The practical Recoil from the Mysteries of Buddhism. 423

India has given to China the most effective and earnest of its religions. For eighteen hundred years China has regarded India with something like the enthusiasm with which Europe has looked on Palestine as the earthly source of its heavenly light; but the light that was in it has been darkness, and great has been the darkness! for it has uttered the fearful conclusions, that man is greater than God; that the highest object of worship is an annihilated spirit; that the summum bonum is final extinction; and that the reasons for right doing, and for the love of man, are not а common brotherhood, but a common doom. The basis of Buddhist hope is not the conviction that there are eternal principles underlying human affairs, or that Infinite Wisdom is directing the retributions of Life; but that the universe, resting on infinite nothingness, has been perpetuated by human follies and affections, and can only be unriddled by discovering the ignorance which has given impetus to unreal sorrows.

Buddhism has an awful notion of a Fate which links every class of being in inexorable chains, but no idea of deliverance. It worships, but it has no God; it groans over sin, but has not the slightest conception of forgiveness, redemption, or sacrifice. It believes in an immortality of wretchedness, but only in later times has fashioned for itself a paradise. It proffers a moral code, but furnishes no reason for its observance. Yet, strange to say, it seems to rebel-or the human heart which has been influenced, stimulated, though crushed by it-has rebelled, against its own conclusions. It has deified the great philosophical Atheist. The sage, the Boddhisatwa, the semi-historical individuals referred to in their religious traditions, are the virtual Gods of these people. The highest conception that they have had of man has received from them their highest reverence, and even the pure selfishness of Buddhist morality has inspired apparent sacrifice for the good of others, and kindled a burning desire for such subsequent births as would give the devotee power to instruct, and convert others from the empire of sense and the misery of life.

The dim, thick darkness of Nirvâna glitters with the phantasms of imaginary paradises: having lost the idea of genuine immortality, Buddhism has unveiled for itself a past eternity, and groaned over the wretchedness or exulted in the imaginary blessedness of that. Viewed in this way, it seems to be an exceeding bitter cry to Heaven for help. It proclaims the misery of sin, and thus asks for redemption. It declares its willingness to accept the highest revelation that it knows of truth, goodness, sacrifice, and righteousness in human form, and thus it seems to cry aloud for the true Lord of man. It acknowledges the worth

of written law, and so is prepared to understand the meaning of the Bible. It has been accustomed for two thousand years to the functions of a hierarchy and to the existence of a holy community, and thus is ready to understand the claims of the Christian ministry and Church.

Even the innumerable sects into which Buddhism is dividedthe Popery of Thibet, the Protestantism of Burmah, the Rationalism of China, the specialities of Nepaul, Mongolia, and Japan, present some singular analogies to the external history of Christianity which will tell quite as much in our favour as against it, in dealing with men who believe, as no other heathen have done, in TRUTH as the basis of their religion. The missionary fervour of Buddhism, and the martyr-like zeal of its great founders, seem, we think, to yield us more of hope than of despondency. It may be an argument with millions, that a foreign religion preached by earnest missionaries, and promising infinitely more than they have ever found in their own-cutting away the whole necessity of their awful creed and toilsome labour-may do with them and their descendants what their ancestors did with the devil-worship and nature-worship of Eastern nations.

Once more, the wide diffusion of Buddhism over the Oriental mind may be a preparation for, rather than an argument against, what will be the wider diffusion of Christianity. It will still be seen that whereas Buddhism has conquered Turkish hordes and nomadic Tartars, the phlegmatic Chinaman and the luxurious Cingalese, there have been far greater diversities among the followers of Jesus Christ, in whom the savage and the civilized, the Jew and the Greek, the philosopher and the little child, the enterprising Anglo-Saxon and the dreamy Hindu, have found their deepest unity. He has grasped the reins of every kind of monarchy, has sat dictator in every class of philosophy, and has made conquest of every kind of man. The vast extent of Buddhism has weakened its energies, and destroyed its unity; but there is still sufficient intercommunion to make the conversion of large classes of the subjects of any Buddhist kingdom the prelude to the realization of the splendid prophetic vision that 'a nation shall be born in a day.'

There is no caste in Buddhism to arrest the progress of Christianity, and while its practical development seems to our ears to utter a piercing cry for help, may the Christian Church have faith, and energy, and sacrifice enough to convince its votaries that not blind destiny, but Infinite Love, wraps around this universe; that the great fear that haunts them is an unsustained delusion; and that there is One in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge! China and Japan are now open to

European and Christian influences, and the great battle must be fought between this hoary faith and the religion of One greater than Buddha, and fought by men as laborious and devoted as the pilgrim on whose traces we have lingered so long. May God forbid that the work of Christian men should be paralysed, that our holy faith should be blasphemed by proceedings under the name of Free-trade in Opium, whose torpedo and defiling touch are stigmatized even by the Ethics of Confucius and of Buddha, as egregious perfidy and inhuman crime !

The friends of Christian Missions owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Edkins for his very able and deeply interesting little volume on the religious condition of the Chinese. He has sketched with masterly hand the features of the three great religious systems that have prevailed in China, and has analysed their several and combined influence on literature, philosophy, and social life. He has done much to explain the singular co-existence of these three great phases of religious creed and observance, and the fact that the same individuals may profess and defend the three religions at one and the same time. Nothing would be more inaccurate, according to Mr. Edkins, than to divide the population into Taouists, Confucianists, and Buddhists. The Buddhists are now Confucianists, and Confucianists are Buddhists. The three forms of faith appeal and respond to three different portions of human nature, the material, moral, and spiritual, and are practically speaking supplemental the one to the other. Mr. Edkins' sketch of the work of the Roman Catholics, of the Mahomedans, and of the semi-Christian insurgents is full of deep interest, and will amply repay the perusal of all who are interested in the well-being of the hundreds of millions of Chinese.

ART. V.-(1.) An Essay on the Causes of Rain, and its allied Phenomena. By G. A. ROWELL, Honorary Member of the Ashmolean Society. Oxford. 1859.

(2.) The Rain Cloud: or, an Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers, and Uses of Rain in various Parts of the World. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1846.

No water, no vegetables. No vegetables, no animals. animals, no men.

No

The due irrigation of the earth is a point of vital importance in the adjustments of creation. The machinery by which this is

accomplished is complex, and in many respects extremely recondite; but viewed as a great apparatus for pumping up water and sprinkling the surface of the planet, it is impossible to conceive of a happier or a more effective contrivance.

For the better comprehension of the subject, let us venture upon a trifling supposition. In the interior of some continent, just on the spot where an old map-maker would have planted an elephant and castle for want of true topographical material, there lies a farm, which is far removed from lake and river, and at best but stingily supplied with springs or wells. There has been no rain for several years. How is the poor proprietor to keep it in cultivation? Noted as the agricultural mind is for discontent-always complaining of meteorological hardships and indulging in philippics against the skies-he would doubtless avail himself of his privilege of grumbling to the fullest extent, and might perhaps be disposed to abandon his ill-used freehold in despair. To dig a long canal for the purpose of conveying water from the nearest stream, and then to furrow his fields with innumerable little channels for its distribution, would be as tedious and elaborate a process as it would be to plough up all the corn-fields of Great Britain with penknives, or reap them with scissors. It would be ridiculous to think of moistening his acres by means of watering-carts, and insane to attempt it by means of gigantic squirts. Not many days ago we watched a man who was watering a spacious area in a fashionable town with a view to subjugate the dust. He had a force-pump mounted on wheels, with a stumpy barrel to hold the fluid, a stumpy hose to direct the stream, and a stumpy lever to expel it from the machine. Stationing his apparatus at a particular point, he slowly scattered the liquid over the ground within range of the jet, and then shifting his quarters, proceeded to operate on a new space, until a gurgling in the tube announced that the receptacle was exhausted. Away he trudged to a cistern, dragging his engine after him, and then with some effort-we thought a little groaning-drew fourteen big pails of water, with which he replenished his reservoir of rain. Returning to the area, our Aquarius executed a little more irrigation, but it was obviously as poor an apology for a shower as a peal of sheet-iron thunder at a theatre is for one of those echoing crashes which seem to tear the firmament asunder. By the time that one portion of the ground was syringed, another was nearly dry; here and there were streaks and patches which had been left untouched; in fact so superficial was the sprinkling the place had received, that Beau Brummell, who professed to have caught cold when shut up in a coffee-room with a damp stranger, might have

bivouacked on the spot without incurring a twinge of rheumatism. Toiling at this rate, thought we, if the whole population of England were converted into drawers of water and workers of pumps, they would scarcely suffice to souse a single county and maintain it in a state of vegetable prosperity.

Now nature takes all this trouble off our hands. Whilst the owner of our imaginary farm is puzzling his brains to discover how he shall procure the fertilizing fluid-comforting himself meanwhile with many agricultural growls-she is preparing for him a rich and gratuitous supply. Far off-it may be hundreds or thousands of miles away-vapour is ascending from some great expanse of liquid, or from some humid tract of land. Water is the life's blood of the world. To keep it in circulation is not less needful for the health of the planet, than is the flow of the red rivers through our veins for the health of man. But as the fluid always seeks its level, and finds it in the ocean, how is it to be brought back and scattered over the high grounds, or hoisted to the summits of the mountains? How, too, shall it be freed from the salts and other foreign ingredients it may have imbibed in the soil, or found in the sea, and thus return to its duty in a pure and uncontaminated condition ?

The magnificent process of evaporation is the first step which is taken for the farmer's relief. Since water is a fluid of considerable gravity, being 860 times heavier than air (at a temperature of 60° at the level of the sea), it is necessary that it should be rendered portable through the atmosphere. This object is accomplished by converting it into vapour through the agency of heat. The ocean has in fact been called a great still, and the sun may be regarded as the great distiller. But because water when placed in a pan over the fire does not pass into steam, properly so called, until it reaches a temperature of 212°, we must not suppose that it refuses to volatilize at all lower degrees of the thermometric scale. On the contrary, it gives out vapour at every stage, though at a tardier rate, and of feebler tension. Even ice and snow will waste away in an atmosphere cooled below the freezing point; for Boyle found that an icicle weighing two ounces, when poised in a balance in the evening, lost ten grains by morning; and Howard ascertained that a circular patch of snow, five inches in diameter, threw off 150 grains-equal to a thousand gallons per acre-in the space of a single January night.

Of course the great sheets of water on the globe are the reservoirs from which our supplies of vapour are primarily extracted. Dr. Halley calculated that the quantity brewed by the Mediterra