WHICH IS IT TO BE?

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 148, 24 June 1890, Page 4

WHICH IS IT TO BE?

Sir Edwin Arnold, recently editor of a London morning paper, and Poet Laureate of Buddhism, has gone to Japan, where he will remain. He is reported to bave recently said, " I feel like a bird from a cage. I shall never go back." He said. "We Buddhists neither hope nor fear ; earthquake or banquet is the same to ua." He further said, " Japan is infinitely reposeful for lovers of good manners. The Japanese live in an atmosphere of Buddhism without knowing it." Sir Edwin Arnold is not only a Buddhist, but a believer that Buddhism will in future inspire the life of Japan Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop), in an address recently delivered at South-place Institute — the Metropolitan Ethical Church — in speaking of the religions life of Japan, says : — " The easiest and least exacting of religions is passing away ; and now — what will satisfy the spiiitual cravings which Buddhism and Christianity have awakened, and who will mould the religious future of Japan 7 Will it be the ascetic and philosophic Sakyamuni, dead for two thousand years, and serene for ever in his golden shrine, offering a passionless nonentity as the goal of righteousness 1 or will it be Jesus, the cruoified.Nazareno, holding in his pierced hands the gift of an immortality of unhindered and consecrated activities, the best hope of the wearing age?, to whom, as the Crowned and Risen Christ, through centuries of glow and peaceful progress, all Christendom has bent the adoring knee, and who shall yet reign in righteousness, King of Kings and Lord of Lords ?"