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 from 'Japan 
 
'Bbc Gall from Japan. 
 
 BY REV. W. E. TOWSON. 
 
 IOTWITHSTANDING the movement in 
 Japan for an independent and self- 
 governing Church, there remains a call 
 for missionary effort in that remark- 
 able country. I base this call on five conditions: 
 
 What Has Been Accomplished. 
 
 There has been less than one generation of 
 active missionary work in Japan. The results 
 show about 60,000 Protestant, 60,000 Roman 
 and 30,000 Greek Catholic Christians. The 
 leading pastor has recently said: “There are 
 more than one million who are ordering their 
 lives by the teachings of the Bible, who only 
 require to be brought to a public confession 
 of faith.” There is a “Christian Party” whose 
 influence has been estimated at one hundred 
 times the number of the Christians. Their in- 
 fluence has been markedly manifested in poli- 
 tics and in moral effort. The Christian mem- 
 bers of Parliament have never exceeded thir- 
 teen out of three hundred and sixty; still there 
 have been elected two Christians as presidents 
 of the body, one of these reelected five times. 
 The Emperor has made monetary gifts to the 
 Young Men’s Christian Association, to a Prot- 
 estant orphan asylum, and to a home for re- 
 leased prisoners. These have varied from 1,000 
 to 10,000 yen (about $500 to $5,000). 
 
 It is known that the Prince Imperial occa- 
 sionally quietly goes to a church and listens 
 
to a Christian sermon. His eldest son has a 
 governess who is a Christian, a member of 
 the Methodist Church, f^ishop Candler, who 
 spent several months in Japan recently, said 
 he would not be surprised if the present prince, 
 when he reaches the throne, would have a 
 court preacher. Few, if any, of the mission 
 fields can show results as great as these ac- 
 complished in as brief a period. 
 
 What is Being Accomplished. 
 
 A recent writer has said that “the most 
 marked feature in Christian work in Japan 
 to-day is the movement of the nation as a 
 whole toward Christianity.” A leading pastor 
 says: “The tiipe has come when people have 
 to be restrained, so eager are they to receive 
 baptism.” In meetings of but two or three 
 days’ duration it is a common occurrence for 
 from fifty to one hundred and twenty names 
 to be handed in of those whp wish to study 
 Christianity or to become .Christians. A few 
 months since, at one brief meeting, oyer seven 
 hundred names were received. During his re- 
 cent visit, General Booth held nine evening 
 services, in which nine hundred and sixty-nine 
 persons went forward to the “mourners’ 
 bench.” A letter from a friend tej}s me of 
 over two hundred whp have come into the 
 Church within a few months on one island. 
 
 Our Work and the United Church. 
 
 In 1886 Dr. J. W. Lanibuth apd son, Dr. W. 
 R. Lambuth, and Q. A. Dukes were transferred 
 from China to open work for tjie Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, South. They selected a ter- 
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ritory unoccupied by any other Methodism. 
 This territory is a fertile and populous region, 
 comprising the southern part of the main- 
 land, the Island of Shikoku, and northeastern 
 part of Kiushiu. It contains the four large 
 cities of Kobe, Osaka, Kioto, and Hiroshima, 
 aggregating over 1,500,000 population. The 
 smaller cities, towns and villages are almost 
 countless. Our educational work has been wise 
 and successful; the Kwansei Gakuin, of Kobe; 
 our Anglo- Japanese College at Kobe, with 258 
 students; the Hiroshima, Girls’ School, cover- 
 ing nearly a whole block, in a new building, 
 with 945 students ; the Lambuth Memorial 
 Training School for Bible women, in Kobe, 
 with 64 students; and the Palmore Institute, 
 in Kobe, with 140 students. These are crowd- 
 ed, and are greatly in need of enlargement and 
 fuller equipment. 
 
 The evangelistic work is carried on in fifteen 
 circuits and stations, with twenty-four organ- 
 ized churches and thirty- eight chapels and 
 houses of worship. Two hundred and sixty 
 three were added to the Church on profession 
 of faith last year. 
 
 Our mission leads them all in the proportion 
 of Sunday-school scholars to Church members. 
 There are 5,451 of the former to 1,774 of the 
 latter — more than three to one. Let it be re- 
 membered, however, that no record of facts 
 can keep pace with the rapid changes. What 
 is correct to-day will be different to-morrow. 
 
 One of the most significant missionary facts 
 of recent years was the union of three Meth- 
 odisms into one, and the setting up of a native 
 Church among a people so recently strangers 
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to the gospel. This was accomplished when, 
 on May 19, 1907, the Methodist Episcopal, the 
 Canadian Methodist, and the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church, South, united to form the Nippon 
 Methodist Kyokwai, and the body formed a 
 Discipline and elected a bishop of its own. 
 The first Annual Conference under the new 
 arrangement met March 31, 1908. 
 
 This by no means discharges the Boards 
 from responsibility to continue their aid. This 
 will be necessary for years to come. Our Board 
 will therefore still continue to contribute and 
 our missionary will still labor [in cooperation 
 with the Japanese Methodist Church. 
 
 The Boards that have work in Japan should 
 still give them a large measure of financial co- 
 operation, yet I believe that if Japanese Chris- 
 tianity were left to itself it is vitally sufficient 
 to carry on the work to a crowning success. 
 A recent writer has said that if American Chris- 
 tianity by some cataclysm should be totally 
 destroyed, Japanese Christianity would send 
 missionaries to this country to restore the lost 
 faith. In some respects, Japan is in a better 
 position to receive Christianity than America. 
 Christianity means suffering, and the United 
 States is not suffering to-day. Japan has re- 
 cently had her baptism of suffering, while the 
 United States is reveling in wealth and luxury. 
 God has been preparing this country to bear 
 the suffering of other nations. May He put 
 Japan, China, and Korea upon the heart of 
 American Christianity! Unless the United States 
 enters into suffering with the spiritually needy 
 nations, there is real danger that she will lose 
 her Christianity. 
 
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The Present Need. 
 
 Over three-fourths of Japan is unevajig^l- 
 ized. This is three times as many people as 
 are in all Korea, and yet there is npt a borne 
 in alj i Japan that is pot illpmin^d by .coal oil 
 brought from Christian lands. In little towns 
 of a few hundred inhabitants can be seen the 
 advertisement of Duke’s “Cameo” cigarettes, 
 manufactured by a Christian merchant of our 
 Southland; and yet in these same to^yns there 
 are no phurches, chapels, or Bibles. What do 
 these things mean but that Christian business 
 men are m°re alive tQ the opportunity to se- 
 cure wealth than the Chjurch is to win souls? 
 1 bring you no picture of the degradation, the 
 superstition, and the idolatry of Japan; I sim- 
 ply base the plea for Japan on the fact that 
 three-fourths of its inhabitants are without 
 Christ. There is no other basis fpr Christian 
 propagapdism than this: “Without God and 
 without hppe in the world.” 
 
 The Need as Recognized py the Nation’s 
 Leaders. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago Marquis It o said: “I 
 regard religion as quite unnecessary for a na- 
 tion’s life.” To-day he says: “We get our civ- 
 ilization from the West, and we mugt get our 
 religion from the same source.” Count Okuma 
 has recently said: “The notion I entertained 
 of the efficiency of a material civilization I 
 now admit to have been a mistaken one.” 
 
 The reasons for this revolution in thought 
 are: (1) The attempt to establish a high moral 
 standard in Japan without religion has failed. 
 The new wine of Western civilization is burst - 
 
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ing the old bottles of mediaeval Japan. The 
 moral and social standard which did for 
 feudalism and a closed nation is not standing 
 the strain and stress of the world’s best civili- 
 zation. Japan is learning the lesson that ma- 
 terial civilization alone is not sufficient for 
 the life of a nation. Vice was never more 
 rampant. “The bottom has dropped out of 
 Japanese morality.” (2) I'Eey' recognize that 
 Christianity is the basis of Western civiliza- 
 tion, and that the structure they have reared 
 will soon fall unless they strengthen the founda- 
 tion. Hence the change in the opinions of 
 Marquis Ito and other leaders. (3) Chris- 
 tianity has produced a new type of men and 
 women, truly different from any Japan has 
 known heretofore; produced men who, while 
 occupying positions of place and power, are 
 uninfluenced by graft or any other species of 
 wrongdoing. 
 
 Japan’s Present World Position. 
 
 Japan stands on an equality with the civ- 
 ilized nations of the world. She is in military 
 alliance with England. Japan is the leader of 
 the East, the pilot of the Oriental ship of 
 state. In her hands is the destiny of the 
 Orient. As goes Japan, so will go Korea, China 
 and Siam. I believe God has called her to 
 this position. We must not eliminate God 
 from the movements of history. “Christ is 
 the head over all things to the Church.” It 
 surely was providential that Korea fell into 
 the hands of Japan, rather than into the hapds 
 of Russia. If it had been the latter, it would 
 have meant the death of all Protestant mis- 
 7 
 
sionary effort in that country. Japan has been 
 criticised in reference to her management of 
 Korea. So has the United States in regard 
 to her conduct in the Philippines. If left to 
 herself, the coming years will show that Japan 
 will do for Korea what England has done for 
 Egypt. 
 
 Japan is the schoolmaster of the Orient. 
 There are over eighteen thousand Korean, 
 Siamese, and Chinese students in her capital. 
 There has never been such a movement of stu- 
 dents to one country in the history of the world. 
 Special missionaries have been appointed for 
 work among these students. Japan is not 
 only the schoolmaster of these eighteen thousand 
 students, but she is the schoolmaster of the 
 entire East* and from her China, Siam and 
 India will learn the lessons of independence, 
 self-government, and civilization. The impor- 
 tance of the situation in Japan has not been 
 equaled in the whole history of missions. Were 
 she not the tremendously energetic and pro- 
 gressive country that she is, the winning of her 
 millions to Christ would present a call worthy 
 of the activities of the Church. But when we 
 think of Japan’s position and influence, of 
 what she has accomplished, and of what she 
 promises in the world’s field, we have a situa- 
 tion and a call as colossal as momentous facts 
 can make them possible. Every prayer for 
 Japan is a prayer of the whole East. Contri- 
 butions for Japan are contributions for the 
 entire East. And every servant of the Church 
 sent to Japan is sent to the entire Orient. 
 
 Board of Missions, M. E. Church, South, Nashville, Tenn. 
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