ect is to save his own soul. All the faults of Buddhism, according to
M. Saint-Hilaire, spring from this root of egotism in the heart of the
system.

No doubt the same idea is found in Christianity. Personal salvation is
herein included. But Christianity _starts_ from a very different point: it
is the "kingdom of Heaven." "Thy kingdom come: thy will be done on earth."
It is not going on away from time to find an unknown eternity. It is God
with us, eternity here, eternal life abiding in us now. If some narrow
Protestant sects make Christianity to consist essentially in the salvation
of our own soul hereafter, they fall into the condemnation of Buddhism.
But that is not the Christianity of Christ. Christ accepts the great
prophetic idea of a Messiah who brings down God's reign into this life. It
is the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. It is the earth
full of the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea. It is all
mankind laboring together for this general good.

This solitary preoccupation with one's own salvation causes the religious
teachers of Buddhism to live apart, outside of society, and take no
interest in it. There is in the Catholic and Protestant world, beside the
monk, a secular priesthood, which labors to save other men's bodies and
souls. No such priesthood exists in Buddhism.

Moreover, not the idea of salvation from evil,--which keeps before us evil
as the object of contemplation,--but the idea of good, is the true motive
for the human conscience. This leads us up at once to God; this alone can
create love. We can only love by seeing something lovely. God must seem,
not terrible, but lovely, in order to be loved. Man must seem, not mean
and poor, but noble and beautiful, before we can love him. This idea of
the good does not appear in Buddhism, says M. Saint-Hilaire. Not a spark
of this divine flame--that which to see and show has given immortal glory
to Plato and to Socrates--has descended on Sakya-muni. The notion of
rewards, substituted for that of the infinite beauty, has perverted
everything in his system.

Duty itself becomes corrupted, as soon as the idea of the good disappears.
It becomes then a blind submission to mere law. It is an outward
constraint, not an inward inspiration. Scepticism follows. "The world is
empty, the heart is dead surely," is its language. Nihilism arrives sooner
or later. God is nothing; man is nothing; life is nothing; death is
nothing; eternity is