The Three Hour Sermon on God, Sin and Salvation

MY friends, this is the Bible. This is the only book of the Christian religion. There is none beside this one book that can be called the book of Christianity.

There are innumerable books written concerning Christianity but if you ask what is the book of Christianity, I answer that this Bible is the only book and there is none beside. This Bible consists of two parts, the Old and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written before Christ, and the New Testament after Christ. The whole Bible contains sixtysix different books, of which thirty-nine are in the Old Testament and twenty-seven are in the New Testament.

For those who read the Bible the first time I think it is easier and better to begin with the New Testament, especially with the four gospel stories of Christ. This Bible is not a difficult book to read like the books of Confucius and Mencius. It is written in a plain and easy style. Moreover it has Kana [the Japanese Syllabary] beside the Chinese char- aeters, so that any one who knows Kana can read every page of the entire book. And the Bible is not a very costly book. You can get the whole Bible for less than half a dollar, and a copy of the New Testament for five cents. Therefore any one who has fifty cents can buy the entire book of the Christian religion, and if he knows forty-eight Kana he can read the whole Bible through. I think there is no other religion in the world which is so easy to study as Christianity. So I hope you will all get that Bible and read it carefully, then you can understand for yourselves what Christianity is.

However, to read the Bible through is not an easy task. My Bible has twelve hundred and twenty pages. To read through a book of over a thousand pages is rather hard work. Moreover, in one sermon I couldn't explain the Bible from beginning to end. But it is not necessary to do that in order to understand the Christian religion.

There is another and much shorter way. I have read this Bible through, studying it carefully, and I have found that there are three great points around which all its teachings cluster.

These are: first, God; secondly, Sin; and, thirdly, Salvation. These three are its fundamental truths. All other teachings hang on these three. And now therefore as soon as you fully understand these three points you can easily understand all the other teachings. So I think it is absolutely necessary for those who wish to understand the Christian religion to get a clear conception of these fundamental truths. Now I will explain each of these in order.

The first is God. So I must tell you first of all about God. But when I say I must speak about God, there are many people among you who say at once: " Oh, we know gods. No Japanese can be ignorant of gods, seeing our country is in the land of the gods. We have eight million gods in our country. We have god-shelves in our homes. We have tutelary gods in our towns and villages. What need is there of hearing any more about gods, when every one knows them and worships them? If it is a talk about gods that we are listening to we need not come to a Christian service to hear it. We have imported many good things from the western countries, such as railroads, steamships, the telegraph, and so on, because we did not have them before in our country. But what use is there of importing more gods from the western world when we have so many gods here already, perhaps more than we need?"

That is the objection raised by many of our people to the teaching of God.

It is true that all Japanese believe in gods from childhood. I am a Japanese. I am not a foreigner. In my father's house we had a godshelf. In my own town we had the shrine of the tutelary god. I know very well that our land is a land of eight million gods. From my childhood I was a most devoted worshipper of the gods. My own guardian god was the god of writing [Ten Zin]. Our family crest is the plum blossom, which, as you know, is the crest of the god Ten Zin. We used to say that our family is related in some way to that god of writing. In devotion to the gods of our ancestors I was not a whit behind any other Japanese.

But you see the gods that we Japanese used to worship are entirely different from the God whom Christians worship, and I will try to show you the difference between the Japanese gods and the Christian's God.

I will begin with the God of Christianity. Christianity teaches that there is only one true God in the universe. One and not many.

If you ask who is this one true God, Christianity will answer thus: The one true God whom we Christians worship is the God who made heaven and earth, and all things therein. God is the Creator of the Universe.

When I say heaven in this connection I mean the heavenly bodies the sun, moon and stars. All these heavenly bodies were created by God. Earth here means of course the globe whereon we live; and by " all things," I mean all animals and birds, grasses and trees, and everything else that we find upon the face of the earth, having Man at the head of creation.

Thus Christianity teaches that all things in heaven and on earth were created by God in the beginning, and there is nothing in the whole universe that was not created by Him.

You know this building did not come of itself. It was built, but by whom? Of course by carpenters. Thus in the same way this universe did not come of itself. It was created by God in the beginning. And the Creator of this universe must be One. There cannot be two creators in this one universe. This is the Christian conception of God.

If you compare these two conceptions you can easily understand the difference between the gods whom we worship in Japan and the God whom Christians worship, according to the teachings of the Bible.

But, remember this, that when I tell you stories of the gods of Japan I am giving you my own personal experiences. Because I myself believed in these gods from my childhood. So you see I am not simply quoting from somebody else. On the contrary, mine are all firsthand personal experiences.

In Japan people say there are many gods, even eight million of them. This is a fundamental difference belief in many gods and belief in one God. Moreover, Japanese gods have names. There is no nameless god in this country, just as there is no nameless man in this town.

If you go to any town and simply inquire for a man nobody can answer you. There is no such thing as a man without a name in the town. You must ask for such and such a man by name. Just so, if you simply say god in this country nobody can understand what god you are speaking of. You must give the name of the particular god you are asking for.

Hachiman Ten Zin Gongen Konj inand so on.

We have a mountain god, a wind god, a water god, a fire god, an earth god, and so on. We were taught in this country that the different parts of the world are governed by different sets of gods, just as the different provinces of the country are governed by different governors. Not only that, but towns and villages have their own tutelary gods to guard and protect them.

The tutelary god of my own town was the fire god. Once a year we used to have a great festival in his honour. On that day the people made a great pile of firewood in front of the big shrine and burned it all through the night. Toward dawn, when all tke wood was burned, leaving a big bed of red coals, the priests who had been dancing all night in the temple, with drawn swords in one hand and tinkling bells in the other, came down from the temple and ran barefooted over the coals but were not burned. This was regarded as a miracle. Great crowds from far and near came to see this miraculous deed. After the priests had several times run over the fire, the people themselves began to run through the fire, trampling upon it, believing that thus they would gain some benefit for themselves. The ashes were later carried away, for the people believed those ashes had great healing power for many kinds of diseases.

When I was a child we believed that thunder was a terrible god. Whenever we heard the thunder rolling we thought the thunder god was angry and kicking around in heaven, thus making a tremendous noise. And we were told that the lightning was the fire in his eyes when he gazed at a wicked man. At such times we used to crawl under the mosquito nets and try to hide ourselves, for we were told that even the thunder god could not reach us through the net. And if he should fall down on the net it is so soft and light he would be tangled in it and could do no harm to the person inside.

Oftentimes a man walking in the field was struck down by the lightning and killed. Then the people said, " That man must have been a very bad man, because the thunder god has fallen from heaven upon him and punished him for his wickedness." But, we boys at such times said, "Why, if the thunder god has come down from heaven to punish that one man, how can he get back to heaven again, seeing there is no ladder on earth which reaches to heaven?" But we were told: "There is no need of such a ladder for the thunder god because he can go back to heaven by climbing any tall tree. Go and see that pine tree yonder then you can understand how the thunder god has gone back to heaven." On going we found the tree had been split from top to bottom, and this was said to be done by the thunder god climbing that tree in order to get back to heaven.

Yes, the thunder god was regarded as one of the most dreadful gods of the country. We used to see pictures of the thunder god. He looked something like a black devil beating drums with all his might. And we were very much afraid of him.

Now we are using that fire in the thunder god's eyes for lighting our houses. You know the electric light is the same thing as the lightning. In olden times we had no electric light and no gas, not even lamps. Some children might think that we have always had lamps. But no, there was no lamp in our country in the olden time. Lamps were imported from the West. You know the word lamp is not a Japanese word, it is an English word.

What do you think we had in those old days for lighting our houses? We had a light called Andon. We used to put rape seed oil into a plate with two or three wicks floating in it, light their ends and thus get a dim light in our houses. This is an Andon. It was a very poor light indeed. We even had to read by such a poor light. It was all right while we were reading Chinese books only because they were written in large characters. But when we began to read English books by such a poor light it at once spoilt our eyes and the result is, as you see, we are obliged to wear glasses.

If you look back fifty years you find our country was just as dark as a house lighted by these Andons.

There was no school in our country which could be called a school in the modern sense. The only school for the common people was a place to learn to write [Tenarai]. There were also schools for learning to read Chinese books, but these were for the higher classes alone. No commoner was allowed to attend.

Ignorance and darkness reigned all over the country. Therefore the people were exceedingly superstitious and childish, you know superstition and ignorance go hand in hand. Every morning we worshipped the rising sun with clapping of hands and a prayer, calling on the sun as O Hi Sama Honoured Fire, or O Tento Sama. When the moon flooded the earth with her silvery light, we worshipped her also as the most beautiful goddess of heaven. Children loved the moon and worshipped her. Some stars were also worshipped as gods. There is a large star on each side of the Milky Way to which we used to pray. One was represented by a woman sitting at a loom, and the other by a man taking care of a cow. The woman star was called Tanabata San the weaver, and the man star was called Ushikai San -cowherd. They were man and wife. The Milky Way which separates them was called Amano Kawa (Heavenly Stream). Now these two star gods meet only once a year, on a certain summer day, and if on that day unfortunately it rains and the heavenly stream is swollen so they can not meet, they must wait until the next summer. As it is a great pity for these star gods not to meet even once- a year, it is the duty of men living on earth to help them out by celebrating their festival and so preventing the flooding of the heavenly stream. So we used to have a great festival on that day. Then we were taught to worship all these heavenly bodies as gods.

You who go to school now all study astronomy, and those who have studied astronomy know what these heavenly bodies are. You need not be told that they are not gods. Everybody knows that nowadays. But when I was a child we knew nothing of astronomy; we were not taught that science in our old Chinese schools; we were taught only the Chinese classics and histories, that is all. No astronomy, no physics, no chemistry, no, not a bit of modern science. So we were perfectly ignorant about the phenomena of the natural world. If you look at the full moon you see shady spots on its surface. When we children asked our old folks, "What are those shady spots on the face of the beautiful moon? ", they said, " Oh, that is a rabbit living in the moon." In old books you find a picture of the moon in which a rabbit is represented pounding a mortar with pestles.

All sorts of such funny things we were taught about the heavenly bodies. We were taught to worship not only these heavenly bodies but also still baser objects.