Those who hope to substitute their own Western creed in the room
of one which they wreck by the aid of knowledge borrowed from
modern science, do not imagine that the arguments used against
the ancient faith can be used with equal force against the new.
Unable himself to reach the higher levels of modern thought, the
average missionary cannot foresee the result of his small
teaching of science upon an Oriental mind naturally more powerful
than his own. He is therefore astonished and shocked to discover
that the more intelligent his pupil, the briefer the term of that
pupil's Christianity. To destroy personal faith in a fine mind
previously satisfied with Buddhist cosmogony, because innocent of
science, is not extremely difficult. But to substitute, in the
same mind, Western religious emotions for Oriental, Presbyterian
or Baptist dogmatisms for Chinese and Buddhist ethics, is not
possible. The psychological difficulties in the way are never
recognized by our modern evangelists. In former ages, when the
faith of the Jesuits and the friars was not less superstitious
than the faith they strove to supplant, the same deep-lying
obstacles existed; and the Spanish priest, even while
accomplishing marvels by his immense sincerity and fiery zeal,
must have felt that to fully realize his dream he would need the
sword of the Spanish soldier. To-day the conditions are far less
favorable for any work of conversion than they ever were in the
sixteenth century. Education has been secularized and remodeled
upon a scientific basis; our religions are being changed into
mere social recognitions of ethical necessities; the functions of
our clergy are being gradually transformed into those of a moral
police; and the multitude of our church-spires proves no increase
of our faith, but only the larger growth of our respect for
conventions. Never can the conventions of the Occident become
those of the Far East; and never will foreign missionaries be
suffered in Japan to take the role of a police of morals. Already
the most liberal of our churches, those of broadest culture,
begin to recognize the vanity of missions. But it is not
necessary to drop old dogmatisms in order to perceive the truth:
thorough education should be enough to reveal it; and the most
educated of nations, Germany, sends no missionaries to work in
the interior of Japan. A result of missionary efforts, much more
significant than the indispensable yearly report of new
conversions, has been the reorganization of the native religions,
and a recent government mandate insisting upon the higher
education of the native priest-hoods. Indeed, long before this
mandate the wealthier sects had established Buddhist schools on
the Western plan; and the Shinshu could already boast of its
scholars, educated in Paris or at Oxford,--men whose names are
known to Sanscritists the world over. Certainly Japan will need
higher forms of faith than her mediaeval ones; but these must be
themselves evolved from the ancient forms,--from within, never
from without. A Buddhism strongly fortified by Western science
will meet the future needs of the race.
The young convert at Yokohama proved a noteworthy example of
missionary failures. Within a few years after having sacrificed a
fortune in order to become a Christian,--or rather the member of
a foreign religious sect,--he publicly renounced the creed
accepted at such a cost. He had studied and comprehended the
great minds of the age better than his religious teachers, who
could no longer respond to the questions he propounded, except by
the assurance that books of which they had recommended him to
study parts were dangerous to faith as wholes. But as they could
not prove the fallacies alleged to exist in such books, their
warnings availed nothing. He had been converted to dogmatism by
imperfect reasoning; by larger and deeper reasoning he found his
way beyond dogmatism. He passed from the church after an open
declaration that its tenets were not based upon true reason or
fact; and that he felt himself obliged to accept the opinions of
men whom his teachers had called the enemies of Christianity.
There was great scandal at his "relapse."
The real "relapse" was yet far away. Unlike many with a similar
experience, he knew that the religious question had only receded
for him, and that all he had learned was scarcely more than the
alphabet of what remained to learn. He had not lost belief in the
relative value of creeds,--in the worth of religion as a
conserving and restraining force. A distorted perception of one
truth--the truth of a relation subsisting between civilizations
and their religions--had first deluded him into the path that led
to his conversion. Chinese philosophy had taught him that which
modern sociology recognizes in the law that societies without
priesthoods have never developed; and Buddhism had taught him
that even delusions--the parables, forms, and symbols presented
as actualities to humble minds--have their value and their
justification in aiding the development of human goodness. From
such a point of view, Christianity had lost none of its interest
for him; and though doubting what his teacher had told him about
the superior morality of Christian nations, not at all
illustrated in the life of the open ports, he desired to see for
himself the influence of religion upon morals in the Occident; to
visit European countries and to study the causes of their
development and the reason of their power.
This he set out to do sooner than he had purposed. That
intellectual quickening which had made him a doubter in religious
matters had made him also a freethinker in politics. He brought
down upon himself the wrath of the government by public
expressions of opinion antagonistic to the policy of the hour;
and, like others equally imprudent under the stimulus of new
ideas, he was obliged to leave the country. Thus began for him a
series of wanderings destined to carry him round the world. Korea
first afforded him a refuge; then China, where he lived as a
teacher; and at last he found himself on board a steamer bound
for Marseilles. He had little money; but he did not ask himself
how he was going to live in Europe. Young, tall, athletic, frugal
and inured to hardship, he felt sure of himself; and he had
letters to men abroad who could smooth his way.
But long years were to pass before he could see his native land
again.