Part 25

“Das Christenthum ist das allerveränderlichste; das ist sein besonderer Ruhm.”—Rothe, _Stille Stunden_, p. 357.

Footnote 322:

Acts xxviii. 13; Rom. xv. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 10; 1 Peter i. 1.

Footnote 323:

Greg. Nyss. _Op._ iii. 574.

Footnote 324:

Keim, _Rom und Christenthum_, p. 417.

Footnote 325:

Uhlhorn, _Conflict of Christianity_, pp. 54, 90.

Footnote 326:

Neander, _Church History_, vol. i. pp. 10, 40.

Footnote 327:

Orig. _cont. Cels._ iii. 44-54; Tatian, c. 33; Minut. Felix, _Octav._ 8. 12; Tertull. _Apolog._ 37 _et passim_.

Footnote 328:

Newman, _Grammar of Assent_, pp. 460 _seq._

Footnote 329:

Kullavagga, iv. 14. 25; also _ibid._ vii. 1. 5; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xx.

Footnote 330:

E. Burnouf, _Science of Religions_, p. 288, notes the analogy between Pryadarsi and “a man greatly beloved” in Daniel ix. 23.

Footnote 331:

See _Lotus de la bonne Loi_, App. x. p. 659 _seq._: Prinsep’s trans., _Jour. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ vol. vii. pp. 219 _seq._; Prof. H. H. Wilson’s, vol. xii. of _Jour. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ pp. 153 _seq._

Footnote 332:

Wheeler, _History of India_, vol. iii. p. 214.

Footnote 333:

T. W. Rhys Davids, _Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 225.

Footnote 334:

Dipavamso, chap. viii.

Footnote 335:

T. W. Rhys Davids, _Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 259.

Footnote 336:

_Buddhist Records of the Western World_, trans. by Prof. Beal, vol. i.; Fo-Kwo-ki, chap. xxii. p. xlix, vol. ii; Hiuen Tsiang, B. vi. pp. 13, 14.

Footnote 337:

Lassen, _Indische Alterth._ vol. ii. p. 1078; vol. iv. p. 741.

Footnote 338:

Dr. Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 61; Dr. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, Preface, p. i.

Footnote 339:

_Buddhism in Tibet_, E. Schlagintweit, pp. 61-75.

Footnote 340:

_Comparative Progress of Ancient and Modern Missions._

Footnote 341:

Dr. Maclear, _Gradual Conversion of Europe_, pp. 6-12.

Footnote 342:

_Nouveau Journ. Asiat._ pp. 106, 137, 139.

Footnote 343:

Dr. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, pp. 84, 207.

Footnote 344:

“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, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, p. 67. The old Turanian race, far from being savage, or even barbarous, not only laid the basis of Chinese civilisation, but seems to have been also the first civiliser of Western Asia, and the first to spread art and science along the southern coasts of Europe. The Iberian, Etruscan, Phœnician, Hittite, even Egyptian monuments, are now acknowledged to be relics of this mighty race, which must have sent horde after horde over Asia and Europe long before the historic advance westwards in the thirteenth century A.D.; its latest invasion of India may have been represented, not by Scythian ancestors of Buddha, but the Sikhs.—Conder, “Early Races of Western Asia,” _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ August 1889, pp. 30-43.

Footnote 345:

Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, Introduction; Eitel, _Lectures on Buddhism_.

Footnote 346:

Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, pp. 114, 156.

Footnote 347:

Wassilief, _Le Bouddhisme_, etc., pp. 14, 18.

Footnote 348:

Dêvadatta’s Five Points (Kullavagga, vii. 3. 14, 15) all insist upon a more ascetic rule than the Sangha practised.

Footnote 349:

Stanley, _Eastern Church_, pp. 45, 50.

Footnote 350:

Turnour, “Pali Bud. Annals,” _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ vol. vi. p. 729; Wassilief, _Le Bouddhisme, etc._, p. 18.

Footnote 351:

The beginning of the dissensions is related in Kullavagga vii. with much legendary adornment. There too, in vii. 5, and in Mahavagga, x. 1. 6, the distinction is drawn between “dissension” and “schism,” and the woe predicted for the breaker-up of the Sangha when it was at peace: “He is boiled for a kalpa in Niraya, doomed for so long to a penance of misery.” The reconciler of a divided Sangha was made happy for a kalpa in heaven.

Footnote 352:

T. W. Rhys Davids, _Handbook of Buddhism_, p. 182.

Footnote 353:

Beal, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 101: “a worship of association and memory.”

Footnote 354:

Agni. Indra, Sūrya; Kern, _Buddhismus_, vol. ii. p. 156; Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, p. 175.

Footnote 355:

“A being whose essence (sattva) has become intelligence (bodhu) derived from _self-enlightening_ intellect, and who has only once more to pass through human existence before attaining Buddhahood.”—Eitel, _Sanskrit-Chinese Dict._, p. 26; Sir Monier Williams’ _Buddhism_, p. 98.

Footnote 356:

Wassilief, _Le Bouddhisme, etc._, pp. 124 _seq._; Burnouf, _Le Lotus de la bonne Loi_, p. 302.

Footnote 357:

Nâgârdjuna, the Nagasēna of the Milindipanha, was the chief representative, if not founder, of one of the Mahāyāna Schools. He has been regarded as a mythical personage, and the name has been supposed to be the generic one of various authors and doctors of the system. For an account of Hināyāna and Mahāyāna doctrine, with its subdivisions, see Wassilief, _Le Bouddhisme, etc._, pp. 9 _seq._, 118 _seq._; Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 19-57. Nâlanda must have been a very important centre in Buddhist times.—Fergusson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, p. 79.

Footnote 358:

Dr. Edkins says about 190 A.D.

Footnote 359:

Burnouf, _Introd. à l’histoire du Bud. Ind._ vol. i. pp. 220, 224 (Paris, 1844); also Burnouf, _Le Lotus de la bonne Loi_, chap. xxiv. pp. 261-268; also Appendix III. pp. 498-511 (Paris, 1852).

Footnote 360:

Müller, Gifford Lectures, _Natural Religion_, p. 543; Dr. Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 123; Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, p. 195.

Footnote 361:

Hodgson, _Illustrations of the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists_, p. 30; Burnouf, _Introduction, etc._, pp. 116-121; also in note at p. 118, quoting Hodgson.

Footnote 362:

Though strong affinities exist between Gnosticism and Buddhism, which may indicate later connection, in their origin they appear to have been quite distinct. The methods, aims, and terminology of Gnosticism, all betoken derivation from purely Western sources. It is quite possible that Gnosticism may have given Adi-Buddha to the East, but the question of their relations is still undetermined. See Weber, _Hist. Ind. Lit._ p. 309; Obry’s _Nirvana, etc._, p. 161; Bishop Lightfoot, Essay on the Essenes (_Epistle to Colossians_), p. 157; _Home and Foreign Review_, vol. iii. pp. 143 _seq._ (1863).

Footnote 363:

Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, p. 203; Dr. Beal, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 128; Dr. Eitel, _Lectures_, p. 98.

Footnote 364:

Kullavagga, v. 21. 4; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xx.

Footnote 365:

_Introd._ § vi. p. 558: “La plume se refuse à transcrire des doctrines aussi misérables quant à la forme, qu’odieuses et dégradantes pour le fond.”

Footnote 366:

Âryasanga, founder of the Yôgacharya or contemplative system of Mahāyāna (_circa_ 400 A.D.). For an account of his doctrine, see Wassilief, _Le Boudd._ pp. 288 _seq._, and Schlagintweit, _Bud. in Tibet_, pp. 39 _seq._, 46 _seq._; Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, p. 207 _seq._

Footnote 367:

A writer in the _Nineteenth Century_, October 1889, professes to describe the testimony of the only reporter who has written of Lhása since Huc and Gabet were expelled from it forty-five years ago. According to this witness, the Church is now actually in grip of the State, though nominally dominant. Of five members of the Council of the Grand Lama four are laymen, superior military officers, with the Regent at their head. Till the Grand Lama is eighteen years of age, the Regent is supreme, and for sixty years, not a single Grand Lama, chosen as an infant, has survived his eighteenth birthday!!

Footnote 368:

Buddhism, however, introduced into Tibet the benefits of the art of writing, the reduction of its language to an alphabet, and grammar; and not only the sacred literature represented by the collection of the Kandjur, but the very miscellaneous literature of the Tandjur. Several of its Buddhist missionaries and the kings who favoured them were really great men. Kublai Khan and the first Lamistic Pope Phags-pa, 1259-94, rendered lasting service to the cause of civilisation. See Köppen’s _Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche_, being vol. ii. of his celebrated and most laborious work, _Die Religion des Buddha_; T. W. Rhys Davids, Art. LAMAISM, _Encyc. Brit._ vol. xiv.; Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_, pp. 262-302.

Footnote 369:

The most recent and reliable information as to this perverted form of Buddhism—if it is to be called Buddhism, for it seems to be no more Buddhism than Vandoux worship can be called Christianity—will be found in the works of T. W. Rhys Davids; Sir Monier Williams, _Buddhism_; Babu Sarat Chunder Das, “Religious Hist. of Thibet,” _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ 1881; _Life and Works of Alex. Csoma de Koros_, Th. Duka, Lond. 1885; E. Colborne Baber, _Travels and Researches in Western China_; Bushell’s “Hist. of Thibet,” _Journ. R.A.S._ vol. xii. 1878-79.

Footnote 370:

An invocation of Avalôkitês’vara, who is believed to have delivered it to the Tibetans.—Klaproth, _Fragments Bouddhiques_, p. 27; Hodgson, _Illustrations_, p. 171; Charles Loring Brace, _Gesta Christi_, p. 455.

Footnote 371:

Schlagintweit, _Buddhism in Tibet_, pp. 227-272.

Footnote 372:

_Chinese Review_, vol. xi. p. 162; Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 233.

Footnote 373:

Once when a heathen asked Hillel to show him the whole Jewish religion in a few words, he replied, “_Do not unto others what thou wouldst not should be done unto thee_.” Kuenen’s _Religion of Israel_, p. 243 (quotes Talmud, Sabbath, 31 a.)

Footnote 374:

See Isaiah xxxii. 5, 6. Socrates says in _Phaedo_, “to use words wrongly and indefinitely is not merely an error in itself; it also creates evil in the soul.” A vast amount of mischief is done by the misapplication of good adjectives to bad subjects. All true reformers, with Confucius, labour for a rectification of names.

Footnote 375:

Shu King, Shi King, Pref. and Introd. pp. 1-27, by Dr. Legge; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. iii.

Footnote 376:

_Mémoire sur la Vie et les Opinions de Lao-tsze._

Footnote 377:

Translation of the Tâo-teh-King, under the title, _Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu_.

Footnote 378:

μέθοδος, Prof. Douglas, _Confucianism and Taoism_, p. 189.

Footnote 379:

It is very interesting to find, so long before Christianity, and so far from its cradle, this fundamental rule in Christian morals. In the Book of Proverbs its enunciation may have preceded that in the Tao-teh-King in point of time; but its being uttered at the end of the world, along with the “golden rule” of Confucius, prove how essentially one are the moral instincts of humanity.

Footnote 380:

Dr. Legge’s Preface to vol. iii. of _Sacred Books of the East_, p. xxi; also Art. LAO-TSZE, _Encyc. Brit._ vol. xiv.

Footnote 381:

Dr. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, pp. 128, 202; Beal, _Introduction to Fa-Hian_, p. 27.

Footnote 382:

Douglas, _Confucianism_, p. 84; Beal, _Buddhism in China_, p. 235; Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 333.

Footnote 383:

In the whole range of the Catacombs no crucifix, and only very few crosses have been found, and these generally in a disguised form. The communion of the early Church was with Christ risen and triumphant; it was only when the spirit and fervour of worship declined that it made so much of the crucifixion.—Northcote and Brownlow’s Abridgment of De Rossi’s _Roma Sotterranea_; Smith and Cheetham, _Dict. of Christian Antiq._, Art. CATACOMBS, pp. 294 _seq._; Witherow, _Catacombs_, pp. 260, 281.

Footnote 384:

The efficiency of _relic-worship_ may be said to have been established as early as the fourth century. Julian compares the churches to whited sepulchres, full of dead men’s bones. Development of _image-worship_ proceeded _pari passu_ with the erection of fine churches and their adornment with painting and sculpture. There were all along strong protests from individual bishops, and even prohibitions by Councils, but the fashion was too strong for their fulminations. Even in the eighth century the iconoclastic reformation of Leo the Isaurian was too late. His zeal, moreover, was wrongly directed. He assailed high art, and condemned only the truly fine paintings, sparing the ruder and more ancient productions, and leaving untouched the worship of and disgraceful traffic in relics, real and spurious. It is not to be wondered at that in opposition to all this Gregory in the West became the champion of art as an aid to devotion.—Milman, _Lat. Christianity_, vol. ii. p. 152.

Footnote 385:

In protesting against the Mass, the Reformed Churches maintain the universal priesthood, and therefore perpetual sacrifice, of the visible Church. As Christ’s witness on earth, the Church must be always offering itself, in thanksgiving for its own redemption, for the salvation of the world.

Footnote 386:

Fergusson, _Tree and Serpent Worship_, p. 67; Cunningham, _Bhilsa Topes_, p. 130.

Footnote 387:

Dr. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 126; Judges vi. 31.

Footnote 388:

Originally called Bódhitara, but renamed by his teacher Payantara, in token of his religious “insight.” He is said to have brought to China the famous alms-bowl, which all the Buddhas of the Kalpa have used, and will use, and whose final disappearance will indicate that the religion is about to perish. Thus Buddhism has also its San Greal. Bôdiharma is called the “wall-gazing Brahman,” though a Kshatrya, because on his arrival in China he spent nine years in silent meditation.—Eitel, _Sanskrit Chinese Dict._ p. 24.

Footnote 389:

Dr. Edkins, _Chinese Buddhism_, p. 130.

Footnote 390:

Men who have in vain sought God without have happily found Him in the witness of their own conscience and affection, but generally they who conceitedly reject the revelation without them only obscure the seeing faculty within. “When mysticism threw off external authority it went mad, as in the revolutionary pantheism of the Middle Ages. When it incorporated itself more and more in revealed truth, it became a benign power—as on the eve of the Reformation.”—Vaughan, _Hours with the Mystics_, vol. ii. p. 356.

Footnote 391:

“Mysticism,” A. Seth, _Encyc. Brit._ vol. xvii. pp. 129-136.

Footnote 392:

Correctly so, if we are to judge of Mysticism even from its purest phases and its best representatives, _e.g._ the Quietism of Madame Guyon, the Spiritualism of Swedenborg, the Romanticism of F. von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis. Even on its speculative or philosophical side, it would not be difficult to cull from the writings of the Cambridge Platonists, and the Idealists of Europe and America, extracts equivalent to the aphorisms of Novalis, that “action is morbid,” “to dream is to overcome,” that “the soul must abandon the actual world if it would discover in the recesses of the mystic night the Queen of Heaven, Eternal Beauty.”—_Hymns to Night_, Schriften, vol. ii. p. 158.

Footnote 393:

Pâtimokkha; Pârâgikâ Dhammâ, 3; _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xiii.

Footnote 394:

Beal, Introduction to _Fa-Hian_, p. 42. In an important aspect the perversion of Christianity was worse than that of Buddhism. The Buddhist ascetics, though merciless to themselves, never tortured their vanquished opponents. There is no parallel to the Romish Inquisition and some Protestant atrocities in any of the annals of Buddhism.

Footnote 395:

ἡ σωματικὴ γυμνασία, 1 Tim. iv. 8.

Footnote 396:

Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, vol. i. p. 440.

Footnote 397:

“Vient enfin le mysticisme de la dernière époque, qui, de même que tous les mysticismes, finit de la manière la plus misérable, et enfante une idolâtrie grossière, ainsi que les stupides pratiques de la sorcellerie” (Laboulaye, Introd. to La Comme’s transl. of Wassilief’s _Buddhism_, p. xlv). This has often been verified in the religious history of the West, and the fate of many former “spiritual” aspirants to enter or to peer into the Invisible and Unutterable should be a powerful warning to all who are now aiming at surpassing the natural conditions of existence. In endeavouring to transcend humanity, we are likely to fall miserably below it.

Footnote 398:

_Chinese Buddhism_, pp. 370-379.

Footnote 399:

Also Seneca: “We do not love virtue because it gives us pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because we love it.”—_De Vit. Beat._ c. ix. “In doing good man should be like the vine, producing grapes, and asking for nothing in having done so.”—M. Aurel. v. 6 and ix. 42.

Footnote 400:

Herzog, _Encyclop._ (Schaff), vol. i. p. 334.

POSTSCRIPT.

In endeavouring to perform the very honourable task assigned to me, I have had to contend all along with the difficulty of comprising in six what would require many more lectures properly to relate. Much which was actually prepared I have been forced to omit, consoling myself with the thought that, after all, I had simply to lecture and not to write a compendious treatise, and that it was my business to sketch as truthfully as I could what it was simply impossible, within the limits prescribed, adequately to depict. It was originally my intention to give in parallel quotations the alleged similarities between the contents of the Pitakas and the New Testament, but the conditions of time and space compelled me to be content with references to specimens of them in the _Sacred Books of the East_, from which any ordinary English reader may be able to form a judgment concerning them. Moreover, when well on with the work, I discovered that a much more thorough examination of Professor Seydel’s _Buddhist-Christian Harmony_ than I could profess to make had already been published by Professor Kellogg of Allegheny, U.S., in his book on the _Light of Asia and the Light of the World_. An Indian missionary of eleven years’ experience, and the author of an excellent Grammar of the Hindi language, can write upon this subject, not only with greater authority, but to much better purpose, than one who only knows Indian books through the medium of European translations, and who has not seldom been compelled to take on trust what he felt strongly inclined to question. If Dr. Kellogg’s book is not extensively read in this country, it certainly deserves to be.

Our sketch has been confined to Buddhism as a religion and as an ethical system. The philosophy which has grown out of it, and especially the psychology which lies at the base of its original dogmas, would require a large volume to expound. A great field is open here for those who have the ability and the leisure to cultivate it; and though good work has already been done in it, we may be convinced that, until this psychology has been more thoroughly investigated, we must continue in uncertainty as to what original Buddhism was. Though much has been written upon the origin and growth of Buddhism, the first authoritative words are only now beginning to be spoken by the learned translators of the Pali texts; and though they have dispelled illusions and corrected false impressions not a few, we cannot affirm that there is a strong consensus of opinion among them as to the life and teaching of the founder of Buddhism. One is greatly impressed by the modest hesitation with which they have presented their views, but this very diffidence makes one fear that we may be attributing to Buddha sayings which he never uttered, or that we have drawn from them inferences which he would have disowned.

In working out a sketch like this, the temptation constantly besetting one is to compare or contrast actual Buddhism with ideal Christianity.

I have endeavoured to bear in mind that our modern religion may in many features grossly misrepresent that of its Divine Author, and, indeed, that “Christianity has all along been much embarrassed in being obliged to apologise for Christendom.”[401] In like manner I have tried to make plain the great distinction between the original system of Buddha and that which very soon came to be known by his name. An Oriental will certainly misjudge Christianity if he derives his knowledge of it from mediæval theology or from some nineteenth-century sermons; and we may unconsciously commit the same mistake in ascribing to the primitive dogmas the interpretation put upon them by its later schools.[402] I have read several books in which this mistake was flagrant, and I should be extremely sorry to follow their bad example. In the present state of our knowledge, however, and until the earliest texts have been accurately ascertained, and sifted, and classified, this, to a certain extent, is inevitable, and therefore excusable. If I have failed in my attempt to portray accurately even the salient features of this great religion, it has been from no desire to caricature it. The days have surely passed when it could be said that we were “too infatuated by a sense of the superiority of our own to make a fair survey of other religions.”[403] It is our duty, and it will be for our interest, to do justice to them, and, instead of being content with the schoolboy’s endeavour to prove them false, we should seek carefully among the ruins of the most degraded of them for all the elements of truth we can discover. It is in this direction that we must proceed if we would find solid foundations for a true Christian theology, and the more we address ourselves to the work the more likely shall we be to convince the Church of the proper value of the Faith deposited in its keeping, and to rouse it to realise its destiny and fulfil its glorious mission to the world.

In correcting these sheets for the press, I have often been sensible of my great obligations to a very highly valued personal friend, whose goodness was as remarkable as his learning. May I be forgiven if, in gratitude for his kind and generous help in these very studies, given now long ago, I desire to keep alive the memory of this justly esteemed Sanskrit scholar, by adding this little stone to his cairn, and adorning my book with the name of Dr. John Muir.

Footnote 401:

_Eternal Atonement_, by Dr. R. D. Hitchcock, p. 157.

Footnote 402:

T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 196.

Footnote 403:

Quinet, _Le Génie des Religions_, p. 13.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty, _at the Edinburgh University Press_.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the lectures in which they are referenced.