devilish, but which we, and many of them now, call sound and Christian.  Finally, behold him at night in the public streets, assaulted by assassins, and given quick death by their bullet and blades.  See his gray head lying severed from his body and in its own gore, the wretched murderers thinking they have stayed the advancing tide of Christianity; but at home there dwells a little son destined in God’s providence to become an earnest Christian and one of the brilliant leaders of the native Christianity of Japan in our day.

The Buddhist Inquisitors.

During the nation’s period of Thorn-rose-like seclusion, the three religions recognized by the law were Buddhism, Shint[=o] and Confucianism.  Christianity was the outlawed sect.  All over the country, on the high-roads, at the bridges, and in the villages, towns and cities, the fundamental laws of the country were written on wooden tablets called kosats[)u].  These, framed and roofed for protection from the weather, but easily before the eyes of every man, woman and child, and written in a style and language understood of all, denounced the Christian religion as an accursed “sect,” and offered gold to the spy and informer;[19] while once a year every Samurai was required to swear on the true faith of a gentleman that he had nothing to do with Christianity.  From the seventeenth century, the country having been divided into parishes, the inquisition was under the charge of the Buddhist priests who penetrated into the house and family and guarded the graveyards, so that neither earth nor fire should embrace the carcass of a Christian, nor his dust or ashes defile the ancestral graveyards.  Twice—­in 1686 and in 1711—­were the rewards increased and the Buddhist bloodhounds of Japan’s Inquisition set on fresh trails.  On one occasion, at Osaka, in 1839,[20] a rebellion broke out which was believed, though without evidence, to have been instigated in some way by men with Christian ideas, and was certainly led by Oshio, the bitter opponent of Buddhism, of Tokugawa, and of the prevalent Confucianism.  Possibly, the uprising was aided by refugees from Korea.  Those implicated were, after speedy trial, crucified or beheaded.  In the southern part of the country the ceremony of Ebumi or trampling on the cross,[21] was long performed.  Thousands of people were made to pass through a wicket, beneath which and on the ground lay a copper plate engraved with the image of the Christ and the cross.  In this way it was hoped to utterly eradicate the very memory of Christianity, which, to the common people, had become the synonym for sorcery.

But besides the seeking after God by earnest souls and the protest of philosophers, there was, amid the prevailing immorality and the agnosticism and scepticism bred by decayed Buddhism and the materialistic philosophy based on Confucius, some earnest struggles for the purification of morals and the spiritual improvement of the people.

The Shingaku Movement.