Part 15

I am aware that many missionaries in Japan, for whose opinions I have all respect, will not agree with these views. But, after most careful thought and investigation, the above are the conclusions to which I have arrived; and I am glad to know that my views are shared by many of my fellow-missionaries. It is my sincere conviction that most of the money now being used for educational purposes in Japan is misapplied, and would yield far greater results if used in other ways.

_Literary Work_

One of the most important and fruitful branches of missionary work is the literary. The creation of a sound Christian literature is one of the first and most imperative duties pressing upon the missionary to the heathen.

This is an exceedingly difficult task. When we think of how much labor and how many precious lives our own Christian literature has cost us, we begin to have some conception of the immensity of the task of creating a Christian {262} literature in a heathen land. In the first place, the missionary must have a complete mastery of the language,--in Japan an appalling task,--and then he must create the terms to express so many ideas. Many of our Christian ideas have no counterpart in non-Christian lands, and the very words to express them must be coined. A common device is to take words of kindred meaning and to make them serve the purpose, endeavoring to attach our own meaning to them by gradual processes of instruction and use. Thus with the words for God and sin in use by most missions in Japan. These words are _kami_ and _tsumi_. Now _kami_ is the word used for numerous mythological divinities, with natures very different from our God, and is also applied to the ancient heroes of Japan. As it expresses the idea better than any other word we have, we use it for God; but we must be careful always to explain the sense in which we use it. The word _tsumi_ means crime, or offense against the laws of the land. Our idea of sin is lacking in the Japanese mind, and hence there is no word that exactly expresses it. We take the word _tsumi_ as being nearest it, and endeavor to impart to it our own meaning. In this way we have not only to translate the ideas, but also to coin or modify the words to express them.

This work of the missionary is very different {263} from that of translating English books into a European language which has a circle of ideas similar to our own, for there the words are found ready-made to express the ideas.

Generally the first literary work to be done by missionaries is the translation and publication of portions of Scripture and of tracts. As soon as their knowledge of the language is sufficiently advanced, they translate the whole Bible and some good hymns. Then follow apologetical and evidential works, and treatises on theology and morality. Afterward biographical and devotional books, magazines, and Christian newspapers are published. We cannot overestimate the value of a good Christian newspaper. It will carry gospel truth to people whom the missionary and the native evangelist cannot reach, and it will help much to nourish and strengthen the life of the native converts. In such a paper the latter will probably see their religion set forth in all its relations to the questions of practical life in a way they seldom hear it done in sermons. I think parish papers, which are becoming so common at home, would also exert a splendid influence in Japan.

In this field a considerable Christian literature has already been created. Among the most important books translated so far might be mentioned the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, {264} Luther's Small Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, Bynyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." A considerable number of books on apologetical, evidential, dogmatic, and historical theology have been published, besides biographical, ethical, and devotional books. There are also several Christian newspapers, and recently the missionaries of the American Board have begun the publication of a Christian magazine.

A Christian literature which will be a powerful auxiliary to our work is at present forming rapidly in Japan.

_Medical Work_

Medical work is one of the youngest departments of missionary labor. Christ healed the body as well as the soul, and it is peculiarly fitting that the missionary be able to heal the body likewise. Medical missions have done more in some countries toward breaking down the prejudice against Christianity than any other one thing. Doors effectually closed to the evangelist have been opened wide to the doctor. The power for good of a consecrated physician in many mission fields is boundless. The mission boards have fully recognized this fact, and have wisely used large numbers of medical missionaries.

In former times medical missionaries accomplished much good in Japan. They helped greatly {265} to break down the prejudice and opposition to Christianity. Many who came to the hospitals to have their bodies healed went away having their ears filled with words from the great Physician, and their hearts moved by the kindness and love of these Christian doctors. Not only was much direct mission work accomplished in this way, but the principles of physiology and medicine were also taught to large numbers of native physicians and students. Among the men who did most in this work were Drs. Hepburn, Berry, and Taylor.

Although they have accomplished much good, medical missions are no longer needed in Japan. The Japanese themselves have become adepts in medical science, and especially in surgery. Every town and city has one or more hospitals where competent medical consultation and treatment can be had, and these now occupy the position formerly filled only partially by the mission hospitals. A few hospitals and dispensaries are still kept in operation by some missions, but most of them were years ago dispensed with as no longer profitable. We rejoice that Japan has so far progressed as to be well able to care for the health of her own people, and we adapt ourselves to the changed circumstances, diverting into more fruitful channels the energies formerly expended in this way.

{266}

XIV

HINDRANCES

Many of the hindrances that oppose the progress of Christianity in Japan have already been indirectly suggested in other portions of this book. But that they may be more clearly apprehended by the friends of missions at home, and that the effect of their militating influence may be fully felt, we will endeavor in this chapter to arrange them in order and show just how they oppose our work. For the sake of clearness and logical order we will consider the subject under two divisions: 1. Hindrances in Japan common to all mission fields; 2. Hindrances peculiar to Japan.

1. There are certain things inherent in the very nature of Christianity that impede her progress. They are necessities of her being, and cannot be gotten rid of. These things may be either a part of Christianity herself, belonging to her nature, {267} or they may be necessary results of her acceptance by non-Christian peoples. For this reason they are encountered wherever the gospel is propagated; they are common hindrances to the advance of our faith alike in China, India, Africa, and Japan.

Although not peculiar to Japan, it seems to me wise briefly to refer to these universal hindrances, because often they are not realized in their full force and power either by the people of our home churches or even by our pastors. To appreciate fully their militating influence one must go to the mission field, and there observe them actually hindering the rapid progress of evangelization. There they are seen in a new light, and are impressed upon the mind as they can hardly be otherwise. If I can succeed in causing the constituency of the churches at home to realize the number, magnitude, and power of these hindrances I will have done good service for the cause of missions.

As the first one of these universal militating influences, inherent in the very nature of missions, opposing the progress of Christianity wherever its teachings are newly propagated, I would mention its _revolutionizing tendency_. Christian missions are in their nature revolutionizing. The result is inevitable and unavoidable. The advance of Christianity in a heathen land {268} necessitates the revolutionizing of many institutions that have obtained for centuries. Not only must the religious ideas undergo a revolution, but all moral ideas, and manners and customs as well. The reasons for this are very evident.

Religion is intimately connected with the life of man. It furnishes the motive power of his life, controls his actions, creates his morality, determines his manners and customs, and shapes his laws. The ethnic religions are just as intimately interwoven with the lives of their adherents as Christianity is with the lives of Christians; and Buddhism, Confucianism, and Brahmanism have shaped and determined the lives and actions of their adherents.

The connection between religion and morality is a necessary and indissoluble one. The two are united in their growth and development, and the form of morality is necessarily colored by the dominant religion. Wherever the Buddhist faith has been accepted there has sprung up a system of morality peculiar to it; so that we speak of a Buddhistic in opposition to a Christian morality. This morality is dependent upon the religion, and a change of religion must bring about a change of morality.

Christianity, having necessarily developed a morality in accord with its principles, must, as it advances, destroy the existing systems and create {269} widely different ones. While the better element in heathen nations has more or less outgrown its religious ideas and superstitions, and can calmly contemplate a change of religion, yet its moral system has a stronger hold, and anything which antagonizes it is severely condemned. This necessary revolutionizing of moral ideas very much opposes the progress of Christianity.

The acceptance of Christianity necessitates also a revolution in manners and customs. These are partially an expression of the faith that is in us, their nature being determined by it. A change of religion, therefore, means a change in all of these.

People have great respect for time-honored customs, and that which antagonizes these brings upon itself condemnation. Christianity changes the manners and customs, and therefore the people do all they can to oppose it.

In these ways the work of missions is revolutionizing, and must expect to encounter the opposition of the spirit of conservatism, which is much stronger in the East than in the West.

A second principle inherent in the very nature of Christianity which hinders its progress in heathen lands is its _exclusiveness_. Our religion is among the most intolerant in its attitude toward other faiths. We believe and teach that "there is none other name under heaven given among {270} men, whereby we must be saved," than the name of Christ. While acknowledging that other religions contain grains of truth, we must affirm that, as religious systems, they are false. Christ sent forth His apostles to make disciples of all, winning them to the Christian faith. And the aim of the church to-day is, not to cultivate brotherly love and communion with other _religions_, but rather to exterminate them and make Christians of all. She can brook no rival. Her adherents must give their allegiance to her alone.

Christianity not only claims to be the only religion, but she can offer no hope to those outside of her pale. While the Bible does not demand that I teach the Japanese that their ancestors are surely lost, it certainly gives me no ground for assuring them of their salvation. We all revere our forefathers, but none so much as the Oriental. He pays periodical visits to the tombs of his ancestors; he worships his father and commemorates the day of his death by mourning. A heaven from which his ancestors are excluded has little attractions for him. Often does the Shintoist say, "I would rather be in hell with my ancestors than in heaven without them."

If Christianity could be less exclusive and more tolerant of other faiths she would find a much more ready acceptance at the hands of non-Christian peoples. But she cannot be so and be true {271} to her own nature and mission. In ancient Rome, when the church was called to pass through fire, the manifestation of a more tolerant spirit would have saved her from that awful persecution. The Romans had many gods and did not object to one more. They adopted those of all the conquered peoples, and were ready to adopt the Christians', and erect an altar to Him, if the Christians would acknowledge Him as simply one among the other gods. And from that day to this the exclusive claims of Christianity have brought upon her trials and persecutions, and have hindered her progress throughout the earth. Especially is this religious exclusiveness unpopular in Japan, because there the native religions are very tolerant of one another.

These are some of the strongest hindrances to the rapid progress of Christianity in pagan lands. They belong to the very nature of our faith, and cannot be avoided. Their antagonizing influence is encountered wherever the gospel is preached.

2. But I think that the greatest hindrances to mission work in Japan to-day are those which are peculiar to this field. Many circumstances conspire to make Japan stand alone among mission fields. She has been pronounced at once the most promising and the most difficult of all fields for evangelistic work: the most promising because of the life, force, and ability of her people; the {272} most difficult because of the host of peculiar hindrances under which the evangelist must labor there. I will proceed to point out some of these.

(1) Perhaps the most potent at present is the _extreme nationalistic feeling_, which has brought into disrepute everything of foreign origin. The Christian religion, being a foreign institution, is therefore unpopular, and is thought to be less adapted to the people and less liable to nourish a strong national feeling than the native Shinto.

It is hard for us to realize the fanatical intensity of their patriotism. Having been taught for so many centuries that this is the first virtue, the people have exalted it above everything else. "Japan first, forever, and always," is the universal motto. There is hardly a man, woman, or child in the empire to-day who would not be perfectly willing to lay down his life for the good of the country.

This extreme patriotism operates in several ways to hinder the progress of Christianity. It prevents the ready acceptance of the new religion. There are a great many so ignorant and inconsistent as to hate Christianity just because it is of foreign origin, thinking that nothing good can originate outside of Japan. Such people adhere to the native religion, in spite of its inferiority, simply because they think that to do so is patriotic. But there is a much larger and more {273} influential class that is led to antagonize Christianity from patriotic motives other than this. They hold that a belief in the native religions is necessary to preserve their darling patriotic spirit, and that the adoption of any foreign religion would gradually destroy all patriotism and loyalty. Christianity is not national, but cosmopolitan. It teaches the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, both of which great ideas are repugnant to most Japanese, because they do not harmonize with their ideas of the divine origin of the imperial family, and their national superiority to the other races of the world. They want a religion which exalts Japan above everything and inculcates patriotism and loyalty to her alone.

But the most hurtful influence of this extreme nationalism is felt within the pale of the church herself. Actuated by it, many of the native Christians, both clerical and lay, want to do away with everything foreign in connection with the churches. The more strictly national they can make their work the better satisfied are they. Not only do they antagonize the missionary and try to push him off the field, but they also antagonize foreign theology, and want to build up a native system with no foreign taint. The result is great friction between the native and foreign workers, strained relations, and in many instances {274} open antagonism. This want of cordiality and harmony, for which the national feeling is largely responsible, is very hurtful to the best interests of our work.

But the desire for a purely native theology, which this strong, benighted patriotism begets, is even more hurtful than its sowing seeds of discord among the workers. Many of the leading native ministers and laymen say that it is folly for their churches to perpetuate the theological divisions and creeds of the West, and they propose to develop a theology peculiarly their own. Now Christianity cannot be kept pure and sound without paying due regard to its historical development; and the Japanese, in cutting loose from this, have already run into heresy. The danger is that a Christianity may be developed which is lacking in all that is distinctively Christian, and which will be harder to overcome than the old heathenism.

(2) Another hindrance which has operated with great power throughout the whole history of Protestant missions in Japan is the _past record of Christianity_. In a former chapter upon the "First Introduction of Christianity" I have told how Christianity was first introduced, how it grew to magnificent proportions, and how finally it was crushed by the secular arm. The fact that the government once felt constrained to extirpate {275} Christianity, at whatever cost, and especially the fact that the Christians dared oppose the government, have brought our religion into disrepute. Since, according to native morality, whatever government does is right and whatever government opposes is wrong, the mere fact of this opposition on the part of the government is enough to condemn Christianity in the eyes of many. Then the fact that the Christians at last rebelled gives color to the idea already formed that Christianity is disloyal to Japan. That idea prevails widely, and in many quarters Christians are regarded with suspicion.

A memory of the past bitter persecutions and of the hated rebellion still lingers. The old people talk of them around the hibachi, as they sip their tea and smoke their pipes; the young read of them in the histories, and thus their memory is kept alive. Many are still living who saw and read the rigid prohibitions of Christianity on the sign-boards over all the country, and they cannot forget them. There are not a few people in the empire who to this day have hardly learned that the changed attitude of the government toward Christianity is more than outward; and these still regard the foreign faith as the chief of all evils. It is really pathetic sometimes to hear them talk of it. There was an old man living near a Christian chapel not far from here, who one day was {276} complaining of his woes and wishing to die. He said it had been a bad year, and none of his crops had done well, two of his children had died, his country had been insulted by a foreign power, and, to cap the climax, Christianity had come and taken up its abode next door to him. This last evil was too much, and he wanted to die. He still regarded our faith as the worst of evils. I once gave a few tracts to some old men in a mountain village near Saga, and they remarked that they remembered the time when it would have meant certain death to be seen with one of those little books.

(3) The _character of the education_ prevalent in Japan to-day is also antagonistic to Christianity. The Japanese are a studious race and are capable of high mental development. The country is so well supplied with schools--nearly all of them government institutions--that no one is too poor to receive some education. There is, on the part of the school authorities, no open antagonism to Christianity as such. According to the regulations, no one religion is to be favored more than another in the schools, and complete religious liberty is to be allowed. But the general tenor of the education given is unchristian--an exaltation of reason above faith, of science above religion. Especially is the tendency of the higher education against any form of religion. The {277} educators of Japan are training a nation of atheists and agnostics. The scientific schools of the West that have no room for religion are studied earnestly and copied by educated Japan. In philosophy Herbert Spencer and his school have been acknowledged masters. Indeed, it never seems to have occurred to the minds of thinking Japanese that there are systems of philosophy other than the materialistic. All religious sentiment is crushed in the schools, other things being substituted. Science, learning, is thought to be all that is necessary, and religion is left for old women and children. Men who still believe in religion are thought superstitious and uneducated, and are regarded with a sort of lordly contempt. In a conversation some time ago with a graduate of the Imperial University I was dogmatically told that Christianity was acknowledged to be absurd by all thinking men everywhere, that all religions are only for the infancy of the race, and that full-grown men can dispense with them. This man's views are the usual product of the higher education, of Japan to-day. Hence it happens that few students of the higher schools are Christian, and frequently men go there with Christian sentiments, only to lose them before they leave.

(4) The _old religions of Japan_ strongly oppose the march of Christianity. Men often speak as though the old heathen faiths had lost their power {278} and were no longer really believed. Their power is on the wane, but they lack much of being dead. They still possess enough vitality strongly to oppose the evangelization of this land. The old Shinto faith, having the decided advantage of national origin, and fitting in exactly with Japanese ideas of their relative national importance and the nature of their emperor, is a strong opposing influence. Buddhism still possesses a strong hold upon the masses of the people. It has the recommendation of age, has played a prominent part in the national history, and is dear to the hearts of the people. It occupies a decided vantage-ground from which it opposes us and our work. To some in the West it seems almost incredible that these people should really believe and trust in these faiths. And yet be assured that they do believe and trust in them. There are about the same sincerity, the same confidence, and the same faith placed in Buddhism by its adherents as are placed in Christianity by its. The religious cravings and instincts of the people are, on the whole, satisfied by their native religions.