at all."—Aino Studies.
"I asked the earth, and it answered, 'I am not He;' and whatsoever are therein made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deep and the creeping things that lived, and they replied, 'We are not thy God; seek higher than we.' … And I answered unto all things which stand about the door of my flesh, 'Ye have told me concerning my God, that ye are not he; tell me something about him.' And with a loud voice they explained, 'It is He who hath made us!'"—Augustine's Confessions.
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name."—Amos.
"That which hath been made was life in Him."—John.
CHAPTER I - PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS
The Morse Lectureship and the Study of Comparative Religion
As a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York, in the Class of 1877, your servant received and accepted with pleasure the invitation of the President and Board of Trustees to deliver a course of lectures upon the religions of Japan. In that country and in several parts of it, I lived from 1870 to 1874. I was in the service first of the feudal daimi[=o] of Echizen and then of the national government of Japan, helping to introduce that system of public schools which is now the glory of the country. Those four years gave me opportunities for close and constant observation of the outward side of the religions of Japan, and facilities for the study of the ideas out of which worship springs. Since 1867, however, when first as a student in Rutgers College at New Brunswick, N.J., I met and instructed those students from the far East, who, at risk of imprisonment and death had come to America for the culture of Christendom, I have been deeply interested in the study of the Japanese people and their thoughts.
To attempt a just and impartial survey of the religions of Japan may seem a task that might well appall even a life-long Oriental scholar. Yet it may be that an honest purpose, a deep sympathy and a gladly avowed desire to help the East and the West, the Japanese and the English-speaking people, to understand each other, are not wholly useless in a study of religion, but for our purpose of real value. These lectures are upon the Morse1 foundation which has these specifications written out by the founder:
The general subject of the lectures I desire to be: "The Relation of the Bible to any of the Sciences, as Geography, Geology, History, and Ethnology, … and the relation of the facts and truths contained in the Word of God, to the principles, methods, and aims of any of the sciences."
Now, among the sciences which we must call to our aid are those of geography and geology, by which are conditioned history and ethnology of which we must largely treat; and, most of all, the science of Comparative Religion.
This last is Christianity's own child. Other sciences, such as geography and astronomy, may have been born among lands and nations outside of and even before Christendom. Other sciences, such as geology, may have had their rise in Christian time and in Christian lands, their foundation lines laid and their main processes illustrated by Christian men, which yet cannot be claimed by Christianity as her children bearing her own likeness and image; but the science of Comparative Religion is the direct offspring of the religion of Jesus. It is a distinctively Christian science. "It is so because it is a product of Christian civilization, and because it finds its impulse in that freedom of inquiry which Christianity fosters."2 Christian scholars began the investigations, formulated the principles, collected the materials and reared the already splendid fabric of the science of Comparative Religion, because the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify this. Jesus bade his disciples search, inquire, discern and compare. Paul, the greatest of the apostolic Christian college, taught: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." In our day one of Christ's loving followers3 expressed the spirit of her Master in her favorite motto, "Truth for authority, not authority for truth." Well says Dr. James Legge, a prince among scholars, and translator of the Chinese classics, who has added several portly volumes to Professor Max Müller's series of the "Sacred Books of the East," whose face to-day is bronzed and whose hair is whitened by fifty years of service in southern China where with his own hands he baptized six hundred Chinamen:4
The more that a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is governed by Christian principle, the more anxious will he be to do justice to every other system of religion, and to hold his own without taint or fetter of bigotry.5
It was Christianity that, in a country where the religion of Jesus has fullest liberty, called the Parliament of Religions, and this for reasons clearly manifest. Only Christians had and have the requisites of success, viz.: sufficient interest in other men and religions; the necessary unity of faith and purpose; and above all, the brave and bold disregard of the consequences. Christianity calls the Parliament of Religions, following out the Divine audacity of Him who, so often, confronting worldly wisdom and priestly cunning, said to his disciples, "Think not, be not anxious, take no heed, be careful for nothing—only for love and truth. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."
Of all places therefore, the study of comparative religion is most appropriate in a Christian theological seminary. We must know how our fellow-men think and believe, in order to help them. It is our duty to discover the pathways of approach to their minds and hearts. We must show them, as our brethren and children of the same Heavenly Father, the common ground on which we all stand. We must point them to the greater truth in the Bible and in Christ Jesus, and demonstrate wherein both the divinely inspired library and the truth written in a divine-human life fulfil that which is lacking in their books and masters.
To know just how to do this is knowledge to be coveted as a most excellent gift. An understanding of the religion of our fellow-men is good, both for him who goes as a missionary and for him who at home prays, "Thy kingdom come."
The theological seminary, which begins the systematic and sympathetic study of Comparative Religion and fills the chair with a professor who has a vital as well as academic interest in the welfare of his fellow-men who as yet know not Jesus as Christ and Lord, is sure to lead in effective missionary work. The students thus equipped will be furnished as none others are, to begin at once the campaign of help and warfare of love.
It may be that insight into and sympathy with the struggles of men who are groping after God, if haply they may find him, will shorten the polemic sword of the professional converter whose only purpose is destructive hostility without tactics or strategy, or whose chief idea of missionary success is in statistics, in blackening the character of "the heathen," in sensational letters for home consumption and reports properly cooked and served for the secretarial and sectarian palates. Yet, if true in history, Greek, Roman, Japanese, it is also true in the missionary wars, that "the race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries."6
Apart from the wit or the measure of truth in this sentence quoted, it is a matter of truth in the generalizations of fact that the figure of the "sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," used by Paul, and also the figure of the "word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of the soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart," of the writer to the Hebrews, had for their original in iron the victorious gladium of the Roman legionary—a weapon both short and sharp. We may learn from this substance of fact behind the shadow of the figure a lesson for our
