p of
similar expressions of humility and contrition, the votary calling
himself a "miserable sinner" and a "vile worm," and on the other hand
magnifying his Lord as greater than all other gods, mighty and helpful
to those who assiduously worship him.

In some form or other, as of petition, gratitude or contrition, uttered
in words or confined to the aspirations of the soul, prayer is a
necessary factor in the religious life. It always has been, and it must
be present.

The exceptions which may be taken to this in religious systems are
chiefly two, those supposed to have been founded by Buddha Sakyamuni and
Confucius.

It is undoubtedly correct that Buddha discouraged prayer. He permitted
it at best in the inferior grades of discipleship. For himself, and all
who reached his stage of culture, he pronounced it futile.

But Buddha did not set out to teach a religion, but rather the inutility
of all creeds. He struck shrewdly at the root of them by placing the
highest condition of man in the total extinguishment of desire. He bound
the gods in fetters by establishing a theory of causal connection (the
twelve Nidana) which does away with the necessity of ruling powers. He
then swept both matter and spirit into unreality by establishing the
canon of ignorance, that the highest knowledge is to know that nothing
is; that there is neither being nor not-being, nor yet the becoming.
After this wholesale iconoclasm the only possible object in life for the
sage is the negative one of avoiding pain, which though as unreal as
anything else, interferes with his meditations on its unreality. To this
negative end the only aid he can expect is from other sages who have
gone farther in self-cultivation. Self, therefore, is the first, the
collective body of sages is the second, and the written instruction of
Buddha is the third; and these three are the only sources to which the
consistent Buddhist looks for aid.

This was Buddha's teaching. But it is not Buddhism as professed by the
hundreds of millions in Ceylon, in Thibet, China, Japan, and Siberia,
who claim Sakyamuni under his names Buddha, the awakened, Tathagata,
thus gone, or gone before, Siddartha, the accomplisher of the wish, and
threescore and ten others of like purport, as their inspired teacher.
Millions of saints, holy men, Buddhas, they believe, are ready to aid in
every way the true believer, and incessant, constant prayer is, they
maintain, the one efficient means to