[8]
The Rev. Samuel Beal, author of "Buddhism in China," said (p. 19) that
"it was plain to him that no real work could be done among the people
[of China and Japan] by missionaries until the system of their belief
was understood."
The Rev. James MacDonald, a veteran missionary in Africa, in the
concluding chapter of his very able work on "Religion and Myth," says:
The Church that first adopts for her intending missionaries the
study of Comparative Religion as a substitute for subjects now
taught will lead the van in the path of true progress.
The People of Japan.
In this faith then, in the spirit of Him who said, "I come not to
destroy but to fulfil," let us cast our eyes upon that part of the world
where lies the empire of Japan with its forty-one millions of souls.
Here we have not a country like India--a vast conglomeration of nations,
languages and religions occupying a peninsula itself like a continent,
whose history consists of a stratification of many civilizations. Nor
have we here a seemingly inert mass of humanity in a political structure
blending democracy and imperialism, as in China, so great in age, area
and numbers as to weary the imagination that strives to grasp the
details.
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