JAVA 129 



presents offerings that he may obtain beautiful children, 

 to Solomon for honour and rank, to Closes for bravery, 

 to Jesus for learning. The ritual of his religion — and 

 his whole round of life is part of his religion — is intricate 

 almost beyond conception, and at the same time rigid and 

 precise. Everything must be done by rule and rubric ; 

 the unwritten law handed down from father to son admits 

 of no curtailment or modification. Each individual class 

 of offering must be prepared in its own peculiar way ; 

 the rice, for example — which is one of the chief sacri- 

 ficial substances — must now be white, now red, now 

 hard, now soft." ^ 



The state of education in Java is far from being 

 creditable to so cultured a people as the owners of the 

 land. While in the Philippines we find a church in 

 almost every village, and nearly 2000 schools which 

 afford instruction to about 200,000 children, the Dutch 

 have until lately studiously set their faces against both 

 the education and the Christianising of the nati^•es. 

 Java at the present day has under 11,000 Christian 

 natives. Everything which tended to lessen the distance 

 between the two races was discouraged. The island was 

 to be farmed by the Government, and was looked upon 

 as private property. Xothing which could in any way 

 become a source of difticulties and complications was to 

 he permitted, however right or desirable it might be. 

 The island was ten^a clausa, and the missionary was con- 

 sidered to have hardly more claim to enter it than the 

 settler. Even as late as the second or third decade of 

 this century the New Testament was considered a revolu- 

 tionary work, and Herr Briickner, who translated it, had 

 his edition destroyed by Government. All this, of course, 

 is past, but so also is the opportunity for the moral and 



^ Mr. H. A. Webster in i:?ici/c. Brit. 

 K 



