that knows no personal God, no Creator, no atonement, no gospel of
salvation from sin, and the gospel which bids man seek and know the
great First Cause, as Father and Friend, and proclaims that this
Infinite Friend seeks man to bless him, to bestow upon him pardon and
holiness and to give him earthly happiness and endless life? Between one
religion which teaches personality in God and in man, and another which
offers only a quagmire of impersonality wherein a personal god and an
individual soul exist only as the jack-lights of the marsh, mere
phosphorescent gleams of decay, who can fail to choose? Of the two
faiths, which shall be victor?

CHAPTER X - JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT

"The heart of my country, the power of my country, the Light of
my country, is Buddhism."--Yatsubuchi, of Japan.

"Buddhism was the teacher under whose instruction the Japanese
nation grew up."--Chamberlain.

"Buddhism was the civilizer. It came with the freshness of
religious zeal, and religious zeal was a novelty. It come as the
bearer of civilization and enlightenment."

"Buddhism has had a fair field in Japan, and its outcome has not
been elevating. Its influence has been aesthetic and not
ethical. It added culture and art to Japan, as it brought with
itself the civilization of continental Asia. It gave the arts,
and more, it added the artistic atmosphere.... Reality
disappears. 'This fleeting borrowed world' is all mysterious, a
dream; moonlight is in place of the clear hot sun.... It has so
fitted itself to its surroundings that it seems
indigenous."--George William Knox.

"The Japanese ... are indebted to Buddhism for their present
civilization and culture, their great susceptibility to the
beauties of nature, and the high perfection of several branches
of artistic industry."--Rein.

"We speak of _God_, and the Japanese mind is filled with idols.
We mention _sin_, and he thinks of eating flesh or the killing
of insects. The word _holiness_ reminds him of crowds of
pilgrims flocking to some famous shrine, or of some anchorite
sitting lost in religions abstraction till his legs rot off. He
has much error to unlearn before he can take in the
truth-"--R.E. McAlpine.

"There in a life of study, prayer, and thought,
Kenshin became a saintly priest--not wide
In intellect nor broad in sy