"When our Lord came, he found the doctrines of last things presented in forms already fixed, and the terms Gehenna, Paradise, etc., in familiar, even proverbial, use" (Eschatology, _Encyclopædia Britannica_). Every being, according to Buddhistic teaching, attains Nirvana in the end; so may it not be in "the times of the restitution of _all things_, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began"? If symbolism were only taken for what it represents, every Buddhist could join with the Christian in many of the exquisite invocations of the Psalms. There is no rest to be found in the impermanent. To find the peace which passeth understanding, we must ultimately have recourse to the unconditioned, the permanent, Nirvana, God. The prayer of the Christian as well as the aspiration of the pure Buddhist is to be, whether living or dead, one with the Uncreate. Professor Oldenberg says that "the devotion of abstraction is to Buddhism what prayer is to other religions." There is here a distinction without a difference. Abstraction is nothing more nor less than true, perfect, sublimated prayer. Real, unadulterated prayer is only possible when the mind is totally relieved of distractions. Jesus went apart to pray; so the Buddhist monk seeks the silence of the forest or the seclusion of the cave to commune with the unconditioned, with "Our Father which art in Heaven," with the Uncreate of the Athanasian Creed. He who abstracts himself from the "plurality of the phenomenal world" anticipates the cessation of the impermanent. "Come, then! Into solitude will I go, into the forest which Buddha praises; therein it is good for the solitary monk to dwell who seeks perfection. In the _sîta_ forest rich in blossoms, in the cool mountain cave, will I wash my body and walk alone." The counting of inhalations and exhalations of the breath, and other practices of a like nature, are used as so many short cuts to this state of abstraction or prayer. For this purpose they are as valuable as ceremonial magic professes to be for the ready acquisition of power over unknown laws and qualities of nature.[AR]