Buddhism, however, viewed in any aspect, must be regarded as a gloomy religion.  It is hard enough to crucify all natural desires and lead a life of self-abnegation; but for the spirit, in order to be purified, to be obliged to enter into body after body, each subject to disease, misery, and death, and then after a long series of migrations to be virtually annihilated as the highest consummation of happiness, gives one but a poor conception of the efforts of the proudest unaided intellect to arrive at a knowledge of God and immortal bliss.  It would thus seem that the true idea of God, or even that of immortality, is not an innate conception revealed by consciousness; for why should good and intellectual men, trained to study and reflection all their lives, gain no clearer or more inspiring notions of the Being of infinite love and power, or of the happiness which He is able and willing to impart?  What a feeble conception of God is a being without the oversight of the worlds that he created, without volition or purpose or benevolence, or anything corresponding to our notion of personality!  What a poor conception of supernal bliss, without love or action or thought or holy companionship,—­only rest, unthinking repose, and absence from disease, misery, and death, a state of endless impassiveness!  What is Nirvana but an escape from death and deliverance from mortal desires, where there are neither ideas nor the absence of ideas; no changes or hopes or fears, it is true, but also no joy, no aspiration, no growth, no life,—­a state of nonentity, where even consciousness is practically extinguished, and individuality merged into absolute stillness and a dreamless rest?  What a poor reward for ages of struggle and the final achievement of exalted virtue!

But if Buddhism failed to arrive at what we believe to be a true knowledge of God and the destiny of the soul,—­the forgiveness and remission, or doing-away, of sin, and a joyful and active immortality, all which I take to be revelations rather than intuitions,—­yet there were some great certitudes in its teachings which did appeal to consciousness,—­certitudes recognized by the noblest teachers of all ages and nations.  These were such realities as truthfulness, sincerity, purity, justice, mercy, benevolence, unselfishness, love.  The human mind arrives at ethical truths, even when all speculation about God and immortality has failed.  The idea of God may be lost, but not that of moral obligation,—­the mutual social duties of mankind.  There is a sense of duty even among savages; in the lowest civilization there is true admiration of virtue.  No sage that I ever read of enjoined immorality.  No ignorance can prevent the sense of shame, of honor, or of duty.  Everybody detests a liar and despises a thief.  Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not kill,—­these are laws written in human consciousness as well as in the code of Moses.  Obedience and respect to parents are instincts as well as obligations.