Some liberal churches invited me to come to their side and help to spread the liberal Christianity in Japan. But I declined all invitations. I thought if social reform and moral uplift are the only work of the Christian ministry, and not the salvation of souls by the blood of Christ, there is no need of my staying in it any longer. Such social service could be rendered out of it just as well, if not better. So I left the ministry, and joined a politico-social reform campaign in my country. Now I became a political and social reformer, and in this capacity spent more than twenty years. Thus I squandered away the best portion of my life in unprofitable worldly pursuit; thus my life was shipwrecked in the midst of my life-work, and thus I turned away from Jesus Christ, whom I had found seventeen years before in such a wonderful manner, and to whom I had pledged my allegiance at the top of the Mount of Flowers. The purpose of the Devil, which could not be accomplished by bitter persecution, had been now accomplished by the help of the New Theology and Higher Criticism. This is the Devil’s way of working. When he cannot gain his object by sword or fire, he resorts to an entirely different method. Now let me tell how the study of Higher Criticism and New Theology destroyed my evangelical faith, and what a baneful influence they exerted upon my spiritual life, and how they finally dragged me down to the depths of doubt and unbelief. But before going farther, I must explain what I call Higher Criticism and New Theology. When I addressed a body of theological students in a certain seminary where the New Theology and Higher Criticism are being taught now, I told them plainly what havoc this New Theology and Higher Criticism have made in my Christian life, and how they are sapping the very life of the Christian churches at present, and I warned them sincerely against this misleading, dangerous teaching. After the address, one of the professors who heard me came and asked, “What do you mean by ‘Higher Criticism’? Do you mean by it the destructive Higher Criticism only, or do you include even the constructive Higher Criticism?” I answered him: “I don’t know. It is very difficult to draw a line between ‘destructive’ and ‘constructive’ in the so-called modern Higher Criticism. But all criticism which destroys faith in the perfect, divine authority of the Bible I call Higher Criticism, and all theological teaching which destroys belief in the perfect deity of Jesus Christ I call New Theology.”