He himself disclaims it. In The Book of the Great Decease he is reported to have said to his most confidential disciple, Ananda, "I have preached the truth without making any distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrine; for in respect of the truths, the Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back." Surely these words ought to be sufficient to show that all claims for occult meanings and practices must have been subsequent and spurious additions, and have no place in the religious teaching of Gotama. Indeed, one may understand that the Buddha was too serious and too much in earnest to encourage thaumaturgical aims and claims which tend to develop personality instead of suppressing it. Neither can one see what advantage can accrue from the acquisition of such powers. They cannot contribute to the soul's advancement in any respect, but must rather prove an obstacle to spiritual development. The truly wise will not desire such abnormal powers, but only wish to walk in the way of solid progress, by disentanglement from all lower attachments, to the high goal of spiritual freedom and elevation. The true Buddhistic teaching undoubtedly enforces the principle that all progress towards the object it has in view must be gained by rigid steps of continuous procedure on the long since laid down lines of probity, unselfishness, and that interior sentiment of the soul which sees its own welfare in the well-being of all; which does not seek the development of abnormal powers, but to use well and faithfully those already in possession by the gift of a natural distribution. Surely this is reasonable, -to grow from one stage of spiritual elevation to another by the exercise of stern self-command, great watchfulness over the growth of character, and that temper of mind which is rooted and fixed in the permanent and undecaying; for nothing can be really our own or actually a part of ourselves

which is not chosen and fostered by force of will. Powers conferred on us by abnormal means, and not of our own attainment by the use of our natural faculties, must always remain a non-essential and accidental tenure, and can never grow into the proper nature of the soul's life.

If we make a comparison of Buddhism with Christianity, however great a similarity may appear in some of the elements of its teaching, its distinct inferiority in scope, purpose, and adaptability will become apparent. The religion of the Buddha could never be brought to combine with the advancement and progressive amelioration of society. It works by abandonment, leaving the world every way as it finds it. It lacks the helpful and actively loving spirit of Christianity; that noble altruism which gains by bestowing, and counts its wealth from the benefit and welfare of others, and not from an egoistical consideration of its own advantage. It is a high testimony to the superiority of Christianity that even in its lowest and least emphatic form it stimulates noble enterprise, and fosters the forward movements of social amendment and elevation, and even contributes in a subsidiary manner to the development of the arts and sciences. Its spirit is based upon the universal law of evolution, and, rightly understood, never stands still either in its spiritual or natural manifestations. This cannot certainly be said of Buddhism, which does not hold any close spiritual connection with universal religious growth, which is so marked a characteristic of the profounder and larger teaching of the Vedânta. There is a want of that dignity and nobility, also, in the personal traits and actions of Gotama which distinguished the Author of Christianity. The miracles attributed to the Buddha have neither the impressive character nor the touching significance of those narrated by the Evangelists of the New Testament. We may search in vain amongst

Buddhistic writings for such instances of moral sublimity as the answer given to the persecutors of the sinning woman, or the fine and silencing retort to the cavilers concerning the tribute money. Then, if we compare the death of Gotama from a surfeit of dried pork, and his lengthy discourses thereupon, with that of Christ on the cross, and his latest exclamation, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," how striking is the contrast! I am aware that a symbolical meaning has been attached by later followers to the manner of Gotama's death, but I know of no authority or reason for such an interpretation, excepting it may be the desire to cover an inconsiderable detail with a more impressive significance.

A very strange and notable circumstance, not perhaps generally known, is that Gotama Buddha should have been enrolled as a saint in the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. I believe the date and circumstances of his canonization are not historically traceable. The story of his life, together with that of a disciple, is related in a christianized form in the narrative of Barlaam and Joasaph, a book well known in hagiology.1

To those having no knowledge of Oriental tongues, who would study Buddhism, or indeed any other of the representative

religions of the East, seriously and profitably, a word of counsel may be directed. They should seek to acquire their knowledge through translations of the most literal and exact interpretation, and not by means of those appareled in the robes of an artificial poetic expression, whose appeal is from the aesthetic investiture rather than from the weight of the matter of utterance. In these dressed-up habiliments the moral force and intrinsic penetrative power of the instruction are sure to be obscured, if not totally lost. "The more sublime the gospel," says the German preacher Schleiermacher, "the more simple should the sermon be." The taste is surely more than questionable that would clothe the Sermon on the Mount in modern æsthetic trimming. The system of dealing with the large ideas, splendid outlook, and grand conceptions of these religions of the ancient world, as material to receive the smooth and easy polish which renders them better suited to the drawing-room table than for the study of the sincere and earnest searcher after truth, is every way to be deprecated and discountenanced. It can only tend to draw them down into the domain of the commonplace, to a depreciation of their intrinsic value, and, finally, to the indifference of neglect and apathetic unconcern.

tiest smile, and clasped his arm, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Well, well, a young man must have

his way, for sure," said the grandmother, not at all ill pleased. "But, John, if thou shouldst take the plague, what 'u'd Margery do then? Come not again till thou com'st to fetch her for good and all."

But there, too, it seemed that a young man must have his way. Not come again? Ay, that would he! But there was Tideswell market next day, where he must get some furnishings for the new cottage, and then there was this and that, till at length "this day week" turned out to be the earliest time he could fix for

"An' that's true," said the grandmother, "wi' the plague upon us, and nobody knowing who next. I heared but now how Anthony Skidmore was drinking ale o' Monday wi' two or three, an' all a-talking o' the plague, an' he says, 'Gi' me good ale enough an' I'll fear no plague,' says he. An' the next morning the red cross on his door, an' they say this night 'll be his last, for "

A deep and solemn sound from the church tower near by, the passing-bell, broke in upon her words. One - two three-the heart-thrilling strokes went on up to five-and-twenty, and there stopped. It was Anthony Skidmore's knell.

"God ha' mercy on his soul! said Granny Hall. "But who next? The Thornleys buried this morning, and three more houses shut up! I doubt thy folk don't want thee to come here, John. They'll not be overglad o' the wedding. They'd like thee to give up Margery, I should n't wonder?"

"It's not what they'd like, but what I like," returned the young man, in a tone which betrayed that this was not the first he had heard of the matter. "Them that's 'feard need n't come to

the wedding. I don't care. So Margery's there, that's enough for me."

Margery rewarded him with her pret

Middleton Dale, at some little distance from Eyam.

Much may happen in a week, however. In September of the year 1665, when the Great Plague was raging in London, the seeds of the dread disease were conveyed to the village of Eyam, lying in peaceful remoteness from the world among the hills of Derbyshire. A box of clothing was sent to the village tailor, from a relative in London, it is said. It may have been a commission, or perhaps, at a time when everything was selling for a song on account of the pestilence, the tailor's kinsman thought it a good opportunity to do him a kindness at small

singularly virulent. All through the winter months there were deaths from the plague here and there, and in the spring the numbers began to increase.

The Rev. William Mompesson, the rector of Eyam, who had been presented to the living by Sir George Savile only a year before the calamity, devoted himself from the first to his stricken flock, going in and out among them not only as a priest, to minister to the sick and dying, but in the place of a physician; fighting the pestilence as best he could, and devising measures to control it. He had sent his two little children away to a relative in Yorkshire, and besought his wife to accompany them; but if his duty was to his people, hers was to him; she would not leave him. So together they faced what inevitably must come.

In June there was a sudden outburst of the disease. House after house was closed, sealed against ingress or egress by a red cross of warning on the door. The devoted priest was the only person who entered there, and the first thing that came out was a coffin.

The village was panic-stricken. Men had no heart for work, and women folded their hands; only the carpenter plied his trade as never before, the tap-tap of his hammer beginning at dawn, and sounding late into the summer night, as he fashioned the last habitation for many and many a one of his neighbors. But he, too, came to loathe his work.

One evening he carried a coffin to its destination, leaned it up against the door, rapped loudly, and started away in ter ror at the sound of footsteps approaching from within.

"That's the last I'll make in this pest-hole," he muttered to himself as he sped home. "Come this time to-morrow night, I'll be far from here, please God. Sure 't is tempting Providence to stay." "Who goes there?" cried a woman's voice from a cottage window. Then, when there was no reply, only the sound of hastening steps, "Whoever it is, go, in pity's

A little farther on, and a man called, "Is it thou, Tim Buxton? And where is our coffin? Stop, man! stop! We must have the coffin. Dost thou hear?"

He heard, and quickened his pace to a run, as if Black Death were after him. "I'll get away from Eyam!" he murmured to himself again.

He was not the only one who thought of flight. As if the idea of escape were in the air, on a sudden the whole village was astir with it. To be free from the daily, nightly terror of the pestilence! To leave everything, to go anywhere, so only they might save themselves alive!

""Tis lucky we've Middleton Dale to go to, seeing we 've no kin in these parts," said Dame Hall to Margery, as they hastily collected such clothing as must be taken on their flight. "They 'll be thinking we 're bringing 'em the plague, John's folk, but we can't help that. There's no staying here. An' there's the new cottage an' all. An' John 'll be willing, for thy sake. He to come here in a week's time! Who'd ha' dreamed we'd all be going to him afore then, thou an' me an' the children!"

"Goin' to John, be ye?" said a sharp voice at the cottage door. An old woman, leaning on a cane, stood there, and forthwith stepped in and seated herself. The village gossip, and living just over the way, she was as much at home in the Halls' kitchen as in her own. "Well, I doubt his folk won't want ye," she observed, after glancing around the room to take in the preparations for the flitting.

"I was just a-saying it," returned Granny Hall calmly. "But what can we do? An' where are ye going yerself, dame?"

"Where would I go but to Tideswell? Is n't my Peter and Mary there? One o' them 'll take their old mother in. When ye 've brought up children 't is the least they can do ; an' they well off.”

66

Why, we 're going to the new cottage, an' there'll be plenty o' room. "T is fine an' large, by what John says." "O-o-oh, to the new cottage!" repeated the visitor. If its size at all impressed her, she kept that to herself, while with unerring acumen she instantly touched upon the tender point in the arrangement. "An' so all the fine new things 'll be used afore ever Margery's married! What does she say to that?"

Margery said only that it could not be helped, and looked a little rueful.

66

"An' ye 're thinkin' to take all that stuff with ye?" continued Dame Lowe,

her eyes fixed upon some piles of snowy linen, Margery's precious contribution to the young housekeeping, and which she could not bear to leave behind.

66

Why, Joel an' me are strong; we can each carry a good big bundle," the girl protested, though with a lurking perturbation in her voice.

"I hope I'll see ye start, that's all! " said the gossip, and betook herself to her own bundle, declaring there was no time to lose.

The excitement naturally attendant on such an exodus prevailed everywhere alike, and in the midst of it all came a message from the rector, delivered in the stentorian tones of the village crier. The adult members of the parish were

invited to repair to the church when summoned by the bell.

Why? Well, his reverence had heard they were all going away. "And belike he'll want to give us some advice," said the crier.

That was a good hearing. Advice was precisely what they all needed, especially those who had no kindred in the neighborhood and little or no money in hand. Accordingly they gathered at the appointed time, full of the momentousness of a near departure, inquiring one of another as they met outside the church, “Are ye ready?" ready?" "When are ye going?" Those whose way was short meant to start after the meeting, others on the morrow. Some gave ambiguous replies about their plans, and showed no disposition to converse; they, perhaps, had left a child at home hanging its head languidly, and what that portended-if it was merely some harmless ailment or the initial stage of the dread disease- the next few hours would reveal; meanwhile, the less said the better, if they did not care to be shut up on suspicion.

When all were assembled, there were some of the familiar prayers; but after the common devotions were ended the priest still knelt, until, in the long silence, all eyes were fixed on the motionless figure. Finally he rose and turned towards them; but even then it was to look around lingeringly on his simple flock, as if he were loath to begin.

Yet it was a magnificent address he was prepared to utter.

From the meagre records left of the rector of Eyam, it would not seem that he was a man of great gifts as the world counts them, but he had certainly the one supreme gift belonging to his holy office, which enabled him to work a miracle in Christ's name. And so of that gathering in a little country church some account will be handed on to future generations as long as the English tongue is spoken; but at the moment - when they all sat expectant - there was only