It is more than startling to see the close resemblance between that form of Buddhism called Lamaism, prevailing in Tibet and Mongolia, and Romanism. Dr. Rhys Davids thus describes it:
" Lamaism, indeed with its shaven priests, its bells, its rosaries, its images, and holy water, and gorgeous dresses; its service with double choirs, and processions, and creeds, and mystic rites, and incense, in which the laity are spectators only; its abbots and monks, and nuns of many grades, its worship of the double Virgin and of the saints and angels; its fasts, confessions, purgatory, its images, its idols, and its pictures; its huge monasteries and its gorgeous cathedrals, its powerful hierarchy, its cardinals, its pope, bears outwardly at least a strong resemblance to Romanism, in spite of the essential difference to its teachings and of its mode of thought " (Buddhism, Dr. Rhys Davids, ch. 9).
Commenting upon this Sir Robert Anderson asks the question: " Is it any wonder that when Roman Catholic missionaries settled in certain provinces in China, they were amazed to find all the externals of their own religion ready to their hand; and that a change of images and nomenclature alone seemed necessary to ' Christianize ' the native cult?" (The Bible or the Church? p. 58).
The similarities between the two systems cannot possibly be the result of mere chance. The items are far too numerous to allow of that. They prepare us for the truth that Romanism is in fact a non-Christian idolatry with a veneer of Christianity.