From ancient times to within less than ten years ago the one fixed conception of the Orient held by Western people has been that it changes not.

W. C. MORRO.

The more cosmopolitan spirits may have known something of the new impulse which recently has been stirring the ancient nations, but even our educated men have been profoundly ignorant of any real progress in the Orient. Travelers and scholars have heaped up adjectives to describe its inertia and stagnation. It was immobile, unprogressive, unimpressionable, lethargic, stagnant, the same yesterday, to-day and forever, all of the expressions being but variants of our usual phrase, "the unchanging East." Nor was this conception wholly an erroneous one. Customs and manners which centuries ago were enshrined in the ancient classics and scriptures of the East, to-day regulate the lives and habits of its peoples. In 1905, Sir Robert Hart said that during the first forty-five years spent in China he seemed to be sitting "as in a vault into which not a breath of air bringing Western civilization entered. The Chinese were apparently unaware of the existence of foreign nations. They were seemingly as dead to modern civilization as if it were removed from them by a thousand years." But recently our one fixed conception of the Orient has been shattered. The East does change. Every month brings us news of revolution, and we know not what shall be to-morrow--except that it will be different from to-day.

      What are the events which have brought to our consciousness this fact of present and impending change? First in the catalogue must be Japan's war with Russia. It is true that the transformation of Japan had partly prepared us to expect this transformation of the Orient, but Japan's victory was needed to convince us that her adoption of Western civilization was not superficial. The second event which told us of a changing East was the issuing of reform decrees from the throne of China. First the emperor proposed a program of reform. This was completely reversed to give place to the reactionary policy of the late Dowager Empress. In its turn this was overthrown, and we have seen the millennial-long policy of China swept away and reform decree follow decree as wave follows wave. The changes have [144] been so numerous, so revolutionary and have followed in such rapid succession that Dr. W. A. Martin estimates that no country save Japan and France during the Revolution has seen so many radical changes within six months. A third event to arrest our attention was the revolution in Turkey. On the 24th of July, 1908, Sultan Hamid II, to save his throne, yielded to the demands of the Macedonian patriots and issued an irade restoring the constitution. But the Sultan had been too long an absolute sovereign to share willingly his power with others. His scheming to restore absolutism was followed by an uprising which compelled him to abdicate, and a new day has dawned for Turkey. The recent history of Persia almost duplicates that of Turkey. Here, too, there has been revolution and counter-revolution, and within recent weeks the Shah has been deposed and the party of progress and enlightenment is in the ascendency.

      These four events are the ones which have opened our eyes to the significant changes taking place in the ancient East. They have been of sufficient general interest to merit scare headlines in the newspapers. No reader of the daily news could remain ignorant of them. But, our attention being attracted by these, we have pushed our investigations further, only to learn of changes of similar significance in India, in Egypt, in Korea, and in every other country of the Orient, and, of more significance, we have learned the true import of these events. They have not come from thrones alone. They are not mere changes in governmental policy nor in dynasties. Kings and governors rarely institute policies which change the social fabric. One of the distinguishing marks between legendary and real history is that in the former the initiative in reform is always taken by kings, but in actual fact the impulse uniformly comes from the populace. It is not merely the crowned heads of the Orient that are undergoing and stimulating change, but the people. Dr. Martin says "the social movement in China has its origin in subterranean forces such as raise continents from the bosom of the deep." With a disgust that is to us almost inconceivable, they are casting away the customs and the habits which have hitherto been honorable, because they are immemorial. The spirit of reform took its origin among the people, and from them the ferment has worked upward to the very throne. In Turkey this fact is even more apparent. For many years the one obstacle to reform here has been Sultan Hamid II. Against all that absolutism, cunning and diplomacy could devise to thwart it, the modern spirit of progress, embodied in what we call the Young Turk Party, has arisen from among the people and shaken from his lofty throne the most venerable relic of barbarism in Europe. The populace of Egypt is stirred by a mighty spirit of unrest. Though recognizing the advantages of English rule, the spirit of religious zeal is strong within the peoples of this ancient land. In that great assemblage of races and religions we call India there is an awakening which threatens to duplicate the uprising and the mutiny of the early nineteenth century. Among all the nations that we call the Orient, in both the near and the farther East, from the Bosphorus to Yokohama, from Mongolia to Ceylon, there is a mighty stirring of the nations. A parallel to it can be found only in such movements as the Teutonic invasion of Europe, and the result of this may not be inferior to that. The Lord has prepared a ferment to leaven the kingdoms of earth. Nations are in commotion, and a spirit of unrest is swaying the people which in the population affected is in magnitude incomparable with any movement that has touched our globe since the dawn of history.

      What is to be the attitude of Western Christianity towards this great awakening of the East? There is to be a new Orient. This is a certainty. It is written in letters too large and too deeply carved to be doubted. Are we to be mere spectators, or are we to have a part in this mighty drama? It is a privilege to witness it, but I can scarcely think that God has designed that we should be mere spectators. I take it to be self-evident that during these opening years of the twentieth century there is being opened a mighty door of opportunity, and month by month, and [145] almost day by day, it is being opened wider by the insistent, clamorous demands of countless millions of awakening Orientals.

      The dawn has already passed. How long has been the period of preparation no man can tell. We are too profoundly ignorant of the real significance of its history to tell how it was that through the slow march of centuries, through the proverbial Eastern torpor and lethargy, through the grinding oppression of Oriental despotism, God has wrought within the Eastern consciousness a yearning for a social regeneration and a political and religious transformation. This leaven has worked thoroughly. In the years of our ignorance and sleep it has worked till all is leavened. Now all of Asia cries for drink. We see its people devouring with an eagerness born of a centuries-long thirst whatever of Western ideas and civilization comes within their grasp. Everything which pertains to our external civilization they certainly will acquire. Our railroads, our telegraphs and our telephones, our automobiles, our flying-machines, our engines of warfare, our sanitation, our sciences, our systems of education, our ethical codes--they have or will soon appropriate. We can not keep them from obtaining these.

      The lesson from the historical parallels which I have given is that we must act now, or God's open door will be closed before we have entered it. We talk of evangelizing the non-Christian world within our generation. So far as the Orient is concerned, if we desire our labors to be abundantly fruitful, we must evangelize it within this generation. Future mission work, if this is not achieved, will probably not be a complete failure, but the toil will be wearisome and the results meager. The virginity of the soil will be gone. The eagerness and the adaptability will be past. It is a startling fact that the dawn of this day is already at hand. Probably the zenith of mission work in Japan is even now past. The process of Westernization has gone so far, and the inclination towards a national church is so advanced, that we shall probably see our opportunities for mission work in Japan decrease rather than increase. In China the sun mounts high in the heavens. It is morning still, the golden morn of opportunity, but the night comes when no man can work. After a few years the statements just now made about Japan may be true of China also. Just to the extent that all of the Orient is astir with the spirit of a new life, to that same extent is God summoning us of this generation to redeem the time. Not to our fathers, nor to our children, but to us, has this heritage of opportunity been given. No generation since that of the apostles has had opening before it so wide a door of privilege leading into so magnificent a possession. To what extent the future of the Christian religion, and especially of its ancient promise that it shall have the nations for its inheritance, depends upon us. He who knows all things alone can tell. If for three thousand years China has lain practically dormant, if the customs of those ancient days still maintain their hold, how long, if this one be ignored, must Christianity wait for another day of opportunity?

[CCR 144-146]