in the worship of this influential and powerful body of religious persons, who nevertheless call themselves Buddhists. I won't say that he has been wholly excluded from the Life of the Sect. His teachings are still much revered and studied, the Shinshu preacher still draws from the Sutras the inspiration of his sermons, and Shinshu scholars have done as much as most for the elucidation of S'akyamuni's teachings. S'akyamuni is the Moses of Buddhism, but he has been extruded from the Shinshu Sanctuary; and we can well understand the indignation of Shinran's great opponent, Nichiren, when he found some children playing in the road with a broken image of S'akyamuni, which had been discarded from the Temple, as useless lumber, since the villagers had given ear to the exhortations of Shinran's itinerant preachers. [**] It is as hard to imagine a "Buddhism without Buddha," as it is to recognize a "Christianity without Christ."

Naturally, the Shinshu theologian has arguments to advance in defence of his position. It is said by some that, as the greater includes the less, so Amida includes S'akyamuni, the latter being only a partial manifestation or incarnation of the former. (This is the view known as ni son it-chi # "two Blessed Ones with One Object," as though the unity of purpose had resulted in the Unity of Person).

The other view is known as ni son bettai (#) "'two Blessed Ones with separate personalities." Those who hold this view maintain that S'akyamuni

was a distinct personage from Amida, and that he was and remains the Lord of the World that now .whereas Amida is Lord of the World to come. Shinshu is altogether a religion of the other world. It teaches men to put their whole trust in the Paradise prepared for them after death. It has therefore no need to teach fasting, celibacy, or the other religious practices which S'akyamuni was at such great pains to teach and institute.

Still, it must be confessed that the reasons thus given, though they would have been, perhaps, sound enough in the beginnings of Buddhism, as grounds for the total exclusion of S'akyamuni from the worship of the Buddhist communities, must have appeared in a very different light, when they were urged as grounds for the exclusion of S'akyamuni from the altars on which he had been venerated for fifteen centuries. A more radical revolution in religion can hardly be imagined.