The Religions of Japan | Page 6

beginnings of a religion is never the work of
infidels, but of the most reverent and conscientious minds."
"We, the forty million souls of Japan, standing firmly and persistently
upon the basis of international justice, await still further manifestations
as to the morality of Christianity,"--Hiraii, of Japan.
"When the Creator [through intermediaries that were apparently
animals] had finished treating this world of men, the good and the bad
Gods were all mixed together promiscuously, and began disputing for
the possession of this world."--The Aino Story of the Creation.
"If the Japanese have few beast stories, the Ainos have apparently no
popular tales of heroes ... The Aino mythologies ... lack all connection
with morality.... Both lack priests and prophets.... Both belong to a very
primitive stage of mental development ... Excepting stories ... and a few
almost metreless songs, the Ainos have no other literature at all."--Aino
Studies.
"I asked the earth, and it answered, 'I am not He;' and whatsoever are
therein made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deep and the
creeping things that lived, and they replied, 'We are not thy God; seek
higher than we.' ... And I answered unto all things which stand about
the door of my flesh, 'Ye have told me concerning my God, that ye are
not he; tell me something about him.' And with a loud voice they
explained, 'It is He who hath made us!'"--Augustine's Confessions.
"Seek Him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the
shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night;
that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the
face of the earth: The LORD is his name."--Amos.

"That which hath been made was life in Him."--John.
CHAPTER I
- PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS
The Morse Lectureship and the Study of Comparative Religion.
As a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New
York, in the Class of 1877, your servant received and accepted with
pleasure the invitation of the President and Board of Trustees to deliver
a course of lectures upon the religions of Japan. In that country and in
several parts of it, I lived from 1870 to 1874. I was in the service first
of the feudal daimi[=o] of Echizen and then of the national government
of Japan, helping to introduce that system of public schools which is
now the glory of the country. Those four years gave me opportunities
for close and constant observation of the outward side of the religions
of Japan, and facilities for the study of the ideas out of which worship
springs. Since 1867, however, when first as a student in Rutgers
College at New Brunswick, N.J., I met and instructed those students
from the far East, who, at risk of imprisonment and death had come to
America for the culture of Christendom, I have been deeply interested
in the study of the Japanese people and their thoughts.
To attempt a just and impartial survey of the religions of Japan may
seem a task that might well appall even a life-long Oriental scholar. Yet
it may be that an honest purpose, a deep sympathy and a gladly avowed
desire to help the East and the West, the Japanese and the
English-speaking people, to understand each other, are not wholly
useless in a study of religion, but for our purpose of real value. These
lectures are upon the Morse[1] foundation which has these
specifications written out by the founder:
The general subject of the lectures I desire to be: "The Relation of the
Bible to any of the Sciences, as Geography, Geology, History, and
Ethnology, ... and the relation of the facts and truths contained in the
Word of God, to the principles, methods, and aims of any of the
sciences."

Now, among the sciences which we must call to our aid are those of
geography and geology, by which are conditioned history and
ethnology of which we must largely treat; and, most of all, the science
of Comparative Religion.
This last is Christianity's own child. Other sciences, such as geography
and astronomy, may have been born among lands and nations outside
of and even before Christendom. Other sciences, such as geology, may
have had their rise in Christian time and in Christian lands, their
foundation lines laid and their main processes illustrated by Christian
men, which yet cannot be claimed by Christianity as her children
bearing her own likeness and image; but the science of Comparative
Religion is the direct offspring of the religion of Jesus. It is a
distinctively Christian science. "It is so because it is a product of
Christian civilization, and because it finds its impulse in that freedom
of inquiry which Christianity fosters."[2] Christian scholars began the