We answer:  Because deeper and more essential relations connect Brahmanism with the Romish Church, and the Buddhist system with Protestantism.  The human mind in Asia went through the same course of experience, afterward repeated in Europe.  It protested, in the interest of humanity, against the oppression of a priestly caste.  Brahmanism, like the Church of Rome, established a system of sacramental salvation in the hands of a sacred order.  Buddhism, like Protestantism, revolted, and established a doctrine of individual salvation based on personal character.  Brahmanism, like the Church of Rome, teaches an exclusive spiritualism, glorifying penances and martyrdom, and considers the body the enemy of the soul.  But Buddhism and Protestantism accept nature and its laws, and make a religion of humanity as well as of devotion.  To such broad statements numerous exceptions may doubtless be always found, but these are the large lines of distinction.

The Roman Catholic Church and Brahmanism place the essence of religion in sacrifices.  Each is eminently a sacrificial system.  The daily sacrifice of the mass is the central feature of the Romish Church.  So Brahmanism is a system of sacrifices.  But Protestantism and Buddhism save the soul by teaching.  In the Church of Rome the sermon is subordinate to the mass; in Protestantism and in Buddhism sermons are the main instruments by which souls are saved.  Brahmanism is a system of inflexible castes; the priestly caste is made distinct and supreme; and in Romanism the priesthood almost constitutes the church.  In Buddhism and Protestantism the laity regain their rights.  Therefore, notwithstanding the external resemblance of Buddhist rites and ceremonies to those of the Roman Catholic Church, the internal resemblance is to Protestantism.  Buddhism in Asia, like Protestantism in Europe, is a revolt of nature against spirit, of humanity against caste, of individual freedom against the despotism of an order, of salvation by faith against salvation by sacraments.  And as all revolts are apt to go too far, so it has been with Buddhism.  In asserting the rights of nature against the tyranny of spirit, Buddhism has lost God.  There is in Buddhism neither creation nor Creator.  Its tracts say:  “The rising of the world is a natural case.”  “Its rising and perishing are by nature itself.”  “It is natural that the world should rise and perish."[97] While in Brahmanism absolute spirit is the only reality, and this world is an illusion, the Buddhists know only this world, and the eternal world is so entirely unknown as to be equivalent to nullity.  But yet, as no revolt, however radical, gives up all its antecedents, so Buddhism has the same aim as Brahmanism, namely, to escape from the vicissitudes of time into the absolute rest of eternity.  They agree as to the object of existence; they differ as to the method of reaching it.  The Brahman and the Roman Catholic think that eternal rest is to be