Chapter XI (3)

We have met few sects which truly practice sorcery. One such is the Yezidis, considered by some a branch of the Koords, though we believe erroneously. These inhabit chiefly the mountainous and desolate regions of Asiatic Turkey, about Mosul, Armenia, and are found even in Syria,[1113] and Mesopotamia. They are called and known everywhere as devil-worshippers; and most certainly it is not either through ignorance or mental obscuration that they have set up the worship and a regular intercommunication with the lowest and the most malicious of both elementals and elementaries. They recognize the present wickedness of the chief of the “black powers;” but at the same time they dread his power, and so try to conciliate to themselves his favors. He is in an open quarrel with Allah, they say, but a reconciliation can take place between the two at any day; and those who have shown marks of their disrespect to the “black one” now, may suffer for it at some future time, and thus have both God and Devil against them. This is simply a cunning policy that seeks to propitiate his Satanic majesty, who is no other than the great _Tcherno-bog_ (the black god) of the Variagi-Russ, the ancient idolatrous Russians before the days of Vladimir.

Like Wierus, the famous demonographer of the sixteenth century (who in his _Pseudomonarchia Dæmonum_ describes and enumerates a regular infernal court, which has its dignitaries, princes, dukes, nobles, and officers), the Yezidis have a whole pantheon of devils, and use the Jakshas, aërial spirits, to convey their prayers and respects to Satan their master, and the Afrites of the Desert. During their prayer-meetings, they join hands, and form immense rings, with their Sheik, or an officiating priest in the middle who claps his hands, and intones every verse in honor of Sheitan (Satan). Then they whirl and leap in the air. When the frenzy is at its climax, they often wound and cut themselves with their daggers, occasionally rendering the same service to their next neighbors. But their wounds do not heal and cicatrize as easily as in the case of lamas and holy men; for but too often they fall victims to these self-inflicted wounds. While dancing and flourishing high their daggers without unclasping hands--for this would be considered a sacrilege, and the spell instantly broken, they coax and praise Sheitan, and entreat him to manifest himself in his works by “miracles.” As their rites are chiefly accomplished during night, they do not fail to obtain manifestations of various character, the least of which are enormous globes of fire which take the shapes of the most uncouth animals.

Lady Hester Stanhope, whose name was for many years a power among the masonic fraternities of the East, is said to have witnessed, personally, several of these Yezidean ceremonies. We were told by an _Ockhal_, of the sect of Druses, that after having been present at one of the Yezidis’ “Devil’s masses,” as they are called, this extraordinary lady, so noted for personal courage and daring bravery, fainted, and notwithstanding her usual Emir’s male attire, was recalled to life and health with the greatest difficulty. Personally, we regret to say, all our efforts to witness one of these performances failed.

A recent article in a Catholic journal on Nagualism and Voodooism charges Hayti with being the centre of secret societies, with terrible forms of initiation and bloody rites, where _human infants are sacrificed and devoured by the adepts_(!!) Piron, a French traveller, is quoted at length, describing a most fearful scene witnessed by him in Cuba, in the house of a lady whom he never would have suspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. “A naked white girl acted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and incantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A serpent, trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round the limbs of the girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing around or standing to watch its contortions. The spectator fled at last in horror when the poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic fit.”

While deploring such a state of things in Christian countries, the Catholic article in question explains this tenacity for ancestral religious rites as evidence of the _natural depravity of the human heart_, and makes a loud call for greater zeal on the part of Catholics. Besides repeating the absurd fiction about devouring children, the writer seems wholly insensible to the fact that a devotion to one’s faith that centuries of the most cruel and bloody persecution cannot quench, makes heroes and martyrs of a people, whereas their conversion to any other faith would turn them simply into renegades. A compulsory religion can never breed anything but deceit. The answer received by the missionary Margil from some Indians supports the above truism. The question being: “How is it that you are so heathenish after having been Christians so long?” The answer was: “What would you do, father, if enemies of your faith entered your land? Would you not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion and retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our priests, and prophets, and soothsayers, and nagualists have done to this time and are still doing.”

Such an answer from a Roman Catholic, questioned by a missionary of either Greek or Protestant Church, would earn for him the crown of a saint in the Popish martyrology. Better a “heathen” religion that can extort from a Francis Xavier such a tribute as he pays the Japanese, in saying that “in virtue and probity they surpassed all the nations he had ever seen;” than a Christianity whose advance over the face of the earth sweeps aboriginal nations out of existence as with a hurricane of fire.[1114] Disease, drunkenness, and demoralization are the immediate results of apostasy from the faith of their fathers, and conversion into a religion of mere forms.

What Christianity is doing for British India, we need go to no inimical sources to inquire. Captain O’Grady, the British ex-official, says: “The British government is doing a shameful thing in turning the natives of India from a sober race to a nation of drunkards. And for pure _greed_. Drinking is forbidden by the religion alike of Hindus and Mussulmans. But ... drinking is daily becoming more and more prevalent.... What the accursed opium traffic, forced on China by British greed, has been to that unhappy country, the government sale of liquor is likely to become to India. For it is a government monopoly, based on almost precisely the same model as the government monopoly of tobacco in Spain.... The outside domestics in European families usually get to be terrible drunkards.... The indoor servants usually detest drinking, and are a good deal more respectable in this particular than their masters and mistresses ... everybody drinks ... bishops, chaplains, freshly-imported boarding-school girls, and all.”

Yes, these are the “blessings” that the modern Christian religion brings with its _Bibles_ and _Catechisms_ to the “poor heathen.” Rum and bastardy to Hindustan; opium to China; rum and foul disorders to Tahiti; and, worst of all, the example of hypocrisy in religion, and a practical skepticism and atheism, which, since it seems to be good enough for _civilized_ people, may well in time be thought good enough for those whom theology has too often been holding under a very heavy yoke. On the other hand, everything that is noble, spiritual, elevating, in the old religion is denied, and even deliberately falsified.

Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see whether any one can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the word Christ anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied idea. “If any man is in Christ he is a new creation,” _he is reborn_, as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit--the spirit of man. Paul was the only one of the apostles who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus, although he had never met him. But Paul had been initiated himself; and, bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above the wisdom of the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final revelation to the epoptæ. As Professor A. Wilder well proves in a series of able articles, it _was not Jesus, but Paul who was the real founder of Christianity_. “The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch,” say the _Acts of the Apostles_. “Such men as Irenæus, Epiphanius, and Eusebius have transmitted to posterity a reputation for untruth and dishonest practices; and the heart sickens at the story of the crimes of that period,” writes this author, in a recent article.[1115] “It will be remembered,” he adds, “that when the Moslems overran Syria and Asia Minor for the first time, they were welcomed by the Christians of those regions as deliverers from the intolerable oppression of the ruling authorities of the Church.”

Mahomet never was, neither is he now, considered a god; yet under the stimulus of his name millions of Moslems have served their God with an ardor that can never be paralleled by Christian sectarianism. That they have sadly degenerated since the days of their prophet, does not alter the case in hand, but only proves the more the prevalence of matter over spirit all over the world. Besides, they have never degenerated more from primitive faith than Christians themselves. Why, then, should not Jesus of Nazareth, a thousandfold higher, nobler, and morally grander than Mahomet, be as well revered by Christians and followed in practice, instead of being blindly adored in fruitless faith as a god, and at the same time worshipped much after the fashion of certain Buddhists, who turn their wheel of prayers. That this faith has become sterile, and is no more worthy the name of Christianity than the fetishism of Calmucks that of the philosophy preached by Buddha, is doubted by none. “We would not be supposed to entertain the opinion,” says Dr. Wilder, “that modern Christianity is in any degree identical with the religion preached by Paul. It lacks his breadth of view, his earnestness, his keen spiritual perception. Bearing the impress of the nations by which it is professed, it exhibits as many forms as there are races. It is one thing in Italy and Spain, but widely differs in France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Great Britain, Russia, Armenia, Kurdistan, and Abyssinia. As compared with the preceding worships, the change seems to be more in name than in genius. Men had gone to bed Pagans and awoke Christians. As for the _Sermon on the Mount_, its conspicuous doctrines are more or less repudiated by every Christian community of any considerable dimensions. Barbarism, oppression, cruel punishments, are as common now as in the days of Paganism.

“The Christianity of Peter exists no more; that of Paul supplanted it, and was in its turn amalgamated with the other world religions. When mankind are enlightened, or the barbarous races and families are supplanted by those of nobler nature and instincts, the ideal excellencies may become realities.

“The ‘Christ of Paul’ has constituted an enigma which evoked the most strenuous endeavor to solve. He was something else than the Jesus of the _Gospels_. Paul disregarded utterly their ‘endless genealogies.’ The author of the fourth _Gospel_, himself an Alexandrian Gnostic, describes Jesus as what would now be termed a ‘materialized’ divine spirit. He was the Logos, or First Emanation--the Metathron.... The ‘mother of Jesus,’ like the Princess Maya, Danaé, or perhaps Periktioné, had given birth, not to a love-child, but to a divine offspring. No Jew of whatever sect, no apostle, no early believer, ever promulgated such an idea. Paul treats of Christ as a personage rather than as a person. The sacred lessons of the secret assemblies often personified the divine good and the divine truth in a human form, assailed by the passions and appetites of mankind, but superior to them; and this doctrine, emerging from the crypt, was apprehended by churchlings and gross-minded men as that of immaculate conception and divine incarnation.”

In the old book, published in 1693 and written by the Sieur de la Loubère, French Ambassador to the King of Siam, are related many interesting facts of the Siamese religion. The remarks of the satirical Frenchman are so pointed that we will quote his words about the Siamese Saviour--Sommona-Cadom.

“How marvellous soever they pretend the birth of their Saviour has been, they cease not to give _him a father and a mother_.[1116] His mother, whose name is found in some of their _Balie_ (Pali?) books, was called, as they say, _Maha_ MARIA, which seems to signify the great Mary, for Maha signifies great. However it be, this ceases not to give attention to the missionaries, and has perhaps given occasion to the Siamese to believe that Jesus being the son of _Mary_, was brother to Sommona-Cadom, and that, having been crucified, he was that _wicked_ brother whom they give to Sommona-Cadom, under the name of Thevetat, and whom they report to be punished in Hell, with a punishment which participates something of a cross.... The Siamese expect another Sommona-Cadom, I mean, another miraculous man like him, whom they already named _Pronarote_, and whom they say was foretold by Sommona. He made all sorts of miracles.... He had two disciples, both standing on each hand of his idol; one on the right hand, and the other on the left ... the first is named Pra-Magla, and the second _Pra Scaribout_.... The father of Sommona-Cadom was, according to this same _Balie_ Book, a King of Teve Lanca, that is to say, a King of Ceylon. But _the Balie Books being without date and without the author’s name, have no more authority than all the traditions, whose origin is unknown_.”[1117]

This last argument is as ill-considered as it is naïvely expressed. We do not know of any book in the whole world less authenticated as to date, authors’ names, or tradition, than our Christian _Bible_. Under these circumstances the Siamese have as much reason to believe in their miraculous Sommona-Cadom as the Christians in their miraculously-born Saviour. Moreover, they have no better right to force their religion upon the Siamese, or any other people, against their will, and in their own country, where they go unasked, than the so-called heathen “to compel France or England to accept Buddhism at the point of the sword.” A Buddhist missionary, even in free-thinking America, would daily risk being mobbed, but this does not at all prevent missionaries from abusing the religion of the Brahmans, Lamas, and Bonzes, publicly to their teeth; and the latter are not always at liberty to answer them. This is termed diffusing the beneficent light of Christianity and civilization upon the darkness of heathenism!

And yet we find that these pretensions--which might appear ludicrous were they not so fatal to millions of our fellow-men, who only ask to be left alone--were fully appreciated as early as in the seventeenth century. We find the same witty Monsieur de la Loubère, under a pretext of pious sympathy, giving some truly curious instructions to the ecclesiastical authorities at home,[1118] which embody the very soul of Jesuitism.

“From what I have said concerning the opinions of the Orientals,” he remarks, “it is easy to comprehend how difficult an enterprise it is to bring them over to the Christian religion; and of what consequence it is that the missionaries, which preach the Gospel in the East, do perfectly understand the manners and belief of these people. For as the apostles and first Christians, when God supported their preaching by so many wonders, did not on a sudden discover to the heathens all the mysteries which we adore, but a long time concealed from them, and the Catechumens themselves, the knowledge of those which might scandalize them; it seems very rational to me that the missionaries, who have not the gift of miracles, ought not presently to discover to the Orientals all the mysteries nor all the practices of Christianity.

“’Twould be convenient, for example, if I am not mistaken, not to preach unto them, _without great caution_, the worshipping of saints; and as to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I think it would be necessary to manage it with them, if I may so say, and _not to speak to them of the mystery of the Incarnation_, till after having convinced them of the existence of a God Creator. For what probability is there, to begin with, of persuading the Siamese to remove Sommona-Cadom, Pra Mogla, and Pra Scaribout from the altars, to set up Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St. Paul, in their stead? ’Twould, perhaps, be more proper not to preach unto them Jesus Christ crucified, till they have first comprehended that one may be _unfortunate_ and _innocent_; and that by the rule received, even amongst them, which is, that the innocent might load himself with the crimes of the guilty, it was necessary _that a god should become man_, to the end that this man-God should, by a laborious life, and a shameful but voluntary death, satisfy for all the sins of men; but before all things it would be necessary to give them the true idea of a God Creator, and justly provoked against men. The Eucharist, after this, will not scandalize the Siamese, as it formerly scandalized the Pagans of Europe; forasmuch as the Siamese do not believe Sommona-Cadom could give his wife and children to the Talapoins to eat.

“On the contrary, as the Chinese are respectful toward their parents even to a scruple, I doubt not that if the Gospel should be presently put into their hands, they would be scandalized at that place, where, when some told Jesus Christ that his mother and his brethren asked after him, he answered in such a manner, that he seems so little to regard them, that he affected not to know them. They would _not be less offended_ at those other mysterious words, which our divine Saviour spoke to the young man, who desired time to go and bury his parents: “Let the dead,” said he, “bury the dead.” Every one knows the trouble which the Japanese expressed to St. Francis Xavier _upon the eternity of damnation_, not being able to believe that their dead parents should fall into so horrible a misfortune for _want of having embraced Christianity, which they had never heard of_.... It seems necessary, therefore, to prevent and mollify this thought, by the means which that great apostle of the Indies used, in first establishing the idea of an omnipotent, all-wise, and most just God, the author of all good, to whom only everything is due, and by whose will we owe unto kings, bishops, magistrates and to our parents the respects which we owe them.

“These examples are sufficient to show with what precautions it is necessary to prepare the minds of the Orientals to think like us, and _not to be offended with most_ of the articles of the Christian faith.”[1119]

And what, we ask, is left to preach? With no Saviour, no atonement, no crucifixion for human sin, no Gospel, no eternal damnation to tell them of, and no miracles to display, what remained for the Jesuits to spread among the Siamese but the dust of the Pagan sanctuaries with which to blind their eyes? The sarcasm is biting indeed. The morality to which these poor heathen are made to adhere by their ancestral faith is so pure, that Christianity has to be stripped of every distinguishing mark before its priests can venture to offer it for their examination. A religion that cannot be trusted to the scrutiny of an unsophisticated people who are patterns of filial piety, of honest dealing, of deep reverence for God and an instinctive horror of profaning His majesty, must indeed be founded upon error. That it is so, our century is discovering little by little.

In the general spoliation of Buddhism to make up the new Christian religion, it was not to be expected that so peerless a character as Gautama-Buddha would be left unappropriated. It was but natural that after taking his legendary history to fill out the blanks left in the fictitious story of Jesus, after using what they could of Christna’s, they should take the man Sakya-muni and put him in their calendar under an _alias_. This they actually did, and the Hindu Saviour in due time appeared on the list of saints as Josaphat, to keep company with those martyrs of religion, SS. Aura and Placida, Longinus and Amphibolus.

In Palermo there is even a church dedicated to _Divo Josaphat_. Among the vain attempts of subsequent ecclesiastical writers to fix the genealogy of this mysterious saint, the most original was the making him Joshua, the son of Nun. But these trifling difficulties being at last surmounted, we find the history of Gautama copied _word for word_ from Buddhist sacred books, into the _Golden Legend_. Names of individuals are changed, the place of action, India, remains the same--in the Christian as in the Buddhist Legends. It can be also found in the _Speculum Historiale_ of Vincent of Beauvais, which was written in the thirteenth century. The first discovery is due to the historian de Couto, although Professor Müller credits the first recognition of the identity of the two stories to M. Laboulaye, in 1859. Colonel Yule tells us that[1120] these stories of Barlaam and Josaphat, are recognized by Baronius, and are to be found at p. 348, of _The Roman Martyrology_, set forth by command of Pope Gregory XIII., and revised by the authority of Pope Urban VIII., translated out of Latin into English by G. K. of the Society of Jesus.[1121]

To repeat even a small portion of this ecclesiastical nonsense would be tedious and useless. Let him who doubts and who would learn the story read it as given by Colonel Yule. Some[1122] of the Christian and ecclesiastical speculations seem to have embarrassed even Dominie Valentyn. “There be some, who hold this Budhum for a fugitive Syrian Jew,” he writes; “others who hold him for a disciple of the Apostle Thomas; but how in that case he could have been born 622 years before Christ I leave them to explain. Diego de Couto stands by the belief that he was certainly _Joshua_, which is still more absurd!”

“The religious romance called _The History of Barlaam and Josaphat_ was, for several centuries, one of the most popular works in Christendom,” says Col. Yule. “It was translated into all the chief European languages, including Scandinavian and Sclavonic tongues.... This story first appears among the works of St. John of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of the eighth century.”[1123] Here then lies the secret of its origin, for this St. John, before he became a divine, held a high office at the court of the Khalif Abu Jáfar Almansur, where he probably learned the story, and afterwards adapted it to the new orthodox necessities of the Buddha turned into a Christian saint.

Having repeated the plagiarized story, Diego de Couto, who seems to yield up with reluctance his curious notion that Gautama was Joshua, says: “To this name (Budâo) the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With reference to this story, we have been diligent in inquiring if the ancient Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St. Josaphat who was converted by Balaam, and who in his legend is represented as the son of a great king of India, and who had just the same up-bringing, with all the same particulars that we have recounted of the life of the Budâo. And as I was travelling in the Isle of Salsette, and went to see that rare and admirable pagoda, which we call the Canará Pagoda (Kànhari Caves) made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of one solid rock, and inquiring of an old man about the work, what he thought as to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up in seclusion, as the story tells. And as it informs us that he was the son of a great king in India, it may well be, as we have just said, that _he_ was the Budâo, of whom they relate such marvels.”[1124]

The Christian legend is taken, moreover, in most of its details, from the Ceylonese tradition. It is on this island that originated the story of young Gautama rejecting his father’s throne, and the king’s erecting a superb palace for him, in which he kept him half prisoner, surrounded by all the temptations of life and wealth. Marco Polo told it as he had it from the Ceylonese, and his version is now found to be a faithful repetition of what is given in the various Buddhist books. As Marco naïvely expresses it, Buddha led a life of such hardship and sanctity, and kept such great abstinence, “_just as if he had been a Christian_. Indeed,” he adds, “had he but been so, he would have been a great saint of our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led.” To which pious apothegm his editor very pertinently remarks that “Marco is not the only eminent person who has expressed this view of Sakya-muni’s life in such words.” And in his turn Prof. Max Müller says: “And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them, read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhistical canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha; and no one either in the Greek or the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to his memory the honor that was intended for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint.”

The Roman Catholic Church has never had so good a chance to Christianize all China, Thibet, and Tartary, as in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Kublai-Khan. It seems strange that they did not embrace the opportunity when Kublai was hesitating at one time between the four religions of the world, and, perhaps through the eloquence of Marco Polo, favored Christianity more than either Mahometanism, Judaism, or Buddhism. Marco Polo and Ramusio, one of his interpreters, tell us why. It seems that, unfortunately for Rome, the embassy of Marco’s father and uncle failed, because Clement IV. happened to die just at that very time. There was no Pope for several months to receive the friendly overtures of Kublai-Khan; and thus the one hundred Christian missionaries invited by him could not be sent to Thibet and Tartary. To those who believe that there is an intelligent Deity above who takes a certain concern in the welfare of our miserable little world, this _contretemps_ must in itself seem a pretty good proof that Buddhism should have the best of Christianity. Perhaps--who knows--Pope Clement fell sick so as to save the Buddhists from sinking into the idolatry of Roman Catholicism?

From pure Buddhism, the religion of these districts has degenerated into lamaism; but the latter, with all its blemishes--purely formalistic and impairing but little the doctrine itself--is yet far above Catholicism. The poor Abbé Huc very soon found it out for himself. As he moved on with his caravan, he writes--“every one repeated to us that, as we advanced toward the west, we should find the doctrines growing more luminous and sublime. Lha-Ssa was the great focus of light, the rays from which became weakened as they were diffused.” One day he gave to a Thibetan lama “a brief summary of Christian doctrine, which appeared by no means unfamiliar to him [we do not wonder at that], and he even maintained that it [Catholicism] did not differ much from the faith of the grand lamas of Thibet.... These words of the Thibetan lama astonished us not a little,” writes the missionary; “the unity of God, the mystery of the Incarnation, the dogma of the real presence, appeared to us in his belief.... The new light thrown on the religion of Buddha induced us really to believe that we should find among the lamas of Thibet a more purified system.”[1125] It is these words of praise to lamaism, with which Huc’s book abounds, that caused his work to be placed on the Index at Rome, and himself to be unfrocked.

When questioned why, since he held the Christian faith to be the best of the religions protected by him, he did not attach himself to it, the answer given by Kublai-Khan is as suggestive as it is curious:

“How would you have me to become a Christian? There are four prophets worshipped and revered by all the world. The Christians say their God is Jesus Christ; the Saracens, Mahomet; the Jews, Moses; the idolaters, Sogomon Borkan (Sakva-muni Burkham, or Buddha), who was the first god among the idols; and I worship and pay respect to all four, and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid me.”

We may ridicule the Khan’s prudence; we cannot blame him for trustingly leaving the decision of the puzzling dilemma to Providence itself. One of his most unsurmountable objections to embrace Christianity he thus specifies to Marco: “You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the idolaters can do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table, the cups from the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor, without being touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to pass in whatever direction they please, and do many other marvels; whilst, as you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects they choose. But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted, would say: ‘What has moved you to be baptized?... What powers or miracles have you witnessed on the part of Christ? You know the idolaters here say that their wonders are performed by the sanctity and power of their idols.’ Well, I should not know what answer to make, so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compass my death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send hither an hundred men skilled in your law; and if they are capable of rebuking the practices of idolaters to their faces, and of proving to them _that they too know how to do such things, but will not_, because they are done by the help of the Devil and other evil spirits; and if they so control the idolaters that these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence, _and when we shall witness this_, we will denounce the idolaters and their religion, and then I will receive baptism, and then all my barons and chiefs shall be baptized also, and thus, in the end, there will be more Christians here than exist in your part of the world.”[1126]

The proposition was fair. Why did not the Christians avail themselves of it? Moses is said to have faced such an ordeal before Pharaoh, and come off triumphant.

To our mind, the logic of this uneducated Mongol was unanswerable, his intuition faultless. He saw good results in all religions, and felt that, whether a man be Buddhist, Christian, Mahometan, or Jew, his spiritual powers might equally be developed, his faith equally lead him to the highest truth. All he asked before making choice of a creed for his people, was the evidence upon which to base faith.

To judge alone by its jugglers, India must certainly be better acquainted with alchemy, chemistry, and physics than any European academy. The psychological wonders produced by some fakirs of Southern Hindustan, and by the shaberons and hobilhans of Thibet and Mongolia, alike prove our case. The science of psychology has there reached an acme of perfection never attained elsewhere in the annals of the marvellous. That such powers are not alone due to study, but are natural to every human being, is now proved in Europe and America by the phenomena of mesmerism and what is termed “spiritualism.” If the majority of foreign travellers, and residents in British India, are disposed to regard the whole as clever jugglery, not so with a few Europeans who have had the rare luck to be admitted _behind the veil_ in the pagodas. Surely these will not deride the rites, nor undervalue the phenomena produced in the secret lodges of India. The _mahadthêvassthanam_ of the pagodas (usually termed _goparam_, from the sacred pyramidal gateway by which the buildings are entered) has been known to Europeans before now, though to a mere handful in all.

We do not know whether the prolific Jacolliot[1127] was ever admitted into one of these lodges. It is extremely doubtful, we should say, if we may judge from his many fantastic tales of the immoralities of the mystical rites among the Brahmans, the fakirs of the pagodas, and even the Buddhists (!!) at all of which he makes himself figure as a Joseph. Anyhow, it is evident that the Brahmans taught him no secrets, for speaking of the fakirs and their wonders, he remarks, “under the direction of initiated Brahmans they practice in the seclusion of the pagodas, the _occult sciences_.... And let no one be surprised at this word, which seems to open the door of the supernatural; while there are in the sciences which the Brahmans call occult, phenomena so extraordinary as to baffle all investigation, there is not one which cannot be explained, and which is not subject to natural law.”

Unquestionably, any initiated Brahman could, if he would, explain every phenomenon. But _he will not_. Meanwhile, we have yet to see an explanation by the best of our physicists of even the most trivial occult phenomenon produced by a fakir-pupil of a pagoda.

Jacolliot says that it will be quite impracticable to give an account of the marvellous facts witnessed by himself. But adds, with entire truthfulness, “let it suffice to say, that in regard to magnetism and spiritism, Europe has yet to stammer over the first letters of the alphabet, and that the Brahmans have reached, in these two departments of learning, results in the way of phenomena that are truly stupefying. When one sees these strange manifestations, whose power one cannot deny, without grasping the laws that the Brahmans _keep so carefully concealed_, the mind is overwhelmed with wonder, and one feels that he must run away and break the charm that holds him.”

“The only explanation that we have been able to obtain on the subject from a learned Brahman, with whom we were on terms of the closest intimacy, was this: ‘You have studied physical nature, and you have obtained, through the laws of nature, marvellous results--steam, electricity, etc.; _for twenty thousand years or more, we have studied_ the _intellectual_ forces, we have discovered their laws, and _we obtain, by making them act alone or in concert with matter, phenomena still more astonishing than your own_.’”

Jacolliot must indeed have been stupefied by wonders, for he says: “We have seen things such as one does not describe for fear of making his readers doubt his intelligence ... but still we have seen them. And truly one comprehends how, in presence of such facts, the ancient world believed ... in possessions of the Devil and in exorcism.”[1128]

But yet this uncompromising enemy of priestcraft, monastic orders, and the clergy of every religion and every land--including Brahmans, lamas, and fakirs--is so struck with the contrast between the fact-supported cults of India, and the empty pretences of Catholicism, that after describing the terrible self-tortures of the fakirs, in a burst of honest indignation, he thus gives vent to his feelings: “Nevertheless, these fakirs, these mendicant Brahmans, have still something grand about them: when they flagellate themselves, when during the self-inflicted martyrdom the flesh is torn out by bits, the blood pours upon the ground. But you (Catholic mendicants), what do you do to-day? You, Gray Friars, Capuchins, Franciscans, who play at fakirs, with your knotted cords, your flints, your hair shirts, and your rose-water flagellations, your bare feet and your comical mortifications--fanatics without faith, martyrs without tortures? Has not one the right to ask you, if it is to obey the law of God that you shut yourselves in behind thick walls, and thus escape the law of labor which weighs so heavily upon all other men?... Away, you are only beggars!”

Let them pass on--we have devoted too much space to them and their conglomerate theology, already. We have weighed both in the balance of history, of logic, of truth, and found them wanting. Their system breeds atheism, nihilism, despair, and crime; its priests and preachers are unable to prove by works their reception of divine power. If both Church and priest could but pass out of the sight of the world as easily as their names do now from the eye of our reader, it would be a happy day for humanity. New York and London might then soon become as moral as a heathen city unoccupied by Christians; Paris be cleaner than the ancient Sodom. When Catholic and Protestant would be as fully satisfied as a Buddhist or Brahman that their every crime would be punished, and every good deed rewarded, they might spend upon their own _heathen_ what now goes to give missionaries long picnics, and to make the name of Christian hated and despised by every nation outside the boundaries of Christendom.

* * * * *

As occasion required, we have reinforced our argument with descriptions of a few of the innumerable phenomena witnessed by us in different parts of the world. The remaining space at our disposal will be devoted to like subjects. Having laid a foundation by elucidating the philosophy of occult phenomena, it seems opportune to illustrate the theme with facts that have occurred under our own eye, and that may be verified by any traveller. Primitive peoples have disappeared, but primitive wisdom survives, and is attainable by those who “will,” “dare,” and can “keep silent.”