Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/174

 added to trust. Grateful remembrance of the mercies of Amida, and faith in his willingness and power to save, now sufficed to secure salvation and to keep the devotee's feet in the true path. There were other differences also. The disciple learned, not that Amida waited until the hour of a man's death to conduct him to paradise, but that the coming of the saviour was present and immediate; that he took up his abode at once, even during life, in the heart of the saved. The doctrine, essential to all forms of Buddhism, remained, — the doctrine that misfortune in this world has its root in some evil wrought in a previous state of existence, — but it received the adjunct that neither Amida nor any other Buddha might be invoked to interrupt the natural sequence of cause and effect, and, as a logical corollary, amulets, spells, and all such aids were interdicted. The devotee was no longer invited to become a priest, — to abandon his home and embrace celibacy. All in every rank and of every calling were entitled to entertain an equal hope of salvation. The priests themselves ceased to observe some of the vetoes that chiefly distinguished them from laymen. They married, ate meat, and, if desirable, replaced the stole by the surcoat. They learned in the domestic circle those sympathies and appreciations that a celibate can never develop.

This "Spirit Sect" is the largest in Japan. With its parent, the "Pure Land Sect," it pos-