CHAPTER XXX.

RECAPITULATION

IT shall be my pleasant task in this concluding chapter to recapitulate for my reader all that I have put before him in a long and rather prolix narration.

I would, first, call attention to the remarkable parallels between the history of Christianity and that of the Buddhist Mahayana.

Both faiths begin in that marvellous sixth century before Christ, which saw the beginnings of so much that has been for the benefit of mankind. Philosophy began for man in Greece, in India, and in China. S'akyamuni was founding a religion which, if not perfect, is at any rate one that commands our most reverent sympathy and affection, and the later exponents of Judaism, the exilic and post-exilic prophets and psalmists, the teachers of the law, and the great Fathers of the later Faith of Jerusalem, were distinctly raising the faith of Israel to a higher plane in preparation for a great event to come.

The great event came. It came at the right moment for East and West. It was like a stone flung into the midst of a large pool, that falls with a mighty splash and sets up ripples which go forth equally on all sides, and never rest till they break upon the distant margins. We have been accustomed to watch the ripples that have gone out West and North from the splash made in the world's religious history by the Advent of Christ. We

have seen those ripples bringing new life to Europe, revivifying philosophy and art, giving men nobler thoughts and aspirations, and laying the foundations of that religion of humanity which is bound up with the name of Christ.

I have tried in this book--tentatively and with the uncertain tread of a pioneer going through untrodden brushwood--to trace the ripples that flowed out eastward from the splash of the stone. Occasionally I have seemed to myself to see the traces of Christ distinct and clear, though few and far between, and not sufficient in number or quantity to allow of anything very elaborate in the way of deduction and inference. But during the whole of the first millennium of the Christian era, a period corresponding very nearly with the millennium of Image Law of which Buddhists speak, I find the same phenomena both East and West--a chaos of heresies, each claiming to be heard as the sole exponent of the Truth, and amidst them all one fact: the proclamation that there is one Being who has given Himself for man, that man through Him might have life. The proclamation in the West, in spite of heresies and in spite of the manifold superstitions of a dark age, is clear and distinct. In the East it is not so distinct; it is like a lotus-seed, sown deep down in the slime at the bottom of the pool. It is there, and it grows, but it takes some time to reach the surface.