Note 1 — Chapter L · INTERNAL POLITICS: CHINESE AND JAPANESE.

In Asia and in semi-civilized states, as in the old European world, each sovereignty is a church nation. Religion and the state are one. China, Corea, and Japan, in their normal oriental condition, are all acute illustrations of the evils of the union of church and state. Like Turkey and Russia, they are persecuting nations, allowing no freedom of conscience to the subject. Any attempt to think differently from the orthodox and established cult, or philosophy, is sure to call down persecution, torture, and death. Modern Japan, by ceasing to be oriental and adopting freedom of conscience, has simplified the relations between ruler and ruled. China still persecutes in bigotry, and during the course of her history has shed more blood in the name of religion and government than probably the mediæval states of Europe.1 In all Asiatic countries in which religious despotism still flourishes, practical Christianity, especially that form of it which is founded on the Bible in the vernacular, is the great disturbing force, even as it is the hope of the future. It comes at once into collision with the theory of the union of Church and State. Giving the common man a new outlook on the universe makes him exactly the kind of man that despots and men of privilege and prerogative most bitterly fear, hate, and oppose. Of this truth Corea is a striking illustration.