This unnatural theory of life indicates the essential weakness of

Buddhism, and makes its history very instructive to Christians. In the

Church, perhaps, room may be accorded to the monastery and convent, as

long as they are sanctified by the Christian idea of self-abnegation in

the service of others, but the attempt to transform the Church into a

monastery, dominated by the Buddhist idea of abnegation of the world for

the sake of self, can only create unmitigated evil. The effect of it in

primitive Buddhism was not only to withdraw good men from the world at

the very time when its diseased condition most required the help of

their preserving salt, but the salt itself, not being used for its

natural and proper purpose, soon lost its savour. The substitution of an

artificial for a natural standard of excellence inevitably tends to

destroy even virtue. Very soon in the Sanghas active itineracy and

devout contemplation gave way to listless indolence and enervating

reverie, and there emerged a mode of life from which the great mass of

healthy men will ever revolt, as sanctioning the idea that the more

useless we become in this world the more fitted for a better we may

safely consider ourselves to be.

The Buddhist Sangha, therefore, though in no sense resembling the

Christian Church, does resemble some of its after-growths. These,

however, must be regarded as parasitical in their nature, for though fed

by its life, they do not spring from its root. In Christianity,

Monachism represents a tendency of human nature incidental to its

development rather than the essential fruit of Christian principle; but

the Buddhist idea of a true society is one essentially and completely

monastic. This one fact is sufficient to show that the similarities

discoverable between the Buddhist and Christian institutions are more

apparent than real, while the contrasts between them are found to be

deeper and more substantial the more they are examined.

The monachism of Christianity originated, it is said, in the endeavour

to reproduce the ideal of excellence represented in the life of Jesus.

In the life of Jesus there was nothing monastic. Though He appeared in

the land of the Essenes, though heralded by a solitary ascetic, though

the age was one of universal defection, when because of its corruption

it seemed impossible to live a man’s life in society, Jesus lived freely

in the world as He found it, and laid His blessing on all of it that was

natural, and on all of it that was necessary. He did not refuse to enjoy

any of the good gifts of God; He warned us against despising or throwing

them away, though He asked us to be ready, when love calls, to let them

go, or relinquish them for the good of others. He gave Himself wholly to

His mission, and He took no thought for the morrow. If He called His

apostles from their secular callings, it was not because such callings

hindered their own salvation, but because, withdrawn from them for love

of God and man, they would be freer to serve the world. We have

interpreted the Apostolate as expressing His desire that in the Church

there will always be an order devoted specially to the service of

religion, but this form of service was never meant to be regarded as the

only religious service. If one calling is consecrated, it is as one day

is consecrated, that all may be sanctified thereby. The world was never

renounced by the apostles that they might work out their own salvation;

and if they “exercised” themselves it was because self-control fitted

them to render more valuable service for man’s redemption. The

missionary zeal which drove the members of the Primitive Church all over

the world to sow the seeds of truth and love made them take no thought

of what they should eat or what they should drink; and missionary zeal

all through the Christian ages has manifested the same indifference to

the Βιωτικά of existence; but those who have been most inspired by it,

and who have found nothing impracticable in following the manner of life

which our Lord Himself led, have never deemed it the only way, or even

the highest way, of Christian service. It was that to which they felt

inwardly moved and called by the Holy Ghost, and, like the apostles,

they exhorted all others to abide in the callings wherein they were

called.

Primitive Christianity, like any other religion, was susceptible to

morbid affections, and the germs of disease with which the atmosphere

around it was charged found early a lodgment within it, and soon matured

into portentous fertility. The persecutions of the Church, the terrible

corruption of the world, the troubles and temptations consequent on the

first junction of Christianity with the Imperial Power, the mistaken

idea that the world which the Church had manifestly failed to transform,

or even preserve, was doomed, and that Christ was speedily coming in His

glory to judge it, strengthened the ascetic tendency to come out and be

separate from it.[257] By the end of the third century the deserts of

Egypt and Arabia, and the mountains of Asia Minor, were so peopled with

recluses that in one spot alone there were ten thousand men and twenty

thousand women. At the close of another century Monachism had a home in

every province of the Oriental Church, and monks and nuns formed “a

nation,” as distinct from the clergy as the clergy were from the common

believers, and in many instances they were hated and persecuted by

clergy and laity alike.[258]

The original purpose of the founders of the new institution, however,

was not to shelter mystics and visionaries, but to train soldiers and

martyrs. Solitude was not intended to be an asylum for the weak, or an

infirmary for the diseased, but an arena for the training and testing of

athletes. “Come,” says Chrysostom,[259] “and see the tents of the

soldiers of Christ. Come, behold their order of battle.” Augustine also

refers to them as “milites Christi,” even as later on they were

designated as “the chivalry of the Church” and “the paladins of God.”

Though not of the world, and being above its ways, they were yet in it

and for it. So these retreats were not only technical schools,

representing the industries essential to the well-being of man; they

were also academies for sacred studies, from which went forth champions

like Athanasius to defend the faith against the heretic, and like Basil

to defend the Church against the Empire. They were also brotherhoods of

charity, in which in self-imposed austerities men grew tender in respect

for the miseries of others, and anticipated in much more unfavourable

times the hospitals for “sick children” and “lepers” and “incurables,”

which we are inclined to regard as the peculiar products of the latest

Christian centuries.[260] Of course, early Christian Monachism had its

ridiculous extravagances, in types like the Stylites and Browsers; and

of course even its soberer types soon degenerated through over

cultivation, till it became a greater hindrance to the spread of

Christianity than all external opposition and persecution. The spirit of

piety which it originated was speedily poisoned by superstition;

theological discussion supplanted the love of earnest study; the spirit

of obedience and loyalty was superseded by that of intrigue and revolt.

So though it spread, it was not as a contagion of health, but as an

infectious disease, whose evil effects are traceable in the decrepitude

which the Oriental Church has never been able to throw off.

In the Western Church, Monachism, though less brilliant in its

beginnings than its Eastern precursor, has had a longer and healthier

course. It is not within the scope of this lecture even to sketch it, or

to analyse and tabulate its results. We live in an age which has

certainly little sympathy with the ideal of Christianity which it sought

to realise, but that is not sufficient reason that we should affect to

despise it, or imagine that we have outgrown the necessity for it. The

life of the recluse may be beyond our attainment, for we may be so

afraid to be alone, and so unable to endure “conversation with

ourselves,” that we have to take refuge in perpetual society. The

“weakness” of the old asceticism many of us have not the strength to

practise, for we are too much under the dominion of the flesh, which

they at least could master, and we are far too inclined to treat with

unnecessary tenderness what they chastised and immolated. The vows of

poverty and obedience and chastity may be the very medicine we require,

in a condition of public sentiment so unhealthy that a man’s standing,

and worth, and even life, seems to consist in the abundance of his

goods, and his freedom in licence to despise all authority and indulge

all his likings. No doubt, in the West as in the East, Monachism

eventually became an impediment to Christian civilisation, but not until

it had considerably regenerated and uplifted it. It kept before the

Church the dignity of manual labour, it wiped out the discredit

attaching to honest poverty, it proclaimed the equality of men by

treating rich and poor alike, and it proved the defender of the

oppressed, the mediator between the strong and the feeble. “We are the

poor of Christ,” says Bernard, “and the friendship of the poor makes us

the equals of kings.” Then just as unquestionably it was the pioneer of

learning and of enterprise, the guardian of law and the fosterer of

charity. There is hardly a city or populous centre in Europe which does

not owe its churches, universities, hospitals, charitable institutions,

either in their origin or growth, to the cœnobites and celibates of

former ages; and whether we acknowledge or repudiate our debt to them,

“its magnitude confronts us more imposingly the more we honestly

consider it.”

But like all unnatural segregations of human beings from society, for

which man was made, Monachism everywhere became eventually an excuse for

indolence and misanthropy; a refuge for the melancholy, and for all who

had become unfit to serve either the world or the Church. Its whole

history in the Christian Church has justified the warning of St. Paul

against artificial methods of attaining to saintliness. The vices which

beset society never lost any of their power over the recluses of the

desert or the inmates of the monastery, while many other vices were

added to the host that assailed the solitary, undefended by his

fellows.[261] “Woe to him that is alone, for when he falls there is not

another to raise him up! Woe to him that is alone, for there is no one

to keep him from falling!” are the lessons of this long mistaken attempt

to realise an undemanded standard of excellence; and yet, just because

of the consistency of its ideal with one side of Christian service,

modern Christendom, though in altered and modified forms, has not parted

with Monachism yet.

“The ideal of the Christian monk,” says Montalembert, “is that of

manhood in its purest and most energetic form—manhood intellectually and

morally superior, devoting itself to efforts greater and more sustained

than are exacted in a worldly career; and this not to make earthly

service a stepping-stone to heaven, but of life a long series of

victories for man.”[262] Surely this is the ideal of every Christian

minister truly consecrated to the service of man; yea, the ideal of

every brother or sister who, married or single, in business or society,

is trying to reach forward to the mark of our high calling. There is no

code of disabilities in the service of Christ, and the way to the

highest honours is open to all who wish to enter it, of whatever

condition or rank or mental capacity they may be. When this common ideal

was fallen from in the monastic orders, it was being realised by many

private members of the Church; when the professional Church had

falsified it, it was being upheld by so-called “men of the world”; and

therefore, as a natural consequence, when the monastic orders of

Christendom became corrupt, society, true to its better instincts, rose

up and reformed them or swept them away. There was always a large volume

of life outside the particular channel which these orders filled, to

purify it when it became foul, or to force it onward, when stagnant,

into the life of the Church.

But it was not so in Buddhism. Its lay associates, however numerous,

were but the fringes of religious communities essentially and wholly

monastic. When, therefore, deterioration or degradation in the Order set

in, reformation of it by the people was hopeless. In the Order this

deterioration showed itself earlier that its dominant ideal was lower

than the Christian. In early Christian Monachism, fortitude and devotion

all sprang from the immolation of self for the universal good. In

Buddha’s Sangha, however, though there was both devotion and fortitude

displayed, the goal to be reached was simply self-rescue. Its course of

beneficence therefore was not only shorter but shallower.

Unintentionally it wrought out social reforms, and perhaps political

revolution. It restrained luxury, and checked the unbounded sensuality

to which Indians are prone; it rebuked the earthly-minded, and witnessed

nobly of the higher interests of life to peoples that sorely needed the

testimony. It not only propagated morality, but promoted learning, and a

love of the beautiful in nature and art, but its force was eventually

exhausted. Very early it sank into the stagnation in which it has

existed for centuries, and any advance registered by the nations among

whom the institution has existed has been due, for more than a thousand

years, to the influx of Christian ideas and sentiments.

Its own methods hastened its decay. Like all Eastern religious growths,

it represented the piety of inertion. Manual labour of all kinds was

placed under the ban, and beyond attending to the cleanliness of his

person and of his lodging the Buddhist monk was not allowed to do

anything save itinerate for his maintenance and the preaching of the

law. He was instructed that every moment abstracted from meditation was

serious loss. This was in direct contradiction to the very first rule of

Christian solitary life, which even in the stifling heat of the desert

demanded manual tasks, which fasting might be said to have doubled,

continued through the long day till vespers summoned the labourers to

worship. The Buddhist monk knew neither the healthy life of physical

exertion nor the spiritual refreshment of worship. He might vindicate

his idleness against the reproaches of the industrious by the assertion

that he too in his quiet life was also “ploughing and sowing” to much

better purpose,[263] but then the effect of his ploughing and the fruit

of his sowing were all confined to himself, who alone was freed by it

from suffering. He could not answer, as the Nicæan monk and quondam

courtier replied to Valens, when challenged as to whither he was going,

“I go to pray for your empire.”[264] Augustine has indeed assured us

that “the less a monk labours in anything but prayer the more

serviceable he is to men”; but the prayer which he had in view was not

selfish. On the contrary, the tears and penitential exercises of men who

had become strangers to all personal desires “were mighty to drown sin

and purify the world.”[265] As long as monks were truly prayerful, and

nuns, like vestals, kept alive the sacred fire for every hearth, they

represented that side of the Church’s mediation which is most important

and effective; for no one can be really effective in the service of man

who is not frequent in the service of waiting upon God. The heroes of

the Christian Church, who have evangelised and civilised the wild waste

places of the world, who, like the apostle, laid aside every encumbrance

to run their race, were, like the apostle, men of much meditation and

prayer. We have no such examples in Buddhism, for it lacked the

provision which alone could nurture them. In the life of the Buddhist

monk there was probably more, and more intense meditation than in that

of the Christian, but there was a vast difference in their respective

themes of meditation. The Christian could draw his inspiration from a

source far higher and purer than himself, and in communion with the

Father, Redeemer, Sanctifier of his spirit gather a strength which

astonished the world; but what possible inspiration for endeavour could

come to a poor Buddhist monk who was chiefly occupied in contemplating

the impurity of his perishable body, and whose very highest theme of

meditation was simply “nothing whatever”?[266]

Another essential distinction between the two modes of life is disclosed

in their relation to charity. We have seen that Buddhism had no

conception of charity in the Christian sense, and that practical charity

in it was represented from a pole quite opposite to that of

Christianity. As if conscious of its defects, later Buddhism originated

faith in and hope of Maitreya, the Buddha who is next to come, and who,

as the son of love, will realise its unconscious prophecies, fulfil its

longings, and perfect all things; but notwithstanding this the Buddhist

monk continued to be the receiver, not the dispenser, of charity. His

whole merit consisted in taking what it was the merit of the layman to

offer him:[267] and the taking was all for himself and for his Order. He

had no conception of the life suggested in the saying, “As poor, yet

making many rich,” and he never could have said of his monastery that it

was “l’infirmière des pauvres.” To offer charity to others was the last

conception which he could form of his duty: yea, to clothe the naked,

take the leper from the dunghill, and help the outcast, was the very

reverse of his duty. His creed as to misery in this being the fruit of

evil done in a former existence, cut him off from that service of the

lost and fallen which in Christendom has been accounted glorious, and

for the rendering of which, several of its monastic institutions have

been spared the penalty of their corruption.

The charity which the Buddhist monk practised was in his preaching and

exposition of the law for the deliverance of the multitudes. And that

this may be the very highest form in which benevolence can express

itself all Christians must admit, for the greatest gift which any man

can bestow is the truth which makes one free. Buddhist monk and

Christian missionary alike proclaimed a gospel for the redemption of

men; and as the gospel of Christ’s salvation brings ever many blessings

in its train, so the preaching of the mendicant Buddhist was attended

with material beneficial results to those who heard and believed it. The

Buddhist, however, while expounding the law for the rescue of the

individual, never laboured, like the Christian missionary, for his

temporal and social improvement. His message had no promise for the life

that now is, and consequently he never seems to have played the part so

nobly sustained by many of the monks of Christendom—that of defending

the oppressed and befriending the helpless. He never, so far as can be

gathered from the texts, proclaimed the equality of men in the same way

and for the same purpose as a Christian reformer would preach it.

Theoretically, he maintained the right of all classes to be admitted to

the brotherhood, but Dr. Oldenberg has asserted that “in the composition

of the Order a marked leaning to the existing aristocracy was

observable.”[268] Buddha never had occasion to confess with the

Christian apostle “that not many noble, not many mighty, were called,”

nor had his Order ever to bear the reproach of the Church, that its

members were recruited from the lowest strata of society. The references

to his disciples from the first all indicate people of rank and wealth

and education. It is not implied that persons of humble origin would

have been rejected had they come, only that “the scriptures afford no

evidence that they did come”; and yet they yield unmistakable evidence

that, as the Order prospered, all lepers, cripples, blind, or one-eyed

persons, all who were deaf and dumb, all who were consumptive or subject

to fits, were rejected.[269] The Order was for the reputable, the noble,

and especially for the religious, for the Brahman votary, and Sraman

seeker after truth. These again were all attracted to it; they were not

sought out as by the Christian Church. Not for one moment would Christ

allow the Church to become select. He not only welcomed all

penitents—for all men needed salvation, and the poorest and the

guiltiest were most in need of it,—but He sent forth His apostles to

seek and gather them, and in order to reason down all natural fears,

based on the personal unworthiness of these outcasts of society, they

were instructed to “compel them to come in.”[270]

Of propagandism in this sense the Buddhist Sangha knew nothing. It was

moved by no enthusiasm of humanity; it felt nothing of that earnestness

which from the days of the apostles has characterised the true

propagators of the gospel. In no discourse that has come down to us is

there any impassioned entreaty of men to repent and believe. There is no

sorrow over the unbelieving who refuse their salvation, no burning

indignation against those who despise or who scoff at the truth. In

Buddha’s last view of the world there is no weeping as over Jerusalem,

reprobate because of its wickedness, and in none of his successors do we

find any trace of the apostle’s willingness to be anathema for the sake

of his brethren.

This tolerant spirit of Buddhism, however, has been contrasted, as

greatly in its favour, with that alleged intolerance which Christianity

is supposed to have inherited from Judaism. We must remember that

Christianity must be judged as it is presented in Christ, and not by His

professing followers, who have often misrepresented Him. Of hypocrisy,

cruelty, deceit, Christ was indeed intolerant, but toward error and

misbelief, because of ignorance, He was very compassionate. Christianity

would make no compromise, again, with false systems of heathendom. It

would have no peace save through victory; it would not accept a place in

the Pantheon for its Lord, and it was content to be persecuted till He

was allowed to rule from the throne of the world. The alleged

intolerance of Christianity, therefore, is simply its conviction of the

infinite importance and value to all men of the truth which compels it

to be propagandist. Now if Buddhism tolerates everything, it is because

it is not sure about anything, but, on the contrary, is in doubt about

everything. It is essentially sceptical, “raising the rejection of every

affirmation to the rank of a principle.”[271] Earnestness in a preacher

of sceptical quietism was an impossibility. He had no heart touched with

the feeling of heavenly love, wounded by sin, impelling him to proclaim

forgiveness, and he had no such hearts to appeal to. The Christian

missionary appeals to soul and conscience in name of a Saviour crucified

for sin; the Buddhist missionary only appealed through the intellect to

self-interest. His preaching was purely didactic, expository, and

advisory in character. He was at best a theologian or moral philosopher

teaching the ignorant, and not a preacher aiming at the conviction of

sinners, endeavouring, with his whole heart and strength and mind, to

sway them to conversion.[272] He never experienced the almost consuming

glow and fervour of inspiration which made the apostles agonise in their

mission. “Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” “I

pray you, in Christ’s stead, Be ye reconciled to God.” As might have

been expected, the early enthusiasm of Buddhists for the enlightenment

of others soon died out, and its missionary spirit, once spent, has

never undergone a true revival. It can boast of many ecclesiastics and

philosophers, but for hundreds of years it cannot point in its

honour-roll to either a Xavier or a Livingstone. It has long ago ceased

to be aggressive. At this day no Oriental Buddhist seriously

contemplates becoming a missionary. Paris may add to its attractions and

curiosities a real Buddhist temple,[273] but the priests who officiate

in it, however devoted they may be to their cult, will certainly never

dream of taking the trouble of preaching it in the streets.

In the Church of the middle ages, supposed to consist only of pope and

bishops and clergy and monks and nuns, of which mediævalism a remnant

survives in those who speak of “entering the Church,” not when as

children they are baptized into its communion, but when they are to be

ordained to service in it, we must look for any resemblance to the

Buddhist Sangha. In ancient India, a church, meaning the fellowship of

the faithful in its totality, was an impossibility. Brahmanism had no

church, and never attempted a conversion, but Buddha in seeking to

rescue others from evil, and in offering a place of escape which they

were free to accept or reject, created not a church but a precursor of

one.[274] Admission into his Brotherhood was at first open to all who

requested it, but as disciples crowded around him, and parents

complained that they were bereaved of their children, and masters that

they were robbed of their slaves, and creditors that they were deprived

of what was owing by their debtors, and even the judges that criminals

escaped the prison; and when accusations grew frequent and loud that the

new movement would ruin households, injure the State, and depopulate the

country, restrictions were devised. Gradually conditions were imposed by

which all who were diseased, or criminals, or soldiers, or debtors, or

slaves, or children under fifteen years of age, or youths under twenty

who had not received their parents’ consent, were disqualified.[275] At

first the disciple was admitted without any ceremony, beyond that of

shaving the whole head, and putting on the yellow robes which

distinguished the ascetic and the recluse, but eventually a rite of

initiation was adopted, which in Ceylon has continued substantially

unaltered to this day.

It consisted of two stages;[276] the first that of the novitiate into

which a candidate could be received by any fully accredited monk. The

ceremony was called the Pabbagga, or “outgoing,” a word used from old

time to describe the last act of a pious Brahman, when, warned by

approaching age, he gave up his possessions to his family, and left them

to enter upon the hermit life of meditation. The Buddhists naturally

adopted it to mark the first step by which a layman at any age exchanged

the secular for the religious life. It was a confession that he desired

to be done with the world, to put off the old man with his deeds and to

put on the new. So with head and face completely shaven, and holding

three lengths of yellow cotton cloth, first torn to render them

valueless, and then sewed together, he presented his petition three

times, that “the reverend monks would take pity on him, and invest him

with the robes, that, like them, he might escape sorrow.” The presiding

monk then tied the clothes around his neck, repeating sentences

regarding the perishable nature of the body, and the petitioner retired.

When he reappeared he had laid aside the loin-cloth, generally the only

article of raiment in tropical lands, and had assumed the new

investiture of the two under-garments and the loose robe, which covered

the whole body, except the right shoulder, of a Buddhist mendicant.

Three times, thus clothed, in “robes of humility and religion,” in

reverential salaam to the monk or monks present, he made public

confession that he took refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and receiving

instructions as to conduct and duty, he became a Sramanera, a bachelor

as it were, a monk of lower degree.

When the novice who had thus “gone forth” from the world, or from the

membership of another fraternity, had “seen the truth, mastered the

truth, understood the truth, penetrated the truth; when he had overcome

uncertainty, dispelled all doubts, was dependent on nobody else for his

knowledge of the doctrines of the Teacher,”[277] he presented himself

before the Order, of whom ten members at least had to be in session, and

reverentially cowering on the ground with his hands clasped on his

forehead, he three times entreated them “to take pity upon him and draw

him out of the evil world by granting him Upasampada” or the “arrival”

initiation rite.[278] Then followed his examination as to whether he was

qualified[279] in his person, his health, his social and civil

relations, whether he had provided an alms-bowl and the yellow robes,

what was his own name, and that of the teacher with whom he was to

consort, and whom he was to serve during a course of five years’

instruction in the whole doctrine and discipline of the system. If the

answers to all these questions were satisfactory, the resolution to

receive him was formally put by the presiding monk, and thrice repeated:

“Whosoever of the venerable is for granting Upasampada to this novice,

with brother So-and-so for his teacher, let him be silent.” When no

dissent was intimated the resolution was passed. “The Sangha is in

favour of it, therefore it is silent—thus I understand,” said the

president, and the novice became a Samana, a fully accredited member of

the Order of Bikkhus.

There was certainly nothing of the Church in all this ceremony, and Sir

Monier Williams very properly guards us from applying to it the sacred

word of ordination.[280] Any one who cares to read the texts in which

the proceedings are described will be inclined to think that the

questions put to the novice, in their childishness and absurdity, seem

diabolically framed to caricature the solemn and soul-searching

questions addressed to candidates for the Holy Ministry. Yet in the

instruction given to the newly admitted member, concerning the “four

chief forbidden acts” from which he must abstain, and “the four

resources”[281] in which he was to trust, there was a touch of the

solemnity which belongs to the charge which follows Christian

ordination. The monk was reminded that in regard to what was pleasant

and permissible to other men he had subjected himself to self-denial and

a yoke. He might receive from the pious, without offence, offerings of

food and clothing, and medicine and shelter, but he must be prepared for

the hard life of one whose food might only be scraps and refuse put into

his bowl, whose clothing might have to be made of cast-off rags, whose

shelter might often be the tree in the jungle or the cave in the rock,

and whose medicine might be only the foul deposit of the cattle-pen. He

was warned that any breach of the four cardinal precepts—against

unchastity, which to him meant what to others was the lawful estate of

marriage, against theft, even of a blade of grass, against murder, even

to the crushing of a flea, against assumption of virtues not really

possessed,—would necessitate expulsion from the Order. “For even as a

man whose head is cut off cannot live with the trunk; ... as a dry leaf

separate from the stalk can never again become green; ... as a stone

split in two cannot be made into one; ... as a palm whose top is

destroyed cannot again grow, so the monk who breaks the least of these

laws is no longer a Samana, no longer a follower of the

Sakya-putta.”[282]

To the credit of Buddha, however, it must be observed, that a monk who

had entered the Order was at any time free to withdraw from it. If he

had a hankering after home, or the pleasures of the old life which he

had forsaken, he was exhorted to confess his weakness and renounce a

vocation which he had found too high for him. He had simply to declare

before a witness that he renounced Buddha, Dharma, Sangha—yea, he could

go forth without making any declaration at all. Freely as he had joined,

as freely could he abandon the brethren; no anger was expressed or even

felt; no discredit attached to him, for the working out of his

deliverance was his own concern. Yea, if at any time he repented of his

action, and desired to renew with the companions of wiser days the

relation of votary or novice, he was not subjected to any discipline,

such as a lapsed member of the Church might be expected to undergo when

seeking re-communion. He was treated upon his confession as though his

past had not been remembered, and as if his folly or fault had never

been committed.[283] Such facility of withdrawal and readmission seemed

to tend to laxity, and may have occasioned very great abuses, but on the

very face of it, it appears calculated to preserve monastic life in

India in a much healthier condition than has always prevailed in the

recluse institutions of Christendom. In how many cases has the monastery

become worse than a prison, and the convent become a very chamber of

tortures, because occupied by reluctant tenants, who have been cruelly

immured in them against their will, or have thoughtlessly devoted

themselves to a vocation for which they were totally unfit. The Eastern

sage may even have shown greater wisdom than the Western bishops and

presbyters, who have bound over for life those admitted to a sacred

profession, so that freedom from it can only be got by ignominious

expulsion, and by degradation for a fault or a crime.

The Sangha from the first was an order of Cœnobites, not Solitaries, and

it was an exception for a mendicant to be alone; for with his practical

insight Buddha seems to have discovered that the life of solitude has

more disadvantages and dangers than that of fellowship. So he ordained

that the newly admitted monk must attach himself for five years to a

tutor and teacher,[284] one of whom must have been ten years in the

Order, rendering to them such personal offices as Elisha rendered to

Elijah, and receiving such parental instruction as St. Paul bestowed

upon his son in the faith. No vow of obedience, so essential to the

monastic rule of Christendom, unless in regard to the laws of the Order,

was exacted. No man could be called Rabbi among them, for the knowledge

which brought deliverance could be and must be acquired by each man for

himself.[285] A monk was expected to reverence his superior in age and

knowledge, but his obedience was to be rendered not to his brother, who

was simply his equal in respect of need and capability of deliverance,

but only to _The Law_ which alone could secure it.

While obedience to a superior was not exacted, the law of poverty and

chastity was as obligatory upon the Buddhist monk as on the members of

the Christian Orders. Francis of Assisi could not more highly have

eulogised poverty as “the way to salvation, the nurse of humility, the

root of perfection,” than did the Indian monks who compiled the Buddhist

scriptures. “In supreme felicity live we, though we call nothing our

own. Feeding on happiness, we are like the gods in the regions of

light.”[286] Food a monk could receive, but not ask for, and of what he

so received he could only have one meal a day. Gold or silver he could

on no account accept, though he might accept its equivalents in food or

medicine. If like Achan’s wedge it was found to have been secreted by

any covetous member, one of the brethren had to hide it away in the

jungle, in a place which could not again be recognised. Bitter

controversies regarding this prohibition seem to have exercised the

primitive Sanghas, and though it was successfully maintained for long,

concessions in relation to it were eventually agreed upon. These however

proved as fatal to the prosperity of the Buddhist, as similar

concessions proved to that of the Western monastic establishments. They

were seeds of evil which speedily grew up into thickets of trouble. The

individual member professed to observe the original law and maintain the

principle that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of his

goods,” but the several fraternities came speedily to abound in lands

and property of every kind, so that in the East as in the West it may be

said the monasteries fell, because crushed with their weight of wealth.

Even while the primitive rule was observed the mendicants could easily

procure what of the necessaries of food and shelter and clothing they

required; the jungle gave them all the shelter they needed, though it

exposed them to frequent perils of being poisoned by snake-bites, and

devoured by beasts. The rains put an end periodically to their

peregrinations, and gathered the twos and threes who had been

associating together into common retreat in the viharas. These

originally were intended to be only temporary shelters from the annual

floods, but as by degrees the system extended into distant regions, they

became permanent institutions, each one a centre of influence in its own

territory, like the abbeys in the original dioceses of mediæval Europe.

Life in a Buddhist vihara two thousand years ago must however have been

very different from life in a monastic establishment in the middle ages.

Labour, as we have seen, of no kind was allowed, either among them or

for them. “A monk who digs the earth or causes it to be dug is liable to

punishment.”[287] Scant time was allowed for sleep, and when there were

no books to read or transcribe, the studies or literary occupations of

the West were out of the question. All the intellectual energies were

claimed for the repetition of such sacred works as they knew, and for

the committing to memory of others which they had only acquired.

Examination of self, meditation on the five principal themes which

occupied the place of prayer or devotion in their system, was expected

to absorb the most of the day. Notwithstanding its intervals of

instruction and discussion, it must have been a very vacant life indeed,

lacking entirely the worship, and most of the duties, which rendered

monastic life in Christendom, if not always profitable, at least

supportable.

Two outstanding features of it, however, compare very favourably with

some forms of the ascetic life both in India and Europe. In the Buddhist

Sanghas would be witnessed neither the slovenliness nor the dirtiness

which has often been associated with the life of those who have

renounced the world and have professed to despise its pleasant things.

Around them,

“Besmeared with mud and ashes, crouching foul,

In rags of dead men, wrapped about their loins,”[288]

were many solitaries endeavouring to gain perfection or exhibit it, in

types more conform to Nebuchadnezzar in his madness or the demoniacs who

had their dwellings in the tombs. Buddha condemned uncleanliness in all

its forms. The robes which he enjoined his monks to wear may have been

made up of rags picked up from a dunghill or from a cemetery, but they

were scrupulously washed, properly dyed, and carefully mended. The

ground all round the vihara, as well as its floors within, had to be

swept every day, and its every item of furniture had to be punctually

dusted and garnished. His monks were Pharisees in regard to the washing

of hands and bowls and other utensils, and they anticipated our modern

demand for proper ventilation.[289] A Buddhist mendicant of the days of

King Asoka might prove a good model of personal neatness and domestic

tidiness for many a Christian minister in these days of Queen Victoria.

He belonged to an Order originally founded by a man who was in every

sense a gentleman, and which for long numbered among its members many

noble and even princely men. Inheriting their instincts, he stoutly

maintained their traditions, that “neither plaited hair, nor dirt, nor

lying on the earth, nor rubbing with dust, can purify a mortal who has

not overcome desires”; “that he who, though well dressed, exercises

tranquillity, is quiet, subdued, restrained, chaste, and has ceased to

find fault with all other beings, he is indeed a Brahmana, a Sramana, a

Bikkhu.”[290]

Again, in these old pictures of Buddhist Sangha life, there is no

reflection of that insane passion for suffering which marked the gaunt

and self-mutilated Yogis around them, and which also distinguished many

of the ascetics of Christendom. The flagellations, and lacerations, and

macerations which at one time became popular in European monasteries,

and which made even a man like the founder of the Franciscan Order

refuse food and sleep for days together, spend whole nights in winter up

to the neck in snow or water, put ashes in the meals which had been

cooked for him, would not for an hour have been tolerated; yea, they

would have been laughed out of the world by Buddha and his monks.

Wherever they went, they encountered grievous companies of

“Eyeless and tongueless, sexless, crippled, deaf:

The body by the mind being thus stripped

For glory of much suffering, and the bliss

Which they shall win,”[291]

but they never seem to have been tempted to give way to this

intoxication which was supposed to make men gods. Self-denial was

essential, but severe austerities and bodily penance were strongly

discouraged. “Blooming, well-fed, with healthy colour and skin,” is the

description often given in the old texts of a model Bikkhu. Buddha, when

first met by the Brahman sages after his illumination, surprised them by

the serenity of his countenance, the purity and brightness of his

complexion. Among the first salutations addressed to the brethren on

their return from their wanderings was the question whether they had

been well fed.[292] It is true some Buddhist saints might be found

sitting for days in the burning sun, oblivious to its fiery torments,

but these must have been exceptions, for there is no mistaking either

the teaching or the life of Buddha himself. All these extravagant

cruelties, by which men have abused or sought to destroy the most

beautiful organism and the most perfect instrument which has ever been

produced in this world, were by him regarded as foolish and dangerous,

and as debasing as the sensualism which they sought to avoid.

Though we have hitherto referred to the Buddhist Order, it is hardly

correct to think of it as just one community. Though theoretically the

Sangha of Buddha was the ideal unit, practically it never became so.

After his decease there was no central governing power to direct and

inspire the whole organisation. The patriarchs, of whom a long

succession is given, were not hierarchs in the Greek or Latin

sense.[293] They were simply outstanding Arhats, the heroic defenders

and apostles of the system. Primitive Buddhism was represented not by

one but by many Sanghas, for each brother as he went forth became the

centre of a new fraternity. Its original cultus was based on the idea

that community of aim would suffice to gather the knots of people who

lived near each other for mutual confession and instruction and

discipline. So they continued a custom which had come down from their

Vedic ancestors, who, in the four days of the lunar month, when the moon

is new, or full, or half-way between the two, celebrated the fast

preparatory to the offering of the intoxicating Soma. The Buddhists had

neither fast, nor sacrifice, nor offering, nor any form of religious

worship whatever, but in these days they gathered for careful

examination of themselves in the light of the Prohibitions, for public

confession one to another, and for discipline. For these weekly

gatherings the manual of the Pâtimokkha or Disburdenment was composed,

it is averred, by Buddha himself.[294] To this public catechising and

purgation of the Roll all the brethren had to come; even a sick man was

only excused when he could assure the assembly, through a sponsor, that

he was clean of fault, and if no brother was available for this office

the assembly had to adjourn to meet at his couch. Its president, who

also summoned the brethren, was the monk of the longest standing among

them. So far it seemed to anticipate our principle of Presbyterian

parity, but, like Convocation, it was an exclusively ecclesiastical

gathering, for neither nun, nor novice, nor layman was allowed to be

present. Like our presbyteries when applying their privy censures, they

expected to be “alone.” Then, when all were reverentially placed, in

presence of no heart-searching God, but before one another, there was

recited by the president the order of confessional, according to the

rule that if there was no transgression there was no interruption, and

silence indicated innocence.

First came the recitation of the gravest offences: the four Pârâgikâ

renounced upon their admission, commission of any one of which involved

expulsion from the Order. Then came the list of the less serious

transgressions—Samghâdisesas, involving temporary degradation, and

lastly that of the Pâkittya, or venial faults, which were atoned for by

simple confession. It was a lengthy, minute, ill-arranged form of

inquisition, more comprehensive and rigid than any catechism of the

confessional which Romanism ever devised.[295] It out-phariseed the

Pharisees in its trivialities and repetitions and straining out of

gnats, and no manual of the cloister ever discovered, could equal its

disgusting details of every conceivable form of unnatural vice supposed

to be perpetrable by the brethren.[296] It reads more like a suggestion

to sin than a defence against temptation. We can understand from it

alone, how impossible it was for Buddhism to live up to its true

principles, how incapable it was of urging on the steady moral progress

of the race, and of even realising the example of its founder. Life’s

whole strength was wasted in watching against petty and artificial

transgressions, so that none was available for the prosecution of real

duty. Yet if deliverance was to come by the law, the most trivial

details of action had to be tried; but here, as elsewhere, by the law

was only the knowledge of sin, and that not as an offence against an

infinitely Holy One, but only as a misfortune, or at worst an

imprudence, a stumbling-block placed by man himself in the way of

advancing his interest.

At the close of the rainy season, when the brethren were making ready

for their wanderings, another solemn conference for self-purgation was

held. In this exercise of the Pâvârana or Invitation no one known to be

under the burden of scandal could take part, but all who were

consciously clean, from the oldest to the youngest, invited the brethren

to name any offence which during their common retreat they might have

noted in their conduct. “I invite, venerable ones, the Order; if ye have

seen anything offensive on my part, or have heard anything, or have any

suspicion about me, have pity upon me, and name it. If I see it, I will

make amends.”[297] It may be asked whether such an institution as this

could ever have flourished in Christendom, although the purest of our

Churches might adopt it with profit. These Buddhist brethren could not

pray the one for the other, but they could confess their faults one to

another by a simpler and more effective method than has ever been

attempted by the confessional. That institution in Christendom has

tended more to corrupt and degrade than to purify and elevate society,

for it has interfered with the divinely instituted and much more ancient

confessional of home. In its secrecy, sealed by affection to father or

mother, or brother or sister, can be told out the things that burn

within; and no priest or ecclesiastic can usurp this parental or

brotherly function without injuring what they must earnestly desire to

protect. This confessional, however, of the one to the whole little

brotherhood, making them watch for and consider one another, must have

tended to mutual edification. It seems of all the observances of the

Sangha to have most nearly realised one great purpose of the Church,

that of being helpful to each other’s salvation. St. Paul and St. James

would have felt at home in such a conference. They would probably have

warned the brethren against judging one another, and they would have

instructed them that only One whose knowledge is perfect, because His

love is infinite, could try the lives of men; but they would have

commended them for this honest endeavour to fulfil one of the precepts

of the perfect law of liberty: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a

fault, ye who are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of

meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”

The part played by woman in the early history of Buddhism was analogous

to that assumed by woman in relation to primitive Christianity. Women

were among the most zealous supporters of Buddha, ministering to him of

their substance. Subsequently, as in the case of the Christian Church,

the largest proportion of the wealth which was lavished in such

marvellous munificence upon the Order came from female votaries.

Evidently in those days in India the position of woman was not so

degraded and helpless as it afterwards became. Women in old Indian

literature are seen to be much more on an equality with men; they are

not only represented as receiving scholastic instruction, but even to

them as authoresses some of the Vedic hymns were ascribed.[298] At any

rate, women appear in almost every Buddhist episode, and they move about

with a freedom which contrasts strangely with the seclusion and

restraint in which in India they have lived for ages. In the character

of Buddha there seems to have been much that was peculiarly attractive

to the best type of women, and at least one of these stands forth with

very clearly marked individuality.[299] His mother is only a shadow in

the legends, and we can only conjecture what the parent of so good and

gentle a man must have been. But his wife confronts us with so much that

is womanly in the picture that we feel she must have been drawn from

life. Very pathetic and tender is the graphic account of her first

interview with him, upon his return as the illustrious Buddha to his

father’s house.[300] When all came to do him honour, Yasodhara did not

come, for she said, “If I am of any value in his eyes, he will come

himself, and I can welcome him better here.” Buddha, noting her absence,

went attended by two of his disciples to the place where she was, and he

warned his companions not to prevent her should she seek to embrace him,

although no member of the Order could touch or be touched by a woman.

And when she saw him, a mendicant in yellow robes, with shaven head and

face—though she knew it would be so—she could not contain herself, but

fell at his feet, which she held, passionately weeping. Then remembering

the great and impassable gulf which he had fixed between them, she rose

and stood at his side. His father sought to apologise for her, telling

how in the greatness of her love she mourned and afflicted her soul for

loss of him, and refused to be comforted. She became his disciple; and

when afterwards, much against his inclination, he admitted women into a

separate branch of the Order, the poor wife, whom he had not only

widowed, but had bereft of her only child, “passed into the silent

life,” as one of the first of Buddhist nuns.

All candid readers of the early Buddhist scriptures will admit that

Buddha must not only have been gentle in disposition but pure in

character. From male and female disciples alike he demanded chastity, in

the Christian conception of the virtue. In the reported discourses of

Buddha there is the same absence of direct denunciation of the vices

that corrupt society which is observable in the Gospels; but the

impression made by the reading of both narratives, is that of characters

so far removed from such vices, that people in their presence or under

their influence could not even think of them. In both narratives we have

presentations of “women who were sinners” in relation to Buddha and

Christ, but it will be confessed that the effect produced upon us is

very different in each case. The Indian episodes lack the stirrings of

the depths of spiritual feeling, the creative word of command exorcising

the lust, and unsealing the long congealed fountains of penitence, which

confront us so prominently in the scenes of the gospel. Buddha was a

pure man, demanding purity from all who would be saved, but demanding it

only as moralists have demanded it all along. There did not radiate from

him that blending of horror of sin and of pity for sinners which makes

the influence of Christ upon the wickedness and infirmities of men to be

unique in its regenerative power. Had Christ insisted upon purity just

as Buddha did, the world would have profited little by the teaching.

Unquestionably the mission of Buddha, though intended to make for

chastity, has not purified Eastern Asia from the gross and unnatural

vices to which all along it has been prone.

For Buddha’s conception and estimate of woman was very inferior to that

of Christ.[301] She was regarded by him through the medium of the

traditional prejudice of her inferiority to man in every respect. To

him, as to Plato, women, of all snares which the tempter spreads for

man, were the most dangerous. Not only was the very smallest love for

them to be destroyed, but they were to be avoided, not to be spoken to,

not looked upon,[302] not to be helped even when in distress. Of their

future as women in the life hereafter he had no hope,[303] and the only

reward which he could hold out to them for obedience or benevolent

service, the very highest object of aspiration which he could present,

was that they might be re-born as men in another stage of existence. His

disciple Ananda did good service when he wrung from him permission to

form the order of Nuns,[304] for a nun might hope for salvation; but

alas for woman and for the progress of society if she had no other

gospel to trust in than that which Buddha preached!

His ideal of purity was from the first vitiated by his celibate views of

life, and from these views human nature has always revolted in

proportion to the honesty with which men have striven to realise them.

Celibacy, when dominant or prevalent, has only produced a more vicious

and unnatural condition of society than that from which it attempted to

escape. The Son of Man represented nobler traditions, and taught far

sublimer doctrine. Woman, though different from, and in some respects

weaker, is in others higher and purer than man, and altogether his

consort. The pure love of the man for the woman was recognised by Christ

as one of the most sanctifying influences in life; and marriage, the

most sacred of all Divine institutions, as the bond which more than any

other keeps society together, obtained His special benediction, and was

committed by Him to His Church to guard as the palladium of social

freedom and dignity. Notwithstanding its many defections, the Church has

never been permitted to lose sight of the Lord’s ideal. Even in the days

of corrupted faith, when its laudation of virginity was most

extravagant, its unmistakable tendency was to acknowledge the true

dignity of the wife.[305] A recent writer professes to be unable “to see

that Christianity has had any favourable effect on the position of

women—on the contrary, it tended rather to lower their character and

contract the range of their activities.”[306] It is noticeable that his

facts or quotations are drawn from a period when asceticism had deeply

tainted the Church, and that they cannot be held to represent the

tendency of the teaching of Christ. The unmistakable influence of His

religion has been to ennoble family relations, and to secure woman in

her true position as the companion and helpmeet of man. It has been

stated by one who cannot be regarded as a special pleader, that what

most differentiates the European from the Hindu branch of the Aryan

race, is that the first has steadily carried forward, for the elevation

of woman, the series of reforms[307] from which the other, though going

a little way, recoiled. No one need fear to assert that the chief factor

in these reforms, sometimes carried against the resistance and

opposition of the Church, was the spirit of Christianity. In proportion

as the example of Christ has been honoured, and His teaching has been

accepted and obeyed, the emancipation of woman and the recognition of

her real rights have been secured. In any case it is certain that the

religion of Buddha, though probably not intended to perpetuate the

inferior position characteristic of woman in the East, has succeeded

neither in lifting her out of it, nor in preventing her from lapsing

more deeply into it.

The time for discovering the worth of woman had not come in Buddha’s

age, and we must remember his antecedents and surroundings before we

condemn his estimate of or his relations to her. If the tradition be

reliable, he prophesied, upon yielding to Ananda’s intercession, that

because of women holy living would not long be preserved. They would

prove in the fair field of his Order what “the disease of mildew proved

to be in a field of rice.”[308] So though he admitted them to a separate

branch of the Order, he placed them under very stringent regulations,

and thoroughly under the tutelage of the monks. “A nun, though admitted

a nun a hundred years ago, must bow reverentially before a monk, though

only admitted to-day.” She must not pass the rainy season in a district

in which monks were not residing; she must report herself twice a month

to the Sangha for confession and instruction; she must give the Pavâranâ

invitation, and she must, if guilty of offence, atone for it before both

monks and nuns. She could only be admitted after a two years’ novitiate;

under no circumstances must she revile or rebuke a monk; yea, on no

occasion whatever must she charge him with any offence.[309] Between

them and the superior sex the strictest separation was maintained from

the first. The brother who was to teach and exhort them was never

allowed to enter their nunnery, unless a sister was very ill. For a monk

to journey alone with a nun, to cross a river in the same boat with one,

to sit alone with a nun, with or without witnesses, was a very grave

offence.[310] In short, in the Buddhist Sangha women were only tolerated

at the best, and they were very severely guarded and restrained, as

creatures not at all calculated to influence any one for good, and who

could only be prevented or tamed from doing mischief or harm.[311]

The Sangha, as a brotherhood and sisterhood leading a celibate life,

coupled with abstinence from labour and from active services of charity,

was simply vicious in its tendency, and it proved one of the most

obstinate hindrances to the realisation of Buddha’s best ideas, and one

of the most powerful factors in the degradation of his religion. Human

nature was too strong to submit to such artificial restrictions; so very

early there gathered around him and his monks many who would not abandon

their families and their callings, though they took refuge in Buddha,

and proved the reality of their devotion by faithful service of the

Order and practice of the Law. These were the votaries, “upasaka”

(masc.), “upasika” (fem.), corresponding with the lay associates of the

great Mendicant Orders of Christendom. Converted to the observance of

the precepts, they could only, as long as they continued in the world,

be sustained by a very faint and far-off hope of deliverance.

Theoretically they might attain to sainthood, and from “this shore” of

common life, in most exceptional cases they might “pass across the

dominion of death,” and reach to the other shore.[312] The father of

Buddha is said to have done so on his deathbed, and another is recorded

in the legends as having gained Nirvana.[313] As a rule, however, it was

reckoned impossible for them to gain what was considered as so barely

possible for the Order of Mendicants, that only one or two even of them

did actually gain it here. Pious votaries, however, could hope for a

happy re-birth, and for strength of merit to be acquired; in some

hereafter sufficient to enable them eventually to pluck the fruit of

Nirvana. For such lay associates no ceremony of initiation was required;

only in presence of a monk the candidates made profession that they took

refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. They had to observe certain

precepts and prohibitions; had to renounce any trade involving the

making or selling of arms, or the killing of animals; they had to

abstain from all traffic in and use of intoxicating drinks, and to put

far away from them all falsehood, and theft, and unchastity. To seal

this, however, no formal vow was demanded of the votary, and to maintain

them in their obedience no pastoral supervision was accorded. When they

transgressed, even in the matter of scandalous living, there was neither

censure nor discipline, and when they offended by injuring the Order or

insulting one of its members, the only penalty inflicted was the refusal

of their invitations to dine, and the withdrawal from them of the

alms-bowl.[314] Into the Uposatha assemblies they dared not intrude, and

from the very slightest share of the business of the Order they were

strictly excluded.[315] They could only listen to the preaching of the

monks, whom they could feed, and lodge, and endow with houses and lands;

and all the reward they could hope for, was the prospect of acquiring in

some future life merit sufficient to enable them to renounce the world

and become mendicants like them. For the present they were not inside,

but only about, the circle of the Sakkya-putta-Samanas; he was not a

member of the family, but only a servitor and a slave.[316] The elect,

the disciples in deed and in truth, the heirs of salvation, were

exclusively the monks; and the Upâsaka at the best was one for whom it

was good “continuously to dispense rice milk, and honey lumps, if he had

a longing for joy, whether he desired heavenly joy or coveted only human

prosperity,”[317] His merit was most likely to be acquired by being

useful to the good, who served him by accepting his offerings,[318] and

taught him—though to a purpose undreamed of by St. Paul when he quoted

his Saviour’s saying—that in his case, at least, it was “more blessed to

give than to receive.”

It is to the lasting honour of Buddha that he converted the Sangha into

a propaganda for preaching to all his way of salvation. He did not, for

he could not, conceive of that better society which our Lord has created

in the Holy Catholic Church. It is true, alas! that the actual or

visible Church has often caricatured, and has never yet properly

represented, its Lord’s ideal; but it has never been permitted wholly to

lose sight of that Kingdom whose citizenship is free to all who believe

and repent, and of that royal priesthood of which all are members who

trust in the one sacrifice and prevailing intercession of the Great High

Priest of our profession. If the visible Church has failed to convert,

or even to attract, the members of the Buddhist Sanghas, it is because

of something wrong in its methods, or false in its presentation; for

notwithstanding its failure, it possesses in the great gospel of the

Divine Fatherhood intrusted to its keeping, potentialities for gathering

all mankind into the only brotherhood which will satisfy their

heaven-born aspirations. The manifestation of it may still be a far-off

Divine event, and to bring it about God may employ many agencies other

than those which the Church as at present organised may be willing to

recognise or to use; but once that holy brotherhood is manifested, He

alone will be found at the head of it, who on His way to His agony, and

to the cross on which He was to reveal to the uttermost the love of the

Creator for the human race, paused by the brook Kedron, and made this

supplication mingle with the ripple of its waters and the whispers of

the olives of Gethsemane, “I pray ... that they all may be one, even as

thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.”

Footnote 244:

_Sangha_, originally an assembly (of disciples gathered around a Hindu

sage). In Buddhism, the entire fraternity (like the Order of Francis

or Dominic).—Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, p. 176.

Footnote 245:

Robertson Smith, _Prophets of Israel_, p. 275.

Footnote 246:

Kullavagga, vi. 2, 3, 4; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xx..

Footnote 247:

Weber, _Indian Literature_, p. 306.

Footnote 248:

Dhammapadda, 141; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x. Part i.;

Pâtimokkha Sekhiyá Dhammâ, 1, 2, 3, 4; _ibid._ vol. xiii. p. 59.

Footnote 249:

Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, iii. 65; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xi.

Footnote 250:

Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 279.

Footnote 251:

Mahavagga, i. 11; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 252:

_Ibid._ i. 12; _ibid._ vol. xiii.

Footnote 253:

_Ibid._ viii. 27. 5; _ibid._ vol. xvii.; Kullavagga, vi. 1. 3; _ibid._

vi. 9. 2; _ibid._ vol. xx.

Footnote 254:

Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 251 _seq._ The doctrine that it bore

nobler fruit is expressly contradicted by some. See Âpastamba, pres.

ii. pat. ix. khan. 23; also pres. ii. pat. ix. k. 24. 15; _Sacred

Books of the East_, vol. ii. pp. 156, 159.

Footnote 255:

The way of “Works”—ceremonial and sacrificial religion; the way of

“Faith”—devotion (heart) to the deities without works; the way of

“Knowledge,” or true enlightenment.—Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_,

p. 95.

Footnote 256:

Saint-Hilaire, _Le Bouddha, etc._, p. 152.

Footnote 257:

Not without protest, however, by fathers and doctors of the Church.

See Hermas, _Simil._ v.; Clem. _Strom._ iii.; Tertullian, _De

Jejunio_, p. 123 _seq._; _De Pallio_, p. 181 _seq._

Footnote 258:

Gieseler, _Eccles. Hist._ vol. i. pp. 289 _seq._; Neander’s _Church

Hist._ vol. iii. pp. 305 _seq._

Footnote 259:

Hom. on St. Matth. 69, 70.

Footnote 260:

Montalembert, _Monks of the West_, vol. i. p. 319; Neander’s _Church

History_, vol. iii. pp. 338, 339.

Footnote 261:

Cassian, _Collationes_, ii. 5-8; _De Instit. Monachi_, x.; _De

capitalibus vitiis_, quoted by Farrar, _Lives of the Fathers_, vol.

ii. p. 224; Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, ii. 510.

Footnote 262:

_Monks of the West_, vol. i. p. 27.

Footnote 263:

Sutta Nipâta, 75-81; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x. p. ii.

Footnote 264:

Theod. _Eccles. Hist._ lib. iv. cap. 26.

Footnote 265:

“They prayed for the whole world.”—Chrysost. H. 78, _In Johannem_.

Footnote 266:

Oldenberg, _Buddha, etc._, pp. 317, 318.

Footnote 267:

Mahavagga, viii. 15; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xvii.

Footnote 268:

“I am not aware of any instances in which the pariah of the age is

mentioned as a member of the Order.” “According to Buddhist dogmatics,

a good Sudra or Vaisya could only hope to be re-born as a Kshatrya,

and this clearly indicates that the distinctions of castes had by no

means vanished or become worthless in Buddha’s consciousness”

(_Buddha, etc._, p. 156).

Footnote 269:

Mahavagga, i. 39. 76; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 270:

Christianity does not, as Goethe averred, “prefer what is despised and

feeble,” but as in God’s eyes nothing is despised and abject, so, in

fellowship with the Father, Christ cherished the maimed and lame and

blind, though hated of the soul of the natural man, and this

disposition will ever be a “mark” or “note” of the true Church of

Christ.

Footnote 271:

Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 284; Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures,

1881, p. 155.

Footnote 272:

Oldenberg, _Buddha, etc._, pp. 181, 182.

Footnote 273:

_The Scotsman_, August 17th, 1889.

Footnote 274:

E. Burnouf, _Science des Religions_, p. 94.

Footnote 275:

Mahavagga, i. 49. 6.

Footnote 276:

_Ibid._ i. 54. 5; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 277:

Mahavagga, i. 7. 10-15; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 278:

Mahavagga, i. 29.

Footnote 279:

_Ibid._ i. 76. 1-10.

Footnote 280:

_Buddhism_, p. 80; Dr. Rhys Davids states that a new or cloister name

was given on admission, in exchange for the family one (Hibbert

Lectures, p. 39), but Professor Oldenberg alleges that this is

supported only by solitary cases (_Buddha, etc._, p. 353 note).

Footnote 281:

Mahavagga, i. 30. 1-4; also _ibid._ vi. 14. 6; and Kullavagga, vi.

1-2.

Footnote 282:

Mahavagga, i. 78. 1-5.

Footnote 283:

Mahavagga, i. 79. 1-3.

Footnote 284:

Mahavagga, i. 25. 1-24, for the duties of novice to his Upagghâya;

_ibid._ i. 32, Kullavagga, viii. 13, 14, for his duties to his

Âkariya. The duties to both are the same, but the Upagghâya seems to

have been the more important of the two tutors.

Footnote 285:

Dr. Rhys Davids, _Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 169.

Footnote 286:

Dhammapada, 200; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x. Part i.

Footnote 287:

Pâtimokkha; Pakittiyá Dhammâ, 10; said to be because he might kill or

harm some living creature.

Footnote 288:

Sir Edwin Arnold, _Light of Asia_, p. 95.

Footnote 289:

Kullavagga, v. vi. viii. _passim_; Mahavagga, i. 25. 15.

Footnote 290:

Dhammapada, 141, 142; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x. Part i.

Footnote 291:

Sir Edwin Arnold, _Light of Asia_, pp. 95, 96.

Footnote 292:

Mahavagga, i. 31. 4.

Footnote 293:

Introduction to Dhammapada, _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x. p.

xliv: a long list quoted from the _Northern Scripture_ by Dr. Edkins

in _Chinese Buddhism_.

Footnote 294:

The question was thrice put, “Are ye pure?” Mahavagga, ii. 1-36.

Footnote 295:

See for a specimen the Kullavaga, v. 21; _Sacred Books of the East_,

vol. xx.

Footnote 296:

Bishop of Colombo, in _Nineteenth Century_, July 1888.

Footnote 297:

Mahavagga, iv. 1. 18; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 298:

Weber, _Indische Studien_, x. 118; Metrical translations by Dr. John

Muir, p. 250, where Professor Eggeling is quoted.

Footnote 299:

Mahâ-pagâpati the Gotami, his aunt and nurse (Kullavaga, x. 1) whose

entreaty, through Ananda, led him to found the Order of Bikkhuni,

seems more than a name. Visâkhâ, “the rich and bountiful,” is another

type of votary (Mahavagga, viii. 15).

Footnote 300:

_Buddhist Jataka Stories_, translated by Rhys Davids, pp. 87, 90;

Bigandet, _Life of Gaudama_, old ed., pp. 156, 168.

Footnote 301:

Dhammapada, 284; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x.

Footnote 302:

Book of the Great Decease, v. 23; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xi.

Footnote 303:

Eitel, _Lectures on Buddhism_, p. 10.

Footnote 304:

Kullavagga, x. 1. 3, 4; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xx.

Footnote 305:

Clement of Alexandria gives prominence to the value of marriage and of

the family life, _Strom._ vii., _Paedag._ iii. So Tertullian, _Ad

Uxorem_, ii. c. 8.

Footnote 306:

Principal Donaldson, _Contemporary Review_, Sept. 1889.

Footnote 307:

Sir Henry S. Maine, _Early History of Institutions_, p. 341.

Footnote 308:

Kullavagga, x. 1. 6.

Footnote 309:

Kullavagga, x. 1. 27.

Footnote 310:

Pâtimokkha; Pakittiyâ Dhammâ, 6, 7, 27, 66, 67.

Footnote 311:

“You are not, O monks, to bow down before women, to rise up in their

presence, to stretch out your joined hands towards them, nor to

perform towards them those duties that are proper to them (from an

inferior to a superior).”—Kullavagga, x. 3. 1. “Giving honour unto the

wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the

grace of God.”—1 Peter iii. 1-7.

Footnote 312:

Dhammapada, 85, 86; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. x.

Footnote 313:

T. W. Rhys Davids, _Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 125; Spence Hardy,

_Eastern Monachism_, p. 199.

Footnote 314:

The bowl was “turned down” in relation to him, and his house became an

unlawful resort.—Kullavagga, v. 20. 3; _Sacred Books of the East_,

vol. xx.

Footnote 315:

Sir Monier Williams states that though votaries did not confess to

monks, the four days were observed by them.—_Buddhism_, p. 84.

Footnote 316:

Oldenberg, _Buddha, etc._, p. 162 note.

Footnote 317:

Mahavagga, vi. 24. 1-6.

Footnote 318:

Kullavagga, vi. 1-5; _ibid._ vi. 4. 10.

LECTURE VI.

THE TWO RELIGIONS IN HISTORY.

I.—External Diffusion.

In His apostles, and the disciples who gathered round them, endowed with

the memory of His words and deeds, two simple sacraments, and a promise

that He would be with them to the end of the æon, while they fulfilled

His commission to evangelise and baptize all nations in the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the continuance of the

Church which our Lord had founded was secured. Buddha left behind him

neither sacrament to signify and seal the benefits which he had

conferred, nor any promise of personal fellowship with or interest in

his followers; but he was survived by the Monastic Order which he had

founded, by a law containing the essentials of his system, and a form of

discipline containing the customs to be observed in their assemblies,

and the rules to which all the brethren were to be subject. Though the

personal guide to Nirvana was lost to them, they still in the law

possessed his way to it, and by observing the law, and following his

way, they would fulfil his last stirring exhortation,[319] “Be ye lamps

unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves, O monks.”

So much importance being attached to the law, his disciples, immediately

after his decease, according to the tradition, set about collecting the

materials of it, in his remembered discourses, decisions, and in all

that he said; and this labour of recalling, determining, and

perpetuating his teaching seems to have occupied them for several

generations. There is no trace of any corresponding anxiety on the part

of the Christian Church to collect the words of the Lord Jesus. The

Gospels are not the earliest of our scriptures, and they were produced

more for the edification of Jewish and Gentile converts, than to secure

for the Church a standard of belief and of discipline. The function of

the Church was not so much to recall and perpetuate the teaching of its

Lord as to interpret the significance of His life, and death, and

resurrection. No written or remembered instructions were required, for

the apostles believed that they had Himself to tell them on every

occasion what they should do and teach. From the very first they prayed

to Him in full assurance that He heard and answered them. They believed

that He had shown Himself to some of them, and that He was witnessed for

in all of them by a new possession. The Gentile world had been familiar

with the μανία of the medium through whom a Divine oracle was supposed

to be given, and with the _rabies_ of the howling priests of the goddess

Cybele, but the Christians professed to be inspired by the πνεῦμα ἅγιον.

In some instances this inspiration manifested itself in extravagant

forms and in mysterious utterances,[320] but those who were most under

its control had complete possession of themselves; their speech was

intelligible, and sober, and most convincing, making “manifest the

secrets of the heart.”

Unquestionably this belief in the presence of Christ in the

Spirit—whether truly founded or not—was universal in the Church. All

the utterances of primitive Christianity, the scriptures of its

apostles, the treatises of its fathers and doctors, and all the

monuments of the first ages, bear witness not to a Christ who once

lived and had died, but who was living triumphant and glorified,

reigning for them, and in them to reign. Unquestionably also in this

belief was the hiding of that power which enabled the Church to

confront the whole world, endure the full weight of its persecutions,

and finally win the victory over it. It also explains the appearance

in the Church, from the first, of that succession of persons who,

because of their strongly marked individualities, gave both direction

and impetus to its progress. Buddhism, though both its southern and

northern scriptures record a patriarchal succession, and though

probably not deficient in highly cultured disciples, seems to have

lacked from the very first men who had genius to organise or intellect

to command its forces. Its own early writings disclose a movement

which very speedily congealed, because ruled only by a remembered law,

interpreted by very adulterated traditions. Christianity represents

quite a different movement; it was not the perpetuation of a system,

but the development of a new inspiration, of a life manifested in

Christ and communicated to all who believed on Him. Consequently it

never was without its heroes, whom it had the power to produce; and

consequently also it never could stiffen into a tradition, for where

its leaders attempted to fix it, in either confession or in ritual, it

was sure to evade them. It has been appropriately described as “the

most changeable of religions,”[321]—mutable in its forms, immutable in

its essence. For Christianity is not a system either of philosophy or

theology; it is a perpetually reforming spirit, fed by faith in One

who is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.

Both religions entered the world as missionaries bent upon its

conversion, and though Buddhism was afterwards to eclipse Christianity

in the superficial extent of its conquests, the annals of the primitive

Church record a much more rapid extension. The early development of

Christianity, even taking into account the circumstances which helped or

facilitated its progress, remains one of the marvels of history. In the

New Testament the Church is seen to have gained a footing almost

wherever the waves of the Diaspora had reached. St. Paul found

Christians not only in Rome, but in little Puteoli, and his letters

imply that there were churches in Spain and in southern Gaul. St. Peter

wrote from Babylon to a wide circle of Christian communities gathered

out of the regions of Asia Minor.[322] There seem to have been even then

churches in most of the chief cities, and in a multitude of minor towns

all over the Empire; and there is no reason to distrust the tradition,

that before the last of the apostles fell asleep, the gospel had called

multitudes living far beyond the bounds of the Empire to make good their

citizenship in the kingdom of God.

The churches may have been small in respect of membership, for the rapid

diffusion of Christianity by no means involved the conversion _en masse_

of the people. Facts will hardly bear out the glowing testimony of

Gregory Thaumaturgus, who found in the populous metropolis of a large

province only seventeen Christians, and in twenty-five years reported

that he could find only seventeen heathens.[323] With Gibbon we may have

to discount as “splendid exaggeration” the testimony of Tertullian,

“Hesterni sumus, et vestra omnia implevimus.” Still the direct testimony

of Tacitus as to the multitude of Christians in Rome, the evidence of

the Catacombs, and many other indications, point to the conclusion that

the rapid numerical increase of Christians was as singular as was the

territorial diffusion of their religion. The whole Empire must have been

sensibly leavened, and the converts must for long have been gathered

from other than the lower classes of society, before the conversion of

Constantine became possible. Emperors—even Roman ones—follow in such

matters, and do not lead their subjects; and so we may be sure what had

at first been glad tidings to the slaves and the poor must for some time

have become the consolation of many a noble Pudens and Linus, and of

many a Claudia of royal descent, before it could be recognised as the

religion of the State.[324]

Many circumstances undoubtedly contributed to this result. A

consolidated empire, with nearly all the representative nations fused

into a union, comprising all the existing elements of culture and forces

of civilisation; the great Roman highways, with means of easy

communication so abundant as to be surprising to us; the widespread

understanding of the two leading languages, making virtually of one

speech a great section of the most important part of the world; the

innumerable communities of Jews, everywhere tolerated, and “cutting

channels through the adamantine mass of heathen society,”[325] immensely

aided the missionary activities of the apostles and their followers.

Moreover, the moral and religious condition of the Empire, the

bankruptcy of the old faith, the despair and confusion and perplexity of

people, everywhere seeking mightier or better deities than they knew,

everywhere trembling “between the two immensities of terror,” rendered

possible the victory of Christianity. Multitudes were thus prepared to

welcome a Deliverer who had come in the name, not of Jupiter Maximus

Tonans, but of the Father in heaven, to give peace in this world’s

tribulations, and sure hope of joy in the world beyond it.[326] And yet

all this, even when added to Gibbon’s five causes, will not account for

the historical puzzle, that a faith, originating in a manger in a Syrian

cattle-shed, brooded over for thirty years of a life of poverty and

toil, preached for three, with the result of being almost universally

rejected, and quenched to all appearance in the blood of crucifixion,

should immediately after the death of its Founder have broken out all

over the Roman world. Converting its agents from farms, and harbours,

and prisons, it called them to martyrdom; for it sent them—poor

“weavers, and shoe-makers, and fullers, and illiterate clowns”—to

proclaim “barbarous dogmas,” and “extravagant hopes,” “universally

detested” by Jew and Gentile, and to bear the full weight of a prolonged

series of persecutions involving indescribable tortures and

disgrace.[327] Yet somehow it never paused for a moment, never abated

one iota of its claim, till in the course of a few generations it was

found upon the throne. We never will explain this wonder by showing how,

as a system of ethics, or as a new theory of life, it found the

condition of the world favourable to its reception. The correlation of

the state of the world to the new faith has been claimed as

providential,—an indication of a Divine purpose making all things work

together, for this manifestation of a new power or principle of life in

society, which as yet has had no historical counterpart.[328]

The early scriptures of Buddhism, though preserving a tradition that in

twelve years from the time in which the doctrine was first preached it

had spread over sixteen kingdoms, disclose no such rapidity of

diffusion. The kingdoms referred to are not to be regarded as kingdoms

in our sense of the word, for in extent and influence they would not

equal a German principality, and were probably only tribal communities.

After the death of Buddha the many Sanghas that had arisen seem to have

suffered for lack of a central governing power. If his Order is to be

called a Church, it had manifestly no church-government. It had synods,

and assemblies, and councils, but not one with the authority of an

Œcumenical as representative of the whole. It was more Congregational

than Presbyterian in its constitution, and for this very reason it was

weak when compared with the compact organisation of Brahmanism, with

which it competed for supremacy. Disorder and dissension are traceable

in it from the first, and the early texts, though containing many

admonitions against schism, warnings that offences must come, and woes

upon those who would cause them, record no practical steps to prevent or

remedy them.[329] Vigorous expansion was consequently not to be looked

for, and for two centuries we may safely infer that Buddhism represented

only a struggling sect, which, beyond the limits in which it was first

preached, had made little, if indeed any, progress.

At the close of this period, when its literature was reaching a

canonical form, and its manuals of discipline and common order were

generally in use, it found its Constantine in the conqueror

Chandragupta. In opposition to the Brahmans, who despised him for his

low-caste origin, he seems to have lifted it from obscurity into the

sunshine of really imperial favour. His grandson Asoka, who consolidated

his conquests, proved its Theodosius, in not only greatly endowing it,

but in establishing its supremacy. There were no quarrels between him

and the Sanghas as to their independence, as afterwards between the

Emperors and the Popes, for, like a true son of the Church, he

acknowledged their authority. By obeying in appearance, he in reality

became, what Buddhism since the death of its founder sorely needed, the

head of the system, and under his wise and energetic rule, the religion

emerged into a vigour which it was to maintain for centuries.

An earnest Buddhist, he seems to have been something better. He called

himself Pryadarsi,[330] the “beloved of the gods,” and a Daniel indeed

he appears to have been, raised up for the blessing of millions. His

edicts—stone inscriptions found all over India—the first written

testimonies which Buddhism left of itself,[331] all breathe a lofty

spirit of righteousness and kindness and toleration, appealing to both

Brahman and Buddhist, and commending themselves at this day, “to Jew and

Christian and Moslem alike, as part of the universal religion of

humanity.”[332] One of them refers to a council which he assembled at

Patna, for the pacification and reformation of the Order. During its

session the ancient collections of rules and dogmas were rehearsed, and

as the list is considerably shorter than the contents of the Tripitaka,

we may be sure that the Southern tradition that Buddha himself was the

author of all the books comprising that collection has no foundation in

fact.[333] A far more momentous act of this ancient council than the

recension of the canon, was that of establishing the first great

Buddhist missions. To a revived and reformed Order the suggestion of the

pious king, that they should go forth and fulfil their great teacher’s

original commission, was welcome. Their dissensions, as has often

happened in Christendom, were due to their living to themselves. An army

inactive in quarters, is more likely to quarrel or mutiny than one in

service in the field. These good Buddhists wisely determined to carry

the war of deliverance beyond them, and so into the Punjab, Kashmir, the

Central Himalayan regions, over into the Malay Peninsula, went the

missionaries, armed only with the words of the Law or the legends which

had been floating round the memory of their master, and supported only

by the offerings put into their alms-dish, to gain whatever victories

they could in the fair conflict of reason with reason.[334]

In India they would of course be supported by imperial influence, and

indeed the mission to Ceylon, headed by Mahinda, the son of Asoka, seems

to have been accredited by royal embassy; but nowhere was Buddhism

propagated as Islam subsequently was by Mohammed, or as Christianity was

by Charlemagne, with an army at its back. Races ever ready to credit the

supernatural would probably be more easily won by the wonders which were

then being formulated in reference to Buddha; but whatever be the

explanation of it, the success of these missionaries anticipated that of

the apostles. In Ceylon there was founded a Sangha, which was destined

to nurse and preserve the original creed in somewhat of its purity, when

all the others betrayed and corrupted it. Surviving several changes of

dynasty, that Sangha, 330 years after Buddha’s decease, is said to have

reduced its canon to writing. The result has been somewhat contradictory

to the theory, that it matters very little whether a canon be oral or

written, for Southern Buddhism, having an authority to which it was thus

earlier anchored, has held more closely to the original system, from

which, having no such check for long, every section of Northern Buddhism

has irrecoverably fallen away.

After the death of Asoka, the empire which he sought to consolidate by

the preaching of the Law fell to pieces, and Buddhism was destined to be

tested by more than one rude shock. A Brahman reaction took place, which

is even supposed to have resulted in the persecution of all Buddhists

living in India. If so, it was the first which the religion

encountered—so unlike Christianity, which had to endure for three

centuries the fierce assaults of its enemies. Persecution by a religion

so tolerant as Brahmanism is hard to conceive, but if it took place at

this period, it only tended, as in the early Christian trials, to the

wider expansion of the persecuted faith. “They that were scattered

abroad went everywhere preaching” the Law. Some of them pushed through

Afghanistan into the regions of Central Asia, and there, just as

Ulphilas and Severinus, centuries later, gained a hold over the wild

races that conquered the moribund Empire, so Buddhist missionaries

succeeded in sowing the seeds of their Law among the rude Scythian

tribes, who were then in great commotion in their vast inland steppes.

Driven from their ancestral homes, a branch of the great tribe of Huns

about 160 B.C. overthrow the Bactrian kingdom, and after generations of

struggle they conquered Kashmir, the Punjab, and a considerable part of

India. Then just as the Goths and Huns, in the moment of their conquest

of Rome, tendered their submission to Christianity, so the conversion of

Kaniska, the greatest of the Indo-Scythian kings, a contemporary with

Augustus and Antony, enabled Buddhism to enter with fresh vigour upon a

second period of very brilliant supremacy.[335]

Though the difference between the Northern and Southern Buddhists was

already showing itself, and though soon after it manifested itself in a

divergence as complete as that which sundered the Greek Orthodox from

the Latin Catholic Churches, monumental evidence, harmonising with that

derived from its own literary relics, indicates that for four or five

centuries after this Buddhism was most successfully propagated almost

everywhere save in India. In the land of its origin it was gradually

declining, because drawing nearer to the Brahmanism from which it had

seceded. Fa-Hian in the end of the fourth century, though describing it

as dominant everywhere, found the place of its nativity only a

wilderness.[336] Later on, the viharas were deserted, the dagobas in

ruins, “the monks were few, the heretics many,” and by the seventh

century the process of assimilation with and absorption into Hinduism

was in India, save in widely separated and remote localities, almost

complete. What it lost in India, however, it was to gain in other

directions. Its greatest conquest was in China. In the days of Asoka

eighteen missionaries are said to have reached China, where they are

held in reverence to this day, their images occupying a conspicuous

place in every temple. The faith which they introduced seemed to have

struggled with very little success to gain a footing till about A.D.

68.[337] Thirteen years before this date, in obedience to a vision which

appeared to him at Troas, St. Paul brought Christianity from Asia to

Europe. On the thirtieth day of the twelfth Chinese month in A.D. 68,

the Emperor Mingti, in consequence of a dream, sent ambassadors to the

distant West for Buddhist monks and manuscripts.[338] Travelling in

almost royal state, the invited missionaries were accorded in China a

welcome in marvellous contrast to the reception of the Christian apostle

in the first colonial city he had reached. From this time onwards a

perpetual succession of monks and manuscripts entered China; yet, though

tolerated from the first, and often royally patronised, centuries

elapsed before it succeeded in winning a place as one of the three

religions of China, while Christianity, persecuted from the first,

succeeded after a fierce struggle in conquering the Empire of Rome, and

then by a long process in evangelising Europe.

The conversion of the most of Eastern Asia was the work of the Northern

or more corrupt Buddhism. Southern Buddhism, like the orthodox Eastern

Church, which contented itself with its evangelistic achievements among

the Goths, and its Nestorian missions, soon exhausted its propagative

force. The introduction of the religion into Burma, Siam, and the

adjacent kingdoms, may be said to sum up its triumphs. Northern

Buddhism, on the other hand, ran from the beginning of our era a course

of unchecked triumphs. In the close of the fourth century it spread from

China to Corea, and in the sixth it reached Japan. Previous to this it

entered the isolated regions of Tibet, more welcomed than resisted by

the demonolatrous inhabitants on account of the adulterated form in

which it presented itself. There, after a struggle for some two

centuries, it succeeded, about the period when Islam was beginning its

conquests elsewhere, in securing strong royal support. After

experiencing for many generations the vicissitudes of popularity and

persecution, the conquests of Genghiz, and the strong favour of Kublai,

his greatest successor, established its hierarchy as supreme, and in

spite of changes of dynasty, it has there dominated the whole relations

of life in a manner like unto, but to an extent far beyond, the wildest

dreams of Rome’s most ambitious Pope.[339]

It thus appears that Buddhism in the second period of its history, and

after it had succeeded in winning the support of powerful kings, reached

its furthest extension and achieved its grandest conquests.

Christianity, on the other hand, was more rapidly diffused in the

primitive than in the subsequent ages. Tested by its intensive hold upon

the nations, it had only nominally converted the Roman Empire by the end

of the fourth century. Gibbon’s estimate of the number of Christians

within it, is acknowledged by friendly authorities,[340] like Bishop

Lightfoot, to err if at all on the side of excess. During the reign of

Constantine, probably not a twentieth of the whole population of the

Empire were Christians, even by profession. After this period, no doubt,

the proportion must have greatly increased, for the barbarous hordes

that poured downwards in successive deluges over the South were

converted so suddenly and so silently that “scarce a legend remains to

tell the tale.” In regard, however, to the conversion of heathen Europe,

it is a mistake to suppose that the missionaries had only to come, and

see, and conquer. The conversion of England by the Roman monks, and of

Ireland, Scotland, and Wales by Oriental and, it is said, Arian

missionaries, cannot be said to have been accomplished before the close

of the seventh century. Afterwards, the conversion of Central and

Northern Germany occupied the Celtic and British missionaries for two

centuries. The conversion of the Scandinavians, beginning in the ninth,

could not be said to have been effected till the middle of the eleventh

century, while that of Slavonia, undertaken in the tenth, did not

terminate, if indeed even then, before the sixteenth century. The

conquest of Europe was the result of a prolonged and often desultory

warfare, in which, while the advance was slow, Christianity sometimes

failed to hold the ground which it had gained. The powerful Churches in

Asia, the seats of its great Councils and the capitals of its rule,

either died or were swept away; Antioch and Constantinople, once its

citadels, became the strongholds of an alien and hostile faith; the

mighty Churches of Egypt and Abyssinia dwindled into a condition of

immedicable disease, and the flourishing Church of Africa, with its more

than six hundred bishoprics, was simply, because ripe for destruction,

obliterated by the forces of Islam. Toward the latter half of the tenth

century it seemed as if Christianity in Europe was surely following the

fate of Buddhism before its disappearance from India. On all sides it

was pressed in the deadly grip of Pagan and Moslem alike, while its

bishops, and priests, and nobles, oblivious of the danger, were living

in sinful self-indulgence. It seemed as if Christendom was being surely

blotted out from the geography of the world; and yet as by a miracle it

survived, or was preserved, till came the Renaissance, and that

marvellous emergence of missionary zeal, which sent Christianity,

Reformed and Unreformed, to the very ends of the earth, and which,

increasing in every generation since then, was never more abundant nor

more fervent than now.[341]

Christianity, unlike Buddhism, came very early into collision with the

most advanced civilisation and highest culture of the world, while

Buddhism for centuries encountered only the religions of inferior

peoples. The only equal or superior civilisation which it met was that

of China, and there, though tolerated and even patronised from the

first, it seems for centuries to have been regarded as an exotic.

Natives of India, like the Jews in the Roman Empire, were allowed to

build Buddhist temples, but only in the fourth century A.D. did Chinese

people begin extensively to be converted to the Buddhist religion. As it

rose into favour its conflicts with the Confucianists began, and the

issue of its varied fortunes has been, that though indirectly it has

greatly influenced, it has only subdued a section of the Chinese

people.[342] While other inferior races came quickly under its

influence, the most civilised of Eastern peoples resisted it, and have

at most only been leavened by it.[343] Christianity had also its easy

conquests, as when some northern tribes were converted in a day by the

baptism of their chiefs; but its principal struggle with the historic

Paganism of aristocratic Rome was fierce and obdurate. There the

position, as in the case of Hinduism to-day, was not carried by assault,

but by slow and almost imperceptible approaches. The Church at Rome for

two centuries was more a Greek than a Latin one. The names of its

bishops were Greek, and the Catacomb inscriptions sufficiently indicate

that Greek was the language of its members. Slowly and indirectly,

however, it gained the hold upon ancient thought and custom, operating

like an alterative in the system, supplanting what was good, by simply

taking possession of it and inspiring it with a new life, while that

which was decaying and waxing old gradually vanished away.

In this respect, therefore, there is a significant difference between

the two religions. Christianity, with all the world against it, and in

spite of three centuries of unparalleled persecutions, succeeded in

vanquishing the highest, while yet approving itself as a gospel to the

lowest civilisation. Buddhism, with the greatest powers of the Eastern

world in its favour, and never, perhaps, save in China, called to bear

the shock of a single persecution, has only succeeded in being accepted

by inferior branches of the human race. The Hindu Aryans, assimilating

what of it they approved, rejected what of it was peculiar and

distinctive. The Semitic followers of Islam simply crushed it under

foot, and it never rose high enough even to touch the Western

Aryans.[344] Very early it withdrew itself entirely within the circles

of the Turanian peoples; and if to-day in Mongolia, Manchuria, among the

Kalmucs on the Wolga, and the Bunjads on the shores of the Baikal Sea,

it may be said to be advancing, the most competent authorities assure us

that everywhere else its progress is arrested, and that, even where it

is most upheld by local governments, in the regions of its most dominant

supremacy, it yields manifest signs of decay.[345]

Another and even more significant contrast is found in the fact that the

advance of Christianity has ever been farthest and most rapid when its

faith was purely taught and most consistently illustrated. It never

sought peace with other religions without being defeated, and never

allied itself with superstition without bringing shame and disaster on

all concerned. It has had its periods of deterioration and defection,

but somehow it has always survived them. Indeed, its vitality is as

truly indicated by the corruptions which it has outlived, as by the

external opposition which it has vanquished. Its real conquests are due

to the expansive power of its inherent and original principles. The very

opposite is the case with Buddhism. Its fundamental principles being

unnatural and repugnant to the essential instincts of mankind, it was

from the very first a morbid growth, having in it the seeds of decay. It

never could have lived in the strength of its own principles, and so the

story of its advance is one of perpetual compromise with every popular

superstition that it met. The more it assimilated itself to them, the

more it seemed to grow; but as foreign influences took possession of it,

its own life oozed out of it, till very early it represented a system so

perverted that its founder would have repudiated and abhorred it. The

Church has often travestied Christianity, but it never fell from the

faith so fearfully as Buddhism has everywhere fallen from the original

doctrine of Buddha. Religion, worship, even the purest, he intended by

his system to supersede, and now his name is employed to support the

grossest of all superstitions,[346] a religion with more idols in it

than that of the most idolatrous of peoples, a worship founded on the

efficacy of magical incantations, and of prayers rendered by machines.

Just for this very reason its