be exalting the sects, for sectarian Christianity is hardly worthy of
association with the exalted teachings of Buddha, the theosophists,
and the finer conceptions of our modern metaphysicians and
Spiritualists, yet we make the comparison for the sake of
illustration.

Counting the philosophical modern Spiritualists we may say that the
number of people in this country who, without knowing it, perhaps, are
reasoning themselves into acceptance of Buddhistic teachings, may be
placed in the hundreds of thousands. A modified, spiritualized, and
improved form of Buddhism is, we suppose, likely to unite the
liberalized minds of this country (normal Christians and Infidels
alike) into a common and highly intellectual and spiritual faith,
opposed to which will be the less advanced people under the leadership
of the Roman Catholic church, representing the temporal power of
Christian priestcraft and the mythological superstitions which have
attached themselves to the precepts and teachings of the Christ man of
1800 years ago.

Certainly no intelligent observer can look out upon the tremendous
upheaval of religious thought which is now taking place in this
country, without seeing that a new era has dawned in the spiritual
life of the American people and foreseeing a readjustment of religious
lines on a more elevated, less dogmatic and less antagonistic plane.
We have been passing through the very same experiences that preceded a
downfall of the polytheistic mythology, followed by the new era of
Christian mythology in one part of the world and Buddhistic mythology
in another. Jesus and Buddha both came to deliver exalted teachings
which would lift the world out of bondage to an older faith and its
more cruel superstitions and the corruptions of priestcraft and gross
ceremonials; both were reformers of substantially the same abuses;
both suffered for humanity, both lived humble and inspired lives, both
were interpreters of the same truths to different peoples, both were
good men, and both have come down to us with their greatness
exaggerated by their followers beyond anything they claimed for
themselves, while the personal existence of each is shrouded in the
same mystery and covered with the same doubt. That these two men did
exist as men we may well believe, but that as personages they were
incarnated on earth is a matter of small importance compared with the
consequences which have followed their supposed embodiment.

The de