J.W. asked Mark Rutledge about all this one day.  “Isn’t it going to make a difference with the work by and by, if you get so many natives into places of responsibility?  Are they ready for it?”

“No,” said Rutledge, “they’re not.  But we must make them ready.  You haven’t begun to see China yet, but already you can see that the country could never be ‘evangelized,’ even in the narrowest use of that word, by foreign missionaries.  And it ought not to be.”

“You mean that we Americans ought to consider our work in China as temporary?” J.W. asked.

Rutledge answered, “Frankly, I do, if you let me put my own meaning into ‘temporary,’ We must start things.  And much that must be done in the long run has not yet been started.  We must stay here beyond my life expectation or yours.  But China will be Christianized by the Chinese, not by foreigners.  As far ahead as we can see the work will have help from outside, but I honestly want the time to come when we missionaries will be looked upon as the foreign helpers of the Chinese Church; not, as now, controlling the work ourselves and enlisting the services of ‘native helpers.’”

“Then tell me another thing,” J.W. persisted.  “Is our Christianity, as the Chinese get it, any advance on their own religion?  Or is their religion all right, if they would work it as we hope they may work the Christian program?”

“That’s two questions,” said Rutledge, dryly, “but, after all, it is only one.  Our Christianity as the Chinese get it is far ahead of the best they have, in ideals, in human values, everything, even if they were more consistent in responding to its claims than Christians are.  The old religions—­and China has several—­are helpless.  We are not killing off the old faiths.  If we should get out to-morrow these would none the less die out in time, but then China would be left without any religion at all.  Instead, she’s going to have the Christian faith in a form that will accord with the genius of the Chinese mind.  That’s my sure confidence, or I wouldn’t be here.”

It was necessary that J.W. should run down the coast to Foochow, the base for his next operations in the hardware adventure.  “I know I’m green,” he said to Rutledge, “and I may be thinking of impossibilities, but do you suppose there’ll be any chance for me to get up to Dr. Carbrook’s place from Foochow?  I’ve told you about him and his wife, and I’d rather see those two than anybody else in all the East.”

“It’s not impossible at all,” Rutledge assured him.  “Carbrook’s post is not so very far from Foochow, as distances go in China, and Ralph Bellew at the college will help you.”

“Yes, my pastor at home told me to be sure and call on him,” said J.W., and took his leave of a man he would long remember.

The call of Professor Bellew was not delayed long after J.W. had found his bearings in Foochow, and the Professor’s welcome was even more cordial than that of the Cummings agency, though these gentlemen were, of course, the soul of courtesy.  If they were not so sure as Peter McDougall that J.W. or any other American could teach them anything about selling the Cummings line in China, at least they would not put anything in his way.