JAPAN

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 3, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 35.

Dr. Dalton, in the Zeitschrift für Missionskunde, commenting on the rapid growth of the Sunday school in Japan, describes a session, opening with a hymn, sung to our Anglo-Saxon tunes. “You see easily that the children delight in the hymn; occasionally, also, no doubt, the spiritual song of the little Sunday scholars resounds in many a heathen house, so that the parents take up the words and melody. Then the leader offers a prayer, often, it seems to me, too long for the children, followed by the reading of the Scripture lesson, which is then explained by the teachers, both male, and often still more largely, female. These are mostly maidens of the people, who have themselves only lately been baptized, and who can not forbear speaking to the little ones of Him who has so wonderfully touched their own heart and brought it to a glow. I have often found confirmed the remark of one who knows the land, that ‘one can recognize in the features of the young female Christians the gracious, transfiguring refulgence of the day that has risen upon them.’” In one Sunday school Dr. Dalton was especially struck with two female helpers; here a young girl in somewhat inferior attire, somewhat distorted in form, but her features reflected unmistakably her devoted care for the childish group intrusted to her, and her warm affection for the Word of Life, which she was setting forth; and it was plain to see by the attentively listening children that she understood how to touch the spot in the children’s heart “where her word of the holy Friend of the children finds a good lodgment.” Yonder ten or twelve children around an old mother, by years, toils, and cares bowed sheer to the earth, and the little ones clustered around her as around a grandmother who is disclosing to her grandchildren a strange and wondrous story world.

The pictures distributed, Dr. Dalton remarks, are adapted to that love of nature which so eminently distinguishes the Japanese. Here the rising sun, on his edge a birdling thrilling his morning lay; the words are, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent therefore.” There the snow-crowned Fujiyama, and on the azure heaven the words, “And tho I had all faith, so that I could remove mountains,” etc. Around another card twines a flowering cherry branch, on which little singing birds rock themselves, accompanying the Saviour’s words, “Behold the fowls of the air.” On another, around a nosegay of lilies, runs the inscription, “Consider the lilies of the field.”

The Zeitschrift happily remarks that the Buddhist imitation of the Sunday school is just such a sign of the impending collapse of Buddhism in Japan, as Julian the apostate’s futile attempts to introduce Christian usages and institutions into his decaying paganism was a sign of his despair. Conscious imitation only succeeds where the principles are the same; otherwise, it only hastens ruin. [Here is a fact that Protestants should heed in their rush to imitate the institutions of Rome.]—Missionary Review.