dissonances of
their wonderful lives and rise through the study into a true
conception and love of the most perfect Life ever breathed upon earth.

I have no apology to offer, as a Christian, for comparing the life of
our Lord with that of any human being; for, though Divine, He was also
supremely human; and human glory and achievement appear in their
fulness only when we gaze upon Him as one of the mighty human forces
of history.

[Illustration: THE GREATEST IMAGE OF BUDDHA (183 feet long)]

Christ and Buddha lived their brief lives upon earth many centuries
ago; and yet never did they grip so many by the magic of their
attraction as they do at present. Nearly two-thirds of the whole
population of the world to-day acknowledges the lordship of the one or
the other of these and loves to be called by their names. The
influence of the one dominates all the life of the West, while that of
the other is supreme in the East. And it is a curious and interesting
fact that Buddha has not only been exalted as the ninth incarnation of
Vishnu in the faith which he aimed to overthrow, he has also been
adopted into the Roman Catholic Calendar and is worshipped on the 27th
of November as a Christian saint under the title "Saint Josaphat."

I am also convinced that the influence of the lives and teachings of
Buddha and Christ will react upon each other with ever increasing
power during the coming years. Indeed, we are now witnessing this very
influence developing before our eyes.

I

Let us first observe the conditions under which these two lived their
earthly lives.

One was born into royal prerogatives and splendour and was surrounded
in youth with all the luxuries and blandishments of an Oriental
court. The other, though of royal lineage, was born in poverty,
cradled in a manger, earned a meagre subsistence as a carpenter, and
was able to say at the end of His brief career that the foxes had
holes and the birds of the air had nests, but that He had not where to
lay His head.

Sidhartthan early married and became a father, but later renounced all
the pleasures and responsibilities of a _grihastan life_. His great
renunciation is one of the most striking and impressive acts in the
history of mankind, and his subsequent asceticism was of the most
thorough and rigid type.

Jesus of Nazareth avoided the entanglements of married life and had a
supreme contempt for the wealth and the pomp of the world. Yet He was
not an asce