is one of its points of contact with Christianity.

Another point of contact is its doctrine of reward and punishment,--a
doctrine incompatible with the supposition that the soul does not pass on
from world to world. But this is the essence of all its ethics, the
immutable, inevitable, unalterable consequences of good and evil. In this
also it agrees with Christianity, which teaches that "whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap"; that he who turns his pound into five
will he set over five cities, he who turns it into ten, over ten cities.

A third point of contact with Christianity, however singular it may at
first appear to say so, is the doctrine of Nirvana. Nirvana, to the
Buddhist, means the absolute, eternal world, beyond time and space; that
which is nothing to us now, but will be everything hereafter. Incapable of
cognizing both time and eternity, it makes them absolute negations of each
other.

The peculiarity of Plato, according to Mr. Emerson and other Platonists
was, that he was able to grasp and hold intellectually both
conceptions,--of God and man, the infinite and finite, the eternal and the
temporal. The merit of Christianity is, in like manner, that it is able to
take up and keep, not primarily as dogma, but as life, both these
antagonistic ideas. Christianity recognizes God as the infinite and
eternal, but recognizes also the world of time and space as real. Man
exists as well as God: we love God, we must love man too. Brahmanism loves
God, but not man; it has piety, but not humanity. Buddhism loves man, but
not God; it has humanity, but not piety; or if it has piety, it is by a
beautiful want of logic, its heart being wiser than its head. That which
seems an impossibility in these Eastern systems is a fact of daily life to
the Christian child, to the ignorant and simple Christian man or woman,
who, amid daily duty and trial, find joy in both heavenly and earthly
love.

There is a reason for this in the inmost nature of Christianity as
compared with Buddhism. Why is it that Buddhism is a religion without God?
Sakya-muni did not ignore God. The object of his life was to attain
Nirvana, that is, to attain a union with God, the Infinite Being. He
became Buddha by this divine experience. Why, then, is not this religious
experience a constituent element in Buddhism, as it is in Christianity?
Because in Buddhism man struggles upward to find God, while in
Christianity God comes down to find man. To