sunshine of His Presence and
favour,--this is the fulness of blessing which Christ presented before
His own as the end to be sought and the consummation which God placed
within their reach.

On the other hand, Nirvana is the word which holds condensed the whole
realm of Buddha's ideals. It is not my purpose to discuss the original
meaning of this word. I gladly concede that it meant a state of moral
achievement when the powers of the soul were at equilibrium and when
resultant peace pervaded the life. But we also know that it meant,
preeminently, that state in which the soul had passed beyond contact
with body, in which contact alone it found consciousness and sensation
and human activity; when the soul, freed from births, had returned to
its elemental condition of semi-nothingness, with neither thought,
emotion, nor volition. This was a condition in which was found only
the negative blessing of release from the turbulence and surging
distresses of life. Without calling it non-existence, we claim that it
is wanting in every element that we connect, or can conceive
connected, with human existence.

There is nothing in it to inspire hope nor to invite cheer. All we can
do in its presence is to ask--is this all that man, the flower of
God's universe, is to arrive at? Is there nothing better for him than
to end his long, dreary existence in such an abject failure? Must he
descend from the plain of even a wretched human life to this the
lowest reach of existence, if such we must call it?

In the eyes of Christ, there issues out of the mighty conflict of life
a purified, glorified human being fit to dwell forever in the
presence of His Father and adopted to enjoy that presence for
evermore. To Buddha, this same human life ends in failure and must
rest forever under the dark pall of oblivion, and robbed by Nirvana of
all the possibilities of good and of joy that were implanted in it.

In the absence of higher satisfaction, all that Buddha could do was to
glory in his achievements, because of their pervasive influence upon
the lives of others during all future time. We might imagine him
joining with George Eliot in her noble aspiration:--

"O! may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pie