man building a palace on a powder magazine. He gets his house done, and the magazine explodes and blows the whole to atoms. Again the man builds, and another explosion knocks the house to pieces as before. The only way to build that house is to first clean out the powder from under the foundations. But in man's heart are any number of bags of powder : pride, malice, lust, envy, etc., and these will explode and destroy the fairest structure of good works unless to the last one they are carefully removed. To try to build a holy life by prayers and fastings while the heart is unchanged, is like trying to cure boils, due to bad blood, by wiping off the matter with the handkerchief. They may be dried, but they cannot be cured until some medicine that will correct the blood is used internally. The Sheikh goes into particulars of the method of curing the internal ills by the "shortest cut." He says, “Make these four things the habit of your life: 1. Know yourself to be the lowest of God's creatures, and act accordingly in your relations to others. 2. Put all your faults and your sins before your face, and wait upon God for forgiveness. 3. Hold your own impotence before you, that you may see the power of God. 4. Cry for mercy, cry with the cry of the man whose ship has sunk in the middle of the ocean and left him on a bare rock, with all help cut off and his business finished unless God takes pity on him. As that man clinging with both hands to that rock cries, so cry in every breath for the mercy of God. The way to form this habit of life," says the Sheikh, "is to perform your ablutions, sit down in a quiet place on a prayer rug, and imagine your clay returned to its several elements, and you left face to face with your soul in the midst. Then say, O soul, long time have we been doing these many wrongs and sins. We have never once been ashamed of ourselves; we have never once thought of our sins, nor have we ever asked forgiveness. Come, now, let us this day make an agreement together before the Almighty. Let us acknowledge ourselves the lowest of his creatures, set our sins before our face, and taking our weakness in our hand, let us stand before the gate of mercy, and never cut off our hope from the tender mercy of God, letting the thing we most covet be God and his favor. Having made this agreement with your soul, be constant in holding to it, and may God give us all success. Amen." As we read these books we cannot fail to be struck with indignation on seeing how fully the character of Christ is attributed to Mohammed; how Mohammed is made the perfect example for all men to follow, to be distantly imitated, but never copied, in actual fact; how he is made the mediator between man and God, the daily helper of his people, and how, in the visions of the prophet, the dervish sees him on a throne surrounded by saints and angels, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at his feet, and all looking to him as the one to whom is given all power in heaven and in earth. As we read the lives of the Dervish Fathers we cannot fail to be filled with disgust at stories to match the wildest flights of fancy of the Christian hagiographers of the Middle Ages. We cannot keep up our interest when asked to wade through pages of minute details of a physical treatment for spiritual ills. The whole philosophy of this part of the system is from pagan sources. And yet with all this there is much to attract the heart of the Christian. I promised, on beginning this paper, to raise, and not solve, questions. On rising from these readings I confess that my mind is a reiterated interrogation point. The people who have written these books are Moslems. They believe in the Koran as the revealed law of God, in Mohammed as the one prophet by whom in these days men are taught the truth, and they regard this belief, with observance of the worship, fasts, pilgrimage, alms-giving, and general system of morals prescribed by the Koran, as the essentials of salvation, and they are certain that the non-fulfillment by any man of the whole Moslem law will subject the culprit to punishment in hell to the extent required by retributive justice. But between the doctrines held by these writers and those of the ordinary Moslem there is a marked difference. The ordinary Moslem regards religion as something mainly important as a means of escape from perdition, and as entirely distinct from character, the character of every man being fixed by the eternal decrees of God. He believes that the verbal profession of faith in God and in Mohammed as his prophet, will ultimately give any man access to Paradise, after he has by good works done in spite of the character which God has seen fit to give him, offset his sins, or after he has suffered in hell punishment in proportion to the amount of unrepented sin which is not balanced off by good works. These dervish writers, on the other hand, regard religion as the natural expression of homage and sincere love to God, and as of the greatest importance in opening the door of escape from the dominion of sin in this life. They seem to have some idea of the worthlessness of man's highest merit in the sight of God, feeling that what will save the sincere servant of God is God's mercy, in spite of sins that pollute the record of the purest life, and they believe that since man knows not the decrees of God, he must hopefully turn to God, with the expectation of a change of character by the divine grace.2 1 See Merakebe. 2 See Miftah ul Kuloub on Predestination, p. 59 seq. All the best writings of the Moslem mystics centre about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The writers were men from Central Asia or East Persia, -from Balkh, Samarcand, Bokhara, and Khorassan. Now in the fourteenth century Christian missions had already existed in Central Asia for a thousand years, with mission houses at Balkh and Samarcand. In the thirteenth century, under Jenghis Khan, Christians and Moslems alike were tolerated in those remote regions, on condition of their living together in peace. In fact, in Central Asia only has Islam ever been in close contact, on an equality, with a living Christianity. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, mysticism and the quietism to which some of the dervish theories bear so strong a resemblance were rife in the Christian church. As we find among the egregious follies of the dervishes the attitude and usages of the omphalo-psychoi of Mount Athos, with the Taboritic light which John Cantacuzene incorporated among the doctrines of the Greek Church; or when we see in some orders the license of the brethren of the free spirit, we would prefer to discover in such perversities signs of a reverse process of derivation. But when we find among some of the dervishes purer notions of spiritual piety, with desire for reform, and confidence that God will change the heart of him who seeks the change in humility and sincerity, we cannot avoid wishing to see here, at least, a heritage from the Christians of Central Asia, among whom the dervish great men lived until Tamerlane wiped out Asiatic Christianity as with a sponge. This field is a tempting one for research. Perhaps it was not a mere coincidence that when Abd el Khalik, the Nakshibendi of Bokhara, was leaving as his dying injunction to his disciples the words: "Let your prayers be humble, your companions the poor, your house a house of worship, and your intimate friend the Almighty God," at almost the same time the followers of Thomas à Kempis were placing on his tomb the words : "Oh where is peace, for thou its paths hast trod? It is hardly needful to call attention to the advantage possessed by the Moslem who has faith to ask of God a change of his heart and its desires over the Moslem who, without such faith, sees no door of escape from the dominion of sin in this life. When Sheikh Obeidullah was in Constantinople I had a talk with him on the subject of the change of heart which God's spirit can effect. He was fully as much astonished to learn that there are Christians who believe in the necessity of regeneration as I was to hear him say that he had seen repeated instances of it through the spirit of God working in the hearts of his own followers, the men having been turned from vice to purity and piety. Afterwards he remarked to one of his Moslem friends, referring to this talk, and to his acquaintance with American missionaries in Persia: "To say that these Americans are not the people of God's guidance is to confess one's self a fool. Yet if we believe the Koran, we must say that these people are unbelievers, or be unbelievers ourselves. For my part, I hold that in the sight of God an unbeliever of this sort and a Moslem are both one." Now I do not wish to be understood as overestimating the importance of the emotions and aspirations set forth in these Nakshibendi writings. We all know how often, as we come into closer relations with these people, the whole mass of such religious expression becomes like a picture without real substance. Yet, in view of the strain of piety that seems to run through these dervish manuals, and in view of the unquestioned fact that there are isolated cases of Moslems taught by the dervishes who seem to be pure and godly men, I would ask: Is it disloyalty to Christ to believe that Moslems who throw scorn upon the Christian theology, but who go to God in the trembling faith that the giver of all good will not disappoint and break the hearts of those who seek Him in humble sincerity, is it disloyalty to Christ to believe that such men may find God when they seek Him, and that the searcher of hearts may acknowledge them as his own? Again, if there is a spiritual life outside of Christ in which God feeds the soul; if that life is built up under circumstances which fill the mind of the devotee with the bitterest contempt for all that is Christian; if the form of Islam which such devotees follow is, and the only form of Christianity which they know is not, seen to yield fruit in spiritual piety; if the whole mass of the people see and know this, have we any particle of hope of influencing the mass of Moslems to seek salvation in any other way than the one which they know to be effective; at least, is not that hope vain until a living and pure Christianity is aroused in the dead churches which surround them? Once more, if any of these dervish systems do, or in times past have done, anything to turn the hearts of men to pure life and godly faith, may we, in seeking to show Moslems the better way of simple dependence on Christ, use the terminology or the literature of the Dervish Fathers for Christian purposes, and if so, how far may we do it? And, finally, since Asia, from time immemorial, has been moved by the tempting claim of the mystics to show the soul a way to the hidden things of God, shall we err, if, in seeking to show Christ to Asiatics, we sometimes begin by showing Him as the door to spiritual life on earth, as the one perfect guide whom they seek, and the revealer of the hidden mysteries of God, instead of beginning by preaching the doom of the sinner and the atoning sacrifice for sin ? The existence of a single instance of apparently pure, spiritual, and godly piety in a Moslem convinces Moslems who see it of the divine mission of Mohammed. Hence the occurrence of one such case suggests to the Christian missionary many hard questions. These, however, will suffice for this time. For myself, I have not, as I said, passed beyond the stage of feeling the difficulty of giving satisfactory answers to such questions. The only positive position which I seem to be near to reach on this subject is the belief that the key to the door by which Christianity may enter the Moslem mind is lost not far from the habitation of the dervishes, somewhere in that rubbish heap which covers so many jewels of truth. CONSTANTINOPLE, TURKEY. Henry O. Dwight. A GENERAL VIEW OF MISSIONS. VI. JAPAN (continued). 66 In accordance with our general plan, of gathering notes of each society from the beginning of the preceding year, we go back to the "Missionary Herald" for January, 1886, in which we find a note justifying the remark often made, that the Chinese and Japanese do everything in exactly the opposite way from us. We learn that the First Church of Kioto, which had a pleasant edifice near the homes of its members where they were well accommodated, have just gone off three quarters of a mile and hired a building in a densely populated section, where they can better reach others with the gospel." What a curious people, to care more for the spreading of the gospel than for their own ecclesiastical ease! The "Herald," speaking of proposals made in Japan to send Buddhist missionaries into Christendom, well remarks: "We do not expect to see many apostles of Buddhism in the United States, but were Japan to send them we have little doubt that her own temples would see more worshipers, and that the national faith would not lose its hold so rapidly as is now the case. Would that all Christians throughout the world understood the truth that the best way to conserve their faith at home is to propagate it abroad." In November, 1886, the "Herald" "The Japan Missions have suffered greatly the past year for want of men to improve opportunities everywhere open for enlarged effort. For several years there has been no increase, but rather a falling off in the number of missionaries connected with the American Board. . . . Yet three new churches were organized during the year ending April 1, making the total number 31, of which 26 are self-supporting. To these churches were added 866 new members on confession of faith, making an aggregate membership of 3,465. Their contributions for Christian objects amounted to between nine and ten thousand dollars. Since April several other churches have been organized, bringing up the number to 35 or more, and the church membership at this date is probably little short of 4,000." ... says: A letter from "a fellow-laborer," describing a journey he had made to baptize a knot of converts gathered in by a converted noble of the illustrious and ancient house of Kusunoki, which in antiquity, if not in rank, rivals that of Savoy or Bavaria, says: "The trip was attended ... with one of the pleasantest incidents of my residence in Japan. For the first time in my life I preached in a Buddhist temple, and at the invitation of the priest himself. I feared it was an impulsive action, the full meaning of which the priest did not understand, and I hesitated to do an act that might embarrass him and produce strife. But one of the Christians with me said, 'I've already preached there once, and the priest knows what he's about. He personally owns the greater part of the temple, and says that he is getting along in years and cares very little what people think; and if there's anything better than what he has learned heretofore he wants to know it.' So we rode to the village, took tea on the mats in a romantic parlor shaded with a Japanese maple that would have made an American nurseryman green with envy, and then we started for the Temple of the Three Monkeys. . . The temple-hall was crowded, and the attention from first to last was excellent. . . . Since then I have noticed that a native newspaper had in its column of news the statement that in front of a temple near Osaka was a great signboard, on which was written: Christianity taught here.' I will only add, in closing, that Buddhism in Japan is breaking down much faster than Christianity can take possession of the wrecks." - Mr. Atkinson, speaking of the revision of the treaties, says: "America stands ready to turn over its citizens and their interests to the care and keeping of the Japanese, but neither England nor Germany has yet reached that frame of mind. Because of this friendly attitude of the United States American missionaries meet with a kindly reception by almost all classes, and it is a string that can be pulled with good effect on such a crowd even as the one I met at Sakaide. The Apostle Paul did not hesitate to make use of his Roman citizenship on occasion, and with good effect,- so I see no reason why we should not do the same with our American citizenship." It appears that only one fourth of the professed Christians in Japan are females. As the membership increases this disparity decreases. The early notices of the Acts seem to agree with a similar assumption respecting the days next succeeding Pentecost. Dr. Davis thus describes a mountain parish: "It is west of Kyoto fifteen miles, and consists of a rich alluvial plain ten miles long and half as wide, with a mountain district to the north, of equal extent. Eight years ago... there was not a Christian in it. Last Saturday a journey of four hours brought me to the house of the evangelist who works in this region, who gave up the mayoralty of his village to become an evangelist and Bible-seller. I sat down to dinner with this brother in his humble home; it consisted of boiled rice, boiled radishes, and boiled mountain potatoes." He then speaks of a leading farmer, whose house is much more elaborately finished than Dr. Davis's in Kyoto, and who, from the various tenant farmers of his twenty-five acres of land, receives about $500 a year, making him the richest man in his village. "Sabbath morning we went on three miles farther to the centre of the parish, where the church has put a little building, 15x30 feet, in the plainest style, without outside aid. The church now numbers fifty members; they have never had a pastor. . . . One branch of this church is still nine miles farther north among the mountains. There are twenty members, who have of their poverty already fitted up two churches, the first one being burned down by hostile Buddhists. Among these twenty Christians is one old woman who has been a paralytic for many years, and she is now not able to move at all, and yet she is happier in her |