Kanamori's life-story : $b Told by himself; how the Higher Criticism wrecked a Japanese Christian—and how he came backKanamori, Paul M.
Religion
Kanamori's life-story : $b Told by himself; how the Higher Criticism wrecked a Japanese Christian—and how he came back
Kanamori, Paul M.
Kanamori, Paul M., 1857-1945
Without knowing that it was a revival of religion, we had it, and that,
too, a powerful one. It happened on this wise. When the winter vacation
was over, all the boys returned to school. These boys were quite young.
I was one of the oldest among them, and I was only eighteen. When the
younger boys returned to the school, we older boys who had read the
Bible during vacation were now so full of it that we could not help
talking about it to these younger students. These students now became
very much interested in hearing Bible stories, and they also began
to read the Bible themselves. So we formed Bible classes and taught
them. The whole school was thrown into such a fever of Bible reading
that, although the new term had already commenced, the school could
not resume its ordinary work because nobody cared to read any other
book but the Bible, Bible, Bible. Everybody was reading the Bible, and
everywhere Bible classes were going on. Consequently, for the whole of
the first week of the term the regular studies were suspended, and the
school was given over to Bible reading. We thought at one time that the
whole school of one hundred boys was going to be converted at once.
Conversion after conversion occurred. There was a boy about fifteen
years of age who preached so powerfully among his fellow-students that
as a result many were converted.
The revival did not confine itself within the school walls. We were not
satisfied with the conversion of the schoolboys alone. We went out
of the school, preaching the Gospel in our own homes, to our parents,
relatives, and friends. We even went to our former Confucian teachers,
and told them the new truths we had learned from the Bible. We were all
Confucianists, and brought up in the Confucian school before we entered
Captain Janes’ school. There were quite often very hot discussions
between those old teachers and the newly converted Christian boys. But
always these boys were able to confound those old Confucian scholars.
As they could not withstand nor gainsay these boys’ arguments, they
were enraged at them. One day I called on my old Confucian teacher, who
loved me as dearly as one of his own sons, and I was also very much
attached to him; but as I told him the new truths which I had learned
from the Bible there arose a hot discussion between us. When he saw
that I would not obey his command to renounce the Christian faith, he
was greatly enraged, and said, “You must never come back again to my
house to see me.”
I was almost driven out of his house, and I did not see him again
before his death. But I am happy to tell you that not long after his
death his widow became a Christian, and one of his grandsons is now the
pastor of a Christian church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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