Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

mandarins had got a little below Tam-Toa; there they stopped, and after doing something which could not be seen, but which was perfectly understood, they again set sail, and began to ascend the river on their return. The Christians in the launch marked the place, and the fishing boats came up and joined them. A young man plunged in, at a depth of five and twenty feet, and came exactly upon the body of the holy martyr. He touched its hands and feet, and immediately rose to the surface, exclaiming triumphantly, I have found it.

"The mandarins had fastened the body of Bonnard to an enor mous stone, such as is used to pound rice, and had tied up the head in a small bag, and put it under the arm. Very soon after the precious treasure was discovered, it was raised from the bottom, and one hour after midnight the fishermen arrived with their pious burden at the door of our community. We immediately dressed it in all the priestly vestments, and laid it, with its face uncovered, in a very beautiful coffin, presented by a Christian family. It remained thus exposed, with lighted torches round it, in the middle of the Church of our college, until the evening of the following day, when we buried it with all the ceremonies of the Ritual. I was the celebrant, assisted by M. Legrand, by two Annamite priests, by a deacon, and by all our disciples; we also admitted some of the principal converts of the village to the funeral, which we performed almost in a whisper."-pp. 202-4.

[ocr errors]

How wonderful is the self-possession shown in this last incident; these men might well have been shaken in nerve by the horrors they had witnessed; they were surrounded by a population ready at any moment to rise, like ravening wolves against them, but no jot of their duty must be omitted, the ceremonial of the Church must receive due and solemn observance-God must be glorified in the death of His saint; the body of the martyr must not be concealed, lest his fate should excite the alarm of the young students, but rather to strengthen their faith, this seed of the Church," their future patron in heaven, is exposed with solemn triumph to their veneration. In character with this has been the working of the Church, throughout all time; but here, in China, we seem to witness with our own eyes, how, and by what means, she made progress amongst unconverted nations, from the time of our wild heathen ancestors to the present day. Ever in danger, and yet not afraid, always suffering obloquy and persecution, but not to be turned from her path; often in martyrdom, in the jaws of destruction, never forgetting that she is not to be destroyed. That her mission.

is to go on, conquer and build up. So if in one part of this great empire the Christians suffer persecution, in others they are peacefully carrying on works of utility and love. We extract from Mr. Oliphant's narrative of Lord Elgin's mission to China, the following account of a Catholic establishment, upon which he came by chance. He is speaking of Ting-hae, and says:

[ocr errors]

Passing through it we entered the pleasant valley beyond; and observing a building in a wood surmounted by a cross, we decided that it was a Roman Catholic mission, and bent our steps thither accordingly. A priest dressed in Chinese costume met us as we approached, and did the honours of the establishment with great simplicity and cordiality. He was the only European on the island, a Lazarist of the order of St. Vincent, and gave us some interesting details of his labours in Kiangsi, where he had resided for ten years. We inspected his industrial farm, cultivated by the boys of the school, a clean chubby-looking set of little fellows, with happy smiling countenances, very different in expression from that of Chinese youths generally. They evidently regarded their spiritual master with feelings of affection and gratitude. Many of them were waifs and strays whom he had picked out of byways and hedges, deserted by their parents on account of some physical infirmity. One was blind, another lame, another's arm and tongue were paralysed. Generally, however, his pupils were the children of converts; the Roman Catholic system being rather to breed converts than to make them, an operation which is becoming daily more simple, as there are upwards of half a million Roman Catholic Christians in the Empire. Out of the entire population of Chusan, estimated at 200,000, the priest calculated that about 250 families were converts. Neither he nor his flock were in any way annoyed by the people, although jealously regarded by the authorities and the literati. Still no active hostility was exercised towards them; and beyond being occasionally called upon to subscribe to pagodas, or take part in Buddhist ceremonies, they practised their faith unmolested. We afterwards visited, with our reverend guide, a girl's hospital in the town, which did equal credit to his management with the rest of his establishment."

"We do not believe the fact that Christians are allowed to attend the religious ceremonies of the Buddhists; the mistake might easily be made in a country were ceremonial mixes with every thing. We dissent also from Mr. Oliphant's comments upon another of our establishments in China; but, we with pleasure accept and give his testimony as to what he saw.

"One day we took a walk of twelve miles to visit the Roman

Catholic college and missionary Establishment of Siccaway.

The mission buildings are pleasantly situated on the banks of a small canal. We were received at the door by some priests, dressed as usual in Chinese costume, who conducted us over the establishment. We found the schoolrooms full of noisy students, all swaying their bodies to and fro over their desks, and reciting their lessons to themselves in a loud monotonous chant, each apparently profoundly indifferent to the sharp tones which were ringing in his ears from his neighbour on either side. There were altogether eighty young men and boys in the several schoolrooms, deep in the study of the classics and polite learning of the Chinese; for the system of the Roman Catholics consists not so much in imbuing the students with the dogmas of their own faith, as in educating them to such a point in the literature of their country, as shall enable them to compete successfully with their fellows for the highest honours of the empire, at the competitive examinations. By these means, if they do not gain converts, they secure to themselves protection in high places, and ever after have friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, upon whom they can rely; for the tie formed between the student and his teacher at these establishments is not easily broken, and the kindness and toleration with which he has been treated by the Roman Catholics, leaves even in the mind of the stern Confucian a strong impression in favour of that class to whom he owes his present greatness, and who, whatever their tenets, have at all events in his own case practised some of the noblest maxims of the great philosopher. I was informed that the Roman Catholic mission could boast of converts even among the mandarins; while numerous instances of devotion and acts of private charity both to the missionaries and their converts were related, both on the part of those Chinese who were members of the Church, and of those who had merely benefited from its institutions.

"The mission at Siccaway was almost entirely conducted by Jesuits. The best possible understanding evidently subsisted between them and their pupils, whose countenances all bore evidence of happiness and contentment, notwithstanding the fact that twelve hours out of the twenty-four were devoted to work or religious exercises. The establishment was kept scrupulously clean; the dormitories were models of neatness; so that habits foreign to the Chinese domestic character were being instilled into the inmates. Some specimens of modelling in clay, by one of the elder students, gave promise of considerable talent as an artist.

*

"Perhaps some of them formed part of the crowd we saw no less reverently adoring the Virgin Mary on the following Sunday at the cathedral at Tonk-a-doo. Here one side of the spacious area was

filled by a large attendance of Chinese female converts, whose devout demeanour testified to their sincerity, and whose neat and occasionally handsome costume, and pleasing countenances, formed an agreeable contrast to the majority of the fair sex the stranger meets in a Chinese town, and of which, if he has no opportunity of seeing the better classes, he will probably form an unfavourable opinion. The cathedral is adorned with sacred pictures drawn in conformity with Chinese notions, though the shaven crowns and tails of the apostles, and small feet of the women, are startling to an accidental eye; but the principal curiosity of the cathedral is the organ, which has been constructed by Chinese mechanics, and the pipes of which are composed simply of the hollowed bamboo of different sizes. The tones which it emitted, though powerful, were soft and melodious, except in some of the higher notes. There is a college attached to the cathedral. The students here are all converts, and many of them were undergoing a course of preparation as native missionaries and catechists."

As to the charges against the doctrinal teaching of the missionaries, (Jesuits or otherwise,) we will only remark that it requires a deeper theological knowledge than is generally possessed, even amongst Catholics, to know where compliance with native customs and ideas, is wrong, or where, as in things indifferent, they may become right, when reduced to their proper value and engrafted into the Truth. To discuss the question on this occasion would be beside the object of our present undertaking; but to the whole objection there is at least one obvious answer,-those have been well instructed in the Christian Faith, who can practise it so well, and suffer so heroically for it. The same instructors taught the Christians of Japan, of whom Mr. Oliphant truly says:

"The early records of the Church do not afford instances of more unflinching heroism than is furnished in the naratives of those martyrdoms to which Japanese of all ranks were subjected when the day of trial came. Thousands were slaughtered at Simabarra, thousands more tormented and put to death in cold blood, or rolled down the Pappenberg; yet we have reason to believe that the last spark has never yet been extinguished, and that, smouldering secretly, the fire of François Xavier still burns in the bosoms of some of those who have received the traditions of his teaching."

Thirty-seven thousand Christians cooped within the walls of Simabarra were bombarded and miserably destroyed by the Dutch, at the behest of the Japanese government. All these might have saved themselves had they been taught to think that conformity with

heathen religions was allowable. We cannot at present pursue this subject further, yet it seems impossible to close even this short notice without mention of the names of Schoeffler, Bonnard, Delamotte, Chapdelain, Imbert, and, ah! how many more? These were men of education and talent, men who left the comforts of home and circles of loving friends, to take up the cross in its most arduous form; devoting themselves from childhood, like Imbert, who at seven years old was wont to say, "Some day I will go and preach the faith in these distant lands, and save these souls who are falling into hell.'

[ocr errors]

They went through difficulties and hardships beyond belief, to introduce themselves in disguise into their future country, of which they entered into possession by throwing themselves on their knees, like Chapdelain, to "consecrate their whole power and life to the glorious work therein entrusted to them." Apostles in work and deed, the martyrdom of these men was worthy of their lives, sublime, in teaching and in suffering. The narratives of them must not be abridged; we recommend them to our readers, who will find them collected in this work. We wish we could hope that not only these edifying narratives, but the subject of missionary labours and their results in general, could be impressed upon the attention of Protestants. Speaking of future Protestant missions, Mr. Oliphant is often obliged reluctantly to admit how slight are the present grounds upon which he builds up many vague but brilliant anticipations. His stay in China was too short, and his duties too engrossing, to enable him to give much time to researches into the progress made by Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant; but he seems to have taken a laudable interest in the subject, and to have endeavoured where he could to acquire information. He must not quarrel with us if we turn some of his own deductions against himself. Upon one occasion we have the following passage:

"With the masses in almost all countries where it has been introduced at all, the Roman Catholic religion has been popular; but the emissaries of that Plagiarist,* their own philosoper, M. Auguste Comte, would have a greater chance of success amongst the

* Query" our own," i. e. Catholic, because French.

« ForrigeFortsæt »