Alone with God and Me

The times are hard, the days are dark, the churches are corrupt, and the pastors are sleeping; but thank God, the pcople are awakening to the Light of the Gospel. God is owning Japan as His own; He is calling her to Himself, directly without the instrumentality of churches and their hired ministers. The sons and daughters of Japan are awakening to their sense of responsibility; and despising the help of missionaries and churches founded by foreigners, are entering the service of the Gospel. The new days of true religious revival are at hand. Japan is becoming a Christian nation, independently, by her own children. Oh, glorious days! We are going to see the days of the national assimilation of Christianity, as was done in the case of Buadhism, seven or eight hundred years ago, in the days of Honen, Shinran and Nichiren.

Ir is said that America is going to spend more money on foreign missions than it spent en the World-War. Very generous for America; but as far mi Japan is concerned, we wish to be spared from the said charity. America has money, but little or no true Gospel; and American gospel preached with American money does veritable, yea infinite, harm to the world. May God give more Gospel and less money to America, Next to German militarism, nothing, I believe, does more harm to the cause of tinue religion than American money. Woe, woe to the world, if it is to be flooded vith American gospel with the push of American money. May God save us all from both!

Cuurcuss as we find them in Hurope and America are Christian doctrines institutionalized. Institutions are Roman, as doctrines are Greek, while Christianity is essentially faith, and faith is Hebrew. Political Romans and their European and American descendants can comprehend faith only in forms of institutions. Not so Orientals. Orientals can comprehend faith as such, apart from forms, and are in this respect akin to Hebrew prophets and Christian apostles. The work remains to Orientals in general, and it may be, to Japanese in particular, of deinstitutionalizing Christianity, and thus of freeing invisible faith from visible institutions. (I hear American and British missionaries saying to all these: Vague, visionary!).

Gop is faithful. Oh blessed words! He changcth not. Whatever He planneth He accomplisheth. He, not we, not our wills or resolutions or endeavours, called us into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ. Therefore we are safe; our salvationis assured. “ Faithful is He that calleth you, who will also do it”, “He who began a good work in you, will perfect it uutil the day of Jesus Christ.” Then, neither men nor devils, nor governments nor churches, nor kings nor bishops, nor powers celestial, nor powers terrestrial, nor the whole creation itself, shall be able to separate us from love of God, and make His plan of salvation concerning us failure and abortion. Because God is faithful, is our hope of salvation sure, in spite of all our unfaithfulness, errors, imperfections, and even of occasional sins and backslidings. I Cor. 1: 9.

The following is from Professer Ragaz of Zurich University, Switzerland, to Pfarrer Iakob Hunziker, now of Tokio: Es ist schwer zu leben. Aile Hollengeister sind obenauf. Das partielle Scheitern des Wilsonschen Planes hat scheinbar dem Unglauben an die Idee vollig Recht gegeben. Nur Jesuiten und Bolschewis!en kommen in dieser Atmossphare zunachst auf ihre Rechnung. Dass ich nun dennoch alle Hoffnungen festhalte, brauche ich Ihnen nicht zu sagen. Vielmehr sage ich: Gerade diese “Apokalypsis" geht der des Guten d.h. den neuen Aeon, voraus. Utchimura dirfte gerade mit seinem “apokalyptischen”’ Glauben der Wahrheit niher kommen als alle “ Evolutionisten”. Konnten Sie ihm einmal einen Gruss von mir iiberbringen, als von Hinem, der sein Buch, ‘‘Wie ich ein Christ wurde”, zu seinen Erlebnissen za&hle und der viel an ihn denke und von ihm erzihle als von einem der wahren “Stellvertreter Christi’’ auf Hirden.

‘‘Paut, an apostle by the will of God,”’-—Nor; by his own choice, not by his resolution, nor by his speculative study of Christian truth, but solely by the will of God, by His sovereign grace, by His election, “foreordained before the foundation of the world.” So is every Christicn ‘‘ born, not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God.” He is not “ Christianized” - by missionaries, but is pressed by the all-conquering, all-compelling will of God into His kingdom and its service. Oh, the sovereign will of God, stronger than my will, than my sin even! Nothing else made me a Christian; nothing else keeps me in the faith; nothing else will save me at last. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.’—I Cor. I, 1.

“Of Him,” or rather “by Him.’—by His almighty will and power, in contradistinction to your feeble efforts and fruitless endeavours,— “are ye in Christ Jesus ’,—have you your new spiritual existence in Him,—‘‘ who was made unto us wisdom from God”,—God-given lifephilosophy and its realization, which is nothing else than our complete salvation, manifested in three successive stages of righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Christianity condensed into a single verse. All from God; Christ, our wisdom and power; and justification, sanctification and glorification as the blessed result of the conjoint actions of grace on God’s part, and faith on man’s. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

CHRISTENDOM is speaking much about Reconstruction now-a-days. But Christiauity has been preaching Conversion for nineteen hundred years. And Conversion is a deeDer term and more fundameutal affair than Reconstruction. Where there is Conversion, there is necessarily Reconstruction. And apostate Christendom, forgetting and drifting away from Christianity, is clamouring for Reconstruction, which is nothing but shallow and _ superficial form of Conver-ion. As in times of old, these so-called Christian nations have forsaken the fountain of living waters, and in the name of political economy and world-politics, are hewing out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water. But we will not imitate them,— these so-called Christian nations, and will persist in preaching Conversion and not Reconstruction, as did the holy founders of Christianity.—Jer. ii, 13.

Emancipation is another of modern slogans. They ery for emancipation from social traditions, from militaristic prejudices, from religious restrictions. Some cry even for emancipation from Jehovah-God! But Old Christianity too has been preaching an emancipation for the last nineteen hundred years, viz. emancipation From sin. It says: “ Every one that committeth sin is the bondervant of sin....If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Truly, sin is the heaviest of all bondages, the source of all other bondages. But modern men seek not this kind of emancipation; therefore they are bondservants, even though by Democracy, Socialism, and Labour- Unions, they imagine they have emancipated themselves from all bondages. God has emancipated all who believe in Him from bondage of sin. Herein is true liberty. maneipation must begin here; else 1 も vanishes like cloud.

The world is not saved by Democracy, not even by President Wilson’s Democracy. Demoeracy at its best isa political principle, and as such it is inert, mechanical ard _ spiritually inefficient. The world is not saved by a principle, but by a person; not by an ageregate of persons, but by an almighty, all-knowing, all-loving person. The resurrected, living Christ is the only hope of the world. He alone, who is able even to subject all things to Himself, can recreate the world into a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. Not Demo. eracy but Christ; not Reconstruction, but Recreation; not the League of Nations, but gathering of all nations at the feet of the reappear. ing Christ for judgement and guidance,—this is the scheme of world’s salvation, and there is no other.

Is the Bible a literature ora book? It isa literature, says the modern criticism; it is a book, says the Christian experience. To the Christian, the Bible is a single book, as certainly as is Hamlet or Divina Comedia. The author is one, the plan is one, the spirit is one, and the truth is one. The Bible is a cosmos, a unity in diversities, a barmony in discrepancies, a perfection in imperfections. He who lived the Bible, and not merely read it, knows that it is so, Apart from orthodoxy, by the sheer force of logics of experiences, he is compelled to believe that it is so. Not a word is to be added unto it, nor a word is to be taken away from it.

Pavt a Jew and a disciple of Jesus the Christ, was a true samurai, the very embodiment of the spirit of Bushido. Said he: “It were good for me rather {o die, than that any man should make my glorying void.” I Cor. 1x, 15. He preferred death to dishonour, to dependency, to begging for whatever cause. Again he said: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” I Tim. v1, 10. Commercialism, in his view, was the cause of all evil, individual, social and national. Then, none was more loyal to his master than Paul was to his, not even Kusunnki Masashige. Independent, money-hating, loyal, Paul was a type of the old samurai, not to be found among modern Christians, both in America and Europe, and alas also in samurai’s

A man is saved by faith, and faith is tested by love. A man is saved by faith which loves, He is saved not by creeds, not by rites and ceremonies, not by church-membership, not by any external or intellectual means, but by faith which works by love. ‘‘ We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren.” We are assured of our salvation when we love. ‘‘ He that loveth not abideth in death.” Faith that loves not is not true, even though it is most orthodox and most Biblical.: Love is the test of faith, as it is of theology, | and of all our thinkings and doings. We learn and believe ultimately ro rove. Only that is true which makes us to love. I John, ur 14.

SatvaTion begins with forgiveness of sins. No forgiveness, no salvation; therefore, no Christianity. All that is true and good and beautiful in Christianity, begins with forgiveness of sins. God forgiving our sins in Christ, and we by faith accepting His forgiveness, and forgiving others as He forgave us,—this is the beginning of our Christian life in all its manifold significances. Reconstruction, the new world, united churches and the heavenly Jerusalem are possible as sure consequences of repentance and forgiveness of sins, When nations sit at the feet of Christ, and implore forgiveness of their sins, then the true reconstruction of the world begins, and not till then, Politics, economics, and ethics cannot take the place of forgiveness of sins, as dynamics for individual and social reformations.

Luruen said a very deep thing, when he said: “He who is a Christian is not a Christian.” The Christian is not a special set of people, but a man par excellence. Jesus was not a Christian, but a Son of Man, THE man. Christianity, as ordinarily understood, is a segment of Humanity, not Humanity itself; and to be a Christian is to be a sectarian, and not a man. Oh then to be not a Christian! Said a prophet: “The Lorp hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lorp require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah vi, 8.) To be a man, a man like the Lord Jesus Christ, that is to be a Christian. An unmanly Christian is a veritable antichrist.

Gogo, a Confucian, was a missionary to the natives of the Alisan district of Formosa. While he lived with them, by his teaching and his influence, made the practice of head-hunting, common to all Formosan natives, to cease from among his chosen tribe. One day, however, the inherited instinct reviving among them, the natives asked their teacher permission to to cut one head, and that the last. Goho remonstrated, but in vain. At last he said: “All right, you shall have it. To-morrow about this time, a Chinaman is coming in scarlet robe, and his head you shall cut.” They were glad, and eagerly waited for the morrow. At the stated hour, the Chinaman appeared, as predicted by the missionary. The natives sprang upon him, cut his head, and carried it in triumph to their village. And lo! the head was no other than their beloved missionary’s! The deed cut into the quick of their hearts. They now saw the evil of head-hunting. They really had their last head. Since then, alone among the Formosan natives, they of the Alisan district know no head-hunting. Goho, a Oonfucian missionary, by laying down his life, abolished head-hunting from among his native converts. So, anl so only are all sins abolished from among mankind. ‘ Without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.’ Heb. rx, 22.