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The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 131

Concordia Seminary Library, St. Louis (scholar.csl.edu/lutheran_pioneer/47)

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

131

knew not what poverty and trouble were till he
reached the age of manhood. But when once he
saw how much sorrow and woe this world held in
store for man, he decided to go forth and learn how
to relieve poor humanity. He started out as a beg-
gar, and after a while, when he thought that he had
. found the way to relieve mankind of its woes, he
went about preaching it. He called himself Buddha,

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ignorant priests. There are said to be almost two
hundred thousand such priests in Siam and over
ten thousand in the one city of Bangkok! They
may be met almost everywhere, their heads shaved
and their half-naked bodies wound about with strips
of yellow cloth. They are inveterate beggars and
go from house to house, asking for rice and other
gifts, smoking cigars and chewing betel nuts.

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Royal Buddhist Temple, Bangkok, Siam.

that is, “the enlightened.” He soon found fol-
lowers, who styled themselves Buddhists, “the en-
lightened.” Of course, the way which Buddha
found was a wrong way and only led to greater and
eternal sorrow; for he recognized no God, no sin,
and no Savior. Buddha taught that man would be
happy and be freed from all woe only after he had
destroyed within him all desire to live, either here
or elsewhere. Buddhism, however, has greatly
changed since the days of its founder, so that in
many places it is to-day little better than a worship
of idols, carried on under the guidance of lazy,

In Bangkok is 2 Buddhist temple which has a
spire the gilding of which cost one hundred thou-
sand dollars; and its doors are made of ebony,
inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A carpet woven of
silver threads covers the floor of this temple’s prin-
cipal room. It is in this temple that the king him-
self worships. Its chief object of interest is an idol
made of pure gold and jewels. It is said that, when
the gold was still in a liquid state, all kinds of
precious stones were cast into the melting-pot and
stirred in with the gold before the metal was cast
into this little god.