There is an Arab proverb, Professor Denio quotes it, which says

Men are four :

He who knows not, and knows not he knows not. He is a fool,-shun him.

He who knows not, and knows he knows not. He is simple,-teach him.

He who knows, and knows not he knows. He is asleep, -wake him.

He who knows, and knows he knows. He is wise,follow him.

The Hebrew prophet was wise. He knew, and he knew that he knew.

This is a significant thing in the Old Testament. It is, in Dr. Denio's judgment, the most significant thing. Marvellous is the knowledge which the Old Testament prophet had of God. If we were to gather together the glorious things which are spoken of God in the Old Testament, we should find, says Professor Denio, that they cover nearly all that we know of God. Even our Lord Himself added little to what the Old Testament tells us about God. But much more significant than their knowledge of God is the Hebrew prophets' confidence that what they knew was true. This is the wonder of the Old Testament. How did they know that they knew? Professor Denio says they knew by their theophanies.

A theophany is a direct, physically miraculous, revelation of God. It differs from reflection. Professor Kittel thinks that the Hebrew prophet got at his knowledge of God by reflection. Professor Denio has great respect for Professor Kittel, but he cannot follow him here. He is ready to follow Professor Davidson instead. He believes that in those early ages God deliberately came down and made Himself known to men in the very same way in which one human personality makes himself known to another. The records say so. Dr. Denio sees nothing in psychology or experience that does not confirm the truth of the records. He knows of no other way in which

the Hebrew prophet could have been so sure that he knew.

St. Paul was certain that Jesus of Nazareth had risen from the dead. He got his certainty from a theophany. In the earlier time it was more necessary and more likely to occur. 'A man is in the desert caring for a flock. His eye is caught by an unwonted sight-an acacia tree is ablaze with flame, yet continues unconsumed. Out from the midst of that flaming acacia into the silence of the desert air come intelligible sounds to his ears. In that solitude the man has a long conversation with an unseen person. The conversation runs on into argument and expostulation. A course of conduct is urged upon him.' That is a theophany. Professor Denio, in close touch with modern thought, sees nothing to hinder him from accepting it. He believes that by means of that theophany Moses came to know that God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; came to know that He was the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious.

The Bishop of Durham has contributed a paper to a volume which is edited by the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., and published by the Religious Tract Society, under the title of Words of Help on Belief and Conduct. The Bishop of Durham's paper is an answer to the question, How can the individual soul approach God? It has the first place in the volume.

And it deserves that place. No clearer word of counsel has ever been spoken by Dr. Moule. He knows the delicacy of his topic. He knows its sacredness. But he knows also that we should think aright about this matter of the soul's approach to God, and that we should put our thinking into practice. For there

is no doubt of the emphasis in the text which Dr. Moule has chosen. 'As for me,' he renders it, as for me, approach to God for me is good.' There is no doubt that the emphasis is on the

me. The whole stress of the sentence,' says Dr. Moule, 'lies upon the individual and independent decision.' That is why it is so delicate a theme; that is why it is so sacred.

But there is also a collective aspect of spiritual life, and with that Dr. Moule deals first. It is sometimes expressed in the word Humanity. Humanity is the object of Redemption, as it is the organ of Revelation. Sometimes it is the Kingdom of God that is the central idea. All is All is for the Kingdom; the individual must find his blessings, if he is to be blest, through its large mediation. And sometimes it is the great word Church. The Church is the true object and recipient of salvation. It is the avenue to Christ the Shrine, the way to Christ the End. rather,' says Dr. Moule, very carefully, 'it, in its collectivity, is represented as so joined to Him, so filled, so impregnated with Him, that we cannot, as individuals, touch Him, with a sure touch, except through it; scarcely, on the other hand, can we touch it without therefore touching Him.'

'Nay,

There is truth in all these conceptions, in the conception of Humanity, of the Kingdom, of the Church. Especially does Dr. Moule feel the truth that lies in the thought of the Church as the Body of Christ of which we are members. Glorious things are spoken of the Church of Christ, he says. But the Church may become a usurper. Her place is not the highest. It is not even higher than the individual conscience. Two centuries ago the Roman community, ruled by the Jesuit school, strove to crush the protest of conscience among the Jansenists, and strove successfully. But Pascal and the Jansenists were right, the Church was never given to be the autocrat of conscience.

So the Bishop of Durham passes to the individualistic aspect of spiritual life. 'Great is the place and formation of the Church. But that place is not between the conscience, not between the soul, and the Redeemer.' This was the gift

He sat down over against the treasury deliberately. He sat down to watch. He has a habit of observing closely. He observed how those who were bidden to a feast chose the best seats. He observed (though He was away on the mountain in communion with the Father and it was night) that the disciples were toiling in rowing on the Sea of Galilee. And He observed the rich casting in their offerings. He observed that many cast in much. He observed a woman cast in hers. He observed that she was a widow, that she was poor, that she cast in two mites, and that it was all her living.

Is He less observant now? He watches still. He knows what we cast in. He that searcheth the heart knoweth. He says Himself, 'I know thy works.'

What is His reason for observing what people give? No doubt because He counts the offering part of the service. The service, said the Scotch minister, begins at the plate,-for in Scotland they used to give as they entered. No doubt also because it is His own property, and He must attend to its administration. 'We give Thee but Thine own,' we sing. He has to see to it that we give as well as sing. He has come to receive of the husbandmen the fruits of His vineyard.

But the chief reason is that which Mr. Purves gives. Christ's act that day was a symbolic act. What He did then He does always. He is the guardian of the treasury. He is its sole guardian. No one has a right to ask us what we give; no one has a right to know. This matter

of giving, though it is the means whereby the kingdom of God is to come, is under no compulsion. It is a matter of love or it is nothing. It is the freewill offering of His people's heart.

were rich casting in much, and He said so. But when He saw a poor widow cast in two mites, He said that she had cast in more than they all.

Can we understand the principle by which He estimates? Well, in the first place, it was two mites, not one. We speak of the widow's mite, but the widow cast in two mites. One is enough, we seem to think; but she gave two. Next, it was all her living. The estimate He made was by what she had left, rather than by what she gave. She had nothing left, and so she gave more than they all.

Some army 'If the dear

And then, she simply gave it. man wrote recently to the Times. old women,' he wrote, 'who give their money for missions in India knew how it was spent!' This widow did not know how it would be spent, and she did not desire to know. Perhaps Caiaphas received it. Perhaps she gave all her living to maintain the state of this most worldly-minded high priest. She did not consider. She simply gave. The distribution? God will see to the distribution. God and the army men will see to it. It is your joy and mine to give, simply to give.

WAR has its good aspects as well as its bad. Here, in Tokyo, we see comparatively few of the horrors of the great war that is raging. A string of stretchers conveying sick and wounded from Shimbashi Station to the Red Cross Hospital at Aoyama, and now and again a gorgeous funeral procession or memorial service in one of the great Temples, these are our sad reminders of the horrible actualities of war. Of the good side of war, on the other hand, we see a great deal,-the increased earnestness of the men, the heroic and at the same time the practical self-devotion of the women, the general bracing up that the whole

nation has undergone,-these we see daily and hourly, and they serve to remind us that there are good things in war as well as ills.

The general bracing up of the people covers every department of social life, and has been felt in religion as elsewhere. Buddhist and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, have all roused themselves to a vigorous life of well-doing, the needs of all the suffering portions of the nation, the wounded, the sick, the dying, the widow, and orphan, are all being attended to, and in a year so remarkable for charitable actions as the last has been, the religious life has also come into prominence, and both

Buddhist and Christian missionaries have felt an access of religious zeal, called forth by the needs of the times. Thus it comes to pass that the Buddhist clergy have felt the need of more strenuous exertions in the spheres of philanthropy and religious teaching, and a demand has arisen for instruction and teaching in homiletics as the basis of all religious work. In this way the path has been opened for a preacher's manual.

The book, Fukyo Taikan, the first volume of which, published this year, lies before me, does not profess to be a manual of Buddhist doctrine. A complex mass, such as is the Mahāyāna Buddhism of Japan, with its multiplicity of sects, from the superstitious Tendon and Shingon, with their amulets and incantations, to the puritan Shinshu, who discard such aids to devotion; from the Pantheistic Zen to the practical deism of the votaries of Amida; from the learned Sōtō to mystic Rinzai, who discard all books and hold that the truth is imparted from heart to heart without the intervention of speech, or the fierce Nichirenist, who discards the whole of the voluminous Mahāyāna Canon, and pins his faith on one Sūtra alone, the Book of the Lotus of the good Law,-such a mass requires more than a manual to describe it; for though there is undoubtedly a certain amount of doctrine common to all the sects, yet the sectarian differences are so great that in truth each sect is a separate religion.

We do not therefore find in the manual now under consideration an orderly and well-arranged body of Buddhistic doctrine. The book is a preacher's manual, and the preacher, we know, does not always have to preach doctrinal sermons. He has to exhort, admonish, persuade, encourage, as well as to teach, and the use of a preacher's manual lies in furnishing him with such topics and persuasives as shall enable him best to stir up the minds of his hearers to a life in accordance with the precepts of their faith. The Preacher's Manual presupposes a knowledge of the doctrine.

The interest of the book lies for us in the light which it throws upon Buddhist propagandist methods, on the style of preaching, the topics, and the illustrations which experience has shown to be most useful to the Buddhist preacher in his work.

It begins by giving a collection of all the Imperial Rescripts bearing on religion and morals. which have been issued by His present Majesty since his accession. It is true that His Majesty

does not profess himself a Buddhist. Buddhism is very wide and tolerant, and welcomes as its ally everything that is not directly and sharply opposed to itself. There is nothing in the practical morality and simple naturalism of these Rescripts (based though they are on a false assumption of divine ancestry) to militate against any of the tenets of Buddhism; on the other hand, it means a great deal in this country, where the emperor counts for so much, to be able to quote in one's favour the authority of the imperial words, and the Buddhist preacher can therefore always reckon on making a good score, provided he can point to the authority of the emperor for any precept he wishes to press home to his hearers. These Rescripts are by no means incapable of adaptation to Christian purposes; indeed, a very good Christian sermon might be based on the main parts of the famous Imperial Rescript on Education.

But if the present emperor is not a professed Buddhist, and can only be claimed as an indirect advocate of the Faith, many of the former sovereigns of Japan belonged to this religion, and their decrees, from the 17 Articles of Prince Shōtoku Taishi's Constitutions (622 A.D.) down to the most recent times, form a useful series of texts for a course of sermons on the practical Buddhism of the ordinary

man.

Here also the Buddhist preacher has an advantage not possessed by his Christian compeer, who can point to no single instance, before the present reign, of favour shown in any way by the Crown to his brethren in the faith. Buddhism is able to pose as one of the great pillars of the things that are, whereas Christianity has always been looked upon more or less with suspicion, and more rather than less.

Next follows an extremely interesting section. The reader is probably aware that the Japanese are very fond of composing diminutive poems of thirty-one syllables each, and even shorter ones, known as Hokku, which consist of only seventeen syllables. Into these very narrow limits has to be compressed a whole poem, and the result sometimes is a short, pithy sentence, full of deep meaning, easily remembered, and excellently adapted for the process which old-fashioned preachers used to call 'opening up the Scriptures.' Many of these tauka touch upon religious or semi-religious questions, and when a poem of this kind has been composed by some well-known personage, ancient

or contemporary, it comes to a Japanese audience with all the authority with which a well-known verse of Scripture appeals to us—indeed, more so; for the Buddhist Scriptures, written in Chinese and read with a pronunciation which has been practically disused for the last thousand years, are unknown books to the laity, whereas the tauka form part of every gentleman's education. The homiletic importance of the tauka may be seen from the fact that, in the arrangement of the book, the tauka take precedence of the passages from the Scriptures as suitable texts for sermons. It will be neither uninteresting nor unprofitable to examine these tauka in detail. I do not pretend to give literal translations of these poems, which are the despair of every translator. All I have attempted to do has been to try and catch their general meaning and spirit, and in this I hope I have succeeded.

Mercy, the cardinal virtue of the Buddhist ethical system, is enforced in the following poem by His present Majesty

On these cold winter nights, I lay me down
And feel the warm folds of the quilt, and then
My heart portrays the sufferings of the poor.

A similar verse written by Her Majesty then follows

The winter, with its rigours, touches not

Our bodies, clad in vestments warm and rich:
But when we think upon the shivering poor
That freeze in their thin rags, the cruel tooth
Of pitiless winter bites our inmost heart.

We then revert to old examples. The Emperor Nintoku (313-399 A.D.), standing on the roof of his palace, observed that no smoke was to be seen ascending from the houses of the citizens, and, on inquiry, was told that the people were too poor to make fires to cook their food. Nintoku thereupon instituted fiscal reforms, diminished taxation, and encouraged industry; after some months he saw the smoke curling upwards in abundance.

then sang

From the high roof of my imperial home
I look upon the city, and behold

The rising smoke from many a lowly hut;
And know that all is well throughout the land.

He

It is not difficult to see what a stirring sermon might be preached from this and similar texts, and how the preacher in the Buddhist temple can rouse his hearers to the observance of a virtue

which comes to them thus recommended by the historic examples of Japanese sovereigns, both ancient and modern. In a collection of poems by their Majesties, which I have had the honour to translate, none received more commendation from Japanese readers than one on a similar subject by the emperor, written last year—

Importunate mosquitoes, light of wing,
With trivial song and sting disturb my rest
This livelong night.

On what dark, lonesome field, 'Midst what great hardships, lie my patient troops? The Buddhist preacher has more examples to quote than merely these. He may draw the picture of the Emperor Tendri (668–671 A.D.), learning by practical discomfort to appreciate the hardships of the poor

The thatch upon this cottage is so thin That the rain penetrates it, drop by drop, And, as he works, the farmer's hand is wet. Or he may quote Go-toba (1186-1239 A.D.), who forsook the throne for the monastery, that he might the better lead a religious life

The night is cold, the mournful soughing wind
Howls through my chamber door;

And then I know
How cold must be the cottage of the poor.

The history of England furnishes us with no example of a monarch who has exchanged his crown for a monkish cowl, and we should rather despise a sovereign who had done so, and yet, from a preacher's standpoint, there is something to be said in favour of the faith which made the

monastic cell more attractive than the throneroom.

The virtue of mercy, which is the end-all and be-all of Buddhism, must, as a matter of course,

be more conspicuous in sovereigns than in others.

'Tis mightiest in the mighty.' No Japanese emperor has shown it more markedly than the unfortunate Godaigo, whose attempts, five centuries ago, to wrest the supreme power from the hands of the Shoguns, and restore the personal rule of the emperor as the present generation has seen it done, ended for him in exile and misfortune. He was in many respects an ideal sovereign.

My people's peace, the welfare of my land, What an unending theme for thought is here! Kōmei Tennô (1847-1867 A.D.), the father and predecessor of the present sovereign, furnishes the