ldiers of Pilate did its Founder. And even the
Christian missionaries raised no protest against the crucifixion.

Let us hear what a Chinaman says in a book just published, the author
writing under the name of "Wen Ching." I heard the identical opinions
expressed by many intellectual Chinese.

"For their gifts," he says, "to the West in the shape of silk, tea,
and the magnetic compass, the Chinese have so far in return received
opium, missionaries, and bombardment." "The _literati_, the backbone
of China ... are not kindly spoken of by missionaries, nor are they
liked by foreigners."

It is only "the lower orders that have always been very susceptible to
the teaching of foreigners. Their ignorance and their poverty furnish
ample reasons for their willingness to join the churches of the
Europeans."

Also "the claims of missionaries to a right of travel and residence in
the interior ... are founded on no higher authority than an
interpolation by a missionary translator into the Chinese text of the
treaty between France and China." That "the disturbance of a local
_fengshui_ by a church spire is considered as much of a grievance as
the erection of a hideous tannery beside Westminster Abbey would be."

He says that "the Christian religion spread chiefly, if not entirely,
among the poorer people, until it was discovered that political
advantages accrued to the convert." For "in many places the missionary
intrudes himself into the Chinese court, and sits beside the
magistrate to hear a case between his convert and a non-Christian
native. The influence of the missionary is very great, and the
official is often pestered and worried by the messengers of the
Gospel." Therefore the Christian converts are voted a "source of
trouble and a nuisance."

Still, in this writer's opinion, "nothing has done so much harm to the
cause of the missionary as this forcing the opium trade on the
people." "If there are honest missionaries," he remarks, "there are
also sincere believers in the ancient faiths of Cathay to resent the
insidious encroachments of blatant foreign priests, who preach to the
heathen the doctrines of self-imposed poverty and mendicancy, and yet
themselves live sumptuously enough in comfortable houses, surrounded
by a wife and a numerous progeny, in the midst of heathen squalor and
misery."

These are just a few extracts from the views of an intelligent
Chinaman as regards the question of missionaries in his country