has translated this very rhetorical work into
English, thinks it existed at or some time before 250 A.D., and that in
its most ancient form it dates some centuries earlier, possibly as early
as the opening of the Christian era. It has now twenty-seven chapters,
and may be called the typical scripture of Northern Buddhism. It is
overflowingly full of those sensuous images and descriptions of the
Paradise, in which the imagination of the Japanese Buddhist so revels,
and in it both rhetoric and mathematics run wild. Of this book, "the
cream of the revealed doctrine," we shall hear often again. It is the
standard of orthodoxy in Japanese Buddhism, the real genius of which is
monastic asceticism in morals and philosophical scepticism in religion.

In most of the other sutras the burden of thought is ontology.
Doctrinally, Buddhism seems to be less a religion than a system of
philosophy. Hundreds of volumes in the canon concern themselves almost
wholly with ontological speculations. The Japanese mind,[3] as described
by those who have studied most acutely and profoundly its manifestations
in language and literature, is essentially averse to speculation. Yet
the first forms of Buddhism presented to the Japanese, were highly
metaphysical. The history of thought in Japan, shows that these
abstractions of dogma were not congenial to the islanders. The new faith
won its way among the people by its outward sensuous attractions, and by
appeals to the imagination, the fancy and the emotions; though the men
of culture were led captive by reasoning which they could not answer,
even if they could comprehend it. Though these early forms of dogma and
philosophy no longer survive in Japan, having been eclipsed by more
concrete and sensuous arguments, yet it is necessary to state them in
order to show: first, what Buddhism really is; second, doctrinal
development in the farthest East; and, third, the peculiarities of the
Japanese mind.

In this task, we are happy to be able to rely upon native witness and
confession.[4] The foreigner may easily misrepresent, even when
sincerely inclined to utter only the truth. Each religion, in its theory
at least, must be judged by its ideals, and not by its failures. Its
truth must be stated by its own professors. In the "History of The
Twelve Japanese Sects," by Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A. Oxon., and in "Le
Bouddhisme Japonais," by Ryauon Fujishima, we have the untrammelled
utterances, of nine living lights o