LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOSEPH HARDY NEESIMA

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194 MISSIONARY WORK IN JAPAN. communities in Japan, ~a community which within a few years contained several self-supporting churches, and two thirds of whose delegation to the Imperial Diet in 1890 were Christians. It was with great re­luctance that he left Annaka for his station. But in reality he had accomplished far more than he realized, for when he set out for Osaka he had planted the spirit of Christianity in the heart of Japan. On his way through Tokyo he interested several friends in his plans for a Christian college, and in Yokohama preached in a union meeting, the first J ap­anese to address a foreign audience in the English language. The same evening he spoke to native hear­ers, and writes: "I find it a great delight to tell of Christ to my own people." Arriving in Osaka January 22d, he was welcomed by Mr. Gordon. The Mission had already been in­formed by the Foreign Secretary of the Board of the fund subscribed towards a training-school for Chris­tian workers, but the opposition to Christianity was so strong that such a school seemed to all a thing of the distant future. In order to escape injurious foreign influences it was Mr. Neesima's plan to establish the school in Osaka outside the treaty limits, and with thiii in view he conferred at once with the governor of the city, a man bitterly opposed to Christianity, and who, a short time before, had been concerned in the per­secution of the survivors of the Jesuit mission at Na­gasaki. These Christians, numbering over four thou­sand, had preserved for two hundred years the rite of baptism, certain forms of prayers, and a few religious books, and, refusing to abandon their faith, had been forcibly removed from their native villages. Scattered as exiles over the empire for six years, they had, in

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