POSTSCRIPT, _Pages 387-391_

LECTURE I.

NECESSITY FOR A PROPER COMPARISON OF THE TWO RELIGIONS.

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.[1] 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 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 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.[2] 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,”[3] but

only a somewhat inflated expression by which an age, rather wise in its

own conceit, proclaims 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 ablest advocates

of Comparative Theology are not only free from antichristian prejudice,

but they protest against it as inimical to the science itself.[4] 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.”[5]

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 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.”[6] 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 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,”[7]

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 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.[8] The question in dispute after all is one of only secondary

importance, for we can hardly conceive of any one other 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.”[9] 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 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 _quod ubique, semper, et ab

omnibus_, 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.”[10] 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.[11]

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.”[12] In the estimation of its severest critics,

Buddhism must occupy a grand and exalted place in the general history of

religions.[13] 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 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.”[14] Even in

the East, however, among the classes who have most 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.[15] 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.

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 _Times

of India_,[16] 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;[17] 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 faith to gentle

Buddha’s better gospel of liberty. Mr. Alabaster’s _Modern Buddhist_

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.”[18] 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 _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, the doctrine 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.”[19] 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.”[20] This they expound in a

so-called theosophy in phraseology largely borrowed from the New

Testament, 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,[21]

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 _ennui_ 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 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,[22] 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 _Light of

Asia_, I know no better restorative than a plain exposition of primitive

Buddhism. It will be seen then that this modern fungus is a growth

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 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

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 _Ancient

Christianity_ 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 Latin

Christianity. There can be little doubt that as these religions spread

they would come in contact with and react upon each other.[23] 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 27th November as a day on which

he may be invoked for intercession.[24]

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 the two, is simply “a

product of India spoiled in its route to Palestine.”[25] 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.[26] And so are the theories elaborated by M.

Emile Burnouf in the _Science of Religions_ and by M. Ernest de Bunsen

in his _Angel Messiah of the Buddhists_. 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

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[27] 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 the Vedic word “Agni” is

equivalent to the Latin “Agnus Dei.” Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter[28] and

Professor Kuenen[29] 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 H. H. 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[30] and 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.[31]

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.[32] Our religion was well advanced in 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 St. 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.[33] 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 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.[34] Again, any one who compares the Gospel account of the life of

the Baptist with the description given in Josephus[35] 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.[36] 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 “so-called connection between Essenism and Christianity

cannot bear serious inquiry for a moment,” and in those of the learned

Bishop,[37] “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 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.[38] 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 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.[39] It is alleged with fair

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.[40] 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.[41]

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 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”[42] 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 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 B.C. 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?[43] 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 the reveries of Indian ascetics in their forest

retreats, and made the teaching of reformers like Buddha possible? And

what if to St. 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.”[44]

These suggestions, though just as worthy of consideration and support as

the theory that Christianity is either an offshoot of Vedic Brahminism

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 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 B.C. 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 far the early proclamation of the Gospel in India

influenced the development of Hinduism is by the best of judges

considered not yet settled,[45] 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 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 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.[46] 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 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 _un_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 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,”[47] 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 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.”[48] 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 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 races can terribly

decline. A state of civilisation is very difficult to keep, as well as

difficult to gain.[49] 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,[50] 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.[51] 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;[52] civilisation is not beyond the

reach of the savage. On the surface of the very highest civilisation

many things appear 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,[53] 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 theories by the facts which they allege in support of them.”[54]

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.[55] 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, 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.[56] 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,[57] 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 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 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.

St. 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 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 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.[58] 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, 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

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,[59] 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

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.”[60]

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

truth, but because it is the manifestation of a Divine life, and because

in that life it reveals the _power_ 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.”[61] 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.”

Footnote 1:

_Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Pref. xiii.

Footnote 2:

Professor Max Müller, Gifford Lectures for 1888, on _Natural

Religion_, p. 11.

Footnote 3:

T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881, “On the Origin and Growth

of Religion as illustrated by some points in the History of Indian

Buddhism,” p. 10.

Footnote 4:

Max Müller, _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 38.

Footnote 5:

John v. 39.

Footnote 6:

Baring Gould, _Origin and Development of Religious Belief_, vol. i. p.

121.

Footnote 7:

Westcott, _Victory of the Cross_, pp. 3, 6.

Footnote 8:

T. W. Rhys Davids estimates the number at five hundred millions

(_Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 6). The previous general estimate was

about four hundred millions; but Dr. A. J. 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 _Travels of Fa-Hian_, 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.

Footnote 9:

T. W. Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, pp. 4, 7; Sir Monier Williams,

_Buddhism_, p. 171.

Footnote 10:

Dr. Caird, _Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion_, Croall

Lectures, 1878-9, pp. 82 _seq._; T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures,

1881, _On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by

Buddhism_, p. 7.

Footnote 11:

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

_one_ section of the human race, it is evidently not entitled to rank

with another which proves itself influential among _all_ sections. A

religion dominant only over _inferior_ 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 _highest_. 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.

Footnote 12:

_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. i. Introd.

Footnote 13:

Köppen, _Die Religion des Buddha_, s. 231; J. Barthelemy

Saint-Hilaire, _Le Bouddha_, etc., pp. 78, 144, 181; Spence Hardy,

_Manual of Buddhism_, p. 358.

Footnote 14:

Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, p. xv, Introd.

Footnote 15:

Alabaster, _Modern Buddhist; in the Wheel of the Law_, p. 73; Trübner

and Co., 1871.

Footnote 16:

5th April 1885. In the Madras _Times_ 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.

Footnote 17:

_The Light of Asia_; _The Occult World_; _Esoteric Buddhism_;

_Theosophy of Archaic Religions_.

Footnote 18:

_Parerga_, 3d ed. i. 59.

Footnote 19:

_Westminster Review_, New Series, vol. xlviii. p. 469.

Footnote 20:

Gerald Massey, _Light_, 16th June 1883.

Footnote 21:

Among these are reckoned Adam, Fohi, Laotze, Jesus, Mohammed, and

Jenghiz Khān.—Kinnealy, _Commentary on the Apocalypse_, p. 685.

Footnote 22:

Pember, _Earth’s Earlier Ages_, p. 326.

Footnote 23:

H. H. Wilson, _Essays_, vol. ii. p. 376; Huc and Gabet, _Travel in

Tartary and Thibet_; translated by Mrs. p. Sinnett and W. Hazlitt.

Footnote 24:

_Buddhist Birth Stories_, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, vol. i

Introd. p. xli.

Footnote 25:

Foucher de Careil, _Hegel et Schopenhauer_, p. 306.

Footnote 26:

_Vie de Jésus_, p. 98, 4th ed.; Paris, 1863.

Footnote 27:

The Buddhists, as Professor Kuenen remarks, do not believe in angels,

and they have no _Messiah_. Tathagata, which Mr. de Bunsen translates

“The Coming One,” _i.e._ Messiah, means “One _who has gone_” or “has

arrived at” (Nirvana), like his predecessors. So Oldenberg, Rhys

Davids, Bigandet, Edkins, Rajendralal Mitra: see too Dr. Kellogg,

_Light of Asia and the Light of the World_, pp. 106, 107.

Footnote 28:

See for these and other curious instances his article on “The

Obligations of the New Testament to Buddhism,” _Nineteenth Century_,

Dec. 1880.

Footnote 29:

_Natural and Universal Religions_, Hibbert Lectures, 1882.

Footnote 30:

_Strom._ i. 15; Porphyry, _de Abstin._ iv. 17.

Footnote 31:

Schwanbeck, _Megasthenes Indica_, p. 20; Lassen, _Ind.

Alterthumskunde_, 209; H. H. Wilson, _Essays_, ii. p. 314 _seq._;

Reinaud, _Relations Politiques et Commerciales de l’Empire Romain avec

l’Asie Central_, Paris, 1863; Priaulx, _Travels of Apollonius and the

Indian Embassies to Rome_, Paris, 1873.

Footnote 32:

The question of the disciples in John ix. 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 (_Das Evangelium von Jesu

in seinen Verhältnissen zu Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre_) 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 St. 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 viii. 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, _Light of Asia, etc._, p. 137 _seq._, 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.

Footnote 33:

Lucius, _Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der

Askese_, Strassburg, 1880; also _Der Essenismus in seinem Verhältniss

zum Judenthum_, Strassburg, 1881.

Footnote 34:

Dissertation in Commentary on _Colossians_, pp. 119, 157.

Footnote 35:

_Jewish Wars_, ii. 8. 2-13; _Antiq._ xiii. 5. 9; xv. 10. 4, 5; xviii.

1. 2-6.

Footnote 36:

Edersheim, _Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah_, vol. i. p. 325.

Footnote 37:

Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 203.

Footnote 38:

Oldenberg, _Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde_,

translated by W. Hoey, 1882, p. 6; Williams and Norgate.

Footnote 39:

Dr. Joseph Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, pp. 250, 343; Trübner, 1880.

Footnote 40:

Fergusson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, Introduction, p. 77.

Footnote 41:

This must be read in the light of Professor Max Müller’s _What can

India teach us?_

Footnote 42:

Luke viii. 46.

Footnote 43:

Even Kuenen and Wellhausen assume as established that Monotheism shows

itself with unmistakable distinctness in Hebrew prophecies of the

eighth century B.C. (Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 119; _Theological

Review_, 1874, pp. 329, 336; _Encyc. Brit._, art. ISRAEL). Professor

H. Schultz maintains that Monotheism was established in Israel from

the time of Moses downward, among the leaders of thought at least.

(_Alttest. Theolog._, 2d ed., 1878, pp. 440, 457.)

Footnote 44:

_Light of Asia and Light of the World_, pp. 40, 102, 161.

Footnote 45:

Weber, _Indische Studien_, vol. i. p. 400; J. Muir, _Sanskrit Texts_,

p. xxxiv; Lorinser, _Bhagavadgitâ_, Appendix, translated by Muir in

_Ind. Antiq._ vol. ii. p. 283.

Footnote 46:

_Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde_, translated by Wm.

Hoey, 1882, p. 292.

Footnote 47:

Müller, Gifford Lectures, _Natural Religion_, p. 169.

Footnote 48: