Even the old ideal of the Samurai embodied in the formula Yamato Damashii will be enlarged and improved from its narrow limits and ferocious aspects, when the tap-root of all progress is allowed to strike into deeper truth, and the Sixth Relation, or rather the first relation of all, is taught, namely, that of God to Man, and of Man to God.  That this relation is understood, and that the Samurai ideal, purified and enlarged, is held by increasing numbers of Japan’s brightest men and noblest women, is shown in that superb Christian literature which pours from the pens of the native men and women in the Japanese Christian churches.  Under this flood of truth the old obstacles to a nobler society are washed away, while out of the enriched soil rises the new Japan which is to be a part of the better Christendom that is to come.  Christ in Japan, as everywhere, means not destruction, but fulfilment.

CHAPTER VI — THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA

    “Life is a dream is what the pilgrim learns,
     Nor asks for more, but straightway home returns.” 
    —­Japanese medieval lyric drama.

“The purpose of Buddha’s preaching was to bring into light the permanent truth, to reveal the root of all suffering and thus to lead all sentient beings into the perfect emancipation from all passions.”—­Outlines of the Mahayana.

“Buddhism will stand forth as the embodiment of the eternal verity that as a man sows he will reap, associated with the duties of mastery over self and kindness to all men, and quickened into a popular religion by the example of a noble and beautiful life.”—­Dharmapala of Ceylon.

“Buddhism teaches the right path of cause and effect, and nothing which can supersede the idea of cause and effect will be accepted and believed.  Buddha himself cannot contradict this law which is the Buddha, of Buddhas, and no omnipotent power except this law is believed to be existent in the universe.

    “Buddhism does not quarrel with other religions about the truth
    ...  Buddhism is truth common to every religion regardless of the
    outside garment.”—­Horin Toki, of Japan.

    “Death we can face; but knowing, as some of us do, what is human
    life, which of us is it that without shuddering could (if we
    were summoned) face the hour of birth?” -De Quinccy.

    The prayer of Buddhism, “Deliver us from existence.” 
    The prayer of the Christian, “Deliver us from evil.”

    “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
    earth.”—­Genesis.

    “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it
    more abundantly.”—­Jesus.

CHAPTER VI — THE BUDDHISM OF NORTHERN ASIA

Pre-Buddhistic India.

Does the name of Gautama, the Buddha, stand for a sun-myth or for a historic personage?  One set of scholars and writers, represented by Professor Kern,[1] of Leyden, thinks the Buddha a mythical personage.  Another school, represented by Professor T. Rhys Davids,[2] declares that he lived in human flesh and breathed the air of earth.  We accept the historical view as best explaining the facts.