God. But, in the West, this dissolving power of mysticism, which reduces all positive, outward religious beliefs and worship to symbolism, and regards the historical facts of religion as mere shadows and signs of mysterious truths, has been vigorously resisted both by Christian churches and by Islam. Instead of explaining the lower worships, they have trampled out and destroyed them; they have insisted on the unequivocal acceptance of the facts of sacred history as essential to salvation; and, undoubtedly, this has been one main reason why the militant faiths have conquered and kept a permanent dominion.

But, in eastern Asia, the two different faces of religion (I may call them the mythical and the mysterious) have remained and have worked together the outer worship for the people who must have their innumerable deities, their images, and their miraculous legends; the inner teaching that explains all these things as symbolical, as signs and shadows of divine truths. You will understand that Hinduism and Buddhism have never set out formal creeds, containing articles of faith which a man must accept at his peril; they have not turned dogmatic propositions, such as those contained in the Athanasian Creed, into ecclesiastical laws, so that a heretic who disputed them might, as in the Middle Ages, be punished as a pernicious law - breaker. All these masterful methods of enforcing unity of belief, which gave the Roman Church such power in the Middle Ages,

and which caused religious wars and long persecutions, are unknown to the tolerant and somewhat indifferent religions of eastern Asia. The people could always worship as they liked; and the priests, or stewards of divine mysteries, did not attempt to persecute, because they treated all outward forms and rites as of little importance, the one thing really essential being the inner truth which lay behind.

Nevertheless, I repeat that, to my mind, the strength, for resistance against outward attack, of these Eastern religions lies in the fact that the polytheism is backed by the philosophy; the ruder worships are supported by intellectual explanations, and the two forms are closely allied; indeed, they blend and run into each other. But I do not pretend that this kind of understanding between simple worships and subtle interpretations is unknown elsewhere. On the contrary, the gradual elevation and refining of ritual and doctrine has always gone on, is still going on, in all societies that have a studious and intellectual priesthood. You find it in the Roman Catholic Church, which has a scientific theology for the elect, and manuals of simple devotion, full of miracles and saintly legends, for the masses. But, while it is the business of theology to provide a reasonable ground for implicit faith, no Christian church openly allows tampering with the plain statements of historic fact contained in revealed Scripture, or permits articles of faith to be treated as anything but

positive truths. Hinduism has neither one authorized revelation, nor a church to guarantee and uphold it. Yet, in one way, the very looseness of its formation is an advantage, because it can assimilate and find room for almost any religious conception, treating everything as a fresh manifestation of the all-pervading divine spirit. And science troubles the Eastern mystic no more than a fresh religion; for science may be understood as merely a symbolical language, shadowing forth the truths of divinity. One may even treat the Asiatic process of assimilating and melting down all religious ideas as belonging to the general intellectual tendency to accept the continuous growth and elevation by slow change of all forms and feelings, and the gradual development of higher and wider truths contained in primitive beliefs.

As the Brahmins would put it, their religion has two forms: the interior, which is invariable; the exterior, which may be constantly modified and adapted to circumstances. The interior truths, the divine secrets, the real way of salvation, are known only to a few; the great majority of men, being timid and ignorant, are concerned mainly in propitiating the powerful and malignant influences by which they fancy themselves to be surrounded. As knowledge increases, as man succeeds in subduing and controlling the forces of nature, he overcomes or despises the troubles of this transitory life, he attains spiritual indepen

dence, and rises into a higher sphere of religion and morality. My suggestion is that a religion of this sort, which has its outworks in paganism and its citadel in pantheism, has always had great power of resistance and endurance, for the very reason that it can change and accommodate itself to social or intellectual conditions. How it will maintain itself in front of the rapid influx of European education and material civilization is another and much more difficult question. In India and in Japan, and to a certain degree wherever European influences have spread in eastern Asia, they are changing the whole atmosphere in which fantastic superstitions and metaphysical speculations grow and flourish; they are introducing orderly government and pacific leisure, scientific methods of inquiry and critical reasoning. Yet, after all, the influence of Europe is mostly industrial and political; we are reorganizing the oldfashioned Asiatic governments and developing commerce and the sources of wealth. I hope that the morality, public and private, of the countries that are falling within the sphere of European influence will be improved. I am not sure what effect may be produced upon the profound spiritualism of eastern Asia.

And this brings us to the weak side of a religion, which, though intensely spiritualistic, is founded on somewhat vague philosophy, and embraces schools of thought, accepts different theories as to the divine nature. It has no dogmatic rulings upon

such questions as are settled by Christian and Mohammedan creeds; and, since it has no ecclesiastical laws, it requires no man's implicit obedience to its teachings. I do not say that Hinduism contains nothing more than philosophic speculations and devotional rhapsodies. In the ascetic desire to be rid of the flesh, to extinguish worldly thought, and, above all, in the longing to escape illusion, change, and all the ills of earthly existence, there is a dominant strain of morality; and the great doctrine of transmigration of souls may well operate as insisting on the penalties of sin and the way of ascending to salvation by purity of conduct. Yet Hinduism, and even Buddhism, has never succeeded in so limiting and clearly stating certain rules of faith and morals as to lay down and impress them upon the people at large, for their practical guidance in life. They have nothing, for instance, like our Ten Commandments or the Lord's Prayer, which order our lives and direct our consciences.

It would be presumptuous to attempt any kind of prediction as to the religious future of India, what will be the nature and direction of the changes that must follow altered circumstances and larger experiences. The antique polytheism will probably disappear, though slowly, before wider and more precise conceptions and before a higher standard of rational morality. Long ago, indeed, the Hindu philosophy struck out one line of thought that undermines all anthropomorphic conceptions