us
though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in
divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet
Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the
character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged
us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern
Japan--of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the
reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:--and you
will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought
and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and
observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan
differed from other oriental despotisms lay in "the ruling influence
among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious
codes of honor that man has ever devised," he touched the main spring
which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is
destined to be.

[Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, pp.
189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. I, p.
32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.]

[Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.]

The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a
work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one
were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When
we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the
latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study
Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the
development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much
less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of
oriental institutions and peoples has written:--"We are told every day
how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those
islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan,
but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of
organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful.
She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before
imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence," continues
Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea
of China. Where is the European apostle," asks our author, "or
philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?"[32] Mr.
Townsend