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and consist of the presentation of offerings and the recital of formal addresses, which are partly praises and partly prayers. In one ritual, that of purification, it is true that there may be seen signs of moral instruction; but this is now a mere formal ceremony, performed, perhaps, only twice a year in some, not all, of the principal Shintō shrines. Certainly, in the sense that Christianity, with its creeds, whether simple or complex, its moral doctrines, its spiritual teachings, its outlook into the future life, its restraining and uplifting influence upon the individual and society, is called a religion, Shintō has no right to that appellation.

But as a system of national as well as of individual worship, including prayers to the deified ancestors or national heroes or to the personified and deified powers of nature, Shintō is properly a religion. And there can be no doubt that, in the eyes of the great mass of the people, it has all the force of a religion. One needs to stand but a few minutes in front of a Shintō shrine to observe that the mode of worship is practically the same as that before a Buddhist temple. This does not refer to the regular public ceremonies at stated times, but to the brief ordinary visits of the common people to the shrines and temples as they may be passing by. In their hearts there is apparently as much "worship" and "reverence" in one case as in the other. And this superstitious attitude of the people toward Shintō has been utilized on more than one occasion