of outgrowing its own defects and correcting its own mistakes. For example, it has largely outgrown its habit of persecuting infidels and heretics. No one is now put to death for heresy. It has also passed out of the stage in which religion is considered to consist in leaving the world and entering a monastery. The anchorites of the early centuries are no longer to be found in Christendom. Even in Catholic countries the purpose of monastic life is no longer to save the soul by ascetic tortures, but to attain some practical end. The Protestant Reformation, which broke the yoke of priestly power and set free the mind of Europe, was a movement originating in Christianity itself, like other developments of a similar kind. No such signs of progress exist in the system of Buddhism. It has lost the missionary ardor of its early years; it has ceased from creating a vast literature such as grew up in its younger days; it no longer produces any wonders of architecture. It even lags behind the active life of the countries where it has its greatest power. It is a curious analogy between the two systems that, while neither the Christ nor the Buddha practiced or taught asceticism, their followers soon made the essence of religion to consist in some form of monastic life. Both Jesus and Sakya-muni went about doing good. Both sent their followers into the world to preach a gospel. Jesus, after thirty years of a retired life, came among men "eating and drinking," and associating with "publicans and sinners." Sakya-muni, after spending some years as an anchorite, deliberately renounced that mode of religion as unsatisfactory, and associated with all men, as Jesus afterward did. Within a few centuries after their death, their followers relapsed into ascetic and monastic practices; but with this difference, that while in Christendom there has always been both a regular and a secular clergy, in the Buddhist countries the whole priesthood live in monasteries. They have no parish priests, unless as an exception. While in Christian countries the clergy has become more and more a practical body, in sympathy with the common life, in Buddhist lands they live apart and exercise little influence on the civil condition of the people.