ment, at the same time they make merit for the future. Some things in this heathen ceremony reminded the missionary of the county fairs he had attended in the West, crowds of people—men, women and children—in their richest apparel, bringing their choicest fruit and most valuable articles, but not for exhibition; they come to spend the day in frolic and offer their fruits to a heathen deity."
The Siamese wat embodies "a theory which extracted and remodeled the best ideas of ancient Brahmanism—a religion that has not only been able to subsist for more than two thousand years, but which has drawn within the meshes of its own peculiar church organization, and brought more or less under the influence of its peculiar tenets, fully one-third of the human race. Such a system ought to have enough importance in our eyes to deserve something more than passing or passive attention."
This study of a Siamese wat gives us the practical aspects of this much-vaunted creed in the hands of the common people, proving that the influence of these great centres of classic Buddhism hinders the material prosperity and dwarfs the intellectual and moral development of the nation. Allowing full credit for its good precepts, the visitor who closely studies the actual outworkings of the Buddhist wat finds a worship that degrades; alms-giving that floods the land
