is
branded as illusion. There is no room for progress in philosophic,
thoroughgoing Buddhism.

In the Greek view the universe is subject in part to the rationalizing
process; but only in part. The effort at ethicization is entirely
futile. The Greek view, equally with the Buddhistic, is at a loss to
understand change. It does not brand it as unreal, but change produced
by man is branded as a departure from nature. Greeks and Hindus alike
have no philosophy of history. In the Christian view the universe is
completely subject to the rational and ethical process. God is creator
of all that is and it is necessarily good. God is an active will and
He is, therefore, still in the process of creating; hence change,
evolution, is justified and understood. History is rational and has a
philosophy. Evolution and revelation have their place at the very
heart of the universe. Hence it is that science, philosophy, and
history, in a word a high-grade civilization, finds its intellectual
justification, its foundation, its primary postulates, its
possibility, only in a land permeated with the Christian idea of God.

In the Buddhistic conception God is an abstract vacuity; in the Greek,
a static intellect; in the Christian, a dynamic will. As is the
conception of God, so is the conception and character of man. The two
are so intimately interdependent that it is useless at this time to
discuss which is the cause and which the result. They are doubtless
the two aspects of the same movement of thought. The following
differences are necessary characteristics of the three religions:

The Buddhist seeks salvation through the attainment of
vacuity--Nirvana--in order to escape from the world in which he says
there is no reason and no morality. The Greek seeks salvation through
the activity of the intellect; all that is needful to salvation is
knowledge of the truth. The Christian seeks salvation through the
activity of the will; this is secured through the new birth. The
Buddhist leaves each man to save himself from his illusion by the
discovery that it is an illusion. The Greek relies on intellectual
education, on philosophy--the Christian recreates the will. The
Buddhist and Greek gods make no effort to help the lost man. The
Christian God is dominated by love; He is therefore a missionary God,
sending even His only begotten Son to reconcile and win the world of
sinning, willful children back to Himself.

In Buddhism salvation is won onl