to diminish the number of apples or plums in the interest of quality. At sunset, I made a pilgrimage with Mrs. Nevius to the cemetery, where, after forty years of herculean toil, the mighty missionary sleeps. We sat for a long time beside the grave, and the aged widow, speaking of her own end, which she appeared to feel could not be far distant, said that she wished to be buried beside her husband and that for this reason she did not want to go to the United States, preferring to remain in Chefoo until her summons came. The scene was very beautiful as the sun set and the moon rose above the quiet sea. Standing beside the grave of the honoured dead and under the solemn pines, the traveller gains a new sense of the beneficence and dignity of the missionary force that is operating through such consecrated lives of the living and the dead. XIX MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE LAWSUITS N considering the effects of the operation of this mission ary force, we are at once confronted by the complaint of many Chinese that missionaries interfere on behalf of their converts in lawsuits. This complaint has been taken up and circulated by foreign critics until it has become one of the most formidable of the objections to missionary work. The difficulty will be understood when we remember that, though the Chinese are not a warlike people, they are litigious to an extraordinary degree. The struggle for existence in such a densely populated country often results in real or fancied entanglements of rights. So the Chinese are forever disputing about something, and the magistrates and village headmen are beset by clamorous hordes who demand a settlement of their alleged grievances. Naturally the Chinese Christians do not at once outgrow this national disposition. Whether they do or not, their profession of Christianity makes them an easy mark for the greedy and envious. Jealousy and dislike of the native who abandons the faith of his fathers and espouses "the foreigner's religion" frequently hale him into court on trumped-up charges and the notorious prejudice and corruption of the average magistrate often result in grievous persecution. The terrified Christian naturally implores the missionary to save him. It is hard to resist such an appeal. But the defendant is not always so innocent as he appears to be, and whether innocent or guilty, the interference of the foreigner irritates both magistrate and prosecutor, while it not infrequently arouses the resentment of the whole community by giving the idea that the Christians are a privileged class who are not amenable to the ordinary laws of the land. When, as sometimes happens, the Christians themselves get that idea and presume upon it, the difficulty becomes acute. Speaking of the Chinese talent for indirection, the Rev. Dr. Arthur H. Smith says: "It is this which makes it so difficult for the most conscientious and discreet missionary to be quite sure that he is in possession of all the needed data in any given case. The difficulty in getting at the botton facts frequently is that there are no facts available, and, as the pilots say, 'no bottom.' Every Protestant missionary is anxious to have his flock of Christians such as fear God and work righteousness, but in the effort to compass this end he not infrequently finds that when endeavouring to investigate the facts' in any case he is chasing a school of cuttlefish through seas of ink.” 1 An illustration of this occurred during my visit in Ichou-fu. A magistrate who needed some wheelbarrows sent out his men to impress them. The rule in such cases is that only empty barrows can be seized. But the yamen underlings found the father of a mission helper with loaded barrows at an inn, stole his goods and forced him to pay them a sum of money for the privilege of keeping his barrows. The helper complained and Dr. C. F. Johnson yielded only so far as to write a guarded letter to the magistrate simply stating his confidence that if the magistrate found that injustice had been done, he would remedy it. But that letter brought the missionary into the case and he found himself forced to see it through or "lose face" with the Chinese Christians and especially the helper who was the son of the man robbed. He soon discovered, moreover, that the wronged man was telling contradictory stories about the value of goods stolen and the amount of money he had to pay to save his barrows. The situation speedily became embarrassing and the sorely-tried missionary, though he had acted from the best of motives and in the most conservative way, vowed that he would never interfere again 1 « Rex Christus," pp. 103, 107. |