The Chinese

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

THE CHINESE.

The last of the Grace Church course of lectures was delivered in Washington Hall last evening by Rev. E. A. Washburn¹—entitled "Personal observations among the Chinese." The audience, owing probably to the coldness of the weather, was smaller than at any former lecture of the course.

The population of China, the lecturer states was not less than 360 millions, inhabiting a country which formed one third of the continental world, and stretching 77 degrees from the frigid to the torrid zone, and embracing 40 degrees of latitude. As to the character of the people, he described the Chinaman as being more like the solid common sense Saxon than the dreaming Hindoo. He had no imagination, no fine arts, no religion, but was practical and fond of facts—he migh be called the Yankee of the Eastern world. Nothing so closely resembled the tone of the Chinese Emperor's proclamations, as that of our own Fourth of July orations. Each race regarded his own empire as the whole civilised world, and looked on all other peoples as "outside barbarians." Each race had a similarity of inventive faculties and utilitarian ideas. With regard to the religion of the Chinese he remarked that the Emperor was not merely reverenced but actually worshipped by his subjects—Henry VIII never had a hundredth part of such a despotic unity in himself of the headship of State and Church, as the Chinese monarch. The first social principle of the CHinese state was the worship of ancestry; and to the feature was to be attributed the purity of the family relation in China, where licentiousness among the young was far less than among nations who boasted of Chrisitan civilisation. Another lesson we might learn of them was, that their aristocracy was solely one of brains and education, instead of birth as in England, or dollars as here. Though in no country was there so despotic a government, ther was non in which so practical a socialism prevailed—nowhere was there so equal a diffision of wealth. The Chinaman was fond of flowers, but he had no conceptuon of a beautiful arrangement of them; he was a splendid copyist, but was unable to paint a picture with any appreciation of Nature's beauty. There was a dead uniformity in the Chinese character—the habits, dress, and tastes of each were the same as those of all his contemporaries and ancestors. Progress and change were to him unkown. There was a queer antipodes between many of his habits and those of the European; the Chinaman thrust the needle ever the thread, instead of putting the thread into the needle, pushed the board against the plane, instead of the plane against the board; wore white shoes instead of black; shook his own hands instead of his friend's; and began his dinner with the dessert.—The literature of China was vast and various: every man was a reader, and every house contained a library. There was no deep metaphysical speculatio, as in Hindoo literature; but in history, the drama and poetry, the literature of China was by no means contemptible. Their novels consisted mainly of the Mrs. Goee and G. P. R. James² class of works, always ending in a happy marriage.—The Chinese were essentially deficient in the spiritual sense. Their morality, that of Confucious, was of the noblest kind, but it had no faith. The fate of Christian missions among such a people was a difficult problem. The Roman Catholic missions were commenced in that country as early as the days of Marco Polo, and some apparent progress had been made; but all other forms of Christianity were prohibited, and existed only by stealth in the very outskirts of the empire. When Protestantism was allowed to penetrate into the heart of the country, hopes might exist of eventual success, for through encrusted so deeply with prejudice, John Chinaman had a heart somewhere; and it was not for any who professed faith in the divine power to doubt that ultimately truth would find its way to that heart and result in conviction. Certain it was that Christianity was the only power which could ever impart vitality to this slumbering fossilized race.

---