The Religious Outlook in China
All this is, of course, not without reason. The success of Christianity, if it has been a success, has been due to extraneous causes. Christianity has the fortune – or the misfortune, according to the different points of view – to be associated with those Western ideas and institutions which have exerted such a potent influence upon all branches of Chinese society. The people had gazed with awe and horror at the conflict between what is their own heritage and what had been introduced from the Western nations, and had been taken aback by the efficiency of the foe, which ultimately compelled them shamefully to yield and surrender many of their rights and privileges. This is the side of Westernism that will continue to have its appeal – its merciless onslaught, its temendous might, its terrible ruthlessness is this glamour that has completely dominated their minds. They may have a very hazy idea of what the Western nations really are; but one thing is palpable to them – that their country is impotent when it strives to complete with the foreigners in science and mechanical inventions.
To them, of course, it makes very little difference what Christianity really means. They are not interested in all the intricacies of its theology, in the meaning of its different denominations and sects, in its historical relations, or lack of relations, with the development of Europe and America: in short, they are not interested in the religion as a religion. They are interested in the fact that Christianity is the religion of those powers which have humiliated them in their wars and their political struggles. It is very doubtful, therefore, whether, unaided by these favoring circumstances, Christianity would ever have gained the foothold that it has at present. In any fair competition with all the different religions that China has already embraced in her long history, – Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and others, Christianity could probably, at best, hope to win an equal position with the rest. But the fact that it happens to be the Western religion has, of course, given it an added impetus. It is by virtue of this prestige that it is turning out ‘converts’ in different parts of China; but it is difficult to say that these converts have really been won for the cause of Christianity, for the principles which Jesus had in mind. The merits of the religion itself have scarcely been apprehended, but its relations have very tellingly influenced the minds of the converts. It is as if a lady is chosen for wife, hardly upon the strength of her own endowments and qualifications, but upon the strength of her having affiliations with millionaires and successful business men, whose worldly honors and glory will always have a universal appeal to the masses of the people. A union of this type does not, however, ensure future happiness to the husband. The fascination of her relations and a possible support, from their resources are not likely to develop his personality and procure him a truly happy life. These have to depend upon the fascination and the inward beauty of the lady herself. She may have them; but the man, his attention fixed upon the shining gold of her relations, has not taken the trouble to discover them and appraise their value. This may be the source of future unhappiness.
It may be objected that I have done injustice to the Christian religion in treating the results of Western civilization and its religion as two independent entities, between which I have found apparently little connection. The objecter would say that it is impossible to conceive the one without at the same time thinking of the other. I readily admit that Western civilization is the product of the Christian religion, and not an independent development; but I admit this only with reservations and limitations, especially as I find that Christian ideals have so far failed to influence the political actions of the different powers in their relations with my country.
Everyone will admit that, without Christianity, at the time when the ancient world collapsed, the beginnings of the new European civilization would have been very different. Society was then steeped in barbarism, people were incessantly engaged in merciless slaughter, and all was chaos. It was Christianity, and that alone probably, that supplied the moral stimulus, elevated the feelings of the tribes above their mutual antipathy and hatred, and brought them together in a bond of peace and brotherhood. With the progress of the centuries, the religious influence became so strong that for all practical purposes it had the entire control of the greater part of Europe. Culture and civilization were almost wholly the results of Christian beneficence. Art, literature, philosophy, and all the finer elements of human life were fostered and encouraged, and Christianity was such a potent factor that everything was regarded as ancilla theologiae.
But after the days of the Augsburg Confession and the subsequent separation of Church and State, so that the affairs of everyday life were no longer subject to the spiritual power, is it not true that the spirit of religion and of practical matters concerning the state began to diverge from one another? Is it not true that Church and State made laws unto themselves, which were sometimes in no way reconcilable? Is this not tantamount to saying that Christianity, in its collective and corporate sense, and Western civilization, as we know it for the last four centuries or so, became two independent entities? Nay, more than that. When the Church saw that it no longer enjoyed the prestige and power that it once had, did it not resign from the high seat of the Areopagus, and, instead of compelling everything to obey its commands, condescend to make itself the ancilla rei publicae? Further, is it not true that, because the Church ceased to exert its autocratic influence over the affairs of the State, the scientific developments, the intellectual diversity and conflict of succeeding ages, and the political expansion and the acquisition of power in distant lands by European countries, especially in the nineteenth century, were made possible?
Speaking of the pathetic position into which the Christian religion has fallen, Mr. George Santayana has this to say: ‘Religion [he is speaking of Christianity in particular] no longer reveals divine personalities, future rewards, and tender Elysian consolations; nor does it seriously propose a heaven to be reached by a ladder or a purgatory to be shortened by prescribed devotions. It merely gives the real world an ideal status and teaches men to accept a natural life on supernatural grounds.’
The eighteenth century in Europe, in the judgment of another writer, a historian, was the most unchristian of all centuries. Of the nineteenth century, he says: ‘The characteristic of political life was its gradual penetration by the principles of democracy proclaimed by the French Revolution, which make the nineteenth century the age of constitutionalism and parliamentary government in its various modifications. In its intellectual life, the idealistic philosophy of the beginning of the century did not permanently prevail, nor did any definite conception of the universe, to the exclusion of all others; it was dominated the empirical-positivist, rational-naturalistic tendencies of thought, which make it the century of the natural and historical sciences. In the field of morals, the striving for the complete autonomy of the individual personality asserted itself far more strongly, and as a necessary consequence, the rejection of the idea of authority, and resistance to the authoritative regulation of the individual’s inner life. Finally, social life was marked by the full development of nationalism, which brought the differentiation of the Occidental peoples to a kind of conclusion, and raised to a hitherto unknown pitch the national sentiment, the consciousness that each nation has in it certain special endowments and conditions, and has a right to demand its place in the concert of peoples. There can be no doubt that all these factors were necessarily unfavorable to the religious life.’ (Italics mine.)
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