Part 14

Christianity is by nature diffusive. It spreads itself as naturally as the leaven spreads in the meal. Confucius taught: "The philosopher need not go about to proclaim his doctrines; if he has the truth the people will come to him." In striking contrast to this Christ taught: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." We are not only to teach those who come to us, but we are also to go out in search of hearers, to carry our message to the people.

When our Saviour was upon earth the work He did was largely itinerating; going about from place to place, teaching in the synagogue, by the wayside, or on the sea-shore. The disciples were all itinerating evangelists, carrying their message from city to city and from land to land. {244} St. Paul was an itinerating missionary on a large scale. Not content to abide long in any one place, but looking out continually to the regions beyond, his life was one ceaseless activity in itinerating evangelism. The missionaries through whom northern Europe and England were converted were itinerants. And those who to-day in mission fields take their valises well stocked with tracts and sermons and go out into the country on long evangelistic tours can feel that they are following in the footsteps of worthy exemplars.

We can hardly overestimate the importance of this work. The word of mouth is still the most effective means of conveying a message to the masses, and a knowledge of Christian principles that could else hardly be given is in this way spread abroad throughout the land.

The facilities for itinerating in Japan are excellent. Most of the important points are easily reached by rail or water. But in general, on an itinerating tour, the missionary has little use for the steamers and railways. The points he wants to visit are not on the great thoroughfares, but are in out-of-the-way places. There is, however, a good system of roads, and the jinrikisha, which is everywhere found, is easily capable of carrying one 40 or 50 miles a day. This little cart resembles a buggy, except that it has only two wheels and is much smaller. The seat is {245} just large enough to accommodate one person. A small Japanese coolie between the shafts furnishes all the necessary motive power. These are very convenient and comfortable little conveyances, and are the ones in ordinary use by missionaries in their itinerating work.

In recent years the bicycle has become popular for this purpose. As the "wheel" has been made to serve almost every other interest, it is but fair that it should also serve the gospel. Perhaps to-day one half of all the male missionaries in Japan ride wheels. They have decided advantages over the jinrikisha, chiefly in the way of speed, personal comfort, and pleasure. I wish my readers could see their representatives in Japan just starting on their wheels for a tour in the interior. Dressed in negligée shirts, caps, and knickerbockers, with a large bundle tied upon the wheel in front of each one, they present a comical appearance. Many sermons have been preached in Japan in negligée shirts and knickerbockers.

There are nice, clean little inns in all the villages and towns, and the missionary is not put to such straits for a place in which to rest and sleep as he is sometimes in other mission fields. But as the food offered him is unpalatable to most foreigners, he carries with him a few things, such as bread, canned meats, and condensed milk.

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The splendid telegraph system extending over all Japan keeps him in communication with his family and friends, no matter where he may go, and he need not hesitate to go into the interior on that score. A good daily mail system is also at hand to carry his letters.

Formerly the greatest hindrance to itinerating in Japan was the difficulty of obtaining passports to travel in the interior. No one was permitted to go outside of certain limits without a special passport, and such passports were only given for two purposes: for health, and for scientific observation. The government did not intend by this restriction to prohibit mission work in the interior, but aimed simply to prohibit foreigners from engaging in interior trade. As the missionaries were not going for purposes of trade, many of them availed themselves of these passports; but there were some whose consciences would not permit them so to do. Several high officials were directly spoken to about the matter by missionaries; and they replied that, in the eyes of the law, a man could want to travel for only three purposes: for health, for trade, or for scientific observation. As this restriction was simply to prevent foreigners from engaging in interior trade, and as the missionaries were not going for that purpose, they were told that they should go on with their work. The government knew well {247} the purpose for which they were going, and permitted it; hence their consciences might be at rest. These explanations on the part of the officials removed the difficulty in the minds of some, but not of all. Fortunately, since the revision of the treaties, passports are granted without any question as to the purpose for which they are wanted, and all who ask it are freely given permission to travel where they will. Since this restriction has been removed more itinerating is being done, and it is probable that it will still increase.

The missionary does two kinds of itinerating in Japan: (1) he visits periodically a large number of outstations, where are native evangelists; (2) he goes into regions where there are no evangelists and heralds the gospel.

Itinerating among stations where native workers are located and regular work kept up is by far the most frequent. These tours are generally made about every two or three months, one missionary visiting perhaps a dozen stations. The local evangelist makes all preparations for the meetings, which are generally of a special character. There will probably be a special preaching service for non-believers, and a communion service with the Christians. If there are any baptisms the sacrament is then administered. The visit of the missionary is intended to be as much a stimulus and encouragement to the evangelist {248} as anything else. These men, living in out-of-the-way places where there are few, if any, Christians, are apt to get despondent and discouraged, and they need occasionally the sympathy and advice of a fellow-worker. The missionary who has charge of this kind of work is a sort of bishop, with an extended parish.

When fields where no regular work is carried on are visited the work is necessarily different. In this case the missionary must take his helper with him. He seldom goes alone, for various reasons. When on one of these tours he will spend one or two days in a village, talking personally with all who will come to him. Very likely he will rent a room in the inn in which he is stopping, and he and his helper will there preach one or two evenings. Sometimes, if the weather is good, he obtains permission of the authorities to hold the meeting in the open air, and preaches on the street or in the public squares. Wherever an audience can be gathered the message is told. After one or two days spent in this manner they move on to the next town, and there do as they did before, thus going their whole round. The most that is accomplished by this method of preaching is to spread abroad a general knowledge of Christianity among the people and break down their prejudice against it. Not many conversions result from it.

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Some may ask what kind of sermons one preaches on these itinerating tours. They should be of the plainest, simplest character. It is profitable to consume a good deal of time in disproving the false ideas which prevail concerning Christianity, and in giving the people correct views of its nature. The nature of God must be carefully explained, both because the word we use for God is in Japanese applicable to an earthly hero as well as to a divine being, and because the divinities of Japan differ very much in nature from the Christian conception of God. One can preach a long time on sin before getting the people properly to understand it. The Japanese are really without any sense of sin, and have no word in their language to express the idea exactly. We use the word which means crime or offense against the laws of the land. Then the old story of Christ simply told always commands a hearing everywhere.

The kind of itinerating last described is open to serious objection. It is uncertain and fitful. One visit may be made to a town each year, or some years not even one. No provision is made for carrying on the work, or for keeping alive any interest that may have been aroused. To be made very profitable such itinerating should be regular and systematic; the visits should not be too far apart; and as soon as some inquirers are {250} found, a native evangelist should be stationed there to care for them. When conducted in this way it is conducive of great good.

_Educational Work_

The educational department of mission work has in recent years been coming more and more into prominence. This feature of the work attracts the attention of the visitor from the home lands more than any other, because it makes more show. The imposing buildings that are erected, and the large number of students that can be gathered into them, make a favorable impression.

Educational work is generally more attractive than evangelistic. The former is regular, while the latter is desultory. The former is continuous, occupying one's time and attention every day; the latter is intermittent. The former can be pursued at home, and the missionary can enjoy the constant society of his family; the latter takes him away from his family and occupies him abroad. Educational work is usually carried on in the open ports and large cities, where one enjoys all the conveniences of life, with sympathetic society; evangelistic work takes the missionary into the interior, where there are few conveniences and no society. Lastly, educational work is more {251} or less welcomed by the natives, while evangelistic work is unwelcome.

Japan possesses a large number of mission schools. Their imposing buildings are seen in almost every city of the empire. Every mission of large size has its schools for both boys and girls. The annual support of these schools costs the various boards more money than all the evangelistic work that is done in Japan. More missionaries are engaged in educational than in evangelistic work.

A certain amount of educational work seems necessary to the success of every mission. First in importance is theological training. A body of well-trained native pastors is absolutely essential. Especially in this land, where there are many educated people and where all forms of rationalism and skepticism are rife, is it necessary that the evangelist have a liberal education, that he be well rooted and grounded in Christian doctrine, and able to answer the philosophical objections to Christianity that meet him on every side. An educated ministry is just as necessary in Japan as it is in the West, and the schools that are providing such a ministry are doing a good work.

But some of the methods used by them are open to criticism. Heretofore most theological training has been in the English language, and {252} the language alone has taken up a great deal of the student's time and strength. And again, very few Japanese young men gain a sufficient knowledge of English to appreciate or derive full benefit from a theological course in that language. Against this is urged the paucity of Christian literature in Japanese, and the wide field of religious thought which a knowledge of the English language opens to the student. This is very true; but if the same amount of time and energy that has been expended in instruction in English had been given to the creation of a native Christian literature the evil would not exist. I am glad to note that recently nearly all the theological schools have introduced courses in the vernacular for those who cannot take the English course. It would be well if the English course were dispensed with entirely and all instruction were given in the vernacular.

Many of the missions operating in Japan have sent worthy young men to America and England for theological training. In nearly every instance this has proved an unwise investment. The good people at home take up these young men and nurse and pet them until they are completely spoiled. They come back to Japan unfitted by taste and education for the position they must occupy and the work they must do. Most of them become dissatisfied in the work after a few {253} years. Foreign education largely denationalizes them and removes them from the sympathies of their own people. Of course there have been some exceptions to this rule; but, in general, experience has proved that locally trained evangelists are best suited for the work and give most satisfaction in it.

By this it is not intended to imply that Japanese pastors and teachers should not have the advantages offered by the Western seminaries when they desire them and are able to obtain them for themselves. They are as capable of receiving advanced instruction as we are, and have the same right to it. But the money which foreign boards spend for training evangelists should be spent in the field.

Besides the theological schools there are large numbers of academical schools for young men, in which a great deal of mission money is spent. In justification of these it is argued that they are necessary for the preparatory training of evangelists. It is said that the education of these future pastors of the church should be Christian from the beginning, and this is true. But more than half the evangelists now laboring in Japan have not received such training. The education they received from government and private schools answers very well in their case. Actual experience has proved that, whatever may be the {254} aim of these academies, as a matter of fact they do not train evangelists. Most of the men who take their full course enter other professions. One of the oldest missions in Japan, employing about twenty evangelists, has among them only one man who has taken the full academical course in its mission college; but many men have been educated at the church's expense for other professions.

Again, it is said in justification of these academies and their large expenditure of mission money that a Christian education must be provided for the children of the constituency of the mission. The church provides a Christian education for her sons and daughters at home; why should she not do it for her wards abroad? Far be it from me to attempt to minimize the importance of Christian education; but will it not be time enough for such education when the constituency of the native church feels its need to such an extent that it will demand this education itself, support the schools with its money, and send its sons and daughters to them? At present even the Christian people frequently prefer a government school to a mission school; and they often send their children to the latter, when they do send them, because they will there be given financial aid.

There was a time when Christian schools did a good work in Japan. Before the government {255} schools were brought up to their present standard the mission schools were well patronized, and they considerably benefited the cause of missions. But to-day the government has schools of every grade, and frequently they are better than the mission schools. The students who formerly flocked to the mission schools now flock to those of the government, and the former have but few pupils. The times have changed, and these large, expensive schools are now hardly needed. In so far as they are needed for the preparatory training of a native ministry, and can be made to serve that end, they may be all right, but certainly as an evangelizing agency they are not justified. The native church should be encouraged and stimulated to educate its own children; it might even be assisted in the attempt, when it has shown an honest effort to do this; but its children should not be educated for it by the mission free of charge. To spend so large an amount of the people's money in purely secular education seems to me a misappropriation of funds.

More than half the mission schools in Japan are boarding-schools for girls. Nearly all the unmarried women engaged in mission work are in these schools, and there are many of them. Some of these schools have very fine locations and buildings, about as good as those of the average {256} girls' college at home. That they are more popular and better patronized than those for boys is because the government does not provide for the higher education of girls as it does for boys.

The purpose of these girls' boarding-schools is to train up earnest Christian women, who will be the wives and mothers of the new Japan. It is said that if the mothers of the nation are made Christian the evangelization of the whole people will speedily follow. This purpose is a worthy one. Most of the girls who enter these mission schools become Christians, and the training given them seems to be good. I recently attended the closing exercises of one of the largest of these, and was surprised at the progress made by the girls. They could paint and draw, and recite classical music as well as the young ladies of the seminaries at home; and I have no doubt that the graduates leave the schools pure-minded, earnest Christians, with worthy aims and aspirations, and with a full intention to exert their influence for God and His church.

But alas! when they go back to their homes the position Japanese etiquette assigns them so effectually ties their hands that the results are bitterly disappointing. I will mention one case which came under my own observation. A young lady was educated by a mission school in a certain city, who was noted for her piety and {257} earnest Christian spirit. Her teachers had most extravagant hopes as to the strong positive influence she would exert for Christianity. After her graduation she spent several years in the same school as a teacher, and her Christian life was broadened and deepened by longer and more intimate contact with the foreign teachers. She finally married and removed to her new home, in a distant city. There she attended church once or twice and then stopped entirely. Neither the urgent personal request of the native pastor nor the oft-repeated invitation of the Christian congregation could induce her to come any more. Instead of exerting an influence for good upon others she herself became a fit subject for mission work. I have known several cases of this kind, and all missionaries have had the same experience. Social conditions in Japan are such that a girl marrying into a non-Christian home can exert little Christian influence.

But admitting for the moment the utility of this Christian training for the girls, these large schools are open to serious objections on other grounds. The course is too long, and the instruction given too advanced. In many of these schools the girls are kept for twelve or fourteen years. During all this time they are more or less supported by mission funds, even down to pin-money. They are taught all kinds of abstract {258} sciences and advanced ideas that can be of no possible use to them. Latin and Greek, biology, geology, psychology, and many other things are taught them that they neither need nor can appreciate. Painting, drawing, vocal and instrumental music form a prominent part of the curriculum. Girls are made to practise on the piano for ten years or more who will in all probability never see a piano after they leave school. Of course these are not the only subjects taught; more useful ones are taught as well.

If mission schools for the education of girls should exist at all the instruction should be much more elementary and practical. A course of two or three years, teaching them how wisely to fill their position as wives and mothers, would amply suffice.

It is claimed by the Japanese with great reason that these schools unfit the girls for the sphere they must occupy in after life. A life of ten, twelve, or fourteen years in constant association with foreign teachers, in a foreign building, with all necessaries and conveniences supplied, pursuing a pleasant course of study, does not fit the pupil for life in her humble home. No wonder she loves the school and dreads to see the day approaching when she must leave it. Having lived so long under much better circumstances, her home, with its thatched roof, narrow walls, {259} and homely duties, becomes distasteful to her. Of what use now are her music and painting, her Latin and Greek, when her time must be spent in boiling rice and mending old, worn-out clothes? There is such a thing as educating people above their sphere in life, and such education is more hurtful than otherwise.

But it is said, "We are training future Bible-women who will go out and teach the gospel to their country-women." In reply to this it can be answered that not a great many graduates of girls' schools become Bible-women; and it is the experience of nearly every missionary that the best Bible-women are middle-aged women, who may never have been in a mission school.

Again, it is said that it is worth while to have these schools if only to train educated Christian wives for the native evangelists. But many of the evangelists, even among those who themselves have received a more or less foreign training, prefer wives who have never been in a mission school, saying that these girls who have lived so long under better surroundings will not be contented and happy in the homes they can provide. It is also true that many of the young ladies who graduate from these schools object to marrying at all, feeling that they have been unfitted for the life they would have to lead.

A very serious objection to the present {260} educational method in use by many missions in Japan is that it hinders self-support in the native churches. These large foreign plants, with their costly appliances, can never be supported by the native churches, and the evident futility of the effort so discourages them that they will not even do what they can. The day when the churches of Japan can become self-supporting is very much postponed by the existence of these costly schools. At present the native churches could hardly keep the school buildings in repair.

The whole work of missions in Japan was in the beginning projected on too high a plane. To many it seems a great mistake that such large and costly buildings were erected and the schools started on a foreign basis. Should not the buildings have been entirely of native architecture from the beginning, and the educational work projected on a plane corresponding to Japanese life? If small wooden houses, with straw roofs and no furniture, are good enough for these people to live in and to transact all kinds of business in, then they are good enough for them to study in and to worship God in. If from the very beginning the schools and churches had been built on a plane corresponding with ordinary Japanese houses and life the day would much sooner have come when the Japanese themselves could undertake their support. When, in the providence of {261} God, the native church shall have been sufficiently developed, materially and spiritually, to undertake the education of her children and the training of her own pastors, the manner in which she will do it will be very different from that in which it is now done by the mission boards.