Kitabı oku: «The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864», sayfa 7

At Shanghai the Baby Tower stands on the southwest side of the city, without the walls, but at Foo-Chow, where the crime of infanticide is still more prevalent, they use no baby towers, but have provided ponds for this express purpose. It is the saddest part of this great national crime of the Chinese, that it is sanctioned by the mandarins, and viewed as a disagreeable necessity, not as a crime.

It has been the fashion of late years to deny the existence of this abomination; the doubters, wise in their own conceit, insisting that the crime is too great for human nature.

Human nature, unfortunately, has proved but a frail barrier to crime of this character in all parts of the world, and the facts of Chinese infanticide are indisputable. The witnesses are too numerous, the crime is too public, and the evidences of it too notorious to deny its existence. The children destroyed are girls; the most common methods of destroying them are: 1st, by drowning in a tub of water; 2d, by throwing into some running stream; 3d, by burying alive. The last-named mode is adopted under the hope and with the superstitious belief that the next birth will be a boy. The excuse is that it is too expensive to educate a girl, but if some friend will take the child to bring up as a wife for a little boy, the parents will sell or give away the infant rather than destroy it. The regular price is two thousand copper cash, or $2, for every year of their lives; for sometimes a girl will be saved for a year or two, and then sold for a wife or slave. Many instances have come to the notice of missionaries where large families of girls have been destroyed. There is one woman now employed as a nurse in a missionary's family at Fuh-Chow, who says that her mother had eight girls and three boys, and that she was the only girl permitted by her father to live. We never heard of an instance of a boy's being destroyed at birth. There is a village about fifteen miles from Fuh-Chow, which is swarming with boys, but where girls are very scarce. The people account for it themselves by alleging the common practice of killing the girls at birth, a practice which is indulged in by the rich as well as by the poor.²

But to enter into all the particularities of Chinese life which attract the attention at Shanghai as in other cities, would be to compile an account of China and her customs.

The points of real importance to be considered in connection with Shanghai, which is fast becoming the commercial centre of Chinese exports, are the extent to which foreigners have an influence on the people in modifying their habits, increasing their knowledge, and dispelling their prejudices. The growth of European influence and the complete opening of the Chinese empire, in which immense advances have been made in the last three years, will, in time, it is to be hoped, lead to the diffusion of the Christian religion, a work attended with such gigantic difficulties, at the present day, that one cannot sufficiently admire the courage, patience, and faith which actuate missionaries to this empire. No representations of these difficulties which reach the Christian world have done justice to them, for it is necessary to observe the heartlessness, self-conceit, and prodigious prejudices of the Chinese to appreciate the noble zeal of the missionaries. The course of trade and much more correct notions of the power and objects of the Western nations, and the firmness with which they use the former to secure the latter, are unquestionably breaking up with rudeness the ridiculous ideas of the Chinese concerning their own importance and superior wisdom. If once they can be made learners in good earnest, the battle is half won, for none doubt their intelligence. European influence, alone, has effected great changes in five years, and European and Chinese combined may, in the five years to come, work out still greater reforms.

COMPARATIVE VIEW OF MOVEMENT OF POPULATION OF

ON HEARING A 'TRIO

 
'All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,'
Thrilled through the wildering harmonies
That from the music came.
 
 
All soothing sounds of nature blent,
In wonderful accord,
With pleadings, wild and passionate,
From human hearts outpoured.
 
 
The wailings of the world's sad heart,
Oppressed with social wrongs,
In mournful monotones were mixed
With sounds of angel songs.
 
 
The falling of a nation's tears
O'er Freedom's prostrate form,
Dew droppings sweet from starry spheres,
Swift-rushing wings of storm.
 
 
The voices of Time's children three—
Past, Present, Future, blent
In that wild 'trio's' harmony,
Thrilled each fine instrument.
 
 
And, at the sound, my soul awoke,
And saw the dawning clear
Of Freedom's coming day illume
Earth's clouded atmosphere!
 

THE IDEAL MAN FOR UNIVERSAL IMITATION; OR, THE SINLESS PERFECTION OF JESUS

(A POSITIVE REPLY TO STRAUSS AND RENAN.)

The first impression which we receive from the life of Jesus, is that of perfect innocency and sinlessness in the midst of a sinful world. He, and He alone, carried the spotless purity of childhood untarnished through his youth and manhood. Hence the lamb and the dove are his appropriate symbols.

He was, indeed, tempted as we are, but he never yielded to temptation. His sinlessness was at first only the relative sinlessness of Adam before the fall, which implies the necessity of trial and temptation, and the peccability, or the possibility of the fall. Had he been endowed with absolute impeccability from the start, he could not be a true man, nor our model for imitation; his holiness, instead of being his own self-acquired act and inherent merit, would be an accidental or outward gift, and his temptation an unreal show. As a true man, Christ must have been a free and responsible moral agent; freedom implies the power of choice between good and evil, and the power of disobedience as well as obedience, to the law of God. But here is the great fundamental difference between the first and the second Adam: the first Adam lost his innocence by the abuse of his freedom, and fell by his own act of disobedience into the dire necessity of sin; while the second Adam was innocent in the midst of sinners, and maintained his innocence against all and every temptation. Christ's relative sinlessness became more and more absolute sinlessness by his own moral act, or the right use of his freedom in the perfect active and passive obedience to God. In other words, Christ's original possibility of not sinning, which includes the opposite possibility of sinning, but excludes the actuality of sin, was unfolded into the impossibility of sinning, which can not sin because it will not. This is the highest stage of freedom, where it becomes identical with moral necessity, or absolute and unchangeable self-determination for goodness and holiness. This is the freedom of God and of the saints in heaven, with this difference: that the saints attain that position by deliverance and salvation from sin and death, while Christ acquired it by his own merit.

In vain we look through the entire biography of Jesus for a single stain or the slightest shadow on his moral character. There never lived a more harmless being on earth. He injured nobody, he took advantage of nobody, he never spoke an improper word, he never committed a wrong action. He exhibited a uniform elevation above the objects, opinions, pleasures, and passions of this world, and disregard to riches, displays, fame, and favor of men. 'No vice that has a name can be thought of in connection with Jesus Christ. Ingenious malignity looks in vain for the faintest trace of self-seeking in His motives; sensuality shrinks abashed from His celestial purity; falsehood can leave no stain on Him who is incarnate truth; injustice is forgotten beside His errorless equity; the very possibility of avarice is swallowed up in His benignity and love; the very idea of ambition is lost in His divine wisdom and divine self-abnegation.'

The apparent outbreak of passion in the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple is the only instance on the record of his history which might be quoted against his freedom from the faults of humanity. But the very effect which it produced, shows that, far from being the outburst of passion, the expulsion was a judicial act of a religious reformer, vindicating in just and holy zeal the honor of the Lord of the temple. It was an exhibition, not of weakness, but of dignity and majesty, which at once silenced the offenders, though superior in number and physical strength, and made them submit to their well-deserved punishment without a murmur, and in awe of the presence of a superhuman power. The cursing of the unfruitful fig tree can still less be urged, as it evidently was a significant symbolical act, foreshadowing the fearful doom of the impenitent Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem.

The perfect innocence of Jesus, however, is based not only, negatively, on the absence of any recorded word or act to the contrary and his absolute exemption from every trace of selfishness and worldliness, but, positively, also on the unanimous testimony of John the Baptist and the apostles, who bowed before the majesty of his character in unbounded veneration, and declare him 'just,' 'holy,' and 'without sin.' It is admitted, moreover, by his enemies: the heathen judge Pilate, and his wife, representing, as it were, the Roman law and justice, when they shuddered with apprehension and washed their hands to be clear of innocent blood; by the rude Roman centurion, confessing under the cross, in the name of the disinterested spectators, 'Truly, this was the Son of God;' and by Judas himself, the immediate witness of his whole public and private life, exclaiming in despair: 'I sinned in betraying innocent blood.' Even dumb nature responded in mysterious sympathy, and the beclouded heavens above and the shaking earth beneath united in paying their unconscious tribute to the divine purity of their dying Lord.

The objection that the evangelists were either not fully informed concerning the facts, or mistaken in their estimate of the character of Christ, is of no avail. For, in addition to their testimony, we have his own personal conviction of entire freedom from sin and unworthiness, which leaves us only the choice between absolute moral purity, and absolute hypocrisy; such hypocrisy would, indeed, be both the greatest miracle and the greatest moral monstrosity on record.

The very fact that Christ came for the express purpose of saving sinners, implies his own consciousness of personal freedom from guilt and from all need of salvation. And this is the unmistakable impression made upon us by his whole public life and conduct. He nowhere shows the least concern for his own salvation, but knows himself in undisturbed harmony with his Heavenly Father. While calling most earnestly upon all others to repent, he stood in no need of conversion and regeneration, but simply of the regular harmonious unfolding of his moral powers. While directing all his followers, in the fourth petition of his model prayer, to ask daily for the forgiveness of their sins as well as their daily bread, he himself never asked God for pardon and forgiveness, except in behalf of others. While freely conversing with sinners, he always does so with the love and interest of a Saviour of sinners. This is an undeniable historical fact, no matter how you may explain it. And to remove every doubt, we have his open and fearless challenge to his bitter enemies: 'Which of you convinceth me of sin?' In this question he clearly exempts himself from the common fault and guilt of the race. In the mouth of any other man, this question would at once betray either the height of hypocrisy, or a degree of self-deception bordering on madness itself, and would overthrow the very foundation of all human goodness; while from the mouth of Jesus we instinctively receive it as the triumphant self-vindication of one who stood far above the possibility of successful impeachment or founded suspicion.

The assumption that Christ was a sinner, and knew himself such, although he professed the contrary and made upon friends and enemies the impression of spotless innocency, is the most monstrous deception that can well be imagined. 'If Jesus was a sinner, he was conscious of sin, as all sinners are, and therefore was a hypocrite in the whole fabric of his character; realizing so much of divine beauty in it, maintaining the show of such unfaltering harmony and celestial grace, and doing all this with a mind confused and fouled by the affectations acted for true virtues! Such an example of successful hypocrisy would be itself the greatest miracle ever heard of in the world.'

It is an indisputable fact, then, both from his mission and uniform conduct and his express declaration, that Christ knew himself free from sin and guilt. The only rational explanation of this fact is, that Christ was no sinner. And this is readily conceded by the greatest divines—even those who are by no means regarded as orthodox. The admission of this fact implies the further admission that Christ differed from all other men, not in degree only, but in kind. For although we must utterly repudiate the pantheistic notion of the necessity of sin, and must maintain that human nature, in itself considered, is capable of sinlessness, that it was sinless, in fact, before the fall, and that it will ultimately become sinless again by the redemption of Christ; yet it is equally certain that human nature, in its present condition, is not sinless, and never has been since the fall, except in the single case of Christ, and that for this very reason Christ's sinlessness can only be explained on the ground of such an extraordinary indwelling of God in him as never took place in any other human being, before or after. The entire Christian world, Greek, Latin, and Protestant, agree in the scriptural doctrine of the universal depravity of human nature since the apostasy of the first Adam. Even the modern and unscriptural dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, of the freedom of the Virgin Mary from hereditary as well as actual sin, can hardly be quoted as an exception; for her sinlessness is explained in the papal decision of 1854 by the assumption of a miraculous interposition of divine favor, and the reflex influence of the merits of her Son. There is not a single mortal who must not charge himself with some defect or folly, and man's consciousness of sin and unworthiness deepens just in proportion to his self-knowledge and progress in virtue and goodness. There is not a single saint who has not experienced a new birth from above, and an actual conversion from sin to holiness, and who does not feel daily the need of repentance and divine forgiveness. The very greatest and best of them, as St. Paul and St. Augustine, have passed through a violent struggle and a radical revolution, and their whole theological system and religious experience rested on the felt antithesis of sin and grace.

But in Christ we have the one solitary and absolute exception to this universal rule, an individual thinking like a man, feeling like a man, speaking, acting, suffering, and dying like a man, surrounded by sinners in every direction, with the keenest sense of sin and the deepest sympathy with sinners, commencing his public ministry with the call: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;' yet never touched in the least by the contamination of the world, never putting himself in the attitude of a sinner before God, never shedding a tear of repentance, never regretting a single thought, word, or deed, never needing or asking divine pardon, never concerned about the salvation of his own soul, and boldly facing all his present and future enemies in the absolute certainty of his spotless purity before God and man!

HIS ABSOLUTE HOLINESS

A sinless Saviour surrounded by a sinful world, is an astounding fact indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade. The Sermon on the Mount alone is worth infinitely more than all that Confucius, Socrates, and Seneca ever said or wrote on duty and virtue. But the difference is still greater if we come to the more difficult task of practice. While the wisest and best of men never live up even to their own imperfect standard of excellency, Christ fully carried out his perfect doctrine in his life and conduct. He both was and did that which he taught; he preached his own life, and lived his own doctrine. He is the living incarnation of the ideal standard of virtue and holiness, and is universally acknowledged to be the highest model for all that is pure and good and noble in the sight of God and man.

We find Christ moving in all ordinary and essential relations of life, as a son, a brother, a friend, a citizen, a teacher, at home and in public. We find him among all classes of society, with sinners and saints, with the poor and the wealthy, with the sick and the healthy, with little children, grown men and women, with plain fishermen and learned scribes, with despised publicans and honored members of the sanhedrim, with friends and foes, with admiring disciples and bitter persecutors; now with an individual, as Nicodemus or the woman of Samaria, now in the familiar circle of the twelve, now in the crowds of the people. We find him in all situations, in the synagogue and the temple, at home and on journeys, in villages and the city of Jerusalem, in the desert and on the mountain, along the banks of Jordan and the shores of the Galilean Sea, at the wedding feast and the grave, in Gethsemane, in the judgment hall, and on Calvary. In all these various relations, conditions, and situations, as they are crowded within the few years of his public ministry, he sustains the same consistent character throughout, without ever exposing himself to censure. He fulfils every duty to God, to man, and to himself, without a single violation of duty, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God, in active and passive obedience to His holy will—one grand act of absolute love to God and love to man, of personal self-consecration to the glory of his Heavenly Father and the salvation of a fallen race. In the language of the people who were 'beyond measure astonished at his works,' we must say, the more we study his life: 'He did all things well.' In a solemn appeal to his Heavenly Father in the parting hour, he could proclaim to the world that he had glorified him in the earth, and finished the work he gave him to do.

UNITY OF VIRTUE AND PIETY

The first feature in this singular perfection of Christ's character which strikes our attention, is the perfect harmony of virtue and piety, of morality and religion, or of love to God and love to man. He is more than moral, and more than pious; he is holy in the strict and full sense of the word. There is a divine beauty and perfection in his character, the mere contemplation of which brings purity, brightness, peace, and bliss to the soul.

Piety was the soul of his morality, and lifted it far above the sphere of legality or conformity to law. Every moral action in him proceeded from supreme love to God, and looked to the temporal and eternal welfare of man. The groundwork of his character was the most intimate and uninterrupted union and communion with his Heavenly Father, from whom he derived, to whom he referred, everything. Already in his twelfth year he found his life element and delight in the things of his Father. It was his daily food to do the will of Him that sent him, and to finish his work. To Him he looked in prayer before every important act, and taught his disciples that model prayer which, for simplicity, brevity, comprehensiveness, and suitableness, can never be surpassed. He often retired to a mountain or solitary place for prayer, and spent days and nights in this blessed privilege. But so constant and uniform was his habit of communion with the great Jehovah, that he kept it up amid the multitude, and converted the crowded city into a religious retreat. His self-consciousness was at every moment conditioned, animated, and impregnated by the consciousness of God. Even when he exclaimed, in indescribable anguish of body and soul, and in vicarious sympathy with the misery of the whole race: 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!' the bond of union was not broken, or even loosened, but simply obscured for a moment, as the sun by a passing cloud, and the enjoyment, not the possession of it, was withdrawn from his feelings; for immediately afterward he commended his soul into the hands of his Father, and triumphantly exclaimed: 'It is finished!' So strong and complete was this moral union of Christ with God at every moment of his life, that he fully realized for the first time the idea of religion, whose object is to bring about such a union, and that he is the personal representative and living embodiment of Christianity as the true and absolute religion.

With all this, the piety of Christ was no inactive contemplation, or retiring mysticism and selfish enjoyment; but thoroughly practical, ever active in works of charity, and tending to regenerate and transform the world into the kingdom of God. 'He went about doing good.' His life is an unbroken series of good works and virtues in active exercise, all proceeding from the same union with God, animated by the same love, and tending to the same end, the glory of God and the happiness of man.