never undergone a true revival. It can boast of many ecclesiastics and philosophers, but for hundreds of years it cannot point in its honour-roll to either a Xavier or a Livingstone. It has long ago ceased to be aggressive. At this day no Oriental Buddhist seriously contemplates becoming a missionary. Paris may add to its attractions and curiosities a real Buddhist temple,[273] but the priests who officiate in it, however devoted they may be to their cult, will certainly never dream of taking the trouble of preaching it in the streets. In the Church of the middle ages, supposed to consist only of pope and bishops and clergy and monks and nuns, of which mediævalism a remnant survives in those who speak of “entering the Church,” not when as children they are baptized into its communion, but when they are to be ordained to service in it, we must look for any resemblance to the Buddhist Sangha. In ancient India, a church, meaning the fellowship of the faithful in its totality, was an impossibility. Brahmanism had no church, and never attempted a conversion, but Buddha in seeking to rescue others from evil, and in offering a place of escape which they were free to accept or reject, created not a church but a precursor of one.[274] Admission into his Brotherhood was at first open to all who requested it, but as disciples crowded around him, and parents complained that they were bereaved of their children, and masters that they were robbed of their slaves, and creditors that they were deprived of what was owing by their debtors, and even the judges that criminals escaped the prison; and when accusations grew frequent and loud that the new movement would ruin households, injure the State, and depopulate the country, restrictions were devised. Gradually conditions were imposed by which all who were diseased, or criminals, or soldiers, or debtors, or slaves, or children under fifteen years of age, or youths under twenty who had not received their parents’ consent, were disqualified.[275] At first the disciple was admitted without any ceremony, beyond that of shaving the whole head, and putting on the yellow robes which distinguished the ascetic and the recluse, but eventually a rite of initiation was adopted, which in Ceylon has continued substantially unaltered to this day.