Southern Baptist Missionary Journal, May 1847

ззг* SOUTHERN BAPTIST MISSIONARY JOURNAL. VOL. I. MAY, 1847. NO. 12. THE EARLIER MISSIONS TO CHINA— NO. I. Wc are accustomed to regard missions to China as quite a modern thing, and to look upon that vast country as if it were now for the first time opened to any thing like foreign effort or influence. But a very slight examination is sufficient to dispel this idea. The earliest protestant missionary to China among the moderns, Dr. Robert Morrison, went there in 1807. But hundreds of years before, that vast empire had been the scene of missionary labor; and the dying embers of the fires then kindled, were and still are discernible. We propose to give some account of these earlier attempts to christian¬ ize the land of Sinim. The earliest positive accounts of a very definite character, in relation to Christians in China, are in respect to the Ncstorians about the middle of the 7th century ; but it may not be improper to allude in the first place to — I. ScrrosED ArosTouc Missions in that part of Asia. It is the constant tradition of the Syrian church, that the apostle Thomas preached the gospel, not only in India, but in China; and he is hence called, in the epitome of the Syrian canons, “the apostle of the Hindoos and Chinese.” When the Portuguese found one hundred and ten native churches in Malabar “ wholly ignorant of the great western apostacy and its peculiar errors,” they learned from them that their ancestors had received their instruction from this apostle, and that he had also preached to the Chinese. (See Dr. Pearson’s Swartz.) In the ancient Chaldee ritual, moreover, the following sentence occurs : “ By the blessed Thomas the kingdom of heaven was ex¬ tended, and opened to the Chinese.” Though these traditions alone would not produce conviction, yet the following considerations seem to add some plausibility to them. 1. The New Testament records the labors of none of the apostles except Paul, Pe¬ ter, James and John. Where were the rest ? Were they idle? Paul is represented as laboring for the most part where the others had not labored, which implies that there were others laboring elsewhere. Wc may also infer this, and that some of them were laboring in the East: (1) From the command to preach, which was not limited to the countries adjacent to or west of Palestine, but extended to “ all nations,” to “ every creature (2) From the known zeal of some of them, combined with the fact that they arc no where mentioned as crossing the paths of those apostles whose labors are particularly recorded. They were not at Jerusalem, (Gal. i : 19 ;) they were not in Greece, nor in the cities in which Paul preached. Yet doubtless they too “ went everywhere preaching the word.” (Mark xvi : 20.) “ Their sound went out into all the world, and their word to the ends of the world.” (Rom. x : 18 ) (3) From the natural tendencies and affinities of the Jews. In the East lay all that to them was attractive. Their commercial arrangements united with the East. In the East they had been captive, and in the East they had left many of their brethren who did not choose to return when Cyrus gave them liberty to do so ; many who were scattered through all that region at the dispersion of the ten tribes, (2 Kings xvii :) and whose 34*