ity of California iern Regional ary Facility . The Religions of the World GUILD TEXT BOOKS l6mo, flexible cloth, each, net ^oc. The Old Testament and Its Contents By Professor James Robertson, D.D. The New Testament and Its Writers By Rev. J. A. McClymont, D. D. Our Lord's Teaching By Rev. James Robertson, D. D. Lessons on the Gospel of St. Mark By Rev. A Irvine Robertson, D.D. Studies in the Acts of the Apostles By Rev. William Robertson, M. A. Landmarks of Church History By Prof. Henry Cowan, D. D. Religions of the World By Principal G. M. Grant, of Queen's Uni- versity, Canada. A Handbook of Christian Evidences By Rev. Alexander Stewart, D.D. Expositions of the Apostles' Creed By Rev. J.Dodds. The Presbyterian Churches: Their Place and Power in Modern Christen- dom. By Rev. J. N. Ogilvie, M. A. THE GUILD TEXT BOOKS THE Religions of the World IN RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY Principal G. M. Grant, D.D. Cf Queens University, Canada New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company Publishers of Evangelical Literature 2060924 U*^ ^( EDITORIAL NOTE THE Editors have much pleasure in issuing this brief but luminous account of the non-Christian Religions of the World from the pen of the learned Principal of Queen's University, Canada It was a gratification to them when he undertook the work at the request of a Committee of his Mother-Church, and they feel that there is reason for congratulation on the manner in which the task has been accomplished. Severe condensation has been necessary in order to treat such a subject within the limits prescribed, but the Editors are glad to think that this has not perceptibly impaired the charm and vigour of the writer's style, and they anticipate for the book a warm welcome from the intelligent and large-hearted youth on both sides of the Atlantic, who feel an interest in the life and thought of the countless millions of their fellow -men that are still beyond the pale of the Christian Chur 4/c*X CLrJfc U-vvw AUTHOR'S PREFACE WRITERS of text-books for Guilds and Bible Classes have sometimes complained of the difficulty of treating their subject, because of its extent and of the narrowness of the limits to which they were necessarily restricted. If the complaint is legiti- mate when only a phase or department of one religion and that a religion known to the readers is discussed, what shall be said when the subject embraces four of the great extant religions of the world ? In this case the limitations imposed upon the writer must be obvious to all. He cannot go into details ; where the evidence is meagre or con- flicting, he must simply give what he believes to be the truth, without giving his reasons or entering into controversy ; and he must be satisfied with stating " the fundamentals " of each religion, its origin, the laws of its growth, and its place in the divine education of the world, in such a way that even when its imperfections or perversions are noted, these may be looked at, not externally and pharisaically, but with understanding and sympa- thising minds. The writer of this little volume believes tkat Jesus is " the way, the truth, and the Vlll THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD life," and that His religion is the absolute religion. Therefore, he believes it to be right and wise to call attention to the excellent features of other religions rather than to their defects ; to the good rather than to the bad fruit which they have borne ; in a word, to treat them as a rich man should treat his poorer brothers, drawing near to and touching them, getting on common ground and then sharing with them his rich inheritance. He does not pretend that an adequate account will be found here of all the phases of any one of the great religions ; but a sketch is attempted, in the spirit that should animate an intelligent Confucianist, Hindoo, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, to whom the task of describing Christianity briefly was assigned, G. M. GRANT. CONTENTS CHAT. INTRODUCTION 1. MOHAMMEDANISM 12 2. THE CAUSES OF THE SUCCESS AND OF THE DECADENCE OF MOHAMMEDANISM . . 26 3. CONFUCIANISM 42 4. SOURCES OF THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF CONFUCIANISM ..... 63 5. HINDUISM 79 6. SOURCES OF THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 96 7. BUDDHISM 108 8. SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF BUDDHISM . 126 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD INTRODUCTION Religion universal Rooted in human nature Indicates that which is highest in man Many forms of religion The unsystematised and the systematised religions Decay of the former when in contact with the latter Every systematised religion has produced a civilisation Each good in its day Eighteenth-century idea of religion Superiority of the modern point of view Comparative examination of the great religions necessary to prove that Christianity is a special revelation Attitude of the prophets, of the apostles, and of Jesus to other religions is the right attitude for Christian missionaries. *T*HE highest authorities are now agreed that "it is -*- legitimate to call religion in its most general sense a universal phenomenon of humanity." l Religion is a note of the race. It cannot be derived from outward sources any more than thinking or loving. There are, indeed, persons destitute of religion, just as there are persons destitute of intellect or affections all alike to be pitied as we pity the deaf, the dumb, or the blind but normal human beings are religious. " Atheism is only the attempt not to be so" (Nitzsch). Religion also indicates what is the highest in man. It lifts him above the senses and relates him in some 1 C. P. Tiele, Outlines of the History of Rtlifien to tht Sfrtad if the Universal Religions. t THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD way to the universe, or the infinite and eternal, of which he is a part. Hegel says, " All peoples know that the religious consciousness is that wherein they possess the truth ; and religion they have ever regarded as their true dignity and the Sabbath of their life." The religions of the world may be classified into systematised and unsystematised. The latter include all those crude and incoherent notions by which savage tribes explain to themselves the problems of existence. Strange and horrible as these religions often are, they indicate man's nobleness, for they express his gropings after God. As Vinet puts it, " They are painful cries of the soul, torn from its centre and separated from its object." But, however interesting to students of humanity, these will soon be only matters for the anti- quary ; for, as certainly as lesser lights vanish on the rising of the sun, so these disappear when brought into contact with any coherent religion. Their votaries throw away the notions and misshapen idols of their fathers for others that are associated with higher forms of living. Even when the new faith is only imperfectly apprehended, the old, at any rate, is discarded. This fact or law explains the success of Hinduism in continuing to bring within its pale the aboriginal tribes of India ; the success of Mohammedanism in Central Africa, the East India Islands, and elsewhere ; the success of Buddhism in Tartary, Mongolia, Corea, and Japan ; and of Chris- tianity among the Kols, Santhals, Bheels, and Karens in Asia, and among the savages of the Polynesian Islands. It is a very different thing when one systematised religion meets another. Victory, then, cannot be expected to in- cline to either side, until there has been an intelligent tudy by each of the sources of the other's strength, an appreciation of the spiritual and social needs which it . has met, and an absorption, by the one that has most inherent excellence and power of assimilation, of all in the other that caused it to be accepted and retained foi centuries by millions of human beings. Every systematised religion has given birth to INTRODUCTION civilisation. The Egyptian, Phoenician, Hittite, Assyrian, Baoylonian, Medo- Persian, Greek, Roman, and many others, with their attendant civilisations, have passed away, as completely as those that existed in Mexico and Peru before Cortez and Pizarro landed on their shores, and it is sometimes difficult for us to get accurate or adequate knowledge of them. But others still stand, ride by side with Christianity, great historic religions interwoven with civilisations hoary with age. They are professed by great and compact societies of industrious, intelligent men and women. They are identified in the affections of their votaries with venerated names, an insult to whom is as unpardonable as an insult to Hebrew prophets or apostles, or even the Founder of our faith, would be felt to be by us. The greatest of these extant religions are the Mohammedan, the Hindu, the Buddhist, and the Confucian. Of these, therefore, it is most necessary to treat. As a matter of fact, they now divide the ground with Christianity. They have proved themselves so enduring and so suited to men on a great scale that, if Christianity should succeed in absorbing and taking the place of one of them, it would be a more crowning demonstration of its superiority than was its triumph over the religions of Greece and Rome. Let us clearly understand that all these religions were blessings to the peoples among whom they originated. They marked a stage of progress in their history. Each has a calendar crowded with the names of saints and martyrs. Yet, in spite of this, 1 " No judge, if he had before him the worst criminal, would treat him as most historians and theologians have treated the religions of the world." " There is no religion, or if there is I do not know it, which does not say, ' do good, avoid evil. ' There is none which does not contain what Rabbi Hillel called the quintessence of all religions, the simple warn- ing, 'be good, my boy.' Add 'for God's sake," and we have in it very nearly the whole of the Law and the 1 Max Mflller, Introduction to the Science of Religion, pp. 216- 39, 858-26*. 4 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD Prophets." " People who judge of religions by theii inevitable excrescences are like those who judge of the health of a people from its hospitals, or its morality from its prisons. If we want to judge of a religion we must try to study it as much as possible in the mind of its founder ; and when that is impossible, as it too often is, try to find it in the lonely chamber and the sick-room rather than in the colleges of augurs and the councils of priests." This is surely a legitimate and even necessary point of view from which to regard religions. It is, however, very different from that which prevailed in Britain more than a century ago. Then, a shallow deism considered all re- ligions alike as having originated in the policy of statesmen or the craft of priests, operating on the ignorance and credulity of the masses, with the object of securing an effective moral police or of gaining wealth and power. When all religions were thus considered equally worthy of contempt, the sole object of the apologist was to defend Christianity. He was quite willing to toss all other religions to the wolves. The differences between Chris- tianity and other religions were accentuated. To be a good Christian it was thought as necessary to believe that other religions were from the devil as to believe that ours was from God. Carlyle did not exaggerate when he said that the general opinion, so recently as in his own day, was that Mohammed, for instance, " was simply a scheming impostor and his religion a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain." But there is a truer philosophy now respecting religion, and a truer view of man's relation to a universal moral order. Religion is admitted to have its basis in the truth of things. Man being made in the image of God, faith must be the highest energy of his spirit that by which he lays hold on God and so raises himself above the limitations of time and sense and his own egoism. The apologist has- therefore, a nobler function than to point out, as Bishop Butler well did in his day, that there are the same diffi- culties in the system of nature as in religion. He seeks rather to show that religion offers a solution to the INTRODUCTION problems and difficulties of nature ; and his object is not to disparage any religion or to accentuate the differences between them, but to discover the points of agreement and to find a common need which one common element is waiting to supply. But, when all religions are con- sidered legitimate products of that faith in the unseen which is recognised as an essential part of man's con- stitution, the tendency, on the part of hasty generalisers, it to assume that Christianity can have no special claim, and that the differences between it and other religions are merely accidental It is even thought a sign of narrow- ness or intolerance to assert that Christianity is distinc- tive, and that it has its root not only in the spiritual nature of man, but also in a Special Revelation from God, who, when man had fallen into sin, revealed Himself as a God of grace. The true way, however, to meet criticism of this kind is not by taking up a pharisaic attitude towards other religions, but by instituting a thorough and im- partial examination and comparison of all. We believe in the superiority of Christianity to other religions, but we cannot entertain this belief intelligently until after such comparison. For the first time in the history of the world, too, we are enabled to undertake it success- fully. There is no great religion, the content and the form of which we cannot now study. The content or its essential ideas must be tested by the universal Reason and Conscience. Here, the true path is in the middle, between the two extremes of what -may be called Ultra- montanism and Rationalism. According to Ultra- montaiusm, revelation is the opposite of reason, and reason must bow in helpless submission before divine oracles, without presuming to understand them. Accord- ing to Rationalism, revelation is simply a natural evolution of reason, and no special revelation has ever been given by God. According to Christianity, revelation is the com- plement of reason. The essential identity of human reason, to far as it goes, with the divine is implied all through the Bible, and we can trace in a history, which is the key to universal history, a special revelation or the 6 THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD unfolding of the depths of the divine nature to meet the special need of man. Only when this revelation hag been made are men able to see its reasonableness and its fitness to be the religion of the world. It then becomes the standard by which we may compare other religions. In order to know what reason of itself can discover and can do, apart from this special revelation, we have only to go back to pre-Christian times, and to lands outside of Christendom, and study their religions and histories. We must, however, take a genial and not a hostile spirit to this study. Our religion will then be seen to be the best friend of all the others. It will vindicate the good that is in them and their gropings after light. It will offer a reconciling element to bring completeness to each and harmony among all. This will be its noblest Apology. The form as well as the content of religions must be studied comparatively ; their sacred books according to the accepted laws of critical scholarship, and the institutions and societies in which their ideas are enshrined also according to rules that have universal validity. In this study of form we must accept the results of the application of rules and principles as readily, in the case of Christianity, as in the case of every other religion. The Holy Scriptures as literature cannot be exempted from the rules that we apply to the Koran, the Vedas, the Tripitaka, or the Shoo or Shih King. It may be noted, too, that nothing but good can come from this study in every case. The object of criticism is construc- tive, not destructive. It endeavours to set each book before us in the light in which it appeared to those for whom it was originally written. It seeks to distinguish between the original utterances of inspired men and " the after-thoughts, generally the corruptions of later ages," between the living words of the prophet and the work of the compiler and the scribe. Simi- larly, the real meaning and value of institutions can be known only when they are traced back to their origins, and a civilisation can be valued aright only when, by INTRODUCTION comparison with others, its conditions and defects are duly acknowledged, and the law of its life is discerned. What was the point of view from which the Old Testament prophets and Jesus to whom the prophets witnessed regarded the religions of the world ? No question can be more important. In answering it, we must not judge by the attitude of the Jews to the Gen- tiles in the time of Jesus, for that was in direct opposition to the spirit of the prophets, and of the Scriptures in which their words were recorded. The Jews themselves would not have admitted any such opposition. Natu- rally enough, learned Rabbis thought that they under- stood their own Scriptures, and the idea that a peasant or carpenter from Galilee understood them better only excited their ridicule. They knew and loved the law and the prophets. They gloried in their fidelity to Moses and the Scriptures, and they believed that it was the attitude of Jesus that was unscriptural. Christians, unfortunately, have either assumed that their interpretation of the Old Testament was correct, and have made it their own, or they have condemned the Jews and especially the scribe* with excessive harshness. We should remember that their attitude was the result of historical conditions, extending as far back as the exile in Babylon, and that for these full allowance must be made. We must try to understand the conditions, for to understand is to forgive. In the fifth century before Christ men of prophetic spirit saw that Israel had fallen, through not understanding the difference between the character of Jehovah and the characters of the gods of the nations round about. Jehovah was essentially righteousness and truth. The gods of the heathen were largely mere reflections of the evil passions of their worshippers. To put both on the same plane and worship them alike was to mingle the true and the false together. Doing this, the Israelites had become as morally vile as their neigh- bours, probably more so, for the corruption of the best is the worst form of corruption. The prophets of th exile saw this, and Ezra, the scribe, as well as his fellow* THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD labourer, Nehemiah, the civil governor, saw that the only hope for Israel was to separate the returned exiles rigidly, according to the commandments of the law, from the filthiness of the surrounding peoples. This policy was required at the time, though there were not wanting men who opposed it, on the ground that it was contrary to the spirit of the fundamental covenant that Jehovah had made with Israel, and to the teaching of the great prophets. Each age, however, has its own work to do, and statesmen are obliged to take up the position that their own time demands. Events tended to harden and sharpen the policy of Ezra, and to accen- tuate the lofty sense which the Jews came to entertain of their own superiority and their privileges as the people of Jehovah. The truth of their election by God for the sake of the world became perverted into the falsehood of an election of favouritism for their own sakes. The Messianic hope became degraded in the same way. The terrible Maccabean struggle, in the second century before Christ, gave the greatest impetus to this evil tendency. In consequence, a bitter hatred, or a haughty and pharisaic contempt of other nations and religions, took the place of the spirit that had animated Abraham, Moses and Isaiah. " Uncircumcised dogs," " Sinners of the Gentiles," and such like, were the names invari- ably given to other nations, and it was assumed that God had revealed Himself to no people but to Israel. The teaching and attitude of Jesus was a continual and emphatic protest against this essentially irreligious spirit. He, the Messiah, was the true successor and fulfiller of the prophets of the elder day, while he transcended the nationalism within which the greatest of them had of necessity to move, and by which they were trammelled in their eagle flights. He had, only in larger measure, the spirit of Amos, who told Israel that Jehovah had brought other nations to their lands in the same way in which He had led themselves out of Egypt ; that He had led the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir; and that He would judge Israel and Judah, INTRODUCTION for their sins, by the same moral law by which He judged those nations, with the difference that their punishment would be greater as their light had been greater (Amos ix. 7). Jesus had, only in larger measure, the spirit of Malachi, who asserted the equality in God's sight of all sincere worship, and who, in order to shame the grudged and polluted offerings of the Jews, reminded them that incense and a pure offering was being made to Jehovah by races outside the Jewish pale, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same " For my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts." Malachi repeats this remarkable say- ing (Mai. i. 11-14, Revised Version). The translation in the Authorised Version obscures his thought ; but on the same point, that all honest, reverential worship and true morality are acceptable to Jehovah, the language of Jesus is unmistakable. " Many," He says, " shall come from the east and the west," that is, from heathen nations, " and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast forth into the outer darkness." His attitude to the Samaritans and Gentiles with whom He came in contact, and His recognition of the faith of the Roman centurion and of the heathen woman whom He tested so severely, must have shocked all who believed that true religion was confined to the Jews. To be told that He found greater faith among the heathen than in the Church must have sounded almost as blasphemy in their ears. It was, however, simply the outcome of the fundamental principle, that God is a Spirit, and there- fore that all who worship in spirit and in truth are worshipping God. The apostles came gradually to see their relation to other races and religions from their Master's point of view. When Peter heard from Cor- nelius his straightforward story and looked into the face of the good man, the light flashed into his soul and illuminated much that had previously been dark to him. " Of a truth," he said, " I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth io THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD him and worketh righteousness is acceptable to him," and straightway he preached Jesus to hearts prepared for Him, by what we would call natural means ; and they believed while the masters of Israel rejected Him. It was the conviction of this same truth that made Paul \ missionary to the Gentiles, and the model for mission- aries to all time. He became a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks, and a barbarian to the barbarians. We have only to study his sermons to the people of Lystra and of Athens, and compare them with his sermons in the synagogues, to understand how thoroughly he adapted himself to the needs, the history, and the actual religious condition of the people to whom he preached ; how genial was his attitude, and how consistently he operated along the line of least resistance, in seeking to bring men to the Saviour. He saw that Christianity had broken down the middle wall of partition between the nations and opened a universal temple ; and when others, even apostles, would have kept the Church as a mere Jewish sect, he, in the spirit of Jesus, made it the religion of humanity. This, too, is the spirit in which the missionary work of the Church must always be conducted. Something more than zeal to make proselytes is needed. The Pharisees had zeal of that kind, and what Jesus thought of them and their zeal we learn from his words, " Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves." Clearly, the only way to under- stand how we should approach an intelligent man who has been brought up in another faith is by putting ourselves in his place. We would disdain being proselytised, but we are always ready to welcome truth. But, admittedly, no one can benefit us who makes his approaches with an air that plainly says that he knows all truth, and that what we have hitherto believed and acted on is all false. If he comes to us with an assumption of his own superiority and a scarcely concealed contempt for our forefathers, he can never be God's prophet to us. He must take a different INTRODUCTION attitude altogether. He must stand with us on the com- mon platform of brotherhood. He must take the trouble to find out what we have done. He must speak our language, understand our music, sing our best songs, itudy our highest literature, honour our past, comprehend our philosophy, sympathise with our ideals, and appre- ciate the deepest elements in our lives. He must respect and love us. Then, if he is greater than we are, and if he has new truth to communicate or new power to impart, we gladly accept him as leader. Then he will be as the early and latter rains to the roots of life. He will initiate forces potential to leaven the community, and a nation will seem to be born in a day. All societies must be influenced from within. Attacks from without make them more impervious than they were before. Proselytism detaches individuals, who as a rule are worth little, but it arrests internal development. Prophetism gains individuals, who become centres of force, and it thus initiates movements which may be delayed or defeated but cannot be destroyed. Christendom is God's prophet to the nations. In order to fulfil this high mission we must act on the truth we profess to believe, that He has appointed the bounds of their habitation ; that in Him they live, move, and have their being ; that He has spoken to them in times past, though, as those were what Paul calls " times of ignorance," the Father's voice was not heard distinctly by His wayward children ; and that now, having spoken by His Son, by whom He will judge the world, He com- mands men everywhere to repent and believe. Presenting the Christ in this spirit we shall see all men drawn unto Him ; while we shall never gain those whom we hate or despise, or endeavour to bully or bribe. They would not be our true brothers if they could be won by any such brute methods. We shall never gain the non- Christian nations until we treat their religions with justice, and until courtesy, respect, and love take the place of the contempt which is now so general and the only excuse for which is that it is largely based upon ignorance. THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER I MOHAMMEDANISM Importance of the person of Mohammed In connection with this religion His birth and character as a youth Religion of the Arabs at the time His perception of its falsehood Intercourse with Christians, Jews, and Hanifs Influence of the desert on him General difference between the religious conceptions of Semites and Aryans Perception by Mohammed that the great reality is God Crisis of his life when he became con- vinced that he was called to be a prophet His revelations His converts Persecutions Crisis in Mecca The Hijra to Medina Characteristics of his ten years in that city Success of his new policy Sketch of the propagation of his faith from his death to the present day. TV/TOHAMMEDANISM is the latest born of all the **-* great extant religions. In studying it, there arises before us " the strange spectacle of a religion coming into being in the clear light of day." 1 A man who lived in the sixth Christian century was its founder and the sole author of its Bible. That Bible the Koran is only about two-thirds of the length of the New Testa- ment, and its authenticity is unquestioned. Clearly, to know this religion we must know what kind of a man the founder was. He insisted, indeed, as Paul did with regard to Christianity, that it was not a new but an old religion, the religion of their forefathers, of the patri- archs, of the prophets and of Jesus, which he wu * Rerun's tudei tFHistoirt Religitnu, p. t3O. MOHAMMEDANISM 13 preaching, in its final form, to the Arabs, and through them to the world. la this form it proved to have extraordinary power, first by fusing the chaotic and dis- cordant tribes of Arabia into a theocratic nation, and then by displacing Christianity from its cradle and from all the countries known to us as the Bible lands. These submitted without exception to the Crescent. Does history present us with any facts more astonishing? Not to make an attempt to learn their secret shows in- difference to all religion, and in order to understand them we must estimate aright the character of Mohammed. Mohammed was born in Mecca, somewhere about the year of our Lord 57 ! The tribe to which he belonged was the Koreysh, the noblest in the city, but his family was poor, and he himself was left an orphan at an early age. As a youth he herded sheep, and gathered wild berries in the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he entered the household of a wealthy widow, named Khadijeh, and in the discharge of her business made journeys to Palestine and Syria. Subsequently he married Khadijeh. His life was of such purity, gravity, and integrity that those who knew him best loved and honoured him most, and at length his townspeople gave him the name of El- Amim, the Trusty. He was forty years old before the thought that he was called to be a prophet took pos- session of him and changed the whole current of his life. The religion of the Arabs at this period was a poly- theistic idolatry, the power of which had died out save what remained in connection with stated feasts at holy places, to which the tribes had gathered from time im- memorial. Mecca was one of those centres. It owed its importance to the Kaaba, or temple, which contained 600 idols, and, more important than any or all of these, sacred black stone probably an aerolite which had fallen from heaven. In the creed of the Arabs there stood, high above all the gods, Allah, the ancient name for 'he Supreme Being in all branches of the Semitic 14 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD race. Worship, however, was paid, not to Allah, for man could not enter into relation with him, but to particular deities who dwelt with men, and who were recognised as patrons, respectively, of different families and tribes. Gradually, from observing the often sceptical and irreverent attitude of the people to the gods they professed to serve, and from other reasons, the conviction grew upon Mohammed that the idols that were to be found in every house and in the Kaaba were not gods, and that even the sacred black stone was only a stone. We learn from the Koran of the grief and in- dignation that were aroused in his soul when he found that the very guardians of the temple, far from believing in the idols, simply used them to delude the people and enrich themselves. But if he gave up the gods of his fathers, what other religion was there? Such a man could not satisfy himself with observance of empty time-honoured forms, and he could not live in peace until he had learned the secret of the wonderful universe of which he was a conscious part. In his mercantile expeditions to Syria, as well as in Arabia, he had met with Jews and Christians, from whom he heard stories about Moses and the prophets and Jesus. But he was no scholar it is doubtful whether he could write or even read and he could not distinguish what was true from what was false. His informants put childish tales from the Talmud on the same level with Old Testament truths, and the character of his know- ledge of Christianity may be inferred from the strange action he entertained that the Trinity consisted of the Father, the Son, and the Virgin Mary. Possibly the Christians whom he met had equally vague notions concerning the fundamentals of their religion. The Christian nations had to a great extent lost sight of the living God. Their faith had evaporated in worship of images, still more in discussions of metaphysical subtleties about God and religious controversies which were splitting the Church into sects and wasting its strength, although there was much clattering activity that looked like MOHAMMED A NISM strength. God was not in all their thoughts. lie was an absentee God, as truly as Allah was to the Arabs, or, what amounted to the same thing, a God hidden by dogmas thut pretended to define what can never be defined, though it can be lived. The faith which had conquered the Roman Empire had given way to make-believes, and the inevitable results worldliness and corruption could not be hid. In spite of the grievous falling away, Mohammed felt that there was truth in Mosaism and Christianity, and this conviction was strengthened when Waraka, an uncle of his wife, brought him into connection with a movement which had been going on quietly for some time in Mecca, Medina, and other cities of Arabia. In all those centres, isolated individuals were to be found whose moral natures had recoiled from the immoralities and idolatry of their countrymen. Rejecting polytheism and the filthiness associated with it, they not only acknowledged Allah, but made faith in him consist, not in assent to any mere intellectual doctrine, but in Islam, or submission to his will. These men were called Hanifs, or "penitents." The source of this Hanifite movement was probably Jewish Essenism or ascetic Christianity, or both com- bined. Essenism had spread from the Jordan down into the Arabian desert, and some primitive forms of Christianity were scarcely distinguishable from this as- cetic Judaism. Men who prove their sincerity by volun- tarily cutting themselves off from the ties and pleasures of life will always influence others, and Bedouin poetry proves that Jewish or Christian anchorites were popular with the Arabs. " It was not their doctrine that proved impressive, but the genuine earnestness of their con- secrated life, spent in preparation for the life to come, for the day of judgment, and forming the sharpest con- trast to the profanity of heathenism. Ascetic life and meditation were the chief points with the Hanifs also, and they are sometimes called by the same name with the Christian monks. It can hardly be wrong to conclude that these nameless witnesses of the Gospel, unmentione4 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD ven the best informed among them, over active duties and the precepts of morality. As to the common people, they have a still lower scale, and they find a ready sub- stitute for the inconvenience of all moral restraint in the fervour of that faith which they place in Vishnu, and the unwearied perseverance with which they train a paj ot or a starling to repeat his names, to articulate Krishna- Radha, or Slta-Ram." Sir Monier Williams believes that " the worship of Vishnu continues to this day the great conservative element of Hinduism " ; but he also says : " I verily believe that the religion of the most of the Hindus is simple demonolatry. Men and women of all classes, except perhaps those educated by ourselves, are perpetually penetrated with the idea that from the cradle to the grave they are being pursued and perse- cuted not only by destructive demons but by simple, mischievous imps and spiteful goblins. This, in my opinion, is the true explanation of the universal w6rship of Ganesa, lord of the demon hosts." I have sketched the development of the religion of India and of the successive books in which its religious life found expression. Such a sketch, how- ever, gives only an external view. If we could see beneath the surface we should find, all down the stream of Indian history, holy wise, and -Diritually- minded men, poets and philosophers, priests, reformers and devotees; but it must also be admitted -no man who can be held up to all the world for all time as its teacher, example, and Saviour, as mediator with God and the true life of man ; not one who cries with authority to all races, " Follow me " ; not one whom we could follow. We find writings for which inspiration is claimed, more absolute than that claimed by the Swiss scholastics of the eighteenth century for the Bible, writings that vastly exceed our Scriptures in volume ; but they are discordant in their teaching, instead of converging towards one central truth and person, and witnessing to One who gathers in Himself every ordinance and prophecy. We find miracles, but they are divorced HINDUISM 95 from the moral order and history of the world. Neither the pure crystal of personal character nor ~reat facts of history are pledged to them. They are now laughed at by every educated Hindu. Hinduism may be regarded as a reservoir into which have run all the varied religious ideas which the mind of man is capable of elaborating. How true this is we shall not fully see until we have sketched Buddhism, for it too is a product of India. But, in the meantime, let us do justice to Hinduism. It expresses beautiful thoughts concerning the supremacy of Intelligence ; the immortal nature of the soul ; the right attitude of man to the Supreme ; the importance of meditation, prayer, and sacrifice ; the necessity of incarnation and propitiation, and of self-surrender, faith, and good works. It gave, in almost every epoch of its history, profound teaching concerning man's natural sinfulness and weakness, the littleness of earth and time, and the grandeur of spiritual perfection. It spoke comforting words concerning the goodness of the Supreme, his sympathy with us and his interposition on our behalf. Promises were made of a better age to come which, no doubt, cheered many a heart crushed with the load or torn with the contradictions of life. Notwith- standing, the people of India found not the true God ; and so while the hopeful promise of their early religion has ended in a jungle of debasing idolatry, their later national history presents a picture of corresponding degradation. When the Mohammedan invaders entered India, Hinduism could not stand before them. But, though Mohammedanism triumphed, it did not meet the spiritual necessities which had tried to express themselves in the religion of India. Whether Christianity can do so depends upon whether its interpreters can give to the people what they have been groping after for centuries. THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER VI SOUECBS OF THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM The institution of caste Grounded in race necessities and religious duty Social condition that resulted from it Testimony of the first Greek observers Supremacy of the Brahman a benefit to society for cen tunes Caste now meaningless and hurtful Attitude to it of Hindu reformers Need of substituting something positive in its place That supplied by Christianity A native church essential Hindu conception of God profound but one-sided Conception of man also inadequate Persistence of Hindu thought with regard to God and man Pantheism the great strength and weakness of Hinduism Its doctrine of incarnation an illustration of this Our duty to the people of India. \ ^7"HAT are the sources of the strength and weakness of the religion of India ? I. The institution of caste, with the Brahman as supreme. This, more than anything else, has compacted the structure that has endured for ages. Caste seems to us essentially anti -national and anti-social, but it originated in religious and still more in race necessities. This is its vindication and the explanation of its astonishing permanence. The Aryan invaders, on establishing them- selves in the land, saw that they were few in number compared to the subject races, and that if they were to preserve their higher civilisation and religion they must guard the purity of their blood, as jealously as the Jews after Ezra's day guarded themselves by means of the law STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 97 of Moses from the filthiness of the surrounding heathen, or as the Dutch boers in South Africa in our own time have kept aloof from the Hottentots, Bushmen, and Kaffirs, regarding them as Canaanites and themselves as God's people. The Brahmans valued the inheritance of their fathers too much to imperil it lightly. The result was a social condition which excited the admiration of the Greek observers, who, twenty -two centuries ago, first gave to Europe pictures of life in India. Megasthenes, who was resident ambassador at a court in Bengal, tells us that the women were chaste and the men courageous above all other Asiatics ; that they required no locks to their doors, and that no one was ever known to tell a lie. The outstanding characteristic of society was the existence of a set of men whose great business was contemplation, and who submitted to astonishing priva- tions and austerities that they might meditate or think more effectually. These men the Greek observers called sophists or the wise, because their first business was study. They were the Brahmans, for we must remember that the Brahman was never merely a priest. Brahma is the absolute Intelligence, and the sage aspired to be one with him. The Brahman believed that there is in man, but not in all men, a capacity for beholding the Unseen Being. The sons of God, therefore, must not ally themselves with the daughters of men. Elect souls must keep themselves pure and be trained by perpetual meditation on Brahma. For this purpose their laws or institutes were designed. The idea of a separation between the twice-born man and the merely animal man is fundamental. The twice-born man must, by study of the Veda, by duly observing rites and sacrifices, and by mortifying the affections and lusts of the flesh, learn to practise abstraction of spirit and maintain his relation to the unseen Brahma. Thus he may hope to arrive at the perception of the perfect one and obtain deliver- ance from personal existence. All this was for the sake of others as well as for his own sake. Not only is his intelligence the expression of the Divine Being, but be 98 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD is the mediator between Brahma and the rest of ths universe. We are sometimes disposed to think that the Brahman* deliberately adopted caste and surrounded it with an intricate and elaborate system of defence, for their own glory or profit, or that they themselves might lead lives of pleasure at the expense of their fellow-men. That is not the way in which anything that has life comes into being, nor is it the rock on which anything permanent is ever built. That which lasts must have its roots in the nature of things and not in the selfishness of an individual or a class. The stern theory of duties which the Brahmans worked out, the faithfulness with which they observed them, and the reverence which they received for centuries from all classes are the best proofs that they were actuated, not by love of ease, but by a high sense of obligation. Even now, when the day of their power is drawing to its close, they bear, in their fine features, high foreheads and dignified carriage, the manifest imprints stamped on them by a noble past. They were the ordained high priests of Intelligence. Their discipline was intended to prevent their being de- based by mixture with people in whom the lower nature predominated. This was the aim of the institution, and the aim of the code of Menu and other inspired law- givers. Caste had to be declared eternal, something that had its foundations in the Creator, something, therefore, that could never be changed. This, along with racial pride or necessity, was at the basis of the distinction between twice-born men and sudras, and even between the Brahman and inferior castes. It is impossible to deny the grandeur of the aim ; but, as it was based on only partial truth, it had only a partial success. Like every other noblesse, the Brahmans had virtues of their own, and they performed incalculable service to the people of India ; but the distinction between spiritual and animal men cannot be main- tained along the lines of natural descent, no matter how urgent the necessity or how severe the training or bow STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 99 overwhelming the advantages of the favoured caste. Things turned out as might have been expected. The Brahman became his own god, and from believing that he was the perfection of humanity there arose in him contempt for others, haughty disregard of their rights, and practical denial of human brotherhood. Then came the mighty reaction of Buddhism. Brahmanism reasserted itself, after centuries of oscillation, but the institution which had been useful as the natural out- growth of one condition of society could only be injurious when artificially imposed upon another out of deference to traditional theology or social preconceptions. Caste, deprived of its old life, became the curse of India. It destroyed national unity and so made successful resistance to invasion impossible. All that is generous in the young life of the people is now arrayed against it, as a dogma that must be discarded and a system that must be abolished, if India is to rise again to its former glory. Here is the testimony of B. B. Nagarkar of Bombay, one of the leaders of the theistic movement known as the Brahmo-Somaj : " In western countries the lines of social division are parallel but horizontal, and, therefore, range in the social strata one above another. In India these lines are perpendicular, and, therefore, run from top to bottom of the body social, dividing and separating one social stratum from every other. The former arrangement is a source of strength and support, and the latter a source of alienation and weakness. Perhaps at one time in the history of India, when the condition of things was entirely different, and when the number of these castes was not so large, or their nature so rigid as now, the institution of caste did serve a high purpose ; but it is long, too long, since that social condition underwent a change. . . . Caste in India has divided the mass of Hindu society into innumer- able classes and cliques. It has created a spirit of extreme exclusiveness ; it has crowded and killed legitimate ambi- tion, healthy enterprise and combined adventure. It has fostered envy and jealousy between class and class, and set ioo THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD one community against another. . . . Therefore, the first item on the programme of social reform in India is the abolition of caste and the furtherance of free and brotherly intercourse between class and class, as also between individual and individual, irrespective of the accident of his birth and parentage, and mainly on the recognition of his moral worth and goodness of heart." There are differences of opinion regarding the resisting power that still exists in Brahmanism and the extent to which the Brahmo-Somaj expresses the higher life of modem India or is likely to be a factor in its future, but men like Rammohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, P. C. Mozoomdar and his co-workers show, at any rate, movement in a hopeful direction. But caste can be abolished only when something equally positive and more in accordance with the truth of things is prepared to take its place. The fundamental truths on which it stood, viz. the divine right of the spiritual man to rule and the consequent necessity of his keeping himself unspotted from the world, must be re- cognised in Hindu society, in forms suited to Hindu life. These truths are imbedded in our Sacred History, and caste will disappear when they become living forces in the Christian Church of India. Abraham was called to be the father of a multitude of nations. He was separated from home, kindred, and ordinary ties, in order that he might do for the world the great work of grace that Jehovah purposed. His family received a sacramental sign of that separation. When the people began to mix with the nations round about them and walk in their evil ways, they were warned that God required them to be a peculiar people. Accord- ingly, they were separated from their neighbours as well as from all moral evil, by rigid law. This condition of things has come to an end, but the truth that it was intended to teach is stated still more emphatically in the New Testament. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." ' Except a man be born again, he cannot see the STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 101 kingdom of God." Christians are called to be a royal priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices, a chosen genera- tion, *a holy nation, a peculiar people. The Church claims to be a body of twice-born men, and to be an authentic, continuous, indestructible witness to the facts that man needs to be delivered from all that is sinful and that there is deliverance for him, that man needs communion with "God and that life with God is his inheritance. Christianity then fulfils the object aimed at in the characteristic institution of Brahmanism, but without condemning any man or class of men to remain animal. The gospel despairs of none. The call of Jesus is universal, but it is a call to holiness. Only as the Church is filled with His spirit is it His body Humanly speaking, the cause of God on earth depends on Christians being men of Christ-like character and on every country having a church suited to its history and national life. This is especially true of India, for nowhere else is there a more religious people. Christianity will be judged there by the conformity of Christians to the highest standard, and by its power to establish an independent church instead of pale re- flexions of Romanism or of any Protestant denomination. Such a church must take root in the soil, instead of leaning upon foreign support for its creeds, formularies, or funds. Unless there is such a church, caste is likely to remain for many a day. Its sudden abolition or even its gradual decay, without any framework for society to take its place, would be attended with the gravest dangers. 2. The teaching regarding God and man. Hinduism is pantheistic. We find a conception of God and of man's relation to Him fundamentally the same, from first to last, under every possible form of statement, in the Veda, in the philosophical systems, in the law books, in the lyric poets, in the dramatists, in the epics, and in the Puranas and Tantras alike. That nothing exists absolutely but Brahma; "that everything, from the lowest estate of a straw to the highest estate of a God loa THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD is Brahma " ; that the human soul is an emanation from it ; that in order to get into the closest possible relation with it, we must, while here on earth, break all connection with objects of desire ; that we " should pass through life without attachments, as a swimmer in the ocean strikes freely without the impediment of clothes ; that, like a reed torn from its native banks, like wax separated from its delicious honey, the soul of man bewails its disunion with melancholy music, and sheds burning tears like the lighted taper, waiting passionately for the moment of its extinction, as a disengagement from earthly trammels and the means of returning to its only beloved," these are thoughts that are familiar to every Hindu, and no religion that does not recognise their power will ever prevail in India. " The religion of the modern Hindu, his char- acter, ay, even his mode of thought, is the same now as in the time of Calidasa, or still more in that of Vyasa and Valmiki. If there be any change at all, it is only that of day to night." * To prove this, extracts from works so different as the Institutes of Menu and the Bhagavad-Gfta may be given. Bhrigu, whom Menu appointed to pro- mulgate to the other divine sages the code of lawi which he had received in the beginning from the Supreme, concludes the chapter on Transmigration and Final Be- atitude as follows. " Thus did the all-wise Menu . . . disclose to me from his benevolence to mankind this transcendent system of law which must be kept devoutly concealed from persons unfit to receive it. Let every Brahman with fixed attention consider all nature both visible and invisible as existing in the Divine Spirit ; for then he cannot give his heart to iniquity. The Divine Spirit alone is the whole assemblage of gods ; all worlds are seated in the Divine Spirit, and the Divine Spirit produces, no doubt, by a chain of causes and effects con- sistent with free-will, the connected series of acts per- formed by embodied souls. A Spirit by whose energy alone all else exists : a Spirit by no means the object of 1 Tlu Bkagavad-GUd, by J. Cockburn Thomson. STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 103 any sense, which can only be conceived by a mind wholly abstracted from matter and as it were slumbering, but which, for the purpose of assisting his meditation, he may imagine more subtil than the finest conceivable essence and more bright than the purest gold. Him some adore as transcendently present in elementary fire ; others in Menu, lord of creatures : some as more distinctly present in Indra, regent of the clouds and atmosphere : others in pure air : others in the most high Eternal Spirit It is He, who pervading all beings in five elemental forms, causes them by gradations of birth, growth, and dissolu- tion, to revolve in this world, till they deserve beatitude, like the wheels of a car. Thus the man who perceives in his own soul the supreme soul present in all creatures acquires equanimity towards them all, and shall be ab- sorbed at last in the highest essence." Again, in the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjoona is represented as shrinking back from battle with his royal kindred when he sees their well-known faces in the opposing lines, but Krishna, who has been acting as his charioteer, reveals himself as Vishnu and urges him to slay them without compunction, saying that in so doing he will be only an instrument, as they are killed already in the determina- tion of " the All," and as the duty of caste is supreme, there is nothing better for Kshatrya than lawful war. But, he continues, if thou wilt not join in this fight, thou abandonest thine own duty and glory and contractest a crime. And mankind will, moreover, relate of thee im- perishable ignominy. And to a noble man infamy is worse than death. A brief extract from this address will suffice to show the teaching and the tone of the poem : ' Thou moum'st for those thou should'st not mourn, albeit thy words are like the wise ; For those that live or those that die may never mourn the truly wise. Ne'er was the time when I was not, nor these, nor yonder kings of earth ; Hereafter, ne'er shall be the time when one of us shall ceasa to be. 104 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD The soul within this mortal frame glides on through child hood, youth and age : Then in another form renewed, renews its stated course again. All indestructible is He that spread the living universe, And who is he that shall destroy the work of the indestruct- ible? . . . Then, on to battle, Bharata I " Note how the great tenets of Hinduism are here enunciated ; the eternity and immortality of the soul, the mortality and mutability of the body, the trans- migration of the soul, and the existence of a Supreme Spirit to whom the existence of the universe is to be as- cribed, from which everything proceeds, and to which everything returns. Undoubtedly the Hindu conception of God ii very profound, but it is one-sided and fatally defective. It takes no account of the personality of God, of His separation from man, His sovereign will and the essence of His character, as righteousness, purity, and love. In the mind of the Hindu, the moral and the immoral are both contained in the Supreme, and there can there- fore be no real distinction between the two. Similarly, the personality of man is ignored. Our consciousness that we are persons, which should be decisive, counts for nothing. We know that every man, though recognis- ing his littleness, distinguishes himself from the universe, from his kind and from God. Life is therefore the great reality, and each of us is free to possess or to sacrifice himself. But our life is represented by Hindu thought as an illusion. It does not consist in perpetu- ally reaching out to perfection and so realising our true self, but in the annihilation of will and personality, that is, in spiritual suicide. The Bible teaches emphatically that God is Intelli- gence. No language can be more explicit than that in which the Wisdom literature asserts that the Supreme is Wisdom and that kings and judges rule by Wisdom. But it teaches the Transcendence as well as the Immanence of God. 1 he opposite truths of Mohammedanism and STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OP HINDUISM 105 Hinduism are thereby united ; and in the Incarnation of the Son we learn that the adequate image of God is to be found in man. To that central fact all the history of Israel pointed, on it the Church is based, and by it the true ideal is presented to man. The Bible also teaches that it is man's privilege to meditate on God ; to reflect on His wonderful Word and works ; to speculate on the facts of life. Nowhere is this side of duty made more prominent than in the Book of Psalms. But meditation must find its fruition in rational activity. Only by such activity is character perfected and the best solution of the mysteries of life found. Mere meditation tends to indolent quietism or to dehumanising asceticism. Pantheism has been the strength and weakness of Hinduism. This fundamental principle has gradually swelled the thirty -three gods of the Vedas to three hundred and thirty millions. It has enabled the Brahmans to adopt every god with which they came in contact, to acknowledge every idol and to supply a philosophic basis for its worship. Each new deity, no matter how misshapen, is simply another of the innumer- able streams that lead to the ocean of Liberation, and the old worshippers become Hindus without the necessity of changing their religious forms or their lives. Buddha, too, has been accepted as the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, and there would be no objection to calling Jesus the tenth. The worshippers of Krishna, however, under any arrangement of this kind would continue to over- shadow all others, his sovereignty being maintained, for every new generation, by repetitions of his incarnation. The acceptance of the immoral Krishna, as the great embodiment of the Supreme, shows how truly pantheism is the weakness and disgrace of Hinduism. Its ideal is unmoral. It is independent of character and practi- cally declares that virtue and vice are alike indifferent for salvation. Let us be thankful that the best Hindus are far superior to their ideal. The people of India are our fellow-subjects. What a summons u involved in this fact, to all who believe io6 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD that history is a revelation of the will of God ! Men are needed to go to them in the spirit of Paul, who saved the Church from becoming a Jewish sect, and who was per- secuted on that very account. India has been preparing during this century for Christ. A tremendous revolution, social, political and religious, is going on all over the land. The compact fabric of Hindu society which has triumphed over the rude assaults of Mohammedanism and the missionary fervour of Buddhism, and which has seemed able to defy the corrosive influences of time itself, is being undermined at all points by Western thought, by contact with the agencies and instruments of Western civilisation, and by forces generated by its own vigorous life. Just as Christianity triumphed over the religions of Greece and Rome by absorbing from Greek philosophy and literature acd from Roman jurisprudence all in them which was good and true, so must it triumph in India. That will mean its triumph, in due time, in other lands as well as India ; for there is no race so religious as the Hindu, so devoted to the ideal, and so contemptuous of the life of sense. We know a little, and we should know more of that wonderful epoch in their history, when, after the death of Gautama, missionaries from the highest classes in society went forth to all the surrounding lands and gathered in mighty harvests. So shall it be again. Who shall venture to say that the vitality of this noble race is exhausted ? God will raise up a prophet to teach with power that in Christ all the wisdom and power needed for the regeneration of India are hid. He will enable him to give Christianity a form as suited to the Eastern mind as the decrees of the first four General Councils were suited to Europe. Missionaries by the thousand will then stream over the Himalayas and to the remotest ocean to tell to all Asia the good news of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, as the wisdom of God and the power of God to every one who believeth. For Christianity alone has elements to satisfy the deepest aspirations of Hinduism. " There is something in Pantheism so deep that nought STRENGTH & WEAKNESS OF HINDUISM 107 in bare Deism can meet it Deism is not so deep. And Pantheism may well keep the house till a stronger than Deism comes to take possession of it. In Jesus Christ I find the only true solution of the mystery." These words of the late Dr. Duncan {Horae Peripatcticae) explain why Mohammedanism, though succeeding in part, actually consolidated Hinduism as a whole, and why Christianity is certain to prevail, when it is rightly nderstood. Io8 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER VII BUDDHISM Buddhism a branch of the religion of India Identi- fied with one name, though now multiform The sacred books of Buddhism The explanation of their Christian colouring Early life and character of the founder of Buddhism The Great Renunciation His attainment to Buddhahood The four great truths Meaning of Nirvana and of Karma The Middle Path The ethical code of Buddhism Its social organisation The power of Gautama's personality His missionary fervour Spirit and zeal of his disciples His life Last words Death The times then ripe in India for a democratic movement Individualism and rationalism of Buddhism Interactions of Buddhism and Brahmanism Result, the decay of Buddhism and the rise of modern Hinduism. TDUDDHISM is related to Brahmanism somewhat as *-* Christianity is to Judaism or Protestantism to Romanism. In all three cases the branch has become mightier, if not more populous, than the parent stock. As regards Christianity and Buddhism, in each case a universal religion has developed from one strictly local, and both are now almost strangers in the lands- that gave them birth. The founder of Buddhism lived and died a Hindu. Neither he nor the Brahmans of his day thought that the new faith that he preached was incompatible with the old. He would have claimed that he was a correct exponent of the spirit of the ancient Vedic faith. His BUDDHISM 109 disciples simply claimed that he was the greatest, wisest and best of the Hindus. As there were "Reformers before the Reformation " in Europe, so in India there were sages before Gautama who were dissatisfied with the Brahmanical system ; but he was the Hindu Luther, in whose voice all previous voices blended, and whose personality fused into living unity forces that had been long gathering, and originated a movement that swept over India and all but submerged for a time the monu- ments, institutions and ordinances of the ancient religion. Buddhism thus unlike Hinduism is identified with the name of one man, in whose life, teaching and personality we find its secret. It would, however, be a great mistake to fancy that a study of the story and character of Gautama will throw much light on modern Buddhism. Originally a system of Humanitarianism with no future life and no God higher than the perfect man it has become a vast jungle of contra- dictory principles and of popular idolatry, the mazes of which it is hardly worth while to tread. " It passes from apparent atheism and materialism to theism, polytheism and spiritualism. It is under one aspect mere pessimism ; under another pure philanthropy ; under another monastic communism ; under another high morality ; under another a variety of materialistic philo- sophy ; under another simple demonology ; under another a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism." ' But, after all, the power of any religion is to be found in its ideas and in the personality of its founder. Men will return to these as to a living fountain which may have been choked for centuries with sand and driftwood. Clearing away the rubbish, they see again the living water. Drinking of it, they will rejoice all the more when the full river of the water of life sufficient to satisfy the thirst of all lands breaks upon their astonished rixioo, * Mooier Williams, Buddhism, p. i> no THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD THE SACRED BOOKS OF BUDDHISM. A strong Christian colouring is found in the sacred books of Buddhism which at first puzzled scholars. Some writers explained this by saying that Buddhism, being the older, must be the parent religion, and that Jesus or the writers of the New Testament must have come in contact with Bud- dhistic ideas or legends. Jesuit fathers declared that the devil, foreknowing the details of the promised Messiah's life, anticipated them by a caricature in Gautama. Others contended that the Buddhistic documents had gradually received modern accretions. This is the true explanation. "A biography of Buddha," says Oldenberg, "has not come down to us from ancient times, from the age of the Pali texts, and we can safely say no such biography was in existence then." " There is not," says Dr. Eitel, "a single Buddhist manuscript in existence which can vie in antiquity and undoubted authenticity with the oldest codices of the Gospels, and the most ancient Buddhist classics contain scarcely any details of Buddha's life, and none whatever that are of peculiarly Christian character." In justice to the Buddhist scribes, we must remember that their literary ideas and their defective historical sense made borrowing appear to them perfectly legitimate. All that we are concerned about is to know that every authority would now agree with the conclusion of Kuenen " I may safely affirm that we must abstain from assigning to Buddhism the smallest direct influence on the origin of Christianity." l HISTORY OF THE FOUNDER OF BUDDHISM. Siddharta was the son of the Rajah of Kapilavastu (now the village of Bhuila), a town between the holy city of Benares and the Himalaya mountains. The family name was Gautama and the tribe was the Sakyas. Hence, when Siddharta became an ascetic he was called Sakya-Muni or the monk of the Sakyas. The word Buddha from the root Bud, to know is generic. 1 Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Rtlifient, p. 5u Sec also Note at the end of this chapter. BUDDHISM When a devotee became enlightened, he was said to have attained to Buddhahood. The name thus reveals to us the kinship of original Buddhism to the funda- mental Brahmanic principle of reverence for intelligence. By what process did Siddharta or Gautama become enlightened ? Few facts about his early life are known with certainty, and it is difficult to distinguish these from the legends that the enthusiasm of his followers wove round them. But, after making all allowances for accretions, the picture remains of an extraordinary man, the memory of whose life, thirst for truth, and love for humanity ought to be honoured to the latest generations. " Except Christ alone, there is not, among the founders of religions, a figure purer or more touching than that of Buddha. His constant heroism equals his conviction ; he is a finished model of all the virtues that he preaches ; his self-denial, his charity, his unalterable sweetness, seem not to fail for a moment." 1 His disciples imi- tated him and propagated the faith with an enthusiasm, self-abnegation and success, which the history of Christen- dom cannot surpass ; and his religion is the only one of the universal religions that never sought to propagate itself by force or persecution, even when it had the power. In India, in the sixth century before Christ, the son of a king, even though the king was only the Rajah of a petty state or a zemindar, had all the world at his feet. Gautama was married, at the early age dictated by custom, to the daughter of a neighbouring Rajah, and the union was one of affection. He was distinguished for bodily vigour, intellectual power and purity of heart and life. What was lacking ? " The divine unrest " of noble souls possessed him. That could not be charmed away by power and splendour, by the influences of home or the duties of his station. Even the birth of a son, after he had been married ten years, did not fill his heart The idea that the new tie might become a bond too strong to break, Kerns, on the 1 Barth&emy St. Hilaire. ria THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD contrary, to have decided him to leave all and follow the promptings of his higher nature, though he should go out " not knowing whither he went." Every picture of old age, of disease, or of death, made him ask the question What is the meaning of this apparently endless, transitory, suffering life ? The only person who seemed to him superior to the influences of time and the body was the ascetic, the man without ties and relation- ships, living in and for the spiritual, preserving his dignity even when holding out a mendicant's bowl for rice. We must remember that Orientals, Hindus especially, are prone to take a pessimistic rather than our optimistic view of life. In India, too, the universally accepted belief in transmigration produces in the thought- ful a positive loathing of existence. This added, in the mind of Gautama, to " the weary weight of all this unintelligible world." Surely there must be some explanation of the secret of life. If only that could be learned, what, compared to it, were all other wisdom ! Convinced that the one thing needful was to find out this secret, he at the age of twenty-nine tore himself away from wealth, power, home, parents, wife and child, making what Buddhists call "the Great Renunci- ition." Exchanging garments with a beggar, he betook himself as a penniless student to one celebrated teacher nd then to another, whom he found in secluded forests, md from them learned all that Brahmanism could teach, from the inspired oracles of the Veda, or their own speculations, concerning the way of emancipation and anion with the universal soul. Unsatisfied with their teaching, he betook himself to the jungles, accompanied by five disciples, resolved to test the principle of orthodox Brahmanism, according to which the soul can become independent of the body and obtain superhuman power, and finally salvation, through asceticism. By that means and by constantly murmuring the mystic syllable 6m, with mind concentred on Brahma, of whom all worlds are "the outer fringes," the devotee becomes prepared for union with the supreme. He gradually BUDDHISM 113 becomes possessed of supernatural powers. His mind becomes clairvoyant. Material forms seem to him as bubbles on the surface of a sea of ether. Finally, the process of thinking is suppressed. Personality is lost, and the soul, escaping from its confines in the finite, merges into the innermost soul, to throb for ever in the sunny ocean of divine existence. For six years, Gautama tried as few ascetics eren in India have ever tried to obtain liberation by this method. He could afterwards say " If any other man thinketh that he may trust foi salvation to works of merit and self- mortification, I more." But he found the way as unsatisfactory as Paul and Luther afterwards found it under other forms and skies. At last when he had reduced his daily allow- ance of food to a single grain of rice and when his penances were extorting the admiration of all who heard of them in sheer disgust he ceased his efforts and began to take food like other men. This to his five disciples meant apostasy. They abandoned him when he most needed their sympathy, and betook them- selves to the holy city, Benares, where they spoke mournfully of the failure of one from whom so much had been expected. Was there then no way of peace or salvation ? The thought of returning home and confessing that he had followed a will-o'-the-wisp, now suggested itself. The duties of his station called him. Was it right to neglect these and the ordinary round of social and religious exer- cises ? With this temptation and with others he wrestled. One day, he sat down to eat his simple morning meal, under the shade of a fig-tree (Ficiu rcligiosa), to be known thenceforward by all Buddhists as the Bo tree 01 tree of wisdom, and to be esteemed sacred by them as the cross is by Christians. All day long and through the night he sat there, meditating, reflecting, questioning. As the sun rose again, the truth dawned on him that all his unrest and misery came from his desires, and that man himself was surely greater than these. Why, then, should he be their slave ? That was to him the moment H4 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD of illumination. He saw the open secret that man had only to be true to himself in order to rise permanently luperior to appetite, desire and misery ; and that in the extinction of desires, through inward culture and love to others, lay the solution of the mystery of life. Before the simplicity and power of this way of salvation salvation from the lower self, especially from the crav- ing for continuous personal life sacrifices and penances lost their efficacy and the Veda its supernatural authority. Caste was seen to be a convention and God to be un- necessary. The whole world changed to Gautama in that moment. All things became new. The desert rejoiced, and the wilderness became vocal with praise. Is not the world to every one just what he himself is ? Think where Gautama, according to our point of view, now stood. Through the inspiration of the Divine Spirit he had gotten an insight into the truth " He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life shall find it"; not into the root and all the relations of that pro- found truth, because he could not see it in Him, who is the root and life of the soul, and separated from whom the truth itself cannot take hold of humanity with power. But what he did see filled him with deep joy. It is music like that of Israel which we hear in the pithy verse in which he summed up the way to salvation : " To cease from all sin, To get virtue, To cleanse one's own heart This is the religion of the Buddhas." Gautama saw that along this way was deliverance from desire, and therefore from the future misery of those endless transmigrations which had weighed on his spirit like a heavy pall. From that moment, when the truth burst on his mind with all the power of supernatural revelation, the chains of earth fell from him, and, claiming the title of Buddha, he went forth from the wilderness with an air that betokened that his heart was fixed, resolved to teach humanity the precious BUDDHIS^f its ecret that he had learned. Two truths were hereaftei clear to him : (i) That we are saved through the power of inward culture and active love, and that all sacrifices and asceticisms are dead works ; (2) That this way of peace and salvation is open to all men alike. His own statement of these two positions was given in the formula of " the four sublime verities : " (a) There is pain or sorrow because of existence ; (l>) This comes from desire ; (f) Pain and sorrow may be made to cease by conquest over desire, and that conquest is equivalent to the attain- ing of Nirvana ; (J) There is a way that leads thither. The first of these verities tells what had driven Gautama from his home. Existence in any form necessarily involves suffering. Birth or death, illness or health, is suffering. Clinging to the five elements, that compose every being, is suffering. It were better not to be. The second was the discovery of the cause. All suffering is caused by lust or desire of three kinds for ensual pleasure, for wealth, and for existence. The third was the discovery of the remedy. Here comes in one of the characteristic words of Buddhism, Nirvana. The ordinary meaning of the word is extinct (as fire), set (as the sun), defunct (as a saint who has passed away). To Gautama, Nirvana meant the dis- appearance of that restless condition of mind and heart, which would otherwise, according to the great mystery of Karma, be the cause of renewed individual existence. By the doctrine of Karma or " Act " it meant that every man's condition in this life is the consequence and exact equivalent of his acts in a previous state. All worlds come into existence, change and vanish in obedience to an absolutely rigid law of cause and effect. This law takes the place of one or "lore gods, personal or impersonal. The doctrine that as we sow we must reap, and must reap all that we sow, is extended to the deeds done by us in previous states of existence. As long as we have not exhausted the cousequences of our past actions, we must ornUnue to n6 THE K ELI (J IONS OF THE WORLD be reborn in one form or another, unless, indeed, we have been so bad that at death we are born into hell, where once imprisoned we must remain for thousands of years. At the end of this terrible period of suffering, the man may be reborn as a plant or worm, and laboriously win his way, by righteous living, back into higher states of being. Naturally, extinction is regarded as a para- disiacal escape from such a future. With Gautama, the doctrine of Karma took the place of transmigration. As Buddhism does not acknowledge a soul in man, the link of connection between one state of existence and another is not the soul but the Raima of the being who dies. Round that there gathers a new outward form or body, with its equipment of material attributes, sensations, ideas, potentialities and thought. The Karma of the previous being determines the locality, nature and future of the new being. Gautama, not being able to accept the doctrine of transmigration, postulated this mystery of Karma as a moral cause of the unequal appointments of happiness and misery in this life. Notwithstanding the fact that every man has lived a long series of con- nected lives, he who follows Buddha's law will attain to Nirvana and cease to be. His Karma is exhausted. The fourth verity is the basis of the moral and religious code of Buddhism. The way to Nirvana is by following the middle path, which consists in eight things : right belief, that is, in the Buddha's doctrine ; right resolve, that is, to abandon all ties that interfere with becoming a monk ; right language, or the recitation of the law ; right behaviour, or that of a monk ; right mode of livelihood, or living by alms ; right exertion, or suppression of self; right mindfulness, that is, of the impurities and transitoriness of the body ; and right meditation, or composure of the mind into trance-like quietude. There are four stages or. this path. 1 These four verities in which Gautama r< sted would not have given to Buddhism its extraordinary success. On them Gautama built up a system of morality, 1 Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 108-110. BUDDHISM 117 the essence of which he found in Brahmanism, superior to that of every religion save Christianity ; also, a social organisation well adapted to Eastern life, habits and modes of thought. \Vhen dying, he told his dis- ciples that he left them in his stead two witnesses of the truth he had taught, namely, Dharma (the law), and Sangha (the Order). Hence, to this day, the formula for all Buddhist neophytes, on being received into the Order, is, "I take my refuge in Buddha, in Dharma and in Sangha." That is, I vow to imitate the life of Buddha ; I accept his teaching or law ; and I renounce the ties of life, of society and property, and become a monk, content to dress in rags and to beg for daily bread. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha have long since been elevated to the rank of deities by the personifying tendencies of the Eastern mind. Their names are invoked in prayer as the .three great objects of refuge, and they appear as gigantic idols in the temples of the different countries of Eastern Asia. Gautama enjoined five commandments on all : Thou shalt not kill ; Thou shalt not steal ; Thou shalt not commit adultery ; Thou shalt not speak untruth ; Thou shalt not taste intoxi- cating drink. The first four he received from Brahman- ism and he himself added the fifth. He enjoined five additional commandments on members of the society : They were required to abstain from eating at forbidden times ; from dancing, singing, music and worldly spectacles ; from garlands, scents, unguents and orna- ments ; from the use of a high or broad bed ; and from receiving gold or silver. The prohibition not to receive money was held to be the most important and was for a long time obeyed, but, subsequently, monasteries became owners of property and of immense revenues. Gautama inculcated the virtues cf resignation, of long-suffering without limit, of forgiveness of injuries, and all the charities and duties that are most required in countries where almost every one, from the cradle to the grave, is exposed to sore suffering, and that are most congenial to a race that is naturally of a mild and gentle disposition. n8 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD But the great secret of the Buddha's success is to be found neither in the four verities nor in his moral code, but in his own personality. His system without himself would soon have been dead. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the power of his personality. The following story illustrates it, as well as his method of teaching, and the spirit with which he inspired his disciples : A rich merchant of the name of Purna, being converted, resolved to forsake all and go to a neighbouring savage tribe in order to win them to Buddhism. Gautama apparently tried to dissuade him " The men of Sronaparanta, where you wish to fix your residence," he said, " are violent, cruel, passionate, fierce and insolent. When these men address you in wicked, brutal, gross and insolent language, when they storm at you and abuse you, what will you do, O Purna ? " " When they address me in wicked and insolent language, and abuse me," replied Purna, " this is what I will think. These men of Sronaparanta are certainly good and gentle men, who do not strike me either with their hands or with stone." 41 But if they strike you, what will you think ? " " I will think them good and gentle, because they do not strike me with cudgels or with the sword." " But what if they do strike you with the sword ?" 41 1 will think them good and gentle, because they do not completely deprive me of life." 41 But if they do deprive you of life, what then ? " 44 1 will think the men of Sronaparanta good and gentle, for delivering me with so little pain from this body full of vileness. " 44 It is well, Purna," said Buddha ; 4 ' with your perfect patience you may dwell among the Sronaparan- takas. Go thou, O Purna, thyself delivered, deliver others ; thyself arrived on the other shore, help others thither ; thyself comforted, comfort others ; having attained complete Nirvana, guide others to it." Purna went on his mission and succeeded. Shall we BUDDHISM 119 err in giving the name of the Spirit of God to the power that enables one man to so transform others. Mo- hammed, Confucius, Lao-Tse and successive reformers of Hinduism had it in measure, but none of them so largely as Gautama. He seems to come nearest to Him, to whom the Father gave the Spirit without measure. Gautama at first hesitated whether he should proclaim his faith to others. Instead of his being required to do so, it was apparently his duty to cease from all action on arriving at enlightenment and peace. According to later legends, Mara, the evil one, suggested this to him : " With great pains, blessed one, hast thou acquired this doctrine (Dharma). Why proclaim it? Beings lost in desires and lusts will not understand it. Remain in quietude. Enjoy Nirvana." But Gautama was greater than his creed. He went forth from the wilderness, first, to proclaim his way of salvation to the two Brahmans under whose instructions he had placed himself seven years before, and then finding that both of them were dead to the five disciples who had abandoned him when he renounced the way of asceticism. To these he expounded the four noble truths and the middle path which avoids the two extremes the life of subjection to the senses and the life given up to self-mortification. They believed, for there was no resisting a teacher so beloved, when he spoke with authority, and they became the first members of the fraternity that he had decided to establish. A high-born youth, named Yasa, was the next convert. Then four friends of Yasa, and, within the next three months, fifty more of the same class in society repeated the triple formula and were admitted to the Order. The Buddha at once sent out these sixty disciples in different directions to teach and to preach to others what they had heard from him. " Go ye now," he said, "and turn the wheel of the excellent Law," that is, according to Mr. Rhys Davids, " set rolling the royal chariot wheel of a universal empire of truth and righteousness ; " the wheel being the sign of dominion, lao THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD and the turner of the wheel one who makes his chariot roll unopposed over the world. For the next forty-five years the Buddha continued to preach his doctrine, travelling from place to place during fine weather, and, during the four rainy months, from June to October, going " into retreat " and instruct- ing chosen disciples. The details of this period of his life, and especially of his visit to his former home, are profoundly interesting. He went to the city where he was to have been king, as a mendicant, alms-bowl in hand, begging from house to house. When his aged father entreated him to go and beg elsewhere, and not bring shame on the royal house he had forsaken, the Buddha calmly replied "You, O King, are faithful to your ancestors, who were kings ; but my descent is from the Buddhas of old, and they, begging their food, have always lived on alms." 1 When the Buddha felt his end drawing near, he spoke to Ananda, his cousin and favourite disciple, the following words, which show clearly that he maintained the fundamental position of his system to the last : " O Ananda, I am now grown old, and full of years, and my journey is drawing to its close ; I have reached eighty years my sum of days and just as a worn-out cart can only with much care be made to move along, so my body can only be kept going with difficulty. It is only when I become plunged in meditation that my body is at ease. In future, be ye to yourselves your own light, your own refuge ; seek no otter refuge. Hold fast to the truth as your lamp. Hold fast to the truth as your refuge ; look not to any one but yourselves as a refuge. " * And, shortly before his decease, he said, "Behold now, O monks, I exhort you Everything that cometh into being passeth away ; work out your own perfection with diligence." These were his last words. Long before, he had 1 Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 64-80. * Monier Williams, ibid. p. 49. BUDDHISM attained Nirvana or extinction of the fire of desires, and he now passed through the four stages of meditation till the moment came for his Pari- Nirvana, whereby the fire of life also was extinguished. It b not very difficult to understand why Buddhism succeeded. Gautama's own personality and the sacrifices which every one knew he had made gave him the willing ear of the people of India, a people who are always ready to follow any religious teacher in whose life they see tokens of contempt for the world and of obedience to the spiritual. Buddhism also commended itself for a time to the common people as the highest form of practical religion that had ever been taught, and as a political and democratic protest against extravagant priestly pretensions and religious monopolies. The Kshatriyas, who had submitted with reluctance to the pretensions of the Brahmans, embraced the new faith with special eagerness. Rajah after Rajah declared against the old and for the new. Besides, the times were ripe for such a movement, as they were in the Roman empire when unbelief in the old gods and consequent popular immorality gave rise by reaction to the elevated Stoicism of Epictetus and the Antonines ; as they were in Europe in the sixteenth century, when the degeneracy of the monks and priesthood was the chief factor in rousing the popular conscience to clamour for a reforma- tion and in giving momentum to the new movement, especially in the purer north. Buddhism also appeared to the masses as a protest in favour of liberty, equality and fraternity. While the first aim of Gautama was to found an order of mendicant monks, membership in which was- necessary to attain to Nirvana, multitudes attached themselves to it as lay-brethren, attracted by his doctrine of universal brotherhood. He spoke to the people, too, in their own language, and he enforced his words by using the literary forms that the common people always hear gladly ; dialogues, parables, fables, and frequent repetitions. " Probably he was the first Introducer of real preaching into India, and by bis f22 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD practical method he seemed to bring down knowledge from the clouds to every man's door." 1 Buddhism, in one of its great spiritual defects, had another charm for man. It preached a consistent and thorough individualism, and thus united to its moral, social and political forces the impulse that made the Illuminism of Germany in the eighteenth century the prevailing European fashion. It appealed to man's self- sufficiency by declaring that he could attain to fulness of knowledge and to perfect righteousness by his own unassisted efforts. What man could not understand was to be disbelieved. Reason was able to penetrate to the innermost secrets of the universe, and revelation was unnecessary. Of the long contest of Buddhism and Brahmanism or rather of their interaction in India we know little. There were probably local persecutions, but Hinduism is not given to the use of the sword or the rack. Its essence is tolerance, provided that no interference with caste be attempted ; while Buddhism not only made its way by persuasion alone, but, in its system of propagating its doctrine by a celibate order, was akin to the spirit of Hinduism. According to accounts given us by the Greek observers before Christ, and by the Chinese pilgrims who visited the holy land of Buddhism between the fourth and seventh centuries of our era, it would seem that the various currents of Hindu religious life flowed as peacefully side by side then as they do now. In the celebrated caves of Elora, filled with marvels of sculpture that belong to a period prob- ably between our third and sixth centuries, " Brah- manical, Buddhist and Jaina caves are seen side by side, and their inmates, no doubt, lived on terms of fairly friendly tolerance, much as the members of the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Wesleyan communions live in Europe at the present day." 1 Buddhism actually became more idolatrous than Hinduism, and gradually dropped its distinctive features of ultra-pessimism and 1 Munier Williams, BuddJiism, p. 51. * Ibid. p. 170. BUDDHISM 123 atheism. It thus lost its individuality. The old religion absorbed its popular features of equality, fraternity and even in some cases the abolition of caste distinction; and, by identifying the heroes of the nation with Avatars or descents of Vishnu, it took new hold of the imagination and heart of the people. Buddhism, Vaishnavism and Saivism each borrowed ideas and practices from the others, but, under this interaction, Buddhism, as a distinct ystem, faded away, and for centuries it has had no hold on India. The old faith took it into its arms and sucked out its life-blood. Hinduism, however, incorporated into itself so much of the spirit of Gautama, that we can still trace it in the manners of "the mild Hindu," as he is named, half scornfully, by the disciples of Him who called Himself " meek and lowly." NOTE TO PAGE no. Of the sacred books of Buddhism, there are two collections, representing respectively Southern and Northern Buddhism. We do not know when either was first committed to writing. We are not certain even with regard to the time when the founder of Buddhism lived. While a Chinese account gives the tenth century before Christ, there are ancient inscriptions in India which place the date of his birth or death in the third century before Christ. 543 B.C., the date assigned by the Buddhists of Ceylon for his death and indirectly confirmed by coins and inscriptions, was for some time commonly accepted, but Mr. Rhys Davids would bring it more than a century nearer our time, and Sir Monier Williams is satisfied with saying that " we shall not be far wrong if we assert that he was born about the year 500 B.C." The southern canon, called the Tri-pita or three baskets, from the way in which the leaves in each volume were originally kept together, was determined about 250 B.C., at a council of the Buddhist church held at Pata- liputra, on the Ganges, under the auspices of the Emperor 124 THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine and a much better man than the Roman Emperor. This collection is about twice the length of our Bible and is written in Pali, a language the origin of which is a matter of controversy, though a probable supposition is that, it was originally a modifica- tion of Sanskrit and at the time a vernacular where the Buddha lived. Mahendra, the son of Asoka, took this canon or part of it with him, when he went, as a Buddhist mendicant, accompanied by his only sister to Ceylon, and converted the people of that island to the faith. From Ceylon, Buddhism spread to Siam, Burmah and adjoining lands, in all of which though rejected in India it has remained to this day. The northern canon, written in a debased Sanskrit, is very voluminous. It was determined at a much later date, and has been swollen by developments that make the religion entirely different from what its author intended. The northern church includes an overwhelming proportion of the Buddhists of the world and calls its method and canon the Great Vehicle, in contradistinction to the Little Vehicle of the southern church. It tells, for instance, that the Buddha was born of a virgin; was welcomed at his birth by angels and received by an old saint, en- dowed with a prophetic vision ; that he was presented in the temple, baptized with water and afterwards with fire ; that he astonished the most learned doctors by his wisdom, was led by the Spirit into the wilder- ness and tempted by the devil ; that he went about preaching and working miracles ; that he was the friend of sinners and was transfigured on a mount ; that he descended into hell and ascended into Heaven. " About the middle of the fifth century, Nestorian missionaries reached Central Asia and made numbers of Buddhist priests of Tibet acquainted with the story of Christ's life and with the ceremonial of the Catholic Church. True to the eclectic instincts of Buddhism, the Tibetan priesthood then and in subsequent centuries adopted as many Christian ideas, traditions and cere- monies, as they thought compatible with Buddhist ortho BUDDHISM 12$ doxy." 1 In the fifteenth century, a reformed Buddhist church in Tibet adopted the whole organisation of the Roman Catholic Church, and so we find there, pope, cardinal, prelate, bishops, abbots, priests, monks, nuns ; with the ritual of infant baptism, confirmation, ordina- tion and investiture, masses for the dead, litanies, chants and antiphones, rosaries, chaplets, candles, holy water, processions, pilgrimages, saints' days and fast days. It is quite clear that Buddhist scribes are responsible foe whatever borrowing there was. * Ehel, TJtrrt Lectvrti fm BtuUhitm^ pp. r6-ya. i6 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD CHAPTER VIII SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF BUDDHISM Success of Buddhism in the reigns of Asoka and Kaniskha Its services to humanity Its real failure The cause to be looked for in its atheistic or agnostic position Practical abandonment of this for Lamism, Adi- Buddhism or the worship of Bodhi-Satwas Character of the people where Buddhism is supreme lu mechanical worship Value attached to vain repeti- tions Its defective view of man Consciousness of misery but not of guilt Sin cosmical and forgiveness impossible Supposed influence of such a view Arises from inadequate conceptions of atonement and repent- ance The ultimate aim of Buddhism really selfish Buddhism and Christianity opposite poles, as regards their view of life The position of Buddhism regard- ing the universal duty of celibacy and mendicancy its sufficient condemnation How Christianity meets the fundamental truths that gave Buddhism its power Our duty. OF all the religions we have considered, none seems to give so much promise as Buddhism, What, then, is the verdict of history with regard to it ? For, according as a religion has, in the long run and on a wide scale, elevated man, so is its truth. According as it has failed in this regard, so must there be defect. Humanity will judge it by the civilisation which it has produced and maintained. The practical result of Buddhism is not what might have been expected from its spirituality, its ethical code and the lofty character of its founder. Undoubt- *ISCCSS AND FAILURE OF BUDDHISM 127 edly, it was singularly successful for a time. During Gautama's life, it spread quietly from one petty kingdom to another. After his death its progress was arrested, owing to internal dissensions in the Order and wars between rival states ; but the unification of almost the whole of India under Chandragupta and his grand- ion, Asoka, from 320 to 250 B.C., gave it a great opportunity. Those emperors, being of Sudra origin, naturally favoured a teaching and system that made light of caste distinctions. Asoka, who took the title of " beloved of the gods," distinguished himself for zeal in propagating the new faith, and, for this as well as for virtues seldom found in kings, his name is honoured to this day wherever Buddhists are found. To the men of his time he was a universal monarch. To them India was as truly " the world " as China was to Confucius and the Roman empire to St. Luke. The noble character of Asoka, as well as his triumphs, his devotion and his missionary real, made him deservedly illustrious. " If a man's fame," says Koppen, " can be measured by the number of hearts who revere his memory, by the number of lips who have mentioned and still mention him with honour, Asoka is more famous than Charlemagne or Caesar." He erected, in different parts of India, stone pillars at enormous distances from each other that testify to the extent of his empire, and he inscribed on these, and on rocks, edicts breathing the purest spirit of " peace on earth and good- will to men." Among other commands, he gavt directions for what may be called the first hospitals, where men and beasts were to be treated medically ; and what is still more remarkable in a Buddhist, he enjoined quinquennial periods of national humiliation and confession of sins. His religion appeals " to Jew and Christian and Moslem alike, as part of the universal religion of humanity." l Three centuries later, Kanishka, :he Indo-Scythian king of Kashmir, became to northern Ruddhism what Asoka had been to southern. Under hii patronage, Buddhism entered upon another period of I Wheeler, Histsry a/ India, voL viiL p. 314. 138 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WOULD great missionary revival. It may therefore be truly said that for a period of several centuries Buddhism was a mighty reforming force on a great scale. It conferred un- told benefits on India, and on Eastern and Northern Asia. " It introduced education and culture ; it encouraged literature and art ; it promoted physical, moral, and intellectual progress up to a certain point ; it proclaimed peace, goodwill, and brotherhood among men ; it depre- cated war between nation and nation ; it avowed sympathy with social liberty and freedom ; it gave back much independence to women ; it preached purity of thought, word, and deed (though only for the accumula- tion of merit) ; it taught self-denial without self-torture ; it inculcated generosity, charity, tolerance, love, self- sacrifice, and benevolence, even towards the inferior animals ; it advocated respect for life and compassion towards all creatures ; it forbade avarice and the hoarding of money ; and from its declaration that a man's future depended on his present acts and condition, it did good service for a time in preventing stagnation, stimulating exertion, promoting good works of all kinds, and elevating the character of humanity." l This is a splendid cata- logue of services, enumerated too by one whom Buddhists consider more candid than generous ; but when we look for service still more radical and permanent the real failure of Buddhism is apparent. It has found its home only among the lower forms of civilisation. " 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. " * The same assertion may be made regarding the reception of it by Semitic peoples. More generally, it may be said with truth that Buddhism has permanently elevated neither the race nor any nation that adopted it as the law of iti life. It has not impelled man forward along the path oJ general progress. It is not associated with great historic movements. It has not been favourable to scientific 1 Monier Williams, Buddhism, p. 551. * Fcrgusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, p. $7. SUCCESS AND FA/LURE OF BUDDHISM 129 research or produced any great literature or art. It has not widened man's soul. On the contrary, the character of the people where Buddhism prevails is unspiritual and nnprogressive. In no religion is the priesthood so ignorant, worship so mechanical, and idolatry so general. Better fruit might have been expected, and there must be something radically wrong with the root, when the fruit has been so poor for centuries. Notwithstanding a period of brilliant promise, it may be said then to have failed. The failure of such a religion, " the one infal- lible diagnostic of which is a belief in the infinite capacity of the human intellect," testifies strikingly to the soul's need for God and to the true greatness of the soul. The main defects of Buddhism would seem to be its atheism and its consequent defective view of man. Let us con- sider these. i. That it is atheistic or agnostic can hardly be denied, though there is an aspect from which it has been described as almost perfect theism. Buddha is clear light or intelli- gence diffused throughout the universe. As the highest form of intelligence is the perfect man, the only object of worship is the memory of the glorified Buddha or the images of others who shall come hereafter to earth ta Buddhas, or, as in Tibet and Mongolia, some person whom the Lamas or priests decide to be the one in whom the spirit of Buddha dwells and who is regarded as the representative of perfect intelligence. The Grand Lama never dies; he is lost sight of in one form only to reappear in another ; and the function of the other Lamas is to decide who he is or where he is to be found at any given time. When the soul of the Grand Lama has departed from his body, these select a child into whom they declare that the spirit of Buddha has passed, and they bring him up in a monastery with special care, preserving him from all sensual and impure influences. They teach him to look upon himself as the shrine of the divinity and as entitled to the homage of all men. These fictions have now to come into rude contact with the fact, that no decision can be arrived at as to which of the children ioo THE RELIGIONS OP THE WORLD born in Tibet when the old Lama dies is his reincarna- tion, until three candidates are proposed for election, acceptable to the Chinese government, or its residents at Lhassa. All power, too, has been taken out of the hands of the Grand Lama. Most of the children who are elected to the position " either die naturally or are made to die before they have gained any knowledge, and an elected chief Lama acts as regent or administrator of affairs, while the incarnated Buddha is supposed to lose himself in sublime heights of meditation and receive divine homage." * The fact that millions of devout Buddhists have for centuriesaccepted a substitute for God, which is little better than the Goddess of Reason whom the French Revolu- tionists set up for a time, or other substitutes, human, bestial, or wooden, to whom men have given the great name, is a commentary on the failure of Buddhism. Reverent agnosticism is preferable to such forms of theism. Gautama would have considered Lamisra more childish and idolatrous than the metaphysical god of the Brahmans, whose doctrine of God he rejected, not so much because it was incapable of proof, as because an abstract, im- personal spirit could not be regarded as possessing exist- ence at all. Existence without something to exist for, Intelligence without something to understand, Conscious- ness without something to be conscious about, Joy without something to rejoice about, are simply names for zero, though spelled with capital letters. Gautama therefore concluded that there was no such spirit. When the Brahmans in their turn pressed him for an explanation of the origin of the world and man, he disclaimed the character of a disputant and declared him- self to be simply one " who participates in the great mass of evil that exists, and seeks only a physician. " The only Creator that he recognised is Act-force or the mystery of Karma. No force can ever be lost, and there is nothing eternal but a perpetually revolving circle of causes and effects. Therefore it is that the wheel, 1 Monier Williams, Buddhism, p. 286. SUCCESS AND FA/LUKE OF BUDDHISM 131 which represents this doctrine and also its rolling over the world, is one of the chief symbols of Buddhism. The wheel-like form of the lotus the petals instead of the spokes typifying the doctrine of perpetual cycles of existence and the perpetual renewing of the beautiful flower after decay and death, make it another favourite symbol. On account of its atheism, Sir Monier Williams sayi that " Buddhism ought not to be called a religion at all, for where there is no God there can be no need ; " but it is useless fighting for a word when the facts are on the other side. A man like King Asoka was truly religious. " There is no gift comparable with the gift of religion," U one of his rock-cut inscriptions. Buddhism has been a religion to countless millions. Buddha himself soon came to be worshipped as supreme. In Nepaul, one supreme Buddha called Adi- Buddha is worshipped. The Buddhist calendar is full of Bodhi-Satwas, that is, persons having as their essence knowledge derived from self-enlightening intellect, and these are worshipped by the people as the Budclhas who are to be in the future. They are now living as angels in Heaven, and their Karma will produce other beings in a continually ascending scale of goodness, until they are vested in Buddhas who will come to earth, as they may be needed. As Gautama has passed completely away, the pious Buddhist turns with more devout feelings of worship to those Bodhi-Satwas than to one who U extinct. In southern Buddhist temples, the pure white image of Maitreya, the Buddha of kindness, is found by the side of Gautama ; and in northern temples, great Images of Manju-Sri, the personification of wisdom, of Avalokitesvara, the personification of protecting power, or of Amitabha. immeasurable light," are prominent This universal abandonment of atheism shows that the soul will not dispense with God ; still, as all this varied theological development is external to the spirit of original Buddhism, it has not affected the moral nature of the people very profoundly. In Buddhist countries, 132 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD the people are hard, unsympathetic and barren. Morality, which was at first the distinguishing feature of Buddhism, has disappeared as a regulative or in- spiring power. Buddhist worship is a strange picture of agnosticism combined with the greatest development of formalism that the world has ever seen. Buddhism is the only religion that has invented praying by machinery, or what Carlyle calls " the rotary calabash system," the principle of which is that there is a spiritual value in "vain repetitions." The prayer most frequently used is a mere formulary, consisting of the six-syllabled sentence, om mani padme Hum, that is Om ! the Jewel in the Lotus ! Hum ! Whatever the origin and meaning of this prayer, no other prayer is considered so valuable or is repeated so often. An incessant stream of repetition of these six syllables is kept going on in some Buddhist countries, by mouth, and by turning cylinders on which the words are inscribed, by every known mechanical means. Cranks, winds, and waters are enlisted in the service, the object being to store up merit by incessant repetition of the prayer. A rich harvest awaits the European or American trader who first introduces dynamos into those countries. Where electricity can be obtained economically, prayer wheels can be easily arranged, with the words printed millions of times on scrolls of paper, and these can be kept re- volving continually at a minimum of expense ! 2. Gautama's defective view of man. (a) Gautama had apparently no consciousness of guilt ; it was not sin but misery that he yearned to be delivered from. He offered to remain at home if his father would guarantee him exemption from sickness, old age, death and future births. But the deepest misery of man is not poverty, pain, disease, nor death, but the burden of guilt. To Gautama's gentle nature, which abhorred everything like the infliction of pain, the sacrifices of the Brahmans were simply repulsive, because he did not realise the deep sense of need out of which sacrifices spring. He rejected the ideas of SUCCESS AND FAILURE OF BUDDHISM 133 propitiation and atonement To him sin was a cos- mica!, not a personal thing ; inherent in the world of matter and inseparable from all forms of transient being. If a man sins, the punishment which nature has attached to the sin must take effect. There can be no remission. Buddhism thus took the position, with regard to sin and forgiveness, which some writers declare to be more favour- able to morality than the Christian position. They declare that by "the Christian doctrine of the remission of sins the knowledge of the inevitable sequence of effects and causes is robbed of half its proper influence on the imagination ; " * that without such a doctrine, virtue would have more stringent sanctions ; that men would be more thoughtful and more beneficent ; that they would know that the consequences of evil actions are irreparable ; and that the human race would altogether fare better and be better off. A practical answer to these contentions is that the experiment has been tried, under the most favourable circumstances, and with results most unfavourable to morality. A rational answer is found in proper conceptions of love, atone- ment and repentance, especially in seeing that inflexible righteousness and purity are involved in love. That is a perversion of Christianity which teaches that we can escape the consequences of our sins by any process that does not involve radical repentance. The love of God in Christ makes us hate sin, and this explains why the loftiest morality has always been found in connection with the Cross. " There is forgiveness with Thee that Thou mayest be feared," said the Psalmist ; and the Cross inspires us with this fear, as well as with passionate love to Him who loved us and gave Him- self for us. A religion that knows nothing of guilt has not probed the wound of humanity. It cannot, therefore, give the remedy that man needs, cannot elevate our nature, and cannot be the permanent religion of humanity. (6) The ultimate aim that Buddhism sets before men 1 Mil* E. Simcox, Natural Law, An Ettay in Ethic*. 134 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD is a purely selfish one. One warm advocate of Buddhism l says that " Probably there never has been a system cf morality so purely unselfish offered to the world. It held out no rewards, not even the personal existence of the saint, as a thing to be preserved at all ; it was pure renunciation, divorce from all regard for oneself." Yes, but note that its conception of self is inadequate. Gautama denied the existence of the soul and made the extinction of individual being take the place of identification with Brahma. His view of the soul resulted from his atheistic position and his belief in the materialistic nature of all existence. According to him there is no such thing as a purely spiritual existence : " He is a heretic who holds that man has a soul or permanent self separate from the body. There is no life that is not material and man's only salvation is not to be. The great problem comes to be how to commit suicide ; suicide, not of that pitiful and illusive kind which rids a man of life in one particular form, but which rids him of existence in every form." 8 The great aim is thus not really unselfish but the very opposite. Mr. Rhys Davids indeed declares that the Buddhist in seeking Nirvana has a lofty motive for humanity as well as for himself; that he knows that by destroying his Karma he leaves behind him no inheritance of misery ; he ceases to be, and no one takes his place ; and thus he helps forward to the goal of non-existence. This is true so far as it goes, but it does not go very far. It means that the best men vanish and leave the masses in hopeless misery. The great aim is deliverance from personal suffering. The Buddhist dies to the lower, not that he may realise the true self, not that he may rise with Christ to newness of life, but that he may pass away into nothingness. He is to hate his life in this world, not that he may keep tt unto life eternal, according to the well-balanced and lofty law laid down by Jesus, but in order that he may never have any more life. This defect of Buddhism also springs 1 Mr. Mills. * Marcus Dods, Mohammed, Buddha mnd Christ, p. 155. SUCCESS AND FAILURE OP BUDDHISM 135 from its atheism. There is nothing higher than man, and whatever he attains unto must be by his own merit and wholly for himself. He is not a creature, still less a sinner accountable to a holy God. He is a thing of fate that suffers, and all efforts must be directed to escape from his own misery. He is exhorted to be kind, long- suffering and forgiving, not from love to God, who speaks through His Spirit in our reason and conscience, nor from love to those who being children of one Father are our brothers indeed, but because with opposite states of mind are connected the desires from which our misery springs. Gautama's words when he exultantly rejoiced in the dawn of light in his mind, as well as his last words, clearly show that his own escape from the danger of rebirth was the great subject for congratulation ; and he taught " the Way" to his disciples, that each of them might attain to similar blessedness. This view of the selfishness of Buddhism, even when it teaches that we must die to self, enables us to understand the words of Max Muller: "In no religion are we so constantly reminded of our own as in Buddhism, and yet, in no religion has man been drawn away so far from the truth as in the religion of Buddha. Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite poles with regard to the most essential points of religion Buddhism ignoring all feeling of dependence on a higher power and therefore denying the very existence of a supreme deity ; Christianity resting entirely on a belief in God as the Father, in the Son of Man as the Son of God, and making us all the children of God by faith in His own Son." The defective view of man taken by Buddhism is most clearly seen when it makes celibacy the loftiest state and mendicancy the highest ideal of life. This is really its sufficient condemnation. Instead of placing men under the law which Paul laid down and which common-sense sanctions, " he that will not work neither shall he eat," it tells them that they ought to eat only what they beg from others. All the ties of life are 136 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD ignored. A premium is put on celibacy and on indolence. Such are the fruits which come from believing that existence is a mistake and a curse. No wonder that even Mr. Mills remarks on these as fatal shortcomings: "Not less than one -third of the male population become Lamas or monks in the countries where the influence of Buddhism is greatest." And, " the monk with staff and alms-bowl asking for bread is not quite honourable or manly in the midst of working mankind." The great cause then of the failure of Buddhism is that it did not reveal God. Agnosticism is always prac- ti&^lly the same as atheism, and from atheism the heart recoils in dismay. We can see in Gautama himself, in his country and his time, in the very defects as well as the ex- cellence of his doctrine, the explanation of his success. Speaking broadly, it may be said that the Brahmans offered men religious observances without morality. Gautama offered them morality without religion ; and his system was accepted for a time a the more reason- able of the two. Yet, while both have failed, Buddhism has been the greater failure ; and its failure proves that morality cannot be permanent, when dissociated from its root in God. What are the affinities of Christianity with Buddhism? The Holy Scriptures declare that man is made in the image of God, and the promise to Israel was that God would exhibit His perfect image in a man, and that through him He would destroy death and sin. In the fulness of the times, this promise was fulfilled and now the risen Christ offers the Holy Spirit unto men, to make them sons of God. In yielding to His Spirit, we are yielding our powers not to an external force but to our rightful King. In the innermost depths of our being, His grace and our freedom are the same thing. That profound feeling of reverence for the human spirit and for the equality of all men which characterises Buddhism has thus its full vin- dication in Christianity. " And every subordinate idea which has grown out of these primary convictions in the SUCCESS AND FA I LUKE OP BUDDHISM 137 mind of the Buddhist has that which answers to it in the Gospel." 1 Gautama was only a man. He did not pretend to be more, though he won the admiration and love of f he people by giving up everything to find and to preach salvation. But for doing so, he would have bad little influence, for " the Asiatic apostle will ever remain an ascetic, a celibate, a Fakeer." Let us honour him for what he was and what he did ; let us direct his followers to his life and its great lessons ; and thus we may lead them from the light to be found in him to the Light of the World ; from the Buddha who never sought to be worshipped, to the Saviour, who claims our worship ; from the prophet of Kapilavastu to the Son, unto whon> all the prophets bear witness. I Mawfe* Tk* RtUcim* ifOU ITfrU, J** x> V*Xj' -f*^XJL*. i'*i^*- k *A-x-^