ything. That Buddhism approves of mercy or of
self-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity; it
is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence.
Buddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all sane
human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess. But to say that
Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy of these things is
simply false. All humanity does agree that we are in a net of sin. Most
of humanity agrees that there is some way out. But as to what is the way
out, I do not think that there are two institutions in the universe
which contradict each other so flatly as Buddhism and Christianity.

Even when I thought, with most other well-informed, though unscholarly,
people, that Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there was one thing
about them that always perplexed me; I mean the startling difference in
their type of religious art. I do not mean in its technical style of
representation, but in the things that it was manifestly meant to
represent. No two ideals could be more opposite than a Christian saint
in a Gothic cathedral and a Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The
opposition exists at every point; but perhaps the shortest statement of
it is that the Buddhist saint always has his eyes shut, while the
Christian saint always has them very wide open. The Buddhist saint has a
sleek and harmonious body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with sleep.
The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to its crazy bones, but his eyes are
frightfully alive. There cannot be any real community of spirit between
forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both
images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be
a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The
Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards. The Christian is
staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue
steadily we shall find some interesting things.

A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interesting essay, announced that
there was only one religion in the world, that all faiths were only
versions or perversions of it, and that she was quite prepared to say
what it was. According to Mrs. Besant this universal Church is simply
the universal self. It is the doctrine that we are really all one
person; that there are no real walls of individuality between man and
man. If I may put it so, she does not tell us to lov