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Show CHANGES IN CHINA. THE LAND OF THE DRAGON MAKING PROGRESS. Upturned Missionary Tells of the Influence In-fluence of Three Wars Says Armed Invasions Have Caused Many Keforms in the Empire. The Rev. E. E. Aiken, a missionary who lost his wife in China, is now in this country with his two children. While engaged in tis work in China, invariably wore the native costume, as it gave him greater opportunity of access to the people he fought to serve. He has appeared before American audiences au-diences in the same costume. Mr. Aiken says the Chinese now regard the boxer movement as having utterly collapsed. col-lapsed. They now entertain a kindlier feeling toward Christians than they have done at any previous time. The passing of the storm of war and massacre mas-sacre is to be followed by a brighter day than has yet dawned upon "the land of Sinim." Speaking of the Chinese Chi-nese people, he says: "It could hardly be expected that a great, ancient and conservative race should change their religious beliefs and customs, and adopt Christianity without a struggle. In the recent uprising up-rising in north China, we see history repeating itself; yet the power of Christianity in the world is now , so great that it does not seem possible for religious persecution to go to the lengths which it reached in many former for-mer Instances. Witness the way in which persecution has already been stopped and the wrongs of many native Christians righted through the interference inter-ference of Western nations. ' "Moreover, the experience of the past in China has been that the war with Great Britain in 1842, the war with Britain and France in 1860, and the war with Japan in 1834, each successively suc-cessively resulted in opening the empire em-pire far more than before to commerce and modern civilization, as well as to missions. The uprising of 1900, it is true, differed from all that had gone before in that it represented a tremen- j dous popular movement in reaction against everything foreign, Christianity Christian-ity Included. The fact that, as such, it has totally failed, must be as appar- fill' REV. E. E. AIKEN. rent to the Chinese themselves as it is to all the world; and,, notwithstanding notwithstand-ing the anarchy which still prevails in some districts, there are already signs of beneficent results." |