Education in China consists solely in social and political training for the purposes of despotism. The studies are confined to one unvaried routine, and no deviation from the prescribed track is permitted. Within this circle all are, and must be, educated. Hence an uniformity of mind prevails, and has prevailed for ages throughout China, and has extended itself to the national features; betraying itself in Snub Noses and a dull, stolid expression of countenance. So much for compulsory education! It is impossible that it should be otherwise.
A nation whose minds are all reduced to the same level; whose thoughts are prescribed; whose daily conduct is measured out; whose very amusements are dictated by an imperial will, must necessarily soon become uniform, both mentally and physically. This uniformity will be the waveless level of the Dead Sea. Storms may agitate the upper sky, winds may rage, and floods descend; but the waves are too heavy to rise from their death-like repose. They sleep the calm sleep, not of peace, but of death. The last trumpet alone can arouse their torpor. The benignant mind of the Christian may nourish sweet hopes of evangelizing a nation so sunk. but the hopes are vain. Christianity came not till the human mind was fitted and prepared to receive and understand its divine precepts. It came not to the infancy of the world, but to its old age and matured judgment. A nation, therefore, steeped in the irreclaimable dotage of a childhood which has endured throughout its whole life, cannot receive it. Both the Hindoos and the Chinese have forfeited by their long-lived puerility the blessed message.
The first and every subsequent step of Christianity, as of civilization, has been Westward. Neither can they ever return to the East. The Apostle of the Gentiles preached from Judea to Pamphylia and Galatia, but was forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the Word in Asia;[49] and when he assayed to go Eastward into Bithynia, the spirit suffered him not, but compelled him westerly into Macedonia. From Macedonia to Rome; from Rome to Gaul; from Gaul to Britain; from Britain to America and Polynesia, the course has still ever been uniformly westward.[50] A few isolated Christians may be made in Asia; but it will never be Christianized. Asia has performed its part on the world’s stage. It is dead out, and cannot be resuscitated. When Christianity is entertained by “all nations,” Asia will be no more. It will not be reckonable among the nations, even as a dead man is not among the living. This may seem a harsh judgment. But is it harsher that nations whose own degradation unfits them for Christianity, shall remain ignorant of it during the brief remainder of the world, than that they have been ignorant of it for nearly two thousand years?