E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading
Team
1907
"Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them."
[Illustration: A Chinatown Slave Market and Den of Vice. (Built andowned by Americans.)]
"Heathen slaves and Christian rulers." No injustice is done toChristians in the title given this book. The word "Christian" iscapable of use in two senses, individual and political. We apply thewords "Hindoo" and "Mahommedan" in these two senses also. A man whohas been born and brought up in the environment of the Hindoo orMahommedan religions, and who has not avowed some other form of faith,but has yielded at least an outward allegiance to these forms, wedeclare to be a man of one or the other faith. Moreover, we judge ofhis religion by the fruits of it in his moral character. Just so,every European or American who has not openly disavowed the Christianreligion for some other faith is called a "Christian." Furthermore,such men, when they mingle with those of other religions, as in theOrient, call themselves "Christians," in distinction from those ofother faith about them. They claim the word "Christian" as by righttheirs in this political sense, and it is in this sense that we employthe word "Christian" in the title of this book. The word is used thuswhen reckoning the world's population according to religions.
As we treat the Hindoo or Mohammedan so he treats us. Our Christianityis judged, and must ever be, in the Orient, by the moral character ofthe men who are called Christian; and the distinguishing vices ofsuch men are regarded as characteristic of their religion. Officialrepresentatives of a Christian nation have gone to Hong Kong and toSingapore, and there, because of their social vices, elaborated asystem, first of all of brothel slavery; and domestic slavery hassheltered itself under its wing, as it were; and lastly, at Singaporecoolie labor is managed by the same set of officials. What theseofficials have done has been accepted by the Oriental people aboutthem as done by the Christian civilization. It cannot be said that theevils mentioned above have been the outgrowth of Oriental conditionsand customs, principally. It has been rather the misfortune ofthe Orient that there were brought to their borders by Westerncivilization elements calculated to induce their criminal classes toally themselves with these aggressive and stronger "Christians" todestroy safeguards which had been heretofore sufficient, for the mostpart, to conserve Chinese social morality.
Christian people, even as far back as Sir John Bowring, Governorof Hong Kong, and up to the present time, both at Hong Kong andSingapore, have acquiesced in the false teaching that vice cannot beput under check in the Orient, where, it is claimed, passion mountshigher than in the Occident, and that morality is, to a certainextent, a matter of climate; and in the