THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
 
 re 
 
 THE 
 
 RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 
 
 AND THEIR 
 
 ta Cjjristtoitg 
 
 CONSIDERED IN 
 
 EIGHT LECTURES 
 FOUNDED BY THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A. 
 
 To yvatrrbv TOW 8eou ifra.vcpoi' eoriv iv avrolf 6 yap 8eb avrots f(j>a.vtpu<re. 
 ROM. L 19. 
 
 SIXTH EDITION 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1886
 
 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, LONDON, 
 
 ttunqay. Suffolk.
 
 Su 
 
 BO 
 MMMr 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 CHARLES JAMES, 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF LOXDOK 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 THROUGH your Lordship's kindness i was 
 appointed to the BOYLE LECTURESHIP ; the same kindness 
 has permitted me to relinquish it at the end of one year. 
 I take the liberty of presenting to your Lordship the 
 Discourses of that year. The study of the subject which 
 is considered in them has been most interesting and com- 
 forting to myself; I shall be thankful indeed if it should 
 prove of any use to my countrymen. Desiring for the 
 Church universal, for that portion especially over which 
 your Lordship presides, and for your Lordship personally, 
 all the blessings of this season, 
 
 I have the honour to be, 
 
 My LORD, 
 Your Lordship's very obliged Servant, 
 
 F. D. MAUEICE. 
 
 December, 1846.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Why these Lectures were founded. Design of the present Course. 
 Mahometanism. Its successes. Reasons assigned for them. 
 Principle of the Faith 1 
 
 LECTUEE II. 
 
 Character of the Hindoo Faith. The Brahmin. Worship of the 
 Pure Intelligence. The popular re-action. Vishnu and Si* a. 
 Relations of the English Government to Hindooism . . .34 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Buddhism. Its origin and diffusion. Its various forms. The Lama. 
 
 Buddhism and its rivals in China 60 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Old Persian Faith, and its destruction. The Egyptian. The 
 Greek. The Roman. The Gothic. General Conclusion . . 96 
 
 PAET II. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Why Judaism has not occupied a separate place in these Lectures. 
 Mahometauism related to Christianity on its Judaical side. 
 Nature of the relation indicated. Wherein Mahome 1 anism differs
 
 viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 from Judaism. Dangers to Christianity from the forgetfulness 
 or predominance of its Mahometan side. How the Christian 
 Faith and Church satisfy the cravings of Mahometans . . 130 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The relation between Christianity and Hindooism generally com- 
 pared. Mistakes concerning it. Investigation cf its nature. The 
 twice-born man. The Image of Brahm. Incarnations. Sacrifice. 
 Dangers to Christianity from its Hindoo tide. How Christianity 
 can and cannot satisfy Hindoos 162 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 How this relation should be detected. The descent of the Spirit. 
 Relation of the Christian Church to the Jewish. Supposed 
 analogy to the relations of Buddhism with Brahminism. The 
 resemblances and difference between Christianity and Buddhism. 
 The Buddhist side of Christianity threatening its existence. 
 How Christians may sjeak to Buddhists elsewhere, especially 
 in China . 187 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The early preaching of the Gospel how it affected Greeks, Egyptians, 
 Romans, Goths. Form of this preaching. Resistance from the 
 doctrine of an Evil Principle. Mahometan protest against it, 
 and for the sacredness of the outward world. Hindoo protest 
 on behalf of a Divine kingdom. Buddhist protest for an actual 
 Indwelling Spirit. Modern infidel protest for humanity. Chris- 
 tianity established by all. Conclusion 216
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 substance of these Lectures was delivered, accord- 
 ing to the directions of Boyle's Will, in one of the 
 London Churches, on the first Mondays of certain 
 months in the years 1845 and 1846. Though it is not 
 imperative on the preacher to print his Discourses, it 
 has been the custom to do so. Indeed the intention of 
 the Founder seems to be scarcely fulfilled by addressing 
 a series of Sermons on subjects requiring some attention, 
 at distant intervals, to the e"ight or ten persons who in 
 the present times compose an ordinary week-day con- 
 gregation. In preparing them for publication I have 
 omitted the texts, which were little more than mottoes, 
 and have altered the forms of language which belong 
 especially to pulpit composition. 
 
 The object of the Lectures will, I hope, be sufficiently 
 intelligible to those who read them. - But it is a duty 
 to speak of some writers who have discussed the same 
 subjects, and to whom I am indebted. 
 
 In the first Lecture, I have not touched upon the 
 question which is considered in Mr. Forster's Mahomet- 
 anism Unveiled. My business was with popular views 
 upon the subject, not with learned and ingenious
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 speculations. Of Mr. Forster's theory I do not feel 
 competent to express an opinion ; so far as it evinces a 
 desire to deal fairly with facts which Christian apologists 
 Lave often perverted, and a confidence that the cause of 
 Christianity must be the better for such fairness, it 
 must, I am sure, have done good, even if the basis upon 
 which it rests should be found untenable. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle's Lecture on Mahomet in his Hero Wor- 
 ship, is probably much better known to my readers than 
 Mr. Forster's treatise. Some persons may have been 
 led by that Lecture to identify Mahometanism with 
 reverence for the person of Mahomet ; they will strongly 
 object to the sentiments which I have expressed in one 
 passage of this book. But I do not anticipate any such 
 objection from Mr. Carlyle himself. No writer has more 
 distinctly recognised the Islamite principle of subjection 
 to an absolute Will, as the vital one in this faith ; or 
 has exhibited a more earnest, I had nearly said a more 
 exclusive, veneration for that principle. A man seems 
 to him to be strong or weak, admirable or contemptible, 
 precisely as he is possessed by it, or as he substitutes 
 some notion of happiness, some theory of the Universe, 
 in place of it. Those who feel that they are under the 
 deepest obligation to Mr. Carlyle for the power with 
 which he has brought the truth of. this principle to 
 their minds, for the proofs which he has given that, as 
 much in the seventeenth century as in the seventh, it 
 could break down whatever did not pay it homage, 
 cannot be persuaded to look upon any phrases of his
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to them himself, as the most genuine expressions of his 
 mind. They rather recognise in these phrases an 
 attempt, confessedly unsuccessful, to bridge over the 
 chasm which separates, as Mr. Carlyle thinks, the ages 
 in which this faith could be acted out from our own in 
 which it has become only a name. That no phrases or 
 formulas, from whatever period or country they may be 
 borrowed, can accomplish this object, Mr. Carlyle is a 
 sufficient witness; that it must be accomplished in 
 some way, his lamentations over the present state of 
 the world abundantly prove. Those who think that it 
 is the first duty of an author to provide them with 
 sunshine, find these lamentations intolerable ; there are 
 some who seem to be pleased with them as they might 
 be with any unusually strong exhibition of passion upon 
 the stage. There are others who hear in his wailings 
 the echoes of their own saddest convictions, but who 
 for that reason cannot be content to spend their time 
 merely in listening to them or repeating them. One 
 who desires to lead an honest life, and learns that men 
 in former days were honest, because they believed in a 
 personal Being, who is. and was, and is to come, must 
 ask himself whether such a belief has become impossible 
 for him. And if we are assured by Mr. Carlyle that 
 under the conditions of Mahometanism or even of 
 Christian Puritanism it is now impossible, then we 
 must again ask, Why so? Is it because the truth 
 which made these faiths so energetic is not what it 
 was ? or is it because it dwelt in them apart from other
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 truths, without which in our days it can scarcely even 
 exist, much less live ? These questions may never 
 present themselves to a dilettante admirer of Mr. 
 Carlyle ; those whom his writings have really moved, 
 and who regard him with hearty, though perhaps silent, 
 gratitude and affection, are, I know, haunted by them 
 continually. If these Lectures should lead any one such 
 questioner even to hope for an answer, they will do the 
 work for which I especially designed them. 
 
 In illustration of the remark that the Mahometan 
 conquerors were not merely ' Scourges of God,' however 
 they may have deserved that title, I would suggest to 
 the reader a comparison of their wars with those of 
 Zinghis Khan. May I advise him also to read with 
 some attention the passage in Gibbon (Chap. LXIV. Vol. 
 XI. pp. 391, 392, 8vo Ed.) on the philosophical religion 
 of that Mogul whom Frederick II., the accomplished 
 Suabian, the enemy of Popes, the suspected infidel, 
 denounced as the common foe of mankind, against 
 whom he invoked a crusade of all princes ? Gibbon's 
 panegyric, illustrated as it is by his faithful narrative of 
 the proceedings of Zinghis Khan and his successors in 
 Persia, Russia, Hungary, &c., of their incapacity to pre- 
 serve a record of their own acts, and of their ultimate 
 conversion by the bigoted Mussulman, is full of the 
 deepest instruction. 
 
 In connection with the remarks upon the constitution 
 of Mahometan Society as exhibited in the Ottoman 
 Empire, I would recommend the study of Ranke's
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 excellent Essay upon that subject in his Fursten und 
 Volken. 
 
 The second Lecture is a collection of hints, which 
 may not, I hope, be quite useless to some whose per- 
 sonal observations of India or whose knowledge of its 
 languages may enable them to detect my mistakes, and 
 if they please, to laugh at my ignorance. The scholars 
 of British India and the intelligent natives have good 
 right to despise any one who sets up his own notions in 
 opposition to their testimonies, and who makes these 
 notions an excuse for severe reflections upon a state 
 of society with which he is unacquainted. They may 
 possibly be tolerant of one who by comparing their 
 testimonies, so far as he has been able to gather them, 
 has corrected many crude notions which he had previ- 
 ously entertained, and who desires nothing more than 
 that any sentiments of disgust and contempt which 
 Englishmen in India may conceive for the notions and 
 practices which they witness, should rather be coun- 
 teracted than strengthened by their English education. 
 Professor H. Wilson has undertaken an edition of Mr. 
 Mill's History of British India, in the hope, as he inti- 
 mates in his preface, of correcting, by the evidence of 
 facts, the harsh judgments of the Hindoos, into which 
 the historian was led by theory. To the civil and 
 military servants of the Company such a work may 
 be as useful as the design of it is benevolent. But 
 the missionary, though it is to be hoped he will not 
 neglect to profit either by Mr. Mill's labours, or by the
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 experience and Oriental wisdom with which Professor 
 Wilson has enriched them, is open to another kind of 
 temptation, which the one will not much increase, nor 
 the other enable him to resist. The actual sight of 
 a country wholly given to idolatry, must be far more 
 startling and appalling to him than any pictures he 
 can have formed of it previously. Not to weaken these 
 impressions, but to prevent them from overwhelming 
 him, and so destroying that sympathy with the victims 
 of idolatry which is the most necessary qualification for 
 his task, should be the great object of his home instruct- 
 ors. For this end, I think, we should aim, not merely 
 at cultivating Christian love and pity in his heart : these 
 will scarcely be kept alive, if there be not also an intel- 
 lectual discipline (I call it intellectual, yet it is in the 
 very highest sense a moral discipline), to show him 
 what the thoughts and feelings of which Hindooism is 
 the expression, have to do with himself, how they are 
 interpreted by the experience of individuals and the 
 history of the world. I look earnestly to St. Augustine's 
 College, in the hope that it may fulfil both these tasks. 
 Should it do so, it will be indeed worthy of its name ; 
 it may be the instrument of restoring faith to England 
 as well as of imparting it to her dependencies. For do 
 'we not need, as I have hinted in my last Lecture, to be 
 taught that the Gospel is not a dead letter, by discover- 
 ing what living wants there are in us, and all men, 
 which it meets and satisfies ? 
 
 It inieht have been desirable that I should have
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 appended to this, and the two following Lectures, some 
 illustrative notes : I had intended to do so, but I feared 
 that I should increase the size and price of the volume, 
 without conferring a proportionate benefit upon the 
 reader. I can enumerate in a few lines the books from 
 which my proofs would have been drawn. From them, 
 (and they are within the reach of persons who are as 
 ignorant of Oriental literature as I am) much more may 
 be learnt in the course of a few hours' fair study, than 
 from long appendices of extracts selected at the pleasure 
 of an Author. 
 
 The Essay of Mr. Colebrooke on the Vedas, in the 
 eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches, and Mr. Rosen's 
 Latin translation of the Rig Veda, are at present * the 
 chief helps which the Western student possesses for a 
 knowledge of the earliest Hindoo faith. It is important 
 to observe, that while Mr. Colebrooke's extracts are 
 chiefly taken from the liturgical part of the Vedas, 
 those upon which the late Rammohun Roy raised his 
 argument for the corruption of the later faith, were 
 doctrinal passages. His conclusion, as I have hinted in 
 my Lecture, is therefore unsatisfactory, though it ought 
 not to be called unfair or disingenuous. If he had 
 quoted the prayers which Mr. Colebrooke has made us 
 acquainted with, English readers would no doubt have 
 
 * I understand that a young German, now in London, whose know- 
 ledge of Sanscrit is profound, and his industrj- plus quam Germanica, 
 has it in contemplation to publish and translate all the Vedas. English 
 money it is to be hoped will not be wanting, when the other and more 
 indispensable requisite is supplied by a foreigner.
 
 xviii PREFACE. 
 
 compared with the paper on the Veddnta System, by 
 Col. Vans Kennedy, Vol. m. p. 412) are full of 
 interest. 
 
 These writings of actual observers should be studied 
 before the speculations of even the most intelligent 
 thinkers. But I should be ungrateful if I did not say 
 that the passages on India in the Mythologies of Baur 
 and Windischmann, and still more in Hegel's Philosophy 
 of History, with the little book of Frederick Schlegel, 
 called Die Indien, have illuminated many dark and dull 
 reports, and have enabled me to feel the connection 
 between the thoughts of other periods and countries and 
 those which characterise our own times. 
 
 The temptation to speak of Buddhism merely or chiefly 
 in this connection, is one which I was aware of when I 
 entered upon the subject in my third Lecture, and 
 which I strove to resist. I am sure that any advantage 
 we may derive from a comparison of the difficulties 
 which have beset Asiatics in different ages, with those 
 which are besetting Europeans now, must depend upon 
 the earnestness with which we determine first to under- 
 stand the former in themselves. If we are more eager 
 to make applications, than to ascertain what we have 
 to apply, we may write a polemical treatise which will 
 convince all who agreed with us before, and will furnish 
 writers in reviews, who have exhausted their old argu- 
 ments or invectives against some opponent, with a set 
 of new phrases ; but we shall not remove one perplexity 
 from any earnest mind ; we shall only throw into it a
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 new element of confusion. The ultimate tendencies of 
 Buddhism to entire evaporation, to mere negation, are 
 manifest enough. The like tendencies assuredly exist, 
 perhaps are becoming stronger every day, in Christ- 
 endom. But to take the result of a certain doctrine or 
 habit of mind, without considering its stages, varieties, 
 counteractions ; its lights as well as its shadows ; how 
 it weaves for itself at one time a dogmatic or sacerdotal 
 vesture ; how it sinks at another into a mere specula- 
 tion ; above all, what an Eternal Verity keeps it alive 
 in all its forms; is not using it for the warning and 
 instructi on of men, but turning it into a mask for fright- 
 ening children. If it is well for us to show what possi- 
 bilities lurk in Buddhism because they lurk in us, still 
 more ought we to consider its actual history, because it 
 is the history of a process which may be passing in the 
 minds of persons whom we are most ready to think of 
 as having reached the last development of unbelief; 
 because it may be going on in us when we are giving 
 ourselves credit for the greatest amount of faith. 
 
 Entering upon the subject with these feelings I 
 desired to hear of Buddhism not in digests, which 
 represented it as a system at rest, but from intelligent 
 observers who saw it in motion and described its dif- 
 ferent appearances. The papers on the subject in the 
 Royal Asiatic Society are for this purpose invaluable, 
 especially those of Mr. Hodgson, to which I have referred 
 in the text (Transactions, Vol. II. p. 222); that on 
 Buddha and the Phrabat by Captain Low (Vol. III. p.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 57) ; that on the consecration of priests by Mr. Knox 
 (Vol. in. p. 271) ; the disputations respecting Caste 
 by a Buddhist (Vol. III. p. 160). To these may be 
 added different accounts of the Lama in the Asiatic 
 Researches (Vol. I. p. 197, and xvil. pp. 522 524), and 
 the later narrative of Mr. Turner. For a general state- 
 ment, I know nothing better than the article on 
 Buddhism in the Penny Cyclopaedia. Dr. Pritchard's 
 works will supply valuable information upon this as 
 upon most other subjects. Of course it would be absurd 
 to slight the French writers upon Buddhism, though on 
 a subject which offers such facilities for systematising, 
 and in which systematising is so likely to mislead, it 
 may be lawful to view them with some suspicion. 
 
 Of the Confucian doctrine, on the other hand, they 
 are probably the best, as they are the most zealous 
 and enthusiastic expounders. The Quatre Livres of 
 Confucius, translated by Pauthier, is a moderately-sized 
 and readable book, and the preface to it is very useful 
 and instructive. The Chinese reverence of Fathers is 
 abundantly illustrated in the fourth volume of the 
 Mtmoires sur les Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pdkin. 
 All our recent writers, Davis, Medhurst, Gutzlaff, though 
 valuable in reference to China generally, are rather vague 
 and unsatisfactory on the subject of its religion. The 
 Chinese exhibition at Knightsbridge was, in this respect, 
 more valuable than any of them. 
 
 The recent interpretation of the arrow-headed in- 
 scriptions by Major Rawlinson will add, no doubt, greatly
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 to our knowledge of the Persian or Zend doctrines. 
 They seem to confirm the opinion which was so long 
 entertained upon other grounds, that Darius Hystaspes 
 was an instrument in the restoration of the true Persian 
 faith, after it had been subverted by the Pseudo- 
 Smerdis. It seems also clearer than it was before, that 
 the reformation, which is connected with the name of 
 Zoroaster, consisted mainly in the assertion of the 
 absolute supremacy of Ormuzd. It does not follow 
 that Ahriman worship was prohibited or wholly de- 
 nounced : that it was continually re-appearing in the 
 popular mind, is evident. The later Magian faith may 
 have been an attempt to reconcile the reformed with 
 the popular doctrine ; or rather, may it not be supposed, 
 that Zoroaster's was the regal creed, and that the priest 
 never more than partially recognised it ? 
 
 What has been said respecting the three cycles of 
 Egyptian gods, is explained at large in the ^Egypten 
 of Chevalier Bunsen, Vol. i. p. 423433. He has a 
 remark (p. 432) upon the mistaken effort to form Triads 
 in different mythologies, by bringing together gods from 
 different localities, or periods of history, which I have 
 found very useful. Keeping it in memory, I think I 
 have learnt more to find in THE Triad, an interpretation 
 of all mythology, than if I had laboured ever so diligently 
 to find parallels for it in the external parts of the systems. 
 
 If I had been writing a history instead of a lecture, 
 it would have behoved me, when speaking of the rela- 
 tions of Christianity with Persia, to have noticed the
 
 xxii PREFACE. 
 
 Nestorian missions in that country. I believe the history 
 of these missions would throw an important light upon 
 the whole subject; but it would have led me into 
 many details, which, especially in a recapitulation, I 
 was anxious to avoid. To pass over any facts merely 
 because they might tend to the honour of heretics, 
 would be grossly inconsistent with the professions, and, 
 I hope, with the spirit, of these Lectures.* 
 
 * I ought perhaps to have noticed two large Works, written by 
 Englishmen, on the subject of my second Lecture ; the Hindoo 
 Antiquities of Mr. Thomas Maurice, and the work on the Literature, 
 Manners, and Religion of the Hindoos, by Mr. Ward. They illustrate 
 two habits of mind directly opposite to each other ; almost equally 
 unfavourable, I think, to a true apprehension of the Brahminical 
 faith, and of its relation to Christianity. Mr. Maurice seems to 
 regard the abominations of idolatry as objects merely of literary 
 interest and antiquarian curiosity. Mr. Ward can see only the hateful 
 and the devilish ; of what good it may be the counterfeit, what 
 divine truth may be concealed in it, and may be needed to supplant 
 it, he has not courage to inquire. Each, I think, is refuted on its 
 own ground. Dilettante scholarship is found not to be sound scholar- 
 ship. That which has no hold on the present, proves not to be true 
 of the past. Mere observers of evil do not describe the evil accurately 
 or vividly enough ; the points may be correct, but the impression is 
 false ; for want of light, we do not feel the darkness. I believe most 
 persons find it exceedingly difficult to read either of these books ; 
 quite impossible, to remember them. 
 
 I ought to have said, when speaking of Rammohun Roy, that his 
 Tracts were written originally for his own countrymen, not for English- 
 men. They were first printed in Calcutta : collected and re-published 
 *in London, I believe under his direction, in 1832.
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
 
 2 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 be started, to which good answers have not yet been 
 made." 
 
 The two latter of these clauses seem to explain the 
 intentions of the first. The objections to Christianity 
 urged by Jews, Pagans, and Mahometans were not, 
 perhaps, likely to perplex an ordinary Englishman. 
 But England, in the 17th century, was becoming more 
 and more a colonising country. The American settle- 
 ments were increasing in importance every year. The 
 East India Company had already begun its career of 
 commerce, if not of conquest. In his own particular 
 department of natural science Boyle observed the most 
 steady progress; no one was doing more to accelerate 
 it than himself. He would naturally divine that an 
 advancement, not less remarkable, must take place in 
 another region, in which the interests of men were far 
 more directly engaged. He must have felt how much 
 the student in his closet was helping to give speed to the 
 ships of the merchant, and to discover new openings 
 to his ambition. As a benevolent man he could not 
 contemplate accessions to the greatness and resources 
 of his country, without longing that she might also be 
 conscious of her responsibility, that she might bring no 
 people within the circle of her government whom she 
 did not bring within the circle of her Light. Accord- 
 ingly, we find him offering frequent encouragement by 
 his pen and purse to the hard-working missionaries 
 who were preaching the Gospel among the North 
 American Indians. Cheering words, pecuniary help,
 
 LECT. i.] EEASONS AGAINST CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 3 
 
 and faithful prayers, might be all which these teachers 
 of savages could ask from their brethren at home. 
 But Boyle knew that difficulties which they would 
 rarely encounter must continually present themselves 
 to those who came in contact with the Brahmin in 
 Hindostan, with the Mussulman both in Europe and 
 Asia, with the Jew in every corner of the globe. A 
 man who thought lightly or contemptuously of any of 
 these, or of their arguments who had not earnestly 
 considered what they would have to say, and what he 
 had to tell them could not be expected to do them 
 much good. Moreover, Boyle was too well acquainted 
 with philosophical men, with the general society of 
 England, and with his own heart, not to be aware that 
 there was another kind of opposition more formidable 
 than this, which the proposal to diffuse Christianity 
 abroad must struggle with. Was the gift worth bestow- 
 ing? Were we really carrying truth into the distant 
 parts of the earth when we were carrying our own 
 faith into them ? Might not the whole notion be a 
 dream of our vanity? Might not particular soils be 
 adapted to particular religions? Might not the effort 
 to transplant one into another involve the necessity of 
 mischievous forcing, and terminate in inevitable dis- 
 appointment ? Might not a better day be at hand in 
 which all religions alike should be found to have done 
 their work of partial good, of greater evil, and when 
 something much more comprehensive and satisfactory 
 should supersede them ? Were not thick shadows over-
 
 4 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 hanging Christendom itself, which must be scattered 
 before it could be the source of light to the world ? 
 
 Such questions as these Boyle must often have heard 
 propounded by others ; but the deepest and most painful 
 suggestion of them had been to himself. He tells us, 
 in the sketch of an European tour written under the 
 name of Philaretus, that "when he was still a young 
 "man, after he had visited other places, his curiosity 
 "at last led him to those wild mountains where the 
 " first and chiefest of the Carthusian abbeys is seated ; 
 " where the devil, taking advantage of that deep raving 
 " melancholy befitting so sad a place, his humour, and 
 "the strange stories and pictures he found there of 
 " Bruno, the father of that order, suggested such strange 
 " and hideous thoughts, and such distracting doubts of 
 " some of the fundamentals of Christianity, that though 
 "his looks did little betray his thoughts, nothing but 
 " the forbiddingness of self-dispatch hindered his acting 
 " it. But, after a tedious languishment of many months 
 "in this tedious perplexity, at last it pleased God one 
 "day he had received the Sacrament to restore unto 
 " him the withdrawn sense of his favour. But, though 
 " Philaretus ever looked upon these impious suggestions 
 " rather as temptations to be resisted than as doubts to 
 "be resolved, yet never did these fleeting clouds cease 
 "now and then to darken the clearest serenity of his 
 "quiet; which made him often say that injections of 
 "this nature were such a disease to the faith as tooth- 
 "ache is to the body, for though it be not mortal, it
 
 LECT. I.] BOYLE'S PERSONAL CONFLICTS. 5 
 
 " is very troublesome. However, as all things work 
 "together for good to them that love God, Philaretus 
 " derived from this anxiety the advantage of grounded- 
 " ness in his religion ; for the perplexity his doubts 
 " created obliged him to remove them to be seriously 
 "inquisitive of the truth of the very fundamentals of 
 " Christianity, and to hear what both Jews and Turks, 
 "and the chief sects of Christians, could allege for 
 "their several opinions; that so, though he believed 
 " more than he could comprehend, he might not believe 
 " more than he could prove, and not owe the steadfast- 
 " ness of his faith to so poor a cause as the ignorance of 
 " what might be objected against it. He said, speaking 
 " of those persons who want not means to inquire and 
 "abilities to judge, that it was not a greater happiness 
 " to inherit a good religion, than it was a fault to have 
 " it only by inheritance, and think it the best because it 
 " is generally embraced, rather than embrace it because 
 " we know it to be the best. That though we cannot 
 "always give a reason for what we believe, yet we 
 "should be ever able to give a reason why we believe 
 "it. That it is the greatest of follies to neglect any 
 " diligence that may prevent the being mistaken when 
 " it is the greatest of miseries to be deceived. That 
 " how dear soever things taken upon the score are sold, 
 " there is nothing worse taken up upon trust than 
 " religion, in which he deserves not to meet with the 
 "true one that cares not to examine whether or no 
 " it be so." (Works, Vol. I. p. 12.)
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART r. 
 
 It is evident, I think, that a comparison of religious 
 systems undertaken by a man who had just passed 
 through so tremendous a conflict, and who had no pro- 
 fessional motive for entering upon it, must have been 
 something very different from a dry legal inquiry re- 
 specting the balance of probabilities in favour of one 
 or the other. I do not mean that Boyle will not have 
 brought to this subject all the habits of patient inves- 
 tigation which he ordinarily applied to the study of 
 physical phenomena. The very anguish of his mind 
 made it essential that he should seek for a real standing- 
 ground ; and that he should not therefore strain facts 
 for the sake of arriving at an agreeable conclusion. 
 Indeed, it is difficult to say which conclusion would 
 seem most agreeable to a man exercised as he was: 
 there would be at times a bias of understanding, and 
 even affection, as strong against Christianity, as his 
 education could create in favour of it. But undoubt- 
 edly, his object in questioning these different schemes 
 of belief will have been to ascertain what each of them 
 could do for him : what there was in it to meet the 
 demands of his heart and reason. It was no occasion 
 for clever special pleading; the question was to him 
 one of life and death : when he had once resolved it, 
 the next duty was to act upon his conviction, and to 
 strive that all men should be better for that, which 
 he, because he was a man, had found to be needful for 
 himself. Upon this principle he founded these Lectures. 
 The truth of which he had become assured, was, he
 
 LECT. i.] FAITH, IN THE LAST CENTURY. 7 
 
 believed, a permanent one ; the next generation would 
 need it as much as his own. He did not suppose that 
 the actual relation in which that truth stood to different 
 systems of belief could alter. But it did not follow 
 that the inquiry respecting the nature of that relation 
 would be exhausted in his day. As new regions un- 
 folded themselves to European adventure, new facts 
 modifying or changing previous notions respecting the 
 faiths which prevailed in them might come to light; 
 fresh and more trying experiences might make the 
 past more intelligible ; the same doubts respecting the 
 justice, wisdom, or possibility of bringing other men into 
 our religious fellowship which presented themselves to 
 his contemporaries, might appear again and again in 
 very different shapes, appealing to even opposite feelings 
 and tempers. 
 
 The event, I believe, has proved that he was right. 
 Within fifty years a prodigious change has taken place 
 in the feelings of men generally of philosophical men 
 particularly respecting Religious Systems. In the 
 latter part of the 17th century, still more during a great 
 part of the 18th, they were regarded by those who most 
 gave the tone to popular thinking and who had the 
 highest reputation for wisdom, as the inventions of 
 lawgivers and priests. Men cleverer and more dishonest 
 than the rest of the world found it impossible to build 
 up systems of policy or to establish their own power, 
 unless they appealed to those fears of an invisible world 
 which ignorance so willingly receives and so tenderly
 
 8 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 fosters. This being the admitted maxim respecting 
 religions generally, it seemed the office of the Christian 
 apologist to show that there was one exception ; to 
 explain why the Gospel could not be referred to this 
 origin; how entirely unlike it was to those forms of 
 belief which were rightly considered deceptions. That 
 many dangerous positions were confuted by works 
 written for this object; that many of the distinguish- 
 ing marks of Christianity were brought out in them ; 
 that many learnt from them to seek and to find a 
 standing-ground in the midst of pits and morasses, it 
 is impossible to doubt. But the demonstrations of 
 God's providence were in this case, as in all others, 
 infinitely broader, deeper, more effectual than those of 
 man's sagacity. The evidence furnished by the great 
 political Revolution at the close of the last century 
 seems slowly to have undermined the whole theory 
 respecting the invisible world and men's connection 
 with it, which possessed the teachers of that century. 
 Men are beginning to be convinced, that if Religion 
 had had only the devices and tricks of statesmen or 
 priests to rest upon, it could not have stood at all; 
 for that these are very weak things indeed, which, 
 when they are left to themselves, a popular tempest 
 must carry utterly away. If they have lasted a single 
 day, it must have been because they had something 
 better, truer than themselves to sustain them. This 
 better, truer thing, it seems to be allowed, must be 
 that very faith in men's hearts upon which so many
 
 LECT. i.] CHARACTEK OF MODERN OBJECTIONS. 9 
 
 disparaging epithets were cast, and which it was sup- 
 posed could produce no fruits that were not evil and 
 hurtful. Faith it is now admitted has been the most 
 potent instrument of good to the world ; has given to 
 it nearly all which it can call precious. But then it 
 is asked, is there not ground for supposing that all the 
 different religious systems, and not one only, may be 
 legitimate products of that faith which is so essential 
 a part of man's constitution ? Are not they manifestly 
 adapted to peculiar times and localities and races ? Is 
 it not probable that the theology of all alike is some- 
 thing merely accidental, an imperfect theory about our 
 relations to the universe, which will in due time give 
 place to some other ? Have we not reason to suppose 
 that Christianity, instead of being, as we have been 
 taught, a Revelation, has its root in the heart and 
 intellect of man, as much as any other system ? Are 
 there not the closest, the most obvious relations between 
 it and them ? Is it not subject to the same law of 
 decay from the progress of knowledge and society with 
 all the rest ? Must we not expect that it too will lose 
 all its mere theological characteristics, and that what 
 at last survives of it will be something of a very general 
 character, some great ideas of what is good and beauti- 
 ful, some excellent maxims of life, which may very well 
 assimilate, if they be not actually the same, with the 
 essential principles which are contained in all other 
 religions, and which will also, it is hoped, abide for 
 ever ?
 
 10 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART I. 
 
 Notions of this kind will be found, I think, in much 
 of the erudite as well as of the popular literature of 
 this day ; they will often be heard in social circles ; 
 they are undoubtedly floating in the minds of us all. 
 While we entertain them, it is impossible that we 
 can, with sound hearts and clear consciences, seek to 
 evangelise the world. Yet they are not to be spoken 
 of as if they proceeded from a merely denying, un- 
 believing spirit : they are often entertained by minds 
 of deepest earnestness ; they derive their plausibility 
 from facts which cannot be questioned, and which a 
 Christian should not wish to question. They may, I 
 believe, if fairly dealt with, help to strengthen our own 
 convictions, to make our duty plainer, and to show us 
 better how we shall perform it. All their danger lies 
 in their vagueness: if we once bring them fairly to 
 those tests by which the worth of hypotheses in another 
 department is ascertained, it may not perhaps be hard 
 to discover what portions of truth, and what of false- 
 hood, they contain. I think I shall be carrying out the 
 intention of Boyle's Will, if I attempt, in my present 
 course, to make this experiment. I propose to examine 
 the great Religious Systems which present themselves 
 to us in the history of the world, not going into their 
 details, far less searching for their absurdities, but in- 
 quiring what is their main character istical principle. If 
 we find, as the objectors say, good in each of them, we 
 shall desire to know what this good is, and under what 
 conditions it may be preserved and made effectual.
 
 LECT. i.] MAHOMETANISM ITS PROGRESS. 11 
 
 These questions may, I think, be kept distinct from 
 those which will occupy us in the latter half of the 
 course. In what relation does Christianity stand to 
 these different faiths ? If there be a faith which is 
 meant for mankind, is this the one or must we look 
 for another ? 
 
 I shall not take these systems in their historical order, 
 but rather according to the extent of the influence they 
 have exerted over mankind ; a reason which would at 
 once determine me to begin in the present Lecture 
 with MAHOMETANISM. 
 
 For the first ninety years after the publication of 
 this religion in the world, the Christians of Europe 
 could do little more than wonder at its amazing and, 
 as it seemed, fatal, progress in Asia and Africa. Before 
 the end of a century it had obtained a settlement in a 
 corner of their own Continent and threatened every part 
 of it. But the new Western Empire established itself, 
 Christian champions appeared in Spain, the power of 
 the Caliphs declined. Then Islamisrn appeared again 
 in another conquering, proselytising tribe. For two 
 centuries the European nations wrestled to recover its 
 conquests in the Holy Land. A period followed during 
 which the disciples of both religions seemed almost 
 equally threatened by Tartar hordes. These stooped to 
 the Crescent ; in the loth century a mighty Mahom- 
 etan government was seen occupying the capital of the 
 East, threatening the Latin world, profiting by the 
 disputes of Christian sovereigns with one another,
 
 12 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 exhibiting its own order and zeal in melancholy contrast 
 to the quarrels, unbelief, and heartlessness of monarchs 
 and prelates. It became a question with the thoughtful 
 men of that time, whether the Ottoman empire did not 
 possess a polity which was free from the tendencies to 
 weakness and decay that had existed in all previous 
 governments, and whether it might not last for ever. 
 
 In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the fallacy of 
 this notion was making itself evident, Christians began 
 to speculate coldly and quietly upon the causes which 
 had given such pre valency to this faith in past days, 
 and which still kept it alive in their own. It may 
 be well to consider a few of the explanations which 
 different persons, according to their different observa- 
 tions or habits of mind, have offered of this fact, that 
 we may not lose the benefit of any light which has 
 been thrown from any quarter upon the nature or 
 principle of the religion itself. 
 
 I. It was an easy and obvious method of solving the 
 difficulty, to say that the Mahometans had triumphed 
 by the force of their arms; personal valour and a 
 compact military organisation being comprehended 
 under that term. That they were warriors from the 
 first, that their courage was often amazing, and that 
 " the Ottomans for a long time possessed the secret of 
 military subordination, as scarcely any nation has ever 
 possessed it, is evidently true. And it is a truth of 
 which Christian apologists would very naturally avail 
 themselves. The opposition, not in some accidental
 
 LECT. i.] FIRST MODE OF EXPLAINING CONQUEST. 13 
 
 points, but in their whole scheme and conception, 
 between the Sermon on the Mount, and the doctrine 
 which could require or sanction such methods for its 
 diffusion, would of course be carefully noted. Plain 
 men would be asked to declare which teaching bore 
 clearest tokens of belonging to the earth, which of a 
 Divine origin. Nor was this argument an unfair one, 
 however it might be, and has been again and again, 
 traversed by an appeal to the practice of Christians, 
 and the weapons to which they have resorted for the 
 defence and propagation of their faith. For it is quite 
 clear that the Mahometan wars were no accidental 
 outgrowth of the system that they were not resorted 
 to with a doubtful conscience, with any uneasy feeling 
 that they might by possibility be inconsistent with the 
 intentions of their Founder. On the contrary, the 
 very spirit and life of Mahometanism exhibited them- 
 selves in these wars. In them came forth all the most 
 striking and characteristic virtues which the doctrine 
 has a right to boast of. 
 
 The Mahometan ruler felt that he was fulfilling his 
 vocation when he was going forth against the infidel ; 
 he could scarcely fulfil it in any other way. We 
 know indeed that Bagdad and Cordova became cele- 
 brated for all graceful refinements, for letters, even for 
 toleration. We know that science, physical and meta- 
 physical, became a distinctive mark of the Arabians. 
 Where a book like the Koran, written in a beautiful 
 language, is regarded with unbounded reverence, by
 
 14 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 degrees it will be studied ; and out of that study will 
 be produced a literature which may spread itself in 
 various directions. Monarchs would feel the influence 
 of such pursuits, and would consider it their chief 
 honour to direct them. But though periods like those 
 of Haroun-al-Raschid were sure to occur in the history 
 of Mahometanism, though in one sense they may be 
 considered natural developments of it, they assuredly 
 do not belong to the religion as such; they rather 
 showed that the original spirit which possessed its 
 disciples was becoming feeble ; they portended a further 
 decline of it, and probably its revival in some more 
 vigorous form. Whenever a Mahometan ruler quite 
 allows his arms to rust, whenever he does not feel that 
 it is his main work in the world to diffuse his doctrine 
 by those means which are most simple and direct, we 
 may be sure, whatever temporary prosperity may be 
 vouchsafed him, that his dynasty cannot last very long. 
 But though on these grounds it may be fair to 
 represent Mahometanism as essentially warlike, it is 
 surely a great mistake to suppose that by saying so we 
 have accounted for its spread over so large a portion 
 of the earth. No thoughtful man could accept such 
 a solution, because when he hears of valour in men 
 
 i 
 
 and discipline in armies, he must ask himself whence 
 these proceeded, how they came to attach themselves to 
 this particular faith, and because that question must 
 inevitably lead him to seek for the real ground of 
 success elsewhere. It cannot satisfy any Christian,
 
 LECT. i.] SECOND POWER OF IMPOSTURE. 15 
 
 because the very belief which he opposes to that of the 
 Mahometan must teach him that arms are not the 
 most mighty things ; that there are secret invisible 
 influences which are stronger than they. 
 
 II. The proneness of the human mind to embrace 
 any imposture was resorted to as a second method of 
 accounting for this phenomenon, one which might 
 perhaps combine with the former and help out its 
 weakness. Of this proneness, the records of the world's 
 history seem to supply abundant proofs our own daily 
 experience of others, and of ourselves, still more. All 
 men, in one kind of language or another, have con- 
 fessed that there is something in man which tempts 
 him to entertain falsehood and disown truth, to follow 
 deceitful guides, to reject the honest and true, to make 
 a lie and to love it. And yet I think all confess, in 
 one kind of language or another, that whenever any 
 man, or any body of men, has learnt to relish what is 
 false and dislike what is true for its own sake, that 
 man, or that body of men, is in the last stage of cor- 
 ruption and degradation is approaching a point in 
 which manliness, faith, and union become impossible 
 in which the death of all individual power, of all 
 social existence, is at hand. That the elements of 
 such destruction are in every human being and in 
 every human fellowship at every moment, and that 
 they are often gathered up in religious systems, none 
 will dispute. But that they can account for the exist- 
 ence of any thing which has endured for a long time,
 
 16 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 which has manifested great power; that in them lies 
 the source of a vigour and concentration which they 
 are perpetually threatening to extinguish, I think no 
 sane person who sets the question fairly before himself 
 can believe. We may need the propensity of men to 
 believe impostures, as a key to many portions of the 
 history of the Mahometan faith, to many circumstances 
 of its present condition ; we shall not find therein the 
 secret of its diffusion and predominance. 
 
 III. Led by these or other considerations, to feel that 
 what is right must be recognised in this faith, as well 
 as what is wrong, Christians have sometimes explained 
 its influence, by speaking of the plagiarisms in the 
 Koran from the Old and New Testament Scriptures. 
 That Mahometanism derived much from its connection 
 with the older faiths of the world, would be con- 
 fessed, I suppose, even by the philosophers who have 
 least veneration for those faiths. They would easily 
 acknowledge, nay, have often acknowledged, how much 
 historical dignity and sacredness an Arabian teacher 
 must have acquired by connecting himself with patri- 
 archs who had lived two thousand years before; who 
 were attached, by closest links of association, to the 
 very soil his countrymen trod; whose doctrine he 
 could speak of as the truth given to their fathers, now 
 revived in its purity by himself. Nor would it be 
 denied by these philosophers, that one living not only 
 among Sabeau worshippers, but amongst Christians 
 and Jews, might advance his cause by professing his
 
 LECT. i.] PLAGIARISMS OF THE KORAN. 17 
 
 sympathy with much of the teaching in their holy 
 books ; by saying, that he came to restore their systems 
 to purity, while he delivered his countrymen from 
 idolatry. But though, perhaps, thus much might be 
 conceded by all, far more by a firm believer in the 
 Bible, it may be firmly doubted whether the word 
 "plagiarism" is one suited to the case; or whether, 
 so far as Mahomet was a plagiarist, he could have 
 exerted any influence. If he had merely transferred 
 passages from our Scriptures to his, merely adopted 
 formal doctrines which they set forth in living power, 
 to mix them with his own notions, one cannot believe 
 that he ever would have moved the heart of a single 
 nation or of a single man. A teacher may, indeed, 
 exercise a much greater power by reviving what is 
 old, than by inventing what is new ; but to revive 
 a principle he must have been penetrated by it, it 
 must have taken possession of him, it must have 
 inspired his whole being; otherwise he could never 
 impart it to others. Something of this sort must 
 have been the case with Mahomet; and therefore his 
 plagiarisms, great as they may have been, do not 
 account for his success. 
 
 IV. The same answer may serve for those persons of 
 a very different temper who are disposed to dwell with 
 complacency upon passages in the Koran which contain 
 just and benevolent sentiments, and who believe that 
 these were not merely transferred from Jewish or Chris- 
 tian sources, but actually exhibited the heart of the
 
 18 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 writer. We may admit the existence of such senti- 
 ments ; we need not, in the least, wish to represent 
 them as insincere or hypocritical ; we may believe that 
 they have exercised a real influence over the minds of 
 Mussulmans, who constantly repeat them, and look upon 
 them as proceeding from a prophet of God. But we 
 cannot believe that mere phrases and sentiments, be 
 they ever so good, nay, even if they did not occur in 
 the midst of any that are fond or trivial and contra- 
 dictory to themselves, could have wrought a deep con- 
 viction into the minds of men previously indisposed to 
 them. A precept may be of vast weight when we 
 have bowed to the preceptor ; otherwise it is weak : it 
 may be respected and praised, but it will not be followed ; 
 nothing will be abandoned for the sake of it. 
 
 V. There would seem then to be far more plausibility 
 in the opinion of those who attribute great weight to 
 the character of Mahomet itself, believing that however 
 it may have been mixed of good and evil qualities, it 
 was of a kind to act mightily upon his own countrymen, 
 and through them upon mankind. He has been spoken 
 of as one of the great governing and leavening minds 
 of the world, one able to stamp his own image upon 
 nations and generations. Men did homage to him, it 
 has been said, as they always will do homage to one 
 who they feel is their master, who is stronger than they, 
 because his convictions are stronger, because he has 
 grappled more with realities, because he has faith in 
 unseen substances, of which they see little more than
 
 LECT. i.] REVERENCE FOR MAHOMET. 19 
 
 the shadows. Such assertions may be at variance 
 with many conceptions we have formed of this man, but 
 there is much in his biography to bear them out ; there 
 is nothing in them, I believe, to startle any Christian 
 who knows the grounds of his own belief. At what 
 point the strong conviction of a truth which must be 
 divine, which must be given us from above, becomes 
 mixed with self-exaltation, with the desire of showing 
 how wise we are, and of exercising a dominion over 
 others for our own sakes, it is hard to determine in any 
 case. The more we know of ourselves, the more we 
 shall understand how it is possible to vibrate between 
 the certainty we have of principles, which for the sake 
 of our moral being we cannot part with, and a positive- 
 ness about notions which we have grounded upon them. 
 When the conscience is clear, when the man is lowly, 
 when he has been subdued by discipline, the opposition 
 seems clear to him as between day and night ; the 
 delusion of his own heart is manifested to him by the 
 light which God has kindled there. But amidst the 
 noise of human applause the distinction which was so 
 definite vanishes, the precious and the vile become 
 hopelessly mingled. Such personal experiences, which 
 all have had in a greater or less degree which earnest 
 and thoughtful young men especially require to be 
 schooled in, because it depends upon the way they use 
 them whether strong and clear and bright impressions 
 in their minds shall destroy their docility, shall make 
 them merely utterers of some new notion, or shall ripen
 
 20 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 into blessed discoveries of that which is true these 
 experiences, I say, may help us to read the biographies 
 of men who have had a great influence upon the world 
 with a kindlier and truer feeling. Their impressions 
 were, doubtless, more overpowering than ours, their 
 conflicts greater, their temptations severer. It is hard 
 to say, that because they called themselves inspired, 
 they meant to deceive ; that language might be the 
 language of humility, not of arrogance the confession 
 that every good gift, above all every illumination respect- 
 ing any invisible reality, cometh from the Father of 
 Lights. Not in this conviction, but in that pride which 
 forgets Him in the desire to be something in them- 
 selves do we trace the beginning of all imposture ; 
 in the blending of the two together, the melancholy 
 mixture which religious systems present to one who 
 studies them in themselves or in their effects. I am 
 far then from wishing to deny that Mahomet's character 
 may have met with unfair treatment at the hands of 
 Christians. And it is, without doubt, one of the most 
 noticeable circumstances in the history of his religion, 
 that his own person should have been so much bound 
 up with it ; that every caliph or sultan who has reigned 
 .over any tribe of his followers should have reigned in 
 his name ; that the recollection of a man should have 
 so much more power than even the book which Mussul- 
 mans regard with such profound reverence ; that the 
 honour of a human chieftain should so markedly dis- 
 tinguish a religion which looks upon man as separated
 
 LECT. i.] HERO-WORSHIP. MONOTHEISM. 21 
 
 by an immeasurable distance from the object of his wor- 
 ship. But this last remark shows that the person and 
 character of Mahomet, important as they may have been 
 in their practical influence, cannot satisfactorily explain 
 the charm by which his religion worked its way. In 
 fact, it is one of the anomalies which requires to be 
 accounted for, that a human leader should win this 
 reverence. He himself declared and felt that he was 
 nothing but a witness for God ; his followers received 
 and honoured him as holding that office. All the worth 
 he had in him was derived from that of which he 
 testified. When he began consciously to take up any 
 other position it was one of weakness. We may con- 
 sider Mahomet a hero if we please ; we may regard the 
 reverence for him as a proof of men's tendency in all 
 circumstances to worship heroes ; but we cannot, without 
 denying the plainest facts of the case, say that the 
 success of his doctrine was a consequence of this dis- 
 position. His teaching was emphatically the denial of 
 that worship; every Mahometan sword was drawn to 
 prove that it was false, and to put it down. 
 
 VI. It might seem to follow inevitably, from what 
 has just been said, that the Monotheism of Mahomet, 
 and his hatred of idolatry, constituted the strength 
 and vitality of his system. This opinion has often 
 been maintained, and a reader of the history is continu- 
 ally tempted to adopt it. As we follow any of the earlier 
 conquerors through Persia, through Egypt, through the 
 Greek empire, we feel that the enthusiasm of the chief
 
 22 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 and of the soldier is connected with what they believe 
 to be the destruction of false worship, the carrying out 
 of the first and second Commandments. All the enemies 
 of the Prophet are regarded alike as infidels, because 
 all are thought to have raised something created into 
 the place and glory of the Creator. The belief that 
 nothing in the earth, nothing in the heavens, not even 
 light, is a symbol of God ; that not even man himself 
 can be looked upon in any other character than as a 
 minister of the one Supreme Being, evidently inspires 
 every enterprise. In the strength of it they destroy 
 temples, idols, priests, plunder cities, make slaves of 
 their inhabitants, turn their children into soldiers of 
 the Crescent. All this is true, and yet I think no 
 considerate person will suppose that mere opposition to 
 the grossest forms of false worship could give nerve 
 to any arm, far less permanence to any society. If 
 Monotheism means the not believing in many gods, it 
 could, as little as the other causes we have enumerated, 
 be the root of the Mahometan faith and the Mahometan 
 power. 
 
 VII. But these sweeping conquests of Mahomet are 
 susceptible of yet another interpretation, which has 
 sometimes been applied to the whole history of their 
 dominion : they may be regarded as the righteous 
 judgments of God upon guilty nations, whether these 
 were the idolaters of India, the fire-worshippers of 
 Persia, the corrupted Greeks, or the Visigoths. It is 
 difficult, I should think, for any person really taking
 
 LECT. i.] THE SCOUKGE OF GUILTY NATIONS. 23 
 
 the Bible as his guide, nay, for any person recognising 
 a Divine Providence at all, not to look upon every great 
 earthquake which has shaken kingdoms as a Divine 
 visitation ; not to see a Divine hand regulating outward 
 circumstances, and the wills of men. Nor can we go 
 so far without going farther, and asking what the state 
 of those nations was on which the scourge descended ? 
 If we pursue the inquiry fairly in this case, we shall 
 be led, it seems to me, to the discovery of the real 
 ground of the Mahometan might, and perhaps to regard 
 the continuance of that might through so many ages 
 not wholly as a calamity. In the Christian nations 
 which were permitted to fall under the armies of Islam, 
 almost as much as in those which were avowedly Pagan, 
 the sense of a Divine Almighty Will, to which all 
 human wills were to be bowed, had evaporated amidst 
 the worship of images, amidst moral corruptions, philo- 
 sophical theories, religious controversies. Notions about 
 God more or less occupied them ; but God Himself was 
 not in all their thoughts. The awe of an Absolute 
 Eternal Being, to be obeyed as well as to be confessed, 
 was passing away in some had scarcely been awakened 
 in others. The soldiers of Mahomet said, by their 
 words and acts, " God verily is, and man is his minister, 
 to accomplish his will upon earth." This we shall 
 find was the inspiring thought in the warriors of the 
 Crescent this gave them valour, subordination, dis- 
 cipline. This, where it encountered no like or equal 
 feeling in the minds of those among whom they came,,
 
 24 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 made them invincible. We must not be content with 
 talking of their armies; here was the life of their 
 armies. We must not speak of men's readiness to 
 receive an imposture ; in yielding to this assertion they 
 were bowing to a truth. This was no verbal copy from 
 ancient records; it may have been the oldest of all 
 verities, but it was fresh and new for every one who 
 acted upon it. It was no mere phrase out of a book 
 no homage to a mortal hero no mere denial of other 
 men's faith. Let us go yet farther and say, It was 
 a mercy of God that such a witness, however bare of 
 other supporting principles, however surrounded by con- 
 fusions, should have been borne to His Name, when 
 His creatures were ready, practically, to forget it. The 
 first Mahometan conquest, the continued Mahometan 
 dominion, prove the assertion " God is " to be no dry 
 proposition, but one which is capable of exercising a 
 mastery over the rudest tribes, of giving them an order, 
 of making them victorious over all the civilisation and 
 all the religion which has not this principle for its 
 basis. 
 
 I think that most persons studying the history of 
 Mahometanism without prejudice, will feel that this is 
 the principle which confronts them at every turn, and 
 to which everything else is subordinate. And if so, the 
 consideration is surely a very important one for our 
 purpose. We are told that the mere theological part 
 of religious systems is only a loose, flimsy drapery for 
 certain maxims of morality, or certain ideas about the
 
 LECT. i.] INFERENCES FROM THESE STATEMENTS. 25 
 
 nature and spiritual destinies of man. How does the 
 study of Mahoraetanism bear out this opinion ? Is it a 
 collection of moral maxims which has been its strength ? 
 Is it some theory or conception about the nature of 
 man ? Precisely the opposite assertion is true. All 
 mere maxims, all mere ideas about the nature of man, 
 have proved weak and helpless before this proclamation 
 of a living and Eternal God. The theological transcend- 
 ent principle is just the one which has stood its ground, 
 which has re-appeared age after age, which the most 
 ignorant warriors felt was true and mighty for them, for 
 which no cultivation has provided any substitute. We 
 are told, again, that the character of particular localities 
 and races determines what shall be the character of a 
 theology; that that only is universal which concerns 
 the laws of outward nature or the life of man. How 
 does the history of Mahoinetanism bear out this opinion ? 
 Let it be granted that the soil of Arabia was one on 
 which it was fitting that such a doctrine as that of 
 Mahomet should be first preached : let it be allowed 
 that the Semitic race has been especially distinguished 
 from every other by an interest in what is purely 
 Divine, by a comparative indifference to what is human. 
 But here is an assertion which tribes the most remote 
 from this are compelled to recognise ; which establishes 
 itself in India, in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece. And it is 
 remarkable that, while numerous sects and parties have 
 been called into existence by questions respecting the 
 proper successors of Mahomet, or the interpretation of
 
 25 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 the Koran, the Divine principle among them has been 
 the uniting one. It is said again, that the great doc- 
 trines which have been embodied in religious systems 
 are the creations of the religious principle in man ; that 
 his faith moulds the object which it worships : in other 
 words, that what is called theological truth is but some 
 outward expression of our feelings or habits of mind. 
 Look again at the history of Mahometan! sm ; consider 
 the facts steadily: there are none to which the sup- 
 porters of this theory should more gladly appeal. They 
 can find no instance of a race of which faith in an 
 unseen object has been more characteristic. " Faithful " 
 is the very name by which the Islamite warriors proclaim 
 themselves to the world. But what was the nature of 
 this faith ? It meant nothing, it was nothing, except 
 so far as it asserted a Being not dependent on itself; 
 the ground of man's being ; one of whom he was the 
 minister, not the Creator. The Mahometan believed 
 that the God whom he worshipped must have revealed 
 Himself that man could not have discovered Him. 
 He went forth to beat into powder all gods which 
 he supposed man had invented. Take away these 
 characteristics from his faith and it vanishes, with all 
 the doings which were the fruits of it. 
 
 i 
 
 One question still remains to be considered before 
 I- close this Lecture. May not the principle which 
 Mahometanism embodies be left to the protection of 
 the system which it seems to have created for itself ? 
 We must look into Mahometan history for the answer.
 
 LECT. i.] WILL THE SYSTEM PROTECT ITSELF. 27 
 
 When I spoke to you of the great power by which 
 the Mahometan soldier was carried along in his enter- 
 prises, of the principle which gave him strength and 
 endurance, you may have wondered that I did not dwell 
 more upon the rewards which were promised to him 
 after death, upon the Paradise of sensual felicity for 
 which the brave man was encouraged to hope. ' I did 
 not allude to this motive, because I do not believe that 
 it was the one by which the Mahometan hosts were 
 really inspired. The mighty conviction that they were 
 then, at that very moment, called by God to a work 
 that they were His witnesses and were the ministers 
 of His vengeance, was, I believe, immeasurably more 
 effective than any dreams, were they ever so gross and 
 palpable, of what might be given to them hereafter. 
 When they had already cast themselves away to live 
 or die, they had a sense of immortality which no such 
 visions could impart, which alone made them credible. 
 
 But when the Mahometan was at peace, the belief 
 of a mighty Sovereign to whom he was doing homage, 
 no longer sufficed him ; he began to ask himself what 
 he was living for ? To the multitude these sensual 
 promises were a tolerable answer. These were the 
 things to be desired; for these, by whatsoever means 
 the Koran or its interpreters prescribed, if they were 
 in earnest, they were to labour. Some, with higher 
 apprehensions, would feel that such rewards were not 
 satisfying; they would explain away the language of 
 Mahomet, and pursue the practices, to which the others
 
 28 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 submitted in hope of earthly gratifications, that they 
 might attain the knowledge or vision of God. The 
 former would fall into gross moral corruptions, the 
 latter would indulge in philosophical speculations 
 would found sects would substitute theories and 
 notions for that Being in whose name their fathers 
 had fought. This has actually been the case, and 
 hence it has been proved that Mahometanism can 
 only thrive while it is aiming at conquest. Why ? 
 Because it is the proclamation of a mere Sovereign, 
 who employs men to declare the fact that he is a 
 Sovereign, and to enforce it upon the world. It is 
 not the proclamation of a great moral Being who 
 designs to raise His creatures out of their sensual and 
 natural degradation; who reveals to them not merely 
 that He is, but what He is why He has created them 
 what they have to do with Him. Unless this mighty 
 chasm in the Mahometan doctrine can be filled up, it 
 must wither day by day wither for all purposes of 
 utility to mankind; it can leave nothing behind but 
 a wretched carcase, filling the air with the infection of 
 its rottenness. 
 
 For, secondly, see how that which gave all the dignity 
 and glory to this system becomes, from its want of some 
 other element, the very cause of its degradation. The 
 absolute government of the unseen Being had presented 
 itself to the Mussulman, in every age, in the absolute, 
 visible government of his caliph or sultan. While the 
 divine feeling was strong and alive, the subjection to
 
 LECT. i.] BLANKS IN MAHOMETANISM. 29 
 
 the human ruler was .an affectionate, dutiful, entire 
 submission. The ruler was, in very deed, the centre 
 of his warriors. He felt towards them as a protector, 
 sharing their toils, bound to the same master, enduring 
 hardships in the same cause. But the battle over, he 
 becomes the absolute monarch in the midst of his 
 seraglio they are merely his slaves. There is no such 
 connection between him and the being whom he wor- 
 ships as permanently to check this tendency to make 
 the monarch feel that he is set over them to do them 
 good, or the subjects that they have an appeal against 
 him to a higher Ruler. 
 
 The very nature of the Ottoman government and 
 that government is the perfect development of the 
 Mahometan idea excludes the possibility of orders and 
 gradations in society. Its strength lies in all being 
 simply subjects of the one ruler, holding their offices 
 not in virtue of any hereditary ranks or privileges, but 
 only at his pleasure. When therefore the one principle 
 which quickened the whole society waxes feeble, of 
 necessity it becomes the most intolerable of despotisms. 
 Elsewhere there is a balance and conflict of powers, 
 which even in the dreariest periods produces struggles 
 or paroxysms of life ; here, if the monarch do not 
 inspire his people with strength, all is dead; And 
 the same cause which destroys what may be called 
 the family bonds of civil society, destroys equally the 
 family itself. Polygamy is no accident of Mahomet- 
 anism : a careful consideration of the system will show
 
 30 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART T. 
 
 that it must fall to pieces the moment any reformer 
 shall attempt to remove this characteristic of it. 
 
 But again, the first principle of Mahometanism. 
 wanting the support of some other which it does not 
 acknowledge, must change, and is continually changing, 
 into one which is the counterfeit and direct opposite 
 of itself. The belief of a living, acting Will passes 
 into the acknowledgment of a dead necessity, a Fate, 
 against which there is no struggling, which drives the 
 soul not to energy for some great object, but to indiffer- 
 ence, languor, and the submission that means despair. 
 Oftentimes indeed the patience of a Turk must even 
 yet awaken our homage and our shame. Joyfully 
 would we confess that God has not suffered the true 
 principle to be wholly extinguished by its bastard 
 product. But we would draw from that confession 
 not a pretext for leaving this, or any feeble and 
 beautiful plant of a better soil, to the hot-bed which 
 has always impeded its growth, and now threatens to 
 stifle it altogether ; but a certain hope that it is 
 intended to receive culture from without, and that, by 
 help of that culture, it may yet blossom and bear fruit 
 abundantly. 
 
 These remarks may prepare us to take notice of one 
 great fact in the history of Mahometanism, which is 
 the connecting link between it and the other systems 
 of which I propose to speak hereafter. 
 
 I have talked of the victories of the Crescent in 
 different quarters of the globe, and it is not easy to
 
 LECT. i.] ITS VICTOKIES NOT COMPLETE. 31 
 
 exaggerate the greatness of those victories. Yet we all 
 know they were not complete ; they did not exterminate 
 that which they were meant to exterminate. I do not 
 speak now of the resistance which this great power 
 encountered from the hammer of the Mayor of Paris, 
 or from the heroes in the Asturian mountains. I do 
 not speak of anything which is directly connected with 
 Christianity. I mean that the most remarkable of 
 the old polytheistic faiths, though crushed, were not 
 cast out ; that some of the countries which yielded to 
 Mahometans are not Mahometan. It behoves us to 
 inquire into the meaning of this fact to ask ourselves, 
 what there was in their doctrines, compounded of all 
 strange elements, sanctioning so many fearful ciimes, 
 for which the simple and purer Mahometan faith could 
 provide no satisfaction. We may find that convictions 
 which the Mahometan trampled down, do as much 
 require recognition as those which he enforced; that 
 man has demands for himself which will not be satisfied 
 by being told that he is the servant of an absolute Will 
 demands which must, somehow or other, find their 
 explanation, must in some way or other be reconciled 
 with that great truth. 
 
 I will not anticipate the nature or the results of 
 that inquiry; but I hope we may gather something 
 from the one in which we have been engaged. You 
 have found a set of men brought up in circumstances 
 altogether different from yours, holding your faith in 
 abhorrence, who say in language the most solemn and
 
 32 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 decisive, " Whatever else we part with, this is needful 
 to us and to all human beings the belief that God is 
 the recognition of Him as a living personal Being." 
 You have seen this faith growing weak for a time, and 
 everything else growing weak with it ; you have seen 
 it re-appearing, finding a new set of champions to assert 
 it, compelling nations to bow before it. Be sure that 
 here is something which the heart and reason within 
 you have need of which they must grasp. Be quite 
 sure, that if you give them in place of it any fine 
 notions or theories; if you feed them with phrases 
 about the beautiful or the godlike, when they want 
 the source of beauty, the living God ; if you- entertain 
 them with any images or symbols of art or nature when 
 they want that which is symbolised ; if you talk about 
 physical laws when you want the lawgiver, of mechanical 
 properties when you want him who set them in motion, 
 of secret powers when you want him who acts by them 
 and upon you, you are cheating yourselves cheating 
 mankind. Remember further, that the acknowledg- 
 ment of this Being may imply much more than the 
 Mahometan perceived, but that it does imply that 
 which he perceived. If such an One is, His will 
 must be the law of the universe. Every creature in 
 the universe must be in a right or wrong position, 
 must be doing his work well or failing in it, as he 
 yields himself to this will, or as he resists it. And 
 let us not fancy that the early Mahometan was entirely 
 mistaken as to the way in which this will ought to be
 
 LECT. i.] ITS LESSONS. 33 
 
 obeyed. He may not have understood what enemies 
 he. had to fight with, what weapons he had to wield, 
 but he did discover that the life of man is to be a 
 continual battle, that we are only men when we are 
 engaging in a battle. He was right that there is 
 something in the world which we are not to tolerate, 
 which we are sent into it to exterminate. First of all, 
 let us seek that we may be freed from it ourselves; 
 but let us be taught by the Mussulman that we shall 
 not compass this end unless we believe, and act upon 
 the belief, that every man and every nation exists for 
 the purpose of chasing falsehood and evil out of God's 
 universe. 
 
 M. B. L.
 
 34 
 
 PAET I. LECTURE II. 
 
 Character of the Hindoo Faith. The Brahmin. Worship of 
 the Pure Intelligence. The popular re-action. Vishnu and 
 Siva. Relations of the English Government to Hindooism. 
 
 FT1HE remarks which I made at the close of my last 
 -*- Lecture will prepare you to expect that I should 
 speak in the present of HINDOOISM. That faith has 
 been brought into conflict with Mahometanism, has 
 succumbed to it, and yet has maintained its ground, 
 leaving the victorious religion the religion of a small 
 minority. Though it may pretend to an antiquity 
 which it does not possess, it has certainly lasted three 
 thousand years. The language in which its holy books 
 are composed is the mother-tongue if I may use that 
 phrase in its literal, rather than its ordinary sense of 
 the Greek, the Latin, and the dialects of our Gothic 
 ancestors ; consequently, of nearly all which are spoken 
 in Western Europe at this day. From this fact it 
 might, I think, be inferred, if other evidence were 
 wanting, that the mythologies of these nations could be 
 traced to an Indian source. But there is abundant 
 evidence, so much as to have misled those scholars 
 who were first struck with it into a forgetfulness of the 
 important historical principle, that we cannot determine 
 the character of nations, or of their belief, merely by
 
 LECT. ii.] IMPORTANCE OF HINDOOISM. 35 
 
 finding the point from which they started; that each 
 must be studied in itself, and in its own utterances, 
 and that we gain only a secondary aid in our investiga- 
 tions when we have the means of affiliating it .to some 
 other. That this mistake was committed by some of 
 the great Orientalists of the last century, I think is 
 now generally acknowledged ; they seemed to suppose 
 that they could learn more of the Greeks from San- 
 scrit books than from their own. But an extravagance 
 which is natural to all discoverers does not make the 
 discovery itself less valuable ; in fact, we are only 
 beginning to appreciate its importance. The more 
 practically we learn to sympathise with our fellow-men 
 in all countries and in all ages, to cultivate such 
 sympathy for our own sake and for theirs, and for the 
 glory of God, the more will all such hints respecting 
 the relationship between different nations be reflected 
 on and prized. And this remark suggests another and 
 much weightier reason, why a Boyle Lecturer should 
 address himself to the subject of Hindooism, and why 
 we all should take an interest in it. It is the faith, to 
 say the least, of between eighty and ninety millions 
 of people, subjects of the British Empire. By conquests 
 scarcely paralleled for rapidity in the annals of the 
 world, we have obtained supremacy over them, and by 
 civil policy we have tried to preserve it. As to the 
 right character of this policy there has been the greatest 
 variety of opinion ; but I think intelligent men are now 
 well agreed, that, whatever it be, it must be grounded
 
 36 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WOELD. [PART i. 
 
 upon a knowledge of the character, institutions, 
 faith of the people who are to be influenced by it. 
 Civilians, military officers, and missionaries in India, 
 have exerted themselves to acquire this knowledge, and 
 to make it available for us. Their theories, as well as their 
 facts, when they seem most contradictory, are worthy 
 of study and of comparison ; they may all help us in find- 
 ing the principle of Indian life and belief, and that 
 principle, when we apprehend it, may make the differ- 
 ences in their observations and opinions more intelligible. 
 There are, unquestionably, considerable difficulties 
 in the investigation. This ancient people is strictly 
 speaking without a history. "No date of a public 
 event," I use the words of Mr. Elphinstone, "can 
 be fixed before the invasion of Alexander ; no connected 
 relation of the national transactions can be attempted 
 until after the Mahometan conquest." Yet it would 
 seem that we were in the greatest need of such records 
 to connect the phenomena which offer themselves to 
 the eye of the traveller in this day with the early 
 books which are still regarded with the profoundest 
 veneration. A Hindoo will sometimes tell us in wild 
 language that he acknowledges three hundred millions 
 of gods ; he means, of course, that the number is in- 
 definite, that any object or power in nature, any heroic 
 man, may be a god. And those who trace Oriental 
 extravagance in such a description, will, nevertheless, 
 remember to have heard of various beings who are 
 acknowledged objects of Hindoo adoration, of Brahma
 
 LECT. ii.] ITS APPARENT CHANGES. 37 
 
 the Creator, of Vishnu the Preserver, of Siva the 
 Destroyer, of Indra, the Lord of the Elements, of the 
 fearful goddess Devi, of the beautiful hero Krishna, 
 and a multitude more. Yet learned and trustworthy 
 critics, Asiatic as well as European, confidently affirm 
 that the ground of the Brahminical faith is Monothe- 
 istic ; that One Being is assumed in the earliest of 
 the sacred books to be the origin of all things ; that 
 this was no lazy, inoperative tenet, but penetrated the 
 whole system of worship, and the life of the worshipper. 
 Putting such facts and such statements together, you 
 might be ready to conclude that there was no real 
 identity between the faith of one of these periods 
 and of the other; that either by conquest, or some 
 strange process of degeneracy, the character and feelings 
 of the people had become so changed as to make the 
 notion of one Hindoo or Brahminical religion a mere 
 delusion. But many considerations will show us that 
 this opinion, however plausible, is untenable. I have 
 said that the early Vedas, composed, perhaps, fifteen 
 hundred years before the time of Christ, be their tenets 
 what they may, are still regarded with unbounded 
 veneration by the religious men among the Hindoos. 
 The Menu code or institute, which is probably about 
 six hundred or seven hundred years younger than 
 these, and which indicates some, though not radical, 
 alterations of practice and opinion during the interval, 
 must still be the great study of every English jurist 
 who wishes to understand the grounds of Hindoo law
 
 38 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART I. 
 
 and life at the present day. Five or six centuries after 
 the composition of this code the troops of Alexander 
 crossed the Indus. The picture which the Greeks give 
 us of society as they observed it, accords with that 
 which we gain from the earlier native source ; but, 
 what is still more to the point, it also accords in 
 essentials with what our own countrymen tell us of 
 India now. With the advantages we possess from the 
 actual occupation of the country, from being able to 
 examine parts of it which the Greeks never visited, 
 and from modern habits of critical investigation, we 
 must see many things much more clearly than they 
 did ; and therefore, even when their reports are 
 different from the present state of things, it is not 
 necessary to assume that there must have been really 
 a great change. It is hardly needful, however, to take 
 this remark into consideration, for we are assured, by 
 those who have the best opportunities of judging, that 
 one of the most remarkable features of Hindoo life, 
 the constitution and government of the villages, is 
 exhibited with surprising faithfulness in narratives 
 which were derived from observations made more 
 than two thousand years ago. Such permanence in 
 social habits would surely lead us to expect something 
 corresponding to it in the inward convictions of a 
 people ; and we are not left to conjecture. The 
 soldiers of Alexander found a set of men whose great 
 business was contemplation, who submitted to numer- 
 ous privations and austerities that they might pursue
 
 LECT. ii.] CHARACTER OF THE BRAHMINS. 39 
 
 it more effectually. The Brahmins they found were 
 the leading class in the country ; military, agricultural, 
 commercial occupations were all subordinate to theirs 
 all society had, in fact, organised itself in con- 
 formity with their ideas. The Greek fancied they 
 had less to do with civil affairs than we know, from 
 their own code, that they must have had. But the 
 general conception which he formed of the Brahmins 
 was singularly accurate. He called them Sophists, a 
 name which, in his own country, often denoted mere 
 sceptics ; here it had no such signification ; it implied 
 that the Brahmins were not merely priests, such as 
 were to be seen elsewhere; that their first business 
 was study, and that the purely sacerdotal office was 
 secondary to this. As the accounts which the Greek 
 writers give of the objects of Hindoo worship are 
 meagre, and evidently distorted by the desire of 
 finding resemblances to their own mythology, we might 
 suppose that, for our purpose, we could not learn much 
 from them. But I believe we shall find that their 
 report of the Brahmins is, in fact, the key to the 
 whole system ; one which, if we use it rightly, will 
 enable us to discover its leading characteristics, and 
 to understand, however little we may be able to trace, 
 the varieties of form which it has assumed. 
 
 The name of Brahmin at once suggests that of 
 Brahm. The resemblance is no accidental one ; nor 
 does it merely signify that the Brahmin is the minister 
 or priest of Brahm. The connection is of a far more
 
 40 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 intimate and wonderful kind. The learned man, the 
 contemplative sage, aspires to be one with him whom he 
 adores to lose his own being in his. And what is this 
 being ? He is the Absolute Intelligence ; the Essential 
 Light. Rest, Contemplation : this is his glory, his 
 perfection. You will feel at once the direct opposi- 
 tion between this idea and that of the Mahometan. 
 I bring it before you just at this point, that you 
 may see how much we may impose upon ourselves 
 by the word Monotheism, which is often used as if it 
 were common to these two faiths, at least in their 
 origin ; that you may see at the same time in what 
 sense it has been honestly and rightly applied to 
 Hindooism. Mahometanism began with a Prophet, 
 but we saw the Prophet soon merged in the Khalif 
 or Sovereign. The Sovereign was the organ of a 
 mighty Will, which had called all things into existence, 
 and of whom all men are servants. He fulfils his 
 service in perpetual conflict; only in such conflict 
 does his faith make his meaning intelligible. There 
 are no natural gradations of society, no hereditary 
 ranks ; all are merely officers holding their position 
 under the one ruler. The priest is an insignificant 
 person. Strictly speaking, there is no priesthood. 
 The dervish or learned man may be an important 
 adviser of the Sovereign : in times of quiet he may 
 promote learning, or become the head of a sect ; but 
 when he is most regarded it is only as an interpreter 
 of the Divine "Will. The first principle of Mahometan-
 
 LECT. ii.] GKOTJND OF THIS FAITH. 41 
 
 ism would be violated if he aspired to be himself 
 divine. Here, on the contrary, the priest, the student, 
 the beholder is judge, lawgiver, everything. The God 
 is an Intelligence, not a Will himself a higher priest 
 a more glorious student a more perfect contem- 
 plator. You can scarcely conceive a mandate issuing 
 from such a being : all things must flow from him as 
 light from the sun, or thoughts from a musing man. 
 Such an idea is ever implied in Hindooism ; but it 
 may not have been frequently expressed ; it may 
 sometimes have been contradicted, in the earliest 
 stage; for the rapt student, feeling it his highest 
 calling and privilege to meditate on an Absolute Being 
 in silence and awe, will have had such a practical 
 reason for not confounding him with the world around, 
 as no theoretical consistency could outweigh. It was 
 far otherwise with the feeling of a relation between 
 the human worshipper and the object of his adoration. 
 This feeling was not resisted, but strengthened by 
 his practical discipline. He was taught that he was 
 intended to rise into the closest communion, nay, into 
 actual identity, with the Divinity : to realise such a 
 state was the effort of his existence. 
 
 The Brahmin believed that there was in man a 
 capacity for such intercourse or absorption as this; 
 but surely not in all men. Some are merely animal: 
 there must be a race intended for this high converse, 
 there must be a race excluded from it. One would not 
 say, however, that the highest sage is the only man
 
 42 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 who is not merely animal. The warrior must have 
 something of the higher diviner faculty; it may be 
 cultivated and ripened in him. Even the merchant, 
 the traveller into other lands, must be more than a 
 merely earthly creature. These orders of men should 
 be kept apart from the lowest of all the mere human 
 animal, the Sudra. Yet the purely contemplative 
 man should not be allowed too much intercourse even 
 with these. He may educate them to be such men 
 as they are meant to be, but he must keep himself 
 and his race pure : this race must be carefully trained 
 to be the model of humanity to rise above humanity 
 by perpetual meditation on the unseen Brahm. 
 
 The so-called laws or institutes of the Hindoos are 
 all designed for this purpose. They are, properly 
 speaking, a system of education or discipline ; a method 
 of fitting the highest man for fulfilling his vocation, 
 and all the others for preserving their proper relation 
 to him. The idea of a separation between the twice- 
 born man and the merely animal man, is the funda- 
 mental one; all the arrangements are for the purpose 
 of giving effect to this idea all other distinctions are 
 secondary to it. The twice-born man must, by certain 
 services or sacraments, the principal of which is read- 
 ino- the Vedas, maintain his relation to the unseen 
 
 O * 
 
 object. He must practise certain plans for lessening 
 his dependence on mere material gratifications ; he must 
 cultivate rather the passive than the active qualities. 
 In the progress of ages the two middle classes seem
 
 LECT. IL] CASTES THEIR ORIGIN. 43 
 
 to have disappeared, or at least this is the prevailing 
 Brahminical opinion. The system has undergone other 
 modifications, till at length, iii some places at least, 
 it has so adapted itself to the different pursuits and 
 occupations of men, as to offer an excuse for the 
 European notion, that it was invented in an early 
 stage of society by some legislator, who observed that 
 labour must be divided in order to be successful, and 
 that there is likely to be an hereditary aptitude for 
 particular professions or trades. Such a notion seems 
 to be refuted by the fact that, according to the early 
 arrangements of castes, there was no accurate division 
 of employments; that persons of the same order were 
 allowed to perform many which were unlike and in- 
 compatible. Nor does another plausible hypothesis, 
 that the Brahmins were a conquering tribe and the 
 Sudras a conquered one, seem to be more tenable. 
 Those who have the best opportunities for comparing 
 them, say that they can discover no such differences 
 between them as would warrant the supposition of 
 their belonging to a different race, none greater than 
 are naturally produced by meaner occupations and a 
 sense of degradation during a long course of years. 
 But the great objection to this opinion is, that the 
 Sudras are not in any sense slaves, and never can 
 have been such; the Greeks were surprised to find 
 all classes in India free citizens in some sense, in 
 however low a one. So that probably we cannot get 
 much further than the religious principle as the basis
 
 44 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 of the distinction than the idea, I mean, that there 
 is a tendency in men to become purely animal, and 
 that there is a race of men in which this tendency 
 is realised and perpetuated ; that there is in man that 
 which may be raised to fellowship with the Divine ; 
 and that there is a race in which this capacity is 
 exhibited and transmitted. 
 
 In spite then of the fact, that there are in the 
 very earliest Hindoo Vedas prayers and hymns to light 
 and fire, and to many natural powers, nay, though 
 the liturgical part of them consists mainly of such 
 prayers, we may fully admit the assertion, that the 
 Brahmin is seeking after one Divine unseen object; 
 that he is only asking these different creatures to tell 
 him what that object is, and how He is to be found; 
 nay, that his aim in his whole life and discipline is to 
 purify himself from outward, sensible things, that he 
 may approach nearer to this one source of illumination. 
 
 But then how can we explain the fact, that men 
 setting this end before them, looking upon the most 
 mysterious powers in the universe as at best ladders 
 to ascend to the highest region ladders which the 
 wise men could generally, in time, throw away 
 should have become so utterly entangled in sensible 
 "outward idolatry as the modern Hindoo seems to be? 
 The explanation often given, that the ordinary gods 
 are but the gods of the vulgar, that the learned man 
 has altogether another view of them which he keeps 
 to himself, is quite unsatisfactory. For the point we
 
 LECT. ii.] CASTES THEIR PRINCIPLE. 45 
 
 want to ascertain is this, how the Brahmin came 
 to suppose that the divers and manifold beings of 
 whom the Hindoo Pantheon consists, could be helps 
 to the discovery or the presentation of the One Being ; 
 how he could possibly be induced to reverse the whole 
 order and object of his studies and discipline ; to in- 
 troduce variety, that he might suggest the idea of 
 unity; to bring in a host of visible forms, that he 
 might lead his disciples more certainly to that which 
 is beyond their senses. I do not deny the possibility 
 of such a scheme, but the origin and the steps of it 
 should be explained. If a modern Brahmin confesses 
 that he attaches no importance to the things to which 
 he seems to attach the greatest, we may accept his 
 testimony against himself. Still more willingly we 
 may believe one who says that he loves the simple 
 faith which he thinks has departed, and that he will 
 spend his life in efforts to restore it. But we cannot 
 take the witness of either respecting their fathers. 
 The process by which they arrived at one strange 
 conclusion after another may have been as simple and 
 natural a one as that by which their traditions are 
 discarded, or that by which they are traced to a 
 deliberate purpose of imposture. 
 
 And this, I believe, is actually the case. While the 
 Brahmin was learning, by various arts, to practise 
 abstraction of spirit ; was searching, by various helps, 
 to arrive at the perception of the Perfect One; he 
 felt that the light, the intelligence which entered into
 
 46 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 his own heart that which raised him above his fellows 
 that which enabled him to see mysteries, must be 
 the great expression of the Divine Being. Brahm 
 becomes Brahma; the light which flows from the 
 source of light, the wisdom, which comes from the 
 fount of wisdom, is that which declares him this is 
 his Name. In that character the initiated disciple is 
 to worship him : no sacrifices need be offered to him, 
 no temples need be raised to him. It is the inward 
 and purified intellect which does him homage. A very 
 sublime conception, you may be inclined to say; one 
 which it is no wonder that enlightened Brahmins in 
 our day should wish to reproduce. 
 
 But imagine yourselves in the school where this 
 sublime doctrine was taught ; look at the self-satisfied, 
 self-glorified person who is proclaiming it ; see how 
 he has gone on, step by step, till, from a profound 
 idea of some awful, absolute Being, he has passed into 
 the habitual conviction that this Being is himself; 
 he has become his own God. Mark what contempt 
 he manifests for persons about him, what utter in- 
 humanity has grown out of this notion that he is 
 the very perfection of humanity, that he is above 
 it. Suppose an earnest, enthusiastic disciple, struck 
 with the contradiction, saying to himself, " Is this the 
 devout, the self-losing, absorbed Brahmin whom I was 
 taught to wonder at whose teaching at first seemed 
 to me so sublime ? " In the tumult of his feelings, 
 in the sadness of his disappointment, he goes forth
 
 LECT. ii.] THE REFORMER-VISHNU WORSHIP. 47 
 
 from the school into Nature. What a change he 
 finds there ! What a sense of refreshment, freedom, 
 calmness, penetrates through his whole being ! Surely 
 he has been living till this time in a close, pent-up 
 atmosphere, thinking only of himself; ever hoping, 
 and hoping in vain, to find his God in himself. But 
 is he not here ? What a wonderful order there is 
 through this wide universe ; an order of day and 
 night ; of seasons of heat and seasons of rain ; an 
 order in the planets over our heads; an order in the 
 growth of the flowers at our feet; an order in the 
 overflowings of the mighty river. Yes, his name is 
 the Preserver ! Conceive of him under that name 
 worship him under that name call him Vishnu : bid 
 men rejoice that they have such an One caring for 
 them. The name, perhaps, had been known before 
 in the Brahminical school. It had been one thought 
 among many, that Brahma was the preserver of things : 
 now it becomes THE name. Hundreds of hearts are 
 ready to welcome it: even the poor Sudra can look 
 up, and feel that it has a sound of blessing to him. 
 And now the older worship becomes, comparatively, 
 obsolete; the young reformer has prevailed. The 
 Brahminical order must take up his doctrine, and 
 proclaim it, and reconcile it as they can with that 
 which they held before : if they do not so, a sect of 
 Vishnu worshippers will form themselves men will go 
 out into the deserts and proclaim this faith, without 
 respect to the laws of family or caste at all.
 
 48 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART I. 
 
 In some such way as this, I conceive, the popular 
 Vishnu worship may have supplanted the original 
 Brahma worship. It would be surely hard to say that 
 the alteration was in itself for the worst ; yet the effect 
 of it must, undoubtedly, have been to withdraw the 
 idea of divinity from the inner sanctuary in which 
 it had dwelt ; to bring it forth into the world. Then 
 temples would be raised, the fruits of the world offered, 
 with songs and symbols, to the great Preserver. But 
 soon there will have been a fearful re-action against 
 this kind of service. How could the mere feeling of 
 a beneficent Guardian of the Earth help men who 
 were tormented with a sense of inward evil? What 
 was there in such a Being at all corresponding to 
 the dark visions which continually rose before them, 
 whether they looked behind or before, to the past or 
 the future ? But was there nothing in Nature which 
 did correspond to these inward agonies, which seemed 
 to be the very echo of them ? "Were there no frightful 
 floods and earthquakes was there not a continual 
 process of destruction going on in the universe ? Is 
 not death the mighty king to whom all must do 
 homage ? Poor worshippers of Vishnu, how miserably 
 you are striving to hide the realities of the world from 
 'your eyes to strew garlands over the grave ! You 
 have never yet dared to pronounce the real name : 
 it is Siva the Destroyer. If you know your own 
 state, and what you have to fear, you will invoke 
 that name you will propitiate that divinity. And
 
 LECT. IL] THE DESTROYER THE DELIVERER. 49 
 
 do not think to approach him with such oblations as 
 are signs of plenty and gladness. It is blood he craves 
 for ; the blood of your children and of yourselves. No 
 sacrifices but these can appease his wrath, or abate 
 the misery which he is sending to you, and designing 
 for you. Here was another deep conviction working 
 in the heart of the Hindoo, and destined to produce 
 the most fearful fruits, from generation to generation. 
 The Brahmin could not allay it could not reduce it 
 under his old notion of the Brahma, the one celestial 
 Intelligence, who spoke only in the Wise. The Siva 
 sect rose up in fierce antagonism to the Vishnu sect. 
 He must endeavour to bring the different ideas into 
 reconciliation ; to assign the Brahma, the Vishnu, the 
 Siva, each a part in the arrangement of Nature, and 
 in the different ages of the universe. Religious books 
 are composed, some with the Vishnu, some with the 
 Siva element predominant in them; the former with 
 a gracious, the latter with a stern forbidding aspect ; 
 the first not denying the dark principle only keeping 
 it in the back-ground ; the latter doing homage to 
 the Preserver, but confessing the greater might of the 
 Destroyer. 
 
 Soon the unsatisfied heart feels another necessity. 
 If it be true (and can it be denied ?) that the Power 
 which divides and annihilates has such a direct in- 
 fluence over the destinies of the world, may not the 
 Preserver yet have somewhere an undisturbed reign ; 
 and may he not descend from that region, at certain
 
 50 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 periods, to claim his rights over this earth too to 
 create again that which has perished ? Is there not 
 a principle of Restoration implied in Preservation ; 
 nay, in Destruction itself? The animals die, but the 
 race survives : and have there not been in the ages 
 of man periods of deepest calamity, when all things 
 seemed to sink in utter ruin, followed by bright sunny 
 days the earth coming forth out of darkness into 
 light ? These must have been the times of Vishnu's 
 descent. The animals, we have been told, all exhibit 
 some side or aspect of the divinity; may have been, 
 originally, portions of it. In these he may have 
 appeared. Men may have been able, without becom- 
 ing absorbed, to behold him, and converse with him. 
 Again, the priest will partly have led the popular 
 conviction, partly have been led by it. He will have 
 arranged the number and method of these Vishnu 
 incarnations, reducing dreams to a system, and sanc- 
 tioning the hope that there might be an avatar, which 
 should restore all things. 
 
 But these dreams were not sufficient. Was not a 
 kind and gracious Rajah who felt for his poor subjects 
 one in whom the Divinity was more likely to manifest 
 himself, than in any of those creatures, however sacred, 
 of which man is practically the master ? Have we 
 not always felt that a man was permitted, in some 
 mysterious way, to contemplate the Divine Being to 
 become one with him? Why may not He in such a 
 form, so much more beautiful than any other, appear
 
 LECT. ii.] THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 51 
 
 to us ? The bright Krishna becomes the centre of 
 innumerable legends. He is felt to be the true form 
 of the divine Deliverer. As other dreadful apparitions 
 rise up beside Siva, and claim the kind of worship 
 which is offered to him as there comes forth even a 
 Kali to be a patroness of murder, to make strangling 
 a virtue ; this image of a friend and protector of 
 the helpless is the more eagerly sought after, and 
 delighted in. 
 
 At each step in this process more of the forms and 
 images of outward nature will have been called in, to 
 express the conception of which the heart was full ; at 
 each step the theoretic man will have been obliged to 
 incorporate new schemes of the universe, new specula- 
 tions upon all questions astronomical, geological, 
 physiological, metaphysical into his theology, in order 
 to connect the later and more popular outgrowths of it 
 with the original root. Nevertheless, it is certain that, 
 amidst all these definite conceptions and idolatrous 
 forms, the primary Idea of an Inconceivable, Absolute, 
 Unseen Being, whom it is the highest glory of the 
 holiest man to behold, and in whom he is to be lost, 
 has survived survived not as a theory of some learned 
 Brahmin, but as so deep and essential an article of 
 popular faith, that all other habitual convictions, nay, 
 the reverence for the Brahminical order itself, which 
 seems worked into the very tissue of Hindoo society, 
 must give place to it. Religious orders, formed without 
 any reference to distinction of castes, shall be followed
 
 52 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 and reverenced in proportion as this seems to be the 
 end of their existence : the perfectly abstracted Yogi 
 shall be looked upon as greater, because in the way to a 
 higher knowledge, than he who can explain all the order 
 of nature. In fact, in the worst form of what may be 
 supposed modern corruptions we may trace the original 
 feeling at work. The woman who gives up herself to 
 death on her husband's funeral pile, is exhibiting the 
 same deep sense of the necessity of self-abandonment, 
 self-sacrifice, which is implied in the desire of the con- 
 templative man to be absorbed into the Divine Essence. 
 We have, then, a faith presented to us here, which 
 the more we think of it, the more fairly we consider its 
 apparent anomalies, the more light we receive respect- 
 ing it from different and contradictory reports, the more 
 heartily and affectionately we sympathise with the 
 feelings of our fellow-men, the more we know of our- 
 selves, will awaken in us the more of reflection, and 
 wonder, and awe. It is the faith not of savages but of 
 men in whose minds respect for learning has occupied 
 all but the highest place ; men whose whole common- 
 wealth is modelled upon the notion, that the seer, the 
 learned man, ought to be at the head that all other 
 people should look up to him. At the same time, these 
 learned men have not been able to devise a belief at 
 their pleasure for those whom they have governed. 
 Strong necessities have come forth out of the heart of 
 
 O 
 
 the people, demanding satisfaction compelling the wise 
 men to remould their system, yet recognising the worth
 
 LECT. ii.] HINDOOISM APART FROM ITS THEOLOGY. 53 
 
 and reality of that higher, older principle, which they 
 seem to set at nought. I do not think it would be 
 easy to find a fairer test of those assertions respecting 
 the religions of mankind which I propose to examine. 
 
 The first of them that there are deep truths implied 
 in each of these systems receives, it seems to me, 
 abundant confirmation from even the hasty glance we 
 have been able to take of Hindooism. In the midst of 
 the extravagances and horrors which the most favour- 
 able testimonies prove it to have brought forth, and 
 which have multiplied, not diminished, as it has 
 expanded, we have been able to trace some convictions 
 so sacred, so bound up in the heart of the people for 
 thousands of years, as to sustain the credit of monstrous 
 fictions, to make tormenting practices endurable; con- 
 victions which have been able to create and perpetuate 
 a complicated form of society, and to defy the power of 
 victorious invaders. 
 
 But it is affirmed next, that these deep convictions 
 will in time disengage themselves from the theological 
 element in which they dwell ; that theology being only 
 an inadequate attempt to explain the phenomena of the 
 universe. Now, I have been careful that you should 
 notice how much of the Hindoo system is an attempt 
 to explain the phenomena of the universe ; it was 
 scarcely necessary for me to remark how ineffectual 
 a one. But, if you have followed the course of my 
 observations, still more if you have made observations 
 for yourselves, you will, I think, be convinced that
 
 54 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 these theories about the world are especially the non- 
 theological element of the system ; precisely that which 
 has been added to the theology, and become a part of 
 it, in consequence of the inability of the Hindoo to 
 distinguish between God and the world. His inward 
 convictions, from first to last, have had reference to the 
 Absolute, Unseen God, arid to his relations with man. 
 The drapery of these convictions has been his doctrine 
 about Nature. Nor can that idolatrous, degrading, 
 often filthy drapery ever be cast away, unless it can 
 be shown him that the theological riddles, for which 
 he has been seeking a solution in Nature so long and 
 not finding it which are bound up with the deepest 
 wants of his heart can receive that explanation some- 
 where else. 
 
 But, most of all, the notion that all ideas respecting 
 an unseen world are produced by the religious faculty 
 in man, might seem to receive countenance from the 
 Hindoo records. How active that faculty has been, 
 what words it has called into existence, whilst there 
 were no outward transactions to relate or no one to 
 relate them, we have seen. The Hindoo, in action the 
 idlest, is in imagining, dreaming, combining, the most 
 busy of all human creatures. But is this all we have 
 learnt ? Have we not found also an assurance in the 
 mind of these people that all the efforts of thought in 
 them must originate in a communication from above, 
 and require fresh communications to meet them ? In 
 the thinking, or reasoning, or religious faculty, call it
 
 LECT. ii.] THE RELIGIOUS FACULTY. 55 
 
 what you will or, as I should say, in the man's own 
 heart, in his inmost being have arisen desires and 
 longings after converse with the unseen world, with 
 some living being in that unseen world, with some one 
 between whom and himself he feels there is a relation. 
 His religious books echo the cry; they mutter a half- 
 response to it : but the response is only the question 
 thrown into a more definite form. The highest student 
 meditates on the problem, and repeats his own thoughts; 
 or more probably, what some ancient person, who medi- 
 tated and conversed with the Divinity, said about it ; or 
 what some other said that he said. The circle is a very 
 weary one ; if we calmly consider it, and what kind of 
 comfort those receive who are ever revolving in it, we 
 shall confess that the Hindoo is right in his belief, that 
 the wisdom of which he sees the image and reflection 
 must speak and declare itself to him; that he cannot 
 always be left to grope his way amidst the shadows 
 which it casts in his own mind, or in the world around 
 him. I ask nothing more than the Hindoo system and 
 the Hindoo life as evidence that there is that in man 
 which demands a Revelation that there is not that in 
 him which makes the Revelation. I ask no clearer 
 proof of the fact, that whenever the religious feeling 
 or instinct in man works freely, without an historical 
 revelation, it must beget a system of priestcraft. It 
 must be satisfied by God, or overlaid by man, or stifled, 
 altogether. 
 
 The question still remains : Is the help to this state.
 
 56 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 of things to come from within the system ? I hinted 
 that there are, or have been, Hindoo patriots who have 
 dreamed of bringing back the first state of Brahminism, 
 setting up the Monotheism of the older Vedas, sweep- 
 ing away the accumulations of centuries. But if the 
 original Brahminism itself contained the great puzzle 
 of all subsequent ages ; if the Monotheism of the Vedas 
 admitted the doubt whether man, nay, whether all 
 things might not be a part of the Divinity ; if those 
 accumulations of centuries were the inevitable results 
 of anxieties which men could only quell by destroying 
 themselves, it seems somewhat unreasonable to go back 
 to the beginning of a series, every step of which, so 
 far as we can tell, would have to be repeated. Or, if 
 the notion be that some form of Monotheism, not in- 
 volving the idea of direct connection between God and 
 Man, or God and Nature, might supersede the existing 
 superstition, is it not playing with words to speak of 
 this as a revival or restoration ? must it not be simply 
 a denial of the fundamental principle of the whole 
 system ? We need not, however, enter upon this subject 
 at present, for both these experiments have been made 
 under every possible advantage. Buddhism, a doctrine, 
 to which I hope to devote a separate Lecture, may, at 
 'least under one of its aspects, be regarded as a formal 
 effort to revive the original Brahminical idea ; an effort 
 not without very important results, which have affected 
 a large portion of the world ; but which has not dis- 
 placed Hindooism on its proper soil, and which, I think,
 
 LECT . IL] CAN THE OLD FAITH BE EESTORED ? 57 
 
 we shall find is scarcely the doctrine any modern 
 Hindoo reformer would desire to produce. To the 
 other experiment I have alluded already it is that 
 of Mahometanism. A considerable number of the 
 Hindoo race were converted to this faith, and profess 
 it to this day. But it could take no hold of the heart 
 of the people, for it solved no one difficulty which was 
 perplexing them ; it affirmed a truth which staggered 
 them, and before which they bowed ; one, however, 
 which in this form coalesced with scarcely any con- 
 ditions of their intellectual or of their moral being. 
 
 Whether Christianity can do for the Hindoo what 
 these systems have not done, is a question for our future 
 consideration. One or two remarks I would make here 
 which may remove some difficulties from that inquiry 
 and which seem to arise naturally out of the present 
 subject. I cannot feel surprise that the statesmen and 
 scholars of British India, observing the failure of the 
 Mahometans to overthrow the faith and institutions of 
 this strange people, should have pressed strongly upon 
 their own government the duty of respecting what it 
 had not power to subvert. I cannot believe that an 
 indifference to evils which were continually before their 
 eyes, or a feeling that the safety of English dominion 
 is the highest of all considerations, can have induced 
 men often of the greatest cultivation and humanity to 
 protest against the efforts which some of their coun- 
 trymen were making to spread the faith of Europe 
 in the East. It is much pleasanter, and surely more
 
 58 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 reasonable, to believe that they felt there was something 
 hardhearted, almost impious, in trampling upon con- 
 victions which had struck root into the soil for many 
 thousand years, which had created the whole fabric of 
 society. For such a feeling one is bound to entertain 
 the greatest respect; only I think men generally so 
 clear-sighted must by this time have perceived that 
 there was an important oversight in the inference 
 which they drew from it. No doubt it is a very 
 serious thing to assault the belief, even the prejudices, 
 of any ancient people. But this assault had already 
 been made; every circumstance which brought English- 
 men into contact with the Hindoo was a repetition of 
 it. When all nature is peopled with divinities it does 
 not require an adverse theologian to wound the pre- 
 judices of the worshipper, the army commissary, the 
 judge, the ordinary traveller, must interfere with them 
 continually. Above all, when it came to be perceived, 
 as it would of course be in time perceived by any 
 benevolent government, that Englishmen ought not to 
 be settled in a country without communicating to its 
 inhabitants some portion of that knowledge which they 
 possess, or rather, when it was found that a people so 
 eager for information, so quick in receiving it, as the 
 Hindoos, would not be content until they had learnt 
 the secret of our mechanical achievements, it was 
 certain that some cherished tenet must be outraged, 
 some express statement in the religious books contra- 
 dicted, if the teacher of European science should advance
 
 LECT. ii.] DANGER OF THE HINDOO FAITH. 59 
 
 beyond his alphabet. Such considerations do not prove 
 that the idea of respecting a people's convictions is 
 a false one; they show only that there are certain 
 accidents of these convictions which we are not only 
 permitted, but obliged, to make light of. Just in 
 proportion to that necessity which is laid upon us for 
 showing the Hindoo that visible things cannot be 
 treated with the reverence which he has been taught 
 to feel for them, should be our desire and determin- 
 ation to preserve him from the danger to which he 
 is certainly exposed, of thinking that all the question- 
 ings of his fathers respecting the invisible world had 
 no purpose or meaning. These questionings belong to 
 the most radical portion of the Hindoo mind ; in them 
 you see what the Hindoo is, what his existence means, 
 and how he has been able to stamp such an image 
 of himself upon society. To these questionings he 
 owes the activity of his intellect and imagination when 
 all his other tendencies and his outward circumstances 
 would make him indolent ; hence have arisen his love 
 of letters and his desire for science. But the time 
 has evidently come when he cannot be questioning 
 merely ; he must have answers. I contend that he 
 who is able to give them is not a destroyer, but a 
 preserver : that he will have a right to boast of having 
 upholden all that was strongest and most permanent 
 in the Hindoo life and character, while English influ- 
 ences in general were, however innocently and inevit- 
 ably, threatening to undermine them. I concede with
 
 60 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 equal readiness, that if Christianity do not -offer these 
 answers, it cannot make this boast; it must leave 
 to some other instrument the work of regenerating 
 Hindostan. As the question is brought to this test, 
 let us gather up in a few words the enigmas which 
 have tormented the Hindoo so long, and of which, for 
 the sake of his practical life, he demands a solution. 
 
 First, he has had the deepest assurance that God 
 must be an Absolute and Living Being, who can be 
 satisfied with nothing less perfect than himself; and 
 yet he has' an equally deep conviction that this Absolute 
 and Eternal Being cannot merely live in self-contem- 
 plation; that there must be some object in which he 
 sees his image reflected. The thought is expressed 
 with great earnestness and beauty in one of the early 
 Vedas, where Brahm is introduced seeking for the 
 image of himself. The words which are imputed to 
 him express the strong feeling, that a merely solitary, 
 self-seeking, abstracted being would be one whom a 
 man, experiencing his own need of sympathy and fellow- 
 ship, could not bear to contemplate. The thought ex- 
 pands itself through the whole Hindoo mythology. It 
 utters itself from the beginning in the idea of a Brahma, 
 as well as a Brahm ; it gives birth to all the later notions 
 of goddesses dwelling beside the gods. If no voice 
 comes from the secret place to interpret this mighty 
 contradiction which the learned man has perceived, 
 which the most ignorant Hindoo feels, their thoughts of 
 God and their human life must continue a hopeless maze.
 
 LECT. ii.] THE BRAHMIN AND SUDRA. 61 
 
 For the perplexity which grows out of this lies close 
 to personal, as well as social, existence. May not man 
 himself be this partner of the Divinity? If he is, 
 what means that deep assurance of a Divinity retired 
 within the sanctity and awfulness of his own nature ? If 
 he is not, what mean these yearnings in the spirit after 
 the knowledge of him ; this promise in the heart that it 
 may be attained ; this discontent while it is wanting ? It 
 is an idle thing to cut this knot by affirming either prin- 
 ciple and denying the other ; all confusions, theoretical 
 and practical, of the Hindoo arise from the attempt to 
 do this, and from the experience of its impossibility; 
 only if you can show that they have been reconciled, 
 and how, will you lead him to any clearness or freedom. 
 
 Again, man has this glorious faculty ; but a portion 
 of men seem without it. It must dwell in a caste ; 
 the rest must be cut off from it. Leave this thought 
 to work, and it will bring forth the fruits which it has 
 brought forth hitherto. The modern Hindoo, with his 
 European culture and science, will be just as contempt- 
 uous to all who want his information and intellect as the 
 Brahmins of old ; the twice-born notion may change its 
 form, in effect it will be as rampant and tyrannical as 
 ever. You cannot extirpate it, until you justify it until 
 you can show that some eternal truth lies in the distinc- 
 tion, and yet that it excludes no human creature ; that 
 it asserts the common privilege of Brahmin and Sudra. 
 
 Then we come to another set of questions This 
 Absolute Being, what manner of being is he ? If it
 
 62 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 be true that he stands in some relation to us and the 
 world, in what relation ? Is he benignant, or hateful ? 
 is he a preserver or destroyer? You cannot answer 
 the question with any vague flourishes of rhetoric. 
 The Hindoo is willing enough to acknowledge a kind 
 and gracious ruler, but the worshipper of Siva meets 
 you with a set of facts. Here is "misery, here is death. 
 You must encounter these facts you cannot blink 
 them. You must be able to say "I can show that 
 this misery and death do not interfere with the idea 
 of a God of Order, Mercy, Love ; I can show it by 
 practical tokens and demonstrations ; " otherwise you 
 must leave the sects to fight on for ever, with a toler- 
 able certainty that the darker will in general have the 
 ascendency. Again, the idea of a struggle between 
 life and death, order and disorder, good and evil, and 
 of the victory having been achieved by the God 
 actually descending into the battle-field, and himself 
 taking part in the strife ; the idea that he must assume 
 some form which is subject to all the accidents of 
 earthly calamity; this is one which a European may 
 easily scoff at, when he sees it presented to him in the 
 Hindoo stories, and, doubtless, he will find many a 
 learned Brahmin who is ready, with more or less 
 reserve, to scoff too, nay, to represent such a notion 
 as quite incompatible with the higher Brahminical 
 theology. But let it be well considered that a stern 
 demand of the popular conscience carries with it a 
 very mighty witness ; if the learned order bows to that
 
 LECT. ii.] PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED. 63 
 
 demand, allows the people to clothe their inward belief 
 in their own shapes, and reduces their crudities to a 
 system, we may be sure that the faith of the taught is 
 stronger and more' vital than that of the teacher ; it 
 may be grosser, but it must contain, at least, as real 
 an element. Except this part of the Hindoo convic- 
 tion can be recognised; unless it can be shown how 
 the belief of such a divine descent is compatible with 
 the highest idea any Brahmin can entertain of the 
 divine perfection, or of man's spirit being intended to 
 ascend to the apprehension and participation of it; 
 I cannot see how the Hindoo race can ever be perman- 
 ently raised above its present degradation, or how that 
 respect and justice, which have been so passionately 
 demanded for the faith and institutions of centuries, 
 can be practically rendered. Once more It is, undoubt- 
 edly, a right thing in a government to suppress, by 
 actual edict and physical force, human sacrifices. The 
 Roman, tolerant as he was of all polytheistic systems 
 in the provinces, took this course in our own country 
 when he was dealing with the practices of Druidical 
 worship. But neither by this act, nor by establishing 
 municipal institutions in Britain, nor by building and 
 encouraging the natives to build baths and porticoes 
 and temples, did he provide any real substitute for 
 those dark, mysterious thoughts of the unseen world 
 which had haunted the mind of the Celt under his 
 oaks, and which found a fearful expression in the 
 sacrifices of children or of men. Those thoughts were
 
 64 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 the stamina of the British heart ; when an external 
 civilisation expelled them, what remained was a feeble 
 colony, groaning for help to the masters who could 
 give it help no longer ; a colony which needed to have 
 all its arts and polish destroyed by a people possessing 
 some real faith, some inward strength, that the soil 
 might, by this process, be prepared to bear genuine 
 native fruits. It will be the same with Hindostan, 
 if, while we put down the burnings of widows, and 
 bestow a culture which makes such practices disgusting 
 to its inhabitants, we are not able to show them what 
 is the true form of self-immolation, and how wife, and 
 maiden, and widow how men, whether called to the 
 contemplative or active life, may practise it. 
 
 I know that I am asking no light thing of any 
 faith when I say, All this it must do if it is to satisfy 
 the heart and conscience of this Asiatic people. But 
 let me ask you, before I conclude, whether a faith 
 which does less than this can satisfy your hearts and 
 consciences ? We are in a world of action and energy 
 and enterprise, more unlike that dreaming and specu- 
 lative world we have been hearing of than the soil 
 and climate of England are unlike those of Hindostan. 
 And yet I will be bold to say it, the same thoughts 
 ' which stir the spirit of the Indian sage and the Indian 
 Sudra, are working secretly beneath all our bustling 
 life, are affecting the counsels of statesmen, are entering 
 into the meditations of the moralists and meta- 
 physicians who most despise theology; in another
 
 LECT. ii.] THE GREAT HUMAN QUESTION. 65 
 
 form, sue disturbing the heart of the country peasant, 
 and of the dweller in St. Giles's. They are such 
 questions as these What do we worship ? A dream, 
 or a real Being? One wholly removed from us, or 
 one related to us ? Is He a Preserver, or a Destroyer ? 
 Has Death explained its meaning to us, or is it still 
 a horrible riddle ? Is it still uncertain whether Life 
 or Death is master of the world, or how has the 
 uncertainty been removed ? What is the evil which 
 I find in myself? Is it myself? Must I perish in 
 order that it may perish, or can it be in any wise 
 separated from me ? Can I give up myself and yet 
 live ? What are these desires which I feel in myself 
 for something unseen, glorious, and perfect? Are 
 they all phantasy, or can they be realised ? If they 
 can, by what means ? Has He to whom they point 
 made himself known to me ? How am I connected 
 with Him? Must I utterly renounce all the things 
 about me, that I may be absorbed into Him, or is 
 there any way in which I can devote them and myself 
 to Him, and only know Him the better by filling 
 my place among them ? These are the great human 
 questions; distance in time and space does not affect 
 them; if we are not concerned with them it is 
 because we have not yet ceased to be savages, or 
 because we are returning, through an extreme civilis- 
 ation, into the state of savages : if they do occupy 
 us, we shall find that there can be but one answer to 
 them for the Englishman and the Hindoo. 
 
 M. B. L. F
 
 66 
 
 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 Buddhism. Its origin and diffusion. Its various forms. The 
 Lama. Buddhism and its rivals in China. 
 
 TN my former Lectures I have spoken of two 
 religions, very opposite in their character, which 
 have exercised an influence over a large portion of 
 the world the Mahometan and the Hindoo. The 
 former, we said, could only thrive when it was in 
 action; the proper element of the other was rest. 
 They were brought face to face in Hindostan. The 
 Islamite triumphed, as might have been expected ; 
 but there was a passive strength in the Hindoo, which 
 ultimately kept its ground, and enables him to say 
 that his system has endured for three thousand years. 
 
 I hinted that it had had struggles with a very 
 different kind of enemy from the Mahometan with 
 a doctrine in many of its essential peculiarities like 
 its own. That doctrine is.; the Buddhist, the faith 
 of Thibet, of Siam, of the Burmese Empire, of Cochin 
 China, Japan, Ceylon ; the popular, though not the 
 state, faith of China. It is said to number above 
 three hundred millions of people among its disciples; 
 to be, therefore, by far the most prevailing religion 
 which does exist, or ever has existed, in the world. 
 It is surely, then, deserving of earnest investigation;
 
 LECT. m.] FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 67 
 
 there must be something in it which has given it this 
 wide diffusion. It must express some necessities of 
 man's heart, some necessities of our own. 
 
 I propose, in the present Lecture, to inquire what 
 these are ; to search for the main principle of Budd- 
 hism ; to consider in what relation it stands to those 
 religions of which we have spoken ; lastly, to inquire 
 how it is connected with two other systems which 
 divide with it the Celestial Empire. 
 
 A faith which is spread over such a number of 
 countries, many of them very different from each other 
 in outward circumstances, perhaps even in race and 
 early cultivation, must present great varieties, which 
 may seem to make the use of a common name rather 
 a convenient refuge for our ignorance, than a proof 
 that they have really any connection. Undoubtedly 
 our information respecting the different forms of 
 Buddhism is still very imperfect, and we have not 
 the same means of correcting and enlarging it as in 
 the case of countries which have fallen under our own 
 dominion. Ceylon is, I believe, the only British pos- 
 session in which pure Buddhism is professed. Never- 
 theless, I am convinced that the intelligent travellers 
 and residents who have given us accounts of what 
 they have seen or heard in the different countries I 
 have enumerated, or what they have read in the books 
 which these countries account sacred, have not been 
 mistaken in believing that the fundamental doctrine 
 is the same in all. The opposition between different
 
 68 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 views of the system, great as it is, admits, I think, of 
 a tolerably easy explanation ; easy at least, if we do 
 not merely look to find a meaning in the dry records 
 of other people's notions or practices, but compare 
 them with what we have felt and experienced in our 
 own lives. The numerous phases, however, which the 
 system assumes, make it very desirable that we should 
 ascertain from what country it was derived, where we 
 may seek for the first form of it. On this subject 
 there is some, but, I think, now not much difference 
 of opinion. The external arguments which induced 
 Sir William Jones, and some eminent scholars of 
 the last century, to suppose that its native seat could 
 not have been Hindostan, have given way to later and 
 fuller information. Therewas a stronger internal argu- 
 ment, arising from a comparison of the Brahminical and 
 Buddhist faith, which is also, it seems to me, untenable ; 
 but which is well worth considering, and which at once 
 connects the present subject with that of the last Lecture. 
 We do not adequately describe the condition of 
 Hindostan, by saying that the priests constitute its 
 leading caste. The whole form of society has a sacer- 
 dotal stamp upon it ; it has moulded itself in con- 
 formity with a religious idea ; not, as some have 
 fancied, with a professional or mercantile one. And 
 yet, when we look into the meaning of this system it 
 explains itself, by the doctrine that there is in man 
 a capacity for beholding the Unseen Being, and that 
 there is in man an animal nature which admits of
 
 LECT. m.] BRAHM. 69 
 
 no Divine converse. The Brahmin is the learned, 
 diviiie, absorbed man, the end of whose existence is 
 to become one with Brahm. 
 
 Brahm himself, I observed, was emphatically an 
 Intelligence, a thinking, not a commanding being 
 One from whose thoughts all the universe has flowed 
 out, not one by whose will it has been created. He 
 is a higher priest, not in any sense a sovereign ; herein 
 standing in the most direct contrast to the object of 
 Mahometan worship. Between, then, the God and the 
 worshipper there is the most direct affinity, which may 
 become identity. Intelligence is to be the character- 
 istic of both. The hereditary caste is to preserve this 
 Intelligence ; its discipline to prevent it from being 
 debased by mixture with people in whom the lower 
 nature is predominant, or by contact with things which 
 may make it predominant in themselves. 
 
 Now that any set of men should arise in a society 
 constituted like that of Hindostan, to deny the ex- 
 istence of a special caste of priests, might not seem 
 surprising ; for one might conjecture that there would 
 be popular reactions against so very strict and exclusive 
 a system. We saw that there had been such popular 
 reactions in Hindostau. They took this form. They 
 demanded a being less abstract than Brahm; not a 
 mere thinking being, but one who should exercise 
 actual influence over the arrangements of Nature and 
 the world one to whom its good or its evil might 
 be ascribed one who should not merely cultivate
 
 1) 
 
 70 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 intercourse with an absorbed devotee, but should enter 
 into fellowship with human creatures in their ordinary 
 condition. To such strong workings of popular feeling, 
 to such cries of the popular heart, we traced the 
 Vishnu and Siva worship, which the priests had been 
 compelled to incorporate with that older principle it 
 seemed striving to subvert. In these cases the priestly 
 caste, whatever rude shocks it may have sustained, 
 nevertheless kept its ground, even in the hearts of 
 the people who assailed it. In fact, nothing proves 
 more clearly than such changes, how much the rever- 
 ence for a priestly order has been bound up with 
 the sympathies and character of this nation. Neither 
 the awakening of impulses which the priests could not 
 control, nor conquest by such an utterly unsacerdotal 
 people as the Mahometans, have availed to weaken this 
 reverence. The priests have adapted themselves to 
 feelings which they could not subdue ; their authority 
 has waxed stronger by a doctrine which threatened 
 to crush it and the popular faith together. 
 
 But the Buddhist doctrine cannot in any wise be 
 identified with this kind of movement. The word 
 Buddha, it seems to be admitted on all hands, means 
 Intelligence. That men ought to worship pure Intel- 
 ligence, must have been the first proclamation of the 
 original Buddhists. The deduction from this must 
 have been, that no caste of priests was necessary for 
 such worship. Could this doctrine have originated 
 on the soil of Hindostan? I do not wonder that
 
 LECT. in.] TWO CO-EXISTENT PRINCIPLES. 71 
 
 thoughtful persons, especially those whose experience 
 made them aware of the facts I have just alluded 
 to, should have said that it could not : that a theoiy 
 so contrary to the tendencies of Hindoos from gener- 
 ation to generation, must have come from some other 
 region, and been rudely forced for a time upon this. 
 But, plausible as such an hypothesis may seem, I 
 think I have given you sufficient reason for distrusting 
 it. The sacerdotal principle has indeed struck its roots 
 very deep into the Indian soil, probably from as early 
 a time as any to which we can look back. It has 
 shown itself to be, in some form or other, inseparable 
 from that soil. But it has grown up side by side with 
 another principle, from which, at times, it is hardly 
 distinguishable ; the reverence for human intelligence ; 
 the disposition to make this the great Brahminical 
 characteristic. It is quite conceivable, then, that from 
 a very early time two sets of men may have co-existed 
 in Hindostan; one composing an hereditary order of 
 priests, the other a mere order of sages or devotees. 
 They co-exist in India to the present day, on terms 
 not probably of sympathy, but also not of absolute 
 opposition or repulsion. The Greek writers allude to 
 two classes seen by the soldiers of Alexander, between 
 whom it has been reasonably enough supposed that a 
 relation similar to this may have subsisted. 
 
 Both will alike have aimed at converse with the 
 pure Intelligence, absorption into him. Both there- 
 fore will have been far removed from any wish to
 
 72 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 substitute for this object of worship one of a more 
 visible and earthly character. But different circum- 
 stances may have operated to draw each of them into 
 closer connection with that which is visible. The 
 hereditary priest will have maintained his position by 
 taking part in civil employments will gradually have 
 exhibited less of the higher and more abstracted char- 
 acter. The devotee will have been reverenced by the 
 people for retaining and carrying out this character. 
 Thus he will have been brought into greater sympathy 
 with them; will have been induced to symbolise the 
 object of his worship, that it might be more apparent 
 to ordinary men. In this way, perhaps, we may 
 account for the appearance of temples, possessing the 
 characteristics of Buddhism, which must have existed 
 in Hindostan from a very early period. Gradually the 
 distinction between these classes will have become 
 more marked and definite. Sages will have appeared 
 calling upon men to adore Buddha in purity and sim- 
 plicity, denouncing the hereditary caste, denouncing 
 the books upon which they rested their pretensions, 
 acknowledging a modified sympathy with the worship 
 of the people as opposed to that of the Brahmins. 
 In what light these sages were regarded we shall 
 "consider hereafter ; now it is only necessary to observe 
 that there are the widest differences of opinion among 
 Buddhists respecting the time in which the original 
 sage, the first Buddhist teacher, flourished. That one 
 Sakya Muni appeared in the sixth century before
 
 LECT. in.] ORIGINAL SEAT OF BUDDHISM. 73 
 
 Christ, who produced an effect upon the inhabitants 
 of India of the kind I have just described, and that 
 he left a series of successors, seems to be ascertained. 
 But he was in all probability only the rekindler of 
 feelings which had been existing previously; only the 
 person who formally set them in opposition to the 
 Brahminical tendencies with which they had been 
 hitherto, though by somewhat loose and fragile links, 
 associated. Although, then, I would by no means 
 support a paradox which has had some countenance 
 from learned men, but not from the most learned 
 or those who have examined the subject most, that 
 Buddhism was the original doctrine, of which Brah- 
 minism was a depravation; though such an opinion 
 has to struggle with the greatest opposition of out- 
 ward facts, and is, I think, also quite inconsistent with 
 the respective character of the two systems : yet I 
 imagine we must look upon Hindostan as the place 
 from which both have started, must assume that they 
 were branches from the same root, and that their 
 separation, however decided at last, was a slow and 
 gradual work. Ultimately the systems did come into 
 direct collision, and it became evident that they could 
 not dwell together on the same soil. The Brahminical 
 succeeded in expelling its rival from Hindostan, and 
 it went forth to seek and to find an asylum first in one, 
 then in another of those numerous Asiatic countries 
 which it now claims as its own. 
 
 This view of the origin of Buddhism may be a
 
 74 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 great help, I think, in reconciling the very opposite 
 reports of it which we obtain from those who have 
 seen it in different, or even in the same, localities. 
 The extreme Polytheism of India we found was not 
 so incompatible with what was said of its original 
 Monotheism, as it appeared at first. But what are 
 we to say of a doctrine which is sometimes represented 
 as one of almost perfect Theism ; sometimes as direct 
 Atheism ; sometimes as having the closest analogy to 
 what in a Greek philosopher, or in a modern philo- 
 sopher, would be called Pantheism ; sometimes as the 
 worship of human saints or heroes ; sometimes as alto- 
 gether symbolical; sometimes as full of the highest 
 abstract speculation ; sometimes as vulgar idolatry ? 
 Strange as it may seem, the same doctrine is, I believe, 
 capable of assuming all these different phases ; no one 
 of them can be thoroughly understood without refer- 
 ence to the other. Each is very imperfectly denoted 
 by the names which I have used ; for the feelings, 
 good and evil, which work in the hearts of human 
 beings, can never be satisfactorily expressed by mere 
 labels describing a notion or theory. 
 
 I. Thus, to begin with the first supposition. Budd- 
 hism is, as we have seen, an attempt at the highest, 
 least material idea of divinity. Buddha is clear light, 
 perfect wisdom. You must not try to conceive of him 
 as doing anything. Rest is not so much his attribute 
 as his very essence. He is One, the One ; and it is 
 only with the inward eye, purged from sensual corrup-
 
 V 
 
 LECT. in.] THE BUDDHIST'S BELIEF IN GOD. 75 
 
 tions, and steadily fixed on the contemplation of unity, 
 that he can in any wise be apprehended. For the 
 natural eye of the ordinary man views a multiplicity 
 of things, each thing divided and separate from the 
 other. The natural eye takes account only of appear- 
 ances; it requires the severest discipline for a man 
 to behold the Reality, This is surely Theism in its 
 highest form and conception. It is something much 
 more than we are wont to mean by that word, for by 
 a Deist or Theist we often describe a person who does 
 not deny t the existence of God ; who admits it as a 
 sort of ultimate fact, as the Hercules' pillar of the 
 universe. But to the Buddhist, the belief in God is 
 the most awful, and at the same time the most real 
 of all thoughts; one not thrust back into the corner 
 of a mind which is occupied by everything else, but 
 which he thinks demands the highest and most refined 
 exercise of all the faculty that he has. It is something 
 which is to make a change in himself, which is at once 
 to destroy him and to perfect him. And the effect 
 is a practical one. Buddha is ever at rest. Can his 
 worshipper be turbulent? Can he admit any rude or 
 violent passions into his heart? He must cultivate 
 gentleness, evenness, all serene and peaceful qualities, 
 reverence and tenderness to all creatures, or he is not 
 in his rightful state. He is not tempted, or obliged, 
 as the Brahmin is, to look upon any human creature 
 as merely animal, as excluded even from the highest 
 privileges. He denies the natural difference of the
 
 76 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 Sudra ; the poorest man of the vilest race may become 
 one with Buddha. Hence, though he belongs to no 
 priestly family, all his functions are more essentially 
 those of a priest than the Brahmin's can be. He 
 claims no civil distinction; he is to be reverenced 
 simply as offering up prayers for the peace and pro- 
 sperity of all other people. He must abstain from 
 much speech. In silence he may best hope to know 
 the Unseen Intelligence. This is one aspect of the 
 doctrine, and surely a very interesting one. 
 
 II. But if the Buddhist sage asks himself, "What 
 is it that I am contemplating : I cannot see it, or 
 hear it, or handle it; I dare not conceive it; it is 
 altogether inconceivable, and yet I know of it only by 
 this mind of mine : " he is likely to find himself in a 
 strange perplexity. Or, if he puts the case thus to 
 himself: "The end I propose to myself is to become 
 absorbed, lost, that is to say, nothing. Can it be 
 Something which is to work this result ? Can it be 
 Something I am contemplating ? " He must say at 
 length " No, it is Nothing. Nothing must be the 
 ground of my life, of my being of the being of all the 
 things I see ! " Here is Atheism ; a deep, hopeless 
 void, yet touching on the borders of that doctrine 
 which implied real belief in a living Divinity. 
 
 The transition to such Atheism is, no doubt, possible 
 in the Brahminical doctrine ; but here it is much easier. 
 For the existence of a continuous caste preserves the 
 tradition of a Divinity, invests it with a reality in
 
 I 
 
 LECT. in.] THE BUDDHISM TRIAD. 77 
 
 some sense independent of the mind of the beholder. 
 Here all rests upon that mind. The light seems to be 
 projected from the eye ; now it may be a bright sun in 
 the heaven; now it may shrink into a speck; now it 
 may vanish altogether. Yet we should draw a wrong 
 inference from the incapacity of the Buddhist in this 
 state of mind to give any form to his belief, if we said 
 that it is wanting. He may even declare in honesty, 
 " I see nothing," and the words being the utterance of 
 despair, not of triumph or satisfaction, may themselves 
 contain a sure witness, even to himself, that there 
 is that which no words or thoughts of his can com- 
 prehend; an eternal absolute ground of all words and 
 thoughts. 
 
 III. And soon the Buddhist discovers an escape from 
 this void of nothingness. He began with looking upon 
 the One Intelligence as alone real ; all outward nature 
 he discarded, as merely apparent. But the visible world 
 claims its rights; he cannot disown it; he must, in 
 some way or other, take it into his system. The 
 Intelligence, therefore, the pure Buddha, must have a 
 partner of his throne. It is Dharma ; the principle of 
 Matter ; that out of which all things are formed. But 
 these two powers, Intelligence and Matter, seem essen- 
 tially opposite : if they are co-workers, how can they 
 be reconciled ? There must be another power, Sanga, 
 the mediating influence, which binds the informing 
 mind to the dead formless thing upon which it works. 
 This is nearly the explanation which a Buddhist priest
 
 78 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART T. 
 
 gave to the English resident at Nepaul of a subject 
 which has occasioned much controversy. It is borne 
 out by the symbols in the Buddhist temples. They 
 seem contrived to express the idea of some active, 
 productive power; of some passive, merely receptive 
 power; again, of something which is the joint result 
 of both. If we compare the Buddhist Triad with 
 the Hindoo Triad of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the 
 Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, we are struck rather by 
 their difference than their resemblance. The powers 
 of preservation and destruction are militant powers; 
 each is continually invading the kingdom of the other : 
 Bramah is looked upon as the common origin of both. 
 Here the Intelligent Power is considered as balancing, 
 or sustaining, the Passive, Material Power ; and a third 
 as necessary to their fellowship. The latter idea is, I 
 think, by far the deeper, and more suggestive; but 
 then it is abstract, rather than personal ; more of a 
 philosophical speculation; less of a practical belief. 
 And it leads very directly to the next side of Buddhism 
 what is called its Pantheistic side. 
 
 IV. Beginning with the notion that the Intelligence 
 is entirely separated from the world that He is One, 
 and it multiform the Buddhist may arrive, by a series 
 of easy steps, at a conclusion which would seem most 
 opposed to this, that the Intelligence is essentially one 
 with the world : in fact, that it can only be considered 
 as the informing life or soul of the world. As in the 
 case of Brahminism, it may be rightly said that this
 
 LECT. in.] HUMAN BUDDHAS. 79 
 
 doctrine was latent in the Buddhist from the first: in 
 other words, that the moment he began to think upon 
 Nature with no other data than the belief which he 
 possessed, he must inevitably terminate in this scheme. 
 But it should be said at the same time that he has 
 struggled earnestly, even heroically, with this tendency ; 
 that his effort to contemplate the pure Essence in- 
 dicates a genuine desire to see something above the 
 world, not merely dwelling in it and actuating it. 
 However true then it may be that Buddhism often 
 becomes a mere notion of a God diffused through all 
 things, I cannot believe that this is its characteristic 
 principle. To ascertain what that is, we must examine 
 the next allegation respecting it, that it is especially 
 the deification of human saints or heroes. 
 
 V. We can scarcely speak of this as a phase of 
 Buddhism. Everywhere you will find certain human 
 beings called Buddhas. You will find Europeans ask- 
 ing such questions as these, When was Buddha born ? 
 How many Buddhas are there ? And those who are 
 asked seem not astonished at the inconsistency of the 
 two inquiries, or of either with that idea of a pure 
 essential Intelligence, sometimes the fixed only reality, 
 sometimes so divested of all qualities as to become 
 nothing, sometimes diffused through all things. If 
 you consider the starting-point of the doctrine, you 
 will see that the departure from it, which is involved 
 in this notion of human Buddhas, is far less than it 
 seems. The abstracted man was to become one with
 
 80 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 the Divinity. In the mind of the Hindoo a whole 
 caste is marked out for that glory. But a whole caste 
 evidently does not attain it ; there must be immeasur- 
 able differences of taste, earnestness, wisdom, in the 
 priests of one generation, still more in those of success- 
 ive generations. So it comes to pass, that there is 
 much feeling of a divine character diffused through a 
 great many ; not so much belief of actual divinity in 
 particular individuals. Here, on the contrary, there is 
 no check to the conviction that a man has risen to the 
 state of Godhead may be a God. In proportion as the 
 Infinite Object fades into obscurity, or waxes fearful, 
 the vision is more cherished of his appearance in some 
 man, who in this or that period confers blessings on 
 some particular country ; traverses different countries 
 now mounts into the regions where Indra the Lord 
 of the Elements dwells now descends to earth, like 
 Vishnu ; (for these powers have passed from the Hindoo 
 into the Buddhist legends ;) and leaves here and there, 
 in some mountain or valley, footmarks which may be 
 noted, and become the symbols of his continual pre- 
 sence. For as he has moved through space, passing 
 rapidly from one portion of the globe to another, so 
 does he live through different periods of time, the same 
 "principle inhabiting various forms; the same Buddha, 
 though there may have been a number of Buddhas 
 though they may appear even now. 
 
 VI. And now we can understand how idolatry, the 
 worship of different outward natural things, may be
 
 LECT. in.] SYMBOLISM OF SENSIBLE OBJECTS. 81 
 
 attributed to this Theistic, Atheistic, Pantheistic, Human 
 
 Doctrine. Through all nature, above and beneath, 
 
 Buddha has journeyed ; everywhere he has left his 
 
 footmarks ; everywhere we may find tokens of him. 
 
 Sun, moon, and stars, all things on this earth, may 
 
 speak of him. Or we may think of him as the fixed 
 
 Immoveable Past, as the Actual Present, as the dim 
 
 Future of fears and hopes. But these sensible objects 
 
 are too distant and vague ; these Past, and Present, and 
 
 Future, too abstract. And we want to feel that we are 
 
 not contemplating them in themselves, or for their own 
 
 sakes, but the living, quickening Intelligence which has 
 
 stamped its form iipon them. They must be changed 
 
 into symbols; in that character we must approach them 
 
 and revere them. They must assume shapes which are 
 
 given to them by the kindred Intelligence in ourselves. 
 
 Oftentimes these shapes will be animal; for how 
 
 ought we to think of the creatures around us, with 
 
 those half-human faculties and affections which we 
 
 discover in them ; with the ferocity and cunning which 
 
 are surely not peculiar to them ? Must not they be 
 
 inhabited by a human spirit in some degraded, fallen 
 
 condition ? Are they not wandering about as signs to 
 
 us of what we may become ; of that state to which, by 
 
 cultivating the lower and baser qualities of our nature, 
 
 we may reduce ourselves ? So reasons the Buddhist ; 
 
 he reveres and fears the animals as meaner forms of 
 
 that Intellect, of which he sees the highest form in 
 
 the glorified man, the Buddha.
 
 82 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 VII. I have not yet spoken of Buddhism as a social 
 system. I described its ministers as forming an order 
 of devotees, so distinguished from a caste of priests. It 
 is necessary to speak thus of them, for we must not 
 suppose because they have no hereditary vocation, that 
 they take their office at hazard, or that they have no 
 communion with each other. We have a very accurate 
 description of the ceremonies which are observed in 
 some countries at their consecration, of the questions 
 which are asked to ascertain that they have no bodily 
 or mental disqualification for the task. Such cere- 
 monies, though they may vary in their forms, exist 
 wherever Buddhism exists. In Thibet, which must 
 be regarded as the centre and proper home of the 
 religion, the priests are called Lamas; it is they who 
 decide who the Lama, the true high priest of the 
 universe, at any given time is. I say they decide who 
 he is ; for they could never allow that the faculty of 
 choosing the chief Lama resides in them. In some 
 person or other the spirit of Buddha dwells; he is 
 meant to be the head of the universe ; to him all owe 
 homage. This Lama, therefore, never dies ; he is lost 
 sight of in one form, re-appears in another. The body 
 of some old man who has had this honour loses its 
 breath, is laid in the tomb. The Lama has passed 
 into some infant, who is brought up in a convent 
 with special care, preserved from sensual influences, 
 taught from the cradle to look upon himself as the 
 shrine of the Divinity, and to receive the homage of
 
 LECT. in.] THE DIAGNOSTIC OF BUDDHISM. 83 
 
 rajahs, nations, even of the Celestial Empire ; nay, 
 even of European monarchs. Some of you may re- 
 member to have read of a solemn embassy sent by the 
 English government at Calcutta, in the days of Warren 
 Hastings, to the court of the Lama. A very affect- 
 ing letter had been addressed by him to the English 
 authorities in India, asking their help in checking 
 quarrels between certain native sovereigns, an object, 
 he said, which he sought diligently in prayers by day 
 and night. An old man was the author of this letter ; 
 before Mr. Turner, the English envoy, arrived he had 
 left the world; and a child of eighteen months was 
 acknowledged as his successor. It reigned by no here- 
 ditary right ; but the other Lamas presented him with 
 unquestioning faith as the representative of the Perfect 
 Intelligence through whom it would most surely utter 
 itself. 
 
 If we now try to sum up the evidence which we 
 have gathered from different indications respecting 
 Buddhism, I do not know that we can do it better 
 than in the words of Mr. Hodgson, the resident at 
 Nepaul, to whom I have already referred. "The one 
 infallible diagnostic of Buddhism," he says, with an 
 emphasis and decision which were the result of patient 
 inquiries, conducted during many years, " is a belief in 
 the infinite capacity of the human intellect." This 
 is the conclusion to which all our inquiries into the 
 system have conducted us. The idea of an Adi Buddha 
 or Absolute Eternal Intelligence, is there, but it is
 
 84 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 hidden; it gradually evaporates. The possibility of 
 utter Atheism is there ; but the heart flies in dismay 
 from it. The vision of a Unity resulting from the 
 reconciliation of opposites is there ; but it either passes 
 into a mere theory, or seeks for images to express it, 
 which make it material. The conception of an intelli- 
 gent soul in nature is there; but it quickly resolves 
 itself into a recognition of all Nature as symbolising 
 human deeds and attributes. Lastly, the idea of deified 
 men is there ; but this loses itself in another, that 
 there is in man, in humanity, a certain Divine Intelli- 
 gence, which at different times, and in different places, 
 manifests itself more or less completely, and which must 
 have some one central manifestation. The Human 
 Intellect is first felt to be the perfect organ of worship ; 
 finally its one object. This is Buddhism; this is the 
 conviction which, with more or less of confusion, is 
 working in the hearts of three hundred millions of 
 people on this globe of ours. 
 
 I greatly desire to ask this doctrine, what testimony 
 it bears for or against that hypothesis which it is the 
 purpose of these Lectures to examine; the hypothesis, 
 I mean, that the Divine portion of the faith of different 
 nations signifies nothing; that it is only an attempt 
 to explain the phenomena of the universe ; that there 
 is no need of a Revelation to man, because in himself, 
 in his own heart, there is a sufficient revelation of all 
 the truths he wants to know ; that we may safely leave 
 this to work itself out as it can in the different religious
 
 LECT. m.] CHINA. SOCIAL ORDER. 85 
 
 systems, without pretending to inculcate notions of our 
 own, which, perhaps, are only a little better than those 
 we should displace. But I believe we shall be in a 
 fairer condition to meet these questions, when we have 
 considered the circumstances of a country in which 
 Buddhism does not exist alone ; in which it is coun- 
 teracted, and yet, I think, also illustrated, by the 
 presence of systems older, in that country at least, 
 than itself. 
 
 Numerous as are the puzzles which the history and 
 actual condition of China may present to European 
 inquirers even to those few who are acquainted with 
 its language, and have had opportunities of closely 
 observing it I do not think that there is much differ- 
 ence of opinion respecting its main and distinguishing 
 characteristic. Its learned men, we are told by the 
 most respectable authorities, say, without exception, 
 'a principle of Order is that which we discover and 
 reverence in the world : ' and every act of their lives, 
 the construction of their society, their art, their most 
 minute ceremonies, bear out the assertion. If you 
 hear their choicest phrases reported to you, or look 
 at the works they have produced, or remember the 
 duration of their empire, or think how many shocks 
 from without it has withstood, or even read one of 
 their singular state papers, you can scarcely avoid 
 saying within yourself : here is a people which, success- 
 fully or unsuccessfully, is striving to be orderly, which 
 for generations has been carrying on this struggle,
 
 86 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 which hates everything that interferes with its success, 
 would gladly obtain it by any sacrifice. Hence the 
 preservation of historical records in their driest form 
 has been as important a purpose in their eyes as it has 
 been an indifferent or impossible one to the Hindoo. 
 Hence, from first to last, we discover among them 
 precisely the opposite view of social life to that which 
 we have noticed in the conception of the Buddhist 
 Lama. The Chinese does not first ask where Spiritual 
 Intelligence dwells, and then confess that to this he 
 must submit. But he starts with the belief in Govern- 
 ment or Society ; and then demands that all study and 
 intelligence should be applied to the preservation of 
 it. The emperor is the datum or postulate from which 
 the speculations of philosophers, as well as the arrange- 
 ments of society, begin. He is put into the position 
 which he holds that he may be the spring and soul 
 of Order to the commonwealth. How he may be so 
 he is to inquire very diligently. All the functionaries 
 of government are to be chosen according to their 
 fitness to preserve that order, according to their know- 
 ledge of the maxims upon which it rests. To prevent 
 any infractions of it by themselves, or those over whom 
 they rule, is to be their incessant study. Instruction 
 therefore, it would seem, has been from the earliest 
 period a primary condition of all civil duties and 
 employments. The Chinese have not anticipated the 
 West more in other machinery than in that of educa- 
 tion, and in the importance which they have attached
 
 LECT. in.] CONFUCIUS. ROOT OF HIS SYSTEM. 87 
 
 to it. Schools, great and little, especially for the 
 instruction of those who shall have any offices in the 
 state, were the great distinction of those dynasties, 
 which, we should call in the history of any other 
 people here the name would be strikingly inapplicable 
 the heroic period of the Empire. Because they fell 
 into decay, and the fabric of social order with them, it 
 was necessary that a Reformer should appear. 
 
 Confucius appeared, not to introduce new maxims, 
 but to revive the old to explain what he saw to be 
 the conditions and first principles of Chinese govern- 
 ment, and to embody them in books. These books 
 have been for two thousand years the school-books 
 of China: the maxims of society and practical con- 
 duct possessing an authority higher than any decrees, 
 because they explain that which must make decrees 
 stable, and procure obedience to them. The education 
 of Confucius was one in state affairs. He was strictly 
 a government functionary. He was disgusted with the 
 confusion and disorder which he found in all depart- 
 ments of the state, and he retired to meditate in 
 secret the grounds upon which a reformation must be 
 undertaken. He did not trust solely to his own reflec- 
 tion, or to Chinese antiquity. There was an old man, 
 Laoutsee, who spoke much of the Divine Reason which 
 dwelt within each man, of its being the first object of 
 every man to cultivate this, and to bring all his faculties 
 of body and mind under its rule. This he seems to 
 have set up as the maxim of life, in opposition to the
 
 88 THE KELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 political notions of it, which prevailed among his 
 countrymen generally. To his words Confucius listened 
 respectfully; though far from admitting his doctrine, 
 he turned it to account by subordinating it to his own. 
 He taught also that a man must cultivate this reason 
 in himself must try to arrive at self-government, even 
 at perfect self-government ; but all for social ends and 
 purposes, all that he might be better able to contribute 
 towards the rational administration of the state, towards 
 the preservation of public order. But where lay the 
 root of this order? Its first ground Confucius, still 
 professing only to be an interpreter of old and admitted 
 doctrines, said, must lie in actual relationships ; the 
 family must sustain the state. The authority of the 
 father must be the root of all other authority. The 
 emperor must be regarded, must regard himself, as the 
 common father. He was set to keep his people in 
 order, and upon this principle he must order himself. 
 These were not mere words. They actually express 
 that which has been the binding principle of Chinese 
 society, from generation to generation. Jesuit mission- 
 aries, Protestant missionaries, English travellers, French 
 philosophical admirers of Confucius, have all alike con- 
 fessed it. The maxims of Confucius are faithful results 
 
 
 
 of the observations of a man honestly desirous to make 
 use of the experience that is given him for a moral 
 purpose; they may generally be read with interest, 
 often with admiration, as hints for conduct even as 
 helps to internal self-discipline. But they would be
 
 LECT. in.] CONFUCIUS NOT AN ATHEIST. 89 
 
 feeble and unmeaning, and could scarcely have exer- 
 cised any great influence on the mind of a nation, if 
 they had not rested upon the recognition of a real 
 and eternal principle of order, lying far deeper than 
 all Chinese formalities, or than the formalities in the 
 mind of Confucius himself. Fatherly authority was his 
 ultimate principle. Practically, he went not a step 
 beyond it. What he heard of divine, unseen, mysterious 
 powers above man, or above nature, or even in man and 
 in nature, of some thing or person beyond the earthly 
 emperor, or the earthly father he by no means denied. 
 Whatever faith his countrymen had respecting the in- 
 visible world, he would have wished to confirm. But 
 he did not see his way in such inquiries : he could not 
 trace the actual connection between them and practical 
 life. And the sincerity of his mind revolted against 
 the notion of merely using them as artifices, to keep 
 up respect for human institutions. On this ground 
 he has, I think, been too hastily condemned as an 
 atheistical philosopher. I cannot feel any desire to 
 make good such a charge. It is a pleasanter, and also 
 a truer course to admit that his confession of ignorance 
 may have been a genuine one ; and may even have im- 
 plied that he had deeper thoughts than he knew how 
 to express. We may be sure that what there was weak 
 and maimed in his scheme will discover itself in the 
 course of history, and that this discovery will be far more 
 valuable than any rash conclusions of ours respecting it. 
 Not many centuries after this reform, a Chinese
 
 90 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 emperor became aware that there was some blank in 
 the doctrine of Confucius; a blank which was not filled 
 up by turning him into a god, and raising temples to 
 him. Side by side with the Confucian, or State- worship, 
 dwelt the Taou sect, the disciples of that old philosopher 
 with whom Confucius had conversed, men who still 
 maintained that the Reason was something divine and 
 mysterious in each person, and would lead him into 
 inward contemplation, not make him the handy instru- 
 ment in the State machinery. But these people had 
 little faith, except in themselves. The effect of their 
 mysterious knowledge upon others seemed chiefly 
 exhibited in charms and incantations and magic arts, 
 which interfered with the good order of the State, 
 rather than promoted it. Something else was wanted. 
 The emperor heard of a great teacher and prophet 
 somewhere in India. In spite of the remonstrances 
 of wise men, who showed him how grievously he was 
 departing from Chinese maxims in preferring foreign to 
 native culture, the Buddhist faith was imported into 
 the empire. A religion resting upon communion with 
 the unseen world, in all its outward and many of its 
 inward characteristics the direct opposite of the Con- 
 fucian system, gained footing on the soil which that 
 system ruled. The result was what might have been 
 expected. The new faith took hold of popular sym- 
 pathy and has retained that sympathy to the present 
 day. It was and is despised by the great mandarins, 
 by the functionaries of government, by the adorers of
 
 LECT. m.] BUDDHIST AND CONFUCIAN DOCTRINE. 91 
 
 social order. But it is more than tolerated by the 
 government as such; it is recognised as deserving of 
 respect, even of homage. Though the emperor cannot 
 allow the Lama to interfere with his own supreme rule, 
 and has procured the appointment of a deputy Lama 
 who shall be really the head of the Buddhist society in 
 his dominions, and his subject, he yet sends embassies to 
 the high priest in Thibet, and asks his intercessions for 
 China. Evidently Buddhism is felt, even by the disci- 
 ples of Confucius, to be an element of society in China 
 which cannot be dispensed with, and for which their own 
 system, much as they may prefer it, offers no substitute. 
 
 I have said, that in most of its inward, as well as 
 outward characteristics, the Buddhist and the Confucian 
 doctrine are opposed. I used this language, because it 
 is evident that in one respect they are not opposed. 
 Different as are the functions which are assigned to the 
 intellect of man in the three Chinese systems, that 
 intellect is still an object of profound veneration to all. 
 Wisdom is viewed as wholly social and experimental in 
 the first, internal and mystical in the second, strangely 
 mixed with the idea of what is superhuman and eternal 
 in the third. Had it been otherwise, had there been 
 nothing common in these faiths, it is scarcely possible 
 to conceive of them dwelling together in such an 
 empire ; or to suppose that one should at all supply 
 the gaps in the other. 
 
 And which, then, of these three faiths shall we say 
 can be described by that comprehensive formula, ' a mere
 
 92 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PARTI. 
 
 attempt to explain the phenomena of the universe ? ' 
 All three do attempt that, doubtless, Buddhism, espe- 
 cially. But, does the faith of the Buddhist consist in 
 this ? Is it this which in his inmost heart he wants to 
 know ? Every inquiry we have made has led us to the 
 opposite conclusion. He is obliged to question the uni- 
 verse, because he does not know what else he should 
 question. He has questioned it, and to every problem 
 which disturbs him it has returned a more confused 
 answer. He has asked, what that is within him which 
 is higher than it, what that is which seeks a knowledge 
 which it cannot give ? He is sure that he is above the 
 world that it was never meant to be his master that 
 the spirit in him must have its ground elsewhere. But 
 where ? What is this ground ? Is it anything ? Is it 
 nothing ? Who will tell him ? That which has asked 
 the question cannot give the answer. With deepest 
 solicitude, he cries, " Do Thou, of whom I see the foot- 
 marks in natural things, but most of all in human beings, 
 in those who have thoughts and reasons, and wills, in 
 those who feel that these are not meant to be the servants 
 of their senses or of the things with which their senses 
 deal, do Thou tell me who Thou art, and how I may 
 draw nigh to Thee. Tell me what Thou hast to do with 
 "man, for something Thou must have. Tell me if there 
 be a man, and where he is, in whom I may behold 
 Thee ; One who is not here to-day, and gone to-morrow ; 
 but who, amidst all changes of times, the disappearance 
 of generations, lives on. Tell me if there be indeed a
 
 LECT. in.] THE EESULTS OF BUDDHISM. 93 
 
 King and High Priest of the universe a man actually 
 Divine. And this, too, I need to know : What that 
 Light is which dwells in me; whether it is self-derived, 
 or, as my inward heart tells me, derived from Thee. 
 Whether there be any Spirit coming forth from Thee 
 to dwell in men, and bind them together to make 
 them gentle and gracious and wise to be the common 
 life of all and still the life of each. And if these 
 things be so, tell me how these things can be recon- 
 ciled, as my reason has whispered that they can be, 
 though as yet I see not how, with that Unity the 
 essential condition of Thy Being that which divides 
 Thee from all the multitude of things and persons 
 with whom in this world we converse." I say that 
 Buddhism, rightly interpreted, is a prayer of this kind 
 an earnest prayer, consciously or unconsciously 
 uttered by three hundred millions of people. And yet 
 we are told that it is honouring the faith of these 
 people, showing tenderness and respect for them, to 
 believe that there is not any Revelation, save that 
 which man procures for himself. In other words, that 
 this prayer never has been, never can be, answered. 
 Only if we have really brought ourselves to this 
 contempt for the thoughts of so many human beings, 
 can we patiently think of this faith working out, as 
 the phrase ts, its own results. It has been working 
 out its results for all these thousand of years and 
 what have they been ? The worship of the intellect 
 has not caused the intellect to grow not even to
 
 94 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 grow to an ordinary human or earthly stature; I say 
 nothing of that Divine stature which it feels that it 
 may reach. The priest of Buddha, of the Intelligence, 
 is rarely an intelligent man. That mighty portion of 
 the globe over which Buddhism rules is nearly the 
 most ignorant portion of it. And yet in it lie the 
 seeds of all highest, noblest culture, if only we can 
 really address ourselves to that which is within the 
 hearts of those who hold this faith, if we can only tell 
 them that which they crave to know. That it is a 
 vain and cruel thing merely to carry our own notions 
 among them our notions upon any subject, divine, 
 human, earthly, I admit readily. If we do not know 
 that which will solve their riddle if we cannot tell 
 them Here is that which will turn doubt and con- 
 fusion into clearness; here is that which is not our 
 notion, but which has come from GOD to confound 
 our notions, to confound our pride; and which is 
 meant, not for us, but for mankind : for mercy's sake 
 let us be silent the Buddhists are better as they are. 
 
 So also of the Confucian scheme. That cannot be 
 charged with want of practical results. Yet that some- 
 thing is wanting, China itself has confessed. Can it 
 be supplied from within ? When we fancy it I think 
 we commit a great injustice. Mr. Medhurst, the 
 author of an interesting book on China, the result 
 of his own observations, expresses his wonder and 
 even indignation, that Confucius, having dwelt so 
 beautifully on the rights and duties of a father, should
 
 I 
 LECT. in.] WHAT THE CHINESE BEQUIRE. 95 
 
 not have carried up his thoughts to the Great Father 
 of all. I confess that I feel quite unable to adopt 
 this language. It seems to me evidence of Confucius 
 being a sincere man, that he did not allow himself to 
 use mere figures of rhetoric upon this subject, for such 
 in his lips they would have been. If having spoken 
 of one holding an actual relation under the name of 
 Father, he had afterwards used that word as a synonym 
 for a Creator or for an unknown Being, the pleasure 
 which such expressions might have caused us would 
 have been dearly purchased by the loss of reality in 
 the mind of him who resorted to them. If you can 
 tell the Chinese that this is an actual relation, that 
 it has been proved to be so, that our human relation 
 is the image of it, that the reality of one gives reality 
 to the other, that the honour paid to relationships is 
 not incompatible with that seemingly abstract, unsocial, 
 unreal view of the Reason of which the Taou sect has 
 been the champion ; and that the Buddhist spiritualism 
 is not an element of new confusion, but of reconciliation : 
 you will indeed discover to him that deepest founda- 
 tion of order which he is looking for, you will show him 
 that way from the visible to the Invisible which he has 
 never yet discovered. But any teaching short of this, 
 that hard and formal and yet withal practical and 
 serious mind of his, will repel. You will find that you 
 have not learnt the spell which can break the heavy 
 yoke of custom from off his neck, and change him from 
 the most perfect of living machines into a living MAN.
 
 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Old Persian Faith and its destruction. The Egyptian. 
 The Greek. The Roman. The Gothic, General Conclusion. 
 
 Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Buddhist, are 
 the great prevailing faiths of the world. A person 
 indeed who should insist upon reducing all the religious 
 thoughts and convictions he met with in different places 
 under one of these three heads, would exhibit great 
 practical ignorance ; for the feelings and apprehensions 
 which belong to actual human beings will not bear to 
 be so treated. A man will not really be intelligible to 
 you, if, instead of listening to him and sympathising 
 with him, you determine to classify him. But it is 
 true, that one who has patiently studied a,nd livingly 
 realised the characteristics of these wide-spread beliefs, 
 will not be hopelessly puzzled by the notions of men 
 in any part of the globe, civilised or savage. There 
 are no other existing forms of religious thought suffi- 
 ciently distinct from these to deserve a separate examin- 
 ation in such a course of Lectures as this ; none which 
 have not grown out of them, or have not been rapidly 
 absorbed into them. And it is of existing systems 
 that I wished first and chiefly to speak, because for 
 the practical object I proposed to myself, and which 
 Boyle desired we should keep in sight, these must be
 
 LECT. iv.] PERSIA. 97 
 
 the most important. I could not, however, do proper 
 justice to the subject, if, before I enter upon the second 
 division of it the consideration of the way in which 
 Christianity is related to different religions I did not 
 touch upon what may be called the defunct systems, 
 those which belong to history, and which have yielded 
 to the might either of the Crescent or the Cross. The 
 word ' defunct,' we shall soon find, is only in one sense 
 applicable to them ; they had that in them which is 
 not dead, and cannot die; that which is exerting an 
 influence upon the mind and education of Christendom 
 at the present day. Still, as systems, they belong to 
 the past ; they will therefore supply a new kind of test 
 for trying the maxims respecting the worthlessness and 
 transitoriness of what is merely theological, which I 
 have been examining in former Lectures. For the 
 reason I have given they ought not to be treated in the 
 same detail as those which have occupied us hitherto : 
 indeed, I do not think we should gain so much by con- 
 sidering them in detail, as by glancing at them side 
 by side ; so that the principles which distinguish them, 
 and those wherein they are alike, may be more readily 
 discerned. I shall therefore endeavour to compress 
 what I have to say of them into a single Lecture. 
 
 I. The old Persian religion is the first which offers 
 itself to our notice, as standing in a close relation, both 
 outwardly and inwardly, to the Hindoo. The Zend- 
 avesta, the religious book in which this faith is profess- 
 edly set forth, cannot be appealed to as a very certain 
 M. B.L. H
 
 98 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART r. 
 
 authority respecting it ; what we possess is confessedly 
 a compilation from earlier sources ; and though critics 
 think that they can detect older fragments in the midst 
 of it, there is great difficulty in separating them from 
 the mass, or in determining the times when it was put 
 together. The age and history of the man who is 
 spoken of as the great prophet of this faith, Zerdusht 
 or Zoroaster, are equally obscure. It has even been 
 questioned whether such a man ever existed whether 
 he does not merely represent a divine principle, or a 
 stage in a nation's history. It might seem, then, as 
 if this doctrine, of which we have such vague records, 
 must have exercised but a slight influence; at all 
 events, that its essential character cannot be ascer- 
 tained. Both conclusions would be erroneous. What- 
 ever authority the Zendavesta may have, whatever 
 kind of person Zoroaster may have been, the Persian 
 faith has been bound up with the life of a great 
 portion of Asia, and has left as strong evidences as any 
 both of its nature and of its power over the minds of 
 men, even in generations far removed from each other. 
 
 The readers of Gibbon will remember a splendid 
 passage of his history describing a great Asiatic revo- 
 lution which took place in the third century after 
 Christ. The old Persian empire was then ruled by the 
 Parthians. Their dynasty had lasted for several cen- 
 turies : it had been set up after the Greek armies had 
 conquered Asia; after they had established their own 
 habits and civilisation in the midst of it. Their worship
 
 LECT. iv.] CHARACTER OF THE PERSIAN FAITH. 99 
 
 the Parthians to a considerable extent adopted ; the old 
 faith of the Persians they crushed. At the period I 
 speak of, it was found that this faith had lain hidden 
 under the soil, but had never been destroyed. The 
 Magi came forth and proclaimed that which they 
 affirmed to be the original teaching of Zoroaster. 
 The innovations of five centuries were swept away; 
 a dynasty which the Persians recognised as the con- 
 tinuation of the old kingdom of Cyrus was established, 
 and the nation's old belief was the foundation upon 
 which it rested. This power became the great Eastern 
 antagonist of Rome : at a later period it had nearly 
 wrested the empire of Asia from Constantinople : it 
 sunk at last under the irresistible strength of the 
 Mahometan armies. For a time, those whom the 
 Mahometans called fire- worshippers struggled hard; 
 at length they vanished into an insignificant sect; 
 Persia acknowledged the Prophet of Arabia as its one 
 divine teacher. 
 
 But what was the faith which governed the old 
 Persian while he ruled the world which dwelt so 
 deeply in the heart of a people that it could revive 
 after a lapse of centuries which perished all but 
 utterly at last ? We have seen that the Brahm of the 
 Hindoo, the Buddha of that mighty sect which arose 
 out of Hindooism, is especially the Intelligent Being, 
 He in whom light dwells, and by communication with 
 whom men become enlightened. Observe how natur- 
 ally, how inevitably, one uses this word Light for
 
 100 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 Intelligence. We feel instinctively that it is much the 
 better word of the two ; that one is hard and abstract, 
 the other living and real. So men have felt in all 
 countries and ages. Their bodily eye distinguished 
 one thing from another could exert itself in the day, 
 was useless in darkness. They had as certainly some- 
 thing within them which could discern a sense in 
 words, a meaning in things. This surely was an eye 
 too. There was no better way of speaking about it. 
 And there must be some light, answering to this eye, 
 older than it, otherwise it could not be. They dis- 
 covered, too surely also, that there was a state in 
 which this eye saw nothing, a state of darkness. If 
 we keep these very simple thoughts in our minds, (I 
 say, keep them in our minds, for they are there already ; 
 we are obliged to make use of this language it 
 belongs to us all, to prince and peasant alike,) and if 
 we recollect that what we are apt to overlook as too 
 simple is oftentimes just the most important thing of 
 all the key which unlocks a multitude of treasure- 
 houses; we shall be able to enter into the belief of 
 different people, and to trace the transition from one 
 to another far more easily. The conviction which we 
 have found dwelling so strongly in the minds of 
 Brahmin and Buddhist, though taking different forms, 
 was this " He who has the inward eye most opened, 
 must be the greatest man : he in whom it is quenched, 
 must be the lowest and most miserable man." And 
 the puzzle which we saw tormenting them both, in
 
 LECT. iv.] OEMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 101 
 
 different ways and different degrees, was this. But 
 where is this light ? Is it only in the eye ? What 
 then does the eye behold ? Is it not in the eye ? 
 How then can I call that a light ? A very deep 
 question indeed ; the answers to which, in every case, 
 are full of practical significance. The Persian solution 
 was the most simple of all. He felt that his whole 
 life was precisely this debate between light and dark- 
 ness. There must, he said, be Lords over this light 
 and over this darkness. This had probably been his 
 oldest and strongest conviction. 
 
 The nights in Persia are clear and beautiful. The 
 stars were a language which spoke to peasant and priest 
 alike of light coming out of darkness. On these the 
 one will have meditated till he thought them powers 
 and rulers of the world ; the other will have paid them 
 actual homage. The Magians, the servants of the 
 Light, will have devised a system of worship addressed 
 to these. If Zerdusht or Zoroaster were a real man, he 
 probably arose at a time when this worship had become 
 very general, and when the mind of the people had 
 become much debased by it. To some man, or some 
 men, it was given to perceive that the ministers of 
 light had become ministers of darkness. Those things 
 which symbolised a Divine Light had been substituted 
 for it. He rose up as the witness for Ormuzd, the Lord 
 of Light, to testify that light comes from him, and 
 not from the outward, material things ; that whoso 
 serves them is the servant of Ahriman, the Prince of
 
 102 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART I. 
 
 Darkness. While Ahriman teaches his servants to 
 bow down before visible things, Orrauzd communicates 
 to men his living Word (that is the meaning of Zend- 
 avesta), speaks to ^ their hearts, teaches them the 
 laws of justice and order. The battle between Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman will be long, but Ormuzd must triumph 
 at last. The kingdom of light is mightier than the 
 kingdom of darkness. This was the substance of the 
 Persian faith, to the revival of which, in its strength 
 and simplicity, all that was vigorous in the Persian 
 character and government seems to have been owing. 
 There was the greatest difference between it and the 
 Hindoo : precisely this difference, the Hindoo thought 
 of light and darkness as the opposition between cultiva- 
 tion and ignorance between the Brahmin and the 
 Sudra ; the Persian looked upon them as expressions 
 for right and wrong. Far less refined and intellectual 
 than the Indian, far less capable of mere speculation, 
 he had a sense of practical, moral distinctions to which 
 the other was almost a stranger, or, at least, which 
 never presented themselves to him, nakedly and 
 directly, as the foundation of all other distinctions. 
 Hence a difference in their scheme of life. f Right must 
 be proclaimed by some one ; not merely recognised or 
 p*erceived. The Persian, therefore, looked much more 
 to an authority which should command men, or to a 
 teacher who should impart wisdom, than merely to a 
 thinker or devotee. He regarded the king, from whom 
 the law and words of grace proceeded, with more
 
 LECT. iv.] THE PERSIAN PUZZLE. 103 
 
 reverence than the priest. There might be many 
 conflicts between the two, at times they might work 
 in harmony, but this was the abiding, characteristic 
 Persian feeling. 
 
 But there were two or three difficulties specially 
 besetting him who held this faith. The Persian felt 
 that visible things were not to be adored. It was the 
 worship of Ahriman to set up them as the lords of 
 men. Yet he had more need than the Hindoo to feel 
 that the object he was worshipping was above himself, 
 not merely in himself. He must speak of the Light 
 as coming to him, not merely as proceeding from him. 
 But if so, how shall he realise it ? Must not the light, 
 or must not the fire, or must not the sun, be in some 
 sense or other an object for him to fear and obey ? 
 This thought would be always re-appearing in the 
 popular mind, nay, in the mind of the teacher who 
 most protested against it, when he was struggling 
 with the tendency in himself and other men to set up 
 their own thoughts as if the true Light was in them. 
 To meet it the Magian devises a theory. These out- 
 ward objects -are but images or counterfeits of some- 
 thing within ; they are the productions of the king of 
 darkness : the good and great beings who appear in 
 the world come forth from the inner kingdom to subvert 
 these. Starting from such a notion as this, it was easy 
 to produce a universe of phantasies ; the simple and 
 earnest mind of the Persian, struggling against them, 
 and struggling in vain, would plunge into direct
 
 104 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 idolatry. Another awful question there was : Did this 
 power of good originate the power of evil, or is each 
 self-created ? Or whence do they come ? Some hidden 
 being there must be some deeper ground than all 
 that man could conceive. They tried to express it in 
 some name they called this ground of all things, Time 
 ivithout Bounds. 
 
 Under this last form the Persian faith came into 
 contact with the Christian Church of the first ages. 
 The influence of the Gospel over Persia was slight and 
 partial; but the preachers of it perceived a deep 
 meaning in the Persian speculations. Gradually some 
 appeared who thought the speculation beautiful, who 
 cared little for the solution. These produced some of 
 the darkest of the early heresies. When the Mussul- 
 man encountered the Persian faith he felt no such 
 temptation. " Is this your GOD this Time without 
 bounds, this phantasy the Living Being ? It is impos- 
 sible. No ! pretend what you will, you are worshippers 
 of fire, or of the sun, or of the stars. With our swords 
 we cut through your webs of sophistry through your 
 worlds seen and unseen your good and your evil prin- 
 ciples. There is one GOD, and Mahomet is his prophet. 
 Yield to that belief, or perish ! " 
 
 The victory was very complete ; such an one is 
 hardly recorded in the annals of the world. But when 
 it was effected there was found to be something im- 
 perishable in Persian faith and feelings which could 
 change the characteristics of Mahometanism itself.
 
 LECT. iv.] EGYPT. 105 
 
 To it we owe those stories of fairies and genii, which 
 mix Avith our earliest impressions of Mahometanism. 
 In a later time Persia became the home of the great 
 Sofi schism, which has introduced a new Pantheistic 
 element into the doctrine of the Koran. Under the 
 Mahometan teaching, which in Turkey has certainly 
 been favourable to veracity, the strong sense of moral 
 right and wrong which distinguished the Old Persian 
 has deserted him. He who was celebrated by Xenophon 
 as above all men the speaker of truth, has become 
 proverbial for lying. 
 
 II. The history of Persia at a certain period becomes 
 connected with that of Egypt. The connection is a 
 religious one. The Persian king Cambyses seems to 
 have been a fanatic, and to have carried on wars, if 
 not for the propagation of his own faith, at least, for 
 the punishment of those who held what he thought a 
 false one. The Egyptian priests were especial objects 
 of his abhorrence. If we ask on what grounds, we 
 shall be led into the consideration of another faith of 
 the old world, which has left the most singular records 
 of itself; which at different periods of its existence is 
 bound up with Jewish and with Greek history ; which 
 was an object of profound interest to students two 
 thousand years ago, and is scarcely of less interest to 
 the students of our own century. 
 
 One subject immediately suggests itself to most of 
 us when we think of Egypt. I mean its hieroglyphics, 
 or sacred symbolical writing. And as the deciphering
 
 106 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 of this writing has been the key to all modern dis- 
 coveries respecting the details of the history of this 
 people, so the mere fact itself that they did use such 
 a character, is, perhaps, the most helpful of all to the 
 understanding of its principle. We have seen what a 
 puzzle it was to the Persian to connect the outward 
 things which he saw with those which were objects of 
 his thought ; how continually there seemed to be some 
 light very near to his mind and heart which was reveal- 
 ing itself to him ; how, while he realised this conviction, 
 the outward sensible things which withdrew him from 
 this light, were regarded as dark and evil ; and yet how 
 difficult he found it to express his thoughts about 
 that inward light, except in terms which soon became 
 confused with sensible images. The Egyptian never 
 seems to have had this horror of visible things. He 
 felt that something very sacred lay beneath them, and 
 was expressed by them. To discover what this was, 
 to read what was hidden in the objects of nature, was, 
 in his apprehension, the function of the wise man. 
 Then he was to translate back these perceptions of his 
 into outward forms and images, that the vulgar might 
 be able to profit by them so far as it was meant that 
 they should. Hence, there grew up an order of priests 
 in Egypt, as separate from the rest of society as the 
 Brahmins. A caste system organised itself in the 
 African, as in the Asiatic, nation. But the Egyptian 
 priest was not an abstracted man in the same sense 
 as the Hindoo ; he did not so much withdraw himself
 
 LECT. iv.] HIEROGLYPHICS WHAT THEY IMPORT. 107 
 
 from the contemplation of outward things, as seek to 
 extract a virtue and a meaning from them. His first 
 thought of all seems to have been that there was a 
 Being hidden from man, but who was making himself 
 manifest in different forms and signs. His operations 
 in nature, the power which is exerted over the earth, 
 and the life which goes on within it, might, especially 
 in a country of such unparalleled fertility as Egypt, 
 present themselves as objects of wonder and witnesses 
 of a Divine presence. But it would be impossible to 
 think of v these powers in the earth, without thinking 
 of the animals which dwell upon it, of the different 
 powers and qualities which they display, of their birth 
 and decay and renewal. These animals supply him 
 with more distinct and definite symbols than the vague 
 expanse of the heaven or earth. Different kinds of 
 power are more concentrated and expressed in them; 
 they can be far more easily exhibited in stone or in 
 writing. Hence these became predominant objects of 
 meditation to the priests. The various characteristics 
 of the Godhead very soon become Gods. Students of 
 Egyptian monuments discover three stages in the 
 worship three different cycles of gods. In the earliest 
 cycle the idea of the Ammon, the hidden god, is the 
 predominant one; and his manifestations are them- 
 selves rather in active energies, in vital operations, 
 than in outward objects. The third cycle is the one 
 most directly outward, hinting, however, at principles 
 which in the first period were less perceived. As might
 
 108 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 be expected, different cities are found to have different 
 classes of symbols ; those in Upper Egypt to be charac- 
 teristically diverse from those in the Lower ; though at 
 some period an attempt must have been made to bring 
 all into one system. 
 
 Here, then, we seem to be in the idolatrous country 
 the country of divided worship ; that which teaches 
 us what idolatry means; how man loses sight of a 
 centre; how every separate thing about him may 
 become his master. And yet, throughout the whole 
 of this idolatry, there is a perpetual questioning of an 
 unknown power to tell what this visible creation means. 
 Each thing that is beheld is a riddle, an oppressive, 
 tormenting riddle, of which some solution must be 
 found. The Egyptian priest feels that the riddle is in 
 the things. He does not put it into them, and it is not 
 for him to do more than catch a stray hint of what each 
 is denoting. But there is some object, some centre. 
 The Pyramids point up to heaven as if they would say, 
 " We are in search of it, we would reach it if we could." 
 
 Such a system as this, on whatever side he viewed 
 it, would be very offensive to a Persian king, especially 
 if he lived shortly after the revival of his own faith, and 
 before it had undergone any of its later changes. The 
 Egyptians would seem to him worshippers of those out- 
 ward things, which he was taught to regard as in some 
 sort the possessions of Ahriman. And all their mystical 
 wisdom would look like miserable attempts to bring 
 light out of darkness. It was far otherwise with the
 
 LECT. iv.] LATER EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 109 
 
 Greek. The inquiries and speculations of the Egyptian 
 priests were listened to by him with attention and 
 wonder. He thought they had a secret which he did 
 not possess ; he eagerly, but often in vain, questioned 
 them to learn what it was. In later times, when a 
 Greek kingdom has established itself in the heart of 
 Egypt, under the Ptolemies, both Jews and Greeks 
 met upon that soil, and the old Egyptian feeling, of 
 a mysterious meaning lying at the root of all things, 
 exercised a remarkable influence over both. The influ- 
 ence was felt by the Christian Church which estab- 
 lished itself afterwards there, and which consisted of 
 both elements. It has left deep traces in the thoughts 
 of men during all subsequent periods. But Christianity, 
 which had a strong hold upon the Greek cities of 
 Egypt, seems never to have penetrated into the heart 
 of the country population. The symbolising tendencies 
 which it had inherited from the old faith led to divisions 
 on most momentous points, which appeared to lose their 
 momentousness in the violent party strifes and intel- 
 lectual subtleties to which they gave rise. Egypt 
 became sectarian and demoralised ; the Mahometan 
 power established itself there. Various dynasties and 
 various forms of Islamism have possessed it at different 
 times ; the arms which swept away subtleties and 
 janglings were utterly unable to cultivate the mind 
 of the Egyptian. All the European refinements and 
 material wisdom of its present ruler have not awakened 
 one thought in the people's heart, or done aught but
 
 110 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 make their slavery more ignominious and hateful. If 
 the Memnon lyre is again to give forth any music, it 
 must be touched by the rays of some sun which is 
 not yet visible in that heaven. 
 
 III. To understand the difference between the 
 Egyptian and the Greek faith, it is not necessary to 
 study a great many volumes, or to visit different lands : 
 our own British Museum will bring the contrast before 
 us in all its strength. If we pass from the hall of 
 Egyptian antiquities into the room which contains the 
 Elgin marbles, we feel at once that we are in another 
 world. The oppression of huge animal forms, the 
 perplexity of grotesque devices, has passed away. You 
 are in the midst of human forms, each individually 
 natural and graceful, linked together in harmonious 
 groups ; expressing perfect animal beauty, yet still more 
 the dominion of human intelligence over the animal. 
 You perceive that the Greek is not mainly occupied 
 with spelling out a meaning in the forms of nature : 
 their symmetry and harmony present themselves to 
 him as delightful and satisfying. He is not trying 
 to find out the natural characters in which he shall 
 utter his thoughts : he feels that he is able to write 
 them in a character devised by themselves, upon nature. 
 He can take the forms of the world and mould them 
 into expressions of the spirit that is working in himself. 
 The JBrahm or Buddha of the East, the God of Intelli- 
 gence, is with him. At Delphi, the centre of the world, 
 he utters his oracles of wisdom, by which states and
 
 LECT. iv.] APOLLO ZEUS. Ill 
 
 men are to rule themselves. But he is no mere formal, 
 abstract Divinity : he is all Light like the Persian 
 God; you may see him in the sun; but he himself 
 is a beautiful human being, with his quiver and bow, 
 destroying the creatures that offend the earth, or punish- 
 ing human wrong-doings; with the lyre, at the sound of 
 which cities spring up and men are brought into order 
 and harmony. Apollo seems to be the central figure in 
 Greek mythology, that around which the others have 
 disposed themselves. The idea of Light and Wisdom, 
 which is concentrated in him, is diffused in different 
 forms, male and female, through the rest of the 
 mythology, each having some particular locality, and 
 presenting some different aspect to the Greek mind. 
 
 But it is felt that this bright, clear, human form 
 cannot be the ground of all things. A Hindoo might 
 have said that he was an emanation from the First 
 Principle ; but a Greek, with his strong human feelings, 
 at once refers him to a Parent, and says that he must 
 be the Son of Zeus, the Lord of All. And what is He, 
 and where does He dwell ? On a high Thessalian hill, 
 out of the sight of men. There his thunders are heard ; 
 thence his decrees come forth. An awe surrounds his 
 habitation, but he too very speedily becomes a clear, 
 definite conception. He is seen in a human form, 
 presently figured in sculpture. Human acts and passions 
 are ascribed to him. The thought of mere solitary, self- 
 subsisting grandeur is intolerable to the Greek ; around 
 him therefore must be a council of chiefs. And since
 
 112 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 the upper world seems his possession, since it is impos- 
 sible to conceive of him otherwise than in the World 
 of Light; the nether world, the dark world, must have 
 its own ruler, and that other strange region, which seems 
 neither to belong to the world above nor to the world 
 below, the illimitable ocean, on which the Greek gazed 
 with delight and child-like wonder, which was ready to 
 swallow him up, and yet which owned his rule, which 
 he could traverse with his ships, which gave him a 
 sense of unbounded freedom and communion even 
 while it shut him in, and separated him from his 
 fellows this too must have its Monarch. 
 
 There was delight in forming these conceptions, in 
 moulding them into actual shapes ; and yet the heart 
 craved for something else, something that it could not 
 thus conceive and mould. Dreams came to them of 
 an earlier period, when another divinity, older than 
 Zeus, had dominion Chronos, or Time, was his name. 
 Of such a one Zoroaster had spoken, but his abstraction 
 of time without limits is quickly moulded by the Greek 
 into an outward form, an old man with a scythe, who 
 devours his children as soon as they .are born. So 
 quickly did these visions of a world above man, or of 
 a world in the past, take their shape and colouring 
 from the actual world, and from the mind of him who 
 observed it. And other visions there were, which con- 
 fessedly belonged to earth, though they began and 
 ended with heaven. The Greek Heracles is the head 
 of a whole class of human benefactors and heroes, who
 
 LECT. iv.] PROMETHEUS, DIONYSUS. 113 
 
 tilled and subdued the earth, drained marshes, destroyed 
 beasts and oppressive men, one of whom also penetrated 
 into the lower world, delivered the victims of death, so 
 proving his title to be a son of the god, and, ultimately, 
 rising into fellowship with the gods. With these were 
 mingled men who aspired rashly and presumptuously 
 to that glory Titans, who strove to overcome the Lord 
 of Heaven by pure strength one who was sentenced 
 to perpetual thirst for seizing the divine nectar one 
 whose name declares him to be the representative of 
 wisdom and foresight, who opposed the brute strength 
 of the Titans, but who, because he stole fire from 
 heaven for the good of man, must be fastened to a 
 rock, and be the prey of a vulture, till a predestined 
 deliverer should come. 
 
 All these conceptions could harmonise very well with 
 that worship of Apollo which seems to have been 
 characteristically the Greek worship. But at some 
 time or other a mysterious divinity appeared, who 
 possessed men with an inspiration which raised them 
 into gods, or degraded them into brutes a power to 
 be felt rather than beheld. The Greek imagination 
 was able to give even this Deity a form and a name ; 
 to invest him with ivy-leaves, and describe him as 
 coming amid songs and shoutings from India. But 
 the idea of such a power, so near to man, so deep 
 and inward, could not forsake them. It uttered itself 
 in poems, which were of a very different character 
 from the free songs of early times; which spoke of 
 
 M. B. L. I
 
 114 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 man as carrying on a conflict with himself and with 
 the world; which spoke of a deep, unknown Fate, 
 whereto even the gods must bow. This faith associated 
 itself also with Mysteries, which imparted to the mind 
 of the whole nation a sense of something too sacred 
 for words to utter, or images to represent, and which 
 must, nevertheless, lie at the root of human life and 
 society. 
 
 Meantime the feelings which these mysteries con- 
 veyed to the popular mind were realised in another way 
 by thoughtful men; they began to say within them- 
 selves, The origin of the things we see, of our own lives, 
 of human society, cannot be in those persons to whom 
 the traditions of our ancestors have ascribed them. 
 The authors, they said, of these traditions were poets, 
 who created our creators. But where is that which is 
 not conceived, not created ? Is it in the things them- 
 selves in water, or earth, or air, or fire ? Is it in our 
 own mind ? Is it in some principle which unites these 
 together ? These were the questions which the Greeks 
 asked themselves, when they could be no longer content 
 with the vision of a fair-haired Apollo, but must find 
 out what that Light or Intelligence was of which his 
 name testified. In pursuing such inquiries, some were 
 willing to seek aid of those Egyptian priests who seemed 
 to have discerned the meaning of things, and not to 
 have invented a meaning for them. Some wished to 
 turn the stories of their childhood into mere abstract 
 speculations; some discarded them and all belief to-
 
 LECT. iv.] LATER GREECE. 115 
 
 gether. The wisest of them laboured to show the 
 Greek youths that their Conscience and Reason de- 
 manded something which they did not create for 
 themselves; that all faith and reverence and worship, 
 the words which they spoke, their own existence, their 
 very doubts and questionings, pointed to a deep, 
 eternal ground, which could not be a visible phantom, 
 nor a theory, nor an abstraction which must be the 
 Being. 
 
 We may possibly persuade ourselves that with this 
 record of human thoughts we have nothing to do. But 
 with it is bound up the history of one of the most 
 remarkable people that has ever existed upon the earth. 
 Their inward history is necessary to interpret the out- 
 ward one. From it we must learn why the Greeks 
 were so mighty, and why they were so weak; why 
 their intellect asserted such a dominion over the 
 greatest physical power, and why it could not be 
 victorious over the animal nature in themselves ; why, 
 when they were feeble, they seemed capable of ruling 
 the world, and why, when they became its masters, they 
 were broken in pieces. And this inquiry has not 
 become an obsolete one even in reference to Greece 
 itself; the last thirty years have given it new interest. 
 The Greek mythology, after some desperate efforts to 
 ally itself with philosophy, and in that shape to put 
 itself forth as an antagonist to Christianity, sunk into 
 insignificance; the last school of purely Greek philo- 
 sophy was closed in the reign of Justinian. But the
 
 116 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 habits and character which that mythology and philo- 
 sophy embodied, exhibited themselves most remarkably 
 in the history and controversies of the Christian Church, 
 were preserved at Constantinople through the whole of 
 the middle ages, penetrated into the West at the 
 revival of letters, have survived on their own soil 
 three centuries of Mahometan dominion, and must be 
 earnestly studied by all who desire that the new Greek 
 kingdom should not exhibit all the vices and none of 
 the merits of the old Greek republics ; who desire that 
 it should be, as it may be, an efficient bond between 
 the European and the Asiatic, the Western and the 
 Eastern world. 
 
 IV. The faith which is embodied in the acts and 
 literature of the Romans is often supposed to be the 
 same with that of the Greeks. But this opinion arises, 
 I think, from the habit of comparing the systems 
 together, instead of seeking the main and central object 
 in each. The majority of the Latin books which we 
 read belong to a period after the Greeks had become 
 the teachers of Rome, and after its own faith had in 
 a great measure disappeared. Yet even from these it 
 is easy to perceive that Apollo, who as the teacher of 
 wisdom, the model of human beauty, the source of 
 harmony, was the prominent Greek Divinity, never 
 could have occupied any similar place in the Latin 
 mind. In the system of the Greeks the father of 
 Gods and men was of course the centre. He was so, 
 I believe, practically and vitally to the Roman. But
 
 LECT. iv.] BELIEF OF GREECE AND ROME. 117 
 
 he did not habitually think of Jupiter as seated on a 
 mountain, as the lord of earth and air. Such notions 
 might gradually develop themselves in his mind ; but, 
 first of all, he believed there was One in the capitol 
 of his own city ; a presence there from which all law 
 and government, the right of the father, the authority 
 of the consul, proceeded. These different conceptions 
 of a Being dwelling in the centre of the world, and 
 uttering oracles of wisdom to guide the thoughts and 
 understandings of men of one dwelling in the centre 
 of the City, and issuing words of authority and law 
 to bind citizens together, to restrain, mould, organise 
 societies, seem to mark the difference between the 
 characters and doings of the two nations ; each wonder- 
 fully asserting the power of man over natural things, 
 and ascribing this power to his connection with a 
 divine ruler, or teacher, or inspirer : but the one using 
 nature to set forth man's thoughts, the other making 
 it the servant of his purposes ; the first creating statues, 
 the other roads and aqueducts ; both aiming at unity, 
 but the one always ready to sacrifice actual unity to an 
 ideal, the other considering everything subordinate to 
 the object of keeping men practically at one ; each 
 alike disturbed by the oppositions of self-will and indi- 
 vidual interest ; but these concealing themselves, in the 
 Greek, under the pretence of defending some Principle ; 
 in the Roman, under the ambition of upholding the 
 rights of some Order. 
 
 This distinction is apparent in every part of the
 
 118 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 Roman faith. A God who defines and preserves bound- 
 aries is more sacred in his eyes than the teacher of 
 the divinest art. If he honours any God as a teacher 
 it is Mercury, because he imparts the gift of eloquence, 
 by which bodies of men are swayed by which armies 
 are moved or regulated. This result, and not the 
 cultivation of any faculty for its own sake, is what 
 he seeks. The god of war, who is often utterly con- 
 temptible in the Greek legends, is his great patron 
 and defender. The first king in old Roman heroic 
 traditions is his son, though it is not as a conqueror, 
 but as the organiser of an infant community, that those 
 traditions present him to us. War, in the Roman 
 conception of it, is not an exhibition of individual 
 prowess, however such prowess may be called forth by 
 it ; but a means of subduing restless, striving atoms 
 into order. It is, then, not at all inconsistent with his 
 reverence for Mars, that a feeling of the sanctity of 
 domestic ties should especially belong to his faith. 
 Virgil, who, though as a writer he may have copied 
 Greek models, was in heart a Roman, and entered into 
 the spirit of his country's traditions better than any 
 man, lays the foundation of it in filial reverence, in 
 the care of household gods. If the Roman entertained 
 any of the Persian awe of fire, as the symbol of light 
 and penetrating power, it was expressed in his worship 
 of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, the preserver of 
 family purity, and in the fire which was ever to be 
 kept burning within her temple. The power of the
 
 LECT. iv.] DECAY OF ROMAN BELIEF. 119 
 
 father lay at the root of his law and life ; and it was 
 not, like the Chinese, a mere human apprehension, it 
 was practically and essentially connected with all his 
 thoughts of a Divine Being. He looked upon the 
 bonds of family life as implied in the existence of a 
 commonwealth as its necessary basis and continual 
 support. Upon any less real foundation so mighty a 
 power could not have stood. Having such a ground, 
 whatever threatened it with dissolution ultimately con- 
 tributed to its strength. Conflicts of different orders 
 of society brought out principles of the constitution 
 which were previously latent; opposing principles, yet 
 necessary to each other. And soon it seemed as if 
 a power which had grown up by such regular and 
 mysterious processes must be irresistible. Carthage, 
 Egypt, Greece, bowed before it. The Parthian Empire 
 disputed with it the sovereignty of Asia. The countries 
 of Western Europe it appeared specially appointed to 
 subdue and civilise. The belief of Rome gave it, as 
 we have seen, its centre : in the capitol where Jove 
 dwelt, the nation and the world which it ruled found 
 the principle of their cohesion. The statesmen saw 
 that it was so ; they lost the belief, but determined 
 that it must be upheld for the state's sake. The 
 Family they would have acknowledged it was expedient 
 to uphold for the same reason ; but that refused to 
 stand upon a fiction, to live merely because it was 
 wanted by the politician. As all domestic bonds 
 became relaxed, the forms of the religion became more
 
 120 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 consciously unreal. Then it was seen that the state 
 could not exist any longer upon its old ground. A 
 visible Emperor must supply the place of an invisible 
 Law and Presence. The military sacrament of the 
 soldier to the commander must be the one substitute 
 for the ancient reverence. And such was the force of 
 this bond, so much of the feeling and principle of 
 order still survived in it, that the state could last 
 even for centuries with this thin plank separating it 
 from the abyss. The plank cracked often gave way 
 at last ; and the nations, which had been prepared for 
 the day and the hour, seized the spoil. Before that 
 catastrophe the proclamation of a set of Galilean fisher- 
 men, that a crucified man was the Lord of the World, 
 had been believed by the Emperors. Roman paganism 
 seemed to disappear from the earth. But its peculiar 
 character, the secret of its power, the cause of its 
 decay, should be carefully reflected on, or the history 
 of Western Christendom for twelve hundred years will 
 be to us an inexplicable riddle. 
 
 V. Very soon after Rome became an empire it was 
 discovered that there was a part of Europe which 
 was more formidable to it than even the Parthian 
 empire in the East. Intelligent Romans began to 
 inquire very earnestly what that German race was 
 which seemed to present the newest and strangest 
 obstacle to Roman ascendancy. They had a prophetic 
 feeling that the question would be a very interesting 
 one in after days to their own country and to man-
 
 LECT. iv.] THE GOTHS. THEIR MYTHOLOGY. 121 
 
 kind. They found a people who recalled to them the 
 traditions of their own ancestors; rude and scattered, 
 full of individual energy, severe and chaste, reverenc- 
 ing family bonds ; with a sense, however imperfectly 
 developed, of social order. A few observations they 
 made upon the faith of this people, which are well 
 worthy of note. "The Germans looked upon day," 
 says Tacitus, " as coming out of night, the last as the 
 ground of the first. They appeared to pay a kind of 
 worship to the earth. They looked upon themselves as 
 descended from Mannus." It seemed to the Roman, 
 trying to translate their notions into his own, that 
 Mercury was their chief god. These hints, slight and 
 imperfect as they are, throw great light upon the 
 mythology of Germany and the North, as we receive 
 it from those who lived under its influence. To trace 
 it through all its mazes may be difficult, and not very 
 profitable ; but there are certain great features in it 
 which are worthy of earnest consideration. 
 
 I did not endeavour to disconnect the Mythology 
 of Persia from its climate and scenery. The thoughts 
 of the Magian were wonderfully affected by Eastern 
 nights and days, and Eastern earth and sky. So like- 
 wise were the thoughts of the Goth, by the murky 
 atmosphere in which he dwelt, by the dark woods 
 which he must fell, by the seas out of which the solid 
 land emerged or which broke in upon it. Doubtless, 
 the phenomena of the world occasioned the Northerns 
 great perplexity; all the powers of earth and air and
 
 122 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 fire and water are at work in their tales and poems. 
 The conflicts of these powers may, in one sense, be 
 said to be the subject of them. 
 
 But we know little, indeed, about our ancestors, if 
 we suppose that they were thinking merely about such 
 matters. They described wars of giants, of good and 
 evil powers. It is easy to say these giants only express 
 the struggles and throes of nature cultivation con- 
 tending with barrenness, spring succeeding winter. But 
 why are they giants ? Why do they take this personal 
 form ? Why, if winter and spring were chiefly in 
 their minds, did they not speak of winter and spring ? 
 Tacitus is most right in saying that the earth is the 
 object of their study, perhaps of their worship ; but 
 he is still more right in saying that they felt them- 
 selves derived from Mannus. Man is the subduer of 
 the earth ; because he lives upon it, tills it, sows 
 it, rescues it from the waters, brings the harvests of 
 autumn out of the frosts of winter ; therefore do these 
 Goths care about the earth. A.nd those battles which 
 they see going on upon it or beneath it, those struggles 
 of gigantic powers of evil with deliverers and bene- 
 factors, are interpreted to them by what they feel going 
 on in themselves ; they are the wars of Mannus, much 
 "more than of the earth, and sea, and sky. Head them 
 -in this light, and every Northern saga is full of pro- 
 foundest interest and instruction. A mighty power of 
 death and of darkness struggling to draw all creatures 
 into itself; mightier powers of good struggling against
 
 LECT. iv.] ODIN. VARIOUS THEORIES. 123 
 
 it; consuming fires, that are to destroy what is corrupt; 
 life coming out of death, second birth, resurrection 
 these are ideas by which you see that they were 
 haunted and possessed. They could find no clue to 
 the strange mystery, yet they felt that it was near 
 them, and about them, and that there must be some 
 bright sun, which would come forth one day to scatter 
 the shadows, and show all things in their true relations 
 and proportions. Yet it is equally true that Mannus 
 himself and his origin are lost in the Infinite. Tacitus 
 expresses the idea of the mythology in this respect too 
 distinctly and definitely, but not unhappily, when he 
 speaks of Mercury the messenger of gods and men, 
 who passes rapidly from heaven to earth, and from 
 earth to the shades below, who connects each with the 
 other, as the object of Gothic reverence. Such a being, 
 only surrounded with vagueness and mist, not capable 
 of being exhibited in a form like the Greek Hermes, 
 or the Eoman Mercury, is the Northern Odin. Each 
 new theorist about him will present him in a different 
 aspect, one as a mere mortal, to whom a history may 
 be ascribed one as a mere divinity one as a teacher 
 of human wisdom one as merely the ideal of wisdom 
 one perhaps as the representation of some physical 
 process one as the establisher of a political order. 
 Each may give plausible reasons for his opinion; no 
 worshipper of him could have told you which was 
 true; he would have felt that in some sense all must 
 be true. Precisely the necessity of his mind was to
 
 c 
 
 124 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 find some 'object in which these characters might really 
 meet: who should bring the clear light out of the 
 darkness, and be a conqueror in that war with the 
 earth's tormentors. 
 
 I have now completed this division of my subject, 
 and I may ask you for a moment to consider how 
 the different portions of it are connected together, and 
 what is the general result. Mahometanism, we see, 
 stands upon a different ground from all the rest. It 
 starts from the Divine Will, it assumes a declaration 
 of that Will to men, it affirms men to be the servants 
 of God to execute His Will. Hindooism has only the 
 faintest conception of a Divine Will ; but it recognises 
 a Divine original Light or Intelligence from which 
 the intelligence in man proceeds, and which it is to 
 contemplate. In striving to ascertain what this Light 
 is how it is distinct from the human intelligence the 
 Brahmin becomes lost in speculation. The Buddhist 
 cuts the knot, practically makes man's intellect the 
 origin of all things; yet recognises a certain universal 
 Intelligence dwelling in the race, and concentrated 
 from time to time in some person. Hindooism and 
 Buddhism have been compelled in different ways to 
 come down from the merely abstract region, and to 
 speak of the Divinity as concerned with the doings 
 of ordinary men; as exercising influences beneficent 
 or pernicious over them : each has been obliged to
 
 t 
 
 LECT. iv.] SUMMARY. 125 
 
 explain what the universe has to do with the original 
 Intelligence ; each has been compelled into an idolatry 
 of material things against which, in its first conception, 
 it is a protest. Both have struggled with Mahomet- 
 anism, and been overcome by it; neither has been 
 able to amalgamate with it; for neither has it been 
 found to be a substitute. Buddhism in China has 
 established itself side by side with a system of social 
 order, the basis of which is the recognition of paternal 
 authority, and which regards the knowledge of the 
 invisible as unattainable. Entirely opposed to this 
 system, Buddhism has been found nevertheless an in- 
 dispensable supplement to it : even for the accom- 
 plishment of its own purpose. These different faiths, 
 which exercise a dominion over so large a portion of 
 the universe, claim something to satisfy them, some- 
 thing to unite them. Not one of them contains the 
 solution of the difficulties which it has raised; each 
 testifies that there is a chasm which the other seems 
 meant to fill up; but it remains a chasm still. Not 
 one of them can be satisfied by any philosophical 
 theory about the universe, or about man, or about 
 God, or about all of them. Mahometanism meets 
 such theories by its primary proclamation, God is; 
 He must be a living personal Being : he must be the 
 King of Men. Hindooism is continually attempting 
 to philosophise, but every new turn of its history 
 proclaims, We want a Living Intelligence, which shall 
 hold converse with men, and with which men may
 
 126 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 converse. Buddhism has been a continual effort at 
 philosophy ; but every passage of its history proclaims, 
 Philosophy will not do for us ; we want a Living In- 
 telligence to dwell in man. And now we have to add 
 some new evidence to this. First, we hear from the 
 Persian a cry for some infinite, absolute Being, the 
 ground of Light and Darkness, which he can only call 
 Illimitable Time. Then from the Egyptian the witness 
 of an Ammon, or hidden God. Then from the Greek 
 the cry for something which he cannot express which 
 must be veiled in mysteries, which the poet speaks of 
 as irresistible Fate, which the philosopher says must be 
 the Being, which cannot be material, and yet is no 
 abstraction. The Roman must have an invisible God of 
 the city, a righteous lawgiver, preserving the authority 
 of his state, or it perishes. Unless in the heaven or 
 the abyss there be one greater than Mannus, the dark 
 thoughts of the Goth signify nothing. But none of 
 them can be satisfied with the recognition of this 
 hidden Being. There must be a manifestation of Him. 
 From the immeasurable Time a Light must come 
 forth, and that Light must be a Person. An Ormuzd 
 must speak living words, nay must be a living Word. 
 .\mmon must assume forms ; the visible must, in some 
 way, set forth the Invisible. One all clear and bright 
 must be himself Wisdom to the Greeks must utter 
 the thoughts of Wisdom, which keep them a people, 
 and then must scatter himself through a thousand 
 visible images. The Jove of the capitol cannot be
 
 t 
 LECT. iv.] A REALITY IN THE MYTHOLOGIES. 127 
 
 only there. His presence must come forth in the host 
 and in the family. Odin must travel from land to 
 land, teach, give laws, open Walhalla to men. 
 
 Look at these religions, and you see in them all a 
 witness of unity. Look at them again, and you see 
 there is something which divides them from each other. 
 They confess that if men are to unite, it must be in 
 something above themselves ; they cannot unite ; for 
 things beneath themselves, the accidents of life, the 
 climate, the soil of the lands in which they dwell, 
 seem to determine what it is that is above them. 
 They confess that if men are to unite, it must be in 
 something above themselves; but the habits, tempers, 
 tastes of the worshippers determine what it is which 
 is above them. 
 
 This is the report which history gives of these 
 religions the stamp which they have left of them- 
 selves upon the actual universe. Dare you talk of 
 all this as merely an illustration of the working of 
 the religious principle in men ? Dare you use such a 
 dry, withered, heartless abstraction, to get rid of the 
 recollection that you have been hearing how beings 
 of your own flesh felt and acted and suffered ? Or 
 can you comfort yourselves with saying, "These have 
 all passed . away ; the Persian Ormuzd and Ahriman 
 the Egyptian dream of types in the world which 
 must have some antitype the Greek question, how is 
 it I can create such marvels? what is it I cannot 
 create ? the Roman sense of a divine order in the
 
 128 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART i. 
 
 nation and family the Odin warfare of good and evil 
 spirits ; they have passed away as visions of the night." 
 Visions they were, but visions which came to men 
 concerning the dreadful realities of their own existence. 
 They were visions of the night, but by them men had 
 to steer their vessels and shape their course; without 
 them all would have been dark. And we belong to 
 the same race with the men who had these visions; 
 some nearer to us, some more distant, some brought 
 up in regions utterly unlike our own, some almost our 
 kinsmen after the flesh ; all our kinsmen in reality. 
 It has not been a mistake, I believe, in our educa- 
 tion that we have busied ourselves so much with the 
 legends of Greece and Rome. If we used them aright, 
 they would not serve for the food of an idle dilet- 
 tantism they would teach us reverence and fear. We 
 should tremble as we remembered, "These dreams of 
 a beauty which eye hath not seen, or ear heard, have 
 visited the hearts of human beings generations ago; 
 the dark and filthy imaginations which mingled with 
 these dreams were engendered in the same hearts; by 
 one as much as the other and by the fearful combin- 
 ation we know that those hearts were like our own. 
 .They will dwell together in us, and in time the vile 
 will seem real, the beautiful only a shadow, unless we 
 can find that the beauty has been somewhere sub- 
 stantiated; unless we can see the beauty apart from 
 the corruption; unless there is some power which can 
 establish the one and destroy the other in ourselves."
 
 t 
 LECT. iv.] A REALITY IN THE MYTHOLOGIES. 129 
 
 Such reflections often come, I trust, to the young 
 men of our land, as they read the classical fables. Yet 
 these belong rather to a refined cultivation, and they 
 may so possess the mind with the love of finite forms 
 as to make it forget that those who conceived them 
 could not be satisfied with them, but cried for the 
 Infinite beyond. It is otherwise with the tales of our 
 own proper ancestors. These are bound up with the 
 thoughts of our peasantry ; the most ignorant man feels 
 that they represent some of the unspeakable fears and 
 hopes of his spirit. And they clothe themselves in no 
 graceful forms. The storms and earthquakes of nature 
 are the only adequate types of the conflict which they 
 speak of, a conflict in which human beings of that day 
 were actually engaged. Are we not engaged in it too ? 
 Have we asked ourselves whether we can bear up in 
 it alone ? if not, whether we know where help in it is 
 to be found ? 
 
 M. B. L.
 
 PART II. 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE 
 WORLD WITH CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 LECTUEE I. 
 
 Why Judaism has not occupied a separate place in these Lectures. 
 Mahometanism related to Christianity on its Judaical side. 
 Nature of the relation indicated. Wherein Mahometanism 
 differs from Judaism. Dangers to Christianity from the 
 forgetfulness or predominance of its Mahometan side. Hoio 
 the Christian Faith and Church satisfy the cravings of 
 Mahometans. 
 
 T SPOKE in my last lecture of Mahometanism, Hin- 
 *- dooism, and Buddhism, as the three great existing 
 religions of the world; of the Persian, the Egyptian, 
 the Greek, the Roman, and the Gothic, as the most 
 conspicuous of those which belong to the past. It may 
 strike some of you, that in one of these lists, though 
 you may scarcely be able to say in which, there was a 
 capital omission. Might not even the letter of Boyle's 
 Will have reminded me, that the Christian missionary 
 is likely to be encountered by Jews in all parts of the 
 world? Is there any faith which has had a more 
 memorable past than theirs? 
 
 It is indeed true, that a person must take a most 
 imperfect view of society ^ during the last eighteen
 
 t 
 LECT. i.] THE JEWS. 131 
 
 hundred years, who forgets that the Jew has had a 
 place in it. Upon whatever age, upon whatever por- 
 tion of the world he fixes his eye, this strange figure 
 encounters him. He sees men without a place which 
 they can call their own upon the earth, still feeling 
 themselves to be the nation which has been chosen out 
 of all others to be the head of the earth ; men willingly 
 submitting to the most grovelling occupations, and with 
 a character seemingly conformed to these occupations, 
 yet never deserted by a vision of past and future glory ; 
 men trampled upon by all people, and yet exercising 
 a mighty influence, one which has increased with the 
 increase of riches and civilisation, over the counsels of 
 statesmen and princes; men, who if the time should 
 come when no GOD but Mammon is worshipped in the 
 world, will carry a fearful recollection into the temples 
 of Mammon of one who may be his destroyer. It is 
 true also that the Jew has never been without powerful 
 arguments for that which he holds, and against that 
 which he denies. He can always appeal to his own 
 consistency in support of the first to the persecutions 
 and crimes of Pagans, Mahometans, and Christians, as 
 evidence in opposition to them. Though he cannot 
 make converts, though he does not wish it for his 
 business is to keep the family of Abraham distinct from 
 all others he can do much to shake the faith of those 
 among whom he dwells. In all times, of late years 
 more especially, he has been able to adapt himself to 
 prevailing habits of thought and feeling, to become
 
 i 
 132 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART IT. 
 
 conspicuous in art and science, to enter into philo- 
 sophical speculations, and strangely to mingle the 
 lessons which he has received in the schools of the 
 Prophets with the wisdom of those who most despise 
 them. 
 
 The Jew then may on these grounds be well said 
 to belong to the present, his religion to be one of the 
 existing religions of the earth. He is a witness for 
 something which survives. But he is also, by his own 
 sad confession, a witness for something which is 
 departed. Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, exhibit the 
 signs of a bygone world to travellers who go in search 
 of them. The Israelite carries the signs of the change 
 which has befallen Palestine with him into the meanest 
 street of every city of Europe, Asia, America. The 
 rich merchant, the beggarly hawker, testify to the glory 
 of David and Solomon. 
 
 But there is this reason for not placing the Jew in 
 either of those divisions to which I referred the other 
 beliefs of mankind. We cannot go back in his case, as 
 we did in that of the Mahometan, to the first promulga- 
 tion of the faith, or, as in the case of the Hindoo, to the 
 earliest Vedas, without finding ourselves engaged in the 
 assertion or defence of that which is as dear to us as 
 it, is to him ; we cannot interpret his present position, 
 except by comparing it with our own. In following 
 the course which I marked out for myself originally, 
 we shall, I believe, be enabled to consider this subject 
 from its right point of view. I proposed to inquire
 
 I 
 
 LECT. i.] THE DIVINE VOICE SPEAKING TO MEN. 133 
 
 how the religious which have passed under our review 
 stand severally related to Christianity. The first of 
 these was the Mahometan. Now it is in the Jewish 
 side of Christianity that we must seek for this relation. 
 From the Old Testament we shall learn what are the 
 great points of agreement between us and the Maho- 
 metan. In studying those points of agreement, we 
 shall, perhaps, see more clearly the grounds of our dif- 
 ference both with the Mahometan and the modern Jew. 
 I. I endeavoured to show you in my first Lecture 
 that the mere dry, formal assertion of the unity of God, 
 as an article of doctrine, was not that which had given 
 Islamism its power. The proclamation, " There is one 
 God," was no school formula; it was the announce- 
 ment of a Living Being, acting, speaking, ruling. Now 
 this is the leading characteristic of the Old Testament. 
 Schoolmen giving you an account of it will say, that it 
 is distinguished .from all Pagan books by its assertion 
 of the unity of the object of worship. But we have 
 seen reason to think that this quality, taken alone, 
 might not separate it from the early sacred writings of 
 the Hindoos. Turn to the Book of Genesis or Exodus, 
 and you at once feel the essential difference. There 
 are no speculations about God, no questionings how 
 man is to contemplate Him, or to be absorbed into His 
 essence. He is creating the world according to a certain 
 order ; He is making man in His own image ; He is 
 placing man in a garden, fixing a certain prohibition 
 for him, giving him a helpmeet, discovering his sin
 
 ' 
 
 134 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 when he has broken the command, pronouncing a 
 sentence upon him, promising him a blessing. He is 
 punishing the murderer, visiting the earth with a flood, 
 calling out a man to be a preserver of the race, sending 
 forth his sons to people the earth, with the rainbow as 
 a pledge of His mercy ; scattering them abroad when 
 they wish to build a tower, and to make themselves a 
 name; calling a man out of his father's house, and 
 bidding him to go into a land which should be shown 
 him; promising him that in him and in his seed all 
 the families of the earth should be blest; giving him 
 a covenant, giving him a son ; trying the faith of the 
 father; revealing himself to Isaac and Jacob; guiding 
 the Hebrew youth into Egypt ; causing him to bring 
 his whole family thither; hearing their cry when a 
 king arose who knew not Joseph, and made them 
 slaves ; revealing Himself to Moses as the I Am ; 
 sending signs and judgments upon Pharaoh, bringing 
 the people out of Egypt, appointing them a feast in 
 memorial of their deliverance from generation to gener- 
 ation ; feeding them with manna, and causing the rock 
 to be struck when they were thirsty ; proclaiming the 
 Law to them amidst thunders and lightnings; pre- 
 , scribing the form of the tabernacle, and the order of 
 the priesthood; laying down the ordinary rules which 
 were suitable to them as an eastern people ; going before 
 them in the ark of the covenant. 
 
 Nothing, you see, is set forth in the Hindoo manner, 
 as a dream, or thought, or reflection about God ; all is
 
 I 
 
 LECT. i.] THE GREAT FIRST PRINCIPLE. 135 
 
 set forth as coming from Him ; He is, and He is doing. 
 This is the Old Testament language ; this is the lan- 
 guage which the Mahometan asserts must be true still. 
 It is a record, he said, but not merely a record it tells 
 us of Him who was, and is, and is to come ; of One by 
 whose command the world was made, and by whose 
 command it subsists; who rules and directs in the 
 affairs of men, not less now than of old. I conceive 
 that there is nothing in Christianity so primary and 
 fundamental as this belief; nothing which it is so 
 necessary for us to assert, in the simple practical lan- 
 guage of the Old Testament, and not to dilute by any 
 modern phrases or unreal substitutes. It was on this 
 account especially that I violated chronology, by con- 
 sidering Mahometanism before either of the other 
 religions with which it divides Asia; for I believed 
 that it had taken hold of the great first principle 
 that it had begun at the beginning; not working its 
 way up to the divine ground from the earthly, but 
 assuming that ground as its starting-point. And, at 
 the same time, I wished you to feel how idle the 
 assertion is, that this doctrine merely belongs to the 
 world in its infancy; how when it seemed to have 
 become obsolete, amidst the arguments and discussions 
 of the schools, it stood forth again as a living, terrific 
 reality: as a truth which men must be taught by the 
 sword, if they would be taught it in no other way. 
 
 II. Next, the Mahometan believed that the Lord of 
 All does actually make His will known to men ; that
 
 136 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 He speaks, and that they can hear and obey His voice. 
 This is the second most obvious characteristic of the 
 Old Testament. Abram is called out of his land by 
 the unseen Lord. He knows that he is, and he does 
 what he is commanded. Moses is bidden to go in before 
 Pharaoh ; he shrinks from the work, but he is certain 
 that the Lord God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob 
 has sent him. Thus Kevelation, or the declaration 
 of God's mind and will of God himself to man, is 
 assumed as the ground of action, and history, and 
 knowledge. It is not put as a vague, distant possi- 
 bility that such communications may be made to man, 
 that they may reach him ; it is declared that they must 
 reach him, or that he is helpless and ignorant. He 
 must act under a divine call of some kind, or he cannot 
 act rightly. The Mahometan affirms that this truth 
 of the old time is a truth of the later time. In the 
 seventh century after Christ, Mahomet claims to be 
 called of God to a work. We may believe that in 
 many points he greatly mistook the nature of this call, 
 of this work. But the principle that any man who 
 rouses the heart of a nation, who proclaims any deep 
 truth in the midst of it, has a calling a calling from 
 ^God ; that he has no right to deny it or to explain 
 it away; that he cannot do what he is meant to do 
 except on the faith of it ; this is a conviction which 
 we Christians, like the Mahometan, have inherited, or 
 ought to have inherited, from the Jew. Our own 
 language is framed upon the supposition; we speak
 
 I 
 
 LECT. i.] THE DIVINE BOOK. 137 
 
 of callings and vocations. If the words mean nothing, 
 it is a great pity that we should use them. It is 
 lending ourselves to a falsehood it is contracting a 
 false habit of mind. But I am sure they have meant 
 something to men in past times to all good and great 
 men, who have really served their generation in any 
 kind of work. And I do trust and believe that they 
 mean something to some of us still ; that we feel we 
 should be parting with what is most precious, if they 
 cease to mean that something; that we desire they 
 should mean much more. 
 
 III. But, thirdly, the Mahometan, while he acknow- 
 ledges that the voice of God thus speaks to men, 
 believes as strongly that there is meant to be some 
 record of His utterances some book of which it may 
 be said, This is the book. He cannot part with this 
 conviction; it is necessary to him. Whether or not 
 he can explain how and why the Koran should cease 
 at a certain point, he is sure that it was to cease at 
 a certain point; that there must be a Book which is 
 complete, and to which men may refer as an authority. 
 The Israelites, of whom we read in the Old Testament, 
 could not of course contemplate that Book as a com- 
 plete Book; it was growing. Their own lives and 
 histories were contributing to it. Their Patriarchs 
 had no Book. Still, from the time that the Law was 
 delivered, they were convinced that they had that 
 written in enduring letters which proceeded from God. 
 They believed that His communications were meant
 
 138 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 to be preserved in letters. They laboured to preserve 
 them, and to keep them apart from all which they 
 believed was not His. They had confidence that God 
 Himself would watch over His own Revelation. Upon 
 us this conviction also has descended : we agree with 
 the Mahometan that the belief in a Book of Revelation, 
 a completed Book, is not incompatible with the idea 
 of God ruling in the world now, of His calling men 
 'to do a work for Him now; nay, that the one truth 
 is necessary to the other. Why Mahomet required 
 a new Bible in the seventh century, why we do not 
 require it, is a point to be considered hereafter; that 
 which I am pressing here is, that both alike do feel 
 the need of a Bible of a Divine Book. 
 
 IV. But the Mahometan does not only look upon the 
 peculiar Prophet as called of God. He believes that the 
 whole body of Islamites is a body called by God to the 
 work of proclaiming Him, and putting down whatever 
 sets itself in opposition to Him. I need not remind you 
 that the children of Israel had this belief concerning 
 themselves. In the strength of it they went a little 
 handful of men, who were lately Egyptian slaves and 
 drove out the Canaanitish people ; beating down their 
 walls, and slaying them with the edge of the sword. 
 They were not a wild, undisciplined host a terrific 
 horde, like the Huns or the Avars of later times ; they 
 were most orderly; divided according to tribes, each 
 man encamping beside the standard of the house of 
 his fathers, marshalled under regular leaders, practising
 
 k 
 
 LECT. i.] THE DIVINELY- APPOINTED WARRIORS. 139 
 
 the ordinary methods and stratagems of war. Still, 
 that which gave them all their energy, that which 
 made them one people, that which caused their dis- 
 cipline to be an instrument of their valour, not a 
 substitute for it, was a belief that the Lord of Hosts 
 was among them, that they were His soldiers, and 
 moving under His command. They were sure that 
 they had a commission from Him to punish a people 
 the cup of whose iniquities was full. They were sure 
 they were not doing a work for themselves, but were 
 executing the purposes of His Will. And this the 
 Mahometan says is the true law of armies, the right 
 spirit for men of later as well as earlier days to fight 
 in and to act in. They must feel that an Unseen 
 Power is in the midst of their host ; that they are His 
 soldiers. We are often told that the opinion is a mis- 
 taken and a dangerous one ; one which belonged to 
 Judaism, and which Christianity discountenances. I 
 cannot think so. That there is a sense in which the 
 disciples of the Koran have perverted Jewish example, 
 I shall endeavour to show presently. Perhaps we shall 
 find that the perversion has been in not adhering to 
 it closely enough. But I do not think that any 
 Christian nation has ever been the worse for believing 
 that it was acting as the minister of God. Our forms 
 and proclamations always express this. Have we been 
 better when these forms and proclamations were real 
 and significant, or when they were false ? It seems to 
 me, that the more we come to think these phrases not
 
 140 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 merely phrases, but the expressions of what is true, the 
 more simple and honest our lives will be, and that 
 when to any nation they become mere phrases, its life, 
 I need not say its Christianity, is gone. I feel very 
 sure that the sense of a Divine Presence has never 
 utterly forsaken, and does not forsake, any host of 
 Christian men fighting by land or sea: or that, if it 
 do, their arms become palsied, and they become the 
 shame of their enemies. They may act very inconsist- 
 ently with this profession ; the inconsistency no doubt 
 weakens the reality of it ; but it is not a mere pro- 
 fession. Asking the help of God may be a poor 
 formality to easy, luxurious men ; those who are on 
 the eve of battle, who are standing between life and 
 death, have no time for words unless they mean some- 
 thing. And they have a signification as of old, other- 
 wise a feeble force would not be able to put a greater 
 one to flight, supported by all the advantages of posi- 
 tion, and the resources of art. When our soldiers shall 
 quite disbelieve that the same Lord who went forth 
 with Joshua and Gideon is with them, see whether 
 we shall have tidings of courage and triumph, and not 
 rather of cowardice and ignominy. 
 
 Y. We saw how much the office of the caliph or 
 sovereign blended itself with Mahometan life and 
 history, how the visible centre of the host recalled 
 to each soldier the sense of his allegiance to Allah 
 the Unseen King. Here, again, we are reminded of 
 the Old Testament. David, and every true king, felt
 
 I 
 
 LECT. i.] THE DIVINELY-APPOINTED WARRIORS. 141 
 
 that he reigned by covenant with God, that he was the 
 witness of Him to the people. And his people returned 
 the feeling. Looking up to him, they felt that they 
 were a people indeed it was not a dream ; they were 
 so actually ; they had one heart, one with each other, 
 one with those who had gone before them, one with 
 those who should come after them. Of course such lan- 
 guage is liable to misinterpretation. There were crimes 
 and divisions in the times of David and Hezekiah, as 
 at all times. Scripture does not conceal them, but 
 declares them, and shows the punishment of them. 
 When any evil deed was perpetrated by the king it 
 destroyed the reverence of the people for him, and so 
 their own unity. On the other hand, their evil con- 
 dition re-acted upon him, and led him to depend more 
 on the number of his armed men than upon the strength 
 of Israel. These facts, far from weakening the assertion 
 I made, illustrate it. Do not they seem also to prove 
 that these records are not merely records of the past, 
 or of a particular nation, but that they explain the 
 bonds by which sovereign and subjects are connected 
 according to a divine and immutable law, in all times 
 and in all nations ? So the Mahometan thought in his 
 own case. Had the people whom he attacked felt the 
 same ; had there been that real vital relation between 
 the monarch and those who paid him homage, which 
 there was between the caliph and the soldiers of the 
 Crescent, those soldiers would not have triumphed as 
 they did. I am making no rash assertion; but one
 
 142 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART ir. 
 
 borne out by history. Asia was not able to resist the 
 armies of the prophet, because there was in it no such 
 national feeling as that which I have described. 
 Constantinople could not ultimately resist them, for 
 this feeling was perishing in the Greek empire. They 
 were resisted in Western Europe, for there a set of 
 Christian nations had gradually grown up, believing, 
 amidst many confusions and inconsistencies no doubt, 
 but still practically believing, that their kings were 
 covenant kings, reigning in the name of the Lord, as 
 much as the kings of Judah had ever done. 
 
 These are some of the points of real affinity between 
 Christianity and Mahometanism. I say Christianity; 
 meaning thereby that though these principles belong 
 to the Old Testament, and not to the New, as such, 
 yet that Christians can adopt them and realise them, 
 and that Jews, who seem to stand upon the ground 
 of the Old Testament, cannot. I do not say this in 
 reproach to them, I merely state a fact. All the most 
 living principles of the Old Testament, those which 
 were embodied in the history of the Jewish people, 
 have become dead letters to their descendants. They 
 retain the acknowledgment of the Divine unity as 
 against anything which contradicts it, or seems to them 
 to contradict it. But the sense of a Living Being, of 
 One speaking, acting, ruling, this may dwell deep down 
 in the heart of Jews ; it may have been drawn out by 
 persecution in many; but, so far as we can judge, it is 
 always threatening to become dried in a formula among
 
 * 
 LECT. i.] THE OLD AND MODERN JEW. 143 
 
 the orthodox Israelites, to lose itself in pantheistical 
 phrases among the liberal and intellectual. The former 
 class will readily acknowledge a Divine Book, but for 
 the very purpose of keeping out the notion of any real 
 intercourse between heaven and earth since it was 
 closed. And yet this Book will not satisfy them ; it 
 must be stifled under Rabbinical interpretations; all 
 its practical, homely, awful realities, must be reduced 
 into notions, and speculations, and frivolities. The 
 liberal class will gladly avail themselves of phrases 
 about a living voice, that they may throw off the 
 burden of these interpretations, and in fact of the Book 
 which they oppress. But the living voice does not 
 proceed from a personal being who has a right to com- 
 mand his creatures ; there is no bowing to it as to that 
 which must not, cannot, be resisted; no acknowledg- 
 ment of a high calling, no feeling of a relation to the 
 past ; only a claim to be independent, to think and feel 
 differently from those who went before a very natural 
 tendency, surely, in men who have been under a grievous 
 yoke, but offering little hope that they will be emanci- 
 pated from it, or will not fall under a more grievous 
 one still. No wonder then that the reality of the 
 unseen should be lost in that very worship which was 
 established as the witness of it, that the Jewish cere- 
 monial should bind the spirit to earth instead of raising 
 it. No wonder that the most vulgar of all outward 
 things, the mere coin by help of which one is exchanged 
 for another, should have become the great object of
 
 144 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 heart devotion. To speak of this people as not having 
 now any' sense of the relation of a people to its 
 Sovereign, would be a mockery : that heavy loss is of 
 course inevitable. It is far pleasanter to remember 
 that the sense of a national existence, of a national 
 calling, has, through all these centuries of degradation, 
 not forsaken them. It has been upheld by that glorious 
 hope of a Deliverer to come hereafter, which neither the 
 Rabbinism of one of their schools, nor the Pantheism 
 of another, has been able to extinguish. They had 
 been almost six hundred years without a temple or a 
 capital, scorned and hated by all people, when Mahomet 
 arose ; yet when he bade them join his standard as the 
 reviver of the true faith of their fathers, as the asserter 
 of the Lord Jehovah against his enemies, they utterly 
 refused the invitation. He thought, and perhaps rightly, 
 that they were too degraded to understand the words 
 which he spoke to them, too little worshippers of Him 
 whom their Scriptures proclaimed, to believe that He 
 could really interfere in the affairs of the world. The 
 prophet's first great war, therefore, was directed against 
 them. If they yielded they were not crushed, still less 
 converted. The belief that they belonged to the true 
 stock of Abraham, and he at best only to an ille- 
 
 i 
 
 gitimate offshoot from it, that they were children of 
 the promises, and he was not, sustained them. Here 
 was the one sure thing which they could hold fast, a 
 token that the lock of hair on the head of Samson, 
 shorn, blinded, and captive, might still grow again.
 
 LECT. i.] THE JEW AND THE ISLAMITE. 145 
 
 There was a reality and continuity in the national 
 feeling of the Jew which the Islamite felt he could not 
 encounter. He acknowledged a sovereign, his empire 
 was to spread far and wide ; but, except so far as the 
 caliph or representative of Mahomet was concerned, 
 this empire had no connection with any feeling of 
 family, or even country. Mecca became indeed the 
 shrine of religious worship for all Mahometans ; but the 
 practical centre of Mahometan society was at one time 
 in Persia, at another in Spain, at last in Turkey. So 
 that a system, in many respects like the Jewish, was 
 in this one directly opposed to it. The Jews had grown 
 from a family into a nation, and, so long as they continued 
 a nation, were the great witnesses against all attempts 
 at universal sovereignty. The Mahometans, setting 
 at nought family distinctions and national distinctions, 
 attempted to bind all races and languages together, under 
 the authority of one man, the successor of the Prophet. 
 This is a remark of great importance with a view 
 to the subject on which we are now engaged. I have 
 shown you that there are many points in which Chris- 
 tianity and Mahometanism both claim affinity with 
 Judaism, as it was set forth in the Old Testament. 
 Now we are come to a point in which they both separ- 
 ate from it. The Mahometan claims to be a universal 
 religion; to set up a universal society. The Gospel 
 does so too. The questions we have now to consider 
 are, on what basis these universal societies respectively 
 rest, and what is the relation between them. 
 
 M. B. L. L
 
 146 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 I. We have seen that it is common to Judaism, to 
 Mahometanism, to Christianity, that they assert the 
 will of a living Being as the ground of all things, that 
 they speak of Him as declaring Himself, as exercising 
 a continual, not an occasional, government over men. 
 This recognition of a Divine, personal, unseen Sove- 
 reignty; of One who is not sought out by men, but 
 who seeks men ; who calls them, and chooses them to 
 do His work, is the strength of all three. Each one 
 of them becomes helpless when this faith is lost, or 
 is exchanged for any other. But if you look at the 
 records of the Old Testament, you will be struck by 
 nothing so much as this that the Divine Being is 
 continually said to be declaring His NAME to men. In 
 other words, it is not the fad of His existence chiefly 
 which He is teaching them to acknowledge ; but his 
 character what manner of Being He is. He calls 
 upon them to obey a Will; each act of obedience 
 brings them into closer acquaintance with Him who 
 gives the command. 
 
 II. Hence we are able to understand the calling of 
 the Jewish Prophet. We are expressly told that he is 
 called to know this Name. The character of God 
 
 reveals itself to him in the different circumstances of 
 his own history, or his nation's history. He is taught 
 that the evil which he is conscious of in himself, and 
 which he sees in others, comes from unlikeness to the 
 perfect Being in whose image he is created. He has 
 but a glimpse of the Divine purposes and character,
 
 LBCT. i.] THE DIVINE NAME. 147 
 
 but it is such a glimpse as is suitable to his necessities 
 and the necessities of his time. It enables him to 
 understand what he is, and what his nature is, without 
 God ; what the blessing is of being called by Him ; 
 what the end of his calling is ; namely, to make this 
 Name known to his countrymen ; to bring it out in 
 opposition to the evil which is most prevailing among 
 them. 
 
 III. And so too he understands, and is able to set 
 forth, the purpose of his nation's calling. It, too, was 
 to proclaim this righteous Name ; to exhibit the conflict 
 between God and all forms of evil ; to show that 
 righteousness is a reality, and not a dream ; that the 
 government of the world is based upon it ; that wrong 
 and oppression are not meant to triumph; that the 
 earth is not meant to be a den of robbers. 
 
 IV. But such a Revelation as this, though it may 
 be handed down in enduring letters though it may 
 become a possession for all generations, could never 
 merely be delivered to men as a book of sentences or 
 maxims ; it must come forth in a gradual history a 
 history of Divine acts and human acts. 
 
 The Revelation assumes that God is altogether 
 distinct from His creatures ; it must enable us to fed 
 that He is distinct from them. It declares that He 
 has made man in His own image ; it must enable us 
 to feel practically that this assertion also is true. It 
 treats man as we find him, full of wrong and evil ; it 
 treats man as capable of the highest good as unsatisfied
 
 148 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 till he attains that good. We must learn how these 
 two things are compatible. It must be a book of life, 
 then, not merely of letters a record of real men and 
 real events. It must show how the Divine Will 
 directed events, and disciplined men for that perfect 
 good, that knowledge of Himself, which he had designed 
 for them. It must show how He cultivates those 
 faculties in His creatures which he has given; how 
 He enables them to overcome the darkness and evil 
 in the midst of which they are struggling. 
 
 V. These are very obvious characteristics of the 
 Jewish Revelation : its origin in a personal Being ; its 
 recognition, of a righteous Name ; its speaking of each 
 class in the nation, and of the whole nation, as called 
 to declare that Name ; its human, practical, and his- 
 torical form. But there is another characteristic as 
 obvious. The histoiy is always pointing to a comple- 
 tion, and that completion in a Person. The Prophets 
 have a vision of a King, who shall be the manifestation 
 of God the perfect image of Him the Man the 
 Deliverer of the called nation, the ruler of all the 
 nations: who should establish righteousness, should 
 open the unseen world, should unite earth and heaven. 
 For such an one, these Prophets say, David and his 
 line were the preparation He would really establish 
 a universal kingdom. Now Christians affirm that the 
 ground of universal society is the Revelation of this 
 King. This Son of God, they say, has been mani- 
 fested ; He in whom this perfect Image dwelt ; He has
 
 LECT. i.] THE CHRISTIAN UNITY. 149 
 
 exhibited that Image in the life and acts of a man, 
 in the poverty and death of a man; He, as a man, 
 has exercised dominion over the powers of nature ; as 
 a man, wrestled with spiritual evil ; as a man, triumphed 
 over death ; as a man, ascended to the right hand of 
 God. He having so united man to God, has sent down 
 His Spirit to dwell among men, that they might be 
 one family, and glorify the Father of all in Him. The 
 universal kingdom, say they, must be a fatherly king- 
 dom. The Lord of it must be a suffering man, who is 
 yet the Son of God. That which makes it one, and 
 enables men to acknowledge God as one, must be a 
 uniting, reconciling, Spirit, who raises them above the 
 broken forms and shadows of earth above those 
 material things, in which there is nothing but division, 
 into the true unity, the perfect, absolute Love. 
 
 This, according to the Christian's faith, being the 
 kingdom which is meant for all men, he must believe 
 that God Himself designs that it should be made known 
 to men; that all people should be brought into it. 
 Men now, as much as formerly, must be commissioned 
 servants of God for this end ; there must be distinct 
 callings tending to the accomplishment of it. All who 
 have been brought to acknowledge the true King must 
 have a share in the calling. But that particular work 
 which was assigned to the Jewish nation, of putting 
 down wrong and violence, of asserting justice and 
 judgment, though it can never be obsolete, though 
 each nation must be called upon in its own place and
 
 150 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 circumstances to fulfil it, cannot be the highest work of 
 all. For He who did the highest work of all, did it by 
 suffering, submission, sacrifice ; the greatest triumph 
 over the greatest evils was won in this way. Power 
 manifested itself in weakness ; He who was most meek, 
 proved Himself to be most a King. He who most 
 proved Himself to be Divine, did so by becoming one 
 with the poorest and vilest. This was not a novelty in 
 the history of the world ; in a measure it had been 
 shown before, that what is greatest is best able to stoop ; 
 that what can most bear to be crushed, has most 
 capacity of life; that each thing must die before it 
 can attain its perfection. The whole history of the 
 world, rightly read, would illustrate this lesson : above 
 all, it had been illustrated by the prophets and holy 
 men of the Old Testament ; nay, those very exertions 
 of national strength and energy, which seem to set this 
 principle at nought, were themselves exhibitions of it. 
 The glory of the Israelitish conquest of Canaan was 
 this, that it was the triumph of weakness over strength, 
 of infused spiritual might over the height of walls and 
 the bulk of giants. 
 
 But though men had been learning this lesson gradu- 
 .ally, the time which fully brought it out, which set 
 at nought all pretensions of outward strength to 
 dominion, which showed that the power of God Himself 
 must be exhibited through weakness and death, in 
 order that it may be felt to be the power of Love ; 
 this was of necessity the beginning of a new era.
 
 LECT. i.] THE WORLD BEGINNING AFRESH. 151 
 
 Henceforth surely every new event of history would 
 demonstrate this truth afresh. Whatever power was 
 working in the world must submit to this, or be broken 
 by it. The evidence might be various, complicated, 
 often contradictory ; but it would all tend to this point 
 it would assert a Loving Will as the ground of all 
 things; that that Will had been fully manifested to 
 men in the person of a man, who delighted to do it; 
 that it can only accomplish its ends by bringing the 
 wills of men into subjection to itself. 
 
 Now Mahometanism formally sets at nought this 
 idea of a Divine and universal kingdom ; treats it as a 
 mere imagination which outrages all simplicity. It goes 
 back to the one principle of God's sovereignty; cares 
 nothing for the gradual unfolding of a Name through a 
 history of living acts ; assumes that the Book is given 
 to the prophet as a complete scheme of life; affirms 
 that it is the commission of the faithful to diffuse faith 
 in this Book, and in the fact of the Divine sovereignty 
 through the world ; for this purpose invests its caliph 
 or sovereign with absolute dominion. In the seventh 
 century after Christ, Mahomet taught that the world 
 was to begin its history again ; but to begin it with no 
 hope of a progress. That principle, which had been 
 the mere starting-point of Jewish faith, the ground of 
 what it was learning for nineteen hundred years, was 
 to be the one, all-sufficing maxim of Mahometan life. 
 The Koran was to make it the one all-sufficing maxim 
 for generations.
 
 152 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 Grand then as was the truth which Mahomet pro- 
 claimed, needful as the proclamation of it was for the 
 overthrow of Jewish and Christian unbelievers, he did 
 but re-affirm the primary confession of both ; he denied 
 that which made this primary confession consistent in 
 itself and effectual for man. By this denial he sanc- 
 tioned and adopted some of the worst, most character- 
 istic, superstitions and evils of the Jews and Christians 
 against whom he protested. They had substituted 
 words for realities ; faith in notions for faith in God ; 
 he, in seeming to add a new revelation, destroyed the 
 vital, historical, progressive character of the old ; in 
 publishing newer and later notions, set mankind at a 
 more hopeless distance from Him to whom these notions 
 related. By this denial he made the acts and struggles 
 of Islamism unintelligible. For beginning in weakness, 
 triumphing through faith, this doctrine was a witness 
 for the Christian principles which it set at nought. 
 The grandeur of the Crescent can be understood only 
 by the light which falls upon it from the Cross. Be- 
 cause the Mahometan recognises a mere Will governing 
 all things, and that Will not a loving Will, he is 
 converted, as we saw that he had been in the course 
 ^of his history, from a noble witness of a Personal Being 
 into the worshipper of a dead necessity. Because he 
 will not admit that there has been a Man in the world 
 who was . one with God a Man who exercised power 
 over nature, and yet whose main glory consisted in 
 giving up Himself, therefore he cannot really assert
 
 LECT. i.] GOD'S MESSAGE ONLY EFFECTUAL. 153 
 
 the victory of man over visible things when he tries 
 most to do so. He glorifies the might of arms when 
 he most talks of the might of submission. Because 
 he does not acknowledge a loving Will acting upon 
 men's wills, to humble them in themselves, and to 
 raise them to God, therefore he becomes the enslaver 
 of his fellows, therefore cheerful obedience to a master, 
 which for a while distinguished him, becomes servitude 
 to a tyrant. Because he will not acknowledge that the 
 highest and divinest unity is that of love, but rests all 
 upon the mere unity of sovereignty, he has never been 
 able to establish one complete government upon the 
 earth. It has been found that such a universality or 
 unity is merely material; that it has no root in the 
 nature of things, in the Divine order; that each new 
 age must do something to weaken its integrity and 
 hasten its dissolution. 
 
 Two questions, I hope, may have been partly answered 
 by these observations. The first is, whether Christianity 
 must abandon its claims to be a Revelation, in order 
 that it may deal fairly with the Mahometan ? The 
 second, whether it can strengthen and quicken that faith 
 of his which we found was ready to perish ? Whatever 
 pretends only to be a better system of notions, a better 
 scheme of conduct than his own, he will reject while he 
 has the courage and constancy of his fathers, will only 
 receive because he has sunk into a state in which it 
 is indifferent what he holds, or rather, in which it is 
 impossible for him with a real vital grasp to hold
 
 154 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 anything. Mahomet was believed by those, and those 
 only, who felt that he brought a message from God ; 
 nothing which does not come as a message from God 
 can reach the hearts of those who still acknowledge Him. 
 And of what form must the message be? If it sets 
 at nought the first conditions of the Mahometan's faith, 
 nay, of his very existence, this he is certain cannot be 
 from God: yea, he knows it must be from the devil. 
 Only that which assumes his original faith as its eternal 
 foundation, and which deepens and expands it so that 
 the facts of human life which seem least in accord- 
 ance with it shall be shown to rest upon it, will carry 
 that Divine stamp which the reason and conscience it 
 awakens will recognise. Therefore we agree with the 
 arguments of our opponents to this extent. Supposing 
 they had proved the Gospel not to be a revelation, but 
 only a product of the human intellect, their conclusion 
 is incontestable. It ought not to be presented to the 
 Mahometan ; it is utter folly, or else cruelty, to inflict 
 the proclamation upon him. But if it does not follow, 
 from the likeness which has been detected between 
 Mahometanism, Judaism, and Christianity, that they 
 are all equally deceived in their great postulate ; if it 
 appears that Christianity interprets that postulate, and 
 prevents it from sinking into a dead notion ; then we 
 have found 'the power which can avenge the outrages 
 and injuries of Islamism, preserving the precious frag- 
 ments of truth which are lodged within it, forming 
 them into a whole, making them effectual for the 
 blessing of all the lands over which it reigns.
 
 LECT. i.] ALIKE TO JEW AND MAHOMETAN. 155 
 
 And surely, if this be the way in which we can and 
 should speak to the Mahometan, no other can befit us 
 in our intercourse with the Jew. Whatever there is 
 in him of strength or earnestness clings to the belief 
 that God spake to his fathers. Systems, rabbinical and 
 philosophical, may choke that belief; money-getting 
 habits may almost extinguish it. But it haunts him; 
 it is an oppression to him, from which in these ways he 
 seeks to be delivered when he is in an evil state of 
 mind ; it is his only consolation and hope when he rises 
 into a higher one. With it is connected that sense of 
 nationality which is even yet his noblest characteristic, 
 however mixed it may be with sin and weakness. To it 
 is linked that hope of a coming Deliverer which some- 
 times cheers him amidst all the misery and anguish 
 of his actual condition. A religion which is not a 
 message from God, not an unveiling of Him, is at once 
 felt by him to be a phantasy. He may adopt the 
 modern talk about the religious instinct or principle 
 creating its own object; but it is in his mouth, if in 
 no other person's, absolutely insincere. Again then we 
 say, if Christianity be not a Revelation, or we do not 
 think it is, we are right to keep it from the Jew, as 
 being something with which his mind can have no 
 possible affinity. But if it is this ; if it is such a 
 revelation as rests upon his data, as justifies his nation- 
 ality, as establishes his hope of a Deliverer, while it 
 takes from these convictions that narrowness which he 
 is beginning to find incompatible with his apprehen- 
 sions respecting the condition and greatness of man ;
 
 156 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 shows how the nationality, without being lost, may 
 be expanded into a universal fellowship; hinders the 
 vision of a future revelation from degenerating into 
 the expectation of a sensual and mundane felicity, by 
 declaring that the Redeemer has come already to claim 
 man for his possession, and to rescue him from his 
 earthly bondage : then we may feel in this case that 
 there is one power, and but one in the world, which can 
 raise the fallen Israelite to a new and spiritual life. 
 
 There is, however, another view of the relations 
 of Christianity with Judaism and Mahometanism 
 another, and a most important one. If Christianity 
 deserve that character in which I have endeavoured 
 to present it, it has, and it ought to have, its Judaical 
 and Mahometan side. It may, as I have said, alienate 
 this part of its own possession ; it may forget the great 
 truth which it has inherited from Judaism, the truth 
 of a living King and Lord of the World ; it may try 
 to sever the doctrine of Christ from this absolute and 
 eternal ground ; then that doctrine loses all its mean- 
 ing, becomes a shadow, and not a substance a dogma, 
 not a living word. Then God does assuredly raise up 
 some witness for this truth, lest men should be robbed 
 of it. But it is also possible for Christians to exalt the 
 Judaical or Mahometan side of Christianity exclusively, 
 to become, in fact, practically Jews or Mahometans, 
 though they do not belong to the family of Abraham 
 and may care nothing about the Arabian Prophet. 
 In practice Christians have done this when they have
 
 LECT. i.] WE COPY JEW AND MAHOMETAN. 157 
 
 attempted to copy Jewish example in the manner of 
 propagating their faith ; really copying not that, but 
 Mahometan example; for we truly copy Jewish example, 
 as I have shown you, when we go forth as national 
 bodies, under our national sovereign, to resist wrong 
 and robbery, and to maintain the position which God 
 has given us; we copy Mahometan example when we 
 attempt to spread the principles of the Universal 
 Family, which is based upon the Love of God, and 
 the Sacrifice of Christ, and the gift of the Spirit of 
 meekness and of charity, by any other methods than 
 those of love, and sacrifice, and meekness. We seem 
 to copy Jewish example we really copy Mahometan 
 example, when we seek for any visible, mortal man to 
 reign over the Universal Family ; for the Jewish king- 
 reigned not over the universe, but over a particular 
 nation; and so soon as a universal society grew out 
 of the national one, it was the glorious proclamation 
 that an Unseen King, who had ascended to the right 
 hand of God, was its only Sovereign. We seem to copy 
 Jewish example we really copy Mahometan example, 
 when we set visible and outward rewards before us as 
 the prizes of our high calling ; for though the Jew lived 
 especially to assert God's dominion over the earth, and 
 to rule it, and subdue it for Him, yet the reward he 
 always kept in sight was, that he might know Him who 
 exercised righteousness and judgment in the earth, that 
 he might awake up after His likeness, and be satisfied 
 with it. In like manner we copy the example of the
 
 153 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART IT. 
 
 modern Jew and of the Mahometan, not of the ancient 
 Jew, or if of the ancient Jew, only of the formal, heart- 
 less Pharisee, when we receive the Bible not as a record 
 of actual doings, of actual intercourse between a living 
 Being and His creatures upon earth, but only as a 
 collection of notions and opinions, about which we are 
 to dispute and tear each other in pieces. Still more 
 effectually do we assume the character of the servant 
 of the Prophet, of the degenerate Israelite, when we 
 set up the dry confession of God's sovereignty against 
 His righteousness, supposing that His acts are ever acts 
 of self-will ; that His glory is ever anything but the 
 glory of purity, and goodness, and truth. In all these 
 ways we may prove that there is indeed a very near 
 relation between our belief and theirs, inasmuch as we 
 can hold the one under the name of the other. 
 
 Again, we may adopt what some would call, I think 
 wrongly, a merely theoretical Judaism, or Mahomet- 
 anism; we may seem to copy Jewish example by 
 asserting the simplicity of God's nature; by denying 
 the possibility of a man manifesting forth the Unseen 
 God, by rejecting the belief of a Father and of a Son, 
 and of a Spirit who binds them together in an ever- 
 blessed Unity. Why this is not the adoption of the 
 ( true Judaical Faith, but the rejection of it, I have 
 explained already; it has been ever ready to issue in 
 the dryness of modern Judaism, wherein all which we 
 see alive in the Old Testament is petrified. Now 
 especially that result is inevitable; for now, less than
 
 LECT. i.] NO EXEMPTION FROM TEMPTATION. 159 
 
 in any former day, it is possible to speak of God as 
 if He stood in no relation to man. The tendency of 
 our time is to confound Him with His creatures, with 
 the works of His hands; to lose all thought of His 
 distinctness; to regard Him as only the conception of 
 man's mind, a sort of synonyme for man's thinking 
 faculty, or for the life which dwells in things. Against 
 such notions the records of Judaism and Mahometanism 
 are mighty and standing protests ; but they are more 
 and more ineffectual protests. They show why such 
 notions of God can never satisfy human beings who 
 know their own necessities ; not what these necessities 
 signify, and how they are to be satisfied. 
 
 It is true, then, that the temptations of Jews and 
 Mahometans are our temptations ; that we carry their 
 practical confusions and divisions within our own bosoms. 
 At every moment we are liable to fall into them. Each 
 careless step we take, each unholy temper we indulge, 
 the neglect of our duties, the tolerance of our evil, is 
 always increasing the danger. It is true also that the 
 Christian has no right to undervalue any good thing 
 which he finds in any Jew or Mahometan; it flows from 
 a principle which he ought to hold fast, and which 
 ought to produce the same or better fruits in him. 
 While we acknowledge that every right act in them 
 deserves tenfold more admiration than it could deserve 
 in us, and that all our evil acts must be done with ten- 
 thousandfold greater sense of wrong and less of excuse, 
 this confession does not in the least affect what we
 
 160 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 believe ; for Christianity is not concerned in justifying 
 our sins, but in condemning them : it does not say that 
 any particular set of men, calling themselves by the 
 Christian name, are better than others; but it says 
 that God will be true, though every man be a liar; 
 that His kingdom will be established whether we who 
 belong to it care that it should be established, or cut 
 ourselves off from it. And the same conscience which 
 tells us of our evil, forces each of us to say : ' This evil 
 comes not from my faith, but from indifference to it. 
 It comes not from my holding too fast by that which 
 is simple and old when I might be seeking for a new 
 and finer Christianity. It comes simply from my for- 
 getting the Creed of my childhood. For if I did believe 
 in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and 
 Earth, I should be acknowledging that Will which 
 Jews and Mahometans acknowledge as the ground of 
 all things : only I should be confessing it as a loving 
 and fatherly Will. If I did believe in Jesus Christ 
 His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, who 
 descended into hell, and rose again the third day from 
 the dead, who ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the 
 right hand of God the Father Almighty, who from 
 thence shall come to judge the quick arid dead, I 
 should feel and understand that there is indeed a 
 Man who will reign over the world, and judge it as 
 Jews and Mahometans teach ; but that this Man is the
 
 LECT. i.] THE CHRISTIAN CREED. 161 
 
 Son of God and the Son of Man ; one who before He 
 claimed our homage, submitted to our curse, wrestled 
 with death and overcame ; who has already set up His 
 throne in the highest region of all, and calls upon every 
 voluntary creature in his heart and spirit to do Him 
 homage. If I did believe in the Holy Ghost, the 
 Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the 
 Forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the Body, and 
 the Life Everlasting, I should feel there was a mighty 
 Divine Power working in us, to make us more com- 
 pletely servants of a Human King and of the Divine 
 Will, than Jews and Mahometans have ever dreamed 
 they could be; to make us members of a universal 
 society, as Islamites wish to be; to make our bodies 
 more triumphant over death, more glorious, than they 
 have thought possible : but, besides this, to make us 
 sons of God, brethren with Him who is the Son of 
 God, brethren with those who have passed into another 
 world, who are perfectly freed from temptation and sin, 
 who have inherited not a sensual Paradise, but a 
 kingdom of righteousness and peace and love. 
 
 M
 
 162 
 
 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 The relation between Christianity and Hindooism generally 
 compared. Mistakes concerning it. Investigation of its 
 nature. The twice-born man. The Image of Brahm. In- 
 carnations. Sacrifice. Dangers to Christianity from its 
 Hindoo side. How Christianity can and cannot satisfy 
 Hindoos. 
 
 rPHE subject which I propose to consider in my 
 present Lecture, is the relation between Christian- 
 ity and Hindooism. That such a relation exists has 
 been felt by most persons, different as their theories 
 have been respecting the nature or the cause of it. 
 Christian writers on Hindoo antiquities have spoken of 
 various traditions, which they suppose must have been 
 derived, originally, from Scripture narratives of various 
 Hindoo doctrines which have an obvious resemblance 
 to some that form part of the orthodox faith of Chris- 
 tendom. Infidel writers have been equally willing to 
 notice these correspondences, and have turned them to 
 their own account. If any part of the Hindoo theories 
 about the origin of the world recalls the Mosaic narra- 
 tive, this is evidence to them that each was equally the 
 work of some early imperfect theorist, that neither 
 has any claim to Divine authority. If the similarity 
 is of an historical kind, the notorious confusion of the 
 Hindoo records throws new doubt upon the Jewish.
 
 LECT. ii.] ANALOGIES MAY MISLEAD US. 163 
 
 If, again, the likeness be between the great mysteries 
 of the Christian faith, and the more recondite Hindoo 
 speculations, what, they ask, does this show but that 
 these mysteries are the results of certain trains of 
 human thought, and have only been attributed to a 
 higher origin, because our forefathers had not the same 
 means as we have of tracing them out in the minds 
 of those whom they considered ignorant and idolatrous 
 as we do ? 
 
 I do not wish to conceal any of these objections ; I 
 am rather anxious to put them forward at the outset 
 of my inquiry, because they concern not so much the 
 conclusions to which it may lead, as the method in 
 which it shall be pursued. It is no doubt true that 
 Christian writers have often caught at external, super- 
 ficial indications of a resemblance between their own 
 faith and that of other men, and have strained evidence 
 to show how it must have been produced. And I am 
 satisfied that every such attempt to make out a case 
 by ingenious twisting of words or perversion of facts, 
 is sorely punished. For the impression left upon our 
 minds, supposing the likeness completely established, 
 would be no more than this ; that certain opinions of 
 certain people upon matters of history, or upon ques- 
 tions of a very subtle and refined nature, had something 
 to do with opinions existing among ourselves, and 
 might, perhaps, have proceeded from the same source. 
 But the mere theories which we find in the sacred 
 books of different nations, either about the past state
 
 164 THE KELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 of the world, or the system of it now, though they are 
 
 worthy of our study and reflection, as hints (not always 
 
 the most important hints) towards understanding what 
 
 is the radical principle and belief of the race which 
 
 adopts them, are not themselves identical with that 
 
 principle and that belief. Now when this is the case 
 
 with that to which we compare the Christian doctrines, 
 
 it is far too likely that we shall begin to think of them 
 
 in the same way. They also will appear to us notions 
 
 and opinions about certain great subjects : Divine 
 
 notions and opinions we may call them; but a mere 
 
 name will not change their character ; we shall not feel 
 
 that they have to do with our own life and being ; we 
 
 shall regard them as truths which we are to hold, not 
 
 as truths which are to hold us, which are to give us 
 
 a standing-ground for time and for eternity. I do not 
 
 wonder, then, nor am I altogether sorry, that those who 
 
 have put forward this view of the relations between 
 
 Hindooism and Christianity should have been taught 
 
 that their own weapons may be used against them. 
 
 Such discoveries, instead of shaking our faith, may 
 
 lead us to feel more diligently for the foundation of it ; 
 
 to ask whether other nations have not given evidence 
 
 that they too need such a foundation ; whether they 
 
 are not craving to be told what it is. 
 
 In considering the relations between Mahometanism 
 and Christianity, we did not satisfy ourselves with 
 showing that certain precepts of the Koran corre- 
 sponded to certain precepts of the Bible, and that the
 
 LECT. ii.] VITAL PRINCIPLE OF MAHOMETANISM. 165 
 
 one was wrong when it had departed from the other. 
 It seemed necessary to examine whether the main prin- 
 ciple of Mahometan life, that which had given strength 
 to its hosts when they were most strong, be or be not 
 embodied in Christianity, and whether there or here it 
 has most vitality, and is most in harmony- with other 
 principles equally important. If we could not find 
 that the great Mahometan truth was asserted more 
 distinctly, mightily, livingly in Christianity than in 
 Mahometanism, we did not feel that Christianity could 
 ever be a substitute for Mahometanism. If that for 
 which the Mahometans were content to give up their 
 lives, were merely a formal proposition in our faith, we 
 were sure we could not sustain ourselves against them. 
 If anything wherein we differed from them weakened 
 this principle, that was so much of evidence against us. 
 Nothing seemed sufficient to us but the discovery that 
 the belief in an Absolute Living God actually ruling 
 in the world seeking men not first sought by them, 
 which is the root of all their convictions, is the root of 
 ours; that Christianity perishes even more completely 
 than Mahometanism when this truth is forgotten ; that 
 this principle has lost its power over the Mahometan, 
 mind, or been changed into one of the most opposite 
 character, just because it wants the support of other 
 kindred truths, which belong to the essence of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 Precisely in the same manner I would deal with the 
 present subject. In my second Lecture I considered
 
 166 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 what were the permanent characteristics of Hindooism, 
 those which had survived in all its changes, and made 
 its different changes intelligible, those which had 
 resisted all opposition, even from truths which seemed 
 mightier than they and from men who were hraver and 
 stronger than those who upheld them. I would now 
 inquire whether these characteristics have their counter- 
 parts in Christianity; whether they enter into the 
 substance of it, as they do into the substance of Hindoo- 
 ism; whether the difficulties and contradictions which 
 we found had grown naturally out of these convictions, 
 and yet had weakened and impaired them, belong 
 also to our belief; whether in that belief these Hindoo 
 truths are or are not reconciled with those to which 
 they seemed utterly hostile. I have said again and 
 again, that I do not think we prove our confidence in 
 the divinity of that which we confess by subjecting it 
 to light tests, by arguing that this or that is not justly 
 required of it. Whatever has been found necessary in 
 the course of six thousand years' experience, we have 
 a right to ask of that which offers itself as the faith 
 for mankind. And I do not believe that it ever has 
 shrunk, or ever will shrink, from any demands of this 
 kind that we make upon it. 
 
 The position of the Brahmin in reference to the rest 
 of Hindoo society was that which seemed to us at once 
 the most obvious outward mark of the system, and its 
 essential characteristic. Here was the radical distinc- 
 tion between Hindooism and Mahometanism ; here
 
 LECT. ii.] THE TWICE-BORN MAN. 167 
 
 was the key to its connection with Buddhism, and to 
 the divergence of the latter from it. The Greeks under 
 Alexander had seen that the Hindoo people were cast 
 in the Brahminical mould they retain this mould 
 under the English government in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury after Chris^ Whatever principle then be the 
 ground of the belief in the superiority of the Brahmin 
 to other men, can be no mere accident of Hindoo 
 opinion, no mere notion in the sacred books : it must 
 belong to the innermost heart of the race. This prin- 
 ciple we found expressed in that distinction between the 
 twice-born man and other men, which is the character- 
 istical one of the Menu code. All mere distinctions 
 of occupation, even the distinctions of the four original 
 classes, seem to resolve themselves into this. This, 
 therefore, had endured, though two of those classes 
 had disappeared, and though the whole caste system 
 had undergone great outward modifications. This had 
 continued universal amidst all its local varieties. Nor 
 was there much difficulty in ascertaining the ground 
 on which the distinction rested. First of all, it stood 
 on the conviction that there is in man that which is 
 meant to converse with an Unseen Spiritual Being, 
 that this is the vocation of the highest wisest man, of 
 him who is properly the man, who is alone able to guide 
 and rule his fellows. Next, upon the consideration 
 that this is not the natural, ordinary state of men, that 
 this is an ignominious, degraded, animal state, out of 
 which Avhoever is raised, must be raised by different acts
 
 163 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 of purification, acts which are to bring him into a relation 
 more or less intimate with Brahm. Thirdly, we saw that 
 the idea of hereditary succession became involved with 
 this, that the twice-born men became a distinct family, 
 to be preserved pure from generation to generation. 
 
 I repeat these observations in this place the more 
 carefully, because I am anxious that you should not 
 suppose I am attaching any force to a mere phrase like 
 that of the twice-born man. The phrase instantly 
 suggests to every Christian an idea with which all his 
 life he has been familiar. Hence, it might lead us to 
 one of those hasty analogies against which I have 
 already warned you. A person thoughtfully and 
 earnestly considering such a subject as this for a great 
 practical purpose, will be suspicious of himself when 
 he finds that he is noticing a verbal correspondence : 
 he will be aware of the temptation to build an argu- 
 ment upon it, and will understand how very easily he 
 may be deceived by a translation from another language 
 made by men who were formed in an English school 
 of thought, and were, perhaps, glad to catch at a ren- 
 dering which would bring a lively and well-known 
 image before the minds of their readers. I am quite 
 willing, therefore, to forget this expression altogether, 
 > or to adopt any other that an Oriental scholar shall 
 give me as a substitute for it, which has no resemblance 
 to our own sacred dialect. It is the thing, and not 
 the word, I wish you to notice ; the deep conviction 
 which has wrought itself into the mind of the Hindoo, 
 and which has gone along with him through every
 
 LECT. ii.] THE JEWISH SEPARATION. 169 
 
 stage of his history. Still more earnestly would I 
 remind you that it is not the words New Birth, or 
 Second Birth, which characterise Christianity, but the 
 meaning indicated by them. To realise that conviction, 
 let us, as on the last occasion, look at the context of the 
 Scriptures, not confining ourselves to the New Testa- 
 ment, but beginning with the opening of Jewish history. 
 I. You will remember how we traced the idea of 
 a Divine call through the whole of that history. I 
 referred to it then for the purpose of showing how 
 everything in our faith, as in the Mahometan, rests 
 upon the recognition of an act done on the part of 
 God. But in that call was involved the idea of dis- 
 tinction, of separation. Abraham is called out of his 
 father's house, he is set apart to be the head of a 
 peculiar family, and the whole of that family have a 
 sign of the separation appointed for them. When the 
 nation is called out of its Egyptian bondage, not only 
 is this sign carefully preserved ; not only is every 
 institution expressly contrived to keep this people 
 distinct from other people ; but within the nation itself 
 distinctions begin to be established. The priest is 
 called out to the special work of presenting sacrifices, a 
 whole tribe is set apart to the service of the tabernacle. 
 They are carefully designated; the anointing oil is 
 poured upon their heads; garments of honour and 
 beauty are given them; Holiness to the Lord is in- 
 scribed on the forehead of the high priest. The last 
 fact shows you how completely the idea not only of a 
 separation is involved in these appointments, but of -a
 
 170 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 sepa:ation for the very purpose to which the Brahmin 
 is devoted. The priest is dedicated to the service of 
 the Unseen Jehovah. He is to enter into His presence, 
 to hold awful converse with Him. His separation is 
 never for an instant spoken of as having another object 
 than this. A gross animal taste, a disposition to honour 
 visible things and bow before them, is characteristic 
 of men generally ; the elect people are taken from the 
 surrounding nations, that they may be emancipated 
 from this slavish tendency. Yet the Jew is reminded 
 that he is liable to it like other men ; that he must 
 be cut off from it ; that he must look upon himself as 
 intended for intercourse with that which the eye cannot 
 tell him of. The priest explains the end of the nation's 
 existence. It is expressly declared that the tribe of Levi 
 is taken instead of the firstborn of all the families of 
 Israel. 
 
 Here you see one very clear indication of the principle 
 which Hindoo society embodies. And this principle 
 is not less characteristic of the later history than of the 
 earlier. True, the people began in process of time to 
 mix with the nations round about them, and to adopt 
 their habits. But the wise man always warned them, 
 and the fact proved, that hereby they were destroying 
 themselves. When they forgot their covenant, when 
 they no longer looked upon themselves as a chosen, 
 separated people, above all when their priests lost sight 
 of their own vocation, and the purpose of it, feebleness, 
 division, subjection to their neighbours, followed of 
 course. The fact does not change in the least degree
 
 LECT. ii.] IT IS MAINLY SPIRITUAL. 171 
 
 from one generation to another. The only change is 
 in the increased knowledge which the Jews obtain of 
 the reason and ground of the fact. This progress is 
 very remarkable. The prophets told them more and 
 more distinctly, that they required to be circumcised 
 in heart ; that the separation must not be merely from 
 surrounding people, but from an evil and corruption in 
 themselves; that if they remembered the covenant of 
 their God, and clave to Him, they would overcome not 
 merely the Moabites and Edomites, but a 'perverse, 
 grovelling habit of soul, which was the cause of their 
 idolatry ; that if they forgot this covenant, they would 
 sink first under the yoke of their own inclinations, then 
 under that of Nineveh or Babylon. The more you 
 read the Old Testament prophets the more you will 
 see that amidst all the various circumstances which 
 surround them, amidst all the different methods of 
 instruction which they are taught to adopt, this is their 
 great burthen. But is there not a change in the New 
 Testament ? Did not our Lord destroy that separation 
 which the teachers of the old time had been so careful 
 to establish ? Did not His coming put Jews and Gen- 
 tiles on a level ? We must not permit vague phrases 
 of this kind to hide from us the fact that our Lord, so 
 far from obliterating the principle for which the Jewish 
 nation had testified, asserted it ; established it, expressed 
 it for* the first time in all its clearness and fulness. 
 That, He said, 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 kingdom of
 
 172 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 heaven. In this language He gathers up the very 
 meaning of the old dispensation ; shows us what a 
 truth was involved in every part of it ; how every part 
 had been a preparation for the full revelation of this 
 truth. His coming was, no doubt, to destroy the barrier 
 between Jew and Gentile ; but not till that barrier had 
 been proved to have its justification in the very con- 
 dition and being of man, in his relation to God and to 
 the world. If there is a flesh in man, by obedience to 
 which he becomes degraded, sensual, idolatrous, if he 
 naturally is obedient to this flesh, and can only attain 
 the rights of a spiritual creature when the Lord of all 
 raises him above his nature, above himself; then we can 
 understand why a whole nation should have been called 
 by its position in reference to other nations, by its 
 strength and weakness, righteousness and sins, by the 
 experience of all its individual members, to set forth 
 this mighty fact in which the eternal destinies of man- 
 kind must be involved. And this testimony we hold is 
 not, and cannot be, obsolete. The Christian Church 
 claims to be a body of twice-born men ; claims to be a 
 witness of that mighty privilege which men have of 
 conversing with the Unseen and Infinite, as well as a 
 witness of the tendency which there is in man to be 
 merely animal and sensual. The Christian Church 
 claims a set of ministers who shall represent the spirit- 
 ual glory and privileges of the whole body, shall be 
 instruments in overcoming the low and grovelling pro- 
 pensities of its members. Here, then, is a principle 
 which is as characteristic of our faith as it is of the
 
 LECT. ii.] MAN'S RELATION TO DIVINE NATURE. 173 
 
 Hindoo, which has scarcely moulded Oriental society 
 more than it has moulded the society of modern Europe. 
 II. It is impossible to separate the belief in the 
 superiority of the Brahmin to other men, from the 
 belief in his relation to Brahm. Technically we may 
 call one a political, the other a theological, idea; prac- 
 tically, the former may, for a while, survive the latter. 
 But in any serious investigation of the grounds of 
 the religious system they must be contemplated as 
 identical. Brahm is Wisdom or Light : the Brahmin 
 is the reflection of this Wisdom or Light. Such a view 
 of the Divinity, and of the way in which man is related 
 to him, is found in different modifications among all 
 those people who are members of what is called the 
 Indo-Germanic stock, and, perhaps, in some who do 
 not belong to it. While creative Will, Command, 
 Sovereignty, Separation from man, are the attributes 
 of Him whom the Arabian proclaimed to be the one 
 God, Persians, Greeks, Goths, each recognised Intelli- 
 gence, an Intelligence communicable to man, and 
 quickly involving human worship, as the object of 
 their reverence. But long before this reverence had 
 taken any definite form among these people, hear how 
 strongly it was expressed by those Hebrew sages who 
 seemed to live for the assertion of the Mahometan 
 truth : " I Wisdom dwell with Prudence, and find out 
 knowledge of witty inventions. I am Understanding ; 
 . I have strength. By me kings reign, and princes 
 decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, and 
 all the judges of the earth. The Lord possessed me
 
 174 THE EELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. 
 When there were no depths, I was brought forth ; 
 when there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills 
 was I brought forth : while as yet He had not made 
 the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the 
 dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, 
 I was there ; when He set a compass upon the face 
 of the deep; when He established the clouds above; 
 when He strengthened the fountains of the deep ; 
 when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters 
 should not pass His commandment ; when He appointed 
 the fountains of the earth : then I was by Him as one 
 brought up with Him; and I was daily His delight, 
 rejoicing always before Him ; rejoicing in the habitable 
 part of His earth; and my delights were with the 
 sons of men." 
 
 Here we have the origin of the universe ascribed to 
 Wisdom ; kings and judges are said to rule by Wisdom; 
 Wisdom is said from the first to have had her delight 
 in the sons of men. Is this an isolated passage ; the 
 dream of some particular writer, who had perhaps 
 been instructed by Chaldeans ? On the contrary, it 
 expresses the very spirit of the Jewish economy, as it 
 is presented to us in the writings of all its historians 
 and prophets. The wise king or the wise prophet is 
 ever spoken of in Scripture as having the Divine 
 Wisdom, the Divine Word with him, nay, in him. He 
 does not shrink from the pretension. In his truest, 
 humblest state of mind, he feels and confesses himself
 
 LECT. IL] THE DIVINE WOKD OE WISDOM. 175 
 
 to be only a reflection of the Divine Light, an utterer 
 of the Divine Voice. He charges it as a sin upon the 
 false teachers, that they speak words out of their own 
 hearts. Here again, the New Testament takes up, 
 expands, and interprets, the language of the Old. " In 
 the beginning," says St. John, "was the Word. In 
 Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. 
 And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
 comprehended it not." Of these words, and of some 
 which I have for the present omitted, St. John's Gospel 
 and his First Epistle are the exposition. They declare 
 what this life was which had been the light of men, 
 how it was manifested, who it was that could say, " I 
 am the Light of the World; he that followeth me 
 shall not walk in darkness." 
 
 III. But we detected a yet deeper conception beneath 
 that one of the relation of the Brahmin to Brahma ; 
 we found that Brahma himself was supposed to be 
 the expression or manifestation of Brahm, who must be 
 thought of only as Absolute, Self-existent. These two 
 ideas are inseparable. The God is said to have sought 
 for a companion of His throne, and having considered 
 and rejected all animal natures, at last to have found 
 His one adequate image in man. This thought, we 
 saw; was a pregnant one : a dualism, not of opposition 
 but of consort, might be traced through the whole 
 mythology. 
 
 Now, in the passage which I quoted from the Book 
 of the Proverbs, you cannot fail to have noted the 
 words, "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of
 
 176 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 His way. I was with Him as one brought up with 
 Him." Beneath this Wisdom, this teacher of the Sons 
 of Men, this Ruler of Princes, by whom the sea and 
 earth have been formed, there is still a deeper and 
 more unfathomable essence. Is this a dream, mixing 
 inconsistently with the rest of the discourse? You 
 cannot banish it without destroying the sense of the 
 context. Does it stand apart from the general course 
 and tenor of Jewish Revelation ? You cannot under- 
 stand the most striking turning-points of that Revel- 
 ation, if you determine to pass by these words as 
 incomprehensible or insignificant. Habitually the Jew 
 believed that He whom he worshipped dwelt in the 
 thick darkness ; no eye had seen Him ; it was unlawful 
 to conceive any likeness of Him. But he also believed 
 that this Lord had revealed Himself to Abraham, as 
 he sat by the tent-door in the heat of the day on the 
 plain of Mamre ; that He had been the Captain of the 
 Hosts of Israel; that He had spoken to and by every 
 holy seer. Do you say, " These were difficulties ; they 
 look like contradictions in the faith of this people ; 
 they seem fragments from different religions witnesses 
 that they were not, as divines pretend, the subjects of 
 a continuous, harmonious revelation " ? I admit the 
 difficulty; I see why those who have never discovered 
 it in themselves, should suppose it must have arisen 
 from the blending of two incompatible traditions. I 
 admit, further, that the apparent contradiction could 
 not be removed from the mind of the Jew; that it 
 must have haunted him sometimes have tormented
 
 LECT. n.] AN APPARENT DISCREPANCY. 177 
 
 him ; that the vision of a reconciliation will only from 
 time to time have cheered him, in the fulfilment of 
 lowly duties, after hours of deep sorrow, in the temple- 
 worship ; that a verbal reconciliation could not satisfy 
 him, or any man. But a reconciliation he and the 
 Hindoo both demand ; the penalty of not finding it is 
 Modern Judaism, or Modern Hindooism. In that 
 passage, which I purposely mutilated when I quoted 
 it before, St. John says, " In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God. The same was in the beginning with God." He 
 states broadly, and in union, the two truths which 
 the former dispensation had beheld separately, each of 
 which had seemed at times to stifle the other, each of 
 which had again seemed necessary to the other. But he 
 does not attempt to bring them together in words, until, 
 as he believes, they had first been brought together in 
 fact. The Word, he says, was made flesh, and dwelt 
 among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the 
 only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. 
 
 IV. I would beg you to remark how the Evangelist 
 speaks of Him here, first as a Word, then as a Sou. 
 The Hindoo dreamed of Light proceeding from a 
 fountain of Light; the Greek of a Child springing 
 from a Father. Naturally, and without effort, St. John 
 recognises both conceptions ; for the divine Wisdom 
 is with him no abstraction; the divine Son is with 
 him no material image. Hence there is no sudden 
 transition from the divinest part of the Christian lore
 
 178 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 to that which connects it with the popular faith of 
 Hindooism. The Word was made flesh, A divine 
 Incarnation is affirmed to be the great instrument 
 for redressing the evils of the world. It is declared 
 that He who had held converse with holy men in 
 their hearts, He whose life was the light of men, had 
 brought himself nigh to all, so that He could be seen 
 with human eyes, handled with human hands. 
 
 I have said that the Scripture speaks of this In- 
 carnation as the means for the redress of mortal evils. 
 But if we will use its language strictly, we shall make 
 a closer approximation to the Hindoo apprehension ; 
 we shall say that it was expressly to deliver men out 
 of the power of the Destroyer, to break in pieces his 
 kingdom, that the Eternal Word became one with his 
 creatures. Nowhere more distinctly than in Christian 
 Theology is there the recognition of the fact which 
 the Siva worshipper perceives ; nowhere less effort to 
 make men comfortable by dissembling the fact, that 
 misery and death have gotten hold of the earth ; 
 nowhere a more emphatic affirmation of the witness 
 which the hearts and consciences of men have borne 
 everywhere, but with special earnestness in Hindostan, 
 that in them, in the region of man's inner being, is 
 the fiercest debate with the evil which he sees without ; 
 that there, in that region, he has to encounter it in its 
 highest form, in its most radical principle. The Gospel 
 does not start with a philosophical lie; what man by 
 bitter experience has discovered to be his condition, 
 it assumes to be his condition.
 
 LECT. ii.] THE DESTEOYER CONFOUNDED. 179 
 
 V. But dare we admit the genuineness of that other 
 page in the book of human experience which the Siva 
 worshippers would blot out ? The Incarnation answers 
 this question; affirms the Preserver to be the Lord of 
 all; affirms Him through the whole course of His 
 government to have been upholding this earth and 
 those who dwell upon it ; to have been interfering for 
 their rescue. Here, in this very Incarnation, and that 
 which follows from it, is the assertion of his complete 
 dominion ; the answer to the Destroyer's claim to be in 
 any sense the Creator, to have any dominion whatso- 
 ever over that race which has paid him such fearful 
 homage. 
 
 That which meets us first in the records of the 
 life of the Son of Man upon earth, after He had been 
 declared to be the Son of God, is a conflict, which no 
 human eye could behold, with the Destroyer; next, 
 the testimony which He gave outwardly of the truth 
 He had in that secret battle made good, by delivering 
 the bodies and spirits of men out of their bondage to 
 inward miseries and inward tyrants. Yet never for an 
 instant did He speak of the claim which He put forth 
 for the dominion of the Gracious Preserver and Father, 
 as a new claim. Never when He spoke of setting up His 
 Kingdom did he admit that He was not King of kings 
 
 o O O 
 
 and Lord of lords before. The Jewish calling and 
 economy had been asserting for generations the fact 
 that the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
 slow to anger, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity, 
 transgressions, and sin, was the one Lord ; that He had
 
 180 THE KELIGIONS OF THE WOKLD. [PART n. 
 
 taken this nation to be His, to make them witnesses 
 of His righteousness and government; that every one 
 who received His Revelation of Himself, who submitted 
 to Him, and trusted in Him, was thereby brought into 
 a righteous state, was thereby enabled to understand 
 the purpose of His government, and to receive the 
 blessings of it. 
 
 VI. Trust in this Being lay at the foundation of the 
 life of the Jewish people. That trust involved Sacrifice. 
 They gave up themselves; so they rose out of the 
 dominion of that Spirit of self-will to which others 
 were paying homage ; so they were able in their daily 
 acts to resist him, and defy him, and to declare that 
 neither in himself, nor in any of his innumerable forms, 
 images, apparitions, had he any title to the obedience 
 of God's servants. The Jew was taught that he was 
 devoted, sacrificed to this Lord, who had chosen his 
 nation, who preserved it from generation to generation, 
 who exercised righteousness and judgment in all the 
 earth. It was He who called the priest, appointed his 
 vocation ; to Him he was to bring the sacrifices for 
 himself and his nation; to Him, and to no visible 
 things ; to Him, and to no unrighteous, hateful power. 
 Sacrifice was the bond of the nation's existence ; sacrifice 
 the act by which man realised his place in it, and came 
 to understand its privileges. The meaning, the law, 
 the ground, of sacrifice was interpreting itself to the 
 conscience and reason of the true Israelite by every 
 step of his discipline, by every act of obedience, by his 
 sin, by his repentance. More and more he felt it to
 
 LECT. ii.] SACRIFICES TO NO VISIBLE POWER. 181 
 
 be the law of the universe; apart from which its 
 very existence is a contradiction ; since only in perfect 
 submission to the perfect Will can any creature attain 
 its life and freedom. He was prepared therefore for 
 that announcement which the Apostles of our Lord 
 made so boldly, that the Son of the Father, the 
 Deliverer of Man, had offered himself a perfect Sacrifice 
 to God ; that He had accomplished this act by entering 
 into all the miseries of man ; that with this loving filial 
 sacrifice He who was perfect Love was well pleased; 
 that in it was the Atonement and Eeconciliation of 
 all Creation to Him, through its original Head; that 
 in the strength of it each man might offer himself to 
 God as a reasonable, holy, acceptable sacrifice. 
 
 I hope I have shown in these last hints that if the 
 other portions of the faith of the Hindoos have that 
 which answers to them in ours, their faith in the might 
 and blessing of Sacrifice is one in which we are bound 
 with all our hearts to participate. If there be any acts 
 in past or present ages on which we can think with 
 delight, which we can be sure had Christ's mark upon 
 them, which have wrought mightily, though in general 
 secretly, for the deliverance of men from idols, from 
 intellectual or spiritual plagues, here has been the root 
 and spring of them. But it is just in the point of 
 deepest sympathy with this ancient people that we 
 arrive at the secret of our opposition. Upon the 
 question to whom the sacrifice should be offered, 
 whether by it we propitiate a Siva, or surrender our- 
 selves in faith and trust to Him who cares for us and
 
 182 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART IT. 
 
 loves us; whether it is to overcome the reluctance of 
 an enemy, or is the offering of our own reluctant wills 
 to a Father in the name of one who has presented and 
 is ever presenting His own filial and complete Sacrifice 
 upon this issue, let us understand it well, our con- 
 troversy with Hindooism turns. 
 
 The idea of a Kehama obtaining a power from his 
 gods which they cannot afterwards resist to curse and 
 plague his fellow-men, is involved in the one doctrine, 
 and is ready at any moment to come forth in a form 
 of terrific wickedness, in the likeness of some Man-God. 
 The Agony of the Garden, the spirit of the 22nd Psalm, 
 the Cross of Him who became nothing that the power, 
 and grace, and wisdom of God might through Him 
 shine forth upon all creatures; here we see the Christian 
 Sacrifice, the sacrifice of the God-Man. This Spirit of 
 Sacrifice He promises to all who are made the sons of 
 God in Him. Everything then depends in our dealings 
 with the Hindoos let me add, everything in our deal- 
 ings with ourselves upon the degree in which we grasp 
 this distinction, or lose sight of it. I showed you that 
 we are open to all Mahometan temptations. So are 
 we to all Hindoo temptations. We may exalt a priestly 
 caste, as if it were set up to make the rest of men 
 Sudras; we may dwell upon the privilege of holding 
 intercourse with the Divine Being, till we sink into 
 self- worshippers ; we may revenge ourselves for this 
 abstract idolatry by plunging into outward idolatry; 
 we may at last bow down before Siva, who we should 
 have known was in all these ways drawing us into his.
 
 LECT. ii.] CHRISTIAN HINDOOISM. 183 
 
 worship, since every act of pride, spiritual, intellectual, 
 sensual, is a mystery of his worship. 
 
 These dangers have discovered themselves in former 
 periods of the world ; seeing that they appertain to 
 human nature, we may be as liable to them as those 
 who lived in any country or age. Is it an escape from 
 them to deny the existence of a priesthood, to say that 
 intercourse with heaven is a dream, to scoff at all 
 popular feelings, to maintain that the conscience of 
 evil is nothing, that sacrifices are a mockery ? Or 
 rather, is the escape from them to maintain that a 
 priesthood exists for the purpose of raising men above 
 animal degradation, as a witness of the great rights of 
 humanity ; that, because intercourse with heaven was 
 intended for the spirit of man, and has been made 
 possible for men, therefore lowliness and self-abasement 
 are our most proper and reasonable conditions; that 
 poor and rich, priests and Sudras, have been alike 
 looked upon, sympathised with, redeemed, raised to 
 human privileges, by Him who took the nature of all ; 
 that every man may be delivered from an evil con- 
 science, that he may renounce and scorn the authority 
 of the evil spirit, that he may offer himself in Christ's 
 name to God ? This is the alternative for India and 
 for England. In other words, the question is, whether 
 we hold a system of opinions or a revelation from God. 
 All Brahminical acts, services, sacraments, imply an 
 effort or scheme on the part of the creature to raise 
 himself to God. All Christian acts, services, sacraments, 
 imply that God has sought for the creature that He
 
 184 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 might raise him to Himself. The differences in our 
 thoughts of God, of the priest, of the sacrifice, all go 
 back to this primary difference. When we get into 
 the region of conceptions and speculations, all our 
 views of that which is divine will be fragmentary; 
 some of them will be very dark, because they are 
 derived from our own experience ; either these become 
 predominant, or in seeking to rid ourselves of them we 
 deny facts and extinguish great portions of our own 
 being. To believe really, practically, that God is light 
 and in Him is no darkness at all, we must believe that 
 He has caused this light to arise and shine ; we must 
 seek to walk in it, and to see all things by it. 
 
 In my second Lecture, I referred to the condition of 
 the Britons, who had parted with their original faith 
 and had received Roman civilisation, when they were no 
 longer protected by Roman arms. I said the example 
 was one which the statesmen of British India would do 
 well to ponder. To abolish human sacrifices is good ; 
 but a blank will be left in the nation's heart even by 
 the loss of such practices as these, which must be filled 
 up, or we shall impoverish those whom we seek to 
 reform. But there is another, sadder side of this history, 
 one which refers not to the conquered, but to the 
 conquerors. Britain uttered her groan because Rome 
 . could no longer send forth her legions. The hundred 
 hands which had been stretched from east to west, from 
 north to south, were palsied ; for the giant who moved 
 them had become a child. And whence came this 
 decay of strength ? All the signs of it still belonged
 
 LECT. ii.] LESSONS FROM ROMAN HISTORY. 185 
 
 to Rome. From the city of Jerusalem to the city of 
 York she had traversed the earth with her roads; 
 within her own walls were the mightiest trophies of 
 art over nature. Her history told by what wonderful 
 agencies human and natural, by how evidently divine 
 an ordinance, her glory had been achieved. And to 
 the gloss of civilisation had been added the gloss of 
 Christianity. The Emperor had believed, when other 
 help was failing, that in the might of the Cross he 
 might still conquer. The sign was indeed there, but 
 it was marked upon the standard, not written upon the 
 hearts, of those rulers of the world. They saw not 
 what it meant; how it interpreted and crowned all 
 that had been great in their history hitherto; how 
 it separated the real great from the real little; how it 
 sanctified all those feelings of obedience, duty, rever- 
 euce for unseen law, self-devotion, by which the city 
 had risen from nothing ; how it poured contempt upon 
 dominion, except as an instrument by which the highest 
 might serve the lowest, upon glory, except as it grew 
 out of humiliation, and was the exaltation of man above 
 himself. The civilised Christian Roman had lost the 
 heart, the reverence, the faith, which belonged to his 
 rude Pagan ancestors; that Christianity and civilisation 
 might be victorious, the miserable patrons of both were 
 swept away. 
 
 If it is so with us ; if our civilisation merely consists 
 in those outward conveniences and mechanical inven- 
 tions which are the fruits of it, assuredly we shall 
 impart but that which we have ; we shall communicate
 
 186 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 only our external polish to the nations which we rule ; 
 their inward condition under our hands will become 
 less strong, less sound, than it was before. If our 
 belief in Christianity floats upon the surface of our 
 minds, just keeps itself alive by a few phrases and 
 conventions in the multitude of our pursuits, if it offers 
 no greater evidence of its vitality than the debates and 
 controversies which it engenders, assuredly we cannot 
 present it to the Hindoo with the slightest hope that 
 he will receive it in exchange for a faith which, be it 
 good or evil, has governed his life. Only if our cultiva- 
 tion be of that kind which is truly human, which 
 delights to discern the essential humanity of each 
 nation, to honour it, to sympathise with it, shall we 
 understand that which is peculiar in our subjects, or 
 reform that which is corrupt in them. Only if we 
 have received the Gospel as the answer from heaven 
 to inward perplexities which we have a thousand times 
 tried to stifle, but could not; only if we have learnt 
 that these perplexities are the groans of the human 
 spirit within us crying for deliverance; can we with 
 honest confidence speak to that spirit in whatever 
 region it dwells, in whatever language, clear or inar- 
 ticulate, it utters its voice, as one spake to it of old, 
 " Say not, Who shall ascend up into heaven ? that is, 
 to bring Christ down ; or, Who shall descend into the 
 deep ? that is, to bring Christ again from the dead : 
 for lo ! the word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy 
 heart, even the word of faith which we preach."
 
 187 
 
 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 Hoiv this relation should be detected. The descent of the Spirit, 
 delation of the Christian Church to tlie Jewish. Supposed 
 analogy to the relations of Buddhism with Brahminism. The 
 resemblances and difference between Christianity and Budd- 
 hism. The Buddhist side of Christianity threatening its 
 existence. How Christians may speak to Buddhists elsewhere, 
 especially in China. 
 
 Buddha and Brahm are words of cognate if 
 not of the same signification; that Buddhism is 
 nevertheless essentially opposed to Brahminism, seeing 
 that it denies the existence of a priestly caste ; that 
 the Buddhists are scattered over many lands, and have 
 adopted various forms of belief and opinion ; that their 
 universal characteristic is reverence for the human intel- 
 lect, which they think of as one, though diffused through 
 many persons, and as having its central manifestation 
 in the Lama; that Buddhism exists in China beside 
 two other forms of opinion with which it does not 
 combine I have explained in. my third Lecture of 
 the First Part. It is now our business to inquire 
 whether this system has any or what affinities with 
 Christianity. If the inquiry is conducted fairly, it must 
 satisfy certain conditions. The resemblance which we 
 detect must be not in the superficial accidental parts of 
 either faith, but in their radical and essential character- 
 istics ; these must not be assumed by the inquirer on
 
 188 THE KELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 his own authority, but must have some clear voucher 
 that they are recognised as radical and essential charac- 
 teristics by Buddhists and Christians respectively ; the 
 likeness must not be to that side of Buddhism which 
 coincides with Hindooism otherwise we shall only 
 be repeating the last Lecture but to the opposite 
 side. 
 
 The festival of Whitsuntide is observed in all parts 
 of Christendom; here in England, among the Protest- 
 ants in the north of Europe, by the Romanists in the 
 south, by Greeks and Armenians, by the descendants 
 of English, French, and Spanish settlers in North and 
 South America. It is felt by all these to commemorate 
 a great event, the event which marks the establishment 
 of the Christian Church in the world. They derive 
 their notion of this event from the record of it in the 
 second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. There we 
 are told, that on a certain day which had long been 
 kept as a festival day among the Jews, numbers of 
 them were gathered from various countries of Asia, 
 Africa, and Europe, in the city of Jerusalem. In that 
 city dwelt a body of priests divinely called, as its 
 inhabitants believed, to this office, members of a priestly 
 family. There were also authorised doctors and inter- 
 preters of the law, whose words were received by the 
 great mass of the people as oracles. On the day of 
 Pentecost, says the writers of the Acts, a great body 
 of the inhabitants of the city, and of the strangers 
 from other lands, were drawn to a place near the
 
 LECT. in.] THE DAY OF PENTECOST. 189 
 
 temple, because they were told that a set of men, not 
 priests, not doctors of the law, but inhabitants of the 
 most despised part of Palestine, themselves of the 
 lowest caste, Galilean fishermen, were speaking in 
 different tongues the wonderful works of God. This 
 power the Scripture declares was given them from on 
 high. The Spirit of God had descended upon them ; 
 they spake with other tongues as the Spirit gave them 
 utterance. To the body thus endued it is said that a 
 multitude joined themselves. They were regarded with 
 more and more jealousy by the priests and doctors of the 
 Jews. But they spread themselves through Palestine ; 
 they went into other lands. Everywhere, they declared 
 that they came in the power of the Spirit, who had 
 thus broken down the barriers of language and race ; 
 everywhere they said that this Spirit would be given 
 to those who believed their message. 
 
 Are we to conclude from this story that the Christian 
 faith broke loose from the Jewish faith, as Buddhism 
 broke loose from Brahminism ; that in each case there 
 was a vehement reaction against caste narrowness and 
 local boundaries; that in each case this reaction was 
 associated with the recognition of a spirit dwelling in 
 man? There may be much plausibility in such a 
 notion ; for many reasons it would commend itself to 
 certain modern philosophers. Only they would say, 
 ' In order to make out this resemblance, it is necessary 
 to divest the Scriptural story of its halo of mystery 
 and marvel. Take it as it stands, and all you learn
 
 190 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART ir. 
 
 from it is, that on a certain occasion a strange phe- 
 nomenon was seen, unlike any that had previously 
 occurred, or was to occur again ; at variance with the 
 constitution of man and the dealings of his Creator. 
 In that form it offers only a seeming analogy to the 
 Buddhist doctrine ; seeing that the latter assumes the 
 presence of a divine and diffusive spirit to be the proper 
 characteristic of humanity, at least in its noblest state, 
 and that on this ground it oversets the caste principle, 
 not for a particular emergency, but altogether. If, 
 however, you are inclined to admit that this is the 
 confused narrative of a remarkable epoch in Jewish 
 history (and, indeed, in the world's history) when there 
 was awakened in the nation, or in a part of it, the 
 consciousness, previously slumbering, of a capacity in 
 men generally for that knowledge, which had been 
 confined to the priests ; a narrative surrounded, as all 
 Hebrew narratives are, with a divine machinery ; we 
 will admit that you have established your case.' 
 
 I submit that one part of this statement is quite 
 incorrect. If I read the story as it stands, I shall not 
 merely be told that a certain event happened at a 
 certain time and in a certain place ; I shall be told 
 that this event was the fulfilment of a promise made 
 to the fathers of the Jewish nation; I shall be told 
 that it was intended for those of that generation, and 
 for their children. These assertions, it will be remem- 
 bered, are very prominent in the discourse which the 
 writer of the Acts of the Apostles attributes to St.
 
 LECT. in.] FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE. 191 
 
 Peter. One therefore who believes his statement can- 
 not look upon this descent of the Spirit, with all that 
 was implied in the circumstances of it, as violating the 
 laws of the human constitution, as an exception in the 
 plan of the Creator. He must look upon it as expound- 
 ing that constitution, as carrying out that plan. But 
 on what grounds, it will be asked, can it be alleged 
 that the principles set forth in the Jewish scriptures 
 and the Jewish economy were asserted and realised 
 by a transaction which seems to destroy the exclusive 
 hierarchy, ultimately the exclusive national limitation, 
 which lie at the root of them ? The answer to this 
 question will, I believe, show that the affinities of 
 Christianity with Buddhism are much closer and more 
 extensive than they would be on the hypothesis of the 
 former being a rebellion against Judaism ; on the other 
 hand, will explain wherein the difference between them 
 consists, and what that- ' miraculous halo ' which is 
 imputed to the Scripture narrative, has to do with it. 
 
 We turn to the earliest of the Jewish records, and 
 we find it declared that God made man in His own 
 image, and gave him dominion over all the other crea- 
 tures He had formed. Before a word has been said 
 about the difference of one people from another, here 
 is a broad fundamental assertion respecting man as 
 man. Perhaps you will say, ' Yes ; but this is set at 
 nought by one which immediately follows it; the fall 
 of Adam is the real, though the creation of man may 
 be the nominal, beginning of the history.' As we are
 
 192 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 examining these records to find what they actually 
 affirm, I consider the simplest, nay, the only honest 
 method is to take them as beginning where they seem 
 to begin, not to assume a starting-point of our own. It 
 will then be seen more clearly whether they have a 
 connection with each other, or are only a collection of 
 Sibylline leaves ; whereas, if we insist that the Divine 
 drama opens at a certain chapter, and that all which 
 precedes is prologue, we do not find the connection, 
 but make it. The arrangements of divines may demand 
 such violence upon the text ; but I do not think it is 
 ever justified by the conscience of simple and devout 
 Christians. I believe they would be shocked to the 
 last degree if you insist in plain language upon their 
 believing that the constitution of God was nullified, 
 destroyed, or even at all affected, by the evil acts of 
 man. Undoubtedly, there is the fullest, most imme- 
 diate recognition of the fact that evil entered into the 
 world. There is no tampering with experience, no 
 attempt to represent the universe as something else 
 than it is, in order to make it accord with the account 
 of its origin. There is no hint of a golden age, during 
 which sin and death were not upon the earth. We are 
 told that the very first man forgot that he was made in 
 the image of God; yielded to the temptation of an 
 inferior creature; came under death. He denied the 
 law after which he was created. And each of his 
 descendants is shown to have the same propensity to 
 obey that which he was meant to rule ; to disbelieve
 
 LECT. m.] KECOGNITION OF EVIL IN THE BIBLE. 193 
 
 in Him whom he was meant to obey. But neither the 
 first man nor any of his successors could make this 
 degradation and disobedience anything else than an 
 anomaly and a contradiction. The worst man in Scrip- 
 ture is never represented as evil in any other sense than 
 because he fights against the law under which he exists, 
 and of which his very transgression is the continual 
 witness. And therefore in the Bible God is ever repre- 
 sented as addressing Himself to the creature whom 
 He had formed, as awakening in him by His voice a 
 consciousness of his right condition. 
 
 He is represented as speaking thus to Adam when 
 he was hiding himself from His presence ; as speaking 
 thus to Cain when he was meditating his crime, and 
 when he had committed it. In each case it is assumed 
 that the creature addressed stood in a direct relation 
 to the Creator, however he might be denying it, and 
 determining to shut himself out from it. And I need 
 scarcely remind you, that he is treated, after the fall as 
 well as before it, as still intended to have dominion 
 over the earth and the animals upon it. The ground 
 is cursed for his sake : in the sweat of his brow he 
 must till it; but he does till it he does subdue it. 
 He is continually disposed to treat it as his master, but 
 he is compelled to act as if it were his slave ; compelled 
 at the same time to remember that its power of pro- 
 ducing nourishment for him depends not upon himself, 
 but upon an Unseen Will, which he is ever inclined 
 to lose sight of. The punishment of the race when lust
 
 194 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART ir. 
 
 and violence had spread over it, the preservation of it 
 in a family, the blessing under which the sons of Noah 
 go forth to replenish the earth and to subdue it, the 
 confusion of their purpose of dwelling together in one 
 plain when they were meant to people the earth, bear 
 witness to the same principle. Man, the race of Man, 
 is treated as formed in the image of God, as intended 
 for rule over the creatures. 
 
 Now if this be the case with respect to the records 
 of the period preceding the Call of Abraham, those 
 which follow can only be understood on the same prin- 
 ciple. The history of the chosen people does not 
 record an outrage upon mankind for the sake of one 
 portion of it; it is the history of men taken out of 
 darkness into the light, made conscious of their own 
 state, as created in the image of God and meant to 
 have dominion over the earth. A Mesopotamian shep- 
 herd is called the friend of God ; in him all the families 
 of the earth are to be blessed. Out of his family grows 
 a nation. It is a witness to all nations against the 
 separate idolatrous worship which is dividing them. 
 Its members are taught to believe that God Himself 
 is their King the Unseen God of all the earth. They 
 are not in some unnatural condition because they are 
 taken under His government; their lives are simple, 
 natural, orderly, in proportion as they remember it; 
 confused and irregular when they forget it. As the 
 history of the nation goes on, there are continually new 
 discoveries of evil tendencies, of an evil nature, in the
 
 LECT. in.] MAN MADE IN GOD'S IMAGE. 195 
 
 members of it. They are not different from the rest 
 of the world; they are equally idolatrous, equally 
 selfish, equally corrupt. Where then is their advan- 
 tage ? The Lord of All has revealed Himself to them ; 
 He has taken them into covenant; they may trust 
 Him. In trusting Him they rise above these selfish 
 and idolatrous tendencies, they become truly men. 
 The Jewish Prophet, when he is most overwhelmed 
 with his own evil and with the evil of his nation, 
 obtains most apprehension of the truth that God will 
 exhibit His perfect Image to men, in a Man, and will 
 so confound all the images they have made. Except 
 such an Image were really presented to them in a Man 
 except it were really shown to be true that Man was 
 made in the Image of God, and had dominion over the 
 creatures, and that Death and Evil were not his masters, 
 the visions of Jewish seers were delusions. But St. 
 Peter, when he spoke to the Jews on the day of Pente- 
 cost, was firmly assured that a Man had appeared in 
 the world who was the perfect Image of the Unseen 
 God. He believed that this Person had been declared 
 in the waters of baptism to be the Son of God ; that 
 the Spirit of God had descended upon Him ; that in 
 the strength of that Spirit he had exercised dominion 
 over the powers of nature, over man's spiritual enemies ; 
 had passed through death, had ascended to the right 
 hand of His Father. That He should give His Spirit 
 to men, to make them the sons of God in Him; to 
 restore them to God's Image ; to give them power over
 
 196 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 the earth ; to constitute them the masters, and not the 
 subjects, of visible things; this seemed to him the 
 right and reasonable fulfilment of express promises 
 which were contained in the Jewish Scriptures, and of 
 all their meaning. 
 
 With equal certainty he said, that the promise would 
 be to them and to their children. . He was sure that 
 the Spirit of God had taken possession of the powers 
 and energies and speech of men. He was sure that 
 in yielding to that Spirit he was obeying no strange, 
 unnatural impulse, but was submitting to his proper 
 guide and teacher, to the Author of all order and 
 peace and unity. More than this, perhaps, he may not 
 have perceived. To see in this gift the witness for a 
 great human fellowship, to see all that it implied re- 
 specting man's creation and his redemption was perhaps 
 reserved, more perfectly, for another Apostle. Through 
 intense personal humiliation and suffering did the 
 Apostle Paul learn that Christ by His death and resur- 
 rection and ascension had justified man before God ; 
 that the Spirit of God was given, not only as the ful- 
 filment of all promises which had been made to the 
 fathers of the Jewish nation, but as the fulfilment of 
 the original law of his creation, when He made all 
 things in Christ Jesus, with the intent of finally gather- 
 ing them all together in Him. In his Epistles we find 
 him brought into contact with men of different habits, 
 philosophies, and educations. The old mythologies 
 had prepared them very readily to recognise an inspira-
 
 LECT. in.] BUDDHISM OF THE GOSPEL. 197 
 
 tion from God ; the sages very readily recognised the 
 worth of the individual soul in man : but the inspiration 
 which the first admitted was sudden and casual, the 
 honour which the other paid to the soul was solitary, 
 exclusive, self-exalting. He spoke of a Spirit of God 
 as given to dwell continually in man ; to be the source 
 in him of all knowledge, faith, love; the strength for 
 all ordinary toils, the comforter in all sorrows, the power 
 of exploring the unseen and the future. He spoke of 
 this Spirit as calling forth a spirit in man, in the indi- 
 vidual man, which lifts him above himself, which he 
 cannot call his own, which belongs to him as the child 
 of God, the member of a universal family " the spirit 
 of MAN which is in him." 
 
 That profound feeling of reverence for the human 
 spirit, then, which we have discovered in the Buddhist, 
 his belief in the mighty capacities of this spirit, his 
 determination to recognise these capacities as belonging 
 to the race, not to some one section or class of it, his 
 assurance that the spirit in man cannot be circum- 
 scribed by the limits of time or space, or by the 
 measures and conditions of individual feeling and con- 
 sciousness, his conviction that this human spirit must, 
 in some mysterious manner be divine, has its full 
 jurisdiction in Christianity. And every subordinate 
 idea which has grown out of these in the mind of the 
 Buddhist has that which answers to it in the Gospel. 
 He believes that it is the privilege of the divine man 
 to contemplate the Divinity in His purity. The highest
 
 198 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 view which St. Paul takes of the privileges of Christian 
 men, in consequence of the gift which had been bestowed 
 upon them, is that they might know God; his most 
 earnest prayer, that they might increase in this know- 
 ledge. The Buddhist believes that, in order to the 
 attainment of such knowledge, the mind must be 
 separated from outward, sensual things. Sanctification, 
 the deliverance of the heart and mind from earthly 
 temporal influences, that they may enter into the enjoy- 
 ment of that which is unseen and eternal, is the very 
 work which the writers of the New Testament, with 
 one accord, attribute to the Holy Spirit who had been 
 given them. The Buddhist however, feeling that he 
 must, in some way, study the universe, and account for 
 the facts which he observes in it, was led to perceive 
 the necessity of a power which originates or begets, a 
 capacity which receives, a bond which unites them. 
 The Scriptures, too, suppose a power which creates, 
 a power in the creature which receives ; the Scriptures 
 contemplate the union and co- working of these powers 
 as the condition of health in all that exists ; they show 
 how all destruction in the human voluntary creature 
 has come from his will not yielding itself to the divine, 
 creating, inspiring Will ; how all restoration comes from 
 their being again brought into accordance. They speak 
 of the deepest ground of all things being the awful 
 union of the Father with the Son in the Spirit. 
 
 Again, we heard of holy men appearing as benefactors 
 of different portions of the globe ; their footsteps traced
 
 LECT. in.] BUDDHISM OF THE GOSPEL. 199 
 
 upon earth, yet their home seeming to be somewhere 
 else. What they are is known chiefly by what they 
 have done; their acts are palpable, a mystery hangs 
 about themselves. They are called Buddhas; though 
 they appear in places and times far apart, the same 
 wisdom, the same power, dwells in them all ; they must 
 be the wisdom and power of Buddha; they can belong 
 to no other. Even thus do Christians speak of those 
 who in far-off ages, in various latitudes, have shed light 
 into the hearts of men, have cheered the poor in the 
 midst of their sore trials with help for the present, hope 
 for the future, have restrained triumphant evil, and 
 laboured that righteousness and truth might flourish. 
 These we hold to be all partakers of the self-same 
 Spirit; in their words and acts they manifest its 
 presence ; care not to be great in themselves, but do 
 homage to a mysterious greatness, from which all that 
 seems such in themselves is derived ; show that they 
 have their work on earth, their citizenship in the 
 heavens. Once more, the Buddhist affirms that there 
 must be some person, and that a human person, in 
 whom the perfect wisdom resides. He need not in his 
 earthly appearance be glorious ; he may wear the form 
 of a child ; but the Power must be within, and must 
 so reveal itself that men shall see the Divine Priest 
 is there. Even thus it is the clearest, most invariable 
 proclamation in the Gospel, that each man, in his best, 
 purest estate, does but utter some portion of the Divine 
 Mind, does but exhibit some one partial image of the
 
 200 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 Divine Character ; that there is one perfect Utterance 
 of that voice, one perfect Image of that substance, one 
 in whom the Fulness pleased to dwell, one who humbled 
 Himself to the cradle of Bethlehem, to the Cross of 
 Calvary ; who in that cradle, and on that Cross, showed 
 forth the Divine glory : and who, because He humbled 
 Himself, has been exalted to be the High Priest of our 
 race for ever. 
 
 But as we have seen this relation between Buddhism 
 and Christianity coming out before us with increasing 
 brightness, we must, I think, have become also more 
 and more conscious of some difference, which, whatever 
 it be, is a deep and radical one. The philosophical 
 objectors told us that if we could separate the story of 
 Pentecost from its 'mythical' accidents, the sound of 
 the rushing mighty wind, the cloven tongues, the notion 
 of a particular endowment bestowed by Jesus Christ at 
 that particular moment on His disciples, we should 
 arrive at an intelligible result, which might throw some 
 light upon Buddhist and other history. I complained 
 of this statement so far as it represents the events of 
 that day as isolated, as inconsistent with principles 
 recognised in the Jewish economy, as importing that 
 the in-dwelling of a Spirit in man is not implied in 
 his original constitution. Subject to these remarks, 
 .1 now admit that they are right in looking upon these 
 miraculous circumstances as indicative of the difference 
 between the Scriptural and the Buddhist conception 
 of the spiritual endowments of human creatures. The
 
 LECT. m.] BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 201 
 
 Buddhist starts from the human ground ; assumes the 
 existence or possibility of certain qualities and attributes 
 of a divine nature in man ; supposes the man, in virtue 
 of these, to hold intercourse with the Divinity. The 
 Scripture starts from the divine ground ; assumes that 
 man according to his constitution is nothing but an 
 image; denies that he can originate anything; sets 
 forth a revelation of his Creator to him as the found- 
 ation of his knowledge, of his life; represents all 
 faculties, powers, energies of the creature as gifts of 
 the Creator. Upon this difference every other depends. 
 If the first view be the right one, there can, of course, 
 be no divine manifestation, for there is nothing to mani- 
 fest. The Creator does not witness to men by visible 
 signs that He is the Author of these gifts, for He is not 
 the Author of them, or He does not design to make 
 them know that He is. If the other view be true, 
 these (so-called) miracles, these exercises of power, these 
 signs of a Presence, are precisely the methods which 
 commend themselves to the conscience and reason of 
 mankind as the most fitted I had nearly said as the 
 only possible witnesses of a truth, which, when it has 
 been once testified of in this way, can hereafter be held 
 as certain and abiding, though there be no startling 
 signs of it at all. 
 
 Now, as Buddhism and Christianity are the respective 
 exemplifications of these two methods, it may be well 
 to consider the practical results of each. You will see, 
 I trust, my object. I do not desire to make out a
 
 202 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 charge against Buddhism on the ground of its moral 
 deficiencies; but, I want to ascertain how far these 
 deficiencies are or are not owing to this characteristical 
 feature of it, that more than any other system the 
 world has ever seen, it makes the belief of a Divine 
 power working in man its ground, and ascends from 
 that ground to any apprehension it may entertain 
 respecting the Divinity Himself. 
 
 I. One leading contrast offers itself instantly to our 
 notice. The Buddhist believes that a Divine wisdom 
 and power dwells, or may dwell, in human beings, and 
 that its dwelling constitutes them heroic spirits, saintly 
 men. The New Testament begins with teaching us 
 what kind of Spirit this must be ; what manner of 
 Being He is from whom this Spirit proceeds; what 
 must be the manner of His working in creatures who 
 submit to His government. It speaks of the Spirit of 
 Him who had declared Himself for ages to the Jews 
 as the God of Truth and "Righteousness; it speaks of 
 the Spirit of Him who gave His Son for men. It sets 
 forth the character of this Spirit by His life, in whom 
 it is said to have dwelt without measure. If holiness 
 was more characteristic of Him than power, the Spirit 
 of holiness is the name by which we are taught to 
 express it most uniformly and perfectly. If meekness, 
 , humility, gentleness, were the essential qualities of His 
 life, the Spirit is known as the Spirit of meekness, 
 humility, gentleness; these are declared to be the fruits 
 of its operations. If His whole life was an act of self-
 
 LECT. HI.] THE BUDDHIST'S DILEMMA. 203 
 
 sacrifice, His Spirit is set forth as the power whereby 
 man is able to offer himself a sacrifice. If Love was 
 the source and end of His sacrifice, it is the Spirit of 
 Love which he promises to those who obey Him. Not 
 that these assertions in the least interfere with the 
 other equally prominent one, that He is the Spirit of 
 Truth and Knowledge ; that all powers and exercises of 
 mind, and their direction, are from him. No one brings 
 out that assertion more clearly than St. Paul ; but he 
 winds up the enumeration of gifts and powers in these 
 words : " And yet I show you a more excellent way. 
 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
 and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass 
 or a tinkling cymbal." Love is in his teaching, as in 
 his life, the highest manifestation of the presence of the 
 Spirit, because God, from whom it proceeds, is Love. 
 
 II. All this difference, you see, is grounded upon the 
 difference between the naked idea of a Spirit dwelling 
 in man and identical with himself, and the idea of Him 
 as given to men by the Eternal God through His Son. 
 Look now at the difference as to another point, the 
 estimate of human creatures. To the Buddhist those 
 whom he believes thus endowed necessarily become 
 gods; they can be nothing else. And thus, he who 
 starts with the rejection of an hereditary priesthood as 
 an intolerable yoke, because men, as men, have the 
 capacity of seeing God and worshipping Him, ends by 
 becoming the poor servant and tool of a priesthood. 
 All who can exhibit the intellectual power which he
 
 204 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 feels is of right his, and yet which he is conscious that 
 he does not actually possess, must be objects of his 
 obedience and his worship. He has no standard with 
 which he can compare what they are and what they 
 do; he is sure that there must be some who enjoy 
 intercourse with the unseen world; they cannot tell 
 him what the intercourse means, what the result of it 
 is, how he can be the better for it. They seem to say, 
 some of them actually say, and wish him to understand 
 that at all events they are marking out a ne plus ultra 
 to his inquiries, " Beyond us lies a void of Nothingness." 
 Into that void the listening disciple has no temptation 
 to enter. What can he do but accept these finite 
 temporary priests as the best substitutes for the Infinite 
 which he longs for and yet shrinks from ? They at 
 least keep alive the appetite, they save him from utter 
 despair. Such is the condition of those who can only 
 contemplate the Spirit which they feel is meant for 
 man as in man. The Christian is taught to think of 
 this Spirit as in God, as coming forth from Him. He 
 is taught that he may ask God continually for the 
 quickening and renewing of it in himself, and in all 
 the family to which he belongs. He is told that when 
 the Comforter comes He shall convince the world of 
 Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgment; that He shall 
 .not become identical with the man himself, but shall 
 show him his evil ; shall raise him out of that evil into 
 a Righteousness which is above him, which is in one 
 who is gone to the Father; shall give him the continual
 
 LECT. in.] THE TRUE PRIEST AND PROPHET. 205 
 
 assurance of a final separation between that which is 
 true and that which is false. 
 
 III. Thus the promise of the Spirit is the promise 
 to a man of a power to overlook his own mind, to judge 
 its acts and movements, to know what in it requires to 
 be cut off, what is wrought in God. Every human 
 heart is to be the subject of it ; no creature belonging 
 to the race for which Christ died is meant to be 
 defrauded of this mighty illumination. But no one 
 who receives it can pretend to be thereby exalted above 
 his fellows ; his knowledge is the knowledge of his own 
 individual abasement; of that glory which he shares 
 with his kind in Christ. And therefore the Scripture, 
 in strict conformity with this idea, represents all intel- 
 lectual gifts as bestowed, not to raise one man above 
 another, but simply that men may be enabled to serve 
 each other. The highest of all is the servant of all. 
 He who holds his gifts under this condition, and con- 
 fesses his unfitness for the use of them, is a fellow- 
 worker with the Divine Spirit. He is doing that which 
 he was sent here to do. He who uses them for any 
 other end, who holds them on any other condition, 
 practically disowns the blessing and its Author. The 
 priest and the prophet [come under this rule. They 
 especially are to look upon themselves as called by 
 Him who is the deliverer of men out of their confusion 
 and darkness, to an office under Him, as endowed with 
 powers by Him to fulfil this office. So far as the priest 
 or the prophet looks upon all the ability he possesses
 
 206 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD; [PART n. 
 
 as a gift, the object of which is determined by the 
 character of the giver, and the nature of His work, 
 so far he is a true priest and true prophet : assuming 
 his ability as his property, he becomes a false priest, a 
 false prophet ; in the language of Scripture, a wolf and 
 not a shepherd, a destroyer of men, not their deliverer. 
 
 IV. But the conception of the Lama supplies us 
 with the most perfect illustration of the difference I 
 am endeavouring to point out. In him is gathered up 
 that spirit of humanity which the Buddhist worships, 
 and from which he deduces his divinity. The Christian 
 affirms that He in whom the priesthood of the universe 
 rests is the eternal Son of God, that He took human 
 nature, united it to God, endued it with that Spirit 
 which dwelt without measure in Himself. He, they 
 declare, is the Head of many members, through each 
 of which, so long as it abides in Him, the same life- 
 blood is transmitted. The former notion, grounded 
 upon a true and deep feeling that there must be a 
 centre or that there can be no fellowship, assumes the 
 centre anywhere in a child or old man and demands 
 implicit faith that there all intelligence rests. The 
 other, starting from the fact that humanity has a centre 
 above itself, declares how He who claimed to be this 
 centre, in poverty, weakness, contempt made good his 
 .title, by proving that He could deliver the spirit of 
 man out of its fetters, that in owning Him to be its 
 Lord it attained the freedom it was sighing for. The 
 one notion, glorifying the intellect and spirit of man, 
 insists upon their doing homage to the meanest object
 
 LECT. in.] CONTRADICTIONS HOW RECONCILED. 207 
 
 which they create for themselves to worship ; the other, 
 humbling the intellect and spirit of man before one 
 who has established his right to be their master, offers 
 them an expansion and exaltation of which the know- 
 ledge and love of an absolute and perfect Being are 
 the only limits. 
 
 Y. Thus the society of the Buddhist has no bond 
 except the existence of something mysterious in the 
 creatures who belong to it : feeling this to be insuffi- 
 cient, he invents an external supremacy, and endues it 
 with attributes which he knows it does not possess; 
 he makes a lie, and the lie avails him nothing, for the 
 three hundred millions which own it compose only a 
 mass of atoms without any principle of cohesion, though 
 they are ever seeking one. The Christian Ecclesia 
 confesses by its very name that its existence has its 
 ground in the call of an Almighty Being ; that it 
 stands only by His will ; that it is distinguished from 
 a divided world to be a witness of that true glory which 
 man possesses when he looks upward, not downward, 
 to a Master, not to himself; that, having such a call 
 and being such a witness, it is baptised with a Spirit 
 of power and truth and love, who by it would bring 
 all men into the divine fellowship which embraces all 
 peoples, tongues, kindreds from which no one can, 
 except by an act of self-will, be excluded. 
 
 VI. I might perhaps leave the comparison here 
 drawn to work its way upon the consciences and hearts 
 of all who love truth and freedom and their kind, in 
 deed more than in word. But the subject is so tran-
 
 208 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 scendantly important at this time, that I must present 
 it still in one or two other lights. The first is this. 
 Buddhism, you see, necessarily excludes Mahometanism 
 and Hindooism. It is the direct contradiction of the 
 former: Mahometanism basing the universe upon the 
 distinctness and absoluteness of God. Its antipathy to 
 the second is the great fact of its history, the explan- 
 ation of its existence. It denies the reality of that 
 distinction which is involved in the doctrine of the 
 twice-born man, as opposed to the ordinary man. And 
 now we find it cannot sustain those pretensions to 
 spirituality, on account of which it is at war with the 
 unspiritual Mahometan, or that pretension to humanity 
 and freedom from priestcraft, on account of which it is 
 at war with the exclusive Brahmin. It sets their ideas 
 at nought; it utterly fails in realising its own. But 
 we have been led to think that ideas which have exer- 
 cised such a sway over multitudes of human beings, 
 from generation to generation, must be realised in some 
 way. Our philosophers have taught us to pay this 
 homage to the thoughts of our fellow-men; we bless 
 them for the lesson; we are ashamed of not having 
 learnt it sooner, of not having rather imparted it to 
 them. I beseech you seriously to ponder this question. 
 How may these ideas be realised ? How may they be 
 reconciled ? And if you should, after much thinking j 
 find that this ancient Revelation which you were going 
 to cast aside as one of the false and worn-out systems 
 of the world, supplies that realisation and reconciliation 
 supplies them because it is a Revelation on that
 
 LECT. in.] THE AUTHORITY OF A FATHER. 209 
 
 ground and no other then be sure that if you do cast 
 it aside, or wish to prove it something else than revela- 
 tion, the reason is not that you care for what is expan- 
 sive and comprehensive, that you hate what is formal 
 and narrow ; this is not any longer the ground of your 
 opposition. Will you then with great earnestness ask 
 yourselves what it is ? 
 
 VII. Perhaps, however, we have been speaking only 
 of a verbal reconciliation ; you want one which shall be 
 practical ; one which may bear to be tried on a great 
 scale. Let us see, then, whether the case of China, a 
 country which you will allow to be practical at least in 
 its aim, to offer quite sufficient room for a large experi- 
 ment, may not supply what you require. If you did 
 hear of a people which had had for ages the strongest 
 conviction that the authority of the Father was the 
 one foundation of society, but had never been able to 
 connect this conviction with the acknowledgment of 
 anything mysterious and divine ; of a society which for 
 ages had not been able to prevent a certain body of its 
 subjects from dreaming that there is a mysterious and 
 divine Word or Reason speaking to the wise man, out 
 of which dream, however, no fruits had proceeded but 
 impostures and delusions; if you were told, that into 
 the heart of this society Buddhism had come, with its 
 strange testimony of a Spirit in the human race, the 
 ordinary manifestations of which are seen in very 
 ignorant priests, its perfect manifestation often in an 
 infant; if you heard that these doctrines had never 
 been able to combine, and yet that no one could succeed
 
 210 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART 11. 
 
 in banishing the other from an empire in which order 
 and unity are prized as the highest blessings of all, nay, 
 that experience had proved to reluctant sages, that none 
 of these elements of discord could safely be extinguished, 
 that each was in some strange way needful to the per- 
 manence of that which it seemed to undermine: and 
 if after this you heard of a faith which assumed that 
 the ground of all things and all men is a Father ; that 
 He has spoken and does speak by his Filial Word to 
 the hearts and spirits of men, so making them wise, 
 and separating them from what is base and vain; that 
 this Filial Word has been made flesh and dwelt among 
 men, and has given them power to become sons of God ; 
 and that through Him a Spirit is given to dwell with 
 men, to raise up a new spirit in them, to unite them 
 to each other, to make them living portions of a living 
 body; that men are actually admitted by a simple rite 
 into a Name expressive of their adoption by the Father, 
 their separation by the Word, their inspiration by the 
 Spirit ; that in this Name stood a universal fellowship, 
 which upheld the authority of earthly fathers upon the 
 ground of the divine relation, which asserted the dis- 
 
 o ' 
 
 tinction of wise and foolish, good and evil men, upon 
 the ground of their following or disobeying the monitions 
 of that Filial Teacher, from whom all right human 
 instructors derived the power whereby they were able 
 to make good and useful scholars, which maintained 
 the intercourse and communion of human beings upon 
 the ground of their obedience to the Spirit of order 
 and harmony : if, I say, these two sets of facts were
 
 LECT. in.] CHEISTIAN BUDDHISM. 211 
 
 presented to you side by side, would not you feel 
 there was some strange adaptation in the one to the 
 other; that there was in the last the secret principle 
 and power for which it was evident from the former 
 that China had through centuries been asking in 
 vain? 
 
 VIII. But why do I speak thus ? Does it not sound 
 like the idlest of all visions to talk of our converting 
 Buddhists, when, judging from various indications, they 
 are far more likely to convert us ? I have not disguised 
 from you the Buddhist side of Christianity; I have 
 rejoiced to set it forth, as I rejoiced to set forth the 
 Mahometan and Hindoo sides of it. But, as we saw 
 that either of these elements might in any age become 
 the predominant, almost the exclusive one, it is needful 
 that we should consider well how this third doctrine 
 may in former days have crushed, may crush in our 
 own, every other. Assuredly, there are distinct traces 
 of prevalent triumphant Buddhism in the Christian 
 Church of periods gone by. The history of Orders 
 rising up to reform society, to rebuke organised priest- 
 hoods for their self-indulgence, coldness, exclusiveness, 
 to assert the rights of the poor, to maintain that every 
 member of Christ's flock has a calling to benefit the 
 rest ; beginning thus nobly, and then sinking into more 
 intolerable despots than those against whom they pro- 
 tested, self-exalted in their gifts, their knowledge, 
 their ignorance, their poverty; deceiving, and being 
 deceived; drawing all reverence to themselves on the 
 score of their humility, holding down the poor in
 
 212 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 slavery, whom they came to deliver : this history con- 
 tains one class of such phenomena. In the history of 
 Mysticism and Quietism, telling how men beginning to 
 seek God with earnest hearts, to denounce the idola- 
 trous notions others had formed of Him, to retire into 
 the secret chamber that there might be no hindrance 
 from outward things to the clearness of the vision, to 
 mortify their flesh that it might not stand in their way, 
 went on till their hearts grew puffed up and proud, 
 till they began to boast of wonderful discoveries vouch- 
 safed to them alone, till they became the subjects of all 
 nervous impressions, fantasies, disorders, more sensual 
 than those whom they charged with being so ; how at 
 last they gazed on vacancy, and felt, if they had not 
 honesty to say, ' The vision is gone, we see nothing : ' 
 here we find Christian Buddhism in another manifesta- 
 tion. And the lessons which these two records supply 
 . are not obsolete ; either of these temptations may 
 assault any of us again; in some form is perhaps 
 assaulting all of us. 
 
 o 
 
 IX. But chiefly should we be careful to note what 
 common principle it was which in each of these cases 
 turned so much seeming truth into a curse ; for it is 
 of that we have need to beware, in whatever dress it 
 may come, or if our especial work should be to 
 encounter it in its nakedness. Unquestionably the 
 member of the Order and the solitary mystic alike 
 yielded to the feeling, 'It is this power in me, this 
 faculty of government,' this faculty of vision, which is 
 the great thing of all. How glorious to belong to this
 
 LECT. in.] ITS LATEST FORM TREATMENT OF IT. 213 
 
 great society, for which I am ready to live and die ; 
 how glorious to have this capacity of conversing with 
 the Infinite, for the sake of which I have cheerfully 
 resigned all things ! ' Who could think that the dead- 
 liest poison was lurking in such words as these ; that 
 there could be the essence of all pride in such self- 
 sacrifice ? But what if men should say boldly, ' It is 
 this power in me which is really the great power of all ; 
 it is this eye in me which creates the object it seems 
 to behold. I will acknowledge nothing else, worship 
 nothing else.' What if this should be the language 
 which men lisped a few years ago, and now begin to 
 speak distinctly? Then surely there will gradually 
 appear most of the other signs which we have traced 
 in Buddhism, and many which could not appear in it, 
 or in any heathen system. First, the formation of an 
 intellectual priesthood more utterly without the sense 
 of a vocation, more simply glorying in its powers, there- 
 fore more intolerant, exclusive, oppressive, than any 
 other with which this earth has ever been cursed. 
 Next, the consciousness in that exclusive priesthood of 
 a want of sympathy with actual men, notwithstanding 
 their boast of humanity in the abstract ; therefore an 
 attempt to supply this want, as it always has been 
 supplied, by devices to meet the taste of the vulgar, 
 by prodigies, portents, sorceries; physical mysteries 
 being called in as a compensation for the absence of 
 divine mysteries ; science being degraded into an instru- 
 ment of basest imposture. Finally, intellectual worship, 
 after giving birth to all forms of empiricism, ending at
 
 214 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART IT. 
 
 last in the elevation of some merely brute power to 
 the throne of the universe ; a power which will prove 
 by its triumph, that if intellect, freedom, humanity, 
 have no better protectors than themselves, they must 
 be trampled down ; will prove, as we are well assured, 
 by its ultimate discomfiture, that they have another 
 Protector, Him from whom all good and perfect gifts 
 have come. 
 
 X. But it will avail little to call up such visions as 
 these, however certain we may feel from the testimony 
 of history that they will one day show themselves to 
 be realities, if they lead us only to the denunciation 
 of others, to a dread of the words which they speak, or 
 of the acts which they do. Oftentimes I fear such 
 denunciations and such dread conceal a very shallow 
 faith in ourselves; oftentimes they indicate that we 
 are sadly beset with that pride in our own intellectual 
 powers which we attribute to others. Ourselves we 
 need to suspect; our own half-belief in the truths of 
 which we talk most loudly; our own readiness to 
 substitute the conclusions of our understandings for the 
 divine teaching. If we heartily confess these sins and 
 repent of them we shall not magnify the operations of 
 the divine Spirit less because some seem to contemplate 
 them exclusively; we shall not be betrayed into the 
 .vulgar and deceitful policy of underrating the reason 
 and faculties of men. because some seem to overvalue 
 them ; we shall not fancy that we show great dexterity 
 and piety when we force a feeling in one direction, 
 because its natural growth seems to be in another.
 
 LECT. m.] CONCLUSION. 215 
 
 Kather, we shall regard all the tendencies of particular 
 periods with reverence as indications of God's will, how- 
 ever perverted by man's ignorance and selfishness. 
 When we meet with a fanatical exaltation of spiritual 
 emotions, excitements, ecstacies, we shall be most 
 anxious to assert the reality and universality of spiritual 
 communications; to place them on their deepest ground, 
 to show how utterly dreary man's condition would be 
 without them. When we see a fanatical exaltation of 
 human faculties, then most shall we be eager to assert 
 their worth and sacredness ; to vindicate them from all 
 aspersions grounded upon the imperfections which attach 
 to them in this world ; to maintain that he who refuses 
 them the noblest cultivation despises and blasphemes 
 the Author of them. And that the truths proclaimed 
 by raving sects and by idolaters of the intellect may 
 both be preserved, we shall bring them into fellowship. 
 The communication of the divine Spirit we shall believe 
 to be the only means whereby the Reason, the Heart, 
 the Understanding, are enabled to perform their rightful 
 functions, to be vigorous, calm, pure, in harmony with 
 the mind of the Creator, and with all that is truly 
 human. Holding all power as a trust, every office as a 
 stewardship, believing that the divine Spirit itself who 
 dwells with us is the greatest trust, the most awful 
 stewardship, we shall feel more the glory of our race 
 because we feel more our own insignificance ; shall be 
 more really men, because we walk more humbly with 
 our God.
 
 21,6 
 
 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 The early preaching of the Gospel hwv it affected Greeks, 
 Egyptians, Romans, Goths. Form of this preaching. Resist- 
 ance from the doctrine of an Evil Principle. Mahometan 
 protest against it, and for the sacredness of the outward 
 world. Hindoo protest on behalf of a divine kingdom. 
 Buddhist protest for an actual Indwelling Spirit. Modern 
 infidel protest for humanity. Christianity established by all. 
 Conclusion. 
 
 TN former Lectures I have considered the relation in 
 -*- which Christianity stands to the existing religious 
 systems of the world, to Mahometanism, Hindooism, 
 Buddhism. In this, the last Lecture of the course, I 
 ought, according to the plan which I laid down for 
 myself, to consider in what relation it stands to those 
 which I called the defunct systems those of ancient 
 Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Gothic world. 
 But it will strike you at once that this subject has, in 
 a great measure, been anticipated. 
 
 I could not allude to the facts which justified my 
 use of the word defunct, in reference to these religions, 
 without indicating the kind of influence which Christi- 
 anity had exercised over them. I was obliged to tell 
 you that the worship of the god of Light in Greece, 
 the state religion of Rome, the worship of Odin amongst 
 the Goths, had given way before the preaching of the
 
 LECT. iv.] EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 217 
 
 Crucified Son of God. I could not omit to notice the 
 way in which the Gospel had established itself in the 
 Greek cities of Egypt, or the influence it had received 
 from the culture previously existing in them, or the 
 resistance it had met with in the country districts where 
 the old Egyptian doctrine had its strongest hold. I 
 could not but speak of that revival of the Persian faith, 
 which took place in the second century of the Christian 
 era, of the obstruction which that faith offered to the 
 Gospel, of its remarkable re-action upon some of the 
 teachers of the Gospel. I should have no excuse for 
 travelling again over this ground, though the observa- 
 tion we took of it was so rapid and superficial, were it 
 not that the facts to which I have just alluded, taken 
 in connection with those which have engaged our atten- 
 tion already, suggest painful doubts to the mind, doubts 
 closely related to those which it has been the object of 
 the whole course to examine. 
 
 The aspect of Christianity in the first ages, notwith- 
 standing the exceptions which I have noticed, is that of 
 a youthful, growing, victorious doctrine ; its roots laid 
 in the depths; its branches spreading over the earth, and 
 reaching to heaven. But then came Mahometanism, 
 utterly exterminating that Persian doctrine with which 
 the Christian teachers had so unsuccessfully fought; 
 bringing Egypt, great part of Asia, and a section of 
 Europe, under its yoke. When we studied the history 
 of this faith, we learnt that it had conquered much from 
 the Gospel, and had scarcely, through twelve centuries,
 
 218 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 yielded to any permanent impression from it. The 
 latter assertion is almost as true of Hindooism, in spite 
 of the establishment of a Christian empire in the East. 
 Buddhism still holds a third of the globe in almost 
 undisturbed possession. Now a person comparing these 
 two sets of facts will be very likely to say, ' Supposing 
 your answers to the philosophical objectors, who maintain 
 that Christianity is a decaying, nearly obsolete, creed, to 
 be ever so relevant and strong, yet what are they when 
 weighed against this startling confirmation of their 
 statements ? Must not that faith have had a fitness 
 for other ages, an unfitness for ours, which during six 
 centuries accomplished so much, which now seems to 
 be accomplishing almost nothing; which could then 
 encounter the wisdom and power of those nations 
 that we still recognise as having been the wisest and 
 mightiest in the world, which now fails in a conflict with 
 the ignorant and incoherent worshippers of Buddha, 
 And if you escape by pleading that the human pro- 
 fessors of this doctrine are less sincere and energetic 
 than they were, what is this but saying that it depends 
 on human energy ; that it is, in fact, a human system, 
 strong whilst those who hold it are strong, sure to 
 wither when their zeal withers ? ' Such an objection 
 as this cannot be evaded. In considering it, I shall 
 Jbe led to examine the different steps we have taken, 
 beginning with the question, How did Christianity 
 address itself to the systems with which, in its infancy, 
 it came into collision ?
 
 LECT. IT.] WITNESSES OF A LORD AND KING. 219 
 
 I am forced to use the word Christianity; for many 
 purposes it is a convenient one. But I must remind 
 you, that it is not a word which was familiar to the 
 Apostles, or to those who succeeded them in the first 
 ages. We are not told that they went forth preaching 
 Christianity. The writer of the Acts of the Apostles 
 says that they preached the "Kingdom of God," or 
 "the Gospel of God," or "Christ," or "the Gospel of 
 Christ." To expound these words fully, would be to 
 expound the New Testament. But this meaning lies 
 upon the surface of them : the Apostles came witnessing 
 of a Lord and King ; the Lord and King of men. The 
 proclamation of the Crucified Man, as the Son of God, 
 was their Gospel, or good tidings. In that character 
 men were invited to receive Him. The Apostles 
 believed their own words; they could therefore trust 
 God to prove them true. If this man were the King 
 of the world, strange and ridiculous as the proposition 
 might sound in the ears of Jews or Heathens, He 
 would be shown to be such by one means or other. 
 Some of the Apostles knew nothing of the previous 
 feelings and discipline of the nations; some, as the 
 Apostle Paul, might have meditated on that subject, 
 and have conversed much with men of different opinions. 
 But all alike met the people among whom they came, 
 not with arguments to prove this opinion true, or that 
 false, but with the announcement of a Person who had 
 a right to men's obedience, and whom it was good that 
 they should obey.
 
 220 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 I. St. Paul at Athens encountered Epicureans and 
 Stoics; he disputed with them in the market-place. 
 When we are made acquainted with his words, we find 
 they were of this kind, " Whom ye ignorantly worship, 
 Him declare I unto you." ' Your poets have said, that 
 we are the offspring of God ; it is true ; therefore do 
 not make Him after the likeness of things you see. He 
 is not far from any of us; for in Him we Jive, and move, 
 and have our being. He has appointed a day in the 
 which He will judge the world by that Man whom He 
 hath ordained ; whereof He hath given assurance unto 
 all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.' 
 This language, you see, assumed that the Athenians 
 were in search of God ; that they were ignorantly 
 worshipping Him ; that they had a sense of His being 
 a Father ; that they wanted some one living, human 
 image of Him, to supplant those images of Him which 
 they had made for themselves. In Athens itself the 
 words were little heeded ; men there were busy seeking 
 for some new thing to talk of; they were occupied with 
 schemes of the universe ; of realities they had lost the 
 perception. But the teaching was adapted to all that 
 was sound and true in the Greek mind; it met whatever 
 wants that mind was conscious of. The Greek asked 
 for one who should exhibit humanity in its perfection ; 
 .he was told of a Son of Man. He felt that whoever 
 did so exhibit Humanity must be divine. The Son 
 of Man was declared to be the Son of God. He had 
 dreamed of one from whom the highest glory man could
 
 LECT. iv.] GOSPEL TO THE GREEKS. 221 
 
 conceive must have proceeded. He was told of a 
 Father. He had thought of a divine Presence in every 
 tree and flower. He heard of a Presence nearer still 
 to himself. He was not told that he must cease to 
 believe in powers ruling in the Sun or Moon, or over 
 any portion of the earth. The Apostles had no com- 
 mission to declare there might not be such Powers, or 
 whether they had actual personality ; they were not to 
 deny the existence of kingly men upon the earth, or of 
 angels or saints in the unseen world ; only they were to 
 say, This Man is the King of kings, and Lord of lords. 
 Of his fulness must they all have received who are any- 
 thing, or ever were anything, here or elsewhere ; their 
 graces can only be a reflection from His grace. They 
 were to say, He is nearer to you, more directly related 
 to you, than all these can be; for He has taken the 
 nature of all, and borne the sorrows and sins of all ; in 
 Him there is nothing partial, nothing imperfect; no 
 feebleness of sympathy in any single direction. They 
 were to say further, If in any of the objects of your 
 reverence there is anything earthly, sensual, evil ; any- 
 thing belonging to human nature in its corruption : then 
 that must be contrary to Him ; that must be at war 
 with Him. So far as any creature is endued with such 
 qualities, it is an evil creature : it has the evil spirit ; 
 it is not to be worshipped as if it were glorious, but 
 renounced as devilish ; as that which would draw you 
 from the true estate into which Christ, by taking 
 your nature, has redeemed you. Therefore the Greek
 
 222 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 mythology was met at all points by this Gospel. What 
 was actually or possibly good in it, the Revelation of 
 Christ comprehended ; what was evil and degraded it 
 wrestled with, by proclaiming the good which it had 
 counterfeited. But this was its charm, The Greek had 
 a world without a centre ; the preachers of the Gospel 
 made the centre known to him. What could revolve 
 about it, fell into its proper orbit ; what determined 
 to move independently of the centre, was seen to be 
 unnatural and distracted. 
 
 II. How the Gospel found its way into the Egyptian 
 heart we are not informed so distinctly. This however 
 we may remember ; Our Lord spoke to His disciples 
 in parables; through them he declared the mysteries 
 of the kingdom. The facts of outward nature, the 
 ordinary transactions of men, he recognised as a sacred 
 writing, in which God had expressed part of his mean- 
 ing, a meaning which he did not will to remain hidden, 
 but which his Son unfolded. That the preachers of 
 the Christian kingdom in Egypt should think much 
 on this method of discovering the divine treasures was 
 inevitable. But the substance of the communication 
 was still the same. The Egyptian was questioning 
 all nature to tell him of the Ammon, the hidden God : 
 the Christian answer was still, " Him declare we unto 
 
 .you." 
 
 III. So it fared likewise with the Roman, whose 
 worship had really, as we saw, a different direction 
 from that of the Greek, however at various points they
 
 LECT. iv.] THE ROMAN. THE GOTH. 223 
 
 might intersect each other. The clear intellect, the 
 beautiful form, were not in his mind the constituents 
 of Kinghood or Godhead. Order, self-government, the 
 capacity of ruling others, submission of individual will 
 to law, he demanded in the chief man; and qualities 
 corresponding to these alone seemed to him divine. A 
 faith without an organised harmonious society, was to 
 the Latin a dream. After many struggles his own 
 mighty commonwealth had felt that it could only 
 continue to exist under the guidance of a single head ; 
 and that head one uniting military and religious titles ; 
 a ruler of armies, an object of adoration. A.King, in 
 whom was seen the perfect fulfilment of Law, the 
 surrender of the individual Will to the Higher Will, 
 the entire self-sacrifice ; a King who was the centre of 
 a society, the head of many members, was proclaimed 
 by the fishermen of Galilee, by the tent-maker of 
 Tarsus. That announcement met Roman life on all 
 its sides and aspects; adopted its highest maxims; 
 overreached its noblest idea of fellowship ; showed that 
 the true society had for its chief, one altogether unlike 
 the emperor; one whom he must crush, or to whom 
 he must bow. And so, by slow degrees, the Roman 
 state-idolatry, like the Greek idolatry of individual 
 forms and persons, perished out of the world. 
 
 IV. The Goths, again, heard the same proclamation 
 of a kingdom of God. It did not find them watching 
 the embers of an expiring civilisation, but full of 
 boyish vigour and life and rudeness, eager to break and
 
 224 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART ir. 
 
 subdue the earth; possessed by the wildest dreams of 
 powers in earth and sea which wrestled for victory ; 
 doing homage to a champion of a strong hand and 
 seeing eye, the leader of their hosts and their prophet. 
 With much joy, though amidst much confusion, these 
 barbarians welcomed the tidings of a Redeemer in 
 whom men could own at once their Lord and their 
 brother. 
 
 A redemption of man, a redemption of all that had 
 been lost or disorderly in creation, was equally assumed 
 in the preaching to Greeks, Romans, and Goths. It- 
 was set forth as an accomplished fact ; as laying the 
 only right and reasonable ground-work for human life ; 
 as that of which the Church, by its very existence, 
 bore testimony. And it was signified in the word 
 Redemption, that the partakers of it were not brought 
 into some novel or unnatural state, but into that for 
 which they were created, that which was implied in 
 their human constitution. 
 
 V. If this was the nature of the Christian preaching 
 and its success, we may understand where it was likely 
 to encounter the greatest obstructions. The Persians 
 believed in two rulers of the world, one good, one 
 evil. The great reformer had indeed affirmed that 
 the Lord of Light would prevail at last. He seems 
 to have believed that the Prince of Darkness was a 
 rebel against him; not originally a divider of his 
 throne. But he never quite realised this conviction; 
 he could not entirely deny the outward universe to
 
 LBCT. iv.] THE PERSIAN. 225 
 
 Ahriman; the Persians generally deemed him to be 
 the creator of it. The two powers were regarded as 
 having each a right over man, his flesh and his external 
 circumstances being especially the property of the dark 
 Spirit. What mighty evidences there seemed to be 
 in favour of this hypothesis ! How all history, from 
 its beginning onwards, seemed to vouch for it ! What 
 obstinacy in the old forms of evil ; what new floods of 
 it were continually pouring in as from a perennial 
 source ! In the third or fourth centuries, when the 
 Roman empire was tottering to its fall, under the 
 weight of its own wickedness, the proofs of Ahriman's 
 sovereignty were surely not less than they had been 
 before. Had the Gospel of Christ permanently altered 
 this state of things ? When the Persian conversed with 
 Christians, he found them more ready than others to 
 acknowledge an evil in themselves, more sensitive to 
 its existence in the world. They even seemed to 
 admit its supremacy, and to speak of the higher and 
 purer state which they said Christ had established as 
 a deliverance out of the natural human condition; of 
 His saints as rebelling against the Prince of this World. 
 Such language, often carelessly and ignorantly used, 
 often misunderstood when it was rightly used, may at 
 first have led the Magian to think that the Gospel 
 had not undermined his primitive doctrine had rather 
 brought new facts in confirmation of it. And yet he 
 will have found Christians ready to live and die for 
 the assertion that Christ was the one only Lord ; that 
 M. B. L. Q
 
 226 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 all things in heaven and earth and under the earth 
 were subject to Him ; that no power of evil could 
 measure itself against Him ; that He held an undoubted, 
 undivided authority. The Persian will therefore have 
 felt that, in spite of seeming coincidences, this faith 
 was one with which his could not consist ; that he was 
 bound to exterminate the believers in Jesus, if he could 
 not convert them. 
 
 We have good evidence that no question was so 
 profoundly agitating to men's minds in the first ages 
 as this. The Magians, as I said, succeeded in re- 
 establishing their old doctrine, and with it the old 
 Persian empire. But the belief in rival powers of good 
 and evil, to the latter of which the origin of all visible 
 things might be ascribed, spread far beyond its limits. 
 It incorporated itself with all the religious and philo- 
 sophical views of the age ; it penetrated deeply into 
 the Church of Christ, was the great characteristic of 
 its most prevalent heresy, and mingled, in different 
 forms and measures, with every other. Of all tests of 
 the reality of Christian humility and faith, the greatest 
 seems to have been the power of practically meeting 
 this temptation, of resisting the conclusion that a 
 perfectly good Being could not be the author and ruler 
 of the universe ; that man could not really be a holy 
 and redeemed creature; that the material world, at 
 all events, must be given up as an evil thing. Only 
 the simple, childlike trust which said, ' There are many 
 things I cannot explain, but this I know, that the
 
 iEcr.lv.] ST. AUGUSTINE. 227 
 
 Son of God has taken my nature, and made it holy, 
 has walked this earth and made it holy, that He has 
 adopted us into fellowship with Him, and commands 
 us to look upon ourselves as holy, in spite of all the 
 evil that is in us; and commands us to treat every 
 creature as holy, though corruption and death may 
 have set their mark upon it' only a faith of this 
 kind, surmounting present appearances, and laying hold 
 of a higher truth, waiting calmly for them and it to be 
 reconciled in God's good time, and meanwhile bracing 
 the heart to those daily duties, which, on the other 
 hypothesis, must have been thrown aside as useless 
 and hopeless, could have hindered any Christian from 
 becoming inwardly, if not professedly, a Manichean. 
 St. Augustine has given us, in his own biography, 
 a striking picture of this conflict. With a Christian 
 mother and a heathen father, brought up in the feeble 
 rhetoric of his time, but full of earnest thoughts which 
 made him long to understand the nature of himself 
 and of God ; full also of violent passions seeking for 
 gratification; he eagerly embraced the doctrine of the 
 Manichean teachers, for it seemed at once to explain 
 the problem of the universe, and to justify the in- 
 dulgences which something within him condemned. 
 He shows us how he was forced from speculations upon 
 things without, to a more awful study of that which, 
 was passing in himself; how he learnt to perceive that 
 the evil within him was the resistance of his will to 
 a perfect and holy will; how this discovery did much
 
 228 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 more than scatter his old notions; how it led him to 
 ask what that pure and holy Being had been doing 
 on behalf of our race ; whether He had offered men the 
 means of knowing Him and being like Him. Then 
 the meaning of Christ's coming dawned upon him ; he 
 believed that the perfect and holy Being was mani- 
 fested in Him; that in Him man might behold his 
 own true and proper state, and rise to it; that in 
 His strength we may .cast off evil from us, as an 
 enemy which has no proper right or dominion over 
 us, or over any creature ; that man when he becomes 
 the slave of outward things is evil, not because they 
 are evil, but because he is created to be their master. 
 These truths, which slowly worked themselves out in 
 his mind amidst great discouragements and bitter 
 sorrows, he was asserting under one aspect or another 
 all his life through. Shadows of his old system no 
 doubt often darkened his intellect; when he was 
 tempted to make Christianity a system, they were 
 sure to re-appear. But there were times in his life 
 when he felt more clearly than almost any man ever 
 did, that evil does not belong to the order of the 
 universe, but is its disorder; that every creature seeking 
 to dwell in selfish independence, of necessity embraces 
 that disorder and becomes a part of it; that every 
 .creature entering into God's covenant and yielding 
 itself to Him, becomes orderly, reasonable, blessed. 
 
 But it required more than the teaching of any man, 
 however wise, to check a belief which was so plausible
 
 LECT. iv.] MAHOMET'S WITNESS FOR THE GOSPEL. 229 
 
 as this. Though only open heretics affirmed that the 
 world was essentially an evil thing, and originated in 
 an evil Being, from whom Christ came to deliver his 
 disciples, though these statements were generally felt 
 to be blasphemous, yet numbers acted as if they were 
 true. Those who decided to live pure and holy lives, 
 left the world that they might do so. The sphere of 
 human action was regarded by saints as an ungodly 
 one, and those who moved in it and ruled it showed by 
 their lives that they adopted the opinion. There was 
 no distinct, audible voice, declaring, "The kingdoms 
 of this world are the kingdoms of our God and of His 
 Christ." The belief silently gained ground, that there 
 was no warrant for such an assertion ; that the redemp- 
 tion which our Lord had wrought, whatever it might 
 mean, did not mean this. 
 
 VI. But soon a voice was heard, speaking these 
 words in the ears both of Persians and Christians : 
 " This earth is the possession of the One Lord, the 
 God of Abraham; He claimed it as His when He 
 called out Abraham, and promised that he and his 
 seed should possess a portion of it. The earth is still 
 His. Those who say He has an equal or rival are 
 liars." This was Mahomet's language. His sword was 
 ready to make it good. The Magian faith, the Persian 
 empire, fell to pieces before it. Of all the Mahometan 
 enterprises this was the most startling, and that by 
 which its other triumphs may be best understood. 
 We complain of Mahometanism for its hard outward
 
 230 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 character ; for the materialism of its acts and its rewards. 
 But see how well suited it was on this very ground 
 to meet precisely that evil tendency to which men's 
 minds had yielded. The denial of God's dominion 
 over the actual world; the notion, that though He 
 might have a reign somewhere else, it was not here ; 
 this unbelief was destroying all ordinary morality, all 
 simple trust in a Father, was introducing atheism, 
 or else devil-worship, among those who pretended to 
 worship the Holy God, and utterly to renounce His 
 enemies. No mere spiritualism, if it had been ever so 
 fine and true, could have broken this spell. Palpable 
 proofs were wanted that the kingdoms of this very earth 
 were subject to an Unseen and Absolute Sovereign. 
 And the Mahometan conquests, though so mighty a 
 testimony against Christians, were not a testimony 
 against the Gospel, but for it; a testimony to one 
 necessary, forgotten portion of it; a proof that, if the 
 Church of Christ forgets its own proper position, God 
 can raise up the strangest instruments to do His work. 
 
 I say one portion of the Gospel ; for you will remind 
 me that if Mahometanism asserted half the doctrine of 
 the text I quoted just now, " The kingdoms of this 
 earth are God's ; " it denied the latter half of it, " and 
 His Christ's." But this remark requires to be ex- 
 plained and qualified by two others. Mahometanism 
 does, indeed, deny the fact on which our Gospel rests, 
 that a man is verily and indeed one with the Lord 
 of all ; how that denial has affected the whole system,
 
 LECT. iv.] ITS PEACTICAL EFFECT. 231 
 
 I have considered in a former Lecture. But if we 
 remember what the doctrine was which Mahometanism 
 subverted, we shall see that it involved a much more 
 direct denial of Christ, of His rule over this universe, 
 and of His relation to God. The disposition to look 
 upon the world as the possession of an evil power, 
 which belonged to the Persian, and to the Christian 
 who had caught his temper, made it impossible even 
 to think of it as connected with Christ. The idea 
 of Christ as a deliverer of man from the power of 
 his Creator, went far deeper than the denial of His 
 essential oneness with the Creator. So far as Mahom- 
 etanism helped to clear the air of these pollutions, it 
 removed the greatest of all impediments to the recog- 
 nition of that doctrine which it set at nought. But 
 secondly, in order to understand the effect of a system, 
 and the place it occupies in the scheme of Providence, 
 we should think not only of itself, but also of that 
 which has been called out in opposition to it. The 
 formation of society in modern Europe stands in close 
 relation to the history of Mahometanism. The Christian 
 nations were brought to feel that they were connected 
 with each other, and what connected them, by seeing 
 such large portions of the world knit together in the 
 acknowledgment of the Arabian prophet. Then was 
 the feeling distinctly realised, that all government has 
 a Divine basis, that kings must be anointed with oil 
 in the name of Christ, that the different members of 
 the community hold their possessions, offices, powers,
 
 232 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 ultimately of Him ; that they depend in different 
 gradations upon each other ; that fealty is due to that 
 which is unseen, reverence to that which is weak. 
 Thus, in short, those institutions, forms, habits of 
 thought established themselves which characterise the 
 middle ages; which may be mischievous when they 
 exclude other principles, more clearly perceived in later 
 times; which have become mixed with corruptions, 
 counterfeits, tyrannies, and confounded with them ; but 
 which are essential elements of our social existence at 
 this day, and cannot perish until we perish. Now 
 these embodied the other half of the great truth which 
 St. John's words express : " The kingdoms of this 
 world are the kingdoms of his Christ." Nor should 
 it be forgotten, that while the Mahometan doctrine has 
 been proved by the evidence of history to be maimed 
 and self-destructive, so long as it stands alone, re- 
 jecting the principle of European society ; that society 
 was continually in danger of losing its own foundation 
 and stability, and of becoming utterly idolatrous and 
 depraved, through forgetfulness of the principle which 
 the Mahometans put forth. The worship of the men 
 who uttered, of the visible symbols which shadowed 
 forth, divine truths, might have effaced those truths, 
 but for the testimony which Islamism was permitted 
 to bear on behalf of them. 
 
 
 
 VII. But though the Gospel, as it was preached by 
 the Apostles and others who followed them, involved 
 the assertion that the earth was redeemed and claimed
 
 LECT. iv.] THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 233 
 
 as God's possession by Christ, I am far from affirming 
 that this was its only or its most characteristic affirma - 
 tion. The Old Testament was especially the witness 
 for God's government of the earth. The New speaks 
 of the kingdom of heaven. John the Baptist said the 
 kingdom of heaven was at hand. Our Lord illustrated 
 its principles in every discourse and every miracle ; 
 His Apostles invited men to enter into it; in their 
 Epistles they unfolded its nature to those who had 
 believed the message and sought the privilege. This 
 kingdom they described as one of righteousness, peace, 
 and joy ; the eye could not see it, but it was most real. 
 It was a kingdom for the heart and spirit of man, for 
 that which was most properly himself, for that in which 
 dwell all his capacities of sorrow, of sympathy, of trust, 
 of hope, of love. It was called the kingdom of God 
 because communion with Him is the great blessedness 
 of it. And it is the kingdom of God because men are 
 brought into it that they may see themselves, their 
 fellow-creatures, the whole universe, as He sees them ; 
 not partially, or each in reference to a separate centre, 
 as they naturally do. Into this kingdom, our Lord 
 said, men were pressing. Experience of sorrow, a sense 
 of weariness and dissatisfaction with all that was visible, 
 the feeling of a good almost within reach and yet never 
 quite attained; above all, the bitter consciousness of 
 something wrong within, which needed to be purged 
 away, of a hollow which needed to be filled up ; these 
 were intimations to men of an unseen treasure which
 
 234 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 they were intended to possess, which only One mightier 
 than they could enable them to possess. Such thoughts 
 and longings would especially haunt the hearts of poor 
 and suffering people ; they would be rarer in men who 
 had outward ease and comfort. But our Lord spoke of 
 a divine power which could awaken in all the desire 
 and capacity for this good; of a birth from above by 
 which their spirits might be made fit for the Kingdom 
 of Heaven ; of an inward eye which might be opened 
 to behold it. The Apostles, when they baptised men 
 in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
 the Holy Ghost, bade them understand that this power 
 was given them, and that though their bodies dwelt in 
 Corinth or Ephesus, their real home was with Him 
 whom they could love but not see. These were the 
 words which stirred the hearts of the early Christians 
 and led them to that indifference for outward things, 
 which afterwards blended so easily with the Persian 
 notion that these things were to be despised or regarded 
 as evil in themselves. But the truth was not the less 
 mighty because it was capable of a grievous perversion. 
 The belief in it was the strength in which the Christian 
 confessor lived and died. The invisible world was his 
 dwelling : each day he sought to become more familiar 
 with it, to have every thought and feeling brought into 
 harmony with it; to show forth more of the temper and 
 spirit of it, in his converse with his fellow-creatures. 
 While, indeed, he kept his Lord's words and example 
 in recollection, he could not scorn any earthly task, he
 
 LECT. iv.] IN WHAT SENSE OURS AN EVIL WORLD. 235 
 
 must look upon all the creatures of God as good ; while 
 he remembered for what end Christ had come upon 
 earth, he must deem fellowship with men more blessed 
 than separation from them. Still it was the first gift 
 of his redemption, that he could rise out of this c'-vcle 
 of things. And when he saw to what coldness and 
 hardness of heart, to what gross superstitious, those 
 yielded, whose thoughts and aspirations were bounded 
 by what they could see and handle, he could understand 
 in what sense St. Paul blessed God for having delivered 
 the Galatians out of this present evil world. It was an 
 evil world, because men made it so, by renouncing the 
 privilege of men ; by living as if they had only senses 
 and were not spiritual beings capable of spiritual enjoy- 
 ments ; as if each could only realise the little portion 
 of the goods of earth which he calls his property, and 
 might not enter upon that inheritance of true blessed- 
 ness which all may share together, as all may share 
 the light of the sun together. 
 
 If men could so pervert these truths as to forget that 
 the outward world was redeemed to be a part of God's 
 kingdom, and if their inward life suffered terribly from 
 this forgetfulness, it became manifest in the course of 
 ages that they could quite as easily lose sight of that 
 which was specially and emphatically the Christian 
 doctrine while they seemed to admit and prize its 
 material results. Since the active energies of men's 
 minds have been awakened, since we have felt that it 
 is our vocation to subdue the earth, to trade, colonise,
 
 236 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 and conquer, this has become the characteristic tempt- 
 ation of all Christian nations, perhaps I may say, 
 especially the characteristic one of our own ; for it lies 
 close to some of our highest virtues, to our business-like 
 habits, our love of action, our impatience of what does 
 not look real and practical. 
 
 Englishmen in the last century seem for the most 
 part to have persuaded themselves that man is not a 
 mysterious being ; that the Gospel does not address him 
 as such ; that its main use is to check disorders which 
 the law cannot entirely repress, to make servants 
 respectful to their masters, to keep the humble classes 
 from interfering with the privileges of their superiors ; 
 that the kingdom of heaven is a place where certain 
 rewards are bestowed hereafter for decency of conduct 
 here. Those who refused to act upon these maxims, 
 and earnestly devoted themselves to a spiritual life, 
 fancied, not unnaturally, that the desires of which they 
 were conscious did not properly belong to human 
 beings ; that all men ought to have them, but that in 
 fact scarcely any had them ; that the unseen world is 
 for the select few, not for mankind. 
 
 But to Englishmen in the eighteenth century, the 
 continent of India revealed itself with its treasures and 
 its wonders. Its material treasures might help to 
 strengthen the worldly appetite which went in search 
 
 
 
 of them; but its wonders, well considered, might surely 
 have supplied the counteraction, might have proved 
 that men everywhere need a kingdom of heaven as
 
 LECT. iv.] HINDOOS PREACHING TO ENGLISHMEN. 237 
 
 well as a kingdom on earth. The Hindoo lives in a 
 world of thought. He is certain that divine know- 
 ledge, the knowledge of Brahm, is the highest end of 
 life. He cannot be satisfied till he is united with the 
 Divinity. The divine man, he says, must be a twice- 
 born man, must be raised out of his natural condition, 
 must not lose himself in communion with outward 
 things. Indications of this faith are forced upon the 
 observation of every Englishman in India; he may 
 explain them as he will, but he cannot deny them. Do 
 they not say to him, just perhaps when the associations 
 of his childhood are about to be cast off altogether 
 'What you used to hear from your nurse and your 
 mother may after all mean something. You were told 
 that you were a twice-born man, a member of Christ, a 
 child of God, an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. 
 May there not be treasures nearer to you than these 
 Indian treasures, treasures which are yours by the 
 clearest title, and yet which you have never reduced 
 into possession ? If you could impart them to these 
 subjects of ours, might you not do that for them which 
 the best legislation cannot do ? Will you not at least 
 ask whether the Hindoo is wrong in thinking that man 
 is made for something else than to buy and sell, to eat, 
 drink, and die ; and whether, if he is right, there is any 
 escape from his restless self-torture, except in the calm 
 faith that it is our Father's good pleasure to give us 
 that kingdom which the idolater would at the price of 
 any anguish wring from the objects of his worship ? '
 
 238 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 Here then is a voice coming from the most opposite 
 quarter to that whence the other was brought to us a 
 voice of the most different kind. Yet it comes as a 
 witness not against but for that which we have been 
 taught to believe, a witness not for but against our 
 indifference to it. So that these two voices compared 
 together, may, I think, help to answer the question we 
 have been examining, whether Christianity be not 
 dependent for its evidence and its success upon the 
 faith of those who promulgate it. There cannot be a 
 truer assertion than that this is the criterion of a human 
 system ; there cannot be a more undoubted prophecy 
 than that the Gospel, if it be a human system, must 
 perish, as all systems are perishing. On the other 
 hand, if it were anything more than this, we should 
 expect that the weakness, heartlessness, cowardice, 
 baseness, of its advocates would themselves be in some 
 way converted into demonstrations of its truth; that 
 when men were holding their peace respecting it, the 
 stones would cry out. Have we not found this to be 
 the fact ? You say that Islamism has not fallen before 
 the Cross. No, but Islamism has become one of God's 
 witnesses for the Cross when those who pretended to 
 bear it had really changed it for another standard. 
 You say that Hindooism stands undisturbed by the 
 presence of a triumphant Christian nation. Yes, for 
 Hindooism has been wanted to teach this nation what 
 it is very nearly forgetting itself, very nearly forcing 
 others to forget, that Christianity is not a dream or a lie.
 
 LECT. iv.] SECTAEIAN MODE OF PREACHING. 239 
 
 I believe these conclusions must be brought home, in 
 some way or other, to the hearts as well of those who 
 are earnest about heathen missions as of those who are 
 indifferent to them. For what is it that palsies all 
 efforts of this kind ; what is it that produces the con- 
 trast which we have confessed between the teachers of 
 our own and those of earlier days ? Is it not that we 
 have more than half subscribed to the philosophical 
 doctrine ; more than half acted as if we were engaged 
 in propagating a system of our own ? Has not the 
 impression we have conveyed to the minds of Maho- 
 metans and pagans been something of this kind : 
 'These Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, or English- 
 men, acknowledge a certain teacher, to whom they 
 attach very high titles. They wish us to acknowledge 
 their teacher instead of those whom we in Arabia, 
 Persia, or Hindostan, have been accustomed to honour. 
 In other words, they wish to make us Europeans, to bring 
 us over to their modes and habits of thinking.' I know 
 and thank God that other impressions than this have 
 been made by the Christian missionaries of all ages 
 and nations upon those among whom they have gone. 
 I know that the hearts of many of them have been so 
 possessed with the love of Him who died for them and 
 for all mankind, that they could not speak of Him as if 
 He was their teacher, the Head of their sect. By their 
 language, by their acts, by that higher, simpler teach- 
 ing which the Bible supplies, they must have carried 
 home to many a broken-hearted creature, crying for a
 
 240 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WCVRLD. [PART n. 
 
 Comforter, the assurance that there. is One who has taken 
 the nature, not of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, 
 but of Man ; who has entered into man's misery and 
 death ; has borne the sins of man ; has encountered all 
 his enemies, and vanquished them. 
 
 The history of Missions would be barren indeed if 
 this were not the case. But the more we admit the 
 worth of such testimonies (how great it has been we 
 shall not know till the great day of revelation) the 
 more convinced must we be that the old proclamation 
 of a divine kingdom, the old Gospel that the Son of 
 God the Deliverer of Man has appeared and will be 
 shown hereafter to be the Lord of the universe, is the 
 only effectual one; that this is as fresh to-day as it 
 was eighteen hundred years ago, because it is a pro- 
 clamation of that eternal Law of the universe, which 
 wears not out, which grows not old ; is not, in any sense 
 whatever, our scheme or theory of the universe, but is 
 sent to confound, to break in pieces, our schemes and 
 theories of the universe ; to show how feeble and con- 
 temptible we and they are ; how little we or any human 
 creatures want a theory ; what absolute need all crea- 
 tures have of a Living God who will reveal to us 
 Himself : what relation there is between us and Him ; 
 how He works in us to bring us to know His purposes, 
 and to move in accordance with them. 
 
 VIII. That last discovery is indeed one without 
 which the words I have just been speaking would seem 
 only words of discouragement. To look out upon the
 
 iECT. iv.] THE BUDDHIST GOSPEL. 241 
 
 world, and see a valley covered with the dry bones of 
 different systems, to hear them clashing together as if 
 they might be joined to each other, and then to be told, 
 ' It is all in vain ; there is no voice which can bid the 
 breath enter into these bones; perhaps it might have 
 come from Christians, but it does not ; they too occupy 
 part of this valley ; they have become dry bones, very 
 dry indeed ; clashing always, never uniting ' such an 
 announcement as this, however softened by thoughts of 
 the past or the future, must be a very mournful one. 
 But that third great religion of the world comes to turn 
 the current of these thoughts, to check this despond- 
 ency. We are but ill provided with a theory, say the 
 Buddhists; we have tried many, and little fruit has 
 come of them. But this we are assured of : you Chris- 
 tians may not have heard it, but there is a quickening, 
 life-giving Spirit, which is meant for humanity ; which 
 all may possess together; which alone can bring a 
 universe out of chaos, unity out of division. "Wonderful 
 testimony to be borne from the ends of the earth, from 
 such a medley of strange people, so different in their 
 thoughts, so incoherent in their utterances ! Is not 
 the report of it like the sound of that rushing mighty 
 wind, which was heard on the day of Pentecost, not 
 indeed itself the promised Power, but the type and 
 herald of it ? Does it not say that we too might 
 have cloven tongues to declare, in different tones and 
 measures, according to the different thoughts, habits, 
 and apprehensions of men, the same wonderful works 
 M. B. L. B
 
 242 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 of God, and that these tongues might be of fire if only 
 the living inspiration were confessed and obeyed by 
 us ? Does it not bid us remember that with this Spirit 
 of peace and love and a sound mind we have been 
 sealed ; that the Name of the Father, and the Son, and 
 the Holy Ghost, which was to be the blessing, the per- 
 manent blessing, of Pentecost, has been bestowed upon 
 us; that we hold this Spirit, not as the Buddhists 
 dream, by our own right, to be therefore the witness 
 of our independence, flowing from no source whence 
 it may be replenished, but as the very bond of our 
 dependence and childhood, as the Spirit of adoption, 
 whereby we are to cry, Abba, Father; as the power 
 whereby we can ask and receive a new life day by day. 
 If so, there is cause enough for humiliation in all 
 of us, for despair in none. The broken limbs of the 
 world may yet be united, if the broken limbs of the 
 Church be united first. But are these the limbs of a 
 great system, or of a living body ? Holding the first 
 opinion of herself, the Church has been either held 
 artificially together, the children within her groaning 
 under the bondage to which she has subjected them, 
 those without hearing in her invitation a message not 
 of deliverance but of heavier slavery; or else, these 
 artificial joints and fastenings being removed, she has 
 split into fragments, upon which those who are clinging 
 to them feel they can less and less depend, which offer 
 to heathens an excuse for adhering to the tradition of 
 their fathers, be it ever so dreary, till we who bid them
 
 LECT. iv.] THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT. 243 
 
 leave it are agreed what they should adopt in its place. 
 But if the Scripture language is true, if the Church is 
 a body constituted in a Head, the Buddhist proclama- 
 tion carries with it the reproof and consolation which 
 we require. There is a Power which can bring us not 
 into some imaginary condition of excellence, but pre- 
 cisely into our true condition : which can remove the 
 individual interests, selfish feelings, national antipathies 
 narrow apprehensions, that all our efforts to produce 
 unity have only evoked and strengthened ; which can 
 bring down our high notions and conceits of what we 
 are and what we do ; which can enable us to be God's 
 servants and to do His work in the world He has 
 redeemed. Having confessed our rebellion against this 
 Spirit, and sought the renewal of it in us and in the 
 whole Church, we shall no longer say, as we have been 
 tempted to say, ' The power of evil is supreme over the 
 universe; only there has been a special deliverance 
 vouchsafed to us;' we shall, from our hearts, abjure 
 such blasphemous Manicheism ; we shall say boldly to 
 all people among whom we go, ' The devil is not your 
 master, he has no right to your worship : the God, in 
 whom is light and no darkness at all, has claimed you 
 and the whole creation for his own. His marvellous 
 light is as much for you as for us. We only enjoy it 
 upon the condition of renouncing all exclusive claim 
 to it, upon the condition of bidding you enter into it.' 
 
 IX. Buddhism, then, like Hindooism and Mahomet- 
 anism, has its lesson for us. We are debtors to all these
 
 244 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WCt&J>. [PART n. 
 
 in a double sense. Nor, I think, is it otherwise with 
 those modern infidels whose objections I have been 
 considering throughout this course. Our obligations to 
 them are not slight if they have been sent to break 
 dwn a low grovelling notion we had formed of our 
 own position and work; if they have been employed 
 to convince us that human systems must indeed perish, 
 one and all, that what survives must be something of a 
 much higher derivation, of a more permanent character. 
 We owe them the deepest gratitude if they have led 
 us to ask ourselves whether there is any faith, and what 
 kind of faith it is, which must belong, not to races or 
 nations, but to mankind ; still more, if they have forced 
 us to the conclusion, that the real test, whether there 
 be such a faith, and whether it has been made known 
 to us, must be action, not argument ; that if it exist, it 
 must show that it exists ; that if it have power, it must 
 put forth its power. So, in this nineteenth century, the 
 opponents of Christianity will return to the maxim 
 which the wisest of them announced in the first : " If 
 this be of men, it will come to nought ; if it be of God, 
 we cannot overthrow it." 
 
 I have been anxious in these Lectures to show that 
 I did regard this practical experiment of our faith as the 
 really decisive one. In compliance with the directions 
 of Boyle, I sought for that which seemed to be the most 
 prevailing form of unbelief in our day ; and I found it 
 in the tendency to look upon all theology as having its 
 origin in the spiritual nature and faculties of man. This
 
 LECT. iv.] THE TRUE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY. 245 
 
 was assumed to be the explanation of other systems, 
 why not apply it to Christianity? The questions we 
 have asked are, ' Is it the adequate explanation of any 
 system ? Do not all demand another ground than the 
 human one ? Is not Christianity the consistent assertor 
 of that higher ground ? Does it not distinctly and con- 
 sistently refer every human feeling and consciousness to 
 that ground ? Is it not for this reason able to interpret 
 and reconcile the other religions of the earth ? Does it 
 not in this way prove itself to be not a human system, 
 but the Revelation, which human beings require ? ' 
 
 ' Prove ! ' you cry : ' Yes, on paper ! It is easy to 
 prove many things about human creatures when you 
 are not actually dealing with them.' Assuredly, most 
 easy. It was of this that the other clauses of Boyle's 
 will warned me. They said very significantly, 'Your 
 business is to urge upon your countrymen the duty of 
 not proving Christianity upon paper; but of entering 
 into actual intercourse with Jews, Mussulmans, Hindoos, 
 Buddhists, for the purpose of showing that it is a 
 reality.' Accordingly, I have never lost sight of this 
 object. My questions have been, ' How may we bring 
 Christianity into contact with the actual convictions of 
 these different people ? How may we put it upon the 
 broadest trial ? Where have other instruments and 
 appliances failed ? for that is the point on which we 
 would make this bear. Where may it most clearly 
 prove its inefficiency, if it be inefficient ? ' In no case 
 have I wished to disguise any apparent symptoms of
 
 246 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 its failure. I have entreated Christians and infidels to 
 investigate these symptoms, that they may ascertain 
 the causes of them. And lest you should fancy, from 
 the view I took of these systems, that I was recom- 
 mending some new method of dealing with them, 
 which could only be learnt and applied after a long 
 discipline, and at last could scarcely be followed by 
 simple ministers of the Gospel, I have endeavoured to 
 show you in this Lecture, that precisely the course I 
 have suggested is that which the preachers of the 
 Gospel in the first ages actually adopted, that our 
 departures from it have arisen from want of simple 
 faith; that the discipline we require is especially one 
 to restore this faith. And lest, from what has been 
 just said about the unity of Christians, you should 
 conclude that I suppose missions to the heathen should 
 be deferred till some indefinite time when the nations 
 of Christendom can make a simultaneous assault upon 
 the outlying world, I would remind you that my refer- 
 ence to the first ages, and to the successful missionary 
 efforts of every subsequent age, precludes such a notion. 
 What nation of the earth owes its Church to a simul- 
 taneous effort among nations or among men ? If any 
 one nation takes its stand upon its true ground as a 
 member of that body whereof Christ is the Head, that 
 Cation becomes a witness to all Christian nations of 
 their true unity, if they care ever so little for it ; that 
 nation can fulfil its own task of vindicating the truths 
 which its heathen subjects confess, by imparting to
 
 LECT. iv.] MISSIONS TO THE HEATHEN. 247 
 
 them the truths which they want, though all the 
 other Christian nations should smile or frown upon 
 its endeavours. Any Christian man who takes his 
 stand upon the same ground of unity in the Church 
 whereof Christ is the Head, who acts consistently with 
 that position, fulfilling the office to which he is called, 
 and not seeking some other to please himself, may 
 become a witness in every land to which he goes of 
 the fellowship into which his baptism has brought him ; 
 may in his words or life expound the principle of this 
 fellowship ; may show how universal its privileges are, 
 and how each may for himself partake of them. 
 
 But I know that there must be many on whom the 
 often-repeated words, ' There are heathens at our doors, 
 we ourselves are half heathens ; leave Buddhists and 
 Mahometans till you have provided for these,' will have 
 an effect sufficient to destroy their interest in all such 
 exhortations. One answer to these objections is well 
 known, and has been sufficiently used. If English- 
 men did abstain rigidly from all intercourse with 
 Mahometans, Hindoos, Buddhists, if no body of our 
 countrymen were engaged in trading with other countries, 
 or in conquering them, or in keeping possession of them, 
 the interdiction of all spiritual communication might be 
 judicious at all events possible. But as the points at 
 issue are, what kind of comnmnication shall we hold 
 with these people, what kind of help or protection shall 
 we extend to them : if they are spiritual creatures, and 
 as such must in some way be dealt with, then how ?
 
 248 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 since this, I say, is the fair statement of the case, such 
 appeals to our home sympathies seem rather capricious 
 and rhetorical than benevolent or sensible. But this is 
 not the only reply which is suggested by our particular 
 circumstances, or which lies in the nature of the subject 
 itself. A faith which boasts to be for humanity cannot 
 test its strength unless it is content to deal with men 
 in all possible conditions. If it limits itself to England, 
 it will adapt itself to the habits and fashions and preju- 
 dices of England, of England too in a particular age. 
 But doing this, it will never reach the hearts of English- 
 men. You say, ' Try your Christianity upon the cotton- 
 spinners of Manchester, upon the hardware men of 
 Birmingham; if it fails with them, do you expect it 
 will succeed in Persia and Thibet ? ' We know it will 
 fail, it must fail in Birmingham and Manchester, if it 
 addresses the people in those places mainly as spinners 
 and workers in hardware. This has been the mistake 
 we have continually made. We have looked upon these 
 ' hands ' as created to work for us ; we have asked for 
 a religion which should keep the ' hands ' in the state 
 in which they will do most work and give the least 
 trouble. But it is found that they are men who use 
 these hands ; and that which is a religion for hands, is 
 not one for men. Therefore it becomes more evident 
 every day that there is a demand in Manchester and 
 Birmingham for that which, till we understand human 
 beings better, we cannot supply. To acquire that 
 understanding we need not grudge a journey to Persia
 
 LECT. iv.] A RELIGION FOR MEN. 249 
 
 or Thibet ; we need not think it an idle task to inquire 
 what people want, who are not called to spin cotton or 
 work in hardware, but who are creatures of the same 
 kind with those who do. When thoughtful men say 
 that a working age of the world is about to begin, they 
 mean, I suppose, an age in which those essential quali- 
 ties of humanity which belong to working men as much 
 as to all others shall be more prized than the accidents 
 by which one class is separated from another. Most 
 important is it then to ascertain whether we are holding 
 a faith which addresses us as members of a class, a class 
 of fine gentlemen, philosophers, divines, or one which 
 addresses us as men, which explains the problems of 
 our human life. Two centuries ago Boyle was led in 
 deep anguish of spirit to consider that question for 
 himself; for himself, and not I think without something 
 of the like anguish, must each one of us consider it in 
 this day. We are told that circumstances have changed, 
 that our condition is a different one from his. Doubtless, 
 the saying is true ; circumstances are always changing ; 
 but the necessities of man's being do not change. What 
 was true of man generations ago, is true now. If our 
 condition is different from that of our forefathers, the 
 difference is this : we are come nearer to the great crisis 
 of all controversies, there is less power of hiding our- 
 selves from realities amidst shadows and appearances. 
 Thanks be to God that such a time has come, terrible 
 as it may be to many, nay to all of us ! For this is the 
 time which will show that His truth is not of man,
 
 250 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. [PART n. 
 
 neither by man ; but that it is for men, here and every- 
 where. . Only then when the grass withereth, and the 
 flower fadeth, so speaks individual experience, so speaks 
 the voice of history, is it known assuredly that the 
 Word of our God shall stand for ever. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Richard day and iiotit, Lundon and Eungay.
 
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