THE JAPANESE ANSWER TO THE QUESTION.
We will now hear from a "heathen" nation distinguished for good sense, good morals, and practical honesty.
Tell us, then, brother Japanese, what we must do and believe in order to be saved. "Well, first of all, you must keep the Christian Bible out of your houses. Don't suffer it to enter your doors. Let all Bibles alone, and obey the inward monitions of your own souls. Your own conscience and experience and moral sense will teach you that it is wrong to lie, wrong to swear, wrong to steal, wrong to cheat, wrong to get drunk, wrong to fight, and wrong to kill." Now let us learn something about the moral character and practical lives of this "heathen nation," who, for more than two hundred years, have kept Christian Bibles and Christian missionaries out from among them, most of the time by positive law. Dr. Oliphant and Col. Hall, who both spent some considerable time amongst them, state that they are an honest, upright, moral, and sober people. With respect to honesty of dealing, sobriety, and abstinence from swearing, quarreling, fighting, or any of the common vices of society, the best authorities assure us that no Christian nation on earth will compare with them; and yet they conscientiously refrain from reading the Christian Bible. (See Chapter L. of this work.) What a startling disproof is here furnished to the declaration of Christian writers that the introduction of the Christian Bible, and the establishment of the Christian religion amongst the heathen, are essential to the existence of good morals amongst them! In many cases more good would be effected by reversing the practice, and sending heathen missionaries into Christian nations, as the pious pagans of China, India, and the Friendly Isles have all been talking of doing; and some of the godly people of India have already entered upon the work.