nature and tendency of the Buddhist system of ethics, the Spectator (March 10, 18G6) has the following just remarks: "Strictly speaking, the Buddhist creed, by reducing every thing to the natural law of cause and ef- fect, should kill morals, but it does not. Of sin, in the sense in which the Scriptures speak of it, the Buddh- ist knows nothing. There is no authoritative law- giver, nor can there possibly be one ; so that the trans- gression of the precepts is not an iniquity, and brings no guilt. It is right that we should try to get free from its consequences, in the same way in which it is right for us to appease hunger or overcome disease, hut no repentance is required ; and if we are taught the necessity of being tranquil, subdued, and humble, it is that our minds may go out with the less eager- ness after those things that unsettle their tranquillity. If we injure no one by our acts, no wrong has been done ; and if they are an inconvenience to ourselves only, no one else has any right to regard us as trans- gressors. Nevertheless self-denial is the sum of prac- tical ethics, and Gotama, having set up the killing of attachment to sense as the object, and self-denial as the means, has produced a noble theoretic system of ethics. No act is in the Buddhist system sin — the very idea is unknown— but then a bad act produces a bad consequence, just as a rotten substance will produce stench, and bad acts are therefore to be avoided. As to what is good, everything is good, because in se ev- erything is indifferent; but, nevertheless, that is bad relatively to its consequence which produces injury to another. If it produces injury to one's self, no matter, because each existence is its own irresponsible lord; but if to another, then nirvana is by that injurious act postponed, and ho who commits it is lower than he who does not. There is no sin, but there is unkind- ncss, and unkindness produces fruit just as a tamarind produces fruit. It would be a crime to hurt any living thing, and strict Buddhists still refuse to swallow ani- malcule ; but it would not be a crime to commit adul- tery if the husband consented, a deduction formally drawn and acted on in Ceylon, 1 ccause no one is in- jured. In practice the id-^a works in two ways : the really devout pass lives of the monastic kind, absorbed in themselves, and apart from the world ; and the worldly follow their own inclinations, thinking the re- ward of virtue a great deal too distant and too shad- owy— a hunt after nothing. So keenly, indeed, is this felt, that in most Buddhist countries there is a sub-creed, not supposed to be at variance with the Es- tablished Church, but to work in a less refined but quicker way. When a Singhalese, for example, feels the need of supernatural help, he worships a devil to get it, not as disbelieving Buddhism, but as supposing that devils may exist as well as any tiling else, and may, if kindly treated, be as useful as any other allies. Of course the race which holds such a system has, as a race, rather a better chance, of being decent than a really pagan one, for it only half understands its own creed, and the stock texts being all very benevolent and philosophical, it takes them for a theoretic rule of life, and, though it does not fully obey the rule, it is decidedly better than if the rule were a bad one. The Burmese, for example, are on the whole distinctly a better people than the Hindoos, more especially lie- cause, as human affairs must go on, they make rules for holding society together, which are quite inde- pendent of any divine rule at all, and which happen in Burmah to be decently wise." The commandments enjoin upon man to refrain from ten deadly sins, which are again divided into three classes. Five deadly sins (patricide, matricide, the murder of an arhat [" vener- able priest"], wounding the person of Buddha, and causing a schism among the priesthood) shut a man forever out of nirvana. Charity or self-sacrifice for the good of others is specially inculcated.
III. Worship.— The Buddhists retain many of the ceremonies of Brahmaism, but do not recognise the
precepts of the Vedas. The sanctuary in their tem- ples, which contains the relic of a saint, is called dagop. Prayers are directed to Buddha, to the hermit Gotama, and, in general, to those who have attained the digni- ty of a Buddha. Sacrifices, consisting of flowers, fruits, and slaughtered animals, are offered to the Buddhas and the lower gods. "The adoration of the statues of the Buddha and of his relics is the chief external ceremony of the religion. The centres of the worship
j are the temples containing statues, and the topes or tumuli erected over the relics of the Buddha or of his distinguished apostles, or on spots consecrated as the scenes of the Buddha's acts. The central object in a Buddhist temple, corresponding to the altar in a Ro- man Catholic church, is an image of the Buddha, or a.
I dagoba or shrine containing his relics." Sacred is the mystic word Om. The priests are called lamas among the Mongols, bonzes in China and Japan, rahana in Burmah, talapoins in Siam. They wear the tonsure, live in celibacy, and frequently in monastic communi-