Think of him again, when unable to
purify the Augean stables of Yedo's moral corruption, because the time
was at hand for other cleansing agencies, he retires to his home,
content awhile with his books and flowers. Again, see him summoned to
the capital, to sit at Ki[=o]to--like aged Franklin among the young
statesmen of the Constitution in Philadelphia--with the Mikado's
youthful advisers in the new government of 1868. Think of him pleading
for the elevation of the pariah Eta, accursed and outcast through
Buddhism, to humanity and citizenship. Then hear him urge eloquently the
right of personal belief, and argue for toleration under the law, of
opinions, which the Japanese then stigmatized as "evil" and 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.
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