In a word, knowledge of the opposing religion, and especially of alien language, literature and ways of feeling and thinking, lengthens missionary life.

A man who does not know the moulds of thought of his hearers is like a swordsman trying to fight at long range but only beating the air.

Armed with knowledge and sympathy, the missionary smites with effect at close quarters.

He knows the vital spots.
Let me fortify my own convictions and conclude this preliminary part of my lectures by quoting again, not from academic authorities, but from active missionaries who are or have been at the front and in the field.[8] The Rev.Samuel Beal, author of "Buddhism in China," said (p.

19) that "it was plain to him that no real work could be done among the people [of China and Japan] by missionaries until the system of their belief was understood." The Rev.James MacDonald, a veteran missionary in Africa, in the concluding chapter of his very able work on "Religion and Myth," says: The Church that first adopts for her intending missionaries the study of Comparative Religion as a substitute for subjects now taught will lead the van in the path of true progress.
The People of Japan.
In this faith then, in the spirit of Him who said, "I come not to destroy but to fulfil," let us cast our eyes upon that part of the world where lies the empire of Japan with its forty-one millions of souls.
Here we have not a country like India--a vast conglomeration of nations, languages and religions occupying a peninsula itself like a continent, whose history consists of a stratification of many civilizations.