There is a great deal to be said in favour of any or all of these hypotheses, but this is not the place in which to say it. There is another and more generous way of looking at the problem. It is equally possible, we may say, that there has been no historical connection whatever between Christianity and the Mahayana. It is quite possible that neither faith has borrowed from the other, but that God, Who fulfils Himself in countless ways, has brought Shinshuists and Christians, along totally different roads, to the common acknowledgement of the fact that there is One and Only One Lord and Saviour of Mankind, and that He willeth all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the Truth, by faith in what He has done, and not. through any works or merits of their own. [**] Viewed superficially, the Saviours are respectively God-in-Christ and Amida Nyorai--poles apart from each another. Go below the surface, and there is much reason for concluding that the two conceptions are identical, and that, without being conscious of it,

our worship, under different forms and names, is all the while being directed towards the same object. Throughout this book I purpose consistently to take this line of argument, viz. that when the Shinshuist recites his Nembutsu, he is (however unconsciously) addressing the same Divine Person whom the Christian worships, on his knees in the closet or before the Altar, and I believe that the witness to Himself which God has thus given to the Japanese is one which the Christian missionary would be ill advised to set aside or neglect.

The adoption of this line of argument will save me from a great deal of antiquarian research and historical disquisition,--discussions which are after all of but little value for the practical issues of life. These matters will mostly appear only in footnotes and appendices, as matters of secondary importance, and I shall be able to expose, in considerable detail, and with constant reference to Christianity, the actual teachings of the Shinshu itself, what answer they give to the spiritual needs and cravings of mankind, how and in what way they help men to be better, where they conflict with Christianity, and where they have fresh light to throw on points which we Christians have held, perhaps, mechanically, without a due appreciation of their full significance.

In order to give definiteness and order to my book, I am basing it on a Japanese work which has but recently appeared--a Catechism of Shinshu Doctrine, [**]--which I shall follow faithfully from