night he slipped stealthily away to follow the path of the Brahman ascetic. At first he joined himself to one of the religious teachers of Brahmanism, hoping to find help in the classic faith of India, but during these years very little light breaks into his dark despair, although he gives himself over to the most rigorous ascetic practices. He resolves, therefore, to work out his own salvation and chooses the famous bo-tree at Gaya as a place to meditate upon the meaning of life, where he wages a mighty struggle with his insistent desires and the fundamental "will to live." Gaya, or, rather, Buddh Gaya, about a hundred miles from Benares, is one of the most sacred spots in India. Here the traveler of to-day may visit the scenes of Gotama's mighty soul struggle, and the very spot where one of the world's greatest religions was born. The original temple at this place, closely connected with numerous events in Buddha's life, was built in B. C. 543, and the present structure is said to contain the oldest sculptures in all India. Behind this temple on an elevated platform is a bo-tree on the spot where the original bo-tree grew under which Buddha sat during the meditations that resulted in this great Oriental religious movement. Numerous images of the Teacher himself also are to be seen in Buddh Gaya. In spite of the temptations of Mara, the Buddhist Satan, who came to Gotama here at Gaya with the appeal of hunger, of ambition, and of sensuality to turn him from the path of truth, he finally emerges victorious

from his long meditations, and leaves the bo-tree to go forth with a definite remedy for the ills of human life and a complete system of knowledge which has also been called, in striking similarity to our own gospel, "The Glad Tidings."

THE FAMOUS SERMON AT BENARES

Buddha's ministry began in the holy city of Benares, where he preached his first sermon to a handful of half-credulous ascetics who knew him in his old Brahman days. They had given him up for lost when he left their ranks and had classed him as a heretic, so the congregation on that memorable day at first must have been far from sympathetic. The preacher, however, by the sheer power of his calm, dignified personality arrested their attention and soon they began to listen closely to his discussion of "The Foundation of the Realm of Eternal Justice," into which the new prophet poured all the conclusions of his earnest struggles with the problem of life and his bo-tree meditations. He outlined at the start the Four Great Truths. The first was the universality of human suffering, or the inherent evil of existence. Under this head Buddha pointed out with multiplied illustrations that from the cradle to the grave mankind is literally beset with sufferings of every kind, including disappointments, misfortune, sickness, and death. The second truth indicates the cause of suffering, and this Gotama finds not in anything external but in the desires

of the soul itself, and fundamentally in the "will to live"; that is, in the craving for existence. This constant seeking for a continuation of life results in an endless chain of reincarnations which can be broken only when desire is at last extinguished. This drastic remedy is Buddha's third truth. The fourth relates to the method of attainment of Nirvana, a state wherein there is left no "will to live," and shows that this condition can be reached only as one follows strictly the sublime path of Buddhism.

Upon this fourfold philosophic foundation, then, the preacher began to build his practical teaching, which he called the Eightfold Path, in contrast to the ruinous Twofold Path that leads to destruction. If, said he, a man follow the path of striving to satisfy his desires and passions in a round of empty pleasures, there is no hope for him. Neither is there any salvation in the opposite of this, in fasting, self-torture, and asceticism. "No; walk in the Eightfold Path and be saved!" is the cry of the preacher of Gaya. And what was Buddha's Eightfold Path? The first part is right knowledge, embracing a correct understanding of the misery of life. "And what, O ascetics, is right knowledge? The knowledge of misery, O ascetics, the knowledge of the origin of misery (craving for selfhood), the knowledge of the cessation of misery (the Eightfold Path)—this, O ascetics, is called right knowledge." Right aspirations come next and grow out of right knowledge. These consist in earnest craving for