June 10, 2000
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Uchimura Kanzo - How I became a Christian
Chapter 6: THE FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CHRISTENDOM.
That I looked upon Christendom and English-speaking peoples with peculiar reverence was not an altogether inexcusable weakness on my part. It was the same weakness that made the Great Frederick of Prussia a slavish adorer of everything that was French. I learnt all that was noble, useful, and uplifting through the vehicle of the English language. I read my Bible in English, Barnes'scommentaries were written in English, John Howard was an Englishman, and Washingston and Daniel Webster were of English descent. A "dime-novel" was never placed into my hand, and as for slangs, the word itself I did not learn till long after my living among English-speaking people. My idea of the Christian America was lofty, religious, Puritanic. I dreamed of its templed hills, and rocks that rang with hymns and praises. Hebraisms, I thought, to be the prevailing speech of the American commonality, and cherub and cherubim, hallelujahs and amens, the common language of its streets.
I was often told upon a good testimony that money is all in all in America, and that it is worshipped there as Almighty Dollar; that the race prejudice is so strong there that the yellow skin and almond-shaped eyes pass for objects of derision and dog-barking; etc. etc. But for me to credit such statements like these as anything near the truth was utterly impossible. The land of Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln, of Dorothea Dix and Stephen Girard, how could it be a land of mammon-worship and race-distinction! I thought I had different eyes to judge of the matter, so strong was my confidence in what I had read and heard about the superiority of the Christian civilization over that of the Pagan. Indeed, the image of America as pictured upon my mind was that of a Holy Land.
At the day-break of Nov. 24, 1884, my enraptured eyes first caught the faint views of Christendom. Once more I descended to my steerage-cabin, and there I was upon my knees; the moment was too serious for me to join with the popular excitement of the hour. As the low Coast Range came clearer to my views, the sense of my dreams being now realized overwhelmed me with gratitude, and tears trickled rapidly down my cheeks. Soon the Golden Gate was passed, and all the chimneys and mast-tops now presented to my vision appeared like so many church-spires pointing toward the sky. We landed, the company of some twenty young men, and were hackneyed to a hotel owned by an Irishman who was known to show special kindness to men of my nation. As my previous acquaintance with the Caucasion race had been mostly with missionaries, the idea stuck close to my mind; and so all the people whom I met in the street appeared to me like so many ministers fraught with high Christian purpose, and I could not but imagine myself as walking among the congregation of the First-born. It was only gradually, very gradually, that I unlearnt this childish notion.
Yes, Hebraism in one sense at least I found to be a common form of speech in America. First of all, everybody has a Hebrew name, and even horses are christened there. The words which we have never pronounced without the sense of extreme awe and reverence are upon the lips of workmen, carriage-drivers, shoe-blacks, and others of more respectable occupations. Every little offence is accompanied by a religious oath of some kind. In a hotel-parlor we asked a respectable-looking gentleman how he liked the new president-elect (Cleveland), and his emphatic answer was strongly Hebraic. "My God," he said, "I'll tell you he is a devil." The gentleman was afterward known to be a staunch Republican. We started in an emigrant train toward the East, and when the car stopped with a jerk so that we were almost thrown out of our seats, one of our fellow-passengers expressed his vexations with another Hebraism, "Christ" and accompanied it with a stamping. And so forth. All these were of course utterly strange to our ears. Soon I was able to discover the deep profanity that lay at the bottom of all these Hebraisms, and I took them as open violations of the Third Commandment, of whose special use and significance I have never been able to comprehend thus far, but now for the first time, was taught with "Living examples."
So universal is the use of religious terms in every-day speech of the American people, that a story is told of a French immigrant who carried an English-French dictionary in his pocket, to which he referred for every English word that he heard from the very beginning of his departure from Havre. On his landing at the Philadelphia wharf, the commonest word that he heard the people spoke was "damn-devil." He at once went to his dictionary, but failing to find such a word therein, he threw it away, thinking that a dictionary that did not contain so common a word must be of no further use to him in America.
The report that money was the almighty power in America was corroborated by many of our actual experiences. Immediately after our arrival at San Francisco, our faith in "Christian civilization" as severely tested by a disaster that befell one of our numbers. He was pick-pocketed of a purse that contained a five-dollar-gold piece! "Pick-pocket-ing in Christendom as in Pagandom," we cautioned to each other; and while in dismay and confusion we were consoling our robbed brother, an elderly lady, who afterward told us that she believed in the universal salvation of mankind, good as well as bad, took our misfortune heavily upon her heart, and warned us of further dangers, as pick-pocketing, burglary-ing, high-way-ing, and all other transgressions of the sinful humanity were not unknown in her land as well. We did only wish, however, that that crank who despoiled us of that precious five-dollar-piece would never go to heaven, but be really damned in everlasting hell-fire.
But it was when we came to Chicago that mammonism is the highest spiritual sense was revealed to our vision. In the depot-restaurant, where, after four-days' jerking in an emigrant train, we refreshed ourselves with a piece each of cold chicken, with grateful remembrance of the Refresher of our souls, we were surrounded by a group of waiters whose black skin and woolly hair were the unmistakable signs of their Hamitic origin. On our bowing our heads before we partook of the gifts of the table, one of them patted our shoulders, and said, "You're gut men, you!" Upon our telling them of our faith (we believed in the literal sense of Matt. 10:32), they told us that they were all Methodists, and took great deal of interest in the universal spreading of God's Kingdom. Soon there appeared another Hamite, who was introduced to us as the deacon of their church. He was very kind to us, heard with seeming interest to what we told him of the advance of our mutual Faith in our land. We exchanged our good wishes and exhortations for the cause of our common Lord and Master. He attended upon us for full two hours, when the time for our departure came. He took all our valises upon his shoulders, followed us to the place where our tickets were examined, such was his care and attention for us. With courtesy and many thanks we extended our hands to take our goods to ourselves, to which our Methodist deacon objected; but stretching forth his dusky hand toward us, said, "Mist gib me somding." He had our valises in his custody, and only "somding" could recover them from his hands. The engine-bell was ringing; it was not time to argue with him. Each of us dropped a 50-cent piece into his hand, our things were transferred to us, to a coach we hastened, and as the train began to move, we looked to each other in amazement, and said, "Even charity is bartered here." Since then we never have trusted in the kind words of black deacons.
One year after this, when I was again robbed of my new silk-umbrella on a Fall River steamer, whose superb ornamentation and exquisite music conveyed to me no idea whatever of the spirit of knavery that lurked underneath, and so did once more liberate my heathen innocence, I felt the misfortune so keenly, that only once in my life I prayed for the damnation of that execrable devil, who could steal a shelter from a homeless stranger at the time of his dire necessity. Even the Chinese civilization of forty centuries ago could boast of a state of society when no body picked up things dropped on the street. But here upon Christian waters, in a floating palace, under the spell of the music of Handel and Mendelssohn, things were as unsafe as in a den of robbers.
Indeed, insecurity of things in Christendom is something to which we were wholly unaccustomed. Never have I seen more extensive use of keys than among these Christian people. We in our heathen homes have but very little recourse to keys. Our houses, most of them, are open to everybody. Cats come in and out at their own sweet pleasures, and men go to siesta in their beds with zephyrs blowing over their faces; and no apprehensions are felt of our servants or neighbors ever transgressing upon our possessions. But things are quite otherwise in Christendom. Not only are safes and trunks locked, but doors and windows of all descriptions, chests, drawers, Ice-boxes, sugar-vases, all. The housewife goes about her business with a bundle of keys jingling at her side; and a batchelor coming home in the evening has first to thrust his hand into his pocket to draw out a cluster of some twenty or thirty keys to find out one which will open to him his lonely cell. The house is locked from the front-door to the pin-box, as if the spirit of robbery pervaded every cubic-inch of the air. In our country we have this saying, uttered by the most suspicious of mankind, I suppose: "When you look at a light, think that it is a fire which can consume all your substances; when you look at a man, think that he is a robber who can rob you of all your possessions." But never have I seen this injunction put into practice in more literal sense than in a well-locked American household. It is a miniature feudal castle modified to meet the prevailing cupidity of the age. Whether a civilization which requires cemented cellars and stone-cut vaults, watched over by bull-dogs and battalions of policemen, could be call Christian is seriously doubted by honest heathens.
In no other respect, however, did Christendom appear to me more like heathendom than in a strong race prejudice still existing among its people. After a "century of dishonor," the copper-colored children of the forest from whom the land was wrested by many a cruel and inhuman means, are still looked upon by the commonality as no better than buffaloes or Rocky Mountain sheep, to be trapped and hunted like wild beasts. As for ten millions of Hamites whom they originally imported from Africa, as they now import Devon bulls and Jersey cows, and just for the very same purpose, there was shown considerable sympathy and Christian brothership some thirty years ago; and beginning with John Brown, that righteous Saxon, 500,00 of the flower of the nation were to be butchered to atone for the iniquity of merchandizing upon God's images. And though they now have so condescended themselves as to ride in the same cars with the "Darkies" they still keep up their Japhetic vanity by keeping themselves at respectable distances from the race which they bought with their own blood. Down in the state of Delaware, whither I was astonished to find a separate portion of a town given up wholly to Negroes. Upon telling my friend that this marking a sharp racial distinction appeared to me very Pagan-like, his emphatic answer was that he would rather be a Pagan and live separate from "niggers," than be a Christian and live in the same quarters with them!
But strong and unchristian as their feeling is against the Indians, and the Africans, the prejudice, the aversion, the repugnance, which they entertain against the children of Sina are something which we in heathendom have never seen the like. The land which sends over missionaries to China, to convert her sons and daughters to Christianity from the nonsense of Confucius and the superstitions of Buddha, the very same land abhors ever the shadow of a Chinaman cast upon its soil. There never was seen such an anomaly upon the face of this earth. Is Christian mission a child's play, a chivalry more puerile than that engaged the wit of Cervantes, that it should be sent to a people so much disliked by the people who send it?
The main reasons which make the Chinese so objectionable to the Christian Americans I understand to be three:
1.) The Chinese carry away all their savings to their home, and thus impoverish the land. That is, that they might be acceptable to the Americans, they must spend up all they earned in America, and go home empty-handed. A strange doctrine this to hear from the people who inculcate the lessons of industry and provision upon themselves. "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Do all the American and European merchants and savants and engineers who come to our shores, 妖o they leave all their earnings with us, and go home without bank-accounts in their favor? Do we not pay each one of them, 200, 300, 400, 500, 800 dollars a month in solid gold, scarcely a third of which he usually spends in our land, and goes away with the rest to buy ease and comforts in his homeland? And yet we send them out with thanks, with presents of silk-robes and bronze-vases, and oftentimes with imperial decorations and pensions affixed thereto. They did the service corresponding to the money we paid them, (at least we suppose they did), and we do not think ourselves robbed by them. By what laws under heaven are the Chinese compelled to leave all their earnings in America after they have helped to cut a railroad through the Rocky Mountains, and planted and watered vineyards in California? The do not carry away gold for nothing, as self-styled Christians sometimes did by directing muzzles of guns at the defenseless heathens, and kidnapping supple babies from the breasts of suckling mothers. The Chinamen leave the work behind them equivalent to the money they carry away. The gold now theirs by Nature's inherent law, and who art thou that deniest the sacred right of property to the sons of honest toil! We the "pitiable heathens" send our foreign employees with honors and ceremonies, and they the "blessed Christians" kick us out with derisive languages. Can these things be, O God of Vengeance!
2. The Chinese with their stubborn adherence to their national ways and customs, bring indecencies upon the Christian community. True, pigtails and flowing pantaloons are not very decent things to be seen in the streets of Boston or New York. But do you think corsets and compressed abdomens are fine thing to see in the streets of Peking or Hankow? "But Chinese are filthy in their habits, and tricky in their dealings with others," you say. I wish I could show you some specimens of the noble Caucasian race roaming in the Eastern ports, who as filthy, as stinky, as putrefactive, as a poor pox-stricken Chinaman who is dungeoned by the San Francisco quarantine in a manner as if he had upset ten imperial thrones. As for the alleged moral obliquity of the Chinese: Have you ever heard of a Chinaman throwing a bombshell at city-police, or disgracing the American womanhood in the mid-day sun? Why not enact anti-German laws and anti-Italian laws as well if the social order and decency are your aim? What are the iniquities of the poor Chinamen that you persecute them with so much rigor, except they be their defenselessness, and abject submission to your Gothic will? Would that the iniquities of the Caucasian sojourners in our land be counted that they be weighed over against those of Chinamen! If we had done to American or English citizens in our land half as much indignities as are done to the helpless Chinese in America, we would soon be visited with fleets of gunboats, and in the name of justice and humanity, would be compelled to pay $50,000 per capita for the lives of those worthless loafers, whose only worth as human beings consist in their having blue eyes and white skins, and in nothing more. Christendom seems to possess another Gospel, in addition to one preached by Paul and Cephas, which teaches among other detestable things this: Might is Right, and Money is that Might.
3. The Chinese by their low wages do injury to the American laborer. This sounds more plausible than the other two reasons. It is "protection" applied to the imported labor. I do not like to see any American household deprived of its chicken-pies on Sunday that a Chinaman might have a morsel more of his steamed rice. But let America's national conscience ask this question to itself: Is 4,000,000 square miles of land flowing with milk and honey not wide enough for 65,000,000 of its people? Are there no space left in Idaho, Montana, and elsewhere, where the packed population of Canton and Foochow may be given opportunities of coping with buffaloes and grizzly bears to subdue the land for humankind? Where in God's Sacred Writings, or in Nature's fossiled tablets, can be found a statement that goes to prove an assumption that America must be possessed by the white race alone? Or if you like to be argued without having your vanity touched in any way, you may be persuaded thus: Grudge to the poor Chinamen so much charity as the unpardoning Jews did to the heathen Gibeonites; that is, make them "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to you, and you go to some more lordly occupations befitting your Teutonic or Celtic origin. Let them wash all your cuffs and collars and shirts for you; and they will serve you with lamblike meekness, and for half the price of your own Caucasian laundrymen charge you with. Or send them down into Arizona or New Mexico mines to fetch from the bosom of infernal darkness the metal we prize so highly in day-light. "Strike" is yet unknown among the poor heathens, unless some of you teach them how to do it. A class of laborers so meek, so uncomplaining, so industrious, and so cheap, you cannot find anywhere else under the sun. That to so use them in a sphere of industry peculiarly their own is not only befitting your Christian profession, but profitable as well for your pockets, you have proved more than once by acts of "smugglings of Chinamen" often enacted upon the Canadian frontiers. Why not believe in the Law and Prophets, and be kind and merciful to strangers, that the Lord of hosts may open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it? But as they now are, the whole tenor of anti-Chinese laws appears to me to be anti-Biblical, anti-Christian, anti-evangelical, and anti-humanitarian. Even the nonsense of Confucius teaches us very much better things than these.
I have cautiously kept back my nationality from my readers, (though by this time it must be pretty well known to them). But I must make this confession that I am not a Chinaman myself. Though I am never ashamed of my racial relationship to that most ancient of nations, that nation that gave Mencius and Confucius to the world, and invented the mariner's compass and printing machines centuries before the Europeans even dreamed of them, yet to receive in my person all the indignities and asperities with which the poor coolies from Canton are goaded by the American populace, required nothing less than Christian forbearance to keep my head and heart in right order. Here again, American Hebraisms, which are applied even in the nomenclatures of horses, are made use of in the designations of the Chinese. They are all called "John," and even the kind policemen of the city of New York call us by that name. "Pick up those Chinamen in," was the polite language of a Chicago coachman, to whom we paid the regular fare, and did nothing to hurt his vanity as a prot馮・of St. Patrick. A well-clad gentleman sharing the same seat with me in a car asked me to have my comb to brush his grizzly beard; and instead of a thank which we in heathendom consider as appropriate upon such a occasion, he returned the comb saying, "Well John, where do you keep your laundry shop?" An intelligent-looking gentleman asked us when we did cut our cues; and when told that we never had cues, "Why," he said, "I thought all Chinamen have cues." That these very gentlemen, who seem to take peculiar delight in deriding our Mongolian origin, are themselves peculiarly sensitive as to their Saxon birthright, is well illustrated by the following little incident:
A group of young Japanese engineers went to examine the Brooklyn Bridge. When under the pier, the structure and tension of each of the suspending ropes were being discussed upon, a silk-hatted, spectacled, and decently dressed American gentleman approached them, "Well John," he intruded upon the Japanese scientists, "These things must look awful strange to you from China, ey!" One of among the Japanese retorted the insulting question, and said, "So they must be to you from Ireland." The gentleman got angry and said, "No, indeed not. I am not an Irish." "And so we are not Chinese,"was the gentle rejoinder. It was a good blow, and the silk-hatted sulked away. He did not like to be called an Irish.
Time fails me to speak of other unchristian features of Christendom. What about legalized lottery which can depend for its stability upon its millions in gold and silver, right in face of simple morality clear even to the understanding of a child; of widespread gambling propensities, as witnessed in scenes of cock-fights, horse-race, and foot-ball matches; of pugilism, more inhuman than Spanish bull-fights; of lynching, fitted more for Hottentots than for the people of a free Republic; of rum-traffic, whose magnitude can find no parallel in the trade of the whole world; of demagogism in politics; of denominational jealousies in religion; of capitalists' tyrrany and laborers' insolence; of millionaires' fooleries; of men's hypocritical love toward their wives; etc, etc, etc? Is this the civilization we were taught by missionaries to accept as an evidence of the superiority of Christian Religion over other religions? With what shamefacedness did they declare unto us that the religion which made Europe and America must surely be the religion from on high? If it was Christianity that made the so-called Christendom of to-day, let heaven's eternal curse rest upon it! Peace is the last thing we can find in Christendom. Turmoils, complexities, insane asylums, penitentiaries, poor-houses!
O for the rest of the Morning Land, the quietude of the Lotus Pond! Not the steam-whistle that alarms us from our disturbed sleep, but the carol of the Bird of Paradise that wakens us from our delicious slumber; not the dust and jar of an elevated railroad, but a palanquin borne by a lowing cow; not marble-mansions built with price of blood earned in the Wall Street battle-market, but thatched roofs with sweet contentment in Nature's bounties. Are not sun, moon, and stars purer and more beautiful objects of worship than money and honors and empty shows?
O heaven I am undone! I was deceived! I gave up what was really Peace for that which is no Peace! To go back to my old faith I am now too overgrown; to acquiesce in my new faith is impossible. O for Blessed Ignorance that might have kept me from the knowledge of faith other than that which satisfied my good grandma! It made her industrious, patient, true; and not a compunction clouded her face as she drew her last breath. Hers was Peace and mine is Doubt; and woe is me that I called her an idolater, and pitied her superstition, and prayed for her soul, when I myself had launched upon an unfathomable abyss, tossed with fear and sin and doubt. One thing I shall never do in future: I shall never defend Christianity upon its being the religion of Europe and America. An "external evidence" of this nature is not only weak, but actually vicious in its general effects. The religion that can support an immortal soul must have surer and profounder bases than such a "show"evidence to rest upon. Yet I once built my faith upon a straw like that.
THE NET IMPRESSIONS OF CHRISTENDOM. - RETURN HOME.
Now that my disciplines in Christendom came to end, my readers would like to know what I think of it after all. Did I retain to the last the impressions I received on my first landing upon it? Is Christendom after all better than Heathendom? Is Christianity worth introducing to my country; or is there raison d'etre of Christian mission?
First let me frankly confess that I was not entirely taken up by Christendom. Three-and-a-half years' stay in it, with the best of hospitality it gave me, and the closest of friendships I formed in it, did not entirely naturalize me to it. I remained a stranger throughout, and I never had exerted myself to be otherwise. Not as Terra-del-Fuegians in a civilized country yearn after their former roamings over the foamy cliffs under the Southern Cross, or as latinized Indians seek for re-companionship with buffaloes in their native prairies, but with aims higher and nobler I yearned after my homeland with "Home-Sweet-Home" yearnings till the very last of my stay in Christendom. Never have I entertained any wish whatever of becoming an American or an Englishman; but I rather reckoned my heathen relationship a special priviledge of my own, and thanked God once and again for having brought me out into this world as a "heathen,"and not as a Christian.
For there are several advantages to be born a heathen, Heathenism I consider as an undeveloped stage of humanity, developable into a higher and perfecter stage than that attained by any form of Christianity. There are perennial hopes in heathen nations still untouched by Christianity; hopes as of the youth venturing for life grander than that of all his predecessors. And though my nation is more than two thousand years old in History, it is yet a child in Christ, and all the hopes and possibilities of future lie shrouded in its rapidly developing days. Thrice thankful am I that I can witness many of such days. When I could feel the power of the New Truth more. What to the "born Christians" sounded as time-worn commonplaces, were to me new revelations, and called forth from me all the praises sung perhaps by our first parents, when, "Bneath a curtain of translucent dew, Bathed in the rays of the great settling flame, Heperus, with the host of heaven, came, And lo! creation widened in man's view.
In me could I witness the changes and progress of the eighteen Christian centuries, and when I came out of all my strifes, I found myself a sympathetic man, acquainted as I was with all the stages of spiritual development from idol-worship up to soul's emancipation in the Crucified Son of God. Such visions and experiences are not vouchsafed to all of God's children, and we who are called in the eleventh hour have at least this priviledge to make up all the loss of having remained in darkness so long.
In forming any right estimate of Christendom, it is essential for us first of all to make a rigid distinction between Christianity pure and simple, and Christianity garnished and dogmatized by its professors. I believe no sane man of this generation dare speak ill of Christianity itself. After reading all the skeptic literatures that had come to my hand, I came to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth remains untouched after all the furious attacks mad upon those who are called by His name. If Christianity is what I now believe it to be, it is as firm and fixed as the Himalaya itself. He that attacks it does so to his own disadvantage. Who but fools dare rush at rocks? Some indeed rush at what they imagine to be Christianity, which in fact is no Christianity, but super-structures over the same, built by some faithless believers, who, thinking that the Rock by itself cannot stand all the wear and tear of Time, shed it over with shrines, cathedrals, churches, doctrines, Thirty Nine Articles, and other structures of combustible nature; and some fools of this world, knowing that such are combustible, set fire to them, and rejoice over their conflagration, and think that the Rock itself has also vanished in the flame. Behold the Rock is there, "towering o'er the wrecks of Time."
But what is Christianity? Certainly it is not the Bible itself, though much of it, and perhaps the essence of it, is contained in it. Neither can it be any set of dogmas framed by men to meet the exigencies of a time. Really we know more of what it is not than what it is.
We say Christianity is Truth. But that is defining an undefinable by another undefinable. "What is Truth?" is asked by the Roman Pilate and other unveracious men. Truth like Life is hardest, yea impossible, to be defined; and this mechanical century has began to doubt both because of their undefinability. Bichat, Treviranus, Beclard, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel, each has his own definition of Life; but all unsatisfactory. "organization in action," says one; "The sum total of the forces which resist death,"says another. But we know it is more. The true knowledge of Life comes only by living it. Scalpel and Microscope show only the mechanism of it. To Truth. We come to know it only by keeping it. Logic-chopping, hair-splitting, and wire-drawing only make it less true. Truth is there, unmistakable, majestic; and we have but to go there from ourselves, and not call it to us. The very attempt to define Truth shows our own stupidity, for what but the Infinite Universe can de-fine or limit Truth. So we shall give up the definition of Truth, if for the mere purpose of hiding our own stupidity.
So I came to see that the undefinability of Christianity is not an evidence of its non-existence, much less of its humbugness. The very fact that it grows more to me the more I conform myself to its teachings, shows its close relationship with the Infinite Truth itself. I know it is not a thing wholly unrelated to other religions. It is one of "Ten great religions," and we will not, like some, depreciate all others to make it appear as the only religion worth having. But to me it is more, very much more, than any religion that I am acquainted with. At least it is perfecter than the religion in which I was brought up, and now after sifting all that has been lectured upon "Comparative Religion," I can yet think of nothing perfecter than it.
"But no more Panegyrics," you say. "Tell us in what respect it is perfecter than your heathenism."
Heathenism, like much of what passes for Christianity in Christendom, teaches morality, and inculcates upon us the keeping of the same. It shows us the way, and commands us to walk therein. No more and no less. As for Juggernaut, infant-sacrifice, and so-forth, let us eliminate them from our account of heathenism, for they are not it, as mammon-worship, and infant-killing by other methods than that of throwing them to gavials, and other horrors and superstitions of Christendom are not Christianity Therein let us be fair and forgiving in judging others. We will meet our enemy in his best and strongest. I do not hesitate to say that Christianity does the same; i.e. show us the way to walk in. Indeed, it does so more clearly and unmistakably than any other religion. In it there is no will-of-the-wisp-ness of the guiding light that I often meet with in other faiths. Indeed, one prominent feature of Christianity is this sharpness of distinction between Light and Darkness, Life and Death. But let any fair judge compare the Ten Commandments of Moses with those of Buddha, and he will see at once that the difference is not that of day from night. The Rectitude of Life as taught by Buddha, Confucius, and other "Heathen" teachers, is something, which if carefully studied by Christians, will make them ashamed of the former self-satisfaction. Do but make the Chinese and the Japanese keep the commandments of their own Confucius, and you make fairer Christendoms out of these two nations than any you have in Europe or America. The best of Christian converts has never given up the essence of Buddhism or Confucianism. We welcome Christianity, because it helps us to become more like our own ideals. Only zealots, "revivalists," pleasers of some show-loving missionaries, indulge in the auto-da-fe of the objects of their former worship. "I came to fulfill, and not to destroy,"said the Founder of Christianity.
Christianity is more and higher than Heathenism in that it makes us keep the law. It is Heathenism plus Life. By it alone the law-keeping becomes a possibility. It is the Spirit of the Law. It of all religions works form inside. It is what Heathenism has been searching and groping after with much weeping. It not only shows us the Good, but it makes us good, by taking us right at once to the Eternal Goodness Himself. It provides us not only with the Way, but with the Life as well; with the Rail as well as the Engine. I am yet to be taught by "Comparitive Religion" of some other religion that does likewise.
With the "Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation" let Philosophical Wisdom concern itself to its heart's content. The fact of salvation is there, and Philosophy or No-Philosophy cannot unmake facts. The human experience has yet known of none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Of moral science we have more than enough. That any Ph. D. can tell us, if we but pay big fees to him. We know we must not steal, without a doctor to teach us. But oh not to steal, in the manifold and spiritual sense of stealing! "Look at me, and be ye saved." "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life."In this looking at Him is our salvation, whatever be the philosophy of it. The nineteen Christian centuries teach me so, and my little soul too can testify (God be thanked) that it is so.
This then is Christianity. It is at least so to me. Deliverance from sin by the atoning grace of the Son of God. It may be more, but it cannot be less. This the essence of Christianity then; and popes and bishops and reverends and other adjuncts, useful and otherwise, are not the necessary parts of it. As such it is worth having above all other things. No true man can get along without it and Peace cannot be his without it.
Websters defines Christendom as "that portion of the world in which Christianity prevails, or which is governed under Christian institutions, in distinction from heathen or Mohammedan lands." He does not say it is a land of perfected angels. It is where Christianity prevails, or is looked up to by the majority of the people as the guide of their lives. Two elements, Belief and Believers, determine the practical morality of any nation. Fierce Saxons, piratical Scandinavians, pleasure-loving French, trying to manage themselves in this world by the tenets of the Divine Man of Nazareth, that is what we witness in Christendom. Lay no blame then upon Christianity for their untowardness; but rather praise it for its subduing power over tigers such as they.
What if these people had no Christianity? What if no Pope Leos are with them to curb their depredations, and turn them over to Justice and Forgiveness? Buddhism and Confucianism will be to them as Apollinaris' Water be to chronic dyspepsia, -inertness, insipidity, the return of animalism, eternal destruction. It is only by the Church Militant arrayed against the huge monstrosities of mammonism, rum-traffic, Louisiana lottery, and other enormities, that Christendom is kept from precipitating into immediate ruin and death. A son of a Presbyterian minister, by the name of Robert Ingersoll, said that it would be better for his country to turn all of its churches into theaters. He said so because he was sure that his country would never follow his advice. Say whatever we may of the "Beastliness" of Christendom; does not its very disease testify to the vitality of the Life that keeps it alive?
Then observe this optic phenomenon of the greatest darkness with the greatest light. The shadow is the deeper, the brighter the light that casts it. One characteristics of Truth is that it makes the bad worse and the good better. It is useless to ask why this is so. "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath;" in morals as in economics. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. If Christianity is light unto all men, it is not to be wondered at that it develops badness as well as goodness. We may reasonably expect therefore the worst badness in Christendom.
It is said that the state of New York with a population of 5,000,000 produces more murderers than Japan with 40,000,000 souls. General Grant's observation in the latter county was that the number and state of its poor were nothing compared with what he saw in his own United States. London is proverbial for the magnitude of its pauperism, and Christendom generally for its gambling and drinking habits. Some of the alcoholic liquors that can satisfy the appetite of these people are strong enough to upset the heads of our drunkards, if taken in any considerable quantity. Scenes in those backstreets of some of the largest cities of Christendom, which no decent men dare even to look into, can be described with no milder words than the vilest in any language. Shameless gamblings, open-day piracies, cool-blooded sacrifice of fellow-men for one's own aggrandizement, are being conducted there on gigantic, business-like scales. You who look with pity upon heathens, and glory in the blessedness of your Christian civilization, read with fair open eyes the following that came to my ears from one of your own philanthropists:
In the suburb of the capital city of one of the most Christian of Christian countries, lived in silence an old couple, in apparent enjoyment of the good things of this world. The cause of their well being remained a secret to themselves alone. One thing peculiar, however. They had a stove which to all outward appearances was altogether too large for their cooking purpose; and the chimney-pipe smoked late in the stillness of night, when no man eats, but all go to sleep. The quaint little household called forth the attention of a heroic woman of the city, who to her keen womanly instinct combined a tact of the most practical kind when in pursuit of the dark things of the world. She investigated the case carefully, quietly. Evidences upon evidences were secured, and further skeptism became impossible. One dark night, she with proper authorities breaks into the house. The stove is the object of suspicion. They open it, and what do you think they find in there? Embers of anthracites to cheer the old age? No. The horror of horrors! Human-looking things there! Supple babies being baked! The price of baking, two dollars a piece! Engaged in this business for twenty years unmolested! And made quite a fortune out of it, too! For what purpose this horror? To cover and annihilate the shame called the unlucky babies into being! The city too full of illegitimacies; hence the prosperity of the old couple's trade! And my narrator continued "do not wonder if some of those poor things owed their advent to this world to・・・・・・・ (disgrace upon disgrace)!
Moloch-worship in Christendom as well! No need of scoring through Indian mythologies to create in one's imagination the horrors of Juggernaut. The heathen Ammonites sacrificed their infants with distinct religious purposes; but these night-hags, with no higher aim than those "two dollars a piece." Assuredly you have "heathens at your door." "Christendom is a beastly land." So report some of my countrymen who have traveled abroad, and saw only its dark half. True, they are unfair; but as far as the said beastliness goes, the impressions they have received are correct. Heathendom cannot compete with Christendom in its beastliness as well.
But if Christendom's bad is so bad, how good is its good! Seek through the length and breadth of Heathendom, and see whether you can find one John Howard to ornament its history of humanity. My father, who, as I told you in my first chapter, is a deep Confucian scholar, and whose admiration for the ancients of China is very strong, has told me once and again, that from what he knows of George Washington, Yao and Shun, upon whom Confucius spent all his stock of eulogies, were nothing compared with this liberator of America; and I , with more knowledge of Washington than my father, can endorse his "historic criticism" in full. Such combinations of heroism and tenderness of heart, of ability and disinterestedness of purpose, of common-sense and enthusiasm in his religious conviction, as were those of Oliver Cromwell, cannot be imagined of existence under non-Christian dispensation. We have heard of our magnates hoarding millions, and spending them upon temples, or feeding the poor for their own "future's sake;" but a George Peabody or a Stephen Girard, who hoarded for the sake of giving, and took delight in giving, is not a phenomenon observable among heathens. And not these select few only, but widely distributed throughout Christendom, though necessarily hidden from view, are to be found what might be specially named goodmen, -souls who love goodness for its own sake, and are bent toward doing good, as mankind in general is bent toward doing evil. How these souls, charity keeping themselves from the view of the public, are striving to make this world any bit better by their efforts and prayers; how they often shed tears for the wretchedness of the state of the people of whom they read only in newspapers; how they lay upon their hearts the welfare of the whole mankind; and how willing they are to take part in the work of ameliorating human misery and ignorance; these I saw and witnessed with my own eyes, and can testify to the genuine spirit that underlies them all. These silent men are they, who in their country's peril are the first to lay down their lives in its service; who, when told of a new mission enterprise in a heathen land, will deliver their railroad fares to the missionary who undertakes it, and return home tramping on their own feet, and praise God for their having done so; who in their big tearful hearts, understand all the mysteries of Divine Mercy, and hence are merciful toward all around them. No fierceness and blind zeal with these men, but gentleness, and cool calculation in doing good. Indeed, I can say with all truthfulness that I saw good men only in Christendom. Brave men, honest men, righteous men are not wanting in Heathendom, but I doubt whether good men, by that I mean those men summed up in that one English word which has no equivalent in any other language: Gentleman, doubt whether such is possible without the religion of Jesus Christ to mould us. The Christian, God Almighty's gentlemen, he is a unique figure in this world, undescibably beautiful, noble, and lovable.
And not only are there such good men in Christendom, but their power over bad men is immense, considering the comparative scarcity of good men even in Christendom. This is another feature of Christendom, that goodness is more possible and more powerful there than in Heathendom. One Lloyd Garrison "friendless and unseen," and the freedom of a race began with him. One John B. Gough, and the huge intemperance begins to totter. Minority does not mean defeat with these people, though their Constitution seems to imply to that effect. They are too sure of their righteous cause, and too sure of the national conscience, they feel sure to win over the nation to them. Rich men they fear and honor and admire, but good men, more. They are more proud of the goodness of Washington than of his bravery; of Phillips Brooks than of Jay Gould. (Indeed, very many of them are really ashamed of the latter.) Righteousness with them is a power; and an ounce of righteousness goes against a pound of wealth, and often outweighs it.
Then their national conscience, by that I mean the sum total of the people's conscience as a nation, how infinitely higher and purer than their average conscience! What as individuals they freely indulge in, they as a nation strongly protest against. I have heard it stated that many a blasphemer died a Christian death on the battlefields of the late Civil War in America; and I do not doubt the statement. The battle was one of principles, and not of honor and filthy lucre. They marched with a Christian aim in view: the liberation of an inferior race. Never in History has a nation gone into war with such an altruistic end in view. None but a Christian nation can go to such a war. Yet all were not Christians who went to this war. Observe, too, how scrupulous these people are about the moral perfection of the men whom they choose as their Presidents. The men must not merely be able men, but moral men as well. No Richelieus or Mazarins can be their Presidents. Woe to that poor candidate, who in other respects is the fittest to rule; but a stain or two that mar his character has made him a failure. Morality does not usually count with statesmanship in Heathendom. why do they pursue the Mormons with so much rigor? Are not concubinage and polygamy of an "occult kind" actually practiced among these people? A strange inconsistency, you say. Strange, but to be admired. As a nation they cannot allow polygamy. Let those who practice it, do it secretly. The national conscience is not yet sharp enough to look after secrecies of this sort. But polygamy as an institution, under the sufferance and protection of the nation's laws, that neither Christians nor infidels will wink at. The Mormons must submit; else Utah shall not add one more star to the banner already spangled with so many bright and honorable stars.
The same national conscience that fosters all noble and worthy sentiments, keeps at bay all that are ignoble and unworthy. Broad daylight is denied to hags of all kinds. Such must put on garments of righteousness when they appear among the people; else they will be "lynched" by the very hags like themselves, and handed over to Oblivion and his angels. Mammons walk by the laws of righteousness. Honesty is believed to be the best policy, in politics as well as in other money-getting business. A man kisses his wife in society, whom he beats in his home. Gambling-houses go by the name of billiard rooms, and even the fallen angels of the title of "ladies." Saloons are all screened from outside views, and men drink in darkness, in evident shame of their evil habit. All very productive of the hypocrisies of the worst sort, you say. But does Virtue mean the license of evils? I think not.
So then, this differencing of good from evil, of sky-loving larks from cave-dwelling bats, of sheep on the right hand from goats on the left, this I consider to be a Christian state, the foretaste of that into we are all going, the complete separation of the good from the bad. This Earth, though beautiful, was not originally meant as an angel-land. It was meant as a school to prepare us for some other places. This educational value of the Earth must not be lost sight of in our poor attempts to make it what it should be. Utilitarianism, Sentimental Christianity, and other shallow things, that, like the ancient Greeks, think this world to be god's home, will stumble at Cromwells and other no-sweet prophets, because they cannot make all happy. In too many cases, "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" means just the reverse of a righteous and just government. I suppose nowhere under heaven are more "universal satisfactions" found than in African jungles upon the Congo or the Zambesi. That state is the best in which the best discipline of soul is possible, and hence the original aim of the creation of this Earth is best realized. When this is done, we all may quit this earth, and go, some of us to eternal bliss, and other to eternal no-bliss, and the Earth itself to its original elements, as a thing that has finished its business.
One more feature of Christendom before I cease to speak good things about it. There is one doctrine in Christianity upon which the recent Biology makes much after-dinner speeches; I mean Resurrection. Let Renan and his disciples make whatever they please out of this doctrine; but the practical significance of this unique doctrine cannot be overlooked by "historical schools" of any turn of mind. Why is it that heathens in general go into decay so soon, but Christians in general know no decay whatever, but hope even in Death itself? Octogenarians still scheming for future as if they were still in twenties are objects of almost miraculous wonders with us heathens. We count men above forty among the old age, while in Christendom no man below fifty is considered to be fit for a position of any great responsibility. We think of rest and retirement as soon as our children come to age; and backed by the teaching of filial piety, we are entitled to lazy idleness, to be cared and caressed by the young generation. Judson a missionary, after hardships of his life-time, exclaims he wants to live and work more, as he has eternity to rest. Victor Hugo in his eighty-four can say: "I improve every hour because I love this world as my fatherland. My work is only beginning. My monument is hardly above its foundation. I would be glad to see it mounting and mounting forever."
Compare these with a Chinese poet Tao-Yuen-Ming who sought the solace of his old age in cups of liquor, or many of my own countrymen excusing themselves from the busy world as soon as grayness appears upon their heads. The godless Physiology attributes all this to difference in diet, climate, and so forth; but the very fact that we too with our rice and monsoon can be other than what we used to be, calls for some other explanation than physiological.
I attribute the progressiveness of Christendom to its Christianity. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the three Life-angels that defy and shun Death and his angels, have worked upon it for the past nineteen hundred years, and have made it as we have it now. Enormous yet though their sins are, these people have the power to overcome them. They have yet no sorrows which they think they cannot heal. Is not Christianity worth having if but for this power alone?
The raison d'etre of Christian mission? I think I have stated it already. It is the raison d'entre of Christianity itself. Said David Livingstone: "The spirit of missions is the spirit of our Master; the very genius of His religion. A diffusive philanthropy is Christianity itself. It requires perpetual propagation to attest its genuineness." Once it ceases to propagate, it ceases to live. Have you ever thought why it is that God leaves so large a part of human race still in darkness of heathenism? I think it is that your Christianity may live and grow by your efforts to diminish the darkness. One hundred and thirty-four millions of heathens yet! Thank God, there are still so many, for we need not like Alexander weep for the lack of the world to be conquered. Suppose God tells you to stay at home, and keep your purse-strings tight, and your hearts closed toward heathens. Think you you will thank Him for relieving you from useless obligations? If Christian mission is an obligation to you, for which you must have God's further blessings to reward you, and heathens' gratitude to keep your hearts warm, I believe you better cease to take any part in it, as neither God nor heathens get any good from you. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." That was Apostle Paul. I believe, to him the greatest trial was not to be a missionary. With an expansive life in him, could he refrain himself from expanding into universal charity, which is Christian mission. I believe we better confess right honestly that we have no Christianity to speak of, than to grumble at "the difficulties of the station," "the insolence of heathens" and other cowardly things.
But why send missionaries to heathens when you have heathens enough in your own land? You know this world is a unit, and the human race is one great family. This is what I read in my Christian Bible, though Patriotisms, Christian and otherwise, seem to deny this. You cannot make yourself perfect without making others perfect. An idea of a perfect Christendom in midst of encircling heathenism is impossible. In Christianizing other peoples, you Christianize yourself. This is a philosophy abundantly illustrated by actual experiences.
Suppose you stop you foreign mission, and concentrate your whole energy upon home mission. What will you have? Many more striking conversions, many more homes freed from the cures of whiskey, many more children decently clothed, no doubt. But withal what? Many more heresy-huntings, many more denominational backbitings, with perhaps more Sunday-school excursions, and "Japanese marriages" in churches. I think you who have had Christianity now over eighteen hundred years have got over by this time that foolish and heathenish notion, that good done in one direction diminishes good to be done in other directions. Growth outside always means growth inside. You are troubled with some intestine lethargy. You go to your physician, and he medicates upon you nostrums after nostrums. But nothing heals you, and you begin to lose faith in your doctor. Finally you come to the true knowledge of your trouble. You turn your attention from the inside; that is, you forget yourself, and go to some outside work, cultivation of cabbages, it may be. Then you begin to breathe freely, your bicep-muscles get little bigger and firmer. Gradually you feel your trouble is gone, and you are now a stronger man than before. You healed yourself by reflex influences. You gave yourself upon cabbages, and cabbages healed you.
So with churches. Pruning with heresy-huntings and medicating with New Theologies may never heal them. Nay, they may grow even worse. Now some wise men prescribe foreign mission to them. They take part in it, and they soon get interested in it. They have taken in the whole world into their sympathy, and they feel themselves expanding by having done so. The new sympathy thus engendered calls up the old sympathy that has gone to sleep by heresy-trials and New Theology medicatings. What they failed to revive within them by spending themselves upon themselves, they now see returning to them by spending themselves upon other than themselves. You converted heathens, and heathens now re-convert you. Such is humanity, so intimately are you connected with the whole race. Pity the heathen? Do you pity your own brother in wretchedness? Are you not ashamed of him, and blame yourself for his wretched state? I believe this is the true philosophy of Christian mission; and missions started on any other basis than this are shows, plays, things to be criticized by their enemies, and disregarded by the very heathens to whom they are sent.
But you ask: Do you heathens like to have Christianity? Yes, we sensible heathens do; and the insensible among us, though they throw stones at missionaries, and do other mischievous things upon them, as soon as they resume their sensibility, will see that they did wrong. Of course, we do not like many things that come under the name of Christianity. Hosts, surplices, compulsory prayer-books, theologies, unless they are absolutely necessary to convey Christianity itself to us in our present state of mental development, we do desire to be spared from. We also like to have no Americanianity and Anglicanianity imposed upon us as Christianity. I hope none of us ever threw stones at Christ Himself. If we did, we stoned at the Almighty Throne itself, and we shall have the Truth itself to condemn us. But chide us not for throwing stones at missionaries who in the name of Christ teach us their own views, theologies they call them, and also their own manners and customs, such as "free marriages," "Woman's rights," and others, all more or less objectionable to us. We do this for self-preservation. You who tolerate Catholicism, but not Roman Catholicism, who fling your pulpit addresses and newspaper editorials right at the faces of Piuses and Leos for their interference in your school and other public affairs, sympathize with us in our protest against Americanism, Anglicanism, and other foreign isms.
Then, when you come to us, come with strong common sense. Do not believe the words of those mission-circus men who tell you that a nation can be converted in a day. There is no spiritual El Dorado to be found upon this earth. Nowhere can souls be converted by dozens and hundreds. The same matter-of-fact world here as there. Men do doubt, simulate, stumble, here as elsewhere. I know some missionaries who preach to us as if we were their own countrymen. They seem to think that the Moody-Sankey method that goes so successfully with Americans and Englishmen, should succeed equally well with Japanese and Chinese. But Japanese and Chinese are not Americans, as you well know. They had not their childhood mothered with "Lord is my shepherd," "Now I lay me down to sleep," and other angelic melodies. They take as much delight in gong-bells as in Estey pipe-organs. They are "heathens," and you must teach them accordingly. But some preach Jesus Christ to them, give them a copy each of New Testament, persuade them to be baptized, get their names enrolled in church-membership, and so have them reported to home-churches, and think that they are safe, and will go to heaven somehow. Perhaps they may, perhaps they may not. Hereditary influences, mental idiosyncracies, social environments, to say nothing of the same old Adamic propensity to sin in them, are not so readily conformable to the new and strange doctrine that are preached to them. Though we despise godless science, yet scienceless evangelization we do not put much value upon. I believe faith is wholly compatible with common-sense, and all zealous and successful missionaries have had this sense in abundance.
Come to us also, after fighting out Devils in your own souls. You know John Bunyan speaks of a reverend gentleman who had but very little experience with Devils. As he was not able to cure Bunyan's soul, so such as he cannot cure us heathens. "Born Christians," who have only heard of conversions, as "reports from a distance," cannot help us much in our death-struggles from Darkness to Light. I know a Quaker professor in America, who, when I told him of the doubts and difficulties that I had to overcome in my struggles Christward, said that he could not very well see how that could have been, seeing that Christianity was so simple a thing as was contained in one monosyllable L-O-V-E. Only a monosyllable, but the Universe itself cannot contain it! An enviable man he. His ancestors had fought out the battles for him. He came into this world unconscious of struggles, a readymade Christian. Like as a millionaire's son cannot comprehend the miseries and strifes of a self-made man, so this professor and many like him in Christendom cannot comprehend what we heathens have to fight out in our souls before we get settled in peace in that monosyllable. I advise such as he to stay at home as professors, and not come to us as missionaries, for our complexities and sinuosities may confound them, as their simplicities and straight-cuttednesses confound us. Indeed, those of us who have had some earnest experiences with Christianity, have found it not an altogether easy-going, home-sweet-home, and peace-unto-all-men affair. We can appreciate "Pilgrim's Progress;" but as for that happy, happy, honey-moon style religion, we know not what it is, but that it is not the Christianity of the Crucified One. Heathenism first subdued in you own soul then you can subdue it right successfully in us.
With you Christianity sifted from you own isms, and you common-sense well sharpened (if not sharp already), and best of all, with Devils fought out in you own souls, I see no reason why you fail to do immense good to heathens. Heathendom has had such missionaries (god be thanked,) and it is crying for more of them. We soon take no thought of them that they are strangers. Even their very lack of our language is no barrier between them and us. Christianity is in their very eyes. We feel it in their grasp of our hands. O how they shine among us! Their very presence dispels darkness. They need not preach unto us. We will preach for them; only let them hold us from behind. Rather one such than dozens and hundreds of missionary adventurers and experimenters. The work which an Archangel may envy, the work of preaching Christ to the heathen. Who but an archangel himself can engage in this enviable work?
Yes, Christianity we do need. We need it not so much to demolish our idols of wood and stone. Those are innocent things compared with other idols worshipped in Heathendom and elsewhere. We need it to make our bad appear worse, and our good appear better. It only can convince us of sin; and convincing us of it, can help us to rise above it, and conquer it. Heathenism I always consider as a tepid state of human existence; it is neither very warm nor very cold. A lethargic life is a weak life. It feels pains less; hence rejoices less. De profundis is not of heathenism. We need Christianity to intensify us; to swear fealty to our God, and enmity toward Devils. Not a butterfly-life, but an eagle-life; not diminutive perfection of a pink-rose, but the sturdy strength of an oak. Heathenism will do for our childhood, but Christianity alone for manhood. The world is growing, and we with the world. Christianity is getting to be a necessity with all of us.
For fifty days I was upon the sea on my way home. I sailed under the Southern Cross, saw the True Cross stand, and the False Cross fall. But think you I was happy to see my dear ones soon? Yes, happy in the sense that a soldier is happy, who dreams of conquests after encounter with his enemies. I was found by Him, and He girded me, and intimated me that He would carry me whither I would not. Battles he assigned me in my own small sphere, and I was not to answer Nay. Alas I sought Him with much fightings. I found Him, and He ordered me at once to His battlefield! This the lot of one born in a soldier-family. Let me not murmur, but feel thankful,
May 16, Noon. Clear, hazy in afternoon. Came to the sight of my land about 10 A.M. Run 282 miles since yesterday noon. 63 miles more, and home. Read 32nd chapter of Genesis. Much consoled by the thought that I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies which God hath shewed unto me during these years of my exile. His grace fills up all the vacancies left by the sad experiences of life. I know my life hath been guided by Him, and though I go with much fear and trembling to my homeland, I fear no evil, for he will still manifest more of Himself unto me.
Midnight. Reach home 9:30 P.M. Thank God I am here at last after traveling some 20,000 miles. The joy of the whole family knew no bounds. Perhaps it was the happiest time my poor parents ever have had. Brother and sister grew big, the former an active little fellow, and the latter a quite nice girl. Talked with father all night. Mother doesn't care to learn about the world; she is only glad that her son is safely at home. I thank God for keeping my family all these years of my absence from them. My prayer has been to see my father in safety to tell him all what I have seen and experienced.
"And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which sadist unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with one staff I passed over the Jordan; and now I am become two bands." (Gen. XXXII, 9. 10.) This the state of one whom the Lord liketh to honor. Jacob had in Haran all what he had sought after and prayed for: Leah and Rachel, children, sheep. I too, a poor servant of His, had in Christendom all what I had sought after and prayed for. Not indeed the kind with which Jacob was blessed. Indeed, so strait was my condition in this respect that I had only 75 cents left in my pocket after my roamings over 20,000 miles of land and sea. My mental capital too, which I carried home was inconsiderable compared with that which is usually brought back by my countrymen of my own age and circumstance. Science, Medicine, Philosophy, Divinity, got a sheepskin of this kind I had in my trunk to please my parents as my present to them. But I had what I wished to have even ・・ "unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishiness." True, I did not find it in Christendom in the way as I had expected; i.e. I had not picked it up in streets, or even in churches or in theological seminaries; but in ways various and contrarious, I had it nevertheless, and I was satisfied. This then my present to my parents and countrymen, whether they like it or not. This the Hope of human souls, this the Life of nations. No philosophy or divinity can take its place in history of mankind. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek."
I reached my home late in evening. There upon a hill, enclosed by Cryptomeria hedge, stood my paternal cottage. "Mamma," I cried as I opened the gate, "Your son is back again." Her lean form, with many more marks of toil upon it, how beautiful! The ideal beauty that I failed to recognize in the choices of my Delaware friend, I found again in the sacred form of my mother. And my father, the owner of a twelfth part of an acre upon this spacious globe, he a right hero too, a just and patient man. Here is a spot then which I may call my own, and by which I am chained to this Land and Earth. Here my Home and my Battlefield as well, the soil that shall have my service, my prayers, my life, free.
The day after my arrival at home, I received an invitation to the principalship of a Christian college said to have been started by heathens. A singular institution this, unique in the history of the world. Shall I accept it?
But here this book must close. I have told you how I became a Christian. Should my life prove eventful enough, and my readers are not tired of my ways of telling, they shall have another book like this upon "How I Worked a Christian."
