208 CHURCH UNITY 



achieved so much as to place in clear relief 

 the vast, and sometimes discouraerincr, task 



7 o o 7 



which is before all who believe in the king- 

 dom of God. 



1. The condition of that part of the 

 world commonly called heathen. Until 

 one has travelled extensively, and studied 

 carefully the religious condition of the un- 

 evangelized nations, he has a faint concep- 

 tion of the smallness of the beginnings of 

 Christianity, and no idea of how the Chris- 

 tian faith sometimes reacts against itself. 

 This is seen in the rivalry to which it stimu- 

 lates the non-Christian religions. Buddhism 

 and Mohamedanism are lethargic, and con- 

 tent to be so, until inspired to activity by 

 the presence of Christianity. Then they 

 adopt its best methods, and fight it with its 

 own weapons. From being mere names 

 they become aggressive and persistent an- 

 tagonists. It seems sometimes as if Chris- 

 tianity were hardly more than a ripple on 

 an infinite ocean. In Japan less than one- 

 fourth of one per cent, of the nearly 

 42,000,000 of people are even nominally 

 Christian. In China the proportion is not 

 so large. In the Sandwich Islands the na- 

 tives, though in touch with the Church and 



