Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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O ' THE QUESTOF THE PERFECT RELIGION. 29 time however I checked myself. I was confident that he would not 'long remain in ignorance of my character and office, and how could I, ehiefpriest of my nation, betray to him such doubt as this my question would imply. I was too proud to place my- self in such an attitude of personal inquiry. And yet perpet- ually this thought recurred: This man has seen cities and mountains and rivers and peoples wl1icl1 you have never seen, and you feel no humiliation in being a learner in these thingsg -why hesitate to ascertain if in religion he may not equally be able to give fresh light and information. At last I broke my proud reserve, and said: 'You must have seen something of the chief religions of the whole world as well. Now, which among them all, strikes you as the best? ' H ' I have seen but one,' was the laconic reply. t lVhat mean you?' I rejoined. 'You have told me of a score of peoples and lands and cities whose temples you must have seen, and whose rites you must have witnessed? 't 'There is but one rcligion,' he repeated. 4' 'Explain,' I demanded of him again. ' it 4 I-Iow many do you make? ' he said, evading my question. HI paused a moment. I was about to answer: tAt least a larger 'number than there are of different tribes and peoples,' -- but in my hesitation I was struck by the strange agreement be- tween his enigmatic utterance and my own previous conclusion that there could be but one perfect religion. Someway I yielded to the impulse to mention the coincidence. fDo you mean,' I added, 4 that there can be but one religion worthy of the name? ' 't My sacrifice of p1'ide'had its reward. It won an answering confidence, and unsealed the stranger's lips. if 4 I-Iave you time,' he said, 'to hear a sailor's story? More than sixty years ago I was born in a beautiful home hard by the base of our holy mountain, the Fusijama. This very evening I start to visit the scenes of my boyhood, after an absence of more than forty years. My father and mother were persons of deep piety, and from the first had dedicated me, as their first- born, to the service of the gods. At an early age I was placed in the care of a community of priests who kept one of the chief shrines of my native province. I-Iere I was to be trained up for the same holy priesthood. For some years I was delighted with

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. 'fWhy are we here, brothers from all climes, why are we here in serious search for the one true and perfect Way? It is because He, in whom are all things, and who is in all things - as sang that Hindu poet-is yearning with ineffable affection to be known of us, his earthly offspring, and to know us as his own. Only lately have I learned this secret. Only since my invitation to address this. World's Convention have my eyes been' opened to the blessed truth. Never before had I been led to meditate upon the necessary implications of a religion abso- lutely perfect. In preparation for my question I was compelled thus to meditate. Scarce had I addressed myself to my task before I began to see what you have seen, and to lay down the propositions which you to-day in due succession have been lay- ing down. I could not help discerning that there can be but one religion truly perfectg that a. religion can never be perfect unless it present a perfect God 5 that no religionlcan be perfect which does not deliver man from sin and death and dowcr him with pure and everlasting blessedness. I could not help per- ceiving that no religion could ever claim perfection in which any gulf is left unfilled between the wo1'shipper and the object of his worship. Oppressed and almost overwhelmed by these great thoughts, convinced that there was no such -perfect 1'eligion in existence, nor any credential by which it could be known, I was yesterday morning alone, in a favorite hermitage by the sound- ing sea, near Yokohama. The whole night I had passed in sleeplessness and fasting. No light had dawned upon my mind. To cool my fevered brain, I strolled upon the seashore up and down, and listened to the solemn beatings of the billows on the sand. . ' I-Iere, in one of my turns, I fell in with a stranger-a sailor fresh from his ship. In conversation I quickly learned that he had followed the sea from early life, that-he had been quite round thelworld, and had seen more wonders than any man it had ever been my fortune to meet. Long time we talked together of lands and peoples underneath the world and all around its great circumference. Repeatedly I was on the point of opening my heart to this plain man and of asking him whether in all his world-wide wanderings he had anywhere found a religion more perfect than that of our ancestors. Every

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x ' I 30 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR' BOOK. my companions, with my tasks, and with my prospects. But at length, as I grew more and more mature, and as my medita- tions turned oftener upon the mysteries of the world and of life, an inexpressible sadness gradually mastered me, I shrank from the calling to which I had been destined. I said to myself, How can I teach men tl1e way of the gods when I know it not myself? How long have I yearned to find the way of peace and the way of virtue! How long have I cried unto all the kami of heaven and all the kami of earth to teach it me! ,Yet even while I see the good I love that which is not good. I do myself the things which I condemn in others. I teach others to bc truthful, but before an hour has passed I have lied to myself, -have done or said what I had promised myself I would not. I love myself more than I love virtue, and then I hate myself because I love myself so well. I am at war within. O who shall deliver me, who can give me peace? i H ' As time passed' on I 'became more and more the prey of this consuming melancholy. The time was at hand when my period of pupilage was to end and I was to be given the dignity of full admission to the sacred priesthood. The night before the day appointed for the ceremony my agony was too great for human endurance. Under the friendly cover of the darkness I fled from the sacred precincts of the temple, fled from the lov- ing parents and friends who had come to witness my promo- tion. A wretched fugitive I arrived at this very port which now stretches itself out before our eyes.I I-Iere I shipped as a sailor and sought the uttermost parts of , the earth. H ' Years on years I kept to the high seas, always choosing the ships which would take me farthest from the scenes with which I had become familiar. Ail great ports I visited, many a language I learned. Steadily I prayed the gods some time to bring me to some haven where I might learn the secret of a. holy peace within. I H 'At last one day--I can never forget it-in a great city many thousand miles toward the sunrise, a city' which is the commercial metropolis of the greatest republic in the world, - I was pacing heavy-hearted up and down a massive pier at which lay vessels from many a nation. The wharves were per- fectly quietfor it was a holy day. ' I was sadder than usual for I l