Excerpt from Heathenism Under the Searchlight: The Call of the Far East

Many students have recently formulated various opinions as to the main motives of the new Chinese policy. Probably the only legitimate conclusion is that, as all human motives are mixed, so it is in this case. Fear of foreign aggression and of piratical partition by the Great Powers which have been carving up continents for appropriation and annexation is surely a potent factor. But the Providence of God had anticipated the ways of the leaders of the nations, by raising up pioneers of a new moral and spiritual polity, long in advance of the move ments of carnal and secular competitors for influence over the venerable nationality. The twentieth century began with the tremendous awakening of new political forces in China and Japan; but the nineteenth century had commenced with the vast uprising of the system of modern missions which inaugurated a new Pentecost. China is starting to its feet to stand up for its inde pendence; but the Bible translated into its own tongue is the first object that it grasps with its newly nerved hands. China for Christ! Is the cry of China's own native Christian Church, born under the blessed auspices of nineteenth-century missionary enterprise, and baptized at the close of that century in the blood of Chinese Christian martyrs.

Those who have studied the history of nations well understand that when any community has had its religious Reformation before its political Revolution, the nation has been saved. If the Revolution comes first, with fire and blood, the Reformation is likely to fail.

Britain accepted the Reformation, and so it passed safely through revolutionary throes afterwards. France fatally reversed the order. Now the most crucial problems of welt-politik have their focus in the Far East. Is China to be civilised before it is Christianised? The great Churches of the West have decided that this must not be permitted. A Far Eastern national Renaissance without the grace of God is an appalling contingency. The object of this booklet is to prove the truth of this proposition.

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