is the gospel which Confucianist and Buddhist, Hindu
and Mohammedan, need to-day, and which, thank God, our missionaries are
giving them.

IV

THREE WEEKS IN BURMA

Burma is the land of pagodas. These places of worship are the most
striking feature of every landscape. Their bell-shaped domes,
startlingly white, or so covered with gold-leaf as to shine resplendent
in the sunlight, crown many a hilltop and constitute the chief beauty of
the towns. The pagodas are usually solid structures of brick, with
facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather than in
which, worship is offered. There are exceptions, however. The more
ancient of these edifices, like the Ananda at Pagan, have inner chambers
enshrining gigantic statues of Buddha, with corridors around the
chambers, quite comparable to the aisles of English or French
cathedrals. But the greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon
of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, with no interior cell, yet
enormous in size, erected on a broad platform one hundred and sixty-six
feet from the ground, towering to an additional height of two hundred
and seventy feet, and crowned with a jewelled "umbrella" at the total
elevation of four hundred and thirty-six feet above the teeming streets
of the city below. The main platform from which the pagoda proper rises
is an immense court nine hundred feet long by six hundred and
eighty-five feet wide, and crowded with minor pagodas and shrines. This
great esplanade is approached from the four points of the compass by
long covered arcades, lined with shops in which offerings of every
description can be bought. On the marble floor of the main court and
before the minor shrines these offerings are presented by scores of
worshipers prostrating themselves before statues of Buddha of every
size. And yet the great conical or bell-shaped dome of the pagoda is
its chief attraction, for this is covered with gold-leaf from its base
to its summit, and its shining splendor salutes the traveler from miles
and miles away.

The religion of Burma is Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion of "merit," so
called, and the surest way to acquire "merit" is by building a pagoda.
Repairing an old pagoda will not answer the purpose; hence many an old
pagoda goes to ruin, side by side with a new one coated with whitewash
or gold-leaf. Curiously enough, the epoch of pagoda-building was almost
coincident with that of cathedral-building in England