The hotel-keeper told me afterward this so-called
conversion was a source of much amusement among the natives. Well,
be it so. I believe, myself, that the holy father is the victim of
misplaced confidence. But here in Nagasaki nothing like this can
be said. Thirty-five thousand professing Christians in a district
where there are not a hundred foreign Christian families, if half
so many, and where to be a Christian is to declare one's self of
the minority and so out of fashion, surely this does prove that
the Church has succeeded, and justifies it in hoping that ere long
this part of Japan at least will one day enter the fold.
One great reason for this undoubted success is probably that
neither the Government nor the people have the slightest objection
to missionaries, for their own religion sets but lightly on the
Japanese. With the Chinaman it is totally different. His own
religion is sacred to him, a vital force, and his gods must not be
defamed. He stands by his faith like a Covenanter. It touches the
most sacred feelings of his nature, and is everything to him. Mrs.
D. O. Hill's celebrated statue of Livingstone in Prince's Gardens,
Edinburgh, therefore, represents too truly the attitude of our
missionaries in the flowery land as well as in other so-called
heathen lands: the Bible in one hand and the pistol in the other.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80