RELIGION AND RITES
sesses more than one-half of all the temples in the country.[1] It is full of vitality. Its doctrines as to the origin of the world, the sphere of providential functions, original sin, the efficacy of prayer, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, do not so greatly shock ordinary intelligence, or make such large demands on unreasoning credulity, as do the corresponding tenets preached from Western pulpits.[2]
Among the last sects calling for notice here is one that has attracted considerable observation among Occidental students of Japanese Buddhism. It is the sect of the "Flower of the Law" (Hokke-shu), founded (1253 A.D.) by Nichiren (the Lotus of Light), one of the noblest and most picturesque figures among Japanese "saints." The essential difference between the creed of Nichiren and the creeds of all his predecessors is that he preached a god, the prime and only great cause. They showed to their disciples a chain of cause and effect, but had nothing to say about its origin; he taught that the first link in the chain was the Buddha of original enlightenment, of whom all subsequent Buddhas, Sakyamuni and the rest, were only transient reflections, Nichiren thus reached the Christian conception of a god in whom everything lives, moves, and has its being; an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient deity. All phenomena, mental and material, in all time and space, were declared by him to
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