there be any such peoples they must be very few indeed.

But I must not overlook that an attack on the universality of religion, or at least on the universality of belief in a God, has been made from another side. The very marvellous system of thought called Buddhism, which originated in India about five hundred years before the advent of Christ, has spread over a greater area of the earth, and gained more adherents than even Christianity, and by peaceful means-by the power of persuasion-not by force of arms, not by persecution. Disregarding all distinctions of class, nation, and race, and enforcing no social laws or theories, but concentrating its whole energy on showing the way to eternal deliverance from evil, it has propagated itself in a much more remarkable manner than Mohammedanism. Although driven out of India-Nepaul excepted-after having flourished there for centuries, its devoted missionaries have spread it over Ceylon and Burmah, China and Japan, Tartary and Thibet. But Buddhism, we are told, is a system of atheism; and the three hundred millions of people by whom it is embraced, ignore in the most absolute manner the notion not only of a future state but of a deity. "There is not the slightest trace of a belief in God in all Buddhism," says M. Barthélemy SaintHilaire; and many others speak as strongly.

A very little examination, however, shows that such statements are stronger than they ought to be, and that they cannot but mislead unless they are explained and limited. In this religion which is characterised as atheistic, gods are represented as appearing on numerous occasions. In the legend of Buddha the gods of the Hindu pantheon are familiar personages, and never is a shadow of doubt thrown on their existence. "It is not enough to say," writes Saint-Hilaire, "that Buddha does not believe in God. He ignores Him in such a complete manner, that he does not even care about denying His existence; he does not care about trying to abolish Him; he neither mentions such a being in order to explain the origin or the anterior existence of man and his present life, nor for the purpose of conjecturing his future state and his eventual freedom. Buddha has no acquaintance whatsoever with God, and, quite given up to his own heroic sorrows and sympathies, he has never cast his eyes so far or so high." Now, if by God be meant the true God, this is what no one will either deny or be surprised at; but every account of Buddhism, M. Saint-Hilaire's included, and all the literature of Buddhism yet made known to the European world, agree in showing that Buddha has always been supposed by the millions of his followers to have been familiar with gods, and heavens, and hells, innumerable. You will not

read long in almost any Buddhist book without meeting with gods. The Lalitavistara introduces us to Buddha before his incarnation. "The scene is laid in heaven. Surrounded and adored by those that are adored, the future Buddha announces that the time has come for him to assume a mortal body, and recalls to the assembled gods the precepts of the law. When in the bosom of his mother Mâyâ Devi he receives the homage of Brahma, of Çakra the master of the gods, of the four kings of the inferior gods, of the four goddesses, and of a multitude of deities. When he enters into the world the divine child is received by Indra the king of the gods, and Brahma the lord of creatures. When arrived at manhood, and hesitating to break the bonds which attached him to the world, it is the god Hridéra―the god of modesty-who encourages him and reminds him that the hour of his mission has come. Before he can become Buddha he has to be tempted by Mara, the god of the love of sin and of death, and to struggle against the hosts of hell commanded by their chief." And so on, and so on. Everywhere gods, even in what M. Saint-Hilaire himself regards as one of the most ancient and authentic records of primitive Buddhism. But all these legends, he says, are "extravagances." Well, there is no doubt about that, but they are extravagances of religious belief. And the very absurdity and

naïveté of them testifies to the energy of the belief. In spite of its absurdities, and by its very absurdities even, the Buddhistic legend testifies that Buddhists believe in gods. But an atheism which includes a belief in gods is an atheism of a very strange kind, or rather a system which everywhere avows the existence and action of gods is not usually, and can only very improperly be, called atheism.

But, it will be said, Brahma, Indra, and all the other deities recognised in Buddhism, will disappear with the universe itself. They are not regarded as truly gods, because they are not regarded as eternal. They have come out of nothingness and will go back to nothingness. Now observe that if we are to reason in this way, if we are to call every system atheistic which implies atheism, we must come to the conclusion that there is no religion in the world except where a consistent theism prevails; that all forms of polytheism and of pantheism are simply varieties of atheism. For polytheism and pantheism are both essentially self-contradictory, and must logically pass over either into atheism or theism. There is no consistent, independent, middle term between these two. What is not the one, ought, logically considered, to be the other.

All the Greek gods and goddesses were believed by their worshippers to have been born, or, at least,

to have had an origin; there was admitted to have been a time when they were not, and it was felt that there might be a time when they would not be. Whence had they come? Their worshippers did not clearly put and resolutely face the question, but the question existed, and it could only be answered in an atheistic or in a theistic manner. If they came out of nothing, or were the products of chance, or the effects of eternal matter and its inherent powers, then what underlay this polytheism was atheism. If, on the other hand, these gods were the creatures of a self-existent, eternal Mind, what underlay the polytheism was theism. But if theism had been clearly apprehended it would have been seen at once that there was no evidence for the polytheism at all; that it was a system of fictions and fancies which dishonoured the one all-sufficient God. And what is true in this respect of Greek polytheism is true of all polytheism. In so far as it falls short of theism it involves atheism. It is not, however, on this account to be called atheism. It is to be described as what it is, not as what it involves.

Then, all pantheism involves atheism. An impersonal reason, an impersonal God, is not, if you insist on self-consistency, on logical definiteness and thoroughness, a reason, a god at all. A reason which is unconscious and which belongs to no one subject, a God who has no existence in himself,