THE RESPONSIBILITY OF A CHRISTIAN NATION FOR THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF THE WORLD

REV. ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN, D. D.

SECRETARY PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS, NEW YORK CITY

The non-Christian world is demanding education. Japan already has it. She has 30,000 schools, of which 858 are institutions of higher learning, including technical schools of various grades and a splendidly equipped Imperial University. These schools enroll 5,351,502 pupils, or 92 per cent of the children of school age. It may be doubted whether any other country in the world is educating a larger proportion of its children or, from a purely secular view-point, educating them better. The buildings, as a rule, are excellent, the teachers intelligent, and the curriculum is equal to that of good public schools in America. Japan is not rich, but she spends about $16,000,000 a year upon her educational system, or thirty-four cents per capita. This is about ten times as much as Russia spends for education.

China has long been a nation of scholars; but until recent years those scholars studied only the dead past. A man might believe that the world was flat and went about its orbit on wheels, or that a lunar eclipse was caused by a dragon trying to swallow the moon; but if he could only write rhetorical essays on the maxims of Confucius, he was sure of office. But August 29, 1901, a day memorable in the reorganization of the world, an imperial decree abolished those literary examinations and directed that thereafter young men who wished to obtain official preferment must pass an examination in western arts and sciences and economic and governmental methods. Realizing that facilities for this training must be provided, the government further decreed that schools should be established throughout the empire, with a university in every provincial capital. Already fifteen of these universities have been opened, and academic, engineering, agricultural, and military schools are springing up in scores of cities. There are sixty-eight schools in Shanghai alone, and 5000 in the single province of Chih-li. Strangest of all, the government decreed that where no other places were available, the temples should be turned into schools. All this means that 1,650,000 of the brightest young men of China, who had been standing with their faces toward the dead past, executed an aboutface, and are now looking toward the living future.

Some magistrates, in their efforts to secure adequate support for

these schools, have even urged the people to apply to education the money that they have been accustomed to spend on sacrifices for the dead. Suppose the mayor of your city were to ask the people to economize on flowers and carriages at funerals and devote the money to the public schools! That is practically what some Chinese officials are asking their people to do. Whatever we may think of such a sugges

tion, it means earnestness.

Most remarkable of all, this new Chinese system of education includes schools for girls. Until recently, the only schools for girls in the entire empire were conducted by missionaries; but now such a man as Yuan Shih Kai, Viceroy of the Province of Chih-li, declares that the most important thing in China is the education of her women. When the Empress Dowager gave her final instructions to the Imperial High Commissioners, who were to visit America for the purpose of studying our methods, she insisted that they should make special inquiry as to how Americans taught their girls.

Nor is this all. Recognizing the need of giving her brightest young men a wider training than they can obtain in their native land, China is sending some of them to take special courses in other countries. There are 17,000 of these Chinese studying in Tokyo, Japan, and others are studying in various countries of Europe. I am ashamed to say that America is losing this splendid opportunity to have a part in the molding of these young men by the narrow-mindedness which subjects. Chinese students, coming to America, to such indignities that they prefer to seek their training elsewhere. What does it mean to have the coming leaders of Asia well treated and highly educated in other lands, so that they return to China warm friends of the peoples among whom they have lived and with instinctive prejudice against America, which closed its doors upon them? High Chinese officials state that the Chinese Government does not care to have its coolies come over here, and would not object to any reasonable law excluding them, provided it was couched in terms that did not imply insult to the Chinese as a people. All that China asks is that when her scholars and merchants and gentlemen visit this country they shall be treated with that decent respect which men of that type are supposed to receive anywhere in the world. Surely, this is a fair position, and it is humiliating to feel that it is not more generally recognized in the United States.

Siam, also, has recently established a public school system, though it is far inferior to that in China. India, with the most intellectual people of Asia, philosophers and metaphysicians by nature, has had a highly developed educational system for many years, and her leading cities have

universities of high grade which are literally thronged with students. There are said to be more students in the city of Calcutta than in any other city in the world.

In the Philippine Islands, our country has established the free public school system in every part of the archipelago. There are a thousand American teachers and five thousand Filipino teachers, and the Philippine Commission is spending upon the system about $2,000,000 a year.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations. All over Asia there are the throbbings of a new intellectual life. Ignorance is being dispelled; barriers of superstition are falling. Even in bigoted Moslem Turkey, young men are eagerly demanding a better mental training, and the colleges and boarding-schools of the empire are filled with students. It would be difficult to exaggerate the intellectual revolution that is taking place among these teeming millions. The future historian will unquestionably count this new movement in the Far East as one of the most significant events of our time. The relation of the recent war between Russia and Japan to this movement and through it to the whole civilized world is one which every thoughtful man should seriously ponder.

This is encouraging so far, but the serious phase of the situation will appear when I state that there is imminent danger that this whole educational system will fall into anti-Christian hands. Many of these schools and colleges in Asia are ostensibly secular; but whatever may be said as to the possibility of keeping religious bias out of an institution in the United States, in Asia it is simply impossible. Christianity is operating in that great continent as such a disturber of customs that are rooted in evil or superstition, and as such a reconstructor of human life and society, that every man's hand is for or against it. The teachers, moreover, are Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Moslem, and they invariably and inevitably influence their pupils by their unconscious attitude and known convictions, even if they do not make a special effort to mold the religious thinking of their students.

Most of these schools in Asia, however, are frankly anti-Christian. The priests of non-Christian systems have awakened in alarm to the fact that the Gospel of Christ is not an insignificant thing, to be treated with indifference or contempt, but that it is a world force which is accomplishing world changes, and that it deliberately proposes to turn this world upside down wherever it thinks that this world is wrong side up. Heathenism, therefore, is setting itself in battle array. It is opening innumerable schools of its own and equipping splendid universities. Formerly, the average Asiatic who wished to get a modern education

had to go to the mission schools because there were no other good schools in the country; but Mohammedanism and Buddhism and Hinduism are now providing such institutions of their own, that their young men can get training in them.

Is it necessary to insist upon the peril involved in these facts? We believe that Christianity is an indispensable element in the development of character. The world has learned by sad experience that an education that is anti-Christian at its worst and purely secular at its best is no safeguard against danger. Greek and Roman culture were at their highest point of development when the ancient world was literally rotten with vice. The student of the Renaissance knows that Italy was never worse morally than in the period famous for its revival of classic learning. "Under the thin mask of humane refinement," says the historian Symonds, "leered the untamed savage; and an age that boasted not unreasonably of its mental progress was, at the same time, notorious for the vices that disgrace mankind." Macaulay said that nine-tenths of the evils that afflict society are caused by the union of high intelligence and low desires. Some of the most dangerous men in our country to-day are university graduates. It has been shown over and over again that high intellectual culture may co-exist with depraved morals and an effeminate character. Knowledge is power, but it depends altogether upon the principle which controls it whether it is a power for good or a power for evil. There is nothing in an arithmetic or a spelling book to change character and to give lofty ideals. "Unless knowledge ripens into moral force, it becomes the tool of selfishness and sin."

The condition of some Asiatic countries to-day eloquently testifies to the truth of this statement. The Japanese are unquestionably the most enlightened people in the Far East. As we have seen, no other nation in the world is educating a larger proportion of its youth, or educating them better, so far as secular training is concerned. But a competent observer has declared that the Japanese are the most immoral people in the world. Some of her school-teachers themselves see no inconsistency between education and vice. I have referred to the people of India as the most intellectual people in the Far East; but any traveler in India can see obscene pictures and statues in the most sacred places. There is undoubtedly vice in Christian lands, but it is discountenanced by society, is contrary to the law and obliged to hide itself in secret places. But in Japan and India, vice is open and shameless. It is to be found not simply outside of the religion of the country, but inside of it. It is recognized in the temple services, and in Japan is sanctioned by the law in ways that should be utterly impossible in any Christian land on earth.

It will be an unspeakable calamity to the world if the leaders of these rising nations are to be given all the inventions and appliances and military and naval equipment of the modern world, without being given those principles of character that will enable them to use those vast powers aright. From the Garden of Eden down, the fall of man has resulted from what George Adam Smith calls "the increase of knowledge and of power unaccompanied by reverence. No evolution is stable which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake itself free from the eternal duties of obedience and of faith."

The last point speaks for itself. The Christian peoples must make a tremendous effort to mold this new education for Christ. This work has already begun. The foreign missionaries sent out by the various churches have established schools and colleges in many places in the non-Christian world. Perhaps few realize the magnitude of this Christian educational movement. The Protestant boards and societies of foreign missions are now maintaining 29,010 of these schools, of which about one thousand are of higher grade. Almost everywhere, the foreign missionary, like the Pilgrim Fathers in New England, plants the school and the church side by side. The great intellectual movement in Asia, of which we have spoken, was inaugurated by the missionaries. But now it is developing so rapidly that is can no longer be handled with our present equipment. Our schools and colleges are still far and away the best in Asia, but they are not numerous enough or well equipped enough to meet the demands that are being made upon them. A wise and statesmanlike policy on the part of the Christian people of America would bring to the boards and societies of foreign missions such additional support that the number of these schools could be greatly increased and their facilities vastly enlarged. Why is it that our rich men, who pour millions without stint upon the institutions that we already have at home, give but a few hundreds or at most a few thousands to aid in this stupendous Christian educational movement among the thousand millions of the non-Christian world? I do not mean to intimate that our rich men are giving too much to our home institutions. These institutions need every dollar that they have received, and many of them a great deal more. It is in the interest of this world-wide educational movement that our home institutions should be well equipped, for we must depend upon them to supply the men and the women for the leadership of our educational work abroad. Not less for the institutions at home, but more for the institutions abroad, should be the thought of us all.

The mission boards do not, of course, expect to send out enough missionaries to train all the young people of the non-Christian world.