the leaders
in Japan. Literally thousands of them have come, these thousands of miles
around the world, to knock at our doors, and ask for what we have and they
haven't.

Even more striking is the recent visitation to us of official commissions
from the non-Christian lands. One after another, these national
governmental deputations have come to us. They have been composed of the
strongest men in these lands, men in leading official position. They have
come by government appointment, and at government expense, to learn the
secret of our marvellous Western progress.

And in addition to these official deputations others have come, men of
like prominence and influence, coming on their own account, to witness our
civilization and learn its secrets.

<u>The Coming Great Leaders.</u>

One of the most remarkable incidents of this most remarkable movement has
been the great migration of young Chinese men to study in the colleges of
Japan. Within a very short space of time, as though by a concerted
movement, fifteen thousand Chinese young men have flocked to Tokyo. The
inevitable sifting process has sent many back, but fully ten thousand
remain, engaged in earnest, hard study.

Will you mark very keenly why they went to <i>Japan</i>? Because to them Japan,
in its new life, stood for the new light and life of the West. Their
little, but mighty, aggressive neighbor on their eastern shore had brought
to their very door the new civilization of the Christian West.

Here was an unusual opportunity. Where hundreds had come clear around the
earth to us, thousands have seized this opportunity close at hand. They
come from every province of China; even that farthest away, on the border
of Tibet, sending hundreds.

The travel involved thousands of miles. And if their slow means of travel
be taken into account, it meant what would be to us practically hundreds
of thousands of miles. Hundreds of them have been sent by the provincial
and local governments. Others have come through private funds made up for
the purpose. And wealthy men have sent their sons. They have gone to Japan
only because Japan has opened her doors so widely to our Christian
civilization. It is not to their conqueror, Japan, they have come, but to
the civilization which Japan has imported from Christian lands.

Was there ever such a knocking at the door of the Christian Church as
this? Ten thousand picked men, of the best and keenest young manhood of
China,