| Chiao-hui Hsin-pao(The Church News, 1868-1874) is predecessor of Wan~kuo Kung-pao(The Globe Magazine, 1874-1883;A Review of the Times, 1889-1907) which is the most famous newspaper in the late Ch'ing dynasty. In the setting of drastic conflict between China and the West, enthusiastically advocating mutual understanding, pure-hearted dialogue, and partial syncretism between Christianity and Confucianism, The Church News became one of the earliest Chinese Protestant periodicals which systemically discussed Christian-Confucian relationship. Academic circles pay attention to Wan-kuo Kung-pao, but neglect the value of Chiao-hui Hsin-pao. Sampling The Church News, This article will examine the history of modern Chinese church, explore the different aspects in Christian-Confucian dialogue, and testify necessity, possibility, and feasibility of Christian-Confucian syncretism. A study of The Church News may not only elucidate theoretically effect and significance of inter-religious and cross-cultural dialogue to promote global ethic, but also contribute practically edification and experience to contemporary Chinese church in how to adapt to its context and play a proper role.When two heterogeneous cultures encountered, what they firstly confronted was how to communicate each other. From the late Ming dynasty to the early Ch'ing dynasty, Jesuit missionaries racked their brain to invent two approaches-figurism and textual criticism to combine Christianity with Confucianism. The Church News demonstrated that these ways had been inherited and developed by the nineteenth-century protestant missionaries. Figurism searches mystically God's original revelation and Messianic figure in Confucian classics, for example, Guangdong Rhenish adherent Wang Yu-chu(l843-1902) believed that "the Western Sage" said by Confucius or "the Most Sincere Man" told by Tzu-ssu is Jesus Christ. Although this means is ungrounded, it has cognitive significance transcending history. Textual criticism testifies positively that ancient Chinese history accords with the Bible, for example, Edkins Joseph(l823-1905) from London Missionary Society concluded that there are much comparability or same origin in politics, astronomy, and ritual between China and the West. Although this means has a Western-centric character, it breaks the wall between the two traditions.The theory of God is core and focus in Christian-Confucian dialogue. The Church News recognized not only the classical or primordial Confucianism of the pre-Ch'in period but also Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism. On the one hand, it assertedthat Christian worship of God rirually is incompatible with Chinese ancestral worship, on the other hand, it metaphysically connected t'ai-chi(the Great Ultimate) with the attributes of Christian God and expounded the characters of Jesus Christ from the standpoint of the School of Mind(hsin hsing). The adaptation of the Protestants to Neo-Confucianism is more flexible than the Jesuits.The relationship of science and religion is a noticeable subject in Confucian-Christian dialogue. Chinese organic view of nature pays more attention to human ethic than physics, whereas the Western mechanical view of nature not only accords with the Bible but also improves science and technology. Obviously, science is not completely a way of preaching, perhaps Christianity and science has many affinities.Confucian-Christian ethical dialogue is most feasible. Chinese Christians criticized, inherited, and integrated different theories of human nature of ancient China while they admitted the theory of the Original Sin. The Church News compared Confucian Jen characterized by the Five Cardinal Relationships(wu-lun) and the Five Constant Virtues(wu-chang) to Christian Agape characterized by the Ten Commandments.The practical co-operation between Christianity and Confucianism is the embodiment of Confucian-Christian ethical dialogue. Modem Protestants were inclined to "Social Gospel Movement" whilst Confucians in the late Ch'ing dynasty emphasized a participatory humanism of...
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