aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

244 ABOUND THE WOELD.
with you letters of introduction from aristocratic circles ; but
the door of the Buddhist is ever open to the stranger, with
the mat and waiting pot of rice. The Burmese missionary-
Smith, said he could traverse the whole kingdom without
'
money ; ' and during his missionary stay he saw no drunkenness,
not an indecent act, nor an immodest gesture. Compare
this with the gross, filthy, night-walking prostitution of
New York or London. Unselfishness, or forgetfulness of
self, is a cardinal virtue.
Struggles, sufferings, and sacrifices
for others' good, purify and prepare the soul for heavenly
rest." And these, these^ are the heathen Buddhists, whom
Orthodox theologians have for centuries preached to perdition
for not believing in Christianity, — this American Christianity
that speculates, loans money, persecutes heretics, rents
pews, cheats, fights, and gambles at fairs and festivals, for
religion's sake. I am not writing of the Christianity of
Jesus, but the civilized Christianity of America, that sends
missionaries to Asia's coral strand "to convert the Buddhists."
BUDDHA AND JESUS.
The Buddhists consider Sakya Muni Guatama Buddha a
much greater Saviour than Jesus Christ ; because the latter,
born in poverty, a carpenter's son, sought, upon Jewish
authority, to enthrone himself as king ; while Guatama
Buddha, a king's son, laying aside royalty and a prospective
crown, humbled himself, walking the companion of beggars,
that he might the more effectually break down caste, reaching
and enlightening the lowest classes of humanity. In
preaching, Buddha continually magnified the " wheel of the
law," the four great principles —
:
I. There is son-ow, want, pain.
II. Examining the source of pain, he found it to be selfish desire.
III. Pain was destroyed by regulating the natural demands of life, and
destroying selfish desire by self-control.
IV. The means of destroying it, in the sense of extii-pation, were
meditation, self-abnegation, and the practice of eveiy virtue.