Buddhism and Christianity: A Parallel and a Contrast

In endeavouring to sketch in so limited a space even the most salient features of the many-sided religion of Buddhism it is possible that here and there I may have misrepresente...

Were this computation correct, Buddhism would have to be accounted by far the most widely accepted of all the religions of mankind. It has however been seriously challenged by t...

If Christianity be the offspring of Buddhism, or even if Buddhism exercised any direct influence upon its earliest development, some indications of that influence should be trac...

It is not in the plan of our lecture to discuss these momentous questions, or to enter the lists against the representatives of the sciences of Anthropology or Religion. Anthrop...

The question of the disciples in John ix. 2, concerning the man who was born blind, “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” is alleged by Professor Seyde...

But Christianity from the very earliest possessed what Buddhism for a long period lacked. In its canonical writings it conserved not only a check upon this apostasy, but a secur...

This belief in transmigration, with the pessimism which is its inevitable concomitant, was wholly absent from their ancient Vedic faith. At intervals from the times of Pythagora...

From the period when Vedic speculation first began its course to that in which it produced its earliest Upanishad, these moral and spiritual truths were not kept secret among th...

We may safely assert that in the mass of Buddhist literature already available nothing has been found, nor is anything at all likely to be found, corresponding in character and...

Collision and antagonism between sects in India was neither so sharp nor so fierce as in Palestine, and Buddha ministered in conditions much more favourable to the propagation o...

But the grand and crowning distinction between the import and effect of the two ministries emerged at the close. After Gotama died and his body was burned, and his relics had be...

Again, the New Testament writers claim for Christ what the early disciples of Buddha never dreamed of claiming for their master, and they insist upon their claim, though it is a...

“Mâra eat le démon de l’amour, du péché et de la mort,” says Burnouf in his _Introduction to the Study of Indian Buddism_, p. 76; see also Sutta Nipâta, _Sacred Books of the Eas...

Whatever may be said of the doctrine of the Fall, belief in it is indeed “a condition of hope,”[188] and the belief and the hope both spring from their faith in God as Creator a...

The great question with Buddha and his immediate disciples was not how Nirvana, the goal of human aspiration, was to be defined, but how it was to be attained. It was for him su...

Dr. Oldenberg has pointed out to us that the much-vaunted charity of Buddhism, illustrated in the legends by the self-immolation of Buddha to satisfy the hunger of a wild beast,...

Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, p. 95; Spence Hardy, _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 388; Oldenberg, _Buddha, etc._, quoting Bhikkuni Samyutta, p. 258; Colebrooke’s _Essays_, vol. i. p. 417,...

The monachism of Christianity originated, it is said, in the endeavour to reproduce the ideal of excellence represented in the life of Jesus. In the life of Jesus there was noth...

In the Church of the middle ages, supposed to consist only of pope and bishops and clergy and monks and nuns, of which mediævalism a remnant survives in those who speak of “ente...

At the close of the rainy season, when the brethren were making ready for their wanderings, another solemn conference for self-purgation was held. In this exercise of the Pâvâra...

Mahâ-pagâpati the Gotami, his aunt and nurse (Kullavaga, x. 1) whose entreaty, through Ananda, led him to found the Order of Bikkhuni, seems more than a name. Visâkhâ, “the rich...

It thus appears that Buddhism in the second period of its history, and after it had succeeded in winning the support of powerful kings, reached its furthest extension and achiev...

In India, as early as Fa-Hian’s time, and probably earlier in China,[358] out of these happy gods a new triad was formulated, receiving such worship as Hindus would render to th...

The iconography of early Christianity reflects even more clearly than its literature the various stages of its deterioration. As long as the world was against it, and it was com...

“It may be safely asserted that no Aryan race, while existing in anything like purity, was ever converted to Buddhism, or could permanently adopt its doctrines.”—Fergusson, _Tre...