"All the nations of the West have, broadly speaking, a common past, a common fund of ideas, from which everything that they have and everything that they are springs naturally as part of a correlated whole, -one Roman Empire in the background, one Christian religion at the centre; one gradual emancipation, first from feudalism and next from absolutism, worked out or now in process of being worked out together; one art, one music, one kind of idiom, even though the words expressing it vary from land to land. Japan stands beyond this pale, because her past has been lived through under conditions altogether different. China is her Greece and Rome. Her language is not Aryan, as even Russia's is. Allusions familiar from one end of Christendom to the other require a whole chapter of commentary to make them at all intelligible to a Japanese student, who often has not, even then, any words corresponding to those which it is sought to translate. So well is this fact understood by Japanese educators that it has been customary of late years to impart most of the higher branches of knowledge through the medium of the English language. This, however, is an enormous additional weight hung around the student's neck. For a Japanese to be taught through the medium of English is infinitely harder than it would be for English lads to be taught through the medium of Latin, as Latin does not, after all, differ so very widely from English. It is, so to say, English in other words. But between English and Japanese the gulf fixed is so wide and gaping that the student's mind must be forever on the stretch. The simpler and more idiomatic the English, the more it taxes his powers of comprehension. It is difficult to see the way out of this cul-de-sac."

The situation is not stated in the current phrase "a nation born in a day," but, as Professor Chamberlain says, a nation burying its past, and endeavoring to be somebody else and something else than what it has been and still partly is." What is true of education in general is true of all its branches. The cul-de-sac confronts one at every turn. It is not necessary for the modern artist to believe that St. Margaret set her foot on the head of Satan in order to depict such a subject with a loving and sympathetic pencil, for legends like this are the penumbral light of a sun which still rules his day. But if the Japanese artist, believing no longer that Kwannon rode the dragon, resorts to subjects drawn from a past which he is eager to bury, inspiration is withdrawn. And with foreign subjects he can have little real sympathy. Think of all that lies behind our art, Greece, Rome, Christianity! At how many fountains of religion and national life it has drank! What a soil, therefore what a flower! Then consider this Japanese artist. Thirty years ago he was under the feudal system, giving his whole life lovingly, happily, to the production of some single masterpiece of carving, ivory, lacquer, or painting for his feudal lord. His master's bread was his. His conditions were those of the Middle Ages, rivalry without competition. Suddenly his lord disappears, his pension vanishes, he must work for coin rather than honor. He is confronted with all the so-called "processes which save what he has never been accustomed to economize, time and labor, which cheapen art and confuse the public taste. He is face to face with competition.

His standards are swept away. Spencer and Christianity are in the air. He has a foreign technique to master. Subjects with which he has no sympathy, and which therefore fail to stir his emotions or imagination, are offered him, the nude human form, which he has seen without ever essaying to study or to copy. Eminently receptive, he is without conceptions. He cannot fulfill the condition laid down by Goethe, that he must be in touch with his time. His time is out of joint; for if great art often accompanies great transitions, these transitions, though violent, were natural.

The same cul-de-sac is encountered in the adoption of a legal code from the continent, a code evolved from precedents which have no counterpart in Japanese national life, borrowed like a dress-coat, and destined for a long time to be associated with remnants of an earlier law and custom which cannot be discarded. All this is, perhaps, the condition of an ardently desired treaty revision, — of the entrance of Japan into the full comity of nations; yet it is difficult to conceive of a legal code as other than the reflection of a society, the outcome of a national experience.

There can be no doubt that Japan will persist in the path on which she has entered. It is impossible for her to return to her former solitude, and she has no desire to. But in destroying the old landmarks, and tearing up the roots of her own civilization, she is discovering that in that civilization are elements of obedience, reverence, courtesy, too good to be thrown away. In all the problems before her, that which assumes more and more prominence is the problem how to conserve Japan, and in no sphere of progress does this question raise difficulties more perplexing than in that of religion. Under the title of "The Future of Christianity in Japan," one of the most gifted of Japanese pastors, a graduate of the Doshisha, and friend of the late Mr. Neesima, contributes an article to "The Rikugo Zasshi," from which the "Japan Mail" takes the following extracts:

"Our church has made great progress, and we are now experienced enough to select from European and American seeds those which are good and suitable. The day has come when we can take steps for the development of Japanese Christianity. . . . In certain essential points, neither time nor space can make any difference in the religion of Christ. But in other respects, in matters of every-day life and thought, the Christianity of Japan cannot but differ more or less from that of England or America. There will not only be some difference between the two, but Christianity may possibly make a new growth here and develop some finer qualities not discernible in the older stock. I once spoke to some friends in Europe and America thus: 'In sending out missionaries to the East, you are not conferring a benefit on Orientals alone; you are conferring a great benefit on your own churches also. If you wish to see Christianity triumphant in the West, you will have to send reinforcements from the East.' Christianity has attained its present stage of development in the Occident on the basis laid by Grecian literature and Roman jurisprudence. The Christianity which is about to spring up in the East must stand on the pedestal formed

out of the religion of Buddha and the Confucian philosophy. Our Christianity must appropriate to itself, in the course of its development, whatever truth and whatever good qualities may be found in the religion of India and the philosophy of China. . . . It is therefore our wish to develop a system of divinity which in its essential characteristics shall be purely Japanese, and to originate religious rites and ceremonies which shall be Japanese in character. At first sight, the church in Japan may seem to rest on a firm basis; but the plain truth is, that our churches are virtually so many foreign colonies. . . . The thoughts and customs prevailing indicate a wholesale introduction of foreign thoughts and customs. It is a fine thing to select whatever is good and beautiful from foreign countries; but nothing deserves to be more severely condemned than to blindly follow in everything the recommendations of foreign denominations and their representatives. As a result of such a practice, various abuses and evils have sprung up within the church, and there is danger of our letting a golden opportunity like the present pass without courageously hoisting our own banners and fighting for victory on our own lines. Unless Christianity divests itself of foreign clothes and puts on a Japanese dress, it will never accomplish its object in this country. . . . As the result of thirty years' training and experience, there has risen in our churches a numerous race of capable men equal to any work of responsibility. There are even some among the foreign missionaries who, seeing this, have made up their minds to yield the principal positions to Japanese, remaining themselves mere advisers and helpers to the latter. . . . The time has now come for Japanese propagandists to form their own estimate of Christ, and to make it known to their fellow-countrymen. We must henceforth think independently, and construct without assistance, so as to build a Church of Japan. . . . We have only to believe in Christ as Japanese ; only to study divinity as Japanese; only to preach as Japanese. What is now required to secure the complete success of evangelization in Japan is, that there should rise up preachers like Wesley, Beecher, Knox, Luther, and Paul. The time is ripe. Where are the men to take up this responsible task?"

The writer, Mr. Yokoi, is fully persuaded that Christianity is destined to prevail in Japan, and will be the dominant factor in moulding its future. Neither Shintoism nor Buddhism are formidable rivals. The former, a worship rather than a religion, a ritual without a theology, without sacred books, moral code, dogmas, or any real influence on the conduct of life, offers as little resistance now to its new foe as it did centuries ago to Buddhism; and that the latter is destined to lose, in the feeble struggle it is making against Christianity, there can be no manner of doubt. Confucianism, with its doctrines of obedience to rulers and parents, while eminently adapted to feudal Japan, cannot survive the decay of the dogma of the Mikado's divinity and the introduction of the new education, and is steadily falling into neglect. An educated native ministry has been the goal of all missionary effort. That end, with its inevitable corollary of independence, has been largely secured. The future of the foreign missionary must be more and more one of counsel and direction, and less and less that of absolute leadership. In religious as in secular affairs, the supremacy of the foreign adviser is drawing to a close. Doubtless there

is much of self-sufficiency in evangelical new Japan, as in other departments of the new order of things. Young men pass a few years abroad, and return with a smattering of science and philosophy picked up from various sources, Berlin, Paris, New England, to occupy positions of trust and responsibility. For this, as for so many other things, there seems to be no help; it is one of the factors of the situation. That Japanese Christians will make no mistakes is to assume them wiser than we have been. That they do not feel themselves the heirs to all the subtle controversies which have created the sectarian divisions of the West, to all the accretions which have proved stumbling-blocks to simple faith, is natural. That Christianity may develop a "finer growth" in the soil of Eastern civilization may be doubted, but not that it must and will adjust itself to a radically different environment of human need. No other religion has exhibited the same capacity for adjustment and development; no other possesses the same vital power of growth. The extinct dogmas which strew its path through the centuries are the evidence and proof of its superiority to human limitations, of its freedom and life. What the world owes to Christ is well known. What its debt is to his human interpreters we are more ready to admit for the past than the present. But the adaptiveness of his teaching to every race and time is only another form of the statement that in every age, and from every people born into his kingdom, a new light is shed upon his life and work. Arthur Sherburne Hardy.

BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL CRITICISM.

IMMANUEL. -PROPHECY AND FULFILLMENT.

THE name Immanuel first occurs Isaiah vii. 14, in the familiar passage describing the interview between Ahaz and Isaiah. Ahaz and his kingdom were in peril. Rezin of Syria and Pekah of Israel had combined to overthrow him, and, according to the twenty-eighth chapter of 2 Chronicles, made considerable headway toward the accomplishment of their purpose. Ahaz was greatly alarmed. "His heart was

moved, and the hearts of his people," says the record, "as the trees of the forest are swayed by the wind" (Isa. vii. 2). At this juncture Isaiah, by divine direction, sought an interview with the king and tried to encourage him to trust in Jehovah for deliverance. Later, in the name of Jehovah, he offered to produce any desired sign to help Ahaz to believe that the God of his people could and would help him. The king, with feigned piety, declined to "tempt Jehovah.' He had already appealed, or at least decided to appeal, to Tiglathpileser, who, during the last ten years, had restored Assyria to the first place among the nations of Western Asia; and he did not wish to have the wisdom of his course challenged. Isaiah, who perceived his hypocrisy, was prepared for this emergency. 'Hear ye now, house

that ye

of David," he said, "is it too little for you to weary men, must weary even my God?" Then he added the words touching Immanuel, which are translated in our English versions as follows:

Authorized.

himself

14. Therefore the Lord shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call (marg. or Thou, O virgin, shalt call) his name Immanuel.

15. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.

16. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.

17. The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

Revised.

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a (marg. or the) virgin (marg. or maiden) shall conceive and bear (marg. or is with child and beareth) a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter (marg. or curds) and honey shall he eat when he knoweth (marg. that he may know) to refuse the evil, and choose the good. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. The Lord shall bring upon thee, and upen thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.

The revisers have greatly improved upon the translation of their predecessors, and further assisted the reader by attaching verse 17 to this paragraph, instead of making it the beginning of a new one, as was done in the old version. The passage has been grossly misinterpreted, mainly, perhaps, because it has not been studied as a whole. Now it is perfectly clear from verse 13 that the prophet was indignant, and justly so, at Ahaz. Would his indignation most naturally vent itself in a promise, or a warning? The latter is, of course, to be expected. If, then, there is a part of the passage which, taken by itself, would seem encouraging, and another which would naturally inspire terror and anxiety, it is to be presumed that the former is, in some way, to be subordinated to the latter. These two elements are actually found, the former in verses 14 and 16, the latter in verses 15 and 17; but, as is often the case in Hebrew composition, the particles which would indicate their relations to each other are omitted. Supplying these, one gets some such translation as follows: "Though the young woman who now conceiveth, when she beareth [a son], may call his name Immanuel, curds and honey will he eat by the time when he knoweth enough to reject evil and choose good: for, before he knoweth enough to reject evil and choose good, the land, whose two kings thou loathest, will be deserted; but Jehovah will bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days such as have not come [upon them] since the time when Ephraim separated from Judah." This rendering may at first seem to make the warning element too prominent, but it harmonizes with the tone in which Isaiah must have spoken verse 13, and therefore must be substantially correct.

The conclusion based upon the relation of the passage to the context is confirmed by a study of its internal structure. It consists of two perfectly symmetrical parts. To the first belong verses 14 and 15; to the second, verses 16 and 17: moreover, as has already been indicated, verse 16 corresponds to verse 14, and verse 17 to verse 15. The two parts are connected by the particle for (), which is often