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It is an ugly little town, full of unpleasant smells; it exists only as a port; it has no industries, scarcely any shops, and only one Shinto temple of small dimensions and smaller interest.

Thus in the fourth ritual of 'the Way of the Gods' that is Shinto it is explained that the Spirits of the Storm took the Japanese to be their people, and the people of Japan took the Spirits of the Storm to be gods of theirs.

Many other cognate instances might be quoted. A belief in amulets and charms, in revelations by dreams and in the efficacy of ordeal, belongs to this category of superstitions. The usual form of ordeal was by thrusting the hand into boiling water. It has been alleged that the Shinto religion took no account of a soul or made any scrutiny into a life beyond the grave.

Daily offerings of boiled rice are also made; and fresh flowers are put in the shrine vases; and incense although not allowed by Shinto is burned before the tablets.

But the symbols of Shinto are more numerous, and the structure of its miya larger and loftier.

And this marvellous vitality of Shinto is due to the fact that in the course of its long development out of unrecorded beginnings, it became at a very ancient epoch, and below the surface still remains, a religion of the heart. Whatever be the origin of its rites and traditions, its ethical spirit has become identified with all the deepest and best emotions of the race.

Obvious reasons of state policy decided this course. Having fulfilled its grand task, Shinto abdicated. But as representing all those traditions which appeal to race-feeling, to the sentiment of duty, to the passion of loyalty, and the love of country, it yet remains an immense force, a power to which appeal will not be vainly made in another hour of national peril.

If other evidence is needed of æsthetic defect in the still unoccidentalized Japanese taste let the doubter go to any popular second-grade Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple. Here unæsthetic objects and sights abound.

In Shinto, sin is little, if anything, more than physical impurity. Although Buddhism brought a higher conception of religion for the initiated few, it gave no help to the ignorant multitudes, rather it riveted their superstitions upon them.

The Indian creed now began to present itself to the Japanese people, not merely as a vehicle for securing insensibility to suffering in this life and happiness in the next, but also as a great protagonist of refined progress, gorgeous in paraphernalia, impressive in rites, eminently practical in teachings, and substituting a vivid rainbow of positive hope for the negative pallor of Shinto.