. We remark here
that it is a redemption man achieves by his own efforts, without any
outward prop or aid. In this system there is no occasion for any
priests or sacrifices, for any prayers, or for any gods. There is no
ritual, because there is no object of worship, there is no sin in the
sense of offending a higher being. The gods are denied not because of
any speculative doubt of their existence, but because in that inner
world of moral effort which man has come to feel so supremely real
and important, they have no part to play. As all the gods faded away
in Indian speculation before Brahma, so Brahma's own turn has come to
fade away. The Buddhist speaks of the gods as if they existed, and he
makes no attack on the sacrifices; but no living god fills his heart.
The Buddha is greater than all the gods; his teaching is for the
benefit of gods as well as men. But the Buddha is not an object of
worship. If the Buddhist can be said to worship any higher power, it
is the moral order which never fails to reward men according to the
deeds done in this or former existences. That is for him a real and
tremendous, though impersonal power, and in contemplating it he may
be said to worship after a fashion. But he has no aid to look for
from any power in heaven or earth in working out his salvation.
Buddhism is the most autosoteric of all religions; it declares more
uncompromisingly than any other, that man must save himself by his
own efforts, and that no one can possibly stand in his place or
relieve him of any part of his great task. All that any one, even the
Buddha, can do for another, is to enlighten him, to open his eyes to
the true knowledge, and show him the narrow path on which he must
thenceforth walk.

3. The Order.--There were monks before Buddhism. That religion made
its appearance when Indian thought was at the stage of growth at
which monastic communities may be expected to arise. When religion
has ceased to be regarded as the affair of the nation or the tribe,
and is cherished as the affair of the individual, when the mind turns
from the sacrifices and ritual of public religion to cultivate
relations with a power known chiefly in the heart and soul, and when
religious duty has thus come to be recognised as a boundless and
all-embracing thing, not a service the hands and feet can discharge,
but the effort, never ending, still beginning, to make the whole
personality with all its acts and aims conform to the ideal,