Some ten days ago a most interesting letter came to us from Japan. It was from a quiet sort of chap, behind typically thick Japanese spectacles, the kind of person you can spend hours and days with and have him say little or nothing. Then after you have gone, suddenly out of the blue a long letter comes.
After our Morning Prayers in the Office, I opened the letter rather eagerly, and, glancing through the first of seven pages, decided to read it aloud with one or two of my Chinese colleagues. Its effect was extraordinary. Many of the things it said they could not agree with, it is true, but the reading of that letter became an act of worship more real than our regular Morning Prayers had been. It brought us consciously into the presence of God in an unforgettable way. I don't know. It's hard to put your finger on the exact reason why. For one thing, just the fact that the two sides could speak so openly and realistically to one another made one profoundly grateful. His genuine and valid criticism of some of the things which had been said by Chinese Christian ' students, to which he was replying, was taken in good spirit, particularly when it Was combined with no less trenchant criticism of some of the things his own students had said. His authen-
Ye scriptural foundation gave power tó what he said. It was discouraging in a sense because it showed realise tically how our thinking can be confused and warped by the pressure of a national emergency, such as the Japanese feel themselves to Be facing. Yet it was the most hopeful thing that has happened (0 me since I have been out here. Poor fellow, the blast from the Chinese students had hit him pretty hard. He had been rudely disappointed in what he felt to be the somewhat self-righteous outlook of Chinese Christians, but he had no less trenchant criticism of things his own students had said. But despite all this—and this was the encouraging thing,—he still felt a profound concern for maintaining unity between the groups in the two countries, Not for any political purposes, that was obvious. The two groups could scarcely have been further apart in their political outlook, but, praises be, because whatever it might cost in human disappointment and humiliation and suffering, it was pert and parcel of Christ's suffering and of what He requires of those who knowledge allegiance to Him and to His Universal Church.
During the reading of that letter together, we had really been brought up against God the Father. First of all, we knew ourselves to be home where we belonged. Chinese, Japanese and Westerners, we were separate ed almost completely on the human level yet in the Father's house we mere one.
On both sides we could see, in the setond place, something of where we were wrong, something of the fact that even in our prayers we accepted all too easily our righteousness and the entire righteousness of our cause. We knew finally that what our Japanese friend wrote was true. "Human ambition will not do to bring about real ce-operation between China and Japan. It is God and Him only who can do anything under these circumstances." And with him also we knew that powerless though we may be at the moment, our task was simply to trust and to obey confidently, and that on those terms whatever truly Christian contribution we can make on both sides, its to use his words again, the light hundreds and thousands of years later—it will be a contribution of eternal value."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.