Dervishes, who “often initiated the Janizaries. They wear _a small
marble cube spotted with blood_. Their ceremony is as follows: Before
reception a year’s probation is required, during which false secrets
are given to test the candidate; he has two godfathers _and is
divested of all metals and even clothing_; from the wool of a sheep a
cord is made for his neck, and a girdle for his loins; he is led into
the centre of a square room, presented as a slave, and seated upon
a large stone with twelve escallops; his arms are crossed upon his
breast, his body inclined forward, his right toes extended over his
left foot; after various prayers he is placed in a particular manner,
with his hand in a peculiar way in that of the Sheik, who repeats a
verse from the _Koran_: ‘Those who on giving thee their hand swear
to thee an oath, swear it to God, the hand of God is placed in
their hand; whoever violates this oath, will do so to his hurt, and
to whoever remains faithful God will give a magnificent reward.’
Placing the hand below the chin is their sign, perhaps in memory of
their vow. All use the double triangles. The Brahmans inscribe the
angles with their trinity, and they possess also the Masonic sign of
distress as used in France.”[660]
From the very day when the first mystic found the means of
communication between this world and the worlds of the invisible
host, between the sphere of matter and that of pure spirit, he
concluded that to abandon this mysterious science to the profanation
of the rabble was to lose it. An abuse of it might lead mankind to
speedy destruction; it was like surrounding a group of children with
explosive batteries, and furnishing them with matches. The first
self-made adept initiated but a select few, and kept silence with the
multitudes. He recognized his God and felt the great Being within
himself. The “Âtman,” the Self,[661] the mighty Lord and Protector,
once that man knew him as the “_I am_,” the “_Ego Sum_” the “_Ahmi_,”
showed his full power to him who could recognize the “_still small
voice_.” From the days of the primitive man described by the first
Vedic poet, down to our modern age, there has not been a philosopher
worthy of that name, who did not carry in the silent sanctuary of
his heart the grand and mysterious truth. If initiated, he learnt
it as a sacred science; if otherwise, then, like Socrates repeating
to himself, as well as to his fellow-men, the noble injunction,
“O man, know thyself,” he succeeded in recognizing his God within
himself. “Ye are gods,” the king-psalmist tells us, and we find
Jesus reminding the scribes that the expression, “Ye are gods,”
was addressed to other mortal men, claiming for himself the same
privilege without any blasphemy.[662] And, as a faithful echo, Paul,
while asserting that we are all “the temple of the living God,”[663]
cautiously adds, that after all these things are only for the “wise,”
and it is “unlawful” to speak of them.
Therefore, we must accept the reminder, and simply remark that even
in the tortured and barbarous phraseology of the _Codex Nazaræus_,
we detect throughout the same idea. Like an undercurrent, rapid and
clear, it runs without mixing its crystalline purity with the muddy
and heavy waves of dogmatism. We find it in the _Codex_, as well
as in the _Vedas_, in the _Avesta_, as in the _Abhidharma_, and in
_Kapila’s Sânkhya Sûtras_ not less than in the _Fourth Gospel_. We
cannot attain the “Kingdom of Heaven,” unless we unite ourselves
indissolubly with our _Rex Lucis_, the Lord of Splendor and of
Light, our Immortal God. We must first conquer immortality and
“take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence,” offered to our material
selves. “The first man is of the earth earthy; the _second_ man _is
from heaven_.... Behold, I show you a _mystery_,” says Paul (_1
Corinthians_, xv. 47). In the religion of Sakya-Mum, which learned
commentators have delighted so much of late to set down as purely
_nihilistic_, the doctrine of immortality is very clearly defined,
notwithstanding the European or rather Christian ideas about Nirvana.
In the sacred Jaïna books, of Patuna, the dying Gautama-Buddha is
thus addressed: “Arise into _Nirvi_ (Nirvana) from this decrepit
body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into _thy former abode_,
O blessed Avatar!” This seems to us the very opposite of Nihilism.
If Gautama is invited to reäscend into his “former abode,” and this
abode is Nirvana, then it is incontestable that Buddhistic philosophy
does _not_ teach final annihilation. As Jesus is alleged to have
appeared to his disciples after death, so to the present day is
Gautama believed to descend from Nirvana. And if he has an existence
there, then this state cannot be a synonym for _annihilation_.
Gautama, no less than all other great reformers, had a doctrine for
his “elect” and another for the outside masses, though the main
object of his reform consisted in initiating all, so far as it was
permissible and prudent to do, without distinction of castes or
wealth, to the great truths hitherto kept so secret by the selfish
Brahmanical class. Gautama-Buddha it was whom we see the first in
the world’s history, moved by that generous feeling which locks the
whole humanity within one embrace, inviting the “poor,” the “lame,”
and the “blind” to the King’s festival table, from which he excluded
those who had hitherto sat alone, in haughty seclusion. It was he,
who, with a bold hand, first opened the door of the sanctuary to the
pariah, the fallen one, and all those “afflicted by men” clothed in
gold and purple, often far less worthy than the outcast to whom their
finger was scornfully pointing. All this did Siddhârtha six centuries
before another reformer, as noble and as loving, though less favored
by opportunity, in another land. If both, aware of the great danger
of furnishing an uncultivated populace with the double-edged weapon
of _knowledge which gives power_, left the innermost corner of the
sanctuary in the profoundest shade, who, that is acquainted with
human nature, can blame them for it? But while one was actuated by
prudence, the other was forced into such a course. Gautama left
the esoteric and most dangerous portion of the “secret knowledge”
untouched, and lived to the ripe old age of eighty, with the
certainty of having taught the essential truths, and having converted
to them one-third of the world; Jesus promised his disciples the
knowledge which confers upon man the power _of producing far greater
miracles than he ever did himself_, and he died, leaving but a few
faithful men, only half way to knowledge, to struggle with the world
to which they could impart but what they _half_-knew themselves.
Later, their followers disfigured truth still more than they
themselves had done.
It is not true that Gautama never taught anything concerning a
future life, or that he denied the immortality of the soul. Ask any
intelligent Buddhist his ideas on Nirvana, and he will unquestionably
express himself, as the well-known Wong-Chin-Fu, the Chinese orator,
now travelling in this country, did in a recent conversation with
us about _Niepang_ (Nirvana). “This condition,” he remarked, “we all
understand to mean a final reünion with God, coïncident with the
perfection of the human spirit by its ultimate disembarrassment of
matter. It is the very opposite of personal annihilation.”
Nirvana means the certitude of personal immortality in _Spirit_, not
in _Soul_, which, as a finite emanation, must certainly disintegrate
its particles a compound of human sensations, passions, and yearning
for some objective kind of existence, before the immortal spirit
of the _Ego_ is quite freed, and henceforth secure against further
transmigration in any form. And how can man ever reach this state so
long as the _Upadāna_, that state of longing for _life_, more life,
does not disappear from the sentient being, from the _Ahancara_
clothed, however, in a sublimated body? It is the “Upādana” or the
intense desire which produces WILL, and it is _will_ which develops
_force_, and the latter generates _matter_, or an object having
form. Thus the disembodied _Ego_, through this sole undying desire
in him, unconsciously furnishes the conditions of his successive
self-procreations in various forms, which depend on his mental state
and _Karma_, the good or bad deeds of his preceding existence,
commonly called “merit and demerit.” This is why the “Master”
recommended to his mendicants the cultivation of the four degrees of
Dhȳana, the noble “Path of the Four Truths,” _i.e._, that gradual
acquirement of stoical indifference for either life or death; that
state of spiritual self-contemplation during which man utterly loses
sight of his physical and dual individuality, composed of soul and
body; and uniting himself with his third and higher immortal self the
_real and heavenly man_ merges, so to say, into the divine Essence,
whence his own spirit proceeded like a spark from the common hearth.
Thus the Arhat, the holy mendicant, can reach Nirvana while yet
on earth; and his spirit, totally freed from the trammels of the
“psychical, terrestrial, _devilish_ wisdom,” as James calls it, and
being in its own nature omniscient and omnipotent, can on earth,
through the sole power of his _thought_, produce the greatest of
phenomena.
“It is the missionaries in China and India, who first started this
falsehood about Niepang, or Nïepana (Nirvana),” says Wong-Chin-Fu.
Who can deny the truth of this accusation after reading the works of
the Abbé Dubois, for instance? A missionary who passes forty years
of his life in India, and then writes that the “Buddhists admit
of no other God but the body of man, and have no other object but
the satisfaction of their senses,” utters an untruth which can be
proved on the testimony of the laws of the Talapoins of Siam and
Birmah; laws, which prevail unto this very day and which sentence a
sahân, or _punghi_ (a learned man; from the Sanscrit _pundit_), as
well as a simple Talapoin, to death by decapitation, for the crime
of unchastity. No foreigner can be admitted into their _Kyums_, or
Viharas (monasteries); and yet there are French writers, otherwise
impartial and fair, who, speaking of the great severity of the rules
to which the Buddhist monks are subjected in these communities, and
without possessing one single fact to corroborate their skepticism,
bluntly say, that “notwithstanding the great laudations bestowed upon
them (Talapoins) by certain travellers, merely on the _strength of
appearances_, I do not believe at all in their chastity.”[664]
Fortunately for the Buddhist talapoins, lamas, sahâns, upasampadas,[665]
and even samenaïras,[666] they have popular records and facts for
themselves, which are weightier than the unsupported personal opinion
of a Frenchman, born in Catholic lands, whom we can hardly blame for
having lost all faith in clerical virtue. When a Buddhist monk becomes
guilty (which does not happen once in a century, perhaps) of criminal
conversation, he has neither a congregation of tender-hearted members,
whom he can move to tears by an eloquent confession of his guilt, nor
a Jesus, on whose overburdened, long-suffering bosom are flung, as in
a common Christian dust-box, all the impurities of the race. No
Buddhist transgressor can comfort himself with visions of a Vatican,
within whose sin-encompassing walls black is turned into white,
murderers into sinless saints, and golden or silvery lotions can be
bought at the confessional to cleanse the tardy penitent of greater or
lesser offenses against God and man.
Except a few impartial archæologists, who trace a direct Buddhistic
element in Gnosticism, as in all those early short-lived sects
we know of very few authors, who, in writing upon primitive
Christianity, have accorded to the question its due importance. Have
we not facts enough to, at least, suggest some interest in that
direction? Do we not learn that, as early as in the days of Plato,
there were “Brachmans”--read Buddhist, Samaneans, Saman, or Shaman
missionaries--in Greece, and that, at one time, they had overflowed
the country? Does not Pliny show them established on the shores of
the Dead Sea, for “thousands of ages?” After making every necessary
allowance for the exaggeration, we still have several centuries B.C.
left as a margin. And is it possible that their influence should
not have left deeper traces in all these sects than is generally
thought? We know that the Jaïna sect claims Buddhism as derived
from its tenets--that Buddhism existed before Siddhârtha, better
known as Gautama-Buddha. The Hindu Brahmans who, by the European
Orientalists, are denied the right of knowing anything about their
own country, or understanding their own language and records better
than those who have never been in India, on the same principle as
the Jews are forbidden, by the Christian theologians, to interpret
their own Scriptures--the Brahmans, we say, have authentic records.
And these show the incarnation from the Virgin Avany of the first
Buddha--_divine light_--as having taken place more than some
thousands of years B.C., on the island of Ceylon. The Brahmans
reject the claim that it was an avatar of Vishnu, but admit the
appearance of a reformer of Brahmanism at that time. The story of
the Virgin Avany and her divine son, Sâkya-muni, is recorded in one
of the sacred books of the Cinghalese Buddhists--the _Nirdhasa_; and
the Brahmanic chronology fixes the great Buddhistic revolution and
religious war, and the subsequent spread of Sâkya-muni’s doctrine in
Thibet, China, Japan, and other places at 4,620 years B.C.[667]
It is clear that Gautama-Buddha, the son of the King of Kapilavastu,
and the descendant of the first Sakya, through his father, who was
of the Kshatriya, or warrior-caste, did not invent his philosophy.
Philanthropist by nature, his ideas were developed and matured while
under the tuition of Tir-thankara, the famous guru of the Jaïna sect.
The latter claim the present Buddhism as a diverging branch of their
own philosophy, and themselves, as the only followers of the first
Buddha who were allowed to remain in India, after the expulsion of
all other Buddhists, probably because they had made a compromise,
and admitted some of the Brahmanic notions. It is, to say the
least, curious, that three dissenting and inimical religions, like
Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jaïnism, should agree so perfectly in their
traditions and chronology, as to Buddhism, and that our scientists
should give a hearing but to their own unwarranted speculations and
hypotheses. If the birth of Gautama may, with some show of reason, be
placed at about 600 B.C., then the preceding Buddhas ought to have
some place allowed them in chronology. The Buddhas are not gods,
but simply individuals overshadowed by the spirit of Buddha--the
divine ray. Or is it because, unable to extricate themselves from the
difficulty by the help of their own researches only, our Orientalists
prefer to obliterate and deny the whole, rather than accord to the
Hindus the right of knowing something of their own religion and
history? Strange way of discovering truths!
The common argument adduced against the Jaïna claim, of having
been the source of the restoration of ancient Buddhism, that the
principal tenet of the latter religion is opposed to the belief of
the Jaïnas, is not a sound one. Buddhists, say our Orientalists,
deny the existence of a Supreme Being; the Jaïnas admit one, but
protest against the assumption that the “He” can ever interfere
in the regulation of the universe. We have shown in the preceding
chapter that the Buddhists do not deny any such thing. But if any
disinterested scholar could study carefully the Jaïna literature,
in their thousands of books preserved--or shall we say hidden--in
Rajpootana, Jusselmere, at Patun, and other places;[668] and
especially if he could but gain access to the oldest of their sacred
volumes, he would find a perfect identity of philosophical thought,
if not of popular rites, between the Jaïnas and the Buddhists. The
Adi-Buddha and Adinâtha (or Adiswara) are identical in essence and
purpose. And now, if we trace the Jaïnas back, with their claims to
the ownership of the oldest cave-temples (those superb specimens
of Indian architecture and sculpture), and their records of an
almost incredible antiquity, we can hardly refuse to view them in
the light which they claim for themselves. We must admit, that in
all probability they are the only true descendants of the primitive
owners of old India, dispossessed by those conquering and mysterious
hordes of white-skinned Brahmans whom, in the twilight of history, we
see appearing at the first as wanderers in the valleys of Jumna and
Ganges. The books of the Srawacs--the only descendants of the Arhâtas
or earliest Jaïnas, the naked forest-hermits of the days of old,
might throw some light, perhaps, on many a puzzling question. But
will our European scholars, so long as they pursue their own policy,
ever have access to the _right_ volumes? We have our doubts about
this. Ask any trustworthy Hindu how the missionaries have dealt with
those manuscripts which unluckily fell into their hands, and then see
if we can blame the natives for trying to save from desecration the
“gods of their fathers.”
To maintain their ground Irenæus and his school had to fight hard
with the Gnostics. Such, also, was the lot of Eusebius, who found
himself hopelessly perplexed to know how the Essenes should be
disposed of. The ways and customs of Jesus and his apostles exhibited
too close a resemblance to this sect to allow the fact to pass
unexplained. Eusebius tried to make people believe that the Essenes
were the first Christians. His efforts were thwarted by Philo Judæus,
who wrote his historical account of the Essenes and described them
with the minutest care, long before there had appeared a single
Christian in Palestine. But, if there were no _Christians_, there
were Chr_e_stians long before the era of Christianity; and the
Essenes belonged to the latter as well as to all other initiated
brotherhoods, without even mentioning the Christnites of India.
Lepsius shows that the word _Nofre_ means Chrēstos, “good,” and that
one of the titles of Osiris, “Onnofre,” must be translated “the
goodness of God made manifest.”[669] “The worship of Christ was
not universal at this early date,” explains Mackenzie, “by which I
mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of
_Chrēstos_--the Good Principle--had preceded it by many centuries,
and even survived the general adoption of Christianity, as shown on
monuments still in existence.” ... Again, we have an inscription
which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial tablet (Spon. _Misc. Erud._,
Ant., x. xviii. 2). Υακινθε Λαρισαιων Δημοσιε Ηρως Χρηστε Χαιρε, and
de Rossi (_Roma Sotteranea_, tome i., tav. xxi.) gives us another
example from the catacombs--“Ælia Chreste, in Pace.”[670] And, _Kris_,
as Jacolliot shows, means in Sanscrit “sacred.”
The meritorious stratagems of the trustworthy Eusebius thus proved
lost labor. He was triumphantly detected by Basnage, who, says
Gibbon, “examined with the utmost critical accuracy the curious
treatise of Philo, which describes the Therapeutæ,” and found that
“by proving it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, he has
demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius and a crowd of modern Catholics,
that the Therapeutæ were neither Christians nor monks.”
As a last word, the _Christian_ Gnostics sprang into existence
toward the beginning of the second century, and just at the time
when the Essenes most mysteriously faded away, which indicated that
they were the identical Essenes, and moreover pure _Christists_,
viz.: they believed and were those who best understood what one of
their own brethren had preached. In insisting that the letter Iota,
mentioned by Jesus in _Matthew_ (v. 18), indicated a secret doctrine
in relation to the ten æons, it is sufficient to demonstrate to a
kabalist that Jesus belonged to the Freemasonry of those days; for
Ι, which is Iota in Greek, has other names in other languages; and is,
as it was among the Gnostics of those days, a pass-word, meaning the
SCEPTRE of the FATHER, in Eastern brotherhoods which exist to this
very day.
But in the early centuries these facts, if known, were purposely
ignored, and not only withheld from public notice as much as
possible, but vehemently denied whenever the question was forced upon
discussion. The denunciations of the Fathers were rendered bitter in
proportion to the truth of the claim which they endeavored to refute.
“It comes to this,” writes Irenæus, complaining of the Gnostics,
“they neither consent to Scripture nor tradition.”[671] And why
should we wonder at that, when even the commentators of the
nineteenth century, with nothing but fragments of the Gnostic
manuscripts to compare with the voluminous writings of their
calumniators, have been enabled to detect fraud on nearly every
page? How much more must the polished and learned Gnostics, with all
their advantages of personal observation and knowledge of fact, have
realized the stupendous scheme of fraud that was being consummated
before their very eyes! Why should they accuse Celsus of maintaining
that their religion was all based on the speculations of Plato, with
the difference that his doctrines were far more pure and rational
than theirs, when we find Sprengel, seventeen centuries later,
writing the following?--“Not only did they (the Christians) think to
discover the dogmas of Plato in the books of Moses, but, moreover,
they fancied that, by introducing Platonism into Christianity, they
would _elevate the dignity of this religion and make it more popular
among the nations_.”[672]
They introduced it so well, that not only was the Platonic philosophy
selected as a basis for the trinity, but even the legends and
mythical stories which had been current among the admirers of the
great philosopher--as a time-honored custom required in the eyes
of his posterity such an allegorical homage to every hero worthy
of deification--were revamped and used by the Christians. Without
going so far as India, did they not have a ready model for the
“miraculous conception,” in the legend about Periktionè, Plato’s
mother? In her case it was also maintained by popular tradition that
she had immaculately conceived him, and that the god Apollo was his
father. Even the annunciation by an angel to Joseph “in a dream,” the
Christians copied from the message of Apollo to Ariston, Periktionè’s
husband, that the child to be born from her was the offspring of that
god. So, too, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars, by the virgin
Rhea Sylvia.
It is generally held by all the symbolical writers that the Ophites
were found guilty of practicing the most licentious rites during
their religious meetings. The same accusation was brought against the
Manichæans, the Carpocratians, the Paulicians, the Albigenses--in
short, against every Gnostic sect which had the temerity to claim
the right to think for itself. In our modern days, the 160 American
sects and the 125 sects of England are not so often troubled with
such accusations; times are changed, and even the once all-powerful
clergy have to either bridle their tongues or prove their slanderous
accusations.
We have carefully looked over the works of such authors as Payne
Knight, C. W. King, and Olshausen, which treat of our subject; we
have reviewed the bulky volumes of Irenæus, Tertullian, Sozomen,
Theodoret; and in none but those of Epiphanius have we found any
accusation based upon direct evidence of an eye-witness. “They say;”
“_Some_ say;” “We have heard”--such are the general and indefinite
terms used by the patristic accusers. Alone Epiphanius, whose works
are invariably referred to in all such cases, seems to chuckle with
delight whenever he couches a lance. We do not mean to take upon
ourselves to defend the sects which inundated Europe at the eleventh
century, and which brought to light the most wonderful creeds; we
limit our defense merely to those Christian sects whose theories
were usually grouped under the generic name of _Gnosticism_. These
are those which appeared immediately after the alleged crucifixion,
and lasted till they were nearly exterminated under the rigorous
execution of the Constantinian law. The greatest guilt of these were
their syncretistic views, for at no other period of the world’s
history had truth a poorer prospect of triumph than in those days of
forgery, lying, and deliberate falsification of facts.
But before we are forced to believe the accusations, may we not
be permitted to inquire into the historical characters of their
accusers? Let us begin by asking, upon what ground does the Church
of Rome build her claim of supremacy for her doctrines over those
of the Gnostics? Apostolic succession, undoubtedly. The succession
_traditionally_ instituted by the direct Apostle Peter. But what if
this prove a fiction? Clearly, the whole superstructure supported
upon this one imaginary stilt would fall in a tremendous crash.
And when we do inquire carefully, we find that we must take the
word of Irenæus _alone_ for it--of Irenæus, who did not furnish one
single valid proof of the claim which he so audaciously advanced,
and who resorted for that to endless forgeries. He gives authority
neither for his dates nor his assertions. This Smyrniote worthy
has not even the brutal but sincere faith of Tertullian, for he
contradicts himself at every step, and supports his claims solely on
acute sophistry. Though he was undoubtedly a man of the shrewdest
intellect and great learning, he fears not, in some of his assertions
and arguments, to even appear an idiot in the eyes of posterity, so
long as he can “carry the situation.” Twitted and cornered at every
step by his not less acute and learned adversaries, the Gnostics, he
boldly shields himself behind blind faith, and in answer to their
merciless logic falls upon imaginary tradition invented by himself.
Reber wittily remarks: “As we read his misapplications of words and
sentences, we would conclude that he was a lunatic if we did not know
that he was something else.”[673]
So boldly mendacious does this “holy Father” prove himself in many
instances, that he is even contradicted by Eusebius, more cautious
if not more truthful than himself. He is driven to that necessity
in the face of unimpeachable evidence. So, for instance, Irenæus
asserts that Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, was a direct hearer of
St. John;[674] and Eusebius is compelled to show that Papias never
pretended to such a claim, but simply stated that he had received his
_doctrine from those who had known John_.[675]
In one point, the Gnostics had the best of Irenæus. They drove
him, through mere fear of inconsistency, to the recognition of
their kabalistic doctrine of atonement; unable to grasp it in its
allegorical meaning, Irenæus presented, with Christian theology as
we find it in its present state of “original sin _versus_ Adam,” a
doctrine which would have filled Peter with pious horror if he had
been still alive.
The next champion for the propagation of Apostolic Succession, is
Eusebius himself. Is the word of this Armenian Father any better than
that of Irenæus? Let us see what the most competent critics say of
him. And before we turn to modern critics at all, we might remind
the reader of the scurrilous terms in which Eusebius is attacked
by George Syncellus, the Vice-Patriarch of Constantinople (eighth
century), for his audacious falsification of the Egyptian Chronology.
The opinion of Socrates, an historian of the fifth century, is no
more flattering. He fearlessly charges Eusebius with perverting
historical dates, in order to please the Emperor Constantine. In his
chronographic work, before proceeding to falsify the synchronistic
tables _himself_, in order to impart to Scriptural chronology a more
trustworthy appearance, Syncellus covers Eusebius with the choicest
of monkish Billingsgate. _Baron Bunsen has verified the justness
if not justified the politeness of this abusive reprehension._ His
elaborate researches in the rectification of the _Egyptian List of
Chronology_, by Manetho, led him to confess that throughout his work,
the Bishop of Cæsarea “had undertaken, in a very _unscrupulous_ and
arbitrary spirit, to mutilate history.” “Eusebius,” he says, “is the
originator of that systematic theory of synchronisms which has so
often subsequently maimed and mutilated history in its procrustean
bed.”[676] To this the author of the _Intellectual Development of
Europe_ adds: “Among those who have been the most guilty of this
offense, the name of the celebrated Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsarea
... should be designated!”[677]
It will not be amiss to remind the reader that it is the same
Eusebius who is charged with the interpolation of the famous
paragraph concerning Jesus,[678] which was so miraculously found,
in his time, in the writings of Josephus, the sentence in question
having till that time remained perfectly unknown. Renan, in his _Life
of Jesus_, expresses a contrary opinion. “I believe,” says he, “the
passage respecting Jesus to be authentic. _It is perfectly in the
style of Josephus_; and, _if_ this historian had made mention of
Jesus, it is _thus_ that he must have spoken of him.”
Begging this eminent scholar’s pardon, we must again contradict him.
Laying aside his cautious “_if_,” we will merely show that though
the short paragraph may possibly be genuine, and “perfectly in the
style of Josephus,” its several parentheses are most palpably later
forgeries; and “_if_” Josephus had made any mention of Christ at
all, it is _not_ thus that he would “have spoken of him.” The whole
paragraph consists of but a few lines, and reads: “At this time was
_Iasous_, a ‘WISE MAN,’[679] if, at least, _it is right to call him a
man_! (ἄνδρα) for he was a doer of surprising works, and a teacher of
such men as receive “the truths” with pleasure.... _This was the_
ANOINTED (!!). And, on an accusation by the first men among us, having
been condemned by Pilate to the cross, they did not stop loving him
who loved them. For _he appeared to them on the third day alive_, and
the divine prophets having said these and many other wonderful things
concerning him.”
This paragraph (of sixteen lines in the original) has two unequivocal
assertions and one qualification. The latter is expressed in the
following sentence: “If, at least, it is right to call him a
man.” The unequivocal assertions are contained in “This is the
ANOINTED,” and in that Jesus “appeared to them _on the third day
alive_.” History shows us Josephus as a thorough, uncompromising,
stiff-necked, orthodox Jew, though he wrote for “the Pagans.” It is
well to observe the false position in which these sentences would
have placed a true-born Jew, if they had really emanated from him.
Their “Messiah” was then and is still expected. The Messiah is the
_Anointed_, and _vice versa_. And Josephus is made to admit that the
“first men” among them have accused and crucified _their_ Messiah and
Anointed!! No need to comment any further upon such a preposterous
incongruity,[680] even though supported by so ripe a scholar as Renan.
As to that patristic fire-brand, Tertullian, whom des Mousseaux
apotheosizes in company with his other demi-gods, he is regarded
by Reuss, Baur, and Schweigler, in quite a different light. The
untrustworthiness of statement and inaccuracy of Tertullian, says
the author of _Supernatural Religion_, are often apparent. Reuss
characterizes his Christianism as “_âpre_, _insolent_, _brutal_,
_ferrailleur_.” It is without unction and without charity, sometimes
even _without loyalty_, when he finds himself confronted with
opposition. “If,” remarks this author, “in the second century all
parties except certain Gnostics were intolerant, Tertullian was the
most intolerant of all!”
The work begun by the early Fathers was achieved by the sophomorical
Augustine. His supra-transcendental speculations on the Trinity; his
imaginary dialogues with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and
the _disclosures_ and covert allusions about his ex-brethren, the
Manicheans, have led the world to load Gnosticism with opprobrium,
and have thrown into a deep shadow the insulted majesty of the one
God, worshipped in reverential silence by every “heathen.”
_And thus is it that the whole pyramid of Roman Catholic dogmas rests
not upon proof, but upon assumption._ The Gnostics had cornered
the Fathers too cleverly, and _the only salvation of the latter
was a resort to forgery_. For nearly four centuries, the great
historians nearly cotemporary with Jesus had not taken the slightest
notice either of his life or death. Christians wondered at such an
unaccountable omission of what the Church considered the greatest
events in the world’s history. Eusebius saved the battle of the day.
Such are the men who have slandered the Gnostics.
The first and most unimportant sect we hear of is that of the
_Nicolaïtans_, of whom John, in the _Apocalypse_, makes the
voice in his vision say that he hates their doctrine.[681] These
Nicolaïtans were the followers, however, of Nicolas of Antioch, one
of the “seven” chosen by the “twelve” to make distribution from the
common fund to the proselytes at Jerusalem (_Acts_ ii. 44, 45, vi.
1-5), hardly more than a few weeks, or perhaps months, after the
Crucifixion;[682] and a man “of honest report, _full of the Holy
Ghost and wisdom_” (verse 3). Thus it would appear that the “Holy
Ghost and wisdom” from on high, were no more a shield against the
accusation of “hæresy” than though they had never overshadowed the
“chosen ones” of the apostles.
It would be but too easy to detect what kind of heresy it was
that offended, even had we not other and more authentic sources
of information in the kabalistic writings. The accusation and
the precise nature of the “abomination” are stated in the second
chapter of the book of _Revelation_, verses 14, 15. The sin was
merely--_marriage_. John was a “virgin;” several of the Fathers
assert the fact on the authority of tradition. Even Paul, the most
liberal and high-minded of them all, finds it difficult to reconcile
the position of a married man with that of a faithful servant of God.
There is also “a difference between a wife and a virgin.”[683] The
latter cares “for the things of the Lord,” and the former only for
“how she may please her husband.” “If any man think that he behaveth
uncomely towards his virgin ... let them marry. Nevertheless, he that
standeth steadfast in his heart, and hath power over his own will,
and hath so decreed ... that he will keep _his virgin_, doeth well.”
So that he who marries “doeth well ... but he that giveth her not in
marriage _doeth better_.” “Art thou loosed from a wife?” he asks,
“seek not a wife” (27). And remarking that according to his judgment,
both will be happier if they do not marry, he adds, as a weighty
conclusion: “And I think also that I have the spirit of God” (40).
Far from this spirit of tolerance are the words of John. According to
his vision there are “but the hundred and forty and four thousand,
which were _redeemed_ from the earth,” and “these are they which
were not defiled with women; for _they were virgins_.”[684] This
seems conclusive; for except Paul there is not one of these primitive
_Nazari_, there “set apart” and vowed to God, who seemed to make
a great difference between “sin” within the relationship of legal
marriage, and the “abomination” of adultery.
With such views and such narrow-mindedness, it was but natural that
these fanatics should have begun by casting this _iniquity_ as a
slur in the faces of brethren, and then “bearing on progressively”
with their accusations. As we have already shown, it is only
Epiphanius whom we find giving such minute details as to the
Masonic “grips” and other signs of recognition among the Gnostics.
He had once belonged to their number, and therefore it was easy
for him to furnish particulars. Only how far the worthy Bishop is
to be relied upon is a very grave question. One need fathom human
nature but very superficially to find that there seldom was yet a
traitor, a renegade, who, in a moment of danger turned “State’s
evidence,” who would not lie as remorselessly as he betrayed. Men
never forgive or relent toward those whom they injure. We hate our
victims in proportion to the harm we do them. This is a truth as
old as the world. On the other hand, it is preposterous to believe
that such persons as the Gnostics, who, according to Gibbon, were
the wealthiest, proudest, most polite, as well as the most learned
“of the Christian name,” were guilty of the disgusting, libidinous
actions of which Epiphanius delights to accuse them. Were they even
like that “set of tatterdemalions, almost naked, with fierce looks,”
that Lucian describes as Paul’s followers,[685] we would hesitate to
believe such an infamous story. How much less probable then that men
who were Platonists, as well as Christians, should have ever been
guilty of such preposterous rites.
Payne Knight seems never to suspect the testimony of Epiphanius.
He argues that “if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations
of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general
conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a
licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded.”
If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of
the first three centuries and those mediæval sects whose doctrines
“rather closely resembled modern communism,” we have nothing to say.
Only, we would beg every critic to remember that if the Templars were
accused of that most “abominable crime” of applying the “holy kiss”
to the root of Baphomet’s tail,[686] St. Augustine is also suspected,
and on very good grounds, too, of having allowed his community to go
somewhat astray from the primitive way of administering the “holy
kiss” at the feast of the Eucharist. The holy Bishop seems quite too
anxious as to certain details of the ladies’ toilet for the “kiss” to
be of a strictly orthodox nature.[687] Wherever there lurks a true
and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for worldly details.
Considering the extraordinary dislike exhibited from the first by
Christians to all manner of cleanliness, we cannot enough wonder at
such a strange solicitude on the part of the holy Bishop for his
female parishioners, unless, indeed, we have to excuse it on the
ground of a lingering reminiscence of Manichean rites!
It would be hard, indeed, to blame any writer for entertaining such
suspicions of immorality as those above noticed, when the records
of many historians are at hand to help us to make an impartial
investigation. “Hæretics” are accused of crimes in which the Church
has more or less openly indulged even down to the beginning of our
century. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX. issued two bulls against the
Stedingers “for various _heathen_ and magical practices,”[688]
and the latter, as a matter of course, were exterminated in the
name of Christ and his Holy Mother. In 1282 a parish priest of
Inverkeithing, named John, performed rites on Easter day by far
worse than “magical.” Collecting a crowd of young girls, he forced
them to enter into “divine ecstasies” and Bacchanalian fury, dancing
the old Amazonian circle-dance around the figure of the heathen
“god of the gardens.” Notwithstanding that upon the complaint of
some of his parishioners he was cited before his bishop, he retained
his benefice because he proved that _such was the common usage of
the country_.[689] The Waldenses, those “earliest Protestants,”
were accused of the most unnatural horrors; burned, butchered, and
exterminated for calumnies heaped upon them by their accusers.
Meanwhile the latter, in open triumph, forming their heathen
processions of “Corpus Christi,” with emblems modelled on those of
Baal-Peor and “Osiris,” and every city in Southern France carrying,
in yearly processions on Easter days, loaves and cakes fashioned like
the so-much-decried emblems of the Hindu Sivites and Vishnites, as
late as 1825![690]
Deprived of their old means for slandering Christian sects whose
religious views differ from their own, it is now the turn of the
“heathen,” Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese, to share with the ancient
religions the honor of having cast in their teeth denunciations of
their “libidinous religions.”
Without going far for proofs of equal if not surpassing immorality,
we would remind Roman Catholic writers of certain _bas-reliefs_ on
the doors of St. Peter’s Cathedral. They are as brazen-faced as the
door itself; but less so than any author, who, knowing all this,
feigns to ignore historical facts. A long succession of Popes have
reposed their pastoral eyes upon these brazen pictures of the vilest
obscenity, through those many centuries, without ever finding the
slightest necessity for removing them. Quite the contrary; for we
might name certain Popes and Cardinals who made it a life-long study
to copy these heathen suggestions of “nature-gods,” in practice as
well as in theory.
In Polish Podolia there was some years ago, in a Roman Catholic
Church, a statue of Christ, in black marble. It was reputed to
perform miracles on certain days, such as having its hair and beard
grow in the sight of the public, and indulging in other _less_
innocent wonders. This show was finally prohibited by the Russian
Government. When in 1585 the Protestants took Embrun (Department of
the Upper Alps), they found in the churches of this town relics of
such a character, that, as the Chronicle expresses it, “old Huguenot
soldiers were seen to blush, several weeks after, at the bare
mention of the discovery.” In a corner of the Church of St. Fiacre,
near Monceaux, in France, there was--and it still is there, if we
mistake not--a seat called “the chair of St. Fiacre,” which had the
reputation of conferring fecundity upon barren women. A rock in the
vicinity of Athens, not far from the so-called “Tomb of Socrates,”
is said to be possessed of the same virtue. When, some twenty years
since, the Queen Amelia, perhaps in a merry moment, was said to
have tried the experiment, there was no end of most insulting abuse
heaped upon her, by a Catholic Padre, on his way through Syra to some
mission. The Queen, he declared, was a “superstitious heretic!” “an
abominable witch!” “Jezebel using magic arts.” Much more the zealous
missionary would doubtless have added, had he not found himself,
right in the middle of his vituperations, landed in a pool of mud,
outside the window. The virtuous elocutionist was forced to this
unusual transit by the strong arm of a Greek officer, who happened to
enter the room at the right moment.
There never was a great religious reform that was not pure at the
beginning. The first followers of Buddha, as well as the disciples
of Jesus, were all men of the highest morality. The aversion felt by
the reformers of all ages to vice under any shape, is proved in the
cases of Sâkya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St. Paul, Ammonius
Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders--if less successful--were not less
virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides,[691]
Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaïtans,
who, if they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites,
were numbered among the small sects which were absorbed in it at
the beginning of the second century, owe their origin, as we have
shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, “a man of honest report, full of the
Holy Ghost and wisdom.” How absurd the idea that such men would
have instituted “libidinous rites.” As well accuse Jesus of having
promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so extensively
by the mediæval _orthodox_ Christians behind the secure shelter of
monastic walls.
If, however, we are asked to credit such an accusation against the
Gnostics, an accusation transferred with tenfold acrimony, centuries
later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars, why should we not
believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix states
that “the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing,
during the ceremony of the “Perfect Passover,” each neophyte, on his
admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of
flour; the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation.
After they had become the dominant party, they (the Christians)
transferred this charge to their own dissenters.”[692]
The real crime of heterodoxy is plainly stated by John in his
_Epistles_ and _Gospel_. “He that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh ... is a deceiver and _an antichrist_” (2 _Epistle_
7). In his previous _Epistle_, he teaches his flock that there are
_two_ trinities (7, 8)--in short, the Nazarene system.
The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and
dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an
offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves,
born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives
converted to the so-called _orthodox_ body of Christians. And, as
every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of
votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till
the moment when the emperor enforced this _revealed_ olla-podrida,
of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an
unwilling world as the _religion of Christ_. Wearied in the vain
attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations,
unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of
an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of
brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine.
Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied
from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly
original with her--namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one
custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected both with horror.
“An execration is a fearful and grievous thing,” says Plutarch.
“Wherefore, the priestess at Athens was commended for refusing to
curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries) when the people
required her to do it; _for_, she said, _that she was a priestess of
prayers and not of curses_.”[693]
“Deep researches would show,” says Renan, “that nearly everything
in Christianity is mere baggage brought from the Pagan Mysteries.
The primitive Christian worship is nothing but a mystery. The whole
interior police of the Church, the degrees of initiation, the command
of silence, and a crowd of phrases in the ecclesiastical language,
have no other origin.... The revolution which overthrew Paganism
_seems_ at first glance ... an absolute rupture with the past ... but
_the popular faith saved its most familiar symbols from shipwreck_.
Christianity introduced, at first, so little change into the habits
of private and social life, that with great numbers in the fourth
and fifth centuries it remains uncertain whether they were Pagans
or Christians; many seem even to have pursued an irresolute course
between the two worships.” Speaking further of _Art_, which formed
an essential part of the ancient religion, he says that “_it had
to break with scarce one of its traditions_. Primitive Christian
art is really nothing but Pagan art in its decay, or in its lower
departments. The Good Shepherd of the catacombs in Rome is a copy
from the Aristeus, or from the Apollo Nornius, which figure in the
same posture on the Pagan sarcophagi, and still carries the flute of
Pan in the midst of the four half-naked seasons. On the Christian
tombs of the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the animals.
Elsewhere, the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina,
receive the souls that Mercury, wearing the broad-brimmed hat and
carrying in his hand the rod of the soul-guide (_psychopompos_),
brings to them, in presence of the three fates. Pegasus, the symbol
of the apotheosis; Psyche, the symbol of the immortal soul; Heaven,
personified by an old man, the river Jordan; and Victory, figure on a
host of Christian monuments.”
As we have elsewhere shown, the primitive Christian community
was composed of small groups scattered about and organized in
secret societies, with passwords, grips, and signs. To avoid the
relentless persecutions of their enemies, they were obliged to seek
safety and hold meetings in deserted catacombs, the fastnesses of
mountains, and other safe retreats. Like disabilities were naturally
encountered by each religious reform at its inception. From the
very first appearance of Jesus and his twelve disciples, we see
them congregating apart, having secure refuges in the wilderness,
and among friends in Bethany, and elsewhere. Were Christianity not
composed of “_secret communities_,” from the start, history would
have more _facts_ to record of its founder and disciples than it has.
How little Jesus had impressed his personality upon his own century,
is calculated to astound the inquirer. Renan shows that Philo, who
died toward the year 50, and who was born many years earlier than
Jesus, living all the while in Palestine while the “glad tidings”
were being preached all over the country, according to the _Gospels_,
had never heard of him! Josephus, the historian, who was born three
or four years after the death of Jesus, mentions his execution
in a short sentence, and even those few words were altered “by a
_Christian hand_,” says the author of the _Life of Jesus_. Writing at
the close of the first century, when Paul, the learned propagandist,
is said to have founded so many churches, and Peter is alleged to
have established the apostolic succession, which the Irenæo-Eusebian
chronology shows to have already included three bishops of Rome,[694]
Josephus, the painstaking enumerator and careful historian of even
the most unimportant sects, entirely ignores the existence of a
Christian sect. Suetonius, secretary of Adrian, writing in the first
quarter of the second century, knows so little of Jesus or his
history as to say that the Emperor Claudius “banished all the Jews,
who were continually making disturbances, at the instigation of one
_Crestus_,” meaning Christ, we must suppose.[695] The Emperor Adrian
himself, writing still later, was so little impressed with the tenets
or importance of the new sect, that in a letter to Servianus he shows
that he believes the Christians to be worshippers of Serapis.[696]
“In the second century,” says C. W. King, “the syncretistic sects
that had sprung up in Alexandria, the very hot-bed of Gnosticism,
found out in Serapis a prophetic type of Christ as the Lord and
Creator of all, and Judge of the living and the dead.”[697] Thus,
while the “Pagan” philosophers had never viewed Serapis, or rather
the abstract idea which was embodied in him, as otherwise than a
representation of the Anima Mundi, the Christians anthropomorphized
the “Son of God” and his “Father,” finding no better model for him
than the idol of a Pagan myth! “There can be no doubt,” remarks the
same author, “that the head of Serapis, marked, as the face is,
by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the
conventional portraits of the Saviour.”[698]
In the notes taken by a traveller--whose episode with the monks
on Mount Athos we have mentioned elsewhere--we find that, during
his early life, Jesus had frequent intercourse with the Essenes
belonging to the Pythagorean school, and known as the Koinobi.
We believe it rather hazardous on the part of Renan to assert so
dogmatically, as he does, that Jesus “ignored the very name of
Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Plato;” that he had never read a Greek nor
a Buddhistic book, “although he had more than one element in him,
which, unawares to himself, proceeded from Buddhism, Parsism, and the
Greek wisdom.”[699] This is conceding half a miracle, and allowing
as much to chance and coincidence. It is an abuse of privilege,
when an author, who claims to write historical facts, draws
convenient deductions from hypothetical premises, and then calls
it a biography--a _Life_ of Jesus. No more than any other compiler
of legends concerning the problematical history of the Nazarene
prophet, has Renan one inch of secure foothold upon which to maintain
himself; nor can any one else assert a claim to the contrary,
except on inferential evidence. And yet, while Renan has not one
solitary fact to show that Jesus had never studied the metaphysical
tenets of Buddhism and Parsism, or heard of the philosophy of
Plato, his opponents have the best reasons in the world to suspect
the contrary. When they find that--1, all his sayings are in a
Pythagorean spirit, when not _verbatim_ repetitions; 2, his code of
ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life,
Essenean; and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and
his ways, those of an initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or Magian
(for the “Perfect,” who spoke the _hidden_ wisdom, were of the same
school of archaic learning the world over), it is difficult to escape
from the logical conclusion that he belonged to that same body of
initiates. It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing
upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they often are,
there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression,
whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy.
Surely, the Almighty--were it but to spare future generations their
present perplexity--might have brought down with Him, at His _first
and only_ incarnation on earth, something original--something
that would trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself
and the score or so of incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of
virgins, had all been saviours, and were either killed, or otherwise
sacrificed themselves for humanity.
Too much has already been conceded to the emotional side of the
story. What the world needs is a less exalted, but more faithful
view of a personage, in whose favor nearly half of Christendom has
dethroned the Almighty. It is not the erudite, world-famous scholar,
whom we question for what we find in his _Vie de Jesus_, nor is
it one of his _historical_ statements. We simply challenge a few
unwarranted and untenable assertions that have found their way past
the emotional narrator, into the otherwise beautiful pages of the
work--a life built altogether on mere probabilities, and yet that
of one who, if accepted as an historical personage, has far greater
claims upon our love and veneration, fallible as he is with all his
greatness, than if we figure him as an omnipotent God. It is but in
the latter character that Jesus must be regarded by every reverential
mind as a failure.
Notwithstanding the paucity of old philosophical works now extant,
we could find no end of instances of perfect identity between
Pythagorean, Hindu, and _New Testament_ sayings. There is no lack
of proofs upon this point. What is needed is a Christian public
that will examine what will be offered, and show common honesty in
rendering its verdict. Bigotry has had its day, and done its worst.
“We need not be frightened,” says Professor Müller, “if we discover
traces of truth, traces even of Christian truth, among the sages and
lawgivers of other nations.”
After reading the following philosophical aphorisms, who can
believe that Jesus and Paul had never read the Grecian and Indian
philosophers?
SENTENCES FROM SEXTUS, THE VERSES FROM THE
PYTHAGOREAN, and other NEW TESTAMENT.[700]
Heathen.
1. “Possess not treasures, but 1. “Lay not up for yourselves
those things which no one treasures upon earth.
can take from you.” where moth and rust doth
corrupt, and where
thieves break through and
steal” (_Matthew_ vi. 19).
2. “It is better for a part of 2. “And if thy hand offend
the body which contains thee, cut it off; it is
purulent matter, and better for thee to enter
threatens to infect the _unto life_ maimed, than go
whole, _to be burnt_, to hell,” etc. (_Mark_ ix.
than to continue so in 43).
_another state_ (life).”
3. “You have in yourself 3. “Know ye not ye are _the
something _similar to temple of God_, and that the
God_, and therefore use Spirit of God dwelleth in
yourself _as the temple you?” (_1 Corinthians_, iii.
of God_.” 16).
4. “The greatest honor which 4. “That ye may be the children
can be paid to God, is to of your Father, which is
know and imitate his in Heaven, be ye perfect
_perfection_.” even as your _Father is
perfect_” (_Matthew_ v.
45-48).
5. “What I do not wish men to 5. “Do ye unto others as ye
do to me, I also wish not would that others should do
to do to men” (_Analects to you.”
of Confucius_, p. 76; see
Max Müller’s _The Works
of Confucius_).
6. “The moon shines even in 6. “He maketh his sun to rise
the house of the wicked” on the evil and on the good,
(_Manu_). and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust” (_Matthew_
v. 45).
7. “They who give, have things 7. “Whosoever hath, to him
given to them; those who shall be given ... but
withhold, have things whosoever hath not, from him
taken from them” (Ibid.). shall be taken away”
(_Matthew_ xiii. 12).
8. “Purity of mind alone sees 8. “Blessed are the pure in
God” (Ibid.)--still a heart, for they shall see
popular saying in India. God” (_Matthew_ v. 8).
Plato did not conceal the fact that he derived his best philosophical
doctrines from Pythagoras, and that himself was merely the first to
reduce them to systematic order, occasionally interweaving with them
metaphysical speculations of his own. But Pythagoras himself got his
recondite doctrines, first from the descendants of Mochus, and later,
from the Brahmans of India. He was also initiated into the Mysteries
among the hierophants of Thebes, the Persian and Chaldean Magi. Thus,
step by step do we trace the origin of most of our Christian doctrines
to Middle Asia. Drop out from Christianity the personality of Jesus,
so sublime, because of its unparalleled simplicity, and what remains?
History and comparative theology echo back the melancholy answer, “A
crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan myths!”
While the mythical birth and life of Jesus are a faithful copy of
those of the Brahmanical Christna, his historical character of a
religious reformer in Palestine is the true type of Buddha in India.
In more than one respect their great resemblance in philanthropic and
spiritual aspirations, as well as external circumstances is truly
striking. Though the son of a king, while Jesus was but a carpenter,
Buddha was not of the high Brahmanical caste by birth. Like Jesus, he
felt dissatisfied with the dogmatic spirit of the religion of his
country, the intolerance and hypocrisy of the priesthood, their
outward show of devotion, and their useless ceremonials and prayers.
As Buddha broke violently through the traditional laws and rules of
the Brahmans, so did Jesus declare war against the Pharisees, and the
proud Sadducees. What the Nazarene did as a consequence of his humble
birth and position, Buddha did as a voluntary penance. He travelled
about as a beggar; and--again like Jesus--later in life he sought by
preference the companionship of publicans and sinners. Each aimed at a
social as well as at a religious reform; and giving a death-blow to
the old religions of his countries, each became the founder of a new
one.
“The reform of Buddha,” says Max Müller, “had originally much more of
a social than of a religious character. The most important element of
Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its
metaphysical theories. _That moral code is one of the most perfect
which the world has ever known_ ... and he whose meditations had been
how to deliver the soul of man from misery and the fear of death, had
delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom and from
priestly tyranny.” Further, the lecturer adds that were it otherwise,
“Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and we
should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded
him, and his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of
philosophic speculation by which India was deluged at all times.”[701]
The same with Jesus. While Philo, whom Renan calls Jesus’s elder
brother, Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel, are hardly mentioned--Jesus
has become a God! And still, pure and divine as was the moral code
taught by Christ, it never could have borne comparison with that of
Buddha, but for the tragedy of Calvary. That which helped forward the
deification of Jesus was his dramatic death, the voluntary sacrifice
of his life, alleged to have been made for the sake of mankind, and
the later convenient dogma of the atonement, invented by the
Christians. In India, where life is valued as of no account, the
crucifixion would have produced little effect, if any. In a country
where--as all the Indianists are well aware--religious fanatics set
themselves to dying by inches, in penances lasting for years; where
the most fearful macerations are self-inflicted by fakirs; where young
and delicate widows, in a spirit of bravado against the government, as
much as out of religious fanaticism, mount the funeral pile with a
smile on their face; where, to quote the words of the great lecturer,
“Men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of
Juggernâth, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in, where
the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the
door of his judge; where the philosopher who thinks he has learned all
which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the
Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other
shore of existence,”[702] in such a country even a voluntary
crucifixion would have passed unnoticed. In Judea, and even among
braver nations than the Jews--the Romans and the Greeks--where every
one clung more or less to life, and most people would have fought for
it with desperation, the tragical end of the great Reformer was
calculated to produce a profound impression. The names of even such
minor heroes as Mutius Scævola, Horatius Cocles, the mother of the
Gracchi, and others, have descended to posterity; and, during our
school-days, as well as later in life, their histories have awakened
our sympathy and commanded a reverential admiration. But, can we ever
forget the scornful smile of certain Hindus, at Benares, when an
English lady, the wife of a clergyman, tried to impress them with the
greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus, in giving _his_ life for us?
Then, for the first time the idea struck us how much the pathos of the
great drama of Calvary had to do with subsequent events in the
foundation of Christianity. Even the imaginative Renan was moved by
this feeling to write in the last chapter of his _Vie de Jesus_, a few
pages of singular and sympathetic beauty.[703]
Apollonius, a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, an
enthusiastic founder of a new spiritual school. Perhaps less
metaphysical and more practical than Jesus, less tender and perfect in
his nature, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of
spirituality, and the same high moral truths. His great mistake was to
confine them too closely to the higher classes of society. While to
the poor and the humble Jesus preached “Peace on earth and good will
to men,” Apollonius was the friend of kings, and moved with the
aristocracy. He was born among the latter, and himself a man of
wealth, while the “Son of man,” representing the people, “had not
where to lay his head;” nevertheless, the two “miracle-workers”
exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Still earlier than
Apollonius had appeared Simon Magus, called “the great Power of God.”
His “miracles” are both more wonderful, more varied, and better
attested than those either of the apostles or of the Galilean
philosopher himself. Materialism denies the fact in both cases, but
history affirms. Apollonius followed both; and how great and renowned
were his miraculous works in comparison with those of the alleged
founder of Christianity as the kabalists claim, we have history again,
and Justin Martyr, to corroborate.[704]
Like Buddha and Jesus, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy
of all outward show of piety, all display of useless religious
ceremonies and hypocrisy. If, like the Christian Saviour, the sage of
Tyana had by preference sought the companionship of the poor and
humble; and if instead of dying comfortably, at over one hundred years
of age, he had been a voluntary martyr, proclaiming divine Truth from
a cross,[705] his blood might have proved as efficacious for the
subsequent dissemination of spiritual doctrines as that of the
Christian Messiah.
The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius, were as numerous as
they were false. So late as eighteen centuries after his death he was
defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against miracles. In this the
Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical facts. If we
study the question with a dispassionate mind, we will soon perceive that
the ethics of Gautama-Buddha, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas,
and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy.
That all worshipped one God, whether they considered Him as the
“Father” of humanity, who lives in man as man lives in Him, or as the
Incomprehensible Creative Principle; all led God-like lives. Ammonius,
speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school dated from the days
of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from India. It was the same mystical
contemplation throughout, as that of the Yogin: the communion of the
Brahman with his own luminous Self--the “Atman.” And this Hindu
term is again kabalistic, _par excellence_. Who is “Self?” is asked in
the _Rig-Veda_; “Self is the Lord of all things ... all things are
contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahmân
itself is but Self,”[706] is the answer. Says Idra Rabba: “All things
are Himself, and Himself is _concealed_ on every side.”[707] The “Adam
Kadmon of the kabalists contains in himself all the souls of the
Israelites, and he is himself in every soul,” says the _Sohar_.[708]
The groundwork of the Eclectic School was thus identical with the
doctrines of the Yogin, the Hindu mystics, and the earlier Buddhism of
the disciples of Gautama. And when Jesus assured his disciples that
“the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because _it seeth
Him not_, neither knoweth Him,” dwells _with_ and _in_ them, who “are
in Him and He in them,”[709] he but expounded the same tenet that we
find running through every philosophy worthy of that name.
Laboulaye, the learned and skeptical French savant, does not believe
a word of the miraculous portion of Buddha’s life; nevertheless, he has
the candor to speak of Gautama as being _only second to_ Christ in the
great purity of his ethics and personal morality. For both of these
opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed at this
scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against
Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that “ce savant distingué n’a
point etudié cette question.”[710]
“I do not hesitate to say,” remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire,
“that, except Christ alone, there is not among the founders of
religions, a figure either more pure or more touching than that of
Buddha. His life is spotless. His constant heroism equals his
convictions.... He is the perfect model of all the virtues he
preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of
disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age
of twenty-nine, his father’s court to become a monk and a beggar ...
and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity
of a sage who practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of
having found the truth.”[711] This deserved panegyric is no stronger
than the one which Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned
des Mousseaux’s wrath. “It is more than difficult,” adds the former,
“to understand how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so
high and approached so near the truth.”[712] Curious that there should
be so many lofty souls “not assisted by revelation!”
And why should any one feel surprised that Gautama could die with
philosophical serenity? As the kabalists justly say, “Death does not
exist, and man never steps outside of universal life. Those whom we
think dead live still in us, as we live in them.... The more one lives
for his kind, the less need he fear to die.”[713] And, we might add,
that he who _lives_ for humanity does even more than him who dies for
it.
The _Ineffable name_, in the search for which so many kabalists--
unacquainted with any Oriental or even European adept--vainly consume
their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man.
This mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles,
“rushes into the infinite worlds ακοιμητω στροφαλιγγι,” can be
obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the
“small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of
God. And “when Elijah heard it he wrapped his _face in his mantle_ and
stood in the entering of the cave. And behold there came _the_ voice.”
When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the “small voice,” he used
to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed
both his feet, after having performed certain magnetic passes, and
pronounced not the “name” but an invocation well known to every adept.
Then he drew the mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or
astral spirit was free. On ordinary occasions he wore wool no more than
the priests of the temples. The possession of the secret combination of
the “name” gave the hierophant supreme power over every being, human
or otherwise, inferior to himself in soul-strength. Hence, when Max
Müller tells us of the Quichè “Hidden majesty which was never to be
opened by human hands,” the kabalist perfectly understands what was
meant by the expression, and is not at all surprised to hear even this
most erudite philologist exclaim: “What it was we do not know!”
We cannot too often repeat that it is only through the doctrines of
the more ancient philosophies that the religion preached by Jesus may
be understood. It is through Pythagoras, Confucius, and Plato, that we
can comprehend the idea which underlies the term “Father” in the _New
Testament_. Plato’s ideal of the Deity, whom he terms the one
everlasting, invisible God, the Fashioner and Father of all
things,[714] is rather the “Father” of Jesus. It is this Divine Being
of whom the Grecian sage says that He can neither be envious nor the
originator of evil, for He can produce nothing but what is good and
just,[715] is certainly not the Mosaic Jehovah, the “_jealous_ God,”
but the God of Jesus, who “alone is good.” He extols His all-embracing,
divine power,[716] and His omnipotence, but at the same time intimates
that, as He is unchangeable, He can never desire to change his laws,
_i.e._, to extirpate evil from the world through a miracle.[717] He is
omniscient, and nothing escapes His watchful eye.[718] His justice,
which we find embodied in the law of compensation and retribution,
will leave no crime without punishment, no virtue without its
reward;[719] and therefore he declares that the only way to honor God
is to cultivate moral purity. He utterly rejects not only the
anthropomorphic idea that God could have a material body,[720] but
“rejects with disgust those fables which ascribe passions, quarrels,
and crimes of all sorts to the minor gods.”[721] He indignantly denies
that God allows Himself to be propitiated, or rather bribed, by
prayers and sacrifices.[722]
The _Phædrus_ of Plato displays all that man once was, and that which
he may yet become again. “Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and
was embodied with it through the loss of his wings, he lived among the
gods in the airy [spiritual] world where everything is true and pure.”
In the _Timæus_ he says that “there was a time when mankind did not
perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits.” In the future world,
says Jesus, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage,” but “live
as the angels of God in Heaven.”
The researches of Laboulaye, Anquetil Duperron, Colebrooke, Barthelemy
St. Hilaire, Max Müller, Spiegel, Burnouf, Wilson, and so many
other linguists, have brought some of the truth to light. And now that
the difficulties of the Sanscrit, the Thibetan, the Singhalese, the
Zend, the Pehlevi, the Chinese, and even of the Burmese, are partially
conquered, and the _Vedas_, and the _Zend-Avesta_, the Buddhist texts,
and even Kapila’s _Sûtras_ are translated, a door is thrown wide open,
which, once passed, must close forever behind any speculative or
ignorant calumniators of the old religions. Even till the present
time, the clergy have, to use the words of Max Müller--“generally
appealed to the deviltries and orgies of heathen worship ... but they
have seldom, if ever, endeavored to discover the true and original
character of the strange forms of faith and worship which they call
the work of the devil.”[723] When we read the true history of Buddha
and Buddhism, by Müller, and the enthusiastic opinions of both
expressed by Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and Laboulaye; and when, finally,
a Popish missionary, an eye-witness, and one who least of all can be
accused of partiality to the Buddhists--the Abbé Huc, we mean--finds
occasion for nothing but admiration for the high individual character
of these “devil-worshippers;” we must consider Sakyâ-muni’s philosophy
as something more than the religion of fetishism and atheism, which
the Catholics would have us believe it. Huc was a missionary and it
was his first duty to regard Buddhism as no better than an outgrowth
of the worship of Satan. The poor Abbé was struck off the list of
missionaries at Rome,[724] after his book of travels was published.
This illustrates how little we may expect to learn the truth about the
religions of other people, through missionaries, when their accounts
are first revised by the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the
former severely punished for telling the truth.
When these men who have been and still are often termed “the obscene
ascetics,” the devotees of different sects of India in short, generally
termed “Yogi,” were asked by Marco Polo, “how it comes that they
are not ashamed to go stark naked as they do?” they answered the
inquirer of the thirteenth century as a missionary of the nineteenth was
answered. “We go naked,” they say, “because naked we came into
the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of this world.
Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore,
we are not ashamed of our nakedness any more than you are to show
your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh,
do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness.”[725]
One could make a curious list of the excuses and explanations of
the clergy to account for similarities daily discovered between Romanism
and heathen religions. Yet the summary would invariably lead to one
sweeping claim: The doctrines of Christianity were plagiarized by the
Pagans the world over! Plato and his older Academy stole the ideas
from the Christian revelation--said the Alexandrian Fathers!! The
Brahmans and Manu borrowed from the Jesuit missionaries, and the
_Bhagaved-gita_ was the production of Father Calmet, who transformed
Christ and John into Christna and Arjuna to fit the Hindu mind!! The
trifling fact that Buddhism and Platonism both antedated Christianity,
and the _Vedas_ had already degenerated into Brahmanism before the days
of Moses, makes no difference. The same with regard to Apollonius
of Tyana. Although his thaumaturgical powers could not be denied in the
face of the testimony of emperors, their courts, and the populations of
several cities; and although few of these had ever heard of the Nazarene
prophet whose “miracles” had been witnessed by a few apostles only,
whose very individualities remain to this day a problem in history, yet
Apollonius has to be accepted as the “monkey of Christ.”
If of really pious, good, and honest men, many are yet found among
the Catholic, Greek, and Protestant clergy, whose sincere faith has
the best of their reasoning powers, and who having never been among
heathen populations, are unjust only through ignorance, it is not so
with the missionaries. The invariable subterfuge of the latter is to
attribute to demonolatry the really Christ-like life of the Hindu and
Buddhist ascetics and many of the lamas. Years of sojourn among
“heathen” nations, in China, Tartary, Thibet, and Hindustan have
furnished them with ample evidence how unjustly the so-called
idolators have been slandered. The missionaries have not even the
excuse of sincere faith to give the world that they mislead; and, with
very few exceptions, one may boldly paraphrase the remark made by
Garibaldi, and say that: “_A priest knows himself to be an impostor,
unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood_.”