China And Methodism
Cód:
491_9781443754163
PREFACE. THE present critical state of China, and the attitude of European Powers, compel me to issue at once this popular form of a work meant to be of more pretentious proportions, for which the materials were i a large measure prepared. If rapidity of production has, as I fear, left signs of haste in composition, I trust that, in the circumstances, good intentions will be an excuse for imperfect performance. No statement of-fact has been made without good -authority, nor opinion expressed without careful thought. There are some subjects on which there are repetitions in statement of facts or expressions - of opinion, which are a fault in composition, but which I trust will be pardoned, if not approved of, on account of their importance in their bearing on the object of the work, I do not rest my claim to be heard, regarding - either the past or future of China, on a brief residence of a few years in that country-only long enough to impress a thoughtful student with the difficulties of the subject-but on a lifelong interest in Asiatic questions, especially those connected with China. To one who has pored over the records of the history of China, covering a period of 4,000 or 5,000 years, and studied its institutions-the nearest, in a continuous and living form, to those of the earliest known inhabitants of our world-it is impossible to read with philosophic calmness the pretensions of the upstart nations of Europe to carve out for themselves, from that vast and venerable empire, provinces larger and with populations more numerous than their own territories and people and that in the name of civilization of an empire which has civilized thousands of years before these nations had emerged from barbarisn. While I admit the superiority of Western civilization in many of its aspects, I may ask, in the strong language of a distinguished American writer Is China to be civilized by France, whose common sailors in a shipwreck clubbed drowning women and children who tried t
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