The samurai of to-day is rapidly imbibing new ideas, and is learning to see the world from a Western point of view; but his thoughts and actions are still moulded on the ideas of old Japan, and it will be a long time before the loyal, faithful, but proud spirit of the samurai will die out. The pride of clan is now changed to pride of race; loyalty to feudal chief has become loyalty to the Emperor as sovereign; and the old traits of character exist under the European costumes of to-day, as under the flowing robes of the two-sworded retainer. It is this same spirit of loyalty that has made it hard for Christianity to get a foothold in Japan. The Emperor was the representative of the gods of Japan. To embrace a new religion seemed a desertion of him, and the following of the strange gods of the foreigner. The work of the Catholic missionaries which ended so disastrously in 1637 has left the impression that a Christian is bound to offer allegiance to the Pope in much the same way as the Emperor now receives it from his people; and the bitterness of such a thought has made many refuse to hear what Christianity really is. Such words as "King" and "Lord" they have understood as referring to temporal things, and it has taken years to undo this prejudice; a feeling in no way surprising when we consider how the Jesuit missionaries once interfered with political movements in Japan. So bitter was this feeling, when Japan was first opened, that a native Christian was at once branded as a traitor to his country, and very severe was the persecution against all Christians. Missionaries at one time dared not acknowledge themselves as such, and lived in danger of their lives; and the Japanese Christian who remained faithful did so knowing that he was despised and hated. I know of one mother who, finding command and entreaty alike unavailing to move her son, a convert to the new religion, threatened to commit suicide, feeling that the disgrace which had fallen on the family could only be wiped out with her death. Happily, all this is of the past, and to-day the samurai has found that he can reconcile the new religion with his loyalty to Japan, and that in receiving the one he is not led to betray the other.