USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Westerville > Three quarters of a century of triumph : seventy-fifth anniversary report and board meeting, Westerville, Ohio, November 11-13, 1930 > Part 3
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There were 1,015 articles of furniture made in the wood shop, 136,335 cards, leaflets, posters, and 267,855 pages of literature printed in the print shop.
There is a movement on foot at the present time to establish a union normal training college in the Protectorate. This movement is sponsored by the United Christian Council. Each of the four leading missionary organizations is to share equally in the cost. The college is to be located in the Mendi country, within the bounds of the English Wesleyan Methodist area. Plans as to buildings, etc., have not been formulated.
BLESSINGS THROUGH HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES
If our missionaries who are engaged in educational work are modest, those from the medical department are even more so. If all the work done through the dispensaries and hospitals would be tabulated, this would make a book each year.
In the labors at the medical stations the Spirit has blessed the work of preaching the Gospel as well as of giving medicine to the patients. 537 services were held in connection with the dispensary work with an attendance of 12,432. During the year 25,250 patients applied for examination and treatment and 222 operations were performed. I have known times when a nurse with our native helpers had
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more than a hundred patients in a day. Medical and surgical clinics cannot be considered separately because every patient wishes to be first on the list to receive attention. Lepers come with the others and why not-are they not all going to the dispensary to be treated? Truly our dispensaries have proved a blessing to untold numbers in Sierra Leone.
CONCLUSION
It is not necessary for me to add that our hearty thanks accompany this report. You sent us forth, we are trying by God's help to carry forward the work of the Church. Our efforts may be weak at times, and the response on the part of our people inadequate to your expectations; but the past is history. We look forward to the next decade with hope and confidence-hope that the home church will continue to stand back of us and we have no reason to believe she will not; confi- dence that the native church will arise in her strength and be true to the call of God in sending the Gospel to the uttermost parts of Sierra Leone.
We believe a great harvest is ripening and that the fruit will be gathered to the glory of our Lord. Only as each missionary and native worker, each institution, and each church shall put Christ first in life and work, shall the deeper currents of spiritual life be realized and the thirty, sixty or a hundred fold fruitage be harvested.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I. That the missionaries now on furlough in America be returned to the field at the expiration of their furlough period.
2. That Albert Academy should have immediate attention relative to the principalship in case Mr. Schutz is not to remain there after June, 1931.
3. We are disappointed in not having missionary supervision in the Shenge district during the year and, therefore, renew our plea for a missionary whose work will be that of supervision with headquarters at Shenge, where the mission house is in waiting.
4. Examination of the school building at Shenge, including the dormitories, showed them to be in need of immediate repairs. This work is in progress at the present time. Fifteen hundred dollars is urgently needed to defray the expenses.
5. Specials that are urgently needed and should be on hand at once:
I. Rebuilding Rotifunk Boys' Home, $2,400.00.
2. Repairing Taiama Church, $240.00.
3. Building Boys' Home, Taiama, $960.00.
4. To furnish doctor's residence, Jiama, $360.00.
5. Hospital building at Taiama; estimate not made.
6. We sincerely beg that no reduction be made on our general budget which represents our minimum needs.
We thank you most heartily for what you as a Church have done for Africa, and for what you will continue to do while the indigenous church is making pro- vision to take on more responsibility.
We, the missionaries, pledge ourselves more fully than ever in carrying forward the program of the church.
Yours faithfully, J. F. MUSSELMAN
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON AFRICA
After due organization and consideration of the work in Africa, the committee submits the following report:
I. We heartily commend the church in Africa for the heroic struggle it is making in face of economic depression, manifested in its contributions and in the successes of the past year, in its forward look and the emphasis upon evangelism. The church at home is struggling against the same world wide economic stringency, but is determined in spite of the difficulties to go forward. We are glad for the same spirit in the church in Africa and that thus through His power and might we may go forward together victoriously.
II. We appreciate the education program of the mission in Africa and recom- mend:
I. That just as soon as funds can be made available the facilities of the Harford School at Moyamba be enlarged and the staff increased.
2. That we realize the value of the proposed union normal training school; that we look with favor upon the plan, and advise the mission in Africa to keep in touch with and promote the project.
III. We recommend that our Board study carefully the stipulation set forth by the Sierra Leone Government to missions for medical services and get an official interpretation of government grants to be sure that funds are spent in harmony with same.
IV. In regard to the recommendations on page 24 of the African report, we recommend:
I. That No. I be adopted:
"That the missionaries now on furlough in America be returned to the field at the expiration of their furlough period."
2. That No. 2 be referred to the Executive Committee:
"That Albert Academy should have immediate attention relative to the prin- cipalship in case Mr. Schutz is not to remain there after June, 1931."
3. That in regard to No. 3 because of the financial stringency a missionary to Shenge cannot be sent at the present time:
"We are disappointed in not having missionary supervision in the Shenge District during the year and, therefore, renew our plea for a missionary whose work will be that of supervision with headquarters at Shenge, where the mission house is in waiting."
4. That the Executive Committee be instructed to provide funds as soon as possible for the necessary repairs at Shenge:
"Examination of the school building at Shenge, including the dormitories, showed them to be in need of immediate repairs. This work is in progress at the present time. Fifteen hundred dollars is urgently needed to defray the expenses."
5. That of the specials urgently needed the first four be granted as soon as funds can be made available; and that action regarding the hospital building at Taiama be postponed for one year:
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"Specials that are urgently needed and should be on hand at once:
I. Rebuilding Rotifunk Boys' Home, $2,400.
2. Repairing Taiama Church, $240.
3. Building Boys' Home, Taiama, $960.
4. To furnish doctor's residence at Jiama, $360.
5. Hospital Building at Taiama; estimate not made.
6. That recommendation No. 6 be referred to the Appropriation Committee: "We sincerely beg that no reduction be made on our general budget which represents our minimum needs."
V. Experience has proven that the three year term in Africa with one year furlough in America, is best for the continuity of the work and the conservation of our limited funds; nevertheless desiring to conserve the health of our mission- aries, we wish to reemphasize the importance of regular vacation periods and insist that missionaries observe the same. We also wish to reemphasize the action formerly taken that if medical authorities and the mission believe the health of any missionary would be jeopardized by the length of the term, the missionary should return home before the expiration of the term without censure.
VI. We approve and recommend the adoption of the report of the Committee. on Foreign Students governing the coming of the students from any of our mission fields to our country, expecting to earn at least part of their expenses by speaking in.our churches.
VII. That we present to the Board for action the World Friendship Project for Students of United Brethren Schools.
Respectfully submitted,
A. B. STATTON, Bishop MAUD E. HOYLE E. I. CONNER G. T. ROSSELOT S. C. CALDWELL ALICE E. BELL, Secretary Committee.
CHRISTIANITY MAKES PROGRESS IN CHINA
At this time, when our United Brethren Foreign Missionary enterprise is celebrating its "Diamond Jubilee," our China Mission work is just getting ready to enter upon its forty-second year. And since this anniversary occasion has put us all into a reminiscent mood, it will be permissible to ascend the current of our China Mission history past the year 1889 when our denominational work was born.in the city of Can- ton, back to the uppermost and remotest sources which can be shown in any measure or manner to have influenced our work in this year of grace, 1930.
Let it be freely admitted at the outset, that there is much in the present China missionary situation Rev. C. W. Shoop that looks like failure. But at the same time let us also be challenged by the certain conviction that the Christian movement in China is succeeding better in 1930, than in any previous year! Let us understand that the confusion in China, as in many other parts of the world today, is not at all a sign of failure, but an indication of God's creative work as he seeks to change an old world order into a new. It will be impossible to survey adequately, here, the history of Christianity in China in such a way as to prove that the present stage in its development, in spite of all its many and serious handicaps, marks a long advance over the days of the greatest success of the "Foreign Missionary Enterprise." In the eyes of the multitudes that thronged Him, Jesus was doubtless much more of a "success" when he was feeding the crowd with loaves and fishes than when he was hanging upon the cross. Yet it is not difficult for some of us today to see that even when He called out "My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?"-that even then He was making progress, and was more truly the Savior of men than ever before. So today in the Christian movement in China, the significance of the Cross of Christ looms up in a way that makes faith in God more vital perhaps than during the days of easier missionary success.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The very beginnings of the Christian missionary movement in China carry us back to the seventh century of the Christian era when the Nestorians worked with great success for a while among the Chinese people. The Chinese were neither anti-foreign nor anti-Christian at this time and for many centuries follow- ing, it seems, and foreigners in China were practically on the same footing as Chinese subjects and were given fullest protection. It should be remembered also that during this early period Chinese civilization, culture, laws, etc., were as "up- to-date" as were the corresponding institutions of Europe. In fact, China was more advanced at that time than was Europe. It was after Columbus discovered America that the rest of the world forged ahead of China.
Near the close of the sixteenth century the Roman Catholic Order of Jesuits began work in China, and some time later the Dominican Order came also. These
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two Roman Catholic societies differed in opinion and policy on such subjects as the proper name for God in Chinese, the correct missionary attitude toward Chinese ancestor-worship, etc. The dispute became bitter and involved finally the Chinese Emperor, who was on the side of the Jesuits, and the Pope at Rome, who sided with the Dominicans. The up-shot was that a later Emperor finally asserted his sovereignty by denouncing Christianity and banishing the missionaries early in the eighteenth century. The long dispute brought Christianity in China somewhat into disrepute, and helped to turn the Chinese against it long before the modern Protestant Missionary Movement began with Robert Morrison in 1807. When the latter arrived at Canton that year, Christianity was still outlawed in China and its preaching illegal, while the profession of Christianity by a Chinese was punishable by death.
But there were further reasons that led China to change her attitude from a hos- pitable country, glad to welcome the missionary and trader from foreign lands, into that of intolerance and exclusiveness. After Columbus, Magellan, and other explorers and discoverers had shown how rich and how accessible to Europe every other portion of the earth was, European adventurers, led by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, took advantage of the opportunities thus afforded to exploit newly discovered countries and peoples. The Portuguese came to Canton in 1516 and the Spaniards arrived in 1575. It was not long until the Chinese discovered these "western barbarians" to be very rude guests. The fears and the suspicions of the Chinese people were also being aroused by the conquests which these for- eigners were making in the East Indies, India, the Malay Peninsula, and elsewhere. And when finally, in the Philippine Islands, the Spanish conquerors of those islands, fearful lest all the trade should fall into the hands of the Chinese merchants and that Spain might lose control even of the Islands themselves, instituted a barbarous massacre in which about 20,000 Chinese lost their lives, China thought it was time to close her doors tight against all foreigners.
However, one door was left partly open. Foreign traders were permitted to carry on commerce at Canton, in South China. They might not, however, bring their wives and families, nor were they permitted to reside wherever they might choose or move about among the Chinese people at will. Every foreigner in Can- ton was obliged to live in one of the thirteen "factories"-as their business houses were called-and to carry on his business intercourse with the outside world through a Chinese middleman only. Once a week these foreign business men were permitted to come out of their seclusion and to walk about in the flower gardens of Canton-but always under the oversight of a Chinese guard. These early foreign traders in Canton were prisoners, virtually, and the method of carrying on business was far from satisfactory.
When the English first arrived in Canton in 1635, they accepted conditions as they found them, but by 1792 we find a British embassy at Peking, attempting to get the Chinese Emperor's permission to establish a permanent British Ministry in the Chinese capital. This Mission, like the later Mission of 1816, failed to achieve the desired results. England found numerous points of dissatisfaction with Chinese policy, and insisted on a revision of that policy. China, self-confi- dent and ignorant of England's real power, was overbearing in expressions of con- tempt of the latter's peaceful advances. War followed, 1839-1842. By the treaty of Nanking, signed August 29, 1842, China discovered that England had success- fully blown open with her superior guns, five "doors" into China, namely, Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai, besides taking from China the island
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CHRISTIANITY MAKES PROGRESS IN CHINA
of Hong Kong. The date of the Nanking treaty, perhaps more accurately than any other date that might be named in China's four thousand years of authentic history, marks the beginning of the end of conservative, isolated, static China. For on this date, much against her will, China was forced to admit the foreigner with all his strange customs which were bound in time to undermine the time- honored and rigid Chinese culture and to cause it to fall, never to rise again except as vitalized and modified by the newer elements entering from without.
MISSIONARY BACKGROUND
When Robert Morrison, the pioneer of Protestant Christian Missions, arrived at Canton in 1807, China, as we have seen, was inhospitable toward foreigners and intolerant toward Christianity. Except for preliminary work of language study and some literary work, Canton was impossible as a field for real missionary work, and Morrison made and baptized his first Chinese convert at Macao, a Portuguese settlement, seven years after arrival at Canton. When Morrison and his colleague, Peter Milne, sought a place to establish a school for educating Chinese in the ele- ments of Christianity and Western culture, as well as for educating Europeans in the elements of Chinese culture, they located the school not in Chinese territory but at Malacca. Here it remained until 1843 when it was moved to the then recently acquired island of Hong Kong, and made into a theological seminary.
When the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent their first missionaries to China in 1830-just a century ago-they also found it impos- sible to do active missionary work in Canton, except language and literary work. The American Presbyterian Board opened its first work for Chinese at Singapore in 1838. The American Episcopal Board began its China missionary effort in Batavia in 1835, transferred it to Macao, and in 1844 transplanted it upon Chinese territory near Amoy. The point which such facts as these are meant to emphasize is that all the missionary societies from the time of Morrison's going to Canton in 1807 to the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, began their work for China not in China, but outside of China, waiting until after the first war between England and China had opened the five treaty-ports already named, and after the Nanking Treaty had guaranteed a measure of protection to foreigners and made missionary effort possible, to locate missions in Chinese territory.
It is very difficult to put ourselves, imaginatively, into the place of these great missionary pioneers to China. Morrison, Milne, Bridgman, Abeel, S. Wells Williams, Dr. Peter Parker, and others were all great men of heroic mould, sterling Christian character and superb consecration. In fact, no modern missionary, knowing the facts of their lives and the conditions under which these men lived their lives, would venture to suggest that they acted with indiscretion at any point. And it is only because
"TIME MAKES ANCIENT GOOD UNCOUTH"
that the missionary in China today is called upon to explain why these great and good men were willing to rest the cause of Christ in China in those early, trying days on "the unequal treaties" and on "the gunboat policy," both of which are anathema to the Chinese Nationalist of 1930. For, in these later days, when your young Chinese student studies Political or Historical Science in American uni- versities, he becomes aware of the fact that these early Protestant missionaries to China were the only foreigners there in 1842, 1844, 1858, 1860, and so on, when the "unequal treaties" were signed, who were sufficiently grounded in Chinese language
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and usages to enable them to put a treaty with China into acceptable literary form. One of our best American authorities on the subject reminds us that the provision for churches and hospitals made in the first American treaty with China in 1844 at Macao, "recalls the fact that Mr. Caleb Cushing, the American Com- missioner, was entirely in the hands of missionaries who were his only interpreters."
Reasonable and altogether justifiable as it must have been nearly a century ago, that Christian missionaries should approve of the forcing of China's closed door, and that they should take a leading hand in shaping the treaties whereby China gave her unwilling consent to that which she was not strong enough to prevent, and that they should rejoice in this work of their hands as a lawful expres- sion of the Christian spirit and as a legitimate method of its promotion, we of the present generation need to make it clear beyond the peradventure of a doubt that in the intervening years God has revealed to us the inadequacy of the moral foundations which seemed once to support the theory that the Gospel can be acceptably preached to a non-Christian by force. Unless missionaries and those who believe in missions can succeed in convincing the Chinese people that from now on the Good News must-and will-make its appeal to them in its own right, unsupported by carnal weapons, their message will continue to fall upon deaf ears.
When our United Brethren work was opened in Canton in 1889, the Chinese had not yet forgotten the wars and the thousands of petty pin-pricks which marked their intercourse with foreign nations since 1839-just half a century earlier- when the first war with England began. Since the city of Canton, as we have seen, was for several centuries the only place in China where foreigners might. trade or reside, this city was probably for this very reason more conscious of anti- foreignism than any other place in China. Also, here, around and in Canton, the wars with foreign powers had first centered and Canton had experienced several humiliations. At any rate, missionary work progressed slowly for many years in Canton. Although it was the first of the Chinese cities to be occupied, Foochow, Amoy, and Shanghai forged well ahead of Canton in number of church members by 1907, the year of the Centenary Conference held at Shanghai. The superin- tendent of our United Brethren Mission reported to this Conference that "The people around Canton have always been bitterly anti-foreign" and indicates that it had always, up to that time, been difficult to secure an opening in any of the outlying towns. Doctor Bigler was mobbed in the streets of Honam while attend- ing a patient found ill on the street; and while not personally mobbed himself, Mr. Ward quelled a riot in Siu Lam on one occasion when the life of another mis- sionary guest was in imminent danger.
It has long been an open secret that the usurping Manchus, who came into power in China near the middle of the seventeenth century, becoming more and more corrupt and correspondingly weaker as time went on, used every opportunity to shift the blame for China's woes off themselves and upon the foreigners living in China, and on their respective countries. This policy of the Manchus had much to do with anti-foreignism in China. But finally an increasing number of Chinese people began to discern that these Manchus were themselves largely to blame for China's increasing sorrows and humiliations, and as early as 1885 we find the young patriot Sun Yat Sen, organizing a society for the express purpose of deposing the Manchus and setting up in their stead a new Chinese house to govern the country. It was not until 1911 and 1912, however, that the movement had grown sufficiently to make successful revolution possible, and in the meanwhile China
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had lost out in its war with Japan, and the Boxer outbreak had helped to make the Manchus still more unpopular.
The sympathies of Americans generally and of the American missionaries in particular, were on the side of Sun Yat Sen, who himself had been a student in a Mission school in his younger days, and who had embraced Christianity. From 1912 to 1922, Christianity was very popular in China and perhaps nowhere more so than in Canton, the source of revolution and the home of the "Father of the Chinese Revolution"-Dr. Sun Yat Sen. The former hostilities and antipathies toward foreigners had disappeared here, and foreign ways and ideas were eagerly adopted. Many of the Chinese official class from this time on were actually or nominally Christian, and in a national election crises in 1913, President Yuan Shai-kai, although not himself a Christian, issued a call to the Christian church for prayer. It was a period of great expectancy and optimism on the part of Christian people, and the various denominational Boards of Foreign Missions planned to enlarge their China program extensively. The number of foreign missionaries in China nearly doubled between 1912 and 1922.
But alas, for China as for the rest of the world, in 1914 the Christian nations went to war with each other, and invited China to join, promising her that certain wrongs done her by a "Christian" nation would be righted at the close of the war if the Allies were successful! China went into the war on the side of the Allies, but when the peace treaty was signed at Versailles, her delegates refused to sign it because the promise that had been made and not kept led them to think differ- ently. Instead of signing on the dotted line, these Chinese delegates sent a tele- gram to Peking, telling their people what had taken place. The Chinese students organized in protest, principally against the country that had blocked the way to satisfactory adjustment of the Shantung situation, but partly also against the so-called Christian Powers who, they felt, had betrayed China. The first great wave of the spirit of Nationalism was rolling over young China.
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