May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, be ushered in.

NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works:  T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Kojiki, for Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes, Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things Japanese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H.  Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow and Hawes’s Hand-book for Japan, now continued in new editions (4th, 1894), by Professor B.H.  Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers’s Chinese Reader’s Manual; M.E., The Mikado’s Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio’s A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, T[=o]ki[=o], 1887.

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE FAITH:  RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS

[Footnote 1:  The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer, and gazetteer.  In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this lectureship in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on “The Relation of the Bible to the Sciences,” May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand dollars.]

[Footnote 2:  An American Missionary in Japan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L.  Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 3:  Lucretia Coftin Mott.]

[Footnote 4:  “I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred....  I believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for all missionaries.  Still more important, it seems to me, is it that missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent.”—­Dr. Legge’s Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]

[Footnote 5:  The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York, 1881.]

[Footnote 6:  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions of 1859 and 1879.]

[Footnote 7:  One of the many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the Chinese and Koreans.  See, for the shortening and lightening of the modern Japanese sword (katana) as compared with the long and heavy (ken) of the “Divine” (kami) or uncivilized age, “The Sword of Japan; Its History and Traditions,” T.A.S.J., Vol.  II., p. 58.]

[Footnote 8:  The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia (which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev. Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]