Chinese nation for missionaries of every denomination who settle in
their country, naturally suggests the question whether Christianity is
likely to prove a boon to China, if, indeed, it ever succeeds in
taking root at all. That under the form of Roman Catholicism, it once
had a chance of becoming the religion of the Empire, and that that
chance was recklessly sacrificed to bigotry and intolerance, is too
well known to be repeated; but that such an opportunity will ever
occur again is quite beyond the bounds, if not of possibility, at any
rate of probability. Missionary prospects are anything but bright in
China just now, in spite of rosily worded "reports," and annual
statistics of persons baptized. A respectable Chinaman will tell you
that only thieves and bad characters who have nothing to lose avail
themselves of baptism, as a means of securing "long nights of
indolence and ease" in the household of some enthusiastic missionary
at from four to ten dollars a month. Educated men will not tolerate
missionaries in their houses, as many have found to their cost; and
the fact cannot be concealed that the foreign community in China
suffers no small inconvenience and incurs considerable danger for a
cause with which a large majority of its members has no sympathy
whatever. It would, however, be invidious to dwell upon the class of
natives who allow themselves to be baptized and pretend to accept
dogmas they most certainly do not understand, or on the mental and
social calibre of numbers of those gentlemen who are sent out to
convert them; we will confine ourselves merely to considering what
practical benefits Christianity would be likely to confer upon the
Chinese at large. And this we may fairly do, not being of those who
hold that all will be damned but the sect of that particular church to
which they themselves happen to belong; but believing that the Chinese
have as good a chance as anybody else of whatever happiness may be in
store for the virtuous, whether they become Christians or whether they
do not.

In the course of eight years' residence in China, we have never met a
drunken man in the streets. Opium-smokers we have seen in all stages
of intoxication; but no drunken brawls, no bruised and bleeding wives.
Would Christianity raise the Chinese to the standard of European
sobriety? Would it bring them to renounce opium, only to replace it
with gin? Would it cause them to become more frugal, to live more
economical