"Why do you think they will make a sensation?" I inquired
innocently.
"Don't you see what they are? They date from the time of the
persecutions. _Japanese devils trampling on the Cross!_"
They were small temple guardians only; but their feet rested upon
X-shaped supports.
"Did any person tell you these were devils trampling on the
cross?" I made bold to ask.
"What else are they doing?" he answered evasively. "Look at the
crosses under their feet!"
"But they are not devils," I insisted; "and those cross-pieces
were put under their feet simply to give equilibrium."
He said nothing, but looked disappointed; and I felt a little
sorry for him. _Devils trampling on the Cross_, as a display line
in some London poster announcing the arrival of "josses from
Japan," might certainly have been relied on to catch the public
eye.
"This is more wonderful," I said, pointing to a beautiful group,
--Maya with the infant Buddha issuing from her side, according to
tradition. _Painlessly the Bodhisattva was born from her right
side. It was the eighth day of the fourth moon_.
"That's bronze, too," he remarked, tapping it. "Bronze josses are
getting rare. We used to buy them up and sell them for old metal.
Wish I'd kept some of them! You ought to have seen the bronzes,
in those days, coming in from the temples,--bells and vases and
josses! That was the time we tried to buy the Daibutsu at
Kamakura."
"For old bronze?" I queried.
"Yes. We calculated the weight of the metal, and formed a
syndicate. Our first offer was thirty thousand. We could have
made a big profit, for there's a good deal of gold and silver in
that work. The priests wanted to sell, but the people wouldn't
let them."
"It's one of the world's wonders," I said. "Would you really have
broken it up?"
"Certainly. Why not? What else could you do with it?... That one
there looks just like a Virgin Mary, doesn't it?"
He pointed to the gilded image of a female clasping a child to
her breast.
"Yes," I replied; "but it is Kishibojin, the goddess who loves
little children."
"People talk about idolatry," he went on musingly. "I've seen
things like many of these in Roman Catholic chapels. Seems to me
religion is pretty much the same the world over."
"I think you are right," I said.
"Why, the story of Buddha is like the story of Christ, isn't it?"
"To some degree," I assented.
"Only, he wasn't crucified."
I did not answer; thinking of the text, _In all the world there
is not one spot even so large as a mustard-seed where he has not
surrendered his body for the sake of creatures_. Then it suddenly
seemed to me that this was absolutely true. For the Buddha of the
deeper Buddhism is not Gautama, nor yet any one Tathagata, but
simply the divine in man. Chrysalides of the infinite we all are:
each contains a ghostly Buddha, and the millions are but one. All
humanity is potentially the Buddha-to-come, dreaming through the
ages in Illusion; and the teacher's smile will make beautiful the
world again when selfishness shall die. Every noble sacrifice
brings nearer the hour of his awakening; and who may justly
doubt--remembering the myriads of the centuries of man--that even
now there does not remain one place on earth where life has not
been freely given for love or duty?