It is with considerable hesitation, that 1 venture to address you on the subject of Buddhism. Not as if I had given years of study to this particular religion, and yet failed to make myself familiar with its general characteristics and minute details. It is the magnitude and importance of the subject that appals me and in view of which I naturally feel distrustful of my own power to deal with that subject in a satisfactory and yet attractive manner. Buddhism, I repeat, is a system of vast magnitude, for it embraces all the various branches of science, which our Western nations have been long accustomed to divide for separate study. It embodies in one living structure grand and peculiar views of physical science, refined and subtle theorems on abstract metaphysics, an edifice of fanciful mysticism, a most elaborate and far-reaching system of practical morality, and finally a church organisation as broad in its principles and as finely wrought in its most intricate network as any in the world. All this is moreover combined and worked up in such a manner, that the essence and substance of the whole may be compressed into a few formulas and symbols, plain and suggestive enough to be grasped by the most simple-minded Asiatic, and yet so full of philosophic depth, as to provide rich food for years of meditation to the metaphysician, the poet, the mystic; and pleasant pasturage for the most fiery imagination of any poetical dreamer. The magnitude of the subject, however, is but equalled by its importance. A system which takes its roots in the oldest codebook of Asiatic nations, in the Vêda, a theory which extracted and remodelled all the best ideas that were ever laid hold of by ancient Brahmanism, a religion which has not only managed to subsist for 2400 years but which has succeeded to draw within the meshes of its own peculiar church-organization and to bring more or less under the influence of its own peculiar tenets 450 millions of people, fully one third of the human race,-such a system,

such a religion ought to have importance enough in our eyes to deserve something more than passing or passive attention.

The history of Eastern Asia is the history of Buddhism. But the conquests of Buddhism are not confined to Asia. This grand system of philosophic atheism, which discards from the universe the existence of a creating and overruling deity and in its place deifies humanity, has, since the beginning of the present century, entered upon a course of conquest in the West, in Europe and America. Atheistic philosophers, unconsciously attracted by the natural affinity, which draws together Atheists of all countries and ages, have during the last fifty years almost instinctively gone on sipping at the intoxicating cup of Buddhistic philosophy. The Germans Feuerbach and Schoppenhauer, the Frenchman Comte, the Englishman Lewis, the American Emerson, with hosts of others, have all drunk more or less of this sweet poison and taken as kindly as any Asiatic to this Buddhistic opium-pipe. But most of all that latest product of modern philosophy, the so-called system of positive religion, the school of Comte, with its religion of humanity, is but Buddhism adapted to modern civilisation, it is philosophic Buddhism in a slight disguise.

I mention these facts only, to claim your attention for the subject of my lecture, being aware of the prejudices which deter people from a study so unpromising at first sight and uninviting as that of Buddhism. But to guide you through the vast labyrinth of Buddhistic literature and doctrines with something like method, I would divide the subject matter under discussion into three parts and treat Buddhism first as an event in history, secondly as a dogmatic system, and finally consider its aspects as a popular religion. Considering, however, that the time allotted for this lecture is too limited to allow of my treating the whole subject more than superficially, I shall confine my remarks for the present to the first part of this programme. And I propose therefore to treat Buddhism as an event in