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S a boat's crew approaching the land in the face of an adverse wind and tide on a stormy night, enters at last within the shelter of the harbor, and feels the boat slip forward suddenly into quiet water, and as the winds hush under the protecting land, they rest on their oars with thankful hearts-some such feeling as this came upon the writer on looking, the other day, through the recent num bers of The Hibbert Journal. Almost every principle for which the theosophist has contended for the last thirty years, through good report and evil report, was accepted and admitted in one or another article by men among the most eminent, learned and thoughtful of our time; admitted, not in a niggardly and reluctant way, but cheerfully, with all the freshness and wonder of an original discovery. As one turned over page after page, article after article, number after number, it became evident that the ideals of the theosophist are winning all along the line; that the sacrifices of our martyrs have not been in vain; that an immense and marvelous revolution has indeed taken place in the best thought of the western world since the days, thirty years ago, when our first pioneers began to put forward thoughts that were then too often condemned as dangerous heresies, to be met with ridicule and persecution. Another thing becomes evident: that the hour for that pioneer work was chosen with consummate wisdom; that cyclic time was ripe for it; that the field of the world was ready for the seed. Therefore it comes that so many of the principles for which our first leaders fought seem now to be springing up of their own accord, freely, luxuriantly, in all kinds of unexpected places. And many who now advocate them would be astonished to find that they are only repeating what theosophists had already said; expressing principles and ideals which were matters of faith in the theosophical movement from the outset.

One of the fundamental thoughts of the theosophists, and one which brought keener persecution, perhaps, than any other, was the ultimate

unity of religions. The motive behind this idea was by no means to lessen reverence for Christianity by comparing it with other faiths. On the contrary, the moving principle was to "assert eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to man." In the spirit of that wonderful saying: "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd," the theosophist held it not compatible with the goodness of God to believe that the untold myriads born without the Christian faith, and who had never heard the Christian name, should be condemned to eternal punishment. On the contrary, the theosophist held that the All-Father had at all times placed within the reach of all men, in all ages, the spiritual light and teaching needful for the welfare of their souls, and that to all men had appeared the glimmering of the "small old path that stretches far away," whose end is immortal life. The theosophist held, and vehemently urged, that the so called heathen religions must be viewed, not as snares of the evil one, but as the very provisions of spiritual light placed by divine Providene within the reach of all souls, in all lands and times; that, as being of divine purpose and inspiration, they must be reverently studied, with faith and fervor; as only thus could the whole plan of the world's religion, the world's divine teaching, be made clear.

So it is with supreme satisfaction that those who remember the early battle through which the theosophists had to pass, now read such articles as those in The Hibbert Journal, where the unity of the world's religious experience is taken as axiomatic. Thus, in the number of October, 1905, we find the Editor writing:

"If there is any considerable number of Christian thinkers who habitually take due account of the meaning of the great non-Christian religions, I must confess that the fact has escaped my observation. ... Nor do I overlook the splendid labors of Oriental scholars. they leave us all with no excuse for ignorance. But although the work of these thinkers deserves to be ranked among the greatest achievements of modern science, and although, as it seems to me, they have a close bearing on the problems of the Christian consciousness, the fact remains that in modifying the general form of Christianity they have effected next to nothing. They have at least made incredible the doctrine of exclusive salvation, though this, to the scandal of Christendom, still remains in the formularies."

The Editor further writes: "Even those Christian thinkers who not only know of the existence of these religions-this we all may be supposed to do but are acquainted with their history and doctrines, are none too eager to bring this knowledge into relation with current beliefs. It has repeatedly fallen to my lot to call the attention of writers on

Christian themes to this matter; to point out to them-what was very obvious that the course of their arguments needed modification, in view of the existence of the non-Christian religions; that such and such a view of 'humanity' or 'the human race' would be flagrantly untrue if the five hundred million Buddhists were allowed to be human; and in these cases I have been met with answers which showed that the minds of the writers were unprepared for the reference-so unprepared, indeed, as to find it superfluous or even provoking. This again is no cause for surprise. For centuries past there has been so little foreign interference in the course of Christian thought that the mere possibility of its occurrence has passed out of sight. What wonder, then, if Christian thinkers regard the reference to Buddhism as a needlessly disturbing element— an impertinent intrusion of the foreigner, of which they are in no sense bound to take account? That men should refuse to recognize plain truth until the thunder of cannon has dinned it into their heads is, indeed, no new thing."

Even more explicit are the words of Rev. Heber Newton, in the January, 1906, number of the same journal. Dr. Newton, after winning wide fame as a liberal divine, was invited to become Select Preacher of Leland Stanford Jr. University, and is also Vice-President of the Liberal Congress of Religions, and President of the International Metaphysical League. Indicating the causes which are liberalizing our views of religion, Dr. Newton writes: "Religions are many, religion proves to be one. There are infinite variations of the religious life of man-there is one soul and substance of religion everywhere. Human nature, being one and the same, and the universe confronted by man being one and the same, human thought of the problems of the universe tends to develop towards one and the same generic form. Given the same stage of evolution with the same environment and the same ideas, beliefs, aspirations, cults and worships will appear. The astonishing parallelisms between the great religions of the earth prove to be no mere accidents, no cribbing from Moses by Plato, no benevolent assimilations of the ideas of Buddhism by Christianity. Religions apparently the most widely separated one from another, and seemingly the most alien one to the other, prove to have each its own sacred book, its own sacred institutions, its own body of belief. And these, however varied, are seen to be moving along one line of natural evolution, toward one and the same ethical and spiritual goal."

One can well believe that immense good will come from the influence of so broad and enlightened a teacher, radiating among the students of the great Western university.

The Hibbert Journal does more than merely preach the comparative study of religions. It puts it in practice. In the three numbers before us,

we have two scholarly and sympathetic articles on Buddhism. We have also two studies of Christianity, one by a Japanese Buddhist, the other by a distinguished Indian Mohammedan. M. Anesaki, the Japanese Buddhist who writes on Christianity, won our hearts at once by controverting one of the fallacies into which so many western Orientalists fall, when they come to write of Buddhism: the fallacy that the Buddha taught mere negation, a sublimed materialism. M. Anesaki writes: "The so-called Buddhist metaphysic, which mainly teaches these phenomenal aspects of our life, presupposes a long history of Vedic philosophy, which culminated in the contrast of the true universal self (atman) and the sensuous life (jiva). The enlightenment of the pre-Buddhistic philosophy consisted in the abandonment of the empirical life and the realization of the true ego, or the absorption into the highest being (Brahmanirvana). The Buddhistic ideal of Nirvana, the wisdom of the truth, the meditation leading to it, and the good conduct-all these teachings are founded upon the Brahmanic philosophy. Buddhism teaches the non-entity of the ego, and uses the very term atman for the ego which is to be annihilated. But that means the transcendence of the empirical ego, which is made up of constituents, and after this extinction there remains the universal Bodhi, the highest, eternal life in Truth. In this respect Buddhism is no heterodox branch of the Brahmanic philosophy and religion. Buddhism has grown out of the very philosophical soil of the Brahmanic wisdom. Though the powerful personality of the founder had given the religion a very strong impression of faith in and love of the Master, its enlightenment consisted in the intellectual conviction of the truth; and the calm resignation of all worldly interests by the Master has become typical of a Buddhist saint."

This learned Japanese Buddhist, professor of the Philosophy of Religion in the Imperial University of Japan, holds that the atman whose reality is denied by the Buddhist is the jivatman of Vedanta teaching, not the Paramatman; the personal self, and not the Supreme Self, which is one with Bodhi, the highest spiritual being. It has always seemed to us that this is the true view; that it is the self of selfishness which is denied, not that Supreme Self, which is the One Being, and which is also the final reality within each of us, according to the Great Word: "That thou art!"

It will be seen that this learned Buddhist holds very much the view which is put forward in an article in this number of THE THEOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, on "the Religion of India,”—that Buddhism is “no heterodox branch of the Brahmanic philosophy" but a vital growth of the pre-Buddhistic wisdom of India. Yet we find here also the misleading use of the adjective "Brahmanic" for that wisdom, although, as the article referred to shows, its genealogy is not Brahmanic at all. Buddhism