|The Heart of China.| The opportunities of the Lutheran Church in Central China are set forth in Our First Decade in China. “It will appear in looking at the map of China and noting the important position that the Lutheran Church holds geographically, that God has meant her to be a dominating force in new China. He has entrusted to her the very heart of China. The Lutheran Church occupies in the central provinces territory equal to all of Illinois and Iowa and half of Wisconsin, or as large as the whole of New England plus New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and half of Maryland. In this territory she is ministering to a population of fifty million souls.”
|The Work of a Century.| A hundred years have passed since Robert Morrison, the English missionary, baptized his first convert and recorded in his diary. “At a spring of water issuing from the foot of a lofty hill, by the seaside, away from human observation, I baptized him in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.... May he be the first fruits of a great harvest.” To-day there are in China over five thousand foreign missionaries, seventeen thousand native workers and two hundred and thirty-five thousand communicant members of the Protestant Church. Of these about ten per cent. are Lutherans.
Japan.
|The Land.| Japan proper consists of four large islands, Yezo, Hondo, Shikoku and Kyushu and about three thousand smaller islands. In the northern part the climate is severe, in the southern part semi-tropical. From north to south through the center of the large islands runs a long line of volcanic mountains whose highest peaks are still active. From this high ridge the land slopes gradually to either shore. Only about one-tenth can be cultivated, an area which is equal to about one-tenth of the State of California. From this soil about fifty-three million persons draw their sustenance.
|The Religion.| Like the Chinese, the Japanese selects his religion from among three great religions, Shintoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. Like the Chinese he frequently thinks it well to mix the three. If he is a Confucianist, he is thoroughly trained in the rules which govern man’s relation to the State and to his fellow man; if he is a Buddhist, he learns self-control and self discipline in order that he may at the last become absorbed into a vague impersonal deity; if he is a Shintoist he worships the rulers and his ancestors.
|The Japanese a Lover of Beauty and a Fatalist.| The Japanese is intensely patriotic and invariably civil and courteous. His love of beauty finds expression in almost every detail of his life, his practical ability needs no further proof than the adaptation of the nation’s millions to its circumscribed area. His life is happy; but the volcanic eruptions, numerous earthquakes, dreadful tidal waves which bring to his lips a patient smile and a fatalistic word “No help for it” must stir in the depths of his human heart other feelings, however unexpressed of terror and dismay. To him, so far lifted above many other non-Christians but lacking the chief thing, the Christian’s God offers peace for terror and assurance for dismay.
Scandinavian Societies.
There is but one European Lutheran Society in Japan, the Lutheran Gospel Association of Finland, which has six men and three women in its field northwest of Tokyo, where it began to work in 1902.
American Societies.
|“Kyushu Gakuin.”| The mission of the United Synod in the South was begun in 1892. It has met with the difficulties and obstacles common to all young enterprises and is now well-established. Its chief stations are in Saga, a city of thirty-five thousand, in Kumamoto, a city of sixty-five thousand and in Fukuoka, which, together with its twin city Hakata has a population of eighty thousand. The island of Kyushu upon which these cities lie is densely populated, and there is an average of only one Protestant Christian to over one thousand of the people. In the city of Kumamoto is located the educational institution of the United Synod and the only Lutheran educational institution in Japan, called Kyushu Gakuin, which consists of a middle school and a theological department for the training of native workers. Here almost six hundred boys and young men are being educated, who are but a small part of those who would gladly come if there were larger accommodations. The work among the little children in Sunday schools and kindergartens meets with hearty support at home, a work whose joys it is easy to comprehend. The United Synod has at work four missionary families and two single women. Its baptized membership is over six hundred.