How Christianity Is Spreading in Japan.
By Editor
A DESPATCH from Tokyo, dated November 28, states that the general election in Japan resulted in the choice of fourteen Christians as members of the House of Representatives, twice as many as before the dissolution. The Church Missionary Society has it on the authority of an influential Japanese Christian newspaper, that while the number of nominally enrolled Christians is only about 150,000 out of 50,000,000, or three out of 1,000; or while the Christian community may be roughly estimated at about 300,000 out of 50,000,000, or six out of 1,000, the fourteen Christians out of three hundred and eighty members in the House of Representatives are almost four out of one hundred. Japan is becoming Christianized to a far more rapid extent than is generally recognized. We would like to suggest, however, to our readers that this should be taken with a grain of salt. The Christianization of a country is not to be measured by its manifestations in politics. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If Japan becomes thoroly Christianized it will not be in the greater political prestige or power of its adherents, but in its more faithful devotion to what Christianity demands. In all probability Japan will become nominally Christian, as also will China; it will be, however, but a veneer of political Christianity with only enough of the true nature of Christianity to make it a perversion.