Despite the awful under-tow in
the immorality of the sailor, the adventurer and the gain-greedy
foreigner, the tide of Christianity began steadily to rise.
Notwithstanding the outbursts of the flames of persecution, the torture
and imprisonment of Christian captives and exiles, and the slow worrying
to death of the missionary's native teachers, inquirers came and
converts were made. In 1868, after revolution and restoration, the old
order changed, and duarchy and feudalism passed away. Quick to seize the
opportunity, Dr. J.C. Hepburn, healer of bodies and souls of men,
presented a Bible to the Emperor, and the gift was accepted.
No sooner had the new government been established in safety, and the
name of Yedo, the city of the Baydoor, been changed into that of
T[=o]ki[=o], the Eastern Capital, than an embassy[25] of seventy persons
started on its course round the world. At its head were three cabinet
ministers of the new government and the court noble, Iwakura, of
immemorial lineage, in whose veins ran the blood of the men called gods.
Across the Pacific to the United States they went, having their initial
audience of the President of the Republic that knows no state church,
and whose Christianity had compelled both the return of the shipwrecked
Japanese and the freedom of the slave.
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