Kanamori's life-story

ONE of my missionary friends in Japan asked me to write a tract on the prodigal son. I told him I could not do it, because it would be just like writing my own story. How can I write such a shameful story? But now I would like to tell you a little about it, and show you how patient and long-suffering was my Saviour toward such a poor, erring child as myself during those long years of disobedience and prodigality. Simply for the glory of God I will give you the following story of my life.

You know, when the prodigal son left his father’s home he forgot everything. He forgot his father, his brother, his home, and his servants, and was entirely absorbed in his present enjoyment of worldly pleasures until a terrible calamity brought him to himself again. Then he recalled for the first time since he left his father’s home, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger.” Then he started homeward with a heavy heart, full of grief and remorse, and determined to reform and live a life of devotion to his father. But during all those days, perhaps years, his father had not forgotten his erring and wandering boy. He was waiting day and night for his return. Perhaps he was looking out from his windows every morning and evening in the direction his son had gone. One evening when he got a glimpse of his lost son he did not wait in his room for him, but jumped up and ran from his house to meet that wretched son.

Just so, my friend, during those twenty years of my prodigal life I forgot my heavenly Father, and my Saviour, and my spiritual home and inheritance. I had been absorbed entirely in my ambitious worldly career and earthly happiness, but my Father did not forget me. He had not forsaken me. He was watching and waiting all the while for my return. In his own time the Father himself arrested me in my wild career of worldly ambition and earthly enjoyment.

It was in this way. In the midst of my worldly prosperity and happiness my Father came down and suddenly took away my dear wife, leaving behind her nine motherless children, the youngest of whom was not quite four. I was overwhelmed with grief. But, oh, my children’s grief! They loved their mother very much. She was a devout woman, and not a backslider like myself. During the quarter of a century of our married life I had never heard a single murmur from her lips, nor a word of discouragement. She was always thankful and grateful for everything. She led such a beautiful life of love and devotion before her children that they almost worshiped her. When she was suddenly taken away from them, they were all thrown into the deepest grief, and they cried and wailed day and night, clinging to their dead mother. My friends came to comfort them, but they would not be comforted, because their mother was gone, and they could not see her again. Their grief was so intense that at one time I was afraid some of my children would go insane. A man may marry a second wife, and love her just as much as the first, but when children lose their own mother they can never have a second one whom they can love as their own. It was a most heartrending thought to me that death had made these nine children motherless forever.

While their mother was with them they thought their home was a sweet and bright home,—heaven on earth. They were all so happy and contented, but when their dear mother was taken away from them the home became a dark, dismal hell on earth. Yes, in those days the home was full of weeping and wailing day and night.

In the midst of this darkness a light as from heaven flashed into my home, in this way. The children were crying because their mother was gone, and they could not see her again, but suddenly they changed their tone and began to say, “No, our mother is not gone. What we have buried in her grave was not mother herself, but only her body. Our mother has gone to heaven to be with her God. And if she has gone to heaven and is with God now, as God is everywhere our mother also might be here in spirit. Though we cannot see her, she might be seeing from there these nine poor motherless children crying day and night for her.”

Then, in order to realize their mother’s spiritual presence in the home, they began to decorate the whole house with her picture. They hung up large pictures of her in the dining-room, in the parlor, in the bedroom, and in other rooms. There was not a single room in the whole house where her picture was not hanging on the wall. And on all of their desks they placed their mother’s picture.

Thus they began to say “Mama, mama,” once more. “Mama” is an English word, not Japanese, but as its sound was very endearing to their hearts, all my children used to call her by that name.

You know children love to say “mama” or “mother.” When they come back from school the first word they utter is “mama,” or “mother.” If they cannot use this endearing word they cannot be happy. Now my children had suddenly been deprived of this dear word by the death of their mother, and so they were crying. But now, once more, they began to say this dear word.

Pointing to those pictures of their mother, they began to say: “That is a dining-room mama, that a parlor mama, and that your mama, and this mine, on my desk.” There was a picture of her holding the youngest child in her arms and kissing his cheeks. This picture the youngest boy always called his own mama. Thus, you see, as soon as that endearing word “mama” came into the children’s mouths, the whole house was brightened up, and home became sweet again. These pictures were a great comfort to my children in those days of sorrow. They even became a source of inspiration and encouragement in the times of trial and difficulty.

One of my boys went to take the entrance examination of a medical college shortly after his mother’s death. He went down to the college town before the examination to prepare for it. One day, when I went to see how he was getting on, I found three boys studying in the same room. On the desks of the other two boys I noticed pictures of Gladstone and Bismarck. Perhaps these great men were the objects of their hero-worship, but on my boy’s desk I saw his mother’s picture, right in front, as usual. He thought his mother’s picture was just as good for him, if not better, than those of great men. I was much pleased with this expression of his love for his dead mother, even in such a place as this.

The examination was said to be hard, especially in mathematics. There were five questions to answer. Four of them he disposed of quickly, but he could make nothing out of the fifth. If he could not answer all five questions satisfactorily, his failure to pass would be certain, because there were ten times more applicants for the examination than the college could possibly take in that year. The time set for the examination was quickly passing; so, closing his eyes, he tried very hard to think out the solution. Just at that moment his mother’s figure flashed before him. In surprise he opened his eyes, and the solution of the problem was in his mind. He took up his pen and wrote it out satisfactorily.

He entered the college at the head of his class, and wrote to me afterward, saying, “Surely mama helped me.”

One day my youngest girl came to me with a curious question. She said, “Papa, when you go to any faraway place you always come back, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “This is papa’s home; papa has to come back always to his home,—don’t you see?”

Then she said, “Well, then, you all say mama is gone to heaven from here; and if she really went there, and is living there now, why can’t she come back, as you always do from a faraway place? Why can’t she come home again from heaven?”

I could not answer such a question. But simply to comfort her, I said:

“Oh, I see! Perhaps God has some work for your mama in heaven. Therefore he is keeping her there, and your mama cannot come back here. You know, mama must obey God; whatever God says mama must do. God does not want your mama to come back to this world, so she cannot come home.”

I said this simply to satisfy her childish mind, which was wondering why her mama, if she is really living in heaven with God, cannot come back once more to her old home.

Instantly she said, “All right, papa. Then why can’t you go now to heaven yourself, and do mama’s work and serve God in her place, and let mama come down here for one month? And when you get tired of heaven, papa, you might come down, and then we will send mama up again to heaven. It is very good to have papa with us always, but we want mama also.”

You see, in her childish mind there was no partition between heaven and earth. Heaven is joined to the earth by her dear mother being there. She could see now right through to the throne of God, and her dear mother there. In those days they underwent various spiritual experiences in a most wonderful manner.

Every evening their favorite hymn was that one which has in its chorus, “Our friend is waiting on the other side.” In Japanese “friend” is tomo, and my children changed that tomo into “mama,” almost the same sound, and were singing, “Our mama is waiting on the other side.” To them the unseen world seemed so near and real that they felt as if they themselves were living in the same spiritual world with their departed mother.

In the midst of such a spiritual atmosphere, how could I resist the influence pouring in upon me from the other side? You know, I had been a pastor at one time, as well as a professor of theology, so I must have known intellectually things pertaining to the spiritual world. I had not forgotten them, only they were clouded by doubt. Thus, while I was watching these spiritual experiences of my children, gradually the clouds of doubt and unbelief began to disperse, and once more heaven opened, and with my spiritual eyes I saw Jesus Christ, my Saviour and Lord, whom New Theology had taken away from me, still sitting at the right hand of God: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”

Then I could exclaim with doubting Thomas when he saw the prints of the nails in the hands of Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus is my God, my very God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

These verses of Scripture, which I had committed to memory forty years ago in Captain Janes’ Bible class, now flashed into my mind as lightning from heaven, and the whole spiritual world was once more lighted up as in the noonday. Thus I was brought back to my old simple faith by the words of my child. Indeed, “out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.” Thus began my return.

On another occasion I was brought back to my old religious consciousness thus: Just before my wife died she was talking with me, with a smile on her face. She was weak in body, and had lain in bed for many weeks; but she was perfectly sound in her mind. I found no sign of mental weakness to the very moment of her death. Then suddenly a spasm caught her, as the physician told me afterward, and in a few minutes she was gone. Only a moment ago there she was, and now she is not. Where is she? What has become of her? Her body lies here just as before, a little cold, perhaps, but where is that personality which shone so brightly through those eyes which are now shut? Has she vanished? Has she been destroyed? Is she annihilated? Impossible to think such a thing at such a time. Do you think I could help following her into that world yonder whither she went so suddenly? Yes, I did follow her. I was, as it were, peeping through the portal of death into that eternal world where she had just been translated. There and then I came face to face with the eternal reality of death.

When you face death, either in yourself or in your friend, you face eternity. When you face eternity, all things which are not eternal, which belong to this world alone, temporary things, such as wealth and possessions, houses and clothing, and all other earthly valuables, which have absorbed your attention while you were healthy and strong, now sink into insignificance before the brightness of the eternal realities. What use is there of wealth and possessions to a dying man? He came naked into this world, and now he must go out of it naked again. What comfort can gold and diamonds give to the dying girl? Can the possession of pretty dresses and costly jewels make happy the heart of a dying girl? When a man comes to the last moment of his earthly journey, the sense of the nearness of eternity will overshadow all things earthly and temporal.

When I faced eternity in the death of my dear one, that solemn and awe-inspiring consciousness of the eternal destiny of man which lay so long dormant in my heart now came back to me with overwhelming force and vividness. Then all the clouds of doubt and unbelief raised by my too much speculative thinking, and all the mists and fogs caused by worldly ambition and earthly enjoyment just vanished away, and I was lifted up into the third heaven.

Death is a sad thing. Especially is the death of our dearest one the saddest experience of our life. But when you look at it in the light of heaven, the death of a dear friend is the most precious gift God can ever give in this world. I confess I was revived by the death of my wife. Certainly it can be said that she died in order to rouse me from the slumber of a backsliding and prodigal life. Oh, the wonderful method of God’s dealing, always surpassing our human understanding! Always and everywhere, the good suffer for the bad, the righteous for the unrighteous, and saints for sinners.

As a natural consequence of this death experience, I was brought back once more to that glorious scene on Calvary. I saw plainly why the holy and righteous Son of God, who knew no sin and in whom was found no guile, had to face that terrible death on the cross; why Jesus, the Lamb of God, should have been bruised for our iniquities and wounded for our transgressions; why the chastisement of our peace must be upon him, and why we sinners must be healed by his stripes.

When I look back to those days of sorrow and grief, I almost forget the death of my human wife, and feel always as though I were standing at the foot of the cross on Calvary. Yes, it was Jesus who was with me during those long years of my wanderings, though I was entirely unconscious of his gracious presence. At every turn of my life Jesus was there protecting and keeping, loving and suffering. When I succumbed to temptation and sin, and stumbled, he was there looking at me with sorrowful eyes, as he looked at Peter, who denied him. It was by his unseen hand that I was kept and guarded and lifted up again and again, and was not utterly destroyed, though I was struck down numberless times by my enemies. Though I pierced his heart again and again with my sins, he never forsook me. Though I wilfully ran away from him, he always followed me. It is a terrible thing to think how I pained his heart, how sorrowful I must have made him, and finally how I crucified him. He died for me on account of my sin, taking upon himself all my iniquities and transgressions, and all their penalties and consequences. Oh, what a wonderful Saviour is Jesus, my Lord!

I found once more the joy of my salvation in the cross of Christ. It is not by the work of social reform, or world reconstruction, or moral uplift, that this sin-stricken world may be saved. It is not by the teaching of Jesus, nor by his blessed life even, that we sinners are to be saved, but it is only by the preaching of the cross of Christ that salvation comes to this world.

Then I said, “Now I know the redeeming power of the cross of Christ. Now I will preach this cross to my fellow-sinners. I am determined not to know anything among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

I returned to my old simple faith in Jesus as my Saviour and Lord, after passing for many years through a tempestuous life of doubt and unbelief caused by the study of New Theology. Even after I returned to my old faith I read many books of New Theology, especially of the German authors, in order to see their present situation in the theological world. But this time my mental atmosphere was cleared by light from heaven, and my perception of spiritual truth became so real through my own experiences that no cunningness of mere argument could lead my mind astray from the path of truth. Now I saw plainly enough the fallacies and shallowness in their reasonings, and no amount of plausibleness in what they call the scientific method of treating religious truth could longer shake my conviction, based on the experimental knowledge of my own Christian life.

I tell you, my friends, when you have once tasted how gracious is your Lord, how real and true is his personal presence, and how sweet are his words, yea, “sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb,” no destructive criticism, and no evil teachings of New Theology, can disturb your faith in the absolute divine authority of the Bible, as well as in the perfect deity of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is only when we have no such experimental knowledge of spiritual truth, when our minds are not enlightened from above, and our faith is cold, formal, and lifeless, that the crafty arguments of the enemies of the Gospel can shake us. Just as when our bodies are weak and our vitality is low, we are apt to be attacked by disease, so the best precaution against this disease of the soul, and the most effective remedy for the pestilential doctrines of the present day, is the spiritual health and strength gained by a vital knowledge of God and the unseen world. Thus returning to my old simple faith in my Saviour and Lord, I became the preacher of his cross, and God has wonderfully blessed my work.