Charles Reginald Haines

“ But it was not objections brought by fellow-Christians only that Eulogius took upon himself to answer, but also the taunts and scoffs of the Moslems. "Why," said they, "if your God is the true God, does He not strike terror into the executioners of his saints by some great prodigy? and why do not the martyrs themselves flash forth into miracles while the crowd is round them? ”

“ What but the natural craving of mankind for some intoxicant or narcotic “to make glad the heart of man” can have brought about the independent discovery and use of so many stimulants? For what purpose but to satisfy such a craving can Nature have scattered in such profusion the materials for its gratification? It has been said, and all known facts bear out the assertion, that “the craving for such indulgence, and the habit of gratifying it, are little less universal than the desire for, and the practice of, consuming the necessary materials of our common food.” ”

“ The number of misguided men and women that now came forward and threw their lives away is certainly remarkable, and seems to have struck the Moslems as perfectly unaccountable. The Arabs themselves were as brave men as the world has ever seen, and, by the very ordinances of their faith, were bound to adventure their lives for their religion in actual human conflict with infidel foes, yet they were unable to conceive how any man in his senses could willingly deprive himself of life in such a way as could do no service to the cause, religious or other, which he had at heart. ”

“ This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the Chinese are unwilling to renounce a religion in many respects as pure and as moral a one as the pagan world has ever seen, and one which they have held for eighteen centuries, in favour of a creed, as it would seem to them, of yesterday, and one which the hated foreigner seeks to force upon them at the point of the bayonet; for the war of 1857 was a missionary war, though not by any means an opium war; and it is only by the Treaty of Tientsin that missionaries have any right to preach Christianity in China. ”

“ To the down-trodden slaves, who were very numerous all through Spain, the Moslems came in the character of deliverers. A slave had only to pronounce the simple formula: "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his Prophet": and he was immediately free. To the Jews the Moslems brought toleration, nay, even influence and power. In fact, since the fall of Jerusalem in 588 B.C. the Jews had never enjoyed such independence and influence as in Spain during the domination of the Arabs. ”

“ There is no doubt that China offers a large and virgin field to the commercial activity of England, and the result that followed the opening of ports after our two wars with China are sufficiently remarkable. By the first treaty we gained a trade of £2,000,000; by the second of £3,500,000 annually. In our commercial dealings with the Chinese we have to deal not only with “the obstructive policy of the mandarins, but also the passive and unconscious resistance of a people of stagnant ideas, of very limited enterprise, and possessing only primitive means of inter-communication.” ”

“ The Moslems were not very anxious to proselytize, as the conversion of the Spaniards meant a serious diminution of the tribute. [2] Those Christians who did apostatize—and we may believe that they were chiefly slaves—at once took up a position of legal, though not social, equality with the other Moslems. It is no wonder that the slaves became Mohammedans, for, apart from their hatred for their masters, and the obvious temporal advantage of embracing Islam, the majority of them knew nothing at all about Christianity. ”

“ They, we freely admit, are actuated by the highest and noblest motives of benevolence and philanthropy; but in their sensibility to the sufferings of others, they are apt to disregard the justice due to their own countrymen. If one half of the allegations of the missionaries and their supporters could be accepted as true, and brought home to the intelligence of the nation, there would not be a voice raised for the traffic. The cry would not indeed be “Perish India,” but “Perish the opium revenue,” at whatever cost to England. ”

“ Children are dashed on the ground, young men beheaded, their fathers fall in battle, the old men are massacred, the women reserved for greater misfortune; every cathedral burnt or destroyed, the national substance plundered, oaths and treaties uniformly broken. [1]
To appreciate the mildness and generosity of the Arabs, we need only compare their conquest of Spain with the conquest of England by the Saxons, the Danes, and even by the Christian Normans. The comparison will be all in favour of the Arabs. ”

“ If the Chinese were allowed to double the import duty on Indian opium as they proposed to Sir Thomas Wade, and if they were able, as they formerly were distinctly unable, to prevent smuggling, our profits on the drug would no doubt be diminished in proportion to the increase of duty, and this rivalry would presumably lead to a compromise. But apart from this contingency there are two ways in which the opium revenue might be lost to India. On the one hand, by natural competition with other kinds of opium the Indian drug might be driven from the field. ”

“ With a view to the better understanding of the position of Christianity and Mohammedanism at the very beginning of our inquiry, we have thought it advisable to point out in a preliminary sketch the development of Christianity in Spain previous to the period when the Moslems, fresh from their native deserts of Arabia and Africa, bearing the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, possessed themselves of one of the fairest provinces of Christendom. ”

“ Terrible as it is, it has been accepted by our countrymen as a deplorable necessity which cannot be altered by any legislative enactments against the importation of alcoholic drinks from abroad. All, or all except a few visionary enthusiasts, have come to see that the only way to check this widespread vice is by bringing the opinion of the people to bear upon it, to drive it out from among the lower classes as it has been driven out from the upper by the force of public example and public opinion. ”

“ Though not a religious institution at the outset, except perhaps among our Saxon forefathers, [3] chivalry soon became religious in character, and its golden age of splendour was during the crusades against the Moslems of Spain and Palestine. Spain itself may almost be called the cradle of chivalry; and it must be allowed that even in the first flush of conquest the Arabs shewed themselves to be truly chivalrous enemies, and clearly had nothing to learn from Christians in that respect. ”

“ It will be enough to point out where opium has the decided advantage over alcohol. One point in which this advantage is manifest will be obvious to all, and indeed is conceded by the bitterest opponents of the drug. Alcohol makes men noisy and quarrelsome, and maddens them till they are ready to commit any crime and perpetrate any outrage; opium lulls its votary into a dreamy rest quite incompatible with any violent or passionate action. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Christianity was brought very early into Spain by the preaching, as is supposed, of St Paul himself, who is said to have made a missionary journey through Andalusia, Valencia, and Aragon. On the other hand, there are no grounds whatever for supposing that James, the brother of John, ever set foot in Spain. The "invention" of his remains at Ira Flavia in the 9th century, together with the story framed to account for their presence in a remote corner of Spain so far from the scene of the Apostle's martyrdom, is a fable too childish to need refutation. ”

“ Yet in Mohammedan Spain religious fervour was not wholly vanished: it was still to be found among the clergy, and specially among the dwellers in convents. Monks and nuns, severed from all worldly influences, in the silence of their cloisters, would read the lives of the Saints [1] of old, and meditate upon their glorious deeds, and the miracles which their faith had wrought. They would brood over such texts as, "Ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for My sake;" [2] and, "Every one who shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father, which is in Heaven;" ”

“ But we can hardly escape the conviction that the Chinese would show themselves as unable or as unwilling to stop the cultivation in China, no less than the import from India, as they have ever been. In fact, the lofty utterance of Taou Kwang notwithstanding, the Chinese authorities are very glad to draw a revenue even from the vices of their people, and they would be very reluctant, not to say quite averse, to sacrifice a revenue now amounting to more than two millions. ”

“ See thou therefore, O my son, that thou distribute equal justice to rich and poor, nor permit that any wrong or oppression be committed in thy kingdom, for by injustice is the road to perdition. Be clement, and do right to all who depend upon thee, for all are the creatures of God. ”

“ If the opium revenue is to be retained while the monopoly is abolished, there is only one practicable course to be pursued. A Customs duty must be laid on the export of all opium. And this method has obtained the support of many able men who, objecting to the opium traffic as at present conducted, and at the same time seeing the difficulties in the way of its total abolition, propose this compromise. ”

“ But if the sovereign was jealous of his rights, no less so were the barons of theirs, and when in the war of the barons with Henry IV. (1454-1474) , the papal legate threw his influence on to the king's side, and excommunicated the rebellious barons, they firmly answered that "those who had advised the pope that he had a right to interfere in the temporal concerns of Castile had deceived him; and that they, the barons of the kingdom, had a perfect right to depose their sovereign on sufficient grounds, and meant to exercise it." ”

“ India would certainly not lose all its revenue; for a considerable part, one-seventh at least, goes to the Straits Settlements and the neighbouring islands, to the Netherlands of India, to Hongkong for export to the islands of the Pacific, and to California. Moreover, Indian opium has a monopoly value, and is, besides, superior in flavour to all other opium—holds, in fact, that place among the various kinds of the drug which champagne holds among wines. ”

“ It is natural enough that the Moslems and the clergy of the Christian Church should be hostile to one another, but it is surprising to find—as we do find in some cases—the latter making common cause with the Arabs in ill-treating their fellow-countrymen and coreligionists. Thus, as we have seen, Hostegesis, relying on the support of the secular arm, [7] beat and imprisoned the clergy for withholding from him the Church tithes, dragging them through the city naked, with a crier crying before them:—"Such is the punishment of those who will not pay their tithes to their bishop." ”

“ This air of injured innocence is remarkably effective with some people; but the exquisite plausibility and adroitness of these and other similar pleas must not blind us to their inherent falsity. Li Hung Chang can no more prevent the Chinese from consuming opium than we can prevent our countrymen from drinking wine and spirits and smoking tobacco by mere legislative enactments, and it would be considered a remarkable method for attaining this desirable end if the distillation of spirits were made as free and unrestrained as the brewing of beer. ”

“ Succeeding to the throne when quite a youth, to the exclusion of his uncles, the sons of the late Sultan, he found the country torn by innumerable factions, and the king's power openly defied by rebels, Arab, Berber, and Christian. In person, and through his generals, he put down all these rebels, and though not uniformly successful against the Christians in the North, yet he defeated them in a series of great engagements. [1] He welded all the discordant elements under his rule into one great whole, [2] thereby giving the Arab domination in Spain another lease of life. ”

“ But, in truth, whatever ingenious arguments the astute Chinaman may use to justify his rejection of the new doctrine, the reason of the ill success of our missionaries is not to be found here. For why, if opium be the only obstacle to conversion, are we not more successful in India? There are in the whole of British India only 900,000 converted Christians, of whom far the largest number are Roman Catholic “hereditary” Christians, about a quarter of a million being Protestants of various denominations. ”

“ But that the reader may hear in brief the whole story of sorrow—not to speak of all the disastrous ills which in innumerable ages past from Adam even till now in various states and regions of the earth a cruel and foul foe has caused to a fair world—whatever Troy in Homer's tale endured, whatever Jerusalem suffered that the prophets' words might come to pass, whatever Babylon underwent that the Scripture might be fulfilled—all this, and more, has Spain experienced—Spain once full of delights, but now of misery, once so exalted in glory, but now brought low in shame and dishonour. ”

“ The Roman Catholic faith, by its very oneness, by its remarkable similarity to the institutions of Buddhism, and by its concessions to some of the grosser instincts of the human mind, no less than by having a united and organized Church behind it, cannot fail to commend itself more readily to the minds of the heathen than the more spiritual and independent, but at the same time more narrow and sectarian, beliefs which are all ranked as branches of the Reformed Church. ”

“ During the remainder of the tenth century the strong administration of Abdurrahman III., Hakem II., and the great Almanzor, gave the Christians no chance of raising the cry of "Spain for the Spanish." The danger of a renewal of the rebellion once removed, the position of the Christians does not seem to have been made any worse in consequence of their late disaffection, and Abdurrahman, himself the son of a Christian mother, treated all parties in the revolt with great leniency, even against the wishes and advice of the more devout Moslems. ”

“ But, say the anti-opiumists, if we have not introduced opium into China, we have certainly forced it upon the Chinese when they showed a sincere desire to have none of it; first by a system of armed smuggling; secondly, by open armed intervention in the wars of 1840 and 1857; and thirdly, by the imperious logic of Lord Elgin and others. Now, as to the armed smugglers, the answer is easy. They were armed to resist pirates, who swarm in the bays and creeks so abundant in the Chinese coast-line of 3,500 miles; and by no means, as implied, to fall foul of the Custom House officials. ”

“ Consequently the Jews in Spain had such an opportunity to develop their natural gifts as they have never had since the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; and they shewed themselves no whit behind the Arabs, if indeed they did not outstrip them, in keeping alive the flame of learning in the dark ages. [5] In science generally, and especially in the art of medicine they had few rivals, and in learning and civilisation they were, no less than the Arabs, far ahead of the Christians. ”

“ Our missionaries, then, almost unanimously [Pg 98] assert that “opium has been the means of closing millions of Chinese hearts to the influence of Christian preaching,” partly by setting the Chinese against foreigners in general and Englishmen in particular, but chiefly by supplying them with a ready-made argument against the Christian religion as one that tolerates so iniquitous a traffic to the ruin of a friendly nation. Dr. Medhurst [113] supplies us with a sufficient answer to this. “If we do supply the opium, why do you smoke it? Why do you even grow it?” ”

“ Yet far too often have portions of the Christian Church been conspicuous for intolerance rather than tolerance. Alcuin, indeed, does say in his letter to Aquila, Bishop of Winchester, that he does not approve of punishing heresy with death, because God, by the mouth of His prophet, had said: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live;" [1] but Alcuin was a man of unusual mildness and sweet reasonableness, as his letters to Felix and Elipandus testify. ”

“ As a general rule, the unhealthier the locality is, the more opium is consumed there, not in China only, but in India (e.g. in Orissa and Assam) , and in our own fen districts. But besides being a safeguard against malaria and its attendant ailments, opium is also a valuable agent in counteracting the effect of the putrid and unwholesome food which, by its piquancy, pleases the Celestial palate. But over and above these special reasons, there are general causes which predispose the Chinese to some lazy habit. Their home life is not one which affords them many attractions. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. HERESIES IN SPAIN.
Such mixtures of religions are by no means without example in history. The Sabians, for instance, were the followers of a religion, which may have been a cross between Judaism, Christianity, and Magianism. [1] But Mohammedanism itself has furnished the most marked instances of such amalgamation. In Persia Islam combined with the creed of Zoroaster to produce Babyism; while in India Hinduism and Mohammedanism, fused together by the genius of Nanak Guru, have resulted in Sikhism. ”

“ Every nation, as has been repeatedly pointed out, [89] whether civilized or barbarous, in all ages of the world, has been addicted to the use of some stimulant or narcotic. [90] Of these there are more than fifty kinds in use in different regions of the globe, ranging from alcohol in Europe, to “pombe,” a fermentation from millet, in Africa, and from bhang or hemp in India to coca and [Pg 77] tobacco in America. Samshoo, a fiery distillation from rice, is the intoxicant of Japan, and was that of China before opium took its place. ”

“ It was not till 570, the year in which Mohammed was born, that a king came to the Gothic throne strong enough to crush the Suevi and to reduce the imperialist garrisons in the South; and it was not till 622, the very year of the Flight from Mecca, that a Gothic king, Swintila, finally drove out all the Emperor's troops, and became king in reality of all Spain. ”

“ The English people, however, are not so fastidious, and our annual revenue from the duty on spirituous liquors is £27,000,000, and on tobacco £8,500,000, while our partiality to alcohol costs us £145,000,000. The Chinese, with a population ten times as great, only spend £42,000,000 on their luxury, opium, and derive a revenue therefrom, in spite of the Emperor’s disclaimer, of more than three millions sterling. India exports to China about 5,300 tons of crude opium, which together with four times the amount of native-grown drug gives 21⁄2 oz. ”

“ Musa ibn Nosseyr, the organiser of the expedition into Spain, and the first governor of that country under Arab rule, when asked by the Khalif Suleiman for his opinion of the Goths, answered that "they were lords living in luxury and abundance, but champions who did not turn their backs to the enemy." ”