JAPAN AND SOME OF ITS PEOBLEMS, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL. 33 



loyalty and patriotism, whicli have from early times been so 

 manifest among the Japanese, probably had their root, as the 

 virtues of most non-Christian people have, in self interest, 

 corporate and individual. 



Buddhism, in its original form as taught by Sakyamuni, has 

 still less claim than Shintoism to be counted as a religion. 

 Monier Williams denies that it is such, and describes it as " a 

 mere system of morality and philosophy founded on a pessimistic 

 view of life."* But its later developments, known as Mahayana 

 or Higher Buddhism, found in China and afterwards in Japan, 

 give evidence of the invariable refusal of the religious instinct 

 of mankind to be satisfied with negations, powerless precepts, 

 and the absence of a concrete object of worship. The abstract 

 Buddha is everywhere present, but has countless manifestations ; 

 one or many, sometimes a triad, are given the highest place in 

 their pantheon. Images of these abound, from the gigantic 

 figure at Kamakura to a tiny charm on a necklace. A spacious 

 hall in a temple at Kyoto is filled with them. 



A central figure of superhuman proportions, seated in the 

 well-known attitude, which irresistibly suggests the contrast 

 with Him who " went about doing good," has on either hand 

 1,500 life-sized standing figures gilded, and each in some slight 

 particular differing from the others. The popular Buddha is 

 Amida, who is regarded as a real person, both Creator and 

 Preserver, the Lord of life and the all Merciful Father. He is 

 said to have lived a perfect life on earth, and when by labour 

 and suffering he had acquired sufficient merit, he departed to the 

 Western Paradise, where he will receive the faithful, till by 

 further progress they reacli the ultimate Nirvana. Connected 

 with him are two other principal Buddhas, Kwannon the goddess 

 of mercy and Seishi the god of might. 



Though the conclusions which Dr. Kichard draws from such 

 facts in his recent book, which he calls " The New Testament of 

 Higher Buddhism," are exaggerated and misleading, it is quite 

 possible to find what seem to be traces of some Christian 

 influence which had been carried, perhaps by Nestorians, to China 

 in the fourth or fifth century after Christ. But it muse have 

 been a teaching either grievously defective on the part of those 

 who gave it or as seriously mutilated by those who received it. 

 Its doctrine is that of a tritheism, not of the Trinity. It has 

 nothing to say of sin and its remedy, of atonement and recon- 

 ciliation, still less of the work of the Divine Spirit as given in 



* Buddhism, p. 539. 



D 



