THE RELIGION OF KINDNESS. Mo . THE EDITOR OF THB "SrEcrwroa."1
SIR,—In the article in the issue of December 26th, 1908, he5.ded "The Religion of Kindness" the sentence occurs : "No
doubt our Lord must be admitted•on all bands to be the first revealer and expounder of the doctrine of human kindness." The italics are mine. But Dean Church in a Christmastide sermon entitled "Man's Ideals" writes:— "Centuries before our Lord came there was a great religious reformation in India. We know it by the name of Buddhism. The ideal of this was complete sacrifice of all that was pleasant to flesh and blood, for the sake of the soul—to deliver the soul from the passions, and ignorance, and slavery, and burdens of this mortality, and it was accompanied by two things : the most passionate enthusiasm to communicate with, and so to help and deliver others; and a spirit of tender and all-embracing kindness, Which expressed itself in the most touching language, and embodied itself in the most touching acts; which sought out the forlorn and . the miserable, and which willingly associated itself with the degradation of the outcast, and with the shame and doom of the sinner. Such an ideal was presented to the men of the East before our Lord appeared."
am, Sir, &c.,
A READER OF THE " SPECTATOR " FOR MORE THAN FORTY YEARS.
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