Sunrise In The Sunrise Kingdom

Introductory Note IK the folio wing pages Dr. De Forest has accomplished a work as delicate as it is im portant, f To deal with a great subject in a simple way is a mark of power, especially when that subject is removed from the sphere of American experience as far as the East is from the West. It may be said that much interest in Japan is felt throughout Chris tian circles in America. But that interest lacks depth and definition. Beyond the notion that a spirit of progress prevails in modern Japan and that that progress consists in the assimilation of Western customs and ideas, there is much vagueness and no little misap prehension. And these occur from no lack of good and illuminating books, dealing with Japan from various points of view. There are such books and they are read with appre ciation. Yet one whose privilege has been to come near to the soul of Japan, through inter course with its leaders, realizes how difficult it is to make those aspirations fully understood by Western minds. Some have written sympathetically of Introductory Note Japan, yet without knowledge and some writing with much knowledge, have lacked sympathy. In either case, the subject has been presented with misleading limitations The readers of this book will find in it first hand knowledge of facts, tempered with sympathetic appreciation of their meanings and relations. The training of the author lias been felicitous. For many years he has lived in a part of the Empire relatively far from direct Western influences and so, emerging more slowly and with more normal self-expres sion from the old feudalism into the new regime of a constitutional monarchy. Sendai, Dr. De Forests home, is far removed from thecosmopolitanism of Yokohama and Tokyo. Tet it is a thought centre of immense importance to the civil and military life of the nation. It is a place where the traditions of ancient glory mix with the new thought of the awakened Empire, and where the bearing of the past on the present can be studied apart from the confusing intervention of European detail. At Sendai, the seat of influence for Northern Japan, has the author resided throughout a large part of the new era of Meiji or Enlightenment He has lived, it is true, during this period, the life of a mission ary. He has been loyal and outspoken in his allegiance to the Divine Saviour fruitful in, Introductory Note evangelistic labours. Yet, with this diligence as an ambassador for Christ, he has combined a respect for the ancestral religious experience of the Japanese people, and an appreciation of their liner feelings that has won the confi dence and affection of those in high stations. During the later momentous years of the Meiji Era Era of Enlightenment, Dr. De Forest has been persons grata in the inner circles of Japanese culture, and has enjoyed unusual opportunities to know the truth concerning the motives that govern and the ideas that attract the best representatives of Japanese society. He has been sought as a counsellor and cherished as a friend by officers of the government, directors of education, and makers of public opinion. He has seen very clearly that the larger mission of Christian teachers in Japan is to disseminate that vital essence of revelation which, because of its universal validity, takes up into itself what ever in any faith is of the truth, gathering together all things in one, even in Christ, the veryGod. Dr. De Forest has realized the noble ele ments in Japanese thought and has not neglected to point them out with appreciation. It is strange that Christians ever should be grudge the acknowledgment of good in non-Christian faiths, when the presence of that Introductory Note good attests the universal working of the Holy Spirit...