In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers, secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces, their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution was broken.
The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in Japan is told, first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. A study of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian Church began. On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry's treaty ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in Japan.
At this point our task is ended. We cannot even glance at the native Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to appraise the work of the foreign missionaries. He has read these pages in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the Japanese have been trained for higher forms of faith.
The armies of Japan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing lines. The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being snapped asunder. May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace whose kingdom is not of this world.
May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, be ushered in.
[NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS]
The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works: T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Kojiki, for Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes, Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things Japanese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow and Hawes's Hand-book for Japan, now continued in new editions (4th, 1894), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers's Chinese Reader's Manual; M.E., The Mikado's Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio's A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, Tōkiō, 1887.
CHAPTER I
PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS