a new religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if presented in intelligible words,—­that is to say, if expressed in the vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—­will find easy lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality.  Christianity in its American or English form—­with more of Anglo-Saxon freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—­is a poor scion to graft on Bushido stock.  Should the propagator of the new faith uproot the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel on the ravaged soil?  Such a heroic process may be possible—­in Hawaii, where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal race:  such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—­nay, it is a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his kingdom on earth.  It behooves us to take more to heart the following words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—­“Men have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may have been mingled with the other.  They have compared the best part of themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity with the corruption of Greece or the East.  They have not aimed at impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of religion."[34]

[Footnote 34:  Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, II.]

But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a power which we must take into account in reckoning

THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,

whose days seem to be already numbered.  Ominous signs are in the air, that betoken its future.  Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at work to threaten it.

Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did with that of the former.  The particular and local causes for the decay of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages are as surely working for the decline of Bushido.