PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY***


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THE INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY


       *       *       *       *       *

_By the same Author_,

BUDDHISM IN CHRISTENDOM.


"The most learned, thoughtful, and thought-provoking work which has yet
appeared on this momentous question.... I read the book from cover to
cover with much interest."--_Truth._

"The present work is of the profoundest interest, and is certain to
command attention in all future discussions of the subject with which
it deals.... It is exceedingly ably written."--_Scotsman._

"The relation of Essenism to Buddhism is here dwelt upon with
some fresh illustration of the probably Indian origin of the
Therapeuts of Alexandria. Mr. Lillie's chapters on ritual and
observances are rendered attractive by a number of interesting
illustrations."--_Athenæum._

"Discusses the influence which Buddhism has had on Christianity. The
admission that there is any relationship at all between the two will
be vehemently denied by many good people, but no one can impartially
and fairly study Mr. Lillie's book, examine his evidence, and give due
weight to his arguments, without admitting that the connection not only
exists but is an intimate one."--_Evening Standard._


_Also_,

THE POPULAR LIFE OF BUDDHA.

"Contends that the atheistic and soulless Buddhism was drawn from the
'Great Vehicle,' which was a spurious system introduced about the time
of the Christian era, whereas the 'Little Vehicle,' compiled by Asoka,
contained the motto, 'Confess and believe in God.' There are a large
number of passages drawn from the sacred books, which tend to prove
that Mr. Lillie is right in his theory of Buddhist theology. Even Dr.
Rhys Davids admits that the Cakkavati Buddha was to early Buddhists
what the Messiah Logos was to early Christians. 'If this be so,' as Mr.
Lillie is justified in asking, how can an atheist believe in a 'Word of
God made flesh?'

"Mr. Lillie thus sums up the originalities of the Buddhist
movement:--Enforced vegetarianism for the whole nation; enforced
abstinence from wine; abolition of slavery: the introduction of
the principle of forgiveness of injuries in opposition to the _lex
talionis_; uncompromising antagonism to all national religious
rites that were opposed to the _gnosis_ or spiritual development of
the individual; beggary, continence, and asceticism for religious
teachers."--_Spectator._

"Contains many quotations from the Buddhist religious writings, which
are beautiful and profound--a most readable book."--_Saturday Review._

"Our author has unquestionably the story-teller's gift."--_St. James
Gazette._

       *       *       *       *       *


THE INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY

by

ARTHUR LILLIE

Author of "Buddhism in Christendom," etc.







[Illustration: Shield supported by two Unicorns]

London
Swan Sonnenschein & Co.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
1893

       *       *       *       *       *

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_,

The "Philosophy at Home" Series.


1 to 5. SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER--Translated
from the German by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. (Oxon), viz.:--

  1. THE WISDOM OF LIFE, 4th Edition.
  2. COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, 3rd Edition.
  3. RELIGION, A DIALOGUE, and other Essays, 3rd Edition.
  4. THE ART OF LITERATURE, 2nd Edition.
  5. STUDIES IN PESSIMISM, 3rd Edition.

6. OUTLINES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, by HERMANN LOTZE. Edited,
with an Introduction, by F. C. CONYBEARE, M.A. (Oxon).

7. THE PROBLEM OF REALITY, by E. BELFORT BAX.

8. THE INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY, by ARTHUR
LILLIE.

       *       *       *       *       *


PREFACE.


A volume that proves that much of the New Testament is parable rather
than history will shock many readers, but from the days of Origen and
Clement of Alexandria to the days of Swedenborg the same thing has been
affirmed. The proof that this parabolic writing has been derived from
a previous religion will shock many more. The biographer of Christ
has one sole duty, namely, to produce the actual historical Jesus. In
the New Testament there are two Christs, an Essene and an anti-Essene
Christ, and all modern biographers who have sought to combine the two
have failed necessarily. It is the contention of this work that Christ
was an Essene monk; that Christianity was Essenism; and that Essenism
was due, as Dean Mansel contended, to the Buddhist missionaries "who
visited Egypt within two generations of the time of Alexander the
Great." ("Gnostic Heresies," p. 31.)

The Reformation, in the view of Macaulay, was the struggle of layman
_versus_ monk. In consequence, many good Protestants are shocked to
hear such a term applied to the founder of their creed. But here I must
point out one fact. In the Essene monasteries, as in the Buddhist,
there was no life vow. This made the monastery less a career than a
school for spiritual initiation. In modern monasteries St. John of the
Cross can dream sweet dreams of God in one cell, and his neighbour may
be Friar Tuck, but to both the monastery is a prison. This alters the
complexion of the celibacy question, and so does the fact that the
Christians were fighting a mighty battle with the priesthoods.

The Son of Man envied the security of the crannies of the "fox."
He called his opponents "wolves." His flock after his death met
with closed doors for fear of the Jews. The "pure gospel," says the
Clementine Homilies (ch. ii. 17), was "sent abroad secretly" after the
removal to Pella. The new sect, not as Christians but as Essenes, were
tortured, killed, hunted down. To such, "two coats," "wives," daily
wine celebrations were scarcely fitted.

Twice has Buddhism invaded the West, once at the birth of
Christianity, and once when the Templars brought home from Palestine
Cabbalism, Sufism, Freemasonry. And our zealous missionaries in Ceylon
and elsewhere, by actively translating Buddhist books to refute them,
have produced a result which is a little startling. Once more Buddhism
is advancing with giant strides. Germany, America, England are overrun
with it. M. Léon de Rosny, a professor of the Sorbonne, announces that
in Paris there are 30,000 Buddhists at least. A French frigate came
back from China the other day with one-third of the crew converted
Buddhists. Schopenhauer admits that he got the philosophy which now
floods Germany from a perusal of English translations of Buddhist
books. Even the nonsense of Madame Blavatsky has a little genuine
Buddhism at the bottom, which gives it a brief life.

The religions of earth mean strife and partisan watch-cries, partisan
symbols, partisan gestures, partisan clothes. But as the daring climber
mounts the cool steep, the anathemas of priests fall faintly on the
ear, and the largest cathedrals grow dim, in a pure region where Wesley
and Fenelon, Mirza the Sufi and Swedenborg, Spinoza and Amiel, can
shake hands. If this new study of Buddhism has shown that the two
great Teachers of the world taught much the same doctrine, we have
distinctly a gain and not a loss. That religion was the religion of the
individual, as discriminated from religion by body corporate.




CONTENTS.


  CHAP.                                         PAGE

        INTRODUCTORY                               1

     I. MOSES                                      4

    II. BUDDHA                                    23

   III. THE FOUR PRESAGING TOKENS                 35

    IV. AFTER BUDDHA'S DEATH                      77

     V. THE APOSTLES OF THE BLOODLESS ALTAR       98

    VI. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS      111

   VII. THE ESSENE JESUS                         135

  VIII. THE ANTI-ESSENE JESUS                    144

    IX. THE CHURCH OF JERUSALEM                  160

     X. JOHANNINE BUDDHISM                       169

    XI. RITES                                    174

        INDEX                                    181




INFLUENCE OF BUDDHISM ON CHRISTIANITY




INTRODUCTORY.


In the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15th, 1888, M. Émile Burnouf has
an article entitled "Le Bouddhisme en Occident."

M. Burnouf holds that the Christianity of the Council of Nice was due
to a conflict between the Aryan and the Semite, between Buddhism and
Mosaism:--

"History and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly
that creeds grow slowly up. None come into the world ready-made, and
as if by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great
Indian poet has said, 'The beginning of things evades us; their end
evades us also. We see only the middle.'"

M. Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longer
contested: "It has been placed in full light by the researches of
scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of
the original texts.... In point of fact, for a long time, folks had
been struck with the resemblances, or rather the identical elements
contained in Christianity, and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith
and most sincere piety have admitted them. In the last century these
analogies were set down to the Nestorians, but since then the science
of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is
many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory
had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without
proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently,
when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced, step by step, from
India to Jerusalem."

What are the facts upon which scholars abroad are basing the
conclusions here announced? I have been asked by the present publishers
to give a short and popular answer to this question. The theory of this
book, stated in a few words, is that at the date of King Asoka (B.C.
260), Persia, Greece, Egypt, Palestine had been powerfully influenced
by Buddhist propagandism.

Buddha, as we know from the Rupnath Rock inscription, died 470 years
before Christ. He announced before he died that his Dharma would endure
five hundred years. (Oldenburg, "Buddhism," p. 327.) He announced also
that his successor would be Maitreya, the Buddha of "Brotherly Love."
In consequence, at the date of the Christian era, many lands were on
the tip-toe of expectation. "According to the prophecy of Zoradascht,"
says the First Gospel of the Infancy, "the wise men came to Palestine,"
expecting, probably, Craosha, as the Jews expected Messiah. The time
passed. Jesus was executed. His followers dispersed in consternation.
The conception that he was the real Messiah was apparently long in
taking definite form.

First came a book of "sayings" only. Then a gospel was constructed--the
Gospel of the Hebrews--of which only a small fragment can be restored.
This was the basis of many other gospels. At the date of Irenæus (180
A.D.) they were very numerous. (Hœr i. 19.) As only the Old Testament,
at that time, was considered the Bible, the composers of these gospels
apparently thought it no great sin to draw on the Alexandrine library
of Buddhist books for much of their matter, it being a maxim of both
the Essenes and the early Christians that a holy book was more allegory
than history.

But before I compare the Buddhist and Christian narratives, I must say
a word about the early religion of the Jews.




CHAPTER I.

_Moses._


Until within the last forty years the Old Testament has been
practically a sealed book.

It found interpreters, no doubt--two great groups.

The first group pointed to its useless and arbitrary edicts, and
pronounced them the inventions of priests inspired by fraud and greed.

The second group practically admitted the arbitrary and useless nature
of most of the edicts, but maintained that they were given by the
All-wise, in a book penned by His finger, to miraculously prepare a
nation distinct from the other nations of the earth, for a special
purpose. They were "types" of a higher revelation, a "better covenant."

Practically, with both of these interpreters Mosaism was a pure comedy.

But comparative mythology, unborn yesterday, is telling a different
story. It shows that the religion of the Jews, far from having been a
distinct religion miraculously given to a peculiar people, had the same
rites and gods as the creeds of its Semitic neighbours. It shows us
these Semites, or descendants of Shem, in two great groups, differing
much in language and religion. It shows us the southern Semites, the
Arabs, the Himyarites, the Ethiopians. It shows us the northern
group, the Babylonians or Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Arameans, the
Canaanites, the Hebrews. It shows us their gods, El and Yahve, and
Astarte of Sidon; and going a step back shows how the Semites borrowed
from an earlier civilisation, that of the Acadians, the yellow-faced
Mongols who seem to have preceded the white races everywhere. "The
Semite borrowed the old Acadian pantheon _en bloc_," says Professor
Sayce ("Ancient Empires," p. 151).

But the work of the archæologist and the anthropologist has been still
more important.

The former has suddenly revealed to us chapters in the history of human
experience hitherto undreamt of. He has allowed us to peer far, far
into the past, to see man at an incalculable distance.

Thousands and thousands of years before Cain and Abel we see the
palæolithic man, "dolichocephalic and with prominent jaws," pursue
the great migrations of urus, reindeer, mammoth, and the thick-nose
rhinoceros from Cumberland to Algeria, and Algeria to Cumberland,
passing dry-shod to France, and from Sicily to Africa. He is naked. He
is armed with a javelin with a flint head. He is an animal, struggling
for survival with other animals. He eats his foes as wolves eat
vanquished wolves. To extract the marrow from their bones he cracks
them with his poor flint "celt" or "_langue du chat_;" and these
cracked human bones 240,000 years afterwards are found in caves and in
beds of gravel and sand, and brick earth, and tell their story. Some
are charred, which proves that the notion of sacrifice to an unseen
being was due to him.

To this poor savage our debt is quite incalculable.

1. He invented the missile. This made the monkey dominant in the animal
world. He became a man.

2. He invented religion.

Here the valuable work of the anthropologist chimes in. He has
collected the records of ancient and modern savages, and compared
them with the records of caves and beds of gravel. In this way he
has allowed us to peer into the mind of the stone-using savage, who
lived at least 240,000 years ago. And the Bible of the Jews, from
being a text-book for sermons which bewildered the moral sense even of
children, has become, for the study of the great evolution of religion,
one of the most valuable books in the world. It bridges the gap between
the neolithic or polished-stone-using man and Christ and Mahomet.

Before we go further, let us say a word about the authorship of the Old
Testament.

The Books of Moses were compiled by Ezra, at the date of Artaxerxes,
the King of the Persians.

It is to be observed that this is not an extravagant guess of German
theorists. It is stated authoritatively by Clement of Alexandria.
(Strom. i. 22.) Irenæus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, and Basil give
the same testimony. But a greater authority is behind. It is known that
Christ and His disciples, and the early fathers, used the Septuagint
or Greek version of the Bible, and Dr. Giles goes so far as to say
that there is no hint amongst the latter of the knowledge of even the
existence of the Hebrew version. In this Bible (2 Esdras xiv.), it is
announced distinctly that the "law was burnt;" and that Ezra, aided by
the Holy Ghost and "wonderful visions of the night," wrote down "all
that hath been done in the world from the beginning which was written
in thy law."

Let us write down a few dates from the accepted chronology.

                               B.C.
  Adam                         4004
  Abraham                      1996
  Moses                        1571
  Nebuchadnezzar leads Jews in
  captivity to Babylon          587
  Jews restored 517 Ezra        457

Thus the story of Adam in its present form was written down 3547 years
after it had occurred. The story of Abraham was written down 1539
years after it occurred. The transactions between Yahve and Moses were
written down 1114 years after they occurred.

To gauge the full significance of this, let us call to mind that the
poet Tennyson a few years back compiled from old ballads and chronicles
the story of Arthur, a king separated from him by about the same gap
of time that parted Ezra and Moses. The poet was honest, according to
our ideas of honesty, and sought to give a faithful picture of Arthur's
court--with a success that is only moderate. But Ezra was not honest,
that is, in our sense of the word. His nation had been a captive of
the Babylonians, and had been released from slavery and the lash by
Cyrus. In consequence, the molten bulls of the temples of the Jewish
taskmasters stank in his nostrils, and led him to advocate the severe
nakedness of the Persian fire-altar. And he proposed to do this, not so
much by writing new books as by altering the old records and legends,
and proclaiming his views through the mouths of the time-honoured
patriarchs.

But all this involved a grotesque inference that he seems not to have
anticipated. If Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Solomon, knew in their secret
hearts that the one fierce hatred of Yahve was the graven image, their
assiduous idolatry spread over 1500 years must have been a pure comedy,
intended to insult Yahve, not to conciliate him.

What is the object of the religion of the savage? Anthropology has
recently answered this question.

The religion of the savage is a slavish reign of terror. His rites and
prohibitions are a vast apparatus of magic, to obtain food for the
tribe, and safety from the plague and the foeman. In language borrowed
from the New Zealander, it is a Great TABOO.

Early man found himself in the presence of the mighty forces of nature.
The thunder roared. The lightning struck his rude shelter. A hurricane
ruined his crops. The fever or the foeman came upon him. He had to
guess the meaning of all this. Some dead chief, much feared in life, is
seen in a dream, or his ghost appears. He is silent and looks very sad.
What is the cause of his sorrow? Want of food. The early savage knows
no other. A storm, a pestilence vexes the clan, and the chief appears
again, looking angry. The two facts are connected together. Beasts are
slaughtered, and perhaps human victims, and placed near his cairn. The
pestilence ceases. In this way the Hottentots have made an ancestor,
Tsui Goab, into their god. Indeed, ancestor worship is the basis of all
religions. But by and by, to resume our illustration, new calamities
vex the tribe. Tsui Goab is angry once more. Fresh efforts are made
to soothe him. Soon the Taboo develops into a number of complicated
superstitions.

"The savage," says Sir John Lubbock, "is nowhere free. All over
the world his daily life is regulated by a complicated, and often
most inconvenient set of customs (as forcible as laws), of quaint
prohibitions and privileges.... The Australians are governed by a
code of rules and a set of customs which form one of the most cruel
tyrannies that has ever, perhaps, existed on the face of the earth."
("Origin of Civilisation," p. 304.)

"The lives of savages," says Mr. Lang, "are bound by the most
closely-woven fetters of custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed.' A
strict code regulates all intercourse." ("Custom and Myth.," p. 72.)

Now, unless this system is clearly understood, Mosaism will remain a
riddle. It is to be observed that Ezra, far from having relaxed the
reign of terror of the Great Taboo of savage survival, had enlarged the
number of petty faults and superstitions; and the Levites and Pharisees
at the date of Christ, far from considering all this a comedy, were the
most stiff-necked of believers. It results that a new religion that
proposed to ignore the chief edicts of the Taboo must have come from
some strong outside influence.

The two great foes of the savage, as Mr. Frazer shows in his able
work, the "Golden Bough," were the ghost and the necromancer. The first
was deemed all-powerful, and the second sought to use this power to
help the tribe and injure its rivals. His art was that of the farmer,
the warrior, the doctor--in fact, in his view, pure science. And the
laws and ordinances were a Great Taboo, acts forbidden or enjoined to
control the ghosts.

Let the Deuteronomist himself tell us what Israel was to expect if she
kept these laws and ordinances.

Yahve, it is said, "will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee,
and he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy
land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine
and the flocks of thy sheep.... The Lord will take away from thee all
sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt which thou
knowest upon thee, but will lay them upon all them that hate thee....
Moreover, the Lord thy God will send the hornet amongst them, until
they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be destroyed."

This was the religion of Moses. The ghostly head of the clan would
give abundant flocks and fertile ground to those who fed him with
burnt-offerings, but failing these, would send "the blotch, the itch,
the scab" (Deut. xxviii. 27), the victorious foeman--and change the
fertilising rain to the "powder and dust" of the desert.

"It must be admitted that religion," says Sir John Lubbock, "as
understood by the lower savage races, differs essentially from ours.
Thus their deities are evil, not good. They may be forced into
compliance with the wishes of man. They require bloody, and rejoice in
human sacrifices. They are mortal, not immortal; a part not the author
of nature. They are to be approached by dances rather than prayers, and
often approve what we call vice rather than what we esteem as virtue."
("Origin of Civil.," p. 133.)

In point of fact, the savage believes that sickness, death, thunder,
and other human ills come not from nature, but the active interference
of the god. He looks upon every one outside his tribe as an enemy. The
west coast <DW64>s represent their deities as "black and mischievous,
delighting to torment them in various ways." The Bechuanas curse
their deities when things go wrong. All this throws light on the god
of the Hebrews. Professor Robertson Smith, in the new "Encyclopædia
Britannica," describes him as immoral, but perhaps it would be more
correct to say that he has the gang morality of a savage chief. He
counsels the Jews to borrow the poor silver bangles of the Egyptian
women, and then to treacherously carry them off (Exod. iii. 22),
because gang morality recognises no rights of property outside the
gang. All through the early books, stories of cheating and lying are
popular.

Palestine is a narrow strip of land between the Jordan and the
Mediterranean, surrounded by deserts. To it, from a city named Ur, in
Chaldea, 1996 years B.C., came Abraham and the Hebrews, or "Men from
Beyond." These little Semite clans were like the modern Bedouins. They
did not live in towns; they pitched their tents in the country. The
soil of Palestine, even in Abraham's day, was quite unable to support
these teeming hordes, for the sons of Abraham went several times to
Egypt to escape famine. In similar fashion, ten or twelve thousand
Arabs from Tripoli and Bengazi lately left their own country to reach
Egypt.

All this must be borne in mind. It has been debated whether the
earliest god of Israel was a sun-god or a moon-god, and whether his
name was El or Yahve. In point of fact, his name was Starvation, and
the Jewish Taboo a great food-making apparatus. This accounts for the
extreme ferocity with which the struggle for the land flowing with milk
and honey was carried on by the rival tribes.

"When thou comest nigh to a city to fight against it, then proclaim
peace to it.

"And it shall be, if it make thee an answer of peace and open unto
thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall
be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.

"And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against
thee, then thou shalt besiege it:

"And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt
smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;

"But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in
the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself: and
thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath
given thee.

"Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from
thee, which are not of the cities of these nations."

The "cities that are very far off" mean, in reality, those that are
nearer to Moses in the desert than the cities of the promised land,
but the writer, composing imaginary laws for Moses in Jerusalem, some
hundred years after his death, overlooked this. These are not pretty
ones. These cities have to choose at once between slavery or extinction.

"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give
thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.

"But thou shalt utterly destroy them, namely the Hittites, and the
Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the
Jebusites, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee." (Deut. xx. 10-17.)

It accounts, too, for the ferocity of the punishments for the
infringement of the Taboo. Death was the penalty. The man who fails to
pour dust on the blood of a pigeon that he has knocked down with an
arrow, the man who picks up sticks upon the Sabbath, the perfumer who
imitates a temple smell, the man who roasts the smallest particle of
fat or blood, the labourer who has an abscess and fails to take two
turtle doves as a "sin offering" to the priest at "the door of the
tabernacle of the congregation" (Levit. xv. 15), may all be cut off.
Every one may be stoned for infringing the Taboo.

Sir John Lubbock has pointed out that the god of the savage is of
limited power and intelligence, and that the Taboo was designed to
control rather than conciliate him. He cites the "Eeweehs" of the
Nicobar Islands, who put up scarecrows to frighten their gods, and the
inhabitants of Kamtschatka, who insult their deities if their wishes
are unfulfilled. He cites also the Rishis and heroes of the Indian
epics, who are constantly overcoming the gods of the Indian pantheon.
Certainly the early god of the Jew was not deemed all-powerful. When
the Jews fought against Askelon it is recorded:--

"The LORD was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the
mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley,
because they had chariots of iron." (Judges i. 19.)

He wrestles with Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 29), and the superior wrestling of
the man forces the god to give his blessing. He strives to kill Moses,
but fails to do it. (Exod. iv. 24.) He is a purely local god, like
Kemosh and other Semitic deities.

"Surely Yahve is in this place," said Jacob in Mesopotamia, "and I knew
it not."

"David himself," says M. Soury, "who was not and could not have been
the monotheistic king of tradition, David, who had _teraphim_ in
his house, as had Jacob in his time, does he not seem to restrict
the kingdom of Yahve to the land of Israel when he complains that
Saul has driven him out from abiding in the inheritance of Yahve,
saying, 'Go, serve other gods'? Finally, many centuries afterwards the
contemporaries of Ezekiel still believed that Yahve, having abandoned
the country, could no longer see them." (Ezek. ix. 9.) (Soury,
"Religion of Israel," c. v.)

Anthropology divides the early races who used stone implements into two
groups, the palæolithic or rough-stone-using man, and the neolithic
man, who polished his implements. The editing of Ezra has burnished up
the early Hebrew a little, but it is plain that he had not emerged from
the stone age. His god is a stone. Jacob erected a menhir. A menhir is
a piece of chipped rock, erect, huge, imposing, the neolithic man's
first rude piece of sculpture, the neolithic man's god. Moses erected
a circle of these stone monoliths. Joshua erected twelve stone gods on
the Jordan, and sacrificed to them. (Josh. iv. 9.) Palestine abounds
in such circles archæologists tell us. These circles were the "high
places" of scripture.

Some hold that the Yahve who travelled with Israel in the Ark was a
stone. The mighty God of Jacob is called the "Stone of Israel." (Gen.
xlix. 24.) We read of Eben-ezer, the "Stone of Help," when the Ark
gives the victory to Samuel. (1 Sam. vii. 12.) Daniel's "stone cut
out of the mountain without hands" brake in pieces the kings and the
kingdoms. (Dan. ii. 45.) The "Shem Hamphoras," the stone in the Holy of
Holies in Solomon's temple, was said to be the "Stone of Jacob."

Circumcision, a savage rite, was performed with "knives of flint."
(Josh. v. 2.) Mr. Tylor ("Early History of Mankind," p. 216) shows us
that even at the date of the Mishna, the beast at the altar was killed
with the kelt of the neolithic man. Stones were the official weights in
Israel, and also the instruments of execution. David used the sling,
and perhaps the chipped stone missiles that we see in museums, and his
singing and dancing naked before the fetish, and the very unpleasant
scalps that purchased him a wife, savour a little of the latitude of
Polynesia. And his hanging up the hands and feet of Rechab and Baanah
remind us of the stakes crowned with sculls round the huts of the Dyaks
of Borneo.

"At a late date," says M. Soury, "we perceive in Hebrew legislation
the repression of monstrous habits and depraved tastes which are only
found amongst the very lowest savages. They are forbidden to tattoo
themselves, to eat insects, reptiles," etc. (Levit. xi. 31; xix. 28.)

I have still to record a quaint use of stones in Israel, another
survival from the stone age. In Astley's "Collection of Voyages" (vol.
ii., p. 674,) it is announced that the savages of West Africa consult
their god with a sort of "Odd or Even!" with nuts. In Israel, the
weightiest questions were settled by the same rude divination. "The
pebble is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of
the Lord." (Prov. xvi. 33.) By this odd or even Saul was chosen to be
king and Jonah to be thrown overboard. By stones also malefactors were
judged in the Holy of Holies, but the exact method of this is a secret
that is lost.

In writing thus, of course, I do not believe myself to be dealing
with the actual neolithic period. Its survivals are tough. In India
before the Mutiny I was employed with a force sent to put down the
rebellion of the Santals. These, a branch of the Kolarias, represent
the early races that the Arya displaced. And their institutions were
singularly like those of the Jews. They worshipped in "high places"
rude circles of upright monoliths. They worshipped in "groves;" and
on one occasion we came across a slaughtered kid still warm, that
under the holy Sal tree had been sacrificed to obtain the help of
Singh Bonga against us. They had, like the Jews, twelve tribes. They
believed, like them, that death ended consciousness. They had marriage
by capture, softened down into a comedy, like other savage tribes. They
believed that all diseases were due to the wrath of evil spirits, or
the spell of a sorcerer. All through the night we could hear their war
tom-toms sounding, the tuph of the Jews (whence "tympanum," according
to Calmet). They fought with the bows and arrows and axes that are
marked "aboriginal weapons" in the South Kensington Museum. When we
met them in action a chief came forward like Goliath with gestures
and shouts of defiance. Like the Jews they were stiff-necked in their
conservatism. Buddhism and Buddha had risen in their very midst.
Brahmins, Mussulmans, Christians, had ruled them and plied them with
missionaries; but pious Hindoos, instead of converting them, had been
persuaded to offer sacrifices to Bagh Bhut, a tiger god, all-powerful
in Santal jungles. They recited at night their deeds of theft and
pillage and slaughter, like the Sioux Indians or the early Jews.

Circumcision is another savage rite. We find it with the Papuans.
We find it in Central America. We find it amongst the Australian
aborigines. That it was performed in Israel with knives of flint (Josh.
v. 4) argues a survival from the men of stone implements. Sanitary
precautions have been suggested as the origin of the rite, but such
an idea would be in advance of the filthy savages using it. The
"Encyclopædia Britannica" holds that it was a sacrifice to Aschera, the
goddess of generation, like a somewhat similar mutilation of females.
Professor Sayce ("Ancient Empires," p. 199) shows that with young men a
complete mutilation in honour of the Phœnician Ashtoreth was common.

Mr. Frazer ("Golden Bough," i. 169) explains another cruel law of
Leviticus. The Maoris believe that if anyone touches a dead body, and
then accidentally touches food, any one partaking of that food will
join the dead man in the shades. This superstition about the power
of the dead is the root idea of other practices, covering pictures
and looking-glasses whilst the corpse is still in the house, shunning
the graveyard at night when it is buried. It is treated as an enemy
who might pass his soul into the picture and do mischief. The death
penalty for touching Yahve's food (Levit. vii. 21) is probably the
same superstition. When God is supposed to be walking about on earth
in human form, as in the instance of a semi-divine savage chief, the
danger of touching his food increases enormously. Mr. Frazer shows that
the Mikado used to eat every day off new rude earthenware platters,
which were at once broken and buried, that no one might lose his life
by accidentally touching a particle of his food. ("Golden Bough," i.
166.) Mr. Frazer gives numerous instances, where the same fatality is
believed to result from food contaminated by a menstruous woman.

In the view of M. Soury, the early Jew was a tattooed savage, who
ate insects; but anthropology has shed an unexpected light on this.
The families, and small clans of early savages, had each some animal
as a Totem. They were tattooed with this for distinction, and it was
everywhere ruled that cat could not marry cat, or fox fox. A young man
tattooed as a fox would have to capture a lady with another crest,
"stunning her first with a blow from his dowak" perchance, like the
Australian savage described by Sir John Lubbock.

It has been shown by Professor Robertson Smith that the "unclean"
animals of the Old Testament are these totems. "So I went in and saw,
and behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts and
all the _idols of the house of Israel_ pourtrayed upon the wall round
about." (Ezek. viii. 10.) This accounts for the hare being "abominable"
in Israel, and the beetle edible. It was meritorious to eat the totems
of one's foes, but the totems of friendly tribes, and one's own totems,
were tabooed. The origin of these ideas is much debated. The custom
is believed to be closely connected with marriage by capture. Female
infanticide was prevalent, as women only attracted ravishers. The story
of the sons of Benjamin capturing the daughters of Shiloh is a frequent
sort of story in savage annals. (Judges xxi.)

The sacrifice has puzzled the modern divine.

It is urged that rites are necessary to religion, and that the
sacrifice was an apparatus to train Israel to a deep sense of sin,
and a necessity for a blood atonement. It is contended that it was
merely a form, as only the useless portions of the carcase were given
to Yahve. Those who talk like this libel the Jewish patriarchs. With
savages the blood and the fat are considered the choicest morsels. To
stone a poor Jew because he ate a little fat with his supper would
have been infamous, if the whole affair was a harmless comedy. We have
shown that the one thought of the Jew was a mighty terror, a Great
Taboo. Starvation or rich harvests, victory or slavery, were due direct
to Yahve; and the bloody sacrifice was the one and sole instrument by
which he might be controlled.

As late as Leviticus it was believed that the burnt-offering actually
provided food and drink to the Maker of the universe. It is called the
"food of God" (Levit. xxi. 8), a phrase softened into "bread of God"
in our version, as the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (article "Bible") has
shown. It was believed also that God specially loved the smell. (Levit.
viii. 21.) More important still, as pointed out by Sir John Lubbock in
his "Origin of Civilisation," p. 272, human sacrifices are expressly
ordered in Leviticus (xxvii. 28, 29):--

"Notwithstanding, no devoted thing that a man shall devote unto the
LORD, of all that he hath, _both of man and beast_, and of the field of
his possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most
holy unto the LORD.

"None devoted, which shall be devoted of men, shall be redeemed, but
shall _surely be put to death_."

"There is indeed no doubt that human victims were offered to Yahve,"
says M. Soury. "The young of man belonged to Yahve, just as did the
young of the animal and the fruit of the tree. All the gods of the
Semites,--El, Schaddai, Adon, Baal, Moloch, Yahve, Kemosh,--were
conceived in the likeness of Eastern monarchs. They had right absolute
over all that was born and all that died in their realms. Man admits
his vassalage. He adores the 'master,' and brings to his lord the
first-fruits of his flock, his field, and his family." ("Religion of
Israel," c. vi.)

The French author goes on to say that during their sojourn in Egypt the
Jews sacrificed human victims. (Ezek. xx. 26.) "In all the history of
religions there is no human sacrifice better established than that of
the daughter of Jephthah to Yahve. In the time of the Judges, who does
not know the story of Samuel and Agag? It is 'before Yahve,' at Gilgal,
that Samuel kills his victim. David appeased the wrath of Yahve, who
had afflicted the land with famine during three years, by delivering up
to the Gibeonites seven men of Saul's blood. The seven victims being
hanged 'on the hill before Yahve,' the deity was satisfied." (2 Sam.
xxi. 1-14.)

This human sacrifice is, of course, a survival of cannibalism. The
Australians, as Lumholtz ("Among Cannibals," p. 70) shows, consider
"talgoro" (human flesh) the daintiest of food. At their watchfires they
discourse upon the delicate fat round the kidneys as an alderman might
talk of calipash.

What is all this leading up to? Simply to this, that we must put far
away from us the theory of modern pulpits that the bloody sacrifice
was a comedy of the priest, a comedy of the Almighty. The sacrifice
was not a comedy at all. To the mind of the savage it was at once
business and science. It was the bank, the war office, the bureau
of agriculture, the college of physicians of the nation. By it alone
could the blood-loving Semite gods be influenced to give harvests,
shekels, victory; and the ferocious Taboo was pure science likewise.
The archer, for instance, who killed a partridge without covering the
blood with earth was killed in turn, because the Taboo was a mechanism
that could only be kept in working order by a remorseless attention to
its most minute rules. Writers like Kuenen and Lightfoot assure us that
it is quite impossible that Christianity can be due to any influence
outside Judaism, because it is such a very obvious development of
Jewish thought. This is a startling statement. Christianity pronounced
the slaughter of animals at the altar a piece of useless folly, and
tore up the great ordinances of Taboo, the Covenant between Israel and
the Maker of the Heavens. It proclaimed three Gods instead of one.
It pronounced that the Jewish holy books were parables rather than a
statement of actual facts. Such ideas were at this epoch current in the
West, owing to the activity of the missionaries of an Eastern creed.

To them we will now turn.




CHAPTER II.

_Buddha._


I propose now to give a short life of Buddha, noting its points of
contact with that of Jesus.


PRE-EXISTENCE IN HEAVEN.

The early Buddhists, following the example of the Vedic Brahmins,
divided space into Nirvritti, the dark portion of the heavens, and
Pravritti, the starry systems. Over this last, the luminous portion,
Buddha figures as ruler when the legendary life opens. The Christian
Gnostics took over this idea and gave to Christ a similar function.
Buthos was Nirvritti ruled by "The Father" (in Buddhism by Swayambhu,
the self-existent), Pravritti was the Pleroma. "It was the Father's
good pleasure that in him the whole Pleroma should have its home."
(Col. i. 19.)


"BEHOLD A VIRGIN SHALL CONCEIVE."

Exactly 550 years before Christ there dwelt in North Oude, at a city
called Kapilavastu, the modern Nagar Khas, a king called Suddhodana.
This monarch was informed by angels that a mighty teacher of men would
be born miraculously in the womb of his wife. "By the consent of the
king," says the "Lalita Vistara," "the queen was permitted to lead
the life of a virgin for thirty-two months." Joseph is made, a little
awkwardly, to give a similar privilege to his wife. (Matt. i. 25.)

Some writers have called in question the statement that Buddha was born
of a virgin, but in the southern scriptures, as given by Mr. Turnour,
it is announced that a womb in which a Buddha elect has reposed, is
like the sanctuary of a temple. On that account, that her womb may be
sacred, the mother of a Buddha always dies in seven days. The name of
the queen was borrowed from Brahminism. She was Mâyâ Devî, the Queen of
Heaven. And one of the titles of this lady is Kanyâ, the Virgin of the
Zodiac.

Queen Mâyâ was chosen for her mighty privilege because the Buddhist
scriptures announce that the mother of a Buddha must be of royal line.

Long genealogies, very like those of the New Testament, are given also
to prove the blue blood of King Suddhodana, who, like Joseph, had
nothing to do with the paternity of the child. "King Mahasammata had a
son named Roja, whose son was Vararoja, whose son was Kalyâna, whose
son was Varakalyâna," and so on, and so on. (Dîpawanso, _see_ "Journ.
As. Soc.," Bengal, vol. vii., p. 925.)

How does a Buddha come down to earth? This question is debated in
Heaven, and the Vedas were searched because, as Seydel shows, although
Buddhism seemed a root and branch change, it was attempted to show that
it was really the lofty side of the old Brahminism, a lesson not lost
by and by in Palestine. The sign of Capricorn in the old Indian Zodiac
is an elephant issuing from a Makara (leviathan), and it symbolises the
active god issuing from the quiescent god in his home on the face of
the waters. In consequence, Buddha comes down as a white elephant, and
enters the right side of the queen without piercing it or in any way
injuring it. Childers sees a great analogy in all this to the Catholic
theory of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Catholic doctors quote this
passage from Ezekiel (xliv. 2):--

"Then said the LORD unto me, This gate shall be shut, it shall not be
opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because the LORD, the God of
Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore shall it be shut."


A DOUBLE ANNUNCIATION.

It is recorded that when Queen Mâyâ received the supernal Buddha in
her womb, in the form of a beautiful white elephant, she said to her
husband: "Like snow and silver, outshining the sun and the moon, a
white elephant of six defences, with unrivalled trunk and feet, has
entered my womb. Listen, I saw the three regions (earth, heaven, hell,)
with a great light shining in the darkness, and myriads of spirits sang
my praises in the sky."

A similar miraculous communication was made to King Suddhodana:--

"The spirits of the Pure Abode flying in the air, showed half of their
forms, and hymned King Suddhodana thus:

    "Guerdoned with righteousness and gentle pity,
    Adored on earth and in the shining sky,
    The coming Buddha quits the glorious spheres
    And hies to earth to gentle Mâyâ's womb."

In the Christian scriptures there is also a double annunciation. In
Luke (i. 28) the angel Gabriel is said to have appeared to the Virgin
Mary before her conception, and to have foretold to her the miraculous
birth of Christ. But in spite of this astounding miracle, Joseph seems
to have required a second personal one before he ceased to question the
chastity of his wife. (Matt. i. 19.) Plainly, two evangelists have been
working the same mine independently, and a want of consistency is the
result.

When Buddha was in his mother's womb that womb was transparent.
The Virgin Mary was thus represented in mediæval frescoes. (_See_
illustration, p. 39, in my "Buddhism in Christendom.")


"WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR IN THE EAST."

In the Buddhist legend the devas in heaven announce that Buddha will
be born when the Flower-star is seen _in the East_. (Lefman, xxi. 124;
Wassiljew, p. 95.)

Amongst the thirty-two signs that indicate the mother of a Buddha,
the fifth is that, like Mary the mother of Jesus, she should be "on a
journey" (Beal, "Rom. History," p. 32) at the moment of parturition.
This happened. A tree (palâsa, the scarlet butea) bent down its
branches and overshadowed her, and Buddha came forth. Voltaire says
that in the library of Berne there is a copy of the First Gospel of
the Infancy, which records that a palm tree bent down in a similar
manner to Mary. ("Œuvres," vol. xl.) The Koran calls it a "withered
date tree."

In the First Gospel of the Infancy, it is stated that, when Christ was
in His cradle, He said to His mother: "I am Jesus, the Son of God, the
Word whom thou didst bring forth according to the declaration of the
angel Gabriel to thee, and my Father hath sent Me for the salvation of
the world."

In the Buddhist scriptures it is announced that Buddha, on seeing the
light, said:--

"I am in my last birth. None is my equal. I have come to conquer death,
sickness, old age. I have come to subdue the spirit of evil, and give
peace and joy to the souls tormented in hell."

In the same scriptures (_see_ Beal, "Rom. History," p. 46) it is
announced that at the birth of the Divine child, the devas (angels) in
the sky sang "their hymns and praises."


CHILD-NAMING.

"Five days after the birth of Buddha," says Bishop Bigandet, in the
"Burmese Life," "was performed the ceremony of head ablution and naming
the child." (p. 49.)

We see from this where the ceremony of head ablution and naming the
child comes from. In the "Lalita Vistara" Buddha is carried to the
temple. Plainly we have the same ceremony. There the idols bow down to
him as in the First Gospel of the Infancy the idol in Egypt bows down
to Jesus. In Luke the infant Jesus is also taken to the temple by his
parents to "do for him after the custom of the law." (Luke ii. 27.)
What law? Certainly not the Jewish.


HEROD AND THE WISE MEN.

It is recorded in the Chinese life (Beal, "Rom. History," p. 103) that
King Bimbisâra, the monarch of Râjagriha, was told by his ministers
that a boy was alive for whom the stars predicted a mighty destiny.
They advised him to raise an army and go and destroy this child, lest
he should one day subvert the king's throne. Bimbisâra refused.

At the birth of Buddha the four Mahârâjas, the great kings, who in
Hindoo astronomy guard each a cardinal point, received him. These may
throw light on the traditional Persian kings that greeted Christ.

In some quarters these analogies are admitted, but it is said that
the Buddhists copied from the Christian scriptures. But this question
is a little complicated by the fact that many of the most noticeable
similarities are in apocryphal gospels, those that were abandoned by
the Church at an early date. In the Protevangelion, at Christ's birth,
certain marvels are visible. The clouds are "astonished," and the birds
of the air stop in their flight. The dispersed sheep of some shepherds
near cease to gambol, and the shepherds to beat them. The kids near a
river are arrested with their mouths close to the water. All nature
seems to pause for a mighty effort. In the "Lalita Vistara" the birds
also pause in their flight when Buddha comes to the womb of Queen Mâyâ.
Fires go out, and rivers are suddenly arrested in their flow.

More noticeable is the story of Asita, the Indian Simeon.

Asita dwells on Himavat, the holy mount of the Hindoos, as Simeon
dwells on Mount Zion. The "Holy Ghost is upon" Simeon. That means that
he has obtained the faculties of the prophet by mystical training. He
"comes by the Spirit" into the temple. Asita is an ascetic, who has
acquired the eight magical faculties, one of which is the faculty of
visiting the Tawatinsa heavens. Happening to soar up into those pure
regions one day, he is told by a host of devatas, or heavenly spirits,
that a mighty Buddha is born in the world, "who will establish the
supremacy of the Buddhist Dharma." The "Lalita Vistara" announces that,
"looking abroad with his divine eye, and considering the kingdoms of
India, he saw in the great city of Kapilavastu, in the palace of King
Suddhodana, the child shining with the glitter of pure deeds, and
adored by all the worlds." Afar through the skies the spirits of heaven
in crowds recited the "hymn of Buddha."

This is the description of Simeon in the First Gospel of the Infancy,
ii. 6--"At that time old Simeon saw Him (Christ) shining as a pillar of
light when St. Mary the Virgin, His mother, carried Him in her arms,
and was filled with the greatest pleasure at the sight. And the angels
stood around Him, adoring Him as a King; guards stood around Him."

Asita pays a visit to the king. Asita takes the little child in his
arms. Asita weeps.

"Wherefore these tears, O holy man?"

"I weep because this child will be the great Buddha, and I shall not be
alive to witness the fact."

The points of contact between Simeon and Asita are very close. Both
are men of God, "full of the Holy Ghost." Both are brought "by the
Spirit" into the presence of the Holy Child, for the express purpose of
foretelling His destiny as the Anointed One.

More remarkable still is the incident of the disputation with the
doctors.

A little Brahmin was "initiated," girt with the holy thread, etc.,
at eight, and put under the tuition of a holy man. When Vis'vâmitra,
Buddha's teacher, proposed to teach him the alphabet, the young prince
went off:--

"In sounding 'A,' pronounce it as in the sound of the word 'anitya.'

"In sounding 'I,' pronounce it as in the word 'indriya.'

"In sounding 'U,' pronounce it as in the word 'upagupta.'"

And so on through the whole Sanscrit alphabet.

In the First Gospel of the Infancy, chap. xx., it is recorded that when
taken to the schoolmaster Zaccheus, "The Lord Jesus explained to him
the meaning of the letters Aleph and Beth.

"8. Also, which were the straight figures of the letters, which were
the oblique, and what letters had double figures; which had points and
which had none; why one letter went before another; and many other
things He began to tell him and explain, of which the master himself
had never heard, nor read in any book.

"9. The Lord Jesus further said to the master, Take notice how I say to
thee. Then He began clearly and distinctly to say Aleph, Beth, Gimel,
Daleth, and so on to the end of the alphabet.

"10. At this, the master was so surprised, that he said, I believe this
boy was born before Noah."

In the "Lalita Vistara" there are two separate accounts of Buddha
showing his marvellous knowledge. His great display is when he competes
for his wife. He then exhibits his familiarity with all lore, sacred
and profane, "astronomy," the "syllogism," medicine, mystic rites.

The disputation with the doctors is considerably amplified in the
twenty-first chapter of the First Gospel of the Infancy:--

"5. Then a certain principal rabbi asked Him, Hast Thou read books?

"6. Jesus answered that He had read both books and the things which
were contained in books.

"7. And he explained to them the books of the law and precepts and
statutes, and the mysteries which are contained in the books of the
prophets--things which the mind of no creature could reach.

"8. Then said that rabbi, I never yet have seen or heard of such
knowledge! What do you think that boy will be?

"9. Then a certain astronomer who was present asked the Lord Jesus
whether He had studied astronomy.

"10. The Lord Jesus replied, and told him the number of the spheres and
heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square, and sextile aspects,
their progressive and retrograde motions, their size and several
prognostications, and other things which the reason of man had never
discovered.

"11. There was also among them a philosopher, well skilled in physic
and natural philosophy, who asked the Lord Jesus whether He had studied
physic.

"12. He replied, and explained to him physics and metaphysics.

"13. Also those things which were above and below the power of nature.

"14. The powers also of the body, its humours and their effects.

"15. Also the number of its bones, veins, arteries, and nerves.

"16. The several constitutions of body, hot and dry, cold and moist,
and the tendencies of them.

"17. How the soul operated on the body.

"18. What its various sensations and faculties were.

"19. The faculty of speaking, anger, desire.

"20. And, lastly, the manner of its composition and dissolution, and
other things which the understanding of no creature had ever reached.

"21. Then that philosopher worshipped the Lord Jesus, and said, O Lord
Jesus, from henceforth I will be Thy disciple and servant."

Vis´vâmitra in like manner worshipped Buddha by falling at his feet.

THE MYSTERIES OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

I have now come to a stage in this narrative when a few remarks are
necessary. The "Lalita Vistara" professes to reveal the secrets of the
Buddhas, the secrets of "magic," the secrets of Yoga, or union with
Brahma. And whether it be fiction or history, it does so more roundly
than any other work. The Christian gospels profess also to teach a
similar secret. Read by the light of the Buddhist book, I think they do
teach it. But read alone, eighteen centuries come forward to show that
they do not.

The highest spiritual philosophers in Buddhism, in Brahminism, in
Christendom, in Islam, announce two kingdoms distinct from one another.
They are called in India the Domain of Appetite (Kâmaloca), and
the Domain of Spirit (Brahmaloca). The "Lalita Vistara" throughout
describes a conflict between these two great camps. Buddha is offered
a crown by his father. He has wives, palaces, jewels, but he leaves
all for the thorny jungle where the Brahmacharin dreamt his dreams
of God. This is called pessimism by some writers, who urge that we
should enjoy life as we find it, but modern Europe having tried, denies
that life is so enjoyable. Its motto is _Tout lasse, tout casse, tout
passe_. Yes, say the optimists, but we needn't all live a life like Jay
Gould. A good son, a good father, a good husband, a good citizen, is
happy enough. True, reply the pessimists, in so far as a mortal enters
the domain of spirit he may be happy, for that is not a region but a
state of the mind. But mundane accidents seem, almost by rule, to
mar even that happiness. The husband loses his loved one, the artist
his eyesight. Philosophers and statesmen find their great dreams and
schemes baffled by the infirmities of age.

Age, disease, death! These are the evils for which the great Indian
allegory proposes to find a remedy. Let us see what that remedy is.




CHAPTER III.

_The Four Presaging Tokens._


Soothsayers were consulted by King Suddhodana. They pronounced the
following:--

"The young boy will, without doubt, be either a king of kings, or a
great Buddha. If he is destined to be a great Buddha, four presaging
tokens will make his mission plain. He will see--

"1. An old man.

"2. A sick man.

"3. A corpse.

"4. A holy recluse.

"If he fails to see these four presaging tokens of an avatâra, he will
be simply a Chakravartin" (king of earthly kings).

King Suddhodana, who was a trifle worldly, was very much comforted by
the last prediction of the soothsayers. He thought in his heart, It
will be an easy thing to keep these four presaging tokens from the
young prince. So he gave orders that three magnificent palaces should
at once be built--the Palace of Spring, the Palace of Summer, the
Palace of Winter. These palaces, as we learn from the "Lalita Vistara,"
were the most beautiful palaces ever conceived on earth. Indeed, they
were quite able to cope in splendour with Vaijayanta, the immortal
palace of Indra himself. Costly pavilions were built out in all
directions, with ornamented porticoes and burnished doors. Turrets and
pinnacles soared into the sky. Dainty little windows gave light to the
rich apartments. Galleries, balustrades, and delicate trellis-work were
abundant everywhere. A thousand bells tinkled on each roof. We seem to
have the lacquered Chinese edifices of the pattern which architects
believe to have flourished in early India. The gardens of these fine
palaces rivalled the chess-board in the rectangular exactitude of their
parterres and trellis-work bowers. Cool lakes nursed on their calm
bosoms storks and cranes, wild geese and tame swans; ducks, also, as
parti- as the white, red, and blue lotuses amongst which they
swam. Bending to these lakes were bowery trees--the champak, the acacia
serisha, and the beautiful asoka tree with its orange-scarlet flowers.
Above rustled the mimosa, the fan-palm, and the feathery pippala,
Buddha's tree. The air was heavy with the strong scent of the tuberose
and the Arabian jasmine.

It must be mentioned that strong ramparts were prepared round the
palaces of Kapilavastu, to keep out all old men, sick men, and
recluses, and, I must add, to keep in the prince.

And a more potent safeguard still was designed. When the prince was
old enough to marry, his palace was deluged with beautiful women. He
revelled in the "five dusts," as the Chinese version puts it. But a
shock was preparing for King Suddhodana.

This is how the matter came about. The king had prepared a garden even
more beautiful than the garden of the Palace of Summer. A soothsayer
had told him that if he could succeed in showing the prince this
garden, the prince would be content to remain in it with his wives for
ever. No task seemed easier than this, so it was arranged that on a
certain day the prince should be driven thither in his chariot. But,
of course, immense precautions had to be taken to keep all old men and
sick men and corpses from his sight. Quite an army of soldiers were
told off for this duty, and the city was decked with flags. The path of
the prince was strewn with flowers and scents, and adorned with vases
of the rich kadali plant. Above were costly hangings and garlands, and
pagodas of bells.

But, lo and behold! as the prince was driving along, plump under the
wheels of his chariot, and before the very noses of the silken nobles
and the warriors with javelins and shields, he saw an unusual sight.
This was an old man, very decrepit and very broken. The veins and
nerves of his body were swollen and prominent; his teeth chattered;
he was wrinkled, bald, and his few remaining hairs were of dazzling
whiteness; he was bent very nearly double, and tottered feebly along,
supported by a stick.

"What is this, O coachman?" said the prince. "A man with his blood all
dried up, and his muscles glued to his body! His head is white; his
teeth knock together; he is scarcely able to move along, even with the
aid of that stick!"

"Prince," said the coachman, "this is Old Age. This man's senses are
dulled; suffering has destroyed his spirit; he is contemned by his
neighbours. Unable to help himself, he has been abandoned in this
forest."

"Is this a peculiarity of his family?" demanded the prince, "or is it
the law of the world? Tell me quickly."

"Prince," said the coachman, "it is neither a law of his family, nor a
law of the kingdom. In every being youth is conquered by age. Your own
father and mother and all your relations will end in old age. There is
no other issue to humanity."

"Then youth is blind and ignorant," said the prince, "and sees not the
future. If this body is to be the abode of old age, what have I to do
with pleasure and its intoxications? Turn round the chariot, and drive
me back to the palace!"

Consternation was in the minds of all the courtiers at this untoward
occurrence; but the odd circumstance of all was that no one was ever
able to bring to condign punishment the miserable author of the
mischief. The old man could never be found.

King Suddhodana was at first quite beside himself with tribulation.
Soldiers were summoned from the distant provinces, and a cordon of
detachments thrown out to a distance of four miles in each direction,
to keep the other presaging tokens from the prince. By and by the king
became a little more quieted. A ridiculous accident had interfered with
his plans: "If my son could see the Garden of Happiness he never would
become a hermit." The king determined that another attempt should be
made. But this time the precautions were doubled.

On the first occasion the prince left the Palace of Summer by the
eastern gate. The second expedition was through the southern gate.

But another untoward event occurred. As the prince was driving along
in his chariot, suddenly he saw close to him a man emaciated, ill,
loathsome, burning with fever. Companionless, uncared for, he tottered
along, breathing with extreme difficulty.

"Coachman," said the prince, "what is this man, livid and loathsome
in body, whose senses are dulled, and whose limbs are withered? His
stomach is oppressing him; he is covered with filth. Scarcely can he
draw the breath of life!"

"Prince," said the coachman, "this is Sickness. This poor man is
attacked with a grievous malady. Strength and comfort have shunned him.
He is friendless, hopeless, without a country, without an asylum. The
fear of death is before his eyes."

"If the health of man," said Buddha, "is but the sport of a dream, and
the fear of coming evils can put on so loathsome a shape, how can the
wise man, who has seen what life really means, indulge in its vain
delights? Turn back, coachman, and drive me to the palace!"

The angry king, when he heard what had occurred, gave orders that the
sick man should be seized and punished, but although a price was placed
on his head, and he was searched for far and wide, he could never
be caught. A clue to this is furnished by a passage in the "Lalita
Vistara." The sick man was in reality one of the Spirits of the Pure
Abode, masquerading in sores and spasms. These Spirits of the Pure
Abode are also called the Buddhas of the Past, in many passages. The
answers of the coachman were due to their inspiration.

It would almost seem as if some influence, malefic or otherwise, was
stirring the good King Suddhodana. Unmoved by failure, he urged the
prince to a third effort. The chariot this time was to set out by the
western gate. Greater precautions than ever were adopted. The chain of
guards was posted at least twelve miles off from the Palace of Summer.
But the Buddhas of the Past again arrested the prince. His chariot was
suddenly crossed by a phantom funeral procession. A phantom corpse,
smeared with the orthodox mud, and spread with a sheet, was carried on
a bier. Phantom women wailed, and phantom musicians played on the drum
and the Indian flute. No doubt also, phantom Brahmins chanted hymns to
Jatavedas, to bear away the immortal part of the dead man to the home
of the Pitris.

"What is this?" said the prince. "Why do these women beat their breast
and tear their hair? Why do these good folks cover their heads with the
dust of the ground? And that strange form upon its litter, wherefore is
it so rigid?"

"Prince," said the charioteer, "this is Death! Yon form, pale and
stiffened, can never again walk and move. Its owner has gone to the
unknown caverns of Yama. His father, his mother, his child, his wife
cry out to him, but he cannot hear."

Buddha was sad.

"Woe be to youth, which is the sport of age! Woe be to health, which
is the sport of many maladies! Woe be to life, which is as a breath!
Woe be to the idle pleasures which debauch humanity! But for the 'five
aggregations' there would be no age, sickness, nor death. Go back to
the city. I must compass the deliverance."

A fourth time the prince was urged by his father to visit the Garden of
Happiness. The chain of guards this time was sixteen miles away. The
exit was by the northern gate. But suddenly a calm man of gentle mien,
wearing an ochre-red cowl, was seen in the roadway.

"Who is this," said the prince, "rapt, gentle, peaceful in mien? He
looks as if his mind were far away elsewhere. He carries a bowl in his
hand."

"Prince, this is the New Life," said the charioteer. "That man is of
those whose thoughts are fixed on the eternal Brahma [Brahmacharin].
He seeks the divine voice. He seeks the divine vision. He carries the
alms-bowl of the holy beggar [bhikshu]. His mind is calm, because the
gross lures of the lower life can vex it no more."

"Such a life I covet," said the prince. "The lusts of man are like the
sea-water--they mock man's thirst instead of quenching it. I will seek
the divine vision, and give immortality to man!"

King Suddhodana was beside himself. He placed five hundred corseleted
Sakyas at every gate of the Palace of Summer. Chains of sentries were
round the walls, which were raised and strengthened. A phalanx of
loving wives, armed with javelins, was posted round the prince's bed
to "narrowly watch" him. The king ordered also all the allurements of
sense to be constantly presented to the prince.

"Let the women of the zenana cease not for an instant their concerts
and mirth and sports. Let them shine in silks and sparkle in diamonds
and emeralds."

The allegory is in reality a great battle between two camps--the
denizens of the Kâmaloca, or the Domains of Appetite, and the denizens
of the Brahmaloca, the Domains of Pure Spirit. The latter are unseen,
but not unfelt.

For one day, when the prince reclined on a silken couch listening to
the sweet crooning of four or five brown-skinned, large-eyed Indian
girls, his eyes suddenly assumed a dazed and absorbed look, and the
rich hangings and garlands and intricate trellis-work of the golden
apartment were still present, but dim to his mind. And music and
voices, more sweet than he had ever listened to, seemed faintly to
reach him. I will write down some of the verses.

    "Mighty prop of humanity
    March in the pathway of the Rishis of old,
    Go forth from this city!
    Upon this desolate earth,
    When thou hast acquired the priceless knowledge of the Jinas,
    When thou hast become a perfect Buddha,
    Give to all flesh the baptism (river) of the kingdom of Righteousness,
    Thou who once didst sacrifice thy feet, thy hands, thy precious
        body, and all thy riches for the world,
    Thou whose life is pure, save flesh from its miseries!
    In the presence of reviling be patient, O conqueror of self!
    Lord of those who possess two feet, go forth on thy mission!
    Conquer the evil one and his army."

In the end the Buddhas of the Past triumph. They persuade Buddha to
flee away from his cloying pleasures and become a Yogi.


"THEN WAS JESUS LED UP BY THE SPIRIT INTO THE WILDERNESS, TO BE TEMPTED
OF THE DEVIL."

Comfortable dowagers driving to church three times on Sunday would
be astonished to learn that the essence of Christianity is in this
passage. Its meaning has quite passed away from Protestantism, almost
from Christendom. The "Lalita Vistara" fully shows what that meaning
is. Without Buddhism it would be lost. Jesus was an Essene, and the
Essene, like the Indian Yogi, sought to obtain divine union and the
"gifts of the Spirit" by solitary reverie in retired spots. In what is
called the "Monastery of our Lord" on the Quarantania, a cell is shown
with rude frescoes of Jesus and Satan. There, according to tradition,
the demoniac hauntings that all mystics speak of occurred.


"I HAVE NEED TO BE BAPTISED OF THEE."

A novice in Yoga has a guru, or teacher. Buddha, in riding away from
the palace by and by reached a jungle near Vaisalî. He at once put
himself under a Brahmin Yogi named Arâta Kâlâma, but his spiritual
insight developed so rapidly that in a short time the Yogi offered to
Buddha, the arghya, the offering of rice, flowers, sesamun, etc., that
the humble novice usually presents to his instructor, and asked him to
teach instead of learning. (Foucaux, "Lalita Vistara," p. 228.)


THIRTY YEARS OF AGE.

M. Ernest de Bunsen, in his work, "The Angel Messiah," says that
Buddha, like Christ, commenced preaching at thirty years of age. He
certainly must have preached at Vaisalî, for five young men became
his disciples there, and exhorted him to go on with his teaching.
("Lalita Vistara," p. 236.) He was twenty-nine when he left the palace,
therefore he might well have preached at thirty. He did not turn the
wheel of the law until after a six years' meditation under the Tree of
Knowledge.


BAPTISM.

The Buddhist rite of baptism finds its sanction in two incidents in the
Buddhist scriptures. In the first, Buddha bathes in the holy river,
and Mâra, the evil spirit, tries to prevent him from emerging. In the
second, angels administer the holy rite (Abhisheka).


"AND WHEN HE HAD FASTED FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS."

Buddha, immediately previous to his great encounter with Mâra, the
tempter, fasted forty-nine days and nights. ("Chinese Life," by Wung
Puh.)


"COMMAND THAT THESE STONES BE MADE BREAD."

The first temptation of Buddha, when Mâra assailed him under the bo
tree, is precisely similar to that of Jesus. His long fast had very
nearly killed him. "Sweet creature, you are at the point of death.
Sacrifice food." This meant, eat a portion to save your life.


"AGAIN THE DEVIL TAKETH HIM UP INTO AN EXCEEDING HIGH MOUNTAIN," ETC.

The second temptation of Mâra is also like one of Satan's. The tempter,
by a miracle, shows Buddha the glorious city of Kapilavastu, twisting
the earth round like the "wheel of a potter" to do this. He offers
to make him a mighty king of kings (Chakravartin) in seven days.
(Bigandet, p. 65.)


THE THIRD TEMPTATION.

Jewish prudery has quite marred the third temptation. From the days of
Krishna and the phantom naked woman, Kotavî, to the days of St. Anthony
and St. Jerome, or even to the days of mediæval monasteries with their
incubi and succubi, sex temptations have been a prominent feature of
the fasting ascetic's visions. The daughters of Mâra, the tempter, in
exquisite forms, now come round Buddha. In the end he converts these
pretty ladies, and converts and baptises Mâra himself.


"AND ANGELS CAME AND MINISTERED UNTO HIM."

After his conflict with Mâra, angels come to greet him.

"GLAD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY."

Buddha, on vanquishing Mâra, left Buddha Gaya for the deer forest of
Benares. There he began to preach. His doctrine is called Subha Shita
(glad tidings). (_See_ Rajendra L. Mitra "N. Buddhist Lit.," p. 29.)


"BEHOLD A GLUTTONOUS PERSON!"

Five disciples who left him when he gave over the rigid fasts of the
Brahmins, called out on seeing him in the deer forest, "Behold a
gluttonous person!" (_relaché et gourmand_).


"FOLLOW ME."

Almost his first converts were thirty profligate young men, whom he met
sporting with lemans in the Kappasya jungle. "He received them," says
Professor Rhys Davids, "into the order, with the formula, 'Follow Me.'"
("Birth Stories," p. 114.)


THE TWELVE GREAT DISCIPLES.

"Except in my religion, the twelve great disciples are not to be
found." (Bigandet, p. 301.)


"THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED."

One disciple was called Upatishya (the beloved disciple). In a former
existence, he and Maudgalyâyana had prayed that they might sit, the
one on the right hand and the other on the left. Buddha granted this
prayer. The other disciples murmured much. (Bigandet, p. 153.)


"GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD."

From Benares Buddha sent forth the sixty-one disciples. "Go ye forth,"
he said, "and preach Dharma, no two disciples going the same way."
(Bigandet, p. 126.)


"THE SAME CAME TO JESUS BY NIGHT."

Professor Rhys Davids points out that Yâsas, a young rich man, came to
Buddha by night for fear of his rich relations.


PAX VOBISCUM.

On one point I have been a little puzzled. The password of the Buddhist
Wanderers was Sadhu! which does not seem to correspond with the "Pax
Vobiscum!" (Matt. x. 13) of Christ's disciples. But I have just come
across a passage in Renan ("Les Apôtres," p. 22) which shows that
the Hebrew word was Schalom! (_bonheur!_) This is almost a literal
translation of Sadhu!

Burnouf says that by preaching and miracle Buddha's religion was
established. In point of fact it was the first universal religion. He
invented the preacher and the missionary.


"A NEW COMMANDMENT GIVE I YOU, THAT YE LOVE ONE ANOTHER."

"By love alone can we conquer wrath. By good alone can we conquer
evil. The whole world dreads violence. All men tremble in the presence
of death. Do to others that which ye would have them do to you. Kill
not. Cause no death." ("Sûtra of Forty-two Sections," v. 129.)

"Say no harsh words to thy neighbour. He will reply to thee in the same
tone." (_Ibid._ v. 133.)

"'I am injured and provoked, I have been beaten and plundered!' They
who speak thus will never cease to hate." (_Ibid._ v. 4, 5.)

"That which can cause hate to cease in the world is not hate, but the
absence of hate."

"If, like a trumpet trodden on in battle, thou complainest not, thou
has attained Nirvâna."

"Silently shall I endure abuse, as the war-elephant receives the shaft
of the bowman."

"The awakened man goes not on revenge, but rewards with kindness the
very being who has injured him, as the sandal tree scents the axe of
the woodman who fells it."


THE BEATITUDES.

The Buddhists, like the Christians, have got their Beatitudes. They
are plainly arranged for chant and response in the temples. It is to
be noted that the Christian Beatitudes were a portion of the early
Christian ritual.

         "_An Angel._

    "1 Many angels and men
        Have held various things blessings.
        When they were yearning for the inner wisdom.
        Do thou declare to us the chief good.

    "_Buddha._

    "2 Not to serve the foolish,
    But to serve the spiritual;
    To honour those worthy of honour,--
        This is the greatest blessing.

    "3 To dwell in a spot that befits one's condition,
    To think of the effect of one's deeds,
    To guide the behaviour aright,--
        This is the greatest blessing.

    "4 Much insight and education,
    Self-control and pleasant speech,
    And whatever word be well spoken,--
    This is the greatest blessing.

    "5 To support father and mother,
    To cherish wife and child,
    To _follow a peaceful calling_,--
        This is the greatest blessing.

    "6 To _bestow alms_ and _live righteously_
    To give help to kindred,
    Deeds which cannot be blamed,--
        These are the greatest blessing.

    "7 To _abhor and cease from sin_,
    Abstinence from strong drink,
    _Not to be weary in well-doing_,--
        These are the greatest blessing.

    "8 _Reverence_ and lowliness,
    Contentment and gratitude,
    The hearing of Dharma at due seasons,--
        This is the greatest blessing.

    "9 To be _long-suffering_ and _meek_,
    To associate with the tranquil,
    Religious talk at due seasons,--
        This is the greatest blessing.

    "10 _Self-restraint and purity_,
         The knowledge of noble truths,
         The attainment of Nirvâna,--
         This is the greatest blessing."


THE ONE THING NEEDFUL.

Certain subtle questions were proposed to Buddha, such as: What will
best conquer the evil passions of man? What is the most savoury gift
for the alms-bowl of the mendicant? Where is true happiness to be
found? Buddha replied to them all with one word, _Dharma_ (the heavenly
life). (Bigandet, p. 225.)


"WHOSOEVER SHALL SMITE THEE ON THY RIGHT CHEEK OFFER HIM THE OTHER
ALSO."

A merchant from Sûnaparanta having joined Buddha's society, was
desirous of preaching to his relations, and is said to have asked the
permission of the master so to do.

"The people of Sûnaparanta," said Buddha, "are exceedingly violent; if
they revile you what will you do?"

"I will make no reply," said the mendicant.

"And if they strike you?"

"I will not strike in return," said the mendicant.

"And if they kill you?"

"Death," said the missionary, "is no evil in itself. Many even desire
it to escape from the vanities of life." (Bigandet, p. 216.)


BUDDHA'S THIRD COMMANDMENT.

"Commit no adultery." Commentary by Buddha: "This law is broken by even
looking at the wife of another with a lustful mind." (Buddhaghosa's
"Parables," by Max Müller and Rogers, p. 153.)


THE SOWER.

It is recorded that Buddha once stood beside the ploughman
Kasibhâradvaja, who reproved him for his idleness. Buddha answered
thus:--"I, too, plough and sow, and from my ploughing and sowing I reap
immortal fruit. My field is religion. The weeds that I pluck up are
the passions of cleaving to this life. My plough is wisdom, my seed
purity." ("Hardy Manual," p. 215.)

On another occasion he described almsgiving as being like "good seed
sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given
to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions, are
like a seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of
the alms, choke, as it were, the growth of merits." (Bigandet, p. 211.)


"NOT THAT WHICH GOETH INTO THE MOUTH DEFILETH A MAN."

In the "Sutta Nipâta," chap. ii., is a discourse on the food that
defiles a man (Âmaghanda). Therein it is explained at some length that
the food that is eaten cannot defile a man, but "destroying living
beings, killing, cutting, binding, stealing, falsehood, adultery, evil
thoughts, murder,"--this defiles a man, not the eating of flesh.


"WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS."

"A man," says Buddha, "buries a treasure in a deep pit, which lying
concealed therein day after day profits him nothing, but there is a
treasure of charity, piety, temperance, soberness, a treasure secure,
impregnable, that cannot pass away, a treasure that no thief can steal.
Let the wise man practise Dharma. This is a treasure that follows him
after death." ("Khuddaka Pâtha," p. 13.)


THE HOUSE ON THE SAND.

"It [the seen world] is like a city of sand. Its foundation cannot
endure." ("Lalita Vistara," p. 172.)


BLIND GUIDES.

"Who is not freed cannot free others. The blind cannot guide in the
way." (_Ibid._ p. 179.)


"AS YE SOW, SO SHALL YE REAP."

"As men sow, thus shall they reap." ("Ta-chwang-yan-king-lun," sermon
57.)

"A CUP OF COLD WATER TO ONE OF THESE LITTLE ONES."

"Whosoever piously bestows a little water shall receive an ocean in
return." ("Ta-chwang-yan-king-lun," sermon 20).


"BE NOT WEARY IN WELL-DOING."

"Not to be weary in well-doing." ("Mahâmangala Sutta," ver. 7.)


"GIVE TO HIM THAT ASKETH."

"Give to him that asketh, even though it be but a little."
("Udânavarga," ch. xx. ver. 15.)


"DO UNTO OTHERS," ETC.

"With pure thoughts and fulness of love I will do towards others what I
do for myself." ("Lalita Vistara," ch. v.)


"PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE LORD!"

"Buddha's triumphant entry into Râjagriha (the "City of the King") has
been compared to Christ's entry into Jerusalem. Both, probably, never
occurred, and only symbolise the advent of a divine Being to earth.
It is recorded in the Buddhist scriptures that on these occasions a
"Precursor of Buddha" always appears. (Bigandet, p. 147.)

"WHO DID SIN, THIS MAN OR HIS PARENTS, THAT HE WAS BORN BLIND?" (John
ix. 3.)

Professor Kellogg, in his work entitled "The Light of Asia and the
Light of the World," condemns Buddhism in nearly all its tenets. But he
is especially emphatic in the matter of the metempsychosis. The poor
and hopeless Buddhist has to begin again and again "the weary round of
birth and death," whilst the righteous Christians go at once into life
eternal.

Now it seems to me that this is an example of the danger of contrasting
two historical characters when we have a strong sympathy for the
one and a strong prejudice against the other. Professor Kellogg has
conjured up a Jesus with nineteenth century ideas, and a Buddha who is
made responsible for all the fancies that were in the world B.C. 500.
Professor Kellogg is a professor of an American university, and as
such must know that the doctrine of the _gilgal_ (the Jewish name for
the metempsychosis) was as universal in Palestine A.D. 30, as it was
in Râjagriha B.C. 500. An able writer in the _Church Quarterly Review_
of October, 1885, maintains that the Jews brought it from Babylon.
Dr. Ginsburg, in his work on the "Kabbalah," shows that the doctrine
continued to be held by Jews as late as the ninth century of our era.
He shows, too, that St. Jerome has recorded that it was "propounded
amongst the early Christians as an esoteric and traditional doctrine."

The author of the article in the _Church Quarterly Review_, in proof
of its existence, adduces the question put by the disciples of Christ
in reference to the man that was born blind. And if it was considered
that a man could be born blind as a punishment for sin, that sin must
have been plainly committed before his birth. Oddly enough, in the
"White Lotus of Dharma" there is an account of the healing of a blind
man, "Because of the sinful conduct of the man [in a former birth] this
malady has risen."

But a still more striking instance is given in the case of the man sick
with the palsy. (Luke v. 18.) The Jews believed, with modern Orientals,
that grave diseases like paralysis were due, not to physical causes in
this life, but to moral causes in previous lives. And if the account
of the cure of the paralytic is to be considered historical, it is
quite clear that this was Christ's idea when He cured the man, for He
distinctly announced that the cure was affected not by any physical
processes, but by annulling the "sins" which were the cause of his
malady.

Traces of the metempsychosis idea still exist in Catholic
Christianity. The doctrine of original sin is said by some writers
to be a modification of it. Certainly the fancy that the works of
supererogation of their saints can be transferred to others is the
Buddhist idea of good karma, which is transferable in a similar manner.


"IF THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND, BOTH SHALL FALL INTO THE DITCH." (Matt.
xv. 14.)

"As when a string of blind men are clinging one to the other, neither
can the foremost see, nor the middle one see, nor the hindmost see.
Just so, methinks, Vâsittha is the talk of the Brahmins versed in the
Three Vedas." (Buddha, in the "Tevigga Sutta," i. 15.)


"EUNUCHS FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'S SAKE."

In the days of St. Thomas à Kempis the worshipper was modelled on the
Christ. In our days, the Christ seems modelled on the worshipper. The
Bodleian professor of Sanscrit writes thus: "Christianity teaches that
in the highest form of life love is intensified. Buddhism teaches that
in the highest state of existence all love is extinguished. According
to Christianity--Go and earn your own bread and support yourself and
your family. Marriage, it says, is honourable and undefiled, and
married life a field where holiness can grow."

But history is history; and a French writer has recently attacked
Christ for attempting to bring into Europe the celibacy and pessimism
of Buddhism. This author in his work, "Jésus Bouddha," cites Luke xiv.
26:--

"If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother, and
_wife_, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be My disciple."

He adduces also:--

"Let the dead bury their dead."

"Think not that I have come to send peace on earth: I come not to send
peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own
household." (Matt. x. 34-36.)

"And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father
the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and
cause them to be put to death." (_Ibid._ ver. 21.)

"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he
hath, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke xiv. 33).

The author says that all this is pure nihilism, and Essene communism.
"The most sacred family ties are to be renounced, and man to lose
his individuality and become a unit in a vast scheme to overturn the
institutions of his country."

"Qu' importe au fanatisme la ruine de la societé humaine."

"The anticosmic tendency of the Christian doctrine," says Mr. Felix
Oswald ("Secret of the East," p. 27), "distinguishes it from all
religions except Buddhism. In the language of the New Testament the
'world' is everywhere a synonym of evil and sin, the flesh everywhere
the enemy of the spirit.... The Gospel of Buddha, though a pernicious,
is, however, a perfectly consistent doctrine. Birth, life, and
re-birth is an eternal round of sorrow and disappointment. The present
and the future are but the upper and lower tire of an ever-rolling
wheel of woe. The only salvation from the wheel of life is an escape
to the peace of Nirvâna. The attempt to graft this doctrine upon
the optimistic theism of Palestine has made the Christian ethics
inconsistent and contradictory. A paternal Jehovah who yet eternally
and horribly tortures a vast plurality of his children. An earth the
perfect work of a benevolent God, yet a vale of tears not made to be
enjoyed, but only to be despised and renounced. An omnipotent heaven,
and yet unable to prevent the intrigues and constant victories of hell.
Christianity is evidently not a homogeneous but a composite, a hybrid
religion; and considered in connection with the indications of history,
and the evidence of the above-named ethical and traditional analogies,
these facts leave no reasonable doubt that the founder of the Galilean
Church was a disciple of Buddha Sakyamuni." (p. 139.)

All this is very well if the Buddhists by "salvation" meant escape from
life, and not from sin. A "pessimist" Buddhist kingdom, according to
this, ought to present the universal sad faces of the "Camelot" of a
modern school of artists, and yet the Burmese are pronounced by all to
be the merriest and happiest of God's creatures. We know, too, that
India never was so prosperous as in the days of Buddhist rule. The
monks carried agriculture to high perfection; and Indian fabrics were
famous everywhere. A convent meant less a career than an education in
spiritual knowledge. Like the Essene, the Buddhist monk was not forced
to remain for life. Catholicism introduced that change.


"THEN ALL HIS DISCIPLES FORSOOK HIM AND FLED."

It is recorded that on one occasion when a "must" elephant charged
furiously, "all the disciples deserted Buddha. Ananda alone remained."
("Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king," iv. 21.)


"IF THY RIGHT EYE OFFEND THEE."

Mr. Felix Oswald ("The Secret of the East," p. 134) announces, without
however giving a more detailed reference, that according to Max
Muller's translation of the "Ocean of Worlds," a young monk meets a
rich woman who pities his hard lot.

"Blessed is the woman who looks into thy lovely eyes!"

"Lovely!" replied the monk. "Look here!" And plucking out one of his
eyes he held it up, bleeding and ghastly, and asked her to correct her
opinion.


WALKING ON THE WATER.

Certain villagers, hard of belief, were listening to Buddha on the
shore of a mighty river. Suddenly by a miracle the great teacher caused
a man to appear walking on the water from the other side, without
immersing his feet. ("Chinese Dhammapada," p. 51.)


"AND LO! THERE WAS A GREAT CALM."

Pûrna, one of Buddha's disciples, had a brother in danger of shipwreck
in a "black storm." But the guardian spirits of Pûrna informed him of
this. He at once transported himself through the air from the distant
inland town to the deck of the ship. "Immediately the black tempest
ceased as if Sumeru had arrested it." (Burnouf, Introd., p. 229.)


A BUDDHA MULTIPLYING FOOD.

Buddha once narrated a story of a former Buddha, who visited King
Sudarsana in his city of Jambunada (Fu-pen-hing-tsi-king).

Now in that city was a man who was the next day to be married, and he
much wished the Buddha to come to the feast. Buddha, passing by, read
his silent wish, and consented to come. The bridegroom was overjoyed,
and scattered many flowers over his house and sprinkled it with
perfumes.

The next day Buddha with his alms-bowl in his hand and with a retinue
of many followers arrived; and when they had taken their seats in due
order, the host distributed every kind of exquisite food, saying, "Eat,
my lord, and all the congregation, according to your desire."

But now a marvel presented itself to the astonished mind of the host.
Although all these holy men ate very heartily, the meats and the drinks
remained positively quite undiminished; whereupon he argued in his
mind, "If I could only invite all my kinsmen to come, the banquet would
be sufficient for them likewise."

And now another marvel was presented. Buddha read the good man's
thought, and all the relatives without invitation streamed in at the
door. They, also, fed heartily on the miraculous food.


"WHY EATETH YOUR MASTER WITH PUBLICANS AND SINNERS?" (Matt. ix. 10.)

The Courtesan Amrapalî invited Buddha and his disciples to a banquet
in the mango grove at Vaisalî. Buddha accepted. Some rich princes,
sparkling in emeralds, came and gave him a similar invitation. He
refused. They were very angry to see him sit at meat with Amrapalî. He
explained to his disciples that the harlot might enter the kingdom of
Dharma more easily than the prince. (Bigandet, p. 251.)


THE PENITENT THIEF.

Buddha confronts a terrible bandit in his mountain retreat and converts
him. ("Chinese Dhammapada," p. 98.)


"THERE WAS WAR IN HEAVEN."

Professor Beal, in his "Catena of Buddhist Scriptures" (p. 52), tells
us that, in the "Saddharma Prâkasa Sasana Sûtra," a great war in
heaven is described. In it the "wicked dragons" assault the legions of
heaven. After a terrific conflict they are driven down by Indra and the
heavenly hosts.


 "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE UNTO A MERCHANT-MAN SEEKING GOODLY
 PEARLS, WHO, WHEN HE HAD FOUND ONE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE, WENT AND SOLD
 ALL THAT HE HAD AND BOUGHT IT." (Matt. xiii. 45.)

The most sacred emblem of Buddhism is called the mani (pearl), and in
the Chinese biography, a merchant-man seeking goodly pearls finds it,
and unfortunately drops it into the sea. Rather than lose it he tries
to drain the sea dry. ("Rom. Hist.," p. 228.)


THE VOICE FROM THE SKY.

This sounds often in the Buddhist narratives. (_See_ Beal, "Rom.
Hist.," p. 105.)


FAITH.

"Faith is the first gate of the Law." ("Lalita Vistara," p. 39.)

"All who have faith in me obtain a mighty joy." (_Ibid._ p. 188.)


"THOU ART NOT YET FIFTY YEARS OLD, AND HAST THOU SEEN ABRAHAM?"

In the "White Lotus of Dharma" (ch. xiv.) Buddha is asked how it is
that having sat under the bo tree only forty years ago he has been
able, according to his boast, to see many Buddhas and saints who died
hundreds of years previously. He answers that he has lived many hundred
thousand myriads of Kotis, and that though in the form of a Buddha, he
is in reality Swayambhu, the Self-Existent, the Father of the million
worlds. In proof of this statement, he causes two Buddhas of the
Past, Prabhûtaratna and Gadgadesvara, to appear in the sky. The first
pronounces loudly these words: "It is well! It is well!" These Buddhas
appear with their sepulchral canopies (stupas) of diamonds, red pearls,
emeralds, etc. Peter, at the scene of the Transfiguration, said to
Christ:--

"Let us make here three tabernacles, one for Thee, one for Moses, and
one for Elias." Why should Peter want to adopt a Buddhist custom and
build tabernacles for the dead Moses and the dead Elias? Why, also,
should Moses come from the tomb to support a teacher who had torn his
covenant with Yahve to shreds?


"HE WAS TRANSFIGURED BEFORE THEM."

Buddha, leaving Maudgalyâyana and another disciple to represent him,
went off through the air to the Devaloca, to the Heaven Tus´ita, to
preach to the spirits in prison and to convert his mother. When he came
down from the mountain (Mienmo), a staircase of glittering diamonds,
seen by all, helped his descent. His appearance was blinding. The "six
glories" glittered on his person. Mortals and spirits hymned the benign
Being who emptied the hells. (Bigandet, p. 209.)

In the Gospel according to the Hebrews is a curious passage, which Baur
and Hilgenfeld hold to be the earliest version of the Transfiguration
narrative.

"Just now my mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one of my hairs and
bore me up on to the great mountain of Tabor."

This is curious. Buddha and Jesus reach the Mount of Transfiguration,
each through the influence of his mother. But perhaps the Jewish writer
did not like the universalism inculcated in the Buddhist narrative.


"HE BEGAN TO WASH THE DISCIPLES' FEET." (John xiii. 5.)

In a vihâra at Gandhâra was a monk so loathsome and stinking, on
account of his maladies, that none of his brother disciples dare go
near him. The great Teacher came and tended him lovingly and washed his
feet. ("Chinese Dhammapada," p. 94.)


THE GREAT BANQUET OF BUDDHA.

In the "Lalita Vistara" (p. 51) it is stated that those who have faith
will become "sons of Buddha," and partake of the "food of the kingdom."
Four things draw disciples to his banquet,--gifts, soft words,
production of benefits, conformity of benefits.


BAPTISM.

In a Chinese life of Buddha by Wung Puh (_see_ Beal, "Journ. As. Soc.,"
vol. xx. p. 172), it is announced that Buddha at Vaisalî delivered a
Sûtra, entitled, "The baptism that rescues from life and death and
confers salvation."


"AND NONE OF THEM IS LOST BUT THE SON OF PERDITION."

Buddha had also a treacherous disciple, Devadatta. He schemed with a
wicked prince, who sent men armed with bows and swords to slaughter
Buddha. Devadatta tried other infamous stratagems. His end was
appalling. Coming in a palanquin to arrest Buddha, he got out to
stretch himself. Suddenly fierce flames burst out and he was carried
down to the hell Avichi (the Rayless Place). There, in a red-hot
cauldron, impaled by one red bar and pierced by two others, he will
stay for a whole Kalpa. Then he will be forgiven. (Bigandet, p. 244.)


THE LAST SUPPER.

Buddha had his last supper or repast with his disciples. A treacherous
disciple changed his alms-bowl, and apparently he was poisoned. (_See_
Rockhill's "Buddha," p. 133.) Fierce pains seized him as he journeyed
afterwards. He was forced to rest. He sent a message to his host,
Kunda, the son of the jeweller, to feel no remorse although the feast
had been his death. Under two trees he now died.

It will be remembered that during the last supper of Jesus a
treacherous disciple "dipped into his dish," but as Jesus was not
poisoned, the event had no sequence.


"NOW FROM THE SIXTH HOUR THERE WAS DARKNESS OVER ALL THE LAND UNTIL THE
NINTH HOUR."

The critical school base much of their contention that the gospels do
not record real history on this particular passage. They urge that such
an astounding event could not have escaped Josephus and Tacitus. When
Buddha died, the "sun and moon withdrew their shining," and dust and
ashes fell like rain. "The great earth quaked throughout. The crash
of the thunder shook the heavens and the earth, rolling along the
mountains and valleys." ("Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king," v. 26.) The Buddhist
account is certainly not impossible, for the chronicler takes advantage
of the phenomena of an Indian dust-storm to produce his dark picture.
At Lucknow, before the siege, I remember a storm so dense at midday
that some ladies with my regiment thought the Day of Judgment had
arrived.


"AND MANY BODIES OF THE SAINTS WHICH SLEPT AROSE."

When Buddha died at Kus'inagara, Ananda and another disciple saw
many denizens of the unseen world in the city, by the river Yigdan.
(Rockhill's "Life of the Buddha," p. 133.)


"TO ANOINT MY BODY TO THE BURYING." (Mark xiv. 8.)

The newly discovered fragments of the Gospel of Peter give striking
evidence of the haphazard way in which extracts from the Buddhist
books seem to have been sprinkled among the gospels. It records that
Mary Magdalene, "taking with her her friends," went to the sepulchre
of Jesus to "place themselves beside him and perform the rites" of
wailing, beating breasts, etc. Amrapalî and other courtesans did the
same rites to Buddha, and the disciples were afterwards indignant
that impure women should have "washed his dead body with their tears."
(Rockhill, "Thibetan Life," p. 153.)

In the Christian records are three passages, all due, I think, to the
Buddhist narrative. In one, "a woman" anoints Jesus; in John (xii. 7),
"Mary" anoints him; in Luke, a "sinner," who kisses and washes his feet
with her hair. Plainly these last passages are quite irrational. No
woman could have performed the washing and other burial rites on a man
alive and in health.


"THEY PARTED MY GARMENTS."

The Abbé Huc tells us ("Voyages," ii. p. 278) that on the death of the
Bokté Lama his garments are cut into little strips and prized immensely.


"HE APPEARED UNTO MANY."

Buddha prophesied that he would appear after his death. ("Lotus," p.
144.) In a Chinese version quoted by Eitel ("Three Lectures," p. 57),
Buddha to soothe his mother, who had come down weeping from the skies,
opens his coffin lid and appears to her. In the temple sculptures he
is constantly depicted coming down to the altar during worship. (_See_
illustrations to my "Buddhism in Christendom.")


THE "GREAT WHITE THRONE."

Mr. Upham, in his "History of Buddhism" (pp. 56, 57), gives a
description of the Buddhist heaven. There is a "high mountain," and a
city "four square" with gates of gold and silver, adorned with precious
stones. Seven moats surround the city. Beyond the last one is a row of
marble pillars studded with jewels. The great throne of the god stands
in the centre of a great hall, and is surmounted by a white canopy.
Round the great throne are seated heavenly ministers, who record men's
actions in a "golden book." A mighty tree is conspicuous in the garden.
In the Chinese heaven is the "Gem Lake," by which stands the peach tree
whose fruit gives immortality.


THE ATONEMENT.

The idea of transferred good Karma, the merits of the former lives of
an individual being passed on to another individual, is of course quite
foreign to the lower Judaism, which believed in no after life at all.
In the view of the higher Buddhism, Sakya Muni saved the world by his
teaching, but to the lower, the Buddhism of offerings and temples and
monks, this doctrine of Karma was the life-blood. It was proclaimed
that Buddha had a vast stock of superfluous Karma, and that offerings
at a temple might cause the worshipper in his next life to be a prince
instead of a pig or a coolie. In the "Lalita Vistara" (Chinese version,
p. 225) it is announced that when Buddha overcame Mâra all flesh
rejoiced, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb spake, the hells were
cleared, and all by reason of Buddha's Karma in previous lives.

In Romans (v. 18), St. Paul writes thus:--

"As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation,
even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men
unto justification of life.

"For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one shall many be made righteous."

Here plainly all the world is saved by the Karma of Christ.

Now Dr. Kuenen, whose main proposition is that Christianity emerged
from Judaism alone, should tell us how Paul got this idea. The priests
and the Levites were the sole interpreters of the law, and they had
settled that a certain Hebrew had so broken that law that it was
necessary to execute him. And now another Hebrew proclaims that the
righteousness of this man is so great that he can bestow the "free gift
of life" to "all men." Would not Caiaphas have called the second Hebrew
out of his mind.

But St. Paul was a Pharisee, and as a Pharisee he knew that the
Pharisees that he tried to convert believed that nothing but blood
could wipe out sin. In the person of Christ he mixed up the two ideas.

"Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His
blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are
past, through the forbearance of God." (Rom. iii. 25.)

But according to our first quotation, Christ had already saved "all
men" by his righteousness alone. Plainly St. Paul, who viewed the Old
Testament as "allegory," "carnal ordinances," "beggarly elements," and
so on, never meant his trope about Adam's sin to be taken too literally.


PARABLES.

Buddha taught in parables. I will give one or two. The reader is
referred to my "Popular Life of Buddha" for some very beautiful ones.


THE PRODIGAL SON.

A certain man had a son who went away into a far country. There he
became miserably poor. The father, however, grew rich, and accumulated
much gold and treasure, and many storehouses and elephants. But he
tenderly loved his lost son, and secretly lamented that he had no one
to whom to leave his palaces and suvernas at his death.

After many years the poor man, in search of food and clothing, happened
to come to the country where his father had great possessions. And when
he was afar off his father saw him, and reflected thus in his mind: "If
I at once acknowledge my son and give to him my gold and my treasures,
I shall do him a great injury. He is ignorant and undisciplined; he is
poor and brutalised. With one of such miserable inclinations 'twere
better to educate the mind little by little. I will make him one of my
hired servants."

Then the son, famished and in rags, arrived at the door of his father's
house; and seeing a great throne upraised, and many followers doing
homage to him who sat upon it, was awed by the pomp and the wealth
around. Instantly he fled once more to the highway. "This," he
thought, "is the house of the poor man. If I stay at the palace of the
king perhaps I shall be thrown into prison."

Then the father sent messengers after his son; who was caught and
brought back in spite of his cries and lamentations. When he reached
his father's house he fell down fainting with fear, not recognising
his father, and believing that he was about to suffer some cruel
punishment. The father ordered his servants to deal tenderly with the
poor man, and sent two labourers of his own rank of life to engage him
as a servant on the estate. They gave him a broom and a basket, and
engaged him to clean up the dung-heap at a double wage.

From the window of his palace the rich man watched his son at his work:
and disguising himself one day as a poor man, and covering his limbs
with dust and dirt, he approached his son and said, "Stay here, good
man, and I will provide you with food and clothing. You are honest, you
are industrious. Look upon me as your father."

After many years the father felt his end approaching, and he summoned
his son and the officers of the king, and announced to them the secret
that he had so long kept. The poor man was his son, who in early days
had wandered away from him; and now that he was conscious of his former
debased condition, and was able to appreciate and retain vast wealth,
he was determined to hand over to him his entire treasure. The poor
man was astonished at this sudden change of fortune, and overjoyed at
meeting his father once more.

The parables of Buddha are reported in the Lotus of the Perfect Law to
be veiled from the ignorant by means of an enigmatic form of language.
The rich man of this parable, with his throne adorned by flowers and
garlands of jewels, is announced to be Tathagata (God), who dearly
loves all his children, and has prepared for them vast spiritual
treasures. But each son of Tathagata has miserable inclinations. He
prefers the dung-heap to the pearl mani. To teach such a man, Tathagata
is obliged to employ inferior agents, the monk and the ascetic, and to
wean him by degrees from the lower objects of desire. When he speaks
himself, he is forced to veil much of his thought, as it would not be
understood. His sons feel no joy on hearing spiritual things. Little by
little must their minds be trained and disciplined for higher truths.


PARABLE OF THE WOMAN AT THE WELL.

Ananda, a favourite disciple of Buddha, was once athirst, having
travelled far. At a well he encountered a girl named Matanga, and asked
her to give him some water to drink. But she being a woman of low
caste, was afraid of contaminating a holy Brahmana, and refused humbly.

"I ask not for caste, but for water!" said Ananda. His condescension
won the heart of the girl Matanga.

It happened that she had a mother cunning in love philtres and weird
arts, and when this woman heard how much her daughter was in love, she
threw her magic spells round the disciple and brought him to her cave.
Helpless, he prayed to Buddha, who forthwith appeared and cast out the
wicked demons.

But the girl Matanga was still in wretched plight. At last she
determined to repair to Buddha himself and appeal to him.

The Great Physician, reading the poor girl's thought questioned her
gently:--

"Supposing that you marry my disciple, can you follow him everywhere?"

"Everywhere!" said the girl.

"Could you wear his clothes, sleep under the same roof?" said Buddha,
alluding to the nakedness and beggary of the "houseless one."

By slow degrees the girl began to take in his meaning, and at last she
took refuge in the Three Great Jewels.

       *       *       *       *       *

A common objection to Buddhism is that it fails to proclaim the
fatherhood of God.

"The loving Father of all that lives." (Tsing-tu-wan.)

"Our loving Father and Father of all that breathes." ("Imit. Buddha,"
p. 67.) (" Daily Manual of the Shaman," cited by Mr. Bowden.)

"I am the Heavenly Father (loka pita Swayambhu), the Healer, the
Protector of all creatures." (Kern, "Lotus," p. 310.)

I will give a pretty parable that pictures Buddha as a Father.


PARABLE OF THE BLAZING MANSION.

Once there was an old man, broken, decrepit, but very rich. He
possessed much land and many gold pieces. Moreover, he possessed a
large rambling mansion which also showed plain proofs of Time's decay.
Its rafters were worm-eaten; its pillars were rotten; its galleries
were tumbling down; the thatch on its roof was dry and combustible.
Inside this mansion were several hundreds of the old man's servants and
retainers, so extensive was the collection of rambling old buildings.

Unfortunately, this mansion possessed only one door.

The old man was also the father of many children--five, ten, twenty,
let us say. One day there was a smell of burning, and he ran out by
the solitary door. To his horror he saw the thatch in a mass of flame,
the rotten old pillars were catching fire one by one, the rafters were
blazing like tinder. Inside, his children, whom he loved most tenderly,
were romping and amusing themselves with their toys.

The distracted father said to himself, "I will run in and save my
children. I will seize them in my strong arms. I will bear them
harmless through the falling rafters and the blazing beams!" Then the
sad thought seized him that his children were romping and ignorant. "If
I tell them that the house is on fire they will not understand me. If I
try to seize them they will romp about and try to escape. Alas! not a
moment is to be lost!"

Suddenly a bright thought flashed across the old man's mind. "My
children are ignorant," he mentally said, "but they love toys and
glittering playthings. I will promise them some playthings of
unheard-of beauty. Then they will listen to me!"

So the old man shouted out with a loud voice, "Children, children,
come out of the house and see these beautiful toys. Chariots with
white oxen, all gold and tinsel. See these exquisite little antelopes!
Whoever saw such goats as these! Children, children, come quickly or
they will all be gone!"

Forth from the blazing ruin came the children in hot haste. The word
"playthings" was almost the only word that they could understand. Then
the fond father, in his great joy at seeing his offspring freed from
peril, procured for them some of the most beautiful chariots ever
seen. Each chariot had a canopy like a pagoda. It had tiny rails and
balustrades, and rows of jingling bells. It was formed of the seven
precious substances. Chaplets of glittering pearls were hung aloft upon
it; standards and wreaths of the most lovely flowers. Milk-white oxen
drew these chariots. The children were astonished when they were placed
inside.

The meaning of this parable is thus rendered in the "White Lotus
of Dharma." The old man is Tathagata, and his children the blind,
suffering children of sin and passion. Tathagata fondly loves them,
and would save them from their unhappiness. The old rambling mansion,
unsightly, rotten, perilous, is the Domain of Karma, the Domain of
Appetite. This old mansion is ablaze with the fire of mortal passions,
and hates, and lusts. Tathagata in his "immense compassion" would
lead all his beloved children away from this great peril, but they do
not understand his language. Their only thought is of tinsel toys and
childish pastimes. If he speaks to them of the great inner quickening
which makes man conquer human pain, they cannot understand him. If he
talks to them of wondrous supernatural gifts accorded to mortals, they
turn a deaf ear to him. The tinsel chariots provided for the children
of Tathagata are the "Vehicles" of the Buddhist teaching.




CHAPTER IV.

_After Buddha's Death._


From Buddha's death we turn to Buddha's religion and its progress. And
I think the narrative form will help us best, but a few preliminary
remarks are necessary.

What is Buddhism?

"The religion of Buddha," says Professor Max Müller in his "Chips from
a German Workshop," "was made for a madhouse."

"Buddha," says Sir Monier Williams in his "Buddhism," "altogether
ignored in human nature any spiritual aspirations."

Having heard the dictum of Oxford, perhaps it is fair to listen to
a real Buddhist. In a work called "Happiness," an anonymous writer
sketches his religion.

The teaching of Buddha, as set forth by him, is simple and sublime.
There are two states of the soul, call them ego and non-ego--the plane
of matter and the plane of spirit--what you will. As long as we live
for the ego and its greedy joys, we are feverish, restless, miserable.
Happiness consists in the destruction of the ego, by the Bodhi, and
Gnosis. This is that interior, that high state of the soul, attained by
Fenelon and Wesley, by Mirza the Sufi and Swedenborg, by Spinoza and
Amiel.

"The kingdom of God is within you," says Christ.

"In whom are hid the treasures of _sophia_ and _gnosis_," says St. Paul.

"The enlightened view both worlds," says Mirza the Sufi, "but the bat
flieth about in the darkness without seeing."

"Who speaks and acts with the inner quickening," says Buddha, "has joy
for his accompanying shadow. Who speaks and acts without the inner
quickening, him sorrow pursues as the chariot wheel the horse."

Let us give here a pretty parable, and let Buddha speak for himself:--

"Once upon a time there was a man born blind, and he said, 'I cannot
believe in a world of appearances. Colours bright or sombre exist not.
There is no sun, no moon, no stars. None have witnessed such things.'
His friends chid him; but he still repeated the same words.

"In those days there was a Rishi who had the inner vision; and he
detected on the steeps of the lofty Himalayas four simples that had the
power to cure the man who was born blind. He culled them, and, mashing
them with his teeth, applied them. Instantly the man who was born blind
cried out, 'I see colours and appearances. I see beautiful trees and
flowers. I see the bright sun. No one ever saw like this before.'

"Then certain holy men came to the man who was born blind, and said
to him, 'You are vain and arrogant and nearly as blind as you were
before. You see the outside of things, not the inside. One whose
supernatural senses are quickened sees the lapis-lazuli fields of the
Buddhas of the Past, and hears heavenly conch shells sounded at a
distance of five yoganas. Go off to a desert, a forest, a cavern in the
mountains, and conquer this mean thirst of earthly things.'"

The man who was born blind obeyed; and the parable ends with its
obvious interpretation. Buddha is the old Rishi, and the four simples
are the four great truths. He weans mankind from the lower life and
opens the eyes of the blind.

I think that Sir Monier Williams's fancy, that Buddha ignored the
spiritual side of humanity is due to the fact that by the word
"knowledge" he conceives the Buddhist to mean knowledge of material
facts. That Buddha's conceptions are nearer to the ideas of Swedenborg
than of Mill is, I think, proved by the Cingalese book, the Samanna
Phala Sutta. Buddha details, at considerable length, the practices
of the ascetic, and then enlarges upon their exact object. Man has a
body composed of the four elements. It is the fruit of the union of
his father and mother. It is nourished on rice and gruel, and may be
truncated, crushed, destroyed. In this transitory body his intelligence
is enchained. The ascetic, finding himself thus confined, directs his
mind to the creation of a freer integument. He represents to himself
in thought another body created from this material body--a body with a
form, members, and organs. This body, in relation to the material body,
is like the sword and the scabbard, or a serpent issuing from a basket
in which it is confined. The ascetic, then, purified and perfected,
commences to practise supernatural faculties. He finds himself able to
pass through material obstacles, walls, ramparts, etc.: he is able to
throw his phantasmal appearance into many places at once; he is able to
walk upon the surface of water without immersing himself; he can fly
through the air like a falcon furnished with large wings; he can leave
this world and reach even the heaven of Brahma himself.

Another faculty is now conquered by his force of will, as the fashioner
of ivory shapes the tusk of the elephant according to his fancy.
He acquires the power of hearing the sounds of the unseen world as
distinctly as those of the phenomenal world--more distinctly, in point
of fact. Also by the power of Manas he is able to read the most secret
thoughts of others, and to tell their characters. He is able to say,
"There is a mind that is governed by passion. There is a mind that is
enfranchised. This man has noble ends in view. This man has no ends in
view." As a child sees his earrings reflected in the water, and says,
"Those are my earrings," so the purified ascetic recognises the truth.
Then comes to him the faculty of "divine vision," and he sees all that
men do on earth and after they die, and when they are again reborn.
Then he detects the secrets of the universe, and why men are unhappy,
and how they may cease to be so.

I will now quote a conversation between Buddha and some Brahmins which,
I think, throws much light on his teaching. It is given in another
Cingalese book, the "Tevigga Sutta."

When the teacher was dwelling at Manasâkata in the mango grove, some
Brahmins, learned in the three Vedas, came to consult him on the
question of union with the eternal Brahma. They ask if they are in the
right pathway towards that union. Buddha replies at great length. He
suggests an ideal case. He supposes that a man has fallen in love with
the "most beautiful woman of the land." Day and night he dreams of her,
but has never seen her. He does not know whether she is tall or short,
of Brahmin or Sudra caste, of dark or fair complexion; he does not even
know her name. The Brahmins are asked if the talk of that man about
that woman be wise or foolish. They confess that it is "foolish talk."
Buddha then applies the same train of reasoning to them. The Brahmins
versed in the three Vedas are made to confess that they have never seen
Brahma, that they do not know whether he is tall or short, or anything
about him, and that all their talk about union with him is also foolish
talk. They are mounting a crooked staircase, and do not know whether it
leads to a mansion or a precipice. They are standing on the bank of a
river and calling to the other bank to come to them.

Now it seems to me that if Buddha were the uncompromising teacher of
atheism that Sir Monier Williams pictures him, he has at this point an
admirable opportunity of urging his views. The Brahmins, he would of
course contend, knew nothing about Brahma, for the simple reason that
no such being as Brahma exists.

But this is exactly the line that Buddha does not take. His argument
is that the Brahmins knew nothing of Brahma, because Brahma is purely
spiritual, and they are purely materialistic.

Five "Veils," he shows, hide Brahma from mortal ken. These are--

1. The Veil of Lustful Desire.

2. The Veil of Malice.

3. The Veil of Sloth and Idleness.

4. The Veil of Pride and Self-Righteousness.

5. The Veil of Doubt.

Buddha then goes on with his questionings:--

"Is Brahma in possession of wives and wealth?"

"He is not, Gautama!" answers Vasettha the Brahmin.

"Is his mind full of anger, or free from anger?"

"Free from anger, Gautama!"

"Is his mind full of malice, or free from malice?"

"Free from malice, Gautama!"

"Is his mind depraved or pure?"

"It is pure, Gautama!"

"Has he self-mastery, or has he not?"

"He has, Gautama."

The Brahmins are then questioned about themselves.

"Are the Brahmins versed in the three Vedas in possession of wives and
wealth, or are they not?"

"They are, Gautama!"

"Have they anger in their hearts, or have they not?"

"They have, Gautama."

"Do they bear malice, or do they not?"

"They do, Gautama."

"Are they pure in heart, or are they not?"

"They are not, Gautama."

"Have they self-mastery, or have they not?"

"They have not, Gautama."

These replies provoke, of course, the very obvious retort that no point
of union can be found between such dissimilar entities. Brahma is free
from malice, sinless, self-contained, so, of course, it is only the
sinless that can hope to be in harmony with him.

Vasettha then puts this question: "It has been told me, Gautama, that
Sramana Gautama knows the way to the state of union with Brahma?"

"Brahma I know, Vasettha!" says Buddha in reply, "and the world of
Brahma, and the path leading to it!"

The humbled Brahmins learned in the three Vedas then ask Buddha to
"show them the way to a state of union with Brahma."

Buddha replies at considerable length, drawing a sharp contrast between
the lower Brahminism and the higher Brahminism, the "householder"
and the "houseless one." The householder Brahmins are gross,
sensual, avaricious, insincere. They practise for lucre black magic,
fortune-telling, cozenage. They gain the ear of kings, breed wars,
predict victories, sacrifice life, spoil the poor. As a foil to this,
he paints the recluse, who has renounced all worldly things, and is
pure, self-possessed, happy.

To teach this "higher life," a Buddha "from time to time is born
into the world, blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom, a guide to
erring mortals." He sees the universe face to face, the spirit world
of Brahma and that of Mâra the tempter. He makes his knowledge known
to others. The houseless one, instructed by him, "lets his mind
pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of pity sympathy, and
equanimity; and so the second, and so the third, and so the fourth. And
thus the whole wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does
he continue to pervade with heart of pity, sympathy, and equanimity,
far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure."

"Verily this, Vasettha, is the way to a state of union with Brahma,"
and he proceeds to announce that the bhikshu, or Buddhist beggar, "who
is free from anger, free from malice, pure in mind, master of himself,
will, after death, when the body is dissolved, become united with
Brahma." The Brahmins at once see the full force of this teaching. It
is as a conservative in their eyes that Buddha figures, and not an
innovator. He takes the side of the ancient spiritual religion of the
country against rapacious innovators.

Sir Monier Williams quotes a part of this Sutta, and, oddly enough,
still maintains that Buddha was an atheist.

There are two great schools of Buddhism, and they are quite agreed on
this point that Buddhism is the quickening of the spiritual vision.

Let us now consider how the two great schools of Buddhism diverge.

1. The earliest school, the Buddhism of Buddha, taught that after
Nirvâna, or man's emancipation from re-birth, the consciousness of the
individual survived, and that he dwelt for ever in happiness in the
Brahma heavens. This is the Buddhism of the "Little Vehicle."

2. The second, or innovating school, maintained that after Nirvâna
the consciousness of the individual ceased. Their creed was the blank
atheism of the Brahmin S'unyavâdi.

The first serious study of Buddhism took place in one of our colonies,
and the first students were missionaries. Great praise is due to the
missionaries of Ceylon for their early scholarship, but naturally they
ransacked the Buddhist books less as scholars than missionaries. Soon
they discovered with delight the teaching of the atheistic school,
and statements that the Ceylon scriptures were the earliest authentic
Buddhist scriptures, brought to the island by Mahinda, King Asoka's
son (B.C. 306). In consequence of this the missionaries concluded that
Ceylon had preserved untainted the original teaching of Buddha, and
that the earliest school, that of the "Little Vehicle," was atheistic.

But the leading Sanscrit scholar of the world, Dr. Rajendra Lala
Mitra, has completely dissipated this idea. In his work, "Nepalese
Buddhist Literature," p. 178, he shows conclusively that it is the
Buddhism of the innovating school, that of the "Great Vehicle," which
preaches atheism. About the epoch of Christ, Kanerkos or Kanishka, a
king who conquered India, introduced this innovating teaching. Hweng
Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, who visited India in the seventh century,
confirms this. There was in India at this date amongst the followers
of Siva, a school who held that Nothingness was God, and Nothingness
the future of man. They were called the S'unyavâdis, the proclaimers
of Nothingness. Two priests, Parsvika and Vasabandhu, were with
Kanerkos, and they persuaded this monarch to force this Pyrrhonism on
the Buddhists. A mighty conflict was the consequence. The old Buddhists
remonstrated. They said that Buddha knew nothing of all this. They
called the "Great Vehicle" Sunyapushpa (the Carriage that drives to
Nowhere). But Parsvika packed a convocation like Constantine, and
forced the new teaching down their throats. ("Hweng Thsang, Hist." p.
114., _et. seq._ "Memoirs," pp. 174, 220.) Rajendra Lala Mitra says
that the Buddhist books of the "Great Vehicle" are in a servile manner
copied from Brahmin treatises.

Let us examine this "Great Vehicle," as writers like Sir Monier
Williams tells us that it was this school that introduced the ideas
of God and immortality into Buddhism, which until then was pure
atheism. Its main Bible is a collection of writings called the "Rakshâ
Bhagavatî." (Rajendra Lala Mitra, p. 179.) Bryan Hodgson confirms this.
("Literature of Nepal," p. 16.) The work itself is an avowed attack on
the Hinayâna or "Little Vehicle," which is "refuted repeatedly," says
the learned Hindoo. (p. 178.)

Let us now see what sort of god and what sort of immortality the
"Rakshâ Bhagavatî" in its title of chapters proclaimed.

Chap. I. The subject of Nothingness (Sunyata) expounded.

Chap. II. Relation of the soul to form colour and vacuity.

Chap. IV. Relation of form to vacuity.

Chap. VII. How a Bodhisattwa merges all natural attributes into vacuity.

Chap. XII. The doctrine of Mahâyâna and its advantages, derived
principally, if not entirely, from its recognition of the greatness of
S'unyavâda (Nihilistic doctrine of the Brahmin sect of S'unyavâdis).

Chap. XIII. To the Bodhisattwa there is nothing eternal, nothing
transient, nothing painful, nothing pleasant. All qualities are unreal
as a dream.

Chap. XIV.-XVI. The principle of the Prajnâ Paramitâ imparted by Buddha
to Indra. The end sought is the attainment of vacuity.

Chap. XXXV. All objects attainable by the study of Nihilism. ("Nepalese
Buddhist Literature," p. 180.)

Hodgson gives a bit of what he calls this "pure Pyrrhonism" from the
same book. Buddha is made to talk thus:--


"The being of all things is derived from belief, reliance, in this
order: from false knowledge, delusive impression; from delusive
impression, general notions; from them, particulars; from them,
the six seats of the senses; from them, contact; from it, definite
sensation and perception; from it, thirst or desire; from it, embryolic
(physical) existence; from it, birth or actual existence; from it, all
the distinctions of genus and species among animate things; from them,
decay and death, after the manner and period peculiar to each. Such is
the procession of all things into existence from delusion (avidyâ), and
in the inverse order to that of their procession they retrograde into
non-existence." (p. 79.)

Another book, the "Suvarna Prabhâsa," makes "grand non-existence,"
the Bodhi, the divine knowledge. "I now instruct you on the means of
acquiring the knowledge of nothingness," Buddha is made to say to his
disciples. (Rajendra Lala Mitra, p. 243.)

But there is a third school of Buddhism, the Madhyamika, or "Middle
Pathway." Unless all this is definitely understood, Buddhism will
remain a riddle. For a long time the "Great" and the "Little" Vehicles
fought furiously. I believe that the "Middle Pathway" was a rude
attempt at conciliation. No one can read many Buddhist writings without
observing flat contradictions at every page. Thus the Brahmajâla Sûtra,
much quoted by missionaries, who are plainly unaware that it belongs
to the literature of the "Carriage that drives to Nowhere," announces
that the existence of the soul after death in a conscious or even an
unconscious state is impossible. But there is a passage which the
missionaries do not quote. Buddha also tells his disciples that the
statement of the Brahmins and Buddhist teachers, that "existing beings
are cut off, destroyed, annihilated," is founded on their ignorance and
want of perception of the truth. (_See_ my "Popular Life of Buddha," p.
223.)

Having thus cleared the way, I will now proceed with the history
of the progress of Buddha's religion. Before, it would have been
unintelligible.

Buddha died B.C. 470. Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine, gained India
B.C. 260. Unfortunately, between these two dates there is scarcely any
authentic history at all. Buddha left behind him brief instructions
to his disciples, which are called the "Twelve Observances." They were
never to sleep under a roof. In Ceylon even to this day a Buddhist monk
is called Abhyâvakâsika (he whose covering is the heavens). They were
never to stop two nights in the same spot. What was to be their food?
Refuse victuals. What was to be their dress? Rags from the graveyard,
dung-heap, etc. What was his following to be called? The "Mob of
Beggars" (Bhikshu Sangha). Jumping from B.C. 470 to B.C. 302, history
flashes a sudden light upon these wandering beggars.

At this date Seleucus Nicator sent an ambassador named Megasthenes to
King Chandragupta at Patna. His account of the India of that day is,
unfortunately, lost; but through Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Arrian, and
Clement of Alexandria, some valuable fragments have come down to us.
Patna, it must be remembered, was in the heart of the Buddhist Holy
Land. Clement of Alexandria cites a passage from Megasthenes about
the Indian "philosophers." "Of these there are two classes, some of
them called Sarmanæ (Sramanas) and other Brahmins. And those of the
Sarmanæ, who are called Hylobii, neither inhabit cities nor have roofs
over them, but are clothed in the bark of trees, feed on nuts, and
drink water in their hands. Like those called Encratites in the present
day, they know not marriage, nor begetting of children. Some, too,
of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha, whom, on account of his
extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours."

Strabo also describes the Brahmins and the Hylobii, or Germanes, with
similar details. He draws a distinction between the Germanes and the
Brahmins on the subject of continency, the Brahmins being polygamists.

No doubt these Sarmanæ and Brahmins of Megasthenes were the Brahmins
and Buddhist Sramanas, or ascetics. To the first were confided
sacrifices and ceremonies. They were a caste apart, and none outside
this caste could officiate. Their ideas of life and death, it is
announced, were similar to those of Plato and the Greeks. The Brahmins
ate flesh and had many wives. Every new year there was a great synod of
them. They dwelt in groves near the great cities on "couches of leaves
and skins."

The Hylobii, on the other hand, insisted on absolute continence and
strict vegetarianism, and water drinking. Clitarchus gives us an
additional fact from Megasthenes. The Hylobii "derided the Brahmins."
"By their means," says Strabo, "kings serve and worship God." (See for
all that can be recovered from Megasthenes, Cory, "Ancient Fragments,"
pp. 225-227.)

That the Buddhists at first were wandering beggars without any convents
is the opinion of the Russian Orientalist, Wassiljew, who supports it
from a valuable Chinese history by Daranatha. It asserts that the King
Ajatasatru passed Varsha or Lent in a graveyard; and that until the
date of Upagupta, a contemporary of Asoka, there were no temples. The
first was built at Mathura. (Ch. iv., cited by Wassiljew, "Buddhism,"
p. 41.)

Daranatha asserts that a disciple of Ananda reached Cashmir. M.
Wassiljew remarks that this would mean a spread of the doctrines in
intermediate lands. I must point out that the first ritual of Buddhism
was the "Praise of the Seven Mortal Buddhas," who were worshipped, as
Gen. Cunningham has shown from the Bharhut Stupa, in the form of trees.
This seems to have been the sole form of worship even in the days of
King Asoka, who enjoins his subjects to worship round Buddha's tree,
the ficus indicus.

I think that my readers are now in a position to judge whether India
was gained by houseless Parivrajakas, ever marching, ever preaching,
ever enduring hunger, thirst, buffets, death if necessary, or by lazy
monks, living in sumptuous convents, and debating whether their couches
should have fringes and their dress be silk or cotton. This last is the
contention of the Buddhist histories, and these dishonest documents
have even deceived learned men in the West, more skilful in Pâli roots,
perhaps, than judicial analysis. These books record that three months
after Buddha's death a vast convocation of monks was assembled at
Râjâgriha to render canonical certain holy books, in bulk four times as
big as our Bible. Eighteen disused monasteries were hastily cleared of
their cobwebs and rubbish, and set in order for these monks, and a cave
temple, whose columns and splendid stone carvings vied with Ellora, was
cut out of the rock in what must be thought a very small space of time,
namely, two months. I have shown in my "Popular Life of Buddha" that
we have here most probably the details of a real convocation, that of
King Kanerkos, assembled about 20 A.D., by the "Carriage that drives
Nowhere" (Sunyapushpa) to force their Pyrrhonism on the old faith,
and that they have dishonestly antedated this convocation by nearly
500 years, to make it appear that their innovations were the earliest
Buddhism. Hweng Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, has given us the details
of the convocation.

The number of monks was fixed at four hundred and ninety-nine. The
ambitious Vasubandhu, leader of the "Great Vehicle" movement, presented
himself at the door, but the traditions of early Buddhism were still
strong. Some of the monks desired him to depart, as none but Arhats
(the fully enfranchised) could remain near the building.

"I care little for the enfranchisement of study" (the rank of Arhat),
said Vasubandhu. Then, with some inconsistency, he performed a great
miracle to prove that he had attained that dignity. He flung into
the air a ball of thread, and one end remained fixed in the sky. A
similar prodigy was witnessed by Marco Polo and other old travellers.
Vasubandhu was chosen president, and the convocation proceeded to
discuss their Pyrrhonism. All this is servilely repeated in the
fictitious narrative of the first convocation. A difficulty arose about
Ananda, who had not acquired the miraculous powers that stamp the
adept in the knowledge of Prajñâ Pâramitâ, the wisdom of the unseen
world. Thus, as first constituted, the convocation consisted of 499
members and a vacant carpet was spread for Ananda. During the night
he meditated on the Kâyagastâ Sâtiyâ, and in the morning these powers
came; and in proof he reached his seat through the medium of the floor
of the temple.

To culminate this silliness, Ananda is then called upon to disclose
this "wisdom of the unseen world," because, being Buddha's chief
disciple, he is the only one who knows much about it. The Bible of
the "Carriage that drives Nowhere" is the chief book discussed, the
Brahmajâla Sûtra, which Hoa Yen, the greatest Chinese authority (_see_
Rémusat, "Pilgrimage of Fa Hian," p. 108), says is distinctly a "Great
Vehicle" scripture. In it Buddha discusses every conceivable theory
about the next world, and contradicts them all. Could such an insane
Bible, in a few years, have tumbled to pieces the great priesthoods of
India, China, Persia?

We now come to King Asoka, a monarch whose dominions stretched from
Grândhâra, or Peshawur, to Chola and Pândiya, the extreme southern
provinces of India. On the extreme west he cut a rock-inscription at
Girnar, on the Gulf of Cutch. On the east coast at Ganjam were the
Dhauli and Jaugada inscriptions. His rule was a broad one.

He became a convert to Buddhism, and made it the official creed. He
carved his "Edicts" on rocks and stone columns. Let us see from them
whether early Buddhism was the atheism and negation of an immortal life
that is depicted in popular treatises. He is called Devânampiya, the
friend of the spirits.


KING ASOKA'S IDEAS ABOUT GOD.

"Much longing after the things [of this life] is a disobedience, I
again declare; not less so is the laborious ambition of dominion by
a prince who would be a propitiator of Heaven. Confess and believe
in God [Isâna], who is the worthy object of obedience. For equal to
this [belief], I declare unto you, ye shall not find such a means
of propitiating Heaven. Oh, strive ye to obtain this inestimable
treasure." (First separate Edict, Dhauli, Prinsep.)

"Thus spake King Devânampiya Piyadasi:--The present moment and the
past have departed under the same ardent hopes. How by the conversion
of the royal born may religion be increased? Through the conversion of
the lowly born if religion thus increaseth, by how much [more] through
the conviction of the high born and their conversion shall religion
increase? Among whomsoever the name of God resteth, verily this is
religion."

"Thus spake Devânampiya Piyadasi:--Wherefore from this very hour I have
caused religious discourses to be preached. I have appointed religious
observances that mankind, having listened thereto, shall be brought
to follow in the right path, and give glory to God." (Edict No. vii.,
Prinsep.)


ASOKA ON A FUTURE LIFE.

"On the many beings over whom I rule I confer happiness in this world;
in the next they may obtain Swarga [paradise]." (Edict vi., Wilson.)

"This is good. With these means let a man seek Swarga. This is to be
done. By these means it is to be done, as by them Swarga [paradise] is
to be gained." (Edict ix., Wilson.)

"I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with me in
creed, that they, following after my example, may with me attain unto
eternal salvation." (Delhi Pillar, Edict vi., Prinsep.)

"And whoso doeth this is blessed of the inhabitants of this world; and
in the next world endless moral merit resulteth from such religious
charity." (Edict xi., Prinsep.)

"Unto no one can be repentance and peace of mind until he hath obtained
supreme knowledge, perfect faith, which surmounteth all obstacles, and
perpetual assent." (Rock Edict, No. vii., Prinsep.)

"In the tenth year of his anointment, the beloved King Piyadasi
obtained the Sambodhi or complete knowledge." (Rock Edict, No. vii.,
Burnouf.)

"All the heroism that Piyadasi, the beloved of the gods, has exhibited
is in view of another life. Earthly glory brings little profit, but,
on the contrary, produces a loss of virtue. To toil for heaven is
difficult to peasant and to prince unless by a supreme effort he gives
up all." (Rock Edict, No. x., Burnouf.)

"May they [my loving subjects] obtain happiness in this world and in
the next." (Second separate Edict, Burnouf.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Early Buddhism had no prayer, no worship, say our popular treatises.

"Devânampiya has also said--Fame consisteth in this act, to meditate
with devotion on my motives and on my deeds, and to pray for blessings
in this world and the world to come." (Dhauli, separate Edict, No. ii.,
Prinsep.)

"I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with me in
creed, that they, following after my example, may with me attain unto
eternal salvation." (Delhi Pillar, Edict vi., Prinsep.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Early Buddhism knew nothing of soul, we learn also.

"As the soul itself, so is the unrelaxing guidance of Devânampiya
worthy of respect." (Dhauli, separate Edict, No. ii., Prinsep.)

On the Bairât rock the king, too, gives a list of the holy books that
his monks were to learn by heart.

1. The Summary of Discipline.

2. The Supernatural Powers of the Masters.

3. The Terrors of the Future.

4. The Song of the Muni.

5. The Sûtra on Asceticism.

6. The Question of Upatishya.

7. The Admonition to Râhula concerning Falsehood, uttered by our Lord
Buddha.

Nothing can be more important than this. If the Bairât rock-inscription
is genuine, the Ceylon history of the convocations is pure fiction.

It must be remembered that in the old Indian creeds, holy books were
handed down entirely by recitation. The letters of the alphabet,
according to Professor Max Müller, General Cunningham, and the chief
authorities, were not known in India until Asoka's day. We know from
the Mahâwanso that the holy books of Ceylon were not committed to
writing until the reign of King Wattaganini (104 to 76 B.C.). So the
books that Asoka ordered to be handed down by the recitation and
chantings of his monks must have plainly constituted the entire body
of the recognised scriptures. In what way could any other scriptures
come down? Dr. Oldenburg talks of these seven books as if they were
"passages" only, he believing that the large body of Pâli scriptures
of Ceylon were in existence as early as the second convocation. But if
they were "passages," who was to remember and recite the rest of the
voluminous canon? Asoka's monks were expressly forbidden so to do.

Of immense importance is one more fact. The Dhauli inscription
announces that the four Greek kings (Chapta Yoni Raja), who took over
Alexander's empire, had allowed their subjects to "follow the doctrine"
of Asoka. He mentions Antiochus and Ptolemy. Also "Gongakenos" and
Megas of Cyrene. This plainly proves that his missionaries had reached
Egypt and Greece.




CHAPTER V.

_The Apostles of the Bloodless Altar._


There are two Zoroasters, or rather a sort of dual personality.
One of these Zoroasters lived six thousand years B.C. according to
Darmesteter, and the other about five hundred years B.C. The earlier
Zoroaster swathed Persia in a network of silly rites and regulations.
A culprit who "threw away a dead dog" was to receive a thousand blows
with the horse goad, and one thousand with the Craosha charana. A
culprit who slew a dog with a "prickly back" and a "woolly muzzle"
was to receive a similar punishment. ("Fargard," xxx.) This Zoroaster
was particular about the number of gnats, ants, lizards, that the
devout had to kill. ("Fargard," xiv.) This Zoroaster proclaimed a god
who loved to see on his altar a "hundred horses, a thousand cows, ten
thousand small cattle," and so on. ("Khordah Avesta," xii.) But the
second Zoroaster proclaimed a bloodless altar, and sought to tear the
network of the first Zoroaster to shreds. What was the meaning of this?
Simply that the Buddhist Wanderers had by this time invaded Persia, and
had fastened their doctrines upon the chief local prophet. This was
their habit. A study of this second religion, the religion of Mithras,
will help us to some of the secrets of Buddhist propagandism.

Mr. Felix Oswald cites Wassiljew as announcing that the Buddhist
missionaries had reached Western Persia, B.C. 450. This date would,
of course, depend on the date of Buddha's life and Buddha's death.
The latter is now definitely fixed by Buhler's translation of Asoka's
Rupnath rock-inscription, B.C. 470. Wassiljew, citing Daranatha,
announces that Madeantica, a convert of Ananda, Buddha's leading
disciple, reached Ouchira in Cashmir. From Cashmir Buddhism passed
promptly to Candahar and Cabul. (p. 40). Thence it penetrated quickly
to Bactra, and soon invaded "all the country embraced by the word
Turkistan, where it flourished until disturbed by Mahomet."

Tertullian has two passages which describe the religion of Mithras.

       *       *       *       *       *

He says that the devil, to "pervert the truth," by "the mystic rites
of his idols vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments
of God. He too baptises some--that is, his own believers and faithful
followers. He promises the putting away of sins by a laver (of his
own), and, if my memory still serves me, Mithras there (in the
kingdom of Satan) sets his mark on the foreheads of his soldiers,
celebrates also the oblation of bread, and introduces an image of the
resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown." (Pres. v., Hœr.
chap. xl.)

Here is another passage.

"Some soldier of Mithras, who at his initiation in the gloomy
cavern,--in the camp, it may well be said, of darkness,--when at the
sword's point a sword is presented to him as though in mimicry of
martyrdom, and thereupon a crown is put upon his head, is admonished to
resist and cast it off, and, if you like, transfer it to his shoulders,
saying that Mithras is his crown. He even has his virgins and his
ascetics (continentes). Let us take note of the devices of the devil,
who is wont to ape some of God's things." ("De Corona," xv.)

From this it is plain that the worshippers of Mithras had the simple
rites of Buddhists and Christians, baptism and the bloodless altar;
also an early Freemasonry, which some detect veiled in the Indian
life of Buddha. Thus the incident of the sword and crown in the
Mithraic initiation is plainly based on the menacing sword of Mâra in
the "Lalita Vistara" and the crown that he offered Buddha. In modern
masonry it is feigned that Hiram Abiff, the architect of Solomon's
temple, made three efforts to escape from three assassins. These are
plainly Old Age, Disease, and Death. He sought to evade the first at
the east of the temple, in the same way that Buddha tried to escape
by the eastern gate. The second and third flights of Hiram and Buddha
were to the same points of the compass. Then Buddha escaped the lower
life through the Gate of Benediction, and Hiram was killed. The
disciples of Mithras had, in the comedy of their initiation, "seven
tortures,"--heat, cold, hunger, thirst, fire, water, etc.,--experiences
by no means confined to histrionics in the experience of Buddha's
Wanderers. A modern mason goes through the comedy of giving up his
gold and silver and baring his breast and feet, a form that once
had a meaning. Mithras was born in a cave; and at Easter there was
the ceremony called by Tertullian the "image of the resurrection."
The worshippers, Fermicus tells us ("De Errore," xxiii.), placed by
night a stone image on a bier in a cave and went through the forms of
mourning. The dead god was then placed in a tomb, and after a time
withdrawn from it. Then lights were lit, and poems of rejoicing sounded
out, and the priest comforted the devotees. "You shall have salvation
from your sorrows!" Dupuis naturally compares all this to the _cierge
pascal_ and Catholic rites. In Jerusalem the Greek pontiff goes into
the cave called Christ's sepulchre and brings out miraculous fire
to the worshippers, who are fighting and biting each other outside,
imaging unconsciously Buddha's great battle with Mâra and the legions
of hell, its thunder and lightning and turmoil, followed by a bright
coruscation, and by the angels who greeted his victory. This sudden
illumination, which is the chief rite of Freemasonry, of Mithraism, and
of Christianity, has oddly enough been thrown overboard by the English
Church.

That Mithraism was at once Freemasonry and Buddhism is proved by its
great spread. Buddhism was the first missionary religion. Judaism and
the other old priestcrafts were for a "chosen people." At the epoch of
Christ, Mithraism had already honeycombed the Roman paganism. Experts
have discovered its records in Arthur's Oon and other British caves.

A similar Freemasonry was Pythagoreanism in Greece. Colebrooke, the
prince of Orientalists, saw at once that its philosophy was purely
Buddhist. Its rites were identical with those of the Mithraists and
Essenes. These last must now be considered. They have this importance,
that they are due to a separate propagandism. Alexandria was built by
the great invader of India, to bridge the east and the west. And an
exceptional toleration of creeds was the result.

Neander divides Israel at the date of Christ into three sections:--

1. Pharisaism, the "dead theology of the letter."

2. Sadduceeism, "debasing of the spiritual life into worldliness."

3. Essenism, Israel mystical--a "co-mingling of Judaism with the old
Oriental theosophy."

Concerning this latter section, Philo wrote a letter to a man named
Hephæstion, of which the following is a portion:--

 "I am sorry to find you saying that you are not likely to visit
 Alexandria again. This restless, wicked city can present but few
 attractions, I grant, to a lover of philosophic quiet. But I cannot
 commend the extreme to which I see so many hastening. A passion for
 ascetic seclusion is becoming daily more prevalent among the devout
 and the thoughtful, whether Jew or Gentile. Yet surely the attempt to
 combine contemplation and action should not be so soon abandoned. A
 man ought at least to have evinced some competency for the discharge
 of the social duties before he abandons them for the divine. First the
 less, then the greater.

 "I have tried the life of the recluse. Solitude brings no escape from
 spiritual danger. If it closes some avenues of temptation, there are
 few in whose case it does not open more. Yet the Therapeutæ, a sect
 similar to the Essenes, with whom you are acquainted, number many
 among them whose lives are truly exemplary. Their cells are scattered
 about the region bordering on the farther shore of the Lake Mareotis.
 The members of either sex live a single and ascetic life, spending
 their time in fasting and contemplation, in prayer or reading. They
 believe themselves favoured with divine illumination--an inner light.
 They assemble on the Sabbath for worship, and listen to mystical
 discourses on the traditionary lore which they say has been handed
 down in secret among themselves. They also celebrate solemn dances
 and processions of a mystic significance by moonlight on the shore
 of the great mere. Sometimes, on an occasion of public rejoicing,
 the margin of the lake on our side will be lit with a fiery chain of
 illuminations, and galleys, hung with lights, row to and fro with
 strains of music sounding over the broad water. Then the Therapeutæ
 are all hidden in their little hermitages, and these sights and sounds
 of the world they have abandoned make them withdraw into themselves
 and pray.

 "Their principle at least is true. The soul which is occupied with
 things above, and is initiated into the mysteries of the Lord,
 cannot but account the body evil, and even hostile. The soul of man
 is divine, and his highest wisdom is to become as much as possible
 a stranger to the body with its embarrassing appetites. God has
 breathed into man from heaven a portion of His own divinity. That
 which is divine is invisible. It may be extended, but it is incapable
 of separation. Consider how vast is the range of our thought over the
 past and the future, the heavens and the earth. This alliance with
 an upper world, of which we are conscious, would be impossible, were
 not the soul of man an indivisible portion of that divine and blessed
 spirit. Contemplation of the divine essence is the noblest exercise
 of man; it is the only means of attaining to the highest truth and
 virtue, and therein to behold God is the consummation of our happiness
 here."

Here we have the higher Buddhism, which seeks to reach the plane of
spirit, an "alliance with the upper world" by the aid of solitary
reverie. That Philo knew where this religion had come from is, I think,
proved by another passage.

"Among the Persians there is the order of Magi who deeply investigate
the works of nature for the discovery of truth, and in leisure's quiet
are initiated into and expound in clearest significance the divine
virtues.

"In India, too, there is the sect of the Gymnosophists, who, in
addition to speculative philosophy, diligently cultivate the ethical
also, and have made their life an absolute ensample of virtue.

"Palestine, moreover, and Syria are not without their harvest of
virtuous excellence, which region is inhabited by no small portion of
the very populous nation of the Jews. There are counted amongst them
certain ones, by name Essenes, in number about four thousand, who
derive their name, in my opinion, by an inaccurate trace from the term
in the Greek language for holiness (Essen or Essaios--Hosios, holy),
inasmuch as they have shown themselves pre-eminent by devotion to the
service of God; not in the sacrifice of living animals, but rather in
the determination to make their own minds fit for a holy offering."
(Philo, "Every virtuous man is free.")

Plainly here the Essenes are pronounced of the same faith as the
Gymnosophists of India, who abstain from the bloody sacrifice, that is
the Buddhists.

I will now jot hastily down the points of contact between one of these
monasteries described by Philo and a Buddhist monastery. In the centre
is the sanctuary. Round it, in an enclosure "four square," are ranged
the cells of the monks. The monks in Thibet, according to the Abbé Huc,
may be divided into three categories.

1. Those who live in monasteries and perform the religious services,
and also, like the Essenes described by Josephus, farm the convent land.

2. Hermits, in caves, like Banos dreaming holy dreams.

3. Wandering missionaries (Parivrajakas) who, like the "Apostles"
described in the recently discovered "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,"
are not allowed to remain more than a day in the same place.

In the Buddhist Lent the community goes into a hastily built group of
mud huts in the jungle. Each of these is tenanted by a monk and two
novices. Each has a "guest chamber" for a sick man, or a wandering
beggar. This throws light on much. Let us continue our parallelism.

Enforced vegetarianism, community of goods, rigid abstinence from
sexual indulgence, also a high standard of purity, were common to both
the Buddhists and the Therapeuts.

Neither community allowed the use of wine.

Long fastings were common to both.

With both, silence was a special spiritual discipline.

The Therapeut left "for ever," says Philo, "brothers, children, wives,
father and mother," for the contemplative life.

Like the Buddhists, the Therapeuts had nuns vowed to chastity.

The preacher and the missionary, two original ideas of Buddhism, were
conspicuous amongst the Therapeuts. This was in direct antagonism to
the spirit of Mosaism.

The Therapeut was a healer of the body as well as the soul.

Turning to the kindred society of the Essenes we get a few additional
points of contact.

The Essenes, like the Buddhist monks, had ridiculous laws relating to
spitting and other natural acts, those of the Essenes being regulated
by a superstitious veneration for the Sabbath day, those of the
Buddhists, by a superstitious respect for a pagoda.

In Buddhist monasteries a rigid obedience, together with a quite
superstitious respect for the person of a superior, is enacted.
In Buddhaghosa's Parables is a puerile story of a malicious Muni,
who, when an inferior monk had gone out of a hut where the two
were sleeping, lay across the doorway in order to make the novice
inadvertently commit the great sin of placing his foot above his
superiors head. The penalty of such an act is that the offender's
head ought to be split into seven pieces. With the Essenes similar
superstitions were rife. If an Approacher accidentally touched the hem
of the garment of an Associate, all sorts of purifications had to be
gone through.

The principle of thrift and unsavouriness in dress was carried to
extremes by both Essenes and Buddhists. The sramana (ascetic) was
required to stitch together for his _kowat_ the refuse rags acquired
by begging. The Essenes were expected to wear the old clothes of their
co-religionists until they tumbled to pieces.

In the Thibetan "Life of Buddha," by Rockhill, it is announced that
when the great teacher first cast off his kingly silks he donned a foul
dress that had been previously worn by ten other saints. This throws
light on the story of Elisha.

Dr. Ginsburg ("The Essenes," p. 13) shows that the Essenes had eight
stages of progress in inner or spiritual knowledge.

1. Outward or bodily purity by baptism.

2. The state of purity that has conquered the sexual desire.

3. Inward and spiritual purity.

4. A meek and gentle spirit which has subdued all anger and malice.

5. The culminating point of holiness.

6. The body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the mystic
acquires the gift of prophecy.

7. Miraculous powers of healing, and of raising the dead.

8. The mystic state of Elias.

The Buddhists have likewise eight stages of inner progress, the
Eightfold Holy Path. The first step, "Those who have entered the
stream, the Naírañjana, the mystic river of Buddha," is precisely
the same as the first Essene step. Then follow advances in purity,
holiness, and mastery of passion. In the last two stages the Buddhists,
like the Essenes, gained supernatural powers, to be used in miraculous
cures, prophecies, and other occult marvels. It must be mentioned that
the Essenes were circumcised as well as the other Jews.

The word "Essenes," according to some learned philologists, means
the "Bathers," or "Baptisers," baptism having been their initiatory
rite. Josephus tells us that this baptism was not administered until
the aspirant had remained a whole year outside the community, but
"subjected to their rule of life."

I will here give the rite of Buddhist baptism (abhisheka) when a
novice is about to become a monk. It consists of many washings,
borrowed plainly by the early Buddhists from the Brahmins, and brings
to mind the frequent use of water attributed to the Hemero Baptists
or disciples of John. It may be mentioned that in some Buddhist
countries--Nepal, for instance--the various monkish vows are now taken
only for form sake. This makes the letter, retained after the spirit
has departed, all the more valuable.

The neophyte having made an offer of scents and unguents (betel-nut,
paun, etc.) to his spiritual guide (guru), the latter, after certain
formalities, draws four circles in the form of a cross, in honour of
the Tri Ratna (trinity), on the ground, and the neophyte, seated in a
prescribed position, recites the following text: "I salute Lord Buddha,
Dharma, and Sangha, and entreat them to bestow on me the Pravrajya
Vrata." The first and second days of the ceremonial are consumed in
prayers and formalities carried on by the guide and his pupil alone.
On the second day another mystical cross is drawn on the ground, the
Swastica. A pot containing water and other mystic ingredients, a gold
lotus, and certain confections and charms, figure in these early rites.
At last it is poured on the neophyte's head. This is the baptism.

Previous to this there is a confession of sins and much catechising.
The catechumen's name is changed at the baptism, and his head is
shaved. A light is lit which reminds one of the φωτισμός of the early
Christians. Besides their baptism, the Essenes and Therapeuts had a
mystery (sacramentum), an oblation of bread. Part of this was placed
upon the bloodless altar, and part eaten. The Buddhists with their
wheat and rice do exactly the same thing.

Two other points remain, the most important of all.

The Buddhists have a Trinity, Buddha or Swayambhu, the Self-Existent,
Dharma or Prajnâ, which is the same word as Philo's Sophia Wisdom.
From these two the Father and the Mother have been produced. Sangha,
literally Union, the union of matter and spirit, like St. Paul's
Christ, Humanity--ideal Humanity.

That a nation so "stiff-necked" as the Jews in the matter of their
one God, should have accepted a Trinity, shows certainly a foreign
influence.

The second point is stronger still. The Buddhist teachers in Persia
and Egypt in days before Christ; in Japan, in Islâm, during the Middle
Ages; in Europe now,--have had and have one method of procedure.
They say practically, "Religion as we conceive it has only one
lesson--knowledge of God. This is to be acquired not externally through
creeds and priests, but internally by the education and purification of
the soul. Keep your Bibles if the weaker brethren insist on them, but
explain that they are symbols, not history. Keep your prophets, your
Moses, your Mahomet, your Zoroaster, and fasten our teaching on him.
Keep your hob-goblins and folklore, but give up your bloody altar."

Now, in the view of the Jew, God had made a covenant with Israel, which
was to last as long as the sun, the moon, and the stars. In return for
the "offerings of the Lord made by fire" (Levit. xxiv. 9) on the temple
altar of Jerusalem, Israel was to triumph over its foes and receive
every temporal blessing. The advice of the Buddhist was practically
that the Jewish half of the bargain was to be broken, but that the
Bible, the document containing the contract, was to be retained. _A
priori_ could any one have guessed that advice of this sort could be
taken?

And yet we see the Essenes "allegorize" the bloody altar out of their
Bible, but cling to the document more fondly than ever. The early
Christians and Justin and Irenæus do the same. Scripture for the early
Church was the Old Testament.




CHAPTER VI.

_The Gospel according to the Hebrews._


Papias, the Bishop of Hieropolis (about A.D. 140), wrote a small
sentence which, examined critically recently, has revolutionised all
our ideas about the four eye-witnesses of Paley.

He tells us that Matthew first in the Hebrew dialect wrote the λόγια
(sayings), and each person translated as he was able.

This tells us everything. Matthew in Aramaic wrote down all the
"sayings" of Christ that he could remember, and our three gospels and a
number of other gospels were translations, enlargements, and fanciful
versions of this. Matthew's work emerged in the Church at Jerusalem,
and was their sole scripture. Jerome (416 A.D.), writing against the
Pelagians, says:

"In the Gospel according to the Hebrews--which is written, indeed,
in the Chaldee and Syriac language, but in Hebrew letters, which the
Nazarenes use to this day--according to the Apostles, or, as very many
deem, according to Matthew." ("Dial. adv. Pelag.," ch. iii.)

This gives us its title. The Gospel according to the Hebrews was first
called the Gospel according to the Apostles, and sometimes the Gospel
according to Matthew. What do we know about this Gospel according to
the Apostles? In a great trial, three or four obscure witnesses often
unexpectedly assume a dominant importance. In the great trial now going
on of Christianity (as distinguished from the religion of Christ), four
such witnesses have suddenly surged up.

They are Hegesippus, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenæus. What do they tell
us of the Gospel of the Apostles--the Gospel according to the Hebrews?

Hegesippus (170 A.D.) was the earliest Church historian, but his
history has been destroyed. Eusebius tells us ("Hist.," iv. 22) that he
was a Jew, and that he used the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

Papias, according to Eusebius, also used it, for he quotes from it the
story of the woman taken in adultery.

Irenæus (Hœr. i. 26) tells us that the Ebionites (Church of Jerusalem)
used "that Gospel which is according to Matthew." As we have
overwhelming evidence that the Ebionites used the Gospel according
to the Hebrews, it is plain that the Gospel according to Matthew of
Irenæus was the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

Remains Justin Martyr, and now the din of battle grows loud. Did he
know anything of the sayings (λόγια)? Had he ever heard of the Gospel
according to the Apostles? Or did he, according to the conventional
defence, know only our Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

The answer on the surface seems convincing. Justin never mentions the
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John at all. He makes one hundred
and ninety-seven quotations from the Old Testament, with the names of
the authors and books attached. He alludes to "a man amongst us named
John," as the author of the Revelations. He gives two hundred gospel
quotations, and professes to get them from the sayings of our Lord,
though he does not mention Matthew. He announces also that he is citing
the "Memoirs of the Apostles," the alternative title apparently of the
Gospel according to the Hebrews. Are the sayings of our Lord quoted by
Justin precisely similar to the words of Christ in our gospels? As a
matter of fact, they differ considerably in the English translation,
and still more in the Greek, as shown by Dr. Giles in his "Hebrew and
Christian Records." It is replied that Justin quoted from our gospels
and made mistakes.

Much has been made by the conventional defence of certain words used
by Justin in reference to the works he was quoting from, "which are
called gospels," but Schliermacher contends that the passage is an
interpolation, and an instance in which a marginal note has been
incorporated into the text. He urges, and so does Dr. Giles, that, at
the date of Justin, ευαγγελια could not have been used in the plural
for books. It is twice used in the singular by Justin elsewhere, and
then means simply the Christian revelation (literally, glad tidings).

I propose now to give all that can be recovered from the writings of
the Fathers of the Gospel according to the Apostles. To this I will add
the "Sayings of our Lord" as quoted by Justin. If these are not from
the Gospel of the Hebrews, at any rate we get a much earlier version
of Christ's words than those read in our churches. For the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, consult Renan, "Les Evangiles," chap. vi.;
Hilgenfeld, "Novum Testamentum extra Canonem Receptum," Fasc. iv.;
Nicholson, "The Gospel according to the Hebrews;" and Baring-Gould.


THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS.

Epiphanius has given us the opening verses:--

 "There was a certain man, by name Jesus, and he of about thirty years,
 who chose us out.

 "And when he had come to Capernaum, he entered into the house of
 Simon, who was surnamed Peter, and opened his mouth and said,

 "Passing by the Lake of Tiberias, I chose out John and James, sons of
 Zebedee, and Simon and Andrew, ... and Thaddæus, and Simon the Zealot,
 and Judas the Iscariot;

 "And thee, Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, I called, and
 thou didst follow me.

 "I will therefore that ye be twelve apostles for a testimony to
 Israel."

A fragment shows that the flight into Egypt was in the gospel.

 "... then he arose and took the young child and departed into Egypt,

 "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the prophet, Out of
 Egypt have I called my son."

Now, supposing that there were no class interests in the way, it
would be difficult to read the opening verses of this gospel without
seeing what Justin meant by the "Memoirs of the Apostles." In it the
Apostles expressly announce that Jesus has "chosen them out" to produce
a "testimony," testament, memorial; and Matthew, apparently, is to
be the amanuensis. This "testimony" was the entire New Testament,
with the earliest Church, the Church of Jerusalem. It was called
indiscriminately, as we have seen from Jerome, the Gospel according
to the Apostles, and the Gospel according to Matthew. Papias and
Hegesippus, the immediate predecessors of Justin, used it, and Irenæus
some years later.

Let us go on with the Gospel of the Apostles.

 "And John began baptizing.

 "And there came out unto him Pharisees who were baptized, and all
 Jerusalem.

 "And John had a raiment of camel's hair and a leathern girdle about
 his loins, and his food was wild honey, whereof the taste was that of
 manna.

 "And behold the mother of the Lord and his brethren said to him, John
 the Baptist baptizeth for remission of sins. Let us go and be baptized
 by him.

 "But he said to them, Wherein have I sinned that I should go and be
 baptized by him? except, perchance, this very thing that I have said
 is ignorance.

 "And when the people had been baptized, Jesus also came and was
 baptized by John.

 "And as he went up, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy
 Spirit, in shape of a dove, descending and entering into him.

 "And a voice from heaven said, Thou art my beloved Son. I have this
 day begotten thee.

 "And straightway a great light shone around the place. And John fell
 down before him, and said, I pray thee, Lord, baptize thou me.

 "But he prevented him, saying, Let be; for thus it is becoming that
 all things be fulfilled.

 "And it came to pass when the Lord had come up from the water, the
 entire fountain of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and
 said to him,

 "My Son, in all the prophets did I wait thee, that thou mightest come
 and I might rest in thee;

 "For thou art my rest. Thou art my first-born Son for ever and for
 ever."

 "And the Lord said, If thy brother hath sinned in word, and hath made
 thee amends seven times in a day, receive him.

 "Simon, his disciple, said to him, Seven times in a day?

 "The Lord answered and said unto him, I tell thee also unto seventy
 times seven, for in the prophets likewise after they were anointed by
 the Holy Spirit utterance of sin was found."

       *       *       *       *       *

 "And there was a man whose right hand was withered, and he said, I was
 a mason, seeking sustenance by my hands. I beseech thee, Jesus, that
 thou restore me to health that I may not shamefully beg for food. And
 Jesus healed him.

 "And it was told to him, Behold thy mother and thy brethren stand
 without.

 "And he answered, Who is my mother and brethren?

 "And he stretched out his hand over the disciples, and said, These are
 my brethren and mother that do the wishes of my Father.

 "And behold there came to him two rich men. And one said, Good master.

 "But he said, Call me not good, for he that is good is one, the Father
 in the heavens.

 "The other of the rich men said to him, Master, what good thing shall
 I do and live?

 "He said unto him, Man, perform the law and the prophets.

 "He answered him, I have performed them.

 "He said unto him, Go, sell all that thou hast and divide it with the
 poor, and come, follow me.

 "But the rich man began to scratch his head, and it pleased him not.

 "And the Lord said unto him, How sayest thou, I have performed the law
 and the prophets? seeing that it is written in the law Thou shalt love
 thy neighbour as thyself. And behold many of thy brethren, sons of
 Abraham, are clad with dung, dying for hunger, and thy house is full
 of much goods, and there goeth from it nought unto them.

 "And he turned and said to Simon, his disciple, sitting by him, Simon,
 son of John, it is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of a
 needle than a rich man into the kingdom of the heavens."


THE "SAYINGS OF OUR LORD." (Justin Martyr.)

"Love your enemies. Be kind and merciful as your heavenly Father is.

"To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other, and
him that taketh away thy cloak or thy coat forbid not. And whosoever
shall be angry shall be in danger of the fire. And every one that
compelleth thee to go with him a mile follow him two. And let your good
works shine before men, that they, seeing them, may glorify your Father
which is in heaven.

"Give to him that asketh, and from him that would borrow, turn not
away. For if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what new thing
do ye? Even the publicans do this. Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and where thieves break
through, but lay up for yourself treasure in heaven, where neither moth
nor rust doth corrupt. For what is a man profited if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul? And what shall a man give in exchange for
it? Lay up, therefore, treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
strength, and thy neighbour as thyself.

"Swear not at all, but let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; for
whatsoever is more than this cometh of evil.

"If ye love them that love you, what new thing do ye? For even
fornicators do this. But I say unto you, pray for your enemies, and
love them that hate you, and bless them that curse you, and pray for
them that despitefully use you.

"There are some who have been made eunuchs of men and some who were
born eunuchs, and some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom
of heaven's sake; but all cannot receive this saying.

"If thy right eye offend thee, cut it out; for it is better for thee
to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than having two eyes to be
cast into everlasting fire.

"Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her committeth adultery with
her already in his heart before God.

"Whoso shall marry that is divorced from another husband committeth
adultery.

"I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

"Fear not them that kill you and after that can do no more, but fear
him who after death is able to cast both soul and body into hell.

"Except ye be born again, verily ye shall not enter the kingdom of
heaven.

"The children of this world marry and are given in marriage, but the
children of the world to come neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but shall be like the angels in heaven.

"Many false Christs and false apostles shall arise and shall deceive
many of the faithful.

"Beware of false prophets, who shall come to you clothed outwardly in
sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

"And he overthrew the money-changers, and exclaimed, Woe unto ye
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because ye pay tithe of mint and rue
but do not observe the love of God and justice. Ye whited sepulchres,
appearing beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men's
bones. Woe unto ye scribes, for ye have the keys, and ye do not enter
in yourselves, and them that are entering in ye hinder. Ye blind
guides, ye are become twofold more the children of hell.

"The law and the prophets were until John the Baptist. From that time
the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by
force.

"And if you can receive it, he is Elijah who was to come. He that hath
ears to hear let him hear.

"Elijah must come and restore all things. But I say unto you, Elijah is
already come, and they knew him not, but have done to him whatever they
chose. Then the disciples understood that he spake to them about John
the Baptist.

"The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the
Pharisees and scribes, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

"Not every one who saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the
kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is
in heaven. For whosoever heareth me and doeth my sayings, heareth him
that sent me. And many will say unto me, Lord. Lord, have we not eaten
and drunk in thy name and done wonders? And then will I say unto them,
Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity. Then shall be wailing and
gnashing of teeth, when the righteous shall shine like the sun, and
the wicked are sent into everlasting fire. For many shall come in my
name clothed outwardly in sheep's clothing, but inwardly being ravening
wolves. By their works ye shall know them. Every tree that bringeth
not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

"I give you power to tread on serpents and on scorpions and on
scolopendras, and on all the might of the enemy.

"They shall come from the East and shall sit down with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the
kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness.

"There is none good but God only, who made all things.

"No man knoweth the Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father, and
they to whom the Son revealeth him.

"An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign, and no sign
shall be given it save the sign of Jonah.

"Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things
that are God's.

"In whatsoever things I shall apprehend you, in those also will I judge
you."


SAYINGS FROM THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS.

"I have come to abolish sacrifices; and if ye do not cease to
sacrifice, the wrath of God against you will not cease.

"Be ye approved money-changers.

"No servant can serve two masters. If we wish to serve both God and
Mammon it is unprofitable to us.

"I am not come to take away from the law of Moses, nor add to the law
of Moses am I come.

"It is blessed to give rather than to receive.

"Keep the mysteries for me and for the sons of my house.

"I am not come to call the just, but sinners.

"There is not thank to you if ye love them that love you; but there is
thank to you if ye love your enemies and them that hate you.

"For there shall be false Christs, false prophets, false apostles,
heresies, lovings of rule.

"Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall be saved, but he
that doeth righteousness.

"If ye have been gathered with me into my bosom, and do not my
commandments, I will cast you away and will say unto you, Depart from
me, I know not whence ye are, workers of iniquity.

"And the Lord said, Ye shall be as lambkins in the midst of wolves. And
Peter answered and said, If then the wolves rend the lambkins asunder?
Jesus said to Peter, Let not the lambkins after they are dead fear the
wolves. And do ye not fear them that kill you and can do nought unto
you. But fear him who, after you are dead, hath authority over soul and
body to cast into the Gehenna of fire.

"Just now my mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one of my hairs and
bore me up to the great mountain of Tabor.

"He that hath marvelled shall reign, and he that hath reigned shall
rest.

"I am he concerning whom Moses prophesied, saying, A prophet will the
Lord our God raise unto you from your brethren even as me. Him hear ye
in all things, for whosoever heareth not that prophet shall die."

Here is the account of the woman taken in adultery afterwards borrowed
by John:--

 "And they went each to his own house, and Jesus went to the Mount of
 Olives.

 "And at dawn he came again into the temple, and all the people came to
 him; and having sat down, he taught them.

 "And the scribes and the Pharisees brought up a woman taken up for
 adultery.

 "And having placed her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this
 woman hath been taken up in adultery, in the very act;

 "And in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What therefore dost
 thou say?

 "And this they said, trying him, that they might have whereby to
 accuse him.

 "But Jesus having bent down, kept writing with his finger upon the
 ground.

 "But as they continued asking him, he unbent and said to them, Let the
 sinless one of you first cast against her the stone. And having bent
 down again he kept writing on the ground.

 "But they having heard, went out one by one, beginning from the elder
 ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman.

 "And Jesus having unbent, said to her, Mistress, where are they? Hath
 none condemned thee?

 "And she said, None, sir. And Jesus said, Neither will I condemn thee,
 go and from this time sin no more."

The evidence accumulates. Justin gives the voice from the sky exactly
as it is given in the Gospel of the Apostles.

"Thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee."

He then proceeds to argue against an heretical theory that these words
meant that Jesus was the Son of God on receipt of the Holy Spirit
at baptism, and not before. But that is plainly the meaning of the
passage, for the Ebionites "assert," says Hippolytus, "that our Lord
was a man in like sense with all." (L. vii. 2). This is so patent that
our first gospel has changed the words to "in thee I am well pleased."
Had Justin known the false Matthew's false version, he would have
quoted it eagerly instead of taking the trouble to refute the heretics.

I come to a second piece of evidence. In the lives of Krishna, Râma,
Buddha, etc., many incidents are plainly inserted as authority for
rites. Thus Buddha has his hair cut off by the god Indra, and receives
the Abhisheka (baptism) at the hands of the heavenly host; and true
Buddhists are expected to imitate him in this. The baptism of the early
church was called φωτισμός (Illumination), Justin tells us; and in the
Coptic Church, as in Buddhism, the lighting of a taper is still a part
of the ceremony. Now Justin informs us that a light was kindled on the
Jordan on the occasion of Christ's baptism. It is plain again here that
he is quoting from the Gospel according to the Apostles, and not from
our gospels, who have cut out this light altogether.

Here is another strong piece of evidence. The Gospel according to the
Apostles had a passage about "false Christs, false prophets, false
_apostles_." Justin also has a passage about "false Christs, false
_apostles_" This is most important, as it refers to St. Paul. Renan
shows that in the original Gospel according to the Hebrews, there must
have been more than one attack on this "false apostle." He is "the
enemy" who sowed tares amongst the gospel wheat. The "enemy" was his
nickname with the Church of Jerusalem. Pseudo Matthew softens this to
"the devil," and cuts out the "false apostle" altogether. It is plain
that Justin is not quoting from him.

Renan refers to another attack on St. Paul from the Gospel according to
the Hebrews.

"People have prophesied and cast out devils in the name of Jesus. Jesus
openly repudiates them, because they have "practised illegality.""(Les
Evangiles, chap. vi.)

Stronger still is this. Justin records that when the question was put
to Christ, "Show us a sign!" he answered, "An evil and adulterous
generation seeketh after a sign, and no sign shall be given them,
save the sign of Jonah." Justin goes on to say that Jesus "spoke this
obscurely" (Trypho, ch. vii.), and he explains the meaning of the sign.
Had he possessed our Matthew, he could not possibly have done this, for
in the 40th verse of the twelfth chapter, Jesus, instead of "speaking
obscurely," explains that Jonah's three days' sojourn in the whale's
belly typifies his own three days' sojourn in the tomb.

In many other points Justin's "Memoirs of the Apostles" differ from our
gospels.

"For an ass's foal was standing at a certain entrance to a village,
tied to a vine." Our gospels know nothing about the vine incident when
they narrate the story of Christ's entry to Jerusalem. Justin says
that Jesus wrought amongst yokes and ploughs. Of this our gospels know
nothing.

He says, too, that Jesus was born in a cave. (Trypho, ch. lxxviii.) The
First Gospel of the Infancy confirms him here.

"The Magi _from Arabia_ came to Bethlehem and worshipped the child."
(H. Trypho, ch. lxxviii.) Here again Justin is plainly using some other
gospel. Our gospels know nothing of the Magi coming from Arabia.

There is one passage used in the conventional defence to show
that Justin knew the fourth gospel also, but Dr. Abbott, in the
"Encyclopædia Britannica," holds that this is impossible.

"Except ye be born again, verily ye shall not enter the kingdom of
heaven."

It is so obvious that baptism is a new birth, that the Brahmins have
been the "twice born" from time immemorial. The Buddhist Abhisheka
too is called the "whole birth." Baptism must have been compared to a
birth in the young Christian Church from an early date. And if Justin
had known Christ's explanations about the birth from water and the
Spirit, he could have scarcely wandered on like this. "Now, that it is
impossible for those who have once been born to re-enter the wombs of
those that bear them, is evident to all."

But there is a more overwhelming argument. Justin was a Platonic
philosopher converted to Christianity, as he thought. But in the view
of the sober Dr. Lamson, he brought with him into the fold Philo's
doctrine of the Logos. It does not appear in Christianity until his
date. This Logos, according to Justin and to Philo, was a distinct
being, a second God. And in Justin's dialogue with Trypho, he tries to
prove all this, enlisting three times into his argument the passage,
"No man knoweth the Father but the Son." (Varied in Matt. xi. 27). Is
it conceivable that if he had had at his command the opening verses of
the fourth gospel, and believed them to be by an apostle of Christ, he
would have spared Trypho the infliction of them? The poor Jew would
have heard of nothing else.

But a new witness has surged up, coming, as it were, from the tomb. I
allude to the fragment of the Gospel of Peter. Justin writes:--

"For also, as said the prophet, mocking him, they placed him on a
_tribunal_, and said, Give judgment to us." Our gospels know nothing
of the incident of the _tribunal_, nor of the mocking speech recorded
by Justin. "Let him who raised the dead save himself." Now, the
newly-discovered Gospel of Peter says that they did place Christ on
the judgment-seat in mockery. It affirms also at the end that it was
inspired by the twelve disciples, just like the Gospel of the Hebrews.

In point of fact, the traditional argument of the advocates of
the miraculous origin of our four gospels goes practically on the
hypothesis that only these four gospels were in existence in Justin's
time. But Dr. Giles shows that Christendom at this period was flooded
with spurious gospels, spurious "revelations," spurious "epistles."
He cites from Lucian an account of a contemporary of Justin, one
Peregrinus, who murdered his father.

"Consigning himself to exile, he took to flight, and wandered about
from one country to another. At this time it was that he learnt the
wonderful philosophy of the Christians, having kept company with their
priests and scribes in Palestine. And what was the end of it? In a
short time he showed them to be mere children, for he became a prophet,
a leader of their processions, the marshaller of their meetings, and
everything in himself alone.

"And of their books, he explained and cleared up some, and wrote many
himself; and they deemed him a god, made use of him as a legislator,
and enrolled him as their patron." ("Hebrew and Christian Records," p.
82.)

Irenæus bears the same testimony. "But in addition to these things,
they introduce an unspeakable number of apocryphal and spurious
writings, which themselves have forged, to the consternation of those
that are foolish, and who do not know the writings of the truth." (Hœr.
i. 19.)

But worse than the composition of imaginary gospels is the
falsification of canonical scriptures. "It is obvious," says Origen,
"that the difference between the copies is considerable, partly from
conclusions of individual scribes, partly from the impious audacity of
some in correcting what is written, partly, also, from those who add or
remove what seems good to them in the work of correction." (Origen in
Matt. xv. 14.)

It might be imagined that a gospel that gives to us the only authentic
record of Christ's words, written down at an early date under the
sanction of James, Christ's immediate successor as the head of his
Church and of the other Apostles, would be cherished in Christendom as
the holiest of treasures. Instead of that, it was garbled, truncated,
vilified, pronounced heretical by a Pope, and finally suppressed. Why
was this? This question is the crux of historical Christianity.

At present we must content ourselves with a brief analysis of the
gospel, and say a few words first about the Ebionites.

The word "Ebionite" signifies "poor," and seems to be the Greek
rendering of bhikshu or beggar, the word by which Buddha described his
followers. The Ebionites were the earliest Christians. They composed
the Church of Jerusalem. It fled to Pella, on the Jordan, just before
the destruction of the Holy City. Bishop Lightfoot calls them the
Essene-Ebionites, because they were plainly in all their rites simple
Essenes.

The early fathers gave them five distinctive characteristics:--

1. They held Jesus to be "a man in like sense with all," as we have
seen from Hippolytus.

2. They rejected the writings of Paul, and indeed all other New
Testament scriptures, except the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

3. They refused to eat meat, like the Essenes.

4. Like the Essenes also they rejected wine, even in the Sacramentum.
"Therefore do these men reject the co-mixture of the heavenly wine,
and wish it to be the water of the world only, not receiving God so as
to have union with him," says Irenæus (Hœr. v. 3) speaking of them.

5. Like the Essenes they also insisted on the rite of circumcision.
Here is another passage from Irenæus, "They use the Gospel according
to Matthew only, and repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he
was an apostate from the law. As to the prophetical writings, they
endeavour to expound them in a somewhat singular manner. They practice
circumcision, persevere in the observance of those customs which are
enjoined by the law, and are so Judaic in their style of life that
they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the House of God." (Hœr. iii.
1.) Irenæus says also that their opinions were similar to those of
Cerinthus, who held that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, and that
at his baptism the Holy Spirit came to him.

These are the main peculiarities of the Ebionites, and they seem on the
surface to show that if Christ was an Essene, and James was an Essene,
and their Church after 150 years were still orthodox Essenes, the
"heresy" should be sought elsewhere. But at present we will consider
the Gospel according to the Apostles.

Epiphanius writes thus:--

"And they have the Gospel according to Matthew very full in Hebrew. For
assuredly this is still kept amongst them as it was at outset written
in Hebrew letters. But I do not know whether at the same time they have
taken away the genealogies from Abraham to Christ." (Hœr. xxix. 9.)

This lets in a flood of light. The main "heresy" of the Gospel
according to the Hebrews is that it contains no genealogies. But the
same must be said of Mark and John. And there is a version of Luke that
was used by the Marcionites that was also without the genealogies. And
critics affect to show that our Luke was plainly once without them
also:--

"And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape, like a dove, upon him;
and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son;
in thee I am well pleased. And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost,
returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness."

This is a consecutive sentence, and yet the genealogies have been
clumsily pitchforked into the middle of it. (Luke iii. 23.)

And with regard to Matthew, it can, at least, be proved that Justin
Martyr knew nothing of his genealogies.

"He was the Son of Man, either because of his birth by the Virgin,
who was, as I said, of the family of David, and Jacob, and Isaac, and
Abraham." Plainly Justin thought that it was the Virgin and not Joseph
that had descended from Abraham.

But the suppressing of genealogies that were not invented until one
hundred years after the Apostles were slumbering in forgotten tombs,
was only a detail of their "heresy." Their gospel makes out Christ to
be not the Logos masquerading in a human form, but a man and a prophet.
"A prophet will the Lord our God raise up unto you from your brethren,"
he says. And prophets can sin, and he can sin, for he was plainly
without the Holy Ghost until his baptism. It comes down, in the Hebrew
gospel, not _upon_, but _into_ him. And he is the Son of God from that
moment, not before.

"Call me not good, for he that is good is one the Father in the
heavens!" Pseudo-Matthew weakens this considerably, "There is none good
but one, that is God."

"He that is good is one." That was the motto of the Essenes of
Jerusalem. Tertullian tells us that certain "unlearned" Christians in
his day protested against the Trinity. "They declare that we proclaim
two or three gods, but they, they affirm, worship only one." (Adv.
Prax. c. 3.) The unlearned were the Church of Jerusalem that still
clung to the text, "He that is good is One."

We come to other "heresies." The early gospel knew nothing of Matthew's
interpolation about John the Baptist eating locusts, because John the
Baptist, as an Essene, could do nothing of the sort. And Jerome tells
us that the wicked Ebionites garbled the passage, Luke xxii. 15, to
make it appear that Jesus actually refused to eat flesh at the Passover
supper.

This is all that can be restored of this in the Ebionite gospel:--

"... Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the Passover?"

To this, Jesus answers:--

"Have I desired with desire to eat this flesh, the Passover, with you?"

It is very plain here that Luke is the garbler.

Still more instructive is the question of wine at the Lord's Supper.
Of course, the genuine gospel being written by water drinkers, had no
passage about the "fruit of the vine." But Luke, fortunately, has two
accounts of the celebration in chap. xxii.

"And he took the cup and gave thanks, and said, Take this and divide it
amongst yourselves.

"For I say unto you I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the
kingdom of God has come.

"And he took bread and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave it to them,
saying, This is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance
of me.

"Likewise the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament
in my blood, which is shed for you."

Now it is perfectly plain that verses 17 and 18 have been clumsily
added. They are not in Marcion's version. Mark and Matthew have been
more clever. They have garbled the passage better. Verses 19 and 20
fairly represent, I think, the real Gospel of the Hebrews. Justin says
that in the "Memoirs of the Apostles," were these words:--

"This do ye in remembrance of me. This is my body!"

In the scene of the Lord's Supper, James was apparently the most
prominent character. His removal from the list of the twelve apostles
in the canonical gospels is significant.

"And when the Lord had given his shroud to the servant of the priest,
he went to James and appeared to him.

"For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour wherein
he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he saw him rising again from the
dead.

"And the Lord said, Bring a table and bread.

"And he took the bread, and blessed and broke, and afterwards gave it
to James the Just, and said, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of
Man is risen from them that sleep."

Now, the suppression of all this in the orthodox gospels is, as Renan
shows, of immense importance. ("Les Evangiles," ch. vi.)

"Then was he seen by James," says St. Paul (1. Cor. xv. 7), "then by
all the Apostles."

This shows that the incident was known to the very earliest Church.




CHAPTER VII.

_The Essene Jesus._


We now come to an important question, Did Christianity emerge from
Essenism?

Historical questions are sometimes made more clear by being treated
broadly. Let us first deal with this from the impersonal side, leaving
out altogether the alleged words and deeds of Christ, Paul, etc. Fifty
years before Christ's birth there was a sect dwelling in the stony
waste where John prepared a people for the Lord. Fifty years after
Christ's death there was a sect in the same part of Palestine. The sect
that existed fifty years before Christ was called Essenes, Therapeuts,
Gnostics, Nazarites. The sect that existed fifty years after Christ's
death was called "Essenes or Jesseans," according to Epiphanius,
Therapeuts, Gnostics, Nazarites, and not Christians until afterwards.

Each had two prominent rites: baptism and what Tertullian calls the
"oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons, presbyters,
ephemereuts. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy, community of goods.
Each interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical way, so mystical, in
fact, that it enabled each to discover that the bloody sacrifice of
Mosaism was forbidden, not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have
been pointed out between these two sects by all Catholic writers
from Eusebius and Origen to the poet Racine, who translated Philo's
"Contemplative Life" for the benefit of pious court ladies. Was there
any connection between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive
that there can be two answers to such a question.

And if it can be proved, as Bishop Lightfoot affirms, that Christ was
an anti-Essene, who announced that His mission was to preserve intact
every jot and tittle of Mosaism as interpreted by the recognised
interpreters, this would simply show that he had nothing to do with the
movement to which his name has been given.

There are two Christs in the gospels. Let us consider the Essene Christ
first.

The first prominent fact of His life is His baptism by John. If John
was an Essene, the full meaning of this may be learnt from Josephus:--

"To one that aims at entering their sect, admission is not immediate;
but he remains a whole year outside it, and is subjected to their rule
of life, being invested with an axe, the girdle aforesaid, and a white
garment. Provided that over this space of time he has given proof of
his perseverance, he approaches nearer to this course of life, and
partakes of the holier waters of cleansing; but he is not admitted
to their community of life. Following the proof of his strength of
control, his moral conduct is tested for two years more; and when he
has made clear his worthiness, he is then adjudged to be of their
number. But before he touches the common meal, he pledges to them in
oaths to make one shudder, first that he will reverence the Divine
Being, and, secondly, that he will abide injustice unto men, and will
injure no one, either of his own accord or by command, but will always
detest the iniquitous, and strive on the side of the righteous; that
he will ever show fidelity to all, and most of all to those who are in
power, for to no one comes rule without God; and that, if he become a
ruler himself, he will never carry insolence into his authority, or
outshine those placed under him by dress or any superior adornment;
that he will always love truth, and press forward to convict those that
tell lies; that he will keep his hands from peculation, and his soul
pure from unholy gain; that he will neither conceal anything from the
brethren of his order, nor babble to others any of their secrets, even
though in the presence of force, and at the hazard of his life. In
addition to all this, they take oath not to communicate the doctrines
to any one in any other way than as imparted to themselves; to abstain
from robbery, and to keep close, with equal care, the books of their
sect and the names of the angels. Such are the oaths by which they
receive those that join them." (Josephus, De B. J., ii. 8, 2, 13.)

As a pendant to this, I will give the early Christian initiation from
the Clementine "Homilies."

"If any one having been tested is found worthy, then they hand over to
him according to the initiation of Moses, by which he delivered his
books to the Seventy who succeeded to his chair."

These books are only to be delivered to "one who is good and religious,
and who wishes to teach, and who is circumcised and faithful."

"Wherefore let him be proved not less than six years, and then,
according to the initiation of Moses, he (the initiator) should
bring him to a river or fountain, which is living water, where the
regeneration of the righteous takes place." The novice then calls to
witness heaven, earth, water, and air, that he will keep secret the
teachings of these holy books, and guard them from falling into profane
hands, under the penalty of becoming "accursed, living and dying, and
being punished with everlasting punishment."

"After this let him partake of bread and salt with him who commits them
to him."

Now if, as is believed by Dr. Lightfoot, the chief object of Christ's
mission was to establish for ever the Mosaism of the bloody altar, and
combat the main teaching of the ἀσκητής, or mystic, which "postulates
the false principle of the malignity of matter," why did He go to an
ἀσκητής to be baptised? Whether or not Christ belonged to mystical
Israel, there can be no discussion about the Baptist. He was a Nazarite
"separated from his mother's womb," who had induced a whole "people"
to come out to the desert and adopt the Essene rites and their
community of goods. And we see, from a comparison of the Essene and
early Christian initiations, what such baptism carried with it. It
implied preliminary instruction and vows of implicit obedience to the
instructor.

It is plain too that the Essene Christ knows at first nothing of any
antagonism to his teacher.

"The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom
of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." (Luke xvi, 16.)

This shows that far from believing that he had come to preserve the
Mosaism of the bloody altar, he considered that John and the Essenes
had power to abrogate it.

Listen, too, to the Essene Christ's instructions to his twelve
disciples:--

"As ye go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

This is the simple Gospel of John:--

"Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip
for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes."

Here again we have the barefooted Essenes without silver or gold. "He
that hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none," said the
Baptist. "And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, inquire
who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye
come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your
peace come upon it; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to
you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when
ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom
and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city. Behold, I
send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise
as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men; for they will
deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their
synagogues; and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my
sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they
deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it
shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And
the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the
child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause
them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's
sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved."

This passage is remarkable. No Christian disciple had yet begun to
preach, and yet what do we find? A vast secret organisation in every
city. It is composed of those who are "worthy" (the word used by
Josephus for Essene initiates); and they are plainly bound to succour
the brethren at the risk of their lives. This shows that Christ's
movement was affiliated with an earlier propagandism.

There is another question. On the hypothesis that Christ was an
orthodox Jew, why should he, plainly knowing beforehand what mistakes
and bloodshed it would cause, make his disciples mimic the Essenes in
externals? The Essenes had two main rites, baptism and the bloodless
oblation. Christ adopted them. The Essenes had a new name or conversion.

"Thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone."
(John i. 42.)

The Essenes had community of goods:--

"And all that believed were together, and had all things common." (Acts
ii. 44.)

"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me."
(Matt. xix. 21.)

A rigid continence was exacted:--

"All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given....
There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom
of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."
(Matt. xix. 11, 12.)

"And I looked, and, lo! a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with him an
hundred and forty-four thousand, having his Father's name written on
their foreheads.... These are they which were not defiled with women,
for they are virgins." (Rev. xiv. 1, 4.)

Divines tell us that this first passage is to have only a "spiritual"
interpretation. It forbids not marriage but excess. We might listen to
this if we had not historical cognizance of a sect in Palestine at this
date which enforced celibacy in its monasteries. The second passage
shows that the disciples understood him literally.

The bloody sacrifice forbidden:--

"I will have mercy and not sacrifice." (Matt. ix. 13.)

"Unless ye cease from sacrificing, the wrath shall not cease from you."
(Cited from Gospel of the Hebrews by Epiphanius, Hær. xxx. 16.)

Bishop Lightfoot, as I have mentioned, considers that Jesus was an
orthodox Jew, whose mission was to perpetuate every jot and tittle of
Mosaism; and that "emancipation" from the "swathing-bands" of the law
came from the Apostles. (Com. on Galatians, pp. 286, 287.) It might
be thought that this was a quaint undertaking for the Maker of the
million million starry systems to come to this insignificant planet in
bodily form to "perpetuate" institutions that Titus in thirty years
was to end for ever; even if we could forget that human sacrifices,
concubinage, polygamy, slavery, and border raids were amongst these
institutions. But if this Christ is the historical Christ, it appears
to me that we must eliminate the Christ of the gospels almost entirely.
For capital offences against the Mosaic law, the recognised authorities
three times sought the life of Jesus, twice after formal condemnation
by the Sanhedrim. These offences were Sabbath-breaking, witchcraft, and
speaking against Mosaic institutions. According to the Synoptics, he
never went to Jerusalem during his ministry until just the end of it;
although the three visits for the yearly festivals were rigidly exacted.

In my "Buddhism in Christendom" I give reasons for supposing that the
"multitudes" whose sudden appearance in stony wastes have bewildered
critics, were in reality the gatherings for the Therapeut festivals
described by Philo.

Bishop Lightfoot makes much of the fact that John's gospel makes Christ
go up once for the feast of tabernacles. But did he go as an orthodox
worshipper, to present his offerings for the bloody sacrifice? On the
contrary, on this very occasion he was accused of Sabbath-breaking and
demoniac possession; and the rulers of the people sent officers to
arrest him.

Leaving Mr. Gladstone and Professor Huxley to discuss whether Christ's
acts in the temple among the money changers were illegal, I must point
out that His dispersing the sellers of doves goes quite against the
theory that He desired to perpetuate Mosaic institutions, for the sale
of these doves was a necessity for the temple sacrifices.

Much has been made in modern pulpits of a vague word, "fulfilling."
Christ, it is said, did not overthrow the old law, he "fulfilled" it.
This is nonsense.

Mosaism was an "eternal covenant." It was a "perpetual statute,"
offerings of the "food of the Deity" on the altar of burnt sacrifice.
It was concubinage, slavery, polygamy, the _lex talionis_ made eternal
institutions. To say that a teacher who preaches forgiveness in place
of revenge, continence for concubinage, slaving for, instead of
slaving others, immortality of the soul for the religion of to-day, is
"fulfilling" merely an abuse of words.




CHAPTER VIII.

_The Anti-Essene Jesus._


I have said that in the New Testament there is an Essene and an
anti-Essene Christ. Both are most conspicuous in the Gospel of St.
Luke. Catholic and Protestant disputants are aware of this.

Until the days of Ferdinand Christian Baur, St. Luke had an immaculate
reputation. He was believed to be the companion of St. Paul on his
voyages. He was believed to have written the third gospel almost as
early as the date of Paul's imprisonment. He was the reputed author of
the Acts of the Apostles.

"Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you." (Col. iv. 14.)

In the Second Epistle to Timothy, and in the Epistle to Philemon, he is
also mentioned.

But now all is changed.

In the first place, two out of the three epistles that name him are
pronounced to be forgeries by all competent critics; and very few hold
even the Epistle to the Colossians to be by the pen of St. Paul. Then
it is pointed out that there is no mention of St. Luke's gospel or of
the Acts of the Apostles until the date of Irenæus (A.D. 180.)

Let us give the opening verses of the gospel as amended by that eminent
Greek scholar, Dr. Giles:--

"Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narrative
of those things which have been brought to fulfilment in us, even as
they which from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the
word have handed down to us, it hath seemed good to me also, following
all accurately from the beginning, to write unto thee, in order, most
excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those
things wherein thou hast been instructed."

Now, here it is plain, as Dr. Giles remarks, that the author "does
not profess to have been an original writer, or to have had perfect
understanding of all things from the very first," which is the
erroneous rendering of our authorised version, but that he follows the
accounts of others, who "were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word."
(Giles, "Apostolical Records," p. 34.)

Next comes the pertinent question, Who was the "most excellent
Theophilus?" The word used is _Kratistos_, "which is thought by Gibbon
to designate a man holding a civil or official dignity. If this be so,
we might find it difficult to suppose that such a title would have been
given to a Christian, even if there were any one of exalted station,
within a few years after the first promulgation of Christianity."
("Apostolical Records," p. 13.)

But at Antioch, about the year 171, there was a Theophilus, the
sixth bishop. He might have been called Kratistos without anything
inappropriate. He was a convert late in life, which may explain the
passage about "those things in which thou has been instructed."
Eusebius tells us that this Theophilus wrote a treatise against
Marcion. But in the view of modern critics, the forged epistles of Paul
to Timothy were also levelled against Marcion.

This has its significance. For the followers of Marcion have always
maintained that Luke's gospel is Marcion's gospel enlarged and
falsified. One of these, Megethius, declared it was full of errors and
contradictions. This controversy has been revived in modern times.

But before we deal with this important gospel, we must say a word about
what the Germans call Luke's "tendency,"--his scheme of colour, to use
an artistic expression.

Baur, comparing the Acts with other scriptures, was struck with the
many discrepancies and absolute false statements that it contained.
He perceived also that these false statements were not accidental
but systematic. Soon their motive dawned upon him. It was plain that
this "Luke," writing long after the animosities of Paul against the
historical Apostles had ceased, desired to tone down and conceal these
animosities. Hence the book of the Acts of the Apostles could not be
the work of a contemporary. And a strong motive for this has been
suggested by erudite Germans.

The early enemy of Christianity was the Jew. The Roman official at
first treated the animosities of the dominant party as part of the
incomprehensible Jewish superstition, and sided, when practicable,
with the weaker section. But when Christianity began to gain ground,
the Roman began to examine it more closely, and soon found much to
condemn. For the Essenes proclaimed that the State gods of the Romans
were wicked demons. The Essenes forbade the use of wine and flesh meat,
important elements in the ceremonial of the Roman religion. The Essenes
forbade slavery. The Essenes forbade marriage, replacing it, according
to rumour, with lewd rites in their secret orgies. Soon violent
persecutions arose.

Now it has been suggested by the Germans that at the date of Kratistos,
the school of Antioch sought to conciliate the Roman authority by
showing that Christianity was a harmless form of Judaism, equally
entitled to State toleration.

This "tendency" of "Luke" must be borne in mind. It is very plain in
the earlier chapters of the Acts. The gospels announce that at Christ's
death consternation and cowardice were amongst his followers. The
"lambs" had fled in all directions from the "wolves." St. Paul also
speaks of the fierce persecutions that followed the event,--Stephen
stoned, and the "havoc" and the "slaughter." And yet in the opening
chapters of the Acts we find the "wolves" more gentle than the "lambs."
They are "pricked in their heart." They at once allow Peter to proclaim
in the temple, and also before the Sanhedrim, that there is no
salvation in any name other than that of the malefactor they have just
executed (by inference not even in Yahve); and that all who will not
hear this malefactor shall be destroyed. And the Sanhedrim, in solemn
conclave, let him go, "finding nothing how they might punish him."
(Acts iv. 21.) And Gamaliel, a solemn doctor, advises his colleagues
to let the hated "lambs" alone, "lest haply they be found to fight
against God." Had a "wolf" talked like that, his brother "wolves" would
have made short work of him.

The "tendency" here is very plain. "Luke" wants it to be understood
that from the first the chief doctors saw no harm in Christianity,
and allowed it to be preached in the temple. I shall not waste time
over the controversy, whether "Luke" is an enlargement of Marcion's
or some other shorter gospel. As we know that the earliest and only
authentic gospel came from the Essene Ebionites, it is plain that all
anti-Essenism is an accretion.

We now come to the opening chapters of Luke's gospel. Let us see if it
is possible at this distance of time to trace how they were built up.

In the Jerusalem Talmud, and also in the Babylonish, is a somewhat
fanciful account of the slaughter of a priest named Zacharias. who was
killed in the court of the priests, _near the altar_. A great miracle
now occurred: his blood began to bubble, that it might cause fury to
come up to take vengeance! Soon Nebuzaradan (this fixes the date of
the story to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar) arrived at the temple. He
asked the meaning of the bubbling. He was told that the blood was the
blood of calves, and rams, and lambs. He caused some calves, and rams,
and lambs to be slaughtered; still the blood bubbled. He slaughtered
a number of rabbins; still the blood bubbled. Ninety-four thousand
priests were slaughtered before the blood of the dead Zacharias was
appeased. (Talmud Hierosol. in Taannith, fol. 69, Lightfoot the
Hebraist.)

We now come to the Protevangelion, a fanciful gospel attributed to
James, the "Bishop of Bishops," as he is called on the title page. It
has incorporated this story of Zacharias and his avenging blood; and
tacked on to it an account of the birth of the Virgin Mary. One Joachim
was much afflicted because Anna his wife had no issue. He "called to
mind the patriarch Abraham, how that God in the end of his life had
given him his son Isaac," and he went into the wilderness and fasted
forty days. An angel appeared to Anna and promised offspring. Mary
the child was born, and dedicated to God. Zacharias, the high priest,
received her in the temple. When she was twelve years old a veil was
wanted, and the high priest cast lots to find out what maiden should
spin it. The lot fell on Mary, and from this moment Zacharias was dumb.

Meantime, Mary was espoused to Joseph, who, shortly afterwards finding
his betrothed with child, was sorrowful. Both were summoned before
the deputy of Zacharias, who caused them to go through the prescribed
ordeal of drinking "the water of the Lord." Christ was born. The wise
men came. Herod slew the infants, and murdered Zacharias in the temple.
Then a mighty miracle occurred. The roofs of the temple howled, and
were rent from the top to the bottom. And a voice from heaven said,
"Zacharias is murdered, and his blood shall not be wiped away until the
revenger of his blood shall come."

Let us now suppose that Luke comes across this story, the "Luke" of the
epoch of the most excellent Theophilus, the Luke with the "tendency"
to soften subversive Essenism. How would he proceed? He might argue
that John the Baptist would make a more suitable hero. He could be born
of old parents like Mary. And the story would certainly gain in unity
and dramatic vigour, if Zacharias the priest was made the old father.

That one author has copied from the other there can be no doubt.

 Hail, thou art full of grace, thou art blessed amongst women. (Prot.
 ix. 7.)

 Mary, the Lord God hath magnified thy name to all generations. (Prot.
 vii. 4.)

 Mary, the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most
 High overshadow thee.

 Wherefore, that which shall be born of thee shall be holy, and shall
 be called the Son of the Living God.

 And thou shalt call his name Jesus. (Prot. ix. 13.)

 For lo, as the voice of thy salutation reached my ears, that which is
 in me leaped and blessed me. (Prot. ix. 21.)

 Hail, thou art highly favoured. Blessed art thou among women. (Luke i.
 28).

 My soul doth magnify the Lord. Henceforth all generations will call me
 blessed. (Luke i. 46, 48).

 The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest
 overshadow thee.

 Therefore, also that holy thing which shall be born, shall be called
 the Son of God. (Luke i. 35.)

 And shalt call his name Jesus. (Luke i. 31.)

 And it came to pass when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the
 babe leaped in her womb. (Luke ii. 41.)

The question now arises, Which author has copied from the other? Three
theories are possible.

1. "James" copied the story from Luke, the companion of Paul.

2. James copied the story from "Luke," of a later date.

3. Luke copied from James.

1. Bishop Lightfoot is angry that an "evangelist" should be accused of
copying from an "apocryphal gospel." But there is the difficulty here,
that the Zacharias of both stories is plainly the Zacharias of the
Talmudic narrative. So that, if the bishop could prove that "James" had
stolen from Luke, there would still be an "apocryphal" document behind
both. And if "Luke" was the first to use the Talmudic story, how is it
that he misses the point of that story, and James copying him, hits it?
That point is the avenging blood.

2. The details of the picture and the whole local colour point plainly
to an age when past events have so faded away from the memory of living
people that a writer can afford to play tricks with them. The huge
animosity with which dominant Israel viewed spiritual Israel would have
made even Torquemada feel lukewarm. Christ called the two the "wolves"
and the "lambs." And yet a chief "wolf," on being informed that his
son is to be a water-drinking Nazarite, a leader of the abominable
schismatics who prated about the "power of Elias," and called
themselves a "people prepared for the Lord," feels ecstasy rather than
wrath. Imagine Philip of Spain learning that a son of his had helped to
steer the English fire-ships at the great battle of Gravelines. Imagine
Legree composing an original song of triumph on learning that Uncle
Tom was a free citizen. If there was a historical Luke, and he was the
genuine companion of Paul, he of all men would know of the "haling
men and women and committing them to prison," of the "havoc and the
slaughter." He would have known how the priestly party in Jerusalem
would view a proposal to annul the eternal covenant of Yahve with a
better, a more "holy covenant," and substitute remission of sins by
penitence for remission of sins by the bloody sacrifice.

3. If the opening chapters of Luke are historical, many events in his
own and the other gospels are plainly unhistorical. If John the Baptist
was the cousin of Christ, brought up with him from childhood, how is
it that he failed to recognise him on the Jordan (John i. 33) until
the First Person of the Trinity intervened, and performed the miracle
of sending down a dove to indicate him? Why, too, should he have sent,
as Luke himself announces (vii. 19), messengers to his cousin to ask
if he was the coming Messiah, when he must have known from his mother
the announcement of the angels that his cousin was the "Son of the
Highest," destined to "reign over Jacob for ever"? Why, too, did Mary,
knowing all this, forget it when the boy-Christ disputed in the temple?
and why did Luke forget it too? (Luke ii. 48.)

4. If John the Baptist was really the son of a chief priest, the
silence of the other gospels is unaccountable. Certainly if Justin
Martyr had had the opening chapters of Luke before him, he would have
used them against Trypho.

5. When I first read Luke critically, I asked myself, Why has he
omitted the death of Zacharias, as he has dragged him in? Then I was
struck with the words that he has put into the mouth of Christ:--

"From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias which _perished
between the altar and the temple_." (Ch. xi. 51.)

This passage convinced me that he had the Protevangelion before him. It
is to be remarked that this verse does not appear in Marcion's version.

Then I came across a whimsical passage in Bishop Lightfoot. He shows
that an "early tradition identified the Zacharias who is mentioned
in the gospels as having been slain between the temple and the altar
(Matt. xxiii. 35) with this Zacharias, the father of the Baptist."
("Supernatural Religion," p. 256.) The bishop then triumphs over the
author of "Supernatural Religion," who had declared that Luke makes no
announcement of Zacharias's death. "He appears," says Bishop Lightfoot,
"to have forgotten Luke xi. 51." (Op. cit. p. 257.)

But surely the bishop has overlooked one whimsical objection to
accepting this story as historical. If the John the Baptist was the son
of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, he must have been 531 years old
when he baptised Christ.

Bishop Lightfoot makes much of these opening chapters, because they
show that the parents of Jesus were orthodox Jews, who went up every
year to the feast of the Passover, and offered doves at the prescribed
times. But what about Herod and the flight into Egypt? If the first
four chapters which "Luke" is accused of adding to Marcion's gospel be
historical, the flight into Egypt is a fiction.

The Buddhist story about Simeon, and the Buddhist disputation with the
doctors, are borrowed from the First Gospel of the Infancy. They are
not in any other canonical gospel, and the First Gospel of the Infancy
is the great armoury of Buddhist legends.

It is to be remarked that a young Buddhist, that he may acquire
readiness in controversy, is pestered with questions by doctors and
theologians. But the rabbis at Jerusalem would scarcely have allowed a
little boy to talk to them about the Messiah. (First Infancy, xxi. 3.)

We now come to the two passages most relied on by those who desire to
show that Jesus condemned the asceticism of John. Let us read each with
its context.

 "And when the messengers of John were departed, he began to speak
 unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness
 for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to
 see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously
 apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts. But what went
 ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more
 than a prophet. This is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my
 messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
 For I say unto you, Among those that are born of women there is not a
 greater prophet than John the Baptist, _but he that is least in the
 kingdom of God is greater than he_. And all the people that heard him,
 and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism
 of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God
 against themselves, being not baptized of him.

 "_And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this
 generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children
 sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another, and saying,
 We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to
 you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating
 bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man
 is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man,
 and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!_ But wisdom is
 justified of all her children." (Luke vii. 24-35.)

It is a singular fact that this short passage has been made the
chief armoury of the disciples of gastronomic, and also of interior
Christianity. Thus Migne's "Dictionnaire des Ascétes" cites it to show
that Christ approved of the asceticism of the Baptist. Does not this at
starting seem to argue two teachings, and, as a corollary, two distinct
teachers? If we omit the passages that I have marked in italics it is
difficult to find a more eloquent eulogy of ascetic mysticism. The
Buddhist mystics are called the Sons of Wisdom (Dharma or Prajñâ), and
Christ adopts the same terminology. Plainly the gist of the passage is
that the children of the mystic Sophia have no rivalry and no separate
baptism. The lower life of soft raiment and palaces is contrasted
with John's ascetic life amongst the "reeds" that still conspicuously
fringe the rushing Jordan. John is pronounced the greatest of prophets,
and his teaching the "counsel of God." Then comes my first passage
in italics, the statement that the most raw catechumen of Christ's
instruction is superior to this the greatest of God's prophets. It
completely disconnects what follows from what precedes, and involves
the silliest inconsequence, as shown by the action of Christ's hearers.
It is said that they crowded to the "baptism of John." Had that speech
been uttered, of course they would have stayed away from it.

The subsequent insertion of the gospel of eating and drinking,
and piping and dancing, involves a greater folly. It betrays a
writer completely ignorant of Jewish customs. The fierce enmity of
anti-mystical Israel to the Nazarites pivoted on the very fact that
the latter were pledged for life to drink neither wine nor strong
drink. This was the Nazarite's banner with victory already written
upon it. Hence the fierce hatred of the Jewish priesthood. If Christ
in their presence had drunk one cup of wine, there would have been no
crucifixion, and certainly no upbraiding.

This is the second passage that anti-mystical Christianity builds
upon:--

"_And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and
make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine
eat and drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the
bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will
come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall
they fast in those days._

"And he spake also a parable unto them: No man putteth a piece of a new
garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and
the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And
no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst
the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine
must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. _No man also
having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old
is better._" (Luke v. 33-39.)

I have again resorted to italics. I think we have here a genuine speech
of Christ, and a very important one. His doctrine was "new wine," and
it was quite unfit for the "old bottles" of Mosaism. The gravity of
this speech was felt by the Roman monks who were trying to force the
new wine into the old bottles (with much prejudice to the wine), so
they tried to nullify it with flat contradiction let in both above and
below.

"For the old is better."

This completely contradicts Christ's eulogy of the Christian's "new
wine." Moreover, the words are not found in Matthew's version, which
makes the cheat more palpable. There, too, we have the gospel of eating
and drinking, a gospel that did not require an avatâra of the Maker of
the Heavens for its promulgation.

But supposing that we concede the two passages to be genuine, I do not
see that the priests of materialism will gain very much.

These texts are internecine, involving contradictions due either to
more than one author, or to an interpolator singularly deficient in
logical consistency and common sense. The statement, as far as it is
intelligible, is that Christ, having determined to forsake mystical for
anti-mystical Israel, made the following enactments:--

1. That the ascetic practices that He had taken over from John the
Baptist and the Nazarenes, and which in other gospels He enjoins under
the phrase of "prayer and fasting" as the machinery for developing
miraculous gifts, interior vision, etc., shall be discontinued by His
disciples during His lifetime and then again renewed.

2. That feastings and the use of wine, which as Nazarites He and
His disciples had specially forsworn, should be again resumed, with
no restrictions in this case in the matter of His death. So that by
one enactment His disciples after His death were to remain jovial
"wine-bibbers" by the other fasting ascetics. It is scarcely necessary
to bring forward the true Luke to confute the pseudo Luke.

A valuable historical transaction is recorded by the real Luke which
throws a strong light on the relations between Christ and John the
Baptist. Towards the close of the Saviour's career, at Jerusalem
itself, the chief priests accosted Him and asked Him by what authority
He did what He did. Now if the relations between Christ and John the
Baptist had been what the pseudo Luke would have us believe, Christ
had only to state all this and He might have saved many valuable
lives. He had only to plainly announce that His movement was not from
anti-mystical to mystical Israel, but from mystical to anti-mystical
Israel; that he had introduced wine and oil as a protest against
Essenism; that He had forbidden its ascetic fastings, and brought
many disciples back from "the baptism of John" to the orthodox fold.
If He had stated all this clearly, the high priest and elders would
have hailed Him as a friend instead of slaying Him as a foe. But the
Saviour, evidently quite unaware that He had led a great movement
against the Baptist, takes refuge behind John instead of condemning
him. He asks the pregnant question, Was he a prophet of God, or was he
not? inferring, of course, that he was, and that the prophetic gift
was "authority" enough. (Luke xx. 1, _et seq._) "For I say unto you,
Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than
John the Baptist." (Luke vii. 28.) Here again we have the real Luke
confronting his unskilful interpolator.




CHAPTER IX.

_The Church of Jerusalem._


Competent critics hold that Luke has based the Acts on earlier records.
Certainly the picture of the early Church at Jerusalem is very Essenic.
The disciples had all things in common. They lived in groups of houses,
with a central house of assembly, like the Therapeuts. They had two
main rites, baptism and the breaking of bread. They had for officers,
deacons, presbyters, ephemereuts. Wine and flesh meat were forbidden,
if we may judge the parent from the daughter. For the Roman Christians
before the advent of St. Paul forbade wine and flesh meat, and the
Roman Church was the eldest daughter of the Church at Jerusalem. Also
we see from the Apocalypse that the saints of the New Jerusalem were
"virgins."

Thus history flashes a light, transient but vivid, on the rising
religion at three distinct periods.

1. When Christ by the Sea of Tiberias preached the memorable λόγια,
and said, "Be eunuchs, sell all worldly goods. Blessed are the poor!"

2. When James started the vegetarian water-drinking celibates of the
Church of Jerusalem.

3. When Irenæus attacked the vegetarian water-drinking celibates of the
Church of Jerusalem which had migrated to Pella (A.D. 180).

Now, these three flashes of light seem to me to dispel much, notably
all disquisitions which seek to combine the Essene Christ and the
anti-Essene Christ. Renan holds that the Church of Jerusalem were
Pharisees. If so, why had they Essene rites, A.D. 34 and A.D. 181? He
admits that these rites were borrowed from the Mendaites, or Disciples
of John, and that there is the closest analogy between the rise of
Christianity and the rise of "other ascetic religions, Buddhism for
example." ("Les Apôtres," pp. 78-90.) He admits that the accounts
in the Acts of Peter's bold preachings in the temple, are not to be
reconciled with passages about "closed doors for few of the Jews." What
has chiefly led to misapprehensions is not so much the dishonesty of
writers like "Luke," as the fiction of the Essenes themselves that they
were orthodox Jews. They were most particular about circumcision. They
had a Sanhedrim of Justice, and so had the early Christians. The Church
of Jerusalem had its "chief priest," as we see from the First Epistle
of Clement to the Corinthians. "The daily sacrifices are not offered
everywhere, nor the peace-offerings, nor the sacrifices appointed for
sins and transgressions, but only at Jerusalem, nor in any place there,
but only at the altar before the temple." (Ch. xviii.)

This chief priest must not be confused with the Jewish one. He has
been established by God through Christ. (Ch. xix. 7.) It is also
stated that Christ has laid down what "offerings and service" must be
performed. (Ch. xviii. 14.) This gives a significance to the passages
in Revelations describing the temple of the mystic Jerusalem, which
would of course be modelled on the "temple" familiar to the white-robed
virgin saints of the material New Jerusalem, the "angel" taking the
"golden censer" and filling it with the fire of the altar, the "lamps,"
the "candlesticks," the "golden altar," the "incense." The ground near
Jerusalem is perforated with caverns. This temple, probably, was some
secret crypt like a chapel in the catacombs. Keim points out that the
command given in chap. xi. verse 2 of the Revelations to leave out
the court of the bloody sacrifices in the ideal temple of the New
Jerusalem, is an additional piece of evidence in favour of the Essenism
of the early Church.

This is what Hegesippus, the earliest Christian historian, says about
James, described in the Protevangelion as the "chief apostle and first
Christian bishop."

"He was consecrated from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor
strong drink, neither ate he any living thing. A razor never went upon
his head. He anointed not himself with oil, nor did he use a bath. He
alone was allowed to enter into the holies. For he did not wear woollen
garments, but linen. And he alone entered the sanctuary and was found
upon his knees praying for the forgiveness of the people, so that his
knees became hard like a camel's through his constant bending and
supplication before God, and asking for forgiveness for the people."
(Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl." ii. 33.)

This passage seems to settle the question whether the early Christians
were Essenes or Pharisees. Here we have the chief apostle depicted as
an Essene of Essenes. He rejects wine and flesh meat. And the "temple"
of the Essenes was plainly not the Jewish temple. The temple guards
would have made short work of any one rash enough to attempt to enter
the Holy of Holies.

Epiphanius adds the two sons of Zebedee to the list of the ascetics,
and also announces that James, the chief apostle, entered the Holy of
Holies once a year. He gives another detail, that the Christian bishop
wore the bactreum or metal plate of the high priest. (Epiph. Hær.
lxxviii. 13, 14.)

Clement of Alexandria gives a similar account of St. Matthew:--

"It is far better to be happy than to have a demon dwelling in us. And
happiness is found in the practice of virtue. Accordingly, the Apostle
Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, and vegetables without flesh."
(Pædag. ii. 1.)

The Clementine "Homilies" give a far more authentic picture of the
Church of Jerusalem than the Acts. In them St. Peter thus describes
himself:--

"The Prophet of the Truth who appeared on earth taught us that the
Maker and God of all gave two kingdoms to two (beings), good and evil,
granting to the evil the sovereignty over the present world.... Those
men who choose the present have power to be rich, to revel in luxury,
to indulge in pleasures, and to do whatever they can; for they will
possess none of the future goods. But those who have determined to
accept the blessings of the future reign have no right to regard as
their own the things that are here, since they belong to a foreign
king, with the exception only of water and bread and those things
procured with sweat to maintain life (for it is not lawful to commit
suicide); and also only one garment, for they are not permitted to go
naked." (Clem. Hom. xv. 7.)

A word here about the "Sepher Toldoth Jeshu," a work which orthodoxy as
usual would modernise overmuch. It is a brief sketch of Christ's life,
and, at any rate, represents the Jewish tradition of that important
event. It announces that the Saviour was hanged on a tree for sorcery.
After that there was a bitter strife between the "Nazarenes" and the
"Judeans." The former, headed by Simeon Ben Kepha, (who, "according
to his precept," abstained from all food, and only ate "the bread of
misery," and drank the "water of sorrow,") altered all the dates of the
Jewish festivals to make them fit in with events in Christ's life. This
seems to make Peter and the "Nazarenes" or Nazarites water-drinking
vegetarian ascetics.

Old Jerusalem, considered as a religious centre, quite eclipsed holy
cities like Benares or mediæval Rome, for the chief rites could only
be performed there. The Jewish Christians plainly traded with this
exceptional importance, adding a more powerful claim. For in Israel,
for at least a hundred years, there had been a strange prophetic book,
believed, even by the writer of one Christian scripture (Jude), to be
written by the patriarch Enoch. This book was believed to be genuine by
Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian. For a thousand
years it was lost to Christendom, and then Bruce brought back three
copies from Abyssinia. Archbishop Laurence translated the work in 1821.

The importance of the Book of Enoch is that it gives quite a new view
of the mission of the Messiah. From their prophets the Jews expected a
conqueror who was to come with a "bow" and the "sword of the mighty,"
and to "have dominion from the Jordan to the ends of the earth." That
he was to be a mere mortal is proved by the fact that, according to
Daniel, he was by-and-by to be "cut off." (Dan. ix. 26.) But the Son of
Man of Enoch differed from this:--

"Before the sun and the signs were created, before the stars of heaven
were formed, his name was invoked in the presence of the Lord of
Spirits. A support shall he be for the righteous and the holy to lean
upon, without falling, and he shall be the light of nations.

"He shall be the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell
on earth shall fall down and worship before him." (Enoch xlviii.)

"Behold he comes with ten thousand of his saints to execute judgment
upon them and destroy the wicked." (Enoch ii.) This is the passage
cited by Jude.

"In those days shall the earth deliver up from her womb, and hell
deliver up from hers, that which it has received, and destruction shall
restore that which it owes. He shall select the righteous and holy from
among them." (Enoch i.)

"In those days shall the mouth of hell be opened, into which they shall
be immerged. Hell shall destroy and swallow up sinners from the face
of the elect." (Enoch liv.)

"I beheld that valley in which ... arose a strong smell of sulphur....
Through that valley rivers of fire were flowing." (Enoch lxvi. 5-8.)

"He shall select the righteous and holy from among them, for the day of
their salvation has approached." ... (Enoch l. 2.)

"I saw the habitations and couches of the saints. Then my eyes beheld
their habitations with the angels and their couches with the holy ones.
Thus shall it be with them for ever and ever." (Enoch xxxix. 4.)

"The former heaven shall depart and pass away, a new heaven shall
appear." (Enoch xcii. 17.)

These texts show where the Jews got the idea of a Son of Man coming in
the clouds of heaven and summoning the dead from their graves for a
great assize. They show where Christianity got its heaven and its hell.
The author of the "Evolution of Christianity" gives in parallel columns
a number of other passages which seem to have suggested corresponding
passages in the Christian scriptures. The defenders of conventional
orthodoxy urge that these passages and the passages I have quoted
are post-Christian interpolations. In the way of this theory stands
the fact that Enoch describes only one advent, that of a superhuman,
triumphant Messiah. He knows nothing of a suffering, crucified mortal.
That advent, according to the Jewish ideas of the time, seemed at first
blush a failure. Surely the first object of an interpolator would have
been to suit his prophecies to the double advent, and make the second
explain the failure of the first. It is to be observed, too, that
Enoch's Son of Man rules in heaven. There is no mention of Jerusalem.
It seems very plain that the Apocalypse has attempted to fuse together
the Messiah of Enoch and the Messiah of Micah, and the clumsy expedient
of a thousand years preliminary rule in Jerusalem, entailing, as it
does, two resurrections and two judgment days, is the result.

The Messiah of Enoch is plainly Craosha of the Persians, who will, one
day, summon the dead to judgment in their old material bodies, sending
the wicked to Douzakh, and the good to Behisht.

Let us see how this affects our present inquiry.

The Buddhists took over from the Brahmins:--

1. A heaven (Swarga) and a purgatory.

2. Ancestor worship (the S'raddha). The Buddhas of the Past had
offerings given to them at stated periods at their topes, for which
they were expected to perform miracles.

Nothing can be more explicit than the statements in the gospels about
the fate of the dead. Souls and bodies are to remain in the festering
grave until a trumpet shall sound. Then the body as well as the soul
will arise for an universal judgment.

But side by side with this idea soon sprang up a conflicting one, the
"Communion of Saints."

"God dwells in the bones of the martyrs," said St. Ephrem, "and by
his power and presence miracles are wrought." ("Wiseman's Lectures,"
xi. 105.) Soon the Buddhist saint worship and the Buddhist purgatory
were taken over by the Church, Alexandrian Buddhism fighting with the
dualism of Persian Buddhism.

But if there has been no judgment, how can we tell who is in purgatory,
and who are the saints? This question seems to have stirred Cardinal
Newman, and he attempted an answer in his "Dream of St. Gerontius."
Christ has a "rehearsal of judgment." This is, of course, preposterous.




CHAPTER X.

_Johannine Buddhism._


The Indians of old observed that one portion of the sky was dark at
night and one portion lit with stars. They judged that the dark portion
was spirit--primary substance, and that the light portion was the same
substance made tangible to the senses under the form of matter. The
Buddhists took over these ideas and called the dark portion Nirvritti
and the light portion Pravritti. In Nirvritti dwelt the formless,
passionless, inconceivable God--Swayambhu the Self-Existent. Pravritti
contained numerous world-systems (Buddha-Kshetras), the Ogdoads of
the Gnostics. These christened Nirvritti "Buthos," and Pravritti, the
luminous worlds, the "Pleroma." In Buddhism, Pravritti was presided
over by five beings, emanations from Swayambhu. These are announced
in the Buddhist books to be simply the attributes of Swayambhu
personified. They were probably invented to provide the vulgar with
a substitute for the old Brahmin hierarchy. Each has a Sakti (wife,
female energy). I give a list of them with their Saktis, and the divine
attributes that they personify.


      ATTRIBUTES.      |    DHYANI BUDDHAS.     |      SAKTIS.
                       |                        |
  Su-vis'uddha Dharma  | Vairochana.            | Vajra Dhateswatî.
    Dhâtu. (Purifying  |   (Sun-born.)          |   (Goddess of
    eternal law.)      |                        |   eternal elements.)
                       |                        |
  Adarsana.            | Akshobhya.             | Lochanâ.
    (Invisibility).    |   (Immovable.)         |   (Eye goddess.)
                       |                        |
  Prativekshana. (Eyes | Ratna-Sambhava.        | Mamukhî.
    that sleep not.)   |   (Born of the jewel.) |
                       |                        |
  Sânta. (Calmness.)   | Amitabha. (Diffusing   | Pândarâ.
                       |   infinite light.)     |   (Pale goddess.)
                       |                        |
  Krityânushtana.      | Amogha-Siddha.         | Târâ. (Star.)
    (One who performs  |   (Unfailing aim.)     |
    rites.)            |                        |

Turning to Basilides we find that he placed in Buthos the "Unnameable,"
a being similar to Swayambhu. From the Unnameable emanated also five
beings, whom he called Æons (Eternals), a substitute for the Dhyani
Buddhas. Their names were Nous (Mind), Logos (Speech), Phronesis
(Prudence), Sophia (Wisdom), Dunamis (Power).

Plainly these also are simply divine attributes personified, the five
Dhyani Buddhas.

Valentinus has also a supreme Æon, Unbegotten, Invisible,
Self-Existent, remaining from everlasting in impassive serenity. This
God, named Bythus, has his Sakti like the Dhyani Buddhas. She is called
Ennœa (Idea), also Charis (Grace).

Bythus is also called Propator (First Father). After countless ages he
determines to evolve the Pleroma, and for that purpose brings forth
Nous (Mind) and Aletheia (Truth).

From Nous, according to Valentinus, by the aid of Aletheia proceeded
Logos (Word) and Zoe (Life). Nous was also called Monogenes (the Only
Begotten).

Zoe brought forth Anthropos (Man) and Ecclesia (Church). These brought
forth other Æons.

In this system Christ figures as Phos (Light), Soter (Saviour), and
Logos (Word). He gives light to the Pleroma.

Now let us turn to the famous opening verses of the fourth gospel. I
copy down the translation of them by the author of the "Evolution of
Christianity."

"In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the
Logos was divine. The same was in the beginning with God. All things
came into existence through him, and without him nothing came into
existence. That which hath been made in him was Zoe (Life), and Zoe
was the Phos (Light) of men, and Phos shineth in the darkness, and the
darkness apprehended it not....

"And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt amongst us, full of Charis
(Grace) and Aletheia (Truth). And we beheld his glory, glory as of
Monogenes (the Only Begotten) from the Father."

As the author of the "Evolution of Christianity" truly says, we have
here a condensation of the Æons of Valentinus. John unifies Christ in
Monogenes, Logos, Phos, and Soter. He descends as Phos (Light). He has
Æonic relationship with Charis and Aletheia.

"Of his Pleroma have we all received," says the fourth evangelist.
(John i. 16.)

"It was the Father's good pleasure that in him the whole Pleroma should
have its home" (Col. i. 19).

"In him dwells the whole Pleroma of the Godhead in bodily shape." (Col.
ii. 9).

"The Church, which is his body, the Pleroma of him that filleth all in
all." (Eph. i. 23.)

We turn now to the Æons or Dhyani Buddhas.

"According to the purpose of the Æons." (Eph. iii. 11.)

"Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations."

The author of the "Evolution of Christianity" shows that the authorised
version has no sense. He amends it thus:--

"The mystery concealed from the Æons and from their offspring."

From this two things are patent:--

1. Johannine Christianity is Gnosticism.

2. Gnosticism is Buddhism.

In chapter ii. I said that Buddha, like the Gnostic Christ, ruled the
Pleroma or Pravritti. In the "Lalita Vistara" many pages are devoted
to show that he is Purusha, the God-man of the Hindoos. Purusha is
always contrasted with Pracriti, the Buthos of the Gnostics, that part
of the Kosmos which is un-fashioned and non-luminous. Purusha is like
the divine man of the Kabbalah, the Christ of St. Paul, humanity, ideal
humanity. Valentinus proclaimed that from Sophia the Mother, proceeded
Ecclesia the Church. Jesus called his flock the sons of Sophia, and
said that his mother, the Holy Spirit, had carried him up to the top of
Mount Tabor.

As early as the Asoka inscriptions the triad of Buddhism was:--

1. Buddha or Swayambhu, the Self-Existent.

2. Dharma or Prajñâ (Sophia).

3. Sangha (literally Union). Sangha "created the worlds," says the Pûja
Kanda. (For this triad, see Hodgson, "Lit. Nepal," p. 88.) This triad
with the vulgar is now Buddha, his Law, and the Church.

A version of this was not unknown in Palestine, for Hegesippus records
of the early Christians:--

"In every city that prevails which the Law, the Lord, and the Prophets
enjoin."




CHAPTER XI.

_Rites._


I have left myself little space to write of the many points of close
similarity between the Buddhists and the Roman Catholics.

The French missionary Huc, in his celebrated travels in Thibet, was
much struck with this similarity.

"The crozier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the cope or _pluvial_, which
the grand lamas wear on a journey, or when they perform some ceremony
outside the temple, the service with a double choir, psalmody,
exorcisms, the censer swinging on five chains, and contrived to be
opened and shut at will, benediction by the lamas, with the right
hand extended over the heads of the faithful, the chaplet, sacerdotal
celibacy, Lenten retirements from the world, the worship of saints,
fasts, processions, litanies, holy water--these are the points of
contact between the Buddhists and ourselves."

Listen also to Father Disderi, who visited Thibet in the year 1714.
"The lamas have a tonsure like our priests, and are bound over to
perpetual celibacy. They study their scriptures in a language and
in characters that differ from the ordinary characters. They recite
prayers in choir. They serve the temple, present the offerings, and
keep the lamps perpetually alight. They offer to God corn and barley
and paste and water in little vases, which are extremely clean. Food
thus offered is considered consecrated, and they eat it. The lamas have
local superiors, and a superior general." ("Lettres edifiantes," vol.
iii., p. 534.)

Father Grueber, with another priest named Dorville, passed from Pekin
through Thibet to Patna in the year 1661. Henry Prinsep ("Thibet
Tartary, etc.," p. 14) thus sums up what he has recorded:--

"Father Grueber was much struck with the extraordinary similarity he
found, as well in the doctrine as in the rituals of the Buddhists of
Lha Sa, to those of his own Romish faith. He noticed, first, that the
dress of the lamas corresponded with that handed down to us in ancient
paintings as the dress of the Apostles. Second, that the discipline
of the monasteries and of the different orders of lamas or priests
bore the same resemblance to that of the Romish Church. Third, that
the notion of an Incarnation was common to both, so also the belief in
paradise and purgatory. Fourth, he remarked that they made suffrages,
alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the dead, like the Roman Catholics.
Fifth, that they had convents filled with monks and friars to the
number of thirty thousand, near Lha Sa, who all made the three vows
of poverty, obedience, and chastity, like Roman monks, besides other
vows. Sixth, that they had confessors licensed by the superior lamas or
bishops, and so empowered to receive confessions, impose penances, and
give absolution. Besides all this there was found the practice of using
holy water, of singing service in alternation, of praying for the dead,
and of perfect similarity in the customs of the great and superior
lamas to those of the different orders of the Romish hierarchy. These
early missionaries further were led to conclude from what they saw
and heard that the ancient books of the lamas contained traces of the
Christian religion, which must, they thought, have been preached in
Thibet in the time of the Apostles."

In the year 1829, Victor Jacquemont, the French botanist, made a
short excursion from Simla into Thibet. He writes: "The Grand Lama of
Kanum has the episcopal mitre and crozier. He is dressed just like
our bishops. A superficial observer at a little distance would take
his Thibetan and Buddhist mass for a Roman mass of the first water.
He makes twenty genuflexions at the right intervals, turns to the
altar and then to the congregation, rings a bell, drinks in a chalice
water poured out by an acolyte, intones paternosters quite of the
right sing-song--the resemblance is really shocking. But men whose
faith is properly robust will see here nothing but a corruption of
Christianity." (Corr. vol. i., p. 265.)

It must be borne in mind that what is called Southern Buddhism has the
same rites. St. Francis Xavier in Japan found Southern Buddhism so
like his own that he donned the yellow sanghâti, and called himself
an apostle of Buddha, quieting his conscience by furtively mumbling a
little Latin of the baptismal service over some of his "converts."

This is what the Rev. S. Beal, a chaplain in the navy, wrote of a
liturgy that he found in China:--

"The form of this office is a very curious one. It bears a singular
likeness in its outline to the common type of the Eastern Christian
liturgies. That is to say there is a 'Proanaphoral' and an 'Anaphoral'
portion. There is a prayer of entrance (τῆς εἰσοδου), a prayer of
incense (τοῦ θυμιάματος), an ascription of praise to the threefold
object of worship (τρισαγίον), a prayer of oblation (τῆς προσ θεσεως),
the lections, the recitations of the Dharanî (μυστηριον), the
Embolismus or prayer against temptation, followed by a 'Confession,'
and a 'Dismissal.'" ("Catena of Buddhist Scriptures," p. 397.)

Turning to architecture, I must point out that Mr. Fergusson, the
leading authority in ancient art, was of opinion that the various
details of the early Christian basilica--nave, aisle, columns,
semi-domed apse, cruciform ground plan--were borrowed _en bloc_ from
the Buddhists. Mr. Fergusson lays special stress on the Dâgoba and its
enshrined relics, represented in the Christian Church by the high
altar, the bones of a saint, the baldechino. Relic worship, he says,
was certainly borrowed from the East. Of the rock-cut temple of Kârle
(B.C. 78) he writes:--

"The building resembles, to a great extent, an early Christian church
in its arrangements, consisting of a nave and side aisles terminating
in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is carried.... As a
scale for comparison, it may be mentioned that its arrangements and
dimensions are very similar to those of the choir of Norwich Cathedral,
and of the Abbaye aux Hommes at Caen, omitting the outer aisles in the
latter buildings.

Immediately under the semi-dome of the apse, and nearly where the altar
stands in Christian churches, is placed the Dâgoba." ("Indian and
Eastern Architecture," p. 117.)

The list of resemblances is by no means exhausted. The monks on
entering a temple make the gesture that we call the sign of the cross.
The Buddhists have illuminated missals, Gregorian chants, a tabernacle
on the altar for oblations, a pope, cardinals, angels with wings,
saints with the nimbus. For a full account I must refer the reader to
my "Buddhism in Christendom," where I give (pp. 182, 184) drawings of
monks and nuns, the Virgin and Child (p. 205), the adoration of the
rice cake on the altar (p. 83), Buddha coming down to the altar with
the heavenly host (p. 210), the long candles, artificial flowers,
cross, incense burner, and divine figure with the aureole, of the
Buddhist temple (p. 208). The election of the Grand Lâma I show to be
pin for pin like the election of the Pope. The list is endless.

How is all this to be accounted for? Several theories have been
started:--

The first attempts to make light of the matter altogether. All
religions, it says, have sacrifice, incense, priests, the idea of
faith, etc. This may be called the orthodox Protestant theory, and many
bulky books have recently appeared propounding it. But as these books
avoid all the strong points of the case, they cannot be called at all
satisfactory to the bewildered inquirer.

To this theory the Roman Catholics reply that the similarities between
Buddhism and Catholicism are so microscopic and so complete, that
one religion must have borrowed from the other. In consequence they
try to prove that the rites of Buddhism and the life of its founder
were derived from Christianity, from the Nestorians, from St. Thomas,
from St. Hyacinth of Poland, from St. Oderic of Frioul. (_See_ Abbé
Prouvéze, "Life of Gabriel Durand," vol. ii., p. 365.)

In the way of this theory, however, there are also insuperable
difficulties. Buddha died 470 years before Christ, and for many years
the Christian Church had no basilicas, popes, cardinals, basilica
worship, nor even for a long time a definite life of the founder. At
the date of Asoka (B.C. 260) there was a metrical life of Buddha (Muni
Gatha), and the incidents of this life are found sculptured in marble
on the gateways of Buddhist temples that precede the Christian epoch.
This is the testimony of Sir Alexander Cunningham, the greatest of
Indian archæologists. He fixes the date of the Bharhut Stupa at from
270 to 250 B.C. There he finds Queen Mâyâ's dream of the elephant, the
Rishis at the ploughing match, the transfiguration of Buddha and the
ladder of diamonds, and other incidents. At the Sanchi tope, an earlier
structure (although the present marble gateways, repeated probably from
wood, are fixed at about 19 A.D.), he announces representations of
Buddha as an elephant coming down to his mother's womb, three out of
the "Four Presaging Tokens," Buddha bending the bow of Sinhahanu, King
Bimbisâra visiting the young prince, and other incidents.

A man who invents a novel high explosive, or a quick-firing gun, at
once puts his idea to a practical test. Let us try and construct a
working model here. Suppose that the present ruler of Afghanistan
were paying us a visit, and, introduced at Fulham Palace, he were to
suggest that the life of Mahomet should supersede that of Jesus in our
Bible, and Mussulman rites replace the Christian ritual in the diocese
of London. What would be the answer? The bishop, anxious to deal gently
with a valuable ally, would point out that he was only a cogwheel in a
vast machinery, a cogwheel that could be promptly replaced if it proved
the least out of gear. He would show that the Anglican Church had a
mass of very definite rules called canon law, with courts empowered to
punish the slightest infringement of these rules. He would show that
even an archbishop could not alter a tittle of the gospel narrative.
Every man, woman, and child would immediately detect the change.

Similar difficulties would be in the way of St. Hyacinth of Poland
in, say, a monastery of Ceylon. The abbot there would be responsible
to what Bishop Bigandet calls his "provincial," and he again to his
"supérieur général" (p. 478), and so on to the Âchârya, the "High
Priest of all the World," who, in his palace at Nalanda, near Buddha
Gayâ, was wont to sit in state, surrounded by ten thousand monks.
Buddhism, by the time that a Christian missionary could have reached
it, was a far more diffused and conservative religion than Anglicanism.
It had a canon law quite as definite. It had hundreds of volumes
treating of the minutest acts of Sakya Muni.


THE END.


_Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth._




INDEX.


  Amrapalî, the Buddhist Magdalene, 61.

  Alexandria, bridges East and West, 102.

  Altar, Apostles of the Bloodless, 99 _et seq._

  Antiochus, mentioned by King Asoka, 97.

  Apostles, the Buddhist Parivrajakas, 105.

  Appearances of Buddha after death, 67.

  Architecture, Christian, derived from the Buddhist rock temples, 177.

  Asita, the Indian Simeon, 29.

  Asoka, King, 93 _et seq._

  Atheism, early Buddhist disproved, 77 _et seq._

  Atonement, 68.


  Baptism, the Buddhist, 43, 108.

  Beal, Rev. S., on a Buddhist liturgy, 176.

  Beatitudes, the Buddhist, 48.

  Bigandet, Catholic bishop, his "Life of Gautama" cited, 27 _et passim_.

  Bimbisâra, advised like Herod to kill the Holy Child, 28.

  Bhikshu, Buddhist beggar, Ebionite, 129.

  Bodhi, Gnosis, interior knowledge, 77.

  Brahma, union with, object of early Buddhism, 80.

  Buddha, born of a virgin, 24;
    Star in the East, 26;
    Baptism and fasting, 44;
    Temptation, 45;
    Disputation with the doctors, 30;
    Third commandment, 51;
    Triumphant entry into the city of the king, 54;
    Forsaken by disciples, 58;
    Transfigured, 63;
    Last supper, 65;
    Death, 65;
    Darkness over all the land at his death, 65.

  Buddhism defined, 77;
    Schools of, 84;
    Eight spiritual states, 108.

  Burnouf, Emile, considers Christianity due to a conflict between
    Mosaism and Buddhism, 1.


  Ceylon scriptures, 85.

  Chakravartin, King of Kings, Messiah, 35.

  Chief priest in early Church modelled on Jewish, 161.

  Circumcision widely spread amongst savages, 15.

  Church of Jerusalem, creed, 129; Description of, 160.

  Clement of Alexandria on the Hylobii and followers of Buddha, 89.

  Colebrooke, Henry, Orientalist, sees Buddhist philosophy in the
    teaching of Pythagoras, 101.

  Cunningham, Sir Alexander, traces incidents of Buddha's life in
    pre-Christian sculptures in the Buddhist temples, 179.


  Darkness over the land at Buddha's death, 65.

  Daranatha, Chinese historian, valuable testimony about early
    Buddhism, 90, 99.

  Disciple whom Buddha loved, 46.

  Disciples, twelve great, 46.

  Disderi, Father, visits Lha Sa, 174.


  Ebionite, Buddhist bhikshu, 129.

  Enoch, Book of, 164.

  Epiphanius cited, 130.

  Essenes, due to Buddhist propagandism, Philo on, 103.

  "Evolution of Christianity," author of cited, 171.

  Ezra compiles Old Testament, 6, 7.


  Faith in Buddhist books, 62.

  Fergusson, James, architect, derives Christian basilica from Buddhist
    rock temple, 177.

  "Follow me!" phrase used by Buddha, 46.

  Freemasonry in Buddhism, Mithraism, etc., 100.

  "Fulfilling," vague word without any meaning in modern polemics, 143.


  Giles, Rev., on the Christian forgeries of Peregrinus, 128;
    Amended version of Luke's opening verses, 144.

  Ginsburg, Dr., on the eight spiritual states of the Essenes, 107.

  "Glad tidings" (Subha Shita), word used for the Buddhist revelation, 46.

  Golden book for the Buddhist recording angels, 68.

  "Golden Bough," by Mr. Frazer, cited, 9.

  Grueber, Father, on Buddhist rites, etc., 175.

  Gymnosophists, Buddhists, 104.


  Heaven, the Buddhist, 68.

  Hebrews, Gospel according to, 114 _et seq._;
    St. Jerome on, 101;
    Condemned and suppressed, 129.

  Hegesippus used Gospel according to the Hebrews, 112;
    Describes James, 162.

  Hippolytus cited to show that the early Church held Christ to be a
    mere man, 129.

  Hodgson, Bryan, on the Pyrrhonism of the second or "Great Vehicle"
    school of Buddhism, 86.

  Holy Ghost descends _into_ Christ, in the Gospel according to the
    Hebrews, 131.

  Hylobii, Greek term for Buddhists, 89.


  Irenæus, on Gospel according to Hebrews, 112;
    On the many spurious gospels in his day, 128;
    Shows that early Church of Jerusalem used water in the communion, 130.


  Jacquemont, Victor, French botanist, on similarity of Buddhist and
    Catholic mass, 176.

  James succeeds Christ, who appears and gives him communion bread on
    the very night of the Crucifixion, 133;
    Account by Hegesippus, 162.

  Jerome, St., on the Gospel of the Hebrews, 111.

  Jerusalem, Church of, 160 _et seq._

  Josephus, initiation of Essenes, 137.

  Judas, the Buddhist, 64.

  Justin Martyr, 112 _et seq._


  Kanishka, or Kanerkos, introduces atheistic Buddhism and Pyrrhonism, 85.

  Kârle, cave temple, described, 177.

  Karma, the Buddhist doctrine, mixed up with the Atonement, 68.


  Lang, Andrew, on savage terrorism, 9.

  Lightfoot, Bishop, on the "swathing bands" of Judaism, 141.

  Luke, Gospel of, analysed, 144.


  Magic, Buddhist, 79.

  Maitreya, Buddha of Brotherly Love, 2.

  Man born blind, parable, 79.

  Matthew, St., an ascetic, 164.

  Marcion's gospel, testimony of Megethius that it has been added to and
    falsified, 146.

  Megasthenes on the Buddhists, 90.

  Mithras, religion of, 99.

  Müller, Max, on Buddhism, 77.


  Newman, Cardinal, his "Dream of St. Gerontius," 168.

  Nicator, Seleucus, sends an ambassador to Patna, 89.

  Nicholson, E. B., best authority on the Gospel according to the
    Hebrews, 114.

  Nirvritti the same as the Pleroma of the Gnostics, 169.

  Nuns in Buddhism and Essenism, 106.


  Origen on the abundant falsification of the gospels in his day, 128.

  Oswald, Felix, cited, 57.


  Papias, Bishop, on the composition of the gospels, 111.

  Parables, the Buddhist, 70 _et seq._

  Pax Vobiscum! the Hebrew "Schalom!" the Buddhist "Sadhu!" 47.

  Peregrinus composes Christian scriptures, 128.

  Peter, Gospel according to, cited, 127.

  Philo on the Essenes and Therapeuts, 104;
    Connects them with the Gymnosophists of India, 104.

  Photismos in early Church, 107.

  Pravritti, the Buthos of the Gnostics, 169.

  Prodigal Son, Buddhist parable, 70.

  Protevangelion compared with Luke's gospel, 149.

  Pythagoras, Buddha's teaching fathered on, 101.


  Racine translates the "Contemplative Life of Philo," 136.

  "Rakshà Bhagavatî" the great Bible of atheistic Buddhism, 86.

  Rajendra Lala Mitra proves atheistic Buddhism to have been forced on
    early Buddhism by the "Great Vehicle," A.D. 20, 85.

  Renan on the Church of Jerusalem, 161;
    On the status of St. James, 134.

  _Revue des Deux Mondes_ defines Christianity as due to a conflict
    between Buddhism and Mosaism, 1.


  Saints appear at Buddha's death, 66.

  Samanna Phala Sutta cited, 79.

  Sayings of Christ, according to Justin Martyr, 117.

  Semites, 4, 5.

  Smith, Professor Robertson, on the "Totems" of the Old Testament, 19.

  Son of Perdition, the Buddhist, 64.

  Sunyapushpa (the "Carriage that drives Nowhere"), nickname of early
    Buddhists for innovating Pyrrhonism, 91.

  Supper, Buddhist last, 65.

  Sutta, Tevigga, gives Buddha's ideas about God, 80.


  Therapeuts, _see_ Essenes.

  Throne, great white, 67.

  Transfiguration, the Buddhist, 63.

  Twelve great disciples of Buddha, 46.


  "Vehicle, Great," 85;
    "Little," 84, 85.

  Valentinus, fourth gospel due to his teaching, 172.


  Walking on water, miracle, 59.

  War in Heaven, 61.

  Washing feet, 64.

  Wassiljew cited, 90.

  Williams, Sir Monier, his views on Buddhism, 77.

  Woman at the well, 70.


  Zacharias, legend about, 148.

  Zoroaster, Buddha as, 98.




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Transcriber's note:

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Revue des Deus Mondes corrected to Revue des Deux Mondes.

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been
retained except in the case of conflict with index entries.

Perigrinus has been corrected to Peregrinus and Ferguson to Fergusson.



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