A Tour of the Missions Part 1

A Tour of the Missions.

by Augustus Hopkins Strong.

FOREWORD

The forty years of my presidency and teaching in the Rochester Theological Seminary have been rewarded by the knowledge that more than a hundred of my pupils have become missionaries in heathen lands. For many years these former students have been urging me to visit them.

Until recently seminary sessions and literary work have prevented acceptance of their invitations. When I laid down my official duties, two alternatives presented themselves: I could sit down and read through the new Encyclopaedia Britannica, or I could go round the world. A friend suggested that I might combine these schemes. The publishers provide a felt-lined trunk to hold the encyclopaedia: I could read it, and circ.u.mnavigate the globe at the same time. This proposition, however, had an air of c.u.mbrousness. I concluded to take my wife as my encyclopaedia instead of the books, and this seemed the more rational since she had, seven or eight years before, made the same tour of the missions which I had in mind. To her therefore a large part of the information in the following pages is due, for in all my journey she was my guide, philosopher, and friend.

Our tour would not have covered so much ground nor have been so crowded with incidents of interest, if it had not been for the foresight and a.s.sistance of the Reverend Louis Aga.s.siz Gould. He was a student in our seminary forty years ago, and after his graduation he became a missionary to China. Though his work abroad lasted only a decade, his interest in missions has never ceased, and he is an authority with regard to their history and their methods. I was fortunate in securing him as my courier, secretary, and typewriter, and his companionship enlivened our table intercourse and our social life. But he was bound that we should see all that there was to be seen. Without my knowledge he wrote ahead to all the missions which we were to visit, and the result was almost as if a delegation with bra.s.s band met us at every station. We were sight-seeing all day, and traveling in sleeping-cars all night. Though I had notified the public that I could preach no more sermons and make no more addresses, I was summoned before nearly every church, school, and college that we visited, and fifty or sixty extemporized talks were extorted from me, most of them interpreted to the audience by a pastor or teacher. My letters to home friends were often written on the platforms of railway stations while we were waiting for our trains, and after six months of these exhausting labors I still survived.

These preliminary remarks are intended to prepare the reader for a final statement, namely, that the papers which follow were written with no thought of publication. They were simply a record of travel, set down each week, for the information of relatives and friends. I have been urged to give them a wider circulation by putting them into print. In doing this I have added some reflections which, for substance, were also written at intervals on my journey, and these, with sundry emendations and omissions, I have called my "Conclusions." I submit both "Observations" and "Conclusions" to the judgment of my readers, in hope that my "Tour of the Missions" may lead other and more competent observers to appreciate the wonderful attractions and the immeasurable needs of Oriental lands.

I cannot close this personal foreword without expressing to my former students and the many friends who so hospitably entertained us on our journey, my undying sense of their great kindness, and my hope that between the lines of my descriptions of what I saw they will discover my earnest desire to serve the cause of Christ and his truth, even though my impressions may at times result from my own short-sightedness and ignorance. Only what I have can I give.

Augustus H. Strong.

Rochester, August 3, 1917.

I

A WEEK IN j.a.pAN

The Pacific Ocean was very kind to us, for it answered to its name, and was pacific beyond all our expectations. Sixteen days of smooth seas and lovely weather brought us by way of Honolulu to Yokohama. Only the last day of our voyage was dark and rainy. But though the rain continued after our landing, j.a.pan was picturesque. On four out of our six days we drove about, shut up in water-tight buggies called "rickshaws." They were like one-hoss-shays, through whose front windows of isingla.s.s we looked out upon the bare legs of our engineer and conductor, who took the place of the horse for twenty-five cents an hour.

There were other sights on these rainy days--endless processions of slipshod men on wooden clogs, clattering their way through the narrow streets, while they protected themselves from the watery downpour by flat oil-paper umbrellas; other strong-limbed men acting as wheel-horses to draw or push incredible weights of lumber; and saving themselves from the wet by bushy coats of straw that made them look like porcupines; women, little and big, carrying babies on their backs, occasionally a girl, aged anywhere from four to eight, loaded with a baby aged two; shops, shops, shops, one-storied, artistic, fantastic, with signs on which Ah Sing and Ah Tong have mingled Chinese characters and English, and which inform you that the proprietors can furnish you with the _sake_ of j.a.pan or the gasoline of the Standard Oil Company; these things convince you that you are in the midst of a crowded population struggling for subsistence and ready to work, a population of inexhaustible vitality and enterprise.

Our first rainy day was distinguished by a visit to the palatial mansion of a j.a.panese millionaire. Mr. Asano, the President of the Steamship Company that brought us thither, had invited the whole lot of first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers to afternoon tea at his house in Tokyo. That house is a veritable museum of j.a.panese art. It reminded us of the collections of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. There was a great retinue of servants, and we were escorted upon arrival to one of the topmost rooms, where we were served with tea and presented with symbolic cakes by a dozen gorgeously bedecked young girls, who proved to be the children and grandchildren of our host. This, however, was only a preparatory welcome, for it was followed by the real reception in a great audience-room below, where Mr. and Mrs. Asano, together with their eldest son and daughter, gave us cordial greetings. A couple of hundred of our fellow pa.s.sengers were gathered there and were partaking of light refreshments, with claret, tea, and mineral waters, while an expert j.a.panese juggler amused them with his feats of sleight of hand. The tapestries and paintings of this house were exquisite products of taste and skill, and the total effect was that of great wealth accompanied by true love for the beautiful. But it was the mansion of an orthodox Shinto and Buddhist, for in every large room there was an alcove with the sitting figure of a bronze Buddha.

A more distinctly Christian entertainment for that same rainy day was our reception by the Conference of Baptist missionaries and workers at the new Tabernacle in Tokyo. They had been called to meet Doctor Franklin and Doctor Anderson, who had been sent by our Foreign Missionary Society to consult with them as to our educational policy in j.a.pan. We reached the Conference on its last day of meeting, and we had a most valued opportunity of observing its method of procedure. Half of those present were j.a.panese workers who did not understand English, and it was a new experience to address them when every word had to be interpreted. The social intercourse that followed was delightful, for it enabled us to greet our former pupils in considerable numbers. We then took lunch at the house of Doctor Axling, the pastor of the Tokyo church, while Doctor Tenny is President of the Theological Seminary. The little j.a.panese missionary home, with its tiny secluded garden, its paper part.i.tions, and its mingled reminders of an American household, were things long to be remembered. Not less to be noted was the grat.i.tude for our visit which was shown by our hosts. We had regarded ourselves as the persons honored and entertained. We learned that missionaries in a heathen land wonderfully appreciate the sight and the companionship of friends from their distant home.

Even more unexpected was our reception at the Women's College of j.a.pan.

Since I had been more than thirty years a trustee of Va.s.sar College, and for some years chairman of its board of trustees, Mrs. Strong and I were the guests of honor, and I was the first speaker called upon.

Before me were five hundred young women in more somber dress than prevails at Va.s.sar. All rose to welcome me at the beginning of my address, and all rose again to thank me at its conclusion. Most of these students understood only j.a.panese and needed an interpreter. Doctor Zumoto, the accomplished editor of the j.a.panese "Herald of Asia,"

translated my address into his own language after I had finished, having taken notes while I spoke. Until the very end I had the impression that this was a Christian college, and I innocently made the Lord Jesus the center and substance of my remarks, declaring that the renaissance of learning in j.a.pan needed to be supplemented by a reformation of religion. Only when the evening was over did I learn that the inst.i.tution was not only undenominational, but also non-religious, having Buddhist as well as Christian professors. Doctors Anderson and Franklin were also guests, and when they followed me, they made the same mistake and made Christian addresses. But the j.a.panese management is very polite and very liberal, and even in the dinner that followed our _faux pas_ did not provoke a word of criticism. The guests at that dinner served by the students were from the most prominent educational inst.i.tutions of j.a.pan. We highly appreciated the honor done us, and did not regret that in our ignorance of the situation we had given to that distinguished audience the true gospel of Christ.

Another dinner of a very different sort was that which we ourselves gave at the Grand Hotel of Yokohama to the Rochester men. To my surprise twenty-four persons sat down, but this number included at least ten of the wives. Chiba and Axling, Tenny and Topping, the Fishers, father and son, Clement, Brown, Benninghoff, Takagaki, Kawaguchi, all except the last with their wives, made up the list. I was proud of them, for they are leaders of thought and of education in j.a.pan. Only Doctor Bearing's absence on furlough in America, a furlough ended only by his lamented death, prevented us from inviting him, though he was not a Rochester man. Reminiscences of seminary life were both pathetic and amusing at that dinner. One thing impressed itself upon my mind and memory: Our missionaries have not lost their sense of humor. Under all their burdens of anxiety and responsibility they have retained their sanity, their hopefulness, and their good fellowship. The hilarity of our gathering was the bubbling over of cheerful dispositions, and the safety-valve gave evidence that there were large reserves of steam. Missionaries are not a solemn set. They are only a good set of human beings made in the divine image, for is it not written that even "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh"?

The next day was the brightest of the bright. We took advantage of it to visit the great temple of Kamakura, and to inspect the greatest artistic monument of j.a.pan, the bronze image of Buddha. It is a sitting statue, with folded hands and eyes closed, as if absorbed in mystic contemplation of his own excellence as a manifestation of deity, and careless of the sorrows and sins of the world. The great bronze image is fifty feet high, but it is hollow. We entered it, climbed up by ladders to its shoulders, and looked out of windows in its back. Its hollowness seemed symbolic, for it has only the outward semblance of divinity and is deaf to all human entreaties. On that same day we visited the temple of Hachiman, the G.o.d of war, most s.p.a.cious and impressive in its park-like surroundings of ancient trees and n.o.ble gateways, but fearful in its accompanying images of revenge and slaughter. Humanity needs compa.s.sion in the G.o.dhead. The j.a.panese have felt this, and they have invented a G.o.ddess of mercy, Kwannon by name.

Her shrine is the richest in j.a.pan. It const.i.tutes one of the greatest attractions of the capital. Millions visit it every year, and the offerings of its worshipers support a whole colony of Buddhist priests.

The avenue leading to the temple is lined with shops where mementoes of the G.o.ddess may be purchased, as in Ephesus of old silver shrines might be bought in honor of the great G.o.ddess Diana. It is the old story of buyers and sellers in the Jewish temple. It was most pathetic to see a well-dressed and handsome woman bend herself almost double before the image, clap her hands to call the attention of the G.o.ddess, and then fold them in prayer, possibly for the child that had hitherto been denied her. It is well understood in this temple that, until the clink of coin is heard in the collection-box, it is vain to suppose that even the G.o.ddess of mercy will listen to a prayer.

The G.o.d of war reigns in j.a.pan, rather than the G.o.ddess of mercy. War is more profitable. The sale of munitions to the Russian Government is enriching j.a.pan, as our sales to the Allies are enriching us. The love of gain is an obstacle to the success of the gospel, here as well as in America. Nothing but a mighty influence of the Holy Spirit can convince j.a.pan of sin, and bring her to the feet of Christ. The work of our missionaries, however, is permeating all the strata of society. Western science and Western literature are so bound up with Christianity that j.a.pan cannot easily accept them without also accepting Christ.

We wished to see mission work in a country field, and we begged Mrs.

Fisher to go with us to Kanagawa, a suburb of Yokohama, where an educated milkman is pastor, and where the Mary Colby School of Christian girls attends the worship of his church. The reverence and sincerity of the service impressed us. The warmth and abandon of the singing put to shame our Western quartet choirs. Here is a pastor who prefers to supplement his meager salary by selling milk on week-days, rather than give up the satisfaction of seeing his church entirely self-supporting.

It seemed to me the model of a good ministry, and the prophecy of a mult.i.tude of New Testament churches in j.a.pan, manned and financed and governed by the j.a.panese themselves. So long as we of the West furnish both the preachers and their salaries, the j.a.panese will not learn to depend upon their own administration or their own giving, and we will not have churches organized on correct principles and so rooted in the soil that they can stand the shocks of time and endlessly propagate the gospel. May "the little one" in Kanagawa "become a thousand"!

j.a.pan is a country where "every prospect pleases, and only man is vile."

Immorality is its curse. There is little drunkenness indeed, and gambling is strictly prohibited. But the relations of the s.e.xes are almost wholly unregulated. Patriotism and filial devotion take exaggerated forms, and girls can lead a life of shame in order to provide means for the education of their brothers. General Nogi and his wife can commit suicide when his sons are killed in battle, and the whole country can regard it as so n.o.ble a deed that the general's desire to extinguish his family name is not permitted to prevent the adoption of it by another. The j.a.panese are a nation of wonderful natural gifts.

Honor, enterprise, submission, accessibility to new ideas, powers of imitation and invention, make them the leaders of the Orient. Steamships of twenty-two thousand tons, and equal to any Atlantic Cunarders, yet built in their own dockyards by shipwrights who twenty years ago knew nothing of their trade, are a proof of extraordinary plasticity and ability. Civilization and Christianity may find new expression, if the j.a.panese are subdued by the Cross of Christ.

My interest in missions has been doubled since I came in contact with the practical work of our missionaries. We have able and devoted representatives on this foreign field, and I believe that G.o.d will make them mighty to dethrone Buddhism, and to crown Christ Lord of all. Yes, "every prospect pleases." When I sailed through the Inland Sea of j.a.pan, two hundred and forty miles long, studded with hundreds of islands small and great, islands often surmounted with glistening white temples or fortifications, I thought our Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, and even the Isles of the Greek aegean, were not to be mentioned in comparison. The landlocked harbor of Nagasaki, with its encircling hills, is finer than our Golden Gate of the Pacific. Fuji-yama, snow-capped and symmetrical, seen against the crimson sunset sky, is more beautiful even than Mount Ranier when seen from Tacoma, or Vesuvius when seen from Naples. j.a.pan is a land for poetry and song, a land to awaken the loftiest patriotism, a land to inspire and lead the world.

Provided, ah yes! provided, it can be converted to Christ, and made his servant. The j.a.panese is a natural orator; he has organizing ability of the highest order; he is accessible, yet independent. Now is the time to make him a preacher of the gospel to all the East. China and India have already felt the influence of his military and political progress. Let us, by pouring in the light of Christianity, make him also their leader in true religion!

II

A WEEK-END IN CHINA

Hongkong is a city wonderful for situation and for trade. It has a landlocked harbor encircled by precipitous hills and large enough to float the navies of the world. It is the second largest port on earth for exports and imports, over six hundred million dollars' worth in a year. It is a meeting-place of the East and the West, a fortress of Britain in China, a conglomeration of people, a center of influence for j.a.pan and for India, an object-lesson in sanitation, education, and munic.i.p.al government. The dominating religion is that of the Church of England, and the Hongkong University, though endowed in part by wealthy Chinese, follows English models and has a staff of English professors.

I mention Hongkong only to make more clear my description of Swatow, its northern neighbor. The situation of Swatow is very like that of Hongkong. A n.o.ble harbor encircled by steep hills, it is one of the chief ports between Hongkong and Shanghai, and only a single night's steamer-ride from Hongkong. Its attraction to us lay in the fact that it is more Chinese than Hongkong, a princ.i.p.al seat of Presbyterian and Baptist missions, and not so dominated as is Hongkong by the Church of England. As Hongkong is an island, so our Baptist Mission Compound is on an island, separated from the city of Swatow by the bay on which hundreds of sampans and fishing-boats with lateen sails are always riding, and at whose wharves many a great steamship is loading or unloading freight. When our vessel arrived, we were quickly surrounded by a mult.i.tude of smaller craft, manned by clamorous tradesmen selling wares or seeking employment. The commissioner of British customs, who was our fellow pa.s.senger, most courteously invited us to share his motor-launch, and when we had landed on the other side of the bay he sent us up the hill to the mission compound in two of his sedan-chairs, each one borne by two stout men in picturesque uniform: and wearing the insignia of the customs office.

A word about the English customs may be interesting. To satisfy English creditors, and later, to pay interest on indemnities for the Boxer uprising, China mortgaged the larger part of her duties on foreign imports. Sir Robert Hart was appointed Inspector General, to superintend this collection of duties. He introduced system and honesty, where before there had been only disorder and peculation. From twenty to thirty million dollars are in this way collected every year. Swatow is the third port in the amount thus obtained, itself furnishing two to three millions of the aggregate result. But this putting her collection of customs into the hands of foreigners, though it has taught China her own wastefulness and the superiority of Western finance, is a burden so humiliating that it cannot always continue. When China fully awakes, she will realize her strength and will reclaim what her weakness ceded to Great Britain.

Our mission compound is one of the n.o.blest in the East. It is due to the foresight and executive ability of Dr. William Ashmore, Senior. He began his missionary work in Bangkok, Siam, but was transferred by our Missionary Union to Swatow, with the view of opening China to our missionary efforts. He had Irish blood in his veins. He was witty and eloquent, fervid and pa.s.sionate. But he was also a man of grit, and a hero of the faith. He wanted a quiet base of supplies from which he could send out expeditions into the heart of China. He had no means of any account. But he saw the possibilities in these steep and barren hillsides opposite Swatow, and for six hundred dollars he bought a tract which he gradually turned into a garden, with twenty mission buildings and residences so thrust into the rocks and so overhanging one another, that the whole plant seems a miracle of engineering. Like a fortress, it commands the city of Swatow across the bay, very much as Governor's Island commands New York. From its church and its schools have gone out a score of evangelists and native pastors, to turn Swatow and the whole country within a radius of a hundred miles into a present seed-plot and a future garden of the Lord.

William Ashmore, Senior, died seven years ago. But he left a son of the same name, who is a Chinese scholar of wide reputation, a sound theologian, and a leader greatly beloved. He has nearly completed a translation of the Bible into the colloquial Chinese--a felt need of many years. At his house, so wedged into the rocky hillside that a typhoon might seem equal to washing it down into the bay, we were most hospitably entertained. Here we spent a memorable Sabbath Day. At the church service, at least five hundred church-members and pupils of the various schools were gathered, and I addressed them on "Faith, as Both a Giving and a Taking"--a giving of one's self, and a taking of Christ to be ours. Doctor Ashmore interpreted my talk to the audience, sentence by sentence. The whole service was to me an inspiring ill.u.s.tration of New Testament order and simplicity, for my address and the sermon of Doctor Ashmore which followed had been preceded by free partic.i.p.ation of members of the church, in which one happy father arose to give thanks for the birth of a girl-baby, after five sons had been given him--a great change from the time when new-born girls were despised and often thrown out into the street. This reverent congregation, worshiping G.o.d in freedom and sincerity, seemed the prophecy of a redeemed China. This congeries of schools, from kindergarten to theological seminary, with Ashmore, Capen, Page, and Waters for instructors, and Groesbeck, Speicher, Lewis, Foster, and others for evangelists, has already permeated a whole province with Christian teaching. It needs an inst.i.tutional plant in the city, where it already has a n.o.ble location, and it also needs a motor-launch to carry its students to the field across the bay, where they can find opportunity to win the mult.i.tude to Christ.

Even Swatow is partly Anglicized. We wished to see old China, heathen China, and Brother Groesbeck gave us the opportunity. Only twenty miles from Swatow lies the city of Chao-yang, where this pioneer missionary has for eighteen years been stationed. Chao-yang is a larger city than Swatow; the Chinese count it as containing a population of three hundred thousand. It is the converging point of all the trade that reaches Swatow from a hundred miles to the south and the west. Yet all this trade is conducted through a narrow ca.n.a.l, so congested with boats that there are innumerable delays. Even when the boats reach the waters of the bay, the remaining channel is shallow for lack of dredging, and launch-progress is very slow. We had ocular proof of this latter evil; but we at last reached the dock.

Then came a reception entirely new to our experience, and one which we can never forget. Eighty young men from the mission school met us, all in white uniforms with sashes of blue. We pa.s.sed through their lines, forty boys on each side baring their heads as we pa.s.sed. Then a procession was formed. A bra.s.s band, with bugles and resounding drums, led the way. The student escort followed. After the long rows of boys came an honor-squad of Chinese soldiers, shouldering their guns and bearing the Chinese and the American flags. This portion of the escort had been furnished by the Chinese governor, who in this way certainly showed his friendly regard for the American mission. We concluded the procession, sitting in our sedan-chairs, each of our party of four borne upon the shoulders of four men. The band struck up, a great explosion of firecrackers ensued, and we began our journey of a mile and a half to the gates of the city, and then two miles and a half farther through its crowded streets, until we reached the mission buildings and the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Groesbeck on the other side of the town. The Chinese are great on ceremonial, and all this reception had been arranged by the students themselves, in honor of Mr. Groesbeck's teacher and his teacher's wife. Needless to say that I was astounded at such a reception, for Augustus Caesar never made an imperial entry in Rome more thrilling than the triumphal entry which Augustus Strong made that day into the great city of Chao-yang.

Mr. Groesbeck said that no public notice had been given of our coming.

Yet the whole population of three hundred thousand seemed to have come out to meet us. Imagine a street two and a half miles long, but only ten to fifteen feet wide, thronged with water-carriers and beasts of burden compelled to give way to our great procession! Every nook and corner of the way, the fronts of the one-storied shops and the entrances to the cross-streets, were all a perfect sea of faces--rows of children little and big overtopped by rows of half-naked men, with scores of women peering wistfully from windows in the rear--faces by thousands and tens of thousands, till it seemed as if the whole population of the planet had emptied itself into Chao-yang. I looked upon hundreds of splendid forms of men, naked above the waist, and carrying heads worthy of notice from any sculptor, none of them hateful, all of them impressed and wondering, and they seemed to me the embodiment of China crying out for G.o.d. When we were only half-way through the city, the endless ma.s.ses of humanity had so impressed me that I could not restrain the tears. The sight was simply overwhelming. And all this the parish of one man! It is to save this great city, now almost wholly given to idolatry, that Mr. Groesbeck asks for money to build in its very center an a.s.sembly-room and an inst.i.tutional church, and that Doctor Lesher asks for a hospital building to facilitate his medical work.

I made an address to those eighty boys that evening, as they stood at attention before me. Half of them were still heathen, but their fathers had sent them to this Christian school, believing that they needed a better religion than that of Confucius or of Buddha. I urged them to become soldiers of Christ, and to follow him as their Commander. I did not conceal from them the fact that such following might involve opposition and earthly loss. But I promised them that, if they suffered with Christ, they would also reign with him.

We returned from Chao-yang very sober and thoughtful, for our visit had been a revelation of appalling needs. Swatow seemed a paradise after such a visit. The smiling faces of so many Christians, and the signs of a truly Christian civilization, inspired me with new hope for the future. But our time had come for leaving China, at least temporarily, and India was at once to be visited. Our departure from Swatow was almost as spectacular as our entry into Chao-yang. There was no military guard, and there were no firecrackers, but there was a fine bra.s.s band of academy boys, to lead our procession of sedan-chairs, as we pa.s.sed through the long lines of scholars who had gathered with their teachers to bid us farewell. The schools were all represented. First came the little kindergartners, then pupils of the grammar school, the girls'

school, the women's school, the Bible-women's training-school, the boys'

academy, and finally, the theological seminary. They numbered more than three hundred in all. Some of the teachers accompanied us to the steamer. We parted from them with regret, but we were thankful that they could remain to prepare the way for a new religion, education, and civilization in China.

My week-end in China leaves me with a new sense of the vastness of the heathen world, and of its absolute dependence upon Christ, as its only possible Saviour. The question whether the heathen will ever be saved if we do not give them the gospel, is not so serious a one for us as the other question whether we ourselves will ever be saved if we do not give them the gospel.

III

MANILA, SINGAPORE, AND PENANG