Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/255

 The present high-priest has a longer genealogy than the Emperor, and is the seventy-third of his family, in direct succession, to live in the same Kioto yashiki. Besides his ecclesiastical rank, he is a nobleman of the first order, and moves in the imperial circle, his modern brougham with liveried men being often seen driving in and out of the palace enclosures in the western end of the city. Besides his temple services, he directs the large college which the Hongwanji maintains for the education of young men for the priesthood and for advanced philosophical studies for lay students. In its library is a vast literature of Buddhism, the scrolls of silk and paper in boxes of priceless gold lacquer facing the neatly-bound volumes of Sinnett, Sir Edwin Arnold, and other foreign writers. The college employs teachers of all European languages, and intends to send missionary workers to European countries. One of the priestly instructors, Mr. Akamatsu, spent several years in England, and has made comparative religions his great study. This admirable scholar is an admirable talker as well, and every student of Buddhism in Japan is referred to his vast stores of information. The breadth and liberality of Mr. Akamatsu’s views are shown in his belief in the brotherhood of all religions, their likeness, and their convergence towards “that far-off, divine event, towards which the whole creation moves.” It was he who drew up and translated that new canon of his faith, which introduced passages from the Sermon on the Mount, and who explained that these contained exactly the Buddhist tenets. The Shin Buddhists are called the Protestants of that faith. The priests may marry, and are not required to fast, to do penance, make pilgrimages, or abstain from animal food. They believe in salvation by faith in Buddha, and in those over-higher transmigrations of the soul which finally attain Nirvana. Their priests maintain that the presence of Christian 239