A Japanese on Idolatry.

Manawatu Herald, 20 September 1894, Page 3

A Japanese on Idolatry.

. At the recent Congress of Liberal Religiqiis. Societies" held* in Chicago, one of the Japanese delegates in speaking in defence of his country against the charges of idolatry, gave a very telling address, the conclusion being as follows \— v Laclieg and gentlemen, let me close my speech by presenting you the Japanese conception regarding all religions of the world . through the following simile : When person's statid on the different points of the seashore in a moonlight night; each of them will see a loiig conical shape of pathway of light fall on the water fronting the place where he stands. When he walks, the light, instead of being left behind, follows him and stops where he stops. He thinks that he is the only one who can see the light, for the other part looks to him like a black sheet of Water — ' nothing/ And he is anxious to let other tiled set! the beautiful reflection, and he insists that his is the only standpoint from which to behold it, and that others who are in distant places look out upon only the dark benighted sheet of water; Far from the. shore'; oh the peak of a liigh tHoutitaih; there is another person. He looks down upoti the sea and knows that the moonlight is not a long strip, nor is it confined to the places where the people stand, but the whole surface of the wide ocean reflects the light like a mirror, leaving no place in darkness. None of the views seen from the different points by different persons can be false, and all of them are true. Sometimes we linger on the seashore flooded by our own shaft of moonlight, and at other times the soul takes wing to the highest peak and there beholds a quite different aspect of the wide universe."