. New China and old : personal recollections and observations of thirty years. c Buddhist. I have met withlarge numbers of Buddhists, both clerical and lay, inChina; but it was unusual, so far as my experiencewent, to find a man prepared to defend intelligentlynot the follies but the philosophies of Buddhism. Hewas as courteous and polite as the most polishedChinaman could be. He listened with patience andeager interest to our statements and arguments ; buthe was ready also, with real eloquence and lucidarrangement of thought, to defend Buddhism, not asa companion religion, but as pre-eminentl
. New China and old : personal recollections and observations of thirty years. c Buddhist. I have met withlarge numbers of Buddhists, both clerical and lay, inChina; but it was unusual, so far as my experiencewent, to find a man prepared to defend intelligentlynot the follies but the philosophies of Buddhism. Hewas as courteous and polite as the most polishedChinaman could be. He listened with patience andeager interest to our statements and arguments ; buthe was ready also, with real eloquence and lucidarrangement of thought, to defend Buddhism, not asa companion religion, but as pre-eminently the had a clear and strong hold on the great principleswhich seem to underlie Buddhist pliilosophy, and whichin their legitimate issue make it not agnostic butatheistic. Look, he said, at the misery of the world!You tell me that it was made and is upheld by is this possible if God is good ? If God be notgood, it were infinitely better surely to be without theDeity altogether. If God be good, this poor world ofours must be beyond His cognizance. And are we. A Buddhist Apologist. 165 not driven thus/ he continued, to the great principleof our Holy Buddliist faith, namely, that happinessexists for man solely in the cessation of all sensation ;in the eternal repose of deliverance, not from the burdenof the iiesh alone, but from the burden of the changesand perturbations inseparably connected with consciousexistence. And man must and may work out thissalvation for himself! The idea of probation and ofhuman responsible free-will, being indispensable to allbut mechanical and automatic virtue, seemed new tohim; and the pardon and renewal and progressivesanctification in the name of the Lord Jesus, and bythe Spirit of our God, seemed to him like new andincomprehensible mysteries. It is not often that wefind the speculative side of pure Buddhism so undaunt-edly professed by a Chinaman, and so ably Yang told me that he had been a student ofBuddhism for th
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