There can be no mistake in assuming that the time is close at hand when the opportunity will be presented of introducing the Gospel into Japan. It is seasonable, therefore, to examine the history of the efforts already made to plant the Christianity of Rome there. Both the success and the ruin of that enterprise constitute one of the most instructive chapters in the history of Missions.

"The order of the Jesuits," says Steinmetz, "never had an infancy; like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, it sprang full armed from the brain of Ignatius." No more striking illustration of this can be desired, than the amazing energy with which, from its very foundation, the Society entered on the work of foreign missions. The Reformation had cost the Romish church the best half of Europe. To balance this loss, new kingdoms were to be won from the domains of Heathendom. The Jesuits lost no time in setting about this work. Of the ten members who composed the order in 1540, two were assigned, at the request of the king of Portugal, as missionaries for the East Indies. Rodriguez was, however, detained by King John for the sake of his labors at home. Francis Xavier sailed from the Tagus, 7th April 1541. At Mozambique, at Goa, along the Malabar coast, in Ceylon and in Malacca he engaged with all the ardor of his nature in laboring for the conversion of the natives, five or six years being thus spent. It was not till 1549 that he landed at Kangosima, on Kiousiou island, the southernmost port of Japan.

The Empire on which this zealous and gifted "Apostle of the Indies" thus set foot, is composed of four large islands, and an immense number of smaller ones, forming a chain which extends from north-east to south-west, through twenty degrees of latitude, a distance of fifteen hundred miles. It lies due west of California, at the distance of four thousand miles; San Francisco and Yeddo being nearly under the same parallel, 36°. Like a huge breakwater, Japan stretches along the coast of Asia, and receives the first shock of the Pacific billows. Its low, rocky shores swell in the interior into rugged chains of hills, traversing the entire length of Niphon and Kiousiou. Lofty peaks of eight and even ten thousand feet rise above the range; some snow-capped, others perpetually sending forth

smoke and flame. The islands form part of the western rim of that vast volcanic zone, connecting with the Aleutian islands on the north, and the Philippines and Molucca on the south, which surrounds the Pacific, as Guizot observes, like an immense burning crown. At least eight active volcanoes, and numerous boiling springs exist in Japan. Some of these were turned to dreadful account in the persecution of the converts to Romanism. The area of Japan is about two hundred and sixty-six thousand square miles, which is near three times the united area of New York and Pennsylvania. All accounts agree in representing the population as very dense. The climate of a large part of the Empire is temperate; the heat proper to the latitude of the southern portion being moderated by regular breezes and frequent rains. Rice, cotton and tobacco, with the fruits and vegetable products of Southern Europe are raised in abundance. The industry of the people has left no foot of ground waste, the soil being cultivated to the tops of the hills; supported by terraces where necessary, and fertilized by careful manuring, as among the Chinese, and by artificial irrigation. It is by no means incredible that a country of such extent, so cultivated, should sustain a population of fifty millions.

The Japanese belong to the Mongol variety of the human family, having the characteristic physical, and moral traits. They are shrewd, quick witted, intelligent; ready for argument and disputation; a people of much firmer mental fibre, as the Jesuits observed, than those inhabiting the Hindu peninsula. "It never happened to Xavier in Japan," says the Jesuit historian, "as it did in India, to baptize idolators from morning to night, until unable from sheer exhaustion to lift his hand to the font; nor to lose his voice from incessant repetition of the baptismal formula. He fished here with the hook, drawing in painfully one convert after another; and not with the net, gathering sinners in shoals into the church. There were even places in Japan-a circumstance which befell the saint no where elsewhere he was made the mark of insult and violence. So different are the Japanese from other races of unbelievers in the east. On the other hand, it is true that if they were hard to fashion into Christians, they kept almost indelibly the character once stamped upon them. The missionary's labor here was

like working in marble; not in wax as among the Hindus, a people as facile in losing as in receiving all impression. The reason of this difference is, that the Japanese, filled with arrogant contempt for other nations, especially Europeans, whom they have known only as traders-a class of low caste among themselves are peculiarly slow to abandon their own usages for others. This is eminently true, of course, in matters of religion. The people of Japan possess famous universities and schools in various branches of science, taught by masters of reputation. They have also ancient religious books, and various sects that vie with each other for pre-eminence. They have numerous temples in every city, most of which are monuments of the magnificence and piety of various monarchs by whom they were built. They have monasteries too, and religions of every order, solitary and cœnobite; and gods and demigods of their own, deriving their descent, as they pretend, from the Sun. The acuteness of the Japanese understanding moreover, and the habit engendered by the diversity of sects among them, of disputing keenly on questions of religion, makes it difficult to bring them to a change of sentiment in any direction. If in the progress of this history we shall see the faith so completely extirpated from Japan, as to leave only a mournful memory of its former existence, we shall also see that the engines for its destruction were so various and powerful, that the wonder is Christianity should have lasted so long, and not that it should have been finally uprooted. In fact, never was a fortress more bravely defended, foot by foot, and with greater cost of blood, than that of the church in Japan; the greater part of the converts remaining all their lives faithful at heart, and renegades only in appearance." (Déntro fideli, é in apparenza sol rinnegati.)*

This extract, however, leads us too far in anticipation of the history. The prevailing religion of Japan is Buddhism; that wide-spread, ancient faith, which at this day rules the minds of three hundred millions of the human family. It was introduced into Japan through China, about the sixth century of the Christian era; supplanting to a considerable extent the old Japanese

Bartoli. Introduction to the History of Jesuit Missions in Japan.

religion, but also receiving some modification from it. The latter still exists as a popular form of worship. It is called Kami-no-mitsi—the way to the Kami; these Kami being the lesser gods and demi-gods of the Japanese Olympus. Of the former, 492 are recognized as native spirits of heaven, and 2640 are canonized mortals. It is only through the intercession of these saints and angels that the worshipper hopes for favorable access to the Ten-syoo-dai-zin, the Supreme Divinity. In this respect, as in others to be hereafter mentioned, the old Japanese worship bore a striking resemblance to that of the Romish church.

Temples to the Kami are found in great numbers in all parts of Japan; as many as three thousand, it is said, on one sacred mountain, Zezi, near Meaco, the ecclesiastical metropolis. In every Japanese house, moreover, there exists a private chapel, in which worship is offered morning and evening to the Supreme Deity. The people of Japan like the ancient Athenians, are a devout race; exceedingly devoted to the worship of the gods. The popular faith includes a belief in future existence and retribution. They hope for a Paradise hereafter; or rather for some one among twenty or more different heavens, of which they can take their choice, according to the particular deity to whose service they devote themselves. Some of these abodes of happiness are in the clouds; some in the moon; some in the depths of the sea. Of all regions under heaven, suicide revels and holds carnival in Japan. No where is the instinctive love of life more easily overborne by the sentiment of honor, the hope of posthumous fame, or the eager desire of immortality. The devotees of the various gods who hold their court in the ocean or the air, impatient of the slow stages along the "road to the Kami," often anticipate by a voluntary death the period assigned them by nature. Some cause themselves to be walled up in mountain caves, where they perish of starvation. Some resort to a particular rock overhanging a dizzy precipice, with deep caverns at its base, and there calling loudly on their god, take the leap, as they suppose, into Paradise. Father Bartoli affirms that the Fiend himself comes forth as a shining body from a sulphurous crater in the neighborhood. The deluded victims taking the light for a favorable

sign, throw themselves down and are dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Others still of these martyrs of the Devil's church, as the historian calls them, embark by companies in a vessel, each with a large stone about his neck, and proceed out into the harbor, leaving their benedictions with the people who line the shore in crowds to witness the ceremony. On reaching a convenient distance they scuttle the junk, and as she gradually sinks they chant together the praises of their god.

Very different in its nature and effects from this old popular faith is Buddhism, the religion of the court and of the upper classes; a religion which, however wide its grasp on the human mind, must apparently be forever incapable of exciting high enthusiasm in its devotees. Starting in India as a reaction against the gross forms of Brahmanism, as the religion of a priesthood, of caste and of idols, Buddhism recognized in each individual man the elements of a possible divinity. It aimed to vindicate the dignity of human nature; to develop what is godlike'in man, not through outward worship and sacerdotal rites, but by leading the worshipper to a consciousness of his participation in that intelligence which exists supreme in Buddha. By steadfast contemplation of the supreme perfection, the inherent perfectibility of man is to be nursed into more or less complete deity. Men themselves become Buddhas, or according to the Japanese mythology, Kamis, by gazing upon Buddha. This view admits of the idea of portions of the supreme intelligence being diffused through the world; and of course easily runs into Pantheism. But Pantheism is only the penumbra of Atheism; and in Japan, Buddhism having run the circle, appears to exist in its most simple negative form. It is the belief of an infinite change and succession of being, sprung from nothing and ending in nothing. This universally diffused Buddha, impersonal, intangible, inconceivable, is after all but a word; in fact nothing. The devotee who strives to resemble Buddha, is verging towards nothing. Thus a religion which set out with the assertion of spiritualism against a sacerdotal faith and worship, has, in Japan at least, ended in the blankest negation of all belief; in simple Atheism. It is the exhibition in Heathendom of that tendency of the human mind, illustrated of old in the career of Sadduceeism, and in