Sidotti produced in Hakuseki that mixed feeling of perplexity and irritation which contact with a profound religious faith so often excites in thinkers of the positive type. The devotion to his sovereign and religious chief (for so Hakuseki thought it) which prompted him at the Pope's command to journey to so distant a country, and there for six years to undergo peril and suffering, appealed strongly to a man who had himself a stern sense of duty. Hakuseki reported to his Government that it was impossible to witness without emotion Sidotti's firm adherence to his own faith, and he also spoke with warm appreciation of his kindly disposition and scientific knowledge. "But," said he, "when this man begins to speak of religion his talk is shallow and scarce a word is intelligible. All of a sudden folly takes the place of wisdom. It is like listening to the talk of two different men."
The "folly" which Hakuseki had more particularly in view was an outline of Bible history and Christian doctrine which Sidotti had dictated to him in the fulness of his heart. In its Japanese form it is a dry and soulless husk, which affords some excuse for Hakuseki's obtuseness to its spiritual import. It should be a warning to missionaries not to attempt the teaching of religion until they have something more than a tyro's command of the language. As Hakuseki's attitude towards Christianity is essentially that of educated Japanese at the present day, I may quote some of his observations.
"The foreign word 'Deus,' which the Western man used in his discourse, is equivalent to 'Creator,' and means simply a Being who first made heaven and earth and the ten thousand things. He argued that the universe did not come into existence of itself. 'It must,' he said, 'have had a maker.' But if this were so, then who made
