Taking a comprehensive review of our study thus far, we see that the forms of Japanese religious life have been determined by the history, rather than by any inherent racial character of the people.  Although they had a religion prior to the coming of any external influence, yet they have proved ready disciples of the religions of other lands.  The religion of India, its esoteric, and especially its exoteric forms, has found wide acceptance and long-continued popularity.  The higher life of the nation readily took on in later times the religious characteristics of the Chinese, predominantly ethical, it is true, and only slightly religious as to forms of worship.  When Roman Catholic Christianity came to Japan in the sixteenth century, it, too, found ready acceptance.  It is true that it presented a view of the nature of religion not very different from that held by Buddhism in many respects, yet in others there was a marked divergence, as for instance, in the doctrine of God, of individual sin, and of the nature and method of salvation.  The Japanese have thus shown themselves ready assimilators of all these diverse systems of religious expression.  Just at present a new presentation of Christianity is being made to the Japanese; some are urging upon them the acceptance of the Roman Catholic form of it; others are urging the Greek; and still others are presenting the Protestant point of view.  Each of these groups of missionaries seems to be reaping good harvests.  Speaking from my own experience, I may say, that many of the Japanese show as great an appreciation of the essence of the religious life, and find the ideas and ideals, doctrines and ceremonies, of Christianity as fitted to their heart’s deepest needs, as do any in the most enlightened parts of Christendom.  It is true that the Christian system is so opposed to the Buddhistic and Shinto, and in some respects to the Confucian, that it is an exceedingly difficult matter at the beginning to give the Buddhist or Shintoist any idea of what Christianity is.  Yet the difficulty arises not from the structure of the brain, nor from the inherent race character, but solely from the diversity of hitherto prevailing systems of thought.  When once the passage from the one system of thought to the other has been effected, and the significance of the Christian system and life has been appreciated,—­in other words, when the Japanese Buddhist or Shintoist or Confucianist has become a Christian,—­he is as truly a Christian and as faithful as is the Englishman or American.

Of course I do not mean to say that he looks at every doctrine and at every ceremony in exactly the same way as an Englishman or American.  But I do say that the different point of view is due to the differing social and religious history of the past and the differing surroundings of the present, rather than to inherent racial character or brain structure.  The Japanese are human beings before they are Japanese.