were sent him by their parents for that purpose as an act of religious devotion! The sect is said to favor a wider range of study for its priests than others, and several have gone to England and America to study. It has also sent one or two missionaries to China, but according to report the mission is not very successful. A higher degree of morality than prevails among other sects has been claimed for this, but the claim can hardly be substantiated. In general it may be said that, while Buddhism has very powerfully affected the intellectual life of the Japanese, and while many, especially among the old and more ignorant, doubtless find peace in their faith in Amida and hope of future happiness in his paradise, its moral power is very little indeed. Very few of the priests have any living faith in its doctrines, and their reputation for morality is about as bad as it can be. The Jōdo sect reports 8,314 temples and 9,240 monks and nuns. Shin sect numbers 19,208 of the former and 24,395 of the latter. And here we may note that, including the smaller sects not noticed in this paper, the whole number of Buddhist temples in Japan is 72,000; that of monks and nuns being 90,000. The This rapid survey of the Buddhism of Japan makes it clear that the strong words quoted at the beginning of this paper as to the heterogeneity of the Buddhism of northern countries are none too strong, even when applied to the forms of that religion found among a single people. We have found not Buddhism, but "Buddhisms"; not one religion, but several. The clear recognition of this fact will be helpful in many ways. In the first place it will explain some of those contradictory accounts of Buddhism which have perplexed us. We are all familiar with these. It is declared atheistic by Burnouf, Max Müller, and many others. Mr. Maurice, on the other hand, says that "Buddhism is theism in its highest form and conception."2 Dr. Davids speaks of the "Agnostic materialism of Sakyamuni." 3 And it is just as certain that Buddhism represents the extreme of idealism. J. S. Mill and others tell us that its "capital prize" is "annihilation;" Dr. Davids says that in describing Nirvana Gotama was expressing no opinion at all, either one way or the other, as to existence after death; "5 and Mr. Akamatsu uses Nirvâna as the equivalent of "being reborn into paradise." Prayer is declared useless and impossible: 66 "Pray not! The darkness will not brighten! Ask Nought from the helpless gods by gift and hymn, Yet we have seen the temples crowded with images of buddhas, bodhisattvas, Brahmanic and Shinto deities, and that the most popular doctrine in Japan and China is that of salvation by simple faith in Amida Buddha. 1 Science of Religion, p. 139. 8 Encyclopædia Britannica. 5 Hibbert Lectures, 1881, p. 253. 21 2 Quoted in Saturday Review. Three Essays on Religion, p. 121. The Light of Asia. Why distress ourselves further to reconcile such statements? Sane minds rest in the recognized impossibility of squaring the circle. Again, a recognition of this heterogeneity enables us to see why the comparisons made between Christianity and Buddhism have been so unsatisfactory. An individual has been compared to a species. That Buddhism is one religion in the sense that Christianity is cannot be admitted for a moment; and Dr. Davids, in saying that "the Buddhism of Nepal and Thibet differs from the Buddhism of Ceylon as much as the Christianity of Rome or Moscow differs from that of Scotland or Wales," showed that even he had not fully realized the radical nature of the differences of which he was writing. For widely as the Christianity of Rome differs from that of Moscow, and as both of these differ from that of Edinburgh, they and all Christendom agree in believing in one "God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ his only Son;" and in the Holy Ghost." They agree, also, in accepting the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revelation of the divine will. Nor is this statement impaired by the fact that the Churches of Moscow and Rome accept as revelation a few small books to which Protestants deny divine authority, or that Mariolatry and the worship of saints exist in some parts of the Christian church. The most widely errant Christian sect sets up no new God, trusts in no new Saviour, seeks no new Sanctifier, and possesses no new Bible. Now Buddhism, as we have found it, has no such unity. The "bible" of the Ten Dai sect differs from that of the Shin-gon sect. That of the Jōdo and Shin sects is totally different from both of these. The Zen sect contemns all sûtras; and no sect in China or Japan gives the highest religious authority to those books which the best scholars declare to be the genuine teaching of Sakyamuni. The objects of worship are still more various; in theory extending to Sakyamuni and countless other buddhas and bodhisattvas, and in practice resulting in the worship of devils in Ceylon and Thibet, and in China and Japan in the worship of innumerable gods, heroes, and objects of nature. If it be at all true that "the Buddhist Church teaches an incarnation and worships a God-man," it is equally true that it teaches scores of incarnations and worships hundreds of god-men; for in addition to the Shinto gods and heroes already spoken of, almost every celebrated teacher is held to be a buddha or bodhisattva incarnate. 1 The real analogue of Buddhism is not Christianity but theism, and just as there are theistic religions so are there Buddhistic religions. Christianity differs far less widely from Mahommedanism, and even from the old religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, than some Buddhist religions differ from each other. So long as we continue to think of one system in the terms of the other we shall be at a great disadvantage. The English language greatly needs the terms mono-buddhism, poly-buddhism, pan-buddhism, a-buddhism, mono-buddhistic, etc., one of which has already been used in this paper. Finally, a recognition of this heterogeneity will be helpful in forming a just estimate of the influence of Sakyamuni. When, for example, Mr. Edwin Arnold tells us, in the preface to "The Light of Asia," that "four hundred and seventy millions of our race live and die in the tenets of Gautama," we very properly call for specifications. What are the tenets spoken of? Does he refer to the sûtras upon which his beautiful 1 Dr. J. F. Clarke in North American Review, May, 1883. but most misleading poem is founded? For many more than four hundred millions (if we follow his estimate) those sûtras have practically no religious authority. Does he mean that they walk in the path of "selfculture?" As we have already seen, "salvation by the power of another" is the most popular doctrine among the vast majority of Buddhists. Are those who make "rebirth into paradise" the synonym of Nirvana, and who exalt Amida far above Sakyamuni himself, living and dying in Sakyamuni's tenets? Professor Max Müller answers this question when he declares his belief that Sakyamuni never heard of Amida or of his Western Paradise.1 Another significant fact in estimating the influence of Sakyamuni is that Buddhists are nowhere exclusively so. The worship of the Shinto and Brahmanic deities, etc., etc., by Japanese Buddhists is characteristic of that religion wherever it is found. The worship of one buddha, or of the buddhas and bodhisattvas recognized in the sûtras, is the exception; indiscriminate idolatry is the rule. According to Dr. Davids 2 more than four fifths of the Buddhists of the world are Chinese; yet these are all Tauists and Confucionists quite as much as they are Buddhists. Another veteran observer thinks they are much more so, and would reduce the Buddhists of China from 400,000,000 to 20,000,000, and those in the world to 72,000,000. Such a reduction is undoubtedly far too sweeping; but the facts which lie behind it cannot be ignored in any just estimate of the influence of Sakyamuni. The Christian, and especially the Christian missionary, has no reason to minimize the really great good done by the pure and gentle Indian sage; but as he finds that his teaching has never brought a nation to a high degree of civilization, and that Sakyamuni nowhere receives the exclusive homage of the human soul, he magnifies his office of preaching salvation from sin as well as from misery through Him who said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself." M. L. Gordon. KIYOTO, JAPAN. SOCIOLOGICAL NOTES. SOME remarks on the need of sociological instruction in our higher educational institutions may serve to introduce this new department of the "Review." We append to them a few Notes on topics of general interest, which may also serve to enforce the need of meeting the want of which we first speak. A good elementary knowledge of mental philosophy, including psychology, logic, and ethics, has long held a prominent place in the equipment of the Christian ministry in our country, and the chairs for teaching it have usually been among the best endowed in our college faculties. The founders of our Christian educational institutions clearly saw that the lodgment of Christianity in the human mind and its development there according to its laws required that every Christian minister, as a rule, should be taught the elements of this science. Theology, homiletics, and 1 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. v., p. 237. 2 Buddhism, p. 5. Dr. A. H. Happer, in The Chinese Recorder for December, 1883. instruction in pastoral work have all wrought in the field of philosophy. The philosophic thought of the age has necessarily had a powerful influence over its theology. But man is more than an individual. The Christian man is a good deal more. He is a member of society. He finds his life in society. He does his work in society. He is himself largely a social product. Mankind are not simply shifting heaps of sand, driven about by the wind. The church is no mere collection of individuals for their own separate ends, or even for their own individual ends as determined by their separate relationship to God. Christian society is not a pool from which selfish individual need draws in the game of life. The church is the body of Christ, and Christianity is the very manifestation of the life of God in the world. Just as fast as this life of God is realized, it becomes as complex, as manifold, and as comprehensive as the creation made man and the world in which he lives. Human redemption became through the incarnation as wide in scope as humanity itself. And just as fast as it passes beyond its earlier and rudimentary work of making converts, it necessarily begins to deal with men as social beings. It sets them in families. It collects them in churches and thence reaches into all their social life. Indeed, the whole work of Christianity is a social process, which the scientific student sees going on almost as widely as the naturalist sees the processes of creation. The church and its most cherished institutions, its sacraments and its ordinances, are themselves social institutions. The species may be ecclesiastical, but the general type is social. Two lines of movement are calling attention to these matters. The first is the practical. Any one who will stop to reflect will readily acknowledge that modern social life has already been making marvelous changes in the equipment and methods of the church. The Sundayschool, the prayer-meeting, the Christian associations in a dozen forms, and the missionary boards with other appliances, have effected such marvelous changes in the simpler organized churches of our country that they are quite as unlike their earlier types as the steam transportation of to-day is unlike that of fifty years ago. The yearly report of almost any active church now rivals the complexity of a modern business concern. The annual survey of the field of a great missionary board reveals a work hardly less intricate than that treated in the annual message of the president of a nation. If revered theories have seemed to oppose missionaries, evangelists, Monday lecturers, and the work of women, the theories and not the new workers have had to get out of the way, and the chief part of the secret of all this is readily found. Christians have been constrained by the growing needs of an increasingly complex society to enlarge their interpretation of Scriptural precepts. The difficult and primary problem of Christian unity is also urging us to this duty. For this is very largely a social and sociological problem. And if there is any one cry just now louder than any other, it is that the church has only begun to meet the great social work before her. Social activity seems to be the present demand upon Christianity. The other line of movement has sprung from the scientific study of society. In its more practical form of social science, which studies the operations of society as present facts, it is beginning to interest pastors, philanthropists, and legislators in social questions as scientific studies. The Social Science Associations of Great Britain and this country stand for a large amount of valuable work. But behind this part of the science lies that which is taking the rather hard name of Sociology. It deals with mankind in social relations, past and present, as they become subjects of scientific study, applying to them the historical, comparative, statistical, and critical methods. Though it has taken shape within a quarter of a century, it is recognized as the great science of the future. The distinguished head of one of our largest theological seminaries has long urged upon his students the importance to them of political economy, and the wisdom of his counsel is now widely acknowledged. The late Dr. Mulford, whose work was carrying him into this field, wrote last summer to a friend a well-known author, who had been studying for a long time the subjects of material science saying, "You must leave this field for the more important one of sociology." This advice will probably be followed by many Christian apologists within the next few years. Neither political economy, nor political science, nor ethics, as generally studied hitherto by the American undergraduate and by the average pastor, comprehend the work to be done. Indeed, the place of these sciences themselves and many of their most important special problems can be understood only as they are approached or sup plemented with some knowledge of sociology. This latter science helps give the others and that of ecclesiastical polity their true perspectives. There are problems in the study of Christian polity which urgently demand the aid of sociology. And the lesson of the history of social types shows that the attempt to solve the problems of modern society by study of present social conditions only will be deficient in real results. The consideration, too, that the social order of historic Christianity may probably be best understood only as it is apprehended in its place in the one vast social order which God has been working out from the beginning furnishes a most important reason for the best possible understanding of sociology. But we cannot go into this part of the topic as we would like to do. The amount of sociological instruction available in this country, for theological students especially, is very small. It is practically almost nothing. A beginning was made last year by courses of special lectures in the field of social science at Harvard and Cornell Universities concerning charities and the like, and in some degree, we believe, at the University of Pennsylvania, and at Andover, on sociology as it touches the family. Some work has also been done at Johns Hopkins for a year or two among post-graduates. Now and then a professor in college or seminary has introduced or supplemented his work with a lecture or two of the character of a sociological survey. But this is about all. Special inquiry has convinced us that not more than one in seven or eight of the students in our better theological seminaries has had the slightest instruction in the history of those social institutions which have helped form the church and state. And most of the exceptions have come from those who have been in the English or German universities, or who have come from two or three of the best American institutions. All special lecturers in this department are now compelled to begin with the very elements, or work at the greatest disadvantage. The schools of political science are doing something to meet the want, especially among those who seek admission to the bar, or are looking towards the legislative halls and the chair of the editor. And this will soon tell on our politics for good. But there is no corresponding provision |