y
measured by righteousness. International righteousness, duty and
rights, regardless of military power, are coming to the forefront of
the thinking of advanced nations.

Looked at closely, and studied in its implications, what is this but a
developing form of communal religion? No nation is conceived as
existing apart; each exists as but one fraction of the world-wide
community; in its relations it has both rights and duties. Does this
not mean that appeal has been made from the communal sanctions of
might to the supra-communal sanctions of right? We do not simply ask
what do other nations think of this or that national act, but what is
right, in view of the whole order of the nature which has brought man
into being and set him in families and nations. In other words,
national rights and duties are felt to flow from the supra-mundane
source, God the Creator of heaven and earth and all that in them is.
The sanctions for national rights and duties are religious sanctions
and rest on a religious world-view.

Now the point, of interest for us is the fact that Japan has entered
into this universal community and is feeling the sanctions of this
universal communal religion. The international rights and duties of
Japan are a theme of frequent discourse and conversation. Japan
stoutly maintained that the war with China was a "gi-sen," a righteous
war, waged primarily for the sake of Korea. Many a Japanese waxes
indignant over the cruelty of the Turk, the savage barbarity of the
Spaniard, and the impotence and supineness of England and Europe. I
have already spoken of the young man who became so indignant at
England's compelling China to take Indian opium, that he proposed to
go to England to preach an anti-opium crusade. Japan is beginning to
enter into the larger communal life of the world, although, of course,
she has as yet little perception of its varied implications.

Many a student of New Japan perceives that she is abandoning her old
religious conceptions, and that many moral and social evils are
entering the land, who yet does not see that the wide acceptance of
some new religion by the people is important for the maintenance of
the nation. Some earnest Japanese thinkers are beginning to realize
that religion is, indeed, needful to steady the national life, but
they fail to see that Christianity alone fulfills the condition. Many
are saying that a religion scientifically constructed must be
manufactured especially f