This popular sect also makes greatest use of charms, spells and amulets,
lays great store on pilgrimages, and is very fond of noise-making
instruments whether prayer-books or the wooden bells or drums which are
prominent features in their temples and revival meetings. In one sense
it is the Salvation Army of Buddhism, being especially powerful in what
strikes the eye and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the
Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and
reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are
familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects.
Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even
against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian
sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the
lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for
the priests of all other sects." When the Parliament of Religions was
called in Chicago, the successors of Nichiren, with their characteristic
high-church modesty, promptly sent letters to America, warning the world
against all other Japanese Buddhists, and denouncing especially those
coming to speak in the Parliament, as misrepresenting the true doctrines
of Buddha.


Doctrinal Culmination.


When the work of Nichiren had been completed, and his realistic
pantheism had been able to include within its great receiver and
processes of Buddha-making, everything from gods to mud, the circle of
doctrine was complete. K[=o]b[=o]'s leaven had now every possible lump
in which to do its work. All grades of men in Japan, from the most
devout and intellectual to the most ranting and fanatical, could choose