of an open-mouthed multitude in the second, are the objects the pious promoters have in view.
Not so the incarnations. They too, indeed, serve a double purpose. But whereas they are, like the miracles, measures of the value of the purity of the man, they are also practical mediums of exchange between the human spirit and the divine. Foregone for directly profitable ends, loss of self is the necessary price of an instant part in the kingdom of heaven.
Perhaps the most startling thing about these Japanese divine possessions is their number; unless it be that being so numerous they should have remained so long unknown. But it is to be remembered that what no one is interested to reveal may stay a long while hid. For, with quite Anglican etiquette, the Japanese never thought to introduce their divine guests and their foreign ones to each other. Once introduced, the two must have met at every turn. Indeed, the visitants from the spirit-world remind one of those ghost-like forms of clever cartoonists, latent in the outlines of more familiar shapes, till, by some chance
