40 REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL^ M.A., ON THE INFLUENCE 



grogshop-haunting English Jack-ashore, but would have blushed 

 at the really unimaginable indecency which preceded our advent 

 in this country. Why, until we — the Yokohama, Tokyo, and 

 other foreign residents — came here, and had been here long 

 enough for our influence to be generally felt, the very sweet- 

 meats were indecent, the very toys of the children were 

 indecent, the very temples of religion were indecent." Christi- 

 anity by its mere outward influence has already changed all 

 this, and the effect on Japanese religion must be immense. 



In Japan the progress of Christianity has produced opposition 

 from the Buddhists : and, as in India and previously in the 

 Eoman Empire, this opposition has manifested itself in the 

 adoption of Christian methods of working. " Where Christians 

 established schools for young men the Buddhists built others 

 under their own control ; where the Christians had succeeded 

 in arousing an interest in the education of girls, the Buddhists, 

 unmindful of the low estimate they had always put on women, 

 opened schools for girls : and they speedily imitated Young- 

 Men's Christian Associations, women's prayer meetings, orphan- 

 ages, temperance societies, summer schools, and other institu- 

 tions inaugurated by the Christians."* Apart altogether, there- 

 fore, from the number of people who have become Christians in 

 Japan, the leaven of Christianity is working far and wide 

 among both Buddhists and Shintoists. 



B. — Influence of Christianity upon the Eeligions of the 



Near East. 



Arabian Muhammadanisni as a religion has itself been 

 declared to be rather a Christian heresy than an anti-Christian 

 faith. This, however, is an error into which no real student of 

 Islam can possibly fall. Islam may rather be described as a 

 Jewish heresy than as a heretical form of Christianity. 

 Muhammad was successful in the end largely because he 

 vdtimately became very much the victorious Warrior-Prophet 

 which the mass of the Jews (and somewhat similarly many 

 Arabs) hoped their " King Messiah " would be when He came. 

 The Qur'an is the book of a distinctly Semitic religion, in which 

 certain beliefs and practices of the heathen Arabs are brought 

 into close alliance with many of the teachings of the Jewish 

 Talmud. There are also in it ideas borrowed from Zoroastri- 



anism and from the Apocryphal Gospels. The J.Jb 



Cory, p. 87. 



