FORMATIVE ELEMENTS OF JAPANESE BUDDHISM.

The believer is taught to devote his attention largely to Kannon original: "Kwannon," the Bodhisattva of Compassion; in another sect, the Shingon, to Kōbō Daishi the 8th-century founder of Shingon Buddhism; and in a third, to Nichiren the 13th-century founder of the Nichiren sect. These saints, especially Kōbō and Nichiren, have so fully absorbed the attention of their worshippers that the original founder of Buddhism Siddhartha Gautama, or Sakyamuni has been nearly forgotten. Buddhism has practically become a system with no saints but many gods.

In other cases, the existence of good saints has been logically twisted into a justification for the co-existence of equally powerful "bad saints" or "devils"—men who developed along evil lines just as the Buddhas have been developed along good ones.

A third tendency has consequently been manifested: to discard the help of all Buddhas and Bosatsus Bodhisattvas; beings who delay their own enlightenment to help others, and to require each soul to work out its own salvation by and for itself.

The Christian doctrine of the "Communion of Saints" keeps Christ as its central point. Christ remains as the center and key of the whole position. Toward him, the eyes of all—"saints on earth and saints in heaven"—are directed; so long as they are directed toward him, there will be no tendency toward polytheism the belief in or worship of more than one god.

It is an actual and not a sentimental communion, which works for efficiency. The best test of the existence of this great spiritual fact is found in the vigor, prudence, patience, and humility with which Christ’s business in the world is carried on. For the realization of the common brotherhood in Christ which all Christians share, and the acting upon that realization, is at least one part of the Communion of Saints. This kind of communion will always appeal to the Japanese mind, which is essentially practical.

As for the other parts of the doctrine, we may expect them, possibly, to laugh at many of the superstitious trappings which the doctrine has assumed in cults based on legendary narratives about the saints. Yet, when we consider the care they exhibit in the burial of their dead, the scrupulous exactness with which they offer worship to the Manes original Latin: manes, referring to the spirits of deceased ancestors of their ancestors, and the reverence they pay to their tombs, we shall understand that nothing will satisfy them in a religion unless it makes full provision for the...