very deep consciousness
of sin among the converts. "The Christians or martyrs repeatedly cried
out 'we miserable sinners,' 'Christ died for us,' etc., as their
letters abundantly prove. It was because of this that their
consciences were aroused by the burning words of Christ, and kept
awake by means of contrition and confession." Among modern Christians
the sense of sin is much more clear and pronounced than among the
unconverted. Individual instances of extreme consciousness of sin are
not unknown, especially under the earlier Protestant preaching. If the
Christians of the last decade have less sense of sin, it is due to the
changed character of recent preaching, in consequence of the changed
conception of Christianity widely accepted in Protestant lands. Who
will undertake to say that Christians in New England of the nineteenth
century have the same oppressive sense of sin that was customary in
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries? The sense of sin
is due more to the character of the dominant religious ideas of the
age than to brain structure or to race nature. I cannot agree with Mr.
Takahashi that "To be religious one needs a Semitic tinge of mind." It
is not a question of mind, of race nature, but of dominant ideas.

In this connection I may refer to an incident that came under my
notice some years ago. A young man applied for membership in the
Kumamoto Church, who at one time had been a student in one of my Bible
classes. I had not known that he had received any special help from
his study with me, until I heard his statement as to how he had
discovered his need of a Saviour, and had found that need satisfied in
Christ. In his statement before the examining committee of the church,
he said that when he first read the thirteenth chapter of 1
Corinthians, he was so impressed with its beauty as a poem that he
wrote it out entire on one of the fusuma (light paper doors) of his
room, and each morning, as he arose, he read it. This practice
continued several weeks. Then, as we continued our study of the Bible,
we took up the third chapter of John, and when he came to the
sixteenth verse, he was so impressed with its statement that he wrote
that beside the poem from Corinthians, and read them together.
Gradually this daily reading, together with the occasional sermons and
other Christian addresses which he heard at the Boys' School, led him
to desire to secure for himself the love described by Paul, and t