书城外语ChristianityinChina
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第6章 FeaturesofEarlyMissionaryActivities(2)

Knowing the contents of the treaty, the U.S. government quicklysent a delegation headed by Gu Sheng to China and claimed tosign a treaty with China. Gu Sheng appointed Bridgman andParker as secretaries to the delegation. After the Xiamen Treatywas signed, Parker totally abandoned his missionary work andwholeheartedly engaged himself in diplomatic and politicalactivities for over ten years. At the beginning, he was designatedsecretary to the U.S. special envoy to China, and was thenpromoted to charge d"affaires in 1847. He was formally appointedplenipotentiary in August 1855 by the U.S. president, who lethim present his credentials to the emperor of China. Before hewent to Guangzhou to assume his new post, he visited the Britishand French diplomatic compounds to discuss the situation. Afterhe reached Guangzhou, he continued his talks with the Britishand French deputies and concluded that the use of force shouldbe maintained to back up their talks with China.

2) Missionary activities were carried out throughpracticing medicine and running schools.

Practicing medicine and running schools was a key approachto disseminating Western civilization. In early times, missionariesspent most of their energy gaining a solid foothold for preachingin China. The reason why they began practicing medicine wasbecause they wanted to break their estrangement with and closethe distance between themselves and the Chinese people, and towin the people"s trust and favor. An American Christian scholarnamed Latourette considered that there were two functions ofpreaching through practicing medicine: one was to convince theChinese of the value of the Western medicine; the other was toremove Chinese people"s prejudice against Christianity. Parkerwas the first missionary doctor in China. He set up a clinic andsuccessfully cured many patients‘ eye problems, sometimes evenby surgery. His work got the "magic‘ of Western medicine acrossto the Chinese people and greatly enhanced the missionaries‘reputation in China. In Shanghai, Lockhart and Medhurstestablished a clinic at the southern gate of the city at the end of1843, and treated as many as 10,000 patients in two years. Afterthe second Opium War, the missionaries established manyhospitals in China"s hinterland, including Shanghai Ren Ji Hospital (1861), West Gate Women and Children"s Hospital(1885), Shantou Fu Yin Hospital (1867), Hangzhou Guang JiHospital (1880), etc. These hospitals absorbed far more believersthan the churches did and greatly promoted the religious work.

However, practicing medicine required professionalknowledge and training and could only be exercised by a smallnumber of missionaries, which made the choice of runningschools more common among missionaries. At the verybeginning, some missionary couples just set up very simple andshabby houses to teach children about the Bible as well as basicarts and science. In order to appeal to the children, they alsoprovided free lunches and snacks or even money in compensationfor the time when they neglected housework in favor of study.

With the increasingly strengthened ability in doing missionarywork, all Churches supported their missionaries to build upgradedand specialized schools, like Xin Yi School in Ningbo, Pei YaSchool and Du En School in Shanghai, Wen Shan Women"sSchool in Fuzhou, etc. According to statistics in the 1870s, therewere about 350 schools run by missionaries with approximately6,000 students. After that, the scale of the schools continuouslyexpanded and they were run in an increasingly standardizedmanner. In the late 19th century, the famous schools in China included: Dengzhou Arts Association in Shandong, Lu He MiddleSchool in Hebei, St. John"s School and Zhong Xi School inShanghai, etc. The schools established by the missionariespursued Western teaching principles and curricula. Whilespreading Christian ideas they had also taught modern scienceand arts, so that they admitted a lot of Christians on the one handand cultivated many intellectuals on the other.

3) Drawing Chinese people"s interest inChristianity by disseminating Western modernscience.

From the time missionaries first came to China, theyattached great importance to disseminating Christianity bypreaching in letters and words. The early missionaries likeMorrison and his sons, Milne, Medhurst, Gutzlaff and Bridgman,had all translated the Bible into Chinese. In order to achieveconcerted and coordinated translation, the British and Americanmissionaries established a committee for Bible Translation in1843 and published the Chinese version of New Testament andOld Testament successively in 1859 and 1862. Nevertheless, itwas far from enough to carry out missionary activities with onlya translation of the Bible. All missionaries engaged in introducing the cultural outlook of the West to the Chinese people throughbooks and reading materials or even articles and brochures writtenby themselves. The early missionaries wrote many books andbrochures introducing Western knowledge, for instance, thehistory, geography, politics and economies of various countries,etc. Observation on Secularity Monthly, established by Morrisonand Milne in Malacca in 1815 and distributed to the local overseasChinese for free, on the one hand briefly presented the heliocentrictheory and knowledge about solar and lunar eclipses; on the otherhand, it attribute all theories to the power of God. In 1823,Medhurst established Selected Important News Monthly thatcarried articles on religion, current events, history, geographyand common knowledge, etc. From 1828 to 1829, Medhurststarted World News, the first type monthly in Chinese. It waspublished in Malacca and carried articles of news, history, andreligion, etc. Gutzlaff established a periodical titled Eastern andWestern Oceans Monthly between 1833 and 1838 and contributedmany articles on the culture and people of other countries. Toextend their influence, many Churches established specializedpublishing houses among which Mo Hai Book House by LondonMissionary Society, Mei Hua Printing House and Yi Zhi BookAssociation by the Presbyterian Church were relatively famous.

Besides propaganda materials of Christianity, these publishinghouses also published many books about science. Chinesepeople"s earliest knowledge about algebra, geometry, physics,astronomy and geography came from these publications.