for the Redemption of mankind, and for our salvation from the misery of constant renascence. They hold that the world has not been made by anyone,[147] that it is self-created, that Nature spreads it out, and draws it in again; but that it is that, which existing, does not exist: that it is the necessary accompaniment of renascence, and that renascence is the result of our sinful conduct, &c. &c. &c. I mention such facts as these chiefly on account of the really scandalous way in which German _savants_ still universally persist, even to the present day, in looking upon Religion and Theism as identical and synonymous; whereas Religion is, in fact, to Theism as the genus to the single species, and Judaism and Theism are alone identical. For this reason we stigmatize as heathen all nations who are neither Jews, Christians, nor Mahometans. Christians are even taxed by Mahometans and Jews with the impurity of their Theism, because of the dogma of the Trinity. For, whatever may be said to the contrary, Christianity has Indian blood in its veins, therefore it constantly tends to free itself from Judaism. The Critique of Pure Reason is the most serious attack that has ever been made upon Theism--and this is why our professors of philosophy have been in such a hurry to set Kant aside; but had that work appeared in any country where Buddhism prevailed, it would simply have been regarded as an edifying treatise intended to refute heresy more thoroughly by a salutary confirmation of the orthodox doctrine of Idealism--that is, the doctrine of the merely apparent existence of the world, as it presents itself to our senses. Even the two other religions which coexist with Buddhism in China--those of Taotsee and of Confucius--are just as Atheistic as Buddhism itself; wherefore the missionaries have never been able to translate the first verse of the Pentateuch into Chinese, because there is no word in the language for God and Creation. Even the missionary Gützlaff, in his "History of the Chinese Empire," p. 18, has the honesty to say: "It is extraordinary that none of the (Chinese) philosophers ever soared high enough to reach the knowledge of a Creator and Lord of the Universe, although they possessed the Light of Nature in full measure." J. F. Davis likewise quotes a passage, which is quite in accordance with this, from Milne's Preface to his translation of the Shing-yu, where in speaking of that work, he says that we may see from it "that the bare Light of Nature, as it is called, even when aided by all the light of Pagan philosophy, is totally incapable of leading men to the knowledge and worship of the true God." All this confirms the fact that revelation is the sole foundation on which Theism rests; indeed, it must be so, unless revelation is to be superfluous. This is a good opportunity for observing that the word Atheism itself implies a surreptitious assumption, since it takes Theism for granted as a matter of course.