great mass of Christians justify the above criticism by actually believing in the letter of their dogmas. We trust that there is a nobler Christianity than Christian dogmatism, but Sir Monier Monier-Williams regards the belief in the atonement of sin by the innocent blood of Christ, the efficacy of real prayer, the reality of an ego-soul, and the existence of a personal and miracle-working God-Creator, as the essence of Christianity.

In a summary of his comparison of Christianity with Buddhism, Professor Williams says:

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'Buddhism, I repeat, says: Act righteously through your own efforts, and for the final getting rid of all suffering, of all individuality, of all life in yourselves. Christianity says: Be righteous through a power implanted in you from above, through the power of a life-giving principle, freely given to you, and always abiding in you. The Buddha said to his followers: Take nothing from me, trust to yourselves alone.' Christ said: 'Take all from Me; trust not to yourselves. I give unto you eternal life, I give unto you the bread of heaven, I give unto you living water.' Not that these priceless gifts involve any passive condition of inaction. On the contrary, they stir the soul of the recipient with a living energy. They stimulate him to noble deeds and self-sacrificing efforts. They compel him to act as the worthy, grateful, and appreciative possessor of so inestimable a treasure.

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'Still, I seem to hear some one say: We acknowledge this; we admit the truth of what you have stated; nevertheless, for all that, you must allow that Buddhism conferred a great benefit on India by encouraging freedom of thought and by setting at liberty its teeming population, before entangled in the meshes of ceremonial observances and Brahmanical priestcraft.

"Yes, I grant this: nay, I grant even more than this. I admit that Buddhism conferred many other benefits on the

millions inhabiting the most populous part of Asia. It introduced education and culture; it encouraged literature and art; it promoted physical, moral, and intellectual progress up to a certain point; it proclaimed peace, good will, and brotherhood among men; it deprecated war between nation and nation; it avowed sympathy with social liberty and freedom; it gave back much independence to women; it preached purity in thought, word, and deed (though only for the accumulation of merit); it taught self-denial without self-torture; it inculcated generosity, charity, tolerance, love, self-sacrifice, and benevolence, even towards the inferior animals; it advocated respect for life and compassion towards all creatures ; it forbade avarice and the hoarding of money; and from its declaration that a man's future depended on his present acts and condition, it did good service for a time in preventing stagnation, stimulating exertion, promoting good works of all kinds, and elevating the character of humanity."

If Professor Williams's conception of Christianity must be accepted as true Christianity, Christianity will pass away to make room for Buddhism. Happily, Christianity is a living religion, that, having passed through the stage of metaphysical dogmatism, is still possessed of the power of regeneration, so as to approach more and more—though progress is sometimes slow-the ideal of a genuine catholicity. Those features which Professor Williams regards as the essential grandeur of Christianity, are a most serious defect; and their absence in Buddhism indicates that it is the more advanced religion. That religion only which has overcome the pagan notions of a special revelation, of atonement through blood, of wiping out the past, of the miraculous power of prayer, of the ego-consciousness as a kind of thing-in-itself, and of a creation

out of nothing by a God-magician, can eventually become the religion of mankind.

For myself, I must confess that I never felt more like a true Buddhist than after a perusal of Professor Williams's description of Buddhism; for I am now more firmly convinced than ever, that our Church-Christianity can only become a scientifically true and logically sound religion of cosmic and universal significance, by being transformed into that Buddhism which Professor Williams refuses to regard "as a religion in the proper sense of the word."

Did you never read in the Scriptures, "The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner"?

CONCLUSION.

BUDDHA's religion appears valuable for three rea

sons.

1. It is the religion of enlightenment. Buddha's principle of acquiring truth is to rely upon the best and most accurate methods man can find for investigating the truth. In his dying hour he urged his disciples to rely upon their own efforts in finding the truth, not upon the Vedas, not upon the authority of others, not even upon Buddha himself, and he added: "Hold fast to the truth as a lamp."

2. Buddha anticipated even in important details the results of a scientific soul-conception. He rejected the Brahman theory of soul-migration and explained man's continuance beyond death as a rebirth or reincarnation, a reappearance of the same soul-form. This is based on the doctrine that man's psychic nature is not a substance or entity, not an âtman or self, but consists of karma; it is the product of deeds, a form of activity conditioned by the preservation or transference of the memory of former actions. Nor did Buddha shun the unpopularity to which his message to the world was exposed, be

cause liable to be misrepresented as a "psychology without a soul."

3. While he was bold and outspoken in his negation, he proclaimed at the same time, the positive consequences of his philosophy. The negation of the âtman-soul shows the vanity of man's hankering after enjoyment, be it in this world or in a heaven beyond, and Buddha taught that by cutting off the yearning for a heaven in any form, be it on earth or beyond the clouds, man will annihilate those conditions which produce the hell of life. When the idea of an independent self is done away with, when we understand that man's character is the form of his being as shaped by, and finding expression in, deeds, and finally, when we learn that according to our deeds this form continues in the further development of life, bearing fruit according to the nature of our deeds, the irrationality of all hatred, envy, and malevolence becomes apparent, and room is left only for the aspirations of an unbounded and helpful sympathy with all evolution of life.

Buddha is, so far as we know, the first prophet who proclaimed the paramount importance of morality in religion. At the same time he is the first positivist, the first humanitarian, the first radical freethinker, the first iconoclast, and the first prophet of the Religion of Science. The more we become acquainted with the original writings of Buddhism, the more are we impressed with the greatness of Buddha's far-seeing comprehension of both the problems of religion and psychology. To be sure,