The Religious Herald

Conversion of the Heathen.

We mourn that so little progress has been made, since the Reformation, in the conversion of the Heathen. It is an astonishing and a fearful fact that we should pause and reflect upon. But here seems to be an epoch in the history of religion and the world, that promise better things. For two centuries the present dynasty has ruled over this wide-spread Empire. Its population is more than one third of the entire population of the globe. Under Providence, the door is now thrown open for Christian kingdoms to gain a foothold to the very centre of that vast, densely-crowded territory, to plant the banner of the cross on every hillside. Never since the Reformation has such an opening occurred.—Would that it were duly improved.

In favor of such effort there is the fact, unlike the efforts in Borneo and New Zealand, where the inhabitants have first to be civilized and then Christianized, here the people are already far advanced in the arts. Moreover, unlike India, where there is naturally a prejudice against the religion of the conqueror, here there would be no such prejudice. There would be no offence politically and the utter latitudinarianism of the Chinese, holding already three domesticated religions, removes all such obstructions from our path, and what a result might the world witness?

The conversion of China, the alteration in its social and religious life, would have the most powerful effect on all the Eastern world in the way of obtaining agencies and facilities for carrying on the work now utterly beyond our power. With Christianity radiating from the centre of the land, supported on the East and from India, on the South, by England, and from the North and West, by Russia, the work of centuries, we may hope, would be done in years; and instead of slow and isolated concessions, the delay and patience, the hope deferred, that now attend the feeble missionary struggle at the Five Ports, we would have a controlling influence that would bring multitudes to the knowledge of a true God, and gladden Christendom by the signs of vitality in the Christian religion, such as have not been seen for centuries.—Evan. Cath.