on and frequent collisions with France spring
chiefly from two sources; (1) the French protectorate over the Roman
missions, and (2) the menacing attitude of France in Indo-China.
It was to avenge the judicial murder of a missionary that Louis
Napoleon sent troops to China in 1857-60. From this last date the
long-persecuted Church assumed an imperious tone. The restitution
of confiscated property was a source of endless trouble; and the
certainty of being backed up by Church and State emboldened native
converts not only to insist on their own rights, but to mix in
disputes with which they had no necessary connection--a practice
which more than anything else has tended to bring the Holy Faith
into disrepute among the Chinese people.

Yet, on the other side, there are more fruitful sources of difficulty
in the ignorance of the people and in the unfair treatment of converts
by the Chinese Government. While the Government, having no conception
of religious freedom, extends to Christians of all creeds a compulsory
toleration and views them as traitors to their country, is it not
natural for their pagan neighbours to treat them with dislike and
suspicion?

In this state of mind they, like the pagans of ancient Rome, charge
them with horrible crimes, and seize the slightest occasion for
murderous attack. A church
[Page 262]
spire is said to disturb the good luck of a neighbourhood--the
people burn the building. A rumour is started that babies in a
foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic
medicine--the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity
killed. A skeleton found in the house of a physician is paraded
on the street as proof of diabolical acts--instantly an angry mob
wrecks the building and murders every foreigner within its reach.
One of these instances was seen in the Tientsin massacre of 1869,
the other in the Lienchow massacre of 1905. Nor are these isolated
cases. Two American ladies doing hospital work in Canton were set
upon by a mob, who accused them of killing a man whose life they
were trying to save, and they narrowly escaped murder. But why
extend the gruesome list? In view of their mad fury, so fatal to
their benefactors, one is tempted to exclaim: _Unglaube du bist
nicht so viel ein ungeheuer als aberglaube du!_ "Of the twin
monsters, unbelief and superstition, the more to be dreaded is
the last!"

In China if a man falls in the street, the priest and Levite consult