and lives of almost the whole population, with its difficult language and its contempt for innovation and change, China open to the Gospel of Christ, and ready to receive the good tidings of great joy-oh! who shall say whether the Call of Opportunity or the Call of Difficulty is greatest here? The need is very great. The call is very urgent. Men are needed. It is the earnest desire and aim of both Bishops and of both our Church Societies, and of all their agents, to promote as soon as possible the healthy independence of the Chinese Church, by teaching the duty of self-support, and by training and ordaining Native clergy. But meanwhile we must go over and help them. Men are wanted-men of God, men of faith, men of prayer, men of self-denial, men of varied gifts and attainments, men whose hearts the love of Christ has touched, and whom the Holy Spirit of God is sanctifying and enabling. Money is wanted, not the leavings of our luxury and pomp, of our covetousness and greed of gain, but " the firstfruits of all our increase," the plentiful sowing that shall issue in plentiful reaping; yea, even the depth of our poverty abounding to the riches of our liberality. The difficulties are great. Would God we had not made them greater. There is no greater hindrance to Christian Missions in China than the trade in that noxious drug which Christian England has forced upon an unwilling heathen government and people. You tell me --and who can deny the force of the argument from the lips of a native of China?-you tell me that Christian England has sent you to me with the exceeding boon of the Gospel of Christ, but how can this be when it is she who has sent me the terrible bane of opium? Out of the same mouth can there proceed both blessing and cursing? Doth a fountain send forth at the same place both sweet water and bitter? The Gospel of blessing and the curse of opium, can the same hands bring me them both? Is it too much to hope, to pray, to strive for, that the national conscience may in this matter be enlightened and aroused? Would it not be a triumph of Christian statesmanship to devise means-even costly means, if so it must be to wipe away this reproach from our country, and to abolish a traffic which has been no real boon to India, and a terrible wrong to China? The Call of Opportunity and the Call of Difficulty-yes, they are sounding around us and within, but, brethren, the call to what? To toil and labour, to self-denial and privation, to the severing of tender ties, and the surrender of hallowed associations, to solitude it may be and want of sympathy, to danger perhaps and even death itself? Yes! but not in these things only does the true burden of the call lie. They are not these things that in holiest moments make the spirit faint, and the heart die down, and the hand almost withdraw itself from the accepted task. It is the thought of the everlasting issues that wait upon our work, of the strict and solemn account that must one day be given before the judgment-seat of Christ, of the blood that will be required at the hand of the watchman if he slumber at his post, and give not timely warning. It is this that makes us ask, "Who is sufficient for these things"?this, combined with the sense of our own utter weakness, that almost drives us to exclaim, "O my Lord, send, I pray Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send." Yet here in the call itself is at once our comfort and our strength. It is the Master's call, and it is His call to each one of us individually in the vocation and ministry which He has given us. The door is not opened by me. It is opened to me. My hand has not made, much less forced, the opening. To me, and not to another, the call to occupy it is addressed. He has made it for me, and me for it. Let me not fear to enter, for He will assuredly be with me. The command, Stretch forth thy hand and take this work for Me, is itself the pledge and promise of all needful grace and strength and wisdom. The word of command from His lips is to faithful hearts the word of healing virtue and enabling power. Weakness in ourselves is no barrier to great work for Him, nay, to be faithful in weakness by His grace is to earn the reward of greater opportunity. "These things saith He that openeth, and no one shutteth, Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no one can shut it, for thou hast but little strength, and yet hast kept My word, and has not denied My name." It is He we know Him by the pierced side and the thorn-clad brow, by the many crowns He wears, and by the sceptre of the universe which He sways-it is He who has opened to us the "great door and effectual." It is He who is calling us to enter, by the Call of Opportunity and the Call of Difficulty. It is He who will be with us alway even unto the end. It is He who gives, and who is, our "exceeding great reward." And, brethren, is not that enough? JAPAN. Japan: its History, Traditions, and Religions; with the Narrative of a Visit. By Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. By Isabella L. Bird. London, Murray, 1880. UNDRY articles on Japan have appeared, from time to time, in our own pages. As might naturally be expected, these have mainly consisted of valuable communications from our missionaries, recounting the obstacles to and the progress of their work. Their hopes and fears, their difficulties and their facilities, have been placed before all friends of Missions to excite their sympathy and to stimulate their prayers. A careful study even of these statements would help largely to furnish some idea of the strange kingdom so long hidden from outside observation, but which, not the least marvel of our own days, is now revealed to our contemplation. But, in addition to more direct missionary information, there have been, in these statements, accounts given of the manners, customs, and religious beliefs of the Japanese, which have placed missionary readers, beyond all others, in a position to understand what Japan was, and what it has so recently now become. Still, as some most interesting works have recently been published by independent persons who have had favourable opportunities for forming judgments, it may not be amiss to add their observations to those we have already accumulated, especially in so far as they directly, or indirectly, bear upon the all-important work which Christians have undertaken in that remote, and hitherto unknown, nook of our lost world. The writers of the books whose titles are prefixed to this article are very various. One is an eminent naval architect, who has attained high distinction, and has a seat in Parliament. Another is an adventurous lady, who, by her previous travels, had fairly qualified herself by experience for so arduous an undertaking as travelling through the interior and remote districts of Japan. The last was our Minister at what he termed the "Capital of the Tycoon," at a most critical period in the history of Japan. Although only a magazine article, and not an elaborate work, it deserves notice. As a matter of criticism, while we acknowledge the abstract value of the materials which Sir Edward Reed has brought together, particularly in his first volume, we cannot place a very high estimate on his production. In a book obviously intended for general readers he has been too unmindful that, like Milton, "he has set out on his way by night, and has travelled through a region of smooth and idle dreams; "" nor has he been as sensible of "how wearisome it is to read of so many bare and reasonless actions, so many names of kings, one after another, acting little more than mute persons in a scene," and sprinkling his work unduly with "rugged names of places unknown.' We suspect that most persons have come to the end of his first volume by a very rapid process. Nor is the wearisomeness of the first part redeemed by the importance of the second. Sir E. Reed's stay in Japan was short, and he saw what he could in the time under very favourable circumstances, perhaps too favourable to enable him to form a judicious estimate of a people so entirely strange to him. On the whole, therefore, we distinctly prefer Miss Bird's most useful and interesting production. She was next the people, and saw a good deal of them as they were. Her remarks are sensible and discriminating. Criticism, however, is not our province, and we therefore now proceed to digest and place before our readers so much of the contents of the volumes under review as may help them to take an intelligent interest in the labours of our missionaries in a land so strange as Japan. There is one chief respect in which Japan presents a strange problem to all interested in the country; after the self-imposed seclusion of centuries, no sooner has it emerged from its isolation, and taken its place among the comity of nations, than it has, with an avidity unparalleled, embraced every kind of European and American novelty that could be presented to it. We constantly hear of the impassiveness and immobility of Eastern nations. The "unchanging East" is a proverbial expression with a vast amount of truth in it. We have now for centuries had dealings with India, and for a long time been ts masters, but except in what may be termed isolated cases the people cling to their ancient customs, their mode of life, their dress, and we are still, in the midst of them, outside strangers. It is an important fact that Christianity, confined as its progress has been, has more than anything else brought us into intimate relations with the people of India, and established a bond of union between us. Our government, our laws, our military system, our railroads leave the people where they were. They submit to them, or use them, but the Hindu still remains the Hindu, the Brahman the Brahman; very few are Anglicized by them. Still smaller has been our success in the vast empire of China. Even the Turks and the Arabs, comparatively at our doors, are little affected by Western ideas and Western civilization. All these nations differ widely in origin, in religious creed, in climate and customs, in modes of government; but in one point all agree, they are almost impervious to anything like an amalgamation with Europe. How rapid the changes have been in Japan may be gathered from the following extract from Miss Bird: On turning to Chambers's admirable Encyclopædia, I find that the edition of 1863 states that there are two Emperors, Spiritual and Secular, that Japan is ruled by an aristocracy of hereditary daimiyo, that the weapons used by the army are matchlocks and even bows and arrows, that the navy is composed of war junks, that the iron cash is the only circulating medium, that the most remarkable of existing customs is hara kiri, that only men of rank can enter a city on horseback, and that the area of the empire is estimated at 265,000 square miles. Of all these statements, substantially correct sixteen years ago, there is truth now only in the last.* How has it come to pass that the Japanese are so solitary an exception to all other dwellers in the East? In answering this inquiry, some clue might be furnished if it could be satisfactorily proved that the Japanese are a race in their origin wholly distinct from all other Asiatics, having little or nothing in common with them. At present the true origin of the Japanese is a question involved in much obscurity, and hotly debated amongst learned men. Japanese legends are too wild and too extravagant to throw much, if any, light upon it. The amount of chaff is so disproportionate to the few grains of wheat that the most diligent searchers in this direction give the task up in despair. Sir Edward Reed supplies us with the different theories now current. Dr. Kæmpfer, in his great work on Japan (1727), rejects the legends which would make the Japanese to be of Chinese origin, "grounding his disbelief upon the dissimilarity of the early languages, religions, and modes of life of the two countries." His own theory is that they descended from the inhabitants of Babylon, and that their language is one of those which "an all-wise Providence thought fit to infuse into the minds of the vain builders of the Babylonian town." According to him the * Hakodate, which in 1859 had only a population of 6000 people, is now a flourishing city of 37,000; it is a great centre of missionary operation, the Greeks, Romanists, Church Missionary Society, and American Methodist Episcopal Church having agents there (Bird's Japan). Japanese passed through Persia, then along the shores of the Caspian, and by the banks of the Oxus to its source. Thence they crossed China, descended the Amoor, and found their way southward to Korea, and across to Japan. Another, and a favourite theory is, that the Japanese have descended from the Ainos. This is grounded on resemblances in language between the Ainos and the Japanese; upon similarity of peculiar ideas, customs, and superstitions. On this theory the Ainos would be identical with an aboriginal race of whom traces are to be found "in the stone age of Japan." The nobility are supposed to be of an origin distinct from the people, but that origin is not explained. Another learned man, from their physical conformation, opines that "the Mantchus and the Koreans are the nearest congeners of the Japanese." He considers it certain that they are a Tungusic race, and that the Korea is the route by which they made their passage from their ancient Mantchurian seats. Sir Edward Reed adduces a new theory, propounded by Mr. Hyde Clarke, who traces the origin of the Japanese to an ancient Turano-African empire. He says, My learned friend Mr. Hyde Clarke, whose ethnological and philological researches are well known, has long had his attention drawn to the Japanese language, and after many labours has discovered relations between that and the languages of Ashantee and Western Africa. His expectations of finding a solution of the main problem were discouraged by the vast ethnological differences between the peoples; but having, on ethnological grounds, "to distinguish a white race earlier on the field of history than the Aryans," he has, in accordance with his readings of history, looked for this race in High Africa-"regions as healthy as those of High Asia, from which the Aryan migrations are held to have proceeded." Pursuing this line of inquiry, he has arrived at the opinion that it is in an ancient Turano-African empire that the origin of the Japanese should be sought. Whatever may ultimately prove to be the value of Mr. Hyde Clarke's speculations, we do not hesitate to record on our pages, with due acknowledgment, a portion of the memorandum in which he embodies his views: These labours have been directed to the explanation of the position of the races of early culture, the Abkad-Babylonians, the Egyptians, Lydians, Etruscans, the founders of the Chinese and Japanese empires, and also those of the North American mounds and monuments of the civilization of Mexico and Peru. In carrying out this undertaking it was necessary for me on ethnological grounds to distinguish a white race earlier in the field of history than the Aryans. Lately it has seemed most consistent with the course of historical events, and in conformity with all the incidents, to look for the seat of this Turanian white race in High Africa, in regions as healthy as those of High Asia, from which the Aryan migrations are held to have proceeded. The first conquests of these Turano-Africans were evidently made in Central Africa, because the languages of all the leading states and nations, Pulo, Bornu, Mandenga, &c., afford to this day the identical words of the early dead languages, as well as of those living languages that are considered to be allied with them. Thus the Abkad words in the vocabularies of M. Lenormant will be found, and also the Ugro-Altaic illustrations. It was also from the West African regions that migrations were made to North, Central, and South America, in continuation of earlier migrations. So to this standard are brought the languages and mythology of America. If a linguistic |