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A Shinshu Temple.

"Eternal Life, Eternal Light! Hail to Thee, wisdom infinite. Hail to Thee, mercy shining clear, And limitless as is the air. Thou givest sight unto the blind, Thou sheddest mercy on mankind, Hail, gladdening Light, Hail, generous Might, Whose peace is round us like the sea, And bathes us in infinity."

Or it may be some patriarch who is being hymned, such as Honen himself:

"What though great teachers lead the way,-- Genshin and Zendo of Cathay,-- Did Honen not the truth declare How should we far-off sinners fare In this degenerate, evil day?"

Occasionally a hymn, like the excellent preaching of some of the priests, strikes a note of moral living whose motive is gratitude to Amida:

"Eternal Father on whose breast We sinful children find our rest, Thy mind in us is perfected When on all men thy love we shed; So we in faith repeat thy praise, And gratefully live out our days."

The Japanese, in whom gratitude is a very strong motive, find in the teachings of Shinran a Buddhism which is very Christian, and the words attributed to him as he was nearing his journey's end, are a confession of sin which is only worthy of a saint. That the mass of his followers fall far behind him in this respect is unfortunately true, as it is true of most of us who call ourselves by a greater name.

Other founders of Buddhism are commemorated on the altars and in the hymns of this sect, especially N?g?rjuna, the Indian philosopher of about the second century A.D., and Donran, a Chinese, who carried still further the evolution of Mah?y?na Buddhism.

A Revival of Buddhism.

This Buddhist revival in Japan is well worthy of study. As in Ceylon and Burma nationalism has much to do with it. The Japanese have been reminded by Lafcadio Hearn and Fenollosa and by their own native scholars trained by Max M?ller at Oxford, or in other Western universities, how great is the debt which they owe to Buddhism; "There is scarcely one interesting or beautiful thing produced in the country," wrote Lafcadio Hearn, "for which the nation is not in some sort indebted to Buddhism," and the Japanese, in whom gratitude is a strong motive, are saying, "Thank you." Moreover, in the present restless seeking after truth the nation is finding, in its old religions, things which it is refusing lightly to cast away, and in its resentment against some of the nations of Christendom, and its conviction that our Christianity does not go very deep, it reminds itself that after all Buddhism was a great international force which helped to establish peace for a thousand years in Asia.

The present revival manifests itself in many ways, not least in the new intellectual activity which has brought into existence Buddhist universities, chairs of religious education, and a very vigorous output of literature; and each of the great sects has some outstanding scholar trained in the scientific methods of Western scholarship, but proud to call himself a Buddhist. There are ample signs, too, of a quickened interest in social service, of movements for children and young people, such as the Y.M.B.A., which is now active in all Buddhist countries.

Old temples are being repaired and new ones built and there are said to be over a hundred thousand of these in Japan devoted to Buddhism alone. Amongst the more recent is one in Ky?to which cost nearly a million pounds sterling; for the transport of its massive timbers hundreds of thousands of women sacrificed their hair. It is interesting and amusing to see Buddhist priests in bowler hats and gorgeous robes directing the removal of some ancient shrine to a new site and to note the modern American methods of engineering employed. All this is symptomatic of a new Japan which is yet tenaciously loyal to its old past.

Christian Influence.

All this is very largely the outcome of Christian activities in Japan and it is very noteworthy that while the Christian Church is numerically small its leadership in liberal politics and in philanthropy is acknowledged all over the Empire and its pervasive influence upon the thought of modern Japan is obvious on all sides. St. Francis of Assisi and Tolstoy are perhaps the Christian leaders most admired by the Japanese. They belong to the same spiritual company as the great S?kyamuni, who, like them, embraced poverty and was filled with a tender love and a sane yet passionate enthusiasm of humanity. Japan is looking for a great spiritual and moral leader. Will he be a Buddhist like the great Nichiren who in the thirteenth century came like a strong sea-breeze to revive the soul of his people and preached a religion which was to be a moral guide in national affairs and in the daily life of his people? Or will he be a Christian leader who, counting all things as dung compared with the Gospel of Jesus, shall answer the cry of the Japanese patriot who believes that his people are hungry for truth? There is a wealth of liberalism in young Japan and there are idealists everywhere waiting to rally around a great religious leader. But he will need to know and understand her past and to launch his appeal to that wonderful patriotism which is the essence of the Japanese character.

Can Buddhism produce this moral leadership? Let us hear what a Japanese Christian of great learning and insight has to say. "To Buddhism Japan owes a great debt for certain elements of her faith which would scarcely have developed without its aid; but those germinal elements have taken on a form and colouring, a personal vitality not gained elsewhere. Important as are those elements of faith, they still lack the final necessary reality. Buddhism is incomplete in the god whom it presents as an object of worship. In place of the Supreme Being, spiritual and personal, Buddhism offers a reality of which nothing can be affirmed, or, at best, a Great Buddha among many. Buddhism is incomplete in the consciousness of sin which it awakens within the soul of man. Instead of the sense of having violated an eternal law of righteous love by personal antagonism, Buddhism deepens the consciousness of human misery by an unbreakable bond of suffering; and the salvation, therefore, which Buddhism offers is deliverance from misery, not from the power of personal sin. In its idea of self-sacrifice, Buddhism affords an element of faith much more nearly allied to that of the Christian believer. In both the offering of self is for the sake of the multitude, the world-brotherhood; but in the one pity, often acquiescent and helpless, predominates, whereas in the other loyalty to a divine ideal finds expression in the obligation to active service."

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns."

Praise to Amida Buddha.

See "Buddhist Hymns," tr. by S. Yamabe and L. Adams Beck.

A Chinese Temple.

Let us get a glimpse of Chinese Buddhism in one of these great monasteries. The day is a round of worship and the worship is divided amongst many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Here some rich layman is making an offering for masses for his dead; Buddhism in China has indeed become largely a matter of such masses, and the filial Chinese spend yearly scores of millions upon them. The priests have turned out in force, and the abbot is reciting the praises now of Omito-Fo, now of Pilochana, the great sun-Buddha, now of the merciful Kwanyin whose ears are ever open to human prayer, and now of Titsang, guardian of the dead. Beautiful figures these, and especially that of this strong conqueror of death so popular amongst the Japanese as the guardian of the little ones who have gone into the dark under-world. Innumerable figures of him adorned with baby garments tell their own pathetic tale, and he is unimaginative indeed who cannot find here in these ideal figures traces of the Spirit of God at work in human hearts.

Buddhism in China, decadent though it is in many places, is reviving itself; there is great building activity at certain centres such as Ningpo and Hangchow; there are probably nearly half a million monks, and at one ordination in 1920 a thousand candidates were ordained in Changchow. Many men, indeed, disillusioned at the failure of the revolution, are seeking the quiet otherworldly retreats of Buddhism, and others of scholarly bent delight in the classical scriptures which the early missionaries from India translated into Chinese, and which are still models of beauty.

Among laymen also there is an increasing interest in the Buddhist scriptures. Turn into this bookstore at Peking and you will find over a thousand copies of different texts and commentaries, and there are publishing-houses in most of the great cities. Two notable works are the reprint of the whole of the Scriptures and a new dictionary of Buddhist terms, containing over three thousand pages. At Ningpo one will find a small group of young enthusiasts working for a "neo-Buddhism." Antipathetic to Christianity, and especially to the aggressions of "Christian" nations, these men, like some of the propagandists in Ceylon, use weapons which are two-edged and dangerous to all religion, not only to Christianity; they seem to feed upon the publications of the rationalist press, and must not be taken too seriously. Yet we can sympathise with their resentment of Western aggression, which is a large factor in these Buddhist movements everywhere. "Buddhism: the Religion of Asia" often accompanies and reinforces another cry, "Asia for the Asiatics."

In justification of such claims, however, Buddhism is doing some good work in social service, and in education, and takes its part in famine relief, prison visitation, and the beneficent work of the Red Cross.

The Chinese are a religious people, whatever critics may say. Vast armies of monks and innumerable temples and shrines witness to this other-worldly strain, and though much of their religion is superstitious, and almost all of it needs moralising, the sympathetic observer will find on every hand the evidences that these are not a "secular-minded" people.

In almost every house are not only ancestor-tablets, but images of Kwanyin and other Buddhist deities, and pilgrimages play in China as elsewhere in Asia a great part in the national life.

Follow this merry throng as it climbs the slopes of some great mountain; note the groves and the poetical inscriptions on the rocks; enter this noble group of temples with them and watch their acts of worship.

Here before Kwanyin a young apprentice bows: carelessly he tosses the bamboo strips which will tell him if his prayer is to be answered, and defiantly he tosses his head as he turns away with a refusal from the goddess: but here is an old widow, with sorrowful persistence importuning the Compassionate One, and in even the most careless is a belief that Heaven rules in the affairs of men and that Heaven is just.

Here prayers are offered for rain and harvest, for children and wealth, for release from suffering and demons.

As in many Christian nations the bridge between natural religion and the essential truths of Christian Theism is a very shaky one--so here in China and Japan, whilst there is a widespread belief in Karma and in Heaven's laws, this is but vaguely connected with the polytheistic cults of the masses. And as in some other Christian lands, the worship of the saints and local gods--even of the great Kwanyin--is not always moralised. Habitual sinners--opium fiends who, it may be, are ruining scores of lives, prostitutes and murderers--will pay their daily court to the family or local god: not conscious of any demand from the Compassionate that they should show compassion, or from the Righteous that they should be righteous. Buddhism has indeed lost its early salt of morality. It is for these and other reasons that China and Japan urgently need the Gospel of Jesus and of His Kingdom. In their own religious development is a noble preparation for this New Order: and in the Jesus of History they are finding a Norm and a Vision of God which makes their old ideals real and vital, and which purifies their idea of God. In this faith the Church is at work in these wonderful lands, believing that they have rich gifts for the Kingdom of God, and that it will greatly enrich them and carry to its fulfilment their noble civilisations whilst it emancipates their masses from fear and superstition. With all its achievements Buddhism has failed because it has had no power to cast out fear, and its Confucian critics even accuse it of playing upon the superstition of the people and of letting loose more demons to plague them. Yet it has done much for China, not only ennobling her art and culture but giving a new value to the individual, a new respect for women, a new love of nature, and many noble objects of worship to hungry human hearts.

Whilst then the Gospel wins its way slowly but surely in Asia, leavening and giving new and abundant life, there are those in Christendom who hold that it is played out, and that Buddhism is destined to supersede it as the religion of the intelligent!

The student should investigate their activities in London, Breslau, and other Western cities; and he may find Appendix I a finger-post to guide him in his quest.

Appendix II is offered as a similar guide to a course of reading.

The chief services are at 2 a.m. and at 4 p.m.

During the war many such masses were said for the fallen, whether friend or foe.

SOME EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN BUDDHISTS

In the year 1881 Dr. Rhys Davids said, "There is not the slightest danger of any European ever entering the Buddhist Order." Yet a recent writer was told by a Buddhist in Ceylon that his religion was making its converts "chiefly amongst the Tamils and Germans," and in each of the Buddhist countries there is to-day a small but active group of converts from the European nations to Buddhism.

It would be difficult to say whether these groups are the product or the cause of the undoubted revival which is taking place in the Buddhist world: probably they are part product and part cause. Buddhism is certainly in ferment. As Dr. Suzuki has said, "It is in a stage of transition from a mediaeval dogmatic and conservative spirit to one of progress, enlightenment, and liberalism," and in other ways, especially in Japan, it is approximating to a liberal Christianity.

To this awakening there are several contributory causes, such as the national spirit which has awakened in recent years, the works of Eastern and Western students of Buddhism, the activities of the Theosophical Society, and, it must be confessed, and unwise and, in my opinion, illiberal and unfair attitude on the part of many missionaries who, forgetting that they are sent to preach Christ, have attacked, often without adequate knowledge, the religion of Gautama. From this criticism I do not wish to exempt myself; I have gone through the unpleasant but salutary process of having to eat my own words, and I am more anxious than I can say to foster a real spirit of love and understanding between the followers of Gautama and those of Jesus.

Of the founder of Buddhism I can honestly say with the great Danish scholar Fausboll: "The more I know of him, the more I love him," and it is the "fact of Gautama," emerging more and more clearly as the Buddhist books are being edited and translated, which more than any other single cause is responsible for the Buddhist revival.

"From such far distances the echo of his words returns that we cannot but rank him amongst the greatest heroes of history," says the eminent Belgian scholar de la Vall?e Poussin, and from him, as from Gautama, we shall all do well to learn the spirit of tolerance and courtesy. Yet both of them speak out bluntly and shrewdly enough at times. It is recorded that when the great teacher met men whose doctrines were morally dangerous or intellectually insincere, he harried them remorselessly till "the sweat poured from them" and they cried, "As well might one meet an infuriated bull or dangerous snake as the ascetic Gautama!" Of those whose teachings were sincere and earnest he was wonderfully tolerant, even advising a soldier disciple to give alms to them and their followers, no less than to the Buddhist monks.

In this spirit the Belgian scholar, probably the greatest living authority upon Buddhism as a whole, is lovingly tolerant towards Buddhism and honest Buddhists, but of Neo-Buddhism he says: "It is at once frivolous and detestable--dangerous, perhaps, for very feeble intellects." Even so, a vast Neo-Buddhist Church is not impossible!

European and American Buddhists, then, fall into these two classes: those who are honest and sincere students of Buddhism and followers of Gautama, and those of whom the most charitable thing that can be said is that they lead astray "foolish women," and other sentimentalists. To illustrate the methods of these two schools, who are unfortunately at present often working in an unnatural alliance, let me describe two recent experiences.

On Easter Day I went from the simple and exquisite beauty of our Communion Service, in which the glamour of the Resurrection is ever being renewed, to a Buddhist church within a stone's throw, here in the heart of San Francisco. There, as in innumerable other centres of Buddhist life, the birth of Gautama was being celebrated; and I could unhesitatingly join in paying reverence to the memory of the great Indian teacher. But it was certainly amazing and a little staggering to find "Buddhist High Mass" being performed, the celebrant calling himself a bishop and ordaining on his own initiative abbots and abbesses. Three altar candles representing the Buddha, the Law, and the Order being lighted, the "bishop," preceded by seven or eight American and British monks in yellow robes, and by the Abbess, known as Mahadevi, ascended to the platform, which contains a beautiful Japanese shrine of the Hongwanji sect. Several monks from Japan, to my surprise, assisted in the strange service that followed, which began with the invocation of Amida Buddha, and went on in an astonishing hotch-potch of the cults of the primitive and the later Buddhism derived indiscriminately from Ceylon, Tibet, and Japan.

In his sermon he claimed to have founded no less than eighty missions in the past ten years in California, and said some shrewd things in criticism of the Christian Church, of which I am persuaded he was himself once a member. For the rest it was a practical discourse enough; he advised his followers, if they would live as long as he , they must change their wrinkles into dimples, and learn the secret of a serene mind. He gave notice that in the evening there would be a banquet and a dance, in which he would join, if widows and maidens pressed him, and immediately after the service he saluted them all "with a holy kiss," which they seemed to enjoy as much as he. There is something really attractive about this jovial monk, and he has the energy, the ubiquity and the perseverance of another "Persian prince" who is equally opposed to Christianity!

It is not by such means that Buddhism can be revived.

But there are others! Some years ago I had a delightful talk with one of them in the shadow of the great pagoda from which our organist did not come. He was a Scot, a scholar and scrupulously honest, and his name is already widely known as the translator of both German and P?li works. Quite frankly he told me why he had taken the yellow robe, and how, having lost his faith in Christianity, he found in the Buddhist books something which saved his reason and probably his life: then, turning to me, he said: "How glad you fellows would be if you could get rid of the Old Testament."

Such men as these three ought not to be associated with those who claim to teach "esoteric" Buddhism. There is really no such thing; "I have preached the Law without making any distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrine," said Gautama, "for I have no such thing as the closed fist of the teacher who keeps some things in reserve."

There is fortunately a marked improvement in this respect in missionary methods: but the old order has not yet given place to the new. The present writer was recently classed, in a public address in Rangoon, with the Kaiser and Antichrist--as a "Sign of the Times."

They are, fortunately, even now parting company: the "bishop," for example, has been obliged to start a rival "church" in San Francisco.

HOW TO STUDY BUDDHISM

The Christian missionary in Buddhist lands is faced with a task of infinite fascination. He is dealing, in the first place, with remarkable peoples for whom their religion has done much of the great service which Christianity has done for him and his people. He will find everywhere traces of a mighty Buddhist civilisation, and in many places, if he has the eye to see, proofs that this venerable religion is still alive and is reforming itself to meet the needs of the modern world. In the second place, he will find that it is vitally linked up with the intensely interesting and important nationalist movements of Asia, and that he cannot understand the political situation in these countries without a close and careful study of the religion. And in the third place, he will find that it is not only as part and parcel of nationalist movements that Buddhism is alive, but that it has an international programme and that it is closely bound up with the movement of "Asia for the Asiatics"--a movement deserving of respectful and sympathetic study.

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