POWER OF CHRISTIANITY.
A JAPANESE TESTIMONY. "FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT." . J':' • ' I , ' A striking aqcount of his conversion to Christianity was given by the Rev, Paul Nagano, a Japanese clergyman, at a recent Church Missionary Society's "rally" in Hobart. Mr. Nagano said that one night, when a boy, "when the house was still, I sat up in my bed, and began to think about death. What- would become of me if I died ? I saw myself in imagination lying dead s and the people taking me in my coffin to the cemetery. I saw them digging a grave and putting ms into it. I was not. dreaming: It was as if I saw these things. I felt as if I were falling down, down, down, into darkness unknown, and stretched out a hand to find something to cling to, and, finding nothing, for the first time in my life I began to grope and to feel for something more than man. We had many gods, and to the one I thought most powerful I prayed, but there came no help. For more than three years I was groping .about, trying to find one able to help me, but finding none. "One evening we heard there was a Christian preaching. I went there, and there was a Christian trying to explain God to us, the God we had to worship, not the God that man makes, but the God Who makes heaven and earth, and Who created man. I felt that this was the very God that I was searching for, and when I came home, I knelt down and thought of death again. There was the same pit. There was the same darkness. There was the. falling fast into greater darkness.
"I poured out my whole heart to this new-found God, the Creator Who makes heaven and earth. 'You inust save me. You can save m&J' I said. It seemed to me as if a powerful hand were stretched out under me, to Bold me and lift mo up, up, up into light. That was the beginning of my conversion*'*
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New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19265, 2 March 1926, Page 10
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350POWER OF CHRISTIANITY. New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19265, 2 March 1926, Page 10
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