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gladly connect it with their religion that they possess these 
natural virtues ; but, on the other hand, I cannot deny that 
they are very deficient in truthfulness and honesty,— that they 
are covetous to a strong extent, and revengeful ; — but I am not 
desirous of giving a catalogue of their faults. The defect in 
their morality is this — they are the slaves of the impulse of the 
hour. As they are not taught to resist wrong as wrong, and to 
do right because it is right and as responsible to a Being of 
infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, they yield, each of them, 
almost without a struggle to their besetting temptation, and 
great crimes are committed, not, as with us, either by those 
who love better things, after a struggle and under strong temp- 
tation, or by the wilfully depraved who know what they are 
doing— but by what we might call good and bad alike, without 
distinction, and almost without compunction. That is the great 
peculiarity of Buddhism : evil deeds are committed by Bud- 
dhists whom we should otherwise consider very good men. If 
they were tempted, they would, without the least compunction, 
commit the grossest crimes. It is possible, of course, in a 
Christian country to have such cases, but there they are 
common. They never seem to have the least idea of resisting 
a temptation, and I do not think I am uncharitable in saying 
this. I have lived in the midst of them for a long time, 
and I have always recognized most gladly all that was good 
amongst them. 
(4.) I now pass to that which I will place last in my sad enu- 
meration of the shortcomings of Buddhism, — its having no 
future, no prospect of a bright eternity, no love of a Father 
who will be then present with us, giving us that which at this 
season we pray for, “ the fruition of His glorious Godhead.” 
But I must not assert that Buddhism in theory presents no 
future to its followers. It tells them very plainly that death 
may not be the end — that they may find existence still clinging 
to them after they have laid down the life they now live ; nay, 
that there is an alternative of good or evil. But what are 
these ? Punishment in the one case — the life of a brute, it 
may be, they will have to experience, if they have failed in the 
requirements of that strangely inconsistent religion in which 
they have had no consolation, and can have felt no joy. The 
punishment, so far as it is such, I have mentioned. The 
reward I also alluded to earlier in my remarks : it is to cease 
to exist — consciously and individually to be lost for ever in 
the great universal life, absorbed in that which, pervading all 
things, is to our conception nowhere. I will not say that I 
can lay before you in adequate terms this strange theory of a 
