[paragraph continues] Shinshuist, for many long years the doctrines of the Holy Path [**] ("this is the way: walk ye in it"). But the Holy Path is a road along which it needs strength and courage to walk, and the majority of mankind are feeble. For the weary, the heavy-laden, the sinner, the great S'akyamuni at last opened the Gate of Faith in the Mercies of Amida, and thus made his system all-embracing and universal, by welcoming to his fold the ignorant and sinful, as well as the wise and holy.

The numerous points of resemblance between Christianity and Shinshu will not fail to strike the readers of these pages. These resemblances may be accounted for in many ways.

(i) The "Three Books," may be the genuine records of S'akyamuni's Teaching. In that case they will .fall at the end of S'akyamuni's life, between B.C. 490 and 480, after the fall of Babylon and when Persia was already at grips with Greece. It is impossible to deny that, by that time, the teachings of Jewish prophets may already have found an echo in Indian teaching halls and viharas. [*+]

Or (ii) the "Three Books" may not have been composed until somewhere near the time when we get the first literary mention of them, i.e. about the middle of the second century A.D. In that case, it would seem impossible to deny the possibility of Christian (and esp. Gnostic) influences in their production. [**]

Or again (iii), if we consider that the Amida Sects, as distinct bodies, do not make their appearance on the scene until after Nestorians and Buddhists had been working together side by side for a few centuries in China,--that great school-house of Japanese religion,--we may again suppose that there has been an influencing of Buddhist thought by Christian ideas. In the course of these Lectures we shall frequently have occasion to consider the wonderful coincidences which exist between Christian theology and what we may call the theology of the Shinshu. The Japanese theologians discuss a very large number of

problems, such as the relations between Faith and Works, Conversion, the New Birth, Abstinence from meats, and from marriage, etc. which are almost identical with those which agitated the Christian Communion during the Apostolic age and afterwards,--strange to say, in almost every case do we find the Shinshu doctors taking the same side as St. Paul in their treatment of these questions.