Note 556 — CXIII. COLLECTING SUBSCRIPTIONS.

Such is one of the most common causes of hostile demonstration against Chinese Christians. The latter, acting under the orders of the missionaries, frequently refuse to subscribe to the various local celebrations and processions, the great annual festivities, and ceremonies of all kinds, on the grounds that these are idolatrous and forbidden by the Christian faith. Hence bad feeling, high words, blows, and sometimes bloodshed. I say “frequently,” because I have discovered several cases in which converts have quietly subscribed like other people rather than risk an émeute.

An amusing incident came under my own special notice not very long ago. A missionary appeared before me one day to complain that a certain convert of his had been posted in his own village, and cut off from his civic rights for two years, merely because he had agreed to let a room of his house to be used as a missionary dépôt. I took a copy of the placard which was handed to me in proof of this statement, and found it to run thus:—“In consequence of —— having entered into an agreement with a barbarian pastor, to lease to the said barbarian pastor a room in his house to be used as a missionary chapel, we, the elders of this village, do hereby debar —— from the privilege of worshipping in our ancestral hall for the space of two years.” It is needless, of course, to mention that Ancestral Worship is prohibited by all sects of missionaries in China alike; or that, when I pointed this out to the individual in question, who could not have understood the import of the Chinese placard, the charge was promptly withdrawn. return to text