The Christian missionary in Buddhist lands is faced with a task of infinite fascination. He is dealing, in the first place, with remarkable peoples for whom their religion has done much of the great service which Christianity has done for him and his people. He will find everywhere traces of a mighty Buddhist civilisation, and in many places, if he has the eye to see, proofs that this venerable religion is still alive and is reforming itself to meet the needs of the modern world. In the second place, he will find that it is vitally linked up with the intensely interesting and important nationalist movements of Asia, and that he cannot understand the political situation in these countries without a close and careful study of the religion. And in the third place, he will find that it is not only as part and parcel of nationalist movements that Buddhism is alive, but that it has an international programme and that it is closely bound up with the movement of "Asia for the Asiatics"—a movement deserving of respectful and sympathetic study.

How then will the missionary prepare himself for this absorbing task? Nothing can take the place of friendly intercourse with Buddhists in temple and home, on pilgrimage and at great times of festival; it is thus that the religion will become a living reality to him, full of colour and movement, giving him at times moments of exquisite pleasure in its artistic pageantry, and bringing him into sympathetic touch with the "soul of the people" to whom he is seeking to minister. But to prepare him for this absorbing pursuit, at once business and pleasure, study and hobby, for any one who really enjoys such things, he can and must do some systematic reading. Appended are a course of study for the first two years worked out for Y.M.C.A. secretaries in India, and a more advanced and detailed course. The following additional notes may be of service in using these:

1. Clearly the first step is to get a sympathetic and accurate idea of the founder of Buddhism, of the essence of his teaching, and of the secret of his amazing influence. There is, in human history, only one figure more significant and more worthy of a study. Side by side the student should read Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia (London: Kegan Paul. 1s. 6d. and 5s.) and some good biographical study such as that of H. Oldenberg, Buddha (London: Williams & Norgate. Out of print. 1882), or that by the present writer, Gotama Buddha (New York: Association Press. 1920).

2. Next he will do well to saturate himself in such selections of the moral teachings of Gautama as are contained in the Dhammapada or the Itivuttaka, both of which contain much very early material, some of which may be attributed to the founder himself.

3. For the whole Buddhist system in its earlier forms Warren's admirable Buddhism in Translations (Harvard Oriental Series. Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 1900) is indispensable, and should be constantly used for reference.

4. As an introduction to the history of Buddhism two elementary books, attempting to cover the whole field in a rather sketchy way, are Saunders' The Story of Buddhism (London: Oxford University Press. 4s., 6d. 1916) and Hackmann's Buddhism as a Religion (London: Probsthain. 15s. 1910).

5. Whether the student is going to work in lands devoted to the primitive type of Buddhism, such as Ceylon, Siam, and Burma, or in those in which a highly developed Buddhism prevails, such as Japan, China, and Korea, he ought to have a grasp of the essential differences between the two types of Buddhism known as Hinayana and Mahayana; for an evolution must be read backwards as well as forwards, and the missionary will look forward to spending a holiday in one of the other Buddhist lands. If, for instance, his lot is cast in Burma, he ought to plan to go on a visit to Japan or to China, and vice versÂ. To get a grasp of the highly developed Mahayana he should study especially the famous Lotus of the Good Law translated in vol. xxi of the Sacred Books of the East (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 15s. 6d.) and should carefully compare this with the Dhammapada. He will find that even in the conservative Buddhism of Ceylon and Burma there are Mahayana tendencies, and that everywhere Gautama Buddha has become in practice more than a moral teacher and is related, in the minds of the people, to an eternal order making for righteousness. In this and in other ways which the student will study for himself, e.g. in the idea of a sacrificial life-process culminating in the historical life of Sakyamuni and in the practice of prayer by all Buddhists, he will find a wonderful preparation for the gospel of Christ. I would suggest that he take as his guiding light this saying of a great Buddhist scholar of Japan, "We see your Christ, because we have first seen our Buddha." The task of the missionary will be to relate Christianity to this great preparation that has been made for it and to think out with Eastern scholars the thought bases of a truly Eastern Christianity which shall seem to these Asiatic nations to come with all the authority of their own past behind it, and with all the glamour of a knowledge that the God who has been working with and for them in the past is now bringing them out into a larger and freer life. Only so can they be won for Christ.

[24] Reprinted by kind permission of the editors and publisher from "An Introduction to Missionary Service," Ed. by G. A. Gollock and E. G. K. Hewat, Oxford University Press. 1921, 3s. 6d. net.