Image provided by: Silverton Country Historical Society; Silverton, OR
About Torch of reason. (Silverton, Oregon) 1896-1903 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 30, 1900)
2 THE TORCH OF REASON, SILVERTON, OREGON, AUGUST 30, E. M. 300 (1900.) their degradation. He told us all about mission buildings, and how We’re getting excited over the manv teachers there were in them, Chinese Boxers and their daring to and what thousands and thousands fight—in their own country. They of dollars it all cost, and at the end have the assurance to defend the of his speech he said: “I have been laboring in the altars of their fathers. They care enough for their religion to die or vineyard for lo, these twenty years, to do murder for it. What hideous and I have led three men and seven women to the light,” and all bad form. We in America, who have let re the room echoed to the fervent ligion lapse into a mere form, we “amen” of the electrified listeners. Then the elderly woman spoke, who wouldn’t think of murdering a man to save his soul, much less and she told us all about the dying to save our own, we who call ‘heathen women and their hea our religion the greatest thing in thenish ways” with such a super the universe, and who let the min cilious lack of sympathy that it isters who preach it half starve made me long to turn heathen my until they cm dun their churches self just to spite her. And then the young woman rose out of a reluctant dollar or two, we who will not do or suffer or sacri and rolled her pale eyes and told fice one material thing for the us of the awful martyrdom of a de church we profess to honor—we voted missionary so far from friends have the audacity to send half-edu and home and luxury, and then we cated, half-formed men and women all put something in the contribu over into a foreign land to take tion box. from the people there a religion in A bland and smiling heathen sat which they have the grace to be in the back of the room, fanned lieve with ail their hearts and souls, himself with a gorgeous fan of pea and then we wonder why these cock feathers arid listened. people arise and protest. He was a prosperous merchant, The missionary business is a sur known throughout San Francisco as vival of another age. a just, honest and wise man. It is as distant an anachronism as He and I walked down the steps if a feudal castle, drawbridge, moat together after the meeting. and all would be set up on the “Do you wonder,” he said to me, Hudson river to defend America and he 6poke better English than from an invasion of the Huns. any of the speakers of the day, It was all very well during the “do you wonder that my people dark ages when people believed in laugh at the missionaries? and lived up to their religion, but “That man and those women now—have you ever been to a mis who spoke in there, they do not sionary lovefeast? look like the people I see here who Have you sat at the feast of a are intelligent and well educated. returned missionary and heard him Where do you find them, these tell of his trials and privations, missionaries?” and when I expostu and of his glorious work of saving lated he said: souls? “Tell me, if you want to transact I have. important business with me, do The first one of any importance you send an ignorant servant to do I ever went to was in San Francisco. it?” It was a glorious occasion. “Our men in China are wise men. There were delegates from all the They will listen to wise men. Why churches and Bauds of Hope from do you not send some to them?” all the Sunday schools. The heathen in his blindness We gathered into dank and had a curious little way of seeing darksome parlors in the Chinese straight into the heart of things mission up on the slope of China after all. town hill. Who are our missionaries? There were lemonade .aid cook Good, conscientious, if somewhat ies, and the Chinese children of meddlesome, folk, no doubt. the mission sang “ I lang to be But to what class do they be angelle” deliciously and without the faintest idea of what words long? Do we send Lyman Abbot, Dr. they were singing. Gonsaulus, Edward Everett Hale, Then the missionaries spoke. One was a tall, fine, patriarchal or even men of half their ability? Do we pick out men and women old man, and one was an elderly woman with a disappointed face specially adapted by their sympa and a quantity of curious brass thetic nature, wide experience and jewelry disposed variously over her .ieady resource to the persuasion of shrunken figure, and one was a a stubborn and peculiar folk, or do pale young woman with a knobby we take any one who wants to go forehead, large pale eyes and a and convert them? stubborn mouth. Do we select men of courage, of The patriarch spoke first. youth, of high hope and stern re He told us about the poor suffer solve? Or do we choose a broken- ing heathens who bowed down to down minister who could not make wood and stone, and how he and a success of his own church among his brothers were saving them from , his people? W hy B lam e th e B oxers? There fs no use to ask these questions. Everyone knows their answer. We send a mealy young theo logical student from Kalamazoo, who has never heard of Confucius, or a discouraged old bigot from some backwoods congregation over there to China to talk to a nation of intellectual skeptics. How can they reach them? How understand them? Come, come, let us face the truth. How many of us would listen with patience to a Chinese coolie who tramped into our houses, smiled at our customs, laughed at our religion and criticised our do mestic economy? How many days do you suppose a colony of proselyting Chinamen would live undisturbed in Mul berry Bend, or out in West Denver, for instance, if they invaded the homes of a neighborhood of well- meaning laborers and tried to tear their religious pictures from the walls? How long do you think a mis- sionary home of Chineee workers could disseminate the doctrines of Confucius in a good old New Eng land Presbyterian village? Religion, politics and the reputa tion of a woman, these are three subjects no wise man ventures upon in decent society. These missionaries of ours have no such scruples. They pry into a Chinaman’s home. They tell him the religion of his fathers is a bv-word and a scorn, because they do not happen to believe in his particular form of marriage. They call his wife a name no man will listen to in pa tience, and then, when the China man gets up and throws things at him, they run out and bawl for the police. I am afraid I don’t sympathize much with the troubles of the mis sionaries in China or anywhere else. They know the risks they take, and they take them voluntarily. Why worry other people about them? We all admire the spirit of a martyr to any cause so long as he be sincere, but if he is dragged to the stake howling protests and shouting for help all the way, we somehow begin to lose interest in him. I have never met a naval officer, a minister to other countries, or a traveler of any intelligence, who believed in foreign missions. They have seen too much of it. When I was a very little girl I went to Sunday school. The brother- in-law of the superintendent was a missionary to the Hawaiian Islands. Every Sunday I put a round, perspiring nickel in the box for the Sandwich Islander. When I grew up I went to those blessed islands. The first day I went out to drive I saw a magnificent country seat; great rows of palms led up to a magnificent mansion. “Missionary So-and-So lives in there,*’ said my driver. And then I saw another country place, and another, and yet another, magnifi cent homes, the like of which none but multi-millionaires can inhabit, much less own, in this country. All of them belonged to mission aries. A prominent missionary gave a picnic and invited me to it. He had twenty servants on horse back to help attend to the comfort of the guests.—[Winnifred Black in Denver Post. T he S p irit of O rthodox C h ris tia n ity . Jesus is reported as saying: “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daugh ter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother- in-law.” Mat. x., 34-34. And the following, that we clip from the Chicago Tribune of June 18, shows that Bishop Earl Cran ston is a zealous advocate of the kind of religion taught in the above words of Jesus: Denver, June 17.—(Special.)— Bishop Earl Cranston, who recently returned from China, declared from the pulpit today that civilized na tions must rule China. “It is worth any cost in money,” he said. “It is worth any cost in bloodshed if we can make millions of Chinese true and intelligent Christians.” He said that the missionaries’ compound was under the guns of Pekin, and that from the inner wall of the city the native troops could blow this foreign quarter to pieces. The United States, he said, had but a paltry company of marines to protect its missionaries and its citizens. “I would cut all the red tape in the world,” he asserted, “and break all the treaties ever made to place the armies of the United States in the fore next to Great Britain. We must not be the tail end of every thing. “The open door must be main tained for Christianity as well as commerce, and the bigotry of Rus sia, which now shows so strongly in the events taking place in China, must not be allowed to interfere with the progress of humanity, civi lization and religion.” We do not defend the conduct of the “ Boxers;” their conduct ap pears most villainous and detest able from our standpoint, but we have not heard their side of the case. But of one thing we are sure, that no more fiendish spirit prevails among them (poor “hea then” as they are) than that ex-