To refer to but one other hindrance to Christian progress in Japan--which, although the last mentioned, is by no means the least serious--I mean the estimate formed by the natives of the practical influence of the Christian religion upon English people and upon other nations professing it. Applying to Christianity the test of its results, they urge that it has, at any rate, only very partially succeeded. For instance, the Japanese comment upon the fact that numbers of Englishmen in Japan never attend the services of their Church; and that the lives of many of them display a flagrant disregard for the principles which should regulate the conduct of Christians. Without, however, denying either the justice of these charges, or the reasonableness of the mood which advances them, I think it may be urged with fairness that the influence of Christianity on us as a nation cannot rightly be estimated in this particular way. As a rule, the Englishman can scarcely be said to appear to advantage abroad. Too often he assumes an attitude of insolent superiority to the people whose guest he is; while the position in which our countrymen are placed in a country like Japan--coupled with the freedom from restraint, so much greater than at home--has, for reasons which we need not now enter into, its peculiar difficulties. Neither is it by any means certain that a Japanese, paying a short visit to England, will gather any just impression of what hold Christianity has on us as a people. In all probability the range of his observations will be very limited and superficial; his wanderings will be chiefly confined to the great thoroughfares of the principal cities; while the circle of his acquaintance will, it is likely, be equally restricted, and equally unrepresentative of English life. Not that, in saying this, we would seek to excuse ourselves, or deny that there is far more truth than we could wish, and than there ought to be, in the charges brought against us. We would merely submit that there is another side to the picture which ought not, in fairness, to be overlooked. Admitting as we must, for instance, the great prevalence of infidelity in our England of to-day, there is yet to be placed over against it,--and may I not add, drawing it out into the light?--the increased activity of the Church during this last half-century, the remarkable power she has exhibited of adapting herself to meet the needs of her times, the influence for good that she has not only been in the past, but remains at the present day, in the nation at large, and in thousands and thousands of English homes. "By their fruits ye shall know them": and Christianity must not and need not deprecate the application of that test to herself. Only, we would urge, that is not a fair judgment, which takes account only of what the Church of Jesus Christ has failed to do, without recognizing also all that, in the strength of her Divine Head, she has been permitted to accomplish.