Scarcely less strange is the absence, from nearly all the most modern authorities on Shinshu doctrine of all mention of the supposed Jodo and Shinshu doctrine of the Trinity. Neither the Shinshu Hyakuwa, nor the Shinshu Seikun, as far as I have read it, nor Mr. Tada's works, as far as I am acquainted with them, allude to it. And yet in a Life of Shinran, published apparently as late as 1904 there is abundant evidence of it. In vol. i of that book, Amida is constantly spoken of as ikko sanzon no Butsu (#) "the Buddha of three Persons and One Light," or as san son itchi (#) "the three Blessed Ones with one object." In this Trinity, Amitabha,

the Unoriginated, the Supreme, is the Father: by Him stands the Son, the Embodiment of Amitabha's Compassion,--in Sanskrit Avalokites'vara, "the Lord that looks down," in Japanese Kwanzeon, or Kwannon; and another, the Embodiment of his Wisdom,--in Sanskrit Mahasthamaprapta, "He that hath obtained great strength," in Japanese, Seishi. [**]

The three are One, and the Father, Amida, is the Centre and the Heart of the Trinity, the source of Compassion and Wisdom. When the Compassion of the Most High is to be manifested to men, Kwannon, the Embodiment of the Compassion which is in the Godhead, becomes Incarnate: when the Wisdom of the Father, or his Might, is set forth, Seishi, the Embodiment of Divine Wisdom, manifests himself in and through some human personality.

So far the picture corresponds to our own ideas of the Trinity of God. But as the Gnostics of the Apostolic times, and especially those who sprang from the same regions and came into existence about the same time as the Buddhist Mahayana, held that the Divine Son had often become incarnate, (one of those incarnations being that one which took place at Bethlehem in the days of Herod), and as both Manes and Mahomet claimed to be the Paraclete, the Incarnation of God's Wisdom, so the Shinshu (and not the Shinshu alone) has believed in many incarnations and manifestations of Kwannon and,