Chapter XI: Part 11

The Buddhism of the earliest traditions was concerned chiefly with morality as essential to deliverance, and the Christianity of the New Testament is a faith and hope and love, dominating and fusing and moulding life after a nobler type. In China, as elsewhere, the Buddhism of morality gave way to the Buddhism of mystic contemplation. Yielding to the same tendency which afterwards made so many Christians abandon the paths of obedience and practice of righteousness for the cultivation of the inner life, Buddhism as early as 520 A.D. was prepared to follow eagerly Bôdiharma,[388] who came from Southern India to sweep away the alien growth of all book-instruction, and to establish the truth that “out of mind there is no Buddha, out of Buddha there is no mind; that virtue is not to be sought, and vice is not to be shunned; that nothing is to be looked upon as pure or polluted, for all that is needed is to avoid both good and evil, and he that can do this is a truly religious man.”[389]

In proclaiming that ethical distinctions mark an inferior stage of discipleship, for a “good man, though never against, is always above them,” Bôdiharma, the nominal founder of Esoteric Buddhism, simply formulated more clearly the teaching of Nâgârdjuna, the reputed founder of the Mahāyāna system. It was only another expression of that indefinable phase of thought, found in all religions as mysticism, and which, though commonly identified only with its extravagant outbursts, is really of the very essence of religion. The dominating thought in a religious man is that of a Supreme One in whom we live and move and have our being, and there are times in his worship when the balance of consciousness is disturbed, and self is lost in consciousness of the Divine. Man without the aid of prayer or sacramental grace finds in himself the revelation, and alas! as his consciousness is always imperfect, and very often confused, the revelation is too often distorted and the reverse of Divine.[390]

Mysticism, as was natural in a religion quickening both thought and emotion, appeared early in Christianity, and from the days of St. John it has never lacked a representative. In its manifold varieties and aberrations it presents many similarities to the mysticism of the East, but in reality it is as different from it in its nature as it is distant from it in its source. Eastern mysticism has always been more speculative than practical in character. Pantheistic in its origin, it assumes that all things are as divine as it is their nature to be, and aspires to get at the unity of being. Western mysticism, on the other hand, starts always from a sense of the disorder and alienation of things, and endeavours to get at man’s true life. The Eastern finds its object within, the Western generally without; the Eastern considers identity with Deity a natural state, the Western regards perfect fellowship with Deity as a goal of spiritual attainment. In Christianity mysticism has been occasional in its manifestations, and has always been regarded as an innovation; but in the East it is the normal deduction from Hindu Pantheism and Buddhist Nihilism.[391] Nâgârdjuna and Bôdiharma were the natural outcome of Gotama’s teaching. In Christianity it has often shown itself to be marvellously practical, and generally in revolt from some stereotyped system of dogma or form of worship. Though associated in our thoughts more with the sentimental than the intellectual aspects of religion,[392] it has manifested frequently a decidedly rationalistic tendency. Refusing to be dominated by authority or to be bound by antiquity, it has questioned fearlessly the dicta of Scripture, avowing that reason is not superseded, but divinely inspired and controlled as the organ of revelation. In Christianity its extravagances may be forgiven in consideration of the benefits which have flowed from it. It powerfully helped to bring about the Reformation, and since then, in the Churches, whether reformed or unreformed, it has tended to sweeten and intensify devotion. It has kept them mindful of their common lineage by insisting upon those essential and universal truths which are confessed to be vital in all religions, and especially by proclaiming the supremacy of the Holy Spirit as the fountain of all enlightenment and activity.

As manifested in St. Paul and St. John, mysticism is the recognition of the Holy Spirit as the Witness of Christ, and therefore the supreme lord over all man’s emotions and reasonings and purposes. Consequently the asceticism with which mysticism has always been associated has been in Christianity more kept under control. Occasionally it has lapsed into frightful excesses; indeed, the extravagances practised in the East to attain to insight have been equalled by the devices resorted to by many in the West to gain the vision of the Divine. In ingenious methods of self-torture the West certainly vied with the East, but at self-torture perverted Christianity stopped, while degenerate Buddhism went on to invent and put in practice most revolting methods of self-destruction as well. The law of Buddha prohibited this, and forbade even the mention of the advantages of death. It was an offence of the gravest kind, punished by the severest penalty which the Order could inflict,[393] for a monk to procure a weapon for the purpose of taking away his life, or to teach how death may be procured. Still, in India before Fa-Hian’s time, self-murder was practised, and in China Imperial edicts against self-mutilation and self-immolation were required to prevent fanatics evading the primitive law by the quibble, that while prohibiting suicide, Buddha enjoined the destruction of anger and lust, and that it was against these alone that they raised their hand, in order to complete their deliverance.[394]

Christianity demands that an ἄσκησις shall be practised by all who desire the illumination of the Spirit, for all that is vile must be purged out of life, and all that is animal in it must be subdued. The discipline, however, is always moral as well as religious, and it aims only at controlling, never, like Stoicism or Cynicism, at stifling or violating natural affection. Unlike Plato, who regarded matter as evil, Christ and His apostles recognised it as the creature of God, and taught us to seek the seat of evil, not in the body, but in the perverted will. In the spirit is the true _fons et origo mali_; but as the occasion of sin directly or indirectly often originates in some desire for bodily indulgence or some dread of bodily pain, temperance and fortitude demand that the body, if not inured to hardness, should be at least kept under control. So bodily exercise,[395] though in itself profiting little, profiteth much as moral discipline, a means to a spiritual end. Consequently the fast in its literal sense has its place in the Christian system as an expedient generally most required in the times when we are inclined to despise it. The fanaticism which would destroy or injure what is natural is condemned by Christianity as severely as is the sensuality which would unduly strengthen it. What it demands is that the whole nature be educated and ennobled by loving surrender to the control of an infinitely holy Will. Enjoyment of the vision beatific, communion with the Divine Being, is the _summum bonum_ of Christianity, and that is the portion only of the sanctified. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”

Bôdiharma’s mystic or esoteric Buddhism had no such influences to steady and sober it, and its aberrations were wilder than the fancies of our delirium. The supernatural pretensions of mysticism have always been disallowed or condemned in Christianity by overwhelming healthy-minded majorities, but the consequence of the practice of Esoteric Buddhism was believed by all to be supernatural power. An adept in it professed to see through all ages and worlds, and move through space by a sheer exercise of will. All the phenomena of modern spiritualism may have been witnessed in India and China two thousand years ago—yea, centuries perhaps before Buddha appeared. The first pretenders to these mysteries were the Indian Yogis and the medicine-men of savage and barbarous races.[396] The “Neo-Buddhism” and “Theosophy” of to-day simply confront us in the cast-off yellow rags of these pitiful superstitions. Their disciples attempt to warm themselves and to walk in the light of the unhallowed flames which the deluded followers of Bôdiharma believed they could kindle. In whatever way the phenomena of spiritualism are to be explained—and one cannot say what phenomena may emerge when the human mind is abandoned to vacuity, and the human will to an ungoverned fancy—we may be certain that investigation of them will never disclose the reality of benign supernatural power. What capabilities may be dormant in humanity no one can tell. Christ who redeemed us is the prophecy of what He can make us. He had supernatural power because His being accorded perfectly with the Heavenly Father’s will; but supernatural power as manifested by Christ is very different indeed from the ludicrous exhibitions of the “spiritualists.” Christ’s supernatural power was not manifested just in their ways, and certainly not by their methods; will it ever be acquired?[397]

It is not compatible with our space to trace the parallels between Esoteric Buddhism and some nineteenth-century forms of speculation in which the finite is again seen to be going back to the absolute, and the reality of everything but the self is denied. On the religious side, however, it is interesting to notice a later stage of it in a system which, originating not long after Bôdiharma, took some four centuries to establish itself. The T’ien-t’ai or Chi-Che school differed from Bôiharma’s theory of pure mental abstraction to be gained through complete withdrawal from all sensible surroundings, in that it sought to aid contemplation by sensuous exercises. Worship of gay idols, music of many persons chanting in unison, postures of kneeling and standing, exercises of continued and loud recitation, with intervals of profound silence and intense meditation, were supposed to produce the desired illumination. It seemed to be the first recognition of feeling in the Buddhist religion, and the first attempt to employ it to produce ecstasy. The same attempt has often been repeated in the history of Christianity, sometimes in very grotesque and extravagant forms. In every outburst of religious enthusiasm we may see rude examples of it, but it is also the principle on which æsthetic worship is generally defended. It is a reminder, therefore, to some very superior people, of our common human nature, and a warning that when left to itself, or indulged, even the æsthetic, like all other instincts, will just run the same round of extravagance in manifold and ever-recurring variety.

The tendency in human nature to pervert a religion is as strongly manifested in Christianity as in Buddhism; but there is this outstanding distinction between them, that while a survey of Buddhism shows that everywhere it has run its course, and has exhausted its intellectual and moral and spiritual resources, Christianity upon examination appears to be only in an early stage of development. In spite of the perversions of the Church, and its repeated resistance to Christian movements, Christianity has always produced what has condemned and corrected and vanquished them. It is the recuperative power of Christianity which most distinguishes it. There is nothing in the history of Buddhism which at all corresponds with the Reformation. To-day all over the world it is stereotyped and unprogressive, whereas everywhere in Christendom there is ferment of thought and stirring of life, plainly indicating that whatever power may claim the past, Christianity has the sure promise of the future.

In China, two hundred and seventy years ago, originated a sect whose adherents, scattered through the villages of the Eastern Provinces, and belonging principally to the lower classes of society, may be called Protestant or Reformed Buddhists. They are described by Dr. Edkins[398] as opposed to idolatry in all its forms, as having no temple, but only plain meeting-houses, signalised with only the common tablet to heaven, earth, king, parents, and teachers, as their symbol of reverence. Their worship consists not in ceremonies, but in quiet meditation, and inner adoration of the all-pervading Buddha. They are called the “Do-Nothing Sect,” not because they are idle, like the ignorant inmates of the monasteries—for they are really industrious and virtuous,—but because they hold that the highest virtue is never intentional, but wholly unconscious of self. Like M. Aurelius,[399] they consider that to ask to be “paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompence for seeing.” In thinking of them, the words of the Lord Jesus recur to us: “Do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.” George Fox, and the quiet and charitable Society which he founded, and which still continues in formal garb his protest against all formalism in worshipping God, not by clamouring to Him, but in silently waiting till He speaks, seems to be the realisation of what these good Wu-wei-Kiau aspire to in their religion. They have not been able to free themselves from Buddhism or Taoism. Buddha, though not worshipped, is believed in by them, and they have found an object of adoration in Kîn-mu, the Golden Mother of the soul, who can protect and deliver from calamity, and even save those that have died from misery. They have four principal festivals, two of which celebrate the birth and death of Lo-tsu, their founder. On these occasions three small cups of tea and nine tiny loaves of bread are placed on the tables, according to the appointment of Lo-tsu himself. On this account they are nicknamed “the Tea and Bread Sect.” They are strict vegetarians, but in no other sense ascetics, honouring marriage and family life, and having no monastic institute among them. They aver that one of their leaders during a persecution was crucified, and their great hope is that the world will soon come to an end, and that the Golden Mother will appear, to take all her children—all who believe in her as they do—home to her beautiful heaven.

This can hardly be called a reformation of Buddhism according either to its original form or its fundamental principles. It is a departure from, and an immense improvement upon it, which is manifestly due to foreign and probably Christian influence. The Nestorians entered China in the seventh, and the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, while Reformed Christianity only came in contact with China in the present generation. If it be denied that Christianity helped to produce the Do-Nothing Sect, it will be difficult to disprove the claim that, directly or indirectly, it has done much to produce the latest forms in which, in China and Japan, Buddhism is now presented to the world. In both countries Reformed Buddhists are found differing in much from one another, but generally agreeing in rejecting polytheism for the worship of one divinity: in China, Kwan-yin, who for long has changed sexes, and is now the goddess of mercy; in Japan, Buddha, whose attribute is Amita, the infinite. One sect, called the “Salvation without Works Sect,” has progressed greatly in Japan, under the title of Shin-Shin, “the true religion.” The worshipper renounces all merit, and trusts for salvation in nothing but the mercy of Amita.[400] The soul is brought into a state of salvation by an act of faith, and though sure of salvation, the faithful must not abandon the struggle with evil, for holiness is not the beginning, but the result of salvation. In Kioti, a Buddhist sect has a college quite Western in its curriculum and arrangements. There too the Japanese newspapers not only record the successes of able Buddhist preachers in spreading their doctrine, and in founding schools, they advertise a Buddhist propaganda for the conversion of Europe and America. Its only organ as yet is a little magazine called the _Bijou of Asia_, but it is printed in English for the enlightenment of all who believe in the moribund creeds of the West, and for the rescue especially of souls from the snare of that Christian superstition which “happily all over the world is rapidly declining in power”!

If this be not impure Christianity, no one will dare to call it pure Buddhism. Surely it is a hopeful indication for the future of Japan, as being evidently a movement somewhat similar to that inaugurated in India by Rammohun Roy, and greatly furthered in our days by Chunder Sen. The first professed to trace his reform to the Upanishads rediscovered, and expounded, and applied; and the second to the Vedas as the primitive fountains of the faith. Both reformers and their work would have been impossible two thousand years ago; yea, they would have been equally impossible to-day, had not the West given of its thoughts to the East, and Christendom communicated to it something of its better life. It is one thing to read the Vedas and Upanishads, as the Rishis recited or the Brahmans expounded them long ago, and quite another to have them interpreted by natives of India, around whose forefathers for several generations all the influences of Christian civilisation have been playing. So is it with the reforming Buddhists of China and Japan, who have enterprise to send their sons to study at our British Universities. They are reading their old literature—even when rejecting our systems of belief—with minds unconsciously saturated with Christian intelligence, and no doubt they often find there what the Gospel has put in themselves.

We may rest assured that the reform of the Oriental religions will only be effected by the infusion into them of the spirit of Christianity. A higher religion meeting them as Christianity does, may not supplant or destroy them, but it will revive and transform them. It will destroy much that is false, correct much that is wrong, supply all they lack, and so in the end annul them. The product will not likely be a facsimile of any of the Churches of Christendom. It may be a religion in which Buddha and the great teachers of his system will be lifted to their places among the prophets who, “since the world began,” unconsciously testified, by their errors as well as by their truths, by their failures as well as by their successes, to the Mystery to be revealed. The fact that in Buddhism the object of worship is not the Buddha that was, but Mâitrêya who is to be, is a pathetic confession that its Messiah has yet to come. Though Buddha did not proclaim His coming, the result of his mission bears witness to the need of Him. So he was a lawgiver preparing the way for Moses, even as Moses prepared the way for the Baptist, and as the Baptist heralded the Christ of God. Could his voice reach down to-day from “the quiet shore” to the millions who have taken hold of him in hope of finding deliverance from the miseries and perplexities of this sinful world, it would be to repeat a testimony once heard on Jordan’s banks from him than whom no one born of woman was greater: “There standeth One among you whom ye know not, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose.”

Footnote 319:

Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, ii. 33. 35.

Footnote 320:

1 Corinthians xiv.

Footnote 321:

“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.