The fluctuating condition of the Christian churches is not cause for astonishment, nor is it to be wholly, if at all, attributed to the fickleness of the national character, but rather, in a large degree, to the peculiar conditions of Japanese life.  The early Christians had much to learn.  They knew, experimentally, but little of Christian truth.  The whole course of Christian thought, the historical development of theology, with the various heresies, the recent discussions resting on the so-called “higher criticism” of the Bible, together with the still more recent investigations into the history and philosophy of religion in general, were of course wholly unknown to them.  This was inevitable, and they were blameless.  All could not be learned at once.

Nor is there any blame attached to the missionaries.  It was as impossible for them to impart to young and inexperienced Christians a full knowledge of these matters as it was for the latter to receive such information.  The primary interest of the missionaries was in the practical and everyday duties of the Christian life, in the great problem of getting men and women to put away the superstitions and narrowness and sins springing from polytheism or practical atheism, and getting them started in ways of godliness.  The training schools for evangelists were designed to raise up practical workers rather than speculative theologians.  Missionaries considered it their duty (and they were beyond question right) to teach religion rather than the science and philosophy of religion.  When, therefore, the evangelists discovered that they had not been taught these advanced branches of knowledge, it is not strange that some should rush after them, and, in their zeal for that which they supposed to be important, hasten to criticise their former teachers.  As a result, they undermined both their own faith and that of many who had become Christians through their teaching.

The dullness of the church life, so conspicuous at present in many of the churches, is only partly due to the fact that the Christians are tired of the services.  It is true that these services no longer afford them that mental and spiritual stimulus which they found at the first, and that, lacking this, they find little inducement to attend.  But this is only a partial explanation.  Looking over the experience of the past twenty-five years, we now see that the intense zeal of the first few years was a natural result of a certain narrowness of view.  It is an interesting fact that, during one of the early revivals in the Doshisha, the young men were so intense and excited that the missionaries were compelled to restrain them.  These young Christians felt and said that the missionaries were not filled with the Holy Spirit; they accordingly considered it their duty to exhort their foreign leaders, even to chide them for their lack of faith.  The extraordinary expectations entertained by the young Japanese workers of those days and shared by the missionaries,