THE HEATHEN ATTACKED AT LAST.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4368, 20 March 1875, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE HEATHEN ATTACKED AT LAST.

(From the Melbourne Aryus, February 24.) One of the latest sensations in " the hub of the universe," as the inhabitants of Boston, U.S., are pleased to call it, is the appearance of a Chinese missionary, who has acquired the English language, and is animated with a fervent desire to convert the people of New England to the faith of Confucius, whose five cardinal doctrines he stated to be gravity, propriety, sincerity, virtue, and filial love. Wong Chin Poo succeeded in attracting large audiences to the Parker Memorial Hall ; and the people who were at first inclined to be amused at the audacity of his attempt appear to be considerably impressed by his earnestness and eloquence. He asserted that society in China, taken as a whole, is more sincere, moral, ingenuous, and cultivated than society in Europe or America, and ingeniously argued that the worship of a few visible images, as practiced by his countrymen, was " nicer and quicker" than the adoration of such idols as rank, wealth, and fashion by the American Athenians. He contrasted the Arcadian simplicity and kindliness of the rural population of his own country with the cruelty, greed, selfishness, discontent, and barbarity of Europeans and Americans, and affirmed that there are fewer murders annually committed among the 450,000,000 of people who are crowded together in China than among the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United States. The New York Times, in summarising his clever and telling address, observes :—" He seems to have retained an unwavering love for and belief in the religion and society of the country of the Celestials, and he has begun an active missionary work here. He mourns over our incompleteness, our lack of repose and gravity, our profuse expenditure, our business greed, i and our utter want of filial reverence. Nothing, he thinks, can lift us from our degradation but the religion of Confuciu3, which raised China from a low and disturbed condition, and gave her so many centuries of brilliant peace. Wong Chin Foo earnestly expresses the hope that followers of the Chinese philosopher may at once spring up here, and his audacity may yet result in a ' Confucius class,' into whose ranks young Boston may flock to listen to the teachings of the exiled aristocrat." This retort of a Chinaman is as curious a sign of the times as the letters of remonstrance in The Times from Hindoo law students on a missionary address by the Archbishop of Canterbury.