for pilgrims, who make extended journeys, to carry what may be called a passbook, in which seals are placed by the officials of each shrine.  This is evidence to friends and to the pilgrim himself, in after years, of the reality of his long and tedious pilgrimage.  Beggars before these shrines are apt to display these passbooks as an evidence of their worthiness and need.  For many a pilgrim supports himself, during his pilgrimage, entirely by begging.

Pilgrims also buy from each shrine of note some charm, “o mamori,” “honorable preserver,” and “o fuda,” “honorable ticket,” which to them are exceedingly precious.  There is hardly a house in Japan but has some, often many, of these charms, either nailed on the front door or placed on the god-shelf.  I have seen a score nailed one above another.  In some cases the year-names are still legible, and show considerable age.  The sale of charms is a source of no little revenue to the temples, in some cases amounting to thousands of yen annually.  We may smile at the ignorance and superstition which these facts reveal, but, as I already remarked, these are external features, the material expression or clothing, so to speak, of the inner life.  Their particular form is due to deficient intellectual development.  I do not defend them; I merely maintain that their existence shows conclusively the possession by the people at large of a real religious emotion and purpose.  If so, they, are not to be sneered at, although the mood of the average pilgrim may be cheerful, and the ordinary pilgrimage may have the aspect of a “peripatetic picnic, faintly flavored with piety.”  The outside observer, such as the foreigner of necessity is, is quick to detect the picnic quality, but he cannot so easily discern the religious significance or the inner thoughts and emotions of the pilgrims.  The former is discernible at a glance, without knowledge of the Japanese language or sympathy with the religious heart; the latter can be discovered only by him who intimately understands the people, their language and their religion.

If religion were necessarily gloomy, festivals and merry-making would be valid proof of Japanese religious deficiency.  But such is not the case.  Primitive religions, like primitive people, are artless and simple in religious joy as in all the aspects of their life.  Developed races increasingly discover the seriousness of living, and become correspondingly reflective, if not positively gloomy.  Religion shares this transformation.  But those religions in which salvation is a prominent idea, and whose nature is such as to satisfy at once the head and the heart, restore joyousness as a necessary consequence.  While certain aspects of Christianity certainly have a gloomy look,—­which its critics are much disposed to exaggerate, and then to condemn,—­yet Christianity at heart is a religion of profound joy, and this feature shows itself in such universal festivals as Christmas and Easter.  Even though the Japanese popular religious life showed itself exclusively in festivals and on occasions of joy, therefore, that would not prove them to be inherently lacking in religious nature.