569th OEDINARY GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, 

 WESTMINSTER, ON MONDAY, MAY 3rd, 1915, at 4.30 p.m. 



Col. M. A. Alves took the Chair. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Chairman invited the Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, who had 

 favoured the Institute with important papers upon two former occasions,, 

 to deliver his address on " Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity." 



MAHAY AN A BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



By the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.I). 



~A PAHAYANA Buddhism has recently been asserted to 

 JAX. resemble Christianity very closely. A writer who has 

 spent many years in China, in close contact with those who 

 profess the former faith, speaks of " the extensive common*" 

 ground in Buddhism and Christianity/' tells us that there is a 

 "vital connexion between Christianity and Buddhism," styles the 

 MaMy&na school " New Testament Buddhism," finds " a com- 

 plete identification of the attributes of the Christian Trinity in 

 the New Buddhism," and even ventures to assert that " its 

 theology is Christian in everything almost but its nomen- 

 clature." He adds a statement with which, if it he the truth, 

 we must reckon in all missionary work in the Far East, and 

 which we now proceed to examine. " If it be, as it is more and 

 more believed, that the Mahayana Faith is not Buddhism, 

 properly so called, but an Asiatic form of the same Gospel of 



* The New Testament of Higher Buddhism, by Timothy Richard, D.D.,, 

 Litt.D., pp. 2, 9, 15, 27 and 39. 



