therefore narrow, not to say bigoted. Still the elderly gentleman
found the teachings of the young man sufficiently strong and clear
thoroughly to upset all his old ideas of religion, his polytheism, his
belief in charms, his worship of ancestors, and all kindred ideas. He
accepted the New Testament in simple unquestioning faith. But, after
six or eight years, the young instructor began to lose his own
primitive and simple faith. He at once proceeded to attack that which
before he had been defending and expounding. Soon his whole
theological position was changed. Higher criticism and religious
philosophy were now the center of his preaching and writing. The
result was that this old gentleman was again in danger of being upset
in his religious thinking. He felt that his new faith had been
received in bulk, so to speak, and if a part of it were false, as his
young teacher now asserted, how could he know that any of it was true?
Yet his heart's experience told him that he had secured something in
this faith that was real; he was loath to lose it; consequently, for
some years now, he has systematically stayed away from church
services, and refrained from reading magazines in which these new and
destructive views have been discussed; he has preferred to read the
Bible quietly at home, and to have direct communion with God, even
though, in many matters of Biblical or theoretical science, he might
hold his mistaken opinions. A surface view of this man's conduct might
lead one to think of him as fickle; but a deeper consideration will
lead to the opposite conclusion.

The fluctuating condition of the Christian churches is not cause for
astonishment, nor is it to be wholly, if at all, attributed to the
fickleness of the national character, but rather, in a large degree,
to the peculiar conditions of Japanese life. The early Christians had
much to learn. They knew, experimentally, but little of Christian
truth. The whole course of Christian thought, the historical
development of theology, with the various heresies, the recent
discussions resting on the so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible,
together with the still more recent investigations into the history
and philosophy of religion in general, were of course wholly unknown
to them. This was inevitable, and they were blameless. All could not
be learned at once.

Nor is there any blame attached to the missionaries. It was as
impossible for them to impart to young and inexp