the books constituting the sacred canon of the Buddhists. Dr. Rhys Davids, an eminent specialist in orientalism, and Professor Monier Williams, a profound student of Indian literature, and others, are authorities, laying bare the import of the originals, from which we must learn the reality. This we do not find in the "Light of Asia." To begin with, the Gautama of the originals is not the "Light" that Mr. Arnold makes him to be. Professor Wilkinson's charge is thus stated: "I shall therefore not say that Mr. Arnold with deliberate purpose takes biblical phrases, consecrated to the Christian imagination and to the Christian heart by association with Jesus, and transfers them by application to Gautama in order to cheat the surprised and bewildered mind into the half-conscious suspicion that, after all, Jesus was but one in a class, larger or smaller, in which Gautama was another and a peer. But I may say, and I will, that if Mr. Arnold had had such a sinister purpose, unconfessed, he could not have chosen a way better adapted than his actual, to accomplish it." Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Arnold has simply put more into the legends than is in them, to make of his hero "the highest, gentlest and most beneficent with one exception." To illustrate, he has represented Buddha as loving his wife with Christian affection, and the great renunciation, so skilfully portrayed is in leaving this dear one for the life of an ascetic. But there is nothing of this in the legend. We there learn that he turned "disgusted" from his home, "roused to action like a man who is told that his house is on fire."

We are prepared, then, to understand that Buddhism, as a system, will not be faithfully revealed to us in this poem-but rather something over which the light of Christianity has been reflected through the author's imagination. Buddhism can be seen far more truly in the translation of a worker like Hardy, who gives us his method in the preface to his work :

"In the preparation of the present manual, I have kept one object steadily in view-What is Buddhism? A deep interest in the subject; intense application; honesty of purpose; a long residence in a country where the system is professed; a daily use of the language from which I have principally translated; and constancy of intercourse with the srama priests, have been my personal advantages. I am not aware that I have omitted any great feature of the system. I have never willingly perverted any statement and have taken all practical methods to secure the utmost accuracy."

Buddhism as a system is largely a rehash of Hinduism, or more strictly speaking, of Brahmanism, with the oppressive system of caste theoretically ignored. In it the Brahmanic dogma of absorption reappears as nirvan or annihilation, if it be intended as anything intrinsically different from absorption. Fancied connection between Buddhism and Christianity has been traced. But two eminent authorities, Dr. Rhys Davids and Max Müller, give it as their decided opinion that there is no historic connection here, and, we may add, no connection at all, except as Buddhism must have some truth in it, and all truth is connected. Now, what is this vaunted system which it has become the fashion in certain quarters to laud as the almost-equal, if not equal or superior of Christianity? It is not a religion, for it is without a God and cannot have any real worship. It is rather a system of ethics with a philosophy of existence, and by its ethical and philosophical claims it must be judged.

There seems to be a kind of Buddhist decologue, which Mr. Arnold has in the last book of his poem wrought into lines, and which Professor Wilkinson tells us it is hard to discriminate from "mere and pure doggerel." As there given, they make a plausible showing for the system. However, when we turn to the faithful translation of a man who spent his life in studying the record, there we learn just what Buddhist morals are. We find that Buddhist precepts are rendered nugatory and impracticable by casuistry and Pharisaical refinements. To illustrate by two or three examples, first among Buddha's precepts, no life is to be taken. Murder as understood in the Mosaic prohibition is not here intended, but the taking of any life. There is no provision for capital punishment, and the destruction of all mere animal life, even of an insect, is forbidden. And note the casuistry woven about this precept: "If it is intended to take the life of a particular person, by throwing a dart or javelin, and the weapon kill another, it is not murder." "When a command is given to take the life of a particular person at a particular time-place-in a particular manner-by a particular weapon' -and the killing be done contrary to all this as to time, place, etc., "it is not murder." Again, take the prohibition on lying, to which, among other comments defining the essence of a lie,

and good enough, a third and fourth are added thus: (3) "There must be some endeavor to prevent the person addressed from learning the truth." (4) "There must be the discovery by the person deceived, that what has been told him is not true." The most glaring falsehood may become truth by such teaching, or at least it need not be deemed a lie.

One more illustration may be given concerning the mutual relation of the sexes. Numerous classes (not relationships) of women are mentioned who are not to be approached, and the whole comment leaves classes of women available to the evilinclined. And then, "four things are necessary to constitute this crime: 1. There must be some one that it is unlawful to approach. 2. There must be evil intention. 3. There must be some act or effort to carry that intention into effect. 4. There must be the accomplishment of the intention." How infinitely is all this below the simple teaching of Jesus and His apostles. The reviewer well says, "Let Buddhist morality swim if it can, with such a millstone, tied in a knot that none will untie, about its neck."

It illustrates this question of Buddhist morality, to refer to the subject of woman in the system. Mrs. C. Stanton has recently sought, in the North American Review, to cast a reproach on Christianity by sinking it below other religions in its estimate of woman and treatment of her. In spite of Paul's seemingly hard sayings about woman and marriage, compared with Buddhism, his injunctions touching a gentle and tender regard for woman, and his acknowledgment of the labors of many women, who were his "helpers in Christ Jesus "-among them Priscilla who, with her husband, "laid down her neck" for Him; Mary, who "bestowed much favor on us;" Jania, “of note among the Apostles;" "beloved Persis which labored much in the Lord," with, "Tryphena and Tryphora (one or both ladies) who labor in the Lord." Turning to Buddhism, we find many hard sayings that cannot be harmonized with any proper estimate of woman. Indeed in a system which teaches that only when the sex, in the rounds of transmigration, is changed, can woman attain the highest good, how could the estimate of woman be other than it is? Specimens from Mr. Hardy show what

this estimate is: "Women are hasty, they are given to quarrel, they exercise hatred and are full of evil." Buddha said, “Any woman whatever, if she have proper opportunity, and can do it in secret, and be enticed thereto, will do that which is wrong, however ugly the paramour may be." Although there are precepts in Buddhism that inculcate a gracious bearing in the husband toward his wife, still, as can be plainly seen, it is the graciousness of a man toward "the woman whom he possesses," to quote from the literature, and implies inferiority in woman. In seeking the highest good, nirvan, be it annihilation, or the bliss as they deem it, of eternal unconscious rest, the candidate "must be a male and not a female." "He must avoid all sins that would cause him to be born as a woman."

It is manifest that the chasm of difference between Christianity and Buddhism, renders comparison ludicrous. Let any one seriously and honestly study the two systems, in the earliest documents of both, and he must be convinced that while the one seems divine, the other is of the earth earthy. The New Testament history and teaching are straightforward, simple, and sublime, the Buddhist legends and doctrines are hazy as well as wearisome in frivolous and impractical details. Jesus is peerless and supreme in simplicity, purity and majesty. Buddha is a dreamy recluse, of whom most trivial details abound in the legends, and yet whose very existence has been doubted.

As to the practical outcome of the two systems, it seems like the sheerest perversity that prevents one seeing, that while Christianity has blest and elevated nations and generations, this is just what Buddhism has failed to do. India, China, Japanthese have been the great fields of its operation—Japan is the last country into which it spread, and looking at its history and effects there Max Müller writes, "Surely Japan is ripe for better things." Setting aside the testimony of missionary workers in these great fields, it seems almost inexplicable, that by any ordinary mode of observation or interpretation of facts, any one cannot see how sad a failure Buddhism has been. On the other hand, even sceptical minds have been constrained to see in history the mighty work of Jesus on humanity. Lecky says of Christianity, "as a matter of fact, it has probably done more

to quicken the affections of mankind, to promote piety, to create a pure and merciful ideal, than any other influence that has ever acted on the world." According to the famous saying of Richter, Jesus, "being holiest among the mighty, and mightiest among the holy, has with that pierced hand of His, lifted the gates of empire off their hinges, has turned the stream of centuries out of its channels, and still governs the ages."

How immeasurably vast the difference in the answer these two systems give to the awful question of human destiny. The one can only hint at evolution through multiplied transmigrations; the very statement of them so absurd that the mind revolts from the representation. And in the end, the highest good offered, is not an existence of any positive worth, but the dismal blank of nirvan-some kind of nonentity. In contrast with this we have in the Christian system the simple idea of the one present practical holy life, leading to the conscious joy and noble activities of a blessed future life. The reviewer of the "Light of Asia," has made this book, and the system of Buddhism, look sorry enough. But he has not been unfair to the system," the casuistry and trifling character" of which he could have more fully illustrated; but he forbore, as he tells us, out of "a consideration of mercy toward the reader." Of his treatment of it, he says, "Buddhism has no just cause to complain. So far from it, the system might easily, and that in consistency with truth, have been made to appear greatly more ridiculous." That there are truths in the system is simply saying that error is perhaps nowhere more "pure and simple." But to all whose whim of sentimentality turns their eyes to this poor, dim "light," the caution of the reviewer is timely: "How foolish to chant your ode to a meteor of the twilight when the great sun himself already sits half-risen on the kindled limits of the morning!"

REV. DR. HOWARD CROSBY said: There is a certain class that like to be queer, and they take up anything that is peculiar whatever it may be and advocate it. I have a friend in this city who, just from the love of the queer is a Buddhist, and goes about with long hair and a broad hat lecturing on Buddha. Another class likely to become Buddhists are romantic young