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Review and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 30.

In Him Complete

Review and Herald

Jul 23, 1908

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 23, 1908

In Him Complete

By C. M. Snow

C. M. Snow
With naught wherein to boast, O Lord, Unto Thy throne we come; If worth in us Thou shouldst require, In shame our tongues were dumb. In vain our service and our song If by their ministry We seek to call heaven’s blessing down, Or purchase praise from Thee.
In darkest night, in lurid day, In tempest or in calm, We lean, O Lord, upon Thy Word, Our psaltery and psalm. For every trial fit us, Lord, Whate’er that trial be, That, come what may, or life or death, Some heart may learn of Thee,
No hand can falter in the fray Where heart and soul are Thine; No life be fruitless that is joined To Thee, the living Vine. Then give us courage, strength, and faith, Refine us by Thy Word, Till in our hearts Thine image shine, Our Father, Saviour, Lord.
Takoma Park, D. C.

LIFE and HEALTH

The August Number Now Ready

This number of “Life and Health” reaches the climax in the suggestions on the care of the health during the heated season.
It presents examples in the lives of noted persons who have practised simple, healthful living; and reveals how it may be possible for others through adherence to simple, natural laws, to live twice as long and twice as well.
It impresses the importance of cleanliness in maintaining health and in preventing diseases,—cleanliness of body, food, surroundings, and habits of life,—mental, moral, and physical cleanliness.
It will be of value to those who are afflicted with neuralgia; for it explains in simple language, so all may understand, the nature of this disease, and prescribes for its treatment.
It suggests the restorative value of rugged nature for the weary and nervous.
It brings the simple yet really wonderful message of health through the quickening of the mortal body by the Holy Spirit.
It presents some of the best things on the preserving of fruits and vegetables, preparation of raw foods, improvising a practical home-made fireless cooker, directing in its use, and offers some very practical suggestions on important household affairs.
It will be worth many times its cost on account of the practical instruction it contains on the prevention and treatment of summer diarrhea.
It presents some opportune facts concerning Rabies, or Hydrophobia, Tuberculosis Germs in Butter, Tuberculous Cows and Tuberculous Children.
It gives the simple, yet effective Schäfer Method of resuscitating the apparently drowned, something every one should know.
It contrasts the results of the drug habit and rational methods in the treatment of diseases.
It recommends, with sound reasoning, the taking of time to do nothing in maintaining health and accomplishing best life results.
It contains much of great importance on such questions as Hydrophobia; the Need of Protecting Animals; Infant Mortality Preventable; The Dangers from Convalescent Patients; The Common Practise of Overeating, especially during hot weather; Infant Feeding; Objectionable Places in Which Ice-Cream is Manufactured; Chloroform Treatment of Neuralgia; Osteopathy Recognized; The Progress of the Medical Mission Work in Heathen Lands; The Development of Hygienic Health Principles in all lands, etc.

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Single copy, 10 cents; 2 to 25 copies, 5 cents a copy; 25 to 500 copies, 4 cents a copy. Special rates on orders of 500 or more copies. The regular subscription price is 75 cents. Ten or more copies one year, to one address, one order, 45 cents a copy. Foreign subscriptions, including Canada, $1 a year.
Life and Health,
TAKOMA PARK WASHINGTON, D. C.

Bible Teaching in Our Schools

By Editor

Our subject is both broad and important. It will be impossible within the proper limits to discuss it exhaustively. We can only endeavor to cover the ground in a partial way, and to make some suggestions which we hope may be helpful.
The last quarter of a century has witnessed a marked change in the attitude of many professed Christians toward the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scriptures. The difference between the old and the new view is clearly stated in one of the latest books on liberalism ("The Programme of Modernism") in these words:—
The common and traditional notion is that in the Bible we possess an orderly and complete history of the revelation of the Old and New Testaments, guaranteed true in every part by the authority of God, who, as he has inspired the Bible, may be called the principal historian; and also by the secondary historians, who were more or less immediate witnesses of the facts they record,—such as Moses and Joshua for the Old Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for the New. But this conception has been shaken to its foundations by literary criticism applied to the historical books of either Testament.
As a result of this destructive criticism, the Bible is now, even to many teachers of religion, a fallible book, inspired only in the sense in which all the great classics are inspired, and with no more authority than is conceded to it after it has been tried at the bar of reason. In such a time as this, there is, therefore, great need of a powerful testimony to the fact that the whole Bible is indeed “the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” This testimony can best be borne by a prayerful and earnest study of the book itself—such a study as will lead to the revelation of its power and authority in lives molded by it.
The teachers of the Bible in our educational institutions ought to be such painstaking students of the Word of God as will enable them to bring forth constantly from this divine storehouse things new and old, and especially ought they to have such a clear comprehension of the truths of the gospel, and particularly of those phases of truth which need to be emphasized in the message to this generation, that they may be most effective defenders of “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” In this time of apostasy from the truth, when some who have long professed the faith are becoming unsettled concerning some of its essential features, and when men of ability in other denominations are attacking with greater show of learning than ever before, both the theological and the historical features of this second advent movement, there should go forth from our educational institutions an influence that should tend to “stablish, strengthen, settle” any who may be wavering in this message; and the heads of the Bible departments in our institutions should, by such study and research as can not be expected from the average minister, be prepared to defend, with expositions both sound and convincing, those doctrines which constitute the warp and woof of the third angel’s message. Furthermore, the students who are for any considerable length of time under the instruction of these teachers, should go to the field sound in doctrine and experience, and equipped with such a knowledge of the Scriptures as will make them most efficient both in winning souls and in building up the church in the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus.
Let us then consider some suggestions which may tend to the realization of this ideal:—
1. The Bible is one book, the product of one mind, and not a library by different authors. While the individuality of the different instruments used in producing this book may appear plainly, yet the thoughts are always the thoughts of God; and as he can not lie, there will be found neither inconsistency nor contradiction between the different portions of this one volume, even though written at times and places far separated from each other. When the tragic story of Job’s experience was written; when Moses traced the record of the beginnings of things; when “Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied” of the glorious consummation of the gospel in the second advent of our Lord, all things which holy men of old were afterward moved to write by the Holy Spirit were then present to the divine mind, and the Spirit of truth has placed his own stamp both of harmony and reliability upon every succeeding portion. This conception of the Bible is fundamental in the profitable study and the successful teaching of this heaven-sent message.
2. There is but one theme in the Bible,—the gospel of Christ. Nature speaks of the power and the wisdom of him who created and who upholds all things, but only through a supernatural revelation can come a knowledge of the entrance of sin, with the consequent sentence of death, and the divine provision whereby the image of God may be restored in the human soul, the curse removed, and the kingdom of God again established upon earth. Christ the eternal Son; his pre-existence with the Father in times eternal; his relation to all created things and all created beings as the only Mediator; his devotion to the salvation of the human family; his wondrous humiliation in becoming the Son of man; his sacrificial death; his resurrection “by the glory of the Father;” his ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high; his ministry in “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man;” and his return to this earth “with power and great glory,” to gather his saints unto himself,—Christ the revelation of his Father’s character, and himself the meeting-place between divinity and humanity,—Christ “the Way, the Truth, and theLife,”—Christ the “Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,”—Christ in whom the gospel becomes personality, is the one subject in Holy Writ. Of this there is abundant confirmation in the Book itself. When Jesus was walking with the two disciples to Emmaus, “he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” To the Jews he declared of the Scriptures, “They are they which testify of me;” of Moses he declared, “He wrote of me;” and to the eleven, after his resurrection, he said, “All things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” Such is the intimate connection between the Word of God in language and the Word of God in the flesh.
3. In order to have a grasp upon the main theme of the Scriptures, it is necessary to acquire a knowledge of the book as a whole. A narrow runway of texts, arbitrarily joined together and expounded on traditional authority, does not furnish a satisfactory statement of gospel truth. The Bible is not a mere collection of texts any more than it is a collection of separate books, but rather a living organism, all of whose parts sustain an intimate and necessary relation to each other. As the study of one of the joints of the finger, or the lobe of the ear, or even of the proverbial fifth rib, will not give a comprehensive and satisfactory view of the structure and functions of the human body, no more will the study of disjointed texts or haphazard selections of the Scriptures furnish a well-balanced view of the revelation of the gospel.
From the creation of the heavens and the earth in the beginning to the creation of the new heavens and the new earth; from paradise lost to paradise restored; from the entrance of sin to the destruction of death and hell in the lake of fire; from the promise of the Seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent’s head, to the, “Surely I come quickly,” which closes the Revelation,—there is a constant development of the main theme, in history, in biography, in prophecy, in the songs of the sweet singer of Israel, and in the epistolary correspondence of the great apostle to the Gentiles, until in the full tide of the symbolism of the book of Revelation the complete triumph of the gospel is foretold, and the singing of the hallelujah chorus, and the announcement that “the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth,” are anticipated. This view of the progress of the gospel is necessary to an adequate comprehension of the fulness of its meaning; and no teacher of the Scriptures should rest satisfied until his mental vision can extend from the horizon of Genesis to the horizon of Revelation.
4. Every Bible teacher ought to be familiar with the material found in each separate book of the Bible, and with those special characteristics which distinguish one book from another. The need of such knowledge is so manifest that it hardly seems necessary to take the time to emphasize it, and instead of doing this we will illustrate our meaning by taking up a few of the individual books of the Bible. It often happens that a single text of the New Testament will indicate the key-note for a whole book of the Old Testament, as the following examples will show: Genesis is the book of beginnings, but overtopping all other subjects in importance is the beginning of the gospel. While the first chapter of Genesis is the only authentic record of the original creation, it was not written merely to record the facts, but in order to disclose the secure foundation upon which rests the gospel of salvation. Man was originally created in the image of God, and at the close of creation week all things were pronounced “Very good;” but through sin the image of the Creator in man was marred, and the curse came upon the earth. The same power which wrought in the original creation through the mediation of the eternal Son, has been vouchsafed in the gospel of the new creation, “The power of God unto salvation.”
To our first parents, before they were excluded from Eden, the first proclamation of the gospel was made in the announcement that the Seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head. To Abraham the gospel was preached in the promise that in him should all the nations of the earth be blessed (Gal. 3:8), and to Jacob in the dream of the mystic ladder was made known the fact that earth and heaven had been connected by the promised Seed. Joseph, the dreamer, in his experience in Egypt is a marked type of the great Deliverer, and the prophecy of Jacob just before his death announces that “the Shepherd the Stone of Israel” will appear in the line of Joseph. The book of Genesis may therefore be regarded as an extended exposition of Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The limits of this paper will not permit us to deal thus particularly with other books, but merely to suggest as follows:—
(a) The brief statement in Matt. 5:15, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son,” is the index-finger pointing to the book of Exodus, a knowledge of which is necessary to a full understanding of the experience of Jesus, who in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, led forth his people anciently.
(b) In the book of Leviticus, which contains the gospel in precept, are given explicit instructions concerning those services of the tabernacle through which sinful men were permitted to draw near to a holy God. The epistle to the Hebrews is the divine commentary in which the antitypes of these services are fully revealed, and the key-note is found in Heb. 10:19-22: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, . . . let us draw near.”
(c) The story of wilderness wandering and of the bringing again of the children of Israel to the borders of the promised land is told in the book of Numbers. The spiritual meaning of this whole experience is interpreted in James 5:20: “He who converteth a sinner from the error [wandering] of his way shall save a soul from death.”
(d) In the book of Deuteronomy past experiences are rehearsed, and what has been once told is written again to guide in the proper interpretation and application of the lessons contained therein. Thus the contents of the book of Deuteronomy may be indicated by the words found in Matt. 4:7: “It is written again.”
(e) The conquest of the land, in which success and defeat some times alternated, is recorded in the book of Joshua. This whole campaign might have been a succession of the victories of faith the same as at Jericho, but self-confidence and a failure to maintain a record of implicit obedience to God’s instructions led to disaster. In all this is set forth the experience of the individual Christian in the great controversy, while Eph. 6:12 will show the spiritual application of what is written in the book of Joshua: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
(f) In the oft-repeated apostasy of the children of Israel, as recorded in the book of Judges, and the long-suffering of God in pardoning their transgressions, and renewing to them the divine favor, we have an object-lesson on a national scale of the application of the principle enunciated by Jesus in reply to the question of Peter (Matt. 18:21, 22): “How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.”
(g) The great lesson in the book of Ruth is the right of redemption by one near of kin, and the place which this story occupies in unfolding the gospel is clearly indicated in the light of Heb. 2:14: “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.”
These illustrations are amply sufficient to indicate how in a single text ofthe New Testament may be gathered up the spiritual meaning of a whole book of the Old Testament, and again remind us that the gospel is enfolded in the Old Testament and unfolded in the New Testament.
(To be concluded)

Editorial

By Editor

How little, comparatively, there is for which to live when our hopes are limited by the horizon of this brief and uncertain life. What infinite possibilities are before us when we receive that life which is life indeed. Let us then lay hold upon the hope set before us.

The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America

By C. M. S.

The Making and Meaning of Rhode Island
THE story of the establishment of Rhode Island without the story of Roger Williams’ connection therewith, would be like the story of America with the Declaration of Independence omitted. Roger Williams was Rhode Island’s Declaration of Independence; and from the constitution of the State which he founded, the great Constitution of the United States drew many of its most vital and valuable principles. It is, therefore, well worth while to study some of the experiences which led to the founding of that lone State in the woods of the Narragansett Indians.
Mr. James Bryce, present ambassador from Great Britain to the United States, in writing the introduction to a book on Rhode Island, says: “The enormous changes which have passed over America during the last sixty years do not diminish—indeed, they rather increase—the value of a study of the days wherein the foundations of this mighty edifice were raised.” Mr. Bryce is the author of a work entitled “The American Commonwealth,” and the study which he has made of America and American institutions, makes the above quoted remark a particularly striking one.
There have been great changes going on in America. Strong influences are at work undermining the foundation principles of this great commonwealth—the very principles which made it possible for it to achieve its present greatness. The principles of church-and-state union, against which Rhode Island was an eloquent protest, are being again insidiously woven into the fabric of our national and State governments. Since 1863 an influence has been at work, constantly increasing in power, which proposes to bring the nation back to the principles that dominated the Massachusetts, New Haven, and Connecticut colonies. They were all established upon a kind of theocratic basis—God ruling through the magistrate, and all the observances of the ruling church made obligatory upon all persons dwelling within the realm. This was carried to such an extent that even the mere holding of opinions was penalized if those opinions did not harmonize with the creed of the established church. It is the changes, Mr. Bryce says, that make essential a study of the fundamental principles of our government at the present time. If the changes were for the better, Mr. Bryce would not have considered so essential a study of the fundamental principles.
The date of Roger Williams’ birth is not definitely known, but he was born in England about the year 1603. The years of his youth were years of great theological debates and strong theological feelings, for in those days it was a costly and generally a dangerous matter to hold to opinions that were contrary to the creed of the established church. It mattered not how clearly those opinions could be proved from the Word of God, if they were contrary to the creed, they were dangerous heresies; and the more easily they were proved the more dangerous they were—to the established church. Those were the days of the Anabaptists, the Menonites, the Separatists, the Pilgrims, and the Puritans. The first two named stood for the complete separation of church and state; the Separatists separated from the state church in order that they might find in their conventicles and prayer-meetings the religious refreshing which they did not receive in the meetings of the established church. The Pilgrims were Separatists who removed to Holland in 1608 and twelve years later came to America. The Puritans were members of the established church who desired a simpler and purer form of worship in that church than that which obtained there.
With the established church—the English Catholic—persecuting all these nonconformists, or dissenters, in England, and with the Presbyterian establishment doing the same for all dissenting from its creed in Scotland, with the Roman Church outlawed throughout the realm, Roger Williams had an excellent opportunity to study the benefits and the disadvantages of the church-and-state system. His early espousal of the principles of soul-liberty soon made him persona non grata with the establishment, and his biographers indicate that when he left England, there were reasons of a very personal and imperative nature for his doing so; viz., to escape the wrath of the officials of the established church for the opinions he held. A sample of the conditions existing in England at the time when Roger Williams left for America is seen in the treatment given to one Leighton for publishing his “Plea Against Prelacy.” For that act he was committed to prison for life, fined ten thousand pounds, degraded from his ministry, whipped, pilloried, his ears cut off, his nose slit, and his face branded with a hot iron.
It was in 1631 that Roger Williams landed in Boston. He had come to America for freedom of belief and worship; but he found a church there as truly established and as truly despotic as the establishment in either England or Scotland. He refused to join the church of Boston because it still held communion with the Church of England, from whose oppressive jurisdiction he had fled. He thought it his duty to renounce all connection with a church which would imbrue its hands in the blood of the Lord’s people. He made application for the rights of a “freeman” in the colony, but this was denied him because of his refusal to join the church, the rights of citizenship being specifically denied those outside the communion of the established church. It no doubt vexed the righteous soul of Williams to find in the New World the same oppressive conditions that he had fled from in the Old, and without delay or diplomacy he began to combat the principle.
In spite of the disapprobation of the general court of the Colony, the congregation at Salem elected Williams pastor. He soon found it conducive to his temporal peace, however, to take up his abode in the Plymouth colony, where a greater degree of toleration existed, and there exercised his gifts as a minister of the gospel. He was again invited to become the pastor of the Salem church, and accepted the invitation, although the magistrates and ministers greatly objected. The majority of the church felt that they had a right to choose their pastor, and held to their choice. At once his opponents began to denounce his teachings, and he was summoned to appear before the court to answer charges brought against his heretical opinions. One of the teachings for which he was called to answer was that the civil magistrate had no right to enforce religion and religious practises. Such teaching, of course, was diametrically opposed to the principles upon which the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded, and was regarded by the officials as a very serious matter. Three days after Mr. Williams’ appearance in court to answer to these charges, the Salem church was refused legal possession of a certain piece of land for which they had applied, because of their having selected Mr. Williams as their teacher after being admonished by the magistrates not to do so.
Mr. Williams and his church then wrote letters of admonition to the churches of which those magistrates were members, setting forth the injustice of their action, and asking the churches to admonish the magistrates of the criminality of their conduct. These letters failed to have the desired effect, and even some of Mr. Williams’ congregation, because of the official pressure, began to waver. The difficulty grew, and finally Mr. Williams withdrew from the church because of the church’s refusal to withdraw with him from the communion ofthe other churches. Mr. Williams’ friend, Endicot, was imprisoned for the crime of publicly justifying Mr. Williams’ letter of admonition to the churches, and a Mr. Sharpe was summoned to appear in court to answer for the same.
In October, 1635, Roger Williams was again summoned to appear in court. All the ministers of the colony were present. They had already decided that any one was worthy of banishment from the jurisdiction of the colony “who should obstinately assert that the civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy.” Mr. Williams bravely upheld his teachings, but the following sentence was passed upon him, all the ministers present, save one, approving of the deed:—
Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church of Salem, hath broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions, against the authority of magistrates; as also writ letters of defamation, both of the magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without any retraction; it is therefore ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks, now next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be lawful for the governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court.
Here, then, truth asserting itself had met bigotry entrenched behind the breastworks of temporal power. The Christian, commissioned of heaven to preach the gospel as taught by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, had met the professed Christian bearing the sword of the civil magistrate, and deciding for himself who shall and who shall not teach and what shall and what shall not be taught. The sword-bearing restrictor of other men’s liberties triumphs for the time; but his triumph is in reality a self-inflicted defeat; for in robbing other men of their liberties, he is robbing himself of his own. In imprisoning other men for their consciences, he is committing his own soul to the chains of soul-slavery. The exiled Williams was defeated for the time; but out of that defeat grew a monument to his name that succeeding generations have learned to revere. The triumph of the party of oppression has crumbled and gone; the defeat of Williams grew into a State that has influenced not the nation alone, but the whole civilized world as well.
The experiences of Roger Williams in the actual work of founding the Rhode Island Colony, the attempts of his enemies to frustrate his plans, and the crystallizing of the principles of civil and religious freedom into concrete form in the constitution of the State, will be considered in another article.
C. M. S.

The Increasing Appropriations to Missions

By Arthur Grosvenor Daniells

THERE are good reasons why our appropriations to foreign missions are much larger to-day than they were a few years ago. In demonstration of this statement let us look at one part of our great field — the far East, including China, Japan, and Korea. Here are located nearly one third of the population of the whole world.
Eight years ago we had one missionary in all China, and he was eighty years old. Our annual expenditure amounted to about five hundred dollars. To-day we have between forty and fifty workers in China, at an expenditure of about thirty thousand dollars a year.
In 1900 we had three or four workers in Japan, but not one in Korea. Then our appropriations amounted to something like two thousand dollars each year. At the present time we have between fifteen and twenty workers assigned to Japan and Korea, while our annual expenditure has increased to at least fifteen thousand dollars. Thus in the far East we have increased the number of missionaries from five at the most, to about sixty, and we have enlarged our appropriations from two thousand five hundred dollars to at least forty-five thousand dollars.
This appears like a large increase when we look at it from the standpoint of our slender resources, and when we consider what we have done in other parts of our world-field. But it looks very small when we measure it with the great extent of territory, the vast population, and the marvelous opportunities for service which the providence of God has created.
The following statements from a missionary who seems to be well acquainted with developments in the far East, convey to us some idea of the mighty changes taking place there. These changes surely seem to be designed by an overruling Providence for the speedy proclamation of this last message to those millions who have for so many centuries been groping in their heathen darkness. This missionary says:—
It is perhaps impossible for any one who has not been actually living in the far East during the past three to five years to appreciate the colossal changes that have come over the Oriental nations bordering on the Pacific — what a ferment of new life, what a crumbling of old institutions, what a maelstrom of conflicting forces, what a yearning after something new! The spirit of change has touched every phase of national existence.
Throughout this entire region, whether one goes from Shanghai up to the shadows of the Himalayas, or to the borders of the Gobi Desert; or from Formosa to northern Japan, he will find the picture of George Washington in the rooms of the college students and in the primers of the little boys. He will hear Washington’s name on the lips of every statesman. Washington has become the political idol of this half billion people. Is it not eloquent testimony to the revolution in political ideals of the last decade?
Yet, perhaps, if you were to visit the far East, it would not be these political changes which would strike you so much as the industrial revolution. Instead of the tiny shops with the members of one family as the only workers, there are now coming vast modern factories. The forests of lofty chimneys which rise above Osaka, remind one of Pittsburg or Birmingham. Shanghai has a quarter of a million spindles, and a number of great silk filatures. Ten years ago China had one short line of railway. To-day nine thousand miles are under projection, and four thousand are complete. From Han-kow to Peking is thirty-six hours, where four years ago it was thirty-six days. A splendid railway with American coaches rushes you from the southernmost point to the northern border of Korea, the “Hermit Nation” of yesterday. The rich coal-mines of China, throughout countless centuries untouched, are yielding their thousands of tons to supply the needs of the new industrialism. It is only a brief period since old horseshoes were being picked up in London, shipped to Han-kow, and made into plows to cultivate the fields which lay over the immense iron beds of central China, but to-day the government iron works are shipping pig-iron from Han-kow to Seattle.
Wherever the breath of modern commerce has touched the coast of Asia, modern cities, seething with life, and nerved to the highest activity, have burst into being. No part of the world is more active. No streets of the world are crowded like the streets of Shanghai. Yesterday it was a river village; to-day the tonnage of its harbor is second only to that of Liverpool. But yesterday the island of Hongkong was a barren mountain, rising sheer out of the ocean. The mountain has in part been torn down, and thrown into the sea, and where was once the ceaseless beat of the waves, is now the countless tread of traders from every nation, and her princely mansions look down a harbor which, in volume of tonnage, stands mistress of the world.
More significant, however, than any of these changes in the far East — industrial, commercial, or even governmental — has been the educational revolution in China. In order to understand the full significance of this change, it is necessary for us to recall for a moment the nature of China’s old educational system. The only avenue into any position of influence in the nation was through a series of competitive examinations beginning in the district capitals, continuing in the provincial capitals, and culminating to the few successful candidates, in Peking. The result was that the nation was absolutely in the hands of about a million literati. Not only the form but the substance of this system had continued, up to less than a decade ago, practically unchanged for two thousand years. This was not the most striking fact, but rather that two thousand years ago it was then behind the times. Even then the one sole aim of the teaching was to win men from the degeneracy of the present, and get them to attain unto the civilization of twothousand years before.
So, less than ten years since, China still had her eye fixed upon the golden age of four thousand years ago. She was advancing backward, and casting imprecations and pouring out denunciations upon the insistent modernism which was thrusting itself upon her. Here lies the explanation of China’s conservatism. For centuries her great intellectual force has been held with the manacles of an effete scholasticism. For two thousand years her intellectual life has been a worthless Sahara.
If I were to say to you that that old system of education had been changed, what a wonder it would be. But when I say to you that in September, 1905, by one stroke of the vermilion pencil of the Empress Dowager, in one single hour, that entire system from one end of the Chinese empire to the other was absolutely and forever abolished, and that there was put in the place of it not some effete system of medieval Europe, but there was adopted in its place the most modern education that China could discover; namely, the American system of education, which they took from us through Japan, then assuredly the change seems startling.
Missionary work in the far East to-day is entirely different from what it was even three years ago. This great movement, this immense wave, this change that has taken place, has been God’s doing; the ground is broken up and prepared for us. The old systems and institutions that have held millions during centuries have fallen to pieces, and half a billion people stand trembling upon the threshold of a new liberty, and hungering with a new desire.
From the character, purpose, and scope of the work we are doing, these great changes mean more to us than to any other people. And in view of them, who can feel that our appropriations to the far East are too large? If they are not, then how earnestly all should work to secure the full amount.
A. G. DANIELLS.
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