I suppose this thought lies at the root of popular religion. We need not try to define the character of the reward or punishment, but simply state that there are consequences accruing from the practice of virtue, or the contrary, which must certainly overtake us.

I pass on to observe some facts connected with the cosmogony of the Buddhists, as it has been developed in China. The influence of what is called the Lotus School has resulted in some extremely interesting speculations. The great problem before the world had been to account for the origin of things. You remember, I daresay, the remarkable passage in the tenth book of the Rig Veda in which the originator is spoken of as "breathing,' breathless."

The search after this first cause ended in the symbolism of the Lotus, which floats in its loveliness on the surface of the Lake, but comes from an unknown source. So the Lotus was used as the emblem of what we should call creation. Whence come these worlds around us? who is the First? where His abode ? The answer was: "We cannot tell; the Lotus floats upon the water-that is all we know."

Now let us trace the active growth of this conception.

The first and earliest idea was, that all things spring from water; hence the world, or the four quarters of the world, are represented as floating on the universal Ocean, placed symmetrically.

In the centre is the Divine Mountain, the Olympus of the Greeks, the Zagros of the Iranians, the Meru of the Indians; around this mountain are the rock girdles which prevent approach by mortal man to the abode of the gods; beyond the outer girdle of rocks, in the salt sea, are the four quarters of the world, denoted by the figures and the accompanying islands.

Here we have the earliest thought of a central inaccessible mountain, and the four quarters, or the four winds, into which the world is divided as it floats on the sea.

At the base of the central mountain are the four guardians, who keep the way and guard the residence of the gods. This idea is also a primitive one, denoted in Homer by the Horæ or Seasons, who keep the gates of Olympus.

On the summit of the Divine Mountain are the abodes of the gods, or the thirty-three gods, over whom Sakra the Powerful One reigns supreme. These are the Oλvμmia Swμara; the number thirty-three is known in the Vedas, incorporated therein, doubtless, from the old tradition, which may be traced back to the period when Time or Chronos was the supreme ruler, and when the year, the four seasons, and the twenty-eight days made up the thirty-three. Above this Paradise are the three tiers of higher Heavens:-The Kama Heavens, in which there are earthly pleasures; the Rupa Heavens, in which there are forms but no earthly pleasures; and the Arupa Heavens, in which there are neither Forms nor human conceptions. This was the extended idea of the One System of worlds. Buddha

taught in agreement with the oldest beliefs that all the denizens of these worlds are subject to decay and death; just as Homer makes Nectar a condition of prolonged life to the Gods, without which they would perish; Buddha, therefore, would have nought to say about such a Heavenly State; he sought after a condition of Being that never began and never will perish, -an eternal state of existence, and he called this Nirvâna, a non-breathing state, like that of Him before His breath went forth upon the Waters.

Before passing on to notice the extension of this system of worlds, I will notice that underneath the earth, the Buddhists, and especially the Chinese Buddhists, place the various prisons in which the wicked are confined for vast, but not endless, periods of time; they are called earth-prisons, and the sufferings endured in each are supposed to be material. The lowest prison is a burning one, surrounded by an iron wall-it is the Tartarus of Homer (cf. Iliad, viii. 15), with its iron gates and brazen walls, the deepest underneath the earth. The lowest place of punishment is called Avichi, which the Chinese translate "without interval"; there is no cessation of pain here, literally the fire is not quenched, but yet there is hope of escape.

And now, under the persuasion of the infinity of the Universe, the Buddhists began to multiply their systems of worlds in this way: they supposed a repetition of mountains and heavens extending through space, over which, however, there was but one Buddha; they then supposed these extended systems to be multiplied one over the other, the whole springing from a Lotus, denoting their confessed ignorance of the Originator; advancing still, they placed this complex system of worlds in the centre, and other similar systems to the number of ten surrounding it. These systems were ruled over by other Buddhas.

Advancing yet, they place ten such chiliocosms, ruled over by different Dhyâní Buddhas; and finally, in sheer despair, they multiply these systems, each one so inconceivably vast, indefinitely, till they become as numerous as the sands of countless Rivers Ganges.

Now the origin of this cosmogony was doubtless, in the first stages of it, inherited from primitive time. The surrounding streams of ocean, the central mountain and the abode of the Gods-these are fables common to all nations; but the expansion of the belief or system is doubtless Buddhis tic, and the introduction of the Lotus peculiarly so. But whether matured in the valley of the Ganges, or on the high lands of Asia abounding with lakes, or even in Egypt, we can hardly say. This much, however, appears likely, that the final stage, where the worlds and systems are made as numerous as the Ganges sands, was reached in the dreamy land of Eastern India, and thence carried to China, where it now finds acceptance, and has led to a similar state of dreamy philosophical speculation.

I must hasten to point out one more feature in the Buddhist development in China. I mean the belief in a Western Paradise, with which is connected the worship of Amitâbha and Kwan-yin.

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The idea of a place of happy rest in the Western regions of the world is an old and well-known one. The sight of the glorious region of the setting sun, so peaceful, so lovely, so full of quiet hope, may have given birth to the thought. We cannot tell. But at any rate, so early as 149 A.D., a Parthian prince, who would have been probably Vologases III. of Parthia, if he had not become a Buddhist monk, eame to China and translated the Sutra of boundless years, i.e. of Amitâbha or Amitâyus. This gives us an account of the Western Paradise; it is a place beautiful to behold-its golden streets and lovely tanks, the flowers and birds and palaces, all so exquisite; and the happy people who dwell there, worshipping the eternal and all-glorious Amita. This was the fable that excited

the wonder and drew out the active spiritual powers of the Chinese converts. Let me only give one example. It is that of a poor Chinese Pilgrim, whose brief history is given us by I-Tsing. His name was Shangtih.

The narrative is this :-"Shang-tih, a contemplative priest, of Ping-chau. He longed for the joys of the Western Paradise, and, with the view of being born there, he devoted himself to a life of purity and religion (reciting the name of Buddha). He vowed to write out the whole of the Prajña-Sutra, occupying 10,000 chapters. Desiring to worship the sacred vestiges, and so by this to secure for himself the greater merit, with a view to a birth in that heaven, he travelled through the nine provinces (of China), desiring wherever he went to labour in the conversion of men, and to write the sacred books. Coming to the coast, he embarked in a ship for Kalinga. Thence he proceeded by sea to the Malaya country, and thence wishing to go to Mid-India, he embarked in a merchant-ship for that purpose. Being taken in a storm, the ship began to founder, and the sailors and merchants were all struggling with one another to get aboard a little boat that was near. The captain of the ship being a believer, and anxious to save the priest, called out to him with a loud voice to come aboard the boat; but Shang-tih replied, 'I will not come; save the other people.' And so he remained silently absorbed, as if a brief term of life were agreeable to one possessed of the heart of Bôdhi. Having refused all help, he clasped his hands in adoration, and looking towards the west, he repeated the sacred name of Amita, and when the ship went down these were his last words. He was about fifty years of age. He had a follower unknown to me, who also perished with his master, also calling on the name of Amita Buddha."

We cannot doubt that this idea of the Eternal One was, in the first place, borrowed from the boundless Time of the Zoroastrian belief, and became merged in the idea of Mithras, the glorious light; and so the Amita of the Chinese is both the eternal and the altogether glorious.

The worship of Kwan-yin or Avalokiteshvara, the looking-down God, the personification of Mercy, is equally common in China. This Being is sometimes represented as a female with a child on her knee; at other times as a youth or a God. The Chinese everywhere invoke her aid.

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There is a liturgy, as complex as any Western manual of the same sort used for her worship; and the ritual itself is very imposing.

I presume this idea of Kwan-yin was introduced into China with that of Amita Buddha, and that both were derived from the Persian. The worship of Mithras and Anahita, the pure Goddess of the Waters, was a favourite one in the times of Artaxerxes Mnemer; and, from his patronage, is said to have extended from East to West. The Buddhists, owing to its popularity, incorporated it in their system; and in China, now, the invocation of Amita and aspirations for mercy and protection at the hands of Kwan-yin form the staple part of the worship and belief of the majority of the people.

All this has created a spiritual activity, the origin of which must first of all be sought in the fundamental thoughts of the system itself. Its unselfishness, its appeal to the conscience, its vast scope, its future hope, its belief in the mercy of the Merciful One, the glory and eternity of the All-Glorious and Eternal One, and the future rest in Paradise.

These thoughts are not Chinese, they are not Indian. They must be looked for in that neighbourhood where in the early beginning there was a knowledge of truth as it came from the Source of Truth, and which, though dimmed by the accretions of time and perverted by fond inventions, still survived to give some faint light and hope to nations that sat in darkness and under the shadow of Death.

ZOROASTRIANISM.

BY L H. MILLS, D.D.

It has been a matter of sincere regret to me that I have been obliged to let two years pass by without contributing anything to this important series of lectures.

The reason has been an "embarrassment of wealth" in the acquisitior. of manuscripts from the East. It will be understood that it consumes much time to go over manuscripts of the Zend Avesta not merely for the purpose of reading them, but to note down every important or trivial variation in each from the text of its fellows, and this occupation has not only robbed me of the pleasure of contributing to this series, but also delayed the appearance of my recently published Commentary on the Gâthas. Everything has to be stopped for the collation of MSS., as no progress can be made till full light has been obtained upon our texts. And even now I can only jot down items or heads for a future lecture.

The Avesta, like the Bible, the Rig Veda, and other very ancient books, is a collection of documents of widely different ages. The Gâthas, the Haptanghâiti, the other parts of the Yasna, the Vendidâd and the Yashts, the Afrinagân, etc., were composed at different periods. But all stand differentiated from the Gâthas, which are totally distinct in character from the rest of the Avesta, and from the Veda. They are original, the plain expression of actual personal longings, fears, hopes, and struggles; and there is no nature-worship in them, but, on the contrary, the worship of the Creator of nature.

Zoroaster (Zarathushtra) makes no intentional historical statements. If he did, we should doubt them; but he gives us what is far surer than any assertions, and that is, the expression of emotions and efforts which reveal his individuality. The persons mentioned in the Gâthas are plainly actual contemporaneous men engaged in a dangerous politico-religious struggle. All is real, and for that reason of inestimable value. A few hundred years later Zoroaster is a demi-god, and all the rich nature-worship of the Rig Veda appears or reappears. We have, therefore, two stages of the Zoroastrian religion which are as distinct as Quakerism is from Ultramontane Roman Catholicism. As many different religions are included in Christianity, so there are many in Zoroastrianism, and they should be carefully distinguished. To mix up the purity of the Gâthas with the puerile ceremonial of the Vendidâd mars the effect of each. And unless writers write with careful criticism, the subject of Zoroastrianism will be spoiled.