At one time Buddhism spread over India and promised the conquest of all Asia. Two hundred years after the Buddhist's death a great king, Asoka, sent out eighty-four thousand missionaries and the doctrines of Gautama were accepted as far east as China and Japan, and as far south as Java. But the wave receded; India returned to Hinduism, China to Confucianism and Japan to Shintoism, and Mohammedanism now outnumbers Buddhism on the Ganges. The Buddhists still hold Burma, Thibet and Ceylon, but even in these countries there is evidence of decline. Kandy, the capital city of Ceylon, has the distinction of guarding a "sacred tooth," thought by the ignorant to be one of the eyeteeth of Buddha. It is kept in a gold and jeweled casket enclosed in six larger ones and is an object of worship, but the more intelligent Buddhists know that it is a fraud.
At Rangoon I found a Baptist school, conducted by Americans, with nearly nine hundred pupils, and learned of the gratifying success which has attended missionary work in Burma.
GATHERING PRECIOUS STONES IN BURMA
And yet, there is a Buddhist propaganda in Europe and America! In a review called Buddhism, published at Rangoon by the International Buddhist Society, I read that Kaiser Wilhelm is "alarmed" at the progress that this religion is making in Germany, and I also read that our country offers a promising field for Buddhist missionaries.
BRONZE IMAGE OF BUDDHA, BUILT 1252
As a religion of agnosticism, requiring belief in neither God nor immortality, nor in the morality taught by Christ, it may appeal to some who, like the Englishman whom I found in the monastery, have already rejected Christianity, but it is not likely to appeal to those who have had religious experience. Those who emphasize good works, and fail to recognize the need of an inspiring faith behind the works, may take refuge in the teachings of Buddha from the more exacting requirements of the Nazarene, but no one is likely to be led astray who compares the altruism, the philanthropy and the benevolences of Christianity with the fruits of Buddhism. To live, even in poverty, upon the labors of others with a view to gaining thus an earlier entrance into blissful unconsciousness is not so unselfish after all, as to spend one's self in the service of his fellows and to convert life into an exhaustless fountain.