for them of a new progress, and give to that ancient and highly endowed race another chance in history.  What they want is evidently moral power, for they have all intellectual ability.  The effeminate quality which has made them slaves of tyrants during two thousand years will be taken out of them, and a virile strength substituted, when they come to see God as law and love,—­perfect law and perfect love,—­and to see that communion with him comes, not from absorption, contemplation, and inaction, but from active obedience, moral growth, and personal development.  For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by developing it, so that we may be able to serve and love him.

Chapter IV.

Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.

Sec. 1.  Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism. 
Sec. 2.  Extent of Buddhism.  Its Scriptures. 
Sec. 3.  Sakyamuni, the Founder of Buddhism. 
Sec. 4.  Leading Doctrines of Buddhism. 
Sec. 5.  The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane. 
Sec. 6.  Buddhism as a Religion. 
Sec. 7.  Karma and Nirvana. 
Sec. 8.  Good and Evil of Buddhism. 
Sec. 9.  Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.

Sec. 1.  Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit, Protestantism.

On first becoming acquainted with the mighty and ancient religion of Buddha, one may be tempted to deny the correctness of this title, “The Protestantism of the East.”  One might say, “Why not rather the Romanism of the East?” For so numerous are the resemblances between the customs of this system and those of the Romish Church, that the first Catholic missionaries who encountered the priests of Buddha were confounded, and thought that Satan had been mocking their sacred rites.  Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,[92] when he beheld the Chinese bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment:  “There is not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country.”  Mr. Davis (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, II. 491) speaks of “the celibacy of the Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes; to which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting prayers, their incense, and their candles.”  Mr. Medhurst ("China,” London, 1857) mentions the image of a virgin, called the “queen of heaven,” having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross.  Confession of sins is regularly practised.  Father Huc, in his “Recollections of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet, and China,” (Hazlitt’s translation), says:  “The cross, the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their journeys,