CHAPTER VI.

Objects of Worship.

section section 28, 29, 30.

The Shinshu has as its principal object of Veneration the Tathagata Amitabha, "that is to say Namu-Amida-Butsu." [**] In the house-hold shrines of the laity there is no other object of worship but this: in temples and places of public worship, worship is offered also to Shinran Shonin (now officially known as Kenshin-Daishi), to the zenchishiki "righteous and holy men," (a term which includes the founders and patron saints of the various honzan, or cathedrals of the sub-sects or dioceses mentioned in a previous chapter), to the Seven Ko-So, or Patriarchs honoured by Shinran in the Shoshinge, as responsible for the transmission of doctrine, and finally to Shotoku Taishi, as the introducer of Buddhism into Japan, and as a great favourer of the Nembutsu practices and faith. These, together with Amida, form what are called the Go-hon-zama, or five classes of venerable Beings.

It is never, however, maintained that the worship given to Shinran, to the "righteous and holy men,"

to the Patriarchs, or to Shotoku Taishi, stands on a par with that offered to Amida Himself. This may be seen by the fact that, in household worship, no notice is taken of any one of them, also that Mr. Nishimoto, in his Catechism, having just mentioned their names, never reverts to them again, and never attempts to build any doctrines on the worship offered to them. They are clearly of no doctrinal importance whatever, and the worship (matsuri) offered to them is clearly of that lower type which Christian theologians sometimes call latreia, to distinguish it from the perfected and whole-hearted douleia (or "slavery") which is due to God alone. Plato made the same distinction, so do the Hindoos. A Vaishnavite in India is practically a monotheist. He believes in One God with all his heart. Yet he will give a lesser worship to twenty minor deities, without feeling that he thereby takes aught from the worship due to Vishnu the Preserver. In the Shinshu, this lesser worship, or latreia, is reduced to very small limits, and may indeed be said to be almost non-existent. The Shinshu believer can no more be said to worship e.g. Shotoku Taishi, in the ordinary sense of the term, than the Anglican can be said to worship St. Paul or St. John, because of the few Saint's Days in his Calendar.

But, however small may be the worship given by the Shinshu Buddhist to the unnamed Zenchishiki, or the somewhat obscure Patriarchs, of whom the average lay believer scarce knows the names, it is more than that which is given, either in households or Temples, to S'akyamuni himself. The Founder of Buddhism has absolutely no place