Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1879 — THE HEATHEN CHINEE. [ARTICLE]

THE HEATHEN CHINEE.

How He Treat* Native Christiaan in Hid Own Country. Another outrage, more serious than any we have yet recorded in these pages, has been perpetrated on the native Christians ana preachers of the English Church Mission in the town of Yikkau. On the 2d day of the present Chinese moon (24th ultimo) the native preachers and several of the Christian residents of the district were induced by the Mandarins to present themselves at the town of Yik-kau for the purpose apparently of holding a friendly consultation with the Mandarins and literati, in order to make some arrangement with reference to the outrage on the Mission Chapel, which we noticed in a recent issue. The literati at once demanded a written engagement from the Christians that they would at the expiry of the present year abandon their chapel at Yik-kau and their right to exercise their religion in that town and its neighborhood. This, of course, the Christians refused to agree to do, but at the same time they expressed their willingness to sign an agreement to the effect that if they were found guilty of doing anything wrong or disgraceful they might at once be expelled from the town. They asked for nothing beyond the restoration to them of tneir chapel and their right to be tolerated as Christians. The Mandarins appear to have approved of these proposals, and to have applauded the Christians for their conciliatory hearing anil conduct. But the gentry and literati would have nothing less than their expulsion from the place. The meeting then broke up, and the Christians retired to a lodging house in the town. Very shortly afterward the Mandarins’ alarm-gong was sounded, the -hundreds of people rushed, at the signal, to the lodging house where the Christians had retired for the night, dragged four of them into the street, beat them most barbarously with all manner of weapons and iuflicted severe wounds on the unfortunate men, leaving them, as was supposed, dead. Two of these poor men were then thrown like dogs into'the river, but managed to scramble to the other bank, and crept away till they were found by the Yamen runners, who placed them in a sedan chair and sent them to the nearest mission station in the district. The other two men were taken as’ dead, and the brutal literati, aided by their hired followers, set fire to their clothing and queues. These two sufferers were ultimately rescued, and also sent in a chair to the nearest mission station. From the station they were sent on by boats to this port, where they arrived On the 20th of March, and were placed in the Mission Hospital, under the care of Dr. Taylor. The unfortunate men were, we are informed, unable to walk or stand when they arrived in Foochow, and one of them is delirious and is still in a very precarious condition. The outrage on the chapel at Yik-kau some few weeks ago was brought by the English Missionaries to the notice of H. B. M.’s Consul, who, we learn, agreed to represent the case to the Chinese authorities. As usual, the native officials promised to examine into tlie : matter. Instead, however, of punishing the offenders, they wrote eomplainingly to H. B. M.’s Consul that the matter was greatly exaggerated and made the usual excuses, but meanwhile did nothing. H. B. M.’s Consul appears to have taken the same view of the case as the Chinese authorities, and, we hear, lias censured the missionaries for having reported (as the Mandarins are pleased to term it) such an insignificant affair!—[Fooshow Herald.