priest under very peculiar circumstances. We met him at a funeral. It
was the cremation of one of his priests. On the outskirts of the village
a great crowd surrounded a burning pyre. Two or three cords of rough
wood had been piled up, with the body of the priest in its center and
the bier on which the body had been brought laid upon its top. The fire
was blazing upward, and a deafening beating of tom-toms gave sacredness
to the obsequies. The awe-stricken followers of Buddha stood at a little
distance around, while the flames grew fierce, and the sickening odor of
burning flesh entered their nostrils. It was no wonder that they were
willing to follow the high priest, when he came to salute me as a
minister of religion from the other side of the world. He was
eighty-eight years of age. Clothed in his saffron robe and holding with
trembling hands his rod of office, he seemed the decaying specimen of a
moribund religion. He presented me with an umbrella of yellow silk. It
had an ivory handle with the carving of a lotus bud on its end. I could
not let him make such a present without some reward, and he seemed
grateful for the few rupees which my interpreter wrapped up in his
handkerchief. He lifted up his fan and fanned me, as we parted, while he
uttered some words of blessing. I could hardly doubt his good will, or
fail to hope that some gleams of heavenly light had come to him from
Christ, the Light of the world. But Anurajahpura was, like Pagan in
Burma, the type of a vanishing religion, and its high priest was, like
the Jewish high priest of old, the type of a priesthood sure to pass
away, since Christ, the true High Priest, has come.

XIII

JAVA AND BUDDHISM

We have crossed the equator, and the Southern Cross, invisible to
northern eyes, seems still to beckon us onward. But we have reached the
most distant point of our journey, and henceforth we shall be homeward
bound, taking China and Japan as we go. Java is not so hot as we
expected. An island like Cuba, six hundred miles long and only two
hundred broad, has sea-breezes enough to keep it tolerably cool. Rain
falls almost every day, with an average of twelve feet in a year. As the
moisture is excessive, all sorts of vegetation are luxuriant. Java is a
gem of the ocean, and an emerald gem at that. Life here is as easy as
anywhere on earth, and there is a swarming population. While Ceylon,
similar in area, has only five millions of inhabitants, Java has
th