The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their soil, and to regulate their own tariff.  Secondarily, its members went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.

In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers, secretaries and students were opened.  They saw themselves as others saw them.  They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces, their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless family life in the Christian home.  They found, further yet, free churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely the condition of the present.  It took but a few whispers over the telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public view like snowflakes melting on the river.  The right arm of persecution was broken.

The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in Japan is told, first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit.  A study of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian Church began.  On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry’s treaty ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in Japan.

At this point our task is ended.  We cannot even glance at the native Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to appraise the work of the foreign missionaries.  He has read these pages in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the Japanese have been trained for higher forms of faith.

The armies of Japan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing lines.  The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being snapped asunder.  May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace whose kingdom is not of this world.