Another point that can scarcely fail to strike us as we examine Mr. Loomis' statistics, is the large number of “dismissals and exclusions” made by those bodies which supply information under this head, and amounting in some cases to several hundreds in a year. That such measures are not resorted to without grave reason may be assumed, and that some exercise of discipline is especially necessary in dealing with a young and nascent church admits of no dispute. There is indeed every reason to hope that by far the greater number of converts are actuated by an intense sincerity, and evidence of this is afforded in the self-sacrifice to which they, in many ways, readily submit for the Faith they have embraced. But, at the same time, it is probable that the numbers in question indicate an even larger proportion of “failures,” than is the case with mission work [pg 113] generally; and that they point not only to losses through “back-sliding,” but to many instances of insincerity on the part of those professing conversion. It has been remarked that it does not belong to the Japanese temperament to “take things au grand serieux;” and this characteristic extends to matters of religion. The young fellow, for instance, who, for some reason or another, thinks it “worth his while” to conform to Christianity for a time, will have the very smallest scruples about doing so; and that, with a semblance of earnestness that will baffle, at any rate for some time, the careful scrutiny to which candidates are rightly subjected by most, if not all, of the missionary bodies. The missionaries, I fear, are often imposed on; and yet—anything, surely, is better than being over suspicious and severe. After all, what we want to do is to show these different nations to whom we go, that Christ and His Church, and we, His members, do really care for them, alike in things temporal and eternal. Our Faith, to be really preached, needs to be boldly, hopefully practised. And especially in Japan, where the only idea that such a phrase as “eternal life” would commonly suggest is that of a series of painful and endless transmigrations, must Christianity be ready to prove herself man's friend in the things of this life, if she would be looked to with confidence for the things that lie beyond.
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