Page 307 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

293.

l830's Bridgman and Williams firmly believed that, if they

could freely reach the Chinese people, they could proclaim

the Christian gospel successfully. The American Board

reflected this optimism. In its instructions to Peter Parker,

a medical missionary leaving for China in 1834, the Board

cautioned him not to meddle with the government but to take

the gospel directly to the people, wherever he can find them."
11
The Board concluded that Chinese authorities would eventually

relent, when missionaries had filled the people with the

gospel, 11extending its light and its reforming power through

all ranks, till it rises to those who occupy the highest places

in the state. 11 Only those who already were in China realized

how difficult such instructions were to obey. Bridgman had

already noted to the Board: 11The barbarians' place, in the

'Celestial Empire' is very strait; and they come into contact
16
1
with few natives of the country, except merchants. 1 Distri-
buting tracts at Canton and teaching several boys had produced

no tangible results. In the summer of 1834 the situation seemed

to reach its nadir. During the disturbance over Lord Napier's

demands, the Canton authorities raided the Americans' printing

press and seized their Chinese workers. Bridgman and Williams

removed their mission operations to Macao, while Bridgman ordered

the printing press transported to the Singapore mission. When

Robert Morrison died shortly thereafter, the missionary community

16
Instructions, Prudential Committee of the American
Board of Commissioners to P. Parker, May 1834, in Phillips,
Protestant America and the Pagan World, pp. 182-83. Journal of
E.C. Bridgman, Apr. 8, 1831, in the Missionary Herald, XXVIII,
5 (May 1932), 137.