gcls_WFP_425
Facsimile
Transcription
[Black and white photograph of a smiling man]
KAGAWA of JAPAN
The Great Christian
Social Reformer
Toyohiko Kagawa.
We think that one of the most wonderful characters in the world to-day is Toyohiko Kagawa, of Japan. His message to our boys is inspiring and should be read by ever boy who attends camp. A duplicate is enclosed in this books. We quote from a sketch of his life as follows.
"Toyohiko Kagawa was born in Japan on July 10th, 1888. He was the son of a well-to-do family, and though his father died when he was young, he was brought up under the care of a wealthy uncle, so that during his school years he had every educational advantage.----
"It was during this period of his teens that his family faced extremely difficult times, due to a moral lapse on the part of his elder brother which led to financial ruin for the family. These happenings burned themselves into his experience and challenged him early to a consideration of the necessity for a philosophy of life which should have moral power.
"Realizing the boy's distress of soul, his English Bible teacher, Dr. Harry Myers of Kobe, then in Tokushima, invited the young Kagawa out into the quiet of the sunset glow for a conversation. He brought home to the lonely, orphaned youth the power of Christianity as a personal religion.------
"When it became time to graduate from the middle school, his uncle wanted him to go to the Imperial University and prepare for a diplomatic career. But Kagawa refused, and was completely disinherited, although previously the uncle, the richest man in the province of Awa, had intended making the brilliant nephew his heir. Instead, Kagawa became a penniless student at the Southern Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Kobe, where he studied Christian theology, and where Dr. Myers befriended him in many ways.
"At this time his health was poor.----Anxiety was increased when on his return to college it was discovered that he was frequenting Shinkawa, one of the worst slum districts in Kobe, where he was preaching to groups of people on the streets. 'It was one of the worst conceivable, a district where some eleven thousand people were living in eleven blocks, as many as nine people sleeping in a room six feet square.' Kagawa saw that something more than preaching was needed in the neighborhood, and when he was twenty-two years of age, not yet thoroughly recovered from tuberculosis, he went to live in Shinkawa. Here he began the work of love and service that crystalized his life philosophy and made him so completely identified in sympathy and understanding with the problems of poverty and moral lapse that he has become a world figure, a symbol of Christ-living in the twentieth century.---
"For years his eyes have been exceedingly weak and painful, owing to his having contracted trachoma from a man with whom he shared his bed, and at intervals he has suffered complete loss of sight. Yet he cannot spare the time necessary for the long-drawn-out treatment which might bring relief.----
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