ces of its sacred (?) officials than for
any virtues in its creed, and one of the high priests, like the
Emperor himself, has a dozen or more women in his household. Some
Buddhists are making an earnest effort to bring about at least an
outward reformation of their organization, but the difficulties are
such as to make the success of the undertaking very improbable. With
the usual Japanese quality of imitativeness they have started "Young
Men's Buddhist Associations," "Sunday schools," etc., and are also
beginning to follow the example set by the Christians of participating
in philanthropic and charitable work. In the Buddhist service I
attended last Sunday the gorgeously robed priest sat on a raised altar
in the centre of the room, with other priests ranged about him, and
the general service, as usual, was much as if they had copied the
Catholic ritual.

After the Buddhist ceremonies, I went to the Christian service at the
Congregational School, or Doshisha, where the sound of the
American-born minister's voice was punctuated by the street sounds of
whirring rickshaw wheels and the noisy getas of passing Buddhists,
while outside the window I could see the bamboo trees and the now
familiar red disk and white border of the Mikado's flag. Prayer was
offered for {51} "the President of the United States, the King of
Great Britain, the Emperor of Germany, and the Emperor of Japan."

At night I was even more interested, even though I could not
understand a word, in a native Japanese service I attended for half an
hour. Although there was a downpour of rain the chapel was comfortably
filled and the faces of the worshippers, I thought, were of more than
ordinary intelligence and promise, while their sincerity is
illustrated by the fact that numbers of the women Christians are
actually depriving themselves of suitable food in order to give money
for erecting a larger church building.

The next evening I took tea with a missionary who has in his home one
of the public notices (dated March, 1868,) and common throughout the
empire forty odd years ago, prohibiting Christianity, the ancient
penalty being nothing less than death itself. The explanation of this
notice is found in a bit of history. Three hundred and sixty years ago
the Catholics came here, started missions, and made many converts
among the lords or daimyios, who ordered their followers also to
become Catholics, with the result that by the time of the first
English s