Page:The Praises of Amida, 1907.djvu/29

Rh every hand, we hear the Holy Name of the Buddha of Boundless Light and Life. Three thousand years in the past, three thousand years in the future, can make absolutely no difference to this Name. It has precisely the same virtue, whether in distant India or in near Japan. Nor is it a matter of three thousand years only, nor of India and Japan only. At all times, and in all places, it is the same. This One Name stands revealed in the midst of a world of Shadow and Vision, and it alone is neither Shadow nor Vision. It is revealed in the World, but it belongs not to this world. It is Light. It is the Way. It is Life. It is Power. This name alone has come down from Heaven, the Absolute and Invisible, to Earth, the Finite and the Visible. It alone is the rope which can draw us out from the burning fire of pain, and land us safely in a place of pure and eternal bliss.

10. Iron is iron, however much you polish it: but the ancients had a tale about the philosopher s stone which could change iron into