Let to-morrow be fair, whatever we may miss hereafter. This is the universal sentiment.
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SATURDAY, November 30.
What a day this has been! Many a rich experience which seemed grand enough never to fade from the memory may pass into oblivion, but no mortal can ever sail through the inland sea of Japan on a fine day and cease to remember it till the day he dies. It deserves its reputation as the most beautiful voyage in the world; at least I cannot conceive how, taking the elements of earth, water and sky, anything more exquisitely beautiful could be produced from them. Entering the narrow sea at sunrise, we sail for three hundred and fifty miles through three thousand pretty islands,
"Which seem to stand
To sentinel enchanted land."
These divide the water, making, not one but a dozen pretty lakes in view at once. It is the Lakes of Killarney, or the English or Scotch lakes, multiplied a hundred-fold; but instead of the islands and mountains being in pasture, they are cultivated to their very tops, terraced in every form, in order to utilize every rod of ground. On the shores cluster villages, nestling in sheltered nooks, while the water swarms with the sails of tiny fishing boats, giving a sense of warm, happy life throughout. These sail-boats add greatly to the beauty of the scene. I counted at one time from the bow of our steamer, without looking back, ninety-seven sails glistening in the sun, while on the hills were seen everywhere gangs of people at work upon their little farm-gardens. It is a panorama of busy, crowded life, but life under most beautiful surroundings, from beginning to end, and we all vote that never before have we, in a like space of time, seen so much of fairy-land as upon this ever-memorable day. We begin to understand how the thirty odd millions of the Japanese exist upon so small an area. The rivers and seas abound in fish; the hills and valleys under irrigation and constant labor grow their rice, millet, and vegetables. A few dollars per year supply all the clothing needed, and a few dollars build their light wooden houses. Thus they have everything they need, or consider necessary, and are happy as the day is long, certain of one established fact in nature, to wit, that there is no place like Japan; and no doubt they daily and hourly thank their stars that their lines have fallen in pleasant places, and pity us—slaves to imaginary wants—who deny ourselves the present happiness they consider it wisdom to enjoy, in vain hopes of banquetting to surfeit at some future time, which always comes too late.
On emerging from this fairy scene, we encountered a gale upon the China Sea, which lasted for the few hours we were upon it before reaching Nagasaki, the last port of Japan. Here, two hundred years ago, the Dutch secured a small island, from which they traded with Japan long before any other nation was permitted to do so. The Catholics also had their headquarters here. They were so successful in converting the natives that the government became alarmed, and several thousand Christians were driven to the island and all massacred. This was in the sixteenth century; but it is only a few years ago that seven thousand native Catholics were banished from this region. To-day all is changed. These fugitives have been permitted to return, and there is entire freedom of religious worship. Last month a return was made of professing Christians (Catholics) in this district, and thirty-five thousand were reported. Protestants are very few indeed.
As far as I saw in the East, here is the only real and considerable advance made toward christianizing a people. At other stations throughout my journey I saw only a few ignorant natives who professed Christianity—sometimes a dozen or two, rarely more. European residents invariably told me that these were the dependants or servants of foreigners who held their places mainly because of their conversion to the new faith. If dismissed, they relapsed. One can readily see that the lowest and most unscrupulous would be the first to fall before the almost irresistible temptation, for a means of comfortable livelihood seems the one serious concern of life in all the East to a degree difficult for us in America, at least, to imagine.
I remember the dear, kind Catholic Bishop of Canton telling me with such delicious simplicity that every workman engaged in building the Cathedral—a work of many years and yet unfinished—had by the grace of God been converted to Holy Mother Church. The hotel-keeper told me afterward this so-called conversion was a source of much amusement among the natives. Well, be it so. I believe, myself, that the holy father is the victim of misplaced confidence. But here in Nagasaki nothing like this can be said. Thirty-five thousand professing Christians in a district where there are not a hundred foreign Christian families, if half so many, and where to be a Christian is to declare one's self of the minority and so out of fashion, surely this does prove that the Church has succeeded, and justifies it in hoping that ere long this part of Japan at least will one day enter the fold.
One great reason for this undoubted success is probably that neither the Government nor the people have the slightest objection to missionaries, for their own religion sets but lightly on the Japanese. With the Chinaman it is totally different. His own religion is sacred to him, a vital force, and his gods must not be defamed. He stands by his faith like a Covenanter. It touches the most sacred feelings of his nature, and is everything to him. Mrs. D. O. Hill's celebrated statue of Livingstone in Prince's Gardens, Edinburgh, therefore, represents too truly the attitude of our missionaries in the flowery land as well as in other so-called heathen lands: the Bible in one hand and the pistol in the other. In Japan the pistol is wholly unnecessary. The man of Japan regards missionaries as harmless curiosities, and if not disposed to trouble himself about their new ideas, he has not the least objection to their being expounded.