CURRENT LITERATURE.
Missionaries in China. By Alexander Michie. (E. Stanford.)— Mr. Michie brings the results of a long experience to bear on this difficult question. He points out that from various causes, one of them being that the introduction of missions was forced on the Chinese Government from without, missionaries are hated through- out China. China is tolerant of Buddhism and Islam : why does it hate Christianity ? Race-hatred goes for much. It is the religion of the detested Western barbarians. (We of the West, it must be remembered, reciprocate this feeling to the utmost.) Then there is the universal belief in the kidnapping of children. The orphanages give rise to this suspicion. And, indeed, if the Catholic Missions do what they are doing in the neighbourhood of Lake Tanganyika, and buy children wholesale, no one can wonder at it. We cannot follow Mr. Michie through his arguments ; but they are worth considering, as is the modus vivendi which he pro- poses. In 1870, the Chinese Government proposed regulations which are, indeed, very distasteful to Western minds, but have yet, from their point of view at least, much to recommend them. One thing is certain,—that missions cannot be supported by foreign force. This is an arrangement that contradicts the principles of Christianity.—Church Work in North China, with a Preface by C. P. Scott, Bishop in North China (S.P.C.K.), does not touch on these difficulties, but details the progress—satisfactory, as far as it goes—of mission work in the country intersected by the Imperial
Canal.
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