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BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY | A PARALLEL AND A CONTRAST
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<xxl><B>BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY</B></xxl>

<xl><B>A PARALLEL AND A CONTRAST</B></xl>

<l><B>BEING</B></l>

<xl><B>THE CROALL LECTURE FOR 1889-90</B></xl>

<l><B>BY</B></l>

<xxl><B>ARCHIBALD SCOTT, D.D.</B></xxl>

<l><B>MINISTER OF ST. GEORGE’S PARISH, EDINBURGH</B></l>


EDINBURGH: DAVID DOUGLAS

MDCCCXC

[<i>All rights reserved.</i>]
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PREFACE
.sp 2
In endeavouring to sketch in so limited a space
even the most salient features of the many-sided
religion of Buddhism it is possible that
here and there I may have misrepresented it.

If so, I hope the fault will be attributed to inadvertence,
or rather to disadvantages under which
I have worked. The sacred beliefs of any section
of mankind are entitled to receive at our hands not
only justice but kindly consideration, and a religion
so vast and in some respects so wonderful as
Buddhism ought to have much to commend it to
our sympathy. Long and patient study of it has
indeed greatly modified opinions originally formed
concerning it, but it has only tended to increase
respect for so earnest an effort of the intellect to
solve the mystery of human life and destiny.
Even Christians may have something to learn
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from Buddhists. The divers and seemingly antagonistic
Churches of Christendom help to educate
and reform each other, and non-Christian religions
may perform a similar office to Christianity in
bringing into prominence some universal truths
which its creeds have allowed to slip into forgetfulness.
Our perception and apprehension of what
Christianity really is will be all the clearer and
firmer for an impartial study of the system
formulated so long ago by Gotama the Buddha.

The aim of the Lecture has not been to use the
extravagances of Buddhism as a foil to set off the
excellencies of Christianity. That Christianity as
a religion is immensely superior to Buddhism goes
without saying, unless in the case of a very small
and conceited and purblind minority. I have tried
by a fair exposition of what is best and highest
in this religion to discover its feeling after something
better and higher still, and to suggest rather
than indicate the place which it occupies in the
religious education of humanity. As

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“Man hath all which nature hath, but more,
  And in that more lie all his hopes of good,”
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so Christianity, while having in it in fuller measure
and clearer form every truth that has vivified any
other religion, has in it, as the new creation to which
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the long travail of the soul under every form of
faith has from the first been pointing, something
peculiar and contrasted—which is the Divine answer
to all their aspirations. This we do not need
to demonstrate: indeed it may be a verity, as
incapable of demonstration as is that of the existence
of Deity or the immortality of the soul.
It is sure eventually to be almost universally
recognised, and meanwhile, whether accepted or
denied, we may say—<i>E pur si muove</i>.

.tb

Very gratefully would I acknowledge my profound
obligations to all who have instructed me in
this subject. Though we no longer regard the
Saddharma-Pundarika and Lalita Vistara as good
specimens of Buddhism, we still venerate the great
scholars who first introduced them to our notice.
The splendid productions of Burnouf, Foucaux,
Köppen, Stanislas Julien, Hodgson and Turnour;
the excellent works of Spence Hardy, Gogerly,
Bigandet and <abbr rend=spell>H. H.</abbr> Wilson, and, among the
best of all, the laborious and faithful Dictionary
of Professor Childers, though several of them are
unfortunately out of print, are not likely to be
soon out of date. It is with pleasure that we
find them so frequently quoted or referred to
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by our latest and best authorities. Still, ever
since Professor Max Müller organised his truly
catholic enterprise of the translation of the
Sacred Books of the East, he has brought us
very considerably nearer to real Buddhist teachers
themselves. To praise the scholarship of himself,
and Oldenberg, and Rhys Davids, and Kern,
and Fausböll, and others of his <i>collaborateurs</i>,
would be unwarrantable presumption on my part;
but as a humble disciple very willing to learn, I
am glad to have this opportunity of publicly
expressing my appreciation of the great services
which in their editions of old Eastern texts, and in
these series of translations, they are rendering to
the cause of religion.

The lectures were drafted and in great part
written before I read the very valuable works of
Sir Monier Williams on <i>Buddhism</i> and of Dr.
Kellogg on the <i>Light of Asia and the Light of the
World</i>. I specially mention these books as likely
to prove very useful guides to any one desirous of
prosecuting the subject of the present Lecture.
In the notes I have marked my indebtedness to
them, and to many authors of what has already
become a great literature. Many others whose
works have been of service to me in a course of
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reading extending over many years are not
noted, simply because in the caprices of memory
my peculiar obligations to them could not at the
time be recalled.

For in regard to Buddhism I do not profess to
add any original information to the stock already
acquired. Others have extracted the ore from these
old and interesting fields, and minted it into gold
and silver. What has thus been rendered available
many like myself can only reduce into copper or
bronze, but if only our work be faithfully done,
we may thus help in increasing the currency and
in extending its circulation. With this in view
I accepted the honour which the Croall Trustees
conferred upon me in calling me to undertake this
Lecture, and if the only effect of my efforts be to
stimulate other ministers of the Church more advantageously
situated to prosecute their researches to
much better purpose, no one will be more pleased
than myself.

ARCHIBALD SCOTT.

<sc>Edinburgh</sc>, <i><abbr='twenty-fifth'>25th</abbr> December 1889</i>.
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.h2
CONTENTS
.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=one>I.</abbr>:lecture-1#

INTRODUCTORY: NECESSITY FOR A PROPER COMPARISON OF
BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Schopenhauer’s prediction as to the influence of Oriental studies upon
European religion and philosophy—New science of Comparative
Theology—Its value to the expounders of Christianity—Study of
all religions binding upon Christians—Special claims of Buddhism—Its
duration and wide-spread diffusion—The quality of its doctrinal
and ethical system—The correspondences between it and
Christianity—Instructive parallels of historical development—Resemblances,
if granted or assumed, not to be accounted for by
theory of derivation—Renan—<abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Burnouf—Ernest de Bunsen—Both
religions independent in origin, though analogous in development—What
the significance of this—True answer to be found, not
by examining alleged resemblances between the religions, but their
points of contradiction and contrast—Unity of humanity involves
organic unity of language and of religion—What is meant by
organic unity and development of religion—Declarations of Scripture—Christianity
as the universal religion has much in common with
all—has something peculiar to itself which it possesses in contrast—In
this will be found not only its superiority to all the rest, but
the answer to all their cravings and aspirations,      <i>Pages #1#-58</i>
.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=two>II.</abbr>:lecture-2#

THE HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY,
AND THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THEIR RESPECTIVE
SCRIPTURES.

Both religions inherited and produced scriptures—Christian scriptures
criticised for eighteen centuries—Buddhist scriptures as yet only in
part available for examination—Admissions made by translators in
regard to them—Strong contrasts between two sets of scriptures,
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in respect of authenticity and genuineness—Impossible to regard
the two as of similar canonical or authoritative value—In Buddhism
only oral traditions for centuries—Effect of the lack of a real canon
in primitive Buddhism—Effect of a fixed and written canon in the
development of Christianity—Antecedents of Buddhism—Vedic
India—Brahmanic India—Development of Brahmanic speculation—Its
highest reach in philosophical Brahmanism—The Upanishads—Pursuit
of Atman—Antecedents of Christianity—Patriarchal belief
in Deity—Mosaic stage of religious belief—The religion of Moses
and the prophets too pure for the people under the kings—Destruction
of the kingdom—Effect of Captivity on the prophets—on
the people—Difference between the beliefs and hopes of the
Diaspora and those of the returned Palestinian Jews—Preparation
of the Empire and world beyond it for the dawn of
Christianity,      <i>Pages #59#-125</i>
.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=three>III.</abbr>:lecture-3#

THE BUDDHA OF THE PITAKAS: THE CHRIST OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT.

Palestine at the birth of Christ—India at the birth of Gotama—Like,
yet unlike—Analogies in development of previous beliefs and
speculation—Contrasts—Gotama’s life and ministry contrasted
with the life and ministry of Jesus—The difference between
their personal relations to the religions which they founded—“I
take refuge in Buddha”—“I believe in Christ”—The supernatural
in both religions—Pre-existence, incarnation, and miracles
ascribed to Buddha—Sources of information as to these beliefs
examined and compared with the Gospel accounts—Relation of the
miracles to each religion—Nature of the miracles themselves—Growth
of Buddhist legends described by <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids—Implied
growth of the Christian legends examined—Essential
contrasts manifest all through—Buddha can be accounted for, but
Christ is the Miracle of History,      <i>Pages #126#-191</i>
.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=four>IV.</abbr>:lecture-4#

THE DHARMA OF BUDDHA: THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST.

Gotama’s discovery at Bohimanda—The Four Sacred Verities—The
noble Eightfold Way—His theory of life different from but
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not wholly antagonistic to that of speculative Brahmanism—Existence
not illusion, but essentially evil—Transmigration—“Modern
Buddhists’” defence of the dogma—Contrast
between it and Christian doctrine of the Fall—Christianity
in its sorest struggle with evil hopeful—Buddhism hopeless—atheistic—materialistic,
yet has its own way, not of victory,
but of retreat and escape—Doctrine of Karma analogous to
Christian doctrine of Heredity, yet really contrasted—Goal of all
Buddhist aspiration and effort—Nirvana, point-blank contradiction
to Christian goal, yet way to it analogous—Arhatship as essential
in Buddhism as holiness is in Christianity—Noble quality of
Buddhist ethical code—Its approach to the Christian rule—A law
not for all—Its degrees or paths of perfection—Uprightness—Meditation—Enlightenment—Christ’s
way of salvation and sanctification
by the Holy Spirit through the truth—Essential defects of
Buddhist scheme,      <i>Pages #192#-252</i>
.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=five>V.</abbr>:lecture-5#

THE BUDDHIST SANGHA: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

The Church the fruit of Christianity, the Sangha the root out of which
Buddhism sprang—The Sangha not a Church but an Order—Different
from the many Orders then existing, yet with a likeness to
them which it never lost—Renunciation of secular life an indispensable
qualification for membership—Analogous to yet essentially
different from Monachism in Christianity, and in utter contrast
to the idea and reality of the Christian Church—The Sangha as
theoretically open to all, and propagandist in its purpose, a precursor
of the Church—Actual disqualifications for membership—Ceremonial
of admission—The “outgoing” from the world—Ceremonial of
Confirmation—The “arrival”—The novitiate or tutelage—The rule
of the Sangha—No vows of obedience to superiors—Stringent vows of
poverty and chastity—Difference between a Buddhist Vihara and
a Christian monastery—Favourable features of Buddhist monastic
life—The Uposatha gathering—The Pâtimokkha catechising—The
Pavârâna invitation—Relation of women to the Sangha—Institution
of Order of Bikkhuni—The relation of the laity to the
Sangha—The Buddhist layman’s only possible “merit,” and his
only hope,      <i>Pages #253#-313</i>
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.sp 2
#LECTURE <abbr=six>VI.</abbr>:lecture-6#

THE RELIGIONS IN HISTORY.

External diffusion—Both religions missionary—Vastly different in respect
of their messages—Buddhist endeavour to perpetuate a system—Christian
endeavour to set forth and interpret the facts of a miraculous
life—Effect of belief in Christ’s continued presence upon the
Church—Rapid diffusion of Christianity during the first four
centuries—Condition of Buddhism during a similar period—Spread
of Christianity after Constantine—Spread of Buddhism after Asoka—Difference
in the peoples affected by both religions—Inferences—Internal
history—Buddhism and Brahmanism—Christianity and
Judaism—In Buddhism an early abandonment of fundamental
principles manifest—Recoil of human nature from its Atheism into
Polytheism and Tantrism—Degradation of Southern and Northern
Buddhism—Buddhism in Tibet—Christianity in Abyssinia—History
of Chinese Buddhism from fourth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> analogous
to that of Christianity in Europe from same date—Deterioration of
both religions similarly indicated—Bôdiharma—Modern Neo-Buddhism—The
T’ien-t’ai School—Reformed Buddhism in China—in
Japan—Its most modern attitude—Difference between Buddhism
and Christianity—Alike in their tendency to deteriorate—Christianity
alone manifests a reforming and progressive power—Resources
of Buddhism manifestly exhausted—Christianity apparently
in only an initial stage of development,      <i>Pages #314#-386</i>
.sp 2
#<sc>Postscript</sc>:postscript#,      <i>Pages #387#-391</i>
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.h2 id=lecture-1
LECTURE <abbr=one>I.</abbr> | NECESSITY FOR A PROPER COMPARISON OF THE TWO RELIGIONS.
.sp 2
Early in this century Schopenhauer, fascinated by
the contents of the Upanishads, which had been
translated from the Persian into Latin by the illustrious
discoverer of the Zend-Avesta, ventured to
predict that the influence of the newly-found Sanskrit
literature upon the philosophy of the future
would not be less profound than was that of the
revival of Greek upon the religion of the fourteenth
century.[#] That century was marked by the close of
the mediæval age, and the beginning of the times
of Reformation in which we are privileged to live.
The Reformation was not an event, but the inauguration
of a period. Its significance was far deeper
than that of a revolt from ecclesiastical superstition
and corruption. It meant a quickening of the
human spirit, and a consequent awakening of the
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human intellect, to which many forces other than
the leading religious ones, contributed; and its
effects are visible not simply in the changes which
it immediately produced, but in the revolution
which is still actively progressing in all our social,
political, and religious relations. The movement
designated by the Reformation is manifestly far
from having exhausted itself, and there can be no
question that its course has been greatly accelerated
by the studies to which Schopenhauer referred.

The re-discovery of India, lost to Europe for
centuries after the beginning of the Christian era,
almost as completely as America was hidden from
it, was a fact of even greater import than the resurrection
of Greece. It was no wilderness of ruins
which was thus disclosed, from which only the
shards of a long-buried civilisation could be exhumed,
but a living and cultured world, whose
institutions were rooted in an antiquity more profound
than Greece could claim, and whose language
and manners and religion were separated from the
West by far more than a hemisphere. So totally
unlike to the Western world was it, that the labours
and sacrifices of several generations of the finest
intellects of Europe were required before a key
could be found to interpret its significance. Since
the days when Anquetil Duperron, after many
adventures and hardships, succeeded in breaking
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through the tangled thicket which guarded its
treasures, the scholars of all nations have pressed
into it, each one announcing, as he emerged, the
dawn or the progress of another Renaissance, whose
meaning and direction and ultimate issues only
the rash will venture to predict or pretend to foresee.

One of the first-fruits of their combined or independent
researches is the new science of Religion.
By a careful collection, analysis, and comparison of
all the beliefs of mankind available, with the view
of eliciting what is peculiar to each, and what they
all share in common, its professors aim at discovering
what may be the real nature and origin and purpose
of all religion.[#] As yet it should hardly be
designated a science, for though the elements for it
undoubtedly exist, they are too widely scattered to
be of service for immediate induction. The materials
already collected have not been sufficiently
sifted, and moreover, it requires the assistance of
other sciences, as yet too immature, to render it
effective support. The title may not be a “misnomer,”[#]
but only a somewhat inflated expression by
which an age, rather wise in its own conceit, proclaims
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the discovery of a new field of learning which
it means assiduously to cultivate. The discovery
however is a solid one, and the assiduity of those
who would improve it is unmistakable; year by
year their numbers increase, their implements improve
in quality, and this generation may not pass
away before an abundant harvest has been reaped.

Another indication of the change that is coming
over the world is the attitude which Christian
divines now assume toward other religions. Fifty
years ago the attempt to compare our Bible and our
Creed with the scriptures of other religions would
have been regarded as a sacrilegious surrender of
what was holy to the dogs. This was due not so
much to prejudice on the part of the expounders of
Christianity as to aversion to the avowedly anti-christian
spirit in which these researches were
prosecuted. The Comparative method was then
frequently employed, as it had been by the Encyclopædists
of last century, for the purpose of discrediting
and degrading Christianity. The conclusion
was often foregone before the process began;
and so it was natural that reverent but timid minds
jealous for their religion, and anxious to guard it
from insult, should decline such encounters. Now,
however, orthodox theologians are quite aware that
in this matter they have to reckon with other
than the professed enemies of Christianity. The
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ablest advocates of Comparative Theology are not
only free from antichristian prejudice, but they
protest against it as inimical to the science itself.[#]
It is not infidelity, but Providence, that is forcing
us to investigate the origin of our religion, and to
search its scriptures in the fuller light which we
now enjoy. We are being divinely taught that we
cease to revere a heavenly gift the moment we
begin to idolise it; that the disposition most fatal
to ourselves, most dishonouring to our religion, is
that which would regard its scriptures as charmed
relics too sacred to be examined, and only to be
brought by an undevout and apostate Church, in
the moment of its extreme peril, into the field of
battle with the Philistines. To shrink from the
comparison of our Faith with the religious beliefs of
those whom we acknowledge to be bone of our bone,
and flesh of our flesh, is to manifest a cowardly lack
of confidence in its Author. It is at the judgment-bar
of all the ages that He means to make good His
claim to be the Judge of all mankind. The more
He is tried, the more will His authority be confessed
to be divine. He certainly invited inspection
and comparison, and He may have had other
than Hebrew scriptures in His view when He instructed
us to “search them, for they testify of Me.”[#]
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The comparative study of other religions, so far
from being prejudicial to the claims of Christianity,
will be helpful in establishing its sublime
pre-eminence among them, and in enabling us to
discharge to their adherents the duty which its
Founder has imposed upon us. It may modify
considerably our theology, but it will strengthen
our fundamental beliefs. As a general rule, we
may assert that the strength of a man’s faith will
be found to be in direct proportion to his knowledge
of the everlasting and unchangeable laws by
which the universe is governed. It is our theology
alone that is assailed, and we are learning that
theology, as a system of reasoning upon materials
furnished not only by religion itself, but also by
some other “ologies,” must be based on other and
higher authority than that of an infallible Council,
or that of a chapter whose significance was supposed
to be unalterably fixed two or three thousand years
ago. The religion which revolted against the assumption
of the Scribe in our Lord’s day, and
which disallowed the claim of the Pope some three
centuries ago to be the sole interpreters of revelation,
is not only testing the authenticity of the texts to
which the appeal was then made, but is inquiring
into their actual significance by collating them with
the truths of another revelation as divine. It is
not that men want to get rid of dogma, for
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dogma of some kind there must ever be. There
will always be a vast deal which we must believe,
because there is much that can only thus be known;
but a satisfactory dogmatic foundation must henceforth
be sought in facts anterior to any scriptures,
or to any church that would interpret them, viz., in
the elemental necessities and aspirations of our
common human nature. It has been wisely said
that “the theology which fails to meet the demands
of the whole man is simply doomed.”[#] What is
wanted therefore for theology is some broad and
solid basis, to be laid by analysing, comparing, and
co-ordinating all religious beliefs within our reach.
In each of them we may hope to find some truth—it
may be very feebly and very partially expressed—of
no more value by itself than a flake of gold
found in an immense drift of sand or mass of quartz,
but yet of immense value as indicating the source
from which it came and the substance to which it
claims affinity. All separate and imperfect truths
point towards some higher truth which will unite
and fulfil and interpret them. And so every religion,
however erroneous it may be, is prophetic—because
found in a humanity that is essentially one—of
a universal religion, a faith which is not just
one of the faiths of the nations, but is the divine
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answer, unchanged and inexhaustible, to all the
aspirations of mankind. The study of other religions
therefore, even of those of the most degraded
peoples, and of those most contradictory of
our own, is as binding upon us as is the study of
our Bibles. For us “history” has been truly said
“to stand in the place of prophecy,”[#] and it is only
by gathering up and considering its testimony that
we can appreciate the worth of the treasure which
has been given to us, that we may communicate it
to all the world.

Prominent among the religions that challenge
our consideration is the one which, following
authorities acknowledged to be the best, we will
endeavour briefly to sketch and to expound. It is
not an obsolete system, appealing only to the poetic
sentiment from a vanished past, like the religion
of Greece, but one which confronts us with vitality
sufficient to overshadow a considerable portion of
the populous East. Two thousand four hundred
years have passed since it was first proclaimed,
and though it disappeared long ago from the land
of its birth, it still reigns in many kingdoms, and
continues to spread its influence in several directions
in Central and Northern Asia. To tell its
story completely would be to write the history of
nearly the whole of China, India, and the countries
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that lie around or between them. Till very
recently it was generally computed that quite one-third
of the human family, though widely separated
geographically and otherwise, professed to find in
Buddhism consolation sufficient to strengthen them
to do the work and endure the sufferings of life,
and to confront with calmness the necessity of
death.

Were this computation correct, Buddhism would
have to be accounted by far the most widely accepted
of all the religions of mankind. It has however
been seriously challenged by those whose experience
and candour are beyond question. According
to their enumeration, Buddhism must rank only
fourth in the scale of numerical comparison among
the great faiths of the world, for instead of there
being five hundred millions of adherents, as we
were previously led to believe, probably not more
than one hundred millions of professing Buddhists
can be found in all the world.[#] The question in
dispute after all is one of only secondary importance,
for we can hardly conceive of any one other
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than some democratic fanatic who would propose
to settle the truth of a religion by a reckoning of
the suffrages which it could command. Numerical
statistics of religious adherence furnish only
an indirect test even of influence. It is impossible
to indicate even geographically the range of a
religion. We are very properly reminded that
“the influence of Buddhism in India may be
immense, though not a single Buddhist temple
exists in it, while its influence in China and
Ceylon may be vastly over-stated in figures, for
many Chinese Buddhists may be called Confucianists
and Taoists, and many Singhalese worshippers
at Buddha’s shrines are far from being only
or altogether Buddhists.”[#] Indeed everywhere,
though chiefly in Thibet, Nepaul, and Mongolia,
the religion which is called Buddhism is no more
Buddhist than the survivals of Pagan worship
and belief which are found in some extreme forms
of Romanism can be called Christian.

The rapidity with which and the extent to
which a religion has spread is no certain indication
of its capability to meet and satisfy the real
spiritual necessities of mankind. A religion may
rapidly gain, and retain for long, an ascendency
over many men, without possessing any of the
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qualities essential to its being recognised as the
one religion of all men. The catholicity of a faith
is indicated not by the extent of the supremacy
which it has acquired, but by the quality of its
contents. Universal truths are not necessarily the
truths which have won the consent of the greatest
numbers. The test of <i>quod ubique, semper, et ab
omnibus</i>, if thoroughly applied, would have established
the truth of many a degrading superstition
in former times. “It is not that which is common
to barbarism and civilisation which is most truly
human, but precisely that in which civilisation
differs from barbarism.”[#] The divinity of a
religion, instead of being attested by the readiness
with which it is accepted, may be indicated by the
antagonism which it at first evokes. Truth at no
time depends upon majorities, at least in this
world, for here truth of any kind, when first proclaimed,
instead of meeting a generally friendly
reception, has to win its victory by conflict and
lay in martyrdom the foundation of its throne.[#]
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It is not on account of its adherents, however,
nor of the superficial extent of its supremacy—though
such facts have indeed a very pathetic
significance—but it is in respect of the quality of
its original faith, that Buddhism is considered
worthy of comparison with Christianity. We
must not be repelled by the childish superstitions
and gross absurdities with which it is incrusted,
for in a religion so ancient and extensive this is
just what we might expect to find; nor should
we be surprised at the marvellous and grotesque
legends which profess to relate its origin and
early history, for these, as Professor Müller has very
properly reminded us, “are the clouds, not alway
rosy, that gather round the sunrise of any religion.”[#]
In the estimation of its severest critics,
Buddhism must occupy a grand and exalted
place in the general history of religions.[#] Among
the various systems of the non-Christian world,
ancient or modern, none can compare with it in
respect of its ethical code, its spirit of toleration
and gentleness, and its beneficent influence upon
// File: 029.png
.pn +1
many wild populations that have embraced it.
Neither Zeno nor Marcus Aurelius conceived a
higher theory of morals, in which justice and
temperance were infused by kindness, than that
which the founder of Buddhism successfully reduced
to practice. It was the most natural of all
things therefore, that it had only to be introduced
to the notice of Christendom to win for
itself a degree of admiration accorded to no other
heathen faith.

We would be understating its claims, however,
if we referred to it as appealing only to our
Christian consideration and sympathy. It has
been brought into the lists of criticism as the rival
of Christianity. Modern unbelief is forcing it
upon our notice as a much truer philosophy of
existence and a more satisfactory theory of the
universe than that furnished by Christianity.
We cannot let it alone, were it for no other
reason that it will not let us alone. In the
civilised and semi-civilised portions of the East
its disciples have long ago ceased to propagate it,
and as a form of belief it may be said that there
not only has it reached the limits of its extension,
but that its present condition is one of “increasing
disintegration and decay.”[#] Even in the
East, however, among the classes who have most
// File: 030.png
.pn +1
come under the influence of Western culture, the
spirit of Buddhism shows considerable vitality, and
there its spirit is coming into constant and active
collision with Christianity every day. The educated
or intelligent Buddhist of Burmah or Siam
tells us plainly that he will not give up his
ancient faith for Christianity; for notwithstanding
the manifold and manifest absurdities of his
ancestral religion, he professes to find the same
in the forms in which Christianity has been presented
to him. By the light of our science we
have helped him to weed out his old superstitions,
and he will not accept from us any new ones.
In language marvellously akin to that of the
founder of Buddhism, he discards every religion as
involving the worship of deity, and he professes
to find in Suttas more ancient than our Gospels
a morality as sublime, a charity as comprehensive,
and a system of faith sufficient to bear the strain
of all his necessities, whether present or future.[#]
In short, Buddhism as professed by a modern
Oriental with any pretension to culture, is almost
identical with that paradoxical condition of thought
or belief which maintains, and indeed professes to
be spreading in Christendom as modern Agnosticism.
// File: 031.png
.pn +1

But it is not in an attitude of resistance only
that Buddhism confronts Christianity even in the
East. In Ceylon, if we are to trust the <i>Times
of India</i>,[#] it numbers among its typical gains “a
young highly educated European lady and a
clergyman of the English Church,” and these, it is
averred, “are not the first, and are not likely to be
the last of its direct converts from the Christian
churches.” In Europe and America also, not
among the lower and less educated, but among
the higher ranks of society, among people affecting
culture and new light, are to be found not a
few professing admirers, if not practical followers,
of Buddha and his law. The admiration of many
of these dilettanti may sometimes be found to be in
exact proportion to their ignorance of Buddhism.
Their information is drawn almost exclusively from
such sources as are supplied by the romance of
Sir Edwin Arnold and works like those produced
by Mr. Sinnett and Colonel Olcott;[#] but even
when we discount all these, we must own that
here and there we find some thoughtful and
earnest people who profess to have come out from
bondage to the beggarly elements of the Church’s
// File: 032.png
.pn +1
faith to gentle Buddha’s better gospel of liberty.
Mr. Alabaster’s <i>Modern Buddhist</i> finds a co-religionist
not only in the disciples of Feuerbach
and Von Hartmann, but in every “fervent atheist”
who, acknowledging nothing in the universe save
man, and a system of unbending law in which he
is involved, and with which he is sometimes confounded,
has been compelled to deify humanity
and to demand for its idol a service worthy of a
divine object of faith.

So another prediction of Schopenhauer’s, uttered
in the beginning of the century, seems to be repeated
in many publications at its close. “In India,” he
affirmed, “our religion will never strike root; the
primitive wisdom of the human race will never be
pushed aside by any incidents in Galilee. On
the contrary, Indian wisdom will flow back upon
Europe, and produce a thorough change in our
knowing and thinking.”[#] He certainly laboured
hard to bring about the fulfilment of his prophecy,
preaching Nirvana as the goal of moral effort,
though confessing that his own animal propensities
allowed him no hope of attaining it. In his lifetime
his strenuous endeavours were unsuccessful, and he
died in 1860 in comparative neglect. Since then,
and especially since the publication of his book
<i>Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung</i>, the doctrine
// File: 033.png
.pn +1
painfully planted, has taken root in the congenial
soil prepared for it by Comte and his disciples.
Spiritualism again—which, though originating only
in 1848, in circumstances almost ludicrous, has
spread so rapidly and extensively that it now
claims to count its converts by millions all over
the world—has obviously contributed to the dissemination
and growth of pseudo-Buddhist ideas.
With a literature of over five hundred psychological
works—many of them voluminous and very
costly—and with forty-six periodicals regularly
published in Europe and America, it not only
assails Christianity, but supports the doctrine
that “the Reign of Law has supplanted the
Reign of God; that just as we have ceased to
embody the conception of the State in a person, it
is time we should cease similarly to embody the
conception of the universe, for loyalty to a personal
ruler is an anachronism in the nineteenth century,
and will some day become extinct.”[#] Its apostles
profess to find in the Christian faith many signs of
disintegration, and they look “to the bloodless and
innocent record of Buddhism for the reconstruction
of true religious faith upon a permanent basis.”[#]
This they expound in a so-called theosophy in
phraseology largely borrowed from the New Testament,
// File: 034.png
.pn +1
but descriptive of a curious amalgam of later
Buddhist and Hindu doctrines utterly contradictory
to the essential teaching of Christianity.

Occultism, Esoteric Buddhism, which professes to
supplant the religion of Jesus, and to prepare the
way of the twelfth of the Messiahs, whose mission
is to harmonise the perverted teaching of his predecessors,[#]
and thus establish the universal religion of
humanity, is not likely to occasion serious concern.
It is just another of those instances in which the
diseases of a lower civilisation are communicated to
one superior and more robust. Just as plagues
originating in the ruined or degraded populations
of the East have repeatedly desolated large portions
of Europe, where they found physical conditions
favourable to their spread, so there are mental and
moral epidemics which, generated among inferior
religions, propagate themselves in the very highest,
for reasons almost similar. There are modern conditions
which present very close affinities to those
out of which Buddhism arose. It has been truly
called the religion of despair, and it seems suited to
that intellectual <i>ennui</i> in which many profess to
live who find themselves confronted by problems
which they are unable to solve. The enervating
agnosticism and sentimental pessimism of our
// File: 035.png
.pn +1
generation furnish the very soil in which the germs
of Buddhism are most likely to mature; but the
spiritual life of Christendom is too robust to succumb
to its heresy of inertion and moral defeat. The
system of Buddha, even as laid out by himself, is
not at all likely to entrap any considerable number
of Western nineteenth-century thinkers; and this
mongrel system of Neo-Buddhism, though professing
to be founded on that ancient creed, will only find
adherents among peculiar people. There is always
a tendency in the most advanced civilisation, on the
part of some who are freed from the necessity of
industry, so essential to man’s mental and moral
as well as to his physical health, to revert to
beliefs and customs peculiar to earlier and inferior
stages of culture. It is a curious and significant
fact,[#] that not among the working and professional
classes, but among the upper and fashionable ranks
of modern society, such survivals of ancient superstition
as intercourse with spirits and palmistry are
chiefly now to be found. For such unstable souls
as have been or may be tempted to be drawn into
these practices by an appeal to the authority of the
beautiful character limned for our generation in the
<i>Light of Asia</i>, I know no better restorative than a
plain exposition of primitive Buddhism. It will be
seen then that this modern fungus is a growth
// File: 036.png
.pn +1
almost as foreign in its nature to real Buddhism as
it is to true Christianity. The degenerate Buddhism
from which it borrows its largest stock of
ideas bears the same relation to the actual teaching
of Buddha that the Cabbala bear to the prophecies
of the Old Testament, and the doctrines which it
counts upon as most popular and attractive are
precisely those which Buddha would have treated
with his most withering scorn.

There is yet another characteristic of this religion
which has commended it more to the unbelief than
the belief of our age. Many agreements are alleged
to subsist between the contents of the New Testament
and those of the sacred books which profess to
record the life and express the teaching of Buddha.
Its ancient Pitakas are said to be filled with stories
resembling the narratives of the Evangelists, with
sayings which recall the parables, and miracles
reflecting the signs and wonders which signalised
the ministry of Jesus. It is averred that with the
single exception of the Crucifixion—and how immense
is the significance of that exception I shall
endeavour in a subsequent lecture to show,—it
would be easy to find in them a parallel to
almost every incident related in the Gospel. Most
startling of all are said to be the resemblances between
the central figures in both sets of scriptures.
For Buddhism, as truly as Christianity, has its
// File: 037.png
.pn +1
ideal of a perfect human life, illustrated in one who,
like unto the Son of Man, went about doing good, and
enforcing by his example the pure morality which
he preached, but who, most unlike the Son of Man,
without any sustaining belief in deity, or hope of
sympathy or help from any divine being, professed
to have made good his own salvation, and to teach
all whom he could reach the way to work out theirs.

When we come to examine its history, we find
that it has followed a line of development strikingly
parallel to that of Christianity, and the
parallels thus furnished by its antecedents and
progress, and by the external and foreign influences
which encountered and modified it, are
those which have the most interest and instruction
for the student of Religion. In order, however, to
ascertain their significance, we must examine these
alleged correspondences of story and of doctrine;
for these have powerfully influenced a certain class
of thinkers, as supplying confirmation of a charge
brought against our religion in almost the beginning
of its history, that after all there was
nothing original in Christ, and nothing new in
His teaching. That resemblances do exist, not
only between the forms in which Buddhism confronts
us in some quarters of the world and the
ritual and organisation of a large section of the
Christian Church, but between the contents of the
// File: 038.png
.pn +1
Buddhist scriptures as we have them now, and
those of the New Testament, all must admit. As
we cast a hasty and general glance over them we
see how natural and how pardonable was the old
rough and ready method of accounting for them by
the supposition of direct transference of the various
lineaments from the one to the other. The early
Jesuit missionaries did not hesitate to assert that
the Buddhists, by assimilating and incorporating
the rites and doctrines of the primitive missionaries,
had succeeded in producing a caricature of
Christianity. In like manner, when in Central
America—till then as independent of Europe as if it
had been separated not by untraversed oceans, but
by the immensities that divide the planets—the
Spaniards found to their amazement a most complex
religion, with priests, and monasteries, and
temples adorned with the cross and statues of a
goddess with an infant in her arms, they could only
explain the mystery by averring that it was a
gigantic mimetic ruse of the devil to lead the
unhappy nations astray. The suppositions in both
cases are not likely to be seriously supported now.
Indeed, it is far more likely, as the author of <i>Ancient
Christianity</i> and Dr. Prinsep and others have
attempted to show, that in the East we have to
seek for the origin of several institutions and rites
once considered the peculiar growth of Greek or
// File: 039.png
.pn +1
Latin Christianity. There can be little doubt that
as these religions spread they would come in contact
with and react upon each other.[#] It is difficult
in the present state of our knowledge to indicate
their first conjunction, or to trace their various
intercommunications, but that they have been
mutually indebted to each other is sufficiently
attested by their histories. In later Hinduism
and Buddhism and Lamaism there are plain indications
of the action of the Western upon the
Eastern religions. Romanism, on the other hand,
has set its official seal upon the relationship, by
incorporating a legend of Buddha among its “Lives
of the Saints,” by canonising the founder of this
most antichristian of all religions, and by consecrating
the <abbr='twenty-seventh'>27th</abbr> November as a day on which
he may be invoked for intercession.[#]

Though as yet the field is only opening out, and
its exploration is only beginning, there can be little
doubt that it will be found that in their advanced
stages Buddhism and Greek and Latin Christianity
have contributed to each other’s resources; but it
is quite another matter to assert that the existence
of the one religion accounts for the origin of
the other, and that Christianity, as the junior of
// File: 040.png
.pn +1
the two, is simply “a product of India spoiled in
its route to Palestine.”[#] Those who allege that
the sources of Christianity may be discovered in
Buddhism are bound not to assume but clearly to
trace and demonstrate the medium of communication
between the two. As yet the allegation,
though frequently made, appears to be incapable
of proof. Renan’s picture of “wandering Buddhist
monks who overran the whole world, and converted
on the banks of the Jordan, by their garb and
manners, people who did not understand their
language, like the Franciscan monks in later days,”
is only a pious imagination.[#] And so are the
theories elaborated by <abbr=Monsieur>M.</abbr> Emile Burnouf in the
<i>Science of Religions</i> and by <abbr=Monsieur>M.</abbr> Ernest de Bunsen
in his <i>Angel Messiah of the Buddhists</i>. Both these
authors have explained to their own satisfaction
the derivation of Christianity from old Indian or
Aryan beliefs, which, transmitted through Parthia
to the Babylonian Jews, by them communicated to
the Essenes John Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth,
and from them again passed on to the Therapeut
Stephen, were formulated in the plastic mind of Paul
of Tarsus into the Christian dogmas which we now
revere. The scheme is devised with thoroughly
French precision, and the treatises in which it is
// File: 041.png
.pn +1
elaborated, full as they are of indications of great
ingenuity and laborious research, are interesting as
any romance. For scientific purposes, however, they
have hardly more historic worth than a romance.
Based upon assumptions, they are constructed almost
entirely of hypotheses: when a difficulty emerges,
it is solved by a supposition which further on is confirmed
by a “reasonable expectation” of something
else, so that by and by the supposition meets us as
an established result. They abound in analogies,
some of which transgress as flagrantly the laws of
time as the theory once advanced that the story of
Christ is only a reflection of the legend of Krishna,
seeing that belief in Krishna did not arise in India
till centuries after Christianity had reached its
shores. “The laws of language[#] are also violated
as openly as they were by the discovery that
the mysterious word ‘Om’ of the Upanishads is
the equivalent of the ‘Amen’ in ancient Hebrew
worship.” It may be as possible by this method
to prove the connection between the Vedic and
Levitical institutions, as it is possible to establish
the conclusion that the old Aryan symbol of the
fire sticks is the fontal idea of the Cross, or that
// File: 042.png
.pn +1
the Vedic word “Agni” is equivalent to the
Latin “Agnus Dei.” Dr. <abbr rend=spell>J.</abbr> Estlin Carpenter[#] and
Professor Kuenen[#] have most exhaustively and
decisively exposed the vanity of such speculations,
which, on the whole, may be regarded as a good
confirmation of a saying uttered by Professor <abbr rend=spell>H. H.</abbr>
Wilson some thirty years ago, in reference to
those who would derive Christianity from Indian
sources, that “the disposition to draw impossible
analogies is not yet wholly extinct.”

As far as the history of Buddhism can be traced
it presents no actual point of contact with either
Syria or Egypt or Europe. Even after it became
a missionary religion its progress was never westwards,
and at no period did it reach further in this
direction than the region now known as Afghanistan.
The civilisation of the West offered no opportunity
for its enthusiasm, and none of the great Western
cities appear in its records. In the few scattered
extracts which survive of the writings of those
Greeks who visited India during or subsequent to
the period of Alexander’s invasion, there is no
indication of a knowledge of Buddhism, nor any
allusion to Buddha by name. We have to come
down to the times of Clement of Alexandria[#] and
// File: 043.png
.pn +1
of Bardesanes the Syrian before we have any
tangible evidence of the slightest acquaintance on
the part of the West with Buddhism. The first
writer mentions Buddha by name, the second distinguishes
his monks from the Brahmans, and gives
some details as to their customs, but it is impossible
from their statements to conjecture how much
they knew of the faith to which they alluded, and
most absurd to infer from them that they were
affected with the slightest admiration for it.[#]

If Christianity be the offspring of Buddhism, or
even if Buddhism exercised any direct influence
upon its earliest development, some indications of
that influence should be traceable in the Jewish
and Greek literature of that period. Yet in spite
of the most searching examination none have as yet
been found, and it is not at all likely that they ever
will be found.[#] Our religion was well advanced in
// File: 044.png
.pn +1
its course before we find in the works of its
defenders any sign of acquaintance with the
Buddhist legend, or any expression of suspicion, as
on the part of Cyril and Ephraim of Jerusalem in
the fourth century, that the taint of some of the
heresies which had infected the Church might be
traced to its contagion. Then, unfortunately for
the ingeniously constructed theory that the
doctrines were secretly transmitted by the channel
already indicated till they reached <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul through
Stephen the Therapeut, the only passage on which
the existence of Therapeuts in Apostolic times could
be founded has been recently proved to be a
spurious interpolation in the writings of Philo of a
treatise forged several centuries after his death.[#]
Research can find no trace of Therapeuts in Alexandria
nor anywhere else till Monachism had become
the fashion in the Christian Church. Bishop
Lightfoot has convincingly proved that the theory
// File: 045.png
.pn +1
of the transmission of Christian doctrine from the
Buddhists of India through the Babylonian Jews
to the Essenes has not the slightest trace of evidence
to support it, but that, on the contrary, the
weight of evidence and probability is all against it.[#]
Again, any one who compares the Gospel account
of the life of the Baptist with the description given
in Josephus[#] of the manners and tenets of the
Essenes will find that just as the Essenes owed
nothing to Buddha, so Christ, and even John
Baptist, owed nothing to them. Though similar in
a few external points, the Baptist’s preaching and
manner of living were essentially antagonistic to
those of the little Jewish sect which had severed
itself not only from Jewish society but from Jewish
hopes. The teaching of Christ, again, whose manner
of life, notoriously in contrast to that of His
herald, was throughout a powerful though silent
contradiction to every doctrine which the Essenes
held, and it would be extravagant to assert that
He owed to it even an illustration of His own.[#] It
may be safely asserted that the theory of the
derivation of Christianity from Buddhism breaks
down at every point at which it is tested. We may
dismiss it in the words of Professor Kuenen, that the
// File: 046.png
.pn +1
“so-called connection between Essenism and Christianity
cannot bear serious inquiry for a moment,”
and in those of the learned Bishop,[#] “that though
the Essenes may have had some connection with
Persia, their system was antagonistic to that of
Buddhism in everything save the spirit of despair
which called both into existence.”

The whole supposition of Burnouf and De Bunsen,
and writers of the school to which they belong, is
based upon a most exaggerated and indeed fictitious
estimate of the Indian contribution to the
sum of human knowledge. It assumes that India
was the cradle of all wisdom, and that from that
favoured land of primeval light went forth from
time to time the apostles of religion and the
expounders of all philosophy. Yet history reveals
not the slightest trace of any such propaganda
westward before the coming of Christ, and though
centuries after we have slight notices of Indian
travellers to the West, we do not find a missionary
among them. We have historic evidence, however,
of the Western races reaching India certainly before
the coming of Christ, and probably long before
the birth of the founder of Buddhism, and we can
hardly suppose that races with enterprise and
intelligence sufficient to discover and conquer the
Hindus would appear only before them as beggars
// File: 047.png
.pn +1
to receive their alms. We forget that the wave of
Aryan humanity that poured downward into India
really deflected from the path of progress, and that
under climatic and other unfavourable conditions,
and through intermixture with inferior races, it
stagnated, while that which proceeded westward
improved the more the farther it advanced. We
have a tolerably clear idea of the civilisation of
Western Asia in the time of Solomon, whose navy
is supposed to have traded with India. It comprehended
capitals with magnificent buildings,
public works, and well-guarded highways; commerce
protected and encouraged; law administered;
religion observed, and learning cultivated. What
Indian civilisation meant at the same period we can
only conjecturally infer from the literature that is
extant, but we have clearer glimpses of it five
centuries later as the home of a mixed race,
geographically severed from the rest of the world,
living in village settlements, which only here and
there were large enough to be called towns, divided
into clans whose wealth consisted chiefly in pasture
and tillage lands, and flocks and herds.[#] A kingdom
in the sense in which Solomon would have used the
word did not exist. In respect of civilisation
Palestine was far ahead of India, and in respect of
// File: 048.png
.pn +1
religious development, its theology, though greatly
tainted with heathen superstitions, was sufficiently
pure and strong to save the Hebrew from requiring
instruction at the wattle huts of a race that confounded
God with His works. If Ophir be the name
of an Indian port, then Solomon’s navy brought back
from it gold, and ivory, and curious things indicated
by Sanskrit words for which the Hebrew chronicler
could find no equivalent. The sailors may have
picked up a few fables and riddles and proverbs,
but surely in regard to religion and philosophy, the
superior and stronger race would be more likely to
impart of their abundance to the lower and weaker
than to enrich themselves out of their poverty.

When we come to the Greek invasion we move
on more solid ground, and we can handle events
which have left permanent and very traceable
effects; but in the historic notices that remain,
we have no trace of Hindu influence upon Greek
civilisation. Instead of Greek religion and philosophy
being enriched by the Indian, the opposite
is more likely to have been the case. The invasion
of Alexander must have originated a host of new
thoughts in India, which may yet be traced in the
works of the prolific Buddhist scholars, who are
said to have lived in the Punjab during the period
of the Greek domination.[#] It is alleged with fair
// File: 049.png
.pn +1
show of reason to have given rise to some new
products, such as the art of writing, a currency in
coin, stone sculpture, none of which have as yet
been traced in India in any previous period.[#] The
appearance in India of the drama, the epic, of new
views of mathematics, astronomy, physics, are all
said to be subsequent to and consequences of the
Greek invasion. And this is what we might
expect, for all through the historical ages the
Hindu, instead of enriching Western nations, has
been a needy borrower from them. He has always
been more ready to absorb than impart, ever
greedy of foreign ideas, and ever ready to be
modified by external culture. The beneficent influence
of India is indeed traceable in China, whose
science it undoubtedly improved, and whose literature
it has greatly enriched; but with the exception
of the cipher so useful in our arithmetical
notation, it is questionable whether India has
contributed to the stock of Western wisdom one
single religious or philosophic or scientific truth.[#]

The wealthy are more likely to lend to than
to borrow from the poor; the wise more likely to
teach, though they do sometimes learn from the
less instructed. The strong may be infected by
// File: 050.png
.pn +1
the diseases of the feeble, but generally the contagion
of health radiates from the more robust
to the weaker vitalities. The “power” which the
touch of the East has “made to go forth from us”[#]
no doubt flows back in quickened life upon ourselves.
As these Oriental studies proceed, the
tables will perhaps be turned upon the school
that would derive all our philosophy and religion
from old Indian sources. We have seen that
two successive waves of Western life flowed eastwards
upon the shores of India. Another rich
stream of Semitic thought in pre-Buddhistic
times, represented by such religious teachers as
the second Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
reached the Tigris, and we may ask, Was the
Indus unknown to them? We do not assert that
they knew it, but surely it was just as easy
for a Jew to reach India as for Burnouf or de
Bunsen’s Buddhists to reach Babylon. It was just
as probable that a Jewish pedlar found his way
eastward through Parthia to India, with other
and more precious goods in his possession than
the Babylonian wares in his pack, as it was that
Renan’s wandering Buddhist monk found his
way to the Jordan. Later on there is a tradition—and
though it is only a tradition, what a find to
Messieurs Renan, Burnouf, and de Bunsen would
// File: 051.png
.pn +1
one similar Buddhist tradition be!—that one of the
original twelve apostles of Jesus evangelised a portion
of the western shores of India. So, founding
on all these data, only assuming—as we are entitled
to assume—that the East was well connected with
the West by the sea routes from Arabia and by
the land route through Persia, and remembering
that there is nothing so volatile and permeating as
thought, is the speculation so very extravagant
that old Indian philosophy and religion, though
following their own course, may have been modified
and purified by contact with the thoughts of
the West? What if the conjecture be hazarded
that from the West a thousand years <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> was
communicated the theistic impulse which produced
what is best in the Upanishads—the truth, viz., of
the unity which is behind and above all variety,
the One Absolute into which all thought and all
being is resolved?[#] What if it be some day
asserted that the teaching of the Hebrew prophets
before the Diaspora, as to the worthlessness of
sacrifice to put away sin and to promote communion
with God, may have insinuated itself into
// File: 052.png
.pn +1
the reveries of Indian ascetics in their forest
retreats, and made the teaching of reformers like
Buddha possible? And what if to <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Thomas
may be indirectly traced that influence which
made later Buddhism differ so materially from
the primitive, and approach in the similarities
of its legends so close to the Gospel narratives?
Dr. Kellogg already proclaims that “it may be
affirmed with certainty that no man can show that
the legend of Buddha, in a form containing any
coincidence which could be held to argue a borrowing
from it by Christians, was in existence before
the Christian era”; “that all the various versions
of the legend in any language date from a time
later than the Christian era”; “that the chief
Sanskrit authority for it cannot be proved in the
judgment of the most competent critics to have
existed in its present form nearly as far back as
the Christian era”; and though he does not allege
any actual transference from the Gospel to the
Buddha legend, he avers with justifiable confidence
that the opportunity for “such a transference
before the Sanskrit version assumed its present
form is an indubitable fact.”[#]

These suggestions, though just as worthy of
consideration and support as the theory that Christianity
is either an offshoot of Vedic Brahminism
// File: 053.png
.pn +1
or a direct product of Buddhist speculation, need
not be discussed at present. We may content ourselves
with the conclusions formed by our most
reliable authorities, that Buddhism and Christianity
in their origin and earliest development were perfectly
independent of each other. The births of
their founders were separated by centuries, and the
spheres of their ministry by almost the whole extent
of Asia. While thus sundered by the conditions
of both time and space, they were still more so by
their intellectual peculiarities and antecedents. The
Indian differed very widely from the Jew in his
way of looking at and reasoning about things. He
would be very differently impressed by the same or
similar phenomena, and he would communicate his
impressions by a very different method. Geographically
India was shut up from the rest of the world,
and the Aryans who went down into it were left
in a manner hardly paralleled by other peoples to
develop their own life out of itself, and according
to its own laws. In far less favourable circumstances,
and far removed from the educational
stimulus of contact with alien or cognate nations,
they came to stand alone as a people scarcely intelligible
by others. The Jews, on the other hand,
were early brought into the stream of human movement.
Mingled with many peoples, sent from land
to land, they became in spite of their passionate love
// File: 054.png
.pn +1
for their own country the cosmopolitans of the
world. Consequently when the two races came in
contact, the circles of thought and feeling in which
they moved could hardly be said to touch. Solomon’s
sailors, as regards religious or philosophical
treasures, could neither give nor take away. They
had almost nothing in common with the strange
people whom they met. The Sanskrit words which
they took home to designate the peculiar products
obtained in Ophir indicated how helpless they
would have been to understand the metaphysics of
India even had they inquired about them. The
natives of Western India a thousand years before
Christ were as helpless to understand the Jew.
You have only to compare a prophecy of Israel of
the eighth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> with the earliest of the
Upanishads to find how widely separated at that
date was the Semite from the Aryan of India.
Even when their own kinsmen visited them, when
the descendants of sires who had occupied the same
cradle and had heard the same stories told over
them in the one primeval home, met for deadly strife
in the wars of Alexander on the plains of the Punjab,
they were aliens in almost everything. Later
on, when Christian missionaries, anxious to teach
them better ways, succeeded in influencing their
religious conceptions, the Hindus always modified
what of our faith they adopted. The question how
// File: 055.png
.pn +1
far the early proclamation of the Gospel in India influenced
the development of Hinduism is by the best
of judges considered not yet settled,[#] but even those
who affirm the reality of this influence admit that
Hinduism did not so much incorporate the doctrines
as assimilate the ideas of Christianity. The ultimate
decision of this question, however, does not in any
way affect the one before us. We may be almost
certain that the great mass of Indian speculation on
man and his relations to the infinite, for many centuries
before our era, was developed originally from
the resources of the Indian mind quite apart from
foreign influences. The same assertion will hold
good as to the rise of Greek philosophy and of the
Christian religion. Not one of the three can
be understood without careful reference to their
particular antecedents, but they can never be
accounted for by any theory of derivation of the
one from the other.

It is the fact of this complete independence of
each other in origin, coupled with their analogous
development, and the many supposed agreements
in their systems, which makes the study of Buddhism
so interesting. What does this signify? What
important law in providence does it indicate or
// File: 056.png
.pn +1
illustrate? Our best guides content themselves
with calling attention to the analogies, and they
are chary as yet of drawing inferences from them.
The wisdom of such caution is apparent when we
find that the supposed coincidences require to be
examined and discussed. Most of them have been
found to be superficial and accidental, and, when
probed, very essential and fundamental contrasts are
discovered beneath them. Now to judge correctly
concerning these religions we must try not their
analogies but their contradictions. The analogies
may be only seeming, and the contrasts may be very
real and profound. On every point that is truly
characteristic the two religions may be separated
as widely as the zenith is from the nadir. All
religions are parallel in their tendencies, and every
approach to truth must inevitably produce resemblances
in religious belief. The resemblances
may indicate the aspirations of a moral and religious
nature common to all men; and in what is peculiar to
Christianity, what it possesses in contrast, may be
found the divine answer to these aspirations. The
two religions may proceed in parallel lines, but on
very different planes, and from quite opposite directions.
Thus the morality of Buddhism so deservedly
admired is in no sense peculiar to Buddhism, for
much of it was taught in India before Buddha
appeared, and in China before his law was proclaimed
// File: 057.png
.pn +1
in it. It is the natural outgrowth of the
moral sense of mankind where circumstances are
favourable to its development. But high as the
law of Buddha is, it only “approaches, swings
toward,” as Oldenberg tells us, but never reaches or
touches the law of Christ.[#] There is in the Christian
Gospel something which the Buddhist system plainly
lacks, and which Buddhism out of any evolution
of its own inherent energy could never produce.
Christianity seems to be superior to it, not in the
sense that the infant is superior to the embryo, but
as man is superior to the animal, which yet may be
said of very necessity to precede him. The lower
organism in creation, though not accounting for the
higher, may reach out after and indicate the necessity
for it, and the higher by fulfilling the lower
will interpret it. Just as the mineral, vegetable,
and animal world all point to some higher creative
fact, which in man is to sum up and perfect them,
so the many lower religions of the human race all
point to a higher, which is to annul and fulfil them.
No theory of evolution has yet accounted for man.
He appears in the universe as a new creature while
part of a very old system of creation, and related to
all its inferior forms. So Christianity, in one sense
as old as human history, and related to every form
// File: 058.png
.pn +1
of religion by which man has tried to satisfy his
spiritual cravings, may not be elaborated out of any
of them as their products, but confronts us as a
new fact of history to satisfy and complete them.

This conclusion is one which many students of the
science of religion are not prepared to accept. To
them Christianity is simply one of the natural
religions, and at best their highest but necessary
outgrowth. Just as they allege that the origin of
man is to be found in the lowest type of the savage,
so they seek for the genesis of his religious consciousness
in his lowest animal wants and fears,
and they profess to trace the development of
that consciousness from its first almost shapeless
forms, through the monstrosities of Fetichism, then
of Animism, Polytheism, Monotheism, till it finds its
ultimate culmination in Christ. Now Christianity
is indeed a natural religion; were it otherwise, it
would cease to be divine. It supplies all man’s
natural wants, and it satisfies and educates all
man’s natural aspirations. While, however, there
is nothing <i>un</i>natural in it, we aver that there is
something supranatural in its ideal, fitting it to answer
the necessities of a being who has in him all that
nature has, and a great deal more. Man is a being
akin on one side of his nature to both the ape and
the worm, but he is also what they are not. “The
pressure of the infinite on his senses” awakens
// File: 059.png
.pn +1
feelings, and originates a train of thought in which
he soon becomes conscious of relations to a higher
than nature his inferior, and to other than men his
equals. There is that in him which once it is aroused
refuses to believe that what he sees or handles or
tastes is all, and that there can be no higher being
than himself. If his own most perfect machine does
not express all his intelligence, he cannot believe
that all possible intelligence is comprehended and expressed
in the world of nature. Behind and beyond
all these physical arrangements of the world, which
seem fully to meet the lower wants of his being, he
feels that there must be higher arrangements corresponding
to his peculiar wants. Just because he
finds every appetite has its corresponding object,
and every organ implies an element for which it is
fitted,—so that if there be an eye there must be
light, and if lungs there must be air,—so this
feeling or instinct which impels him to seek the
unknown Power, “for whose sake he feels constrained
to do what he does not like to do, or to
abstain from what he would like to do,”[#] is the
pledge not only that He exists, but that he has
already and always been found by Him, as One who
understands perfectly his thoughts and wants, and
is freely communicating with him.

It is not in the anthropoid ape that we may
// File: 060.png
.pn +1
hope to find the origin of man, and it is not in the
terror of the savage cowering before the majesty
and mystery of nature that we are likely to find
the genesis of his religion. Even if anthropology
succeeded in proving that savagery was the first
type in which humanity was expressed, and that
its bestial rites inspired by terror was the first form
of human religion, it would not then have accounted
for their origin. The gulf between the religious
savage and the non-religious speechless ape would
remain as vast as ever. The first manifested
beginning of a work may be rude enough, “as
is the rough block which receives the first stroke
of the sculptor who has designed to produce a
statue; but the real beginning,” as we have been
eloquently reminded, “is in the plan of the artist,
and to perceive his ideal we have to wait for the
final result.”[#] It is in the end therefore that
we may be said to find and understand the author.
So the origin of man, and the genesis of his religion,
is more likely to be indicated by that divine fiat
which one of the ancient authors of Genesis has
dared to formulate, “Let us make man in our
image, and after our likeness.” According to that
conception, man is a creature, neither equal with,
nor perfect as the Being who conceived him, but
having affinity with his Creator, and from the
// File: 061.png
.pn +1
very first manifesting capacity and potentiality of
indefinite progress to be gained by the divine education
to which he is everlastingly subjected.

It is not in the plan of our lecture to discuss
these momentous questions, or to enter the lists
against the representatives of the sciences of
Anthropology or Religion. Anthropology is not
sufficiently advanced to scatter the mystery that
surrounds the cradle of the human race: and it
would be rash for the apostles of the other science
to maintain that they have succeeded in tracing
the lines of that process, out of which Christianity
or even Buddhism is alleged to have evolved from
the shapeless superstitions of the primitive savage,
before they confront us as facts in the history of
human thought. Observation and experience alike
seem to counsel greater caution in making our
deductions and drawing our inferences. Indeed
there seems to be almost as much evidence in
favour of the theory of degradation as there is in
favour of that of evolution. There is no inherent
tendency in human society to pass ever on and ever
up to something better and nobler. No race, by its
own inherent strength, seems to have raised itself
from barbarism into anything that can be called
true civilisation; but we have abundant proof in
the Aztecs of former generations, and the negroes
of the Black Republic in the present day, that
// File: 062.png
.pn +1
races can terribly decline. A state of civilisation is
very difficult to keep, as well as difficult to gain.[#]
And so far as observation goes, savage life and
religion appear to be “not the dawning of a
society about to rise, but the fading remains of
one sinking in storms, overthrown and shattered
by overwhelming catastrophes.” Humboldt and
Niebuhr, quoted by Whately in his lecture on
the Origin of Civilisation, both protest as strongly
as he did himself against those who profess to find
in the wreck of the civilised and religious man his
original representative,[#] and our best authority in
the science of religion assures us that Fetichism,
far from being the initial of an upward course,
marks the very last stage in the downward course
of religion.[#] It should content us, in the present
state of our knowledge, to find that humanity is
capable both of development and degradation.
Savagery and civilisation are not separated from
each other by impassable barriers: savagery is at
least a possibility to a civilised race;[#] civilisation is
not beyond the reach of the savage. On the surface
of the very highest civilisation many things appear
// File: 063.png
.pn +1
which are also to be seen in the lowest: and just as
in the lowest organisms certain rudimentary traces
are found of members which are perfected in organisms
above them, so the very lowest savagery seems
to exhibit an upward tendency. In the same way
the very purest religions have clinging to them
traces of the lowest superstitions. Not in Buddhism
only, but even in Christianity, we find forms
of Animism and Fetichism; but the question
whether both religions first manifested themselves
in these lower forms, with which they are still
partly incrusted, must not be held to be settled
in the affirmative because these traces of them
exist. Instead of being survivals which they
have not yet sloughed off or outgrown, they may
be parasitical growths indicating degradation and
disease.

Though the researches hitherto prosecuted have
not resulted in the discovery of a law regulating
the development of religion,[#] they all point to a
common religious faculty peculiar to man, and
indicate that the religious instinct is co-extensive
with the human race. Nothing, it is true, in the
nature of things forbids the discovery of tribes
absolutely without religion; but as matter of fact,
no such have been found. And as Tylor remarks,
“those who assert the contrary disprove their
// File: 064.png
.pn +1
theories by the facts which they allege in
support of them.”[#] Now, if we find in all sections
of humanity, even far apart from each other, the
same groping after an Author and Governor of our
being, and the same forecasting of our destiny,
though in most contradictory, and, alas! often fearfully
perverted ways, we may safely infer as a
fundamental truth that humanity, though broken
up into many fragments, is really an organic unity,
and that the Christian dogma simply expresses a
scientific fact, “that God hath made of one all
nations on the face of the earth.”

If the organic unity of humanity be granted,
the organic unity of language and of religion too
would seem to be deducible from it as simple
corollaries. But we must be careful in defining
wherein this organic unity consists. We may
assume that in regard to language it does not
consist in a perfect primitive speech, broken up at
later times into numberless forms to be used richly
and copiously by some civilised, but scantily by
barbarous peoples.[#] In regard to religion it does
not mean a complete compendium of truth supernaturally
given to the fathers of the human race,
from which, while all men have erred more or less,
some have fearfully fallen away. Such a view,
// File: 065.png
.pn +1
though held generally once, would be condemned
by Christian theologians now as irreligious in principle,
for it would seek for the roots of religion
not in the nature of man, but in some external
enactment, and would make religion, which is
essentially spontaneous, to be something mechanical
or compulsory in action.[#] The unity of language
does not consist in a common vocabulary,
but in a common faculty which all men have of
expressing their feelings and their thoughts; and
the unity of religion does not consist in a number
of fundamental beliefs which all men have in
common; but in the universal instinct to believe
in, and reverence and obey, a power higher and
better than ourselves. The faculty, the instinct
in each case is one; yet it has been developed,
if we are to use that word, in very different
degrees. In some tribes the faculty of reckoning
is so weak, that they have numerals only to five,
and their vocabulary is so poor as to express only
objects around them or their own sensuous wants.
In the same way in some peoples the religious
faculty is so stunted as almost to be amorphous.
It exists as it were in embryo; in other peoples
it perplexes us by the monstrosities in which it is
expressed, but the monstrosity, as we are reminded,[#]
// File: 066.png
.pn +1
may mark a further growth which also points onward
to something more complete, and may be in
itself a type of things not seen as yet. Observation
therefore seems to detect a religious tendency
in process of evolution, and if so, the only question
is as to whether that tendency develops by its own
inherent power, or by a process of education intelligently
conducted; in other words, whether man
grows into his religion, or whether he is instructed
in it by the revelation of a mind higher than his own.

The New Testament writers, while proclaiming
the organic unity of humanity, proclaim as clearly
that the organic development of religion proceeds
under Divine control. The phrase “organic development
of religion” may only be a modern way
of designating that long continuous process by
which God reveals His mind and will for the
education of the human race, which culminated
when He “who at sundry times and in divers manners,”
in various ways and in different measures,
“spake unto the fathers by the prophets,” spoke unto
us by His Son. Holy Scripture from first to last
is consistent in its teaching as to this. It tells of
a Divine Spirit not operative only in one race or in
one part of the world during a few centuries of its
history, but striving with human souls always and
everywhere. It tells us that God never left the
world without a witness of Himself; it reminds us
// File: 067.png
.pn +1
of prophets—certainly not all of the one nation—who,
trained to grasp and to proclaim moral and
spiritual truths, were sent to lead among their fellow-men
lives so pure and unselfish as profoundly to
affect the moral progress of the whole human race.
In a word, it reveals Deity not as apart from man
and uninterested in him, but as an everlasting
agent in human history,—working out an eternal
purpose hid as a mystery from all ages, but now
manifested in the last times to us; the purpose of
gathering together not only the scattered and alienated
nations, but “all things which are in heaven
and which are on earth in One,” even in Christ.

The proclamation of this universality of the
Divine purpose is one of the chief distinctive characteristics
of Christianity. Its canonical Scriptures
from beginning to end contradict the Jewish heresy,
that God, though He has made of one all nations,
has only taken one or two under His protection,
and has no care for the rest. They tell us that God
cares for the sparrow that flits over the heads of the
most degraded of the human race, and for the worm
that crawls under their feet; and by implication they
warn us that to assert that He who has provided for
the wants of the reptile and the bird has made no
provision for the spiritual wants of those whom He
is said to have made in His image, is blasphemy
more heinous than ever heathen or atheist has
// File: 068.png
.pn +1
uttered. “The same Lord over all is rich in mercy
unto all,” and “He is not far from any one” of them.
He has left none “without a witness.” Though He
has given some more than others, He has left no
one without something. The religious instinct in
some He has specially trained and illuminated, not
because He regards them as favourites—for He is
no respecter of persons—but because through them
He would work out His beneficent plan for all. A
few are indeed chosen, but that many may be
called, and when one individual or one people is
selected and peculiarised, it is that through them
all nations may be blessed.

<abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul, quoting to the Athenians from one of
their own poets, reminded them that “we are all His
offspring,” and as such we are all divinely cared for.
It is true that He does not deal with all after the
same fashion, and His dealings will always be perplexing
if we apply to them only the standard of
man and the measures of time; but if we remember
that “He is God, and not man,” that “His years
are throughout all generations,” and that we “can
see only a portion of His ways,” we may trust that
by-and-by He will show that He has wasted neither
His own patience nor His creatures’ strength. For
though He may not be dealing with us after the
same fashion, He is dealing with all toward the
same blessed end, the end which He has revealed in
// File: 069.png
.pn +1
Christ, through whom, and by whom, and in whom,
all men and things are to be reconciled.

We can only judge of His purpose by what of
it has been disclosed. Humanity, essentially and
fundamentally one, exhibits most manifold variety.
While the unity of the race secures its sympathy
with all its members, in its variety there is secured
its indefinite expansion and progress. No family
could always keep together in one spot: the
differences of disposition and character among its
members demand their separation as the condition
of harmony. The family of man is a scattered
one, not merely to prevent jealousy and
hostility between its members, but to promote
their education. The training of the race seems to
proceed on principles somewhat analogous to those
which we ourselves have adopted in the education
of our children. We never could hope to educate a
large number of children of various ages and mental
capacities, by keeping them all in one class; so we
break them up, and isolate, and grade them, and
train some of them specially for the sake of all,
that they may be their leaders and teachers.
Even so, we find nations widely separated by
natural barriers, that the characteristic energies of
each may be developed, till the time comes when
one or other of them is needed for the elevation or
reformation of the rest. That the division of nations
// File: 070.png
.pn +1
and the separate training of nations entered deeply
into the counsels of Providence, may be learned by
a glance at the configuration of the world, and
the influences which are exercised by soil and
climate and circumstance upon any single nation.
The blessed effect of this division may be seen by
the slightest survey of history in the corrective,
educative, redemptive influence which they have
exercised upon each other.[#] And yet a survey of
the history of the last eighteen centuries will just
as plainly indicate a Divine purpose of drawing the
nations toward unity. Babel may mark the Divine
purpose of the primeval economy, and Pentecost
may be the sign of the present. The wonder in the
plain of Shinar was, that through diversity of speech
men were ceasing to understand each other. The
wonder in Jerusalem was, that men of the most
widely separate nationalities heard, each in their
own tongue, Christian evangelists proclaim the marvellous
works of God. Religion, which up till the
coming of Christ, had proved a repellent and divisive
force, began at that time to prove an attractive,
harmonising, and transforming power. A new
spring-tide dawned upon man’s religious conceptions,
// File: 071.png
.pn +1
and truths after which all had been groping,
but which none had attained to, emerged grandly
into prominence. The Fatherhood of the One living
and eternal God, the Divine Son, in whom all men
are brethren, and the Holy Spirit, dealing with
every man, working upon him and in him to conform
him to the likeness of the highest and best,
began to be revealed; and the more that revelation
is accepted the more the reconciliation of the
race advances.

It is not our interest, therefore, to sever Christianity
from all connection with the manifold forms
in which the religious instinct and faculty of man
has found expression. If it could be proved that
our religion stands in no relation to anything which
men in other religions thought or believed, it would
be discovered defective, and we would have to abandon
the claim that it is the universal religion of
humanity. To assert that all previous religious
ideas must be expunged as erroneous or false, so that
an entirely new message might be written, is to contradict
the evangelical doctrine as to the nature of
Christ and the purpose of His mission to the world.
The New Testament writers assert that Christ is
the source of all the truth that was ever uttered,
the inspirer of all the goodness that was ever seen,
and that He is the stimulator and educator of man’s
every reaching out after God. The noblest thinkers,
it is true, failed to comprehend the truth, and their
// File: 072.png
.pn +1
highest religion failed to satisfy them; but we must
not think of them as divinely permitted to fail to
teach us the glory of Christ as the ultimate revelation
of God. Here, as in all similar cases, failure
was rather a partial success; for by the effort to
reach it the mind was trained to receive and grasp
the reality when it was disclosed. Some one has said
that all pre-Christian religions are just Christ partially—very
very partially—realised. Certainly they
all point to Him, and but for Him they would have
been abortive. They all suggest Him, in respect
that they each claim something to satisfy and unite
them. Christianity thus proves itself Divine, not
in being absolutely different from, nor even in being
vastly superior to, but in the fact that it harmonises
and completes them. Instead, therefore, of being
scared by the resemblances to Christianity which we
meet in other religions, we should be thankful for
their discovery. The early Apologists were not
frightened when Celsus,[#] in the second century,
submitted his alleged parallels to Christian doctrine
and ethics, in order to prove that what Christians
called revelation had already been attained
by the unassisted efforts of heathen minds. Anticipating
the language of the eighteenth century
// File: 073.png
.pn +1
Deists, he proclaimed that “Christianity was as old
as creation.” His parallels were often found to be
defective, and many of them had only to be looked
at to show the immense superiority of the Christian
quotations. Augustine turned them against himself,
when he showed that to claim entire originality
for Christianity, to deny the existence of any light
before Christ came, and the possibility of any silent
universal revelation through reason and conscience,
was to contradict His Messiahship. To ignore
what God had done before, would have cut Him off
from God and man. We would expect the Son
of Man to confirm the deepest convictions of the
human race. We would expect the Son of God
to claim and utilise all the truth God’s Spirit had
spoken in ages past. “Siquis vera loquitur, prior
est quam ipse veritas? O Homo, attende Christum,
non quando ad te venerit, sed quando te fecerit.”[#]

The more of Christian doctrine and ethics we
find in other religions, the more Divine will Christianity
appear. There is not a truth which has
verified and sustained any other religion which is
not found in Christianity, in fuller amount and in
clearer form. Christianity differs from all other
religions, not because it is a purer system of moral
// File: 074.png
.pn +1
truth, but because it is the manifestation of a
Divine life, and because in that life it reveals the
<i>power</i> which alone can reconcile the knowing with
the doing of duty. It professes only to have one
original, one distinctive element; but how much is
involved in that profession? for this original is Christ
Himself, and all its doctrines and precepts are vital
only because of their connection with Christ. Whole
libraries of moral and doctrinal anthologies would
not make up for the obliteration of His likeness
from the religious consciousness of the world: “It
would be like consoling ourselves for the loss of
the sun by the kindling of ten thousand artificial
lamps.”[#] He confronts the ages, as the One to
whom all religions point, of whom all true prophets
of the human race have unconsciously testified.
They, like the Founder of this great religion, whose
alleged resemblances will be found, as we examine
them, to be rather point-blank contradictions and
contrasts to the Christian doctrines and story, may
have indeed been burning and shining lights, and
men were willing for a season to rejoice in their
light. They were “not that Light,” but as voices
crying in the night for its arising they came to
“bear witness of it”: the Light not of Asia only,
nor yet only of Europe, but the “Light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

.fn #
<lang=de><i>Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung</i></lang>, <abbr=preface>Pref.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Max Müller, Gifford Lectures for 1888, on <i>Natural
Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 11.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881, “On the Origin and
Growth of Religion as illustrated by some points in the History of Indian
Buddhism,” <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 10.
.fn-
.fn #
Max Müller, <i>Introduction to the Science of Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 38.
.fn-
.fn #
John <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 39.
.fn-
.fn #
Baring Gould, <i>Origin and Development of Religious Belief</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 121.
.fn-
.fn #
Westcott, <i>Victory of the Cross</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 3, 6.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids estimates the number at five hundred millions
(<i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 6). The previous general estimate was about
four hundred millions; but Dr. <abbr rend=spell>A. J.</abbr> Happer, missionary at Canton for
forty-five years, reduces this number to seventy-three millions. Sir
Monier Williams, in his recent book on Buddhism, quoting Professor
Legge’s introduction to <i>Travels of Fa-Hian</i>, calculates the number at one
hundred millions, and claims for Christianity, with its four hundred and
thirty millions of adherents, the numerical preponderance over all others.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 4, 7; Sir Monier Williams,
<i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 171.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Caird, <i>Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion</i>, Croall Lectures,
1878-9, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 82 <i>seq.</i>; <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881,
<i>On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 7.
.fn-
.fn #
To draw proper inferences from statistics of the spread and supremacy
of a religion, we must first investigate the circumstances in which
it was propagated, and the intellectual and moral conditions of the
peoples whom it has converted. If it has gained only the belief of <i>one</i>
section of the human race, it is evidently not entitled to rank with
another which proves itself influential among <i>all</i> sections. A religion
dominant only over <i>inferior</i> races is manifestly of less value than another
which, while satisfying the wants of the lowest and most degraded
peoples, is yet fulfilling the spiritual aspirations of the <i>highest</i>. The
first, if in any way related to the second, can only be so as preparatory
and prophetic of the mission which the second alone can accomplish.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> Introd.
.fn-
.fn #
Köppen, <lang=de><i>Die Religion des Buddha</i></lang>, <abbr rend=spell>s.</abbr> 231; <abbr rend=spell>J.</abbr> Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire,
<i>Le Bouddha</i>, etc., <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 78, 144, 181; Spence Hardy, <i>Manual of
Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 358.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xv,</abbr> Introd.
.fn-
.fn #
Alabaster, <i>Modern Buddhist; in the Wheel of the Law</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 73;
Trübner and <abbr=company>Co.</abbr>, 1871.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=fifth>5th</abbr> April 1885. In the Madras <i>Times</i> for October 29, 1886, a
meeting of the Society for the Propagation of True Religion is advertised,
for reading and exposition of the Bhagavad-Gita.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>The Light of Asia</i>; <i>The Occult World</i>; <i>Esoteric Buddhism</i>; <i>Theosophy
of Archaic Religions</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Parerga</i>, <abbr=third>3d</abbr> <abbr=edition>ed.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 59.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Westminster Review</i>, New Series, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xlviii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 469.
.fn-
.fn #
Gerald Massey, <i>Light</i>, <abbr=sixteenth>16th</abbr> June 1883.
.fn-
.fn #
Among these are reckoned Adam, Fohi, Laotze, Jesus, Mohammed,
and Jenghiz Khān.—Kinnealy, <i>Commentary on the Apocalypse</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 685.
.fn-
.fn #
Pember, <i>Earth’s Earlier Ages</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 326.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>H. H.</abbr> Wilson, <i>Essays</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 376; Huc and Gabet, <i>Travel
in Tartary and Thibet</i>; translated by Mrs. <abbr=page>p.</abbr> Sinnett and <abbr rend=spell>W.</abbr> Hazlitt.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhist Birth Stories</i>, translated by <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i</abbr>
Introd. <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xli.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Foucher de Careil, <lang=fr><i>Hegel et Schopenhauer</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 306.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr><i>Vie de Jésus</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 98, <abbr=fourth>4th</abbr> <abbr=edition>ed.</abbr>; Paris, 1863.
.fn-
.fn #
The Buddhists, as Professor Kuenen remarks, do not believe in
angels, and they have no <i>Messiah</i>. Tathagata, which Mr. de Bunsen
translates “The Coming One,” <abbr rend=spell><i>i.e.</i></abbr> Messiah, means “One <i>who has gone</i>”
or “has arrived at” (Nirvana), like his predecessors. So Oldenberg,
Rhys Davids, Bigandet, Edkins, Rajendralal Mitra: see too Dr. Kellogg,
<i>Light of Asia and the Light of the World</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 106, 107.
.fn-
.fn #
See for these and other curious instances his article on “The Obligations
of the New Testament to Buddhism,” <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, <abbr=December>Dec.</abbr> 1880.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Natural and Universal Religions</i>, Hibbert Lectures, 1882.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Strom.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 15; Porphyry, <i>de Abstin.</i> <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 17.
.fn-
.fn #
Schwanbeck, <i>Megasthenes Indica</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 20; Lassen, <lang=de><i>Ind. Alterthumskunde</i></lang>,
209; <abbr rend=spell>H. H.</abbr> Wilson, <i>Essays</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 314 <i>seq.</i>; Reinaud, <lang=fr><i>Relations
Politiques et Commerciales de l’Empire Romain avec l’Asie Central</i></lang>, Paris,
1863; Priaulx, <i>Travels of Apollonius and the Indian Embassies to
Rome</i>, Paris, 1873.
.fn-
.fn #
The question of the disciples in John <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> 2, concerning the man who
was born blind, “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born
blind?” is alleged by Professor Seydel (<lang=de><i>Das Evangelium von Jesu in
seinen Verhältnissen zu Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre</i></lang>) to indicate an
idea introduced into the Gospel from a foreign source, as the doctrine of
the pre-existence of souls was then unknown among the Jews. Meyer
in his critical and exegetical Handbook to <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John’s Gospel has shown
that no one required to go outside the sphere of Jewish thought for an
explanation of this part of the disciples’ question. In addition to his
quotations from the Rabbinical books illustrating this Jewish belief,
Kuenen in his brief criticism of Seydel adduces another from the
Wisdom of Solomon <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 20, as also rendering the Buddhist derivation
of this “thought quite superfluous” (Hibbert Lectures, 1882, Appendix).
Many instances of agreement in thought and phraseology with the
Gospels in passages in Buddhist works are adduced by Dr. Kellogg,
<i>Light of Asia, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 137 <i>seq.</i>, and are satisfactorily accounted for by the
similarity of circumstances under which Buddha and the Saviour taught
and the condition of men which they both perceived and described.
.fn-
.fn #
Lucius, <lang=de><i>Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der
Askese</i></lang>, Strassburg, 1880; also <lang=de><i>Der Essenismus in seinem Verhältniss
zum Judenthum</i></lang>, Strassburg, 1881.
.fn-
.fn #
Dissertation in Commentary on <i>Colossians</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 119, 157.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Jewish Wars</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 8. 2-13; <i>Antiq.</i> <abbr rend=arabic>xiii.</abbr> 5. 9; <abbr rend=arabic>xv.</abbr> 10. 4, 5; <abbr rend=arabic>xviii.</abbr>
1. 2-6.
.fn-
.fn #
Edersheim, <i>Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 325.
.fn-
.fn #
Hibbert Lectures, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 203.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <lang=de><i>Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde</i></lang>, translated
by <abbr rend=spell>W.</abbr> Hoey, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 6; Williams and Norgate.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Joseph Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 250, 343; Trübner, 1880.
.fn-
.fn #
Fergusson, <i>Tree and Serpent Worship</i>, Introduction, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 77.
.fn-
.fn #
This must be read in the light of Professor Max Müller’s <i>What
can India teach us?</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Luke <abbr rend=arabic>viii.</abbr> 46.
.fn-
.fn #
Even Kuenen and Wellhausen assume as established that
Monotheism shows itself with unmistakable distinctness in Hebrew
prophecies of the eighth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> (Hibbert Lectures, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 119;
<i>Theological Review</i>, 1874, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 329, 336; <i>Encyc. Brit.</i>, art. <sc>Israel</sc>). Professor
<abbr rend=spell>H.</abbr> Schultz maintains that Monotheism was established in Israel
from the time of Moses downward, among the leaders of thought at least.
(<i>Alttest. Theolog.</i>, <abbr=second>2d</abbr> ed., 1878, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 440, 457.)
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Light of Asia and Light of the World</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 40, 102, 161.
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, <i>Indische Studien</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 400; <abbr rend=spell>J.</abbr> Muir, <i>Sanskrit Texts</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxxiv</abbr>; Lorinser, <i>Bhagavadgitâ</i>, Appendix, translated by Muir in
<i>Ind. Antiq.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 283.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=de><i>Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde</i></lang>, translated by
<abbr=William>Wm.</abbr> Hoey, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 292.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 169.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Caird, <i>Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 343 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Sir <abbr rend=spell>A.</abbr> Mitchell, Rhind Lectures for 1876 and 1878, <i>The Past in
the Present</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 207, 214; Edinburgh, Douglas, 1880.
.fn-
.fn #
Whately, <i>Political Economy</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 68.
.fn-
.fn #
Max Müller, Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 54.
.fn-
.fn #
The savagery of a great city is in some aspects more awful than
that of Africa.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 10.
.fn-
.fn #
Tylor, <i>Primitive Culture</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 380.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, <i>Introduction to the Science of Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 41; <i>Chips from
a German Workshop</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 254.
.fn-
.fn #
Fairbairn, <i>Studies in Religion and Philosophy</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 13.
.fn-
.fn #
Baring Gould, <i>Origin and Development of Religious Belief</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 109.
.fn-
.fn #
“Nations,” says Professor Goldwin Smith, “redeem each other.
They preserve for each other principles, truths, and hopes, and aspirations
which, committed to the keeping of one, might become extinct for
ever. They thus not only raise each other again when fallen, but they
prevent each other from falling.”—<i>Lectures on the Study of History</i>,
delivered in Oxford 1859-61, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 71.
.fn-
.fn #
Celsus, quoting our Lord’s saying, <abbr=Matthew>Matt.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xix.</abbr> 24, and the exhortation
to forgive our enemies, <abbr=Matthew>Matt.</abbr> <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 43, 45, alleged they were
transferred and coarsely perverted from Plato, <i>de Legibus</i>, and <i>Crito</i>.—Origen,
<i>contra Celsum</i>, Book <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=chapters>chaps.</abbr> 15, 16, and Book <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> 61.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Enarr. in Psalm.</i> <abbr rend=arabic>cxl.</abbr> 6. Clement of Alexandria regarded Greek
philosophy as a προπαιδεία or preparatory discipline for the reception
of Christian truth, <i>Strom.</i> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> 8, and as a step to something higher,
ὑποβάθραν οὖσαν τῆς κατὰ Χριστὸν φιλοσοφίας, <i>Strom.</i> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> 17.
.fn-
.fn #
Trench, Hulsean Lectures for 1846, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 153.
.fn-
// File: 075.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=lecture-2
LECTURE <abbr=two>II.</abbr> | THE HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY, AND THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THEIR RESPECTIVE SCRIPTURES.
.sp 2
It should be an advantage to the study of
Buddhism that even in its origin it confronts us
as the religion of a people sufficiently advanced
in civilisation to be able to formulate their metaphysical
conceptions and present us with their religious
beliefs organised in a system. Like Christianity
it not only inherited but also produced
a considerable and very miscellaneous literature,
whose contents throw valuable light upon the past
from which it emerged and upon the course which
it followed, and like Christianity it has left its
stamp on most of the institutions of the peoples
among whom it was successfully propagated. When
all these sources of information have been properly
investigated, we may hope that the story of the
rise and progress of Buddhism in the East will
// File: 076.png
.pn +1
be revealed with something at least of the clearness
with which the history of Christianity is
disclosed by the literature and art of the West.

To trace, however, the dawn and spread of
Buddhism with anything like historical accuracy
for the first six or seven hundred years of its
course, is a task as yet beyond the literary ability
of the times. It is doubtful whether the materials
for such a work have as yet been collected, and he
would be a bold man who would claim for the task
of sifting what has already been furnished more
than an earnest beginning. Not even Saint-Hilaire
would now repeat the assertion so confidently
made thirty years ago,[#] that “no new discoveries
can change our conclusions regarding it”; for during
the past generation the effect of fuller information
has been not only to modify, but in several
instances to revolutionise the theories formed
concerning it. Discoveries are multiplying every
year; and, though the knowledge thus acquired
serves often more to reveal difficulties than to solve
them, we may be thankful that the examination
of them is engaging the attention of the highest
order of scholarship, and hopeful, yea, even confident
that since so many of the ablest and most patient
minds are turned in this direction, the aggregate
of progress will speedily be immense.
// File: 077.png
.pn +1

All that we know of Buddhism, and all that
we are likely to know of it, is to be gathered from
its own Scriptures; and a comparison of these
with the Christian Scriptures reveals at the very
outset a difference amounting to a vast contrast
between them. The original Scriptures of Christianity
have been before the tribunal of the world’s
keenest and most hostile criticism for 1800 years;
but we are only now beginning to make the
acquaintance of the Scriptures of Buddhism, which
have hardly been subjected to any cross-questioning
worthy of the name. Those who have ventured
to assail have only published their inability to
understand them, and those most competent to
criticise may be pardoned if they handle tenderly
the fragments which they are collecting and translating
for our use. The services which they are
thus rendering to religion as well as to science are
very great. Previously we had only anthologies
extracted often without reference to date or authorship
or connection to judge from, but now these
learned pundits are furnishing us with books
containing not only the wisdom and beauties of
Eastern literature, but its follies and blemishes as
well. Omitting only what is obscene and offensive
to the moral sense,[#] they are giving us specimens
of several strata of Oriental thought and belief,
// File: 078.png
.pn +1
vertically and thoroughly cut, from which a correct
understanding of the essential features of this very
peculiar religion may with considerable probability
be ascertained.

Only a portion of the Buddhist Scriptures are
as yet available, and these we are certainly not at
liberty to place side by side as of equal evidential
value with the contents of the New Testament.
It is said that two thousand manuscripts of the
New Testament, or of portions of it, have been
discovered, several of which are of great antiquity,
and notwithstanding the immense number of various
readings on points of detail, the text of the
oldest corresponds substantially with that of the
books as we have them to-day. We are informed,
however, on the best authority, that “all Indian
manuscripts are comparatively modern, that no
manuscript written one thousand years ago is now
existent in India, and that it is almost impossible
to find one written five hundred years ago; for
most manuscripts which claim to be of that date
are merely copies of old ones, the dates of which
are repeated by the copyists.”[#] It is admitted,
moreover, that the literary honesty of these Indian
translators and copyists is very questionable, that
the books of the Buddhists have undergone wholesale
// File: 079.png
.pn +1
textual alterations, that none of the Sanskrit
works as yet known to us are unadulterated specimens
of transmitted doctrines, that the oldest and
most reliable authorities for the life of Buddha
exaggerate greatly events which are said to have
happened, and ascribe to him long discourses of
which the writers themselves were the composers.[#]
In respect, therefore, of literary accuracy and faithfulness
of purpose, these old compilers and re-editors
of the Buddhist books are far below the
standard which criticism has inexorably applied to
the versionists of the Christian Scriptures.

The faithfulness of our English versions is
vouched for by the names of the translators, and
yet they admit that their translations are only
approximations.[#] From the very nature of the
case they must be so. The East is very far distant
from the West; its ways are not our ways;
its thoughts are not our thoughts. Some one
has said that “the <i>Iliad</i> is separated from the
<i>Rig Veda</i> by an interval of several civilisations”;
and if so, how vast must be the gulf separating
Vedic and even Buddhist metaphysicians from the
British philosopher of to-day! It is simply impossible
// File: 080.png
.pn +1
for the most impartial translator to put
himself in the place of the ancient Indian sage, and
to prevent his own preconceptions from insinuating
themselves among the data with which he has to
deal. He has to express, as we have been reminded,
“a lower order of ideas in a higher order
of terms, and use words suggesting a wealth of
analysis and association quite foreign to the
thought to be reproduced. Translation from a
lower to a higher language is thus a process of
elevation.”[#] In reading these translations and
the books founded upon them, we have constantly
to guard against giving to such terms as “sin,”
“lust,” “salvation,” “law,” “church,” and many
others, our Christian conceptions of them. We
are often perplexed whether the phrases employed,
and even the very titles of the treatises, be really
the equivalents of the ancient texts and titles, or
nineteenth century conceptions of what they may
be made to mean. A European scholar inheriting
the results of ages of Christian culture may be
more likely to interpret the reach of an old
Buddhist expression than the monk who first
used it; but he is always in danger of confounding
that reach with his own firm grasp of truth,
and of expressing his conceptions by phraseology
// File: 081.png
.pn +1
which, if it could be explained to the ancient,
would be rejected by him as inconsistent with
his original meaning.

Another strong contrast between the two sets
of scriptures emerges when we attempt to fix the
dates at which the earliest Buddhist works were
produced. The New Testament is admitted by
authorities who cannot be accused of prejudice in
favour of Christianity and even by antichristian
critics, to contain the actual writings of some of
the original disciples of Jesus. The very latest of
the books which compose it was in circulation
within a century after His death, while the
great bulk of them were accepted before half a
century had passed as the testimonies of those
who were eye-witnesses of the rise of our religion.[#]
M. Renan admits that the three Synoptical Gospels
are the “tender remembrances and simple narratives
of the first and second generations of Christians,
written in substantially their present form
by the men whose names they bear.”[#] The
// File: 082.png
.pn +1
epistle of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> James and several of the epistles
of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul are almost now unanimously accepted
as the products of the first generation. <abbr=Monsieur>Mons.</abbr>
<abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Burnouf therefore may safely aver that “the
history of Christian doctrine and worship bears
the crown over all others in respect that its
records are complete.”[#] What of these records
are comprised in the New Testament, though
tried by the severest of tests, continues to-day
as they were eighteen centuries ago delivered to
the Church. Though the various readings in the
<abbr=manuscripts>mss.</abbr> are said to be counted by 200,000, hardly
one of them can be said to affect a fundamental
doctrinal or historical statement; and so outstanding
and distinct is their canonical character that
it requires no external authority, but only comparison
with them, to disclose what of early Christian
literature is to be regarded as apocryphal.

The evidence on which Orientalists have to rely
in fixing the date of the Buddhist scriptures is
confessedly such “that we must not be surprised
if those who are accustomed to test historical and
chronological evidence in reference to Greece and
Rome declined to be convinced by it.”[#] For centuries
after the death of Buddha his followers
assure us that they had no written books constituting
// File: 083.png
.pn +1
their rules of faith and manners. The
earliest written collection of which in their own
records we have any historical trace is that of
Ceylon, and all that can be said of it is “that
there is nothing improbable” that part of it may
have been reduced to writing about the first
century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, but the whole was only fixed about
420 <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> The Nepaulese collection is said to date
only from the first Christian century; but it is
not alleged that the whole of the works now
in it were even then in existence. According to
their own tradition, they had no written biography
of Buddha till about the first century of our era,
and no one who has examined that narrative or
read the opinions expressed by Orientalists as to
the date when it was produced—opinions so divergent
as to indicate a difference of several centuries—would
ever dream of employing it as
evidence of what is alleged in it to have happened.
It is simply impossible, therefore, to regard the
Buddhist’s Pitakas as if they were of similar
authoritative value with the New Testament, for,
in fact, in respect of canonical worth they do not
deserve to be ranked with much of our later
patristic literature.

A very high antiquity, however, is claimed by
Buddhists for these collections. According to the
Dipavanso, their earliest available chronicle, dating
// File: 084.png
.pn +1
only from the fifth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>, the doctrines orally
communicated by Buddha to his disciples were by
them immediately after his death revised and classified
under the three divisions of Vinaya, Abhidharma,
and Sutta, in which they have always since then
been preserved. This collection having passed
through the crucible of a council held at Vaisali a
hundred years later, was fixed as canonical at
another held in the reign of Asoka about 242 <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>
It is urged that a canon, to be authoritative, does
not require to be written, and that Indians claim
for one orally transmitted higher authority than for
one transcribed. The art of writing was probably
unknown in India in Buddha’s time, and so, thrown
back upon their resources, memory was by the
Indians cultivated to an extent which enabled them
to dispense with methods deemed by nearly all
other peoples to be essential to accuracy. Eminent
Orientalists therefore, while regarding the account
of the first council as apocryphal, are yet inclined
to admit—from the identity of the threefold division
in all the schools that have been tested, from the
similarity of the titles of the contents of all the
various collections, and especially from the quality of
the writings themselves—that the tradition recorded
in the Dipavanso is well founded, and that considerable
portions of the Vinaya and Sutta literature may
date from a hundred years after the death of Buddha.
// File: 085.png
.pn +1

In assuming so much, however, these scholars
by no means believe that they have found in these
texts the actual teaching of Buddha in an unadulterated
condition. While not thinking it possible
to impugn the substantial accuracy of the Vinaya
texts, though given in Pali translations of the lost
dialect in which they were originally preached, they
tell us that the oldest of the Sutta texts are “not
his teachings nor the teachings of his immediate
disciples, who could not have spoken of him in the
manner in which he is there described. They are
only founded on his teachings, and record existing
beliefs as to the doctrines which he actually taught.”[#]
For “the fundamental and original doctrines they
may be accepted as fairly trustworthy authorities,”
but for the facts of his life they are even at the
best very questionable guides. Nearer to the
origin of Buddhism and of the person of its founder
we are not likely to get than in the book entitled
by its translator the Sutta of the Great Decease;
but he confesses that even in it we are standing on
anything but solid ground, and that we are only
able to catch a distant and most uncertain glimpse
of the figure of the great Teacher as he comes
out at rare intervals from the mist of legends
which, designed to adorn and magnify, have in reality
diminished and obscured his real personality.
// File: 086.png
.pn +1

For our knowledge of Buddhism, therefore, we
have for centuries only oral traditions to rely upon.
Of these traditions only a portion may be traced
approximately to the times of Buddha, and of the
fragments which can possibly be traced not one
contains a narrative nor any historical reference to
passing events. On the contrary, our knowledge
of the origin of Christianity is derived not from
fragments of oral tradition, but from a set of
canonical writings, many of them traceable close to
the generation that witnessed Christ’s death, in
which the story of His ministry is set in historical
relation to the age in which He appeared, and
His peculiar doctrines are so fixed that any addition
to them is at once recognised as spurious. Between
the extremes of criticism as to the period
covered by the life of Christ there is a difference
of only half a dozen years; but there is a difference
in Buddhist traditions of more than a thousand
years as to the date of Buddha’s birth, and even
European scholars, after carefully sifting traditions
and writings, have only been able approximately to
fix dates for his death ranging over a period of
175 years.[#]

For historical accuracy, therefore, the traditions
are as worthless as they are for any photographic
presentation of the various persons who figure in
// File: 087.png
.pn +1
them. In truth we have in them neither chronology
nor biography. Events and actors are equally
indistinct; we have only a background without
any perspective, and pasteboard puppets projected
against it which might be designated by
any name whatever. Even in respect of transmission
of doctrine, oral tradition was found very
early to have failed. The reason given in their
chronicles for resorting to writing is confession
sufficient that they considered that method of
preserving the deposit of the faith a safer one.[#]
So divergent had the renderings and so corrupt
had the texts become—“for even the monks of the
great council were blamed for turning the religion
upside down, for distorting the sense and teaching
of the five Nikayas, for casting aside that Sutta
and Vinaya, and making imitations of them changing
this to that[#]—that the profoundly wise priests,
foreseeing the perdition of the people (from the
perversion of the doctrines), and in order that the
religion might endure for ages, wrote the same in
books.”[#] Before this time the many schisms which
had arisen were powerful illustrations of the evils
which the “profoundly wise” transcribers deplored,
// File: 088.png
.pn +1
and of that falling away from the original creed
which this religion had already suffered for lack of
a secured basis of faith.[#]

For the want of an authoritative standard told
very severely against the early history of Buddhism.
Its rapid and widespread extension was due, not
so much to the natural development of its own
principles as to its assimilation of the external
and foreign influences with which it came in contact.
// File: 089.png
.pn +1
Its advance was the result more of compromise
than of conquest.[#] It welcomed or tolerated,
at least it could not or did not defend itself against
the introduction of many parasitical germs which
were destined to arrest its growth and pass into its
life. As the ivy covers and adorns the oak only
to suck away with its million mouths its strength,
so the popular beliefs which Buddhism incorporated
from without, as well as the defections from
the original teaching which took place within it,
produced very soon upon it alterations so extensive
that its founder would have disclaimed or would
have been really unable to recognise it as his
own.

No temptation happened to Buddhism, however,
but such as is common to all the higher religions.
As far as observation and experience go, the lower
types of religion continue unchanged; but those
that confront us upon a higher level are in a
perpetual flux, in which change does not always
indicate progress. Instead of tracing their path
by the superstitions which they have outgrown,
their course may be indicated by those which they
have incorporated. Man, in his exodus of faith, is
always tempted to go back to the condition from
which he has emerged, or to fall away to the
// File: 090.png
.pn +1
religions by which he is surrounded. Mosaism and
Christianity had to pass through this trial, and
certainly they did not pass through it unscathed.
They suffered from the corruption of popular superstitions
and of Pagan rites, all of which, as in the
case of Buddhism, were defended by an appeal
to tradition. Just as every Buddhist innovator
was ready with some forgotten saying or Sutta
alleged to have been delivered by the “Blessed
One,” sometimes miraculously preserved through
the ages till the necessity for the revelation arose,
so the Popes and the Fathers of Christendom were
never at a loss for authorities when, professing
to develop and define, they in reality were adding
to the faith and the worship and the claims of
the Church.

But Christianity from the very earliest possessed
what Buddhism for a long period lacked.
In its canonical writings it conserved not only a
check upon this apostasy, but a security for reformation.
Mechanical though it seems, there was
a providence in the early committal to writing
of such books as compose our Bibles. In the fact
that their successive disclosures of truth were
thus registered there is more significance than at
first appears. It is admitted by all that man’s
progress depends in no small degree on his ability
to secure and hand down the treasures of his
// File: 091.png
.pn +1
wisdom and experience. The art of writing is thus
recognised to be one of the most moving powers
in the world. The nations that have depended
upon it for the transmission of knowledge inherited
or acquired, have certainly made more progress in
religion and civilisation than those that have
neglected or despised it. It is significant that the
writers of the Bible have all recognised this condition
of human progress, and that many of them
have represented themselves as instructed by the
Divine authority, from whom they profess to have
received their communications, to make them permanent
in popular language and in plain written
form.[#]

In the history of the Hebrews there is not a
single recorded instance of religious reformation in
which the law and the testimony, or the scrolls
of the prophets, did not play an important part.
In like manner the New Testament, which embodies
the ideals and perpetuates the standard
which is to regulate its course, not only saved Christianity
from the perils which threatened its earliest
spread, but has often rescued it from the degradation
into which it has fallen. Canonical books
may only give, as it has been said, “the reflected
image of the real doctrines of the founder of a
religion, an image always blurred and distorted
// File: 092.png
.pn +1
by the medium through which it has to pass”;[#]
but in the case of the New Testament the Church
has never developed, or thought it possible to
develop, a purer reflection. Advance as it may,
the Church never can outgrow the ideals of its
youth, and change what it pleases, it never can
improve them. Whenever the Church assumed
supremacy over its law, and whenever tradition
superseded its testimony, it yielded to the disintegrating
influences of heathenism. It was rapidly
lapsing into polytheism when Mohammed rose with
a spurious and mutilated version of the Scriptures
to recall it to the witness of true Scriptures to the
unity and sovereignty of God. Later on, when
sinking through formalism into superstition and
sorcery almost as degrading as any Indian, Luther,
by the re-discovery of the Greek Testament,
brought about a reformation which not only saved
Europe, but has created a new Western and
Southern world. In every revival and every advance
which has taken place since then there may
be traced, directly or indirectly, the regenerative
influences of the Christian originals. On its
human side the Christian Church will always be
in danger of losing its pure conceptions and noble
aims in grosser forms of belief and in lower ambitions;
// File: 093.png
.pn +1
but high over all its degradation towers in
its early Scriptures the majesty and spirituality of
its Divine authority, and we have only to look up
to be first convicted, then attracted and redeemed.
The purest sections of the Christian Church, the
surest and the first to outgrow all unworthy expressions
of Christianity, are those which adhere
most closely to the original rule of faith and worship.
It is quite possible that we “may be only
too apt to make a fetich of our sacred books”;[#]
but somehow the Christian communities that most
revere their sacred books show that they are least
likely to fall into this danger. The more we obey
the Scriptures, the less likely are we to idolise
them. The New Testament, so far from attaching
any mystical or talismanic value to its contents,
tells us that the letter killeth, and the spirit alone
giveth life. It is otherwise with the Buddhist
Tripitaka. Its authors claim meritorious efficacy
not only for the repetition of its sentences, but for
the very sound of its words, “as if they were
capable of elevating every one who hears them to
heavenly abodes in future existence.” Sir Monier
Williams has illustrated this by a legend long
current, not in northern Buddhist countries, but
in Ceylon, where a purer Buddhism prevails.
According to it, two monks were heard by five
// File: 094.png
.pn +1
hundred bats reciting in a cave the law of Buddha,
and they by merely hearing gained such merit
that in death they were re-born as men, and ultimately
through successive re-births were raised
to the fellowship of the gods.[#] Of course this is
simply a legend, a thing of hay or straw that has
got mixed with the purer primitive faith; but it
indicates that the course of the current flows in
quite an opposite direction from the faith which
allows itself to be dominated and guided by the
canon of Holy Scriptures.

The quality of the contents of the two sets of
writings is not under discussion, but we cannot help
remarking one characteristic of the Christian Scriptures
which is not likely to emerge in our longest
acquaintance with the Buddhist books. No one
ever expects that the genuineness of the contents
of the Tripitaka will ever be discussed with anything
like the intensity and acerbity with which
we have discussed the genuineness of the books of
the Bible. The long and fierce contendings that
have been waged over each portion of the Gospels
will never take place over any of the Suttas. We
have been working for five centuries to secure a
proper English translation of the Holy Bible, and
we are not satisfied with it yet: does any one
// File: 095.png
.pn +1
expect a similar expenditure of labour to secure a
proper version of the Tripitaka? It is possible that
scholarship will by and by exhaust this particular
field of Oriental research, and “having catalogued
its discoveries will put them aside and proceed to
more interesting studies”; but though men have
quarrelled about and questioned the Holy Scriptures
for eighteen centuries they are not likely to
come to a term of their hostility or curiosity. The
ceaseless endeavour to disprove, refute, shows that
we cannot get rid of them. There must be something
either in the history of their production or
the quality of their contents, or the range of their
influence, which separates them from all sacred
books of the type of the Buddhist Tripitaka.
Certainly we cannot conceive it possible that any
of these so-called Bibles of other religions will
ever among any civilised people supplant the
Christian Bible. “One chapter of Isaiah,” says
Quinet,[#] “has more in it than a whole Republic of
Plato.” One Psalm of David will outweigh all the
religious lore of the Vedas. One sentence of Moses,
“The Lord our God is one Lord: I the Lord am
holy,” is worth all the speculations of the devout
and learned authors of the Upanishads. Not that
the Republic, the Vedas, the Upanishads are to be
despised. On the contrary, the more they are
// File: 096.png
.pn +1
studied the more likely is the Bible to be revered,
for the truth that is in them is only prophetic of
truth which could not then be revealed and received.
We may outlive and outgrow the teaching of these
wise ancients, but we have not yet transcended the
originals of Christianity, and it is not at all likely
that we ever shall. There is an end to the perfection
of all other systems, but here is “a commandment
exceeding broad,” “whose line has gone
through all the earth, and its word to the end
of the world.”

From this slight notice of the literature which
Buddhism has produced let us proceed to glance at
the literature which it inherited, with the view of
catching a glimpse of the conditions out of which
it arose. As with man’s language, so is it with his
other distinctive birthright: we can only understand
a religion when we have ascertained its
antecedents. Christianity emerged from a previous
religion of which it professed to be the complement.
Our Lord appeared among a people whose spiritual
history extended over several thousand years.
They had a sacred canon, professing to register the
successive Divine revelations made to their ancestors,
which was fixed as we have it now at least two,
and perhaps more, centuries before He came. Instead
of breaking with the past He acknowledged
and appropriated it; instead of abrogating their
// File: 097.png
.pn +1
law, He fulfilled it; instead of disowning their
prophets He claimed them as His witnesses. In
prosecuting His mission He brought upon Himself
the fierce antagonism of the existing Church, whose
leaders in less than three years succeeded in having
Him crucified; but His constant appeal was to their
ever-venerated Scriptures. His apostles again
record and expound the incidents of His ministry
and His death as realising the pre-intimations of
their ancient rites, and as fulfilling all their prophecies;
and all along faith in the Divine origin
of Christianity is never supposed to be weakened
but to be greatly confirmed by an appeal to the
religion which it annulled and supplanted.

Now Buddhism grew out of Brahmanism, but
however divergent their relations eventually became,
it was originally accepted as a natural consequence
of it. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, there was
for long no trace of serious antagonism between the
Brahmans and many generations of the successors
of Buddha. Brahmans formed a considerable portion
of his followers, and in regard to his teaching,
his doctrines, where not identical, were not likely to
offend them. <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul scandalised the Pharisees
by preaching that outward Jewish connection
marked by the seal of circumcision profited
nothing, but long before Buddha’s time Brahman
teachers had declared, as he did, to that most
// File: 098.png
.pn +1
exclusive of the Indian elect, that the true Brahman
was not a person born within the sacred caste, but
only the thoughtful and self-controlled man:[#] that
a bad mind and wicked deeds are what defile a
man, and that no outward observances can purify
him.[#] Buddha has been designated as the best and
wisest and greatest of Hindus; “a reformer of
Hinduism who ignored its superstitions and follies,
and sought to elevate and refine its dogmas.”[#] It
is now considered very questionable whether the
difference between the two systems ever grew into
hostility involving persecution of the new religion
by the old. The two streams of Hindu belief seem
for long in their course in India to have flowed
peaceably side by side, and if Buddhism eventually
disappeared from India as a separate and distinct
system, it was not altogether because it was crushed
by persecution, but because it returned to enrich
and modify the religion from which it originally
parted.[#]

Buddhism was thus an offspring of Brahmanism,
but Brahmanism was itself the product of a religion
older still. Behind Buddhism lies a great and
// File: 099.png
.pn +1
undefined past, a past with no history in the
proper sense of the word, and absolutely without
chronology; but out of this vast and nebulous era
there has been extracted a rich traditional literature,
and Oriental scholars working on principles similar
to those by which geologic periods are determined,[#]
are endeavouring by an examination of the various
civilisations reflected in that literature to establish
the leading stages in the growth of prehistoric
Indian thought. The sacred books of India disclose
sufficiently in outline the social and religious progress
of the people from a period of great antiquity.
No one can tell when the oldest fragments of them
were originally composed, but some of them are
said to have been in circulation among the Aryans
when one immigrant contingent of them had arrived
at the confluence of Jumna with the Ganges,[#] and if
so, they image for us the life and beliefs of a people
who must have been contemporaries with Moses
some fifteen centuries at latest before the coming of
Christ.

It is now asserted that this Aryan immigration
had been preceded from the same quarter by an
earlier one, in a past so very remote that the
Indians had lost completely the memory of it, and
that by the time this second wave had reached
// File: 100.png
.pn +1
the north-west Gangetic tracts, the first had
pushed its way as far east as the delta, where
first vanquishing it finally amalgamated with the
aboriginal tribes. It is supposed that from out
of this earliest section arose the natural ancestors
of Buddha, while in the second and intellectually
superior section we must look for the religious
teachers from whom his spiritual lineage is to be
traced.[#] For with them were introduced the
Vedas, revealing the earliest forms of civilisation
and religion in that great section of the human
family to which we ourselves belong. We see
pictured in the Rig-Veda a people who, in
complexion, manner, and rites, were at first as
distinct from the native Indian races as were the
Israelites from those of Canaan. Patriarchal in
their institutions, pastoral or agricultural in their
pursuits, they confront us as a primitive but
certainly not a barbarous folk. Nurtured by the
invigorating climate and magnificent scenery of an
ancestral home “on the very roof of the world,”
they had reached a social condition in which, in a
language fitly called “polished,” or “carefully
made” (Sanskrita), they were as fitly called
“Aryan” or “noble.” They practised the arts
of Jabal and Jubal, venerated their sages and
poets, and called their wives and daughters by
// File: 101.png
.pn +1
names of beauty and grace like that of Naamah.
Their religion, though polytheistic, was not inspired
by dread of evil spirits or awe of ancestral shades,
but by wonder of the world around them and
their own awakening instincts. Man in these
ancient fragments, as in the first pages of our
Bible, is evidently a creature transcending the
savage, and made in a diviner image than the
type from which it is maintained he must have
sprung. Instead of consorting with or worshipping
the animals, he exercises dominion over
them; he questions himself and the heavens and
the earth concerning their origin and author, and
with some divine authentic instinct which he has
never lost, he seems to be growing into the
feeling that not only the trinity of supernatural
powers which he worshipped, but his very self, are
the children of some primordial and eternal Dyaus,
the father of all.

While the earliest light that falls upon our
ancestors reveals them as a religious people, whose
worship, simple and rudimentary as it was, indicated
a sense of inferiority, and also, as one who
ought to know informs us, “some sense of flaw
in the relationship, some concept of sin and
guilt,”[#] to the deities worshipped, it is to be
noted that gods and men were felt to be too
// File: 102.png
.pn +1
much akin to allow of spiritual aspiration, or of
high moral significance in man’s religious acts.
The ethical or rather spiritual elements so vital
to the Biblical conceptions of religion may not
be quite foreign to the earliest Veda, but they are
scantily, if at all, represented in it. No prayer
can be said to have ever been directed to obtain
forgiveness, or growth in goodness, in the Bible
sense. The sinner was for the most part only a
defaulter in respect of offerings, and his guilt
was that of a person who refused to render
homage. That the gods might be able to watch
over and enrich mankind, they had to be fed and
sustained. The worshipper was thus in a certain
degree necessary to the worshipped. The sense
of submissive gratitude to the Deity which meets
us in the earliest fragments of the Bible is not
expressed, for religion was conceived of as a kind
of exchange in which men purchased a right to
divine help by service rendered, and “each man
satisfied his higher instinct according to his own
conception of the character of the being on whose
favour his welfare was thought to depend.”[#]

Centuries later, in another strata of sacred
literature, composed in prose, dogmatic and liturgic
// File: 103.png
.pn +1
in character, and designated Brahmanas,[#] we behold
the same branch of the Aryan family in a
further stage of their history. Their patriarchal
age has vanished, and their heroic seems passing
into the aristocratic and hierarchic. Caste has
appeared as the invariable attendant upon conquest,
when the victor is separated from the
vanquished by language, complexion, and religion.
It is not so much caste, however, in the ordinary
sense of the word, as class, sternly prohibiting
marriage not only with the aboriginal tribes, but
between persons of unequal rank, and anticipating
the organisation of European society in the middle
ages. In the nobles, who were subordinate only
to the Church, the burghers or merchants socially
distinct from and inferior to the nobles, and in
the villeins or serfs of the conquered territories,
we have an exact parallel to the old Indian system,
in which Sudra, Vaisya, Kshatrya, all formed
steps in a social pyramid, on the top of which the
Brahman was throned.[#]

Thus early in the history of the Indian people
emerged that sacerdotal institution which was to
exercise so powerful and eventually so sinister an
influence upon their religious progress. In Vedic
// File: 104.png
.pn +1
times the father of the family and the rajah of the
clan were the celebrants of the religious rites, but
as life became more complicated ceremonies became
more laborious, and men who had preserved the
knowledge of the old hymns, and the religious
formularies which had died out from the common
people, gradually took the rajah’s place. As
thought widened, men refused to be satisfied with
guardian deities that could be fed with rice and
butter. The sense of human law reflected itself
in the conception of divine rulers governing men,
and penalties inflicted by man for wrong-doing
suggested expiation for the infringed laws of deity.
This idea of sacrifice, of which there is said to be no
trace in the flesh feasts of earlier times, becomes
prominent in the offerings of the period. “The
shedding of blood, the burning of a limb of the
victim in the fire, by some at least was believed
to atone for transgression, and it is probable that
at one time the religious instinct expressed itself
in human sacrifice.[#]” In any case, the development of
the idea of the great efficacy of sacrifice as a means
of compelling the gods to do the will of the worshipper—yea,
of elevating the worshipper to their
privileges and rank,—must soon have had the effect
of making a priesthood, at first only helpful, to be
// File: 105.png
.pn +1
necessary as the sole agents between man and
deity. By preserving the memory of what had
faded from the vulgar, by transmitting to their
families a lore which became the more sacred the
more it was forgotten, the professional liturgists or
sacrificers, at first satirised by the poets as was the
Romish friar by the minstrel in the middle ages,
imperceptibly grew into an order whose privileges
were more exclusive and whose pretensions were
higher than were ever asserted in Israel by the
descendants of Aaron. Among the Hebrews the
priesthood was never allowed to gain complete
ascendency. Its representatives were subordinated
to the king, who was the fountain of all law, and
they were kept in check by the prophets as the
ministers of Divine revelation; but the Brahmans
came to be regarded as not only the guardians of
religion, but the teachers of all knowledge and the
source of all authority. They owned no superior,
were subject to no law in the state: each one was
a pope in himself, more independent of the crown
and the commonwealth than a Christian pope
ever pretended to be, and had a faith in his personal
infallibility which no Christian pope affected to
have. In India there resulted from the ascendency
all the evils that were manifested in Judaism
and in Latin Christianity; and in India far worse
results were produced. For, left to themselves as
// File: 106.png
.pn +1
superior beings apart from the actual world, who
never could err, they gave their minds that licence
which too often in the history of thought has been
confounded with liberty, and, as always happens
when self-restraint is disregarded, the result in this
instance was the production, not of a system of
philosophy, but a crude conglomerate of incongruous
phantasies more resembling a chaos than a
cosmos.[#]

Let us not suppose that the Brahmans were
originally, or even eventually, the vain and greedy
and self-seeking bigots which the name unfortunately
suggests to a European. They gained the
ascendency because they cultivated the power to
rise; they represent what many are inclined to
revere as the ideal aristocracy, that of Intellect.
They were not ignorant priests, but learned philosophers,
from whom sprung again and again the
reformers who headed the revolt from an overdone
ritual, and from a faith which expressed itself
wholly in metaphysical speculations. By them
were excogitated the Upanishads and the laws of
Manu, two of the most wonderful literary productions
of mankind. From there too came the great
epic poems of the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata,
poems in some respects equal to the Homeric, and
// File: 107.png
.pn +1
in cleverness of purpose, which is said to be that of
arresting the progress of Buddhism, equalling anything
which the Society of Jesus ever produced to
counteract the Reformation. In its complexity and
adaptability and many-sidedness Brahmanism is
unrivalled by any human system, and the men who
first gave it expression and directed its earliest
movements must rank among the most original and
daring of thinkers.

But they were Indians living in the period
beginning about the tenth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, in a land
as completely cut off from the rest of the world as
they were severed from the practical life of their
countrymen. They had the same earnest and inquisitive
mind which their westward-moving kinsmen had
inherited with them from their trans-Himalayan
ancestors, but in them it had to work out its
advances in more adverse conditions. The tribes
that went westward marched along the uplands, in
zones of climate and through scenery and conditions
stimulating effort, both mental and physical. Consequently
they went on improving their beliefs, till
they apprehended the truth which lies at the base
of all true systems of faith, the immortality of the
soul, and developed a philosophy which represents
man’s most successful attempt to grasp that divine
unity after which man in his polytheism is ever
feeling. It was otherwise with the branch that
// File: 108.png
.pn +1
went southwards. They had to live under physical
conditions not conducive to energy, under burning
skies which repressed, and on soils which rendered
industry unnecessary. As they gained ascendency
over the aborigines the vices of the vanquished
race told fatally upon them. Their sensual worship,
customs like polygamy and sutteeism, ascetic
practices and sorcerous rites, took possession of
them; and, most marked of all, a belief very widely
spread among the lower tribes of mankind so
terribly bewitched them that to this day the Indian
mind has never been able to break away from its
fascination.

This belief in transmigration, with the pessimism
which is its inevitable concomitant, was wholly
absent from their ancient Vedic faith. At intervals
from the times of Pythagoras it has infected the
religion and philosophy of the Western Aryans, but
never to any extent or with any serious result.
Its true habitat and breeding-place, like that of the
cholera, is among the degraded and broken-down
populations of the East. It was communicated from
the native Indian races to the Hindus, who unfortunately
were prepared to receive it through the
depressing and degenerating influences of tropical
life on a northern-born family. Anyway, while their
more fortunate brethren were eagerly groping after,
in their westward progress, the truth of immortality,
// File: 109.png
.pn +1
and thirsting for more life and fuller, they in
their fat Gangetic plains, wearied of life as something
not worth having, yet dreading death because
it was appointed unto man not once but many times
to die, were seeking some way of deliverance from
this inherited curse. And the Brahmans professed
to point to it. Their earliest popular conception of
deliverance was simply that of re-birth in a happier
world, perchance secured by sacrificial rites and religious
acts, but such a conception could not long
satisfy, and eventually it gave way in the higher
class of minds to nobler views. In India, as elsewhere,
men soon became conscious of the more
solid security of merit procured by a life of justice
and mercy. Man’s future was in his own and not
in the hands of a priest: its happiness or misery
would be no accident, but the sure result of good
or evil done here and now. Therefore the wise
man endeavoured laboriously and continuously to
collect merit by good deeds, “as the white ant
builds her house, for with these as his guide he
could hope to traverse a gloom hard to be crossed.”

But by and by even this belief ceased to satisfy
them, for how could man hope to liberate himself
from the bondage of endless change as long as,
seeking only a happier existence, he was content
to be a citizen of the changeable? Let him seek
reunion with Brahma, of which he is an emanation.
// File: 110.png
.pn +1
So here again, while the Westerns were finding the
path which would lead them from polytheism to
theism, and were growing into nobler conceptions
of what the individual self should be, the speculative
ascetics of the East, in a life of meditation far
apart, were trying to subside rather than rise into
Brahma the Absolute as a river reunites with the
ocean. In their earlier Brahmanas their fathers
knew nothing of Brahma as deity, and at no time
did Brahma mean to the Indian what deity meant
to the Western Aryan. Polytheism in India never
became theism in the old Greek sense, nor even
Pantheism in our nineteenth-century sense. The
mysterious all-pervading Presence was indeed early
detected by the Indians as the “Breath” of all
things, but the name employed by them to distinguish
it signified only the universal self. In no
sense was it the conscious author, but only the
irrepressible source of things because reflected upon
by illusion. Brahma Atman was neither the infinitely
intelligent nor the perfectly blessed, in our
sense of the word. It was simply thought without
cognition, beatitude without consciousness. “The
Hindu never thinks of asserting that Brahma knows
or even has consciousness, but always that Brahma
is knowledge.” “It is simply impersonal being,
absolute unity contrasted with disruption, from
which existence, as an emanation wholly and only
// File: 111.png
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evil, because originating in a mistake, must move
through endless cycles of change, until the way of
escape be discovered and followed by which the
erratic spark may be absorbed in the central fire.”[#]

Such a speculation was manifestly an advance
upon Vedic materialism, which sought to bring
down the gods to the side of man as useful guardians,
and upon early Brahmanism which sought by
sacrifice to force them to do man’s will, and by and
by to elevate man to their level. In endeavouring,
however, to abstract its disciples from the superstitions
of the priests, it tampered with the foundations
of religion. It never attempted to propitiate
the gods—for, even if superior to man, they were as
much involved in the labyrinth of transmigration
as he was himself,—but it professed in a universe of
illusion to have discovered the only real. It dared
to name the Absolute; so, withdrawing from the
world, it practiced austerities for the sake of illumination,
gave itself up to meditation to reduce the
personal self to an abstraction, and endeavoured thus
to escape from the necessity of existence in time
and space into “passionless, characterless being.”

All this is expounded in the Upanishads, the
special scriptures of philosophical Brahmanism.[#]
Though translated by Professor Max Müller, and
// File: 112.png
.pn +1
lucidly interpreted by Professor Gough, readers of
ordinary philosophical culture find them very hard
to understand, and in spite of the high commendation
of them by Rammohun Roy and Schopenhauer,
they will be inclined to question whether
these “beginnings of thought,” “conceptions hardly
formed,” though essential to a proper knowledge of
Indian philosophy, “should be ranked among the
outstanding productions of the human mind.”[#]
Throughout their long and most tedious verbiage,
however, one dominant idea is ever discoverable—that
the chief end of the wise man is to know, not
the forms of things, but the great self of all things,
and seek his deliverance not by practice of religion
but by pursuit of Gnosis.[#] Religion would indeed
secure rewards, but they would only be transient;
religion might regulate and modify the course of
migration, but only Gnosis could break its adamantine
chain. “The vision of Atman is the only deliverance,
for by it all ties are loosened”; “the vision
of the self is the light of the world, to which only
the purest minds attain.” To reach it not only the
bonds of desire must be broken, but of ignorance
too. “For Atman is highly exalted above all reverence
and effort, above holiness and unholiness.” “It,
the uncreated, is beyond all good and evil,” and
// File: 113.png
.pn +1
upon rewards and punishments, upon both good
and evil, the sage must turn his back, for he alone
who knows the Universal is free, from Karman and
from Kâma (action and desire) which hold captive
the self in the net of the impermanent.[#]

This is said to be the last outcome of Brahmanic
belief, and “indeed the highest point
reached by Indian philosophy.”[#] Manifestly, it can
never be designated a gospel. It was a deliverance
impossible for the many, and possible only for the
few; a promise not to the suffering millions, but
to the mystic and the sage, and to them it came
not with the hope of a nobler character to be
attained, and of a purer, higher life to be reached,
but only with that of a dreamless repose—“the
sleep eternal in an eternal night”—when the soul
ceases to be soul, merged “like the weariest river”
in a shoreless and waveless sea. And this was
the system in which the wisest and saintliest in
Buddha’s days were nurtured. He was no Brahman
by caste, but as pure Kshatrya he would be instructed
in his youth by Brahmans, and in early
manhood he for long consorted with them. He had
mental capacity, and spiritual energy, more than
adequate to the task of comprehending as fully as
they did their very abstruse theosophies. From
// File: 114.png
.pn +1
their speculation he derived much of his terminology,
like Karma and Nirvana; and even Buddha,
words which, till recently, it was considered he had
to coin. Many doctrines which were once regarded
as peculiarly his own were taught in their jungle
schools by learned Brahmans centuries before he
was born. Without the Brahmans he could not
have been produced, and yet his system will be
found to be original and distinct. They furnished
the phraseology in which he expressed himself, the
methods by which he wrought, the institutions like
that of the wandering Bikkhu, by which his system
was spread; but in essentials we will find that his
teaching was not only different from but antagonistic
to theirs, and that, had the principles which he
enunciated been truly accepted and consistently
carried out, this noblest of the Reformers of Hinduism
would have reformed it out of existence.

During this pre-Buddhistic era, much longer,
perhaps, than is generally supposed, another process
of development was going on among one section of
the Semitic stock, in a small handbreadth of a land
on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. The
several stages of that development have also been
unconsciously recorded in a literature so peculiar in
its motive, and method, and character, as to separate
it from the national literatures of all the world. It
is not that it claims to be inspired, for the same
// File: 115.png
.pn +1
claim is advanced by the Indian, and indeed by or
for every collection of religious writings extant;
but while in the literature of India we see represented
the struggles of man to reach the Deity,
that of Palestine professes to represent the endeavour
of Deity to reach and to communicate with
men. Intensely patriotic as a people, the sacred
literature of the Hebrews is essentially religious.
Their historians are not permitted to record, and
the poets are not allowed to sing their own national
achievements, but only the mighty works and the
praises of Jehovah their God. The shame of their
many defeats, and of their final destruction, is
ascribed always to their own sin, but any national
success or prosperity is due to the Divine favour.
Alike through all their victories and disasters, an
Almighty Hand is acknowledged to be shaping their
destiny, and to be working out a purpose which,
often entirely hidden, and at best only very imperfectly
understood by them, is seen toward the close
of their sad and eventful history, to comprehend the
larger destinies of mankind in a salvation of God
which “all the ends of the earth” were to see.

The relative antiquity of the Hebrew and Indian
scriptures is not a matter which we are called upon
to discuss. It is possible that some hymns in the
Rig-Veda may be older than anything which we
possess in the Bible, but it is almost absolutely
// File: 116.png
.pn +1
certain that most of the books of the Hebrew Bible
were in circulation as scriptures, and that the whole
of it was in the shape in which we have it now,
before any ancient Indian sacred book was reduced
to writing. The Pentateuch, in the form in which
we have it now, is probably not the most ancient
of the Hebrew writings. It appears to be a very
composite production, containing works of different
authors, written originally at different places and
at different times. The most destructive criticism,
however, admits that it embodies very ancient traditions—many
of them not peculiar to the Hebrews,—which
were open to a succession of very talented
narrators. These traditions may indicate their
derivation from a once common ancestral home, or
acquirement by later contact with foreign nations,
but they are in nowise incorporations; for in the
Hebrew books they are not only presented in forms
far more refined, but they are employed to suggest
or to unfold a spiritual teaching quite beyond the
capacity of the peoples among whom it is alleged
they originated. No one denies that we have in
the Pentateuch writings as old as the time of
Moses, and probably fragments of writings much
older still. Ewald[#] ascribes an important portion
of it to the times of the later judges, another still
more important section to a priest of Solomon’s
// File: 117.png
.pn +1
reign, and the Book of Deuteronomy to the time
of Hezekiah. Even if we are compelled to accept
later dates than these, it follows that they are older
than any Upanishad, or even any of the Brahmanas.
There was a Law, a Book of the Covenant, a Book
of Origins, in currency probably before the authors
of any of the Brahmanas was born; and even if we
are to regard the contents of these works as only
traditional, we may surely assume that the Hebrew
traditions are as credible as the Indian. It is
quite true “that religion exists long before it is
expressed in a canon, and that law runs and rules
long before it is written in a code,”[#] but in regard
to accuracy neither suffers from being so definitely
registered. Hitherto the maxim affecting such
matters has been, and for a long time henceforth
we may be certain it will be, not <i>litera locuta</i>,
but <i>litera scripta manet</i>.

Again, we are not called upon to maintain in this
lecture the chronological exactness or the historical
faithfulness of the sacred annals of Israel; all that
is asserted is that in them we have as faithful a
mirror of the ages which they profess to reflect as
we have in the Indian. The characters in the
scenes which they produce are neither puppets nor
shadows, but very living and substantial realities.
The personages at least are men whose idiosyncrasies
// File: 118.png
.pn +1
are sharply but naturally defined, and whose
speech, and manners, and conduct, and beliefs, accord
wonderfully well with the places and the periods
in which they meet us. We have to examine the
Hebrew annals however, not to verify the details
of ancient transactions which they record, but simply
to ascertain the beliefs which they contain and
illustrate. The truth or the error of these beliefs
we need not discuss, for the beliefs themselves are
facts of great importance, and so are the consequences
that flowed from them; and when we compare
these beliefs with those which we have been
considering, we will find a development parallel
indeed, but of an entirely different class of ideas
or religious thoughts.

In the Rig-Veda we have reflected the immigration
of a higher race into what has been called the
Holy Land of India. The Rig-Veda dates from
about the times of the Exodus or the invasion
of the Holy Land of Palestine. The Hebrew traditions,
like the Indian, tell of an earlier immigration
of their fathers into the same Palestine
some five centuries previous. When we examine
the narratives in which this earlier immigration is
recorded, we find the patriarchs moving along among
similar conditions, but representing a much higher
level of religious thought than the Aryans when
they reached the Ganges. Though everywhere
// File: 119.png
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living among nature-worshippers, and though
showing the taint of that worship in their own conduct,
their religion is neither that of physiolatry
nor idolatry.[#] Abraham was not a polytheist;
he came out of Ur of the Chaldees—whether that
be a designation of a geographical region or a
description of a religious state—not as one who
trembled before the forces of Nature, afraid to
inquire what they meant or whence they came; not
as one who had discovered behind them the Infinite
Self, out of which, because of ignorance or illusion,
he and they had emanated, but as a man who
believed in a Personal Deity who had created and
continued to control them, and who, though El-Elion
and Shaddai, yet watched over and communicated
with Abraham as his best of friends. We
need not ascribe to the patriarch an intelligence
which he did not possess. God may have been in
his thought too much the almighty Protector of
himself and of his descendants—for in that age the
family of the chief would be all-important, and the
idea even of the nation had not yet germinated,—but
// File: 120.png
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that he apprehended God under a strictly
moral aspect is vouched for by his life, as the
founder of a new epoch to which his latest descendant
looked back with thankfulness.[#] We may not
be able to prove that Abraham’s conception of Deity
was monotheistic in our conception of the word.
It lacked the sublimity of Isaiah’s conception and
the definiteness of that of Moses. There was
naturally a great deal of darkness clinging about
it, but his ideas of duty and religion and worship
were far higher than entered the thoughts of a
Vedic or Brahmanic sage. The rite of Blood Covenant,
universal in the Semitic tribes, he felt divinely
impelled to offer Godward; and the same impulse is
said to have led him to offer in proof of his allegiance
to his unseen and almighty Friend the sacrifice of his
only son. But there was unmistakably imparted by
Abraham to the ancient rite of circumcision a far
higher and more spiritual idea, and it is noteworthy
that while the spiritual part of his awful sacrifice
was accepted, the slaying of the son was rejected,
with the effect of stamping, in the very morning
of Hebrew history, the Divine abhorrence upon
that form of propitiation to which the unrestrained
instinct of man has everywhere been prone. His
worship, his sacrifice, his whole service, instead of
being regarded as a means of making Deity serviceable
// File: 121.png
.pn +1
to man, or of raising man to the comfortable
condition of Deity, meant the surrender of the
heart and of the whole life to His will, not as only
mightier, but juster and more merciful than he was
himself, and therefore perfectly worthy of trust
and love. And so it is plain that whether the patriarchs
represent a race fallen because of sin, from
purer knowledge and more intimate communion
with God, or one providentially educated from the
very lowest animalism, they indicate a religious
stage to which the greatest things became possible.
They are stammering at least the glorious Name,
comprised in three letters, whose significance millennial
ages of study can never exhaust. They
believe in God, who, behind and beyond Nature,
and greater than it, is revealing Himself as one
infinitely worthy of their allegiance and adoration,
and their faith becomes righteousness.

When we reach the Mosaic period we find that
though clouds and darkness are round the throne
of the Eternal, the light that streams from it into
the minds of men reveals, just more clearly, the
same one living and true God. According to the
Book of Origins, a period of four hundred and eighty
years separated the patriarchal from the Mosaic age,
and during that period the Hebrew tribes had
first been sheltered, and then for long enslaved, by
the most civilised of all peoples in the ancient
// File: 122.png
.pn +1
world. Astonished by the grandeur of Egypt,
they at last succumbed to its religion; and while
oppression in the pent-up Egyptian cities deteriorated
fearfully their physical condition, slavery and
idolatry wrought with terrible effect upon their
character. They came out of Egypt a cowardly
horde, leprous in body, childish and brutish in
their disposition. Their children however entered
Palestine, more than a generation after, a powerful
and consolidated and victorious force, whose fear
was upon all the surrounding tribes; and their
annals ascribe all this to revival and reformation
due to Divine revelation and training under the
plastic genius of one of Egypt’s wisest men, and
one of the greatest prophets of the human race.

The oldest Hebrew historian states that Moses
wrote two tables of the Covenant, and one entire,
though small, Book of Laws besides; and though
it were proved to universal satisfaction that he
never wrote anything else than the Ten Words,
and the preface[#]: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God is one,” it will be admitted that no one in
all the old world has ever contributed more than
he did to man’s stock of the highest of all knowledge.
The truth communicated by the patriarchs
in the word Creator was of supreme moment and
promise for the human race, for by it man was
// File: 123.png
.pn +1
saved from the sin and folly of confounding the
Deity with His works. The idea of a Creator occurs
indeed in the Vedas,[#] but not as an idea that
ever got hold of the popular mind, or ever ripened
into the conception of Creator which we have in
the Bible. The Brahman expounders of Vedic
thought made deity the sum of all that is, a being
that is ever becoming, a universe that is never
completed. The Hebrew, on the contrary, conceived
of the universe as God’s work—not God.
It was but a part of His ways, and as nothing
before Him. In the Indian creed emanation continues
indefinitely, and their sacred books record
a never-ending genesis. In the Hebrew Bible two
pages suffice to relate the genesis of the world and
man. Between the deities of the Vedas and the
Jehovah of Moses there is no natural progression,
and we never in any series, however prolonged,
can reach from the one to the other. The Indian
deities are simply one with Nature, and like its
// File: 124.png
.pn +1
forces they are multitudinous, capricious, evanescent;
but the Deity of Moses is One, Supreme,
Invisible, not to be likened to anything we can
see or hear—eternal as One who alone is, and
causes to be: “I Am that I Am!” The effect of
such a belief was to raise all men who learned of
Moses above the worship and tyranny of Nature,
before which so many of the tribes of mankind
have prostrated themselves. It made them regard
the animal creation especially as existing not for
their adoration but for their use; and Nature itself
and all its forces as powers to be studied, subdued,
and governed. The germs of man’s faith in his own
imperishableness, implanted from the first, began
to sprout the moment he found himself capable
of knowing and serving this Eternal and Invisible
One as the Author and Controller of his being.

Comparisons are often instituted between the
Mosaic ethical code and that of other religions,
with the view of showing that there is nothing
peculiar in it, and that instead of being fuller it
appears to be even defective when placed side by
side with some of them. The peculiarity of the
Mosaic code is in its first table, which nearly all
the others lack. The Mosaic is an interpretation
of the law written in men’s hearts by the light of
religion: it is the manifestation of religious truth
as the real foundation of ethics. Morality has so
// File: 125.png
.pn +1
long been associated with religion in our thought
that we speak at times as if it had been always
so; but among no ancient people, save among the
Hebrews, did any worshipper expect morality from
their deities. On the contrary, they conceived of
them as having all their own appetites and passions
and vices, so that as civilisation advanced men
were often far nobler and purer than the gods
which they worshipped. When we remember that
physiolatry, from its lowest to its highest form,
tolerates and even consecrates the vilest impurities
by its worship, we can realise what a new and
creative power was communicated when the conviction
had laid hold of man that Deity is one who
is Himself all that man ought to be, one who can
only be propitiated by righteousness and appeased
by truth. Human progress became not only possible
then, but it was secured. So pure an idea of
God meant a loftier idea of man. It involved the
poorest and the humblest of men in vast responsibilities,
and therefore it implied for them rights
and dignities equal to those of the highest of men;
for the supreme all-holy Lord God was no respecter
of persons, and the beggar on the dunghill was in
His eyes as precious as the prince upon the throne.[#]

From the period when Vedic speculation first
began its course to that in which it produced its
// File: 126.png
.pn +1
earliest Upanishad, these moral and spiritual truths
were not kept secret among the philosophic few,
but were prophesied in the gates and streets of
every Hebrew city. No one can say that they were
thankfully received and loyally obeyed by the
people of Israel; on the contrary, their whole
history represents the struggle of a stubborn and
rebellious race against a revelation too pure and
spiritual to be acceptable to them. Their religion
was always higher than themselves, but while
towering above them, it perpetually hovered round
them, contradicting their most cherished inclinations,
and condemning their most deeply rooted
habits. The invisible God, of whom no likeness
was to be tolerated, who was not to be worshipped
even in the greatest of His works, was too far removed
from their sympathies. It took centuries
of severe handling to uproot their strong tendency
to Nature-worship; yea, the Divine detestation of
it had to be branded in the national conscience
by their final overthrow. Eventually, however,
the truth got rooted in the mind of a “remnant”
of them that God is not to be worshipped under
any symbol, and cannot be enshrined in temples
made with hands; that the heaven of heavens
cannot contain Him; that in gifts and offerings He
takes no pleasure, but that He dwells with the
meek and lowly, and finds a pleasing sacrifice in
// File: 127.png
.pn +1
the contrite spirit and broken heart. The divinity
of the revelation seems attested by the fact that
it continued all throughout their history above
them, rebuking and condemning, but never suffering
them altogether to fall away from it. And
this is still its relation to ourselves: it is a creed
contradicting our life, a Divine law in direct
opposition to all that claims to be popular; for
where even yet is the Christian who can be said
fully to realise all that is summed up in the truth,
“God is not to be worshipped by man as though
He needed anything;” “God is a spirit, and they
that worship Him must worship Him in spirit
and in truth”?

The universality as well as the purity and
spirituality of this fundamental article of the
Hebrew faith separates it from and elevates it
above the Indian beliefs. Nature-worship has
always been local and ethnic in its range; the
gods of the hills are not the gods of the valleys,
and the deities of Assyria command no reverence
in Egypt. To the Hebrew was first communicated
the catholic faith that the one Lord over all is
rich in mercy unto all. The treasure was received,
it is true, in an earthen vessel, by a people who
could only apprehend as children what we are
expected to hold in the comprehensions of men.[#]
// File: 128.png
.pn +1
In patriarchal times by the people generally the
One Lord was conceived of too much as just the protector
of the family. In Mosaic times the great and
terrible God who avenged Himself on Egypt was
thought of too much as the champion of the tribes.
Under David and the kings He was too much the
sovereign of the nation and of the Holy Land;
and so it was down to the times of the Captivity.
All throughout this period, however, there were
perpetual protests against this attempt to ethnicise
a faith essentially catholic. They were reminded
that the Holy One was Lord over all the earth;
that though they were a peculiar people, they were
not His only people. The prophets of other nations
were brought to testify to them; their own prophets
were sent to warn the heathen that they should not
die. All through their history they were admonished
that their gift was too large for their little nation to
contain; that it was theirs only in proportion as
it was imparted or shared, and that as a nation they
could only exist if all nations were blessed in them.

Alas however for them, all this seemed in vain
// File: 129.png
.pn +1
in its effect upon the nation at large; the treasure
was forgotten in their estimate of the vessel; their
own destiny loomed largest in their conceptions of
Providence. It was not the holy Lord God who was
to have universal dominion, but they His favourites,
and therefore their king would reign over all lands
and keep his feet on the neck of their foes. Out
of this fatal error, and out of the childish superstition
akin to it, that material prosperity was the
sole or chief reward of devotion, came all their
unbelief and apostasy, and so when the succession
of prophets had in vain testified to them that the
Lord alone was to be exalted—that before Him, not
before them, must all peoples bow,—the threatenings
long uttered were fulfilled: the nation was
shattered, its palladium, the temple, was destroyed,
and they were driven beyond the Euphrates.

Then however ensued a course of events which
must be regarded as among the greatest surprises
of history; for just when they and their religion
might have been expected to vanish as completely
as the ten tribes previously deported had vanished,
they are found to be preserved; and the worship of
Jehovah, instead of being extinguished by the dominant
worship of Babylon, is seen to emerge in the
course of two generations more vigorous and considerably
purer than ever it had been before. It was
during the Exile that the real nature of the religion
// File: 130.png
.pn +1
of Israel, as one adapted and destined to enlighten
and sanctify far more than a single people, began
to be truly discerned.[#] The Jewish people had a
great deal to learn from Babylon and Persia, and
they returned to their own land with clearer conceptions
of immortality, the resurrection, the spiritual
world and judgment to come, than any of their
forefathers had gained. Scholars, however, who
enlarge upon their indebtedness to their conquerors,
seem to forget how much they had to communicate
to them. In the psalms of the pre-Exilian period,
and in the doctrines of Moses and the prophets,
they carried with them a treasure richer than the
whole wisdom of the East. So though they learned
much from Babylon, they also learned in it to
appreciate the gifts which they had previously
despised. Sorrow and penitence helped to clear
their spiritual vision, and prepared them for the
prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah. They
learned that though banished from the Holy Land
they were not thereby cast out—as their fathers
imagined—from the presence of Jehovah; that,
though the temple had been destroyed and sacrifice
had been suspended, God could still be worshipped
with sincerity and truth. The teachings of their
prophets brought home with conviction to them
// File: 131.png
.pn +1
the oracles of their earlier seers, that obedience was
better than sacrifice, and contrition than sin-offering,—“that
he that doeth repentance, it is imputed
to him as if he went to Jerusalem, built a temple and
altar, and wrought all the sacrifices of the law.”[#]

With the destruction of the temple there arose
the synagogue, which, with its reading of the Law
and the Prophets, its chanting of the Psalms, its
offering of prayer, and the giving heed to the voices
of the elders, represented a far higher and more
spiritual service than temple courts reeking with
sacrifices and steaming with incense. It is true
that they were still fascinated by the material
splendours of the former days; for after their
return they restored Jerusalem, rebuilt the temple,
and re-appointed its services. A revival led to
a reformation, which, following the old lines as
closely as possible, assumed the form of a retrogression
rather than advance. The new energies
of the nation were repressed by a Levitical domination
as rigid and intolerant as Brahmanism
ever was in India. It was not the spirit of the
Living God but the hand of the long dead Moses
that was to rule their conscience and mould their
history. The consequence was just what might
have been anticipated. Human nature revolted
from subjugation to a system which had served
// File: 132.png
.pn +1
its day. Religion, where it was earnest, stiffened
into formalism, and formalism in many cases congealed
into hypocrisy, and, as inevitably happens,
intellect raised its protest against this irreligious
religion in many anti-religious and even atheistic
forms. Meanwhile synagogues rose all over the
land, promoting doctrine rather than ritual, stimulating
rather than repressing discussion, and thus
conserving and propagating the truths that prepared
the ways of the Lord. Only a handful
however, had returned; the majority of the exiles
prospered and multiplied, and, unlike the ten
tribes, were not absorbed among the Gentiles.
At the beginning of the Christian era, for one Jew
living in Palestine there would be a hundred
living beyond it, not only in Babylonia, but in
Greece, and Egypt, and Italy, and all over the Empire.
There were many Jews in Spain, in Britain,
and in the dark territories beyond the Danube; and
though they adapted themselves to foreign ways,
and became all things to all men, in regard to
their religion and their intimate connection with
Jerusalem they still continued to be Jews.[#]
As their nationality declined their faith arose.
By and by, not content with the heathen toleration
for their religion as only one of the many
in the world, they began to spread it abroad.
// File: 133.png
.pn +1
Judaism, with the temple and the Levitical law,
would in Palestine eventually have petrified, but
the Diaspora, with the Synagogue and the Septuagint,
enabled Israel to play their proper parts as
the religious teachers of mankind. Proselytism
gradually became very vigorous and successful;
devout men and women everywhere, unable to
find peace of conscience in the intoxicating and
demoralising rites of Pagan temples, turned from
them to take hold of the skirts of the man who
was a Jew. In a manner and to an extent which
even the youthful Isaiah never could have dreamed,
Jerusalem began to attract out of every nation
under heaven the kind of people who were found
in its streets at Pentecost,—Parthians and Medes,
and dwellers in Pontus and Arabia, and the eunuch
of far distant Ethiopia.[#]

As we have noticed the highest outcome of
Vedic thought in pursuit of Atman, let us also
notice the highest development of Hebrew belief
in their hope of Messiah, whose germs are traceable
in their faith from the first. For example,
one of the earliest and most lasting effects of their
conception of Deity was the conviction of their
own unworthiness and inability to live in the
presence of the holy God. Though they were to
// File: 134.png
.pn +1
be a kingdom of priests for other nations, they
dared not enter into the relationship which priest
implied. They required a mediator like Moses,
who could speak to the Holy One for them, and
receive for them His message. Their whole worship
was based on this feeling, and the purer and
higher rose their conceptions of God, the more
intense became their self-abasement. Between
Him and the noblest of His creatures there was
an impassable gulf. Though He was far, far off
from them, He was far too near—so near that they
could not go anywhither from His presence, and
yet in their dread there was a yearning to come
near to Him and to see Him face to face. The
Brahman aspired to lose himself in the Absolute,
in the pure light of characterless knowledge; the
Hebrew, mastered by the personality of God,
longed to see Him as He is. And never more
earnest was this longing in the Hebrew to behold
the beauty of the Lord, and to be satisfied with
His likeness, than in the times of his deepest self-humiliation
and keenest contrition. “I pray Thee,
pardon the <i>iniquity</i> of Thy people;” “I beseech
Thee, show us Thy <i>glory</i>;” “and these two pangs
so counter and so keen,” shame and reverence
akin to dread, aspiring love, were to prove not
only the purification of their own faith, but the
birth-throe of a better hope for the world.
// File: 135.png
.pn +1

For their dread and shame sprang from their
consciousness of their own evil, and their aspiration
from an instinct which whispered that evil, though
deeply ingrained in, was not essential to the being
of man. Their sense of sin was very poignant,
more so than in the case of any other people. The
Hindus had a conception of merit, but a very poor
and weak conception of sin. They were more impressed
by life’s suffering than by the taint of which
it was only the consequence. But the Hebrews
felt the shame and the curse of that taint as no
people ever felt it. They had quite a vocabulary
to express the many shades and degrees of the
feeling of it; yet in their speculations they were
led to believe that this taint was not inherent in
their nature nor ineradicable from it. There was a
time when sin was not; there might be a time when
it would not be. The dominion of evil was an interlude,
and though terribly prolonged in human experience,
it might have an end. That was the central
ideal of the Fall which they pictured on the first
page of their Bible, and conserved in their seventh-day
Sabbath.[#] In the fact of man’s creation they
// File: 136.png
.pn +1
felt that his redemption was involved, and so the
Hebrew dread of and longing for God were reconciled
by a hope that though to man belongeth
shame, to God belongeth mercy as the God of
salvation. There was another and a better covenant
than that which had been concluded with their
ancestors at Sinai, or with the first father of their
tribes long before. It was made not with Moses or
Abraham for Israel, but for all nations with a Divine
Mediator, who, behind all that was of man, though
yet the seed of the woman, would, in a way that
neither Moses nor any of the prophets could understand,
eventually make an end of sin.

The history and the literature of the Hebrews
would be a perplexing enigma without this hope.
Like their faith, it was too pure and spiritual for
them to receive, and to the very latest it always
appears with something of the defilement of their
religious condition clinging to it. During the
Exile, however, this hope became purer and
stronger, and the imagery in which they embodied
it became more evangelical and spiritual than that
employed by earlier poets and prophets. The
section of the Hebrews that returned to Palestine
held it in increased strength, but with the old
national taint upon it. Their own restoration and
// File: 137.png
.pn +1
the favour of Persia kindled anew the foolish
dreams of their ancestors, and, alas! when Persia
disappointed them, and its favour was supplanted
by oppression, and the kingdom, instead of rising
Phœnix-like out of its ashes, became the battlefield
or the gage of foreign nations, there broke out
in Palestine the bitterest plague of unbelief and
apostasy that had ever assailed the nation. For
idolatry, for overlaying or corrupting the worship
of Jehovah, their forefathers had often been severely
chastised, but no prophet had as yet complained of
a temple deserted and an altar defiled by unworthy
offerings. And this was because men professed to
have discovered in the destruction of their national
hopes that after all religion was vain, and there was
no profit in serving God.

Any one who has intelligently read Malachi, or
the sayings of Agur the proverb-collector,[#] or the
Book of Ecclesiastes, will see to what a depth of
scepticism, if not indeed of atheism, their perverted
Messianic hopes had brought the Jews of Palestine.
We appreciate the criticism which regards Coheleth,
so alien to the healthy and joyous spirit of the
Hebrew religion, as the natural outgrowth of this
period.[#] When faith in Israel’s imperishable kingdom
// File: 138.png
.pn +1
seemed to be completely wrecked, when ministers
of religion led the revolt from it, and unrighteous
rulers and corrupt society made life in Palestine, as
in Rome in Nero’s day, not worth the living, it is
not to be wondered that this one which has survived,
but that “many books”[#] should have been
written to echo the cry, “All is vanity.” We may
listen to it as a note of despair from a pessimist in
whose people religion had died, because disappointed
political ambition had shown them that “no earthly
good” came of serving God; or we may read it as
the protest of some healthy-minded Jew against
that orthodox asceticism which after the Captivity
invaded religion, and led to the rise of Pharisaism
and Essenism. In any case, it seems to mark the
proper close in Palestine of an age of national
perverted faith and hope. The Essenes like the
Indian ascetics had hope neither for the nation’s
recovery nor for the establishment anywhere of a
kingdom of God. The Pharisees, on the contrary,
had hope, but it was the old political hope, and in
them, though Egyptian and Syrian and Greek
and Roman had trodden the nation under foot, and
though the Maccabees had suffered and poured out
their blood in vain, it seemed to grow stronger and
stronger. Ready to believe any impostor, and to
rise at the faintest call, their fanaticism more than
// File: 139.png
.pn +1
once betrayed the people into ineffectual and most
sanguinary revolts; but it had one result that was
not wholly evil, for they drew after them the multitudes
to the desert, when the thunder of the
Baptist’s cry reached Jerusalem, “The kingdom of
God is at hand.”[#]

So was it in Palestine; but among the Diaspora
all over the Empire the hope of Messiah assumed
a purer and more catholic form. Everywhere it
was strong, but the broader horizons by which
they were surrounded saved them from the delusions
which intoxicated the Palestinian Jew. In
classical literature there are tokens that it had
filtered into Gentile minds. It was undoubtedly
vague and shadowy even at its brightest, but in
the Sibyl and Pollio its fulfilment signified something
more important than a successful revolution
in Palestine. It meant mighty changes impending
that would bring good to all the world, the augury
of a star that would soon glimmer in the eastern
horizon, and grow and brighten till it would be
seen to be not a light for Asia only, but the Sun of
Righteousness with healing in His beams for every
nation under heaven.

We have thus been following two lines of
// File: 140.png
.pn +1
religious movement, perfectly independent of each
other, far apart geographically, still further apart in
the beliefs which inspired them. We have seen
how the melody of joy and health which the Indians
brought with them from our common primeval home
ended in a sigh of despair. Individual existence,
at first so full of wonder and delight, lost soon
its freshness and glory, and came to be felt to be
such a burden that emancipation from it by absorption
into the Absolute was hailed as a boon. The
human mind, leaving its childhood behind it, and
advancing to question itself and the universe, after
a season of movement and sense of freedom and
power, somehow lost or missed the way. Oppressed
in the toils of the jungle, and wandering ever
further from practical life as it proceeded, it lay
down vanquished, longing only to be at rest and in
quiet as infants that never saw the light.

The other line of development marks not the
course of a speculation, but the growth of a faith
laying hold of mankind with creative and transforming
power. This faith, never dissociated from,
but seeking to dominate and reform actual life,
condemned inertion, and fostered hope for a race
working out its salvation, because convinced that
God is working in them both to will and to do.
We see a light streaming from above into the
darkness of man, paining and blinding at first the
// File: 141.png
.pn +1
organs which it seeks to purify. We see a struggle
on the part of the creatures to bring the Most High
down to their level, and make Him their servant,
and a striving of the Divine Spirit to train them as
children. We see a mighty Hand laid ever on a
peculiar people, at times so softly that they hardly
felt it, at times with conscious guiding and sustaining
power; at times chastising them sorely by the
sword of the enemy and the heart-hunger of exile,
but never giving them over unto death. Not for
forty years, but for twice forty generations we see
Him leading and humbling and proving them, till in
the souls of the aptest—though only “a remnant”
of them—He had rooted ideals of human destiny
which never can perish. Then, that all might be
ready in the fulness of time, He scattered them
among the nations, and lo! when required they
are everywhere, crying in the crowded capitals of
the East and of the West, in the darkness of the
North and the brightness of the South, “Prepare
ye in the desert an highway for the Lord.”

.fn #
Introduction to <lang=fr><i>Le Bouddha et sa Religion</i></lang>; Paris, 1858.
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, Introd. to <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>A.</abbr> Burnell, <i>Indian Antiq.</i>, 1880, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 223, quoted by <abbr=Professor>Prof.</abbr> Max
Müller in Introduction to <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Frankfurter, Appendix to Wordsworth’s Bampton Lectures for
1881; <i>The One Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 340; Eitel <i>Lectures on Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 44;
Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 232.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Professor>Prof.</abbr> Max Müller, Introduction to <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxvii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>A. E.</abbr> Gough, <i>Philosophy of the Upanishads, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 5; Trübner’s
Oriental Series.
.fn-
.fn #
This statement is hazarded, notwithstanding the recent reply of
the author of <i>Supernatural Religion</i> to Bishop Lightfoot’s Essays. It
will be generally conceded that he has adopted an untenable position,
and that, though his rejoinder to the learned Bishop may be a vigorous
assault, it is weak criticism. Sanday’s work on <i>The Gospels in the
Second Century</i> is on the whole a better reply than the Bishop’s to
the allegations of the author of <i>Supernatural Religion</i>, whose extreme
scepticism of literary evidence is quite equalled by his dogmatic extravagance
of statement.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr><i>Vie de Jésus</i></lang>, <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xv, xvii</abbr>, <abbr=fourth>4th</abbr> <abbr=edition>ed.</abbr>; Paris, 1863.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Science de Religions</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 12, 20.
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Max Müller, Introd. to Dhammapada, <i>Sacred Books of
the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xiii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 37; <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 27.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavansa, by Turnour; Dipavansa, <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr> 20, quoted by Professor
Max Müller in <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volumes>vols.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxiv</abbr>, and <abbr rend=arabic>xiii.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxxv</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhist Birth Stories</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>lvii</abbr>; Trübner’s Oriental Series.
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, <i>Indian Literature</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 294; <i>ibid.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
We may safely assert that in the mass of Buddhist literature
already available nothing has been found, nor is anything at all likely
to be found, corresponding in character and evidential value to the
Christian Scriptures. What would the New Testament have been, asks
Professor Müller, “if the spurious Gospels, the pseudo-apostolic and post-apostolic
productions, the debates of the Councils, the commentaries of
the Fathers, and the lives of the saints, had all been bound and mixed
up with it”? (<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>, <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> <abbr=fifteen>xv</abbr>, <abbr=sixteen>xvi</abbr>.)
And yet this is a parallel to the confusion represented by the so-called
Buddhist Bible. In truth, it is not a Bible, but a library, containing
not only the earliest treatises, but the commentaries upon them made
in later ages, and extracts and repetitions from itself so extensive and
numerous that were they omitted this portentous collection—four times
as voluminous as our Christian Bible—would be found to be much
shorter than it. When the original Bible of Buddhism has been disinterred
from this pile it will be found to resemble almost in nothing our
New Testament, but it may present many analogies to the Talmud and
Targums, and perhaps some very interesting resemblances to isolated
portions of the Old Testament. As far as it has been translated to us,
the Tripitaka contain neither prophecy nor history; but one division of
it presents suggestive coincidences with portions of the apocryphal Scriptures;
and scholars may find a comparison of some of the texts of Job,
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes with those of the Dhammapada and some of
the Suttas an agreeable and not unprofitable study, without in the
least being tempted to transfer their allegiance from the Hebrew to the
Indian sages.
.fn-
.fn #
Eitel, <i>Lectures on Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 6; Hunter, “Historical Aspects
of Indian Geography,” <i>Scot. Geog. Mag.</i>, <abbr=December>Dec.</abbr> 1888.
.fn-
.fn #
Rogers, <i>Superhuman Origin of the Bible</i>, Lecture <abbr=five>v</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Max Müller, <i>Introduction to the Science of Religion</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 103.
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Müller, Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 564.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Record of Missionary Conference in London</i>, 1888, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 39;
also his <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 558.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr><i>Le Génie des Religions.</i></lang>
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipata, translated by Fausböll in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of
the East</i>, Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 23, 76, 109, 113.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>, <i>ibid.</i> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 40. We are also reminded that a
man is not a Bikkhu because he puts on yellow robes, unless he has
cleansed himself from evil (Dhammapada, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 9, 10).
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 5, 145.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 162, 163.
.fn-
.fn #
Émile Burnouf, <lang=fr><i>Science de Religions</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 24.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Monsieur>M.</abbr> Vivien de <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Martin, <lang=fr><i>Mémoires sur les contrées occidentales</i>.</lang>
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 10.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Tylor, <i>Primitive Culture</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 338; Weber, <i>Indian Literature</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 38; Sir Monier Williams, <i>Religious Thought and Life in India</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 18.
.fn-
.fn #
See Satapatha-Brâhmana, translated by Professor Eggeling in <abbr=volumes>vols.</abbr>
<abbr rend=arabic>xii.</abbr> and <abbr rend=arabic>xxvi.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>. Max Müller places the age
of these books within the ninth and seventh centuries <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Quinet, <lang=fr><i>Le Génie des Religions</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 185; Paris, 1857.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Religious Thought and Life in India</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 24,
referring to the Aitareya-Brahmana, <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 13.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 15; <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert
Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 25.
.fn-
.fn #
Gough, <i>Philosophy of the Upanishads</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 41, 42.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volumes>vols.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> and <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr> No one has dated any of
the Upanishads earlier than 600 <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, and some of them are very late.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>lxvi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Svetâsvatara-Upanishad, <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 7, <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 14, 16, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 13, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 7, 9, <i>Sacred
Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 47, 48; Gough, <i>Phil. Upan.</i> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 61, 67.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 28.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>History of Israel</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 41, 47.
.fn-
.fn #
Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 563.
.fn-
.fn #
It is significant that in the beginning of the Bible Nature-worship
seems stamped as accursed in its symbol, the serpent, and that the whole
Bible from beginning to end is a Divine protest against that worship in
all its forms. Mankind in all ages is tempted to become as the gods,
and in a low condition he has almost everywhere succumbed to the
temptation. He feasts his gods, compels them to serve him, is really
higher than they, and thus he degrades himself or falls from the ideal of
one made in the image and after the likeness of God.
.fn-
.fn #
Ewald, <i>History of Israel</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 320-322.
.fn-
.fn #
Some ascribe it to the Deuteronomist, <abbr=chapter>ch.</abbr> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 4.
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Müller finds the first traces of a Maker or Creator in the
Vedic deity Tvashtar, the carpenter—the clever workman, even smith,
forging bolts for Indra therein, Rig-Ved. <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 55. 19. “Tvashtar, the
enlivener, endowed with many forms, has nourished the creatures and
produced them in many ways; all these worlds are his.” Of another
god, latterly called Pragâpati, he quotes Rig-Ved. <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 81. 2, as one who,
“creating the earth, disclosed the sky by his power.” Very significantly,
however, he reminds us that the same poet loses the idea, and speaks
of the secret of creation as undiscoverable.—Müller’s <i>Natural Religion</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 245. Also Introd. to Upanishads, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxiv.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Fairbairn, <i>Religion in History and in the Life of To-day</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 39-51.
.fn-
.fn #
It was only by their very highest and greatest souls that the Godhead
was conceived in anything of its spiritual glory. To Abraham God
was the Creator, distinct from and greater than the earth and heavens
which He had made; to Moses He was a righteous Lawgiver, training
upon eagle-wings a peculiar people; to David He was a tender and wise
Shepherd of a foolish and helpless flock; to Isaiah and the later prophets
a Father dealing with rebellious people, whom He pities, knowing
whereof they were made. These conceptions, however, cannot be said
to have been those of the mass of the people.
.fn-
.fn #
Kuenen, <i>National Religions and Universal Religion</i>, Hibbert
Lectures, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 187.
.fn-
.fn #
Edersheim, <i>Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 275.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Josephus>Jos.</abbr> <i>Contra Ap.</i> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 30. 32; <i>Antiq.</i> <abbr rend=arabic>xviii.</abbr> 1. 1; <i>Jewish Wars</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 8.
.fn-
.fn #
Uhlhorn, <i>Conflict of Christianity</i>, <abbr=chapters>chaps.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr>; <abbr=Josephus>Jos.</abbr> <i>Antiq.</i> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
9. 1, and 11. 3, and <i>Contra Ap.</i> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 10. 39; Kuenen, <i>Religion of Israel</i>,
<abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 273 <i>seq.</i>; Renan, <i>Les Apôtres</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 253, 260.
.fn-
.fn #
The truth on which the Sabbath is founded is the majestic truth of
a completed creation, and one conform to the latest discoveries of
science. During the whole course of human observation no new creative
effort has been displayed in the production of a new type. The animal
and vegetable worlds stand to-day as man first beheld them. The
creative spirit has passed into the soul of man, in whose world is the
progress which nature has long ceased to manifest, and under whose
handling nature itself improves. But God, though resting from His
works of creation, is not in Scripture said to be resting from His works
of mercy: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
.fn-
.fn #
“The words of Agur the son of Jakeh,” Proverbs <abbr rend=arabic>xxxi.</abbr> 1.
.fn-
.fn #
Hüber, <lang=de><i>Der Pessimismus</i></lang>, 1876, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 8; Holdheim, Preface to
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> of <i>Predigten</i>, quoted by Cheyne, <i>Job and Solomon</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 250-253.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Ecclesiasticus>Eccles.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xii.</abbr> 12.
.fn-
.fn #
Edersheim, <i>Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 276;
Keim, <i>Jesus of Nazara</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 316-325; Kuenen, <i>Religion of Israel</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 177.
.fn-
// File: 142.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=lecture-3
LECTURE <abbr=three>III.</abbr> | THE BUDDHA OF THE PITAKAS: THE CHRIST OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
.sp 2
The condition of Palestine and the progress of
events in it at the beginning of the Christian era,
are set in the clear light of history, and defined by
an accurate chronology. To the superficial observer
it appeared to be a prosperous land, for it was
fertile and carefully tilled, populous, and, in the
northern regions especially, teeming with the fruits
of industry. It had reached the commercial stage
of civilisation, and everywhere, in well-built cities
adorned with palatial buildings, many of them the
abodes of merchants who rivalled the Italian nobles
and Herodian princes in the costliness of their
manner of living, it yielded indications of the
luxury which successful commerce brings in its
train. But as always happens when wealth
abounds in a land, there was a corresponding
amount of poverty. While the rich were lavishing
fortunes upon selfish and gigantic follies, an increasing
// File: 143.png
.pn +1
multitude, born and bred in squalor, were
struggling for very existence. In the days of the
Son of Man their numbers were vastly increased
by political troubles which disturbed trade and
depressed agriculture. So to an eye that looked
beneath the surface this seemingly prosperous
Palestine was diseased and in a dangerous condition,
for pauperism and discontent were rapidly maturing
the seeds of anarchy, and preparing for the successive
revolutions in which so many perished before
the Roman eagles swept down upon the carcass
of a State politically dead, because morally and
socially corrupt.

Under the Herodian dominion, secured as it had
been by the destruction of an illustrious royal house
and the sacrifice of their bravest patriots, the sympathies
of the people revolted from the throne to
cluster for a time around the temple; but just as
the dignity of the office of the high priest was
rising in their estimation, successive nominations
to it by the king and procurator of men odious to
the good turned the tide in a different direction.
The hierarchy was represented by the Sadducees, a
party small in number and far from popular.
Though wearing names of ancient and honoured
families, they were obviously careless alike of the
sanctuary and of the interests of the nation. Strict
observers of the law of their Davidic ancestor, they
// File: 144.png
.pn +1
rejected the prevalent interpretations of it, and all
the new-fangled doctrines concerning angels and
spirits, and the resurrection of the just, which had
been formulated since the Exile. Especially opposed
to the belief that the keeping of the law would
procure for a man recompence in a future state,
they held that the law must be kept to the letter
just because it was God’s will, even though the
soul died with the body. Their wealth and position
as the aristocracy brought them into connection
with the representatives of the great foreign powers
of the times, whose manners and fashions they
copied; but the nearer they drew to the Roman
and Asmonean nobility the further they drew
apart from the people whom they never pretended
to love, and who, equally alienated, regarded them
with similar dislike.

Withdrawn from the temple, the affections of
people were freely given to the synagogue leaders as
the representatives and fosterers of the national ideals
and hopes. In these days every small town had its
synagogue, while in Jerusalem alone there were said
to be four hundred and eighty. These were not only
places of worship, but schools in which the Law was
made the common possession of all without distinction,
and also arenas for exciting discussion, in which
was nursed that love of dialectics to which so many
striking analogies exist both in India and Greece.
// File: 145.png
.pn +1
They were dominated by the Scribes, the sole
copiers for the ever increasing synagogues of the
ancient Scriptures, and the true interpreters of the
law. Pedantic and self-important though they
generally were, they were revered so by the people
for their piety and gifts that from them were
chiefly selected the members of the court of the
Sanhedrim, which represented all that was left to
the nation of executive power. Their Cabbala,
revealing the secret doctrines to be found in
names, of which we have specimens in the
writings of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul,[#] and the mystic significance
of numbers, of which we have traces in the Apocalypse,
may be only interesting now as curiosities,
but we must never forget that they rendered
undying service to the world in preserving from
corruption, by many arts carefully studied and
applied, the texts of Holy Scripture.[#]

The Pharisees, the Nazarites of the nation as their
name implies, the democratic antagonists of the aristocratic
Sadducees, the staunch opponents of the
Gentile, the believers in the coming kingdom of the
just, were deservedly the most popular of all the
religious sects in Palestine. More liberal than the
Sadducees in their interpretation of the law in its
// File: 146.png
.pn +1
bearing upon the people, they never thought of exacting
for faults or transgressions the ancient penalties;
but they were far more severe in their personal
observance of it.[#] To the mass of them it was a
ladder by which they might climb into the kingdom
of heaven; and out of it, to make sure of this end,
they evolved a most comprehensive system of bye-laws,
as sacred to them as the original precepts by
which every action and word and relation of life
was regulated. Pharisaism was just Brahmanism,
and though more ethically applied it was in its
spirit and aim as selfish. Bent only upon accumulating
merit, in character it became eventually as
morally impure. Forgetting in their attention to
petty details the weightier obligations of life, disregarding
their neighbours that they might provide
for their own recompence, the Pharisees became as
a class so corrupt as to draw upon them the most
scathing of all the denunciations of our Lord.

More Pharisaic than the Pharisees, said to be
an offshoot or secession from them, the Essenes in
their desert communities sought by the worship
of Jehovah in the spirit of the prophets, and yet
apparently by prayers to the sun, and by an ascetic
and celibate life, to deliver the immortal soul from
material impurity, to educate it to enjoy the
beatific vision, and to prophesy the secret things
// File: 147.png
.pn +1
of the future. In these communities of pious
people, the very flower of Judaism,[#] the only ray
of light in the deepening darkness, some may be
pardoned in professing to find the dawn of Christianity—not
in its external arrangements, but its
inward dispositions and beliefs. In its avowal that
morality was superior to legal observance, in its
endeavour to prepare the mind by calm to receive
the Divine instruction, in its sabbatic sanctification
of all days of the week, in its estimate of all work
as religious, and of every meal as sacramental, it
pre-intimated the teaching of the coming gospel;
but while its arrangements may have suggested the
monastic institutions of Christendom, we can never
regard it as the matrix of Christianity. Its life
was just the last flickering ray of Judaism, a bright
gleam irradiating the features of a moribund age,
but not that of a new birth with promise of a
mighty future. It was not the rush of a new force
into the battle of the redemption of humanity, but
the <lang=fr><i>sauve qui peut</i></lang> of a rout which it believed to
be universal. As pessimist as Brahmanism in its
views of life, though more Buddhist than Brahman
in its methods, its aim was the same—that of
rescuing the individual from a world nigh unto
perdition and really not worth the saving.[#]

In the virtuous Pharisee and the pious Essene
// File: 148.png
.pn +1
Judaism found its best representatives;[#] but at
most there were only six thousand Pharisees[#] and
four thousand Essenes[#] in all the nation, and, alas!
the majority of the Pharisees were not sincere;
and the Essenes, though really in earnest, had
abandoned the nation to its fate. Among the
religious classes piety and morality had become
so dissociated that a man who in the matter of
belief or of worship would strain at a gnat,
might in practice without condemnation swallow
a camel. The result of this fatal divorce between
creed and conduct was seen in a social corruption
which augured everywhere the gathering
of the storm-clouds of retribution. At that time
Greece was dead, and what was best in its spirit
had passed into Alexandria. There, blending with
the more robust spirit of the Hebrew religion, it
was forming that Hellenism which, though it never
could account for the origin, was yet powerfully to
influence the unfolding of our religion. In Hellenism
we have the natural resultant of the conflux of
Eastern and Western thought, which, according to
some, will explain the birth of Christianity. In it
certainly the Aryan and the Semite were seen contributing
their very best thoughts, and the product
// File: 149.png
.pn +1
was—Philo; but Philo-Judæus is neither <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul
nor <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John, and the Christ of the Gospels is further
beyond him than the heavens are above the earth.

In Alexandria Greece might be said to live,
but Rome was hopelessly dying. Drunk with the
cup of the sorceries of all nations, embruted with
every lust, it was staggering to a doom which
neither law, even the best conceived and most
thoroughly administered, nor philosophy, even the
wisest and most consistently illustrated, could
avert. The civilisation of the Western world was
marvellous: it was a world not only of poets and
artists, of brave soldiers and subtle statesmen,
but of sound moralists too; but civilisation, powerless
to save, could only cover with broidered robes
the leprous body, or adorn with golden trappings
its bier, and morality could not restore what
was sick unto death. When Rome and Palestine
were alike corrupt, there was no hope for the
world in man; yet when all help in man faileth,
there never lacketh help in God, and so, just when
the night was blackest, and despair had seized on
all save a few aged people in the courts of Zion,
and a few thoughtful Magi in the distant East, lo!
over a Babe in the cattle-crib of a leewan in Bethlehem
was descried the shining of the Star of Hope.

When we turn from Palestine to the holy land
of Magadha, the cradle of Buddhism in the sixth
// File: 150.png
.pn +1
century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, we find no light of history streaming
upon it. All is dim and shadowy, with no chronology
to define events, and no incidents to distinguish
personalities. It is like a land of dreams
to our modern conception, but it is not a chaos.
We can trace to a certain extent movements in it,
and as we follow them there emerges in outline
sufficiently clear a real civilisation, which, though
lacking the stir and endeavour, the commerce and
the art of the West, and really inferior to it, is
yet most interesting in its pathetic resemblances,
and all the more instructive that its beliefs and
institutions were formed out of antecedents and
predispositions very different from any of which
the Western world had experience.

It is evident from the very cursory survey
already made that religious belief in India and in
the West must have passed through phases significantly
similar. In both it proceeded from faith
in a revealed system of truth—in India in the inspired
Vedas, in Palestine in the inspired oracles.
Human speculation in both cases was begotten,
and for long it was educated in faith in revelation,
then beginning to rationalise; in both cases it
unintentionally undermined what at first it only
endeavoured to explain. Turning from ancient
scrolls to the study of the book of human nature,
whose pages, though often tattered and defiled,
// File: 151.png
.pn +1
are always fascinating, it was staggered by the
contradiction between man’s ideals of goodness and
justice and the realities of human history. Out of
this collision arose the Promethean demand that
the divine powers that govern life “should either
explain or abdicate.” In Palestine this wrestle with
the inequalities of providence originated early, and
continued all along; but it was confined within
limits by faith in the personality of Deity as one
so infinitely greater than man that only a part of
His ways could be understood. Indian speculation
never reached the approaches to this idea of
God: it wandered into a Pantheism of a grosser
type than ever the West was acquainted with, and
once it reached that stage it could not stop. Just
as in Greece pantheism ripened into the materialism
of the Epicurean and the atheism of the Stoic,
so in India, even before the days of Gotama, may
have begun that open revolt against Deity, in the
perilous attempt of reason to explain by itself the
universe, with which his name has since then been
most closely associated.

The religious world in India in the times preceding
his birth, like the religious world of Palestine,
had a hierarchy represented by the Brahmans,
the indispensable functionaries in all sacrificial
services. Corresponding to the Scribes were the
Teviggi, the reciters and expounders of the sacred
// File: 152.png
.pn +1
and still unwritten books. The Rabbin had their
analogies in reforming Brahmans, who alone or in
communities that had gathered round them professed
to teach the higher discipline which could
secure deliverance. If a multitude of sects be an
indication of intellectual movement, there was as
much stir in Brahmanism as in Judaism. In the
Pali books there are mentioned as contemporaries of
Buddha six noted teachers of great schools, the
most formidable of whom, or at least the most
hated of his soul, was the head of an ascetic sect
which, like the Essenes, had renounced the world
to make good their own salvation. This Niggantha
sect, still represented in India by close upon half a
million of adherents in the district of Rajputana,
claims not only to have preceded the founder of
Buddhism by two hundred and fifty years, but to
have anticipated the essentials of his system.[#] Its
philosophical and ethical doctrines are almost in
accord with his, while its cosmogony and ritual
incline more towards those of Hinduism. Its adherents
apply to their founder the titles “Victor”
or Jina, and “Enlightened One” or Buddha,
which many imagine were ascribed solely to Gotama;
but whether Buddhism sprang from it or
gave birth to Jainism is a question still undecided.
// File: 153.png
.pn +1
The only solid fact as yet ascertained is that from
the earliest traceable period their mutual relations
are marked by that pronounced intolerance[#] which
prevails when kinsfolk quarrel.

Collision and antagonism between sects in India
was neither so sharp nor so fierce as in Palestine,
and Buddha ministered in conditions much more
favourable to the propagation of his system than did
Jesus Christ. The Sadducean opponents of Christ
represented a powerful hierarchy, the Pharisees a
popular democracy, and the Scribes an influential
Sanhedrim, with power of inflicting a sentence of
death. The Essenes never mingle in the scenes
of the Gospel, and it is questionable if they are
ever referred to in them. Over all and dominating
all was a most jealous and vigilant Roman despotism,
ever ready to turn even a religious quarrel to
its own account, so that it was the most natural
of things that an opposition thus represented should
nip, as it were, Christianity in the very bud by
crucifying its Founder. In Magadha, however, it
was otherwise. The broad distinction was between
Brahmans and Sramans,[#] the latter a general title
// File: 154.png
.pn +1
covering many secessions from Brahmanism, and
the popular favour was equally bestowed on both.
The Brahmans, though dominant, had not the
power, and to their credit do not seem to have had
the will, to persecute. It was not from them, but
from the scholastic and conceited Teviggi and
from the ascetic sects that Buddha encountered
most formidable opposition; and yet even in these
cases opposition was not rigid. It was a war not
of blows, but of words, in which an appeal to the
secular arm or to force was out of the question. A
new sect, therefore, especially one that had donned
the yellow robes and alms-bowl of the mendicant,
protesting against the debasing belief in the efficacy
of Brahmanic rites, or the virtue gained by extravagant
Yogi austerities, would obtain from the people
at large more favour than resistance or disdain.

The intellectual movement in India appears
thus to have been extensive and many-sided. In
the multitude of sects there is a guarantee for
freedom,[#] and competition in the proclamation of
truth is better than monopoly; but in religion, as
in trade, the competition of over-multiplying sects
tends to increase adulteration. So in early Buddhist
literature, while there is incontestable evidence of
// File: 155.png
.pn +1
the existence of honest instructors, there is also unquestionable
evidence of the abundance of quacks,
who trifled with truth simply to make a gain of
it, and of shallow but clever professionals, who
dealt with gravest themes in the spirit of the mere
debater.[#] So there, as in Palestine in the days of
Coheleth, through over-discussion the old faith was
rapidly evaporating. In the Brahmans, religion had
degenerated into formalism; in the Teviggi, into
traditionalism. In the philosophic Sramans it was
in many instances passing into blank atheism; and
among the ascetics, into despair. While this was
the condition of the learned and of the few, the
masses everywhere, like the Ammé Ha-árets in
Palestine, were wandering—no man caring for them—further
and further into the idolatries and sensualities
of Hinduism. Morality was perishing, the
writing on the heart was getting more indistinct,
and conscience becoming more confused. Then,
just as five centuries later, when faith was almost
gone, Christ came to restore it by communicating
new life, so when divine law was in danger of fading
from the consciousness of men, there arose one to
assert its eternal supremacy; preaching the creed
of Coheleth without his fear of God, and enforcing
the keeping of the commandments, not as expressed
in Vedas or interpreted in Brahmanas, but
// File: 156.png
.pn +1
as written in every fibre of the body and every
faculty of the being, as the only way to safety.

Who was he? Like the Author of Christianity,
he has had to contend, as it were, for the recognition
of his personal existence. Even to-day it is maintained
that neither Christ nor Buddha ever existed,
that they were merely incarnations of popular conceptions,
and that all the legends concerning them
can be reduced to a combination of anterior mythological
elements. These mythical theories, however,
in regard to the origin of Christianity, may
be considered among the curiosities of criticism;[#]
and in regard to the origin of Buddhism, though
more justified by the confessed uncertainty as to
dates, they have been satisfactorily dispelled as
another instance of refining overdone.[#] Brahmanism
and the successive phases of Hinduism can be
traced to no individual founder, but in investigating
the origin of Buddhism we breathe a very different
atmosphere. There is a human and moral character
about it which the other Indian religions lack:
something real as in Mosaism, and palpable as in
Islam.[#] We may rest assured that Buddhism had
for its founder a real person, and though our best
// File: 157.png
.pn +1
authorities have had to search for their facts
through a vast amount of fabulous materials, we may
accept the dates which they have approximately
fixed for his birth and death, and the outlines
which they have sketched of his life and ministry.

Gotama, a name still found among the Rajput
chiefs of Nagara, was born in the north-eastern
region of India, about a hundred miles from
Benares, about the year <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> 557. His father, a
Sakya, a name unknown in any native Indian
family, and said to indicate descent from a race
of northern nomad immigrants, was rajah of Kapila,
and his mother was a daughter of the family
of Koli.[#] His principalities, of very limited extent,
seem to have been eventually swallowed up by the
greater Indian monarchies, for when Fa-Hian visited
the country Kapila had become a vast solitude,
and there for ages its very name has perished from
the living speech of men. Even though his royal
pedigree be an embellishment of the later legends,
there seems no reason to doubt that his father was
noble and rich according to the standard of the
time, and sufficiently independent of Brahman domination
to train his son in his own way. It seems
not to have been in their studies, but in the exercises
befitting a warrior prince, that Gotama was
// File: 158.png
.pn +1
educated, though a disposition thoughtful and
melancholy, and strongly sympathetic, appears to
have disinclined him from such a mode of life.
Even as a youth the darker sides of existence
threw a shadow over him; the sufferings of mankind
were among his earliest impressions, and he
brooded over them till his mind, poisoned by the
contemplation of them, threw its gloom over everything
around him, and made the very air hang
heavy with the weight of woe.

To one driven as he was to the conclusion that
existence was a burden rather than a blessing,
death, according to the belief in which he had
been nurtured, could afford no relief; but hope
seemed to dawn for him as he thought of the
happy yellow-robed sages who, freed from his
horror, were tranquil and dignified, abstracted
alike from pleasure and pain. So after a period of
irresolution and struggle, in the very prime of his
manhood, he stole away from his wife and his new-born
child, and cast in his lot with the forest
recluses. Having lived some time with them, and
having found that their ascetic discipline failed
to satisfy his aspirations, he left them, and joined
two philosophic Brahmans, who taught him the
science of meditation in its lower and higher degrees.
Though he had profited so much by their
instruction and discipline that he rose in six years
// File: 159.png
.pn +1
from being a disciple to a teacher, he confessed
that he had not found by their methods the imperishable
and permanent quietude which he coveted.
So, abandoning all his disciples, he withdrew into
solitude, and plunged into fasting so rigorous that
he nearly destroyed himself; then, finding that the
secret of deliverance was not thus to be obtained,
he returned, amid the contempt of his former companions,
to a more genial mode of life. Then, all
alone in the jungle, its manifold discomforts, the
memories of home, and the fruitlessness of all his
endeavours, assailed him with the force of a temptation
to desist from the quest; but rallying all his
powers for one supreme effort, he eventually, under
a banyan-tree at Bohimanda, triumphed—awoke as
one before whom all illusion had vanished, and who
by no divine illumination, but by his own personal
energy, had attained to knowledge of the causes of
all things, and had at last become the Buddha, the
Enlightened One.

We need have no difficulty in accepting this
outline of the man’s spiritual history as substantially
correct; and assuming it to be so, we see at
once that it is contrasted in every point with the
early history of Jesus of Nazareth. In the Indian
narrative, <abbr rend=spell><i>e.g.</i></abbr>, we have long and prolix details of
the youth and manhood of Gotama; in the Christian
Gospels very few incidents, one pregnant
// File: 160.png
.pn +1
saying, two or three words of description, sum up
the whole record of Christ’s biography till He
appeared before the Baptist. This silence is surely
suggestive, for it could not have been the result of
ignorance or forgetfulness. “It is silence, where,
to a moral certainty,” as is indicated alike by the
apocryphal Gospels and the Buddhist legends,
“men left to themselves would have used much
speech.” In the Gospels the things which we are
naturally curious to know are concealed from us,
and there is disclosed only the spiritual reality in
which Christianity consists. Where He was, how
He looked, what He did during these long years of
waiting and preparation, the Evangelists have not
told us; but they have revealed enough to show
what He was. Scenery and circumstances are as
nothing, because the life that was revealing itself
in them was everything; and of the unfolding of
that life, the few and slight but most suggestive
touches of the Gospels enable us to form clearer conceptions
than we are ever likely to form of Gotama’s
from the abundant incidents of the Buddhist story.

Thus while the son of the Indian rajah did not
require to keep from himself anything that his heart
desired, Jesus of Nazareth in the home of Galilee
had to deny Himself, and to endure in the commonest
kind of labour a hardness which the
Indian youth, in the inertion of his class and race,
// File: 161.png
.pn +1
regarded as part of the curse of existence. Still,
Jesus had meat to eat which the other knew not
of; He had bread enough and to spare, while the
other was perishing of hunger. Rich in poverty,
while Gotama was poor in his abundance, Jesus
the carpenter appears highly exalted in what the
other would have called humiliation. There,
while Gotama, having everything which he could
desire at his call, had discovered that human life
was worse than vanity, Jesus, self-surrendered in
faithful service of others, was learning how full
of blessedness and how rich in power of blessing
the life of any man might be. The angels of
nature and providence, by the lilies of the field
and the children in the market-place, instructed
him in a wisdom which no Indian sage ever
dreamed of; and though He saw the wretchedness
of this evil world as Gotama never saw it,
and felt for the misery of men as Gotama never
could feel, He saw what even Buddha the Enlightened
never could descry, the face of a Father
in Heaven not frowning in wrath but yearning in
pity over all. So, instead of repelling, the suffering
and evil of the world drew Jesus closer to it, till,
finding His grace, not as Gotama found His wisdom,
in desire to be delivered from it, but in the depth
of His longing to save it, He gave Himself to it
and for it, as for a joy that was set before Him.
// File: 162.png
.pn +1

Again, the enlightenment of Gotama was the
result of a painful struggle, first between inclination
and duty, and then with great perplexities of
duty, but in Christ it was painless and natural,
like the growing of the dawn into the day. His
pure and at first joyous life unfolded itself like a
beautiful morning under the animating impulse of
love to God and to all His creatures. As He grew
in consciousness of the heaven within, He became
more conscious of the disorder without, and more
sensible of His isolation in regard to it. As year
by year the sense not of the world’s misery but of
its guilt increased within Him, there would also
increase the longing that it should be taken away.
Very early the conviction took possession of Him,
that He was not here to win His own way to
deliverance, but to be about His Father’s business.
Gradually the Father’s business was revealed to
Him, and when the preaching of the Baptist had
made it clear, without any wrestle like Gotama’s,
Christ, ever close to His Father, and ever clear in
His duty, set Himself at once to fulfil it.

It is often alleged that the temptation in the
wilderness, which marked the close of our Lord’s
long period of silent preparation, is an exact
parallel to the fasting and temptation which
preceded Gotama’s enlightenment at Bohimanda.
There is doubtless an external similarity sufficient
// File: 163.png
.pn +1
to arrest our attention, but the internal contrasts
disclose experiences of quite different characters.
In the light of their respective histories, these
occurrences, though often referred to as miraculous,
were in reality most natural. They represent
experiences of which there could be no witnesses,
and which, indescribable in plain words, could only
be suggested by a kind of parable. The temptations
are recorded not as they were presented to
the persons tried, but in the character which they
assumed when their drift was discovered and their
aim was detected. Both were assailed by suggestions,
raising in them a tumult of emotion, which,
if unresisted or yielded to, would in Gotama’s case
have been equivalent to abandonment of his quest
for deliverance for the sake of sensual indulgence
offered by Mâra and his daughters, and in the case
of Christ, to refusal to live by obedience, to tempting
the Holy One of Israel, and to worshipping
the splendid majesty of wrong. The temptations
were real, assailing the will, seeking to paralyse
or to change it; and their force in each case would
be in proportion to the depth and purity of the
natures assailed. Gotama, though unmistakably
a man of high spiritual aspiration, was attacked
by sensual visions,[#] which could not possibly have
// File: 164.png
.pn +1
been a temptation to a nature like Christ’s. He
had “to repel as evil what to other men would
have appeared as ideals of good, and had to turn
away from what the noblest of men would have
cherished as innocent dreams or splendid chances,”[#]
because to His pure eyes they were Satanic temptations.
He suffered, being tempted, but His trouble
and suffering were caused neither by irresolution,
nor vanity, nor fear, but by His own lowly humility
and to the sense of the exceeding greatness of His
mission.

Gotama, sorely concerned about himself, went
apart to fast and meditate and wrestle for his own
deliverance, but Christ went apart not to fast—fasting
was an unheeded incident in and not the
aim of His retirement, and in no perplexity about
His own salvation, for that was assured and made
the basis of assault,—but that in quiet meditation
He might see more clearly the way by which the salvation
of God could be brought to mankind. Christ
was forced to acknowledge that absolute surrender to
His Father’s will in His mission meant absolute
antagonism to the world, and He was tried by suggestions
as to the mode of prosecuting His mission,
// File: 165.png
.pn +1
all the more seductive that they were confessed to
be natural. Might He not, as the Beloved of
Heaven, to carry the world along with Him, and to
save multitudes from suffering, swerve just a little
from His high ideal, and accommodate His ways to
suit their prejudices? These temptations in the
beginning continued His temptations to the very
close of His ministry. Not once, but all His life, as
He hungered for the sympathy and trust of those
whom He sought to save, was He tempted, as in
Capernaum, when many fell away from Him, to
“change the stones into bread.” Not once only did
He stand on “the battlements of the temple,” nor
once only was He offered “all the kingdoms of the
world and the glory of them.” Again and again
was He in peril when He stood high in the opinion
of the crowds, and heard them in their Hosanna
entreating Him, through His very sympathy with
and love for them, to gratify their wishes; yet in
every case the temptation was rejected without the
slightest wavering the moment it was understood.
“Get thee behind me, Satan.” “Thou shalt not
tempt the Lord thy God.” “The cup which my
Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”

For again, Christ conquered because from the
beginning to the closing agony He stood firm rooted
in obedience and in submission to the will of a
Higher than self; but the Buddhist writers want to
// File: 166.png
.pn +1
impress the very opposite of this upon us in regard
to Gotama’s victory. He is said to have conquered
Mâra by the force of his own will, and won his way
to light by his individual energy alone. After he
became Buddha he hesitated whether he would
preach the way of deliverance to men, not because,
like Moses and the Hebrew prophets, he had no
confidence in himself and required the assurance of
a divine strength not his own. He had perfect
assurance in himself, but he had no confidence at
first in the ability of others to comprehend and to
follow him in a way so difficult to find and so hard
to tread.[#] He asked no deity to help him, for he
was greater and wiser than all the gods. In the
legends Brahma is said in intercession to have
pressed him to preach the way, and moved eventually
by no intercession, but simply by his own
pity for men lost in the vortices of miserable existence,
he went forth in no strength but his own to
preach and to teach in a ministry, not of shame and
humiliation and death, but one of great exaltation
and honour.

This conception colours the narrative of his
whole career. In the later scriptures he is designated
the Tathâgata (He who has gone or arrived
at Nirvana), the very reverse and point-blank contradiction
of Christ the Messiah, He who was sent.
// File: 167.png
.pn +1
There was no higher to send him, no wiser to
teach. He came in his own name; but Jesus, as
one sent by Him into the world, went forth in
the name of His Father. Though He made demands
upon the faith of the world compared with which
the pretensions of Gotama are trivial—for at the
highest he only claimed to be Buddha the Enlightened,
while Christ spake of Himself as the “Light
of the world,”—yet in Christ’s claim there was ever
a sense of dependence expressed or implied, as of
one who of His own self could do nothing, and who
only taught what His Father had showed Him.
Both spake with authority, and not as the scribes;
both superseded the traditional domination of what
was said by men of old times with the emphatic
“I say unto you”; but there is a vast difference in
the quality of this authority in the two cases. The
authority of Buddha sprang from his acknowledged
intellectual superiority, but the authority of Jesus
sprang from spiritual insight. The deliverances of
Buddha were given after the manner of a Socratic
dialogue, and he won his converts and vanquished
opponents by his dialectic skill.[#] But in all the
// File: 168.png
.pn +1
encounters of Christ with His enemies there was no
forcing of their reason to gain His end. His replies
and counter questions were brief and direct and
incisive; they were like the fiat of a king or the
sentence of an unchallengeable judge, from which
reason and conscience alike confessed that there
could be no appeal.

Certainly in the two ministries was fulfilled a
saying of Christ, “I am come in my Father’s name,
and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his
own name, him will ye receive,” for after a very
short period of imperfect success the public career
of Gotama became a continuous victorious progress.
Disciples, drawn mostly from the highest classes—the
Brahmans, the nobles, and the wealthy merchants—flocked
round him wherever he appeared. He
journeyed followed by admiring crowds, he had
only to show himself to impress, and he had only to
preach to convince. The most stubborn resistance
became fluid under his spell, and those who approached
// File: 169.png
.pn +1
to confute were sure to succumb to his
sweet reasonableness. He was supported by powerful
rajahs, and those who did not show him proper
reverence were punished according to their edicts.
He was lodged in parks and gardens and palaces,
several of which were gifted to him for the use of
his Order. Accessible always to people of all castes,
and of every condition, and of both sexes, he
received the attention of the courtesan, and shared
her feast and accepted her offering,[#] but he always
maintained the nobility and purity of an irreproachable
character, and wherever he was found it was
as the prophet of righteousness, temperance, and
judgment to come. Rejoicing through his long and
honourable ministry, sometimes loath to die, as foreseeing
the troubles which would befall his Order
after his decease, he at last, when over fourscore
years, in a sickness alleged to have been induced
by partaking too freely of some rich food, with the
quiet dignity and composure of a saint, fell asleep,
and was buried with the funeral obsequies which
// File: 170.png
.pn +1
Indians then bestowed on the bodies of their
greatest kings.[#]

It would be impossible, in every respect, to find
a more absolute contrast to all this than the story
of Jesus of Nazareth. If He was popular, it was
only for a little, and then only with the masses.
The aristocracy and the religious classes stood aloof,
and soon entered into a conspiracy to get rid of
Him. He had a few disciples among them, like
Joseph of Arimathæa, and Nicodemus, and the
family at Bethany, but the words of the prophet
accurately sum up the narratives of the Gospel,
that He was “despised and rejected of men.” To
follow Him meant joining in no triumphal procession,
but in a struggle against storm and tide which
was sure to end in death. Suspected from the
first, and speedily denounced, He was watched and
tracked and driven from place to place, till at last
the toils of the hunters closed successfully around
Him, and at the age of thirty-three He was crucified
as a malefactor between two robbers on Calvary.

But the grand and crowning distinction between
the import and effect of the two ministries emerged
at the close. After Gotama died and his body was
burned, and his relics had been reverently gathered,
// File: 171.png
.pn +1
and distributed, and enshrined in costly dagobas
erected in the various scenes of his labours, there
was an end of him. He had gone out into the
void, according to his own theory of the hereafter,
and, no longer capable of being of use to his
disciples, he exhorted them to be “their own refuge,
their own law, and to work diligently out their
salvation.”[#] But when Jesus had been crucified
there was manifestly not an end, but rather a new
beginning of His personal influence, a rising in
fuller power, a coming again with greater authority.
From the very morning of His ministry He took
His death into His plan, as the consummation of
one stage of His mission, without which His plan
would have been a failure. All His teaching centred
in His death, as a moral and spiritual necessity in
Divine providence. Instead of complaining of it,
He pointed to it as the seal of His Messiahship,
“the cause for which He was born, the end for
which He came into the world,” “the hour” of His
glorification. The very setting of crime and passion
which His enemies sought to give to the manner
of it only made it in His estimation more divine.
// File: 172.png
.pn +1
Instead of evading it He went straight to meet it,
when the time had come, as one who had a purpose
to fulfil by it. That purpose He announced to be
the development of His personal resources, the
liberation of the creative energies of His being.
As uncrucified He might be weak, as crucified He
would be so mighty as to “draw all men unto
Him.” The event amply fulfilled the prediction,
for shortly after the crucifixion Christ again confronted
the world in another form and in far
greater power. The followers of Buddha went
forth testifying to his law, and they prefaced their
preaching by the invariable formula, “Thus have
I heard, when the Blessed One lived in ——.”
Their mission was simply to recall and declare and
expound the system of a master who had been
absolutely lost to them, but the apostles of Christ
from the very first testified not of a doctrine, but
of Christ Himself, as one who having died still
lived, was reigning in mightier power, and would
be with them always, even to the end of the
æon.

For we must bear in mind that Buddha and
Christ stand in very contrasted relations to the
systems of belief which they each founded. Soon
after Buddha’s death, if not before it, the formula
of admission into his order began with the phrase,
“I take refuge in Buddha,” which consequently
// File: 173.png
.pn +1
has been described by some as the “first article in
the Buddhist creed.” We must not for a moment
however suppose that this expression is of equal
or even of similar significance to our confession,
“I believe in Christ.” Gotama in the whole course
of his preaching never asked his hearers for faith
in himself as essential to their emancipation. All
that he demanded was obedience to the law, disposition
to enter, and determination to follow the
paths which he had discovered. He could not
give them Nirvana, nor even bring them to it; he
could only tell them the way to it, which he had
found, and as he had succeeded so might they
by their own individual energy.[#] We are thus not
free to explain Buddhism from and by the person
of its founder; it is perfectly explicable apart from
him, as if he had never lived; but apart from
Christ, and without the light thrown upon it by His
person, Christianity would be an enigma. Christ
from the first demanded faith in Himself as essential
to salvation.[#] Belief in what He taught was always
// File: 174.png
.pn +1
subordinated to trust in Himself. Consequently the
apostles never said, ‘Observe the precepts; follow
the paths, and you will find the way of escape,’
but always “Believe in (<i>or</i> on) the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved.” They pointed to Him
as the sole object of faith and worship, as the only
rule and example and inspiration. Their creed, their
theology, their ethical code, were not elaborated in
systems; they were all comprehended in a Person
who required neither apologists nor defenders, but
only witnesses who would manifest and declare Him.

This must be borne in mind when we consider
the miraculous elements which are common to the
presentation, given in both religions, of their respective
Authors. The story of Buddha, as we have
hitherto followed it, tells of a great renunciation,
but of one that can hardly be called unparalleled in
the history of religion. He was probably neither
the first nor the last noble Indian youth who
“for the sake of that supreme goal of the higher
life went out from all and every household gain
and comfort, to become a houseless wanderer.”[#]
But the story as we have it in the Buddhist books
is very different.[#] Had any one asked a yellow-robed
// File: 175.png
.pn +1
missionary, about the time when the last
Gospel was being written, what he meant by the
Buddha, he would have begun by telling of one
who, thousands of ages back, in the shining world
of the gods, out of pity for the miseries of men,
resolved to become a Buddha that he might teach
them the way of deliverance, and who through
many transformations—in which he was baptized
into all experiences, even those of rat and a clod of
earth—at last reached the point when, coming down
from heaven, and entering, in the form of a white
elephant, the side of the wedded wife[#] of a great
king,[#] was born as Buddha. He would tell of a
mysterious baptism, when two full streams of perfumed
water fell from heaven upon him, while all the
gods in all the worlds raised in responsive harmony
the heavenly song; of a holy sage who descended from
heaven to greet him with predictions of his glorious
career;[#] of many prodigies displayed by him in his
// File: 176.png
.pn +1
illustrious youth; of his mighty struggle with and
victory over Mâra, Lord of all Desires, and of his
going forth as a great king, at the urgent request
of the great god Brahma, to preach Nirvana and
deliver the world.

Then he would tell how when he set “a-rolling
the wheel” of the “kingdom of righteousness,”[#] he
did so with such effect that not only multitudes of
men, but eighty thousand gods and angels, “hearing,
each in their own tongue, though the language
was that of Magadha,”[#] were by one sermon imbued
with saving knowledge and converted; how during
his long and holy ministry, by discourses and
parables and miracles, he brought countless millions
of men and women, and gods and sprites and fairies,
to find the right way; how the great devas came
to worship or to ask counsel from him;[#] how, inviolable
and invincible, there could not be found,
either in this world or in the world of the devas,
Mâras, Brahmans, “any who could either scatter
his thoughts or cleave his heart”;[#] how he was
transfigured,[#] and at last, when the time was come,
// File: 177.png
.pn +1
accompanied by a disciple very dear to him, how
he lay down like a king between two trees. Then
when winds were hushed, and streamlets silenced,
and flowers from heaven shed their blossoms over
him like rain-drops, and a great earthquake
rumbled, and the sun and moon hid their faces,
and the great Brahma lamented, rising through
light to light he achieved the full Nirvana.[#]

It is not wonderful that Christians who have
only read or heard of the statements current as to
the remarkable coincidences between the miraculous
incidents recorded in the Buddhist legends and
the Christian Gospels should be perplexed, and
that not a few of those who are anti-Christian in
their attitude should have almost jumped to the
conclusion that the biographers of the two lives must
have known of each other’s works and borrowed
each other’s traditions. Examination of the alleged
coincidences, however, reveals that there is no occasion
for the perplexity in the one case, and no ground
for the jubilation in the other. By no honest process
of manipulation can we turn the supposed similarities
into even probable identities. The incidents
illustrate very widely contrasted lives, and enforce
dogmas utterly contradictory to each other. If any
one is desirous of ascertaining the coincidences
// File: 178.png
.pn +1
which are stated to exist, he will find them clearly
set forth and classified by Professor Seydel in his
so-called Buddhist Harmony;[#] and if he require
any more than his own common sense to guide him
to an opinion concerning them, he had better consult
the Appendix to Professor Kuenen’s Hibbert
Lectures on <i>National Religions and Universal
Religions</i>, Dr. Kellogg’s <i>Light of Asia and Light
of the World</i>, and Dr. <abbr rend=spell>J.</abbr> Estlin Carpenter’s article
in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, December 1880, “On the
Obligations of the New Testament to Buddhism.”
These authorities will confirm the judgment which
any unbiassed and intelligent juryman would form,
from considering the evidence adduced in support
of the theory of borrowing, and from a simple comparison
of the alleged parallels themselves, that
Buddhism had not the smallest direct influence on
the origin of Christianity. So fundamentally unlike
are the alleged “similarities” that the hypothesis of
the derivation of the contents of the Gospels from
Buddhist sources is as ridiculous as would be the
supposition that the Venus of Milo was copied from
the rude idol or hideous fetich of an aboriginal tribe.[#]
// File: 179.png
.pn +1

When the missionaries of the two religions first
came into actual contact has not yet been ascertained,
and the influence of the Christian ideals of
self-oblivion upon the most essentially selfish system
of salvation ever promulgated to the world has yet
to be traced. The conception of self-renunciation
which is set forth in the legends may have originated
in the memory of the kindness and gentleness
and goodness of one whose life was far nobler than
his creed, and it may have assumed greater strength
and clearness when the teaching of the Gospels
came to be reflected upon it. It may or it may not,
but of this we may be positively certain, that the
writers of the New Testament and the composers
of the earliest Buddhist traditions knew positively
nothing of each other’s productions. This is a
conclusion accepted by the very best authorities on
the subject, and it is maintained with the greatest
// File: 180.png
.pn +1
firmness by those of them who discount the miraculous
occurrences found in the scriptures of both
religions as only the fond fancies which their
affectionate disciples gradually wove around the
memories of their respective teachers. They hold
that working independently of each other, but under
similar influences and in similar conditions, it was
simply natural that they should have come to
adorn with wonders somewhat alike in character
the story of two lives so pure and beneficial.

The learned author of the Hibbert Lectures for
1881 has made some very interesting and important
suggestions as to the rise of the Buddhist legends,
and as he seems to imply a similar growth of the
“Christian legend,” it may be advisable to consider
both accounts in their relation to the literary
sources which profess to authenticate them. Let
us assume, therefore, that the Lalita Vistara was
actually in circulation about the beginning of the
Christian era,[#] and let us take for granted that one
// File: 181.png
.pn +1
of the oldest Suttas,[#] professing to relate a portion
of Buddha’s ministry, was extant in the form in
which we have it, some three centuries earlier,
or a century after Buddha’s death. A comparison
of these two productions reveals at once the fact
that in the earliest there is no reference to the
divinity, pre-existence, or supernatural birth of
Buddha, and making allowance for the usual exaggeration
of language, that there are very few
miraculous incidents recorded in it. It has been
asserted that Buddha never professed to work a
miracle. Certainly the fragments of his original
teaching which survive indicate that he would be
the first to repudiate all such as have been ascribed
to him. Be that as it may, it is a literary fact
that in the supposed earliest books only a few
miracles are recorded. We may infer therefore
that by the time they were composed his orthodox
disciples had not formed those conceptions of his
person and mission which their pious descendants
later on learned to believe and to proclaim.[#]
// File: 182.png
.pn +1

The Gospels are not the earliest Christian
writings, and not several, but many, “narratives
concerning those matters which had been fulfilled
or established among” Christians, even as they
“delivered them who were eye-witnesses and
ministers of the word,”[#] were probably in circulation
before the Gospels were written. Some of
the Epistles of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul also, in all probability,
preceded those collections of “the words and
deeds of the Lord”; but the substance of the
three first Gospels was very early produced, and we
may be morally certain that they contain the beliefs
which the very first generation of Christians entertained
concerning Him. The truth of these beliefs
is not now under discussion, but only the fact of
them, and the kind of people who were influenced
by them. It is averred “that the outward conditions
in which Buddhism and Christianity arose
were similar, and so were the mental qualities of
the disciples of both religions”;[#] but the conditions
were most dissimilar in this respect, that Buddhism
originated in the dimness of an unhistoric age, and
Christianity in an age and land so irradiated by
// File: 183.png
.pn +1
the light of history that we know more clearly
what was happening then and there than we do of
what occurred in Europe a thousand years after.
The mental qualities of the disciples of both religions
again seem to have been most unlike. About
Ananda and his companions we know really nothing
but the names, for they meet us in the Buddhist
records as mere lay figures, completely resembling
one another, and with no individuality to distinguish
them.[#] We may assume, however, that they
belonged to one or other of the many sects of Brahmans
or Sramans, and if so, that they were dreamy
and contemplative men, withdrawn from practical
life, and finding in the life of meditation a sphere
more congenial to them than the actual world of
which they were parts. They appear to have been
directly and thoroughly unlike to the very marked
personalities represented by the Evangelists and
the other apostles of Christ, who were all drawn
from practical life to be His followers. They were
the very reverse of speculative; they had little
imagination and almost no poetry in them; they
were very dull of comprehension in regard to truths
higher than the few which they inherited, and very
incredulous about any unwonted occurrence said to
have taken place outside the little circle of their
own observation. In their conscientious, matter-of-fact
// File: 184.png
.pn +1
way of looking at things they were the very
last men to dream dreams or weave legends around
the memory of one whom they revered; and we
have their own confession, not of their slowness of
apprehension merely, but of their unbelief at first
in regard to all supernatural manifestations.

Now while the supernatural only rarely meets us
in the most ancient Buddhist productions, where
we would naturally have expected it to have predominated,
it meets us in the very earliest writings
of Christianity, where we would not have expected
it at all. Christ to His first disciples and apostles
was a miraculous being. The claim formulated in
<abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John’s Gospel, which is probably the latest
book in the New Testament, is that advanced for
Christ by <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul in his earliest extant letter to
the churches. The Christ of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John is not a new
Person, but the same Divine Being of whom <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr>
Paul says, “He being in the form of God” was
“found on earth in fashion as a man.” He may
have been all wrong as to the ground of his belief;
he may have been an epileptic, a visionary, a man
subject to trances, whose intense spiritual affinities
disqualified him from judging calmly of matters of
history; but there is no mistake as to his own belief
and that of the other evangelists and writers of the
New Testament. The teaching of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul and <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr>
John concerning Christ is set forth in <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Matthew
// File: 185.png
.pn +1
with a clearness which no language can improve
upon.[#] <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Mark dwells primarily upon the humanity
of Jesus, a most important fact, presenting a
historic basis without which Christian truth would
have been little more than a mystic speculation;
but even in <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Mark that humanity is not
described as unfolding under conditions which are
merely normal.[#] The life to which he testifies is
not just that of Jesus of Nazareth, but of the Christ
of God, who speaks with more than human authority.
The development which is traceable in the theology
of the Epistles is the expansion of the significance
of the events recorded in the Gospels. The latest
writings may more fully interpret the teaching of
the earlier ones, but in them we find no other
Gospels, but only anathemas pronounced on those
who pretend to have them. In them a larger
domain is seen expanding beneath our gaze, but it
is visible only in the light of the central figure that
meets us in the first. Plainly, therefore, while the
earliest Buddhist witnesses account for their master
and his teaching in the ordinary ways, and while
their successors much later on in their attempts
to embellish his portrait have produced quite a
different person from the man of whom they first
testified, the very earliest Christian writers could
// File: 186.png
.pn +1
not account for Christ in any other way than by
regarding Him as a supernatural being, who did not
come into the world and did not leave it in the
way of all other men. It is possible that they may
all have been deluded, but if so, they vouched for
their sincerity by their martyrdoms. The delusion,
moreover, was at least universally and most
consistently maintained, and it is the first instance
in the history of mankind where a delusion has produced
intellectual activity and expansion so wonderful
as to have changed the current of history, and
originated the great throbbing ever-enlarging world
of Christendom which confronts us now.

Another significant contrast between the two
sets of writings is found in the fact that while we
can dissociate the miraculous elements from the
Buddhist Pitakas without detriment to their other
contents, we find it impossible to apply the same
process with the like results to the New Testament.
No one questions that primitive Buddhism is
improved by being freed from the portents which
subsequently gathered around it, for primitive
Buddhism is an intellectual and moral system, a
theory of the universe more likely to be obscured
than elucidated by an appeal to the supernatural.
Christianity, however, while appealing both to
intellect and conscience, does so as the revelation of
a life which, as a new thing, might break through
// File: 187.png
.pn +1
all men’s conceptions of what was ordinary or
necessary. The first appearance of life on this
planet as an unwonted phenomenon would be
accompanied by manifestations miraculous to all who
only judged by experience of what had already
been. So would be the first appearance of man to
those who judged of things by what was possible to
the actual animal world. That the manifestation
of One who had come that men might have life, and
have it more abundantly, should be accompanied
with phenomena new and strange to mankind
might have been expected. Christ, as revealing an
ideal of excellence to which things as they are in
nature, and men as they now are in society, do not
conform, will in truth contradict the present working
of both. This at least is the impression inevitably
produced by the reading of the New Testament. Its
teaching is throughout founded upon, and it would be
quite unintelligible without reference to, the supernatural.
To dissociate the miraculous portions from
the rest of its contents would be not only to mutilate
but to destroy it.[#] Not the theological and
metaphysical elements only, but even “the ethical,
are so interwoven into one fibre with the supernatural
in the New Testament that it is impossible
to detach them without destroying the whole fabric.”[#]
// File: 188.png
.pn +1
Verily a Gospel without the miracles and all
that accounts for them would be a very strange
book.

Another very distinctive feature in the New
Testament accounts is displayed in the character of
the wonders there recorded. Indeed, this distinguishing
element is found in all the miraculous narratives
of the Bible. If it be true that the ancient
writers or redactors of Scripture have employed the
legends of other nations to illustrate their works,
it must be conceded that they have immensely improved,
and made a much better use of them. The
story of the creation of the world, of the primeval
paradise, and of the deluge, may be only myths common
to several nations, but somehow, while all other
writers just lose themselves in these myths, the
Hebrews alone have laid hold of them to enforce
the sublimest views ever formulated in human
speech concerning the origin of the world and of
man. The narratives of the Old Testament are
evidently not constructed to startle the reader with
portents, but to disclose the providential dealings
of a holy and merciful God with man to enlighten
and save him. The Gospels in like manner are not
written to record miraculous occurrences, nor are
miracles introduced to glorify Christ: they are
simply referred to as incidents in His ministry.
When we compare the prodigies ascribed to Buddha
// File: 189.png
.pn +1
during the many changes of his pre-existence, or
during his ministry, with the miracles of the
Gospels, they are like the rough casts in clay or
wood made by a rude or childish people contrasted
with the perfect productions of nature in the world
of animals or of men. They may endure comparison
with the portents found in the Apocryphal books, or
in the Lives of the Saints, but placed side by side
with the Gospel miracles they serve only to illustrate
the difference between what is artificial and grotesque,
and what is original and natural. There is
a marked sobriety in the Gospel accounts totally
lacking in the Buddhist legends. The latter serve
no other end but to exalt and magnify Buddha,[#]
but the Gospel miracles are all founded in some
great human necessity which they are intended to
supply. The Buddhist marvels are simply produced
to startle us, the Christian are recorded as signs to
instruct us. What a gulf separates the conception
of Buddha leaping high in air amid the sounding of
the bells of the heavens and the plaudits of all the
gods, just to prove that he was Buddha, from the
account of Christ’s refusal to work a miracle to win
the adherence of the crowd, or give the sign from
heaven to vanquish Sadducean unbelief! The
// File: 190.png
.pn +1
Gospel miracles are few after all, but they all flow
from and are in harmony with the original idea of
Christ as Messiah which is assumed in all the
Gospels. The mighty works done by Him are all
such as might be expected to be done in a world
like this by the Son of a heavenly Father. The cure
of all manner of disease, the exorcism of all the evil
spirits that have afflicted humanity, the victory over
death, the control of all the forces of nature, were
all in the scope of one who came hither to establish
the kingdom of God. Christ’s miracles were all
signs of man’s present and prophecies of his future
relations to all the evils that afflict him. They all
remind us of the Divine original ideal that man,
perfectly obedient to God, must exercise dominion
over His creatures in this world. Man’s present
antagonism to nature, and the disorder seen in his
own social relations, are alike due to his refusal to
merge his will in God’s, and the miracles of our
Saviour are all prophecies that when through
obedience to or faith in God he shall be restored
to holiness, he will find his social and external
relations improved, and will regain over nature that
spiritual authority which even already the winds
and the waves in part recognise and obey.[#]

Again, the New Testament writers claim for
Christ what the early disciples of Buddha never
// File: 191.png
.pn +1
dreamed of claiming for their master, and they
insist upon their claim, though it is associated with
the meanest and apparently most contradictory of
elements. It is not the glorification but the humiliation
of Christ which constitutes the marvel in the
Gospels. It was very natural that the Evangelists
should imagine that the angels should sing over the
birth of a Saviour, but it was not natural that they
should conceive of them singing over a babe in a
manger. It was not wonderful, again, for Jews to
believe that the coming of their Messiah was
divinely announced, but it is very wonderful that
they should believe that this annunciation was
made to unknown shepherds. It was certainly
not in that way their Messiah was expected to
come. Had He come in the way they expected,
the miracles might naturally have been accounted
for which they associated with His coming; but, as
matter of fact, it requires the miracle to account
for their belief in Him. And so it is all through
in the Gospels. That the Messiah should be discovered
to be the Son of God need not surprise us,
but that the Son of God should be recognised by
Jews in the form of a servant, enduring patiently
the contradiction of sinners, submitting to trial, to
torture, to death on the cross, is one of the greatest
marvels in the whole history of religion. This
combination of glory and shame was a difficulty in
// File: 192.png
.pn +1
the way of faith, not a help or support of it. The
claim, we must remember, was not advanced for
Christ by the Evangelists after He died; it was
formulated by Himself, and by Him it was asserted
more conspicuously, and with greater frequency
and emphasis toward the close of His earthly life.
It was the only charge on which He was condemned;
all other accusations brought against Him
broke down; but this one He admitted—that He
called Himself the Son of God. Questioned upon
it, He would not retract. “Thou sayest,” was all
His reply, and for the saying He was ordered to
the cross. Yet upon the cross His assertion was
strengthened. Had He been a pretender, He would
never have so comported Himself before Pilate and
Herod; had He been self-deluded, He never would
have said to His fellow-sufferer on Calvary: “To-day
shalt thou be with me in paradise.” The
torture of crucifixion was sufficient to expel the
hallucinations of the maddest brain, but the Evangelists
show that while faith in His Messiahship
was, during His crucifixion, fading even from His
disciples, in Himself it was stronger than ever, and
at the very last it was communicated to a dying
robber, who trusted that He had power to absolve
him, and to open to him the gates of a better life.
Now, all this surely never could naturally have
occurred to Jewish men to conceive, and if their
// File: 193.png
.pn +1
records be only fictions, the devout creations of
over fond imaginations, then their legends are
miracles themselves.

Some one has said that it is possible to find in
the Buddhist books a parallel to every incident in
the Gospels; if so, these parallels will be found to
be very far apart; but to the incident of the Crucifixion
there can be no parallel. That one historical
event separates not only the two systems of thought
and belief, but marks off Christianity from all other
religions in the world. Till the crucifixion of Jesus
was accomplished, the idea of associating with Deity
humiliation, and of conceiving of God as dying the
death of a slave upon the cross, would have been
regarded as the grossest impiety. The fundamental
idea of the Incarnation was not wholly foreign to
the mind either of India or of Greece; to the Jew
it was not a natural thought, but one so anti-Semitic
that Jew and Moslem alike have rejected
Christianity because of it;[#] but the incarnation of
Deity represented in the Gospels, the humiliation of
the Godhead implied in the Crucifixion, is an idea
which never could have originated in the mind of
either Gentile or Jew. It is one of the things of
God which the natural man cannot conceive, a
mystery hid from all ages until it was revealed, and
// File: 194.png
.pn +1
apparently, unless we admit the reality of the
revelation, we never can account for the faith.

The miraculous personality of Christ is thus
the outstanding and distinctive feature of the
Christian writings. As the mists clear away in
the East, Buddha emerges more and more in the
stature of a good and great man, but Christ rises
upon us as one who cannot be accounted for according
to the measure of any man, nor even that of
an angel. It is not as a teacher, a guide out of
the difficulties of life, that He meets us, but as a
Revealer and Saviour. It is thus He has been
accepted by His disciples, and upon their faith He
has reared His Church. It is thus He conceived of
Himself, and His conception is not more astounding
than are the simplicity and lowliness and
meekness of His character. He is Himself thus
the miracle of miracles, wholly inexplicable on
any human theory devised to account for Him;
and till that one miracle is solved, all questions
as to the miracles which are ascribed to Him can
afford to wait for their solution.

We have no desire to exaggerate the value of
the miraculous elements in Christianity, but it
does not appear to be true wisdom that would
depreciate them or ignore them altogether. Miracles
by many have been wrongly considered, and they
have been often expounded by the advocates of
// File: 195.png
.pn +1
Christianity in such a way as to create instead of
removing difficulties connected with the faith. On
the other hand, many who reject or refuse to consider
them seem afflicted by a kind of mental
semeiophobia which in its own way may be as
dangerous an affliction as hydrophobia is. The
proper way is to consider them in relation to the
nature and purpose of the Revelation with which
they are associated. The miracle may sometimes
be found only in the form of the narrative, as a
hieroglyph whose purpose we are too lazy to search
for, whose meaning we are too stupid to elucidate.
The theory that miracles are only figurative expressions
of spiritual truth is not true, as it is generally
expounded; but it has a truth in it which must
never be overlooked. Every miracle is a parable,
and every parable is a miracle. It is the spiritual
reality revealed by both which gives them value,
and not the wonder in them by which we are at
first arrested. Yet without the wonder to arrest
us we might never have received the revelation.
“What did the apostle mean,” asks Robert
Elsmere,[#] “by death to sin and self? what the
precise idea attached by him to being risen with
Christ? Are this death and resurrection necessarily
dependent upon certain alleged historical
events, or are they not primarily, and were there
// File: 196.png
.pn +1
not, even in Paul’s mind, two aspects of a spiritual
process perpetually re-enacted in the soul of man,
and constituting the veritable revelation of God?
Which is the stable and lasting witness of the
Father? the spiritual history of the individual and
of the world, or the envelope of miracle to which
hitherto mankind has attached such importance?”
The envelope certainly would be as worthless without
the message which it carries as a husk from
which the kernel has dropped. Would <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul,
however, ever have conceived the spiritual truths
referred to, if they had not been suggested by historical
facts? Could he ever have conceived of a
death to sin had the world never witnessed the
death of the Holy Christ upon the cross? Could
he ever have dreamed of rising again in the power
of a new life if the tomb in the garden nigh Golgotha
had never been found empty of its crucified
occupant? Is he not just suggesting the significance
of very exceptional historical events? He
may be wrong in his interpretation, but there can
be no mistake that the interpretation is founded
upon the history, that it was the event which
originated his theory, and not his theory that produced
the story of the event. Christian theology,
instead of giving this miraculous character to the
tragic story of the life and death of Christ, has
been called into existence by man’s endeavours to
// File: 197.png
.pn +1
account for it as a fact not only marvellous, but
simply unique in the experience of mankind.

It is not likely that the miraculous elements in
the Christian religion will be found to be “the
produce of its primitive theology, which will fade
out of the conception of men as theology advances
and becomes purified.” The demonstration of this
must not be assumed to be complete because the
miraculous is also found in other religions. We
must be able to account for it in all of them.
It is, indeed, the natural tendency of humanity
to magnify and eventually to deify its heroes,
to embellish their careers with similar marvels, to
apply to them figurative language very liable to
be misunderstood, which in later generations
hardens into erroneous beliefs. That Christians
as well as Buddhists have done so is sufficiently
attested by the apocryphal Gospels, but we must
not conclude that because there are so many fictitious
and counterfeit wonders in currency there
can be no real miracles. We must examine each
religion on its merits, and its miraculous elements
in the light of their purpose and of their actual
genesis; and if we do so in the case of Christianity,
we will probably discover the one supernatural
reality from which the shadows in all other
religions are reflected, and to which they all point.[#]
// File: 198.png
.pn +1

Dr. Rhys Davids, in the Hibbert Lectures, informs
us that the early Buddhist conception of
Gotama was dominated and transformed by two
ideals, neither of which had any necessary connection
with the man himself. One of them, due to
political experience, made him finally assume in
the popular imagination the office of a Universal
King; while the other, due to philosophic speculation,
invested him with the attribute of Perfect
Wisdom. The implied parallel between this conception,
coloured as it grew by the sun myths which
it incorporated, and the Christian conception of
Jesus, suggested by the titles King of Glory and
Divine Word, is obvious to everybody. Yet examination
of the supposed similarities only reveals
essential contrasts between the two sets of beliefs.
The political experiences in India which are referred
to occurred about two centuries after the
death of Buddha. The victories of Chandragupta,
resulting in the consolidation of a kingdom such as
Indians had never before witnessed, combined with
his patronage of the Buddhist monks, may have
suggested the idea of the universal monarch. “His
achievements recalled the nearly forgotten poetry
of the Vedic legends, while the new and popular
ethics of Buddha invested him with a righteousness
which made him a worthy Lord of the Four
Quarters (of the Globe).” So in one of the Suttas,
// File: 199.png
.pn +1
said to be early, and which may have been assuming
shape at this time, words like these are put in
the mouth of Buddha:—“I am a king, O Sela, an
incomparable, religious king; with justice I roll the
wheel, the wheel that is irresistible.”[#] With this
conception of Cakka-vatti, a glorious king, was
connected, avers Dr. Rhys Davids, that of an age
in which plenty and peace were to abound as the
fruits of righteousness.[#] The idea of a golden age
is common to most religions, and as the Western
Aryans always preserved it, we may conclude that
the branch which reached India carried it thither
with them. Soon, however, as the belief in transmigration
took possession of them, they seem to
have lost it. Their book of the generations of man
did not mount higher than the Fall; existence was
essentially evil in their thought, and belief in a
golden age on earth, either in the past or in the
future, was quite inconsistent with the creed which
Buddhists inherited or created. The other branch
of the Aryan stock so cherished it that it adorns
their most beautiful mythologies; but even with
them the golden age was always placed in the past,
and the world, fallen from good, was supposed to be
degenerating from bad to worse. And so it is that
the fondest glances of even the happy Greek are
// File: 200.png
.pn +1
not forward but backward cast, and that sadness
mingles with his most mirthful music.

It is possible at least that changes so favourable
to the fortunes of the new religion, and the
social reforms which followed its extension, may
have awakened in the pious the memories of old
Vedic faith; and that the victories of Chandragupta
may have suggested to the authors of the Suttas
the idea of the invincible Buddha advancing
through the ages, as the chariot-wheel of the sun
disperses the clouds in the heavens. It is certain,
however, that neither Buddha nor his earliest disciples
ever dreamed of applying the title of Cakka-vatti
to or of associating the promise of a better
time with himself. To old Vedic faith as supporting
his teaching or predicting his mission he never
appealed; he ignored all previous teaching: and
indeed in ancient Indian teaching, uninspired by
either promise or hope, there is nothing prophetic.
In the case of Christianity it is quite the contrary.
The conception of the Messiah as the righteous
and glorious King, under whose reign all the world
would be blessed, was not suggested by political
experience two centuries after the dawn of Christianity.
It was formulated and predicted many
centuries before the coming of Christ. The
Hebrew, like the Aryan, never lost the memory
of a happy past, but, unlike the Aryan, he placed
// File: 201.png
.pn +1
his paradise not only in the past but in the future.
With far richer materials at his command than
the Aryan seems to have possessed for painting a
vanished golden age, the Hebrew poets made very
sparing use of them. A few paragraphs exhaust
all they have to say as to the traditions of a
paradise that had been lost, but their whole Bible
is full of the hope of the good time which is coming
to all the world. This hope, centred as it was in
their Messiah, Christianity from the very first took
up and promised to fulfil. The ministry of Jesus
was scarcely begun before it was associated with
Him. Among the first questions asked concerning
Him was, “Is not this Messias?” Among the
earliest declarations made was, “We have found
the Messias.” Very soon in His career He confessed,
“I that speak unto thee am He!” The
Gospels and Epistles would be unintelligible without
this perpetual reference to Messianic prediction;
it is the golden thread which runs through
all the Old Testament and unites it with the
New. In its Messianic hope, Old Testament prophecy
reached its highest and purest development,
and the New Testament claims that in Christ it
is finding its fulfilment. It may be alleged of
course that the prophecy and the claim are alike
delusions, but the prophecy at least was a fact, and
its application to Christ was no legendary growth
// File: 202.png
.pn +1
of a later generation, but the original and essential
testimony of the earliest Christian teachers.

The other conception of Perfect Wisdom represented
by Buddha the Awakened or Enlightened
One is also confessedly an aftergrowth. The
earliest traces which we have of Gotama after
his death disclose him as a man who gained his
knowledge by severe struggle, and who therefore,
in the estimation of his followers, was a “Jina”
or conqueror. As time went on, and his memory
rose in the estimation of later generations, the
faithful, guided by their belief in transmigration,
projected this struggle for Buddhahood further and
further into former stages of existence, till at last
the idea was conceived that he was only one of
a long series of Buddhas, of whom he was not to
be the last. The development of this interesting
speculation, with its distinctions into Buddhas
who only save themselves—Paccekabuddhas—and
the Sammâsambuddhas, who appear at very rare
intervals, able and willing to save to the uttermost,
need not here be traced. It is sufficient
to note how unlike and contradictory is this belief
to that which dominates in our religion. In
Christ we have the <i>only</i> Messiah, and He, having
once come, we do not look for another. The hope
of the Christian is fixed upon His coming again
in glory; but it is the coming again of the <i>same</i>
// File: 203.png
.pn +1
Jesus. The unity of Deity colours and pervades
all our thoughts of Divine communications with
mankind; “there is one God, and one Mediator
between God and man.” Consequently the doctrine
of the Divine Word formulated in connection
with Christ in <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John’s Gospel represents a
very different set of ideas from the conception of
Buddha as the Perfect Wisdom, to whom all worlds
and all times were open. That conception of
Buddha was probably an incorporation into the
Buddhist creed from foreign sources, but the idea
of Christ as the Son, “unto whom all things have
been delivered by the Father,” so that “no one
knoweth the Son save the Father, neither doth
any know the Father save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him,” was
a common one among the very earliest Christians
of whom we have any trace. <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Matthew, <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr>
Mark, <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul, <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Luke all preach Christ, “unto
whom has been committed all knowledge and
judgment,” “who is before all things, and in whom
all things consist,” “the image of the invisible
God, in whom it pleased the Father that all
fulness should dwell.”[#]

And so it is not in the latest Gospel but in the
// File: 204.png
.pn +1
earliest Scriptures that we have the first indications
of this doctrine as Christ the Word, though
in the latest, as we might expect, it is more clearly
formulated and more fully expounded. Written
after the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the
ancient Church, and the recognition of the Gentiles
as fellow-heirs, by one who was quite conscious of
the new intellectual position which Christianity
occupied in relation to the speculations of Syria
and Egypt, and of the dangers which thereby
accrued to the faith, its author took up a term
very current at the time in theosophic and metaphysical
writings, and specially those of Philo, to
set forth the truth of the Life whose manifestation
he had witnessed. That <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John did not borrow
the term from Philo is evident from the very different
use which he has made of it, and the very
different purpose which he had in view. By it
Philo expressed the conception of Divine intelligence
in the abstract, while <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John employed it
to suggest the concrete idea of God’s personal
action. Both found it in the Septuagint and the
Hebrew traditional lore;[#] but while Philo gave
it a Greek, <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John adhered to its Hebrew significance.
The first chapter of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John compared
with a page of Philo[#] will reveal at once the difference
// File: 205.png
.pn +1
between them, and convince us that the
teaching of Philo concerning the Logos leads further
and further away from the idea of the incarnation
which is the foundation-truth of the teaching
of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John. His doctrine would be quite unintelligible
as an application or continuation of the
doctrine of Philo, but it is intelligible and consistent
as the final co-ordination of truths concerning
the Divine Being disclosed in the Old
Testament viewed by a man whose antecedents
and modes of thought were very different from
those of the Alexandrian sage.[#]

The ideas suggested by the “Angel of the
Presence” in the historic and prophetic books, by
the “Word of the Lord” in the Psalms, and by
“Wisdom” in the Books of Wisdom, indicate the
rays which converge in <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John’s doctrine of the
Christ. As one who tarried long after the first
generation of Christians had gone to their rest, as
one who had not only pondered longer, and in
deeper silence, the Life he had seen manifested,
but who had found its interpretation in such providences
as the spreading of the Churches and the
destruction of the State, he was abler to meet the
necessities of a wider age, by setting the truth in
rounder form and clearer light; but while he expands
// File: 206.png
.pn +1
and expounds the teaching of the first generation,
he adds and introduces not a single element.
His testimony is identical with that proclaimed at
the Resurrection, that Jesus of Nazareth is the
Christ, and that Christ is the only begotten Son of
God.

It is not as one who has acquired truth by long
struggle, not as one who has fought or forced His
way to light, that Christ presents Himself in the
Gospels, but as one who can say: “I am the way,
the truth, the life,” “the light of the world.” Yet
along with this stupendous demand upon the faith
of humanity there is a humility and simplicity
undiscoverable in the Buddha of the Pitakas. Self-consciousness,
self-reliance, self-culture—these are
the phrases most suggestive of the system and of the
life of the great Indian sage, while not self-abasement,
but self-oblivion, characterises the teaching
and life of Jesus of Nazareth. Identity with the
Highest, manifested by absolute surrender to Him,
is the essence of the Revelation of Christ. Always
is the Father confessed to be the source of all grace
and truth, and if the Son asks to be glorified, it is
that the Father may be glorified in Him. We are
certainly not contemplating similarities when we
look at the Buddha of the Suttas and the Christ
of the Gospels, but contrasts more widely separated
than the soul is from the body. In Buddha we
// File: 207.png
.pn +1
have a historical personage, who can be thoroughly
accounted for as the product and outgrowth of his
past, and of his environment; in Christ we have one
whom no philosophy of history has ever explained.
Alone and unapproachable, He meets us as one
who is really human, because He has become man,
one who has arisen among men to save them, but
because He has come through and to them. He
is not just one of the many, a son of men, the product
of a divinely-trained humanity, but the Son
of Man, who as Son of God, incarnated in the
nature of all men, has become the Head and Creator
of a new humanity. Correct, improve, embellish
as we may, the portrait left us of the gentle
teacher of Magadha, we never can lift him up to
that level which would justify his being worshipped
or being addressed, as Jesus of Nazareth
has been by the consensus of all the Christian ages,
“Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art
the everlasting Son of the Father.”

.fn #
<abbr rend=spell><i>E.g.</i></abbr> Sinai = Hagar (<abbr=Galatians>Gal.</abbr> <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 24-31); also Claudius = ὁ κατέχων
(2 <abbr=Thessalonians>Thess.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 6, 7); Hausrath, <i>Life and Times of Jesus</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 77.
.fn-
.fn #
Derenbourg, <lang=fr><i>Hist. de la Palestine d’après les Talmuds</i></lang>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 159, 202.
.fn-
.fn #
Wellhausen, <i>The Pharisees and Sadducees</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 8, 26-43; Greifswald,
1874.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Josephus>Jos.</abbr> <i>Antiq.</i> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr> 5. 9, <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr> 10. 4, 5; <i>Bell. Jud.</i> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 8. 2, 14.
.fn-
.fn #
Keim, <i>Jesus of Nazara</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 392.
.fn-
.fn #
Delitzsch, <i>Jesus and Hillel</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 31 <i>seq.</i>; Pirké Abôth, Cambridge,
1877, <i>passim</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Josephus>Jos.</abbr> <i>Antiq.</i> <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr> 4.
.fn-
.fn #
Philo, <lang=la><i>Quod omnis Probus Liber</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 12.
.fn-
.fn #
Bühler, <i>Ind. Ant.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 143; Jacobi, “Mahâvira and his
Predecessors,” <i>Ind. Ant.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 311-314; Kern, <i>History of Buddhism
in India</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 143; Colebrooke’s <i>Essays</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 380.
.fn-
.fn #
See “Jainism,” by Dr. Shoolbred—Report of the Missionary Conference,
1888, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 41; Wilson’s <i>Essays</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 427 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
“Sramana,” in Brahman speech, was a man who performed hard
penances, from <i>sram</i>, to work hard. There is another Sanscrit root,
<i>sam</i>, to quiet, and from it afterwards the popular etymology derived
the word. See Professor Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada
in <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 65 <i>note</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
There seems to have been four great divisions of Sramanas, with
as many as sixty-three philosophical systems represented by them. The
Brahmanas were also similarly divided. See Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books
of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 15, 16, 88, 93.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 71.
.fn-
.fn #
See <i>Year-Book of Protestant Theology</i> for 1883 for an account
of the views of Professor Loman of Amsterdam.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=Monsieur>M.</abbr> Senart, <i>Legend of Buddha</i>, Paris, 1875; Kern, <i>History of
Buddhism in India</i>: Schoebel. <i>Buddh. Actes de la Soc. Philol.</i>; Paris,
1874, vol <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 160 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Annual Report of the Asiatic Society; Paris, July 1875.
.fn-
.fn #
Cunningham, <i>Ancient Geog. of India</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 147; Oldenberg,
<i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 95; Beal, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 67.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr>“Mâra eat le démon de l’amour, du péché et de la mort,”</lang> says
Burnouf in his <i>Introduction to the Study of Indian Buddism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 76;
see also Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 159,
for the popular conception of Buddha’s temptation; the arrows of Mâra
are “flower-pointed,” like Kama’s, the Hindu god of love. See Dhammapada,
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 17.
.fn-
.fn #
Geikie, <i>Life of Christ</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 449.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 5. 2; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
This is not the place to discuss the substance of their respective
teachings. Their aims seemed to be similar, for both proclaimed freedom
to be gained by the Truth, or saving knowledge, but their conceptions of
the knowledge that saves are as widely contrasted as are their ideas of
salvation. If we put the Sermon on the Mount side by side with Buddha’s
first sermon (translated in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 146 of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>)
we find contradiction in almost every sentence. “Blessed are the poor
in spirit” is an utterance not only foreign to but in direct antithesis to the
preaching of Buddha. He has no sympathy with the “poor in spirit,”
if we take the phrase in the light of the old Hebrew concept of it. His
benediction is reserved for the self-conscious and self-reliant, who are
bent upon self-culture and self-development. “Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, etc., and thy neighbour as thyself.” Buddha
found no higher to adore, and no other than self to consider. The moral
precepts in his law are based on no appeal to conscience, and are inspired
by no sense of duty. Others were regarded as the occasion for winning
merit, and kindness done to them was not done for their sake, but with
the view of securing the safety of the doer.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Oldenberg (<i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 148) very properly remarks that
Ambapali the courtesan was no Mary Magdalene, and that she was not
regarded by Buddha as the woman that was a sinner was regarded by
Christ. Buddha had not Christ’s horror of sin, and therefore felt none
of His boundless pity for the frailty of its victims; of hatred of sin in
the Christian sense Buddhism knows nothing. Its highest virtue is
imperturbability, a serenity that is apathetic in regard to the most outrageous
wrong or the most heinous wickedness. Cariya Pitaka, <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 15;
also <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 151.
.fn-
.fn #
Bishop Bigandet, <i>Life of Gaudama</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 287; Professor <abbr rend=spell>H.</abbr> Wilson,
<i>Essays</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 243; Wheeler, <i>History of India</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 139;
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 148; Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, in <i>Sacred
Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 71, 72.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 10, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 114. Dr. Edkins, in <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 57, gives a version of an
appearance of Buddha after cremation to his mother, Máya, who came
down from heaven to see his coffin. Professor Childers finds no trace
in any Pali earliest literature of any belief in Buddha’s existence after
death (<i>Dictionary of Pali Language</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 472, note 1).
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 322, 323; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 264.
.fn-
.fn #
In the Bhagavadgitá loving devotion for Krishna is demanded as
the only means of salvation; but Krishna-worship began very considerably
later than the origin of Christianity. Professor Müller admits
(Gifford Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 99) that Christian influences were possible then,
but says that there is no necessity for admitting them. He cites the
passage from Bhagavad. <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> 29 (<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 34),
“They who worship me with devotion or love, they are in me, and I in
them,” as an interesting parallel to John <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 7 and <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr> 23, but we must
remember that <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John’s words were circulating all over the world
for generations before these were penned.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 1. 18.
.fn-
.fn #
The Lalita Vistara, of which there are many versions, is the chief
authority for the legends. In the <i>Buddhist Birth-Stories</i>, translated by
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, in Bigandet’s <i>Life of Gaudama</i>, and Spence Hardy’s
Manual (<i>Legends of the Buddhists</i>), in the <i>Romantic Legend</i> of Sakya
Buddha, translated by Professor <abbr rend=spell>S.</abbr> Beal, will be found a large and interesting
miscellany of the prodigies connected with the coming of Buddha.
.fn-
.fn #
A wife, not a virgin; <i>Romantic Legend</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 32, 36, 37, 41.
.fn-
.fn #
Lalita Vistara, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 63, Calcutta edition; <i>Buddhist Birth-Stories</i>,
<abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 62, 68.
.fn-
.fn #
Nalaka Sutta, Sutta Nipâta, <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 1. 20, 21; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Asita, the aged ascetic, is said to have ascended to heaven after
his daily repast, and upon finding the gods in joyful commotion he at
length returned to see the new-born wonder (<i>Birth-Stories</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 69).
.fn-
.fn #
Title given by the translator of the Dhanima-Kakka-ppavatana
Sutta, in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
Spence Hardy, <i>Manual of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 187, quoting the Pujáwaliya,
said to be later than the thirteenth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 17.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 31, 45.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 49, 50, <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 81.
.fn-
.fn #
Bigandet, <i>op. cit.</i> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 323; Spence Hardy, <i>Manual</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 347; Mahâparinibhâna
Sutta, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 11-16.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=de><i>Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zur Buddha-Sage
und Buddha-Lehre</i></lang>; Leipzig, 1882.
.fn-
.fn #
Let any one compare the prediction of the so-called Indian Simeon,
the Nalaka Sutta, in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 125 of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, with
Luke <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 25; the account of the Temptation by Mara, in the <i>Romantic
Legend</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 204, 224, or in Hardy’s <i>Manual of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 183, with
Matt. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 1; the so-called Transfiguration in Mahâparinibhâna, <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 49,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 81, with <abbr=Matthew>Matt.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr> 1-8; the feast
of the courtesan Ambopali, in Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 16. 25, <i>Sacred
Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 30, with Christ’s treatment of the Magdalene
in Luke <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 36, and he will see at once how improbable and even
absurd is the theory that the Evangelists borrowed from the Buddhist
compilers. That we are dealing with quite an inferior order of facts is
apparent when we compare one of the most touching coincidences, Buddha’s
last discourse to the Beloved Ananda in Mahâparinibhâna Sutta,
<abbr=five>v.</abbr> 34. 35, “Let not yourself be troubled,” with John <abbr rend=arabic>xiv.</abbr> 1-6. In some
of the miracles accompanying the birth and temptations of Buddha, there
are not only gross absurdities but positive indecencies, which by the simplicity
and modesty and reticence of the Gospel narratives are powerfully
condemned. See <i>Lalita Vistara</i>, <abbr=chapters>chaps.</abbr> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> and <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr>, and <i>Buddhist Birth-Stories</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 58, 68.
.fn-
.fn #
This is a very great assumption indeed. Foucaux, its translator,
assigns it to the first century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, but <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids assigns it
to some Nepaulese poet “who lived between six hundred and a thousand
years after Buddha’s death” (Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 197, 204). A
Chinese version is said to have been in existence about 70 <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>
Rajendralal Mitra, its English translator, admits this in his Introduction,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 48, but whether that was a version, or another book altogether,
or how far it corresponded with the <i>Lalita Vistara</i>, no scholar
has been confident to say. Dr. Beal also mentions a life of Buddha by
Asvaghosha as probably in circulation about the middle of the Christian
era (<i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 73).
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparinibhâna Sutta, translated by <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Sacred
Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
The blessed Buddha rebuked Pindola Bhâradvâga (for having won
a bowl of sandalwood by performing a miracle), saying, “This is improper,
not according to rule, unsuitable, unworthy of a Samana,
unbecoming, and ought not to be done. How can you for the sake of a
miserable wooden pot display before the laity the superhuman quality
of your miraculous power of Iddhi?... This will not conduce either to
the conversion of the unconverted or to the increase of the converted”
(Kullavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 8. 2). The danger of performing a miracle by power of
Iddhi, for self-glorification, is exemplified in the story of Devadatta in
Kullavagga, <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 1. 2, 3. In the Mahavagga, Kullavagga, Sutta Nipâta,
and similar books, however, miracles are ascribed to Buddha, and conversions
attributed to their performance.
.fn-
.fn #
Luke <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 1.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 128.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 190.
.fn-
.fn #
Matthew <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> 27; <abbr rend=arabic>xxviii.</abbr> 16-20.
.fn-
.fn #
Mark <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 7-11; <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 10-28; <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 38; <abbr=twelve>xii.</abbr> 35-37.
.fn-
.fn #
Pressensé, <lang=fr><i>Vie de Jésus</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 373.
.fn-
.fn #
Cox, <i>Commentary on Job</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 19.
.fn-
.fn #
See Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 15-20, for specimens of the “three thousand
five hundred” wonders of Buddha. “The marvellous in the Gospels is
but sober good sense compared with what we find in ... the Hindu
European mythologies” (Renan, <lang=fr><i>Études d’histoire Relig.</i></lang> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 177, 203).
.fn-
.fn #
Godet, <i>Lectures in Defence of the Christian Faith</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 118-161.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Dods, <i>Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 201; Dr. Fairbairn,
<i>Studies in Religion as a Philosophy</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 36.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 58, one-<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> edition.
.fn-
.fn #
Trench, Hulsean Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 150.
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipâta, translated by Fausböll in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 102; parallel
suggested to John <abbr rend=arabic>xviii.</abbr> 37.
.fn-
.fn #
Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 144-147.
.fn-
.fn #
Dorner, <i>Doctrine of the Person of Christ</i>, <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 56-60, 64-70;
Liddon, Bampton Lectures, 1866, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 364-380; Lange, <i>Life of
Christ</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 121-124.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell><i>E.g.</i></abbr> the Targums.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell><i>E.g.</i></abbr> <i>De Opific. Mund.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 4; <i>De Mundi incor.</i> § 16, 17.
.fn-
.fn #
Sears, <i>Fourth Gospel</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 220 <i>seq.</i>; Westcott, <i>Introduction to <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr>
John</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvi</abbr>, <abbr rend=arabic>xvii</abbr>; Dorner, <i>op. cit.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 327-332.
.fn-
// File: 208.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=lecture-4
LECTURE <abbr=four>IV.</abbr> | THE DHARMA OF BUDDHA:[#] THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.
.sp 2
What was the discovery that rewarded Gotama’s
long travail and conflict under the Bo-tree at
Bohimanda, and gained for him the title of Buddha,
the Awakened or Enlightened One? and what was
the message of “glad tidings” which since then has
made so many millions of the human race regard
him as their Deliverer? We shall never obtain the
answer to these questions if we follow the legends
and the later scriptures, although they profess to
give all the steps of the process by which he
wrought out his deliverance. These all date from
// File: 209.png
.pn +1
a time when the seeds which he had sown among
the thorns of uncleansed superstitions, had grown up
into as gigantic and tangled a jungle of speculation
as the world has ever seen. Had he confronted his
day and generation proclaiming as the result of
his laborious and painful inquiries the complicated
metaphysical system formulated in these books, he
would have made few converts. He might have
become the head of another sect, the founder of
another school, but he never would have established
a religion so extensive as that which for so many
centuries, and among so many peoples, has been
known by his name.

Following the Southern scriptures, and guided
by the eminent Oriental scholars who have made
them available by translations, we may be able to
trace, in the wild growth of fancy which has grown
up around them, the leading lines of the original
teaching. The real doctrine of Buddha did not
profess to be a philosophy inquiring into the
ultimate ground of things. He is represented as
having despised philosophisings, and as having inveighed
against profitless questionings as earnestly
as did <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul against vain babblings and oppositions
of science falsely so called.[#] His object was
// File: 210.png
.pn +1
avowedly practical, and he kept silent when asked
concerning themes whose discussion did not tend
to “illumination and quiet.” Notwithstanding this,
there must have been from the first, even in the
earliest forms of his teaching, ideas and thoughts
beyond the comprehension of the simple. For a
while he hesitated, as we have seen, to proclaim
his discovery, because “the way” was too hidden
for men to know, and too hard, even when known,
for them to follow. Like the Jewish Scribe, he
conceived that to the wise alone, and not to the
ignorant, belonged the law, and to the wise alone
was reserved the hope of final deliverance. To
children, and to the uninstructed struggling
classes, the preaching was not made fully known,
as really beyond them. Unlike Christ, whose
preaching was for all without exception, whose
gospel, though full of mystery, confers illumination
even on babes, the law of Buddha was in its entirety
for the sages only, and instead of conferring
knowledge on those who obeyed it, it made knowledge
a condition of obtaining deliverance. Nevertheless,
though the deductions were within the
grasp only of the few, his popularity proves that
his fundamental and principal dogmas must have
been such as all could understand, and they seem
// File: 211.png
.pn +1
to have been published, as Saint-Hilaire observes,
in a language so “simple and vernacular” as to
induce even the children and the ignorant to enter
the paths that lead to deliverance.[#]

He entered upon his travail, in order to find a
way of escape from the endless cycles of unsatisfying
change, and he believed that he had discovered
it. Leavening every part of his system is his impression
of the universality of suffering; and suffering,
its origin, its extinction, and the path or
method that leads to its extinction, are the so-called
“four noble truths” which constitute in Buddhism
the “Law of the Wheel.” In Buddhism the wheel
is the dominant symbol, corresponding to the cross in
Christianity, and he who would preach or roll onward
the wheel must present to the affectionate consideration
of the hearers these “four sacred verities”—the
verity of suffering, the verity that concupiscence
is the cause of suffering, the verity that
concupiscence can be quenched in Nirvana, and the
verity that the way that leads to Nirvana is the
sublime eightfold path of Buddha’s law. From his
// File: 212.png
.pn +1
first public discourse at Benares—corresponding to
our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount—on to his last
words on the night on which he died, this, with
manifold amplifications, but ever as the one pathetic
refrain, is the substance of his teaching, “through
not understanding and grasping which, O monks,
we have had to run and wander so long in weary
paths, both you and I.”[#]

The primitive creed of Buddhism was different
from, though not wholly antagonistic to, the
popular creed or theory of life of Brahmanism.
Weighed by Brahmanism, existence was found
wanting, as only illusion, a specious something
which truly was a mere nothing, and identity of
the personal with the universal self was the only
reality. By Buddhism existence was condemned,
not as an illusion, but as wholly and solely suffering.[#]
“What think ye, O disciples: whether is
more, the water that is in the four great oceans, or
the tears which have flown from you, and have been
shed by you, while ye strayed and wandered in this
long pilgrimage, and sorrowed and wept, because
that which ye abhorred was your portion, and that
which ye loved was not your portion?”[#] It was not
// File: 213.png
.pn +1
“vanity of vanities!” but “misery of miseries! all
is misery!” Life was misery, because governed by
the immeasurable and wretched past; death was
misery, because opening up an equally immeasurable
and wretched future. As long as man exists
he must be miserable, unable to “cease his wanderings,”
and “still from one sorrow to another
thrown.” The only deliverance conceivable from
this interminable evil would be to break the bands
of existence altogether. “Surely ’twere better not
to be.” And how “not to be” seems to have been
the problem which Buddha professed to solve.

May we not conclude with Saint-Hilaire that
this, “his first dogma, was his first fatal error”?[#]
With all his intellectual ability he never sought to
emancipate himself from the superstition and nightmare
of transmigration. Though he had cast off all
faith in the government of a divine power, he never
questioned the belief with which the lower aboriginal
races had infected the thought of his ancestors, that
life was governed by this law. It is averred that
he found it necessary to solve the conflict between
his ideas of justice and the actual order of things,
which has exercised the human mind always and
everywhere. A modern Buddhist, fortunate in
having Mr. Alabaster to introduce him to the notice
of an English-reading public, so propounds this
// File: 214.png
.pn +1
belief, and, purged from some of its errors, tries to
vindicate it. “For the law of perfect justice,” he
says, “demands that human conditions should be
equalised, and that good and bad luck should be
balanced sometime and somewhere. If a good man
be poor and wretched now, he must be reaping the
fruits of what he had sown in a previous stage of
existence.”[#] Yet surely this is a very superficial
theory for an Oriental professing Western culture to
formulate. It is judging of life as children and
savages judge of it, by the evidence of the senses,
and according to a very inferior and inaccurate
standard of good and evil. Poverty and suffering,
though confessedly painful, may not be regarded by
a good man as wholly evil in this world. Circumstances
which the savage and the child would covet
as realising their dreams of paradise may be the reverse
of desirable to the mature and thoughtful man.
The believers in transmigration make no distinction
between what is evil and what is simply painful.
Evil is not that which pains, but that which
defiles and degrades and destroys, and good is not
just that which pleases, but that which elevates and
ennobles and purifies. The law of absolute justice
does not require, as the modern Buddhist demands,
that human conditions should be equalised, and that
// File: 215.png
.pn +1
all men should be treated alike; for no two human
beings all the world over are absolutely alike; but
it demands that each should receive the treatment
most conducive to his healthy growth as a moral
being, and what appears to sense as the harder lot
may commend itself to reason as the better portion
of the man to whom it has been assigned, because
most suited to his need.

The dogma of transmigration is said to occupy
in the Buddhist system a position analogous to that
of the Fall in our Christian theology; but in reality
the two are diametrically opposed, both in their
essential ideas and the consequences which flow
from them. They are analogous only in respect that
they each profess to account for the conflict between
man’s ideal of himself and his actual condition.
The existence of evil is admitted by both, but the
Buddhist believes that evil belongs to the very
essence of man, and therefore he can find no prospect
of relief from it, here or hereafter. For as long as
the stream of existence continues it will always fall
below its source, and evil, according to the inexorable
rule of nature, will propagate only evil. The
Hebrew, however, did not conceive of it as essential
to or as always in the nature of man. His ancestral
beliefs carry him beyond the Fall; his
pedigree starts with the most sublime of all theories
of human origin that has ever been formulated in
// File: 216.png
.pn +1
human speech: “Let us make man in our image and
after our likeness, and let him have dominion over”
the creature. Dominion over nature man has
not, for he is too much under its dominion, and to
this subjection much of his suffering is directly
traceable. The Hebrew professed to have the
origin of this condition revealed to him in a breach
between man and his Maker, consequent upon man’s
self-assertion and selfish withdrawal of his life from
the source of life, which must involve suffering and
death. So through all the weary generations there
is the same invariable sequence of sin entering the
world, and death by sin. And yet at his very
worst the Hebrew believed that it was once far
better with the human race, and on this belief he
dared to rear the structure of his magnificent hope,
that mankind shall be restored to the original close
relationship with God, and therefore to a grander
dominion over nature, and to a happier and even
more prosperous life than that of which his ancestors
had dreamed as their primeval state.

Whatever may be said of the doctrine of the
Fall, belief in it is indeed “a condition of hope,”[#]
and the belief and the hope both spring from their
faith in God as Creator and Governor of the race,
which characterised the Hebrew prophets. Wherever
that faith is lively, it not only sustains man
// File: 217.png
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amid the sufferings of life, but it nerves him to
struggle with physical and moral evil to vanquish
it. The purer the faith the more resolute is the
struggle; the holier the Deity becomes to the
thought of man the stronger becomes his conviction
that life is a blessing, and that all its struggles may
conduce to peace. There is an instinct which seems
to suggest that there are worse things than troubles,
and that they may be blessings of no mean quality
after all. Christianity has made the startling
revelation that suffering is not peculiar to man, as
the consequence of his perversity in traversing the
Divine order; for not only is Christ presented to us
as the greatest sufferer, but in Him God the highest
and the holiest is disclosed as involved in it, and
as taking upon Himself the responsibilities and the
sufferings which our sin and need entail. But if in
Christ there is revealed the greatest sufferer, it is as
one whose suffering is not in vain. By suffering He
conquers that which has produced it; by enduring
suffering He ends it; and He reigns and finds
His blessedness in making us partakers of His
victory over it. So again Christianity, unlike other
religions which promise salvation <i>from</i> suffering,
offers salvation <i>through</i> suffering. It alone asserts
the utility of suffering; others regard it as evil,
Christianity as evil overruled for good. Others
reckon it as a mere loss or waste, Christianity as
// File: 218.png
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something that may be turned to profit as the condition
and preparation for joy. Joy in the Christian
conception is not the reward of suffering, nor compensation
for suffering, but the fruit and issue of
suffering which leads to it, as travail leads to birth.
So instead of evading or ignoring it, Christ would
have us recognise and acquiesce in it, and even be
thankful for it, as necessary not for our personal
profit, but for the gain of mankind. By His sufferings
we are healed, and through our sufferings we
fill up what remains of His for the redemption of
the world. Only through “the long travail of ages
yet to be” will there be born in the evolution of
God’s redemptive purpose that better race from
which all suffering shall have passed away, because
disobedience will have had an end. Fellowship in
Christ’s sufferings has thus transfigured the afflictions
of all who believe in Him. Unlike the Indian,
tortured by endless change, without any evolution
from low to higher, from evil or imperfect to what
is good and perfect, the Christian can endure suffering
not only patiently but also cheerfully, knowing
that he is suffering not just for his own sake, but
that in ways mysterious he is lightening the load
of many, and helping to bring to an end the long
anguish of the whole creation.

But of this consolation which comes from faith
in God the Creator, and therefore the Redeemer of
// File: 219.png
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man from destruction, Buddha had deprived himself.
Unlike the Brahman who sought escape from the
evils of transmigration by a process of subsidence
into the universal Self, he professed to find no
trace of this Absolute Self. The Brahman postulated
the Infinite and reasoned from it, but
Buddha started from quite the opposite pole. He
professed to deal with life as he found it, and so
reasoning from man outward, he asserted that the
necessity for transmigration was involved, not in
the illusion of Brahma, but in man’s own character.
Instead of being a natural or divine necessity, it
was a moral necessity created by man, which
having its cause in his own action could also by
him be destroyed.

And so Pantheistic speculation, in this instance
at least, ripened into its proper fruit. The passage
from conceiving Deity as characterless passionless
self, to discarding Deity altogether from human
thought, is a sure and generally a very rapid one.
When we come to think of Deity as of being diffused
and dispersed, we will soon omit the thought
altogether in the recognition only of physical force.
Brahmanic speculation had resolved the deities of
the ancient books into abstractions, and Buddha
recognised no such abstractions in the government
of human life. His creed was fundamentally
atheistic, as directly contradicting belief in a
// File: 220.png
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supreme ruler of the universe.[#] Not that he
denied the existence of the gods believed in by
his countrymen. On the contrary, he allowed
them to continue in the popular thought and
speech, and even encouraged disciples who had
not yet reached the highest knowledge to try to
acquire merit by virtue, so as to secure after death
a re-birth into their society. Similarly he admitted
the existence of devils or demons, and their
influence for evil upon man. All through his career
he was beset by Mara, the sensual king of all who
submit to him; but Buddha was superior not only
to Mara, but to all the gods in the popular pantheon,
for they, alike with the lowest and the
weakest of things, were subject to the law of transmigration.
Man might rise to a higher heaven
than what they occupied; they might fall to the
lowest hell. “Their worlds must perish like that
of man, and if ever they attained to final salvation,
it could only be by the same way in which a worm
might hope to reach it.”[#] Throwing his “plummet
down the broad deep universe,” he cried, “Gods
many,” but no god able to save. All alike with
men were bound in fetters, because ignorant of the
// File: 221.png
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truth he knew. Naturally, therefore, they are
represented in the legends as profiting by his
preaching and as seeking unto him for instruction,
while those of them who refused, or could not walk
in his ways, came to be regarded with pity.[#]

In like manner his creed was as essentially
materialistic. Man was no spiritual being, but a
bundle of Sankharas—a term, it is said, very
difficult to translate, but implying that person
meant a mass of “forms” or material qualities so
changing as to be never the same for two consecutive
moments. Belief in a soul he regarded as a
heresy, which he distinctly classed with sensuality
and belief in the efficacy of sacrificial rites.[#] To
the heart as the sixth sense he ascribed the power
of conceiving ideas without form, as the eye had
the power of perceiving objects; but this disappeared
in dissolution as completely as did the
others, and what was re-born was not the soul but
the quality, the merit or demerit acquired. This
startling assertion of Bishop Bigandet’s[#] has been
confirmed and amplified by others, specially by Rhys
Davids, and so the question at once suggests itself,
// File: 222.png
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now that the governing ideas of Deity and the separate
existence of the soul were expelled from the
human mind,—What was there left to give vitality
and coherence to his system as a religion? A kind
of religion is conceivable when something eternal
and self-dependent is recognised, if not without
and above a man, at least within him; but here
is a religion vast and comprehensive springing from
the determination to annihilate all religion, asserting
not simply that man is independent of all
superior beings, but that as the sum-total of
groups of sensations, abstract ideas, tendencies,
and potentialities, nothing of his personality can
survive dissolution, and how are we to account
for it?[#]

The answer is to be sought for in the working
of that great moral instinct which is at the root
of the belief in transmigration. Though there was
no person, no soul to emigrate from the body,
though the man perished, there was something
which he called the Karma—a word coined by
old Brahman sages long before him, though used
by them in a different sense—that survived.[#] The
aggregate of the good and evil in the life that had
come to an end formed the seed of another existence,
// File: 223.png
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so that each new individual and generation
became the exact and inevitable results of those
that had preceded them. It was evidently a
theory of continuity as unscientific as it was unphilosophic.
It could not be called an evolution
in any sense of the word, seeing it meant the
appearance in a new individual of the mental and
physical acts of another who had ceased to be.
The assertion, again, that though there was no
“continuing consciousness,” no transience of soul
in any sense from one person to the other, the
two persons are one, has been very properly stigmatised
as a “psychological absurdity.”[#] From
the first, though one of their stablest dogmas, this
one was a difficulty to the Buddhists themselves.
Their learned men never professed to justify it to
reason, but accepted it as a mystery, in open contradiction
to their principle that everything was
to be rejected which could not be comprehended
or explained. The common people again simply
ignored it, and adhered to the belief of their
fathers in continuity of life and personal identity
for man in the future. The sages might refine,
but the moral sense of the masses could not escape
from the conviction that the evil which they had
done must follow them, and the good which they
// File: 224.png
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would do could not be interred with their bones.
Even the speculation of the sages was a telling
confirmation of the truth that man cannot get rid
of himself. He may make a mock at God, may
demand, If a man die can he live again? or how
differs the life of a man from the life of a beast?
but he cannot refine away his moral sense and the
instinct of retribution which is inwoven in his
inmost being. Buddha acknowledged no moral
government of Deity, discarded the old belief
that the same soul must receive the reward of the
deeds done in the body; he denied even to the
soul a separate existence from the perishable body;
but he was haunted by the ghost of personal
identity. He felt absolutely certain that there
was a real connection of cause and effect between
past and present and future, and that each act of
the soul must work out its full effect to the bitter
end.[#] So it was only by profession that God was
mocked; men were witnesses to themselves of a
Sovereign Power forcing Himself upon them, even
when they tried to forsake Him, compelling them
// File: 225.png
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to receive His thoughts when they would not think
for themselves. So in primitive Buddhism we have
the strange paradox that out of Atheism there
arose a religion, with a demand upon conscience
almost Christian, and asserting as Christianity does
the eternal necessity of righteousness and truth.[#]

The analogy which has been suggested between
the Buddhist dogma of Karma and the Christian
doctrine of heredity is a very interesting one. It is
strange that the law of heredity, so clearly indicated
in the Bible, should be proclaimed in our age as a
modern discovery. Infidelity formerly denounced
the Bible for teaching that sin and its penalty were
transmitted from generation to generation, forgetting
that but for transgression the law of heredity could
only and always entail good. Laws are to be
judged by their intention, and this one, designed to
secure and transmit the increment of good in each
generation, is manifestly perverted by conditions
for which it is not responsible. The law, however,
which asserts itself in humanity by entailing on the
generations the blessing of good as well as the curse
of evil, is now being proclaimed and interpreted, not
by divines, but by men of science and philosophy.
The twin truth of the unity of humanity, elemental
in the Hebrew and Christian religions, though
// File: 226.png
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formerly strangely forgotten or denounced by infidelity,
is also adopted as a professed discovery of
our century. We are all agreed that humanity is
one, that each life is part of a larger life, and so
the injury of the part is the injury of the whole.
Sin could not enter humanity without dragging it
down, and holiness could not enter and conquer without
lifting it up. If one could appear in humanity
without sin, not a link in the diseased chain, but
perfectly free from all taint of disease, is the
supposition incredible that he would have the effect
upon humanity of a new creation? His coming
would imply the reversal of the drift toward evil and
the weakening of the inherited and accumulated
tendency to depravity. It would be a bringing
under Divine influence of this mysterious principle
of heredity, with results for good which no human
intellect can measure, and establish a once greatly
derided assertion, that as in one Adam, that is, one
kind of humanity, all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive.

Buddha had a clear apprehension of the truth
of heredity, but he had not the faintest conception
of the unity of humanity. His theory of life was
essentially atomic. Humanity was not to him one
whole, but a congeries of individuals, each one an
end to himself, and living just to himself. The
injury done to self by wrong-doing was always
// File: 227.png
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present to a Buddhist’s thought, but the suffering
thus caused to others was never taken into account.
He had no idea of the whole suffering in the one, and
consequently no sense of duty to mankind. Though
believing in the propagative power of good and evil,
he did not work for the good of coming generations,
but solely for the rescue of the individual from the
whirlpool of suffering existence. It has been
charitably suggested that his aim finds its analogue
in the offset to personal extinction so winningly
presented by “George Eliot” and Mr. John Morley,
whereby though dead and gone for ever in ourselves,
we may “live again in minds made better by
our presence,” and “in pulses stirred to generosity.”[#]
Buddhism had no such hope; the age, the system
itself, were alike incapable of conceiving it. The
time for that kind of Positivism had not come. The
human mind had to undergo long centuries of
Christian culture before it was possible for the
nineteenth-century agnostic poetess and philosopher
thus to expound their creed, for modern Positivism
has been powerfully though indirectly influenced by
the faith which it contradicts, and, like many of the
assailants of Christianity, it owes to it the most of
its strength and the best of its weapons.

Christianity, starting from the conception of
man as no outgrowth of nature, but a new creation
// File: 228.png
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in it, a being within and distinct from his body
as the driver is from the chariot,[#] has a theory of
human destiny contrasted utterly with that of
Buddhism. Man’s teeth have been set on edge
because his fathers have eaten a sour grape, but the
brand of pain upon past transgressions helps him to
conquer the taint transmitted in the blood. Though
he finds heavy temptation in inherited tendencies,
he finds in every temptation a way of escape in a
call to yield to other tendencies which are ever
drawing his soul to goodness. Sharing a confessedly
sinful humanity, he may be partaker of a sinless
one, and thus, if evil reigns over him unto death,
the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus can free
him from it.

Buddhism had no such hope and goal for man;
indeed, we may well wonder that a pessimism more
thorough than that of Brahmanism did not deprive
it of all hope and sink it into fatalism. Left alone
to fight his way through the universe, struggling
in a maelstrom of forces with no help for him in
man, no hope of sympathy in God, a Buddhist
would surely despair. On the contrary, unlike the
Moslem cowering under the thought of relentless
will, he accepted the situation with Christian
// File: 229.png
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determination to improve it.[#] He could hope for
deliverance, for suffering had an origin, and if the
cause could be removed then suffering would end.
The coils of misery could be unwound, the curse
of humanity could be abolished, if only man could
procure for himself emancipation from the necessity
of Karma. Now this the true Buddhist believed
he could gain by the extinction of all desire. Plato
adopting the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration,
taught that the future organism of the soul
would depend upon the cravings which it had
fostered here.[#] Somewhat similarly Christians believe
that the future of the man will depend upon
his most dominant present habits, and that, disembodied,
the spirit will gravitate unerringly to the
society which it has made of its kind. Buddhism,
believing in no soul, maintained that in the dying
creature a particular thirst or cleaving to existence
caused the birth of another creature; and so he
who would escape from the chain of existence must
endeavour, by vigorous prosecution of the eightfold
way, and the four paths or degrees of perfection to
which it led, to attain a state in which all craving
for continuity had ceased. Karma then would have
no terror to him; he would have reached a point
whence he could look onwards without anxiety,
because he would be treading a path from which he
// File: 230.png
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never would stray. He might still be a man, liable
to suffering and subject to death, but one purified
and emancipated from all inheritance of evil, and
fully assured of Nirvana.

And what was Nirvana, the final refuge of the
emancipated Buddhist? Ever since the religion
was known in Europe great diversity of opinion has
prevailed as to the meaning of this word. It was
employed by the Brahmans many centuries before
Buddha’s day, and used by them and by himself and
his disciples in so great a variety of senses that even
the learned Rajendralala Mitra, in enumerating
the sects into which orthodox Buddhists are divided
in regard to it, confessed some years ago that he
had given up in despair the attempt to ascertain its
meaning.[#] The researches and discoveries of later
years have enabled the translators of the texts to
write with less hesitation as to its significance, and
we are entitled to accept as solid the results of their
patient investigations. To begin with, they tell us
that it means the peace which ensues when all
passion has been subdued, and all selfish craving
has been extinguished. Though practically no
Buddhist hopes to attain to it here, but only to
enter the paths leading to it, it may be reached, not
in anticipation only, but in fruition.[#] Buddha may
// File: 231.png
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be said to have been in Nirvana forty years, for he
entered it, not in the moment of dying, but when
he attained perfection. This first conception of it,
therefore, seems a marvellous anticipation of the
faith of the Christian, who finds his heaven and
enters into his rest when he is delivered from the
φρόνημα τῆς σάρκος, from all selfish clutching at
the means of existence. In both religions, taken
at their highest, the goal of aspiration was not
extinction of sorrow, but extinction of self-love: in
Buddhism the quenching of <i>trishna</i>, or <i>upádána</i>,
“thirst,” in Christianity the quenching of ἐπιθυμία,
“lust,” “inordinate desire.” In both religions the
goal meant finality, a state in which there was an
end of death; and in both, moreover, it meant a
change which no language could define, and to
which no known standard could apply. The
Christian believer tells us that he is passing from
the visible to the invisible, from the temporal to the
eternal, and in like manner the Buddhist Arahat
would only be able to allude to the great change by
negations, and as the very opposite of all we know
or at present conceive. The Christian believes in
the perseverance of the saints, and the Buddhist
who has really entered the path must sooner or
later reach his prize.

But there the analogies end, while the contrasts
between the two beliefs are as irreconcilable as are
// File: 232.png
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their postulates. The postulates of Christianity
are the spiritual nature of man, and that his present
evil condition is not his normal one. Sin has gone
extensively and deeply into his being, for it is no
mere superficial excrescence, a fault which can be
corrected, a smirch that can be washed away, but
a leprosy in the blood, which is the life. Cleansing
is required and provided, but it is the cleansing out
of the whole corrupt nature by the transfusion into
the soul of a Divine life so pure, and so strong because
of purity, that it could not be holden of
death. Life is the essential idea of Christian salvation;
it is the Divine gift bestowed by Christ, who
came that we might have life, and have it more
abundantly. So while in the body we groan, being
burdened by a suffering flesh, it is not that we may
be unclothed, but clothed upon; not that the gift
of life may be recalled, but that it may be secured
in its completeness. It is “more life and fuller
that we want.” Sanctification in the Christian
conception means a process of healing, and salvation
means perfect health—the condition of a creature
freed from all inordinate desire, or desire for anything
forbidden, which is the root of all sin, and
rejoicing in the untainted bliss of being. Deathless,
sinless life, the life of eternal incorruption, “the
perfect life of love, the rest of immortality,” that is
the Christian Nirvana.
// File: 233.png
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Buddhism, on the contrary, postulating the
material nature of all existence controlled by the
universal law of transmigration, had no such conception
of final blessedness. Nirvana in its thought
meant, indeed, extinction in the first instance of all
fleshly and selfish dispositions; but the thirst, the
“cleaving” (<i>tanhā</i>) which was to be quenched, was not
lust in the Christian sense, but the natural innocent
love of life, and Nirvana involved the extinction of
that love, and of life as the going out of a flame
which had nothing else to feed upon. Deliverance
from this instinctive thirst for life is a specific germ
of which annihilation is the outcome. That Buddha
so expounded it was long questioned, and by many
denied, but Dr. Oldenberg has sufficiently made
clear his attitude toward this dogma. He seems to
have contented himself with its first significance,
to have evaded the necessity of deciding the many
discussions which were waged concerning the
second as profitless, and not tending to quietude
and wisdom, and to have exhorted his disciples to
strive rather to enter the paths.[#] By the time,
however, the canonical books were produced, his
disciples had not shrunk from pushing his fundamental
principles to their only logical conclusion.
The most ancient expositions of his doctrine disclose
one long theory of Nihilism as its only legitimate
// File: 234.png
.pn +1
inference. If misery was inseparable from existence,
it followed that non-existence was a blessing,
and consequently man’s chief end was to aspire and
strive to reach that state in which the “very seed
of existence has withered, the lamp of life has burnt
out for ever, and man can no more be born again.”[#]

While this was the doctrine of the philosophers,
the overwhelming majority of Buddhists in every
age and country have put a very different meaning
upon the word. Just as human nature has proved
too strong in them to accept their atheistic creed,
so in popular estimation from the first, Nirvana has
meant not annihilation of existence, but extinction
of suffering. They did not comprehend its metaphysical
significance, but they longed, as all men
do, for release from sorrow, and a happier life when
this is over, and they took refuge in Buddha, because
his law promised to convey them over the
troubles of life into a blessed hereafter. There
might be higher things for the wise to gain, but the
simple were contented with this inferior portion, and
indeed they chose the better part. For surely the
conception of deliverance from suffering, involving
extinction of the being that suffers, was as childish
as that of getting rid of a toothache by cutting off
the head.[#] Rightly were they led by the infallible
// File: 235.png
.pn +1
instincts of our moral being to believe that the end
of righteousness must be rest, but they wandered
fearfully in conceiving of rest as nothingness, for
the “end of righteousness is peace, and the fruit of
peace, quietness and assurance for ever.”[#]

The great question with Buddha and his immediate
disciples was not how Nirvana, the goal
of human aspiration, was to be defined, but how
it was to be attained. It was for him sufficiently
expressed as the final extinction of all the roots
of sorrow, and he taught that this consummation
could only be reached by knowledge. Ignorance
was the ultimate ground of all suffering existence,
but, as in Christianity, men could know the truth,
and the truth would set them free. According to
both religions, this knowledge could neither be
transmitted by tradition nor learned by a simple
intellectual process. It implied a moral and
spiritual training, and was the fruit of obedience;
but there again the analogy ends, for the Buddhist’s
idea of knowledge is as widely contrasted with the
Christian idea as is its idea of the Truth to be
known. In Christianity knowledge means Divine
// File: 236.png
.pn +1
illumination or revelation, the result of trustful
surrender to Christ, the revealer of the Father, and
Himself the Truth. In Buddhism it meant a knowledge
gained by man himself, through a process of
moral culture and self-control.[#] In Christianity it
was a grace that came through obedience to a better
Will; in Buddhism it meant simply obedience to
a Law. That law, moreover, had no commanding
power to enforce it, and involved no moral obligation
in the Christian sense to obey it. It was not a law
like the law of Moses or the law of Christ, for it
implied no Lawgiver to make it binding. It was
simply a rule, a method, discovered by man, and
followed because he found it expedient to follow it.
Adopting this method, observing this rule, persevering
in this course, a man would attain to
knowledge of the truth of things, but this supposed
truth is the very contradiction of the truth as it
is in Jesus, the truth by which we are sanctified,
and made wise unto salvation.[#]

This should be borne in mind when in translations
of Buddhist books we find such words as
“holiness,” “saints,” “paths or degrees of sanctification,”
“righteousness,” and such like. The original
// File: 237.png
.pn +1
words represent conceptions different from and
antagonistic to those suggested by these words to
us. But keeping this in view, we may well admire
and be thankful for the high purpose and clear
moral insight which enabled Buddha to discover
and set forth his way to Nirvana. The strength
and glory of Buddhism, the secret of its original
attractiveness, and of its long continuance, is its
ethical system. Its metaphysical creed may represent
a very puerile philosophy, its discipline of
artificial restraint may have been the reverse of
emancipation, but its moral code, in its simple and
direct and powerful appeal to the conscience, is a
far nearer approach to the Gospel than that of
Gentile Stoics or of Jewish Scribes. Avoiding sensuality
on the one hand as degrading, and asceticism
on the other as unprofitable, it mapped out a
<i>via media</i> that led far above that projected by any
ancient school. It entered into every domain of
life, of thought and word and deed;[#] laid its control,
as Christianity does, on feeling and motive, and
proclaimed that the way to perfect peace was a
way which no unrighteous man could enter and no
unclean man could tread.
// File: 238.png
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It is very interesting to catch, behind all its
superstitions and idolatries, and crude and childish
speculations, this glimpse of an ideal like unto that
of the Son of Man, calling and leading men to
righteousness, purity, and kindness, as their only
refuge. To the old Vedic religion, and to all
the class of religions of which it is the type,
morality, as we have seen, was a stranger. It was
the philosopher, and not the priest, who in old
times argued of righteousness, temperance, and
judgment to come. The Hebrew, as we have
seen, was the first and only ancient religion that
demanded holiness of life as indispensable to
the worship of God, and Christianity, as was
natural, recognised this old law which men had
from the beginning. But Buddhism was the first
system in which morality was substituted for religion.
It had neither priests, nor temples, nor
prayers, but taught men to depend for safety solely
upon a life of virtue and wisdom and goodness.
Though it implied a change of heart amounting to
conversion, this was due to the operation of no
regenerating spirit, but to perseverance in courses
within the reach of any one. Anticipating, therefore,
theories of life broached now-a-days as if they
were new discoveries, its endeavour to dissociate the
human from the supernatural, and to substitute the
ethical for the religious, deserves very earnest study.
// File: 239.png
.pn +1

It meant man’s earnest resolve to work out his
salvation with fear and trembling, for there is no
God within him working both to will and to do of
His good pleasure. It was an attempt to conceive
of a morally governed universe without a Governor.
Professedly atheistic compared with the religion out
of which it arose, it has been properly described to
be “more theistic at its core than Brahmanism has
ever been.”[#] It did not trouble itself about the
origin of man as an emanation from the universal
self, but it asserted the dignity of his nature as
resting on really a sounder basis. It refused to
believe with the Hebrew that the Creator had
written the law on the tables of the heart, but it
found the law there written somehow, and read it
almost as correctly. Like the Christian apostle, its
founder asserted that each man was a law unto himself,
the judge of his own action, and the arbiter of
his fate. And thus it came to pass that, without
any conscious purpose of doing so, he inaugurated a
moral revolution which lasted for ages. It swept
away an enormous mass of superstitions from the
Indian mind for centuries, abolished many abuses,
and modified more which it failed to overcome. It
has tended to civilise many barbarous races; and if
among them Buddhism has been able to bear the
encumbrance of their hideous idolatries which it
// File: 240.png
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assumed, it is because of the strong ethical foundation
upon which it rests. It is the ethical element
in religion that is universal and enduring, and there
is a completeness and force and persuasiveness of
ethical teaching in Buddhism which all non-Christian
religions lack; there is a comprehensiveness
of duty and gentleness which pre-intimate
clearly that universal Christian rule which makes
it imperative that we should not only duly consider
all brethren who are human, but should say to the
worm, as within the scope of our benevolence,
“Thou art my mother and sister.”

Let us now examine more closely this way to Nirvana
as expounded in the Suttas of Buddha, and in
relation to Christ’s way of salvation. The Christian
is very simple, but as it proceeds from a much deeper
conception of human need, its method of meeting it
is very different. It was not the suffering and misdirection
of men that most deeply impressed and
most powerfully affected our Lord. He came to a
race made in the image of God, that had confessedly
fallen from or had failed to realise its ideal. It was
lost, as sheep are lost, by inherent tendency to
wander; as coins are lost, by the neglect of others;
as prodigals are lost, by sensuality; and as Pharisees
are lost, by self-righteousness. It was diseased and
perishing, struggling not in the coils of changeful
suffering, but in the clutch of an evil power which
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had taken possession of it. Sorely needing, though
not seeking redemption, unable to help itself, He
had come in the name of His Father, who willed not
that any should perish, to seek and save it. His
formula of salvation was plain enough for even
babes to apprehend, for all He asked was that men
should turn to and believe in Him. They could
not raise themselves, but they could look toward
Him, and find deliverance in the look, for by trust
in Him as the supreme object of love and worship,
they would be lifted up out of their evil state. The
deepest tides of man’s being are those which are
swayed by his faith in and love of persons, and it
was upon faith, the commonest of all powers in our
nature, that Christ relied for the deliverance of
mankind from the dominion of evil. He offered
Himself to man and for man, was lifted up for them
on the cross in the beauty of suffering holiness; and
as love always attracts love, and as goodness
becomes a creative power in those who appreciate
it, so all who believed Him, trusted Him, clung
to Him as the weak cling to the strong, were
uplifted, and changed, and transfigured. Love not
only has a dominating but an assimilating power.
We become like those whom we fervently admire
and implicitly obey. Obedience in such a case is
not an obligation, but an inspiration; so though in
Christianity we speak of the Law of Christ, it is
// File: 242.png
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not as an external code to which we must conform,
but as a power communicated to and operative in us.
It is a law of the <i>spirit of life</i>, a grace and blessedness
of disposition, which, springing from gratitude,
will manifest itself in holiness far exceeding the
righteousness of a law, because vivified by a charity
and mercy as boundless as that which it adores.

So when our Lord inaugurated His kingdom, He
may be said to have proclaimed in the Beatitudes
His Law, for He then declared the dispositions of
those who would receive Him, and who as sons of
men trusting and following Him, would be saved
and sanctified and glorified by the Son of God.
Now, though from his first sermon to the last
Buddha is represented as “instructing his disciples,
inciting them, rousing them, and gladdening them”
by discoursing of blessedness, it was not of blessedness
in the gospel sense. It was the blessedness of
the Old Covenant, not of the New—the blessedness,
not of them who love much because they have been
forgiven much, but of them who keep the law, and
tread “the path which opens the eyes, bestows understanding,
leads to peace of mind and full enlightenment”—the
blessedness all who, walking in the Noble
Eightfold Way, must eventually reach Nirvana.[#]

It is almost impossible to explain all that is
// File: 243.png
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meant by the Noble Eightfold Way, for translators
differ very greatly as to the real meaning of the
terms employed, and even when they agree, they
warn us that the words, though similar to our own,
do not suggest the same realities. The word “righteousness”
and even “morality” never can have on the
lips of a true Buddhist the same signification which
they have on ours; for righteousness, apart from
the fear and love of God, is an impossible conception
to us, and so would unrighteousness, unless as a
sin or an offence against Him. Buddhism has no
word for ‘sin’ in our sense, and therefore no words for
‘holiness’ or ‘saint.’ “Sin is simply pain, demerit,
and a saint is one freed from what causes pain.” “A
righteous act is one accumulating merit, an unrighteous
act one producing suffering.”[#] The Eightfold
Way, interpreted by the legends, presents us
with the Buddhist conception of the perfect man,
and were we to take its constituents as equivalents
to the Christian qualities suggested by the words,
we should find outlined a character which here or
anywhere must be its own beatitude, but whose
blessedness is as completely beyond the reach of
sinful man as flying is beyond the power of a bird
whose pinions are broken.

But Right Views or Belief, Right Resolve, Right
Speech, Right Work, Right Livelihood, Right Exercise,
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Right Mindfulness, and Right Tranquillity,
must be taken, not as we accept, but as Buddhists
understand, the phrases. By right belief they unquestionably
meant belief in Buddha and the Four
Verities; right resolve included abandonment of all
domestic and social duties; right speech was the
recitation or publication of the dharma; right
work was specially that of a monk; right livelihood
that of living on alms; right exercise tended
to the suppression of all individuality; right mindfulness
was habitual contemplation upon the impurity
and impermanence of human nature; and
right tranquillity was ecstasy.[#] To have substituted
even this in the Hindu mind for a righteousness
only ceremonial and superstitious was indeed
reformation; but as an idea of Perfection it is
manifestly not only different from, but greatly
inferior to, the Christian ideal. Perfection in the
case of Buddhism meant extinction of feeling
and consciousness; in Christianity it meant harmonious
and full development of being and character.
In Christianity perfection meant conformity
to an Exemplar outside and above it, the likeness of
a child to a Father in heaven; but Buddhism could
conceive of no exemplar, and the man who would
be perfect must strive in entire self-dependence to
// File: 245.png
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be so. In Buddhism the standard is purely human;
in Christianity, while the measure required is relative,
the standard is divine. So in Buddhism the
Arhat is content, and we never hear from him the
confession, “I count not myself to have attained!”
but in Christianity the more saintly the life, the
greater the discontent with it. The higher we rise
the more urgent is the desire to press on. Christianity
therefore opens up the avenue to perpetual
improvement, and inspiring us with a motive to progress
which can never lose its power, it provides
for the soul the only rest that will satisfy it. “In
life,” says Pascal, “we are ever believing, we seek
repose, but what we really crave is agitation.” “It
is the contest that pleases us, and not the victory;
the pursuit and not the possession.”[#] Absolute
truth and goodness is the perfection of divine
blessedness; the never-ceasing pursuit of it is
human blessedness. The goal we can never reach,
but the watchword, “Nearer, my God, to Thee!”
seems to solve for us the problem of human destiny,
for by directing us to the life of perpetual achievement,
it assures us of a never-ending blessedness.

The Buddhist goal of perfection and the law or
way that led to it, was by Buddha himself or his
earliest disciples considered to be beyond the power
of many to attain to. His followers were soon
// File: 246.png
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ranged into classes according to their ability to
tread the paths which led to liberty. His law,
therefore, unlike the Ten Commandments of the
Bible, which are binding on all without distinction,
was not a law for all men. Each one was at liberty
to take on him as many or as few obligations as he
pleased, according to his resolve to continue in the
world, or to abandon it, and having abandoned it
according to his resolve to seek after Arhatship
and aspire to Nirvana.[#] Upon those who, conforming
outwardly, yet remained in their secular callings,
was enjoined abstinence from the five gross sins,
of killing, theft, adultery, falsehood, taking intoxicating
drinks—already, with the exception of the
last, made binding on them by the Hindu religion.
By refraining from these, and by serving and
maintaining the monks, even the laity could win
for themselves a happy re-birth into some world
hereafter. Those wiser ones, again,[#] who, convinced
of the evil and danger of secular life, had
abandoned their homes, and entered the Order
that by meditation and abstraction they might
further work out their deliverance, bound themselves,
in addition to observance of these five commands,
to eat only at stated times, to use neither
perfume nor ornament, to sleep only on mats on
// File: 247.png
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the ground, to abstain from dancing, music, and
worldly shows, to own and accept neither silver nor
gold, and to be perfectly chaste. For those wisest
of all, who had not only abandoned the world
in order to lead the better life of the religious, but
who had strenuously resolved, in following the
religious life, to attain to Arhatship and Nirvana,
there remained the much more severe observance of
what was called the “Seven Jewels of the Law,”[#]
the last and most important use to which the Noble
Eightfold Way could be put. For by earnestly
struggling, meditating, mastering their precepts,
the “Ten Fetters” of Delusion, Doubt, Dependence
on Ceremonial Rites, Sensuality, Hatred, Love
of life on Earth, Craving for life in Heaven, Pride,
Self-Righteousness, and Ignorance, would one by
one be broken, and long self-abnegation involved
in the process would work out its full reward.

It is to be observed that in all these classes or
stages the practice of virtue and the cultivation of
purity were considered fundamental. In the preaching
ascribed to Buddha great stress is laid on Enlightenment,
and on Meditation, which leads to it; but
at the base of all this system, as the first indispensable
factor in securing perfection, was Uprightness.
In the Suttas this formula constantly recurs:
“Great is the advantage, great the fruit of earnest
// File: 248.png
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contemplation when set round with upright conduct.
Great is the fruit, great the advantage of
intelligence when set round with earnest contemplation.
The mind set round with intelligence is
free from the greatest evils, that is to say, from
sensuality, from individuality, from delusion, and
from ignorance.“ Again, “Righteousness, earnest
thought, wisdom and freedom sublime: these are
the truths realised by Gotama far-renowned.”[#] The
uprightness, or righteousness required, presents, as
the Moral Law of Scripture does, a much broader
range of influence than the words would indicate.
In prohibiting lying, Buddha enjoined avoidance of
all offensive language, and of every word that could
sever men. He also instructed his disciples not only
to avoid showing enmity to those who hated them,
but to overcome evil with good. Purity again in
his regard meant purity not of word and deed alone,
but of thought and feeling. In some respects his
precepts go beyond the Moral Law. The command
not to kill included respect not for human beings
only, but for every creature that had life. He not
only condemned drunkenness, but demanded total
abstinence as essential. The precept “Do not commit
adultery” was understood in our sense of it only
by the laity; for the religious, marriage was not an
honourable estate, but one polluted and polluting.
// File: 249.png
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Unlike the Moral Law, which recognises everything
that is natural and sanctifies it, the rule of Buddha
in these respects was unnatural in its restrictions.
It pronounced common and unclean what God Himself
has cleansed; and, as always happens when men
add to the commandments of God in one direction,
they are sure to take away from them in another.
So Buddha’s rule, though excellent in that it lays
its control not on conduct only, but on thought and
feeling, is essentially negative and defective. It
does not cover man’s whole nature, nor provide for
his every possible relation. Ignoring God, it is
therefore interpreted by no positive and active
principle of goodness. It is inspired by no sense
of duty, for it recognises in the universe no superior
to whom anything is due, and, unconscious of any
benefit, it owns no gratitude. Consequently unrighteousness,
as an offence to or an outrage upon a
better or kinder being than self, is not in all its
range of view. Unrighteousness is only a calamity
to be avoided or an imprudence not to be repeated.
Struggling to get out of the meshes of an evil net,
the Buddhist might bewail his mistake, his folly, or
his feeble or ill-directed effort, but he was totally
unconscious of rebellion or ingratitude.[#]

Moreover, in a universe where Moi-même is the
only god, and a man’s own Nirvana his only goal,
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the primary motive of action can rise no higher
than fear or self-interest. Apparently strong, it is
really essentially weak in regard to the maintenance
of proper relations to others demanded by the
second table of the Moral Law. The suffering caused
to others through his failure to fulfil the law, or by
conscious transgression of it, makes no impression
on the Buddhist, except in as far as it interferes
with his pursuit of perfection. Others are regarded
only as occasions of acquiring merit. Instead of
serving them as Christ enjoins us to do, the
Buddhist serves himself of them. It is a religion
of every man for himself. It has been likened to
Positivism, but it falls far short of it, as lacking
the altruism which Positivism has borrowed from
Christianity.[#] Positivism refuses to do anything
for the glory of God, but it lays great stress upon
the duty of living for humanity. It makes the
great mistake of supposing that the claims of God
must be distinct from or antagonistic to the interests
of humanity. It does not recognise that they are
identical—that the more the life is reserved for
God, the more of it is communicated to our fellow-men,
and that we must love the Lord our God with
all our hearts, before we can love our neighbour as
ourselves. The Positivist scheme of morals, however,
is vastly superior to that of Buddhism, for in
// File: 251.png
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it the goal is Nirvana, without any reference to
the good of any other, and the decided advantage of
any action consists wholly and solely in the consequences
to the actor himself.

Dr. Oldenberg has pointed out to us that the
much-vaunted charity of Buddhism, illustrated in
the legends by the self-immolation of Buddha to
satisfy the hunger of a wild beast, though it “sways
toward does not even touch the law of Christian
charity.”[#] Buddha’s Rule, though benevolent to the
extent that it would harm no one, and beneficent
in respect of doing good, knew nothing of Christianity’s
enthusiastic passionate desire to help and
work for others.[#] It was the interest of the true
Buddhist to forgive his enemies and not to hate
them,[#] but he never considered himself bound to
love them. It was good policy for one pressing on
to Arhatship to do good works, and he would go
far out of his way to do them; but he never went
about doing good as one who found his reward in
the opportunity and power to do it. He was
among men not as one who ministers and gives his
life to ransom others. His very self-abnegation
had egoism at its core. Between the Christian surrender
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of self to God for the sake of others, and
the Buddhist surrender to others for the sake of
self, there is a great gulf fixed. The first springs
from a sense of indebtedness, a consciousness of
mercy unmerited, but freely bestowed; but the
other, having no sense of forgiveness received, has
no real mercy to show. The mercy of God is the
spring of all true human compassion, for he who
truly receives it finds it impossible to withhold it.
It is, alas! bestowed upon many who are too full of
themselves to take it in, and in all such cases it is
lost, but in every heart that is conscious of it, it
becomes a disposition to show kindness that cannot
be counted by acts, and that never will ask, “How
oft shall my brother offend me and I forgive him?”
Buddhism was friendly in its benevolence, but it
never was actively charitable, in taking upon it the
infirmities and bearing the sicknesses of others. It
has no passionate desire to gather the wrecked and
blighted of humanity and to bind up their bleeding
wounds and sores. On the contrary, in its pursuit
of Nirvana it passed by all such in the path of
life, precisely as the priest and Levite passed the
wounded man on their way to Jericho. It not
only was selfish, but even cruel in this pursuit,
for a woman in difficulty or in distress was not to
be helped by a passing monk. The poor and the
diseased and the lost were not to be considered,
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for they were simply suffering the due reward of
their deeds; but the yellow-robed monks, healthy
and shining-faced, were to be the recipients of the
bounty of the charitable and the proper objects of
their attention. One of its beatitudes runs thus:
“Not to serve the foolish, but to serve the wise;
to honour those worthy of honour. This is the
greatest blessing.”[#] Almsgiving was indeed encouraged;
but alms were only to be bestowed upon
the worthy—on the monk and Arhat—not on the
outcast and the leper, whose miserable condition
indicated their unworthiness. If the animal creation
profited by their charity, which they refused
to their suffering fellow-men, it was from a selfish
motive: for the parent, or wife, or child, whom by
Buddha’s rule they were obliged to help, might be
looking at them, for all they knew, out of the eyes
of the beast, and not to fulfil the precept would
bring to themselves both harm and loss.[#] Tested
even socially, therefore, the Rule of Buddha is
defective, and this because it is not founded on
religion. The cause of God is eternally the cause
of man. In the Fatherhood of God is essentially
involved the universal brotherhood of man. Christ
is before us as the representative of humanity,
// File: 254.png
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because He is the representative of Deity. Refusal
to acknowledge His supremacy will disturb all
human relationships and throw them into disorder.
We learn to do to others as Christ hath done
to us; the sense of our indebtedness will be the
measure of our charity. For this end He has
chosen the poorest and the most wretched as His
memorials, and He has said, “Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye
have done it unto Me.”

To do justice to Buddha’s way, however, we
must remember that the path of uprightness (<i>sila</i>)
was only the first part of it. Without external
rectitude, inward integrity would be impossible;
but external rectitude, without self-concentration,
would be a foundation without a structure. “A
man must endeavour to keep constant watch over
his thoughts, for our whole existence depends upon
our thinking,”[#] was one of the noble maxims of
Buddhism. It is to its credit as a religion that
it recognised that only a small part of our real life
can be expressed in words and deeds, that the true
sphere of morality and human temptation was
within, and that it instructed men to keep the
heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues
of life. Buddha seems to have felt, and to have in
part at least expressed, the contrast and conflict
// File: 255.png
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between the seen and the unseen in our life. He
recognised, it is true, no soul, and the warfare between
the flesh and the spirit was not found in his
philosophy, but he had to account for the antagonism
which every one feels between our animality and
our humanity, between what is pressing or dragging
us down, and what in us struggles to be free.
The mental and moral qualities were of far more
value than the physical; the invisible was of more
consequence, because more real, than the visible.
The “mindful and thoughtful man” was the man
who “looked within and not without,” and so
Buddha’s insistence upon the “noble earnestness
of meditation” as indispensable to deliverance is
a grand testimony to the truth, which no philosophy
of materialism can falsify, that we are far
more concerned with what we think and feel and
imagine than with what we touch and we taste,
and that our thoughts and feelings go far more
into the weaving of our character than do our words
and works.

It is alleged that in Pali literature the word
for meditation (<i>samadhi</i>), by which alone inner
purity can be attained, bears to the word for “uprightness”
the same relation as that which faith in
the New Testament bears to works.[#] By uprightness,
// File: 256.png
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delusion is cleared away, and by pondering
constantly the five principal kinds of meditations—Love,
Pity, Joy, the Impurity of the Body, and
the state of Serene Indifference to what men think
bad or good—the man was supposed to be redeemed
from all attachment.[#] It is very pathetic
to note this approach toward and yet rebound from
the Christian conception of the function of faith:
for faith is the victory that overcometh the world,
with its lust of the flesh, its lust of the eye, and its
pride of life. It is that too which, because it looks
to the unseen and eternal, quenches all sordid or
inordinate cleaving to life, which is the root of so
// File: 257.png
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much evil and the cause of so much suffering. The
apostles, instructed of Christ, have taught us that
God’s precious gift of life is ours to use: that to
keep it, to will to save and to find it, as if it were an
end and not a means, is to miss and to lose it; while
to use it, be willing to lose it for some higher good,
is to keep it unto life eternal. Now Buddha had a
glimpse of this truth, that lust of existence was the
root of bitterness in humanity. He condemned as
heresies the worldly lust which says, “Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die,” and the lust of
other-worldliness which dreams that the life beyond
will yield as good, or better pleasures than this
one;[#] but the two last of his five principal meditations
show how far apart and far short of the
victory of faith was his idea of the victory of
samadhi. The apostles’ aim was to get rid of lust;
but his aim was to get rid of life. The apostles
mortified the members which are upon the earth,
anger, wrath, malice, evil concupiscence, and covetousness,
just that the higher life, the life hid with
Christ in God, might grow and brighten; but
Buddha, in “cleansing himself from all impurity,
little by little, moment by moment, piece by
piece,”[#] sought to escape from the last shadow of
// File: 258.png
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personal existence into the blessedness of absolute
unconsciousness, if not of utter extinction.

For this seems clearly revealed in the last or
highest stage to which the paths of uprightness
and meditation were supposed to conduct, that
of enlightenment (<i>panna</i>) or spiritual abstraction,
alleged to be equivalent to prayer in other religions.
The highest Christian conception of prayer is that
of communion with God; the highest Buddhist
conception of <i>panna</i> is of a state of clairvoyance
or ecstatic insight in which “men hear with
clear and heavenly ear, surpassing that of men,”
and “comprehend by their own hearts the hearts of
other men,” and “recall their own various states in
former existences,” and “see with pure and heavenly
vision the procession of other beings as they pass
from life to life.”[#] Buddha evidently was believed
by his disciples to have possessed this power, and
probably his own long fasting and severe austerities,
practised in the beginning of his career, acting upon
a highly nervous system, made him a believer in
the reality of this perfect insight and ecstasy of
contemplation, and that it might be acquired by all
who were sufficiently persevering in pursuit of
Arhatship.[#] It must be observed, however, that
// File: 259.png
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he does not appear to have regarded this as an
experience to be enjoyed by the Arhat in perpetuity;
on the contrary, it was the condition
preceding final and eternal deliverance, and so it
may be taken as the Buddhist conception of
Euthanasia.

The Christian in the highest and supreme
moment of life aspires, if conscious, after the beatific
vision. It is no Brahmanic absorption into the
absolute that he desires, but likeness to and communion
with God. The consciousness of personality
was never more intense, the conviction was never
stronger that he has been divinely created and
trained as a separate character. By long and prayerful
use of the means of grace he has sought to bring,
and to keep himself under the control of the Holy
Spirit; and he hopes that the next change will
completely free him from every trace of “sensuality,
delusion, and ignorance,” and purge away from the
soul the last taint of selfishness. By long and
sore experiences he has learned that selfishness is
the evil root whence spring all the suffering and
sorrow that poison life. He can therefore understand
and sympathise with the Buddhist anathema
upon “individuality,” if by that is meant the
// File: 260.png
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endeavour to abstract our life from the solidarity
of humanity, to use it for our own ends, and to
grudge what of it God uses for the rest of His
family. This is the Christian conception of the
cause of death and all its woe, and from this a
Christian saint ever prays and struggles to be
free; but it is not from “individuality” in this
sense that the Buddhist Arhat seeks deliverance.
He is bent upon the very thing from which the
Christian is anxious to escape. He wants to isolate
and withdraw his portion of life from the sum of
humanity, to abstract himself from the mass, to save
his own soul; and now that he nears the goal, his
whole energies are directed, not to purify and
strengthen and ennoble the personal self for better
service, by minding what is pure and lovely, and
by striving unceasingly after what is right and
true, but by crushing out every feeling into
apathy, every thought into vacuity, so as to get
rid of personality, identity, and the very faintest
germ of life.[#]

And this is the goal of a race that has extended
not only over the whole range of the present, but
over that of many existences; this is the victory
which crowns a fight that has continued throughout
untold ages. Truly there is something very
pathetic in the conception of a struggle after sainthood
// File: 261.png
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so prolonged, by one who, now a god, now an
animal, now a man, has never lost sight of his
mark, and has ever pressed onwards to it.[#] Probably
we may have something to learn from it,
by way of correcting the idea that true moral and
spiritual excellence, perfection, saintliness, is the
growth of a single life; but when the goal is
understood in its bare reality, as implying not
destruction of selfishness, but extinction of being,
surely the reproachful question is justified, “To
what purpose is this waste?” After millennia of
transformation the nebula has formed into a star,
and just at the point when it can illumine an
immensity, it disappears for ever from the firmament.
Unreckonable energy and thought have
been expended upon the production of a man,
and just when he has reached the highest point
of perfection, and is most serviceable to the
universe, he becomes of less value than a vapour
that vanishes away. Truly

.pm verse-start
        “the crown of our life as it closes
Is darkness; the fruit thereof dust,”
.pm verse-end

and man walketh in a vain show, he disquieteth
himself in vain, if Buddha’s way be the only path
of deliverance from evil, and Nirvana his only goal.

And so while we ought to be profoundly thankful
for the intellectual culture and moral earnestness
// File: 262.png
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that made Buddha, in spite of himself, the
reformer of Eastern Asia, it is manifest that even
his best doctrines represent very partial and one-sided
truths, “dwelt upon with morbid intensity,
to the exclusion of every fact which might have
modified them.”[#] His fundamental error was
his wild attempt to explain the life of man independently
of Divine control, and to guide man
safely through the perils and temptations of
existence by an ethical system founded on no
appeal to an eternal principle of goodness without,
but solely to self-interest. The result, which
has been to identify the nature of man with
that of the animals,[#] surely shows conclusively
that religion and morality can never be dissociated
without damage to both. A religion without
morality must degrade. A system of morality
apart from religion will never upraise. Religion
is for man simply indispensable. Deity is a
necessity to him, and deity he must have, though
he finds his god in a tree or makes it out of a
stone. Man lives by faith, faith in his higher
self, faith in a higher than himself, who alone can
explain the conflict between his actual condition
and the ideals which he conceives. The modern
Buddhist assumes that “religion is the science of
// File: 263.png
.pn +1
man, not the revelation of God, and he considers
that comprehensions of deity are of far less consequence
than just ideas of a man’s own self,”[#] but
how can a man have a just idea of himself apart
from some idea of God? According to his idea of
God will be his estimate of himself. Buddhism, by
ignoring God and preaching morality, has certainly
failed to make its adherents moral, and it has
imparted to what is noble in their morality the
melancholy of despair.[#]

Ignoring God, it could only form, or could not
emancipate itself from, a false conception of man,
as part of a material system of things; but man,
though considerably involved in a material system,
never can be interpreted by it. On the contrary,
nature can only be interpreted or properly understood
in man as the lower in the higher. Man is
an antagonist of nature; he is for ever condemning
its ways, coming into collision with its laws, refusing
to live its life. Out of this collision emerges
his religion, while his morality originates in the
conflict between his own sense of duty and its life
of animal instinct.[#] To conform to nature, he must
become a brute, but he has in him ideals and
// File: 264.png
.pn +1
capacities transcending it, and by exercising these
capacities in pursuit of his ideals he finds his life.
Buddha confessed to an ideal, and wrought hard to
realise it, but alas for humanity when it finds no
higher than self to reverence! Buddha’s theories
of self-culture and self-deliverance reduced to
practice have proved most miserable failures. It
could not be otherwise; no man is likely to move
the ship in which he sits by puffing away at the
sails, or to lift himself out of the mire by simply
pulling away at his boots; and no philosophy of
self-culture, self-control, or self-rescue, can succeed,
which ignores or refuses to acknowledge man’s instinct
of worship. What he most needs is not law,
not a system of morality, not even an example or
model to copy, but inspiration. He knows already
enough to condemn himself, and he has examples
which, though far from perfect, quite suffice to
confound him. The command to be perfect mocks
him as truly as a command to see would mock a
man stone-blind. What he does want is a powerful
moral energy within him, for lack of which he
has to confess that he cannot do the good he would,
but is ever doing the evil which he would not.
His real wretchedness is not his suffering and death,
not even his ignorance, as Buddha thought, but the
continual and seemingly ineffectual struggle between
the animal and the man, the flesh and the
// File: 265.png
.pn +1
spirit. And Buddhism was powerless to help him
here. It lacked the steady support of the sense of
duty to the highest and best, the inspiration that
comes from the faith that the highest and best is
for us, and is with us, and in us. Belief in God,
as Bacon reminds us, is “essential to the consciousness
of our nobility and dignity, for certainly man is
of kin to the beasts by his body, and if he be not of
kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble
creature.” So Buddhism in unduly exalting man
to the level of deity has in reality degraded him.
It has indeed lifted wild races out of barbarism,
but it has failed to civilise them. It has certainly
not destroyed ignorance, and the worship of intelligence
has not tended to its development and
diffusion among the peoples whom it has swayed.
Judged even by an ordinary standard, the monks
of either Southern or Northern Buddhism are rarely
found to be enlightened men, while the vast
portion of the peoples among whom these monks
are found are about the most ignorant of all. And
just as certainly has it failed to make men free;
for religion is the guarantee of freedom. “Where
there is no place left in human thought for deity,
there will soon be none found for human liberty.”[#]
The basis of individual right is the recognition of a
// File: 266.png
.pn +1
divine and purely moral government of man. If
there be no higher than the highest man regarding
us, we have only the right to live under the power of
the strongest, and the reign of terror must succeed
to that of order and law. The history of Buddhism
and the miserable governments associated with it
are telling comments upon and confirmation of the
truth that belief in God is necessary to secure the
rights of man.[#]

The progress of the human race will ever be in
proportion to the strength of its conviction that it
is governed and considered and sustained by a
Power of infinite goodness ever making for righteousness.
Such a conviction means inspiration,
stimulating endurance and hope, and resolute
struggle with evil in all its forms. In it is implied
the assurance that resistance can never be in vain,
that failure at the very worst is only partial success,
and that all things work together for good. The
time for this gospel had not come when Buddha
called upon the people of India to “save themselves
from this condition of wretchedness,” and the result
of his mighty and benevolent efforts shows convincingly
how urgent in human nature is the demand
// File: 267.png
.pn +1
for a Faith which will not only enlighten but enliven,
which, recognising fully not only the sufferings
but the whole necessities of man, and creating
strong discontent with the world as we find it, and
even disgust of human life as it is, will quicken in
us persevering and deathless efforts to reform the
one and to improve the other. Such a faith it is
our privilege and awful responsibility to communicate.
Our religion is higher than our grasp, for
it is always above us. Alas! in too many cases
it is higher than our aim, for we are too inclined
to let it slip, and drift on the tides of things as
they are; but mankind will never be satisfied
with a lower. <lang=fr>“Après l’invention du blé ils ne
veulent pas encore vivre du gland.”</lang> “We needs
must love the highest when we see it,” and we
needs must strive to become like the highest when
we love it. The gospel preaches consolation and
hope to a suffering world, and promises grace upon
grace to every endeavour to heal and amend its
condition. Christ purifies and improves the life
which we have by destroying only what is evil, and
by preserving and training and ennobling all that is
truly natural. Inexorably He demands the extinction
of selfishness in all its forms, and He will not
even permit us in our prayers to think and ask for
ourselves. He reminds us that God is our Father
in heaven, and what He gives is for all His family.
// File: 268.png
.pn +1
Sternly He denounces as sinful the attempt to
secure our own happiness here or in a better world
hereafter; but He offers the heaven and Nirvana
which He found in assuming the burdens of others,
and in bearing their cross. So He assures us that
it is worth our while to live, even in a world groaning
and travailing with suffering, and that it will be
worth our while, even in agony if we must, to die.
It is indeed a very evil world, but as long as we
draw our inspiration from Him we can live in it
not only without damage but with great profit.
When we offer ourselves in His strength for its
salvation we will be saved from its sins. In the
times of our deepest distress we will have the peace
which He left us, and when most severely beset
and cast down with sorrow because of what seems
baffled endeavours, we have only to think of that
hope of ultimate victory which made Him to endure
to the end, to rise into

.pm verse-start
                    “that last large joy of all,
Trust in the goodness and the love of Him
Who, making so much well, will end all well.”
.pm verse-end

.fn #
<i>Dharma</i>, an ancient Brahman term, meaning law or order; what
holds things as they are, or ought to be. In later Sanskrit it also
means duty and virtue, <abbr rend=spell><i>i.e.</i></abbr> law performed.—Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural
Religion</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 94, 95. <i>Buddha</i> is also an ancient Brahman term applied
to one who has attained a perfect knowledge of the Self.—Satapatha-brahmana,
<abbr rend=arabic>xiv</abbr>. 7. 2. 17. In Buddhism Dharma means Buddha’s doctrines,
“bodhi,” <abbr rend=spell><i>i.e.</i></abbr> knowledge self-acquired, as distinguished from “Veda,”
<abbr rend=spell><i>i.e.</i></abbr> revelation obtainable only through the Brahmans.—Sir Monier
Williams’ <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 97.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 205-208; Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 87; Spence Hardy, <i>Manual of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 375. His relation to the
philosophical systems of his day is illustrated in several Suttas; see
Sutta Nipâta, in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 148-152.
Evidently he regarded them with aversion, and even contempt.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Le Bouddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 79. The legends indicate that his use of the
vernacular was matter of principle. Two Brahmans, “excelling in speech,
excelling in pronunciation,” complained that the monks corrupted the
word of the Buddhas by repeating it in their own dialect, and asked
permission to put it into classical or polished verse. “How can you, O
foolish ones, speak thus?... You are not, O monks, to put the words
of the Buddhas into polished (Sanskrit) verse. Whosoever does so shall
be guilty of a dukkata.”—Kullavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 33. 1; <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 1. 2; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>;
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 6. 18, 27; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Not as the Nothing, as Wuttke tries to show in <lang=de><i>Geschichte des
Heidenthums</i></lang>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> § 166. Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 212.
.fn-
.fn #
Samyutta-ka-Nikâya, quoted by Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 217.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr><i>Bouddha et sa Religion</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii</abbr>, Introduction.
.fn-
.fn #
“The Modern Buddhist,” published in the volume called <i>The Wheel
of the Law: Buddhism illustrated from Siamese Sources</i>, by <abbr rend=spell>H.</abbr>
Alabaster; London, 1876.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Westcott, <i>Social Aspects of Christianity</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 12; Aristotle,
<i>Ethic.</i>, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 1; <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 3.
.fn-
.fn #
“The Modern Buddhist,” Alabaster, <i>Wheel of the Law</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 73;
Spence Hardy, <i>Eastern Monachism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 5, 339; Gogerly’s translation
of the Brahmajala Sutta in Digha Nikâya, <i>Journal of Ceylon Asiatic
Society</i>, 1846.
.fn-
.fn #
Preface to Müller’s Dhammapada, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=thirty>xxx</abbr>, old <abbr=edition>ed</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
Note at <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 31, 32 of Dhammapada in <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books
of the East</i>. Frankfurter, <abbr=Appendix>App.</abbr> <i>Bamp. Lect.</i> 1881, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 349.
.fn-
.fn #
Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 95; Spence Hardy, <i>Manual of
Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 388; Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, quoting Bhikkuni Samyutta,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 258; Colebrooke’s <i>Essays</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 417, Cowell’s edition; Sabbasava
Sutta, 10, 11, 12: <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Life of Gaudama</i>, first <abbr=edition>ed.</abbr>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 321 note; Rangoon, 1866.
.fn-
.fn #
Max Müller, <abbr=introduction>introd.</abbr> to Buddagosha’s Parables, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=thirty>xxx</abbr>, <abbr=edition>ed</abbr>. 1870.
.fn-
.fn #
The first traces of this belief are found, it is said, in the Upanishads,
Brihadáranyaka, <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 2. 1, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 126;
Dhammapada, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 1. 127, <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 3. 35.
.fn-
.fn #
Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 94; also his <i>Manual of Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 100, 106.
.fn-
.fn #
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded
on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts
with an evil thought (or polluted mind), suffering follows him as the
wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the wain” (Dhammapada, 1).
“Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter the cleft of
the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man
might be freed from an evil deed” (Dhammapada, 127; <i>Sacred Books
of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>).
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr>“L’athéisme devenu religion et recouvert du manteau des vertus
chrétiennes.”</lang>—Wassilief, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=introduction>introd</abbr>. by <abbr rend=spell>E</abbr>. Laboulaye, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Professor Dods, <i>Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 171.
.fn-
.fn #
Nagasēna’s figure used in controverting the idea of the separate
existence of the soul.—Milindapanha, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 25, quoted by Oldenberg,
<i>Buddha</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 254; Hardy, <i>Manual</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 425; Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 96.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>op. cit.</i>, 221.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Phaedo</i>, Jowett’s <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr>, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 407, <abbr=edition>ed</abbr>. 1875.
.fn-
.fn #
Preface to English translation of the Lalita Vistara; Calcutta.
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipâta; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 33, 80.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 274-284; Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 111-123.
.fn-
.fn #
Childers, <i>Pali Dictionary</i>, <abbr=article>Art</abbr>. <sc>Nirvana</sc>.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Kellogg, in his <i>Light of Asia and Light of the World</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 223,
252, protests very forcibly against the use by translators of the word
“immortality” as the equivalent of Nirvana. It meant, as he reminds
us, “the end of death indeed, but not because life had triumphed, but
because, life having ceased, death had nothing to feed on.” Immortality,
endless bliss, and kindred phrases, applied to it, are only justifiable
by the popular but really un-Buddhistic use of the word Nirvana.
.fn-
.fn #
Isaiah <abbr rend=arabic>xxxii.</abbr> 11; James <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 18.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 97, 223.
.fn-
.fn #
“Not to know suffering, not to know the cause of suffering, not to
know the path that leads to the cessation of suffering—this is called
Ignorance.” Consequently knowledge of these things is saving knowledge.—Mahavagga,
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 75, note 2.
.fn-
.fn #
This threefold division or “doorway” (Hardy, <i>Manual</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 491), once
considered by Weber to be peculiar to Buddhism, has been proved to be
common to Brahmans, Persians, Jews, and Greeks, as well as Christians.
See interesting note at <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 28, 29, of <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>,
Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Fairbairn, <i>Studies in Religion and Philosophy</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 161.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhamma. Sutta, 2-4; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 146,
147; Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 6. 17-20; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 94, 95.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 124.
.fn-
.fn #
Frankfurter, A<abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> to Wordsworth’s Bampton Lectures on <i>The One
Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 348; Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 69.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Pensées</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 34; <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 205; <abbr=edition>ed</abbr>. Faugère.
.fn-
.fn #
Spence Hardy, <i>Manual of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 506.
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 33, 46, 67;
Dhammapada, 284.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 60, 61.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, cap. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 4; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Saint-Hilaire, <i>Le Bouddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 149, 153, 161.
.fn-
.fn #
Wordsworth, Bampton Lectures on <i>The One Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 91.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 289.
.fn-
.fn #
Meta Sutta, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 25.
.fn-
.fn #
See the story given in Mahavagga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 2. 3-20; also the story of
Kunala, Asoka’s son—this latter said by Burnouf, in his Introduction,
to be of modern origin. Quoted by Oldenberg, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 290.
.fn-
.fn #
So Dr. Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 126. Fausböll translates,
“Not cultivating the society of,” etc. (Sutta Nipâta, <i>Sacred Books of
the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 43, 44.)
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 204.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 157-8-9, 379-80; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, in the Introduction to his translation of
the Keto Khila Sutta (Barrenness and Bondage), <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 222, says that in reading it he was irresistibly reminded
of 2 Peter <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 5-9. The barrenness referred to in the Sutta is lack of successful
effort to be free from “the Ten Fetters” which bind man to existence,
chief of which is hankering after immortality in any form, or
without form. How contrasted is this to <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Peter’s thought! “Give diligence
to provide in your faith earnestness,” that it may be an overcoming
faith; but as faith without knowledge is superstition, and earnestness
misdirected will do harm, provide in earnestness “knowledge”;
and as knowledge ungoverned will degenerate into conceit, provide in it
“temperance”; but temperance must be inspired with “patience,” bent
on God’s glory, not personal gain; “godliness” thus attained, “brotherly
kindness” will manifest itself, and then “charity” toward every creature—that
is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the <i>summum bonum</i>, the
knowledge in which we are neither to be barren nor unfruitful. No more
forcible illustration of the utter contradiction between the two religions
could be found than this verbal analogy of “barrenness and bondage.”
.fn-
.fn #
Compare <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul, Phil. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 8: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are gracious; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise,
think on these things.”
.fn-
.fn #
Dhamma-Kakka-ppavattana Sutta, 6, note; <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 148.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 239; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 1.
.fn-
.fn #
Akankheya Sutta; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 210.
.fn-
.fn #
If the legends are to be followed, he believed in the miraculous
power which resulted from it (see Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 33,
and <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 22; also Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 20. 24), but he condemned the
exercise of that power for self-glorification or for paltry gain (Kullavagga,
<abbr=five>v.</abbr> 8. 2; also <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 1, 2, 3; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volumes>vols.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
<abbr=twelve>xii.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>).
.fn-
.fn #
See Gough, <i>Philosophy of the Upanishads</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 267, 268.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 314.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 35.
.fn-
.fn #
Saint-Hilaire, <i>Le Bouddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 162.
.fn-
.fn #
Mr. Alabaster, <i>Wheel of the Law</i>, preface, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvi</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
Eitel, <i>Lectures on Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 59-70; Saint-Hilaire, <i>Le Bouddha</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 156.
.fn-
.fn #
Jackson’s Bampton Lectures, <i>The Doctrine of Retribution</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 284;
Caird’s <i>Philosophy of Religion</i>, Croall Lectures, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 259 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Saint-Hilaire, <i>Le Bouddha</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> xxiii; Hardy’s <i>Eastern Monachism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 312.
.fn-
.fn #
“Prefix the name of God to this Declaration” (of the Rights of
Man), said Abbé Grégoire to the National Assembly in 1789, “or you
leave it without foundation, and make right the equivalent of force.”
The Assembly refused, but events soon confirmed his judgment.—Baring
Gould, <i>Development of Belief</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 88.
.fn-
// File: 269.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=lecture-5
LECTURE <abbr=five>V.</abbr> | THE BUDDHIST SANGHA[#]: THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
.sp 2
The designation “Church,” never wholly applicable
to Buddhism in the sense in which Christians
employ it, was totally inapplicable to the primitive
Buddhist communities. The institution of the
Church is peculiar to Christianity, for though we
speak of the worship of Krishna, or the religion of
Baal, we never speak of the church of the one or
the other. Christianity is the only religion which
has created a society which no political revolution
can destroy, and no civilisation, however advanced,
can outlive. It may change its form, or express
itself in several co-existent forms; but it is so
adapted to the nature and necessities of man that
it is properly described, in its relation to his
present condition, as divine and everlasting.

Though the Church is the creation of Christ
and the fruit of His mission, the idea of it had
been suggested to the world long ages before He
// File: 270.png
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came. “Ecclesia” is peculiarly a New Testament
word, but there are found in the Old Testament
Scriptures plain foreshadowings of the reality represented
by it. In Abraham, “called” out from his
country and kindred, that he might be separated
unto the worship of Jehovah, we have the first pre-intimation
of the Church. In relation to other
nations, his descendants were the “peculiar people”
and Ecclesia of Jehovah, and when as a nation they
failed to embody and express the universal truths,
which it is the Church’s function to communicate
for the blessing of all the world, there was called
out from them, or rather there was formed within
them, “the remnant,” so often referred to by Isaiah
and the subsequent prophets; and in this spiritual
community and fellowship, dissociated from the
national religion,[#] were conserved and perpetuated
the truths and ideals from which they had fallen
away. After the Captivity, in the rise of the synagogue
system of worship, there was provided an
organisation, whose essential details Christ and
His apostles in instituting the Church could either
adopt or copy; and there can be no question that
from out this synagogue system the Christian
Church emerged, and that even to-day it reflects
some of its peculiar features.

The Church was the fruit of Christianity, but
// File: 271.png
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the Sangha was the root out of which Buddhism
sprang. In a Sangha its founder lived and learned
and taught, till as Buddha he founded his own;
but just as he gave a new significance to the
doctrines in which he had been instructed, so he
gave the Sangha an application which accounts for,
though it does not justify, the designation often
accorded to it of a church. As an order without
worship, a brotherhood without any recognition of
the uniting Fatherhood in heaven, a confraternity
in which seniority was assigned only to age,[#] and
whose leaders never pretended to hold any priestly
office or to exercise any hierarchical authority, the
Sangha at first and for long was not a church; yet
when we examine its constitution and aims we
need not wonder that the religious instincts of
Buddhists, proving stronger than their creed, should
have developed their Sangha into something like a
church, with a cult which, at first consisting only
of veneration for his images and relics, for long
has been almost second to none in the world for
solemnity and dignity and pomp.[#]

We have seen that philosophic schools and
religious sects originating in secessions from the
national religion abounded in India long before
Buddha’s day. In the Gangetic valley, as in
// File: 272.png
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Greece, the new sages attracted their disciples by
the fame of their teaching, but there, not as in
Greece, the disciples lived with their masters apart,
and distinguished from the world by peculiar dress
and manners. Of Monachism, an early outgrowth
of Hindu religion, and indeed its essential adjunct,
as being the state which marked the maturity and
completion of a good man’s earthly life, there were
already many forms, all held in high respect by the
people. Celibacy and mendicancy were common to
all Sanghas, but in regard to vows of silence, and fasting,
and self-torture, they differed greatly from one
another. The majority of them were Brahman in
their constitution and in their recognition of caste:
but long before the rise of Buddhism the Sraman
fraternities, founded on the non-recognition of caste,
were quite equal to the purest Brahman ones in
public esteem. Now in organising the Sakya-putta-Samanas,
the designation by which his disciples
were first known by the people, Buddha adopted
many features and details of discipline common to
all these fraternities, while yet the peculiarity of
his doctrines gave to the community of his own
disciples a character quite distinctive.

The Brahman Orders believed that Brahmans
only could be finally saved, and Brahman reformers
could only encourage inferior castes that came to
them for enlightenment by the hope of possibly
// File: 273.png
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securing a higher birth in a future state. Buddha,
however, considered all men alike in respect of
need, so, knowing of only one way of deliverance,
he proclaimed it without distinction, and, like the
Sramans, he opened his Sangha to all who were
willing to submit to his discipline. Unlike many
of the Sraman fraternities, he discouraged the
life of solitude, and prohibited the practice of self-torture
and severe austerities. In opposition to
the hated Nigganthas, who, aiming at perfection,
went about with only the light and air for their
clothing, he insisted that his disciples should be
decently clad.[#] In respect that he required
obedience from disciples only as long as they continued
to be so, and would not permit irrevocable
vows—indeed, exacted from them no vow at all—his
Sangha was more like some Anglican guild than
any monastic institution with which we are acquainted.

Still more widely did it differ, not only from
many, but from all the existing fraternities in the
purpose for which he instituted it. Hitherto India
had never witnessed a religious sect that could be
called propagandist. Brahmanism was essentially
exclusive, for no man could become a Brahman by
conversion. The Sraman sages again, left the
// File: 274.png
.pn +1
masses to ripen in evil ways for worse lives in more
degraded spheres of future existence, in order to
deliver themselves by ascetic practices and meditation.
At best they taught those who resorted to
them, and were prepared to consort with them.
Buddha, however, by laying upon the brethren the
obligation of extending the knowledge of the law,
inaugurated a revolution in the monastic system
which anticipated that of the great Mendicant
Orders of Christendom. Just as <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Francis emptied
the monasteries and sent forth their inmates to
find their own in seeking the salvation of others,
so Buddha broke down the barriers between the
Indian recluses and the world, by ordaining the
members of his Sangha to teach their fellow-men
the way to liberty. “Therefore, O brethren, to
whom the truths which I have perceived have been
made known by me, having thoroughly mastered
them, meditate upon them, practise them, spread
them abroad, in order that the pure Dhamma may
last long and be perpetuated, in order that it may
continue to be for the good and happiness of the
great multitude, out of pity for the world, to the
good, and gain, and weal of gods and men.”[#]

This was the original element[#] in his conception,
and while one of its effects was to save the members
// File: 275.png
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of the Sangha from some of the evils besetting the
life of the recluse by balancing the duty of contemplation
by that of active itineration, its chief and
immediate result was to give Buddhism an expansive
power marvellous to Indians. Religious fraternities
depended upon the presence of their teachers, and
consequently the members were few, but Buddha
commanded the brethren to go forth. “Let not two
of you go the same way” was the original instruction,
and preach the doctrine “which is glorious in the
beginning, glorious in the middle, glorious in the
end, in the spirit and in the letter, for the pure and
perfect life, for the complete cessation of sorrow.”[#]
By and by these missionaries were authorised to
receive those who desired admission into the
Sangha, and after a due novitiate to ordain them;[#]
and so we need not wonder that this itineracy,
which in the earliest days was the very essence
of a good Buddhist’s duty, should have had the
effect of spreading the doctrines and gathering
converts so rapidly that in some of the earliest
extant scriptures the Sangha was known as “the
Brotherhood of the Four Quarters”[#] of what to
Indian thought was the world.

Thus far the Sangha was different from the
// File: 276.png
.pn +1
institutions that preceded it, but, unlike the Christian
Church, which finally emerged from Judaism
as the one holy Church of all nations and of both
sexes, and of all classes of men, the Buddhist Sangha
bore with it, and never lost, several marks of its
Hindu origin. One relic of its extraction it most
zealously conserved as essential to the moral
restraint which it encouraged; for though later on
it attracted associates whom it recognised as in
the ways of deliverance, it was from the very first
an exclusively monastic order. Indeed, Monachism,
or the life of retirement, privation, and
chastity, had in Buddhism a place quite different
from that which it occupied in Brahmanism.[#] The
meditative Brahman anchorite was not considered
the only man who was in the way to deliverance,
for every believer in Brahman ascendency was
free to choose one of three ways of securing salvation,[#]
but in Buddhism renunciation of the world
represented the highest form of religion, and the
indispensable condition of reaching Nirvana. So,
though in opening the Sangha to all classes, and
// File: 277.png
.pn +1
proclaiming, in opposition to Brahmanism, that
every man was capable of the highest enlightenment,
Buddha sapped the foundation of caste, it was
only to replace it in another form.[#] The mendicant
monk, as has been truly observed, took the
Brahman’s place, and for him alone Nirvana was
reserved. So sharply defined were the lines which
divided the Sangha from the rest of mankind, that
no one who had not come out from the world was
regarded as in it and of it.

This was quite in keeping with the Buddhist
conception of deliverance. The Sangha simply was
an attempt to realise the idea and purpose of the
creed. Salvation according to Christ meant rescue
from the power of evil, but not withdrawal from the
world as so incurably evil that the sooner man got
out of it the better. Instead of making His Church
an asylum and refuge from the world, He organised
it for the redemption of the world. Instead of
attempting to destroy civil society, He aimed at its
purification by the leavening influence of the new
society which He was creating. The Church was to
be Christ’s witness when He was no longer visible,
the instrument by which His own power would
bear upon the wants of mankind. The slavery and
the degradation of society, the destruction of the
world, was never meant to be the condition of
// File: 278.png
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the existence or of the liberty and dignity of the
Church. It was but a means to an end, a means
so essential that without it the end could not be
reached, but, once the end has been reached, the
Church will be superseded, or rather will be
merged in the kingdom of God. So the very
symbol of it is not found in the apocalyptic
visions of the new heaven and the new earth. In
the civitas of the new Jerusalem <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John saw
families and nations and kingdoms, but he could
see no temple therein, for the instrumentality of
which the temple was the symbol had done its
work in the emancipation and education of the
human race, and had vanished into the more
glorious and eternal realities of the throne of God
and of the Lamb.

In Buddhism we find a set of ideas quite contradictory
to all these. The Sangha was the vehicle
of rescue from out the world, not the bringer of
salvation to it; it worked not for the regeneration
of society, but for its disintegration and destruction.
It considered the world to be so hopelessly
incurable, and even existence to be so weighted with
misery, that wisdom would move men to abandon
the one to its fate, and goodness impel them to
strive to bring the other to an end. The monastery,
therefore, was naturally its loftiest conception of
the Civitas Dei, and into that it endeavoured to
// File: 279.png
.pn +1
transform as large a section of humanity as was
inclined to accept its law.

This unnatural theory of life indicates the
essential weakness of Buddhism, and makes its
history very instructive to Christians. In the
Church, perhaps, room may be accorded to the
monastery and convent, as long as they are sanctified
by the Christian idea of self-abnegation in
the service of others, but the attempt to transform
the Church into a monastery, dominated by the
Buddhist idea of abnegation of the world for the
sake of self, can only create unmitigated evil. The
effect of it in primitive Buddhism was not only
to withdraw good men from the world at the very
time when its diseased condition most required
the help of their preserving salt, but the salt itself,
not being used for its natural and proper purpose,
soon lost its savour. The substitution of an artificial
for a natural standard of excellence inevitably
tends to destroy even virtue. Very soon in the
Sanghas active itineracy and devout contemplation
gave way to listless indolence and enervating
reverie, and there emerged a mode of life from
which the great mass of healthy men will ever
revolt, as sanctioning the idea that the more useless
we become in this world the more fitted for
a better we may safely consider ourselves to be.

The Buddhist Sangha, therefore, though in no
// File: 280.png
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sense resembling the Christian Church, does resemble
some of its after-growths. These, however,
must be regarded as parasitical in their nature,
for though fed by its life, they do not spring from
its root. In Christianity, Monachism represents
a tendency of human nature incidental to its development
rather than the essential fruit of Christian
principle; but the Buddhist idea of a true
society is one essentially and completely monastic.
This one fact is sufficient to show that the similarities
discoverable between the Buddhist and
Christian institutions are more apparent than real,
while the contrasts between them are found to be
deeper and more substantial the more they are
examined.

The monachism of Christianity originated, it
is said, in the endeavour to reproduce the ideal
of excellence represented in the life of Jesus. In
the life of Jesus there was nothing monastic.
Though He appeared in the land of the Essenes,
though heralded by a solitary ascetic, though the
age was one of universal defection, when because
of its corruption it seemed impossible to live a
man’s life in society, Jesus lived freely in the world
as He found it, and laid His blessing on all of it
that was natural, and on all of it that was necessary.
He did not refuse to enjoy any of the good
gifts of God; He warned us against despising or
// File: 281.png
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throwing them away, though He asked us to be
ready, when love calls, to let them go, or relinquish
them for the good of others. He gave Himself
wholly to His mission, and He took no thought
for the morrow. If He called His apostles from
their secular callings, it was not because such callings
hindered their own salvation, but because,
withdrawn from them for love of God and man,
they would be freer to serve the world. We have
interpreted the Apostolate as expressing His desire
that in the Church there will always be an order
devoted specially to the service of religion, but this
form of service was never meant to be regarded as
the only religious service. If one calling is consecrated,
it is as one day is consecrated, that all
may be sanctified thereby. The world was never
renounced by the apostles that they might work
out their own salvation; and if they “exercised”
themselves it was because self-control fitted them
to render more valuable service for man’s redemption.
The missionary zeal which drove the
members of the Primitive Church all over the
world to sow the seeds of truth and love made
them take no thought of what they should eat
or what they should drink; and missionary zeal
all through the Christian ages has manifested the
same indifference to the Βιωτικά of existence; but
those who have been most inspired by it, and who
// File: 282.png
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have found nothing impracticable in following the
manner of life which our Lord Himself led, have never
deemed it the only way, or even the highest way,
of Christian service. It was that to which they
felt inwardly moved and called by the Holy Ghost,
and, like the apostles, they exhorted all others
to abide in the callings wherein they were called.

Primitive Christianity, like any other religion,
was susceptible to morbid affections, and the
germs of disease with which the atmosphere around
it was charged found early a lodgment within it,
and soon matured into portentous fertility. The
persecutions of the Church, the terrible corruption
of the world, the troubles and temptations consequent
on the first junction of Christianity with
the Imperial Power, the mistaken idea that the
world which the Church had manifestly failed to
transform, or even preserve, was doomed, and that
Christ was speedily coming in His glory to judge
it, strengthened the ascetic tendency to come out
and be separate from it.[#] By the end of the third
century the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, and the
mountains of Asia Minor, were so peopled with
recluses that in one spot alone there were ten
thousand men and twenty thousand women. At
// File: 283.png
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the close of another century Monachism had a
home in every province of the Oriental Church,
and monks and nuns formed “a nation,” as
distinct from the clergy as the clergy were from
the common believers, and in many instances they
were hated and persecuted by clergy and laity
alike.[#]

The original purpose of the founders of the
new institution, however, was not to shelter mystics
and visionaries, but to train soldiers and martyrs.
Solitude was not intended to be an asylum for
the weak, or an infirmary for the diseased, but an
arena for the training and testing of athletes.
“Come,” says Chrysostom,[#] “and see the tents of
the soldiers of Christ. Come, behold their order of
battle.” Augustine also refers to them as “milites
Christi,” even as later on they were designated as
“the chivalry of the Church” and “the paladins
of God.” Though not of the world, and being
above its ways, they were yet in it and for it.
So these retreats were not only technical schools,
representing the industries essential to the well-being
of man; they were also academies for sacred
studies, from which went forth champions like
Athanasius to defend the faith against the heretic,
and like Basil to defend the Church against the
// File: 284.png
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Empire. They were also brotherhoods of charity,
in which in self-imposed austerities men grew
tender in respect for the miseries of others, and
anticipated in much more unfavourable times the
hospitals for “sick children” and “lepers” and
“incurables,” which we are inclined to regard as
the peculiar products of the latest Christian centuries.[#]
Of course, early Christian Monachism had
its ridiculous extravagances, in types like the
Stylites and Browsers; and of course even its
soberer types soon degenerated through over cultivation,
till it became a greater hindrance to the
spread of Christianity than all external opposition
and persecution. The spirit of piety which it originated
was speedily poisoned by superstition; theological
discussion supplanted the love of earnest
study; the spirit of obedience and loyalty was
superseded by that of intrigue and revolt. So
though it spread, it was not as a contagion of
health, but as an infectious disease, whose evil
effects are traceable in the decrepitude which the
Oriental Church has never been able to throw off.

In the Western Church, Monachism, though
less brilliant in its beginnings than its Eastern
precursor, has had a longer and healthier course.
It is not within the scope of this lecture even to
// File: 285.png
.pn +1
sketch it, or to analyse and tabulate its results.
We live in an age which has certainly little sympathy
with the ideal of Christianity which it
sought to realise, but that is not sufficient reason
that we should affect to despise it, or imagine that
we have outgrown the necessity for it. The life of
the recluse may be beyond our attainment, for we
may be so afraid to be alone, and so unable to
endure “conversation with ourselves,” that we
have to take refuge in perpetual society. The
“weakness” of the old asceticism many of us have
not the strength to practise, for we are too much
under the dominion of the flesh, which they at
least could master, and we are far too inclined to
treat with unnecessary tenderness what they chastised
and immolated. The vows of poverty and
obedience and chastity may be the very medicine
we require, in a condition of public sentiment so
unhealthy that a man’s standing, and worth, and
even life, seems to consist in the abundance of his
goods, and his freedom in licence to despise all
authority and indulge all his likings. No doubt,
in the West as in the East, Monachism eventually
became an impediment to Christian civilisation, but
not until it had considerably regenerated and uplifted
it. It kept before the Church the dignity
of manual labour, it wiped out the discredit attaching
to honest poverty, it proclaimed the equality
// File: 286.png
.pn +1
of men by treating rich and poor alike, and it
proved the defender of the oppressed, the mediator
between the strong and the feeble. “We are the
poor of Christ,” says Bernard, “and the friendship
of the poor makes us the equals of kings.” Then
just as unquestionably it was the pioneer of learning
and of enterprise, the guardian of law and the
fosterer of charity. There is hardly a city or
populous centre in Europe which does not owe its
churches, universities, hospitals, charitable institutions,
either in their origin or growth, to the
cœnobites and celibates of former ages; and whether
we acknowledge or repudiate our debt to them,
“its magnitude confronts us more imposingly the
more we honestly consider it.”

But like all unnatural segregations of human
beings from society, for which man was made,
Monachism everywhere became eventually an excuse
for indolence and misanthropy; a refuge for
the melancholy, and for all who had become unfit
to serve either the world or the Church. Its
whole history in the Christian Church has justified
the warning of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul against artificial methods
of attaining to saintliness. The vices which beset
society never lost any of their power over the
recluses of the desert or the inmates of the
monastery, while many other vices were added to
the host that assailed the solitary, undefended
// File: 287.png
.pn +1
by his fellows.[#] “Woe to him that is alone, for
when he falls there is not another to raise him up!
Woe to him that is alone, for there is no one to
keep him from falling!” are the lessons of this
long mistaken attempt to realise an undemanded
standard of excellence; and yet, just because of
the consistency of its ideal with one side of Christian
service, modern Christendom, though in altered
and modified forms, has not parted with Monachism
yet.

“The ideal of the Christian monk,” says Montalembert,
“is that of manhood in its purest and
most energetic form—manhood intellectually and
morally superior, devoting itself to efforts greater
and more sustained than are exacted in a worldly
career; and this not to make earthly service a
stepping-stone to heaven, but of life a long series
of victories for man.”[#] Surely this is the ideal of
every Christian minister truly consecrated to the
service of man; yea, the ideal of every brother
or sister who, married or single, in business or
society, is trying to reach forward to the mark
of our high calling. There is no code of disabilities
in the service of Christ, and the way to
the highest honours is open to all who wish to
// File: 288.png
.pn +1
enter it, of whatever condition or rank or mental
capacity they may be. When this common ideal
was fallen from in the monastic orders, it was
being realised by many private members of the
Church; when the professional Church had falsified
it, it was being upheld by so-called “men of the
world”; and therefore, as a natural consequence,
when the monastic orders of Christendom became
corrupt, society, true to its better instincts, rose
up and reformed them or swept them away.
There was always a large volume of life outside
the particular channel which these orders filled,
to purify it when it became foul, or to force it
onward, when stagnant, into the life of the Church.

But it was not so in Buddhism. Its lay
associates, however numerous, were but the fringes
of religious communities essentially and wholly
monastic. When, therefore, deterioration or degradation
in the Order set in, reformation of it
by the people was hopeless. In the Order this
deterioration showed itself earlier that its dominant
ideal was lower than the Christian. In early
Christian Monachism, fortitude and devotion all
sprang from the immolation of self for the universal
good. In Buddha’s Sangha, however, though there
was both devotion and fortitude displayed, the
goal to be reached was simply self-rescue. Its
course of beneficence therefore was not only
// File: 289.png
.pn +1
shorter but shallower. Unintentionally it wrought
out social reforms, and perhaps political revolution.
It restrained luxury, and checked the unbounded
sensuality to which Indians are prone; it rebuked
the earthly-minded, and witnessed nobly of the
higher interests of life to peoples that sorely needed
the testimony. It not only propagated morality,
but promoted learning, and a love of the beautiful
in nature and art, but its force was eventually
exhausted. Very early it sank into the stagnation
in which it has existed for centuries, and any
advance registered by the nations among whom
the institution has existed has been due, for more
than a thousand years, to the influx of Christian
ideas and sentiments.

Its own methods hastened its decay. Like all
Eastern religious growths, it represented the
piety of inertion. Manual labour of all kinds
was placed under the ban, and beyond attending
to the cleanliness of his person and of his lodging
the Buddhist monk was not allowed to do anything
save itinerate for his maintenance and the
preaching of the law. He was instructed that
every moment abstracted from meditation was
serious loss. This was in direct contradiction to
the very first rule of Christian solitary life, which
even in the stifling heat of the desert demanded
manual tasks, which fasting might be said to have
// File: 290.png
.pn +1
doubled, continued through the long day till
vespers summoned the labourers to worship. The
Buddhist monk knew neither the healthy life of
physical exertion nor the spiritual refreshment
of worship. He might vindicate his idleness
against the reproaches of the industrious by the
assertion that he too in his quiet life was also
“ploughing and sowing” to much better purpose,[#]
but then the effect of his ploughing and the
fruit of his sowing were all confined to himself,
who alone was freed by it from suffering. He
could not answer, as the Nicæan monk and quondam
courtier replied to Valens, when challenged as to
whither he was going, “I go to pray for your
empire.”[#] Augustine has indeed assured us that
“the less a monk labours in anything but prayer
the more serviceable he is to men”; but the prayer
which he had in view was not selfish. On the
contrary, the tears and penitential exercises of men
who had become strangers to all personal desires
“were mighty to drown sin and purify the world.”[#]
As long as monks were truly prayerful, and nuns,
like vestals, kept alive the sacred fire for every
hearth, they represented that side of the Church’s
mediation which is most important and effective;
// File: 291.png
.pn +1
for no one can be really effective in the service
of man who is not frequent in the service of waiting
upon God. The heroes of the Christian
Church, who have evangelised and civilised the
wild waste places of the world, who, like the
apostle, laid aside every encumbrance to run
their race, were, like the apostle, men of much
meditation and prayer. We have no such examples
in Buddhism, for it lacked the provision which
alone could nurture them. In the life of the
Buddhist monk there was probably more, and
more intense meditation than in that of the
Christian, but there was a vast difference in their
respective themes of meditation. The Christian
could draw his inspiration from a source far higher
and purer than himself, and in communion with
the Father, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his spirit
gather a strength which astonished the world;
but what possible inspiration for endeavour could
come to a poor Buddhist monk who was chiefly
occupied in contemplating the impurity of his
perishable body, and whose very highest theme
of meditation was simply “nothing whatever”?[#]

Another essential distinction between the two
modes of life is disclosed in their relation to charity.
We have seen that Buddhism had no conception
of charity in the Christian sense, and that practical
// File: 292.png
.pn +1
charity in it was represented from a pole quite
opposite to that of Christianity. As if conscious
of its defects, later Buddhism originated faith in
and hope of Maitreya, the Buddha who is next to
come, and who, as the son of love, will realise its
unconscious prophecies, fulfil its longings, and
perfect all things; but notwithstanding this the
Buddhist monk continued to be the receiver, not
the dispenser, of charity. His whole merit consisted
in taking what it was the merit of the layman
to offer him:[#] and the taking was all for himself
and for his Order. He had no conception of the
life suggested in the saying, “As poor, yet making
many rich,” and he never could have said of his
monastery that it was <lang=fr>“l’infirmière des pauvres.”</lang>
To offer charity to others was the last conception
which he could form of his duty: yea, to clothe
the naked, take the leper from the dunghill, and
help the outcast, was the very reverse of his duty.
His creed as to misery in this being the fruit of
evil done in a former existence, cut him off from
that service of the lost and fallen which in Christendom
has been accounted glorious, and for the
rendering of which, several of its monastic institutions
have been spared the penalty of their
corruption.

The charity which the Buddhist monk practised
// File: 293.png
.pn +1
was in his preaching and exposition of the
law for the deliverance of the multitudes. And
that this may be the very highest form in
which benevolence can express itself all Christians
must admit, for the greatest gift which
any man can bestow is the truth which makes
one free. Buddhist monk and Christian missionary
alike proclaimed a gospel for the redemption
of men; and as the gospel of Christ’s salvation
brings ever many blessings in its train, so
the preaching of the mendicant Buddhist was
attended with material beneficial results to those
who heard and believed it. The Buddhist, however,
while expounding the law for the rescue of
the individual, never laboured, like the Christian
missionary, for his temporal and social improvement.
His message had no promise for the life that now
is, and consequently he never seems to have played
the part so nobly sustained by many of the monks
of Christendom—that of defending the oppressed
and befriending the helpless. He never, so far as
can be gathered from the texts, proclaimed the
equality of men in the same way and for the same
purpose as a Christian reformer would preach it.
Theoretically, he maintained the right of all classes
to be admitted to the brotherhood, but Dr. Oldenberg
has asserted that “in the composition of the
Order a marked leaning to the existing aristocracy
// File: 294.png
.pn +1
was observable.”[#] Buddha never had occasion to
confess with the Christian apostle “that not many
noble, not many mighty, were called,” nor had his
Order ever to bear the reproach of the Church,
that its members were recruited from the lowest
strata of society. The references to his disciples
from the first all indicate people of rank and wealth
and education. It is not implied that persons of
humble origin would have been rejected had they
come, only that “the scriptures afford no evidence
that they did come”; and yet they yield unmistakable
evidence that, as the Order prospered, all
lepers, cripples, blind, or one-eyed persons, all who
were deaf and dumb, all who were consumptive or
subject to fits, were rejected.[#] The Order was for
the reputable, the noble, and especially for the
religious, for the Brahman votary, and Sraman
seeker after truth. These again were all attracted
to it; they were not sought out as by the Christian
Church. Not for one moment would Christ
allow the Church to become select. He not only
welcomed all penitents—for all men needed salvation,
and the poorest and the guiltiest were most
// File: 295.png
.pn +1
in need of it,—but He sent forth His apostles to
seek and gather them, and in order to reason down
all natural fears, based on the personal unworthiness
of these outcasts of society, they were instructed
to “compel them to come in.”[#]

Of propagandism in this sense the Buddhist
Sangha knew nothing. It was moved by no
enthusiasm of humanity; it felt nothing of that
earnestness which from the days of the apostles
has characterised the true propagators of the
gospel. In no discourse that has come down to
us is there any impassioned entreaty of men to
repent and believe. There is no sorrow over the
unbelieving who refuse their salvation, no burning
indignation against those who despise or who scoff
at the truth. In Buddha’s last view of the world
there is no weeping as over Jerusalem, reprobate
because of its wickedness, and in none of his successors
do we find any trace of the apostle’s willingness
to be anathema for the sake of his brethren.

This tolerant spirit of Buddhism, however, has
been contrasted, as greatly in its favour, with that
alleged intolerance which Christianity is supposed
to have inherited from Judaism. We must
// File: 296.png
.pn +1
remember that Christianity must be judged as it
is presented in Christ, and not by His professing
followers, who have often misrepresented Him. Of
hypocrisy, cruelty, deceit, Christ was indeed intolerant,
but toward error and misbelief, because of
ignorance, He was very compassionate. Christianity
would make no compromise, again, with false systems
of heathendom. It would have no peace save through
victory; it would not accept a place in the Pantheon
for its Lord, and it was content to be persecuted till
He was allowed to rule from the throne of the world.
The alleged intolerance of Christianity, therefore,
is simply its conviction of the infinite importance
and value to all men of the truth which compels
it to be propagandist. Now if Buddhism tolerates
everything, it is because it is not sure about anything,
but, on the contrary, is in doubt about everything.
It is essentially sceptical, “raising the
rejection of every affirmation to the rank of a
principle.”[#] Earnestness in a preacher of sceptical
quietism was an impossibility. He had no heart
touched with the feeling of heavenly love, wounded
by sin, impelling him to proclaim forgiveness, and
he had no such hearts to appeal to. The Christian
missionary appeals to soul and conscience in name
of a Saviour crucified for sin; the Buddhist
// File: 297.png
.pn +1
missionary only appealed through the intellect to
self-interest. His preaching was purely didactic,
expository, and advisory in character. He was at
best a theologian or moral philosopher teaching
the ignorant, and not a preacher aiming at the
conviction of sinners, endeavouring, with his whole
heart and strength and mind, to sway them to
conversion.[#] He never experienced the almost consuming
glow and fervour of inspiration which made
the apostles agonise in their mission. “Now is the
accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” “I
pray you, in Christ’s stead, Be ye reconciled to God.”
As might have been expected, the early enthusiasm
of Buddhists for the enlightenment of others soon
died out, and its missionary spirit, once spent, has
never undergone a true revival. It can boast of
many ecclesiastics and philosophers, but for hundreds
of years it cannot point in its honour-roll
to either a Xavier or a Livingstone. It has long
ago ceased to be aggressive. At this day no
Oriental Buddhist seriously contemplates becoming
a missionary. Paris may add to its attractions and
curiosities a real Buddhist temple,[#] but the priests
who officiate in it, however devoted they may be
to their cult, will certainly never dream of taking
the trouble of preaching it in the streets.
// File: 298.png
.pn +1

In the Church of the middle ages, supposed
to consist only of pope and bishops and clergy
and monks and nuns, of which mediævalism a
remnant survives in those who speak of “entering
the Church,” not when as children they are baptized
into its communion, but when they are to
be ordained to service in it, we must look for any
resemblance to the Buddhist Sangha. In ancient
India, a church, meaning the fellowship of the
faithful in its totality, was an impossibility. Brahmanism
had no church, and never attempted a
conversion, but Buddha in seeking to rescue others
from evil, and in offering a place of escape which
they were free to accept or reject, created not a
church but a precursor of one.[#] Admission into
his Brotherhood was at first open to all who
requested it, but as disciples crowded around him,
and parents complained that they were bereaved
of their children, and masters that they were
robbed of their slaves, and creditors that they
were deprived of what was owing by their debtors,
and even the judges that criminals escaped the
prison; and when accusations grew frequent and
loud that the new movement would ruin households,
injure the State, and depopulate the country, restrictions
were devised. Gradually conditions were
imposed by which all who were diseased, or
// File: 299.png
.pn +1
criminals, or soldiers, or debtors, or slaves, or
children under fifteen years of age, or youths
under twenty who had not received their parents’
consent, were disqualified.[#] At first the disciple
was admitted without any ceremony, beyond that
of shaving the whole head, and putting on the
yellow robes which distinguished the ascetic and
the recluse, but eventually a rite of initiation
was adopted, which in Ceylon has continued
substantially unaltered to this day.

It consisted of two stages;[#] the first that of the
novitiate into which a candidate could be received
by any fully accredited monk. The ceremony was
called the Pabbagga, or “outgoing,” a word used
from old time to describe the last act of a pious
Brahman, when, warned by approaching age, he
gave up his possessions to his family, and left
them to enter upon the hermit life of meditation.
The Buddhists naturally adopted it to mark the
first step by which a layman at any age exchanged
the secular for the religious life. It was a confession
that he desired to be done with the world,
to put off the old man with his deeds and to put
on the new. So with head and face completely
shaven, and holding three lengths of yellow cotton
cloth, first torn to render them valueless, and then
// File: 300.png
.pn +1
sewed together, he presented his petition three
times, that “the reverend monks would take pity
on him, and invest him with the robes, that, like
them, he might escape sorrow.” The presiding
monk then tied the clothes around his neck, repeating
sentences regarding the perishable nature
of the body, and the petitioner retired. When
he reappeared he had laid aside the loin-cloth,
generally the only article of raiment in tropical
lands, and had assumed the new investiture of
the two under-garments and the loose robe, which
covered the whole body, except the right shoulder,
of a Buddhist mendicant. Three times, thus clothed,
in “robes of humility and religion,” in reverential
salaam to the monk or monks present, he made
public confession that he took refuge in Buddha,
Dharma, Sangha, and receiving instructions as
to conduct and duty, he became a Sramanera, a
bachelor as it were, a monk of lower degree.

When the novice who had thus “gone forth”
from the world, or from the membership of another
fraternity, had “seen the truth, mastered the truth,
understood the truth, penetrated the truth; when
he had overcome uncertainty, dispelled all doubts,
was dependent on nobody else for his knowledge
of the doctrines of the Teacher,”[#] he presented
himself before the Order, of whom ten members
// File: 301.png
.pn +1
at least had to be in session, and reverentially
cowering on the ground with his hands clasped on
his forehead, he three times entreated them “to take
pity upon him and draw him out of the evil world
by granting him Upasampada” or the “arrival”
initiation rite.[#] Then followed his examination as to
whether he was qualified[#] in his person, his health,
his social and civil relations, whether he had
provided an alms-bowl and the yellow robes, what
was his own name, and that of the teacher with
whom he was to consort, and whom he was to
serve during a course of five years’ instruction in
the whole doctrine and discipline of the system.
If the answers to all these questions were satisfactory,
the resolution to receive him was formally
put by the presiding monk, and thrice repeated:
“Whosoever of the venerable is for granting Upasampada
to this novice, with brother So-and-so
for his teacher, let him be silent.” When no
dissent was intimated the resolution was passed.
“The Sangha is in favour of it, therefore it is
silent—thus I understand,” said the president,
and the novice became a Samana, a fully accredited
member of the Order of Bikkhus.

There was certainly nothing of the Church in
all this ceremony, and Sir Monier Williams very
properly guards us from applying to it the sacred
// File: 302.png
.pn +1
word of ordination.[#] Any one who cares to read
the texts in which the proceedings are described
will be inclined to think that the questions put
to the novice, in their childishness and absurdity,
seem diabolically framed to caricature the solemn
and soul-searching questions addressed to candidates
for the Holy Ministry. Yet in the instruction
given to the newly admitted member, concerning
the “four chief forbidden acts” from which
he must abstain, and “the four resources”[#] in which
he was to trust, there was a touch of the solemnity
which belongs to the charge which follows Christian
ordination. The monk was reminded that in
regard to what was pleasant and permissible to
other men he had subjected himself to self-denial
and a yoke. He might receive from the pious,
without offence, offerings of food and clothing,
and medicine and shelter, but he must be prepared
for the hard life of one whose food might only
be scraps and refuse put into his bowl, whose
clothing might have to be made of cast-off rags,
whose shelter might often be the tree in the
jungle or the cave in the rock, and whose medicine
// File: 303.png
.pn +1
might be only the foul deposit of the cattle-pen.
He was warned that any breach of the four cardinal
precepts—against unchastity, which to him meant
what to others was the lawful estate of marriage,
against theft, even of a blade of grass, against murder,
even to the crushing of a flea, against assumption
of virtues not really possessed,—would necessitate
expulsion from the Order. “For even as a man
whose head is cut off cannot live with the
trunk; ... as a dry leaf separate from the stalk
can never again become green; ... as a stone
split in two cannot be made into one; ... as a
palm whose top is destroyed cannot again grow,
so the monk who breaks the least of these laws is
no longer a Samana, no longer a follower of the
Sakya-putta.”[#]

To the credit of Buddha, however, it must be
observed, that a monk who had entered the Order
was at any time free to withdraw from it. If he
had a hankering after home, or the pleasures of
the old life which he had forsaken, he was exhorted
to confess his weakness and renounce a vocation
which he had found too high for him. He had
simply to declare before a witness that he
renounced Buddha, Dharma, Sangha—yea, he
could go forth without making any declaration at
all. Freely as he had joined, as freely could he
// File: 304.png
.pn +1
abandon the brethren; no anger was expressed
or even felt; no discredit attached to him, for the
working out of his deliverance was his own concern.
Yea, if at any time he repented of his action,
and desired to renew with the companions of
wiser days the relation of votary or novice, he
was not subjected to any discipline, such as a
lapsed member of the Church might be expected
to undergo when seeking re-communion. He was
treated upon his confession as though his past
had not been remembered, and as if his folly or
fault had never been committed.[#] Such facility
of withdrawal and readmission seemed to tend
to laxity, and may have occasioned very great
abuses, but on the very face of it, it appears
calculated to preserve monastic life in India in a
much healthier condition than has always prevailed
in the recluse institutions of Christendom. In
how many cases has the monastery become worse
than a prison, and the convent become a very
chamber of tortures, because occupied by reluctant
tenants, who have been cruelly immured in them
against their will, or have thoughtlessly devoted
themselves to a vocation for which they were
totally unfit. The Eastern sage may even have
shown greater wisdom than the Western bishops
and presbyters, who have bound over for life those
// File: 305.png
.pn +1
admitted to a sacred profession, so that freedom
from it can only be got by ignominious expulsion,
and by degradation for a fault or a crime.

The Sangha from the first was an order of
Cœnobites, not Solitaries, and it was an exception
for a mendicant to be alone; for with his practical
insight Buddha seems to have discovered that
the life of solitude has more disadvantages and
dangers than that of fellowship. So he ordained
that the newly admitted monk must attach himself
for five years to a tutor and teacher,[#] one of
whom must have been ten years in the Order,
rendering to them such personal offices as Elisha
rendered to Elijah, and receiving such parental
instruction as <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul bestowed upon his son in
the faith. No vow of obedience, so essential to
the monastic rule of Christendom, unless in regard
to the laws of the Order, was exacted. No man
could be called Rabbi among them, for the knowledge
which brought deliverance could be and
must be acquired by each man for himself.[#] A
monk was expected to reverence his superior in
age and knowledge, but his obedience was to
be rendered not to his brother, who was simply
// File: 306.png
.pn +1
his equal in respect of need and capability of
deliverance, but only to <i>The Law</i> which alone
could secure it.

While obedience to a superior was not exacted,
the law of poverty and chastity was as obligatory
upon the Buddhist monk as on the members of
the Christian Orders. Francis of Assisi could
not more highly have eulogised poverty as “the
way to salvation, the nurse of humility, the root
of perfection,” than did the Indian monks who
compiled the Buddhist scriptures. “In supreme
felicity live we, though we call nothing our own.
Feeding on happiness, we are like the gods in the
regions of light.”[#] Food a monk could receive,
but not ask for, and of what he so received he
could only have one meal a day. Gold or silver
he could on no account accept, though he might
accept its equivalents in food or medicine. If like
Achan’s wedge it was found to have been secreted
by any covetous member, one of the brethren had
to hide it away in the jungle, in a place which
could not again be recognised. Bitter controversies
regarding this prohibition seem to have exercised
the primitive Sanghas, and though it was successfully
maintained for long, concessions in relation to
it were eventually agreed upon. These however
proved as fatal to the prosperity of the Buddhist, as
// File: 307.png
.pn +1
similar concessions proved to that of the Western
monastic establishments. They were seeds of
evil which speedily grew up into thickets of trouble.
The individual member professed to observe the
original law and maintain the principle that “a
man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of his
goods,” but the several fraternities came speedily
to abound in lands and property of every kind, so
that in the East as in the West it may be said
the monasteries fell, because crushed with their
weight of wealth.

Even while the primitive rule was observed
the mendicants could easily procure what of the
necessaries of food and shelter and clothing they
required; the jungle gave them all the shelter they
needed, though it exposed them to frequent perils
of being poisoned by snake-bites, and devoured by
beasts. The rains put an end periodically to their
peregrinations, and gathered the twos and threes who
had been associating together into common retreat
in the viharas. These originally were intended to
be only temporary shelters from the annual floods,
but as by degrees the system extended into distant
regions, they became permanent institutions, each
one a centre of influence in its own territory, like
the abbeys in the original dioceses of mediæval
Europe.

Life in a Buddhist vihara two thousand years
// File: 308.png
.pn +1
ago must however have been very different from
life in a monastic establishment in the middle ages.
Labour, as we have seen, of no kind was allowed,
either among them or for them. “A monk who
digs the earth or causes it to be dug is liable to
punishment.”[#] Scant time was allowed for sleep,
and when there were no books to read or transcribe,
the studies or literary occupations of the
West were out of the question. All the intellectual
energies were claimed for the repetition of such
sacred works as they knew, and for the committing
to memory of others which they had only acquired.
Examination of self, meditation on the five principal
themes which occupied the place of prayer
or devotion in their system, was expected to absorb
the most of the day. Notwithstanding its intervals
of instruction and discussion, it must have been
a very vacant life indeed, lacking entirely the
worship, and most of the duties, which rendered
monastic life in Christendom, if not always profitable,
at least supportable.

Two outstanding features of it, however, compare
very favourably with some forms of the ascetic
life both in India and Europe. In the Buddhist
Sanghas would be witnessed neither the slovenliness
nor the dirtiness which has often been
// File: 309.png
.pn +1
associated with the life of those who have renounced
the world and have professed to despise its pleasant
things. Around them,

.pm verse-start
“Besmeared with mud and ashes, crouching foul,
In rags of dead men, wrapped about their loins,”[#]
.pm verse-end

were many solitaries endeavouring to gain perfection
or exhibit it, in types more conform to
Nebuchadnezzar in his madness or the demoniacs
who had their dwellings in the tombs. Buddha
condemned uncleanliness in all its forms. The
robes which he enjoined his monks to wear
may have been made up of rags picked up
from a dunghill or from a cemetery, but they
were scrupulously washed, properly dyed, and carefully
mended. The ground all round the vihara,
as well as its floors within, had to be swept
every day, and its every item of furniture had to
be punctually dusted and garnished. His monks
were Pharisees in regard to the washing of hands
and bowls and other utensils, and they anticipated
our modern demand for proper ventilation.[#] A
Buddhist mendicant of the days of King Asoka
might prove a good model of personal neatness
and domestic tidiness for many a Christian minister
in these days of Queen Victoria. He belonged
to an Order originally founded by a man who was
// File: 310.png
.pn +1
in every sense a gentleman, and which for long
numbered among its members many noble and
even princely men. Inheriting their instincts, he
stoutly maintained their traditions, that “neither
plaited hair, nor dirt, nor lying on the earth, nor
rubbing with dust, can purify a mortal who has
not overcome desires”; “that he who, though
well dressed, exercises tranquillity, is quiet, subdued,
restrained, chaste, and has ceased to find
fault with all other beings, he is indeed a Brahmana,
a Sramana, a Bikkhu.”[#]

Again, in these old pictures of Buddhist Sangha
life, there is no reflection of that insane passion
for suffering which marked the gaunt and self-mutilated
Yogis around them, and which also distinguished
many of the ascetics of Christendom.
The flagellations, and lacerations, and macerations
which at one time became popular in European
monasteries, and which made even a man like the
founder of the Franciscan Order refuse food and
sleep for days together, spend whole nights in
winter up to the neck in snow or water, put
ashes in the meals which had been cooked for
him, would not for an hour have been tolerated;
yea, they would have been laughed out of the
world by Buddha and his monks. Wherever
they went, they encountered grievous companies of
// File: 311.png
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“Eyeless and tongueless, sexless, crippled, deaf:
The body by the mind being thus stripped
For glory of much suffering, and the bliss
Which they shall win,”[#]
.pm verse-end

but they never seem to have been tempted to give
way to this intoxication which was supposed to
make men gods. Self-denial was essential, but
severe austerities and bodily penance were strongly
discouraged. “Blooming, well-fed, with healthy
colour and skin,” is the description often given in
the old texts of a model Bikkhu. Buddha, when
first met by the Brahman sages after his illumination,
surprised them by the serenity of his
countenance, the purity and brightness of his complexion.
Among the first salutations addressed
to the brethren on their return from their wanderings
was the question whether they had been
well fed.[#] It is true some Buddhist saints might
be found sitting for days in the burning sun,
oblivious to its fiery torments, but these must
have been exceptions, for there is no mistaking
either the teaching or the life of Buddha himself.
All these extravagant cruelties, by which men have
abused or sought to destroy the most beautiful
organism and the most perfect instrument which
has ever been produced in this world, were by
him regarded as foolish and dangerous, and as
// File: 312.png
.pn +1
debasing as the sensualism which they sought to
avoid.

Though we have hitherto referred to the Buddhist
Order, it is hardly correct to think of it as
just one community. Though theoretically the
Sangha of Buddha was the ideal unit, practically
it never became so. After his decease there was
no central governing power to direct and inspire
the whole organisation. The patriarchs, of whom
a long succession is given, were not hierarchs in
the Greek or Latin sense.[#] They were simply outstanding
Arhats, the heroic defenders and apostles
of the system. Primitive Buddhism was represented
not by one but by many Sanghas, for each
brother as he went forth became the centre of a
new fraternity. Its original cultus was based
on the idea that community of aim would suffice
to gather the knots of people who lived near each
other for mutual confession and instruction and
discipline. So they continued a custom which had
come down from their Vedic ancestors, who, in
the four days of the lunar month, when the moon
is new, or full, or half-way between the two,
celebrated the fast preparatory to the offering of
the intoxicating Soma. The Buddhists had neither
fast, nor sacrifice, nor offering, nor any form of
// File: 313.png
.pn +1
religious worship whatever, but in these days they
gathered for careful examination of themselves in
the light of the Prohibitions, for public confession
one to another, and for discipline. For these
weekly gatherings the manual of the Pâtimokkha
or Disburdenment was composed, it is averred, by
Buddha himself.[#] To this public catechising and
purgation of the Roll all the brethren had to come;
even a sick man was only excused when he could
assure the assembly, through a sponsor, that he was
clean of fault, and if no brother was available for
this office the assembly had to adjourn to meet
at his couch. Its president, who also summoned
the brethren, was the monk of the longest standing
among them. So far it seemed to anticipate our
principle of Presbyterian parity, but, like Convocation,
it was an exclusively ecclesiastical gathering,
for neither nun, nor novice, nor layman was
allowed to be present. Like our presbyteries
when applying their privy censures, they expected
to be “alone.” Then, when all were reverentially
placed, in presence of no heart-searching God, but
before one another, there was recited by the
president the order of confessional, according to
the rule that if there was no transgression there
was no interruption, and silence indicated innocence.
// File: 314.png
.pn +1

First came the recitation of the gravest offences:
the four Pârâgikâ renounced upon their admission,
commission of any one of which involved
expulsion from the Order. Then came the list of
the less serious transgressions—Samghâdisesas,
involving temporary degradation, and lastly that
of the Pâkittya, or venial faults, which were atoned
for by simple confession. It was a lengthy, minute,
ill-arranged form of inquisition, more comprehensive
and rigid than any catechism of the confessional
which Romanism ever devised.[#] It out-phariseed
the Pharisees in its trivialities and repetitions and
straining out of gnats, and no manual of the cloister
ever discovered, could equal its disgusting details
of every conceivable form of unnatural vice supposed
to be perpetrable by the brethren.[#] It
reads more like a suggestion to sin than a defence
against temptation. We can understand from it
alone, how impossible it was for Buddhism to live
up to its true principles, how incapable it was of
urging on the steady moral progress of the race,
and of even realising the example of its founder.
Life’s whole strength was wasted in watching
against petty and artificial transgressions, so that
none was available for the prosecution of real duty.
Yet if deliverance was to come by the law, the
// File: 315.png
.pn +1
most trivial details of action had to be tried; but
here, as elsewhere, by the law was only the knowledge
of sin, and that not as an offence against an
infinitely Holy One, but only as a misfortune, or
at worst an imprudence, a stumbling-block placed
by man himself in the way of advancing his interest.

At the close of the rainy season, when the
brethren were making ready for their wanderings,
another solemn conference for self-purgation was
held. In this exercise of the Pâvârana or Invitation
no one known to be under the burden of scandal
could take part, but all who were consciously clean,
from the oldest to the youngest, invited the
brethren to name any offence which during their
common retreat they might have noted in their
conduct. “I invite, venerable ones, the Order; if
ye have seen anything offensive on my part, or have
heard anything, or have any suspicion about me,
have pity upon me, and name it. If I see it, I will
make amends.”[#] It may be asked whether such
an institution as this could ever have flourished in
Christendom, although the purest of our Churches
might adopt it with profit. These Buddhist
brethren could not pray the one for the other,
but they could confess their faults one to another
by a simpler and more effective method than has
ever been attempted by the confessional. That institution
// File: 316.png
.pn +1
in Christendom has tended more to corrupt
and degrade than to purify and elevate society,
for it has interfered with the divinely instituted
and much more ancient confessional of home. In
its secrecy, sealed by affection to father or mother,
or brother or sister, can be told out the things that
burn within; and no priest or ecclesiastic can usurp
this parental or brotherly function without injuring
what they must earnestly desire to protect. This
confessional, however, of the one to the whole little
brotherhood, making them watch for and consider
one another, must have tended to mutual edification.
It seems of all the observances of the
Sangha to have most nearly realised one great
purpose of the Church, that of being helpful to
each other’s salvation. <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul and <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> James
would have felt at home in such a conference.
They would probably have warned the brethren
against judging one another, and they would have
instructed them that only One whose knowledge
is perfect, because His love is infinite, could try
the lives of men; but they would have commended
them for this honest endeavour to fulfil one of the
precepts of the perfect law of liberty: “Brethren,
if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are
spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness,
considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”

The part played by woman in the early history
// File: 317.png
.pn +1
of Buddhism was analogous to that assumed by
woman in relation to primitive Christianity. Women
were among the most zealous supporters of Buddha,
ministering to him of their substance. Subsequently,
as in the case of the Christian Church, the
largest proportion of the wealth which was lavished
in such marvellous munificence upon the Order
came from female votaries. Evidently in those
days in India the position of woman was not so
degraded and helpless as it afterwards became.
Women in old Indian literature are seen to be
much more on an equality with men; they are not
only represented as receiving scholastic instruction,
but even to them as authoresses some of the Vedic
hymns were ascribed.[#] At any rate, women appear
in almost every Buddhist episode, and they move
about with a freedom which contrasts strangely
with the seclusion and restraint in which in India
they have lived for ages. In the character of
Buddha there seems to have been much that was
peculiarly attractive to the best type of women, and
at least one of these stands forth with very clearly
marked individuality.[#] His mother is only a shadow
// File: 318.png
.pn +1
in the legends, and we can only conjecture what
the parent of so good and gentle a man must have
been. But his wife confronts us with so much that
is womanly in the picture that we feel she must
have been drawn from life. Very pathetic and
tender is the graphic account of her first interview
with him, upon his return as the illustrious Buddha
to his father’s house.[#] When all came to do him
honour, Yasodhara did not come, for she said, “If
I am of any value in his eyes, he will come himself,
and I can welcome him better here.” Buddha,
noting her absence, went attended by two of his
disciples to the place where she was, and he warned
his companions not to prevent her should she seek
to embrace him, although no member of the
Order could touch or be touched by a woman.
And when she saw him, a mendicant in yellow
robes, with shaven head and face—though she knew
it would be so—she could not contain herself, but
fell at his feet, which she held, passionately weeping.
Then remembering the great and impassable
gulf which he had fixed between them, she rose
and stood at his side. His father sought to apologise
for her, telling how in the greatness of her love
she mourned and afflicted her soul for loss of him, and
refused to be comforted. She became his disciple;
// File: 319.png
.pn +1
and when afterwards, much against his inclination,
he admitted women into a separate branch of the
Order, the poor wife, whom he had not only widowed,
but had bereft of her only child, “passed into the
silent life,” as one of the first of Buddhist nuns.

All candid readers of the early Buddhist scriptures
will admit that Buddha must not only have
been gentle in disposition but pure in character.
From male and female disciples alike he demanded
chastity, in the Christian conception of the virtue.
In the reported discourses of Buddha there is the
same absence of direct denunciation of the vices
that corrupt society which is observable in the
Gospels; but the impression made by the reading
of both narratives, is that of characters so far removed
from such vices, that people in their presence
or under their influence could not even think of
them. In both narratives we have presentations of
“women who were sinners” in relation to Buddha
and Christ, but it will be confessed that the effect
produced upon us is very different in each case.
The Indian episodes lack the stirrings of the depths
of spiritual feeling, the creative word of command
exorcising the lust, and unsealing the long congealed
fountains of penitence, which confront us so
prominently in the scenes of the gospel. Buddha
was a pure man, demanding purity from all who
would be saved, but demanding it only as moralists
// File: 320.png
.pn +1
have demanded it all along. There did not
radiate from him that blending of horror of sin
and of pity for sinners which makes the influence
of Christ upon the wickedness and infirmities
of men to be unique in its regenerative power.
Had Christ insisted upon purity just as Buddha
did, the world would have profited little by
the teaching. Unquestionably the mission of
Buddha, though intended to make for chastity,
has not purified Eastern Asia from the gross and
unnatural vices to which all along it has been
prone.

For Buddha’s conception and estimate of woman
was very inferior to that of Christ.[#] She was regarded
by him through the medium of the traditional
prejudice of her inferiority to man in every
respect. To him, as to Plato, women, of all snares
which the tempter spreads for man, were the most
dangerous. Not only was the very smallest love
for them to be destroyed, but they were to be
avoided, not to be spoken to, not looked upon,[#]
not to be helped even when in distress. Of their
future as women in the life hereafter he had no
hope,[#] and the only reward which he could hold out
to them for obedience or benevolent service, the very
// File: 321.png
.pn +1
highest object of aspiration which he could present,
was that they might be re-born as men in another
stage of existence. His disciple Ananda did good
service when he wrung from him permission to form
the order of Nuns,[#] for a nun might hope for salvation;
but alas for woman and for the progress of
society if she had no other gospel to trust in than
that which Buddha preached!

His ideal of purity was from the first vitiated
by his celibate views of life, and from these views
human nature has always revolted in proportion to
the honesty with which men have striven to realise
them. Celibacy, when dominant or prevalent, has
only produced a more vicious and unnatural condition
of society than that from which it attempted
to escape. The Son of Man represented nobler
traditions, and taught far sublimer doctrine.
Woman, though different from, and in some respects
weaker, is in others higher and purer than man,
and altogether his consort. The pure love of the
man for the woman was recognised by Christ as
one of the most sanctifying influences in life; and
marriage, the most sacred of all Divine institutions,
as the bond which more than any other keeps
society together, obtained His special benediction,
and was committed by Him to His Church to
guard as the palladium of social freedom and dignity.
// File: 322.png
.pn +1
Notwithstanding its many defections, the Church
has never been permitted to lose sight of the Lord’s
ideal. Even in the days of corrupted faith, when
its laudation of virginity was most extravagant, its
unmistakable tendency was to acknowledge the
true dignity of the wife.[#] A recent writer professes
to be unable “to see that Christianity has had any
favourable effect on the position of women—on the
contrary, it tended rather to lower their character
and contract the range of their activities.”[#] It is
noticeable that his facts or quotations are drawn
from a period when asceticism had deeply tainted
the Church, and that they cannot be held to represent
the tendency of the teaching of Christ.
The unmistakable influence of His religion has been
to ennoble family relations, and to secure woman in
her true position as the companion and helpmeet of
man. It has been stated by one who cannot be
regarded as a special pleader, that what most differentiates
the European from the Hindu branch of
the Aryan race, is that the first has steadily carried
forward, for the elevation of woman, the series of
reforms[#] from which the other, though going a
little way, recoiled. No one need fear to assert
// File: 323.png
.pn +1
that the chief factor in these reforms, sometimes
carried against the resistance and opposition of the
Church, was the spirit of Christianity. In proportion
as the example of Christ has been honoured,
and His teaching has been accepted and obeyed,
the emancipation of woman and the recognition of
her real rights have been secured. In any case it
is certain that the religion of Buddha, though
probably not intended to perpetuate the inferior
position characteristic of woman in the East, has
succeeded neither in lifting her out of it, nor in
preventing her from lapsing more deeply into it.

The time for discovering the worth of woman
had not come in Buddha’s age, and we must
remember his antecedents and surroundings before
we condemn his estimate of or his relations
to her. If the tradition be reliable, he prophesied,
upon yielding to Ananda’s intercession, that because
of women holy living would not long be
preserved. They would prove in the fair field of
his Order what “the disease of mildew proved to
be in a field of rice.”[#] So though he admitted them
to a separate branch of the Order, he placed them
under very stringent regulations, and thoroughly
under the tutelage of the monks. “A nun, though
admitted a nun a hundred years ago, must bow
reverentially before a monk, though only admitted
// File: 324.png
.pn +1
to-day.” She must not pass the rainy season in a
district in which monks were not residing; she
must report herself twice a month to the Sangha
for confession and instruction; she must give the
Pavâranâ invitation, and she must, if guilty of
offence, atone for it before both monks and nuns.
She could only be admitted after a two years’
novitiate; under no circumstances must she revile
or rebuke a monk; yea, on no occasion whatever
must she charge him with any offence.[#] Between
them and the superior sex the strictest
separation was maintained from the first. The
brother who was to teach and exhort them was
never allowed to enter their nunnery, unless a sister
was very ill. For a monk to journey alone with a
nun, to cross a river in the same boat with one, to
sit alone with a nun, with or without witnesses, was
a very grave offence.[#] In short, in the Buddhist
Sangha women were only tolerated at the best, and
they were very severely guarded and restrained, as
creatures not at all calculated to influence any one
for good, and who could only be prevented or tamed
from doing mischief or harm.[#]
// File: 325.png
.pn +1

The Sangha, as a brotherhood and sisterhood
leading a celibate life, coupled with abstinence from
labour and from active services of charity, was
simply vicious in its tendency, and it proved one
of the most obstinate hindrances to the realisation
of Buddha’s best ideas, and one of the most powerful
factors in the degradation of his religion.
Human nature was too strong to submit to such
artificial restrictions; so very early there gathered
around him and his monks many who would not
abandon their families and their callings, though
they took refuge in Buddha, and proved the reality
of their devotion by faithful service of the Order
and practice of the Law. These were the votaries,
“upasaka” (masc.), “upasika” (fem.), corresponding
with the lay associates of the great Mendicant Orders
of Christendom. Converted to the observance of the
precepts, they could only, as long as they continued
in the world, be sustained by a very faint and far-off
hope of deliverance. Theoretically they might
attain to sainthood, and from “this shore” of
common life, in most exceptional cases they might
“pass across the dominion of death,” and reach to the
other shore.[#] The father of Buddha is said to have
done so on his deathbed, and another is recorded in
// File: 326.png
.pn +1
the legends as having gained Nirvana.[#] As a rule,
however, it was reckoned impossible for them to gain
what was considered as so barely possible for the
Order of Mendicants, that only one or two even
of them did actually gain it here. Pious votaries,
however, could hope for a happy re-birth, and for
strength of merit to be acquired; in some hereafter
sufficient to enable them eventually to pluck the
fruit of Nirvana. For such lay associates no ceremony
of initiation was required; only in presence of a
monk the candidates made profession that they took
refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. They
had to observe certain precepts and prohibitions;
had to renounce any trade involving the making or
selling of arms, or the killing of animals; they had
to abstain from all traffic in and use of intoxicating
drinks, and to put far away from them all falsehood,
and theft, and unchastity. To seal this, however,
no formal vow was demanded of the votary, and to
maintain them in their obedience no pastoral supervision
was accorded. When they transgressed, even
in the matter of scandalous living, there was neither
censure nor discipline, and when they offended by
injuring the Order or insulting one of its members,
the only penalty inflicted was the refusal of their
invitations to dine, and the withdrawal from them of
// File: 327.png
.pn +1
the alms-bowl.[#] Into the Uposatha assemblies they
dared not intrude, and from the very slightest share
of the business of the Order they were strictly excluded.[#]
They could only listen to the preaching of
the monks, whom they could feed, and lodge, and
endow with houses and lands; and all the reward
they could hope for, was the prospect of acquiring
in some future life merit sufficient to enable them
to renounce the world and become mendicants like
them. For the present they were not inside, but
only about, the circle of the Sakkya-putta-Samanas;
he was not a member of the family, but only a
servitor and a slave.[#] The elect, the disciples in
deed and in truth, the heirs of salvation, were exclusively
the monks; and the Upâsaka at the best
was one for whom it was good “continuously to dispense
rice milk, and honey lumps, if he had a
longing for joy, whether he desired heavenly joy or
coveted only human prosperity,”[#] His merit was
most likely to be acquired by being useful to the
good, who served him by accepting his offerings,[#]
and taught him—though to a purpose undreamed
// File: 328.png
.pn +1
of by <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul when he quoted his Saviour’s saying—that
in his case, at least, it was “more blessed
to give than to receive.”

It is to the lasting honour of Buddha that he
converted the Sangha into a propaganda for preaching
to all his way of salvation. He did not, for he
could not, conceive of that better society which our
Lord has created in the Holy Catholic Church. It
is true, alas! that the actual or visible Church has
often caricatured, and has never yet properly represented,
its Lord’s ideal; but it has never been permitted
wholly to lose sight of that Kingdom whose
citizenship is free to all who believe and repent,
and of that royal priesthood of which all are members
who trust in the one sacrifice and prevailing
intercession of the Great High Priest of our profession.
If the visible Church has failed to convert,
or even to attract, the members of the Buddhist
Sanghas, it is because of something wrong in its
methods, or false in its presentation; for notwithstanding
its failure, it possesses in the great gospel
of the Divine Fatherhood intrusted to its keeping,
potentialities for gathering all mankind into the
only brotherhood which will satisfy their heaven-born
aspirations. The manifestation of it may still
be a far-off Divine event, and to bring it about
God may employ many agencies other than those
which the Church as at present organised may be
// File: 329.png
.pn +1
willing to recognise or to use; but once that holy
brotherhood is manifested, He alone will be found
at the head of it, who on His way to His agony,
and to the cross on which He was to reveal to the
uttermost the love of the Creator for the human
race, paused by the brook Kedron, and made this
supplication mingle with the ripple of its waters
and the whispers of the olives of Gethsemane, “I
pray ... that they all may be one, even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also
may be in us.”

.fn #
<i>Sangha</i>, originally an assembly (of disciples gathered around a
Hindu sage). In Buddhism, the entire fraternity (like the Order of
Francis or Dominic).—Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 176.
.fn-
.fn #
Robertson Smith, <i>Prophets of Israel</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 275.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 2, 3, 4; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>.
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, <i>Indian Literature</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 306.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapadda, 141; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr>;
Pâtimokkha Sekhiyá Dhammâ, 1, 2, 3, 4; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 59.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 65; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 279.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 11; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 12; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 27. 5; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> xvii.; Kullavagga, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 1. 3; <i>ibid.</i>
<abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 9. 2; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 251 <i>seq.</i> The doctrine that it bore
nobler fruit is expressly contradicted by some. See Âpastamba, pres. <abbr=two>ii.</abbr>
pat. <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> khan. 23; also pres. <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> pat. <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> k. 24. 15; <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 156, 159.
.fn-
.fn #
The way of “Works”—ceremonial and sacrificial religion; the way
of “Faith”—devotion (heart) to the deities without works; the way of
“Knowledge,” or true enlightenment.—Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 95.
.fn-
.fn #
Saint-Hilaire, <i>Le Bouddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 152.
.fn-
.fn #
Not without protest, however, by fathers and doctors of the Church.
See Hermas, <i>Simil.</i> <abbr=five>v.</abbr>; Clem. <i>Strom.</i> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr>; Tertullian, <i>De Jejunio</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 123 <i>seq.</i>; <i>De Pallio</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 181 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Gieseler, <i>Eccles. Hist.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 289 <i>seq.</i>; Neander’s <i>Church Hist.</i>
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 305 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Hom. on <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Matth. 69, 70.
.fn-
.fn #
Montalembert, <i>Monks of the West</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 319; Neander’s
<i>Church History</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 338, 339.
.fn-
.fn #
Cassian, <i>Collationes</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 5-8; <i>De Instit. Monachi</i>, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>; <i>De capitalibus
vitiis</i>, quoted by Farrar, <i>Lives of the Fathers</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 224; Burton,
<i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 510.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Monks of the West</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 27.
.fn-
.fn #
Sutta Nipâta, 75-81; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Theod. <i>Eccles. Hist.</i> lib. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> cap. 26.
.fn-
.fn #
“They prayed for the whole world.”—Chrysost. <abbr rend=spell>H.</abbr> 78, <i>In Johannem</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 317, 318.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 15; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
“I am not aware of any instances in which the pariah of the
age is mentioned as a member of the Order.” “According to Buddhist
dogmatics, a good Sudra or Vaisya could only hope to be re-born as a
Kshatrya, and this clearly indicates that the distinctions of castes had
by no means vanished or become worthless in Buddha’s consciousness”
(<i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 156).
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 39. 76; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Christianity does not, as Goethe averred, “prefer what is despised
and feeble,” but as in God’s eyes nothing is despised and abject, so, in
fellowship with the Father, Christ cherished the maimed and lame and
blind, though hated of the soul of the natural man, and this disposition
will ever be a “mark” or “note” of the true Church of Christ.
.fn-
.fn #
Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, 1882, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 284; Rhys Davids, Hibbert
Lectures, 1881, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 155.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 181, 182.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>The Scotsman</i>, August <abbr=seventeenth>17th</abbr>, 1889.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Burnouf, <lang=fr><i>Science des Religions</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 94.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 49. 6.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 54. 5; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 7. 10-15; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 29.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Ibid.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 76. 1-10.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 80; Dr. Rhys Davids states that a new or cloister
name was given on admission, in exchange for the family one (Hibbert
Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 39), but Professor Oldenberg alleges that this is supported
only by solitary cases (<i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 353 note).
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 30. 1-4; also <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 14. 6; and Kullavagga,
<abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 1-2.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 78. 1-5.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 79. 1-3.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 25. 1-24, for the duties of novice to his Upagghâya;
<i>ibid.</i> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 32, Kullavagga, <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 13, 14, for his duties to his Âkariya.
The duties to both are the same, but the Upagghâya seems to have been
the more important of the two tutors.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Rhys Davids, <i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 169.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 200; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Pâtimokkha; Pakittiyá Dhammâ, 10; said to be because he
might kill or harm some living creature.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Edwin Arnold, <i>Light of Asia</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 95.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> <i>passim</i>; Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 25. 15.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 141, 142; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> Part <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Edwin Arnold, <i>Light of Asia</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 95, 96.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 31. 4.
.fn-
.fn #
Introduction to Dhammapada, <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xliv</abbr>: a long list quoted from the <i>Northern Scripture</i> by Dr. Edkins
in <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
The question was thrice put, “Are ye pure?” Mahavagga, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 1-36.
.fn-
.fn #
See for a specimen the Kullavaga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 21; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Bishop of Colombo, in <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, July 1888.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 1. 18; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Weber, <i>Indische Studien</i>, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 118; Metrical translations by Dr.
John Muir, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 250, where Professor Eggeling is quoted.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahâ-pagâpati the Gotami, his aunt and nurse (Kullavaga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 1)
whose entreaty, through Ananda, led him to found the Order of Bikkhuni,
seems more than a name. Visâkhâ, “the rich and bountiful,” is another
type of votary (Mahavagga, <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr> 15).
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhist Jataka Stories</i>, translated by Rhys Davids, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 87, 90;
Bigandet, <i>Life of Gaudama</i>, old <abbr=edition>ed.</abbr>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 156, 168.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 284; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Book of the Great Decease, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 23; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Eitel, <i>Lectures on Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 10.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 1. 3, 4; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Clement of Alexandria gives prominence to the value of marriage
and of the family life, <i>Strom.</i> <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr>, <i>Paedag.</i> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> So Tertullian, <i>Ad
Uxorem</i>, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr rend=spell>c.</abbr> 8.
.fn-
.fn #
Principal Donaldson, <i>Contemporary Review</i>, Sept. 1889.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Henry <abbr rend=spell>S.</abbr> Maine, <i>Early History of Institutions</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 341.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 1. 6.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 1. 27.
.fn-
.fn #
Pâtimokkha; Pakittiyâ Dhammâ, 6, 7, 27, 66, 67.
.fn-
.fn #
“You are not, O monks, to bow down before women, to rise up in
their presence, to stretch out your joined hands towards them, nor to
perform towards them those duties that are proper to them (from an
inferior to a superior).”—Kullavagga, <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 3. 1. “Giving honour unto the
wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace
of God.”—1 Peter <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 1-7.
.fn-
.fn #
Dhammapada, 85, 86; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 125; Spence
Hardy, <i>Eastern Monachism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 199.
.fn-
.fn #
The bowl was “turned down” in relation to him, and his house became
an unlawful resort.—Kullavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 20. 3; <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams states that though votaries did not confess to
monks, the four days were observed by them.—<i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 84.
.fn-
.fn #
Oldenberg, <i>Buddha, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 162 note.
.fn-
.fn #
Mahavagga, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 24. 1-6.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 1-5; <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 4. 10.
.fn-
// File: 330.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=lecture-6
LECTURE <abbr=six>VI.</abbr> | THE TWO RELIGIONS IN HISTORY.
.sp 2
.h3
I.—External Diffusion.
.sp 2
In His apostles, and the disciples who gathered
round them, endowed with the memory of His
words and deeds, two simple sacraments, and a
promise that He would be with them to the end
of the æon, while they fulfilled His commission to
evangelise and baptize all nations in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
the continuance of the Church which our Lord had
founded was secured. Buddha left behind him
neither sacrament to signify and seal the benefits
which he had conferred, nor any promise of personal
fellowship with or interest in his followers;
but he was survived by the Monastic Order which
he had founded, by a law containing the essentials
of his system, and a form of discipline containing
the customs to be observed in their assemblies, and
the rules to which all the brethren were to be
// File: 331.png
.pn +1
subject. Though the personal guide to Nirvana
was lost to them, they still in the law possessed his
way to it, and by observing the law, and following
his way, they would fulfil his last stirring exhortation,[#]
“Be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge
to yourselves, O monks.”

So much importance being attached to the law,
his disciples, immediately after his decease, according
to the tradition, set about collecting the
materials of it, in his remembered discourses,
decisions, and in all that he said; and this labour
of recalling, determining, and perpetuating his
teaching seems to have occupied them for several
generations. There is no trace of any corresponding
anxiety on the part of the Christian Church to
collect the words of the Lord Jesus. The Gospels
are not the earliest of our scriptures, and they were
produced more for the edification of Jewish and
Gentile converts, than to secure for the Church a
standard of belief and of discipline. The function
of the Church was not so much to recall and perpetuate
the teaching of its Lord as to interpret the
significance of His life, and death, and resurrection.
No written or remembered instructions were
required, for the apostles believed that they had
Himself to tell them on every occasion what they
should do and teach. From the very first they
// File: 332.png
.pn +1
prayed to Him in full assurance that He heard and
answered them. They believed that He had shown
Himself to some of them, and that He was witnessed
for in all of them by a new possession. The
Gentile world had been familiar with the μανία of
the medium through whom a Divine oracle was
supposed to be given, and with the <i>rabies</i> of the
howling priests of the goddess Cybele, but the
Christians professed to be inspired by the πνεῦμα
ἅγιον. In some instances this inspiration manifested
itself in extravagant forms and in mysterious utterances,[#]
but those who were most under its control
had complete possession of themselves; their speech
was intelligible, and sober, and most convincing,
making “manifest the secrets of the heart.”

Unquestionably this belief in the presence of
Christ in the Spirit—whether truly founded or not—was
universal in the Church. All the utterances
of primitive Christianity, the scriptures of its
apostles, the treatises of its fathers and doctors,
and all the monuments of the first ages, bear witness
not to a Christ who once lived and had died,
but who was living triumphant and glorified, reigning
for them, and in them to reign. Unquestionably
also in this belief was the hiding of that power
which enabled the Church to confront the whole
world, endure the full weight of its persecutions, and
// File: 333.png
.pn +1
finally win the victory over it. It also explains the
appearance in the Church, from the first, of that
succession of persons who, because of their strongly
marked individualities, gave both direction and
impetus to its progress. Buddhism, though both
its southern and northern scriptures record a patriarchal
succession, and though probably not deficient
in highly cultured disciples, seems to have lacked
from the very first men who had genius to organise
or intellect to command its forces. Its own early
writings disclose a movement which very speedily
congealed, because ruled only by a remembered
law, interpreted by very adulterated traditions.
Christianity represents quite a different movement;
it was not the perpetuation of a system, but the
development of a new inspiration, of a life manifested
in Christ and communicated to all who believed
on Him. Consequently it never was without
its heroes, whom it had the power to produce; and
consequently also it never could stiffen into a
tradition, for where its leaders attempted to fix it,
in either confession or in ritual, it was sure to evade
them. It has been appropriately described as “the
most changeable of religions,”[#]—mutable in its
forms, immutable in its essence. For Christianity
is not a system either of philosophy or theology;
// File: 334.png
.pn +1
it is a perpetually reforming spirit, fed by faith in
One who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and
for ever.

Both religions entered the world as missionaries
bent upon its conversion, and though Buddhism
was afterwards to eclipse Christianity in the superficial
extent of its conquests, the annals of the
primitive Church record a much more rapid extension.
The early development of Christianity, even
taking into account the circumstances which helped
or facilitated its progress, remains one of the marvels
of history. In the New Testament the Church is
seen to have gained a footing almost wherever the
waves of the Diaspora had reached. <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul found
Christians not only in Rome, but in little Puteoli,
and his letters imply that there were churches in
Spain and in southern Gaul. <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Peter wrote from
Babylon to a wide circle of Christian communities
gathered out of the regions of Asia Minor.[#] There
seem to have been even then churches in most of
the chief cities, and in a multitude of minor towns
all over the Empire; and there is no reason to
distrust the tradition, that before the last of the
apostles fell asleep, the gospel had called multitudes
living far beyond the bounds of the Empire to make
good their citizenship in the kingdom of God.

The churches may have been small in respect
// File: 335.png
.pn +1
of membership, for the rapid diffusion of Christianity
by no means involved the conversion <i>en masse</i> of
the people. Facts will hardly bear out the glowing
testimony of Gregory Thaumaturgus, who found in
the populous metropolis of a large province only
seventeen Christians, and in twenty-five years reported
that he could find only seventeen heathens.[#]
With Gibbon we may have to discount as “splendid
exaggeration” the testimony of Tertullian, <lang=la>“Hesterni
sumus, et vestra omnia implevimus.”</lang> Still
the direct testimony of Tacitus as to the multitude
of Christians in Rome, the evidence of the Catacombs,
and many other indications, point to the
conclusion that the rapid numerical increase of Christians
was as singular as was the territorial diffusion
of their religion. The whole Empire must have
been sensibly leavened, and the converts must for
long have been gathered from other than the lower
classes of society, before the conversion of Constantine
became possible. Emperors—even Roman
ones—follow in such matters, and do not lead their
subjects; and so we may be sure what had at first
been glad tidings to the slaves and the poor must
for some time have become the consolation of many
a noble Pudens and Linus, and of many a Claudia
of royal descent, before it could be recognised as
the religion of the State.[#]
// File: 336.png
.pn +1

Many circumstances undoubtedly contributed
to this result. A consolidated empire, with nearly
all the representative nations fused into a union,
comprising all the existing elements of culture and
forces of civilisation; the great Roman highways,
with means of easy communication so abundant as
to be surprising to us; the widespread understanding
of the two leading languages, making
virtually of one speech a great section of the most
important part of the world; the innumerable
communities of Jews, everywhere tolerated, and
“cutting channels through the adamantine mass of
heathen society,”[#] immensely aided the missionary
activities of the apostles and their followers.
Moreover, the moral and religious condition of the
Empire, the bankruptcy of the old faith, the despair
and confusion and perplexity of people, everywhere
seeking mightier or better deities than they knew,
everywhere trembling “between the two immensities
of terror,” rendered possible the victory of
Christianity. Multitudes were thus prepared to
welcome a Deliverer who had come in the name,
not of Jupiter Maximus Tonans, but of the Father
in heaven, to give peace in this world’s tribulations,
and sure hope of joy in the world beyond
it.[#] And yet all this, even when added to
// File: 337.png
.pn +1
Gibbon’s five causes, will not account for the historical
puzzle, that a faith, originating in a manger
in a Syrian cattle-shed, brooded over for thirty
years of a life of poverty and toil, preached for
three, with the result of being almost universally
rejected, and quenched to all appearance in the
blood of crucifixion, should immediately after the
death of its Founder have broken out all over the
Roman world. Converting its agents from farms,
and harbours, and prisons, it called them to martyrdom;
for it sent them—poor “weavers, and shoe-makers,
and fullers, and illiterate clowns”—to proclaim
“barbarous dogmas,” and “extravagant
hopes,” “universally detested” by Jew and Gentile,
and to bear the full weight of a prolonged series of
persecutions involving indescribable tortures and
disgrace.[#] Yet somehow it never paused for a
moment, never abated one iota of its claim, till in
the course of a few generations it was found upon
the throne. We never will explain this wonder
by showing how, as a system of ethics, or as a new
theory of life, it found the condition of the world
favourable to its reception. The correlation of the
state of the world to the new faith has been
claimed as providential,—an indication of a Divine
purpose making all things work together, for this
// File: 338.png
.pn +1
manifestation of a new power or principle of life
in society, which as yet has had no historical
counterpart.[#]

The early scriptures of Buddhism, though preserving
a tradition that in twelve years from the
time in which the doctrine was first preached it
had spread over sixteen kingdoms, disclose no such
rapidity of diffusion. The kingdoms referred to are
not to be regarded as kingdoms in our sense of the
word, for in extent and influence they would not
equal a German principality, and were probably
only tribal communities. After the death of
Buddha the many Sanghas that had arisen seem to
have suffered for lack of a central governing power.
If his Order is to be called a Church, it had manifestly
no church-government. It had synods, and
assemblies, and councils, but not one with the
authority of an Œcumenical as representative of the
whole. It was more Congregational than Presbyterian
in its constitution, and for this very reason
it was weak when compared with the compact
organisation of Brahmanism, with which it competed
for supremacy. Disorder and dissension are traceable
in it from the first, and the early texts, though
containing many admonitions against schism, warnings
that offences must come, and woes upon those
who would cause them, record no practical steps to
// File: 339.png
.pn +1
prevent or remedy them.[#] Vigorous expansion was
consequently not to be looked for, and for two
centuries we may safely infer that Buddhism
represented only a struggling sect, which, beyond
the limits in which it was first preached, had made
little, if indeed any, progress.

At the close of this period, when its literature
was reaching a canonical form, and its manuals
of discipline and common order were generally
in use, it found its Constantine in the conqueror
Chandragupta. In opposition to the Brahmans,
who despised him for his low-caste origin, he seems
to have lifted it from obscurity into the sunshine
of really imperial favour. His grandson Asoka,
who consolidated his conquests, proved its Theodosius,
in not only greatly endowing it, but in
establishing its supremacy. There were no quarrels
between him and the Sanghas as to their independence,
as afterwards between the Emperors
and the Popes, for, like a true son of the Church,
he acknowledged their authority. By obeying
in appearance, he in reality became, what Buddhism
since the death of its founder sorely needed,
the head of the system, and under his wise and
energetic rule, the religion emerged into a vigour
which it was to maintain for centuries.
// File: 340.png
.pn +1

An earnest Buddhist, he seems to have been
something better. He called himself Pryadarsi,[#]
the “beloved of the gods,” and a Daniel indeed
he appears to have been, raised up for the blessing
of millions. His edicts—stone inscriptions found
all over India—the first written testimonies which
Buddhism left of itself,[#] all breathe a lofty spirit of
righteousness and kindness and toleration, appealing
to both Brahman and Buddhist, and commending
themselves at this day, “to Jew and Christian and
Moslem alike, as part of the universal religion of
humanity.”[#] One of them refers to a council which
he assembled at Patna, for the pacification and
reformation of the Order. During its session the
ancient collections of rules and dogmas were
rehearsed, and as the list is considerably shorter
than the contents of the Tripitaka, we may be sure
that the Southern tradition that Buddha himself
was the author of all the books comprising that
collection has no foundation in fact.[#] A far more
momentous act of this ancient council than the
recension of the canon, was that of establishing the
first great Buddhist missions. To a revived and
// File: 341.png
.pn +1
reformed Order the suggestion of the pious king,
that they should go forth and fulfil their great
teacher’s original commission, was welcome. Their
dissensions, as has often happened in Christendom,
were due to their living to themselves. An army
inactive in quarters, is more likely to quarrel or
mutiny than one in service in the field. These good
Buddhists wisely determined to carry the war of
deliverance beyond them, and so into the Punjab,
Kashmir, the Central Himalayan regions, over into
the Malay Peninsula, went the missionaries, armed
only with the words of the Law or the legends
which had been floating round the memory of their
master, and supported only by the offerings put into
their alms-dish, to gain whatever victories they
could in the fair conflict of reason with reason.[#]

In India they would of course be supported by
imperial influence, and indeed the mission to Ceylon,
headed by Mahinda, the son of Asoka, seems to have
been accredited by royal embassy; but nowhere was
Buddhism propagated as Islam subsequently was by
Mohammed, or as Christianity was by Charlemagne,
with an army at its back. Races ever ready to
credit the supernatural would probably be more
easily won by the wonders which were then being
formulated in reference to Buddha; but whatever
be the explanation of it, the success of these missionaries
// File: 342.png
.pn +1
anticipated that of the apostles. In Ceylon
there was founded a Sangha, which was destined
to nurse and preserve the original creed in somewhat
of its purity, when all the others betrayed
and corrupted it. Surviving several changes of
dynasty, that Sangha, 330 years after Buddha’s
decease, is said to have reduced its canon to writing.
The result has been somewhat contradictory to the
theory, that it matters very little whether a canon
be oral or written, for Southern Buddhism, having
an authority to which it was thus earlier anchored,
has held more closely to the original system, from
which, having no such check for long, every section
of Northern Buddhism has irrecoverably fallen away.

After the death of Asoka, the empire which he
sought to consolidate by the preaching of the Law
fell to pieces, and Buddhism was destined to be tested
by more than one rude shock. A Brahman reaction
took place, which is even supposed to have resulted
in the persecution of all Buddhists living in India.
If so, it was the first which the religion encountered—so
unlike Christianity, which had to
endure for three centuries the fierce assaults of its
enemies. Persecution by a religion so tolerant as
Brahmanism is hard to conceive, but if it took place
at this period, it only tended, as in the early Christian
trials, to the wider expansion of the persecuted
faith. “They that were scattered abroad went everywhere
// File: 343.png
.pn +1
preaching” the Law. Some of them pushed
through Afghanistan into the regions of Central
Asia, and there, just as Ulphilas and Severinus,
centuries later, gained a hold over the wild races
that conquered the moribund Empire, so Buddhist
missionaries succeeded in sowing the seeds of their
Law among the rude Scythian tribes, who were then
in great commotion in their vast inland steppes.
Driven from their ancestral homes, a branch of the
great tribe of Huns about 160 <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> overthrow the
Bactrian kingdom, and after generations of struggle
they conquered Kashmir, the Punjab, and a considerable
part of India. Then just as the Goths and Huns,
in the moment of their conquest of Rome, tendered
their submission to Christianity, so the conversion
of Kaniska, the greatest of the Indo-Scythian
kings, a contemporary with Augustus and Antony,
enabled Buddhism to enter with fresh vigour upon
a second period of very brilliant supremacy.[#]

Though the difference between the Northern
and Southern Buddhists was already showing itself,
and though soon after it manifested itself in a
divergence as complete as that which sundered the
Greek Orthodox from the Latin Catholic Churches,
monumental evidence, harmonising with that
derived from its own literary relics, indicates that
for four or five centuries after this Buddhism was
// File: 344.png
.pn +1
most successfully propagated almost everywhere
save in India. In the land of its origin it was
gradually declining, because drawing nearer to the
Brahmanism from which it had seceded. Fa-Hian
in the end of the fourth century, though describing
it as dominant everywhere, found the place of its
nativity only a wilderness.[#] Later on, the viharas
were deserted, the dagobas in ruins, “the monks were
few, the heretics many,” and by the seventh century
the process of assimilation with and absorption into
Hinduism was in India, save in widely separated
and remote localities, almost complete. What it
lost in India, however, it was to gain in other
directions. Its greatest conquest was in China.
In the days of Asoka eighteen missionaries are said
to have reached China, where they are held in
reverence to this day, their images occupying a
conspicuous place in every temple. The faith which
they introduced seemed to have struggled with very
little success to gain a footing till about <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> 68.[#]
Thirteen years before this date, in obedience to a
vision which appeared to him at Troas, <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul
brought Christianity from Asia to Europe. On
the thirtieth day of the twelfth Chinese month in
<abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> 68, the Emperor Mingti, in consequence of a
// File: 345.png
.pn +1
dream, sent ambassadors to the distant West for
Buddhist monks and manuscripts.[#] Travelling in
almost royal state, the invited missionaries were
accorded in China a welcome in marvellous contrast
to the reception of the Christian apostle in the first
colonial city he had reached. From this time
onwards a perpetual succession of monks and
manuscripts entered China; yet, though tolerated
from the first, and often royally patronised, centuries
elapsed before it succeeded in winning a
place as one of the three religions of China, while
Christianity, persecuted from the first, succeeded
after a fierce struggle in conquering the Empire
of Rome, and then by a long process in evangelising
Europe.

The conversion of the most of Eastern Asia was
the work of the Northern or more corrupt Buddhism.
Southern Buddhism, like the orthodox
Eastern Church, which contented itself with its
evangelistic achievements among the Goths, and its
Nestorian missions, soon exhausted its propagative
force. The introduction of the religion into Burma,
Siam, and the adjacent kingdoms, may be said to
sum up its triumphs. Northern Buddhism, on the
other hand, ran from the beginning of our era a
course of unchecked triumphs. In the close of the
// File: 346.png
.pn +1
fourth century it spread from China to Corea, and
in the sixth it reached Japan. Previous to this it
entered the isolated regions of Tibet, more welcomed
than resisted by the demonolatrous inhabitants
on account of the adulterated form in which
it presented itself. There, after a struggle for some
two centuries, it succeeded, about the period when
Islam was beginning its conquests elsewhere, in
securing strong royal support. After experiencing
for many generations the vicissitudes of popularity
and persecution, the conquests of Genghiz,
and the strong favour of Kublai, his greatest successor,
established its hierarchy as supreme, and
in spite of changes of dynasty, it has there dominated
the whole relations of life in a manner like
unto, but to an extent far beyond, the wildest
dreams of Rome’s most ambitious Pope.[#]

It thus appears that Buddhism in the second
period of its history, and after it had succeeded in
winning the support of powerful kings, reached its
furthest extension and achieved its grandest conquests.
Christianity, on the other hand, was more
rapidly diffused in the primitive than in the subsequent
ages. Tested by its intensive hold upon
the nations, it had only nominally converted the
Roman Empire by the end of the fourth century.
Gibbon’s estimate of the number of Christians within
// File: 347.png
.pn +1
it, is acknowledged by friendly authorities,[#] like
Bishop Lightfoot, to err if at all on the side of excess.
During the reign of Constantine, probably not a
twentieth of the whole population of the Empire
were Christians, even by profession. After this
period, no doubt, the proportion must have greatly
increased, for the barbarous hordes that poured
downwards in successive deluges over the South
were converted so suddenly and so silently that
“scarce a legend remains to tell the tale.” In
regard, however, to the conversion of heathen
Europe, it is a mistake to suppose that the missionaries
had only to come, and see, and conquer.
The conversion of England by the Roman monks,
and of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales by Oriental
and, it is said, Arian missionaries, cannot be said
to have been accomplished before the close of the
seventh century. Afterwards, the conversion of
Central and Northern Germany occupied the Celtic
and British missionaries for two centuries. The
conversion of the Scandinavians, beginning in the
ninth, could not be said to have been effected till
the middle of the eleventh century, while that of
Slavonia, undertaken in the tenth, did not terminate,
if indeed even then, before the sixteenth century.
The conquest of Europe was the result of a prolonged
and often desultory warfare, in which, while the
// File: 348.png
.pn +1
advance was slow, Christianity sometimes failed to
hold the ground which it had gained. The powerful
Churches in Asia, the seats of its great Councils
and the capitals of its rule, either died or were
swept away; Antioch and Constantinople, once its
citadels, became the strongholds of an alien and
hostile faith; the mighty Churches of Egypt and
Abyssinia dwindled into a condition of immedicable
disease, and the flourishing Church of Africa, with
its more than six hundred bishoprics, was simply,
because ripe for destruction, obliterated by the forces
of Islam. Toward the latter half of the tenth century
it seemed as if Christianity in Europe was surely
following the fate of Buddhism before its disappearance
from India. On all sides it was pressed in
the deadly grip of Pagan and Moslem alike, while
its bishops, and priests, and nobles, oblivious of
the danger, were living in sinful self-indulgence.
It seemed as if Christendom was being surely
blotted out from the geography of the world; and
yet as by a miracle it survived, or was preserved, till
came the Renaissance, and that marvellous emergence
of missionary zeal, which sent Christianity,
Reformed and Unreformed, to the very ends of the
earth, and which, increasing in every generation
since then, was never more abundant nor more
fervent than now.[#]
// File: 349.png
.pn +1

Christianity, unlike Buddhism, came very early
into collision with the most advanced civilisation and
highest culture of the world, while Buddhism for
centuries encountered only the religions of inferior
peoples. The only equal or superior civilisation
which it met was that of China, and there, though
tolerated and even patronised from the first, it seems
for centuries to have been regarded as an exotic.
Natives of India, like the Jews in the Roman
Empire, were allowed to build Buddhist temples,
but only in the fourth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> did Chinese
people begin extensively to be converted to the
Buddhist religion. As it rose into favour its conflicts
with the Confucianists began, and the issue of
its varied fortunes has been, that though indirectly
it has greatly influenced, it has only subdued a
section of the Chinese people.[#] While other inferior
races came quickly under its influence, the most
civilised of Eastern peoples resisted it, and have at
most only been leavened by it.[#] Christianity had
also its easy conquests, as when some northern
tribes were converted in a day by the baptism of
their chiefs; but its principal struggle with the
historic Paganism of aristocratic Rome was fierce
and obdurate. There the position, as in the case of
Hinduism to-day, was not carried by assault, but
// File: 350.png
.pn +1
by slow and almost imperceptible approaches. The
Church at Rome for two centuries was more a Greek
than a Latin one. The names of its bishops were
Greek, and the Catacomb inscriptions sufficiently
indicate that Greek was the language of its members.
Slowly and indirectly, however, it gained the hold
upon ancient thought and custom, operating like
an alterative in the system, supplanting what was
good, by simply taking possession of it and inspiring
it with a new life, while that which was decaying
and waxing old gradually vanished away.

In this respect, therefore, there is a significant
difference between the two religions. Christianity,
with all the world against it, and in spite of three
centuries of unparalleled persecutions, succeeded in
vanquishing the highest, while yet approving itself
as a gospel to the lowest civilisation. Buddhism,
with the greatest powers of the Eastern world in
its favour, and never, perhaps, save in China, called
to bear the shock of a single persecution, has only
succeeded in being accepted by inferior branches of
the human race. The Hindu Aryans, assimilating
what of it they approved, rejected what of it was
peculiar and distinctive. The Semitic followers
of Islam simply crushed it under foot, and it never
rose high enough even to touch the Western Aryans.[#]
// File: 351.png
.pn +1
Very early it withdrew itself entirely within the
circles of the Turanian peoples; and if to-day in
Mongolia, Manchuria, among the Kalmucs on the
Wolga, and the Bunjads on the shores of the Baikal
Sea, it may be said to be advancing, the most competent
authorities assure us that everywhere else
its progress is arrested, and that, even where it is
most upheld by local governments, in the regions
of its most dominant supremacy, it yields manifest
signs of decay.[#]

Another and even more significant contrast is
found in the fact that the advance of Christianity
has ever been farthest and most rapid when its
faith was purely taught and most consistently illustrated.
It never sought peace with other religions
without being defeated, and never allied itself with
superstition without bringing shame and disaster
on all concerned. It has had its periods of deterioration
and defection, but somehow it has always
// File: 352.png
.pn +1
survived them. Indeed, its vitality is as truly indicated
by the corruptions which it has outlived,
as by the external opposition which it has vanquished.
Its real conquests are due to the expansive
power of its inherent and original principles.
The very opposite is the case with Buddhism. Its
fundamental principles being unnatural and repugnant
to the essential instincts of mankind, it was
from the very first a morbid growth, having in it
the seeds of decay. It never could have lived in
the strength of its own principles, and so the story
of its advance is one of perpetual compromise with
every popular superstition that it met. The more it
assimilated itself to them, the more it seemed to
grow; but as foreign influences took possession of
it, its own life oozed out of it, till very early it
represented a system so perverted that its founder
would have repudiated and abhorred it. The Church
has often travestied Christianity, but it never fell
from the faith so fearfully as Buddhism has everywhere
fallen from the original doctrine of Buddha.
Religion, worship, even the purest, he intended by
his system to supersede, and now his name is employed
to support the grossest of all superstitions,[#]
a religion with more idols in it than that of the
most idolatrous of peoples, a worship founded on
the efficacy of magical incantations, and of prayers
// File: 353.png
.pn +1
rendered by machines. Just for this very reason
its
.sp 2
.h3
II.—Internal History
.sp 2
is very instructive, and we shall now proceed to
consider a few of its most salient points.

Buddhism, in a quiet land and tranquil age, was
launched upon the world as a new theory of life—a
system so rounded off and completed that its
disciples had no other duty than that of believing,
obeying, and propagating it. Christianity, on the
other hand, began its career amid the convulsions of
political revolution, and for three centuries of conflict
it had to fight every inch of its way. It was
not, however, as a new system that it appeared in
history, but as a new principle of life, round which
all the moral, and spiritual, and intellectual energies
which it found in mankind, and all which itself
might awaken, might form and gather strength.
It was impossible, therefore, that it ever could
remain stationary. Its apostles were commissioned
to carry on all that their Lord had “begun both to
do and to teach.” He distinctly promised them
increase of knowledge and power from on high, and
all the changes which increase or growth implies.
To-day His religion could no more be made to
return to the form in which it was manifested
eighteen centuries ago than man could be made
to put on the clothes of his childhood. Its development,
// File: 354.png
.pn +1
however, is that of its inherent life,
manifesting all the continuity and identity of the
sapling with the tree, of the boy with the man.
Like all growing things, it has been subject to
disease by contagion and infection, but it has always
preserved life in sufficient volume to slough off its
impurities and to pass onward through reformation
to health. Now, the history of Buddhism, on the
contrary, reveals only a long process of degradation,
without having manifested any power as yet to
recover and to reform itself according to its original
and essential principles.[#]

The offspring of Brahmanism, from which it
differed more in degree than in substance, at no
period of its history did it succeed in completely
disentangling itself from it. Not only did the
forms of the old religion cling to it; its very life
was continued in the new. While Buddha rejected
all the sacrificial rites and religious observances of
Brahmanism, and preached a law subversive of all
its faith in revelation, he accepted and continued
its ascetism and its hope of deliverance by a process
of meditation and of abstraction. It was by himself,
therefore, and not by his cousin Dêvadatta,[#] that
the heretic leaven was introduced into the lump.
// File: 355.png
.pn +1
Dêvadatta’s attempted changes were not innovations,
but a return to the primitive rule, a logical
deduction from a law which Gotama never wholly rejected.
Just as to the patriarchs of the Greek,
the Western or Romish Church “is the chief heresy
of latter days,” just as the Pope was branded in
their Encyclical of 1848 “as the first founder of German
Rationalism,”[#] so the successive advances and
orthodox decisions of the Buddhist Councils were
denounced as apostasies by men like Dêvadatta.
Still these changes were due in great measure to
the beliefs which Buddhism had inherited, for
when in the inevitable rebound from its unnatural
Nihilism the theistic movement set in, the spirit
of Brahmanism, which had passed into it at the
first, began to assert itself, and, interpenetrating
it more and more, prepared it for that issue in
which, blending with the popular forms in which
Brahmanism was then expressing itself, Buddhism
merged into the composite system of Hinduism
which confronts us in India to-day.

In Christianity, as in nature, the grafting of the
good stock upon the wild conquered the wild.
Christ took nothing from Judaism but the universalism
of its prophets, its faith in one living and
true God, the Heavenly Father of multitudes whom
Abraham was ignorant of, and Israel did not acknowledge.
// File: 356.png
.pn +1
His apostles, judged by the literature
which they have bequeathed, seem faithfully to
have carried out His principles; but many of their
converts were strict Jews, who insisted upon some
visible connection with the old religion. Just as
Dêvadatta, their prototype, held that a true
Buddhist must first be a good Brahman in respect
of asceticism, so they insisted that Christians were
debtors to keep what of the old law was expressed
in circumcision, and the observance of certain other
commandments and ordinances. The danger of
Christianity being reduced to the bondage of the
old was serious, but the inspiration of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul,
the providential destruction of the nation, and the
marvellous spread of the religion among the Gentiles,
eventually overcame it. The spirit of Judaism,
it is true, has never been wholly cast out from the
Christian Church. All through its history it is
traceable in one form or another of the ritualism
and asceticism which, like Brahmanism, it may be
held to represent. There have been times when it
has attained to portentous and pernicious influence,
and such times may happen again; but from the
early days there has always been in Christianity
vitality sufficient to detect and try and condemn
it; and so though Judaism, and even Paganism, to
some extent, still taint the theology and worship of
the Church, we need have no fear that the genius
// File: 357.png
.pn +1
of the old religion will ever gain, as it did in the
case of Buddhism, permanent ascendency over the
new.

The opposite of Ritualism and Asceticism, represented
by Judaism and Brahmanism, is the Rationalism
which such reforming religions may be said
to beget of themselves; and if its spirit of inquiry
be uncontrolled, it will certainly dissipate their
energy. As early as <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul’s day we see
Rationalism working upon the development of
Christianity, and necessitating the rise of a theology,
which, perhaps inevitably, has often been
confounded with, and, in the estimation of many,
has supplanted the Christian religion. The many
sects which Rationalism produced in the first centuries
do not so much indicate hostility to the new
faith, as the mighty ferment through which the
minds of men were passing in regard to it. Now
though Buddhist scriptures manifest rationalistic
movements in the Sanghas from the first, they seem
to have proceeded in quite a different direction. Of
conflict as to fundamentals of creed there appears
to be very little trace, but there are abundant
indications of considerable controversy as to practice.
The first quarrel traceable in the Christian
Church arose over the peculiar institution of community
of goods; and though the Sanghas avoided
that mistake, their earliest troubles were concerning
// File: 358.png
.pn +1
the possession of property. The original rule
enjoined upon the brethren absolute poverty, and
the regulations in regard to food and shelter were
equally stringent. Very soon after Buddha’s
decease a reaction set in, and a feeling began to
prevail that his standard of morality and his ideal
of the Order were too lofty for all but exceptional
men to realise. He may have succeeded as the
fully Enlightened One, but common men could
not hope to “wind themselves so high;” so out
of consideration for human infirmity there commenced
a constant and increasing relaxation in
their interpretation of his precepts of perfection.[#]
The law of absolute poverty was modified to the
extent that property might be held in common,
and the laws regulating diet, dress, and even
meditation, were soon subjected to the same treatment.
The wealth which poured in upon them,
and the consequent improvement of their position,
was not followed by corresponding spiritual growth.
The more they prospered, the more the fundamental
principles of the Order were neglected, evaded, or
explained away. The friendly conferences of the
rainy season gave place to controversy, and controversy
proved so fruitful of schism, that very
early in its career Buddhism is said to have
// File: 359.png
.pn +1
produced eighteen different sects, ranged in four
great divisions. Yet in no one schism seemed
there a great principle to be involved; they were
but Pharisee quarrels at best, in which though
they strained out the gnat they swallowed the
camel.[#]

Side by side with this relaxation of the law
advanced the growth of the legends concerning him
who first preached it. The further they removed
from his decease, the higher, as was natural, he
rose in their esteem. As one by one the fathers
fell asleep, and the early enthusiasm died, and the
law was felt to be more and more burdensome,
the less he seemed to be a man of like passions
with themselves, till eventually they came to regard
him as “omniscient and absolutely sinless.”[#] He
had taken away their gods, and disowned their
religious cravings. He professed to find no proper
divine being to whom any instinct should attach
itself—yea, in his dissection and analysis of human
nature he found no religious faculty to be relied
upon; but he could not unmake his fellow-men,
// File: 360.png
.pn +1
whose religious instinct education can neither
originate nor eradicate; and so, defrauded of its
natural gratification, it inevitably turned to illegitimate
methods of appeasing itself. In the first
instance, it found the objects of its reverence in
the relics which survived him, the law which he
preached, and the Order which he founded.
Originally it could not be called worship; it was
more an expression of affectionate homage.[#] But
so strong is man’s impulse to worship, that very
early they expressed it in images of Buddha
everywhere, though the images of the Law and
of the Order have only been found in the lands
where the Northern Buddhism reigns.

This earliest triad of personalities, called “triratna,”
the three gems or three holies, seems to
have been suggested by, and certainly corresponds
with, the primitive triad of deities in the old Indian
Pantheon.[#] It was the first indication of the
bankruptcy of Buddhism, of its failure out of its
own resources to meet the religious wants of its
disciples, and it marked only the beginning of a
revolt, which was to issue in complete disavowal
of every doctrine essential to original Buddhism.
The religious conscience and common sense which
// File: 361.png
.pn +1
rebelled against its unnatural atheism, would not
long be satisfied with the worship of the memory
of a completely vanished Buddha, or of the idea
of an impersonal Law, or of a miscellaneous Order.
So pious Buddhists turned readily to a doctrine
said to be taught by the Master, and formulated
before the settlement of the Southern canon in
its present form, according to which Buddha is not
a distinctive name of just one person, but a title
descriptive of a long series of Enlightened Ones,
who, leaving, as he was supposed to have done, the
estate of a Bôdhisatva[#] in the Tushita heavens,
appeared at distant intervals to proclaim the same
truth for the deliverance of men and gods. The
names of twenty-four of these Buddhas who preceded
Gotama have been handed down, and the
name of his successor, to whom, upon the attainment
of Buddhahood, he transferred his Bôdhisatvaship,
and who is to appear after five thousand
years for the rediscovery of the truth, was announced
as Mâitrêya. To this coming one, the
Buddha of “kindness and mercy”—thought to be
a personification by some imaginative poet of the
gentle spirit of Buddhism—the thoughts and the
hopes of the disciples turned, and out of this hope
// File: 362.png
.pn +1
arose a doctrinal system, which, expanding and
enlarging by manifold additions as the time went
on, showed that however atheistic the original
creed might be, the religion itself had become
polytheistic.[#] To Mâitrêya, in his glorious heavens,
the deliverer of distant generations, prayers
ascended, and worship was rendered by all Buddhists
everywhere alike; and out of this cult by
far the largest section of them began to evolve
deity after deity, till the heavens, in which Buddha
could find no superior to himself, were crowded
with objects of idolatrous regard.

In this polytheistic development a very great
distinction emerged between the Northern or
Mahāyāna and the Southern or Hināyāna system
of Buddhism. How the divergence originated has
not been clearly ascertained, but about the beginning
of the Christian era it seems to have been
very manifest, and at that time, when sectarian
controversy and philosophical speculation threatened
to rend the system into fragments, Nâgârdjuna,[#] a
// File: 363.png
.pn +1
monk of Nâlanda, is said to have done for Northern
Buddhism what Gregory and Benedict did for the
Western Church. Under him, and certainly after
him, Northern Buddhism, both in respect of expansive
power and of dogmatic and ritualistic development,
left Southern Buddhism far behind it. The
Hināyāna,
or the “little way” of deliverance, is
believed to have been applied by the Northern,
not without contempt for the Southern school’s
arrestment. They did not profess to contradict
the Southern faith: they simply included it, and
advanced in their “great way” beyond it. To
the Southern the <lang=la><i>summum bonum</i></lang> of life meant
Arhatship, for that once attained there would be
no more re-birth. They acknowledged and worshipped
only one Bôdhisatva, the coming Mâitrêya;
but the doctors of the North, properly conceiving
the estate of the Bôdhisatva to be nobler than that
of Arhat, propounded it as the goal of aspiration.
Arhatship would indeed secure one’s own deliverance;
but Bôdhisatvahood would enable them, as
possible coming Buddhas, to confer the blessings of
deliverance upon countless multitudes. Along with
Mâitrêya they discovered many persons who, like
Buddha’s great disciples and their successors, had
through merit, acquired in a long series of lives,
// File: 364.png
.pn +1
taken his Tushita heavens by violence; but who,
unlike him, were under no obligation to quit their
celestial abodes, and proceed through Buddhahood
to Nirvana. They might enjoy their blessedness to
the full, and sit beside their nectar without concern,
for they fulfilled every function expected of them in
being objects of worship, to whom mortals could
appeal for comfort in sorrow and help in time of
need.

In India, as early as Fa-Hian’s time, and probably
earlier in China,[#] out of these happy gods a new
triad was formulated, receiving such worship as
Hindus would render to their later triad of deities,
Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. The title of one of these,
Mandjus-ri, was said to have been the name of
the monk who, two hundred and fifty years after
Buddha, introduced the religion into Nepaul, and
founded the system which Nâgârdjuna consolidated.[#]
He in this connection is believed to be
the personification of that “wisdom” or “spiritual
insight” which the Northern school valued so
highly. Another deity, Avalôkitês’vara, “the lord
who sees from on high,” is supposed to be the
mythical term for that “kindly providence” which
watched over the whole Buddhist world. And
// File: 365.png
.pn +1
Vajra-dhara, “the thunderer,” represented the
power which protected the faithful from the malice
of demons. How such a worship, so contradictory
to the doctrines of primitive Buddhism, came to
be introduced and recognised, is a puzzle to all
our scholars. Rhys Davids and Sir Monier Williams
are inclined to regard it as suggested by
the second Hindu triad of deities already referred
to. Professor Max Müller[#] considers it to be a
graft from the superstitions of some northern
Scythian or Turanian race, while Dr. Beal advances
the theory that it was in all probability introduced
from a western monotheistic religion, either
landward through Persia, or by sea from Arabia.
However it came, from this date and onwards,
all over the wide extent of territory covered by
it, Buddhism rapidly deteriorated. While the
Southern system was everywhere yielding to
the influence of the popular mythology, and that
so unmistakably that it became, wherever it
reached, “the unconscious propagator of Hindu
doctrine,” the Northern became a heterogeneous
mixture of all the superstitions which it met.
From this second triad of deities it went on discovering
or inventing its five triads of Dhyâni-Buddhas,
among whom Gotama was the emanation
// File: 366.png
.pn +1
of Avalôkitês’vara, who again was the æon
of Amitâbha, “immeasurable light.” Behind all
these again, they professed to find the Adi-Buddha,
the primordial Buddha, who, out of himself,
by the exercise of five meditations, evolved the
Five Dhyâni.[#] Each of these again by “insight”
evolved their corresponding æons, who in their turn
from out of their immaterial essence produced a
material world. It is as if the Gnosticism which had
broken out in the West long before this time had
also invaded the distant East,[#] and as if its dreams,
more restrained by Western sobriety, were in the
East free to produce a phantasmagoria more confused
still. Certainly it is a convincing proof
that, notwithstanding its rich ethical sources, the
essential principles of Buddhism had no inherent
propagative power. For just as it had to return
from its atheism to the deities which it had
discarded, so it had to substitute for its Nihilism
// File: 367.png
.pn +1
the Western Paradise, where, beyond the confines
of the world, the pious Buddhist at last hopes to
join the one Supreme Amitâbha, and millions of
blessed Buddhas discoursing upon all things good,
in a state in which there is no sorrow, and,
“strangest to say, no Nirvana.”[#]

The more these imaginary deities increased, the
more must the earnest moral teachings of Buddha
have been obscured. The discovery of the Bôdhisatvas
opened the way to a rapid declension from
primitive self-culture to a system of “voluntary
humility.” Discipleship became easier in proportion
as the worship of these shadowy creations
extended. It is much easier to idolise than obey,
to say, “Lord, Lord,” than to do the thing
which he commands. This falling away from the
high Buddhist rule of self-control, proceeding step
by step with the growth of the legends, is just an
illustration of the tendency in every religion to
allow the ethical and metaphysical elements so to
drift asunder, that instead of being one in holy
wedlock they become thoroughly and irreconcilably
opposed.

It was inevitable in Buddhism that morality,
considered essential to self-rescue, should be supplanted
by that debasing belief in the efficacy of
// File: 368.png
.pn +1
rites which the system was launched to destroy.
Its founder went to the unnatural extreme of
ignoring man’s craving for reconciliation. He had
no faith in Divine forgiveness, or in the grace of
repentance, and he never wearied of pouring contempt
upon sacrifice and prayer. No Hebrew
prophet could be more severe in his scorn of useless
rites; but then the Hebrew believed in the efficacy
of one sacrifice, a “heart broken by sorrow,” for sin
not as a misfortune or a folly, but as an offence to
a Holy Being who was ready to forgive, and to be
pleased with the worship of a will surrendered in
gratitude and in love. Very early in his history
man has indicated his sense of alienation from God
in his endeavours to discover an atonement. The
instinctive sense of wrong relations to the powers
that govern life has been liable to fearful perversion,
but Buddha, with all his denunciation, could not
destroy it, nor reason men out of it. He could
induce some to withdraw their imploring cries and
glances from the gods, but he could not sweep the
heavens clean of them. Belief in the existence[#] of
gods, and demons, and fairies, and charms against
ill-luck, was strong in his disciples from the first;
and when an object of worship was recognised and
allowed, an elaborate ritual of worship, and latterly
of propitiation, was rapidly developed. In Northern
// File: 369.png
.pn +1
Buddhism this recoil was most extreme, for there,
especially in Nepāl and Tibet, belief in the
efficacy of rites deteriorated into belief in spells
and incantations, till it issued in the Tantra system—a
mixture of magic and sorcery whose abominable
doctrines, Burnouf, out of very loathing, refused to
translate to us.[#] Christianity has had many corrupters,
who have never scrupled to propose or to
accept any compromise with heathenism at all
calculated to strengthen the power of the priesthood,
but it never had its Âsanga,[#] who cleverly
succeeded in reconciling the demonolatry of the
people of Nepāl and Tibet with the acceptance of
the Buddhist system. This he did by placing their
male and female devils in the inferior heavens
as worshippers of Buddha and Avalôkitês’vara, and
by thus making it possible for the half-savage
tribes to bring their sacrifices, even of blood, to
their congenial shrines, and under cover of allegiance
to the priests of the new to continue the old
hideous idolatry.

This discovery of Âsanga’s is said to have secured
the rapid extension of the Buddhist hierarchy
// File: 370.png
.pn +1
in these half-barbarous regions; but the hierarchy
itself indicated a complete reversal of the primitive
constitution of the Order. Buddha endeavoured to
emancipate his fellow-men from faith in the efficacy
of a priesthood to mediate between men and Deity,
or to secure deliverance. He never dreamed that
either temple or priest would arise in his system;
but the temple grew naturally out of the dagoba
and the relics which it enshrined, and the priesthood
as naturally was evolved from the Sthavira or
senior Bikkhu. In Southern Buddhism the priest
is more like a Protestant minister of religion than
like a priest in the Romish sense of the word; but
in Northern Buddhism, and especially in that form
of it dominant in Tibet, the people from the seventh
century have been completely under the power of
the Lamas who alone can work out their salvation.
With the exception of a short interval of neglect
and persecution, a hierarchy marvellously similar to,
and no doubt in some respects suggested by, that
of Romish Christianity, has completely controlled
all the relations of life,[#] with the terrible result that
cruelty and immorality most abhorrent to the good
and gentle Buddha have been permitted to assert
// File: 371.png
.pn +1
themselves unopposed, though a devotee who
slaughters his fellow-men in cold blood will shudder
with horror if by accident he should tread upon a
worm or crush an over-irritating flea.[#]

Only once in that region has it experienced any
attempt at reform. In the fourteenth century,
when the policy of the Ming dynasty in reducing
the predominance of any one sect had prepared
the way for him, Tsong-Kapa, “the Tibetan
Luther,” endeavoured to effect a revival of the
primitive rules of the Order, and succeeded in
restoring something of the ancient simplicity in
dress, the celibacy of the priests, the fortnightly
confession, the season of yearly retreat, and the
invitation ceremony at its close. He set his face
also against the Shamanism of the Tantra system,
adhered to the purer forms of the earlier Mahāyāna
// File: 372.png
.pn +1
school, and succeeded in creating a new sect,
whose leaders in the fifteenth century were by the
Chinese Emperor recognised as titular lords over
the Church and tributary rulers over the State,
under the titles of Dalai Lāma and Pantshen
Lāma. The dream of Hildebrand or Leo for the
Papacy was for centuries more than realised in the
Lāmaism of Tibet, for the Lamas are more than
Popes, being re-incarnations of Avalôkitês’vara and
of his father Amitabha, who never die, but at the
act of dying transfer themselves into another body,
born at that very moment, to be found in it in due
time through a procedure, according to lot, never
yet known to fail. When discovered, he has, however,
to be accepted after the Erastian fashion by
the Chinese Government or its representative, who,
with the Desi or Regent, must also be present
when the final lot is drawn.[#]

Never under the Papacy, even in the times
when its pretensions were most extravagant, and
its power was most unchecked, has Christianity
// File: 373.png
.pn +1
deteriorated so fearfully as Buddhism has done in
Nepāl and Tibet. Not even in the Abyssinian—the
most degraded of all the Churches that have worn
the name of Christ, in respect of its incorporation of
old Jewish rites and Egyptian superstitions—can
we find the contrivance of the prayer-wheel, or the
poles with their silken flags blazoned with the six
sacred syllables, “om mani padme hum,”[#] fluttering
their supposed incantations to the heavens. Buddhism’s
ages of worship have been only a long sad
history of degradation, of perpetual falling from bad
to worse.[#] The higher the worship of Buddhists for
the founder of their system has risen, the more have
they fallen from his virtue; but in Christianity the
ages of strongest devotion to Christ have ever been
the periods of progress. The more intense man’s
reverence for Christ has been, the loftier has been
the standard of virtue attained. Worship and pursuit
of holiness have gone hand in hand, and we
cannot conceive of a life truly offered up in adoration
of Christ ever proving immoral or impure.

The story of Buddhism in India, where without
much resistance it yielded to the seductions of
Vishnaism and Sivaism, the record of its conquests
in the surrounding countries, and especially in
// File: 374.png
.pn +1
those just referred to, present few and slight analogies
to the history of Christianity; but the story of
Buddhism in China as related by those most competent
to testify of the changing forms which it
assumed from the fourth century onwards, is significantly
akin to that of Christianity after it became
the religion of the Empire. China, unlike India,
had before the Christian era a very ancient history,
marked by distinct epochs. Its annals, even of the
eighth century <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr>, seem to reflect a civilisation
similar to that of Europe in the thirteenth century
<abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> Two thousand years <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> the Chinese are
said to have attained to an idea of Deity somewhat
equivalent to the El Elion of Melchizedek.[#] Shangti,
the highest of all spirits to whom the people sacrificed,
was the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of
the world, unapproachable by the sinner, but
merciful to all penitents; and in this idea of God,
and in the morality which sprang from it, we have
the secret of that social and political progress whose
arrestment and decay Confucius lamented. Living
in a degenerate age, he laboured earnestly as a
reformer of personal morality and social order; but,
departing himself from the ancestral faith in a
Supreme Ruler of nature and man, “respecting,
but keeping aloof, as he said, from all spiritual
beings,” expressively silent as to the future, and
// File: 375.png
.pn +1
refusing to present motives of conduct drawn from
consideration of it, his vigorous ministry, conducted
for many years in many of the States, could only
have the effect of preparing the way for a real
regeneration of society. He had great faith in man,
as born good, with an innate moral faculty which
only contact with the world and the delusion of
the senses prevent from making him virtuous. Man
was made for society, and the five relations of which
society consists—that of ruler and subject, husband
and wife, parent and child, elder brother and
younger, and friend and friend—were Divine ordinances.
His standard of personal righteousness
and social purity, his strong faith in the power of
example, his golden rule, “<i>What you would not like
to have done to yourself, do not to any other</i>,”[#] his
demand, as urgent as was that of Isaiah or Socrates,[#]
that language should be used ever with scrupulous
care to express only the thing that is, have gone
far to form, with beneficial ethical results, the
ordinary Chinese character. His ignoring of personal
// File: 376.png
.pn +1
Deity, only referred to under the vague term
Heaven, and of the future of man, could not long
arrest the degeneracy of society or purge out the
secret vices burrowing beneath its surface. If
Buddha is to be regarded in his bold metaphysical
speculations as the first of Gnostics, Confucius in
his pure secularism may be designated the first
Agnostic, and the monotonous and stagnant type
of humanity which his teaching has produced may
be a warning of the kind of civilisation which
the world may expect should ever philanthropic
secularism supplant or supersede the religion of
Christ.[#]

Contemporary with Confucius, though much
older in years, was Lao-tsze the Venerable, the
author of the celebrated Tâo-teh-King, in which not
only Romish missionaries but scholars like Montucci
of Berlin (1808) and Remusat[#] (1823) professed to
find the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the name
of Jehovah phonetically expressed. Twenty years
later Stanislas Julien[#] dispelled these illusions, and
showed that the treatise was as agnostic in its essential
teachings as were the Analects of Confucius.
A poet and a mystic, he gave his whole strength to
// File: 377.png
.pn +1
enforce the virtue of Tao—the <i>way</i>[#] of man’s return
to that spontaneity of action without motive which
prevails in nature, and which will manifest itself
in man, in humility, gentleness, refusal to take precedence
in the world, in accounting the great as
the small, the small as the great, and <i>in recompensing
injury with kindness</i>.[#] He does not affirm
the existence of God, but he does not deny it, and
his language seems to imply it. Certainly there is
not a word which savours of superstition, and yet
he is the reputed founder of a most idolatrous
religion, which is found in shape five centuries after
his death. The works of his earliest followers are
said to be full of the most grotesque and absurd
beliefs. As early as 221 <abbr rend=spell><sc>B.C.</sc></abbr> some of them were
in search of the Eastern Hesperides, where grew
the herb of immortality. In the first century
<abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> another professor of Taoism invented a pill
containing the elixir of life, and spells which could
tame and destroy by the touch of a pencil millions
of demons. All through its history it has been a
conglomerate of superstitions so base, and so contrasted
with the teaching of the Tâo-teh-King,
// File: 378.png
.pn +1
that to make the author of that literary relic bear
the obloquy of even the slightest connection with
Taoism, appears to be one of the grossest wrongs of
history.[#]

These sages preceded Buddha by a century,
whose religion, though it came into contact with
China shortly after the reign of Asoka, did not
seriously begin to influence it till about the fourth
century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> The Buddhism of that period was the
religion of the Northern school, well advanced in
its second stage of degeneracy. Wherever it was
encouraged, or allowed to maintain itself, it reared
monasteries and nunneries, temples and shrines of
idols and relics, and established the worship of
saints and images, which sometimes, like winking
Madonnas, opened their eyes and otherwise worked
miracles. Its effect upon Taoism was simply to
absorb it; for before then that religion had neither
monasteries nor temples, nor any system of worship.
All these it borrowed from Buddhism, whose Triratna
and endless pantheon of deities it greedily
accepted, with the effect that though Taoism has
existed nominally distinct from Buddhism in China,
it has simply been as Buddhism in a native dress,
and thus far the Hindu mind can be truly said to
have powerfully influenced Chinese thought.
// File: 379.png
.pn +1

By the Confucians the reception of Buddhism
was very different. They might have laughed at
its idolatrous system budding vigorously into life,
but they could not endure its full-blown anti-social
Monasticism. Its morality they could appreciate,
though it seemed inferior to their own; for though
its teaching as to future rewards commended itself
to the moral instincts of the masses, the Confucians,
more logical than Buddhists, averred that to avoid
wrong-doing for fear of future punishment was not
doing right for its own sake; while to labour for
happiness hereafter led to neglect of the present,
and promoted lazy inactivity. Such a scheme of
religion was by them judged inimical to virtue,
which was its own reward, and the manner of life
by which it was illustrated was condemned as particularly
immoral. The State, the Family, Society,
were Divine institutions which ought to be maintained
and perfected. Industry, public and private,
was essential to their ideal of propriety; and Buddhism,
with its religion of inaction, its celibate rule,
and abandonment of all secular business, was simply
odious to the instincts of a practical and kindly
people. There could only be war between two
such contradictory systems—a war not of words,
but, on the Chinese side at least, of very hard blows.
Their hostility manifested itself in repeated and
prolonged persecutions. In one of these 250,000
// File: 380.png
.pn +1
monks and nuns were forced to return to social
life, while their property was confiscated, and the
copper of their images and bells was minted into
coin. The Confucians have long ceased to persecute,
but they have never withdrawn their first
indictment against the Buddhists for teaching what
to them is criminal because disloyal, and immoral[#]
because anti-social.

To the ethical system of China, as represented by
Confucians, Mahāyāna Buddhism could not add much,
if indeed anything, of value; but its speculative
philosophy seems peculiarly to have fascinated them,
and it produced remarkable and permanent changes
in their thinking. The literature and the art of
China reflect not Chinese but Indian scenes and
manners. Its grammatical and arithmetical sciences
owe much to Indian tutelage. An educated Chinaman,
while avowing himself Confucian in respect of
ethics, will in all metaphysical problems reason
according to Buddhist methods and enunciate
Buddhist ideas. To this extent, therefore, it
affected the Confucians, but not with beneficial
results. It aided Confucius in his evil work of
shaking the faith of “the classes” in the personal
Ruler of the Universe, while its effect upon “the
masses” was even more injurious, for it dragged
// File: 381.png
.pn +1
them down to a polytheism from which for centuries
they had been free, and put in place of the impersonal
principle with which Confucius had supplanted
their ancestral faith, those shadowy crowds of
Buddhas and Bôdhisatvas, to lead them still further
away from the purer works and ways of more
reverential ages.[#]

The episodes in the history of Chinese Buddhism
from the fourth century onward were marvellously
similar to the scenes and incidents witnessed in
Europe during the same period in connection
with the Christian Church. Cardinal Newman has
somewhere said that in “professing to write the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon has
reluctantly, but actually, written the Rise and
Progress of Christianity.” The most zealous defender
of the faith, however, must admit that the
Christianity which maintained in Europe from the
fourth century onward had grievously declined from
that of the primitive ages. It is the fashion in
some quarters to attribute this degradation to the alliance
of the Church with the State, and to aver that
had it kept apart from the embraces of the Emperors
it would have preserved itself from corruption.
Unquestionably Constantine was a “sair sanct” to
the Church; a convert more from expedience than
// File: 382.png
.pn +1
conviction, he and his successors endeavoured to
utilise the Christian hierarchy to buttress their
own throne. Unquestionably, too, the Church
suffered more indignity and harm from the Christian
Emperors who patronised it, than ever it did from
the heathen Emperors who persecuted it. Candid
inquiries will, however, convince most people that
the alliance with the Empire was more an incident in
than the cause of the Church’s degradation. The
transfer of the seat of rule to the Bosporus left the
Western Church free from the Imperial influence
to regulate its own affairs, and yet it became not
less but even more corrupt than its Oriental neighbour.
The truth seems to be that the corruption
of the Church was due more to its external or material
prosperity than to anything else. To churches
and to nations that is the real ordeal by fire. In
the poverty and struggles they have higher hopes,
but when difficulties are surmounted, and they dwell
at ease, they mistake or forget their vocation. The
adversity and terrible persecution of the Church,
coincident with its primitive enthusiasm, did a
very great deal to preserve its health and purity;
and it was simply natural, and to be expected,
that when it emerged into prosperity and popular
favour, like Jeshurun in his fatness, it should have
rebelled, and instead of serving as it was ordained
to do, should have usurped the power to rule.
// File: 383.png
.pn +1

The iconography of early Christianity reflects
even more clearly than its literature the various
stages of its deterioration. As long as the world
was against it, and it was compelled to use such
places as the Catacombs for its shelter and worship,
its faith was pure, and its life was full of exhilaration
and brightness. Its symbolism was thoroughly
ideal and spiritual, in sharp and instructive contrast
with every Pagan specimen that has been
discovered, and with its own subsequently paganised
art. It was a symbolism, moreover, only of its
hopes, and not of its one object of faith or of
worship. It tolerated no symbol in worship save
the water of Baptism and the bread and the wine
of the Eucharist. It needed, as yet, no crucifix,
not even a cross,[#] and it would not allow any image
to reveal to the imagination the present but
invisible Christ, or to suggest the profound meaning
of His atonement. But when it went forth,
the admired of the world, into the sunshine, and
began to rear the grand basilicas, and people them
with the tombs of the martyrs and the enshrined
// File: 384.png
.pn +1
relics of the saints, the very desire to rise led it to
fight heathenism with its own weapons, and to copy
its splendours.[#] Even before this it was falling
back from the simple service of the synagogue to
that of the destroyed temple, but now it was found
adopting the heathen festivals, or accommodating
its own to their dates, and incorporating with its
own the more imposing rites of still popular heathen
fanes. To “offer the new law’s new oblation” it
invented a new ritual and priesthood; and seeing
a priesthood must have somewhat to offer, it discovered
a new sacrifice in the very sacrament which
was the Divine pledge and human thanksgiving for
the abrogation of all external sacrifice.[#] Then the
government of the Empire became the model of its
// File: 385.png
.pn +1
organisation, and soon it was crowned in a Papacy
professing to dominate, as vicegerent for Christ, a
world which confessedly it has not yet been able
to convert.

It is not necessary to trace the sickening
degradation of Christianity through all its encounters
and compromises with heathenism, till in
the gathering gloom its degenerate art reached a
point where it dared to portray to the eye of sense
the death-pangs of the Son of God, and its worship
touched a depth of idolatry in which it symbolised
the mystery of the Holy Trinity by a three-headed
figure quite after the model of the Hindu Trimurti.
It is sufficient to say that it appears to have proceeded
on parallel lines, and at as rapid a pace as
the degeneracy of Buddhism in the East. It too
has its iconography as well as its literature, and it
is interesting to trace its passage from its earliest
graffiti—the stone edicts of Asoka, where we have
the religion without even the name of the founder—through
the carvings of the Sanchi gateway,
where there is alteration, though to no considerable
extent, on to those at Amravati, where we have the
full-blown Buddhism to which China to a considerable
extent succumbed.[#] Through all this period
everywhere in Chinese Buddhist temples were seen
// File: 386.png
.pn +1
the idols of the saints, everywhere were found their
worshipped relics. A bone, a tooth, a single hair,
would be purchased by the revenue of a State and
welcomed with imperial honours. The rationalists
of the West might protest as loudly and as scoffingly
as they pleased that there was as much wood of
the true cross and as many veritable nails of it
in Europe as would suffice to build a navy. The
Confucian mandarins at the court of a relic-worshipping
Emperor might indignantly denounce the
desecration and pollution of the royal palace by
the introduction of part of the carrion of a monk
who had died long ago.[#] With the father of
Gideon, deriding the wonder-working powers of
these relics, they might insist that they, and even
Buddha himself, should plead, Baal-like, for themselves
against their iconoclastic ire; but at that
time neither law, nor persecution, nor common
sense could prevail to cure this perverted disposition.
Belief in the virtue of a fetich marks both
the infancy and decay of most religions. In
Chinese Buddhism to-day this belief is as vigorous
as ever, and notwithstanding the influence of the
Reformation, and the spread of scientific discovery,
this belief marks an extreme of thought from which
neither Romanism nor Protestantism as yet can be
said to be free.
// File: 387.png
.pn +1

The Buddhism of the earliest traditions was
concerned chiefly with morality as essential to
deliverance, and the Christianity of the New
Testament is a faith and hope and love, dominating
and fusing and moulding life after a nobler type.
In China, as elsewhere, the Buddhism of morality
gave way to the Buddhism of mystic contemplation.
Yielding to the same tendency which afterwards
made so many Christians abandon the
paths of obedience and practice of righteousness
for the cultivation of the inner life, Buddhism as
early as 520 <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr> was prepared to follow eagerly
Bôdiharma,[#] who came from Southern India to
sweep away the alien growth of all book-instruction,
and to establish the truth that “out of mind
there is no Buddha, out of Buddha there is no
mind; that virtue is not to be sought, and vice is
not to be shunned; that nothing is to be looked
upon as pure or polluted, for all that is needed is
to avoid both good and evil, and he that can do
this is a truly religious man.”[#]
// File: 388.png
.pn +1

In proclaiming that ethical distinctions mark
an inferior stage of discipleship, for a “good man,
though never against, is always above them,”
Bôdiharma, the nominal founder of Esoteric Buddhism,
simply formulated more clearly the teaching
of Nâgârdjuna, the reputed founder of the Mahāyāna
system. It was only another expression of that
indefinable phase of thought, found in all religions
as mysticism, and which, though commonly identified
only with its extravagant outbursts, is really
of the very essence of religion. The dominating
thought in a religious man is that of a Supreme
One in whom we live and move and have our
being, and there are times in his worship when
the balance of consciousness is disturbed, and self
is lost in consciousness of the Divine. Man without
the aid of prayer or sacramental grace finds in
himself the revelation, and alas! as his consciousness
is always imperfect, and very often confused,
the revelation is too often distorted and the reverse
of Divine.[#]

Mysticism, as was natural in a religion quickening
// File: 389.png
.pn +1
both thought and emotion, appeared early
in Christianity, and from the days of <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John it
has never lacked a representative. In its manifold
varieties and aberrations it presents many
similarities to the mysticism of the East, but in
reality it is as different from it in its nature as it
is distant from it in its source. Eastern mysticism
has always been more speculative than practical
in character. Pantheistic in its origin, it assumes
that all things are as divine as it is their nature
to be, and aspires to get at the unity of being.
Western mysticism, on the other hand, starts always
from a sense of the disorder and alienation of
things, and endeavours to get at man’s true life.
The Eastern finds its object within, the Western
generally without; the Eastern considers identity
with Deity a natural state, the Western regards
perfect fellowship with Deity as a goal of spiritual
attainment. In Christianity mysticism has been
occasional in its manifestations, and has always been
regarded as an innovation; but in the East it is the
normal deduction from Hindu Pantheism and Buddhist
Nihilism.[#] Nâgârdjuna and Bôdiharma were
the natural outcome of Gotama’s teaching. In Christianity
it has often shown itself to be marvellously
practical, and generally in revolt from some stereotyped
system of dogma or form of worship. Though
// File: 390.png
.pn +1
associated in our thoughts more with the sentimental
than the intellectual aspects of religion,[#] it
has manifested frequently a decidedly rationalistic
tendency. Refusing to be dominated by authority
or to be bound by antiquity, it has questioned fearlessly
the dicta of Scripture, avowing that reason is
not superseded, but divinely inspired and controlled
as the organ of revelation. In Christianity its
extravagances may be forgiven in consideration of
the benefits which have flowed from it. It powerfully
helped to bring about the Reformation, and
since then, in the Churches, whether reformed or
unreformed, it has tended to sweeten and intensify
devotion. It has kept them mindful of their common
lineage by insisting upon those essential and
universal truths which are confessed to be vital
in all religions, and especially by proclaiming the
supremacy of the Holy Spirit as the fountain of
all enlightenment and activity.

As manifested in <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> Paul and <abbr=Saint>St.</abbr> John, mysticism
// File: 391.png
.pn +1
is the recognition of the Holy Spirit as the Witness
of Christ, and therefore the supreme lord over all
man’s emotions and reasonings and purposes. Consequently
the asceticism with which mysticism has
always been associated has been in Christianity more
kept under control. Occasionally it has lapsed into
frightful excesses; indeed, the extravagances practised
in the East to attain to insight have been
equalled by the devices resorted to by many in the
West to gain the vision of the Divine. In ingenious
methods of self-torture the West certainly vied with
the East, but at self-torture perverted Christianity
stopped, while degenerate Buddhism went on to invent
and put in practice most revolting methods of
self-destruction as well. The law of Buddha prohibited
this, and forbade even the mention of the
advantages of death. It was an offence of the gravest
kind, punished by the severest penalty which the
Order could inflict,[#] for a monk to procure a weapon
for the purpose of taking away his life, or to teach
how death may be procured. Still, in India before
Fa-Hian’s time, self-murder was practised, and in
China Imperial edicts against self-mutilation and
self-immolation were required to prevent fanatics
evading the primitive law by the quibble, that
while prohibiting suicide, Buddha enjoined the
// File: 392.png
.pn +1
destruction of anger and lust, and that it was
against these alone that they raised their hand,
in order to complete their deliverance.[#]

Christianity demands that an ἄσκησις shall be
practised by all who desire the illumination of the
Spirit, for all that is vile must be purged out of
life, and all that is animal in it must be subdued.
The discipline, however, is always moral as well as
religious, and it aims only at controlling, never,
like Stoicism or Cynicism, at stifling or violating
natural affection. Unlike Plato, who regarded
matter as evil, Christ and His apostles recognised it
as the creature of God, and taught us to seek the
seat of evil, not in the body, but in the perverted
will. In the spirit is the true <i>fons et origo mali</i>;
but as the occasion of sin directly or indirectly
often originates in some desire for bodily indulgence
or some dread of bodily pain, temperance and fortitude
demand that the body, if not inured to hardness,
should be at least kept under control. So
bodily exercise,[#] though in itself profiting little,
profiteth much as moral discipline, a means to a
spiritual end. Consequently the fast in its literal
// File: 393.png
.pn +1
sense has its place in the Christian system as an
expedient generally most required in the times
when we are inclined to despise it. The fanaticism
which would destroy or injure what is natural is
condemned by Christianity as severely as is the
sensuality which would unduly strengthen it. What
it demands is that the whole nature be educated
and ennobled by loving surrender to the control
of an infinitely holy Will. Enjoyment of the vision
beatific, communion with the Divine Being, is the
<i>summum bonum</i> of Christianity, and that is the
portion only of the sanctified. “Blessed are the
pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Bôdiharma’s mystic or esoteric Buddhism had
no such influences to steady and sober it, and its
aberrations were wilder than the fancies of our delirium.
The supernatural pretensions of mysticism
have always been disallowed or condemned in Christianity
by overwhelming healthy-minded majorities,
but the consequence of the practice of Esoteric
Buddhism was believed by all to be supernatural
power. An adept in it professed to see through all
ages and worlds, and move through space by a sheer
exercise of will. All the phenomena of modern
spiritualism may have been witnessed in India and
China two thousand years ago—yea, centuries
perhaps before Buddha appeared. The first pretenders
to these mysteries were the Indian Yogis
// File: 394.png
.pn +1
and the medicine-men of savage and barbarous
races.[#] The “Neo-Buddhism” and “Theosophy”
of to-day simply confront us in the cast-off yellow
rags of these pitiful superstitions. Their disciples
attempt to warm themselves and to walk in the
light of the unhallowed flames which the deluded
followers of Bôdiharma believed they could kindle.
In whatever way the phenomena of spiritualism
are to be explained—and one cannot say what
phenomena may emerge when the human mind is
abandoned to vacuity, and the human will to an
ungoverned fancy—we may be certain that investigation
of them will never disclose the reality of
benign supernatural power. What capabilities may
be dormant in humanity no one can tell. Christ
who redeemed us is the prophecy of what He
can make us. He had supernatural power because
His being accorded perfectly with the Heavenly
Father’s will; but supernatural power as manifested
by Christ is very different indeed from the
ludicrous exhibitions of the “spiritualists.” Christ’s
supernatural power was not manifested just in
their ways, and certainly not by their methods;
will it ever be acquired?[#]
// File: 395.png
.pn +1

It is not compatible with our space to trace the
parallels between Esoteric Buddhism and some
nineteenth-century forms of speculation in which
the finite is again seen to be going back to the
absolute, and the reality of everything but the self
is denied. On the religious side, however, it is
interesting to notice a later stage of it in a system
which, originating not long after Bôdiharma, took
some four centuries to establish itself. The T’ien-t’ai
or Chi-Che school differed from Bôiharma’s theory
of pure mental abstraction to be gained through
complete withdrawal from all sensible surroundings,
in that it sought to aid contemplation by sensuous
exercises. Worship of gay idols, music of many
persons chanting in unison, postures of kneeling
and standing, exercises of continued and loud
recitation, with intervals of profound silence and
intense meditation, were supposed to produce the
desired illumination. It seemed to be the first
recognition of feeling in the Buddhist religion, and
the first attempt to employ it to produce ecstasy.
The same attempt has often been repeated in the
history of Christianity, sometimes in very grotesque
// File: 396.png
.pn +1
and extravagant forms. In every outburst of
religious enthusiasm we may see rude examples
of it, but it is also the principle on which æsthetic
worship is generally defended. It is a reminder,
therefore, to some very superior people, of our
common human nature, and a warning that when
left to itself, or indulged, even the æsthetic, like all
other instincts, will just run the same round of
extravagance in manifold and ever-recurring variety.

The tendency in human nature to pervert a
religion is as strongly manifested in Christianity
as in Buddhism; but there is this outstanding
distinction between them, that while a survey of
Buddhism shows that everywhere it has run its
course, and has exhausted its intellectual and moral
and spiritual resources, Christianity upon examination
appears to be only in an early stage
of development. In spite of the perversions of the
Church, and its repeated resistance to Christian
movements, Christianity has always produced what
has condemned and corrected and vanquished them.
It is the recuperative power of Christianity which
most distinguishes it. There is nothing in the
history of Buddhism which at all corresponds with
the Reformation. To-day all over the world it is
stereotyped and unprogressive, whereas everywhere
in Christendom there is ferment of thought and
stirring of life, plainly indicating that whatever
// File: 397.png
.pn +1
power may claim the past, Christianity has the
sure promise of the future.

In China, two hundred and seventy years ago,
originated a sect whose adherents, scattered through
the villages of the Eastern Provinces, and belonging
principally to the lower classes of society, may
be called Protestant or Reformed Buddhists.
They are described by Dr. Edkins[#] as opposed to
idolatry in all its forms, as having no temple, but
only plain meeting-houses, signalised with only
the common tablet to heaven, earth, king, parents,
and teachers, as their symbol of reverence. Their
worship consists not in ceremonies, but in quiet
meditation, and inner adoration of the all-pervading
Buddha. They are called the “Do-Nothing Sect,”
not because they are idle, like the ignorant inmates
of the monasteries—for they are really industrious
and virtuous,—but because they hold that the
highest virtue is never intentional, but wholly unconscious
of self. Like M. Aurelius,[#] they consider
that to ask to be “paid for virtue is as if the eye
demanded a recompence for seeing.” In thinking
of them, the words of the Lord Jesus recur to us:
“Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.”
// File: 398.png
.pn +1
George Fox, and the quiet and charitable Society
which he founded, and which still continues in
formal garb his protest against all formalism in
worshipping God, not by clamouring to Him, but
in silently waiting till He speaks, seems to be the
realisation of what these good Wu-wei-Kiau
aspire to in their religion. They have not been
able to free themselves from Buddhism or Taoism.
Buddha, though not worshipped, is believed in
by them, and they have found an object of adoration
in Kîn-mu, the Golden Mother of the soul,
who can protect and deliver from calamity, and
even save those that have died from misery. They
have four principal festivals, two of which celebrate
the birth and death of Lo-tsu, their founder. On
these occasions three small cups of tea and nine
tiny loaves of bread are placed on the tables,
according to the appointment of Lo-tsu himself.
On this account they are nicknamed “the Tea and
Bread Sect.” They are strict vegetarians, but in
no other sense ascetics, honouring marriage and
family life, and having no monastic institute among
them. They aver that one of their leaders during
a persecution was crucified, and their great hope
is that the world will soon come to an end, and
that the Golden Mother will appear, to take all
her children—all who believe in her as they do—home
to her beautiful heaven.
// File: 399.png
.pn +1

This can hardly be called a reformation of Buddhism
according either to its original form or its
fundamental principles. It is a departure from,
and an immense improvement upon it, which is
manifestly due to foreign and probably Christian
influence. The Nestorians entered China in the
seventh, and the Jesuits in the sixteenth century,
while Reformed Christianity only came in contact
with China in the present generation. If it
be denied that Christianity helped to produce
the Do-Nothing Sect, it will be difficult to disprove
the claim that, directly or indirectly, it has done
much to produce the latest forms in which, in
China and Japan, Buddhism is now presented to the
world. In both countries Reformed Buddhists are
found differing in much from one another, but generally
agreeing in rejecting polytheism for the worship
of one divinity: in China, Kwan-yin, who for long
has changed sexes, and is now the goddess of mercy;
in Japan, Buddha, whose attribute is Amita, the
infinite. One sect, called the “Salvation without
Works Sect,” has progressed greatly in Japan, under
the title of Shin-Shin, “the true religion.” The
worshipper renounces all merit, and trusts for
salvation in nothing but the mercy of Amita.[#] The
soul is brought into a state of salvation by an act
of faith, and though sure of salvation, the faithful
// File: 400.png
.pn +1
must not abandon the struggle with evil, for holiness
is not the beginning, but the result of salvation.
In Kioti, a Buddhist sect has a college quite Western
in its curriculum and arrangements. There
too the Japanese newspapers not only record the
successes of able Buddhist preachers in spreading
their doctrine, and in founding schools, they advertise
a Buddhist propaganda for the conversion
of Europe and America. Its only organ as yet is
a little magazine called the <i>Bijou of Asia</i>, but it is
printed in English for the enlightenment of all who
believe in the moribund creeds of the West, and
for the rescue especially of souls from the snare of
that Christian superstition which “happily all over
the world is rapidly declining in power”!

If this be not impure Christianity, no one will
dare to call it pure Buddhism. Surely it is a hopeful
indication for the future of Japan, as being evidently
a movement somewhat similar to that inaugurated
in India by Rammohun Roy, and greatly furthered
in our days by Chunder Sen. The first professed
to trace his reform to the Upanishads rediscovered,
and expounded, and applied; and the
second to the Vedas as the primitive fountains of
the faith. Both reformers and their work would
have been impossible two thousand years ago; yea,
they would have been equally impossible to-day, had
not the West given of its thoughts to the East,
// File: 401.png
.pn +1
and Christendom communicated to it something of
its better life. It is one thing to read the Vedas
and Upanishads, as the Rishis recited or the Brahmans
expounded them long ago, and quite another
to have them interpreted by natives of India,
around whose forefathers for several generations all
the influences of Christian civilisation have been
playing. So is it with the reforming Buddhists
of China and Japan, who have enterprise to send
their sons to study at our British Universities.
They are reading their old literature—even when
rejecting our systems of belief—with minds unconsciously
saturated with Christian intelligence,
and no doubt they often find there what the Gospel
has put in themselves.

We may rest assured that the reform of the
Oriental religions will only be effected by the
infusion into them of the spirit of Christianity. A
higher religion meeting them as Christianity does,
may not supplant or destroy them, but it will
revive and transform them. It will destroy much
that is false, correct much that is wrong, supply
all they lack, and so in the end annul them.
The product will not likely be a facsimile of any
of the Churches of Christendom. It may be a
religion in which Buddha and the great teachers
of his system will be lifted to their places among
the prophets who, “since the world began,” unconsciously
// File: 402.png
.pn +1
testified, by their errors as well as by
their truths, by their failures as well as by their
successes, to the Mystery to be revealed. The fact
that in Buddhism the object of worship is not the
Buddha that was, but Mâitrêya who is to be, is
a pathetic confession that its Messiah has yet
to come. Though Buddha did not proclaim His
coming, the result of his mission bears witness to
the need of Him. So he was a lawgiver preparing
the way for Moses, even as Moses prepared the
way for the Baptist, and as the Baptist heralded
the Christ of God. Could his voice reach down
to-day from “the quiet shore” to the millions
who have taken hold of him in hope of finding
deliverance from the miseries and perplexities of
this sinful world, it would be to repeat a testimony
once heard on Jordan’s banks from him than whom
no one born of woman was greater: “There standeth
One among you whom ye know not, the latchet
of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.”

.fn #
Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> 33. 35.
.fn-
.fn #
1 Corinthians <abbr=fourteen>xiv.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=de>“Das Christenthum ist das allerveränderlichste; das ist sein besonderer
Ruhm.”</lang>—Rothe, <lang=de><i>Stille Stunden</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 357.
.fn-
.fn #
Acts <abbr rend=arabic>xxviii.</abbr> 13; Rom. <abbr=fifteen>xv.</abbr> 24; 2 Tim. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 10; 1 Peter <abbr=one>i.</abbr> 1.
.fn-
.fn #
Greg. Nyss. <i>Op.</i> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 574.
.fn-
.fn #
Keim, <lang=de><i>Rom und Christenthum</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 417.
.fn-
.fn #
Uhlhorn, <i>Conflict of Christianity</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 54, 90.
.fn-
.fn #
Neander, <i>Church History</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 10, 40.
.fn-
.fn #
Orig. <i>cont. Cels.</i> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> 44-54; Tatian, <abbr rend=spell>c.</abbr> 33; Minut. Felix, <i>Octav.</i>
8. 12; Tertull. <i>Apolog.</i> 37 <i>et passim</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
Newman, <i>Grammar of Assent</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 460 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 14. 25; also <i>ibid.</i> <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 1. 5; <i>Sacred Books of the
East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Burnouf, <i>Science of Religions</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 288, notes the analogy between
Pryadarsi and “a man greatly beloved” in Daniel <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> 23.
.fn-
.fn #
See <lang=fr><i>Lotus de la bonne Loi</i></lang>, <abbr=appendix>App.</abbr> <abbr=ten>x.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 659 <i>seq.</i>: Prinsep’s <abbr=translation>trans.</abbr>,
<i>Jour. Asiat. Soc. Beng.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 219 <i>seq.</i>; <abbr=Professor>Prof.</abbr> <abbr rend=spell>H. H.</abbr> Wilson’s,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twelve>xii.</abbr> of <i>Jour. Asiat. Soc. Beng.</i> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 153 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Wheeler, <i>History of India</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 214.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 225.
.fn-
.fn #
Dipavamso, <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> <abbr=eight>viii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 259.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhist Records of the Western World</i>, <abbr=translated>trans.</abbr> by <abbr=Professor>Prof.</abbr> Beal, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>;
Fo-Kwo-ki, <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xlix</abbr>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii</abbr>; Hiuen Tsiang, <abbr rend=spell>B.</abbr> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 13, 14.
.fn-
.fn #
Lassen, <i>Indische Alterth.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 1078; <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 741.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Beal, <i>Buddhism in China</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 61; Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese
Buddhism</i>, Preface, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Buddhism in Tibet</i>, <abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Schlagintweit, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 61-75.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Comparative Progress of Ancient and Modern Missions.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Maclear, <i>Gradual Conversion of Europe</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 6-12.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Nouveau Journ. Asiat.</i> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 106, 137, 139.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 84, 207.
.fn-
.fn #
“It may be safely asserted that no Aryan race, while existing in anything
like purity, was ever converted to Buddhism, or could permanently
adopt its doctrines.”—Fergusson, <i>Tree and Serpent Worship</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 67. The
old Turanian race, far from being savage, or even barbarous, not only laid
the basis of Chinese civilisation, but seems to have been also the first
civiliser of Western Asia, and the first to spread art and science along the
southern coasts of Europe. The Iberian, Etruscan, Phœnician, Hittite,
even Egyptian monuments, are now acknowledged to be relics of this
mighty race, which must have sent horde after horde over Asia and
Europe long before the historic advance westwards in the thirteenth
century <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>; its latest invasion of India may have been represented, not
by Scythian ancestors of Buddha, but the Sikhs.—Conder, “Early Races
of Western Asia,” <i>Journ. Anthrop. Inst.</i> August 1889, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 30-43.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, Introduction; Eitel, <i>Lectures on
Buddhism</i>.
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 114, 156.
.fn-
.fn #
Wassilief, <lang=fr><i>Le Bouddhisme</i></lang>, etc., <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 14, 18.
.fn-
.fn #
Dêvadatta’s Five Points (Kullavagga, <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 3. 14, 15) all insist upon
a more ascetic rule than the Sangha practised.
.fn-
.fn #
Stanley, <i>Eastern Church</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 45, 50.
.fn-
.fn #
Turnour, “Pali Bud. Annals,” <i>Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=six>vi.</abbr>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 729; Wassilief, <lang=fr><i>Le Bouddhisme, etc.</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 18.
.fn-
.fn #
The beginning of the dissensions is related in Kullavagga <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> with
much legendary adornment. There too, in <abbr=seven>vii.</abbr> 5, and in Mahavagga,
<abbr=ten>x.</abbr> 1. 6, the distinction is drawn between “dissension” and “schism,” and
the woe predicted for the breaker-up of the Sangha when it was at peace:
“He is boiled for a kalpa in Niraya, doomed for so long to a penance
of misery.” The reconciler of a divided Sangha was made happy for
a kalpa in heaven.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, <i>Handbook of Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 182.
.fn-
.fn #
Beal, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 101: “a worship of association and
memory.”
.fn-
.fn #
Agni. Indra, Sūrya; Kern, <i>Buddhismus</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 156; Sir Monier
Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 175.
.fn-
.fn #
“A being whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhu)
derived from <i>self-enlightening</i> intellect, and who has only once more to
pass through human existence before attaining Buddhahood.”—Eitel,
<i>Sanskrit-Chinese Dict.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 26; Sir Monier Williams’ <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 98.
.fn-
.fn #
Wassilief, <lang=fr><i>Le Bouddhisme, etc.</i></lang>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 124 <i>seq.</i>; Burnouf, <lang=fr><i>Le Lotus de
la bonne Loi</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 302.
.fn-
.fn #
Nâgârdjuna, the Nagasēna of the Milindipanha, was the chief
representative, if not founder, of one of the Mahāyāna Schools. He has
been regarded as a mythical personage, and the name has been supposed
to be the generic one of various authors and doctors of the system. For
an account of Hināyāna and Mahāyāna doctrine, with its subdivisions,
see Wassilief, <lang=fr><i>Le Bouddhisme, etc.</i></lang>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 9 <i>seq.</i>, 118 <i>seq.</i>; Schlagintweit,
<i>Buddhism in Tibet</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 19-57. Nâlanda must have been a very
important centre in Buddhist times.—Fergusson, <i>Tree and Serpent
Worship</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 79.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins says about 190 <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Burnouf, <lang=fr><i>Introd. à l’histoire du Bud. Ind.</i></lang> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 220, 224
(Paris, 1844); also Burnouf, <lang=fr><i>Le Lotus de la bonne Loi</i></lang>, <abbr=chapter>chap.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxiv.</abbr>
<abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 261-268; also Appendix <abbr=three>III.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 498-511 (Paris, 1852).
.fn-
.fn #
Müller, Gifford Lectures, <i>Natural Religion</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 543; Dr. Beal,
<i>Buddhism in China</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 123; Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 195.
.fn-
.fn #
Hodgson, <i>Illustrations of the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 30; Burnouf, <i>Introduction, etc.</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 116-121; also in note at
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 118, quoting Hodgson.
.fn-
.fn #
Though strong affinities exist between Gnosticism and Buddhism,
which may indicate later connection, in their origin they appear to have
been quite distinct. The methods, aims, and terminology of Gnosticism,
all betoken derivation from purely Western sources. It is quite possible
that Gnosticism may have given Adi-Buddha to the East, but the question
of their relations is still undetermined. See Weber, <i>Hist. Ind. Lit.</i>
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 309; Obry’s <i>Nirvana, etc.</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 161; Bishop Lightfoot, Essay on the
Essenes (<i>Epistle to Colossians</i>), <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 157; <i>Home and Foreign Review</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 143 <i>seq.</i> (1863).
.fn-
.fn #
Sir Monier Williams, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 203; Dr. Beal, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 128; Dr. Eitel, <i>Lectures</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 98.
.fn-
.fn #
Kullavagga, <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 21. 4; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=twenty>xx.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Introd.</i> § <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 558: <lang=fr>“La plume se refuse à transcrire des doctrines
aussi misérables quant à la forme, qu’odieuses et dégradantes pour le fond.”</lang>
.fn-
.fn #
Âryasanga, founder of the Yôgacharya or contemplative system of
Mahāyāna (<i>circa</i> 400 <abbr rend=spell><sc>A.D.</sc></abbr>). For an account of his doctrine, see Wassilief,
<i>Le Boudd.</i> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 288 <i>seq.</i>, and Schlagintweit, <i>Bud. in Tibet</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 39 <i>seq.</i>,
46 <i>seq.</i>; Rhys Davids, <i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 207 <i>seq.</i>
.fn-
.fn #
A writer in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, October 1889, professes to
describe the testimony of the only reporter who has written of Lhása
since Huc and Gabet were expelled from it forty-five years ago. According
to this witness, the Church is now actually in grip of the State,
though nominally dominant. Of five members of the Council of the
Grand Lama four are laymen, superior military officers, with the Regent
at their head. Till the Grand Lama is eighteen years of age, the Regent
is supreme, and for sixty years, not a single Grand Lama, chosen as an
infant, has survived his eighteenth birthday!!
.fn-
.fn #
Buddhism, however, introduced into Tibet the benefits of the art
of writing, the reduction of its language to an alphabet, and grammar;
and not only the sacred literature represented by the collection of the
Kandjur, but the very miscellaneous literature of the Tandjur. Several
of its Buddhist missionaries and the kings who favoured them were
really great men. Kublai Khan and the first Lamistic Pope Phags-pa,
1259-94, rendered lasting service to the cause of civilisation. See Köppen’s
<lang=de><i>Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche</i></lang>, being <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> of his
celebrated and most laborious work, <lang=de><i>Die Religion des Buddha</i></lang>; <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr>
Rhys Davids, <abbr=article>Art.</abbr> <sc>Lamaism</sc>, <i>Encyc. Brit.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xiv.</abbr>; Sir Monier Williams,
<i>Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 262-302.
.fn-
.fn #
The most recent and reliable information as to this perverted form
of Buddhism—if it is to be called Buddhism, for it seems to be no more
Buddhism than Vandoux worship can be called Christianity—will be
found in the works of <abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids; Sir Monier Williams,
<i>Buddhism</i>; Babu Sarat Chunder Das, “Religious Hist. of Thibet,”
<i>Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng.</i> 1881; <i>Life and Works of Alex. Csoma de
Koros</i>, Th. Duka, Lond. 1885; <abbr rend=spell>E.</abbr> Colborne Baber, <i>Travels and Researches
in Western China</i>; Bushell’s “Hist. of Thibet,” <i>Journ. <abbr rend=spell>R.A.S.</abbr></i>
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> xii. 1878-79.
.fn-
.fn #
An invocation of Avalôkitês’vara, who is believed to have delivered
it to the Tibetans.—Klaproth, <lang=fr><i>Fragments Bouddhiques</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 27; Hodgson,
<i>Illustrations</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 171; Charles Loring Brace, <i>Gesta Christi</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 455.
.fn-
.fn #
Schlagintweit, <i>Buddhism in Tibet</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 227-272.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Chinese Review</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=eleven>xi.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 162; Beal, <i>Buddhism in China</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 233.
.fn-
.fn #
Once when a heathen asked Hillel to show him the whole Jewish
religion in a few words, he replied, “<i>Do not unto others what thou
wouldst not should be done unto thee</i>.” Kuenen’s <i>Religion of Israel</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> 243 (quotes Talmud, Sabbath, 31 <abbr rend=spell>a</abbr>.)
.fn-
.fn #
See Isaiah <abbr rend=spell>xxxii.</abbr> 5, 6. Socrates says in <i>Phaedo</i>, “to use words
wrongly and indefinitely is not merely an error in itself; it also creates
evil in the soul.” A vast amount of mischief is done by the misapplication
of good adjectives to bad subjects. All true reformers, with Confucius,
labour for a rectification of names.
.fn-
.fn #
Shu King, Shi King, <abbr=preface>Pref.</abbr> and <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 1-27, by Dr. Legge;
<i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr><i>Mémoire sur la Vie et les Opinions de Lao-tsze.</i></lang>
.fn-
.fn #
Translation of the Tâo-teh-King, under the title, <lang=fr><i>Le Livre de la
Voie et de la Vertu</i></lang>.
.fn-
.fn #
μέθοδος, Prof. Douglas, <i>Confucianism and Taoism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 189.
.fn-
.fn #
It is very interesting to find, so long before Christianity, and so far
from its cradle, this fundamental rule in Christian morals. In the Book
of Proverbs its enunciation may have preceded that in the Tao-teh-King
in point of time; but its being uttered at the end of the world,
along with the “golden rule” of Confucius, prove how essentially one
are the moral instincts of humanity.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Legge’s Preface to <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=three>iii.</abbr> of <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xxi</abbr>;
also <abbr=article>Art.</abbr> <sc>Lao-tsze</sc>, <i>Encyc. Brit.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xiv.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 128, 202; Beal, <i>Introduction to
Fa-Hian</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 27.
.fn-
.fn #
Douglas, <i>Confucianism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 84; Beal, <i>Buddhism in China</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 235;
Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 333.
.fn-
.fn #
In the whole range of the Catacombs no crucifix, and only very
few crosses have been found, and these generally in a disguised form.
The communion of the early Church was with Christ risen and triumphant;
it was only when the spirit and fervour of worship declined
that it made so much of the crucifixion.—Northcote and Brownlow’s
Abridgment of De Rossi’s <i>Roma Sotterranea</i>; Smith and Cheetham,
<i>Dict. of Christian Antiq.</i>, Art. <sc>Catacombs</sc>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 294 <i>seq.</i>; Witherow,
<i>Catacombs</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 260, 281.
.fn-
.fn #
The efficiency of <i>relic-worship</i> may be said to have been established
as early as the fourth century. Julian compares the churches to
whited sepulchres, full of dead men’s bones. Development of <i>image-worship</i>
proceeded <i>pari passu</i> with the erection of fine churches and
their adornment with painting and sculpture. There were all along
strong protests from individual bishops, and even prohibitions by
Councils, but the fashion was too strong for their fulminations. Even in
the eighth century the iconoclastic reformation of Leo the Isaurian was
too late. His zeal, moreover, was wrongly directed. He assailed high
art, and condemned only the truly fine paintings, sparing the ruder and
more ancient productions, and leaving untouched the worship of and
disgraceful traffic in relics, real and spurious. It is not to be wondered
at that in opposition to all this Gregory in the West became the champion
of art as an aid to devotion.—Milman, <i>Lat. Christianity</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 152.
.fn-
.fn #
In protesting against the Mass, the Reformed Churches maintain
the universal priesthood, and therefore perpetual sacrifice, of the visible
Church. As Christ’s witness on earth, the Church must be always offering
itself, in thanksgiving for its own redemption, for the salvation of
the world.
.fn-
.fn #
Fergusson, <i>Tree and Serpent Worship</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 67; Cunningham, <i>Bhilsa
Topes</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 130.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 126; Judges <abbr=six>vi.</abbr> 31.
.fn-
.fn #
Originally called Bódhitara, but renamed by his teacher Payantara,
in token of his religious “insight.” He is said to have brought to China
the famous alms-bowl, which all the Buddhas of the Kalpa have used,
and will use, and whose final disappearance will indicate that the religion
is about to perish. Thus Buddhism has also its San Greal. Bôdiharma
is called the “wall-gazing Brahman,” though a Kshatrya, because on his
arrival in China he spent nine years in silent meditation.—Eitel,
<i>Sanskrit Chinese Dict.</i> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 24.
.fn-
.fn #
Dr. Edkins, <i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 130.
.fn-
.fn #
Men who have in vain sought God without have happily found
Him in the witness of their own conscience and affection, but generally
they who conceitedly reject the revelation without them only obscure
the seeing faculty within. “When mysticism threw off external authority
it went mad, as in the revolutionary pantheism of the Middle Ages.
When it incorporated itself more and more in revealed truth, it became
a benign power—as on the eve of the Reformation.”—Vaughan, <i>Hours
with the Mystics</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 356.
.fn-
.fn #
“Mysticism,” <abbr rend=spell>A.</abbr> Seth, <i>Encyc. Brit.</i> <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xvii.</abbr> <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 129-136.
.fn-
.fn #
Correctly so, if we are to judge of Mysticism even from its purest
phases and its best representatives, <abbr rend=spell><i>e.g.</i></abbr> the Quietism of Madame Guyon,
the Spiritualism of Swedenborg, the Romanticism of <abbr rend=spell>F.</abbr> von Hardenberg,
better known as Novalis. Even on its speculative or philosophical
side, it would not be difficult to cull from the writings of the Cambridge
Platonists, and the Idealists of Europe and America, extracts equivalent
to the aphorisms of Novalis, that “action is morbid,” “to dream is
to overcome,” that “the soul must abandon the actual world if it would
discover in the recesses of the mystic night the Queen of Heaven,
Eternal Beauty.”—<i>Hymns to Night</i>, Schriften, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=two>ii.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 158.
.fn-
.fn #
Pâtimokkha; Pârâgikâ Dhammâ, 3; <i>Sacred Books of the East</i>,
<abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=thirteen>xiii.</abbr>
.fn-
.fn #
Beal, Introduction to <i>Fa-Hian</i>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 42. In an important aspect the
perversion of Christianity was worse than that of Buddhism. The
Buddhist ascetics, though merciless to themselves, never tortured their
vanquished opponents. There is no parallel to the Romish Inquisition
and some Protestant atrocities in any of the annals of Buddhism.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=grc>ἡ σωματικὴ γυμνασία</lang>, 1 Tim. <abbr=four>iv.</abbr> 8.
.fn-
.fn #
Tylor, <i>Primitive Culture</i>, <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 440.
.fn-
.fn #
<lang=fr>“Vient enfin le mysticisme de la dernière époque, qui, de même que
tous les mysticismes, finit de la manière la plus misérable, et enfante une
idolâtrie grossière, ainsi que les stupides pratiques de la sorcellerie”</lang>
(Laboulaye, <abbr=Introduction>Introd.</abbr> to La Comme’s transl. of Wassilief’s <i>Buddhism</i>,
<abbr=page>p.</abbr> <abbr rend=arabic>xlv</abbr>). This has often been verified in the religious history of the
West, and the fate of many former “spiritual” aspirants to enter or to
peer into the Invisible and Unutterable should be a powerful warning
to all who are now aiming at surpassing the natural conditions of
existence. In endeavouring to transcend humanity, we are likely to
fall miserably below it.
.fn-
.fn #
<i>Chinese Buddhism</i>, <abbr=pages>pp.</abbr> 370-379.
.fn-
.fn #
Also Seneca: “We do not love virtue because it gives us pleasure,
but it gives us pleasure because we love it.”—<i>De Vit. Beat.</i> <abbr rend=spell>c.</abbr> <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> “In
doing good man should be like the vine, producing grapes, and asking
for nothing in having done so.”—<abbr rend=spell>M.</abbr> Aurel. <abbr=five>v.</abbr> 6 and <abbr=nine>ix.</abbr> 42.
.fn-
.fn #
Herzog, <i>Encyclop.</i> (Schaff), <abbr=volume>vol.</abbr> <abbr=one>i.</abbr> <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 334.
.fn-
// File: 403.png
.pn +1
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.h2 id=postscript
POSTSCRIPT.
.sp 2
In endeavouring to perform the very honourable
task assigned to me, I have had to contend all along
with the difficulty of comprising in six what would
require many more lectures properly to relate.
Much which was actually prepared I have been
forced to omit, consoling myself with the thought
that, after all, I had simply to lecture and not to
write a compendious treatise, and that it was
my business to sketch as truthfully as I could
what it was simply impossible, within the limits
prescribed, adequately to depict. It was originally
my intention to give in parallel quotations the
alleged similarities between the contents of the
Pitakas and the New Testament, but the conditions
of time and space compelled me to be content with
references to specimens of them in the <i>Sacred Books
of the East</i>, from which any ordinary English
reader may be able to form a judgment concerning
them. Moreover, when well on with the work, I
discovered that a much more thorough examination
of Professor Seydel’s <i>Buddhist-Christian Harmony</i>
// File: 404.png
.pn +1
than I could profess to make had already been published
by Professor Kellogg of Allegheny, <abbr rend=spell>U.S.</abbr>, in his
book on the <i>Light of Asia and the Light of the World</i>.
An Indian missionary of eleven years’ experience,
and the author of an excellent Grammar of the
Hindi language, can write upon this subject, not
only with greater authority, but to much better
purpose, than one who only knows Indian books
through the medium of European translations, and
who has not seldom been compelled to take on
trust what he felt strongly inclined to question.
If Dr. Kellogg’s book is not extensively read in
this country, it certainly deserves to be.

Our sketch has been confined to Buddhism as a
religion and as an ethical system. The philosophy
which has grown out of it, and especially the
psychology which lies at the base of its original
dogmas, would require a large volume to expound.
A great field is open here for those who have the
ability and the leisure to cultivate it; and though
good work has already been done in it, we may be
convinced that, until this psychology has been
more thoroughly investigated, we must continue in
uncertainty as to what original Buddhism was.
Though much has been written upon the origin
and growth of Buddhism, the first authoritative
words are only now beginning to be spoken by the
learned translators of the Pali texts; and though
// File: 405.png
.pn +1
they have dispelled illusions and corrected false
impressions not a few, we cannot affirm that there
is a strong consensus of opinion among them as to
the life and teaching of the founder of Buddhism.
One is greatly impressed by the modest hesitation
with which they have presented their views, but
this very diffidence makes one fear that we may
be attributing to Buddha sayings which he never
uttered, or that we have drawn from them inferences
which he would have disowned.

In working out a sketch like this, the temptation
constantly besetting one is to compare or contrast
actual Buddhism with ideal Christianity.

I have endeavoured to bear in mind that our
modern religion may in many features grossly misrepresent
that of its Divine Author, and, indeed,
that “Christianity has all along been much embarrassed
in being obliged to apologise for Christendom.”[#]
In like manner I have tried to make plain
the great distinction between the original system of
Buddha and that which very soon came to be known
by his name. An Oriental will certainly misjudge
Christianity if he derives his knowledge of it from
mediæval theology or from some nineteenth-century
sermons; and we may unconsciously commit the
same mistake in ascribing to the primitive dogmas
the interpretation put upon them by its later
// File: 406.png
.pn +1
schools.[#] I have read several books in which this mistake
was flagrant, and I should be extremely sorry
to follow their bad example. In the present state of
our knowledge, however, and until the earliest texts
have been accurately ascertained, and sifted, and
classified, this, to a certain extent, is inevitable,
and therefore excusable. If I have failed in my
attempt to portray accurately even the salient
features of this great religion, it has been from no
desire to caricature it. The days have surely
passed when it could be said that we were “too
infatuated by a sense of the superiority of our own
to make a fair survey of other religions.”[#] It is
our duty, and it will be for our interest, to do
justice to them, and, instead of being content with
the schoolboy’s endeavour to prove them false, we
should seek carefully among the ruins of the most
degraded of them for all the elements of truth we
can discover. It is in this direction that we must
proceed if we would find solid foundations for a true
Christian theology, and the more we address ourselves
to the work the more likely shall we be to
convince the Church of the proper value of the
Faith deposited in its keeping, and to rouse it to
realise its destiny and fulfil its glorious mission to
the world.
// File: 407.png
.pn +1

In correcting these sheets for the press, I have
often been sensible of my great obligations to
a very highly valued personal friend, whose goodness
was as remarkable as his learning. May I
be forgiven if, in gratitude for his kind and generous
help in these very studies, given now long
ago, I desire to keep alive the memory of this justly
esteemed Sanskrit scholar, by adding this little
stone to his cairn, and adorning my book with the
name of Dr. John Muir.

.fn #
<i>Eternal Atonement</i>, by Dr. <abbr rend=spell>R. D.</abbr> Hitchcock, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 157.
.fn-
.fn #
<abbr rend=spell>T. W.</abbr> Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 196.
.fn-
.fn #
Quinet, <lang=fr><i>Le Génie des Religions</i></lang>, <abbr=page>p.</abbr> 13.
.fn-

Printed by <sc>T.</sc> and <sc>A. Constable</sc>, Printers to Her Majesty,
<i>at the Edinburgh University Press</i>.
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