The Religious Future of Asia
By L. A. S.
A WRITER in the Methodist Magazine and Review (Toronto, Canada), the Rev. C. S. Eby, who has had long experience as a missionary in Japan, writes of the “yellow peril” as the greatest problem before Christian missions. Christian missions have before them, he says, the task of combating the unseen but very real forces which are shaping the evolution of Japan and China. One of the greatest of these forces in Japan he finds to be agnosticism. Japan is breaking away from the old religions, but is not, to any great extent, substituting Christianity in their place. On this point Mr. Eby says that “the educational department of Japan, so far as possible, has wrought for the exclusion of Christian influences from the national system, and when able, cripples the mission schools.” A religious census of two schools which were typical of the whole, showed, in one school of 200 pupils, 2 Christians, 9 Buddhists, 140 agnostics, and 27 atheists; and in another of 130 students, no Christians, 3 Buddhists, 95 agnostics, and 26 atheists. These schools contain ninety-two per cent of the boys of school age and eighty-three per cent of the girls. China still holds to Confucianism, but China is under the tutelage of Japan, and may be expected to receive the mold of Japan in religion as in other phases of thought and life, at least to a large extent. All this being true, it is evident that the religious future of this vast Asiatic field with its myriads of souls, so far as Christianity is concerned, depends more largely upon the third angel’s message than upon any other presentation of Christian doctrine; for it is this message, pointing to fulfilled prophecy and throwing a flood of light upon God’s great work of salvation on the earth and in heaven, both past and present, that startles the agnostic out of his negative attitude, and compels him to see that the gospel message set forth in the divine Word is supported by facts and logic which can not be ignored. Neither religious error nor unbelief can stand before the power of “this gospel of the kingdom.” L. A. S.