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^ 1 V »

CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

AND HER REPULSE

By CLERUS.

TORONTO :
VVILLIAM BRIGGS,

WESLKY BUILDINGS,

MONTREAL : C. W. COATES. Halifax : S. F. HUESTIS.

1898

^li

PREFACE.

"Go YE therefore, and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them, into the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost :
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I commanded you : and lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world." Such are the
words that Christ spoke to the Church when He
was about to withdraw His visible presence and
to return unto the Father. The verse is com-
monly spoken of as the "Great Commission";

PREFACE.

but wc do nut always bear in mind its terms :
"Make disciples of all the nations" — navra la
i'dvif — the heathen. He had already, on the
evening of His resurrection, walked ijicognito as
far as Emmaus, with two of His disciples, and
in His conversaticjn with them had perceived
that they ha<l not understood the significance of
His death, which had taken place three days
before ; and that they were even now in dark-
ness, which had only been made more perplexing
Sc'll by certain rumors that their Lord had lisen
and appeared to some of their fellow disciples.
Then He opened their mind, that they might
understand the Scriptures. " And He said unto
them, Thus it is written, that the Christ should
suffer, and rise again from the dead the third
day ; and that repentance and remission of sins
should be preached in His name unto all the

■

PREFACE.

nations" — nai-ra ri\ b'^h't} — " bo^iniiiiij;' from
Jci-usaleni."

Tlic tcnu "all tlie nations" moans those peo-
ples tliat have not a knowletl<;e of the true (iod,
an<l is used as a kind of antithesis to the term
Israel, or tlu' .lews. The aim that, from the Hi'st
announcement of the conmiission, was set before
the Church was the Christiani/ation of tlie
heathen. The Churcli mi^ht begin fvor\i Jevxi-
tialem ; but her <^oal must be the uttermost parts
of the earth.

Yet after 11)00 years of Christian history, the
Church is able to say little more than that
she has skirted the shores of heathendom — has,
perliaps, liere and tliere caused a ray of light
to pierce the darkness. As the dawn of the
twentieth century is painting the hill-tops wdth
its glory, she is able to say that of a total popu-

PREFACE.

lation of the world of sonic 1,400,000,000 tliere
remain .still 1,000,000,000 to wliom she has not
yet carried the Goppel, who are still sitting in
ihe darkness of the shadoio of death.

When will their evanirelization be effected ?

CLERUS.

October, 181)8.

PART I

CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH
AND HER REPULSE.

Of the grandeur and magnificence of that
civilization which grew up in ancient times on
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, it is im-
possible to give an adequate description. But
from its western limits, where the Straits of
Gibraltar opened a gateway to the wide and
mysterious Atlantic, to its easternmost point,
where its blue waters washed the shores of that
land once trodden by the Saviour's feet, its
borders were lined with cities, towns and villages

all the way.

Of these, some of the cities still remain, show-
ing traces of their ancient magnificence ; while
others lie buried in ruins, from which savants

10 CHRISTlANiry^S GREAT TRIUMPH

dig up specimens of ancient skill in sculpture,
architecture and art that surpass the most skil-
ful productions of modern times.

On these shores was Rome, seated on her
seven hills, upon whose summits and in whose
valleys the whi pillars of marble palaces
glinted through the groves in the mellow sun-
light of Italian skies. Her streets were lined
with the mercantile houses of her merchant-
princes. Her suburbs were filled with the man-
sions K,l the nobles and the wealthy ; while her
wharves were thronged with vessels laden with
grain from Alexandria in Egypt, with spices and
gold, with costly silks and pearls of India and
other lands afar. Down her streets the legions
of her mighty armies marched with thunderous
tread to the conquest of the world. On her
public buildings — the Colosseum, the theatres,
the imperial palaces — the skill of architecture
and art had been lavished to make them the
admiration of all nations.

There was Corinth, whose isthmus was washed
on both sides by the waters of the sea. At her
ports the costly luxuries of all nations were

AND HER REPULSE. U

unloaded. In her splendid palaces of marble,
made brilliant with purple and gold, pleasure
reigned supreme ; while her merchants were
known in all lands for their enterprise and
wealth. In her suburbs on the isthmus, the
world's games were celebrated ; when thousands
who sought pleasure or distinction in the games,
or who sought the opportunity of reciting their
literary productions to the assembled multitudes,
found their way within her walls.

There was Athens, the world's university, to
which the best men of all lands turned their
steps to hear or to tell the newest discoveries in
science, philosophy or art. On her Acropolis sat
the court of Areopagus, the most august tri-
bunal of the nation; within her walls Demos-
thenes had thrilled assembled thousands with
his eloquence ; within her precincts was the
grove,

" Plato's retirement where the Attic bird
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long.

Across the iEcjean, on the coast of Asia Minor,
stood mighty Ephesus, whose temple to the god-

12 CHRISTIANITVS GREAT TRIUMPH

\\\

dess Diana, burned on the night that Alexander
the Great was born, but rebuilt at the expense
of the nation with the aid of the ladies, who
contributed their golden jewellery and ornaments,
was one of the seven wonders of the world.
Within the walls of the temple not only was the
august worship of the goddess celebrated, but
there too were stored the riches of the wealthy
men of all nations, for it was the Bank of Eng-
land of those days.

There on Syrian Orontes lay Antioch, whose
eastern gates welcomed the wealth of Asia and
whose western gates sent it forth over the Medi-
terranean to every land ; whose long streets —
some of them four miles long — were lined with
marble colonnades, under which the busy multi-
tudes could walk untouched by the blazing sun.
Thither came the wealthy of every land seeking
health or pleasure, while their life pass^'d on as
one long summer day. In its suburbs was the
beautiful grove of Daphne, described by General
Lew Wallace in his book " Ben-Hur."

Away to the south, in Egypt, lay Alexandria,
founded by Alexander the Great, to provide an

And her repulse.

entrepot for the commerce of India, Persia and
Araby the blest, borne over the Indian Ocean to
Egypt and transhipped to Alexandria, whence it
could be distributed to the nations of the world.
To the westward again lay Cyrene, whose
magnificent ruins yet remain to bear witness to
its former greatness. Westward still farther
was that Carthage which Augustus had built to
replace the more ancient city of the same name.

II.

In the countries of which these cities were
either the capitals or the chief ornaments, were
found illustrations of principles of government, of
philosophy, of jurisprudence, of military science,
that remain unshaken to this present time and
that perhaps will never pass away.

Rome showed to all time those principles of
government that enabled her to maintain it for
herself unshaken, even when its outward form
changed from monarchy with kings to a demo-
cracy with consuls and tribunes, and back again
to monarchy with emperors. Her form of
government might change, but her government

14 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

itself was never shaken. And when she ruled
her colonies by deputies, in many different arenas
she found opportunity to work out those prin-
ciples to the production of strong and stable
governments for the people. The governors
might be dishonest and vicious, but the govern-
ment itself was not vicious.

Underneath the governments of to-day,
whether monarchical, democratic, or despotic,
lie many of the same principles that had their
exemplification in the Empire of Rome.

Her jurisprudence is the jurisprudence of the
courts of the British Empire, and, indeed, of all
the civilized nations of to-day. Her science of
war that secured the adhesion of many of the
greatest generals the world has ever known, is
largely that of the generals of the present time,
in those countries where the destructive science
of war is made a study.

In Greece, philosophy and architecture and
art found their congenial home. The produc-
tions of her architects, even though many of
those productions are found as ruins only, are
studied by the architects of to-day ; while her

AND HER REPULSE.

Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders of archi-
tecture appear in many of the noblest structures
that adorn the cities of our time.

Her philosophers — Socrates and Plato and
Aristotle — still sit in the master's seat, and are
still recognized as holding in many respects un-
disputed sway over men's thinking and philoso-
phizing ; and, perhaps, there is no country of
modern times that can count among its people
such a long list of philosophers as that small and
rocky land of Greece.

But in art, especially in sculpture, she sat as
queen ; and no sculptor of to-day can be said to
have received adequate training without having
studied the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, —
the statues, the friezes, the columns that adorned
the palaces and temples of her cities.

III.

This magnificent civilization had its systems
of religion ; for religion belonged to the nation,
not to the world, and its systems were almost
as numerous as the nations.

In Rome it was marked by great splendour

16 CHRJSTJANITY'S GREAT TRIUMt'H

and mafynificence in all its rites and ceremonies.
Of the place it held in the country, we may form
some idea from what Gibbon says (''Decline and
Fall of the Roman B]mpire," chapter xxviii. —
^tate Pacjanimn at Rome), in reference to the
priests : " Their robes of purple, chariots of state,
and sumptuous entertainments, attracted the
admiration of the people, and they received from
the consecrated lands and the public revenue an
ample stipend, which liberally supported the
splendours of the priesthood and all the expenses
of the religious worship of the State. As the
service of the altar was not incompatible with
the command of armies, the Romans, after their
consulships and triumphs, aspired to the place of
Pontiff or of Augur. The seats of Cicero and of
Pompey were filled, in the fourth century, by the
most illustrious members of the senate." So
intimately was religion connected with the life
of the country, that no affair of importance,
either of war, of diplomacy or of public policy
at home, was undertaken without it3 sanction
sought in the most solemn and public way. No
less intimately associated with the personal and

AND HER REPULSE.

home life of the people, it had its Lares and
Penates, around which the most sacred associa-
tions of home often gathered.

In Greece it entered, if possible, even more in-
timately into the puVjlic and private life of the
nation. Every hill and valley was associated
with the name of some god, while the cities
were crowded — the porticos, the housetops, the
markets, the stjuares, the temples, the streets—
with cods, manv of whose statues were the pro-
ductions of sculptors whose names the world
will never let die. Keligious rites were per-
formed in the home by the master of the house,
supplying the place of family worship of to-day
in Christian lands. In the temples, on public
occasions of importance, special sacrifices were
offered and prayers were said to secure the
blessing of the deities upon great undertakings
either at home or abroad ; but regular ser-
vices were maintained by the priests at stated
times, and most temples were always open to
devout worshippers. Of the intimacy of the
association of religion with the people's national
life, we may form an idea from the fact that

18 CHRISTIANirrS GREAT TRIUMPH

Thucydides (Books II., 2, 1 ; IV., 133, 1) in his
history fixes certain dotes not merely by the
year of certain magistracies, but also by the
year of the priesthood of Chrysis.

It would be unnecessary to glance at the re-
ligious systems of the other peoples — as the
Egyptians, the Carthaginians, or those of Asia
Minor — since from the general glance given at
the place religion held in the private and public
life of Rome an;^ Greece, we may form a just
idea of its place in relation to the public and
private life of the peoples in other lands.

IV.

Now, of those countries that clustered around
the Mediterranean and of the magnificence of
whose civilization we have written in these gen-
eral terms, there is scarcely one in which litera-
ture had not its devotees and which has not sent
down to our time writings, in almost every de-
partment, worthy of a place among the immor-
tals, or at least worthy of being studied or read.
Of the orators of Greece, it is sufficient to give
the names of the ten included in the Alexau-

Ar^D HER REPULSE.

drian Canon : Antiphon, Andocides, Isocrates,
IsaBUs, i^ilschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hy-
perides and Dinarchus, with the addition of
Pericles. What country in modern times has
produced the superiors of these ? How many
countries have produced the equal of any of
them ? Of the philosophers, it is sufficient to
give the names of Pythagoras, Thales, Epicurus,
Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Their names
are known to every student of philosophy, and
much of the philosophy of modern times is either
an appropriation or a modification of that of
Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. What poets
and dramatists of modern times surpass her
Homer, her Sophocles, Euripides and Aristoph-
anes ? Almost the only names among English-
speaking writers, at least, that may be placed in
the same category, are Shakespeare and Milton.
And do not her Herodotus, the Father of History,
and her Thucydides stand in the front rank
among the world's historians ?

Although Rome cannot contend for the palm
with Greece, yet she has handed down illustrious
names that may stand side by side with hers,

,«

20 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

In oratory, although she was inferior to Greece,
whither her sons were sent to be trained in that
science, she took no mean place ; and the
orations of her Cicero are read in all the univer-
sities of to-day.

The poems, histories and dramatic productions
of Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Cjiesar, Tacitus,
Plautus and Terence are on the shelves of all
modern libraries that have any pretensions to
completeness.

Indeed, there are in the systems of education
of Germany, Fiance, England, the United States
and Canada, many principles, methods and
courses of training that have their root in those
of these ancient nations of which we have
been speaking, and which may serve as illustra-
tions of the Mediterranean world in the time of
Christ.

In the world of which we are speaking, how-
ever, there existed institutions of the most
degrading kind and a moral degradation that
bears witness to such enervation of the moral

11 r

AND HER REPULSE.

■I

nature as appals one who has lived in the brac-
mg atmosphere of a Christian land.

There was the institution of slavery, which
was universal. The calculation made by Gibbon
in the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,"
puts the number of the slaves in the time of
Claudius at 00,000,000, about equal to the num-
ber of free men in the empire. While this may
not be strictly accurate, it is as likely to be too
few as to be too many. Wilkins, in his essay
on " Education in Greece," estimates that in
Sparta and Athens there were three or four
times as many slaves as free men. The name
Phrypjian was used as synonymous with slave.
Pliny, in his " Natural History," mentions the
fact that a certain freedman, that is, one who
had himself been a slave, but had been manu-
mitted, had, on his death, left 4,116 slaves ; and
many of the wealthy Roman nobles had far
larger numbers on their estates. At one time it
was sugfjested that all Roman slaves should be
compelled to wear a certain uniform ; but Seneca
prevented the accomplishment of that purpose
by showing how great would be the danger if

22 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMI'H

the slaves should, by that means, be made
aware of their own numbers and the few-
ness of their owners. Cooper's " Justinian,"
p. 411, says: " Slaves were held yivo nullis, pro
mortuis, pro quadrupedihus \ nay, were in a
much worse state than any cattle whatsoever.
Thev had no head in the State, no name, no
title, no register. . . . They were not en-
titled to the rights and considerations of matri-
mony, and therefore had no relief in case of
adultery. . . . They could be sold, trans-
ferred or pawned as goods or personal estate,
for goods they were, and as such they were
esteemed ; they might be tortured for evidence,
punished at the discretion of their lord, and even
be put to death by his authority." Says Farrar,
in his " Early Days of Christianity " : " At the
lowest extreme of the social scale were millions
of slaves without family, without religion, with-
out possessions, who had no recognized rights,
and towards whom none had any recognized
duties, passing normally from a childhood of
* degradation to a manhood of hardship, and an
old age of unpitied neglect."

AND HER REPULSE.

This vast multitude of slaves was accumu-
lated in different ways. We have our bankrupt
courts, by which a man may, in due process of
law, be released from the obligation of his debts
when he is no longer able to discharge them ;
but when the Roman could not pay, he might
be sold, his wife and children, and all that he
had, and thus be reduced to the degraded con-
dition of slavery. The great means, however,
of recruiting the slave popula ion was by war,
which need not have any other justification
than desire of conquest, or indeed of plunder,
felt by the stronger power. Lucan, a Roman
poet who lived in the reign of Nero, blames the
people for their internal dissensions, and says,
" Shame on you ! You turned your arms against
each other when you might have been sacking
Babylon." He does not give any reason for sack-
ing Babylon ; but it is a reproach that they spent
the energy that they might have employed in
sacking that city in contending with each other.
When, by the fortunes of war, a country or a
city was at the mercy of a Roman conqueror,
he drove off vast multitudes of its citizens to

24 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

the slave markets to be sold into slavery, or
divided them up among the soldiers of his army.
The war of ^Emilius Paulus, in Macedonia,
resulted in the sale of 150,000 people into
slavery. When Lucullus triumphed in the East,
so vast was the multitude of captives that they
brought only about sixty cents of our money
apiece. At the final destruction of Jerusalem
90,000 people were sold into slavery. The slave
merchants followed in the wake of armies on
expeditions that promised well, that they might
buy up the captives and send them to the slave
markets of Athens, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome or
Delos. At some periods kidnapping supplied an
important part of the slaves.

N(»w these slaves were considered as mere
chattels, that could be disposed of at the will of
their masters, who had power of life and death
over them, and while, of course, many masters
were kind and considerate in the treatment of
their slaves, very many were guilty of the
greatest possible cruelty. Sometimes when the
owner was murdered, all his slaves were put to
death, even to the number of hundreds. After

»)

AND HER REPULSE.

a slave revolt headed b}' Spartacus, about 73
B.C., which was after a long conflict put down,
from G,000 to 10,000 of the captured slaves wete
crucifled on the Appian Wny, one of the most
public roads of Rome. So late as the time of
Trajan — among the best of the emperors — no
less than 10,000 slaves were driven into the
arena, and compelled to slaughter each other.
The awful tragedy continued for 123 days, dur-
ing which the populace of Rome employed
their leisure in sitting in the amphitheatre to
witness the bloody scene.

Licentiousness was a necessary concomitant
of this institution of slavery, and it rose into
most appalling proportions. Indeed, so degraded
was the world that prostitution had ceased to
be a sin, so that Terence in the Adelphi makes
Mincio say —

"Noll est flagitiuni, niilii erode, adulescontuluni
Scortari, ne<iue potaro."

As if it were not enough to have absolved this
crime from the guilt of sin, men had actually
incorporated it into their religion, and in the

26 CHRISTIANITY S GREAT TRIUMPH

ma<^nificent temple of Aphrodite in Corinth there
were, as Renan tells us, no less than a thousand
courtesans attached to the temple as priestesses
and ministers of lust. Infanticide was common.
It is referred to as a matter of course in Juvenal,
Terence, Tacitus, Pliny and others of the ancient
writers. When by reason of the size of the
family the new arrival was not welcome, or
when any other reason made it inexpedient that
the child shoild live, the father did not take
the new-born child in his arms, and it was
thereupon exposed and allowed to perish, or
someone took it and brought it up as a slave or
for purposes of vice.

As one casts his eves over that world bathed
in the splendour of the civilization, the refine-
ment and learning we have briefly described,
and then considers the awful profounds of
degradation and vice to which it had sunk, he
no longer wonders at the picture drawn by Paul
in the first chapter of Romans, or at that given
by the Roman Seneca, who was contemporary
with the apostle, which was scarce less appalling
Says Farrar, in his " Early Christianity," " The

AND HER REPULSE. 27

epoch which witnessed the early growth of
Christianity was an epoch of which the horror
and the degradation have rarely been equalled,
and perhaps never exceeded, in the annals of
mankind."

VI.

In this world thus pictured before us, and yet
not of it, lay, in its south-easternmost corner,
the country of Palestine — a land insignificant
in size, without harbours for trade, without
military prowess and destitute of any literature
that had ever secured a place among the writ-
ings of the world's worthies. By turns she had
been the prey of the Assyrians, the Persians, the
Macedonians, the Syrians, the Romans. The
area of the land was about two-thirds of that
of Nova Scotia. Its population, although some-
what dense, wa«i, in the aggregate, insignificant
as compared with that of many surrounding
nations, being between two and three millions.
The inhabitants were an unsocial people, desiring
no relations with others except in so far as was
necessary for purposes of trade, in the pursuit

28 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

«i

of which they penetrated into every town or
village to which they could find admittance.
They found their way in large numbers to
Egypt; they went into the towns and villages
in the mountain recesses of Asia Minor — Ico-
nium, Derbe, Lystra ; they crossed over to
Europe to Phiiippi where, however, they were
so few that they could afford a Proseucha only
— a place where prayer was wont to be made —
as the author of Acts says ; they crowded to
rich Corinth, and to Rome, from which they
were banished by the Emperor Claudius, only
to return, however, after the storm had passed
by. Wherever they went they were separate
from the rest of the population, usually by
choice ; but sometimes their neighbours found
their presence so ungrateful that, by law, they
were condemned to live in some section of the
town set apart for their use, as in Rome, where
they were placed on the western side of the
Tiber.

In spite of themselves, they were involved in
that Hellenising movement which was making
itself felt in all parts of the world ; but they

AND HER REPULSE.

struggled long and fiercely against it. Said
their teachers, a Jew who kept swine or taught
his child Greek was accursed, and the gates of
eternal life were shut to those who read the
books of other nations. But with the excep-
tion of the Sacred Scriptures, their own books
were so intolerably dull that it was scarcely
necessary for them to put in the way of
foreigners who might, for some reason or
another, seek to acquire the Hebrew language,
such obstacles as Jerome describes in some of
his writings.

We look in vain for any philosopher among
them, for any historian who concerns himself
with the greater world round about him, or for
any writer in any other department of litera-
ture who has written anything worthy of being
read. They were intolerant in all matters per-
taining to religion. Other nations would give
a place in their temples to the gods of peoples
around them ; the Jew would not allow a
worshipper of another god than Jehovah even
to enter the sacred precincts of the temple, let
alone have another divinity admitted to his

1 ''
i

30 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

shrine. Wherever he was he made himself
obnoxious by reason of the character, the fre-
quency and the demonstrativeness of his relig-
ious rites and ceremonies.

I .

Ill

VII.

Now, some time about four years prior to the
Christian era, was born in the town of Bethle-
hem in this country of Palestine, Jesus the son
of Mary, the wife of a carpenter named Joseph.
The child was inhospitably received into the
world, being born in a manger, because Joseph
and Mary could not obtain lodging in the cara-
vansary, as its accommodation had already been
secured by others. Although Matthew tells of
wise men coming from the far East to hail the
birth of Jesus, He was little welcome to some, at
least, of the people of Palestine, for it was not
long before Joseph and Mary had to carry Him
into Egypt to save Him from being slain by the
king. When at length they returned, they
made their home in Nazareth, where Jesus
passed most of His early life, perhaps in the pur-
suit of the calling of Joseph, His reputed father,

AND HER REPULSE.

and drinking '\? knowledge from home teaching
in the Scriptures, or from the Synagogue services
on the Sabbath, and on Mondays and Thursdays.
Of His boyhood we have one glimpse only.
It was when He was twelve years of age. He
was taken up to Jerusalem with His parents, who,
as devout Jews, went to the Passover, taking
Him wdth them, that the religious impressions
of His home-life might be broadened and deep-
ened by the solemn scenes and ceremonies of the
feast. The narrative is given in the Gospel
according to St. Luke, chapter ii., from verse
41 to 51. Eighteen years pass on before we get
another glimpse of Him, and then we see Him,
not in the temple or in the city, but in the
wilderness of Judea, where John the Baptist is
baptizing. It is after all the people had been
baptized that He makes Himself known and is
Himself baptized by the rough prophet of the
wilderness. It is not many days after, when He
opens His public ministry with the very same
message as John had proclaimed (Matt. iv. 17).
" Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand."

32 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

In the course of the ministry which began
with these words, He, with unvarying consis-
tency, proclaimed that no man couhl be saved
who refused to become His follower. A man
might hold the most exalted position in the
state, in society, or even in the Jewish Church ;
but if he refused to become a follower of Him, he
could not be saved. On the other hand, the pub-
licans, whom every Jew despised and hated ; the
harlots, whom all considered outcasts, and even
the Gentiles or heathen should be welcomed with
the tenderest possible welcome, and saved if
only they should follow Him. Both the slur
upon the goodness of those who were considered
the better classes, implied in the condition ex-
acted, and His willingnt s to accept the greatest
outcast on the same condition, offended the
better classes — the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the
Scribes, the Rabbis. Instead of moderating or
varying His requirements in favour of these
moral and religious people. He treated them
even with greatest sternness, uttering against
them most overwhelming denunciations.

The twenty-third chapter of Matthew, with

AND HER REPULSE.

its fierce wrath, its reiterated "Woes;" — "Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for
ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte,
and when he is become so, ye make him two-
fold more a son of hell than yourselves." — " Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for
ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which out-
wardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full
of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." — " Ye
serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye
escape tlie judgement of hell ? " This whole
chapter is made up of these denunciations, which,
for fierceness and overwhelming wrath, cannot
be equalled in any other literature ever written.
On the other hand, nowhere can be found Uie
equal of those tender stories in the fifteenth
chapter of Luke, designed as they are to show
the yearning love God feels toward the outcasts
of society who come penitently to Him.

As to what Jesus said about Himself, He
claimed the most amazing things. He declared
that He had power on earth to forgive sins, that
if men would believe on Him, they should never
die ; and with most obvious inconsistency, that

34 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

if they believed on Him, when they died He
would raise them from the dead, and meeting
them in the other world, He would protect them
from all the power of divine wrath and conduct
them to mansions He would prepare for them,
that He and they might be together and be for-
ever with God.

As we who have nineteen centuries of Chris-
tian history behind us, nineteen centuries of
Christian thought and Christian training, read
these things in cold print, they are robbed of
much of the appalling tone they had to the
Jews ; but even to us the only thing that
rescues them from being amazing blasphemy is
their amazing truth. Having made such an-
nouncements about His person, it is not sur-
prising that He claimed that He was lord even
of divine institutions, for when certain Pharisees
charged him with a violation of the Sabbath,
He declared (Luke vi. 5) that He was lord of
the Sabbath. Many of the teachings of the
most revered Rabbis He swept away, as if they
were dishonouring to God and pernicious. " Ye
have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye,

AND HER REPULSE.

and a tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you,
Resist not him that is evil; but wliosoever smiteth
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also." " Ye have heard that it was said, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy ;
but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray
for them that persecute you. . . . For if ye
love them that love you, what reward have ye ?
do not even the publicans the same \ "

Not less did He expose Himself to the hatred
of the leading men of the country by passing
over the Scribes and Pharisees, who had always
been the teachers of the people, and taking
Peter, James and John — who had spent their
earlier life in the rough and arduous callinir of
fishermen on the boisterous Sea of Galilee — and
Matthew— one of the hated publicans— and send-
ing them with eight others, whose avocations
cannot be positively determined, throughout the
land to proclaim His mission and teachino-s.

It is needless to prolong these words. But

the end was what was to be expected. He died

on the cross, deserted by almost all His disciples,

and treated with the ignominy of contempt by

3C CHRISTIANITYS GREAT TRIUMPH

the Roman officials who were concerned in His
death. What hanj^inj^ is to us, that crucifixion
was in those times to the Jew, the Greek, the
Roman. It was aj^ainst the law to put a Roman
citizen to death by crucifixion. One of the most
serious char<^es Cicero urges against Verres is
that he had been guilty of the heinous crime of
crucifying Roman citizens. What is surprising,
however, in the case of Christ, is that there can
scarcely be said to have been two parties on the
question of His crucifixion. It is true, no doubt,
that His disciples tried, in a feeble way, to
secure His escape ; but what were they, com-
pared to the great multitude of the community
at large, that can scarcely la said to have been
divided on the question at all ?

VIII.

Thus ended this extraordinary life and
ministry. No ! it did not end thus : for, on the
third day after His crucifixion. He rose from the
dead. Even that extraordinary event, however,
was discredited, at first by some of his own
disciples and afterwards by many of the public

AND HER REPULSE.

at large, so tliat twenty-five c thirty years
afterwards, the story was still current that the
disciples had come by ni<;ht and stolen His body
while the Roman soldiers who guarded the tomb
were asleep.

Now such, in brief outline, is the story of the
life, teaching, death and resurrection with which
the Apostles were to go forth to conquer the
world. But who were the men who were to go
forth with this story to the mighty con(iuest ?
First, Peter, who belonged to the town of
Bethsaida (Huuse of Fish), a fishing town on the
shores of the Sea of Galilee, a water that was
amazingly prolific in fish of many varieties.
The sea was a boisterous one upon which sudden
squalls swept down, to the destruction of many
a craft. To ply their calling upon its waters,
the fishermen required strength and a rude
vigour such as are possessed by the hardy fisher-
men on the shores of Nova Scotia. In summer-
time they were not unaccustomed to prosecute
their work in a state of nudity, as we may infer
from the reference in John xxi. 7, where Peter
himself is said to be naked ; for while, no doubt,

38 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

a person was sometimes said to be naked
(yi)juros) when his outside garments were re-
moved, and so to speak, he was in his shirt
sleeves, as Geikie gives us to understand in his
''Life of Christ" (Vol. II., p. 614), it is quite
probable that sometimes they toiled stript al-
together of their clothing. At best, a fisherman's
calling is not calculated to promote refinement
and grace, does not promote intellectual attain-
ments and elegant utterance of one's thoughts.
Peter did not prove an exception in respect to
these things. He was not converted till young
manhood, at least, when his opportunities for
education and training, if ever he had them, had
gone. He had not, however, escaped the evil
habits of fishermen, for when in after life, he is
charged, on the occasion of Christ's trial, with
beinof one of His followers, he denies with oaths
and curses — words that do not rise to the lips
unless they are familiar, or are the reassertion
of habits of former times. As a compensation
there had come to Peter a vigour and self-reliance
that always stood him in good stead on occasions
of difficulty ; a loud and strong voice that he

AND HER REPULSE.

could " lift up " and that could make itself heard
anywhere, and a constitution that was a strant^er
to those ailments that too often harassed the
Apostle Paul, and to which he refers more than
once in tones of sorrow and pain. Then there
were James and John, two fishermen brought up
in the same town as Peter, in their early life
fiery and hot-headed, so that even after they
have become disciples of Jesus, He needs to
rebuke them for desirin^^ to have fire brouMit
down from heaven i) consume a Samaritan
village that had refii.std hospitality to their
Master. Sons of Thunder they are, who need
the moderating hand of Jesus constantly near to
restrain and to make them useful in His cause.
And there was Matthew also, a publican, who
could scarcely be a very great source of strength
to the Saviour's c-iuse among a Jewish popula-
tion. Indeed, he was not strictly a publican ;
but only one of the subordinates or jwrtitores
who were hated even more than the publicans,
inasmuch as the subordinate can be more safely
despised than the master. The proverb said,
"Bears and lions might be the fiercest wild

' I. '

i|l^

40 CHRISTIANJTrS GREAT TRIUMPH

beasts in the forest ; but publicans an<l informers
were the worst in the city," and in this estimate
the povtitores were included amonf^ the pub-
licans {vide Geikie, "Life of Christ," Vol. L, pp.
288, 289).

When we have named these we have mentioned
all the original apostles, or even disciples, whose
names are connected with any special work for
Christ, so far, at least, as the Scripture record
goes. Even after the resurrection and ascension,
when the faith of the apostles had been restored
by frequent intercourse with Jesus, it does not
appear that there was any very general enthu-
siasm among the disciples at large, if we may
judge from the fact referred to in the first
chapter of Acts, where we have a record of a
meeting of the disciples in the city of Jerusalem ;
but the number of those present (if indeed it
does not mean the number of disciples in Jeru-
salem) was only about one hundred and twenty.

AND HER REPULSE.

IX.

Now these men and others, whose names are
not given, preached ir Jerusalem, and, on the
day of Pentecost, no less than 3,000 persons
were converted. Their ministry was continued
in the city, and " the Lord added to them day hy
day those that were being saved." A little
later Luke, the author of the Acts of the
Apostles, says, " Believers were the more added
to the Lord, TiiuUitudes both of men and women,"
and " the Word of God increased ; and the
number of the disciples midtiplied^ Jerusalem
exceedingly : and a great company of the priests
were obedient to the faith." Meanwhile " there
arose on that day a great persecution against the
Church that was in Jerusalem ; and they were
all scattered abroad throughout the regions of
Judea and Samaria, except the apostles." Among
those compelled to flee before the fury of the
storm was Philip, a disciple, who by the choice
of his brethren, had been associated with six
others, appointed to distribute the supplies of

42 CHklSTIANITrs GREAT TRIUMPH

the church to the widows, as we have it in the
account in Acts vi. Under the promptings of
the Holy Spirit, or, as some would have it, of
his own motion, Philip began to preach the
Gospel, assuming that he needed no other
ordination than that which comes throujjh the
anointing of the Spirit. He went down to
Samaria and preached the Gospel to the people
of that city ; and '' the multitudes gave heed
with one accord unto the things that were
spoken by Philip." A little later, he was the
means of converting the officer or chamberlain
of Candace, Queen of the Ethiopians, who was
returning to his home, by the desert road that
led to Gaza; and, no doubt, the new convert
carried the Gospel to his distant African home.

The wrath of man God made to praise him,
and everywhere the very fury of the storm
fanned the flame of Christian zeal. The very
atmosphere seemed to be electric with the divine
influence, so that converts were made without
any apparent human intervention. In the Acts
of the Apostles a remarkable illustration of this
is given. There was a young Jew named Saul,

AND HER REPULSE.

and also called Paul, born in the university town
of Tarsus in Cilicia, of parents belonj^ing to the
tribe of Benjamin, who perhaps had somewhat
recently removed from the town of Giscala, in
Galilee. The father was possessed of the rights
of Roman citizenship, which he transmitted to
his son, so that he could boast of being a free-
born Roman. The intensity of the Jewish spirit
that pervaded his family may be seen from the
fact that, although abundant facilities were
provided for education in Tarsus, he was sent to
receive his education in the school of Rabbi
Gamaliel, in Jerusalem. Whether he had first
used the opportunity of attending the university
at home is a disputed point. But his Jewish
zeal was heightened by training at Jerusalem;
for although Gamaliel was a liberal-minded
Rabbi, Saul could not help drinking in some, at
least, of that intense Jewish spirit which was
everywhere abroad, and that zeal for the House
of the Lord, which was leading many to do, in
the name of the Lord, things which were too
wicked to be allowed by man. His experience
at Jerusalem led him, no doubt, to share this

44 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

spirit, so that he was soon looked upon as one of
the rising young men of the nation, and as was
to be expected, took a share in persecuting the
Christians. When Stephen was stoned, those
who did the dreadful deed laid down their
clothes at the feet of this younn' man Saul, who,
to that extent of carinor for the garments of the
executioners, shared in the crime of murdering,
under tlie form of law, the first Christian martyr.
That whetted his desire for the blood of the
Christians, and it was not very long before he
applied to the authorities for letters to Damascus,
a city of Syria, some 150 miles to the north-east
of Jerusalem — authorizing him to break up the
Christian Church iti that city and to destroy the
members. This was some four or five years
after the crucifixion of Jesus ; so that although
the Saviour had never preached in that city, and
we have no record of the apostles or other
disciples having done so, yet a church had arisen
there, that by its numbers, zeal and enthusiasm,
attracted the hostility of the authorities of the
Jewish Church a hundred and fifty miles away.
But Saul, who in his early life had some way

AND HER REPULSE.

acquired the name of Paul, just as Thomas be-
came Didymus, or Levi became Matthew, or
Lebba3us became Thadd^^us, was stricken down
on the way by a wonderful manifestation of
God's glory, and was converted to Christ. That
conver.-sion meant the conversion of many thou-
sands durinty the next twenty-five or thirty
years.

It would be tedious and unnecessary'' to our
purpose to trace the progress of Christianity
through the multitude of such instances as these,
since they are recorded in Scripture ; but, in spite
of opposition it was triumphant almost every-
where. Let it suffice to say that Peter went
down to Cne^area and preached the Gospel to
Cornelius, and his household and many other
persons were converted, so that afterwards, when
in its turn the garrison was transferred to Rome,
they became witnesses for Christ in the imperial
city. In its triumphant march the Gospel reached
Antioch in Syria, and cleansed the foulness of
that magnificent city ; reached the Islands of the
Sea ; reached the heart of Asia Minor, gaining
victory in Iconium, in Antioch of Pisidia, in

!■

CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

^'^

■!

«'■ I!

Derbe, in Lystra, Colosse, Epliesus, Troas, Pontus,
Cappadocia, Bithynia ; and crossing to Europe,
triumphed in Philippi, gaining a victory more
important to the future of the continent than
that which Octavius gained nearly one hundred
years before, over Brutus and Cassius ; triumphed
in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Athens, in Corinth,
in Rome ; so that, so soon as the time of Nero,
only about thirty years after the death of Christ,
according to Tacitus, the Roman historian, there
was a " vast multitude " of Christians in the
imperial city ; and the Epistles of Paul, Peter
and the other New Testament writers, who refer
to the matter, bear witness to the large numbers
who were disciples of Christ in other parts of
the world.

By the time of the Emperor Trajan, say, 100
A.D., the world was full of Christians. Pliny,
the Governor of Bithynia and Pontus in Asia
Minor, reporting to Trajan, declares that the
heathen temples were almost deserted, that the
sacred victims could scarcely find purchasers,
that the Christian superstition had infected the
cities and had also extended to the villages and

AND HER REPULSE.

country districts generally. Justin Martyr, who
wrote somewhere about 135 A.D., says in his
" Dialogue with Typho," " There exists not a
people, Greek or barbarian, or any other race of
men, by whatever name or manners they may
be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or
agriculture, whether they dwell under tents or
wander about in w^aggons, among whom prayers
are not offered up in the name of the crucified
Jesus, to the Father and Creator of all things."
TertuUian, writing in the north of Africa some-
time between 150 and 200 A.D., in his "Answer
to the Jews," says : " For upon whom else have
the universal nations believed, but upon the
Christ wdio is already come ? For on whom have
the nations believed ? — Parthians, Medes, Elam-
ites, and they who inhabit Mesopotamia,
Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, and they who
dwell in Pontus and Asia, and Pamphylia, tar-
riers in Egypt, and inhabiters of the region of
Africa which is beyond Cyrene, Romans and
sojourners, yes, and in Jerusalem, Jews and all
other nations ; as, for instance, by this time the
varied races of the Gsetulians and manifold con-

48 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

; I

; 1

fines of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains,
and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the
haunts of the Britons (inaccessible to the
Romans, but subjugated to Christ), and of the
Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and
Scythians, and of many remote nations and of
provinces and islands, many to us unknown, and
which we can scarce enumerate ? In all which
places the name of the Christ who is already

come reigns.

Now while such words as these written by a
heathen governor in Asia Minor and by a (Chris-
tian writer in the north of Africa, may both be
exaggerated, we may, from their statements,
taken in connection with the records in the New
Testament, form some idea of the triumphant
march of Christianity in the face of persecu-
tions and opposition everywhere. The progress
that was thus rapid continued till the whole
Roman Empire was at the feet of Jesus Christ.
There were times when this rapid progress
aroused the hostility of the government, and
persecution followed ; but the onflow of the
tide was scarcely checked at all.

AND HER REPULSE.

At the close of the first century and beginning
of the second, Trajan, one of the best emperors,
a conservative ruler who seemed to think it his
duty to maintain the established religion of the
country, administered the Roman laws against
Christianity, which was a rellgio illicita (an
unlawful religion), in such a way as to cause in
some parts of the empire, at least, the persecu-
tion of the Christians ; but it can scarcely be
said that he was a voluntary persecutor. His
course is illustrated by the case of Bithynia in
the northern parts of Asia Minor. Pliny, the
younger, who was propraetor of the country, and
to whom we have just referred, w^rote Trajan ask-
ing to be directed as to his course in relation
to the Christians. We sum up the correspond-
ence in the words of Ramsay (" Church in Roman
Empire "). Pliny asked :

1. Should any discrimination be made between
ditierent culprits on account of youth ? In other
words, are extenuating circumstances to be taken
into account ?

2. Should those who repent be pardoned ?

3. What is the precise nature of the offence

50 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

ii ;

il ^

a 3

which is to be investigated and puni^shed ? Is
the mere name Christian, without any proof
that serious moral offences have been committed,
to be punished, or is it definite crimes conjoined
with the name, that deserve punishment ?

Trajan replies, not in form, but in fact, as
follows :

1. Pliny's procedure has been correct, i.e., his
original assumption that the name of Christian,
if persisted in, deserved death, was right.

2. No universal rule applicable to all cases
can be laid down, i.e., extenuating circumstances
are to be considered according to the discretion
of the governor.

3. Penitence deserves pardon, if shown in acts
by compliance with rites of the Roman religion.

4. The governor is not to search for the Chris-
tians ; but if they are formally accused by an
avowed (not an anonymous) accuser, the penalty
must be inflicted.

Of course, persecution carried on in that way,
although bad enoufjh, was not so fierce as some-
times it became, and as indeed it became in the
next reign, that of Domitian, when without the

AND HER REPULSE,

forms of law multitudes were sacrificed in many
parts of the empire to the fury of the heathen
populace.

In the reign of Decius, about 250 A.D., a most
cruel and relentless persecution was undertaken,
for the avowed purpose of exterminating Chris-
tianity from the empire.

An edict was issued requiring all Christians
to appear before the magistrate in their own
locality, and to abjure Christianity and to sacri-
fice to the gods of Rome. They were not to wait
for some one to accuse them ; but they must
accuse themselves by going to the magistrate and
acknowledging themselves to be Christians, and
then they must forsake their religion and sacrifice
to the gods whose altars they had forsaken.
Many abandoned Christianity, some presented
forged certificates to the effect that they had paid
worship to the Roman deities; but a still larger
number suflfered death under different forms and
with varied tortures " not accepting deliverance,"
nor " counting their lives dear unto them."

About fifty years afterwards Diocletian entered
upon a persecution, if possible, more cruel and

■•■ill
1

J :

KiH I

52 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

relentless still. He issued edict after edict, each
designed to intensify the persecution and to ex-
tend it more widely than its predecessor. As
Snuth says in his " Ecclesiastical History," " All
Christian churches throughout the empire were
to be destroyed and their property confiscated,
and all copies of the Scriptures were to be given
up to be burnt in public by the magistrates ; all
who practised Christian worship in private were
doomed to death. Christians were deprived of
their civil rights ; freemen were shut out from
all honours and public employments ; slaves from
the hope of manumissiun. Debarred even from
the common benefit of the law, they were placed
at the mercy of informers ; for, while the magis-
trates were enjoined to hear all complaints
asfainst them, the Christians were forbidden to
bring their complaints before the tribunals."
Then, as if this were not enough, death was
proclaimed as the penalty, so that, in the words
of Eusebius, the swords were dull and the weary
executioners had to relieve each other ; and even
the wild beasts at last being satiated with blood,
refused to attack the Christians any longer.

cT^

AND HER REPULSE.

The persecution exhausted itself at length,
and in 311 the Emperor Ga^rius issued an edict
of toleration, and in 313 the Emperor Constan
tine issued a second edict, not of toleration
merely, but of preparation for the step that was
soon taken — the recoj^nition of Christianity as
the legal religion of the empire, when " the
Church ascends the throne of the C;\3sars under
the banner of the once despised, now triumphant
cross,"

At lenjjth the victory had been o;ained and
the Roman empire lay at the feet of Christ ;
for, although the old religions, rooted as they
were in the institutions, the civilization, the
business, the home and family life of the people,
and in the vices of the city and the country
alike, at intervals made efforts to regain their
standing, they never succeeded in doing so.

Now it would not be fair to conclude that the
victory was one in which spiritual religion and
genuine Christianity alone were found trium-
phant — that the new religion had succeeded in
making all the people true disciples of Christ,
find that worldly influences did not prevail witl^

V <

54 CHRISTIANirrS GREAT TRIUMPH

many ; or that even Constantine himself was
much more than a Christian in name. But it
would be safe to say, what is sufficient for our
purpose, that the percentage of genuine Chris-
tians — men with whom the spirit was more
than the form, whose heart was imbued with
vital godliness — was just as large as it would be
in any general ingathering into the fold of
Christianity in any mission-field to-day.

In the course of the struggle, many of the con-
verts had shown the genuineness of their con-
version by enduring, without a murmur, most
cruel tortures, and even death, at the hands of
heathen persecutors. Blandina, a female slave,
who endured tortures and death with almost
superhuman fortitude, and Pothinus, a bishop,
who, at the age of ninety, was cruelly put to
death, may serve tr illustrate the spirit of the
Christians in Gaul. Three young men — Revo-
catus, Saturninus and Secundulus — who, on the
anniversary of the birthday of the Associate-
Emperor Geta, were flung to the hungry lions
and leopards in the amphitheatre ; and Perpetua,
p, widqw of only twenty-two years of age, and

AND HER REPULSE.

Felicitas, a young female slave, both of whom
were tossed in the arena on the horns of an
infuriated cow, then despatched by the sword,
may serve to illustrate the spirit of the Chris-
tians in the north of Africa. While Polycarp,
of the Church in Smyrna, who, when arrested
and commanded to curse Christ, replied, " Eighty
and six years have I served Christ, and He has
done me nothing but good, and how could I
curse Him, my Lord and Saviour ? " and was
then led to the stake and burned, may illustrate
the spirit of the Christians in Asia Minor. It
would be easy to multiply names from the great
army of martyrs, but sufficient has been urged
to show that the faith and devotion of that time
were at least ecjual to the average in the case of
converts from among the heathen to-day.

The Christians of that age wrote works that
still live ; and, in spite of their fanciful inter-
pretations of Scripture, their crude views on
many uf the theological teachings of Chris-
tianity, they are read by the Church of to-day.
And when we remember that their authors had
only recently stepped from the darkness of

66 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

\\ 1;

• I;

heathenism into the lij^ht of Christianity, we
cannot but wonder that they contain so much
that is of value to the Christian Church after
the lapse of so many Christian centuries. Up
to the time of the Emperor Constantine, Clement
of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias, Justin
Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Clement of Alex-
andria, Origen, Dionysius, Gregory Thaumatur-
gus, Irena3'as, TertuUian, Cyprian, Novatian
Arnobius, Lactantius, and a host of others that
we need not enumerate — men, some of whom
had been rescued from the deepest profounds of
heathenism — wrote treatises that have come
down to our time — a fact that is no insignificant
proof that, in those days, Christianity made
conquests that might fairly rank with any of
her victories of modern times.

All this was achieved without the assistance
of wealth, either in the possession of those who
went abroad preaching or in the treasury of any
organization, such as the modern Missionary
Society that stands behind the missionary of
to-day ; without the aid of civil or political
power ; indeed, in face of the opposition of the

AND HER REPULSE,

governments of all countries, even in face of the
hostility and contempt of all influential classes
of the land from which the missionaries went.
In one word, this most tremendous revolution
which brought the world to the feet of Jesus
Christ and gave the throne of almost universal
empire to a Christian emperor was wrought by
men who themselves had lost their distinct
nationality, their capital city having been
annihilated and their country reduced to the
status of a mere subject province of the very
empire they conquered for Christ.

As Dr. Schaff has said, " The most perfect
doctrine and life were described by unschooled
fishermen of Galilee, who never before had
been outside of Palestine, and we^e scarcely
able to read and write, and the profoundest
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven — the incar-
nation, redemption, regeneration, resurrection —
were taught by the apostles to poor and illiterate
peasants, slaves and freedmen. For ' God chose
the foolish things of the world, that He might
put to shame them that are wise ; and God
chose the weak things of the world, that He

I (

68 CHRJSTIANITrS GREAT TRIUMPH,

might put to shame the things that are strong ;
and the base things of the world, and the things
that are despised, did God choose ; yea, and the
thino-s that are not, that He might bring to
nauffht the things that are ; that no flesh should
glory before God."

' \\\

In the north-western corner of the Pacific
Ocean lies the Empire of Japan, a name which
is a corruption of Marco Polo's term Zipanj^u,
which itself represents the Chinese word Shi-
pen-kue, or land of the rising sun. The people
of the country, however, call it Dai Nihon.

It consists of a vast number of islands — said
to be about four thousand — some of which, how-
ever, are so insignificant, as to be scarcely worthy
of being considered at all, as they are little more
than the mere summits of submarine volcanic
mountains. Their total area is variously esti-
mated from 130,000 to 155,000 square miles.
There are four main islands that can be con-
sidered as constituting the empire, and they lie
together in the form of an irregular crescent ex-
tending from Saghalien on the north, at latitude

62 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

r^ I

iii !'

Ill

45°, to about the 30th parallel south, which lies
about 4' to the south of Corea, thus coverinfr a
distance of nearly 15° of latitude.

The northernmost of the islands, formerly
called Yezo, but now known as "The Hak-
kaido," or north country, used to be considered
as uninhabitable for any except the aboriginal
Ainos — a race of painted, hairy, uncivilized
people, who spend most of their time out of
doors. Recently, however, the Japanese gov-
ernment has been colonizing it and opening it
up for further settlement. Next, to the south,
lies Hondo, which formerly went under the
name Nippon. It is by far the largest of the
group, having an area of about 80,000 square
miles, and being commonly spoken of as " The
Mainland." Upon it are situated nearly all the
chief towns of the empire, while almost all the
foreign trade is done through its ports. To the
south and east of Hondo lies Shikoku, or Four
Provinces, so situated as to round out, in that
part, the convex side of the crescent. Still far-
ther to the south, but in a westerly direction, lies
Kiu Shiu, the last of the group, and having an

.^.

AND HER REPULSE,

area of about lo^OOO square miles. The northern
arm of the crescent approaches almost within
sinrht of the Russian island of Saj^halien, while
the southern arm approaches so near to Corea
that vessels may cross the strait between the two
without losing sight of land. The whole coun-
try bears witness to its volcanic orifjin. beino-
mountainous and rocky, so that it is doubtful if
more than one-twelfth of the total area can ever
be cultivated. A mountain ridge runs, like a
backbone, from north to south of the crescent,
interrupted only where the islands are separated
from each other by the narrow straits cut
through by the erosive power of the cur-
rents of the ocean. East and west from this
central ridge, there run down to the coast
mountain spurs that terminate in bold headlands,
so that although here and there are a few plains,
almost the entire country is broken by mountain

ranges.

As we have said, the whole country is of vol-
canic origin, and, indeed, the process of forma-
tion does not yet seem complete ; for, according
to geological observations carried on durino- g,

64 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

F '

long series of years, some of the islands still
appear to be rising farther out of the ocean, de-
cade by decade. Eighteen volcanoes, still active,
give constant indications of the activity of the
geological forces at work within, while earth-
quakes are of almost daily occurrence in some
part or other of the islands — indeed, no less than
eighty-seven distinct shocks have been observed
within twenty-four hours. Much damage and
loss of life have sometimes resulted. So late as
1854, an earthquake occurred in Hondo that
threw down hundreds of houses and destroyed
the lives of several thousands of people.

The scenery of the country is very striking.
In almost every direction the land is diversified
by mountains, of which some assume proportions
alpine in their grandeur and magnificence. The
most noted, as well as most striking, peak in all
Japan, is the volcanic cone of Fusiyama, as it is
commonly called, which lies some seventy miles
south-west of Tokyo, and attains an altitude of
about 14,000 feet. It is capped with snow most
of the year, while its craters and hollows retain
the snow all the year round. Having many

AND HER REPULSE.

weird associations gathering about it, it has
been from time immemorial the scat of a shrine,
to which many religious pilgrims resort, liak-
usan, on the western side of Hondo, rises to the
height of 9,000 feet, while a large number of
other peaks of respectable altitude are to be
found in dilforent parts of the country.

The Inland Sea, as that part of tlie ocean is
called, which is partly enclosed by the islands of
Hondo, Shikoku and Kiu Shiu, adds much to the
beauty of the scenery in that region of country,
and in summer especially, presents a most
charming appearance ; while the narrowness of
the islands and their irregrular coast line brinfj a
very large portion of the interior within sight of
the ocean.

The people themselves claim that there is a
larije number of safe harbours, notwithstandincf
the fact that much of the coast is broken and
bold ; and no less than two hundred and ninety,
large and small, are marked on the charts.

Vegetation is abundant and very luxuriant,
owing to the great amount of moisture in the
atmosphere, and Howers of many varieties grow

66 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

almost everywhere, the camellia growing to the
height of fort}'' feet. The mulberry, which pro-
vides in its leaves the food for the silkworm, is
much cultivated, while the family of the conifers
attains to great magnificence, and is perhaps
represented by more varieties than in any other
country in the world.

Japan has many cities of considerable size and
several of very large proportions. Tokyo, for-
merly called Yedo, the capital of Japan, has about
800,000 people; Kioto, 567,000, and Ozaka,
531,000 ; while the most recent statistics put
the population of the empire at about 40,000,-
000. Tokyo is a town of vast size. In former
times, when means of information were not so
accessible or so reliable as now, the city was
supposed to be the London of the East. Oli-
phant, who was with Lord Elgin, when in 1858
he made a treaty with Japan, was so impressed
with the size of the city that, writing in 1860
his narrative of the mission, he says, " The pres-
ent population would, in all probability, be found
to exceed 2,000,000"; while the Russian navi-
gator Golovnin, who, in the early part of this

I!i

AND HER REPULSE.

century was a prisoner in the city, makes the
wild estimate of 8,000,000. For these extrava-
gant estimates a justification, at least an excuse,
may be found in the extent of the area covered
by the city and suburbs, which is about sixty
square miles, while the city proper, very densely
populated as it is, covers about twenty-eight
square miles.

II.

The history of Japan is said to begin with
Jimmu Tenno, who, if indeed he is a real and
not a mythical personage, was the first emperor,
being the fifth from Aniaterasu, the heaven-
illuminating goddess who was born into this
world. Dr. J. J. Hoffman, the author of a
Japanese grammar, published in Leyden, 1808,
fixes the date of Jimmu's accession to the throne,
as February 19, 6G0 B.C. It is not necessary,
however, that we should accept with implicit
confidence this date, fixing with such nice
accuracy the time of an event so long ago. In
point of fact, if we take the best authorities, we
shall fix the beginning of the reliable history of

68 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

the country somewhere about the fifth century
A.D,; although there is no doubt that so early
as the close of the second century, the Empress
Jingu Kogo, who ascended the throne of her
husband, who died when in the field quelling an
insurrection of his subjects, having put down
the rebels, undertook an expedition against
Corea. No other reason for the expedition was
given than the desire to cause the arms of Japan
" to shine beyond the seas " ; no doubt, however,
the real explanation is to be found in the wish
of the shrewd empress to divert the minds of her
subjects from their wrongs at home by an
expedition abroad. The expedition w^as success-
fully accomplished without bloodshed, for the
Coreans were ignorant not only that an enemy
was at their doors, but even of the existence of
people beyond the sea ; so that when the
Japanese forces came in sight the Coreans were
paralyzed with mingled fanazement and fear,
and immediately submitted. The date of this
invasion of Corea is put at 203 A.D.

On her return from the expedition, Jingu, a
few months after her husband's death, was

AND HER REPULSE.

-r,

delivered of a son, Ojin, who became a great
warrior, and on his death in 313 was deified as
God of War; and so late as 1874, when the
Japanese undertook war against Formosa, many
of the troops before embarking on the steamers
visited the shrine of Ojin to supplicate his
protection.

This was the first time the Japanese had ever
been brought into contact with Asia, and the
contact was fraujjht with far greater conse-
quences to Japan than to Corea. From the date
of the conquest in 203 A.D. to the latter part of
the sixth century, there was, at intervals, an
influx into Japan from Corea and China of
skilled artizans of all kinds, scholars and teachers
who brought with them the arts, letters, astron-
omy, medicine, the Chinese language, silkworms
and the mulberry to supply them with food, and,
the most important thing of all, the Buddhist re-
ligion, which modified and corrupted the ancient
religi(m of the country. Shinto, by the foreigner
commonly called Shintoism or Sintooism, the
most ancient form of Japanese religion, is
essentially the same as the pre-Confucian type

70 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

of Chinese relij^ion, and in all probability came
into Japan (before the dawn of her hi.'story)
from the Asiatic mainland. It is without a code
of morals or abstract doctrines, it has no
developed doctrine of the soul's immortality, it
has no idols or images of any kind : nor has it
any representation of deity, its sole symbols
being a mirror and the goJtei, or strips of paper
notched at the edges and suspended from the
tops of wands of wood. One of its chief and
most distinguishing characteristics is the deifica-
tion of the emperors, scholars and heroes, and
the worship of ancestors. In its early form it
had no temples strictly so called ; but on some
hill-top or by some river-side or in some quiet
forest grove, the priest, robed in white, assembled
the people to render thanks to the gods for
blessings and to make confession of sins. These
acts of worship were followed by sacrifices of
the products of the soil, of the chase, of the net.
Later on a feast of purification was celebrated
twice a year — in the sixth month and again in
the twelfth — when the people ar^sembled ^ +^^he
side of a river and, after prayers, peri.o.aied

AND HER REPULSE.

their ablutions, when they were pronounced
pure from the sins of the past six months and
sent to their homes with the favour of the gods
resting upon them. At a later period temples
were introduced, of the severest style of archi-
tecture, however, but no matter of what pro-
portions or of how great importance the temple
might be, its sole symbols of the divinity were
the gohei and the mirror — the mirror being an
imitation of that which was brought down from
heaven by Amaterasu, at creation, the original
itself being in the chief temple at Isd. In 1872,
the Shinto shrines numbered 128,123. Shinto
priests, although of different ranivs, are known
simply as shrine keepers. Strictly speaking
they were government officials, although they
can scarcely be said to hold that relation now ;
but in 1872 there were 76,119 of them. The
Kojiki, that is, the Shinto Bible, compiled 712
A.D., is filled with narratives, many of them
very fanciful, but it is destitute of any elements
which we are accustomed to consider as per-
taining to religion, containing neither precepts,
morals, doctrines nor ritual. According to this

72 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

system of religion, Japan is the land of the gods,
and the Mikado, who is descended from them, is
their vicegerent on earth ; hence he is looked
upon with extreme reverence. Shinto was much
modified and corrupted by Buddhism, which was
introduced from China ; but, at the close of last
century, a revival of pure Shinto was begun,
under a great reformer, Motsori, who brought in
again the native purity of that system. So late
as 1872, the Japanese Department of Religion
summed up the principles of it and promulgated
them through the empire as follows : "(I) Thou
shalt honor the gods, and love thy country.
(2) Thou shalt clearly understand the principles
of heaven and the duty of man. (3) Thou shalt
revere the Mikado as thy sovereign, and obey
the will of his court."

A minute analysis of Shinto reveals the fact
that, in reality, it is not properly a religion at
all ; but, as William E. Griffis wrote in the New
York Independent in 1871, it is, "in its higher
forms, simply a cultured and intellectual atheism.
In its lower forms, it is blind obedience to
governmental and priestly dictates." Or, as

AND HER REPULSE.

Rev. Dr. Brown says, " It is in no proper sense
of the term a religion. It has rath(^r the look
of an original Japanese invention." So that as
Griffis says, in his "The Mikado's Empire,"
"Swarms of petty deities, who have human
passions, and are but apotheosized liistorical
heroes, fill the pantheon of Shinto. The end
and aim of even its most sincere adherents
and teachers is political. Strike out the dogma
of the divinity of the Mikado and the duty of
all Japanese to obey him implicitly, and almost
nothinij is left of modern Shinto."

III.

The other great religious system that may be
said to divide with Shinto the allenfiance of the
people was Buddhism, which, as we have already
said, first came over from China, in the sixth
century, although many contend that it was
brought over about the close of the third, when
one Wani, a Corean scholar, came to Japan and
resided at the court of the Mikado for the
purpose of instructing his .son in Asiatic learning.
The probabilities are against the earlier date,

U CHRISTIANITTS GREAT TRIUMPH

■ : 1

however. In all essential pa*' ulars, the
Buddhism of Japan is the same u X which,
in India, China, Biirmah and elsewheie, includes
adherents numbering in all probability about
400,000,000. It has a lofty philosophy, and a
code of morals inferior to that alone of the
religion of Christ. The transmigration of souls,
or metempsychosis, and the entire equality of
all men as to sinfulness and misery and as to
the possibility of b \g delivered from both
through knowledge, are fundamental precepts.
According to its teachings, all souls have lived
for endless ages in previous states, for sins
committed in which, the miseries of this world
are the punishments. And when the soul leaves
this world it must pass through other states or
stages of life, superior or inferior, until, in the
course of ages, it shall be absorbed in Buddha
and its conscious existence be lost forever. In
its early purity, its morals differed little, if any,
from those of Christianity. They are summed
up as follows in " The Mikado's Empire " : " Be-
sides the cardinal prohibitions against murder,
stealing, adultery, lying, drunkenness, and un-

AND HER REPULSE,

chastity, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anther,
pride, suspicion, j^ieediness, gossiping, cruelty to
animals, is guarded against by special precepts.
Among the virtues recommended, we tind not
only reverence of parents, care of children, sub-
mission to authority, gratitude, moderation in
time of prosperity, submission in time of trial,
equanimity at all times, but virtues such as the
duty of forgiving insults, and not rewarding evil
with evil." It is not necessary to say how far
the devotees of Buddhism fell short of its moral
exactions.

When it arrived in Japan, it had already seen
twelve centuries of its history, during which time
it had elaborated an ecclesiastical system of most
imposing proportions. It had its priests, its
monastic system, its systematized theology, in
which were included sensuous heavens, hells with
materialized punishments, an elaborated escha-
tology, a hagiology of duly graded saints, and
masses to be procured by purchase; so that it
has been said to be Roman Catholicism without
Christ and in an Asiatic dress. To many of the
Japanese Buddhism was peculiarly attractive.

r. !

76 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

It i

It presented a positive system of morals, a lofty
philosophy, and an ecclesiastical system of
striking and splendid proportions. Among the
learned and higher classes, it made rapid head-
way ; but its almost universal triumph was not
brought about till well on in the eleventh or
twelfth century, and then only by incorporating
w^ithin itself much of Shinto ; so that the deiHed
heroes and local deities of tlie latter are all in-
cluded in the pantheon of Buddhism as incarna-
tions of Buddha.

In the course of the centuries, Buddhism itself
w^as divided into different sects characterized by
peculiarities of various kinds, but all adhering
to th3 essentials of Buddhism. The chief of these
sects are the following: Tendai, Shingon, Zen,
Jodo, Shin, Nichiren, Ji, having among them,
according to the census of 1872, 98,914 temples,
75,925 priests, 9,021 nuns, 37,827 student novices,
or about a total of all classes of religieux, some of
which are not classified in this list, of 211,846.
Manv of the temples and relisious houses of the
Buddhists are of striking proportions and mag-
nificence. So triumphant had been the progress

AND HER REPULSE.

of Buddhism that, in the sixtcentli century, it
aroused the bitter hostility of the Shintoists, so
that one of the descendants of tlie priestly
family established by Ota Chi.cazane, a prince
with little respect, however, for religion, Nobu-
naga by name, undertook the extermination of
the whole system from the country. He assem-
bled his warriors and marched acfainst the
strongholds of the Buddhists, for such many of
their religious establishments were. Of their
vast size and fortress-like character we may
form an idea from a description of one of them
destroj^ed by Nobunaga, in 1571. It was situated
at Hiyeizan, on Lake Bivva, and was, perhaps,
more extensive than any other in the empire.
" The grounds, adorned and beautified with the
rarest art of the native landscape gardener, in-
closed thirteen valleys and over five hundred
temples, shrines and priestly dwellings. Here
thousands of monks were congregated. They
chanted before gorgeous altars, celebrated their
splendid ritual, revelled in luxury and licentious-
ness, drank their sak(5, eat tlie forbidden viands,
and dallied with their concubines, or hatched

I ^■^'

78 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

plots to li<iflit or fan the Haines of feudal war, so
as to make the quarrels of the clans and chiefs
redound to their aggraiidi/enient. They trusted
profoundly to their professedly sacred character
to shield them from all dan^jer." Havin": sat
down before this monastery, Nobunaga ordered
it to be set on tire, and amidst the great con-
flagration the most dreadful scenes of slaughter
took place. The priests and their families —
children, concubines, and aged monks — were
slaughtered without mercy, and the whole
establishment utterly destroyed. The persecu-
tion swept through the land, so that Buddhism
was almost annihilated, and even to this day, it
can scarcely be said to have recovered from the
blow. Such, in brief outline, are the systems of
religion which have claimed the devotion of
Japan.

IV.

What intercourse Japan had with the main-
land of Asia, or with the large islands that lay
to the south of her, it is impossible to tell ; but
the Portuguese may, perhaps, claim the honour

AND HER REPULSE,

of liavin<^ been first anion*,' EuropcariH to land
upon her shores. About the middle of the six-
teenth century, one IMendez I'into, a Purtufruese
sailor, with two companions of the same nation-
ality, havinj^ been almost wrecked off the shore
of Kiu Shiu, succeeded in landinf^ there. They
introduced into the country a knowledge of the
manufacture and use of gunpowder and fire-
arms ; and so won upon the people by their skill
and by their knowledge of the outer world, that
they were allowed to carry a rich cargo from the
country and to open up a trade between their
countrymen settled in China and the Japanese.
Pinto carried to his friends such wonderful
stories of Japan, that not only did they open
up a prosperous trade, but also reported to their
countrymen in Portugal their great prosperity
and success. Europe heard with amazement the
wonderful stories of the wealth of Japan, and
in 1598, the Dutch East India Company
despatched thither five merchant vessels, of
which, however, one only reached its destination,
taking two years for the voyage. The Dutch
were welcomed and were given facilities for

80 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

■\

carrying]; on trade, a port on the Island of Hirado,
which lies or the south-east of Kiu Shiu, being
conceded to them. In 1()37-1689 the Portu-
guese incurred the dislike of the Japanese, who,
in the latter year, expelled them from the
country and transferred to tlie Dutch Deshima,
the seat of the Portuguese trade, a town near
Nagasaki, where for two hundred years the
Dutch continued to enjoy a monopoly of the
European trade with the empire.

In 1611, James I. of England sent one Cap-
tain Saris, with three ships, to open up trade ;
but although he was well received at first, yet,
owing to a quarrel with the Dutch, he was
compelled to abandon his undertaking and
England never succeeded in really opening up
commerce with the country till, in 1858, the
Earl of Elgin, on behalf of the Queen, negotiated
a treaty of friendship and commerce, ^.x the
year 1854, Commodore Perry, of the United
States Navy, succeeded in negotiating a treaty
on behalf of his government. And by 1874,
Japan had treaties of commerce with Great
Britain, United States of America, Holland,

AND HER REPULSE,

Russia, Prussia, P'^^tuf^al, France, Spain, Switzer-
land, Italy, Austria, Greece, Denmark, Sweden
and Norway, Hawaii, Pern, China, thus practi-
cally being open to the world.

So soon as Japan became known to the outer
world, and the stories of the fabulous wealth of
the people and their mild, generous and civilized
character were reported in Europe, the Christian
Church began to lay its plans for conquering the
country for Christ. Loyola had then just organ-
ized the Society of Jesus, and Xavier, his associ-
ate in the undertaking, resolved upon effecting
that object. Accordingly, in 1549, Xavier,
accompanied by another member of the order of
the Jesuits and two Japanese who had been con-
verted in India, landed at Kagoshima, in Kiu
Shiu, the southernmost portion of the empire.
It is not necessary to describe either the methods
emplo3^ed by Xavier or the stages of his pro-
gress ; or to criticise the character of the con-
verts, the type of Christianity he introduced, or
the teachings he imparted to those who embraced
the Christian faith. But within thirty-tive
years he succeeded in establishing no less than

1
t

82 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

two hundred churches with a membership of
sometiiing like 150,000. In 1583 theDaimios of
Kiu Shiu sent ci^^ht young Christian noblemen
to Rome to visit the Pope, and after an absence
of eif^ht years they returned liome, takintjj with
them seventeen Jesuit missionaries, which, with
those that had in the meantime found their
way to Japan, constituted no insignificant body
of workers. At that time the whole country
seemed ready to turn to Christ. It was not long,
however, before a change came in the policy of
the government and in the disposition of the
people towards the new religion, and in 1590
the missionaries were all banished from the
country, while the most stringent measures were
taken to annihilate Christian* ly.

To show the wonderful progress of the work
of the missionaries, however, the Japanese them-
selves declared that there were no less than
2,000,000 Christians in the empire at that time.
No doubt these figures are very much exagger-
ated ; but the Jesuits themselves put the num-
bers at 000,000, which is probably not in excess
of the truth.

AND HER REPULSE.

It is not necessary for our purpose that we
should pursue the story of these early attempts
to Christianize the country: but we may add
that all the efforts of the fjjovernment, which, at
intervals pursued a course of relentless persecu-
tion, proved unavailing to stamp out Christian-
ity ; for, so late as 1869, when Roman ('atholic
missionaries again landed, they found in Naga-
saki and neighbouring districts, at least 10,000
Christians who still stood firm in their attach-
ment to the faith of their fathers who were
converted in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.

We have not touched the great institution of
feudalism which extended throughout the em-
pire; nor that political movement by which the
Emperor had been robbed of his power and rele-
gated to the privacy of his palace, to be nothing
more than a name in the government, while the
general of his forces, under the title Shogun,
had usurped all the real power ; nor the great
struofffles to overthrow Buddhism and to restore
6

riw . ' ta - — Ltf» | ijwLJu i i,j

84 CHRISriANITTS GREAT TRIUMPH

Shinto ; nor any other of the great social and
political movements which might very properly
find a place in even a sketch of the country's
history. All this lies outside our purpose. But
it is necessary that we should say, that, during
all the years over which we have passed with
such a light touch, there was social and political
ferment which, in 1808, culminated in a covp
(Vttat.

The most influential and public-spirited of the
population had long cherished the desire to over-
throw the Shngunate with all its attendant evils,
and to restore the Mikado to his ancient and law-
ful rule as it existed prior to A.D. "1200. In 18G8,
January 3rd, troops gathered by this party, sud-
denly seized the gates of the Mikado's palace, in
Kioto, and under their leaders proceeded to eflTect
a revolution in affairs. The old oflficials were
dismissed, and their places were filled with men
friendly to the new ideas : while the whole
machinery of the government was seized and
held by the revolutionary party. Of course, the
old was not overthrown without a struggle, in
which fire and sword did their usual work in

AND HER REPULSE.

destruction of life and property ; but the
struggle was not a long one, for by July of the
following year the revolution was complete, and
the country was in the enjoyment of universal
peace.

Although it is doubtful if the design of the
reformers included any purpose of bringing into
the country western ideas, civilization and learn-
ing, yet it is beyond question that the revolu-
tion did, in fact, prepare the way for them all, in
a very striking manner. Just so soon as the
work was completed, the Mikado removed his
residence from Kioto, first to Osaka, and after-
wards to Yedo, or Tokio, as it is now called, /.e.,
eastern capital, as the word means.

He not only removed the seat of government
from its former out-of-the-way locality to the
business centre of the empire, but he himself
came forth from the privacy in which all his
ancestors for seven centuries had dwelt, and took
a part in the public work of government: his
first step being to meet a council of the nobles
and Daimios, and to take before them the follow-
ing oath : "A deliberative assembly should bp

!■■

<'• II

86 CHRISTIANITTS GREAT TRIUMPH

formed ; all measures be decided by public opin-
ion ; the uncivilized customs of former times
should be broken through ; and the impartiality
and justice displayed in the workings of nature
be adopted as a basis of action ; and that intel-
lect and learninfj should be sou<j:ht fur throufrh-
out the world, in order to establish the founda-
tions of the empire."

Althouofh, during; the course of the revolu-
tion, much bitterness and bloodshed had been
caused and considerable fanaticism had been
aroused, yet when the chanj^e had been effected,
the party that had triumphed was marked by
the greatest possible moderation in the hour of
victory. Of the leaders on the other side,
bitterly as they had fought against the revolu-
tion, not one was put to death ; but by the
clemency of the Emperor they were all pardoned
Most of them, if not all, were permitted to share
on equal terms with the victors in political pre-
ferment and in the enjoyment of public office ;
while all the defeated Daimios were restored to
rank and income. Thus, in a brief period of
Jess than twq years, there w^s effected such £(,

AXD HER REPULSE.

complete revolution, as can be paralleled in the
hi.story of few peoples— a revolution that was
effected, and that too in a heathen country, with-
out any of those injustices, excesses and sub-
sequent cruelties that, even in Christian coun-
tries, have come to be looked upon as almost
necessary concomitants of all great political
changes effected by arms.

Immediately the nation entered upon the path
of modern civilization and development. News-
papers sprang up. books were published, trans-
lations of western works were issued from the
presses in large numbers and sown broadcast
throughout the country, western science be^^an
to be cultivated, while many young men who
had been sent to Europe and America to study
and to observe the civilization of the people
there returned, and in their writings drew faith-
ful representations of the lands they had seen,
their usages, their commerce and their govern-
ment.

At the close of hostilities, in 1870, there still
remained one work of great importance to be
effected. About eight centuries prior to the

•88 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

time of which we are speak in*^, there had been
established a system of feudalism by which the
country had been divided up between a certain
number of Daimios, or feudal chiefs, who held
their possessions as private and personal pro-
perty, the people dwellinf^ on it being practically
serfs of the Daimios ; but so steadfast was the
nation to the new ideas that were brought in
by the revolution, that, with scarcely any
friction at all, the whole feudal system was
overthrown and abolished forever. In the
month of September, 1871, all the Daimios were
summoned to Tokio to surrender their fiefs to
the Emperor and to be retired to private life.
The whole number of them presented themselves
before the Emperor, and submitted to his will in
the matter ; or, if any failed to present them-
selves, they were of so little importance that
they could be safely disregarded. The Japanese
may be pardoned for the spirit which leads
them to delight in referring to this occasion as
illustrating, in a most striking manner, the
public spirit of the Daimios, who consented to
surrender to the Emperor dignity, power, pro-

AND HER REPULSE.

81)

peity, income, when it became necessary to do so
in the interest of tlie country'.

The revohation was complete, hut the effort to
re-establish Shinto had most completely failed.
Buddhism still continued the national reliirion,
although with a much weakened hold on the
people, and in 187-t it was formally dis-
established.

From 1872 only, may be dated the free public
and official intercourse of Japan with the out-
side world, but she entered upon it with a vigour
that gave great promise for her own advance-
ment. For the first time, in her modern history
at least, she welcomed western knowled<re
western civilization, western religion.

The Christian churches were not slow to see
their opportunity, and immediately procaeded
to establish missions in the country, being wel-
comed w^ith an enthusiasm which promised
great things for the future. In the year above
named the Methodist Episcopal Church of the
United States established a mission. In the
year 1873 the Methodist Church of Canada
organized one. Two years later the American

' III

Il I

90 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

Board of Conimissioners of Foreifjn IMissions
had entered the field, wliile, so early as 1859,
the Protestant Episcopal Churcli of the United
States, and the Reformed Church of Ajiierica,
had both sent well-orixanized missions to the
country. On March 10th, 1872, the first
Japanese Christian church of modern times was
organized ; native pastors were rapidly intro-
duced into the work, and Christianity seemed to
be about to sweep everything before it. Sup-
plementing their distinctively religious work by
that of education, the Christian churches estab-
lished schools, in which they provided instruction
for the youth of each sex in all the branches of
a modern Christian education. They authorized
their missionaries to assume the office of in-
structors in the higher schools and universities
of the empire, and used the printing-press to
disseminate among the people a knowledge of
western learning pervaded with a strong Chris-
tian influence. In the earnest purpose of gain-
ing the people for Christ and His Church, the
missionary committees of the different denomi-
nations established medical missions, in con-

AND HER REPULSE.

neckion with which hospitals were opened for
the cratuitous treatment of the sick and dis-
eased, especially among the poor, by Christian
physicians, whose chief aim was to find the
means of curing the souls of the people while
ministering to their diseased bodies. It was
not long before Christianity seemed about to
capture the country. Christian newspapers
were established, and even the native publica-
tions spoke in the most friendly terms of Chris-
tianity. All the missionaries seemed intoxicated
with the enthusiasm of the times, and sent
home most sanguine reports of their prospects
for winning multitudes for Christ and His
Church. At the same time, as the Japanese
were, to all appearances, being swayed by the
strong Christian influence tliat seemed to l)e
welcomed with enthusiasm as that for which
the great national revolution had been prepar-
ing the way, the nation was studying with
intense earnestness the civilization, the arts, the
manufactures, and the constitutions and irovern-
ments of the western nations. Many young
men were sent over to the United States, to

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92 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

III

Enf^land, to Germany and France, to study at
the universities ol: those countries, and to acquire
a knowledge of their political institutions.

All this shows that while the leaven of Chris-
tianity was no doubt workinf^ in a most wonder-
ful manner, the leavin of new political life was
working also ; and in 1875, the Emperor seeing
that the establishment of some form of con-
stitutional government was inevitable, began to
prepare the way for it by establishing a senate
and forming local councils or assemblies every-
where throughout the country. Although com-
paratively little benefit resulted directly to the
country from these councils, yet they served a
good purpose in preparing the people for main-
taining representative institutions when in
due time they were established. Some five or
six years afterwards, in October, 1881, the
Emperor took the final step precedent to estab-
lishing representative institutions, when he
issued the following proclamation : " We have
long had it in view to gradually establish a
" jnstitutional government. ... It was
with this object in view that in the eighth year

AND HER REPULSE.

of Meiji (1875) we established the Senate, and in
the eleventh year of Meiji (1878) authorized the
formation of local assemblies. . . . We,
therefore, hereby declare that we shall, in the
twenty-third year of Meiji (1890), establish a
parliament in order to carry into full effect the
determination we have announced, and we
charge our faithful subjects bearing our com-
missions to make, in the meantime, all necessary
preparations to that end."

The five years that elapsed before the period
named in the proclamation were years of won-
derful progress in all departments of connnercial,
economic and political development. Railways,
telegraph lines, tramways, telephone lines and
factories were established everywhere. Military
and naval establishments were organized on
most approved modern scientific principles.
Civil and criininal codes of procedure in the
courts were elaborated, being based on the
soundest principles of modern jurisprudence.
Commerce with the outside world, especially
with Europe, the United States and Canada,
was encouraged and grew to striking propor-

94 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

tions in a comparatively short time. Thus,
when the date fixed for the promulgation of the
new constitution arrived, the country was in a
measure prepared for it, and had already antici-
pated some of the results it was designed to
effect.

Under the new constitution there are two
Houses of Parliament — the House of Peers and
the House of Representative*!. The House of
Peers is composed of the princes of the blood and
other hereditary nobles who sit in their own right ;
of certain persons nominated by the Emperor
for meritorious services or for learning, and of
representatives sitting for a term of seven years.
The Lower House, or House of Representatives,
is elected by the people, and sits for four years.

The experiment has now been tried for about
ten years, and although it has not been without
friction and sometimes not without signs of
danger to its continuance, yet, when we look at
the results, we cannot fail to admire the success
achieved. Under the new constitution the
country has triumphantly passed through a war
with its vast neighbour, China, and has made

AND HER REPULSE.

itself feared by other nations whose interests lie
in different parts of the Pacific Ocean. And, at
the present, when the si(rn,s of the times seem to
indicate a conflict of interests between China,
Russia, France, Germany and EncrJand and the
United States, that may issue in war, by a kind
of tacit consent it is taken for granted that
Japan will stand slioulder to shoulder with
Encrland and the United States in the contest, if
it should come—indeed, that a secret treaty to
that effect already exists. If that condition of
affairs should arise, there will be seen for the
first time in history, two of the njost hi^rhly
Christianized nations in alliance with a heathen
country, in a war whose other anta^ronists will
all be Christian. In any case, however, Japan
must be enumerated among the great powers of
the worl.l, and beyond question .she will play an
important part - the task of deciding the future
of much of Asia, at least, even if, at some time
or other, she should not have to be counted with
in making the destiny of Europe itself.

96 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

W^-^'W.

VI.

And thus at this very mom^n" hat do we
see ? For the first time in the history of the
world, we see a nation, highly civilized, with
European civilization, with large cities lighted
by electricity, and having hospitals for the sick
and institutions for the orphan and the maimed
members of society ; with an elaborate school
system, from the common school up to the
university, whose professors stand side by side
with the learned men of any other country in
the world ; with learned societies, whose scien-
tific observations in seismology, in medicine,
geology, bacteriology are accepted everywhere ;
with railways, steamships, telegraph lines and a
post-office sj'stem not surpassed anywhere ; with
an army and a navy which not only showed its
prowess in the recent war with China, but
which has already put the nation among the
great powers of the world ; with manufactures
that are reaching gigantic proportions; with a
vast commerpe with all the civilized nations of

AND HER REPULSE.

the world ; with ambassadors, or other represen-
tatives, at the capitals of all the important
countries in Europe, Asia and America ; with a
system of jurisprudence and legal machinery of
the best type ; with presses pouring forth
millions of newspapers, books and magazines ;
and, above all, with responsible government
carried on by an Emperor with a House of
Lords and House of Representatives modelled
after the systems in Great Britain, Germany
and the United States ; — we say, at the dawn of
the twentieth century of Christian history, we
see for the first time a nation possessed of all
these things which have their roots in Chris-
tianity and are its legitimate fruit, practically
rejecting Christianity itself. For when the
Emperor opened Parliament and the constitution
was given to the country, its preamble began by
ascribing the Emperor's imperial position to the
influence of his " ancestors " : — " Having, by
virtue of the glories of our ancestors, ascended
the throne of a lineal succession unbroken for
ages eternal." The first article declares " The
empire of Japan shall be reigned over and gov-

98 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

erned by a line of emperors unbroken for aj^es
eternal." And the imperial oath, taken when the
constitution was promulgated, declared "That
we have been so fortunate in our reign . . .
as to accomplish this work, we owe to the r/^t>rio?^«
spirits of the impervd founder of our House
and of our other imperial ancestors." It seems
almost grotesque to have the ruler of the country,
as he is about to put the crown upon the civil-
ization which Christianity has furnished him, by
giving to the people a constitution and parlia-
mentary government such as Christianity has
made possible and of which it has provided the
very roots, to stand forth, so to speak, not only
before his own peopl*^ but, as it were, before the
world, to ascribe it all, according to the teachings
of his heathen Shintoism, to the benign and
potent influence of the spirits of his ancestors.
Is there a parallel to it in the history of the
world ?

It may, perhaps, be urged that the Japanese
have not rejected Christianity, and that it is too
early to reach any conclusions on that point.
But that they have made their choice is evident.

AND HER REPULSE.

Christianity and western civilization were held
up before them, not that the missionaries and
the Christian churches consciously oifered them
the choice, but that only makes the case the
more serious. They listened to the preaching
of Christianity, and had its Bibles and all its
appliances for enforcing its claims, and then
quietly passed it by and accepted the civilization
of the west, which had never urged its claims
and which was not a matter with which the
missionaries were concerned at all.

We do not say no results have been produced
that were well worthy the expenditure and the
toil ; but we do say that, by some means and for
some reason or other, matters have been so pre-
sented to the Japanese mind that western civil-
ization has appeared to them the great thing
and Christianity almost nothing at all.

What are the results so far as Christianity is
concerned ? There were in Japan, in the year
1896 (these are the most recent statistics at
hand and will not vary much from those of this
present year), thirty-seven different societies
and denominations at work in the empire, ex-

100 CHRIST/ANirrS GREAT TRIUMPH

elusive of the Roman Catholic Church, but
including the Greek Church. There were 479
churches, with a membership of G1,514. The
number of adherents of the Roman Catholic
Church was 52,177. Probably 125,000 would
cover the whole nuiriber of nominal Christians
in the empire at this present time. This means
that on the average there is in Japan one
nominal Christian for every 350 heathen. That
the present condition of the Christian churches in
Japan is satisfactory cannot be affirmed, for
there seems to be much unrest among them. It
is two or three years only since the Congre-
gational Church of the United States felt called
upon to send a deputation to v.is't its missions
there, and to deal with some very difficult ques-
tions — questions of which some still remain
unsettled. And on the return of the deputation
one of its members wrote in the New York
Outlook, under date of November 14th, 1896,
as follows : " The difficulties of the situation in
Japan are already well known. There is no
violence there, but many of the Japanese feel
that the time is already at hand when mission-

AND HER REPULSE.

101

aries will be no Ioniser needed, anrl there is not
the slightest doubt that their influence for the
time at least has greatly waned." Only this
summer the Methodist Church here in Canada
sent its General Superintendent to visit its
missions among the Japanese, for the purpose of
investigating, on the ground, certain matters
that have for some time caused friction, that
during the General Conference of 1894 were
discussed at great length, and that even still
continue to give anxiety to those charged with
the responsibility of managing the work in the
foreign field. Not only do these things indicate
this unrest referred to above, but the decline in
membership of some, if not all, of the Japanese
churches, points in the same direction.

In all this, how little do we see of the
triumphal tread of the Christian march of the
first centuries. Then almost everything com-
bined with the power of Satan to prevent the
triumph of Christianity. Now all things seem
to join to make straight a highway for our God.
In Japan everything seemed to invite the mis-
sionary ; in the Mediterranean world all things

102 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRICMPTf

seemed to conspire to resist and oppose him. In
the ancient days the preachers of Christianity
were persons who, in their own country, mi<;ht
be called " unlearned and ignorant," and how
much more in foreign lands to which they
went; for although, in later years, some to
whom that term could not justly be applied
became preachers of Christianity, yet there
never was a time before Constantine when it
would not have been largely true. In Japan,
however, the preachers of Christianity have
been able, educated and well-taught men, many
of whom have been graduates of British, Ger-
man or American universities. In the former
case, they went out to preach, trusting to what
the people might be disposed to contribute for
their support or to the precarious liberality of
Christian churches, whose members were ill able
to afford them help; so that sometimes they
needed to spend in manual labour, to earn their
bread, the precious time that they should have
been free to devote to preaching. In the latter
case, they have been supported generously by
powerful missionary societies or other organiza-

AND HER REPULSE,

103

tions, so as to be free from perplexities of
worldly care in onler to give their whole time
to their work. In the former case, the oricfinal
preachers came from an obscure country that
had lost its distinct nationality, whose capital
with its temple had been utterly annihilated.
In the latter, they belonf^ed to the greatest
nations in the world — Great Britain, Germany,
and the United States. In the former case, they
could be burned alive, could be thrown to the
lions in the amphitheatre, could be butchered to
make a Roman holiday, and no voice would be
raised in their defence. In the latter, let them
suffer injustice, not to say death or destruction
of property, and the power of the country to
which they belong would be used in their be-
half ; and let reparation be denied, and the fleet
and armies of their nation would be r^ioved to
avenge their wrongs. In the former case, their
religion was proscribed in the empire that they
sought to lead to Christ, and was hated and
despised by the majority of the people of Pales-
tine, where it had originated. In the latter case,
it was the religion of the nations from which

104 CHRISTIANITY'S GREAT TRIUMPH

IS, a ;-

1 t&. ^

the missionaries came, and was welcomed with
enthusiasm and (gladness, so that Japan seemed
already at the feet of Christ.

Is the battle lost because there has been a
repulse ? Christ's armies have oftentimes been
driven back, but the promise stands sure. " He
shall not fail nor be discouraged till H have set
judgement in the earth ; and the isles shall wait
for His law." " The kingdoms of this world shall
become the kingdoms of oar Lord and of His
Christ." And the triumphant shout shall be
raised, even in Japan, "Hal'^lujah, the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth ! " But if that triumph is
to be seen in our day — in our children's day —
in our children's children's day — is to be seen
by those who shall greet the dawn of the
twenty-first century, there must be a change of
the policy of the Christian Church which, under
the spur of denominational rivalry, is duplicat-
ing and reduplicating several times over its
agencies at home, and making this very ex-
travagance an excuse for a ne^jlect of the
starving millions of heathen abroad, which
excuses itself for sending to Japan a score or so

AND HER REPULSE. 105

of missionaries, when there is ample field for
hundreds and urgent need of them if the empire
is to be won for God: and need of the re-
discovery of that secret power by virtue of the
possession of which the early apostolic mission-
aries could say, " thanks be to God that always
causeth us to triumph."

FINIS.