So when our Lord inaugurated His kingdom, He may be said to have proclaimed in the Beatitudes His Law, for He then declared the dispositions of those who would receive Him, and who as sons of men trusting and following Him, would be saved and sanctified and glorified by the Son of God. Now, though from his first sermon to the last Buddha is represented as “instructing his disciples, inciting them, rousing them, and gladdening them” by discoursing of blessedness, it was not of blessedness in the gospel sense. It was the blessedness of the Old Covenant, not of the New—the blessedness, not of them who love much because they have been forgiven much, but of them who keep the law, and tread “the path which opens the eyes, bestows understanding, leads to peace of mind and full enlightenment”—the blessedness all who, walking in the Noble Eightfold Way, must eventually reach Nirvana.[213] It is almost impossible to explain all that is meant by the Noble Eightfold Way, for translators differ very greatly as to the real meaning of the terms employed, and even when they agree, they warn us that the words, though similar to our own, do not suggest the same realities. The word “righteousness” and even “morality” never can have on the lips of a true Buddhist the same signification which they have on ours; for righteousness, apart from the fear and love of God, is an impossible conception to us, and so would unrighteousness, unless as a sin or an offence against Him. Buddhism has no word for ‘sin’ in our sense, and therefore no words for ‘holiness’ or ‘saint.’ “Sin is simply pain, demerit, and a saint is one freed from what causes pain.” “A righteous act is one accumulating merit, an unrighteous act one producing suffering.”[214] The Eightfold Way, interpreted by the legends, presents us with the Buddhist conception of the perfect man, and were we to take its constituents as equivalents to the Christian qualities suggested by the words, we should find outlined a character which here or anywhere must be its own beatitude, but whose blessedness is as completely beyond the reach of sinful man as flying is beyond the power of a bird whose pinions are broken.