The priest is the organ of the pardoning and saving love of God; the prophet, of his inspiring truth.

In the European Reformation, the prophet revolting against the priest founded Protestantism; in the Asiatic Reformation he founded Buddhism.

Finally, Brahmanism and the Roman Catholic Church are more religious; Buddhism and Protestant Christianity, more moral.

Such, sketched in broad outline, is the justification for the title of this chapter; but we shall be more convinced of its accuracy after looking more closely into the resemblances above indicated between the religious ceremonies of the East and West.
These resemblances are chiefly between the Buddhists and the monastic orders of the Church of Rome.

Now it is a fact, but one which has never been sufficiently noticed, that the whole monastic system of Rome is based on a principle foreign to the essential ideas of that church.