MYTHOLOGY OF THE JAPANESE. 509 



TENDENOY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN JAPAN. 



If the forms and ceremonies of worship among heathen peoples, and 

 among the illiterate in our own land, are not an exaggerated indica- 

 tion of the reverence and religious sentiment of the worshipers, we 

 can well understand how religions have ever exercised a controlling in- 

 fluence upou mankind. But in Japan the religious sentiment has not 

 been strong. The people may believe in the efdcacy of prayer and 

 they are quite as devout in the formal observances of their religion as 

 need be to insure prosperity and long life. They make long pilgrim- 

 ages to famous shrines and offer daily prayers before ancestral tab- 

 lets. But there is not much feeling or sentiment about such worship. 



Christianity is supposed to be making its way, but it can never gain 

 a strong footing in either Japan or China. The statistics of converts 

 given by the missionaries are entirely misleading. Christianity is not 

 adapted to the Japanese character. Its gruesome teachings of a 

 Jealous God ruling supreme over the destinies of man, whose justice 

 is without mercy, involving a hell and eternal torment, will never be 

 received by them. The new teaching is having some influence, 

 although not what is intended by its ministers. It is destroying the 

 last vestiges of faith in the religion of the country and offering 

 nothing acceptable in return. The consequence is, that the Japa- 

 nese are becoming, through the misdirected zeal of Christian mission- 

 aries, sustained by the widow's mites and (children's pennies from home 

 Sunday schools, a nation of independent, liberal thinkers on religious 

 subjects. It is the nature of man, however, to have some form of re- 

 ligion; therefore, it is not improbable that eventually the Japanese 

 will evolve, out of the elements of their own mythology, the teachings 

 of Confucius, Buddha and Christ, a new faith which will prove accept- 

 able to the people. They may go even further than this and by 

 adopting the teachings of Christ, shorn of the theological travesties of 

 modern Christianity, give to the world a new religion worthy of the age. 

 I believe them capable of accomplishing such a work. 



No account of the religion of Japan can be comj)lete without a de- 

 scription of the temples which are scattered in great numbers over the 

 land, but owing to the length of this article already and also to the 

 fact tliat the author is too far from home to select and arrange the illus- 

 trations necessary to a proper understanding of temple architecture, 

 it is deemed best to defer this part of the subject until his return home. 



Tientsin, China, 1891. 



