I thanked the priest for his pretty legend, and cautiously approached the subject of religion, asking if he had studied Christianity, and to what cause he attributed its slow progress among his compatriots. He answered that two facts, in his opinion, contributed greatly to its want of success. The first was its extraordinary similarity to Buddhism. The ideas of a saviour of mankind resigning kingly power to become a wandering beggar; of virginal motherhood; of trinitarian godhead; of the beauty of holiness and charity, love to men and kindness to animals; of heaven and hell, as the populace conceived them, though in reality but intermediary stages to the ultimate Nirvana;--these, and the miracles attributed to the _rakan_, or disciples of Buddha, which bore such remarkable resemblance to the wonders attributed to Christian saints, prayers for the dead, and monastic institutions;--indeed, almost every salient doctrine of Christianity, as taught by priests of the Roman See, could be found with more or less modification in one or other of the numerous Buddhist sects. Why should a believer, then, apostatise from the faith of his forefathers to adopt a foreign creed so similar to, and yet so remote from, his own? I found that his conceptions of Christianity were derived from a Romish priest, whom he had known in the island of Yezo. There was also a patriotic reason which struck me as rather unusual. The loyal Japanese believed that their Emperor was descended from the gods, and in the “Kojiki,” which is regarded with the same reverence by them as the Bible by Europeans, many actions implying divine power are said to have been performed by such beings as the Heavenly-August-Sky-Luxuriant-Dragonfly-Youth, by the Great-Refulgent-Mountain-Dwelling Grandee, and by other _kami_, or superior ones (“them that are above us,” Mrs. Dolly Winthrop would have said), to whom it was impossible to refuse the rank of deity. But the missionary said, “Thou shalt have none other gods but Me,” which commandment imposed on the convert the necessity of becoming disloyal as well as an apostate. Yet, so tolerant were Buddhist and Shintō believers, that they did not subject a pervert to any sort of persecution. They practised and allowed entire freedom of belief. I replied that, granting his premisses, his conclusions were irresistible, and we parted excellent friends.