274 THE REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D., ON 



The result of our enquiry into the asserted relationship 

 between Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism is therefore that 

 the whole of the main principles of the two religions are totally 

 opposed to each other. Their ideals are different, their aims 

 are different, and what would be commended in the one system 

 would be sternly condemned in the other. Such terms as God, 

 salvation, sin, prayer, eternal life, virtue, and many others, 

 convey to the Mahayanist a meaning almost entirely contrary 

 to that which a Christian understands by them. In the 

 Mahayanist view it is a terrible crime to kill and eat any living 

 thing, but it is no harm to act as priest to Chinese worshippers 

 of evil spirits, to offer adoration to an idol, or to incorporate 

 Chinese, Japanese, or Tibetan gods into the pantheon. All 

 things considered, the resemblance and even kinship between 

 Christianity and the Greek and Roman forms of heathenism, 

 with which it had in early days to contend to the death, was 

 far closer than now exists between the Gospel of Christ and 

 the corrupt Buddhism of the Far East. The invitation to 

 recognize Mahayanism as " an Asiatic form of the Gospel of 

 Christ" is one which a study of the two religions forbids us to 

 accept. 



Discussion. 



The Rev. A. Elwin said that anyone who had spent any length 

 of time in China could not fail to come to the conclusion that 

 Buddhism and Christianity were irreconcilably opposed. He him- 

 self had spent thirty years in China. 



The Chinese speak much about the "Western Heaven." An entrance 

 is won into the Western Heaven by the continual repetition of the 

 formula O-mi-to Foh (Amida Buddha). In the morning, as one goes 

 along the street, one may pass a shop sometimes, and hear a ceaseless 

 buzzing sound ; women are repeating these words as fast as they 

 possibly can, counting the beads of their rosaries at the same time, 

 each rosary having a hundred beads. It is not necessary in order 

 to reap the advantage of these repetitions that one should repeat 

 the sacred words oneself ; it was sufficient to pay someone to do it 

 for you, and the women in the shop were doing it for hire. In the 

 Western Heaven there was neither sin, nor suffering, nor sickness, 

 nor sorrow, nor women — for if a woman repeated the mystic words 

 often enough, in the Western Heaven she became a man. 



The paper we had just heard was very interesting ; it was a paper 

 to be prized, and to be kept by one for reference. 



