Let me add the testimony of Mr. Gulick himself, who spent years in the country: "The universality of the tokens of family religion, and the constant and loving care bestowed upon them, are striking testimony to the universality of religion in Japan. The pathos of life is often revealed by the family devotion of the mother to these silent representatives of divine beings, and departed ancestors or children. I have no hesitation in saying that, so far as external appearances go, the average home in Japan is far more religious than the average home in enlightened England or America, especially when compared with such as have no family worship. There may be a genuine religious life in these Western homes, but it does not appear to the casual visitor. Yet no casual visitor can enter a Japanese home, without seeing at once the evidences of some sort of religious life."[43] It is to be remarked that in the history and evolution of religion, where there has been obvious evolution, periods of long peace and repose, marked by formalism, skepticism, and indifference to religious obligation, are generally followed by great revivals and reforms. Some new light breaks in; some great prophet appears; new ideas and hopes take hold on the popular mind, and thereupon a new era opens in civilization. The renaissance in Japan of the last fifty years may be the prelude to an epoch-making revival of the Orient. =26. Concluding Observations and Suggestions.= Our study of Shinto has led us over a somewhat unfamiliar field of thought. The mythology and the records of the _Ko-ji-ki_ and the _Nihongi_ are far apart from all our Western legends and ideals of the early world, and in great part seem like monstrosities of fantastic speculation. It is affirmed by some that the Japanese people have been halting for two millenniums in a state of childhood, receiving nothing from Confucianism or from Buddhism to quicken or change the national life; but with the introduction of Western thought and enterprise they have suddenly leaped into comparative maturity, and their new departure from a dreamy past is likely to astonish the whole world. It is very obvious that the introduction of modern science into her thousands of elementary schools must sooner or later undermine all faith in the traditional cosmogony, and, along with that, a whole world of notions bound up with the Shinto cult must needs be overthrown. Eminent Japanese scholars say that Western learning has sounded the knell and signed the death warrant of the ancient religion of their island-world.