have long been infested by men of this infamous type, and while some of their nefarious practices have been broken up, others still continue. Almost every port city in non-Christian lands has dens of vice which are kept by white men or women and which pander to the lowest passions. Men of this kind are, of course, virulent haters of missionaries. Charles Darwin asserted that "the foreign travellers and residents in the South Sea Islands, who write with such hostility to missions there, are men who find the missionary an obstacle to the accomplishment of their evil purposes." There are, too, native priests who, like the silver-smiths of Ephesus, find their craft in danger and circulate falsehoods regarding missionaries as political plotters or adepts in witchcraft. In Chinese cities, it is not uncommon for placards to be conspicuously posted, charging missionaries with boiling and eating Chinese babies. The massacre of the Presbyterian missionaries at Lien-chou, China, in 1905, was primarily caused by the finding of a skeleton of a man and the body of a still-born child preserved in alcohol in the mission hospital, the mob parading these grewsome finds through the streets as evidence of the way that missionaries treated the Chinese.

Third: Criticisms which are based on want of sympathy with the fundamental motives and aims of the missionary enterprise. It is sometimes wholesome for those who live in a missionary environment to ascertain how their methods appear to people who are outside of that environment. Attention may thus be called to defects which would otherwise escape notice. Men, however, who are opposed, not merely to certain methods, but to the essential character of the movement itself can hardly be considered fair critics. They will never be silenced, because they are inaccessible to the Christian argument. Their criticisms have been demolished over and over again, but they reappear unabashed within a month. Even when their objections are overcome, their opposition remains. Critics of this class will always ridicule the effort to propagate a religion

which they do not practice. Their criticisms are not confined to the missionary, for they sneer at the churches at home, declaring that ministers are hirelings and communicants hypocrites. It does not necessarily follow that the criticisms of such men are unfounded; but "it is within the right of the missionary to protest against being arraigned against judges habitually hostile to him, and it is within the right of the public to scrutinize the pronouncements of such judgments with much suspicion." 1

Some of the critics of this class live in Europe and America, but many of them reside in the treaty ports of non-Christian lands. We do not mean that the foreign colonies in the concessions are wholly composed of such men. These colonies include some excellent people to whose sympathy and helpfulness the missionaries are greatly indebted. We are not quoting missionaries, however, but widely travelled laymen in the statement that the life of the typical foreigner in Asia is such that a missionary cannot consistently join in it, no matter how cordial his desire to be on friendly terms with his countrymen. Colquhoun declares that foreigners in China go to get money and then return, do not learn the language, have little intercourse with natives and know little about them. Mr. Frederick McCormick, for six years Associated Press correspondent in China, says that "the foreign communities are not in China, but at China," simply "ranged on the shore"; that "they carry on their relations with China through a go-between native"; that their "society is centred about a club, of which the most conspicuous elements are the bar, race-track and book-maker;" and that "the life, for the most part, of the communities is in direct antagonism to that of missionaries" who live and work among the Chinese. Griffis, then of the

1 Capt. Brinkley, Editor of the Japan Mail. 2" China in Transformation."

3 Article in The Outlook.

Imperial University, Tokio, says: "It is hard to find an average man of the world in Japan who has any clear idea of what missionaries are doing or have done. Their dense ignorance borders on the ridiculous." Maclay states that the foreign communities in that country are very immoral.' Mr. Donrovan, who once filled an important position under the Chinese Government, declares that the foreign residents of that Empire are either ignorant of the work of missionaries, or their lives are so immoral that they studiously avoid them. Such men by their lust and greed, their brutal treatment of the natives and their remorseless pushing of their own selfish interests, create the very conditions of hatred and unrest which critics ignorantly ascribe to the missionaries.

Many naval officers are Christian gentlemen who know how to value missionary work and who have publicly testified to their appreciation of it. But sometimes when a vessel enters a foreign port, the sailors, impatient of the restraints of shipboard, proceed to "paint the town red." The natives are astonished by the conduct of representatives of an alleged Christian nation, and the missionary, in self-defense, finds it necessary to disavow their acts and, perhaps, rebuke them. Then the sailors go away, cursing the missionaries. Prof. E. Warren Clark writes that he once "took two of our most earnest Christian converts on a visit to the foreign resident quarter of Yokahoma, and the first thing they saw, in front of the English Episcopal Church, was a drunken British tar assaulting an equally intoxicated American sailor, and both of them were being arrested by a heathen' Japanese policeman !" Several years ago, a RearAdmiral of the American Navy wrote that "the missionaries in Turkey are a bad lot." Investigation developed the fact that of the hundreds of American missionaries in the Turkish Empire, that Admiral had met only three, that these three had

1" The Mikado's Empire."

2" Budget of Letters from Japan."

conducted themselves like the gentlemen they were, but that the Admiral himself was notorious for profanity and roughness of behaviour, and that the conduct of his men on shore was in violation of all decency.

When a man who returns from a foreign land maligns missionaries, it is safe to assume, either that he has been making a fool of himself so that he had to be rebuked by the missionaries, or that he has gotten his information from men whose corrupt habits give them personal reasons for disliking consistent Christian men. When "a noted English traveller stated in one of his books that the missionaries at a certain place in Africa accomplished nothing, the missionary retorted that his station could hardly be considered entirely useless, as it had been a refuge for the native women from the drunken attacks of the travelling companions of this censor."

Fourth Criticisms which come from those who are ignorant of the real character, aims and work of the missionary and the methods of mission boards. This is a large class. There are many people who have never seen missionary work, or met a missionary, or read a missionary book, but who, seeing in the newspapers or hearing from some friend the class of criticisms to which reference has just been made, jump to the conclusion that they are true.

The increasing interest in Asia and the comparative ease with which it can now be visited are rapidly enlarging the stream of foreign travellers. Unfortunately, many of them are mere globe-trotters, knowing little and caring less about missionaries, people who at home are only languidly interested in church work and do not know what religious work is being done in their own city. Abroad, they usually confine their visits to the port cities and capitals, and become acquainted only at the foreign hotels and clubs. They seldom look up foreign missions and missionary work, but get their impressions from more or less irreligious and dissolute traders and professional guides. What they do see of missions sometimes

misleads them. Typical mission work can seldom be seen in a port city. The natives often exhibit the worst traits of their own race, or are spoiled by the evil example of the dissolute foreign community. The mission buildings are apt to be memorials or other special gifts, and give a misleading impression as to the scale of missionary expenditure. Hearing the sneers at the clubs and hotels and without going near the missionary himself, the globe-trotter carries away slanders, which, on his return, are sensationally paraded in the newspapers and eagerly swallowed by a gullible public. The Hon. Edwin H. Conger, former American Minister to China, writes: "The attacks upon missionaries by sensational press correspondents and globe-girdling travellers have invaribly been made without knowledge or investigation, and nine-tenths of them are the veriest libel and the grossest slander." 1

It is often interesting to propound some questions to such a critic. An American merchant returned from China to say that missions were a failure. Whereupon his pastor proceeded to interrogate him. "What city of China did you visit?" "Canton," was the reply. "What did you find in our mission schools which impressed you as so faulty?" The merchant confessed that he had not seen any schools. "And yet," said the pastor, "our board alone has in Canton a normal school, a theological seminary, a large boarding school for girls, and several day schools, while other denominations. also have schools. Well, what was there about the mission churches which so displeased you?" Again the merchant was forced to confess his ignorance; he did not know that there was a church in Canton till his pastor told him that there were, in and near the city, scores of churches and chapels, some of them very large, and with preaching not only every Sunday but, in some instances, every day.

"But surely you were interested in the hospitals," queried

'Address, Kansas City, Mo., May 16, 1906.