A BUDDHIST'S TESTIMONY IN JAPAN.
By M. L. Gordon
A FEW years ago there was in the Taiseigak-kwan, a Christian school in the city of Osaka, Japan, a young teacher named Genzo Sugahara. After considerable service in the school he was attacked by a succession of diseases, and finally consumption laid its relentless hand upon him. He was ordered into a hospital, and visits from friends even were forbidden. His pastor, however, anxious in regard to his preparation for death, disregarded the physician's instructions, and visited him, and questioned him concerning his faith. To his great delight he found the young man looking forward to death, not with doubt and fear, but with the confidence of one whose life is hid with Christ in God. In the freest, frankest way he told his pastor and friend of the presence of Christ with him in his weakness and suffering, and of his joyful hope of a still closer union with his Lord after death. How much relief and comfort these words gave the pastor need not be dwelt upon. In an adjoining room, separated only by thin paper sliding doors, another young man lay at the point of death, a victim of the same dread disease. He was the son of a priest of the Shin sect of Buddhists, the so-called “Reform Buddhists,” which allows its priests to marry. While Sugahara was telling his pastor of his Christian confidence concerning the future life, the father of his suffering neighbor was visiting him, and vainly striving to quiet and comfort his son, who was bitterly lamenting his own early death, and filled with concern regarding the future. Sugahara's words of courage and hope, easily passing through the paper partition between the rooms, came upon the ears of the perplexed father like a voice from another world. Pushing back one of the sliding doors, he entered Sugahara's room, and, putting the palms of his hands together as in prayer, knelt before and worshiped the dying but triumphant Christian, explaining his conduct by telling his fruitless efforts, already mentioned, to comfort his son. This act of worship by no means meant all that worship means to the Christian. The word has a wider signification than our word for worship. Here it denoted astonishment, awe, profound reverence. Coming from the head of a temple belonging to the sect of Buddhists, which, above all others, attaches importance to the life to come, it was strong testimony to the fact that Christ has indeed “brought life and incorruption to light through the Gospel.” —M. L. Gordon, in Sunday School Times.