ective such a description is. But have we not now
traced one root of this seeming characteristic of New Japan? The old
religious conceptions have been largely outgrown by the educated. They
have come to the conclusion that the old religious forms constitute
the whole of religion, and that consequently they are unworthy of
attention. The spirit of New Japan is indifferent to religion; but
this is not due to an inherently non-religious or irreligious nature,
but to the empty externalism and shallow puerilities of the only
religions they know. How can they be zealous for them or recognize any
authority in them? Those few Japanese who have come within the
influence of the larger conception of religion brought to Japan by
Christianity are showing a religious zeal and power supporting the
contention that the generally asserted lack of a religious nature is
only apparent and temporary. Preaching the right set of ideas, those
which appeal to the national sense of communal needs, by supplying the
demand for sanctions for the social order; ideas which appeal to
intellects molded by modern thought, by supplying such an intellectual
understanding of the universe as justifies the various supra-communal
sanctions; and ideas which appeal to the heart, by supplying the
personal demand of each individual for a larger life, for intercourse
with the Father of all Spirits and for strength for the prolonged
battle of life--preach these and kindred ideas, and the Japanese will
again become as conspicuously a religious people as they were when
Buddhism came to Japan a thousand years ago.[DG]

But if the real nature of a full and perfect religion is to save not
only the individual, providing sanctions for his conduct, but also to
justify the social order, and to provide sanctions that shall secure
its maintenance, any religion which fails to have both characteristics
can hardly claim the name universal. We have seen that Buddhism lacks
one of these elements. In my judgment it is not properly universal. So
long as it exists in or goes to a land already provided with other
religions securing the social order, it may continue to thrive. But,
on the one hand, it can never become the exclusive religion of any
land for it cannot do without and therefore it cannot depose the other
religions; and, on the other hand, it must give way before the
stronger religion which has both the individual and communal elements
combined. Buddhism, therefore, lacks a