undertaken. It should be added that the existence of several Chinese versions, which all educated Japanese could read, render ed the necessity for a version in the vernacular less urgent than would have been the case in other lands. A complete version of the New Testament was published in 1880, of the Old Testament in 1887.[1] Meanwhile the opposition of the government to Christianity faded away, and the number of converts increased,—slowly at first, for in 1872 no more than ten persons had been baptised, but afterwards by leaps and bounds. Besides actual evangelising work, much general school work has been engaged in. The venerable Dr. Hepburn and others have also combined the art of healing bodies with that of curing souls. The educational efforts of the missionaries have met with amazing success, even allowing for an interval of disappointment during the last decade of the nineteenth century, consequent on the spread of chauvinistic feeling and the difficulty of conforming to school standards insisted on by a non-Christian Government. Obstructions of this nature have now been removed, the higher departments of certain Christian colleges (including at least one theological school) having even received formal official recognition, and been accorded equal rank in the national educational system with those government colleges that represent the grade immediately below the Imperial Universities. Thus their scholars share in the much-prized privilege of postponement of the call to military service until the completion of eight years of school life.
The leading Protestant denominations having missions in Japan may be classified under four heads, which we notice in the order of their local importance:—
The Presbyterians, representing seven religious societies, number 55 male and 53 female missionaries,[2] whose labours are aided
- ↑ Unfortunately the Japanese language, intricate and impersonal, is singularly ill-fitted to reproduce the rugged sublimity of Hebrew thought. Chinese lends itself somewhat better to the task.
- ↑ If the wives of married missionaries be included in the enumeration, the number of female missionaries in this and the other Protestant missions will be considerably increased.
