BUDDHISM. 
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he has to encounter in the course of his life ; the 
miserable condition of his old age, and the calamity 
of death. As years increase, his skin becomes dry 
and wrinkled like an old parchment ; the flesh upon 
his bones withers and wastes away ; the blood in his 
veins flows sluggishly ; his body bends towards the 
ground ; his sight begins to fail, and even mountains 
are scarcely apparent to his weak eyes ; the sense of 
hearing is so lost that trumpets sound for him in vain ; 
the mouth loses its teeth ; and fragrance is wasted on 
his decayed sense of smelling. The diminution of his 
bodily strength compels him to have recourse to a 
staff for support, the faculties of the soul change into 
distraction and forgetfulness.” He thus at great 
length enumerates all the possible evils to which man is 
subject, and concludes by declaring that belief in the 
Buddha is the sure path of salvation. 
The path of salvation can scarcely be explained 
without entering very deeply into the mysteries of 
Indian metaphysics. All religions that do not pro- 
fess to be founded on a special revelation, must of 
necessity be Pantheistic, because Pantheism is the 
natural result to which we are led by unassisted 
reason. But, few have been content to stop here : in 
most instances men look beyond the material and 
changeable world, for that which is immaterial and 
unchangeable. The Buddhists arrive at this notion 
by abstracting all the attributes that would imply 
limitation until nothing is left but the simple idea of 
existence. This remote abstraction, which has been 
well termed “ the something-nothing,” they regard 
as the supreme God. The world and its deceptive 
