in the world unless it be granted that Christianity filtering along
the great trade routes of an earlier world joined hands with
Buddhism in many unsuspected ways and places. Evidence is
accumulating that this is so, and in a measure at present almost
incredible. And if it be so--if it be true that in spite of racial
distinctions, differences of thought and circumstance, the religious
thought of East and West has so many and so great meeting-points,
the hope of the world in things spiritual may lie in the recognition
of that fact and in a future union now shadowed forth only in symbol
and in a great hope. This, however, is no essay on Buddhism, either
earlier or later, and what I have said is necessary to the
introduction of these Jodo-Wasan, or Psalms of the Pure Land, which
are a part not only of the literature, but also of the daily worship
and spiritual life of Japan. Their history may be briefly told.

Buddhism passed into Japan from China and Korea about 1320 years
ago, in or about the year A.D. 552. It adapted itself with perfect
comprehension to the ideals of the Japanese people, inculcating
among them the teachings of morality common to the great faiths
with, in addition, the spiritual unction, the passion of love and
sympathy, self-devotion, and compassion, in which Buddhism and
Christianity are alike pre-eminent. The negative side of Buddhism,
with its passionless calm and self-renunciation, is the only one
that has been realised in the West, and the teachings of Mahayana
which have borne fruit and flower, visible to all the world, of
happiness, courtesy, kindliness in the spiritual attitude of a whole
people, have never received the honour which was their due.

For with the Buddhist faith there came the germ of the belief that
the Gautama Buddha in his own grandeur bore witness to One