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Griffis : Verbeck of Japan 829 Verbeck of Japan, A Citizen of no Comitry ; A Life Story of Founda- tion Work inaugurated by Guido Fridolin Verbeck. By Wil- liam Elliot Griffis. (New York, Chicago and Toronto : Fleming H. Revell Co. 1900. Pp. 376.) To the student this book is a vexation, to the casual reader a delight. It is not placed on the solid adequate basis that this eminent missionary's personality and career deserved, yet Mr. Griffis writes with so much vividness and sympathy that during the pleasure of perusal his grave de- fects of conception and treatment do not offend. It is only afterwards, when we try to reproduce the picture, that we realize the shortcomings of the biography. Here was a man of unusual course in life and of striking individual- ity. Born in Holland, spending his boyhood there, passing his early manhood in America practising his profession of engineering and striving for wealth, then turning his energies to theology, neglecting material pursuits, and consecrating himself to the spiritual caUing of sav- ing souls in a "heathen" land, G. F. Verbeck finally sets foot on Jap- anese soil at the crisis of a most pregnant and picturesque era in her his- tory. With his great linguistic attainments (commanding six tongues), his wide appreciativeness, his tireless industry, his wonderful tact, and his high character, his services are invaluable and for years he enjoys the full confidence of the ruling and official class of the country. He is made head of the leading college, plants the seed of the educa- tional system of to-day, advises the organization of an army and other means of defense, is consulted on diplomatic affairs and inspires the des- patch of the Iwakura embassy abroad. In reality at this portentous epoch, at the transition from medievalism to progressive modernism, he is the expert adviser to the supreme authority, and is chief among foreigners in laying the foundations of the present polity and constitutional government of the realm. Through these manifold duties he was all the abler to aid and estimate the effort to christianize which he ever held before him as the guiding star. This favorable environment seems to have met a temperament equal to this glorious opportunity to understand the spirit of the age. The major- ity of missionaries everywhere have only the single eye of ecclesiasticism, and, like much of the voluminous correspondence of the Catholic priests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, their records are dry and mea- gre except within contracted churchly channels. In talents and accom- plishments at least, Verbeck was an exception to this narrowness of vision. With this rare but happy union of the hour and the hero, the man fit for the occasion, it is justifiable to expect from his pen important revela- tions and valuable comments, an insight into the secret motives and mainsprings of that marvelous national transformation, a substantiiil addi- tion to the history, both Christian and native, of the period. But we are disappointed, though we have to a large extent the ful- fillment of the promise made in the preface to let Verbeck speak for him-