End Notes: Forever Keep True

The 19th century had brought the 亚洲通st more progress and improvement than in the previous millennium. But it had brought China one calamity after another. China proved unable to arrest its economic tailspin or to maintain itself in the face of rapidly advancing 亚洲通stern and Japanese military power. The missionaries believed the Christian Gospel would awaken China from its torpor. They did their best to alleviate the manifold human hardships entailed by an intensifying whirlwind of revolution and war. They witnessed the arduous and painful birth of a modern nation—a process that would be protracted across the entire 20th century.

In December 1995, exactly 100 years after Daniel first arrived in China, Betsy and I were teaching at Beijing’s Foreign Affairs College. Anita and Sarah joined us for Christmas. A steady stream of friends paraded through our festive apartment. It was decorated with a potted evergreen tree, temporarily borrowed from the college gardens and lugged upstairs by four husky young students.

How might Daniel have reacted to all of this?

Without a doubt, he would have been bewildered by modern Beijing. A century before he had considered Shanghai hopelessly commercialized and ill-suited to receive the Christian message. China’s breakneck development since 1995 would have left him even more disoriented.

On the other hand, he surely would have applauded China’s vastly improved food supplies, living standards, life expectancies, and literacy rates. He thought the people of China would draw the world’s attention if they ever got the opportunity to develop their talents.

Daniel would have been especially gratified to find that the belief system so central to his own outlook has attracted many more Chinese followers than in his lifetime. Christians—flying under the disapproving radar of the Chinese state—have made the church their own. For them as for him, material well-being cannot fill the emptiness in the human heart.

Daniel Crofts is professor of history at The College of New Jersey, the author of Upstream Odyssey: An American in China, 1895-1944, and most recently has written a series of articles at the New York Times Online about the origins of the Civil War.