Through the thick-falling rain the long still row of granite Buddhas smile back at me. I have thought so long upon that smile, which strikes on western senses oddly, almost irreverently. Do we ever conceive of a smiling God? In all the long picture galleries of Europe I have never seen a Christ who smiled. With sword-pierced side and thorn-crowned head He hangs before us--suffering, always sad. The Man of Sorrows; yet He redeemed the world; He saved mankind. For pure joy a soul could smile at such a thought. Yet with us the Redeemer suffers; He never smiles. The peasant Sōgorō, from his cross where he had watched the killing of his children, laughed gaily as he bade his dying wife farewell; for he had saved three hundred villages from unjust taxation. In his intensest suffering a Japanese is taught to smile. He comes to tell you that his child is dying, and he smiles. Perhaps his eyes are red, but he smiles, that the sight of his suffering may not pain another. It is the sublimest unselfishness and self-control. Sōgorō dying on the cross bade his crucified wife farewell, laughing gaily, and no Japanese would praise or wonder at the fact. Sōgorō died as a martyr. Yes, I have seen a smile on the faces of our martyrs, rarely, it is true. Sodoma’s _St. Sebastian_ smiles; it is a smile of the eyes. He sees a vision--the Lamb of God and all the choirs of the angels. But Christ never smiles. I cannot think of one picture, one conception of a smiling God. Sad, weighed down with the sins of mankind; pitiful, pleading; or stern, implacable, the Just Judge, the Ruler of the Universe, immovable Omnipotence, scales in hand. Can either Godhead smile? Buddha suffered much and endured much, but still he smiles. He too is merciful and full of pity. He too suffers with each sin man sins. Here too the Just Judge judgeth the World. And the patient Buddha suffers till the wicked are redeemed. There is no end to his suffering till all are saved. Only when the wicked cease from troubling, cease because they are the good, is mortal life completed, till then the complex worlds spin on and on. Yet Buddha smiles. For man’s birthright is not sin, not sorrow, but Joy. The Godhead smiles. This long silent row of granite gods, fashioned by the hands and the hearts of this nation, smile. And all the bronze and granite statues, all the gilded images, all the Buddhas of this island smile too, for the people who made them and conceived them believe in Joy, in the innate as in the ultimate goodness of man; in the innate as in the ultimate Joy of the Godhead. Verily these are forgotten Gods in western lands. Across the raging mountain river, through the fast-falling rain, on the desolate green bank the numberless Buddhas battered and forsaken smile, that slow still smile of One Who Understands, who understands All Things, and understanding is content. Great Buddha, _Dai Nippon_, teach us. LORD FUJI