A Japanese Sermon by Algernon Bertram Milford

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 2, 1872

A Japanese Sermon.

By Algernon Bertram Milford

Translated by Algernon Bertram Milford, Secretary of Legation in Japan.

Sermons in Japan are not delivered as part of a service on a special day of the week, but are preached in courses, the delivery occupying a fortnight, two sermons being given each day. In a great many cases the preachers are itinerant priests, who go from town to town, and village to village, lecturing. The locale is usually the main hall of a temple, or the guest-room of the resident priest. The audiences are composed of old people, who, finding themselves near their end, wish to make their peace with Heaven, and young girls, who attend doubtless with every intention of profiting, but forget, as soon as they get outside the door, everything they have heard within. There are, of course, no pews or benches. The congregation squat on the mats, the preacher being accommodated with a cushion at the upper end of the room. In front of him is a reading-desk, on which he lays his sermon, and he holds in his hand a fan, with which, from time to time, he raps the desk to emphasize his delivery, and wake the slumbering. Between the two sermons occurs an interval of ten minutes, introduced by the priest with the words, “Well, let’s take a puff” (of tobacco).

The following sermon is by a preacher of the “Shingaku” sect, which professes to combine all that is excellent in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism. The text is taken from the Chinese Classical Book, just as we take ours from the Bible. Jokes, stories, and pointed applications to members of the congregation, are as common in these sermons, as dry, rigid formality is with us.

Moshi says, “Benevolence is the heart of man, Righteousness is the path of man. How lamentable a thing is it to leave the path and go astray, to cast away the heart, and not know where to seek for it.”

The text is taken from the first chapter of Koshi (Chin.: Kao Tsu), in Moshi. Now this quality, which we call benevolence, has been the subject of commentaries by many teachers, but as these commentaries have been difficult of comprehension, they are too hard to enter the ears of women and children. It is of this benevolence that, using examples and illustrations, I mean to treat. A long time ago there lived at Kioto a great physician, called Imaoji—I forget his other name—he was called a very famous man. Once upon a time, a man from a place called Kuramaguchi, advertised for sale a medicine which he had compounded against the cholera, and got Imaoji to write a puff for him. Imaoji, instead of calling the medicine in the puff a specific against the cholera, misspelt the word cholera, so as to make it simpler; when the man who had employed him went and taxed him with this, and asked him why he had done it so, he answered with a smile, “As Kuramaguchi is an approach to the capital from the country, the passers-by are but poor peasants and woodmen from the hills; if I had written ‘cholera’ at length, they would have been puzzled by it, so I wrote in a simple way that should pass current with every one. Truth itself loses its value if people don’t understand it. What does it signify how I spelt the word cholera, so long as the efficacy of the medicine is unimpaired?” Now, was not that delightful? In the same way the doctrines of the sages are mere gibberish to women and children who cannot understand them. Now my sermons are not written for the learned. I address myself to farmers and tradesmen, who, hard-pressed by their daily business, have no time for study; with the wish to make known to them the teachings of the sages, and carrying out the ideas of my teacher, I will make my meaning pretty plain by bringing forward examples and quaint stories. Thus, by blending together the doctrine of the Shinto, Buddhist, and other schools, we shall arrive at something near the true principle of things. Now, positively, you must not laugh if I introduce a light story now and then; levity is not my object, I only want to put things in a plain and easy manner.

Well, then, the quality which we call benevolence is, in fact, a perfection, and it is this perfection which Moshi spoke of as the heart of man. With this perfect heart, men in serving their parents, attain to filial piety; in serving their masters, they attain to fidelity; and if they treat their wives, their brethren and their friends in the same spirit, then the principles of the five relations of life will harmonise without difficulty. As for putting perfection into practice, parents have the special duties of parents, children have the special duties of children, husbands have the special duties of husbands, wives have the special duties of wives. It is only when all these special duties are performed without a fault, that true benevolence is reached, and that again is the true heart of man.

For example, take this fan. Any one who sees it knows it to be a fan, and knowing it to be a fan, no one would think of using it to blow his nose in; the special use of a fan is for visits of ceremony, or else it is opened in order to raise a cooling breeze; it serves no other purpose. In the same way, this reading-desk will not serve as a substitute for a shelf; again, it will not do instead of a pillow. So, you see, a reading-desk also has its special functions, for which you must use it. So, if you look at your parents in the light of your parents, and treat them with filial piety, that is the special duty of children. That is true benevolence, that is the heart of man. Now, although you may think that when I speak in this manner, I am speaking of others and not of yourselves, believe me that the heart of every one of you is by nature pure benevolence. Now, I am just taking down your hearts as a shopman does goods from his shelves, and pointing out the good and bad qualities of each, but if you will not lay what I say to your own accounts, but persist in thinking that it is all anybody’s business but yours, all my labor will be lost.

Listen, you who answer your parents rudely, and cause them to weep; you who bring grief and trouble on your masters; you who cause your husbands to fly into passions; you who cause your wives to mourn; you who hate your younger brothers, and treat your elder brothers with contempt; you who sow sorrow broadcast over the world; what are you doing but blowing your noses in fans, and using reading-desks as pillows? I don’t mean to say that there are any such persons here, still there are plenty of them to be found—say in the back streets of India, for instance. Be so good as to mind what I have said.

Consider carefully; if a man is born with a naturally bad disposition, what a dreadful thing that is!

This perfect heart is called in my discourses “the original heart of man.” It is true that benevolence is also called the original heart of man, still there is a slight difference between the two. However, as the inquiry into this difference would be tedious, it is sufficient for you to look upon this original heart of man as a perfect thing, and you will fall into no error. It is true, that I have not the honour of the personal acquaintance of every one of you who are present, yet I know that your hearts are perfect. The proof of this is, that if you say that which you ought not to say, or do that which you ought not to do, your hearts within you are in some mysterious way immediately conscious of wrong. When the man that has a perfect heart does that which is imperfect, it is because his heart has become warped and turned to evil. This law holds good for all mankind. What says the old song? “When the roaring waterfall is shivered by the night-storm, the moonlight is reflected in each scattered drop.” Although there is but one moon, she suffices to illumine each little scattered drop! Wonderful are the laws of Heaven! So the principle of benevolence, which is but one, illumines all the particles that make up mankind. Well, then, the perfection of the human heart can be calculated to a nicety. So, if we follow the impulses of our perfect heart in whatever we undertake, we shall perform our special duties, and filial piety and fidelity will come to us spontaneously. You see the doctrines of this school of philosophy are quickly learned. If you once thoroughly understand this, there will be no difference in your conduct and that of a man who has studied a hundred years.

The duty of man has been compared by the wise men of old to a high road. If you want to go to Yedo or Nagasaki, if you want to go out to the front of the house or to the back of the house, if you wish to go into the next room, or into some closet or other, there is a right road to each of these places; if you do not follow the right road, scrambling over the roofs of houses and through ditches, crossing mountains and desert places, you will be utterly lost and bewildered. In the same way, if a man does that which is not good, he is going astray from the high road. Filial piety in children, virtue in husbands and wives, truth among friends; but why enumerate all these things which are patent? All these are the right road and good, but to grieve parents, to anger husbands, to hate, and to breed hate in others, these are all bad things, these are all the wrong road. To follow these is to plunge into rivers, to run upon thorns, to jump into ditches, and bring thousands upon ten thousands of disasters. It is true that if we do not pay great attention we shall not be able to follow the right road.

Certainly the harp and guitar are very good things in their way, but to attend to nursing their parents is the right road for children. Lay this to heart, and consider attentively where the right road lies. People who live near haunts of pleasure become at last so fond of pleasure that they teach their daughters nothing but how to play on the harp and guitar, and train them up in the manners and ways of singing-girls, but teach them nothing of their duties as daughters; and then very often they escape from their parents’ watchfulness and go wrong. Nor is this the fault of the girls themselves, but the fault of the education which they have received from their parents. I do not mean to say that the harp and guitar and songs and dramas are useless things. If you listen attentively, all our songs incite to virtue and condemn vice. In the song called “The Four Sleeves,” for instance, there is the passage, “If people knew beforehand all the misery that it brings, there would be less going out with young ladies to look at the flowers at night.” Please give your attention to this piece of poetry. This is the meaning of it: When a young man and a young lady set up a flirtation without the consent of their parents, they think that it will all be very delightful, and find themselves very much deceived. If they knew what a sad and cruel world this is, they would not act as they do. The quotation is from a song of remorse. This sort of thing happens but too often in the world.

When a man marries a wife he thinks how happy he will be, and how pleasant it will be keeping house on his own account; but before the bottom of the family kettle has been scorched black, he will be like a man learning to swim in a field, with his ideas all turned topsy-turvy—and, contrary to all his expectations, he will find the pleasure of housekeeping to be all a delusion. Look at that woman there! Haunted by her cares, she takes no heed of her hair, or of her personal appearance. With her head all untidy, her apron tied round her as a girdle, with a baby twisted into the bosom of her dress, she carries some wretched bean sauce which she has been out to buy. What sort of creature is this? This all comes of not listening to the warnings of parents, and of not waiting for the proper time, but rushing suddenly into housekeeping; and who is to blame in the matter? Passion, which does not pause to reflect. A child of five or six years will never think of learning to play the guitar for its own pleasure. What a ten-million times miserable thing it is, when parents, making their little girls hug a great guitar, listen with pleasure to the poor little things playing on instruments big enough for them to climb upon, and squeaking out songs in their shrill treble voices. Now I must beg you to listen to me carefully. If you get confused and don’t keep a sharp lookout, your children brought up upon harp and guitar-playing, will be abandoning their parents, and running away secretly. Depend upon it, from all that is licentious and meretricious, something monstrous will come forth. The poet who wrote “The Four Sleeves,” regarded it as the right path of instruction to convey a warning against vice. But the theater, and dramas, and fashionable songs—if the moral that they convey is missed—are a very great mistake. Although you may think it very right and proper that a young lady should practise nothing but the harp and guitar until her marriage, I tell you that it is not so; for if she misses the moral of her songs and music, there is danger of her falling in love with some man and eloping.

With regard to the danger of over-confidence, I have a little tale to tell you. Be so good as to wake up from drowsiness, and listen attentively. There is a certain powerful murex, the suryase, with a very strong lid to its shell. Now this clam, if it hears that there is any danger astir, shuts up its shell from within with a loud noise, and thinks itself perfectly safe. One day a snapper and another fish, lost in envy at this, said, “What a strong castle this is of yours, Mr. Murex, when you can shut up your lid from within, nobody can so much as point a finger at you. A capital figure you make, sir.” When he heard this, the murex, stroking his beard, replied, “Well, gentlemen, although you are so good as to say so, it’s nothing to boast of in the way of safety; still, when I shut myself up thus, I do not feel much anxiety.” And as he was speaking thus, with the pride that apes humility, there came the noise of a great splash, and the murex, shutting up his lid as quickly as possible, kept quite still, and thought to himself what in the world the noise could be. Could it be a net? Could it be a fish-hook? What bore it was, always having to keep such a sharp lookout! Were the snapper and the other fish caught? he wondered, and he felt quite anxious about them; however, at any rate, he was safe. And so the time passed, and when he thought all was safe, he stealthily opened his shell and slipped out his head, and looked all round him. There seemed to be something wrong, something with which he was not familiar. As he looked a little more carefully, lo and behold! there he was in a fishmonger’s shop, with a card marked sixteen cash on his back! Poor shellfish! I think there are some people not unlike him to be found in China and India. How little self is to be depended upon! There is a moral poem which says, “It is easier to ascend to the cloudy heaven without a ladder than to depend entirely on one’s self.”

This is what is meant by the text, “If a man casts his heart from him, he knows not where to seek for it.” Think twice upon everything that you do. To take no care for the examination of that which relates to yourself, but to look only at that which concerns others, is to cast your heart from you. Casting your heart from you does not mean that your heart actually leaves you; what is meant is, that you do not examine your own conscience. Nor must you think that what I have said upon this point of self-confidence applies only to wealth and riches. To rely on your talents, to rely on the services you have rendered, to rely on your cleverness, to rely on your judgment, to rely on your strength, to rely on your rank, and to think yourself secure in the possession of these, is to place yourself in the same category with the murex in the story. In all things examine your own consciences. The examination of your own hearts is above all essential.

Here the preacher leaves his place.