actions of certain supreme lives. It is the genius of the religion to point at the facts and ask for their systematic interpretation. In the Sermon on the Mount, in the Parables, and in their accounts of Christ, the Gospels exhibit a tremendous fact. The doctrine may, or may not, lie on the surface. But what is primary is the religious fact. The Buddha left a tremendous doctrine. The historical facts about him are subsidiary to the doctrine.
In respect to its treatment of evil, Christianity is, therefore, less clear in its metaphysical ideas, but more inclusive of the facts. In the first place, it admits the evil as inherent throughout the world. But it holds that such evil is not the necessary outcome of the very fact of individual personality. It derives the evil from the contingent fact of the actual course of events; it thus allows of an ideal as conceivable in terms of what is actual.
Christianity, like Buddhism, preaches a doctrine of escape. It proclaims a doctrine whereby, through the treatment of evil, life is
