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shall one make of this world, and what shall one do to be saved? The decision cannot be postponed; and yet the evidence is, strictly considered, inconclusive. Faith means to believe what seems probable, and to believe it not halfheartedly, but with conviction. For if one believes halfheartedly, one cannot proceed according to one's belief, or attain salvation by it. The element of sheer faith may be more or less, according to the degree of critical and philosophical power which the worshiper possesses. But in every case there will be some basis in experienced fact and in inference, and also some "will to believe" or reliance on authority. And we shall consequently find in religious literature a note of dogmatic certainty and of willfulness, which is as inevitable in such a context as it would be intolerable in science.

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RELIGION AND MORALITY

There is one further topic to which even so brief an introduction as this must allude. What is the relation between religion and morality? Are we to regard ethical teachings such as those of the "Book of Proverbs" or the "Sayings of Confucius" as religious? To answer this question, we have only, I think, to bear clearly in mind the generic meaning of religion. A mode of life becomes religious only when it is pursued under certain auspices; only when it is conceived as sanctioned by the general nature of the cosmos, and as constituting a way of salvation. If justice be prized as a means of social welfare, it is ethical; if it be adopted as a means of winning the favor of God, or as a means of achieving Nirvana, it is religious. The moral life takes on a religious character when it is in some way connected with the cosmic life. In the so-called "ethical religions" the mode of life prescribed by religion tends to coincide with that prescribed by the moral consciousness, and righteousness is conceived as the way of salvation. Needless to say, such a contraction of morality greatly enhances its impressiveness and appeal. In all ethical religions that are inspired with hope, religion adds to a good conscience the sense of ascendency or 10 H. C., xliv, 5ff., and lecture by A. D. Sheffield, below.

victory over nature. Right living takes on the aspect of ultimate reality. To sheer duty is added confidence, inspiration, the expectation of limitless and durable achievement. Even in pessimistic religions of the ethical type, morality acquires prestige as having supreme importance for escape from the misery of existence. And from the religious consciousness as such, irrespective of its special claims and beliefs, morality acquires a certain dignity and reinforcement. For religion encourages man to look at life roundly and seriously. It frees him from the obsession of passion and the circumscription of immediate interests. It keeps alive the cosmic imagination, and invites attention to the problem of life as a whole in all its bearings, internal and external.

Thus it is fair to conclude that religion is universal in two senses. On the one hand it springs from a universal need. On the other hand, it possesses a universal value, and cannot fail, however much of error or blindness there may be in it, to elevate and dignify life. True religion is better than false, but it is not less certain that religion is better than irreligion.

II. BUDDHISM

BY PROFESSOR C. R. LANMAN

HE life of Gotama, the Enlightened One or Buddha, a life of eighty years, is divided into two parts, one

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of thirty-five years and one of forty-five, by the event of his Enlightenment or Bodhi. This seeing of a new light is to a Buddhist the one supreme event of the incalculably long æon now current, just as is the birth of Jesus in Occidental chronology. Those first thirty-five years are again divided into two parts, the period of his life as a prince or the time from his birth until (at the age of twentynine') he forsook the world to struggle for the Supreme Enlightenment, and the period of the six years of that struggle. Of these thirty-five years we have elaborate accounts. Of the last forty-five, tradition has little to say in the way of entertaining story, but very much by way of reporting "the Teacher's" teachings. These teachings as laid down in the canonical scriptures of Buddhism are in very deed his life in the truest sense.

THE BIRTHS OF BUDDHA

The belief that a man must be born and live and die, only to be born and die again and again through a weary round of existences, was widespread in India long before Buddha's day. And accordingly the "biography" of a Buddha must include an account of some of those former "births" or existences. The story of Sumedha is one of these. The "Jātaka," the most charming of all Buddhist story books,* contains the narrative of not less than 547 former existences H. C., xlv, 617-661.

1 Harvard Classics, xlv, 657. 3 H. C., xlv, 591-616. The story of the "Wise Hare," pages 712-716, is a Jataka or Birth story.

Translated by various hands under the editorship of E. B. Cowell, 6 vols., Cambridge, 1895-1907.

of Gotama. Next after all this prenatal biography comes the account of Buddha's birth into the existence which concerns us most nearly, the actual one of the sixth century before Christ, and this forms the subject of the second of Warren's translations, "The Birth of the Buddha." That translation is from a later work. It is most instructive for the student of religious tradition to compare the meager statements of the oldest canonical account with such an account as this, in order to see how the loving imagination of devout disciples may embellish a simple and prosaic fact with a multitude of picturesque details. Thus the presages of Buddha's birth are quite comparable, except for beauty of poetic diction, with those of the birth of Jesus in Milton's hymn "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity." As an example of new accretions to the older story may be cited the later tradition that Buddha was born from his mother's right side, a trait that appears not only in the Lalita-vistara and in St. Jerome, but also in many of the sculptured representations of the scene.

THE TEACHINGS OF BUDDHA

The teachings of Buddha are indeed his life, his very self. In the house of a potter the venerable Vakkali lay nigh unto death. The Exalted One (Buddha) came to his pillow and made kindest inquiries. "Long have I wished to go to the Exalted One to see him, but there was not enough strength in my body to go." "Peace, Vakkali! what should it profit thee to see this my corrupt body? Whoso, O Vakkali, seeth my teachings, he seeth me." Here the Teacher identifies himself with his teachings no less completely than does Jesus when he declares unto Thomas, "I am the way." And yet, despite Buddha's merging of his personality in his doctrine, it is of utmost importance to remember two things: First that Buddha most explicitly disclaims acceptance of his teachings on the score of authority; and secondly that it was, after all, their intrinsic excellence which (whether we take it as the fruit of a *H. C., iv, 7.

5 H. C., xlv, 617-626.

H. C.. xlv, 622.
Samyutta-Nikaya, xxii, 87 (3.119).

transcendental illumination or as the outcome of his personality) has maintained them as a mighty world power for five and twenty centuries.

First then his position as to authority. The Exalted One, when making a tour through Kosala, once stopped at Kesaputta, a town of the Kālāmans. They asked him: "Master, so many teachers come to us with their doctrines. Who of them is right and who is wrong?" "Not because it is tradition," he answers, "not because it has been handed down from one to another, not because ye think 'Our teacher is one to whom great deference is due,' should ye accept a doctrine. When, O Kālāmans, when ye of yourselves recognize that such and such things are bad and conduce to evil and sorrow, then do ye reject them." And again, "When a man's conviction of a truth is dependent on no one but himself, this, O Kaccāna, is what constitutes Right Belief." It is hard for us of the twentieth century to estimate aright the significance of Buddha's attitude. He lived in a land and age when deference to authority was well-nigh universal. To break with it as he did, implies an intelligence far beyond the common and a lofty courage.

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Secondly as to the intrinsic excellence of Buddha's teaching. That teaching is well characterized by a few brief phrases which occur as a commonplace in the canonical texts and are used as one of the forty subjects of meditation or "businesses" by devout Buddhists: "Well taught by the Exalted One is the doctrine. It avails even in the present life, is immediate in its blessed results, is inviting, is conducive to salvation, and may be mastered by any intelligent man for himself."11 Frankly disclaiming knowledge of what happens after death, Buddha addressed himself to the problem of sorrow as we have it here and now, and sought to relieve it by leading men into the path of righteousness and good-will and freedom from lust. A would-be disciple once asked him to answer certain dogmatic questions about life after death. Buddha parried them all as irrelevances in the dialogue which Warren gives" and which is one of the finest presentations of

Anguttara-Nikaya, iii, 65 (1.189). 11 H. C., xlv, 765.

10 H. C., xlv, 677.
12 H. C., xlv, 662-667.

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