Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/178

 ception of one supreme, all-merciful being forced itself into prominence. The gulf of social and political distinctions that yawned so widely between the patrician and the plebeian, and all the other unsightlinesses of the world, became subjective eidola destined to disappear at the first touch of moral light. The Buddha and the people were identified.

Religion does not overshadow the daily life of the Japanese. The gloomy fanatic is unknown. Confession of sins, repentance in sackcloth and ashes, solemn and protracted acts of worship, the terrors of an eternity of torture, — these things enter scarcely at all into the layman's existence. The temple presents itself to him as a place where the mortuary tablets of his ancestors are guarded; a place to be visited for the burning of incense at tombs and their adornment with flowers on anniversaries of the deaths of near relatives; a place for the occasional deposit of small coins in an alms-chest; a place for offering up brief prayer when every-day affairs seem in need of the Buddha's divine influence; a place where the ashes of the worshipper himself will in the end be laid to rest, and whither his own friends and relatives will come to honour his memory when he too shall have received from the priests one of those beautiful and benevolent posthumous titles which they know so well how to choose. It is all essentially practical and easy-going. If a man needs moral guidance, he goes to the temple and listens to