f Buddha,
they have completely separated themselves from him, and have created for
themselves a different Dalai-Lama. Our Dalai-Lama is the only one who
has received the divine gift of seeing, face to face, the majesty of
Buddha, and is empowered to serve as an intermediary between earth and
heaven."

"Which Dalai-Lama of the Christians do you refer to?" I asked him; "we
have one, the Son of God, to whom we address directly our fervent
prayers, and to him alone we recur to intercede with our One and
Indivisible God."

"It is not him of whom it is a question, Sahib," he replied. "We, too,
respect him, whom we reverence as son of the One and Indivisible God,
but we do not see in him the Only Son, but the excellent being who was
chosen among all. Buddha, indeed, has incarnated himself, with his
divine nature, in the person of the sacred Issa, who, without employing
fire or iron, has gone forth to propagate our true and great religion
among all the world. Him whom I meant was your terrestrial Dalai-Lama;
he to whom you have given the title of 'Father of the Church.' That is a
great sin. May he be brought back, with the flock, who are now in a bad
road," piously added the lama, giving another twirl to his
prayer-machine.

I understood now that he alluded to the Pope. "You have told me that a
son of Buddha, Issa, the elect among all, had spread your religion on
the Earth. Who is he?" I asked.

At this question the lama's eyes opened wide; he looked at me with
astonishment and pronounced some words I could not catch, murmuring in
an unintelligible way. "Issa," he finally replied, "is a great prophet,
one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any
one of all the Dalai-Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality
of our Lord. It is he who has instructed you; he who brought back into
the bosom of God the frivolous and wicked souls; he who made you worthy
of the beneficence of the Creator, who has ordained that each being
should know good and evil. His name and his acts have been chronicled in
our sacred writings, and when reading how his great life passed away in
the midst of an erring people, we weep for the horrible sin of the
heathen who murdered him, after subjecting him to torture."

I was struck by this recital of the lama. The prophet Issa--his tortures
and death--our Christian Dalai-Lama--the Buddhist recognizing
Christianity--all these made me think more and more of Jesus Christ. I
ask