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future state. If you can form some conception of it which 
brings it to your minds in a more tangible shape, I shall be 
glad that you should do so, for I have no wish to do aught but 
full justice to the system I am attempting to describe. But 
what I can say without doubt is this : that the prospect of 
Nirwana does not influence with hope one in a hundred I 
might say a thousand — of those amongst whom I have lived, and 
continually sought to ascertain with what hope they were living, 
or yet more, dying , when death came, as it comes to all of us in 
turn. The most striking proof I will adduce is this : when 
death approaches, in some of its exterior signs of approach, 
the sufferer turns to his friends, and often to the priest for 
what — for consolation ? Alas ! no; for some chance of prolonging 
life, some charm to stay the disease, or keep the evil spirit who 
is inflicting it at a distance— it may be for a little space and 
that is all ; and after death they mourn for the dead, not only 
without hope, but in fear and trembling. The bird of the air 
whose voice they hear, the animal that pasess by them in the 
gloom, these may, any of them, be the lost one revisiting in 
sadness the scenes he has left. Yery few, indeed, can die and 
leave behind them actual hope of even that dim and uncertain 
future of rest being attained. So time, and time alone, does 
its work of a partial consolation, and the dead are forgotten, 
and the survivors live on with no higher motive to incite 
them to good or to deter them from evil. Such is the 
system of Buddhism of which, a few weeks ago, one who 
knows the theory from books, spoke as if it might vie with our 
own Christianity in excellence. If he had lived amongst its 
followers as I have done — if he had observed the way in 
which a national religion shows its effects upon a people, i. e. in 
making better those who follow it the most sincerely he would 
have, I venture to say, come to a very different conclusion from 
that to which he seems to have come ; and certainly, if he had 
known the priests of this religion, as I have done, in friendly 
intercourse and quiet converse, and heard them calmly express 
their indifference as to the wider extension of their principles, 
or the success of Christianity itself as a possible event, ne 
would not have ventured to say of Buddism that it was a 
missionary religion, seeking to propagate itself by extension, 
like ours — which bids us “ go into all the world, and preach 
the Gospel to every creature.” 
Before I conclude, I should like to refer for a moment to a 
letter which has been received from a distinguished person,— 
Professor Chandler, of Oxford— who, having read a proof copy 
of my paper, very kindly and properly offers his comments 
