European and American Buddhists, then, fall into these two classes: those who are honest and sincere students of Buddhism and followers of Gautama, and those of whom the most charitable thing that can be said is that they lead astray "foolish women," and other sentimentalists. To illustrate the methods of these two schools, who are unfortunately at present often working in an unnatural alliance, let me describe two recent experiences. On Easter Day I went from the simple and exquisite beauty of our Communion Service, in which the glamour of the Resurrection is ever being renewed, to a Buddhist church within a stone's throw, here in the heart of San Francisco. There, as in innumerable other centres of Buddhist life, the birth of Gautama was being celebrated; and I could unhesitatingly join in paying reverence to the memory of the great Indian teacher. But it was certainly amazing and a little staggering to find "Buddhist High Mass" being performed, the celebrant calling himself a bishop and ordaining on his own initiative abbots and abbesses.[21] Three altar candles representing the Buddha, the Law, and the Order being lighted, the "bishop," preceded by seven or eight American and British monks in yellow robes, and by the Abbess, known as Mahadevi, ascended to the platform, which contains a beautiful Japanese shrine of the Hongwanji sect. Several monks from Japan, to my surprise, assisted in the strange service that followed, which began with the invocation of Amida Buddha, and went on in an astonishing hotch-potch of the cults of the primitive and the later Buddhism derived indiscriminately from Ceylon, Tibet, and Japan.