rty." Under the
plea of maintaining secular education, the Educational Department has
forbidden informal and private Christian teaching, even in private
schools. An adequate statement of the present struggle for complete
religious liberty would occupy many pages. We note but one important
point.

In the very act of forbidding religious instruction in all schools the
Educational Department is virtually establishing a brand-new religion
for Japan, a religion based on the Imperial Educational Edict.[CF] The
essentially religious nature of the attitude taken by the government
toward this Edict has become increasingly clear in late years. In the
summer of 1898 one who has had special opportunities of information
told me that Mr. Kinoshita, a high official in the Educational
Department, suggested the ceremonial worship of the Emperor's picture
and edict by all the schools, for the reason that he saw the need of
cultivating the religious spirit of reverence together with the need
for having religious sanctions for the moral law. He felt convinced
that a national school system without any such sanctions would be
helpless in teaching morality to the pupils. His suggestion was
adopted by the Educational Department and has been enforced.

In this attitude toward the religious character of entirely private
schools, the government is materially abridging the religious liberty
of the people. It is abridging their liberty of carrying belief into
action in one important respect, that, namely, of giving a Christian
education. It virtually insists on the acceptance of that form of
religion which apotheosizes the Emperor, and finds the sanctions for
morality in his edict; it excludes from the schools every other form
of religion. It should, of course, be said that this attitude is
maintained not only toward Christian schools, but theoretically also
toward all religious schools. It, however, operates more severely on
Christian schools than upon others, because Christians are the only
ones who establish high-grade schools for secular education under
religious influences.

It is evident, therefore, that in the matter of religious liberty the
present attitude of the government is paradoxical, granting in one
breath, what, in an important respect, it denies in the next. But
throughout all these changes and by means of them we see more and more
clearly that even religious tolerance is a matter of the prevailing
social ideas and of the domin