Report Of A Visitation Of The China Missions

Excerpt from Report of a Visitation of the China Missions: May 22-September 19, 1901 While I visited Central and Southern China, particularly in and about the large stations of Canton and Shanghai, I gave the greater part of my four months in China to the three missions in the north, where the anti-foreign uprising of last year wrought such havoc to our work and where such stupendous problems of reconstruction now confront us. Many will sympathize with the emotions which stirred my heart as i entered the Peking Mission, hallowed to us by the sufferings and death of so many of our Chinese fellow Christians and of all our beloved missionaries who laid down their lives for Christ during the awful summer of 1900. When I think of all that the survivors endured i wonder that their health was not irretrievably shattered. Several, indeed, had been forced to leave before i arrived, invalided home by order of the mission. but others were heroically and self-sacrificingly at their posts, and almost daily and sometimes nightly, too, during the two weeks of my visit there, we studied and prayed together concerning the grave questions which have been forced upon us. Naturally, we took an early opportunity to visit not only the places made memorable by the great siege, but the sites of our former missions work. I say former, for the desolation is complete. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

China has bulked large in the imagination of the Catholic Church for 500 years. It had been central to the missionary dream of the Jesuits for almost as long. However, only with this book's appearance has the detailed focus of attention shifted to the substantial and neglected period of catholic and Jesuit engagement with china - the almost 120 years from the second arrival of the Jesuits. Matteo Ricci the polymath, Ferdinand Verbeist and Adam Schall von Bell the astronomers and the exquisite painter who influenced Chinese painting beyond measure, Giuseppe Castiglione, have been written about, made ls of and been the heart and soul of the first stage of Jesuit impact on China - in the 17th and 18th Centuries. They brought Western learning and art to China and took Chinese language and literature to Europe. The Jesuits were the first multinational to be welcomed in China and they came with a specific method of engagement - to make friends build relationships and share their gifts before anything else was transacted, including conversations about Christianity. It remains an unsurpassed method of engagement with a rich and ancient people. But the second arrival - from the 1840's - was very different. It was made possible by the arrival of European governments and traders, many of whom came not just for financial gain but to spread their "superior" religion. This work by David Strong in two volumes is the first major treatment of the period from the arrival of the European and eventually American Jesuit missionaries under the protection of the so called Unequal Treaties through to their expulsion after the Communist victory in the long running civil war in 1949. Volume II- The Wider European Adventure- covers the commitments, places and activities of missions undertaken by the Spaniards, Austrian, Hungarians, Italians, French Canadians, and lastly in the 1930s, the Americans from California.