The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-10-05
DESTROY.

Church, on September 18th. 1t IS,
in some respects, one of the most
extraordinary sermons preached IN
an Evangelical pulpit. With clear
ness, force, simplicity and rare
philosophical insight, it drives off
the hazy atmosphere, which en-
velopes the relations of Christianity
to the Oriental religions, and de-
clares boldly and confidently, that
science and civilization must be the
pioneer missionaries In the Orient.
After they have broken the intel
lectual errors of the ancient reli-
gions and shown by rational pro-
cess their incompleteness and fail
ure to supply the aspirations of
man, then Christianity will take its
place.
Mr.. Gulick starts with the bold
and broad assertion, that Christ
came to fulfill, not the Jewish law
and religion only, but all that was
good in every religion; to fulfill
the genuine moral truths and as
pirations of the great ancient rell-
gions. He believes that "Occident-
al science and civilization will bring
these religions to their inevitable
DOOM" that is, will gradually re-
place them, with the better religion
of Christ. He asks, "does not the
gospel enter these lands as dis
turber and destroyer! Does it not
inevitably undermine their social
system? What duty, nay what
right have we, then to force on
them out faith!
These are bold questions, and are
torrents of new thought surging
and laundering through the deep
and narrow channels of the old
thought. When the Hindoo mother
in final and uttermost devotion to
her religion, cast her child into the
Ganges, the old teacher standing
by, coldly said, 'sthat is murder, it
is not religion Did he think, for
moment, that in that moment OF
her supreme self sacrifice and an
guish, he was trying to anihilate
the only relations she had with the
supernatural!
It is little wonder then, that
fifteen years ago, Cannon Taylor,
of the great Church Missionary so
ciety of Great Britain, told his as
sociates that there was something
wrong in missionary work in the
Orient.
In illustrating his points, Mr..
Gulick quotes the Chinese, who
have been led by the teaching OF
Confucius up to Christ, and "since
they have become Christians, have
learned to appreciate and love the
teachings of Confucius."
Of the japanese, Mr.. Gulick
says that they will choose Christ
or materialism. AS the latter can
not answer the needs of man, it will
end, he believes, in the choice of
Christ. As philosophical thinker,
Mr.. Gulick takes no account Of
time. It NAV take three hundred
years to bring this about. In the
meantime, the enlightened mis-
sionary will not worry himself in
the expectation that every one of
these believers in the old religions
goes, at the moment of death, into
everlasting torment.
Mr.. Gulick has, evidently, a
hard fight before him. It took
twenty years for Professor Tyler
Lewis, to convince the clergyman
of New England that the account
of the Genesis, was not literally
true. There is something of rom
: ance in it, that the grandson of one
of the Hawaiian missionaries,
should come to the front, just as
the japanese have gone into a state
of religious reaction, and, need
above all things, to be confronted
with the very best, truest and unas-
sailable religious philosophy, which