Page:Barlaam and Josaphat. English lives of Buddha.djvu/101

Rh to the means of salvation. "Entbehren, entbehren sollst du," cried Goethe, and in his own way was only repeating what Buddha and Christ had said before him. Renunciation as the key of salvation is thus the teaching of all modern religions. It is because the Barlaam Legend, and many of its Parables, have presented renunciation as the ideal of man's striving, that it came home in the Middle Ages so persistently to the folk with whom renunciation is a necessity of existence. The truth embodied in this tale has indeed come home to lowly minds.