"Verily this, Vasettha, is the way to a state of union with Brahma," and he proceeds to announce that the bhikshu, or Buddhist beggar, "who is free from anger, free from malice, pure in mind, master of himself, will, after death, when the body is dissolved, become united with Brahma." The Brahmins at once see the full force of this teaching. It is as a conservative in their eyes that Buddha figures, and not an innovator. He takes the side of the ancient spiritual religion of the country against rapacious innovators. Sir Monier Williams quotes a part of this Sutta, and, oddly enough, still maintains that Buddha was an atheist. There are two great schools of Buddhism, and they are quite agreed on this point that Buddhism is the quickening of the spiritual vision. Let us now consider how the two great schools of Buddhism diverge. 1. The earliest school, the Buddhism of Buddha, taught that after Nirvâna, or man's emancipation from re-birth, the consciousness of the individual survived, and that he dwelt for ever in happiness in the Brahma heavens. This is the Buddhism of the "Little Vehicle." 2. The second, or innovating school, maintained that after Nirvâna the consciousness of the individual ceased. Their creed was the blank atheism of the Brahmin S'unyavâdi. The first serious study of Buddhism took place in one of our colonies, and the first students were missionaries. Great praise is due to the missionaries of Ceylon for their early scholarship, but naturally they ransacked the Buddhist books less as scholars than missionaries. Soon they discovered with delight the teaching of the atheistic school, and statements that the Ceylon scriptures were the earliest authentic Buddhist scriptures, brought to the island by Mahinda, King Asoka's son (B.C. 306). In consequence of this the missionaries concluded that Ceylon had preserved untainted the original teaching of Buddha, and that the earliest school, that of the "Little Vehicle," was atheistic.