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Southern Methodist Church for gewgaws would support a hundred missionaries in Japan. How long, O how long, thou Son of God! until thy Church shall be baptized with thy own spirit of love? When will the day come when every man and every woman who bears thy name will come to the help of the Lord-to the help of the Lord against the mighty?

The Japanese are as capable of reaching the highest type of Christian character as the European or American. Many beautiful traits of character appear among them-traits which show a very high susceptibility to noble impulses. They are polite, even to excess. Some of the most exquisite and delicate forms of intercourse mark their social customs. What among us can equal the phrase they use at parting, Say-o-nara? The meaning of it is, "Since it must be so." It shows an actual genius in this line-it is the very poetry of elegant manners. No doubt, there is a little hypocrisy in it sometimes, but then what form of good breeding is there that is not liable to that abuse?

CHAPTER VII.

W

RELIGION IN DAI NIPPON.

HAT a man sees, he can report with confidence, and no man can pass through this country without seeing temples and shrines and images until his very eyes will be bewildered. St. Paul would have classed them with the Athenians. It is not to be supposed that the temples are all great and costly structures. Far from it. There are a few such in the cities, but scattered through the country there are many that are mere shells, having no beauty, either of design or execution. Nor are the images all found in temples. There are a great many scattered by the wayside, generally, I believe, in connection with burial places. But very often the grave has disappeared, and the traveler will see nothing but the row of images. These exposed images are all small, at least so far as I saw, and cut in high relief on slabs of what seemed to be a hard sandstone, or gray granite. One thing I observed particularly they were all old. I saw but one that looked fresh. They were in various stages of decay. I saw some more pretentious deities standing out in the neighborhood of temples, not in relief, but full figures, of the same material. Some were well preserved, some with mutilated limbs, some with noses crumbled off, and some that had lost their heads.

Truly, these gods are in a bad way, and if they represent the religion of Japan, it needs revamping beyond doubt.

The primitive religion of the country was Sintooism. What this religion is specifically, I can hardly say. The word Sinto, or Shinto, means simply the doctrine concerning God. This form of religion still exists in the country, and has a good many temples. Its priests claim that they use no images in their worship; but the only Sintoo temple of any note that I visited contained some life-size figures. The priests, however, explained to us that they were only statues of men distinguished in Japanese history. One invariable piece of furniture is a large, circular mirror of polished metal. The one I saw was about three feet in diameter. This mirror commemorates a great event in Sintoo mythology. It seems that a very powerful goddess became offended on some occasion, and falling into a sulky mood went off and hid herself, whereupon great calamities impended, and I know not what extremity poor mortals were driven to, until they bethought themselves to place a mirror somewhere in a position. in which the celestial beauty would come upon it unawares. The expedient was successful, for when she saw herself she was so delighted with her own beauty that she at once came out in the best possible humor with herself and everything else.

A silly mythology of this sort makes up, so far as I could learn, the body of Sintoo teaching as it is current in Japan. It goes back to the beginning of things, when the first god and goddess were evolved out of the primary elements, and gods and goddesses

multiplied, and out of their fecundity the family of the Mikadoes sprung, so that the Mikado is the representative of the divine presence on earth. It represents that the whole mass of the elements was divided, so that one part constituted heaven and the other the earth, and that these were so near together at first that there was a bridge between them, over which the gods had easy passage back and forth. But the separation became greater, and the heavens. lifted, until intercourse became impossible, at least on the mortal side, and the Mikado was the only divine object left below. All this the simple people seem to have taken with implicit credulity, and it certainly served the ends of kingcraft effectually, for to this day the Emperor is regarded with superstitious awe by the great mass of the people—so much so that when he goes out many of them conceal themselves, thinking it wrong to look upon his sacred person.

In the sixth century of the Christian era Buddhism entered Japan from China and Corea, and soon met with popular favor. But, in becoming naturalized in its new home, it became greatly modified in many respects. Indeed, not less than five or six great sects were formed, all differing in important respects. I have no minute knowledge of these modifications, and in this chapter I can speak of its general aspects only.

The moral code of the Buddhists, in Japan as in India, is above criticism; but as a religion, both its tenets and its practice are evil, and only evil, continually; at least in its Japanese developments. It is idolatrous and superstitious in the last degree, and

many of its rites and superstitions are as silly as they are abominable. It has its images and shrines everywhere, and you would be astonished to see the similarity of it in many respects to Roman Catholicism.

First, it is similar in its modes of worship. This similarity appears, in the first place, in the general fact that in both the public services are designed for dramatic effect. I happened to witness a service at the celebrated temple of Shiba, in Tokio. There was a sermon by the priest, which was followed by a service in which different parts were performed by various priests, some of whom were concealed in recesses, and the intoning, with occasional ringing of bells, of various sizes, and posturing and genuflexions, the whole of which was contrived with a good deal of skill, and appealed to the imagination in a very effective way. Besides this, there are many points of exact correspondence, suggesting that either the Buddhists or the Romanists must have borrowed, the one from the other, or both from a common source. There is the "holy water," used for the same purposes, and much in the same way; there is the burning of incense; there are the lighted tapers; there are the images and the prostrations; there are the beads, and I know not what all. In the presence of these things you can scarcely keep from feeling that you are witnessing the carryings on of the priests of Rome.

Nor has the popish priest a monopoly of purgatory, for his Buddhist rival manages this institution as dexterously and profitably as he, and much in the same way, having his own methods of getting the soul

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