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No wonder that they characterize Buddha's religion as atheism, denouncing it as unsatisfactory, or even nihilistic, and vigorously repudiate any kinship which might be supposed to obtain between both creeds.

The God-idea, representing the ultimate authority of conduct, is so fundamental in Christianity that Christians cannot think of any atheistic religion; they actually identify religion with belief in God and, indeed, we confess that it is remarkable how Buddhists can dispense at all with the God-idea.

We grant that no religion can exist without a belief in the existence of an ultimate authority of conduct; but in this sense Buddhism, too, teaches a belief in God. The Abhidharma, or Buddhist philosophy, distinctly rejects the idea of a creation by an Ishvara, i. e., a personal Creator; but it recognizes that all deeds, be they good or evil, will bear fruit according to their nature, and they teach that this law, which is ultimately identical with the law of cause and effect, is an irreversible reality; that there are no exceptions or deviations from it. Thus, law takes to some extent the place of the God-idea, and Buddhists gain a personal attitude to it, similarly as Christians do when speaking of God, in quite a peculiar way. The doctrine of the Trikâya, or the three bodies, teaches us that Buddha has three personalities; the first one is the Dharma-Kâya, or the body of the law: it corresponds to the Holy Ghost in the Christian dogmatology. The second personality is the Nirmâna-Kâya, or the body of transformations; it is transient in its various forms, and its

most important and latest appearance has been Gautama Siddhârtha. This corresponds to the second person of the Christian, Trinity, to God the Son, or Christ. But there is this difference: that the Nirmâna Kâya appeared before Gautama Siddhartha in many other incarnations and will reappear in this and other worlds again; for every one who has attained enlightenment and reached the ideal of perfection is a Tathagata, a Buddha, a preacher of moral truth. It is in agreement with this conception that Philo speaks of Moses as a former incarnation of the Logos. The third personality of Buddha is called Sambhoga-Kâya, or the body of bliss. It is the Christian idea of God the Father. Buddha in his capacity as Sambhoga-Kâya is described as eternal, omnipresent, and omnipotent. He is the life of all that lives and the reality of all that exists. Thus he is the All in All, in whom we live and move and have our being.

Buddhistic atheism, apparently, is not wholly un- }

like Christian theism.

Christianity possesses in the idea, and, indeed, in the very word "God," representing the authority of moral conduct, in a most forcible manner, a symbol of invaluable importance; it is an advantage which has contributed not a little to make Christianity so powerful and popular, so impressive and effective as it has proved to be. In this little word "God," much has been condensed, and it contains an unfathomable depth of religious comfort.

No serious thinker who has ever grappled with

the problem of the God-idea can have any doubt that the conception of God as an individual being is a mere allegory, which, however, symbolizes a great truth which it is difficult to explain to untrained minds in purely scientific terms. There is a disadvantage and there is also an advantage in mythological terms. Let us here as everywhere learn from various methods of presenting a truth. Let us prove all and hold fast that which is good.

BUDDHISTIC ART.

The spirit of Buddhism also exhibits a palpable affinity with Christian conceptions in its art productions, which, we have every reason to believe, originated uninfluenced by either the technique or the taste of the Western civilization. The difference between Western and Eastern taste is as strongly marked in religious art as in the other walks of life. Nevertheless there is an unmistakable coincidence of aspiration, which will strike any one who visits the Buddhistic departments of the Musée Guimet at Paris, or glances over the Illustrated Guide of its collections. We reproduce here a few pictures which seem to us especially instructive, because they express sentiments which are not foreign to the student of Christian art.

1. Mi-rô-Kou, or Maitreya, the Buddha to come, of gilded wood (Sixteenth Century), seated upon a lotus in an attitude as if ready to rise and proclaim to the world the Gospel of the Good Law. The halo

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