said: "I do not regret the tendency to free thought and atheism which is almost universal in Japan." An editor said: "We do not need religion of any kind. What we want to insure a glorious future for our beloved country are armies and navies, commerce, manufacture, and modern education with plenty of natural science in it." Such statements are no more openly advocated. Rather has religion come to be considered a necessary medicine for the cure of moral maladies. This decided swing to religion, even as an expedient or help for the state, is very encouraging. Christian workers now have an opportunity for work which, if utilized in full, will affect the future materially. If the Church of Christ in Japan is given but a few more decades of tranquillity, freedom of speech, and even as much welcome and interest as is generally shown now, there will be little occasion for any one after these decades have passed to write a chapter on the future of Christianity, for the thing hoped for will have come. In that day some Japanese Christian will say, as of old Tertullian said to a Roman official: "We are but of yesterday and yet we have filled every place belonging to you, cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camps, your tribes, companies, palace, senate, forum— we leave you your temples only." The place to bring power to bear is at the point where power can be most widely distributed; and surely so far as the Far East is concerned, Japan is that place.-JOHN R. MOTT, "The World Call to Men of To-day." Japan is the gateway of the Orient and is to-day exerting an influence upon China greater than the combined influence of all the European nations. Western civilization is likely to enter China through Japan.-WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, "The Old World and Its Ways." Japan is peculiarly fitted to become, in mental and moral, no less than in material civilization, the mediator between the Occident and the Orient. Whether we will or not, the words still ring in our ears: "Japan leading the Orient-but whither?"— Edinburgh Conference, 1910, Vol. I, p. 51. The situation in the whole Orient, in fact, constitutes one of the most splendid opportunities and at the same time one of the gravest crises in the whole history of the church. With every passing year the opportunity is slipping farther from her grasp. I make bold to say that her victory or defeat in Japan will largely determine the future of Christianity in the whole Far East.-TASUKU HARADA, International Review of Missions, January, 1912, p. 97. This earth too small, For love divine? Is God not infinite? One famished babe meets pity oft from man More than an army slain! Too small for love! Why then too small to be redeemed? -AUBREY DE VERE, quoted in "The Christian View of God and the World," p. 320. It is extremely desirable that American Christians should once more exercise the solicitude for the spiritual condition of this island empire that was so marked a feature of their attitude when the country was first opened up in the fifties and sixties. ... That special effort should be put forth to make plain to missionary volunteers the urgent call to self-sacrificing service presented by the unevangelized millions of Japan-a call second to none other in the world.-Presbyterian Missionaries in Council, August, 1910. I THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF JAPAN P ORT ARTHUR is some thousands of miles from St. Petersburg, and, strictly speaking, always was outside the Russian Empire. However, its fall, more than any event in a hundred years, has changed the destiny of Russia. The citadel, compared to Russia's vast area, is inconsiderable, yet its hills and valleys are pregnant with power. The rocks of Port Arthur, though worthless to the miner or the farmer, are of priceless value from the point of strategy. There are multitudes in the home lands who are unconcerned as to the struggle now going on in the Orient between Christian and idolatrous forces. Japan is remote both from Europe and North America, the strongholds of Christianity. Both from the standpoint of population and area, Japan is small. However, Japan is the Port Arthur of Christendom. The Church cannot be indifferent to this strategic field. As the battle goes in Japan, so may the destiny of Christianity in eastern Asia for centuries be determined. Japan, geographically, is strategically located. The ancestors of the Japanese were not placed in the sands of the Sahara or the ice fields of Greenland, because God had a great mission for them to fulfil elsewhere. "The extent of the country is not large, while its soil is not particularly fertile and its natural resources not conspicuously rich. And yet in wealth, in commerce, in manufacture, in science and literature, in military and naval matters; in short, from whatever point of view you regard it, Great Britain occupies a unique and proud position in the world as the greatest of the European |