Missionary Workers ^ and their Work, 189 
work by a native teacher, a Church has been formed of twenty- 
eight members. The first converts were baptized precisely 
one year after he commenced his labours among the people. 
Three branches of Presbyterians have combined in Kioto 
to form what is called the " United Church of Christ in 
Japan." These branches are, the Reformed Church of 
America, the American Presbyterian Church, and United 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland. They have at present 
twenty-one organized churches, with ordained missionaries 
and ministers, and other Chrisvian workers. This United 
Church insists upon these things : ist, The systematic and 
proportionate assumption of the expenses of each Church, 
by the Church itself, from the time of its organization ; 2nd, 
The constant diminution of help from the mission funds, as 
the Churches increase in size ; 3rd, The cessation of all help 
as the Churches reach a position of self-sustenance. The 
principle of self-support is thus being taught practically 
to each Church, and adopted as years go on. 
A missionary writes from Osaka as follows : "It has long 
been evident that contact with Western civilization, and with 
Christianity, was making great changes in Buddhism in 
Japan, but I never felt this so strongly as when in Hikone 
on this visit. There are now about seventy pupils, the 
younger portion of whom study the ordinary branches 
taught in all common schools. Such a course must reform 
radically the old Buddhist way of teaching. Sacred geogra- 
phy, for example : A priest once told me that 80,000 miles 
north of this city was a great square mountain, the other side 
of which was heaven. Such training schools as they now 
have here and there in Japan, will explode that old heaven 
of theirs, and they will have to locate it anew. The older 
scholars, from twenty to thirty years of age, study the sacred 
books. I was fortunate enough to be admitted to one reci- 
