General Administration
Japan is looked upon by the world as one of its modern wonders. The revolution, there wrought within a decade of years, has perhaps no historic parallel. The steps were giant strides: the fall of the dual dynasty, the change of capitals, the death-blow of feudalism, the adoption of a new calendar, and of the weekly Rest-day; the establishment of postal union and savings banks; national mint, lighthouses and coast survey; of railways and telegraphs; the reconstruction of army and navy and educational systems — these were a few of the prominent features of the New Japan, now also crowned with constitutional liberty.
To some, there is in this no hand of God, but only a nation waking from long sleep, shaking his locks, quaffing the new wine of Western enterprise; and, conscious of gianthood, bursting old bonds and taking huge strides forward. But there are circumstances too remarkable to allow any explanation short of divine interposition; some coincidences which are both marks and fruits of a higher plan, in which, as cog fits cog in the wheel of a vast machine, event meets event in a pre-arranged harmony. As in Ezekiel’s vision, even events which face different ways move together in one direction.
Commodore Perry’s initial act — when he laid an open Bible over the American flag upon the capstan of his flagship, and sent the words of the Hundredth Psalm echoing over Yeddo’s Bay — that initial act was a parable in action. The mute guns of his warship spoke of a peaceful commerce displacing warlike invasion. The stars and stripes were the symbol of Western civilization with its liberty, civil and religious; and the open Bible and the sacred psalm forecast gospel triumph. God himself planned all the details of that opening scene, and according to that pattern the work has been built on those shores.
All along the subsequent development of these forty years, we see the play of this divine mechanism — the wheel in the middle of the wheel. We shall need only to recur to the story of Neesirna, as already given in previous pages. Apparently accidental, really providential — his disgust with idols, his glimpse of the Bible, his taste of a new faith, his escape to America, his contact with Alpheus Hardy, his Christian training, his service to the embassy, his return to his own land, the vindication of his right to teach, the establishment of the Doshisha — are not these the play of divine coincidents and coincidences in an articulated plan?
After Neesima found Christ, and, while asking how he could get back to his country without incurring death for having gone away without leave — the Japanese embassy seek his aid as interpreter. Through them he not only gets safe conduct, but open door to his new mission among his countrymen; for, when he lands in Japan, his former patrons of the embassy are holding the reins of empire, and the decree goes forth to his opponents: “Let Neesima alone!”
Watch the play of these wheels still further. Was it a mere chance that opened Kyoto for the Hundred Days’ Exhibition, when Rev. O. H. Gulick made the acquaintance of that friend whose powerful mediation not only furthered Neesima’s plans for Christian education, but furnished the site for the Doshisha? And when the “sacred city” would have denied even Neesima the right to teach the Christian faith, it was Tanaka himself, who owed to Neesima his successful study of the common schools of America, — who was head of the department of education and turned the scale in Neesima’s favour; so that he himself could only attribute his deliverance from the ‘’ deep muds of the past “to the “unseen hand of God.”
Close search reveals in this curious fabric of Japanese history one delicate thread of divine purpose, wrought of countless fibres. Many of these providential events belong to yet unwritten records; but a further example may serve to confirm our faith in this remarkable guidance of God.
Just when this great work of Christian education at Kyoto hung in the balance and final failure seemed to threaten, there came a strange accession of some thirty native Christian students as reinforcements from a most unexpected quarter. In the old province of Higo, in Kuishu, some “Jo-i” men, or ‘^ foreign-expellers” — had banded together to form a school for the purpose of keeping out Western ideas, and especially the hated Western religion. A certain Captain Janes, who had come out to teach military tactics, but was without employment, by another most singular chain of events became the teacher. That man, says Dr. Davis, Neesima’s biographer, was himself a Christian. Yet so deadly was the hatred of the new faith that for six months he had to keep his Christianity out of sight; but meanwhile he could not keep its influence from pervading the school — a flower cannot suppress its fragrance even in the darkness. At last he ventured to present the scientific argument for the existence of a God, and was met by a bold challenge from his pupils, ‘’ Yon lie, sir!” Two years went by before he dared to ask some more advanced students to study the New Testament with him. The patrons of the school consented because students must understand Christianity in order to oppose it.
Behold God’s hand placing in the very hotbed of infidel culture, a plant of godliness! and making the foes of the faith to give it room to take root, in order that they might learn how to recognize it and destroy it wherever found! God’s armour-bearer is training the opposers of Christ in the knowledge of His own weapons; and, meanwhile, they are compelled to see that no weapon formed against Him can prosper!
Two years more go by. To study the New Testament is to look upon the cross with its Crucified One, and before the infinite pathos of that cross, the winter in their hearts shows signs of melting under the beams of the Sun of Righteousness! And less than five years after Bible study began its work, forty of those young men who had banded to fight the new faith, went up the Hanaoka mountain to set their seal to a new covenant with Christ and each other, to give their lives to Christ for Japan! And these were the men that in the crisis reinforced the imperilled enterprise at Kyoto, and in 1879 were graduated from the Doshisha to become the best native teachers and preachers to mould the New Japan!
There are many other plain signs of the divine working in this well-jointed mechanism. Neesima was a conspicuous man from his connection with the embassy and the Doshisha, and even the opposition to his work only gave his name and fame a trumpet voice. The graduates from his school were found to be commanding the best posts in the empire and controlling affairs by sheer force of character, so that, at the tenth anniversary of the Doshisha, it had proven its mission to be so useful that it had vindicated its right to be. Count Inouye himself gave the address, and so the government recognized a Christian school as a national blessing! Before Neesima died he had, in a large Buddhist temple at Kyoto, pleaded for the new university, and over 60,000 yen had been subscribed. And five years ago the work of the Doshisha had already given to Japan nearly one thousand young workers for God.
This story we have considered worthy of a large place as an example of the wonder-working of God in modern missions. Prominent as is the individual factor, its importance is found only in its connection with Him who alone controls history. This man was the rod of God with which He wrought signs.
Neesima’s biographer, already referred to, expresses the sum of all this forty years’ wonder-working:
‘^ Let us realize that God still moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform in the world. The age of miracles of physical healing may be past, but we have before us the fulfilment at the present day of the Saviour’s promise: ‘Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go unto my Father! ’ “Then referring to the wonderful chain of events already traced, he adds: “This is as great a ’ miracle ’ as is recorded in the Old Testament or the New, if we except our Saviour’s incarnation and atoning work. It is inconceivable that all these improbable things should happen and come together at just the right time, simply by chance!”
The locatioji and succession of labo7ire?’s is another proof of providential administration. Who but God knows what sort of men and women will be needed at any critical and pivotal point of time and place. Yet with what divine prescience the story of missions abounds! God has at the precise exigency raised up and placed at the great centres of influence the exact workmen needed. And they could have had no conscious part in this adaptation, for they did not know the field to which they were going, and still less did they know its peculiar wants. There were obvious pre-adaptations which far transcend all mere human forethought. How little Livingstone knew how his preparations for China were pre-eminently fitting him for Africa and his exact work in the Dark Continent! When McAU was amusing himself with architectural drawing, how little did he dream that his pencil was to be brought into such requisition in planning ^^//^i- in Paris! When John E. Clough was training as a civil engineer, and persisted in going to India, who but God foresaw that, in 1877, civil engineer would be specially needed to complete that Buckingham canal, and give perishing Teluguswork and wages? Who gave Carey such native love for linguistic study and such passion for Cook’s ‘^ Voyages,” but He who meant him for England’s first missionary to India, and the great translator of His Word into the many dialects of that vast empire? Dr. George E. Post little thought, when perfecting himself in medicine and surgery, that he was to wield a world-wide influence from Beirut, and make St. John’s Hospital a vestibule to the kingdom of heaven.
Was it no providence of God that at critical periods of missions raised up and placed at the great centres of influence the exact men and women needed? What a man was Lord William Bentinck, to take the governor-generalship in India during that memorable seven years, from 1828-1835. It forms an epoch in administrative reform, and in the slow process whereby the population of a province become reconciled to foreign rule, and even attached to alien rulers. With Lord Bentinck begins that modern Jiistory of British rule in India which introduced a benevolent and fraternal administration, wherein the good of the native population was the supreme end kept in view. Two memorable acts forever adorn his rule: the abolition of suttee and the suppression of the Thugs. So prevalent was the immolation of widows under religious sanction, that, in the year 18 17, seven hundred mounted the pyre in Bengal presidency alone; and to-day, each of the little white pillars, so thickly dotting the most holy pilgrim paths of the Hindus, commemorates a suttee. In the face of determined opposition, both from natives and Europeans, this noble magistrate decreed Dec. 4, 1829, that all who abetted the suttee were to be held guilty of ‘’ culpable homicide.” And when the Brahmans claimed the right to follow their own conscience, which, as they declared, demanded that widows should be burned alive, he calmly answered: ‘’Obey your conscience, then; but I forewarn you that an Englishman’s conscience compels him to hang every one of you who becomes responsible for such murder!”
And then, as to the Thugs or Thagi — those bands of secret assassins bound by oath to commit outrages, and basing their vows on the rites of the bloody Kali — between 1826 and 1835, over fifteen hundred of these Thugs were apprehended in different parts of India. And thus gradually the plagues of India abated.
Macaulay’s graceful pen furnished that noble tribute engraved on the statue at Calcutta:
‘’ He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study it was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge.”
And so suttee and Thug outrages ceased; and then infanticide — till, in 1863, the last link between idolfanes and State patronage was broken.