LITMIR.BIZ

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of placing side by side, as it were, the historical and radiant figures of Jesus the Christ and Gotama the Buddha, and of indicating an analogy between the essential features of the two systems of religion which these great deliverers of a world on earth have fashioned and commended for the acceptance of their fellow creatures.

      Indeed, Buddhism should occupy a very large place in the affections and admiration of all true Christians on account of the many points of resemblance discernible in the characters and gospels of Gotama and Jesus.

      St. Augustine, the great vindicator of Christianity, clears the ground for an assimilation of the two systems. He writes: "For the thing in itself which is now called the Christian religion really was known to the ancients, nor was wanting at any time, from the beginning of the human race until the time that Christ came into the flesh, from which the true religion which had previously existed began to be called Christian; and this in our day is the Christian religion—not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name."

      Köppen says: "As, from the standpoint of Buddhism, all men—nay, all beings—are brothers, children of one sin, sons of the same nonentity, thus all religions of the globe appear to it as related, as sprung from one source; all pursuing the same end, and arriving at the same goal. The religious views, creeds, etc., etc. ... of all nations, Churches, schools, sects, and parties, however diverse they may seem, are hence, according to the conception of the believing Buddhist, not alien, but inwardly akin. They are merely peculiar forms, modifications, obscurations, degenerations of the same truth—of one law, one faith, one redemption. For him there is only one doctrine and one Way; and all religions belong, in one way or another, to this doctrine, and are all on that Way."

      Among the things that can never be shaken are the foundations of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and other cognate religious systems. Here and there, perchance, a steeple may come down with a crash, a minaret may fall, a pagoda crumble into dust; but the foundation-stones, laid beneath the surface, buried in mystery, and encompassed by darkness, remain irremoveable, changeless, and eternal.

      It is, then, in this brooding darkness which envelopes their occult sources that we must take our stand; and not until we have grown into and become one with the encircling gloom, and been subjectively steeped in it, can we hope to understand or pronounce a fair judgment upon what is the less obscure and objective.

      The comparative study of religions requires approach with an open and receptive mind, and a large amount of intuitive sympathy with all. It cannot be fairly undertaken if the initial object of investigation is to mould the one or the other to the shape of personal fancy.

      Mr. Arthur Lillie, a most interesting exponent of Buddhism in relation to Christianity, says that the study of an ancient religion is not philosophy, but pure history. This may be true, in a sense; but, at the same time, it is necessary that the records of the past should be studied in a philosophical and synthetic spirit, with an Impressionist rather than a pre-Raphaelite tendency. Mr. Lillie hardly makes due allowance for the measure of failure which must accompany all human efforts to do justice to a great idea, and perhaps overstrains the theory that literary and philological analysis have had their day, and that archæology and history should now reign supreme.

      In connection with the placing of too great a reliance upon the "letter" of venerated records, a warning—serious enough if we appropriate it to ourselves—has issued from the pen of the Rev. Spence Hardy, who, in a passage of his book, entitled Eastern Monachism (p. 166), emphasizes with tremendous force the precarious position of those who take their stand solely upon sacred books. "The priests of India," he writes, "are encompassed by weapons that may be wrested from their hands and used to their own destruction. When it is clearly proved to them that their venerated records contain absurdities and contradictions, they must of necessity conclude that their origin cannot have been divine; and, the foundations of the system being thus shaken, the whole mass must speedily fall, leaving only the unsightly ruin as a monument of man's folly, when he endeavours to form a religion from the feculence of his own corrupt heart or the fancies of his own perverted imagination."

      It may be apposite here to demonstrate how far short of the Pauline standard the cultivated European critic falls, by referring to some remarks of the Rev. Prof. Bruce in one of his Gifford Lectures[A] of last year, in which he treats of Gotama's views concerning the moral order of the universe. Of the two leading doctrines of Buddhism, Karma is called by him "fantastic" and Nirvana "morbid"; and, not content with such a contemptuous dismissal of these remarkable conceptions, he proceeds to say: "The well-being of the race demanded warriors, brave in the field of battle against evil, not monks, immured in cloisters and passing their lives in poverty, wearing the yellow robe of a mendicant order."

      This rhetorical flourish may have sounded very effective and convincing as a peroration, and have produced the desired result of clearing the lecturer from any possible imputation of sympathy with Buddhism, except as an ethical system of considerable excellence; but such a summing-up of Buddhism is neither more nor less than a throwing of dust in the eyes of beholders, and is, in my opinion, very far removed from the dispassionate survey one would expect from a Gifford Lecturer. Alighting on such a misrepresentation of his religious system, a Buddhist would naturally feel aggrieved, and his belief in our self-adopted reputation for fair-play all round might be rudely shaken.

      "Karma" is undoubtedly one of the so-called mysteries of Buddhism; but is it in any sense more fantastic than any other religious mystery? Is this theory of the transmigration of character (as it has been somewhat loosely described) more fanciful in its conception than that of the transmigration of the soul, a "vaguely-apprehended, feebly-postulated ego," to a dim locality such as heaven? Then, again, it may be asked, what is there so objectionable in a quiet, unobtrusive resistance to evil, that it should prompt the lecturer to magnify the importance of a crude aggressiveness?

      It is by no means true that Buddhist monks are usually immured in cloisters; they, in fact, move about freely as examples, within human limits, of the highest morality, and they chiefly occupy themselves (as in Burma) with the education of children.[B] General Forlong, in his Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religions, says: "Gotama's religion widened from Jaino-Buddhism into one of work and duty towards his fellows; his instructions to the order of monks were to the following effect: that they were not to beg from door to door, but only to accept gifts in return for services performed; and this was their service—to be an example to all men."

      Condemnation of these monks for passing their lives in poverty sounds strangely inappropriate coming from the lips of a Christian professor; and, as to the well-being of the race not demanding the wearing of yellow garments, one might reasonably ask if it demanded the wearing of a black gown. We must, in all fairness, I think, credit Gotama with possessing a large measure of that "Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world."

      Sir Edwin Arnold, I believe, refers to the mysteries of Buddhism as "blank abstractions," but I do not suppose he regards them as more "blank" than the mysteries of other religions. All mysteries are, in a sense, blank abstractions, and the blanker they are the nearer the truth; and what religion is without them? It may be conceded, however, that such a conception as "Ultimate Reality" upon which to fall back in time of need might prove to some minds a more comfortless one than that presented by the "Compassionate Father" of the Christian God-idea. But even this Christian symbolism has an element of mystery in it.

      Then there is the poetic phase of anthropomorphism, which is not altogether to be despised from an æsthetic point of view. Such as the Mohammedan Allah, who is described with exquisite imagery in the Bostān of Sâdi as a beautiful cup-bearer at Sufistic banquets,

      "So fair,

      They spill the wine and stare,"[C]

      which recalls the anthropomorphic Deity of the Psalms:—

      "In His hand is a cup, and the wine is red."

      Another picture of great poetical merit is that of the Incarnate Saviour of the Mexicans, who does not ascend to heaven on his departure from the earth, but sets forth upon the wide ocean

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