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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oriental Religions and Christianity
+by Frank F. Ellinwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Oriental Religions and Christianity
+       A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the
+       Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891
+       
+
+Author: Frank F. Ellinwood
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2005 [EBook #14867]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Marilynda Fraser-Gunliffe, David King,
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIVERED ON THE ELY FOUNDATION
+BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
+NEW YORK, 1891
+
+BY FRANK F. ELLINWOOD, D.D.
+SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS
+OF THE
+PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH U.S.A.;
+LECTURER ON COMPARATIVE RELIGION
+IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
+
+NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1892
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The following lectures, prepared amid many cares and duties, have aimed
+to deal only with practical questions which are demanding attention in
+our time. They do not claim to constitute a treatise with close
+connections and a logical order. Each presents a distinct topic, or a
+particular phase of the present conflict of Christian truth with the
+errors of the non-Christian religions. This independent treatment must
+constitute my apology for an occasional repetition of important facts or
+opinions which have a common bearing on different discussions. No claim
+is made to scholarship in the Oriental languages. The ability to compare
+original sources and determine dates and intricate meanings of terms, or
+settle points in dispute by a wide research in Sanscrit or Pali
+literatures, can only be obtained by those who spend years in study
+along these special lines. But so many specialists have now made known
+the results of their prolonged linguistic studies in the form of
+approved English translations, that, as Professor Max Müller has well
+said in his introduction to "The Sacred Books of the East," "there is
+no longer any excuse for ignorance of the rich treasures of Oriental
+Literature."
+
+Two considerations lend special importance to the topics here discussed.
+First, that the false systems in question belong not merely to the past,
+but to our own time. And second, that the increased intercommunication
+of this age brings us into closer contact with them. They are no longer
+afar off and unheard of, nor are they any longer lying in passive
+slumber. Having received quickening influences from our Western
+civilization, and various degrees of sympathy from certain types of
+Western thought, they have become aggressive and are at our doors.
+
+On controverted points I have made frequent quotations, for the reason
+that the testimonies or opinions of writers of acknowledged competency
+are best given in their own words.
+
+I have labored under a profound conviction that, whatever may be the
+merit and success of these modest efforts, the general class of subjects
+treated is destined to receive increased attention in the near future;
+that the Christian Church will not long be content to miscalculate the
+great conquest which she is attempting against the heathen systems of
+the East and their many alliances with the infidelity of the West. And I
+am cheered with a belief that, in proportion to the intelligent
+discrimination which shall be exercised in judging of the non-Christian
+religions, and the skill which shall be shown in presenting the
+immensely superior truths of the Christian faith, will the success of
+the great work of Missions be increased.
+
+It scarcely needs to be said that I have not even attempted to give
+anything like a complete view of the various systems of which I have
+spoken. Only a few salient points have been touched upon, as some
+practical end has required. But if the mere outline here given shall
+lead any to a fuller investigation of the subjects discussed, I shall be
+content. I am satisfied that the more thoroughly the Gospel of
+Redemption is compared with the futile systems of self-righteousness
+which man has devised, the more wonderful it will appear.
+
+F.F. ELLINWOOD.
+
+NEW YORK, January 20, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+_THE ELY LECTURES_--1891.
+
+
+The lectures contained in this volume were delivered to the students of
+Union Theological Seminary in the year 1891, as one of the courses
+established in the Seminary by Mr. Zebulon Stiles Ely, in the following
+terms:
+
+     "The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand dollars to the Union
+     Theological Seminary of the city of New York, to found a
+     lectureship in the same, the title of which shall be 'The Elias P.
+     Ely Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity.'
+
+     "The course of lectures given on this foundation is to comprise any
+     topics that serve to establish the proposition that Christianity is
+     a religion from God, or that it is the perfect and final form of
+     religion for man.
+
+     "Among the subjects discussed may be:
+
+     "The Nature and Need of a Revelation;
+
+     "The Character and Influence of Christ and his Apostles;
+
+     "The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, Miracles, and
+     Prophecy;
+
+     "The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity; and
+
+     "The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the Christian
+     System.
+
+     "Upon one or more of such subjects a course of ten public lectures
+     shall be given, at least once in two or three years. The
+     appointment of the lecturer is to be by the concurrent action of
+     the directors and faculty of said Seminary and the undersigned; and
+     it shall ordinarily be made two years in advance."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE NEED OF UNDERSTANDING THE FALSE RELIGIONS 1
+
+     The New "Science of Religion" to be Viewed with Discrimination--The
+     Study of the Oriental Systems too Long a Monopoly of Anti-Christian
+     Scholars--The Changed Aspects of the Missionary Work--The
+     Significant Experience of Ziegenbalz--Fears Entertained in
+     Reference to this Subject by Timid Believers--The Different View
+     taken of the Old Heathen Systems of Greece and Rome--The Subject
+     Considered from the Standpoint of Missionary Candidates--The
+     Testimony of Intelligent and Experienced Missionaries--Reasons for
+     Studying Oriental Systems Found in the Increased Intercourse of the
+     Nations; in the Intellectual Quickening of Oriental Minds by
+     Education; in the Resistance and even Aggressiveness of Heathen
+     Systems; in the Diversities of the Buddhist Faith in Different
+     Lands--False Systems to be Studied with a Candid Spirit--The
+     Distinction to be Drawn between Religion and Ethics--Reasons why a
+     Missionary should Pursue these Studies before Arriving on his
+     Field--Reasons why the Ministry at Home Should Acquaint Themselves
+     with Heathen Systems--Their Active Alliance with Various Forms of
+     Western Infidelity--Intellectual Advantages to be Derived from such
+     Studies--A Broader and Warmer Sympathy with Universal Humanity to
+     be Gained--A Better Understanding of the Unique Supremacy of the
+     Gospel as the Only Hope of the World--Pastors at Home are also
+     Missionaries to the Heathen--They are Sharers in the Conflict
+     through the Press.
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE METHODS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN DEALING
+     WITH HEATHENISM 39
+
+     The Coincidences of the Present Struggle with that of the First
+     Christian Centuries--The Mediæval Missionary Work of a Simple
+     Character--That of India, Japan, China, and the Turkish Empire a
+     Severe Intellectual Struggle as well as a Spiritual
+     Conquest--Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam, present
+     Obstacles and Resistances Similar to those of Ancient Greece and
+     Rome--How far Contrasts Appear between the Early and the Present
+     Conquests--The Methods of Paul--His Tact in Recognizing Truth
+     wherever Found, and Using it for his Purpose--The Attitude of the
+     Early Christian Fathers toward the Heathen--Augustine's
+     Acknowledgment of the Good which he Received from Cicero and
+     Plato--The Important Elements which Platonism Lacked, and which
+     were Found Only in the Gospel of Christ--The Great Secret of Power
+     in the Early Church Found in its Moral Earnestness, as Shown by
+     Simplicity of Life, and especially by Constancy even Unto a
+     Martyr's Death--The Contrast between the Frugality of the Early
+     Church and the Luxury and Vice of Roman Society--The Great Need of
+     this Element of Success at the Present Time--The Observance of a
+     Wise Discrimination in the Estimate of Heathen Philosophy by the
+     Great Leaders of the Early Church--The Generality with which
+     Classical Studies were Pursued by the Sons of the more Enlightened
+     Christian Fathers--Method Among the Leaders--The Necessity for a
+     thorough Knowledge of the Systems to be Met, as it was then
+     Recognized--The thorough Preparation of Augustine, Ambrose,
+     Iræneus, and Others for their Work--Origen's Masterly and
+     Successful Reply to Celsus--The Use Made by the Early Fathers and
+     by the Churches of a Later Day, of the Philosophy of Plato and
+     Aristotle--Heathenism thus Conquered with its Own Weapons.
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OF HINDUISM 73
+
+     The Great Variety in India's Religious Systems--The Early
+     Monotheistic Nature Worship and its Gradual Lapse Into
+     Polytheism--The Influence of Environment on the Development of
+     Systems--The Distinction between Aryanism and Brahmanism, and the
+     Abuses of the Latter in its Doctrines of Sacrifice and Caste--The
+     Causes which Led to the Overthrow of this System of
+     Sacerdotalism--The Upanishads and the Beginnings of Philosophy--The
+     Rise of Buddhism and the Six Schools of Philosophy--Points in
+     Common between them--The Code of Manu and its Countercheck to
+     Rationalism--Its Development and its Scope, its Merits and
+     Demerits--The Meaning of the Word Hinduism as here Used and the
+     Means by which it Gained Ascendency--The Place and Influence of the
+     Two Great Hindu Epics, their Origin, the Compromise which they
+     Wrought, and the New and Important Doctrines which They
+     Developed--The Trimurti and the Incarnations of Vishnu--The
+     Deterioration of the Literature and the Faith of India--The Puranas
+     and the Tantras--The Parallels between Hinduism and Christianity.
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 111
+
+     The Great Interest Felt in this Poem by a Certain Class of
+     Readers--Its Alleged Parallels to the Scriptures--The Plausibility
+     of the Recent Translation by Mr. Mohini M. Chatterji--Its
+     Patronizing Catholicity--The Same Claim to Broad Charity by Chunder
+     Sen and Others--Pantheism Sacrifices nothing to Charity, because
+     God is in All Things--All Moral Responsibility Ceases since God
+     Acts in Us--Mr. Chatterji's Broad Knowledge of Our Scriptures, and
+     his Skill in Selecting Passages for His Purpose--His Pleasing
+     Style--The Story of Krishna and Arjuna Told in the Interest of
+     Caste and Pantheism--The Growth of the Krishna Cult from Popular
+     Legends--The Origin of the Bhagavad Gita and its Place in the
+     Mahabharata--Its Use of the Six Philosophies--Krishna's
+     Exhortation--The Issue of the Battle in which Arjuna is Urged to
+     Engage--The "Resemblances" Explained by their Pantheistic
+     Interpretation--Fancied Resemblances which are only in the Sound of
+     Words--Coincidences Springing from Similar Causes--The Totally
+     Different Meaning which Pantheism gives them--Difference between
+     Union with Christ and the Pantheistic Pervasion of the
+     Infinite--The Differentials of Christianity.
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 140
+
+     New Interest in Old Controversies Concerning Buddhism--Max Müller's
+     Reply to the Alleged Influence of the System on Christianity--The
+     Distinction to be made between the Credible History of Gautama and
+     Later Legends--The Legends of the Pre-existent States and the
+     Wonders Attending the Earthly Life--The Northern and the Southern
+     Buddhism--The Sources of the Principal Legends--The Four Principal
+     Doctrines of Buddhism, Skandas, Trishna, Kharma, and
+     Nirvana--Difficulties in the Doctrines of Kharma and
+     Nirvana--Various Opinions of Scholars in Regard to the Nature of
+     Nirvana--Buddha's Final Reticence on the Subject--The Real Goal at
+     which the Average Buddhist Aims--The Need of a Careful Estimate of
+     the Merits and Demerits of Buddhism, and of the Hold which it is
+     likely to have on Western Minds--Its Points of Contact with Western
+     Errors--The Fact that Modern Buddhism, like many other False
+     Systems, Claims Christ as a Believer in its Principles--The Theory
+     that the Life of Christ is Modelled after that of the Buddha--The
+     Superior Authenticity of the Life of Christ--The Unreliable
+     Character of Buddhist Legends--The Intrinsic Improbability that a
+     Religion claiming a Distinct Derivation from Jewish Sources would
+     Borrow from a far-off Heathen System--The Contrast of Christ's
+     Loving Recognition of the Father in Heaven with the Avowed Atheism
+     of Buddhism--The General Spirit of the System Forbids all Thought
+     of Borrowing from it--Points of Contrast.
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+MOHAMMEDANISM PAST AND PRESENT 178
+
+     Posthumous Legends of Mohammed; how they were Produced--Ancient
+     Arabia and its Religious Systems--The Vale of Mecca and its Former
+     Uses--The Birth of Mohammed, and his Religious Associations--His
+     Temperament and Character--The Beginnings of his Prophetic
+     Mission--Jews and Christians in Arabia and their Influence on
+     Mohammedanism--Their Errors and Shortcomings a Help to the
+     Reformer--Strange Doctrines of the Christian Church in Arabia--The
+     Lost Opportunity of the Early Christian Sects and the Fatal Neglect
+     of the Surrounding Nations--The Nomads of Arabia specially Prepared
+     for Conquest by their Manner of Life and their Enlistment as
+     Mercenary Soldiers--The Question of Mohammed's Real Character--The
+     Growth of his Ambition and his Increasing Sensuality and
+     Cruelty--Blasphemous Revelations in Behalf of the Prophet's Own
+     Lust--Discriminating Judgment Required on his Career as a
+     Whole--Mohammedan Schools--Noble Characters the Exception--General
+     Corrupting Influence of the System--Its Conquests in Northern
+     Africa and in the Soudan--The Early Races of Northern Africa, and
+     the General Deterioration of the Country--The Piracies of the
+     Barbary States--Civilization in Modern Egypt Due to Foreigners--The
+     Bloody Ravages of El Mahdi in the East and the Fanatic Samadu in
+     the West--The Testimony of a Secular Newspaper
+     Correspondent--Professor Drummond and Henry M. Stanley on the Slave
+     Traffic and Mohammedan Civilization--The Alleged Missionary
+     Operations of Mohammedans in West Soudan--The Account Given of Them
+     by Bishop Crowther, Schweinfurth, and Others--Canon Taylor and the
+     Egyptian Pashas--The Effects of European Education--Palgrave on
+     Mohammedan Intolerance of To-day--Mohammedanism and Temperance;
+     Exaggerated Accounts of it; Proofs to the Contrary--R. Bosworth
+     Smith's Protest against Canon Taylor's Extravagant Glorification of
+     Islam--His Plea for Missions.
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM 222
+
+     Two Conflicting Theories on the History of Religion--That of the
+     Old and New Testaments--That of Modern Evolution--The Importance of
+     this Question--Professor Henry B. Smith's Estimate of Ebrard's
+     Discussion of it--Ebrard's Summing-up of the Argument--Professor
+     Naville's View of the Subject--Conclusions of Rev. W.A.P. Martin,
+     D.D., and Max Müller--How far May we Attempt to Establish the Fact
+     of an Early Monotheism from Heathen Traditions?--Conceptions
+     Differing in Different Nations--Evidences of Monotheism in the
+     Vedas--Professor Banergea's Testimony--The Views Held by the Modern
+     Somajes--Monotheism in China--Monotheistic Worship in the Days of
+     Yao and Shun, 2300 B.C.--The Prayer of an Emperor of the Ming
+     Dynasty Quoted by Professor Legge--Remarkable Monument of
+     Monotheism in the Temple of Heaven--A Taouist Prayer--Zoroaster a
+     Monotheistic Reformer--The Inscription at Behistun--Testimony of
+     the Modern Parsee Catechism--No Nation without some Notion of a God
+     Supreme over All--Buddhists in Thibet--Egyptian Monotheism--The
+     Greek Poets--Old Monotheism in Mexico and Peru--Evidences of
+     Ramification and Decline in Polytheism--Egypt and India Give
+     Abundant Proofs--Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taouism all Show
+     Degeneration--Mohammedan Corruption since the Days of the Early
+     Caliphs--The Religions of Greece and Rome Became Effete--Even
+     Israel, in Spite of Instruction and Reproof, Lapsed into Idolatry
+     again and again--Even the Christian Church has Shown Similar
+     Tendencies.
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+INDIRECT TRIBUTES OF HEATHEN SYSTEMS TO THE DOCTRINES
+     OF THE BIBLE 266
+
+     The Universality and Similarity of Race Traditions--Their General
+     Support of the Old Testament History--Traditions of the Creation
+     Found in India, China, among the Northern Turanians and some
+     African Tribes--The Fall of Man as Traced in Assyria and among the
+     Hindus--The Buddhists of Ceylon, Mongolians, Africans and Tahitans
+     had Similar Traditions--The Flood--Traditions of the Chinese, the
+     Iranians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Peruvians--The
+     Prevalence of Piacular Sacrifice and Tokens of a Sense of
+     Guilt--Traditions or Traces of Substitution Found in the
+     Vedas--Faint Traces in the Religion of the Egyptians--Traditions of
+     the Iroquois--Prophecies Looking to Divine Deliverers--The Tenth
+     Avatar of Vishnu yet to Come as a Restorer of Righteousness--The
+     Influence of the Tradition as Utilized by a Missionary--A Norse
+     Deliverer and Millennium--The Prediction of the Cumæan Sibyl Forty
+     Years before the Birth of Christ--Prevailing Conceptions of some
+     Mediator between God and Man--The Hindu Krishna as an
+     Example--Changes in Buddhism from the Old Atheism to Theism, and
+     even to a Doctrine of Salvation by Faith--A Trinity and at last a
+     Saviour--All the False Systems Claiming the Teachings and the
+     Character of Christ.
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+ETHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN
+     PHILOSOPHIES 294
+
+     The Prevalence of Speculation in all Ages in Regard to the Great
+     Questions of Man's Origin and Destiny, and His Relations to
+     God--The Various Schemes which have Seemingly Dispensed with the
+     Necessity for a Creator in Accounting for the Existence of the
+     Visible World--The Ancient Atomic Theories and Modern
+     Evolution--Kanada, Lucretius, Herbert Spencer--Darwin's Theory of
+     the Development of Species--Similar Theories Ascribed to the
+     Chinese--The Ethical Difficulties Attending Many Philosophic
+     Speculations, Ancient and Modern--Hindu Pantheism and Moral
+     Responsibility--In the Advance from Instinct to Conscience and
+     Religion, where does Moral Sentiment Begin?--If It was Right for
+     Primeval Man to Maraud, why Might not Robbery again Become His Duty
+     in Case of Extreme Deterioration?--Mr. Spencer's Theory of the
+     Origin of Moral Intuition--The Nobler Origin which the Scriptures
+     Assign to Man's Moral Nature--The Demonstrated Possibility of the
+     Most Radical and Sudden Moral Changes Produced by the Christian
+     Faith--Tendency of Ancient and Modern Theories to Lower the General
+     Estimate of Man--The Dignity with which the New Testament Invests
+     Him--The Ethical Tendency of the Doctrine of Evolution--The Opinion
+     Expressed on the Subject by Goldwin Smith--Peschel's Frank
+     Admission--The Pessimistic Tendency of all Anti-Biblical Theories
+     of Man's Origin, Life, and Destiny--Buddha, Schopenhauer, and the
+     Agnostics--The more Hopeful Influence of the Bible--The Tendency of
+     all Heathen Religions and all Anti-Christian Philosophies toward
+     Fatalism--Pantheism and the Philosophy of Spinoza Agreeing in this
+     Respect with the Hindu Vedantism--The Late Samuel Johnson's "Piety
+     of Pantheism," and His Definition of Fatalism--What Saves the
+     Scriptural Doctrine of Fore-ordination from Fatalism--The Province
+     of Faith and of Trust.
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+THE DIVINE SUPREMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 338
+
+     The Claim that Christianity is the only True Religion--The Peculiar
+     Tendencies of Modern Times to Deny this Supremacy and Monopoly--It
+     is not Enough in Such Times to Simply Ignore the Challenge--The
+     Unique Claim must be Defended--First: Christianity is
+     Differentiated from all Other Religions by the Fact of a Divine
+     Sacrifice for Sin--Mohammedanism, though Founded on a Belief in the
+     True God and Partly on the Old Testament Teachings, Offers no
+     Saviour--No Idea of Fatherhood is Found in any Non-Christian
+     Faith--The Gloom of Buddhism and the Terror of Savage
+     Tribes--Hinduism a System of Self-Help Merely--The Recognized
+     Grandeur of the Principle of Self-Sacrifice as Reflected from
+     Christ--Augustine Found a Way of Life only in His Divine
+     Sacrifice--Second: No Other Faith than Christianity is Made
+     Effectual by the Power of a Divine and Omnipotent Spirit--The
+     Well-Attested Fact of Radical Transformations of Character--Other
+     Systems have Made Converts only by Warlike Conquest or by Such
+     Motives as might Appeal to the Natural Heart--Christianity Rises
+     above all Other Systems in the Divine Personality of Christ--The
+     Contrast in this Respect between Him and the Authors of the
+     Non-Christian Systems--His Attractions and His Power Acknowledged
+     by all Classes of Men--The Inferiority of Socrates as Compared with
+     Christ--Bushnell's Tribute to the Perfection of this Divine
+     Personality--Its Power Attested in the Life of Paul--The Adaptation
+     of Christianity to all the Circumstances and Conditions of
+     Life--Abraham and the Vedic Patriarchs, Moses and Manu, David's Joy
+     and Gratitude, and the Gloom of Hindu or Buddhist Philosophy--Only
+     Christianity Brings Man to True Penitence and Humility--The
+     Recognized Beauty and the Convincing Lesson of the Prodigal
+     Son--The Contrast between Mohammed's Blasphemous Suras, which
+     Justify his Lust, and the Deep Contrition of David in the
+     Fifty-first Psalm--The Moral Purity of the Old and New Testaments
+     as Contrasted with all Other Sacred Books--The Scriptures Pure
+     though Written in Ages of Corruption and Surrounded by Immoral
+     Influences--Christ Belongs to no Land or Age--The Gospel Alone is
+     Adapted to all Races and all Time as the Universal Religion of
+     Mankind--Only Christianity Recognizes the True Relation between
+     Divine Help and Human Effort--It Encourages by Omnipotent
+     Co-operation--The All-Comprehensive Presentation of the Gospel.
+
+
+APPENDIX 381
+
+
+
+
+ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE NEED OF UNDERSTANDING THE FALSE RELIGIONS
+
+
+It is said that the very latest among the sciences is the Science of
+Religion. Without pausing to inquire how far it admits of scientific
+treatment, certain reasons which may be urged for the study of the
+existing religions of the world will be considered in this lecture. It
+must be admitted in the outset that those who have been the pioneers in
+this field of research have not, as a rule, been advocates of the
+Christian faith. The anti-Christian theory that all religions may be
+traced to common causes, that common wants and aspirations of mankind
+have led to the development of various systems according to environment,
+has until recently been the chief spur to this class of studies.
+Accordingly, the religions of the world have been submitted to some
+preconceived philosophy of language, or ethnology, or evolution, with
+the emphasis placed upon such facts as seemed to comport with this
+theory. Meanwhile there has been an air of broad-minded charity in the
+manner in which the apologists of Oriental systems have treated the
+subject. They have included Christ in the same category with Plato and
+Confucius, and have generally placed Him at the head; and this supposed
+breadth of sentiment has given them a degree of influence with dubious
+and wavering Christians, as well as with multitudes who are without
+faith of any kind.
+
+In this country the study of comparative religion has been almost
+entirely in the hands of non-evangelical writers. We have had "The Ten
+Great Religions," from the pen of Rev. James Freeman Clarke; "The
+Oriental Religions," written with great labor by the late Samuel
+Johnson; and Mr. Moncure D. Conway's "Anthology," with its flowers,
+gathered from the sacred books of all systems, and so chosen as to carry
+the implication that they all are equally inspired. Many other works
+designed to show that Christianity was developed from ancient sun myths,
+or was only a plagiarism upon the old mythologies of India, have been
+current among us. But strangely enough, the Christian Church has seemed
+to regard this subject as scarcely worthy of serious consideration. With
+the exception of a very able work on Buddhism,[1] and several review
+articles on Hinduism, written by Professor S.H. Kellogg, very little has
+been published from the Christian standpoint.[2] The term "heathenism"
+has been used as an expression of contempt, and has been applied with
+too little discrimination.
+
+There is a reason, perhaps, why these systems have been underestimated.
+It so happened that the races among whom the modern missionary
+enterprise has carried on its earlier work were mostly simple types of
+pagans, found in the wilds of America, in Greenland and Labrador, in the
+West Indies, on the African coast, or in the islands of the Pacific; and
+these worshippers of nature or of spirits gave a very different
+impression from that which the Apostles and the Early Church gained from
+their intercourse with the conquering Romans or the polished and
+philosophic Greeks. Our missionary work has been symbolized, as Sir
+William W. Hunter puts it, by a band of half-naked savages listening to
+a missionary seated under a palm-tree, and receiving his message with
+child-like and unquestioning faith.
+
+But in the opening of free access to the great Asiatic nations, higher
+grades of men have been found, and with these we now have chiefly to do.
+The pioneer of India's missions, the devoted Ziegenbalg, had not been
+long in his field before he learned the mistake which the churches in
+Europe had made in regard to the religion and philosophy of the Hindus.
+He laid aside all his old notions when he came to encounter the
+metaphysical subtleties of Hindu thought, when he learned something of
+the immense Hindu literature, the voluminous ethics, the mystical and
+weird mythologies, the tremendous power of tradition and social
+customs--when, in short, he found his way hedged up by habits of thought
+wholly different from his own; and he resolved to know something of the
+religion which the people of India already possessed.
+
+For the benefit of others who might follow him he wrote a book on
+Hinduism and its relations to Christianity, and sent it to Europe for
+publication. But so strong were the preconceived notions which prevailed
+among his brethren at home, that his manuscript, instead of being
+published, was suppressed. "You were not sent to India to study
+Hinduism," wrote Franke, "but to preach the Gospel." But Ziegenbalg
+certainly was not wanting in his estimate of the chief end in view, and
+his success was undoubtedly far greater for the intelligent plan upon
+which he labored. The time came when a change had passed over the
+society which had sent him forth. Others, less friendly than he to the
+Gospel of Christ, had studied Hinduism, and had paraded it as a rival of
+Christianity; and in self-defence against this flank movement, the
+long-neglected work of Ziegenbalg was brought forth from obscurity and
+published.
+
+It is partly in self-defence against similar influences, that the
+Christian Church everywhere is now turning increased attention to the
+study of Comparative Religion. In Great Britain a wider interest has
+been felt in the subject than in this country. And yet, even there the
+Church has been far behind the enemies of evangelical truth in
+comparing Christianity with false systems. Dr. James Stalker, of
+Glasgow, said a few months since that, whereas it might be expected that
+the advocates of the true faith would be the first to compare and
+contrast it with the false systems of the world, the work had been left
+rather to those who were chiefly interested in disparaging the truth and
+exalting error. Yet something has been done. Such men as Sir Monier
+Williams, Sir William Muir, Professors Rawlinson, Fairbairn, and Legge,
+Bishop Carpenter, Canon Hardwick, Doctors Caird, Dodds, Mitchell, and
+others, have given the false systems of the East a thorough and candid
+treatment from the Christian standpoint. The Church Missionary Society
+holds a lectureship devoted to the study of the non-Christian religions
+as a preparation for missionary work. And the representatives of that
+Society in the Punjab have instituted a course of study on these lines
+for missionaries recently arrived, and have offered prizes for the best
+attainments therein. Though we are later in this field of investigation,
+yet here also there is springing up a new interest, and it is safe to
+predict that within another decade the real character of the false
+religions will be more generally understood.
+
+The prejudice which has existed in regard to this subject has taken two
+different forms: First, there has been the broad assumption upon which
+Franke wrote to Ziegenbalg, that all knowledge of heathenism is worse
+than useless. Good men are asking, "Is not such a study a waste of
+energy, when we are charged with proclaiming the only saving truth? Is
+not downright earnestness better than any possible knowledge of
+philosophies and superstitions?" And we answer, "Yes: by all means, if
+only the one is possible." Another view of the subject is more serious.
+May there not, after all, be danger in the study of false systems? Will
+there not be found perplexing parallels which will shake our trust in
+the positive and exclusive supremacy of the Christian faith?
+
+Now, even if there were at first some risks to a simple, child-like
+confidence, yet a timid attitude involves far greater risks: it amounts
+to a half surrender, and it is wholly out of place in this age of
+fearless and aggressive discussion, when all truth is challenged, and
+every form of error must be met. Moreover, in a thorough study there is
+no danger. Sir Monier Williams tells us that at first he was surprised
+and a little troubled, but in the end he was more than ever impressed
+with the transcendent truths of the Christian faith. Professor S.H.
+Kellogg assures us that the result of his careful researches in the
+Oriental systems is a profounder conviction of the great truths of the
+Gospel as divine. And even Max Müller testifies that, while making every
+allowance for whatever is good in the ethnic faiths, he has been the
+more fully convinced of the great superiority of Christianity. Really,
+those are in danger who receive only the superficial and misleading
+representations of heathenism which one is sure to meet in our magazine
+literature, or in works like "Robert Elsmere" and "The Light of Asia."
+
+One cannot fail to mark the different light in which we view the
+mythologies of the Greeks and Romans. If their religious beliefs and
+speculations had remained a secret until our time, if the high ethical
+precepts of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius had only now been proclaimed, and
+Socrates had just been celebrated in glowing verse as the "Light of
+Greece," there would be no little commotion in the religious world, and
+thousands with only weak and troubled faith might be disturbed. But
+simply because we thoroughly understand the mythology of Greece and
+Rome, we have no fear. We welcome all that it can teach us. We cordially
+acknowledge the virtues of Socrates and assign him his true place. We
+enrich the fancy and awaken the intellectual energies of our youth by
+classical studies, and Christianity shines forth with new lustre by
+contrast with the heathen systems which it encountered in the Roman
+Empire ages ago.
+
+And yet that was no easy conquest. The early church, when brought face
+to face with the culture of Greece and the self-assertion of Roman
+power, when confronted with profound philosophies like those of Plato
+and Aristotle, with the subtleties of the Stoics, and with countless
+admixtures of Persian mysticism, had, humanly speaking, quite as
+formidable a task as those that are presented in the heathen systems of
+to-day. Very few of the champions of modern heathenism can compare with
+Celsus, and there are no more subtle philosophies than those of ancient
+Greece. Evidently, the one thing needed to disenchant the false systems
+of our time is a clear and accurate knowledge of their merits and
+demerits, and of their true relation to Christianity.
+
+It will be of advantage, for one thing, if we learn to give credit to
+the non-Christian religions for the good which they may fairly claim.
+There has existed a feeling that they had no rights which Christian men
+were bound to respect. They have been looked upon as systems of unmixed
+evil, whose enormities it were impossible to exaggerate. And all such
+misconceptions and exaggerations have only led to serious reactions.
+Anti-Christian writers have made great capital of the alleged
+misrepresentations which zealous friends of missions have put upon
+heathenism; and there is always great force in any appeal for fair play,
+on whichever side the truth may lie. Where the popular Christian idea
+has presented a low view of some system, scarcely rising above the grade
+of fetichism, the apologists have triumphantly displayed a profound
+philosophy. Where the masses of Christian people have credited whole
+nations with no higher notions of worship than a supreme trust in
+senseless stocks and stones, some skilful defender has claimed that the
+idols were only the outward symbols of an indwelling conception of
+deity, and has proceeded with keen relish to point out a similar use of
+symbols in the pictures and images of the Christian Church.
+
+From one extreme many people have passed to another, and in the end have
+credited heathen systems with greater merit than they possess. A marked
+illustration of this fact is found in the influence which was produced
+by Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Sentimental readers, passing
+from surprise to credulity, were ready to invest the "gentle Indian
+Saint" with Christian conceptions which no real Buddhist ever thought
+of. Mr. Arnold himself is said to have expressed surprise that people
+should have given to his poem so serious an interpretation, or should
+have imagined for a moment that he intended to compare Buddhism with the
+higher and purer teachings of the New Testament.
+
+In considering some of the reasons which may be urged for the study of
+false systems, we will first proceed from the standpoint of the
+candidate for the work of missions. And here there is a broad and
+general reason which seems too obvious to require much argument. The
+skilful general or the civil engineer is supposed, of course, to survey
+the field of contemplated operations ere he enters upon his work. The
+late Dr. Duff, in urging the importance of a thorough understanding of
+the systems which a missionary expects to encounter, illustrated his
+point by a reference to the great Akbar, who before entering upon the
+conquest of India, twice visited the country in disguise, that he might
+gain a complete knowledge of its topography, its strongholds, and its
+points of weakness, and the best methods of attack.
+
+While all religious teachers must understand their tasks, the need of
+special preparation is particularly urgent in the foreign missionary,
+owing to his change of environment. Many ideas and methods to which he
+has been trained, and which would serve him well among a people of his
+own race, might be wholly out of place in India or China, Ram Chandra
+Bose, M.A.--himself a converted Brahman--has treated with great
+discrimination the argument frequently used, that the missionary "need
+only to proclaim the Glad Tidings." He says: "That the simple story of
+Christ and him crucified is, after all, the truth on which the
+regeneration of the Christian and the non-Christian lands must hang, no
+one will deny. This story, ever fresh, is inherently fitted to touch the
+dead heart into life, and to infuse vitality into effete nationalities
+and dead civilizations. But a great deal of rubbish has to be removed in
+heathen lands, ere its legitimate consequences can be realized. And a
+patient, persistent study of the false religions, and the complicated
+systems of philosophy associated with them, enables the missionary to
+throw out of the way those heaps of prejudices and errors which make it
+impossible for the story of the cross to reach and influence the
+heart."[3] It has been very wisely said that "any fragment of truth
+which lies in a heathen mind unacknowledged is an insuperable barrier
+against conviction: recognized and used, it might prove a help;
+neglected and ignored, it is insurmountable."[4]
+
+The late Dr. Mullens learned by careful observation, that the
+intellectual power of the Hindus had been so warped by false reasoning,
+that "they could scarcely understand how, when two principles are
+contradictory, one must be given up as false. They are prepared to
+receive both sides of a contradiction as true, and they feel at liberty
+to adopt that which seems the most comfortable. And nothing but a full
+exposure of evil, with a clear statement of the antagonistic truth,
+will suffice to awaken so perverted an intellect."[5]
+
+The missionary has often been surprised to find that the idea which he
+supposed was clearly understood, was wholly warped by the medium of
+Hindu thought, as a rod is apparently warped when plunged into a stream,
+or as a beautiful countenance is distorted by the waves and
+irregularities of an imperfect mirror. To the preacher, sin, for
+example, is an enormity in the sight of God; but to his Hindu listener
+it may be only a breach of custom, or a ceremonial uncleanness. The
+indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as it is set forth in Paul's Epistles, is
+to the missionary a union in which his personality is still maintained
+in blest fellowship with God, while to his audience it may be only that
+out and out pantheism in which the deity within us supplants all
+individual personality, and not only excludes all joy, but all
+responsibility.
+
+Professor W.G.T. Shedd has clearly pointed out the fact that the modern
+missionary has a harder task in dealing with the perversions of the
+heathen mind than that to which the Apostles of the Early Church were
+called, owing to the prevalence in India and elsewhere of that pantheism
+which destroys the sense of moral responsibility. He says: "The Greek
+and Roman theism left the human will free and responsible, and thus the
+doctrine of sin could be taught. But the pantheistic systems of the East
+destroy free will, by identifying God and man; and hence it is
+impossible to construct the doctrine of sin and atonement except by
+first refuting the pantheistic ethics. The missionary can get no help
+from _conscience_ in his preaching, when this theory of God and the
+world has the ground. But St. Paul appealed confidently 'to every man's
+conscience in the sight of God,' and called upon the ethics and theology
+of the Greek and Roman philosophers for a corroboration. The early
+Apologists, Tertullian and others, did the same thing."
+
+The testimonies which have been given within the last few years, by the
+most intelligent and observing missionaries in Eastern lands, are of
+such peculiar significance and force, that I shall be justified in
+quoting a few at some length. Rev. George William Knox, D.D., of Tokio,
+Japan, in accepting an election to an honorary membership of the
+American Society of Comparative Religion, wrote, December 17, 1890: "I
+am deeply in sympathy with the objects of the Society, as indeed every
+missionary must be. We have practical demonstrations of the value of
+research into the ethnic religions. Even at home the value of such
+research has already been great, but in these non-Christian lands it is
+indispensable. It is true that non-Christian systems, as found among the
+people, rarely exhibit the forms or the doctrines which we learn from
+books, but I presume the same would be said by an intelligent Asiatic,
+were he to study our sacred books and then compare results with much of
+the religion which calls itself Christian in the West. And yet for the
+study even of the most debased forms of Christianity in South America or
+Mexico, let us say, we must needs begin with our sacred books. And so
+it is with debased Buddhism in Japan. The Buddhism of Ceylon and of the
+books is unknown to this people, and when it is used as the basis of
+argument or exposition we do not hit the mark. Yet, after all, our debt
+is immeasurable to the societies and scholars that have made accessible
+the sources that have yielded at last such systems as are dominant here.
+
+"The study of non-Christian systems is essential to the missionary, even
+though he does not refer to them in his preaching, but contents himself
+with delivering the Gospel message. And that is the rule with
+missionaries, so far as I know. But a knowledge of the native systems is
+imperative, that we may properly present our own. Otherwise we waste
+time in teaching over again that which is already fully known, or we so
+speak that our truth takes on the form of error, or we so underestimate
+the thought of those whom we address, that the preaching of the wisdom
+of God sounds in their ears the preaching of foolishness. The adaptation
+of preaching to the hearers of Asiatic lands is a task that may well
+make us thankful for every help that may be furnished us.... The
+missionary is far too apt to come from the West with exalted notions of
+his own superiority, and with a feeling of condescending pity for men
+who, perhaps, have pondered the deep things of the universe far more
+than he. Let him really master a philosophy like the Confucian, and he
+will better illustrate the Christian grace of humility, and be so much
+the better prepared for his work. His study will show him how
+astonishing is the light that has shone upon those men whom he has
+thought of as wholly in darkness. It will thus show him the true way of
+approach, and enable him to follow the lines of least resistance. It
+will also reveal to him what is the essential character of the divine
+message which he himself bears. He will separate that peculiar and
+spiritual truth which is the Word of Life, and will bring it as glad
+tidings of great joy. Surely no man can study these ethnic faiths, no
+matter with what appreciation of their measure of truth, and rejoicing
+in it, without a constantly growing conviction that the one power that
+converts men and establishes God's kingdom on earth is the Word that is
+eternal, the Son of God. He gathers in Himself all the truth of all the
+religions, and He adds that divine Salvation and Life for which all the
+nations have waited, and without which the highest and deepest thought
+remains unable to bring men into living communion with the God and
+Father of us all."
+
+Rev. Martyn Clark, D.D., Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at
+Umritsur, India, has given thorough study to the Sanscrit, and has
+thereby been enabled to expose the fallacies and misrepresentations
+which the Arya Somaj, in its bitter controversy with the Gospel, has put
+forth as to the real character of the Vedic literature. No man is better
+able to judge of the importance of a correct understanding of the errors
+of the non-Christian systems than he. In a letter accepting an honorary
+membership of the above-named Society he says: "The object of the
+Society is one in which I am deeply interested, and I shall at all
+times do what I can to further its aims. I am convinced that there is
+much that is helpful to the cause of Christ to be learned in this field
+of research."
+
+Rev. H. Blodgett, D.D., veteran Missionary of the American Board in
+Peking, in accepting a similar honor, says: "My interest in these
+studies has been deep and growing. It is high time that such a society
+as you represent should be formed. The study of Comparative Religion has
+long enough been in the hands of those who hold all religions to be the
+outcome of the natural powers of the human mind, unaided by a revelation
+from God. It is time that those who believe in the revelation from God
+in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament founded upon the Old,
+should study the great ethnic religions in the light derived from the
+Bible."
+
+Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D., long a Missionary of the Presbyterian
+Mission in Beyrout, Syria, says in the same connection: "The great
+missionary movement of our age has brought us face to face with problems
+and conflicts which are far more deep and serious than those which
+confront evangelistic efforts in our own land, and it is of the highest
+importance that the Church at home should know as fully as possible the
+peculiar and profound difficulties of work in foreign fields. These
+ancient religions of the East are behind intrenchments, and they are
+prepared to make a desperate resistance. Those who have never come into
+close contact with their adherents, and discovered by experience the
+difficulty of dislodging them and convincing them of the truth of the
+Gospel, may very properly misunderstand the work of the foreign
+missionary and wonder at his apparent failure, or at least his slow
+progress. But I wonder at the success attained in the foreign field, and
+consider it far more glorious and remarkable than it is generally
+accounted to be. A fuller acquaintance with the strength, and resources,
+and local éclat, and worldly advantages of these false religions, will
+give the Church at home greater patience and faith in the great work of
+evangelizing the nations."[6]
+
+A specific reason for the study of the non-Christian religions is found
+in the changes which our intercourse with Eastern nations has already
+wrought. With our present means of intercommunication we are brought
+face to face with them, and the contact of our higher vitality has
+aroused them from the comparative slumber of ages. Even our missionary
+efforts have given new vigor to the resistance which must be
+encountered. We have trained up a generation of men to a higher
+intellectual activity, and to a more earnest spirit of inquiry, and they
+are by no means all won over to the Christian faith. And there are
+thousands in India whom a Government education has left with no real
+faith of any kind, but whose pride of race and venerable customs is
+raised to a higher degree than ever. They have learned something of
+Christianity; they have also studied their own national systems; they
+have become especially familiar with all that our own sceptics have
+written against Christianity; still further, they have added to their
+intellectual equipment all that Western apologists have said of the
+superiority of the Oriental faiths. They are thus armed at every point,
+and they are using our own English tongue and all our facilities for
+publication. How is the young missionary, who knows nothing of their
+systems or the real points of comparison, to deal with such men? It is
+very true that not all ranks of Hindus are educated; there are millions
+who know nothing of any religion beyond the lowest forms of
+superstition, and to these we owe the duty of a simple and plain
+presentation of Christ and Him crucified; but in every community where
+the missionary is likely to live there are men of the higher class just
+named; and besides, professional critics and opposers are now employed
+to harass the bazaar preacher with perplexing questions, which are soon
+heard from the lips of the common people. A young missionary recently
+wrote of the surprise which he felt when a low caste man, almost without
+clothing, met him with arguments from Professor Huxley.
+
+Missionary Boards have sometimes sent out a specialist, and in some
+sense a champion, who should deal with the more intelligent classes of
+the heathen. But such a plan is fraught with disadvantages. What is
+needed is a thorough preparation in all missionaries, and that involves
+an indispensable knowledge of the forces to be met. The power of the
+press is no longer a monopoly of Christian lands. The Arya Somaj, of
+India, is now using it, both in the vernacular and in the English, in
+its bitter and often scurrilous attacks. One of its tracts recently sent
+to me contained an English epitome of the arguments of Thomas Paine. The
+secular papers of Japan present in almost every issue some discussion on
+the comparative merits of Christianity, Buddhism, Evolution, and
+Theosophy, and many of the young native ministry who at first received
+the truth unquestioningly as a child receives it from his mother, are
+now calling for men whom they can follow as leaders in their struggle
+with manifold error.[7]
+
+Even Mohammedans are at last employing the press instead of the sword.
+Newspapers in Constantinople are exhorting the faithful to send forth
+missionaries to "fortify Africa against the whiskey and gunpowder of
+Christian commerce, by proclaiming the higher ethical principles of the
+Koran." Great institutions of learning are also maintained as the
+special propaganda of the Oriental religions. El Azar, established at
+Cairo centuries ago, now numbers ten thousand students, and these when
+trained go forth to all Arabic speaking countries.[8] The Sanskrit
+colleges and monasteries of Benares number scarcely less than four
+thousand students,[9] who are being trained in the Sankhyan or the
+Vedanta philosophy, that they may go back to their different provinces
+and maintain with new vigor the old faiths against the aggressions of
+Christianity. And in Kioto, the great religious centre of Japan, we find
+over against the Christian college of the American Board of Missions, a
+Buddhist university with a Japanese graduate of Oxford as its president.
+In a great school at Tokio, also, Buddhist teachers, aided by New
+England Unitarians, are maintaining the superiority of Buddhism over
+Western Christianity as a religion for Japan.[10]
+
+Another reason why the missionary should study the false systems is
+found in the greatly diversified forms which these systems present in
+different lands and different ages. And just here it will be seen that a
+partial knowledge will not meet the demand. It might be even misleading.
+Buddhism, for example, has assumed an endless variety of forms--now
+appearing as a system of the baldest atheism, and now presenting an
+approximate theism. Gautama was certainly atheistic, and he virtually
+denied the existence of the human soul. But in the northern development
+of his system, theistic conceptions sprang up. A sort of trinity had
+appeared by the seventh century A.D., and by the tenth century a supreme
+and celestial Buddha had been discovered, from whom all other Buddhas
+were emanations. To-day there are at least twelve Buddhist sects in
+Japan, of which some are mystical, others pantheistic, while two hold a
+veritable doctrine of salvation by faith.[11]
+
+China has several types of Buddhism, and Mongolia, Thibet, Nepaul,
+Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam present each some special features of the
+system. How important that one should understand these differences in
+order to avoid blundering, and to wisely adapt his efforts! In India,
+under the common generic name of Hinduism, there are also many sects:
+worshippers of Vishnu, worshippers of Siva, worshippers of Krishna.
+There are Sikhs, and Jains, and devil worshippers; among the Dravidian
+and other pre-Aryan tribes there are victims of every conceivable
+superstition.
+
+Now, a missionary must know something of these faiths if he would fight
+with "weapons of precision." Paul, in becoming all things to all men,
+knew at least the differences between them. He preached the gospel with
+a studied adaptation. He tells us that he so strove as to win, and "not
+as those who beat the air." How alert were the combatants in the arena
+from which his simile is borrowed! How closely each athlete scanned his
+man, watched his every motion, knew if possible his every thought and
+impulse! Much more, in winning the souls of darkened and misguided men,
+should we learn the inmost workings of their minds, their habits of
+thought, and the nature of the errors which are to be dislodged.
+
+But how shall the false systems of religions be studied? First, there
+should be a spirit of entire candor. Truth is to be sought always, and
+at any cost; but in this case there is everything to be gained and
+nothing to be lost by the Christian teacher, and he can well afford to
+be just. Our divine Exemplar never hesitated to acknowledge that which
+was good in men of whatever nationality or creed. He could appreciate
+the faith of Roman or Syro-Phoenician. He could see merit in a Samaritan
+as well as in a Jew, and could raise even a penitent publican to the
+place of honor. It was only the Pharisees who hesitated to admit the
+truth, until they could calculate the probable effect of their
+admissions.
+
+The very best experience of missionaries has been found in the line of
+Christ's example. "The surest way to bring a man to acknowledge his
+errors," says Bishop Bloomfield, "is to give him full credit for
+whatever he had learned of the truth."[12] "What should we think," says
+a keen observer of the work of missions--"what should we think of an
+engineer who, in attempting to rear a light-house on a sandbar, should
+fail to acknowledge as a godsend any chance outcropping of solid rock to
+which he might fasten his stays?"[13]
+
+But in urging the duty of candor, I assume that an absolute freedom from
+bias is impossible on either side. It is sometimes amusing to witness
+the assurance with which professed agnostics assume that they, and they
+alone, look upon questions of comparative religion with an unbiased and
+judicial mind. They have no belief, they say, in any religion, and are
+therefore entirely without prejudice. But are they? Has the man who has
+forsaken the faith of his fathers and is deeply sensible of an
+antagonism between him and the great majority of those about him--has he
+no interest in trying to substantiate his position, and justify his
+hostility to the popular faith? Of all men he is generally the most
+prejudiced and the most bitter. We freely admit that we set out with a
+decided preference for one religious system above all others, but we
+insist that candor is possible, though an absolutely indifferent
+judgment is out of the question. Paul, who quoted to the Athenians their
+own poet, was fair-minded, and yet no man ever arraigned heathenism so
+terribly as he, and none was so intensely interested in the faith which
+he preached.
+
+Archbishop Trench, in discussing the exaggerations from which a careful
+study of the Oriental religions would doubtless save us, says, "There is
+one against which we are almost unwilling to say a word. I mean the
+exaggeration of those who, in a deep devotion to the truth as it is in
+Christ Jesus, count themselves bound, by their allegiance to Him, to
+take up a hostile attitude to everything not distinctly and avowedly
+Christian, as though any other position were a treachery to his cause,
+and a surrender of his exclusive right to the authorship of all the good
+which is in the world. In this temper we may dwell only on the guilt and
+misery and defilements, the wounds and bruises and putrefying sores of
+the heathen world; or if aught better is brought under our eye, we may
+look askant and suspiciously upon it, as though all recognition of it
+were a disparagement of something better. And so we may come to regard
+the fairest deeds of unbaptized men as only more splendid sins. We may
+have a short but decisive formula by which to try and by which to
+condemn them. These deeds, we may say, were not of faith, and therefore
+they could not please God; the men that wrought them knew not Christ,
+and therefore their work was worthless--hay, straw, and stubble, to be
+utterly burned up in the day of the trial of every man's work.
+
+"Yet there is indeed a certain narrowness of view, out of which alone
+the language of so sweeping a condemnation could proceed. Our allegiance
+to Christ, as the one fountain of light and life for the world, demands
+that we affirm none to be good but Him, allow no goodness save that
+which has proceeded from Him; but it does not demand that we deny
+goodness, because of the place where we find it, because we meet it, a
+garden tree, in the wilderness. It only requires that we claim this for
+Him who planted, and was willing that it should grow there; whom it
+would itself have gladly owned as its author, if, belonging to a happier
+time, it could have known Him by his name, whom in part it knew by his
+power.
+
+"We do not make much of a light of nature when we admit a righteousness
+in those to whom in the days of their flesh the Gospel had not come. We
+only affirm that the Word, though not as yet dwelling among us, yet
+being the 'light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,'
+had also lighted them. Some glimpses of his beams gilded their
+countenances, and gave to these whatever brightness they wore; and in
+recognizing this brightness we are ascribing honor to Him, and not to
+them; glorifying the grace of God, and not the virtues of man."[14]
+
+In marked contrast with this, and tending to an extreme, is the
+following, from the pen of Bishop Beveridge. It is quoted by Max Müller,
+in the opening volume of "The Sacred Books of the East," as a model of
+candor.
+
+"The general inclinations which are naturally implanted in my soul to
+some religion, it is impossible for me to shift off; but there being
+such a multiplicity of religions in the world, I desire now seriously to
+consider with myself which of them all to restrain these my general
+inclinations to. And the reason of this my inquiry is not, that I am in
+the least dissatisfied with that religion I have already embraced; but
+because 'tis natural for all men to have an overbearing opinion and
+esteem for that particular religion they are born and bred-up in. That,
+therefore, I may not seem biased by the prejudice of education, I am
+resolved to prove and examine them all; that I may see and hold fast to
+that which is best.... Indeed, there was never any religion so barbarous
+and diabolical, but it was preferred above all other religions
+whatsoever by them that did profess it; otherwise they would not have
+professed it.... And why, say they, may you not be mistaken as well as
+we? Especially when there are, at least, six to one against your
+Christian religion; all of which think they serve God aright; and expect
+happiness thereby as well as you.... And hence it is that in my looking
+out for the truest religion, being conscious to myself how great an
+ascendancy Christianity holds over me beyond the rest, as being that
+religion whereunto I was born and baptized; that the supreme authority
+has enjoined and my parents educated me in; that which everyone I meet
+withal highly approves of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued
+profession, made almost natural to me; I am resolved to be more jealous
+and suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to
+entertain it any longer without being convinced by solid and substantial
+arguments of the truth and certainty of it. That, therefore, I may make
+diligent and impartial inquiry into all religions and so be sure to find
+out the best, I shall for a time look upon myself as one not at all
+interested in any particular religion whatsoever, much less in the
+Christian religion; but only as one who desires, in general, to serve
+and obey Him that made me in a right manner, and thereby to be made
+partaker of that happiness my nature is capable of."[15]
+
+Second, in studying the false systems it is important to distinguish
+between religion and ethics. In the sphere of ethics the different
+faiths of men may find much common ground, while in their religious
+elements they may be entirely true or utterly false. The teachings of
+Confucius, though agnostic, presented a moral code which places the
+relations of the family and state on a very firm basis. And the very
+highest precepts of Buddhism belong to the period in which it was
+virtually atheistic. Many great and noble truths have been revealed to
+mankind through the conscience and the understanding, and these truths
+have found expression in the proverbs or ethical maxims of all races. To
+this extent God has nowhere left himself without witness. But all this
+is quite apart from a divinely revealed religion which may be cherished
+or be wholly lost. The golden rule is found not only in the New
+Testament, but negatively at least in the Confucian classics;[16] and
+the Shastras of the Hindus present it in both the positive and the
+negative form. And the still higher grace of doing good to those who
+injure us, was proclaimed by Laotze, five hundred years before Christ
+preached the Sermon on the Mount.
+
+The immense superiority of the ethical standard in Christianity, lies in
+its harmony and completeness. Confucius taught the active virtues of
+life, Laotze those of a passive kind; Christianity inculcates both. In
+heathenism ethical truths exist in fragments--mere half truths, like the
+broken and scattered remains of a temple once beautiful but now
+destroyed. They hold no relation to any high religious purpose, because
+they have no intelligent relation to God. Christian ethics begin with
+our relations to God as supreme, and they embrace the present life and
+the world to come. The symmetry of the divine precept, "Thou shalt love
+the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," finds
+no counterpart in the false religions of the world. Nowhere else, not
+even in Buddhism, is found the perfect law of love. The great secret of
+power in Christianity is God's unspeakable love to men in Christ; and
+the reflex of that love is the highest and purest ever realized in human
+hearts.
+
+Thirdly, the false systems should be studied by the Christian
+missionary, not for their own sakes so much as for an ulterior purpose,
+and they should be studied in constant comparison with the religion
+which it is his business to proclaim. His aim is not that of a savant.
+Let us not disguise it: he is mainly endeavoring to gain a more thorough
+preparation for his own great work. The professional scholar at Oxford
+or Leipsic might condemn this acknowledged bias--this pursuit of truth
+as a means and not as an end--but if he would be entirely frank, he
+would often find himself working in the interest of a linguistic
+theory, or a pet hypothesis of social science. It was in this spirit
+that Spencer and Darwin have searched the world for facts to support
+their systems.[17]
+
+I repeat, it is enough for the missionary that he shall be thoroughly
+candid. He may exercise the burning zeal of Paul for the Gospel which he
+proclaims, if he will also exercise his clear discrimination, his
+scrupulous fairness, his courtesy, and his tact. Let him not forget that
+he is studying religions comparatively; he should proceed with the Bible
+in one hand, and should examine the true and the false together.
+Contrasts will appear step by step as he advances, and the great truths
+of Christianity will stand out in brighter radiance, for the shadows of
+the background. If the question be asked, when and where shall the
+missionary candidate study the false systems, I answer at once; before
+he leaves his native land; and I assign three principal reasons. First:
+The study of a new and difficult language should engross his attention
+when he reaches his field. This will prove one of the most formidable
+tasks of his life, and it will demand resolute, concentrated, and
+prolonged effort. Second: In gaining access to the people, studying
+their ways and winning their confidence, the missionary will find great
+advantage in having gained some previous knowledge of their habits of
+thought and the intricacies of their beliefs. Third: The means and
+appliances of study are far greater here at home than on the mission
+fields. A very serious difficulty with most missionaries is the want of
+books on special topics; they have no access to libraries, and if one
+has imagined that he can best understand the faiths of the people by
+personal contact with them, he will soon learn with surprise how little
+he can gain from them, and how little they themselves know of their own
+systems. Those who do know have learned for the purpose of baffling the
+missionary instead of helping him. The accumulation and the arrangement
+of anything like a systematic knowledge of heathen systems has cost the
+combined effort of many missionaries and many Oriental scholars; and
+now, after three generations have pursued these studies, it is still
+felt that very much is to be learned from literatures yet to be
+translated. Such as there are, are best found in the home libraries.
+
+Let us for a few moments consider the question how far those who are not
+to become missionaries may be profited by a study of false systems. To a
+large extent, the considerations already urged will apply to them also,
+but there are still others which are specially important to public
+teachers here at home. Dean Murray, in an able article published in the
+"Homiletic Review" of September, 1890, recommended to active and
+careworn pastors a continued study of the Greek classics, as calculated
+to refresh and invigorate the mind, and increase its capacity for the
+duties of whatever sphere. All that he said of the Greek may also be
+said of the Hindu classics, with the added consideration that in the
+latter we are dealing with the living issues of the day. Sir Monier
+Williams, in comparing the two great Epics of the Hindus with those of
+Homer, names many points of superiority in the former.[18] It is safe to
+say that no poems of any other land have ever exercised so great a spell
+over so many millions of mankind as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, of
+India, and no other production is listened to with such delight as the
+story of Rama as it is still publicly read at the Hindu festivals.
+
+Of philosophies, no system of India has approached so near to veritable
+divine revelation as that of Plato, but in variety and subtlety, and in
+their far-reaching influence upon human life, the Indian schools,
+especially the Vedanta, are scarcely excelled to this day. And they are
+_applied_ philosophies; they constitute the religion of the people. Max
+Müller has said truly that no other line of investigation is so
+fascinating as that which deals with the long and universal struggle of
+mankind to find out God, and to solve the mystery of their relations to
+him. Unfortunately, human history has dealt mainly with wars and
+intrigues, and the rise and fall of dynasties; but compared with these
+coarse and superficial elements, how much more interesting and
+instructive to trace in all races of men the common and ceaseless
+yearnings after some solution of life's mysteries! One is stirred with
+a deeper, broader sympathy for mankind when he witnesses this universal
+sense of dependence, this fear and trembling before the powers of an
+unseen world, this pitiful procession of unblest millions ever trooping
+on toward the goal of death and oblivion. And from this standpoint, as
+from no other, may one measure the greatness and glory of the Gospel of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+To my mind there is nothing more pathetic than the spectacle of
+world-wide fetichism. It is not to be contemplated with derision, but
+with profoundest sympathy. We all remember the pathos of Scott's picture
+of his Highland heroine, with brain disordered by unspeakable grief,
+beguiling her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" and plumes
+from the eagle's wing. But sadder far is the spectacle of millions of
+men made for fellowship with God, building their hopes on the divinity
+dwelling in an amulet of tiger's teeth or serpent's fangs or curious
+shells. And it ought to enlarge our natures with a Christ-like sympathy
+when we contemplate those dark and desperate faiths which are but
+nightmares of the soul, which see in all the universe only malevolent
+spirits to be appeased, which, looking heavenward for a father's face,
+see, as Richter expressed it, "only a death's head with bottomless,
+empty sockets" instead of a loving smile.[19]
+
+And what a field do the greater but equally false systems present for
+the study of the human mind and heart! How was it that the simple nature
+worship of the Indo-Aryans grew into the vast deposit of modern
+Hinduism, and developed those social customs which have become walls of
+adamant? How could Buddhism grow out of such a soil and finally cast its
+spell over so many peoples? What were the elements of power which
+enabled the great sage of China to rear a social and political fabric
+which has survived for so many centuries? How was it that Islam gained
+its conquests, and what is the secret of that dominion which it still
+holds? These surely are questions worthy of those who are called to deal
+with human thought and human destiny. And when by comparison we find the
+grand differentials which raise Christianity infinitely above them all,
+we shall have gained the power of presenting its truths more clearly and
+more convincingly to the minds and hearts of men.
+
+There are some specific advantages flowing from the study of other
+religions of which I will give little more than an enumeration.
+
+1. It impresses us with the universality of some more or less distinct
+conception of God. I am aware that from time to time explorers imagine
+that they have found a race of men who have no notion of God, but in
+almost every instance subsequent investigation has found a religious
+belief. Such mistakes were made concerning the aborigines of Australia,
+the Dyaks of Borneo, the Papuans, the Patagonians, and even the American
+Indians. The unity of the race finds a new and striking proof in the
+universality of religion.
+
+2. The study of false systems brings to light an almost unanimous
+testimony for the existence of a vague primeval monotheism, and thus
+affords a strong presumptive corroboration of the Scriptural doctrine of
+man's apostasy from the worship of the true God.
+
+3. The clearest vindication of the severities of the Old Testament
+Theocracy, in its wars of extermination against the Canaanites and
+Phoenicians, is to be found in a careful study of the foul and cruel
+types of heathenism which those nations carried with them wherever their
+colonies extended. A religion which enjoined universal prostitution, and
+led thus to sodomy and the burning of young children in the fires of
+Moloch, far exceeded the worst heathenism of Africa or the islands of
+the Pacific. The Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean have not
+even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such
+a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even
+a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The
+extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great
+scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith,
+and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of
+Peace to all lands, becomes a work of mercy to the human race.
+
+4. The ethics of the heathen will be found to vindicate the doctrines of
+the Bible. This is a point which should be more thoroughly understood.
+It has been common to parade the high moral maxims of heathen systems as
+proofs against the exclusive claims of Christianity. But when carefully
+considered, the lofty ethical truths found in all sacred books and
+traditions, corroborate the doctrines of the Scriptures. They condemn
+the nations "who hold the truth in unrighteousness." They enforce the
+great doctrine that by their own consciences all mankind are convicted
+of sin, and are in need of a vicarious righteousness,--a full and free
+salvation by a divine power. My own experience has been, and it is
+corroborated by that of many others, that very many truths of the
+Gospel, when seen from the stand-point of heathenism, stand out with a
+clearness never seen before.
+
+Many prudential reasons like those which we have given for the study of
+false systems by missionaries, pertain also to those who remain at home.
+Both are concerned in the same cause, and both encounter the same
+assailments of our common faith. We are all missionaries in an important
+sense: we watch the conflict from afar, but we are concerned in all its
+issues. The bulletins of its battle-fields are no longer confined to
+missionary literature; they are found in the daily secular press, and
+they are discussed with favorable or unfavorable comments in the monthly
+magazines. The missionary enterprise has come to attract great
+attention: it has many friends, and also many foes, here at home; it is
+misrepresented by scoffers at our doors. The high merits of heathen
+systems, set forth with every degree of exaggeration, pass into the
+hands of Christian families, in books and magazines and secular papers.
+Apostles of infidelity are sent out to heathen countries to gather
+weapons against the truth. Natives of various Oriental lands, once
+taught in our mission schools perhaps, but still heathen, are paraded on
+our lecture platforms, where they entertain us with English and American
+arguments in support of their heathen systems and against Christianity.
+Young pastors, in the literary clubs of their various communities, are
+surprised by being called to discuss plausible papers on Buddhism, which
+some fellow-member has contributed, and they are expected to defend the
+truth. Or some young parishioner has been fascinated by a plausible
+Theosophist, or has learned from Robert Elsmere that there are other
+religions quite as pure and sacred as our own. Or some chance lecturer
+has disturbed the community with a discourse on the history of religious
+myths. And when some anxious member of a church learns that his
+religious instructor has no help for him on such subjects, that they lie
+wholly outside of his range, there is apt to be something more than
+disappointment: there is a loss of confidence.
+
+It is an unfortunate element in the case that error is more welcome in
+some of our professedly neutral papers than the truth: an article
+designed to show that Christianity was borrowed from Buddhism or was
+developed from fetichism will sometimes be welcomed as new sensation,
+while a reply of half the length may be rejected.
+
+There is something ominous in these facts. Whether the secular press
+(not all papers are thus unfair) are influenced by partisan hatred of
+the truth or simply by a reckless regard for whatever is most popular,
+the facts are equally portentous. And if it be true that such
+publications are what the people most desire, the outlook for our
+country is dark indeed. The saddest consideration is that the power of
+the secular press is so vast and far reaching. When Celsus wrote, books
+were few. When Voltaire, Hume, and Thomas Paine made their assailments
+on the Christian faith, the means of spreading the blight of error were
+comparatively few. But now the accumulated arguments of German infidels
+for the last half-century may be thrown into a five-cent Sunday paper,
+whose issue will reach a quarter of a million of copies, which perhaps a
+million of men and women may read. These articles are copied into a
+hundred other papers, and they are read in the villages and hamlets;
+they are read on the ranches and in the mining camps where no sermon is
+ever heard.
+
+It is perfectly evident that in an age like this we cannot propagate
+Christianity under glass. It must grow in the open field where the free
+winds of heaven shall smite and dissipate every cloud of error that may
+pass over it, and where its roots shall only strike the deeper for the
+questionings and conflicts that may often befall it. Error cannot be
+overcome either by ignoring it or by the cheap but imbecile scolding of
+an ignorant pulpit.
+
+I cannot express the truth on this point more forcibly than by quoting
+the trenchant words of Professor Ernest Naville, in his lectures on
+"Modern Atheism." After having admitted that one, who can keep himself
+far from the strifes and struggles of modern thought, will find
+solitude, prayer, and calm activity, pursued under the guidance of
+conscience, most conducive to unquestioning faith and religious peace,
+he says: "But we are not masters of our own ways, and the circumstances
+of the present times impose on us special duties. The barriers which
+separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down; everywhere
+shreds of philosophy, and very often of very bad philosophy, scattered
+fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable
+theological science, are insinuating themselves into the current
+literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a
+political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without
+occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests. The most
+sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public opinion.
+At such a juncture can men, who preserve faith in their own souls,
+remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow limits
+of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common ground and
+fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For this purpose
+it is necessary to state questions which run the risk of startling
+sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it if we are to
+combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only
+that we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a passing
+rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channels, shall be
+found to have left not so much as a trace of their passage upon the Rock
+of Ages." The fact that Professor Naville's lectures were delivered in
+Geneva and Lausanne, to audiences which together numbered over two
+thousand five hundred people, affords abundant proof that the people are
+prepared to welcome the relief afforded by a clear and really able
+discussion of these burning questions. In the ordinary teaching of the
+pulpit they would be out of place, but every public teacher should be
+able to deal with them on suitable occasions.
+
+In a single concluding word, the struggle of truth and error has become
+world-wide. There are no ethnic religions now. There is Christianity in
+Calcutta, and there is Buddhism in Boston. The line of battle is the
+parallel that belts the globe. It is not a time for slumber or for mere
+pious denunciation. There must be no blundering: the warfare must be
+waged with weapons of precision, and then victory is sure. It is well if
+our missionary effort of a century has drawn the fire of the enemy; it
+is well if the time has come to hold up the truth face to face with
+error, and to fight out and over again the conflict of Elijah and the
+Priests of Baal.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Light of Asia and the Light of the World_. Macmillan &
+Co.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The late Professor Moffat, of Princeton Theological
+Seminary, published a _Comparative History of Religions_, but its field
+was too broad for a thorough treatment.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Methodist Quarterly_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Manual of India Missions._]
+
+[Footnote 6: Similar views, though in briefer terms, have been presented
+by Rev. William A.P. Martin, D.D., of Peking; Rev. John L. Nevins, D.D.,
+of Chefou; Rev. A.P. Happer, D.D., and Rev. B.C. Henry, D.D., of Canton;
+Professor John Wortabet, M.D., of Beyrout; Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, D.D.,
+Missionary of the Reformed Church in Madras; Rev. Z.J. Jones, D.D.,
+Missionary of the American M.E. Church at Bareilly, India; Rev. K.C.
+Chattergee and Ram Chandra Bose, both converts from high caste Hinduism
+and both eminent ministers of the Gospel in India; and Rev. E.W. Blyden,
+D.D., the accomplished African scholar of Liberia.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The _Japan Mail_ of September 30, 1891, in reviewing the
+progress of religious and philosophic discussion as carried on by the
+native press of the Empire, says: "The Buddhist literature of the season
+shows plainly the extent to which the educated members of the (Buddhist)
+priesthood are seeking to enlarge their grasp by contact with Western
+philosophy and religious thought. We happen to know that a prominent
+priest of the Shinsu sect is deeply immersed in Comte's humanitarianism.
+In _Kyogaku-roushu_ (a native paper) are published instalments of
+Spencer's philosophy. Another paper, the _Hauseikwai_, has an article
+urging the desirability of a general union of all the (Buddhist) sects,
+such as Colonel Olcott brought about in India between the northern and
+the southern Buddhists."]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book._]
+
+[Footnote 9: Papers of Rev. Mr. Hewlett in the _Indian Evangelical
+Review_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In an address given in Tokio, by Rev. Mr. Knapp, of
+Boston, Buddhists in Japan were advised to build their religion of the
+future upon their own foundations, and not upon the teachings of Western
+propagandists.]
+
+[Footnote 11: _The Twelve Buddhist Sects of Japan_, by Bunyiu Nanjio,
+Oxon.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Hulsean Lectures_, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Private Thoughts on Religion, Part I., Article 2.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Confucius not only taught that men should not do to others
+what they would not have done to them, but when one of his disciples
+asked him to name one word which should represent the whole duty of man,
+he replied "Reciprocity."]
+
+[Footnote 17: Whoever will read the Preface of Mr. Spencer's work on
+Sociology will be surprised at the means which have been used in
+collecting and verifying supposed facts; a careful perusal of the book
+will show that all classes of testimony have been accepted, so far as
+they were favorable. Adventurers, reporters, sailors, and that upon the
+briefest and most casual observation, have been deemed capable of
+interpreting the religious beliefs of men. Even Peschel doubts many of
+their conclusions.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See _Indian Wisdom_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Archbishop Trench, after speaking in his Hulsean lectures
+of the advantages which we may gain from an earnest study of the
+struggles of thoughtful men, who amid heathen darkness have groped after
+a knowledge of the true God, and of the gratitude which we ought to feel
+who have received a more sure word of prophecy, adds in words of rare
+beauty: "And perhaps it shall seem to us as if that star in the natural
+heavens which guided those Eastern sages from their distant home, was
+but the symbol of many a star which, in the world's mystical night, such
+as, being faithfully followed, availed to lead humble and devout hearts
+from far-off regions of superstition and error, till they knelt beside
+the cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem, and saw all their weary wanderings
+repaid in a moment, and all their desires finding a perfect fulfilment
+in Him."]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE METHODS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN DEALING WITH HEATHENISM
+
+
+The coincidences of our present conquest of the non-Christian races with
+that to which the Apostolic Church was called are numerous and striking.
+Not even one hundred years ago was the struggle with heathen error so
+similar to that of the early Church.
+
+To a great extent the missionary efforts of the mediæval centuries
+encountered only crude systems, which it was comparatively easy to
+overcome. The rude tribes of Northern Europe were converted by the
+Christianity of the later Roman Empire, even though they were
+conquerors. Their gods of war and brute force did not meet all the
+demands of life. As a source of hope and comfort, their religion had
+little to be compared with the Christian faith, and as to philosophy
+they had none. They had inherited the simple nature worship which was
+common to all branches of the Aryan race, and they had expanded it into
+various ramifications of polytheism; but they had not fortified it with
+subtle speculations like those of the Indo-Aryans, nor had their
+mythologies become intrenched in inveterate custom, and the national
+pride which attends an advanced civilization.
+
+At a later day Christian missionaries in Britain found the Norse
+religion of the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, scarcely holding the
+confidence of either rulers or subjects. They had valued their gods
+chiefly for the purposes of war, and they had not always proved
+reliable. The king of Northumbria, like Clovis of France, had vowed to
+exchange his deities for the God of the Christians if victory should be
+given him on a certain battle-field; and when he had assembled his
+thanes to listen to a discussion between the missionary Paulinus and the
+priests of Woden on the comparative merits of their respective faiths,
+the high priest frankly admitted his dissatisfaction with a religion
+which he had found utterly disappointing and useless; and when other
+chief counsellors had given the same testimony, and a unanimous vote had
+been taken to adopt the Christian faith, he was the first to commence
+the destruction of the idols.[20]
+
+The still earlier missionaries among the Druid Celts of Britain and
+France, though they found in Druidism a more elaborate faith than that
+of the Norsemen, encountered no such resistance as we find in the great
+religious systems of our day. Where can we point to so easy a conquest
+as that of Patrick in Ireland, or that of the Monks of Iona among the
+Picts and Scots?
+
+The Druids claimed that they already had many things in common with the
+Christian doctrines,[21] and what was a still stronger element in the
+case, they made common cause with the Christians against the wrongs
+inflicted on both by pagan Rome. The Roman emperors were not more
+determined to extirpate the hated and, as they thought, dangerous
+influences of Christianity, than they were to destroy every vestige of
+Druidism as their only hope of conquering the invincible armies of
+Boadicea. And thus the mutual experience of common sufferings opened a
+wide door for the advancement of Christian truth.
+
+The conquests of Welsh and Irish missionaries in Burgundy, Switzerland,
+and _Germany_, encountered no elaborate book religions, and no profound
+philosophies. They had to deal with races of men who were formidable
+only with weapons of warfare, and who, intent chiefly on conquest and
+migration, had few institutions and no written historic records. The
+peaceful sceptre of the truth was a new force in their experience, and
+the sympathetic and self-denying labors of a few missionaries tamed the
+fierce Vikings to whom Britain had become a prey, and whose incursions
+even the armies of Charlemagne could not resist.
+
+How different is our struggle with the races now under the sceptre of
+Islam, for example--inflated as they are with the pride of wide
+conquest, and looking contemptuously upon that Christian faith which it
+was their early mission to sweep away as a form of idolatry! How
+different is our task in India, which boasts the antiquity of the noble
+Sanskrit and its sacred literature, and claims, as the true
+representative of the Aryan race, to have given to western nations their
+philosophy, their religion, and their civilization! How much more
+difficult is our encounter with Confucianism, which claims to have laid
+the foundations of the most stable structure of social and political
+institutions that the world has ever known, and which to-day, after
+twenty-five centuries of trial, appeals to the intellectual pride of all
+intelligent classes in a great empire of four hundred millions! And
+finally, how different is our task with Buddhism, so mystical and
+abstruse, so lofty in many of its precepts, and yet so cold and thin, so
+flexible and easily adapted, and therefore so varied and many sided! The
+religious systems with which we are now confronted find their
+counterparts only in the heathenism with which the early Church had to
+deal many centuries ago; and for this reason the history of those early
+struggles is full of practical instruction for us now. How did the early
+Church succeed in its great conquest? What methods were adopted, and
+with what measures of success?
+
+In one respect there is a wide difference in the two cases. The Apostles
+were attempting to convert their conquerors. They belonged to the
+vanquished race; they were of a despised nationality. The early fathers
+also were subjects of Pagan powers. Insomuch as the Roman emperors
+claimed divine honors, there was an element of treason in their
+propagandism. The terrible persecutions which so long devastated the
+early Church found their supposed justification in the plea of
+self-defence against a system which threatened to subvert cherished and
+time-honored institutions. Candid writers, like Archdeacon Farrar, admit
+that Christianity did hasten the overthrow of the Roman Empire.
+
+But we find no conquering powers in our pathway. Christianity and
+Christian civilization have become dominant in the earth. The weakness
+of the Christian Church in its conquests now is not in being baffled and
+crippled by tyranny and persecution, but rather in the temptation to
+arrogance and the abuse of superior power, in the overbearing spirit
+shown in the diplomacy of Christian nations and the unscrupulous
+aggressions of their commerce. There is also a further contrast in the
+fact that in the early days the advantages of frugality and simple
+habits of life were on the side of the missionaries. Roman society
+especially was beginning to suffer that decay which is the inevitable
+consequence of long-continued luxury, while the Church observed
+temperance in all things and excelled in the virtues which always tend
+to moral and social victory.[22]
+
+On the other hand, we who are the ambassadors to the heathen of to-day,
+are ourselves exposed to the dangers which result from wealth and
+excessive luxury. Our grade of life, our scale of expenditure, even the
+style in which our missionaries live, excites the amazement of the
+frugal heathen to whom they preach. And as for the Church at home, it is
+hardly safe for a Persian or a Chinaman to see it. Everyone who visits
+this wonderful eldorado carries back such romantic impressions as excite
+in others, not so much the love of the Gospel as the love of mammon.
+When the Church went forth in comparative poverty, and with an intense
+moral earnestness, to preach righteousness, temperance, and the judgment
+to come; when those who were wealthy gave all to the poor--like Anthony
+of Egypt, Jerome, Ambrose, and Francis of Assisi--and in simple garments
+bore the Gospel to those who were surfeited with luxuries and pleasures,
+and were sick of a life of mere indulgence, then the truth of the Gospel
+conquered heathenism with all that the world could give. But whether a
+Church in the advanced civilization of our land and time, possessed of
+enormous wealth, enjoying every luxury, and ever anxious to gain more
+and more of this present world, can convert heathen races who deem
+themselves more frugal, more temperate, and less worldly than we, is a
+problem which remains to be solved. We have rare facilities, but we have
+great drawbacks. God's grace can overcome even our defects, and He has
+promised success.
+
+But in the proud intellectual character of the systems encountered
+respectively by the ancient and by the modern Church, there are
+remarkable parallels. The supercilious pride of Brahminism, or the lofty
+scorn of Mohammedanism, is quite equal to that self-sufficient Greek
+philosophy in whose eyes the Gospel was the merest foolishness. And the
+immovable self-righteousness of the Stoics has its counterpart in the
+Confucianism of the Chinese literati. A careful comparison of the six
+schools of Hindu philosophy with the various systems of Greece and
+Rome, will fill the mind with surprise at the numerous
+correspondences--one might almost say identities. And that surprise is
+the greater from the fact that no proof exists that either has been
+borrowed from the other.
+
+The atomic theory of creation advanced by Lucretius is found also in the
+Nyaya philosophy of the Hindus. The pessimism of Pliny and Marcus
+Aurelius was much more elaborately worked out by Gautama. The Hindus had
+their categories and their syllogisms as well as Aristotle. The
+conception of a dual principle in deity which the early Church traced in
+all the religious systems of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria, and whose
+influence poisoned the life of the Phoenician colonies, and was so
+corrupting to the morals of Greece and Rome, was also elaborated by the
+Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and it has plunged Hindu society into as
+deep a degradation as could be found in Pompeii or Herculaneum.[23] The
+Indian philosophy partook far more of the pantheistic element than that
+of Greece. Plato and Aristotle had clearer conceptions of the
+personality of the deity and of the distinct and responsible character
+of the human soul than any school of Hindu philosophers--certainly
+clearer than the Vedantists, and their ethics involved a stronger sense
+of sin.
+
+German philosophy has borrowed its pantheism from India rather than from
+Greece, and in its most shadowy developments it has never transcended
+the ancient Vedantism of Vyasa.
+
+As in the early centuries, so in our time, different systems of religion
+have been commingled and interwoven into protean forms of error more
+difficult to understand and dislodge than any one of the faiths and
+philosophies of which they were combined. As the Alexandrian Jews
+intertwined the teachings of Judaism and Platonism; as Manichæans and
+Gnostics corrupted the truths of the Old and New Testaments with ideas
+borrowed from Persian mysticism; as various eclectic systems gathered up
+all types of thought which the wide conquests of the Roman Empire
+brought together, and mingled them with Christian teachings; so now the
+increased intercommunication, and the quickened intellectual activity
+of our age have led to the fusion of different systems, ancient and
+modern, in a negative and nerveless religion of humanity. We now have in
+the East not only Indian, but Anglo-Indian, speculations. The
+unbelieving Calcutta graduate has Hegel and Spinoza interwoven with his
+Vedantism, and the eclectic leader of the Brahmo Somaj, while placing
+Christ at the head of the prophets and recognizing the authority of all
+sacred bibles of the races, called on Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and
+Mohammedans to unite in one theistic church of the New Dispensation in
+India. Not even the old Gnostics could present so striking an admixture
+as that of the Arya Somaj. It has appropriated many of those Christian
+ethics which have been learned from a century of contact with
+missionaries and other Christian residents. It has approved the more
+humane customs and reforms of Christendom, denouncing caste, and the
+degradation of woman. It has repudiated the corrupt rites and the
+degrading superstitions of Hinduism. At the same time its hatred of the
+Christian faith is most bitter and intense.
+
+And there are other alliances, not a few, between the East and the West.
+In India and Japan the old Buddhism is compounded with American
+Spiritualism and with modern Evolution, under a new application of the
+ancient name of Theosophy. In Japan representatives of advanced
+Unitarianism are exhorting the Japanese Buddhists to build the religion
+of the future on their old foundations, and to avoid the propagandists
+of western Christianity.
+
+The bland and easy-going catholicity which professes so much in our day,
+which embraces all faiths and unfaiths in one sweet emulsion of
+meaningless negations, which patronizes the Christ and His doctrines,
+and applies the nomenclature of Christianity to doctrines the very
+opposite of its teachings, finds a counterpart in the smooth and vapid
+compromises of the old Gnostics. "Gnosticism," says Uhlhorn, "combined
+Greek philosophies, Jewish theology, and ancient Oriental theosophy,
+thus forming great systems of speculative thought, all with the object
+of displaying the world's development. From a pantheistic First Cause,
+Gnosticism traced the emanation of a series of æons--beings of Light.
+The source of evil was supposed to be matter, which in this material
+world holds light in captivity. To liberate the light and thus redeem
+the world, Christ came, and thus Christianity was added as the crowning
+and victorious element in this many-sided system of speculation. But
+Christ was regarded not so much as a Saviour of individual souls as an
+emancipator of a disordered kosmos, and the system which seemed to
+accord great honor to Christianity threatened to destroy its life and
+power." So, according to some of our Modern Systems, men are to find
+their future salvation in the grander future of the race.[24]
+
+Not only do we encounter mixtures of truth and error, but we witness
+similar attempts to prove that whatever is best in Christianity was
+borrowed from heathenism. Porphyry and others maintained that Pythagoras
+and Theosebius had anticipated many of the attributes and deeds of
+Christ, and Philostratus was prompted by the wife of Severus to write a
+history of Appolonius of Tyana which should match the life of Christ.
+And in precisely the same way it has been variously claimed in our time
+that the story of Christ's birth, childhood, and ministry were borrowed
+from Buddha and from Krishna, and that the whole conception of his
+vicarious suffering for the good of men is a clever imitation of
+Prometheus Bound. Now, in the earlier conflict it was important to know
+the facts on both sides in order to meet these allegations of Porphyry,
+Marinus, and others, and it is equally important to understand the
+precise ground on which similar charges are made with equal assurance
+now.[25] The very same old battles are to be fought over again, both
+with philosophy and with legend.
+
+And it is very evident that, with so many points of similarity between
+the early struggle of Christianity with heathenism and that of our own
+time, it is quite worth our labor to inquire what were the general
+methods then pursued. Then victory crowned the efforts of the Church.
+That which humanly speaking seemed impossible, was actually
+accomplished. From our finite standpoint, no more preposterous command
+was ever given than that which Christ gave to his little company of
+disciples gathered in the mountains of Galilee, or that last word before
+his ascension on Mt. Olivet, in which He placed under their responsible
+stewardship, not only Jerusalem, but all Judea and Samaria, and the
+"uttermost parts of the earth." The disciples were without learning or
+social influence, or political power. They had no wealth and few
+facilities, and so far as they knew there were no open doors. They were
+hated by their Jewish countrymen, ridiculed by the ubiquitous and
+cultured Greeks, and frowned upon by the conquering powers of Rome. How
+then did they succeed? How was it that in three or four centuries they
+had virtually emptied the Roman Pantheon of its heathen deities, and
+had gained the sceptre of the empire and the world?
+
+It is easy to misapprehend the forces which won the victory. The
+disciples first chosen to found the Church were fishermen, but that
+affords no warrant for the belief that only untutored men were employed
+in the early Church, or for the inference that the Salvation Army are to
+gain the conquest now. They were inspired; these are not; and a few only
+were chosen, with the very aim of setting at naught the intolerant
+wisdom of the Pharisees. But when the Gospel was to be borne to heathen
+races, to the great nations whose arrogance was proportionate to their
+learning and their power, a very different man was selected. Saul of
+Tarsus had almost every needed qualification seen from a human point of
+view. Standing, as he must, between the stiff bigotry of Judaism and the
+subtleties of Greek philosophy, he was fortunately familiar with both.
+He was a man of rare courtesy, and yet of matchless courage. Whether
+addressing a Jewish governor or the assembled philosophers and
+counsellors of Athens, he evinced an unfailing tact. He knew how to
+conciliate even a common mob of heathen idolators and when to defy a
+high priest, or plead the immunities of his Roman citizenship before a
+Roman proconsul.
+
+In tracing the methods of the early Church in dealing with heathenism,
+we begin, therefore, with Paul; for although he was differentiated from
+all modern parallels by the fact that he was inspired and endowed with
+miraculous power, yet that does not invalidate the force of those
+general principles of action which he illustrated. He was the first and
+greatest of all missionaries, and through all time it will be safe and
+profitable to study his characteristics and his methods. He showed the
+value of thorough training in his own faith, and of a full understanding
+of all the errors he was to contend with. He could reason with Jews out
+of their own Scriptures, or substantiate his position with Greeks by
+citing their own poets. He was certainly uncompromising in maintaining
+the sovereignty of the one God, Jehovah, but he was not afraid to admit
+that in their blind way the heathen were also groping after the same
+supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an
+adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must
+admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the
+supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a
+real resemblance, if not a partial and obscured identity.
+
+The essential principle here is that Paul frankly acknowledged whatever
+glimpses of truth he found in heathen systems, and made free use of them
+in presenting the fuller and clearer knowledge revealed in the Gospel.
+No man ever presented a more terrible arraignment of heathenism than
+that which he makes in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans,
+and yet, with marvellous discrimination he proceeds, in the second
+chapter, to show how much of truth God has imparted to the
+understandings and the consciences of all men. And he seems to imply
+the Holy Spirit's regenerative work through Christ's atonement, when he
+maintains that whoever shall, "by patient continuance in well doing,
+seek glory and immortality," to him shall "eternal life" be given; but
+"tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, to the
+Jew first, and also to the Gentile." Peter was not prepared to be a
+missionary till he had been divested of his Jewish narrowness by
+witnessing the power of grace in the Roman centurion at Cesarea. That
+widened out his horizon immensely. He saw that God in his ultimate plan
+was no respecter of persons or of races.
+
+There has been great difference of opinion as to whether the annual
+worship of the supreme God of Heaven in the great imperial temple at
+Peking is in any degree a relic of the worship of the true God once
+revealed to mankind. Such Chinese scholars as Martin and Legge and
+Douglass think that it is; others deny it. Some men raise a question
+whether the Allah of the Mohammedan faith is identical with the Jehovah
+of the Old Testament. Sales, the profoundest expositor of Islam,
+considers him the same. Moslems themselves have no doubt of it: the
+intent of the Koran is that and nothing else; Old Testament teachings
+are interwoven with almost every sura of its pages. I think that Paul
+would have conceded this point at once, and would the more successfully
+have urged the claims of Jesus, whom the Koran presents as the only
+sinless prophet. Of course Mohammedans do not recognize the Triune God
+as we now apprehend Him, from the New Testament standpoint; neither did
+ancient believers of Israel fully conceive of God as He has since been
+more fully revealed in the person and the sacrifice of his Son--Jesus
+Christ.
+
+Both the teachings and the example of Paul seem to recognize the fact
+that conceptions of God, sometimes clear and sometimes dim, may exist
+among heathen nations; and many of the great Christian fathers evidently
+took the same view. They admitted that Plato's noble teachings were
+calculated to draw the soul toward God, though they revealed no real
+access to Him such as is found in Christ. Archbishop Trench, in his
+Hulsean lectures on "Christ the Desire of the Nations," dwells
+approvingly upon Augustine's well-known statement, that he had been
+turned from vice to an inspiring conception of God by reading the
+"Hortensius" of Cicero. Augustine's own reference to the fact is found
+in the fourth book of his "Confessions," where he says: "In the ordinary
+course of study I fell upon a certain book of Cicero whose speech almost
+all admire--not so his heart. This book contains an exhortation to
+philosophy, and is called 'Hortensius.' But this book altered my
+affections and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have
+other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to
+me, and I longed with an incredible burning desire for an immortality of
+wisdom, and began now to arise that I might return to Thee. For not to
+sharpen my tongue did I employ that book: nor did it infuse into me its
+style, but its matter."
+
+The "Hortensius" of Cicero has not survived till our time, and we know
+not what it contained; but we cannot fail to notice this testimony of a
+mature and eminent saint to the spiritual benefit which he had received
+at the age of thirty-one, from reading the works of a heathen
+philosopher. And a most interesting proof is here furnished for the
+freedom with which the Spirit of God works upon the hearts of men, and
+the great variety of means and agencies which He employs,--and that
+beyond the pale of the Christian Church, and even beyond the actual
+knowledge of the historic Christ. It would be interesting to know
+whether the regeneration of Augustine occurred just then, when he says
+in such strong language, that this book altered his affections and
+turned his prayers unto God, and made him "long with an indescribable
+burning desire for an immortality of wisdom." All men are saved, if at
+all, by the blood of Christ through the renewing of the Holy Ghost; but
+what was the position of such men as Augustine and Cornelius of Cesarea
+before they fully and clearly saw Jesus as the actual Messiah, and as
+the personal representative of that Grace of God in which they had
+already reposed a general faith, is at least an interesting question.
+
+Not less positive is the acknowledgment which Augustine makes of the
+benefits which he had received from Plato. And he mentions many others,
+as Virgininus, Lactantius, Hilary, and Cyprian, who, like himself,
+having once been heathen and students of heathen philosophy, had, as he
+expresses it, "spoiled the Egyptians, bringing away with them rich
+treasures from the land of bondage, that they might adorn therewith the
+true tabernacle of the Christian faith." Augustine seems to have been
+fond of repeating both this argument and this his favorite illustration.
+In his "Doctrine of Christ" he expands it more fully than in his
+"Confessions." He says: "Whatever those called philosophers, and
+especially the Platonists, may have said conformable to our faith, is
+not only not to be dreaded, but is to be claimed from them as unlawful
+possessors, to our use. For, as the Egyptians not only had idols and
+heavy burdens which the people of Israel were to abhor and avoid, but
+also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver and apparel which that
+people at its departure from Egypt privily assumed for a better use, not
+on its own authority but at the command of God, the very Egyptians
+unwittingly furnishing the things which themselves used not well; so all
+the teaching of the Gentiles not only hath feigned and superstitious
+devices, and heavy burdens of a useless toil, which we severally, as
+under the leading of Christ we go forth out of the fellowship of the
+Gentiles, ought to abhor and avoid, but it also containeth liberal arts,
+fitter for the service of truth, and some most useful moral precepts; as
+also there are found among them some truths concerning the worship of
+the One God Himself, as it were their gold and silver which they did not
+themselves form, but drew from certain veins of Divine Providence
+running throughout, and which they perversely and wrongfully abuse to
+the service of demons. These, the Christian, when he severs himself from
+their wretched fellowship, ought to take from them for the right use of
+preaching of the Gospel. For what else have many excellent members of
+our faith done? See we not how richly laden with gold and silver and
+apparel that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, Cyprian,
+departed out of Egypt? Or Lactantius, or Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary,
+not to speak of the living, and Greeks innumerable? And this, Moses
+himself, that most faithful servant of God, first did, of whom it is
+written, that 'he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'"
+
+Let us for a moment pause and see of what these treasures of Egypt
+consisted, and especially what Plato taught concerning God. Like
+Socrates, he ridiculed the absurd but popular notion that the gods could
+be full of human imperfections, could make war upon each other, could
+engage in intrigues, and be guilty of base passions. And he earnestly
+maintained that it was demoralizing to children and youth to hold up
+such beings as objects of worship. Such was his condemnation of what he
+considered false gods. He was equally opposed to the idea that there is
+no God. "All things," he says, "are from God, and not from some
+spontaneous and unintelligent cause." "Now, that which is created," he
+adds, "must of necessity be created by some cause--but how can we find
+out the Father and maker of all this universe? If the world indeed be
+fair, and the artificer good, then He must have looked to that which is
+external--for the world is the fairest of creatures, as He is the best
+of causes."
+
+Plato's representation of the mercy of God, of his providential care, of
+his unmixed goodness, of his eternal beauty and holiness--are well-nigh
+up to the New Testament standard. So is also his doctrine of the
+immortality of the soul. The fatal deficiency is that he does not
+_know_. He has received no divine revelation. "We will wait," he said in
+another passage, "for one, be it a god or a god-inspired man, to teach
+us our religious duties, and as Athene in Homer says to Diomede, to take
+away the darkness from our eyes." And in still another place he adds:
+"We must lay hold of the best human opinion in order that, borne by it
+as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous sea of life, unless we can
+find a stronger boat, _or some word of God which will more surely and
+safely carry us_."[26]
+
+There is a deep pathos in the question which I have just quoted, "How
+can we find out the Father and maker of all this universe?" And in the
+last sentence quoted, Plato seems to have felt his way to the very
+threshold of the revelation of Christ.[27]
+
+Augustine shows a discrimination on this subject too important to be
+overlooked, when he declares that while the noble philosophy of the
+Platonists turned his thoughts away from his low gratifications to the
+contemplation of an infinite God, it left him helpless. He was profited
+both by what philosophy taught him and by what it could not teach: it
+created wants which it could not satisfy. In short, he was prepared by
+its very deficiencies to see in stronger contrast the all-satisfying
+fulness of the Gospel of Eternal Life. Plato could tell him nothing of
+any real plan of redemption, and he confesses with tender pathos that
+he found no Revealer, no divine sacrifice for sin, no uplifted Cross, no
+gift of the transforming Spirit, no invitation to the weary, no light of
+the Resurrection.[28] Now, just here is the exact truth; and Augustine
+has conferred a lasting benefit upon the Christian Church by this grand
+lesson of just discrimination. He and other Christian fathers knew where
+to draw the lines carefully and wisely with respect to heathen errors.
+
+We often have occasion to complain of the sharpness of the controversies
+of the early Church, but it could scarcely be otherwise in an age like
+that. It was a period of transitions and of rude convulsions. The
+foundations of the great deep of human error were being broken up. It
+was no time for flabby, jelly-fish convictions. The training which the
+great leaders had received in philosophy and rhetoric had made them keen
+dialectics. They had something of Paul's abhorrence of heathen
+abominations, for they saw them on every hand. They saw also the
+specious admixtures of Gnosticism, and they met them squarely.
+Tertullian's controversy with Marcion, Augustine's sharp issue with
+Pelasgius, Ambrose's bold and uncompromising resistance to Arianism,
+Origen's able reply to Celsus, all show that the great leaders of the
+Church were not men of weak opinions. The discriminating concessions
+which they made, therefore, were not born of an easy-going
+indifferentism and the soft and nerveless charity that regards all
+religions alike. They found a medium between this pretentious extreme
+and the opposite evil of ignorant and narrow prejudgment; and nothing is
+more needed in the missionary work of our day than that intelligent and
+well-poised wisdom which considers all the facts and then draws just
+distinctions; which will not compensate for conscious ignorance with
+cheap misrepresentation or wholesale denunciation.
+
+1. Now, first of all, in considering the methods of the early Church and
+its secret of power in overcoming the errors of heathenism, it must be
+borne in mind that the victory was mainly due to the _moral earnestness_
+which characterized that period. In this category we must place the
+influence which sprang from the martyrdom of thousands who surrendered
+life rather than relinquish their faith. That this martyr spirit did not
+always produce a true symmetry of Christian character cannot be denied.
+The tide of fanaticism swept in, sometimes, with the current of true
+religious zeal, and inconsistencies and blemishes marred even the
+saintliest self-sacrifice; but there was no resisting the mighty logic
+of the spirit of martyrdom as a whole. The high and the low, the wise
+and the unlettered, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, strong
+men and delicate women, surrendered themselves to the most cruel
+tortures for the love of Christ. This spectacle, while it may have
+served only to enrage a Nero and urge him on to even more Satanic
+cruelty, could not be wholly lost upon the more thoughtful Marcus
+Aurelius and others like him. It was impossible to resist the moral
+force of so calm and resolute a surrender unto torture and death.
+Moreover, an age which produced such relinquishment of earthly
+possessions as was shown by men like Anthony and Ambrose, who were ready
+to lay down the emoluments of high political position and distribute
+their large fortunes for the relief of the poor; and such women as Paula
+and others of high position, who were ready to sacrifice all for Christ
+and retire into seclusion and voluntary poverty--an age which could
+produce such characters and could show their steady perseverance unto
+the end, could not fail to be an age of resistless moral power; and it
+would be safe to say that no heathen system could long stand against the
+sustained and persistent force of such influences. Were the Christian
+Church of to-day moved by even a tithe of that high self-renunciation,
+to say nothing of braving the fires of martyrdom, if it possessed in
+even partial degree the same sacrifice of luxury and ease, and the same
+consecration of effort and of influence, the conquest of benighted
+nations would be easy and rapid.
+
+The frugality of the early Christians, the simplicity of life which the
+great body of the Church observed, and to which even wealthy converts
+more or less conformed, was also, doubtless, a strong factor in the
+great problem of winning the heathen to Christ. Probably in no age could
+Christian simplicity find stronger contrasts than were presented by the
+luxury and extravagance, the unbridled indulgence and profligacy, which
+characterized the later periods of the Roman Empire. Universal conquest
+of surrounding nations had brought untold wealth. The Government had
+hastened the process of decay by lavish distribution to the people of
+those resources which obviated the necessity of unremitting toil. It had
+devoted large expenditures to popular amusements, and demagogues had
+squandered the public funds for the purpose of securing their own
+preferment. Over against the moral earnestness of the persecuted
+Christian Church, there was in the nation itself and the heathenism
+which belonged to it, an utter want of character or conviction. These
+conditions of the conquest, as I have already indicated, do not find an
+exact counterpart with us now. There is more of refined Christian
+culture than existed in the early Church; probably there is also more of
+organized Christian effort. In many points the comparison is in our
+favor, but earnestness, and the spiritual power which attends it, are on
+a lower grade. There is no escape from the conviction that just here
+lies the reason why the Christian Church, with all her numbers, her vast
+material resources, and her unlimited opportunities, cannot achieve a
+greater success.
+
+2. But, on the intellectual side, and as relating to the methods of
+direct effort, there are many points in which imitation of the early
+example is entirely practicable. And first, the wise discrimination
+which was exercised by Augustine and other Christian leaders is entirely
+practicable now. There has prevailed in our time an indiscriminate
+carelessness in the use of terms in dealing with this subject. The
+strong language which the Old Testament employed against the
+abominations of Baalism, we have seemed to regard as having equal force
+against the ethics of Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one
+brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it
+were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was
+undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has
+ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not
+surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament
+employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the New Testament a
+different spirit exercised toward the types of error which our Saviour
+and his disciples were called to meet. There is only gentleness in our
+Lord's dealings with those who were without the Jewish Church. His
+strongest denunciations were reserved for hypocrites who knew the truth
+and obeyed it not. He declared that the men of Nineveh would rise up in
+judgment against those who rejected the clear message of God's own Son.
+The man who goes forth to the great mission fields with the feeling that
+it is his province to assail as strongly as possible the deeply-rooted
+convictions of men, instead of winning them to a more excellent way, is
+worse than one who beats the air; he is doing positive harm; he is
+trifling with precious souls. He does not illustrate the spirit of
+Christ.
+
+The wisest of the early Fathers sometimes differed widely from each
+other in their methods; some were denunciatory, others were even too
+ready to excuse. The great African controversialist, Tertullian, was
+unsparing in his anathemas, not only against heathen customs, which were
+vile indeed, but against the teachings of the noblest philosophy. He had
+witnessed the former; he had not candidly studied the latter. With a
+blind zeal, which has too often been witnessed in the history of good
+causes, he denounced Plato, Aristotle, and even Socrates with a violence
+which marred the character of so great a man. On the other hand, Justin
+Martyr and Clement of Alexandria were perhaps excessively broad. Of two
+noted Alexandrines, Archdeacon Farrar says: "They were philosophers in
+spirit; they could enforce respect by their learning and their large,
+rounded sympathy, where rhetorical denunciation and ecclesiastical
+anathemas would only have been listened to with a frown of anger, or a
+look of disdain. Pagan youths would have listened to Clement when he
+spoke of Plato as 'the truly noble and half-inspired,' while they would
+have looked on Tertullian as an ignorant railer, who could say nothing
+better of Socrates than to call him the 'Attic buffoon,' and of
+Aristotle than to characterize him as the 'miserable Aristotle.'"
+
+Tatian and Hermes also looked upon Greek philosophy as an invention of
+the devil. Irenæus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax
+charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when
+called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the
+Gallic Druidism, believing that a special adaptation would be called for
+in that remote mission field.[30] Basil was an earnest advocate of the
+Greek philosophy as giving a broader character to Christian education.
+
+There were among the Fathers many different types of men, some
+philosophically inclined, others better able to use practical arguments.
+Some were more successful in appealing to the signs of the times, the
+clear evidences of that corruption and decay to which heathenism had
+led. They pointed to the degradation of women, the prevalence of vice,
+the inordinate indulgence in pleasures, the love of excitement, the
+cruel frenzy of the gladiatorial shows, the unrest and pessimism and
+despair of all society. One of the most remarkable appeals of this kind
+is found in a letter of Cyprian to his friend Donatus. "He bids him seat
+himself in fancy on some mountain top and gaze down upon what he has
+abandoned (for he is a Christian), on the roads blocked by brigands, the
+sea beset by pirates, the camps desolated by the horrors of many wars,
+on the world reeking with bloodshed, and the guilt which, in proportion
+to its magnitude, was extolled as a glory. Then, if he would turn his
+gaze to the cities, he would behold a sight more gloomy than all
+solitudes. In the gladiatorial games men were fattened for mutual
+slaughter, and publicly murdered to delight the mob. Even innocent men
+were urged to fight in public with wild beasts, while their mothers and
+sisters paid large sums to witness the spectacle. In the theatres
+parricide and infanticide were dealt with before mixed audiences, and
+all pollution and crimes were made to claim reverence because presented
+under the guise of religious mythology. In the homes was equal
+corruption; in the forum bribery and intrigue ran rife; justice was
+subverted, and innocence was condemned to prison, torture, and death.
+Luxury destroyed character, and wealth became an idol and a curse."[31]
+Arguments of this kind were ready enough to hand whenever Christian
+teachers were disposed to use them, and their descriptions found a real
+corroboration in society as it actually appeared on every hand. None
+could question the counts in the indictment.
+
+3. While the Christian Fathers and the missionaries differed in their
+estimates of heathenism, and in their methods of dealing with it, one
+thing was recognized by all whom we designate as the great leaders,
+namely, the imperative necessity of a thorough knowledge of it. They
+understood both the low superstition of the masses and the loftier
+teaching of the philosophers. On the other hand, they had the same
+estimate of the incomparable Gospel of Christ that we have; they
+realized that it was the wisdom of God and the power of God unto
+salvation as clearly as the best of us, but they did not claim that it
+was to be preached blindly and without adaptation. The verities of the
+New Testament teachings, the transforming power of the Holy Ghost, the
+necessity for a new birth and for the preternatural influence of grace,
+both in regeneration and in sanctification, were as strongly maintained
+as they have ever been in any age of the Church; but the Fathers were
+careful to know whether they were casting the good seed upon stony
+places, or into good ground where it would spring up and bear fruit. The
+liberal education of that day was, in fact, an education along the old
+lines of heathen philosophy, poetry, history, and rhetoric; and a broad
+training was valued as highly as it has been in any subsequent period.
+It was thoroughly understood that disciplined intellect, other things
+being equal, may expect a degree of influence which can never fall to
+the lot of ignorance, however sanctified its spirit. There has never
+been a stronger type of men than the Christian Fathers. They were
+learned men, for the age in which they lived, and their learning had
+special adaptations to the work assigned them. Many of them, like
+Cyprian, Clement, Hilary, Martin of Tours, had been born and educated in
+heathenism; while others, like Basil, Gregory, Origen, Athanasius,
+Jerome, and Augustine, though born under Gospel influences, studied
+heathen philosophy and poetry at the instance of their Christian
+parents.
+
+4. Some of the leaders familiarized themselves with the speculations of
+the day, not merely for the sake of a wider range of knowledge, but that
+they might the more successfully refute the assailants of the faith,
+many of whom were men of great power. They were fully aware that it
+behooved them to know their ground, for their opponents studied the
+points of comparison carefully. The infidel Celsus studied Christianity
+and its relation to the Old Testament histories and prophecies, and he
+armed himself with equal assiduity with all the choicest weapons drawn
+from Greek philosophy. How was such a man to be met? His able attack on
+Christianity remained fifty years unanswered. To reply adequately was
+not an easy task. Doubtless there were many, then as now, who thought
+that the most comfortable way of dealing with such things was to let
+them alone. But a wiser policy prevailed. Origen was requested to
+prepare an answer, and, although such work was not congenial to him, he
+did so because he felt that the cause of the truth demanded it. His
+reply outlived the attack which it was designed to meet, and in all
+subsequent ages it has been a bulwark of defence.[32]
+
+Origen was not of a pugnacious spirit--it was well that he was not--but
+with wide and thorough preparation he summoned all his energies to meet
+the foe. Archdeacon Farrar says of him, that he had been trained in the
+whole circle of science. He could argue with the pupils of Plato, or
+those of Zeno, on equal terms, and he deems it fortunate that one who
+was called, as he was, to be a teacher at Alexandria, where men of all
+nations and all creeds met, had a cosmopolitan training and a
+cosmopolitan spirit.
+
+No less resolute was the effort of Ambrose in resisting the errors of
+Arianism, and he also adapted himself to the work in hand. He had not
+been afraid of Platonism. On the other hand, we are told that Plato,
+next to his Bible, constituted a part of his daily reading, and that,
+too, in the period of his ripest Christian experience, and when he
+carried his studies and his prayers far into the hours of the night. But
+in dealing with Arianism he needed a special understanding of all its
+intricacies, and when among its advocates and supporters he encountered
+a powerful empress as well as her ablest advocates, he had need of all
+the powers within him--that power of moral earnestness which had led him
+to give all his property to the poor--that power of strong faith, which
+prepared him, if need be, to lay down his life--the power of a
+disciplined intellect, and a thorough knowledge of the whole issue.
+
+5. The early Fathers not only studied the heathen philosophies of Plato
+and Aristotle, but they learned to employ them, and their successors
+continued to employ them, even to the Middle Ages, and the period of the
+Reformation. As an intellectual framework, under which truth should be
+presented in logical order, it became a strong resource of the early
+Christian teachers. Let me refer you on this point to the clear
+statements of Professor Shedd.[33] He has well said that "when
+Christianity was revealed in its last and beautiful form by the
+incarnation of the Eternal World, it found the human mind already
+occupied by human philosophy. Educated men were Platonists, or Stoics,
+or Epicureans. During the age of Apologetics, which extended from the
+end of the apostolic age to the death of Origen, the Church was called
+to grapple with these systems, to know as far as possible what they
+contained, and to discriminately treat their contents, rejecting some
+things, utilizing others." "We shall see," he continues, "that Plato,
+Aristotle, and Cicero exerted more influence than all other philosophic
+minds united upon the greatest of Christian Fathers, upon the greatest
+of the School men, and upon the greatest of the theologians of the
+Reformation, Calvin and Melancthon; and if we look at European philosophy,
+as it has been unfolded in England, Germany, and France, we can perceive
+that all the modern philosophic schools have discussed the principles
+of human reason in very much the same manner in which Plato and
+Aristotle discussed them twenty-two centuries ago."
+
+I need hardly say, in closing, that it is not necessary to borrow from
+the heathen systems of to-day as extensively as the Fathers did from the
+systems of Greece and Rome, and it would be discordant with good taste
+to illustrate our sermons with quotations from the Hindu poets as
+lavishly as good Jeremy Taylor graced his discourses with gems from the
+poets of Greece. But I think that we may so far heed the wise examples
+furnished by Church history as to face the false systems of our time
+with a candid and discriminating spirit, and by a more adequate
+knowledge to disenchant the bugbears with which their apologists would
+alarm the Church.
+
+We are entering upon the broadest and most momentous struggle with
+heathen error that the world has ever witnessed. Again, in this later
+age, philosophy and multiform speculation are becoming the handmaids of
+Hindu pantheism and Buddhist occultism, as well as of Christian truth.
+The resources of the East and the West are combined and subsidized by
+the enemy as well as by the Church. As in old Rome and Alexandria, so
+now in London and Calcutta all currents of human thought flow together,
+and truth is in full grapple with error. It is no time to be idle or to
+take refuge in pious ignorance, much less to fear heathen systems as so
+many haunted houses which superstitious people dare not enter--as if the
+Gospel were not as potent a talisman now as it was ages ago. Let us
+fearlessly enter these abodes of darkness, throw open the shutters, and
+let in the light of day, and the hobgoblins will flee. Let us explore
+every dark recess, winnow out the miasma and the mildew with the pure
+air of heaven, and the Sun of Righteousness shall fill the world.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: _The Norsemen_, Maclear.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The Druid bard Taliesen says: "Christ, the Word from the
+beginning, was from the beginning our teacher, and we never lost His
+teaching. Christianity was a new thing in Asia, but there never was a
+time when the Druids of Britain held not its doctrines."--_St. Paul in
+Britain_, p. 86.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Uhlhorn's _Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism_.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The same dualism of the male and the female principle is
+found in the Shinto of Japan. See Chamberlain's translation of the
+_Kojiki_.]
+
+[Footnote 24: The late George Eliot has given expression to this grim
+solace, and Mr. John Fiske, in his _Destiny of Man_, claims that the
+goal of all life, from the first development of the primordial cell, is
+the perfected future man.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Voltaire found great delight in the so-called _Ezour
+Veda_, a work which claimed to be an ancient Veda containing the
+essential truths of the Bible. The distinguished French infidel was
+humbled, however, when it turned out that the book was the pious fraud
+of a Jesuit missionary who has hoped thus to win the Hindus to
+Christianity.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Quoted by Uhlhorn in _The Conflict of Christianity with
+Heathenism_, p. 70. He also quotes Seneca as saying: "Oh, if one only
+might have a guide to truth!"]
+
+[Footnote 27: Plato showed by his writings and his whole life that he
+was a true seeker after the knowledge of God, whom he identified with
+the highest good. Though he believed in an efficient creatorship, he
+held that matter is eternal. Ideas are also eternal, but the world is
+generated. He was not a Pantheist, as he clearly placed God outside of,
+or above, the universe. He regarded the soul of man as possessed of
+reason, moral sensibility, and appetite.
+
+On the doctrine of future immortality Plato was most emphatic.
+
+He also believed that the soul in a previous state had been pure and
+sinless, but had fallen. He taught that recovery from this fallen
+condition is to be accomplished by the pursuit of philosophy and the
+practice of virtue (not as merit but as discipline), by contemplating
+the highest ideal which is the character of God, and by thinking of
+eternity. Plato regarded suffering as disciplinary when properly
+improved. True philosophy may raise the soul above the fear of death.
+This was proved by Socrates. Both Socrates and Plato seemed to believe
+in a good demon (spirit) whose voice was a salutary and beneficent
+guide. As to eschatology, Plato looked forward to a heaven where the
+virtuous soul shall dwell in the presence of God, and in the enjoyment
+of pure delights.
+
+Aristotle's idea of God was scarcely less exalted than that of Plato. He
+expressed it thus: "The principle of life is in God; for energy of mind
+constitutes life, and God is this energy. He, the first mover, imparts
+motion and pursues the work of creation as something that is loved. His
+course of life must be similar to what is most excellent in our own
+short career. But he exists forever in this excellence, whereas this is
+impossible for us. His pleasure consists in the exercise of his
+essential energy, and on this account vigilance, wakefulness, and
+perception are most agreeable to him. Again, the more we examine God's
+nature the more wonderful does it appear to us. He is an eternal and
+most excellent being. He is indivisible, devoid of parts, and having no
+magnitude, for God imparts motion through infinite time, and nothing
+finite, as magnitude is, can have an infinite capacity. He is a being
+devoid of passions and unalterable."--Quoted in _Indian Wisdom_, p.
+125.]
+
+[Footnote 28: "Those pages present not the image of this piety, the
+tears of confession, Thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a
+contrite heart, the salvation of the people, the Bridal city, the
+earnest of the Holy Ghost, the cup of our redemption. No man sings
+there, 'Shall not my soul be submitted unto God? for of Him cometh my
+salvation, for He is my God and my salvation, my guardian, I shall no
+more be grieved.' No one there hears Him call 'Come unto me all ye that
+labor.'"--_Confessions_, Bk. vii., xxi. "But having then read those
+books of the Platonists, and thence being taught to search for
+incorporeal truth, I saw Thy invisible things, understood by the things
+which are made; and though cast back, I perceived what that was which,
+through the darkness of my mind, I was hindered from contemplating,
+being assured 'that Thou wert and wert infinite, and yet not diffused in
+space, finite or infinite, and that Thou truly art who art the same
+ever, in no part nor motion varying; and that all other things are from
+Thee.... Of these things I was assured, yet too insecure to enjoy Thee.
+I prated as one skilled, but I had not sought Thy way in Christ our
+Saviour; I had proved to be not skilled but killed."--_Confessions_, Bk.
+vii., xx.]
+
+[Footnote 29: We may judge of the bearing of the common term heathen as
+applied to non-Christian nations, when we consider that the Greeks and
+Romans characterized all foreigners as "barbarians," that Mohammedans
+call all Christians "infidels," and the Chinese greet them as "foreign
+devils." The missionary enterprise as a work of conciliation should
+illustrate a broader spirit.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _The Celts_, Maclear.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Lives of the Fathers_, Farrar.]
+
+[Footnote 32: "Christianity," says Max Müller, "enjoyed no privileges
+and claimed no immunities when it boldly confronted and confounded the
+most ancient and the most powerful religions of the world. Even at
+present it craves no mercy and it receives no mercy from those whom our
+missionaries have to meet face to face in every part of the world; and
+unless our religion has ceased to be what it was, its defenders should
+not shrink from this new trial of its strength, but should encourage
+rather than depreciate the study of comparative theology."--_Science of
+Religion_, p. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _History of Christian Theology_, Vol. I., p. 52.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OP HINDUISM
+
+
+The religious systems of India, like its flora, display luxuriant
+variety and confusion. Hinduism is only another banyan-tree whose
+branches have become trunks, and whose trunks have produced new
+branches, until the whole has become an intellectual and moral jungle of
+vast extent. The original stock was a monotheistic nature worship, which
+the Hindu ancestors held in common with other branches of the Aryan
+family when dwelling together on the high table-lands of Central Asia,
+or, as some are now claiming, in Eastern Russia. Wherever may have been
+that historic "cradle" in which the infancy of our race was passed, it
+seems certain from similarities of language, that this Aryan family once
+dwelt together, and had a common worship, and called the supreme deity
+by a common name. It was a worship of the sky, and at length of various
+powers of nature, _Surya_, the sun: _Agni_, fire: _Indra_, rain, etc. It
+is maintained by many authors, in India as well as in Europe, that these
+designations were only applied as names of one and the same potential
+deity. This is the ground held by the various branches of the modern
+Somaj of India. Yet we must not suppose that the monotheism of the
+early Aryans was all that we understand by that term; it is enough that
+the power addressed was _one_ and personal. Even henotheism, the last
+name which Professor Max Müller applies to the early Aryan faith,
+denotes oneness in this sense. The process of differentiation and
+corruption advanced more rapidly among the Indo-Aryans than in the
+Iranian branch of the same race, and in all lands changes were wrought
+to some extent by differences of climate and by environment.[34] The
+Norsemen, for example, struggling with the wilder and sterner forces of
+storm and wintry tempest, would naturally differ in custom, and finally
+in faith, from the gentle Hindu under his Indian sky; yet there were
+common elements traceable in the earliest traditions of these races, and
+the fact that religions are not wholly dependent upon local conditions
+is shown by both Christianity and Buddhism, which have flourished most
+conspicuously and permanently in lands where they were not indigenous.
+
+"In the Vedas," says Sir Monier Williams, "unity in the conception of
+deity soon diverged into various ramifications. Only a few of the hymns
+appear to contain the simple conception of one divine, self-existent,
+omnipresent Being, and even in these, the idea of one God, present in
+all nature, is somewhat nebulous and undefined." One of the earliest
+deifications that we can trace was that of _Varuna_, who represented the
+overhanging sky. The hymns addressed to Varuna are not only the
+earliest, but they are the loftiest and most spiritual in their
+aspirations. They find in him an element of holiness before which sin is
+an offence; and in some vague sense he is the father of all things, like
+the Zeus whom Paul recognized in the poetry of Greece.
+
+But, as already stated, this vague conception of God as one, was already
+in a transition toward separate impressions of the different powers of
+nature. If the idea of God was without any very clear personality and
+more or less obscure, it is not strange that it should come to be thus
+specialized as men thought of objects having a manifestly benign
+influence--as the life-quickening sun or the reviving rain. It is not
+strange that, without a knowledge of the true God, they should have been
+filled with awe when gazing upon the dark vault of night, and should
+have rendered adoration to the moon and her countless retinue of stars.
+If there must be idolatry, let it be that sublime nature worship of the
+early Aryans, though even that was sure to degenerate into baser forms.
+One might suppose that the worship of the heavenly bodies would remain
+the purest and noblest; and yet the sun-worship of the Assyrians and the
+Phoenicians became unspeakably vile in its sensuousness, and finally the
+most wicked and abominable of all heathen systems. India in her darkest
+days never sank so low, and when her degradation came it was through
+other conceptions than those of nature worship.
+
+In the early Vedic hymns are to be found many sublime passages which
+seem to suggest traces of those common traditions concerning the
+creation--the Fall of man and the Deluge, which we believe to have been
+the earliest religious heritage of mankind. They contrast strongly with
+the later and degrading cosmogonies of degenerate heathen systems, and
+especially with the grotesque fancies of the subsequent Hindu mythology.
+In the Xth Mandala of the Rig Veda we find the following account of
+primeval chaos, which reminds one of the Mosaic Genesis:
+
+   "In the beginning there was neither aught nor naught,
+    There was neither sky nor atmosphere above.
+    What then enshrouded all the teeming universe?
+    In the receptacle of what was it contained?
+    Was it enveloped in the gulph profound of water?
+    There was then neither death nor immortality.
+    There was then neither day nor night, nor light nor darkness.
+    Only the _Existing One_ breathed calmly self-contained,
+    Naught else but him there was, naught else above, beyond;
+    Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom,
+    Next all was water, chaos indiscreet
+    In which the _One_ lay void, shrouded in nothingness,
+    Then turning inward by self-developed force
+    Of inner fervor and intense abstraction grew."
+
+
+In the early Vedic period many of the corruptions of later times were
+unknown. There was no distinct doctrine of caste, no transmigration, no
+mist of pantheism, no idol-worship, no widow-burning, and no authorized
+infanticide. The abominable tyranny which was subsequently imposed upon
+woman was unknown; the low superstitions of the aboriginal tribes had
+not been adopted; nor, on the other hand, had philosophy and
+speculation taken possession of the Hindu mind. The doctrine of the
+Trimurti and the incarnations had not appeared.[35]
+
+The faith of the Hindus in that early period may be called _Aryanism_,
+or _Vedism_. It bore sway from the Aryan migration, somewhere about one
+thousand five hundred, or two thousand, years before Christ, to about
+eight hundred years before Christ.[36] By that time the priestly class
+had gained great power over all other ranks. They had begun to work over
+the Vedas to suit their own purposes, selecting from them such portions
+as could be framed into an elaborate ritual--known as the Brahmanas. The
+period during which they continued this ritualistic development is known
+as the Brahmana period. This extended from about eight hundred to five
+hundred B.C.[37] These, however, are only the approximate estimates of
+modern scholarship: such a thing as ancient history is unknown to the
+Hindu race. This Brahmana period was marked by the intense and
+overbearing sacerdotalism of the Brahmans, and by an extreme development
+of the doctrine of caste. Never was priestly tyranny carried to greater
+length than by these lordly Brahmans of India. One of the chief abuses
+of their system was their depravation of sacrifice.
+
+The earliest conception of sacrifice represented in the Vedas is that of
+a vicarious offering of Parusha, a Divine being. Very obscure
+references to this are found in the oldest of the four Vedas, dating
+probably not later than 1200 B.C. It is brought out still more clearly
+in a Brahmana which was probably composed in the seventh century B.C. It
+is there said that the "Lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice
+for the Gods." Principal Fairbairn finds Vedic authority for the idea
+that the creation of the world was accomplished by the self-sacrifice of
+deity; and Manu ascribes the creation of mankind to the austerities of
+the gods. Sir Monier Williams, the late Professor Banergea, and many
+others, have regarded these references to a Divine sacrifice for the
+benefit of gods and men as dim traces of a revelation once made to
+mankind of a promised atonement for the sins of the world.[38]
+
+But so far as the actual observances of the early Hindus were concerned,
+they seem to have made their offerings rather in the spirit of Cain than
+in the faith of Abel. They simply fed the gods with their gifts, and
+regaled them with soma juice, poured forth in libations; the savor of
+melted butter also was supposed to be specially grateful. Still there is
+reason to believe that the piacular idea of sacrifice was never wholly
+lost, but that the Hindus, in common with all other races, found
+occasion--especially when great calamities befell them--to appease the
+gods with the blood of sacrifice. In the early days human sacrifices
+were offered, and occasionally at least down to a late period.[39] It
+was a convenient policy of the priesthood, however, to hypothecate the
+claim for a human victim by accepting the substitution of a goodly
+number of horses or cows. A famous tradition is given, in the Aitareya
+Brahmana, of a prince[40] who had been doomed to sacrifice by a vow of
+his father, but who bought as a substitute the son of a holy
+Brahman--paying the price of a hundred cows. When none could be found to
+bind the lad on the altar, the pious father offered to perform the task
+for another hundred cows. Then there was no one found to slay the
+victim, and the father offered for still another hundred to do even
+that. As the victim was of high caste the gods interposed, and the
+Brahman was still the possessor of a son plus the cattle. The incident
+will illustrate the greed of the priesthood and the depravation of
+sacrifice. It had become a system of bargaining and extortion. The
+sacrifices fed the priesthood more substantially than the gods. There
+was great advantage in starting with the human victim as the unit of
+value, and it is easy to see how substitution of animals became
+immensely profitable. The people were taught that it was possible, if
+one were rich enough in victims, even to bankrupt heaven. Even demons by
+the value of their offerings might demand the sceptre of Indra.[41]
+
+Hand in hand with this growth of the sacrificial system was the
+development of caste; the former was done away by the subsequent
+protest of Buddhism and the philosophic schools; but the latter has
+remained through all the stages of Hindu history.[42] Such was
+_Brahmanism_. Its thraldom has never been equalled. The land was deluged
+with the blood of slain beasts. All industries were paralyzed with
+discouragement. Social aspiration was blighted, patriotism and national
+spirit were weakened, and India was prepared for those disastrous
+invasions which made her the prey of all northern races.
+
+It was in protest against these evils that Gautama and many able
+philosophers arose about 500 B.C. Already the intellectual classes had
+matched the Brahmans by drawing upon Vedic authority for their
+philosophy. As the Brahmans had produced a ritual from the Vedas, so
+the philosophers framed a sort of philosophic Veda in the _Upanishads_.
+Men had begun to ask themselves the great questions of human life and
+destiny, "Whence am I? What is this mysterious being of which I am
+conscious?" They had begun to reason about nature, the origin of matter,
+the relation of mortals to the Infinite. The school of the Upanishads
+regarded themselves as an aristocracy of intellect, and held philosophy
+as their esoteric and peculiar prerogative. It was maintained that two
+distinct kinds of revelation had been made to men. First, that simple
+kind which was designed for priests and the common masses, for all those
+who regarded only effects and were satisfied with sacerdotal assumption
+and merit-making. But, secondly, there was a higher knowledge which
+concerned itself with the origin of the world and the hidden causes of
+things. Even to this day the Upanishads are the Vedas of the thinking
+classes of India.[43]
+
+As the Brahmanas gave first expression to the doctrine of caste, so in
+the Upanishads we find the first development of pantheism and the
+doctrine of transmigration. The conclusion had already been reached that
+"There is only one Being who exists: He is within this universe and yet
+outside this universe: whoe'er beholds all living creatures as in Him,
+and Him the universal spirit, as in all, thenceforth regards no creature
+with contempt."
+
+The language of Hindu speculation exhausts its resources in similes by
+which to represent personal annihilation. Man's origin and relations
+are accounted for very tersely by such illustrations as these: "As the
+web issues from the spider, as little sparks proceed from fire, so from
+the One Soul proceed all breathing animals, all worlds, all the gods,
+all beings." Then as to destiny: "These rivers proceed from the east
+toward the west, thence from the ocean they rise in the form of vapor,
+and dropping again, they flow toward the south and merge into the ocean.
+And as the flowing rivers are merged into the sea, losing their names
+and forms, so the wise, freed from name and form, pass into the Divine
+spirit, which is greater than the great."[44] Another favorite
+illustration is that of the moon's reflection in the water-jar, which
+disappears the moment the moon itself is hidden. "If the image in the
+water has no existence separate from that of the moon," says the Hindu,
+"how can it be shown that the human soul exists apart from God?"
+
+The Mundaka Upanishad, based upon the Atharva Veda (one of the
+latest,--the Upanishad being later still), contains this account of the
+universe: "As the spider spins and gathers back (its thread); as plants
+sprout on the earth; as hairs grow on a living person; so is this
+universe here produced from the imperishable nature. By contemplation
+the vast one germinates; from him food (or body) is produced; and thence
+successively, breath, mind, real (elements) worlds, and immortality
+resulting from (good) deeds.
+
+"The Omniscient is profound contemplation consisting in the knowledge
+of him who knows all; and from that, the (manifested) vast one, as well
+as names, forms, and food proceed; and this is truth."[45]
+
+It is a great blemish upon the Upanishads, that while there are subtle,
+and in some respects sublime, utterances to be found here and there, the
+great mass is fanciful and often puerile, and in many instances too low
+and prurient to bear translation into the English language. This is
+clearly alleged by Mr. Bose, and frankly admitted by Max Müller.[46]
+
+In the common protest which finally broke down the system of Brahmanical
+sacrifice, and for a time relaxed the rigors of caste tyranny, Buddhism
+then just appearing (say 500 B.C.), joined hand in hand with the
+philosophies. Men were tired of priestcraft, and by a natural reaction
+they went to an opposite extreme; they were tired of religion itself.
+Buddha became an undoubted atheist or agnostic, and six distinct schools
+of philosophy arose on the basis of the Upanishads--some of which were
+purely rationalistic, some were conservative, others radical. Some
+resembled the Greek "Atomists" in their theory,[47] and others fought
+for the authority, and even the supreme divinity, of the Vedas.[48] All
+believed in the eternity of matter, and the past eternity of the soul;
+all accepted the doctrine of transmigration, and maintained that the
+spiritual nature can only act through a material body. All were
+pessimistic, and looked for relief only in absorption.
+
+But the progress of Hindu thought was marked by checks and
+counter-checks. As the tyranny of the priesthood had led to the protest
+of philosophy, so the extreme and conflicting speculations of
+philosophic rationalism probably gave rise to the conservatism of the
+Code of Manu. No adequate idea of the drift of Hindu thought can be
+gained without assigning due influence to this all-important body of
+laws. They accomplished more in holding fast the power of the Brahmans,
+and enabling them to stem the tide of intellectual rebellion, and
+finally to regain the sceptre from the hand of Buddhism, than all other
+literatures combined. Their date cannot be definitely known. They were
+composed by different men and at different times. They probably followed
+the Upanishads, but antedated the full development of the philosophic
+schools.
+
+Many of the principles of Manu's Code had probably been uttered as early
+as the seventh century B.C.[49] The ferment of rationalistic thought was
+even then active, and demanded restraint. The one phrase which expresses
+the whole spirit of the laws of Manu is intense conservatism. They stand
+for the definite authority of dogma; they re-assert in strong terms the
+authority of the Vedas; they establish and fortify by all possible
+influences, the institution of caste. They enclose as in an iron
+framework, all domestic, social, civil, and religious institutions.
+They embrace not only the destiny of men upon the earth, but also the
+rewards and punishments of the future life. Whatever they touched was
+petrified. Abuses which had crept in through the natural development of
+human depravity--for example, the oppression of woman--the laws of Manu
+stamped with inflexible and irreversible authority. The evils which grow
+up in savage tribes are bad enough, the tyranny of mere brute force is
+to be deplored, but worst of all is that which is sanctioned by statute,
+and made the very corner-stone of a great civilization. Probably no
+other system of laws ever did so much to rivet the chains of domestic
+tyranny.[50]
+
+The Code of Manu has been classified as, 1st, sacred knowledge and
+religion; 2d, philosophy; 3d, social rules and caste organization; 4th,
+criminal and civil laws; 5th, systems of penance; 6th, eschatology, or
+the doctrine of future rewards. No uninspired or non-Vedic production
+has equal authority in India. We can only judge of its date by its
+relative place among other books. It applies Vedic names to the gods,
+though it mentions Brahma and Vishnu, but it makes no reference to the
+Trimurti. Pantheism was evidently in existence and was made prominent in
+the code. The influence of Manu over the jurisprudence of India was a
+matter of growth. At first the code appears to have been a guide in
+customs and observances, but as it gained currency it acquired the force
+of law, and extended its sway over all the tribes of India. It was not,
+however, maintained as a uniform code throughout the land, but its
+principles were found underlying the laws of all the provinces. Its very
+merits were finally fruitful of evil. Human weal was sacrificed to the
+over-shadowing power of a system of customs cunningly wrought and
+established by Brahmanical influence. The author was evidently a
+Brahman, and the whole work was prepared and promulgated in the
+interests of Brahmanism as against all freedom of thought. Its support
+of the Vedas was fanatical. Thus: "A Brahman by retaining the Rig Veda
+in his memory incurs no guilt, though he should destroy the three
+worlds." Again: "When there is contradiction of two precepts in the
+Veda, both are declared to be law; both have been justly promulgated by
+known sages as valid law."
+
+The laws of Manu make no mention of the doctrine of _Bakti_ or faith,
+and there is no reference to the worship of the _Sakti_; both of these
+were of later date. The doctrine of transmigration, however, is fully
+stated, and as a consequence of this the hells described in the code,
+though places of torture, resolve themselves into merely temporary
+purgatories, while the heavens become only the steps on the road to a
+union with deity. There is reason to believe that the practice of
+employing idols to represent deity was unknown at the time the code was
+compiled. There is no allusion to public services or to teaching in the
+temples, the chief rites of religion were of a domestic kind, and the
+priests of that age were nothing more than domestic chaplains.
+
+Manu's theory of creation was this: "The Self-Existent, having willed to
+produce various beings from his own substance, first with a thought
+created the waters and placed on them a productive seed or egg. Then he
+himself was born in that egg in the form of Brahma. Next he caused the
+egg to divide itself, and out of its two divisions there came the heaven
+above and the earth beneath. Afterward, having divided his own substance
+he became half male, half female. From that female was produced Viraj,
+from whom was created the secondary progenitor of all beings. Then from
+the Supreme Soul he drew forth Manu's intellect." This mixed cosmogony
+is supposed to indicate a diversity of authorship.
+
+It will be seen that this is much less philosophical than the theory of
+creation quoted above from the Mundaka Upanishad.[51] If we compare
+Manu's account with the description of the "Beginning" found in one of
+the hymns of the Rig Veda,[52] we shall see that there has been a
+downward trend of Hinduism from the simple and sublime conceptions of
+the early poets to that which is grotesque, and which has probably been
+worked over to suit the purposes of the Brahmans. No mythological legend
+was too absurd if it promoted the notion of the divine origin of the
+Manus (sages) and the Brahmans.
+
+Manu makes much of the Vedic passage which refers to the origin of
+caste.[53] He maintained that this distinction of caste was as much a
+law of nature and divine appointment as the separation of different
+classes of animals. The prominence accorded to the Brahmans was nothing
+short of divine. "Even when Brahmans employ themselves in all sorts of
+inferior occupations (as poverty often compels them to do) they must
+under all circumstances be honored, for they are to be regarded as
+supreme divinities." "A Brahman's own power is stronger than the power
+of the king, therefore by his own might he may chastise his foes." "He
+who merely assails a Brahman with intent to kill him, will continue in
+hell for a hundred years, and he who actually strikes him must endure a
+thousand years."
+
+It is always the truth that is mingled with the errors of any system
+which constitutes its life and gives it perpetuity, and there is much in
+the Code of Manu to be admired. Like the Confucian ethics, it laid its
+foundations in the respect due from childhood to parents, and in
+guarding the sanctities of the home. It aimed at fairness between ruler
+and subject, in an age when over most of the Asiatic continent the
+wildest caprice of rulers was the law of their respective realms. Manu
+taught the duty of kings toward their subjects in most emphatic terms.
+They were to regard themselves as servants, or rather as fathers, of the
+people; and rules were prescribed for their entire conduct. They were
+the representatives of deity in administering the affairs of mortals,
+and must realize their solemn responsibility.[54] It must ever be
+acknowledged that the Hindu laws respecting property were characterized
+by wisdom and equity. Taxation was not subject to caprice or injustice;
+where discriminations occurred they were in favor of the poor, and the
+heaviest burdens were laid where they should be laid, upon the rich.
+There were wise adaptations, calculated to develop the industry and
+self-help of the weakest classes, and care was taken that they never
+should become oppressive. No political or civic tyranny could be
+allowed; but that of the priesthood in its relations to all ranks, and
+that of the householder toward his wife and toward all women, were quite
+sufficient. In this last regard we scarcely know which was the
+greater--the heartless wickedness of the Code, or its blind and bigoted
+folly. How it was that laws could be framed which indicated such rare
+sagacity, which in many other respects were calculated to build up the
+very highest civilization, and which, at the same time, failed to
+foresee that this oppression of woman must result in the inevitable
+degeneracy of succeeding generations of men, must ever remain a
+mystery.[55]
+
+We have glanced at the purer and simpler Aryanism of the early period,
+at the bigoted, tyrannical Brahmanism, with its ritual, its sacrifices,
+its caste. We have merely alluded to the rationalistic reaction of the
+philosophers and the Buddhists. We shall now see that the Brahman power
+is not broken, but that it will regain all and more than it has lost,
+that it will prove elastic enough to embrace all that has gone before;
+that while Buddhism will be banished, many of its elements will be
+retained, and the whole woven into one marvellous texture which we will
+call _Hinduism_.[56] Even during the period of Buddhism's greatest
+triumphs, say, two or three centuries before Christ, changes of great
+moment were going on in the Brahmanical faith. The old sacrificial
+system had lost its power, but the flexible and inexhaustible resources
+of Brahmanical cunning were by no means dormant. In the border wars of
+the Aryans, with rival invaders on the one hand, and with the conquered
+but ever restless aborigines on the other, great and popular heroes had
+sprung up. The exploits of these heroes had been celebrated in two great
+epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the popularity of these
+poems was immense. The heroes were of the soldier caste, and gave to
+that caste a prestige which seemed to the Brahmans formidable and
+dangerous.[57] The divine prerogatives of their order were all in
+jeopardy.
+
+The remedy chosen by the Brahmans was a bold and desperate one. These
+heroes must be raised out of the soldier caste by making them divine. As
+such they would hold a nearer relation to the divine Brahmans than to
+the soldiers. The legends were therefore worked over--Brahmanized--so to
+speak.[58] Rama, who had overcome certain chieftains of Ceylon, and
+Krishna, who had won great battles in Rajputana, were raised to the rank
+of gods and demi-gods. By an equal exaggeration the hostile chiefs of
+rival invaders were transformed to demons, and the black, repulsive hill
+tribes, who were involved as allies in these conflicts, were represented
+as apes. As a part of this same Brahmanizing process, the doctrine of
+the Trimurti was developed, and also the doctrine of incarnation. Most
+conspicuous were the incarnations of Vishnu; Rama and Krishna were
+finally placed among the ten incarnations of that deity. This was a
+skilful stroke of policy, for it was now no longer the heroes of the
+soldier caste who had won victory for the Aryans; it was Vishnu, the
+preserver, the care-taker, and sympathizer with all the interests of
+mankind. The development of the doctrines of the Trimurti and of
+incarnation undoubtedly followed both the rise of Buddhism and the
+promulgation of the Laws of Manu.
+
+Meanwhile the Brahmans were shrewd enough to adapt themselves to certain
+other necessities. The influence of Buddhism was still a force which
+was not to be disregarded. It had demonstrated one thing which had never
+been recognized before, and that was the need of a more human and
+sympathetic element in the divine objects of worship. Men were weary of
+worshipping gods who had no kindly interest in humanity. They were weary
+of a religion which had no other element than that of fear or of
+bargaining with costly sacrifices. They longed for something which had
+the quality of mercy. Buddha had demonstrated the value of this element,
+and by an adroit stroke of policy the Brahmans adopted Gautama as the
+ninth avatar of Vishnu. Meanwhile they adopted the heroic Krishna as the
+god of sympathy--the favorite of the lower masses who were not too
+critical toward his vices.
+
+We have now reached the fully developed form of _Hinduism_.[59] The
+Brahmans had embraced every element that could give strength to their
+broad, eclectic, and all-embracing system.[60] The doctrine of the
+Trimurti had become a strong factor, as it furnished a sort of
+framework, and gave stability. As compared with the early Aryanism, it
+removed the idea of deity from merely natural forces to that of abstract
+thoughts, principles, and emotions, as active and potent in the world.
+At the same time it retained the old Vedic deities under new names and
+with new functions, and it did not abate its professed regard for Vedic
+authority. The Brahmans had rendered their system popular in a sense
+with the intellectual classes by adopting all the philosophies. They had
+stopped the mouth of Buddhist protest by embracing the Buddha among
+their incarnations. They had shown an advance in the succession of
+incarnations from the early embodiments of brute force, the fish, the
+tortoise, the boar, up to heroes, and from these to the ninth avatar,
+the Buddha, as a moralist and philosopher.[61] They left on record the
+prediction that a tenth should come--and he is yet to come--who, in a
+still higher range of moral and spiritual power, should redeem and
+renovate the earth, and establish a kingdom of righteousness.
+
+Meanwhile, in this renaissance of the Hindu faith, this wide, politic,
+self-adapting system, we find not only Buddhism, Philosophy, the early
+Aryanism, and the stiff cultus of Brahmanism, but there is also a large
+infusion of the original superstitions of the Dravidians, Kohls,
+Santals, and other nature worshippers of the hill tribes. Much of the
+polytheism of the modern Hindus--the worship of hills, trees, apes,
+cattle, the sun, the moon, unseen spirits, serpents, etc.--has been
+adopted from these simple tribes, so that the present system embraces
+all that has ever appeared on the soil of India--even Mohammedanism to
+some extent; and as some contend, very much also has been incorporated
+from the early teachings of the so-called St. Thomas Christians of
+Malabar. Such is the immense composite which is called Hinduism. It
+continued its development through the early centuries of the Christian
+era, and down even to the Middle Ages. Since then there has been
+disintegration instead of growth. The Brahmans have not only retained
+the Aryan deities, and extended Vishnu's incarnate nature over the epic
+heroes, but in the Puranas they have woven into the alleged lives of the
+incarnate gods the most grotesque mythologies and many revolting vices.
+
+It may be interesting to trace for a moment the influence of the
+different lines of Hindu literature upon the general development of
+national character. Of course, the early Vedic literature has never lost
+its influence as the holy and inspired source of all knowledge to the
+Hindu race; but we have seen how much more potential were the Brahmanas
+and the Upanishad philosophy drawn from the Vedas, than were those
+sacred oracles themselves; how the Brahmanas riveted the chains of
+priestcraft and caste, and how the philosophies invigorated the
+intellect of the people at a time when they were most in danger of
+sinking into the torpor of ignorance and base subserviency to ritual and
+sacrifice; how it gave to the better classes the courage to rise up in
+rebellion and throw off every yoke, and think for themselves. We have
+seen how Buddhism by its protest against sacerdotalism crippled for a
+time the power of the Brahmans and raised a representative of the
+soldier caste to the chief place as a teacher of men; how its
+inculcation of pity to man and beast banished the slaughter and cruelty
+of wholesale and meaningless sacrifice, and how its example of sympathy
+changed Hinduism itself, and brought it into nearer relations with
+humanity. Driven from India, though it was, it left an immense deposit
+of influence and of power. We have seen how, as a counter-check to
+philosophy and Buddhism, the Code of Manu reasserted the authority of
+the Vedas, and riveted anew the chains of caste, and how it compensated
+for its oppressiveness by many wholesome and benign
+regulations--accomplishing more, perhaps, than all other literatures
+combined to maintain the stability of Hinduism, through its many
+vicissitudes, and in spite of the heterogeneous elements which it
+received and incorporated.
+
+Scarcely less important was the influence of the great epics--the
+Ramayana and the Mahabharata--with their doctrine of Trimurti and the
+incarnations of Vishnu in the national heroes. This conciliated the
+soldier caste, subsidized the most popular characters in Hindu
+tradition, at the same time that it made them tenfold more glorious than
+before. The Epics widened out the field of Hindu mythology immensely.
+Never before had there been such a boundless range for the imagination.
+The early Brahmans had cramped all intellectual growth, and held mankind
+by the leash of priestly ritual. The philosophies had been too strait
+and lofty for any but the higher class; Manu's laws had been a stern
+school-master to keep the people under curbs and restraints; even the
+Brahmans themselves were the slaves of their own ritual. But all the
+people could understand and admire Rama's wonderful victories over the
+demon Ravana. All could appreciate the devotion of the lovely Sita, and
+weep when she was kidnapped and borne away, like Grecian Helen, to the
+demon court in Ceylon; and they could be thrilled with unbounded joy
+when she was restored--the truest and loveliest of wives--to be the
+sharer of a throne.
+
+The Epics took such hold of the popular heart that any fact, any theory,
+any myth that could be attached to them found ready credence. The
+Mahabharata especially became a general texture upon which any
+philosophy, or all the philosophies, might be woven at will. And for a
+long period, extending from three or four centuries B.C. onward far into
+the Christian era, it was ever ready to receive modifications from the
+fertile brain and skilful hand of any devout Brahman. A striking example
+of this was the introduction of the Bhagavad Gita. When this was
+composed, somewhere about the second or third century of our era, there
+was no little conflict between the different schools of philosophy; and
+its unknown author attempted to unite them all in a poem which should
+harmonize their contradictions and exalt the virtues of each, and at the
+same time reiterate all the best maxims of Hinduism. Some centuries
+later, the pronounced Vedantist Sancarakarya revamped the poem and gave
+its philosophy a more pantheistic character; later still the demigod
+Krishna was raised to full rank as the supreme Vishnu--the Creator and
+Upholder of all things.[62]
+
+It is important to notice that in the trend of Hindu literature through
+so many ages there has been no upward movement, but rather a decline.
+Nowhere do we find hymns of so pure and lofty a tone as in the early
+Vedas. No philosophy of the later times has equalled that of the
+Upanishads and the six Darsanas. No law-giver like Manu has appeared for
+twenty-four centuries. No Sanskrit scholarship has equalled that of the
+great grammarian Panini, who lived in the fourth century B.C. And
+although no end of poetry has succeeded the great Epics, it has shown
+deterioration. The Puranas, written at a later day, reveal only a
+reckless zeal to exalt the incarnate deities. They may properly be
+called histories of the incarnations of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and
+glorifications of Krishna. And the very nature of the subjects with
+which they deal gives free scope to an unbridled imagination and to the
+most reckless exaggeration.
+
+If anything more were wanting to insure their extravagance, it may be
+found in the fact that they were inspired by the rivalry of the
+respective worshippers of different gods. The Puranas mark the
+development of separate sects, each of which regarded its particular
+deity as the supreme and only god. The worshippers of Vishnu and the
+worshippers of Siva were in sharp rivalry, and they have continued
+their separation to this day.[63] Those who came to worship Vishnu as
+incarnate in Krishna, gained an advantage in the popular element
+associated with a favorite hero. Yet this was matched by the influence
+of the Sankhya philosophy, which assigned to Siva a male and female
+dualism, a doctrine which finally plunged Hinduism into deepest
+degradation. It brought about a new development known as Saktism, and
+the still later and grosser literature of the Tantras. In these,
+Hinduism reached its lowest depths. The modern "Aryas" discard both the
+Tantras and the Puranas, and assert that the popular incarnations of
+Vishnu were only good men. They take refuge from the corruptions of
+modern Hinduism in the purer teachings of the early Vedas.
+
+
+_The Contrasts of Hinduism and Christianity._
+
+Hinduism has some elements in common with Christianity which it is well
+to recognize. It is theistic; it is a religion, as distinguished from
+the agnostic and ethical systems of India and China.[64] Hinduism always
+recognized a direct divine revelation which it regards with profound
+reverence; and through all its variations and corruptions it has
+inculcated in the minds of the Indian races a deeply religious feeling.
+It has been claimed that it has made the Hindus the most devotional
+people in the world. Like Christianity, Hinduism appeals to man's
+intellectual nature, and it is inwrought with profound philosophy. It
+does not, however, like some modern systems, teach that divine truth has
+been revealed to man by natural processes; rather it regards the early
+revelation as having suffered obscuration.[65] It also has its trinity,
+its incarnations, and its predictions of a Messiah who shall restore the
+truth and establish righteousness. The Hindu traditions maintain that
+mankind descended from a single pair;[66] that the first estate of the
+race was one of innocence; that man was one of the last products of
+creation; that in the first ages he was upright, and consequently happy.
+"The beings who were thus created by Brahma are said to have been
+endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they abode wherever they
+pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts were free from guile;
+they were pure, made exempt from toil by observance of sacred
+institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; they were filled with
+perfect wisdom by which they contemplated the glory of Vishnu." Hartwell
+has pointed out the fact that the early Hindu traditions here unite with
+the Scriptural account in virtually denying all those theories of
+evolution which trace the development of man from lower animals.[67]
+
+But compared with Christianity, its contrasts are far greater than its
+resemblances. First, as to the nature of God, there is an infinite
+difference between the cold and unconscious Brahman, slumbering for ages
+without thought or emotion or any moral attribute, and the God of
+Israel, whose power and wisdom and goodness, whose mercy and truth and
+tender compassion, are so constantly set forth in the Bible. The latter
+compares Himself to a Father who cares for his children, and who has
+redeemed the world by an infinite sacrifice. Even in the most popular
+emanation of Brahman--even in Vishnu--there is nothing of a fatherly
+spirit, no appeal as to children, no kindly remonstrance against sin, no
+moral instruction, or effort to encourage and establish character, no
+promise of reward, no enkindling of immortal hope.
+
+Second, there is a striking contrast in the comparative estimates which
+Hinduism and Christianity place upon the human soul. Unlike Buddhism,
+Hinduism does recognize the existence of a soul, but it is only a
+temporary emanation, like the moon's reflection in the water. It
+resembles its source as does the moon's image, but coldly and in a most
+unsatisfactory sense; there is no capacity for fellowship, and the end
+is absorption.[68] On the other hand, Christianity teaches us that we
+are created in God's image, but not that we _are_ his image. We are
+separate, though dependent, and if reunited to him through Christ we
+shall dwell in his presence forever.
+
+Third, the two systems are in strong contrast in the comparative hopes
+which they hold out for the future. The doctrine of transmigration casts
+a gloom over all conscious being; it presents an outlook so depressing
+as to make life a burden, and the acme of all possible attainment is
+individual extinction, or what amounts to the same thing, absorption
+into deity. The logic of it is that it would be better still not to have
+been born at all. Christianity promises an immediate transfer to a life
+of unalloyed blessedness, and an endless growth of all our powers and
+capacities; but why should Hinduism urge the cultivation of that whose
+real destiny is "effacement?" Hinduism finds the explanation of life's
+mysteries and inscrutable trials in the theory of sins committed in a
+previous existence. Christianity, while recognizing the same trials,
+relieves them with the hope of solutions in a future life of
+compensating joy. The one turns to that which is past, unchangeable and
+hopeless, and finds only sullen despair; the other anticipates an
+inheritance richer than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or heart conceived.
+
+Fourth, Hinduism has no Saviour and no salvation. It is not a religion
+in the highest sense of _rescue_ and reconciliation. It avails us of no
+saving power higher than our own unaided effort. It implies the ruin of
+sin, but provides no remedy. It presents no omnipotent arm stretched
+forth to save.
+
+Its fatalism places man under endless disabilities, and then bids him to
+escape from the nexus if he can; but it reveals no divine helper, no
+sacrifice, no mediator, no regenerating Spirit. It has no glad tidings
+to proclaim, no comfort in sorrow, no victory over the sting of death,
+no resurrection unto Life. Though at a period subsequent to the
+preaching of the Gospel in India--perhaps the seventh or eighth century
+A.D.--a doctrine of faith (_Bakti_) was engrafted upon Hinduism, yet it
+had no hint of a Saviour from sin and death.[69]
+
+Fifth, in Hinduism there is no liberty for the free action of the human
+spirit. Though the life of a Brahman is intensely religious, yet it is
+cramped with exactions which are not only abortive but positively
+belittling. The code of Brahmanism never deals with general principles
+in the regulation of conduct, but fills the whole course of life with
+punctilious minutiæ of observances. Instead of prescribing, as Christ
+did, an all-comprehensive law of supreme love to God and love to our
+neighbor as ourselves, it loads the mind with petty exactions, puerile
+precepts, inane prohibitions. "Unlike Christianity, which is all spirit
+and life," says Dr. Duff, "Hinduism is all letter and death." Repression
+takes the place of inspiration and the encouragement of hope.
+
+There are a thousand subtle principles in Hinduism whose influence is
+felt in society and in the state, and to which the faith and power of
+the Gospel present the very strongest contrasts. For example, while
+Christianity has raised woman to a position of respect and honor, and
+made her influence felt as something sacred and potential in the family
+and in all society, Hinduism has brought her down even from the place
+which she occupied among the primitive Aryans, to an ever-deepening
+degradation. It has made her life a burden and a curse. Pundita Ramabai,
+in her plea for high-caste Hindu women, quotes a prayer of a child widow
+in which she asks, "O Father of the world, hast Thou not created us? or
+has perchance some other God made us? Dost Thou only care for men? O
+Almighty One, hast Thou not power to make us other than we are, that we
+too may have some part in the blessings of life?" Even in this last
+decade of the nineteenth century the priesthood of Bengal are defending
+against all humane legislation those old customs which render the
+girlhood of Hindu women a living death.[70]
+
+In its broad influence Christianity has raised the once savage tribes
+of Europe to the highest degree of culture, and made them leaders and
+rulers of the world; but Hinduism has so weakened and humbled the once
+conquering Aryans that they have long been an easy prey to every
+invading race. Christianity shows in its sacred Book a manifest progress
+from lower to higher moral standards--from the letter to the spirit,
+from the former sins that were winked at to the perfect example of
+Christ, from the narrow exclusiveness of Judaism to the broad and
+all-embracing spirit of the Gospel, from prophecy to fulfilment, from
+types and shadows to the full light of Redemption; the sacred books of
+Hinduism have degenerated from the lofty aspirations of the Vedic
+nature-worship to the vileness of Saktism, from the noble praises of
+Varuna to the low sensuality of the Tantras, from Vedic conceptions of
+the creation, sublime as the opening of St. John's Gospel, to the myths
+of the divine turtle or the boar, or the escapades of the supreme and
+"adorable Krishna."[71]
+
+Christianity breaks down all barriers which divide and alienate mankind,
+and establishes a universal brotherhood in Christ; Hinduism has raised
+the most insurmountable barriers and developed the most inexorable
+social tyranny ever inflicted on the human race. The Hebrew economy also
+recognized a priestly class, but they were chosen from among their
+brethren and were only a distinct family; they made no claim to divine
+lineage, and they were guiltless of social tyranny.
+
+Christianity enjoins a higher and purer ethic than it has ever found in
+the natural moral standards of any people; it aims at perfection; it
+treats the least infraction as a violation of the whole law; it regards
+even corrupt thoughts as sins; it bids us be holy even as He is holy in
+whose sight the heavens are unclean. Hinduism, on the other hand, is
+below the ethical standard of respectable Hindu society. The better
+classes are compelled to apologize for it by asserting that that which
+is debasing in men may be sinless in the gods. The offences of Krishna
+and Arjuna would not be condoned in mortals; the vile orgies of the
+"left-handed worshippers" of Siva would not be tolerated but for their
+religious character. The murders committed by the Thugs in honor of Kali
+were winked at only because a goddess demanded them. The naked
+processions of Chaitanya's followers would be dispersed by the police
+anywhere but in India.
+
+It is the peculiar distinction of India that it has been the theatre of
+nearly all the great religions. Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism
+have all made trial of their social and political power and have failed.
+Last of all came Christianity. The systems which preceded it had had
+centuries of opportunity; and yet Christianity has done more for the
+elevation of Hindu society in the last fifty years than they had
+accomplished in all the ages of their dominion. Neither Buddhism nor
+Mohammedanism had made any serious impression on caste; neither had
+been able to mitigate the wrongs which Brahmanism had heaped upon
+woman--Mohammedanism had rather increased them. The horrors of the satti
+and the murder of female infants--those bitterest fruits of priestly
+tyranny--were left unchecked until the British Government, inspired by
+missionary influence and a general Christian sentiment, branded them as
+infamous and made them crimes. But now even the native sentiment of the
+better classes in India is greatly changed by these higher influences,
+and the conventional morality is rising above the teachings of the
+national religion. Widow-burning and infanticide belong almost wholly to
+the past. Child-marriage is coming into disrepute, and caste, though not
+destroyed, is crippled, and its preposterous assumptions are falling
+before the march of social progress.
+
+Perhaps the very highest tribute which Hinduism has paid to Christianity
+is seen in the fact that the modern Arya Somaj has borrowed its ethics
+and some of its religious doctrines, and is promulgating them under
+Vedic labels and upon Vedic authority.[72] It has renounced those
+corruptions of Hinduism which can no longer bear the light--such as
+enforced widowhood and the general oppression of woman. It denounces the
+incarnations of Vishnu as mere inventions, and therefore cuts up by the
+roots the whole Krishna cult and dissipates the glory of the Bhagavad
+Gita. It abhors polytheism, and not only proclaims the supremacy of one
+only true God, self-existent, the creator and upholder of all things,
+but it maintains that such was the teaching of the Vedas. But although
+this modern eclectic system adopts the whole ethical outcome of
+Christian civilization in India for its own purposes, it shows a most
+uncompromising hostility to Christianity. Though it claims to be
+positively theistic, it seems ready to enter into alliance with any form
+of atheism or agnosticism, Eastern or Western, against the spread of
+Christian influence in India.
+
+In speaking of the movement of revived Aryanism I assume that with the
+more intelligent and progressive classes of India the old Hinduism is
+dead. Of course, millions of men still adhere to the old corruptions.
+Millions in the remoter districts would retain the festival of
+Juggernaut, the hook-swinging, even infanticide and widow-burning, if
+they dared. The revolting orgies of Kali and Doorga, and the vilest
+forms of Siva worship, even the murderous rites of the Thugs, might be
+revived by the fanatical, if foreign influence were withdrawn; but,
+taking India as a whole, these things are coming to be discarded. The
+people are ashamed of them; they dare not undertake to defend them in
+the open day of the present civilization. All intelligent Hindus are
+persuaded to accept the situation, and look to the future instead of the
+past. The country is full of new influences which must be counted as
+factors. British rule is there, and is there to stay. Education has
+come--good, bad, and indifferent. English University training is
+bringing forward a host of acute thinkers of native blood. But the
+forces of Western infidelity are also there, grappling with Western
+Christianity on Indian soil, and before the eyes of the conquered and
+still sullen people. The vilest of English books and the worst of French
+novels in English translations are in the markets. All the worst phases
+of European commerce are exhibited. The opium monopoly, the liquor
+traffic, and all the means and methods of unscrupulous money-getting,
+with the wide-spread example of drinking habits, and unbounded luxury
+and extravagance.
+
+And, in opinions, the war of aggression is no longer on one side only.
+While the foreigner speaks and writes of superstition, of heathenism, of
+abominable rites now passing away, the native Hindu press is equally
+emphatic in its condemnation of what it calls the swinish indulgence of
+the Anglo-Saxon, his beer-drinking and his gluttony, his craze for money
+and material power, his disgust at philosophy and all intellectual
+aspiration, his half-savage love for the chase and the destruction of
+animal life. Educated Hindus throw back against the charge of idolatry
+our idolatry of pelf, which, as they claim, eclipses every other thought
+and aspiration, leads to dishonesty, over-reaching, and manifold crime,
+and sinks noble ethics to the low level of expediency or self-interest;
+the conquest is not yet won.
+
+A hundred varieties of creed have sprung up beneath this banyan-tree
+which I have called Hinduism. There are worshippers of Vishnu, of Siva,
+of Kali, of Krishna as Bacchus, and of Krishna as the supreme and
+adorable God. There are Sikhs, and Jains, and Buddhists; Theosophists,
+Vedantic Philosophers, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Parsees, Evolutionists, and
+Agnostics; Devil-worshippers, and worshippers of ghosts and serpents;
+but in considering these as forces to be met by Christian influence, we
+must regard them all as in virtual alliance with each other. They are
+all one in pride of race and of venerable custom. They are all one in
+their hatred of foreign dominion, and of the arrogance and overbearing
+assumption of the European.[73]
+
+The Hindu religions, therefore, however divided, and however weak and
+moribund they may be taken singly, find a real vitality in the union of
+common interests, in the sentiments of patriotism, in the pride of their
+philosophy, in the glory of their ancient history as the true and
+original Aryans, compared with whom Western nations are mere offshoots.
+
+Their religious faith is mixed and involved with patriotism, politics,
+and race prejudice, and on the other hand Christianity in India is
+handicapped by political and commercial interest and a hated domination.
+On both sides these combined influences must be considered in estimating
+the future issues of the great conflict. The question is not how
+Christianity and Hinduism would fare in a conflict pure and simple,
+unembarrassed by complications, but how Christianity with its drawbacks
+is likely to succeed against Hinduism with its manifold intrenchments.
+
+But, while weighing well the obstacles, how great are the
+encouragements! What an auspicious fact that even a hostile organization
+has appropriated the Christian cultus bodily, and can find no better
+weapons than its blessed truths. Christianity is felt as a silent power,
+even though under other names. It is, after all, the leaven that is
+working all-powerfully in India to-day.
+
+There was a period in the process of creation when light beamed dimly
+upon the earth, though the sun, its source, had not yet appeared. So
+through the present Hinduism there is a haze of Christian truth, though
+the Sun of Righteousness is not yet acknowledged as its source.
+
+But the Spirit of God broods over the waters, and the true Light of the
+world will break on India.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 34: The fact that environment has to a certain extent affected
+the religions of mankind is entirely overworked, when men like Buckle
+make it formative and controlling.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Instead of the later and universal pessimism, there was in
+the Vedic religion a simple but joyous sense of life.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Hinduism_, p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Aryan Witness_, p. 204; also _Hinduism_, p. 36.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 37.]
+
+[Footnote 40: A son of Hariscandra. _Hinduism_, p. 37.]
+
+[Footnote 41: This is in strong contrast with the Old Testament
+precepts, which everywhere had greater respect to the heart of the
+offerer than to the gifts.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The Brahmans had found certain grades of population marked
+by color lines, shaded off from the negroid aborigines to the
+Dravidians, and from them to the more recent and nobler Aryans, and they
+were prompt also to seize upon a mere poetic and fanciful expression
+found in the Rig Veda, which seemed to give countenance to their
+fourfold caste distinction by representing one class as having sprung
+from the head of Brahma, another from the shoulders, the third from his
+thighs, and a fourth from his feet. Altogether they founded a social
+system which has been the wonder of the ages, and which has given to the
+_Brahmans_ the prestige of celestial descent. The _Kshatreych_ or
+soldier caste stands next, and as it has furnished many military leaders
+and monarchs who disputed the arrogant claims of the Brahmans, conflicts
+of the upper castes have not been infrequent.
+
+The _Vaishya_, or farmer caste, has furnished the principal groundwork
+of many admixtures and subdivisions, until at the present time there are
+endless subcastes, to each of which a particular kind of employment is
+assigned. The _Sudras_ are still the menials, but there are different
+grades of degradation even among them.]
+
+[Footnote 43: _Hindu Philosophy_, Bose, p. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Indian Wisdom_ on the Brahmanas and Upanishads. Also
+_Hindu Philosophy_, Bose.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _Colebrook's Essays_, foot-note, p. 85.]
+
+[Footnote 46: See _Introduction to the Sacred Books of the East_, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Vaiseshika Philosophy, in _Indian Wisdom_.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Mimansa Philosophy. Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Sir Monier Williams assigns the Code of Manu _in its
+present form_ to the sixth century B.C. _Indian Wisdom_, p. 215. Other
+Oriental scholars consider it older.]
+
+[Footnote 50: These tendencies were more intensely emphasized in some of
+the later codes, which, however, were only variations of the greater one
+of Manu.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See p. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Quoted on p. 76.]
+
+[Footnote 53: See note, p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Sir Monier Williams declares that some of Mann's precepts
+are worthy of Christianity. _Indian Wisdom_, p. 212.]
+
+[Footnote 55: It should be set down to the credit of the Code of Manu
+that with all its relentless cruelty toward woman it nowhere gives
+countenance to the atrocious custom of widow-burning which soon
+afterward became an important factor in the Hindu system and desolated
+the homes of India for more than two thousand years.
+
+There would seem to be some dispute as to whether or not widow-burning
+is sanctioned in the Rig Veda. Colebrooke, in his _Essays_ (Vol. I., p,
+135), quotes one or two passages which authorize the rite, but Sir
+Monier Williams (_Indian Wisdom_, p. 259, note) has shown that changes
+were made in this text at a much later day for the purpose of gaining
+Vedic authority for a cruel system, of which even so late a work as the
+Code of Manu makes no mention, and (page 205 Ibid.) he quotes another
+passage from the Rig Veda which directs a widow to ascend the pyre of
+her husband as a token of attachment, but to leave it before the burning
+is begun.]
+
+[Footnote 56: As the spread of Buddhism had owed much to the political
+triumph of King Ashoka, so the revival of Hinduism was greatly indebted
+to the influence of a new dynasty about a century B.C.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 314.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Brahmanism and Hinduism are often used interchangeably,
+but all confusion will be avoided by confining the former to that
+intense sacerdotalism which prevailed during the Brahmana period, while
+the latter is used more comprehensively, or is referred particularly to
+the later and fully developed system.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Hinduism_, pp. 12, 13.]
+
+[Footnote 61: The Brahmans were careful, however, to brand the Buddha,
+while admitting him as an avatar. Their theory was that Vishnu appeared
+in Gautama for the purpose of deluding certain demons into despising the
+worship of the gods, and thus securing their destruction. This affords
+an incidental proof that Gautama was regarded as an atheist.--See
+_Indian Wisdom_, p. 335.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See _Aryan Witness_, closing chapter; also _Christ and
+Other Masters_, p. 198, notes 1, 2, and 3.]
+
+[Footnote 63: See _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, Monier Williams.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Hardwick traces similarities between Hindu traditions and
+Christianity in such points as these: 1, The primitive state of man; 2,
+his fall by transgression; 3, his punishment in the Deluge; 4, the rite
+of sacrifice; 5, the primitive hope of restoration.--_Christ and Other
+Masters_, p. 209.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The Hindus hold that "truth was originally deposited with
+men, but gradually slumbered and was forgotten; the knowledge of it
+returns like a recollection."--_Humboldt's Kosmos_, ii., p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Professor Wilson's Lectures_, p. 52.]
+
+[Footnote 67: _Vishnu Puranas_, p. 45, note 4.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Buddhism is still more disheartening, since it denies the
+separate conscious existence of the ego. There cannot be divine
+fellowship, therefore, but only the current of thoughts and emotions
+like the continuous flame of a burning candle. Not our souls will
+survive, but our Karma.]
+
+[Footnote 69: _Christ and Other Masters_, p. 182.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Yet in spite of Manu and the inveteracy of old custom,
+there gleams here and there in Hindu literature and history a bright
+ideal of woman's character and rank; while the _Ramayana_ has its model
+Sita, the _Mahabharata_, i., 3028, has this peerless sketch:
+
+   "A wife is half the man, his truest friend;
+    A loving wife is a perpetual spring
+    Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful wife
+    Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss;
+    A sweetly-speaking wife is a companion
+    In solitude; a father in advice;
+    A mother in all seasons of distress;
+    A rest in passing through life's wilderness."
+
+This, however, is a pathetic outburst: the tyranny of the ages remains.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Even in the later development of the doctrine of faith
+(Bakti) Hinduism fails to connect with it any moral purification or
+elevation. See quotations from Elphinstone and Wilson in _Christ and
+Other Masters_, p. 234.]
+
+[Footnote 72: See a recent _Catechism_ published by the Arya Somaj.]
+
+[Footnote 73: The following hymn, quoted from the Arya _Catechism_,
+reveals the proud spirit of revived Aryanism:
+
+   "We are the sons of brave Aryas of yore,
+    Those sages in learning, those heroes in war.
+    They were the lights of great nations before,
+    And shone in that darkness like morning's bright star,
+    A beacon of warning, a herald from far.
+    Have we forgotten our Rama and Arjun,
+    Yudistar or Bishma or Drona the Wise?
+    Are not we sons of the mighty Duryodani?
+    Where did Shankar and great Dayananda arise?
+    'In India, in India!' the echo replies.
+    Ours the glory of giving the world
+    Its science, religion, its poetry and art.
+    We were the first of the men who unfurled
+    The banner of freedom on earth's every part,
+    Brought tidings of peace and of love to each heart."]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
+
+
+No other portion of Hindu literature has made so great an impression on
+Western minds as the Bhagavad Gita, "The Lord's Lay," or the "Song of
+the Adorable." It has derived its special importance from its supposed
+resemblance to the New Testament. And as it claims to be much older than
+the oldest of the Gospels or the Epistles, it carries the inference that
+the latter may have borrowed something from it.
+
+A plausible translation has been published in Boston by Mr. Mohini M.
+Chatterji, who devoutly believes this to be the revealed word of the
+Supreme Creator and Upholder of the universe.[74] He admits that at a
+later day "the same God, worshipped alike by Hindus and Christians,
+appeared again in the person of Jesus Christ," and that "in the Bible He
+revealed Himself to Western nations, as the Bhagavad Gita had proclaimed
+Him to the people of the East." And he draws the inference that "If the
+Scriptures of the Brahmans and the Scriptures of the Jews and
+Christians, widely separated as they are by age and nationality, are but
+different names for one and the same truth, who can then say that the
+Scriptures contradict each other? A careful and reverent collation of
+the two sets of Scriptures will show forth the conscious and intelligent
+design of revelation." The fact that the Bhagavad Gita is thoroughly
+pantheistic, while the Bible emphasizes the personality of God in
+fellowship with the distinct personality of human souls, seems to
+interpose no serious difficulty in Mr. Chatterji's view, since he says
+"'The Lord's Lay' is for philosophic minds, and therefore deals more at
+length with the mysteries of the being of God." "In the Bhagavad Gita,"
+he says, "consisting of seven hundred and seventy verses, the principal
+topic is the being of God, while scarcely the same amount of exposition
+is given to it in the whole Bible;" and he adds, "The explanation of
+this remarkable fact is found in the difference between the genius of
+the Hebrew and the Brahman race, and also in the fact that the teachings
+of Jesus Christ were addressed to 'the common people.'"[75]
+
+The air of intellectual superiority which is couched in these words is
+conspicuous. Mr. Chatterji also finds an inner satisfaction in what he
+considers the broad charity of the Brahmanical Scriptures. He quotes a
+passage from the Narada Pancharata which speaks of the Buddha as "the
+preserver of revelation for those outside of the Vedic authority." And
+he concludes that when one such revealer is admitted there can be no
+reason for excluding others; therefore Christianity also should be
+allowed a place. He declares on Vedic authority that whosoever receives
+the true knowledge of God, however revealed, attains eternal life. And
+for a parallel to this he quotes the saying of Christ, that "this is
+eternal life that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus
+Christ whom Thou hast sent." "The Brahmanical Scriptures," he says, "are
+of one accord in teaching that when the heart is purified God is seen;
+so also Jesus Christ declares that the pure in heart are blessed, for
+they shall see God."
+
+Our translator discards the often-repeated theory that the Christian
+Scriptures have copied the wise sayings of Krishna; and it is very
+significant that an argument to which superficial apologists constantly
+resort is discarded by this real Hindu, as he supports the theory that
+as both were direct revelations from Vishnu, there was in his view no
+need of borrowing. His contention is that God, who "at sundry times and
+in divers manners" has spoken to men in different ages, made known his
+truth, and essentially the same truth, both on the plains of India and
+in Judea. And he reminds Hindus and Christians alike, that this
+knowledge of truth carries with itself an increased responsibility. He
+says: "The man who sees the wonderful workings of the Spirit among the
+nations of the earth, bringing each people to God by ways unknown to
+others, is thereby charged with a duty. To him with terrible precision
+applies the warning given by Gamaliel to the Pharisees, 'Take heed to
+yourselves what ye intend to do ... lest ye be found to fight even
+against God.' If one be a Brahman, let him reflect when opposing the
+religion of Jesus what it is that he fights. The truths of Christianity
+are the same as those on which his own salvation depends. How can he be
+a lover of truth, which is God, if he knows not his beloved under such a
+disguise? And if he penetrates behind the veil, which should tend only
+to increase the ardor of his love, he cannot hate those who in obedience
+to the same truth are preaching the Gospel of Christ to all nations.
+Indeed he ought to rejoice at his brothers' devotion to the self-same
+God, and to see that he is rendering service to Him by helping others to
+carry out the behests given to them by the Divine Master. If, on the
+other hand, he be a Christian, let him remember that while he is
+commanded to preach repentance and remission of sins in the Saviour
+Jesus, he is also warned against 'teaching for doctrines the
+commandments of men.'" All this seems like charity, but really it is
+laxity.
+
+And here is the very essence of Hinduism. Its chief characteristic, that
+which renders it so hard to combat, is its easy indifference to all
+distinctions. To reason with it is like grasping a jelly-fish. Its
+pantheism, which embraces all things, covers all sides of all questions.
+It sees no difficulties even between things which are morally opposites.
+Contradictions are not obstacles, and both sides of a dilemma may be
+harmonized. And to a great extent this same vagueness of conviction
+characterizes all the heathen systems of the East. The Buddhists and
+the Shintoists in Japan justify their easy-going partnership by the
+favorite maxim that, while "there are many paths by which men climb the
+sides of Fusyama, yet upon reaching the summit they all behold the same
+glorious moon." The question whether all do in fact reach the summit is
+one which does not occur to an Oriental to ask.
+
+This same pantheistic charity is seen in the well-known appeal of the
+late Chunder Sen, which as an illustration is worth repeating here:
+"Cheshub Chunder Sen, servant of God, called to be an apostle of the
+Church of the New Dispensation, which is in the holy city of Calcutta;
+to all the great nations of the world and to the chief religious sects
+in the East and West, to the followers of Moses and of Jesus, of Buddha,
+Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Nanak, and of the various Hindu sects;
+grace be to you and peace everlasting. Whereas sects, discords, and
+strange schisms prevail in our father's family; and whereas this setting
+of brother against brother has proved the prolific source of evil, it
+has pleased God to send into the world a message of peace and
+reconciliation. This New Dispensation He has vouchsafed to us in the
+East, and we have been commanded to bear witness to the nations of the
+earth ... Thus saith the Lord: 'I abominate sects and desire love and
+concord ... I have at sundry times spoken through my prophets and my
+many dispensations. There is unity. There is one music but many
+instruments, one body but many members, one spirit but many gifts, one
+blood but many nations, one Church but many churches. Let Asia and
+Europe and America and all nations prove this New Dispensation and the
+true fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.'"
+
+This remarkable production--so Pauline in style and so far from Paul in
+doctrine--seems to possess everything except definite and robust
+conviction. And its limp philosophy was not sufficient to withhold even
+Chunder Sen himself from the abandonment of his principles not long
+afterward. This sweet perfume of false charity, with which he thus
+gently sprayed the sects and nations of mankind, lost its flavor ere the
+ink of his message was fairly dry; while he who in similar language
+announced his call to an Apostleship eighteen centuries ago, is still
+turning the world upside down.
+
+"Charity" is the watchword of indifferentism in the West as well as in
+the East; and the East and the West are joining hands in their effort to
+soothe the world into slumber with all its sins and woes unhealed. Some
+months ago an advanced Unitarian from Boston delivered a farewell
+address to the Buddhists of Japan, in which he presented three great
+Unitarians of New England--Channing, Emerson, and Parker--in a sort of
+transfiguration of gentleness and charity. He maintained that the lives
+of these men had been an unconscious prophecy of that mild and gentle
+Buddhism which he had found in Japan, but of which they had died without
+the sight.[76]
+
+Thus the transcendentalism of New England joins hands with the Buddhism
+and the Shintoism of Japan, and the Brahmanism of Calcutta, and all are
+in accord with Mr. Chatterji and the Bhagavad Gita. Even the
+Theosophists profess their sympathy with the Sermon on the Mount, and
+claim Christ as an earlier prophet. The one refrain of all is "Charity."
+All great teachers are avatars of Vishnu. The globe is belted with this
+multiform indifferentism, and I am sorry to say that it is largely the
+gospel of the current literature and of the daily press. In it all there
+is no Saviour and no salvation. Religions are all ethnic and local,
+while the _ignis fatuus_ of a mystic pantheism pervades the world.
+
+Mr. Chatterji's preface closes with a prayer to the "merciful Father of
+humanity to remove from all races of men every unbrotherly feeling in
+the sacred name of religion, which is but one." The prayer were touching
+and beautiful on the assumption that there were no differences between
+truth and error. And there are thousands, even among us, who are asking,
+"Why may not Christians respond to this broad charity, and admit this
+Hindu eclectic poem to an equal place with the New Testament?" More or
+less indifferent to all religions, and failing to understand the real
+principles on which they severally rest, they are ready to applaud a
+challenge like that which we are considering, and to contrast it with
+the alleged narrowness and intolerance of Christian Theism.
+
+I have dwelt thus at length upon Mr. Chatterji's introduction, and have
+illustrated it by references to similar specious claims of other faiths,
+in order that I might bring into clearer view the main issue which this
+book now presents to the American public. It is the softest, sweetest
+voice yet given to that gospel of false charity which is the fashion of
+our times. Emerson and others caught it from afar and discoursed to a
+generation now mostly gone of the gentle maxims of Confucius, Krishna,
+and Gautama. But now Krishna is among us in the person of his most
+devout apostle, and a strange hand of fellowship is stretched out toward
+us from the land of the Vedas.
+
+It behooves us to inquire, first, into the pantheistic philosophy which
+underlies these sayings, and to ask for their meaning as applied in real
+life; and second, we shall need to know something of Krishna, and
+whether he speaks as one having authority. It should be borne in mind
+that pantheism sacrifices nothing whatever by embracing all religions,
+since even false religions are a worship of Vishnu in their way, while
+Christianity by its very nature would sacrifice everything. According to
+pantheism all things that exist, and all events that transpire, are
+expressions of the Divine will. The one only existent Being embraces all
+causes and all effects, all truth and all falsehood. He is no more the
+source of good than of evil. "I am immortality," says Krishna. "I am
+also death." Man with all his thoughts and acts is but the shadow of
+God, and moves as he is moved upon. Arjuna's divine counsellor says to
+him: "The soul, existing from eternity, devoid of qualities,
+imperishable, abiding in the body, yet supreme, acts not nor is by any
+act polluted. He who perceives that actions are performed by Prakriti
+alone, and that the soul is not an actor, sees the truth aright."
+
+Now, if this reasoning be correct, it is not we that sin; not we that
+worship; and in the last analysis all religions are alike; they are only
+the varied expressions of the thought of God. As He manifests his power
+in nature in a thousand forms, producing some objects that are beautiful
+to the eye and others that are repulsive, so in his spiritual
+manifestations He displays a like variety. The ignorance and degradation
+of fetichism are His, as well as the highest revelations of spiritual
+truth. A certain class of evolutionists tell us that God contrived the
+serpent's poison-fang and the mother's tender instinct with "the same
+creative indifference." And the broad pantheism which overrides the
+distinctions of eternal right and wrong, and divests God of all moral
+discriminations, puts Vedantism and Fetichism, Christianity and
+Witchcraft, upon the same basis. The Bhagavad Gita and the Gospel both
+enjoin the brotherhood of men, but what are the meanings which they give
+to this term? What are their aims, respectively? One is endeavoring to
+enforce the rigid and insurmountable barriers of caste; the other
+commends a mission of love which shall regard neither Jew nor Greek,
+Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. It will become apparent, I think,
+that there may be parallels or similarities which relate to mere phrases
+while their meanings are wide apart.
+
+Judging from Mr. Chatterji's own stand-point, his work has been well
+done. He has shown a careful study not only of his own literatures and
+philosophies, but also of the scriptures of the Old and New
+Testament--in this respect setting us an example worthy to be followed
+by Christian scholars. Such a man has in the outset an immense advantage
+over those who know nothing of the enemies' positions, but regard them
+only with disdain. Before the high court of public opinion, as
+represented by our current literature, mere ex-parte assumption will go
+to the wall, even though it has the better cause, while adroit error,
+intelligently put and courteously commended, will win the day. This is a
+lesson which the Christian Church greatly needs to learn. Mr.
+Chatterji's work is the more formidable for its charming graces of
+style. He has that same facility and elegance in the use of the English
+language for which so many of his countrymen, Sheshadri, Bose, Banergea,
+Chunder Sen, Mozoomdar, and others have been distinguished. He is a
+model of courtesy, and he seems sincere.
+
+But turning from the translator to the book itself, we shall now inquire
+who was Krishna, Arjuna's friend, what was the origin of the "Lord's
+Lay," and what are its real merits as compared with the New Testament?
+Krishna and Arjuna--like Rama Chandra--were real human heroes who
+distinguished themselves in the wars of the Indo-Aryans with rival
+tribes who contested the dominion of Northern India. They did not live
+three thousand years before Christ, as our translator declares, for they
+belonged to the soldier caste, and according to the consensus of
+Oriental scholarship the system of caste did not exist till about the
+beginning of the Brahmanic period--say eight hundred years before
+Christ. Krishna was born in the Punjab, near Merut, and it was near
+there that his chief exploits were performed. The legends represent him
+as a genial but a reckless forester, brave on the battle-field, but
+leading a life of low indulgence. The secret of his power lay in his
+sympathy. His worship, even as a heroic demi-god, brought a new and
+welcome element into Hinduism as contrasted with the remorselessness of
+Siva or the cold indifference of Brahma. It was the dawn of a doctrine
+of faith, and in this character it was probably of later date than the
+rise of Buddhism. Indeed, the Brahmans learned this lesson of the value
+of Divine sympathy from the Buddha. The supernatural element ascribed to
+Krishna, as well as to Rama, was a growth, and had its origin in the
+jealousy of the Brahmans toward the warrior caste. His exaltation as the
+Supreme was an after-thought of the inventive Brahmans. As stated in a
+former lecture, these heroes had acquired great renown; and their
+exploits were the glory and delight of the dazzled populace. In raising
+them to the rank of deities, and as such appropriating them as kindred
+to the divine Brahmans, the shrewd priesthood saved the prestige of
+their caste and aggrandized their system by a fully developed doctrine
+of incarnations. Thus, by a growth of centuries, the Krishna cult
+finally crowned the Hindu system.
+
+The Mahabharata, in which the Bhagavad Gita was incorporated by some
+author whose name is unknown, is an immense literary mosaic of two
+hundred and twenty thousand lines. It is heterogeneous, grotesque,
+inconsistent, and often contradictory--qualities which are scarcely
+considered blemishes in Hindu literature.
+
+The Bhagavad Gita was incorporated as a part of this great epic probably
+as late as the second or third century of our era, and by that time
+Krishna had come to be regarded as divine, though his full and
+extravagant deification as the "Adorable One" probably did not appear
+till the author of "Narada Pancharata" of the eighth century had added
+whatever he thought the original author should have said five centuries
+before. As it now stands the poem very cleverly weaves into one fabric
+many lofty aphorisms borrowed from the Upanishads and the later
+philosophic schools, upon the groundwork of a popular story of which
+Arjuna is the hero. Arjuna and his four brothers are about to engage in
+a great battle with their cousins for the possession of an hereditary
+throne. The divine Krishna, once himself a hero, becomes Arjuna's
+charioteer, that in that capacity he may act as his counsellor. As the
+battle array is formed, Arjuna is seized with misgivings at the thought
+of slaughtering his kindred for the glory of a sceptre. "I cannot--will
+not fight," he says; "I seek not victory, I seek no kingdom; what shall
+we do with regal pomp and power? what with enjoyments, or with life
+itself, when we have slaughtered all our kindred here?"
+
+Krishna then enters upon a long discourse upon the duties of caste and
+the indwelling of the Infinite, showing that the soul, which is a part
+of deity, cannot be slain though the body may be hewn to pieces. "The
+wise," he says, "grieve not for the departed nor for those who yet
+survive. Never was the time when I was not, nor thou, nor yonder chiefs,
+and never shall be the time when all of us shall not be. As the embodied
+soul in this corporeal frame moves swiftly on through boyhood, youth,
+and age, so will it pass through other forms hereafter; be not grieved
+thereat.... As men abandon old and threadbare clothes to put on others
+new, so casts the embodied soul its worn-out frame to enter other forms.
+No dart can pierce it; flame cannot consume it, water wet it not, nor
+scorching breezes dry it--indestructible, eternal, all-pervading,
+deathless."[77]
+
+It may seem absurd to Western minds that a long discourse, which
+constitutes a volume of intricate pantheistic philosophy, should be
+given to a great commander just at the moment when he is planning his
+attack and is absorbed with the most momentous responsibilities; it
+seems to us strangely inconsistent also to expatiate elaborately upon
+the merits of the Yoga philosophy, with its asceticism and its holy
+torpor, when the real aim is to arouse the soul to ardor for the hour of
+battle. But these infelicities are no obstacle to the Hindu mind, and
+the consistency of the plot is entirely secondary to the doctrine of
+caste and of philosophy which the author makes Krishna proclaim. Gentle
+as many of its precepts are, the Bhagavad Gita, or the "Lord's Lay," is
+a battle-song uttered by the Supreme Being while the contending hosts
+awaited the signal for fratricidal carnage.
+
+The grotesqueness which characterizes all Hindu literature is not
+wanting in this story of Krishna and Arjuna, as given in the great poem
+of which the Bhagavad Gita forms a part. The five sons of Pandu are
+representatives of the principle of righteousness, while the hundred
+brothers of the rival branch are embodiments of evil. Yet, when the
+victory had been gained and the sceptre was given to the sons of Pandu,
+they despised it and courted death, though the "Adorable One" had urged
+them on to strife.
+
+Bishma, the leader of the hostile force, in a personal encounter with
+Arjuna, had been filled so full of darts that he could neither stand nor
+lie down. Every part of his body was bristling with arrows, and for
+fifty-eight days he lingered, leaning on their sharp points. Meanwhile
+the eldest of the victors, finding his throne only a "delusion and a
+snare," and being filled with remorse, was urged by Krishna to visit his
+unfortunate adversary and receive instruction and comfort. Bishma, lying
+upon his bed of spikes, edified him with a series of long and tedious
+discourses on pantheistic philosophy, after which he asked the
+tender-hearted Krishna for permission to depart. He is no longer the
+embodiment of evil: the cruel arrows with which the ideal of goodness
+had pierced him fall away, the top of his head opens, and his spirit
+soars to heaven shining like a meteor. How strange a reversal is here!
+How strange that he who had been the representative of all evil should
+have been transformed by his suffering, and should have been made to
+instruct and comfort the man of success.
+
+Mr. Chatterji falls into a fatal inconsistency when, in spite of his
+assumption that this poem is the very word of Krishna spoken at a
+particular time, in a particular place, he informs us that "all Indian
+authorities agree in pronouncing it to be the essence of all sacred
+writings. They call it an Upanishad--a term applied to the wisdom, as
+distinguished from the ceremonial, part of the Vedas, and to no book
+less sacred." More accurately he might have said that it is a compend of
+all Hindu literatures, the traditional as well as the inspired, and with
+a much larger share of the former than of the latter. Pantheism, which
+is its quintessence, did not exist in the early Vedic times. Krishna was
+not known as a god even in the period of the Buddha.[78] And the Epics,
+which are so largely drawn upon, are later still. And it is upon the
+basis of the Epics, and the still later Puranas, that the common people
+of India still worship him as the god of good-fellowship and of lust.
+The masses longed for a god of human sympathies, even though he were a
+Bacchus.
+
+In the Bhagavad Gita as we now have it, with its many changes, Krishna
+has become the supreme God, though according to Lassen his actual
+worship as such was not rendered earlier than the sixth century; and
+Professor Banergea claims that it "was not at its zenith till the
+eighth century, and that it then borrowed much from Christian, or at
+least Hebrew, sources." Webber and Lorinser have maintained a similar
+view. Krishna as the Supreme and Adorable One has never found favor
+except with the pantheists, and to this day the worship of the real
+Krishna as a Bacchus is the most popular of all Hindu festivals, and
+naturally it is the most demoralizing.
+
+We are now prepared to assume that the pantheistic groundwork of the
+poem on the one hand, and its borrowed Christian conceptions and
+Christian nomenclature on the other, will explain its principal alleged
+parallels with the New Testament. With his great familiarity with our
+Bible, and his rare ability in adjusting shades of thought and
+expression, Mr. Chatterji has presented no less than two hundred and
+fourteen passages which he matches with texts from the Bible. Many of
+these are so adroitly worded that one not familiar with the
+peculiarities of Hindu philosophy might be stumbled by the comparisons.
+Mr. R.C. Bose tells us that this poem has wrought much evil among the
+foreign population of India; and in this country there are thousands of
+even cultivated people with whom this new translation will have great
+influence. Men with unsettled minds who have turned away with contempt
+from the crudities of spiritualism, who are disgusted with the rough
+assailments of Ingersoll, and who find only homesickness and desolation
+on the bleak and wintry moor of agnostic science, may yet be attracted
+by a book which is so elevated and often sublime in its philosophy, and
+so chaste in its ethical precepts, and which, like Christianity, has
+bridged the awful chasm between unapproachable deity and our human
+conditions and wants by giving to the world a God-man.
+
+If the original author and the various expositors of the Bhagavad Gita
+have not borrowed from the Christian revelation, they have rendered an
+undesigned tribute to the great Christian doctrine of a divine and human
+mediator: they have given striking evidence of a felt want in all
+humanity of a _God with men_. If it was a deeply conscious want of the
+human heart which led the heathen of distant India to grope their way
+from the cheerless service of remorseless deities to one who could be
+touched with a feeling of their infirmities, and could walk these
+earthly paths as a counsellor by their side, how striking is the analogy
+to essential Christian truth!
+
+Let us examine some of the alleged parallels. They may be divided into
+three classes:
+
+1. Those which are merely fanciful. Nine-tenths of the whole number are
+of this class. They are such as would never occur to a Hindu on hearing
+the gospel truth. Only one who had examined the two records in the keen
+search for parallels, and whose wish had been the father of his thought,
+would have seen any resemblance. I shall not occupy much time with
+these.
+
+2. Those resemblances which are only accidental. It may be an accident
+of similar circumstances or similar causes; it may be a chance
+resemblance in the words employed, while there is no resemblance in the
+thoughts expressed.
+
+3. Those coincidences which spring from natural causes. For an example
+of these, the closing chapter of the Apocalypse speaks of Christ as "the
+Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." It is a natural
+expression to indicate his supreme power and glory as Creator and final
+Judge of all things. In a similar manner Krishna is made to say, "I am
+Beginning, Middle, End, Eternal Time, the Birth and the Death of all. I
+am the symbol A among the characters. I have created all things out of
+one portion of myself." There are two meanings in Krishna's words. He is
+in all things pantheistically, and he is the first and best of all
+things. In the tenth chapter he names with great particularity sixty-six
+classes of things in which he is always the first: the first of
+elephants, horses, trees, kings, heroes, etc. "Among letters I am the
+vowel A." "Among seasons I am spring." "Of the deceitful I am the dice."
+
+The late Dr. Mullens calls attention to the fact that the Orphic Hymns
+declare "Zeus to be the first and Zeus the last. Zeus is the head and
+Zeus the centre." In these three similar forms of description one common
+principle of supremacy rules. The difference is that in the Christian
+revelation and in the Orphic Hymns there is dignity, while in Krishna's
+discourse there is frivolous and vulgar particularity. Let us notice a
+few examples of the alleged parallels more particularly.
+
+In Chapter IX. Krishna says: "Whatever thou doest, whatever thou
+eatest, whatever thou offerest in sacrifice, etc., commit that to me."
+This is compared with 1 Corinthians x. 31: "Whether therefore ye eat or
+drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Also to
+Colossians x. 17: "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name
+of the Lord Jesus."
+
+Even if there were no pantheistic differential at the foundation of
+these utterances, it would not be at all strange if exhortations to an
+all-embracing devotion should thus in each case be made to cover all the
+daily acts of life. But aside from this there is a wide difference in
+the fundamental ideas which these passages express. Paul's thought is
+that of loving devotion to an infinite Friend and Saviour; it is such an
+offering of loyalty and love as one conscious being can make to another
+and a higher. But Krishna identifies the giver with the receiver, and
+Arjuna is taught to regard the gift itself as an act of God. The phrase
+"commit that to me" is equivalent to "ascribe that to me." In the
+context we read: "Of those men, who thinking of me in identity (with
+themselves), worship me, for them always resting in me, I bear the
+burden of acquisition and preservation of possessions. Even those the
+devotees of other gods, who worship in faith, they worship me in
+ignorance." In other words, the worshipper is to make no difference
+between himself and the Infinite. He is to refer all his daily acts to
+the Infinite as the real actor, his own personal ego being ignored. This
+is not Paul's idea; it is the very reverse of it. It could give comfort
+only to the evil-doer who desired to shift his personal responsibility.
+
+Let us consider another alleged resemblance. In the fifth chapter
+Krishna declares that whoever knows him "attains rest." This is
+presented as a parallel to the words in Christ's prayer: "This is life
+eternal that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ
+whom Thou hast sent."
+
+In both passages the knowledge of God is made the chief blessing to be
+sought, but in the one case knowledge means only a recognition of the
+Infinite Ego as existing in one's personal ego: it is a mere acceptance
+of that philosophic theory of life. Thus one of the Upanishads declares
+that "whoever sees all things in God, and God in all things, sees the
+truth aright;" his philosophy is correct. On the other hand, what Christ
+meant was not the recognition of a pantheistic theory, but a real
+heart-knowledge of the Father's character, a loving experience of his
+divine mercy, his fatherly love, his ineffable glory. The one was cold
+philosophy, the other was experience, fellowship, gratitude, filial
+love.
+
+What pantheism taught was that God cannot be known practically--that He
+is without limitations or conditions that we can distinguish Him from
+our finiteness only by divesting our conception of Him of all that we
+are wont to predicate of ourselves. He is subject to no such limitations
+as good or evil. In Chapter IX., Krishna says: "As air existing in space
+goes everywhere and is unlimited, so are all things in me.... I am the
+Vedic rite, I am the sacrifice, I am food, I am sacred formula, I am
+immortality, I am also death; also the latent cause and the manifest
+effect." To know the God of the Bhagavad Gita is to know that he cannot
+be known. "God is infinite in attributes," says Mr. Chatterji, "and yet
+devoid of attributes. This is the God whom the Bhagavad Gita proclaims."
+
+By a similar contradiction the more the devout worshipper knows of God
+the less he knows, because the process of knowledge is a process of
+"effacement;" the closer the gradual union becomes the fainter is the
+self-personality, till at length it fades away entirely, and is merged
+and lost as a drop in the illimitable sea. This is the so-called "rest"
+which Krishna promises as the reward of knowing him. It is rest in the
+sense of extinction; it is death; while that which Christ promises is
+eternal Life with unending and rapturous activity, with ever-growing
+powers of fellowship and of love.
+
+Take another alleged parallel. Chapter VI. commends the man who has
+reached such a measure of indifference that "his heart is _even_ in
+regard to friends and to foes, to the righteous and to evil-doers;" and
+this is held up as a parallel to the Sermon on the Mount, which commends
+love to enemies that we may be children of the heavenly Father who
+sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust. In the one case the
+apathy of the ascetic, the extinction of susceptibility, the ignoring of
+moral distinctions, the crippling and deadening of our noblest powers;
+in the other the use of these powers in all ways of beneficence toward
+those who injure us, even as God, though his heart is by no means "even"
+as between the righteous and the wicked, stills shows kindness to both.
+Now, in view of the great plausibility of the parallels which are thus
+presented to the public--parallels whose subtle fallacy the mass of
+readers are almost sure to overlook--one can hardly exaggerate the
+importance of thoroughly sifting the philosophy that underlies them, and
+especially on the part of those who are, or are to become, the defenders
+of the truth.[79]
+
+But turning from particular parallels to a broader comparison, there is
+a general use of expressions in the New Testament in regard to which
+every Christian teacher should aim at clear views and careful
+discriminations; for example, when we are said to be "temples of the
+Holy Ghost," or when Christ is said to be "formed in us the hope of
+glory," or it is "no longer we that live, but Christ that liveth in us."
+It cannot be denied that defenders of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the
+whole Indo-pantheistic philosophy, might make out a somewhat plausible
+case along these lines. I recall an instance in which an honored pastor
+had made such extravagant use of these New Testament expressions that
+some of his co-presbyters raised the question of a trial for pantheism.
+But it is one thing to employ strong terms of devotional feeling, as is
+often done, especially in prayer, and quite another to frame theories
+and philosophies, and present them as accurate statements of truth. The
+New Testament nowhere speaks of the indwelling Spirit in such a sense as
+implies an obliteration or absorption of the conscious individual ego,
+while "effacement" instead of fellowship is a favorite expression in the
+Bhagavad Gita. Paul in his most ecstatic language never gives any hint
+of extinction, but, on the contrary, he magnifies the conception of a
+separate, conscious, ever-growing personality, living and rejoicing in
+Divine fellowship for evermore.
+
+In the New Testament the expressions of our union with Christ are often
+reversed: instead of speaking of Christ as abiding in the hearts and
+lives of his people, they are sometimes said to abide in Him, and that
+not in the sense of absorption. Paul speaks of the "saints in Christ,"
+of his own "bonds in Christ," of being "baptized in Christ," of becoming
+"a new creature in Christ," of true Christians as being one body in
+Christ, of their lives being "hid with Christ in God." Believers are
+spoken of as being "buried with Christ," "dead with Christ." Every form
+of expression is used to represent fellowship, intimacy, spiritual union
+with Him, but always in a rational and practical sense, and with full
+implication of our distinct and separate personality. The essential hope
+of the Gospel is that those who believe in Christ shall never die, that
+even their mortal bodies shall be raised in his image, and that they
+shall be like Him and shall abide in his presence. On the other hand,
+"The essence of this pantheistic system," says Mr. Chatterji, "is the
+denial of real existence to the individual spirit, and the insistance
+upon its true identity with God" (Chapter IV.).
+
+It only remains to be said that, whatever may be the similarities of
+expression between this Bible of pantheism and that of Christianity,
+however they may agree in the utterance of worthy ethical maxims, that
+which most broadly differentiates the Christian faith from Hindu
+philosophy is the salient presentation of great fundamental truths which
+are found in the Word of God alone.
+
+1. The doctrine that God in Christ is "made sin" for the redemption of
+sinful man--that He is "the end of the law for righteousness" for them
+that believe; this is indeed Divine help: this is salvation. Divinity
+does not here become the mere charioteer of human effort, for the
+purpose of coaching it in the duties of caste and prompting it to fight
+out its destiny by its own valor. Christ is our expiation, takes our
+place, for our sakes becomes poor that we through his poverty may become
+rich. What a boon to all fakirs and merit-makers of the world if they
+could feel that that law of righteousness which they are striving to
+work out by mortifications and self-tortures had been achieved for them
+by the Son of God, and that salvation is a free gift! This is something
+that can be apprehended alike by the philosopher and by the unlettered
+masses of men.
+
+2. Another great truth found in our Scriptures is that the pathway by
+which the human soul returns to God is not the way of knowledge in the
+sense of philosophy, but the way of intelligent confidence and loving
+trust. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the
+mouth confession is made." Man by wisdom has never known God. This has
+been the vain effort of Hindu speculation for ages. The author of the
+Nyaya philosophy assumed that all evil springs from misapprehension, and
+that the remedy is to be found in correct methods of investigation,
+guided by skilfully arranged syllogisms. This has been in all ages the
+chief characteristic of speculative Hinduism. And the Bhagavad Gita
+furnishes one of its very best illustrations. Of its eighteen chapters,
+fifteen are devoted to "Eight Knowledge." And by knowledge is meant
+abstract speculation. It is a reaching after oneness with the deity by
+introspection and metaphysical analysis.
+
+"Even if thou wert the greatest evil-doer among all the unrighteous,"
+says Krishna, "thou shalt cross over all sins even by the ark of
+knowledge." "Oh, Arjuna, as blazing fire reduces fuel to ashes, so the
+fire of knowledge turns all action into ashes." But in the first place a
+knowledge of the infinite within us is unattainable, and in the second
+place it could not avail us even if attainable. It is not practical
+knowledge; it is not a belief unto righteousness. Faith is not an act of
+the brain merely, but of the whole moral nature. The wisdom of self must
+be laid aside, self-righteousness cast into the dust, the pride and
+rebellion of the will surrendered, and the whole man become as a little
+child. This is the way of knowledge that can be made experimental; this
+is the knowledge that is unto eternal life.
+
+3. Another great differential of the New Testament is found in its true
+doctrine of divine co-operation with the human will. Our personality is
+not destroyed that the absolute may take its place, but the two act
+together. "For men of renunciation," says the Bhagavad Gita, "whose
+hearts are at rest from desire and anger, and knowing the only self,
+there is on both sides of death effacement (of the individual) in the
+supreme spirit." In such a person, therefore, even on this side of
+death, there is a cessation of the individual in the supreme. Over
+against this the Gospel presents the doctrine of co-operative grace,
+which instead of crippling our human energies arouses them to their
+highest and best exertion. "Work out your own salvation with fear and
+trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of
+his good pleasure." The divine acts with and through the human, but does
+not destroy it. It imparts the greatest encouragement, the truest
+inspiration.
+
+4. We notice but one more out of many points of contrast between the
+doctrines of the Hindu and the Christian Bibles, viz., the difference
+between ascetic inaction and the life of Christian activity as means of
+religious growth. I am aware that in the earlier chapters of the
+Bhagavad Gita, Krishna urges Arjuna to valiant activity on the
+battle-field, but that is for a special purpose, viz., the establishment
+of caste distinctions. It is wholly foreign to Hindu philosophy; it is
+even contradictory. The author of the poem, who seems to be aware of the
+inconsistency of arousing Arjuna to the mighty activities of the
+battle-field, and at the same time indoctrinating him in the spirit of
+a dead and nerveless asceticism, struggles hard with the awkward task of
+bridging the illogical chasm with three chapters of mystification.
+
+But we take the different chapters as they stand, and in their obvious
+meaning. "The man of meditation is superior to the man of action," says
+Chapter I., 46, "therefore, Arjuna, become a man of meditation." How the
+man of meditation is to proceed is told in Chapter VI., 10-14. "Let him
+who has attained to meditation always strive to reduce his heart to rest
+in the Supreme, dwelling in a secret place alone, with body and mind
+under control, devoid of expectation as well as of acceptance. Having
+placed in a clean spot one's seat, firm, not very high nor very low,
+formed of the skins of animals, placed upon cloth and cusa grass upon
+that, sitting on that seat, strive for meditation, for the purification
+of the heart, making the mind one-pointed, and reducing to rest the
+action of the thinking principle as well as that of the senses and
+organs. Holding the body, neck, and head straight and unmoved, perfectly
+determined, and not working in any direction, but as if beholding the
+end of his own nose, with his heart in supreme peace, devoid of fear,
+with thought controlled and heart in me as the supreme goal, he
+remains."
+
+How different from all this is that prayer of Christ, "I pray not that
+Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep
+them from the evil." Or those various words spoken to his disciples:
+"Let your light so shine before men that others seeing your good works
+shall glorify your Father which is in heaven." "Work while the day
+lasts, for the night cometh in which no man can work."
+
+Who can imagine Paul spending all those years of opportunity in sitting
+on a leopard skin, watching the end of his nose instead of turning the
+world upside down! In that true sense in which Christ lived within him,
+He filled every avenue of his being with the aggressive spirit of God's
+own love for dying men. The same spirit which brought Christ from heaven
+to earth sent Paul out over the earth. He was not even content to work
+on old foundations, but regarding himself as under sentence of death he
+longed to make the most of his votive life, to bear the torch of the
+truth into all realms of darkness. He was none the less a philosopher
+because he preferred the simple logic of God's love, nor did he hesitate
+to confront the philosophy of Athens or the threatenings of Roman
+tyrants. He was ready for chains and imprisonment, for perils of
+tempests or shipwreck, or robbers, or infuriate mobs, or death itself.
+
+No Hindu fakir was ever more conscious of the struggle with inward
+corruption than he, and at times he could cry out, "Oh, wretched man
+that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" but he did
+not seek relief in idleness and inanity, but in what Dr. Chalmers called
+"the expulsive power of new affections," in new measures of Christlike
+devotion to the cause of truth and humanity. In a word, Christ and his
+kingdom displaced the power of evil. He could do all things through
+Christ who strengthened him.
+
+Nor was the peace which he felt and which he commended to others the
+peace of mere negative placidity and indifference. It was loving
+confidence and trust. "Be careful for nothing"--we hear him saying to
+his friends at Philippi--"be careful for nothing; but in all things by
+prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make known your requests
+unto God: and the peace of God, which passeth understanding, shall keep
+your minds and hearts through Christ Jesus." And yet to show how this
+consists with devout activity, he commends, in immediate connection with
+it, the cultivation of every active virtue known to men. Thus,
+"_Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
+things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if
+there be any praise, think on these things._"
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 74: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 75: The author seems to overlook the fact that the chief
+excellence of an evangel to lost men is that it appeals to the masses.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Address published in the _Japan Mail_, 1890.]
+
+[Footnote 77: There is scarcely another passage in all Hindu literature
+which is so full of half-truths as this, or which turns the sublime
+powers of the human soul to so unworthy a purpose.]
+
+[Footnote 78: In an enumeration of Hindu gods made in Buddha's time
+Krishna does not appear.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Never before has there been so much danger as now that the
+lines of truth will be washed out by the flood-tides of sentimental and
+semi Christian substitutes and makeshifts. As with commodities, so with
+religion, dilution and adulteration are the order of the day and a
+little Christianity is made to flavor a thousand shams.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+
+New interest has recently been awakened in old controversies concerning
+the relations of Christianity and Buddhism. The so-called Theosophists
+and Esoteric Buddhists are reviving exploded arguments against
+Christianity as means of supporting their crude theories. The charge of
+German sceptics, that Christianity borrowed largely from Buddhism, is
+made once more the special stock in trade of these new and fanatical
+organizations. To this end books, tracts, and leaflets are scattered
+broadcast, and especially in the United States and Great Britain.
+
+Professor Max Müller says, in a recent article published in _Longman's
+New Review_: "Who has not suffered lately from Theosophy and Esoteric
+Buddhism? Journals are full of it, novels overflow with it, and one is
+flooded with private and confidential letters to ask what it all really
+means. Many people, no doubt, are much distressed in their minds when
+they are told that Christianity is but a second edition of Buddhism. 'Is
+it really true?' they ask. 'Why did you not tell us all this before?
+Surely, you must have known it, and were only afraid to tell it.' Then
+follow other questions: 'Does Buddhism really count more believers than
+any other religion?' 'Is Buddhism really older than Christianity, and
+does it really contain many things which are found in the Bible?'" And
+the learned professor proceeds to show that there is no evidence that
+Christianity has borrowed from Buddhism. In this country these same
+ideas are perhaps more widely circulated than in England. They are
+subsidizing the powerful agency of the secular press, particularly the
+Sunday newspapers, and thousands of the people are confronting these
+puzzling questions. There is occasion, therefore, for a careful and
+candid review of Buddhism by all leaders of thought and defenders of
+truth.
+
+In the brief time allotted me, I can only call attention to a few
+salient points of a general character. In the outset, a distinction
+should be drawn between Buddhist history and Buddhist legend, for just
+at this point the danger of misrepresentation lies. It is true that the
+Buddha lived before the time of Christ, and therefore anything of the
+nature of real biography must be of an earlier date than the teachings
+of Jesus; but whether the _legends_ antedate His life and doctrines is
+quite another question. The Buddhist apologists all assume that they do,
+and it is upon the legends that most of the alleged parallelisms in the
+two records are based. How, then, shall we draw the line between history
+and legend? The concensus of the best scholarship accepts those
+traditions in which the northern and southern Buddhist records agree,
+which the Council of Patna, B.C. 242, adopted as canonical, and which
+are in themselves credible and consistent with the teachings of Gautama
+himself. According to this standard of authority Gautama was born about
+the sixth century B.C., as the son and heir of a rajah of the Sakya
+tribe of Aryans, living about eighty miles north by northwest of
+Benares. His mother, the principal wife of Kajah Suddhodana, had lived
+many years without offspring, and she died not long after the birth of
+this her only son, Siddartha. In his youth he was married and surrounded
+by all the allurements and pleasures of an Oriental court. He, too,
+appears to have remained without an heir till he was twenty-nine years
+of age, when, upon the birth of a son, certain morbid tendencies came to
+a climax, and he left his palace secretly and sought true comfort in a
+life of asceticism. For six years he tried diligently the resources of
+Hindu self-mortification, but becoming exhausted by his austerities,
+almost unto death, he abandoned that mode of life, having apparently
+become atheistic. He renounced the idea of merit-making as a means of
+spiritual attainment, and he was sorely tempted, no doubt, to return to
+his former life of ease. But he withstood the temptation and resolved to
+forego earthly pleasure, and teach mankind what he conceived to be the
+way of life, through self-control. He had tried pleasure; next he had
+tried extreme asceticism; he now struck out what he called "The Middle
+Path," as between self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme bodily
+mortification as a thing of merit on the other. This middle ground still
+demanded abstinence as favorable to the highest mental and moral
+conditions, but it was not carried to such extremes as to weaken the
+body or the mind, or impair the fullest operation of every faculty.[80]
+
+There can be no doubt that Gautama's relinquishment of Hinduism marked a
+great and most trying crisis. It involved the loss of all confidence in
+him on the part of his disciples, for when he began again to take
+necessary food they all forsook him as a failure. It was while sitting
+under the shade of an Indian fig-tree (Boddhi-tree) that this struggle
+occurred and his victory was gained. There his future course was
+resolved upon; there was the real birth-place of Buddhism as a system.
+He thenceforth began to preach the law, or what he regarded as the way
+of self-emancipation, and therefore the way of life. He first sought his
+five followers, who had abandoned him, and succeeded in winning them
+back. He gathered at length a company of about sixty disciples, whom he
+trained and sent forth as teachers of his new doctrines. Yet, still
+influenced by the old Hindu notions of the religious life, he formed his
+disciples into an order of mendicants, and in due time he established an
+order of nuns.
+
+It was when Gautama rose up from his meditation and his high resolve
+under the Bo-tree, that he began his career as "The Enlightened." He was
+now a Buddha, and claimed to have attained Nirvana. All that has been
+written of his having left his palace with the purpose of becoming a
+saviour of mankind, is the sheer assumption of the later legends and
+their apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six
+years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha
+left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. He
+entered upon the life of the recluse with the same motives and aims that
+have influenced thousands of other monks and anchorets of all lands and
+ages--some of them princes like himself. Nevertheless, for the noble
+decision which was finally reached we give him high credit. It seems to
+have been one of the noblest victories ever gained by man over lower
+impulses and desires. The passions of youth were not yet dead within
+him; worldly ambition may be supposed to have been still in force; but
+he chose the part of a missionary to his fellow-men, and there is no
+evidence that he ever swerved from his purpose. He had won a great
+victory over himself, and that fact constituted a secret of great power.
+Gautama was about thirty-five years of age when he became a Buddha, and
+for forty-five years after that he lived to preach his doctrines and to
+establish the monastic institution which has survived to our time. He
+died a natural death from indigestion at the age of eighty--greatly
+venerated by his disciples, and the centre of what had already become a
+wide-spread system in a large district of India.
+
+The legends of Buddhism are a very different thing from the brief sketch
+which I have given, and which is based upon the earlier Buddhist
+literature. These sprang up after Gautama's death, and their growth
+extended through many centuries--many centuries even of the Christian
+era. The legends divide the life of the Buddha into three periods: 1.
+That of his pre-existent states. 2. That part of his life which extended
+from his birth to his enlightenment under the Bo-tree. 3. The forty-five
+years of his Buddhaship. The legends have no more difficulty in dealing
+with the particular experiences of the pre-existent states than in
+enriching and adorning the incidents of his earthly life; and both are
+doubtless about equally authentic.
+
+Gautama discarded the idea of a divine revelation; he rejected the
+authority of the Vedas totally. He denied that he was divine, but
+distinctly claimed to be a plain and earnest man. All that he knew, he
+had discovered by insight and self-conquest. To assume that he was
+pre-existently divine and omniscient subverts the whole theory of his
+so-called "discovery," and is at variance with the idea of a personal
+conquest. The chief emphasis and force of his teachings lay in the
+assumption that he did simply what other men might do; for his mission
+was that of a teacher and exempler merely. He was a saviour only in that
+he taught men how to save themselves.
+
+The pre-existent states are set forth in the "Jatakas," or Birth Stories
+of Ceylon, which represent him as having been born five hundred and
+thirty times after he became a Bodisat (a predestined Buddha). As a
+specimen of his varied experience while becoming fitted for Buddaship,
+we read that he was born eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight
+as a monarch, forty-three as a deva, twenty-four as a Brahman, eighteen
+as an ape; as a deer ten, an elephant six, a lion ten; at least once
+each as a thief, a gambler, a frog, a hare, a snipe. He was also
+embodied in a tree. But as a Bodisat he could not be born in hell, nor
+as vermin, nor as a woman! Says Spence Hardy, with a touch of irony: "He
+could descend no lower than a snipe."
+
+Northern legends represent Buddha as having "incarnated" for the purpose
+of bringing relief to a distressed world. He was miraculously
+conceived--his mother's side in the form of a white elephant. All nature
+manifested its joy on the occasion. The ocean bloomed with flowers; all
+beings from many worlds showed their wonder and sympathy. Many miracles
+were wrought even during his childhood, and every part of his career was
+filled with marvels. At his temptation under the Bo-tree, Mara (Satan)
+came to him mounted on an elephant sixteen miles high and surrounded by
+an encircling army of demons eleven miles deep.[81] Finding him proof
+against his blandishments, he hurled mountains of rocks against him, and
+assailed him with fire and smoke and ashes and filth--all of which
+became as zephyrs on his cheek or as presents of fragrant flowers. Last
+of all, he sent his three daughters to seduce him. Their blandishments
+are set forth at great length in the "Romantic Legend."
+
+In the Northern Buddhist literature--embracing both the "Romantic
+Legend"[82] and the "Lalita Vistara"--many incidents of Buddha's
+childhood are given which show a seeming coincidence with the life of
+Christ. It is claimed that his birth was heralded by angelic hosts, that
+an aged sage received him into his arms and blessed him, that he was
+taken to the temple for consecration, that a jealous ruler sought to
+destroy him, that in his boyhood he astonished the doctors by his
+wisdom, that he was baptized, or at least took a bath, that he was
+tempted, transfigured, and finally received up into heaven. These will
+be noticed farther on; it is only necessary to say here that the legends
+giving these details are first at variance with the early canonical
+history, and second, that they are of such later dates as to place most
+of them probably within the Christian era.
+
+_The Four Peculiar and Characteristic Doctrines of Buddhism._
+
+1. Its peculiar conception of the soul. 2. Its doctrine of Trishna and
+Upadana. 3. Its theory of Kharma. 4. Its doctrine of Nirvana.
+
+1. The Skandas, five in number, constitute in their interaction what all
+others than Buddhists regard as the soul. They consist of material
+properties; the senses; abstract ideas; tendencies or propensities; and
+the mental powers. The soul is the result of the combined action of
+these, as the flame of a candle proceeds from the combustion of its
+constituent elements. The flame is never the same for two consecutive
+moments. It seems to have a perpetuated identity, but that is only an
+illusion, and the same unreality pertains to the soul. It is only a
+succession of thoughts, emotions, and conscious experiences. We are not
+the same that we were an hour ago. In fact, there is no such thing as
+being--there is only a constant _becoming_. We are ever passing from one
+point to another throughout our life; and this is true of all beings and
+all things in the universe. How it is that the succession of experiences
+is treasured up in memory is not made clear. This is a most subtle
+doctrine, and it has many points of contact with various speculations of
+modern times. It has also a plausible side when viewed in the light of
+experience, but its gaps and inconsistencies are fatal, as must be seen
+when it is thoroughly examined.
+
+2. The second of the cardinal doctrines is that of Trishna. Trishna is
+that inborn element of desire whose tendency is to lead men into evil.
+So far, it is a misfortune or a form of original sin. Whatever it may
+have of the nature of guilt hangs upon the issues of a previous life.
+Upadana is a further stage in the same development. It is Trishna
+ripened into intense craving by our own choice and our own action. It
+then becomes uncontrollable and is clearly a matter of guilt. Now, the
+momentum of this Upadana is such that it cannot be arrested by death.
+Like the demons of Gadara it must again become incarnate, even though it
+should enter the body of a brute. And this transitional something, this
+restless moral or immoral force which must work out its natural results
+somehow and somewhere, and that in embodied form projects into future
+being a residuum which is known as Kharma.
+
+3. What, then, is Kharma? Literally it means "the doing." It is a man's
+record, involving the consequences and liabilities of his acts. It is a
+score which must be settled. A question naturally arises, how the record
+of a soul can survive when the soul itself has been "blown out." The
+illustration of the candle does not quite meet the case. If the flame
+were something which when blown out immediately seized upon some other
+substance in which the work of combustion proceeded, it would come
+nearer to a parallel. One candle may light another before itself is
+extinguished, but it does not do it by an inherent necessity. But this
+flame of the soul, this Kharma, must enter some other body of god, or
+man, or beast.
+
+Again, the question arises, How can responsibility be transferred from
+one to another? How can the heavy load of a man's sin be laid upon some
+new-born infant, while the departing sinner has himself no further
+concern in his evil Kharma, but sinks into non-existence the moment his
+"conformations" are touched with dissolution? Buddhism acknowledges a
+mystery here; no real explanation can be given, and none seems to have
+been attempted by Buddhist writers. To be consistent, Gautama, in
+denying the existence of God and of the soul as an entity, should have
+taught the materialistic doctrine of annihilation. This, however, he
+could not do in the face of that deep-rooted idea of transmigration
+which had taken entire possession of the Hindu mind. Gautama was
+compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could.
+Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air. It alights
+like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless
+boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing
+with permanent character that which is itself impermanent.
+
+But the question may be asked, "Do we not admit a similar principle when
+we speak of a man's influence as something that survives him?" We
+answer, "No." Influence is a simple radiation of impressions. A man may
+leave an influence which men are free to accept or not, but it is quite
+a different thing if he leaves upon a successor the moral liabilities of
+a bankrupt character. Gautama's own Kharma, for example, ceased to exist
+upon his entering Nirvana; there was no re-birth; but his influence
+lives forever, and has extended to millions of his fellow-men.
+
+The injustice involved in the doctrine of Kharma is startling. The
+new-born soul that inherits its unsettled score has no memory or
+consciousness that connects it with himself; it is not heredity; it is
+not his father's character that invests him. This Kharma may have
+crossed the ocean from the death-bed of some unknown man of another
+race. The doctrine is the more astonishing when we consider that no
+Supreme Being is recognized as claiming this retribution. There is no
+God; it is a vague law of eternal justice, a law without a law-giver or
+a judge. There can therefore be no pardon, no commutation of sentence,
+no such thing as divine pity or help. The only way in which one can
+disentangle himself is by breaking forever the connection between spirit
+and matter which binds him with the shackles of conscious being.
+
+4. Nirvana. No doctrine of Buddhism has been so much in dispute as this.
+It has been widely maintained that Nirvana means extinction. But T.W.
+Rhys Davids and others have held that it is "the destruction of malice,
+passion, and delusion," and that it may be attained in this life. The
+definition is quoted from comparatively recent Pali translations.[83]
+Gautama, therefore, reached Nirvana forty-five years before his death.
+It is claimed, however, that insomuch as it cuts off Kharma, or
+re-birth, it involves entire extinction of being upon the dissolution of
+the body.[84] It is held by still others that Nirvana is a return to the
+original and all-pervading Boddhi-essence. This theory, which is really
+a concession to the Brahmanical doctrine of absorption into the infinite
+Brahma, has a wide following among the modern Buddhists in China and
+Japan. It is a form of Buddhist pantheism.
+
+As to the teaching of Gautama on this subject, Professor Max Müller,
+while admitting that the meta-physicians who followed the great teacher
+plainly taught that the entire personal entity of an arhat (an
+enlightened one) would become extinct upon the death of the body, yet
+reasons, in his lecture on Buddhistic Nihilism, that the Buddha himself
+could not have taught a doctrine so disheartening. At the same time he
+quotes the learned and judicial Bishop Bigandet as declaring, after
+years of study and observation in Burmah, that such is the doctrine
+ascribed to the great teacher by his own disciples. Gautama is quoted as
+closing one of his sermons in these words: "Mendicants, that which binds
+the teacher to existence is cut off, but his body still remains. While
+his body still remains he shall be seen by gods and men, but after the
+termination of life, upon the dissolution of the body, neither gods nor
+men shall see him." T.W. Rhys Davids expresses the doctrine of Nirvana
+tersely and correctly when he says: "Utter death, with no new life to
+follow, is, then, a result of, but it is not, Nirvana."[85] Professor
+Oldenberg suggests, with much plausibility, that the Buddha was more
+reticent in regard to the doctrine of final extinction in the later
+periods of his life; that the depressing doctrine had been found a
+stumbling-block, and that he came to assume an agnostic position on the
+question. In his "Buddha,"[86] Professor Oldenberg, partly in answer to
+the grounds taken by Professor Max Müller in his lecture on Buddhistic
+Nihilism, has very fully discussed the question whether the ego survives
+in Nirvana in any sense. He claims that certain new translations of Pali
+texts have given important evidence on the subject, and he sums up with
+the apparent conclusion that the Buddha, moved by the depressing
+influence which the grim doctrine of Nirvana, in the sense of
+extinction, was producing upon his disciples, assumed a position of
+reticence as to whether the ego survives or not. The venerable Malukya
+(see p. 275) is said to have plied the Master with questions. "Does the
+perfect Buddha live on beyond death, or does he not? It pleases me not
+that all this should remain unanswered, and I do not think it right. May
+it please the Master to answer me if he can. But when anyone does not
+understand a matter, then a straightforward man says, 'I do not know
+that.'" The Buddha replies somewhat evasively that he has not undertaken
+to decide such questions, because they are not for spiritual
+edification.
+
+The question, What is Nirvana? has been the object of more extensive
+discussion than its importance demands. Practically, the millions of
+Buddhists are not concerned with the question. They find no attraction
+in either view. They desire neither extinction nor unconscious
+absorption into the Boddhi essence (or Brahm). What they anticipate is
+an improved transmigration, a better birth. The more devout may indulge
+the hope that their next life will be spent in one of the Buddhist
+heavens; others may aspire to be men of high position and influence. The
+real heaven to which the average Buddhist looks forward is apt to be
+something very much after his own heart, or at least something indicated
+by the estimate which he himself places upon his own character and life.
+There may be many transmigrations awaiting him, but he is chiefly
+concerned for the next in order. The very last object to excite his
+interest is that far-off shadow called Nirvana.
+
+In estimating the conflict of Christianity with Buddhism we must not
+take counsel merely of our own sense of the absurdity of Gautama's
+teachings; we are to remember that in Christian lands society is made up
+of all kinds of people; that outside of the Christian Church there are
+thousands, and even millions, who, with respect to faith, are in utter
+chaos and darkness. The Church therefore cannot view this subject from
+its own stand-point merely. Let us glance at certain features of
+Buddhism which render it welcome to various classes of men who dwell
+among us in Western lands. First of all, the system commends itself to
+many by its intense individualism. Paul's figure of the various parts of
+the human frame as illustrating the body of Christ, mutual in the
+interdependence of all its members, would be wholly out of place in
+Buddhism. Even the Buddhist monks are so many units of introverted
+self-righteousness. And individualism differently applied is the
+characteristic of our age, and therefore a bond of sympathy is supplied.
+"Every man for himself," appeals to modern society in many ways.
+
+Again, Gautama magnified the human intellect and the power of the human
+will. "O Ananda," he said, "be lamps unto yourselves; depend upon no
+other." He claimed to have thought out, and thought through every
+problem of existence, to have penetrated every secret of human nature in
+the present, and in the life to come, and his example was commended to
+all, that they might follow in their measure. So also our transcendental
+philosophers have glorified the powers and possibilities of humanity,
+and have made genius superior to saintliness.[87] There are tens of
+thousands who in this respect believe in a religion of humanity, and who
+worship, if they worship at all, the goddess of reason. All such have a
+natural affinity for Buddhism.
+
+Another point in common between this system and the spirit of our age is
+its broad humanitarianism--beneficence to the lower grades of life. When
+love transcends the bounds of the human family it does not rise up
+toward God, it descends toward the lower orders of the animal world.
+"Show pity toward everything that exists," is its motto, and the insect
+and the worm hold a larger relative place in the Buddhist than in the
+Christian view. The question "Are ye not of more value than many
+sparrows?" might be doubtful in the Buddhist estimate, for the teacher
+himself, in his pre-existent states, had often been incarnate in
+inferior creatures. It is by no means conceded that Jesus, in asking his
+disciples this question, had less pity for the sparrows than the Buddha,
+or that his beneficence was less thoughtful of the meanest thing that
+glides through the air or creeps upon the earth; but the spirit of
+Christianity is more discriminating, and its love rises up to heaven,
+where, beginning with God, it descends through every grade of being.
+
+Yet it is quite in accordance with the spirit and aim of thousands to
+magnify the charity that confines itself to bodily wants and
+distresses, to sneer at the relief which religion may bring to the far
+greater anguish of the spirit, and to look upon love and loyalty to God
+as superstition. Is it any wonder that such persons have a warm side
+toward Buddhism? Again, this system has certain points in common with
+our modern evolution theories. It is unscientific enough certainly in
+its speculations, but it gets on without creatorship or divine
+superintendence, and believes in the inflexible reign of law, though
+without a law-giver. It assigns long ages to the process of creation, if
+we may call it creation, and in development through cycles it sees
+little necessity for the work of God.
+
+It can also join hands cordially with many social theories of the day.
+The pessimism of Buddhists, ancient or modern, finds great sympathy in
+the crowded populations of the Western as well as the Eastern world.
+And, almost as a rule, Esoteric Buddhism, American Buddhism,
+Neo-Buddhism, or whatever we may call it, is a cave of Adullam to which
+all types of religious apostates and social malcontents resort. The
+thousands who have made shipwreck of faith, who have become soured at
+the unequal allotments of Providence, who have learned to hate all who
+are above them and more prosperous than they, are just in the state of
+mind to take delight in Buddha's sermon at Kapilavastu, as rehearsed by
+Sir Edwin Arnold. There all beings met--gods, devas, men, beasts of the
+field, and fowls of the air--to make common cause against the
+relentless fate that rules the world, and to bewail the sufferings and
+death which fill the great charnel-house of existence, while Buddha
+voiced their common complaint and stood before them as the only pitying
+friend that the universe had found. It was the first great Communist
+meeting of which we have any record.[88] The wronged and suffering
+universe was there, and all
+
+            "took the promise of his piteous speech,
+   So that their lives, prisoned in the shape of ape,
+   Tiger or deer, shagged bear, jackal or wolf,
+   Foul-feeding kite, pearled dove or peacock gemmed,
+   Squat toad or speckled serpent, lizard, bat,
+   Yea, or fish fanning the river waves,
+   Touched meekly at the skirts of brotherhood
+   With man, who hath less innocence than these:
+   And in mute gladness knew their bondage broke
+   Whilst Buddha spoke these things before the king."
+
+There was no mention of sin, but only of universal misfortune!
+
+In contrast with the deep shadows of a brooding and all-embracing
+pessimism like this, we need only to hint at that glow of hope and joy
+with which the Sun of Righteousness has flooded the world, and the
+fatherly love and compassion with which the Old Testament and the New
+are replete, the divine plan of redemption, the psalms of praise and
+thanksgiving, the pity of Christ's words and acts, and his invitations
+to the weary and heavy-laden. In one view it is strange that pessimism
+should have comfort in the fellowship of pessimism, but so it is; there
+is luxury even in the sympathy of hate, and so Buddhist pessimism is a
+welcome guest among us, though our Communistic querulousness is more
+bitter.
+
+Once more, Buddhist occultism has found congenial fellowship in American
+spiritualism. Of late we hear less of spirit-rappings and far more of
+Theosophy. But this is only the same crude system with other names, and
+rendered more respectable by the cast-off garments of old Indian
+philosophy. There is a disposition in the more intellectual circles to
+assume a degree of disdain toward the crudeness of spiritualism and its
+vulgar familiarity with departed spirits, who must ever be disturbed by
+its beck and call; but it is confidently expected that the thousands,
+nay, as some say, millions, of American spiritualists will gladly
+welcome the name and the creed of Buddha.[89] It will be idle therefore
+to assume that the old sleepy system of Gautama has no chance in this
+wide-awake republic of the West.[90]
+
+I have already called attention to the special tactics of Buddhists just
+now in claiming that Christianity, having been of later origin, has
+borrowed its principal facts and its teachings. Let us examine the
+charge. It is a real tribute to the character of Christ that so many
+sects of false religionists have in all ages claimed Him either as a
+follower or as an incarnation of their respective deities. Others have
+acknowledged his teachings as belonging to their particular style and
+grade. The bitter and scathing calumny of Celsus, in the first
+centuries of our era, did not prevent numerous attempts to prove the
+identity of Christ's teachings with some of the most popular
+philosophies of the heathen world. Porphyry claimed that many of
+Christ's virtues were copied from Pythagoras. With like concession
+Mohammedanism included Jesus as one of the six great prophets, and
+confessedly the only sinless one among them all. Many a fanatic in the
+successive centuries has claimed to be a new incarnation of the Son of
+God. Hindus have named Him as an incarnation of Vishnu for the Western,
+as was Krishna for the Eastern World. As was indicated in the opening of
+this lecture, the Theosophists are making special claim to Him,[91] and
+are reviving the threadbare theory that He was a follower of Buddha.
+
+So strong an effort is made to prove that Christianity has borrowed both
+its divine leader and its essential doctrines from India, that a
+moment's attention may well be given to the question here. One
+allegation is that the Evangelists copied the Buddhist history and
+legends in their account of Christ's early life. Another is that the
+leaders of the Alexandrian Church worked over the gospel story at a
+later day, having felt more fully the influence of India at that great
+commercial centre. The two theories are inconsistent with each other,
+and both are inconsistent with the assumption that Christ Himself was a
+Buddhist, and taught the Buddhist doctrines, since this supposition
+would have obviated the need of any manipulation or fraud at any point.
+
+In replying as briefly as possible I shall endeavor to cover both
+allegations. In strong contrast with these cheap assertions of
+Alexandrian corruption and plagiarism is the frank admission of such
+keen critics as Renan, Weiss, Volkmar, Schenkel, and Hitzig,[92] that
+the gospel record as we have it, was written during a generation in
+which some of the companions of Jesus still lived. Renan says of Mark's
+Gospel that "it is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an
+eye-witness," and he asserts that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written
+"in substantially their present form by the men whose names they bear."
+These Gospels were the work of men who knew Jesus. Matthew was one of
+the Twelve; John in his Epistle speaks of himself as an eye-witness.
+They were written in a historic age and were open to challenge. They
+were nowhere contradicted in contemporary history. They fit their
+environment.
+
+How is it with the authenticity of Buddhist literature? Oldenberg says,
+"For the _when_ of things men of India have never had a proper organ,"
+and Max Müller declares to the same effect, that "the idea of a
+faithful, literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds." He also informs us that there is not a single manuscript in
+India which is a thousand years old, and scarcely one that can claim
+five hundred years. For centuries after Gautama's time nothing was
+written; all was transmitted by word of mouth. Buddhists themselves say
+that the Pali canonical texts were written about 88 B.C.[93]
+
+Any fair comparison of the two histories should confine itself to the
+writings which are regarded as canonical respectively, and whose dates
+can be fixed. No more importance should be attached to the later
+Buddhist legends than to the "Apocryphal Gospels," or to the absurd
+"Christian Legends" which appeared in the middle ages. The Buddhist
+Canon was adopted by the Council of Patna 242 B.C. The legends which are
+generally compared with the canonical story of Christ are not included
+in that Canon, or at most very few of them. They are drawn from certain
+poetical books written much later, and holding about the same relation
+to the Buddhist Canon that the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained"
+of Milton bear to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Who
+would think of quoting "Paradise Lost" in any sober comparison of
+Biblical truth with the teachings of other religions?[94]
+
+Even the canonical literature, that which is supposed to contain the
+true history and teachings of Buddha, is far from authoritative, owing
+to the acknowledged habit--acknowledged even by the author of the
+"Dhammapada" of adding commentaries, notes, etc., to original teachings.
+Not only was this common among Buddhist writers, but even more
+surprising liberties were taken with the narrative. For example: The
+legend describing Buddha's leave-taking of his harem is clearly borrowed
+from an earlier story of Yasa, a wealthy young householder of Benares,
+who, becoming disgusted with his harem, left his sleeping dancing girls
+and fled to the Buddha for instruction. Davids and Oldenberg, in
+translating this legend from the "Mahavagga," say in a note, "A
+well-known incident in the life of Buddha has evidently been shaped
+after the model of this story;" and they declare that "_nowhere in the
+'Pali Pitakas' is this scene of Buddha's leave-taking mentioned_."
+
+As another evidence of the way in which fact and fiction have been mixed
+and manipulated for a purpose, one of the legends, which has often been
+presented as a parallel to the story of Christ, represents the Buddha as
+repelling the temptation of Mara by quoting texts of "scripture," and
+the scripture referred to was the "Dhammapada." But the "Dhammapada" was
+compiled hundreds of years after Buddha's death. Besides, there were no
+"scriptures" of any kind in his day, for nothing was written till two or
+three centuries later; and worse still, Buddha is made to quote his own
+subsequent teachings; for the "Dhammapada" claims to consist of the
+sacred words of the "enlightened one." Most of the legends of Buddhism
+were wholly written after the beginning of the Christian era, and it
+cannot be shown that any were written in their present form until two or
+three centuries of that era had elapsed. T.W. Rhys Davids says of the
+"Lalita Vistara" which contains a very large proportion of them, and one
+form of which is said to have been translated into Chinese in the first
+century A.D., "that there is no real proof that it existed in its
+present form before the year 600 A.D." The "Romantic Legend" cannot be
+traced farther back than the third century A.D. Oldenberg says: "No
+biography of Buddha has come down to us from ancient times, from the age
+of the Pali texts, and we can safely say that no such biography was in
+existence then." Beal declares that the Buddhist legend, as found in the
+various Epics of Nepaul, Thibet, and China, "is not framed after _any_
+Indian model of any date, but is to be found worked out, so to speak,
+among northern peoples, who were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the
+pedantic stories of the Brahmans. In the southern and primitive records
+the terms of the legend are wanting. _Buddha is not born of a royal
+family; he is not tempted before his enlightenment; he works no
+miracles, and he is not a Universal Saviour._"
+
+The chances are decidedly that if any borrowing has been done it was on
+the side of Buddhism. It has been asserted that thirty thousand
+Buddhist monks from Alexandria once visited Ceylon on the occasion of a
+great festival. This is absurd on the face of it; but that a Christian
+colony settled in Malabar at a very early period is attested by the
+presence of thousands of their followers even to this day.
+
+In discussing the specific charge of copying Buddhist legends in the
+gospel narratives, we are met at the threshold by insurmountable
+improbabilities. To some of these I ask a moment's attention. I shall
+not take the time to discuss in detail the alleged parallels which are
+paraded as proofs. To anyone who understands the spirit of Judaism and
+its attitude toward heathenism of all kinds, it is simply inconceivable
+that the Christian disciples, whose aim it was to propagate the faith of
+their Master in a Jewish community, should have borrowed old Indian
+legends, which, by the terms of the supposition, must have been widely
+known as such. And Buddhist apologists must admit that it is a little
+strange that the Scribes and Pharisees, who were intelligent, and as
+alert as they were bitter, should never have exposed this transparent
+plagiarism. The great concern of the Apostles was to prove to Jews and
+Gentiles that Jesus was the Christ of Old Testament prophecy. The whole
+drift of their preaching and their epistles went to show that the gospel
+history rested squarely and uncompromisingly on a Jewish basis. Peter
+and John, Stephen and Paul, constantly "reasoned with the Jews out of
+their own Scriptures." How unspeakably absurd is the notion that they
+were trying to palm off on those keen Pharisees a Messiah who, though in
+the outset at Nazareth he publicly traced his commission to Old
+Testament prophecy, was all the while copying an atheistic philosopher
+of India!
+
+It is equally inconceivable that the Christian fathers should have
+copied Buddhism. They resisted Persian mysticism as the work of the
+Devil, and it was in that mysticism, if anywhere, that Buddhist
+influence existed in the Levant. Whoever has read Tertullian's withering
+condemnation of Marcion may judge how far the fathers of the Church
+favored the heresies of the East. Augustine had himself been a Manichean
+mystic, and when after his conversion he became the great theologian of
+the Church, he must have known whether the teachings of the Buddha were
+being palmed off on the Christian world. The great leaders of that age
+were men of thorough scholarship and of the deepest moral earnestness.
+Many of them gave up their possessions and devoted their lives to the
+promotion of the truths which they professed. Scores of them sealed
+their faith by martyr deaths.
+
+But even if we were to accept the flippant allegation that they were all
+impostors, yet we should be met by an equally insurmountable difficulty
+in the utter silence of the able and bitter assailants of Christianity
+in the first two or three centuries. Celsus prepared himself for his
+well-known attack on Christianity with the utmost care, searching
+history, philosophy, and every known religion from which he could derive
+an argument against the Christian faith.
+
+Why did he not strike at the very root of the matter by exposing those
+stupid plagiarists who were attempting to play off upon the intelligence
+of the Roman world a clumsy imitation of the far-famed Buddha? It was
+the very kind of thing that the enemies of Christianity wanted. Why
+should the adroit Porphyry attempt to work up a few mere scraps of
+resemblance from the life of Pythagoras, when all he had to do was to
+lay his hand upon familiar legends which afforded an abundance of the
+very thing in demand?
+
+Again, it is to be remembered that Christianity has always been
+restrictive and opposed to admixtures with other systems. It repelled
+the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, and it fought for two or three
+centuries against Gnosticism, Manichæism, and similar heresies: and the
+assumption, in the face of all this, that the Christian Church went out
+of its way to copy Indian Buddhism, must be due either to gross
+ignorance or to reckless misrepresentation. On the other hand, it is in
+accordance with the very genius of Buddhism to borrow. It has absorbed
+every indigenous superstition and entered into partnership with every
+local religious system, from the Devil Worship of Burmah and Ceylon to
+the Taouism of China and the Shinto of Japan. In its long-continued
+contact with Christianity it has changed from the original atheism of
+Gautama to various forms of theism, and in some of its sects, at least,
+from a stanch insistance on self-help alone to an out-and-out doctrine
+of salvation by faith. This is true of the Shin and Yodo sects of
+Japan. From recognizing no God at all at first, Buddhism had, by the
+seventh century A.D., a veritable Trinity, with attributes resembling
+those of the Triune God of the Christians, and by the tenth century it
+had five trinities with One Supreme Adi-Buddha over them all. Everyone
+may judge for himself whether these later interpolations of the system
+were borrowed from the New Testament Trinity, which had been proclaimed
+through all the East ten centuries before. Buddhism is still absorbing
+foreign elements through the aid of its various apologists. Sir Edwin
+Arnold has greatly added to the force of its legend by the Christian
+phrases and Christian conceptions which he has read into it. Toward the
+close of the "Light of Asia" he also introduces into the Buddha's sermon
+at Kapilavastu the teachings of Herbert Spencer and others of our own
+time.
+
+But altogether the most stupendous improbability lies against the whole
+assumption that Christ and his followers based their "essential
+doctrines" on the teachings of the Buddha. The early Buddhism was
+atheistic: this is the common verdict of Davids, Childers, Sir Monier
+Williams, Kellogg, and many others. The Buddha declared that "without
+cause and unknown is the life of man in this world," and he recognized
+no higher being to whom he owed reverence. "The Buddhist Catechism," by
+Subhadra, shows that modern Buddhism has no recognition of God.
+
+It says (page 58): "Buddhism teaches the reign of perfect goodness and
+wisdom _without a personal God_, continuance of individuality _without
+an immortal soul_, eternal happiness without a local heaven, the way of
+salvation without a vicarious saviour, redemption worked out by each one
+himself without any prayers, sacrifices, and penances, without the
+ministry of ordained priests, without the intercession of saints,
+_without divine mercy_." And then, by way of authentication, it adds:
+"These, and many others which have become the fundamental doctrines of
+the Buddhist religion, were recognized by the Buddha in the night of his
+enlightenment under the Boddhi-tree." And yet we are told that this is
+the system which Christ and his followers copied. Compare this passage
+with the Lord's Prayer, or with the discourse upon the lilies, and its
+lesson of trust in God the Father of all! I appeal not merely to
+Christian men, but to _any_ man who has brains and common-sense, was
+there ever so preposterous an attempt to establish an identity of
+doctrines?
+
+But what is the evidence found in the legends themselves? Several
+leading Oriental scholars, and men not at all biased in favor of
+Christianity, have carefully examined the subject, and have decided that
+there is no connection whatever. Professor Seydel, of Leipsic, who has
+given the most scientific plea for the so-called coincidences, of which
+he claims there are fifty-one, has classified them as: 1, Those which
+may have been merely accidental, having arisen from similar causes, and
+not necessarily implying any borrowing on either side; 2, those which
+seem to have been borrowed from the one narrative or the other; and 3,
+those which he thinks were clearly copied by the Christian writers. In
+this last class he names but five out of fifty-one.
+
+Kuenen, who has little bias in favor of Christianity, and who has made a
+very thorough examination of Seydel's parallels, has completely refuted
+these five.[95] And speaking of the whole question he says: "I think we
+may safely affirm that we must abstain from assigning to Buddhism the
+smallest direct influence on the origin of Christianity." He also says
+of similar theories of de Bunsen: "A single instance is enough to teach
+us that inventive fancy plays the chief part in them."[96]
+
+Rhys Davids, whom Subhadra's "Buddhist Catechism" approves as the chief
+exponent of Buddhism, says on the same subject: "I can find no evidence
+of any actual or direct communication of these ideas common to Buddhism
+and Christianity from the East to the West." Oldenberg denies their
+early date, and Beal denies them an Indian origin of any date.
+
+
+_Contrasts between Buddhism and Christianity._
+
+Rhys Davids has pointed out the fact that, while Buddhism in some points
+is more nearly allied to Christianity than any other system, yet in
+others it is the farthest possible from it in its spirit and its
+tendency. If we strike out those ethical principles which, to a large
+extent, are the common heritage of mankind, revealed in the
+understanding and the conscience, we shall find in what remains an
+almost total contrariety to the Christian faith. To give a few examples
+only.
+
+1. Christ taught the existence and glory of God as Supreme, the Creator
+and Father, the righteous Judge. His supreme mission to reconcile all
+men to God was the key-note of all His ministry. By His teaching the
+hearts of men are lifted up above all earthly conceptions to the worship
+of infinite purity, and to the comforting assurance of more than a
+father's care and love. Buddhism, on the contrary, knows nothing of God,
+offers no heavenly incentive, no divine help. Leading scholars are
+agreed that, whatever it may be now, the original orthodox Buddhism was
+essentially atheistic. It despised the idea of divine help, and taught
+men to rely upon themselves. While, therefore, Buddhism never rose above
+the level of earthly resources, and contemplated only lower orders of
+being, Christianity begins with God as supreme, to be worshipped and
+loved with all the heart, mind, and strength, while our neighbors are to
+be loved as ourselves.
+
+2. Christ represented Himself as having pre-existed from the foundation
+of the world, as having been equal with God in the glory of heaven, all
+of which He resigned that He might enter upon the humiliation of our
+earthly state, and raise us up to eternal life. He distinctly claimed
+oneness and equality with the Father. Buddha claimed no such antecedent
+glory; he spoke of himself as a man merely; the whole aim of his
+teaching was to show in himself what every man might accomplish. Later
+legends ascribe to him a sort of pre-existence, in which five hundred
+and thirty successive lives were passed, sometimes as a man, sometimes
+as a god, many times as an animal. But even these claims were not made
+by Buddha himself--except so far as was implied by the common doctrine
+of transmigration.
+
+Furthermore, in relation to the alleged pre-existences, according to
+strict Buddhist doctrine it was not really he who had gone before, it
+was only a Kharma or character that had exchanged hands many times
+before it could be taken up by the real and conscious Buddha born upon
+the earth. Still further, even after the beginning of his earthly life
+he lived for many years in what, according to his own teaching, was
+heinous sin, all of which is fatal to the theory of pre-existent
+holiness.
+
+3. Christ is a real Saviour; His atonement claimed to be a complete
+ransom from the penalty of sin, and by His teaching and example, and by
+the power of the Holy Spirit, He overcomes the power of sin itself,
+transforming the soul into His own image. Buddha, on the other hand, did
+not claim to achieve salvation for any except himself, though Mr. Arnold
+and others constantly use such terms as "help" and "salvation." Nothing
+of the kind is claimed by the early Buddhist doctrines; they plainly
+declare that purity and impurity belong to one's self, and that no one
+can purify another.
+
+4. Christ emphatically declared Himself a helper, even in this life:
+"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
+you rest." He promised also to send his Spirit as a comforter, as a
+supporter of his disciples' faith, as a guide and teacher, at all times
+caring for their need; in whatever exigency his grace would be
+sufficient for them. On the contrary, Buddha taught his followers that
+no power in heaven or earth could help them; the victory must be their
+own. "How can we hope to amend a life," says Bishop Carpenter, "which is
+radically bad, by the aid of a system which teaches that man's highest
+aim should be to escape from life? All that has been said against the
+ascetic and non-worldly attitude of Christianity might be urged with
+additional force against Buddhism. It is full of the strong, sweet,
+pathetic compassion which looks upon life with eyes full of tears, but
+only to turn them away from it again, as from an unsolved and insoluble
+riddle." And he substantiates his position by quoting Réville and
+Oldenberg. Réville reaches this similar conclusion: "Buddhism, born on
+the domain of polytheism, has fought against it, not by rising above
+nature in subordinating it to a single sovereign spirit, but by
+reproving nature in principle, and condemning life itself as an evil and
+a misfortune. Buddhism does not measure itself against this or that
+abuse, does not further the development or reformation of society,
+either directly or indirectly, for the very simple reason that it turns
+away from the world on principle."
+
+Oldenberg, one of the most thorough of Pali scholars, says: "For the
+lower order of the people, for those born to toil in manual labor,
+hardened by the struggle for existence, the announcement of the
+connection of misery with all forms of existence was not made, nor was
+the dialectic of the law of the painful concatenation of causes and
+effects calculated to satisfy 'the poor in spirit.' 'To the wise
+belongeth this law,' it is said, 'not to the foolish.' Very unlike the
+work of that Man who 'suffered little children to come unto Him, for of
+such is the kingdom of God.' For children, and those who are like
+children, the arms of Buddha are not opened."
+
+5. Christ and his disciples set before men the highest motives of life.
+The great end of man was to love God supremely, and one's neighbor as
+himself. Every true disciple was to consider himself an almoner and
+dispenser of the divine goodness to his race. It was this that inspired
+the sublime devotion of Paul and of thousands since his time. It is the
+secret principle of all the noblest deeds of men. Gautama had no such
+high and unselfish aim. He found no inspiring motive above the level of
+humanity. His system concentrates all thought and effort on one's own
+life--virtually on the attainment of utter indifference to all things
+else. The early zeal of Gautama and his followers in preaching to their
+fellow-men was inconsistent with the plain doctrines taught at a later
+day. If in any case there were those who, like Paul, burned with desire
+to save their fellow-men, all we can say is, they were better than their
+creed. Such was the spirit of the Gospel, rather than the idle and
+useless torpor of the Buddhist order. "Here, according to Buddhists,"
+says Spence Hardy, "is a mere code of proprieties, an occasional opiate,
+a plan for being free from discomfort, a system for personal profit."
+Buddhism certainly taught the repression of human activity and
+influence. Instead of saying, "Let your light so shine before men that
+they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father who is in heaven,"
+or "Work while the day lasts," it said, "If thou keepest thyself silent
+as a broken gong, thou hast attained Nirvana." "To wander about like the
+rhinoceros alone," was enjoined as the pathway of true wisdom.
+
+6. Christ taught that life, though attended with fearful alternatives,
+is a glorious birthright, with boundless possibilities and promise of
+good to ourselves and others. Buddhism makes life an evil which it is
+the supreme end of man to conquer and cut off from the disaster of
+re-birth. Christianity opens a path of usefulness, holiness, and
+happiness in this life, and a career of triumph and glory in the endless
+ages to come. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are worse than other
+pessimistic systems in their fearful law of entailment through countless
+transmigrations, each of which must be a struggle.
+
+7. Christ, according to the New Testament, "ever liveth to make
+intercession for us," and the Holy Spirit represents Him constantly as
+an ever-living power in the world, to regenerate, save, and bless. But
+Buddha is dead, and his very existence is a thing of the past. Only
+traditions and the influence of his example can help men in the struggle
+of life. Said Buddha to his disciples: "As a flame blown by violence
+goes out and cannot be reckoned, even so a Buddha delivered from name
+and body disappears and cannot be reckoned as existing." Again, he said
+to his Order, "Mendicants, that which binds the Teacher (himself) is cut
+off, but his body still remains. While this body shall remain he will be
+seen by gods and men, but after the termination of life, upon the
+dissolution of the body, neither gods nor men shall see him."
+
+8. Christ taught the sacredness of the human body. "Know ye not that
+your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" said His
+great Apostle. But Buddhism says: "As men deposit filth upon a dungheap
+and depart regretting nothing, wanting nothing, so will I depart leaving
+this body filled with vile vapors." Christ and His disciples taught the
+triumphant resurrection of the body in spiritual form and purity after
+His own image. The Buddhist forsakes utterly and forever the deserted,
+cast-off mortality, while still he looks only for another habitation
+equally mortal and corruptible, and possibly that of a lower animal.
+Thus, through all these lines of contrast, and many others that might be
+named, there appear light and life and blessedness on the one hand, and
+gloom and desolation on the other.
+
+The gloomy nature of Buddhism is well expressed in Hardy's "Legends and
+Theories of Buddhism" as follows: "The system of Buddhism is
+humiliating, cheerless, man-marring, soul-crushing. It tells me that I
+am not a reality, that I have no soul. It tells me that there is no
+unalloyed happiness, no plenitude of enjoyment, no perfect unbroken
+peace in the possession of any being whatever, from the highest to the
+lowest, in any world. It tells me that I may live myriads of millions of
+ages, and that not in any of those ages, nor in any portion of any age,
+can I be free from apprehension as to the future, until I attain to a
+state of unconsciousness; and that in order to arrive at this
+consummation I must turn away from all that is pleasant, or lovely, or
+instructive, or elevating, or sublime. It tells me by voices ever
+repeated, like the ceaseless sound of the sea-wave on the shore, that I
+shall be subject to sorrow, impermanence, and unreality so long as I
+exist, and yet that I cannot cease to exist, nor for countless ages to
+come, as I can only attain nirvana in the time of a Supreme Buddha. In
+my distress I ask for the sympathy of an all-wise and all-powerful
+friend. But I am mocked instead by the semblance of relief, and am told
+to look to Buddha, who has ceased to exist; to the Dharma that never was
+in existence, and to the Sangha, the members of which are real
+existences, but like myself are partakers of sorrow and sin."
+
+How shall we measure the contrast between all this and the ecstacies of
+Christian hope, which in various forms are expressed in the Epistles of
+Paul; the expected crown of righteousness, the eternal weight of glory;
+heirship with Christ in an endless inheritance; the house not made with
+hands; the General Assembly of the first born? Even in the midst of
+earthly sorrows and persecutions he could say, "Nay, in all things we
+are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded
+that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
+nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
+God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 80: It is by no means certain that Buddha's followers, in
+carrying out his system, have not lapsed into the old notions of
+merit-making asceticism to greater or less extent, and have become
+virtually very much like the torpid and useless fakirs of the old
+Hinduism.]
+
+[Footnote 81: The _Jataka_ legends of Ceylon, dating in their present
+form about 500 A.D., greatly enlarge the proportions of this Northern
+legend, making the elephant over seven thousand miles high, and widening
+out the surrounding army to one hundred and sixty four miles.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Of the _Romantic Legend_ found in Nepaul, Beall's
+translation is probably the best.]
+
+[Footnote 83: See Appendix of _Origin and Growth of Religion as
+illustrated in Buddhism_.]
+
+[Footnote 84: See _Buddhism_, pp. 110-115.]
+
+[Footnote 85: _Buddhism_, p. 114.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Pp. 265-285.]
+
+[Footnote 87: It is the boast of the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_, that
+strange mixture of Western spiritualism with Oriental mysticism, that
+his system despises the tame "goody, goody" spirit of Christianity, and
+deals with the endless growth of mind.]
+
+[Footnote 88: _Light of Asia_.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Mr. Sinnett, in his _Esoteric Buddhism_, expressed the
+idea that it was high time that the crudities of spiritualism should be
+corrected by the more philosophic occultism of the East.]
+
+[Footnote 90: The points of contact between Buddhism and certain forms
+of Western thought have been ably treated by Professor S.H. Kellogg, in
+the _Light of Asia and Light of the World_.]
+
+[Footnote 91: A recent tract has appeared, entitled _Theosophy the
+Religion of Jesus_.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Cited by Professor Kellogg.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Professor T.W. Rhys Davids, in his introduction to
+_Buddhism_, enumerates the following sources of knowledge concerning the
+early Buddhism:
+
+1. The _Lalita Vistara_, a Sanscrit work of the Northern Buddhists "full
+of extravagant fictions" concerning the early portion of Gautama's life.
+Davids compares it to Milton's _Paradise Regained_, as a source of
+history, and claims that although parts of it were translated into
+Chinese in the first century of our era, there is no proof of its
+existence in its present form earlier than the sixth century A.D.
+
+2. Two Thibetan versions, based chiefly on the _Lalita Vistara_.
+
+3. The _Romantic Legend_, from the Sanscrit of the Northern Buddhists,
+translated into Chinese in the sixth century A.D.; English version by
+Beal published in 1875. This also is an extravagant poem. This and the
+_Lalita Vistara_ embrace most of the alleged parallels to the Life of
+Christ.
+
+4. The original Pali text of the _Commentary on the Jatakas_, written in
+Ceylon probably about the fifth century of our era. Davids considers its
+account down to the time of Gautama's return to Kapilavastu, "the best
+authority we have." It contains word for word almost the whole of the
+life of Gautama given by Turnour, from a commentary on the
+_Buddhavansa_, "which is the account of the Buddhas contained in the
+second Pitaka."
+
+5. An account taken by Spence Hardy from Cingalese books of a
+comparatively modern date.
+
+6. An English translation by Bigandet of a Burmese account, which was
+itself a translation of unknown date made from a Pali version.
+
+7. An account of the death of Gautama, given in Pali and said to be the
+oldest of all the sources. It is full of wonders created by the fancy of
+the unknown author, but differs widely from the fancy sketches of the
+_Lalita Vistara_ of the North.
+
+8. A translation by Mr. Alabaster of a Siamese account. It does not
+claim to be exact.]
+
+[Footnote 94: T.W. Rhys Davids illustrates the worthlessness of poetic
+narrations as grounds of argument by quoting from Milton's _Paradise
+Regained_ this mere fancy sketch of the accompaniments of Christ's
+temptation:
+
+          "And either tropic now
+   'Gan thunder and both ends of heaven; the clouds
+   From many a horrid rift abortive poured
+   Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire
+   In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds
+   Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
+   From the four hinges of the world, and fell
+   On the vex'd wilderness; whose tallest pines
+   Tho' rooted deep as high and sturdiest oaks,
+   Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts
+   Or torn up sheer. Ill wast Thou shrouded then,
+   O patient Son of God, yet stood'st alone
+   Unshaken! nor yet staid the terror there;
+   Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
+   Environed Thee; some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd,
+   Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou
+   Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace."
+                                                          Book iv.]
+
+[Footnote 95: See _National Religion and Universal Religion_, p. 362.]
+
+[Footnote 96: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1882.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+MOHAMMEDANISM PAST AND PRESENT
+
+
+It has been the fate of every great religious teacher to have his memory
+enveloped in a haze of posthumous myths. Even the Gospel history was
+embellished with marvellous apocryphal legends of the childhood of
+Christ. Buddhism very soon began to be overgrown with a truly Indian
+luxuriance of fables, miracles, and pre-existent histories extending
+through five hundred past transmigrations. In like manner, the followers
+of Mohammed traced the history of their prophet and of their sacred city
+back to the time of Adam. And Mohammedan legends were not a slow and
+natural growth, as in the case of most other faiths. There was a set
+purpose in producing them without much delay. The conquests of Islam
+over the Eastern empires had been very rapid. The success of Mohammed's
+cause and creed had exceeded the expectations of his most sanguine
+followers. In the first half of the seventh century--nay, between the
+years 630 and 638 A.D.--Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo had fallen
+before the arms of Omar and his lieutenant "Khaled the Invincible," and
+in 639 Egypt was added to the realm of the Khalifs. Persia was conquered
+in A.D. 640.
+
+It seemed scarcely possible that achievements so brilliant could have
+been the work of a mere unlettered Arab and his brave but unpretentious
+successors. The personnel of the prophet must be raised to an adequate
+proportion to such a history. Special requisition was made therefore for
+incidents. The devout fancy of the faithful was taxed for the
+picturesque and marvellous; and the system which Mohammed taught, and
+the very place in which he was born, must needs be raised to a
+supernatural dignity and importance. Accordingly, the history of the
+prophet was traced back to the creation of the world, when God was said
+to have imparted to a certain small portion of earthy dust a mysterious
+spark of light. When Adam was formed this particular luminous dust
+appeared in his forehead, and from him it passed in a direct line to
+Abraham. From Abraham it descended, not to Isaac, but to Ishmael; and
+this was the cause of Sarah's jealousy and the secret of all Abraham's
+domestic troubles. Of course, this bright spark of heavenly effulgence
+reappearing on the brow of each lineal progenitor, was designed
+ultimately for Mohammed, in whom it shone forth with tenfold brightness.
+
+There is real historic evidence of the fact that the Vale of Mecca had
+for a long time been regarded as sacred ground. It was a sort of forest
+or extensive grove, a place for holding treaties among the tribes, a
+common ground of truce and a refuge from the avenger. It was also a
+place for holding annual fairs, for public harangues, and the
+competitive recitation of ballads and other poems. But all this, however
+creditable to the culture of the Arab tribes, was not sufficient for
+the purposes of Islam. The Kaaba, which had been a rude heathen temple,
+was raised to the dignity of a shrine of the true God, or rather it was
+restored, for it was said to have been built by Adam after a divine
+pattern. The story was this: At the time of the Fall, Adam and Eve had
+somehow become separated. Adam had wandered away to Ceylon, where a
+mountain peak still bears his name. But having been divinely summoned to
+Mecca to erect this first of earthly temples, he unexpectedly found Eve
+residing upon a hill near the city, and thenceforward the Valley of
+Mecca became their paradise regained. At the time of the Deluge the
+Kaaba was buried in mud, and for centuries afterward it was overgrown
+with trees.
+
+When Hagar and her son Ishmael were driven out from the household of
+Abraham, they wandered by chance to this very spot, desolate and
+forsaken. While Hagar was diligently searching for water, more anxious
+to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking
+the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in
+his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem,
+whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim.
+As Ishmael grew to manhood and established his home in the sacred city,
+Abraham was summoned to join him, that they together might rebuild the
+Kaaba. But in the succeeding generations apostacy again brought ruin
+upon the place, although the heathen Koreish still performed sacred
+rites there--especially that of sevenfold processions around the sacred
+stone. This blackened object, supposed to be an aërolite which fell
+ages ago, is still regarded as sacred, and the sevenfold circuits of
+Mohammedan pilgrims take the place of the ancient heathen rites.
+
+Laying aside these crude legends, and confining our attention to
+probable history, I can only hope, in the compass of a single lecture,
+to barely touch upon a series of prominent points without any very
+careful regard to logical order. This will perhaps insure the greatest
+clearness as well as the best economy of time. And first, we will glance
+at the personal history of Mohammed--a history, it should be remembered,
+which was not committed to writing till two hundred years after the
+prophet's death, and which depends wholly on the enthusiastic traditions
+of his followers. Born in the year 561 A.D., of a recently widowed
+mother, he appears to have been from the first a victim of epilepsy, or
+some kindred affection whose paroxysms had much to do with his
+subsequent experiences and his success. The various tribes of Arabia
+were mostly given to a form of polytheistic idolatry in which, however,
+the conception of a monotheistic supremacy was still recognized. Most
+scholars, including Renan, insist on ascribing to the Arabians, in
+common with all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme,
+though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was
+supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities. Though Islam
+undoubtedly borrowed the staple of its truths from the Old Testament,
+yet there was a short confession strikingly resembling the modern creed
+of to-day, which had been upon the lips of many generations of Arabians
+before Mohammed's time. Thus it ran: "I dedicate myself to thy service,
+O Allah. Thou hast no companion except the companion of whom thou art
+master and of whatever is his."
+
+A society known as the "Hanifs" existed at the time of Mohammed's early
+manhood, and we know not how long before, whose aim was to bring back
+their countrymen from the degrading worship and cruel practices of
+heathenism to the purity of monotheistic worship. The old faith had been
+reinforced in the minds of the more intelligent Arabs by the truths
+learned from Jewish exiles, who, as early as the Babylonish captivity,
+had found refuge in Arabia; and it is a striking fact that the four
+Hanif leaders whom the young Mohammed found on joining their society,
+were pleading for the restoration of the faith of Abraham. All these
+leaders refused to follow his standard when he began to claim supremacy
+as a prophet; three of them were finally led to Christianity, and the
+fourth died in a sort of quandary between the Christian faith and Islam.
+The first two, Waraka and Othman, were cousins of Mohammed's wife, and
+the third, Obadulla, was his own cousin. Zaid, the last of the four,
+presents to us a very pathetic picture. He lived and died in perplexity.
+Banished from Mecca by those who feared his conscientious censorship, he
+lived by himself on a neighboring hillside, an earnest seeker after
+truth to the last; and he died with the prayer on his lips, "O God, if I
+knew what form of worship is most pleasing to thee, so would I serve
+thee, but I know it not." It is to the credit of Mohammed that he
+cherished a profound respect for this man. "I will pray for him," he
+said; "in the Resurrection he also will gather a church around him."[97]
+
+In spite of his maladies and the general delicacy of his nervous
+organization, Mohammed evinced in early youth a degree of energy and
+intellectual capacity which augured well for his future success in some
+important sphere. Fortune also favored him in many ways. His success as
+manager of the commercial caravans of a wealthy widow led to his
+acceptance as her husband. She was fourteen years his senior, but she
+seems to have entirely won his affections and to have proved
+indispensable, not only as a patroness, but as a wise and faithful
+counsellor. So long as she lived she was the good spirit who called
+forth his better nature, and kept him from those low impulses which
+subsequently wrought the ruin of his character, even in the midst of his
+successes. On the one hand, it is an argument in favor of the sincerity
+of Mohammed's prophetic claims, that this good and true woman was the
+first to believe in him as a prophet of God; but, on the other hand, we
+must remember that she was a loving wife, and that that charity which
+thinketh no evil is sometimes utterly blind to evil when found in this
+tender relation.
+
+We have no reason to doubt that Mohammed was a sincere "Hanif." Having
+means and leisure for study, and being of a bright and thoughtful mind,
+he doubtless entered with enthusiasm into the work of reforming the
+idolatrous customs of his countrymen. From this high standpoint, and
+free from superstitious fear of a heathen priesthood, he was prepared to
+estimate in their true enormity the degrading rites which he everywhere
+witnessed under the abused name of religion. That hatred of idolatry
+which became the main spring of his subsequent success, was thus
+nourished and strengthened as an honest and abiding sentiment. He was,
+moreover, of a contemplative--we may say, of a religious--turn of mind.
+His maladies gave him a tinge of melancholy, and, like the Buddha, he
+showed a characteristic thoughtfulness bordering upon the morbid.
+Becoming more and more a reformer, he followed the example of many other
+reformers by withdrawing at stated times to a place of solitude for
+meditation; at least such is the statement of his followers, though
+there are evidences that he took his family with him, and that he may
+have been seeking refuge from the heat. However this may have been, the
+place chosen was a neighboring cave, in whose cool shade he not only
+spent the heated hours of the day, but sometimes a succession of days
+and nights.
+
+Perhaps the confinement increased the violence of his convulsions, and
+the vividness and power of the strange phantasmagorias which during his
+paroxysms passed through his mind. It was from one of these terrible
+attacks that his alleged call to the prophetic office was dated. The
+prevailing theories of his time ascribed all such experiences to the
+influence of supernatural spirits, either good or evil, and the sufferer
+was left to the alternative of assuming either that he had received
+messages from heaven, or that he had been a victim of the devil. After
+a night of greater suffering and more thrilling visions than he had ever
+experienced before, Mohammed chose the more favorable interpretation,
+and announced to his sympathizing wife Kadijah that he had received from
+Gabriel a solemn call to become the Prophet of God.
+
+There has been endless discussion as to how far he may have been
+self-deceived in making this claim, and how far he may have been guilty
+of conscious imposture. Speculation is useless, since on the one hand we
+cannot judge a man of that age and that race by the rigid standards of
+our own times; and on the other, we are forbidden to form a too
+favorable judgment by the subsequent developments of Mohammed's
+character and life, in regard to which no other interpretation than that
+of conscious fraud seems possible.[98]
+
+Aside from the previous development and influence of a monotheistic
+reform, and the favoring circumstance of a fortunate marriage, he found
+his way prepared by the truths which had been made known in Arabia by
+both Jews and Christians. The Jews had fled to the Arabian Peninsula
+from the various conquerors who had laid waste Jerusalem and overrun the
+territories of the Ten Tribes. At a later day, many Christians had also
+found an asylum there from the persecutions of hostile bishops and
+emperors. Sir William Muir has shown how largely the teachings of the
+Koran are grounded upon those of the Old and New Testaments.[99] All
+that is best in Mohammedanism is clearly borrowed from Judaism and
+Christianity. Mohammed was illiterate and never claimed originality.
+Indeed, he plead his illiteracy as a proof of direct inspiration. A far
+better explanation would be found in the knowledge derived from inspired
+records, penned long before and under different names.
+
+The prophet was fortunate not only in the possession of truths thus
+indirectly received, but in the fact that both Jews and Christians had
+lapsed from a fair representation of the creeds which they professed.
+The Jews in Arabia had lost the true spirit of their sacred scriptures,
+and were following their own perverted traditions rather than the
+oracles of God. They had lost the vitality and power of the truths
+revealed to their fathers, and were destitute of moral earnestness and
+all spiritual life. On the other hand, the Christian sects had fallen
+into low superstitions and virtual idolatry. The Trinity, as they
+represented it, gave to Mohammed the impression that the Virgin Mary,
+"Mother of God," was one of the three persons of the Trinity, and that
+the promise of the coming Paraclete might very plausibly be appropriated
+by himself.[100] The prevailing worship of pictures, images, and relics
+appeared in his vision as truly idolatrous as the polytheism of the
+heathen Koreish. It was clear to him that there was a call for some
+zealous iconoclast to rise up and deliver his country from idolatry. The
+whole situation seemed auspicious. Arabia was ripe for a sweeping
+reformation. It appears strange to us, at this late day, that the
+churches of Christendom, even down to the seventh century, should have
+failed to christianize Arabia, though they had carried the Gospel even
+to Spain and to Britain on the west, and to India and China on the east.
+If they had imagined that the deserts of the Peninsula were not
+sufficiently important to demand attention, they certainly learned their
+mistake; for now the sad day of reckoning had come, when swarms of
+fanatics should issue from those deserts like locusts, and overrun their
+Christian communities, humble their bishops, appropriate their sacred
+temples, and reduce their despairing people to the alternatives of
+apostacy, tribute, slavery, or the sword.
+
+It seems equally strange that the great empires which had carried their
+conquests so far on every hand had neglected to conquer Arabia. It was,
+indeed, comparatively isolated; it certainly did not lie in the common
+paths of the conquerors; doubtless it appeared barren, and by no means a
+tempting prize; and withal it was a difficult field for a successful
+campaign. But from whatever reason, the tribes of Arabia had never been
+conquered. Various expeditions had won temporary successes, but the
+proud Arab could boast that his country had never been brought into
+permanent subjection.[101] Meanwhile the heredity of a thousand years
+had strengthened the valor of the Arab warrior. He was accustomed to the
+saddle from his very infancy; he was almost a part of his horse. He was
+trained to the use of arms as a robber, when not engaged in tribal wars.
+His whole activity, his all-absorbing interest, was in hostile forays.
+He knew no fear; he had no scruples. He had been taught to feel that, as
+a son of Ishmael every man's hand was turned against him, and of simple
+right his hand might be turned against every man.
+
+Nor was this all. The surrounding nations, east and west, had long been
+accustomed to employ these sons of the desert as mercenary soldiers.
+They had all had a hand in training them for their terrible work, by
+imparting to them a knowledge of their respective countries, their
+resources, their modes of warfare, and their points of weakness. How
+many nations have thus paved the way to their own destruction by
+calling in allies, who finally became their masters![102]
+
+On Mohammed's part, there is no evidence that at the outset he
+contemplated a military career. At first a reformer, then a prophet, he
+was driven to arms in self-defence against his persecutors, and he was
+fortunate in being able to profit by a certain jealousy which existed
+between the rival cities of Mecca and Medina. Fleeing from Mecca with
+only one follower, Abu Bekr, leaving the faithful Ali to arrange his
+affairs while he and his companion were hidden in a cave, he found on
+reaching Medina a more favorable reception. He soon gathered a
+following, which enabled him to gain a truce from the Meccans for ten
+years; and when they on their part violated the truce, he was able to
+march upon their city with a force which defied all possible resistance,
+and he entered Mecca in triumph. Medina had been won partly by the
+supposed credentials of the prophet, but mainly by jealousy of the rival
+city. Mecca yielded to a superior force of arms, but in the end became
+the honored capital and shrine of Islam.
+
+From this time the career of Mohammed was wholly changed. He was now an
+ambitious conqueror, and here as before, the question how far he may
+have sincerely interpreted his remarkable fortune as a call of God to
+subdue the idolatrous nations, must remain for the present unsettled.
+Possibly further light may be thrown upon it as we proceed. Let us
+consider some of the changes which appear in the development of this
+man's character. If we set out with that high ideal which would seem to
+be demanded as a characteristic of a great religious teacher, and
+certainly of one claiming to be a prophet of God, we ought to expect
+that his character would steadily improve in all purity, humanity,
+truthfulness, charity, and godlikeness. The test of character lies in
+its trend. If the founder of a religion has not grown nobler and better
+under the operation of his own system, that fact is the strongest
+possible condemnation of the system. A good man generally feels that he
+can afford to be magnanimous and pitiful in proportion to his victories
+and his success. But Mohammed became relentless as his power increased.
+He had at first endeavored to win the Arabian Jews to his standard. He
+had adopted their prophets and much of the Old Testament teachings; he
+had insisted upon the virtual identity of the two religions. But having
+failed in his overtures, and meanwhile having gained superior power, he
+waged against them the most savage persecution. On one occasion he
+ordered the massacre of a surrendered garrison of six hundred Jewish
+soldiers. At another time he put to the most inhuman torture a leader
+who had opposed his cause; in repeated instances he instigated the crime
+of assassination.[103] In early life he had been engaged in a peaceful
+caravan trade, and all his influence had been cast in favor of universal
+security as against the predatory habits of the heathen Arabs; but on
+coming to power he himself resorted to robbery to enrich his exchequer.
+Sales mentions twenty-seven of these predatory expeditions against
+caravans, in which Mohammed was personally present.[104]
+
+The biographers of his early life represent him as a man of a natural
+kindness of disposition, and a sensitive temperament almost bordering on
+timidity. Though not particularly genial, he was fond of children, and
+had at first, as his recorded utterances show, frequent impulses of pity
+and magnanimity. But he became hardened as success crowned his career.
+The temperateness which characterized his early pleadings and
+remonstrances with those who differed from him, gave place to bitter
+anathemas; and there was rooted in his personal character that
+relentless bigotry which has been the key-note of the most intolerant
+system known upon the earth.
+
+A still more marked change occurred in the increasing sensuality of
+Mohammed. Such lenient apologists as E. Bosworth Smith and Canon Taylor
+have applied their most skilful upholstery to the defects of his
+scandalous morals. Mr. Smith has even undertaken to palliate his
+appropriation of another man's wife, and the blasphemy of his pretended
+revelation in which he made God justify his passion.[105] These authors
+base their chief apologies upon comparisons between Mohammed and the
+worse depravity of the heathen Arabs, or they balance accounts with some
+of his acknowledged virtues.
+
+But the case baffles all such advocacy. The real question is, what was
+the _drift_ of the prophet's character? What was the influence of his
+professed principles on his own life? It cannot be denied that his moral
+trend was downward. If we credit the traditions of his own followers, he
+had lived a virtuous life as the husband of one wife,[106] and that for
+many years. But after the death of Kadijah he entered upon a career of
+polygamy in violation of his own law. He had fixed the limit for all
+Moslems at four lawful wives; and in spite of the arguments of R.
+Bosworth Smith, we must regard it as a most damning after-thought that
+made the first and only exception to accommodate his own weakness. By
+that act he placed himself beyond the help of all sophistry, and took
+his true place in the sober judgment of mankind. And by a law which is
+as unerring as the law of gravitation, he became more and more sensual
+as age advanced. At the time of his death he was the husband of eleven
+wives. We are not favored with a list of his concubines:[107] we only
+know that his system placed no limit upon the number.[108] Now, if a
+prophet claiming direct inspiration could break his own inspired laws
+for his personal accommodation; if, when found guilty of adultery, he
+could compel his friend and follower to divorce his wife that he might
+take her; if upon each violation of purity and decency he did not shrink
+from the blasphemy of claiming a special revelation which made God the
+abettor of his vices, and even represented Him as reproving and
+threatening his wives for their just complaints--if all this does not
+stamp a man as a reckless impostor, what further turpitude is required?
+
+At the same time it is evident that constant discrimination is demanded
+in judging of the character of Mohammed. It is not necessary to assume
+that he was wholly depraved at first, or to deny that for a time he was
+the good husband that he is represented to have been, or that he was a
+sincere and enthusiastic reformer, or even that he may have interpreted
+some of his _early_ hallucinations as mysterious messages from heaven.
+At various times in his life he doubtless displayed noble sentiments and
+performed generous acts. But when we find him dictating divine
+communications with deliberate purpose for the most villainous objects,
+when we find the messages of Gabriel timed and graded to suit the
+exigencies of his growing ambition, or the demands of his worst
+passions, we are forced to a preponderating condemnation. The Mohammed
+of the later years is a remorseless tyrant when occasion requires, and
+at all times the slave of unbridled lust. Refined and cultivated
+Mohammedan ladies--I speak from testimony that is very direct--do not
+hesitate to condemn the degrading morals of their prophet, and to
+contrast him with the spotless purity of Jesus; "but then," they add,
+"God used him for a great purpose, and gave him the most exalted honor
+among men." Alas! it is the old argument so often employed in many
+lands. Success, great intellect, grand achievements gild all moral
+deformity, and win the connivance of dazzled minds. In this case,
+however, it is not a hero or a statesman, but an alleged prophet of God,
+that is on trial.
+
+It is a question difficult to decide, how far Mohammed made
+Mohammedanism, and how far the system moulded him. The action of cause
+and effect was mutual, and under this interaction both the character and
+the system were slow growths. The Koran was composed in detached
+fragments suited to different stages of development, different degrees
+and kinds of success, different demands of personal impulse or changes
+of conduct. The Suras, without any claim to logical connection, were
+written down by an amanuensis on bits of parchment, or pieces of wood or
+leather, and even on the shoulder-bones of sheep. And they were each the
+expression of Mohammed's particular mood at the time, and each entered
+in some degree into his character from that time forth. The man and the
+book grew together, the system, through all its history, fairly
+represents the example of the man and the teaching of the book.
+
+Let us next consider the historic character and influence of the system
+of Islam. In forming just conclusions as to the real influence of
+Mohammedanism, a judicial fairness is necessary. In the first place, we
+must guard against the hasty and sweeping judgments which are too often
+indulged in by zealous Christians; and on the other hand, we must
+certainly challenge the exaggerated statements of enthusiastic
+apologists. It is erroneous to assert that Islam has never encouraged
+education, that it has invariably been adverse to all progress, that it
+knows nothing but the Koran, or that Omar, in ordering the destruction
+of the Alexandrian library, is the only historical exponent of the
+system. Such statements are full of partial truths, but they are also
+mingled with patent errors.
+
+The Arab races in their original home were naturally inclined to the
+encouragement of letters, particularly of poetry, and Mohammed himself,
+though he had never been taught even to read, much less to write, took
+special pains to encourage learning. "Teach your children poetry," he
+said; "it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom, and makes the heroic
+virtues hereditary."[109] According to Sprenger, he gave liberty to
+every prisoner who taught twelve boys of Mecca to write. The Abbasside
+princes of a later day offered most generous prizes for superior
+excellence in poetry, and Bagdad, Damascus, Alexandria, Bassora, and
+Samarcand were noted for their universities.[110] Cordova and Seville
+were able to lend their light to the infant university of Oxford. The
+fine arts of sculpture and painting were condemned by the early caliphs,
+doubtless on account of the idolatrous tendencies which they were
+supposed to foster; but medicine, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry,
+and astronomy were especially developed, and that at a time when the
+nations of Europe were mostly in darkness.[111] Yet it cannot be denied
+that on the whole the influence of Islam has been hostile to learning
+and to civilization.[112] The world will never forget that by the
+burning of the great library of Alexandria the rich legacy which the old
+world had bequeathed to the new was destroyed. By its occupation of
+Egypt and Constantinople, and thus cutting off the most important
+channels of communication, the Mohammedan power became largely
+responsible for the long eclipse of Europe during the Middle Ages.
+
+Moreover, when zealous advocates of the system contrast the barbarism of
+Richard Coeur de Lion with the culture and humanity of Saladin, they
+seem to forget that the race of Richard had but just emerged from the
+savagery of the Northmen, while Saladin and his race had not only
+inherited the high moral culture of Judaism and Christianity, but had
+virtually monopolized it. It was chiefly by the wars of the Crusaders
+that Western Europe became acquainted with the civilization of the
+Orient.
+
+Instead of ignoring the advantages which the East had over the West at
+that period, it would be more just to inquire what comparative
+improvements of their respective opportunities have been made by Western
+Christianity and Eastern Mohammedanism since that time. It would be an
+interesting task, for example, to start with the period of Saladin and
+Coeur de Lion, and impartially trace on the one hand the influence of
+Christianity as it moulded the savage conquerors of the Roman Empire,
+and from such rude materials built up the great Christian nations of the
+nineteenth century; and on the other hand, follow the banner of the
+Crescent through all the lands where it has borne sway: Persia, Arabia,
+Northern India, Egypt, the Barbary States, East Africa, and the Soudan,
+and then draw an unbiased conclusion as to which system, as a system,
+has done more to spread general enlightenment, foster the sentiments of
+kindness and philanthropy, promote human liberty, advance civilization,
+increase and elevate populations, promote the purity and happiness of
+the family and the home, and raise the standards of ethics and true
+religion among mankind.[113]
+
+One of the brilliant dynasties of Mohammedan history was that of the
+Moors of Spain. We can never cease to admire their encouragement of arts
+and their beautiful architecture, but is it quite certain that all this
+was a direct fruit of Islam? The suggestion that it may have been partly
+due to contact with the Gothic elements which the Moors vanquished,
+finds support in the fact that nothing of the kind appeared on the
+opposite coast of Africa. And while the Mohammedan Empire in India has
+left the most exquisite architectural structures in the world, it is
+well known that they were the work of European architects.
+
+But in considering the influence which Islam has exerted on the whole,
+lack of time compels me to limit our survey to Africa, except as other
+lands may be referred to incidentally.[114] That the first African
+conquests, extending from Egypt to Morocco, were simple warlike
+invasions in which the sword was the only instrument of propagandism, no
+one will deny. But it is contended that in later centuries a great work
+has been accomplished in Western Soudan, and is still being
+accomplished, by missionary effort and the general advance of a
+wholesome civilization.
+
+Any fair estimate of Mohammedan influence must take account of the
+elements which it found in Northern Africa at the time of its conquests.
+The states which border on the Mediterranean had once been powerful and
+comparatively enlightened. They had been populous and prosperous. The
+Phoenician colony in Carthage had grown to be no mean rival of Rome's
+military power. Egypt had been a great centre of learning, not only in
+the most ancient times, but especially after the building of Alexandria.
+More western lands, like Numidia and Mauritania, had been peopled by
+noble races.
+
+After the introduction of Christianity, Alexandria became the bright
+focus into which the religions and philosophies of the world poured
+their concentrated light. Some of the greatest of the Christian fathers,
+like Augustine, Tertullian, and Cyprian, were Africans. The foundations
+of Latin Christianity were laid by these men. The Bishopric of Hippo was
+a model for all time in deep and intelligent devotion. The grace and
+strength, the sublime and all-conquering faith of Monica, and others
+like her, furnished a pattern for all Christian womanhood and
+motherhood.
+
+I do not forget that before the time of the Mohammedan invasion the
+Vandals had done their work of devastation, or that the African Church
+had been woefully weakened and rent by wild heresies and schisms, or
+that the defection of the Monophysite or Coptic Church of Egypt was one
+of the influences which facilitated the Mohammedan success. But making
+due allowance for all this, vandalism and schism could not have
+destroyed so soon the ancient civilization or sapped the strength of the
+North African races. The process which has permanently reduced so many
+once populous cities and villages to deserts, and left large portions of
+the Barbary States with only the moldering ruins of their former
+greatness, has been a gradual one. For centuries after the Arab conquest
+those states were virtually shut off from communication with Europe, and
+for at least three centuries more, say from 1500 down to the generation
+which immediately preceded our own, they were known chiefly by the
+piracies which they carried on against the commerce of all maritime
+nations. Even the Government of the United States was compelled to pay a
+million of dollars for the ransom of captured American seamen, and it
+paid it not to private corsairs, but to the Mohammedan governments by
+which those piracies were subsidized, as a means of supplying the public
+exchequer. These large amounts were recovered only when our navy, in
+co-operation with that of England, extirpated the Riff piracies by
+bombarding the Moslem ports. The vaunted civilizations of the North
+African states would have been supported by wholesale marauding to this
+day, had not their piratical fleets been thus summarily swept from the
+seas by other powers.
+
+If Egypt has shown a higher degree of advancement it has been due to her
+peculiar geographical position, to the inexhaustible fertility of the
+Delta, and, most of all, to the infusion of foreign life and energy into
+the management of her affairs. Ambitious adventurers, like the Albanian
+Mehamet Ali, have risen to power and have made Egypt what she is, or
+rather what she was before the more recent intervention of the European
+powers. Even Canon Taylor admits that for centuries it has been
+necessary to import more vigorous foreign blood for the administration
+of Egyptian affairs.[115]
+
+It will be admitted that Mohammedan conquests have been made in mediæval
+times, and down to our own age, in Central Africa, and that along the
+southern borders of Sahara a cordon of more or less prosperous states
+has been established; also, that the civilization of those states
+contrasts favorably with the savagery of the cannibal tribes with which
+they have come in contact. Probably the best--that is to say, the least
+objectionable--exemplifications of Islam now to be found in the world
+are seen in some of the older states of Western Soudan. The Mandingo of
+the central uplands furnished a better material than the "unspeakable
+Turk," and it would not be quite fair to ascribe all his present virtues
+to the Moslem rule.
+
+But _how_ have these conquests in Central Africa been made? The
+contention of the apologists for Islam is that recently, at least, and
+probably more or less in the past, a quiet missionary work has greatly
+extended monotheism, temperance, education, and general comfort, and
+that it has done more than all other influences for the permanent
+extinction of the slave trade! Dr. E.W. Blyden, in answer to the charge
+that Mohammedan Arabs are now, and long have been, chiefly responsible
+for the horrors of that trade, and that even when Americans bought
+slaves for their plantations, Moslem raiders in the interior instigated
+the tribal quarrels which supplied the markets on the coast, contends
+that the Moslem conquests do most effectually destroy the trade, since
+tribes which have become Moslem can no longer be enslaved by
+Moslems.[116] It is a curious argument, especially as it seems to ignore
+the fact that at the present time both the supply and the demand depend
+on Mohammedan influence.
+
+As to the means by which the Soudanese States are now extending their
+power we may content ourselves with a mere reference to the operations
+of the late "El Mahdi" in the East and the notorious Samadu in the West.
+Their methods may be accepted as illustrations of a kind of tactics
+which have been employed for ages. The career of El Mahdi is already
+well known. Samadu was originally a prisoner, captured while yet a boy
+in one of the tribal wars near the headwaters of the Niger. Partly by
+intrigue and partly by the aid of his religious fanaticism he at length
+became sufficiently powerful to enslave his master. Soon afterward he
+proclaimed his divine mission, and declared a _Jehad_ or holy war
+against all infidels. Thousands flocked to his banner, influenced
+largely by the hope of booty; and ere long, to quote the language of a
+lay correspondent of the London _Standard_, written in Sierra Leone
+September 18, 1888, "he became the scourge of all the peaceable states
+on the right bank of the Upper Niger." Since 1882 he has attempted to
+dispute the territorial claims of the French on the upper, and of the
+English on the lower Niger, though without success. But he has seemed to
+avenge his disappointment the more terribly on the native tribes.
+
+The letter published in the _Standard_ gives an account of an official
+commission sent by the Governor of Sierra Leone to the headquarters of
+Samadu in 1888, and in describing the track of this Western Mahdi in his
+approaches to the French territories it says: "The messengers report
+that every town and village through which they passed was in ruins, and
+that the road, from the borders of Sulimania to Herimakono, was lined
+with human skeletons, the remains of unfortunates who had been slain by
+Samadu's fanatical soldiery, or had perished from starvation through the
+devastation of the surrounding country. Some of these poor wretches, to
+judge from the horrible contortions of the skeletons, had been attacked
+by vultures and beasts of prey while yet alive, and when too near their
+lingering death to have sufficient strength to beat them off. Around the
+ruined towns were hundreds of doubled-up skeletons, the remains of
+prisoners who, bound hand and foot, had been forced upon their knees,
+and their heads struck off. Keba, the heroic Bambara king, is still
+resisting bravely, but he has only one stronghold (Siaso) left, and the
+end cannot now be far off."
+
+Samadu's career in this direction having been arrested, he next turned
+his attention toward the tribes under English protection on the
+southeast, "where, unfortunately, there was no power to take up the
+cause of humanity and arrest his progress. Before long he entirely
+overran and subjected Kouranko, Limbah, Sulimania, Kono, and Kissi. The
+most horrible atrocities were committed; peaceable agriculturists were
+slaughted in thousands, and their women and children carried off into
+slavery. Falaba, the celebrated capital of Sulimania, and the great
+emporium for trade between Sierra Leone and the Niger, was captured and
+destroyed; and all the inhabitants of that district, whom every
+traveller, from Winwood Reade down to Dr. Blyden, has mentioned with
+praise for their industry and docility, have been exterminated or
+carried off. Sulimania, which was the garden of West Africa, has now
+become a howling wilderness."
+
+And the writer adds: "The people of the States to the south of Futa
+Djallon are pagans, and Samadu makes their religion a pretext for his
+outrages. He is desirous, he says, of converting them to the 'True
+Faith,' and his modes of persuasion are murder and slavery. What could
+be more horrible than the story just brought down by the messengers who
+were with Major Festing? Miles of road strewn with human bones;
+blackened ruins where were peaceful hamlets; desolation and emptiness
+where were smiling plantations. What has become of the tens of
+thousands of peaceful agriculturists, their wives and their innocent
+children? Gone; converted, after Samadu's manner, to the 'True Faith.'
+And thus the conversion of West Africa to Islamism goes merrily on,
+while _dilettante_ scholars at home complacently discuss the question as
+to whether that faith or Christianity is the more suitable for the
+Negro; and the British people, dead to their generous instincts of old,
+make no demand that such deeds of cruelty and horror shall be arrested
+with a strong hand."[117]
+
+Similar accounts of the African _propagandism_ of Islam might be given
+in the very words of numerous travellers and explorers, but one or two
+witnesses only shall be summoned to speak of the Mohammedan dominion and
+civilization in East Africa. Professor Drummond, in giving his
+impressions of Zanzibar, says: "Oriental in its appearance, Mohammedan
+in its religion, Arabian in its morals, a cesspool of wickedness, it is
+a fit capital to the Dark Continent." And it is the great emporium--not
+an obscure settlement, but the consummate flower of East African
+civilization and boasting in the late Sultan Bargash, an unusually
+enlightened Moslem ruler. Of the interior and the ivory-slave trade
+pursued under the auspices of Arab dominion the same author says: "Arab
+encampments for carrying on a wholesale trade in this terrible commodity
+are now established all over the heart of Africa. They are usually
+connected with wealthy Arab traders at Zanzibar and other places on the
+coast, and communication is kept up by caravans, which pass at long
+intervals from one to the other. Being always large and well-supplied
+with the material of war, these caravans have at their mercy the feeble
+and divided native tribes through which they pass, and their trail
+across the continent is darkened with every aggravation of tyranny and
+crime. They come upon the scene suddenly; they stay only long enough to
+secure their end, and disappear only to return when a new crop has
+arisen which is worth the reaping. Sometimes these Arab traders will
+actually settle for a year or two in the heart of some quiet community
+in the remote interior. They pretend perfect friendship; they molest no
+one; they barter honestly. They plant the seeds of their favorite
+vegetables and fruits--the Arab always carries seeds with him--as if
+they meant to stay forever. Meantime they buy ivory, tusk after tusk,
+until great piles of it are buried beneath their huts, and all their
+barter goods are gone. Then one day suddenly the inevitable quarrel is
+picked. And then follows a wholesale massacre. Enough only are spared
+from the slaughter to carry the ivory to the coast; the grass huts of
+the village are set on fire; the Arabs strike camp; and the slave march,
+worse than death, begins. The last act in the drama, the slave march, is
+the aspect of slavery which in the past has chiefly aroused the passions
+and the sympathy of the outside world, but the greater evil is the
+demoralization and disintegration of communities by which it is
+necessarily preceded. It is essential to the traffic that the region
+drained by the slaver should be kept in perpetual political ferment;
+that, in order to prevent combination, chief should be pitted against
+chief, and that the moment any tribe threatens to assume a dominating
+strength it should either be broken up by the instigation of rebellion
+among its dependencies or made a tool of at their expense. The
+inter-relation of tribes is so intricate that it is impossible to
+exaggerate the effect of disturbing the equilibrium at even a single
+centre. But, like a river, a slave caravan has to be fed by innumerable
+tributaries all along its course, at first in order to gather a
+sufficient volume of human bodies for the start, and afterward to
+replace the frightful loss by desertion, disablement, and death."
+
+Next to Livingstone, whose last pathetic appeal to the civilized world
+to "heal the open sore of Africa" stands engraved in marble in
+Westminster Abbey, no better witness can be summoned in regard to the
+slave trade and the influence of Islam generally in Eastern and Central
+Africa than Henry M. Stanley. From the time when he encountered the
+Mohammedan propagandists at the Court of Uganda he has seen how
+intimately and vitally the faith and the traffic are everywhere united.
+I give but a single passage from his "Congo Free State," page 144.
+
+"We discovered that this horde of banditti--for in reality and without
+disguise they were nothing else--was under the leadership of several
+chiefs, but principally under Karema and Kibunga. They had started
+sixteen months previously from Wane-Kirundu, about thirty miles below
+Vinya Njara. For eleven months the band had been raiding successfully
+between the Congo and the Lubiranzi, on the left bank. They had then
+undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the Biyerré and
+Wane-Kirundu. On looking at my map I find that such a territory within
+the area described would cover superficially 16,200 square geographical
+miles on the left bank, and 10,500 miles on the right, all of which in
+statute mileage would be equal to 34,700 square miles, just 2,000 square
+miles greater than the island of Ireland, inhabited by about 1,000,000
+people.
+
+"The band when it set out from Kirundu numbered 300 fighting men, armed
+with flint-locks, double-barrelled percussion guns, and a few
+breech-loaders; their followers, or domestic slaves and women, doubled
+this force.... Within the enclosure was a series of low sheds extending
+many lines deep from the immediate edge of the clay bank inland, 100
+yards; in length the camp was about 300 yards. At the landing-place
+below were 54 long canoes, varying in carrying capacity. Each might
+convey from 10 to 100 people.... The first general impressions are that
+the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon
+rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of
+the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms--upright,
+standing, or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under
+the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the
+perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked
+children--many mere infants--forms of boyhood and girlhood, and
+occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women bending under a
+basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through
+the moving groups by two or three musketeers. On paying more attention
+to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron
+rings around their necks, through which a chain, like one of our boat
+anchor-chains, is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children
+over ten are secured by these copper rings, each ringed leg brought
+together by the central ring."
+
+By a careful examination of statistics Mr. Stanley estimates that
+counting the men killed in the raids and those who perish on the march
+or are slain because supposed to be worthless, every 5,000 slaves
+actually sold cost over 30,000 lives.
+
+But there are Arabs and Arabs we are told. The slave-dealers of East
+Africa and the barbarous chieftains who push their bloody conquests in
+Western Soudan are bad enough, it is admitted, but they are
+"exceptions." Yet we insist that they illustrate the very spirit of
+Mohammed himself, who authorized the taking of prisoners of war as
+slaves. Their plea is that they save the souls of those they capture;
+many of these traders are Mollahs--Pharisees of the Pharisees. Canon
+Taylor, Dr. Blyden, and others have given us glowing accounts of "Arab
+missionaries going about without purse or scrip, and disseminating their
+religion by quietly teaching the Koran;" but the venerable Bishop
+Crowther, who has spent his whole life in that part of Africa where
+these conquests are supposed to be made, declares that the real vocation
+of the quiet apostles of the Koran is that of fetish peddlers.[118] If
+it be objected that this is the biased testimony of a Christian
+missionary, it may be backed by the explorer Lander, who, in speaking of
+this same class of men, says: "These Mollahs procure an easy subsistence
+by making fetishes or writing charms on bits of wood which are washed
+off carefully into a basin of water, and drank with avidity by the
+credulous multitude." And he adds: "Those who profess the Mohammedan
+faith among the negroes are as ignorant and superstitious as their
+idolatrous brethren; nor does it appear that their having adopted a new
+creed has either improved their manners or bettered their condition in
+life." Dr. Schweinfurth also describes the Mohammedan missionaries whom
+he found at Khartoum as "polluted with every abominable vice which the
+imagination of man can conceive of." In answer to various statements
+which had been published in regard to the rapid missionary progress made
+by Mohammedans in West Central Africa, Bishop Crowther wrote a letter to
+the Church Missionary Society at the beginning of 1888, giving the
+results of his own prolonged observation. He describes the methods used
+as:
+
+1. War upon the heathen tribes. "If the Chief of a heathen tribe accepts
+the Koran his people are at once counted as converts and he is received
+into favor, and is thus prepared to become an instrument in conquering
+other tribes. But on the refusal to accept the Koran war is declared,
+the destruction of their country is the consequence, and horrible
+bloodshed. The aged, male and female, are massacred, while the salable
+are led away as slaves. One half of the slaves are reserved by the
+chief, the other half is divided among the soldiers to encourage them to
+future raids."
+
+2. Another cause of large increase is polygamy. "For although but four
+lawful wives are allowed, there is unlimited license for concubinage."
+
+3. The sale of charms is so conducted as to prove not only a means of
+profit but a shrewd propaganda. "When childless women are furnished with
+these, they are pledged, if successful, to dedicate their children to
+Islam."
+
+And Bishop Crowther verifies the statement made by others in reference
+to East Africa, that the priests "besides being charm-makers are traders
+both in general articles and more largely in slaves."[119]
+
+We have only time to consider one question more, viz., What is the
+character of Islam as we find it to-day, and what are its prospects of
+development? It is a characteristic of our age that no religion stands
+wholly alone and uninfluenced by others. It is especially true that the
+systems of the East are all deeply affected by the higher ethics and
+purer religious conceptions borrowed from Christianity. Thus many
+Mohammedans of our day, and especially those living in close contact
+with our Christian civilization, are rising to higher conceptions of God
+and of religious truth than have been entertained by Moslems hitherto.
+Canon Taylor, in a little volume entitled "Leaves from an Egyptian
+Note-Book," has drawn a picture of Islam which Omar and Othman would
+hardly have recognized. In the first place it should be remembered that,
+as he confesses, his reputation as a defender of Mohammed and his system
+had gone before him to Cairo, and that he was understood to be a seeker
+after facts favorable to his known views. This opened the hearts of
+friendly Pashas and served to bring out all the praises that they could
+bestow upon their own faith. It appears accordingly that he was assured
+by them that polygamy is widely discarded and condemned by prominent
+Moslems in such cities as Cairo and Alexandria, that many leading men
+are highly intelligent and widely read, that they profess belief in most
+of the doctrines held by the Christian Church, that they receive the
+inspired testimony of the Old and New Testaments--except in so far as
+they have been corrupted by Christian manipulation. This exception,
+however, includes all that is at variance with the Koran. They advocate
+temperance and condemn the slave trade. They encourage the general
+promotion of education, and what seems to the credulous Canon most
+remarkable of all is that they express deep regret that Christians do
+not feel the same charity and fellowship toward Moslems that they feel
+toward Christians!
+
+Now, making all due abatement for the _couleur de rose_ which these
+easy-going and politic Pashas may have employed with their English
+champion, it is undoubtedly true that a class of Mohammedans are found
+in the great cosmopolitan cities of the Levant who have come to
+recognize the spirit of the age in which they live. Many of them have
+been educated in Europe; they speak several languages; they read the
+current literature; they are ashamed of the old fanatical Mohammedanism.
+Though they cherish a partisan interest in the recognized religion of
+their country, their faith is really eclectic; it comes not from Old
+Mecca, but is in part a product of the awakened thought of the
+nineteenth century. But Canon Taylor's great fallacy lies in trying to
+persuade himself and an intelligent Christian public that this is Islam.
+He wearies himself in his attempts to square the modern Cairo with the
+old, and to trace the modern gentlemanly Pasha, whose faith at least
+sits lightly upon his soul, as a legitimate descendant of the fanatical
+and licentious prophet of Arabia. When he strives to convince the world
+that because these courteous Pashas feel kindly enough toward the Canon
+of York and others like him, therefore Islam is and always has been a
+charitable and highly tolerant system, he simply stultifies the whole
+testimony of history. He tells us that his Egyptian friends complain
+that "whereas they regard us as brother-believers and accept our
+scriptures, they are nevertheless denounced as infidels. And they ask
+why should an eternal coldness reign in our hearts."
+
+Probably they are not acquainted with Samadu of Western Soudan and his
+methods of propagandism. They have forgotten the career of El Mahdi;
+they are not familiar with the terrible oppression of the Jews in
+Morocco--with which even that in Russia cannot compare; they have not
+read the dark accounts of the extortion practised by the Wahábees of
+Arabia, even upon Moslems of another sect on their pilgrimages to
+Mecca,[120] nor do they seem to know that Syrian converts from Islam are
+now hiding in Egypt from the bloodthirsty Moslems of Beyrut. Finally, he
+forgets that the very "children are taught formulas of prayer in which
+they may compendiously curse Jews and Christians and all
+unbelievers."[121]
+
+A more plausible case is made out by Canon Taylor, Dr. Blyden, and
+others on the question of temperance. It is true that Moslems, as a
+rule, are not hard drinkers. Men and races of men have their besetting
+sins. Drinking was not the special vice of the Arabs. Their country was
+too arid; but they had another vice of which Mohammed was the chief
+exemplar. Canon Taylor is doubtless correct also in the statement that
+the English protectorate in Egypt has greatly increased the degree of
+intemperance, and that in this respect the presence of European races
+generally has been a curse. Certainly too much cannot be said in
+condemnation of the wholesale liquor trade carried on in Africa by
+unscrupulous subjects of Christian nations. But it should be remembered
+that the whiskey of Cairo and of the West Coast does not represent
+Christianity any more than the Greek assassin or the Italian pickpocket
+in Cairo represents Islam. Christian philanthropists in Europe and
+America are seeking to suppress the evil. If Christian missionaries in
+West Africa were selling rum as Moslem Mollahs are buying and selling
+slaves in Uganda, if the Bible authorized the system as the Koran
+encourages slavery and concubinage, as means of propagandism, a parallel
+might be presented; but the very reverse is true.
+
+As a rule Nomadic races are not as greatly inclined to the use of ardent
+spirits as are the descendants of the ancient tribes of Northern Europe.
+The difference is due to climate, temperament, heredity, and the amount
+of supply. The Koran discourages intemperance and so does the Bible;
+both are disregarded when the means of gratification are abundant.
+
+The Moguls of India were sots almost as a rule. Wealthy Persian Moslems
+are the chief purchasers of the native wines. Lander, Schweinfurth, and
+even Mungo Parke all speak of communities in Central Africa as wholly
+given to intemperance.[122] Egyptians even, according to Canon Taylor,
+find the abundant supplies afforded by Europeans too tempting for the
+restraints of the Koran.
+
+One of the most significant indications that the sober judgment of all
+enlightened men favors the immense superiority of the Christian faith
+over all ethnic systems is the fact that even those zealous apologists
+who have most plausibly defended the non-Christian religions have
+subsequently evinced some misgivings and have even become advocates of
+the superior light of Christianity. Sir Edwin Arnold, seeing how
+seriously some ill-grounded Christian people had interpreted "The Light
+of Asia," has since made amends by writing "The Light of the World." And
+E. Bosworth Smith, on reading the extravagant glorification given to
+Islam by Canon Isaac Taylor, whom he accuses of plagiarism and absurd
+exaggeration, has come to the stand as a witness against his extreme
+views. Without acknowledging any important modification of his own
+former views he has greatly changed the place of emphasis. He has not
+only recorded his condemnation of Canon Taylor's extravagance but he has
+made a strong appeal for the transcendent superiority of the Christian
+faith as that alone which must finally regenerate Africa and the world.
+He has called public attention to the following pointed criticism of
+Canon Taylor's plea for Islam, made by a gentleman long resident in
+Algeria, and he has given it his own endorsement: "Canon Isaac Taylor,"
+says the writer, "has constructed at the expense of Christianity a
+rose-colored picture of Islam, by a process of comparison in which
+Christianity is arraigned for failures in practice, of which
+Christendom is deeply and penitently conscious, no account being taken
+of Christian precept; while Islam is judged by its better precepts only,
+no account being taken of the frightful shortcomings in Mohammedan
+practice, even from the standard of the Koran."[123] No indictment ever
+carried its proofs more conspicuously on its face than this.
+
+E. Bosworth Smith's subsequent tribute to the relative superiority of
+the Christian faith was given in an address before the Fellows of Zion's
+College, February 21, 1888. I give his closing comparison entire; also
+his eloquent appeal for Christian Missions in Africa. "The resemblances
+between the two Creeds are indeed many and striking, as I have implied
+throughout; but, if I may, once more, quote a few words which I have
+used elsewhere in dealing with this question, the contrasts are even
+more striking than the resemblances. The religion of Christ contains
+whole fields of morality and whole realms of thought which are all but
+outside the religion of Mohammed. It opens humility, purity of heart,
+forgiveness of injuries, sacrifice of self, to man's moral nature; it
+gives scope for toleration, development, boundless progress to his mind;
+its motive power is stronger even as a friend is better than a king, and
+love higher than obedience. Its realized ideals in the various paths of
+human greatness have been more commanding, more many-sided, more holy,
+as Averroes is below Newton, Harun below Alfred, and Ali below St. Paul.
+Finally, the ideal life of all is far more elevating, far more
+majestic, far more inspiring, even as the life of the founder of
+Mohammedanism is below the life of the Founder of Christianity.
+
+"If, then, we believe Christianity to be truer and purer in itself than
+Islam, and than any other religion, we must needs wish others to be
+partakers of it; and the effort to propagate it is thrice blessed--it
+blesses him that offers, no less than him who accepts it; nay, it often
+blesses him who accepts it not. The last words of a dying friend are apt
+to linger in the chambers of the heart till the heart itself has ceased
+to beat; and the last recorded words of the Founder of Christianity are
+not likely to pass from the memory of His Church till that Church has
+done its work. They are the marching orders of the Christian army; the
+consolation for every past and present failure; the earnest and the
+warrant, in some shape or other, of ultimate success. The value of a
+Christian mission is not, therefore, to be measured by the number of its
+converts. The presence in a heathen or a Muslim district of a single man
+who, filled with the missionary spirit, exhibits in his preaching and,
+so far as may be, in his life, the self-denying and the Christian
+virtues, who is charged with sympathy for those among whom his lot is
+cast, who is patient of disappointment and of failure, and of the sneers
+of the ignorant or the irreligious, and who works steadily on with a
+single eye to the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men, is, of
+itself, an influence for good, and a centre from which it radiates,
+wholly independent of the number of converts he is able to enlist. There
+is a vast number of such men engaged in mission work all over the
+world, and our best Indian statesmen, some of whom, for obvious reasons,
+have been hostile to direct proselytizing efforts, are unanimous as to
+the quantity and quality of the services they render.
+
+"Nothing, therefore, can be more shallow, or more disingenuous, or more
+misleading, than to attempt to disparage Christian missions by pitting
+the bare number of converts whom they claim against the number of
+converts claimed by Islam. The numbers are, of course, enormously in
+favor of Islam. But does conversion mean the same, or anything like the
+same, thing in each? Is it _in pari materia_, and if not, is the
+comparison worth the paper on which it is written? The submission to the
+rite of circumcision and the repetition of a confession of faith,
+however noble and however elevating in its ultimate effect, do not
+necessitate, they do not even necessarily tend toward what a Christian
+means by a change of heart. It is the characteristic of Mohammedanism to
+deal with batches and with masses. It is the characteristic of
+Christianity to speak straight to the individual conscience.
+
+"The conversion of a whole Pagan community to Islam need not imply more
+effort, more sincerity, or more vital change, than the conversion of a
+single individual to Christianity. The Christianity accepted wholesale
+by Clovis and his fierce warriors, in the flush of victory, on the field
+of battle, or by the Russian peasants, when they were driven by the
+Cossack whips into the Dnieper, and baptized there by force--these are
+truer parallels to the tribal conversions to Mohammedanism in Africa at
+the present day. And, whatever may have been their beneficial effects in
+the march of the centuries, they are not the Christianity of Christ, nor
+are they the methods or the objects at which a Christian missionary of
+the present day would dream of aiming.
+
+"A Christian missionary could not thus bring over a Pagan or a Muslim
+tribe to Christianity, even if he would; he ought not to try thus to
+bring them over, even if he could. 'Missionary work,' as remarked by an
+able writer in the _Spectator_ the other day, 'is sowing, not reaping,
+and the sowing of a plant which is slow to bear.' At times, the
+difficulties and discouragements may daunt the stoutest heart and the
+most living faith. But God is greater than our hearts and wider than our
+thoughts, and, if we are able to believe in Him at all, we must also
+believe that the ultimate triumph of Christianity--and by Christianity I
+mean not the comparatively narrow creed of this or that particular
+Church, but the Divine Spirit of its Founder, that Spirit which, exactly
+in proportion as they are true to their name, informs, and animates, and
+underlies, and overlies them all--is not problematical, but certain, and
+in His good time, across the lapse of ages, will prove to be, not local
+but universal, not partial but complete, not evanescent but
+eternal."[124]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 97: Sprenger's _Life of Mohammed_, pp. 40, 41.]
+
+[Footnote 98: It is a suspicious fact that the first chapter of the
+_Koran_ begins with protestations that it is a true revelation, and with
+most terrible anathemas against all who doubt it. This seems
+significant, and contrasts strongly with the conscious truthfulness and
+simplicity of the Gospel narrators.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Nor have later defenders of the system failed to derive
+alleged proofs of their system from Biblical sources. Mohammedan
+controversialists have urged some very specious and plausible arguments;
+for example, Deut. xviii. 15-18, promises that the Lord shall raise up
+unto Israel a prophet from _among their brethren_. But Israel had no
+brethren but the sons of Ishmael. There was also promised a prophet like
+unto Moses; but Deut. xxxiv. declares that "_There arose no Prophet in
+Israel like unto Moses_."
+
+When John the Baptist was asked whether he were the Christ, or Elijah,
+or "_that prophet_," no other than Mohammed could have been meant by
+"_that prophet_."]
+
+[Footnote 100: Rev. Mr. Bruce, missionary in Persia, states that
+pictures of the Father, the Son, and Mary are still seen in Eastern
+churches.--_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, January, 1882.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Sales, in his _Preliminary Discourse_, Section 1st,
+enumerates the great nations which have vainly attempted the conquest of
+Arabia, from the Assyrians down to the Romans, and he asserts that even
+the Turks have held only a nominal sway.]
+
+[Footnote 102: China owes her present dynasty to the fact that the hardy
+Manchus were called in as mercenaries or as allies.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Dr. Koelle: quoted in _Church Missionary Intelligencer_.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Sales: _Koran and Preliminary Discourse_, Wherry's
+edition, p. 89. One of the chief religious duties under the _Koran_ was
+the giving of alms (Zakat), and under this euphonious name was included
+the tax by which Mohammed maintained the force that enabled him to keep
+up his predatory raids on the caravans of his enemies.]
+
+[Footnote 105: _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_, p. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Dr. Koelle gravely questions this.]
+
+[Footnote 107: One of the most wicked and disastrous of all Mohammed's
+laws was that which allowed the free practice of capturing women and
+girls in war, and retaining them as lawful chattels in the capacity of
+concubines. It has been in all ages a base stimulus to the raids of the
+slave-hunter. Sir William Muir has justly said, that so long as a free
+sanction to this great evil stands recorded on the pages of the _Koran_,
+Mohammedans will never of their own accord cease to prosecute the
+slave-trade.]
+
+[Footnote 108: According to Dr. Koelle, the number of women and children
+who fell to the prophet's share of captives at the time of his great
+slaughter of the surrendered Jewish soldiers, was two hundred.]
+
+[Footnote 109: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 110: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Ibid, p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Says Sir William Muir: "Three radical evils flow from the
+faith, in all ages and in every country, and must continue to flow _so
+long as the Koran is the standard of belief_. _First_, polygamy, divorce,
+and slavery are maintained and perpetuated, striking at the root of
+public morals, poisoning domestic life, and disorganizing society.
+_Second_, freedom of thought and private judgment in religion is crushed
+and annihilated. The sword still is, and must remain, the inevitable
+penalty for the denial of Islam. Toleration is unknown. _Third_, a
+barrier has been interposed against the reception of Christianity. They
+labor under a miserable delusion who suppose that Mohammedanism paves
+the way for a purer faith. No system could have been devised with more
+consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has sway
+from the light of truth. _Idolatrous_ Arabia (judging from the analogy
+of other nations) might have been aroused to spiritual life and to the
+adoption of the faith of Jesus. _Mohammedan_ Arabia is to the human eye
+sealed against the benign influences of the Gospel.... The sword of
+Mohammed and the Koran are the most stubborn enemies of civilization,
+liberty, and truth which the world has yet known."--_Church Missionary
+Intelligencer_, November, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Osborne, in his _Islam under the Arabs_, and Marcus
+Dodds, in _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, have emphasized the fact that
+Islam, however favorably it might compare with the Arabian heathenism
+which it overthrew, was wholly out of place in forcing its
+semi-barbarous cultus upon civilizations which were far above it. It
+might be an advance upon the rudeness and cruelty of the Koreish, but
+the misfortune was that it stamped its stereotyped and unchanging
+principles and customs upon nations which were in advance of it even
+then, and which, but for its deadening influence, might have made far
+greater progress in the centuries which followed.
+
+Its bigoted founder gave the _Koran_ as the sufficient guide for all
+time. It arrested the world's progress as far as its power extended.
+Very different was the spirit of Judaism. "It distinctly disclaimed both
+finality and completeness. Every part of the Mosaic religion had a
+forward look, and was designed to leave the mind in an attitude of
+expectation."
+
+Mohammedanism, in claiming to be the one religion for all men and all
+time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the
+retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal
+religion it has been tried and found wanting.]
+
+[Footnote 114: It has been claimed that the spread of Mohammedanism in
+India is far more rapid than that of Christianity. If this were true in
+point of fact, it would be significant; for India under British rule
+furnishes a fair field for such a contest. But it so happens that there,
+where Islam holds no sword of conquest, and no arbitrary power to compel
+the faith of men, its growth is very slow, it only keeps pace with the
+general increase of the population. It cannot compare with the
+advancement of Christianity. I subjoin an extract from Sir W. Hunter's
+paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July, 1888:
+
+"The official census, notwithstanding its obscurities of classification
+and the disturbing effects of the famine of 1877, attests the rapid
+increase of the Christian population. So far as these disturbing
+influences allow of an inference for all British India, the normal rate
+of increase among the general population was about 8 per cent, from 1872
+to 1881, while the actual rate of the Christian population was over 30
+per cent. But, taking the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal as the
+greatest province outside the famine area of 1877, and for whose
+population, amounting to one-third of the whole of British India, really
+comparable statistics exist, the census results are clear. The general
+population increased in the nine years preceding 1881 at the rate of
+10.89 per cent., the Mohammedans at the rate of 10.96 per cent., the
+Hindus at some undetermined rate below 13.64 per cent., Christians of
+all races at the rate of 40.71 per cent., and the native Christians at
+the rate of 64.07 per cent."]
+
+[Footnote 115: _Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book._]
+
+[Footnote 116: _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_, p. 241.]
+
+[Footnote 117: For the full text of the letter to the _Standard_, see
+_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, December, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, 1887, p. 653.]
+
+[Footnote 119: See _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Over against Canon Taylor's glowing accounts of this
+broad and gentle charity we may place the testimony of Palgrave in
+regard to the remorseless rapacity practised by the Wahábees upon the
+Shiyaées of Persia while passing through their territory in their
+pilgrimages to a common shrine. He tells us that "forty gold tománs were
+fixed as the claim of the Wahábee treasury on every Persian pilgrim for
+his passage through R'ad, and forty more for a safe conduct through the
+rest of the empire--eighty in all....
+
+"Every local governor on the way would naturally enough take the hint,
+and strive not to let the 'enemies of God' (for this is the sole title
+given by Wahábees to all except themselves) go by without spoiling them
+more or less....
+
+"So that, all counted up, the legal and necessary dues levied on every
+Persian Shiyaée while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahábee
+guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and
+fifty gold tománs, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no
+light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an
+Arab."--Palgrave's _Central and Eastern Africa_, p. 161.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Dodds: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 118.]
+
+[Footnote 122: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, November, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 123: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, February, 1888, p.
+66.]
+
+[Footnote 124: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM
+
+
+There are two conflicting theories now in vogue in regard to the origin
+of religion. The first is that of Christian theists as taught in the Old
+and New Testament Scriptures, viz., that the human race in its first
+ancestry, and again in the few survivors of the Deluge, possessed the
+knowledge of the true God. It is not necessary to suppose that they had
+a full and mature conception of Him, or that that conception excluded
+the idea of other gods. No one would maintain that Adam or Noah
+comprehended the nature of the Infinite as it has been revealed in the
+history of God's dealings with men in later times. But from their simple
+worship of one God their descendants came gradually to worship various
+visible objects with which they associated their blessings--the sun as
+the source of warmth and vitality, the rain as imparting a quickening
+power to the earth, the spirits of ancestors to whom they looked with a
+special awe, and finally a great variety of created things instead of
+the invisible Creator. The other theory is that man, as we now behold
+him, has been developed from lower forms of animal life, rising first to
+the state of a mere human animal, but gradually acquiring intellect,
+conscience, and finally a soul;--that ethics and religion have been
+developed from instinct by social contact, especially by ties of family
+and the tribal relation; that altruism which began with the instinctive
+care of parents for their offspring, rose to the higher domain of
+religion and began to recognize the claims of deity; that God, if there
+be a God, never revealed himself to man by any preternatural means, but
+that great souls, like Moses, Isaiah, and Plato, by their higher and
+clearer insight, have gained loftier views of deity than others, and as
+prophets and teachers have made known their inspirations to their
+fellow-men. Gradually they have formed rituals and elaborated
+philosophies, adding such supernatural elements as the ignorant fancy of
+the masses was supposed to demand.
+
+According to this theory, religions, like everything else, have grown up
+from simple germs: and it is only in the later stages of his development
+that man can be said to be a religious being. While an animal merely,
+and for a time even after he had attained to a rude and savage manhood,
+a life of selfish passion and marauding was justifiable, since only thus
+could the survival of the fittest be secured and the advancement of the
+race attained.[125] It is fair to say that there are various shades of
+the theory here presented--some materialistic, some theistic, others
+having a qualified theism, and still others practically agnostic. Some
+even who claim to be Christians regard the various religions of men as
+so many stages in the divine education of the race--all being under the
+direct guidance of God, and all designed to lead ultimately to
+Christianity which is the goal.
+
+That God has overruled all things, even the errors and wickedness of
+men, for some wise object will not be denied; that He has implanted in
+the human understanding many correct conceptions of ethical truth, so
+that noble principles are found in the teachings of all religious
+systems; that God is the author of all truth and all right impulses,
+even in heathen minds, is readily admitted. But that He has directly
+planned and chosen the non-Christian religions on the principle that
+half-truths and perverted truths and the direct opposites of the truth,
+were best adapted to certain stages of development--in other words, that
+He has causatively led any nation into error and consequent destruction
+as a means of preparing for subsequent generations something higher and
+better, we cannot admit. The logic of such a conclusion would lead to a
+remorseless fatalism. Everything would depend on the age and the
+environment in which one's lot were cast. We cannot believe that
+fetishism and idolatry have been God's kindergarten method of training
+the human race for the higher and more spiritual service of His kingdom.
+
+Turning from the testimony of the Scriptures on the one hand and the _à
+priori_ assumptions of evolution on the other, what is the witness of
+the actual history of religions? Have they shown an upward or a downward
+development? Do they appear to have risen from polytheism toward simpler
+and more spiritual forms, or have simple forms been ramified into
+polytheism?[126] If we shall be able to establish clear evidence that
+monotheistic or even henotheistic types of faith existed among all, or
+nearly all, the races at the dawn of history, a very important point
+will have been gained. The late Dr. Henry B. Smith, after a careful
+perusal of Ebrard's elaborate presentation of the religions of the
+ancient and the modern world, and his clear proofs that they had at
+first been invariably monotheistic and had gradually lapsed into
+ramified forms of polytheism, says in his review of Ebrard's work: "We
+do not know where to find a more weighty reply to the assumptions and
+theories of those writers who persist in claiming, according to the
+approved hypothesis of a merely naturalistic evolution, that the
+primitive state of mankind was the lowest and most debased form of
+polytheistic idolatry, and that the higher religions have been developed
+out of these base rudiments. Dr. Ebrard shows conclusively that the
+facts all lead to another conclusion, that gross idolatry is a
+degeneration of mankind from antecedent and purer forms of religious
+worship.... He first treats of the civilized nations of antiquity, the
+Aryan and Indian religions, the Vedas, the Indra period of Brahmanism
+and Buddhism; then of the religion of the Iranians, the Avesta of the
+Parsees; next of the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians, the Canaanites,
+and the heathen Semitic forms of worship, including the Phoenicians,
+Assyrians, and Babylonians. His second division is devoted to the
+half-civilized and savage races in the North and West of Europe, in Asia
+and Polynesia (Tartars, Mongols, Malays, and Cushites); then the races
+of America, including a minute examination of the relations of the
+different races here to the Mongols, Japanese, and old Chinese
+immigrations."[127]
+
+Ebrard himself, in summing up the results of these prolonged
+investigations, says: "We have nowhere been able to discover the least
+trace of any forward and upward movement from fetichism to polytheism,
+and from that again to a gradually advancing knowledge of the one God;
+but, on the contrary, we have found among all the peoples of the heathen
+world a most decided tendency to sink from an earlier and relatively
+purer knowledge of God toward something lower."[128]
+
+If these conclusions, reached by Ebrard and endorsed by the scholarly
+Dr. Henry B. Smith, are correct, they are of great importance; they
+bring to the stand the witness of the false religions themselves upon an
+issue in which historic testimony as distinguished from mere theories is
+in special demand in our time. Of similar import are the well-considered
+words of Professor Naville, in the first of his lectures on modern
+atheism.[129] He says: "Almost all pagans seem to have had a glimpse of
+the divine unity over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays
+of the divine holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a
+Greek (Cleanthus) who wrote these words: 'Nothing is accomplished on the
+earth without Thee, O God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in
+their folly.' It was in a theatre at Athens, that the chorus of a
+tragedy sang, more than two thousand years ago: 'May destiny aid me to
+preserve, unsullied, the purity of my words, and of all my actions,
+according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in the celestial
+heights, have the raven alone for their father, to which the race of
+mortals did not give birth and which oblivion shall never entomb. In
+them is a supreme God, and one who waxes not old.' It would be easy to
+multiply quotations of this order and to show, in the documents of
+Grecian and Roman civilization, numerous traces of the knowledge of the
+only and holy God."
+
+With much careful discrimination, Dr. William A.P. Martin, of the
+Peking University, has said: "It is customary with a certain school to
+represent religion as altogether the fruit of an intellectual process.
+It had its birth, say they, in ignorance, is modified by every stage in
+the progress of knowledge, and expires when the light of philosophy
+reaches its noon-day. The fetish gives place to a personification of the
+powers of nature, and this poetic pantheon is, in time, superseded by
+the high idea of unity in nature expressed by monotheism. This theory
+has the merit of verisimilitude. It indicates what might be the process
+if man were left to make his own religion; but it has the misfortune to
+be at variance with facts. A wide survey of the history of civilized
+nations (and the history of others is beyond reach) shows that the
+actual process undergone by the human mind in its religious development
+is precisely opposite to that which this theory supposes; in a word,
+that man was not left to construct his own creed, but that his
+blundering logic has always been active in its attempts to corrupt and
+obscure a divine original. The connection subsisting between the
+religious systems of ancient and distant countries presents many a
+problem difficult of solution. Indeed, their mythologies and religious
+rites are generally so distinct as to admit the hypothesis of an
+independent origin; but the simplicity of their earliest beliefs
+exhibits an unmistakable resemblance, suggestive of a common source.
+
+"China, India, Egypt, and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of
+their early religion. The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the
+popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God. The odes
+compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the
+Supreme Euler. The Vedas speak of 'one unknown true Being, all-present,
+all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe.'
+And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges
+of a monotheistic worship. 'The other Egyptians,' he says, 'all made
+offerings at the tombs of the sacred beasts; but the inhabitants of the
+Thebaïd stood alone in making no such offerings, not regarding as a god
+anything that can die, and acknowledging no god but one, whom they call
+Kneph, who had no birth, and can have no death. Abraham, in his
+wanderings, found the God of his fathers known and honored in Salem, in
+Gerar, and in Memphis; while at a later day Jethro, in Midian, and
+Balaam, in Mesopotamia, were witnesses that the knowledge of Jehovah was
+not yet extinct in those countries.'"[130]
+
+Professor Max Müller speaks in a similar strain of the lapse of mankind
+from earlier and simpler types of faith to low and manifold
+superstitions: "Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first
+beginning," says the distinguished Oxford professor, "we find it free
+from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The
+founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge,
+were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for
+truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and
+unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom
+realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form,
+offered often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to
+be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more
+particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the
+foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original
+foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the
+plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart and matured in his
+communings with his God."[131]
+
+But in pursuing our subject we should clearly determine the real
+question before us. How much may we expect to prove from the early
+history of the non-Christian systems? Not certainly that all nations
+once received a knowledge of the Old Testament revelation, as some have
+claimed, nor that all races possessed at the beginning of their several
+historic periods one and the same monotheistic faith. We cannot prove
+from non-scriptural sources that their varying monotheistic conceptions
+sprang from a common belief. We cannot prove either the supernatural
+revelation which Professor Max Müller emphatically rejects, nor the
+identity of the well-nigh universal henotheisms which he professes to
+believe. We cannot prove that the worship of one God as supreme did not
+coexist with a sort of worship of inferior deities or ministering
+spirits. Almost as a rule, the worship of ancestors, or spirits, or
+rulers, or the powers of nature, or even totems and fetishes has been
+rendered as subordinate to the worship of the one supreme deity who
+created and upholds all things. Even the monotheism of Judaism and of
+Christianity has been attended with the belief in angels and the worship
+of intercessory saints, to say nothing of the many superstitions which
+prevail among the more ignorant classes. We shall only attempt to show
+that monotheism, in the sense of worshipping _one God as supreme_, is
+found in nearly all the early teachings of the world. That these crude
+faiths are one in the origin is only presumable, if we leave the
+testimony of the Bible out of the account.
+
+When on a summer afternoon we see great shafts of light arising and
+spreading fan-shaped from behind a cloud which lies along the western
+horizon, we have a strong presumption that they all spring from one
+great luminary toward which they converge, although that luminary is
+hidden from our view. So tracing the convergence of heathen faiths with
+respect to one original monotheism, back to the point where the
+prehistoric obscurity begins, we may on the same principle say that all
+the evidence in the case, and it is not small, points toward a common
+origin for the early religious conceptions of mankind.
+
+Professor Robert Flint, in his scholarly article on theism in "The
+Britannica," seems to discard the idea that the first religion of
+mankind was monotheism; but a careful study of his position will show
+that he has in view those conceptions of monotheism which are common to
+us, or, as he expresses it, "monotheism in the ordinary or proper sense
+of the term," "monotheism properly so called," "monotheism which excludes
+polytheism," etc. Moreover, he maintains that we cannot, from historical
+sources, learn what conceptions men first had of God. Even when speaking
+of the Old Testament record, he says: "These chapters (of Genesis),
+although they plainly teach monotheism and represent the God whose words
+and acts are recorded in the Bible as no mere national God, but the only
+true God, they do not teach what is alone in the question--that there
+was a primitive monotheism, a monotheism revealed and known from the
+beginning. They give no warrant to the common assumption that God
+revealed monotheism to Adam, Noah, and others before the Flood, and that
+the traces of monotheistic beliefs and tendencies in heathendom are
+derivable from the tradition of this primitive and antediluvian
+monotheism. The one true God is represented as making himself known by
+particular words and in particular ways to Adam, but is nowhere said to
+have taught him that He only was God." It is plain that Professor Flint
+is here dealing with a conception of monotheism which is exclusive of
+all other gods. And his view is undoubtedly correct, so far as Adam was
+concerned. There was no more need of teaching him that his God was the
+only God, than that Eve was the only woman. With Noah the case is not so
+plain. He doubtless worshipped God amid the surroundings of polytheistic
+heathenism. Enoch probably had a similar environment, and there is no
+good reason for supposing that their monotheism may not have been as
+exclusive as that of Abraham. But with respect to the Gentile nations,
+the dim traces of this monism or henotheism which Professor Flint seems
+to accord to Adam and to Noah, is all that we are contending for, and
+all that is necessary to the argument of this lecture. We may even admit
+that heathen deities may sometimes have been called by different names
+while the one source of power was intended. Different names seem to have
+been employed to represent different manifestations of the one God of
+the Old Testament according to His varied relations toward His people.
+There are those who deny this polyonomy, as Max Müller has called it,
+and who maintain that the names in the earliest Veda represented
+distinct deities; but, by similar reasoning, Professor Tiele and others
+insist that three different Hebrew Gods, according to their respective
+names, were worshipped in successive periods of the Jewish history. It
+seems quite possible, therefore, that a too restrictive definition of
+monotheism may prove too much, by opening the way for a claim that even
+the Jewish and Christian faith, with its old Testament names of God, its
+angels, its theophanies, and its fully developed trinity, is not
+strictly monotheistic. For our present purpose, traces of the worship of
+one supreme God--call it monotheism or henotheism--is all that is
+required.
+
+With these limitations and qualifications in view, let us turn to the
+history of some of the leading non-Christian faiths. Looking first to
+India, we find in the 129th hymn of the Rig Veda, a passage which not
+only presents the conception of one only supreme and self-existing
+Being, but at the same time bears significant resemblance to our own
+account of the creation from chaos. It reads thus:
+
+   "In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught,
+    Then there was neither atmosphere nor sky above,
+    There was neither death nor immortality,
+    There was neither day nor night, nor light, nor darkness,
+    Only the EXISTENT ONE breathed calmly self-contained.
+    Naught else but He was there, naught else above, beyond.
+    Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom;
+    Next all was water, chaos indiscrete,
+    In which ONE lay void, shrouded in nothingness."[132]
+
+In the 121st hymn of the same Veda occurs a passage which seems to
+resemble the opening of the Gospel of St. John. It reads thus, as
+translated by Sir Monier Williams:
+
+     "Him let us praise, the golden child that was In the beginning, who
+     was born the Lord, Who made the earth and formed the sky."
+
+"The one born Lord" reminds us of the New Testament expression, "the
+only begotten Son." Both were "in the beginning;" both were the creators
+of the world. While there is much that is mysterious in these
+references, the idea of oneness and supremacy is too plain to be
+mistaken. Professor Max Müller has well expressed this fact when he
+said: "There is a monotheism which precedes polytheism in the Veda; and
+even in the invocation of their (inferior) gods, the remembrance of _a_
+God, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of an idolatrous
+phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds."[133]
+These monotheistic conceptions appear to have been common to the Aryans
+before their removal from their early home near the sources of the Oxus,
+and we shall see further on that in one form or another they survived
+among all branches of the migrating race. The same distinguished scholar
+traces the early existence of monotheism in a series of brief and rapid
+references to nearly all the scattered Aryans not only, but also to the
+Turanians on the North and East, to the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tartaric,
+and Finnic tribes. "Everywhere," he says, "we find a worship of nature,
+and the spirits of the departed, but behind it all there rises a belief
+in some higher power called by different names, who is Maker and
+Protector of the world, and who always resides in heaven."[134] He also
+speaks of an ancient African faith which, together with its worship of
+reptiles and of ancestors, showed a vague hope of a future life, "and a
+not altogether faded reminiscence of a supreme God," which certainly
+implies a previous knowledge.[135]
+
+The same prevalence of one supreme worship rising above all idolatry he
+traces among the various tribes of the Pacific Islands. His
+generalizations are only second to those of Ebrard. Although he rejects
+the theory of a supernatural revelation, yet stronger language could
+hardly be used than that which he employs in proof of a universal
+monotheistic faith.[136] "Nowhere," he says, "do we find stronger
+arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of God been upheld
+more strenuously against the errors of polytheism, than by some of the
+ancient sages of India. Even in the oldest of the sacred books, the Rig
+Veda, composed three or four thousand years ago, where we find hymns
+addressed to the different deities of the sky, the air, the earth, the
+rivers, the protest of the human heart against many gods breaks forth
+from time to time with no uncertain sound." Professor Müller's whole
+position is pretty clearly stated in his first lecture on "The Science
+of Religion," in which he protests against the idea that God once gave
+to man "a _preternatural_ revelation" concerning Himself; and yet he
+gives in this same lecture this striking testimony to the doctrine of an
+early and prevailing monotheistic faith:
+
+"Is it not something worth knowing," he says, "worth knowing even to us
+after the lapse of four or five thousand years, that before the
+separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek,
+or Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been worshipped, and before
+there was a sanctuary of Zeus among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one
+Supreme deity had been found, had been named, had been invoked by the
+ancestors of our race, and had been invoked by a name which has never
+been excelled by any other name?" And again, on the same subject, he
+says: "If a critical examination of the ancient language of the Jews
+leads to no worse results than those which have followed from a careful
+interpretation of the petrified language of ancient India and Greece, we
+need not fear; we shall be gainers, not losers. Like an old precious
+medal, the ancient religion, after the rust of ages has been removed,
+will come out in all its purity and brightness; and the image which it
+discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations
+upon earth; and the superscription, when we can read it again, will be,
+not only in Judea, but in the languages of all the races of the world,
+the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed--revealed in
+the heart of man."[137]
+
+The late Professor Banergea, of Calcutta, in a publication entitled "The
+Aryan Witness," not only maintained the existence of monotheism in the
+early Vedas, but with his rare knowledge of Sanskrit and kindred
+tongues, he gathered from Iranian as well as Hindu sources many
+evidences of a monotheism common to all Aryans. His conclusions derive
+special value from the fact that he was a high caste Hindu, and was not
+only well versed in the sacred language, but was perfectly familiar with
+Hindu traditions and modes of thought. He was as well qualified to judge
+of early Hinduism as Paul was of Judaism, and for the same reason. And
+from his Hindu standpoint, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, though
+afterward a Christian convert, he did not hesitate to declare his
+belief, not only that the early Vedic faith was monotheistic, but that
+it contained traces of that true revelation, once made to men.[138]
+
+In the same line we find the testimony of the various types of revived
+Aryanism of our own times. The Brahmo Somaj, the Arya Somaj, and other
+similar organizations, are not only all monotheistic, but they declare
+that monotheism was the religion of the early Vedas. And many other
+Hindu reforms, some of them going as far back as the twelfth century,
+have been so many returns to monotheism. A recent Arya catechism
+published by Ganeshi, asserts in its first article that there is one
+only God, omnipotent, infinite, and eternal. It proceeds to show that
+the Vedas present but one, and that when hymns were addressed to Agni,
+Vayu, Indra, etc., it was only a use of different names for one and the
+same Being.[139]
+
+It represents God as having all the attributes of supreme Deity. He
+created the world by His direct power and for the revelation of His
+glory to His creatures. Man, according to the Aryas, came not by
+evolution nor by any of the processes known to Hindu philosophy, but by
+direct creation from existing atoms.
+
+In all this it is easy to see that much has been borrowed from the
+Christian conception of God's character and attributes, but the value of
+this Aryan testimony lies in the fact that it claims for the ancient
+Vedas a clear and positive monotheism.
+
+If we consult the sacred books of China, we shall find there also many
+traces of an ancient faith which antedates both Confucianism and
+Taouism. The golden age of the past to which all Chinese sages look with
+reverence, was the dynasty of Yao and Shun, which was eighteen centuries
+earlier than the period of Confucius and Laotze. The records of the
+Shu-king which Confucius compiled, and from which unfortunately his
+agnosticism excluded nearly all its original references to religion,
+nevertheless retain a full account of certain sacred rites performed by
+Shun on his accession to the full imperial power. In those rites the
+worship of One God as supreme is distinctly set forth as a "customary
+service," thereby implying that it was already long established.
+Separate mention is also made of offerings to inferior deities, as if
+these were honored at his own special instance. It is unquestionably
+true that in China, and indeed in all lands, there sprang up almost from
+the first a tendency to worship, or at least to fear, unseen spirits.
+This tendency has coexisted with all religions of the world--even with
+the Old Testament cult--even with Christianity. To the excited
+imaginations of men, especially the ignorant classes, the world has
+always been a haunted world, and just in proportion as the light of true
+religion has become dim, countless hordes of ghosts and demons have
+appeared. When Confucius arose this gross animism had almost monopolized
+the worship of his countrymen, and universal corruption bore sway. He
+was not an original thinker, but only a compiler of the ancient wisdom,
+and in his selections from the traditions of the ancients, he compiled
+those things only which served his great purpose of building up, from
+the relations of family and kindred, the complete pyramid of a
+well-ordered state in which the Emperor should hold to his subjects the
+place of deity. If such honor to a mortal seemed extravagant, yet in his
+view a wise emperor was far worthier of reverence than the imaginary
+ghosts of the popular superstitions. Yet, even Confucius could not quite
+succeed in banishing the idea of divine help, nor could he destroy that
+higher and most venerable worship which has ever survived amid all the
+corruptions of polytheism. Professor Legge, of Oxford, has claimed, from
+what he regards as valid linguistic proofs, that at a still earlier
+period than the dynasty of Yao and Shun there existed in China the
+worship of one God. He says: "Five thousand years ago the Chinese were
+monotheists--not henotheists, but monotheists"--though he adds that even
+then there was a constant struggle with nature-worship and
+divination.[140]
+
+The same high authority cites a remarkable prayer of an Emperor of the
+Ming dynasty (1538 A.D.) to show that in spite of the agnosticism and
+reticence of Confucius, Shangte has been worshipped in the centuries
+which have followed his time. The prayer is very significant as showing
+how the One Supreme God stands related to the subordinate gods which
+polytheism has introduced. The Emperor was about to decree a slight
+change in the name of Shangte to be used in the imperial worship. He
+first addressed the spirits of the hills, the rivers, and the seas,
+asking them to intercede for him with Shangte. "We will trouble you,"
+said he, "on our behalf to exert your spiritual power and to display
+your vigorous efficacy, communicating our poor desires to Shangte, and
+praying him graciously to grant us his acceptance and regard, and to be
+pleased with the title which we shall reverently present." But very
+different was the language used when he came to address Shangte himself.
+"Of old, in the beginning," he began,--"Of old in the beginning, there
+was the great chaos without form, and dark. The five elements had not
+begun to revolve nor the sun and moon to shine. In the midst thereof
+there presented itself neither form nor sound. Thou, O spiritual
+Sovereign! earnest forth in thy presidency, and first didst divide the
+grosser parts from the purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth:
+Thou madest man. All things got their being with their producing power.
+O Te! when Thou hadst opened the course for the inactive and active
+forces of matter to operate, thy making work went on. Thou didst
+produce, O Spirit! the sun and moon and five planets, and pure and
+beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a
+curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures
+were happy. I, thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee." Farther
+on he says: "All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to
+Thy favor for their being. Men and creatures are emparadised in Thy
+love. All living things are indebted to Thy goodness. But who knows
+whence his blessings come to him? It is Thou, O Lord! who art the
+parent of all things."[141]
+
+Surely this prayer humbly offered by a monarch would not be greatly out
+of place among the Psalms of David. Its description of the primeval
+chaos strikingly resembles that which I have quoted from the Rig Veda,
+and both resemble that of the Mosaic record. If the language used does
+not present the clear conception of one God, the Creator and the
+Upholder of all things, and a supreme and personal Sovereign over kings
+and even "gods," then language has no meaning. The monotheistic
+conception of the second petition is as distinct from the polytheism of
+the first, as any prayer to Jehovah is from a Roman Catholic's prayer
+for the intercession of the saints; and there is no stronger argument in
+the one case against monotheism than in the other. Dr. Legge asserts
+that both in the Shu-king and in the Shiking, "Te," or "Shangte,"
+appears as a personal being ruling in heaven and in earth, the author of
+man's moral nature, the governor among the nations, the rewarder of the
+good and the punisher of the evil.[142] There are proofs that Confucius,
+though in his position with respect to God he fell short of the doctrine
+of the ancient sages, yet believed in the existence of Shangte as a
+personal being. When in old age he had finished his writings, he laid
+them on an altar upon a certain hill-top, and kneeling before the altar
+he returned thanks that he had been spared to complete his work.[143]
+Max Müller says of him: "It is clear from many passages that with
+Confucius, Tien, or the Spirit of Heaven, was the supreme deity, and
+that he looked upon the other gods of the people--the spirits of the
+air, the mountains, and the rivers,[144] and the spirits of the
+departed, very much with the same feeling with which Socrates regarded
+the mythological deities of Greece."[145]
+
+But there remains to this day a remarkable evidence of the worship of
+the supreme God, Shangte, as he was worshipped in the days of the
+Emperor Shun, 2356 B.C. It is found in the great Temple of Heaven at
+Peking. Dr. Martin and Professors Legge and Douglas all insist that the
+sacrifices there celebrated are relics of the ancient worship of a
+supreme God. China is full of the traces of polytheism; the land swarms
+with Taouist deities of all names and functions, with Confucian and
+ancestral tablets, and with Buddhist temples and dagobas; but within the
+sacred enclosure of this temple no symbol of heathenism appears. Of the
+August Imperial service Dr. Martin thus eloquently speaks:[146] "Within
+the gates of the southern division of the capital, and surrounded by a
+sacred grove so extensive that the silence of its deep shades is never
+broken by the noise of the busy world around it, stands the Temple of
+Heaven. It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure
+is intended to represent the form and color of the aerial vault. It
+contains no image; but on a marble altar a bullock is offered once a
+year as a burnt sacrifice, while the monarch of the empire prostrates
+himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe. This is the high
+place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he
+ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet, for no vulgar idolatry
+has entered here. This mountain-top still stands above the waves of
+corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of
+its primeval faith. The tablet which represents the invisible deity is
+inscribed with the name Shangte, the Supreme Ruler, and as we
+contemplate the Majesty of the Empire before it, while the smoke ascends
+from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts are irresistably carried back
+to the time when the King of Salem officiated as priest of the Most High
+God. There is," he adds, "no need of extended argument to establish the
+fact that the early Chinese were by no means destitute of the knowledge
+of the true God." Dr. Legge, the learned translator of the Chinese
+classics, shares so fully the views here expressed, that he actually put
+his shoes from off his feet before ascending the great altar, feeling
+that amidst all the mists and darkness of the national superstition, a
+trace of the glory of the Infinite Jehovah still lingered there. And in
+many a discussion since he has firmly maintained that that is in a dim
+way an altar of the true and living God.
+
+Laotze, like Confucius, was agnostic; yet he could not wholly rid
+himself of the influence of the ancient faith. His conception of Taou,
+or Reason, was rationalistic, certainly, yet he invested it with all the
+attributes of personality, as the word "Wisdom" is sometimes used in the
+Old Testament. He spoke of it as "The Infinite Supreme," "The First
+Beginning," and "The Great Original." Dr. Medhurst has translated from
+the "Taou Teh King" this striking Taouist prayer: "O thou perfectly
+honored One of heaven and earth, the rock, the origin of myriad
+energies, the great manager of boundless kalpas, do Thou enlighten my
+spiritual conceptions. Within and without the three worlds, the Logos,
+or divine Taou, is alone honorable, embodying in himself a golden light.
+May he overspread and illumine my person. He whom we cannot see with the
+eye, or hear with the ear, who embraces and includes heaven and earth,
+may he nourish and support the multitudes of living beings."
+
+If we turn to the religion of the Iranian or Persian branch of the Aryan
+family, we find among them also the traces of a primitive monotheism;
+and that it was not borrowed from Semitic sources, through the
+descendants of Abraham or others, Ebrard has shown clearly in the second
+volume of his "Apologetics." Max Müller also maintains the identity of
+the Iranian faith with that of the Indo-Aryans. The very first notices
+of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda,
+even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or
+gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to
+evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism,
+therefore, was of later growth. Zoroaster, whom Monier Williams assigns
+to the close of the sixth century B.C.,[147] speaks of himself as a
+reformer sent to re-establish the pure worship of Ahura, and Haug
+considers the conception of Ahura identical with that of Jehovah. High
+on a rocky precipice at Behistun, Rawlinson has deciphered an
+inscription claiming to have been ordered by Darius Hystaspes, who lived
+500 B.C., which is as clearly monotheistic as the Song of Moses. The
+Vendidad, which Rawlinson supposes to have been composed 800 years B.C.,
+is full of references to minor gods, but Ahura is always supreme. The
+modern Parsees of Bombay claim to be monotheistic, and declare that such
+has been the faith of their fathers from the beginning.
+
+A Parsee catechism published in Bombay twenty-five years ago reads thus:
+"We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any besides Him....
+He is the God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, the stars,
+the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, ... and all things of the
+worlds; that God we believe in, Him we invoke, Him we adore." And lest
+this should be supposed to be a modern faith, the confession further
+declares that "This is the religion which the true prophet Zurthust, or
+Zoroaster, brought from God."
+
+The Shintoists of Japan, according to their sacred book, the "Kojiki,"
+believe in one self-existent and supreme God, from whom others emanated.
+From two of these, male and female, sprang the Goddess of the Sun, and
+from her the royal line of the Mikados. There was no creation, but the
+two active emanations stirred up the eternally existing chaos, till from
+it came forth the teeming world of animal and vegetable life.
+
+It has often been asserted that tribes of men are found who have no
+conception of God. The author of "Two Years in the Jungle" declares that
+the Hill Dyaks of Borneo are without the slightest notion of a divine
+being. But a Government officer, who for two years was the guest of
+Rajah Brooke, succeeded after long delay in gaining a key to the
+religion of these Dyaks. He gives the name of one Supreme being among
+subordinate gods, and describes minutely the forms of worship. Professor
+Max Müller, while referring to this same often-repeated allegation as
+having been applied to the aborigines of Australia, cites one of Sir
+Hercules Robinson's Reports on New South Wales, which contains this
+description of the singular faith of one of the lowest of the interior
+tribes:[148] First a being is mentioned who is supreme and whose name
+signifies the "maker or cutter-out," and who is therefore worshipped as
+the great author of all things. But as this supreme god is supposed to
+be inscrutable and far removed, a second deity is named, who is the
+_revealer_ of the first and his mediator in all the affairs of men.[149]
+
+Rev. A.C. Good, now a missionary among the cannibal tribes of West
+Africa, stated in the Presbyterian General Assembly at Saratoga in May,
+1890, that with all the fetishes and superstitions known among the
+tribes on the Ogovie, if a man is asked who made him, he points to the
+sky and utters the name of an unknown being who created all things.[150]
+When Tschoop, the stalwart Mohican chief, came to the Moravians to ask
+that a missionary might be sent to his people, he said: "Do not send us
+a man to tell us that there is a God--we all know that; or that we are
+sinners--we all know that; but send one to tell us about
+salvation."[151] Even Buddhism has not remained true to the atheism of
+its founder. A Thibetan Lama said to Abbé Huc: "You must not confound
+religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars
+prostrate themselves before whatever they see, but there is one only
+Sovereign of the universe, the creator of all things, alike without
+beginning and without end."
+
+But what is the testimony of the great dead religions of the past with
+respect to a primitive monotheism? It is admitted that the later
+developments of the old Egyptian faith were polytheistic. But it has
+generally been conceded that as we approach the earliest notices of that
+faith, monotheistic features more and more prevail. This position is
+contested by Miss Amelia B. Edwards and others, who lean toward the
+development theory. Miss Edwards declares that the earliest faith of
+Egypt was mere totemism, while on the other hand Ebrard, gathering up
+the results of the researches of Lepsius, Ebers, Brugsch, and Emanuel de
+Rougé, deduces what seem to be clear evidences of an early Egyptian
+monotheism. He quotes Manetho, who declares that "for the first nine
+thousand years the god Ptah ruled alone; there was no other." According
+to inscriptions quoted by De Rougé, the Egyptians in the primitive
+period worshipped "the one being who truly lives, who has made all
+things, and who alone has not been made." This one God was known in
+different parts of Egypt under different names, which only in later
+times came to stand for distinct beings. A text which belongs to a
+period fifteen hundred years before Moses says:
+
+"He has made all that is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being
+to thee; he is the Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not."
+A papyrus now in Paris, dating 2300 B.C., contains quotations from two
+much older records, one a writing of the time of King Suffern, about
+3500 B.C., which says: "The operation of God is a thing which cannot be
+understood." The other, from a writing of Ptah Hotep, about 3000 B.C.,
+reads: "This is the command of the God of creation, the peaceable may
+come and issue orders.... The eating of bread is in conformity with the
+ordinance of God; can one forget that his blessing rests thereupon?...
+If thou art a prudent man teach thy son the love of God."[152]
+
+Professor Ernest Naville, in speaking of this same subject in a course
+of popular lectures in Geneva, said: "Listen now to a voice which has
+come forth actually from the recesses of the sepulchre: it reaches us
+from ancient Egypt.
+
+"In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
+popular practice complete. But under the confused accents of
+superstition the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
+the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
+of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
+text which is called 'The Book of the Dead.' Here is the translation of
+some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
+who speaks thus: 'I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that
+replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of
+mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. I am the Great and Mighty
+God, the Most High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of
+the armies which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise the
+evil-doers and the persecutors of Godly men. I discover and confound the
+liars. I am the all-seeing Avenger, ... the Guardian of my laws in the
+land of the righteous.' These words are found mingled in the text, from
+which I extract them, with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be
+acknowledged that the translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is
+uncertain enough; still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to
+the general sense and bearing of the recent discoveries of our
+_savans_."[153]
+
+Professor Flint as against Cudworth, Ebrard, Gladstone, and others,
+maintains that the Egyptian religion at the very dawn of its history had
+"certain great gods," though he adds that "there were not so many as in
+later times." "Ancestor worship, but not so developed as in later times,
+and animal worship, but very little of it compared with later times." On
+the other hand, as against Professor Tiele, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, and
+others, he says: "For the opinion that its lower elements were older
+than the higher there is not a particle of properly historical evidence,
+not a trace in the inscriptions of mere propitiation of ancestors or of
+belief in the absolute divinity of kings or animals; on the contrary
+ancestors are always found propitiated through prayer to some of the
+great gods; kings worshipped as emanations and images of the sun god and
+the divine animals adored as divine symbols and incarnations."
+
+Among the Greeks there are few traces of monotheism, but we have reason
+for this in the fact that their earliest literature dates from so late a
+period. It began with Homer not earlier than 600 B.C., and direct
+accounts of the religion of the Greeks are not traced beyond 560 B.C.
+But Welcker, whose examinations have been exhaustive, has, in the
+opinion of Max Müller, fairly established the primitive monotheism of
+the Greeks. Müller says: "When we ascend with him to the most distant
+heights of Greek history the idea of God as the supreme being stands
+before us as a simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God the father
+of men we find in Greece a worship of nature. The powers of nature,
+originally worshipped as such, were afterward changed into a family of
+gods, of which Zeus became the king and father. The third phase is what
+is generally called Greek mythology; but it was preceded in time, or at
+least rendered possible in thought, by the two prior conceptions, a
+belief in a supreme God and a worship of the powers of nature.... The
+divine character of Zeus, as distinguished from his mythological
+character, is most carefully brought out by Welcker. He avails himself
+of all the discoveries of comparative philology in order to show more
+clearly how the same idea which found expression in the ancient
+religions of the Brahmans, the Sclavs, and the Germans had been
+preserved under the same simple, clear, and sublime name by the original
+settlers of Hellas."[154]
+
+The same high authority traces in his own linguistic studies the
+important fact that all branches of the Aryan race preserve the same
+name for the Supreme Being, while they show great ramification and
+variation in the names of their subordinate gods. If, therefore, the
+Indo-Aryans give evidence of a monotheistic faith at the time of their
+dispersion, there is an _à priori_ presumption for the monotheism of the
+Greeks. "Herodotus," says Professor Rawlinson, "speaks of God as if he
+had never heard of polytheism." The testimony of the Greek poets shows
+that beneath the prevailing polytheism there remained an underlying
+conception of monotheistic supremacy. Professor Rawlinson quotes from an
+Orphic poem the words:
+
+       "Ares is war, peace
+   Soft Aphrodite, wine that God has made
+   Is Dionysius, Themis is the right
+   Men render to each. Apollo, too,
+   And Phoebus and Æschlepius, who doth heal
+   Diseases, are the sun. All these are one."
+
+Max Müller traces to this same element of monotheism the real greatness
+and power of the Hellenic race when he says: "What was it, then, that
+preserved in their hearts (the Greeks), in spite even of the feuds of
+tribes and the jealousies of states, the deep feeling of that ideal
+unity which constitutes a people? It was their primitive religion; it
+was a dim recollection of the common allegiance they owed from time
+immemorial to the great father of gods and men; it was their belief in
+the old Zeus of Dodona in the Pan-Hellenic Zeus."[155] "There is, in
+truth, but one," says Sophocles, "one only God, who made both heaven and
+long-extended earth and bright-faced swell of seas and force of winds."
+Xenophanes says: "'Mongst gods and men there is one mightiest God not
+mortal or in form or thought. Entire he sees and understands, and
+without labor governs all by mind." Aratus, whom Paul quotes,[156] says:
+"With Zeus began we; let no mortal voice of men leave Zeus unpraised.
+Zeus fills the heavens, the streets, the marts. Everywhere we live in
+Zeus. Zeus fills the sea, the shores, the harbors. _We are his
+offspring, too._" The reference made by Paul evidently implies that this
+Zeus was a dim conception of the one true God.
+
+That all branches of the Semitic race were monotheistic we may call not
+only Ebrard and Müller, but Renan, to witness. According to Renan,
+evidences that the monotheism of the Semitic races was of a very early
+origin, appears in the fact that all their names for deity--El, Elohim,
+Ilu, Baal, Bel, Adonai, Shaddai, and Allah--denote one being and that
+supreme. These names have resisted all changes, and doubtless extend as
+far back as the Semitic language or the Semitic race. Max Müller, in
+speaking of the early faith of the Arabs, says: "Long before Mohammed
+the primitive intuition of God made itself felt in Arabia;" and he
+quotes this ancient Arabian prayer: "I dedicate myself to thy service, O
+Allah. Thou hast no companion, except the companion of whom thou art
+master absolute, and of whatever is his." The book of Job and the story
+of Balaam indicate the prevalence of an early monotheism beyond the pale
+of the Abrahamic church. In the records of the kings of Assyria and
+Babylonia there is a conspicuous polytheism, yet it is significant that
+each king worshipped _one God only_. And this fact suggests, as a wide
+generalization, that political and dynastic jealousies had their
+influence in multiplying the names and differentiating the attributes of
+ancient deities. This was notably the case in ancient Egypt, where each
+invasion and each change of dynasty led to a new adjustment of the
+Egyptian Pantheon.
+
+Rome had many gods, but Jupiter was supreme. Herodotus says of the
+Scythians, that they had eight gods, but one was supreme, like Zeus. The
+Northmen, according to Dr. Dascent, had one supreme god known as the
+"All-fader." The Druids, though worshipping various subordinate deities,
+believed in One who was supreme--the creator of all things and the soul
+of all things. Though conceived of in a Pantheistic sense, He was
+personal and exerted a moral control, as is shown by the famous triad:
+"Fear God; be just to all men; die for your country." In the highest and
+purest period of the old Mexican faith we read of the Tezcucan monarch
+Nezahualcoyotl, who said: "These idols of wood and stone can neither
+hear nor feel; much less could they make the heavens and the earth, and
+man who is the lord of it. These must be the work of the all-powerful
+unknown God, the Creator of the universe, on whom alone I must rely for
+consolation and support."[157] The Incas of Peru also, though
+sun-worshippers, believed in a supreme creator who made the sun. The
+oldest of their temples was reared to the supreme god "Virachoca." And
+one of the greatest Incas has left his declared belief that "there must
+be above the sun a greater and more powerful ruler, at whose behest the
+sun pursues his daily and untiring round."[158]
+
+It has been assumed throughout this lecture, that instead of an advance
+in the religions of men, there has everywhere been decline. Our proofs
+of this are not theoretic but historic. As an example, all writers are
+agreed, I believe, that during the historic period the religion of the
+Egyptians steadily deteriorated until Christianity and Mohammedanism
+superseded it. In strong contrast with the lofty and ennobling prayer
+which we have quoted from an ancient Egyptian record, is the degradation
+of the later worship. On a column at Heliopolis, belonging to the fourth
+century before Christ, is inscribed this petition: "O thou white cat,
+thy head is the head of the sun god, thy nose is the nose of Thoth, of
+the exceeding great love of Hemopolis." The whole prayer is on this low
+level. Clement, of Alexandria, after describing the great beauty of an
+Egyptian temple, proceeds to say: "The innermost sanctuary is concealed
+by a curtain wrought in gold, which the priest draws aside, and there is
+seen a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent, which wriggles on a purple
+cover."[159]
+
+That the religions of India have degenerated is equally clear. The fact
+that all the medieval and modern reforms look back for their ideals to
+the earlier and purer Aryan faith, might of itself afford sufficient
+proof of this, but we have also abundant evidence which is direct. In
+the Rig Veda there is little polytheism, and no idolatry. There is no
+doctrine of caste, no base worship of Siva with the foul enormities of
+Saktism.[160] In the most ancient times there was no doctrine of
+transmigration, nor any notion that human life is an evil to be overcome
+by self-mortification. Woman was comparatively free from the oppressions
+which she suffered in the later periods. Infanticide had not then been
+sanctioned and enjoined by religious authority, and widow burning and
+the religious murders of the Thugs were unknown. And yet so deeply were
+these evils rooted at the beginning of the British rule in India, that
+the joint influence of Christian instruction and Governmental authority
+for a whole century has not been sufficient to overcome them.
+
+Buddhism in the first two or three centuries had much to commend it.
+King Ashoka left monuments of practical beneficence and philanthropy
+which have survived to this day. But countless legends soon sprang up to
+mar the simplicity of Gautama's ethics. Corruptions crept in.
+Compromises were made with popular superstitions and with Hindu
+Saktism.[161] The monastic orders sank into corruption, and by the ninth
+century of our era the system had been wholly swept from India. The
+Buddhism of Ceylon was planted first by the devout son and daughter of a
+king, and for a time was characterized by great purity and devotion. But
+now it exists only in name, and a prominent missionary of the country
+declared, in the London Missionary Conference of 1888, that nine-tenths
+of the Cingalese were worshippers of serpents or of spirits.[162] The
+prevailing Buddhism in Thibet, from the eighth to the tenth century, was
+an admixture with Saktism and superstition. Where the system has
+survived in any good degree of strength, it has been due either to
+government support or to an alliance with other religions. The history
+of Taouism has shown a still worse deterioration. Laotze, though
+impracticable as a reformer, was a profound philosopher. His teachings
+set forth a lofty moral code. Superstition he abominated. His ideas of
+deity were cold and rationalistic, but they were pure and lofty. But the
+modern Taouism is a medley of wild and degrading superstitions.
+According to its theodicy all nature is haunted. The ignorant masses are
+enthralled by the fear of ghosts, and all progress is paralyzed by the
+nightmare of "fung shuay." Had not Taouism been balanced by the sturdy
+common-sense ethics of Confucianism, the Chinese might have become a
+race of savages.[163]
+
+The decline of Mohammedanism from the sublime fanaticism of Abu Bekr and
+the intellectual aspirations of Haroun Al Raschid, to the senseless
+imbecility of the modern Turk, is too patent to need argument. The worm
+of destruction was left in the system by the vices of Mohammed himself;
+and from the higher level of his early followers it has not only
+deteriorated, but it has dragged down everything else with it. It has
+destroyed the family, because it has degraded woman. It has separated
+her immeasurably from the status of dignity and honor which she enjoyed
+under the influence of the early Christian church, and it has robbed her
+of even that freedom which was accorded to her by heathen Rome. One need
+only look at Northern Africa, the land of Cyprian and Origen, of
+Augustine and the saintly Monica, to see what Islam has done. And even
+the later centuries have brought no relief. Prosperous lands have been
+rendered desolate and sterile, and all progress has been paralyzed.
+
+In the history of the Greek religion it is granted that there were
+periods of advancement. The times of the fully developed Apollo worship
+showed vast improvement over previous periods, but even Professor Tiele
+virtually admits that this was owing to the importation of foreign
+influences. It was not due to any natural process of evolution; and it
+was followed by hopeless corruption and decline. The last days of both
+Greece and Rome were degenerate and full of depression and despair.
+
+It is not contended that no revivals or reforms are possible in
+heathenism. There have been many of these, but with all allowance for
+spasmodic efforts, the general drift has been always downward.[164]
+There is a natural disposition among men to multiply objects of
+worship. Herbert Spencer's principle, that development proceeds from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is certainly true of the religions of
+the world; but his other principle, that development proceeds from the
+incoherent to the coherent, does not apply. Incoherency and moral chaos
+mark the trend of all man-made faiths. The universal tendency to
+deterioration is well summed up as follows by Professor Naville:
+
+"Traces are found almost everywhere in the midst of idolatrous
+superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure and often stamped with a
+lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact; it offers to view in the
+same bed two currents (like the Arve and the Arveiron)--the one pure,
+the other impure. What is the relation between these two currents? ...
+Did humanity begin with a coarse fetishism, and thence rise by slow
+degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of a comparatively pure
+monotheism first show themselves in the recent periods of idolatry?
+Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative.
+It is in the most ancient historical ground that the laborious
+investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion.
+Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few
+years afterward. In place of the tree cut down you will find
+coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided
+among a multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the
+opinion which tends to prevail among our savants on the subject of the
+historical development of religions. The idea of one God is at the
+roots--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative."[165]
+
+We have thus far drawn our proofs of man's polytheistic tendencies from
+the history of the non-Christian religions. In proof of the same general
+tendency we now turn to the history of the Israelites, the chosen people
+of God. We may properly appeal to the Bible as history, especially when
+showing idolatrous tendencies even under the full blaze of the truth. In
+spite of the supernatural revelation which they claimed to
+possess--notwithstanding all their instructions, warnings, promises,
+deliverances, divinely aided conquests--they relapsed into idolatry
+again and again. Ere they had reached the land of promise they had begun
+to make images of the gods of Egypt. They made constant compromises and
+alliances with the Canaanites, and not even severe judgments could
+withhold them from this downward drift. Their wisest king was
+demoralized by heathen marriages, and his successors openly patronized
+the heathen shrines. The abominations of Baal worship and the nameless
+vices of Sodom were practised under the very shadow of the Temple.[166]
+Judgments followed upon this miserable degeneracy. Prophets were sent
+with repeated warnings, and many were slain for their faithful messages.
+Tribe after tribe was borne into captivity, the Temple was destroyed,
+and at last the nation was virtually broken up and scattered abroad.
+
+There was indeed a true development in the church of God from the
+Abrahamic period to the Apostolic day. There was a rising from a narrow
+national spirit to one which embraced the whole brotherhood of man, from
+type and prophecy to fulfilment, from the sins that were winked at, to a
+purer ethic and the perfect law of love; but these results came not by
+natural evolution--far enough from it. They were wrought out not by man,
+but we might almost say, in spite of man. Divine interpositions were all
+that saved Judaism from a total wreck, even as the national unity was
+destroyed. A new Dispensation was introduced, a Divine Redeemer and an
+Omnipotent Spirit were the forces which saved the world from a second
+universal apostasy.
+
+We come nearer still to the church of God for proofs of man's inherent
+tendency to polytheism. Even under the new Dispensation we have seen the
+church sink into virtual idolatry. Within six centuries from the time of
+Christ and His apostles there had been a sad lapse into what seemed the
+worship of images, pictures, and relics, and a faith in holy places and
+the bones of saints. What Mohammed saw, or thought he saw, was a
+Christian idolatry scarcely better than that of the Arabian Koreish.
+And, as if by the judgment of God, the churches of the East were swept
+with a destruction like that which had been visited upon the Ten Tribes.
+In the Christianity of to-day, viewed as a whole, how strong is the
+tendency to turn from the pure spiritual conception of God to some more
+objective trust--a saint, a relic, a ritual, an ordinance. In the old
+churches of the East or on the Continent of Europe, how much of virtual
+idolatry is there even now? It is only another form of the tendency in
+man to seek out many devices--to find visible objects of trust--to try
+new panaceas for the ailments of the soul--to multiply unto himself gods
+to help his weakness. This is just what has been done in all ages and
+among all races of the world. This explains polytheism. Man's religious
+nature is a vine, and God is its only proper support. Once fallen from
+that support, it creeps and grovels in all directions and over all false
+supports.
+
+We have not resorted to Divine revelation for proofs except as history.
+But our conclusions drawn from heathen sources bring us directly, as one
+face answereth to another face in a glass, to the plain teachings of
+Paul and other inspired writers, who tell us that the human race was
+once possessed of the knowledge of One Supreme God, but that men
+apostatized from Him, preferring to worship the creature rather than the
+Creator. There are no traces of an upward evolution toward clearer
+knowledge and purer lives, except by the operation of outward causes,
+but there are many proofs that men's hearts have become darkened and
+their moral nature more and more depraved. In all lands there have been
+those who seemed to gain some glimpses of truth, and whose teachings
+were far above the average sentiment and character of their times, but
+they have either been discarded like Socrates and the prophets of
+Israel, or they have obtained a following only for a time and their
+precepts have fallen into neglect. It has been well said that no race of
+men live up to their religion, however imperfect it may be. They first
+disregard it, and then at length degrade it, to suit their apostate
+character.
+
+Paul's estimate of heathen character was that of a man who, aside from
+his direct inspiration, spoke from a wide range of observation. He was a
+philosopher by education, and he lived in an age and amid national
+surroundings which afforded the broadest knowledge of men, of customs,
+of religious faiths, of institutions. Trained as a Jew, dealing
+constantly with the most enlightened heathen, persecuting the
+Christians, and then espousing their cause, his preparation for a broad,
+calm, and unerring judgment of the character of the Gentile nations was
+complete; and his one emphatic verdict was _apostasy_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 125: Fiske: _The Destiny of Man_, pp. 78-80.]
+
+[Footnote 126: We do not care to enter the field of pre-historic
+speculation where the evolution of religion from totemism or fetishism
+claims to find its chief support. We are considering only the
+traditional development of the ancient faiths of man.]
+
+[Footnote 127: _Introduction to Christian Theology_, Appendix, pp. 166,
+167.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Ebrard's _Apologetics_, vols. ii. and iii.]
+
+[Footnote 129: _Modern Atheism_, p. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 130: _The Chinese_, pp. 163, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 131: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Professor Banergea (see _Indian Antiquary_, February,
+1875) thinks that this Hindu account of creation shows traces of the
+common revelation made to mankind.]
+
+[Footnote 133: _Science of Religion_, p. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 134: _Science of Religion_, p. 88.]
+
+[Footnote 135: "The ancient relics of African faith are rapidly
+disappearing at the approach of Mohammedan and Christian missionaries;
+but what has been preserved of it, chiefly through the exertions of
+learned missionaries, is full of interest to the student of religion,
+with its strange worship of snakes and ancestors, its vague hope of a
+future life, and its not altogether faded reminiscence of a Supreme God,
+the Father of the black as well as of the white man."--_Science of
+Religion_, p. 39.]
+
+[Footnote 136: While he maintains that the idea of God must have
+preceded that of _gods_, as the plural always implies the singular, he
+yet claims very justly that the exclusive conception of monotheism as
+against polytheism could hardly have existed. Men simply thought of God
+as God, as a child thinks of its father, and does not even raise the
+question of a second.--See _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p.
+349.]
+
+[Footnote 137: St. Augustine, in quoting Cyprian, shows that the fathers
+of the Church looked upon Plato as a monotheist. The passage is as
+follows: "For when he (Cyprian) speaks of the Magians, he says that the
+chief among them, Hostanes, maintains that the true God is invisible,
+and that true angels sit at His throne; and that Plato agrees with this
+and believes in one God, considering the others to be demons; and that
+Hermes Trismegistus also speaks of one God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible." Angus., _De Baptismo contra Donat_., Lib. VI., Cap.
+XLIV.]
+
+[Footnote 138: _The Aryan Witness_, passim.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Aristotle said, "God, though He is one, has many names,
+because He is called according to the states into which He always enters
+anew."]
+
+[Footnote 140: _The Religions of China_, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 141: _The Religions of China_, p. 49.]
+
+[Footnote 142: "In the year 1600 the Emperor of China declared in an
+edict that the Chinese should adore, not the material heavens, but the
+_Master_ of heaven."--Cardinal Gibbons: _Our Christian Heritage_.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Martin: _The Chinese_, p. 106.]
+
+[Footnote 144: It has been related by Rev. Hudson Taylor that the
+fishermen of the Fukien Province, when a storm arises, pray to the
+goddess of the sea; but when that does not avail they throw all the
+idols aside and pray to the "Great-grandfather in Heaven." Father is a
+great conception to the Chinese mind. Great-grandfather is higher still,
+and stands to them for the Supreme.]
+
+[Footnote 145: _Science of Religion_, p. 86.]
+
+[Footnote 146: _The Chinese_, p. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 147: Other writers contend that he was probably
+contemporaneous with Abraham. Still others think Zoroaster a general
+name for great prophets. Darmestetter inclines to this view.]
+
+[Footnote 148: _Chips from a German Workshop._]
+
+[Footnote 149: Archbishop Vaughn, of Sydney, emphatically declares that
+the aborigines of Australia believe in a Supreme Being.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Rev. Mr. Johnson, of Lagos, has expressed a belief that
+the pagan tribes of West Africa were monotheists before the incursion of
+the Mohammedans. Rev. Alfred Marling, of Gaboon, bears the same
+testimony of the Fans.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Rev. A.C. Thompson, D.D. _The Moravians_.
+
+One of the early converts from among the Ojibwas, said to the
+missionary, Rev. S.G. Wright: "A great deal of your preaching I readily
+understand, especially what you say about our real characters. We
+Indians all know that it is wrong to lie, to steal, to be dishonest, to
+slander, to be covetous, and we always know that the Great Spirit hates
+all these things. All this we knew before we ever saw the white man. I
+knew these things when I was a little boy. We did not, however, know the
+way of pardon for these sins. In our religion there is nothing said by
+the wise men about pardon. We knew nothing of the Lord Jesus Christ as a
+Saviour."]
+
+[Footnote 152: Professor Tiele, of Leyden, asserts that "It is
+altogether erroneous to regard the Egyptian religion as the polytheistic
+degeneration of a prehistoric monotheism. It was polytheistic from the
+beginning." But on one of the oldest of Egyptian monuments is found this
+hymn, which is quoted by Cardinal Gibbons in _Our Christian
+Inheritance_:
+
+   "Hail to thee, say all creatures; ...
+   The gods adore thy majesty,
+   The spirits thou has made exalt thee,
+   Rejoicing before the feet of their begetter.
+   They cry out welcome to thee,
+   Father of the fathers of all the gods,
+   Who raises the heavens, who fixes the earth;
+   We worship thy spirit who alone hast made us,
+   We whom thou hast made thank thee that thou hast given us birth,
+   We give to thee praises for thy mercy toward us."]
+
+[Footnote 153: _Modern Atheism_, p. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 154: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii., pp. 146, 147.]
+
+[Footnote 155: _Science of Religion_, Lecture III., p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 156: Acts xvii. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 157: Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_.]
+
+[Footnote 158: Réville in his _Hibbert Lectures_ on Mexican and Peruvian
+religions asserts that polytheism existed from the beginning, but our
+contention is that One God was supreme and created the sun.]
+
+[Footnote 159: De Pressensé: _The Ancient World and Christianity_.]
+
+[Footnote 160: Bournouf found the Tantras so obscene that he refused to
+translate them.]
+
+[Footnote 161: T. Rhys Davids: _Buddhism_, p. 208.]
+
+[Footnote 162: _Report of Missionary Conference_, vol. i, p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 163: Buddhism, in the _Britannica_.]
+
+[Footnote 164: Rev. S.G. Wright, long a missionary among the American
+Indians, says: "During the forty-six years in which I have been laboring
+among the Ojibway Indians, I have been more and more impressed with the
+evidence, showing itself in their language, that at some former time
+they have been in possession of much higher ideas of God's attributes,
+and of what constitutes true happiness, immortality, and virtue, as well
+as of the nature of the Devil and his influence in the world, than those
+which they now possess. The thing which early in our experience
+surprised us, and which has not ceased to impress us, is, that, with
+their present low conceptions of spiritual things, they could have
+chosen so lofty and spiritual a word for the Deity. The only
+satisfactory explanation seems to be that, at an early period of their
+history, they had higher and more correct ideas concerning God than
+those which they now possess, and that these have become, as the
+geologists would say, _fossilized_ in their forms of speech, and so
+preserved."--_Bibliotheca Sacra_, October, 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 165: _Modern Atheism_, p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 166: I. Kings, xiv., and II. Kings, xxiii.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+INDIRECT TRIBUTES OF HEATHEN SYSTEMS TO THE DOCTRINES OF THE BIBLE
+
+
+I am to speak of certain indirect tributes borne by the non-Christian
+religions to the doctrines of Christianity. One such tribute of great
+value we have already considered in the prevalence of early monotheism,
+so far corroborating the scriptural account of man's first estate, and
+affording many proofs which corroborate the scriptural doctrine of human
+apostasy. Others of the same general bearing will now be considered. The
+history of man's origin, the strange traditions of his fall by
+transgression and his banishment from Eden, of the conflict of good with
+evil represented by a serpent, of the Deluge and the dispersion of the
+human race, have all been the subjects of ridicule by anti-Christian
+writers:--though by turns they have recognized these same facts and have
+used them as proofs that Christianity had borrowed them from old myths.
+The idea of sacrifice, or atonement, of Divine incarnation, of a
+trinity, of mediation, of a salvation by faith instead of one's own
+merits, have been represented as unphilosophical, and therefore
+improbable in the nature of the case.
+
+It becomes an important question, therefore, whether other religions of
+mankind show similar traditions, however widely they have dwelt apart,
+and however diversified their languages, literatures, and institutions
+may have been in other respects. And it is also an important question,
+whether even under heathen systems, the consciousness of sin and the
+deepest moral yearnings of men have found expression along the very
+lines which are represented by the Christian doctrines of grace. To
+these questions we now address ourselves. What are the lessons of the
+various ethnic traditions? And how are we to account for their striking
+similarities? The most obvious theory is, that a common origin must be
+assigned to them, that they are dim reminiscences of a real knowledge
+once clear and distinct. The fact that with their essential unity they
+differ from each other and differ from our Scriptural record, seems to
+rather strengthen the theory that all--our own included--have been
+handed down from the pre-Mosaic times--ours being divinely edited by an
+inspired and infallible author. Their differences are such as might have
+been expected from separate transmissions, independently made.
+
+We have, first of all, the various traditions of the Creation. In most
+heathen races there have appeared, in their later stages, grave and
+grotesque cosmogonies; and a too common impression is, that these
+represent the real teachings of their sacred books or their earliest
+traditions. But when one enters upon a careful study of the
+non-Christian religions, and traces them back to their sources, he finds
+more rational accounts of the Creation and the order of nature, and
+sees striking points of resemblance to the Mosaic record. The story of
+Genesis represents the "Beginning" as formless, chaotic, and dark. The
+Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The heavens and the
+earth were separated. Light appeared long before the sun and moon were
+visible, and the day and night were clearly defined. Creation proceeded
+in a certain order from vegetable to animal life, and from lower animals
+to higher, and last of all man appeared. In heathen systems we find
+fragments of this traditional account, and, as a rule, they are more or
+less clear in proportion to their nearness to, or departure from, the
+great cradle of the human race.[167] Thus Professor Rawlinson quotes
+from an Assyrian account of the creation, as found upon the clay tablets
+discovered in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, a description of
+formlessness, emptiness, and darkness on the deep--of a separation
+between the earth and sky--and of the light as preceding the appearance
+of the sun. That account also places the creation of animals before that
+of man, whom it represents as being formed of the dust of the earth, and
+as receiving a divine effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an
+Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of
+1,000 years each. In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the
+second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun,
+moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the
+sea; in the sixth, man. According to a passage in the Persian Avesta,
+the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods
+or thousands of years: in the first, the heavens with the stars; in the
+second, the water and the clouds; in the third, the earth and the
+mountains; in the fourth, the trees and the plants; in the fifth, the
+beasts which sprang from the primeval beast; in the sixth, man.[169]
+
+As we get farther away from the supposed early home of the race, the
+traditions become more fragmentary and indistinct. The Rig Veda,
+Mandala, x., 129, tells us that:
+
+     "In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught; There was
+     neither day nor night nor light nor darkness; Only the EXISTENT ONE
+     breathed calmly. Next came darkness, gloom on gloom. Next all was
+     water--chaos indiscrete."[170]
+
+Strikingly similar is the language quoted in a former lecture from the
+prayer of a Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty. It runs thus: "Of old,
+in the beginning, there was the great chaos without form and dark. The
+five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine.
+In the midst thereof there presented itself neither form nor sound.
+Thou, O Spiritual Sovereign, didst divide the grosser parts from the
+purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth: Thou madest man."
+
+There is a possibility that these conceptions may have come from
+Christian sources instead of primitive Chinese traditions, possibly from
+early Nestorian missionaries, though this is scarcely probable, as
+Chinese emperors have been slow to introduce foreign conceptions into
+their august temple service to Shangte; its chief glory lies in its
+antiquity and its purely national character. Buddhism had already been
+in China more than a thousand years, and these prayers are far enough
+from its teachings. May we not believe that the ideas here expressed had
+always existed in the minds of the more devout rulers of the empire? In
+similar language, the Edda of the Icelandic Northmen describes the
+primeval chaos.
+
+Thus:
+
+   "'Twas the morning of time
+    When yet naught was,
+    Nor sand nor sea was there,
+    Nor cooling streams.
+    Earth was not formed
+    Nor heaven above.
+    A yawning gap was there
+    And grass nowhere."
+
+Not unlike these conceptions of the "Beginning" is that which Morenhout
+found in a song of the Tahitans, and which ran thus:
+
+   "He was; Toaroa was his name,
+    He existed in space; no earth, no heaven, no men."
+
+M. Goussin adds the further translation: "Toaroa, the Great Orderer, is
+the origin of the earth: he has no father, no posterity."[171] The
+tradition of the Odshis, a negro tribe on the African Gold Coast,
+represents the creation as having been completed in six days. God
+created first the woman; then the man; then the animals; then the trees
+and plants; and lastly the rocks. God created nothing on the seventh
+day. He only gave men His commandments. The reversal of the order here
+only confirms the supposition that it is an original tradition. We find
+everywhere on the Western Hemisphere, north and south, plain recognition
+of the creation of the world by one Supreme God, though the order is not
+given. How shall we account for the similarities above indicated, except
+on the supposition of a common and a very ancient source?
+
+Still more striking are the various traditions of the Fall of man by
+sin. In the British Museum there is a very old Babylonian seal which
+bears the figures of a man and a woman stretching out their hands toward
+a fruit-tree, while behind the woman lurks a serpent. A fragment bearing
+an inscription represents a tree of life as guarded on all sides by a
+sword. Another inscription describes a delectable region surrounded by
+four rivers. Professors Rawlinson and Delitzsch both regard this as a
+reference to the Garden of Eden.
+
+"The Hindu legends," says Hardwick, "are agreed in representing man as
+one of the last products of creative wisdom, as the master-work of God;
+and also in extolling the first race of men as pure and upright,
+innocent and happy. The beings who were thus created by Brahma are all
+said to have been endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they
+abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts
+were free from guile; they were pure, made free from toil by observance
+of sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they
+were filled with perfect wisdom by which they contemplated the glory of
+Vishnu.
+
+"The first men were, accordingly, the best. The Krita age, the 'age of
+truth,' the reign of purity, in which mankind, as it came forth from the
+Creator, was not divided into numerous conflicting orders, and in which
+the different faculties of man all worked harmoniously together, was a
+thought that lay too near the human heart to be uprooted by the ills and
+inequalities of actual life. In this the Hindu sided altogether with the
+Hebrew, and as flatly contradicted the unworthy speculations of the
+modern philosopher, who would fain persuade us that human beings have
+not issued from one single pair, and also, that the primitive type of
+men is scarcely separable from that of ordinary animals...."[172]
+
+Spence Hardy, in speaking on this subject, describes a Buddhist legend
+of Ceylon which represents the original inhabitants of the world as
+having been once spotlessly pure, and as dwelling in ethereal bodies
+which moved at will through space. They had no need of sun or moon. They
+lived in perfect happiness and peace till, at last, one of their number
+tasted of a strange substance which he found lying on the surface of the
+earth. He induced others to eat also, whereupon all knew good and evil,
+and their high estate was lost. They now had perpetual need of food,
+which only made them more gross and earthly. Wickedness abounded, and
+they were in darkness. Assembling together, they fashioned for
+themselves a sun, but after a few hours it fell below the horizon, and
+they were compelled to create a moon.[173] An old Mongolian legend
+represents the first man as having transgressed by eating a pistache
+nut. As a punishment, he and all his posterity came under the power of
+sin and death, and were subjected to toil and suffering.[174] A
+tradition of the African Odshis, already named, relates that formerly
+God was very near to men. But a woman, who had been pounding banana
+fruit in a mortar, inadvertently entering His presence with a pestle in
+her hands, aroused His anger, and He withdrew into the high heavens and
+listened to men no more. Six rainless years brought famine and distress,
+whereupon they besought Him to send one of His counsellors who should be
+their daysman, and should undertake their cause and care for them. God
+sent his chief minister, with a promise that He would give rain and
+sunshine, and He directed that His rainbow should appear in the
+sky.[175] The inhabitants of Tahiti have a tradition of a fall which is
+very striking; and Humboldt, after careful study, reached the conclusion
+that it had not been derived through any communication with Christian
+lands, but was an old native legend. The Karens of Burmah had a story of
+an early temptation of their ancestors by an evil being and their
+consequent apostasy. Many other races who have no definite tradition of
+this kind have still some vague notion of a golden age in the past.
+There has been everywhere a mournful and pathetic sense of something
+lost, of degeneracy from better days gone by, of Divine displeasure and
+forfeited favor. The baffled gropings of all false religions seem to
+have been so many devices to regain some squandered heritage of the
+past. All this is strikingly true of China.
+
+Still more clear and wellnigh universal are the traditions of a flood.
+The Hindu Brahmanas and the Mahabharata of a later age present legends
+of a deluge which strikingly resemble the story of Genesis. Vishnu
+incarnate in a fish warned a great sage of a coming flood and directed
+him to build an ark. A ship was built and the sage with seven others
+entered. Attached to the horn of the fish the ship was towed over the
+waters to a high mountain top.[176] The Chinese also have a story of a
+flood, though it is not given in much detail. The Iranian tradition is
+very fragmentary and seems to confound the survivor with the first man
+of the creation. Yima, the Noah of the story, was warned by the
+beginning of a great winter rain, by which the waters were raised 19,000
+feet. Yima was commanded to prepare a place of safety for a number of
+chosen men, birds, and beasts. It was to be three stories high, and to
+be furnished with a high door and window, but whether it was a ship or a
+refuge on the mountain top does not appear. The same tradition speaks of
+Eden and of a serpent, but the account is suddenly cut short.[177]
+
+The Greek traditions of a flood varied according to the different
+branches of the Greek nation. The Arcadians traced their origin to
+Dardanus, who was preserved from the great flood in a skin-covered boat.
+The Pelasgians held the tradition of Deucalion and his wife, who were
+saved in a ship which was grounded on the summit of Pindus. As the water
+receded they sent out a dove to search for land. The Assyrian account,
+which was found a few years ago on a tablet in the palace of
+Assur-bani-pal, claims to have been related as a matter of personal
+experience by Sisit, the Chaldean Noah, who was commanded to construct a
+ship 600 cubits long, into which he should enter with his family and his
+goods. At the time appointed the earth became a waste. The very gods in
+heaven fled from the fury of the tempest and "huddled down in their
+refuge like affrighted dogs." The race of men was swept away. On the
+seventh day Sisit opened a window and saw that the rain was stayed, but
+the water was covered with floating corpses; all men had become as clay.
+The ship rested on a mountain top, and Sisit sent forth a dove, a
+swallow, and a raven. The dove and the swallow returned, but the raven
+was satisfied with the floating carcasses. Sisit went forth and offered
+sacrifice, around which "the gods hovered like flies."
+
+Professor Rawlinson thinks that these accounts and those given in
+Genesis were both derived from the earlier traditions, the Assyrian
+version having been greatly corrupted. The Chaldean tradition is
+slightly different. The Noah of the Chaldeans was commanded in a dream
+not only to build a ship, but to bury all important documents and so
+preserve the antediluvian history. As the flood subsided he, his family,
+and his pilot were transferred to heaven, but certain friends who were
+saved with them remained and peopled the earth. Among the ancient
+Peruvians we find a tradition of a great deluge which swept the earth.
+After it had passed, the aged man Wiracotscha rose out of Lake Titicaca
+and his three sons issued from a cave and peopled the earth.[178] Hugh
+Miller and others have named many similar traditions.
+
+The fact that in nearly every case those who were rescued from the flood
+immediately offered piacular sacrifices suggests the recognition in all
+human history of still another fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the
+universal sense of sin. This conviction was especially strong when the
+survivors of a Divine judgment beheld the spectacle of a race swept away
+for their transgressions; but there are abundant traces of it in all
+ages of the world. The exceptions are found in those instances where
+false systems of philosophy have sophisticated the natural sense of
+guilt by destroying the consciousness of personality. All races of men
+have shown a feeling of moral delinquency and a corresponding fear. The
+late C. Loring Brace, in his work entitled "The Unknown God," quotes
+some striking penitential psalms or prayers offered by the Akkadians of
+Northern Assyria four thousand years ago.
+
+The deep-seated conviction of guilt which is indicated by the old
+religion of the Egyptians is well set forth by Dr. John Wortabet, of
+Beyrut, in a pamphlet entitled "The Temples and Tombs of Thebes." He
+says: "The immortality of the soul, its rewards and punishments in the
+next world, and its final salvation and return into the essence of the
+divinity were among the most cherished articles of the Egyptian creed.
+Here (in the tombs), as on the papyri which contain the 'Ritual of the
+Dead,' are represented the passage of the soul through the nether world
+and its introduction into the Judgment Hall, where Osiris, the god of
+benevolence, sits on a throne, and with the assistance of forty-two
+assessors proceeds to examine the deceased. His actions are weighed in a
+balance against truth in the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of
+wisdom, and if found wanting he is hounded out in the shape of an
+unclean animal by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the infernal regions.
+The soul then proceeds in a series of transmigrations into the bodies of
+animals and human beings and thus passes through a purgatorial process
+which entitles it to appear again before the judgment-seat of Osiris. If
+found pure it is conveyed to Aalu, the Elysian fields, or the 'Pools of
+Peace.' After three thousand years of sowing and reaping by cool waters
+it returns to its old body (the preserved mummy), suffers another period
+of probation, and is ultimately absorbed into the godhead. One of the
+most impressive scenes in the whole series is that where the soul, in
+the form of a mummified body, stands before Osiris and the forty-two
+judges to be examined on the forty-two commandments of the Egyptian
+religion. Bearing on its face the signs of solemnity and fear, and
+carrying in its hand a feather, the symbol of veracity, it says among
+other things: 'I have not blasphemed the gods, I have defrauded no man,
+I have not changed the measures of Egypt, I have not prevaricated at the
+courts of justice, I have not lied, I have not stolen, I have not
+committed adultery, I have done no murder, I have not been idle, I have
+not been drunk, I have not been cruel, I have not famished my family, I
+have not been a hypocrite, I have not defiled my conscience for the sake
+of my superiors, I have not smitten privily, I have lived on truth, I
+have made it my delight to do what men command and the gods approve, I
+have given bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty and clothes to
+the naked, my mouth and hands are pure.' Now what strikes one with great
+force in this remarkable passage from the walls of the old sand-covered
+tombs is the wonderful scope and fulness with which the laws of right
+and wrong were stamped upon the Egyptian conscience. There is here a
+recognition, not only of the great evils which man shall not commit, but
+also of many of those positive duties which his moral nature requires.
+It matters not that these words are wholly exculpatory; they
+nevertheless recognize sin."
+
+But perhaps no one has depicted man's sense of guilt and fear more
+eloquently than Dean Stanley when speaking of the Egyptian Sphinx.
+Proceeding upon the theory that that time-worn and mysterious relic is a
+couchant lion whose projecting paws were long since buried in the desert
+sands, and following the tradition that an altar once stood before that
+mighty embodiment of power, he graphically pictures the transient
+generations of men, in all the sin and weakness of their frail humanity,
+coming up with their offerings and their prayers "between the paws of
+deity." It is a grim spectacle, but it emphasizes the sense of human
+guilt. Only the Revealed Word of God affords a complete and satisfactory
+explanation of the remarkable fact that the human race universally stand
+self-convicted of sin.
+
+There is also a tribute to the truth of Christianity in certain traces
+of a conception of Divine sacrifice for sin found in some of the early
+religious faiths of men. All are familiar with the difference between
+the offerings of Abel and those of Cain--the former disclosing a faith
+in a higher expiation. In like manner there appear mysterious references
+to a divine and vicarious sacrifice in the early Vedas of India. In the
+Parusha Sukta of the Rig Veda occurs this passage: "From him called
+Parusha was born Viraj, and from Viraj was Parusha produced, whom gods
+made their oblation. With Parusha as a victim they performed a
+sacrifice." Manu says that Parusha, "the first man," was called Brahma,
+and was produced by emanation from the "self-existent spirit." Brahma
+thus emanating, was "the first male," or, as elsewhere called, "the born
+lord." By him the world was made. The idea is brought out still more
+strikingly in one of the Brahmanas where the sacrifice is represented as
+voluntary and all availing. "Surely," says Sir Monier Williams, "in
+these mysterious allusions to the sacrifice of a representative man we
+may perceive traces of the original institution of sacrifice as a
+divinely appointed ordinance, typical of the one great offering of the
+Son of God for the sins of the world." The late Professor Banergea, of
+Calcutta, reaching the same conclusion, says: "It is not easy to account
+for the genesis of these ideas in the Veda, of 'one born in the
+beginning Lord of creatures,' offering himself a sacrifice for the
+benefit of deified mortals, except on the assumption that it is based
+upon the tradition of the 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the
+world.'"
+
+No doubt modern scepticism might be slow to acknowledge any such
+inference as this; but as Professor Banergea was a high-caste Hindu of
+great learning, and was well acquainted with the subtleties of Hindu
+thought, his opinion should have great weight. And when we remember how
+easily scientific scepticism is satisfied with the faintest traces of
+whatever strengthens its theories--how thin are some of the
+generalizations of Herbert Spencer--how very slight and fanciful are the
+resemblances of words which philologists often accept as indisputable
+proofs--how far-fetched are the inferences sometimes drawn from the
+appearance of half-decayed fossils as proofs and even demonstrations of
+the law of evolution--we need not be over-modest in setting forth these
+traces of an original divine element in the institution of typical
+sacrifices among men.
+
+It is never safe to assume positively this or that meaning for a
+mysterious passage found in the sacred books of non-Christian systems,
+but there are many things which seem at least to illustrate important
+precepts of the Christian faith. Thus the slain Osiris of the Egyptians
+was said to enter into the sufferings of mortals. "Having suffered the
+great wound," so the record runs, "he was wounded in every other wound."
+And we read in "The Book of the Dead" that "when the Lord of truth
+cleanses away defilement, evil is joined to the deity that the truth may
+expel the evil."[179] This seems to denote an idea of vicarious
+righteousness.
+
+The Onondaga Indians had a tradition that the celestial Hiawatha
+descended from heaven and dwelt among their ancestors, and that upon the
+establishment of the League of the Iroquois he was called by the Great
+Spirit to sanctify that League by self-sacrifice. As the Indian council
+was about to open, Hiawatha was bowed with intense suffering, which
+faintly reminds one of Christ's agony in Gethsemane. He foresaw that his
+innocent and only child would be taken from him. Soon after a messenger
+from heaven smote her to the earth by his side. Then, having drank this
+cup of sorrow, he entered the council and guided its deliberations with
+superhuman wisdom.[180] In citing this incident nothing more is intended
+than to call attention to some of the mysterious conceptions which seem
+to float dimly through the minds of the most savage races, and which
+show at the very least that the idea of vicarious sacrifice is not
+strange to mankind, but is often mysteriously connected with their
+greatest blessings. The legend of "Prometheus Bound," as we find it in
+the tragedies of Æschylus, is so graphic in its picture of vicarious
+suffering for the good of men that infidel writers have charged the
+story of the Cross with plagiarism, and have applied to Prometheus some
+of the expressions used in the fifty-third chapter of the Prophecy of
+Isaiah. We are often told that there is injustice in the very idea of
+vicarious suffering, as involved in the Christian doctrine of salvation,
+or that the best instincts of a reasonable humanity revolt against it.
+But such criticisms are sufficiently met by these analogies which we
+find among all nations.
+
+Let me next call attention to some of the predicted deliverers for whom
+the nations have been looking. Nothing found in the study of the
+religious history of mankind is more striking than the universality of a
+vague expectation of coming messiahs. According to the teachings of
+Hinduism there have been nine incarnations of Vishnu, of whom Buddha was
+admitted to be one. But there is to be a tenth avatar who shall yet come
+at a time of great and universal wickedness, and shall establish a
+kingdom of righteousness on the earth. Some years ago the Rev. Dr. John
+Newton, of Lahore, took advantage of this prediction and wrote a tract
+showing that the true deliverer and king of righteousness had already
+come in the person of Jesus Christ. So striking seemed the fulfilment
+viewed from the Hindu standpoint, that some hundreds in the city of
+Rampore were led to a faith in Christ as an avatar of Vishnu.
+
+A remarkable illustration of a felt want of something brighter and more
+hopeful is seen in the legends and predictions of the Teutonic and Norse
+religions. The faiths of all the Teutonic races were of the sternest
+character, and it was such a cultus that made them the terror of Europe.
+They worshipped their grim deities in the congenial darkness of deep
+forest shades. There was no joy, no sense of divine pity, no peace. They
+were conscious of deep and unutterable wants which were never met. They
+yearned for a golden age and the coming of a deliverer. Baldr, one of
+the sons of Woden, had passed away, but prophecy promised that he should
+return to deliver mankind from sorrow and from death. "When the twilight
+of the gods should have passed away, then amid prodigies and the crash
+and decay of a wicked world, in glory and joy he should return, and a
+glorious kingdom should be renewed." Or, in the words of one of their
+own poets:
+
+   "Then unsown the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr;
+    With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace,
+    Shrines of gods the great and holy,
+    There the just shall joy forever,
+          And in pleasure pass the ages."
+
+The well-known prediction of the Sibyl of Cumæ bears testimony to the
+same expectation of mankind. The genuine Sibylline Oracles were in
+existence anterior to the birth of Christ. Virgil died forty years
+before that event, and the well-known eclogue _Pollio_ is stated by him
+to be a transcript of the prophetic carmen of the Sibyl of Cumæ. But for
+the fact that it has a Roman instead of a Jewish coloring, it might
+almost seem Messianic. The oracle speaks thus: "The last era, the
+subject of the Sibyl song of Cumæ, has now arrived; the great series of
+ages begins anew. The virgin returns--returns the reign of Saturn. The
+progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy
+by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the
+whole world shall commence. Whilst thou, O Pollio, art consul, this
+glory of our age shall be made manifest, and the celestial months begin
+their revolutions. Under thy auspices whatever vestiges of our guilt
+remain, shall, by being atoned for, redeem the earth from fear forever.
+He shall partake of the life of the gods. He shall reign over a world in
+peace with his father's virtues. The earth, sweet boy, as her
+first-fruits, shall pour thee forth spontaneous flowers. The serpent
+shall die: the poisonous and deceptive tree shall die. All things,
+heavens and earth and the regions of the sea, rejoice at the advent of
+this age. The time is now at hand."[181] Forty years later the Christ
+appeared. Whether Virgil had been influenced by Hebrew prophecy it is
+impossible to say. It may be that the so-called Sibyl had caught
+something of the same hope which led the Magi of the East to the cradle
+of the infant Messiah, but in any case the eclogue voiced a vague
+expectation which prevailed throughout the Roman Empire.
+
+In modern as well as in ancient times nations and races have looked for
+deliverers or for some brighter hope. Missionaries found the Hawaiians
+dissatisfied and hopeless; their idols had been thrown away. The Karens
+were waiting for the arrival of the messengers of the truth. The
+Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish conquest, were looking for a
+celestial benefactor. The very last instance of an anxious looking for a
+deliverer is that which quite recently has so sadly misled our Sioux
+Indians.
+
+Mankind have longed not only for deliverers, but also for _mediators_.
+The central truth of the Christian faith is its divine sympathy and help
+brought down into our human nature. In other words, mediation--God with
+man. The faith of the Hindus, lacking this element, was cold and
+remorseless. Siva, the god of destruction, and his hideous and
+blood-thirsty wives, had become chief objects of worship, only because
+destruction and death led to life again. But there was no divine help.
+The gods were plied with sharp bargains in sacrifice and merit; they
+were appeased; they were cajoled; but there was no love. But the time
+came when the felt want of men for something nearer and more sympathetic
+led to the doctrine of Vishnu's incarnations: first grotesque deliverers
+in animal shapes, but at length the genial and sympathetic Krishna. He
+was not the highest model of character, but he was human. He had
+associated with the rustics and frolicked around their camp-fires. He
+became Arjuna's charioteer and rendered him counsel and help in that low
+disguise. He was a sharer of burdens--a counsellor and friend. And he
+became the most popular of all Hindu deities.
+
+The important point in all this is that this old system, so
+self-sufficient and self-satisfied, should have groped its way toward a
+divine sympathizer in human form, a living and helpful god among men.
+Hinduism had not been wanting in anthropomorphisms: it had imagined the
+presence of God in a thousand visible objects which rude men could
+appreciate. Trees, apes, cattle, crocodiles, and serpents had been
+invested with an in-dwelling spirit, but it had found no mediator. Men
+had been trying by all manner of devices to sublimate their souls, and
+climb Godward by their own self-mortification; but they had realized no
+divine help. To meet this want they developed a veritable doctrine of
+faith. They had learned from Buddhism the great influence and power of
+one who could instruct and counsel and encourage. Some Oriental scholars
+think that they had also learned many things from Christian
+sources.[182]
+
+However that may be--from whatever source they had gained this
+suggestion--they found it to accord with the deepest wants of the human
+heart. And the splendid tribute which that peculiar development bears to
+the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith, is all the more
+striking for the fact that it grew up in spite of the adamantine
+convervatism of a system, all of whose teachings had been in a precisely
+opposite direction. It was old Hinduism coming out of its intrenchments
+to pay honor to the true way of eternal life. Probably the doctrine
+first sprang from a felt want, but was subsequently reinforced by
+Christian influences.
+
+The late Professor Banergea, in his "Aryan Witness," gives what must be
+regarded as at least a very plausible account of the last development of
+the so-called Krishna cult, and of this doctrine of faith. He thinks
+that it borrowed very much from western monotheists. He quotes a passage
+from the Narada Pancharata, which represents a pious Brahman of the
+eighth century A.D., as having been sent to the far northwest, where
+"white-faced monotheists" would teach him a pure faith in the Supreme
+Vishnu or Krishna. He quotes also, from another and later authority, a
+dialogue in which this same Brahman reproved Vyasa for not having
+celebrated the praises of Krishna as supreme. This Professor Banergea
+regarded as proof that previously to the eighth century Krishna has been
+worshipped only as a demigod. But the whole drift of the old Brahmanical
+doctrines had been toward sacrifice as a debt and credit system, and
+that plan had failed. It had impoverished the land and ruined the
+people, and had brought no spiritual comfort. Men had found that they
+could not buy salvation.
+
+Moreover, Buddhism and other forms of rationalistic philosophy, after
+prolonged and thorough experiment, had also failed. The Hindu race had
+found that as salvation could not be purchased with sacrifices, neither
+could it be reasoned out by philosophy, nor worked out by austerities.
+It must come from a Divine helper. Thus, when Narada had wearied
+himself with austerities--so we read in the Narada Pancharata--he heard
+a voice from heaven saying: "If Krishna is worshipped, what is the use
+of austerities? If Krishna is _not_ worshipped, what is the use of
+austerities? If Krishna is within and without, what is the use of
+austerities? If Krishna is _not_ within and without, what is the use of
+austerities? Stop, O Brahman; why do you engage in austerities? Go
+quickly and get matured faith in Krishna, as described by the sect of
+Vishnu who snaps the fetters of the world." "We are thus led," says
+Professor Banergea, "to the very genesis of the doctrine of faith in
+connection with Hinduism. And it was admittedly not an excogitation of
+the Brahmanical mind itself. Narada had brought it from the land of 'the
+whites,' where he got an insight into Vishnu as the Saviour which was
+not attainable elsewhere." And he then persuaded the author of one of
+the Puranas to recount the "Lord's acts"--in other words, the history of
+Krishna, with the enforcement of faith in his divinity: "Change the
+name," says Banergea, "and it is almost Christian doctrine."[183]
+
+It is an interesting fact that Buddhism, in its progress through the
+centuries, has also wrought out a doctrine of faith by a similar
+process. It began as a form of atheistic rationalism. Its most salient
+feature was staunch and avowed independence of all help from gods or
+men. It emphasized in every way the self-sufficiency of one's own mind
+and will to work out emancipation. But when Buddha died no enlightened
+counsellor was left, and another Buddha could not be expected for four
+thousand years. The multitudes of his disciples felt that, theory or no
+theory, there was an awful void. The bald and bleak system could not
+stand on such a basis. The human heart cried out for some divine helper,
+some one to whom man could pray. Fortunately there were supposed to be
+predestined Buddhas.--"Bodisats"--then living in some of the heavens,
+and as they were preparing themselves to become incarnate Buddhas, they
+must already be interested in human affairs, and especially the
+Maitreyeh, who would appear on earth next in order.
+
+So Buddhism, in spite of its own most pronounced dogmas, began to pray
+to an unseen being, began to depend and trust, began to lay hold on
+divine sympathy, and look to heaven for help. By the seventh century of
+our era the northern Buddhists, whether influenced in part by the
+contact of Christianity, or not, had subsidized more than one of these
+coming Buddhas. They had a complete Trinity. One person of this Trinity,
+the everywhere present Avolokitesvara, became the chief object of
+worship, the divine helper on whom all dependence was placed. This
+mythical being was really the God of northern Buddhism in the Middle
+Ages, and is the popular sympathizer of all Mongolian races to the
+present day. In Thibet he is supposed to be incarnate in the Grand Lama.
+In China he is incarnate in Quanyen, the goddess of mercy. With sailors
+she is the goddess of the sea. In many temples she is invoked by the
+sick, the halt, the blind, the impoverished. Her images are sometimes
+represented with a hundred arms to symbolize her omnipotence to save.
+Beal says of this, as Banergea says of the faith element of the Krishna
+cult, that it is wholly alien to the religion whose name it bears: it is
+not Buddhism. He thinks that it has been greatly affected by Christian
+influences.
+
+Another mythical being who is worshipped as God in China and Japan, is
+Amitabba, a Dhyana or celestial Buddha, who in long kalpas of Time has
+acquired merit enough for the whole world. Two of the twelve Buddhist
+sects of Japan have abandoned every principle taught by Gautama, except
+his ethics, and have cast themselves upon the free grace of Amitabba.
+They have exchanged the old atheism for theism. They have given up all
+dependence on merit-making and self-help; they now rely wholly on the
+infinite merit of another. Their religious duties are performed out of
+gratitude for a free salvation wrought out for them, and no longer as
+the means of gaining heaven. They live by a faith which works by love.
+They expect at death an immediate transfer to a permanent heaven,
+instead of a series of transmigrations. Their Buddha is not dead, but he
+ever liveth to receive into his heavenly realm all who accept his grace,
+and to admit them to his divine fellowship forever. By a direct and
+complete imputation they are made sharers in his righteousness, and
+become joint heirs in his heavenly inheritance. Whatever the genesis of
+these strange cults which now prevail as the chief religious beliefs
+among the Mongolian races, they are marvellously significant. They have
+come almost to the very threshold of Christianity. What they need is the
+true Saviour and not a myth, a living faith and not an empty delusion.
+Nevertheless, they prove that faith in a divine salvation is the only
+religion that can meet the wants of the human soul.
+
+There is something very encouraging in these approaches toward the great
+doctrines of salvation. I do not believe that these sects have come so
+near to the true Messiah without the influence of the Spirit of God, and
+without more or less light from Christian sources. But partly they have
+been moved by those wants which Hinduism and Buddhism could not satisfy.
+The principle of their faith is worthy of recognition, and the
+missionary should say as Paul said: "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him
+declare I unto you."
+
+It is a very significant fact that most of the Brahmo Somajes of India
+have adopted Jesus Christ as the greatest of the world's prophets.
+Chunder Sen sometimes spoke of him as a devout Christian would speak.
+The Arya Somaj would not own His name, but it has graced its Hindu creed
+with many of His essential doctrines. Quite recently a new organ of the
+Brahmo Somaj, published at Hyderabad, has announced as its leading
+object, "to harmonize pure Hinduism and pure Christianity, with Christ
+as the chief corner-stone." In the exact words of this paper, called
+_The Harmony_, its aim is "to preach Christ as the eternal Son of God,
+as the Logos in all prophets and saints before and after the
+incarnation, as the incarnate, perfect righteousness by whose obedience
+man is made righteous.... Christ is the reconciliation of man with man,
+and of all men with God, the harmony of humanity with humanity, and of
+all humanity with Divinity." This prospectus condemns the average
+Christianity of foreigners in India--the over-reaching, "beef-eating,
+beer-drinking" Anglo-Saxon type, "which despises the Hindu Scriptures
+and yet belies its own;" but it exalts the spotless and exalted Christ
+and builds all the hopes of humanity upon Him. How will the mere
+philosopher explain this wonderful power of personality over men of all
+races, if it be not Divine?
+
+But perhaps the most remarkable tribute to the transcendent character of
+Christ is seen in the fact that _all_ sects of religionists, the most
+fanatical and irrational, seem to claim Him as in some sense their own.
+Mormonism, even when plunging into the lowest depths of degradation, has
+always claimed to rest on the redemption of Jesus Christ.
+Mohammedanism--even the Koran itself--has always acknowledged Christ as
+the only sinless prophet. All the others, from Adam to Mohammed, stand
+convicted of heinous offences, and they will not reappear on earth;
+while He who knew no sin shall, according to Mohammedan prophecy, yet
+come again to judge the earth. The worshippers of Krishna, some of whom
+are found among us in this land, claim Christ as one of the true avatars
+of Vishnu, and heartily commend His character and His teachings. Our
+western Buddhists are just now emphasizing the idea that Christ was the
+sacred Buddha of Palestine, that he studied and taught "the eight-fold
+path," became an arahat, and attained Nirvana, and that the Christian
+Church has only misrepresented His transcendent wisdom and purity. The
+ablest tract on Theosophy that I have yet seen is entitled "Theosophy
+the Religion of Jesus."
+
+How marvellous is all this--that Theosophists, Aryas, Brahmos,
+Buddhists, Moslems, though they hate Christianity and fight it to the
+death--still bow before the mild sceptre of Christ. As the central light
+of the diamond shines alike through every facet and angle, so His
+doctrine and character are claimed as the glory of every creed. Many
+types of heathen faiths honor Him, and many schools of philosophic
+scepticism. Some of the noblest tributes to His unearthly purity have
+been given by men who rejected His divinity. In spite of itself the most
+earnest thought of many races, many systems, many creeds, has
+crystallized around Him. History has made Him its moral centre, the
+calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the anniversary of His
+birth is the festival of the civilized world. The prediction that all
+nations should call Him blessed is already fulfilled.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 167: It is worthy of note that both the Pentateuch and most
+heathen traditions agree, as to the order or stages of creation, with
+the geological record of modern science.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Rawlinson: _Ancient Monarchies_.]
+
+[Footnote 169: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 170: Williams: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 171: De Quatrefages: _The Human Species_, p. 490.]
+
+[Footnote 172: _Christ and Other Masters_, p. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 173: _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 66.]
+
+[Footnote 174: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 176: _Indian Wisdom_, pp. 32, 393.]
+
+[Footnote 177: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 178: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 179: De Pressensé: _The Ancient World and Christianity_, p.
+87.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Schoolcraft: _Notes on the Iroquois_.]
+
+[Footnote 181: Quoted by Morgan in _St. Paul in Britain_, p. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The full development of the doctrine was not reached till
+far on in the Christian centuries. Hardwick: _Christ and Other Masters_,
+p. 204.]
+
+[Footnote 183: _Aryan Witness_, closing chapter.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+ETHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN PHILOSOPHIES
+
+
+It is not my purpose to discuss the comparative merits of philosophic
+systems, but only to consider some practical bearings of philosophy,
+ancient and modern, upon vital questions of morals and religion. There
+has been no lack of speculation in the world. For ages the most gifted
+minds have labored and struggled to solve the mysteries of the Universe
+and of its Author. But they have missed the all-important fact that with
+the heart, as well as with the intellect, men are to be learners of the
+highest wisdom, and that they are to listen to the voice of God not only
+in nature, but in the soul.
+
+So the old questions, still unsolved, are ever asked anew. The same
+wearying researches and the same confident assertions, to be replaced by
+others equally confident, are found both in the ancient and in the
+modern history of mankind. By wisdom the present generation has come no
+nearer to finding out God than men of the remotest times. The cheerless
+conclusion of agnosticism was reached in India twenty-four centuries
+ago, and Confucius expressed it exactly when he said, with reference to
+the future, "We do not know life; how can we know death?" This same
+dubious negation probably has the largest following of all types of
+unbelief in our time. It is not atheism: that, to the great mass of men,
+is unthinkable; it is easier to assume simply that "we do not know." Yet
+almost every form of agnosticism, ancient or modern, claims to possess a
+vast amount of very positive knowledge. Speculative hypothesis never
+employed the language of dogmatic assurance so confidently as now. Even
+theosophic occultism speaks of itself as "science."
+
+That which strikes one first of all in the history of philosophy is the
+similarity between ancient and modern speculations upon the great
+mysteries of the world.
+
+1. Notice with what accord various earlier and later theories dispense
+with real and personal creatorship in the origin of the universe. The
+atomic theory of creation is by no means a modern invention, and so far
+as evolution is connected with that hypothesis, evolution is very old.
+Mr. Herbert Spencer states his theory thus: "First in the order of
+evolution is the formation of simple mechanical aggregates of atoms,
+e.g., molecules, spheres, systems; then the evolution of more complex
+aggregations or organisms: then the evolution of the highest product of
+organization, thought; and lastly, the evolution of the complex
+relations which exist between thinking organisms, or society with its
+regulative laws, both civil and moral." Between these stages, he tells
+us, "there is no fixed line of demarcation.... The passage from one to
+the other is continuous, the transition from organization to thought
+being mediated by the nerve-system, in the molecular changes of which
+are to be found the mechanical correlates and equivalents of all
+conscious processes." It will be seen that this comprehensive statement
+is designed to cover, if not the creation, at least the creative
+processes of all things in the universe of matter and in the universe of
+thought.
+
+Mr. Spencer does not allude here to the question of a First Cause back
+of the molecules and their movements, though he is generally understood
+to admit that such a Cause may exist. He does not in express terms deny
+that at some stage in this development there may have been introduced a
+divine spark of immortal life direct from the Creator's hand. He even
+maintains that "the conscious soul is not the product of a collocation
+of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a Divine
+effluence."[184] Yet he seems to get on without any very necessary
+reliance upon such an intervention, since the development from the atom
+to the civilized man is "a continuous process," and throughout the whole
+course from molecule to thought and moral and social law, "there are no
+lines of demarcation." He leaves it for the believer in theistic
+evolution to show when and where and how the Divine effluence is
+introduced.
+
+Similar to this was the theory which the Hindu Kanada propounded more
+than two thousand years ago. As translated and interpreted by Colebrook,
+Kanada taught that two earthly atoms concurring by an unseen and
+peculiar virtue called "adrishta," or by the will of God, or by time, or
+by competent cause, constitute a double atom of earth; and by concourse
+of three binary atoms a tertiary atom is produced, and by concourse of
+four triple atoms a quaternary, and so on.[185] Thus the great earth is
+produced. The system of Lucretius was much the same, though neither
+Lucretius nor Spencer has recognized any such force as adrishta.[186]
+
+What seems to distinguish Mr. Spencer's theory is the extension of this
+evolutionary process to mind and spirit in the development of thought
+and feeling. He does not say that mind resides in the molecules, but
+that their movements attend (if they do not originate and control) the
+operation of the mind. Professor Leconte seems to go farther when he
+says that "in animals brain-changes are in all cases the cause of
+psychical phenomena; in man alone, and only in his higher activities,
+psychic changes precede and determine brain changes."[187] We shall see
+farther on that Mr. Spencer, in his theory of intuition, admits this
+same principle by logical inference, and traces even man's highest
+faculties to brain or nerve changes in our ancestors. Kanada also held
+that mind, instead of being a purely spiritual power, is atomic or
+molecular, and by logical deduction the mental activities must depend
+on the condition of the molecules.
+
+Ram Chandra Bose, in expounding Kanada's theory, says: "The general idea
+of mind is that _which is subordinate to substance_, being also found in
+intimate relations in an atom, and it is itself material." The early
+Buddhist philosophers also taught that physical elements are among the
+five "skandas" which constitute the phenomenal soul. Democritus and
+Lucretius regarded the mind as atomic, and the primal "monad" of
+Leibnitz was the living germ--smallest of things--which enters into all
+visible and invisible creations, and which is itself all-potential; it
+is a living microcosm; it is an immortal soul. These various theories
+are not parallels, but they have striking similarities. And I believe
+that Professor Tyndall, in his famous Belfast Address, virtually
+acknowledges Lucretius as the father of the modern atomic theories.
+Whether Lucretius borrowed them from India, we shall not stop to
+inquire, but we may safely assert that modern philosophers, German,
+French or English, have borrowed them from one or both.
+
+It is not my purpose to discuss the truth or falsity of the atomic
+theory, or the relation of mind to the movements of molecules in the
+brain; I simply point out the fact that this is virtually an old
+hypothesis; and I leave each one to judge how great a degree of light it
+has shed upon the path of human life in the ages of the past, how far it
+availed to check the decline of Greece and Rome, and how much of real
+moral or intellectual force it has imparted to the Hindu race. The
+credulous masses of men should not be left to suppose that these are new
+speculations, nor to imagine that that which has been so barren in the
+past can become a gospel of hope in the present and the future.
+
+The constant tendency with young students of philosophy, is to conclude
+that the hypotheses which they espouse with so much enthusiasm are new
+revelations in metaphysics and ethics as well as in physical
+science--compared with which the Christian cultus of eighteen centuries
+is now effete and doomed. It is well, therefore, to know that so far
+from these speculations having risen upon the ruins of Christianity,
+Christianity rose upon the ruins of these speculations as, in modified
+forms, they had been profoundly elaborated in the philosophies of Greece
+and Rome. Lucretius was born a century before the Christian era, and
+Democritus, whose disciple he became, lived earlier still. Kanada, the
+atomist philosopher of India, lived three centuries before Democritus.
+The early Christian fathers were perfectly familiar with the theories of
+Lucretius. We are indebted to Jerome for many of the facts which we
+possess concerning him. Nearly all the great leaders of the church, from
+Origen to Ambrose, had studied Greek philosophy, some of them had been
+its devotees before their conversion to the Christian faith. There is at
+least incidental evidence that the Apostle Paul was versed in the
+current philosophy as well as in the poetry of Greece.
+
+These great men--great in natural powers and in philosophic
+training--had seen just what the speculations of Democritus, Lucretius,
+Zeno, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle could do; they had indeed
+undermined the low superstitions of their time, but they had proved
+powerless to regenerate society, or even relieve the individual
+pessimism and despair of men like Seneca, Pliny, or Marcus Aurelius.
+Lucretius, wholly or partially insane, died by his own hand. The light
+of philosophy left the Roman Empire, as Uhlhorn and others have clearly
+shown, under the shadow of a general despair. And it was in the midst of
+that gloom that the light of Christianity shone forth. Augustine, who
+had fathomed various systems and believed in them, tells us that it was
+the philosophy which appeared in the writings and in the life of the
+Apostle Paul which finally wrought the great change in his career. Plato
+had done much; Paul and the Cross of Christ did infinitely more.
+
+The development of higher forms of life from lower by natural selection,
+as set forth by the late Charles Darwin, has been supposed to be an
+entirely new system. Yet the Chinese claim to have held a theory of
+development which represents the mountains as having once been covered
+by the sea. When the waters subsided small herbs sprang up, which in the
+course of ages developed into trees. Worms and insects also appeared
+spontaneously, like lice upon a living body; and these after a long
+period became larger animals--beetles became tortoises; worms, serpents.
+The mantis was developed into an ape, and certain apes became at length
+hairless. One of these by accident struck fire with a flint. The
+cooking of food at length followed the use of fire, and the apes, by
+being better nourished, were finally changed into men. Whether this
+theory is ancient or modern, it is eminently Chinese, and it shows the
+natural tendency of men to ascribe the germs of life to spontaneous
+generation, because they fail to see the Great First Cause who produces
+them. The one thing which is noticeable in nearly all human systems of
+religion and philosophy, is that they have no clear and distinct idea of
+creatorship. They are systems of evolution; in one way or another they
+represent the world as having _grown_. Generally they assume the
+eternity of matter, and often they are found to regard the present
+cosmos as only a certain stage in an endless circle of changes from life
+to death and from death to life. The world rebuilds itself from the
+wreck and débris of former worlds. It is quite consistent with many of
+these systems that there should be gods, but as a rule they recognize no
+God. While all races of men have shown traces of a belief in a Supreme
+Creator and Ruler far above their inferior deities, yet their
+philosophers, if they had any, have sooner or later bowed Him out.
+
+2. Most systems of philosophic speculation, ancient and modern, tend to
+weaken the sense of moral accountability. First, the atomic theory,
+which we have just considered, leads to this result by the molecular,
+and therefore purely physical, origin which it assigns to moral acts and
+conditions. We have already alluded to Herbert Spencer's theory of
+intuition. In the "Data of Ethics," page 123, he says: "I believe that
+the experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past
+generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous
+modifications, which by continued transmission and accumulation _have
+become in us certain faculties of moral intuition_, certain emotions
+corresponding to right and wrong conduct which have no apparent basis in
+the individual experiences of utility."
+
+It appears from this statement that, so far as we are concerned, our
+moral intuitions are the results of "nervous modifications," if not in
+ourselves, at least in our ancestors, so that the controlling influence
+which rules, and which ought to rule, our conduct is a nervous, and
+therefore a physical, condition which we have inherited. It follows,
+therefore, that every man's conscience or inherited moral sense is bound
+by a necessity of his physical constitution. And if this be so, why is
+there not a wide door here opened for theories of moral insanity, which
+might come at length to cast their shield over all forms and grades of
+crime? It is easy to see that, whatever theory of creation may be
+admitted as to the origin of the human soul, this hypothesis rules out
+the idea of an original moral likeness of the human spirit to a Supreme
+Moral Ruler of the universe, in whom righteousness dwells as an eternal
+principle; and it finds no higher source for what we call conscience
+than the accumulated experience of our ancestors.
+
+The materialistic view recently presented by Dr. Henry Maudsley, in an
+article entitled, "The Physical Basis of Mind"--an article which seems
+to follow Mr. Spencer very closely--would break down all moral
+responsibility. His theory that true character depends upon what he
+calls the reflex action of the nerve-cells; that acts of reason or
+conscience which have been put forth so many times that, in a sense,
+they perform themselves without any exercise of consciousness, are the
+best; that a man is an instinctive thief or liar, or a born poet,
+because the proper nervous structure has been fixed in his constitution
+by his ancestors; that any moral act, so long as it is conscious, is not
+ingrained in character, and the more conscious it is, the more dubious
+it is; and that "virtue itself is not safely lodged until it has become
+a habit"--in other words, till it has become an automatic and
+unconscious operation of the nerve-cells, such a doctrine, in its
+extreme logical results, destroys all voluntary and conscious loyalty to
+principle, and renders man a mere automatic machine.
+
+On the other hand Mr. A.R. Wallace, in combating the theory that the
+moral sense in man is based on the utility experienced by our ancestors,
+relates the following incident: "A number of prisoners taken during the
+Santal insurrection were allowed to go free on parole, to work at a
+certain spot for wages. After some time cholera attacked them and they
+were obliged to leave, but everyone of them returned and gave up his
+earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages with money in their girdles
+walked thirty miles back to prison rather than break their word. My own
+experience with savages has furnished me with similar, although less
+severely tested, instances; and we cannot avoid asking how it is that,
+in these few cases 'experience of utility' have left such an
+overpowering impression, while in others they have left none.... The
+intuitional theory which I am now advocating explains this by the
+supposition that there is a feeling--a sense of right and wrong--in our
+nature antecedent to, and independent of, experiences of utility."[188]
+
+3. Theories which confound the origin of man with that of brutes,
+whether in the old doctrine of transmigration or in at least some of the
+theories of evolution, involve a contradiction in man's ethical history.
+The confusion shown in the Buddhist Jatakas, wherein Buddha, in the
+previous existences which prepared him for his great and holy mission,
+was sometimes a saint and sometimes a gambler and a thief, is scarcely
+greater, from an ethical point of view, than that which evolution
+encounters in bridging the chasm between brute instinct and the lofty
+ethics of the perfected man.
+
+The lower grades of animal life know no other law than the instinct
+which prompts them to devour the types which are lower still. This
+destruction of the weaker by the stronger pervades the whole brute
+creation; it is a life of violence throughout. On the other hand, all
+weaker creatures, exposed to such ravages, protect themselves
+universally by deception. The grouse shields her young from hawks or
+other carnivora by running in the opposite direction, with the assumed
+appearance of a broken wing. The flat fish, to escape its mortal
+enemies, lies upon the bottom of the stream, scarcely distinguishable in
+color or appearance from the sand which constitutes its bed. Nature
+seems to aid and abet its falsehood by the very form which has been
+assigned to it. And so also the gift of transparency helps the chameleon
+in seeming to be a part of the green plant, or the brown bark, upon
+which it lies. And Professor Drummond, in his interesting account of his
+African travels, describes certain insects which render themselves
+indistinguishable either in color or in form from the branchings and
+exfoliation of certain grasses upon which they feed. Deception therefore
+becomes a chief resource of the weak, while violence is that of the
+strong. And those which are in the middle of the scale practise both.
+There are still other animals which are invested with attributes of all
+that is meanest and most contemptible in character. The sly and
+insinuating snake gliding noiselessly toward the victim of its envenomed
+sting--the spider which spreads forth its beautiful and alluring net,
+sparkling with morning dew, while it lurks in a secret corner, ready to
+fall upon its luckless prey--the sneaking and repulsive hyena, too
+cowardly to attack the strong and vigorous, but waiting for the
+crippled, the helpless, the sick, and dying--if all these are in the
+school of preparation for that noble stage of manhood when truth and
+righteousness shall be its crown of glory, then, where is the
+turning-point? Where do violence, meanness, and deception gradually beam
+forth into benevolence and truth?
+
+   "The spider kills the fly. The wiser sphinx
+    Stings the poor spider in the centre nerve,
+    Which paralyzes only; lays her eggs,
+    And buries with them with a loving care
+    The spider, powerless but still alive,
+    To warm them unto life, and afterward
+    To serve as food among the little ones.
+    This is the lesson nature has to teach,
+    'Woe to the conquered, victory to the strong.'
+    And so through all the ages, step by step,
+    The stronger and the craftier replaced
+    The weaker, and increased and multiplied.
+    And in the end the outcome of the strife
+    Was man, who had dominion over all,
+    And preyed on all things, and the stronger man
+    Trampled his weaker brother under foot."
+
+Mr. John Fiske maintains that mankind, during the previous bestial
+period, were compelled like all other animals to maraud and destroy, as
+a part of the plan of natural selection in securing the survival of the
+fittest; the victories of the strong over the weak were the steps and
+stages of the animal creation in its general advancement. And he further
+states that, even after man had entered upon the heritage of his
+manhood, it was still for a time the true end of his being to maraud as
+before and to despoil all men whose weakness placed them in his power.
+It was only thus that the steady improvement of the race could be
+secured; and in that view it was man's duty to consult the dictates of
+selfishness and cruelty rather than those of kindness. To use Mr.
+Fiske's own words, "If we could put a moral interpretation upon events
+which antedated morality as we understand it, we should say it was their
+duty to fight; and the reverence accorded to the chieftain who murdered
+most successfully in behalf of his clansmen was well deserved."[189]
+
+Much to the same effect writes Professor Leconte. "In organic evolution
+the weak, the sick, the helpless, the unfit in anyway, perish, _and
+ought to perish_, because this is the most efficient way of
+strengthening the _blood or physical nature_ of the species, and thus of
+carrying forward evolution. In human evolution (which occurs at an
+advanced stage) the weak, the helpless, the sick, the old, the unfit in
+anyway, are sustained, _and ought to be sustained_, because sympathy,
+love, pity, strengthen the _spirit and moral nature_ of the race."[190]
+There is this difference, however, between this statement and that of
+Mr. Fiske, that it does not indicate at what point "human evolution"
+begins; it does not expressly declare that the subject of evolution,
+even after he has become a man, is still for a time in duty bound to
+fight in the interest of selfishness and natural selection. Still he
+reverses the "ought" as he advances from organic to human evolution.
+
+According to both authors, when, in view of new environments and new
+social requirements, it became more advantageous to each individual man
+that he should cease to maraud, should learn to regard the rights of
+others, should respect the family relation, and subordinate his selfish
+interest to the general good; then altruism dawned upon the world, moral
+principle appeared, and the angel of benevolence and love became
+enshrined in the human breast. Step by step this favored being, the
+ideal of natural selection in all her plans, advanced to a stage in
+which it became incumbent to even subordinate self to the good of
+others, not only to spare the weak but to tenderly care for them, and
+even to love those who have treated him with unkindness and abuse. While
+in the early stages the law of life and progress had been the sacrifice
+of others for selfish good; now the crowning glory consists in
+self-sacrifice for the good of all but self.
+
+The logical result of this reasoning cannot escape the notice of any who
+carefully consider it. If, for any reason, any community of human beings
+should decline in moral and intellectual character until they should
+finally reach the original state of savagery, it would again become
+their duty to lay aside all high ethical claims as no longer suited to
+their condition. The extraneous complications which had grown out of
+mere social order having passed away, rectitude also would pass away;
+benevolence, philanthropy, humanity, would be wholly out of place, and
+however lovely Christian charity might appear from a sentimental point
+of view, it would be ill adapted to that condition of society. In such a
+state of things the strong and vigorous, if sacrificing themselves to
+the weak, would only perpetuate weakness, and it would be their duty
+rather to extirpate them, and by the survival only of the fittest to
+regain the higher civilization. I state the case in all its naked
+deformity, because it shows the confusion and darkness of a world in
+which God is not the moral centre.
+
+And here, as already stated, modern speculation joins hands with the old
+heathen systems. According to Hindu as well as Buddhist philosophy, this
+retrograde process might not only carry civilized man back to savagery,
+but might place him again in the category of brutes. If tendencies
+control all things and have no limit, why might they not remand the
+human being to lower and lower forms, until he should reach again the
+status of the mollusk?
+
+Now, over against all the systems which make mind either a product or a
+phenomenon of matter, we have the Scriptural doctrine that man was
+created in the image of God. This fact explains the differences which
+distinguish him from the beasts of the field; for even in his lowest
+estate he is amenable to the principle of right and wrong. Paul taught,
+in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, that when men descend
+to the grade of beasts--and he shows that they may descend even below
+the dignity of beasts--so far from becoming exempt from moral claims,
+they fall under increased condemnation. The old Hindu systems taught
+that there can be no release from the consequences of evil acts. They
+traced them from one rebirth to another in kharma, as modern speculation
+traces them physically in heredity. The one saw no relief except in the
+changes of endless transmigrations, the other finds it only in the
+gradual readjustment of the nerve-cells. But we know by observation and
+experience that the spiritual power of the Holy Ghost can transform
+character at once. No fact in the history of Christianity is more firmly
+or more widely established than this. The nerve-tissues to the contrary
+notwithstanding, the human soul may be born again. The persecuting Saul
+may become at once a chief apostle. The blasphemer, the sot, the
+debauchee, the murderer, may be transformed to a meek and sincere
+Christian. Millions of the heathen, with thousands of years of savage
+and bestial heredity behind them, have become pure and loyal disciples
+of the spotless Redeemer. The fierce heathen Africaner, as well as the
+dissolute Jerry McCauley, have illustrated this transforming power.
+
+Professor Huxley and others, in our time, are trying to elaborate some
+basis of ethics independently of religion. But, as a matter of fact,
+these very men are living on conventional moral promptings and
+restraints derived from the Bible. The best basis of morals yet known is
+that of Christianity, and it is from its high and ennobling cultus that
+even the enemies of the truth are deriving their highest inspiration.
+Mr. Goldwin Smith, in an able article published in the _Forum_ of April,
+1891, on the question, "Will Morality Survive Faith?" shows at least
+that the best ethics which the world now has are the outcome of
+religious belief and of Christian belief, and he leads the minds of his
+readers to gravely doubt whether a gospel of agnostic evolution could
+ever produce those forces of moral prompting and restraint which the
+centuries of Christianity have developed. He does not hesitate to assert
+that those who hold and advocate the modern anti-theistic speculations
+are themselves living upon the influence of a Christian cultus which has
+survived their faith. A true test of their principles could only be made
+when a generation should appear upon which no influence of Christian
+parents still remained, and in a society in which Christian sentiment
+no longer survived.[191] It may be said that the _truth_ must be
+received without regard to the results which may follow. This is
+admitted, but the same cannot be said of _theories_. If there is
+perfect harmony between all truths in the physical and the moral world,
+then all these should have their influence in reaching final
+conclusions.
+
+4. The philosophies, ancient and modern, have agreed in lowering the
+common estimate of man as man; they have exerted an influence the
+opposite of that in which the New Testament pleads for a common and an
+exalted brotherhood of the race.
+
+Hinduism raised the Brahman almost to the dignity of the gods, and
+debased the Sudra to a grade but a little higher than the brute. Buddha
+declared that his teachings were for the wise, and not for the simple.
+The philosophers of Greece and Rome, even the best of them, regarded
+the helot and the slave as of an inferior grade of beings--even though
+occasionally a slave by his superior force rose to a high degree. In
+like manner the whole tendency of modern evolution is to degrade the
+dignity and sacredness of humanity. It is searching for "missing links;"
+it measures the skulls of degraded races for proofs of its theories. It
+has travellers and adventurers on the lookout for tribes who have no
+conception of God, and no religious rites; it searches caves and dredges
+lakes for historical traces of man when he had but recently learned to
+"stand upright upon his hind legs." The lower the types that can be
+found, the more valuable are they for the purposes required. All this
+tends to the dishonoring of the inferior types of men. Wherever
+Christianity had changed the old estimates of the philosophers, and had
+led to the nobler sentiment that God had made of one blood all nations
+and races, and had stamped His own image on them all, and even redeemed
+them all by the sacrifice of His Son, the speculations of sceptical
+biology have in a measure counteracted its benign influence. They have
+fostered the contempt of various classes for a dark skin or an inferior
+civilization. They indirectly encourage those who, with little merit of
+their own, speak contemptuously of the "Buck Indian," "the Nigger," the
+"Heathen Chinee." They encourage the "hoodlum," and so far as they have
+any influence, give an implied sanction to much unrighteous legislation.
+
+Even Peschel, who will not be suspected of any bias toward Christianity,
+has said on this subject: "This dark side of the life of uncivilized
+nations has induced barbarous and inhuman settlers in transoceanic
+regions to assume as their own a right to cultivate as their own the
+inheritance of the aborigines, and to extol the murder of races as a
+triumph of civilization. Other writers, led away by Darwinian dogmas,
+fancied that they had discovered populations which had, as it were,
+remained in a former animal condition for the instruction of our times."
+And he adds: "Thus in the words of a 'History of Creation,' in the taste
+now prevalent, 'in Southern Asia and the East of Africa men live in
+hordes, mostly climbing trees and eating fruit, unacquainted with fire,
+and using no weapons but stones and clubs, after the manner of the
+higher apes.' It can be shown," he continues, "that these statements are
+derived from the writings of a learned scholar of Bonn on the condition
+of savage nations, the facts of which are based either on the
+depositions of an African slave of the Doko tribe, a dwarfish people in
+the south of Shoa, or on the assertions of Bengalese planters, or
+perhaps on the observations of a sporting adventurer, that a mother and
+daughter, and at another time a man and woman, were found in India in a
+semi-animal condition. On the other hand, not only have neither nations,
+nor even hordes, in an ape-like condition ever been encountered by any
+trustworthy traveller of modern times, but even those races which in the
+first superficial descriptions were ranked far below our grade of
+civilization have, on nearer acquaintance, been placed much nearer the
+civilized nations. No portion of the human race has yet been discovered
+which does not possess a more or less rich vocabulary, rules of
+language, artificially pointed weapons, and various implements, as well
+as the art of kindling fire.[192]"
+
+The assertion has been made again and again that races are found which
+are possessed of no knowledge or conception of Deity, but this
+assumption has been thoroughly refuted by Max Müller and many others.
+
+There is a very general assumption abroad in the world that bigotry and
+even bias of judgment belong exclusively to the advocates of religious
+truth, and that the teachers of agnostic science are, in the nature of
+the case, impartial and therefore authoritative. But the generalizations
+which have been massed by non-Christian anthropologists and sociologists
+are often gleaned and culled under the strongest subserviency to some
+favorite hypothesis, and that on the most superficial observation and
+from the most unreliable authorities. De Quatrefages, an anthropologist
+of profound learning, and certainly with no predilections for Christian
+theism, in speaking of the alleged evidences given by Sir John Lubbock
+and Saint-Hilaire to show that many races of men have been found
+destitute of any conception of Deity, says: "When the writers against
+whom I am now arguing have to choose between two evidences, the one
+attesting, and the other denying, the existence of religious belief in a
+population, it is always the latter which they seem to think should be
+accepted. More often than not, they do not even mention the contrary
+evidences, however definite, however authentic they may be. Now, it is
+evidently much _easier not to see_ than to _discover_ that which may be
+in so many ways rendered inappreciable to our eyes. When a traveller
+states that he has proved the existence of religious sentiments in a
+population which by others has been declared destitute of them, when he
+gives precise details upon such a delicate question, he has
+unquestionably at least probability in his favor. I see nothing to
+authorize this rejection of _positive evidence_ and unconditional
+acceptance of _negative evidence_. This, however, is too often the case.
+I might justify this imputation by taking one by one almost all the
+examples of so-called atheist populations pointed out by different
+authors."[193] De Quatrefages then proceeds to show how, with respect to
+American tribes, Robertson is quoted while D'Orbigny is passed in
+silence, even though he has by the testimony of many authors disproved
+the statements of Robertson; how Baegert's negative and sweeping
+statements in regard to the California tribes are accepted, while the
+very specific testimony of De Mofras in regard both to the fact and to
+the nature of their worship is rejected. In relation to the Mincopies,
+Mouat (negative) is adopted against Symes and Day. The Hottentots are
+adjudged atheistic on the testimony of Le Vaillant, in spite of the
+united witness of Kolben, Saar, Tachard, Boeving, and Campbell. The
+Kaffirs are declared to be destitute of religion on the statements of
+Burchel, while Livingstone and Cazalis have given clear accounts of the
+religion of the different Kaffir tribes.
+
+In a similar manner Professor Flint, of Edinburgh, arraigns Sir John
+Lubbock and certain other advocates of the atheistic theory concerning
+savage tribes, for the partiality of their selection of testimony and
+for the superficial evidence which they accept when favorable to their
+theories. After reviewing Lubbock's wholesale quotations concerning the
+Indian tribes of Brazil, he says, "These are Sir John Lubbock's
+instances from South American tribes. But I find that they are all
+either erroneous or insufficiently established." And he gives many
+counter-proofs. "It will never do," he says, "to believe such sweeping
+statements--sweeping negatives--merely because they happen to be
+printed." Farther on he adds: "But I think that he (Lubbock) might have
+told us that Humboldt, whose travels in South America were so extensive,
+whose explorations were so varied, scientific, and successful, and who
+certainly was uninfluenced by traditional theological beliefs, _found no
+tribes and peoples without a religion_; and that Prince Max von Neuwied
+tells us that in all his many and wide wanderings in Brazil he had found
+no tribes the members of which did not give manifest signs of religious
+feelings."
+
+In the appendix of the book from which these extracts are made,
+Professor Flint says: "No one, I think, who has not a theory to maintain
+can consider the circumstances in which most of the Brazilian Indian
+tribes are placed without coming to the conclusion that they must have
+sunk from a higher intellectual and religious level."
+
+I have dwelt at length upon these arraignments of the careless and
+biased utterances of supposed scientists, because it is so much the
+fashion of our times to support certain theories of anthropology by
+massing the supposed evidences of man's degradation found, even now, in
+the environments of savage life. Many readers, apparently dazed by the
+vast accumulation of indiscriminate and heterogeneous statements which
+they have no time to examine, yield an easy and blind assent, based
+either on the supposed wisdom of the writer or upon the fact that so
+many others believe, and they imagine that no little courage is required
+on their part to risk the loss of intellectual caste. A vast amount of
+the thinking of our age, although it claims to be scientific, is really
+a matter of simple faith--faith in the opinions and dicta of
+distinguished leaders. And under such circumstances, is it not our
+privilege and our duty as Christian men to at least challenge and
+cross-question those theories which depress and dishonor our common
+humanity before we yield them our assent?
+
+The majority of scientists now so confidently assume the certain
+derivation of man from lower orders of life, that, as Max Müller has
+expressed it, their intolerance greets "with a perfect howl of derision
+a man like Virchow," who dares to declare that proof of man's derivation
+from animals is still wanting. Nevertheless Virchow, himself an
+evolutionist, maintains his ground, as the following passage quoted some
+months since from _The London Tablet_ will show:
+
+"Some sensation has been caused at the recent Anthropological Congress
+in Vienna by the speech of the great Berlin biologist, Professor
+Virchow. About a year ago Virchow, on a similar occasion, made a severe
+attack on the Darwinian position, and this year he is similarly
+outspoken. We make the following extracts from his long address to the
+Congress:
+
+"'Twenty years ago, when we met at Innspruck, it was precisely the
+moment when the Darwinian theory had made its first victorious mark
+throughout the world. My friend Vogt at once rushed into the ranks of
+the champions of this doctrine. We have since sought in vain for the
+intermediate stages which were supposed to connect man with the apes;
+the proto-man, the pro-anthropos is not yet discovered. For
+anthropological science the pro-anthropos is not even a subject of
+discussion. The anthropologist may, perhaps, see him in a dream, but as
+soon as he awakes he cannot say that he has made any approach toward
+him. At that time in Innspruck the prospect was, apparently, that the
+course of descent from ape to man would be reconstructed all at once,
+but now we cannot even prove the descent of the separate races from one
+another.[194] At this moment we are able to say that among the peoples
+of antiquity no single one was any nearer to the apes than we are. At
+this moment I can affirm that there is not upon earth any absolutely
+unknown race of men. The least known of all are the peoples of the
+central mountainous districts of the Malay peninsula, but otherwise we
+know the people of Terra del Fuego quite as well as the Eskimo,
+Bashkirs, Polynesians, and Lapps. Nay! we know more of many of these
+races than we do of certain European tribes. I need only mention the
+Albanians. Every living race is still human; no single one has yet been
+found that we can designate as Simian or quasi-Simian. Even when in
+certain ones phenomena appear which are characteristic of the
+apes--e.g., the peculiar ape-like projections of the skull in certain
+races--still we cannot on that account alone say that these men are
+ape-like. As regards the Lake dwellings, I have been able to submit to
+comparative examination nearly every single skull that has been found.
+The result has been that we have certainly met with opposite
+characteristics among various races; but of all these there is not one
+that lies outside of the boundaries of our present population. It can
+thus be positively demonstrated that in the course of five thousand
+years no change of type worthy of mention has taken place. If you ask me
+whether the first man were white or black, I can only say I don't know.'
+
+"Professor Virchow thus summed up the question as to what
+anthropological science during the last forty years has gained, and
+whether, as many contend, it has gone forward or backward.
+
+"'Twenty years ago the leaders of our science asserted that they knew
+many things which, as a matter of fact, they did not know. Nowadays we
+know what we know. I can only reckon up our account in so far as to say
+that we have made no debts; that is, we have made no loan from
+hypotheses; we are in no danger of seeing that which we know over-turned
+in the course of the next moment. We have levelled the ground so that
+the coming generation may make abundant use of the material at their
+disposition. As an attainable objective of the next twenty years, we
+must look to the anthropology of the European nationalities.'"
+
+5. Another demoralizing type of speculation which has exerted a wide
+influence in many ages and on many nations is pantheism. By abdicating
+the place and function of the conscious ego, by making all things mere
+specialized expressions of infinite Deity, and yet failing to grasp any
+clear conception of what is meant by Deity, men have gradually
+destroyed that sense of moral responsibility which the most savage show
+to have been a common heritage. It is not among the lowest and most
+simple races that missionaries find the greatest degree of obtuseness
+and insensibility with respect to sin; it is among populations like
+those of India, where the natural promptings of conscience have been
+sophisticated by philosophic theories. The old Vedantism, by
+representing all things as mere phenomenal expressions of infinite
+Brahm, tended necessarily to destroy all sense of personal
+responsibility. The abdication of the personal ego is an easy way of
+shifting the burden of guilt. The late Naryan Sheshadri declared that
+one thing which led him to renounce Hinduism was the fact that, when he
+came to trace its underlying principles to their last logical result he
+saw no ground of moral responsibility left. It plunged him into an abyss
+of intellectual and moral darkness without chart or compass. It
+paralyzed conscience and moral sensibility.
+
+It is equally impossible to reason ourselves into any consciousness of
+merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose
+behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations
+within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot
+foresee. It makes little difference whether we build our faith upon the
+god of pantheism or upon the unknowable but impersonal force which is
+supposed to move the world, which operates in the same ways upon all
+grades of existence from the archangel to the mote in the sunbeam,
+which moves the molecules of the human brain only as it stirs the
+globules of sap in the tree or plant. It is difficult to see how, upon
+any such hypothesis, we are any more responsible for our volitions and
+affections than we are for our heart-beats or respirations. And yet we
+are conscious of responsibility in the one case and not in the other.
+Consciousness comes in with tremendous force at just this point, all
+theories and speculations to the contrary notwithstanding. And we dare
+not disregard its testimony or its claims. We know that we are morally
+responsible.
+
+6. Many philosophic systems, ancient and modern, have tended to fill the
+world with gloomy pessimism. Pessimism is very old and very widespread.
+Schopenhauer acknowledges his indebtedness to Gautama for much of the
+philosophy which is known by his name. In Hinduism and Buddhism, as well
+as in the teachings of the German pessimists, the natural complainings
+of the human heart are organized into philosophical systems. There is in
+all human nature quite enough of querulousness against the unequal
+allotments of Providence, but all these systems inculcate and foster
+that discontent by the sanctions of philosophy. The whole assumption of
+"The Light of Asia" is that the power that upholds and governs the world
+is a hard master, from whose leash we should escape if we can by
+annihilating our powers and faculties, and abdicating our conscious
+being; that the world and the entire constitution of things are all
+wrong; that misery is everywhere in the ascendant, and that man and
+beast can only make common cause against the tyranny of a reckless
+fate, and cry out with common voice for some sympathizing benefactor who
+can pity and deliver. There is no hint that sin has wrought the evil.
+Man is not so much a sinner as the victim of a hard lot; he is
+unfortunate, and it is the world that is wrong. Therefore the true end
+of life is to get rid of the recurrence of life.
+
+In much of our modern agnosticism there is the same dark outlook, and
+agnosticism naturally joins hands with pessimism. Dr. Noah Porter, in
+one of the series of "Present-Day Tracts," has shown it to be a doctrine
+of despair. A well-known lecturer who has loudly declaimed against what
+he considers the remorseless character of the Old Testament, has
+acknowledged that it is not more cruel than nature; that in the actual
+world about us we find the same dark mystery, the weak perishing before
+the strong, the wicked prosperous, the just oppressed, and the innocent
+given as a prey to the guilty; and his conclusion is that deism is no
+more defensible than Christianity. His pessimistic estimate of the
+actual world drives him to a disbelief in a personal God.
+
+We do not ignore the sad facts of life; even the Christian is often
+saddened by the mysteries which he cannot explain. Bishop J. Boyd
+Carpenter, in speaking of the sad and cheerless spirit of Buddhism, has
+said: "There are moments in which we are all Buddhists; when life has
+disappointed us, when weariness is upon us, when the keen anguish born
+of the sight of human suffering appals and benumbs us, when we are
+frozen to terror, and our manhood flies at the sight of the Medusa-like
+head of the world's unappeased and unappeasable agony; then we too are
+torn by the paroxysm of anguish; we would flee to the Nirvana of
+oblivion and unconsciousness, turning our back upon what we cannot
+alleviate, and longing to lay down the burden of life, and to escape
+from that which has become insupportable."[195] But these are only the
+dark and seemingly forsaken hours in which men sit in despair beneath
+the juniper-tree and imagine that all the world has gone wrong. The
+juniper-tree in Christianity is the exception; the Bo-tree of Buddhism,
+with the same despondent estimate, is the rule. No divine message came
+to show the Buddha a brighter side. And the agnostic stops his ears that
+no voice of cheer may be heard. The whole philosophy of Buddhism and of
+modern agnosticism is pessimistic. The word and Spirit of God do not
+deny the sad facts of human life in a world of sin, but they enable the
+Christian to triumph over them, and even to rejoice in tribulation.
+
+7. And this leads to one more common feature of all false systems, their
+fatalism. Among the exaggerated claims which are made for heathen
+religions in our day, it is alleged that they rest upon a more humane
+philosophy than appears in the grim fatalism of our Christian theology,
+especially that of the Calvinistic type. Without entering upon any
+defence of Christian doctrines of one type or another, it would be easy
+to show that fatalism, complete and unmitigated, is at the foundation of
+all Oriental religion and philosophy, all ancient or modern pantheism,
+and most of the various types of agnosticism. While this has been the
+point at which all infidel systems have assailed the Christian faith, it
+has nevertheless been the goal which they have all reached by their own
+speculations. They have differed from Christianity in that their
+predestinating, determining force, instead of being qualified by any
+play of free-will, or any feasible plan of ultimate and superabounding
+good, has been a real fatalism, changeless, hopeless, remorseless. That
+the distaff of the Fates, and the ruthless sceptre of the Erinnys,
+entered in full force into all the religions of the Greeks and Romans,
+scarcely needs to be affirmed. They controlled all human affairs, and
+even the gods were subject to them. The Sagas of the Northmen also were
+full of fatalism, and that principle still survives in the folk-lore and
+common superstitions of all Scandinavian, Teutonic, and Celtic races.
+
+The fatalism of the Hindus is plainly stated in the "Code of Manu,"
+which declares that, "in order to distinguish actions, he (the creator)
+separated merit from demerit. To whatever course of action the Lord
+appointed each kind of being, that alone it has spontaneously adopted in
+each succeeding creation. Whatever he has assigned to each at the first
+creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or
+sin, truth or falsehood, that clings to it."[196] The same doctrine is
+put in still more offensive form when it is declared that "Manu (here
+used in the sense of creator) allotted to woman a love of her bed, of
+her seat, of ornament, also impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, and bad
+conduct."[197] There would be some relief from this horrible doctrine if
+in subsequent chapters of Manu there were kindly tokens of grace, or
+sympathy for woman, or any light of hope here or hereafter; but the
+whole teaching and spirit of the "Code" rests as an iron yoke upon
+womanhood, and it is largely a result of this high authority that the
+female sex has for ages been subjected to the most cruel tyranny and
+degradation. It might well be said that, in spite of the horrors of
+infanticide, the most merciful element of Hinduism with respect to woman
+is the custom by which so large a proportion of female children have
+been destroyed at birth. The same fatalistic principles affect all ranks
+and conditions of Hindu society. The poor Sudra is not only low-born and
+degraded, but he is immovably fixed in his degradation. He is cut off
+from all hope or aspiration; he cannot rise from the thraldom of his
+fate. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna declares to Arjuna that it is
+
+   "Better to do the duty of one's caste
+    Though bad or ill performed, and fraught with evil,
+    Than undertake the business of another,
+    However good it be."
+
+Thus even the laws of right and wrong are subordinate to the fatality of
+caste, and all aspiration is paralyzed.
+
+On the other hand, it has been acknowledged repeatedly that the sternest
+type of Puritan theology, as a moral and political force, is full of
+inspiration; it does not deaden the soul; it stimulates the action of
+free-will; its moral earnestness has been a great power in molding
+national destinies. Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to declare that the
+great charters of human liberty are largely due to its strong conception
+of a divine and all-controlling purpose. Even Matthew Arnold admitted
+that its stern "Hebraic" culture, as he called it, had wrought some of
+the grandest achievements of history. But Hindu fatalists, noble Aryans
+as they were at first, have been conquered by every race of invaders
+that has chosen to assail them. And no better result could have been
+expected from a philosophy whose _summum bonum_ is the renunciation of
+life as not worth living, and the loss of all personality by absorption
+into the One supreme existence.
+
+Buddhism does not present the same fatalistic theory of creation as
+Brahminism, but it introduces even a more aggravated fatalism into human
+life. Both alike load down the newly-born with burdens of guilt and
+consequent suffering transmitted from previous existences. But in the
+case of Buddhism there is no identity between the sinner, who incurred
+the guilt, and the recipient of the evil kharma, which demands
+punishment. Every man comes into the world entangled in the moral
+bankruptcy of some one who has gone before, he knows not who nor where.
+There is no consciousness of identity, no remembrance, no possible sense
+of guilt, or notion of responsibility. It is not the same soul that
+suffers, for in either case there is no soul; there is only a bundle of
+so-called skandhas--certain faculties of mind and body newly combined
+whose interaction produces thought and emotion. Yet there is conscious
+suffering. Scoffers have long pointed with indignation at the Christian
+doctrine that a child inherits a moral bias from his parents, but
+nowadays evolutionists carry the law of heredity to an extreme which no
+hyper-Calvinist ever thought of, and many cavillers at "original sin"
+have become eloquent in their praises of Buddhism, which handicaps each
+child with the accumulated demerit of pre-existent beings with whom he
+had no connection whatever.[198] The Christian doctrine imputes
+punishable guilt only so far as each one's free choice makes the sin his
+own: the dying infant who has no choice is saved by grace; but upon
+every Buddhist, however short-lived, there rests an heir-loom of destiny
+which countless transmigrations cannot discharge.
+
+In Mohammedanism the doctrine of fate--clear, express, and emphatic--is
+fully set forth. The Koran resorts to no euphemism or circumlocution in
+declaring it. Thus, in Sura lxxiv. 3, 4, we read: "Thus doth God cause
+to err whom he pleases, and directeth whom he pleases." Again, Sura xx.
+4, says: "The fate of every man have we bound round his neck." As is
+well known, fatalism as a practical doctrine of life has passed into all
+Mohammedan society. "Kismet" (it is fated) is the exclamation of
+despair with which a Moslem succumbs to adversity and often dies without
+an effort to recover. In times of pestilence missionaries in Syria have
+sometimes found whole villages paralyzed with despair. Yielding to the
+fatalism of their creed, the poor mountaineers have abandoned all means
+of cure and resigned themselves to their fate. The same fatal paralysis
+has affected all liberty of thought, all inventiveness and enterprise,
+all reform of evils, all higher aspiration of the oppressed people.
+
+With the lower forms of religious belief, fetishism, animism, serpent
+worship, demon worship, the case is still worse. The only deities that
+are practically recognized in these rude faiths are generally supposed
+to be malevolent beings, who have not only fixed an evil fate upon men,
+but whose active and continued function it is to torment them. Though
+there is a lingering belief in a Supreme Being who created all things,
+yet he is far off and incomprehensible. He has left his creatures in the
+hands of inferior deities, at whose mercy they pass a miserable
+existence. Looking at the dark facts of life and having no revelation of
+a merciful God they form their estimates of Deity from their trials,
+hardships, fears, and they are filled with dread; all their religious
+rites have been devised for appeasing the powers that dominate and
+distress the world. And yet a pronounced agnostic has asked us to
+believe that even this wide-spread horror, this universal nightmare of
+heathen superstition, is more humane than the Calvinistic creed.
+
+If we inquire into the tendency of all types of ancient or modern
+pantheism in this particular phase, we shall find them, without
+exception, fatalistic. They not merely make God the author of sin--they
+make Him the sinner. Our misdeeds are not our acts, but God's. Thus the
+vaunted Bhagavad Gita, uniting the Sankhyan and the Vedanta
+philosophies, makes Krishna say to Arjuna: "All actions are incessantly
+performed by operation of the qualities of Prakriti (the self-existing
+Essence). Deluded by the thought of individuality, the soul vainly
+believes itself to be the doer. The soul, existing from eternity, devoid
+of qualities, imperishable, abiding in the body, acts not, nor is by any
+act polluted. He who sees that actions are performed by Prakriti alone,
+and that the soul is not an actor, perceives the truth."[199] Such is
+Hindu pantheism. Yet this most inconsistent system charges man with
+guilt. It represents his inexorable fate as pursuing him through endless
+transmigrations, holding over him the lash of retribution, while it
+exacts the very last farthing. Still, from first to last, it is not he
+that acts, but some fractional part of the One only Existence which
+fills all space.
+
+The philosophy of Spinoza was quite as fatalistic as the Hindu Vedanta.
+He taught, according to Schwegler, that "The finite has no independent
+existence in itself: it exists because the unrestrained productive
+energy of the (infinite) Substance spontaneously produced an infinite
+variety of particular forms. It has, however, no proper reality; it
+exists only in and through the Substance. Finite things are the most
+external, the last, the most subordinate forms of existence into which
+the universal life is specialized, and they manifest their finitude in
+that they are without resistance, subject to the infinite chain of
+causality which binds the world. The divine Substance works freely
+according to the inner essence of its own nature; individuals, however,
+are not free, but are subject to the influence of those things with
+which they come into contact. It follows from these metaphysical
+grounds," Schwegler continues, "that what is called free-will cannot be
+admitted. For, since man is only a mode, he, like any other mode, stands
+in an endless series of conditioning causes, and no free-will can,
+therefore, be predicated of him." Further on he adds: "Evil, or sin, is,
+therefore, only relative and not positive, for nothing happens against
+God's will. It is only a simple negation or deprivation, which only
+seems to be a reality in our representation."[200] The late Samuel
+Johnson, in his chapter on "The Morality and Piety of Pantheism,"
+undertakes to defend both the Vedantic and the Spinozan philosophy by
+pointing out a distinction between an "external compulsion and an inner
+force which merges us in the Infinite. Though both are equally efficient
+as to the result, and both are inconsistent with individual freedom, yet
+real fate is only that which is external.... While destiny or fate in
+the sense of absolute external compulsion would certainly be
+destructive, not only of moral responsibility but of personality itself,
+yet religion or science without fate is radically unsound." Again he
+adds: "We cannot separate perfection and fate. Deity whose sway is not
+destiny is not venerable, nor even reliable. It would be a purpose that
+did not round the universe, a love that could not preserve it. Theism
+without fate is a kind of atheism, and a self-dominated atheism. But
+holding justice to be the true necessity or fate, is properly theism,
+though it refuses the name."[201]
+
+The reasoning here reminds one of the conclusions of a still more recent
+writer, who while condemning what he considers the fatalism of
+Calvinistic theology, still asserts that its logic leaves no alternative
+but the denial of a personal God. And an early Buddhist philosopher has
+left a fragment which gives the very same reason for agnosticism. Thus
+he says: "If the world was made by God (Isvara) there should be no such
+thing as sorrow or calamity, nor doing wrong, nor doing right; for all,
+both pure and impure, deeds must come from Isvara.... If he makes
+without a purpose he is like a suckling child, or with a purpose, he is
+not complete. Sorrow and joy spring up in all that lives; these, at
+least, are not alike the works of Isvara, for if he causes love and joy
+he must himself have love and hate. But if he loves and hates, he is not
+rightly called self-existent. 'Twere equal, then, the doing right or
+doing wrong. There should be no reward of works; the works themselves
+being his, then all things are the same to him, the maker."
+
+This was a Buddhist's answer to the Hindu pantheism, and there follows
+a reply also to the Oriental dualism which attempted to solve the
+difficulty by assigning two great first causes, one good and the other
+evil. "Nay," says this Buddhist philosopher, "if you say there is
+another cause beside this Isvara, then he is not the end or sum of all,
+and therefore all that lives may, after all, be uncreated, and so you
+see the thought of Isvara is overthrown."[202] Thus the same problems of
+existence have taxed human speculation in all lands and all ages. The
+same perplexities have arisen, and the same cavils and complaints.
+
+There is an important sense in which all forms of materialism are
+fatalistic in their relation to moral responsibility. James Büchner
+assures us that "what is called man's soul or mind is now almost
+universally conceded as equivalent to a function of the substance of the
+brain." Walter Bagehot, like Maudsley, suggests that the newly born
+child has his destiny inscribed on his nervous tissues.[203] Mr. Buckle
+assures us that certain underlying but indefinable laws of society, as
+indicated by statistics, control human action irrespective of choice or
+moral responsibility. Even accidents, the averages of forgetfulness or
+neglect, are the subjects of computation. To support his position he
+cites the averages of suicides, or the number of letters deposited
+yearly in a given post-office, the superscription of which has been
+forgotten. Thus, underlying all human activity there is an unknown
+force, a vague something--call it Deity, or call it Fate--which controls
+human affairs irresistibly.
+
+It would be amusing, if it were not sad, to see what devices and what
+names have been resorted to in order to get rid of a personal God. The
+Hindu Sankhyans ascribed all things to the "Eternally Existing Essence."
+The Greek Atomists called it an "Inconceivable Necessity;" Anaxagoras,
+"The World-forming Intelligence;" Hegel, "Absolute Idea;" Spinoza,
+"Absolute Substance;" Schopenhauer, "Unconscious Will." Spencer finds
+only "The Unknowable;" Darwin's virtual Creator is "Natural Selection;"
+Matthew Arnold recognize a "Stream of Tendency not our own which makes
+for righteousness." Nothing can be more melancholy than this dreary
+waste of human speculation, this weary and bootless search after the
+secret of the universe. At the same time a deaf ear is turned to those
+voices of nature and revelation which speak of a benevolent Creator. But
+the point to which I call particular attention in this connection is,
+that these vague terms, whatever else they may mean, imply in each case
+some law of necessity which moulds the world. They are only the names of
+the Fates whom all philosophies have set over us. If we have been
+correct in tracing an element of fatalism through all the heathen
+faiths, and all ancient and modern philosophies, how is it that the
+whole army of unbelief concentrate their assailments against divine
+sovereignty in the Word of God, and yet are ready to laud and approve
+these systems which exhibit the same things in greater degree and
+without mitigation?
+
+That which differentiates Christianity is the fact that, while it does
+represent God as the originator and controller of all things, it yet
+respects the freedom of the human will, which Mohammedanism does not,
+which Hinduism does not, which ancient or modern Buddhism does not,
+which Materialism does not. Not only the Word of God but our own reason
+tells us that the Creator of this world must have proceeded upon a
+definite and all-embracing plan; and yet at the same time, not only the
+Word of God, but our own consciousness, tells us that we are free to act
+according to our own will. How these things are to be reconciled we know
+not, simply because we are finite and God is infinite. I once stood
+before the great snowy range of the Himalayas, whose lofty peaks rose
+twenty-five thousand feet above the sea. None could see how those
+gigantic masses stood related to each other, simply because no mortal
+ever has explored, or ever can explore, their awful and unapproachable
+recesses.
+
+So with many great truths concerning the being, attributes, and works of
+God. One may say that God predetermined and then foresaw what He had
+ordained; another that He foresaw and then resolved to effect what he
+had foreseen. Neither is correct, or at least neither can know that he
+is correct. God is not subject to our conditions of time and space. It
+is impossible that He, whose knowledge and will encompass all things,
+should be affected by our notions of order and sequence; there is with
+Him no before and after. The whole universe, with all its farthest
+extended history, stood before Him from all eternity as one conception
+and as one purpose; and the conception and the purpose were one. The
+too frequent mistake of human formulas is that they undertake to reason
+out infinite mysteries on our low anthropomorphic lines, one in one
+extreme and another in another. We cannot fit the ways of God to the
+measure of our logic or our metaphysics. What we have to do with many
+things is simply to believe and trust and wait.[204] On the other hand,
+there are many things of a practical nature which God has made very
+plain. He has brought them down to us. The whole scheme of grace is an
+adaptation of the mysteries of the Godhead to our knowledge, faith,
+obedience, and love.
+
+And this leads directly to the chief differential which Christianity
+presents in contrast with the fatalisms of false systems, viz., that
+while sin and death abound, as all must see, the Gospel alone reveals a
+superabounding grace. It is enough for us that the whole scheme is one
+of Redemption, that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the
+world--nay, that He made the world, and made it for an infinitely
+benevolent purpose. If dark mysteries appear in the Word or in the
+world, we are to view them in the light of Calvary, and wait till we can
+see as we are seen; for this world is Christ's, and will surely subserve
+His ends, which are those of infinite compassion.
+
+Our position, therefore, as before the abettors of heathen or agnostic
+philosophy, is impregnable: the fatalism is all theirs, the union of
+sovereign power with infinite love is ours. We have reason as well as
+they. We realize the facts and mysteries of life as fully as they, but
+are not embittered by them. We see nothing to be gained by putting out
+the light we have. We prefer faith to pessimism, incarnate love to the
+tyranny of "unconscious will."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 184: Quoted in Fiske's _Destiny of Man_, p. 117.]
+
+[Footnote 185: See _Indian Wisdom_, p. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 186: What Kanada meant by adrishta was a sort of habit of
+matter derived from its past combinations in a previous cosmos, one or
+more. The rod which has been bent will bend again, and so matter which
+has once been combined will unite again.]
+
+[Footnote 187: _Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought_, p.
+327.]
+
+[Footnote 188: _On Natural Selection_, p. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 189: _The Destiny of Man_, p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 190: _Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought_, p.
+88.]
+
+[Footnote 191: Some of Goldwin Smith's utterances are such as these: "If
+morality has been based on religion there must be reason to fear that
+the foundation being removed the superstructure will fall. That it has
+rested on religion so far as the great majority are concerned will
+hardly be doubted." ... "The presence of this theistic sanction has been
+especially apparent in all acts and lives of all heroic self-sacrifice
+and self-devotion." ... "All moral philosophers whose philosophy has
+been practically effective, from Socrates down, have been religious.
+Many have tried to find an independent basis but have not been
+successful--at least have not arrived at any agreement." ... "Thucydides
+ascribed the fall of Greece to the fall of religion. Machiavelianism
+followed the fall of the Catholic faith." ... "Into the void left by
+religion came spiritual charlatanry and physical superstition, such as
+the arts of the hierophant of Isis, the soothsayer, the
+astrologer--significant precursors of our modern mediums." ...
+"Conscience as a mere evolution of tribal experience may have
+importance, but it can have no authority, and 'Nature' is an unmeaning
+word without an Author of nature--or rather it is a philosophic name for
+God." ... "Evolution is not moral, nor can morality be educed from it.
+It proclaims as its law the survival of the fittest, and the only proof
+of fitness is survival." ... "We must remember that whatever may be our
+philosophic school we are still living under the influence of theism,
+and most of us under Christianity. There is no saying how much of
+Christianity still lingers in the theories of agnostics." ... "The
+generation after the next may perhaps see agnosticism, moral as well as
+religious, tried on a clear field." These utterances are weighty, though
+detached. We only raise a doubt whether "the generation after the next"
+will see agnosticism tried on a clear field. On the contrary, it will be
+surrounded as now, and more and more, by Christian influences, and will
+still depend on those influences to save it from the sad results of its
+own teachings.]
+
+[Footnote 192: _The Races of Man_, pp. 137, 138.]
+
+[Footnote 193: _The Human Species_, p. 478.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Mr. John Fiske declares that man is descended from the
+catarrhine apes.--_Destiny of Man_, p. 19. Professor Le Conte maintains
+that no existing animal could ever be developed into man. He traces all
+existing species up from a common stock, of which man is the head. The
+common line of ancestors are all extinct.--_Evolution in Relation to
+Religious Thought_, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 195: _The Permanent Elements in Religion_, p. 154]
+
+[Footnote 196: Book II., 13.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Book IX., 17.]
+
+[Footnote 198: Development by "heredity" and the Buddhist doctrine of
+transmigration, though both fatalistic, reach that result in different
+ways; they are, in fact, contradictory. Character, according to
+Buddhism, is inherited not from parents: it follows the line of
+affinity.]
+
+[Footnote 199: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 152.]
+
+[Footnote 200: _History of Philosophy_, pp. 220, 221.]
+
+[Footnote 201: _Oriental Religions_--_India_. Part II., p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 202: Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 203: _Physics and Politics_.]
+
+[Footnote 204: "Probably no more significant change awaits the theology
+of the future than the recognition of this province of the unknown, and
+the cessation of controversy as to matters that come within it, and
+therefore admit of no dogmatic settlement."--Tulloch's _Religious
+Thought in Britain_, p. 24.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+THE DIVINE SUPREMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
+
+
+We have in previous lectures instituted brief and partial comparisons
+between Christianity and particular faiths of the East, but I now
+propose a general comparative survey.
+
+Never before has the Christian Faith been so boldly challenged to show
+cause for its supreme and exclusive claims as in our time. The early
+Christians encountered something of the same kind: it seemed very
+preposterous to the proud Roman that an obscure sect, coming out of
+despised Nazareth, should refuse to place a statue of its deified
+Founder within the Pantheon, in the goodly company of renowned gods from
+every part of the Roman Empire; but it did so refuse and gave its
+reasons, and it ultimately carried its point. It gained the Pantheon and
+Rome itself for Christ alone. He was proclaimed as the One Redeemer of
+the world, and this claim has been maintained from that day to this.
+"There can be no diversity," said His followers, "for there is no other
+name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. The very
+genius of Christianity means supremacy and monopoly, for the reason that
+it is divine and God cannot be divided against Himself." But in our time
+the whole world is brought very closely together. The religions of men,
+like their social customs and political institutions, are placed in
+contact and comparison. The enemies of the Christian faith here, in
+Western lands, naturally make the most of any possible alliances with
+other systems supposed to antagonize Christianity; while a multitude of
+others, having no particular interest in any religion, and rather
+priding themselves upon a broad charity which is but a courteous name
+for indifference, are demanding with a superior air that fair play shall
+be shown to all religions alike. The Church is therefore called upon to
+defend her unique position and the promulgation of her message to
+mankind. Why does she refuse to admit the validity of other religions,
+and why send her missionaries over the earth to turn the non-Christian
+races from those faiths which are their heritage by birth, and in which
+they honestly put their trust? Why not respect everywhere that noblest
+of all man's instincts which prompts him to inquire after God, who hath
+made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the earth? If the old
+Hindu pantheism of the Bhagavad Gita taught that the worshippers of
+other gods were only worshipping the One Supreme Vishnu unawares; if
+Buddhism forbids its followers to assert that theirs is the only
+religion, or even that it is the best religion;[205] is it not time that
+Christians should emulate this noble charity?
+
+This plausible plea is urged with such force and volume, it is so backed
+by the current literature and the secular newspaper press that it
+cannot be ignored. The time has come when the Church must not only be
+able to give a reason for the faith she professes, but must assign
+reasons why her faith should supplant every other. I am aware that many
+are insisting that her true course is to be found in an intensive zeal
+in the promulgation of her own doctrines without regard to any other.
+"Preach the Gospel," it is said, "whether men will hear or whether they
+forbear." But it must be borne in mind that Paul's more intelligent
+method was to strive as one who would win, and not as they who beat the
+air. The Salvation Army will reach a certain class with their mere
+unlettered zeal. The men who purposely read only One Book, but read that
+on their knees, doubtless have an important work to do, but the Church
+as a whole cannot go back to the time when devout zealots sneered at the
+idea of an educated ministry. The conflict of truth and error must be
+waged intelligently. There are sufficient reasons for claiming a divine
+supremacy for the Gospel over all heathen faiths, and the sooner we
+thoroughly understand the difference, the more wisely and successfully
+shall we accomplish our work.
+
+Wherein, then, consists the unique supremacy of the Christian faith?
+
+1. It alone offers a real salvation. We are not speaking of ethics, or
+conceptions of God, or methods of race culture, but of that one element
+which heals the wounds of acknowledged sin and reconciles men to God.
+And this is found in Christianity alone. There is no divine help in any
+other. Systems of speculation, theories of the universe, and of our
+relation to the Infinite are found in all sacred books of the East.
+There are lofty ethical teachings gathered from the lips of many
+masters, and records of patient research, cheerful endurance of ascetic
+rigors, and the voluntary encounter of martyrs' deaths. And one cannot
+but be impressed by this spectacle of earnest struggles in men of every
+land and every age to find some way of peace. But in none of the ethnic
+religions has there been revealed a divine and heaven-wrought salvation.
+They have all begun and ended with human merit and human effort. Broken
+cisterns have everywhere taken the place of the One Fountain of Eternal
+Life. Though all these systems recognize the sin and misery of the
+world, and carry their estimate of them to the length of downright
+pessimism, they have discovered no eye that could pity and no arm that
+could bring salvation. In the silence and gloom of the world's history
+only one voice has said, "Lo, I come! in the volume of the Book it is
+written of me." And although men have in all ages striven to rid
+themselves of sin by self-mortification, and even mutilation, yet the
+ever-recurring question, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?" was never answered till Paul answered it in his rapturous
+acknowledgment of victory through the righteousness of Christ. Mohammed
+never claimed to be a saviour or even an intercessor. He was the sword
+of God against idolators, and the ambassador of God to believers; but
+beyond the promise of a sensuous heaven, he offered no salvation. He had
+no remedy for sin--except that in his own case he claimed a special
+revelation of clemency and indulgence. Many a wholesome truth derived
+from the Old Testament scriptures was promulgated to the faithful, but
+self-righteousness, and especially valor in Mohammedan conquest, was
+offered as the key to paradise.[206]
+
+Doubtless we should view the false systems with discrimination. Like the
+sublime philosophy of Plato, Mohammedanism does teach an exalted idea of
+God, and there is, accordingly, a dignity and reverence in its forms of
+worship. I once witnessed a very imposing spectacle in the great mosque
+at Delhi, on the Moslem Sabbath. Several hundred Indian Mohammedans were
+repeating their prayers in concert. They were in their best attire, and
+fresh from their ablutions, and their concerted genuflections, the
+subdued murmur of their many voices, and the general solemnity of their
+demeanor, rendered the whole service most impressive. It contrasted
+strongly with the spectacle which I witnessed a little later in the
+temple of Siva, in Benares. The unspeakable worship of the linga, the
+scattering of rice and flowers and the pouring of libations before this
+symbol; the hanging of garlands on the horns of sacred bulls, and that
+by women; the rushing to and fro, tracking the filth of the sacred
+stables into the trodden ooze of rice and flowers which covered the
+temple pavements; the drawing and sipping of water from the adjacent
+cesspool, known as the sacred well; the shouting and striking of bells,
+and the general frenzy of the people--all this could be considered as
+nothing short of wild and depraved orgies. If we must choose, give us
+Islam, whether in contrast with the Siva worship of India or with the
+tyranny of the witch doctors of interior Africa.
+
+Yet, I repeat, Islam has no salvation, no scheme of grace, no great
+Physician. In visiting any Mohammedan country one is impressed with this
+one defect, the want of a Mediator. I once stood in the central hall of
+an imposing mansion in Damascus, around the frieze of which were
+described, in Arabic letters of gold, "The Hundred Names of Allah." They
+were interpreted to me by a friend as setting forth the lofty attributes
+of God--for example, "The Infinite," "The Eternal," "The Creator," "The
+All-Seeing," "The Merciful," "The Just." No one could help being
+impressed by these inspiring names. They were the common heritage of
+Judaism and Christianity before Islam adopted them, and they are well
+calculated to fill the soul with reverence and awe. But there is another
+class of names which were predicted by Judaism and rejoiced in by
+Christianity, but which Islam rejects; for example, "Messiah,"
+"Immanuel," or God with us, "The Son of God," "The Son of Man," "The
+Redeemer," "The Elder Brother." In a word, Islam has nothing to fill the
+breach between a holy and just God and the conscience-smitten souls of
+men. These honored names of Allah are as sublime as the snow-peaks of
+the Himalayas and as inaccessible. How can we attain unto them? Without
+a Daysman how shall we bridge the abyss that lies between? Even Israel
+plead for Moses to speak to them in place of the Infinite, and they
+voiced a felt want of all human hearts.
+
+Yet no religious system but Christianity reveals a Mediator. There is in
+other faiths no such conception as the fatherhood of God. Though such
+names as Dyauspater, Zeuspiter or Jupiter, and others bearing the import
+of father are sometimes found, yet they imply only a common source, as
+the sun is the source of life. They lack the elements of love and
+fostering care. There can be no real fatherhood and no spirit of
+adoption except through union with the Son of God. The idea that
+re-birth and remission of sin may be followed by adoption and heirship,
+and joint heirship with the Son of the Infinite, belongs to the
+Christian faith alone; and the hope and inspiration of such a heritage,
+seen in contrast with the endless and disheartening prospects of
+countless transmigrations, are beyond the power of language to describe.
+It was with infinite reason that Paul was taught to regard his work
+among the Gentiles as a rescue or a deliverance "from darkness unto
+light, and from the power of Satan unto God," and it was a priceless
+boon which enabled him to offer at once the full remission of sins and a
+part in the glorious inheritance revealed through faith in Christ.
+
+Mere ethical knowledge cannot comfort the human soul. Contrast the gloom
+of Marcus Aurelius with the joy of David in Psalm cxix.; and Seneca,
+also, with all his discernment, and his eloquent presentation of
+beautiful precepts, was one of the saddest, darkest characters of Roman
+history. He was the man who schemed with Catiline, and who at the same
+time that he wrote epigrams urged Nero onward with flattery and
+encouragement to his most infamous vices and his boldest crimes.
+Knowledge of ethical maxims and the power of expressing them, therefore,
+is one thing, religion is another. Religion is a device, human or
+divine, for raising up men by a real or a supposed supernatural aid. It
+ought to reveal God as a helper and a Saviour. It ought to be a
+provision of grace by which the Just can yet be a justifier of them that
+are weak and wounded by sin. The ethical systems of the heathen world
+corroborate the Scriptural diagnosis of man's character and condition,
+but they fail as prescriptions. So far as divine help and regenerative
+power are concerned, they leave the race helpless still.
+
+Christianity is a system of faith in a moral as well as in an
+intellectual sense. It inculcates a spirit of loving, filial trust
+instead of a querulous self-righteousness which virtually chides the
+unknown Ruler of the universe. According to "The Light of Asia" when the
+Buddha preached at Kapilavastu there were assembled men and devils,
+beasts and birds, all victims alike of the cruel fate that ruled the
+world. Existence was an evil and only the Buddha could be found to pity.
+But that pity offered no hope except in the destruction of hope, and the
+destruction of all desire, all aspiration, even all feeling; while
+Christianity offers a hope which maketh not ashamed, even an immortal
+inheritance.[207] Hinduism also, like Islam and Buddhism, lacks every
+element of divine salvation. It is wholly a thing of merit. The infinite
+Brahm is said to be void of attributes of all kinds. No anthropomorphic
+conception can be predicated of him. The three Gods of the Trimurti are
+cold and distant--though for Vishnu in his alleged incarnation of
+Krishna, a sympathetic nature was claimed at a later day--borrowed, some
+say, from Buddhism, or, according to others, from Christianity. In the
+Hindu saint all spiritual power in this life is the merit power of
+ascetic austerities, all hope for the future world lies in the cleansing
+efficacy of endless transmigrations of which the goal is absorption into
+deity.
+
+But the difficulty with both Buddhism and Hinduism is that
+transmigration cannot regenerate. It is only a vague postponement of the
+moral issues of the soul. There is recognized no future intervention
+that can effect a change in the downward drift, and why should a
+thousand existences prove better than one? According to a law of physics
+known as the persistence of force, a body once set in motion will never
+stop unless through the intervention of some other resisting force. And
+this is strikingly true of moral character and the well-known power and
+momentum of habit. Who shall change the leopard's spots or deflect the
+fatal drift of a human soul? Remorselessly these Oriental systems exact
+from Kharma the uttermost farthing. They emphasize the fact that
+according to the sowing shall be the reaping, and that in no part of the
+universe can ill desert escape its awards. Even if change were possible,
+therefore, how shall the old score be settled? What help, what rescue
+can mere infinitude of time afford, though the transmigrations should
+number tens of thousands? There is no hint that any pitying eye of God
+or devil looks upon the struggle, or any arm is stretched forth to raise
+up the crippled and helpless soul. Time is the only Saviour--time so
+vast, so vague, so distant, that the mind cannot follows its cycles or
+trace the relations of cause and effect.
+
+In contrast with all this, Christianity bids the Hindu ascetic cease
+from his self-mortification and become himself a herald of Glad Tidings.
+It invites the hook-swinger to renounce his useless torture and accept
+the availing sacrifice of Him who hung upon the Cross. It relieves woman
+from the power of Satan, as exercised in those cruel disabilities which
+false systems have imposed upon her, and assigns her a place of honor in
+the kingdom of God. The world has not done scoffing at the idea of a
+vicarious sacrifice for the sins of men, and yet it has advanced so far
+that its best thinkers, even without any religious bias, are agreed that
+the principle of self-sacrifice is the very highest element of character
+that man can aspire to. And this is tantamount to an acknowledgment that
+the great principle which the Cross illustrates, and on which the
+salvation of the race is made to rest, is the crowning glory of all
+ethics and must be therefore the germinal principle of all true
+religion.
+
+Christianity with its doctrine of voluntary Divine Sacrifice was no
+after-thought. Paul speaks of it as "the mystery which hath been hid
+from ages and from generations but now is made manifest." It was the one
+great mystery which angels had desired to look into and for which the
+whole world had waited in travail and expectation. Christ was "the Lamb
+slain from the foundation of the world," and the entire world-history
+has proceeded under an economy of grace. And I repeat, its fundamental
+principle of sacrifice, exemplified as it has been through the
+Christian centuries, has won the recognition even of those who were not
+themselves the followers of Christ. "The history of self-sacrifice
+during the last eighteen hundred years," says Lecky, "has been mainly
+the history of the action of Christianity upon the world. Ignorance and
+error have no doubt often directed the heroic spirit into wrong
+channels, and sometimes even made it a cause of great evil to mankind;
+but it is the moral type and beauty, the enlarged conception and
+persuasive power of the Christian faith that have chiefly called it into
+being; and it is by their influence alone that it can be permanently
+maintained."[208] Speaking of the same principle Carlyle says: "It is
+only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to
+begin.... In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making
+others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie." And George Sand in still
+stronger terms has said, "There is but one sole virtue in the world--the
+Eternal Sacrifice of self."
+
+While we ponder these testimonies coming from such witnesses we remember
+how the Great Apostle traces this wonder-working principle back to its
+Divine Source, and from that Source down into all the commonest walks of
+life when he says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ,
+who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
+God; but made himself of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a
+servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion
+as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the
+death of the Cross." Or when he reminds the Corinthians that, though
+Christ was rich, yet for their sake He became poor, that they through
+His poverty might be rich.
+
+In all the Oriental systems there is nothing like this, either as a
+divine source of all-availing help and rescue, or as a celestial spring
+of human action. It is through this communicable grace that Christ
+becomes the Way, the Truth, the Life. Well might Augustine say that
+while the philosophy of Plato led him to lofty conceptions of God, it
+could not show him how to approach Him or be reconciled unto Him. "For
+it is one thing," he says, "from the mountain's shaggy top to see the
+land of peace and to find no way thither; and in vain to essay through
+ways impossible, opposed and beset by fugitives and deserters, under
+their captain the lion and the dragon; and another to keep on the way
+that leads thither guarded by the host of the heavenly General, where
+they spoil not that have deserted the heavenly army; for they avoid it
+as very torment. These things did wonderfully sink into my bowels when I
+read that _least of Thy Apostles_, and had meditated upon Thy works and
+trembled exceedingly." While Christianity is wholly unique in providing
+an objective Salvation instead of attempting to work out perfection from
+"beggarly elements" within the soul itself, as all heathen systems do,
+and as all our modern schemes of mere ethical culture do, it at the same
+time implants in the heart the most fruitful germs of subjective
+spiritual life. Its superior transformation of human character, as
+compared with all other cults, is not only a matter of doctrine but also
+a matter of history. It is acknowledged that Christianity has wrought
+most powerfully of all faiths in taming savage races as well as
+individual men, in moulding higher civilizations and inspiring
+sentiments of humanity and brotherly love. "Christ," says one of the
+Bampton Lecturers, "is the Light that broods over all history.... All
+that there is upon earth of beauty, truth, and goodness, all that
+distinguishes the civilized man from the savage is this gift." And if it
+be asked how the leaven of Christ's influence has pervaded all society,
+the answer is that the work is presided over by a divine and omnipotent
+Spirit who represents Christ, who carries out what He began, who by a
+direct and transforming power renews and enlightens and prompts the
+soul.
+
+Christianity, then, is not a record, a history of what was said and done
+eighteen centuries ago: it is not a body of doctrines and precepts: it
+is the living power of God in the soul of man. The written Word is the
+sword of this Divine Spirit. The renewed soul is begotten of the Spirit
+and it is instinct with the indwelling of the Spirit. No other system
+makes any claim to such an influence as that of the Holy Ghost. Sacred
+books, written systems of law or ethics would all prove a dead
+letter--the Bible itself, as well as the Veda, would be a dead letter
+but for the co-operation of this Divine Spirit. Sacred Scriptures might
+be venerated, they would not be obeyed. The dead heart must be quickened
+and renewed and only Christianity reveals the Transforming Power.
+_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot
+see the Kingdom of God._
+
+Instantaneous renewal of the character and the life is not even claimed
+by other faiths; there is in them nothing like the conversion of Saul of
+Tarsus, or that of thousands of others well known in the history of
+Christian experience. There are no such changes in men who, from having
+led lives of profligacy and irreligion, have turned at once into paths
+of righteousness--have tamed their wild propensities and submitted
+themselves to the gentle law of love. But under Christian influence we
+have seen Africaner the savage transformed to a tractable, humane, and
+loving disciple. We have seen the wild and bloodthirsty Koord subdued
+and made as a little child. We have seen the cannibal King Thokambo, of
+Fiji, turned from his cruelty to a simple, childlike faith, and made to
+prefer the good of his people to the glory of a powerless sceptre. Whole
+races, like the Northmen, have been tamed from savagery and made
+peaceable and earnest followers of Christ. In our own time it has been
+said of a missionary in the South Pacific Islands, "that when he arrived
+on his field there were no Christians, and when he closed his labors
+there were no heathen."
+
+The religion of Gautama has won whole tribes of men, Hinduism and
+Mohammedanism are even now winning converts from fetish-worshipping
+races, but, so far as I know, none of these faiths have ever made
+converts except either by war or by the presentation of such motives as
+might appeal to the natural heart of man; there has been no spiritual
+transformation. If it be said that the Buddhist Nirvana and the Hindu
+doctrine of final absorption cannot attract the natural heart, the ready
+answer is that Nirvana and absorption are not the real inspiration of
+their respective systems. They are so far removed into the dim future as
+to exert no practical influence on the great mass of men. The future
+estate that is really expected and desired is a happy ideal
+transmigration, and perhaps many of them; and the chief felicity of the
+Hindu is that no particular estate is prescribed. While the Christian is
+promised a heaven to which the natural heart does not aspire, the Hindu
+may imagine and prefigure his own heaven. His next life may be as carnal
+as the celestial hunting-ground of the Indian or the promised paradise
+of the Moslem. It may be only the air-castle of a day-dreamer. There is
+no moral transformation. There is no expulsive power of a new and higher
+aspiration. Old things have not passed away; nothing has become new.
+
+But the grace of God in Christ claims to work an entire change in the
+desires and aspirations of the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost.
+Paul found the men of Ephesus highly civilized in a sense, but "dead in
+trespasses and sins," "walking according to the course of this world,
+and having their conversation in the lusts of the flesh." But God by His
+Spirit so "quickened" them that they were able to understand and
+appreciate one of the most spiritual of all his Epistles. He addressed
+them as "new creatures," as God's "workmanship," "_created in Christ
+Jesus unto good works_."
+
+As has already been noticed, all theories of moral transformation found
+in heathen systems require time. The process is carried on by intensive
+and long-continued thought, or by gradual accumulations of merit. Only
+the Buddha was enlightened _per sallum_,[209] so to speak. And quite in
+accord with this view are those modern forms of materialism which
+maintain that mental and moral habits consist in gradual impressions
+made in the molecules of the nerve-tissues--that these impressions come
+at length to determine our acts without the necessity of either purpose
+or conscious recognition, and that only when right action becomes thus
+involuntary can character strictly be said to exist.[210] But such
+theories certainly do not harmonize with the known facts of Christian
+conversion already alluded to. We do not refuse to recognize a certain
+degree of truth hidden in these speculations. We are aware that
+continued thought or emotion promotes a certain habit, and that in the
+Christian life such habit becomes an element of strength. We also admit
+that high and pure thought and emotion stamp themselves at length upon
+our physical nature, and appear in the very expression of the
+countenance, but when we look for the transforming impulse that can
+begin and sustain such habitual exercises in spite of the natural
+sinfulness and corruption which all systems admit, we find it only in
+the Christian doctrine of the new birth by the power of the Holy Ghost.
+
+On these two doctrines of a Divine Vicarious Sacrifice and of the
+transforming power of a Divine Spirit we might rest our case. It should
+be sufficient to show, first, that Christianity alone provides a divine
+salvation in which God is made sin for us; and second, that its power
+alone, though objective, works in us the only effectual subjective
+transformation by a direct influence from on high. But there are many
+other points of contrast in which the transcendent character of
+Christianity appears.
+
+First, an important differential lies in the completeness of the Divine
+personality of Jesus. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, were
+strongly supported by the personality of their founders. We also
+cheerfully accord to such men as Socrates and Plato great personal
+influence. They have impressed themselves upon the millions of mankind
+more deeply than statesmen, or potentates, or conquerors; but not one of
+these presents to us a complete and rounded character, judged even from
+a human stand-point. Mohammed utterly failed on the ethical side.[211]
+His life was so marred by coarse sensuality, weak effeminacy, heartless
+cruelty, unblushing hypocrisy, and heaven-defying blasphemy, that but
+for his stupendous achievements, and his sublime and persistent
+self-assertion, he would long since have been buried beneath the
+contempt of mankind.[212] Confucius appears to have been above reproach
+in morals, and that amid universal profligacy; but he was cold in
+temperament, unsympathetic, and slavishly utilitarian in his teachings.
+His ethics lacked symmetry and just proportion. The five relations which
+constituted his ethico-political system were everything. They were made
+the basis of inexorable social customs which sacrificed some of the
+tenderest and noblest promptings of the human heart. Confucius mourned
+the death of his mother, for filial respect was a part of his system,
+but for his dying wife there is no evidence of grief or regret, and when
+his son mourned the death of his wife the philosopher reproved him. In
+all things he reasoned upward toward the throne; his grand aim was to
+build up an ideal state. He therefore magnified reverence for parents
+and all ancestors even to the verge of idolatry, but he utterly failed
+in that symmetry in which Paul makes the duties of parents and children
+mutual. Under his system a father might exercise his caprice almost to
+the power of life or death, and a Chinese mother-in-law is proverbially
+a tyrant. The beautiful sympathy of Christ, shown in blessing little
+children and in drawing lessons from their simple trust, would have been
+utterly out of place in the great sage of China. Confucius seems to
+have troubled himself but slightly, if at all, about the wants of the
+poor and the suffering; he taught no doctrine of self-sacrifice for the
+ignorant and the unworthy. His ideal of the "superior man" would have
+been tarnished by that contact with the lowly and degraded which was the
+glory of the Christ. And when his cotemporary, Laotze, taught the duty
+of doing good, even to enemies, he repudiated the principle as uncalled
+for in the relative duties which should govern mankind.[213]
+
+With respect to personality, probably a higher claim has been made for
+Gautama than for either of the characters who have been named. Sir Edwin
+Arnold, in his preface to the "Light of Asia," has assigned to him a
+virtual sinlessness, and such is doubtless the character which his
+followers would claim for him. But as a model for the great masses of
+men Gautama was very far from perfection. He had little of the genial
+sunlight of humanity; in every fibre of his nature he was a recluse; his
+views of life were pessimistic; he had no glad tidings for the
+sorrowing; no encouragement for the weary and the heavy laden.[214] His
+agnosticism was ill adapted to the irrepressible wants of mankind, for
+they must place their trust in a higher power, real or imagined.[215]
+But while he cast a cloud over the being of God he drove his despairing
+countrymen to the worship of serpents and evil spirits. In Ceylon, which
+is _par eminence_ an orthodox Buddhist country, ninety per cent. of the
+population are said to be devil worshippers, and the devil jugglers are
+patronized even by the Buddhist monks.[216] As the philosophy of Gautama
+was above the comprehension of the common people, so his example was
+also above their reach. It utterly lacked the element of trust, and
+involved the very destruction of society. To "wander apart like a
+rhinoceros" and "be silent as a broken gong" might be practicable for a
+chosen few, if only self were to be considered, but silence and
+isolation are not worthy ideals in a world of mutual dependence and
+where all life's blessings are enhanced by the ministries of the strong
+to the necessities of the weak. Infinitely higher was the example of Him
+who said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" and who accordingly
+exhorted his disciples to work while the day lasts. Christ prayed not
+that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be kept
+from the evil.
+
+Again the Buddha's life furnished but a poor example in the domestic
+duties. His abandonment of his wife and child cannot be justified upon
+any sound theory of life. Whatever may be said of the merits of celibacy
+in those who are under no marriage vows, the abandonment of sacred
+relations once formed must be considered a crime against all society. As
+Mohammed's example of impurity has cast a blight over all Moslem lands,
+so Gautama's withdrawal from his home has borne, and is still bearing,
+its evil fruit. In Burmah it is common for a Buddhist who desires a
+change of wives to abandon his family for the sacred life of a
+monastery, where, if he remains but a single month, he sunders the old
+relation and is at liberty to form a new one. Good men are disgusted,
+but there is the example of "the Blessed One!" It will be admitted that
+in comparison with Hinduism the Buddhist ethics advanced woman to a
+higher social condition, but when modern apologists compare Gautama with
+Christ there are many contrasts which cannot be disguised.
+
+In some respects Socrates stands highest among great philosophers.
+Mohammed's career cost him nothing but gained for him everything that
+man's earthly nature could desire. Gautama made only a temporary
+sacrifice; he changed lower indulgences for honor and renown, and died
+at a ripe old age surrounded by loving friends. But Socrates resolutely
+and calmly suffered martyrdom for his principles. The sublime dignity
+and self-control of his dying hours will never cease to win the
+admiration of mankind; yet Socrates was by no means a complete
+character. He died unto himself merely. He left no gospel of peace to
+humanity. His influence, however pure, could not, and in fact did not,
+become a diffusive and transforming leaven, either in his own or in any
+subsequent generation. The late Matthew Arnold has said, "The radical
+difference between Jesus and Socrates is that such a conception as
+Paul's (conception of faith) would, if applied to Socrates, be out of
+place and ineffective. Socrates inspired boundless friendship and
+esteem, but the inspiration of reason and conscience is the one
+inspiration which comes from him and which impels us to live righteously
+as he did. A penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, pity, adoration,
+reinforcing the inspiration of reason and duty does not belong to
+Socrates. With Jesus it is different. On this point it is needless to
+argue: history has proved. In the midst of errors the most prosaic, the
+most immoral, the most unscriptural, concerning God, Christ, and
+righteousness, the immense emotion of love and sympathy inspired by the
+person and character of Jesus has had to work almost by itself alone for
+righteousness, but it has worked wonders."[217]
+
+This tribute to the completeness and power of Christ's personality is
+calculated to remind one of a memorable chapter in the well-known work
+of the late Dr. Horace Bushnell, entitled, "Nature and the
+Supernatural." With a wonderful power it portrays Christ as rising above
+the plane of merely human characters--as belonging to no age or race or
+stage of civilization--as transcendent not in some of the virtues, but
+in them all--as never subject to prejudice, or the impulse of passion,
+never losing that perfect poise which it has been impossible for the
+greatest of men to achieve--as possessed of a mysterious magnetism which
+carried conviction to His hearers even when claiming to be one with the
+Infinite--as inspiring thousands with a love which has led them to give
+their lives for His cause.[218]
+
+I have often thought that one of the most striking evidences of the
+divine reality of the Christian faith is found in the reflection of
+Christ's personality in the character and life of the apostle Paul.[219]
+No one can doubt that Paul was a real historic personage, that from
+having been a strict and influential Jew he became a follower of Jesus
+and gave himself to His service with a sublime devotion; that he sealed
+the sincerity of his belief by a life of marvellous self-denial. He had
+no motive for acting a false part at such cost; on the contrary, an
+unmistakable genuineness is stamped upon his whole career. How shall we
+explain that career? Where else in the world's history have we seen a
+gifted and experienced man, full of strong and repellant prejudices, so
+stamped and penetrated by the personality of another?
+
+On what theory can we account for such a change in such a life, except
+that his own story of his conversion was strictly true, that he had felt
+in his inmost soul a power so overwhelming as to sweep away his
+prejudices, humble his pride, arm him against the derision of his former
+friends, and prepare him for inevitable persecution and for the martyr
+death of which he was forewarned? So vivid were his impressions of this
+divine personality that it seemed almost to absorb his own. Christ,
+though He had ascended, was still with him as a living presence. All his
+inspiration, all his strength came from Him. His plans and purposes
+centred in his Divine Master, and his only ambition was to be found
+well-pleasing in his sight. He saw all types and prophecies fulfilled in
+Him as the Son of God, the fulness of His glory, and the express image
+of His person. Paul never indulged in any similes by which to express
+the glory of heaven; it was enough that we should be like Christ and be
+with Him where He is.
+
+The writings of all the apostles differ from the books of other
+religions in the fact that their doctrines, precepts, and exhortations
+are so centred in their divine Teacher and Saviour. Buddha's disciples
+continued to quote their Master, but Buddha was dead. Theoretically not
+even his immortal soul survived. He had declared that when his bodily
+life should cease there would be nothing left of which it could be said
+"I am."
+
+But to the vivid and realizing faith of Christ's followers He is still
+their living Head, their Intercessor, their Guide. His resurrection is
+the warrant of their future life. He has gone before and will come again
+to receive His own. Christianity is Christ: all believers are members of
+His mystic body: the Church is His bride. He is the Alpha and the Omega
+of the world's history. In the contemplation of His personality as the
+chief among ten thousand His people are changed into His image as from
+glory to glory. The ground of salvation in Christianity is not in a
+church, nor a body of doctrines, not even in the teachings of the
+Master: it is in Christ Himself as a humiliated sacrifice and a
+triumphant Saviour.
+
+Second, the religion of the Bible differs from every other in its
+completeness and scope--its adaptation to all the duties and experiences
+of life and to all races and all conditions of men. It alone is able to
+meet all the deep and manifold wants of mankind. Hardwick has very aptly
+pointed out a contrast in this respect between the faith of Abraham and
+that of the early Indo-Aryan chiefs as portrayed in the Rig Veda. The
+pressing wants of humanity necessitate a faith that is of the nature of
+a heartfelt trust. No other can be regarded as strictly religious. Now
+Abraham's faith was something more than a speculation or a creed. It was
+an all-embracing confidence in God. He had an abiding sense of His
+presence and he confided in Him as his constant guide, defender, and
+friend. His family, his flocks, his relations to the hostile tribes who
+surrounded him, the promised possession of the land to which he
+journeyed--all these were matters which he left in the hands of an
+unseen but ever-faithful friend. His was a practical faith--a real and
+complete venture, and it involved gratitude and loyalty and love.
+Abraham's childhood had been spent in the home of an idolatrous father;
+for Shemite as well as Aryan had departed from the worship of the true
+God. In Chaldea, as in India, men had come to worship the sun and moon
+and the forces of nature. But while the Hindu wandered ever farther away
+from Jehovah, Abraham restored the faith which his ancestors had lost.
+He had no recourse to Indra or Varuna, he sought no help from devas or
+departed spirits. He looked to God alone, for he had heard a voice
+saying, "I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be thou
+perfect."[220] Under the inspiration of such a summons Abraham became
+"the father of the faithful." He was the representative and exemplar of
+real and practical faith, not only to the Hebrew race but to all
+mankind. He staked his all upon a promise which he regarded as divine
+and therefore sure. He believed in the Lord and He counted it to him for
+righteousness. He left home and country and ventured among hostile
+tribes in an assured confidence that he should gain a possession, though
+empty-handed, and a countless posterity, though yet childless, and that
+all this would be granted him not for his own glory, but that all
+nations might be blest in him. And this subordination of self and this
+uplifting of his soul to a sublime hope rendered him patient when
+fulfilment seemed postponed, and strong against temptation when spoils
+and emoluments were offered him; for in some sense, vague perhaps, he
+foresaw a Messiah and a Kingdom of Righteousness, and he was girded with
+confidence to the last, though he died without the sight.
+
+We look in vain for anything to be compared with this in the Vedic
+literature, still less in that of the period of Brahmanical
+sacerdotalism, or in the still later speculations of the philosophic
+schools. Real Hinduism is wanting in the element of trust. Its only
+faith is a belief, a theory, a speculation. It receives nothing and
+expects nothing as a free gift of God. Sacrificial rites survived in the
+early Vedic period, but they had lost all prophetic significance. They
+terminated in themselves and rested upon their own value. There was no
+remembered promise and no expectation of any specific fulfilment. The
+Hindu gained simply what he bought with his merit or his offerings, and
+he had no greater sense of gratitude to deity than to the tradesman of
+whom he made a purchase in the bazaar. There are, indeed, traces in some
+of the earliest Vedic hymns of a feeling of dependence upon superior
+powers, yet the Brahmanical priesthood taught men that he who was rich
+enough to offer a sacrifice of a hundred horses might bankrupt heaven,
+and by his simple right of purchase even rob Indra of his throne.[221]
+As stated in a previous lecture, so far was this system from "the faith
+which works by love" that even demons, by costly sacrifices might
+dispute the supremacy of the universe.
+
+There is an equally significant contrast between the legislation of
+Moses and that of Manu. The life and experience of the former are
+interwoven with his statutes. They are illustrated with references to
+actual events in the history of the people. The blessings, the trials,
+the punishments, the victories, the defeats of Israel enter into the
+texture of the whole Mosaic record: it is full of sympathetic feeling;
+it takes hold on the actual life of men and therefore is able to reform
+and elevate them. It brings not only Moses, but Jehovah Himself into
+personal sympathy with the people. But Manu presents statutes only. Many
+of these are wholesome as laws, but they are destitute of tenderness or
+compassion. No indication is given of the author's own experience, and
+we are left in doubt whether there were not many authors to whom the
+general name of Manu was applied. There is no inculcation of gratitude
+and love to God, or any hint of His love to men. No prayer, no song, no
+confession of dependence, no tribute of praise, no record of trembling,
+yet trustful, experience. It is all cold, lifeless precept and
+prohibition, with threats of punishment here and hereafter. Religious
+exaction is most strict, but there are few religious privileges except
+for Brahmans, and these they possess by divine birthright. No
+particular favor is asked from any being in heaven or on earth.
+
+With respect to this same element of personal trust, and real, heartfelt
+experience, contrast David also with any author whose name is given in
+Hindu literature. He was full of humanity, large-hearted, loving,
+grateful, and though stained by sin, yet he was so penitent and humble
+and tender that he was said to be a man after God's own heart. He was a
+successful warrior and a great king, but he held all his honor and his
+power as a divine gift and for the Divine glory. Compare the 119th Psalm
+with the Upanishads, or with any of the six schools of philosophy. The
+one deals with moral precepts and spiritual aspirations, all the others
+with subtle theories of creation or problems of the universe. The one is
+the outflowing of joyous experience found in obedience to God's moral
+law, and only out of the heart could such a psalm have been written. The
+law of God had become not a barrier or a hamper, but a delight.
+Evidently David had found a religion which filled every avenue and met
+every want of his whole being.
+
+Again, only the religion of Christ brings man into his proper relation
+of penitence and humility before God. It is necessary to the very
+conception of reconciliation to a higher and purer being that
+wrong-doing shall be confessed. All the leading faiths of the world have
+traditions of the fall of man from a higher and holier estate, and most
+of them--notably Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient Druidism, and the Druse
+religion of Mount Lebanon--declare that the fall was the result of
+pride and rebellion of spirit. And of necessity the wrong, if it cannot
+be undone, must at least be confessed. Self-justification is
+perpetuation. The offender must lay aside his false estimate of self and
+admit the justice whose claims he has violated. Even in the ordinary
+intercourse of men this principle is universally recognized. There can
+be no reconciliation without either actual reparation or at least a
+frank acknowledgment. Governmental pardon always implies repentance and
+promised reform, and between individuals a due concession to violated
+principle is deemed the dictate of the truest honor. How can there be
+reconciliation to God, then, without repentance and humiliation? Of what
+value can heathen asceticism and merit-making be while the heart is
+still barred and buttressed with self-righteousness? The longer a man
+approaches the Holiness of Deity with the offerings of his own
+self-consequence the greater does the enormity of his offence become and
+the wider the breach which he attempts to close.
+
+Even if he could render a perfect obedience and service for the future,
+he could never overtake the old unsettled score. The prodigal cannot
+recover the squandered estate or wipe out the record of folly and sin,
+and if there be no resource of free remission on the one hand, and no
+deep and genuine repentance on the other, there can be no possible
+adjustment. The universal judgment and conscience of men so decide.
+Philosophers may present this method and that of moral culture and
+assimilation to the character of the Infinite, but practically all men
+will approve the philosophy taught in Christ's touching parable of the
+Prodigal Son. The beauty, the force, the propriety of its principles
+strike the human understanding, whether of the sage or of the savage,
+like a flash of sunlight, and no human heart can fail to be touched by
+its lessons. Yet where in all the wide waste of heathen faiths or
+philosophies is there anything which even remotely resembles the story
+of the Prodigal? Where is the system in which such an incident and such
+a lesson would not be wholly out of place?
+
+In that ancient book of the Egyptian religion known as "The Book of the
+Dead," the souls of the departed when arraigned before the throne of
+Osiris are represented as all joining in one refrain of
+self-exculpation, uttering such pleas as these: "I have not offended or
+caused others to offend." "I have not snared ducks illegally on the
+Nile." "I have not used false weights or measures." "I have not
+defrauded my neighbor by unjustly opening the sluices upon my own land!"
+Any sense of the inward character of sin or any conception of wrong
+attitudes of mind or heart toward God is utterly wanting. It is simply
+the plea of "not guilty," which even the most hardened culprit may make
+in court. In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which
+looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation. "It was
+not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught,
+passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young.
+Even sleep brings unrighteousness." And the remission sought for is not
+one involving a change of character but only release from an external
+bond. "Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those which we
+committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O King, like a thief
+who has feasted on stolen oxen. Release him like a calf from the
+rope."[222]
+
+In the Penitential Psalms of the ancient Akkadians, who inhabited
+Northern Assyria in the times of Abraham, and who may have retained
+something of that true faith from which Abraham's father had declined,
+we find a nearer approach to true penitence, but that also lacks the
+inner sense of sin and seeks merely an exemption from punishments.
+
+Only in the Old and New Testaments is sin recognized as of the nature of
+personal guilt. Accordingly, Christianity alone recognizes the fact that
+right thoughts and motives and a worthy character are the gifts of God.
+Cicero has truly remarked[223] that men justly thank God for external
+blessings, but never for virtue, or talent, or character. All that is
+regarded as their own. And such is the conceit of human
+self-righteousness in all man-made religions, whether Hindu or Greek,
+ancient or modern. Philosophy is in its very nature haughty and
+aristocratic. Even Plato betrays this element. It is only the Christian
+apostle that is heard to say, with heartfelt emotion, "By the grace of
+God I am what I am." The Buddha declared that he recognized no being in
+any world to whom he owed any special reverence; and especially in his
+later years, when his disciples had come to look upon him as in a sense
+divine, he regarded himself as the highest of all intelligences on the
+earth or in the various heavens. Such assumptions in both Buddha and
+Confucius will explain the fact that for ages both have been virtually
+worshipped. "At fifteen," said Confucius, "I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty I stood firm. At forty I had no doubt. At fifty I
+knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty my ear was an obedient organ for
+the reception of truth. At seventy I could follow what my heart desired
+without transgressing what was right."[224] Yet neither of these great
+teachers claimed to be a divine Saviour. They were simply exemplars;
+their self-righteousness was supposed to be attainable by all.
+
+I cannot do better in this connection than point out a striking contrast
+in the recorded experiences of two well-known historic characters. Islam
+honors David, King of Israel, and accords him a place among its
+accredited prophets. Both David and Mohammed were guilty of adultery
+under circumstances of peculiar aggravation. Mohammed covered his
+offence by a blasphemous pretence of special revelations from God,
+justifying his crime and chiding him for such qualms of conscience as he
+had. David lay in dust and ashes while he bemoaned not only the
+consequences of his sin and the breach of justice toward his neighbor,
+but also the deep spiritual offence of his act. "Against Thee, and Thee
+only, O God, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight."
+Profoundest penitence on the one hand and Heaven-daring blasphemy on
+the other, the Bible and the Koran being witnesses!
+
+Another marked distinction is seen in the moral purity of the Christian
+Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other
+religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show
+the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than
+the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social
+intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level.
+And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely
+appear. And it is by this very test that we can with tolerable accuracy
+distinguish the human from the divine in religious records. It is not
+difficult to determine what is from heaven and what is of the earth.
+
+No enlightened reader of Greek mythology can proceed far without
+discovering that he is dealing with the prurient and often lascivious
+imaginings of semi-barbarous poets. He finds the poetry and the art of
+Greece both reflecting the character of a passionate people, bred under
+a southern sun and in an extremely sensuous age. If he ventures into the
+lowest depths of the popular religious literature of Greece or Rome, or
+ancient Egypt or Phoenicia, he finds unspeakable vice enshrined among
+the mysteries of religion, and corruptions which an age of refinement
+refuses to translate or depict abound on every hand. Or apply the same
+test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest
+stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into
+the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here
+and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as
+the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns
+promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences[225] none can
+doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. As for the Upanishads,
+which are regarded as _Sruti_ or inspired, Professor Max Müller, in his
+Introduction to the first volume of "The Sacred Books of the East,"
+virtually admits the impropriety of translating them for English readers
+without expurgation. Mr. Ram Chandra Bose, of Lucknow, declares himself
+unable, for the same reason, to give a full and unabridged account of
+the ancient Hindu sacrifices.[226] The later literatures of the Puranas
+and the Tantras are lower still. Anti-Christian Orientalists have so
+generally conveyed the popular impression that their culled and
+expurgated translations were fair representations of Hindu literature
+that Wilson finally felt called upon in the interest of truth and
+honesty to lift the veil from some of the later revelations of the
+Puranas, and it is sufficient to say that the Greek mythology is fairly
+outdone by the alleged and repeated escapades of the chief Hindu
+deities.
+
+The traditions of all ancient religions found on either hemisphere, and
+the usages observed among savage tribes of to-day all conform to the
+same low moral gauge. All are as deplorably human as the degraded
+peoples who devised them. In Mexico and Peru, as well as in Egypt and in
+Babylonia, base human passion was mingled with the highest teachings of
+religion.[227] Buddhism has generally been considered an exception to
+this general rule, and it will be confessed that its influence has been
+vastly higher than that of the old Hinduism, or the religions of Canaan,
+or Greece, or Rome, and immeasurably higher in morals than that of
+Islam; yet even Buddhism has been colored by its European advocates with
+far too roseate a hue. Sir Edwin Arnold was not the first biographer of
+Gautama to glorify incidentally the seductive influences of his Indian
+harem, and to leave on too many minds the impression that, after all,
+the luxurious palace of Sidartha was more attractive than the beggars'
+bowl of the enlightened "Tathagata." The Bishop of Colombo, in an able
+article on Buddhism, arraigns the apologetic translators of Buddhistic
+literature for having given to the world an altogether erroneous
+impression of the moral purity of the Sacred Books of Ceylon.[228]
+
+The vaunted claim that the early Buddhist records, and especially the
+early rock inscriptions found in caves, are pure, whatever corruptions
+may have crept into more modern manuscripts, is well met by letters from
+a recent traveller, which speak of certain Buddhist inscriptions so
+questionable in character that they cannot be translated or
+described.[229]
+
+It is scarcely necessary for me to speak of the base appeal to man's low
+passions found in the Koran. It is only necessary to trace its
+unmistakable influence in the moral degeneracy of Mohammedan populations
+in all lands and all ages--destroying the sacredness of the home,
+degrading woman, engendering unnatural vices, and poisoning all society
+from generation to generation. It is indeed a hard task for its
+apologists, by any kind of literary veneering to cover the moral
+deformity and the blasphemous wickedness which, side by side with
+acknowledged excellences, mar the pages of the Koran. The soiled
+finger-marks of the sensual Arab everywhere defile them. Like the blood
+of Banquo, they defy all ocean's waters to wash them out. It was easy
+enough for Mohammed to copy many exalted truths from Judaism and
+Christianity, and no candid mind will deny that there are many noble
+precepts in the Koran; but after all has been said, its ruling spirit is
+base. Even its promised heaven is demoralizing. It is characteristically
+a human book, and very low in the ethical scale at that.
+
+Let us now turn to the Bible; let us remember that the Old Testament
+represents those early centuries when the people of Israel were
+surrounded by the corruptions of Baal worship, which transcended the
+grovelling wickedness of all other heathen systems, ancient or modern.
+Let us bear in mind the kind of training which the nation had received
+amid the corruptions of Egypt, all rendered more effective for evil by
+their degrading bondage; and with all these disadvantages in view, let
+us search everywhere, from Genesis to Malachi, and see if there be one
+prurient utterance, one sanction for, or even connivance at, impurity
+in all those records, written by men in different lands and ages, men
+representing all social grades, all vocations in life, and chosen from
+among all varieties of association. Who will deny that these men appear
+to have been raised by some unaccountable power to a common level of
+moral purity which was above their age, their social standards, their
+natural impulses, or any of the highest human influences which could
+have been exerted upon them?
+
+They were often called to deal plainly with moral evils. They record
+instances of grievous dereliction, in some cases the writers were
+themselves the offenders. But there is always reproof. The story always
+has a salutary moral. Sin is always shown to be a losing game, a sowing
+to the wind and a reaping of the whirlwind. It is either followed by
+severe judgments, or it is repented of with a contrition which bows even
+a great monarch in dust and ashes.
+
+The books of the New Testament were also written in an age of great
+moral corruption. Judaism was virtually dead; the current religion in
+the Holy City was "a sad perversion of the truth." Hypocrisy sat in high
+places when John Baptist came with his protest and his rebukes. The
+Herods, who held the sceptres of provincial authority, were either base
+time-servers, or worse, they were monsters of lust and depravity. In the
+far-off capitals of the dominant heathen races vice had attained its
+full fruitage and was already going to seed and consequent decay.
+Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Antioch were steeped in iniquity, while
+the emperors who wielded the sceptre of the Roman empire were hastening
+the ruin of the existing civilization. It was in such an age and amid
+such surroundings that the Gospels and the Epistles came forth as the
+lotus springs, pure and radiant from the foul and fetid quagmire. What
+could have produced them? The widely accepted rule that religions are
+the products of their environments is surely at fault here. Neither in
+the natural impulses of a dozen Judean fishermen and peasants, nor in
+the bigoted breast of Saul of Tarsus, could these unique and sublime
+conceptions have found their genesis. They are manifestly divine. How
+exalted is the portraiture of the Christ! What human skill could have
+depicted a character which no ideal of our best modern culture can
+equal?
+
+In all the New Testament there are none but the highest and purest
+ethical teachings, and even the most poetical descriptions of heaven are
+free from any faintest tinge of human folly. The Apocalypse is full of
+images which appeal to the senses, but there is nothing which does not
+minister to the most rigid purity; while the representations which Paul
+makes of eternal felicity are strictly and conspicuously spiritual and
+elevating. Everywhere, from Matthew to Revelations, it is the pure in
+heart who shall see God, and the inducement held out is to be pure
+because He is pure. And although the gift of eternal life is a free
+gift, yet it affords no excuse for laxity. The sixth chapter of the
+Epistle to the Romans is a remonstrance against all presumption in those
+that are "under grace." "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto
+sin, but alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let not sin
+therefore rule in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts
+thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness
+unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the
+dead."[230] The religion of the New Testament is a spiritual religion,
+the resurrection body is a spiritual body; heaven is not an Indian
+hunting-ground, nor a Vikings Valhalla of shield-clad warriors, nor a
+Moslem harem. It is a spiritual abode, and its companionships are with
+God and the Lamb, with the church of the first-born and of saints made
+perfect. Now, all that we can say of these lofty and pure conceptions is
+that flesh and blood never revealed them. They are divine. They are out
+of the range of our native humanity; they are not the things that human
+nature desires, and it is only by the high culture of transforming grace
+that human aspirations are raised to their level.
+
+In conclusion, there are many points in which Christianity asserts its
+unique supremacy over all other systems of which there is time but for
+the briefest mention. It presents to man the only cultus which can have
+universal adaptation. Christ only, belongs to all ages and all races.
+Buddha is but an Asiatic, Mohammed is an Arab and belongs only to the
+East. The religion or philosophy of Confucius has never found adaptation
+to any but Mongolian races; his social and political pyramid would
+crumble in contact with republican institutions. On the other hand, the
+religion of Christ is not only adapted to all races, but it aims at
+their union in one great brotherhood. Again, Christianity alone presents
+the true relation between Divine help and human effort. It does not
+invest marred and crippled human nature with a false and impossible
+independence, neither does it crush it. Whenever heathen systems have
+taught a salvation by faith they have lost sight of moral obligation.
+Weitbrecht and others state this as a fact with the Hindu doctrine of
+Bakti (faith) adopted in the later centuries; De Quatrefages asserts the
+same of the Tahitans. But the faith of the New Testament everywhere
+supposes a Divine and effectual co-operation. "Work out your own
+salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to
+will and to do of His good pleasure." It bids men serve not as
+hirelings, but as sons and heirs; it stimulates hope without engendering
+pride; it administers discipline, but with a father's love; it teaches
+that trials are not judgments, but wholesome lessons. Of all religions
+it alone inculcates a rational and consoling doctrine of Providence. It
+declares that to the righteous death is not destruction, but a sleep in
+peace and hope. It bids the Christian lay off his cares and worries--in
+all things making his requests known unto God with thanksgivings; and
+yet it enjoins him not to rest in sloth, but to aspire after all that is
+pure and true and honorable and lovely and of good report in human life
+and conduct. It saves him from sin not by the stifling and atrophy of
+any God-given power, but by the expulsive influence of new affections;
+it bids him be pure even as God is pure.
+
+There is in the brief epistle of Paul to Titus a passage which in a
+single sentence sets forth the way of salvation in its fulness. It
+traces redemption to the grace of God, and it makes it a free provision
+for all men; yet it insists upon carefulness and sobriety. Salvation is
+shown to begin _now_ in the laying aside of all sin and the living of a
+godly life. Meanwhile it cheers the soul with expectation that Christ
+shall dwell with the redeemed in triumph, as He once came in
+humiliation, and it keeps ever in mind the great truth that His mission
+is not merely to secure for man future exemptions and possessions, but
+to build up character--character that shall continue to rise and expand
+forever.
+
+_For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
+teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
+soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that
+blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our
+Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us
+from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of
+good works._
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 205: _Holy Bible and Sacred Books of the East_, p. 12.]
+
+[Footnote 206: Mohammed was once asked whether he trusted in his own
+merit or in the mercy of God, and he answered, "The mercy of God." But
+the whole drift of his teaching belied this one pious utterance.]
+
+[Footnote 207: Of the terrible darkness and bewilderment into which
+benighted races are often found Schoolcraft furnishes this graphic and
+painful picture in the condition of the Iroquois:
+
+"Their notions of a deity, founded apparently on some dreamy tradition
+of original truth, are so subtile and divisible, and establish so
+heterogeneous a connection between spirit and matter of all imaginable
+forms, that popular belief seems to have wholly confounded the possible
+with the impossible, the natural with the supernatural. Action, so far
+as respects cause and effect, takes the widest and wildest range,
+through the agency of good or evil influences, which are put in motion
+alike for noble or ignoble ends--alike by men, beasts, devils, or gods.
+Seeing something mysterious and wonderful, he believes all things
+mysterious and wonderful; and he is afloat without shore or compass, on
+the wildest sea of superstition and necromancy. He sees a god in every
+phenomenon, and fears a sorcerer in every enemy. Life, under such a
+system of polytheism and wild belief, is a constant scene of fears and
+alarms. Fear is the predominating passion, and he is ready, wherever he
+goes, to sacrifice at any altar, be the supposed deity ever so
+grotesque. He relates just what he believes, and unluckily he believes
+everything that can possibly be told. A beast, or a bird, or a man, or a
+god, or a devil, a stone, a serpent, or a wizard, a wind, or a sound, or
+a ray of light--these are so many causes of action, which the meanest
+and lowest of the series may put in motion, but which shall in his
+theology and philosophy vibrate along the mysterious chain through the
+uppermost, and life or death may at any moment be the reward or the
+penalty."--_Notes on the Iroquois_, p. 263.]
+
+[Footnote 208: _History of Rationalism_.]
+
+[Footnote 209: And even the Buddha had spent six years in
+self-mortification and in the diligent search for what he regarded as
+the true wisdom.]
+
+[Footnote 210: Henry Maudsley, in _The Arena_ of April, 1891.]
+
+[Footnote 211: "Barren Mohammedanism has been in all the higher and more
+tender virtues, because its noble morality and its pure theism have been
+united with no living example."--Lecky, _History of Morals_, vol. ii.,
+p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 212: The most intelligent Mohammedans, as we have shown in a
+former lecture, admit the moral blemishes of his character as compared
+with the purity of Jesus and only revere him as the instrument of a
+great Divine purpose. His only element of greatness was success. Even
+the Koran convicts him of what the world must regard as heinous sin, and
+presents Jesus as the only sinless prophet.]
+
+[Footnote 213: Douglass, _Confucianism and Taouism_.]
+
+[Footnote 214: The apologists of Buddhism have made much of the story of
+a distressed young mother who came to the "Master" bearing in her arms
+the dead body of her first-born--hoping for some comfort or help. He
+bade her bring him some mustard seed found in a home where no child had
+died. After a wearisome but vain search he only reminded her of the
+universality of death. No hope of a future life and a glad recovery of
+the lost was given. As an illustration of Buddhism the example is a good
+one.]
+
+[Footnote 215: "Men wanted a Father in heaven, who should take account
+of their efforts and assure them a recompense. Men wanted a future of
+righteousness, in which the earth should belong to the feeble and the
+poor; they wanted the assurance that human suffering is not all loss,
+but that beyond this sad horizon, dimmed by tears, are happy plains
+where sorrow shall one day find its consolation."--Renan, _Hibbert
+Lectures_, p. 42.]
+
+[Footnote 216: See report of Missionary Conference, London, 1888, vol.
+i., p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 217: _St. Paul and Protestantism_, p. 79, quoted by Bishop
+Carpenter.]
+
+[Footnote 218: It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the
+well-known tribute which Napoleon, in his conversations with his friends
+on the island of St. Helena, paid to the transcendent personality of
+Christ. He drew a graphic contrast between the so-called glory which had
+been won by great conquerors like Alexander, Cæsar, and himself, and
+that mysterious and all-mastering power which in all lands and all ages
+continues to attach itself to the person, the name, the memory of
+Christ, for whom, after eighteen centuries of time, millions of men
+would sacrifice their lives.]
+
+[Footnote 219: Augustine appears to have been greatly moved by the life
+as well as by the writings of Paul. In an account given of his
+conversion to his friend Romanianus, he says, "So then stumbling,
+hurrying, hesitating, I seized the apostle Paul, 'for never,' said I,
+'could they have wrought such things, or lived as it is plain they did
+live, if their writings and arguments were opposed to this so high a
+good.'"--_Confessions_, Bk. vii., xxi., note.]
+
+[Footnote 220: Genesis, xvii. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 221: The doctrine of human merit-making was carried to such an
+extreme under the Brahmanical system that the gods became afraid of its
+power. They sometimes found it necessary to send apsaras (nymphs), wives
+of genii, to tempt the most holy ascetics, lest their austerities and
+their merit should proceed too far.--_See Article Brahmanism, in the
+Britannica._]
+
+[Footnote 222: Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 40.]
+
+[Footnote 223: De Nat. Deorum, iii., 36.]
+
+[Footnote 224: _Chips from a German Workshop_, p. 304.]
+
+[Footnote 225: See Murdock's _Vedic Religion_, p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 226: _Hindu Philosophy_.]
+
+[Footnote 227: The most sacred of human victims offered by the Aztecs
+were prepared by a month of unbridled lust. See Prescott's _Conquest_.]
+
+[Footnote 228: _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 229: Letters of Rev. Pentecost in _The Christian at Work_,
+1891.]
+
+[Footnote 230: The same principles are set forth with great emphasis in
+Isaiah, Chap. iii.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+BOOKS OF REFERENCE
+
+
+The books relating directly or indirectly to the wide range of topics
+discussed in the following lectures are too numerous for citation here;
+but there are some which are so essential to a thorough knowledge of
+comparative religion and comparative philosophy, that a special
+acknowledgment is due.
+
+"The Sacred Books of the East" are indispensable to one who would catch
+the real spirit of the Oriental religions. The translations from Hindu,
+Buddhist, Mohammedan, Confucian, and Zoroastrian literatures, by Max
+Müller, Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Fausbôll, Palmer, Darmesteter, Mills,
+Legge, Buhler, West, Beal, and other able scholars, are invaluable. The
+various other works of Max Müller, "The Science of Religion," "Chips
+from a German Workshop," "The Origin and Growth of Religion," "Physical
+Religion," etc., fill an important place in all study of these subjects.
+
+"Indian Wisdom," by Sir Monier Williams, is the most comprehensive, and
+in many ways the best, of all compends of Hindu religion and philosophy.
+His abridged work, "Hinduism," and the larger volume entitled
+"Brahmanism and Hinduism," are also valuable. R.C. Bose has given to the
+public an able treatise entitled "Hindu Philosophy." Other books on
+Hinduism to which more or less reference is made, are: "The Vedic
+Religion," by McDonald; "India and the Indians," by Duff; "The Life and
+Letters of Colbrooke;" "The Bhagavad Gita," as translated by Chatterji;
+"The Vishnu Puranas," by Wilson; "The Ramayana," by Griffiths;
+"Brahmoism," by Bose; "The Oriental Christ," by Mozoomdar; "Christianity
+and Hindu Philosophy," by Ballantyne.
+
+Among the ablest books on Buddhism are: "Buddhism;" "The Growth of
+Religion as illustrated by Buddhism," and the able article on the same
+subject in the "Britannica"--all by Rhys Davids. "Buddha: His Life,
+Character, and Order," by Professor Oldenberg, is a scarcely less
+important contribution to Buddhist literature. "The Light of Asia," by
+Sir Edwin Arnold, has done more than any other work to interest Western
+nations in the legends of Gautama; perhaps no other Oriental character
+has been more successfully popularized. Of the many efforts to correct
+the misleading impressions given by this fanciful but really poetic
+story, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," by Dr. S.H.
+Kellogg, is probably the ablest. Dr. Edkins, in "Chinese Buddhism," and
+Professor Beal, in "Buddhism in China," have very successfully shown the
+characteristics of the Chinese types of the system. Spence Hardy, in his
+"Manual of Buddhism," has rendered a similar service in relation to the
+Buddhism of Ceylon, while Bigandet has set forth that of Burmah, and
+Alabaster that of Siam. Sir Monier Williams, in his more recent work,
+"Buddhism," has done much to counteract the fashionable tendency of most
+Orientalists to idealize the Buddhist system.
+
+Other works relating to Buddhism are, "Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ," by
+Dodds; "Buddhism (Modern)," by Subhadra; and "Esoteric Buddhism," by
+Sinnett. Maurice, Bishop Carpenter, Brace, the Bishop of Colombo,
+Martin, and many others have ably discussed the subject.
+
+Of all works on Mohammedanism, Sale's translation of the Koran, with a
+"Preliminary Discourse," is the most comprehensive and important.
+Sprenger's "Life of Mohammed, from Original Sources," is perhaps next in
+rank. "Islam and Mahomet," by Samuel Johnson; "Mohammed and
+Mohammedanism," by E. Bosworth Smith; "Christianity, Islam, and the
+Negro Race," by E.W. Blyden; and "Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book," by
+Canon Isaac Taylor, are among the principal apologies for Islam.
+Gibbon's fifth volume of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has
+at least done ample justice to the glory of the Mohammedan conquest.
+
+Of those who have ably controverted the claims of Islam, the late Dr.
+Pfander, of Northern India, will perhaps hold the first rank. Of the
+three Moulvies who were selected to meet him in public discussion, two
+are said to have been converted to Christianity by his arguments. The
+concessions of the Koran to the truths of the Old and New Testaments
+have been ably pointed out by Sir William Muir in "The Koran," and Dr.
+E.M. Wherry, in his "Commentary," has established the striking fact,
+that of all the prophets named in the Koran, including Mohammed, Jesus
+alone is represented as sinless. The modern apologists of Mohammed and
+his system have been well answered by Knox in current numbers of the
+_Church Missionary Intelligencer_. Other works upon the subject are
+"Islam," by Stobart; "Islam as a Missionary Religion," by Haines;
+"Essays on Eastern Questions," by Palgrave. Sir William Muir's "History
+of the Caliphate" is an important and recent work.
+
+Confucianism and Taouism may be fairly understood, even by those who
+have not the time for a careful study of Legge's translations of the
+Chinese classics, by reference to the following works: "China and the
+Chinese," by Medhurst; "The Religions of China," by Legge; "The
+Chinese," by Martin; "Confucianism and Taouism," by Douglass; "Religion
+in China," by Edkins. The late Samuel Johnson, in his "Oriental
+Religions," has devoted a large volume to the religions of China,
+principally to the ethics and political economy of the Confucian system;
+and James Freeman Clark has given considerable attention to Confucianism
+as one of "The Ten Great Religions."
+
+Zoroastrianism is ably treated by Darmesteter in the Introduction to his
+translation of the "Zend Avesta." Instructive lectures on the religion
+and literature of Persia may be found in the first volume of Max
+Müller's "Chips from a German Workshop;" also in "The Religion of the
+Iranians," found in Ebrard's "Apologetics," vol. ii. West's and
+Darmesteter's translations of "Pahlavi Texts," in the "Sacred Books of
+the East," are also suggestive.
+
+In the following discussions, relating broadly to the ancient as well as
+the modern religions and philosophies of the world, and their contrasts
+to Christian truth, reference is made directly or indirectly to the
+following works: "Christ and Other Masters," by Hardwick; "The Ancient
+World and Christianity," by Edward de Pressensé; "The Religions of the
+World," by Maurice; "The Aryan Witness," by Banergea; "The Unknown God,"
+by Brace; "The Permanent Elements in Religion," by Boyd Carpenter;
+"Oriental and Linguistic Studies," by A.D. Whitney; "The Doomed
+Religions," by Reid; "The Idea of God," by Fiske; "The Destiny of Man,"
+by Fiske; "The Races of Man," by Peschel; "Introduction to the
+Philosophy of Religion," by Caird; "National Religions and Universal
+Religions," by Kuenen; "Some Elements of Religion," by Liddon; "Outlines
+of the History of Ancient Religions," by Tiele; "The Philosophy of
+Religion," by Pfleiderer; "Our Christian Heritage," by Cardinal Gibbons;
+"Hulsean Lectures, 1845-6," by Trench; "Hibbert Lectures, 1880," by
+Renan; "Origins of English History," by Elton; "St. Paul in Britain"
+(Druidism), by Morgan; "Fossil Men and their Modern Representatives," by
+Dawson; "Modern Ideas of Evolution," by Dawson; "Marcus Aurelius," by
+Renan; "Epictetus," Bonn's Library; "Confessions," by St. Augustine;
+"History of the Egyptian Religion," by Tiele; "Lucretius," Bonn's
+Library; "Lives of the Fathers," by Farrar; "The Vikings of Western
+Christendom," by Keary; "Principles of Sociology," by Spencer; "The
+Descent of Man," by Darwin; "Evolution and Its Relation to Christian
+Thought," by Le Conte; "History of European Morals," by Lecky; "The
+Kojiki" (Sacred Books of Shinto), Chamberlain's translation; "The
+Witness of History to Christ," by Farrar; "Anti-Theistic Theories," by
+Flint; "The Human Species," by De Quatrefages.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oriental Religions and Christianity
+by Frank F. Ellinwood
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oriental Religions and Christianity
+by Frank F. Ellinwood
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Oriental Religions and Christianity
+       A Course of Lectures Delivered on the Ely Foundation Before the
+       Students of Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1891
+
+
+Author: Frank F. Ellinwood
+
+Release Date: February 1, 2005 [EBook #14867]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY ***
+
+
+
+
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+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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+ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+A COURSE OF LECTURES DELIVERED ON THE ELY FOUNDATION
+BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY,
+NEW YORK, 1891
+
+BY FRANK F. ELLINWOOD, D.D.
+SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS
+OF THE
+PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH U.S.A.;
+LECTURER ON COMPARATIVE RELIGION
+IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
+
+NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1892
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+The following lectures, prepared amid many cares and duties, have aimed
+to deal only with practical questions which are demanding attention in
+our time. They do not claim to constitute a treatise with close
+connections and a logical order. Each presents a distinct topic, or a
+particular phase of the present conflict of Christian truth with the
+errors of the non-Christian religions. This independent treatment must
+constitute my apology for an occasional repetition of important facts or
+opinions which have a common bearing on different discussions. No claim
+is made to scholarship in the Oriental languages. The ability to compare
+original sources and determine dates and intricate meanings of terms, or
+settle points in dispute by a wide research in Sanscrit or Pali
+literatures, can only be obtained by those who spend years in study
+along these special lines. But so many specialists have now made known
+the results of their prolonged linguistic studies in the form of
+approved English translations, that, as Professor Max Mueller has well
+said in his introduction to "The Sacred Books of the East," "there is
+no longer any excuse for ignorance of the rich treasures of Oriental
+Literature."
+
+Two considerations lend special importance to the topics here discussed.
+First, that the false systems in question belong not merely to the past,
+but to our own time. And second, that the increased intercommunication
+of this age brings us into closer contact with them. They are no longer
+afar off and unheard of, nor are they any longer lying in passive
+slumber. Having received quickening influences from our Western
+civilization, and various degrees of sympathy from certain types of
+Western thought, they have become aggressive and are at our doors.
+
+On controverted points I have made frequent quotations, for the reason
+that the testimonies or opinions of writers of acknowledged competency
+are best given in their own words.
+
+I have labored under a profound conviction that, whatever may be the
+merit and success of these modest efforts, the general class of subjects
+treated is destined to receive increased attention in the near future;
+that the Christian Church will not long be content to miscalculate the
+great conquest which she is attempting against the heathen systems of
+the East and their many alliances with the infidelity of the West. And I
+am cheered with a belief that, in proportion to the intelligent
+discrimination which shall be exercised in judging of the non-Christian
+religions, and the skill which shall be shown in presenting the
+immensely superior truths of the Christian faith, will the success of
+the great work of Missions be increased.
+
+It scarcely needs to be said that I have not even attempted to give
+anything like a complete view of the various systems of which I have
+spoken. Only a few salient points have been touched upon, as some
+practical end has required. But if the mere outline here given shall
+lead any to a fuller investigation of the subjects discussed, I shall be
+content. I am satisfied that the more thoroughly the Gospel of
+Redemption is compared with the futile systems of self-righteousness
+which man has devised, the more wonderful it will appear.
+
+F.F. ELLINWOOD.
+
+NEW YORK, January 20, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+_THE ELY LECTURES_--1891.
+
+
+The lectures contained in this volume were delivered to the students of
+Union Theological Seminary in the year 1891, as one of the courses
+established in the Seminary by Mr. Zebulon Stiles Ely, in the following
+terms:
+
+     "The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand dollars to the Union
+     Theological Seminary of the city of New York, to found a
+     lectureship in the same, the title of which shall be 'The Elias P.
+     Ely Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity.'
+
+     "The course of lectures given on this foundation is to comprise any
+     topics that serve to establish the proposition that Christianity is
+     a religion from God, or that it is the perfect and final form of
+     religion for man.
+
+     "Among the subjects discussed may be:
+
+     "The Nature and Need of a Revelation;
+
+     "The Character and Influence of Christ and his Apostles;
+
+     "The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scriptures, Miracles, and
+     Prophecy;
+
+     "The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity; and
+
+     "The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the Christian
+     System.
+
+     "Upon one or more of such subjects a course of ten public lectures
+     shall be given, at least once in two or three years. The
+     appointment of the lecturer is to be by the concurrent action of
+     the directors and faculty of said Seminary and the undersigned; and
+     it shall ordinarily be made two years in advance."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE NEED OF UNDERSTANDING THE FALSE RELIGIONS 1
+
+     The New "Science of Religion" to be Viewed with Discrimination--The
+     Study of the Oriental Systems too Long a Monopoly of Anti-Christian
+     Scholars--The Changed Aspects of the Missionary Work--The
+     Significant Experience of Ziegenbalz--Fears Entertained in
+     Reference to this Subject by Timid Believers--The Different View
+     taken of the Old Heathen Systems of Greece and Rome--The Subject
+     Considered from the Standpoint of Missionary Candidates--The
+     Testimony of Intelligent and Experienced Missionaries--Reasons for
+     Studying Oriental Systems Found in the Increased Intercourse of the
+     Nations; in the Intellectual Quickening of Oriental Minds by
+     Education; in the Resistance and even Aggressiveness of Heathen
+     Systems; in the Diversities of the Buddhist Faith in Different
+     Lands--False Systems to be Studied with a Candid Spirit--The
+     Distinction to be Drawn between Religion and Ethics--Reasons why a
+     Missionary should Pursue these Studies before Arriving on his
+     Field--Reasons why the Ministry at Home Should Acquaint Themselves
+     with Heathen Systems--Their Active Alliance with Various Forms of
+     Western Infidelity--Intellectual Advantages to be Derived from such
+     Studies--A Broader and Warmer Sympathy with Universal Humanity to
+     be Gained--A Better Understanding of the Unique Supremacy of the
+     Gospel as the Only Hope of the World--Pastors at Home are also
+     Missionaries to the Heathen--They are Sharers in the Conflict
+     through the Press.
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE METHODS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN DEALING
+     WITH HEATHENISM 39
+
+     The Coincidences of the Present Struggle with that of the First
+     Christian Centuries--The Mediaeval Missionary Work of a Simple
+     Character--That of India, Japan, China, and the Turkish Empire a
+     Severe Intellectual Struggle as well as a Spiritual
+     Conquest--Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam, present
+     Obstacles and Resistances Similar to those of Ancient Greece and
+     Rome--How far Contrasts Appear between the Early and the Present
+     Conquests--The Methods of Paul--His Tact in Recognizing Truth
+     wherever Found, and Using it for his Purpose--The Attitude of the
+     Early Christian Fathers toward the Heathen--Augustine's
+     Acknowledgment of the Good which he Received from Cicero and
+     Plato--The Important Elements which Platonism Lacked, and which
+     were Found Only in the Gospel of Christ--The Great Secret of Power
+     in the Early Church Found in its Moral Earnestness, as Shown by
+     Simplicity of Life, and especially by Constancy even Unto a
+     Martyr's Death--The Contrast between the Frugality of the Early
+     Church and the Luxury and Vice of Roman Society--The Great Need of
+     this Element of Success at the Present Time--The Observance of a
+     Wise Discrimination in the Estimate of Heathen Philosophy by the
+     Great Leaders of the Early Church--The Generality with which
+     Classical Studies were Pursued by the Sons of the more Enlightened
+     Christian Fathers--Method Among the Leaders--The Necessity for a
+     thorough Knowledge of the Systems to be Met, as it was then
+     Recognized--The thorough Preparation of Augustine, Ambrose,
+     Iraeneus, and Others for their Work--Origen's Masterly and
+     Successful Reply to Celsus--The Use Made by the Early Fathers and
+     by the Churches of a Later Day, of the Philosophy of Plato and
+     Aristotle--Heathenism thus Conquered with its Own Weapons.
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OF HINDUISM 73
+
+     The Great Variety in India's Religious Systems--The Early
+     Monotheistic Nature Worship and its Gradual Lapse Into
+     Polytheism--The Influence of Environment on the Development of
+     Systems--The Distinction between Aryanism and Brahmanism, and the
+     Abuses of the Latter in its Doctrines of Sacrifice and Caste--The
+     Causes which Led to the Overthrow of this System of
+     Sacerdotalism--The Upanishads and the Beginnings of Philosophy--The
+     Rise of Buddhism and the Six Schools of Philosophy--Points in
+     Common between them--The Code of Manu and its Countercheck to
+     Rationalism--Its Development and its Scope, its Merits and
+     Demerits--The Meaning of the Word Hinduism as here Used and the
+     Means by which it Gained Ascendency--The Place and Influence of the
+     Two Great Hindu Epics, their Origin, the Compromise which they
+     Wrought, and the New and Important Doctrines which They
+     Developed--The Trimurti and the Incarnations of Vishnu--The
+     Deterioration of the Literature and the Faith of India--The Puranas
+     and the Tantras--The Parallels between Hinduism and Christianity.
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND THE NEW TESTAMENT 111
+
+     The Great Interest Felt in this Poem by a Certain Class of
+     Readers--Its Alleged Parallels to the Scriptures--The Plausibility
+     of the Recent Translation by Mr. Mohini M. Chatterji--Its
+     Patronizing Catholicity--The Same Claim to Broad Charity by Chunder
+     Sen and Others--Pantheism Sacrifices nothing to Charity, because
+     God is in All Things--All Moral Responsibility Ceases since God
+     Acts in Us--Mr. Chatterji's Broad Knowledge of Our Scriptures, and
+     his Skill in Selecting Passages for His Purpose--His Pleasing
+     Style--The Story of Krishna and Arjuna Told in the Interest of
+     Caste and Pantheism--The Growth of the Krishna Cult from Popular
+     Legends--The Origin of the Bhagavad Gita and its Place in the
+     Mahabharata--Its Use of the Six Philosophies--Krishna's
+     Exhortation--The Issue of the Battle in which Arjuna is Urged to
+     Engage--The "Resemblances" Explained by their Pantheistic
+     Interpretation--Fancied Resemblances which are only in the Sound of
+     Words--Coincidences Springing from Similar Causes--The Totally
+     Different Meaning which Pantheism gives them--Difference between
+     Union with Christ and the Pantheistic Pervasion of the
+     Infinite--The Differentials of Christianity.
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY 140
+
+     New Interest in Old Controversies Concerning Buddhism--Max Mueller's
+     Reply to the Alleged Influence of the System on Christianity--The
+     Distinction to be made between the Credible History of Gautama and
+     Later Legends--The Legends of the Pre-existent States and the
+     Wonders Attending the Earthly Life--The Northern and the Southern
+     Buddhism--The Sources of the Principal Legends--The Four Principal
+     Doctrines of Buddhism, Skandas, Trishna, Kharma, and
+     Nirvana--Difficulties in the Doctrines of Kharma and
+     Nirvana--Various Opinions of Scholars in Regard to the Nature of
+     Nirvana--Buddha's Final Reticence on the Subject--The Real Goal at
+     which the Average Buddhist Aims--The Need of a Careful Estimate of
+     the Merits and Demerits of Buddhism, and of the Hold which it is
+     likely to have on Western Minds--Its Points of Contact with Western
+     Errors--The Fact that Modern Buddhism, like many other False
+     Systems, Claims Christ as a Believer in its Principles--The Theory
+     that the Life of Christ is Modelled after that of the Buddha--The
+     Superior Authenticity of the Life of Christ--The Unreliable
+     Character of Buddhist Legends--The Intrinsic Improbability that a
+     Religion claiming a Distinct Derivation from Jewish Sources would
+     Borrow from a far-off Heathen System--The Contrast of Christ's
+     Loving Recognition of the Father in Heaven with the Avowed Atheism
+     of Buddhism--The General Spirit of the System Forbids all Thought
+     of Borrowing from it--Points of Contrast.
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+MOHAMMEDANISM PAST AND PRESENT 178
+
+     Posthumous Legends of Mohammed; how they were Produced--Ancient
+     Arabia and its Religious Systems--The Vale of Mecca and its Former
+     Uses--The Birth of Mohammed, and his Religious Associations--His
+     Temperament and Character--The Beginnings of his Prophetic
+     Mission--Jews and Christians in Arabia and their Influence on
+     Mohammedanism--Their Errors and Shortcomings a Help to the
+     Reformer--Strange Doctrines of the Christian Church in Arabia--The
+     Lost Opportunity of the Early Christian Sects and the Fatal Neglect
+     of the Surrounding Nations--The Nomads of Arabia specially Prepared
+     for Conquest by their Manner of Life and their Enlistment as
+     Mercenary Soldiers--The Question of Mohammed's Real Character--The
+     Growth of his Ambition and his Increasing Sensuality and
+     Cruelty--Blasphemous Revelations in Behalf of the Prophet's Own
+     Lust--Discriminating Judgment Required on his Career as a
+     Whole--Mohammedan Schools--Noble Characters the Exception--General
+     Corrupting Influence of the System--Its Conquests in Northern
+     Africa and in the Soudan--The Early Races of Northern Africa, and
+     the General Deterioration of the Country--The Piracies of the
+     Barbary States--Civilization in Modern Egypt Due to Foreigners--The
+     Bloody Ravages of El Mahdi in the East and the Fanatic Samadu in
+     the West--The Testimony of a Secular Newspaper
+     Correspondent--Professor Drummond and Henry M. Stanley on the Slave
+     Traffic and Mohammedan Civilization--The Alleged Missionary
+     Operations of Mohammedans in West Soudan--The Account Given of Them
+     by Bishop Crowther, Schweinfurth, and Others--Canon Taylor and the
+     Egyptian Pashas--The Effects of European Education--Palgrave on
+     Mohammedan Intolerance of To-day--Mohammedanism and Temperance;
+     Exaggerated Accounts of it; Proofs to the Contrary--R. Bosworth
+     Smith's Protest against Canon Taylor's Extravagant Glorification of
+     Islam--His Plea for Missions.
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM 222
+
+     Two Conflicting Theories on the History of Religion--That of the
+     Old and New Testaments--That of Modern Evolution--The Importance of
+     this Question--Professor Henry B. Smith's Estimate of Ebrard's
+     Discussion of it--Ebrard's Summing-up of the Argument--Professor
+     Naville's View of the Subject--Conclusions of Rev. W.A.P. Martin,
+     D.D., and Max Mueller--How far May we Attempt to Establish the Fact
+     of an Early Monotheism from Heathen Traditions?--Conceptions
+     Differing in Different Nations--Evidences of Monotheism in the
+     Vedas--Professor Banergea's Testimony--The Views Held by the Modern
+     Somajes--Monotheism in China--Monotheistic Worship in the Days of
+     Yao and Shun, 2300 B.C.--The Prayer of an Emperor of the Ming
+     Dynasty Quoted by Professor Legge--Remarkable Monument of
+     Monotheism in the Temple of Heaven--A Taouist Prayer--Zoroaster a
+     Monotheistic Reformer--The Inscription at Behistun--Testimony of
+     the Modern Parsee Catechism--No Nation without some Notion of a God
+     Supreme over All--Buddhists in Thibet--Egyptian Monotheism--The
+     Greek Poets--Old Monotheism in Mexico and Peru--Evidences of
+     Ramification and Decline in Polytheism--Egypt and India Give
+     Abundant Proofs--Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taouism all Show
+     Degeneration--Mohammedan Corruption since the Days of the Early
+     Caliphs--The Religions of Greece and Rome Became Effete--Even
+     Israel, in Spite of Instruction and Reproof, Lapsed into Idolatry
+     again and again--Even the Christian Church has Shown Similar
+     Tendencies.
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+INDIRECT TRIBUTES OF HEATHEN SYSTEMS TO THE DOCTRINES
+     OF THE BIBLE 266
+
+     The Universality and Similarity of Race Traditions--Their General
+     Support of the Old Testament History--Traditions of the Creation
+     Found in India, China, among the Northern Turanians and some
+     African Tribes--The Fall of Man as Traced in Assyria and among the
+     Hindus--The Buddhists of Ceylon, Mongolians, Africans and Tahitans
+     had Similar Traditions--The Flood--Traditions of the Chinese, the
+     Iranians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Peruvians--The
+     Prevalence of Piacular Sacrifice and Tokens of a Sense of
+     Guilt--Traditions or Traces of Substitution Found in the
+     Vedas--Faint Traces in the Religion of the Egyptians--Traditions of
+     the Iroquois--Prophecies Looking to Divine Deliverers--The Tenth
+     Avatar of Vishnu yet to Come as a Restorer of Righteousness--The
+     Influence of the Tradition as Utilized by a Missionary--A Norse
+     Deliverer and Millennium--The Prediction of the Cumaean Sibyl Forty
+     Years before the Birth of Christ--Prevailing Conceptions of some
+     Mediator between God and Man--The Hindu Krishna as an
+     Example--Changes in Buddhism from the Old Atheism to Theism, and
+     even to a Doctrine of Salvation by Faith--A Trinity and at last a
+     Saviour--All the False Systems Claiming the Teachings and the
+     Character of Christ.
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+ETHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN
+     PHILOSOPHIES 294
+
+     The Prevalence of Speculation in all Ages in Regard to the Great
+     Questions of Man's Origin and Destiny, and His Relations to
+     God--The Various Schemes which have Seemingly Dispensed with the
+     Necessity for a Creator in Accounting for the Existence of the
+     Visible World--The Ancient Atomic Theories and Modern
+     Evolution--Kanada, Lucretius, Herbert Spencer--Darwin's Theory of
+     the Development of Species--Similar Theories Ascribed to the
+     Chinese--The Ethical Difficulties Attending Many Philosophic
+     Speculations, Ancient and Modern--Hindu Pantheism and Moral
+     Responsibility--In the Advance from Instinct to Conscience and
+     Religion, where does Moral Sentiment Begin?--If It was Right for
+     Primeval Man to Maraud, why Might not Robbery again Become His Duty
+     in Case of Extreme Deterioration?--Mr. Spencer's Theory of the
+     Origin of Moral Intuition--The Nobler Origin which the Scriptures
+     Assign to Man's Moral Nature--The Demonstrated Possibility of the
+     Most Radical and Sudden Moral Changes Produced by the Christian
+     Faith--Tendency of Ancient and Modern Theories to Lower the General
+     Estimate of Man--The Dignity with which the New Testament Invests
+     Him--The Ethical Tendency of the Doctrine of Evolution--The Opinion
+     Expressed on the Subject by Goldwin Smith--Peschel's Frank
+     Admission--The Pessimistic Tendency of all Anti-Biblical Theories
+     of Man's Origin, Life, and Destiny--Buddha, Schopenhauer, and the
+     Agnostics--The more Hopeful Influence of the Bible--The Tendency of
+     all Heathen Religions and all Anti-Christian Philosophies toward
+     Fatalism--Pantheism and the Philosophy of Spinoza Agreeing in this
+     Respect with the Hindu Vedantism--The Late Samuel Johnson's "Piety
+     of Pantheism," and His Definition of Fatalism--What Saves the
+     Scriptural Doctrine of Fore-ordination from Fatalism--The Province
+     of Faith and of Trust.
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+THE DIVINE SUPREMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 338
+
+     The Claim that Christianity is the only True Religion--The Peculiar
+     Tendencies of Modern Times to Deny this Supremacy and Monopoly--It
+     is not Enough in Such Times to Simply Ignore the Challenge--The
+     Unique Claim must be Defended--First: Christianity is
+     Differentiated from all Other Religions by the Fact of a Divine
+     Sacrifice for Sin--Mohammedanism, though Founded on a Belief in the
+     True God and Partly on the Old Testament Teachings, Offers no
+     Saviour--No Idea of Fatherhood is Found in any Non-Christian
+     Faith--The Gloom of Buddhism and the Terror of Savage
+     Tribes--Hinduism a System of Self-Help Merely--The Recognized
+     Grandeur of the Principle of Self-Sacrifice as Reflected from
+     Christ--Augustine Found a Way of Life only in His Divine
+     Sacrifice--Second: No Other Faith than Christianity is Made
+     Effectual by the Power of a Divine and Omnipotent Spirit--The
+     Well-Attested Fact of Radical Transformations of Character--Other
+     Systems have Made Converts only by Warlike Conquest or by Such
+     Motives as might Appeal to the Natural Heart--Christianity Rises
+     above all Other Systems in the Divine Personality of Christ--The
+     Contrast in this Respect between Him and the Authors of the
+     Non-Christian Systems--His Attractions and His Power Acknowledged
+     by all Classes of Men--The Inferiority of Socrates as Compared with
+     Christ--Bushnell's Tribute to the Perfection of this Divine
+     Personality--Its Power Attested in the Life of Paul--The Adaptation
+     of Christianity to all the Circumstances and Conditions of
+     Life--Abraham and the Vedic Patriarchs, Moses and Manu, David's Joy
+     and Gratitude, and the Gloom of Hindu or Buddhist Philosophy--Only
+     Christianity Brings Man to True Penitence and Humility--The
+     Recognized Beauty and the Convincing Lesson of the Prodigal
+     Son--The Contrast between Mohammed's Blasphemous Suras, which
+     Justify his Lust, and the Deep Contrition of David in the
+     Fifty-first Psalm--The Moral Purity of the Old and New Testaments
+     as Contrasted with all Other Sacred Books--The Scriptures Pure
+     though Written in Ages of Corruption and Surrounded by Immoral
+     Influences--Christ Belongs to no Land or Age--The Gospel Alone is
+     Adapted to all Races and all Time as the Universal Religion of
+     Mankind--Only Christianity Recognizes the True Relation between
+     Divine Help and Human Effort--It Encourages by Omnipotent
+     Co-operation--The All-Comprehensive Presentation of the Gospel.
+
+
+APPENDIX 381
+
+
+
+
+ORIENTAL RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+LECTURE I.
+
+THE NEED OF UNDERSTANDING THE FALSE RELIGIONS
+
+
+It is said that the very latest among the sciences is the Science of
+Religion. Without pausing to inquire how far it admits of scientific
+treatment, certain reasons which may be urged for the study of the
+existing religions of the world will be considered in this lecture. It
+must be admitted in the outset that those who have been the pioneers in
+this field of research have not, as a rule, been advocates of the
+Christian faith. The anti-Christian theory that all religions may be
+traced to common causes, that common wants and aspirations of mankind
+have led to the development of various systems according to environment,
+has until recently been the chief spur to this class of studies.
+Accordingly, the religions of the world have been submitted to some
+preconceived philosophy of language, or ethnology, or evolution, with
+the emphasis placed upon such facts as seemed to comport with this
+theory. Meanwhile there has been an air of broad-minded charity in the
+manner in which the apologists of Oriental systems have treated the
+subject. They have included Christ in the same category with Plato and
+Confucius, and have generally placed Him at the head; and this supposed
+breadth of sentiment has given them a degree of influence with dubious
+and wavering Christians, as well as with multitudes who are without
+faith of any kind.
+
+In this country the study of comparative religion has been almost
+entirely in the hands of non-evangelical writers. We have had "The Ten
+Great Religions," from the pen of Rev. James Freeman Clarke; "The
+Oriental Religions," written with great labor by the late Samuel
+Johnson; and Mr. Moncure D. Conway's "Anthology," with its flowers,
+gathered from the sacred books of all systems, and so chosen as to carry
+the implication that they all are equally inspired. Many other works
+designed to show that Christianity was developed from ancient sun myths,
+or was only a plagiarism upon the old mythologies of India, have been
+current among us. But strangely enough, the Christian Church has seemed
+to regard this subject as scarcely worthy of serious consideration. With
+the exception of a very able work on Buddhism,[1] and several review
+articles on Hinduism, written by Professor S.H. Kellogg, very little has
+been published from the Christian standpoint.[2] The term "heathenism"
+has been used as an expression of contempt, and has been applied with
+too little discrimination.
+
+There is a reason, perhaps, why these systems have been underestimated.
+It so happened that the races among whom the modern missionary
+enterprise has carried on its earlier work were mostly simple types of
+pagans, found in the wilds of America, in Greenland and Labrador, in the
+West Indies, on the African coast, or in the islands of the Pacific; and
+these worshippers of nature or of spirits gave a very different
+impression from that which the Apostles and the Early Church gained from
+their intercourse with the conquering Romans or the polished and
+philosophic Greeks. Our missionary work has been symbolized, as Sir
+William W. Hunter puts it, by a band of half-naked savages listening to
+a missionary seated under a palm-tree, and receiving his message with
+child-like and unquestioning faith.
+
+But in the opening of free access to the great Asiatic nations, higher
+grades of men have been found, and with these we now have chiefly to do.
+The pioneer of India's missions, the devoted Ziegenbalg, had not been
+long in his field before he learned the mistake which the churches in
+Europe had made in regard to the religion and philosophy of the Hindus.
+He laid aside all his old notions when he came to encounter the
+metaphysical subtleties of Hindu thought, when he learned something of
+the immense Hindu literature, the voluminous ethics, the mystical and
+weird mythologies, the tremendous power of tradition and social
+customs--when, in short, he found his way hedged up by habits of thought
+wholly different from his own; and he resolved to know something of the
+religion which the people of India already possessed.
+
+For the benefit of others who might follow him he wrote a book on
+Hinduism and its relations to Christianity, and sent it to Europe for
+publication. But so strong were the preconceived notions which prevailed
+among his brethren at home, that his manuscript, instead of being
+published, was suppressed. "You were not sent to India to study
+Hinduism," wrote Franke, "but to preach the Gospel." But Ziegenbalg
+certainly was not wanting in his estimate of the chief end in view, and
+his success was undoubtedly far greater for the intelligent plan upon
+which he labored. The time came when a change had passed over the
+society which had sent him forth. Others, less friendly than he to the
+Gospel of Christ, had studied Hinduism, and had paraded it as a rival of
+Christianity; and in self-defence against this flank movement, the
+long-neglected work of Ziegenbalg was brought forth from obscurity and
+published.
+
+It is partly in self-defence against similar influences, that the
+Christian Church everywhere is now turning increased attention to the
+study of Comparative Religion. In Great Britain a wider interest has
+been felt in the subject than in this country. And yet, even there the
+Church has been far behind the enemies of evangelical truth in
+comparing Christianity with false systems. Dr. James Stalker, of
+Glasgow, said a few months since that, whereas it might be expected that
+the advocates of the true faith would be the first to compare and
+contrast it with the false systems of the world, the work had been left
+rather to those who were chiefly interested in disparaging the truth and
+exalting error. Yet something has been done. Such men as Sir Monier
+Williams, Sir William Muir, Professors Rawlinson, Fairbairn, and Legge,
+Bishop Carpenter, Canon Hardwick, Doctors Caird, Dodds, Mitchell, and
+others, have given the false systems of the East a thorough and candid
+treatment from the Christian standpoint. The Church Missionary Society
+holds a lectureship devoted to the study of the non-Christian religions
+as a preparation for missionary work. And the representatives of that
+Society in the Punjab have instituted a course of study on these lines
+for missionaries recently arrived, and have offered prizes for the best
+attainments therein. Though we are later in this field of investigation,
+yet here also there is springing up a new interest, and it is safe to
+predict that within another decade the real character of the false
+religions will be more generally understood.
+
+The prejudice which has existed in regard to this subject has taken two
+different forms: First, there has been the broad assumption upon which
+Franke wrote to Ziegenbalg, that all knowledge of heathenism is worse
+than useless. Good men are asking, "Is not such a study a waste of
+energy, when we are charged with proclaiming the only saving truth? Is
+not downright earnestness better than any possible knowledge of
+philosophies and superstitions?" And we answer, "Yes: by all means, if
+only the one is possible." Another view of the subject is more serious.
+May there not, after all, be danger in the study of false systems? Will
+there not be found perplexing parallels which will shake our trust in
+the positive and exclusive supremacy of the Christian faith?
+
+Now, even if there were at first some risks to a simple, child-like
+confidence, yet a timid attitude involves far greater risks: it amounts
+to a half surrender, and it is wholly out of place in this age of
+fearless and aggressive discussion, when all truth is challenged, and
+every form of error must be met. Moreover, in a thorough study there is
+no danger. Sir Monier Williams tells us that at first he was surprised
+and a little troubled, but in the end he was more than ever impressed
+with the transcendent truths of the Christian faith. Professor S.H.
+Kellogg assures us that the result of his careful researches in the
+Oriental systems is a profounder conviction of the great truths of the
+Gospel as divine. And even Max Mueller testifies that, while making every
+allowance for whatever is good in the ethnic faiths, he has been the
+more fully convinced of the great superiority of Christianity. Really,
+those are in danger who receive only the superficial and misleading
+representations of heathenism which one is sure to meet in our magazine
+literature, or in works like "Robert Elsmere" and "The Light of Asia."
+
+One cannot fail to mark the different light in which we view the
+mythologies of the Greeks and Romans. If their religious beliefs and
+speculations had remained a secret until our time, if the high ethical
+precepts of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius had only now been proclaimed, and
+Socrates had just been celebrated in glowing verse as the "Light of
+Greece," there would be no little commotion in the religious world, and
+thousands with only weak and troubled faith might be disturbed. But
+simply because we thoroughly understand the mythology of Greece and
+Rome, we have no fear. We welcome all that it can teach us. We cordially
+acknowledge the virtues of Socrates and assign him his true place. We
+enrich the fancy and awaken the intellectual energies of our youth by
+classical studies, and Christianity shines forth with new lustre by
+contrast with the heathen systems which it encountered in the Roman
+Empire ages ago.
+
+And yet that was no easy conquest. The early church, when brought face
+to face with the culture of Greece and the self-assertion of Roman
+power, when confronted with profound philosophies like those of Plato
+and Aristotle, with the subtleties of the Stoics, and with countless
+admixtures of Persian mysticism, had, humanly speaking, quite as
+formidable a task as those that are presented in the heathen systems of
+to-day. Very few of the champions of modern heathenism can compare with
+Celsus, and there are no more subtle philosophies than those of ancient
+Greece. Evidently, the one thing needed to disenchant the false systems
+of our time is a clear and accurate knowledge of their merits and
+demerits, and of their true relation to Christianity.
+
+It will be of advantage, for one thing, if we learn to give credit to
+the non-Christian religions for the good which they may fairly claim.
+There has existed a feeling that they had no rights which Christian men
+were bound to respect. They have been looked upon as systems of unmixed
+evil, whose enormities it were impossible to exaggerate. And all such
+misconceptions and exaggerations have only led to serious reactions.
+Anti-Christian writers have made great capital of the alleged
+misrepresentations which zealous friends of missions have put upon
+heathenism; and there is always great force in any appeal for fair play,
+on whichever side the truth may lie. Where the popular Christian idea
+has presented a low view of some system, scarcely rising above the grade
+of fetichism, the apologists have triumphantly displayed a profound
+philosophy. Where the masses of Christian people have credited whole
+nations with no higher notions of worship than a supreme trust in
+senseless stocks and stones, some skilful defender has claimed that the
+idols were only the outward symbols of an indwelling conception of
+deity, and has proceeded with keen relish to point out a similar use of
+symbols in the pictures and images of the Christian Church.
+
+From one extreme many people have passed to another, and in the end have
+credited heathen systems with greater merit than they possess. A marked
+illustration of this fact is found in the influence which was produced
+by Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Sentimental readers, passing
+from surprise to credulity, were ready to invest the "gentle Indian
+Saint" with Christian conceptions which no real Buddhist ever thought
+of. Mr. Arnold himself is said to have expressed surprise that people
+should have given to his poem so serious an interpretation, or should
+have imagined for a moment that he intended to compare Buddhism with the
+higher and purer teachings of the New Testament.
+
+In considering some of the reasons which may be urged for the study of
+false systems, we will first proceed from the standpoint of the
+candidate for the work of missions. And here there is a broad and
+general reason which seems too obvious to require much argument. The
+skilful general or the civil engineer is supposed, of course, to survey
+the field of contemplated operations ere he enters upon his work. The
+late Dr. Duff, in urging the importance of a thorough understanding of
+the systems which a missionary expects to encounter, illustrated his
+point by a reference to the great Akbar, who before entering upon the
+conquest of India, twice visited the country in disguise, that he might
+gain a complete knowledge of its topography, its strongholds, and its
+points of weakness, and the best methods of attack.
+
+While all religious teachers must understand their tasks, the need of
+special preparation is particularly urgent in the foreign missionary,
+owing to his change of environment. Many ideas and methods to which he
+has been trained, and which would serve him well among a people of his
+own race, might be wholly out of place in India or China, Ram Chandra
+Bose, M.A.--himself a converted Brahman--has treated with great
+discrimination the argument frequently used, that the missionary "need
+only to proclaim the Glad Tidings." He says: "That the simple story of
+Christ and him crucified is, after all, the truth on which the
+regeneration of the Christian and the non-Christian lands must hang, no
+one will deny. This story, ever fresh, is inherently fitted to touch the
+dead heart into life, and to infuse vitality into effete nationalities
+and dead civilizations. But a great deal of rubbish has to be removed in
+heathen lands, ere its legitimate consequences can be realized. And a
+patient, persistent study of the false religions, and the complicated
+systems of philosophy associated with them, enables the missionary to
+throw out of the way those heaps of prejudices and errors which make it
+impossible for the story of the cross to reach and influence the
+heart."[3] It has been very wisely said that "any fragment of truth
+which lies in a heathen mind unacknowledged is an insuperable barrier
+against conviction: recognized and used, it might prove a help;
+neglected and ignored, it is insurmountable."[4]
+
+The late Dr. Mullens learned by careful observation, that the
+intellectual power of the Hindus had been so warped by false reasoning,
+that "they could scarcely understand how, when two principles are
+contradictory, one must be given up as false. They are prepared to
+receive both sides of a contradiction as true, and they feel at liberty
+to adopt that which seems the most comfortable. And nothing but a full
+exposure of evil, with a clear statement of the antagonistic truth,
+will suffice to awaken so perverted an intellect."[5]
+
+The missionary has often been surprised to find that the idea which he
+supposed was clearly understood, was wholly warped by the medium of
+Hindu thought, as a rod is apparently warped when plunged into a stream,
+or as a beautiful countenance is distorted by the waves and
+irregularities of an imperfect mirror. To the preacher, sin, for
+example, is an enormity in the sight of God; but to his Hindu listener
+it may be only a breach of custom, or a ceremonial uncleanness. The
+indwelling of the Holy Spirit, as it is set forth in Paul's Epistles, is
+to the missionary a union in which his personality is still maintained
+in blest fellowship with God, while to his audience it may be only that
+out and out pantheism in which the deity within us supplants all
+individual personality, and not only excludes all joy, but all
+responsibility.
+
+Professor W.G.T. Shedd has clearly pointed out the fact that the modern
+missionary has a harder task in dealing with the perversions of the
+heathen mind than that to which the Apostles of the Early Church were
+called, owing to the prevalence in India and elsewhere of that pantheism
+which destroys the sense of moral responsibility. He says: "The Greek
+and Roman theism left the human will free and responsible, and thus the
+doctrine of sin could be taught. But the pantheistic systems of the East
+destroy free will, by identifying God and man; and hence it is
+impossible to construct the doctrine of sin and atonement except by
+first refuting the pantheistic ethics. The missionary can get no help
+from _conscience_ in his preaching, when this theory of God and the
+world has the ground. But St. Paul appealed confidently 'to every man's
+conscience in the sight of God,' and called upon the ethics and theology
+of the Greek and Roman philosophers for a corroboration. The early
+Apologists, Tertullian and others, did the same thing."
+
+The testimonies which have been given within the last few years, by the
+most intelligent and observing missionaries in Eastern lands, are of
+such peculiar significance and force, that I shall be justified in
+quoting a few at some length. Rev. George William Knox, D.D., of Tokio,
+Japan, in accepting an election to an honorary membership of the
+American Society of Comparative Religion, wrote, December 17, 1890: "I
+am deeply in sympathy with the objects of the Society, as indeed every
+missionary must be. We have practical demonstrations of the value of
+research into the ethnic religions. Even at home the value of such
+research has already been great, but in these non-Christian lands it is
+indispensable. It is true that non-Christian systems, as found among the
+people, rarely exhibit the forms or the doctrines which we learn from
+books, but I presume the same would be said by an intelligent Asiatic,
+were he to study our sacred books and then compare results with much of
+the religion which calls itself Christian in the West. And yet for the
+study even of the most debased forms of Christianity in South America or
+Mexico, let us say, we must needs begin with our sacred books. And so
+it is with debased Buddhism in Japan. The Buddhism of Ceylon and of the
+books is unknown to this people, and when it is used as the basis of
+argument or exposition we do not hit the mark. Yet, after all, our debt
+is immeasurable to the societies and scholars that have made accessible
+the sources that have yielded at last such systems as are dominant here.
+
+"The study of non-Christian systems is essential to the missionary, even
+though he does not refer to them in his preaching, but contents himself
+with delivering the Gospel message. And that is the rule with
+missionaries, so far as I know. But a knowledge of the native systems is
+imperative, that we may properly present our own. Otherwise we waste
+time in teaching over again that which is already fully known, or we so
+speak that our truth takes on the form of error, or we so underestimate
+the thought of those whom we address, that the preaching of the wisdom
+of God sounds in their ears the preaching of foolishness. The adaptation
+of preaching to the hearers of Asiatic lands is a task that may well
+make us thankful for every help that may be furnished us.... The
+missionary is far too apt to come from the West with exalted notions of
+his own superiority, and with a feeling of condescending pity for men
+who, perhaps, have pondered the deep things of the universe far more
+than he. Let him really master a philosophy like the Confucian, and he
+will better illustrate the Christian grace of humility, and be so much
+the better prepared for his work. His study will show him how
+astonishing is the light that has shone upon those men whom he has
+thought of as wholly in darkness. It will thus show him the true way of
+approach, and enable him to follow the lines of least resistance. It
+will also reveal to him what is the essential character of the divine
+message which he himself bears. He will separate that peculiar and
+spiritual truth which is the Word of Life, and will bring it as glad
+tidings of great joy. Surely no man can study these ethnic faiths, no
+matter with what appreciation of their measure of truth, and rejoicing
+in it, without a constantly growing conviction that the one power that
+converts men and establishes God's kingdom on earth is the Word that is
+eternal, the Son of God. He gathers in Himself all the truth of all the
+religions, and He adds that divine Salvation and Life for which all the
+nations have waited, and without which the highest and deepest thought
+remains unable to bring men into living communion with the God and
+Father of us all."
+
+Rev. Martyn Clark, D.D., Missionary of the Church Missionary Society at
+Umritsur, India, has given thorough study to the Sanscrit, and has
+thereby been enabled to expose the fallacies and misrepresentations
+which the Arya Somaj, in its bitter controversy with the Gospel, has put
+forth as to the real character of the Vedic literature. No man is better
+able to judge of the importance of a correct understanding of the errors
+of the non-Christian systems than he. In a letter accepting an honorary
+membership of the above-named Society he says: "The object of the
+Society is one in which I am deeply interested, and I shall at all
+times do what I can to further its aims. I am convinced that there is
+much that is helpful to the cause of Christ to be learned in this field
+of research."
+
+Rev. H. Blodgett, D.D., veteran Missionary of the American Board in
+Peking, in accepting a similar honor, says: "My interest in these
+studies has been deep and growing. It is high time that such a society
+as you represent should be formed. The study of Comparative Religion has
+long enough been in the hands of those who hold all religions to be the
+outcome of the natural powers of the human mind, unaided by a revelation
+from God. It is time that those who believe in the revelation from God
+in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament founded upon the Old,
+should study the great ethnic religions in the light derived from the
+Bible."
+
+Rev. James S. Dennis, D.D., long a Missionary of the Presbyterian
+Mission in Beyrout, Syria, says in the same connection: "The great
+missionary movement of our age has brought us face to face with problems
+and conflicts which are far more deep and serious than those which
+confront evangelistic efforts in our own land, and it is of the highest
+importance that the Church at home should know as fully as possible the
+peculiar and profound difficulties of work in foreign fields. These
+ancient religions of the East are behind intrenchments, and they are
+prepared to make a desperate resistance. Those who have never come into
+close contact with their adherents, and discovered by experience the
+difficulty of dislodging them and convincing them of the truth of the
+Gospel, may very properly misunderstand the work of the foreign
+missionary and wonder at his apparent failure, or at least his slow
+progress. But I wonder at the success attained in the foreign field, and
+consider it far more glorious and remarkable than it is generally
+accounted to be. A fuller acquaintance with the strength, and resources,
+and local eclat, and worldly advantages of these false religions, will
+give the Church at home greater patience and faith in the great work of
+evangelizing the nations."[6]
+
+A specific reason for the study of the non-Christian religions is found
+in the changes which our intercourse with Eastern nations has already
+wrought. With our present means of intercommunication we are brought
+face to face with them, and the contact of our higher vitality has
+aroused them from the comparative slumber of ages. Even our missionary
+efforts have given new vigor to the resistance which must be
+encountered. We have trained up a generation of men to a higher
+intellectual activity, and to a more earnest spirit of inquiry, and they
+are by no means all won over to the Christian faith. And there are
+thousands in India whom a Government education has left with no real
+faith of any kind, but whose pride of race and venerable customs is
+raised to a higher degree than ever. They have learned something of
+Christianity; they have also studied their own national systems; they
+have become especially familiar with all that our own sceptics have
+written against Christianity; still further, they have added to their
+intellectual equipment all that Western apologists have said of the
+superiority of the Oriental faiths. They are thus armed at every point,
+and they are using our own English tongue and all our facilities for
+publication. How is the young missionary, who knows nothing of their
+systems or the real points of comparison, to deal with such men? It is
+very true that not all ranks of Hindus are educated; there are millions
+who know nothing of any religion beyond the lowest forms of
+superstition, and to these we owe the duty of a simple and plain
+presentation of Christ and Him crucified; but in every community where
+the missionary is likely to live there are men of the higher class just
+named; and besides, professional critics and opposers are now employed
+to harass the bazaar preacher with perplexing questions, which are soon
+heard from the lips of the common people. A young missionary recently
+wrote of the surprise which he felt when a low caste man, almost without
+clothing, met him with arguments from Professor Huxley.
+
+Missionary Boards have sometimes sent out a specialist, and in some
+sense a champion, who should deal with the more intelligent classes of
+the heathen. But such a plan is fraught with disadvantages. What is
+needed is a thorough preparation in all missionaries, and that involves
+an indispensable knowledge of the forces to be met. The power of the
+press is no longer a monopoly of Christian lands. The Arya Somaj, of
+India, is now using it, both in the vernacular and in the English, in
+its bitter and often scurrilous attacks. One of its tracts recently sent
+to me contained an English epitome of the arguments of Thomas Paine. The
+secular papers of Japan present in almost every issue some discussion on
+the comparative merits of Christianity, Buddhism, Evolution, and
+Theosophy, and many of the young native ministry who at first received
+the truth unquestioningly as a child receives it from his mother, are
+now calling for men whom they can follow as leaders in their struggle
+with manifold error.[7]
+
+Even Mohammedans are at last employing the press instead of the sword.
+Newspapers in Constantinople are exhorting the faithful to send forth
+missionaries to "fortify Africa against the whiskey and gunpowder of
+Christian commerce, by proclaiming the higher ethical principles of the
+Koran." Great institutions of learning are also maintained as the
+special propaganda of the Oriental religions. El Azar, established at
+Cairo centuries ago, now numbers ten thousand students, and these when
+trained go forth to all Arabic speaking countries.[8] The Sanskrit
+colleges and monasteries of Benares number scarcely less than four
+thousand students,[9] who are being trained in the Sankhyan or the
+Vedanta philosophy, that they may go back to their different provinces
+and maintain with new vigor the old faiths against the aggressions of
+Christianity. And in Kioto, the great religious centre of Japan, we find
+over against the Christian college of the American Board of Missions, a
+Buddhist university with a Japanese graduate of Oxford as its president.
+In a great school at Tokio, also, Buddhist teachers, aided by New
+England Unitarians, are maintaining the superiority of Buddhism over
+Western Christianity as a religion for Japan.[10]
+
+Another reason why the missionary should study the false systems is
+found in the greatly diversified forms which these systems present in
+different lands and different ages. And just here it will be seen that a
+partial knowledge will not meet the demand. It might be even misleading.
+Buddhism, for example, has assumed an endless variety of forms--now
+appearing as a system of the baldest atheism, and now presenting an
+approximate theism. Gautama was certainly atheistic, and he virtually
+denied the existence of the human soul. But in the northern development
+of his system, theistic conceptions sprang up. A sort of trinity had
+appeared by the seventh century A.D., and by the tenth century a supreme
+and celestial Buddha had been discovered, from whom all other Buddhas
+were emanations. To-day there are at least twelve Buddhist sects in
+Japan, of which some are mystical, others pantheistic, while two hold a
+veritable doctrine of salvation by faith.[11]
+
+China has several types of Buddhism, and Mongolia, Thibet, Nepaul,
+Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam present each some special features of the
+system. How important that one should understand these differences in
+order to avoid blundering, and to wisely adapt his efforts! In India,
+under the common generic name of Hinduism, there are also many sects:
+worshippers of Vishnu, worshippers of Siva, worshippers of Krishna.
+There are Sikhs, and Jains, and devil worshippers; among the Dravidian
+and other pre-Aryan tribes there are victims of every conceivable
+superstition.
+
+Now, a missionary must know something of these faiths if he would fight
+with "weapons of precision." Paul, in becoming all things to all men,
+knew at least the differences between them. He preached the gospel with
+a studied adaptation. He tells us that he so strove as to win, and "not
+as those who beat the air." How alert were the combatants in the arena
+from which his simile is borrowed! How closely each athlete scanned his
+man, watched his every motion, knew if possible his every thought and
+impulse! Much more, in winning the souls of darkened and misguided men,
+should we learn the inmost workings of their minds, their habits of
+thought, and the nature of the errors which are to be dislodged.
+
+But how shall the false systems of religions be studied? First, there
+should be a spirit of entire candor. Truth is to be sought always, and
+at any cost; but in this case there is everything to be gained and
+nothing to be lost by the Christian teacher, and he can well afford to
+be just. Our divine Exemplar never hesitated to acknowledge that which
+was good in men of whatever nationality or creed. He could appreciate
+the faith of Roman or Syro-Phoenician. He could see merit in a Samaritan
+as well as in a Jew, and could raise even a penitent publican to the
+place of honor. It was only the Pharisees who hesitated to admit the
+truth, until they could calculate the probable effect of their
+admissions.
+
+The very best experience of missionaries has been found in the line of
+Christ's example. "The surest way to bring a man to acknowledge his
+errors," says Bishop Bloomfield, "is to give him full credit for
+whatever he had learned of the truth."[12] "What should we think," says
+a keen observer of the work of missions--"what should we think of an
+engineer who, in attempting to rear a light-house on a sandbar, should
+fail to acknowledge as a godsend any chance outcropping of solid rock to
+which he might fasten his stays?"[13]
+
+But in urging the duty of candor, I assume that an absolute freedom from
+bias is impossible on either side. It is sometimes amusing to witness
+the assurance with which professed agnostics assume that they, and they
+alone, look upon questions of comparative religion with an unbiased and
+judicial mind. They have no belief, they say, in any religion, and are
+therefore entirely without prejudice. But are they? Has the man who has
+forsaken the faith of his fathers and is deeply sensible of an
+antagonism between him and the great majority of those about him--has he
+no interest in trying to substantiate his position, and justify his
+hostility to the popular faith? Of all men he is generally the most
+prejudiced and the most bitter. We freely admit that we set out with a
+decided preference for one religious system above all others, but we
+insist that candor is possible, though an absolutely indifferent
+judgment is out of the question. Paul, who quoted to the Athenians their
+own poet, was fair-minded, and yet no man ever arraigned heathenism so
+terribly as he, and none was so intensely interested in the faith which
+he preached.
+
+Archbishop Trench, in discussing the exaggerations from which a careful
+study of the Oriental religions would doubtless save us, says, "There is
+one against which we are almost unwilling to say a word. I mean the
+exaggeration of those who, in a deep devotion to the truth as it is in
+Christ Jesus, count themselves bound, by their allegiance to Him, to
+take up a hostile attitude to everything not distinctly and avowedly
+Christian, as though any other position were a treachery to his cause,
+and a surrender of his exclusive right to the authorship of all the good
+which is in the world. In this temper we may dwell only on the guilt and
+misery and defilements, the wounds and bruises and putrefying sores of
+the heathen world; or if aught better is brought under our eye, we may
+look askant and suspiciously upon it, as though all recognition of it
+were a disparagement of something better. And so we may come to regard
+the fairest deeds of unbaptized men as only more splendid sins. We may
+have a short but decisive formula by which to try and by which to
+condemn them. These deeds, we may say, were not of faith, and therefore
+they could not please God; the men that wrought them knew not Christ,
+and therefore their work was worthless--hay, straw, and stubble, to be
+utterly burned up in the day of the trial of every man's work.
+
+"Yet there is indeed a certain narrowness of view, out of which alone
+the language of so sweeping a condemnation could proceed. Our allegiance
+to Christ, as the one fountain of light and life for the world, demands
+that we affirm none to be good but Him, allow no goodness save that
+which has proceeded from Him; but it does not demand that we deny
+goodness, because of the place where we find it, because we meet it, a
+garden tree, in the wilderness. It only requires that we claim this for
+Him who planted, and was willing that it should grow there; whom it
+would itself have gladly owned as its author, if, belonging to a happier
+time, it could have known Him by his name, whom in part it knew by his
+power.
+
+"We do not make much of a light of nature when we admit a righteousness
+in those to whom in the days of their flesh the Gospel had not come. We
+only affirm that the Word, though not as yet dwelling among us, yet
+being the 'light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,'
+had also lighted them. Some glimpses of his beams gilded their
+countenances, and gave to these whatever brightness they wore; and in
+recognizing this brightness we are ascribing honor to Him, and not to
+them; glorifying the grace of God, and not the virtues of man."[14]
+
+In marked contrast with this, and tending to an extreme, is the
+following, from the pen of Bishop Beveridge. It is quoted by Max Mueller,
+in the opening volume of "The Sacred Books of the East," as a model of
+candor.
+
+"The general inclinations which are naturally implanted in my soul to
+some religion, it is impossible for me to shift off; but there being
+such a multiplicity of religions in the world, I desire now seriously to
+consider with myself which of them all to restrain these my general
+inclinations to. And the reason of this my inquiry is not, that I am in
+the least dissatisfied with that religion I have already embraced; but
+because 'tis natural for all men to have an overbearing opinion and
+esteem for that particular religion they are born and bred-up in. That,
+therefore, I may not seem biased by the prejudice of education, I am
+resolved to prove and examine them all; that I may see and hold fast to
+that which is best.... Indeed, there was never any religion so barbarous
+and diabolical, but it was preferred above all other religions
+whatsoever by them that did profess it; otherwise they would not have
+professed it.... And why, say they, may you not be mistaken as well as
+we? Especially when there are, at least, six to one against your
+Christian religion; all of which think they serve God aright; and expect
+happiness thereby as well as you.... And hence it is that in my looking
+out for the truest religion, being conscious to myself how great an
+ascendancy Christianity holds over me beyond the rest, as being that
+religion whereunto I was born and baptized; that the supreme authority
+has enjoined and my parents educated me in; that which everyone I meet
+withal highly approves of, and which I myself have, by a long-continued
+profession, made almost natural to me; I am resolved to be more jealous
+and suspicious of this religion than of the rest, and be sure not to
+entertain it any longer without being convinced by solid and substantial
+arguments of the truth and certainty of it. That, therefore, I may make
+diligent and impartial inquiry into all religions and so be sure to find
+out the best, I shall for a time look upon myself as one not at all
+interested in any particular religion whatsoever, much less in the
+Christian religion; but only as one who desires, in general, to serve
+and obey Him that made me in a right manner, and thereby to be made
+partaker of that happiness my nature is capable of."[15]
+
+Second, in studying the false systems it is important to distinguish
+between religion and ethics. In the sphere of ethics the different
+faiths of men may find much common ground, while in their religious
+elements they may be entirely true or utterly false. The teachings of
+Confucius, though agnostic, presented a moral code which places the
+relations of the family and state on a very firm basis. And the very
+highest precepts of Buddhism belong to the period in which it was
+virtually atheistic. Many great and noble truths have been revealed to
+mankind through the conscience and the understanding, and these truths
+have found expression in the proverbs or ethical maxims of all races. To
+this extent God has nowhere left himself without witness. But all this
+is quite apart from a divinely revealed religion which may be cherished
+or be wholly lost. The golden rule is found not only in the New
+Testament, but negatively at least in the Confucian classics;[16] and
+the Shastras of the Hindus present it in both the positive and the
+negative form. And the still higher grace of doing good to those who
+injure us, was proclaimed by Laotze, five hundred years before Christ
+preached the Sermon on the Mount.
+
+The immense superiority of the ethical standard in Christianity, lies in
+its harmony and completeness. Confucius taught the active virtues of
+life, Laotze those of a passive kind; Christianity inculcates both. In
+heathenism ethical truths exist in fragments--mere half truths, like the
+broken and scattered remains of a temple once beautiful but now
+destroyed. They hold no relation to any high religious purpose, because
+they have no intelligent relation to God. Christian ethics begin with
+our relations to God as supreme, and they embrace the present life and
+the world to come. The symmetry of the divine precept, "Thou shalt love
+the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," finds
+no counterpart in the false religions of the world. Nowhere else, not
+even in Buddhism, is found the perfect law of love. The great secret of
+power in Christianity is God's unspeakable love to men in Christ; and
+the reflex of that love is the highest and purest ever realized in human
+hearts.
+
+Thirdly, the false systems should be studied by the Christian
+missionary, not for their own sakes so much as for an ulterior purpose,
+and they should be studied in constant comparison with the religion
+which it is his business to proclaim. His aim is not that of a savant.
+Let us not disguise it: he is mainly endeavoring to gain a more thorough
+preparation for his own great work. The professional scholar at Oxford
+or Leipsic might condemn this acknowledged bias--this pursuit of truth
+as a means and not as an end--but if he would be entirely frank, he
+would often find himself working in the interest of a linguistic
+theory, or a pet hypothesis of social science. It was in this spirit
+that Spencer and Darwin have searched the world for facts to support
+their systems.[17]
+
+I repeat, it is enough for the missionary that he shall be thoroughly
+candid. He may exercise the burning zeal of Paul for the Gospel which he
+proclaims, if he will also exercise his clear discrimination, his
+scrupulous fairness, his courtesy, and his tact. Let him not forget that
+he is studying religions comparatively; he should proceed with the Bible
+in one hand, and should examine the true and the false together.
+Contrasts will appear step by step as he advances, and the great truths
+of Christianity will stand out in brighter radiance, for the shadows of
+the background. If the question be asked, when and where shall the
+missionary candidate study the false systems, I answer at once; before
+he leaves his native land; and I assign three principal reasons. First:
+The study of a new and difficult language should engross his attention
+when he reaches his field. This will prove one of the most formidable
+tasks of his life, and it will demand resolute, concentrated, and
+prolonged effort. Second: In gaining access to the people, studying
+their ways and winning their confidence, the missionary will find great
+advantage in having gained some previous knowledge of their habits of
+thought and the intricacies of their beliefs. Third: The means and
+appliances of study are far greater here at home than on the mission
+fields. A very serious difficulty with most missionaries is the want of
+books on special topics; they have no access to libraries, and if one
+has imagined that he can best understand the faiths of the people by
+personal contact with them, he will soon learn with surprise how little
+he can gain from them, and how little they themselves know of their own
+systems. Those who do know have learned for the purpose of baffling the
+missionary instead of helping him. The accumulation and the arrangement
+of anything like a systematic knowledge of heathen systems has cost the
+combined effort of many missionaries and many Oriental scholars; and
+now, after three generations have pursued these studies, it is still
+felt that very much is to be learned from literatures yet to be
+translated. Such as there are, are best found in the home libraries.
+
+Let us for a few moments consider the question how far those who are not
+to become missionaries may be profited by a study of false systems. To a
+large extent, the considerations already urged will apply to them also,
+but there are still others which are specially important to public
+teachers here at home. Dean Murray, in an able article published in the
+"Homiletic Review" of September, 1890, recommended to active and
+careworn pastors a continued study of the Greek classics, as calculated
+to refresh and invigorate the mind, and increase its capacity for the
+duties of whatever sphere. All that he said of the Greek may also be
+said of the Hindu classics, with the added consideration that in the
+latter we are dealing with the living issues of the day. Sir Monier
+Williams, in comparing the two great Epics of the Hindus with those of
+Homer, names many points of superiority in the former.[18] It is safe to
+say that no poems of any other land have ever exercised so great a spell
+over so many millions of mankind as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, of
+India, and no other production is listened to with such delight as the
+story of Rama as it is still publicly read at the Hindu festivals.
+
+Of philosophies, no system of India has approached so near to veritable
+divine revelation as that of Plato, but in variety and subtlety, and in
+their far-reaching influence upon human life, the Indian schools,
+especially the Vedanta, are scarcely excelled to this day. And they are
+_applied_ philosophies; they constitute the religion of the people. Max
+Mueller has said truly that no other line of investigation is so
+fascinating as that which deals with the long and universal struggle of
+mankind to find out God, and to solve the mystery of their relations to
+him. Unfortunately, human history has dealt mainly with wars and
+intrigues, and the rise and fall of dynasties; but compared with these
+coarse and superficial elements, how much more interesting and
+instructive to trace in all races of men the common and ceaseless
+yearnings after some solution of life's mysteries! One is stirred with
+a deeper, broader sympathy for mankind when he witnesses this universal
+sense of dependence, this fear and trembling before the powers of an
+unseen world, this pitiful procession of unblest millions ever trooping
+on toward the goal of death and oblivion. And from this standpoint, as
+from no other, may one measure the greatness and glory of the Gospel of
+Jesus Christ.
+
+To my mind there is nothing more pathetic than the spectacle of
+world-wide fetichism. It is not to be contemplated with derision, but
+with profoundest sympathy. We all remember the pathos of Scott's picture
+of his Highland heroine, with brain disordered by unspeakable grief,
+beguiling her woes with childish ornaments of "gaudy broom" and plumes
+from the eagle's wing. But sadder far is the spectacle of millions of
+men made for fellowship with God, building their hopes on the divinity
+dwelling in an amulet of tiger's teeth or serpent's fangs or curious
+shells. And it ought to enlarge our natures with a Christ-like sympathy
+when we contemplate those dark and desperate faiths which are but
+nightmares of the soul, which see in all the universe only malevolent
+spirits to be appeased, which, looking heavenward for a father's face,
+see, as Richter expressed it, "only a death's head with bottomless,
+empty sockets" instead of a loving smile.[19]
+
+And what a field do the greater but equally false systems present for
+the study of the human mind and heart! How was it that the simple nature
+worship of the Indo-Aryans grew into the vast deposit of modern
+Hinduism, and developed those social customs which have become walls of
+adamant? How could Buddhism grow out of such a soil and finally cast its
+spell over so many peoples? What were the elements of power which
+enabled the great sage of China to rear a social and political fabric
+which has survived for so many centuries? How was it that Islam gained
+its conquests, and what is the secret of that dominion which it still
+holds? These surely are questions worthy of those who are called to deal
+with human thought and human destiny. And when by comparison we find the
+grand differentials which raise Christianity infinitely above them all,
+we shall have gained the power of presenting its truths more clearly and
+more convincingly to the minds and hearts of men.
+
+There are some specific advantages flowing from the study of other
+religions of which I will give little more than an enumeration.
+
+1. It impresses us with the universality of some more or less distinct
+conception of God. I am aware that from time to time explorers imagine
+that they have found a race of men who have no notion of God, but in
+almost every instance subsequent investigation has found a religious
+belief. Such mistakes were made concerning the aborigines of Australia,
+the Dyaks of Borneo, the Papuans, the Patagonians, and even the American
+Indians. The unity of the race finds a new and striking proof in the
+universality of religion.
+
+2. The study of false systems brings to light an almost unanimous
+testimony for the existence of a vague primeval monotheism, and thus
+affords a strong presumptive corroboration of the Scriptural doctrine of
+man's apostasy from the worship of the true God.
+
+3. The clearest vindication of the severities of the Old Testament
+Theocracy, in its wars of extermination against the Canaanites and
+Phoenicians, is to be found in a careful study of the foul and cruel
+types of heathenism which those nations carried with them wherever their
+colonies extended. A religion which enjoined universal prostitution, and
+led thus to sodomy and the burning of young children in the fires of
+Moloch, far exceeded the worst heathenism of Africa or the islands of
+the Pacific. The Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean have not
+even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such
+a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even
+a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The
+extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great
+scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith,
+and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of
+Peace to all lands, becomes a work of mercy to the human race.
+
+4. The ethics of the heathen will be found to vindicate the doctrines of
+the Bible. This is a point which should be more thoroughly understood.
+It has been common to parade the high moral maxims of heathen systems as
+proofs against the exclusive claims of Christianity. But when carefully
+considered, the lofty ethical truths found in all sacred books and
+traditions, corroborate the doctrines of the Scriptures. They condemn
+the nations "who hold the truth in unrighteousness." They enforce the
+great doctrine that by their own consciences all mankind are convicted
+of sin, and are in need of a vicarious righteousness,--a full and free
+salvation by a divine power. My own experience has been, and it is
+corroborated by that of many others, that very many truths of the
+Gospel, when seen from the stand-point of heathenism, stand out with a
+clearness never seen before.
+
+Many prudential reasons like those which we have given for the study of
+false systems by missionaries, pertain also to those who remain at home.
+Both are concerned in the same cause, and both encounter the same
+assailments of our common faith. We are all missionaries in an important
+sense: we watch the conflict from afar, but we are concerned in all its
+issues. The bulletins of its battle-fields are no longer confined to
+missionary literature; they are found in the daily secular press, and
+they are discussed with favorable or unfavorable comments in the monthly
+magazines. The missionary enterprise has come to attract great
+attention: it has many friends, and also many foes, here at home; it is
+misrepresented by scoffers at our doors. The high merits of heathen
+systems, set forth with every degree of exaggeration, pass into the
+hands of Christian families, in books and magazines and secular papers.
+Apostles of infidelity are sent out to heathen countries to gather
+weapons against the truth. Natives of various Oriental lands, once
+taught in our mission schools perhaps, but still heathen, are paraded on
+our lecture platforms, where they entertain us with English and American
+arguments in support of their heathen systems and against Christianity.
+Young pastors, in the literary clubs of their various communities, are
+surprised by being called to discuss plausible papers on Buddhism, which
+some fellow-member has contributed, and they are expected to defend the
+truth. Or some young parishioner has been fascinated by a plausible
+Theosophist, or has learned from Robert Elsmere that there are other
+religions quite as pure and sacred as our own. Or some chance lecturer
+has disturbed the community with a discourse on the history of religious
+myths. And when some anxious member of a church learns that his
+religious instructor has no help for him on such subjects, that they lie
+wholly outside of his range, there is apt to be something more than
+disappointment: there is a loss of confidence.
+
+It is an unfortunate element in the case that error is more welcome in
+some of our professedly neutral papers than the truth: an article
+designed to show that Christianity was borrowed from Buddhism or was
+developed from fetichism will sometimes be welcomed as new sensation,
+while a reply of half the length may be rejected.
+
+There is something ominous in these facts. Whether the secular press
+(not all papers are thus unfair) are influenced by partisan hatred of
+the truth or simply by a reckless regard for whatever is most popular,
+the facts are equally portentous. And if it be true that such
+publications are what the people most desire, the outlook for our
+country is dark indeed. The saddest consideration is that the power of
+the secular press is so vast and far reaching. When Celsus wrote, books
+were few. When Voltaire, Hume, and Thomas Paine made their assailments
+on the Christian faith, the means of spreading the blight of error were
+comparatively few. But now the accumulated arguments of German infidels
+for the last half-century may be thrown into a five-cent Sunday paper,
+whose issue will reach a quarter of a million of copies, which perhaps a
+million of men and women may read. These articles are copied into a
+hundred other papers, and they are read in the villages and hamlets;
+they are read on the ranches and in the mining camps where no sermon is
+ever heard.
+
+It is perfectly evident that in an age like this we cannot propagate
+Christianity under glass. It must grow in the open field where the free
+winds of heaven shall smite and dissipate every cloud of error that may
+pass over it, and where its roots shall only strike the deeper for the
+questionings and conflicts that may often befall it. Error cannot be
+overcome either by ignoring it or by the cheap but imbecile scolding of
+an ignorant pulpit.
+
+I cannot express the truth on this point more forcibly than by quoting
+the trenchant words of Professor Ernest Naville, in his lectures on
+"Modern Atheism." After having admitted that one, who can keep himself
+far from the strifes and struggles of modern thought, will find
+solitude, prayer, and calm activity, pursued under the guidance of
+conscience, most conducive to unquestioning faith and religious peace,
+he says: "But we are not masters of our own ways, and the circumstances
+of the present times impose on us special duties. The barriers which
+separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down; everywhere
+shreds of philosophy, and very often of very bad philosophy, scattered
+fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable
+theological science, are insinuating themselves into the current
+literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a
+political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without
+occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests. The most
+sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public opinion.
+At such a juncture can men, who preserve faith in their own souls,
+remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow limits
+of the schools? Assuredly not. We must descend to the common ground and
+fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For this purpose
+it is necessary to state questions which run the risk of startling
+sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it if we are to
+combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only
+that we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a passing
+rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channels, shall be
+found to have left not so much as a trace of their passage upon the Rock
+of Ages." The fact that Professor Naville's lectures were delivered in
+Geneva and Lausanne, to audiences which together numbered over two
+thousand five hundred people, affords abundant proof that the people are
+prepared to welcome the relief afforded by a clear and really able
+discussion of these burning questions. In the ordinary teaching of the
+pulpit they would be out of place, but every public teacher should be
+able to deal with them on suitable occasions.
+
+In a single concluding word, the struggle of truth and error has become
+world-wide. There are no ethnic religions now. There is Christianity in
+Calcutta, and there is Buddhism in Boston. The line of battle is the
+parallel that belts the globe. It is not a time for slumber or for mere
+pious denunciation. There must be no blundering: the warfare must be
+waged with weapons of precision, and then victory is sure. It is well if
+our missionary effort of a century has drawn the fire of the enemy; it
+is well if the time has come to hold up the truth face to face with
+error, and to fight out and over again the conflict of Elijah and the
+Priests of Baal.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: _The Light of Asia and the Light of the World_. Macmillan &
+Co.]
+
+[Footnote 2: The late Professor Moffat, of Princeton Theological
+Seminary, published a _Comparative History of Religions_, but its field
+was too broad for a thorough treatment.]
+
+[Footnote 3: _Methodist Quarterly_.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 5: _Manual of India Missions._]
+
+[Footnote 6: Similar views, though in briefer terms, have been presented
+by Rev. William A.P. Martin, D.D., of Peking; Rev. John L. Nevins, D.D.,
+of Chefou; Rev. A.P. Happer, D.D., and Rev. B.C. Henry, D.D., of Canton;
+Professor John Wortabet, M.D., of Beyrout; Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, D.D.,
+Missionary of the Reformed Church in Madras; Rev. Z.J. Jones, D.D.,
+Missionary of the American M.E. Church at Bareilly, India; Rev. K.C.
+Chattergee and Ram Chandra Bose, both converts from high caste Hinduism
+and both eminent ministers of the Gospel in India; and Rev. E.W. Blyden,
+D.D., the accomplished African scholar of Liberia.]
+
+[Footnote 7: The _Japan Mail_ of September 30, 1891, in reviewing the
+progress of religious and philosophic discussion as carried on by the
+native press of the Empire, says: "The Buddhist literature of the season
+shows plainly the extent to which the educated members of the (Buddhist)
+priesthood are seeking to enlarge their grasp by contact with Western
+philosophy and religious thought. We happen to know that a prominent
+priest of the Shinsu sect is deeply immersed in Comte's humanitarianism.
+In _Kyogaku-roushu_ (a native paper) are published instalments of
+Spencer's philosophy. Another paper, the _Hauseikwai_, has an article
+urging the desirability of a general union of all the (Buddhist) sects,
+such as Colonel Olcott brought about in India between the northern and
+the southern Buddhists."]
+
+[Footnote 8: _Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book._]
+
+[Footnote 9: Papers of Rev. Mr. Hewlett in the _Indian Evangelical
+Review_.]
+
+[Footnote 10: In an address given in Tokio, by Rev. Mr. Knapp, of
+Boston, Buddhists in Japan were advised to build their religion of the
+future upon their own foundations, and not upon the teachings of Western
+propagandists.]
+
+[Footnote 11: _The Twelve Buddhist Sects of Japan_, by Bunyiu Nanjio,
+Oxon.]
+
+[Footnote 12: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Quoted in _Manual of India Missions_.]
+
+[Footnote 14: _Hulsean Lectures_, 1846.]
+
+[Footnote 15: Private Thoughts on Religion, Part I., Article 2.]
+
+[Footnote 16: Confucius not only taught that men should not do to others
+what they would not have done to them, but when one of his disciples
+asked him to name one word which should represent the whole duty of man,
+he replied "Reciprocity."]
+
+[Footnote 17: Whoever will read the Preface of Mr. Spencer's work on
+Sociology will be surprised at the means which have been used in
+collecting and verifying supposed facts; a careful perusal of the book
+will show that all classes of testimony have been accepted, so far as
+they were favorable. Adventurers, reporters, sailors, and that upon the
+briefest and most casual observation, have been deemed capable of
+interpreting the religious beliefs of men. Even Peschel doubts many of
+their conclusions.]
+
+[Footnote 18: See _Indian Wisdom_.]
+
+[Footnote 19: Archbishop Trench, after speaking in his Hulsean lectures
+of the advantages which we may gain from an earnest study of the
+struggles of thoughtful men, who amid heathen darkness have groped after
+a knowledge of the true God, and of the gratitude which we ought to feel
+who have received a more sure word of prophecy, adds in words of rare
+beauty: "And perhaps it shall seem to us as if that star in the natural
+heavens which guided those Eastern sages from their distant home, was
+but the symbol of many a star which, in the world's mystical night, such
+as, being faithfully followed, availed to lead humble and devout hearts
+from far-off regions of superstition and error, till they knelt beside
+the cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem, and saw all their weary wanderings
+repaid in a moment, and all their desires finding a perfect fulfilment
+in Him."]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II.
+
+THE METHODS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN DEALING WITH HEATHENISM
+
+
+The coincidences of our present conquest of the non-Christian races with
+that to which the Apostolic Church was called are numerous and striking.
+Not even one hundred years ago was the struggle with heathen error so
+similar to that of the early Church.
+
+To a great extent the missionary efforts of the mediaeval centuries
+encountered only crude systems, which it was comparatively easy to
+overcome. The rude tribes of Northern Europe were converted by the
+Christianity of the later Roman Empire, even though they were
+conquerors. Their gods of war and brute force did not meet all the
+demands of life. As a source of hope and comfort, their religion had
+little to be compared with the Christian faith, and as to philosophy
+they had none. They had inherited the simple nature worship which was
+common to all branches of the Aryan race, and they had expanded it into
+various ramifications of polytheism; but they had not fortified it with
+subtle speculations like those of the Indo-Aryans, nor had their
+mythologies become intrenched in inveterate custom, and the national
+pride which attends an advanced civilization.
+
+At a later day Christian missionaries in Britain found the Norse
+religion of the Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, scarcely holding the
+confidence of either rulers or subjects. They had valued their gods
+chiefly for the purposes of war, and they had not always proved
+reliable. The king of Northumbria, like Clovis of France, had vowed to
+exchange his deities for the God of the Christians if victory should be
+given him on a certain battle-field; and when he had assembled his
+thanes to listen to a discussion between the missionary Paulinus and the
+priests of Woden on the comparative merits of their respective faiths,
+the high priest frankly admitted his dissatisfaction with a religion
+which he had found utterly disappointing and useless; and when other
+chief counsellors had given the same testimony, and a unanimous vote had
+been taken to adopt the Christian faith, he was the first to commence
+the destruction of the idols.[20]
+
+The still earlier missionaries among the Druid Celts of Britain and
+France, though they found in Druidism a more elaborate faith than that
+of the Norsemen, encountered no such resistance as we find in the great
+religious systems of our day. Where can we point to so easy a conquest
+as that of Patrick in Ireland, or that of the Monks of Iona among the
+Picts and Scots?
+
+The Druids claimed that they already had many things in common with the
+Christian doctrines,[21] and what was a still stronger element in the
+case, they made common cause with the Christians against the wrongs
+inflicted on both by pagan Rome. The Roman emperors were not more
+determined to extirpate the hated and, as they thought, dangerous
+influences of Christianity, than they were to destroy every vestige of
+Druidism as their only hope of conquering the invincible armies of
+Boadicea. And thus the mutual experience of common sufferings opened a
+wide door for the advancement of Christian truth.
+
+The conquests of Welsh and Irish missionaries in Burgundy, Switzerland,
+and _Germany_, encountered no elaborate book religions, and no profound
+philosophies. They had to deal with races of men who were formidable
+only with weapons of warfare, and who, intent chiefly on conquest and
+migration, had few institutions and no written historic records. The
+peaceful sceptre of the truth was a new force in their experience, and
+the sympathetic and self-denying labors of a few missionaries tamed the
+fierce Vikings to whom Britain had become a prey, and whose incursions
+even the armies of Charlemagne could not resist.
+
+How different is our struggle with the races now under the sceptre of
+Islam, for example--inflated as they are with the pride of wide
+conquest, and looking contemptuously upon that Christian faith which it
+was their early mission to sweep away as a form of idolatry! How
+different is our task in India, which boasts the antiquity of the noble
+Sanskrit and its sacred literature, and claims, as the true
+representative of the Aryan race, to have given to western nations their
+philosophy, their religion, and their civilization! How much more
+difficult is our encounter with Confucianism, which claims to have laid
+the foundations of the most stable structure of social and political
+institutions that the world has ever known, and which to-day, after
+twenty-five centuries of trial, appeals to the intellectual pride of all
+intelligent classes in a great empire of four hundred millions! And
+finally, how different is our task with Buddhism, so mystical and
+abstruse, so lofty in many of its precepts, and yet so cold and thin, so
+flexible and easily adapted, and therefore so varied and many sided! The
+religious systems with which we are now confronted find their
+counterparts only in the heathenism with which the early Church had to
+deal many centuries ago; and for this reason the history of those early
+struggles is full of practical instruction for us now. How did the early
+Church succeed in its great conquest? What methods were adopted, and
+with what measures of success?
+
+In one respect there is a wide difference in the two cases. The Apostles
+were attempting to convert their conquerors. They belonged to the
+vanquished race; they were of a despised nationality. The early fathers
+also were subjects of Pagan powers. Insomuch as the Roman emperors
+claimed divine honors, there was an element of treason in their
+propagandism. The terrible persecutions which so long devastated the
+early Church found their supposed justification in the plea of
+self-defence against a system which threatened to subvert cherished and
+time-honored institutions. Candid writers, like Archdeacon Farrar, admit
+that Christianity did hasten the overthrow of the Roman Empire.
+
+But we find no conquering powers in our pathway. Christianity and
+Christian civilization have become dominant in the earth. The weakness
+of the Christian Church in its conquests now is not in being baffled and
+crippled by tyranny and persecution, but rather in the temptation to
+arrogance and the abuse of superior power, in the overbearing spirit
+shown in the diplomacy of Christian nations and the unscrupulous
+aggressions of their commerce. There is also a further contrast in the
+fact that in the early days the advantages of frugality and simple
+habits of life were on the side of the missionaries. Roman society
+especially was beginning to suffer that decay which is the inevitable
+consequence of long-continued luxury, while the Church observed
+temperance in all things and excelled in the virtues which always tend
+to moral and social victory.[22]
+
+On the other hand, we who are the ambassadors to the heathen of to-day,
+are ourselves exposed to the dangers which result from wealth and
+excessive luxury. Our grade of life, our scale of expenditure, even the
+style in which our missionaries live, excites the amazement of the
+frugal heathen to whom they preach. And as for the Church at home, it is
+hardly safe for a Persian or a Chinaman to see it. Everyone who visits
+this wonderful eldorado carries back such romantic impressions as excite
+in others, not so much the love of the Gospel as the love of mammon.
+When the Church went forth in comparative poverty, and with an intense
+moral earnestness, to preach righteousness, temperance, and the judgment
+to come; when those who were wealthy gave all to the poor--like Anthony
+of Egypt, Jerome, Ambrose, and Francis of Assisi--and in simple garments
+bore the Gospel to those who were surfeited with luxuries and pleasures,
+and were sick of a life of mere indulgence, then the truth of the Gospel
+conquered heathenism with all that the world could give. But whether a
+Church in the advanced civilization of our land and time, possessed of
+enormous wealth, enjoying every luxury, and ever anxious to gain more
+and more of this present world, can convert heathen races who deem
+themselves more frugal, more temperate, and less worldly than we, is a
+problem which remains to be solved. We have rare facilities, but we have
+great drawbacks. God's grace can overcome even our defects, and He has
+promised success.
+
+But in the proud intellectual character of the systems encountered
+respectively by the ancient and by the modern Church, there are
+remarkable parallels. The supercilious pride of Brahminism, or the lofty
+scorn of Mohammedanism, is quite equal to that self-sufficient Greek
+philosophy in whose eyes the Gospel was the merest foolishness. And the
+immovable self-righteousness of the Stoics has its counterpart in the
+Confucianism of the Chinese literati. A careful comparison of the six
+schools of Hindu philosophy with the various systems of Greece and
+Rome, will fill the mind with surprise at the numerous
+correspondences--one might almost say identities. And that surprise is
+the greater from the fact that no proof exists that either has been
+borrowed from the other.
+
+The atomic theory of creation advanced by Lucretius is found also in the
+Nyaya philosophy of the Hindus. The pessimism of Pliny and Marcus
+Aurelius was much more elaborately worked out by Gautama. The Hindus had
+their categories and their syllogisms as well as Aristotle. The
+conception of a dual principle in deity which the early Church traced in
+all the religious systems of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria, and whose
+influence poisoned the life of the Phoenician colonies, and was so
+corrupting to the morals of Greece and Rome, was also elaborated by the
+Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and it has plunged Hindu society into as
+deep a degradation as could be found in Pompeii or Herculaneum.[23] The
+Indian philosophy partook far more of the pantheistic element than that
+of Greece. Plato and Aristotle had clearer conceptions of the
+personality of the deity and of the distinct and responsible character
+of the human soul than any school of Hindu philosophers--certainly
+clearer than the Vedantists, and their ethics involved a stronger sense
+of sin.
+
+German philosophy has borrowed its pantheism from India rather than from
+Greece, and in its most shadowy developments it has never transcended
+the ancient Vedantism of Vyasa.
+
+As in the early centuries, so in our time, different systems of religion
+have been commingled and interwoven into protean forms of error more
+difficult to understand and dislodge than any one of the faiths and
+philosophies of which they were combined. As the Alexandrian Jews
+intertwined the teachings of Judaism and Platonism; as Manichaeans and
+Gnostics corrupted the truths of the Old and New Testaments with ideas
+borrowed from Persian mysticism; as various eclectic systems gathered up
+all types of thought which the wide conquests of the Roman Empire
+brought together, and mingled them with Christian teachings; so now the
+increased intercommunication, and the quickened intellectual activity
+of our age have led to the fusion of different systems, ancient and
+modern, in a negative and nerveless religion of humanity. We now have in
+the East not only Indian, but Anglo-Indian, speculations. The
+unbelieving Calcutta graduate has Hegel and Spinoza interwoven with his
+Vedantism, and the eclectic leader of the Brahmo Somaj, while placing
+Christ at the head of the prophets and recognizing the authority of all
+sacred bibles of the races, called on Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and
+Mohammedans to unite in one theistic church of the New Dispensation in
+India. Not even the old Gnostics could present so striking an admixture
+as that of the Arya Somaj. It has appropriated many of those Christian
+ethics which have been learned from a century of contact with
+missionaries and other Christian residents. It has approved the more
+humane customs and reforms of Christendom, denouncing caste, and the
+degradation of woman. It has repudiated the corrupt rites and the
+degrading superstitions of Hinduism. At the same time its hatred of the
+Christian faith is most bitter and intense.
+
+And there are other alliances, not a few, between the East and the West.
+In India and Japan the old Buddhism is compounded with American
+Spiritualism and with modern Evolution, under a new application of the
+ancient name of Theosophy. In Japan representatives of advanced
+Unitarianism are exhorting the Japanese Buddhists to build the religion
+of the future on their old foundations, and to avoid the propagandists
+of western Christianity.
+
+The bland and easy-going catholicity which professes so much in our day,
+which embraces all faiths and unfaiths in one sweet emulsion of
+meaningless negations, which patronizes the Christ and His doctrines,
+and applies the nomenclature of Christianity to doctrines the very
+opposite of its teachings, finds a counterpart in the smooth and vapid
+compromises of the old Gnostics. "Gnosticism," says Uhlhorn, "combined
+Greek philosophies, Jewish theology, and ancient Oriental theosophy,
+thus forming great systems of speculative thought, all with the object
+of displaying the world's development. From a pantheistic First Cause,
+Gnosticism traced the emanation of a series of aeons--beings of Light.
+The source of evil was supposed to be matter, which in this material
+world holds light in captivity. To liberate the light and thus redeem
+the world, Christ came, and thus Christianity was added as the crowning
+and victorious element in this many-sided system of speculation. But
+Christ was regarded not so much as a Saviour of individual souls as an
+emancipator of a disordered kosmos, and the system which seemed to
+accord great honor to Christianity threatened to destroy its life and
+power." So, according to some of our Modern Systems, men are to find
+their future salvation in the grander future of the race.[24]
+
+Not only do we encounter mixtures of truth and error, but we witness
+similar attempts to prove that whatever is best in Christianity was
+borrowed from heathenism. Porphyry and others maintained that Pythagoras
+and Theosebius had anticipated many of the attributes and deeds of
+Christ, and Philostratus was prompted by the wife of Severus to write a
+history of Appolonius of Tyana which should match the life of Christ.
+And in precisely the same way it has been variously claimed in our time
+that the story of Christ's birth, childhood, and ministry were borrowed
+from Buddha and from Krishna, and that the whole conception of his
+vicarious suffering for the good of men is a clever imitation of
+Prometheus Bound. Now, in the earlier conflict it was important to know
+the facts on both sides in order to meet these allegations of Porphyry,
+Marinus, and others, and it is equally important to understand the
+precise ground on which similar charges are made with equal assurance
+now.[25] The very same old battles are to be fought over again, both
+with philosophy and with legend.
+
+And it is very evident that, with so many points of similarity between
+the early struggle of Christianity with heathenism and that of our own
+time, it is quite worth our labor to inquire what were the general
+methods then pursued. Then victory crowned the efforts of the Church.
+That which humanly speaking seemed impossible, was actually
+accomplished. From our finite standpoint, no more preposterous command
+was ever given than that which Christ gave to his little company of
+disciples gathered in the mountains of Galilee, or that last word before
+his ascension on Mt. Olivet, in which He placed under their responsible
+stewardship, not only Jerusalem, but all Judea and Samaria, and the
+"uttermost parts of the earth." The disciples were without learning or
+social influence, or political power. They had no wealth and few
+facilities, and so far as they knew there were no open doors. They were
+hated by their Jewish countrymen, ridiculed by the ubiquitous and
+cultured Greeks, and frowned upon by the conquering powers of Rome. How
+then did they succeed? How was it that in three or four centuries they
+had virtually emptied the Roman Pantheon of its heathen deities, and
+had gained the sceptre of the empire and the world?
+
+It is easy to misapprehend the forces which won the victory. The
+disciples first chosen to found the Church were fishermen, but that
+affords no warrant for the belief that only untutored men were employed
+in the early Church, or for the inference that the Salvation Army are to
+gain the conquest now. They were inspired; these are not; and a few only
+were chosen, with the very aim of setting at naught the intolerant
+wisdom of the Pharisees. But when the Gospel was to be borne to heathen
+races, to the great nations whose arrogance was proportionate to their
+learning and their power, a very different man was selected. Saul of
+Tarsus had almost every needed qualification seen from a human point of
+view. Standing, as he must, between the stiff bigotry of Judaism and the
+subtleties of Greek philosophy, he was fortunately familiar with both.
+He was a man of rare courtesy, and yet of matchless courage. Whether
+addressing a Jewish governor or the assembled philosophers and
+counsellors of Athens, he evinced an unfailing tact. He knew how to
+conciliate even a common mob of heathen idolators and when to defy a
+high priest, or plead the immunities of his Roman citizenship before a
+Roman proconsul.
+
+In tracing the methods of the early Church in dealing with heathenism,
+we begin, therefore, with Paul; for although he was differentiated from
+all modern parallels by the fact that he was inspired and endowed with
+miraculous power, yet that does not invalidate the force of those
+general principles of action which he illustrated. He was the first and
+greatest of all missionaries, and through all time it will be safe and
+profitable to study his characteristics and his methods. He showed the
+value of thorough training in his own faith, and of a full understanding
+of all the errors he was to contend with. He could reason with Jews out
+of their own Scriptures, or substantiate his position with Greeks by
+citing their own poets. He was certainly uncompromising in maintaining
+the sovereignty of the one God, Jehovah, but he was not afraid to admit
+that in their blind way the heathen were also groping after the same
+supreme Father of all. The unknown God at Athens he accepted as an
+adumbration of Him whom he proclaimed, and every candid reader must
+admit that in quoting the words of Aratus, which represent Zeus as the
+supreme creator whose offspring we are, he conveys the impression of a
+real resemblance, if not a partial and obscured identity.
+
+The essential principle here is that Paul frankly acknowledged whatever
+glimpses of truth he found in heathen systems, and made free use of them
+in presenting the fuller and clearer knowledge revealed in the Gospel.
+No man ever presented a more terrible arraignment of heathenism than
+that which he makes in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans,
+and yet, with marvellous discrimination he proceeds, in the second
+chapter, to show how much of truth God has imparted to the
+understandings and the consciences of all men. And he seems to imply
+the Holy Spirit's regenerative work through Christ's atonement, when he
+maintains that whoever shall, "by patient continuance in well doing,
+seek glory and immortality," to him shall "eternal life" be given; but
+"tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, to the
+Jew first, and also to the Gentile." Peter was not prepared to be a
+missionary till he had been divested of his Jewish narrowness by
+witnessing the power of grace in the Roman centurion at Cesarea. That
+widened out his horizon immensely. He saw that God in his ultimate plan
+was no respecter of persons or of races.
+
+There has been great difference of opinion as to whether the annual
+worship of the supreme God of Heaven in the great imperial temple at
+Peking is in any degree a relic of the worship of the true God once
+revealed to mankind. Such Chinese scholars as Martin and Legge and
+Douglass think that it is; others deny it. Some men raise a question
+whether the Allah of the Mohammedan faith is identical with the Jehovah
+of the Old Testament. Sales, the profoundest expositor of Islam,
+considers him the same. Moslems themselves have no doubt of it: the
+intent of the Koran is that and nothing else; Old Testament teachings
+are interwoven with almost every sura of its pages. I think that Paul
+would have conceded this point at once, and would the more successfully
+have urged the claims of Jesus, whom the Koran presents as the only
+sinless prophet. Of course Mohammedans do not recognize the Triune God
+as we now apprehend Him, from the New Testament standpoint; neither did
+ancient believers of Israel fully conceive of God as He has since been
+more fully revealed in the person and the sacrifice of his Son--Jesus
+Christ.
+
+Both the teachings and the example of Paul seem to recognize the fact
+that conceptions of God, sometimes clear and sometimes dim, may exist
+among heathen nations; and many of the great Christian fathers evidently
+took the same view. They admitted that Plato's noble teachings were
+calculated to draw the soul toward God, though they revealed no real
+access to Him such as is found in Christ. Archbishop Trench, in his
+Hulsean lectures on "Christ the Desire of the Nations," dwells
+approvingly upon Augustine's well-known statement, that he had been
+turned from vice to an inspiring conception of God by reading the
+"Hortensius" of Cicero. Augustine's own reference to the fact is found
+in the fourth book of his "Confessions," where he says: "In the ordinary
+course of study I fell upon a certain book of Cicero whose speech almost
+all admire--not so his heart. This book contains an exhortation to
+philosophy, and is called 'Hortensius.' But this book altered my
+affections and turned my prayers to Thyself, O Lord, and made me have
+other purposes and desires. Every vain hope at once became worthless to
+me, and I longed with an incredible burning desire for an immortality of
+wisdom, and began now to arise that I might return to Thee. For not to
+sharpen my tongue did I employ that book: nor did it infuse into me its
+style, but its matter."
+
+The "Hortensius" of Cicero has not survived till our time, and we know
+not what it contained; but we cannot fail to notice this testimony of a
+mature and eminent saint to the spiritual benefit which he had received
+at the age of thirty-one, from reading the works of a heathen
+philosopher. And a most interesting proof is here furnished for the
+freedom with which the Spirit of God works upon the hearts of men, and
+the great variety of means and agencies which He employs,--and that
+beyond the pale of the Christian Church, and even beyond the actual
+knowledge of the historic Christ. It would be interesting to know
+whether the regeneration of Augustine occurred just then, when he says
+in such strong language, that this book altered his affections and
+turned his prayers unto God, and made him "long with an indescribable
+burning desire for an immortality of wisdom." All men are saved, if at
+all, by the blood of Christ through the renewing of the Holy Ghost; but
+what was the position of such men as Augustine and Cornelius of Cesarea
+before they fully and clearly saw Jesus as the actual Messiah, and as
+the personal representative of that Grace of God in which they had
+already reposed a general faith, is at least an interesting question.
+
+Not less positive is the acknowledgment which Augustine makes of the
+benefits which he had received from Plato. And he mentions many others,
+as Virgininus, Lactantius, Hilary, and Cyprian, who, like himself,
+having once been heathen and students of heathen philosophy, had, as he
+expresses it, "spoiled the Egyptians, bringing away with them rich
+treasures from the land of bondage, that they might adorn therewith the
+true tabernacle of the Christian faith." Augustine seems to have been
+fond of repeating both this argument and this his favorite illustration.
+In his "Doctrine of Christ" he expands it more fully than in his
+"Confessions." He says: "Whatever those called philosophers, and
+especially the Platonists, may have said conformable to our faith, is
+not only not to be dreaded, but is to be claimed from them as unlawful
+possessors, to our use. For, as the Egyptians not only had idols and
+heavy burdens which the people of Israel were to abhor and avoid, but
+also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver and apparel which that
+people at its departure from Egypt privily assumed for a better use, not
+on its own authority but at the command of God, the very Egyptians
+unwittingly furnishing the things which themselves used not well; so all
+the teaching of the Gentiles not only hath feigned and superstitious
+devices, and heavy burdens of a useless toil, which we severally, as
+under the leading of Christ we go forth out of the fellowship of the
+Gentiles, ought to abhor and avoid, but it also containeth liberal arts,
+fitter for the service of truth, and some most useful moral precepts; as
+also there are found among them some truths concerning the worship of
+the One God Himself, as it were their gold and silver which they did not
+themselves form, but drew from certain veins of Divine Providence
+running throughout, and which they perversely and wrongfully abuse to
+the service of demons. These, the Christian, when he severs himself from
+their wretched fellowship, ought to take from them for the right use of
+preaching of the Gospel. For what else have many excellent members of
+our faith done? See we not how richly laden with gold and silver and
+apparel that most persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, Cyprian,
+departed out of Egypt? Or Lactantius, or Victorinus, Optatus, Hilary,
+not to speak of the living, and Greeks innumerable? And this, Moses
+himself, that most faithful servant of God, first did, of whom it is
+written, that 'he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.'"
+
+Let us for a moment pause and see of what these treasures of Egypt
+consisted, and especially what Plato taught concerning God. Like
+Socrates, he ridiculed the absurd but popular notion that the gods could
+be full of human imperfections, could make war upon each other, could
+engage in intrigues, and be guilty of base passions. And he earnestly
+maintained that it was demoralizing to children and youth to hold up
+such beings as objects of worship. Such was his condemnation of what he
+considered false gods. He was equally opposed to the idea that there is
+no God. "All things," he says, "are from God, and not from some
+spontaneous and unintelligent cause." "Now, that which is created," he
+adds, "must of necessity be created by some cause--but how can we find
+out the Father and maker of all this universe? If the world indeed be
+fair, and the artificer good, then He must have looked to that which is
+external--for the world is the fairest of creatures, as He is the best
+of causes."
+
+Plato's representation of the mercy of God, of his providential care, of
+his unmixed goodness, of his eternal beauty and holiness--are well-nigh
+up to the New Testament standard. So is also his doctrine of the
+immortality of the soul. The fatal deficiency is that he does not
+_know_. He has received no divine revelation. "We will wait," he said in
+another passage, "for one, be it a god or a god-inspired man, to teach
+us our religious duties, and as Athene in Homer says to Diomede, to take
+away the darkness from our eyes." And in still another place he adds:
+"We must lay hold of the best human opinion in order that, borne by it
+as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous sea of life, unless we can
+find a stronger boat, _or some word of God which will more surely and
+safely carry us_."[26]
+
+There is a deep pathos in the question which I have just quoted, "How
+can we find out the Father and maker of all this universe?" And in the
+last sentence quoted, Plato seems to have felt his way to the very
+threshold of the revelation of Christ.[27]
+
+Augustine shows a discrimination on this subject too important to be
+overlooked, when he declares that while the noble philosophy of the
+Platonists turned his thoughts away from his low gratifications to the
+contemplation of an infinite God, it left him helpless. He was profited
+both by what philosophy taught him and by what it could not teach: it
+created wants which it could not satisfy. In short, he was prepared by
+its very deficiencies to see in stronger contrast the all-satisfying
+fulness of the Gospel of Eternal Life. Plato could tell him nothing of
+any real plan of redemption, and he confesses with tender pathos that
+he found no Revealer, no divine sacrifice for sin, no uplifted Cross, no
+gift of the transforming Spirit, no invitation to the weary, no light of
+the Resurrection.[28] Now, just here is the exact truth; and Augustine
+has conferred a lasting benefit upon the Christian Church by this grand
+lesson of just discrimination. He and other Christian fathers knew where
+to draw the lines carefully and wisely with respect to heathen errors.
+
+We often have occasion to complain of the sharpness of the controversies
+of the early Church, but it could scarcely be otherwise in an age like
+that. It was a period of transitions and of rude convulsions. The
+foundations of the great deep of human error were being broken up. It
+was no time for flabby, jelly-fish convictions. The training which the
+great leaders had received in philosophy and rhetoric had made them keen
+dialectics. They had something of Paul's abhorrence of heathen
+abominations, for they saw them on every hand. They saw also the
+specious admixtures of Gnosticism, and they met them squarely.
+Tertullian's controversy with Marcion, Augustine's sharp issue with
+Pelasgius, Ambrose's bold and uncompromising resistance to Arianism,
+Origen's able reply to Celsus, all show that the great leaders of the
+Church were not men of weak opinions. The discriminating concessions
+which they made, therefore, were not born of an easy-going
+indifferentism and the soft and nerveless charity that regards all
+religions alike. They found a medium between this pretentious extreme
+and the opposite evil of ignorant and narrow prejudgment; and nothing is
+more needed in the missionary work of our day than that intelligent and
+well-poised wisdom which considers all the facts and then draws just
+distinctions; which will not compensate for conscious ignorance with
+cheap misrepresentation or wholesale denunciation.
+
+1. Now, first of all, in considering the methods of the early Church and
+its secret of power in overcoming the errors of heathenism, it must be
+borne in mind that the victory was mainly due to the _moral earnestness_
+which characterized that period. In this category we must place the
+influence which sprang from the martyrdom of thousands who surrendered
+life rather than relinquish their faith. That this martyr spirit did not
+always produce a true symmetry of Christian character cannot be denied.
+The tide of fanaticism swept in, sometimes, with the current of true
+religious zeal, and inconsistencies and blemishes marred even the
+saintliest self-sacrifice; but there was no resisting the mighty logic
+of the spirit of martyrdom as a whole. The high and the low, the wise
+and the unlettered, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, strong
+men and delicate women, surrendered themselves to the most cruel
+tortures for the love of Christ. This spectacle, while it may have
+served only to enrage a Nero and urge him on to even more Satanic
+cruelty, could not be wholly lost upon the more thoughtful Marcus
+Aurelius and others like him. It was impossible to resist the moral
+force of so calm and resolute a surrender unto torture and death.
+Moreover, an age which produced such relinquishment of earthly
+possessions as was shown by men like Anthony and Ambrose, who were ready
+to lay down the emoluments of high political position and distribute
+their large fortunes for the relief of the poor; and such women as Paula
+and others of high position, who were ready to sacrifice all for Christ
+and retire into seclusion and voluntary poverty--an age which could
+produce such characters and could show their steady perseverance unto
+the end, could not fail to be an age of resistless moral power; and it
+would be safe to say that no heathen system could long stand against the
+sustained and persistent force of such influences. Were the Christian
+Church of to-day moved by even a tithe of that high self-renunciation,
+to say nothing of braving the fires of martyrdom, if it possessed in
+even partial degree the same sacrifice of luxury and ease, and the same
+consecration of effort and of influence, the conquest of benighted
+nations would be easy and rapid.
+
+The frugality of the early Christians, the simplicity of life which the
+great body of the Church observed, and to which even wealthy converts
+more or less conformed, was also, doubtless, a strong factor in the
+great problem of winning the heathen to Christ. Probably in no age could
+Christian simplicity find stronger contrasts than were presented by the
+luxury and extravagance, the unbridled indulgence and profligacy, which
+characterized the later periods of the Roman Empire. Universal conquest
+of surrounding nations had brought untold wealth. The Government had
+hastened the process of decay by lavish distribution to the people of
+those resources which obviated the necessity of unremitting toil. It had
+devoted large expenditures to popular amusements, and demagogues had
+squandered the public funds for the purpose of securing their own
+preferment. Over against the moral earnestness of the persecuted
+Christian Church, there was in the nation itself and the heathenism
+which belonged to it, an utter want of character or conviction. These
+conditions of the conquest, as I have already indicated, do not find an
+exact counterpart with us now. There is more of refined Christian
+culture than existed in the early Church; probably there is also more of
+organized Christian effort. In many points the comparison is in our
+favor, but earnestness, and the spiritual power which attends it, are on
+a lower grade. There is no escape from the conviction that just here
+lies the reason why the Christian Church, with all her numbers, her vast
+material resources, and her unlimited opportunities, cannot achieve a
+greater success.
+
+2. But, on the intellectual side, and as relating to the methods of
+direct effort, there are many points in which imitation of the early
+example is entirely practicable. And first, the wise discrimination
+which was exercised by Augustine and other Christian leaders is entirely
+practicable now. There has prevailed in our time an indiscriminate
+carelessness in the use of terms in dealing with this subject. The
+strong language which the Old Testament employed against the
+abominations of Baalism, we have seemed to regard as having equal force
+against the ethics of Confucius or Gautama. "Heathenism" is the one
+brand which we have put upon all the non-Christian religions. I wish it
+were possible to exchange the term for a better.[29] Baalism was
+undoubtedly the most besotted, cruel, and diabolical religion that has
+ever existed on the earth. When we carefully study it we are not
+surprised at the strong language of denunciation which the Old Testament
+employs. But as I have already shown, we find in the New Testament a
+different spirit exercised toward the types of error which our Saviour
+and his disciples were called to meet. There is only gentleness in our
+Lord's dealings with those who were without the Jewish Church. His
+strongest denunciations were reserved for hypocrites who knew the truth
+and obeyed it not. He declared that the men of Nineveh would rise up in
+judgment against those who rejected the clear message of God's own Son.
+The man who goes forth to the great mission fields with the feeling that
+it is his province to assail as strongly as possible the deeply-rooted
+convictions of men, instead of winning them to a more excellent way, is
+worse than one who beats the air; he is doing positive harm; he is
+trifling with precious souls. He does not illustrate the spirit of
+Christ.
+
+The wisest of the early Fathers sometimes differed widely from each
+other in their methods; some were denunciatory, others were even too
+ready to excuse. The great African controversialist, Tertullian, was
+unsparing in his anathemas, not only against heathen customs, which were
+vile indeed, but against the teachings of the noblest philosophy. He had
+witnessed the former; he had not candidly studied the latter. With a
+blind zeal, which has too often been witnessed in the history of good
+causes, he denounced Plato, Aristotle, and even Socrates with a violence
+which marred the character of so great a man. On the other hand, Justin
+Martyr and Clement of Alexandria were perhaps excessively broad. Of two
+noted Alexandrines, Archdeacon Farrar says: "They were philosophers in
+spirit; they could enforce respect by their learning and their large,
+rounded sympathy, where rhetorical denunciation and ecclesiastical
+anathemas would only have been listened to with a frown of anger, or a
+look of disdain. Pagan youths would have listened to Clement when he
+spoke of Plato as 'the truly noble and half-inspired,' while they would
+have looked on Tertullian as an ignorant railer, who could say nothing
+better of Socrates than to call him the 'Attic buffoon,' and of
+Aristotle than to characterize him as the 'miserable Aristotle.'"
+
+Tatian and Hermes also looked upon Greek philosophy as an invention of
+the devil. Irenaeus was more discriminating. He opposed the broad and lax
+charity of the Alexandrines, but he read the Greek philosophy, and when
+called to the bishopric of Lyons, he set himself to the study of the
+Gallic Druidism, believing that a special adaptation would be called for
+in that remote mission field.[30] Basil was an earnest advocate of the
+Greek philosophy as giving a broader character to Christian education.
+
+There were among the Fathers many different types of men, some
+philosophically inclined, others better able to use practical arguments.
+Some were more successful in appealing to the signs of the times, the
+clear evidences of that corruption and decay to which heathenism had
+led. They pointed to the degradation of women, the prevalence of vice,
+the inordinate indulgence in pleasures, the love of excitement, the
+cruel frenzy of the gladiatorial shows, the unrest and pessimism and
+despair of all society. One of the most remarkable appeals of this kind
+is found in a letter of Cyprian to his friend Donatus. "He bids him seat
+himself in fancy on some mountain top and gaze down upon what he has
+abandoned (for he is a Christian), on the roads blocked by brigands, the
+sea beset by pirates, the camps desolated by the horrors of many wars,
+on the world reeking with bloodshed, and the guilt which, in proportion
+to its magnitude, was extolled as a glory. Then, if he would turn his
+gaze to the cities, he would behold a sight more gloomy than all
+solitudes. In the gladiatorial games men were fattened for mutual
+slaughter, and publicly murdered to delight the mob. Even innocent men
+were urged to fight in public with wild beasts, while their mothers and
+sisters paid large sums to witness the spectacle. In the theatres
+parricide and infanticide were dealt with before mixed audiences, and
+all pollution and crimes were made to claim reverence because presented
+under the guise of religious mythology. In the homes was equal
+corruption; in the forum bribery and intrigue ran rife; justice was
+subverted, and innocence was condemned to prison, torture, and death.
+Luxury destroyed character, and wealth became an idol and a curse."[31]
+Arguments of this kind were ready enough to hand whenever Christian
+teachers were disposed to use them, and their descriptions found a real
+corroboration in society as it actually appeared on every hand. None
+could question the counts in the indictment.
+
+3. While the Christian Fathers and the missionaries differed in their
+estimates of heathenism, and in their methods of dealing with it, one
+thing was recognized by all whom we designate as the great leaders,
+namely, the imperative necessity of a thorough knowledge of it. They
+understood both the low superstition of the masses and the loftier
+teaching of the philosophers. On the other hand, they had the same
+estimate of the incomparable Gospel of Christ that we have; they
+realized that it was the wisdom of God and the power of God unto
+salvation as clearly as the best of us, but they did not claim that it
+was to be preached blindly and without adaptation. The verities of the
+New Testament teachings, the transforming power of the Holy Ghost, the
+necessity for a new birth and for the preternatural influence of grace,
+both in regeneration and in sanctification, were as strongly maintained
+as they have ever been in any age of the Church; but the Fathers were
+careful to know whether they were casting the good seed upon stony
+places, or into good ground where it would spring up and bear fruit. The
+liberal education of that day was, in fact, an education along the old
+lines of heathen philosophy, poetry, history, and rhetoric; and a broad
+training was valued as highly as it has been in any subsequent period.
+It was thoroughly understood that disciplined intellect, other things
+being equal, may expect a degree of influence which can never fall to
+the lot of ignorance, however sanctified its spirit. There has never
+been a stronger type of men than the Christian Fathers. They were
+learned men, for the age in which they lived, and their learning had
+special adaptations to the work assigned them. Many of them, like
+Cyprian, Clement, Hilary, Martin of Tours, had been born and educated in
+heathenism; while others, like Basil, Gregory, Origen, Athanasius,
+Jerome, and Augustine, though born under Gospel influences, studied
+heathen philosophy and poetry at the instance of their Christian
+parents.
+
+4. Some of the leaders familiarized themselves with the speculations of
+the day, not merely for the sake of a wider range of knowledge, but that
+they might the more successfully refute the assailants of the faith,
+many of whom were men of great power. They were fully aware that it
+behooved them to know their ground, for their opponents studied the
+points of comparison carefully. The infidel Celsus studied Christianity
+and its relation to the Old Testament histories and prophecies, and he
+armed himself with equal assiduity with all the choicest weapons drawn
+from Greek philosophy. How was such a man to be met? His able attack on
+Christianity remained fifty years unanswered. To reply adequately was
+not an easy task. Doubtless there were many, then as now, who thought
+that the most comfortable way of dealing with such things was to let
+them alone. But a wiser policy prevailed. Origen was requested to
+prepare an answer, and, although such work was not congenial to him, he
+did so because he felt that the cause of the truth demanded it. His
+reply outlived the attack which it was designed to meet, and in all
+subsequent ages it has been a bulwark of defence.[32]
+
+Origen was not of a pugnacious spirit--it was well that he was not--but
+with wide and thorough preparation he summoned all his energies to meet
+the foe. Archdeacon Farrar says of him, that he had been trained in the
+whole circle of science. He could argue with the pupils of Plato, or
+those of Zeno, on equal terms, and he deems it fortunate that one who
+was called, as he was, to be a teacher at Alexandria, where men of all
+nations and all creeds met, had a cosmopolitan training and a
+cosmopolitan spirit.
+
+No less resolute was the effort of Ambrose in resisting the errors of
+Arianism, and he also adapted himself to the work in hand. He had not
+been afraid of Platonism. On the other hand, we are told that Plato,
+next to his Bible, constituted a part of his daily reading, and that,
+too, in the period of his ripest Christian experience, and when he
+carried his studies and his prayers far into the hours of the night. But
+in dealing with Arianism he needed a special understanding of all its
+intricacies, and when among its advocates and supporters he encountered
+a powerful empress as well as her ablest advocates, he had need of all
+the powers within him--that power of moral earnestness which had led him
+to give all his property to the poor--that power of strong faith, which
+prepared him, if need be, to lay down his life--the power of a
+disciplined intellect, and a thorough knowledge of the whole issue.
+
+5. The early Fathers not only studied the heathen philosophies of Plato
+and Aristotle, but they learned to employ them, and their successors
+continued to employ them, even to the Middle Ages, and the period of the
+Reformation. As an intellectual framework, under which truth should be
+presented in logical order, it became a strong resource of the early
+Christian teachers. Let me refer you on this point to the clear
+statements of Professor Shedd.[33] He has well said that "when
+Christianity was revealed in its last and beautiful form by the
+incarnation of the Eternal World, it found the human mind already
+occupied by human philosophy. Educated men were Platonists, or Stoics,
+or Epicureans. During the age of Apologetics, which extended from the
+end of the apostolic age to the death of Origen, the Church was called
+to grapple with these systems, to know as far as possible what they
+contained, and to discriminately treat their contents, rejecting some
+things, utilizing others." "We shall see," he continues, "that Plato,
+Aristotle, and Cicero exerted more influence than all other philosophic
+minds united upon the greatest of Christian Fathers, upon the greatest
+of the School men, and upon the greatest of the theologians of the
+Reformation, Calvin and Melancthon; and if we look at European philosophy,
+as it has been unfolded in England, Germany, and France, we can perceive
+that all the modern philosophic schools have discussed the principles
+of human reason in very much the same manner in which Plato and
+Aristotle discussed them twenty-two centuries ago."
+
+I need hardly say, in closing, that it is not necessary to borrow from
+the heathen systems of to-day as extensively as the Fathers did from the
+systems of Greece and Rome, and it would be discordant with good taste
+to illustrate our sermons with quotations from the Hindu poets as
+lavishly as good Jeremy Taylor graced his discourses with gems from the
+poets of Greece. But I think that we may so far heed the wise examples
+furnished by Church history as to face the false systems of our time
+with a candid and discriminating spirit, and by a more adequate
+knowledge to disenchant the bugbears with which their apologists would
+alarm the Church.
+
+We are entering upon the broadest and most momentous struggle with
+heathen error that the world has ever witnessed. Again, in this later
+age, philosophy and multiform speculation are becoming the handmaids of
+Hindu pantheism and Buddhist occultism, as well as of Christian truth.
+The resources of the East and the West are combined and subsidized by
+the enemy as well as by the Church. As in old Rome and Alexandria, so
+now in London and Calcutta all currents of human thought flow together,
+and truth is in full grapple with error. It is no time to be idle or to
+take refuge in pious ignorance, much less to fear heathen systems as so
+many haunted houses which superstitious people dare not enter--as if the
+Gospel were not as potent a talisman now as it was ages ago. Let us
+fearlessly enter these abodes of darkness, throw open the shutters, and
+let in the light of day, and the hobgoblins will flee. Let us explore
+every dark recess, winnow out the miasma and the mildew with the pure
+air of heaven, and the Sun of Righteousness shall fill the world.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 20: _The Norsemen_, Maclear.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The Druid bard Taliesen says: "Christ, the Word from the
+beginning, was from the beginning our teacher, and we never lost His
+teaching. Christianity was a new thing in Asia, but there never was a
+time when the Druids of Britain held not its doctrines."--_St. Paul in
+Britain_, p. 86.]
+
+[Footnote 22: Uhlhorn's _Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism_.]
+
+[Footnote 23: The same dualism of the male and the female principle is
+found in the Shinto of Japan. See Chamberlain's translation of the
+_Kojiki_.]
+
+[Footnote 24: The late George Eliot has given expression to this grim
+solace, and Mr. John Fiske, in his _Destiny of Man_, claims that the
+goal of all life, from the first development of the primordial cell, is
+the perfected future man.]
+
+[Footnote 25: Voltaire found great delight in the so-called _Ezour
+Veda_, a work which claimed to be an ancient Veda containing the
+essential truths of the Bible. The distinguished French infidel was
+humbled, however, when it turned out that the book was the pious fraud
+of a Jesuit missionary who has hoped thus to win the Hindus to
+Christianity.]
+
+[Footnote 26: Quoted by Uhlhorn in _The Conflict of Christianity with
+Heathenism_, p. 70. He also quotes Seneca as saying: "Oh, if one only
+might have a guide to truth!"]
+
+[Footnote 27: Plato showed by his writings and his whole life that he
+was a true seeker after the knowledge of God, whom he identified with
+the highest good. Though he believed in an efficient creatorship, he
+held that matter is eternal. Ideas are also eternal, but the world is
+generated. He was not a Pantheist, as he clearly placed God outside of,
+or above, the universe. He regarded the soul of man as possessed of
+reason, moral sensibility, and appetite.
+
+On the doctrine of future immortality Plato was most emphatic.
+
+He also believed that the soul in a previous state had been pure and
+sinless, but had fallen. He taught that recovery from this fallen
+condition is to be accomplished by the pursuit of philosophy and the
+practice of virtue (not as merit but as discipline), by contemplating
+the highest ideal which is the character of God, and by thinking of
+eternity. Plato regarded suffering as disciplinary when properly
+improved. True philosophy may raise the soul above the fear of death.
+This was proved by Socrates. Both Socrates and Plato seemed to believe
+in a good demon (spirit) whose voice was a salutary and beneficent
+guide. As to eschatology, Plato looked forward to a heaven where the
+virtuous soul shall dwell in the presence of God, and in the enjoyment
+of pure delights.
+
+Aristotle's idea of God was scarcely less exalted than that of Plato. He
+expressed it thus: "The principle of life is in God; for energy of mind
+constitutes life, and God is this energy. He, the first mover, imparts
+motion and pursues the work of creation as something that is loved. His
+course of life must be similar to what is most excellent in our own
+short career. But he exists forever in this excellence, whereas this is
+impossible for us. His pleasure consists in the exercise of his
+essential energy, and on this account vigilance, wakefulness, and
+perception are most agreeable to him. Again, the more we examine God's
+nature the more wonderful does it appear to us. He is an eternal and
+most excellent being. He is indivisible, devoid of parts, and having no
+magnitude, for God imparts motion through infinite time, and nothing
+finite, as magnitude is, can have an infinite capacity. He is a being
+devoid of passions and unalterable."--Quoted in _Indian Wisdom_, p.
+125.]
+
+[Footnote 28: "Those pages present not the image of this piety, the
+tears of confession, Thy sacrifice, a troubled spirit, a broken and a
+contrite heart, the salvation of the people, the Bridal city, the
+earnest of the Holy Ghost, the cup of our redemption. No man sings
+there, 'Shall not my soul be submitted unto God? for of Him cometh my
+salvation, for He is my God and my salvation, my guardian, I shall no
+more be grieved.' No one there hears Him call 'Come unto me all ye that
+labor.'"--_Confessions_, Bk. vii., xxi. "But having then read those
+books of the Platonists, and thence being taught to search for
+incorporeal truth, I saw Thy invisible things, understood by the things
+which are made; and though cast back, I perceived what that was which,
+through the darkness of my mind, I was hindered from contemplating,
+being assured 'that Thou wert and wert infinite, and yet not diffused in
+space, finite or infinite, and that Thou truly art who art the same
+ever, in no part nor motion varying; and that all other things are from
+Thee.... Of these things I was assured, yet too insecure to enjoy Thee.
+I prated as one skilled, but I had not sought Thy way in Christ our
+Saviour; I had proved to be not skilled but killed."--_Confessions_, Bk.
+vii., xx.]
+
+[Footnote 29: We may judge of the bearing of the common term heathen as
+applied to non-Christian nations, when we consider that the Greeks and
+Romans characterized all foreigners as "barbarians," that Mohammedans
+call all Christians "infidels," and the Chinese greet them as "foreign
+devils." The missionary enterprise as a work of conciliation should
+illustrate a broader spirit.]
+
+[Footnote 30: _The Celts_, Maclear.]
+
+[Footnote 31: _Lives of the Fathers_, Farrar.]
+
+[Footnote 32: "Christianity," says Max Mueller, "enjoyed no privileges
+and claimed no immunities when it boldly confronted and confounded the
+most ancient and the most powerful religions of the world. Even at
+present it craves no mercy and it receives no mercy from those whom our
+missionaries have to meet face to face in every part of the world; and
+unless our religion has ceased to be what it was, its defenders should
+not shrink from this new trial of its strength, but should encourage
+rather than depreciate the study of comparative theology."--_Science of
+Religion_, p. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 33: _History of Christian Theology_, Vol. I., p. 52.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.
+
+THE SUCCESSIVE DEVELOPMENTS OP HINDUISM
+
+
+The religious systems of India, like its flora, display luxuriant
+variety and confusion. Hinduism is only another banyan-tree whose
+branches have become trunks, and whose trunks have produced new
+branches, until the whole has become an intellectual and moral jungle of
+vast extent. The original stock was a monotheistic nature worship, which
+the Hindu ancestors held in common with other branches of the Aryan
+family when dwelling together on the high table-lands of Central Asia,
+or, as some are now claiming, in Eastern Russia. Wherever may have been
+that historic "cradle" in which the infancy of our race was passed, it
+seems certain from similarities of language, that this Aryan family once
+dwelt together, and had a common worship, and called the supreme deity
+by a common name. It was a worship of the sky, and at length of various
+powers of nature, _Surya_, the sun: _Agni_, fire: _Indra_, rain, etc. It
+is maintained by many authors, in India as well as in Europe, that these
+designations were only applied as names of one and the same potential
+deity. This is the ground held by the various branches of the modern
+Somaj of India. Yet we must not suppose that the monotheism of the
+early Aryans was all that we understand by that term; it is enough that
+the power addressed was _one_ and personal. Even henotheism, the last
+name which Professor Max Mueller applies to the early Aryan faith,
+denotes oneness in this sense. The process of differentiation and
+corruption advanced more rapidly among the Indo-Aryans than in the
+Iranian branch of the same race, and in all lands changes were wrought
+to some extent by differences of climate and by environment.[34] The
+Norsemen, for example, struggling with the wilder and sterner forces of
+storm and wintry tempest, would naturally differ in custom, and finally
+in faith, from the gentle Hindu under his Indian sky; yet there were
+common elements traceable in the earliest traditions of these races, and
+the fact that religions are not wholly dependent upon local conditions
+is shown by both Christianity and Buddhism, which have flourished most
+conspicuously and permanently in lands where they were not indigenous.
+
+"In the Vedas," says Sir Monier Williams, "unity in the conception of
+deity soon diverged into various ramifications. Only a few of the hymns
+appear to contain the simple conception of one divine, self-existent,
+omnipresent Being, and even in these, the idea of one God, present in
+all nature, is somewhat nebulous and undefined." One of the earliest
+deifications that we can trace was that of _Varuna_, who represented the
+overhanging sky. The hymns addressed to Varuna are not only the
+earliest, but they are the loftiest and most spiritual in their
+aspirations. They find in him an element of holiness before which sin is
+an offence; and in some vague sense he is the father of all things, like
+the Zeus whom Paul recognized in the poetry of Greece.
+
+But, as already stated, this vague conception of God as one, was already
+in a transition toward separate impressions of the different powers of
+nature. If the idea of God was without any very clear personality and
+more or less obscure, it is not strange that it should come to be thus
+specialized as men thought of objects having a manifestly benign
+influence--as the life-quickening sun or the reviving rain. It is not
+strange that, without a knowledge of the true God, they should have been
+filled with awe when gazing upon the dark vault of night, and should
+have rendered adoration to the moon and her countless retinue of stars.
+If there must be idolatry, let it be that sublime nature worship of the
+early Aryans, though even that was sure to degenerate into baser forms.
+One might suppose that the worship of the heavenly bodies would remain
+the purest and noblest; and yet the sun-worship of the Assyrians and the
+Phoenicians became unspeakably vile in its sensuousness, and finally the
+most wicked and abominable of all heathen systems. India in her darkest
+days never sank so low, and when her degradation came it was through
+other conceptions than those of nature worship.
+
+In the early Vedic hymns are to be found many sublime passages which
+seem to suggest traces of those common traditions concerning the
+creation--the Fall of man and the Deluge, which we believe to have been
+the earliest religious heritage of mankind. They contrast strongly with
+the later and degrading cosmogonies of degenerate heathen systems, and
+especially with the grotesque fancies of the subsequent Hindu mythology.
+In the Xth Mandala of the Rig Veda we find the following account of
+primeval chaos, which reminds one of the Mosaic Genesis:
+
+   "In the beginning there was neither aught nor naught,
+    There was neither sky nor atmosphere above.
+    What then enshrouded all the teeming universe?
+    In the receptacle of what was it contained?
+    Was it enveloped in the gulph profound of water?
+    There was then neither death nor immortality.
+    There was then neither day nor night, nor light nor darkness.
+    Only the _Existing One_ breathed calmly self-contained,
+    Naught else but him there was, naught else above, beyond;
+    Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom,
+    Next all was water, chaos indiscreet
+    In which the _One_ lay void, shrouded in nothingness,
+    Then turning inward by self-developed force
+    Of inner fervor and intense abstraction grew."
+
+
+In the early Vedic period many of the corruptions of later times were
+unknown. There was no distinct doctrine of caste, no transmigration, no
+mist of pantheism, no idol-worship, no widow-burning, and no authorized
+infanticide. The abominable tyranny which was subsequently imposed upon
+woman was unknown; the low superstitions of the aboriginal tribes had
+not been adopted; nor, on the other hand, had philosophy and
+speculation taken possession of the Hindu mind. The doctrine of the
+Trimurti and the incarnations had not appeared.[35]
+
+The faith of the Hindus in that early period may be called _Aryanism_,
+or _Vedism_. It bore sway from the Aryan migration, somewhere about one
+thousand five hundred, or two thousand, years before Christ, to about
+eight hundred years before Christ.[36] By that time the priestly class
+had gained great power over all other ranks. They had begun to work over
+the Vedas to suit their own purposes, selecting from them such portions
+as could be framed into an elaborate ritual--known as the Brahmanas. The
+period during which they continued this ritualistic development is known
+as the Brahmana period. This extended from about eight hundred to five
+hundred B.C.[37] These, however, are only the approximate estimates of
+modern scholarship: such a thing as ancient history is unknown to the
+Hindu race. This Brahmana period was marked by the intense and
+overbearing sacerdotalism of the Brahmans, and by an extreme development
+of the doctrine of caste. Never was priestly tyranny carried to greater
+length than by these lordly Brahmans of India. One of the chief abuses
+of their system was their depravation of sacrifice.
+
+The earliest conception of sacrifice represented in the Vedas is that of
+a vicarious offering of Parusha, a Divine being. Very obscure
+references to this are found in the oldest of the four Vedas, dating
+probably not later than 1200 B.C. It is brought out still more clearly
+in a Brahmana which was probably composed in the seventh century B.C. It
+is there said that the "Lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice
+for the Gods." Principal Fairbairn finds Vedic authority for the idea
+that the creation of the world was accomplished by the self-sacrifice of
+deity; and Manu ascribes the creation of mankind to the austerities of
+the gods. Sir Monier Williams, the late Professor Banergea, and many
+others, have regarded these references to a Divine sacrifice for the
+benefit of gods and men as dim traces of a revelation once made to
+mankind of a promised atonement for the sins of the world.[38]
+
+But so far as the actual observances of the early Hindus were concerned,
+they seem to have made their offerings rather in the spirit of Cain than
+in the faith of Abel. They simply fed the gods with their gifts, and
+regaled them with soma juice, poured forth in libations; the savor of
+melted butter also was supposed to be specially grateful. Still there is
+reason to believe that the piacular idea of sacrifice was never wholly
+lost, but that the Hindus, in common with all other races, found
+occasion--especially when great calamities befell them--to appease the
+gods with the blood of sacrifice. In the early days human sacrifices
+were offered, and occasionally at least down to a late period.[39] It
+was a convenient policy of the priesthood, however, to hypothecate the
+claim for a human victim by accepting the substitution of a goodly
+number of horses or cows. A famous tradition is given, in the Aitareya
+Brahmana, of a prince[40] who had been doomed to sacrifice by a vow of
+his father, but who bought as a substitute the son of a holy
+Brahman--paying the price of a hundred cows. When none could be found to
+bind the lad on the altar, the pious father offered to perform the task
+for another hundred cows. Then there was no one found to slay the
+victim, and the father offered for still another hundred to do even
+that. As the victim was of high caste the gods interposed, and the
+Brahman was still the possessor of a son plus the cattle. The incident
+will illustrate the greed of the priesthood and the depravation of
+sacrifice. It had become a system of bargaining and extortion. The
+sacrifices fed the priesthood more substantially than the gods. There
+was great advantage in starting with the human victim as the unit of
+value, and it is easy to see how substitution of animals became
+immensely profitable. The people were taught that it was possible, if
+one were rich enough in victims, even to bankrupt heaven. Even demons by
+the value of their offerings might demand the sceptre of Indra.[41]
+
+Hand in hand with this growth of the sacrificial system was the
+development of caste; the former was done away by the subsequent
+protest of Buddhism and the philosophic schools; but the latter has
+remained through all the stages of Hindu history.[42] Such was
+_Brahmanism_. Its thraldom has never been equalled. The land was deluged
+with the blood of slain beasts. All industries were paralyzed with
+discouragement. Social aspiration was blighted, patriotism and national
+spirit were weakened, and India was prepared for those disastrous
+invasions which made her the prey of all northern races.
+
+It was in protest against these evils that Gautama and many able
+philosophers arose about 500 B.C. Already the intellectual classes had
+matched the Brahmans by drawing upon Vedic authority for their
+philosophy. As the Brahmans had produced a ritual from the Vedas, so
+the philosophers framed a sort of philosophic Veda in the _Upanishads_.
+Men had begun to ask themselves the great questions of human life and
+destiny, "Whence am I? What is this mysterious being of which I am
+conscious?" They had begun to reason about nature, the origin of matter,
+the relation of mortals to the Infinite. The school of the Upanishads
+regarded themselves as an aristocracy of intellect, and held philosophy
+as their esoteric and peculiar prerogative. It was maintained that two
+distinct kinds of revelation had been made to men. First, that simple
+kind which was designed for priests and the common masses, for all those
+who regarded only effects and were satisfied with sacerdotal assumption
+and merit-making. But, secondly, there was a higher knowledge which
+concerned itself with the origin of the world and the hidden causes of
+things. Even to this day the Upanishads are the Vedas of the thinking
+classes of India.[43]
+
+As the Brahmanas gave first expression to the doctrine of caste, so in
+the Upanishads we find the first development of pantheism and the
+doctrine of transmigration. The conclusion had already been reached that
+"There is only one Being who exists: He is within this universe and yet
+outside this universe: whoe'er beholds all living creatures as in Him,
+and Him the universal spirit, as in all, thenceforth regards no creature
+with contempt."
+
+The language of Hindu speculation exhausts its resources in similes by
+which to represent personal annihilation. Man's origin and relations
+are accounted for very tersely by such illustrations as these: "As the
+web issues from the spider, as little sparks proceed from fire, so from
+the One Soul proceed all breathing animals, all worlds, all the gods,
+all beings." Then as to destiny: "These rivers proceed from the east
+toward the west, thence from the ocean they rise in the form of vapor,
+and dropping again, they flow toward the south and merge into the ocean.
+And as the flowing rivers are merged into the sea, losing their names
+and forms, so the wise, freed from name and form, pass into the Divine
+spirit, which is greater than the great."[44] Another favorite
+illustration is that of the moon's reflection in the water-jar, which
+disappears the moment the moon itself is hidden. "If the image in the
+water has no existence separate from that of the moon," says the Hindu,
+"how can it be shown that the human soul exists apart from God?"
+
+The Mundaka Upanishad, based upon the Atharva Veda (one of the
+latest,--the Upanishad being later still), contains this account of the
+universe: "As the spider spins and gathers back (its thread); as plants
+sprout on the earth; as hairs grow on a living person; so is this
+universe here produced from the imperishable nature. By contemplation
+the vast one germinates; from him food (or body) is produced; and thence
+successively, breath, mind, real (elements) worlds, and immortality
+resulting from (good) deeds.
+
+"The Omniscient is profound contemplation consisting in the knowledge
+of him who knows all; and from that, the (manifested) vast one, as well
+as names, forms, and food proceed; and this is truth."[45]
+
+It is a great blemish upon the Upanishads, that while there are subtle,
+and in some respects sublime, utterances to be found here and there, the
+great mass is fanciful and often puerile, and in many instances too low
+and prurient to bear translation into the English language. This is
+clearly alleged by Mr. Bose, and frankly admitted by Max Mueller.[46]
+
+In the common protest which finally broke down the system of Brahmanical
+sacrifice, and for a time relaxed the rigors of caste tyranny, Buddhism
+then just appearing (say 500 B.C.), joined hand in hand with the
+philosophies. Men were tired of priestcraft, and by a natural reaction
+they went to an opposite extreme; they were tired of religion itself.
+Buddha became an undoubted atheist or agnostic, and six distinct schools
+of philosophy arose on the basis of the Upanishads--some of which were
+purely rationalistic, some were conservative, others radical. Some
+resembled the Greek "Atomists" in their theory,[47] and others fought
+for the authority, and even the supreme divinity, of the Vedas.[48] All
+believed in the eternity of matter, and the past eternity of the soul;
+all accepted the doctrine of transmigration, and maintained that the
+spiritual nature can only act through a material body. All were
+pessimistic, and looked for relief only in absorption.
+
+But the progress of Hindu thought was marked by checks and
+counter-checks. As the tyranny of the priesthood had led to the protest
+of philosophy, so the extreme and conflicting speculations of
+philosophic rationalism probably gave rise to the conservatism of the
+Code of Manu. No adequate idea of the drift of Hindu thought can be
+gained without assigning due influence to this all-important body of
+laws. They accomplished more in holding fast the power of the Brahmans,
+and enabling them to stem the tide of intellectual rebellion, and
+finally to regain the sceptre from the hand of Buddhism, than all other
+literatures combined. Their date cannot be definitely known. They were
+composed by different men and at different times. They probably followed
+the Upanishads, but antedated the full development of the philosophic
+schools.
+
+Many of the principles of Manu's Code had probably been uttered as early
+as the seventh century B.C.[49] The ferment of rationalistic thought was
+even then active, and demanded restraint. The one phrase which expresses
+the whole spirit of the laws of Manu is intense conservatism. They stand
+for the definite authority of dogma; they re-assert in strong terms the
+authority of the Vedas; they establish and fortify by all possible
+influences, the institution of caste. They enclose as in an iron
+framework, all domestic, social, civil, and religious institutions.
+They embrace not only the destiny of men upon the earth, but also the
+rewards and punishments of the future life. Whatever they touched was
+petrified. Abuses which had crept in through the natural development of
+human depravity--for example, the oppression of woman--the laws of Manu
+stamped with inflexible and irreversible authority. The evils which grow
+up in savage tribes are bad enough, the tyranny of mere brute force is
+to be deplored, but worst of all is that which is sanctioned by statute,
+and made the very corner-stone of a great civilization. Probably no
+other system of laws ever did so much to rivet the chains of domestic
+tyranny.[50]
+
+The Code of Manu has been classified as, 1st, sacred knowledge and
+religion; 2d, philosophy; 3d, social rules and caste organization; 4th,
+criminal and civil laws; 5th, systems of penance; 6th, eschatology, or
+the doctrine of future rewards. No uninspired or non-Vedic production
+has equal authority in India. We can only judge of its date by its
+relative place among other books. It applies Vedic names to the gods,
+though it mentions Brahma and Vishnu, but it makes no reference to the
+Trimurti. Pantheism was evidently in existence and was made prominent in
+the code. The influence of Manu over the jurisprudence of India was a
+matter of growth. At first the code appears to have been a guide in
+customs and observances, but as it gained currency it acquired the force
+of law, and extended its sway over all the tribes of India. It was not,
+however, maintained as a uniform code throughout the land, but its
+principles were found underlying the laws of all the provinces. Its very
+merits were finally fruitful of evil. Human weal was sacrificed to the
+over-shadowing power of a system of customs cunningly wrought and
+established by Brahmanical influence. The author was evidently a
+Brahman, and the whole work was prepared and promulgated in the
+interests of Brahmanism as against all freedom of thought. Its support
+of the Vedas was fanatical. Thus: "A Brahman by retaining the Rig Veda
+in his memory incurs no guilt, though he should destroy the three
+worlds." Again: "When there is contradiction of two precepts in the
+Veda, both are declared to be law; both have been justly promulgated by
+known sages as valid law."
+
+The laws of Manu make no mention of the doctrine of _Bakti_ or faith,
+and there is no reference to the worship of the _Sakti_; both of these
+were of later date. The doctrine of transmigration, however, is fully
+stated, and as a consequence of this the hells described in the code,
+though places of torture, resolve themselves into merely temporary
+purgatories, while the heavens become only the steps on the road to a
+union with deity. There is reason to believe that the practice of
+employing idols to represent deity was unknown at the time the code was
+compiled. There is no allusion to public services or to teaching in the
+temples, the chief rites of religion were of a domestic kind, and the
+priests of that age were nothing more than domestic chaplains.
+
+Manu's theory of creation was this: "The Self-Existent, having willed to
+produce various beings from his own substance, first with a thought
+created the waters and placed on them a productive seed or egg. Then he
+himself was born in that egg in the form of Brahma. Next he caused the
+egg to divide itself, and out of its two divisions there came the heaven
+above and the earth beneath. Afterward, having divided his own substance
+he became half male, half female. From that female was produced Viraj,
+from whom was created the secondary progenitor of all beings. Then from
+the Supreme Soul he drew forth Manu's intellect." This mixed cosmogony
+is supposed to indicate a diversity of authorship.
+
+It will be seen that this is much less philosophical than the theory of
+creation quoted above from the Mundaka Upanishad.[51] If we compare
+Manu's account with the description of the "Beginning" found in one of
+the hymns of the Rig Veda,[52] we shall see that there has been a
+downward trend of Hinduism from the simple and sublime conceptions of
+the early poets to that which is grotesque, and which has probably been
+worked over to suit the purposes of the Brahmans. No mythological legend
+was too absurd if it promoted the notion of the divine origin of the
+Manus (sages) and the Brahmans.
+
+Manu makes much of the Vedic passage which refers to the origin of
+caste.[53] He maintained that this distinction of caste was as much a
+law of nature and divine appointment as the separation of different
+classes of animals. The prominence accorded to the Brahmans was nothing
+short of divine. "Even when Brahmans employ themselves in all sorts of
+inferior occupations (as poverty often compels them to do) they must
+under all circumstances be honored, for they are to be regarded as
+supreme divinities." "A Brahman's own power is stronger than the power
+of the king, therefore by his own might he may chastise his foes." "He
+who merely assails a Brahman with intent to kill him, will continue in
+hell for a hundred years, and he who actually strikes him must endure a
+thousand years."
+
+It is always the truth that is mingled with the errors of any system
+which constitutes its life and gives it perpetuity, and there is much in
+the Code of Manu to be admired. Like the Confucian ethics, it laid its
+foundations in the respect due from childhood to parents, and in
+guarding the sanctities of the home. It aimed at fairness between ruler
+and subject, in an age when over most of the Asiatic continent the
+wildest caprice of rulers was the law of their respective realms. Manu
+taught the duty of kings toward their subjects in most emphatic terms.
+They were to regard themselves as servants, or rather as fathers, of the
+people; and rules were prescribed for their entire conduct. They were
+the representatives of deity in administering the affairs of mortals,
+and must realize their solemn responsibility.[54] It must ever be
+acknowledged that the Hindu laws respecting property were characterized
+by wisdom and equity. Taxation was not subject to caprice or injustice;
+where discriminations occurred they were in favor of the poor, and the
+heaviest burdens were laid where they should be laid, upon the rich.
+There were wise adaptations, calculated to develop the industry and
+self-help of the weakest classes, and care was taken that they never
+should become oppressive. No political or civic tyranny could be
+allowed; but that of the priesthood in its relations to all ranks, and
+that of the householder toward his wife and toward all women, were quite
+sufficient. In this last regard we scarcely know which was the
+greater--the heartless wickedness of the Code, or its blind and bigoted
+folly. How it was that laws could be framed which indicated such rare
+sagacity, which in many other respects were calculated to build up the
+very highest civilization, and which, at the same time, failed to
+foresee that this oppression of woman must result in the inevitable
+degeneracy of succeeding generations of men, must ever remain a
+mystery.[55]
+
+We have glanced at the purer and simpler Aryanism of the early period,
+at the bigoted, tyrannical Brahmanism, with its ritual, its sacrifices,
+its caste. We have merely alluded to the rationalistic reaction of the
+philosophers and the Buddhists. We shall now see that the Brahman power
+is not broken, but that it will regain all and more than it has lost,
+that it will prove elastic enough to embrace all that has gone before;
+that while Buddhism will be banished, many of its elements will be
+retained, and the whole woven into one marvellous texture which we will
+call _Hinduism_.[56] Even during the period of Buddhism's greatest
+triumphs, say, two or three centuries before Christ, changes of great
+moment were going on in the Brahmanical faith. The old sacrificial
+system had lost its power, but the flexible and inexhaustible resources
+of Brahmanical cunning were by no means dormant. In the border wars of
+the Aryans, with rival invaders on the one hand, and with the conquered
+but ever restless aborigines on the other, great and popular heroes had
+sprung up. The exploits of these heroes had been celebrated in two great
+epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and the popularity of these
+poems was immense. The heroes were of the soldier caste, and gave to
+that caste a prestige which seemed to the Brahmans formidable and
+dangerous.[57] The divine prerogatives of their order were all in
+jeopardy.
+
+The remedy chosen by the Brahmans was a bold and desperate one. These
+heroes must be raised out of the soldier caste by making them divine. As
+such they would hold a nearer relation to the divine Brahmans than to
+the soldiers. The legends were therefore worked over--Brahmanized--so to
+speak.[58] Rama, who had overcome certain chieftains of Ceylon, and
+Krishna, who had won great battles in Rajputana, were raised to the rank
+of gods and demi-gods. By an equal exaggeration the hostile chiefs of
+rival invaders were transformed to demons, and the black, repulsive hill
+tribes, who were involved as allies in these conflicts, were represented
+as apes. As a part of this same Brahmanizing process, the doctrine of
+the Trimurti was developed, and also the doctrine of incarnation. Most
+conspicuous were the incarnations of Vishnu; Rama and Krishna were
+finally placed among the ten incarnations of that deity. This was a
+skilful stroke of policy, for it was now no longer the heroes of the
+soldier caste who had won victory for the Aryans; it was Vishnu, the
+preserver, the care-taker, and sympathizer with all the interests of
+mankind. The development of the doctrines of the Trimurti and of
+incarnation undoubtedly followed both the rise of Buddhism and the
+promulgation of the Laws of Manu.
+
+Meanwhile the Brahmans were shrewd enough to adapt themselves to certain
+other necessities. The influence of Buddhism was still a force which
+was not to be disregarded. It had demonstrated one thing which had never
+been recognized before, and that was the need of a more human and
+sympathetic element in the divine objects of worship. Men were weary of
+worshipping gods who had no kindly interest in humanity. They were weary
+of a religion which had no other element than that of fear or of
+bargaining with costly sacrifices. They longed for something which had
+the quality of mercy. Buddha had demonstrated the value of this element,
+and by an adroit stroke of policy the Brahmans adopted Gautama as the
+ninth avatar of Vishnu. Meanwhile they adopted the heroic Krishna as the
+god of sympathy--the favorite of the lower masses who were not too
+critical toward his vices.
+
+We have now reached the fully developed form of _Hinduism_.[59] The
+Brahmans had embraced every element that could give strength to their
+broad, eclectic, and all-embracing system.[60] The doctrine of the
+Trimurti had become a strong factor, as it furnished a sort of
+framework, and gave stability. As compared with the early Aryanism, it
+removed the idea of deity from merely natural forces to that of abstract
+thoughts, principles, and emotions, as active and potent in the world.
+At the same time it retained the old Vedic deities under new names and
+with new functions, and it did not abate its professed regard for Vedic
+authority. The Brahmans had rendered their system popular in a sense
+with the intellectual classes by adopting all the philosophies. They had
+stopped the mouth of Buddhist protest by embracing the Buddha among
+their incarnations. They had shown an advance in the succession of
+incarnations from the early embodiments of brute force, the fish, the
+tortoise, the boar, up to heroes, and from these to the ninth avatar,
+the Buddha, as a moralist and philosopher.[61] They left on record the
+prediction that a tenth should come--and he is yet to come--who, in a
+still higher range of moral and spiritual power, should redeem and
+renovate the earth, and establish a kingdom of righteousness.
+
+Meanwhile, in this renaissance of the Hindu faith, this wide, politic,
+self-adapting system, we find not only Buddhism, Philosophy, the early
+Aryanism, and the stiff cultus of Brahmanism, but there is also a large
+infusion of the original superstitions of the Dravidians, Kohls,
+Santals, and other nature worshippers of the hill tribes. Much of the
+polytheism of the modern Hindus--the worship of hills, trees, apes,
+cattle, the sun, the moon, unseen spirits, serpents, etc.--has been
+adopted from these simple tribes, so that the present system embraces
+all that has ever appeared on the soil of India--even Mohammedanism to
+some extent; and as some contend, very much also has been incorporated
+from the early teachings of the so-called St. Thomas Christians of
+Malabar. Such is the immense composite which is called Hinduism. It
+continued its development through the early centuries of the Christian
+era, and down even to the Middle Ages. Since then there has been
+disintegration instead of growth. The Brahmans have not only retained
+the Aryan deities, and extended Vishnu's incarnate nature over the epic
+heroes, but in the Puranas they have woven into the alleged lives of the
+incarnate gods the most grotesque mythologies and many revolting vices.
+
+It may be interesting to trace for a moment the influence of the
+different lines of Hindu literature upon the general development of
+national character. Of course, the early Vedic literature has never lost
+its influence as the holy and inspired source of all knowledge to the
+Hindu race; but we have seen how much more potential were the Brahmanas
+and the Upanishad philosophy drawn from the Vedas, than were those
+sacred oracles themselves; how the Brahmanas riveted the chains of
+priestcraft and caste, and how the philosophies invigorated the
+intellect of the people at a time when they were most in danger of
+sinking into the torpor of ignorance and base subserviency to ritual and
+sacrifice; how it gave to the better classes the courage to rise up in
+rebellion and throw off every yoke, and think for themselves. We have
+seen how Buddhism by its protest against sacerdotalism crippled for a
+time the power of the Brahmans and raised a representative of the
+soldier caste to the chief place as a teacher of men; how its
+inculcation of pity to man and beast banished the slaughter and cruelty
+of wholesale and meaningless sacrifice, and how its example of sympathy
+changed Hinduism itself, and brought it into nearer relations with
+humanity. Driven from India, though it was, it left an immense deposit
+of influence and of power. We have seen how, as a counter-check to
+philosophy and Buddhism, the Code of Manu reasserted the authority of
+the Vedas, and riveted anew the chains of caste, and how it compensated
+for its oppressiveness by many wholesome and benign
+regulations--accomplishing more, perhaps, than all other literatures
+combined to maintain the stability of Hinduism, through its many
+vicissitudes, and in spite of the heterogeneous elements which it
+received and incorporated.
+
+Scarcely less important was the influence of the great epics--the
+Ramayana and the Mahabharata--with their doctrine of Trimurti and the
+incarnations of Vishnu in the national heroes. This conciliated the
+soldier caste, subsidized the most popular characters in Hindu
+tradition, at the same time that it made them tenfold more glorious than
+before. The Epics widened out the field of Hindu mythology immensely.
+Never before had there been such a boundless range for the imagination.
+The early Brahmans had cramped all intellectual growth, and held mankind
+by the leash of priestly ritual. The philosophies had been too strait
+and lofty for any but the higher class; Manu's laws had been a stern
+school-master to keep the people under curbs and restraints; even the
+Brahmans themselves were the slaves of their own ritual. But all the
+people could understand and admire Rama's wonderful victories over the
+demon Ravana. All could appreciate the devotion of the lovely Sita, and
+weep when she was kidnapped and borne away, like Grecian Helen, to the
+demon court in Ceylon; and they could be thrilled with unbounded joy
+when she was restored--the truest and loveliest of wives--to be the
+sharer of a throne.
+
+The Epics took such hold of the popular heart that any fact, any theory,
+any myth that could be attached to them found ready credence. The
+Mahabharata especially became a general texture upon which any
+philosophy, or all the philosophies, might be woven at will. And for a
+long period, extending from three or four centuries B.C. onward far into
+the Christian era, it was ever ready to receive modifications from the
+fertile brain and skilful hand of any devout Brahman. A striking example
+of this was the introduction of the Bhagavad Gita. When this was
+composed, somewhere about the second or third century of our era, there
+was no little conflict between the different schools of philosophy; and
+its unknown author attempted to unite them all in a poem which should
+harmonize their contradictions and exalt the virtues of each, and at the
+same time reiterate all the best maxims of Hinduism. Some centuries
+later, the pronounced Vedantist Sancarakarya revamped the poem and gave
+its philosophy a more pantheistic character; later still the demigod
+Krishna was raised to full rank as the supreme Vishnu--the Creator and
+Upholder of all things.[62]
+
+It is important to notice that in the trend of Hindu literature through
+so many ages there has been no upward movement, but rather a decline.
+Nowhere do we find hymns of so pure and lofty a tone as in the early
+Vedas. No philosophy of the later times has equalled that of the
+Upanishads and the six Darsanas. No law-giver like Manu has appeared for
+twenty-four centuries. No Sanskrit scholarship has equalled that of the
+great grammarian Panini, who lived in the fourth century B.C. And
+although no end of poetry has succeeded the great Epics, it has shown
+deterioration. The Puranas, written at a later day, reveal only a
+reckless zeal to exalt the incarnate deities. They may properly be
+called histories of the incarnations of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and
+glorifications of Krishna. And the very nature of the subjects with
+which they deal gives free scope to an unbridled imagination and to the
+most reckless exaggeration.
+
+If anything more were wanting to insure their extravagance, it may be
+found in the fact that they were inspired by the rivalry of the
+respective worshippers of different gods. The Puranas mark the
+development of separate sects, each of which regarded its particular
+deity as the supreme and only god. The worshippers of Vishnu and the
+worshippers of Siva were in sharp rivalry, and they have continued
+their separation to this day.[63] Those who came to worship Vishnu as
+incarnate in Krishna, gained an advantage in the popular element
+associated with a favorite hero. Yet this was matched by the influence
+of the Sankhya philosophy, which assigned to Siva a male and female
+dualism, a doctrine which finally plunged Hinduism into deepest
+degradation. It brought about a new development known as Saktism, and
+the still later and grosser literature of the Tantras. In these,
+Hinduism reached its lowest depths. The modern "Aryas" discard both the
+Tantras and the Puranas, and assert that the popular incarnations of
+Vishnu were only good men. They take refuge from the corruptions of
+modern Hinduism in the purer teachings of the early Vedas.
+
+
+_The Contrasts of Hinduism and Christianity._
+
+Hinduism has some elements in common with Christianity which it is well
+to recognize. It is theistic; it is a religion, as distinguished from
+the agnostic and ethical systems of India and China.[64] Hinduism always
+recognized a direct divine revelation which it regards with profound
+reverence; and through all its variations and corruptions it has
+inculcated in the minds of the Indian races a deeply religious feeling.
+It has been claimed that it has made the Hindus the most devotional
+people in the world. Like Christianity, Hinduism appeals to man's
+intellectual nature, and it is inwrought with profound philosophy. It
+does not, however, like some modern systems, teach that divine truth has
+been revealed to man by natural processes; rather it regards the early
+revelation as having suffered obscuration.[65] It also has its trinity,
+its incarnations, and its predictions of a Messiah who shall restore the
+truth and establish righteousness. The Hindu traditions maintain that
+mankind descended from a single pair;[66] that the first estate of the
+race was one of innocence; that man was one of the last products of
+creation; that in the first ages he was upright, and consequently happy.
+"The beings who were thus created by Brahma are said to have been
+endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they abode wherever they
+pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts were free from guile;
+they were pure, made exempt from toil by observance of sacred
+institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; they were filled with
+perfect wisdom by which they contemplated the glory of Vishnu." Hartwell
+has pointed out the fact that the early Hindu traditions here unite with
+the Scriptural account in virtually denying all those theories of
+evolution which trace the development of man from lower animals.[67]
+
+But compared with Christianity, its contrasts are far greater than its
+resemblances. First, as to the nature of God, there is an infinite
+difference between the cold and unconscious Brahman, slumbering for ages
+without thought or emotion or any moral attribute, and the God of
+Israel, whose power and wisdom and goodness, whose mercy and truth and
+tender compassion, are so constantly set forth in the Bible. The latter
+compares Himself to a Father who cares for his children, and who has
+redeemed the world by an infinite sacrifice. Even in the most popular
+emanation of Brahman--even in Vishnu--there is nothing of a fatherly
+spirit, no appeal as to children, no kindly remonstrance against sin, no
+moral instruction, or effort to encourage and establish character, no
+promise of reward, no enkindling of immortal hope.
+
+Second, there is a striking contrast in the comparative estimates which
+Hinduism and Christianity place upon the human soul. Unlike Buddhism,
+Hinduism does recognize the existence of a soul, but it is only a
+temporary emanation, like the moon's reflection in the water. It
+resembles its source as does the moon's image, but coldly and in a most
+unsatisfactory sense; there is no capacity for fellowship, and the end
+is absorption.[68] On the other hand, Christianity teaches us that we
+are created in God's image, but not that we _are_ his image. We are
+separate, though dependent, and if reunited to him through Christ we
+shall dwell in his presence forever.
+
+Third, the two systems are in strong contrast in the comparative hopes
+which they hold out for the future. The doctrine of transmigration casts
+a gloom over all conscious being; it presents an outlook so depressing
+as to make life a burden, and the acme of all possible attainment is
+individual extinction, or what amounts to the same thing, absorption
+into deity. The logic of it is that it would be better still not to have
+been born at all. Christianity promises an immediate transfer to a life
+of unalloyed blessedness, and an endless growth of all our powers and
+capacities; but why should Hinduism urge the cultivation of that whose
+real destiny is "effacement?" Hinduism finds the explanation of life's
+mysteries and inscrutable trials in the theory of sins committed in a
+previous existence. Christianity, while recognizing the same trials,
+relieves them with the hope of solutions in a future life of
+compensating joy. The one turns to that which is past, unchangeable and
+hopeless, and finds only sullen despair; the other anticipates an
+inheritance richer than eye hath seen, or ear heard, or heart conceived.
+
+Fourth, Hinduism has no Saviour and no salvation. It is not a religion
+in the highest sense of _rescue_ and reconciliation. It avails us of no
+saving power higher than our own unaided effort. It implies the ruin of
+sin, but provides no remedy. It presents no omnipotent arm stretched
+forth to save.
+
+Its fatalism places man under endless disabilities, and then bids him to
+escape from the nexus if he can; but it reveals no divine helper, no
+sacrifice, no mediator, no regenerating Spirit. It has no glad tidings
+to proclaim, no comfort in sorrow, no victory over the sting of death,
+no resurrection unto Life. Though at a period subsequent to the
+preaching of the Gospel in India--perhaps the seventh or eighth century
+A.D.--a doctrine of faith (_Bakti_) was engrafted upon Hinduism, yet it
+had no hint of a Saviour from sin and death.[69]
+
+Fifth, in Hinduism there is no liberty for the free action of the human
+spirit. Though the life of a Brahman is intensely religious, yet it is
+cramped with exactions which are not only abortive but positively
+belittling. The code of Brahmanism never deals with general principles
+in the regulation of conduct, but fills the whole course of life with
+punctilious minutiae of observances. Instead of prescribing, as Christ
+did, an all-comprehensive law of supreme love to God and love to our
+neighbor as ourselves, it loads the mind with petty exactions, puerile
+precepts, inane prohibitions. "Unlike Christianity, which is all spirit
+and life," says Dr. Duff, "Hinduism is all letter and death." Repression
+takes the place of inspiration and the encouragement of hope.
+
+There are a thousand subtle principles in Hinduism whose influence is
+felt in society and in the state, and to which the faith and power of
+the Gospel present the very strongest contrasts. For example, while
+Christianity has raised woman to a position of respect and honor, and
+made her influence felt as something sacred and potential in the family
+and in all society, Hinduism has brought her down even from the place
+which she occupied among the primitive Aryans, to an ever-deepening
+degradation. It has made her life a burden and a curse. Pundita Ramabai,
+in her plea for high-caste Hindu women, quotes a prayer of a child widow
+in which she asks, "O Father of the world, hast Thou not created us? or
+has perchance some other God made us? Dost Thou only care for men? O
+Almighty One, hast Thou not power to make us other than we are, that we
+too may have some part in the blessings of life?" Even in this last
+decade of the nineteenth century the priesthood of Bengal are defending
+against all humane legislation those old customs which render the
+girlhood of Hindu women a living death.[70]
+
+In its broad influence Christianity has raised the once savage tribes
+of Europe to the highest degree of culture, and made them leaders and
+rulers of the world; but Hinduism has so weakened and humbled the once
+conquering Aryans that they have long been an easy prey to every
+invading race. Christianity shows in its sacred Book a manifest progress
+from lower to higher moral standards--from the letter to the spirit,
+from the former sins that were winked at to the perfect example of
+Christ, from the narrow exclusiveness of Judaism to the broad and
+all-embracing spirit of the Gospel, from prophecy to fulfilment, from
+types and shadows to the full light of Redemption; the sacred books of
+Hinduism have degenerated from the lofty aspirations of the Vedic
+nature-worship to the vileness of Saktism, from the noble praises of
+Varuna to the low sensuality of the Tantras, from Vedic conceptions of
+the creation, sublime as the opening of St. John's Gospel, to the myths
+of the divine turtle or the boar, or the escapades of the supreme and
+"adorable Krishna."[71]
+
+Christianity breaks down all barriers which divide and alienate mankind,
+and establishes a universal brotherhood in Christ; Hinduism has raised
+the most insurmountable barriers and developed the most inexorable
+social tyranny ever inflicted on the human race. The Hebrew economy also
+recognized a priestly class, but they were chosen from among their
+brethren and were only a distinct family; they made no claim to divine
+lineage, and they were guiltless of social tyranny.
+
+Christianity enjoins a higher and purer ethic than it has ever found in
+the natural moral standards of any people; it aims at perfection; it
+treats the least infraction as a violation of the whole law; it regards
+even corrupt thoughts as sins; it bids us be holy even as He is holy in
+whose sight the heavens are unclean. Hinduism, on the other hand, is
+below the ethical standard of respectable Hindu society. The better
+classes are compelled to apologize for it by asserting that that which
+is debasing in men may be sinless in the gods. The offences of Krishna
+and Arjuna would not be condoned in mortals; the vile orgies of the
+"left-handed worshippers" of Siva would not be tolerated but for their
+religious character. The murders committed by the Thugs in honor of Kali
+were winked at only because a goddess demanded them. The naked
+processions of Chaitanya's followers would be dispersed by the police
+anywhere but in India.
+
+It is the peculiar distinction of India that it has been the theatre of
+nearly all the great religions. Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism
+have all made trial of their social and political power and have failed.
+Last of all came Christianity. The systems which preceded it had had
+centuries of opportunity; and yet Christianity has done more for the
+elevation of Hindu society in the last fifty years than they had
+accomplished in all the ages of their dominion. Neither Buddhism nor
+Mohammedanism had made any serious impression on caste; neither had
+been able to mitigate the wrongs which Brahmanism had heaped upon
+woman--Mohammedanism had rather increased them. The horrors of the satti
+and the murder of female infants--those bitterest fruits of priestly
+tyranny--were left unchecked until the British Government, inspired by
+missionary influence and a general Christian sentiment, branded them as
+infamous and made them crimes. But now even the native sentiment of the
+better classes in India is greatly changed by these higher influences,
+and the conventional morality is rising above the teachings of the
+national religion. Widow-burning and infanticide belong almost wholly to
+the past. Child-marriage is coming into disrepute, and caste, though not
+destroyed, is crippled, and its preposterous assumptions are falling
+before the march of social progress.
+
+Perhaps the very highest tribute which Hinduism has paid to Christianity
+is seen in the fact that the modern Arya Somaj has borrowed its ethics
+and some of its religious doctrines, and is promulgating them under
+Vedic labels and upon Vedic authority.[72] It has renounced those
+corruptions of Hinduism which can no longer bear the light--such as
+enforced widowhood and the general oppression of woman. It denounces the
+incarnations of Vishnu as mere inventions, and therefore cuts up by the
+roots the whole Krishna cult and dissipates the glory of the Bhagavad
+Gita. It abhors polytheism, and not only proclaims the supremacy of one
+only true God, self-existent, the creator and upholder of all things,
+but it maintains that such was the teaching of the Vedas. But although
+this modern eclectic system adopts the whole ethical outcome of
+Christian civilization in India for its own purposes, it shows a most
+uncompromising hostility to Christianity. Though it claims to be
+positively theistic, it seems ready to enter into alliance with any form
+of atheism or agnosticism, Eastern or Western, against the spread of
+Christian influence in India.
+
+In speaking of the movement of revived Aryanism I assume that with the
+more intelligent and progressive classes of India the old Hinduism is
+dead. Of course, millions of men still adhere to the old corruptions.
+Millions in the remoter districts would retain the festival of
+Juggernaut, the hook-swinging, even infanticide and widow-burning, if
+they dared. The revolting orgies of Kali and Doorga, and the vilest
+forms of Siva worship, even the murderous rites of the Thugs, might be
+revived by the fanatical, if foreign influence were withdrawn; but,
+taking India as a whole, these things are coming to be discarded. The
+people are ashamed of them; they dare not undertake to defend them in
+the open day of the present civilization. All intelligent Hindus are
+persuaded to accept the situation, and look to the future instead of the
+past. The country is full of new influences which must be counted as
+factors. British rule is there, and is there to stay. Education has
+come--good, bad, and indifferent. English University training is
+bringing forward a host of acute thinkers of native blood. But the
+forces of Western infidelity are also there, grappling with Western
+Christianity on Indian soil, and before the eyes of the conquered and
+still sullen people. The vilest of English books and the worst of French
+novels in English translations are in the markets. All the worst phases
+of European commerce are exhibited. The opium monopoly, the liquor
+traffic, and all the means and methods of unscrupulous money-getting,
+with the wide-spread example of drinking habits, and unbounded luxury
+and extravagance.
+
+And, in opinions, the war of aggression is no longer on one side only.
+While the foreigner speaks and writes of superstition, of heathenism, of
+abominable rites now passing away, the native Hindu press is equally
+emphatic in its condemnation of what it calls the swinish indulgence of
+the Anglo-Saxon, his beer-drinking and his gluttony, his craze for money
+and material power, his disgust at philosophy and all intellectual
+aspiration, his half-savage love for the chase and the destruction of
+animal life. Educated Hindus throw back against the charge of idolatry
+our idolatry of pelf, which, as they claim, eclipses every other thought
+and aspiration, leads to dishonesty, over-reaching, and manifold crime,
+and sinks noble ethics to the low level of expediency or self-interest;
+the conquest is not yet won.
+
+A hundred varieties of creed have sprung up beneath this banyan-tree
+which I have called Hinduism. There are worshippers of Vishnu, of Siva,
+of Kali, of Krishna as Bacchus, and of Krishna as the supreme and
+adorable God. There are Sikhs, and Jains, and Buddhists; Theosophists,
+Vedantic Philosophers, Mohammedans, Brahmos, Parsees, Evolutionists, and
+Agnostics; Devil-worshippers, and worshippers of ghosts and serpents;
+but in considering these as forces to be met by Christian influence, we
+must regard them all as in virtual alliance with each other. They are
+all one in pride of race and of venerable custom. They are all one in
+their hatred of foreign dominion, and of the arrogance and overbearing
+assumption of the European.[73]
+
+The Hindu religions, therefore, however divided, and however weak and
+moribund they may be taken singly, find a real vitality in the union of
+common interests, in the sentiments of patriotism, in the pride of their
+philosophy, in the glory of their ancient history as the true and
+original Aryans, compared with whom Western nations are mere offshoots.
+
+Their religious faith is mixed and involved with patriotism, politics,
+and race prejudice, and on the other hand Christianity in India is
+handicapped by political and commercial interest and a hated domination.
+On both sides these combined influences must be considered in estimating
+the future issues of the great conflict. The question is not how
+Christianity and Hinduism would fare in a conflict pure and simple,
+unembarrassed by complications, but how Christianity with its drawbacks
+is likely to succeed against Hinduism with its manifold intrenchments.
+
+But, while weighing well the obstacles, how great are the
+encouragements! What an auspicious fact that even a hostile organization
+has appropriated the Christian cultus bodily, and can find no better
+weapons than its blessed truths. Christianity is felt as a silent power,
+even though under other names. It is, after all, the leaven that is
+working all-powerfully in India to-day.
+
+There was a period in the process of creation when light beamed dimly
+upon the earth, though the sun, its source, had not yet appeared. So
+through the present Hinduism there is a haze of Christian truth, though
+the Sun of Righteousness is not yet acknowledged as its source.
+
+But the Spirit of God broods over the waters, and the true Light of the
+world will break on India.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 34: The fact that environment has to a certain extent affected
+the religions of mankind is entirely overworked, when men like Buckle
+make it formative and controlling.]
+
+[Footnote 35: Instead of the later and universal pessimism, there was in
+the Vedic religion a simple but joyous sense of life.]
+
+[Footnote 36: _Hinduism_, p. 31.]
+
+[Footnote 37: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 15.]
+
+[Footnote 38: _Aryan Witness_, p. 204; also _Hinduism_, p. 36.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Ibid., p. 37.]
+
+[Footnote 40: A son of Hariscandra. _Hinduism_, p. 37.]
+
+[Footnote 41: This is in strong contrast with the Old Testament
+precepts, which everywhere had greater respect to the heart of the
+offerer than to the gifts.]
+
+[Footnote 42: The Brahmans had found certain grades of population marked
+by color lines, shaded off from the negroid aborigines to the
+Dravidians, and from them to the more recent and nobler Aryans, and they
+were prompt also to seize upon a mere poetic and fanciful expression
+found in the Rig Veda, which seemed to give countenance to their
+fourfold caste distinction by representing one class as having sprung
+from the head of Brahma, another from the shoulders, the third from his
+thighs, and a fourth from his feet. Altogether they founded a social
+system which has been the wonder of the ages, and which has given to the
+_Brahmans_ the prestige of celestial descent. The _Kshatreych_ or
+soldier caste stands next, and as it has furnished many military leaders
+and monarchs who disputed the arrogant claims of the Brahmans, conflicts
+of the upper castes have not been infrequent.
+
+The _Vaishya_, or farmer caste, has furnished the principal groundwork
+of many admixtures and subdivisions, until at the present time there are
+endless subcastes, to each of which a particular kind of employment is
+assigned. The _Sudras_ are still the menials, but there are different
+grades of degradation even among them.]
+
+[Footnote 43: _Hindu Philosophy_, Bose, p. 47.]
+
+[Footnote 44: _Indian Wisdom_ on the Brahmanas and Upanishads. Also
+_Hindu Philosophy_, Bose.]
+
+[Footnote 45: _Colebrook's Essays_, foot-note, p. 85.]
+
+[Footnote 46: See _Introduction to the Sacred Books of the East_, vol. i.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Vaiseshika Philosophy, in _Indian Wisdom_.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Mimansa Philosophy. Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Sir Monier Williams assigns the Code of Manu _in its
+present form_ to the sixth century B.C. _Indian Wisdom_, p. 215. Other
+Oriental scholars consider it older.]
+
+[Footnote 50: These tendencies were more intensely emphasized in some of
+the later codes, which, however, were only variations of the greater one
+of Manu.]
+
+[Footnote 51: See p. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 52: Quoted on p. 76.]
+
+[Footnote 53: See note, p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 54: Sir Monier Williams declares that some of Mann's precepts
+are worthy of Christianity. _Indian Wisdom_, p. 212.]
+
+[Footnote 55: It should be set down to the credit of the Code of Manu
+that with all its relentless cruelty toward woman it nowhere gives
+countenance to the atrocious custom of widow-burning which soon
+afterward became an important factor in the Hindu system and desolated
+the homes of India for more than two thousand years.
+
+There would seem to be some dispute as to whether or not widow-burning
+is sanctioned in the Rig Veda. Colebrooke, in his _Essays_ (Vol. I., p,
+135), quotes one or two passages which authorize the rite, but Sir
+Monier Williams (_Indian Wisdom_, p. 259, note) has shown that changes
+were made in this text at a much later day for the purpose of gaining
+Vedic authority for a cruel system, of which even so late a work as the
+Code of Manu makes no mention, and (page 205 Ibid.) he quotes another
+passage from the Rig Veda which directs a widow to ascend the pyre of
+her husband as a token of attachment, but to leave it before the burning
+is begun.]
+
+[Footnote 56: As the spread of Buddhism had owed much to the political
+triumph of King Ashoka, so the revival of Hinduism was greatly indebted
+to the influence of a new dynasty about a century B.C.]
+
+[Footnote 57: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 314.]
+
+[Footnote 58: Ibid., p. 317.]
+
+[Footnote 59: Brahmanism and Hinduism are often used interchangeably,
+but all confusion will be avoided by confining the former to that
+intense sacerdotalism which prevailed during the Brahmana period, while
+the latter is used more comprehensively, or is referred particularly to
+the later and fully developed system.]
+
+[Footnote 60: _Hinduism_, pp. 12, 13.]
+
+[Footnote 61: The Brahmans were careful, however, to brand the Buddha,
+while admitting him as an avatar. Their theory was that Vishnu appeared
+in Gautama for the purpose of deluding certain demons into despising the
+worship of the gods, and thus securing their destruction. This affords
+an incidental proof that Gautama was regarded as an atheist.--See
+_Indian Wisdom_, p. 335.]
+
+[Footnote 62: See _Aryan Witness_, closing chapter; also _Christ and
+Other Masters_, p. 198, notes 1, 2, and 3.]
+
+[Footnote 63: See _Brahmanism and Hinduism_, Monier Williams.]
+
+[Footnote 64: Hardwick traces similarities between Hindu traditions and
+Christianity in such points as these: 1, The primitive state of man; 2,
+his fall by transgression; 3, his punishment in the Deluge; 4, the rite
+of sacrifice; 5, the primitive hope of restoration.--_Christ and Other
+Masters_, p. 209.]
+
+[Footnote 65: The Hindus hold that "truth was originally deposited with
+men, but gradually slumbered and was forgotten; the knowledge of it
+returns like a recollection."--_Humboldt's Kosmos_, ii., p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 66: _Professor Wilson's Lectures_, p. 52.]
+
+[Footnote 67: _Vishnu Puranas_, p. 45, note 4.]
+
+[Footnote 68: Buddhism is still more disheartening, since it denies the
+separate conscious existence of the ego. There cannot be divine
+fellowship, therefore, but only the current of thoughts and emotions
+like the continuous flame of a burning candle. Not our souls will
+survive, but our Karma.]
+
+[Footnote 69: _Christ and Other Masters_, p. 182.]
+
+[Footnote 70: Yet in spite of Manu and the inveteracy of old custom,
+there gleams here and there in Hindu literature and history a bright
+ideal of woman's character and rank; while the _Ramayana_ has its model
+Sita, the _Mahabharata_, i., 3028, has this peerless sketch:
+
+   "A wife is half the man, his truest friend;
+    A loving wife is a perpetual spring
+    Of virtue, pleasure, wealth; a faithful wife
+    Is his best aid in seeking heavenly bliss;
+    A sweetly-speaking wife is a companion
+    In solitude; a father in advice;
+    A mother in all seasons of distress;
+    A rest in passing through life's wilderness."
+
+This, however, is a pathetic outburst: the tyranny of the ages remains.]
+
+[Footnote 71: Even in the later development of the doctrine of faith
+(Bakti) Hinduism fails to connect with it any moral purification or
+elevation. See quotations from Elphinstone and Wilson in _Christ and
+Other Masters_, p. 234.]
+
+[Footnote 72: See a recent _Catechism_ published by the Arya Somaj.]
+
+[Footnote 73: The following hymn, quoted from the Arya _Catechism_,
+reveals the proud spirit of revived Aryanism:
+
+   "We are the sons of brave Aryas of yore,
+    Those sages in learning, those heroes in war.
+    They were the lights of great nations before,
+    And shone in that darkness like morning's bright star,
+    A beacon of warning, a herald from far.
+    Have we forgotten our Rama and Arjun,
+    Yudistar or Bishma or Drona the Wise?
+    Are not we sons of the mighty Duryodani?
+    Where did Shankar and great Dayananda arise?
+    'In India, in India!' the echo replies.
+    Ours the glory of giving the world
+    Its science, religion, its poetry and art.
+    We were the first of the men who unfurled
+    The banner of freedom on earth's every part,
+    Brought tidings of peace and of love to each heart."]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.
+
+THE BHAGAVAD GITA AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
+
+
+No other portion of Hindu literature has made so great an impression on
+Western minds as the Bhagavad Gita, "The Lord's Lay," or the "Song of
+the Adorable." It has derived its special importance from its supposed
+resemblance to the New Testament. And as it claims to be much older than
+the oldest of the Gospels or the Epistles, it carries the inference that
+the latter may have borrowed something from it.
+
+A plausible translation has been published in Boston by Mr. Mohini M.
+Chatterji, who devoutly believes this to be the revealed word of the
+Supreme Creator and Upholder of the universe.[74] He admits that at a
+later day "the same God, worshipped alike by Hindus and Christians,
+appeared again in the person of Jesus Christ," and that "in the Bible He
+revealed Himself to Western nations, as the Bhagavad Gita had proclaimed
+Him to the people of the East." And he draws the inference that "If the
+Scriptures of the Brahmans and the Scriptures of the Jews and
+Christians, widely separated as they are by age and nationality, are but
+different names for one and the same truth, who can then say that the
+Scriptures contradict each other? A careful and reverent collation of
+the two sets of Scriptures will show forth the conscious and intelligent
+design of revelation." The fact that the Bhagavad Gita is thoroughly
+pantheistic, while the Bible emphasizes the personality of God in
+fellowship with the distinct personality of human souls, seems to
+interpose no serious difficulty in Mr. Chatterji's view, since he says
+"'The Lord's Lay' is for philosophic minds, and therefore deals more at
+length with the mysteries of the being of God." "In the Bhagavad Gita,"
+he says, "consisting of seven hundred and seventy verses, the principal
+topic is the being of God, while scarcely the same amount of exposition
+is given to it in the whole Bible;" and he adds, "The explanation of
+this remarkable fact is found in the difference between the genius of
+the Hebrew and the Brahman race, and also in the fact that the teachings
+of Jesus Christ were addressed to 'the common people.'"[75]
+
+The air of intellectual superiority which is couched in these words is
+conspicuous. Mr. Chatterji also finds an inner satisfaction in what he
+considers the broad charity of the Brahmanical Scriptures. He quotes a
+passage from the Narada Pancharata which speaks of the Buddha as "the
+preserver of revelation for those outside of the Vedic authority." And
+he concludes that when one such revealer is admitted there can be no
+reason for excluding others; therefore Christianity also should be
+allowed a place. He declares on Vedic authority that whosoever receives
+the true knowledge of God, however revealed, attains eternal life. And
+for a parallel to this he quotes the saying of Christ, that "this is
+eternal life that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus
+Christ whom Thou hast sent." "The Brahmanical Scriptures," he says, "are
+of one accord in teaching that when the heart is purified God is seen;
+so also Jesus Christ declares that the pure in heart are blessed, for
+they shall see God."
+
+Our translator discards the often-repeated theory that the Christian
+Scriptures have copied the wise sayings of Krishna; and it is very
+significant that an argument to which superficial apologists constantly
+resort is discarded by this real Hindu, as he supports the theory that
+as both were direct revelations from Vishnu, there was in his view no
+need of borrowing. His contention is that God, who "at sundry times and
+in divers manners" has spoken to men in different ages, made known his
+truth, and essentially the same truth, both on the plains of India and
+in Judea. And he reminds Hindus and Christians alike, that this
+knowledge of truth carries with itself an increased responsibility. He
+says: "The man who sees the wonderful workings of the Spirit among the
+nations of the earth, bringing each people to God by ways unknown to
+others, is thereby charged with a duty. To him with terrible precision
+applies the warning given by Gamaliel to the Pharisees, 'Take heed to
+yourselves what ye intend to do ... lest ye be found to fight even
+against God.' If one be a Brahman, let him reflect when opposing the
+religion of Jesus what it is that he fights. The truths of Christianity
+are the same as those on which his own salvation depends. How can he be
+a lover of truth, which is God, if he knows not his beloved under such a
+disguise? And if he penetrates behind the veil, which should tend only
+to increase the ardor of his love, he cannot hate those who in obedience
+to the same truth are preaching the Gospel of Christ to all nations.
+Indeed he ought to rejoice at his brothers' devotion to the self-same
+God, and to see that he is rendering service to Him by helping others to
+carry out the behests given to them by the Divine Master. If, on the
+other hand, he be a Christian, let him remember that while he is
+commanded to preach repentance and remission of sins in the Saviour
+Jesus, he is also warned against 'teaching for doctrines the
+commandments of men.'" All this seems like charity, but really it is
+laxity.
+
+And here is the very essence of Hinduism. Its chief characteristic, that
+which renders it so hard to combat, is its easy indifference to all
+distinctions. To reason with it is like grasping a jelly-fish. Its
+pantheism, which embraces all things, covers all sides of all questions.
+It sees no difficulties even between things which are morally opposites.
+Contradictions are not obstacles, and both sides of a dilemma may be
+harmonized. And to a great extent this same vagueness of conviction
+characterizes all the heathen systems of the East. The Buddhists and
+the Shintoists in Japan justify their easy-going partnership by the
+favorite maxim that, while "there are many paths by which men climb the
+sides of Fusyama, yet upon reaching the summit they all behold the same
+glorious moon." The question whether all do in fact reach the summit is
+one which does not occur to an Oriental to ask.
+
+This same pantheistic charity is seen in the well-known appeal of the
+late Chunder Sen, which as an illustration is worth repeating here:
+"Cheshub Chunder Sen, servant of God, called to be an apostle of the
+Church of the New Dispensation, which is in the holy city of Calcutta;
+to all the great nations of the world and to the chief religious sects
+in the East and West, to the followers of Moses and of Jesus, of Buddha,
+Confucius, Zoroaster, Mohammed, Nanak, and of the various Hindu sects;
+grace be to you and peace everlasting. Whereas sects, discords, and
+strange schisms prevail in our father's family; and whereas this setting
+of brother against brother has proved the prolific source of evil, it
+has pleased God to send into the world a message of peace and
+reconciliation. This New Dispensation He has vouchsafed to us in the
+East, and we have been commanded to bear witness to the nations of the
+earth ... Thus saith the Lord: 'I abominate sects and desire love and
+concord ... I have at sundry times spoken through my prophets and my
+many dispensations. There is unity. There is one music but many
+instruments, one body but many members, one spirit but many gifts, one
+blood but many nations, one Church but many churches. Let Asia and
+Europe and America and all nations prove this New Dispensation and the
+true fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.'"
+
+This remarkable production--so Pauline in style and so far from Paul in
+doctrine--seems to possess everything except definite and robust
+conviction. And its limp philosophy was not sufficient to withhold even
+Chunder Sen himself from the abandonment of his principles not long
+afterward. This sweet perfume of false charity, with which he thus
+gently sprayed the sects and nations of mankind, lost its flavor ere the
+ink of his message was fairly dry; while he who in similar language
+announced his call to an Apostleship eighteen centuries ago, is still
+turning the world upside down.
+
+"Charity" is the watchword of indifferentism in the West as well as in
+the East; and the East and the West are joining hands in their effort to
+soothe the world into slumber with all its sins and woes unhealed. Some
+months ago an advanced Unitarian from Boston delivered a farewell
+address to the Buddhists of Japan, in which he presented three great
+Unitarians of New England--Channing, Emerson, and Parker--in a sort of
+transfiguration of gentleness and charity. He maintained that the lives
+of these men had been an unconscious prophecy of that mild and gentle
+Buddhism which he had found in Japan, but of which they had died without
+the sight.[76]
+
+Thus the transcendentalism of New England joins hands with the Buddhism
+and the Shintoism of Japan, and the Brahmanism of Calcutta, and all are
+in accord with Mr. Chatterji and the Bhagavad Gita. Even the
+Theosophists profess their sympathy with the Sermon on the Mount, and
+claim Christ as an earlier prophet. The one refrain of all is "Charity."
+All great teachers are avatars of Vishnu. The globe is belted with this
+multiform indifferentism, and I am sorry to say that it is largely the
+gospel of the current literature and of the daily press. In it all there
+is no Saviour and no salvation. Religions are all ethnic and local,
+while the _ignis fatuus_ of a mystic pantheism pervades the world.
+
+Mr. Chatterji's preface closes with a prayer to the "merciful Father of
+humanity to remove from all races of men every unbrotherly feeling in
+the sacred name of religion, which is but one." The prayer were touching
+and beautiful on the assumption that there were no differences between
+truth and error. And there are thousands, even among us, who are asking,
+"Why may not Christians respond to this broad charity, and admit this
+Hindu eclectic poem to an equal place with the New Testament?" More or
+less indifferent to all religions, and failing to understand the real
+principles on which they severally rest, they are ready to applaud a
+challenge like that which we are considering, and to contrast it with
+the alleged narrowness and intolerance of Christian Theism.
+
+I have dwelt thus at length upon Mr. Chatterji's introduction, and have
+illustrated it by references to similar specious claims of other faiths,
+in order that I might bring into clearer view the main issue which this
+book now presents to the American public. It is the softest, sweetest
+voice yet given to that gospel of false charity which is the fashion of
+our times. Emerson and others caught it from afar and discoursed to a
+generation now mostly gone of the gentle maxims of Confucius, Krishna,
+and Gautama. But now Krishna is among us in the person of his most
+devout apostle, and a strange hand of fellowship is stretched out toward
+us from the land of the Vedas.
+
+It behooves us to inquire, first, into the pantheistic philosophy which
+underlies these sayings, and to ask for their meaning as applied in real
+life; and second, we shall need to know something of Krishna, and
+whether he speaks as one having authority. It should be borne in mind
+that pantheism sacrifices nothing whatever by embracing all religions,
+since even false religions are a worship of Vishnu in their way, while
+Christianity by its very nature would sacrifice everything. According to
+pantheism all things that exist, and all events that transpire, are
+expressions of the Divine will. The one only existent Being embraces all
+causes and all effects, all truth and all falsehood. He is no more the
+source of good than of evil. "I am immortality," says Krishna. "I am
+also death." Man with all his thoughts and acts is but the shadow of
+God, and moves as he is moved upon. Arjuna's divine counsellor says to
+him: "The soul, existing from eternity, devoid of qualities,
+imperishable, abiding in the body, yet supreme, acts not nor is by any
+act polluted. He who perceives that actions are performed by Prakriti
+alone, and that the soul is not an actor, sees the truth aright."
+
+Now, if this reasoning be correct, it is not we that sin; not we that
+worship; and in the last analysis all religions are alike; they are only
+the varied expressions of the thought of God. As He manifests his power
+in nature in a thousand forms, producing some objects that are beautiful
+to the eye and others that are repulsive, so in his spiritual
+manifestations He displays a like variety. The ignorance and degradation
+of fetichism are His, as well as the highest revelations of spiritual
+truth. A certain class of evolutionists tell us that God contrived the
+serpent's poison-fang and the mother's tender instinct with "the same
+creative indifference." And the broad pantheism which overrides the
+distinctions of eternal right and wrong, and divests God of all moral
+discriminations, puts Vedantism and Fetichism, Christianity and
+Witchcraft, upon the same basis. The Bhagavad Gita and the Gospel both
+enjoin the brotherhood of men, but what are the meanings which they give
+to this term? What are their aims, respectively? One is endeavoring to
+enforce the rigid and insurmountable barriers of caste; the other
+commends a mission of love which shall regard neither Jew nor Greek,
+Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free. It will become apparent, I think,
+that there may be parallels or similarities which relate to mere phrases
+while their meanings are wide apart.
+
+Judging from Mr. Chatterji's own stand-point, his work has been well
+done. He has shown a careful study not only of his own literatures and
+philosophies, but also of the scriptures of the Old and New
+Testament--in this respect setting us an example worthy to be followed
+by Christian scholars. Such a man has in the outset an immense advantage
+over those who know nothing of the enemies' positions, but regard them
+only with disdain. Before the high court of public opinion, as
+represented by our current literature, mere ex-parte assumption will go
+to the wall, even though it has the better cause, while adroit error,
+intelligently put and courteously commended, will win the day. This is a
+lesson which the Christian Church greatly needs to learn. Mr.
+Chatterji's work is the more formidable for its charming graces of
+style. He has that same facility and elegance in the use of the English
+language for which so many of his countrymen, Sheshadri, Bose, Banergea,
+Chunder Sen, Mozoomdar, and others have been distinguished. He is a
+model of courtesy, and he seems sincere.
+
+But turning from the translator to the book itself, we shall now inquire
+who was Krishna, Arjuna's friend, what was the origin of the "Lord's
+Lay," and what are its real merits as compared with the New Testament?
+Krishna and Arjuna--like Rama Chandra--were real human heroes who
+distinguished themselves in the wars of the Indo-Aryans with rival
+tribes who contested the dominion of Northern India. They did not live
+three thousand years before Christ, as our translator declares, for they
+belonged to the soldier caste, and according to the consensus of
+Oriental scholarship the system of caste did not exist till about the
+beginning of the Brahmanic period--say eight hundred years before
+Christ. Krishna was born in the Punjab, near Merut, and it was near
+there that his chief exploits were performed. The legends represent him
+as a genial but a reckless forester, brave on the battle-field, but
+leading a life of low indulgence. The secret of his power lay in his
+sympathy. His worship, even as a heroic demi-god, brought a new and
+welcome element into Hinduism as contrasted with the remorselessness of
+Siva or the cold indifference of Brahma. It was the dawn of a doctrine
+of faith, and in this character it was probably of later date than the
+rise of Buddhism. Indeed, the Brahmans learned this lesson of the value
+of Divine sympathy from the Buddha. The supernatural element ascribed to
+Krishna, as well as to Rama, was a growth, and had its origin in the
+jealousy of the Brahmans toward the warrior caste. His exaltation as the
+Supreme was an after-thought of the inventive Brahmans. As stated in a
+former lecture, these heroes had acquired great renown; and their
+exploits were the glory and delight of the dazzled populace. In raising
+them to the rank of deities, and as such appropriating them as kindred
+to the divine Brahmans, the shrewd priesthood saved the prestige of
+their caste and aggrandized their system by a fully developed doctrine
+of incarnations. Thus, by a growth of centuries, the Krishna cult
+finally crowned the Hindu system.
+
+The Mahabharata, in which the Bhagavad Gita was incorporated by some
+author whose name is unknown, is an immense literary mosaic of two
+hundred and twenty thousand lines. It is heterogeneous, grotesque,
+inconsistent, and often contradictory--qualities which are scarcely
+considered blemishes in Hindu literature.
+
+The Bhagavad Gita was incorporated as a part of this great epic probably
+as late as the second or third century of our era, and by that time
+Krishna had come to be regarded as divine, though his full and
+extravagant deification as the "Adorable One" probably did not appear
+till the author of "Narada Pancharata" of the eighth century had added
+whatever he thought the original author should have said five centuries
+before. As it now stands the poem very cleverly weaves into one fabric
+many lofty aphorisms borrowed from the Upanishads and the later
+philosophic schools, upon the groundwork of a popular story of which
+Arjuna is the hero. Arjuna and his four brothers are about to engage in
+a great battle with their cousins for the possession of an hereditary
+throne. The divine Krishna, once himself a hero, becomes Arjuna's
+charioteer, that in that capacity he may act as his counsellor. As the
+battle array is formed, Arjuna is seized with misgivings at the thought
+of slaughtering his kindred for the glory of a sceptre. "I cannot--will
+not fight," he says; "I seek not victory, I seek no kingdom; what shall
+we do with regal pomp and power? what with enjoyments, or with life
+itself, when we have slaughtered all our kindred here?"
+
+Krishna then enters upon a long discourse upon the duties of caste and
+the indwelling of the Infinite, showing that the soul, which is a part
+of deity, cannot be slain though the body may be hewn to pieces. "The
+wise," he says, "grieve not for the departed nor for those who yet
+survive. Never was the time when I was not, nor thou, nor yonder chiefs,
+and never shall be the time when all of us shall not be. As the embodied
+soul in this corporeal frame moves swiftly on through boyhood, youth,
+and age, so will it pass through other forms hereafter; be not grieved
+thereat.... As men abandon old and threadbare clothes to put on others
+new, so casts the embodied soul its worn-out frame to enter other forms.
+No dart can pierce it; flame cannot consume it, water wet it not, nor
+scorching breezes dry it--indestructible, eternal, all-pervading,
+deathless."[77]
+
+It may seem absurd to Western minds that a long discourse, which
+constitutes a volume of intricate pantheistic philosophy, should be
+given to a great commander just at the moment when he is planning his
+attack and is absorbed with the most momentous responsibilities; it
+seems to us strangely inconsistent also to expatiate elaborately upon
+the merits of the Yoga philosophy, with its asceticism and its holy
+torpor, when the real aim is to arouse the soul to ardor for the hour of
+battle. But these infelicities are no obstacle to the Hindu mind, and
+the consistency of the plot is entirely secondary to the doctrine of
+caste and of philosophy which the author makes Krishna proclaim. Gentle
+as many of its precepts are, the Bhagavad Gita, or the "Lord's Lay," is
+a battle-song uttered by the Supreme Being while the contending hosts
+awaited the signal for fratricidal carnage.
+
+The grotesqueness which characterizes all Hindu literature is not
+wanting in this story of Krishna and Arjuna, as given in the great poem
+of which the Bhagavad Gita forms a part. The five sons of Pandu are
+representatives of the principle of righteousness, while the hundred
+brothers of the rival branch are embodiments of evil. Yet, when the
+victory had been gained and the sceptre was given to the sons of Pandu,
+they despised it and courted death, though the "Adorable One" had urged
+them on to strife.
+
+Bishma, the leader of the hostile force, in a personal encounter with
+Arjuna, had been filled so full of darts that he could neither stand nor
+lie down. Every part of his body was bristling with arrows, and for
+fifty-eight days he lingered, leaning on their sharp points. Meanwhile
+the eldest of the victors, finding his throne only a "delusion and a
+snare," and being filled with remorse, was urged by Krishna to visit his
+unfortunate adversary and receive instruction and comfort. Bishma, lying
+upon his bed of spikes, edified him with a series of long and tedious
+discourses on pantheistic philosophy, after which he asked the
+tender-hearted Krishna for permission to depart. He is no longer the
+embodiment of evil: the cruel arrows with which the ideal of goodness
+had pierced him fall away, the top of his head opens, and his spirit
+soars to heaven shining like a meteor. How strange a reversal is here!
+How strange that he who had been the representative of all evil should
+have been transformed by his suffering, and should have been made to
+instruct and comfort the man of success.
+
+Mr. Chatterji falls into a fatal inconsistency when, in spite of his
+assumption that this poem is the very word of Krishna spoken at a
+particular time, in a particular place, he informs us that "all Indian
+authorities agree in pronouncing it to be the essence of all sacred
+writings. They call it an Upanishad--a term applied to the wisdom, as
+distinguished from the ceremonial, part of the Vedas, and to no book
+less sacred." More accurately he might have said that it is a compend of
+all Hindu literatures, the traditional as well as the inspired, and with
+a much larger share of the former than of the latter. Pantheism, which
+is its quintessence, did not exist in the early Vedic times. Krishna was
+not known as a god even in the period of the Buddha.[78] And the Epics,
+which are so largely drawn upon, are later still. And it is upon the
+basis of the Epics, and the still later Puranas, that the common people
+of India still worship him as the god of good-fellowship and of lust.
+The masses longed for a god of human sympathies, even though he were a
+Bacchus.
+
+In the Bhagavad Gita as we now have it, with its many changes, Krishna
+has become the supreme God, though according to Lassen his actual
+worship as such was not rendered earlier than the sixth century; and
+Professor Banergea claims that it "was not at its zenith till the
+eighth century, and that it then borrowed much from Christian, or at
+least Hebrew, sources." Webber and Lorinser have maintained a similar
+view. Krishna as the Supreme and Adorable One has never found favor
+except with the pantheists, and to this day the worship of the real
+Krishna as a Bacchus is the most popular of all Hindu festivals, and
+naturally it is the most demoralizing.
+
+We are now prepared to assume that the pantheistic groundwork of the
+poem on the one hand, and its borrowed Christian conceptions and
+Christian nomenclature on the other, will explain its principal alleged
+parallels with the New Testament. With his great familiarity with our
+Bible, and his rare ability in adjusting shades of thought and
+expression, Mr. Chatterji has presented no less than two hundred and
+fourteen passages which he matches with texts from the Bible. Many of
+these are so adroitly worded that one not familiar with the
+peculiarities of Hindu philosophy might be stumbled by the comparisons.
+Mr. R.C. Bose tells us that this poem has wrought much evil among the
+foreign population of India; and in this country there are thousands of
+even cultivated people with whom this new translation will have great
+influence. Men with unsettled minds who have turned away with contempt
+from the crudities of spiritualism, who are disgusted with the rough
+assailments of Ingersoll, and who find only homesickness and desolation
+on the bleak and wintry moor of agnostic science, may yet be attracted
+by a book which is so elevated and often sublime in its philosophy, and
+so chaste in its ethical precepts, and which, like Christianity, has
+bridged the awful chasm between unapproachable deity and our human
+conditions and wants by giving to the world a God-man.
+
+If the original author and the various expositors of the Bhagavad Gita
+have not borrowed from the Christian revelation, they have rendered an
+undesigned tribute to the great Christian doctrine of a divine and human
+mediator: they have given striking evidence of a felt want in all
+humanity of a _God with men_. If it was a deeply conscious want of the
+human heart which led the heathen of distant India to grope their way
+from the cheerless service of remorseless deities to one who could be
+touched with a feeling of their infirmities, and could walk these
+earthly paths as a counsellor by their side, how striking is the analogy
+to essential Christian truth!
+
+Let us examine some of the alleged parallels. They may be divided into
+three classes:
+
+1. Those which are merely fanciful. Nine-tenths of the whole number are
+of this class. They are such as would never occur to a Hindu on hearing
+the gospel truth. Only one who had examined the two records in the keen
+search for parallels, and whose wish had been the father of his thought,
+would have seen any resemblance. I shall not occupy much time with
+these.
+
+2. Those resemblances which are only accidental. It may be an accident
+of similar circumstances or similar causes; it may be a chance
+resemblance in the words employed, while there is no resemblance in the
+thoughts expressed.
+
+3. Those coincidences which spring from natural causes. For an example
+of these, the closing chapter of the Apocalypse speaks of Christ as "the
+Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End." It is a natural
+expression to indicate his supreme power and glory as Creator and final
+Judge of all things. In a similar manner Krishna is made to say, "I am
+Beginning, Middle, End, Eternal Time, the Birth and the Death of all. I
+am the symbol A among the characters. I have created all things out of
+one portion of myself." There are two meanings in Krishna's words. He is
+in all things pantheistically, and he is the first and best of all
+things. In the tenth chapter he names with great particularity sixty-six
+classes of things in which he is always the first: the first of
+elephants, horses, trees, kings, heroes, etc. "Among letters I am the
+vowel A." "Among seasons I am spring." "Of the deceitful I am the dice."
+
+The late Dr. Mullens calls attention to the fact that the Orphic Hymns
+declare "Zeus to be the first and Zeus the last. Zeus is the head and
+Zeus the centre." In these three similar forms of description one common
+principle of supremacy rules. The difference is that in the Christian
+revelation and in the Orphic Hymns there is dignity, while in Krishna's
+discourse there is frivolous and vulgar particularity. Let us notice a
+few examples of the alleged parallels more particularly.
+
+In Chapter IX. Krishna says: "Whatever thou doest, whatever thou
+eatest, whatever thou offerest in sacrifice, etc., commit that to me."
+This is compared with 1 Corinthians x. 31: "Whether therefore ye eat or
+drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Also to
+Colossians x. 17: "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name
+of the Lord Jesus."
+
+Even if there were no pantheistic differential at the foundation of
+these utterances, it would not be at all strange if exhortations to an
+all-embracing devotion should thus in each case be made to cover all the
+daily acts of life. But aside from this there is a wide difference in
+the fundamental ideas which these passages express. Paul's thought is
+that of loving devotion to an infinite Friend and Saviour; it is such an
+offering of loyalty and love as one conscious being can make to another
+and a higher. But Krishna identifies the giver with the receiver, and
+Arjuna is taught to regard the gift itself as an act of God. The phrase
+"commit that to me" is equivalent to "ascribe that to me." In the
+context we read: "Of those men, who thinking of me in identity (with
+themselves), worship me, for them always resting in me, I bear the
+burden of acquisition and preservation of possessions. Even those the
+devotees of other gods, who worship in faith, they worship me in
+ignorance." In other words, the worshipper is to make no difference
+between himself and the Infinite. He is to refer all his daily acts to
+the Infinite as the real actor, his own personal ego being ignored. This
+is not Paul's idea; it is the very reverse of it. It could give comfort
+only to the evil-doer who desired to shift his personal responsibility.
+
+Let us consider another alleged resemblance. In the fifth chapter
+Krishna declares that whoever knows him "attains rest." This is
+presented as a parallel to the words in Christ's prayer: "This is life
+eternal that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ
+whom Thou hast sent."
+
+In both passages the knowledge of God is made the chief blessing to be
+sought, but in the one case knowledge means only a recognition of the
+Infinite Ego as existing in one's personal ego: it is a mere acceptance
+of that philosophic theory of life. Thus one of the Upanishads declares
+that "whoever sees all things in God, and God in all things, sees the
+truth aright;" his philosophy is correct. On the other hand, what Christ
+meant was not the recognition of a pantheistic theory, but a real
+heart-knowledge of the Father's character, a loving experience of his
+divine mercy, his fatherly love, his ineffable glory. The one was cold
+philosophy, the other was experience, fellowship, gratitude, filial
+love.
+
+What pantheism taught was that God cannot be known practically--that He
+is without limitations or conditions that we can distinguish Him from
+our finiteness only by divesting our conception of Him of all that we
+are wont to predicate of ourselves. He is subject to no such limitations
+as good or evil. In Chapter IX., Krishna says: "As air existing in space
+goes everywhere and is unlimited, so are all things in me.... I am the
+Vedic rite, I am the sacrifice, I am food, I am sacred formula, I am
+immortality, I am also death; also the latent cause and the manifest
+effect." To know the God of the Bhagavad Gita is to know that he cannot
+be known. "God is infinite in attributes," says Mr. Chatterji, "and yet
+devoid of attributes. This is the God whom the Bhagavad Gita proclaims."
+
+By a similar contradiction the more the devout worshipper knows of God
+the less he knows, because the process of knowledge is a process of
+"effacement;" the closer the gradual union becomes the fainter is the
+self-personality, till at length it fades away entirely, and is merged
+and lost as a drop in the illimitable sea. This is the so-called "rest"
+which Krishna promises as the reward of knowing him. It is rest in the
+sense of extinction; it is death; while that which Christ promises is
+eternal Life with unending and rapturous activity, with ever-growing
+powers of fellowship and of love.
+
+Take another alleged parallel. Chapter VI. commends the man who has
+reached such a measure of indifference that "his heart is _even_ in
+regard to friends and to foes, to the righteous and to evil-doers;" and
+this is held up as a parallel to the Sermon on the Mount, which commends
+love to enemies that we may be children of the heavenly Father who
+sendeth rain upon the just and upon the unjust. In the one case the
+apathy of the ascetic, the extinction of susceptibility, the ignoring of
+moral distinctions, the crippling and deadening of our noblest powers;
+in the other the use of these powers in all ways of beneficence toward
+those who injure us, even as God, though his heart is by no means "even"
+as between the righteous and the wicked, stills shows kindness to both.
+Now, in view of the great plausibility of the parallels which are thus
+presented to the public--parallels whose subtle fallacy the mass of
+readers are almost sure to overlook--one can hardly exaggerate the
+importance of thoroughly sifting the philosophy that underlies them, and
+especially on the part of those who are, or are to become, the defenders
+of the truth.[79]
+
+But turning from particular parallels to a broader comparison, there is
+a general use of expressions in the New Testament in regard to which
+every Christian teacher should aim at clear views and careful
+discriminations; for example, when we are said to be "temples of the
+Holy Ghost," or when Christ is said to be "formed in us the hope of
+glory," or it is "no longer we that live, but Christ that liveth in us."
+It cannot be denied that defenders of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the
+whole Indo-pantheistic philosophy, might make out a somewhat plausible
+case along these lines. I recall an instance in which an honored pastor
+had made such extravagant use of these New Testament expressions that
+some of his co-presbyters raised the question of a trial for pantheism.
+But it is one thing to employ strong terms of devotional feeling, as is
+often done, especially in prayer, and quite another to frame theories
+and philosophies, and present them as accurate statements of truth. The
+New Testament nowhere speaks of the indwelling Spirit in such a sense as
+implies an obliteration or absorption of the conscious individual ego,
+while "effacement" instead of fellowship is a favorite expression in the
+Bhagavad Gita. Paul in his most ecstatic language never gives any hint
+of extinction, but, on the contrary, he magnifies the conception of a
+separate, conscious, ever-growing personality, living and rejoicing in
+Divine fellowship for evermore.
+
+In the New Testament the expressions of our union with Christ are often
+reversed: instead of speaking of Christ as abiding in the hearts and
+lives of his people, they are sometimes said to abide in Him, and that
+not in the sense of absorption. Paul speaks of the "saints in Christ,"
+of his own "bonds in Christ," of being "baptized in Christ," of becoming
+"a new creature in Christ," of true Christians as being one body in
+Christ, of their lives being "hid with Christ in God." Believers are
+spoken of as being "buried with Christ," "dead with Christ." Every form
+of expression is used to represent fellowship, intimacy, spiritual union
+with Him, but always in a rational and practical sense, and with full
+implication of our distinct and separate personality. The essential hope
+of the Gospel is that those who believe in Christ shall never die, that
+even their mortal bodies shall be raised in his image, and that they
+shall be like Him and shall abide in his presence. On the other hand,
+"The essence of this pantheistic system," says Mr. Chatterji, "is the
+denial of real existence to the individual spirit, and the insistance
+upon its true identity with God" (Chapter IV.).
+
+It only remains to be said that, whatever may be the similarities of
+expression between this Bible of pantheism and that of Christianity,
+however they may agree in the utterance of worthy ethical maxims, that
+which most broadly differentiates the Christian faith from Hindu
+philosophy is the salient presentation of great fundamental truths which
+are found in the Word of God alone.
+
+1. The doctrine that God in Christ is "made sin" for the redemption of
+sinful man--that He is "the end of the law for righteousness" for them
+that believe; this is indeed Divine help: this is salvation. Divinity
+does not here become the mere charioteer of human effort, for the
+purpose of coaching it in the duties of caste and prompting it to fight
+out its destiny by its own valor. Christ is our expiation, takes our
+place, for our sakes becomes poor that we through his poverty may become
+rich. What a boon to all fakirs and merit-makers of the world if they
+could feel that that law of righteousness which they are striving to
+work out by mortifications and self-tortures had been achieved for them
+by the Son of God, and that salvation is a free gift! This is something
+that can be apprehended alike by the philosopher and by the unlettered
+masses of men.
+
+2. Another great truth found in our Scriptures is that the pathway by
+which the human soul returns to God is not the way of knowledge in the
+sense of philosophy, but the way of intelligent confidence and loving
+trust. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the
+mouth confession is made." Man by wisdom has never known God. This has
+been the vain effort of Hindu speculation for ages. The author of the
+Nyaya philosophy assumed that all evil springs from misapprehension, and
+that the remedy is to be found in correct methods of investigation,
+guided by skilfully arranged syllogisms. This has been in all ages the
+chief characteristic of speculative Hinduism. And the Bhagavad Gita
+furnishes one of its very best illustrations. Of its eighteen chapters,
+fifteen are devoted to "Eight Knowledge." And by knowledge is meant
+abstract speculation. It is a reaching after oneness with the deity by
+introspection and metaphysical analysis.
+
+"Even if thou wert the greatest evil-doer among all the unrighteous,"
+says Krishna, "thou shalt cross over all sins even by the ark of
+knowledge." "Oh, Arjuna, as blazing fire reduces fuel to ashes, so the
+fire of knowledge turns all action into ashes." But in the first place a
+knowledge of the infinite within us is unattainable, and in the second
+place it could not avail us even if attainable. It is not practical
+knowledge; it is not a belief unto righteousness. Faith is not an act of
+the brain merely, but of the whole moral nature. The wisdom of self must
+be laid aside, self-righteousness cast into the dust, the pride and
+rebellion of the will surrendered, and the whole man become as a little
+child. This is the way of knowledge that can be made experimental; this
+is the knowledge that is unto eternal life.
+
+3. Another great differential of the New Testament is found in its true
+doctrine of divine co-operation with the human will. Our personality is
+not destroyed that the absolute may take its place, but the two act
+together. "For men of renunciation," says the Bhagavad Gita, "whose
+hearts are at rest from desire and anger, and knowing the only self,
+there is on both sides of death effacement (of the individual) in the
+supreme spirit." In such a person, therefore, even on this side of
+death, there is a cessation of the individual in the supreme. Over
+against this the Gospel presents the doctrine of co-operative grace,
+which instead of crippling our human energies arouses them to their
+highest and best exertion. "Work out your own salvation with fear and
+trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of
+his good pleasure." The divine acts with and through the human, but does
+not destroy it. It imparts the greatest encouragement, the truest
+inspiration.
+
+4. We notice but one more out of many points of contrast between the
+doctrines of the Hindu and the Christian Bibles, viz., the difference
+between ascetic inaction and the life of Christian activity as means of
+religious growth. I am aware that in the earlier chapters of the
+Bhagavad Gita, Krishna urges Arjuna to valiant activity on the
+battle-field, but that is for a special purpose, viz., the establishment
+of caste distinctions. It is wholly foreign to Hindu philosophy; it is
+even contradictory. The author of the poem, who seems to be aware of the
+inconsistency of arousing Arjuna to the mighty activities of the
+battle-field, and at the same time indoctrinating him in the spirit of
+a dead and nerveless asceticism, struggles hard with the awkward task of
+bridging the illogical chasm with three chapters of mystification.
+
+But we take the different chapters as they stand, and in their obvious
+meaning. "The man of meditation is superior to the man of action," says
+Chapter I., 46, "therefore, Arjuna, become a man of meditation." How the
+man of meditation is to proceed is told in Chapter VI., 10-14. "Let him
+who has attained to meditation always strive to reduce his heart to rest
+in the Supreme, dwelling in a secret place alone, with body and mind
+under control, devoid of expectation as well as of acceptance. Having
+placed in a clean spot one's seat, firm, not very high nor very low,
+formed of the skins of animals, placed upon cloth and cusa grass upon
+that, sitting on that seat, strive for meditation, for the purification
+of the heart, making the mind one-pointed, and reducing to rest the
+action of the thinking principle as well as that of the senses and
+organs. Holding the body, neck, and head straight and unmoved, perfectly
+determined, and not working in any direction, but as if beholding the
+end of his own nose, with his heart in supreme peace, devoid of fear,
+with thought controlled and heart in me as the supreme goal, he
+remains."
+
+How different from all this is that prayer of Christ, "I pray not that
+Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep
+them from the evil." Or those various words spoken to his disciples:
+"Let your light so shine before men that others seeing your good works
+shall glorify your Father which is in heaven." "Work while the day
+lasts, for the night cometh in which no man can work."
+
+Who can imagine Paul spending all those years of opportunity in sitting
+on a leopard skin, watching the end of his nose instead of turning the
+world upside down! In that true sense in which Christ lived within him,
+He filled every avenue of his being with the aggressive spirit of God's
+own love for dying men. The same spirit which brought Christ from heaven
+to earth sent Paul out over the earth. He was not even content to work
+on old foundations, but regarding himself as under sentence of death he
+longed to make the most of his votive life, to bear the torch of the
+truth into all realms of darkness. He was none the less a philosopher
+because he preferred the simple logic of God's love, nor did he hesitate
+to confront the philosophy of Athens or the threatenings of Roman
+tyrants. He was ready for chains and imprisonment, for perils of
+tempests or shipwreck, or robbers, or infuriate mobs, or death itself.
+
+No Hindu fakir was ever more conscious of the struggle with inward
+corruption than he, and at times he could cry out, "Oh, wretched man
+that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" but he did
+not seek relief in idleness and inanity, but in what Dr. Chalmers called
+"the expulsive power of new affections," in new measures of Christlike
+devotion to the cause of truth and humanity. In a word, Christ and his
+kingdom displaced the power of evil. He could do all things through
+Christ who strengthened him.
+
+Nor was the peace which he felt and which he commended to others the
+peace of mere negative placidity and indifference. It was loving
+confidence and trust. "Be careful for nothing"--we hear him saying to
+his friends at Philippi--"be careful for nothing; but in all things by
+prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make known your requests
+unto God: and the peace of God, which passeth understanding, shall keep
+your minds and hearts through Christ Jesus." And yet to show how this
+consists with devout activity, he commends, in immediate connection with
+it, the cultivation of every active virtue known to men. Thus,
+"_Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever
+things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are
+lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if
+there be any praise, think on these things._"
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 74: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 75: The author seems to overlook the fact that the chief
+excellence of an evangel to lost men is that it appeals to the masses.]
+
+[Footnote 76: Address published in the _Japan Mail_, 1890.]
+
+[Footnote 77: There is scarcely another passage in all Hindu literature
+which is so full of half-truths as this, or which turns the sublime
+powers of the human soul to so unworthy a purpose.]
+
+[Footnote 78: In an enumeration of Hindu gods made in Buddha's time
+Krishna does not appear.]
+
+[Footnote 79: Never before has there been so much danger as now that the
+lines of truth will be washed out by the flood-tides of sentimental and
+semi Christian substitutes and makeshifts. As with commodities, so with
+religion, dilution and adulteration are the order of the day and a
+little Christianity is made to flavor a thousand shams.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V.
+
+BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY
+
+
+New interest has recently been awakened in old controversies concerning
+the relations of Christianity and Buddhism. The so-called Theosophists
+and Esoteric Buddhists are reviving exploded arguments against
+Christianity as means of supporting their crude theories. The charge of
+German sceptics, that Christianity borrowed largely from Buddhism, is
+made once more the special stock in trade of these new and fanatical
+organizations. To this end books, tracts, and leaflets are scattered
+broadcast, and especially in the United States and Great Britain.
+
+Professor Max Mueller says, in a recent article published in _Longman's
+New Review_: "Who has not suffered lately from Theosophy and Esoteric
+Buddhism? Journals are full of it, novels overflow with it, and one is
+flooded with private and confidential letters to ask what it all really
+means. Many people, no doubt, are much distressed in their minds when
+they are told that Christianity is but a second edition of Buddhism. 'Is
+it really true?' they ask. 'Why did you not tell us all this before?
+Surely, you must have known it, and were only afraid to tell it.' Then
+follow other questions: 'Does Buddhism really count more believers than
+any other religion?' 'Is Buddhism really older than Christianity, and
+does it really contain many things which are found in the Bible?'" And
+the learned professor proceeds to show that there is no evidence that
+Christianity has borrowed from Buddhism. In this country these same
+ideas are perhaps more widely circulated than in England. They are
+subsidizing the powerful agency of the secular press, particularly the
+Sunday newspapers, and thousands of the people are confronting these
+puzzling questions. There is occasion, therefore, for a careful and
+candid review of Buddhism by all leaders of thought and defenders of
+truth.
+
+In the brief time allotted me, I can only call attention to a few
+salient points of a general character. In the outset, a distinction
+should be drawn between Buddhist history and Buddhist legend, for just
+at this point the danger of misrepresentation lies. It is true that the
+Buddha lived before the time of Christ, and therefore anything of the
+nature of real biography must be of an earlier date than the teachings
+of Jesus; but whether the _legends_ antedate His life and doctrines is
+quite another question. The Buddhist apologists all assume that they do,
+and it is upon the legends that most of the alleged parallelisms in the
+two records are based. How, then, shall we draw the line between history
+and legend? The concensus of the best scholarship accepts those
+traditions in which the northern and southern Buddhist records agree,
+which the Council of Patna, B.C. 242, adopted as canonical, and which
+are in themselves credible and consistent with the teachings of Gautama
+himself. According to this standard of authority Gautama was born about
+the sixth century B.C., as the son and heir of a rajah of the Sakya
+tribe of Aryans, living about eighty miles north by northwest of
+Benares. His mother, the principal wife of Kajah Suddhodana, had lived
+many years without offspring, and she died not long after the birth of
+this her only son, Siddartha. In his youth he was married and surrounded
+by all the allurements and pleasures of an Oriental court. He, too,
+appears to have remained without an heir till he was twenty-nine years
+of age, when, upon the birth of a son, certain morbid tendencies came to
+a climax, and he left his palace secretly and sought true comfort in a
+life of asceticism. For six years he tried diligently the resources of
+Hindu self-mortification, but becoming exhausted by his austerities,
+almost unto death, he abandoned that mode of life, having apparently
+become atheistic. He renounced the idea of merit-making as a means of
+spiritual attainment, and he was sorely tempted, no doubt, to return to
+his former life of ease. But he withstood the temptation and resolved to
+forego earthly pleasure, and teach mankind what he conceived to be the
+way of life, through self-control. He had tried pleasure; next he had
+tried extreme asceticism; he now struck out what he called "The Middle
+Path," as between self-indulgence on the one hand, and extreme bodily
+mortification as a thing of merit on the other. This middle ground still
+demanded abstinence as favorable to the highest mental and moral
+conditions, but it was not carried to such extremes as to weaken the
+body or the mind, or impair the fullest operation of every faculty.[80]
+
+There can be no doubt that Gautama's relinquishment of Hinduism marked a
+great and most trying crisis. It involved the loss of all confidence in
+him on the part of his disciples, for when he began again to take
+necessary food they all forsook him as a failure. It was while sitting
+under the shade of an Indian fig-tree (Boddhi-tree) that this struggle
+occurred and his victory was gained. There his future course was
+resolved upon; there was the real birth-place of Buddhism as a system.
+He thenceforth began to preach the law, or what he regarded as the way
+of self-emancipation, and therefore the way of life. He first sought his
+five followers, who had abandoned him, and succeeded in winning them
+back. He gathered at length a company of about sixty disciples, whom he
+trained and sent forth as teachers of his new doctrines. Yet, still
+influenced by the old Hindu notions of the religious life, he formed his
+disciples into an order of mendicants, and in due time he established an
+order of nuns.
+
+It was when Gautama rose up from his meditation and his high resolve
+under the Bo-tree, that he began his career as "The Enlightened." He was
+now a Buddha, and claimed to have attained Nirvana. All that has been
+written of his having left his palace with the purpose of becoming a
+saviour of mankind, is the sheer assumption of the later legends and
+their apologists. Buddhism was an after-thought, only reached after six
+years of bootless asceticism. There is no evidence that when Siddartha
+left his palace he had any thought of benefiting anybody but himself. He
+entered upon the life of the recluse with the same motives and aims that
+have influenced thousands of other monks and anchorets of all lands and
+ages--some of them princes like himself. Nevertheless, for the noble
+decision which was finally reached we give him high credit. It seems to
+have been one of the noblest victories ever gained by man over lower
+impulses and desires. The passions of youth were not yet dead within
+him; worldly ambition may be supposed to have been still in force; but
+he chose the part of a missionary to his fellow-men, and there is no
+evidence that he ever swerved from his purpose. He had won a great
+victory over himself, and that fact constituted a secret of great power.
+Gautama was about thirty-five years of age when he became a Buddha, and
+for forty-five years after that he lived to preach his doctrines and to
+establish the monastic institution which has survived to our time. He
+died a natural death from indigestion at the age of eighty--greatly
+venerated by his disciples, and the centre of what had already become a
+wide-spread system in a large district of India.
+
+The legends of Buddhism are a very different thing from the brief sketch
+which I have given, and which is based upon the earlier Buddhist
+literature. These sprang up after Gautama's death, and their growth
+extended through many centuries--many centuries even of the Christian
+era. The legends divide the life of the Buddha into three periods: 1.
+That of his pre-existent states. 2. That part of his life which extended
+from his birth to his enlightenment under the Bo-tree. 3. The forty-five
+years of his Buddhaship. The legends have no more difficulty in dealing
+with the particular experiences of the pre-existent states than in
+enriching and adorning the incidents of his earthly life; and both are
+doubtless about equally authentic.
+
+Gautama discarded the idea of a divine revelation; he rejected the
+authority of the Vedas totally. He denied that he was divine, but
+distinctly claimed to be a plain and earnest man. All that he knew, he
+had discovered by insight and self-conquest. To assume that he was
+pre-existently divine and omniscient subverts the whole theory of his
+so-called "discovery," and is at variance with the idea of a personal
+conquest. The chief emphasis and force of his teachings lay in the
+assumption that he did simply what other men might do; for his mission
+was that of a teacher and exempler merely. He was a saviour only in that
+he taught men how to save themselves.
+
+The pre-existent states are set forth in the "Jatakas," or Birth Stories
+of Ceylon, which represent him as having been born five hundred and
+thirty times after he became a Bodisat (a predestined Buddha). As a
+specimen of his varied experience while becoming fitted for Buddaship,
+we read that he was born eighty-three times as an ascetic, fifty-eight
+as a monarch, forty-three as a deva, twenty-four as a Brahman, eighteen
+as an ape; as a deer ten, an elephant six, a lion ten; at least once
+each as a thief, a gambler, a frog, a hare, a snipe. He was also
+embodied in a tree. But as a Bodisat he could not be born in hell, nor
+as vermin, nor as a woman! Says Spence Hardy, with a touch of irony: "He
+could descend no lower than a snipe."
+
+Northern legends represent Buddha as having "incarnated" for the purpose
+of bringing relief to a distressed world. He was miraculously
+conceived--his mother's side in the form of a white elephant. All nature
+manifested its joy on the occasion. The ocean bloomed with flowers; all
+beings from many worlds showed their wonder and sympathy. Many miracles
+were wrought even during his childhood, and every part of his career was
+filled with marvels. At his temptation under the Bo-tree, Mara (Satan)
+came to him mounted on an elephant sixteen miles high and surrounded by
+an encircling army of demons eleven miles deep.[81] Finding him proof
+against his blandishments, he hurled mountains of rocks against him, and
+assailed him with fire and smoke and ashes and filth--all of which
+became as zephyrs on his cheek or as presents of fragrant flowers. Last
+of all, he sent his three daughters to seduce him. Their blandishments
+are set forth at great length in the "Romantic Legend."
+
+In the Northern Buddhist literature--embracing both the "Romantic
+Legend"[82] and the "Lalita Vistara"--many incidents of Buddha's
+childhood are given which show a seeming coincidence with the life of
+Christ. It is claimed that his birth was heralded by angelic hosts, that
+an aged sage received him into his arms and blessed him, that he was
+taken to the temple for consecration, that a jealous ruler sought to
+destroy him, that in his boyhood he astonished the doctors by his
+wisdom, that he was baptized, or at least took a bath, that he was
+tempted, transfigured, and finally received up into heaven. These will
+be noticed farther on; it is only necessary to say here that the legends
+giving these details are first at variance with the early canonical
+history, and second, that they are of such later dates as to place most
+of them probably within the Christian era.
+
+_The Four Peculiar and Characteristic Doctrines of Buddhism._
+
+1. Its peculiar conception of the soul. 2. Its doctrine of Trishna and
+Upadana. 3. Its theory of Kharma. 4. Its doctrine of Nirvana.
+
+1. The Skandas, five in number, constitute in their interaction what all
+others than Buddhists regard as the soul. They consist of material
+properties; the senses; abstract ideas; tendencies or propensities; and
+the mental powers. The soul is the result of the combined action of
+these, as the flame of a candle proceeds from the combustion of its
+constituent elements. The flame is never the same for two consecutive
+moments. It seems to have a perpetuated identity, but that is only an
+illusion, and the same unreality pertains to the soul. It is only a
+succession of thoughts, emotions, and conscious experiences. We are not
+the same that we were an hour ago. In fact, there is no such thing as
+being--there is only a constant _becoming_. We are ever passing from one
+point to another throughout our life; and this is true of all beings and
+all things in the universe. How it is that the succession of experiences
+is treasured up in memory is not made clear. This is a most subtle
+doctrine, and it has many points of contact with various speculations of
+modern times. It has also a plausible side when viewed in the light of
+experience, but its gaps and inconsistencies are fatal, as must be seen
+when it is thoroughly examined.
+
+2. The second of the cardinal doctrines is that of Trishna. Trishna is
+that inborn element of desire whose tendency is to lead men into evil.
+So far, it is a misfortune or a form of original sin. Whatever it may
+have of the nature of guilt hangs upon the issues of a previous life.
+Upadana is a further stage in the same development. It is Trishna
+ripened into intense craving by our own choice and our own action. It
+then becomes uncontrollable and is clearly a matter of guilt. Now, the
+momentum of this Upadana is such that it cannot be arrested by death.
+Like the demons of Gadara it must again become incarnate, even though it
+should enter the body of a brute. And this transitional something, this
+restless moral or immoral force which must work out its natural results
+somehow and somewhere, and that in embodied form projects into future
+being a residuum which is known as Kharma.
+
+3. What, then, is Kharma? Literally it means "the doing." It is a man's
+record, involving the consequences and liabilities of his acts. It is a
+score which must be settled. A question naturally arises, how the record
+of a soul can survive when the soul itself has been "blown out." The
+illustration of the candle does not quite meet the case. If the flame
+were something which when blown out immediately seized upon some other
+substance in which the work of combustion proceeded, it would come
+nearer to a parallel. One candle may light another before itself is
+extinguished, but it does not do it by an inherent necessity. But this
+flame of the soul, this Kharma, must enter some other body of god, or
+man, or beast.
+
+Again, the question arises, How can responsibility be transferred from
+one to another? How can the heavy load of a man's sin be laid upon some
+new-born infant, while the departing sinner has himself no further
+concern in his evil Kharma, but sinks into non-existence the moment his
+"conformations" are touched with dissolution? Buddhism acknowledges a
+mystery here; no real explanation can be given, and none seems to have
+been attempted by Buddhist writers. To be consistent, Gautama, in
+denying the existence of God and of the soul as an entity, should have
+taught the materialistic doctrine of annihilation. This, however, he
+could not do in the face of that deep-rooted idea of transmigration
+which had taken entire possession of the Hindu mind. Gautama was
+compelled therefore to bridge a most illogical chasm as best he could.
+Kharma without a soul to cling to is something in the air. It alights
+like some winged seed upon a new-born set of Skandas with its luckless
+boon of ill desert, and it involves the fatal inconsistency of investing
+with permanent character that which is itself impermanent.
+
+But the question may be asked, "Do we not admit a similar principle when
+we speak of a man's influence as something that survives him?" We
+answer, "No." Influence is a simple radiation of impressions. A man may
+leave an influence which men are free to accept or not, but it is quite
+a different thing if he leaves upon a successor the moral liabilities of
+a bankrupt character. Gautama's own Kharma, for example, ceased to exist
+upon his entering Nirvana; there was no re-birth; but his influence
+lives forever, and has extended to millions of his fellow-men.
+
+The injustice involved in the doctrine of Kharma is startling. The
+new-born soul that inherits its unsettled score has no memory or
+consciousness that connects it with himself; it is not heredity; it is
+not his father's character that invests him. This Kharma may have
+crossed the ocean from the death-bed of some unknown man of another
+race. The doctrine is the more astonishing when we consider that no
+Supreme Being is recognized as claiming this retribution. There is no
+God; it is a vague law of eternal justice, a law without a law-giver or
+a judge. There can therefore be no pardon, no commutation of sentence,
+no such thing as divine pity or help. The only way in which one can
+disentangle himself is by breaking forever the connection between spirit
+and matter which binds him with the shackles of conscious being.
+
+4. Nirvana. No doctrine of Buddhism has been so much in dispute as this.
+It has been widely maintained that Nirvana means extinction. But T.W.
+Rhys Davids and others have held that it is "the destruction of malice,
+passion, and delusion," and that it may be attained in this life. The
+definition is quoted from comparatively recent Pali translations.[83]
+Gautama, therefore, reached Nirvana forty-five years before his death.
+It is claimed, however, that insomuch as it cuts off Kharma, or
+re-birth, it involves entire extinction of being upon the dissolution of
+the body.[84] It is held by still others that Nirvana is a return to the
+original and all-pervading Boddhi-essence. This theory, which is really
+a concession to the Brahmanical doctrine of absorption into the infinite
+Brahma, has a wide following among the modern Buddhists in China and
+Japan. It is a form of Buddhist pantheism.
+
+As to the teaching of Gautama on this subject, Professor Max Mueller,
+while admitting that the meta-physicians who followed the great teacher
+plainly taught that the entire personal entity of an arhat (an
+enlightened one) would become extinct upon the death of the body, yet
+reasons, in his lecture on Buddhistic Nihilism, that the Buddha himself
+could not have taught a doctrine so disheartening. At the same time he
+quotes the learned and judicial Bishop Bigandet as declaring, after
+years of study and observation in Burmah, that such is the doctrine
+ascribed to the great teacher by his own disciples. Gautama is quoted as
+closing one of his sermons in these words: "Mendicants, that which binds
+the teacher to existence is cut off, but his body still remains. While
+his body still remains he shall be seen by gods and men, but after the
+termination of life, upon the dissolution of the body, neither gods nor
+men shall see him." T.W. Rhys Davids expresses the doctrine of Nirvana
+tersely and correctly when he says: "Utter death, with no new life to
+follow, is, then, a result of, but it is not, Nirvana."[85] Professor
+Oldenberg suggests, with much plausibility, that the Buddha was more
+reticent in regard to the doctrine of final extinction in the later
+periods of his life; that the depressing doctrine had been found a
+stumbling-block, and that he came to assume an agnostic position on the
+question. In his "Buddha,"[86] Professor Oldenberg, partly in answer to
+the grounds taken by Professor Max Mueller in his lecture on Buddhistic
+Nihilism, has very fully discussed the question whether the ego survives
+in Nirvana in any sense. He claims that certain new translations of Pali
+texts have given important evidence on the subject, and he sums up with
+the apparent conclusion that the Buddha, moved by the depressing
+influence which the grim doctrine of Nirvana, in the sense of
+extinction, was producing upon his disciples, assumed a position of
+reticence as to whether the ego survives or not. The venerable Malukya
+(see p. 275) is said to have plied the Master with questions. "Does the
+perfect Buddha live on beyond death, or does he not? It pleases me not
+that all this should remain unanswered, and I do not think it right. May
+it please the Master to answer me if he can. But when anyone does not
+understand a matter, then a straightforward man says, 'I do not know
+that.'" The Buddha replies somewhat evasively that he has not undertaken
+to decide such questions, because they are not for spiritual
+edification.
+
+The question, What is Nirvana? has been the object of more extensive
+discussion than its importance demands. Practically, the millions of
+Buddhists are not concerned with the question. They find no attraction
+in either view. They desire neither extinction nor unconscious
+absorption into the Boddhi essence (or Brahm). What they anticipate is
+an improved transmigration, a better birth. The more devout may indulge
+the hope that their next life will be spent in one of the Buddhist
+heavens; others may aspire to be men of high position and influence. The
+real heaven to which the average Buddhist looks forward is apt to be
+something very much after his own heart, or at least something indicated
+by the estimate which he himself places upon his own character and life.
+There may be many transmigrations awaiting him, but he is chiefly
+concerned for the next in order. The very last object to excite his
+interest is that far-off shadow called Nirvana.
+
+In estimating the conflict of Christianity with Buddhism we must not
+take counsel merely of our own sense of the absurdity of Gautama's
+teachings; we are to remember that in Christian lands society is made up
+of all kinds of people; that outside of the Christian Church there are
+thousands, and even millions, who, with respect to faith, are in utter
+chaos and darkness. The Church therefore cannot view this subject from
+its own stand-point merely. Let us glance at certain features of
+Buddhism which render it welcome to various classes of men who dwell
+among us in Western lands. First of all, the system commends itself to
+many by its intense individualism. Paul's figure of the various parts of
+the human frame as illustrating the body of Christ, mutual in the
+interdependence of all its members, would be wholly out of place in
+Buddhism. Even the Buddhist monks are so many units of introverted
+self-righteousness. And individualism differently applied is the
+characteristic of our age, and therefore a bond of sympathy is supplied.
+"Every man for himself," appeals to modern society in many ways.
+
+Again, Gautama magnified the human intellect and the power of the human
+will. "O Ananda," he said, "be lamps unto yourselves; depend upon no
+other." He claimed to have thought out, and thought through every
+problem of existence, to have penetrated every secret of human nature in
+the present, and in the life to come, and his example was commended to
+all, that they might follow in their measure. So also our transcendental
+philosophers have glorified the powers and possibilities of humanity,
+and have made genius superior to saintliness.[87] There are tens of
+thousands who in this respect believe in a religion of humanity, and who
+worship, if they worship at all, the goddess of reason. All such have a
+natural affinity for Buddhism.
+
+Another point in common between this system and the spirit of our age is
+its broad humanitarianism--beneficence to the lower grades of life. When
+love transcends the bounds of the human family it does not rise up
+toward God, it descends toward the lower orders of the animal world.
+"Show pity toward everything that exists," is its motto, and the insect
+and the worm hold a larger relative place in the Buddhist than in the
+Christian view. The question "Are ye not of more value than many
+sparrows?" might be doubtful in the Buddhist estimate, for the teacher
+himself, in his pre-existent states, had often been incarnate in
+inferior creatures. It is by no means conceded that Jesus, in asking his
+disciples this question, had less pity for the sparrows than the Buddha,
+or that his beneficence was less thoughtful of the meanest thing that
+glides through the air or creeps upon the earth; but the spirit of
+Christianity is more discriminating, and its love rises up to heaven,
+where, beginning with God, it descends through every grade of being.
+
+Yet it is quite in accordance with the spirit and aim of thousands to
+magnify the charity that confines itself to bodily wants and
+distresses, to sneer at the relief which religion may bring to the far
+greater anguish of the spirit, and to look upon love and loyalty to God
+as superstition. Is it any wonder that such persons have a warm side
+toward Buddhism? Again, this system has certain points in common with
+our modern evolution theories. It is unscientific enough certainly in
+its speculations, but it gets on without creatorship or divine
+superintendence, and believes in the inflexible reign of law, though
+without a law-giver. It assigns long ages to the process of creation, if
+we may call it creation, and in development through cycles it sees
+little necessity for the work of God.
+
+It can also join hands cordially with many social theories of the day.
+The pessimism of Buddhists, ancient or modern, finds great sympathy in
+the crowded populations of the Western as well as the Eastern world.
+And, almost as a rule, Esoteric Buddhism, American Buddhism,
+Neo-Buddhism, or whatever we may call it, is a cave of Adullam to which
+all types of religious apostates and social malcontents resort. The
+thousands who have made shipwreck of faith, who have become soured at
+the unequal allotments of Providence, who have learned to hate all who
+are above them and more prosperous than they, are just in the state of
+mind to take delight in Buddha's sermon at Kapilavastu, as rehearsed by
+Sir Edwin Arnold. There all beings met--gods, devas, men, beasts of the
+field, and fowls of the air--to make common cause against the
+relentless fate that rules the world, and to bewail the sufferings and
+death which fill the great charnel-house of existence, while Buddha
+voiced their common complaint and stood before them as the only pitying
+friend that the universe had found. It was the first great Communist
+meeting of which we have any record.[88] The wronged and suffering
+universe was there, and all
+
+            "took the promise of his piteous speech,
+   So that their lives, prisoned in the shape of ape,
+   Tiger or deer, shagged bear, jackal or wolf,
+   Foul-feeding kite, pearled dove or peacock gemmed,
+   Squat toad or speckled serpent, lizard, bat,
+   Yea, or fish fanning the river waves,
+   Touched meekly at the skirts of brotherhood
+   With man, who hath less innocence than these:
+   And in mute gladness knew their bondage broke
+   Whilst Buddha spoke these things before the king."
+
+There was no mention of sin, but only of universal misfortune!
+
+In contrast with the deep shadows of a brooding and all-embracing
+pessimism like this, we need only to hint at that glow of hope and joy
+with which the Sun of Righteousness has flooded the world, and the
+fatherly love and compassion with which the Old Testament and the New
+are replete, the divine plan of redemption, the psalms of praise and
+thanksgiving, the pity of Christ's words and acts, and his invitations
+to the weary and heavy-laden. In one view it is strange that pessimism
+should have comfort in the fellowship of pessimism, but so it is; there
+is luxury even in the sympathy of hate, and so Buddhist pessimism is a
+welcome guest among us, though our Communistic querulousness is more
+bitter.
+
+Once more, Buddhist occultism has found congenial fellowship in American
+spiritualism. Of late we hear less of spirit-rappings and far more of
+Theosophy. But this is only the same crude system with other names, and
+rendered more respectable by the cast-off garments of old Indian
+philosophy. There is a disposition in the more intellectual circles to
+assume a degree of disdain toward the crudeness of spiritualism and its
+vulgar familiarity with departed spirits, who must ever be disturbed by
+its beck and call; but it is confidently expected that the thousands,
+nay, as some say, millions, of American spiritualists will gladly
+welcome the name and the creed of Buddha.[89] It will be idle therefore
+to assume that the old sleepy system of Gautama has no chance in this
+wide-awake republic of the West.[90]
+
+I have already called attention to the special tactics of Buddhists just
+now in claiming that Christianity, having been of later origin, has
+borrowed its principal facts and its teachings. Let us examine the
+charge. It is a real tribute to the character of Christ that so many
+sects of false religionists have in all ages claimed Him either as a
+follower or as an incarnation of their respective deities. Others have
+acknowledged his teachings as belonging to their particular style and
+grade. The bitter and scathing calumny of Celsus, in the first
+centuries of our era, did not prevent numerous attempts to prove the
+identity of Christ's teachings with some of the most popular
+philosophies of the heathen world. Porphyry claimed that many of
+Christ's virtues were copied from Pythagoras. With like concession
+Mohammedanism included Jesus as one of the six great prophets, and
+confessedly the only sinless one among them all. Many a fanatic in the
+successive centuries has claimed to be a new incarnation of the Son of
+God. Hindus have named Him as an incarnation of Vishnu for the Western,
+as was Krishna for the Eastern World. As was indicated in the opening of
+this lecture, the Theosophists are making special claim to Him,[91] and
+are reviving the threadbare theory that He was a follower of Buddha.
+
+So strong an effort is made to prove that Christianity has borrowed both
+its divine leader and its essential doctrines from India, that a
+moment's attention may well be given to the question here. One
+allegation is that the Evangelists copied the Buddhist history and
+legends in their account of Christ's early life. Another is that the
+leaders of the Alexandrian Church worked over the gospel story at a
+later day, having felt more fully the influence of India at that great
+commercial centre. The two theories are inconsistent with each other,
+and both are inconsistent with the assumption that Christ Himself was a
+Buddhist, and taught the Buddhist doctrines, since this supposition
+would have obviated the need of any manipulation or fraud at any point.
+
+In replying as briefly as possible I shall endeavor to cover both
+allegations. In strong contrast with these cheap assertions of
+Alexandrian corruption and plagiarism is the frank admission of such
+keen critics as Renan, Weiss, Volkmar, Schenkel, and Hitzig,[92] that
+the gospel record as we have it, was written during a generation in
+which some of the companions of Jesus still lived. Renan says of Mark's
+Gospel that "it is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an
+eye-witness," and he asserts that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written
+"in substantially their present form by the men whose names they bear."
+These Gospels were the work of men who knew Jesus. Matthew was one of
+the Twelve; John in his Epistle speaks of himself as an eye-witness.
+They were written in a historic age and were open to challenge. They
+were nowhere contradicted in contemporary history. They fit their
+environment.
+
+How is it with the authenticity of Buddhist literature? Oldenberg says,
+"For the _when_ of things men of India have never had a proper organ,"
+and Max Mueller declares to the same effect, that "the idea of a
+faithful, literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental
+minds." He also informs us that there is not a single manuscript in
+India which is a thousand years old, and scarcely one that can claim
+five hundred years. For centuries after Gautama's time nothing was
+written; all was transmitted by word of mouth. Buddhists themselves say
+that the Pali canonical texts were written about 88 B.C.[93]
+
+Any fair comparison of the two histories should confine itself to the
+writings which are regarded as canonical respectively, and whose dates
+can be fixed. No more importance should be attached to the later
+Buddhist legends than to the "Apocryphal Gospels," or to the absurd
+"Christian Legends" which appeared in the middle ages. The Buddhist
+Canon was adopted by the Council of Patna 242 B.C. The legends which are
+generally compared with the canonical story of Christ are not included
+in that Canon, or at most very few of them. They are drawn from certain
+poetical books written much later, and holding about the same relation
+to the Buddhist Canon that the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained"
+of Milton bear to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Who
+would think of quoting "Paradise Lost" in any sober comparison of
+Biblical truth with the teachings of other religions?[94]
+
+Even the canonical literature, that which is supposed to contain the
+true history and teachings of Buddha, is far from authoritative, owing
+to the acknowledged habit--acknowledged even by the author of the
+"Dhammapada" of adding commentaries, notes, etc., to original teachings.
+Not only was this common among Buddhist writers, but even more
+surprising liberties were taken with the narrative. For example: The
+legend describing Buddha's leave-taking of his harem is clearly borrowed
+from an earlier story of Yasa, a wealthy young householder of Benares,
+who, becoming disgusted with his harem, left his sleeping dancing girls
+and fled to the Buddha for instruction. Davids and Oldenberg, in
+translating this legend from the "Mahavagga," say in a note, "A
+well-known incident in the life of Buddha has evidently been shaped
+after the model of this story;" and they declare that "_nowhere in the
+'Pali Pitakas' is this scene of Buddha's leave-taking mentioned_."
+
+As another evidence of the way in which fact and fiction have been mixed
+and manipulated for a purpose, one of the legends, which has often been
+presented as a parallel to the story of Christ, represents the Buddha as
+repelling the temptation of Mara by quoting texts of "scripture," and
+the scripture referred to was the "Dhammapada." But the "Dhammapada" was
+compiled hundreds of years after Buddha's death. Besides, there were no
+"scriptures" of any kind in his day, for nothing was written till two or
+three centuries later; and worse still, Buddha is made to quote his own
+subsequent teachings; for the "Dhammapada" claims to consist of the
+sacred words of the "enlightened one." Most of the legends of Buddhism
+were wholly written after the beginning of the Christian era, and it
+cannot be shown that any were written in their present form until two or
+three centuries of that era had elapsed. T.W. Rhys Davids says of the
+"Lalita Vistara" which contains a very large proportion of them, and one
+form of which is said to have been translated into Chinese in the first
+century A.D., "that there is no real proof that it existed in its
+present form before the year 600 A.D." The "Romantic Legend" cannot be
+traced farther back than the third century A.D. Oldenberg says: "No
+biography of Buddha has come down to us from ancient times, from the age
+of the Pali texts, and we can safely say that no such biography was in
+existence then." Beal declares that the Buddhist legend, as found in the
+various Epics of Nepaul, Thibet, and China, "is not framed after _any_
+Indian model of any date, but is to be found worked out, so to speak,
+among northern peoples, who were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the
+pedantic stories of the Brahmans. In the southern and primitive records
+the terms of the legend are wanting. _Buddha is not born of a royal
+family; he is not tempted before his enlightenment; he works no
+miracles, and he is not a Universal Saviour._"
+
+The chances are decidedly that if any borrowing has been done it was on
+the side of Buddhism. It has been asserted that thirty thousand
+Buddhist monks from Alexandria once visited Ceylon on the occasion of a
+great festival. This is absurd on the face of it; but that a Christian
+colony settled in Malabar at a very early period is attested by the
+presence of thousands of their followers even to this day.
+
+In discussing the specific charge of copying Buddhist legends in the
+gospel narratives, we are met at the threshold by insurmountable
+improbabilities. To some of these I ask a moment's attention. I shall
+not take the time to discuss in detail the alleged parallels which are
+paraded as proofs. To anyone who understands the spirit of Judaism and
+its attitude toward heathenism of all kinds, it is simply inconceivable
+that the Christian disciples, whose aim it was to propagate the faith of
+their Master in a Jewish community, should have borrowed old Indian
+legends, which, by the terms of the supposition, must have been widely
+known as such. And Buddhist apologists must admit that it is a little
+strange that the Scribes and Pharisees, who were intelligent, and as
+alert as they were bitter, should never have exposed this transparent
+plagiarism. The great concern of the Apostles was to prove to Jews and
+Gentiles that Jesus was the Christ of Old Testament prophecy. The whole
+drift of their preaching and their epistles went to show that the gospel
+history rested squarely and uncompromisingly on a Jewish basis. Peter
+and John, Stephen and Paul, constantly "reasoned with the Jews out of
+their own Scriptures." How unspeakably absurd is the notion that they
+were trying to palm off on those keen Pharisees a Messiah who, though in
+the outset at Nazareth he publicly traced his commission to Old
+Testament prophecy, was all the while copying an atheistic philosopher
+of India!
+
+It is equally inconceivable that the Christian fathers should have
+copied Buddhism. They resisted Persian mysticism as the work of the
+Devil, and it was in that mysticism, if anywhere, that Buddhist
+influence existed in the Levant. Whoever has read Tertullian's withering
+condemnation of Marcion may judge how far the fathers of the Church
+favored the heresies of the East. Augustine had himself been a Manichean
+mystic, and when after his conversion he became the great theologian of
+the Church, he must have known whether the teachings of the Buddha were
+being palmed off on the Christian world. The great leaders of that age
+were men of thorough scholarship and of the deepest moral earnestness.
+Many of them gave up their possessions and devoted their lives to the
+promotion of the truths which they professed. Scores of them sealed
+their faith by martyr deaths.
+
+But even if we were to accept the flippant allegation that they were all
+impostors, yet we should be met by an equally insurmountable difficulty
+in the utter silence of the able and bitter assailants of Christianity
+in the first two or three centuries. Celsus prepared himself for his
+well-known attack on Christianity with the utmost care, searching
+history, philosophy, and every known religion from which he could derive
+an argument against the Christian faith.
+
+Why did he not strike at the very root of the matter by exposing those
+stupid plagiarists who were attempting to play off upon the intelligence
+of the Roman world a clumsy imitation of the far-famed Buddha? It was
+the very kind of thing that the enemies of Christianity wanted. Why
+should the adroit Porphyry attempt to work up a few mere scraps of
+resemblance from the life of Pythagoras, when all he had to do was to
+lay his hand upon familiar legends which afforded an abundance of the
+very thing in demand?
+
+Again, it is to be remembered that Christianity has always been
+restrictive and opposed to admixtures with other systems. It repelled
+the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria, and it fought for two or three
+centuries against Gnosticism, Manichaeism, and similar heresies: and the
+assumption, in the face of all this, that the Christian Church went out
+of its way to copy Indian Buddhism, must be due either to gross
+ignorance or to reckless misrepresentation. On the other hand, it is in
+accordance with the very genius of Buddhism to borrow. It has absorbed
+every indigenous superstition and entered into partnership with every
+local religious system, from the Devil Worship of Burmah and Ceylon to
+the Taouism of China and the Shinto of Japan. In its long-continued
+contact with Christianity it has changed from the original atheism of
+Gautama to various forms of theism, and in some of its sects, at least,
+from a stanch insistance on self-help alone to an out-and-out doctrine
+of salvation by faith. This is true of the Shin and Yodo sects of
+Japan. From recognizing no God at all at first, Buddhism had, by the
+seventh century A.D., a veritable Trinity, with attributes resembling
+those of the Triune God of the Christians, and by the tenth century it
+had five trinities with One Supreme Adi-Buddha over them all. Everyone
+may judge for himself whether these later interpolations of the system
+were borrowed from the New Testament Trinity, which had been proclaimed
+through all the East ten centuries before. Buddhism is still absorbing
+foreign elements through the aid of its various apologists. Sir Edwin
+Arnold has greatly added to the force of its legend by the Christian
+phrases and Christian conceptions which he has read into it. Toward the
+close of the "Light of Asia" he also introduces into the Buddha's sermon
+at Kapilavastu the teachings of Herbert Spencer and others of our own
+time.
+
+But altogether the most stupendous improbability lies against the whole
+assumption that Christ and his followers based their "essential
+doctrines" on the teachings of the Buddha. The early Buddhism was
+atheistic: this is the common verdict of Davids, Childers, Sir Monier
+Williams, Kellogg, and many others. The Buddha declared that "without
+cause and unknown is the life of man in this world," and he recognized
+no higher being to whom he owed reverence. "The Buddhist Catechism," by
+Subhadra, shows that modern Buddhism has no recognition of God.
+
+It says (page 58): "Buddhism teaches the reign of perfect goodness and
+wisdom _without a personal God_, continuance of individuality _without
+an immortal soul_, eternal happiness without a local heaven, the way of
+salvation without a vicarious saviour, redemption worked out by each one
+himself without any prayers, sacrifices, and penances, without the
+ministry of ordained priests, without the intercession of saints,
+_without divine mercy_." And then, by way of authentication, it adds:
+"These, and many others which have become the fundamental doctrines of
+the Buddhist religion, were recognized by the Buddha in the night of his
+enlightenment under the Boddhi-tree." And yet we are told that this is
+the system which Christ and his followers copied. Compare this passage
+with the Lord's Prayer, or with the discourse upon the lilies, and its
+lesson of trust in God the Father of all! I appeal not merely to
+Christian men, but to _any_ man who has brains and common-sense, was
+there ever so preposterous an attempt to establish an identity of
+doctrines?
+
+But what is the evidence found in the legends themselves? Several
+leading Oriental scholars, and men not at all biased in favor of
+Christianity, have carefully examined the subject, and have decided that
+there is no connection whatever. Professor Seydel, of Leipsic, who has
+given the most scientific plea for the so-called coincidences, of which
+he claims there are fifty-one, has classified them as: 1, Those which
+may have been merely accidental, having arisen from similar causes, and
+not necessarily implying any borrowing on either side; 2, those which
+seem to have been borrowed from the one narrative or the other; and 3,
+those which he thinks were clearly copied by the Christian writers. In
+this last class he names but five out of fifty-one.
+
+Kuenen, who has little bias in favor of Christianity, and who has made a
+very thorough examination of Seydel's parallels, has completely refuted
+these five.[95] And speaking of the whole question he says: "I think we
+may safely affirm that we must abstain from assigning to Buddhism the
+smallest direct influence on the origin of Christianity." He also says
+of similar theories of de Bunsen: "A single instance is enough to teach
+us that inventive fancy plays the chief part in them."[96]
+
+Rhys Davids, whom Subhadra's "Buddhist Catechism" approves as the chief
+exponent of Buddhism, says on the same subject: "I can find no evidence
+of any actual or direct communication of these ideas common to Buddhism
+and Christianity from the East to the West." Oldenberg denies their
+early date, and Beal denies them an Indian origin of any date.
+
+
+_Contrasts between Buddhism and Christianity._
+
+Rhys Davids has pointed out the fact that, while Buddhism in some points
+is more nearly allied to Christianity than any other system, yet in
+others it is the farthest possible from it in its spirit and its
+tendency. If we strike out those ethical principles which, to a large
+extent, are the common heritage of mankind, revealed in the
+understanding and the conscience, we shall find in what remains an
+almost total contrariety to the Christian faith. To give a few examples
+only.
+
+1. Christ taught the existence and glory of God as Supreme, the Creator
+and Father, the righteous Judge. His supreme mission to reconcile all
+men to God was the key-note of all His ministry. By His teaching the
+hearts of men are lifted up above all earthly conceptions to the worship
+of infinite purity, and to the comforting assurance of more than a
+father's care and love. Buddhism, on the contrary, knows nothing of God,
+offers no heavenly incentive, no divine help. Leading scholars are
+agreed that, whatever it may be now, the original orthodox Buddhism was
+essentially atheistic. It despised the idea of divine help, and taught
+men to rely upon themselves. While, therefore, Buddhism never rose above
+the level of earthly resources, and contemplated only lower orders of
+being, Christianity begins with God as supreme, to be worshipped and
+loved with all the heart, mind, and strength, while our neighbors are to
+be loved as ourselves.
+
+2. Christ represented Himself as having pre-existed from the foundation
+of the world, as having been equal with God in the glory of heaven, all
+of which He resigned that He might enter upon the humiliation of our
+earthly state, and raise us up to eternal life. He distinctly claimed
+oneness and equality with the Father. Buddha claimed no such antecedent
+glory; he spoke of himself as a man merely; the whole aim of his
+teaching was to show in himself what every man might accomplish. Later
+legends ascribe to him a sort of pre-existence, in which five hundred
+and thirty successive lives were passed, sometimes as a man, sometimes
+as a god, many times as an animal. But even these claims were not made
+by Buddha himself--except so far as was implied by the common doctrine
+of transmigration.
+
+Furthermore, in relation to the alleged pre-existences, according to
+strict Buddhist doctrine it was not really he who had gone before, it
+was only a Kharma or character that had exchanged hands many times
+before it could be taken up by the real and conscious Buddha born upon
+the earth. Still further, even after the beginning of his earthly life
+he lived for many years in what, according to his own teaching, was
+heinous sin, all of which is fatal to the theory of pre-existent
+holiness.
+
+3. Christ is a real Saviour; His atonement claimed to be a complete
+ransom from the penalty of sin, and by His teaching and example, and by
+the power of the Holy Spirit, He overcomes the power of sin itself,
+transforming the soul into His own image. Buddha, on the other hand, did
+not claim to achieve salvation for any except himself, though Mr. Arnold
+and others constantly use such terms as "help" and "salvation." Nothing
+of the kind is claimed by the early Buddhist doctrines; they plainly
+declare that purity and impurity belong to one's self, and that no one
+can purify another.
+
+4. Christ emphatically declared Himself a helper, even in this life:
+"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
+you rest." He promised also to send his Spirit as a comforter, as a
+supporter of his disciples' faith, as a guide and teacher, at all times
+caring for their need; in whatever exigency his grace would be
+sufficient for them. On the contrary, Buddha taught his followers that
+no power in heaven or earth could help them; the victory must be their
+own. "How can we hope to amend a life," says Bishop Carpenter, "which is
+radically bad, by the aid of a system which teaches that man's highest
+aim should be to escape from life? All that has been said against the
+ascetic and non-worldly attitude of Christianity might be urged with
+additional force against Buddhism. It is full of the strong, sweet,
+pathetic compassion which looks upon life with eyes full of tears, but
+only to turn them away from it again, as from an unsolved and insoluble
+riddle." And he substantiates his position by quoting Reville and
+Oldenberg. Reville reaches this similar conclusion: "Buddhism, born on
+the domain of polytheism, has fought against it, not by rising above
+nature in subordinating it to a single sovereign spirit, but by
+reproving nature in principle, and condemning life itself as an evil and
+a misfortune. Buddhism does not measure itself against this or that
+abuse, does not further the development or reformation of society,
+either directly or indirectly, for the very simple reason that it turns
+away from the world on principle."
+
+Oldenberg, one of the most thorough of Pali scholars, says: "For the
+lower order of the people, for those born to toil in manual labor,
+hardened by the struggle for existence, the announcement of the
+connection of misery with all forms of existence was not made, nor was
+the dialectic of the law of the painful concatenation of causes and
+effects calculated to satisfy 'the poor in spirit.' 'To the wise
+belongeth this law,' it is said, 'not to the foolish.' Very unlike the
+work of that Man who 'suffered little children to come unto Him, for of
+such is the kingdom of God.' For children, and those who are like
+children, the arms of Buddha are not opened."
+
+5. Christ and his disciples set before men the highest motives of life.
+The great end of man was to love God supremely, and one's neighbor as
+himself. Every true disciple was to consider himself an almoner and
+dispenser of the divine goodness to his race. It was this that inspired
+the sublime devotion of Paul and of thousands since his time. It is the
+secret principle of all the noblest deeds of men. Gautama had no such
+high and unselfish aim. He found no inspiring motive above the level of
+humanity. His system concentrates all thought and effort on one's own
+life--virtually on the attainment of utter indifference to all things
+else. The early zeal of Gautama and his followers in preaching to their
+fellow-men was inconsistent with the plain doctrines taught at a later
+day. If in any case there were those who, like Paul, burned with desire
+to save their fellow-men, all we can say is, they were better than their
+creed. Such was the spirit of the Gospel, rather than the idle and
+useless torpor of the Buddhist order. "Here, according to Buddhists,"
+says Spence Hardy, "is a mere code of proprieties, an occasional opiate,
+a plan for being free from discomfort, a system for personal profit."
+Buddhism certainly taught the repression of human activity and
+influence. Instead of saying, "Let your light so shine before men that
+they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father who is in heaven,"
+or "Work while the day lasts," it said, "If thou keepest thyself silent
+as a broken gong, thou hast attained Nirvana." "To wander about like the
+rhinoceros alone," was enjoined as the pathway of true wisdom.
+
+6. Christ taught that life, though attended with fearful alternatives,
+is a glorious birthright, with boundless possibilities and promise of
+good to ourselves and others. Buddhism makes life an evil which it is
+the supreme end of man to conquer and cut off from the disaster of
+re-birth. Christianity opens a path of usefulness, holiness, and
+happiness in this life, and a career of triumph and glory in the endless
+ages to come. Both Buddhism and Hinduism are worse than other
+pessimistic systems in their fearful law of entailment through countless
+transmigrations, each of which must be a struggle.
+
+7. Christ, according to the New Testament, "ever liveth to make
+intercession for us," and the Holy Spirit represents Him constantly as
+an ever-living power in the world, to regenerate, save, and bless. But
+Buddha is dead, and his very existence is a thing of the past. Only
+traditions and the influence of his example can help men in the struggle
+of life. Said Buddha to his disciples: "As a flame blown by violence
+goes out and cannot be reckoned, even so a Buddha delivered from name
+and body disappears and cannot be reckoned as existing." Again, he said
+to his Order, "Mendicants, that which binds the Teacher (himself) is cut
+off, but his body still remains. While this body shall remain he will be
+seen by gods and men, but after the termination of life, upon the
+dissolution of the body, neither gods nor men shall see him."
+
+8. Christ taught the sacredness of the human body. "Know ye not that
+your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?" said His
+great Apostle. But Buddhism says: "As men deposit filth upon a dungheap
+and depart regretting nothing, wanting nothing, so will I depart leaving
+this body filled with vile vapors." Christ and His disciples taught the
+triumphant resurrection of the body in spiritual form and purity after
+His own image. The Buddhist forsakes utterly and forever the deserted,
+cast-off mortality, while still he looks only for another habitation
+equally mortal and corruptible, and possibly that of a lower animal.
+Thus, through all these lines of contrast, and many others that might be
+named, there appear light and life and blessedness on the one hand, and
+gloom and desolation on the other.
+
+The gloomy nature of Buddhism is well expressed in Hardy's "Legends and
+Theories of Buddhism" as follows: "The system of Buddhism is
+humiliating, cheerless, man-marring, soul-crushing. It tells me that I
+am not a reality, that I have no soul. It tells me that there is no
+unalloyed happiness, no plenitude of enjoyment, no perfect unbroken
+peace in the possession of any being whatever, from the highest to the
+lowest, in any world. It tells me that I may live myriads of millions of
+ages, and that not in any of those ages, nor in any portion of any age,
+can I be free from apprehension as to the future, until I attain to a
+state of unconsciousness; and that in order to arrive at this
+consummation I must turn away from all that is pleasant, or lovely, or
+instructive, or elevating, or sublime. It tells me by voices ever
+repeated, like the ceaseless sound of the sea-wave on the shore, that I
+shall be subject to sorrow, impermanence, and unreality so long as I
+exist, and yet that I cannot cease to exist, nor for countless ages to
+come, as I can only attain nirvana in the time of a Supreme Buddha. In
+my distress I ask for the sympathy of an all-wise and all-powerful
+friend. But I am mocked instead by the semblance of relief, and am told
+to look to Buddha, who has ceased to exist; to the Dharma that never was
+in existence, and to the Sangha, the members of which are real
+existences, but like myself are partakers of sorrow and sin."
+
+How shall we measure the contrast between all this and the ecstacies of
+Christian hope, which in various forms are expressed in the Epistles of
+Paul; the expected crown of righteousness, the eternal weight of glory;
+heirship with Christ in an endless inheritance; the house not made with
+hands; the General Assembly of the first born? Even in the midst of
+earthly sorrows and persecutions he could say, "Nay, in all things we
+are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded
+that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor
+powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
+nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of
+God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 80: It is by no means certain that Buddha's followers, in
+carrying out his system, have not lapsed into the old notions of
+merit-making asceticism to greater or less extent, and have become
+virtually very much like the torpid and useless fakirs of the old
+Hinduism.]
+
+[Footnote 81: The _Jataka_ legends of Ceylon, dating in their present
+form about 500 A.D., greatly enlarge the proportions of this Northern
+legend, making the elephant over seven thousand miles high, and widening
+out the surrounding army to one hundred and sixty four miles.]
+
+[Footnote 82: Of the _Romantic Legend_ found in Nepaul, Beall's
+translation is probably the best.]
+
+[Footnote 83: See Appendix of _Origin and Growth of Religion as
+illustrated in Buddhism_.]
+
+[Footnote 84: See _Buddhism_, pp. 110-115.]
+
+[Footnote 85: _Buddhism_, p. 114.]
+
+[Footnote 86: Pp. 265-285.]
+
+[Footnote 87: It is the boast of the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_, that
+strange mixture of Western spiritualism with Oriental mysticism, that
+his system despises the tame "goody, goody" spirit of Christianity, and
+deals with the endless growth of mind.]
+
+[Footnote 88: _Light of Asia_.]
+
+[Footnote 89: Mr. Sinnett, in his _Esoteric Buddhism_, expressed the
+idea that it was high time that the crudities of spiritualism should be
+corrected by the more philosophic occultism of the East.]
+
+[Footnote 90: The points of contact between Buddhism and certain forms
+of Western thought have been ably treated by Professor S.H. Kellogg, in
+the _Light of Asia and Light of the World_.]
+
+[Footnote 91: A recent tract has appeared, entitled _Theosophy the
+Religion of Jesus_.]
+
+[Footnote 92: Cited by Professor Kellogg.]
+
+[Footnote 93: Professor T.W. Rhys Davids, in his introduction to
+_Buddhism_, enumerates the following sources of knowledge concerning the
+early Buddhism:
+
+1. The _Lalita Vistara_, a Sanscrit work of the Northern Buddhists "full
+of extravagant fictions" concerning the early portion of Gautama's life.
+Davids compares it to Milton's _Paradise Regained_, as a source of
+history, and claims that although parts of it were translated into
+Chinese in the first century of our era, there is no proof of its
+existence in its present form earlier than the sixth century A.D.
+
+2. Two Thibetan versions, based chiefly on the _Lalita Vistara_.
+
+3. The _Romantic Legend_, from the Sanscrit of the Northern Buddhists,
+translated into Chinese in the sixth century A.D.; English version by
+Beal published in 1875. This also is an extravagant poem. This and the
+_Lalita Vistara_ embrace most of the alleged parallels to the Life of
+Christ.
+
+4. The original Pali text of the _Commentary on the Jatakas_, written in
+Ceylon probably about the fifth century of our era. Davids considers its
+account down to the time of Gautama's return to Kapilavastu, "the best
+authority we have." It contains word for word almost the whole of the
+life of Gautama given by Turnour, from a commentary on the
+_Buddhavansa_, "which is the account of the Buddhas contained in the
+second Pitaka."
+
+5. An account taken by Spence Hardy from Cingalese books of a
+comparatively modern date.
+
+6. An English translation by Bigandet of a Burmese account, which was
+itself a translation of unknown date made from a Pali version.
+
+7. An account of the death of Gautama, given in Pali and said to be the
+oldest of all the sources. It is full of wonders created by the fancy of
+the unknown author, but differs widely from the fancy sketches of the
+_Lalita Vistara_ of the North.
+
+8. A translation by Mr. Alabaster of a Siamese account. It does not
+claim to be exact.]
+
+[Footnote 94: T.W. Rhys Davids illustrates the worthlessness of poetic
+narrations as grounds of argument by quoting from Milton's _Paradise
+Regained_ this mere fancy sketch of the accompaniments of Christ's
+temptation:
+
+          "And either tropic now
+   'Gan thunder and both ends of heaven; the clouds
+   From many a horrid rift abortive poured
+   Fierce rain with lightning mixed, water with fire
+   In ruin reconciled; nor slept the winds
+   Within their stony caves, but rush'd abroad
+   From the four hinges of the world, and fell
+   On the vex'd wilderness; whose tallest pines
+   Tho' rooted deep as high and sturdiest oaks,
+   Bowed their stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts
+   Or torn up sheer. Ill wast Thou shrouded then,
+   O patient Son of God, yet stood'st alone
+   Unshaken! nor yet staid the terror there;
+   Infernal ghosts and hellish furies round
+   Environed Thee; some howl'd, some yell'd, some shriek'd,
+   Some bent at Thee their fiery darts, while Thou
+   Sat'st unappall'd in calm and sinless peace."
+                                                          Book iv.]
+
+[Footnote 95: See _National Religion and Universal Religion_, p. 362.]
+
+[Footnote 96: _Hibbert Lectures_, 1882.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI.
+
+MOHAMMEDANISM PAST AND PRESENT
+
+
+It has been the fate of every great religious teacher to have his memory
+enveloped in a haze of posthumous myths. Even the Gospel history was
+embellished with marvellous apocryphal legends of the childhood of
+Christ. Buddhism very soon began to be overgrown with a truly Indian
+luxuriance of fables, miracles, and pre-existent histories extending
+through five hundred past transmigrations. In like manner, the followers
+of Mohammed traced the history of their prophet and of their sacred city
+back to the time of Adam. And Mohammedan legends were not a slow and
+natural growth, as in the case of most other faiths. There was a set
+purpose in producing them without much delay. The conquests of Islam
+over the Eastern empires had been very rapid. The success of Mohammed's
+cause and creed had exceeded the expectations of his most sanguine
+followers. In the first half of the seventh century--nay, between the
+years 630 and 638 A.D.--Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo had fallen
+before the arms of Omar and his lieutenant "Khaled the Invincible," and
+in 639 Egypt was added to the realm of the Khalifs. Persia was conquered
+in A.D. 640.
+
+It seemed scarcely possible that achievements so brilliant could have
+been the work of a mere unlettered Arab and his brave but unpretentious
+successors. The personnel of the prophet must be raised to an adequate
+proportion to such a history. Special requisition was made therefore for
+incidents. The devout fancy of the faithful was taxed for the
+picturesque and marvellous; and the system which Mohammed taught, and
+the very place in which he was born, must needs be raised to a
+supernatural dignity and importance. Accordingly, the history of the
+prophet was traced back to the creation of the world, when God was said
+to have imparted to a certain small portion of earthy dust a mysterious
+spark of light. When Adam was formed this particular luminous dust
+appeared in his forehead, and from him it passed in a direct line to
+Abraham. From Abraham it descended, not to Isaac, but to Ishmael; and
+this was the cause of Sarah's jealousy and the secret of all Abraham's
+domestic troubles. Of course, this bright spark of heavenly effulgence
+reappearing on the brow of each lineal progenitor, was designed
+ultimately for Mohammed, in whom it shone forth with tenfold brightness.
+
+There is real historic evidence of the fact that the Vale of Mecca had
+for a long time been regarded as sacred ground. It was a sort of forest
+or extensive grove, a place for holding treaties among the tribes, a
+common ground of truce and a refuge from the avenger. It was also a
+place for holding annual fairs, for public harangues, and the
+competitive recitation of ballads and other poems. But all this, however
+creditable to the culture of the Arab tribes, was not sufficient for
+the purposes of Islam. The Kaaba, which had been a rude heathen temple,
+was raised to the dignity of a shrine of the true God, or rather it was
+restored, for it was said to have been built by Adam after a divine
+pattern. The story was this: At the time of the Fall, Adam and Eve had
+somehow become separated. Adam had wandered away to Ceylon, where a
+mountain peak still bears his name. But having been divinely summoned to
+Mecca to erect this first of earthly temples, he unexpectedly found Eve
+residing upon a hill near the city, and thenceforward the Valley of
+Mecca became their paradise regained. At the time of the Deluge the
+Kaaba was buried in mud, and for centuries afterward it was overgrown
+with trees.
+
+When Hagar and her son Ishmael were driven out from the household of
+Abraham, they wandered by chance to this very spot, desolate and
+forsaken. While Hagar was diligently searching for water, more anxious
+to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking
+the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in
+his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem,
+whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim.
+As Ishmael grew to manhood and established his home in the sacred city,
+Abraham was summoned to join him, that they together might rebuild the
+Kaaba. But in the succeeding generations apostacy again brought ruin
+upon the place, although the heathen Koreish still performed sacred
+rites there--especially that of sevenfold processions around the sacred
+stone. This blackened object, supposed to be an aerolite which fell
+ages ago, is still regarded as sacred, and the sevenfold circuits of
+Mohammedan pilgrims take the place of the ancient heathen rites.
+
+Laying aside these crude legends, and confining our attention to
+probable history, I can only hope, in the compass of a single lecture,
+to barely touch upon a series of prominent points without any very
+careful regard to logical order. This will perhaps insure the greatest
+clearness as well as the best economy of time. And first, we will glance
+at the personal history of Mohammed--a history, it should be remembered,
+which was not committed to writing till two hundred years after the
+prophet's death, and which depends wholly on the enthusiastic traditions
+of his followers. Born in the year 561 A.D., of a recently widowed
+mother, he appears to have been from the first a victim of epilepsy, or
+some kindred affection whose paroxysms had much to do with his
+subsequent experiences and his success. The various tribes of Arabia
+were mostly given to a form of polytheistic idolatry in which, however,
+the conception of a monotheistic supremacy was still recognized. Most
+scholars, including Renan, insist on ascribing to the Arabians, in
+common with all other Shemitic races, a worship of one God as Supreme,
+though the Arabian Allah, like the Baal of Canaan and Phoenicia, was
+supposed to be attended by numerous inferior deities. Though Islam
+undoubtedly borrowed the staple of its truths from the Old Testament,
+yet there was a short confession strikingly resembling the modern creed
+of to-day, which had been upon the lips of many generations of Arabians
+before Mohammed's time. Thus it ran: "I dedicate myself to thy service,
+O Allah. Thou hast no companion except the companion of whom thou art
+master and of whatever is his."
+
+A society known as the "Hanifs" existed at the time of Mohammed's early
+manhood, and we know not how long before, whose aim was to bring back
+their countrymen from the degrading worship and cruel practices of
+heathenism to the purity of monotheistic worship. The old faith had been
+reinforced in the minds of the more intelligent Arabs by the truths
+learned from Jewish exiles, who, as early as the Babylonish captivity,
+had found refuge in Arabia; and it is a striking fact that the four
+Hanif leaders whom the young Mohammed found on joining their society,
+were pleading for the restoration of the faith of Abraham. All these
+leaders refused to follow his standard when he began to claim supremacy
+as a prophet; three of them were finally led to Christianity, and the
+fourth died in a sort of quandary between the Christian faith and Islam.
+The first two, Waraka and Othman, were cousins of Mohammed's wife, and
+the third, Obadulla, was his own cousin. Zaid, the last of the four,
+presents to us a very pathetic picture. He lived and died in perplexity.
+Banished from Mecca by those who feared his conscientious censorship, he
+lived by himself on a neighboring hillside, an earnest seeker after
+truth to the last; and he died with the prayer on his lips, "O God, if I
+knew what form of worship is most pleasing to thee, so would I serve
+thee, but I know it not." It is to the credit of Mohammed that he
+cherished a profound respect for this man. "I will pray for him," he
+said; "in the Resurrection he also will gather a church around him."[97]
+
+In spite of his maladies and the general delicacy of his nervous
+organization, Mohammed evinced in early youth a degree of energy and
+intellectual capacity which augured well for his future success in some
+important sphere. Fortune also favored him in many ways. His success as
+manager of the commercial caravans of a wealthy widow led to his
+acceptance as her husband. She was fourteen years his senior, but she
+seems to have entirely won his affections and to have proved
+indispensable, not only as a patroness, but as a wise and faithful
+counsellor. So long as she lived she was the good spirit who called
+forth his better nature, and kept him from those low impulses which
+subsequently wrought the ruin of his character, even in the midst of his
+successes. On the one hand, it is an argument in favor of the sincerity
+of Mohammed's prophetic claims, that this good and true woman was the
+first to believe in him as a prophet of God; but, on the other hand, we
+must remember that she was a loving wife, and that that charity which
+thinketh no evil is sometimes utterly blind to evil when found in this
+tender relation.
+
+We have no reason to doubt that Mohammed was a sincere "Hanif." Having
+means and leisure for study, and being of a bright and thoughtful mind,
+he doubtless entered with enthusiasm into the work of reforming the
+idolatrous customs of his countrymen. From this high standpoint, and
+free from superstitious fear of a heathen priesthood, he was prepared to
+estimate in their true enormity the degrading rites which he everywhere
+witnessed under the abused name of religion. That hatred of idolatry
+which became the main spring of his subsequent success, was thus
+nourished and strengthened as an honest and abiding sentiment. He was,
+moreover, of a contemplative--we may say, of a religious--turn of mind.
+His maladies gave him a tinge of melancholy, and, like the Buddha, he
+showed a characteristic thoughtfulness bordering upon the morbid.
+Becoming more and more a reformer, he followed the example of many other
+reformers by withdrawing at stated times to a place of solitude for
+meditation; at least such is the statement of his followers, though
+there are evidences that he took his family with him, and that he may
+have been seeking refuge from the heat. However this may have been, the
+place chosen was a neighboring cave, in whose cool shade he not only
+spent the heated hours of the day, but sometimes a succession of days
+and nights.
+
+Perhaps the confinement increased the violence of his convulsions, and
+the vividness and power of the strange phantasmagorias which during his
+paroxysms passed through his mind. It was from one of these terrible
+attacks that his alleged call to the prophetic office was dated. The
+prevailing theories of his time ascribed all such experiences to the
+influence of supernatural spirits, either good or evil, and the sufferer
+was left to the alternative of assuming either that he had received
+messages from heaven, or that he had been a victim of the devil. After
+a night of greater suffering and more thrilling visions than he had ever
+experienced before, Mohammed chose the more favorable interpretation,
+and announced to his sympathizing wife Kadijah that he had received from
+Gabriel a solemn call to become the Prophet of God.
+
+There has been endless discussion as to how far he may have been
+self-deceived in making this claim, and how far he may have been guilty
+of conscious imposture. Speculation is useless, since on the one hand we
+cannot judge a man of that age and that race by the rigid standards of
+our own times; and on the other, we are forbidden to form a too
+favorable judgment by the subsequent developments of Mohammed's
+character and life, in regard to which no other interpretation than that
+of conscious fraud seems possible.[98]
+
+Aside from the previous development and influence of a monotheistic
+reform, and the favoring circumstance of a fortunate marriage, he found
+his way prepared by the truths which had been made known in Arabia by
+both Jews and Christians. The Jews had fled to the Arabian Peninsula
+from the various conquerors who had laid waste Jerusalem and overrun the
+territories of the Ten Tribes. At a later day, many Christians had also
+found an asylum there from the persecutions of hostile bishops and
+emperors. Sir William Muir has shown how largely the teachings of the
+Koran are grounded upon those of the Old and New Testaments.[99] All
+that is best in Mohammedanism is clearly borrowed from Judaism and
+Christianity. Mohammed was illiterate and never claimed originality.
+Indeed, he plead his illiteracy as a proof of direct inspiration. A far
+better explanation would be found in the knowledge derived from inspired
+records, penned long before and under different names.
+
+The prophet was fortunate not only in the possession of truths thus
+indirectly received, but in the fact that both Jews and Christians had
+lapsed from a fair representation of the creeds which they professed.
+The Jews in Arabia had lost the true spirit of their sacred scriptures,
+and were following their own perverted traditions rather than the
+oracles of God. They had lost the vitality and power of the truths
+revealed to their fathers, and were destitute of moral earnestness and
+all spiritual life. On the other hand, the Christian sects had fallen
+into low superstitions and virtual idolatry. The Trinity, as they
+represented it, gave to Mohammed the impression that the Virgin Mary,
+"Mother of God," was one of the three persons of the Trinity, and that
+the promise of the coming Paraclete might very plausibly be appropriated
+by himself.[100] The prevailing worship of pictures, images, and relics
+appeared in his vision as truly idolatrous as the polytheism of the
+heathen Koreish. It was clear to him that there was a call for some
+zealous iconoclast to rise up and deliver his country from idolatry. The
+whole situation seemed auspicious. Arabia was ripe for a sweeping
+reformation. It appears strange to us, at this late day, that the
+churches of Christendom, even down to the seventh century, should have
+failed to christianize Arabia, though they had carried the Gospel even
+to Spain and to Britain on the west, and to India and China on the east.
+If they had imagined that the deserts of the Peninsula were not
+sufficiently important to demand attention, they certainly learned their
+mistake; for now the sad day of reckoning had come, when swarms of
+fanatics should issue from those deserts like locusts, and overrun their
+Christian communities, humble their bishops, appropriate their sacred
+temples, and reduce their despairing people to the alternatives of
+apostacy, tribute, slavery, or the sword.
+
+It seems equally strange that the great empires which had carried their
+conquests so far on every hand had neglected to conquer Arabia. It was,
+indeed, comparatively isolated; it certainly did not lie in the common
+paths of the conquerors; doubtless it appeared barren, and by no means a
+tempting prize; and withal it was a difficult field for a successful
+campaign. But from whatever reason, the tribes of Arabia had never been
+conquered. Various expeditions had won temporary successes, but the
+proud Arab could boast that his country had never been brought into
+permanent subjection.[101] Meanwhile the heredity of a thousand years
+had strengthened the valor of the Arab warrior. He was accustomed to the
+saddle from his very infancy; he was almost a part of his horse. He was
+trained to the use of arms as a robber, when not engaged in tribal wars.
+His whole activity, his all-absorbing interest, was in hostile forays.
+He knew no fear; he had no scruples. He had been taught to feel that, as
+a son of Ishmael every man's hand was turned against him, and of simple
+right his hand might be turned against every man.
+
+Nor was this all. The surrounding nations, east and west, had long been
+accustomed to employ these sons of the desert as mercenary soldiers.
+They had all had a hand in training them for their terrible work, by
+imparting to them a knowledge of their respective countries, their
+resources, their modes of warfare, and their points of weakness. How
+many nations have thus paved the way to their own destruction by
+calling in allies, who finally became their masters![102]
+
+On Mohammed's part, there is no evidence that at the outset he
+contemplated a military career. At first a reformer, then a prophet, he
+was driven to arms in self-defence against his persecutors, and he was
+fortunate in being able to profit by a certain jealousy which existed
+between the rival cities of Mecca and Medina. Fleeing from Mecca with
+only one follower, Abu Bekr, leaving the faithful Ali to arrange his
+affairs while he and his companion were hidden in a cave, he found on
+reaching Medina a more favorable reception. He soon gathered a
+following, which enabled him to gain a truce from the Meccans for ten
+years; and when they on their part violated the truce, he was able to
+march upon their city with a force which defied all possible resistance,
+and he entered Mecca in triumph. Medina had been won partly by the
+supposed credentials of the prophet, but mainly by jealousy of the rival
+city. Mecca yielded to a superior force of arms, but in the end became
+the honored capital and shrine of Islam.
+
+From this time the career of Mohammed was wholly changed. He was now an
+ambitious conqueror, and here as before, the question how far he may
+have sincerely interpreted his remarkable fortune as a call of God to
+subdue the idolatrous nations, must remain for the present unsettled.
+Possibly further light may be thrown upon it as we proceed. Let us
+consider some of the changes which appear in the development of this
+man's character. If we set out with that high ideal which would seem to
+be demanded as a characteristic of a great religious teacher, and
+certainly of one claiming to be a prophet of God, we ought to expect
+that his character would steadily improve in all purity, humanity,
+truthfulness, charity, and godlikeness. The test of character lies in
+its trend. If the founder of a religion has not grown nobler and better
+under the operation of his own system, that fact is the strongest
+possible condemnation of the system. A good man generally feels that he
+can afford to be magnanimous and pitiful in proportion to his victories
+and his success. But Mohammed became relentless as his power increased.
+He had at first endeavored to win the Arabian Jews to his standard. He
+had adopted their prophets and much of the Old Testament teachings; he
+had insisted upon the virtual identity of the two religions. But having
+failed in his overtures, and meanwhile having gained superior power, he
+waged against them the most savage persecution. On one occasion he
+ordered the massacre of a surrendered garrison of six hundred Jewish
+soldiers. At another time he put to the most inhuman torture a leader
+who had opposed his cause; in repeated instances he instigated the crime
+of assassination.[103] In early life he had been engaged in a peaceful
+caravan trade, and all his influence had been cast in favor of universal
+security as against the predatory habits of the heathen Arabs; but on
+coming to power he himself resorted to robbery to enrich his exchequer.
+Sales mentions twenty-seven of these predatory expeditions against
+caravans, in which Mohammed was personally present.[104]
+
+The biographers of his early life represent him as a man of a natural
+kindness of disposition, and a sensitive temperament almost bordering on
+timidity. Though not particularly genial, he was fond of children, and
+had at first, as his recorded utterances show, frequent impulses of pity
+and magnanimity. But he became hardened as success crowned his career.
+The temperateness which characterized his early pleadings and
+remonstrances with those who differed from him, gave place to bitter
+anathemas; and there was rooted in his personal character that
+relentless bigotry which has been the key-note of the most intolerant
+system known upon the earth.
+
+A still more marked change occurred in the increasing sensuality of
+Mohammed. Such lenient apologists as E. Bosworth Smith and Canon Taylor
+have applied their most skilful upholstery to the defects of his
+scandalous morals. Mr. Smith has even undertaken to palliate his
+appropriation of another man's wife, and the blasphemy of his pretended
+revelation in which he made God justify his passion.[105] These authors
+base their chief apologies upon comparisons between Mohammed and the
+worse depravity of the heathen Arabs, or they balance accounts with some
+of his acknowledged virtues.
+
+But the case baffles all such advocacy. The real question is, what was
+the _drift_ of the prophet's character? What was the influence of his
+professed principles on his own life? It cannot be denied that his moral
+trend was downward. If we credit the traditions of his own followers, he
+had lived a virtuous life as the husband of one wife,[106] and that for
+many years. But after the death of Kadijah he entered upon a career of
+polygamy in violation of his own law. He had fixed the limit for all
+Moslems at four lawful wives; and in spite of the arguments of R.
+Bosworth Smith, we must regard it as a most damning after-thought that
+made the first and only exception to accommodate his own weakness. By
+that act he placed himself beyond the help of all sophistry, and took
+his true place in the sober judgment of mankind. And by a law which is
+as unerring as the law of gravitation, he became more and more sensual
+as age advanced. At the time of his death he was the husband of eleven
+wives. We are not favored with a list of his concubines:[107] we only
+know that his system placed no limit upon the number.[108] Now, if a
+prophet claiming direct inspiration could break his own inspired laws
+for his personal accommodation; if, when found guilty of adultery, he
+could compel his friend and follower to divorce his wife that he might
+take her; if upon each violation of purity and decency he did not shrink
+from the blasphemy of claiming a special revelation which made God the
+abettor of his vices, and even represented Him as reproving and
+threatening his wives for their just complaints--if all this does not
+stamp a man as a reckless impostor, what further turpitude is required?
+
+At the same time it is evident that constant discrimination is demanded
+in judging of the character of Mohammed. It is not necessary to assume
+that he was wholly depraved at first, or to deny that for a time he was
+the good husband that he is represented to have been, or that he was a
+sincere and enthusiastic reformer, or even that he may have interpreted
+some of his _early_ hallucinations as mysterious messages from heaven.
+At various times in his life he doubtless displayed noble sentiments and
+performed generous acts. But when we find him dictating divine
+communications with deliberate purpose for the most villainous objects,
+when we find the messages of Gabriel timed and graded to suit the
+exigencies of his growing ambition, or the demands of his worst
+passions, we are forced to a preponderating condemnation. The Mohammed
+of the later years is a remorseless tyrant when occasion requires, and
+at all times the slave of unbridled lust. Refined and cultivated
+Mohammedan ladies--I speak from testimony that is very direct--do not
+hesitate to condemn the degrading morals of their prophet, and to
+contrast him with the spotless purity of Jesus; "but then," they add,
+"God used him for a great purpose, and gave him the most exalted honor
+among men." Alas! it is the old argument so often employed in many
+lands. Success, great intellect, grand achievements gild all moral
+deformity, and win the connivance of dazzled minds. In this case,
+however, it is not a hero or a statesman, but an alleged prophet of God,
+that is on trial.
+
+It is a question difficult to decide, how far Mohammed made
+Mohammedanism, and how far the system moulded him. The action of cause
+and effect was mutual, and under this interaction both the character and
+the system were slow growths. The Koran was composed in detached
+fragments suited to different stages of development, different degrees
+and kinds of success, different demands of personal impulse or changes
+of conduct. The Suras, without any claim to logical connection, were
+written down by an amanuensis on bits of parchment, or pieces of wood or
+leather, and even on the shoulder-bones of sheep. And they were each the
+expression of Mohammed's particular mood at the time, and each entered
+in some degree into his character from that time forth. The man and the
+book grew together, the system, through all its history, fairly
+represents the example of the man and the teaching of the book.
+
+Let us next consider the historic character and influence of the system
+of Islam. In forming just conclusions as to the real influence of
+Mohammedanism, a judicial fairness is necessary. In the first place, we
+must guard against the hasty and sweeping judgments which are too often
+indulged in by zealous Christians; and on the other hand, we must
+certainly challenge the exaggerated statements of enthusiastic
+apologists. It is erroneous to assert that Islam has never encouraged
+education, that it has invariably been adverse to all progress, that it
+knows nothing but the Koran, or that Omar, in ordering the destruction
+of the Alexandrian library, is the only historical exponent of the
+system. Such statements are full of partial truths, but they are also
+mingled with patent errors.
+
+The Arab races in their original home were naturally inclined to the
+encouragement of letters, particularly of poetry, and Mohammed himself,
+though he had never been taught even to read, much less to write, took
+special pains to encourage learning. "Teach your children poetry," he
+said; "it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom, and makes the heroic
+virtues hereditary."[109] According to Sprenger, he gave liberty to
+every prisoner who taught twelve boys of Mecca to write. The Abbasside
+princes of a later day offered most generous prizes for superior
+excellence in poetry, and Bagdad, Damascus, Alexandria, Bassora, and
+Samarcand were noted for their universities.[110] Cordova and Seville
+were able to lend their light to the infant university of Oxford. The
+fine arts of sculpture and painting were condemned by the early caliphs,
+doubtless on account of the idolatrous tendencies which they were
+supposed to foster; but medicine, philosophy, mathematics, chemistry,
+and astronomy were especially developed, and that at a time when the
+nations of Europe were mostly in darkness.[111] Yet it cannot be denied
+that on the whole the influence of Islam has been hostile to learning
+and to civilization.[112] The world will never forget that by the
+burning of the great library of Alexandria the rich legacy which the old
+world had bequeathed to the new was destroyed. By its occupation of
+Egypt and Constantinople, and thus cutting off the most important
+channels of communication, the Mohammedan power became largely
+responsible for the long eclipse of Europe during the Middle Ages.
+
+Moreover, when zealous advocates of the system contrast the barbarism of
+Richard Coeur de Lion with the culture and humanity of Saladin, they
+seem to forget that the race of Richard had but just emerged from the
+savagery of the Northmen, while Saladin and his race had not only
+inherited the high moral culture of Judaism and Christianity, but had
+virtually monopolized it. It was chiefly by the wars of the Crusaders
+that Western Europe became acquainted with the civilization of the
+Orient.
+
+Instead of ignoring the advantages which the East had over the West at
+that period, it would be more just to inquire what comparative
+improvements of their respective opportunities have been made by Western
+Christianity and Eastern Mohammedanism since that time. It would be an
+interesting task, for example, to start with the period of Saladin and
+Coeur de Lion, and impartially trace on the one hand the influence of
+Christianity as it moulded the savage conquerors of the Roman Empire,
+and from such rude materials built up the great Christian nations of the
+nineteenth century; and on the other hand, follow the banner of the
+Crescent through all the lands where it has borne sway: Persia, Arabia,
+Northern India, Egypt, the Barbary States, East Africa, and the Soudan,
+and then draw an unbiased conclusion as to which system, as a system,
+has done more to spread general enlightenment, foster the sentiments of
+kindness and philanthropy, promote human liberty, advance civilization,
+increase and elevate populations, promote the purity and happiness of
+the family and the home, and raise the standards of ethics and true
+religion among mankind.[113]
+
+One of the brilliant dynasties of Mohammedan history was that of the
+Moors of Spain. We can never cease to admire their encouragement of arts
+and their beautiful architecture, but is it quite certain that all this
+was a direct fruit of Islam? The suggestion that it may have been partly
+due to contact with the Gothic elements which the Moors vanquished,
+finds support in the fact that nothing of the kind appeared on the
+opposite coast of Africa. And while the Mohammedan Empire in India has
+left the most exquisite architectural structures in the world, it is
+well known that they were the work of European architects.
+
+But in considering the influence which Islam has exerted on the whole,
+lack of time compels me to limit our survey to Africa, except as other
+lands may be referred to incidentally.[114] That the first African
+conquests, extending from Egypt to Morocco, were simple warlike
+invasions in which the sword was the only instrument of propagandism, no
+one will deny. But it is contended that in later centuries a great work
+has been accomplished in Western Soudan, and is still being
+accomplished, by missionary effort and the general advance of a
+wholesome civilization.
+
+Any fair estimate of Mohammedan influence must take account of the
+elements which it found in Northern Africa at the time of its conquests.
+The states which border on the Mediterranean had once been powerful and
+comparatively enlightened. They had been populous and prosperous. The
+Phoenician colony in Carthage had grown to be no mean rival of Rome's
+military power. Egypt had been a great centre of learning, not only in
+the most ancient times, but especially after the building of Alexandria.
+More western lands, like Numidia and Mauritania, had been peopled by
+noble races.
+
+After the introduction of Christianity, Alexandria became the bright
+focus into which the religions and philosophies of the world poured
+their concentrated light. Some of the greatest of the Christian fathers,
+like Augustine, Tertullian, and Cyprian, were Africans. The foundations
+of Latin Christianity were laid by these men. The Bishopric of Hippo was
+a model for all time in deep and intelligent devotion. The grace and
+strength, the sublime and all-conquering faith of Monica, and others
+like her, furnished a pattern for all Christian womanhood and
+motherhood.
+
+I do not forget that before the time of the Mohammedan invasion the
+Vandals had done their work of devastation, or that the African Church
+had been woefully weakened and rent by wild heresies and schisms, or
+that the defection of the Monophysite or Coptic Church of Egypt was one
+of the influences which facilitated the Mohammedan success. But making
+due allowance for all this, vandalism and schism could not have
+destroyed so soon the ancient civilization or sapped the strength of the
+North African races. The process which has permanently reduced so many
+once populous cities and villages to deserts, and left large portions of
+the Barbary States with only the moldering ruins of their former
+greatness, has been a gradual one. For centuries after the Arab conquest
+those states were virtually shut off from communication with Europe, and
+for at least three centuries more, say from 1500 down to the generation
+which immediately preceded our own, they were known chiefly by the
+piracies which they carried on against the commerce of all maritime
+nations. Even the Government of the United States was compelled to pay a
+million of dollars for the ransom of captured American seamen, and it
+paid it not to private corsairs, but to the Mohammedan governments by
+which those piracies were subsidized, as a means of supplying the public
+exchequer. These large amounts were recovered only when our navy, in
+co-operation with that of England, extirpated the Riff piracies by
+bombarding the Moslem ports. The vaunted civilizations of the North
+African states would have been supported by wholesale marauding to this
+day, had not their piratical fleets been thus summarily swept from the
+seas by other powers.
+
+If Egypt has shown a higher degree of advancement it has been due to her
+peculiar geographical position, to the inexhaustible fertility of the
+Delta, and, most of all, to the infusion of foreign life and energy into
+the management of her affairs. Ambitious adventurers, like the Albanian
+Mehamet Ali, have risen to power and have made Egypt what she is, or
+rather what she was before the more recent intervention of the European
+powers. Even Canon Taylor admits that for centuries it has been
+necessary to import more vigorous foreign blood for the administration
+of Egyptian affairs.[115]
+
+It will be admitted that Mohammedan conquests have been made in mediaeval
+times, and down to our own age, in Central Africa, and that along the
+southern borders of Sahara a cordon of more or less prosperous states
+has been established; also, that the civilization of those states
+contrasts favorably with the savagery of the cannibal tribes with which
+they have come in contact. Probably the best--that is to say, the least
+objectionable--exemplifications of Islam now to be found in the world
+are seen in some of the older states of Western Soudan. The Mandingo of
+the central uplands furnished a better material than the "unspeakable
+Turk," and it would not be quite fair to ascribe all his present virtues
+to the Moslem rule.
+
+But _how_ have these conquests in Central Africa been made? The
+contention of the apologists for Islam is that recently, at least, and
+probably more or less in the past, a quiet missionary work has greatly
+extended monotheism, temperance, education, and general comfort, and
+that it has done more than all other influences for the permanent
+extinction of the slave trade! Dr. E.W. Blyden, in answer to the charge
+that Mohammedan Arabs are now, and long have been, chiefly responsible
+for the horrors of that trade, and that even when Americans bought
+slaves for their plantations, Moslem raiders in the interior instigated
+the tribal quarrels which supplied the markets on the coast, contends
+that the Moslem conquests do most effectually destroy the trade, since
+tribes which have become Moslem can no longer be enslaved by
+Moslems.[116] It is a curious argument, especially as it seems to ignore
+the fact that at the present time both the supply and the demand depend
+on Mohammedan influence.
+
+As to the means by which the Soudanese States are now extending their
+power we may content ourselves with a mere reference to the operations
+of the late "El Mahdi" in the East and the notorious Samadu in the West.
+Their methods may be accepted as illustrations of a kind of tactics
+which have been employed for ages. The career of El Mahdi is already
+well known. Samadu was originally a prisoner, captured while yet a boy
+in one of the tribal wars near the headwaters of the Niger. Partly by
+intrigue and partly by the aid of his religious fanaticism he at length
+became sufficiently powerful to enslave his master. Soon afterward he
+proclaimed his divine mission, and declared a _Jehad_ or holy war
+against all infidels. Thousands flocked to his banner, influenced
+largely by the hope of booty; and ere long, to quote the language of a
+lay correspondent of the London _Standard_, written in Sierra Leone
+September 18, 1888, "he became the scourge of all the peaceable states
+on the right bank of the Upper Niger." Since 1882 he has attempted to
+dispute the territorial claims of the French on the upper, and of the
+English on the lower Niger, though without success. But he has seemed to
+avenge his disappointment the more terribly on the native tribes.
+
+The letter published in the _Standard_ gives an account of an official
+commission sent by the Governor of Sierra Leone to the headquarters of
+Samadu in 1888, and in describing the track of this Western Mahdi in his
+approaches to the French territories it says: "The messengers report
+that every town and village through which they passed was in ruins, and
+that the road, from the borders of Sulimania to Herimakono, was lined
+with human skeletons, the remains of unfortunates who had been slain by
+Samadu's fanatical soldiery, or had perished from starvation through the
+devastation of the surrounding country. Some of these poor wretches, to
+judge from the horrible contortions of the skeletons, had been attacked
+by vultures and beasts of prey while yet alive, and when too near their
+lingering death to have sufficient strength to beat them off. Around the
+ruined towns were hundreds of doubled-up skeletons, the remains of
+prisoners who, bound hand and foot, had been forced upon their knees,
+and their heads struck off. Keba, the heroic Bambara king, is still
+resisting bravely, but he has only one stronghold (Siaso) left, and the
+end cannot now be far off."
+
+Samadu's career in this direction having been arrested, he next turned
+his attention toward the tribes under English protection on the
+southeast, "where, unfortunately, there was no power to take up the
+cause of humanity and arrest his progress. Before long he entirely
+overran and subjected Kouranko, Limbah, Sulimania, Kono, and Kissi. The
+most horrible atrocities were committed; peaceable agriculturists were
+slaughted in thousands, and their women and children carried off into
+slavery. Falaba, the celebrated capital of Sulimania, and the great
+emporium for trade between Sierra Leone and the Niger, was captured and
+destroyed; and all the inhabitants of that district, whom every
+traveller, from Winwood Reade down to Dr. Blyden, has mentioned with
+praise for their industry and docility, have been exterminated or
+carried off. Sulimania, which was the garden of West Africa, has now
+become a howling wilderness."
+
+And the writer adds: "The people of the States to the south of Futa
+Djallon are pagans, and Samadu makes their religion a pretext for his
+outrages. He is desirous, he says, of converting them to the 'True
+Faith,' and his modes of persuasion are murder and slavery. What could
+be more horrible than the story just brought down by the messengers who
+were with Major Festing? Miles of road strewn with human bones;
+blackened ruins where were peaceful hamlets; desolation and emptiness
+where were smiling plantations. What has become of the tens of
+thousands of peaceful agriculturists, their wives and their innocent
+children? Gone; converted, after Samadu's manner, to the 'True Faith.'
+And thus the conversion of West Africa to Islamism goes merrily on,
+while _dilettante_ scholars at home complacently discuss the question as
+to whether that faith or Christianity is the more suitable for the
+Negro; and the British people, dead to their generous instincts of old,
+make no demand that such deeds of cruelty and horror shall be arrested
+with a strong hand."[117]
+
+Similar accounts of the African _propagandism_ of Islam might be given
+in the very words of numerous travellers and explorers, but one or two
+witnesses only shall be summoned to speak of the Mohammedan dominion and
+civilization in East Africa. Professor Drummond, in giving his
+impressions of Zanzibar, says: "Oriental in its appearance, Mohammedan
+in its religion, Arabian in its morals, a cesspool of wickedness, it is
+a fit capital to the Dark Continent." And it is the great emporium--not
+an obscure settlement, but the consummate flower of East African
+civilization and boasting in the late Sultan Bargash, an unusually
+enlightened Moslem ruler. Of the interior and the ivory-slave trade
+pursued under the auspices of Arab dominion the same author says: "Arab
+encampments for carrying on a wholesale trade in this terrible commodity
+are now established all over the heart of Africa. They are usually
+connected with wealthy Arab traders at Zanzibar and other places on the
+coast, and communication is kept up by caravans, which pass at long
+intervals from one to the other. Being always large and well-supplied
+with the material of war, these caravans have at their mercy the feeble
+and divided native tribes through which they pass, and their trail
+across the continent is darkened with every aggravation of tyranny and
+crime. They come upon the scene suddenly; they stay only long enough to
+secure their end, and disappear only to return when a new crop has
+arisen which is worth the reaping. Sometimes these Arab traders will
+actually settle for a year or two in the heart of some quiet community
+in the remote interior. They pretend perfect friendship; they molest no
+one; they barter honestly. They plant the seeds of their favorite
+vegetables and fruits--the Arab always carries seeds with him--as if
+they meant to stay forever. Meantime they buy ivory, tusk after tusk,
+until great piles of it are buried beneath their huts, and all their
+barter goods are gone. Then one day suddenly the inevitable quarrel is
+picked. And then follows a wholesale massacre. Enough only are spared
+from the slaughter to carry the ivory to the coast; the grass huts of
+the village are set on fire; the Arabs strike camp; and the slave march,
+worse than death, begins. The last act in the drama, the slave march, is
+the aspect of slavery which in the past has chiefly aroused the passions
+and the sympathy of the outside world, but the greater evil is the
+demoralization and disintegration of communities by which it is
+necessarily preceded. It is essential to the traffic that the region
+drained by the slaver should be kept in perpetual political ferment;
+that, in order to prevent combination, chief should be pitted against
+chief, and that the moment any tribe threatens to assume a dominating
+strength it should either be broken up by the instigation of rebellion
+among its dependencies or made a tool of at their expense. The
+inter-relation of tribes is so intricate that it is impossible to
+exaggerate the effect of disturbing the equilibrium at even a single
+centre. But, like a river, a slave caravan has to be fed by innumerable
+tributaries all along its course, at first in order to gather a
+sufficient volume of human bodies for the start, and afterward to
+replace the frightful loss by desertion, disablement, and death."
+
+Next to Livingstone, whose last pathetic appeal to the civilized world
+to "heal the open sore of Africa" stands engraved in marble in
+Westminster Abbey, no better witness can be summoned in regard to the
+slave trade and the influence of Islam generally in Eastern and Central
+Africa than Henry M. Stanley. From the time when he encountered the
+Mohammedan propagandists at the Court of Uganda he has seen how
+intimately and vitally the faith and the traffic are everywhere united.
+I give but a single passage from his "Congo Free State," page 144.
+
+"We discovered that this horde of banditti--for in reality and without
+disguise they were nothing else--was under the leadership of several
+chiefs, but principally under Karema and Kibunga. They had started
+sixteen months previously from Wane-Kirundu, about thirty miles below
+Vinya Njara. For eleven months the band had been raiding successfully
+between the Congo and the Lubiranzi, on the left bank. They had then
+undertaken to perform the same cruel work between the Biyerre and
+Wane-Kirundu. On looking at my map I find that such a territory within
+the area described would cover superficially 16,200 square geographical
+miles on the left bank, and 10,500 miles on the right, all of which in
+statute mileage would be equal to 34,700 square miles, just 2,000 square
+miles greater than the island of Ireland, inhabited by about 1,000,000
+people.
+
+"The band when it set out from Kirundu numbered 300 fighting men, armed
+with flint-locks, double-barrelled percussion guns, and a few
+breech-loaders; their followers, or domestic slaves and women, doubled
+this force.... Within the enclosure was a series of low sheds extending
+many lines deep from the immediate edge of the clay bank inland, 100
+yards; in length the camp was about 300 yards. At the landing-place
+below were 54 long canoes, varying in carrying capacity. Each might
+convey from 10 to 100 people.... The first general impressions are that
+the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon
+rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of
+the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms--upright,
+standing, or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under
+the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the
+perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked
+children--many mere infants--forms of boyhood and girlhood, and
+occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women bending under a
+basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through
+the moving groups by two or three musketeers. On paying more attention
+to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron
+rings around their necks, through which a chain, like one of our boat
+anchor-chains, is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children
+over ten are secured by these copper rings, each ringed leg brought
+together by the central ring."
+
+By a careful examination of statistics Mr. Stanley estimates that
+counting the men killed in the raids and those who perish on the march
+or are slain because supposed to be worthless, every 5,000 slaves
+actually sold cost over 30,000 lives.
+
+But there are Arabs and Arabs we are told. The slave-dealers of East
+Africa and the barbarous chieftains who push their bloody conquests in
+Western Soudan are bad enough, it is admitted, but they are
+"exceptions." Yet we insist that they illustrate the very spirit of
+Mohammed himself, who authorized the taking of prisoners of war as
+slaves. Their plea is that they save the souls of those they capture;
+many of these traders are Mollahs--Pharisees of the Pharisees. Canon
+Taylor, Dr. Blyden, and others have given us glowing accounts of "Arab
+missionaries going about without purse or scrip, and disseminating their
+religion by quietly teaching the Koran;" but the venerable Bishop
+Crowther, who has spent his whole life in that part of Africa where
+these conquests are supposed to be made, declares that the real vocation
+of the quiet apostles of the Koran is that of fetish peddlers.[118] If
+it be objected that this is the biased testimony of a Christian
+missionary, it may be backed by the explorer Lander, who, in speaking of
+this same class of men, says: "These Mollahs procure an easy subsistence
+by making fetishes or writing charms on bits of wood which are washed
+off carefully into a basin of water, and drank with avidity by the
+credulous multitude." And he adds: "Those who profess the Mohammedan
+faith among the negroes are as ignorant and superstitious as their
+idolatrous brethren; nor does it appear that their having adopted a new
+creed has either improved their manners or bettered their condition in
+life." Dr. Schweinfurth also describes the Mohammedan missionaries whom
+he found at Khartoum as "polluted with every abominable vice which the
+imagination of man can conceive of." In answer to various statements
+which had been published in regard to the rapid missionary progress made
+by Mohammedans in West Central Africa, Bishop Crowther wrote a letter to
+the Church Missionary Society at the beginning of 1888, giving the
+results of his own prolonged observation. He describes the methods used
+as:
+
+1. War upon the heathen tribes. "If the Chief of a heathen tribe accepts
+the Koran his people are at once counted as converts and he is received
+into favor, and is thus prepared to become an instrument in conquering
+other tribes. But on the refusal to accept the Koran war is declared,
+the destruction of their country is the consequence, and horrible
+bloodshed. The aged, male and female, are massacred, while the salable
+are led away as slaves. One half of the slaves are reserved by the
+chief, the other half is divided among the soldiers to encourage them to
+future raids."
+
+2. Another cause of large increase is polygamy. "For although but four
+lawful wives are allowed, there is unlimited license for concubinage."
+
+3. The sale of charms is so conducted as to prove not only a means of
+profit but a shrewd propaganda. "When childless women are furnished with
+these, they are pledged, if successful, to dedicate their children to
+Islam."
+
+And Bishop Crowther verifies the statement made by others in reference
+to East Africa, that the priests "besides being charm-makers are traders
+both in general articles and more largely in slaves."[119]
+
+We have only time to consider one question more, viz., What is the
+character of Islam as we find it to-day, and what are its prospects of
+development? It is a characteristic of our age that no religion stands
+wholly alone and uninfluenced by others. It is especially true that the
+systems of the East are all deeply affected by the higher ethics and
+purer religious conceptions borrowed from Christianity. Thus many
+Mohammedans of our day, and especially those living in close contact
+with our Christian civilization, are rising to higher conceptions of God
+and of religious truth than have been entertained by Moslems hitherto.
+Canon Taylor, in a little volume entitled "Leaves from an Egyptian
+Note-Book," has drawn a picture of Islam which Omar and Othman would
+hardly have recognized. In the first place it should be remembered that,
+as he confesses, his reputation as a defender of Mohammed and his system
+had gone before him to Cairo, and that he was understood to be a seeker
+after facts favorable to his known views. This opened the hearts of
+friendly Pashas and served to bring out all the praises that they could
+bestow upon their own faith. It appears accordingly that he was assured
+by them that polygamy is widely discarded and condemned by prominent
+Moslems in such cities as Cairo and Alexandria, that many leading men
+are highly intelligent and widely read, that they profess belief in most
+of the doctrines held by the Christian Church, that they receive the
+inspired testimony of the Old and New Testaments--except in so far as
+they have been corrupted by Christian manipulation. This exception,
+however, includes all that is at variance with the Koran. They advocate
+temperance and condemn the slave trade. They encourage the general
+promotion of education, and what seems to the credulous Canon most
+remarkable of all is that they express deep regret that Christians do
+not feel the same charity and fellowship toward Moslems that they feel
+toward Christians!
+
+Now, making all due abatement for the _couleur de rose_ which these
+easy-going and politic Pashas may have employed with their English
+champion, it is undoubtedly true that a class of Mohammedans are found
+in the great cosmopolitan cities of the Levant who have come to
+recognize the spirit of the age in which they live. Many of them have
+been educated in Europe; they speak several languages; they read the
+current literature; they are ashamed of the old fanatical Mohammedanism.
+Though they cherish a partisan interest in the recognized religion of
+their country, their faith is really eclectic; it comes not from Old
+Mecca, but is in part a product of the awakened thought of the
+nineteenth century. But Canon Taylor's great fallacy lies in trying to
+persuade himself and an intelligent Christian public that this is Islam.
+He wearies himself in his attempts to square the modern Cairo with the
+old, and to trace the modern gentlemanly Pasha, whose faith at least
+sits lightly upon his soul, as a legitimate descendant of the fanatical
+and licentious prophet of Arabia. When he strives to convince the world
+that because these courteous Pashas feel kindly enough toward the Canon
+of York and others like him, therefore Islam is and always has been a
+charitable and highly tolerant system, he simply stultifies the whole
+testimony of history. He tells us that his Egyptian friends complain
+that "whereas they regard us as brother-believers and accept our
+scriptures, they are nevertheless denounced as infidels. And they ask
+why should an eternal coldness reign in our hearts."
+
+Probably they are not acquainted with Samadu of Western Soudan and his
+methods of propagandism. They have forgotten the career of El Mahdi;
+they are not familiar with the terrible oppression of the Jews in
+Morocco--with which even that in Russia cannot compare; they have not
+read the dark accounts of the extortion practised by the Wahabees of
+Arabia, even upon Moslems of another sect on their pilgrimages to
+Mecca,[120] nor do they seem to know that Syrian converts from Islam are
+now hiding in Egypt from the bloodthirsty Moslems of Beyrut. Finally, he
+forgets that the very "children are taught formulas of prayer in which
+they may compendiously curse Jews and Christians and all
+unbelievers."[121]
+
+A more plausible case is made out by Canon Taylor, Dr. Blyden, and
+others on the question of temperance. It is true that Moslems, as a
+rule, are not hard drinkers. Men and races of men have their besetting
+sins. Drinking was not the special vice of the Arabs. Their country was
+too arid; but they had another vice of which Mohammed was the chief
+exemplar. Canon Taylor is doubtless correct also in the statement that
+the English protectorate in Egypt has greatly increased the degree of
+intemperance, and that in this respect the presence of European races
+generally has been a curse. Certainly too much cannot be said in
+condemnation of the wholesale liquor trade carried on in Africa by
+unscrupulous subjects of Christian nations. But it should be remembered
+that the whiskey of Cairo and of the West Coast does not represent
+Christianity any more than the Greek assassin or the Italian pickpocket
+in Cairo represents Islam. Christian philanthropists in Europe and
+America are seeking to suppress the evil. If Christian missionaries in
+West Africa were selling rum as Moslem Mollahs are buying and selling
+slaves in Uganda, if the Bible authorized the system as the Koran
+encourages slavery and concubinage, as means of propagandism, a parallel
+might be presented; but the very reverse is true.
+
+As a rule Nomadic races are not as greatly inclined to the use of ardent
+spirits as are the descendants of the ancient tribes of Northern Europe.
+The difference is due to climate, temperament, heredity, and the amount
+of supply. The Koran discourages intemperance and so does the Bible;
+both are disregarded when the means of gratification are abundant.
+
+The Moguls of India were sots almost as a rule. Wealthy Persian Moslems
+are the chief purchasers of the native wines. Lander, Schweinfurth, and
+even Mungo Parke all speak of communities in Central Africa as wholly
+given to intemperance.[122] Egyptians even, according to Canon Taylor,
+find the abundant supplies afforded by Europeans too tempting for the
+restraints of the Koran.
+
+One of the most significant indications that the sober judgment of all
+enlightened men favors the immense superiority of the Christian faith
+over all ethnic systems is the fact that even those zealous apologists
+who have most plausibly defended the non-Christian religions have
+subsequently evinced some misgivings and have even become advocates of
+the superior light of Christianity. Sir Edwin Arnold, seeing how
+seriously some ill-grounded Christian people had interpreted "The Light
+of Asia," has since made amends by writing "The Light of the World." And
+E. Bosworth Smith, on reading the extravagant glorification given to
+Islam by Canon Isaac Taylor, whom he accuses of plagiarism and absurd
+exaggeration, has come to the stand as a witness against his extreme
+views. Without acknowledging any important modification of his own
+former views he has greatly changed the place of emphasis. He has not
+only recorded his condemnation of Canon Taylor's extravagance but he has
+made a strong appeal for the transcendent superiority of the Christian
+faith as that alone which must finally regenerate Africa and the world.
+He has called public attention to the following pointed criticism of
+Canon Taylor's plea for Islam, made by a gentleman long resident in
+Algeria, and he has given it his own endorsement: "Canon Isaac Taylor,"
+says the writer, "has constructed at the expense of Christianity a
+rose-colored picture of Islam, by a process of comparison in which
+Christianity is arraigned for failures in practice, of which
+Christendom is deeply and penitently conscious, no account being taken
+of Christian precept; while Islam is judged by its better precepts only,
+no account being taken of the frightful shortcomings in Mohammedan
+practice, even from the standard of the Koran."[123] No indictment ever
+carried its proofs more conspicuously on its face than this.
+
+E. Bosworth Smith's subsequent tribute to the relative superiority of
+the Christian faith was given in an address before the Fellows of Zion's
+College, February 21, 1888. I give his closing comparison entire; also
+his eloquent appeal for Christian Missions in Africa. "The resemblances
+between the two Creeds are indeed many and striking, as I have implied
+throughout; but, if I may, once more, quote a few words which I have
+used elsewhere in dealing with this question, the contrasts are even
+more striking than the resemblances. The religion of Christ contains
+whole fields of morality and whole realms of thought which are all but
+outside the religion of Mohammed. It opens humility, purity of heart,
+forgiveness of injuries, sacrifice of self, to man's moral nature; it
+gives scope for toleration, development, boundless progress to his mind;
+its motive power is stronger even as a friend is better than a king, and
+love higher than obedience. Its realized ideals in the various paths of
+human greatness have been more commanding, more many-sided, more holy,
+as Averroes is below Newton, Harun below Alfred, and Ali below St. Paul.
+Finally, the ideal life of all is far more elevating, far more
+majestic, far more inspiring, even as the life of the founder of
+Mohammedanism is below the life of the Founder of Christianity.
+
+"If, then, we believe Christianity to be truer and purer in itself than
+Islam, and than any other religion, we must needs wish others to be
+partakers of it; and the effort to propagate it is thrice blessed--it
+blesses him that offers, no less than him who accepts it; nay, it often
+blesses him who accepts it not. The last words of a dying friend are apt
+to linger in the chambers of the heart till the heart itself has ceased
+to beat; and the last recorded words of the Founder of Christianity are
+not likely to pass from the memory of His Church till that Church has
+done its work. They are the marching orders of the Christian army; the
+consolation for every past and present failure; the earnest and the
+warrant, in some shape or other, of ultimate success. The value of a
+Christian mission is not, therefore, to be measured by the number of its
+converts. The presence in a heathen or a Muslim district of a single man
+who, filled with the missionary spirit, exhibits in his preaching and,
+so far as may be, in his life, the self-denying and the Christian
+virtues, who is charged with sympathy for those among whom his lot is
+cast, who is patient of disappointment and of failure, and of the sneers
+of the ignorant or the irreligious, and who works steadily on with a
+single eye to the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men, is, of
+itself, an influence for good, and a centre from which it radiates,
+wholly independent of the number of converts he is able to enlist. There
+is a vast number of such men engaged in mission work all over the
+world, and our best Indian statesmen, some of whom, for obvious reasons,
+have been hostile to direct proselytizing efforts, are unanimous as to
+the quantity and quality of the services they render.
+
+"Nothing, therefore, can be more shallow, or more disingenuous, or more
+misleading, than to attempt to disparage Christian missions by pitting
+the bare number of converts whom they claim against the number of
+converts claimed by Islam. The numbers are, of course, enormously in
+favor of Islam. But does conversion mean the same, or anything like the
+same, thing in each? Is it _in pari materia_, and if not, is the
+comparison worth the paper on which it is written? The submission to the
+rite of circumcision and the repetition of a confession of faith,
+however noble and however elevating in its ultimate effect, do not
+necessitate, they do not even necessarily tend toward what a Christian
+means by a change of heart. It is the characteristic of Mohammedanism to
+deal with batches and with masses. It is the characteristic of
+Christianity to speak straight to the individual conscience.
+
+"The conversion of a whole Pagan community to Islam need not imply more
+effort, more sincerity, or more vital change, than the conversion of a
+single individual to Christianity. The Christianity accepted wholesale
+by Clovis and his fierce warriors, in the flush of victory, on the field
+of battle, or by the Russian peasants, when they were driven by the
+Cossack whips into the Dnieper, and baptized there by force--these are
+truer parallels to the tribal conversions to Mohammedanism in Africa at
+the present day. And, whatever may have been their beneficial effects in
+the march of the centuries, they are not the Christianity of Christ, nor
+are they the methods or the objects at which a Christian missionary of
+the present day would dream of aiming.
+
+"A Christian missionary could not thus bring over a Pagan or a Muslim
+tribe to Christianity, even if he would; he ought not to try thus to
+bring them over, even if he could. 'Missionary work,' as remarked by an
+able writer in the _Spectator_ the other day, 'is sowing, not reaping,
+and the sowing of a plant which is slow to bear.' At times, the
+difficulties and discouragements may daunt the stoutest heart and the
+most living faith. But God is greater than our hearts and wider than our
+thoughts, and, if we are able to believe in Him at all, we must also
+believe that the ultimate triumph of Christianity--and by Christianity I
+mean not the comparatively narrow creed of this or that particular
+Church, but the Divine Spirit of its Founder, that Spirit which, exactly
+in proportion as they are true to their name, informs, and animates, and
+underlies, and overlies them all--is not problematical, but certain, and
+in His good time, across the lapse of ages, will prove to be, not local
+but universal, not partial but complete, not evanescent but
+eternal."[124]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 97: Sprenger's _Life of Mohammed_, pp. 40, 41.]
+
+[Footnote 98: It is a suspicious fact that the first chapter of the
+_Koran_ begins with protestations that it is a true revelation, and with
+most terrible anathemas against all who doubt it. This seems
+significant, and contrasts strongly with the conscious truthfulness and
+simplicity of the Gospel narrators.]
+
+[Footnote 99: Nor have later defenders of the system failed to derive
+alleged proofs of their system from Biblical sources. Mohammedan
+controversialists have urged some very specious and plausible arguments;
+for example, Deut. xviii. 15-18, promises that the Lord shall raise up
+unto Israel a prophet from _among their brethren_. But Israel had no
+brethren but the sons of Ishmael. There was also promised a prophet like
+unto Moses; but Deut. xxxiv. declares that "_There arose no Prophet in
+Israel like unto Moses_."
+
+When John the Baptist was asked whether he were the Christ, or Elijah,
+or "_that prophet_," no other than Mohammed could have been meant by
+"_that prophet_."]
+
+[Footnote 100: Rev. Mr. Bruce, missionary in Persia, states that
+pictures of the Father, the Son, and Mary are still seen in Eastern
+churches.--_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, January, 1882.]
+
+[Footnote 101: Sales, in his _Preliminary Discourse_, Section 1st,
+enumerates the great nations which have vainly attempted the conquest of
+Arabia, from the Assyrians down to the Romans, and he asserts that even
+the Turks have held only a nominal sway.]
+
+[Footnote 102: China owes her present dynasty to the fact that the hardy
+Manchus were called in as mercenaries or as allies.]
+
+[Footnote 103: Dr. Koelle: quoted in _Church Missionary Intelligencer_.]
+
+[Footnote 104: Sales: _Koran and Preliminary Discourse_, Wherry's
+edition, p. 89. One of the chief religious duties under the _Koran_ was
+the giving of alms (Zakat), and under this euphonious name was included
+the tax by which Mohammed maintained the force that enabled him to keep
+up his predatory raids on the caravans of his enemies.]
+
+[Footnote 105: _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_, p. 123.]
+
+[Footnote 106: Dr. Koelle gravely questions this.]
+
+[Footnote 107: One of the most wicked and disastrous of all Mohammed's
+laws was that which allowed the free practice of capturing women and
+girls in war, and retaining them as lawful chattels in the capacity of
+concubines. It has been in all ages a base stimulus to the raids of the
+slave-hunter. Sir William Muir has justly said, that so long as a free
+sanction to this great evil stands recorded on the pages of the _Koran_,
+Mohammedans will never of their own accord cease to prosecute the
+slave-trade.]
+
+[Footnote 108: According to Dr. Koelle, the number of women and children
+who fell to the prophet's share of captives at the time of his great
+slaughter of the surrendered Jewish soldiers, was two hundred.]
+
+[Footnote 109: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 110: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_.]
+
+[Footnote 111: Ibid, p. 112.]
+
+[Footnote 112: Says Sir William Muir: "Three radical evils flow from the
+faith, in all ages and in every country, and must continue to flow _so
+long as the Koran is the standard of belief_. _First_, polygamy, divorce,
+and slavery are maintained and perpetuated, striking at the root of
+public morals, poisoning domestic life, and disorganizing society.
+_Second_, freedom of thought and private judgment in religion is crushed
+and annihilated. The sword still is, and must remain, the inevitable
+penalty for the denial of Islam. Toleration is unknown. _Third_, a
+barrier has been interposed against the reception of Christianity. They
+labor under a miserable delusion who suppose that Mohammedanism paves
+the way for a purer faith. No system could have been devised with more
+consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has sway
+from the light of truth. _Idolatrous_ Arabia (judging from the analogy
+of other nations) might have been aroused to spiritual life and to the
+adoption of the faith of Jesus. _Mohammedan_ Arabia is to the human eye
+sealed against the benign influences of the Gospel.... The sword of
+Mohammed and the Koran are the most stubborn enemies of civilization,
+liberty, and truth which the world has yet known."--_Church Missionary
+Intelligencer_, November, 1885.]
+
+[Footnote 113: Osborne, in his _Islam under the Arabs_, and Marcus
+Dodds, in _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, have emphasized the fact that
+Islam, however favorably it might compare with the Arabian heathenism
+which it overthrew, was wholly out of place in forcing its
+semi-barbarous cultus upon civilizations which were far above it. It
+might be an advance upon the rudeness and cruelty of the Koreish, but
+the misfortune was that it stamped its stereotyped and unchanging
+principles and customs upon nations which were in advance of it even
+then, and which, but for its deadening influence, might have made far
+greater progress in the centuries which followed.
+
+Its bigoted founder gave the _Koran_ as the sufficient guide for all
+time. It arrested the world's progress as far as its power extended.
+Very different was the spirit of Judaism. "It distinctly disclaimed both
+finality and completeness. Every part of the Mosaic religion had a
+forward look, and was designed to leave the mind in an attitude of
+expectation."
+
+Mohammedanism, in claiming to be the one religion for all men and all
+time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the
+retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal
+religion it has been tried and found wanting.]
+
+[Footnote 114: It has been claimed that the spread of Mohammedanism in
+India is far more rapid than that of Christianity. If this were true in
+point of fact, it would be significant; for India under British rule
+furnishes a fair field for such a contest. But it so happens that there,
+where Islam holds no sword of conquest, and no arbitrary power to compel
+the faith of men, its growth is very slow, it only keeps pace with the
+general increase of the population. It cannot compare with the
+advancement of Christianity. I subjoin an extract from Sir W. Hunter's
+paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July, 1888:
+
+"The official census, notwithstanding its obscurities of classification
+and the disturbing effects of the famine of 1877, attests the rapid
+increase of the Christian population. So far as these disturbing
+influences allow of an inference for all British India, the normal rate
+of increase among the general population was about 8 per cent, from 1872
+to 1881, while the actual rate of the Christian population was over 30
+per cent. But, taking the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal as the
+greatest province outside the famine area of 1877, and for whose
+population, amounting to one-third of the whole of British India, really
+comparable statistics exist, the census results are clear. The general
+population increased in the nine years preceding 1881 at the rate of
+10.89 per cent., the Mohammedans at the rate of 10.96 per cent., the
+Hindus at some undetermined rate below 13.64 per cent., Christians of
+all races at the rate of 40.71 per cent., and the native Christians at
+the rate of 64.07 per cent."]
+
+[Footnote 115: _Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book._]
+
+[Footnote 116: _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_, p. 241.]
+
+[Footnote 117: For the full text of the letter to the _Standard_, see
+_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, December, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 118: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, 1887, p. 653.]
+
+[Footnote 119: See _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 120: Over against Canon Taylor's glowing accounts of this
+broad and gentle charity we may place the testimony of Palgrave in
+regard to the remorseless rapacity practised by the Wahabees upon the
+Shiyaees of Persia while passing through their territory in their
+pilgrimages to a common shrine. He tells us that "forty gold tomans were
+fixed as the claim of the Wahabee treasury on every Persian pilgrim for
+his passage through R'ad, and forty more for a safe conduct through the
+rest of the empire--eighty in all....
+
+"Every local governor on the way would naturally enough take the hint,
+and strive not to let the 'enemies of God' (for this is the sole title
+given by Wahabees to all except themselves) go by without spoiling them
+more or less....
+
+"So that, all counted up, the legal and necessary dues levied on every
+Persian Shiyaee while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahabee
+guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and
+fifty gold tomans, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no
+light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an
+Arab."--Palgrave's _Central and Eastern Africa_, p. 161.]
+
+[Footnote 121: Dodds: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 118.]
+
+[Footnote 122: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, November, 1887.]
+
+[Footnote 123: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, February, 1888, p.
+66.]
+
+[Footnote 124: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII.
+
+THE TRACES OF A PRIMITIVE MONOTHEISM
+
+
+There are two conflicting theories now in vogue in regard to the origin
+of religion. The first is that of Christian theists as taught in the Old
+and New Testament Scriptures, viz., that the human race in its first
+ancestry, and again in the few survivors of the Deluge, possessed the
+knowledge of the true God. It is not necessary to suppose that they had
+a full and mature conception of Him, or that that conception excluded
+the idea of other gods. No one would maintain that Adam or Noah
+comprehended the nature of the Infinite as it has been revealed in the
+history of God's dealings with men in later times. But from their simple
+worship of one God their descendants came gradually to worship various
+visible objects with which they associated their blessings--the sun as
+the source of warmth and vitality, the rain as imparting a quickening
+power to the earth, the spirits of ancestors to whom they looked with a
+special awe, and finally a great variety of created things instead of
+the invisible Creator. The other theory is that man, as we now behold
+him, has been developed from lower forms of animal life, rising first to
+the state of a mere human animal, but gradually acquiring intellect,
+conscience, and finally a soul;--that ethics and religion have been
+developed from instinct by social contact, especially by ties of family
+and the tribal relation; that altruism which began with the instinctive
+care of parents for their offspring, rose to the higher domain of
+religion and began to recognize the claims of deity; that God, if there
+be a God, never revealed himself to man by any preternatural means, but
+that great souls, like Moses, Isaiah, and Plato, by their higher and
+clearer insight, have gained loftier views of deity than others, and as
+prophets and teachers have made known their inspirations to their
+fellow-men. Gradually they have formed rituals and elaborated
+philosophies, adding such supernatural elements as the ignorant fancy of
+the masses was supposed to demand.
+
+According to this theory, religions, like everything else, have grown up
+from simple germs: and it is only in the later stages of his development
+that man can be said to be a religious being. While an animal merely,
+and for a time even after he had attained to a rude and savage manhood,
+a life of selfish passion and marauding was justifiable, since only thus
+could the survival of the fittest be secured and the advancement of the
+race attained.[125] It is fair to say that there are various shades of
+the theory here presented--some materialistic, some theistic, others
+having a qualified theism, and still others practically agnostic. Some
+even who claim to be Christians regard the various religions of men as
+so many stages in the divine education of the race--all being under the
+direct guidance of God, and all designed to lead ultimately to
+Christianity which is the goal.
+
+That God has overruled all things, even the errors and wickedness of
+men, for some wise object will not be denied; that He has implanted in
+the human understanding many correct conceptions of ethical truth, so
+that noble principles are found in the teachings of all religious
+systems; that God is the author of all truth and all right impulses,
+even in heathen minds, is readily admitted. But that He has directly
+planned and chosen the non-Christian religions on the principle that
+half-truths and perverted truths and the direct opposites of the truth,
+were best adapted to certain stages of development--in other words, that
+He has causatively led any nation into error and consequent destruction
+as a means of preparing for subsequent generations something higher and
+better, we cannot admit. The logic of such a conclusion would lead to a
+remorseless fatalism. Everything would depend on the age and the
+environment in which one's lot were cast. We cannot believe that
+fetishism and idolatry have been God's kindergarten method of training
+the human race for the higher and more spiritual service of His kingdom.
+
+Turning from the testimony of the Scriptures on the one hand and the _a
+priori_ assumptions of evolution on the other, what is the witness of
+the actual history of religions? Have they shown an upward or a downward
+development? Do they appear to have risen from polytheism toward simpler
+and more spiritual forms, or have simple forms been ramified into
+polytheism?[126] If we shall be able to establish clear evidence that
+monotheistic or even henotheistic types of faith existed among all, or
+nearly all, the races at the dawn of history, a very important point
+will have been gained. The late Dr. Henry B. Smith, after a careful
+perusal of Ebrard's elaborate presentation of the religions of the
+ancient and the modern world, and his clear proofs that they had at
+first been invariably monotheistic and had gradually lapsed into
+ramified forms of polytheism, says in his review of Ebrard's work: "We
+do not know where to find a more weighty reply to the assumptions and
+theories of those writers who persist in claiming, according to the
+approved hypothesis of a merely naturalistic evolution, that the
+primitive state of mankind was the lowest and most debased form of
+polytheistic idolatry, and that the higher religions have been developed
+out of these base rudiments. Dr. Ebrard shows conclusively that the
+facts all lead to another conclusion, that gross idolatry is a
+degeneration of mankind from antecedent and purer forms of religious
+worship.... He first treats of the civilized nations of antiquity, the
+Aryan and Indian religions, the Vedas, the Indra period of Brahmanism
+and Buddhism; then of the religion of the Iranians, the Avesta of the
+Parsees; next of the Greeks and Romans, the Egyptians, the Canaanites,
+and the heathen Semitic forms of worship, including the Phoenicians,
+Assyrians, and Babylonians. His second division is devoted to the
+half-civilized and savage races in the North and West of Europe, in Asia
+and Polynesia (Tartars, Mongols, Malays, and Cushites); then the races
+of America, including a minute examination of the relations of the
+different races here to the Mongols, Japanese, and old Chinese
+immigrations."[127]
+
+Ebrard himself, in summing up the results of these prolonged
+investigations, says: "We have nowhere been able to discover the least
+trace of any forward and upward movement from fetichism to polytheism,
+and from that again to a gradually advancing knowledge of the one God;
+but, on the contrary, we have found among all the peoples of the heathen
+world a most decided tendency to sink from an earlier and relatively
+purer knowledge of God toward something lower."[128]
+
+If these conclusions, reached by Ebrard and endorsed by the scholarly
+Dr. Henry B. Smith, are correct, they are of great importance; they
+bring to the stand the witness of the false religions themselves upon an
+issue in which historic testimony as distinguished from mere theories is
+in special demand in our time. Of similar import are the well-considered
+words of Professor Naville, in the first of his lectures on modern
+atheism.[129] He says: "Almost all pagans seem to have had a glimpse of
+the divine unity over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays
+of the divine holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a
+Greek (Cleanthus) who wrote these words: 'Nothing is accomplished on the
+earth without Thee, O God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in
+their folly.' It was in a theatre at Athens, that the chorus of a
+tragedy sang, more than two thousand years ago: 'May destiny aid me to
+preserve, unsullied, the purity of my words, and of all my actions,
+according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in the celestial
+heights, have the raven alone for their father, to which the race of
+mortals did not give birth and which oblivion shall never entomb. In
+them is a supreme God, and one who waxes not old.' It would be easy to
+multiply quotations of this order and to show, in the documents of
+Grecian and Roman civilization, numerous traces of the knowledge of the
+only and holy God."
+
+With much careful discrimination, Dr. William A.P. Martin, of the
+Peking University, has said: "It is customary with a certain school to
+represent religion as altogether the fruit of an intellectual process.
+It had its birth, say they, in ignorance, is modified by every stage in
+the progress of knowledge, and expires when the light of philosophy
+reaches its noon-day. The fetish gives place to a personification of the
+powers of nature, and this poetic pantheon is, in time, superseded by
+the high idea of unity in nature expressed by monotheism. This theory
+has the merit of verisimilitude. It indicates what might be the process
+if man were left to make his own religion; but it has the misfortune to
+be at variance with facts. A wide survey of the history of civilized
+nations (and the history of others is beyond reach) shows that the
+actual process undergone by the human mind in its religious development
+is precisely opposite to that which this theory supposes; in a word,
+that man was not left to construct his own creed, but that his
+blundering logic has always been active in its attempts to corrupt and
+obscure a divine original. The connection subsisting between the
+religious systems of ancient and distant countries presents many a
+problem difficult of solution. Indeed, their mythologies and religious
+rites are generally so distinct as to admit the hypothesis of an
+independent origin; but the simplicity of their earliest beliefs
+exhibits an unmistakable resemblance, suggestive of a common source.
+
+"China, India, Egypt, and Greece all agree in the monotheistic type of
+their early religion. The Orphic hymns, long before the advent of the
+popular divinities, celebrated the Pantheos, the Universal God. The odes
+compiled by Confucius testify to the early worship of Shangte, the
+Supreme Euler. The Vedas speak of 'one unknown true Being, all-present,
+all-powerful; the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe.'
+And in Egypt, as late as the time of Plutarch, there were still vestiges
+of a monotheistic worship. 'The other Egyptians,' he says, 'all made
+offerings at the tombs of the sacred beasts; but the inhabitants of the
+Thebaid stood alone in making no such offerings, not regarding as a god
+anything that can die, and acknowledging no god but one, whom they call
+Kneph, who had no birth, and can have no death. Abraham, in his
+wanderings, found the God of his fathers known and honored in Salem, in
+Gerar, and in Memphis; while at a later day Jethro, in Midian, and
+Balaam, in Mesopotamia, were witnesses that the knowledge of Jehovah was
+not yet extinct in those countries.'"[130]
+
+Professor Max Mueller speaks in a similar strain of the lapse of mankind
+from earlier and simpler types of faith to low and manifold
+superstitions: "Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first
+beginning," says the distinguished Oxford professor, "we find it free
+from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The
+founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge,
+were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for
+truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and
+unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom
+realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form,
+offered often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to
+be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more
+particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the
+foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original
+foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the
+plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart and matured in his
+communings with his God."[131]
+
+But in pursuing our subject we should clearly determine the real
+question before us. How much may we expect to prove from the early
+history of the non-Christian systems? Not certainly that all nations
+once received a knowledge of the Old Testament revelation, as some have
+claimed, nor that all races possessed at the beginning of their several
+historic periods one and the same monotheistic faith. We cannot prove
+from non-scriptural sources that their varying monotheistic conceptions
+sprang from a common belief. We cannot prove either the supernatural
+revelation which Professor Max Mueller emphatically rejects, nor the
+identity of the well-nigh universal henotheisms which he professes to
+believe. We cannot prove that the worship of one God as supreme did not
+coexist with a sort of worship of inferior deities or ministering
+spirits. Almost as a rule, the worship of ancestors, or spirits, or
+rulers, or the powers of nature, or even totems and fetishes has been
+rendered as subordinate to the worship of the one supreme deity who
+created and upholds all things. Even the monotheism of Judaism and of
+Christianity has been attended with the belief in angels and the worship
+of intercessory saints, to say nothing of the many superstitions which
+prevail among the more ignorant classes. We shall only attempt to show
+that monotheism, in the sense of worshipping _one God as supreme_, is
+found in nearly all the early teachings of the world. That these crude
+faiths are one in the origin is only presumable, if we leave the
+testimony of the Bible out of the account.
+
+When on a summer afternoon we see great shafts of light arising and
+spreading fan-shaped from behind a cloud which lies along the western
+horizon, we have a strong presumption that they all spring from one
+great luminary toward which they converge, although that luminary is
+hidden from our view. So tracing the convergence of heathen faiths with
+respect to one original monotheism, back to the point where the
+prehistoric obscurity begins, we may on the same principle say that all
+the evidence in the case, and it is not small, points toward a common
+origin for the early religious conceptions of mankind.
+
+Professor Robert Flint, in his scholarly article on theism in "The
+Britannica," seems to discard the idea that the first religion of
+mankind was monotheism; but a careful study of his position will show
+that he has in view those conceptions of monotheism which are common to
+us, or, as he expresses it, "monotheism in the ordinary or proper sense
+of the term," "monotheism properly so called," "monotheism which excludes
+polytheism," etc. Moreover, he maintains that we cannot, from historical
+sources, learn what conceptions men first had of God. Even when speaking
+of the Old Testament record, he says: "These chapters (of Genesis),
+although they plainly teach monotheism and represent the God whose words
+and acts are recorded in the Bible as no mere national God, but the only
+true God, they do not teach what is alone in the question--that there
+was a primitive monotheism, a monotheism revealed and known from the
+beginning. They give no warrant to the common assumption that God
+revealed monotheism to Adam, Noah, and others before the Flood, and that
+the traces of monotheistic beliefs and tendencies in heathendom are
+derivable from the tradition of this primitive and antediluvian
+monotheism. The one true God is represented as making himself known by
+particular words and in particular ways to Adam, but is nowhere said to
+have taught him that He only was God." It is plain that Professor Flint
+is here dealing with a conception of monotheism which is exclusive of
+all other gods. And his view is undoubtedly correct, so far as Adam was
+concerned. There was no more need of teaching him that his God was the
+only God, than that Eve was the only woman. With Noah the case is not so
+plain. He doubtless worshipped God amid the surroundings of polytheistic
+heathenism. Enoch probably had a similar environment, and there is no
+good reason for supposing that their monotheism may not have been as
+exclusive as that of Abraham. But with respect to the Gentile nations,
+the dim traces of this monism or henotheism which Professor Flint seems
+to accord to Adam and to Noah, is all that we are contending for, and
+all that is necessary to the argument of this lecture. We may even admit
+that heathen deities may sometimes have been called by different names
+while the one source of power was intended. Different names seem to have
+been employed to represent different manifestations of the one God of
+the Old Testament according to His varied relations toward His people.
+There are those who deny this polyonomy, as Max Mueller has called it,
+and who maintain that the names in the earliest Veda represented
+distinct deities; but, by similar reasoning, Professor Tiele and others
+insist that three different Hebrew Gods, according to their respective
+names, were worshipped in successive periods of the Jewish history. It
+seems quite possible, therefore, that a too restrictive definition of
+monotheism may prove too much, by opening the way for a claim that even
+the Jewish and Christian faith, with its old Testament names of God, its
+angels, its theophanies, and its fully developed trinity, is not
+strictly monotheistic. For our present purpose, traces of the worship of
+one supreme God--call it monotheism or henotheism--is all that is
+required.
+
+With these limitations and qualifications in view, let us turn to the
+history of some of the leading non-Christian faiths. Looking first to
+India, we find in the 129th hymn of the Rig Veda, a passage which not
+only presents the conception of one only supreme and self-existing
+Being, but at the same time bears significant resemblance to our own
+account of the creation from chaos. It reads thus:
+
+   "In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught,
+    Then there was neither atmosphere nor sky above,
+    There was neither death nor immortality,
+    There was neither day nor night, nor light, nor darkness,
+    Only the EXISTENT ONE breathed calmly self-contained.
+    Naught else but He was there, naught else above, beyond.
+    Then first came darkness hid in darkness, gloom in gloom;
+    Next all was water, chaos indiscrete,
+    In which ONE lay void, shrouded in nothingness."[132]
+
+In the 121st hymn of the same Veda occurs a passage which seems to
+resemble the opening of the Gospel of St. John. It reads thus, as
+translated by Sir Monier Williams:
+
+     "Him let us praise, the golden child that was In the beginning, who
+     was born the Lord, Who made the earth and formed the sky."
+
+"The one born Lord" reminds us of the New Testament expression, "the
+only begotten Son." Both were "in the beginning;" both were the creators
+of the world. While there is much that is mysterious in these
+references, the idea of oneness and supremacy is too plain to be
+mistaken. Professor Max Mueller has well expressed this fact when he
+said: "There is a monotheism which precedes polytheism in the Veda; and
+even in the invocation of their (inferior) gods, the remembrance of _a_
+God, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of an idolatrous
+phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds."[133]
+These monotheistic conceptions appear to have been common to the Aryans
+before their removal from their early home near the sources of the Oxus,
+and we shall see further on that in one form or another they survived
+among all branches of the migrating race. The same distinguished scholar
+traces the early existence of monotheism in a series of brief and rapid
+references to nearly all the scattered Aryans not only, but also to the
+Turanians on the North and East, to the Tungusic, Mongolic, Tartaric,
+and Finnic tribes. "Everywhere," he says, "we find a worship of nature,
+and the spirits of the departed, but behind it all there rises a belief
+in some higher power called by different names, who is Maker and
+Protector of the world, and who always resides in heaven."[134] He also
+speaks of an ancient African faith which, together with its worship of
+reptiles and of ancestors, showed a vague hope of a future life, "and a
+not altogether faded reminiscence of a supreme God," which certainly
+implies a previous knowledge.[135]
+
+The same prevalence of one supreme worship rising above all idolatry he
+traces among the various tribes of the Pacific Islands. His
+generalizations are only second to those of Ebrard. Although he rejects
+the theory of a supernatural revelation, yet stronger language could
+hardly be used than that which he employs in proof of a universal
+monotheistic faith.[136] "Nowhere," he says, "do we find stronger
+arguments against idolatry, nowhere has the unity of God been upheld
+more strenuously against the errors of polytheism, than by some of the
+ancient sages of India. Even in the oldest of the sacred books, the Rig
+Veda, composed three or four thousand years ago, where we find hymns
+addressed to the different deities of the sky, the air, the earth, the
+rivers, the protest of the human heart against many gods breaks forth
+from time to time with no uncertain sound." Professor Mueller's whole
+position is pretty clearly stated in his first lecture on "The Science
+of Religion," in which he protests against the idea that God once gave
+to man "a _preternatural_ revelation" concerning Himself; and yet he
+gives in this same lecture this striking testimony to the doctrine of an
+early and prevailing monotheistic faith:
+
+"Is it not something worth knowing," he says, "worth knowing even to us
+after the lapse of four or five thousand years, that before the
+separation of the Aryan race, before the existence of Sanskrit, Greek,
+or Latin, before the gods of the Veda had been worshipped, and before
+there was a sanctuary of Zeus among the sacred oaks of Dodona, one
+Supreme deity had been found, had been named, had been invoked by the
+ancestors of our race, and had been invoked by a name which has never
+been excelled by any other name?" And again, on the same subject, he
+says: "If a critical examination of the ancient language of the Jews
+leads to no worse results than those which have followed from a careful
+interpretation of the petrified language of ancient India and Greece, we
+need not fear; we shall be gainers, not losers. Like an old precious
+medal, the ancient religion, after the rust of ages has been removed,
+will come out in all its purity and brightness; and the image which it
+discloses will be the image of the Father, the Father of all the nations
+upon earth; and the superscription, when we can read it again, will be,
+not only in Judea, but in the languages of all the races of the world,
+the Word of God, revealed where alone it can be revealed--revealed in
+the heart of man."[137]
+
+The late Professor Banergea, of Calcutta, in a publication entitled "The
+Aryan Witness," not only maintained the existence of monotheism in the
+early Vedas, but with his rare knowledge of Sanskrit and kindred
+tongues, he gathered from Iranian as well as Hindu sources many
+evidences of a monotheism common to all Aryans. His conclusions derive
+special value from the fact that he was a high caste Hindu, and was not
+only well versed in the sacred language, but was perfectly familiar with
+Hindu traditions and modes of thought. He was as well qualified to judge
+of early Hinduism as Paul was of Judaism, and for the same reason. And
+from his Hindu standpoint, as a Pharisee of the Pharisees, though
+afterward a Christian convert, he did not hesitate to declare his
+belief, not only that the early Vedic faith was monotheistic, but that
+it contained traces of that true revelation, once made to men.[138]
+
+In the same line we find the testimony of the various types of revived
+Aryanism of our own times. The Brahmo Somaj, the Arya Somaj, and other
+similar organizations, are not only all monotheistic, but they declare
+that monotheism was the religion of the early Vedas. And many other
+Hindu reforms, some of them going as far back as the twelfth century,
+have been so many returns to monotheism. A recent Arya catechism
+published by Ganeshi, asserts in its first article that there is one
+only God, omnipotent, infinite, and eternal. It proceeds to show that
+the Vedas present but one, and that when hymns were addressed to Agni,
+Vayu, Indra, etc., it was only a use of different names for one and the
+same Being.[139]
+
+It represents God as having all the attributes of supreme Deity. He
+created the world by His direct power and for the revelation of His
+glory to His creatures. Man, according to the Aryas, came not by
+evolution nor by any of the processes known to Hindu philosophy, but by
+direct creation from existing atoms.
+
+In all this it is easy to see that much has been borrowed from the
+Christian conception of God's character and attributes, but the value of
+this Aryan testimony lies in the fact that it claims for the ancient
+Vedas a clear and positive monotheism.
+
+If we consult the sacred books of China, we shall find there also many
+traces of an ancient faith which antedates both Confucianism and
+Taouism. The golden age of the past to which all Chinese sages look with
+reverence, was the dynasty of Yao and Shun, which was eighteen centuries
+earlier than the period of Confucius and Laotze. The records of the
+Shu-king which Confucius compiled, and from which unfortunately his
+agnosticism excluded nearly all its original references to religion,
+nevertheless retain a full account of certain sacred rites performed by
+Shun on his accession to the full imperial power. In those rites the
+worship of One God as supreme is distinctly set forth as a "customary
+service," thereby implying that it was already long established.
+Separate mention is also made of offerings to inferior deities, as if
+these were honored at his own special instance. It is unquestionably
+true that in China, and indeed in all lands, there sprang up almost from
+the first a tendency to worship, or at least to fear, unseen spirits.
+This tendency has coexisted with all religions of the world--even with
+the Old Testament cult--even with Christianity. To the excited
+imaginations of men, especially the ignorant classes, the world has
+always been a haunted world, and just in proportion as the light of true
+religion has become dim, countless hordes of ghosts and demons have
+appeared. When Confucius arose this gross animism had almost monopolized
+the worship of his countrymen, and universal corruption bore sway. He
+was not an original thinker, but only a compiler of the ancient wisdom,
+and in his selections from the traditions of the ancients, he compiled
+those things only which served his great purpose of building up, from
+the relations of family and kindred, the complete pyramid of a
+well-ordered state in which the Emperor should hold to his subjects the
+place of deity. If such honor to a mortal seemed extravagant, yet in his
+view a wise emperor was far worthier of reverence than the imaginary
+ghosts of the popular superstitions. Yet, even Confucius could not quite
+succeed in banishing the idea of divine help, nor could he destroy that
+higher and most venerable worship which has ever survived amid all the
+corruptions of polytheism. Professor Legge, of Oxford, has claimed, from
+what he regards as valid linguistic proofs, that at a still earlier
+period than the dynasty of Yao and Shun there existed in China the
+worship of one God. He says: "Five thousand years ago the Chinese were
+monotheists--not henotheists, but monotheists"--though he adds that even
+then there was a constant struggle with nature-worship and
+divination.[140]
+
+The same high authority cites a remarkable prayer of an Emperor of the
+Ming dynasty (1538 A.D.) to show that in spite of the agnosticism and
+reticence of Confucius, Shangte has been worshipped in the centuries
+which have followed his time. The prayer is very significant as showing
+how the One Supreme God stands related to the subordinate gods which
+polytheism has introduced. The Emperor was about to decree a slight
+change in the name of Shangte to be used in the imperial worship. He
+first addressed the spirits of the hills, the rivers, and the seas,
+asking them to intercede for him with Shangte. "We will trouble you,"
+said he, "on our behalf to exert your spiritual power and to display
+your vigorous efficacy, communicating our poor desires to Shangte, and
+praying him graciously to grant us his acceptance and regard, and to be
+pleased with the title which we shall reverently present." But very
+different was the language used when he came to address Shangte himself.
+"Of old, in the beginning," he began,--"Of old in the beginning, there
+was the great chaos without form, and dark. The five elements had not
+begun to revolve nor the sun and moon to shine. In the midst thereof
+there presented itself neither form nor sound. Thou, O spiritual
+Sovereign! earnest forth in thy presidency, and first didst divide the
+grosser parts from the purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth:
+Thou madest man. All things got their being with their producing power.
+O Te! when Thou hadst opened the course for the inactive and active
+forces of matter to operate, thy making work went on. Thou didst
+produce, O Spirit! the sun and moon and five planets, and pure and
+beautiful was their light. The vault of heaven was spread out like a
+curtain, and the square earth supported all on it, and all creatures
+were happy. I, thy servant, presume reverently to thank Thee." Farther
+on he says: "All the numerous tribes of animated beings are indebted to
+Thy favor for their being. Men and creatures are emparadised in Thy
+love. All living things are indebted to Thy goodness. But who knows
+whence his blessings come to him? It is Thou, O Lord! who art the
+parent of all things."[141]
+
+Surely this prayer humbly offered by a monarch would not be greatly out
+of place among the Psalms of David. Its description of the primeval
+chaos strikingly resembles that which I have quoted from the Rig Veda,
+and both resemble that of the Mosaic record. If the language used does
+not present the clear conception of one God, the Creator and the
+Upholder of all things, and a supreme and personal Sovereign over kings
+and even "gods," then language has no meaning. The monotheistic
+conception of the second petition is as distinct from the polytheism of
+the first, as any prayer to Jehovah is from a Roman Catholic's prayer
+for the intercession of the saints; and there is no stronger argument in
+the one case against monotheism than in the other. Dr. Legge asserts
+that both in the Shu-king and in the Shiking, "Te," or "Shangte,"
+appears as a personal being ruling in heaven and in earth, the author of
+man's moral nature, the governor among the nations, the rewarder of the
+good and the punisher of the evil.[142] There are proofs that Confucius,
+though in his position with respect to God he fell short of the doctrine
+of the ancient sages, yet believed in the existence of Shangte as a
+personal being. When in old age he had finished his writings, he laid
+them on an altar upon a certain hill-top, and kneeling before the altar
+he returned thanks that he had been spared to complete his work.[143]
+Max Mueller says of him: "It is clear from many passages that with
+Confucius, Tien, or the Spirit of Heaven, was the supreme deity, and
+that he looked upon the other gods of the people--the spirits of the
+air, the mountains, and the rivers,[144] and the spirits of the
+departed, very much with the same feeling with which Socrates regarded
+the mythological deities of Greece."[145]
+
+But there remains to this day a remarkable evidence of the worship of
+the supreme God, Shangte, as he was worshipped in the days of the
+Emperor Shun, 2356 B.C. It is found in the great Temple of Heaven at
+Peking. Dr. Martin and Professors Legge and Douglas all insist that the
+sacrifices there celebrated are relics of the ancient worship of a
+supreme God. China is full of the traces of polytheism; the land swarms
+with Taouist deities of all names and functions, with Confucian and
+ancestral tablets, and with Buddhist temples and dagobas; but within the
+sacred enclosure of this temple no symbol of heathenism appears. Of the
+August Imperial service Dr. Martin thus eloquently speaks:[146] "Within
+the gates of the southern division of the capital, and surrounded by a
+sacred grove so extensive that the silence of its deep shades is never
+broken by the noise of the busy world around it, stands the Temple of
+Heaven. It consists of a single tower, whose tiling of resplendent azure
+is intended to represent the form and color of the aerial vault. It
+contains no image; but on a marble altar a bullock is offered once a
+year as a burnt sacrifice, while the monarch of the empire prostrates
+himself in adoration of the Spirit of the Universe. This is the high
+place of Chinese devotion, and the thoughtful visitor feels that he
+ought to tread its courts with unsandalled feet, for no vulgar idolatry
+has entered here. This mountain-top still stands above the waves of
+corruption, and on this solitary altar there still rests a faint ray of
+its primeval faith. The tablet which represents the invisible deity is
+inscribed with the name Shangte, the Supreme Ruler, and as we
+contemplate the Majesty of the Empire before it, while the smoke ascends
+from his burning sacrifice, our thoughts are irresistably carried back
+to the time when the King of Salem officiated as priest of the Most High
+God. There is," he adds, "no need of extended argument to establish the
+fact that the early Chinese were by no means destitute of the knowledge
+of the true God." Dr. Legge, the learned translator of the Chinese
+classics, shares so fully the views here expressed, that he actually put
+his shoes from off his feet before ascending the great altar, feeling
+that amidst all the mists and darkness of the national superstition, a
+trace of the glory of the Infinite Jehovah still lingered there. And in
+many a discussion since he has firmly maintained that that is in a dim
+way an altar of the true and living God.
+
+Laotze, like Confucius, was agnostic; yet he could not wholly rid
+himself of the influence of the ancient faith. His conception of Taou,
+or Reason, was rationalistic, certainly, yet he invested it with all the
+attributes of personality, as the word "Wisdom" is sometimes used in the
+Old Testament. He spoke of it as "The Infinite Supreme," "The First
+Beginning," and "The Great Original." Dr. Medhurst has translated from
+the "Taou Teh King" this striking Taouist prayer: "O thou perfectly
+honored One of heaven and earth, the rock, the origin of myriad
+energies, the great manager of boundless kalpas, do Thou enlighten my
+spiritual conceptions. Within and without the three worlds, the Logos,
+or divine Taou, is alone honorable, embodying in himself a golden light.
+May he overspread and illumine my person. He whom we cannot see with the
+eye, or hear with the ear, who embraces and includes heaven and earth,
+may he nourish and support the multitudes of living beings."
+
+If we turn to the religion of the Iranian or Persian branch of the Aryan
+family, we find among them also the traces of a primitive monotheism;
+and that it was not borrowed from Semitic sources, through the
+descendants of Abraham or others, Ebrard has shown clearly in the second
+volume of his "Apologetics." Max Mueller also maintains the identity of
+the Iranian faith with that of the Indo-Aryans. The very first notices
+of the religion of the Avesta represent it as monotheistic. Ahura Mazda,
+even when opposed by Ahriman, is supreme, and in the oldest hymns or
+gathas of the Yasna, Ahriman does not appear; there are references to
+evil beings, but they have no formidable head; Persian dualism,
+therefore, was of later growth. Zoroaster, whom Monier Williams assigns
+to the close of the sixth century B.C.,[147] speaks of himself as a
+reformer sent to re-establish the pure worship of Ahura, and Haug
+considers the conception of Ahura identical with that of Jehovah. High
+on a rocky precipice at Behistun, Rawlinson has deciphered an
+inscription claiming to have been ordered by Darius Hystaspes, who lived
+500 B.C., which is as clearly monotheistic as the Song of Moses. The
+Vendidad, which Rawlinson supposes to have been composed 800 years B.C.,
+is full of references to minor gods, but Ahura is always supreme. The
+modern Parsees of Bombay claim to be monotheistic, and declare that such
+has been the faith of their fathers from the beginning.
+
+A Parsee catechism published in Bombay twenty-five years ago reads thus:
+"We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any besides Him....
+He is the God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, the stars,
+the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, ... and all things of the
+worlds; that God we believe in, Him we invoke, Him we adore." And lest
+this should be supposed to be a modern faith, the confession further
+declares that "This is the religion which the true prophet Zurthust, or
+Zoroaster, brought from God."
+
+The Shintoists of Japan, according to their sacred book, the "Kojiki,"
+believe in one self-existent and supreme God, from whom others emanated.
+From two of these, male and female, sprang the Goddess of the Sun, and
+from her the royal line of the Mikados. There was no creation, but the
+two active emanations stirred up the eternally existing chaos, till from
+it came forth the teeming world of animal and vegetable life.
+
+It has often been asserted that tribes of men are found who have no
+conception of God. The author of "Two Years in the Jungle" declares that
+the Hill Dyaks of Borneo are without the slightest notion of a divine
+being. But a Government officer, who for two years was the guest of
+Rajah Brooke, succeeded after long delay in gaining a key to the
+religion of these Dyaks. He gives the name of one Supreme being among
+subordinate gods, and describes minutely the forms of worship. Professor
+Max Mueller, while referring to this same often-repeated allegation as
+having been applied to the aborigines of Australia, cites one of Sir
+Hercules Robinson's Reports on New South Wales, which contains this
+description of the singular faith of one of the lowest of the interior
+tribes:[148] First a being is mentioned who is supreme and whose name
+signifies the "maker or cutter-out," and who is therefore worshipped as
+the great author of all things. But as this supreme god is supposed to
+be inscrutable and far removed, a second deity is named, who is the
+_revealer_ of the first and his mediator in all the affairs of men.[149]
+
+Rev. A.C. Good, now a missionary among the cannibal tribes of West
+Africa, stated in the Presbyterian General Assembly at Saratoga in May,
+1890, that with all the fetishes and superstitions known among the
+tribes on the Ogovie, if a man is asked who made him, he points to the
+sky and utters the name of an unknown being who created all things.[150]
+When Tschoop, the stalwart Mohican chief, came to the Moravians to ask
+that a missionary might be sent to his people, he said: "Do not send us
+a man to tell us that there is a God--we all know that; or that we are
+sinners--we all know that; but send one to tell us about
+salvation."[151] Even Buddhism has not remained true to the atheism of
+its founder. A Thibetan Lama said to Abbe Huc: "You must not confound
+religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars
+prostrate themselves before whatever they see, but there is one only
+Sovereign of the universe, the creator of all things, alike without
+beginning and without end."
+
+But what is the testimony of the great dead religions of the past with
+respect to a primitive monotheism? It is admitted that the later
+developments of the old Egyptian faith were polytheistic. But it has
+generally been conceded that as we approach the earliest notices of that
+faith, monotheistic features more and more prevail. This position is
+contested by Miss Amelia B. Edwards and others, who lean toward the
+development theory. Miss Edwards declares that the earliest faith of
+Egypt was mere totemism, while on the other hand Ebrard, gathering up
+the results of the researches of Lepsius, Ebers, Brugsch, and Emanuel de
+Rouge, deduces what seem to be clear evidences of an early Egyptian
+monotheism. He quotes Manetho, who declares that "for the first nine
+thousand years the god Ptah ruled alone; there was no other." According
+to inscriptions quoted by De Rouge, the Egyptians in the primitive
+period worshipped "the one being who truly lives, who has made all
+things, and who alone has not been made." This one God was known in
+different parts of Egypt under different names, which only in later
+times came to stand for distinct beings. A text which belongs to a
+period fifteen hundred years before Moses says:
+
+"He has made all that is; thou alone art, the millions owe their being
+to thee; he is the Lord of all that which is, and of that which is not."
+A papyrus now in Paris, dating 2300 B.C., contains quotations from two
+much older records, one a writing of the time of King Suffern, about
+3500 B.C., which says: "The operation of God is a thing which cannot be
+understood." The other, from a writing of Ptah Hotep, about 3000 B.C.,
+reads: "This is the command of the God of creation, the peaceable may
+come and issue orders.... The eating of bread is in conformity with the
+ordinance of God; can one forget that his blessing rests thereupon?...
+If thou art a prudent man teach thy son the love of God."[152]
+
+Professor Ernest Naville, in speaking of this same subject in a course
+of popular lectures in Geneva, said: "Listen now to a voice which has
+come forth actually from the recesses of the sepulchre: it reaches us
+from ancient Egypt.
+
+"In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in
+popular practice complete. But under the confused accents of
+superstition the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar
+the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number
+of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred
+text which is called 'The Book of the Dead.' Here is the translation of
+some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God
+who speaks thus: 'I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that
+replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of
+mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. I am the Great and Mighty
+God, the Most High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of
+the armies which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise the
+evil-doers and the persecutors of Godly men. I discover and confound the
+liars. I am the all-seeing Avenger, ... the Guardian of my laws in the
+land of the righteous.' These words are found mingled in the text, from
+which I extract them, with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be
+acknowledged that the translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is
+uncertain enough; still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to
+the general sense and bearing of the recent discoveries of our
+_savans_."[153]
+
+Professor Flint as against Cudworth, Ebrard, Gladstone, and others,
+maintains that the Egyptian religion at the very dawn of its history had
+"certain great gods," though he adds that "there were not so many as in
+later times." "Ancestor worship, but not so developed as in later times,
+and animal worship, but very little of it compared with later times." On
+the other hand, as against Professor Tiele, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, and
+others, he says: "For the opinion that its lower elements were older
+than the higher there is not a particle of properly historical evidence,
+not a trace in the inscriptions of mere propitiation of ancestors or of
+belief in the absolute divinity of kings or animals; on the contrary
+ancestors are always found propitiated through prayer to some of the
+great gods; kings worshipped as emanations and images of the sun god and
+the divine animals adored as divine symbols and incarnations."
+
+Among the Greeks there are few traces of monotheism, but we have reason
+for this in the fact that their earliest literature dates from so late a
+period. It began with Homer not earlier than 600 B.C., and direct
+accounts of the religion of the Greeks are not traced beyond 560 B.C.
+But Welcker, whose examinations have been exhaustive, has, in the
+opinion of Max Mueller, fairly established the primitive monotheism of
+the Greeks. Mueller says: "When we ascend with him to the most distant
+heights of Greek history the idea of God as the supreme being stands
+before us as a simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God the father
+of men we find in Greece a worship of nature. The powers of nature,
+originally worshipped as such, were afterward changed into a family of
+gods, of which Zeus became the king and father. The third phase is what
+is generally called Greek mythology; but it was preceded in time, or at
+least rendered possible in thought, by the two prior conceptions, a
+belief in a supreme God and a worship of the powers of nature.... The
+divine character of Zeus, as distinguished from his mythological
+character, is most carefully brought out by Welcker. He avails himself
+of all the discoveries of comparative philology in order to show more
+clearly how the same idea which found expression in the ancient
+religions of the Brahmans, the Sclavs, and the Germans had been
+preserved under the same simple, clear, and sublime name by the original
+settlers of Hellas."[154]
+
+The same high authority traces in his own linguistic studies the
+important fact that all branches of the Aryan race preserve the same
+name for the Supreme Being, while they show great ramification and
+variation in the names of their subordinate gods. If, therefore, the
+Indo-Aryans give evidence of a monotheistic faith at the time of their
+dispersion, there is an _a priori_ presumption for the monotheism of the
+Greeks. "Herodotus," says Professor Rawlinson, "speaks of God as if he
+had never heard of polytheism." The testimony of the Greek poets shows
+that beneath the prevailing polytheism there remained an underlying
+conception of monotheistic supremacy. Professor Rawlinson quotes from an
+Orphic poem the words:
+
+       "Ares is war, peace
+   Soft Aphrodite, wine that God has made
+   Is Dionysius, Themis is the right
+   Men render to each. Apollo, too,
+   And Phoebus and AEschlepius, who doth heal
+   Diseases, are the sun. All these are one."
+
+Max Mueller traces to this same element of monotheism the real greatness
+and power of the Hellenic race when he says: "What was it, then, that
+preserved in their hearts (the Greeks), in spite even of the feuds of
+tribes and the jealousies of states, the deep feeling of that ideal
+unity which constitutes a people? It was their primitive religion; it
+was a dim recollection of the common allegiance they owed from time
+immemorial to the great father of gods and men; it was their belief in
+the old Zeus of Dodona in the Pan-Hellenic Zeus."[155] "There is, in
+truth, but one," says Sophocles, "one only God, who made both heaven and
+long-extended earth and bright-faced swell of seas and force of winds."
+Xenophanes says: "'Mongst gods and men there is one mightiest God not
+mortal or in form or thought. Entire he sees and understands, and
+without labor governs all by mind." Aratus, whom Paul quotes,[156] says:
+"With Zeus began we; let no mortal voice of men leave Zeus unpraised.
+Zeus fills the heavens, the streets, the marts. Everywhere we live in
+Zeus. Zeus fills the sea, the shores, the harbors. _We are his
+offspring, too._" The reference made by Paul evidently implies that this
+Zeus was a dim conception of the one true God.
+
+That all branches of the Semitic race were monotheistic we may call not
+only Ebrard and Mueller, but Renan, to witness. According to Renan,
+evidences that the monotheism of the Semitic races was of a very early
+origin, appears in the fact that all their names for deity--El, Elohim,
+Ilu, Baal, Bel, Adonai, Shaddai, and Allah--denote one being and that
+supreme. These names have resisted all changes, and doubtless extend as
+far back as the Semitic language or the Semitic race. Max Mueller, in
+speaking of the early faith of the Arabs, says: "Long before Mohammed
+the primitive intuition of God made itself felt in Arabia;" and he
+quotes this ancient Arabian prayer: "I dedicate myself to thy service, O
+Allah. Thou hast no companion, except the companion of whom thou art
+master absolute, and of whatever is his." The book of Job and the story
+of Balaam indicate the prevalence of an early monotheism beyond the pale
+of the Abrahamic church. In the records of the kings of Assyria and
+Babylonia there is a conspicuous polytheism, yet it is significant that
+each king worshipped _one God only_. And this fact suggests, as a wide
+generalization, that political and dynastic jealousies had their
+influence in multiplying the names and differentiating the attributes of
+ancient deities. This was notably the case in ancient Egypt, where each
+invasion and each change of dynasty led to a new adjustment of the
+Egyptian Pantheon.
+
+Rome had many gods, but Jupiter was supreme. Herodotus says of the
+Scythians, that they had eight gods, but one was supreme, like Zeus. The
+Northmen, according to Dr. Dascent, had one supreme god known as the
+"All-fader." The Druids, though worshipping various subordinate deities,
+believed in One who was supreme--the creator of all things and the soul
+of all things. Though conceived of in a Pantheistic sense, He was
+personal and exerted a moral control, as is shown by the famous triad:
+"Fear God; be just to all men; die for your country." In the highest and
+purest period of the old Mexican faith we read of the Tezcucan monarch
+Nezahualcoyotl, who said: "These idols of wood and stone can neither
+hear nor feel; much less could they make the heavens and the earth, and
+man who is the lord of it. These must be the work of the all-powerful
+unknown God, the Creator of the universe, on whom alone I must rely for
+consolation and support."[157] The Incas of Peru also, though
+sun-worshippers, believed in a supreme creator who made the sun. The
+oldest of their temples was reared to the supreme god "Virachoca." And
+one of the greatest Incas has left his declared belief that "there must
+be above the sun a greater and more powerful ruler, at whose behest the
+sun pursues his daily and untiring round."[158]
+
+It has been assumed throughout this lecture, that instead of an advance
+in the religions of men, there has everywhere been decline. Our proofs
+of this are not theoretic but historic. As an example, all writers are
+agreed, I believe, that during the historic period the religion of the
+Egyptians steadily deteriorated until Christianity and Mohammedanism
+superseded it. In strong contrast with the lofty and ennobling prayer
+which we have quoted from an ancient Egyptian record, is the degradation
+of the later worship. On a column at Heliopolis, belonging to the fourth
+century before Christ, is inscribed this petition: "O thou white cat,
+thy head is the head of the sun god, thy nose is the nose of Thoth, of
+the exceeding great love of Hemopolis." The whole prayer is on this low
+level. Clement, of Alexandria, after describing the great beauty of an
+Egyptian temple, proceeds to say: "The innermost sanctuary is concealed
+by a curtain wrought in gold, which the priest draws aside, and there is
+seen a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent, which wriggles on a purple
+cover."[159]
+
+That the religions of India have degenerated is equally clear. The fact
+that all the medieval and modern reforms look back for their ideals to
+the earlier and purer Aryan faith, might of itself afford sufficient
+proof of this, but we have also abundant evidence which is direct. In
+the Rig Veda there is little polytheism, and no idolatry. There is no
+doctrine of caste, no base worship of Siva with the foul enormities of
+Saktism.[160] In the most ancient times there was no doctrine of
+transmigration, nor any notion that human life is an evil to be overcome
+by self-mortification. Woman was comparatively free from the oppressions
+which she suffered in the later periods. Infanticide had not then been
+sanctioned and enjoined by religious authority, and widow burning and
+the religious murders of the Thugs were unknown. And yet so deeply were
+these evils rooted at the beginning of the British rule in India, that
+the joint influence of Christian instruction and Governmental authority
+for a whole century has not been sufficient to overcome them.
+
+Buddhism in the first two or three centuries had much to commend it.
+King Ashoka left monuments of practical beneficence and philanthropy
+which have survived to this day. But countless legends soon sprang up to
+mar the simplicity of Gautama's ethics. Corruptions crept in.
+Compromises were made with popular superstitions and with Hindu
+Saktism.[161] The monastic orders sank into corruption, and by the ninth
+century of our era the system had been wholly swept from India. The
+Buddhism of Ceylon was planted first by the devout son and daughter of a
+king, and for a time was characterized by great purity and devotion. But
+now it exists only in name, and a prominent missionary of the country
+declared, in the London Missionary Conference of 1888, that nine-tenths
+of the Cingalese were worshippers of serpents or of spirits.[162] The
+prevailing Buddhism in Thibet, from the eighth to the tenth century, was
+an admixture with Saktism and superstition. Where the system has
+survived in any good degree of strength, it has been due either to
+government support or to an alliance with other religions. The history
+of Taouism has shown a still worse deterioration. Laotze, though
+impracticable as a reformer, was a profound philosopher. His teachings
+set forth a lofty moral code. Superstition he abominated. His ideas of
+deity were cold and rationalistic, but they were pure and lofty. But the
+modern Taouism is a medley of wild and degrading superstitions.
+According to its theodicy all nature is haunted. The ignorant masses are
+enthralled by the fear of ghosts, and all progress is paralyzed by the
+nightmare of "fung shuay." Had not Taouism been balanced by the sturdy
+common-sense ethics of Confucianism, the Chinese might have become a
+race of savages.[163]
+
+The decline of Mohammedanism from the sublime fanaticism of Abu Bekr and
+the intellectual aspirations of Haroun Al Raschid, to the senseless
+imbecility of the modern Turk, is too patent to need argument. The worm
+of destruction was left in the system by the vices of Mohammed himself;
+and from the higher level of his early followers it has not only
+deteriorated, but it has dragged down everything else with it. It has
+destroyed the family, because it has degraded woman. It has separated
+her immeasurably from the status of dignity and honor which she enjoyed
+under the influence of the early Christian church, and it has robbed her
+of even that freedom which was accorded to her by heathen Rome. One need
+only look at Northern Africa, the land of Cyprian and Origen, of
+Augustine and the saintly Monica, to see what Islam has done. And even
+the later centuries have brought no relief. Prosperous lands have been
+rendered desolate and sterile, and all progress has been paralyzed.
+
+In the history of the Greek religion it is granted that there were
+periods of advancement. The times of the fully developed Apollo worship
+showed vast improvement over previous periods, but even Professor Tiele
+virtually admits that this was owing to the importation of foreign
+influences. It was not due to any natural process of evolution; and it
+was followed by hopeless corruption and decline. The last days of both
+Greece and Rome were degenerate and full of depression and despair.
+
+It is not contended that no revivals or reforms are possible in
+heathenism. There have been many of these, but with all allowance for
+spasmodic efforts, the general drift has been always downward.[164]
+There is a natural disposition among men to multiply objects of
+worship. Herbert Spencer's principle, that development proceeds from the
+homogeneous to the heterogeneous, is certainly true of the religions of
+the world; but his other principle, that development proceeds from the
+incoherent to the coherent, does not apply. Incoherency and moral chaos
+mark the trend of all man-made faiths. The universal tendency to
+deterioration is well summed up as follows by Professor Naville:
+
+"Traces are found almost everywhere in the midst of idolatrous
+superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure and often stamped with a
+lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact; it offers to view in the
+same bed two currents (like the Arve and the Arveiron)--the one pure,
+the other impure. What is the relation between these two currents? ...
+Did humanity begin with a coarse fetishism, and thence rise by slow
+degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of a comparatively pure
+monotheism first show themselves in the recent periods of idolatry?
+Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative.
+It is in the most ancient historical ground that the laborious
+investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion.
+Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few
+years afterward. In place of the tree cut down you will find
+coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided
+among a multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the
+opinion which tends to prevail among our savants on the subject of the
+historical development of religions. The idea of one God is at the
+roots--it is primitive; polytheism is derivative."[165]
+
+We have thus far drawn our proofs of man's polytheistic tendencies from
+the history of the non-Christian religions. In proof of the same general
+tendency we now turn to the history of the Israelites, the chosen people
+of God. We may properly appeal to the Bible as history, especially when
+showing idolatrous tendencies even under the full blaze of the truth. In
+spite of the supernatural revelation which they claimed to
+possess--notwithstanding all their instructions, warnings, promises,
+deliverances, divinely aided conquests--they relapsed into idolatry
+again and again. Ere they had reached the land of promise they had begun
+to make images of the gods of Egypt. They made constant compromises and
+alliances with the Canaanites, and not even severe judgments could
+withhold them from this downward drift. Their wisest king was
+demoralized by heathen marriages, and his successors openly patronized
+the heathen shrines. The abominations of Baal worship and the nameless
+vices of Sodom were practised under the very shadow of the Temple.[166]
+Judgments followed upon this miserable degeneracy. Prophets were sent
+with repeated warnings, and many were slain for their faithful messages.
+Tribe after tribe was borne into captivity, the Temple was destroyed,
+and at last the nation was virtually broken up and scattered abroad.
+
+There was indeed a true development in the church of God from the
+Abrahamic period to the Apostolic day. There was a rising from a narrow
+national spirit to one which embraced the whole brotherhood of man, from
+type and prophecy to fulfilment, from the sins that were winked at, to a
+purer ethic and the perfect law of love; but these results came not by
+natural evolution--far enough from it. They were wrought out not by man,
+but we might almost say, in spite of man. Divine interpositions were all
+that saved Judaism from a total wreck, even as the national unity was
+destroyed. A new Dispensation was introduced, a Divine Redeemer and an
+Omnipotent Spirit were the forces which saved the world from a second
+universal apostasy.
+
+We come nearer still to the church of God for proofs of man's inherent
+tendency to polytheism. Even under the new Dispensation we have seen the
+church sink into virtual idolatry. Within six centuries from the time of
+Christ and His apostles there had been a sad lapse into what seemed the
+worship of images, pictures, and relics, and a faith in holy places and
+the bones of saints. What Mohammed saw, or thought he saw, was a
+Christian idolatry scarcely better than that of the Arabian Koreish.
+And, as if by the judgment of God, the churches of the East were swept
+with a destruction like that which had been visited upon the Ten Tribes.
+In the Christianity of to-day, viewed as a whole, how strong is the
+tendency to turn from the pure spiritual conception of God to some more
+objective trust--a saint, a relic, a ritual, an ordinance. In the old
+churches of the East or on the Continent of Europe, how much of virtual
+idolatry is there even now? It is only another form of the tendency in
+man to seek out many devices--to find visible objects of trust--to try
+new panaceas for the ailments of the soul--to multiply unto himself gods
+to help his weakness. This is just what has been done in all ages and
+among all races of the world. This explains polytheism. Man's religious
+nature is a vine, and God is its only proper support. Once fallen from
+that support, it creeps and grovels in all directions and over all false
+supports.
+
+We have not resorted to Divine revelation for proofs except as history.
+But our conclusions drawn from heathen sources bring us directly, as one
+face answereth to another face in a glass, to the plain teachings of
+Paul and other inspired writers, who tell us that the human race was
+once possessed of the knowledge of One Supreme God, but that men
+apostatized from Him, preferring to worship the creature rather than the
+Creator. There are no traces of an upward evolution toward clearer
+knowledge and purer lives, except by the operation of outward causes,
+but there are many proofs that men's hearts have become darkened and
+their moral nature more and more depraved. In all lands there have been
+those who seemed to gain some glimpses of truth, and whose teachings
+were far above the average sentiment and character of their times, but
+they have either been discarded like Socrates and the prophets of
+Israel, or they have obtained a following only for a time and their
+precepts have fallen into neglect. It has been well said that no race of
+men live up to their religion, however imperfect it may be. They first
+disregard it, and then at length degrade it, to suit their apostate
+character.
+
+Paul's estimate of heathen character was that of a man who, aside from
+his direct inspiration, spoke from a wide range of observation. He was a
+philosopher by education, and he lived in an age and amid national
+surroundings which afforded the broadest knowledge of men, of customs,
+of religious faiths, of institutions. Trained as a Jew, dealing
+constantly with the most enlightened heathen, persecuting the
+Christians, and then espousing their cause, his preparation for a broad,
+calm, and unerring judgment of the character of the Gentile nations was
+complete; and his one emphatic verdict was _apostasy_.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 125: Fiske: _The Destiny of Man_, pp. 78-80.]
+
+[Footnote 126: We do not care to enter the field of pre-historic
+speculation where the evolution of religion from totemism or fetishism
+claims to find its chief support. We are considering only the
+traditional development of the ancient faiths of man.]
+
+[Footnote 127: _Introduction to Christian Theology_, Appendix, pp. 166,
+167.]
+
+[Footnote 128: Ebrard's _Apologetics_, vols. ii. and iii.]
+
+[Footnote 129: _Modern Atheism_, p. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 130: _The Chinese_, pp. 163, 164.]
+
+[Footnote 131: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 132: Professor Banergea (see _Indian Antiquary_, February,
+1875) thinks that this Hindu account of creation shows traces of the
+common revelation made to mankind.]
+
+[Footnote 133: _Science of Religion_, p. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 134: _Science of Religion_, p. 88.]
+
+[Footnote 135: "The ancient relics of African faith are rapidly
+disappearing at the approach of Mohammedan and Christian missionaries;
+but what has been preserved of it, chiefly through the exertions of
+learned missionaries, is full of interest to the student of religion,
+with its strange worship of snakes and ancestors, its vague hope of a
+future life, and its not altogether faded reminiscence of a Supreme God,
+the Father of the black as well as of the white man."--_Science of
+Religion_, p. 39.]
+
+[Footnote 136: While he maintains that the idea of God must have
+preceded that of _gods_, as the plural always implies the singular, he
+yet claims very justly that the exclusive conception of monotheism as
+against polytheism could hardly have existed. Men simply thought of God
+as God, as a child thinks of its father, and does not even raise the
+question of a second.--See _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p.
+349.]
+
+[Footnote 137: St. Augustine, in quoting Cyprian, shows that the fathers
+of the Church looked upon Plato as a monotheist. The passage is as
+follows: "For when he (Cyprian) speaks of the Magians, he says that the
+chief among them, Hostanes, maintains that the true God is invisible,
+and that true angels sit at His throne; and that Plato agrees with this
+and believes in one God, considering the others to be demons; and that
+Hermes Trismegistus also speaks of one God, and confesses that He is
+incomprehensible." Angus., _De Baptismo contra Donat_., Lib. VI., Cap.
+XLIV.]
+
+[Footnote 138: _The Aryan Witness_, passim.]
+
+[Footnote 139: Aristotle said, "God, though He is one, has many names,
+because He is called according to the states into which He always enters
+anew."]
+
+[Footnote 140: _The Religions of China_, p. 16.]
+
+[Footnote 141: _The Religions of China_, p. 49.]
+
+[Footnote 142: "In the year 1600 the Emperor of China declared in an
+edict that the Chinese should adore, not the material heavens, but the
+_Master_ of heaven."--Cardinal Gibbons: _Our Christian Heritage_.]
+
+[Footnote 143: Martin: _The Chinese_, p. 106.]
+
+[Footnote 144: It has been related by Rev. Hudson Taylor that the
+fishermen of the Fukien Province, when a storm arises, pray to the
+goddess of the sea; but when that does not avail they throw all the
+idols aside and pray to the "Great-grandfather in Heaven." Father is a
+great conception to the Chinese mind. Great-grandfather is higher still,
+and stands to them for the Supreme.]
+
+[Footnote 145: _Science of Religion_, p. 86.]
+
+[Footnote 146: _The Chinese_, p. 99.]
+
+[Footnote 147: Other writers contend that he was probably
+contemporaneous with Abraham. Still others think Zoroaster a general
+name for great prophets. Darmestetter inclines to this view.]
+
+[Footnote 148: _Chips from a German Workshop._]
+
+[Footnote 149: Archbishop Vaughn, of Sydney, emphatically declares that
+the aborigines of Australia believe in a Supreme Being.]
+
+[Footnote 150: Rev. Mr. Johnson, of Lagos, has expressed a belief that
+the pagan tribes of West Africa were monotheists before the incursion of
+the Mohammedans. Rev. Alfred Marling, of Gaboon, bears the same
+testimony of the Fans.]
+
+[Footnote 151: Rev. A.C. Thompson, D.D. _The Moravians_.
+
+One of the early converts from among the Ojibwas, said to the
+missionary, Rev. S.G. Wright: "A great deal of your preaching I readily
+understand, especially what you say about our real characters. We
+Indians all know that it is wrong to lie, to steal, to be dishonest, to
+slander, to be covetous, and we always know that the Great Spirit hates
+all these things. All this we knew before we ever saw the white man. I
+knew these things when I was a little boy. We did not, however, know the
+way of pardon for these sins. In our religion there is nothing said by
+the wise men about pardon. We knew nothing of the Lord Jesus Christ as a
+Saviour."]
+
+[Footnote 152: Professor Tiele, of Leyden, asserts that "It is
+altogether erroneous to regard the Egyptian religion as the polytheistic
+degeneration of a prehistoric monotheism. It was polytheistic from the
+beginning." But on one of the oldest of Egyptian monuments is found this
+hymn, which is quoted by Cardinal Gibbons in _Our Christian
+Inheritance_:
+
+   "Hail to thee, say all creatures; ...
+   The gods adore thy majesty,
+   The spirits thou has made exalt thee,
+   Rejoicing before the feet of their begetter.
+   They cry out welcome to thee,
+   Father of the fathers of all the gods,
+   Who raises the heavens, who fixes the earth;
+   We worship thy spirit who alone hast made us,
+   We whom thou hast made thank thee that thou hast given us birth,
+   We give to thee praises for thy mercy toward us."]
+
+[Footnote 153: _Modern Atheism_, p. 13.]
+
+[Footnote 154: _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. ii., pp. 146, 147.]
+
+[Footnote 155: _Science of Religion_, Lecture III., p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 156: Acts xvii. 28.]
+
+[Footnote 157: Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_.]
+
+[Footnote 158: Reville in his _Hibbert Lectures_ on Mexican and Peruvian
+religions asserts that polytheism existed from the beginning, but our
+contention is that One God was supreme and created the sun.]
+
+[Footnote 159: De Pressense: _The Ancient World and Christianity_.]
+
+[Footnote 160: Bournouf found the Tantras so obscene that he refused to
+translate them.]
+
+[Footnote 161: T. Rhys Davids: _Buddhism_, p. 208.]
+
+[Footnote 162: _Report of Missionary Conference_, vol. i, p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 163: Buddhism, in the _Britannica_.]
+
+[Footnote 164: Rev. S.G. Wright, long a missionary among the American
+Indians, says: "During the forty-six years in which I have been laboring
+among the Ojibway Indians, I have been more and more impressed with the
+evidence, showing itself in their language, that at some former time
+they have been in possession of much higher ideas of God's attributes,
+and of what constitutes true happiness, immortality, and virtue, as well
+as of the nature of the Devil and his influence in the world, than those
+which they now possess. The thing which early in our experience
+surprised us, and which has not ceased to impress us, is, that, with
+their present low conceptions of spiritual things, they could have
+chosen so lofty and spiritual a word for the Deity. The only
+satisfactory explanation seems to be that, at an early period of their
+history, they had higher and more correct ideas concerning God than
+those which they now possess, and that these have become, as the
+geologists would say, _fossilized_ in their forms of speech, and so
+preserved."--_Bibliotheca Sacra_, October, 1889.]
+
+[Footnote 165: _Modern Atheism_, p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 166: I. Kings, xiv., and II. Kings, xxiii.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII.
+
+INDIRECT TRIBUTES OF HEATHEN SYSTEMS TO THE DOCTRINES OF THE BIBLE
+
+
+I am to speak of certain indirect tributes borne by the non-Christian
+religions to the doctrines of Christianity. One such tribute of great
+value we have already considered in the prevalence of early monotheism,
+so far corroborating the scriptural account of man's first estate, and
+affording many proofs which corroborate the scriptural doctrine of human
+apostasy. Others of the same general bearing will now be considered. The
+history of man's origin, the strange traditions of his fall by
+transgression and his banishment from Eden, of the conflict of good with
+evil represented by a serpent, of the Deluge and the dispersion of the
+human race, have all been the subjects of ridicule by anti-Christian
+writers:--though by turns they have recognized these same facts and have
+used them as proofs that Christianity had borrowed them from old myths.
+The idea of sacrifice, or atonement, of Divine incarnation, of a
+trinity, of mediation, of a salvation by faith instead of one's own
+merits, have been represented as unphilosophical, and therefore
+improbable in the nature of the case.
+
+It becomes an important question, therefore, whether other religions of
+mankind show similar traditions, however widely they have dwelt apart,
+and however diversified their languages, literatures, and institutions
+may have been in other respects. And it is also an important question,
+whether even under heathen systems, the consciousness of sin and the
+deepest moral yearnings of men have found expression along the very
+lines which are represented by the Christian doctrines of grace. To
+these questions we now address ourselves. What are the lessons of the
+various ethnic traditions? And how are we to account for their striking
+similarities? The most obvious theory is, that a common origin must be
+assigned to them, that they are dim reminiscences of a real knowledge
+once clear and distinct. The fact that with their essential unity they
+differ from each other and differ from our Scriptural record, seems to
+rather strengthen the theory that all--our own included--have been
+handed down from the pre-Mosaic times--ours being divinely edited by an
+inspired and infallible author. Their differences are such as might have
+been expected from separate transmissions, independently made.
+
+We have, first of all, the various traditions of the Creation. In most
+heathen races there have appeared, in their later stages, grave and
+grotesque cosmogonies; and a too common impression is, that these
+represent the real teachings of their sacred books or their earliest
+traditions. But when one enters upon a careful study of the
+non-Christian religions, and traces them back to their sources, he finds
+more rational accounts of the Creation and the order of nature, and
+sees striking points of resemblance to the Mosaic record. The story of
+Genesis represents the "Beginning" as formless, chaotic, and dark. The
+Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The heavens and the
+earth were separated. Light appeared long before the sun and moon were
+visible, and the day and night were clearly defined. Creation proceeded
+in a certain order from vegetable to animal life, and from lower animals
+to higher, and last of all man appeared. In heathen systems we find
+fragments of this traditional account, and, as a rule, they are more or
+less clear in proportion to their nearness to, or departure from, the
+great cradle of the human race.[167] Thus Professor Rawlinson quotes
+from an Assyrian account of the creation, as found upon the clay tablets
+discovered in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, a description of
+formlessness, emptiness, and darkness on the deep--of a separation
+between the earth and sky--and of the light as preceding the appearance
+of the sun. That account also places the creation of animals before that
+of man, whom it represents as being formed of the dust of the earth, and
+as receiving a divine effluence from the Creator.[168] According to an
+Etruscan saga quoted by Suidas, God created the world in six periods of
+1,000 years each. In the first, the heavens and the earth; in the
+second, the firmament; in the third, the seas; in the fourth, the sun,
+moon, and stars; in the fifth, the beasts of the land, the air, and the
+sea; in the sixth, man. According to a passage in the Persian Avesta,
+the supreme Ormazd created the visible world by his word in six periods
+or thousands of years: in the first, the heavens with the stars; in the
+second, the water and the clouds; in the third, the earth and the
+mountains; in the fourth, the trees and the plants; in the fifth, the
+beasts which sprang from the primeval beast; in the sixth, man.[169]
+
+As we get farther away from the supposed early home of the race, the
+traditions become more fragmentary and indistinct. The Rig Veda,
+Mandala, x., 129, tells us that:
+
+     "In the beginning there was neither naught nor aught; There was
+     neither day nor night nor light nor darkness; Only the EXISTENT ONE
+     breathed calmly. Next came darkness, gloom on gloom. Next all was
+     water--chaos indiscrete."[170]
+
+Strikingly similar is the language quoted in a former lecture from the
+prayer of a Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty. It runs thus: "Of old,
+in the beginning, there was the great chaos without form and dark. The
+five elements had not begun to revolve, nor the sun and moon to shine.
+In the midst thereof there presented itself neither form nor sound.
+Thou, O Spiritual Sovereign, didst divide the grosser parts from the
+purer. Thou madest heaven: Thou madest earth: Thou madest man."
+
+There is a possibility that these conceptions may have come from
+Christian sources instead of primitive Chinese traditions, possibly from
+early Nestorian missionaries, though this is scarcely probable, as
+Chinese emperors have been slow to introduce foreign conceptions into
+their august temple service to Shangte; its chief glory lies in its
+antiquity and its purely national character. Buddhism had already been
+in China more than a thousand years, and these prayers are far enough
+from its teachings. May we not believe that the ideas here expressed had
+always existed in the minds of the more devout rulers of the empire? In
+similar language, the Edda of the Icelandic Northmen describes the
+primeval chaos.
+
+Thus:
+
+   "'Twas the morning of time
+    When yet naught was,
+    Nor sand nor sea was there,
+    Nor cooling streams.
+    Earth was not formed
+    Nor heaven above.
+    A yawning gap was there
+    And grass nowhere."
+
+Not unlike these conceptions of the "Beginning" is that which Morenhout
+found in a song of the Tahitans, and which ran thus:
+
+   "He was; Toaroa was his name,
+    He existed in space; no earth, no heaven, no men."
+
+M. Goussin adds the further translation: "Toaroa, the Great Orderer, is
+the origin of the earth: he has no father, no posterity."[171] The
+tradition of the Odshis, a negro tribe on the African Gold Coast,
+represents the creation as having been completed in six days. God
+created first the woman; then the man; then the animals; then the trees
+and plants; and lastly the rocks. God created nothing on the seventh
+day. He only gave men His commandments. The reversal of the order here
+only confirms the supposition that it is an original tradition. We find
+everywhere on the Western Hemisphere, north and south, plain recognition
+of the creation of the world by one Supreme God, though the order is not
+given. How shall we account for the similarities above indicated, except
+on the supposition of a common and a very ancient source?
+
+Still more striking are the various traditions of the Fall of man by
+sin. In the British Museum there is a very old Babylonian seal which
+bears the figures of a man and a woman stretching out their hands toward
+a fruit-tree, while behind the woman lurks a serpent. A fragment bearing
+an inscription represents a tree of life as guarded on all sides by a
+sword. Another inscription describes a delectable region surrounded by
+four rivers. Professors Rawlinson and Delitzsch both regard this as a
+reference to the Garden of Eden.
+
+"The Hindu legends," says Hardwick, "are agreed in representing man as
+one of the last products of creative wisdom, as the master-work of God;
+and also in extolling the first race of men as pure and upright,
+innocent and happy. The beings who were thus created by Brahma are all
+said to have been endowed with righteousness and perfect faith; they
+abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment; their hearts
+were free from guile; they were pure, made free from toil by observance
+of sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they
+were filled with perfect wisdom by which they contemplated the glory of
+Vishnu.
+
+"The first men were, accordingly, the best. The Krita age, the 'age of
+truth,' the reign of purity, in which mankind, as it came forth from the
+Creator, was not divided into numerous conflicting orders, and in which
+the different faculties of man all worked harmoniously together, was a
+thought that lay too near the human heart to be uprooted by the ills and
+inequalities of actual life. In this the Hindu sided altogether with the
+Hebrew, and as flatly contradicted the unworthy speculations of the
+modern philosopher, who would fain persuade us that human beings have
+not issued from one single pair, and also, that the primitive type of
+men is scarcely separable from that of ordinary animals...."[172]
+
+Spence Hardy, in speaking on this subject, describes a Buddhist legend
+of Ceylon which represents the original inhabitants of the world as
+having been once spotlessly pure, and as dwelling in ethereal bodies
+which moved at will through space. They had no need of sun or moon. They
+lived in perfect happiness and peace till, at last, one of their number
+tasted of a strange substance which he found lying on the surface of the
+earth. He induced others to eat also, whereupon all knew good and evil,
+and their high estate was lost. They now had perpetual need of food,
+which only made them more gross and earthly. Wickedness abounded, and
+they were in darkness. Assembling together, they fashioned for
+themselves a sun, but after a few hours it fell below the horizon, and
+they were compelled to create a moon.[173] An old Mongolian legend
+represents the first man as having transgressed by eating a pistache
+nut. As a punishment, he and all his posterity came under the power of
+sin and death, and were subjected to toil and suffering.[174] A
+tradition of the African Odshis, already named, relates that formerly
+God was very near to men. But a woman, who had been pounding banana
+fruit in a mortar, inadvertently entering His presence with a pestle in
+her hands, aroused His anger, and He withdrew into the high heavens and
+listened to men no more. Six rainless years brought famine and distress,
+whereupon they besought Him to send one of His counsellors who should be
+their daysman, and should undertake their cause and care for them. God
+sent his chief minister, with a promise that He would give rain and
+sunshine, and He directed that His rainbow should appear in the
+sky.[175] The inhabitants of Tahiti have a tradition of a fall which is
+very striking; and Humboldt, after careful study, reached the conclusion
+that it had not been derived through any communication with Christian
+lands, but was an old native legend. The Karens of Burmah had a story of
+an early temptation of their ancestors by an evil being and their
+consequent apostasy. Many other races who have no definite tradition of
+this kind have still some vague notion of a golden age in the past.
+There has been everywhere a mournful and pathetic sense of something
+lost, of degeneracy from better days gone by, of Divine displeasure and
+forfeited favor. The baffled gropings of all false religions seem to
+have been so many devices to regain some squandered heritage of the
+past. All this is strikingly true of China.
+
+Still more clear and wellnigh universal are the traditions of a flood.
+The Hindu Brahmanas and the Mahabharata of a later age present legends
+of a deluge which strikingly resemble the story of Genesis. Vishnu
+incarnate in a fish warned a great sage of a coming flood and directed
+him to build an ark. A ship was built and the sage with seven others
+entered. Attached to the horn of the fish the ship was towed over the
+waters to a high mountain top.[176] The Chinese also have a story of a
+flood, though it is not given in much detail. The Iranian tradition is
+very fragmentary and seems to confound the survivor with the first man
+of the creation. Yima, the Noah of the story, was warned by the
+beginning of a great winter rain, by which the waters were raised 19,000
+feet. Yima was commanded to prepare a place of safety for a number of
+chosen men, birds, and beasts. It was to be three stories high, and to
+be furnished with a high door and window, but whether it was a ship or a
+refuge on the mountain top does not appear. The same tradition speaks of
+Eden and of a serpent, but the account is suddenly cut short.[177]
+
+The Greek traditions of a flood varied according to the different
+branches of the Greek nation. The Arcadians traced their origin to
+Dardanus, who was preserved from the great flood in a skin-covered boat.
+The Pelasgians held the tradition of Deucalion and his wife, who were
+saved in a ship which was grounded on the summit of Pindus. As the water
+receded they sent out a dove to search for land. The Assyrian account,
+which was found a few years ago on a tablet in the palace of
+Assur-bani-pal, claims to have been related as a matter of personal
+experience by Sisit, the Chaldean Noah, who was commanded to construct a
+ship 600 cubits long, into which he should enter with his family and his
+goods. At the time appointed the earth became a waste. The very gods in
+heaven fled from the fury of the tempest and "huddled down in their
+refuge like affrighted dogs." The race of men was swept away. On the
+seventh day Sisit opened a window and saw that the rain was stayed, but
+the water was covered with floating corpses; all men had become as clay.
+The ship rested on a mountain top, and Sisit sent forth a dove, a
+swallow, and a raven. The dove and the swallow returned, but the raven
+was satisfied with the floating carcasses. Sisit went forth and offered
+sacrifice, around which "the gods hovered like flies."
+
+Professor Rawlinson thinks that these accounts and those given in
+Genesis were both derived from the earlier traditions, the Assyrian
+version having been greatly corrupted. The Chaldean tradition is
+slightly different. The Noah of the Chaldeans was commanded in a dream
+not only to build a ship, but to bury all important documents and so
+preserve the antediluvian history. As the flood subsided he, his family,
+and his pilot were transferred to heaven, but certain friends who were
+saved with them remained and peopled the earth. Among the ancient
+Peruvians we find a tradition of a great deluge which swept the earth.
+After it had passed, the aged man Wiracotscha rose out of Lake Titicaca
+and his three sons issued from a cave and peopled the earth.[178] Hugh
+Miller and others have named many similar traditions.
+
+The fact that in nearly every case those who were rescued from the flood
+immediately offered piacular sacrifices suggests the recognition in all
+human history of still another fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the
+universal sense of sin. This conviction was especially strong when the
+survivors of a Divine judgment beheld the spectacle of a race swept away
+for their transgressions; but there are abundant traces of it in all
+ages of the world. The exceptions are found in those instances where
+false systems of philosophy have sophisticated the natural sense of
+guilt by destroying the consciousness of personality. All races of men
+have shown a feeling of moral delinquency and a corresponding fear. The
+late C. Loring Brace, in his work entitled "The Unknown God," quotes
+some striking penitential psalms or prayers offered by the Akkadians of
+Northern Assyria four thousand years ago.
+
+The deep-seated conviction of guilt which is indicated by the old
+religion of the Egyptians is well set forth by Dr. John Wortabet, of
+Beyrut, in a pamphlet entitled "The Temples and Tombs of Thebes." He
+says: "The immortality of the soul, its rewards and punishments in the
+next world, and its final salvation and return into the essence of the
+divinity were among the most cherished articles of the Egyptian creed.
+Here (in the tombs), as on the papyri which contain the 'Ritual of the
+Dead,' are represented the passage of the soul through the nether world
+and its introduction into the Judgment Hall, where Osiris, the god of
+benevolence, sits on a throne, and with the assistance of forty-two
+assessors proceeds to examine the deceased. His actions are weighed in a
+balance against truth in the presence of Thoth, the ibis-headed god of
+wisdom, and if found wanting he is hounded out in the shape of an
+unclean animal by Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the infernal regions.
+The soul then proceeds in a series of transmigrations into the bodies of
+animals and human beings and thus passes through a purgatorial process
+which entitles it to appear again before the judgment-seat of Osiris. If
+found pure it is conveyed to Aalu, the Elysian fields, or the 'Pools of
+Peace.' After three thousand years of sowing and reaping by cool waters
+it returns to its old body (the preserved mummy), suffers another period
+of probation, and is ultimately absorbed into the godhead. One of the
+most impressive scenes in the whole series is that where the soul, in
+the form of a mummified body, stands before Osiris and the forty-two
+judges to be examined on the forty-two commandments of the Egyptian
+religion. Bearing on its face the signs of solemnity and fear, and
+carrying in its hand a feather, the symbol of veracity, it says among
+other things: 'I have not blasphemed the gods, I have defrauded no man,
+I have not changed the measures of Egypt, I have not prevaricated at the
+courts of justice, I have not lied, I have not stolen, I have not
+committed adultery, I have done no murder, I have not been idle, I have
+not been drunk, I have not been cruel, I have not famished my family, I
+have not been a hypocrite, I have not defiled my conscience for the sake
+of my superiors, I have not smitten privily, I have lived on truth, I
+have made it my delight to do what men command and the gods approve, I
+have given bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty and clothes to
+the naked, my mouth and hands are pure.' Now what strikes one with great
+force in this remarkable passage from the walls of the old sand-covered
+tombs is the wonderful scope and fulness with which the laws of right
+and wrong were stamped upon the Egyptian conscience. There is here a
+recognition, not only of the great evils which man shall not commit, but
+also of many of those positive duties which his moral nature requires.
+It matters not that these words are wholly exculpatory; they
+nevertheless recognize sin."
+
+But perhaps no one has depicted man's sense of guilt and fear more
+eloquently than Dean Stanley when speaking of the Egyptian Sphinx.
+Proceeding upon the theory that that time-worn and mysterious relic is a
+couchant lion whose projecting paws were long since buried in the desert
+sands, and following the tradition that an altar once stood before that
+mighty embodiment of power, he graphically pictures the transient
+generations of men, in all the sin and weakness of their frail humanity,
+coming up with their offerings and their prayers "between the paws of
+deity." It is a grim spectacle, but it emphasizes the sense of human
+guilt. Only the Revealed Word of God affords a complete and satisfactory
+explanation of the remarkable fact that the human race universally stand
+self-convicted of sin.
+
+There is also a tribute to the truth of Christianity in certain traces
+of a conception of Divine sacrifice for sin found in some of the early
+religious faiths of men. All are familiar with the difference between
+the offerings of Abel and those of Cain--the former disclosing a faith
+in a higher expiation. In like manner there appear mysterious references
+to a divine and vicarious sacrifice in the early Vedas of India. In the
+Parusha Sukta of the Rig Veda occurs this passage: "From him called
+Parusha was born Viraj, and from Viraj was Parusha produced, whom gods
+made their oblation. With Parusha as a victim they performed a
+sacrifice." Manu says that Parusha, "the first man," was called Brahma,
+and was produced by emanation from the "self-existent spirit." Brahma
+thus emanating, was "the first male," or, as elsewhere called, "the born
+lord." By him the world was made. The idea is brought out still more
+strikingly in one of the Brahmanas where the sacrifice is represented as
+voluntary and all availing. "Surely," says Sir Monier Williams, "in
+these mysterious allusions to the sacrifice of a representative man we
+may perceive traces of the original institution of sacrifice as a
+divinely appointed ordinance, typical of the one great offering of the
+Son of God for the sins of the world." The late Professor Banergea, of
+Calcutta, reaching the same conclusion, says: "It is not easy to account
+for the genesis of these ideas in the Veda, of 'one born in the
+beginning Lord of creatures,' offering himself a sacrifice for the
+benefit of deified mortals, except on the assumption that it is based
+upon the tradition of the 'Lamb slain from the foundation of the
+world.'"
+
+No doubt modern scepticism might be slow to acknowledge any such
+inference as this; but as Professor Banergea was a high-caste Hindu of
+great learning, and was well acquainted with the subtleties of Hindu
+thought, his opinion should have great weight. And when we remember how
+easily scientific scepticism is satisfied with the faintest traces of
+whatever strengthens its theories--how thin are some of the
+generalizations of Herbert Spencer--how very slight and fanciful are the
+resemblances of words which philologists often accept as indisputable
+proofs--how far-fetched are the inferences sometimes drawn from the
+appearance of half-decayed fossils as proofs and even demonstrations of
+the law of evolution--we need not be over-modest in setting forth these
+traces of an original divine element in the institution of typical
+sacrifices among men.
+
+It is never safe to assume positively this or that meaning for a
+mysterious passage found in the sacred books of non-Christian systems,
+but there are many things which seem at least to illustrate important
+precepts of the Christian faith. Thus the slain Osiris of the Egyptians
+was said to enter into the sufferings of mortals. "Having suffered the
+great wound," so the record runs, "he was wounded in every other wound."
+And we read in "The Book of the Dead" that "when the Lord of truth
+cleanses away defilement, evil is joined to the deity that the truth may
+expel the evil."[179] This seems to denote an idea of vicarious
+righteousness.
+
+The Onondaga Indians had a tradition that the celestial Hiawatha
+descended from heaven and dwelt among their ancestors, and that upon the
+establishment of the League of the Iroquois he was called by the Great
+Spirit to sanctify that League by self-sacrifice. As the Indian council
+was about to open, Hiawatha was bowed with intense suffering, which
+faintly reminds one of Christ's agony in Gethsemane. He foresaw that his
+innocent and only child would be taken from him. Soon after a messenger
+from heaven smote her to the earth by his side. Then, having drank this
+cup of sorrow, he entered the council and guided its deliberations with
+superhuman wisdom.[180] In citing this incident nothing more is intended
+than to call attention to some of the mysterious conceptions which seem
+to float dimly through the minds of the most savage races, and which
+show at the very least that the idea of vicarious sacrifice is not
+strange to mankind, but is often mysteriously connected with their
+greatest blessings. The legend of "Prometheus Bound," as we find it in
+the tragedies of AEschylus, is so graphic in its picture of vicarious
+suffering for the good of men that infidel writers have charged the
+story of the Cross with plagiarism, and have applied to Prometheus some
+of the expressions used in the fifty-third chapter of the Prophecy of
+Isaiah. We are often told that there is injustice in the very idea of
+vicarious suffering, as involved in the Christian doctrine of salvation,
+or that the best instincts of a reasonable humanity revolt against it.
+But such criticisms are sufficiently met by these analogies which we
+find among all nations.
+
+Let me next call attention to some of the predicted deliverers for whom
+the nations have been looking. Nothing found in the study of the
+religious history of mankind is more striking than the universality of a
+vague expectation of coming messiahs. According to the teachings of
+Hinduism there have been nine incarnations of Vishnu, of whom Buddha was
+admitted to be one. But there is to be a tenth avatar who shall yet come
+at a time of great and universal wickedness, and shall establish a
+kingdom of righteousness on the earth. Some years ago the Rev. Dr. John
+Newton, of Lahore, took advantage of this prediction and wrote a tract
+showing that the true deliverer and king of righteousness had already
+come in the person of Jesus Christ. So striking seemed the fulfilment
+viewed from the Hindu standpoint, that some hundreds in the city of
+Rampore were led to a faith in Christ as an avatar of Vishnu.
+
+A remarkable illustration of a felt want of something brighter and more
+hopeful is seen in the legends and predictions of the Teutonic and Norse
+religions. The faiths of all the Teutonic races were of the sternest
+character, and it was such a cultus that made them the terror of Europe.
+They worshipped their grim deities in the congenial darkness of deep
+forest shades. There was no joy, no sense of divine pity, no peace. They
+were conscious of deep and unutterable wants which were never met. They
+yearned for a golden age and the coming of a deliverer. Baldr, one of
+the sons of Woden, had passed away, but prophecy promised that he should
+return to deliver mankind from sorrow and from death. "When the twilight
+of the gods should have passed away, then amid prodigies and the crash
+and decay of a wicked world, in glory and joy he should return, and a
+glorious kingdom should be renewed." Or, in the words of one of their
+own poets:
+
+   "Then unsown the swath shall flourish and back come Baldr;
+    With him Hoder shall dwell in Hropter's palace,
+    Shrines of gods the great and holy,
+    There the just shall joy forever,
+          And in pleasure pass the ages."
+
+The well-known prediction of the Sibyl of Cumae bears testimony to the
+same expectation of mankind. The genuine Sibylline Oracles were in
+existence anterior to the birth of Christ. Virgil died forty years
+before that event, and the well-known eclogue _Pollio_ is stated by him
+to be a transcript of the prophetic carmen of the Sibyl of Cumae. But for
+the fact that it has a Roman instead of a Jewish coloring, it might
+almost seem Messianic. The oracle speaks thus: "The last era, the
+subject of the Sibyl song of Cumae, has now arrived; the great series of
+ages begins anew. The virgin returns--returns the reign of Saturn. The
+progeny from heaven now descends. Be thou propitious to the Infant Boy
+by whom first the Iron Age shall expire, and the Golden Age over the
+whole world shall commence. Whilst thou, O Pollio, art consul, this
+glory of our age shall be made manifest, and the celestial months begin
+their revolutions. Under thy auspices whatever vestiges of our guilt
+remain, shall, by being atoned for, redeem the earth from fear forever.
+He shall partake of the life of the gods. He shall reign over a world in
+peace with his father's virtues. The earth, sweet boy, as her
+first-fruits, shall pour thee forth spontaneous flowers. The serpent
+shall die: the poisonous and deceptive tree shall die. All things,
+heavens and earth and the regions of the sea, rejoice at the advent of
+this age. The time is now at hand."[181] Forty years later the Christ
+appeared. Whether Virgil had been influenced by Hebrew prophecy it is
+impossible to say. It may be that the so-called Sibyl had caught
+something of the same hope which led the Magi of the East to the cradle
+of the infant Messiah, but in any case the eclogue voiced a vague
+expectation which prevailed throughout the Roman Empire.
+
+In modern as well as in ancient times nations and races have looked for
+deliverers or for some brighter hope. Missionaries found the Hawaiians
+dissatisfied and hopeless; their idols had been thrown away. The Karens
+were waiting for the arrival of the messengers of the truth. The
+Mexicans, at the time of the Spanish conquest, were looking for a
+celestial benefactor. The very last instance of an anxious looking for a
+deliverer is that which quite recently has so sadly misled our Sioux
+Indians.
+
+Mankind have longed not only for deliverers, but also for _mediators_.
+The central truth of the Christian faith is its divine sympathy and help
+brought down into our human nature. In other words, mediation--God with
+man. The faith of the Hindus, lacking this element, was cold and
+remorseless. Siva, the god of destruction, and his hideous and
+blood-thirsty wives, had become chief objects of worship, only because
+destruction and death led to life again. But there was no divine help.
+The gods were plied with sharp bargains in sacrifice and merit; they
+were appeased; they were cajoled; but there was no love. But the time
+came when the felt want of men for something nearer and more sympathetic
+led to the doctrine of Vishnu's incarnations: first grotesque deliverers
+in animal shapes, but at length the genial and sympathetic Krishna. He
+was not the highest model of character, but he was human. He had
+associated with the rustics and frolicked around their camp-fires. He
+became Arjuna's charioteer and rendered him counsel and help in that low
+disguise. He was a sharer of burdens--a counsellor and friend. And he
+became the most popular of all Hindu deities.
+
+The important point in all this is that this old system, so
+self-sufficient and self-satisfied, should have groped its way toward a
+divine sympathizer in human form, a living and helpful god among men.
+Hinduism had not been wanting in anthropomorphisms: it had imagined the
+presence of God in a thousand visible objects which rude men could
+appreciate. Trees, apes, cattle, crocodiles, and serpents had been
+invested with an in-dwelling spirit, but it had found no mediator. Men
+had been trying by all manner of devices to sublimate their souls, and
+climb Godward by their own self-mortification; but they had realized no
+divine help. To meet this want they developed a veritable doctrine of
+faith. They had learned from Buddhism the great influence and power of
+one who could instruct and counsel and encourage. Some Oriental scholars
+think that they had also learned many things from Christian
+sources.[182]
+
+However that may be--from whatever source they had gained this
+suggestion--they found it to accord with the deepest wants of the human
+heart. And the splendid tribute which that peculiar development bears to
+the great fundamental principles of the Christian faith, is all the more
+striking for the fact that it grew up in spite of the adamantine
+convervatism of a system, all of whose teachings had been in a precisely
+opposite direction. It was old Hinduism coming out of its intrenchments
+to pay honor to the true way of eternal life. Probably the doctrine
+first sprang from a felt want, but was subsequently reinforced by
+Christian influences.
+
+The late Professor Banergea, in his "Aryan Witness," gives what must be
+regarded as at least a very plausible account of the last development of
+the so-called Krishna cult, and of this doctrine of faith. He thinks
+that it borrowed very much from western monotheists. He quotes a passage
+from the Narada Pancharata, which represents a pious Brahman of the
+eighth century A.D., as having been sent to the far northwest, where
+"white-faced monotheists" would teach him a pure faith in the Supreme
+Vishnu or Krishna. He quotes also, from another and later authority, a
+dialogue in which this same Brahman reproved Vyasa for not having
+celebrated the praises of Krishna as supreme. This Professor Banergea
+regarded as proof that previously to the eighth century Krishna has been
+worshipped only as a demigod. But the whole drift of the old Brahmanical
+doctrines had been toward sacrifice as a debt and credit system, and
+that plan had failed. It had impoverished the land and ruined the
+people, and had brought no spiritual comfort. Men had found that they
+could not buy salvation.
+
+Moreover, Buddhism and other forms of rationalistic philosophy, after
+prolonged and thorough experiment, had also failed. The Hindu race had
+found that as salvation could not be purchased with sacrifices, neither
+could it be reasoned out by philosophy, nor worked out by austerities.
+It must come from a Divine helper. Thus, when Narada had wearied
+himself with austerities--so we read in the Narada Pancharata--he heard
+a voice from heaven saying: "If Krishna is worshipped, what is the use
+of austerities? If Krishna is _not_ worshipped, what is the use of
+austerities? If Krishna is within and without, what is the use of
+austerities? If Krishna is _not_ within and without, what is the use of
+austerities? Stop, O Brahman; why do you engage in austerities? Go
+quickly and get matured faith in Krishna, as described by the sect of
+Vishnu who snaps the fetters of the world." "We are thus led," says
+Professor Banergea, "to the very genesis of the doctrine of faith in
+connection with Hinduism. And it was admittedly not an excogitation of
+the Brahmanical mind itself. Narada had brought it from the land of 'the
+whites,' where he got an insight into Vishnu as the Saviour which was
+not attainable elsewhere." And he then persuaded the author of one of
+the Puranas to recount the "Lord's acts"--in other words, the history of
+Krishna, with the enforcement of faith in his divinity: "Change the
+name," says Banergea, "and it is almost Christian doctrine."[183]
+
+It is an interesting fact that Buddhism, in its progress through the
+centuries, has also wrought out a doctrine of faith by a similar
+process. It began as a form of atheistic rationalism. Its most salient
+feature was staunch and avowed independence of all help from gods or
+men. It emphasized in every way the self-sufficiency of one's own mind
+and will to work out emancipation. But when Buddha died no enlightened
+counsellor was left, and another Buddha could not be expected for four
+thousand years. The multitudes of his disciples felt that, theory or no
+theory, there was an awful void. The bald and bleak system could not
+stand on such a basis. The human heart cried out for some divine helper,
+some one to whom man could pray. Fortunately there were supposed to be
+predestined Buddhas.--"Bodisats"--then living in some of the heavens,
+and as they were preparing themselves to become incarnate Buddhas, they
+must already be interested in human affairs, and especially the
+Maitreyeh, who would appear on earth next in order.
+
+So Buddhism, in spite of its own most pronounced dogmas, began to pray
+to an unseen being, began to depend and trust, began to lay hold on
+divine sympathy, and look to heaven for help. By the seventh century of
+our era the northern Buddhists, whether influenced in part by the
+contact of Christianity, or not, had subsidized more than one of these
+coming Buddhas. They had a complete Trinity. One person of this Trinity,
+the everywhere present Avolokitesvara, became the chief object of
+worship, the divine helper on whom all dependence was placed. This
+mythical being was really the God of northern Buddhism in the Middle
+Ages, and is the popular sympathizer of all Mongolian races to the
+present day. In Thibet he is supposed to be incarnate in the Grand Lama.
+In China he is incarnate in Quanyen, the goddess of mercy. With sailors
+she is the goddess of the sea. In many temples she is invoked by the
+sick, the halt, the blind, the impoverished. Her images are sometimes
+represented with a hundred arms to symbolize her omnipotence to save.
+Beal says of this, as Banergea says of the faith element of the Krishna
+cult, that it is wholly alien to the religion whose name it bears: it is
+not Buddhism. He thinks that it has been greatly affected by Christian
+influences.
+
+Another mythical being who is worshipped as God in China and Japan, is
+Amitabba, a Dhyana or celestial Buddha, who in long kalpas of Time has
+acquired merit enough for the whole world. Two of the twelve Buddhist
+sects of Japan have abandoned every principle taught by Gautama, except
+his ethics, and have cast themselves upon the free grace of Amitabba.
+They have exchanged the old atheism for theism. They have given up all
+dependence on merit-making and self-help; they now rely wholly on the
+infinite merit of another. Their religious duties are performed out of
+gratitude for a free salvation wrought out for them, and no longer as
+the means of gaining heaven. They live by a faith which works by love.
+They expect at death an immediate transfer to a permanent heaven,
+instead of a series of transmigrations. Their Buddha is not dead, but he
+ever liveth to receive into his heavenly realm all who accept his grace,
+and to admit them to his divine fellowship forever. By a direct and
+complete imputation they are made sharers in his righteousness, and
+become joint heirs in his heavenly inheritance. Whatever the genesis of
+these strange cults which now prevail as the chief religious beliefs
+among the Mongolian races, they are marvellously significant. They have
+come almost to the very threshold of Christianity. What they need is the
+true Saviour and not a myth, a living faith and not an empty delusion.
+Nevertheless, they prove that faith in a divine salvation is the only
+religion that can meet the wants of the human soul.
+
+There is something very encouraging in these approaches toward the great
+doctrines of salvation. I do not believe that these sects have come so
+near to the true Messiah without the influence of the Spirit of God, and
+without more or less light from Christian sources. But partly they have
+been moved by those wants which Hinduism and Buddhism could not satisfy.
+The principle of their faith is worthy of recognition, and the
+missionary should say as Paul said: "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him
+declare I unto you."
+
+It is a very significant fact that most of the Brahmo Somajes of India
+have adopted Jesus Christ as the greatest of the world's prophets.
+Chunder Sen sometimes spoke of him as a devout Christian would speak.
+The Arya Somaj would not own His name, but it has graced its Hindu creed
+with many of His essential doctrines. Quite recently a new organ of the
+Brahmo Somaj, published at Hyderabad, has announced as its leading
+object, "to harmonize pure Hinduism and pure Christianity, with Christ
+as the chief corner-stone." In the exact words of this paper, called
+_The Harmony_, its aim is "to preach Christ as the eternal Son of God,
+as the Logos in all prophets and saints before and after the
+incarnation, as the incarnate, perfect righteousness by whose obedience
+man is made righteous.... Christ is the reconciliation of man with man,
+and of all men with God, the harmony of humanity with humanity, and of
+all humanity with Divinity." This prospectus condemns the average
+Christianity of foreigners in India--the over-reaching, "beef-eating,
+beer-drinking" Anglo-Saxon type, "which despises the Hindu Scriptures
+and yet belies its own;" but it exalts the spotless and exalted Christ
+and builds all the hopes of humanity upon Him. How will the mere
+philosopher explain this wonderful power of personality over men of all
+races, if it be not Divine?
+
+But perhaps the most remarkable tribute to the transcendent character of
+Christ is seen in the fact that _all_ sects of religionists, the most
+fanatical and irrational, seem to claim Him as in some sense their own.
+Mormonism, even when plunging into the lowest depths of degradation, has
+always claimed to rest on the redemption of Jesus Christ.
+Mohammedanism--even the Koran itself--has always acknowledged Christ as
+the only sinless prophet. All the others, from Adam to Mohammed, stand
+convicted of heinous offences, and they will not reappear on earth;
+while He who knew no sin shall, according to Mohammedan prophecy, yet
+come again to judge the earth. The worshippers of Krishna, some of whom
+are found among us in this land, claim Christ as one of the true avatars
+of Vishnu, and heartily commend His character and His teachings. Our
+western Buddhists are just now emphasizing the idea that Christ was the
+sacred Buddha of Palestine, that he studied and taught "the eight-fold
+path," became an arahat, and attained Nirvana, and that the Christian
+Church has only misrepresented His transcendent wisdom and purity. The
+ablest tract on Theosophy that I have yet seen is entitled "Theosophy
+the Religion of Jesus."
+
+How marvellous is all this--that Theosophists, Aryas, Brahmos,
+Buddhists, Moslems, though they hate Christianity and fight it to the
+death--still bow before the mild sceptre of Christ. As the central light
+of the diamond shines alike through every facet and angle, so His
+doctrine and character are claimed as the glory of every creed. Many
+types of heathen faiths honor Him, and many schools of philosophic
+scepticism. Some of the noblest tributes to His unearthly purity have
+been given by men who rejected His divinity. In spite of itself the most
+earnest thought of many races, many systems, many creeds, has
+crystallized around Him. History has made Him its moral centre, the
+calendar of the nations begins with Him, and the anniversary of His
+birth is the festival of the civilized world. The prediction that all
+nations should call Him blessed is already fulfilled.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 167: It is worthy of note that both the Pentateuch and most
+heathen traditions agree, as to the order or stages of creation, with
+the geological record of modern science.]
+
+[Footnote 168: Rawlinson: _Ancient Monarchies_.]
+
+[Footnote 169: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 170: Williams: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 22.]
+
+[Footnote 171: De Quatrefages: _The Human Species_, p. 490.]
+
+[Footnote 172: _Christ and Other Masters_, p. 281.]
+
+[Footnote 173: _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 66.]
+
+[Footnote 174: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 175: Ibid.]
+
+[Footnote 176: _Indian Wisdom_, pp. 32, 393.]
+
+[Footnote 177: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. ii.]
+
+[Footnote 178: Ebrard: _Apologetics_, vol. iii.]
+
+[Footnote 179: De Pressense: _The Ancient World and Christianity_, p.
+87.]
+
+[Footnote 180: Schoolcraft: _Notes on the Iroquois_.]
+
+[Footnote 181: Quoted by Morgan in _St. Paul in Britain_, p. 23.]
+
+[Footnote 182: The full development of the doctrine was not reached till
+far on in the Christian centuries. Hardwick: _Christ and Other Masters_,
+p. 204.]
+
+[Footnote 183: _Aryan Witness_, closing chapter.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX.
+
+ETHICAL TENDENCIES OF THE EASTERN AND THE WESTERN PHILOSOPHIES
+
+
+It is not my purpose to discuss the comparative merits of philosophic
+systems, but only to consider some practical bearings of philosophy,
+ancient and modern, upon vital questions of morals and religion. There
+has been no lack of speculation in the world. For ages the most gifted
+minds have labored and struggled to solve the mysteries of the Universe
+and of its Author. But they have missed the all-important fact that with
+the heart, as well as with the intellect, men are to be learners of the
+highest wisdom, and that they are to listen to the voice of God not only
+in nature, but in the soul.
+
+So the old questions, still unsolved, are ever asked anew. The same
+wearying researches and the same confident assertions, to be replaced by
+others equally confident, are found both in the ancient and in the
+modern history of mankind. By wisdom the present generation has come no
+nearer to finding out God than men of the remotest times. The cheerless
+conclusion of agnosticism was reached in India twenty-four centuries
+ago, and Confucius expressed it exactly when he said, with reference to
+the future, "We do not know life; how can we know death?" This same
+dubious negation probably has the largest following of all types of
+unbelief in our time. It is not atheism: that, to the great mass of men,
+is unthinkable; it is easier to assume simply that "we do not know." Yet
+almost every form of agnosticism, ancient or modern, claims to possess a
+vast amount of very positive knowledge. Speculative hypothesis never
+employed the language of dogmatic assurance so confidently as now. Even
+theosophic occultism speaks of itself as "science."
+
+That which strikes one first of all in the history of philosophy is the
+similarity between ancient and modern speculations upon the great
+mysteries of the world.
+
+1. Notice with what accord various earlier and later theories dispense
+with real and personal creatorship in the origin of the universe. The
+atomic theory of creation is by no means a modern invention, and so far
+as evolution is connected with that hypothesis, evolution is very old.
+Mr. Herbert Spencer states his theory thus: "First in the order of
+evolution is the formation of simple mechanical aggregates of atoms,
+e.g., molecules, spheres, systems; then the evolution of more complex
+aggregations or organisms: then the evolution of the highest product of
+organization, thought; and lastly, the evolution of the complex
+relations which exist between thinking organisms, or society with its
+regulative laws, both civil and moral." Between these stages, he tells
+us, "there is no fixed line of demarcation.... The passage from one to
+the other is continuous, the transition from organization to thought
+being mediated by the nerve-system, in the molecular changes of which
+are to be found the mechanical correlates and equivalents of all
+conscious processes." It will be seen that this comprehensive statement
+is designed to cover, if not the creation, at least the creative
+processes of all things in the universe of matter and in the universe of
+thought.
+
+Mr. Spencer does not allude here to the question of a First Cause back
+of the molecules and their movements, though he is generally understood
+to admit that such a Cause may exist. He does not in express terms deny
+that at some stage in this development there may have been introduced a
+divine spark of immortal life direct from the Creator's hand. He even
+maintains that "the conscious soul is not the product of a collocation
+of material particles, but is in the deepest sense a Divine
+effluence."[184] Yet he seems to get on without any very necessary
+reliance upon such an intervention, since the development from the atom
+to the civilized man is "a continuous process," and throughout the whole
+course from molecule to thought and moral and social law, "there are no
+lines of demarcation." He leaves it for the believer in theistic
+evolution to show when and where and how the Divine effluence is
+introduced.
+
+Similar to this was the theory which the Hindu Kanada propounded more
+than two thousand years ago. As translated and interpreted by Colebrook,
+Kanada taught that two earthly atoms concurring by an unseen and
+peculiar virtue called "adrishta," or by the will of God, or by time, or
+by competent cause, constitute a double atom of earth; and by concourse
+of three binary atoms a tertiary atom is produced, and by concourse of
+four triple atoms a quaternary, and so on.[185] Thus the great earth is
+produced. The system of Lucretius was much the same, though neither
+Lucretius nor Spencer has recognized any such force as adrishta.[186]
+
+What seems to distinguish Mr. Spencer's theory is the extension of this
+evolutionary process to mind and spirit in the development of thought
+and feeling. He does not say that mind resides in the molecules, but
+that their movements attend (if they do not originate and control) the
+operation of the mind. Professor Leconte seems to go farther when he
+says that "in animals brain-changes are in all cases the cause of
+psychical phenomena; in man alone, and only in his higher activities,
+psychic changes precede and determine brain changes."[187] We shall see
+farther on that Mr. Spencer, in his theory of intuition, admits this
+same principle by logical inference, and traces even man's highest
+faculties to brain or nerve changes in our ancestors. Kanada also held
+that mind, instead of being a purely spiritual power, is atomic or
+molecular, and by logical deduction the mental activities must depend
+on the condition of the molecules.
+
+Ram Chandra Bose, in expounding Kanada's theory, says: "The general idea
+of mind is that _which is subordinate to substance_, being also found in
+intimate relations in an atom, and it is itself material." The early
+Buddhist philosophers also taught that physical elements are among the
+five "skandas" which constitute the phenomenal soul. Democritus and
+Lucretius regarded the mind as atomic, and the primal "monad" of
+Leibnitz was the living germ--smallest of things--which enters into all
+visible and invisible creations, and which is itself all-potential; it
+is a living microcosm; it is an immortal soul. These various theories
+are not parallels, but they have striking similarities. And I believe
+that Professor Tyndall, in his famous Belfast Address, virtually
+acknowledges Lucretius as the father of the modern atomic theories.
+Whether Lucretius borrowed them from India, we shall not stop to
+inquire, but we may safely assert that modern philosophers, German,
+French or English, have borrowed them from one or both.
+
+It is not my purpose to discuss the truth or falsity of the atomic
+theory, or the relation of mind to the movements of molecules in the
+brain; I simply point out the fact that this is virtually an old
+hypothesis; and I leave each one to judge how great a degree of light it
+has shed upon the path of human life in the ages of the past, how far it
+availed to check the decline of Greece and Rome, and how much of real
+moral or intellectual force it has imparted to the Hindu race. The
+credulous masses of men should not be left to suppose that these are new
+speculations, nor to imagine that that which has been so barren in the
+past can become a gospel of hope in the present and the future.
+
+The constant tendency with young students of philosophy, is to conclude
+that the hypotheses which they espouse with so much enthusiasm are new
+revelations in metaphysics and ethics as well as in physical
+science--compared with which the Christian cultus of eighteen centuries
+is now effete and doomed. It is well, therefore, to know that so far
+from these speculations having risen upon the ruins of Christianity,
+Christianity rose upon the ruins of these speculations as, in modified
+forms, they had been profoundly elaborated in the philosophies of Greece
+and Rome. Lucretius was born a century before the Christian era, and
+Democritus, whose disciple he became, lived earlier still. Kanada, the
+atomist philosopher of India, lived three centuries before Democritus.
+The early Christian fathers were perfectly familiar with the theories of
+Lucretius. We are indebted to Jerome for many of the facts which we
+possess concerning him. Nearly all the great leaders of the church, from
+Origen to Ambrose, had studied Greek philosophy, some of them had been
+its devotees before their conversion to the Christian faith. There is at
+least incidental evidence that the Apostle Paul was versed in the
+current philosophy as well as in the poetry of Greece.
+
+These great men--great in natural powers and in philosophic
+training--had seen just what the speculations of Democritus, Lucretius,
+Zeno, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle could do; they had indeed
+undermined the low superstitions of their time, but they had proved
+powerless to regenerate society, or even relieve the individual
+pessimism and despair of men like Seneca, Pliny, or Marcus Aurelius.
+Lucretius, wholly or partially insane, died by his own hand. The light
+of philosophy left the Roman Empire, as Uhlhorn and others have clearly
+shown, under the shadow of a general despair. And it was in the midst of
+that gloom that the light of Christianity shone forth. Augustine, who
+had fathomed various systems and believed in them, tells us that it was
+the philosophy which appeared in the writings and in the life of the
+Apostle Paul which finally wrought the great change in his career. Plato
+had done much; Paul and the Cross of Christ did infinitely more.
+
+The development of higher forms of life from lower by natural selection,
+as set forth by the late Charles Darwin, has been supposed to be an
+entirely new system. Yet the Chinese claim to have held a theory of
+development which represents the mountains as having once been covered
+by the sea. When the waters subsided small herbs sprang up, which in the
+course of ages developed into trees. Worms and insects also appeared
+spontaneously, like lice upon a living body; and these after a long
+period became larger animals--beetles became tortoises; worms, serpents.
+The mantis was developed into an ape, and certain apes became at length
+hairless. One of these by accident struck fire with a flint. The
+cooking of food at length followed the use of fire, and the apes, by
+being better nourished, were finally changed into men. Whether this
+theory is ancient or modern, it is eminently Chinese, and it shows the
+natural tendency of men to ascribe the germs of life to spontaneous
+generation, because they fail to see the Great First Cause who produces
+them. The one thing which is noticeable in nearly all human systems of
+religion and philosophy, is that they have no clear and distinct idea of
+creatorship. They are systems of evolution; in one way or another they
+represent the world as having _grown_. Generally they assume the
+eternity of matter, and often they are found to regard the present
+cosmos as only a certain stage in an endless circle of changes from life
+to death and from death to life. The world rebuilds itself from the
+wreck and debris of former worlds. It is quite consistent with many of
+these systems that there should be gods, but as a rule they recognize no
+God. While all races of men have shown traces of a belief in a Supreme
+Creator and Ruler far above their inferior deities, yet their
+philosophers, if they had any, have sooner or later bowed Him out.
+
+2. Most systems of philosophic speculation, ancient and modern, tend to
+weaken the sense of moral accountability. First, the atomic theory,
+which we have just considered, leads to this result by the molecular,
+and therefore purely physical, origin which it assigns to moral acts and
+conditions. We have already alluded to Herbert Spencer's theory of
+intuition. In the "Data of Ethics," page 123, he says: "I believe that
+the experiences of utility, organized and consolidated through all past
+generations of the human race, have been producing corresponding nervous
+modifications, which by continued transmission and accumulation _have
+become in us certain faculties of moral intuition_, certain emotions
+corresponding to right and wrong conduct which have no apparent basis in
+the individual experiences of utility."
+
+It appears from this statement that, so far as we are concerned, our
+moral intuitions are the results of "nervous modifications," if not in
+ourselves, at least in our ancestors, so that the controlling influence
+which rules, and which ought to rule, our conduct is a nervous, and
+therefore a physical, condition which we have inherited. It follows,
+therefore, that every man's conscience or inherited moral sense is bound
+by a necessity of his physical constitution. And if this be so, why is
+there not a wide door here opened for theories of moral insanity, which
+might come at length to cast their shield over all forms and grades of
+crime? It is easy to see that, whatever theory of creation may be
+admitted as to the origin of the human soul, this hypothesis rules out
+the idea of an original moral likeness of the human spirit to a Supreme
+Moral Ruler of the universe, in whom righteousness dwells as an eternal
+principle; and it finds no higher source for what we call conscience
+than the accumulated experience of our ancestors.
+
+The materialistic view recently presented by Dr. Henry Maudsley, in an
+article entitled, "The Physical Basis of Mind"--an article which seems
+to follow Mr. Spencer very closely--would break down all moral
+responsibility. His theory that true character depends upon what he
+calls the reflex action of the nerve-cells; that acts of reason or
+conscience which have been put forth so many times that, in a sense,
+they perform themselves without any exercise of consciousness, are the
+best; that a man is an instinctive thief or liar, or a born poet,
+because the proper nervous structure has been fixed in his constitution
+by his ancestors; that any moral act, so long as it is conscious, is not
+ingrained in character, and the more conscious it is, the more dubious
+it is; and that "virtue itself is not safely lodged until it has become
+a habit"--in other words, till it has become an automatic and
+unconscious operation of the nerve-cells, such a doctrine, in its
+extreme logical results, destroys all voluntary and conscious loyalty to
+principle, and renders man a mere automatic machine.
+
+On the other hand Mr. A.R. Wallace, in combating the theory that the
+moral sense in man is based on the utility experienced by our ancestors,
+relates the following incident: "A number of prisoners taken during the
+Santal insurrection were allowed to go free on parole, to work at a
+certain spot for wages. After some time cholera attacked them and they
+were obliged to leave, but everyone of them returned and gave up his
+earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages with money in their girdles
+walked thirty miles back to prison rather than break their word. My own
+experience with savages has furnished me with similar, although less
+severely tested, instances; and we cannot avoid asking how it is that,
+in these few cases 'experience of utility' have left such an
+overpowering impression, while in others they have left none.... The
+intuitional theory which I am now advocating explains this by the
+supposition that there is a feeling--a sense of right and wrong--in our
+nature antecedent to, and independent of, experiences of utility."[188]
+
+3. Theories which confound the origin of man with that of brutes,
+whether in the old doctrine of transmigration or in at least some of the
+theories of evolution, involve a contradiction in man's ethical history.
+The confusion shown in the Buddhist Jatakas, wherein Buddha, in the
+previous existences which prepared him for his great and holy mission,
+was sometimes a saint and sometimes a gambler and a thief, is scarcely
+greater, from an ethical point of view, than that which evolution
+encounters in bridging the chasm between brute instinct and the lofty
+ethics of the perfected man.
+
+The lower grades of animal life know no other law than the instinct
+which prompts them to devour the types which are lower still. This
+destruction of the weaker by the stronger pervades the whole brute
+creation; it is a life of violence throughout. On the other hand, all
+weaker creatures, exposed to such ravages, protect themselves
+universally by deception. The grouse shields her young from hawks or
+other carnivora by running in the opposite direction, with the assumed
+appearance of a broken wing. The flat fish, to escape its mortal
+enemies, lies upon the bottom of the stream, scarcely distinguishable in
+color or appearance from the sand which constitutes its bed. Nature
+seems to aid and abet its falsehood by the very form which has been
+assigned to it. And so also the gift of transparency helps the chameleon
+in seeming to be a part of the green plant, or the brown bark, upon
+which it lies. And Professor Drummond, in his interesting account of his
+African travels, describes certain insects which render themselves
+indistinguishable either in color or in form from the branchings and
+exfoliation of certain grasses upon which they feed. Deception therefore
+becomes a chief resource of the weak, while violence is that of the
+strong. And those which are in the middle of the scale practise both.
+There are still other animals which are invested with attributes of all
+that is meanest and most contemptible in character. The sly and
+insinuating snake gliding noiselessly toward the victim of its envenomed
+sting--the spider which spreads forth its beautiful and alluring net,
+sparkling with morning dew, while it lurks in a secret corner, ready to
+fall upon its luckless prey--the sneaking and repulsive hyena, too
+cowardly to attack the strong and vigorous, but waiting for the
+crippled, the helpless, the sick, and dying--if all these are in the
+school of preparation for that noble stage of manhood when truth and
+righteousness shall be its crown of glory, then, where is the
+turning-point? Where do violence, meanness, and deception gradually beam
+forth into benevolence and truth?
+
+   "The spider kills the fly. The wiser sphinx
+    Stings the poor spider in the centre nerve,
+    Which paralyzes only; lays her eggs,
+    And buries with them with a loving care
+    The spider, powerless but still alive,
+    To warm them unto life, and afterward
+    To serve as food among the little ones.
+    This is the lesson nature has to teach,
+    'Woe to the conquered, victory to the strong.'
+    And so through all the ages, step by step,
+    The stronger and the craftier replaced
+    The weaker, and increased and multiplied.
+    And in the end the outcome of the strife
+    Was man, who had dominion over all,
+    And preyed on all things, and the stronger man
+    Trampled his weaker brother under foot."
+
+Mr. John Fiske maintains that mankind, during the previous bestial
+period, were compelled like all other animals to maraud and destroy, as
+a part of the plan of natural selection in securing the survival of the
+fittest; the victories of the strong over the weak were the steps and
+stages of the animal creation in its general advancement. And he further
+states that, even after man had entered upon the heritage of his
+manhood, it was still for a time the true end of his being to maraud as
+before and to despoil all men whose weakness placed them in his power.
+It was only thus that the steady improvement of the race could be
+secured; and in that view it was man's duty to consult the dictates of
+selfishness and cruelty rather than those of kindness. To use Mr.
+Fiske's own words, "If we could put a moral interpretation upon events
+which antedated morality as we understand it, we should say it was their
+duty to fight; and the reverence accorded to the chieftain who murdered
+most successfully in behalf of his clansmen was well deserved."[189]
+
+Much to the same effect writes Professor Leconte. "In organic evolution
+the weak, the sick, the helpless, the unfit in anyway, perish, _and
+ought to perish_, because this is the most efficient way of
+strengthening the _blood or physical nature_ of the species, and thus of
+carrying forward evolution. In human evolution (which occurs at an
+advanced stage) the weak, the helpless, the sick, the old, the unfit in
+anyway, are sustained, _and ought to be sustained_, because sympathy,
+love, pity, strengthen the _spirit and moral nature_ of the race."[190]
+There is this difference, however, between this statement and that of
+Mr. Fiske, that it does not indicate at what point "human evolution"
+begins; it does not expressly declare that the subject of evolution,
+even after he has become a man, is still for a time in duty bound to
+fight in the interest of selfishness and natural selection. Still he
+reverses the "ought" as he advances from organic to human evolution.
+
+According to both authors, when, in view of new environments and new
+social requirements, it became more advantageous to each individual man
+that he should cease to maraud, should learn to regard the rights of
+others, should respect the family relation, and subordinate his selfish
+interest to the general good; then altruism dawned upon the world, moral
+principle appeared, and the angel of benevolence and love became
+enshrined in the human breast. Step by step this favored being, the
+ideal of natural selection in all her plans, advanced to a stage in
+which it became incumbent to even subordinate self to the good of
+others, not only to spare the weak but to tenderly care for them, and
+even to love those who have treated him with unkindness and abuse. While
+in the early stages the law of life and progress had been the sacrifice
+of others for selfish good; now the crowning glory consists in
+self-sacrifice for the good of all but self.
+
+The logical result of this reasoning cannot escape the notice of any who
+carefully consider it. If, for any reason, any community of human beings
+should decline in moral and intellectual character until they should
+finally reach the original state of savagery, it would again become
+their duty to lay aside all high ethical claims as no longer suited to
+their condition. The extraneous complications which had grown out of
+mere social order having passed away, rectitude also would pass away;
+benevolence, philanthropy, humanity, would be wholly out of place, and
+however lovely Christian charity might appear from a sentimental point
+of view, it would be ill adapted to that condition of society. In such a
+state of things the strong and vigorous, if sacrificing themselves to
+the weak, would only perpetuate weakness, and it would be their duty
+rather to extirpate them, and by the survival only of the fittest to
+regain the higher civilization. I state the case in all its naked
+deformity, because it shows the confusion and darkness of a world in
+which God is not the moral centre.
+
+And here, as already stated, modern speculation joins hands with the old
+heathen systems. According to Hindu as well as Buddhist philosophy, this
+retrograde process might not only carry civilized man back to savagery,
+but might place him again in the category of brutes. If tendencies
+control all things and have no limit, why might they not remand the
+human being to lower and lower forms, until he should reach again the
+status of the mollusk?
+
+Now, over against all the systems which make mind either a product or a
+phenomenon of matter, we have the Scriptural doctrine that man was
+created in the image of God. This fact explains the differences which
+distinguish him from the beasts of the field; for even in his lowest
+estate he is amenable to the principle of right and wrong. Paul taught,
+in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, that when men descend
+to the grade of beasts--and he shows that they may descend even below
+the dignity of beasts--so far from becoming exempt from moral claims,
+they fall under increased condemnation. The old Hindu systems taught
+that there can be no release from the consequences of evil acts. They
+traced them from one rebirth to another in kharma, as modern speculation
+traces them physically in heredity. The one saw no relief except in the
+changes of endless transmigrations, the other finds it only in the
+gradual readjustment of the nerve-cells. But we know by observation and
+experience that the spiritual power of the Holy Ghost can transform
+character at once. No fact in the history of Christianity is more firmly
+or more widely established than this. The nerve-tissues to the contrary
+notwithstanding, the human soul may be born again. The persecuting Saul
+may become at once a chief apostle. The blasphemer, the sot, the
+debauchee, the murderer, may be transformed to a meek and sincere
+Christian. Millions of the heathen, with thousands of years of savage
+and bestial heredity behind them, have become pure and loyal disciples
+of the spotless Redeemer. The fierce heathen Africaner, as well as the
+dissolute Jerry McCauley, have illustrated this transforming power.
+
+Professor Huxley and others, in our time, are trying to elaborate some
+basis of ethics independently of religion. But, as a matter of fact,
+these very men are living on conventional moral promptings and
+restraints derived from the Bible. The best basis of morals yet known is
+that of Christianity, and it is from its high and ennobling cultus that
+even the enemies of the truth are deriving their highest inspiration.
+Mr. Goldwin Smith, in an able article published in the _Forum_ of April,
+1891, on the question, "Will Morality Survive Faith?" shows at least
+that the best ethics which the world now has are the outcome of
+religious belief and of Christian belief, and he leads the minds of his
+readers to gravely doubt whether a gospel of agnostic evolution could
+ever produce those forces of moral prompting and restraint which the
+centuries of Christianity have developed. He does not hesitate to assert
+that those who hold and advocate the modern anti-theistic speculations
+are themselves living upon the influence of a Christian cultus which has
+survived their faith. A true test of their principles could only be made
+when a generation should appear upon which no influence of Christian
+parents still remained, and in a society in which Christian sentiment
+no longer survived.[191] It may be said that the _truth_ must be
+received without regard to the results which may follow. This is
+admitted, but the same cannot be said of _theories_. If there is
+perfect harmony between all truths in the physical and the moral world,
+then all these should have their influence in reaching final
+conclusions.
+
+4. The philosophies, ancient and modern, have agreed in lowering the
+common estimate of man as man; they have exerted an influence the
+opposite of that in which the New Testament pleads for a common and an
+exalted brotherhood of the race.
+
+Hinduism raised the Brahman almost to the dignity of the gods, and
+debased the Sudra to a grade but a little higher than the brute. Buddha
+declared that his teachings were for the wise, and not for the simple.
+The philosophers of Greece and Rome, even the best of them, regarded
+the helot and the slave as of an inferior grade of beings--even though
+occasionally a slave by his superior force rose to a high degree. In
+like manner the whole tendency of modern evolution is to degrade the
+dignity and sacredness of humanity. It is searching for "missing links;"
+it measures the skulls of degraded races for proofs of its theories. It
+has travellers and adventurers on the lookout for tribes who have no
+conception of God, and no religious rites; it searches caves and dredges
+lakes for historical traces of man when he had but recently learned to
+"stand upright upon his hind legs." The lower the types that can be
+found, the more valuable are they for the purposes required. All this
+tends to the dishonoring of the inferior types of men. Wherever
+Christianity had changed the old estimates of the philosophers, and had
+led to the nobler sentiment that God had made of one blood all nations
+and races, and had stamped His own image on them all, and even redeemed
+them all by the sacrifice of His Son, the speculations of sceptical
+biology have in a measure counteracted its benign influence. They have
+fostered the contempt of various classes for a dark skin or an inferior
+civilization. They indirectly encourage those who, with little merit of
+their own, speak contemptuously of the "Buck Indian," "the Nigger," the
+"Heathen Chinee." They encourage the "hoodlum," and so far as they have
+any influence, give an implied sanction to much unrighteous legislation.
+
+Even Peschel, who will not be suspected of any bias toward Christianity,
+has said on this subject: "This dark side of the life of uncivilized
+nations has induced barbarous and inhuman settlers in transoceanic
+regions to assume as their own a right to cultivate as their own the
+inheritance of the aborigines, and to extol the murder of races as a
+triumph of civilization. Other writers, led away by Darwinian dogmas,
+fancied that they had discovered populations which had, as it were,
+remained in a former animal condition for the instruction of our times."
+And he adds: "Thus in the words of a 'History of Creation,' in the taste
+now prevalent, 'in Southern Asia and the East of Africa men live in
+hordes, mostly climbing trees and eating fruit, unacquainted with fire,
+and using no weapons but stones and clubs, after the manner of the
+higher apes.' It can be shown," he continues, "that these statements are
+derived from the writings of a learned scholar of Bonn on the condition
+of savage nations, the facts of which are based either on the
+depositions of an African slave of the Doko tribe, a dwarfish people in
+the south of Shoa, or on the assertions of Bengalese planters, or
+perhaps on the observations of a sporting adventurer, that a mother and
+daughter, and at another time a man and woman, were found in India in a
+semi-animal condition. On the other hand, not only have neither nations,
+nor even hordes, in an ape-like condition ever been encountered by any
+trustworthy traveller of modern times, but even those races which in the
+first superficial descriptions were ranked far below our grade of
+civilization have, on nearer acquaintance, been placed much nearer the
+civilized nations. No portion of the human race has yet been discovered
+which does not possess a more or less rich vocabulary, rules of
+language, artificially pointed weapons, and various implements, as well
+as the art of kindling fire.[192]"
+
+The assertion has been made again and again that races are found which
+are possessed of no knowledge or conception of Deity, but this
+assumption has been thoroughly refuted by Max Mueller and many others.
+
+There is a very general assumption abroad in the world that bigotry and
+even bias of judgment belong exclusively to the advocates of religious
+truth, and that the teachers of agnostic science are, in the nature of
+the case, impartial and therefore authoritative. But the generalizations
+which have been massed by non-Christian anthropologists and sociologists
+are often gleaned and culled under the strongest subserviency to some
+favorite hypothesis, and that on the most superficial observation and
+from the most unreliable authorities. De Quatrefages, an anthropologist
+of profound learning, and certainly with no predilections for Christian
+theism, in speaking of the alleged evidences given by Sir John Lubbock
+and Saint-Hilaire to show that many races of men have been found
+destitute of any conception of Deity, says: "When the writers against
+whom I am now arguing have to choose between two evidences, the one
+attesting, and the other denying, the existence of religious belief in a
+population, it is always the latter which they seem to think should be
+accepted. More often than not, they do not even mention the contrary
+evidences, however definite, however authentic they may be. Now, it is
+evidently much _easier not to see_ than to _discover_ that which may be
+in so many ways rendered inappreciable to our eyes. When a traveller
+states that he has proved the existence of religious sentiments in a
+population which by others has been declared destitute of them, when he
+gives precise details upon such a delicate question, he has
+unquestionably at least probability in his favor. I see nothing to
+authorize this rejection of _positive evidence_ and unconditional
+acceptance of _negative evidence_. This, however, is too often the case.
+I might justify this imputation by taking one by one almost all the
+examples of so-called atheist populations pointed out by different
+authors."[193] De Quatrefages then proceeds to show how, with respect to
+American tribes, Robertson is quoted while D'Orbigny is passed in
+silence, even though he has by the testimony of many authors disproved
+the statements of Robertson; how Baegert's negative and sweeping
+statements in regard to the California tribes are accepted, while the
+very specific testimony of De Mofras in regard both to the fact and to
+the nature of their worship is rejected. In relation to the Mincopies,
+Mouat (negative) is adopted against Symes and Day. The Hottentots are
+adjudged atheistic on the testimony of Le Vaillant, in spite of the
+united witness of Kolben, Saar, Tachard, Boeving, and Campbell. The
+Kaffirs are declared to be destitute of religion on the statements of
+Burchel, while Livingstone and Cazalis have given clear accounts of the
+religion of the different Kaffir tribes.
+
+In a similar manner Professor Flint, of Edinburgh, arraigns Sir John
+Lubbock and certain other advocates of the atheistic theory concerning
+savage tribes, for the partiality of their selection of testimony and
+for the superficial evidence which they accept when favorable to their
+theories. After reviewing Lubbock's wholesale quotations concerning the
+Indian tribes of Brazil, he says, "These are Sir John Lubbock's
+instances from South American tribes. But I find that they are all
+either erroneous or insufficiently established." And he gives many
+counter-proofs. "It will never do," he says, "to believe such sweeping
+statements--sweeping negatives--merely because they happen to be
+printed." Farther on he adds: "But I think that he (Lubbock) might have
+told us that Humboldt, whose travels in South America were so extensive,
+whose explorations were so varied, scientific, and successful, and who
+certainly was uninfluenced by traditional theological beliefs, _found no
+tribes and peoples without a religion_; and that Prince Max von Neuwied
+tells us that in all his many and wide wanderings in Brazil he had found
+no tribes the members of which did not give manifest signs of religious
+feelings."
+
+In the appendix of the book from which these extracts are made,
+Professor Flint says: "No one, I think, who has not a theory to maintain
+can consider the circumstances in which most of the Brazilian Indian
+tribes are placed without coming to the conclusion that they must have
+sunk from a higher intellectual and religious level."
+
+I have dwelt at length upon these arraignments of the careless and
+biased utterances of supposed scientists, because it is so much the
+fashion of our times to support certain theories of anthropology by
+massing the supposed evidences of man's degradation found, even now, in
+the environments of savage life. Many readers, apparently dazed by the
+vast accumulation of indiscriminate and heterogeneous statements which
+they have no time to examine, yield an easy and blind assent, based
+either on the supposed wisdom of the writer or upon the fact that so
+many others believe, and they imagine that no little courage is required
+on their part to risk the loss of intellectual caste. A vast amount of
+the thinking of our age, although it claims to be scientific, is really
+a matter of simple faith--faith in the opinions and dicta of
+distinguished leaders. And under such circumstances, is it not our
+privilege and our duty as Christian men to at least challenge and
+cross-question those theories which depress and dishonor our common
+humanity before we yield them our assent?
+
+The majority of scientists now so confidently assume the certain
+derivation of man from lower orders of life, that, as Max Mueller has
+expressed it, their intolerance greets "with a perfect howl of derision
+a man like Virchow," who dares to declare that proof of man's derivation
+from animals is still wanting. Nevertheless Virchow, himself an
+evolutionist, maintains his ground, as the following passage quoted some
+months since from _The London Tablet_ will show:
+
+"Some sensation has been caused at the recent Anthropological Congress
+in Vienna by the speech of the great Berlin biologist, Professor
+Virchow. About a year ago Virchow, on a similar occasion, made a severe
+attack on the Darwinian position, and this year he is similarly
+outspoken. We make the following extracts from his long address to the
+Congress:
+
+"'Twenty years ago, when we met at Innspruck, it was precisely the
+moment when the Darwinian theory had made its first victorious mark
+throughout the world. My friend Vogt at once rushed into the ranks of
+the champions of this doctrine. We have since sought in vain for the
+intermediate stages which were supposed to connect man with the apes;
+the proto-man, the pro-anthropos is not yet discovered. For
+anthropological science the pro-anthropos is not even a subject of
+discussion. The anthropologist may, perhaps, see him in a dream, but as
+soon as he awakes he cannot say that he has made any approach toward
+him. At that time in Innspruck the prospect was, apparently, that the
+course of descent from ape to man would be reconstructed all at once,
+but now we cannot even prove the descent of the separate races from one
+another.[194] At this moment we are able to say that among the peoples
+of antiquity no single one was any nearer to the apes than we are. At
+this moment I can affirm that there is not upon earth any absolutely
+unknown race of men. The least known of all are the peoples of the
+central mountainous districts of the Malay peninsula, but otherwise we
+know the people of Terra del Fuego quite as well as the Eskimo,
+Bashkirs, Polynesians, and Lapps. Nay! we know more of many of these
+races than we do of certain European tribes. I need only mention the
+Albanians. Every living race is still human; no single one has yet been
+found that we can designate as Simian or quasi-Simian. Even when in
+certain ones phenomena appear which are characteristic of the
+apes--e.g., the peculiar ape-like projections of the skull in certain
+races--still we cannot on that account alone say that these men are
+ape-like. As regards the Lake dwellings, I have been able to submit to
+comparative examination nearly every single skull that has been found.
+The result has been that we have certainly met with opposite
+characteristics among various races; but of all these there is not one
+that lies outside of the boundaries of our present population. It can
+thus be positively demonstrated that in the course of five thousand
+years no change of type worthy of mention has taken place. If you ask me
+whether the first man were white or black, I can only say I don't know.'
+
+"Professor Virchow thus summed up the question as to what
+anthropological science during the last forty years has gained, and
+whether, as many contend, it has gone forward or backward.
+
+"'Twenty years ago the leaders of our science asserted that they knew
+many things which, as a matter of fact, they did not know. Nowadays we
+know what we know. I can only reckon up our account in so far as to say
+that we have made no debts; that is, we have made no loan from
+hypotheses; we are in no danger of seeing that which we know over-turned
+in the course of the next moment. We have levelled the ground so that
+the coming generation may make abundant use of the material at their
+disposition. As an attainable objective of the next twenty years, we
+must look to the anthropology of the European nationalities.'"
+
+5. Another demoralizing type of speculation which has exerted a wide
+influence in many ages and on many nations is pantheism. By abdicating
+the place and function of the conscious ego, by making all things mere
+specialized expressions of infinite Deity, and yet failing to grasp any
+clear conception of what is meant by Deity, men have gradually
+destroyed that sense of moral responsibility which the most savage show
+to have been a common heritage. It is not among the lowest and most
+simple races that missionaries find the greatest degree of obtuseness
+and insensibility with respect to sin; it is among populations like
+those of India, where the natural promptings of conscience have been
+sophisticated by philosophic theories. The old Vedantism, by
+representing all things as mere phenomenal expressions of infinite
+Brahm, tended necessarily to destroy all sense of personal
+responsibility. The abdication of the personal ego is an easy way of
+shifting the burden of guilt. The late Naryan Sheshadri declared that
+one thing which led him to renounce Hinduism was the fact that, when he
+came to trace its underlying principles to their last logical result he
+saw no ground of moral responsibility left. It plunged him into an abyss
+of intellectual and moral darkness without chart or compass. It
+paralyzed conscience and moral sensibility.
+
+It is equally impossible to reason ourselves into any consciousness of
+merit or demerit, if we are moved only by some vague law of nature whose
+behest, as described by Mr. Buckle, we cannot resist, whose operations
+within us we cannot discern, and whose drift or tendency we cannot
+foresee. It makes little difference whether we build our faith upon the
+god of pantheism or upon the unknowable but impersonal force which is
+supposed to move the world, which operates in the same ways upon all
+grades of existence from the archangel to the mote in the sunbeam,
+which moves the molecules of the human brain only as it stirs the
+globules of sap in the tree or plant. It is difficult to see how, upon
+any such hypothesis, we are any more responsible for our volitions and
+affections than we are for our heart-beats or respirations. And yet we
+are conscious of responsibility in the one case and not in the other.
+Consciousness comes in with tremendous force at just this point, all
+theories and speculations to the contrary notwithstanding. And we dare
+not disregard its testimony or its claims. We know that we are morally
+responsible.
+
+6. Many philosophic systems, ancient and modern, have tended to fill the
+world with gloomy pessimism. Pessimism is very old and very widespread.
+Schopenhauer acknowledges his indebtedness to Gautama for much of the
+philosophy which is known by his name. In Hinduism and Buddhism, as well
+as in the teachings of the German pessimists, the natural complainings
+of the human heart are organized into philosophical systems. There is in
+all human nature quite enough of querulousness against the unequal
+allotments of Providence, but all these systems inculcate and foster
+that discontent by the sanctions of philosophy. The whole assumption of
+"The Light of Asia" is that the power that upholds and governs the world
+is a hard master, from whose leash we should escape if we can by
+annihilating our powers and faculties, and abdicating our conscious
+being; that the world and the entire constitution of things are all
+wrong; that misery is everywhere in the ascendant, and that man and
+beast can only make common cause against the tyranny of a reckless
+fate, and cry out with common voice for some sympathizing benefactor who
+can pity and deliver. There is no hint that sin has wrought the evil.
+Man is not so much a sinner as the victim of a hard lot; he is
+unfortunate, and it is the world that is wrong. Therefore the true end
+of life is to get rid of the recurrence of life.
+
+In much of our modern agnosticism there is the same dark outlook, and
+agnosticism naturally joins hands with pessimism. Dr. Noah Porter, in
+one of the series of "Present-Day Tracts," has shown it to be a doctrine
+of despair. A well-known lecturer who has loudly declaimed against what
+he considers the remorseless character of the Old Testament, has
+acknowledged that it is not more cruel than nature; that in the actual
+world about us we find the same dark mystery, the weak perishing before
+the strong, the wicked prosperous, the just oppressed, and the innocent
+given as a prey to the guilty; and his conclusion is that deism is no
+more defensible than Christianity. His pessimistic estimate of the
+actual world drives him to a disbelief in a personal God.
+
+We do not ignore the sad facts of life; even the Christian is often
+saddened by the mysteries which he cannot explain. Bishop J. Boyd
+Carpenter, in speaking of the sad and cheerless spirit of Buddhism, has
+said: "There are moments in which we are all Buddhists; when life has
+disappointed us, when weariness is upon us, when the keen anguish born
+of the sight of human suffering appals and benumbs us, when we are
+frozen to terror, and our manhood flies at the sight of the Medusa-like
+head of the world's unappeased and unappeasable agony; then we too are
+torn by the paroxysm of anguish; we would flee to the Nirvana of
+oblivion and unconsciousness, turning our back upon what we cannot
+alleviate, and longing to lay down the burden of life, and to escape
+from that which has become insupportable."[195] But these are only the
+dark and seemingly forsaken hours in which men sit in despair beneath
+the juniper-tree and imagine that all the world has gone wrong. The
+juniper-tree in Christianity is the exception; the Bo-tree of Buddhism,
+with the same despondent estimate, is the rule. No divine message came
+to show the Buddha a brighter side. And the agnostic stops his ears that
+no voice of cheer may be heard. The whole philosophy of Buddhism and of
+modern agnosticism is pessimistic. The word and Spirit of God do not
+deny the sad facts of human life in a world of sin, but they enable the
+Christian to triumph over them, and even to rejoice in tribulation.
+
+7. And this leads to one more common feature of all false systems, their
+fatalism. Among the exaggerated claims which are made for heathen
+religions in our day, it is alleged that they rest upon a more humane
+philosophy than appears in the grim fatalism of our Christian theology,
+especially that of the Calvinistic type. Without entering upon any
+defence of Christian doctrines of one type or another, it would be easy
+to show that fatalism, complete and unmitigated, is at the foundation of
+all Oriental religion and philosophy, all ancient or modern pantheism,
+and most of the various types of agnosticism. While this has been the
+point at which all infidel systems have assailed the Christian faith, it
+has nevertheless been the goal which they have all reached by their own
+speculations. They have differed from Christianity in that their
+predestinating, determining force, instead of being qualified by any
+play of free-will, or any feasible plan of ultimate and superabounding
+good, has been a real fatalism, changeless, hopeless, remorseless. That
+the distaff of the Fates, and the ruthless sceptre of the Erinnys,
+entered in full force into all the religions of the Greeks and Romans,
+scarcely needs to be affirmed. They controlled all human affairs, and
+even the gods were subject to them. The Sagas of the Northmen also were
+full of fatalism, and that principle still survives in the folk-lore and
+common superstitions of all Scandinavian, Teutonic, and Celtic races.
+
+The fatalism of the Hindus is plainly stated in the "Code of Manu,"
+which declares that, "in order to distinguish actions, he (the creator)
+separated merit from demerit. To whatever course of action the Lord
+appointed each kind of being, that alone it has spontaneously adopted in
+each succeeding creation. Whatever he has assigned to each at the first
+creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or
+sin, truth or falsehood, that clings to it."[196] The same doctrine is
+put in still more offensive form when it is declared that "Manu (here
+used in the sense of creator) allotted to woman a love of her bed, of
+her seat, of ornament, also impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, and bad
+conduct."[197] There would be some relief from this horrible doctrine if
+in subsequent chapters of Manu there were kindly tokens of grace, or
+sympathy for woman, or any light of hope here or hereafter; but the
+whole teaching and spirit of the "Code" rests as an iron yoke upon
+womanhood, and it is largely a result of this high authority that the
+female sex has for ages been subjected to the most cruel tyranny and
+degradation. It might well be said that, in spite of the horrors of
+infanticide, the most merciful element of Hinduism with respect to woman
+is the custom by which so large a proportion of female children have
+been destroyed at birth. The same fatalistic principles affect all ranks
+and conditions of Hindu society. The poor Sudra is not only low-born and
+degraded, but he is immovably fixed in his degradation. He is cut off
+from all hope or aspiration; he cannot rise from the thraldom of his
+fate. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna declares to Arjuna that it is
+
+   "Better to do the duty of one's caste
+    Though bad or ill performed, and fraught with evil,
+    Than undertake the business of another,
+    However good it be."
+
+Thus even the laws of right and wrong are subordinate to the fatality of
+caste, and all aspiration is paralyzed.
+
+On the other hand, it has been acknowledged repeatedly that the sternest
+type of Puritan theology, as a moral and political force, is full of
+inspiration; it does not deaden the soul; it stimulates the action of
+free-will; its moral earnestness has been a great power in molding
+national destinies. Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to declare that the
+great charters of human liberty are largely due to its strong conception
+of a divine and all-controlling purpose. Even Matthew Arnold admitted
+that its stern "Hebraic" culture, as he called it, had wrought some of
+the grandest achievements of history. But Hindu fatalists, noble Aryans
+as they were at first, have been conquered by every race of invaders
+that has chosen to assail them. And no better result could have been
+expected from a philosophy whose _summum bonum_ is the renunciation of
+life as not worth living, and the loss of all personality by absorption
+into the One supreme existence.
+
+Buddhism does not present the same fatalistic theory of creation as
+Brahminism, but it introduces even a more aggravated fatalism into human
+life. Both alike load down the newly-born with burdens of guilt and
+consequent suffering transmitted from previous existences. But in the
+case of Buddhism there is no identity between the sinner, who incurred
+the guilt, and the recipient of the evil kharma, which demands
+punishment. Every man comes into the world entangled in the moral
+bankruptcy of some one who has gone before, he knows not who nor where.
+There is no consciousness of identity, no remembrance, no possible sense
+of guilt, or notion of responsibility. It is not the same soul that
+suffers, for in either case there is no soul; there is only a bundle of
+so-called skandhas--certain faculties of mind and body newly combined
+whose interaction produces thought and emotion. Yet there is conscious
+suffering. Scoffers have long pointed with indignation at the Christian
+doctrine that a child inherits a moral bias from his parents, but
+nowadays evolutionists carry the law of heredity to an extreme which no
+hyper-Calvinist ever thought of, and many cavillers at "original sin"
+have become eloquent in their praises of Buddhism, which handicaps each
+child with the accumulated demerit of pre-existent beings with whom he
+had no connection whatever.[198] The Christian doctrine imputes
+punishable guilt only so far as each one's free choice makes the sin his
+own: the dying infant who has no choice is saved by grace; but upon
+every Buddhist, however short-lived, there rests an heir-loom of destiny
+which countless transmigrations cannot discharge.
+
+In Mohammedanism the doctrine of fate--clear, express, and emphatic--is
+fully set forth. The Koran resorts to no euphemism or circumlocution in
+declaring it. Thus, in Sura lxxiv. 3, 4, we read: "Thus doth God cause
+to err whom he pleases, and directeth whom he pleases." Again, Sura xx.
+4, says: "The fate of every man have we bound round his neck." As is
+well known, fatalism as a practical doctrine of life has passed into all
+Mohammedan society. "Kismet" (it is fated) is the exclamation of
+despair with which a Moslem succumbs to adversity and often dies without
+an effort to recover. In times of pestilence missionaries in Syria have
+sometimes found whole villages paralyzed with despair. Yielding to the
+fatalism of their creed, the poor mountaineers have abandoned all means
+of cure and resigned themselves to their fate. The same fatal paralysis
+has affected all liberty of thought, all inventiveness and enterprise,
+all reform of evils, all higher aspiration of the oppressed people.
+
+With the lower forms of religious belief, fetishism, animism, serpent
+worship, demon worship, the case is still worse. The only deities that
+are practically recognized in these rude faiths are generally supposed
+to be malevolent beings, who have not only fixed an evil fate upon men,
+but whose active and continued function it is to torment them. Though
+there is a lingering belief in a Supreme Being who created all things,
+yet he is far off and incomprehensible. He has left his creatures in the
+hands of inferior deities, at whose mercy they pass a miserable
+existence. Looking at the dark facts of life and having no revelation of
+a merciful God they form their estimates of Deity from their trials,
+hardships, fears, and they are filled with dread; all their religious
+rites have been devised for appeasing the powers that dominate and
+distress the world. And yet a pronounced agnostic has asked us to
+believe that even this wide-spread horror, this universal nightmare of
+heathen superstition, is more humane than the Calvinistic creed.
+
+If we inquire into the tendency of all types of ancient or modern
+pantheism in this particular phase, we shall find them, without
+exception, fatalistic. They not merely make God the author of sin--they
+make Him the sinner. Our misdeeds are not our acts, but God's. Thus the
+vaunted Bhagavad Gita, uniting the Sankhyan and the Vedanta
+philosophies, makes Krishna say to Arjuna: "All actions are incessantly
+performed by operation of the qualities of Prakriti (the self-existing
+Essence). Deluded by the thought of individuality, the soul vainly
+believes itself to be the doer. The soul, existing from eternity, devoid
+of qualities, imperishable, abiding in the body, acts not, nor is by any
+act polluted. He who sees that actions are performed by Prakriti alone,
+and that the soul is not an actor, perceives the truth."[199] Such is
+Hindu pantheism. Yet this most inconsistent system charges man with
+guilt. It represents his inexorable fate as pursuing him through endless
+transmigrations, holding over him the lash of retribution, while it
+exacts the very last farthing. Still, from first to last, it is not he
+that acts, but some fractional part of the One only Existence which
+fills all space.
+
+The philosophy of Spinoza was quite as fatalistic as the Hindu Vedanta.
+He taught, according to Schwegler, that "The finite has no independent
+existence in itself: it exists because the unrestrained productive
+energy of the (infinite) Substance spontaneously produced an infinite
+variety of particular forms. It has, however, no proper reality; it
+exists only in and through the Substance. Finite things are the most
+external, the last, the most subordinate forms of existence into which
+the universal life is specialized, and they manifest their finitude in
+that they are without resistance, subject to the infinite chain of
+causality which binds the world. The divine Substance works freely
+according to the inner essence of its own nature; individuals, however,
+are not free, but are subject to the influence of those things with
+which they come into contact. It follows from these metaphysical
+grounds," Schwegler continues, "that what is called free-will cannot be
+admitted. For, since man is only a mode, he, like any other mode, stands
+in an endless series of conditioning causes, and no free-will can,
+therefore, be predicated of him." Further on he adds: "Evil, or sin, is,
+therefore, only relative and not positive, for nothing happens against
+God's will. It is only a simple negation or deprivation, which only
+seems to be a reality in our representation."[200] The late Samuel
+Johnson, in his chapter on "The Morality and Piety of Pantheism,"
+undertakes to defend both the Vedantic and the Spinozan philosophy by
+pointing out a distinction between an "external compulsion and an inner
+force which merges us in the Infinite. Though both are equally efficient
+as to the result, and both are inconsistent with individual freedom, yet
+real fate is only that which is external.... While destiny or fate in
+the sense of absolute external compulsion would certainly be
+destructive, not only of moral responsibility but of personality itself,
+yet religion or science without fate is radically unsound." Again he
+adds: "We cannot separate perfection and fate. Deity whose sway is not
+destiny is not venerable, nor even reliable. It would be a purpose that
+did not round the universe, a love that could not preserve it. Theism
+without fate is a kind of atheism, and a self-dominated atheism. But
+holding justice to be the true necessity or fate, is properly theism,
+though it refuses the name."[201]
+
+The reasoning here reminds one of the conclusions of a still more recent
+writer, who while condemning what he considers the fatalism of
+Calvinistic theology, still asserts that its logic leaves no alternative
+but the denial of a personal God. And an early Buddhist philosopher has
+left a fragment which gives the very same reason for agnosticism. Thus
+he says: "If the world was made by God (Isvara) there should be no such
+thing as sorrow or calamity, nor doing wrong, nor doing right; for all,
+both pure and impure, deeds must come from Isvara.... If he makes
+without a purpose he is like a suckling child, or with a purpose, he is
+not complete. Sorrow and joy spring up in all that lives; these, at
+least, are not alike the works of Isvara, for if he causes love and joy
+he must himself have love and hate. But if he loves and hates, he is not
+rightly called self-existent. 'Twere equal, then, the doing right or
+doing wrong. There should be no reward of works; the works themselves
+being his, then all things are the same to him, the maker."
+
+This was a Buddhist's answer to the Hindu pantheism, and there follows
+a reply also to the Oriental dualism which attempted to solve the
+difficulty by assigning two great first causes, one good and the other
+evil. "Nay," says this Buddhist philosopher, "if you say there is
+another cause beside this Isvara, then he is not the end or sum of all,
+and therefore all that lives may, after all, be uncreated, and so you
+see the thought of Isvara is overthrown."[202] Thus the same problems of
+existence have taxed human speculation in all lands and all ages. The
+same perplexities have arisen, and the same cavils and complaints.
+
+There is an important sense in which all forms of materialism are
+fatalistic in their relation to moral responsibility. James Buechner
+assures us that "what is called man's soul or mind is now almost
+universally conceded as equivalent to a function of the substance of the
+brain." Walter Bagehot, like Maudsley, suggests that the newly born
+child has his destiny inscribed on his nervous tissues.[203] Mr. Buckle
+assures us that certain underlying but indefinable laws of society, as
+indicated by statistics, control human action irrespective of choice or
+moral responsibility. Even accidents, the averages of forgetfulness or
+neglect, are the subjects of computation. To support his position he
+cites the averages of suicides, or the number of letters deposited
+yearly in a given post-office, the superscription of which has been
+forgotten. Thus, underlying all human activity there is an unknown
+force, a vague something--call it Deity, or call it Fate--which controls
+human affairs irresistibly.
+
+It would be amusing, if it were not sad, to see what devices and what
+names have been resorted to in order to get rid of a personal God. The
+Hindu Sankhyans ascribed all things to the "Eternally Existing Essence."
+The Greek Atomists called it an "Inconceivable Necessity;" Anaxagoras,
+"The World-forming Intelligence;" Hegel, "Absolute Idea;" Spinoza,
+"Absolute Substance;" Schopenhauer, "Unconscious Will." Spencer finds
+only "The Unknowable;" Darwin's virtual Creator is "Natural Selection;"
+Matthew Arnold recognize a "Stream of Tendency not our own which makes
+for righteousness." Nothing can be more melancholy than this dreary
+waste of human speculation, this weary and bootless search after the
+secret of the universe. At the same time a deaf ear is turned to those
+voices of nature and revelation which speak of a benevolent Creator. But
+the point to which I call particular attention in this connection is,
+that these vague terms, whatever else they may mean, imply in each case
+some law of necessity which moulds the world. They are only the names of
+the Fates whom all philosophies have set over us. If we have been
+correct in tracing an element of fatalism through all the heathen
+faiths, and all ancient and modern philosophies, how is it that the
+whole army of unbelief concentrate their assailments against divine
+sovereignty in the Word of God, and yet are ready to laud and approve
+these systems which exhibit the same things in greater degree and
+without mitigation?
+
+That which differentiates Christianity is the fact that, while it does
+represent God as the originator and controller of all things, it yet
+respects the freedom of the human will, which Mohammedanism does not,
+which Hinduism does not, which ancient or modern Buddhism does not,
+which Materialism does not. Not only the Word of God but our own reason
+tells us that the Creator of this world must have proceeded upon a
+definite and all-embracing plan; and yet at the same time, not only the
+Word of God, but our own consciousness, tells us that we are free to act
+according to our own will. How these things are to be reconciled we know
+not, simply because we are finite and God is infinite. I once stood
+before the great snowy range of the Himalayas, whose lofty peaks rose
+twenty-five thousand feet above the sea. None could see how those
+gigantic masses stood related to each other, simply because no mortal
+ever has explored, or ever can explore, their awful and unapproachable
+recesses.
+
+So with many great truths concerning the being, attributes, and works of
+God. One may say that God predetermined and then foresaw what He had
+ordained; another that He foresaw and then resolved to effect what he
+had foreseen. Neither is correct, or at least neither can know that he
+is correct. God is not subject to our conditions of time and space. It
+is impossible that He, whose knowledge and will encompass all things,
+should be affected by our notions of order and sequence; there is with
+Him no before and after. The whole universe, with all its farthest
+extended history, stood before Him from all eternity as one conception
+and as one purpose; and the conception and the purpose were one. The
+too frequent mistake of human formulas is that they undertake to reason
+out infinite mysteries on our low anthropomorphic lines, one in one
+extreme and another in another. We cannot fit the ways of God to the
+measure of our logic or our metaphysics. What we have to do with many
+things is simply to believe and trust and wait.[204] On the other hand,
+there are many things of a practical nature which God has made very
+plain. He has brought them down to us. The whole scheme of grace is an
+adaptation of the mysteries of the Godhead to our knowledge, faith,
+obedience, and love.
+
+And this leads directly to the chief differential which Christianity
+presents in contrast with the fatalisms of false systems, viz., that
+while sin and death abound, as all must see, the Gospel alone reveals a
+superabounding grace. It is enough for us that the whole scheme is one
+of Redemption, that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the
+world--nay, that He made the world, and made it for an infinitely
+benevolent purpose. If dark mysteries appear in the Word or in the
+world, we are to view them in the light of Calvary, and wait till we can
+see as we are seen; for this world is Christ's, and will surely subserve
+His ends, which are those of infinite compassion.
+
+Our position, therefore, as before the abettors of heathen or agnostic
+philosophy, is impregnable: the fatalism is all theirs, the union of
+sovereign power with infinite love is ours. We have reason as well as
+they. We realize the facts and mysteries of life as fully as they, but
+are not embittered by them. We see nothing to be gained by putting out
+the light we have. We prefer faith to pessimism, incarnate love to the
+tyranny of "unconscious will."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 184: Quoted in Fiske's _Destiny of Man_, p. 117.]
+
+[Footnote 185: See _Indian Wisdom_, p. 82.]
+
+[Footnote 186: What Kanada meant by adrishta was a sort of habit of
+matter derived from its past combinations in a previous cosmos, one or
+more. The rod which has been bent will bend again, and so matter which
+has once been combined will unite again.]
+
+[Footnote 187: _Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought_, p.
+327.]
+
+[Footnote 188: _On Natural Selection_, p. 353.]
+
+[Footnote 189: _The Destiny of Man_, p. 80.]
+
+[Footnote 190: _Evolution and its Relation to Religious Thought_, p.
+88.]
+
+[Footnote 191: Some of Goldwin Smith's utterances are such as these: "If
+morality has been based on religion there must be reason to fear that
+the foundation being removed the superstructure will fall. That it has
+rested on religion so far as the great majority are concerned will
+hardly be doubted." ... "The presence of this theistic sanction has been
+especially apparent in all acts and lives of all heroic self-sacrifice
+and self-devotion." ... "All moral philosophers whose philosophy has
+been practically effective, from Socrates down, have been religious.
+Many have tried to find an independent basis but have not been
+successful--at least have not arrived at any agreement." ... "Thucydides
+ascribed the fall of Greece to the fall of religion. Machiavelianism
+followed the fall of the Catholic faith." ... "Into the void left by
+religion came spiritual charlatanry and physical superstition, such as
+the arts of the hierophant of Isis, the soothsayer, the
+astrologer--significant precursors of our modern mediums." ...
+"Conscience as a mere evolution of tribal experience may have
+importance, but it can have no authority, and 'Nature' is an unmeaning
+word without an Author of nature--or rather it is a philosophic name for
+God." ... "Evolution is not moral, nor can morality be educed from it.
+It proclaims as its law the survival of the fittest, and the only proof
+of fitness is survival." ... "We must remember that whatever may be our
+philosophic school we are still living under the influence of theism,
+and most of us under Christianity. There is no saying how much of
+Christianity still lingers in the theories of agnostics." ... "The
+generation after the next may perhaps see agnosticism, moral as well as
+religious, tried on a clear field." These utterances are weighty, though
+detached. We only raise a doubt whether "the generation after the next"
+will see agnosticism tried on a clear field. On the contrary, it will be
+surrounded as now, and more and more, by Christian influences, and will
+still depend on those influences to save it from the sad results of its
+own teachings.]
+
+[Footnote 192: _The Races of Man_, pp. 137, 138.]
+
+[Footnote 193: _The Human Species_, p. 478.]
+
+[Footnote 194: Mr. John Fiske declares that man is descended from the
+catarrhine apes.--_Destiny of Man_, p. 19. Professor Le Conte maintains
+that no existing animal could ever be developed into man. He traces all
+existing species up from a common stock, of which man is the head. The
+common line of ancestors are all extinct.--_Evolution in Relation to
+Religious Thought_, p. 90.]
+
+[Footnote 195: _The Permanent Elements in Religion_, p. 154]
+
+[Footnote 196: Book II., 13.]
+
+[Footnote 197: Book IX., 17.]
+
+[Footnote 198: Development by "heredity" and the Buddhist doctrine of
+transmigration, though both fatalistic, reach that result in different
+ways; they are, in fact, contradictory. Character, according to
+Buddhism, is inherited not from parents: it follows the line of
+affinity.]
+
+[Footnote 199: _Indian Wisdom_, p. 152.]
+
+[Footnote 200: _History of Philosophy_, pp. 220, 221.]
+
+[Footnote 201: _Oriental Religions_--_India_. Part II., p. 44.]
+
+[Footnote 202: Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 180.]
+
+[Footnote 203: _Physics and Politics_.]
+
+[Footnote 204: "Probably no more significant change awaits the theology
+of the future than the recognition of this province of the unknown, and
+the cessation of controversy as to matters that come within it, and
+therefore admit of no dogmatic settlement."--Tulloch's _Religious
+Thought in Britain_, p. 24.]
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X.
+
+THE DIVINE SUPREMACY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
+
+
+We have in previous lectures instituted brief and partial comparisons
+between Christianity and particular faiths of the East, but I now
+propose a general comparative survey.
+
+Never before has the Christian Faith been so boldly challenged to show
+cause for its supreme and exclusive claims as in our time. The early
+Christians encountered something of the same kind: it seemed very
+preposterous to the proud Roman that an obscure sect, coming out of
+despised Nazareth, should refuse to place a statue of its deified
+Founder within the Pantheon, in the goodly company of renowned gods from
+every part of the Roman Empire; but it did so refuse and gave its
+reasons, and it ultimately carried its point. It gained the Pantheon and
+Rome itself for Christ alone. He was proclaimed as the One Redeemer of
+the world, and this claim has been maintained from that day to this.
+"There can be no diversity," said His followers, "for there is no other
+name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved. The very
+genius of Christianity means supremacy and monopoly, for the reason that
+it is divine and God cannot be divided against Himself." But in our time
+the whole world is brought very closely together. The religions of men,
+like their social customs and political institutions, are placed in
+contact and comparison. The enemies of the Christian faith here, in
+Western lands, naturally make the most of any possible alliances with
+other systems supposed to antagonize Christianity; while a multitude of
+others, having no particular interest in any religion, and rather
+priding themselves upon a broad charity which is but a courteous name
+for indifference, are demanding with a superior air that fair play shall
+be shown to all religions alike. The Church is therefore called upon to
+defend her unique position and the promulgation of her message to
+mankind. Why does she refuse to admit the validity of other religions,
+and why send her missionaries over the earth to turn the non-Christian
+races from those faiths which are their heritage by birth, and in which
+they honestly put their trust? Why not respect everywhere that noblest
+of all man's instincts which prompts him to inquire after God, who hath
+made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the earth? If the old
+Hindu pantheism of the Bhagavad Gita taught that the worshippers of
+other gods were only worshipping the One Supreme Vishnu unawares; if
+Buddhism forbids its followers to assert that theirs is the only
+religion, or even that it is the best religion;[205] is it not time that
+Christians should emulate this noble charity?
+
+This plausible plea is urged with such force and volume, it is so backed
+by the current literature and the secular newspaper press that it
+cannot be ignored. The time has come when the Church must not only be
+able to give a reason for the faith she professes, but must assign
+reasons why her faith should supplant every other. I am aware that many
+are insisting that her true course is to be found in an intensive zeal
+in the promulgation of her own doctrines without regard to any other.
+"Preach the Gospel," it is said, "whether men will hear or whether they
+forbear." But it must be borne in mind that Paul's more intelligent
+method was to strive as one who would win, and not as they who beat the
+air. The Salvation Army will reach a certain class with their mere
+unlettered zeal. The men who purposely read only One Book, but read that
+on their knees, doubtless have an important work to do, but the Church
+as a whole cannot go back to the time when devout zealots sneered at the
+idea of an educated ministry. The conflict of truth and error must be
+waged intelligently. There are sufficient reasons for claiming a divine
+supremacy for the Gospel over all heathen faiths, and the sooner we
+thoroughly understand the difference, the more wisely and successfully
+shall we accomplish our work.
+
+Wherein, then, consists the unique supremacy of the Christian faith?
+
+1. It alone offers a real salvation. We are not speaking of ethics, or
+conceptions of God, or methods of race culture, but of that one element
+which heals the wounds of acknowledged sin and reconciles men to God.
+And this is found in Christianity alone. There is no divine help in any
+other. Systems of speculation, theories of the universe, and of our
+relation to the Infinite are found in all sacred books of the East.
+There are lofty ethical teachings gathered from the lips of many
+masters, and records of patient research, cheerful endurance of ascetic
+rigors, and the voluntary encounter of martyrs' deaths. And one cannot
+but be impressed by this spectacle of earnest struggles in men of every
+land and every age to find some way of peace. But in none of the ethnic
+religions has there been revealed a divine and heaven-wrought salvation.
+They have all begun and ended with human merit and human effort. Broken
+cisterns have everywhere taken the place of the One Fountain of Eternal
+Life. Though all these systems recognize the sin and misery of the
+world, and carry their estimate of them to the length of downright
+pessimism, they have discovered no eye that could pity and no arm that
+could bring salvation. In the silence and gloom of the world's history
+only one voice has said, "Lo, I come! in the volume of the Book it is
+written of me." And although men have in all ages striven to rid
+themselves of sin by self-mortification, and even mutilation, yet the
+ever-recurring question, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this
+death?" was never answered till Paul answered it in his rapturous
+acknowledgment of victory through the righteousness of Christ. Mohammed
+never claimed to be a saviour or even an intercessor. He was the sword
+of God against idolators, and the ambassador of God to believers; but
+beyond the promise of a sensuous heaven, he offered no salvation. He had
+no remedy for sin--except that in his own case he claimed a special
+revelation of clemency and indulgence. Many a wholesome truth derived
+from the Old Testament scriptures was promulgated to the faithful, but
+self-righteousness, and especially valor in Mohammedan conquest, was
+offered as the key to paradise.[206]
+
+Doubtless we should view the false systems with discrimination. Like the
+sublime philosophy of Plato, Mohammedanism does teach an exalted idea of
+God, and there is, accordingly, a dignity and reverence in its forms of
+worship. I once witnessed a very imposing spectacle in the great mosque
+at Delhi, on the Moslem Sabbath. Several hundred Indian Mohammedans were
+repeating their prayers in concert. They were in their best attire, and
+fresh from their ablutions, and their concerted genuflections, the
+subdued murmur of their many voices, and the general solemnity of their
+demeanor, rendered the whole service most impressive. It contrasted
+strongly with the spectacle which I witnessed a little later in the
+temple of Siva, in Benares. The unspeakable worship of the linga, the
+scattering of rice and flowers and the pouring of libations before this
+symbol; the hanging of garlands on the horns of sacred bulls, and that
+by women; the rushing to and fro, tracking the filth of the sacred
+stables into the trodden ooze of rice and flowers which covered the
+temple pavements; the drawing and sipping of water from the adjacent
+cesspool, known as the sacred well; the shouting and striking of bells,
+and the general frenzy of the people--all this could be considered as
+nothing short of wild and depraved orgies. If we must choose, give us
+Islam, whether in contrast with the Siva worship of India or with the
+tyranny of the witch doctors of interior Africa.
+
+Yet, I repeat, Islam has no salvation, no scheme of grace, no great
+Physician. In visiting any Mohammedan country one is impressed with this
+one defect, the want of a Mediator. I once stood in the central hall of
+an imposing mansion in Damascus, around the frieze of which were
+described, in Arabic letters of gold, "The Hundred Names of Allah." They
+were interpreted to me by a friend as setting forth the lofty attributes
+of God--for example, "The Infinite," "The Eternal," "The Creator," "The
+All-Seeing," "The Merciful," "The Just." No one could help being
+impressed by these inspiring names. They were the common heritage of
+Judaism and Christianity before Islam adopted them, and they are well
+calculated to fill the soul with reverence and awe. But there is another
+class of names which were predicted by Judaism and rejoiced in by
+Christianity, but which Islam rejects; for example, "Messiah,"
+"Immanuel," or God with us, "The Son of God," "The Son of Man," "The
+Redeemer," "The Elder Brother." In a word, Islam has nothing to fill the
+breach between a holy and just God and the conscience-smitten souls of
+men. These honored names of Allah are as sublime as the snow-peaks of
+the Himalayas and as inaccessible. How can we attain unto them? Without
+a Daysman how shall we bridge the abyss that lies between? Even Israel
+plead for Moses to speak to them in place of the Infinite, and they
+voiced a felt want of all human hearts.
+
+Yet no religious system but Christianity reveals a Mediator. There is in
+other faiths no such conception as the fatherhood of God. Though such
+names as Dyauspater, Zeuspiter or Jupiter, and others bearing the import
+of father are sometimes found, yet they imply only a common source, as
+the sun is the source of life. They lack the elements of love and
+fostering care. There can be no real fatherhood and no spirit of
+adoption except through union with the Son of God. The idea that
+re-birth and remission of sin may be followed by adoption and heirship,
+and joint heirship with the Son of the Infinite, belongs to the
+Christian faith alone; and the hope and inspiration of such a heritage,
+seen in contrast with the endless and disheartening prospects of
+countless transmigrations, are beyond the power of language to describe.
+It was with infinite reason that Paul was taught to regard his work
+among the Gentiles as a rescue or a deliverance "from darkness unto
+light, and from the power of Satan unto God," and it was a priceless
+boon which enabled him to offer at once the full remission of sins and a
+part in the glorious inheritance revealed through faith in Christ.
+
+Mere ethical knowledge cannot comfort the human soul. Contrast the gloom
+of Marcus Aurelius with the joy of David in Psalm cxix.; and Seneca,
+also, with all his discernment, and his eloquent presentation of
+beautiful precepts, was one of the saddest, darkest characters of Roman
+history. He was the man who schemed with Catiline, and who at the same
+time that he wrote epigrams urged Nero onward with flattery and
+encouragement to his most infamous vices and his boldest crimes.
+Knowledge of ethical maxims and the power of expressing them, therefore,
+is one thing, religion is another. Religion is a device, human or
+divine, for raising up men by a real or a supposed supernatural aid. It
+ought to reveal God as a helper and a Saviour. It ought to be a
+provision of grace by which the Just can yet be a justifier of them that
+are weak and wounded by sin. The ethical systems of the heathen world
+corroborate the Scriptural diagnosis of man's character and condition,
+but they fail as prescriptions. So far as divine help and regenerative
+power are concerned, they leave the race helpless still.
+
+Christianity is a system of faith in a moral as well as in an
+intellectual sense. It inculcates a spirit of loving, filial trust
+instead of a querulous self-righteousness which virtually chides the
+unknown Ruler of the universe. According to "The Light of Asia" when the
+Buddha preached at Kapilavastu there were assembled men and devils,
+beasts and birds, all victims alike of the cruel fate that ruled the
+world. Existence was an evil and only the Buddha could be found to pity.
+But that pity offered no hope except in the destruction of hope, and the
+destruction of all desire, all aspiration, even all feeling; while
+Christianity offers a hope which maketh not ashamed, even an immortal
+inheritance.[207] Hinduism also, like Islam and Buddhism, lacks every
+element of divine salvation. It is wholly a thing of merit. The infinite
+Brahm is said to be void of attributes of all kinds. No anthropomorphic
+conception can be predicated of him. The three Gods of the Trimurti are
+cold and distant--though for Vishnu in his alleged incarnation of
+Krishna, a sympathetic nature was claimed at a later day--borrowed, some
+say, from Buddhism, or, according to others, from Christianity. In the
+Hindu saint all spiritual power in this life is the merit power of
+ascetic austerities, all hope for the future world lies in the cleansing
+efficacy of endless transmigrations of which the goal is absorption into
+deity.
+
+But the difficulty with both Buddhism and Hinduism is that
+transmigration cannot regenerate. It is only a vague postponement of the
+moral issues of the soul. There is recognized no future intervention
+that can effect a change in the downward drift, and why should a
+thousand existences prove better than one? According to a law of physics
+known as the persistence of force, a body once set in motion will never
+stop unless through the intervention of some other resisting force. And
+this is strikingly true of moral character and the well-known power and
+momentum of habit. Who shall change the leopard's spots or deflect the
+fatal drift of a human soul? Remorselessly these Oriental systems exact
+from Kharma the uttermost farthing. They emphasize the fact that
+according to the sowing shall be the reaping, and that in no part of the
+universe can ill desert escape its awards. Even if change were possible,
+therefore, how shall the old score be settled? What help, what rescue
+can mere infinitude of time afford, though the transmigrations should
+number tens of thousands? There is no hint that any pitying eye of God
+or devil looks upon the struggle, or any arm is stretched forth to raise
+up the crippled and helpless soul. Time is the only Saviour--time so
+vast, so vague, so distant, that the mind cannot follows its cycles or
+trace the relations of cause and effect.
+
+In contrast with all this, Christianity bids the Hindu ascetic cease
+from his self-mortification and become himself a herald of Glad Tidings.
+It invites the hook-swinger to renounce his useless torture and accept
+the availing sacrifice of Him who hung upon the Cross. It relieves woman
+from the power of Satan, as exercised in those cruel disabilities which
+false systems have imposed upon her, and assigns her a place of honor in
+the kingdom of God. The world has not done scoffing at the idea of a
+vicarious sacrifice for the sins of men, and yet it has advanced so far
+that its best thinkers, even without any religious bias, are agreed that
+the principle of self-sacrifice is the very highest element of character
+that man can aspire to. And this is tantamount to an acknowledgment that
+the great principle which the Cross illustrates, and on which the
+salvation of the race is made to rest, is the crowning glory of all
+ethics and must be therefore the germinal principle of all true
+religion.
+
+Christianity with its doctrine of voluntary Divine Sacrifice was no
+after-thought. Paul speaks of it as "the mystery which hath been hid
+from ages and from generations but now is made manifest." It was the one
+great mystery which angels had desired to look into and for which the
+whole world had waited in travail and expectation. Christ was "the Lamb
+slain from the foundation of the world," and the entire world-history
+has proceeded under an economy of grace. And I repeat, its fundamental
+principle of sacrifice, exemplified as it has been through the
+Christian centuries, has won the recognition even of those who were not
+themselves the followers of Christ. "The history of self-sacrifice
+during the last eighteen hundred years," says Lecky, "has been mainly
+the history of the action of Christianity upon the world. Ignorance and
+error have no doubt often directed the heroic spirit into wrong
+channels, and sometimes even made it a cause of great evil to mankind;
+but it is the moral type and beauty, the enlarged conception and
+persuasive power of the Christian faith that have chiefly called it into
+being; and it is by their influence alone that it can be permanently
+maintained."[208] Speaking of the same principle Carlyle says: "It is
+only with renunciation that life, properly speaking, can be said to
+begin.... In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making
+others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie." And George Sand in still
+stronger terms has said, "There is but one sole virtue in the world--the
+Eternal Sacrifice of self."
+
+While we ponder these testimonies coming from such witnesses we remember
+how the Great Apostle traces this wonder-working principle back to its
+Divine Source, and from that Source down into all the commonest walks of
+life when he says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ,
+who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
+God; but made himself of no reputation, and took on Him the form of a
+servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion
+as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the
+death of the Cross." Or when he reminds the Corinthians that, though
+Christ was rich, yet for their sake He became poor, that they through
+His poverty might be rich.
+
+In all the Oriental systems there is nothing like this, either as a
+divine source of all-availing help and rescue, or as a celestial spring
+of human action. It is through this communicable grace that Christ
+becomes the Way, the Truth, the Life. Well might Augustine say that
+while the philosophy of Plato led him to lofty conceptions of God, it
+could not show him how to approach Him or be reconciled unto Him. "For
+it is one thing," he says, "from the mountain's shaggy top to see the
+land of peace and to find no way thither; and in vain to essay through
+ways impossible, opposed and beset by fugitives and deserters, under
+their captain the lion and the dragon; and another to keep on the way
+that leads thither guarded by the host of the heavenly General, where
+they spoil not that have deserted the heavenly army; for they avoid it
+as very torment. These things did wonderfully sink into my bowels when I
+read that _least of Thy Apostles_, and had meditated upon Thy works and
+trembled exceedingly." While Christianity is wholly unique in providing
+an objective Salvation instead of attempting to work out perfection from
+"beggarly elements" within the soul itself, as all heathen systems do,
+and as all our modern schemes of mere ethical culture do, it at the same
+time implants in the heart the most fruitful germs of subjective
+spiritual life. Its superior transformation of human character, as
+compared with all other cults, is not only a matter of doctrine but also
+a matter of history. It is acknowledged that Christianity has wrought
+most powerfully of all faiths in taming savage races as well as
+individual men, in moulding higher civilizations and inspiring
+sentiments of humanity and brotherly love. "Christ," says one of the
+Bampton Lecturers, "is the Light that broods over all history.... All
+that there is upon earth of beauty, truth, and goodness, all that
+distinguishes the civilized man from the savage is this gift." And if it
+be asked how the leaven of Christ's influence has pervaded all society,
+the answer is that the work is presided over by a divine and omnipotent
+Spirit who represents Christ, who carries out what He began, who by a
+direct and transforming power renews and enlightens and prompts the
+soul.
+
+Christianity, then, is not a record, a history of what was said and done
+eighteen centuries ago: it is not a body of doctrines and precepts: it
+is the living power of God in the soul of man. The written Word is the
+sword of this Divine Spirit. The renewed soul is begotten of the Spirit
+and it is instinct with the indwelling of the Spirit. No other system
+makes any claim to such an influence as that of the Holy Ghost. Sacred
+books, written systems of law or ethics would all prove a dead
+letter--the Bible itself, as well as the Veda, would be a dead letter
+but for the co-operation of this Divine Spirit. Sacred Scriptures might
+be venerated, they would not be obeyed. The dead heart must be quickened
+and renewed and only Christianity reveals the Transforming Power.
+_Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again he cannot
+see the Kingdom of God._
+
+Instantaneous renewal of the character and the life is not even claimed
+by other faiths; there is in them nothing like the conversion of Saul of
+Tarsus, or that of thousands of others well known in the history of
+Christian experience. There are no such changes in men who, from having
+led lives of profligacy and irreligion, have turned at once into paths
+of righteousness--have tamed their wild propensities and submitted
+themselves to the gentle law of love. But under Christian influence we
+have seen Africaner the savage transformed to a tractable, humane, and
+loving disciple. We have seen the wild and bloodthirsty Koord subdued
+and made as a little child. We have seen the cannibal King Thokambo, of
+Fiji, turned from his cruelty to a simple, childlike faith, and made to
+prefer the good of his people to the glory of a powerless sceptre. Whole
+races, like the Northmen, have been tamed from savagery and made
+peaceable and earnest followers of Christ. In our own time it has been
+said of a missionary in the South Pacific Islands, "that when he arrived
+on his field there were no Christians, and when he closed his labors
+there were no heathen."
+
+The religion of Gautama has won whole tribes of men, Hinduism and
+Mohammedanism are even now winning converts from fetish-worshipping
+races, but, so far as I know, none of these faiths have ever made
+converts except either by war or by the presentation of such motives as
+might appeal to the natural heart of man; there has been no spiritual
+transformation. If it be said that the Buddhist Nirvana and the Hindu
+doctrine of final absorption cannot attract the natural heart, the ready
+answer is that Nirvana and absorption are not the real inspiration of
+their respective systems. They are so far removed into the dim future as
+to exert no practical influence on the great mass of men. The future
+estate that is really expected and desired is a happy ideal
+transmigration, and perhaps many of them; and the chief felicity of the
+Hindu is that no particular estate is prescribed. While the Christian is
+promised a heaven to which the natural heart does not aspire, the Hindu
+may imagine and prefigure his own heaven. His next life may be as carnal
+as the celestial hunting-ground of the Indian or the promised paradise
+of the Moslem. It may be only the air-castle of a day-dreamer. There is
+no moral transformation. There is no expulsive power of a new and higher
+aspiration. Old things have not passed away; nothing has become new.
+
+But the grace of God in Christ claims to work an entire change in the
+desires and aspirations of the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost.
+Paul found the men of Ephesus highly civilized in a sense, but "dead in
+trespasses and sins," "walking according to the course of this world,
+and having their conversation in the lusts of the flesh." But God by His
+Spirit so "quickened" them that they were able to understand and
+appreciate one of the most spiritual of all his Epistles. He addressed
+them as "new creatures," as God's "workmanship," "_created in Christ
+Jesus unto good works_."
+
+As has already been noticed, all theories of moral transformation found
+in heathen systems require time. The process is carried on by intensive
+and long-continued thought, or by gradual accumulations of merit. Only
+the Buddha was enlightened _per sallum_,[209] so to speak. And quite in
+accord with this view are those modern forms of materialism which
+maintain that mental and moral habits consist in gradual impressions
+made in the molecules of the nerve-tissues--that these impressions come
+at length to determine our acts without the necessity of either purpose
+or conscious recognition, and that only when right action becomes thus
+involuntary can character strictly be said to exist.[210] But such
+theories certainly do not harmonize with the known facts of Christian
+conversion already alluded to. We do not refuse to recognize a certain
+degree of truth hidden in these speculations. We are aware that
+continued thought or emotion promotes a certain habit, and that in the
+Christian life such habit becomes an element of strength. We also admit
+that high and pure thought and emotion stamp themselves at length upon
+our physical nature, and appear in the very expression of the
+countenance, but when we look for the transforming impulse that can
+begin and sustain such habitual exercises in spite of the natural
+sinfulness and corruption which all systems admit, we find it only in
+the Christian doctrine of the new birth by the power of the Holy Ghost.
+
+On these two doctrines of a Divine Vicarious Sacrifice and of the
+transforming power of a Divine Spirit we might rest our case. It should
+be sufficient to show, first, that Christianity alone provides a divine
+salvation in which God is made sin for us; and second, that its power
+alone, though objective, works in us the only effectual subjective
+transformation by a direct influence from on high. But there are many
+other points of contrast in which the transcendent character of
+Christianity appears.
+
+First, an important differential lies in the completeness of the Divine
+personality of Jesus. Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, were
+strongly supported by the personality of their founders. We also
+cheerfully accord to such men as Socrates and Plato great personal
+influence. They have impressed themselves upon the millions of mankind
+more deeply than statesmen, or potentates, or conquerors; but not one of
+these presents to us a complete and rounded character, judged even from
+a human stand-point. Mohammed utterly failed on the ethical side.[211]
+His life was so marred by coarse sensuality, weak effeminacy, heartless
+cruelty, unblushing hypocrisy, and heaven-defying blasphemy, that but
+for his stupendous achievements, and his sublime and persistent
+self-assertion, he would long since have been buried beneath the
+contempt of mankind.[212] Confucius appears to have been above reproach
+in morals, and that amid universal profligacy; but he was cold in
+temperament, unsympathetic, and slavishly utilitarian in his teachings.
+His ethics lacked symmetry and just proportion. The five relations which
+constituted his ethico-political system were everything. They were made
+the basis of inexorable social customs which sacrificed some of the
+tenderest and noblest promptings of the human heart. Confucius mourned
+the death of his mother, for filial respect was a part of his system,
+but for his dying wife there is no evidence of grief or regret, and when
+his son mourned the death of his wife the philosopher reproved him. In
+all things he reasoned upward toward the throne; his grand aim was to
+build up an ideal state. He therefore magnified reverence for parents
+and all ancestors even to the verge of idolatry, but he utterly failed
+in that symmetry in which Paul makes the duties of parents and children
+mutual. Under his system a father might exercise his caprice almost to
+the power of life or death, and a Chinese mother-in-law is proverbially
+a tyrant. The beautiful sympathy of Christ, shown in blessing little
+children and in drawing lessons from their simple trust, would have been
+utterly out of place in the great sage of China. Confucius seems to
+have troubled himself but slightly, if at all, about the wants of the
+poor and the suffering; he taught no doctrine of self-sacrifice for the
+ignorant and the unworthy. His ideal of the "superior man" would have
+been tarnished by that contact with the lowly and degraded which was the
+glory of the Christ. And when his cotemporary, Laotze, taught the duty
+of doing good, even to enemies, he repudiated the principle as uncalled
+for in the relative duties which should govern mankind.[213]
+
+With respect to personality, probably a higher claim has been made for
+Gautama than for either of the characters who have been named. Sir Edwin
+Arnold, in his preface to the "Light of Asia," has assigned to him a
+virtual sinlessness, and such is doubtless the character which his
+followers would claim for him. But as a model for the great masses of
+men Gautama was very far from perfection. He had little of the genial
+sunlight of humanity; in every fibre of his nature he was a recluse; his
+views of life were pessimistic; he had no glad tidings for the
+sorrowing; no encouragement for the weary and the heavy laden.[214] His
+agnosticism was ill adapted to the irrepressible wants of mankind, for
+they must place their trust in a higher power, real or imagined.[215]
+But while he cast a cloud over the being of God he drove his despairing
+countrymen to the worship of serpents and evil spirits. In Ceylon, which
+is _par eminence_ an orthodox Buddhist country, ninety per cent. of the
+population are said to be devil worshippers, and the devil jugglers are
+patronized even by the Buddhist monks.[216] As the philosophy of Gautama
+was above the comprehension of the common people, so his example was
+also above their reach. It utterly lacked the element of trust, and
+involved the very destruction of society. To "wander apart like a
+rhinoceros" and "be silent as a broken gong" might be practicable for a
+chosen few, if only self were to be considered, but silence and
+isolation are not worthy ideals in a world of mutual dependence and
+where all life's blessings are enhanced by the ministries of the strong
+to the necessities of the weak. Infinitely higher was the example of Him
+who said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" and who accordingly
+exhorted his disciples to work while the day lasts. Christ prayed not
+that they should be taken out of the world, but that they should be kept
+from the evil.
+
+Again the Buddha's life furnished but a poor example in the domestic
+duties. His abandonment of his wife and child cannot be justified upon
+any sound theory of life. Whatever may be said of the merits of celibacy
+in those who are under no marriage vows, the abandonment of sacred
+relations once formed must be considered a crime against all society. As
+Mohammed's example of impurity has cast a blight over all Moslem lands,
+so Gautama's withdrawal from his home has borne, and is still bearing,
+its evil fruit. In Burmah it is common for a Buddhist who desires a
+change of wives to abandon his family for the sacred life of a
+monastery, where, if he remains but a single month, he sunders the old
+relation and is at liberty to form a new one. Good men are disgusted,
+but there is the example of "the Blessed One!" It will be admitted that
+in comparison with Hinduism the Buddhist ethics advanced woman to a
+higher social condition, but when modern apologists compare Gautama with
+Christ there are many contrasts which cannot be disguised.
+
+In some respects Socrates stands highest among great philosophers.
+Mohammed's career cost him nothing but gained for him everything that
+man's earthly nature could desire. Gautama made only a temporary
+sacrifice; he changed lower indulgences for honor and renown, and died
+at a ripe old age surrounded by loving friends. But Socrates resolutely
+and calmly suffered martyrdom for his principles. The sublime dignity
+and self-control of his dying hours will never cease to win the
+admiration of mankind; yet Socrates was by no means a complete
+character. He died unto himself merely. He left no gospel of peace to
+humanity. His influence, however pure, could not, and in fact did not,
+become a diffusive and transforming leaven, either in his own or in any
+subsequent generation. The late Matthew Arnold has said, "The radical
+difference between Jesus and Socrates is that such a conception as
+Paul's (conception of faith) would, if applied to Socrates, be out of
+place and ineffective. Socrates inspired boundless friendship and
+esteem, but the inspiration of reason and conscience is the one
+inspiration which comes from him and which impels us to live righteously
+as he did. A penetrating enthusiasm of love, sympathy, pity, adoration,
+reinforcing the inspiration of reason and duty does not belong to
+Socrates. With Jesus it is different. On this point it is needless to
+argue: history has proved. In the midst of errors the most prosaic, the
+most immoral, the most unscriptural, concerning God, Christ, and
+righteousness, the immense emotion of love and sympathy inspired by the
+person and character of Jesus has had to work almost by itself alone for
+righteousness, but it has worked wonders."[217]
+
+This tribute to the completeness and power of Christ's personality is
+calculated to remind one of a memorable chapter in the well-known work
+of the late Dr. Horace Bushnell, entitled, "Nature and the
+Supernatural." With a wonderful power it portrays Christ as rising above
+the plane of merely human characters--as belonging to no age or race or
+stage of civilization--as transcendent not in some of the virtues, but
+in them all--as never subject to prejudice, or the impulse of passion,
+never losing that perfect poise which it has been impossible for the
+greatest of men to achieve--as possessed of a mysterious magnetism which
+carried conviction to His hearers even when claiming to be one with the
+Infinite--as inspiring thousands with a love which has led them to give
+their lives for His cause.[218]
+
+I have often thought that one of the most striking evidences of the
+divine reality of the Christian faith is found in the reflection of
+Christ's personality in the character and life of the apostle Paul.[219]
+No one can doubt that Paul was a real historic personage, that from
+having been a strict and influential Jew he became a follower of Jesus
+and gave himself to His service with a sublime devotion; that he sealed
+the sincerity of his belief by a life of marvellous self-denial. He had
+no motive for acting a false part at such cost; on the contrary, an
+unmistakable genuineness is stamped upon his whole career. How shall we
+explain that career? Where else in the world's history have we seen a
+gifted and experienced man, full of strong and repellant prejudices, so
+stamped and penetrated by the personality of another?
+
+On what theory can we account for such a change in such a life, except
+that his own story of his conversion was strictly true, that he had felt
+in his inmost soul a power so overwhelming as to sweep away his
+prejudices, humble his pride, arm him against the derision of his former
+friends, and prepare him for inevitable persecution and for the martyr
+death of which he was forewarned? So vivid were his impressions of this
+divine personality that it seemed almost to absorb his own. Christ,
+though He had ascended, was still with him as a living presence. All his
+inspiration, all his strength came from Him. His plans and purposes
+centred in his Divine Master, and his only ambition was to be found
+well-pleasing in his sight. He saw all types and prophecies fulfilled in
+Him as the Son of God, the fulness of His glory, and the express image
+of His person. Paul never indulged in any similes by which to express
+the glory of heaven; it was enough that we should be like Christ and be
+with Him where He is.
+
+The writings of all the apostles differ from the books of other
+religions in the fact that their doctrines, precepts, and exhortations
+are so centred in their divine Teacher and Saviour. Buddha's disciples
+continued to quote their Master, but Buddha was dead. Theoretically not
+even his immortal soul survived. He had declared that when his bodily
+life should cease there would be nothing left of which it could be said
+"I am."
+
+But to the vivid and realizing faith of Christ's followers He is still
+their living Head, their Intercessor, their Guide. His resurrection is
+the warrant of their future life. He has gone before and will come again
+to receive His own. Christianity is Christ: all believers are members of
+His mystic body: the Church is His bride. He is the Alpha and the Omega
+of the world's history. In the contemplation of His personality as the
+chief among ten thousand His people are changed into His image as from
+glory to glory. The ground of salvation in Christianity is not in a
+church, nor a body of doctrines, not even in the teachings of the
+Master: it is in Christ Himself as a humiliated sacrifice and a
+triumphant Saviour.
+
+Second, the religion of the Bible differs from every other in its
+completeness and scope--its adaptation to all the duties and experiences
+of life and to all races and all conditions of men. It alone is able to
+meet all the deep and manifold wants of mankind. Hardwick has very aptly
+pointed out a contrast in this respect between the faith of Abraham and
+that of the early Indo-Aryan chiefs as portrayed in the Rig Veda. The
+pressing wants of humanity necessitate a faith that is of the nature of
+a heartfelt trust. No other can be regarded as strictly religious. Now
+Abraham's faith was something more than a speculation or a creed. It was
+an all-embracing confidence in God. He had an abiding sense of His
+presence and he confided in Him as his constant guide, defender, and
+friend. His family, his flocks, his relations to the hostile tribes who
+surrounded him, the promised possession of the land to which he
+journeyed--all these were matters which he left in the hands of an
+unseen but ever-faithful friend. His was a practical faith--a real and
+complete venture, and it involved gratitude and loyalty and love.
+Abraham's childhood had been spent in the home of an idolatrous father;
+for Shemite as well as Aryan had departed from the worship of the true
+God. In Chaldea, as in India, men had come to worship the sun and moon
+and the forces of nature. But while the Hindu wandered ever farther away
+from Jehovah, Abraham restored the faith which his ancestors had lost.
+He had no recourse to Indra or Varuna, he sought no help from devas or
+departed spirits. He looked to God alone, for he had heard a voice
+saying, "I am the Almighty God, walk before me and be thou
+perfect."[220] Under the inspiration of such a summons Abraham became
+"the father of the faithful." He was the representative and exemplar of
+real and practical faith, not only to the Hebrew race but to all
+mankind. He staked his all upon a promise which he regarded as divine
+and therefore sure. He believed in the Lord and He counted it to him for
+righteousness. He left home and country and ventured among hostile
+tribes in an assured confidence that he should gain a possession, though
+empty-handed, and a countless posterity, though yet childless, and that
+all this would be granted him not for his own glory, but that all
+nations might be blest in him. And this subordination of self and this
+uplifting of his soul to a sublime hope rendered him patient when
+fulfilment seemed postponed, and strong against temptation when spoils
+and emoluments were offered him; for in some sense, vague perhaps, he
+foresaw a Messiah and a Kingdom of Righteousness, and he was girded with
+confidence to the last, though he died without the sight.
+
+We look in vain for anything to be compared with this in the Vedic
+literature, still less in that of the period of Brahmanical
+sacerdotalism, or in the still later speculations of the philosophic
+schools. Real Hinduism is wanting in the element of trust. Its only
+faith is a belief, a theory, a speculation. It receives nothing and
+expects nothing as a free gift of God. Sacrificial rites survived in the
+early Vedic period, but they had lost all prophetic significance. They
+terminated in themselves and rested upon their own value. There was no
+remembered promise and no expectation of any specific fulfilment. The
+Hindu gained simply what he bought with his merit or his offerings, and
+he had no greater sense of gratitude to deity than to the tradesman of
+whom he made a purchase in the bazaar. There are, indeed, traces in some
+of the earliest Vedic hymns of a feeling of dependence upon superior
+powers, yet the Brahmanical priesthood taught men that he who was rich
+enough to offer a sacrifice of a hundred horses might bankrupt heaven,
+and by his simple right of purchase even rob Indra of his throne.[221]
+As stated in a previous lecture, so far was this system from "the faith
+which works by love" that even demons, by costly sacrifices might
+dispute the supremacy of the universe.
+
+There is an equally significant contrast between the legislation of
+Moses and that of Manu. The life and experience of the former are
+interwoven with his statutes. They are illustrated with references to
+actual events in the history of the people. The blessings, the trials,
+the punishments, the victories, the defeats of Israel enter into the
+texture of the whole Mosaic record: it is full of sympathetic feeling;
+it takes hold on the actual life of men and therefore is able to reform
+and elevate them. It brings not only Moses, but Jehovah Himself into
+personal sympathy with the people. But Manu presents statutes only. Many
+of these are wholesome as laws, but they are destitute of tenderness or
+compassion. No indication is given of the author's own experience, and
+we are left in doubt whether there were not many authors to whom the
+general name of Manu was applied. There is no inculcation of gratitude
+and love to God, or any hint of His love to men. No prayer, no song, no
+confession of dependence, no tribute of praise, no record of trembling,
+yet trustful, experience. It is all cold, lifeless precept and
+prohibition, with threats of punishment here and hereafter. Religious
+exaction is most strict, but there are few religious privileges except
+for Brahmans, and these they possess by divine birthright. No
+particular favor is asked from any being in heaven or on earth.
+
+With respect to this same element of personal trust, and real, heartfelt
+experience, contrast David also with any author whose name is given in
+Hindu literature. He was full of humanity, large-hearted, loving,
+grateful, and though stained by sin, yet he was so penitent and humble
+and tender that he was said to be a man after God's own heart. He was a
+successful warrior and a great king, but he held all his honor and his
+power as a divine gift and for the Divine glory. Compare the 119th Psalm
+with the Upanishads, or with any of the six schools of philosophy. The
+one deals with moral precepts and spiritual aspirations, all the others
+with subtle theories of creation or problems of the universe. The one is
+the outflowing of joyous experience found in obedience to God's moral
+law, and only out of the heart could such a psalm have been written. The
+law of God had become not a barrier or a hamper, but a delight.
+Evidently David had found a religion which filled every avenue and met
+every want of his whole being.
+
+Again, only the religion of Christ brings man into his proper relation
+of penitence and humility before God. It is necessary to the very
+conception of reconciliation to a higher and purer being that
+wrong-doing shall be confessed. All the leading faiths of the world have
+traditions of the fall of man from a higher and holier estate, and most
+of them--notably Hinduism, Buddhism, ancient Druidism, and the Druse
+religion of Mount Lebanon--declare that the fall was the result of
+pride and rebellion of spirit. And of necessity the wrong, if it cannot
+be undone, must at least be confessed. Self-justification is
+perpetuation. The offender must lay aside his false estimate of self and
+admit the justice whose claims he has violated. Even in the ordinary
+intercourse of men this principle is universally recognized. There can
+be no reconciliation without either actual reparation or at least a
+frank acknowledgment. Governmental pardon always implies repentance and
+promised reform, and between individuals a due concession to violated
+principle is deemed the dictate of the truest honor. How can there be
+reconciliation to God, then, without repentance and humiliation? Of what
+value can heathen asceticism and merit-making be while the heart is
+still barred and buttressed with self-righteousness? The longer a man
+approaches the Holiness of Deity with the offerings of his own
+self-consequence the greater does the enormity of his offence become and
+the wider the breach which he attempts to close.
+
+Even if he could render a perfect obedience and service for the future,
+he could never overtake the old unsettled score. The prodigal cannot
+recover the squandered estate or wipe out the record of folly and sin,
+and if there be no resource of free remission on the one hand, and no
+deep and genuine repentance on the other, there can be no possible
+adjustment. The universal judgment and conscience of men so decide.
+Philosophers may present this method and that of moral culture and
+assimilation to the character of the Infinite, but practically all men
+will approve the philosophy taught in Christ's touching parable of the
+Prodigal Son. The beauty, the force, the propriety of its principles
+strike the human understanding, whether of the sage or of the savage,
+like a flash of sunlight, and no human heart can fail to be touched by
+its lessons. Yet where in all the wide waste of heathen faiths or
+philosophies is there anything which even remotely resembles the story
+of the Prodigal? Where is the system in which such an incident and such
+a lesson would not be wholly out of place?
+
+In that ancient book of the Egyptian religion known as "The Book of the
+Dead," the souls of the departed when arraigned before the throne of
+Osiris are represented as all joining in one refrain of
+self-exculpation, uttering such pleas as these: "I have not offended or
+caused others to offend." "I have not snared ducks illegally on the
+Nile." "I have not used false weights or measures." "I have not
+defrauded my neighbor by unjustly opening the sluices upon my own land!"
+Any sense of the inward character of sin or any conception of wrong
+attitudes of mind or heart toward God is utterly wanting. It is simply
+the plea of "not guilty," which even the most hardened culprit may make
+in court. In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which
+looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation. "It was
+not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught,
+passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The old is there to mislead the young.
+Even sleep brings unrighteousness." And the remission sought for is not
+one involving a change of character but only release from an external
+bond. "Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those which we
+committed with our own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O King, like a thief
+who has feasted on stolen oxen. Release him like a calf from the
+rope."[222]
+
+In the Penitential Psalms of the ancient Akkadians, who inhabited
+Northern Assyria in the times of Abraham, and who may have retained
+something of that true faith from which Abraham's father had declined,
+we find a nearer approach to true penitence, but that also lacks the
+inner sense of sin and seeks merely an exemption from punishments.
+
+Only in the Old and New Testaments is sin recognized as of the nature of
+personal guilt. Accordingly, Christianity alone recognizes the fact that
+right thoughts and motives and a worthy character are the gifts of God.
+Cicero has truly remarked[223] that men justly thank God for external
+blessings, but never for virtue, or talent, or character. All that is
+regarded as their own. And such is the conceit of human
+self-righteousness in all man-made religions, whether Hindu or Greek,
+ancient or modern. Philosophy is in its very nature haughty and
+aristocratic. Even Plato betrays this element. It is only the Christian
+apostle that is heard to say, with heartfelt emotion, "By the grace of
+God I am what I am." The Buddha declared that he recognized no being in
+any world to whom he owed any special reverence; and especially in his
+later years, when his disciples had come to look upon him as in a sense
+divine, he regarded himself as the highest of all intelligences on the
+earth or in the various heavens. Such assumptions in both Buddha and
+Confucius will explain the fact that for ages both have been virtually
+worshipped. "At fifteen," said Confucius, "I had my mind bent on
+learning. At thirty I stood firm. At forty I had no doubt. At fifty I
+knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty my ear was an obedient organ for
+the reception of truth. At seventy I could follow what my heart desired
+without transgressing what was right."[224] Yet neither of these great
+teachers claimed to be a divine Saviour. They were simply exemplars;
+their self-righteousness was supposed to be attainable by all.
+
+I cannot do better in this connection than point out a striking contrast
+in the recorded experiences of two well-known historic characters. Islam
+honors David, King of Israel, and accords him a place among its
+accredited prophets. Both David and Mohammed were guilty of adultery
+under circumstances of peculiar aggravation. Mohammed covered his
+offence by a blasphemous pretence of special revelations from God,
+justifying his crime and chiding him for such qualms of conscience as he
+had. David lay in dust and ashes while he bemoaned not only the
+consequences of his sin and the breach of justice toward his neighbor,
+but also the deep spiritual offence of his act. "Against Thee, and Thee
+only, O God, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight."
+Profoundest penitence on the one hand and Heaven-daring blasphemy on
+the other, the Bible and the Koran being witnesses!
+
+Another marked distinction is seen in the moral purity of the Christian
+Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other
+religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show
+the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than
+the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social
+intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level.
+And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely
+appear. And it is by this very test that we can with tolerable accuracy
+distinguish the human from the divine in religious records. It is not
+difficult to determine what is from heaven and what is of the earth.
+
+No enlightened reader of Greek mythology can proceed far without
+discovering that he is dealing with the prurient and often lascivious
+imaginings of semi-barbarous poets. He finds the poetry and the art of
+Greece both reflecting the character of a passionate people, bred under
+a southern sun and in an extremely sensuous age. If he ventures into the
+lowest depths of the popular religious literature of Greece or Rome, or
+ancient Egypt or Phoenicia, he finds unspeakable vice enshrined among
+the mysteries of religion, and corruptions which an age of refinement
+refuses to translate or depict abound on every hand. Or apply the same
+test to the literature of Hinduism, even in its earliest and purest
+stages. The sacred Vedas, which are supposed to have been breathed into
+the souls of ancient rishis by direct divine effluence, are tainted here
+and there by debasing human elements, and that not incidentally but as
+the very soul of the Hindu system. For example, when the Vedic hymns
+promise as future rewards the lowest sensual indulgences[225] none can
+doubt the earthly source of their inspiration. As for the Upanishads,
+which are regarded as _Sruti_ or inspired, Professor Max Mueller, in his
+Introduction to the first volume of "The Sacred Books of the East,"
+virtually admits the impropriety of translating them for English readers
+without expurgation. Mr. Ram Chandra Bose, of Lucknow, declares himself
+unable, for the same reason, to give a full and unabridged account of
+the ancient Hindu sacrifices.[226] The later literatures of the Puranas
+and the Tantras are lower still. Anti-Christian Orientalists have so
+generally conveyed the popular impression that their culled and
+expurgated translations were fair representations of Hindu literature
+that Wilson finally felt called upon in the interest of truth and
+honesty to lift the veil from some of the later revelations of the
+Puranas, and it is sufficient to say that the Greek mythology is fairly
+outdone by the alleged and repeated escapades of the chief Hindu
+deities.
+
+The traditions of all ancient religions found on either hemisphere, and
+the usages observed among savage tribes of to-day all conform to the
+same low moral gauge. All are as deplorably human as the degraded
+peoples who devised them. In Mexico and Peru, as well as in Egypt and in
+Babylonia, base human passion was mingled with the highest teachings of
+religion.[227] Buddhism has generally been considered an exception to
+this general rule, and it will be confessed that its influence has been
+vastly higher than that of the old Hinduism, or the religions of Canaan,
+or Greece, or Rome, and immeasurably higher in morals than that of
+Islam; yet even Buddhism has been colored by its European advocates with
+far too roseate a hue. Sir Edwin Arnold was not the first biographer of
+Gautama to glorify incidentally the seductive influences of his Indian
+harem, and to leave on too many minds the impression that, after all,
+the luxurious palace of Sidartha was more attractive than the beggars'
+bowl of the enlightened "Tathagata." The Bishop of Colombo, in an able
+article on Buddhism, arraigns the apologetic translators of Buddhistic
+literature for having given to the world an altogether erroneous
+impression of the moral purity of the Sacred Books of Ceylon.[228]
+
+The vaunted claim that the early Buddhist records, and especially the
+early rock inscriptions found in caves, are pure, whatever corruptions
+may have crept into more modern manuscripts, is well met by letters from
+a recent traveller, which speak of certain Buddhist inscriptions so
+questionable in character that they cannot be translated or
+described.[229]
+
+It is scarcely necessary for me to speak of the base appeal to man's low
+passions found in the Koran. It is only necessary to trace its
+unmistakable influence in the moral degeneracy of Mohammedan populations
+in all lands and all ages--destroying the sacredness of the home,
+degrading woman, engendering unnatural vices, and poisoning all society
+from generation to generation. It is indeed a hard task for its
+apologists, by any kind of literary veneering to cover the moral
+deformity and the blasphemous wickedness which, side by side with
+acknowledged excellences, mar the pages of the Koran. The soiled
+finger-marks of the sensual Arab everywhere defile them. Like the blood
+of Banquo, they defy all ocean's waters to wash them out. It was easy
+enough for Mohammed to copy many exalted truths from Judaism and
+Christianity, and no candid mind will deny that there are many noble
+precepts in the Koran; but after all has been said, its ruling spirit is
+base. Even its promised heaven is demoralizing. It is characteristically
+a human book, and very low in the ethical scale at that.
+
+Let us now turn to the Bible; let us remember that the Old Testament
+represents those early centuries when the people of Israel were
+surrounded by the corruptions of Baal worship, which transcended the
+grovelling wickedness of all other heathen systems, ancient or modern.
+Let us bear in mind the kind of training which the nation had received
+amid the corruptions of Egypt, all rendered more effective for evil by
+their degrading bondage; and with all these disadvantages in view, let
+us search everywhere, from Genesis to Malachi, and see if there be one
+prurient utterance, one sanction for, or even connivance at, impurity
+in all those records, written by men in different lands and ages, men
+representing all social grades, all vocations in life, and chosen from
+among all varieties of association. Who will deny that these men appear
+to have been raised by some unaccountable power to a common level of
+moral purity which was above their age, their social standards, their
+natural impulses, or any of the highest human influences which could
+have been exerted upon them?
+
+They were often called to deal plainly with moral evils. They record
+instances of grievous dereliction, in some cases the writers were
+themselves the offenders. But there is always reproof. The story always
+has a salutary moral. Sin is always shown to be a losing game, a sowing
+to the wind and a reaping of the whirlwind. It is either followed by
+severe judgments, or it is repented of with a contrition which bows even
+a great monarch in dust and ashes.
+
+The books of the New Testament were also written in an age of great
+moral corruption. Judaism was virtually dead; the current religion in
+the Holy City was "a sad perversion of the truth." Hypocrisy sat in high
+places when John Baptist came with his protest and his rebukes. The
+Herods, who held the sceptres of provincial authority, were either base
+time-servers, or worse, they were monsters of lust and depravity. In the
+far-off capitals of the dominant heathen races vice had attained its
+full fruitage and was already going to seed and consequent decay.
+Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Antioch were steeped in iniquity, while
+the emperors who wielded the sceptre of the Roman empire were hastening
+the ruin of the existing civilization. It was in such an age and amid
+such surroundings that the Gospels and the Epistles came forth as the
+lotus springs, pure and radiant from the foul and fetid quagmire. What
+could have produced them? The widely accepted rule that religions are
+the products of their environments is surely at fault here. Neither in
+the natural impulses of a dozen Judean fishermen and peasants, nor in
+the bigoted breast of Saul of Tarsus, could these unique and sublime
+conceptions have found their genesis. They are manifestly divine. How
+exalted is the portraiture of the Christ! What human skill could have
+depicted a character which no ideal of our best modern culture can
+equal?
+
+In all the New Testament there are none but the highest and purest
+ethical teachings, and even the most poetical descriptions of heaven are
+free from any faintest tinge of human folly. The Apocalypse is full of
+images which appeal to the senses, but there is nothing which does not
+minister to the most rigid purity; while the representations which Paul
+makes of eternal felicity are strictly and conspicuously spiritual and
+elevating. Everywhere, from Matthew to Revelations, it is the pure in
+heart who shall see God, and the inducement held out is to be pure
+because He is pure. And although the gift of eternal life is a free
+gift, yet it affords no excuse for laxity. The sixth chapter of the
+Epistle to the Romans is a remonstrance against all presumption in those
+that are "under grace." "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto
+sin, but alive unto God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Let not sin
+therefore rule in your mortal body that ye should obey it in the lusts
+thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness
+unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the
+dead."[230] The religion of the New Testament is a spiritual religion,
+the resurrection body is a spiritual body; heaven is not an Indian
+hunting-ground, nor a Vikings Valhalla of shield-clad warriors, nor a
+Moslem harem. It is a spiritual abode, and its companionships are with
+God and the Lamb, with the church of the first-born and of saints made
+perfect. Now, all that we can say of these lofty and pure conceptions is
+that flesh and blood never revealed them. They are divine. They are out
+of the range of our native humanity; they are not the things that human
+nature desires, and it is only by the high culture of transforming grace
+that human aspirations are raised to their level.
+
+In conclusion, there are many points in which Christianity asserts its
+unique supremacy over all other systems of which there is time but for
+the briefest mention. It presents to man the only cultus which can have
+universal adaptation. Christ only, belongs to all ages and all races.
+Buddha is but an Asiatic, Mohammed is an Arab and belongs only to the
+East. The religion or philosophy of Confucius has never found adaptation
+to any but Mongolian races; his social and political pyramid would
+crumble in contact with republican institutions. On the other hand, the
+religion of Christ is not only adapted to all races, but it aims at
+their union in one great brotherhood. Again, Christianity alone presents
+the true relation between Divine help and human effort. It does not
+invest marred and crippled human nature with a false and impossible
+independence, neither does it crush it. Whenever heathen systems have
+taught a salvation by faith they have lost sight of moral obligation.
+Weitbrecht and others state this as a fact with the Hindu doctrine of
+Bakti (faith) adopted in the later centuries; De Quatrefages asserts the
+same of the Tahitans. But the faith of the New Testament everywhere
+supposes a Divine and effectual co-operation. "Work out your own
+salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to
+will and to do of His good pleasure." It bids men serve not as
+hirelings, but as sons and heirs; it stimulates hope without engendering
+pride; it administers discipline, but with a father's love; it teaches
+that trials are not judgments, but wholesome lessons. Of all religions
+it alone inculcates a rational and consoling doctrine of Providence. It
+declares that to the righteous death is not destruction, but a sleep in
+peace and hope. It bids the Christian lay off his cares and worries--in
+all things making his requests known unto God with thanksgivings; and
+yet it enjoins him not to rest in sloth, but to aspire after all that is
+pure and true and honorable and lovely and of good report in human life
+and conduct. It saves him from sin not by the stifling and atrophy of
+any God-given power, but by the expulsive influence of new affections;
+it bids him be pure even as God is pure.
+
+There is in the brief epistle of Paul to Titus a passage which in a
+single sentence sets forth the way of salvation in its fulness. It
+traces redemption to the grace of God, and it makes it a free provision
+for all men; yet it insists upon carefulness and sobriety. Salvation is
+shown to begin _now_ in the laying aside of all sin and the living of a
+godly life. Meanwhile it cheers the soul with expectation that Christ
+shall dwell with the redeemed in triumph, as He once came in
+humiliation, and it keeps ever in mind the great truth that His mission
+is not merely to secure for man future exemptions and possessions, but
+to build up character--character that shall continue to rise and expand
+forever.
+
+_For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
+teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live
+soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that
+blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our
+Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us
+from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of
+good works._
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 205: _Holy Bible and Sacred Books of the East_, p. 12.]
+
+[Footnote 206: Mohammed was once asked whether he trusted in his own
+merit or in the mercy of God, and he answered, "The mercy of God." But
+the whole drift of his teaching belied this one pious utterance.]
+
+[Footnote 207: Of the terrible darkness and bewilderment into which
+benighted races are often found Schoolcraft furnishes this graphic and
+painful picture in the condition of the Iroquois:
+
+"Their notions of a deity, founded apparently on some dreamy tradition
+of original truth, are so subtile and divisible, and establish so
+heterogeneous a connection between spirit and matter of all imaginable
+forms, that popular belief seems to have wholly confounded the possible
+with the impossible, the natural with the supernatural. Action, so far
+as respects cause and effect, takes the widest and wildest range,
+through the agency of good or evil influences, which are put in motion
+alike for noble or ignoble ends--alike by men, beasts, devils, or gods.
+Seeing something mysterious and wonderful, he believes all things
+mysterious and wonderful; and he is afloat without shore or compass, on
+the wildest sea of superstition and necromancy. He sees a god in every
+phenomenon, and fears a sorcerer in every enemy. Life, under such a
+system of polytheism and wild belief, is a constant scene of fears and
+alarms. Fear is the predominating passion, and he is ready, wherever he
+goes, to sacrifice at any altar, be the supposed deity ever so
+grotesque. He relates just what he believes, and unluckily he believes
+everything that can possibly be told. A beast, or a bird, or a man, or a
+god, or a devil, a stone, a serpent, or a wizard, a wind, or a sound, or
+a ray of light--these are so many causes of action, which the meanest
+and lowest of the series may put in motion, but which shall in his
+theology and philosophy vibrate along the mysterious chain through the
+uppermost, and life or death may at any moment be the reward or the
+penalty."--_Notes on the Iroquois_, p. 263.]
+
+[Footnote 208: _History of Rationalism_.]
+
+[Footnote 209: And even the Buddha had spent six years in
+self-mortification and in the diligent search for what he regarded as
+the true wisdom.]
+
+[Footnote 210: Henry Maudsley, in _The Arena_ of April, 1891.]
+
+[Footnote 211: "Barren Mohammedanism has been in all the higher and more
+tender virtues, because its noble morality and its pure theism have been
+united with no living example."--Lecky, _History of Morals_, vol. ii.,
+p. 10.]
+
+[Footnote 212: The most intelligent Mohammedans, as we have shown in a
+former lecture, admit the moral blemishes of his character as compared
+with the purity of Jesus and only revere him as the instrument of a
+great Divine purpose. His only element of greatness was success. Even
+the Koran convicts him of what the world must regard as heinous sin, and
+presents Jesus as the only sinless prophet.]
+
+[Footnote 213: Douglass, _Confucianism and Taouism_.]
+
+[Footnote 214: The apologists of Buddhism have made much of the story of
+a distressed young mother who came to the "Master" bearing in her arms
+the dead body of her first-born--hoping for some comfort or help. He
+bade her bring him some mustard seed found in a home where no child had
+died. After a wearisome but vain search he only reminded her of the
+universality of death. No hope of a future life and a glad recovery of
+the lost was given. As an illustration of Buddhism the example is a good
+one.]
+
+[Footnote 215: "Men wanted a Father in heaven, who should take account
+of their efforts and assure them a recompense. Men wanted a future of
+righteousness, in which the earth should belong to the feeble and the
+poor; they wanted the assurance that human suffering is not all loss,
+but that beyond this sad horizon, dimmed by tears, are happy plains
+where sorrow shall one day find its consolation."--Renan, _Hibbert
+Lectures_, p. 42.]
+
+[Footnote 216: See report of Missionary Conference, London, 1888, vol.
+i., p. 70.]
+
+[Footnote 217: _St. Paul and Protestantism_, p. 79, quoted by Bishop
+Carpenter.]
+
+[Footnote 218: It is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the
+well-known tribute which Napoleon, in his conversations with his friends
+on the island of St. Helena, paid to the transcendent personality of
+Christ. He drew a graphic contrast between the so-called glory which had
+been won by great conquerors like Alexander, Caesar, and himself, and
+that mysterious and all-mastering power which in all lands and all ages
+continues to attach itself to the person, the name, the memory of
+Christ, for whom, after eighteen centuries of time, millions of men
+would sacrifice their lives.]
+
+[Footnote 219: Augustine appears to have been greatly moved by the life
+as well as by the writings of Paul. In an account given of his
+conversion to his friend Romanianus, he says, "So then stumbling,
+hurrying, hesitating, I seized the apostle Paul, 'for never,' said I,
+'could they have wrought such things, or lived as it is plain they did
+live, if their writings and arguments were opposed to this so high a
+good.'"--_Confessions_, Bk. vii., xxi., note.]
+
+[Footnote 220: Genesis, xvii. 1.]
+
+[Footnote 221: The doctrine of human merit-making was carried to such an
+extreme under the Brahmanical system that the gods became afraid of its
+power. They sometimes found it necessary to send apsaras (nymphs), wives
+of genii, to tempt the most holy ascetics, lest their austerities and
+their merit should proceed too far.--_See Article Brahmanism, in the
+Britannica._]
+
+[Footnote 222: Mueller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. i., p. 40.]
+
+[Footnote 223: De Nat. Deorum, iii., 36.]
+
+[Footnote 224: _Chips from a German Workshop_, p. 304.]
+
+[Footnote 225: See Murdock's _Vedic Religion_, p. 57.]
+
+[Footnote 226: _Hindu Philosophy_.]
+
+[Footnote 227: The most sacred of human victims offered by the Aztecs
+were prepared by a month of unbridled lust. See Prescott's _Conquest_.]
+
+[Footnote 228: _Nineteenth Century_, July, 1888.]
+
+[Footnote 229: Letters of Rev. Pentecost in _The Christian at Work_,
+1891.]
+
+[Footnote 230: The same principles are set forth with great emphasis in
+Isaiah, Chap. iii.]
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+BOOKS OF REFERENCE
+
+
+The books relating directly or indirectly to the wide range of topics
+discussed in the following lectures are too numerous for citation here;
+but there are some which are so essential to a thorough knowledge of
+comparative religion and comparative philosophy, that a special
+acknowledgment is due.
+
+"The Sacred Books of the East" are indispensable to one who would catch
+the real spirit of the Oriental religions. The translations from Hindu,
+Buddhist, Mohammedan, Confucian, and Zoroastrian literatures, by Max
+Mueller, Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Fausboll, Palmer, Darmesteter, Mills,
+Legge, Buhler, West, Beal, and other able scholars, are invaluable. The
+various other works of Max Mueller, "The Science of Religion," "Chips
+from a German Workshop," "The Origin and Growth of Religion," "Physical
+Religion," etc., fill an important place in all study of these subjects.
+
+"Indian Wisdom," by Sir Monier Williams, is the most comprehensive, and
+in many ways the best, of all compends of Hindu religion and philosophy.
+His abridged work, "Hinduism," and the larger volume entitled
+"Brahmanism and Hinduism," are also valuable. R.C. Bose has given to the
+public an able treatise entitled "Hindu Philosophy." Other books on
+Hinduism to which more or less reference is made, are: "The Vedic
+Religion," by McDonald; "India and the Indians," by Duff; "The Life and
+Letters of Colbrooke;" "The Bhagavad Gita," as translated by Chatterji;
+"The Vishnu Puranas," by Wilson; "The Ramayana," by Griffiths;
+"Brahmoism," by Bose; "The Oriental Christ," by Mozoomdar; "Christianity
+and Hindu Philosophy," by Ballantyne.
+
+Among the ablest books on Buddhism are: "Buddhism;" "The Growth of
+Religion as illustrated by Buddhism," and the able article on the same
+subject in the "Britannica"--all by Rhys Davids. "Buddha: His Life,
+Character, and Order," by Professor Oldenberg, is a scarcely less
+important contribution to Buddhist literature. "The Light of Asia," by
+Sir Edwin Arnold, has done more than any other work to interest Western
+nations in the legends of Gautama; perhaps no other Oriental character
+has been more successfully popularized. Of the many efforts to correct
+the misleading impressions given by this fanciful but really poetic
+story, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," by Dr. S.H.
+Kellogg, is probably the ablest. Dr. Edkins, in "Chinese Buddhism," and
+Professor Beal, in "Buddhism in China," have very successfully shown the
+characteristics of the Chinese types of the system. Spence Hardy, in his
+"Manual of Buddhism," has rendered a similar service in relation to the
+Buddhism of Ceylon, while Bigandet has set forth that of Burmah, and
+Alabaster that of Siam. Sir Monier Williams, in his more recent work,
+"Buddhism," has done much to counteract the fashionable tendency of most
+Orientalists to idealize the Buddhist system.
+
+Other works relating to Buddhism are, "Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ," by
+Dodds; "Buddhism (Modern)," by Subhadra; and "Esoteric Buddhism," by
+Sinnett. Maurice, Bishop Carpenter, Brace, the Bishop of Colombo,
+Martin, and many others have ably discussed the subject.
+
+Of all works on Mohammedanism, Sale's translation of the Koran, with a
+"Preliminary Discourse," is the most comprehensive and important.
+Sprenger's "Life of Mohammed, from Original Sources," is perhaps next in
+rank. "Islam and Mahomet," by Samuel Johnson; "Mohammed and
+Mohammedanism," by E. Bosworth Smith; "Christianity, Islam, and the
+Negro Race," by E.W. Blyden; and "Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book," by
+Canon Isaac Taylor, are among the principal apologies for Islam.
+Gibbon's fifth volume of the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has
+at least done ample justice to the glory of the Mohammedan conquest.
+
+Of those who have ably controverted the claims of Islam, the late Dr.
+Pfander, of Northern India, will perhaps hold the first rank. Of the
+three Moulvies who were selected to meet him in public discussion, two
+are said to have been converted to Christianity by his arguments. The
+concessions of the Koran to the truths of the Old and New Testaments
+have been ably pointed out by Sir William Muir in "The Koran," and Dr.
+E.M. Wherry, in his "Commentary," has established the striking fact,
+that of all the prophets named in the Koran, including Mohammed, Jesus
+alone is represented as sinless. The modern apologists of Mohammed and
+his system have been well answered by Knox in current numbers of the
+_Church Missionary Intelligencer_. Other works upon the subject are
+"Islam," by Stobart; "Islam as a Missionary Religion," by Haines;
+"Essays on Eastern Questions," by Palgrave. Sir William Muir's "History
+of the Caliphate" is an important and recent work.
+
+Confucianism and Taouism may be fairly understood, even by those who
+have not the time for a careful study of Legge's translations of the
+Chinese classics, by reference to the following works: "China and the
+Chinese," by Medhurst; "The Religions of China," by Legge; "The
+Chinese," by Martin; "Confucianism and Taouism," by Douglass; "Religion
+in China," by Edkins. The late Samuel Johnson, in his "Oriental
+Religions," has devoted a large volume to the religions of China,
+principally to the ethics and political economy of the Confucian system;
+and James Freeman Clark has given considerable attention to Confucianism
+as one of "The Ten Great Religions."
+
+Zoroastrianism is ably treated by Darmesteter in the Introduction to his
+translation of the "Zend Avesta." Instructive lectures on the religion
+and literature of Persia may be found in the first volume of Max
+Mueller's "Chips from a German Workshop;" also in "The Religion of the
+Iranians," found in Ebrard's "Apologetics," vol. ii. West's and
+Darmesteter's translations of "Pahlavi Texts," in the "Sacred Books of
+the East," are also suggestive.
+
+In the following discussions, relating broadly to the ancient as well as
+the modern religions and philosophies of the world, and their contrasts
+to Christian truth, reference is made directly or indirectly to the
+following works: "Christ and Other Masters," by Hardwick; "The Ancient
+World and Christianity," by Edward de Pressense; "The Religions of the
+World," by Maurice; "The Aryan Witness," by Banergea; "The Unknown God,"
+by Brace; "The Permanent Elements in Religion," by Boyd Carpenter;
+"Oriental and Linguistic Studies," by A.D. Whitney; "The Doomed
+Religions," by Reid; "The Idea of God," by Fiske; "The Destiny of Man,"
+by Fiske; "The Races of Man," by Peschel; "Introduction to the
+Philosophy of Religion," by Caird; "National Religions and Universal
+Religions," by Kuenen; "Some Elements of Religion," by Liddon; "Outlines
+of the History of Ancient Religions," by Tiele; "The Philosophy of
+Religion," by Pfleiderer; "Our Christian Heritage," by Cardinal Gibbons;
+"Hulsean Lectures, 1845-6," by Trench; "Hibbert Lectures, 1880," by
+Renan; "Origins of English History," by Elton; "St. Paul in Britain"
+(Druidism), by Morgan; "Fossil Men and their Modern Representatives," by
+Dawson; "Modern Ideas of Evolution," by Dawson; "Marcus Aurelius," by
+Renan; "Epictetus," Bonn's Library; "Confessions," by St. Augustine;
+"History of the Egyptian Religion," by Tiele; "Lucretius," Bonn's
+Library; "Lives of the Fathers," by Farrar; "The Vikings of Western
+Christendom," by Keary; "Principles of Sociology," by Spencer; "The
+Descent of Man," by Darwin; "Evolution and Its Relation to Christian
+Thought," by Le Conte; "History of European Morals," by Lecky; "The
+Kojiki" (Sacred Books of Shinto), Chamberlain's translation; "The
+Witness of History to Christ," by Farrar; "Anti-Theistic Theories," by
+Flint; "The Human Species," by De Quatrefages.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Oriental Religions and Christianity
+by Frank F. Ellinwood
+
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