THE SHINTO CULT. (continued 2)

We Americans have dreamed and sometimes boasted that our great Republic of freedom has proven a mighty evangel of human liberty and rights. It is a luminous star of the first magnitude, and it arose in the Western hemisphere. But this brilliant star of the West has cast its helpful beams across the Pacific Ocean upon the blooming rice-fields of Japan. It may be that those grandchildren of the sun-goddess may by their skill and prowess flash upon the world a light so strong as to eclipse to some extent our own, and be so self-evidently excellent that all mankind will bid it welcome. It may or may not be that all will acknowledge the radiant Evangel as "the root and the offspring of David." With the Japanese it may for long be insisted that this new Light is the root and offspring of the Mikado and the Goddess of the Dawn. But we can waive that point and all of us cry out, Let the true Light come. If it make for righteousness and love and the peace of the world, we shall hail its rising in the far East as the light of "the bright, the Morning Star;" for there is no other that can ultimately prove itself to be "the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world."