('l'o Tim Barron or TES "SPIICTA.TOR.n 8n:4—Although I - rarely find something
in your journal with which I do'not fundamentally disagree, I always read it -with interest and profit: -Your article on "Mortniain in Thought and Life" (Spectator, September 22nd) has that acuteness' and charm Which is a constant feature of your "middies," but the article on "Missionaries in China" seems fir me Mis- chievous in its tendency. You eiiereise a well-won influence in both Church and Dissent, and the mistaken attitude of both these-sections of Christendom wM be stiffened by your counsel that mission work shall run along the old lines of undisciplined zeal. You have to face the fact that, however successful missions among the lower races have been, they are failures among races whose creeds are more venerable than that which seeks to supplant them. Sir Alfred Lyall's remarkable "Asiatic Studies," to which you refer, shows that Christianity is making no headway against Brahmanism ; and in his "Australian in China," Dr. Morrison, the Times correspondent in Pekin, gives like testimony to failure in that country. Dr. Morrison writes as one in sympathy with mission effort, and he shows that at the present rate of conversions (these being well-nigh solely among the lower orders, who reap some temporal advantage by change of creed) the triumph of Christianity in China may be expected ad Calendas Grscas. This is certain, unless the quality of the missionary, male and female, is improved, and it is to this that your influence should be directed. There is already sufficient cause of unrest in the competition of the different sects, bewildering the Hindoo and the Chinaman with their respective claims to possession of the truth. But this, serious though it be, pales before the hindrance wrought by ignorance of the history and tenets of the religion combated. You send out a number of men and women (see Dr. Monison's book) fortified by the prayers of the churches, but wholly unequipped to deal, by tact and know- ledge, with ancient faiths embalming, with many errors, precious records of man's spiritual development, and endeared by myriad associations to their adherents. The various missionary societies should start an intelligence department, which, with its other duties, should sift rigorously all reports of progress ; and they should compel every candidate to evidence such acquaintance with the modern science of com- parative theology as may be gained from reading books of the type of Dr. Tylor's "Primitive Culture."—I am, Sir, &c., Strafford House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. EDWARD CLODD.
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