Solomon's enterprises in the same direction
are more creditable to him as a politician than as a worshipper.[3] In
the history of Christianity one cannot commend the efforts either of the
Gnostics or the neo-Platonists, nor always justify the medieval
missionaries in their methods. Nor can we accurately describe as
successful the ingenuity of Vossius, the Dutch theologian, who,
following the scheme of Euhemerus, discovered the Old Testament
patriarchs in the disguise of the gods of Paganism. Nor, even though
Germany be the land of learning, can the clear-headed scholar agree with
some of her rationalists, who are often busy in the same field of
industry, setting forth wild criticism as "science."

The Kami and the Buddhas.

In Japan, to solve the problem of reconciliation between the ancient
traditions of the divine ancestors and the dogmas of the Indian cult, it
was necessary that some master spirit, profoundly learned in the two
Ways, of the Kami and of the Buddhas, should be bold, and also as it
seems, crafty and unscrupulous. To convert a line of theocratic
emperors, whose authority was derived from their alleged divine origin
and sacerdotal character, into patrons and propagandists of Buddhism,
and to transform indigenous Shint[=o] gods into Buddhas elect, or
Buddhas to come, or Buddhas in a former state of existence, were tasks
that might appall the most prodigious intellect, and even strain the
capacities of what one might imagine to be the universal religion for
all mankind.

Yet from such a task continental Buddhism had not shrunk before and did
not shrink then, nor indeed from it do the insular Japanese sects shrink
now. Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up
Japanese Christianity. With all encompassing tentacles, and with
colossal powers of digestion and assimilation, Northern Buddhism had
drawn into itself a large part of the Brahmanism out of which it
originally sprang,[4] reversing the old myth of Chronos by swallowing
its parents. It had gathered in, pretty much all that was in the heavens
above and the earth beneath and the waters that were under the earth, in
Nepal, Tibet, China, and Korea. Thoroughly exercised and disciplined, it
was ready to devour and digest all that the imagination of Japan had
conceived.

We must remember that, at the opening of the ninth century, the Buddhism
rampant in China and indeed throughout Chinese Asia was the Tantra
system of Yoga-chara.