Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/190

 convey as little as a verse from the original Koran would convey to a cowboy. They are part of the magnificent unknown. The priest is the repository of whatever blessed knowledge they embody, the transmitter of their divine message to mankind. And the priest himself understands how to lend spectacular effect to that part of his office. When he seats himself among his congregation to preach, he wears the simplest of robes, a white or sober-hued cassock and a black stole. But when he opens the sutras or recites the litany, his vestments are of brocade that would serve worthily to drape a throne, and might well betray the female units of his congregation into the sin of "lust of the eye" were not the precaution adopted of cutting the splendid fabric into a multitude of fragments before fashioning it into stole or cassock. Patchwork quilts are not used in Japan, and a girdle chequered with seams after the fashion of a chess-board would be a shocking solecism. So the house-wife and the belle are enabled to admire these grand brocades without coveting them.

The religious service is strikingly different from the sermon: the latter a practical, plainly phrased adaptation of saving ethics to every-day affairs; the former, a mysterious, impressive, and enigmatical display, as far removed from mundane affinities as is the lotus throne itself. At one of the great temples, in a hall of worship fifty feet high, four times as many long and three