lly, the likeness was so
exact that at first they could not bring themselves to believe that the
Buddhist ceremonials had not been filched bodily from the practices of
the true faith. Finding, however, that no known human agency had acted
in the matter, they bethought them of introducing, to account for
things, a deus ex machina in the shape of the devil. They were so
pleased with this solution of the difficulty that they imparted it
at once with much pride to the natives. You have indeed got, they
graciously if somewhat gratuitously informed them, the outward semblance
of the true faith, but you are in fact the miserable victims of an
impious fraud. Satan has stolen the insignia of divinity, and is now
masquerading before you as the deity; your god is really our devil,--a
recognition of antipodal inversion truly worthy the Jesuitical mind!

Perhaps it is not matter for great surprise that they converted but few
of their hearers. The suggestion was hardly so diplomatic as might have
been expected from so generally astute a body; for it could not make
much difference what the all-presiding deity was called, if his actions
were the same, since his motives were beyond human observation. Besides,
the bare idea of a foreign bogus was not very terrifying. The Chinese
possessed too many familiar devils of their own. But there was another
and a much deeper reason, which we shall come to later, why Christianity
made but little headway in the Far East.

But it is by no means in externals only that the two religions are
alike. If the first glance at them awakens that peculiar sensation which
most of us have felt at some time or other, a sense of having seen all
this before, further scrutiny reveals a deeper agreement than merely in
appearances.

In passing from the surface into the substance, it may be mentioned
incidentally that the codes of morality of the two are about on a level.
I say incidentally, for so far as its practice, certainly, is concerned,
it not its preaching, morality has no more intimate connection with
religion than it has with art or politics. If we doubt this, we have but
to examine the facts. Are the most religious peoples the most moral? It
needs no prolonged investigation to convince us that they are not. If
proof of the want of a bond were required, the matter of truth-telling
might be adduced in point. As this is a subject upon which a slight
misconception exists in the minds of some evangelically pers