Tales of Old Japan - Maybe You Like It

hanging drum; and the service ended as it had begun, by prayer in chorus,
during which the priest retired, the sacred book being carried out before
him by his acolyte.
Although occasionally, as in the above instance, sermons are delivered
as part of a service on special days of the month, they are more frequently
preached in courses, the delivery occupying about a fortnight,
during which two sermons are given each day. Frequently the preachers
are itinerant priests, who go about the towns and villages lecturing in the
main hall of some temple or in the guest-room of the resident priest.
There are many books of sermons published in Japan, all of which
have some merit and much quaintness: none that I have seen are,
however, to my taste, to be compared to the "Kiu-ô Dô-wa," of which the
following three sermons compose the first volume. They are written by a
priest belonging to the Shingaku sect—a sect professing to combine all
that is excellent in the Buddhist, Confucian, and Shin Tô teaching. It
maintains the original goodness of the human heart; and teaches that we
have only to follow the dictates of the conscience implanted in us at our
birth, in order to steer in the right path. The texts are taken from the
Chinese classical books, in the same way as our preachers take theirs
from the Bible. Jokes, stories which are sometimes untranslatable into
our more fastidious tongue, and pointed applications to members of the
congregation, enliven the discourses; it being a principle with the Japanese
preacher that it is not necessary to bore his audience into virtue.
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