denominations are there--Roman
Catholicism, Church of England, Greek Church, Congregationalists,
Methodists, Baptists, Salvation Army, Society of Friends, and
others--all preaching and proclaiming their own particular dogmas and
all lumped together by the Japanese under the generic title of
Christians. The Japanese may, I think, be excused if he fails to
differentiate between them. He views and hears their differences in
dogma. He observes that there is no bond of union, and frequently
considerable jealousy among these numerous sects. Each claims to
preach the truth, and the Japanese concludes that as they cannot all
be right they may possibly all be wrong. It is only on this assumption
that it is possible to account for the little headway made by
Christianity in Japan in view of the labour and money devoted by
different religious bodies to its propagation for many years past.
There is, let me add, no marked hostility to Christianity in
Japan--only indifference. The educated Japanese of to-day is, I
believe, for the most part an agnostic, and he views Shintoism,
Buddhism, Christianity alike, except in so far as he regards the first
two as more or less national and the last as an exotic.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century the Japanese
Christians are stated to have amounted in numbers to one million. At
the present time it is doubtful if they total up to one hundred
thousand. And this despite the splendid religious organisations that
exist, the facilities that are given for the propagation of the
Christian faith, and the opportunities which were certainly not in
existence three hundred years ago. Into the causes of this comparative
failure of Christianity in Japan to-day as compared with its
marvellous progress in the sixteenth century, I do not propose to
enter. The enthusiasm of a Francis Xavier is not an everyday event,
and the Japanese of the sixteenth century was, mayhap, more impressed
by the missionaries of those days, arriving in flimsy and diminutive
vessels after undergoing the perils and hardships of long voyages,
having neither purse nor scrip nor wearing apparel except what they
stood up in, than he is by the modern missionary arriving as a
first-class passenger in a magnificent steamer and during his
residence in the country lacking none of the comforts or amenities of
life. Or it may be that the Japanese mind has advanced and developed
during the past three centuries, has now less hankering a