[Footnote 1:  The sect of the Lao Tsen, or “Doctors of Reason,” whom LANDRESSE regards as a development of Buddhism, prevailed in Thibet and the countries lying between China and India in the fifth and sixth centuries; and FA HIAN always refers to them as the “Clergy of Reason.”—­Fo[)e] Kou[)e] Ki, chap. xxxviii.]

In the character of the Singhalese people there is to be traced much of the genius of their religion.  The same passiveness and love of ease which restrain from active exertion in the labours of life, find a counterpart in the adjustment by which virtue is limited to abstinence, and worship to contemplation; with only so much of actual ceremonial as may render visible to the eye what would be otherwise inaccessible to the mind.  The same love of repose which renders sleep and insensibility the richest blessings of this life, anticipates torpor, akin to extinction, as the supremest felicity of the next.  In common with all other nations they deem some form of religious worship indispensable, but, contrary to the usage of most, they are singularly indifferent as to what that particular form is to be; leaving it passively to be determined by the conjunction of circumstances, the accident of locality, and the influence of friends or worldly prospects of gain.  Still, in the hands of the Christian missionary, they are by no means the plastic substance which such a description would suggest—­capable of being moulded into any form, or retaining permanently any casual impression—­but rather a yielding fluid which adapts its shape to that of the vessel into which it may happen to be poured, without any change in its quality or any modification of its character.

From this unexcitable temperament of the people, combined with the exalted morals which form the articles of their belief, result phenomena which for upwards of three hundred years have more or less baffled the exertions of all who have laboured for the overthrow of their national superstition and the elevation of Christianity in its stead.  The precepts of the latter, when offered to the natives apart from the divinity of their origin, present something in appearance so nearly akin to their own tenets that they were slow to discern the superiority.  If Christianity requires purity and truth, temperance, honesty and benevolence, these are already discovered to be enjoined with at least equal impressiveness in the precepts of Buddha.  The Scripture commandment forbidding murder is supposed to be analogous to the Buddhist prohibition to kill[1]; and where the law and the Gospel alike enforce the love of one’s neighbour as the love of one’s self, Buddhism insists upon charity as the basis of worship, and calls on its own followers “to appease anger by gentleness, and overcome evil by good."[2]