Amida is Ichi-butsu, the One Buddha, and besides Him there is none, for all the other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and gods, in whom men trust, are but temporary and partial manifestations of the Great Father, whose Vow (a Christian might call it his Will) is that all mankind should be saved--saved from the miseries of existence, from all those universals of misery which S'akyamuni disclosed to a suffering world, and placed in that Paradise where there is nothing to hinder or to hurt the soul ou its upward path to that Perfection which comes from the Beatific Vision of Amida Himself.

Amida is One and Indivisible, but He has several names, and two of the names by which He is known amongst men have become personified with a quasi-separate existence as His Sons, and sit, the one on His right, the other on His left, in His Kingdom. The right represents His Wisdom, the left His Mercy; the latter is occupied by His Son Avalokites'vara, or Kwannon, "the Lord that looked down," incarnate again and again for man and his salvation; the former, personified as Mahasthamaprapta, or Seishi, whose gift to man is, significantly, not salvation, but life.

To grasp this salvation, wrought out for man by Amida, and brought to him by Kwannon and Seishi, nothing is needed but Faith--no works of the Law, no austerities, penances, or devotions, no resolutions of amendment, no futile strivings, no repentance--nothing but Faith. It sounds an immoral doctrine, a kind of antinomianism, yet it is not exactly immoral as expounded, at least by its latest preachers, the school of Shinran and his disciples. For faith brings salvation, the realization of salvation arouses the gratitude of the heart, and the grateful heart, knowing what it is by nature and what it has become by grace, becomes so filled with the expansive power of a deep love that it turns the good deeds, the austerities, the devotions, from being fruitless attempts at obtaining a salvation which is practically beyond man's attainment into the joyful formulae through which the new life imparted to the soul finds its expression.

Shinran Shonin (A.D. 1174 to 1268), the founder of the

[paragraph continues] Shinshu sect, who claimed for his teachings the authority of a Vision of Avalokites'vara himself, has left behind him, amongst other works, a poem entitled the "Shoshinge," which is even now in common use in the family devotions of pious Shinshu households. A writer to whom I am very much indebted for the insight which he has given me into the thoughts and aspirations of the band of Buddhist reformers who owe their inspiration to the life and teachings of the late Mr. Kyozawa, has written a commentary on the poem, which, while being up to date, as coming from a modern scholar, yet represents the very thoughts of Shinran, the last great patriarch of mediaeval Amidaism in Japan.