Neesima. Singularly enough, the streams of influence emanating from their lives were to meet in Kyoto in the school which has since grown to the proportions of a university. In 1872, a school was opened in Kumamoto by the prince of that province, in which Captain Janes, a graduate of West Point, was employed as a teacher. With a strategy worthy of a general, he said nothing about Christianity until two or three years had passed. Then, armoured with the language and ties of friendship, he invited some of his pupils to a study of the Bible. With a masterful passion he urged them to accept Christ. Boys who hated the Bible entered the class, saying, "Knowledge of the enemy is the first step towards victory over them." One Sunday, on a hill near Kumamoto, forty of them met and made a covenant and signed their names on an oath paper" to preach the Gospel even if they lost their lives. Thirty endured. the persecutions which followed this noted meeting. Most of the thirty entered the newly founded Doshisha at Kyoto to prepare for Christian work. They graduated from the first class, becoming " evangelists, pastors, teachers, and editors." Thus the infant church was strengthened by a providentially prepared band of intelligent and earnest workers. Joseph Hardy Neesima was the gift of God to Japan. We should pray for more such gifts. He was born in Tokyo. A spell of measles threw him out of the naval school he was attending, and one day at a friend's home he found a Chinese translation of "Bible History by an American Missionary." The spell of measles and the Bible history fixed his career. He ran away to Hakodate and was secreted in a ship bound for Shanghai. The death penalty was always visited upon any Japanese leaving the land in those days. But at the risk of his life he was determined to learn more of the God who had made heaven and earth. At Shanghai he was taken aboard a ship bound for Boston. The ship's owner was Alpheus Hardy, Chairman of the Prudential Committee of the American Board. Neesima wrote thus of his voyage to America: "Every night, after I went to bed, I prayed to God: Please! don't cast away me into miserable condition. Please! let me reach my great aim." * He reached his great aim. He graduated at Andover. His tears and his persistence won five thousand dollars, which led to the founding of the Congregational school at Kyoto. Before his appeal at Rutland, the Committee were lukewarm on the subject of a school for Japan. His return to Japan was like Paul's departure from Damascus. Henceforth he was to know nothing among his own people save Christ and Him crucified. In his own personality he embodied the energy of a score. Handsome offers of a governmental position did not move him because God had chosen him to move the nation. None but the pioneers know of the perils and hardships of the early days. Here is a part of a tender missive received by some missionaries in Kyoto: "To the four American Barbarians, Davis, Gordon, Learned & Greene; we speak to you who have come with words that are sweet in the mouth but a sword in the heart, bad priests, American barbarians, four robbers. . . . Japan being truly flourishing, excellent country, in ancient times when Buddhism first came to Japan those who brought it were killed; in the same way you must be killed." Signed "Patriots in the peaceful city; Believers in Shinto." Idolatry made every effort, by lectures, by pamphlets, by government pressure, to oppose and obscure the light of the Cross. A society called "Yaso Taiji" was organized to exterminate Christianity. Buddhist and Shinto priests went throughout the land organizing sister societies and speaking against the faith. "One priest travelled about the country urging the people not * Arthur Sherburne Hardy, "Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Neesima," p. 10. to use kerosene oil, since it came from a foreign land.”* It has been a big jump from that day to the other day when a Buddhist priest helped D. Norman distribute a lot of Christian tracts to a train-load of Buddhists returning from their favourite temple at Nagano. A few summers ago, a Y. M. C. A. Summer Conference was held in a Buddhist Monastery near Komoro. A missionary said the other day that he and his friends were free to distribute tracts at temples, to the crowds who gathered at festal times. Some of the delusions which prejudiced the people then, some of which still remain, can be noted in the answers made to Joseph Cook, a Boston lecturer, who visited Japan in 1882. In response to the question, "What are the chief objections made by educated natives in Japan to the acceptance of Christianity?" ten pastors and teachers in Kyoto replied: "They think that Christianity will destroy patriotism, filial piety, loyalty to the Mikado, give rise to religious wars, become secret means of foreign interference. They regard the supernatural elements of Christianity as an outgrowth of superstition and to be antagonistic to modern sciences. They confound Protestantism with Roman and Greek Catholicism." Among the chief hindrances among the lower classes, the following was given: "The fear of offending the Government and their friends, the observance of the Sabbath, ancestorial worship, simplicity of Christian worship, dislike of change, strictness of Christian morals, sacrifices and obstacles inherent to Christian profession. † God's providences are seldom seen so clearly, and the timing of His providences to the needs of His kingdom have never been more in evidence than in the last fifty years of Japanese social and political history. For example, in April, 1876, Sunday was observed by governmental decree as a rest day, for the first time. The *Otis Carey, "Japan and Its Regeneration," p. 91. Otis Carey, "History of Christianity in Japan," Vol. II, p. 162. Government's foreign employees, as well as the staffs at legations and consulates, refused to give up their seventh day of rest. Hence the Government, out of necessity, rather than as an act of courtesy to Christianity, enacted the edict. In the early days the burying grounds were in the control of Shinto and Buddhist priests. As they were then appointed by the Government and stood in the rank of officials, they did not fail to make trouble when Christians came to bury their dead. In 1875, Messrs. Ogawa and Okuno, two Christian teachers of missionaries, were arrested because they had assisted in the interment of a Christian at Ueno cemetery in Tokyo. They were reprimanded at court and fined $1.50 apiece. In 1884, by an edict of the Government, its appointment of priests was abolished. As a consequence, troublesome rules about registration and burial likewise lapsed, and the door of religious liberty opened wider. It swung clear open when at last, on February 11, 1889, the Constitution was promulgated, and the Emperor gave to his people religious liberty. The clause reads: "Japanese subjects shall within limits not prejudicial to peace and order and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief." From the coming of the missionaries to the granting of the Constitution was just thirty years. What eventful, inspiring, and marvellous years they were! The Cross which had been hated and trampled upon was again. lifted up, that its healing beams might shine upon them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death. The first Lord's Day after Perry had cast anchor in Japan his crew sang across the bay: "Before Jehovah's awful Throne, Ye nations, bow with sacred joy: That song has never ceased to echo and reverberate among Japan's hills and mountains because to-day tens of thousands have caught up the refrain: "We are His people, we His care, Our souls, and all our mortal frame; Almighty Maker, to Thy name?" It is as natural for human souls to move into sympathy for the Crucified One as for the magnetic needle to swing northward. Christianity has met the needs of men as no other faith, and before its onward sweep and light-flooding movement, other faiths pale as the candle, as the firefly's glimmer under the rising orb of day. Japan has sought for the world's treasures and found them. She has knocked at the temples of the world's wisdom and the doors have opened to her. She has now set her face toward the light. The Light of the world will dispel all her darkness. All that is worthy in her people, her land, her laws, and her customs, will take on a new glory just as cloud, hill, and valley dress themselves with a changing splendour when the rays of the morning sun stream from over a range to the eastward. Will Christ yet be King? Will these millions bow the knee and own Him Lord of all?" As Lord Nelson replied when a sailor asked him about the issue of the battle of the Nile, so the missionary replies: "There is no doubt about it; the only question is who will live to tell the story." 66 |