preferred not to participate in them could commonly be excused from attendance on the ground of illness.

But in October, 1890, an Imperial edict was issued enjoining a return to a higher morality on the part of the people. This was followed by the introduction of a custom in the schools throughout the country. The Imperial edict, or the Emperor's picture, was hung up, and the students were required to bow before it. One of the teachers in the school preparatory to the University, on conscientious grounds, refrained from doing this. His action raised a storm of indignation among the students, and he was dismissed. It was Christianity against the Emperor.

Of necessity, this attracted the attention and excited the feelings of Christian men among the Japanese. There was a disposition on the part of some to insist that the obeisance was a mere mark of respect to the Emperor; nothing more than standing uncovered in the presence of the Queen of England. "Then that should be made clear," others said, "for all Japan knows that there are other ceremonies connected with the Emperor which cannot be explained by any such analogy." As a result of the agitation that followed, a statement was made by the Department of Education to the effect that bowing to the picture of the Emperor is only to be regarded as the highest reverence that can be paid to man. Among those who took part in the discussion of the subject was the editor of the church newspaper aided by our missionaries. In consequence the paper was suspended, and allowed to be issued again only under a new name. The charge was that the question was a political one. This, of course, was quite true; and it was a true instinct that recognized it as such. When the Emperor is divine, the doctrine that there is but one God, the Father Almighty, and

[September,

one Lord Jesus Christ, has always been political.

For the time being the excitement passed away; but the general movement that raised the excitement was by no means arrested. There is a constant endeavor to antagonize Christianity and Japan as represented in the Emperor. The statement at a public meeting the other day that Japan too may have her Constantine immediately raised a tumult. After the ceremony of bowing to the picture of the Emperor, the teacher of a school in a large town said, "You may now put away his Majesty's picture." The ceremony was over and the teacher meant precisely what he said -nothing more; but the remark was construed into an expression of disrespect; and the teacher was dismissed. In another town an official who visited the school entered without first removing his shoes. This was against the rule, and the students afterwards spoke of it. The teacher replied that all rules have their exceptions. Why," said he, 'suppose His Majesty should come, would you expect him to leave his shoes outside?" That was enough. The teacher had spoken of the Emperor "as if he were a mere man, and he also lost his place. In still another town there was a flourishing Sundayschool connected with one of our churches. Suddenly the seventy-five scholars dropped to a handful. What was the reason? The headmaster of the principal school in the place, a man who had once been friendly to Christianity, had called the parents of the children together and warned them of the danger of subjecting their children to the influence of Christian teaching. The fundamental principle of Christianity, he said, can not be reconciled with loyalty or due reverence for the Emperor. Nor are such things possible only in the schools throughout the country; the spirit that inspires them has possession of the

University. The Imperial University is an institution upon which immense sums of money have been expended. It has a large corps of Japanese and foreign professors; the instruction is highly specialized. By some it has been regarded as preeminently a place for the calm consideration of questions in philosophy and science; being a place free from the traditionalism of the West. But what has happened at the University? One of the professors undertook a line of historical research. His results were thought to throw considerable doubt upon the divine descent of the Emperor; and the editor of the periodical in which his conclusions appeared called upon the Shintoists for an answer. The answer soon came. Professor Kume was dismissed. Apparently also the thing is not intended to be something for a day. There is evidently a set purpose to indoctrinate the minds of the children. Anything that can be construed as hostile to the old conception of the Emperor can find no place in a text book for the school. Recently a work on geography was submitted for inspection. It contained a statement to the effect that there are good reasons for believing that the Japanese race is Mongolian and Malayan in its origin. That statement could not be admitted. It might be true, but it suggested inferences that were not expedient.

The movement first made itself felt in the concrete. It established the custom of bowing to the Imperial Edict, or the Emperor's picture in the schools. It is now preached rather as an abstract political and ethical principle. Christianity lays great stress upon the individual, his worth and his rights; the principle now contended for proclaims that the state is everything and the individual nothing. The dominant motive in Christianity is love. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; and thy neighbor as

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thy self." The dominant motive with a Japanese should be the old doctrine of reverence for superiors; and such reverence finds its highest exercise when rendered to the state in the person of the Emperor. But just here Christianity haggles over the precise nature of the reverence that is due; and therefore Christianity is disloyalty.

As

What the bolder ones among the Japanese Christians said at the beginning of the movement was this: "It is not a thing to be dismissed in a vague way as a matter involving no principle. There is a real significance in the movement and the Church should be made to perceive it. To compel the children throughout the country to bow before the Imperial Edict, unless it be officially declared that the act is one of mere respect, is a violation of the liberty of conscience which is now guaranteed by the Constitution. has been already stated, such a declaration was finally made by the Department of Education. But there are other matters that still excite attention. Christian officials are still obliged to do reverence in the Imperial Sanctuary; and Christian soldiers and sailors are still compelled to take part in the ceremonies performed at the Yasukani Temple. But the world moves; the constitution is on the side of Christianity; and God reigns. So we may well trust that the cloud is only a little one, and that it will soon pass away.

with a school which had entirely outgrown their accommodations and was daily forcing the question: "What in the world shall we do with these girls?" Until very lately matters have been growing worse, for scholars continued to be brought to them by importunate parents, while the elastic walls were already stretched to the utmost.

A day-school of fifty they could contrive to conduct, but how to put twenty-two boarders into a house designed for ten was a puzzle. Many were crowded into places where the rain

sunshine, the great antidote of the damp climate, and so cold were the school-rooms that the ladies were obliged in winter to wear during school hours their heavy outdoor wraps.

During the past year the Board has been able to grant the long standing request of the Mission to enlarge the school building. By an appropriation of $2,500 accommodations are now afforded for fifty boarders, while more healthful sleeping rooms are provided for the teachers themselves and the needed house

1892.]

keeping facilities supplied. The $2,500 given by the Board were, however, supplemented by a gift of many hundred dollars from a generous missionary in Kanazawa and his wife, while the lady teachers also added the gifts of their own self-denying love. The result is the structure which is represented in the accompanying picture, embracing chapel, school-rooms, dormitories for the boarding scholars, rooms for the teachers, who all live in the building, besides dining room, kitchen, storerooms and all the arrangements required for house-keeping.

Year after year, in the face of all obstacles, the school has been filled. And now, the teachers write with thankful hearts, "It is more flourishing than ever." No one can measure the Christian influences which have centered in this scene of faithful labor and which have gone out from it to the homes of that heathen city. One of the teachers writes, "Almost all our boarders become Christians." Six were hopefully converted last year. A society of King's Daughters which they have formed, numbering thirtynine, meets twice a month. Every Saturday morning a prayer meeting is held by the teachers with the girls, and the Sunday-school lesson for the next day is carefully studied. When Sunday comes, sixteen of the girls go out to teach in nine different Sunday-schools in different parts of the city, more than 300 children being thus reached through them with the truths of the Gospel every week.

PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS IN JAPAN.

REV. GEO. W. KNOX, D. D., TOKYO. Prospects and problems change with the passing years, and nowhere are the transitions more rapid than in Japan. Sometimes one feels that nothing is secure, forgetting that the true results of all faithful work abide.

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A few years ago the situation was most striking. The Church was in the full career of popular success: the earlier difficulties had been overcome, antipathies had disappeared, and borne along by the incoming tide of western civilization triumph seemed assured. Officials and gentlemen of position desired their sons to accept the Christian faith. Statesmen discussed the proclamation of Christianity as the state religion and urged missionaries to a more immediate evangelization of the people. Confucianism was dead, Buddhism despondent, and Shinto a mere name. Priests lost heart and sought admittance to the Christian ministry. Crowds gathered to listen to sermons and lectures, religious books were readily sold, and the chief representative of modern thought was a Christian Review. With such a state of things in Tokyo, the heart of Japan, a like success was anticipated everywhere.

Naturally the Christians were full of confidence. Some thought Japan might be Christianized in a decade and all were confident of the immediate independence of the Church, looking forward to a day when foreign men and money would be no longer needed and when under exclusively Japanese control the Church would advance with far greater rapidity. They anticipated the union of all sects and the formation of a single Church adapted to its environment, and master of the situation.

Differing as to the need of foreign help, the missionaries yet shared in these hopes and agreed that the anticipation of the formation of an independent, self-supporting, united Church was reasonable.

To-day the changes are so great that no description seems, at first glance, exaggerated. The people no longer throng religious meetings; the sale of Bibles and religious books has greatly decreased; religion

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no longer attracts general attention: no statesman dreams of the establishment of Christianity; certain politicians find their advantage in appearing as its foes: the Buddhists have taken heart and are working as never before; and even Shinto serves as a centre of opposition with its new profession of extravagant loyalty to the emperor.

The Christians have moderated their expectations and estimate more justly the greatness of their work. A triumphant, united, Protestant Church is not to be formed in Japan more easily than in other lands. With a large part of the control of the work in their hands the native ministers are not so confident that the departure of the foreign missionaries will witness the employment of new methods more potent than those now in use.

Foreign missionaries also learn that work even in Japan is not ideal, and that all the old problems arise here again, with some few in addition peculiar to this soil and race. The missionary's work seems to stretch into an indefinite future. Would he preach Christ as a witness? He learns how slow is the task of making the message intelligible and how few men can be reached by an individual. The truth can be given to the nation only in divers portions and manners and God hastens to-day no more than when His long-suffering waited in the times of old. Does the missionary look chiefly for the establishment of the Church trusting that it shall be the means of grace to the nation? He sees that something more than quick intelligence and receptivity are needed and that the education of the Church needs time and patience now as in that ancient world when then the chosen people wandered in the wilderness for forty years, being trained of God. If some missionaries think the time for foreign missionaries is almost past,

[September,

it is because they question whether the national self-assertion will long endure their presence.

But all this represents only one side of the situation. It may be questioned whether the Church has really lost ground. In spite of hostility here and there, the people are not opposed to the Church but accept it as permanently established, with its own sphere of usefulness. The truth is no longer a novelty nor is its proclamation aided by the popularity of all things western, but its own peculiar claims and virtues are as widely recognized as ever, and the way it now makes is by its own inherent powers. Its growth is constant though slower than in the past, and if the kingdom comes not with observation still unceasingly it comes. In some portions of the empire there is less opposition than in the past. Nowhere does the profession of our faith appear to be an obstacle even to political advancement. Public sentiment is increasingly Christianized, with an ever widening diffusion of a Christian standard of morals and an open profession of sentiments whose source is manifest though unconfessed. In a broad

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way, the outlook is far from gloomy. Christian civilization and standard of ethics may well prepare the way for the profession of the Christian faith. Gradually every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill be brought low and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

The Church shows the reality of its faith as it endures the stress of conflict. The ministers stand firm, and the young men press forward into the service of the Church, though the ministry has now no adventitious glamour. The congregations statedly assemble though the novelty has long worn away. The people continue to give for the support of the Church and the work of home missions. The con