all this is
absolutely wanting. Buddhism is a creed of life, of conduct; death is
the end of that life, that is all.

We have all seen death. We have all of us watched those who, near and
dear to us, go away out of our ken. There is no need for me to recall
the last hours of those of our faith, to bring up again the fading eye
and waning breath, the messages of hope we search for in our Scriptures
to give hope to him who is going, the assurances of religion, the cross
held before the dying eyes.

Many men, we are told, turn to religion at the last after a life of
wickedness, and a man may do so even at the eleventh hour and be saved.

That is part of our belief; that is the strongest part of our belief;
and that is the hope that all fervent Christians have, that those they
love may be saved even at the end.

I think it may truly be said that our Western creeds are all directed at
the hour of death, as the great and final test of that creed.

And now think of Buddhism; it is a creed of life. In life you must win
your way to salvation by urgent effort, by suffering, by endurance. On
your death-bed you can do nothing. If you have done well, then it is
well; if ill, then you must in future life try again and again till you
succeed. A life is not washed, a soul is not made fit for the dwelling
of eternity, in a moment.

Repentance to a Buddhist is but the opening of the eyes to see the path
to righteousness; it has no virtue in itself. To have seen that we are
sinners is but the first step to cleansing our sin; in itself it cannot
purify.

As well ask a robber of the poor to repent, and suppose thereby that
those who have suffered from his guilt are compensated for the evil done
to them by his repentance, as to ask a Buddhist to believe that a sinner
can at the last moment make good to his own soul all the injuries caused
to that soul by the wickedness of his life.

Or suppose a man who has destroyed his constitution by excess to be by
the very fact of acknowledging that excess restored to health.

The Buddhist will not have that at all. A man is what he makes himself;
and that making is a matter of terrible effort, of unceasing endeavour
towards the right, of constant suppression of sin, till sin be at last
dead within him. If a man has lived a wicked life, he dies a wicked man,
and no wicked man can obtain the perfect rest of the sinless dead.
Heaven is shut to him. But if heaven is shut it is not shut for ever;