RELIGION AND RITES
is plain, simple, adapted to the lowest order of intelligence, the even flow of its gentle precepts unimpeded by any rocks of erudition nor deepening to any profundities of transcendental philosophy. The old folks listen with comfortable reverence, and at each pause in the preacher's eloquence — eloquence sometimes of the highest order — bow their heads, roll their rosaries between their palms, devoutly murmur Namu Hōren-ge-Kyō, or whatever formula the sect prescribes, and then throw into the alms-chest an offering of cash. The parabled mite of the widow was a farthing. The cash of Japan is the fortieth part of a penny, and a worshipper that launches four of these lilliputian coins into the great chest has done his duty nobly. No one talks of these copper tokens as saisen. They are o-saisen. The honorific prefix belongs to them just as fully as it does to the lordly vases of silver and gold lotus that flank the altar; to the resplendent altar itself with its broad face of rosy lacquer, its richly chased and heavily gilded mountings, its furniture of fine bronze and ancient céladon; or to the magnificent shrine that glows with mellowed splendour in the sacred obscurity of the chancel. But beyond the sermon, beyond the throwing of o-saisen, and the rolling of beads, what does the worshipper understand? Nothing. The sutra is there; the lotus law, engrossed in exquisite ideographs upon an illuminated scroll. But its texts are unintelligible. To the average Japanese they
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