But whatever be the present thought of the people, on the general subject of sin, it may be shown to be due to the prevailing system of ideas, moral and religious, rather than to the inherent racial character. In an interesting article by Mr. G. Takahashi on the "Past, Present, and Future of Christianity in Japan" I find the statement that the preaching of the monks who came to Japan in the sixteenth century was of such a nature as to produce a very deep consciousness of sin among the converts. "The Christians or martyrs repeatedly cried out 'we miserable sinners,' 'Christ died for us,' etc., as their letters abundantly prove. It was because of this that their consciences were aroused by the burning words of Christ, and kept awake by means of contrition and confession." Among modern Christians the sense of sin is much more clear and pronounced than among the unconverted. Individual instances of extreme consciousness of sin are not unknown, especially under the earlier Protestant preaching. If the Christians of the last decade have less sense of sin, it is due to the changed character of recent preaching, in consequence of the changed conception of Christianity widely accepted in Protestant lands. Who will undertake to say that Christians in New England of the nineteenth century have the same oppressive sense of sin that was customary in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries? The sense of sin is due more to the character of the dominant religious ideas of the age than to brain structure or to race nature. I cannot agree with Mr. Takahashi that "To be religious one needs a Semitic tinge of mind." It is not a question of mind, of race nature, but of dominant ideas.