which still reveres him as its founder. The memory of his father's death seems to have remained with him all his life, for the Amidaism which he taught was ars moriendi rather than ars vivendi. "At the hour of death, ... good Lord deliver us" is practically the cry of the Jodo believer, and if at that solemn hour his faith in Amida is pure and clear, and the Nembutsu rises to his lips, he believes that Amida will come to save him, no matter what may have been the character of his previous life. In the meanwhile, the Jodoist, if he is sincere and earnest, does not neglect the spiritual duties of his religion. They cannot save him (no more can any good works), but they help to create and keep alive in him that faith in Amida which is of such prime importance to him at the psychological moment. But after all, when the hour of death comes, the centurion Cornelius would be no better off than the dying thief, in Genku's teaching.

Shinran, on the contrary, saw that the dying thief was an exception to the rule of salvation. Like his master, Genku, he made Faith in Amida's Vow the absolute and only essential to salvation, but the Faith requisite is not of the death-bed variety. It must be the Faith of a lifetime, and where that Faith exists nothing more is necessary. Penances, austerities, abstinence from flesh

or marriage, works of piety and charity--none of these things will save a man, but the man who has realized the truth of his salvation through the mercies of Amida, will, out of joy and gratefulness, do more than he would ever have done merely as a means to gaining salvation for himself. To this doctrine of salvation by Faith the Shinshu sect bas remained constantly faithful. I have often been told that Shinran was acquainted with Christian doctrines when he framed the system of Jodo Shinshu. From what I have been able to put before my readers in the course of this history, I think we may say that the probabilities are that he was.

Footnotes

^259:1 Gempei is the name given to the period of the great Civil Wars between the families of Minamoto (in Sinico-Japanese Gen) and Taira (Hei). In this chapter I mean the term to include, roughly, the period between the outbreak of the so-called Hogen war (1156) and the establishment of the Hojo Regents at Kamakura about 1200. But the term must be treated as very elastic.