prepared to educate the young lives committed to her care, both by wise precepts and a right example. Good seed is thus sown in the tender years of childhood, which produces beautiful flowers and luscious fruits in later years. Confucianism degrades woman, it neglects her education. The popular saying; # † Œ £ 6 "It is the virtue of a woman to be without talent," is a true embodiment of the spirit of Confucianism towards women. This reminds us of the saying in the evil days of American history, now happily past, that "slaves were only injured by being educated," which was true if they were to be kept in slavery. Women in China are kept in ignorance. Among the wealthy they live in pampered idleness; among the poor their lot is one of drudgery. Children are born to them, and committed to their care, but they are themselves but children in knowledge and self-government. They rule with

passion and caprice, and the minds of the children in their most impressible years, are fed on husks and chaff. Without steady, judicious government, they grow wild and lawless, or cunning and hypocritical. They follow their evil impulses, and the evil example set before them, of abandonment to paroxysms of rage, when their wills are in the slightest crossed; and thus in a land of boasted filial piety, filial impiety abounds in all classes of society. There is little hope of renovating China until the mothers of China are renovated in heart and life. Confucianism justifies polygamy. It declares that the greatest act of filial impiety is to be without children. Confucius was the son of a concubine, and the Confucian literature has no word of condemnation for the practice of polygamy. Shun received from Yao his two daughters at once for wives, and emperors and high officers, in an unbroken line, have set before the people, in this regard, an evil example. Women can be divorced for seven reasons; irreverence to the husband's parents, impurity, laziness, barrenness, excessive talking, theft, evil disease. If a husband is stricken down by death in any extraordinary way, it is a meritorious act for the wife to destroy herself, and be buried in the tomb with the husband. There is a tablet in Tungchou near my home, erected by the officers of the city in honor of a woman, who starved herself to death by the grave of her husband. The memory of this commendable act is thus preserved for the imitation of other women. There is no lot so hard in China as that of the young wife. She is yoked in life, without choice of her own, to an entire stranger. For the husband to love the wife is a weakness to be condemned. The son must side with the mother against the wife, and beat her as he would a child, at his own or the mother's caprice. Cases of suicide are continually occurring among the

people, where young wives find life insupportable, and they choose self-destruction to end their miseries. So general is the tyranny of mothers-in-law, that young wives are congratulated by their friends, where the mother-in-law has been removed by death. Christianity softens and enriches the lives of women, until the graces of gentleness and purity, of patience and love, write themselves in lines of beauty upon their faces, as they grow old in years. Confucianism neglects the culture of women, and as they grow old in years, their faces grow ugly with the marks of ignorance and neglect, of selfishness and passion.

X.-In nothing do the ethics of Christianity and of Confucianism show a more marked divergence than in the spirit of philanthropy which distinguishes Christianity, but which is comparatively lacking in Confucianism. According to Christian teaching, love begins toward those that are near, but it flows forth until it encompasses with its blessing the most remote, the most degraded members of the race. Wherever the Christian sees ignorance, and sorrow, and sin, there does he see a brother to be taught, and comforted, and purified. Paul accounted himself a debtor to all men, to unfold to them the truths of a better life. The Sages of China perceived and announced the duty of reciprocity, which ought to regulate the lives of men; but the demands of Confucian reciprocity fall far short of the demands of Christian philanthropy. Reciprocity, at best, is only the duty of benevolence towards those in the midst of whom our lives are cast. It has never been a moral, propulsive power, sending men forth to lead lives of self-denial, in persistent and methodical efforts for the good of others. Confucianism rejects love as the bond of the family, and substitutes parental tenderness, and filial respect. The philosopher Mo Tsu proposed universal love as the bond of the family and of society. His teachings draw much closer to the Christian doctrine of love for all men than do the teachings of Confucian scholars. Mencius caricatures and repudiates his teachings, as destroying the five relations, urging men to love a passing traveller with the same love that they exercise towards a parent. Mencius contrasts the relation between brothers, with the relation between strangers, in a manner that proves him to have no conception of the brotherhood of man. A man chances to see a stranger in the act of drawing his bow to kill another stranger, and he laughingly exhorts him to desist; but if he sees a brother in a like act, he exhorts him with flowing tears. The killing of a stranger, or the death of another stranger in punishment, is of slight consideration, but the thought of a brother losing his life in punishment for crime, fills his heart with the deepest

consternation. Thus Confucian ethics are selfish and not humanitarian. They have ever tended towards egoism. Christian motives in life begin and end in God. Confucian motives begin in an ideal law, and end in an ideal self-culture. Phariseeism has been the natural result. China has been to the Confucianist the favored land of Heaven. It has been enlightened with the knowledge of the pure doctrines of Heaven, and adorned with the lives of Heaven-sent Sages and Holy men. The inhabitants of other lands are outside barbarians, not indeed to be pitied and helped to a better life, but to be walled out, and kept from polluting the inhabitants of the Flowery Land.

Archimides, delighted with the discovery of the control of mechanical power, boasted that with a proper foundation he could move the world. Confucianism has boasted that the teachings of the Sages, resting for their foundation on the law of Heaven, could easily move the world, and yet the world upon which Confucianism has exerted its power, has sunk deeper and ever deeper into sin. Christianity now comes to a world helplessly sold under sin, and declares that with the Law of God as a foundation, and the Gospel of Christ as a lever, it can lift the world into a new life of love to men and love to God. It points to its magnificent achievements in the past and in the present, in transforming the lives of men, as a pledge of its continued power in the future. It comes to China both as a system of ethics, and a system of religion, not as a supplement to Confucianism, but as a substitute. It does not offer of its new material a few patches, here and there, to fill the holes, and improve the appearance of the Confucian garment, but it offers a new and complete robe to all who will cast off their old garments, and receive the gift of God in humility, in penitence, in faith.

SOME PERSONAL REMINISCENSES OF THIRTY YEARS' MISSION WORK.*

BY REV. R. H. GRAVES, M.D., D.D.

MIS

ISSIONARY intercourse with China heretofore may be divided into three periods. The first extends from the arrival of Dr. Morrison in 1805 to the war of 1840-2, and Treaty of Nankin in 1842 when the five ports were opened to foreign commerce and missionary effort. The second period extends from the opening of the ports to the second war with England in 1856, and the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, when China was opened still more to foreign intercourse. The third period is that in which we have been living since 1858. These may be designated as the preliminary stage, the stage of Laying Foundations, and the stage of Missionary Extension. It will be remembered that some months ago, Dr. Happer gave us reminiscences covering the first two of these periods. At that time some of the friends requested me to relate my recollections and experiences of the work after the time at which Dr. Happer left off. As the present year is the 30th, anniversary of my connection with mission work in China, and as my recollections begin where Dr. Happer's terminated I have thought that it might be well to follow the suggestion alluded to that we might have in the archives recollections covering the period of Mission Work in China.

I arrived in August 1856, and had an opportunity of seeing things as they were before the war. We were not admitted into the city. As we passed the city gates, and saw the busy crowds in the streets we would peer in, and wish we could enter and see for ourselves the wonders which the Chinese asserted it contained. With their usual determination never to be out-matched they always asserted that they had every thing "in the city." There used to be the story of a foreigner showing his compradore over a steamer, and pointing out how fast it could go, when the Chinaman not in the least astonished, said "Oh! hab got allo same, inside city." There were then no country stations. Mr. Vrooman and Mr. Galliard had made tours into the Heung Shan District, and up the West River as far as Tak Hing. Foreigners had no right to go beyond the thirty mile radius from Canton, and these were the only Canton missionaries who had been any farther.

*Read before the Canton Missionary Conference.

Foreigners, except the missionaries, were living at the old "Factories" on the space between Shap Sam Hong and the river, and between the canal which is the prolongation of the Western city moat and the steamer wharves. There were a few mission chapels and Dr. Kerr's Dispensary in the southern suburbs and Dr. Hobson's Hospital at Kam Li Fau. Besides these there was the San Tau Lan Hospital just back of the Foreign Settlement. In these days we got a mail once a month, and had to pay 42 cents postage on our American letters.

In October 1856 occurred the "Arrow" affair, out of which grew the second war with Great Britain. From my window-in a house just East of where the Hospital now stands-I saw a British war vessel move down the river and anchor among the Chinese shipping that filled the river near Dutch Folly, and I heard a great hubbub among the boatmen. In the evening we learned that two Chinese junks had been seized by way of reprisal for some men taken from the lorcha "Arrow." On the breaking out of hostilities a few weeks later the missionaries went to Macao where we remained until after the capture of Canton in December 1857.

The long delay of military operations was caused by the defeat of Lord Palmerston's ministry in Parliament and his appeal to the country, who sustained him in declaring war with China, and by the breaking out of the Indian Mutiny.

In the spring of '58 some of us returned to Canton and began work within the city walls. The first preaching place was in the dwelling of one of the London Mission members in Fu Hok Tung Kai, between Man Ming Mun and the Shing Wong Miu. Mr. Cox, of the English Wesleyan Mission began work here. Soon afterwards Mr. Galliard of our mission rented a chapel on Tung Wang Kai, just inside of the Wing Tsing Mun. This was the first chapel rented within the city walls. Not long afterward I rented the first chapel in the old city, at Chong Un K'iu, near the Little North Gate. Mr. I. J. Roberts meanwhile had returned to his chapel at Tung Shek K'ok, and Mr. Cox, reopened the Kam Li Fau Hospital chapel for preaching services. At the invitation of Mr. Huleatt, chaplain of the British forces, Mr. Louis of the Rhenish mission lived with the troops at Kun Yam Shan or "Head Quarters Hill" as it was termed, and did some work for the Chinese. On the occupation of the city by the Anglo-French troops much destitution was found to exist. The benevolent spirit of Christianity was exhibited in devising means for the relief of the sufferers. Rice was distributed daily from two points, Kun Yam Shan under the direction of Mr. Huleatt and at the old "Consoo Hong" on Shap Sam Hong under the