CHAPTER IV.
Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.
Sec.1.Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit, Protestantism.
Sec.2.Extent of Buddhism.

Its Scriptures.
Sec.3.Sakyamuni, the Founder of Buddhism.
Sec.4.Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.
Sec.5.The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane.
Sec.6.Buddhism as a Religion.
Sec.7.Karma and Nirvana.
Sec.8.Good and Evil of Buddhism.
Sec.9.Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.
Sec.1.Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit, Protestantism.
On first becoming acquainted with the mighty and ancient religion of Buddha, one may be tempted to deny the correctness of this title, "The _Protestantism_ of the East." One might say, "Why not rather the _Romanism_ of the East ?" For so numerous are the resemblances between the customs of this system and those of the Romish Church, that the first Catholic missionaries who encountered the priests of Buddha were confounded, and thought that Satan had been mocking their sacred rites.
Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,[92] when he beheld the Chinese bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment: "There is not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country." Mr.Davis (Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, II.

491) speaks of "the celibacy of the Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes; to which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting prayers, their incense, and their candles." Mr.Medhurst ("China," London, 1857) mentions the image of a virgin, called the "queen of heaven," having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross.

Confession of sins is regularly practised.

Father Huc, in his "Recollections of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet, and China," (Hazlitt's translation), says: "The cross, the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their journeys, or when they are performing some ceremony out of the temple,--the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer suspended from five chains, and which you can open or close at pleasure,--the benedictions given by the lamas by extending the right hand over the heads of the faithful,--the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the processions, the litanies, the holy water,--all these are analogies between the Buddhists and ourselves." And in Thibet there is also a Dalai Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist pope.