father and
mother and playmate to all little children." The words of the Japanese
poet describe Him: "He was caressing them kindly, folding His
shining robes round them; lifting the smallest and frailest into His
bosom, and holding His staff for the tumblers to clutch. To His long
gown clung the infants, smiling in response to His smile, glad in His
beauteous compassion."

I looked at the picture and at the people around me on the platform,
and wondered why in all the Christian world that claims this loving
Master there should be such exceeding bitterness between His
followers. How can they expect us to believe in this great Teacher
when they themselves are doubtful of his message, and criticise quite
openly their Holy Book? If it is true, should education and science
make its teaching less authentic? We do not want a religion that is
uncertain to its own people, yet we take with many thanks what it can
give us, the things we understand, such as their schools and
hospitals. Where there is pain or ignorance, there is no distinction in
the God that brings relief. We may not believe in the doctrines that we
are taught in the waiting-rooms of their hospitals, but we do believe in
the healing power of the medicines that are brought by religious zeal
from over the seas.

If their teaching has not as yet made many converts, the effect has
been great in the spread of higher ideals of education, and much of
the credit for the progress of our modern life must be given to the
mission schools, which, directly or indirectly, have opened new
pathways in the field of education for our country, and caused the
youth of China to demand a higher learning throughout the land. This
aggressive religion from the West, coupled with the education that
seems to go hand in hand with it, is bound to raise the religious plane
of China by forcing our dying faiths to reassume higher and higher
forms in order to survive.

But I believe that these teachers from the foreign lands should
understand better the religions they are so anxious to displace, and
instead of always looking for the point of difference or weakness in our
faith, should search more anxiously for the common ground, the spark
of the true light that may still be blown to flame, finding the altar that
may be dedicated afresh to the true God.

Every religion, however imperfect, has something that ought to be held
sacred, for there is in all religions a secret yearning after the unkn