A History of the Dublin University Fuh-Kien Mission, 1887-1911.

Dublin: Hodges, Figgis & Co., Ltd., [1911]

I.—The Early History.

THE Holy Spirit is at work in the Church of Christ always. But there are times when His active presence is more visibly declared by the putting forth of new energies. Such a time it was that gave birth to the Foreign Missions of Dublin University, more than twenty years ago. Oxford and Cambridge had led the way; each had their own colony of missionaries planted in India; and the famous offer of a band of seven Cambridge men, including some of the best athletes in the University, for work in the China Inland Mission, had stirred the hearts of University men in all English-speaking lands. Dublin University had its Church Missionary Association, its branch of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and its Missionary Prayer Union. As early as the spring of 1885 two or three of their members had begun to feel that Trinity also should be up and doing, and plans were discussed for the foundation of a Dublin University Mission. That autumn a series of meetings was organized in College. They culminated in a striking scene in the Regent House. After the speakers had finished and Miss Havergal's consecration hymn had been sung kneeling, at the invitation of one of the leading students those who felt ready to go on God's service, wherever the way might be made plain for them, came forward to the platform, in number about forty. The pledge was conditional, and for many foreign service proved impossible, but the missionary zeal kindled, or rather fomented by this event and the meetings preceding, was destined to grow into a burning and shining light among men in darkness far away.

But before proceeding with my narrative, let me record the names of some who took a leading part in founding the Mission. An old list of the Joint Committee, which issued a stirring appeal to the graduates of the University, [1/2] runs thus: Revs. T. E. Hackett, G. H. Garrett, C. B. Dowse, E. L. Franklin, S. Hemphill, J. Connell, and Messrs. McMurrough-Murphy, W. E. Ellison, C. R. Dickinson, H. S. M. Harpur, R. D. Oliver, H. B. Kennedy, Eyre Chatterton, J. Northridge, W. M. Gibbon (for years the most untiring of home organizers), A. E. Johnston (Assistant Treasurer), and H. R. Farrar and H. Benn (Hon. Secs.). The Treasurer was a man of unique and life-long devotion to the missionary causethe Rev. Dr. Poole, Senior Fellow of Trinity, two of whose daughters are at present working for Christ in India. Two Cambridge volunteers, Messrs. Weston and Sykes, were invited to come and address the meetings; but still more impressive and moving were the appeals of two Trinity Missionaries on furlough—Robert Stewart, the martyr of Fuh-Kien, and Henry Hackett, who, after long service at Allahabad, is now Dean of Waterford. The Regius Professor of Divinity (Dr. Salmon), and especially Archbishop King's Lecturer (Dr. Gwynn), guided with warmest interest the subsequent steps of the movement, while the seal of the University's approval was set on the undertaking by the sympathy and encouragement of the Provost (Dr. Jellett). Like Dr. Poole, Provost Jellett and Provost Salmon are represented in the Mission field by their daughters to-day, while at home the University Missions have always found loyal supporters among the members and families of the University staff.

Some time elapsed before a scheme took shape to give an adequate outlet to this zeal. Since Messrs. Stewart and Hackett both worked under the C.M.S., it was natural to turn to that Society for encouragement, which was warmly given (all the more warmly because Dr. Gray, its Secretary, was a Trinity man), and equally natural that the C.M.S. should suggest Fuh-Kien, the scene of Stewart's devoted and successful work, as the field. Stewart needed help, and in particular it was thought that help in the educational work in which he had made far-reaching reforms would be fitting for a University to give: The place and the man were equally well chosen to inspire enthusiasm; China was in those days still reluctant to give the foreigner a footing, and the service might at any moment be one of great danger. The appeal was modest. Funds were sought to support one man for [2/3] three years. For a while there was doubt and anxiety; the money came in slowly if steadily; when, just as faith was wavering, a promise, as generous as it was timely, from Mr. W. H. Going, of L5o a year for three years decided the matter.

Nor had the Committee to wait long for a man. With characteristic modesty the Rev. J. Stratford Collins, Curate of Parsonstown, had hung back for a while to let better men, as he said, come forward; but to those who knew him in College it must have been certain that Dublin University had found for the first volunteer in her Missions a man worthy of such a place in her roll of honour. Stratford Collins should be still in the prime of his manhood; his sudden death at his post was a bereavement not more grievous to his friends than to his University, which has lost no nobler son. Fair and slender, with clear-cut features, his activity of body was the outward expression of an unflagging, never resting spirit. Endeared to his friends by his cheerful and kindly nature, and still more by his remarkable unselfishness and modesty, he lived for others; and his unswerving devotion to his duty led him straight through life to the crown which his Master had in store for him. He would have denied any claim to great intellectual gifts, but he had the divine wisdom which springs from character, and it is this quality which makes his letters from the field glow with vivid interest and infectious enthusiasm. They should be gathered into a separate volume. It is some compensation that his death at least sets us free to paint a picture of the man who first gave concrete expression to the ideals and enthusiasms which stirred our University; but in his letters we may say that he, being dead, yet speaks to us who are of a later generation. I quote some characteristic passages from his early letters to Dean Bernard, who was from the beginning Chairman of the Committee.

First, a hint for the practical training of the future Missionary:—

“’Keep believing and receiving' is a motto that wears as well in the tropics as it did in the slums around the old school in Fishamble Street. I wonder if any of the men who read this are workers there; if so, it will interest them to know that the work and experience gained from the work there are as useful to me every day here as they were in Parsonstown. It would be hard to find any such training school for work in the ministry as the Fishamble Street Schools have proved to me."

[4] Next, these words of true prophetic ring; as simple as they are fervent, as direct as they are sincere, they carry conviction and cannot be forgotten:—

“Please tell the Committee, and any of the men who happen to ask after me, that I am every day more thankful that I have come out, and that God has been pleased to call me to this work. You know, I think, that I did not offer so much from enthusiasm as from a sense of duty, but the enthusiasm has come now, It would stir anyone's heart to be face to face with such a tremendous work, and to see how manfully and well the few workers are toiling on.

“I am often ashamed that the thought should have been allowed a place in my mind that missionary work was a sort of bye-work--certainly until I came here I never realized that the issue lies, as the Provost so plainly put it in the few words he spoke at the dismissal, between God and the Devil. You can't walk a few yards among the heathen with your eyes open without feeling how really they are in bondage to Satan. If you laugh at a Chinaman for worshipping wood or stone, he says, ‘I do not worship the idol but the devil it represents.' Here you do not feel that you are working so much for any special Society, as for God against His enemies and against the Devil, who has enslaved people whom Christ died to free.

“Tell the men at 22 [the rooms of the Religious Societies in Trinity] that upon the earnestness and reality of their prayers for us out here depends our success in everything. Already I have felt the great help the prayer-meeting on Wednesday morning is, and each Wednesday is a distinct pleasure to me, when I know you are praying for us. I should like you to make your prayers very definite: points we want special help for at this time. . . .

"It is God's work; who will come and do it? It is real fighting and worth any sacrifice in the world to be at it. Indeed, with the work before you, God's omnipotent strength behind you, sacrifices seem very small, no matter how real they are. This is no exaggerated account of feelings; the romance of mission work, if there be any in your mind, soon dies out, and you feel yourself set down to a hard life-and-death struggle, with an absolute certainty of victory; but your strength is gone, you realize that it is in God's strength alone that you can do anything,

“It is a pity that any should weigh home work in the balance when the call for them has come to the mission field; with all their chances many do not know the Gospel at home, but there are millions here who have no chance of hearing, and with no professing Christian near to carry even the sound of His name to them.

“If you could stand with me on these mountains, and look over the whole Foo-Chow plain, 2,000 feet below, and see the great city in the middle, the countless villages dotted here and there all over it, you would know why we cry out for men—more men. What is this one plain compared to the millions up-country?

“With such facilities why are there so few labourers? To sit at home and read such commonplaces as `perishing millions.' `thousands in heathen darkness,' etc., etc., is often only enough [4/5] to produce weariness in the reader and distaste for missionary literature; but here, out here in the midst, where they are dying, you see them going down to the grave day after day, and hear the mourners' hideous wailing; here where you walk day after day through village after village, where hundreds have never heard of God's gift of salvation, and never will hear before they go down in their turn to the grave; here your mind reverts to the well filled pews of large home churches where the workers, or those who ought to be workers, are treading on each other's heels, and a sad sense of uneasiness comes over one as to whether there is not something strangely wrong with modern Christianity, something un-Christian like after all, when it pours continuous streams of the water of life over the flower garden already dripping with the dews and rains, and sends but tiny rills to these vast deserts of heathenism with their burning sands, withered shrubs, and thirst inexpressible."

Collins arrived in China in February, 1888. The province of Fuh-Kien, in which lay the scene of the future labours of the Dublin University Mission, is one of the least extensive in China. Add Wales to Ireland, and you will have its approximate area; but its population amounts to perhaps 22,000,000. It may roughly be described as the part of the mainland opposite Formosa, lying northwards from Canton to Amoy. Aloof from any of the huge waterways of China, and isolated from its neighbours by a mountain barrier, it hardly possesses first-class political importance. But its people, folk of the mountain and the sea, have a reputation for vigour and hardihood, and not a few warriors and statesmen have arisen from their midst. It is also distinguished for the extraordinary beauty of its scenery, which makes Irish missionaries think of the County Wicklow, and reminds a Scotchman of his Highlands. But the mountains of Fuh-Kien rise to 6,000 or 8,000 feet, and the narrow valleys and slopes along their gorges are fertile and tilled to the fullest extent by the population with true Chinese industry and skill. Rice in the swampy ground and terraces of tea plants on the hillsides, like the vineyards of Europe, enrich the landscape, while the heights are clothed with waving bamboo and pine. Flowers abound; sheets of lilies, red and white, Michaelmas daisies, azaleas, wild rose, and fern gladden the eyes of the missionary on his laborious tramp from village to village. For tramp he must. The hillsides are so steep that the only road is often an endless flight of stone steps, or giddy paths which sorely try weak [5/6] nerves or feeble sinews. It is a welcome change when the time comes to take boat on the picturesque river Min down to Foo-Chow, or from Fuh-Ning, to visit the fishing villages that fringe the beautiful mountain-girdled Sam-Sah Basin, the little inland sea which is the largest of the numerous creeks along the coast.

The line of the River 1VIin, running nearly east and west, divides the province. The smaller (northern) division is the sphere of most of the C.M.S. work in Fuh-Kien. The capital, Foo-Chow, the Banyan City, half way between Canton and Shanghai on the coast line, stands on the river just where, thirty miles from the mouth, it suddenly widens into an estuary. It is a busy port with a population of half a million within its walls, and as many more in its suburbs. Like all treaty ports in China, it is vicious and worldly, an abode of wickedness. Not long ago the opium dens out-numbered the rice and tea shops. After the opium war of 1842 missionaries were sent out to reconnoitre the ground in various parts of China, and when Shanghai and Ning-Po had been occupied, two missionaries arrived to take up work in Foo-Chow in 1850. The medical skill of one of these (Mr. Welton) won them considerable popularity at first, both in the town and villages about, but great hostility was shown by the authorities and literary class, and by 186o the lives of two men and one woman and the health of two others had been spent nobly, but to all seeming in vain; for not a single convert, nor the prospect of one, was yet reported to the Home Committee. They decided to withdraw and transfer their efforts to more hopeful fields. But Mr. G. Smith, the young missionary who now alone remained, besought the Committee to give him and Foo-Chow one more year's grace. That year the Rev. W. H. Collins, a qualified surgeon from Shanghai, paid him a visit, and by opening a dispensary during his stay attracted many visitors. Among these at last there came forward four who finally sought baptism in 1861. It was thus due largely to the father of the first D.U.M. Missionary that the Foo-Chow mission bore its first fruit, and was not condemned as labour in vain. Smith died in 1863, but he died with the knowledge that the door was open at last, and from that time forward the Mission has thriven. The first native clergyman was ordained in 1868, and by 1005 Fuh-Kien had so large a Church that it became necessary to form it into a Diocese.

[7] In 1876 the Mission gained a recruit whose name was destined to be linked for ever with the Church of Fuh-Kien, and to shed lustre alike upon his native Church of Ireland and his old University, whom his voice would one day rouse to her duty towards the lands far away. That day was not yet. Robert Stewart was never technically a missionary of the Dublin University Mission. But yet, apart from our interest in him as our founder, some words as to his work are necessary to the understanding of the history of the Church in Fuh-Kien. For Robert Stewart had not only the voice which more than that of any other man of his time could stir men and women to hear and follow the call to the Mission field; not only the heart which flinched from no peril and won for him the crown of red martyrdom; but also the brain of an organizer and a statesman.

It has been noted as a common fault (in the childhood of Missions) to spend much energy in sowing the seed broadcast, but little thought and care in fostering the young shoot till it grows into a vigorous and sturdy plant. Stewart very soon perceived that China could never be evangelized save through the Chinese; and he set himself to build up a native Church which should become self-supporting and, above all, educated. Instead of going to a new place, renting a house to serve as a church, and then sending a catechist there, to be visited at rare intervals by a missionary, he put his ideas into practice. In the first place he sent a catechist to live only where were already inquirers, and where these were ready to show their wish for instruction by providing a room themselves and promising to contribute towards, his outlay. These catechists were supposed to be educated at a College in Foo-Chow; but this rule was not generally enforced, and even among those who came up to the College (of which Stewart was now in charge) ignorance was general—some could hardly read; more could not read at all. His second great measure was meant to remedy this, and at the same time to supply the needs of the villages not yet ripe for a catechist. There was then no state system of day schools; but they were provided by private enterprise in every town and most villages of Fuh-Kien. A respect for learning is ingrained in the Chinese character. Men of peace that they are, they divide society into four classes, among which the highest rank is given to the scholar. It is an act [7/8] of religious merit to teach a child one character of the Chinese script. Well versed in the psychology of the nation, Stewart saw that illiterate catechists were worse than useless, and that the way to the heart of China lay through its brain. In every village where ten children (boys and girls) were willing to learn to read, and where the parents were willing to provide a room, and pay a small fee in money and kind, a schoolmaster from the Mission was planted to give elementary teaching in the Bible and Chinese classics. From these schools the most promising boys or girls were drafted off in due time to boarding schools, either at Foo-Chow or in one of the larger towns. Of these again the best were promoted to the Boys' High School for more advanced teaching at FooChow; and at the age of twenty the fittest were sent out to the villages to act as schoolmasters. If successful after three years in this capacity, the lad would return an experienced and promising man to enter the Foo-Chow Theological College, and to be trained for the work of catechist. From among the catechists some would ultimately proceed to ordination. The construction of this elaborate educational ladder was the work of time, and was, of course, difficult to carry out with strictness and thoroughness. For the Chinese day school was a happy-go-lucky affair. The children were accustomed to come or to stay away as they liked; for if the Chineses are models of filial piety they are also parents fond to indulgence. Even in the Christian day school the master excused his ill-success at the annual examination by a sprained foot which had prevented him from sallying forth to collect his scholars from the rice field or crop of sugar cane. Again, Chinese education has been directed almost solely to the cultivation of the verbal memory, so that the two features noted by Westerns in the native school were that the scholar always stood with his back to the teacher (lest he should catch a glimpse of the book), and that on the table a teapot was ever ready to refresh throats tired by the parrot-like repetition. To this we may trace the lack of fresh thought, energy and independence, which was the main defect in China as a nation. It has been no easy task to create a better ideal in the minds of teachers and parents. The Chinese are not accustomed to demand in a teacher either a knowledge of his subject or powers of discipline. Nevertheless, the school proved a powerful [8/9] instrument of evangelization, often through the influence of the children in their homes. It was also a revelation to the Chinese, who think women unworthy of education, to see girls placed on an equality with boys, and often passing a better examination. The examination, attended by admiring crowds, gave the visiting missionary a priceless opportunity for preaching to Christian and heathen alike. In ten years' time Stewart had raised the number of such schools from four to eighty-two.

I have dwelt thus long on the subject, because it has been the main part of the work of the University Mission to build on the foundation so laid. The upheaval of the last few years has, indeed, led to important modifications to suit the changes of the day, which must be described later; but the growth of the Church during twenty years, in which it took firm and solid root that held fast through times of storm and stress, owes much to Stewart's farsighted and resolute policy. In another direction his initiative was equally productive. To the illiterate Chinese adult (and for very many to read their own language was a sheer impossibility) the Bible, even in Chinese, was inaccessible; Stewart, therefore, introduced a system of printing in Roman characters, which has enabled converts to read the New Testament in as many months as they would formerly have required years for the study.

With so much well begun, and so much still to do, it was natural that Stewart should long for the assistance of his old University; equally natural that the University and the C.M.S. should select Fuh-Kien and the Theological College to be the sphere of the work of the first man who came out as their official missionary. But though Collins found many Irish friends among the Foo-Chow staff, Stewart was absent, for before Collins could arrive, Stewart's health broke down, and he was transferred to Ku-Cheng, only to be invalided home shortly after Collins arrived. This, perhaps, explains why Collins, after acquiring the language, was transferred from the educational work which he had begun to the pastoral charge of Lo-Nguong--a district of high mountains and deep valleys, north of Foo-Chow. In this year he married Miss M. Johnson, an Irish Missionary from Wexford, sent out by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society; for that Society had been induced in 1881 to extend its operations to China, and the influence of Robert Stewart and [9/10] his wife (Louisa Smyly, one of a family whose zeal for God is a proverb in the Irish Church), when home on furlough in 1885, led to offers of service from a band of Irish ladies. How sorely needed were their services may be judged by the significant remark of Collins, that he found in his new district four hundred church-goers, of whom only eighty-eight were women; he was informed that only two per cent. of the women of Lo-Nguong had unbound feet. Itinerating among this country folk, Collins found endless scope for his inexhaustible energy and ready wit; now drawing parables from the loads of grass passing by for fuel; now utilizing the laden stream of coolies bound from the tea-mountains southward for Foo-Chow, to act as agents in the distribution of leaflets; now cut to the heart, as he sat by the death-bed of the opium-suicide, to find that, for the Chinese, England and opium were but one idea. It was three years since his arrival, and now he was able to welcome a second Missionary from Trinity, the Rev. Thomas McClelland, who was followed at a similar interval by a third, the Rev. L. H. Star. The connexion with the educational work was maintained by the selection of Mr. McClelland as principal of the Boys' High School, Foo-Chow, though he in his turn took up Lo-Nguong and the adjacent district of Ning Taik in 1895, while Star went (for a while) to the work of the school.

For in 1892 Collins was selected to superintend the most difficult and dangerous task which the Mission in FuhKien had in hands. Of the four prefectures into which the Province of Fuh-Kien is divided, Kien-Ning is that to the North-West. Ascending from Foo-Chow up the river Min, a day in a steam launch and a fortnight in a smaller boat, poled or hauled through rocks and rapids, while the mountains rise grandly on either side, after a sharp turn to the north at Yen-Ping, the traveller reaches Nang-wa, a market town by the river. Here the Mission had its base of attack; its objective being the capital city, Kien-Ning, fifteen miles, higher up, where two rivers meet. For, since 1863, attempt after attempt to establish the Mission in the capital had resulted in riot, demolition of buildings, and loss of life; and only a handful of Christians around the neighbouring village stations of CiongBau and Cue-Ciong showed that the efforts were not in vain. A great difficulty was the lack of native agents to prepare the way, for the dialect of Kiea-Ning differs so [10/11] much from that of Foo-Chow that the Foo-Chow Christians could not make themselves understood. Collins himself faced the difficulty of the new dialect with his usual energy; indeed, he always maintained that the Chinese language is not so hard after all, and can be acquired thoroughly in two years.

A new policy was tried; and, by establishing at NangWa a centre of medical work under Dr. Rigg in 1889, the way was paved for a gradual approach to Kien-Ning, and a dispensary was opened outside its walls. But the city was hard to win. The capital of a rich, proud and intensely anti-foreign people, boasting of the days in the middle of the nineteenth century, when its high-turreted and massive walls withstood and beat back the devastating wave of the terrible Taiping rebellion, its mandarins, literati and common people were resolved to resist the western missionary to the uttermost. When the common people had learned what Christian love and Christian medical skill could do for them, they ceased to believe that the only aim of the "Jesus-doctrine people " was to steal the eye-balls and knee-caps of those who listened to their magic. And though here, as everywhere, the Chinese official opposed to each attempt to secure for the Mission rights of property every form of chicanery and injustice, it was possible to bring Consular influence to bear on him. But the hostility of the literati (who formed, like the Scribes and Pharisees of old, a well-organized class of immense prestige), and the inveterate prejudice which is grounded in jealousy, was not to be appeased. They were as expert in ‘planting' (for the benefit of the mandarins) bogus graves on land purchased by the Mission, as in stirring up the people to pull down a church or hospital that the idols might be propitiated.

“I was only able to enter the city after dark," writes Collins of his first visit to attend a little service held in Kien-Ning. "The darkness and the stillness of the house, with the semi-secrecy of the whole affair and the overwhelming thought of thousands of the heathen among whom we knelt, many of them bitterly hostile, made one realize in a small way what the services of the Church in the earliest days were like among their enemies, and lent a new meaning to such words as ‘the doors being shut for fear of the Jews.'"

A month later a desperate attack was made on the hospital which was rising in a suburb. Collins, though [11/12] in the city just before, passed out unmolested through wearing, as his custom was, Chinese garb; but Dr. Rigg and a Chinese colporteur, who stood by him nobly, were assaulted by a mob, which endeavoured to drown them in the manure pits close by. They escaped, however, by a miracle, and that day's riots, together with a similar incident at a neighbouring town, in which two brave Irish ladies were working, fell out for the furtherance of the Gospel, thanks to the indomitable perseverance of the missionaries. Collins confronted the mandarins with the same intrepid coolness and pertinacity which had gained for Stewart a similar battle years before at Foo-Chow; and the undaunted doctor returned to the attack. The astonished officials had no longer any case; the hospital, and with it the base of the Mission work, was planted at Seven Stars Bridge, close by the city walls; Ciong-Bau became a centre for ladies' work, with a girls' boarding school, while at the former station at Nang-Wa there grew up in due time a boarding school for boys. After the great strain and anxiety Collins was ordered home for a rest in 1895. He returned to China, but not for long; in 1897 he met his death by drowning in the River Min. Mary Collins and two of their children, with their faithful Irish nurse, Margaret Hogan, were drowned at sea on their journey home, while Collins's well-loved Chinese servant shared his fate. "Is it not better," said Collins at his last farewell meeting in Ireland, "to be called away suddenly in the Mission Field than to die bit by bit at home?"

But though Collins no longer leads the attack in the north-west, the Dublin University Mission has still no small share in the fresh victories that have been gained. To-day a new hospital stands fearlessly within the walls of Kien-Ning itself under the care of our own Dr. Pakenham, who reached China in 1897. And Miss Gardner, the first lady worker who went forth under the Ladies' Auxiliary, which since 1893 has done splendid service for the Mission, is still busy in the north-west with her younger colleague, Miss Weekes, at Ciong-Bau. In Kien-Ning itself a house for lady workers is called by the name of Collins. And there Miss Darley has found for her

Master's service a truly wonderful instrument. Those who have read The Light of the Morning, or the admirable articles which she has contributed to the D. U. Missionary [12/13] Magazine, will remember her blind Bible-women. Trained to make a living in spite of their misfortunes by singing ballads in honour of idols from village to village, the blind women of Kien-Ning are not helpless like their footbound sisters. Long days of journeyings over steep mountains and across rushing streams are nothing to them; and they are welcome everywhere. But they no longer sing of idols; they tell from village to village the story of Christ with passionate zeal and undaunted courage.

But now one's thoughts must turn elsewhere. In 1894 the D.U.F.M. Committee had three men in the field, with a fourth (Dr. Mackenzie) qualifying at Edinburgh. The C.M.S. Parent Committee had sanctioned a new arrangement by which a lesser share of the expense of maintaining each missionary should be borne by D.U.F.M. in order that it might be possible to enlarge the staff. The newly-formed Ladies' Auxiliary Committee gave promise of further strength; and the China's Children's Helping Band had begun its work in support of the Day Schools through the aid of Irish children, perhaps of all its plans the dearest to Stewart's heart. Thus emboldened. the Committee were ambitious to enlarge and deepen their responsibility. Stimulated by the example of the brotherhood of Trinity men, which had been formed for the work of a definite sphere in Chhota Nagpur (India), and feeling that the idea of joining a band of Trinity missionaries charged with the sole care of a district could not fail to be attractive in its appeal, the D.U.F.M. petitioned the C.M.S. to allot them a sphere of their own in Fuh-Kien. The difficulties in the way were not small; but after more than a year's negotiation, by the kindness of the C.M.S. the prefecture of Fuh-Ning, with the exception of the district of Ning-Taik, was handed over to the D.U.F.M. as a field for its energies. Here it was hoped the University could carry out the policy in which it had always believed. Scattered embers will not heat a room as will a glowing central hearth; it is clearly impossible to evangelize China's vast area and teeming population by Europeans dispersed here and there; better, we think, to concentrate all our efforts on one spot, and make it the training ground, evangelistic, medical, and educational, of native Christians who will spread the gifts they have received with equal zeal and far more effect. Zeal for the propagation of the Gospel has always been remarkable among Chinese converts, and not least in Fuh-Kien.

[14] The history of the work of the Mission in its new sphere, and under the new conditions arising out of the incredible changes in China which the years have brought, must be deferred to a future number. One thing alone remains to tell now. On the 31st July, 1895, a meeting of the Committee was held in Trinity College to welcome a piece of good news. The C.M.S. had consented that Robert Stewart, who was back from home restored to health and at work again in Ku-Cheng on the borders of Kien-Ning province, should be allowed to be the leader of the Dublin University band; and Stewart had accepted the post with joy. But God, who took away Elijah from Elisha, willed it otherwise. Within a few hours (allowing for the difference in Chinese time) of that meeting, there was enacted the deed which added the martyrs of Ku-Cheng to those who are enshrined in the memory of the Irish Church. A long steep ascent climbs from Ku-Cheng city up to the little village of Hwa-Sang, where it clings to the mountain side just under the summit. Here, in the early morning hours of a midsummer's day, the children of the Stewarts were already astir, gathering flowers; for here in this place of calm and beauty, looking down into the great ravine, are placed the houses of a Mission Sanatorium, whither the two Stewarts, with their family and a band of lady missionaries, had come to rest awhile. Suddenly the children were attacked by a band of murderers. The war with Japan had excited the worst elements in China to revolt against their official governors, whose incompetence and weakness grew more manifest day by day. Stewart's last letter shows that he saw clearly the peril which beset him and his flock from the local "Vegetarians" (as they styled themselves, to cloak under a religious name what was really a rabid anti-foreign society), who for a year past had increased in numbers and insolence; it shows also that his courage did not flinch. It was a chance fall of the lot that determined the band to attack the missionary settlement rather than the local magistrate, whose action had recently offended them. But three times, it is said, the lot fell on Hwa-Sang, and so they came, and on that summer morning Robert and Louisa Stewart, six of the lady missionaries, and the brave nurse, Helena Yellop, herself a true missionary (once an orphan in a Dublin Home), were massacred; four of the five children survived by a miracle. It is not for me to tell the details of that story; nor to [14/15] dwell on the wave of enthusiasm which swept over the Church in Fuh-Kien. But his University will not forget the man who called her to the Mission Field, and, though his leadership on earth in her new task was withheld by God, the memory of Robert Stewart and Hwa-Sang has kindled, and will yet kindle, the fire of zeal in hearts he never knew.

II.—The History of the D.U.F.M. Province.

IN the last number of the Irish Church Quarterly it was briefly narrated how the Gospel was first preached in Fuh-Kien, how the first energies of the missionary movement in Dublin University came to be directed to that corner of the harvest field, and how Robert Stewart and Stratford Collins with their true help-meets lived and died. The men and women who followed in their steps have not seldom hazarded their lives, and sacrificed the health of themselves and their dearest ones in the same cause. Very gladly they spent themselves and were spent for their flock. But, since they are still with us, the second half of my story must be rather a chronicle of facts than a sketch of personalities.

Collins relates how Stewart said to him shortly before his martyrdom: "Why does not someone found a society for the study of the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians, and what good might be done!" I will say no more of the missionaries of Dublin University than that they have shown themselves not less worthy than these two to be enrolled in that society of Stewart's thought, whose motto would be Love—Love that believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. With an equal forehead they have met the thunder and the sunshine; their path as lain now through the light of the morning, and again through the valley of the shadow of death. How they have borne themselves in each is not quite unknown to those who watch from home; yet it was not our praise that they sought.

There is a book
By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light,
Whereon the eyes of God not rarely look,
A Chronicle of actions just and bright.

There all their deeds already shine; and since they own that praise we may spare them our undiscerning eulogies.

For the first ten years of its activity, 1887-1886, the University Mission had no allotted sphere in Fuh-Kien. We have seen how the first three missionaries who sailed under its auspices, Collins, McClelland, and Star, were moved from place to place. It is true that the original idea of supporting higher educatiolial work in Foo-Chow [16/17] was, in some degree, maintained, one at least being always engaged in this task. But an agreement with C.M.S. reached in 1895, dated 1896, and finally ratified in 1903, handed over to the exclusive charge of the University Mission the prefecture of Fuh-Ning. Mr. Eyton-Jones, the C.M.S. missionary in charge, was transferred elsewhere, and the question of the women workers who remained found a happy solution; Miss Edith Thomas joined the staff of the D.U.F.M. Ladies' Auxiliary, while Miss Clemson shortly afterwards married Mr. Studdart, one of the new D.U.F.M. missionaries. Miss J. E. Clarke, another C.M.S. lady, also took up work under D.U.F.M. at this time.

The D.U.F.M. Committee is, of course, subordinate to the Central Committee of the C.M.S., and its missionaries work under the same conditions as other C.M.S. missionaries as regards salary, rules and regulations; but no other missionary can be sent to the D.U.F.M. sphere by C.M.S., nor can C.M.S. divert any D.U.F.M. missionary from that sphere; even a temporary loan of services to meet an emergency must be sanctioned by the Home Committee of D.U.F.M. Our workers in the field who belong to Fuh-Ning have a committee of their own, and a Presiding Missionary appointed by the Home Committee with the approval of C.M.S. They also sit on the Council or Conference of all C.M.S. workers in Fuh-Kien which meets at Foo-Chow.

The responsibility thus entrusted to our University, and the privilege of a corporate life thus secured, proved an immediate stimulus to interest at home. By the end of 1896 our first medical missionary, Rev. Dr. Synge, had sailed, Dr. Mackenzie was preparing to follow him to Fuh-Ning, while Dr. Pakenham was by consent allowed to go to Collins's old station at Kien-Ning, capital of the northwest prefecture of Fuh-Kien province, although, for reasons of distance and dialect, that prefecture can never form part of the D.U. sphere proper. For educational and pastoral work, Pakenham-Walsh and Studdert were to reach Fuh-Ning by Christmas, 1897. The post of Presiding Missionary was then entrusted to Rev. L. H. Star, for the mission had by 1897 to lament not only the death of Collins, but also the enforced retirement of Rev. Thomas McClelland, whom the orders of his doctors have confined to forwarding the Mission cause at home.

[18] For the ladies' side of the work, there were, besides the three C.M.S. missionaries already mentioned, Mrs. Synge (Mary Harmar), a qualified doctor, and her sister, Miss Gertrude Harmar (afterwards Mrs. Pakenham-Walsh). The first volunteers under the Ladies' Auxiliary, Miss Mongan and Miss Gardiner, had been already promised to the work in Kien-Ning district, and as Miss Darley, like them, went out under the auspices of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, it was necessary that she also should be sent to that sphere, since Fuh-Ning then lay outside the scope of that society. Even so, the staff at Fuh-Ning promised to be as large as the name of a University Mission demands, and there was good prospect of more recruits. Yet it was calculated at the time that ten clerical, four medical and fifteen lady missionaries at least would be requisite to work the district with thorough efficiency. For Fuh-Ning prefecture is 80 miles long and from 50 to 70 broad. Of the 60 Hsiens or counties into which Fuh-Kien is divided, Fuh-Ning has five, Ning-Taik, Fuh-Ang, Fuh-Ting, Sieu-Ning, and Fuh-Ning (or Ha Puo), each with a capital or Hsien city of the same name. The firstnamed is, indeed, not in the D.U.F.M. sphere, having been excepted by a special clause; but nevertheless it has usually been under the general superintendence of the missionary presiding at Fuh-Ning, and our staff have always hoped to obtain it as part of their regular field. For Fuh-Ning prefecture occupies the north-east corner of the Fuh-Kien province; and our district is separated, as you follow the deeply-indented coast-line southwards, from Foo-Chow treaty port (the populous capital and nerve-centre of the province) first by Ning-Taik, the southernmost of the FuhNing counties, and then by the two narrow counties, Lo-Ngwong and Lieng-Kong. Of these, the former was often in charge of the earliest D.U.M. Missionaries. It is clear (especially if you look at the map on the cover of this little book) that our Mission would derive much advantage from a southward extension of its sphere, which would link it with Foo-Chow. For Fuh-Ning has been aptly described as the backwater of a backwater, though one must remember that the same might have been said of Galilee in A.D. 28. In trade it is among the least important sections of the province. Four days' laborious travelling are needed to reach Foo-Chow by land, though in recent years a steamer twice or thrice a week shortens the [18/19] journey by half. Indeed, in the development of a coastwise steamer service lies the only hope of Fuh-Ning. For inland there is not a plain anywhere to break its mountains, and it will probably be the last part of the province to be opened up by telegraph or railway, while the canals which interlace its northern neighbours are here impossible. But south of Fuh-Ning city (Sieng-Tieng twelve miles away serving as a port) the wide irregular circle of the landlocked Sam-sa basin, Too miles by 6o in extent, supports a busy life of large fishing villages; another narrow inland sea, the Nam-quam harbour, cleaves the north-east corner of the coast-line of the prefecture, and offers an anchorage to the mission boat within two miles of Fuh-Ting city; the abode of Buddhist priests; while east of Fuh-Ning city, on the coast, between these two great inlets, Sang-sua town, with its 10,000 seafaring folk, outnumbers the capital itself. For Fuh-Ning is a decaying town, only preserved by its prestige as the residence of high officials and their soldiery. Even the opening of Sang-Du in the Sam-sa basin in 1898 as a treaty port linked by telegraph to Foo-Chow could hardly avail to restore the prosperity of FuhNing.

“The whole place is in a state of stagnation and decay," writes Mr. Star in ISO; " the streets abominable with pools of filth; the rusty old muzzle-loading cannon lying about anyhow on the tumbling city walls, beggars living in the angles of the wall, which are loopholed for defence. The roads are composed of lumps and slabs of granite truly awful to walk upon!" [but see Notes].

The true centre of the trade of the prefecture is Fuh-Ang to the north-west, 36 miles away by road, but more easily accessible by boat since, like Fuh-Ning, it lies but twelve miles from a creek of the Sam-sa basin. Here there is a strong Roman Catholic community hostile to our Church, but, in its turn, persecuted with especial vigour by the heathen for reasons mentioned elsewhere. Most remote of all the four Hsien cities of our district, four days' hard walking from Fuh-Ning, Sieu-Ning lies buried in the mountains of the north-western corner, a town celebrated only for the opium-eating habits of both men and women.

This rapid sketch will serve to show that there was an ample and varied field for the energies of a large staff among the official classes of the capital, the traders and farmers of town and valley, the fishers of the creeks, the [19/20] strangely-dressed aboriginal tribes of the mountains, and the Ananese settlers driven in the past by a pirate king from their southern homes opposite Formosa. Peculiar advantages for itineration were offered by the legacy of the "Relief," the quaint, keel-less, five-ton native sampan, boasting three masts, but each projecting at a different angle, in which Mr. Eyton Jones with his crew of four (one a woman) was wont for years to thread his way among the thousand islets of the Basin, and brave the whirling squalls which lurk in the gorges of that mountain-backed coast. After years of good service, most notable in 1900, when the rickety old craft was the link which held the Mission together through the persecution, she had to be replaced by a younger and more roomy sister, the "T.C.D." The crew have now become Christians.

The University Mission was thus entering into other men's labours. As early as 1876, a Chinese clergyman had worked at Fuh-Ning, but, though not altogether imperceptible, progress was slow. Seventy per cent. of the population were addicted to opium, and when a European missionary, Mr. Martin, at last came to reside in 1881, he had soon to call for a medical helper. Next year Dr. van Someren Taylor joined him, and the dispensary, soon  followed by a hospital, speedily became popular. Two-thirds of the patients had the opium habit. Dr. Taylor made another excellent move when he set himself to train native doctors, who took charge when he was transferred to another prefecture. The next great step was the opening of a women's hospital under a qualified lady doctor. Dr. and Mrs. Synge, on their arrival in 1897, thus found awaiting them posts offering full scope for their abilities.

Even in 1898, with a most imperfect hospital, there were 10,500 out-patients, and inside overcrowding became serious. It is hardly surprising; for the Chinese doctor, though much revered for his skill in strange herbs, is quite ignorant of surgery and affects the filthiest of poultices. His medicine is often mere magic; possibly the willingness with which the Chinese accept vaccination may be due to faith in it as a charm. Sores and ulcers abound, and Christian skill and loving-kindness, contrasting with the brutal callousness of the heathen, have proved by far the most effectual introduction for Christian teaching. The patient is glad to welcome the friends of his healer, and to spread good will among his fellows. The enemy loses [20/21] indeed no opportunity to spread poisonous slanders. To admit a dying patient has often been dangerous. But truth is great and prevails, and the series of opium cases cured, with moral reformation as a sequel to physical recovery, has impressed the Chinese imagination. The reward is being reaped in the new China of to-day where the co-operation of missionaries is sought by the great Anti-Opium League, which has forced the Government to suppress the cultivation of the poppy, forbid the import of the drug, and place degrading penalties on those who indulge in the habit. In the month of May, 1907, no less than one thousand opium dens were closed in Foo-Chow alone, and the baleful beauty of the poppy-fields will no longer be one of the sights of Fuh-Ning. (See Notes).

Another institution already flourishing before the arrival of the D.U.F.M. was the Women's and Girls' School; opened primarily with a view to supplying trained Biblewomen, and also educated wives for catechists and teachers. The girls were boarders taken free of charge, the children of Christians or enquirers. In 1896 the total number of native converts belonging to the Fuh-Ning prefecture was 154, with 389 catechumens. The totals for the whole of the C.M.S. Mission in Fuh-Kien (16 counties) were 7,215 and 12,802, so that the accession of a new band of missionaries was plainly needed, if Fuh-Ning's five counties were to keep pace with the rest. Yet there was no lack of encouragement. In the little church in Fuh-Ning there gathered every Sunday morning in 1898 a congregation of 150 (mostly men) who joined with real Chinese vigour in hymns and responses. Work in the other three counties of our district had hitherto been necessarily spasmodic, so that the prefecture had as yet not furnished its full quota of hearers. Out of twelve stations in charge of catechists, Fuh-Ning Hsien had six, Fuh-Ang three, FuhTing two, Sieu-Ning only one. Yet the enterprise of preceding missionaries had, at any rate, gained a foothold.

The new-comers threw themselves with energy into their task. Well for the medical brethren who can begin useful work at once! For each stranger must spend many months in chafing at the delay, while he tries (says one of them) to "learn that sêng in an ordinary tone of voice means ‘city,' in a lower one, ‘believe,' spoken with a grunt, ‘spirit,' and said sharply ‘heart,' and so on." There was, too, the added vexation of finding that, after acquiring the proper Foo-Chow accent, the sounds heard in the streets of Fuh-Ning were very different; for Fuh-Ning has a bad provincial brogue. One can imagine the difficulty of a Belfast man in conversing with a native of Cork if in English the meaning of words varied with the tone and pitch. And thus some time elapsed before the opening afforded through the hospital patients could be followed up by effective itineration, and utilized to the full by systematic education.

In education, beyond doubt, the special work of the D.U.F.M. lay, and still lies. The day schools were inferior and few; there was no real appreciation of learning in the poverty-stricken prefecture; and there was no boarding school for promising boys at Fuh-Ning. This defect was promptly made good, and Pakenham-Walsh was put in charge. The pupils were charged six dollars yearly, and a fee of two dollars was imposed on all new arrivals in the Girls' Schools. The amount was small, but a principle was vindicated. The result was at first discouraging. The Boys' School stood for a while empty, and very soon Pakenham-Walsh was, at the earnest desire of the Bishop of Victoria, transferred to Stewart's old work at the Theological College, Foo-Chow. But missionaries are not easily disheartened, and the year 1900 saw an extraordinary growth in the Church. The Sunday congregation at Fuh-Ning was doubled, and large contributions for a new building came in from the people. A permanent abode for the dispensary at Fuh-Ting and the church at Fuh-Ang became instant needs. The Girls' School had 70 applications, and many women sent in their names for the Women's School and Station Class; for, owing to the peculiar domestic arrangements in China, where the house is often inhabited by two generations, and ruled by the elder, a wife can easily afford to leave home for some weeks at a time. The hospital was so crowded that patients had to be accommodated in the passages; and a class of native medical students was under the instruction of Dr. Mackenzie. Two influential men, a literary man, who taught our missionaries, and a native doctor, were baptized.

Then came the national convulsion, which brought to a close the first period of our work at Fuh-Ning. The Boxer rising was neither provoked by missionaries, nor aimed directly at them. Sir Robert Hart and the attaché at [22/23] Pekin bear record that its inspiration was patriotic; anti-foreign, not anti-Christian. China for the Chinese was the cry. But, none the less, the Chinese Christian was regarded as a traitor who encouraged foreign practices and the missionaries as the agents of foreign powers. And so it came about that Chinese Christians by the thousand, and missionaries by the hundred, died for their faith. Thanks to a strong Viceroy, Sung-Shou, Fuh-Kien escaped the stress of the storm, but it was necessary to recall every missionary, man or woman, to the treaty ports in reach of safety, and Kien-Ning and Fuh-Ning were left without their pastors. Some, whose furlough was due, went home; others rested at Ku-Jiang, the beautiful mountain sanatorium overlooking Foo-Chow, which serves as a holiday resort for all Fuh-Kien workers, or found work to occupy them at Foo-Chow: With the help of the “Relief” two of the men were able to pay a visit of, encouragement to Fuh-Ning, and constant communication was maintained. The boarding schools and some of the day schools had to close. But the native workers carried on the hospital, and even the building of the new premises for the Women's School, while the country day schools held together. But the church at Fuh-Ang had been burned to the ground, and pictorial placards, representing the execution of the teacher and pupils, scattered broadcast. For here the officials, unlike those at Fuh-Ning, were bitterly hostile. At Hang-O, a fishing village, persecution had been violent for two years past. In 1899 our detachment at Kien-Ning had been driven out by a riot. The city church was burnt, and though the foreigners escaped with their lives to Foo-Chow, the mob wreaked its vengeance on two native Christians. A series of systematic slanders had persuaded the credulous Chinese that the murder of a boy found mutilated outside the city was the work of the foreigners; the death of a patient in hospital strengthened their conviction, and it was believed that preserved-meat tins contained babies' flesh. Satan repeats himself; the accusations firmly credited about the first Christians in the Roman Empire were of the same type. How the missionaries were recalled to Kien-Ning with a guarantee of safety, and how just as they were beginning their work anew with brighter auspices, the general order of the Consuls in 1900 summoned them back to Foo-Chow; how the floods destroyed the old hospital, but struck [23/24] terror into the heart of the enemy just when an organized attack on the foreigners had been planned; all this, and the later history of Kien-Ning, may be read in Miss barley's vivid pages. I return therefore to Fuh-Ning, where for six months, till February, 1901, but one celebration of the Lord's Supper could be held to strengthen the persecuted disciples. Yet here, as elsewhere in China, the valiant endurance of the Chinese Christian surprised even his friends, and when at last the ferment of excitement had begun to die down, and our missionaries were allowed to return, they found that very few baptized Christians had fallen away in spite of "serious temptation, cruel threatenings, and bitter persecution." But the staff itself was sadly depleted. Miss Weekes, our latest lady worker, was indeed already in China, studying the language during the delay, but she was destined for Kien-Ning. Miss Greer, who in 1888 had joined the Fuh-Ning staff, and promised to be most useful among the children, was obliged to withdraw in 'goo, though the Children's Helping Band at home has given her a congenial instrument for doing service for her old work at Fuh-Ning. But the Mission lost its leader, for Mr. Star also was unable to return to China, and others were still on furlough. Thus Dr. and Mrs. Synge, with her sister, Miss Harmar, and Dr. Mackenzie alone were able to accompany Mr. Studdert (the new leader) and his wife back to the D.U.F.M. district, while Dr. and Mrs. Pakenham returned to Kien-Ning.

The trouble in Fuh-Ning was by no means over, and Mr. Studdert had to face a period of harassing anxiety.

"Ever since he has been in charge (April, 1900)," writes Mrs. Studdert in her journal (August, 1901), “it has been one continual upset day after day, hearing one after another tell of annoyance, persecution, beating, bruising, maltreatment, and robbery, till our people's lives seemed hardly worth living. One old man had lime thrown into his eyes because he was a Christian; another had to repay his already paid taxes; another had his farming implements broken up."

The persecutors were often professedly converts of the Roman Catholic Mission, which had shortly before the rising arrived at Fuh-Ning, and met with considerable though transient success. For that Church has pursued the policy which our Protestant Missions have steadily, and in spite of piteous appeals from our converts, refused to pursue. Her priests make a practice of defending the [24/25] temporal interests of their people in court, and claimed the rank of Mandarin for the heads of their Mission, along with a right to the outward insignia of the office. This privilege was finally extorted from the Chinese Government, who offered it to Protestants as well. The latter refused, and so much resentment has been aroused among the patriotic spirits in China that the privilege has recently

been cancelled. The same characteristic difference of method was shewn in the demands for compensation; the C.M.S. was publicly thanked by the Chinese Government for its moderation, while the claims of the Roman Catholics were so exorbitantly pressed as to become a grave political danger. A British Pro-Consul, Mr. Mackinnon, was sent up at last to investigate matters in Fuh-Ning, and Mr. Studdert, like Mr. Star, after the massacre of the Stewarts, was invited to accompany the commission and examine witnesses. More than one "nest of Boxers" was unearthed, and the two foreigners ran no small risk. " Kill Mr. Studdert, kill Consul Mackinnon," the mob would begin to shout; but, declining an escort of soldiers, they coolly walked into the midst of the crowd, who were too much taken aback to harm them. Those who remember Mr. Studdert's aspect on the football field in college will understand why no one cared to be the first to raise a hand.

But, despite this, it was speedily seen that a new epoch in missionary work had begun. "Perturbation is the mask of evolution." For centuries China had lain stagnant and apparently impervious to the movement of thought and action in the wonderful new world around her. The outer world did not exist for her. All-under-heaven means the Chinese Empire, and that alone. Sir Robert Hart has said that during the fifty years of his work in China he was in a vault where not a ray of light or breath of air from outside could enter. In 1898 reforms attempted by the Emperor, Kwang-su, led to his practical deposition. But the Boxer outburst came like an earthquake; the prison doors were shaken, and the reforming spirit was set free. In each movement was visible the sudden perception that the western world was a force which China could not disregard; both showed China awake to a new consciousness of herself as a nation. In 1901 Yuan Shi-Kai and three other governors, each ruling over twenty millions of people, [25/26] not only recalled the missionaries, but appealed to a missionary, Mr. Richards, of North China, for advice on the introduction of western science and learning. An imperial edict abolished the old style of examination for the Chinese degree, on which all promotion in Government service depended, and the seven million literati of China found themselves confronted with the prospect of acquiring western knowledge. It was decreed that a University should be established in every province, a College in each prefecture, and a Public School in each district. One such institution was immediately opened in Foo-Chow, and the veteran Archdeacon Wolfe, who reached China in 1861, writes in 1901 of "the excitement and interest among the literati and gentry of the city." (Foo-Chow is one of the great examination centres of the Empire.)

“This will, I have no doubt, act favourably towards a close and more friendly intercourse with foreigners and help forward Christianity among all classes. I am persuaded that the time has now come when we as a Mission should no longer hold back from doing all we can to take part in this work of giving the young men of this city and province an English education.. They will have it from whatever quarter they can, and it is most desirable that they shall have it through the medium of Christianity rather than through that of atheism, infidelity or pure heathenism. I have not, I candidly confess, always taken this view of the question. I have been much opposed to missionaries employing their time in teaching English or western science to the Chinese; but circumstances alter cases, and I feel quite justified in strongly advocating what I once strongly opposed."

Contrast with this one of Mr. Star's earliest experiences in China in 1894, when, at no small risk, he helped to distribute books of geography and general knowledge to the men who filed in, amid enormous crowds of spectators, each with his coolies and provision-box, to his three days' ordeal in a locked cell, busy on his eight-legged essay and the works of Confucius and the Chinese classics. It is said that at such an examination nine candidates over eighty years of age and two over ninety went through the prescribed tests, though at nearly every examination one or more persons died from the strain, and blood gushed from the eyes, nose and mouth of many others. Yet only three or four per cent. of the field would annually be successful for the B.A. degree, and of these again only a similar percentage at the further triennial examination for M.A., on which the Government promotion depended. For it must [26/27] be understood that, despite Chinese respect for learning, and the great literature of which they not unjustly boast, they are not yet an educated people. Not 10 per cent. of the men, nor 1 per cent. of the women in China's 400,000,000 could read in 1901, and the limited range and mechanical nature of the education acquired by even these has been already noted. Girt with a fourfold wall of ignorance, suspicion, narrow-mindedness, and pride, China was a fortress well-nigh impregnable, but in 1901 it seemed as if one blast of the trumpet had levelled all her defences.

It can, therefore, be readily understood what an impetus the work in Fuh-Ning had received. By 1902 men and women were back at their posts. The Boys' and Girls' Schools were re-opened, the former now emulating the old-established but ever-increasing success of the latter. The years which follow may be termed the building period of our Mission. Thanks to the energy and generosity of the doctors, two great hospitals for men and women now stand in Fuh-Ning, admirably designed and equipped with 120 beds, an operation theatre, and a little cottage for the dying. They only need a larger staff of doctors and nurses to be in every way worthy of a University. Both the Women's and Girls' Schools have new houses, and excellent quarters for the boys have been found in an old Chinese house. A new church, almost the largest in Fuh-Kien, holds every Sunday 300 worshippers, many of whom are communicants, and could seat 500. "We people at home," said a home worker who has just returned from a visit to China, “do not realize the imposing effect, size, and mass of our settlement in Fuh-Ning. One felt that here was a town where everything that could be done was being done." No less satisfactory was the state of the scattered day schools, as revealed by the yearly examination conducted by Studdert and Pakenham-Walsh; and out of them boys were drafted in from the little mountainous districts to the boarding school at Fuh-Ning. Again, though baptisms were by the wise rule of the Mission only allowed after a prolonged catechumenate trial, and the rise in the numbers of Christians was perhaps less rapid than elsewhere, the proportion of contributions from the native Church was the largest in Fuh-Kien. Even the women and girls in the schools contributed their mite to the buildings.

[28] The scarcity of workers was still serious, and Mr. Hind's advent in 1902 to strengthen the educational side was doubly welcome. Miss Heard was added to the ladies' side in 1903, but, on the other hand, Fuh-Ning lost Miss Harmar in 1902, when she went to Foo-Chow as Mrs. Pakenham-Walsh. For all too brief a period the patients of Fuh-Ning hospital had the loving care of Mrs. Mackenzie, who came to China under C.E.Z.M.S. in 1899, but whose brief married life began and ended in 1904. Dr. Mackenzie had to take furlough, and, as Dr. Synge was also in England, the hospital was once more in the hands of natives. Another great responsibility fell to the native church in the same year. The pastorate of the city church in Fuh-Ning was committed to the catechist, Do Sieng-Dô, who was ordained deacon, and in due time priest in 1904, so that the danger of the flock being left without the possibility of Holy Communion in some stormy period is now averted. A European missionary has been proud to serve as his curate, and his work is one of many signs which arouse the hope of a Chinese Church as intelligent, independent, and self-relying as that in Japan. On the native councils in each district it has been noticed how keen and business-like are the delegates. In 1904 a constitution similar to that of the Church of Ireland was adopted for Fuh-Kien by the native Church Council to govern the nominations to pastorates; in 1909 a complete synodic constitution was created both for the diocese and for the whole Church in China. [See Notes].

The year 1905 saw the staff in desperate straits, for Mr. and Mrs. Studdert also had to take extended furlough. But relief was at hand. Dr. A. W. Goldsmith reached China in December, 1904, and though the immediate demand on his services made it hard for him to learn Chinese, and in two years' time he was invalided home, and, to the deep regret of all, forbidden to return, he was able to tide the medical work of the Mission over the time of difficulty, with the assistance of Dr. Ding, the admirable Chinese physician, while Mr. Hind and the ladies who remained carried the rest of the burden. But a time of plenty was at hand. The Student Volunteer Missionary Union sent out in December, 1905, one of their most valued officials, Mr. W. P. Williams. Miss A. Hind and Miss B. Thomas, whose brother and sister, respectively, were already in Fuh-Ning, joined the Ladies' Auxiliary staff, [28/29] the latter supplying a long-felt demand for a trained nurse. In 1906 four other recruits were expected for the men's staff, and though at the urgent request of the C.M.S. Mr. Parkinson Hill was diverted to Japan, and a second volunteer was kept back by ill-health, Messrs. Curtis and Stanley duly arrived. The missionaries on furlough were back again in China, including Miss Darley, whom Kien-Ning had despaired of seeing again, with health once more restored. The concordat with CTM.S., ratified finally in 1903, safeguarded D.U.M. from appropriation of their staff for other fields. But the needs of FooChow have been so urgent that not only were Mr. Pakenham-Walsh and Mrs. Pakenham-Walsh retained there, but Dr. Mackenzie's services were borrowed in 1906, and Mr. Stanley's in 1908, the latter to help Mr. Pakenham-Walsh in his new undertaking. For Mr. Pakenham-Walsh, in 1907, had become conscious of a new opportunity. First at the Theological College, and then at the Boys' High School, in Foo-Chow he had become acquainted with the educational demand of the hour. It was not until 1906 that the abolition of the old examination system was really carried out. But despite ebb and reaction, reform gained a complete victory. It was decreed that, without prejudice to existing graduates, no one could in future qualify for office without familiarity with western learning. Examination halls and idol temples were converted into school buildings, with modern appliances. A thorough system of national education, scientifically graded and equipped with modern text-books and all the instruments of progress, was set on foot throughout the empire. This had a double effect on the evolution of our mission work. In the first place the old Church schools and their course instantly became obsolete, and, to retain the respect of the Chinese, had to be brought into line with the new schools on the corresponding grade in the government scheme. The emergency was met with statesman-like promptitude and decision. Though attended largely by non-Christian children, the schools had been designed and managed as training institutions for Church workers. The teacher had been only a Catechist in the making, and was paid a smaller salary. But now the schools were closed and reopened in smaller numbers on a new basis. The teaching profession was to be an end in itself and the man paid accordingly. To meet the needs of the new course a [29/30] much higher standard of efficiency was demanded, and no school was opened when this could not be obtained. Hence the number of the D.U.F.M. schools was at first gradually diminished, though it will rise again when teachers are available, despite the increased expense. In 1909 there were six, with a total of 200 pupils. But they are now educational institutions of a high order, open to all, and teaching the prescribed subjects, while no less effective as Evangelistic agencies than before. The Girls' School (whose pupils have been so sympathetically introduced to us by the graphic pen of Miss E. Thomas) was no less forward than the rest to keep up with the demand of the time; language study, English and Mandarin (the official language of China, hardly known to any except the educated classes) is included in its curriculum. For not the least revolutionary of the changes in China to-day is the frank admission of women to the full rights of education. Girl children were formerly superfluous chattels, sometimes destroyed, sometimes sold, always despised. The women from Europe have taught China better things. A crusade against foot-binding and infant marriage is daily gaining strength. The former is now prohibited in Government schools. Physical exercises and sports for girls are witnessed with surprise and delight by admiring crowds. As yet Government recognition has not been accorded to the schools under the new scheme, and it is a remarkable testimony to our staff that the Chinese (Christian or heathen) nevertheless are willing to send their children to the missionary institution, where Bible study is compulsory, and no State certificate can be obtained. For the Chinese view of education has been frankly and coldly utilitarian. But these utilitarians recognise that our men and women are strong where the State is weak. In 1908 education was made compulsory on all boys over eight; viceroys, governors and rich citizens were commanded or encouraged to open preparatory schools; 100 in each province, forty in each prefecture, one in each town. Yet, despite its beautiful paper programme and lavish expenditure, the State has no teachers who know their subjects. Discipline is very poor, there is no thoroughness, and the laws of sanitation and hygiene are unknown; western games are not organized and finally, there is no guarantee against scandalous idleness on the part of the teacher. One thing is agreed; more and more the missionary in China will [30/31] have to become a teacher and trainer of teachers; there the opportunity lies. Evangelization must, as Stewart saw, be the work of the Chinese.

Bishop Hoare, of Victoria, saw this so clearly already in 1904 that he urged on D.U.F.M. the policy of concentration in Fuh-Ning, and encouraged the staff to work out and set on foot a connected scheme of training to be done entirely at Fuh-Ning. For some hold that the country lad is endangered when sent to the great and wicked city of Foo-Chow for his higher training, and think that the isolation of Fuh-Ning had its compensations. But in 1904 Fuh-Kien was made a separate diocese, and the wise and good Bishop of Victoria was drowned in 1906. Bishop Price, the first Anglican Bishop in Fuh-Kien, has shown no less kindness and appreciation of the D.U.F.M. work, but the events of the last few years have rendered it doubtful whether the centre of D.U.F.M. educational work should not rather be Foo-Chow. One great step has already been taken in that direction. For the second result of the new educational campaign of 1906 was the establishment by Mr. Pakenham-Walsh of the Anglo Chinese College at Foo-Chow, since called by the name of St. Mark in memory of the school at Alexandria in the days of the early church. An enormous demand for teachers with a knowledge of English and western subjects had arisen, and all the most promising pupils were leaving to go where this could be had. Backed by Bishop Price and the Conference, Mr. Pakenham-Walsh opened a college offering an English education, through the medium of the English language, to any boy, Christian or heathen, who chose to pay the fee; and a considerable fee was charged, as Mr. Pakenham-Walsh undertook that the school should not be a burden on C.M.S. He could only borrow a wretched Chinese house; yet within a few months there were 75 names on the books, and 100 pupils had to be turned away in 1908. The importance of the new venture was redoubled by the patronage of parents from a class far superior to that to which most Chinese Christians belong; so that a way has been opened to spread Christian influence among the official class. For experience has shown that wherever non-Christian boys attend a school leavened with Christians, and study the Bible under the head of Ethics, the result has been not only some direct conversions, but the diffusion of Christian [31/32] ideas and a Christian atmosphere. The result of such gradual permeation is seen to-day, not only in the anti-opium and educational movements but in religious change.

An imperial edict has commended to all Chinese the observance of the Sabbath, and enforced it in 1907 in the army and the schools and the post office. Shung Shou, Viceroy of Fuh-Kien, issued an edict forbidding idol processions and idol celebrations, which have always served as an occasion for riotous attacks on Christians. Another viceroy has ordered the study of the Bible to be pursued by his subjects. Each rules some 50,000,000 people. The educated Chinese is a Confucian, who can appreciate the vanity of the idols of Taoism and the value of a pure ethic.

Money for proper buildings for St. Mark's will have to be found, and here the Pan-Anglican grant may help, just as in Fuh-Ning we have for educational work a large donation from Mrs. Stewart, a legacy from Miss Stewart, and constant help from the Stewart Memorial Fund. And it would rejoice the heart of Robert Stewart to think that his name is 'inked with every forward step in the education of China. St. Mark's will, we hope, be self-supporting financially; but its staff is certain to call for a large increase to develop its six or eight years' course, and do justice to scientific as well as literary subjects. And St. Mark's is now part of the D.U.F.M. sphere; for this was found to be the best solution of the difficulty as to staff, it being impossible to allow either Pakenham-Walsh or Stanley to return to Fuh-Ning.

Not dissimilar is the enterprise in which Dr. Mackenzie has embarked. Always especially interested in the training of native medical students, and knowing what valuable influence they have exerted in the villages where they have set up for themselves, he was anxious to found a regular medical school. For the practical clinical side of the training nothing could be better than residence at hospitals, like those at Fuh-Ning and Kien-Ning, but the theoretical side could be taught at more leisure in a central institution at Foo-Chow. To the perfecting of this scheme he has for some years devoted himself; his services are therefore for the time lost to Fuh-Ning, and his scheme is at present not part of our work. Fortunately, Dr. Synge has just secured a colleague in Rev. Dr. Bryan, who is to sail this autumn, while Dr. Mary Synge has already been reinforced last year by Dr. Eda Bryan [32/33] Brown. Nevertheless, there is sore need for another doctor and another nurse for Fuh-Ning, for even the new hospital is crowded to overflowing, and the furloughs of the Synges and Miss Thomas, our only nurse, cannot long be postponed. Miss Pitt hopes to sail this year to supply the latter need. [See notes].

The Conference of Fuh-Kien missionaries has shown more and more desire to commit a very large share of the educational work at Foo-Chow to the hands of Dublin University, and the most pressing problem before our Mission is a reconciliation between the prospect thus held out to it and the claims of our own special sphere at FuhNing. Our staff there has been weakened since i go8 by the return to Ireland of Mr. Hind, owing to the sad death of his wife and child, as well as by the retirement of Dr. Goldsmith. This left Mr. Williams and Mr. Curtis reponsible not only for the old Boarding School, but also for a new High School to complete the education of the boys, in addition to a projected normal class for teachers. On Mr. Studdert falls the superintendence of the Mission and of Ning-Taik. And it must be remembered that a large part of the D.U.F.M. district is as yet but little visited (see Notes). It is hoped that the Mission may soon have a regular post at Fuh-Ang. In 1909 the staff of ladies received a most important accession in Miss L. B. Craig, the first lady graduate of Dublin University to join our staff. Miss Craig is not only a trained teacher and gold medallist in Modern Literature, but the founder of the Women Students' Missionary Association, and is largely supported by the women students. In this society the Mission may look forward with confidence to a new source of strength. There is also good reason to believe that the active interest in the Students' Volunteer Missionary Union and the Students' Movement which has for some years past been one of the most striking features of College life, will bring fresh recruits to the men's side as well.

The object of this sketch will have been fulfilled if it helps to make more widely known and more keenly realized how vast a responsibility has fallen to the lot of our University in this generation. China is seeking for teachers from the West. Her wisest heads have already repented of their effort to find modern wisdom in Japan. The students sent thither have returned with morals undermined; and the statesmen of China declare rightly and [33/34] proudly that her past greatness is due to her loyalty to her noble moralists. The appeal is now to Europe. With this generation the opportunity will have passed. China will have teachers of her own. It rests, under God, with the men and women who teach those teachers to shape and guide into the paths of righteousness and peace an empire at whose awakening the world which smiles to-day may else well tremble to-morrow.

It is no rhetoric but sober earnest to say that a share in that tremendous decision will lie with those whose names are entered on that roll which begins with Stratford Collins.

R. M. GWYNN.

Extension of the D.U.F.M. Sphere.

Last year St. Mark's Anglo-Chinese College at FooChow (teaching Western subjects through the medium of English) was added to our sphere. Mr. Pakenham-Walsh and Mr. Stanley have had their energies fully occupied by this charge; and now there has come a call to take up still greater responsibilities. The Pan-Anglican grant of £5,000 is to be devoted to the purchase and erection of a group of educational buildings, which will include, not only a new and adequate abode for St. Mark's, but also for the Boys' High School, Boys' Boarding School and a Normal School for teachers. The Fuh-Kien conference, strongly supported by Bishop Price, have invited D.U.F.M. to take over the sole charge of this work as part of its sphere. Hitherto we have preferred to train our own native educational workers at Fuh-Ning; but now we are asked to undertake the training of men for the whole province; and with the ample play-ground, chapel, and suitable buildings now provided at Foo-Chow it will probably be needless to maintain the higher educational work at Fuh-Ning. Further, Mr. Hind, with a spirit which the Mission will not fail to appreciate, has offered to return at once to China, and thus enable us at once to take up the work at Foo-Chow. His grasp of the Chinese problems and knowledge of the language make him a host in himself. Yet more will be needed. We must not weaken Fuh-Ning; indeed, it must be strengthened in view of the much-needed rest for some of our workers which cannot be long delayed. The Bishop writes thus:—

“We have now a great opportunity of establishing at last something like a strong central educational work. We turn to your Committee as representing the organization best fitted to meet the opportunity. It opens a fine sphere of work to your men; a much better, more central, and f arreaching educational opportunity than can be hoped for in the Fuh-Ning Prefecture.

“It means that you must aim at having a staff of eleven men for your whole sphere—Fuh-Ning and Foo-Chow. The Foo-Chow educational work should have three men in full work on the field by next February. I understand [35/36] that there is a good prospect of Mr. Hind's coming if invited for this work. I shall welcome him most heartily.

"I know that it will require strong faith and courage for your Committee to undertake this additional responsibility. Earnestly do I pray that if these proposals are (as they seem to us) in accordance with God's Will, you may have the faith and courage to respond to them with enthusiasm."

To such an appeal there could be only one answer, and now who will help us to make it good. Between Fuh-Ning and Foo-Chow the Mission offers scope for every kind of talent. The University of Dublin is offered the chance of being God's fellow-worker in the uplift of China. It is for her graduates to say whether that work shall remain undone.

Notes.

OPIUM REFORM.

Mr. Studdert writes, October, 1910:

“In my itinerations throughout the length and breadth of the five counties of this Prefecture during the last two years, I have not seen the smallest trace of poppy cultivation; whereas, in previous years, there were thousands and thousands of acres of it, fertile valleys and mountain sides brilliant with the noxious opium poppy—that awful curse of China. All credit to the Chinese Government for their efforts to suppress this dreadful evil; but it is still coming in large quantities from India—thus frustrating China's noble efforts to free herself from its awful bondage; and our British Government compels her to let the Indian opium in."

FUH-NING CITY.

Dr. Goldsmith's impressions as a new-corner are worth ecording:

"When I first approached a Chinese city two things struck me as very peculiar: the entire absence of any large buildings which gives the whole place an extremely flat appearance; and secondly, the city wall. This is generally a fine structure 30 feet by 15 broad. The Fuh-Ning one is very pretty, for it is covered almost everywhere with a luxuriant growth of ferns and grasses. But as I was coming towards Fuh-Ning I was shown in one corner of the city three or four buildings which stood out conspicuous above the dull brown roofs. These are the mission buildings; the city is built on a slight slope, and our houses are on the highest part. High above the city on the mountain slope stands a stone pagoda casting, as the Chinese say its ‘benign influence' over the inhabitants below. What a different influence!"

THE PASTORATE.

Mr. Do has since (in 1910), owing to the growth of the work and advancing years, been transferred to the Pastorate of Sua Siek (the most flourishing church outside Fuh-Ning); formerly he was able to hold both. Mr. Williams has the city pastorate together with the outlying churches in the north of the county. Mr. Curtis has undertaken Fuh-Ting county, while Mr. Studdert is thus set free to devote his time to the pastorate of Fuh-Ang, Sieu Ning and Ning Tink counties. Mr. Williams and Mr. Curtis have also charge of the higher education in Fuh-Ning city, so that need of another worker to replace Mr. Studdert when his furlough falls due in 1911 is most pressing.

THE LATEST RECRUITS.

Miss Elsie Pitt reached Fuh-Ning before the close of 1910. Dr. Bryan was at the last moment forbidden by the Medical Board to go to China. The need for a man to fill the gap is most urgent.

APPENDIX A.

The following is a table of D.U.F.M. workers:MEN.

Rev. J. S. Collins, 1888-1897—Drowned in River Min.

Rev. T. McClelland, 189o-1897--(Since Organizing Sec. for C.M.S.)

Rev. L. H. Star, 1893-1900—(Since Organizing Sec. for C.M.S., Bristol.)

Rev. S. Synge, M.D., 1896—Fuh-Ning Hospital.

H. R. Pakenham, M.D., 1897—Kien Ning Hospital.

Rev. M. Mackenzie, M.D., 1907—Foo-Chow C.M.S. Medical School.

Rev. T. de C. Studdert, 1897—Superintending Missionary, FuhNing.

Rev. W. S. Pakenham Walsh, 1897--St. Mark's College, Foo-Chow.

Rev. J. Hind, 1902—Returning to Boys' High School new educational work, Foo-Chow.

A. W. Goldsmith, M.D., 1904-1907—Invalided.

Rev. W. P. Williams, 1905—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.

Rev. J. Curtis, 1906—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.

Rev. E. J. Stanley, 1906—St. Mark's College, Foo-Chow.

LADIES' AUXILIARY.

Miss M. Johnson, C.E.Z.M.S., m. Rev. J. S. Collins, 1890--Drowned on voyage home, 1897.
Miss O. Derry, C.E.Z.M.S., m. Rev. T. McClelland, 1893.
Miss K. Gardiner, C.E.Z.M.S., 1895—Ciong Bau, nursing.
Miss A. Mongan, C.E.Z.M.S., 1895, m. Rev. F. Bland, C.M.S.
Miss R. Clemson, C.M.S., m. Rev. T. Studdert, 1900.
Miss E. Thomas, C.M.S., 1896—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.
Miss M. Darley, C.E.Z.M.S., 1896—Kien-Ning Blind School.
Miss M. Harmar, M.D., C.M.S., m. Rev. S. Synge, 1897, Fuh-Ning Women's Hospital.
Miss G. Harmar, C.M.S., 1897, m. Rev. W. Pakenham Walsh, 1902.
Miss J. E. Clarke, C.M.S., 1896—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.
Miss A. Greer, 1898-1900—Sec. China Children's Helping Band.
Miss A. Weekes, C.E.Z.M.S., 1900—Educational work, Ciong Bau.
Miss E. Stringer, C.E.Z.M.S., m. Dr. H. Pakenham, 1901.
Miss A. M. Heard, C.M.S., 1903—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.
Miss A. M. Aston, C.E.Z.M.S., m. Rev. M. Mackenzie, 1904; d. 1904.
Miss A. Hind, C.M.S., 1905—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.
Miss B. Thomas, C.M.S., 1905—Nursing, Fuh-Ning.
Miss L. Craig, 1909—Educational work, Fuh-Ning.
Miss E. Bryan Brown, M.D., 1909—Fuh-Ning Hospital.
Miss E. F. Skegg, C.M.S., m. Rev. M. Mackenzie, 1909.
Miss E. Pitt, 1910—Nursing, Fuh-Ning.

Note.—It should he observed that (1) several of the ladies on the above list were working in China before joining D.U.F.M. or marrying a D.U.F.M. missionary; (2) Miss L. Craig is the only lady missionary who is a member of Dublin University.

APPENDIX B.

The following is a table of some important dates in the mission's history:

1850. First missionaries arrive at Foo-Chow.

1860. Proposal to withdraw, no results having appeared. Rev. G. Smith begs for one more year; he alone is left.

1860. Rev. H. H. Collins visits Foo-Chow; opens dispensary.

1861. Rev. G. Smith baptizes first two converts.

1868. First native ordained.

1876. Rev. R. Stewart arrives.

1881. Fuh-Ning occupied by Rev. T. Martin

1882. Dr. Van Someren Taylor opens dispensary in Fuh-Ning.

1888. Arrival of Rev. J. Stratford Collins, first D.U.F.M. missionary.

1892. Kien-Ning riots.

1893. Foundation of Ladies' Auxiliary.

1895. Foundation of China Children's Helping Band

1895. Massacre of missionaries, including the Stewarts, at Hwa-Sang, near Ku-Cheng.

1895. Miss A. Mongan, Miss K. F. Gardner, first lady missionaries, join.

1897. Kien-Ning city occupied by C.M.S.

1897. Rev. J. Collins drowned in the River Min when itinerating. Mrs. Collins drowned on voyage home.

1897. Dublin University Fuh-Kien Mission takes over FuhNing Prefecture as its own sphere. Rev. L. H. Star, first superintending missionary.

1898. Reforms attempted by Emperor Kwang Su.

1899. Burning of Kien-Ning city church.

1900. Boxer rising. All missionaries withdrawn.

1900. Great flood at Kien-Ning.

1901. Missionaries return. Mr. Studdert succeeds Mr. Star as superintending missionary. Reforms in Chinese educational system.

1904. Do Sieng Do ordained priest and given pastorate of Fuh-Ning city.

1904. Fuh-Kien becomes a diocese, and adopts constitution like that of Church of Ireland. Bishop Price first bishop.

1906. Bishop Hoare, of Victoria, drowned.

1906. Abolition of old examination system. Remodelling of D.U.F.M. schools.

1906. St. Mark's Anglo-Chinese College, Foo-Chow, opened by Mr. Pakenham Walsh.

1909. St. Mark's handed over to D.U.F.M. as part of its exclusive sphere.

1909. First lady graduate of Dublin University, Miss Craig, joins staff.

1910. Pan-Anglican Fund grant of £5,000 for educational buildings in Foo-Chow. The whole group (St. Mark's Anglo-Chinese College, Boys' High School, Boys' Boarding School, Normal Class for Teachers) offered to D.U.F.M. as part of its exclusive sphere, and accepted.

Project Canterbury