Asia-Pacific in the Making of the Americas: Toward a Global History

Missionary Salvation

In all areas of The Middle Kingdom that describe China’s people, Williams walked a tightrope. He admitted as much in the text itself with a statement that rendered his motives transparent: “We do not wish to depict the Chinese worse than they are, nor to dwell so much on their good qualities as to lead one to suppose they stand in no need of the Gospel.”[35] In other words, the Chinese needed to come across as immoral and corrupt on the one hand, yet as human and therefore redeemable on the other. To accomplish the former, Williams formulated a critique of Chinese morals that, upon first glance, appears harsh. He reported that the Chinese “are vile and polluted in a shocking degree,” and that “their conversation is full of filthy expressions and their lives of impure acts.” He went on to enumerate the myriad vices of which this people were guilty: “falsity,” “mendacity,” “[t]hieving,” “licentiousness,” a lack of “[h]ospitality,” “[f]emale infanticide,” and “cruelty towards prisoners.”[36]

Yet as unambiguously negative as these words appear, we cannot fully understand them by viewing them in isolation. In the following passage, Williams places his critique in the proper context: 
 
In summing up the moral traits of the Chinese character…we must necessarily compare it with that perfect standard given us from above; while also we should not forget that the teachings of that book are unknown. While their contrarieties indicate a different external civilization, a slight acquaintance with their morals proves their similarity to their fellowmen in the lineaments of a fallen nature. As among other people, the lights and shadows of virtue and vice are blended in their character, and the degree of advancement they made while destitute of the great encouragements offered to perseverance in well-doing in the Bible, afford grounds for hoping that when they are taught out of that book, they will receive it as the rule of their conduct.[37]

When Williams refers to “the Chinese character” as immoral, he is not pronouncing the Chinese racially inferior to the people of Western nations. Rather, he is measuring the Chinese against “that perfect standard,” by which he means the ideal of heavenly virtue contained in the Bible. In fact, far from highlighting racial difference, Williams emphasizes the innate sameness of the peoples of the earth. The “different external civilization” that the Chinese possess is mainly superficial and masks a much deeper “similarity to their fellowmen.”  

Of course, the underlying “similarity” shared by the people of the world was not something Williams chose to celebrate. It was instead the crux of the great problem to which he had devoted his entire life: humanity’s fall from grace in the Garden of Eden and its subsequent quest for redemption. He believed that Chinese vices flowed not out of innate biological inferiority but rather out of the “fallen nature” of their souls. Likewise, he attributed the Christian virtue that he found in Western nations to the people’s exposure to the Word of God. But whereas citizens of Christian nations enjoyed opportunities to read the Bible, and many (but not all) had availed themselves of its truths, the Chinese had historically not been as fortunate. Thus, if the Bible could penetrate China, Williams earnestly believed that the people would turn to Christ en masse. When they did, the slough of sin, vice, and iniquity in which they currently wallowed would dry up and vanish. In sum, immorality in China was a pervasive ill for which there existed a magic bullet: the missionary movement. 
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[35] Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom vol. 2 (1848), 99.
[36] Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom vol. 2 (1848), 95-99.
[37] Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom vol. 2 (1848), 95.

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