One of the most remarkable of the movements to this end was that of the Shingaku or New Learning.  A class of practical moralists, to offset the prevailing tendency of the age to much speculation and because Buddhism did so little for the people, tried to make the doctrines of Confucius a living force among the great mass of people.  This movement, though Confucian in its chief tone and color, was eclectic and intended to combine all that was best in the Chinese system with what could be utilized from Shint[=o] and Buddhism.  With the preaching was combined a good deal of active benevolence.  Especially in the time of famine, was care for humanity shown.  The effect upon the people was noticeable, followers multiplied rapidly, and it is said that even the government in many instances made them, the Shingaku preachers, the distributors of rice and alms for the needy.  Some of the preachers became famous and counted among their followers many men of influence.  The literary side of the movement[22] has been brought to the attention of English readers through Mr. Mitford’s translation of three sermons from the volume entitled Shingaku D[=o]wa.  Other discourses have been from time to time rendered into English, those by Shibata, entitled The Sermons of the Dove-like Venerable Master, being especially famous.

This movement, interesting as it was, came to an end when the country began to be convulsed by the approaching entrance of foreigners, through the Perry treaty; but it serves to show, what we believe to be the truth, that the moral rottenness as well as the physical decay of the Japanese people reached their acme just previous to the apparition of the American fleet in 1853.

The story of nineteenth century Reformed Christianity in Japan does not begin with Perry, or with Harris, or with the arrival of Christian missionaries in 1859; for it has a subterranean and interior history, as we have hinted; while that of the Roman form and order is a story of unbroken continuity, though the life of the tunnel is now that of the sunny road.  The parable of the leaven is first illustrated and then that of the mustard-seed.  Before Christianity was phenomenal, it was potent.  Let us now look from the interior to the outside.

On Perry’s flag-ship, the Mississippi, the Bible lay open, a sermon was preached, and the hymn “Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne” was sung, waking the echoes of the Japan hills.  The Christian day of rest was honored on this American squadron.  In the treaty signed in 1854, though it was made, indeed, with use of the name of God and terms of Christian chronology, there was nothing upon which to base, either by right or privilege, the residence of missionaries in the country.  Townsend Harris, the American Consul-General, who hoisted his flag and began his hermit life at Shimoda, in September, 1855, had as his only companion a Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, who was later, in Yedo, to be assassinated by ronins.