ld lead the pure life must put behind him all such things as mere
dram-drinking of the soul.

This is a most wonderful thing, a religion that condemns all
mysticisms. It stands alone here amongst all religions, pure from the
tinsel of miracle, either past, or present, or to come. And yet this
people is, like all young nations, given to superstition: its young men
dream dreams, its girls see visions. There are interpreters of dreams,
many of them, soothsayers of all kinds, people who will give you charms,
and foretell events for you. Just as it was with us not long ago, the
mystery, _what is_ beyond the world, exercises a curious fascination
over them. Everywhere you will meet with traces of it, and I have in
another chapter told some of the principal phases of these. But the
religion has kept itself pure. No hysteric visions, no madman's dreams,
no clever conjurer's tricks, have ever shed a tawdry glory on the
monkhood of the Buddha. Amid all the superstition round about them they
have remained pure, as they have from passion and desire. Here in the
far East, the very home, we think, of the unnatural and superhuman, the
very cradle of the mysterious and the wonderful, is a religion which
condemns it all, and a monkhood who follow their religion. Does not this
out-miracle any miracle?

With other faiths it is different: they hold out to those who follow
their tenets and accept their ministry that in exchange for the worldly
things which their followers renounce they shall receive other gifts,
heavenly ones; they will be endued with power from above; they will have
authority from on high; they will become the chosen messengers of God;
they may even in their trances enter into His heaven, and see Him face
to face.

Buddhism has nothing of all this to offer. A man must surrender all the
world, with no immediate gain. There is only this: that if he struggle
along in the path of righteousness, he will at length attain unto the
Great Peace.

A monk who dreamed dreams, who said that the Buddha had appeared to him
in a vision, who announced that he was able to prophesy, would be not
exalted, but expelled. He would be deemed silly or mad; think of
that--mad--for seeing visions, not holy at all! The boys would jeer at
him; he would be turned out of his monastery.

A monk is he who observes purity and sanity of life. Hysteric dreams,
the childishness of the mysterious, the insanity of the miraculous, are
no part of that.

A