which produced that spiritual Body is the same as that which operates constantly and uniformly in Matter,--the Law of Cause and Effect,--which commenced its operations from the moment when, in an unthinkable Eternity long ago, the primordial Mind began to stir itself in the primordial Matter in which it was immanent. It has produced, on the one hand, the phenomena of Nature, or Creation, [**] on the other, the gradual Revelation, to man, of God, as the Shinshuist knows Him.

The Hoshin is of two sorts. It is, in the first place, Hosho Hoshin, the Spiritual Body of the Buddha, as He is, which is still considered as an integral part of Shinnyo Hosho. This is formless, and incapable of description, and answers more or less exactly to God, as He is hinted at, rather than described, in certain passages in the Old Testament. But it is impossible for men, with their finite thoughts and still more finite language, to speak of God, except under some form with which they themselves are familiar. Hence we get, in the Old Testament, the anthropomorphic language about God,--his holy arm, his feet, finger, eye, ear, face. Such language a Japanese would call hoben, an accommodation of the Truth to the capacity of the hearer, and Buddhist Theology speaks not only of a Hosho Hoshin, which it is

beyond the Power of Man to describe or comprehend, but also of a Hoben Hoshin, a Spiritual Body of God, accommodated to the capacity of Finite Man, and spoken of under a Human Shape.

Amitabha in the Shinshu Theology is conceived of as having been originally an integral and co-eternal factor in Shinnyo. In process of time (to adapt my language to the necessities of the case) he became Hosho Hoshin and Hoben Hoshin, and it was as the latter, as God personified, that He built up His Paradise and residing there, attracts all those that believe in Him. According to Shinshu Theology [**], Hozo Biku must be looked upon as the Incarnation of Hoshin, of Dharmakaya, of the highest Form that the personified Mind of the Universe can take, as an Incarnation in other words, of God.

But the Incarnations of the One Buddha are of two sorts. I will mention the lower kind first. It is known in Japanese as Ojin (#) or Keshin (#), in Sanskrit, as Nirmanakaya. This is the material body assumed when Buddha is manifested upon earth for the salvation or help of man. Some Gnostic sects held (this is especially true of the particular sect from which I consider the Shinshu to have descended) that the Deity had often been incarnated in fleshly form, the Incarnation