fits g)tar in tje Cast
A STUDY IN THE EARLY ARYAN
RELIGIONS

BY
LEIGHTON PARKS Ml
RECTOR OF EMMANUEL CHURCH, BOSTON

Children of men ! the unseen Power, whose eye
Forever doth accompany mankind,
Hath looked on no religion scornfully
That man did ever find.
Which has not taught weak wills how much they can.
Which has not fallen on ihe dry heart like rain,
Which has not cried to sunk, self weary man ;
Thou must be born again I
Matthew Arnold.

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BOSTON AND NEW YORK,
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1887

Copyright, 1887,
Bt leighton PAKKS.
All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co.

To
THE MEMORY OF MT FATHER,
MARTIN PHILLIPS PARKS, D. D.
IS KBVEEENTLY DEDICATED.

PEEFACE.

The substance of this book was first embodied
in a course of Lectures, delivered before the Low
ell Institute in the winter of 1885, on " Christian
ity and the early Aryan Religions." Since then
the work has been carefully revised and consider
able matter added, — much of it of a nature not
fitted for such an occasion, — specially that part
in the last chapter which relates to the future of
the Church, inasmuch as any criticism of Christians
of any particular name would have been improper
in a series of lectures in an institution avowedly
unsectarian. I have also modified in some respects
opinions expressed at that time in regard to the
influence of Persian thought upon Hebrew theol
ogy, my studies since having led me to feel that
certain statements, though probably true, could not
be easily verified.
The invitation to deliver tliese lectures induced
me to attempt to put in some systematic order
thoughts which had long been exercising my mind

4 PREFACE.
and employing my leisure moments. This must be
my apology for entering upon such a study without
the knowledge of Oriental languages which would
enable one to make original research. The task
which I set before me was not so ambitious as the
title of the Lectures might seem to imply. The trans
lations of the Sacred Books of the East, edited by
Professor F. Max Miiller, can be found in all large
libraries, and make it possible for any one who
has the time and taste for such studies to become
familiar with the thoughts and hopes and fears of
the men of old. If I can lay claim to any advan
tage in such studies, it must be in an interest awak
ened some ten or twelve years ago when, traveling in
the East with my friend Mr. R. B. Bowler, of Cincin
nati, I had an opportunity to see the outward life of
the people of China, Japan, and India, and to talk
with men who still held to the faith of their fathers.
I met with too many men in Japan " given to hos
pitality," I heard too many stories of the unswerving
rectitude of Chinese compradors, I found too many
examples of the profound and serious thought of
men in India, not to return impressed with the great
truth that "in every nation, he that feareth God is
accepted of Him." And the result of this experience
was that in reading the Yedas and the Upanishads
and the Sutras and the Zend-Avesta, I have never

PREFACE. 6
thought of them as dead books, but as that which
has been the staff of life to "living, breathing,
thinking men."
It may be that these experiences have fitted me in
some sort to write a book which, without any pre
tense to learning, wdl nevertheless help some who
have been perplexed by the many problems which
arise from the consideration of God's dealing with
his children. Among such there are none whom I
would be so glad to help as the young student of the
ology, who perhaps has found that such questions
are not congenial to the lecture-room of the seminary.
There may be some who, without venturing to apply
to themselves St. Paul's words, yet have experienced
his disappointment, " They who were of repute im
parted nothing to me, but contrariwise ! " It may
be that they shall find here at least the sympathy
for which they long.
The questions considered here have a direct bear
ing on the problem of missions to the heathen, —
questions which are coming to the front with star
tling rapidity. Before these can be answered, it
is necessary that we should be clear in our own
minds as to what is meant by " the heathen." An
examination of this wiU lead us to see that they
differ as we do, and that there is no ready-made
method by which they can be converted to Christ,

D PREFACE.
and that no plan can succeed which does not begin
in the faith that God has already been making his
voice heard, and that they only can understand the
words of Christ who have listened to that voice.^ The
problem of missions, then, will be found to run up,
¦ like every great spiritual problem, into the one ques
tion : " What think ye of the Christ ? " All went
well as long as the moral sense of mankind did not
revolt from the dogma that every soul that had not
heard the gospel should be damned. But no man can
be found who believes that to-day. By wbat rule then,
shall they be judged ? By what used to be called
the light of natural reason, while we who have heard
shall be judged by the revelation of the Bible ? This
might do if we were asking questions about a king
who has no personal interest in his subjects, but not
when the question is concerning the dealing of a
Father with his children. Then we must begin with
the faith that He has been speaking to his children
all along, and that their sin, like ours, consists in
not obeying that gracious voice. Call it the natural
reason if you will, but do not say that it differs in
kind from revelation, or you will have asserted that
of the Father which will be the strongest proof that
He is no Father ; for a Father wants the salvation of
every child, and must be giving all the time to each
1 St. John Tiii. 43.

PREFACE. 7
chUd all the knowledge and all the grace that the
child is capable of receiving.
It is the record of that revelation to which this
book desires to call attention. It is a dreadful
thing for any minister of Him who said, " They shall
come from the East and from the West and sit down
in the kingdom of God," to slander those who are
coming, for in so doing they " speak a word against
the Holy Ghost " who has been leading them.
There is another class to whom I venture to hope
that this book may appeal, and that is those who
are asking with deep searchings of heart, " Art thou
he that should come, or do we look for another ? "
That they have been led to ask this question as the
result of the sudden awakening to the fact that the
Bible is not the limit of revelation, I am sure ,• it may
be that a study of some of the great religions will
show them that this is truer than they have dared
to admit, and yet at the same time make them feel
that it is none the less true that " salvation is of
the Jews."
1 have not been free from an author's perplexity as
to references to books to which he is indebted. I had
thought of printing a list of all the works consulted
in the preparation of this book, but to the scholar it
would seem very short, and to the unlearned it would

8 PREFACE.
have no meaning. I have therefore contented myself
with indicating the books from which quotations are
made. The facts stated here can be easily verified,
and the opinions must stand or fall by the judgment
of the reader. To such a storehouse of learning
as Dr. James Freeman Clarke's " Ten Great Reli
gions" I have of course paid frequent visits; but
the two books to which I am specially indebted —
not so much perhaps in their relation to this work,
as in their general influence upon my mind, predis
posing me to look at things as I do — are, Cousin's
" Lectures on Modern Philosophy," and " The Reli
gions of the World," by that master in theology,
Maurice. Emmanuel Choech, Boston.
Epiphany, 1887.

COITTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN.
Evidences of Christianity. — Paley's position. — Miracles.
— Prophecy. — Recent objections. — Christianity and
Civilization. — Revelation. — What is originality ? —
Eclecticism. — The relation of the ethnic religions to
Christ's religion  13

CHAPTER II.
vedaism.
Periods in Indian History. — The Vedas. — The gods. —
Kathenotheism. — Asura. — Universality of the Divine.
— Kindness of the gods. — Christ's justification of Ve
daism. — Weakness of Vedaism  27

CHAPTER III.
brahmanism.
Rise of caste. — New Vedas. — Brahmanas. — Laws of
Manu. — Ritual. — Upanishads. — Sat. — Atman. —
Brahma. — Brahmanism and the gospel. — Sacrifice
divine. — Need of atonement. — Fatal weakness of
Brahmanism  57

10 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER rv.
TRANSITION FROM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM.
Mimansa. — Nyaya. — Kapila. — Vedanta. — Lessons of
religious history  93
CHAPTER V.
BUDDHISM.
Divisions of Buddhism. — Life of the Buddha. — The
great renunciation. — Buddha's teaching. — The exist
ence of pain. — Cause of sorrow. — " The Way.'' —
The Skandhas. — Kamma. — Faith. — Intelligenee. -^^
Nirvana. — Secret of Buddhism  103
CHAPTER VL
Christ's religion and- buddhism.
Kindred legends in both. — Christian and Buddhist moral
ity, caste, almsgiving, forgiveness of injuries. — Saint
and missionary. — Buddhist philosophy and Christian
theology. — Sorrow. — The Skandhas and the Incarna
tion. — Christ's revelation of personality. — Kamma
and the cross of Christ. — The power of faith. — Nir
vana and the Christian Heaven. — Buddhist pessimism
and Chiistian hope. — Progress dependent upon knowl
edge of God  145
CHAPTER VIL
HINDUISM.
Indian Theism. — Return to the Vedas. — The Maha-
Bharata. — Shiva. — Shaivism. — Vishnu. — Vaishnuism.
— Avat^ra. — The Incarnation  178

CONTENTS. 11
CHAPTER VIIL
zoroastrianism.
The Parsis. — The Zend-Avesta. — Bactria. — The first
religious schism. — Zoroaster. — Prayer. — Inspiration.
— The gods. — Truth and purity. — Moral struggle.
— Relation of Zoroastrianism to Judaism. — The Medes.
— Fall of Nineveh. — The Captivity. — Cyrus. — In
fluence of Persian thought. — The Synagogue. — Per
sonal responsibility. — Inspired writings. — Dualism. —
Influence on Christian thought. — The absent God. —
Importance of purity. — The Resurrection  201
CHAPTER IX.
"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL."
Review. — The Catholic Church a new thought. — Why
is not the world Christian ? — Influence of the Roman
Empire. — Incursion of the barbarians. — Medifevalism.
— The Reformation. — Dogmatism. — Institutionalism.
— Sectarianism. — Unity. — Saint Paul the ideal mis
sionary. — Power of sympathy  243
CHAPTER X.
THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION.
Influence of physical science. — Science of comparative
religions. — Failure of Christian nations to realize their
calling. — Future of humanity. — The evolution of
morality. — From what to what ? — Humanitarian
morality. — Need of hope. — The real dangers. — The
lesson of history. — The Brahmo Somaj. — Wise men in
the East  267

HIS STAR IN THE EAST.

CHAPTEE I.
THE RELIGION OP THE SON OF MAN.
The purpose of this short study in the early
Aryan religions is to call attention to the witness
that they bear to man's need of the gospel, and to
show that that need has been answered, just in so far
as any people, or rather any individual, was prepared
to receive it. The assumption that the heathen
once had a perfect revelation which they deliber
ately rejected is far more likely to " cut the nerve
of missions " than any theory of the mercy which
" endureth forever ; " whUe the belief that God
has neglected the larger part of his children will
justify men in neglecting them too. But such a posi
tion, if once taken by the Church, would lead to a
theory of Election, which must harden into a Phari-
seeism, which is the " middle wall " which Christ
came to break down.
The title of the book expresses the thought with
which this study began and which subsequent re
search has deepened, that the " Light which light-
eth every man that cometh into the world " has
been seen in the East, and that the true way to

14 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
make disciples of all nations is by declaring unto
them Jesus as Agni, Brahma, Buddha, or Sosios,
as He was first declared to the Jew as the Christ.
So considered, the religions of the world become
the great " Evidences of Christianity," that is, of
Christ. That there is need of such study seems evident
enough ; for whatever may have been the merits of
the old standards in this department, their usefulness
is a thing of the past. That exceedingly interest
ing book, "The Evidences of Christianity," by Paley,
would hardly be referred to to-day in an argument
with a skeptic. And the reason is simple enough :
Paley's book was written to refute the popular ob
jection of his day, that Christianity was the inven
tion of priests. " No," said Paley, impostors could
not work miracles ; the disciples worked miracles and
thereby proved that what they said was true. Jesus
worked miracles and thereby proved that He came
from God. Ergo, Christianity was not an invention
of impostors. We can scarcely refrain from smiling
at the ndiveti of his argument, yet it was sufficient
for such an absurd objection. But it is unfortunate
that the argument was ever used against any op
ponents save those against whom the sturdy Arch
deacon aimed it ; for it has no force as against men
who feel, with Hume, that a miracle is intrinsi
cally so improbable that no evidence is sufficient
to prove it.
A second argument — what might be called the in
tellectual miracle, as opposed to the physical mira
cles — was found in the literal fulfillment of ancient

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 15
prophecies in the events recorded in the Gospels.
But the new science of Biblical criticism has shown
that there is no such literal agreement as we fondly
supposed. Higher ground was taken by the great Bishop But
ler, when he said that the proof of the truth of the
gospel was found in the wUlingness of the Apostles
to die in the assertion that what is there recorded is
true. But we know now that SS. Peter and Paul
were both dead before the Gospels were written, and
that there is no proof that any Apostle died assert
ing the truth of the gospel record. And even if it
be said that when the " gospel " is spoken of the
great saving truths, and not the record, is meant,
the answer has been that, even so, the death of, any
witness only proves his belief in tbat which he as
severates. And therein lay the weakness of all this
great theologian's argument in the second part of
the " Analogy." He was influenced by the atmos
phere in which he wrote. It was a time when Chris
tianity was spoken of as a "system," — something
finished long ago and sent into the world, in which
men ought to express a " belief " as the result of a
careful weighing of probabilities, with a careful eye
to the result in case of error. Such a good man as
Dr. Johnson, for instance, was forever talking about
Christianity, as we might talk about the pyramids, —
as something that existed outside of England, in
which he believed because a traveler in whom he
had confidence told him that he had seen it ! And
that was the more remarkable in his case, for he had
heard Wesley proclaim the presence of the unseen

16 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
King, of the God who had revealed his son in Kim,
and caused the light of the gospel to shine in his
heart. Methodism was the inevitable reaction from
the deism within and without the Church. Its
immense superiority to what preceded it is now ac
knowledged by aU ; the advances from the position
of Paley are not so readily acknowledged, but they
are no less great. Hume's dictum concerning mira
cles has done nothing to discredit the miraculous,
but it has made it necessary to think of miracles
as the natural effects of a supernatural character,
rather than as a proof of a divine mission. And
when we say that, we mean that Jesus is known to
be the Christ, not after having been kept stand
ing in the antechamber whUe his credentials were
examined, but by the majesty to which all that is
worthy in humanity bends the knee.
The new thought about prophecy is nothing less
than the recovery of the higher ground on which the
Apostle stood who wrote, " the testimony of Jesus is
the spirit of prophecy." The presence of the pro
phetic spirit in us is the bond of sympathy by which
we are able to recognize the outlines of the ideal man
of whom each prophet drew some feature, until we
find them all fulfilled and transfigured in the char
acter of the Son of man.
For Paley and Butler and other great and good
men to write in answer to the objections of their day
was to do a work for which the Church can never be
too grateful, but for us to use such arguments to-day
is a mark of skepticism. It is as if a man were to say
Michael Angelo did succeed in making the dome of

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 17
St. Peter's float in the liquid air, and yet all the
time was building a scaffolding outside it to keep it
from falling down. It does float, or it does n't.
If it does, it vdll assert its origin from genius ; and
if it does not, both it and the scaffolding will fall.
And that is why the old text-books are no longer
useful ; we have come to feel that the effort to prove
Christianity divine is like an effort to prove the
virtue of one's mother. A man believes himself to
be the son of his reputed father, but in the nature
of the case proof is impossible. The truth and love
and purity and goodness that are forever associated
with his mother's character make any other supposi
tion impossible. And so it is that " Evidences of
Christianity," as the word is popularly understood,
are impossible ; for Christianity is only a scholastic
term for that which Jesus called the Kingdora of
God, which He said was within us, that is, the
Christ spirit. The man who has the assurance of
the spirit knows that it came forth from God, and
the man who has it not cannot be convinced by ar
gument. But illustrations of its power and deep
meaning will be found in every age and in each in
dividual in which it has been felt. This spirit is
like what we call the vital force of nature. Proofs
of vegetable life having once existed in the Arctic
regions may be found in the fossil remains of plants
and flowers. No proof of this force is needed in
the tropics, yet illustrations of its myriad fantastic
forms may be found year after year, and viewed
with new interest by all lovers of nature. And so
it is with the living power of Christianity. If we

18 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
would know what form it took in the historic life of
Jesus, we may study the Gospels. If we wish to see
its power working in the lives of the Apostles, we
have the Acts and the Epistles ; but if we wish to
see how it works to-day, we must look to the life of
General Gordon, a free man in his desert prison ;
to the heroism of our own countrymen, who in the
long arctic night had light in all their dwellings, and
in their hunger were fed with the bread of life ; to
the patience of those whom Keble called the " pillars
of the Church," the poor, who in garret and in cellar
are waiting for the descent of the heavenly city. It
is with such illustrations — or evidences — that the
Christian pulpit is dealing week after week ; but
something more seems to be needed, and to that I
have ventured to apply myself.
There are two popular objections urged against
Christianity, neither of them inspired by a hatred of
it, but rather the expression of a feeling that it — a
thing which has done and may do good in the world
— is hindered by the extravagant claims of its igno
rant disciples. The first of these objections is against
that claim which asserts that modern civilization is
the result of the preaching of the freedom of the
sons of God. " Modern civilization," it is said, " is
a mighty power, which would have been essentially
what it is without the religion of Christ. It would
have evolved a religion had not that of the Galilean
been at hand convenient for the purpose." This ob
jection was considered a few years since by that dis
tinguished orator, Dr. Richard Storrs, when he held

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 19
great multitudes of people spellbound by the magic
of his rhetoric, and drew a picture of society in
Greece and Rome before the coming of Christ,^ —
which if to some it appeared in somewhat darker
colors than could be always verified, was still dark
enough to show what another century must have
brought forth ; and then turned to the world of to
day, — whieh, if far from realizing the seer's vision
of the Heavenly Jerusalem, still shows the influence
of the new spirit which came with Jesus Christ.
The second objection deals with the origin of
Christianity. " Christianity," it is said, " can no
longer claim to be a revelation, for there is no such
thing as revelation. Every nation has evolved a
religion colored by the circumstances by which the
nation was surrounded. Nor is that aU ; Christian
ity must now forego even its claim to originality,
for all students of the ethnic religions know that
Christianity is a system of eclecticism, the frag
ments of which may be found scattered from the
Yellow Sea to the steppes of Tartary, from the
Himalayas to the Nile." ^
Now to the first objection, that there is no such
thing as revealed religion, it is sufficient to answer
that all religion wherever it may be found, with
whomsoever associated, is revealed. Religion, the
binding of the soul of man to the Spirit of God,
whether we find the fruit of it in the pure contem
plation of Confucius, or the sweet mysticism of
1 The Divine Origin of Christianity indicated by its Historical De
fects. By Richard S. Storrs, D. D., LL. D.
2 Evolution and Christianity, hy Yorke.

20 HIS STAR IN THE EAST,
Buddha, or the wrapt vision of Isaiah, is the same,
coming, like " every good and perfect gift, from
above." "It is born not of flesh, nor of the will
of man, but of God." £ut that religion we spealc
of as most fully revealed, which most perfectly re
veals — a religion which brings to man such a vision
of God's character as to change his relation to God,
to man, to nature, to life and to time, satisfying
and fulfilling what the human consciousness has wit
nessed to as the fundamental instincts of the human
heart, — such a religion so exceeds all others in the
degree of its revelation as almost to justify us in
speaking of it as different in kind, as the only re
vealed religion. That this is the religion of Jesus
we assume. It may be that a serious study of some
of the great religions of the world will show that
assumption to be one which no thoughtful man need
be ashamed to confess.
The other objection, that Christianity lacks origi
nality, has had perhaps greater influence than any
objection urged in our day. When it has once been
asserted it seems so easy to find illustration of it,
it seems so in harmony with the great law of devel
opment, that few ask themselves if the supposed
illustrations throw light on the subject, and fewer
stiU if the law of evolution does not show that when
an original type appears other types begin to dis
appear. When the new type man appeared, many
old types ceased to exist, and all evolution of new
physical types ceased, and man showed himself a
creature linked to the past, and yet having that
which the past had never seen, the power to super-

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 21
intend his own future development and modify it
in accordance with his own sense of the fitness of
things. In other words, man came on the stage of
life as a creator.^
We start with a like assumption (which it is not
the province of this book to prove), — that the reli
gion of the Son of man, whUe it has its roots in the
past religious consciousness of men — specially of
Israel — has also an element in it which the past
cannot explain.
But what, after all, is originality? Surely it is
something more than a question of chronology, oth
erwise Shakespeare can lay no claim to it. For the
plots of a large part of his plays were drawn from
Italian originals which had passed through the me
dium of the French romances, of the sixteenth cen
tury, or from older English plays ; yet no one wiU
deny that in the truest sense of the term, the " Mer
chant of Venice," " Othello," and " Hamlet " are
original plays. And the reason is this : the test of
originality is not to be found so much in the origin
of a work, if one may so say, as in the original
eff'ect produced. An old truth set in a new light,
or shown to belong to some deeper principle, is as
truly original as the first enunciation of it is an iso
lated fact.
Those who assert that Christianity is a system of
eclecticism have not considered, I venture to say,
either what eclecticism is or what its effect is.
Cousin's " Lectures on Modern Philosophy," for
instance, are an example of eclecticism. " Material-
1 See The Destiny of Man, by John Fiske.

22 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
ism. Idealism, Mysticism, and Skepticism, these are
the four forms that philosophy is perpetually taking,"
says this delighf ul lecturer. " There is truth in
each ; combine those truths and you have the ulti
mate philosophy." Well, we ask after reading him,
what is the central truth into which these partial
truths are to fit ? And the answer is, " the philo
sophic spirit of eclecticism." But that is no truth at
all. It is simply a state of mind, and what is more,
a state of mind that is destined to react against
itself into the narrowest dogmatism.
Again, eclecticism is only fitted to produce men
" sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It
could never have produced a Paul. Now apply either
of these tests to the religion of Christ and they will
fail. Jesus had no such knowledge of the religious
systems of the world as to deliberately form an
eclectic system. " True," say our objectors, " but
Palestine was full of every sort of doctrine. Bud
dhist monks and Parsee priests, Egyptian magi
cians and Hebrew rabbis met in Alexandria, and
Antioch, and probably in Jerusalem. It was impos
sible that Jesus should not have been unconsciously,
and his later disciples consciously, influenced by
these conflicting doctrines. The morality of the
Sermon on the Mount had been preached by Confu
cius and Buddha, and the so-called ' Lord's Prayer '
is a compilation from rabbinic sources." Now in
regard to the relation of Christian to Buddhistic
morality we shall speak in another chapter ; suffice it
to say here that the originality of Christ's morality
is not to be sought for in any enunciation of a new

THE RELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 23
duty, so much as iu the concentration of all duty
into the passion of love. And the object of that
love is to be found not in an abstract principle, but
in the living God, whose character is essentially like
that of Jesus ; and in our fellow-man made like Jesus
and so like God. Jesus revealed sin, not as indul
gence in pleasure, nor the violation of a written
code, but as the ungrateful violation of the sweet
reasonableness of human nature in which God our
Father is well pleased.
Jesus satisfies, then, the first test of originality by
revealing one fundamental principle into which the
morality of humanity can fit.
He satisfies also the second test. He has placed
old truths in such a new light that they are essen
tially new. Thus, take but one petition of the Lord's
Prayer. What did " Our Father, who art in Heaven,"
mean on the lips of the rabbis ? It meant a Being
who dwelt above the visible vault of heaven, caring
for that remnant of the seed of Abraham which
kept the ceremonial law as expounded by the scribes.
But on the lips of the Christian, it means, in the
light of the Incarnation, the Spirit in whom we live
and move and have our being, who dwells in the
heaven of purity and peace and joy which is " about
our path and about our bed," and who creates and
guides and loves every child of man who is born into
the world. That is the originality of Jesus. Such
an illumination of the original instincts of man's
spiritual nature as to enable him to take out of his
treasures old things, and behold, they become new !
The relation which his teaching, or rather his rev-

24 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
elation of himself, bore to the teachings of other
men was like the relation of the ocean to the streams
which irresistibly flow into it. Each little stream
and rivulet, each mighty river and placid bay, brings
its own force ; each inlet has its own eddy ; but they
do not make the ocean. It absorbs them all and
then flows back, filling them with new life and power.
So is it with the religion of the Christ. It sweeps
by the turbid rivers and vast bays of heathenism and
claims kinship with them, fulfilling and purifying
them. Has its effect on life been original, or not ? That
question has, as has been already said, been well
answered by the distinguished divine to whose work
we referred. The object of this book is quite differ
ent. It is hoped to show by this study that evi
dences of Christianity, or rather, illu.strations of the
truth of Christianity, are to be found in the great
ethnic religions.
How can that be best done ? How can Christianity
be proved to be the catholic, the universal religion ?
for if that can be done, if it can be shown that the
religion of Christ contains the desire of humanity,
as manifested in the religions of the world, our task
will have been completed.
Let us take an illustration that may make our
purpose clearer. Suppose a farm of many fields :
suppose there be one field that we believe to be all '
that can be desired ; suppose it be objected that each
field of the farm has its own advantages, how could
we prove the chosen one to be the best ? We might
begin by pointing out deep buried rocks in one, un-

THE EELIGION OF THE SON OF MAN. 25
destroyed stumps in another, a third might be de
clared too marshy to produce a crop, — and so we
might make the round of the farm, and prove the
first field best by comparing its advantages with
the disadvantages of all the others. This method is
one that seems to commend itself to some who think
they are the defenders of the faith. It is, alas ! the
prevailing note in most meetings held to advocate
missions, and perhaps it is the most effective for
getting m,oney — once ; but it mu.st not be used too
often ; there is a point beyond which faithful Chris
tian people will not go, and where the voice of the
scoffer will be heard. " Why try to prove the love
of God," it will be said, " to nations whom, on
your own showing, God has left from the creation
until now in darkness ? " Is it not time that the
orthodoxy whieh would magnify the moral grandeur
of the ethnic religion of Moses and the Catholic re
ligion of Jesus by depressing the religions of India,
China, and Egypt, be declared heresy against the
written as well as the unwritten gospel? Surely
there must be another way, and — to return to our
illustration of the farm — if we began by pointing
out the excellence of each field in turn, and then
showed the same excellence in the first, the first
field would have been shown to be supremely su
perior to any of the others in degree ; but if in ad
dition it could be shown that the first field had any
thing more than all the others, then its excellence
would have been shown to be different in hind.
This, then, is what it is hoped this book will do :
first, point out the excellence of each religion which

26 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
is considered, and then show that the religion of
Christ has the same ; secondly, to show that over
and above the excellent things which may be found
elsewhere, there is that in the gospel which " eye
saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not
into the heart of man," but which God hath revealed
in the life of Jesus the Christ.
The religions considered here are those in which
that branch of the human family known as the Ar
yan lived and died. Strictly speaking, the Aryan
religions include those of India and Persia before
the Mohammedan conquest, Greek, Roman, and
Teutonic mythologies. But tbis book will treat only
of the religions of India, or what may be called the
early Aryan.

CHAPTER II.
VEDAISM.
The religious history of India divides itself into
four periods, viz. : I. The Vedic ; II. The Brah
manic ; III. The Buddhist ; and IV. The Hindu.
The Vedic cannot easily be separated from the
Brahmanic, because the one flowed by an unbroken
gpcadation into the other. But it has been said that
the difference between the two periods is this : " The
Vedic age was the one in which the main traditions
of the Maha-Bharata and Ramayana seem to have
taken place ; whilst the Brahmanic age, which suc
ceeded to the Vedic period, was the one in which
the two poems were composed." ^ The Maha-Bharata,
or " Great War of the Bharata," has for its founda
tion the struggle of the two rival branches of the
great Bharata family, — a sort of Indian " War of
the Roses," which took place in that part of ^India
lying north of AUahabad and east of the Punjab.
This was probably about a thousand years before
our era, — some would place it as early as fifteen
hundred years before.
The traditions of this struggle were to the de
scendants of the mighty Bharata what the siege of
Troy was to the Greeks : and having been sung by
'¦ History af India, by J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i.

28 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the minstrels and recounted by the story-tellers, they
took permanent form in the great Indian Epic, under
the hands of the Brahmans, who made it the vehicle
of theological instruction.^ Of its theological bias
we shall have occasion to speak later ; now we have
need only to note what it has to teach us of the
habits of the people of whom it speaks.
But of course the great storehouse from which we
must draw our materials is the Rig- Veda. The
Vedas or "knowledge," the sacred writings of the
Vedic- Aryans, are probably the oldest of all the ef
forts made by man to record the influence of God's
spirit upon his soul. The Hindus believe that the
original Veda was written by Brahma, and that
having been preserved by tradition, it was finally
arranged in its present form by the sage Dwaipay-
ana, or Vyasa, — the " collector," as he is commonly
called. These Vedas are divided into four parts, of
which the first, called the Rich or Veda in metre, has
given the name Rig- Veda to the whole collection.^
But the Rig- Veda proper is the only one which is un
doubtedly " Vedic," the other three are Brahmanic.
The whole chronology of India is too uncertain,
too much like objects seen in a dream, to enable us
to determine with any certainty the date of the Rig-
Veda, but it is probable that the last of the hymns
had been written before the great war, for the sail
ors of Solomon who brought back the treasures of
the Indies to Jerusalem used the names whieh were
given in India, but which were no longer the pure
' Colebrooke' s Misc. Essays, vol. i.
^ History of India, J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i.

VEDAISM. 29
forms of the Rig- Veda ; ^ so that if its language was
archaic in the time of Solomon, it is allowing none
too much time, in that age of slow change, if we say
that the last of the hymns had been sung before
Moses led the people out of Egypt.
Out of the mystery which shrouds the table-land
of Central Asia, into the land of the Five Rivers,
came the fathers of the Indo-Aryan race. They
were a company of herdsmen, and the prayer which
was ever on their lips was that the heavens would
give them rain ; for unless the clouds, the " heavenly
kine," let down their udders, the earthly cattle must
die. That is the way their religious sense first ex
pressed itself ; rising from the immediate human
want, in prayer to the infinitely human power which
could sympathize with man, and be touched with the
feeUng of his infirmities. To the God, then, who had
power over sun and rain, to the God of the firma
ment, the most frequent prayer was addressed.
The chanters extol Indra with songs.
Indra, the blender of all things, comes verily with his
steeds that are harnessed at his word ; Indra, the richly
decorated, the wielder of the thunderbolt.
Indra, to render all things visible, elevated the sun in
the sky, and charged the cloud with abundant waters.
Shedder of rain, granter of aU desires, set open this
cloud. Thou art never uncompliant with our requests.
The shedder of rain, the mighty lord, the always com
pliant, invests men with his strength, as a buU defends a
herd of kine.^ 1 Stanley's Jewish History, second series.
2 Big-'Veda Sanhita, Wilson, vol. i. p. 18.

30 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
But stiU Indra was far away, and it might be that
prayer, though it were chanted with frequent cry,
would not pierce the vaulted sky. What had man
that could pass from himself to Indra ? The only
thing was fire. But that too must be divine. How
else could it enter the heavenly tents ? And it was
divine, for it came out of mystery to the dwellings
of men. Agni, then, would be the mediator between
man and Grod. And so they sang : —
We select Agni, the messenger of the gods, their in-
voker, the possessor of riches, the perfecter of this rite.
Agni, generated by attrition, bring hither the gods to
the dipt grass ; thou art their invoker for us, and art to be
adored. As thou dischargest the duty of messenger, arouse
them desirous of the oblation ; sit down with them on the
sacred grass.
Agni, the bright, the purifier ! bring hither the gods to
our sacrifice, to our oblations.
Agni, shining vnth pure radiance, and charged with all
the invocations of the gods, be pleased with this our praise.^
When the gods should come they would give them
the best they had ; that which was most likely to
please them, as it pleased men, the inspiring Soma
juice. Indra, let thy coursers hither bring thee, bestower of
desires, to drink the Soma juice ; may the priests, radiant
as the sun, make thee manifest.
We invoke Indra at the morning rite, we invoke him at
the succeeding sacrifice, we invoke Indra to drink the
Soma juice. 1 Big-'Veda Sanhita, vol. i. p. 29.

VEDAISM. 81
These dripping Soma juices are efEused upon the sacred
grass ; drink them, Indra, to recruit thy vigor.
May this our excellent hymn, touching thy heart, be
grateful to thee, and thence drink the effused libation.-'
By the same process of thought which we have
noted in the case of Agni, Soma, first thought of as
a gift acceptable to the gods, became later a god
himself. Thou, Soma, art thoroughly apprehended by our under
standing ; thou leadest us along a straight path ; by thy
guidance, our righteous fathers obtained wealth among the
gods. Thou, Soma, art the protector, the sovereign of the pious,
. . . thou art holy sacrifice. Thou, Soma, hast generated all
these herbs, the water, the kine ; thou hast spread out the
spacious firmament ; thou hast scattered darkness with light.
Divine and potent Soma, bestow upon us with thy
brilliant mind, a portion of wealth.^
Thus the religion began. There was no ritual
but the family meal, in which the gods were asked
to share. The newly cut grass was arranged in a
ring for the gods to sit on. There was no priest
save the father of the household ; his sons were the
assistants, and the family was the congregation.
A favorable spot having been chosen, the fire was
lighted at sunrise, and a hymn, sometimes homely
in its simple expression of trust, sometimes sublime
in the effort of the human spirit to speak with the
inspirer and hearer of prayer, and always pathetic
in its yearning, was chanted by the father and his
sons. Add to this ceremony of the chanted hymn
1 Big-'Veda, vol. i. p. 39.
2 Ibid. vol. i p. 232.

32 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
and the lighted fire, the pouring out of the clarified
butter of the humble household and the sprinkling of
the Soma juice, and we have a picture of the Vedic
ritual before it had been elaborated by Brahmanic
hands. Though, as we have seen, Indra, Agni, and
Soma were the earliest gods of the Vedic pantheon,
yet the hymns, as we find them now, were addressed
impartially to all the great phenomena of nature.
Indra, the ruler of the sky, he who in his power
held back the chariot of the sun as it descended the
western slope, he who refreshed the thirsty earth, he
at first was God of gods. When the storm gathered
on the mountain tops and came hurtling into the
valley below, bending the pines, scattering the cat
tle, blasting the mighty tree that dared to lift up its
head, they said that Rudra, the great storm king,
shot forth his thunderbolts.
But it was not only in the active forces of nature
that men found the witnesses to the divine presence.
There are long days in India when the stillness of
life under the burning sun is indescribable. Above,
below, and ^n every side the great tide of sunlight
fills all space. Such was not a day of Indra, for
Indra was the personification of the active forces of
the atmosphere, and now all things hang in heaven
still. Not a day of Rudra, for no thunderbolt could
pierce that vault of blue. Not a day of Agni, either,
for the fire on the hearth is not needed when all is
fire. On such a day the Vedas praised Varuna, the
Greek Oipavds ; the still, serene, and glorious heaven.
In the cloudless sky, full of unseen power, the Aryan
found the fittest symbol of the peaceful goodness

VEDAISM. 33
of the gods ; and so we find the noblest hymns
addressed to Varuna, and to him ascended, too, the
most frequent cry for pardon.
However we break from thy laws from day to day, men
as we are, O god Varuna,
Do not dehver us unto death, nor to the blow of the
furious, nor to the vrrath of the spiteful !
To propitiate thee, O Varuna, we unbend thy mind with
songs, as the charioteer a weary steed.
He who knows the place of the birds that fly through
the sky, who on the waters knows the ships ; —
He, the upholder of order, he who knows the twelve
months with the ofBspring of each, and knows the month
that is engendered afterwards ; —
He who knows the track of the wind, of the wide, the
bright, the mighty ; and knows those who reside on high ; —
He the upholder of order, Varuna, sits down among
his people ; he the vnse sits there to govern.
May he, the wise Aditya, make our paths straight all
our days ; may he prolong our lives !
Yearning for him, the far-seeing, my thoughts move
onward, as kine move to their pastures.
O hear this, my calling, Varuna, be gracious- now ; long
ing for help, I have called upon thee.
Thou, O wise god, art lord of aU, of heaven and earth :
listen on thy way.^
The god whose light filled every crevice, whose
presence quickened the limbs of the old, and whose
warm breath drew forth the reptile and beast to bask
in his glory, who lifted the humble fern on high and
changed it to a tree of the forest, — surely he was
1 Max MiiUer'a Lectures on the Vedas, Chips from a German
'Workshop, vol. i.

84 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
the god who could not be deceived ; he must mean
weH to all life ; he had power to lift up the troubled
soul. But there was a unity which underlay this seem
ing diversity. The earliest of the hymns indicate
that this mysterious unity was concealed in the joint
action of the two deities Agni and Soma. For while
Agni was fire and Soma was the juice of the plant,
yet they were at the same time the source of life
and activity. We have seen how Agni manifested
itself in many ways, but there were manifestations
back of those, so to speak. Agni, before it appeared
on the hearth as fire, had lain hid in the " womb of
the wood," which by friction had brought forth.-'
So that Agni was without beginning and also with
out end. For when he issued forth into the flashing
thunderbolt or reigned supreme in the cloudless
sky, he had passed beyond the ken of mortals.
There is something at once sublime and pathetic
in this belief in the eternity of the original element,
together with the clinging to the hope of its manifes
tation in the common life of man. It is the first
intimation, as far as I know, of that irrepressible
yearning of the human soul for an incarnation of
the divine.
The other indestructible element was Soma. That
also had a material side which was never lost sisht
of ; but it too went forth into the immensity of life
where the eye of man could no longer follow it. As
it quickened the pulses of men, it came to be thought
1 "Agni, generated by attrition." — Big-Veda, vol, i. p. 29.

VEDAISM. 85
of as the originator of life. It gave the power to
the plant to grow, to women to conceive, to the cow
to secrete mUk ; in fine, it was the origin of all the
forces of secret grovrth, as Agni was of the active,
manifesting powers of life.
Thus was begun that system of the transmigration
of an eternal principle which is the key to all the
theology of India. Whatever we may call the special
modifying philosophical beliefs which came in later,
they all centre in this faith. There is an eternal
principle which folds and unfolds itself ceaselessly
in the manifold appearances of life. It took tre
mendous proportions in later ages, but at the time
we are now considering it was as simple as possible.
This lurking duality of Agni and Soma, which
seems to have been the first effort toward unity, soon
issued into a sort of monotheism, which found ex
pression in the name Brahmanaspati, the Father
of the Gods. And in order to approach this divine
life there was need of more than ritual, there was
need of faith. Thus we read, " He who with a be
lieving mind worships Brahmanaspati, the father
of the gods, -with oblations, he verily receives food,
together with his sons, his kindred, his descendants,
and obtains riches with aU men." ^
This necessity for faith is indicated again : " Ex
cite in us, Indra, veneration for the sun, for the
waters, and for those who are worthy of the praise
of living beings, as exempt from sin ; injure not our
offspring while yet in the womb, ybr our trust is in
thy mighty power." ^
' Big-Veda Sanhita, trans, by Wilson, voL ii. p. 273.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 269.

36 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
It was formerly supposed that sacrifices formed
no part of the Vedic ritual ; that they were the result
of the later philosophy, which we call Brahmanic,
but this is now known to be a mistake. That sacri
fices did not take the proportions at first which they
afterwards assumed is true ; but the necessity for
sacrifices is indicated in the earliest of the hymns,
not as a means of expiating sin, but as a means
of sustaining the gods. This conception of sacrifice,
so different from the common " heathen " view, and
so entirely opposed to the later Hebrew belief, was
the natural outcome of that fundamental conception
of the Hindu mind already mentioned. So firmly
were the authors of the Vedic hymns convinced that
all things issued from the source to which they must
return, that they believed that the gods were de
pendent upon men as truly as men were dependent
upon the gods ! ^
Undoubtedly that idea of sacrifice sunk later to
the common heathen notion of propitiation, but orig
inally it was the result of the belief in the mutual
dependence of each life upon all other life. And
therefore they said, with a divine insight that has
been too little noted, that creation was accompanied
by sacrifice. Around the unbroken ring of existence
all energy must return upon itself. The fire on the
hearth, the heavenly fires in their courses, the flash
ing thunderbolt, — they were aU different, and yet
they were one.
What shall we say of these people ? Were they
monotheistic, or polytheistic ? It seems difficult to
^ Tht Beligions of India, by A. Barth, trans, by Rev. J. Wood.

VEDAISM. 37
affirm either. They were not monotheistic, because
under the manifold manifestations of the divine they
did not grasp the idea of one personal character.
Nor were they polytheistic, for they seemed in wor
shiping Indra to ignore Agni and to have forgotten
Varuna, and so each in turn was made supreme, and
the others did not appear above the horizon of con
sciousness.-' We have mentioned the more prominent of the
gods, or rather names of the divine essence, but there
were many others, as again and again men tried to
speak a name which would more perfectly express
the divine character which was being made manifest
to them through the experiences of life. Sometimes
it was the activity of a man, sometimes it was the
strength of a brute, again it was the unselfish forth-
giving of the vegetable life, which seemed best to
symbolize the power, or the goodness, or the wisdom
of the divine.
Little by little the old names of which we have
spoken began to be felt by the subtler thinkers to
be insufficient as expressions of the divine life, and
instead of the rising sun, and the flashing thunder
bolt, and the upleaping flame, the Rishis ^ began to
speak of a neuter principle of life manifesting itself
in a glorious body. Life, and birth, and death, and
change, what are they ? The rushing wind causing
¦¦ " This is not surely -what we understand by polytheism. Yet
it would be equally -wroiig to call it monotheism. I should call it
Kathenotheism." — Max Miiller, Chips from a German Workshop,
vol. i. p. 28.
^ The priests.

38 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the great trees to moan and rock, the sudden calm,
whence came they ? Some day the air is full of per
fume, the pines are sending out their incense as the
warm sun kisses them. A fire is started in the
forest, it sweeps for miles in its destructive course
and then stops. How came these things to be so ?
The Vedic- Aryans said it was Asura. The glorious
body of the unseen god, changing at every instant,
was what we call life and death ; the blowing of the
wind was the breath of his nostrils ; the unseen
perfume was the sign of his presence ; the raging of
the fire was the fury of " the glorious body of the
principle of life, which is for itself and for others
the origin of movement." ^ They had tried by the
doctrine of Asura to bring the divine near to them,
and behold they had placed it beneath them ! Yet
their experience was not a unique one ; they were
impressed with the phenomena of nature, they were
sure that they witnessed to a higher life than their
own, they could not tell which of these phenomena
was supreme, so each became supreme in turn. It
was not the rigid purity of the monotheist, but it was
far from the licentious excess of the polytheist. It
was the first attemj)t of the human mind to realize
the universality of the divine ; wherever the child
placed its hand it felt the thrill of divine life.
Nothing without God, that was the discovery — if
one likes the word — of the early Aryan mind. That
was the revelation, I should prefer to say, of the
everlasting Father to his children, amidst the glori
ous scenery of India. Illustrations of this truth
I Essai sur le Vida, par E. Bumouf , pp. 320-^40.

VEDAISM. 89
abound in the Rig- Veda. Thus, " Aditi, i. e., ' the
Absolute,' is heaven. Aditi is the firmament.
Aditi is father, mother, son. Aditi is all the gods." ^
Again : —
Thou art the supreme God, the eternal, celestial spirit,
that all the Rishis confess. That also thou dost announce
thyself to me. I beheve in the truth of thy word, but I
know not how to render thee visible to me. Thou thy
self alone dost know thyself. Being of beings, God of gods.
Lord of all creatures. ... It is in thee that we are ; I
and all those beings which surround me. ... I see in
thy unity all the universe, with all things visible and in
visible. Thou dost burn like the fire and like the sun in
thy immensity, mountain of light, on all sides resplendent,
-without commencement, without middle, without end.^
This revelation the Vedic Aryans were led into
much as the Hebrews were led. God's message
to the Aryan was read in the blazing sunlight, was
heard in the awful muttering of the storm, was felt
when the gigantic pines bent and bowed themselves
as He drew near. But the message to Israel came
through the experiences of a nation. Not through
nature, but through man. Yet see how long they
were in learning it ! That which now seems to us so
plain, that there is but one God, the Hebrews at the
beginning would not have understood. At first they
spoke of the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of
Jacob, they did not doubt that there were other
gods. They asked Pharaoh to let them go that they
^ Big-Veda Sanhita, trans, by Wilson, vol. i. p. 230.
^ Essai sur le Veda, par E. Bumouf, p. 307.

40 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
might worship their God. Later they became
bolder, and said there is no God like our God, " He
shall be our guide imto death." While the " God
of Jacob " was with them they would not fear. Not
tiU the time of Isaiah could they say, " There is no
God but the Lord." What the Hebrew asserted of
the spiritual forces of life, the Aryan had said of
the phenomena of nature. The Hebrews were led
to believe in the one God by seeing the superiority of
the idea of the God of Israel, over those ideas which
held sway among the heathen about them. The
unity of the divine was the revelation to the He
brew, the universality of the divine was the revela
tion to the Aryan.
But this is not the only way in which the Rig-
Veda reminds us of the Bible. The most careless
reader of these hymns cannot fail to be struck with
the absence of anything like fear of the gods. It is
a tone of childlike confidence that sounds through
out. Now when we remember that these are the
oldest of all religious books, we shall be inclined to
doubt the popular belief that all religion begins in
fear. If fetichism be the earliest manifestation of
human fear of something beyond the seen, still that
can hardly be called religion, for religion means the
conscious relation to the unseen. It is true that
the fear of the gods seems to be the most power
ful element in the debased heathen worship with
which the traveler comes in contact to-day, but it
was not always so, as Aryan and Semitic history
show. At the beginning of Hebrew history stands
Abraham and he was called the friend of God ; in

VEDAISM. 41
the childhood of Aryanism were chanted the Vedic
hymns, and to these singers the gods seemed very
friendly. Again and again they tell the flame to
mount up quickly, and from the far-off sky call the
gods to the sacrifice, that they with men may drink
the inspiring Soma juice and rejoice. And yet this
sense of friendliness was not the result of moral
obtuseness, for there are frequent prayers for de
liverance from sin.
I invoke the divine waters : waters, take away whatso
ever sin has been formed in me, whether I have know
ingly done wrong, or pronounced imprecations against holy
men, or have spoken untruth.-'
Varuna, loosen for me the upper, the middle, the lower
hand, so, son of Aditi, shall we through righteousness in
thy worship become freed from sin.
Preserve him who praises thee from sin with bands of
iron. Dissolve not, Agni, our ancestral friendship, for thou art
cognizant of the past as well as of the present : in like
manner as light speeds over the sky, so decay impairs my
body ; think of me before that scene of destruction pre
vails.^ The scope of this inquiry does not lead us to con
sider the morality of the Vedas except in as far as
they give indications of a belief on the part of the
1 Big-Veda Sanhita, Wilson, vol. i. pp. 57, 58, 64, 156, 158.
^ The most beautiful hymn to Varuna, -with the refrain " have
mercy, Almighty, have mercy, " is so -well kno-wn that I do not quote
it, fearing it may be supposed to be the only one of its kind. It
will be found entire in Max Miiller's Chips from a German 'Work
shop, vol.!., and in Dr. James Freeman Clarke's Ten Great Beligions.

42 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Vedic- Aryans that the faith expressed in the hymns
must be incorporated into life.^
When the Vedic-Aryans first appear in the Pun
jab they- are seen to show evidence of a struggle else
where. What that was we shall see later, but for
the present it is only necessary to bear in mind that
there had been a great religious struggle, and that
these herdsmen believed themselves to be in the
right. So the first prayers which they uttered,
prayers which at first sight might seem to show no
feeling save that of selfishness, a desire to get as
much as possible of this world's goods, are more than
that. They pray indeed for rain and food, for pro
lific cattle, for health and safety from storms, but it
is as men who feel that they have a claim on the
gods, as those who have " kept the faith " in the
midst of a perverse generation.
So the prayer for temporal prosperity is really a
plea for justice. " If I, O Indra," says one of the
bards, " if I were master of such wealth as thou, I
would be generous to him that praised me, but would
bestow nothing upon the wicked : day by day would
I give in abundance to him who paid me honor, be
he who he might. We have no dearer relative than
thou, were it a father even."
If it be answered, that this does not show a high
standard of morality, the answer is we have no right
to demand a high standard at such a stage ef experi
ence. It is not found among any people, not even
among the most religious the world has ever seen —
the Jews.
^ See Roth's "Morality of the Vedas," va Journal of American
Oriental Society, vol. iii. 1853.

VEDAISM. 43
But a better means of judging of their sense of
right and wrong is found in noting what they con
demn in themselves. Like all nomadic people, the
vice of gambling was widespread. Yet we find a
hymn in the Rig- Veda in which the gambler bewails
his fault, recognizes his sin, and confesses that he
finds no means of escape.
The absence of fear, already spoken of as a char-
acteri.stic of the hymns, would lead us to suspect that
there would be a contempt of the power of the gods.
But this is far from being the case. The sense of
the good--will of the gods to men saved them from
thinking of them as powers which might turn on the
dead, but this did not lead to licentiousness ; they
prayed for forgiveness and believed that the wicked
should be thrust down into the deep by Varuna, the
supreme judge of the living and of the dead. But
in the mystery of the darkness that was apart from
the presence of the God of the cloudless sky, they
left the wicked, and did not exercise their imagina
tions in an effort to depict the torture of the uji-
happy dead until all sense of the loving kindness of
the celestials had given place to a fear which could
only be allayed by bloody sacrifices. That was as far
from the thought of the Vedic Aryans, as the wor
ship of Moloch was from the father of the faithful.
But perhaps the belief which had the most healthy
moral effect was that fundamental faith in the uni
versality of the divine which may be called the dis
tinguishing mark of the Vedic age. This belief,
which on its intellectual side was so perilously near
to polytheism, on its moral side was saved from

44 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
degradation by being ascribed to Varuna, the all-
seeing God, as Omniscience. He counts the very
" winks of the eyes of men." When two whisper
together he hears them, and yet he knows the flight
of the bird and the path of the wind.
He whose light can strike into the shadows of the
mountain cave, he too can shine into the darkened
heart of man and reveal its secrets. That conscious
ness of the abiding presence of One " to whom all
hearts are open, all desires knovm, and from whom
no secrets are hid," ^ is still believed to be the best
preventive of immorality, and so was it thought to
be by the men who kept their herds on the plains of
the Punjab, when Abraham still dwelt in Ur of the
Chaldees. We have now reached a point where we may
pause and ask ourselves what are the leading ideas
of the Rig- Veda, and what has the religion of Jesus
that can affiliate with them. Of course one who
does not believe that any common ground can, or
ought to be found, will be able to point to much in
these hymns which our taste must repudiate and
our conscience condemn ; but our object is very dif
ferent ; it is to find, if possible, not what is common
and gross and immoral in this system, and compare
it with the excellences of the religion of Jesus, but
rather, believing that every good and perfect gift is
from above, to find the good and then show that
Christianity can fulfill it as truly as it does the law
and the prophets of Israel.
^ See the Prayer at the beginning of the Communion Service, in
the Book of Common Prayer.

VEDAISM. 45
There are, then, four points to which I would call
attention in the Rig- Veda. They are, first, that ear
liest expression of the religious instinct, the prayer for
bread and health aud peace. Secondly, the prayer
for the di-vine participation in sacrifice ; thirdly, faith
in the divine good-wiU to good men ; and, lastly, the
belief in the divine universality.
The first is not peculiar to the Vedic-Aryans ; it
is the prayer that the child -spirit of humanity
frames when its eyes first open to the mystery of
life. But when Christ came with his revelation of
the spirituality of God He did not ignore this great
human want. The first prayer that He bade his
disciples put up for themselves was that they might
receive their daily bread. No doubt the prayer
for daily bread in the mouth of Him whose meat
and drink it was to do the will of God was far
more than any prayer for bodily sustenance, but it
included it. The man who knows that man does
not live by bread alone will mean something very
different from the poor starving child of God, when
he says, " Our Father, give me this day my daily
bread ; " but the same thought underlies the two
prayers, and that is faith in One who knows what
we have need of before we ask, but to whom we can
come in our ignorance, asking for that which it seems
to us we need ; whether it be food for ourselves or
for our children, or house or raiment. When Christ
put a prayer in the mouth of his disciples, it was one
which would express the deepest cravings of a soul
athirst for God, and at the same time reach down and
serve as a ladder, by means of which the hungry

46 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
herdsman might mount to the knowledge of One
in whom he lived and moved and had his being.
In teaching a prayer which expressed not only the
saints' hunger and thirst after Righteousness, but
also the primary craving of the natural man, Christ
has shown that no religion is outside the range of
his sympathy ; no nation too far from the divine life
to hear the good news that the faith of its fathers
has been justified.
Of the second point it is hardly necessary to
speak ; it is so evident that the prayer for the divine
presence is a Christian prayer. Not that I would
have it supposed that I think the Rig- Veda is the
gospel before Christ, — far from it ! I only believe
that it was a prophecy of the gospel, and that when
that which is perfect had come, that which was in
part was to be done away. And this second prayer
is an illustration of that. It is true that the Rishis
prayed for the divine presence, and so does the
Lord's Prayer. " Thy kingdom come " is common
to both, but in the Rig- Veda the coming of the king
dom is made dependent upon the giving of bread,
and in the Lord's Prayer the giving of bread is
made dependent upon the coming of the kingdom !
The Vedic-Aryans prayed for bread, and then asked
the gods to share it with them, because they be
lieved that the gods themselves were dependent upon
the family meal for their own strength. But with
Jesus the prayer was for bread, only if it would not
prevent the nourishment of his soul with the bread
of life. In other words, the Vedic-Aryan believed
that the kingdom would come if he was cared for.

VEDAISM. 47
and the Christian believes that if the kingdom comes
he will not be forgotten.
I repeat, the man who does not believe that the
Rig- Veda is any revelation of the divine character
to men will turn over its pages and find nothing
but the weary repetition of extravagant epithets ad
dressed to the Dawn or to the Maruts ; a confused
mythology, and sometimes gross sensuality, yet the
same man might read the revelation to Israel and
faU to see the writing of the finger of God ! But
the traces of it are to be found in both : in one so
plain that he who runs may read ; and in the other
not so obscure that he who would find should fail.
We have spoken of the answer to the Aryan's
prayer in the great Christian prayer, nor need we
go beyond that to find the justification of their faith
that if the divine life came among men it would
be favorable to them, and rejoice in their simple joys
and mourn with them in the old sorrrow that was
no more absent from the valley of the Indus than
from the shores of the lake of Galilee. The mes
sage of the first Christmas carol was forever per
petuated in the prayer of Jesus. When the divine
life came, the tradition embodied in the gospel is
that the angels sang " Peace on earth, good-will to
men." "When ye pray," said Jesus, "say Our
Father. Pray to Him who maketh his sun to rise on
the evil and on the good. Pray to Him who so loved
the world that he sent his son, not to condemn the
world, but that the world by Him might be saved."
And the whole life of Jesus was in harmony with
this Aryan faith that when the divine life came to

48 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
join in the sacrifice it would have good-will to men.
He went about doing good, and preaching the good
news of the kingdom of God — of God whom He
always called the Father. And that word. Father,
means the everlasting friend of the human soul,
whom neither the darkness of ignorance, nor the
cloud of sin, nor the mountain barrier of prejudice
can hold back from that communion, which, as the
Aryan dimly saw, is the joy of God and the life of
man. It remains now for us to inquire if Christianity
has any answer to the yearning of the Aryan soul
for the universality of God which expressed itself
so insufficiently in the doctrine of Asura.
If we consider Christianity as represented in the
life of Jesus, we cannot fail to be struck with the fre
quency and apparent naturalness of what we call the
miraculous. Whatever explanation men may think
best to give of it, even should they be led to deny the
accuracy of the description of certain events in the
life of Jesus, it will still remain in the last analysis
a miraculous life ; and those special manifestations
which we call " miracles " were spoken of, by those
who it is asserted witnessed them, as " signs " ; were
declared by Him who is reported to have worked them
to be signs, or manifestations, not of a power within
himself, but the manifestations of the power of Him
who created all things. Whether these be matters
of fact, or stories, or legends of that Life, it is not
my purpose to discuss ; the point to which I wish to
call attention is this : that these stories give the best
representation of the way in which Jesus regarded

VEDAISM. 49
nature ; which is the question that concerns us now.
The gospel presents us the picture of one full of
divine energy going throughout the land and heal
ing those who were diseased ; in many cases these
diseases were asserted to be the effect of the pres
ence of an evil spirit ; in every case they were
treated as the effect of some interruption of the
divine purpose. Jesus seems to have looked into
the life of the man whom he undertook to heal, and
to have seen there the contradiction of the power
of God. His miracle consisted in the removing
of this hostUe power, this foreign substance, as the
physicians would say to-day. So considered, every
miracle was as truly a witness to the presence of
the divine life in the diseased body as the physi
cian's administration of medicine is a witness to his
belief in the presence and power of the vital force.
And just as a physician only pretends to " assist
nature," so the miracle of Jesus was the setting
free of the current of the divine life which had
been checked. The miracles of Jesus are not rep
resented as the result of the exercise of external
power so much as the cooperation with the power
within nature itself, which was possible only to him
who had entered into the secret councils of God.
This picture, then, is of one who knew no man in
whom there was not a spark of the divine life which
might not be blown upon by the gentle breath of
sympathy until the flame of love to the father re
vived ; and also of one who knew nothing of a
kosmos divorced from God ; who saw the divine will
and love and wisdom working amid the groaning

60 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
and travailing of the creation, and cooperating with
that divine life immanent in nature, wrought the
wonders which have been related of Him, and which
seem so incredible to the men who have never found
trace of God in the work of his hands. Every mir
acle of Jesus was bearing witness to the faith of the
Aryan, that there is no mountain, no river, no tree,
no man, no object, animate or inanimate, in which
there is not the presence of God.
But they were doing more than that. Those mira
cles which are reported of the birth of Jesus, and of
his resurrection ; those stories of the wonders wrought
by Him, not alone upon the bodies of men, but also
upon what we call inanimate nature, were bearing wit
ness to the divine presence in all the kosmos, and at
the same time to the truth that there is a difference
in the manifestation of power ; that though it be true
to speak of God as immanent in nature, it is fatal to
belief in the Fatherhood of God to think of .Him as
contained in nature ; for while it be true that mani
festations of divine wisdom and love and power may
be found in nature, it is only by those who have
first found them -within man.^ Jesus gave to man
kind the highest manifestation of the di-vine when he
let it shine through his own personality, and in the
light of that personality we can see that which He
saw, that nature is instinct with the divine presence.
So considered, the miracles of Jesus become some
thing more than the justification of the faith of the
Aryan in the immanence of the divine life, they be-
^ See "Nature and God," in Essays, Philosophical and Theolog
ical. By James Martineau, vol. i. New York : Henry Holt & Co,

VEDAISM. 61
come a revelation of that which the Aryan failed to
grasp, which is the superiority of the human mani
festation of the divine life: and just because of
that lack the Vedic-Aryan was always confused in
regard to the relation of man to nature. He could
not tell whether the spiritual life of man has its
origin in matter or whether matter is an expression
of mind. And that confusion became fatal to prog
ress. The history of Hindu thought is a weary
round of questioning : Brahmanism pushed idealism
to the extreme until matter became the one unreal
ity ; and modern Hinduism, rushing to the other
pole, reached in its gross idolatry the lowest point
of degradation when it ascribed the origin of life to
sexual intercourse and worshiped the genital organs,
as is done in India to-day. This inability to recog
nize character as the highest manifestation of divine
life lies back of the modern as of the ancient per
plexity concerning the origin of matter. When
character is recognized as the highest manifestation
of life possible, then it becomes a matter of indiffer
ence whether or not the material from which the
kosmos has been evolved, be thought of as coexist
ent with God or not. I think it is only in this day
that we are entering into that higher conception of
God as a creator which the Aryan was feeling after
but failed to grasp, but which the miracles of Jesus
were revealing. A well - known French writer has
declared that the idea of creation is not to be found
in the Vedas, but " the universal agent is the pro-
ductor, the generator of beings, and the father of the
living. The supreme and universal Being is not

52 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
a person separated from the world." ^ But surely
he has in mind a notion of creation which we our
selves have found to be inadequate to that larger
knowledge of the kosmos into which we have been
led. There is no inconsistency in thinking of the Su
preme Being as existing apart from nature and yet
immanent iu nature. If we turn back in thought to
that word which Jesus always used of the Supreme
— Father, — we shall gain, I believe, a conception
of nature truer and far nobler than that which has
been contemptuously called the " Carpenter theory."
The creation of a father is the forthgiving of a fa^
ther's life. It has been well said that " the self im
parting energy of love is the first cause of creation."
The miracles of Jesus showed that this self -imparting
energy of love was omnipresent in his day : in other
words, that creation was not an accomplished fact,
the result of a divine fiat in a moment of time, long
ages ago ; but rather that it is the constant uphold
ing of nature by God's presence, which makes crea
tion a perpetual act. The fatherhood of God in its
relation to nature means the immanence of creative
power. Without the knowledge of the correlation
of physical forces, St. Paul yet entered into the true
spiritual science of nature when he wrote, " In Him
we live and move and have our being."
That is the answer of Christianity to the Aryan,
who says, " To our fathers was revealed the truth of
the Universality, the Omnipresence of the Divine.
We can recognize no religion as true which has no
place for this fundamental belief of the Vedic-Aryan ;
^ E. Burnouf, Essai sur le Vida, p. 453.

VEDAISM. 63
for our religious consciousness will bear no clearer
witness to any new truth of religion than it does to
that old one." We do not need to make little of
such a sublime faith ; we believe that the gospel of
Jesus comprehended it in the larger revelation to
mankind. We have only to look back to the life
of Jesus, in the new sense of the nearness of God
which has come through the study of nature in this
day, to see that by Jesus nature was always treated
as man was treated, as that which had within itself
the divine life.
When He drew near to man. He drew near to the
divinity which was in him ; and when He drew near
to nature, He did so as one who felt that man and
nature form one great whole.
The disorders in nature are from a lack of har
mony between human reason, which is the mani
festation of the divine in man, and force and law,
which are the divine manifestation in nature. Jesus
never lost sight of and never confused the triple
manifestation of the Divine Life. God in Himself ;
that which no man hath seen nor can see. God in
man ; God in nature. But just as God in man,
the Christ, is subject to God the Father, so God
in nature, Force, is to be subject to God in man,
Reason. And yet nature is an entity distinct from
man, and man is an entity distinct from God. The
perfect harmony of thought and life wiU be possible
only when all nature having been subjected unto the
Son of man. He himself becomes subjected unto the
Father, that God may be all in all.'
1 1 Cor. XV. 28, R. V.

54 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Now with all this good, with all the noble truths
which were incorporated in it, it still ought not be
difficult for us to say why Vedaism failed. For it
did fail ; Brahmanism, which grew from its roots,
lived by the power of a new truth which it intro
duced into the system. Vedaism failed because it
was nature worship. Not that the material universe
was worshiped, but the Divine Essence was con
ceived of as dwelling in nature exclusively. The
illustrations of divine power were found in the
storm ; of divine goodness in the refreshing rain ; of
divine care in the unerring sunrise. Such very likely
has been the beginning of every religion, and its in
fluence will be felt just so long as the people con
tinue in intimate contact with nature. So at least it
was -with the Vedic-Aryan. When the nomadic herds
raan life had passed away, and men began to feel in
a higher civilization that their welfare depended not
so much upon nature as upon man, the old nature
worship no longer satisfied and comforted them.
The beautiful goodness of nature had given place to
the cunning of man, and the gods of the mountains
seemed powerless in the village and in the town.
If now it be asked why, in the progress of civiliza
tion, the Aryans did not bring their gods down -with
them frora the mountains and enthrone them as vU
lage divinities, even as Abraham came into Canaan
with the God he had known in Ur of the Chaldees,
the answer is that the fundamental error of the
Hindu religion lay at the root of Vedaism. That
error was Pantheism. God was not a person. In
other words there was no God. There was a divine

VEDAISM. 55
unknovm, unseen mystery back of life, which took
personal and impersonal forms, but it was not essen
tially personal ; there was no will, nor affection, nor
self-consciousness. As therefore there was no divine
person, there could be no personal identity between
Brahmanism and Vedaism. When the herdsmen of
Afghanistan buUt cities in the valley of the Indus,
they left the gods of their fathers behind them and
gave to the Divine Essence new names. That Pan
theism was the necessary form for the transmission
of the truth of the immanence of God, we may be
lieve as firmly as that Anthropomorphism was the
necessary illusion for the perpetuation of the belief
in the personality of God. In which case the election
of the Hebrew, for transmitting the one will be no
more apparent than the mission of the Aryan in the
preservation of the other. I have tried to show how
the gospel of Jesus is full of the idea of the imma
nence of God. Every reader of the Bible knows how
in the teaching of the Master the old anthropomor
phic symbol of the Jewish dispensation feU away,
and the God in " whom we live and move and have
our being," " who is about our path and about our
bed," stood revealed as the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, loving every human soul, governing
every wayward child, healing our sicknesses, cleans
ing our sins, lifting us from the death of sin to the
life of righteousness. So, then, if I were asked for
an illustration of Christianity as being the revela
tion in which all the nations of the world are to be
blest, I would answer : in the life of Jesus is gathered
the Aryan revelation of the Immanence of God, and

56 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the Semitic revelation of the Personality of God ;
and more, in that commingling both are transfig
ured ; the Immanence of God means power and law
and wisdom manifesting themselves as making for
righteousness ; and the Personality of God means
love and forgiveness and grace gathering together
the children of God that are scattered abroad.

CHAPTER IIL
BRAHMANISM.
The second phase of the religion of India is
caUed Brahmanism. It is not easy to draw a line
which shaU divide Brahmanism from Vedaism ; the
former is an outgrowth of the latter. The simple
ritual of the Vedas expanded by slow degrees into
the elaborate ceremonial of the Brahmanic sacri
fices, which were so expensive that only the rich
could afford them. A ritual so elaborate that only
the initiated could follow it caused a division among
the worshipers which gradually hardened into the
caste system of modern India. A philosophy was
developed which swept through the four stages of
Materialism, Skepticism, Idealism, and Mysticism ; '
and a theology arose by the banks of the Ganges so
profound in its speculations, so lofty in its aspira
tion, and widespread in its search for truth, that the
logical mind of the West, used to the definitions
which have their basis in historical facts and expe
riences, loses itself in the effort to thread the dimly
lighted labyrinth of Oriental speculation. Un
checked by contact with other nations, and sepa
rated from the active life of the West, Brahmanism
shows, in philosophy, in ritual, and in theology,
1 Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy, vol. ii. Lecture V.

68 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
crudities and absurdities innumerable; so that it
would be equally true to speak of Brahmanism as
a splendid effort of the human mind to solve the
problems of life, or to declare that it is a mass of
ridiculous nonsense unworthy of the consideration
of thoughtful men. And it would be quite possible,
moreover, to draw from the recognized authorities of
the Brahmanic religion passages which would bear
out either assertion ; but those who believe that God
has not left himself without witness, in any nation,
will seek for the good while not ignoring the evil ; and
will value the good all the more, knowing how easy
it is for the human mind, even in its search after
the highest truth, to be drawn aside by that which
is unworthy of it. They will never cease to wonder
that out of the corruptions of Hindu society there
should have come thoughts which we may reverently
compare with the words of our ovm Bible, and be
lieve that they had the same source. The search for
such traces of the influence of the Divine Spirit
upon the lives of men wiU never lose its interest
for the student of religion, — unless, indeed, he has
somehow come to believe that the Revelation to
Israel exhausted the divine reason, and that the
Word did not lighten every man that has come into
the world.
But before doing that, it may be well to try and
fix in our minds certain landmarks by which our
course may be guided ; for Indian history is like the
course of the river Ganges, which, continually over
flowing its banks, leaves that which was the bed of
last year mUes away from the course which it follows

BBAHMANISM. 59
now, so that it becomes more or less necessary to
use the terms Vedic and Brahmanic in an arbitrary
sense ; for, while the historian may speak of the
Vedic period as that time in which the events of the
Maha-Bharata were being enacted, the student of
the religious thought of India must confine it within
stricter limits, and speak of the Vedic period as that
age in which the hymns of the Rig- Veda were sung ;
which was an indefinite tirae before the year 1000
B. C. The next two hundred years lie on the bor
der of both periods, and may be clairaed by either.
It was during this time that the first code of laws
was compUed, and ascribed to Manu, — that myste
rious person whose name, like the Semitic Adam, is
the generic name of the race, the ancestor of aU
living. The next great literary work of this period;
was the collection, and, to use a modern terpi, the
editing, of the Rig-Veda. All this was done in the
land of the five rivers before the people had taken
those momentous steps which the^ could never re-
:^„?r."' lc„cin,Ioiji nas already been called to the
fact that in the Vedic period the father of the house
hold was at once priest and king, but, when the age
of conquest began, it was inevitable that there should
come a differentiation of society, and that the work
which originally had been done by one should become
so difficult that it would require special training and
a life devoted to its accomplishment.
The first work which presented itself to a people
passing from the nomadic to the settled life was
war. The warrior now lifts his head as a man dis-

60 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
tinct from the rest of the community. Of course
the claims which would be put forth by such a class
would not go unchaUenged, and naturally also the
challenge would be made in the name of what here
tofore had been deemed suprerae — religion. The
conflict which now arose between the warrior and
the priest is the same as meets us on every page of
the history of mediaeval Europe, and it ended in In
dia, as in Europe, in a sort of compromise. That is
to say, the priest, as the representative of religion,
was theoretically admitted to be the superior of the
warrior, but it was also insisted upon that the war
rior should have the help of the supernatural power,
at the disposal of the priest, in return for the protec
tion of the secular arm. It was thus the caste sys-
tira of India began. The priestly caste was called
the iTiahmin, and the warrior was calle2,the Ksha-
triyas ; aniithe laws of Manu declare the " s'acer dotal
order cannot JTOsper without the military, nor the
military without il& sacerdotal ; and the prosperity
of both, in this world and in the next, "oepigncls
on their cordial union." ' Two classes having been
evolved by the necessities of life, the rest of man
kind naturally remained to forra the other.
The Veisyas were the traders or the husbandmen,
in a word, all who were neither priests nor soldiers.
To this class there was added later a fourth, who were
the aborigines of the conquered territory on whicb
the great host was at this time moving. The Sudras,
not belonging to the Aryan family, were counted
beneath the consideration of the lowest of the con
quering race. ' Elphinstone's History of India, vol. i.

BBAHMANISM. 61
So far there is nothing but what we would expect.
Indeed, nothing that we are not familiar with in the
history of western Europe. It seems to be but one
more illustration of the change of a community from
" an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogene
ity by the increase of the heterogeneity in the en
vironment," and yet the term " Indian caste " has
corae to be the synonym of aU that is hateful in the
organization of society.
The answer that is sometimes given, that the evil
in India was due to the impossibility of breaking
the "cake of custom" has been shown to be un
satisfactory, but Mr. Fiske's atterapt to account for
that inability seems to be equally so. It will not
do to say " the Oriental stage ... is not a stage
through which progressive nations pass, but it is a
stage in which further progress is impossible, save
through the occurrence of some deep-reaching social
revolution."^ India saw a social revolution which
one would have supposed would have broken the
" cake of custom," when Gautama began his work ;
and, indeed, it was broken, but there was no power
in the revolution of Buddha to prevent its recement-
ing. I believe the misery of caste has its origin in
that thought of mankind which underlies the word
itself. The Spanish word casta, from which caste
is derived, means " a breed." The reason that it
was so hard to break up this custora was, that it was
associated with the deepest religious convictions of
the Aryan people.
We have already seen that the fundamental belief
1 Outlines of Cosmic PhUosophy, vol. ii. By John Fiske.

62 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
in the universality of the divine, unenlightened by
the revelation of the character of the divine, led to
the association of the divine with that which some
how the human mind felt was unworthy of it ; the
consequence was that it became necessary to make
formal distinctions, not only between things, but also
between occupations, and then between men ; until
a belief arose in different " breeds " of men. Rome
was saved from the caste system by belief in force,
which was common to all men, but India could not
accept such materialism as that. Greece was saved
frora it by faith in intelligence, but India could find
no rest in rationalism. Judaea came very near to
caste in Phariseeism, but there were other elements
which counteracted that. Christianity brought into
the world the belief in character, and faith in char
acter is what lies back of democracy ; the very anti-
pode of caste. It was this failure to recognize char
acter as the highest manifestation of the Di-vine life
which first created caste, and afterwards made it
weU-nigh impossible to overcome the belief. It will
never be overcome, save by the preaching of a gospel
that " God bas raade of one all the children of men,"
and that to the highest possibility of humanity each
man is caUed.
This belief in the necessity of arbitrary distinc
tions between things holy and unholy, having once
taken possession of men's minds, was not likely to
cease with the division of men into castes ; it would
permeate all society. The consequence was that it
soon became impossible for any save those specially
instructed in the mysteries, to perform them, and

BBAHMANISM. 63
thus the priests became a necessity to all classes of
men. That this followed as a natural consequence
of the theories of life, of which we have already
spoken, seems so plain that the popular explanation
that the elaborate ritual was an invention of the
priests, in order that they might fasten their hold
upon the people, is no longer necessary. An artifi
cial ritual was sure to follow the artificial distinc
tions araong raen and things, and then the necessity
of a hierarchy would be apparent to all.
It was about this tirae that the Purohita (literally
prcepositus^ or faraily chaplain to the great chiefs
and nobles arose.' The next step was the division of
the Brahmans themselves into different orders .and
thecontinuation of the Veda. The highest order of
Brahmans was called " Hotri," and they alone were
aUowed to preside at the sacrifices, which had once
been the privilege of every father of a family. But
to the Rig - Veda was now added the Yagur - Veda,
which consisted of a rich or hymn, and a dogmatic
commentary on the same. Yagur - Veda, in which
were erabodied all the formulas for the sacrifices,
was the special study of the second order or Adh-
varyus. Last in order was the Sama- Veda the ser-
¦vice book of the Udgatri or lowest order, whose busi
ness it was to chant the hymns at the sacrifice, which
was actuaUy performed by the Adhvaryus and pre
sided over by the Hotri.
This process of adding to the sacred Canon, hav
ing begun, was continued later by the addition to
• Satapatha Brdhmana. Part I., by Julius Eggeling.

64 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the Vedas of the Brahmanas, or authoritative com
mentaries of the Brahmans on the order of sacrifice.
By this time the religion had traveled far from the
life of the common people, and had become the very
opposite of all that was worthy in the worship of
the early Aryan herdsmen in the Punjab. The
human conscience, which cannot Ignore the existence
of sin, which does not dare to ascribe sin to the
Divine,' made the early Pantheism of their fathers
impossible for raen who had begun to recognize that
there was such a thing as evil in the world. Faith
in a divine person would have led to the revelation
of righteousness, and in the absence of that faith it
was inevitable that Brahmanism shoiUd sink to the
degradation which it reached In the Athavangifas,
or incantations, without which the sacrifice could
not be propitious. Even should there be one faUure
at the end of a two days' ceremony the work must
begin again.
While it is not necessary to account for the rise
of the ceremonial by the supposition of the craft of
the priests, no one can doubt what would follow on
the belief that the formula of sacrifice was known
to the priest alone, and that even for them, it was
no easy matter to foUow the intricacies of the cere
monial. The dignity of the priest was enhanced
without an effort on his part, and the people became
the prey of every evil-minded man who had been
born a Brahman.
1 Later the fatalism of India did lead, in the philosophy which
preceded Buddhism, to this blasphemy, and that having heen ut
tered, the caste system disappeared, until its revival in Hinduism.
I believe that the assertion of caste was an attempt to escape the
ine-ntable immorality of Pantheism.

BBAHMANISM. 65
And yet the Brahmanas are not altogether de
void of religious significance. The sacrifices may be
divided into four classes : First those which were per
formed for a father in behalf of a son too young to
perform them in his own person, concerning which
there is nothing special to remark except the belief
which underlay such an act, that in some way the
young life was in relation with the divine life before
it became conscious of the fact. The second great
sacrifice was when the chUd carae to maturity, and
was invested with the sacred cord, when the son was
said to be " born again." However limited may
have been the idea connected with re-birth, the fact
that such a thought should have been In the rainds
of the people, that the son of a Brahman was not
necessarUy pure, but needed by some voluntary act
to assume the responsibility of a holy life, carries
with it the promise of better things. Of the sacri
fices on the lighting of the fire in the new home, and
the sacrifices of the new moon and the full moon, it
is not necessary to speak.
The Brahmanas, as we have already seen, contain
not only the directions for the sacrifices, but a run
ning commentary on the cereraony. And while in
raany cases, we raay say in most, the reasons assigned
for a particular act are puerUe In the extreme, yet
it is something that it should be thought desirable
to give a reason for any act. A religion cannot
be altogether debased that tries to give an account
to its own reason of the things which it teaches as
essential to salvation ; and a very suggestive thing
in the Brahmanas is that, not only do they pretend

66 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
to give a reason for the performance of a partic
ular act, but in nearly every case it is because in
some way the gods have done the thing that is com
raanded. So that the man who lived under that
system was constantly being stimulated by the re
merabrance that he was imitating the divine life,
even though it were no more than In the pouring
of ghee from one vessel into another. It was not a
high religious life, but it had within it the germs of
something better.
But it is not to the so-called religious books that
we must look at this time to find the truest marks
of the religious spirit that was striving to manifest
itself amid the foolishness of Brahmanism. It has
been weU said that the code of Manu lays down
" sound, solid, and practical morality." " The very
ancient and always ingenious and suggestive sym
bolism which Invests the majority of these usages
is often of great beauty ; and from the whole there
stands forth the image of a life at once grave and
lovable, and which, though bristling somewhat with
formalities, is nevertheless serviceably active, and In
nowise morose or inimicable to joyfulness of heart." '
And this code, it must be remerabered, is not the
production of one raan, but is the embodiment of the
real moral convictions of the people released some
what, at least in this department of life, from the
trammels of the religious ceremonial.
It cannot be too often repeated that aU these
sacrifices were not intended to propitiate the gods.
They may have been so thought of at times, but in
' The Beligions of India. By A. Barth, trans, by J. Wood, p. 53.

BBAHMANISM. 67
the teachings of the Brahmans there was no thought
of expiation. The simple Vedic belief in the par
ticipation of the gods in the family meal led, as we
have already seen, to a belief that the gods were
in some way nourished by the sacrifices, and that in
turn gave way to a belief in the entire dependence
of the gods upon the right performance of the cere
monies. In this way aU spirituality passed from
the rites, and they becarae a raechanical perform
ance in which the worshiper was, as it were, one of
the cogs in the wheel that must ever keep raoving
or else destruction would fall upon gods and men
alike. To the sacrifices then was given the name
Karman, a word destined to play a most Important
part in the religious history of India. No one, gods
or raen, Is free frora the necessity of sacrifice, or
rather not frora sacrifice, for that iraplles a spiritual
act, but frora the mechanical act of the ceremonial.
Brahmanlsra reached no lower depth than this, and
yet I believe that it was indeed the shadow cast by
a great truth which their rainds were uo longer able
to receive, and of which we must speak again, after
we have considered the attempt which was raade by
philosophy to lift Brahmanism from its degradation.
This phUosophy Is embodied in the Upanishads.
The word comes from a root which raeans to " sit
down," and from that original idea of sitting at the
feet of a teacher it came to mean " subraission,"
and finally, because of what was taught, the word
carae to raean revelation. The Upanishads belong
to that division of the Brahraanas called the Aranya-

68 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
kas, or forest readings. The word is suggestive ; it
shows that a time had come when men could no
longer rest satisfied with the performance of a cere
monial ; they found it necessary to meditate, and en
deavor in some way to renew that intercourse with
the divine life which had been the glory of the
Vedic period. They withdrew then to the forests ;
they abandoned the cereraonial, and tried by medi
tation and fasting to draw near to God. Around
these hermits disciples began to gather, and the great
problems of life, which the performance of no rite
can ever solve, were brought to these holy men, and
the answers written down by those who felt that
wisdora was the best heritage for their children. It
was not long before the value of the Upanishads
was recognized, and when the Brahraanas were ad
mitted as a part of the Vedas it was said that the
very essence and glory of the Vedas was the Upani
shads. The three words which give us the key to the
Upanishads are Sat, Atman and Brahma. We have
seen that in the last development of Vedic thought
the Rishis had come to speak of the divine essence
as a neuter principle of life manifesting itself in a
glorious body in the manifold phenomena of nature ;
but when, by the advance of civilization, men had
been drawn from that close contact with nature
which was a part of the daily life of the authors of
the Vedic hyrans, and society had come to take that
form in the village life which it has never lost to
this day ; when schools were opened, and temples
built, and bazaars sprang up in the crowded streets ;

BRAHMANISM. 69
the field, so to speak, for the divine manifestation,
had changed from nature to man. So the religious
teachers began now to speak less and less of Asura
and raore and raore of Sat.
By Sat they meant what we mean by reality, what
the Greeks called To ov. What is the unchangeable
reality ? What is the real thing that lies back of
all phenomena in nature and in man ? That was
the question. They never doubted that there was a
reality ; the problem was how to come near to it.
What relation did it bear to nature ? What rela
tion did it bear to all apparent forms of life ? The
things which we speak of as real they said were
unreal ; that everything which was seen was an iUu-
slon, but that back of aU iUusIon lay the self-exist
ent unseen reality. The authors of the Upanishads
would have claimed as their own the words of the
Christian poet : —
Change and decay in all around I see ;
0 Thou who changest not, abide -with me I
The Karman of which the Brahmans had spoken,
the endless chain which bound gods and raen alike
to the ceremonial, these teachers of the Upanishads
recognized to be far more than a ceremonial law.
Cause worked itself out in effect ; the effect Itself
became a cause. All life was an endless chain of
birth and re-birth, but at the centre of all the eddies
of life there was eternal calm, — there was Sat.
But the cause of the rise of philosophy was not an
interest in speculation ; far from it. Philosophy was
but a means to an end, which was escape frora the
burden of existence. That any one should deliber-

70 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
ately devote himself to any other end is, to the Hin
du, incomprehensible.
Any one who has been In India, and has come
in contact with the high caste natives, must have
been struck with the silent conterapt with which
they view the English triumphs In engineering.
Road building and all other evidences of material
progress are to them what the lifting of a heavy
stone would be to a scholar of feeble frarae. They
do not envy the men who can do these things ; they
only wonder that they should care to do them ! The
Hindu mind has changed but little in two thousand
years, and the problem then as now has always been
how to escape from the Ulusion of life and find
peace in Yoga, that Is, In union with the unchange
able reality. Of course. It was not possible to pre
vent questions arising In the minds of their schol
ars in regard to the great mysteries of life, but all
the efforts of the teacher were directed to diverting
them from any thought which did not tend directly
to Yoga. Thus, In the beginning of the Svetasva-
tara Upanishad,' we read, " The Brahma students
say : Is Brahman the cause ? Whence are we born ?
Whereby do we live, and whither do we go ? O
ye who know Brahman, teU us at whose command
we abide, whether in pain or in pleasure ? " But the
teachers would turn thera frora all speculation, and
so bade them meditate on Brahman as he is revealed
in the heart of man ; in that way only can they
^ In quoting from the Upanishads the translation of The Sacred
Books of the East, ed. by F. Max Miiller is used, and the references
will be made to them.

BBAHMANISM. 71
hope to attain to the knowledge of the sages who
know God as he is in himself, which, when a man
knows, "all fetters fall off," sufferings are destroyed,
and birth and death cease.'
In that state a man realizes the Yoga, that Is, the
union of the divine within and without. Before that
union could be effected, however, it was necessary that
the distinctions in the divine should be recognized.
The reality which lay at the root of all the illu
sions of life they called, as we have seen. Sat. Yet
that word seldom, if ever, occurs In the Upanishads.
The reason is, that the authors of the later Vedas had
two other words which they used to express the divine
life : one was Brahman and the other was Atman,
and Sat was the reality in which these two manifes
tations of it existed ; to use terms borrowed from
Christian theology, Om is the Ova-la of which Sat,
Atman, and Brahman are the 'YTroo-rao-ets.
It was Sat who later was named by the mysterious
syUable Om. This word, which originaUy raeant
"That" or "Yea," expressed with sublime simplicity
all that in the last resort they could say of the
eternal life that it is the eternal yea.
Om means Brahman. Om means all this. Om means
obedience. Beyond the senses is the mind. Beyond the mind is the
highest created Being. Higher than that Being is the
Great Self. Higher than the Great is the liighest Unde
veloped. Beyond the Undeveloped is the Person, the all-
pervading and entirely imperceptible. Every creature
1 Sacred Books ofthe East, vol. xv. p. 231.

72 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
that knows him is liberated, and obtains immortality.
His form is not to be seen. No one beholds him with the
eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the
mind. Those who know this are immortal.^
The person with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a
thousand feet, having compassed the earth on every side
extends beyond it by ten fingers' breadth.''
Its hands and feet are everywhere ; its eyes and head
are everywhere ; its ears are everywhere ; it stands en
compassing all in the world.^
The face of the True is covered with a golden disk.
Open that, O Sun, that we may see the nature of the True.
0 Sun, only seer, . . . spread thy rays and gather them !
The light which is the fairest form, I see it. I am
what he is. Breath to air and to the immortal ! Then
this my body ends in ashes. Om ! Mind ! remember !
Remember thy deeds ! Mind, remember ! Eemember
thy deeds !
Agni lead us on to beatitude by a good path, thou O
God who knowest all things ! Keep far from us crooked
evil, and we shall ofEer thee the fullest praise.*
Lord of the Universe glory to thee ! Thou art the Self
of all ; thou art the maker of all, the enjoyer of all ; thou
art all life, and the lord of all pleasures and joy. Glory
to thee, the tranquil, the deeply hidden, the incomprehen
sible, the immeasurable, without beginning and without
end.^ But it was impossible that the religious want could
be satisfied by a life so far removed frora raan ; and
1 Sacred Books ofthe East, vol. xv. p. 22.
^ That is, beyond man's power of computation.
' Sacred Books of the East, vol. rv. p. 247.
4 Ibid. vol. XV. p. 199.
6 Ibid. vol. XV. p. 803.

BBAHMANISM. 73
SO, while the unchangeable reality was often spoken
of as Brahman or breath, still it is in terras that im
ply the distance that stretches between the human
and the divine. So the problem that always per
plexed them was, how the Individual who in his na^
ture is partaker of the illusions of life is to reach
the Sat who is at the centre of all ?
They answered that problem by asserting that in
every individual there is also dwelling the eternal
reality which when so considered they caUed Atman.
This word Atman is translated in the " Sacred Books
of the East " by the EngUsh word " self." But we
shaU make a great raistake if we suppose that by the
word " self " they meant the individual life. " To
enter one's self " meant " to know the Atman ; " but
when they spoke of " self " they meant that eternal
reality which existed not only at the centre of all
life but also dwelt in the individual.
As we read the Upanishads we find that they
sometimes use the word Brahman as synonymous
with Atman : thus they will say, " One must know
the Atman," or, " one must know the Brahman."
They were convinced that if they could know the
Atman or the Brahman, they could reach that calm
which all the disturbances and eddies of life circle
round but never move.
No wonder they longed for release when this is
what they thought of life.
O Saint, what is the use of the enjoyment of pleas
ures in this offensive, pithless, body — a mere mass of bones,
sinews, skin, marrow, flesh, seed, blood, mucus, tears.

74 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
phlegm, ordure, water, bile, and slime ! What is the use
of the enjoyment of pleasures in the body which is as
sailed by lust, hatred, greed, delusion, fear, anguish, jeal
ousy, separation from what is loved, union with what is
not loved, hunger, thirst, old age, illness, grief, and other
evUs ? ¦'
Now the way of escape frora all these raiseries
was by "knowledge." But here let us guard
against a misunderstanding of terms. The Hindu
mind had no interest in the search for truth, as such.
The playful skepticism of the Greek raind, which
played at battledoor and shuttlecock with the prob-
leras of life, the Hindu would have regarded with
unspeakable disgust. The playful agnosticism of
Socrates would have seemed to them impious. They
were much more in accord with the utUItarianism of
modern physical science, though words would have
failed them to express their contempt for men who
deliberately devoted themselves to the utilization of
material things while the reality, which alone could
deliver frora endless miseries, was still undiscovered :
such an one was like a man who should carve out
figures from the morning mist and dream that they
would remain as monuraents of his genius ! " The
only subject," says Prof. Monier WUliaras,^ " which
has power to rouse thera from their normal condition
of mental torpor is religion." Philosophy then was
to them only a means to an end, and every statement
of philosophy must be interpreted by its religious
bearing : so when they say that peace is to be ob-
' Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 288.
^ Beligions Thought and Life in India.

BRAHMANISM. 75
tained by " knowledge " we must understand that the
authors of the Upanishads were in the habit of speak
ing of the religious cereraonies as " ignorance," so
that " knowledge " originaUy raeant meditation as op
posed to ritual. But their minds could not rest sat
isfied with a raere negation, and so we find thera speak
ing of " knowledge " as the acquaintance with the
esoteric teaching of the Vedas as opposed to a fa
miliarity with the routine of the sacrifices.
Indeed to him who thus knows this Brahma- Upanishad
{i. e., the secret doctrine of the Vedas) the sun does not
rise and set. For him there is day once and for all.
A father may tell that doctrine of Brahma to his eldest
son, or to a worthy pupU. But no one should tell it to
any one else, even if he gave him the whole sea-girt earth,
fuU of treasures ; for this doctrine is worth more than
that, yea it is worth more.^
But there was a farther step yet taken In this def
inition of knowledge. It was not enough to iden
tify it "with acquaintance with certain formulas of
the Veda to which perhaps a purely arbitrary inter
pretation might be given ; and so we find in the
Upanishads "knowledge" spoken of as the New
Testament speaks of " faith," as the exercise of the
spiritual nature so as to Identify one's self with the
object of faith or knowledge. In the second Kanda
of the Mundaka Upanishad we read, "He who
knows the Self, knows that highest home of Brah
man, in which all is contained and shines brightly.
The -wise who, without desiring happiness, worships
' Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 44.

76 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
that person, transcends his seed," i. e., he is not born
again.' That Self cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by
understanding, nor by much learning. He whom
the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained,
when the Self chooses him (his body) as his own.
Nor is that Self to be gained by one who is destitute of
strength, or without earnestness, or without right medita
tion. But if the wise man strives after it by these means
. . . then his Self enters into the home of Brahman.
When they have reached him (the Self) the sages be
come satisfied through knowledge, they are conscious of
their Self, their passions have passed away, ^and they are
tranquil. The wise, having reached him who is omni
present everywhere,^ devoted to the Self, enter into him
wholly. As the flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their
name and their form, thus a wise man, freed from name
and form, goes to the divine person, who is greater than
the great (i. e., than self).
He who knows that highest Brahman becomes even
Brahman. In his race no one is born ignorant of Brah
man. He overcomes evil ; free from the fetters of the
heart, he becomes immortal.'
^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 40.
^ This is not a mere tautology. Brahmanic Pantheism was the
belief that God was equally present everywhere. The consequence
was that it was unable to emphasize the quality of the divine
presence. That necessitates the predication of personality. While
it is true to say that God is omnipresent, meaning (as Coleridge
says) that " all things are present to God," it is equally true to say
that in Jesus, as in no one else, ' ' dwelt all the fulness of the God
head bodUy. ' ' That was a distinction Brahmanism could not make,
for it never predicated ' ' quality ' ' of God.
" Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. pp. 40, 41.

BRAHMANISM. 77
Knowledge then raeant self-knowledge. To know
that in one's self dwelt the Eternal ; that in it man
had his being would bring peace, would assure man
that he was not a creature of a moment, would lead
him to feel that his home was with the Eternal. So
Sat, Om, Brahman, was called Atman, Self.
See how wonderfully this is expressed in the
Khandogya-Upanishad. The inteUigent, whose body is spirit, whose form is
hght, whose thoughts are true, whose nature is like ether
(omnipresent and invisible), from whom all works, all
desires, all sweet odors and tastes proceed ; he who em
braces aU this, who never speaks and is never surprised,
he is myself within the heart, smaUer than a corn of bar
ley, smaller than a mustard seed. . . . He also is myself
within the heart, greater than the earth, greater than the
sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds.
He from whom all works, aU desires, all sweet odors
and tastes proceed, who embraces all this, who never
speaks and is never surprised, he is myself within the
heart, is that Brahman. When I shall have departed
hence I shall obtain that Atman.-'
Let rae quote one raore saying before leaving this
wonderful history of raan's thought of God.
Know that the person within aU beings, not heard
here, not reached, not thought, not subdued, not seen, not
understood, not classed, but hearing, thinking, seeing,
classing, sounding, understanding, knowing, is the Self.^
This Sat Brahma, Atman Is Om, is One.^
^ Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 48.
2 Ibid.
2 Prof. WiUiams would make Brahma — from a root meaiung

78 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
He who dwells in the water and -within the water,
whom the water does not know, whose body the water is,
and who rules the water vrithin, he is thyself, the ruler
within, the immortal.^
For the man who has by knowledge identified
himself with the Eternal there remains the imraortal
life, the life freed from aU the miseries because de
livered from the illusion.
By the old age of the body that does not age ; by the
death of the body that is not killed.^
The Brahman is the true being set in the body. It is
the Self; free from sin, free from old age, free from
death and grief, from hunger and thirst; which desires
and imagines nothing but what it has.
For those who know this, death is but the casting
away of a dead body, as the snake sloughs off its
skin on an ant-hill, that the iramortal Self may enter
into the unconditioned Self.
But on the other hand —
Those who depart from hence without having discov
ered the Self and those true desires, for them there is no
freedom in aU the worlds.*
The true desires are hidden by what is false, as people
who do not know the country walk again and again over
the gold treasure that has been hidden somewhere in the
earth and do not discover it. Thus do all those creatures
"to increase" — the "Essence," and Sat and Atman manifesta^
tions thereof, but tbe theological thoughtof the Upanishads seems
to have been in a state of flux, so that almost anything may find
support. 1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xv. p. 133.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 126.
8 Ibid. vol. i. p. 127.

BBAHMANISM. 79
do who going into the Brahma-world yet do not discover
it, because they are carried away by untruth. They do
not discover the true Self in Brahman, that Self which
abides in the heart.^
It is easy to see how such a doctrine might be
corrupted ; and we have the story of a great misun
derstanding on the part of certain of the disciples.
We are told that on one occasion certain men came
to a learned teacher and besought him to Instruct
them in the way of Self, and he replied, " The per
son that is seen in the eye, that is the Self ; " ^ by
which he raeant, the image that is beheld with the
inward eye and not with the eye of sense. But they
supposing him to raean the minute image which
every child has seen and wondered at, asked if they
beheld this image reflected in a mirror or in the
water would that be seeing the " Self," to which the
sage contemptuously replies " yes." So they go their
way and adorn themselves In their best clothes, and
then looking into the water, and beholding the Image
of themselves reflected therein, return and say that
they have seen the " Self ; " and as they depart the
sage says in bitter irony, " they both go away with
out having perceived and without having known the
"Self, and whosoever will follow this doctrine wiU
perish. .But they went their way and preached that
men should worship the self, i. e., the body, and that
whosoever wUl worship the self and serve the self
will gain both this world and the next ! " °
1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. 129.
2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 135.
" Ibid vol. i. pp. 133-135.

80 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
These extracts wiU be enough to bring before our
minds clearly the fundamental doctrines of Brah
manism ; It remains now to compare them with the
Gospel of the Christ. But this cannot be done as
the Master himself would have done It, unless we ap
proach the subject with reverence. Nothing Is more
truly atheistic than the tone in which men some
times speak of the solemn speech of God's children
concerning what he has done for their souls. Let
us avoid that error and recognize that while it was
incomplete, growing up in the midst of human cor
ruption and sin, while there is much that is false,
much that Is absurd, much that was unworthy of
men to whom the Spirit of God was speaking, yet
in the sacred book of Brahmanlsra there is essential
truth. First, then, we find a statement of the truth
that spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned,
and that the glory of raan's life consisteth not In the
abundance of the things which he possesses, but in
his recognition of the indweUing of the divine life.
And if this be so, whence came it ? To say that it
was man's discovery while truths which were devel
oped through the history of Israel were God's reve
lation. Is to strike at the root of all religion : for it
is to assert that what is true may come apart from
God ! It denies that God " has made of ouq " all na
tions, " that they raight seek after him and find him."
" Every good gift and every perfect gift is frora
above, and cometh down frora the Father of Llsrhts
in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn
ing." The truth in Israel was God's revelation to
Israel, the truth in India was God's revelation to

BBAHMANISM. 81
the Hindu. But this spiritual sympathy with what
they received raust not blind our eyes to their failure
to make the most of tbe truth committed to them,
and the results of that failure are not difficult to find.
The first downward step was taken, as we have
seen, when they caused the natural distinctions in
society to harden into the caste system, — a system
so rigid that no change has been able permanently
to overthrow it. This belief in caste made any real
gospel to the poor impossible — even made it seem
undesirable. So that all the sublirae spiritual truths
which we acknowledge with delight were for a very
Umited class of society. It is true that the best
minds could not rest satisfied with the caste system
as it first took shape. We have seen that the sacri
fices preached the necessity of a new birth even for
the Brahman, and later it was said that no man could
attain to Self whom the Self did not choose. Had
they been able to foUow out the path that the thought
of election opened before them the result might have
been different ; it might have led them to ask them
selves the purpose that lay back of election ; they
might have laid hold of the sublime teaching of
Israel, that election is the witness to the divine care
for aU, and thus the caste system might have been
broken. But it was not so. They asserted that the
Self chose only those who were strong and serious
and self-denying; but that doctrine only served to
intensify their belief in individual merit, and so lay
the whole burden of salvation upon the individual.
The consequence was that, having first separated the

82 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Brahman class from all others, and then separated
the Brahmans themselves into the elect and the non-
elect, and having Insisted that this election was the
result of Individual merit, they developed a self-con
sciousness which became unbearable, and salvation
presented Itself to thera as escape from this individu
ality which was a burden too hea-vy for them to bear.
If we turn now from the early Brahmanic theory
of man to the belief in the divine life, we shaU see
that they came nearer to the truth. We have seen
that the sacrifices were enjoined as Imitations of cer
tain godlike deeds. The authors of the Brahmanas
even asserted that the creation of the world was an
act accompanied by sacrifices. Now leaving out of
sight the gross forra which this thought assuraed, —
the cutting up of a huge giant — is there not really
a profound truth hidden in this teaching ? I think
so. They could not but feel that In some way the
divine life must participate in that which was such
an essential part of huraan life. The grossest form
of heathen sacrifice has witnessed to man's belief
that there was something magnanimous in the di
vine nature, for I do not believe any people have
believed that they could make a payment which
would satisfy the divine demand ; they must always
have felt that they would show their good intention,
and trust that the will would be accepted for the
deed. And if this was true of those sacrifices which
were ostensibly propitiatory in their nature, much
raore must it have been so of those of which we are
now speaking. In some way the Hindus felt that
the divine life had experienced sacrifice.

BBAHMANISM. 83
Now that is a belief into whicii the teaching of
Christ fits exactly. The cross of Jesus is not the
revelation of an awful violation of the divine nature ;
it is the revelation of the dl-dne life. Sacrifice
becoraes painful, " exceeding sorrowful, even unto
death," only because it is done in an atmosphere of
sin. The sacrifice of Jesus was the witness to the
essential divinity of sacrifice. " I have power to
lay down my life, and I have power to take it again ;
this coramandment have I received of my father."
" Therefore my Father loveth me, because I lay
down my life that I might take it again." The di
vine Ufe then, whether it is considered as Father or
Son, delights in sacrifice. It was with that truth In
mind that St. Peter wrote of Jesus, "He was the
lamb slain before the foundation of the world." We
can claim then as divine truth the Brahmanic belief
that creation was an act of sacrifice.
Yet when we try to bring these two thoughts to
gether, we see the weakness of the whole Brahraanic
systera. There seeras to have been no power in the
Hindu mind to compare " spiritual things with spir
itual." If a Brahman found a pearl of great price,
he would not sell aU that he had and buy It ! He
would siraply be content to gaze at it.
It would never occur to him that It might be util
ized, he would never expect to find another, and if he
did he would have no power to join the two. He would
simply meditate upon its beauty in the hope that by
such meditation he might grow like it, and in that
way " shuffle off " this " too, too solid flesh." That

84 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
is why Brahmanism failed In its attempts to attain
Yoga, or union with the divine, and so yielded to
the efforts of Buddha. It was by the recognition of
sacrifice as the essence of the divine life, and par
ticipation in that sacrifice, that Jesus said escape
frora the bondage of this world lay. " If any man
will do God's wUl he shall know of the doctrine,"
and that truth (or doctrine) he said would make
men free. But it seems never to have occurred to
the Brahmanic raind so to utilize truth ! They said
that what they longed for was union with the divine
life. But when we look at the character of that
union we see that it was not the Christian atone-
raent, but what they called " aloneness." That Is to
say, what they wanted was that the Self which dwelt
In their body should so absorb their individuality
that nothing but that Self would reraain. That they
thought would bring thera peace. But humanity can
not so easily destroy Itself as that. No real peace,
the history of the huraan soul has shown, can come,
save through the consciousness of the atonement.
"I and my Father are one." Yet "My Father is
greater than I." " Glorify me, O Father, with the
glory which I had with thee before the worlds
were." It is eternal life to know the Father and the
Son. The consciousness of union can only follow
the consciousness of distinction. A distinction which
is the result of the raysterious act of " begetting."
With profound spiritual Insight, the creed asserts
that the eternal Son is begotten, not made. He is
an impartation of the divine life. The faith of the
Church is that but one has realized that Sonship, but

BRAHMANISM. > 85
that all are created to realize it. The Upanishads
said, " Sacrifice because the Devas sacrificed, but the
one thing needful is knowledge, for that will result
in " aloneness." The gospel says the one thing need
ful is faith ; faith Is sacrificial In its character and
therefore divine. Perfect faith is perfect atone
ment, and perfect atonement is knowledge of Father
and Son.
The more we look into this wonderful system the
more profoundly are we impressed with its anticipa
tion of Christian truth, and yet at its failure to ap
preciate the bearing of that truth. We have seen
one iUustration of this : look now at that funda
mental Brahmanic belief that the one reality. Sat
alone, remains " the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever." The words of St. John are truly Brah
manic : " AU that is in the world, the lust of the
flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,
are not of the Father but are of the world, and the
world passeth away, and the lust thereof." But
when he added, " He that doeth the will of God
abldeth forever," It would have meant nothing to
thera, because they knew of no will in the sense In
which that word Is used In the Bible, — the self-
conscious participation in the divine purpose.
For SS.t had no purpose. Purpose implies good
or evil intent — they would not have ascribed evil
purpose, but they could not have ascribed good —
the essence of the reality was unmoved and un-
movable indifference. Sat was nothing but power.
It is here that the divergence between the gospel of
Jesus and Brahmanism is the greatest. Jesus's

86 » HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
teaching is full of the thought of the power of God,
but it is always spoken of as a power mighty to
save. The power of God Is the power of a father ;
it is simply thought of as love manifesting itself
against selfishness ; we are conscious of power only
because we see that there is friction.
The Brahman sits dumb before the iraraensity of
divine power ; Jesus thinks of the divine power
as the possibility that lies in the background, and
says : " Father, all things are possible with thee, do
not let my will be done ! " The God of Jesus Is a
God who is love. ,
In the doctrine of Atman again we see the same
approximation and subsequent recoil. The real life
of the divine is In the heart of man. " Do not think
of the divine life as far off;" the Upanishads are say
ing on every page, " it is near ; it Is In the heart of
man." ' But Jesus said the same, " The kingdom of
God Is within you." " Realize the true Self," said
Brahmanlsra ; in the parable of the Prodigal Son
Jesus set his seal to the truth of this teaching, when
he declared that when the wanderer turned from the
illusions of life " He came to himself." You cannot
know what the " Highest Uncreated Being is unless
you see Hira in the life of man." That Is the very
essence of the gospel. " No man hath seen God at
any time; the only begotten which is in the bosora
of the Father, He hath declared Him."
But here again the parallel ceases. The result
1 A favorite saying was : ' ' The City oi Brahman is the body of
man." Like St. Paul's saying : " Tour body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost."

BR.\HMANISM. 87
of Atmanship Is the destruction of humanity.
The result of Sonship is the glorification of hu
manity. " Father, I wiU that they whom thou hast
given me be with rae where I am, that they raay
behold my glory." The whole gospel abounds with
the joy of redemption, the atonement with God.
It Is the long story of the " riches of the glory of
his inheritance in the saints."
The same characteristics meet us in the next
article of the Brahmanic creed. For in the word
Brahman they seem again to have anticipated the
gospel. For Brahman means breath. And they
believed that man could breathe that breath into
hiraself and so participate In the divine life. But
when we corae to look Into the raatter a little more
closely, we find that the word means to thera nothing
but breath. There seeras to be no such subtle dis
tinction as we find in the gospel between the " blow
ing wind and the breathing Spirit." In other words.
Brahman was without character. The consequence
was that Brahmanism was without hope. There was
never the divine Intoxication of joy such as we read
of in the gospel as foUovsdng the consciousness of
the Spirit's Indwelling, so raarked that It led the
unbelievers to ascribe the joyful outburst to the
" drunkenness of new wine." There carae with the
•inbreathing of Brahraan no sense of a comforter, a
teacher, leading Into truth. It may be said that
such effects could only follow the revelation of the
divinity of huraanity by the incarnation ; but Brah
manism had no prophecy of such a dispensation as
we find In the Hebrew prophets.

88 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
And the reason of this is to be found, I think,
in the fact that they were utterly Ignorant of the
Hebrew experience of " the pouring out of the
Spirit," all that they knew of was the mbreathing of
the divine breath, and the result was not spiritual
intoxication; it was loss of spiritual consciousness.
They partook not of a stimulant, but of a drug !
Yet no man who knows that these men were striv
ing to know the truth should doubt that the Father
of All saw them, felt them feeling after Him if
haply they might find Him. When we reraember
that this was their creed : the belief in the divine
as the one reality; the belief that in every Brah
man that reality dwelt ; the belief that if man could
once know that iraage he would see Hira who Is in
visible ; the belief that for that man must in sorae
way breathe the divine Ufe into hiraself ; the belief
that the result of this struggle against the illusion
of life, though it be for the present painful, wiU, in
the end, be the perfection of life, in which there
will be no raore sorrow, no more parting, no more
pain ; no man who knows that ought to hesitate to
say of Brahmanism, " It was not far from the king
dom of God."
Yet It was not the kingdom of God, for this Sat,
Brahman, and Atman, wherever found, was essen
tially inert.^ It was, as they constantly said, a
" treasure hid in a field ; " it had no power to
bring itself to the surface ; man raust seek for it
^ Since this was written, attention has been called to the same
characteristic in the writings of Plato. "In the Timceus he
pictures God as the passive Deity, at an infinite distance in the

BRAHMANISM. 89
and find it. The consequence was that raen divided
theraselves into two classes ; those who sought for
release from illusion by ceremonial rites, and those
who reached out for Atmanship by an act of the
wUI. The Upanishads recognize both ; the first
they call the way of ignorance, which it is admitted
must be the path for most men ; but the more ex
ceUent way is a counsel of perfection, to which only
a few are expected to attain. But the outcome of
both was the same ; those who practiced the cere
monial did not find the peace they sought, and con
sequently increased the intensity of their austerities
untU they degenerated into the fearful, revolting,
and degrading self-inflicted tortures of modern India,
which are supposed by many educated people to be
the essence of Brahmanism.
On the other hand, there were the philosophers
who sought for Sat by an act of the will, which, be
ginning with meditation, ended in a condition hardly
to be distinguished frora stupor. The end in both
ways was the same, — the destruction of the active
powers of mind or body.
It is just here that the doctrine of Jesus, so akin
to Brahraanlsra, takes its place. No Brahman ever
preached the doctrine of Sat more earnestly than
Jesus. Almost his last words were, " To this end
heavens, unable to come into immediate contact with a world of
which the very materials contain the conditions of e vU. " ( Continuity
of Christian Thought, by A. V. G. Allen, p. 43. ) It is here suggested
that this is akin to Buddhism, but I venture to think that it is rather
akin to Brahmanism. God did not appear inert to Buddha because
of the prevalence of evU, but because the only God of whom he had
heard was the Brahmanic God who was essentiaUy inert.

90 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
was I born, and for this cause came I into the world
that I might bear witness unto the truth," unto the
one reality, unto Sat.
It Is the same with the doctrine of Atman. When
at the last the perplexed disciples ask, by the mouth
of Philip, for a revelation of the invisible God
which could not be doubtful, Jesus answered, " Have
I been so long with you and hast thou not known me,
Philip ? He that hath seen rae hath seen the Father
also." Now all this was Brahraanic doctrine, only no
Brahman had ever been able to announce himself
as the Atman, and had he done so the instinct of
humanity would have revolted against him, for in
such a case there must be success or the most ig
nominious failure. Yet this is what Jesus dared ;
declared that he was the Atman, the one perfect
image of the Invisible Sat, and yet claimed all men
as sharers in that eternal Atmanship, and could
offer for them no higher prayer than that they might
be conscious of that truth, " I In them and thou in
me, that they may be made perfect in One."
Now had the gospel stopped here It would only
have shown a remarkable coincidence between Se
mitic and Aryan speculation, but it went farther. If
St. Paul had been acquainted with the Upanishads,
he could not have rebuked the Brahmans more per
fectly than he has done in the Epistle to the Ro
raans, where, warning his people against the effort
to find God, he says, " Say not in thy heart who shaU
ascend into heaven, or who shall descend into the
deep," for the good news has been brought you that

BRAHMANISM. 91
God is seeking you, and, that you may be redeemed
from the body of death, the Word is in your " mouth
and in your heart."
The revelation of God as Sat, the revelation of
Jesus — and so of humanity as the Atman, would
not be coraplete without the revelation of the divine
life as an energizing spirit seeking for that which,
araid the Ulusions of life. Is lost. If we might epito
mize the teaching of Brahmanism, we would say that
it is to be found in the first part of the parable
which teUs us of the son who " came to hlraseZ/","
and began to seek his father ; but the gospel of Jesus
is aU told In that same parable where the divine is
pictured, not as waiting In suprerae Indifference for
that return, but as a father who saw the son " a long
way off and ran and fell on his neck and kissed
hira." This is indeed the typical parable, but it is so be
cause it embodies that which was, aU through the
gospel, the revelation of God's self-impartation. The
eternal unchangeable reaUty condescends to raan's
weakness that it raay reveal itself. The truth speaks
so as to be understood by " babes and sucklings."
The " image of the unseen God " is seen and handled
of men. The shepherd seeks the sheep that is lost.
The king dies that the subject may be drawn in loy
alty to him.
In its analysis, if such a word maybe used, of the
di-vine being, Brahmanlsra was not far from the
statements of Christian theology. In its faith that
rest could only be found In union ; It bore witness to
the truth ; but where it failed was In its ignorance

92 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
of grace, the spirit " helping our infirmities," and
so leading through a Saviour to a Father. That this
is not a mere guess wiU be seen when we come to
Brahmanism in its later form of Hinduism, where it
will be found that " grace " was the thought which
underlay the revival after the expulsion of the
Buddhists.

CHAPTER IV.
THE TRANSITION FEOM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM.
We have spoken of Brahmanlsra as if It consisted
of a uniform system of thought. But this is far
frora being the case. The fundamental ideas are
the same indeed, in all the systems, but it was not
long before Indian philosophy divided into two dis
tinct lines, diverging more and more from a comraon
principle. It forms no part of the plan of this book
to enter into a consideration of Indian metaphysics,
but It wiU be necessary to glance hurriedly at the
pathway which phUosophic speculation took in the
seventh century before our era ; for there we shaU
find at once the cause of the decline of Brahmanism
and the rise of Buddhism.
It was, perhaps, the somewhat feeble rationalism
of the Brahraanas, that caused the rise of the Mi
mansa school.
It can hardly be called a philosophy and is not so
counted by writers on the history of phUosophy ; it
was rather the expression of a reaction against the
too free handling of religious questions. " The
foundation of belief and conduct," said Djalmini,
the founder of the Mimansa, " Is to be discovered

94 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
in the Vedas ; to thera we must turn." ' If it was
objected that the real difficulty consists In finding
the meaning of the Vedas, the answer was ready.
" It is to be found, not by speculation, but by tradi
tion. What have the holy men of old declared they
were taught by their fathers ? That is the way to
find the truth. Alongside of the letter there has
come the tradition which interprets the letter. Frora
the solution of speculative questions, which, as we
have seen, never had special interest for the Hindu
mind, the school of Mimansa went on to solve ques
tions of conscience by the same InfaUIble rule of
' Quod semper quod uhique quod ab omnibus.' "
The chief interest of the Mimansa school lies in the
fact that It was the precursor of the Vedanta school,
of which we shaU speak in a moment.
At the opposite pole of thought is found the sys
tem of Gautama,^ caUed the Nyaya or " Analysis."
The word analysis is sufficient to assure us that this
school would not be destined to have great influence
in India. The Indian mind Is impatient of delay in
the discovery of the goal which it seeks ; if that be
at once pointed out, then the teacher may spend the
rest of life in developing the results of the discovery,
but the "DeUverance" must not be delayed. There
fore the Nyaya school with its hair-splitting distinc
tions, which promised so much and led to nothing,
had no such career in India as it had in Greece,
where the delight was not in the discovery but in
the search for truth.
^ Cousin, vol. ii. Lect. V.
^ Not of course to be confounded -with Sakyamouni.

TRANSITION FBOM BBAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 95
Probably because of this inability to continue long
in the analysis of thought, the Nyaya school passed
into the Velseshika, or philosophy of physical re
search. The outcome was the anatomical theory of
the universe, ending in materialism, and, except in
the stronger few, In the lowest form of Epicureanism.
" So long as life lasts, delight thyself and live weU ;
when once the body is reduced to ashes, it wiU
revive no more." '
It was when Indian thought had reached the chaos
that was sure to follow on the enunciation of Epi
cureanism that there arose a school of thought which
declared that the solution of the problem of life was
to be found only by determining to what the origin
of Ufe Is to be ascribed. Kapila, the founder of the
great Sankhyan philosophy, took up the problem of
life where it had been dropped by the Veiseshikan
school. KapUa had no quarrel with that school because of
its methods ; he complained because it did not go far
enough. It may be true that the origin of the visi
ble universe is the resiUt of the "fortuitous con
course of atoms," but to what are we to ascribe the
origin of the atoms ? It wmUd be instructive — If
our subject were the history of phUosophy — to note
how in ancient days, as now, aU attempts to account
for the things which are seen lead sooner or later to
^ This anticipation of "let us eat and drink for to-morrow we
die " is attributed to the SokSyatas, an obscure sect, which analogy
would lead us to conclude was an ofEshoot of the Veiseshikan. See
Beligions of India, Barth, p. 86.

96 . HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the introduction of a principle which is not seen.
The unknown and unknowable mystery back of all
phenomena of Herbert Spencer has been antedated
by the Prakriti of KapUa. Prakriti seeras to have
been an ethereal principle of Ufe having the power
of self-fertilization. What is needed, said Kapila,
Is knowledge of the universe, and that wIU save men
frora all the miseries of illusion. And that knowl
edge is to be obtained neither by meditation, nor by
the analysis of the mind, nor by the voice of tra^
dition, but by sensation. Matter produces sensation
and sensation produces intelligence. Where there
is no sensation there is no intelligence. In other
words, we can know nothing which cannot be appre
hended by the senses.' Of course all this did not
pass without protest. The idea of cause and effect,
it was answered, does not come frora sensation :
whence coraes it ? The idea of cause and effect, an
swered Kapila, is a delusion ; it has no sensible basis.
Cause is only a preceding effect. If nature had
never existed it could never have been created, for
there would have been nothing with which to create
it. Nature is its own cause. Nature is the cause of
inteUigence. There can, therefore, be no intelUgence-
higher than nature ; there can be no God.
The great rival of the Sankhyan philosophy was
the Vedantan which, as we have seen, was an out
growth of the Miraansa. The school of authority
was compelled to let in the reason as an arbiter
' A full account of this system will be found in Cousin, vol. ii.
Lect V.

TRANSITION FROM BBAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 97
along with tradition and so while the Vedantan
school, as its narae Implies,' pretended to reverence
authority, it soon became in the best sense rational
istic. Its history is not unlike that of English Prot
estantism, which attempted to have two standards of
faith, the tradition of the fathers and the conscience.
And perhaps for the same reason — that it seemed to
answer the two different needs that raen have always
experienced, not only of having a truth commend It
self to their individual conscience, but also of know
ing that the Individual conscience is in harmony with
the universal thought of humanity as far as that can
be ascertained — the Vedantan philosophy became
the great bulwark to stera the rising tide of skep
ticism. Like every other Indian philosophy it began with
the problem of escape. " Who wiU deliver rae from
the body of this death," was as truly the cry of the
perplexed Hindu as of the sin - smitten Hebrew.
But to escape, the Pundits of the Vedanta school
recognized that they must follow the lead of KapUa
and define the " Illusion." As " ex nihilo nihil fit "
was an axiom from which aU Indian speculation be
gan, they had to make choice of one of the horns of
the dilemma. That It was possible to begin by pre
mising that matter is an expression of mind never
occurred to any Indian philosopher.
You cannot get to mind as an ultimate product of
matter, for in the very attempt to do so you have already
begun with mind. The earliest step of any such inquiry
involves categories of thought, and it is in terms of
' Followers of the Vedas.
7

98 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
thought that the very problem you are investigating can
be so much as stated. You cannot start in your investi
gations with bare, self-identical, objective facts, stripped of
every ideal element or contribution from thought. The
least and lowest fact of outward observation is not an in
dependent entity-fact minus mind, and out of which mind
may somehow or other be seen to emerge ; but it is a fact
or object as it appears to an observing mind, in the me
dium of thought, and having mind as an inseparable fac
tor of it.'
So writes the Scotch philosopher in answer to
modern materialistic theories of the universe, but it
was impossible that the Vedanta school should have
used this argument, for to have done so would have
forced them to admit that the universe is a " fact as
it appears to an observing mind," i. e., to Brahma.
But this was impossible, because, in the first place, to
predicate observation of Brahma was to make him
partaker of the " lUusion " of personality, and then
where would escape Ue ? Or, if they escaped that
horror, at least they made him responsible for mat
ter, and so the cause of all the evils of Hfe which
they believed to flow from matter. To use such an
argument presupposes an acceptance of the funda
mental postulates of Christian thought: first, that
" God saw everything that he had made and behold
it was very good ; " and the second, that " there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it
so," i. e., that aU the evil of life takes its rise in a
rebellious will.
It seemed, therefore, as if the Vedantists must
1 Philosophy of Beligion, Caird, p. 95.

TRANSITION FBOM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM 99
either accept the dogma of Kapila, that intelligence
is the offspring of matter, or else declare In favor of
a sort of dualism. This they did before long, and
found themselves involved in aU the contradictions
which are sure to flow from such a source.
This, then, was the Vedantan solution of the prob
lem of life. At the centre of aU life sits Brahma.
But from aU eternity he has been enveloped in a
cloud of "lUusion." Out of that lUusion he has
forraed aU things that are seen. It is true that it
seeras to us as if the things that are seen had reality,
but that is because we partake so largely of the
lUusion that we are not able to free our minds from
Its effects. The result of absorption Into Brahma
wiU be that we shaU see things as they are. We are
now like men who walk at night and, seeing a rope,
mistake it for a snake. Their terror is groundless,
but at the sarae tirae it is inevitable. Till the light
of Brahma comes we shall be subject to fear, but in
that Ught we shaU see that that which we feared had
no existence. Nothing is so deceptive as the senses.
The very objects of them are in a state of perpetual
flux. That which we predicate of phenomena to-day
is inapplicable to-morrow. The rolling sun and
gliding moon and heaving sea and trembling earth
speak only of Instability. There is no reality save
the unseen Ufe, of which nature is but the waving
garment. Professor Max Muller Is never tired of calling
our attention to the proof of kinship between the
Germanic and the Indian peoples to be found in
the common root from which the words " father,"

100 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
" mother," " daughter," and " horae " have sprung.
But I think we raay find a stronger proof of the
oneness of the human race in these old discussions
by the banks of the Ganges which sound so modern.
Then as now the men who walked by faith asked
whence come the thoughts which witness to a home
unseen, eternal, of the huraan soul. Then as now they
had to meet the dogmatisra of materialism, which
simply asserted that all which has not its origin in
sensation Is lUusion. It Is not without comfort either
to remeraber the teachings of Kapila, and note how
little influence they had on the huraan race.
It may seem as if the philosophy of Kapila,
which led to atheism and nihilism was the logical
outcome of Indian philosophy, but It is not true, for
though there is a certain phUosophlcal connection
between these various schools of thought, a glance
at the history of Brahmanism is enough to show us
how it is that men came to be atheists. Atheism
then, as now, was not the revolt from spiritualism,
but frora ritualism. God the spirit must be wor
shiped in spirit. Any attempt to substitute cere
monialism for this worship leads to atheism, for
atheism is the natural follower of materialisra, and
ceremonialism Is materialism. If there be one thing
more than another that the history of religion shows
us, it is that when men have insisted that God must
be worshiped in any special mountain, in any special
way, there have not been wanting voices to assert
that such a God is no God at all. That God is a
spirit, and that they that worship Him must worship
Him in " spirit and in truth," the human race has

TBANSITION FBOM BRAHMANISM TO BUDDHISM. 101
been witnessing to by its atheism more truly than
by Its ritualism. The only ground on which ritual
ism can be justified, apart from the question of in
dividual edification, Is, that it pleases God. Of
course that leads at once to a consideration of the
character of God. Now, if any age knows all that
can be known of that character, it is well to embody
that consciousness in ritual ; but if there be a prog
ress in that revelation, it is important that it be
not so embodied, as a rite is difficult to change with
out a revolution. And inasmuch as the supposition
is that ritual is the final statement of truth, this
revolution is apt to lead to disbelief in the truth,
i. e., in God. That this Is the state of affairs in
Roman Catholic countries Is notorious. The same
effects foUowed a like cause in India.
Ceremonialism continued to be the way for the
. multitude, but the inteUectual life of India flowed
on between the two banks of materialistic atheism
and idealistic pantheism, sometimes colored by one
and soraetiraes by the other. But the great current
of human life flowed on, unconscious of either.
Scholars might dispute, but the common people had
to live. But over life there lay a shadow. Beside
the patient oxen there walked an unseen presence.
Under the palm-trees there came a dream of endless
rest ; through the jungle there came at evening the
whisper of an unknown tongue. The dying child
opened his eyes with a startled look of recognition
and feU back into the darkness that lies just outside
of life. There was One among them they knew
not. Was He friend or foe ? No one could teU ;

102 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
and so the common people crept to the temple door
and cast in a handful of rice, or placed a wTeath
of yeUow flowers on the shrine, and brought the in
fant son and laid him doviTi at the idol's feet. If
the unseen was a friend, he would be glad to be re
membered. If he was a foe, perchance he would
remember the chUd who had been brought with an
offering, and pass him over when the other first-born
feU. No one can study the history of India as it was
six hundred years before Christ without being struck
with the resemblance to European history just before
the Reforraation. By the Ganges and by the Seine,
at the foot of the Himalayas and in the valleys of
the Alps, Nominalist and Realist disputed, and the
comraon people stretched out their hands for God.
In both periods men had reached a point where
there must corae a reformation or religion would die
of its own inanity. In both periods the reformer
came with a gospel to the poor.

CHAPTER V.
BUDDHISM,
OuK examination of Indian thought has brought
us to its culmination in the nihlUsm of Buddhism ;
but when we speak of Buddhism, it becomes neces
sary to define the Umits of our subject, for the field
is immense. The Uterature of Buddhism already
makes a library and is increasing every day; the
controversies conceming its fundamental doctrines
bid fair to rival Christian theology. Then, again, it
is divided into two great churches, the Northern and
Southern, as unUke as CathoUcism and Protestant
ism. The disciples of the latter are found in Ceylon,
Burmah, and Siam ; of the former, in Nepaul, Thibet,
China, and Japan; also in Corea, though a recent
traveler informs us, that Buddhism as an ecclesias
tical system is, owing to political reasons, not found
there. So that when one Is speaking of Buddhism,
it is as important to know whether he has in mind
" The Great Vehicle " (as the Northem is called),
or the " Little Vehicle," as its opponents contemptu
ously term the canon of the southern church.
Again, Buddhism as It exists in Thibet, with its
splendid ritual and august hierarchy, with the Grand
Lama at its head, is no more like what we may
caU the Congregational Buddhism in Japan, with

104 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
its thirty-three sects, than the Papal court of Paul
V. was like the Pilgrim band that gathered In prayer
about Plymouth Rock. Of aU religions. Buddhism
is the one which has shown itself most susceptible to
local influences. Mahometanism, though it too has
its great schism, is practicaUy the same in the palace
of Persia and in the tents of Arabia ; but Chinese
Buddhism is not like Nepaulese, and Singhalese Bud
dhism differs from the religion of Burmah.
Again, Buddhism means to some minds a pro
found system of philosophy and science ; to others
an elaborate system of ritual ; to others again, a
debased idol worship ; whUe a popular impression
is gaining ground just now that what is caUed
" esoteric " Buddhism is the only true form of the
doctrine of Gautama ; the representatives of which
are the modern Yogin of India, the magicians who
have become independent of the laws of _, nature.
Now, undoubtedly, all these systems are Iri a sense
related to the teaching of Gautama, but interesting
as their study may be, they wIU not teach us what
Buddhism is ; indeed we cannot understand them
unless we have learned the fundamental dogmas of
Buddhism, and that can only be done by resorting
to those teachings of the Great Master and his
earliest disciples which all Buddhists acknowledge.
If from these we can learn what Buddha taught con
cerning the Skandhas, Karman, and Nirvana, we
shall have the key to Buddhism, just as he who has
learned the meaning of the Incarnation, the Cross, and
the Resurrection has the key to Christian theology.
The world has seen but three Catholic religions, and

BUDDHISM. 105
they are aU the expression of the thought of a per
son. Buddhism, Mahometanism, and Christianity,
and the secret of each is hidden in the life of its
founder. We need then to glance first at the life
of the Buddha.
About 600 years before Christ, there was born
in the kingdom of Kapilavastu, now the province of
Oudh, a prince, whose name Siddartha has almost
been lost sight of in the light of those titles which
have been given to express the splendor of his noble
life. The first of these was Gautama, which means
the ascetic of the Gotamides. A second is S&kya-
mouni, meaning the solitary one among the S&kyas,
— the narae of the tribe to which he belonged. But
the narae most famUiar to us is Buddha the enlight
ened one, — the name which one third of the human
faraily pronounce with reverence as they turn their
faces to the better life. It is the expression of the
highest idea of life among the Aryans, as the word
Christ was araongst the Hebrews. To be the an
ointed man of God was to the Jew the consummation
of life. To be the enlightened one, to look with un
faltering eye on the light of life, seemed to the Hindu
eternal peace. The Buddha is no rival of the Christ,
but when we once know his life we are constrained
to say that the words of Jesus concerning John the
Baptist in his relation to the prophets of Israel is
true of this man in his relation to the other Masters
of Humanity. " Of all that are born of women
there hath not arisen a greater" than Gautama, Saky
amouni, Buddha.

106 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Fancy has been busy here as elsewhere in weav
ing a coat of many colors for the infancy of this
mighty man, but through the legendary mist we
seem to see a simple-minded, pure, earnest boy grow
ing up amidst the luxury and frivolity and flattery
of an Oriental court, the wonder of his teachers,
a mystery to the good king, his father, who, like the
father of a greater one, sought him and sorrowed
because he found him not amongst the ambitious of
his kinsfolk and acquaintance, and wist not that
the earnest lad was about his father's business.
The life moves on amid Oriental scenery. Before
the young prince there come at the father's com
mand aU the beauty of the land ; they pass by un
noticed till at last that life, which the Buddha after
wards said, with such a deep meaning, that he had
known and loved in many a pre-vious existence,
stands before him ; then the sleeping heart awakes
with a bound, and the dreamy prince stands forth
a man after his father's own heart, and gladly ent^
the lists to tame the unbroken steed, to tMrow the
unconquered wrestler, to draw the unbending bow,
that he may win the princess who has waked biia~
to the joy of life. ,*
For a moment the father's cup is fuU ; no fault
of his If the son do not reraain to the end lapped in
luxury, soothed with soft rausic, breathing sweet
perfumes. From the harem the noiseless slaves
carry the sick girl who may not cry out, on pain of
death, lest the prince learn that life has sorrow ;
from the bush the fading rose leaf is picked in the
early moming, lest the waking prince see that decay

BUDDHISM. 107
is the end of beauty ; golden gates, shut in the
palace, lest the prince see that there is disease and
death outside. But no slave can stop the wind which
bloweth where it listeth, and it speaks to the kingly
soul of other lands from whence it blows. The
Western gates cannot prevent the sun's rays from
pointing to other lands to which it stoops. Are all
men happy there as is the prince with his gentle
bride ? Are all men happy just outside the gates ?
The prince wiU see.
The troubled father commands that when the
prince goes through the town all shall seem bright
and fair. So it is. But when the prince, happy at
the sight of all the simple joy of his people, would
turn back again to his own delights, then
when midway in the road,
Slow tottering from the hovel where he hid.
Crept forth a wretch in rags, haggard and foul.
An old, old man, whose shriveled skin, sun-tanned,
Clung like a beast's hide to his fleshless bones.
Bent was his back -with load of many days !
His eyepits red with rust of ancient tears,
TTi'h dim orbs blear -with rheum, his toothless jaws
Wagging -with palsy and the fright to see
So many and such joy. One skinny hand
Clutched a worn staff to prop his quavering limbs,
And one was pressed upon the ridge of ribs.
Whence came in gasps the heavy painful breath.
"Alms," moaned he, " give good people ! for I die
To-morrow or the next day ! " then the cough
Choked him, but stlU he stretched his palm, and stood
Blinking and groaning 'mid his spasms, " Alms I "
Then those around had wrenched his feeble feet
Aside, and thrust him from the road again,
Saying, " The Prince ! dost see ? get to thy lair 1 "
But that SiddSriha cried, "Let be I let be !

108 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Channa ! what thing is this that seems a man.
Yet surely only seems, being so bowed,
So miserable, so horrible, so sad ?
Are men born sometimes thus ? What meaneth he
Moaning * to-morrow or next day I die ? '
Finds he no food that so his bones jut forth ?
What woe hath happened to this piteous one ? "
Then answer made the charioteer, ' ' Sweet Prince 1
This is no other than an aged man.
Some fourscore years ago his back was straight,
His eye bright, and his body goodly ; now
The thie-vish years have sucked his sap away,
Pillaged his strength, and filched his will and wit ;
His lamp has lost its oil, the wick bums black ;
What life he keeps is one poor lingering spark
Which flickers for the finish : such is age ;
Why should your Highness heed ? " Then spake the Prince,
' ' But shall this come to others, or to all,
Or is it rare that one should be as he ? "
" Most noble," answered Channa, " even as he
Will all these grow if ihey shall live so long."
" But," quoth the Prince, " if I shall live as long,
Shall I be thus ; and if Yasodhara
Live fourscore years, is this old age for her,
Jalini, little Hasta, Gautami,
And Gunga, and the others ? " "Yea, great Sir! "
The charioteer replied. Then spake the Prince :
" Turn back, and drive me to my house again !
I have seen that I did not think to see."
This then was what life might be. Again they go
forth and see what must be the end of every life.
What is the end of the lives of the sorrowful, asks
the Prince. "They die" "Die?" ' ' Yea, at the last comes death,
In whatsoever way, whatever hour.
Some few grow old, most sufier and fall sick.

BUDDHISM. 109
But all must die — behold where comes the dead ! "
Then did Sidd^ha raise his eyes, and see
Fast pacing towards the river bank a band
Of wailing people, foremost one who s-wung
An earthen bowl with lighted coals, behind
The kinsmen shorn, with mouming marks, imgirt
Crying aloud, "ORama, Rama, hear!
Call upon Rama brothers ; ' ' next the bier,
Knit of four poles -with bamboos interlaced,
Whereon lay stark and stiff, with feet foremost, lean,
Chapf alien, sightless, hollow-flanked a-griu,
Sprinkled with red and yellow dust the Dead.
Then spake the Prince : —
" Is this the end whieh comes to all who live ? '
" This is the end that comes
To all," quoth Channa.
" The high, the low, the good, the bad, must die.
And then, 't is taught, begin anew and live
Somewhere, somehow, — who knows ? — and so again
The pangs, the parting and the lighted pile : —
Such is man's round."
Then the Prince : — The vail is rent
Which blinded me ! I am as all these men
Who cry upon the Gods and are not heard
Or are not heeded — yet there must be aid !
For them and me and all there must be help !
Perchance the gods have need of help themselves
Being so feeble that when sad lips cry
They cannot save ! I would not let one cry
Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm
Would make a world and keep it miserable,
Since, if aU-powerful, he leaves it so
He is not good, and if not powerful,
He is not God ? — Channa ! lead home again !
It is enough ! Mine eyes have seen enough ! ^
1 The Light of Asia, Book Third.

110 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
I have quoted at great leng-th frora " The Light
of Asia," which has told the story of Buddha's life
with great beauty and power, but I do not see how
the crisis of his life could be better described than in
the words of one of his disciples who has said, with
the brief simplicity of our own Evangelists, " He was
seized with a great compassion for this great multi
tude plunged in uncertainty."
That night the sun left him in his princely state,
next raorning it rose on him far from home, dressed
in the yeUow robe of the mendicant, holding the
beggar's bowl for alms, seeking, in the only way he
knew, the " Kingdom of God and his Righteous
ness." Of only One can it be said with a deeper
meaning by his disciples, " Though he were rich yet
for our sakes he became poor."
The force of any character is to be raeasured by
the amount of hostile power in the conditions of his
life which he overcomes. We are so apt to dweU
upon the disadvantages and hindrances of poverty,
that we are in danger of overlooking the much
greater dangers of luxury. But, of course, it is a
greater proof of power to cast aside the luxury of
the court and adopt a life of hardship than to begin
with hardship and end with farae, for the tendency
of adversity is to brace a healthy character, but each
year of luxury relaxes the sinews of the soul. It
was the greater test to which Buddha was subjected,
and the " Great Renunciation " is to the Buddhist
what the Cross is to the Christian.
Indeed, it was inevitable that the reformation of
Brahmanism should begin with a renunciation, for

BUDDHISM. Ill
in the nature of things it was impossible that God
should choose, in India, as In Judea, " the foolish
things of the world." The caste system had so
permeated life that no peasant would have been heard
had he ventured to preach. The reformation raust
begin by the calling of the " Mighty and the Noble."
Out of the legends that cluster thick about Gau
tama life we learn that for years after the Great Re
nunciation the raan lived in the jungle, and In the
caves of the raountains, seeking through the ascetic
miseries of the reputed holy men, the Rishis, and
the Yogin, to attain to peace. But it was In vain,
and he returned again to the habitations of men
seeking to learn the truth. And it came to him, as
it has always come to man, not as the result of a log
ical process of thought, not as the immediate reward
of any definite act, but as a "peace that passeth all
understanding," it finaUy fUled his heart and mind.
It was at Gaya, the legend says, sitting under the
Bo tree, after long meditation, that deliverance came.
As he sat sUent, there rolled over his soul the suc
cessive waves of light. First he saw as from a
mountain peak the successive stages of lives through
which he had past, then came the insight into all
that was to come, then he saw the secret of sorrow
and the way of escape, where man glides —
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy.
Blessed NirvSna — sinless, stirless rest,
That change which never changes.
The victory had been won, the seeker after truth
had become enUghtened. He was Buddha.

112 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
There is a popular impression that Buddha be
ginning de novo formulated an elaborate system of
philosophy. There could be no greater mistake.
Buddha was above all things a practical man ; for
speculation as such he had no interest. The problem
of his life was how to live. The Brahmans had, as
we have already seen, an elaborate system of phi
losophy, but together with it went a complicated
system of ritual by which the gods were to be in
fluenced. Now when Sakyamouni came to ponder
over the problem of life, he perceived that if the
philosophy of the Upanishads was true there was no
need of the ritual. Nay, more, if it was true, it was
true for the gods as well as for men. So Buddha
did not deny the existence of the gods, he simply Ig
nored them. He was not an atheist but an agnostic.
We have already spoken of-the two schools of Brah
manic philosophy, — the Sankhya and the Vedanta.
At the time of Buddha's Great Renunciation, they
differed in little save in name. Buddha stood at the
meeting of these two streams of thought. From his
day they have formed one river. The Materialism
of the Sankhya school and the Pantheism of the
Vedanta became at their junction the philosophy of
Buddhism, what we may call an idealized material
ism. But the times were ripe for Buddhism, not only
philosophically but also ecclesiastically. We have
seen that the original scripture of the Indian Aryans
was the Rig- Veda, and then that to this was added
the Yagur and the Sama Vedas. The next step was
to insert the Brahmanas in the canon, and then the

BUDDHISM. 113
Upanishads followed. But no sooner had the various
schools of thought arisen than a philosophic litera
ture was produced, which began to have an influence
upon the thinking portion of the community greater
than that of the Vedas themselves. The consequence
was that the adherents of one of the schools, probably
the Mimansa, endeavored to have their Sutras, as
these writings were caUed, inserted as a part of the
canon, on the ground that they embodied the " tradi
tions of the fathers." Then began the great contro
versy concerning the Smriti and the Sutri, that is,
tradition and revelation. It was like the discussion
in Europe concerning the false decretals, and the re
sult In both cases was the same, a profound skepti
cism of the whole systera founded on these traditions.
At the height of this skeptical tide Buddha appeared.
The Ufe of Gautama after his attainment to
Buddhahood differed in no respect from that of the
other teachers of his tirae, that Is, he went through
out the land preaching the good news to those who
had " ears to hear," and so, little by little, gathering
about him a company of disciples. During the rainy
season he rested in sorae quiet viUage ; at the end
of that season he spoke to the multitudes that
flocked to hear hira when It was known that he was
In the neighborhood. Brahmans came with their
disciples and tried to put him to silence, but could
not withstand the wisdom and power with which he
spake. Poor wretched outcasts crept to his side and
learned how the thirst of lust might be quenched.
The " great multitude plunged in uncertainty "
found in him one who could teach them the true
way of escape.

114 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
The method of his teaching was probably entirely
unconventional, but his disciples soon formulated his
sayings into a definite system of logical exactness.
It consisted first of the " Four Noble Truths," which
are: 1. The existence of pain. 2. The cause of
pain. 3. The " Way " to the cessation of pain ; 4.
and then the end of aU, Nirvana. To appreciate the
power of this teaching it is necessary to examine
each of these truths in turn.
1. " The existence of pain." That need not de
tain us long. It is a fact which is as familiar to us
as to the Buddha ; it is one of the great cords that
bind all living creatures together. I shall have some
thing to say later of this as a starting-point of reli
gion or philosophy ; at present I merely wish to caU
attention to the fact. There is one thing to be re
membered, however, before we pass on, and that is,
that the existence of pain is much more apparent in
the East than in the West. We hide our trouble
and go through life as if we were happy whether we
are or not. The Oriental at best only maintains
a dignified silence. We hide our wounds, and house
the sick, and cover the dead. In the East the leper
lies on the bridge with his decaying limbs exposed
to the gaze of every passer-by. The blind grope
their way from house to house. The dead with un
covered face are carried along the highway on which
the bride is being borne to the bridegroom's house.
The evidences of suffering are on every hand. So
we can see why Buddha should have begun with sor
row. On the other hand, when we remember that
the continual sight of suffering tends to deaden the

BUDDHISM. 115
sensibilities, we shall have a deeper appreciation of
the loving heart of the noble prince whose only
thought was of saving of the world from woe.
" This, O monks, is the sacred truth of suffering :
Birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness is
suffering, death is suffering, to be united with the
unloved is suffering, to be separated from the loved
is suffering, not to obtain what one desires is suffer
ing, in short the fivefold clinging to the earthly is
suffering." ' Nor was this all : to the Hindu, death
and birth were alike in this, that both led only to
sorrow : for birth leads to disease, and disease to de
cay, and decay to death, and death again to re-birth.
To deliver man then from sorrow was to deUver him
from the endless chain of existence.
2. What is the cause of sorrow ? The answer to
that question was the great discovery of the Buddha.
It is Desire, more UteraUy Thirst.
The thirst of thoughtless man grows like a creeper. He
runs from Ufe to life like a monkey seeking fruit in the
forest. Whomsoever this fierce thirst overcomes, full of poison
in this world, his sufEei'ings increase like the abounding
Birana grass.
He who overcomes this fierce thirst, diflBcult to be over
come in this world, sufferings faU off from him like water-
drops from a lotus leaf.^
Such was life, — a snare and a delusion. " Vanity
of vanities " was not, as in the Hebrew Scriptures,
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha (Eng. trans.), 211.
^ Dhammapada, chap. xxiv. Sacred Books of the East, vol. x.

116 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
a note which, sounding the discord of life, only
serves to emphasize the eternal harmony of life ; it
was the very theme of Buddhism. Man clutched at
riches, and seized care ; he pampered the senses, and
bred disease ; he sought for knowledge, and engen
dered doubt ; reaching forth with his affections to
erabrace some life, it was snatched away. As death
drew near, wishing ardently for a new life which
would satisfy the unsatisfied cravings of this life, he
bound himself still tighter to the fast revolving
wheel of existence ; the swifter its course the more
desperately he clings to the engine of his destruc
tion. So life is one endless horror, anguish, and de
spair ! But how is this thirst to be quenched ? In
the first place the cause of the thirst must be dis
covered. It would seem that the fear of making this plain
to the world caused the Buddha to hesitate before
proclaiming the Great Deliverance to men, and of
that scheme no part seemed to hira so difficult to
make men understand as this cause of thirst. It is
no wonder, for it will be difficult to say exactly what
it means ; at the same time we may well believe that
the words had a meaning to the Hindu which we
are unable to grasp. And another thing is to be
borne in mind and that Is, that often they did not
care, In their dreamy mysticism, to attach any very
definite meaning to the terms of a proposition if the
general tenor of It commended itself to their feeling.
If we look for a moment at the result of thirst we
shall be able to see why, if that were extinguished,
both its cause and effect ceased. The result of

BUDDHISM. 117
thirst Is clinging to existence ; the result of clinging
is birth, from birth come old age, -pain, death, and,
if thirst stiU continues, re-birth. The constant meta
phor which explained this was the flame of a candle.
Man's life is the flarae. As the fuel is consumed,
the flame flickers to its extinction, but if a breath of
wind blows upon it it will attach itself to new fuel.
Now the wind which blows raan's life is desire,
thirst, lust. So if thirst can be extinguished the
effects which are so disastrous -wiU fail. Now look
backward. Thirst arises from sensation, sensation
results from contact between the senses and objects ;
the cause of this sensible contact, of course. Is the
senses. So far all Is clear enough ; but the senses
result from name and bodily form (that is, I sup
pose, sentient being, which Is true, but only states
the cause In another denomination of the effect).
Name and form result frora consciousness (here I
think we have a trace of the Sankhya belief in the
existence of innumerable individual souls as opposed
to the Vedanta belief in the One Soul, Atman). In
dividual consciousness is the result of the Skandhas,
and the Skandhas are themselves the result of Igno
rance. This last Is the most obscure point of all,
but very likely It points to the Vedanta belief in
Maya, or the iUusIon which existed along with Brah-
raa, and frora which all that Is seen is made, this
being often spoken of as Ignorance. So if we do
not scrutinize the terms too closely we shall be able
to see how the destruction of this thirst will lead, by
many steps, to the cessation of being and conse
quently of suffering. Thirst Is the key-stone of the

118 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Buddhist doctrine ; remove that and the whole arch
falls to the ground. Buddha desired nothing less ;
he was a nihilist. But his nihilism looked to some
thing more than destruction ; that was only a means
to an end, which was the building of a better life on
the ruins of the old.
These things, then, ignorance, consciousness, etc.,
are the fetters which bind the soul to life. They
could have no power over man were it not that he
lusts after thera.
It Is not ignorance that is to be dreaded, it is the
lust of Ignorance, the desire for consciousness, etc.,
which causes the misery of life. Man, therefore,
has his fate In his own hands ; he must be his own
savior. " Quench this thirst and sorrow will faU off
like water-drops frora a lotus leaf."
3. But how is it to be quenched ? The answer is
by entering upon the noble path, — the way of sal
vation which the Buddha came to preach.
This path is eightfold ; namely, right views, right
aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right liveli
hood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right con
templation.' Again the noble path is divided Into four stages,
each of which has its own appropriate blessing. The
unconverted man is he who has not begun to walk
the noble path ; he is the slave of delusion. But he
who has been converted is gradually freed from the
three fetters, namely, the delusion of self, doubt con
ceming the Buddha, and belief in the efficacy of rites
^ Sacred Books ofthe East, vol. xi.

BUDDHISM. 119
and ceremonies. Freedom from these fetters is the
fruit of the first stage.
The second stage is reached by those who, freed
frora the fetters, have reduced sensuality, iU--ivill,
and foolishness. Such wIU return to this earth but
once after death.
The third stage Is reached by those who have ut
terly destroyed sensuality and ill-wiU. Free from
all carnal affections and every evil thought they will
return to the earth no more.
The last stage, only the worthy — the Arahats —
attain to. These are they who have quenched all
desire for Ufe, aU pride, all self-righteousness, all Ig
norance. Free from all delusion and sin, they see
things only as they are. Having quenched all evil
desire they are filled with pity and love for others.
To be in that state is to reach NirvS,na.'
To appreciate the value of this scheme of salva
tion it is necessary to bear in mind what it replaced.
At the tirae of Buddha there were but two ways
of escape, — the one through sensuaUty, from which
the Buddha shrunk as leading only to greater mis
ery ; and the path of asceticism, which the Buddha
saw was Impotent to bring peace to the soul.
There are two extremes, O Bhikkhus, which the man
who has given up the world ought not to follow : the bar
bitual practice, on the one hand, of those things whose
attraction depends upon the passions, and especially of
sensuaUty, — a low and pagan way of seeking satisfac-
^ Contemporary Beview, January, 1877, Buddhism, by Rhys Da
vids.

120 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
tion unworthy, unprofitable, and fit only for the worldly
minded ; and the habitual practice, on the other hand,
of asceticism, — which is painful, unworthy, and unprofit
able. There is a middle path, 0 Bhikkhus, ... a path
which opens the eyes and bestows understanding, which
leads to peace of mind, to the higher wisdom, to fuU en
Ughtenment ; to Nirvtoa ! '
This raiddle path is the way already described.
Now there can be no doubt that this was a verita
ble discovery of the great raoral law that peace can
be obtained only through righteousness. But right
eousness means right relation, and there was no God
with whora raan was to be brought into right rela
tion, — for while, as we have said before, Buddha
did not deny the existence of the gods, he ignored
them ; they might exist, but in that case they needed
to enter on the noble path as rauch as men. So the
only righteousness was that between man and man
and the man with hiraself, — that is, a sort of internal
harmony. Another discovery, that the cause of all
the misery of life is selfishness, was the work of
Buddha. For when we look at it closely we see that
the thirst which he so much deprecated was what
we call selfishness. But, having no god, he could
have no place for redemption in his scheme of sal
vation ! AU that he could promise was the extinc
tion of the fires of passion.
Now wherein lay the power of this gospel? for
that it has been a power in the history of the human
race no one can deny. Rising out of the ruins of
Brahmanism It overspread India and Ceylon. It
1 Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi.

BUDDHISM. 121
passed into Nepaul, and from thence, having under
gone some modification, it developed a missionary
spirit which led to triumphs In Thibet, China, Corea,
and Japan. From Ceylon it passed to Burmah and
Siam. Though it has been driven from India proper,
being found only in Ceylon and Nepaul, yet modern
Hinduism is a mixture of Buddhism and Brahman
lsra, while Janism, the religion of the Sikhs, is the
result of a deliberate atterapt to harmonize the two ;
so that while Buddhism has passed from India as
Christianity did from Palestine, yet its influence is
felt there stUl.
But its missionary spirit is not the most remark
able thing about it, stiU less will it account for its
triumphs ; for while zeal is a necessary element in
missionary work, the important thing is always the
cause of the zeal.
It has been supposed that it was the pure mo
rality of Buddhism which kindled the enthusiasm of
preacher and hearer, and undoubtedly there Is much
truth in that. The morality of Buddhism is so In
comparably higher than anything that had preceded
it in the East that it must have carried in itself the
power of drawing sinful souls. Yet when we con
sider what human nature is, we shall feel con-vlnced
that what the human race wants Is not goodness, but
happiness. As with the chUd, so with the race ; it re
quires a long course of education before it can identify
happiness with goodness. The time does come when
men can turn away frora apparent happiness with the
absolute certainty that eternal happiness is found
only by those who find theu* satisfaction in drinking

122 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
at the fountain of goodness. Now when we remem
ber that eighteen centuries of Christianity have not
sufficed to convince all men who have come under
its Influence of this truth, and are told that Hindus,
Singhalese, Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese welcomed
Buddhism because of its pure morality, we may well
be skeptical !
Buddha, then, must bave had some good news, some
gospel. What was it ?
There are three ways in which the attainment of
happiness may be presented to men. The first is the
heathen way. " Do soraething that your god likes,
sacrifice a buUock or a goat, or, better still, your first
born chUd, and he will pay you." The second is the
Buddhist. " Walk in the Noble Path of virtue, and
you wiU earn happiness," as the reward. The third
is the Christian. " The free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
The first is perfectly arbitrary ; there is no neces
sary connection between the offering of a beast and
the divine favor. It may be bought at a fixed price.
Buddhism repudiated that, and said there Is a neces
sary connection between righteousness and happiness.
Do right and you will earn it. It was an iraraense
advance on heathenisra. It was a veritable discovery
of the eternal law. But there is something higher
still, and that Is the offering to every soul eternal
life, that is the awakening of the soul to the con
scious realization of its life being hidden with Christ
in God, which will ¦manifest itself in righteousness.
Freedom from sin, peace with God, and joy in the
Spirit of Holiness.

BUDDHISM. 128
The success of Buddhism may in part be ac
counted for by its missionary zeal, and by its method
of attaining happiness which appealed to a higher in
stinct of the human race. But what was the happi
ness it proposed ? The happiness of heatheni.sm was
intelligible enough. The god will not destroy your
cattle -with hailstones. When you die he will save
you from torment.
The happiness of the Christian is appreciable ; it
is tbe gaining of a new spirit, the spirit of power,
the spirit of joy, and the spirit of peace.
Now what was the happiness of Buddhism? It
was Nirvana. What that was we may be able to say
later. This much we can say, that it was deliverance
from existence in any such form as we know it now.
Sad as it may seem, that was the cause of the triumph
of Buddhism. The pessimism of the East had per
meated every crevice of life, until raen had lost in
terest in living. It has been weU said that no more
horrible message could be imagined by the Orien
tal than that life is everlasting. The causes of this
pessimism it is impossible here to discuss. Un
doubtedly it is partly physical. A man whose life
is hardly kept from ebbing away by a handful of
rice can feel no thriU in simply living, as did the
strong limbed Greek ! A social system which kiUed
all hope for the individual as well as for the faraily
made long life — that glory of the Hebrew — a hor
ror to the Hindu. A philosophy which restrained
the desire to die by the fear of a re-birth after death
made men " rather bear the ills they had than fly to
others which they knew not of." These were some,

124 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
if not all, of the causes of a pessimism that so col
ored all life, that escape from it into an Inexperi
enced and yet still in some dull way hoped for peace
came to them as a veritable gospel, — a good news.
Yet it was not annihilation that Buddha promised
his disciples, at least not immediately upon death —
if ever. Why he should not have done so is one of
those inconsistencies which are the glory of a truly
religious soul. Why had he who had cut himself
loose from the popular theology, who had risen to
the knowledge of the power of the law of righteous
ness, why did not he go a step further and discard
the belief in the transmigration of souls, and say
boldly, " The end of life is annihilation ? " The an
swer Is twofold : First, there was his firm conviction
that the law of right was eternal; and then there
was the Brahmanic philosophy in which he had been
trained. A man cannot entirely rid bimself of his
past any more than he can outstrip his own shadow,
and Buddha was no exception to the rule.
The legend of Buddha declares that it was the
sight of suffering which caused Buddha to renounce
the pleasures of life and begin the life of a preacher
of salvation to a sorrowful world. But it has been
well said that we may be sure that this effect was
caused not by that sight alone, but by a painful sight
on a mind already saddened by the coUapse of some
ideal. It was the coUapse of the popular philosojihy
which led Buddha and his first disciples to enter
upon the " Noble Path. "
There are three points in that philosophy which
we must consider if we would understand the teach
ing of Buddha.

BUDDHISM. 125
The first is what is called the doctrine of the
" Skandhas " or Groups. Both schools of philoso
phy, that is the Sankhya and the Vedanta, began
with the doctrine of the Skandhas, that is to say,
they both denied the proper individuality of man.
According to the Sankhya school the Individuality of
man was due to the union of an eternally preexistent
independent soul with matter,' In which term they
included material qualities, sensations, abstract ideas,
the natural tendencies or disposition of the life and
thought, or reason. Now from the junction of these
groups with the preexistent soul was produced the
individuality, just as by the mixture of two or more
chemical elements is produced a gas which did not
reside in either of them alone. When it is added
that the soul was dependent for " consciousness " ^
upon this incarnation, we shaU see that the Sankhya
doctrine was pure materialism.
But the Indian mind has always shrunk from
materlaUsm, because it leads to Atheisra, and it
is saturated with Theisra. Nevertheless, there were
some who boldly announced the conclusion to which
their philosophy led, and declared that on the dis
solution of the Skandhas, that is at death, the soul
ceased to be ; that the result of death is annihila
tion.^ The Vedanta doctrine differed from the foregoing
in its denial of the separate existence of Individual
souls, and consequently in its rejection of the doc-
^ Barth's Beligions of India (Eng. trans.), p. 70.
^ See Indian 'Wisdom, p. 96.
' See Oldenburg's Life of Buddha (Eng. trans.), p. 273, note.

126 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
trine of the necessity of the Skandhas for conscious
ness. Both agreed that on the dissolution of the
Skandhas the soul was set free, but the Vedanta
taught that it returned to the source of aU life, the
one soul, the Atman of the universe.
What now was Buddha's relation to this doctrine ?
There is no doubt that he was most in sympathy
with the extreme Sankhya teaching. But he dif
fered from it in two respects : in the first place he
did not believe in preexistent eternal souls ; he
believed that the soul is the result of the junction
of the Skandhas. He subdivided them tiU they in
cluded every variety of sensation and imagination.
He did not go back of this doctrine. He accepted
and developed it A favorite iUustration was this :
You see something which you call a chariot. It con
sists of body, and wheels, and a pole. Divide them,
take them aU apart, you have not destroyed the
elements, but you have destroyed the chariot.^ In
other words, the chariot was only a term given
to express the relation of certain things to each
other ; It is a fiction ; so is the soul. It has no ex
istence apart from the Skandhas. So it was that
the Buddha taught that the first of all delusions
from which man must be delivered was the delusion
of self. The vain imagination that he had any
proper indl-viduallty apart from the conjunction of
the Skandhas. This was what caused aU the misery
of life. The attempt to gain soraething from life that
should be the possession of an Individuality which
had no real existence was as senseless as if a man
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 256.

BUDDHISM. 127
were to deny himself the necessaries of life that he
may heap up riches for a child that is already dead.
Yet this is what Buddha saw both schools of philoso
phy were encouraging raen to do. It was their fail
ure to bring peace that led to the Buddhist doctrine
of the Skandhas.
So far, the doctrine of Buddha was only an am
plification of the Sankhya school of philosophy, but
here it seems to have been deflected from its logical
path by the teaching of the Vedanta school. We
have already seen that the Vedanta school accepted
the doctrine of the Skandhas in a modified form :
teaching, however, that the soul on the dissolution
of the Skandhas was re-absorbed in the divine es
sence, but not iramediately on death. Not until
purified frora all taint of corruption by passing
through many stages of transmigration was the soul
capable of that re-absorption which would end its
miseries. It was at this point that Buddha parted company
¦with the Sankhya school, and followed the teachings
of the Vedanta. He preached with a power never
before equaled the doctrine of the transmigration
of souls.
Now here is the puzzle : Why did he, who had
rejected the dogma of a Supreme Being, not continue
with the materialistic Sankhya school, and say the
misery of the soul ends with death which dissolves
the Skandhas ? Why did he suddenly turn to the
idealistic Vedantism and accept the doctrine of the
transraigration of souls ? I believe it was because
his soul hungered and thirsted after righteousness.

128 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
The soul might be the result of the Skandhas, but if
death ended all, then there was no answer to the
awful moral problem of life ; and so while we cannot
affirm that Buddha believed in the immortality of
the soul, yet he detained the soul, as it were, between
heaven and earth, and insisted that it should give
sorae answer to the raoral problem of suffering.
The answer to that problera, and at the same time
an incentive to virtue, Buddha found In the doctrine
of Kararaa. At first sight It would seem as if there
were no distinction between the Brahmanic doctrine
of the transmigration of souls and the Buddhist
teaching of Kamma ; the difference, however, is that
Kararaa was a highly developed forra of the Brah
raanic doctrine. The Brahmans taught, " An e-vil
life will be punished by re-birth Into a lower forra
of existence. A good life will be rewarded by a
better life, and this will continue until the soul is
sufficiently pure to be re-absorbed into Brahma."
Now this doctrine of re-absorption in some sense
underlay all Oriental teaching, — the object of such
absorption being to destroy the individuality. The
word Kamma, which means, literally, " act," had been
used by the Brahmans to designate the ritual which
was an " act " performed not only for men, but also
for the gods. Upon this " act " gods and raen were
alike dependent. This prepared the way for Bud
dha ; when he asked himself upon what gods and
men were alike dependent, he answered that it could
not be the senseless ceremonies. It must be some
moral act. So with Buddha the " act," or Kamma

BUDDHISM. 129
of life, was that which resulted from the thirst for
existence. Thus : here is a child ; it has done in
this life neither good nor bad, yet it has begun life
deformed in body, or, stUl worse, in mind ; or, even
worse still, it carae into this world with an almost
irresistible tendency to lust or deeds of violence.
How carae it to be so ? Calvinism has its answer.
It is the manifestation of the divine wrath against
sinful flesh. Modern science has its answer. It is
the result of heredity. Buddha said it was Kamma.
That is, when that life which is now In the child
came to die in a previous Ufe It clung to some evU,
and the result of the clinging is the Kamma, or act,
which we see now. The soul is Uke a flame which
is dependent for its existence upon the fuel which
it consumes ; if it did not attach Itself to new fuel it
would not revive.' The child has not inherited a
curse pronounced on the race ; the child has not in
herited the evil tendencies of its ancestors ; the child
has inherited its own evil tendencies ; the child is its
own soul's parent ! ^
It was this belief which prevented Buddha from
accepting the materialistic theory of the annUiUatlon
of the soul at death, which we should have supposed
must follow, naturally, from the belief that the soul
is the result of the Skandhas. " When they dissolve
the soul raust cease to be," we would say, but not
so Buddha ; he said, " No, the soul is the result of
the Skandhas It is true, but it has within itself the
power of forming new Skandhas," which wUl remain
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 262.
^ Contemporary Beview, January, 1877.
9

130 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
when the old have dissolved. But the thing that
revived on the death of the old life, and created the
identity between the two lives, was not self-conscious
ness, nor wUl, nor affection, but simply Kamma, the
net result of the previous life. The suffering man
and the sinner had no right to complain ; they were
simply reaping what they had sown.
According to Buddha every life was the slave of
Kamma. If there were gods they were not free.
He looked back over the long vista of life, and he
saw the reckless sowing of tares ; he looked about
him, and he saw the harvest being gathered v\rith
tears. He looked into the future, and he saw the un
ending road that stretched itself before life. Birth,
and death, and birth again, thirsting deeire never
quenched, bright hopes disappointed, — health sink
ing into disease, agony leading to death, and death
to life, and so on forever, and ever, and ever. He
looked above him, and heard of a Divine Essence
that waited in dumb silence to absorb life, — and
he turned in righteous indignation frora such a God.
He saw men crowd the temples, and he knew that
like shipwrecked sailors they were drinking the salt
water which could only serve to increase the mad
ness of their thirst.
Then in the midst of that silent agony he heard
the voice which had spoken to the Hebrew Psalmist,
saying, " Keep innocency, and take heed unto the
thing that is right, for that wiU bring a man peace
at the last." So it was that he begun to preach his
gospel, promising to all who entered on the Noble
Path that they should be

BUDDHISM. 131
Released from all the .skandhas of the flesh :
Broken from ties — from Up^dltiias — saved
From whirling on the wheel ; aroused and sane
As is a man wakened from hateful dreams,
Until, greater than kings, than gods more glad !
The aching craze to live ends, and life glides —
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy,
Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest,
That change which never changes, i
We can see then why the Buddha was hailed as a
deliverer. It was because he promised freedom
from that law of Kararaa to which every Oriental be
lieved himself to be subject. To the Western mind
it is difficult to reach the point where It can appreci
ate the doctrines of the Skandhas and Kamma, but
we must remember that with the Oriental they were
ultimate facts of consciousness as truly as our cogito
ergo sum. But when we reach this point the Noble
Path stretches before as a straight road which we
may foUow to the end.
We have seen that the " path " was twelvefold, —
eight right things and four stages ; we have seen
that the objective of the path was the destruction of
thirst, but we have not found the secret of the path,
that which gave force to it.
It was that which has given life to every religion
since the world began ; it -was faith. The theory of
Buddhism was that every man was to be his own
savior, but it was impossible that this could be ; and
it was soon found that while the " poor " would fol
low a teacher, they could not apply a theory of sal
vation to their souls ; and so we find that during the
1 The Light of Asia, Book the Sixth.

132 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
lifetime of the Buddha a difficulty arose regarding
the state of the faithful departed, and the Buddha
answered : " Now there is nothing strange in this that
a human being should die, but as each one does so you
should come to the Buddha and inquire about them
in this manner, that is wearisome to the Buddha. I
will therefore teach you a way of truth, caUed the
mirror of truth, which if an elect disciple possess he
may himself predict of himself, 'HeU is destroyed
for me, and re-birth as an animal, or a ghost, or In
any other place of woe. I am converted, I ara no
longer liable to be re-born In a state of suffering, and
ara assured of final salvation.' "
" What, then, Ananda, is this mirror of trath ? It
is the consciousness that the elect disciple is in this
world possessed of faith in the Buddha, beUeving
the blessed one to be the holy one, the fuUy-enlight-
ened one, wise, upright, happy, world-knowing, su
preme, the bridler of men's wayward hearts, the
teacher of gods and men, the blessed Buddha." ' To
this is added faith in the truth proclaimed by
Buddha, and faith In the Church as the keeper of
the truth.
This is as much as was expected of the great body
of Buddhists, and soon took the place of the weightier
matters of the law. The daily confession of faith is
the great safeguard of the faithfiU. " I take my
refuge in Buddha ; I take refuge in the Law."
But for those who were able to bear it there was
^ The Book of the Great Decease, chap, ii,, Sacred Books of the
East, voL xi.

BUDDHISM. 133
the more excellent way of moral exertion. But when
we look into that we find that it too was modified to
answer the needs of an indolent people. The eight
right things are reduced to one, that is, right con
templation. Thus we read iu the " Book of the Great
Decease : " " Great Is the fruit, great the advantage
of earnest contemplation when set round with up
right conduct. Great is the fruit, great the advan
tage of intellect when set round with earnest con
templation. The mind set round with inteUigence Is
freed frora the great evils, that Is to say, frora sen
suality, frora individuality, from delusion, and from
ignorance." ' Now in this passage we see tbat right
conduct is dependent upon InteUigence, and Intelli
gence upon contemplation, but if we look at the pas
sage in the same book on " Contemplation " we shall
see that it ends in trance, and that intelligence is
the power by which the mind prevents its excitation
by sensible objects.
Now the stages of deliverance, Ananda, are eight in
number. Which are the eight ?
A man possessed with the idea of form sees forms ; this
is the first stage of deliverance.
Without the subjective idea of form, he sees forms ex
ternally ; this is the second stage of deliverance.
With the thought it is weU, he becomes intent upon
what he sees ; this is the third stage of deliverance.
By passing quite beyond all idea of form, by putting
an end to all idea of resistance, by paying no attention
to the idea of distinction, he, thinking it is all infinite
space, reaches mentally and remains in the state of mind
^ The Book of the Great Decease, chap, ii.. Sacred Books of the
East, vol. xi.

134 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
in which the idea of the infinity of space is the only idea
that is present ; this is the fourth stage of deliverance.
By passing quite beyond aU idea of space being the in
finite basis, be, thinking it is all infinite reason, reaches
mentally and remains in the state of mind to which the
infinity of reason is alone present ; this is the fifth stage of
deliverance. By passing quite beyond the mere consciousness of the
infinity of reason, he, thinking nothing at aU exists,
reaches mentaUy and remains in the state of mind to
which nothing at aU is speciaUy present ; this is the sixth
stage of deliverance.
By passing quite beyond aU idea of nothingness he
reaches mentally and remains in the state of mind to
which neither idea nor the absence of ideas are speciaUy
present ; this is the seventh stage of deliverance.
By passing quite beyond the state of ideas or the ab
sence of ideas he reaches mentaUy and remams in the
state of mind in which both sensations and ideas have
ceased to be ; this is the eighth stage of deliverance.'
We see, then, to what it aU led ; it reaUy was f
return to the old Brahmanic theory of ab'Srption
through contemplation ; the difference being*hat the
Brahman expected a union with the Atman as the
result, while Buddha expected nothing^.^uAr the d5p~
tinction of the fires of passion and destrubtive thirst.
Before we attempt an answer to the question as to
the meaning of Nirvana, which was to result frora this
extinction, let us run our eye over this plan of salva
tion again.
First, then there was the fundamental dogma,
^ The Book of the Great Decease, chap. ii. , Sacred Books of the
East, vol. xi.

BUDDHISM. 135
Life is misery: (1), because of evident pain and sor
row ; and (2), because those things which are counted
joys are delusions which end in sorrow.
Secondly. There is properly speaking no such
thing as individuality. That which we speak of as
the individual soul is not an entity, but only a mode
of existence of certain physical, mental, and nioral
Skandhas ; this, however, is not dissipated at the phys
ical death, which dissolves the Skandhas, because the
Kamma, that which the life has done, remains and
forms the Individuality of the new life. Is the heir of
all its tendencies, and the inheritor of all Its sorrows.
Thirdly. There would be no Kamma, no " doing "
by any life, were it not that back of this present life
there Is the pressure of an irresistible tendency or
predisposition which arose In some previous existence,
and an accursed thirst which leads the soul to drink
of that which only begets desire. Destroy this
thirst, break the chain of this tendency, and you are
free. Fourthly. This can be done only by entering on
the Noble Path. The cause of desire is ignorance.'
" If," said the Buddha, " you could see things as they
are you would desire nothing." Who would stretch
forth his hand to pluck a fruit if he knew an adder
would bite him ? There is an adder behind aU fruit.
He taught : — . . . how sorrow is
Shadow to life, mo-ving where life doth move ;
Not to be laid aside until one lays
Living aside, -with all its ehanging states,
1 This seems to conflict -with the statement above that " Desire "
is the cause of all ; but the Buddhist would answer. Ignorance is
not the cause of desire, but the desire ybr ^oranee !

136 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Birth, gro-vrth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain,
Being and doing. How that none strips off
The sad delights and pleasant griefs who lacks
Knowledge to know them snares, but he who knows
Avidya — Delusion — sets those snares
Loves life no longer but insures escape.^
Destroy the thirst and you no longer forge new
links in the chain of existence. Destroy the " ten
dencies," and you break those which have been forged
in the past. How can this be done ? By doing
right, and thinking right, and being right. Wrong
doing, wrong thinking, wrong being produce, by a
changeless law, an evil Kararaa. As Jesus said,
" Whoso coraraltteth sin is the servant of sin." The
Buddha taught that he who would do no evil would
have no Kamma to revive, but would glide peaceful
and calm into the unending bliss of Nirvana, where
no delusion deceives the weary soul, but where the
aching craze to live ends, and life glides —
Lifeless — to nameless quiet, nameless joy,
Blessed Nirvana — sinless, stirless rest.
That change which never changes.
What now is meant by Nirv&na? The word
means literally " not blown upon." It is a state of
perfect calm. In it there is no more sorrow, for the
soul is isolated, not in contact with any of the Skan
dhas. The evil power of Kamma broken, there is
no more struggle. That which was capable of re
birth had died, there is no more fear. The penalty
of all evil doing having been gathered home and
patiently borne, there is no more sin.
1 Light of Asia, Book the Sixth.

BUDDHISM. 137
It is a state of enlightenment. Intelligence is not,
as we should say, an act requiring observation and
reflection. It is a waU of light which keens the outer
darkness from coming near the soul. " The mind
set round with Intelligence Is freed frora the great
evUs, that is to say, from sensuality, from individual
ity, from delusion, and from ignorance." Nirvana
is a peace " which passeth all understanding."
So far we can all go, but the question which con
cerns us most of all is this. Did Buddha preach
annihUation ? Is that the goal of the Noble Path ?
It would be most presumptuous in me to attempt to
answer dograaticaUy a question which has divided the
world of Oriental scholarship. .1 may, however, call
your attention to one or two points In this discussion
which raay serve to guide our judgment in this
most difficult path.
And the first thing to notice is that entrance into
the state of Nirvana is quite independent of the
physical accident of death. If the Kamma is not
exhausted Nirv&na is not attained at death, and when
the state of suprerae IntelUgence is reached Nirvana
is entered before death.
In the " Book of the Great Decease " the condi
tion of the last disciple whora the Buddha received
into the order is thus described.
So Subhadda, the mendicant, was received into the
higher grade of the order under the Blesed One ; and
from immediately after his ordination the venerable Sub
hadda remained alone and separate, earnest, zealous, and
resolved, and ere long he attained to that supreme goal of
the higher Ufe for the sake of which men go out from aU

138 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
and every household, gain and comfort, to become houseless
wanderers, yea, that supreme goal did he by himself, and
whUe yet in this visible world, bring himself to the knowl
edge of and continue to reaUze, and to see face to face !
Another thing that we have to notice is this, that
Nirvana is a condition of ecstasy rather than of un
consciousness. In the " Book of the Great Decease " is this story.'
Now at that tirae a man named Pukkusa, a young Mal-
lian, a disciple of Alara Kalama's, was passing along the
high road. . . . And Pukkusa saw the Blessed One seated
at the foot of a tree. On seeing him, he went up to the
place where the Blessed One was, and when he had come
there he saluted the Blessed One, and took his seat re
spectfully on one side. And when he was seated Puk
kusa, the young MaUian, said to the Blessed One, " How
wonderful a thing is it Lord ! and how marvelous, that
those who have gone forth out of the world should pass
their time in a state of mind so calm ! " Formerly, Lord,
Alara Kalama was once walking along the high road ; and
leaving the road he sat down under a certain tree to rest
during the heat of the day. Now, Lord, five hundred
carts passed by one after the other, each close to Alara
Kalama. And a certain man who was foUowing close be
hind that caravan of carts went up to the place where
Alara Kalama was, and when he came there he spoke as
foUows to Alara Kalama : —
"But, Lord, did you see those five hundred carts go
by?" " No, indeed, sir, I saw them not."
" But, Lord, did you hear the sound of them ? "
" No, indeed, sir, I heard not their sound."
^ xi. 75.

BUDDHISM. 139
" But, Lord, were you then asleep ? "
" No, sir, I was not asleep."
" But, Lord, were you then conscious ? "
" Yes, I was conscious, sir."
" So that you. Lord, though you were both conscious and
awake, neither saw nor heard the sound of flve hundred
carts passing by one after the other, and each close to you.
Why, Lord, even your robe was sprinkled over with the
dust of them ! "
" It is even so, sir."
Then thought that man, " How wonderful a thing is it,
and how marvelous, that those who have gone forth out
of the world should pass their time in a state of mind so
calm ! "
And In this connection the Buddha told a story of
his own experience more wonderful stiU.
, Now on one occasion, Pukkusa, I was dweUing at
' A.tuma, and was at the threshing-floor. At that time the
^'*Ung rain began to beat and to splash, and the lightnings
° '""Hash forth, and the thunderbolts to crash ; and two
new Slants, brothers, and four oxen were kiUed. Then,Puk-
speak a, a great multitude of people went forth from Atuma,
because went up to the place where the two peasants, brothers,
is soriid the four oxen lay kiUed.
IP Now at that time, Pukkusa, I had gone forth from the
fr threshing-floor, and was walking up and down thinking at
the entrance to the threshing-floor. And a certain man
came, Pukkusa, out of that great multitude of people, and
when he came up he saluted me and took his place re
spectfuUy on one side.
And as he stood there, Pukkusa, I said to the man,
" Why, then, sir, is this great multitude of people as
sembled together ? " And he answered : —

140 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
"But, just now, the faUing rain began to heat and to
splash, and the lightnings to flash forth, and the thunder
bolts to crash, and two peasants, brothers, were killed,
and four oxen. Therefore is this great multitude gathered
together. But where. Lord, were you ? "
" I, sir, have been here all the while."
" But, Lord, did you see it ? "
" I, sir, saw nothing."
" But, Lord, did you hear it ? "
" I, sir, heard nothing."
" Were you, then. Lord, asleep ? "
" I, sir, was not asleep."
" Were you, then, conscious. Lord ? "
" Even so, sir."
Then, Pukkusa, the thought occurred to that man :
" How wonderful a thing is it, and marvelous, that those
who have gone forth out of the world should pass their
time in a state of mind so calm ! "
We see, then, that Nirvana, so far from being a g^j.
state of annihilation which the devout soul was fc' p^gg
wish to reach after death, was a raoral conditiory Lord,
freedom from passion which raight be attained hfe^ ; and
As Max MiiUer has said : " If we look In \ to rest
Dharamapada, at every passage where NirvinaVundred
mentioned there Is not one which would require th£.Alara
its meaning should be annihilation ; while most, If° p^"
not all, would become perfectly unintelligible if we ^®
assigned to the word Nirv§,na that signification."
Or, as an equally high authority, Mr. Rhys Da
vids, has said : " It foUows, I think, that, to the raind
of the composer of the Buddhavansa, Nirvana meant
not the extinction of being, but the extinction of the
three fires of passion."

BUDDHISM. 141
But, it may be asked, how are we to account for
the fact that so raany distinguished scholars ' have
held a contrary opinion ? How are we to interpret
such words as these, — which occur in the " Book
of the Great Decease " : " And he became con
scious that birth was at an end ; that the higher life
had been fulfiUed ; that all that should be done had
been accoraplished, and that after this present Ufe
there would be no beyond." ^
I think the explanation of the paradox is this :
Buddha had been trained In an atmosphere of
thought which regarded individuality as a curse,
according to the Sankhya school, because it was a
delusion ; according to the Vedanta, because true
happiness consisted only in union with the divine.
To Buddha neither explanation was satisfactory.
This was his : At the dissolution of the Skandhas,
that is at death, the Individuality is not destroyed,
because Kamma reraains, and that, taking the place
of Individuality, forms the nucleus around which
new Skandhas form. So the Buddhists came to
speak of Kamma as tbe Individuality, and hated It,
because it was the foundation of sentient life, which
is sorrow. When Kamma was destroyed individuality
was destroyed, — not consciousness, but self-will and
desire. All that remained to those who yet existing
had gone " out of the world " was the consciousness
of a victory won, and the exquisite languor of a soul
too weary to move and too content to wish, — "a
1 Oldenburg claims to have found many passages in the Singhalese
books which incline to the doctrine of annihilation.
2 Book ofthe Great Decease, xi. 110.

142 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
sublime state of conscious rest in Omniscience." '
We are told distinctly that the Buddha was asked by
his disciples what carae after the last death. A soul
has entered Nirvana, yet the body has still to die.
There Is no Kamma to form a new individuaUty.
Will, then, death destroy Nirv§,na, — wIU the perfect
peace end with death ? And the Buddha would not
answer. He said the question was not practical.
I have no doubt he could not answer. But that need
not surprise us. I believe if the same question had
been put to Moses he would have said : " Eternal
life is to know God. Whether eternal life is ever
lasting I do not know. Whether we live after
death, as the Egyptians teach, I cannot tell. The
question is not practical ; our prayer should be, —
' So teach us to number our days, that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom.' "
In some such way the Buddha spake : —
" No need hath such to live as ye name life,
That which began in him when he began
Is finished : He hath -wrought the purpose through
Of what did make him man.
' ' Never shall yearnings torture him, nor sins
Stain him, nor ache of earthly joys and woes
Invade his safe, eternal peace : nor deaths
And lives recur. He goes
" Unto NirvSna. He is one with Life
Yet lives not. He is blest, ceasing to be.
Om Mani Padme, Hum ! The dew-drop slips
Into the shining sea ! "
1 It is important in this connection to remember the meaning of
NirvSna, which is, "not blown upon." Now as the object of the
Buddhist was to prevent the flame of life being blown upon by lust
the goal would be reached as soon as lust was destroyed.

BUDDHISM. 143
Such is Buddhism. The most fearless facing of
the stupendous facts of life, the most heroic effort
to attain unto righteousness, the most subUme proc
lamation that knowledge is eternal life, and the
sweetest picture of the soul's rest that the world has
ever seen apart from the life of Jesus. There are
not wanting voices to tell us that it will be the re
ligion of the future, but that wIU never be ; for
when aU Is said Buddhism still remains an Oriental
religion. It is the pessimism of the Oriental mind
oppressed by the raagnitude of nature, and disgusted
with itself, that forms the soU in which Buddhism
can grow. It vanishes like a nightmare at the
preaching of the redemption of the world by a
greater man of sorrows than Gautama ; yet, it has
deep notes within it which find an echo in the hu
man heart. To the busy man of affairs Buddha's
" Intelligence," a contemplation that is too deep for
conscious differentiation, will seem unspeakably fool
ish ; but to the religious soul, weary with glib defi
nitions of great mysteries, it will not seem improb
able that something like that will be found in the
" Pavilion where there is the hiding frora the strife
of tongues."
But, after all, it is not Buddha's philosophy but
Buddha who bas been the power in the East. That
great and noble personality towers above all religious
life, at once a refuge and an in.spiration.
If we ask for the secret of the Buddha's power,
we must find It, as we do the secret of aU power, in
the fact that first of all he embodied in his life the
Oriental ideal. The man who can do that is the great

144 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
man — an Alexander, or aNapoleon ; but he did more,
and thus showed himself one of the greatest of men.
He not only embodied the Oriental ideal of dignity,
and conteraplation, and asceticism ; he elevated that
ideal, and showed that dignity was compatible with
fellowship with the pariah, that contemplation would
sink to spiritual self-indulgence unless it was joined
¦with works of mercy. He showed by his life that
true asceticism consisted not in self-inflicted torture,
but in the " fast from sin." It was in this way that
he came nearest to Jesus. Jesus caUed himself the
Son of David, but he soon enlarged that to the Son
of Man. Can Jesus, then, answer the wants of the
East as well as the demands of the West ? Can
he rouse the dreamy Oriental as well as Inspire the
energetic Occidental ? Can he be to the Orient all
that Buddha is and more ? That is the question
which we now must try to answer.

CHAPTER VI.
CHKIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM.
No objection is more frequently urged against the
religion of Christ, than that the stories, in the Gos
pels, of Jesus' chUdhood have been borrowed from
earlier Oriental religious books. Even If this could
be shown to be true it would not affect the truth of
Christian revelation ; for that Is erabodied in the
character of Jesus, and that was the possession of
the Church for fifty years, raore or less, before the
irapression it made on the four Evangelists was re
corded. So that to prove a particular story in any
one of them to be an error does not affect the rev
elation ; for the character of Jesus is a part of the
heritage of humanity, dependent not upon the letter
of the title-deed so much as upon the consciousness
of the Church of its truthfulness. But indeed the
objection wUl not bear an examination. It will be
found In the first place that many of the Gospel sto
ries have been adapted to Buddhist hearers ; as for
Instance the story of Christ's interview with the Rab
bis in the Temple. When it Is said that the same
story is related of Buddha, the first impulse may be
to assert that the Gospel story is a copy. But look
at the two. Accordlnp- to the Buddhist tradition the
young prince shows himself master of all the learn-

146 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
ing of his teachers and able to instruct them. So
that we read that one of bis teachers feU prostrate
before him and cried, " Thou art teacher of thy
teachers." But when we look at the Gospel story,
we read that Jesus went up to the Temple and sat
at the feet of the doctors. With chUdlIke faith He
believed that the appointed teachers of the nation
could answer the questions which had begun to stir
his soul. He never dreamed of teaching them. The
art that would picture Jesus as declaiming before
the astonished Rabbis has missed the meaning of
the story. This, then, is the difference : the one is
the old story of the precocious childhood, and the
other is the record of a chUd that was not precocious,
but who graduaUy increased in wisdom and stature,
in favor with God and man. A life that was per
fectly natural because of Its supernatural grasp upon
all that was essentially human.
The story of Jesus learning from the doctors was
never borrowed from Buddha's teaching of his teach
ers. The latter may be a copy of the Gospel story
by one who had missed the meaning of the original.
And indeed It is to be reraembered that the contact
of East and West has been nearer than has been
supposed. In one of the splendid Buddhist temples of Japan,
there hangs a bell of very exquisite workmanship.
Beside it stand two noble candelabra. The first im
pulse is to say that the altars and towers of Europe
are decked with the spoils of the East, but a closer
look will disclose a date of the seventeenth century,
and a closer study wUl teach us that perhaps at the

CHBIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 147
very time the PUgrim Fathers were sojourning in
HoUand, staunch Protestant sailors were stealing
bells and candelabra from the Catholic cathedrals
of the Netherlands to decorate Buddhist temples In
Japan ! — a view of history which is startling, per
haps, but which raay serve to save us frora hasty
generaUzatlons concerning kindred traditions in Bud
dhist and Christian Scriptures.
A second point which must be noticed before be
ginning the consideration of the relation between
Buddhist and Christian theology is Buddhist mo
raUty. There are three points in Buddhist morality which
it is said show a superiority over Christianity, Inas
much as the Buddhist raorality was preached cen
turies before Christ, and the teachings of Christ do
not, it is asserted, surpass it. Now even if this be
true, it does not tell against Christianity ; on the
contrary, Jesus distinctly told his disciples that He
came not to destroy, but to fulfiU. So if the reli
gion of Jesus be the religion for mankind, then it
must fulfill not only the law of the Jew, but also all
that the human heart responds to amongst the Gen
tiles. Let us look, then, at the three great comraand
ments of the Buddhist law. The first is the de
struction of caste, the second the giving of alms, and
the third the forgiveness of Injuries.
And first, as regards the destruction of the caste
system, there could no greater mistake than to sup
pose that it was an object of attack by Buddha. He

148 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
simply preached deliverance for all who were op
pressed by sorrow, and that gracious message no
doubt drew many low caste men and women. But
no sooner were they gathered together than a new
caste was Instituted. Those only could attain to
Nirvana who became ascetics. Now as that was im
possible for the large majority of men, the disciples
of Buddha were at once divided into two classes ;
those who sought the higher life, and those who, im
mersed in the cares of this world, must content
themselves on a lower plane.
The feeling of having a share as a citizen in the king
dom of Buddha's children was denied to the laity, much
more so even than was such a feeling denied in the old
Brahmanical sacrificial faith to the non-Brahman, who,
albeit only through the medium of the priest, could draw
near to the god equaUy with the priest himself. The
Buddhist believer, who did not feel in himself the power
to renounce the world, could console himself with coming
ages ; he could hope for this, that it might be then vouch
safed to him, as a disciple ... of one of the countless
Buddhas who shall come after him, to don the garb of a
monk, and to taste the bhss of deliverance.'
So we find In Buddhist countries to-day the sarae
phenoraenon which appears in mediaeval history.
The monasteries of Europe were no doubt in a sense
the forerunners of democracy, inasmuch as prince
and peasant might dwell there in equality, but the
little democracy Itself becarae a privileged class ; as
troublesome to kings as the raodern nihilist, as the
kingly connivance at the murder of Becket shows ;
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 387.

CHBIST's KEUGION AND BUDDHISM. 149
and more burdensome to the reUgious layman than
any caste systera, as the Protestant Reformation
proves. Undoubtedly the social morality of Buddhism was
an advance on that of Brahmanism, but it was as
far below the brotherhood of humanity, preached
by Jesus, as was the Monkish system of the Middle
Ages. In every Buddhist country to-day the monas
tery is a curse. The traveler who stands amongst the
trees of the Japanese monastery and sees the portly
abbot, in his yeUow robe of silk, seated at ease, while
a humble brother adjusts the sandal to his sacred
foot ; or watches him feed the carp, that flash like
gold through the waters of the mimic lake, begins
to doubt the reality of his senses. Almost believes
that he is in England, that Chaucer is alive, that
these men are those whom the poet saw on the way
to Canterbury, till he sees them file with downcast
eyes and folded hands before the altar bright with
candles ; then he sees that above the altar there is
no image of the gracious Mary, but the sad and no
ble face of Buddha, and the monotonous chant that
surely must be an " Ave," he learns Is the Buddhist
even-song, " Om Mani padme om''
This Is no excrescence that has grown on the
stock, as was the monkish systera on Christianity;
it Is a degenerate, but yet a legitimate, fruit of the
tree which the Buddha planted.
A second point in which Buddhist morality Is said
to be equal to that of Christ is in the matter of
almsgiving.

150 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
It may be said to be almost literally true that a
Buddhist " never turns his face frora any poor raan."
A great array of mendicants, male and female, is
supported by the offerings of the faithful, most of
whom are as poor as the widow woman who reUeved
the necessities of Elijah.
Certainly we need to pause before boasting of our
charities, when we leam that centuries before Christ
hospitals were buUt, and the destitute cared for,
wherever the religion of Buddha was preached. But
when we come to examine the motive which lay back
of this good work, we shaU see how far it was re
moved from the motive urged by Jesus. We have
already seen that absolute asceticism was the first
step toward the attainment of Nirvana. The giving
up of aU worldly possessions was necessary for aU
who entered on the path of a perfect life, but for
those who eould not leave all there remained the
giving of alms, not, be it remarked, that the neces
sities of others might be relieved, — that was a mere
incident, — but that the hold of the things of this
world might be loosened. So that Buddha would
never have used the words of the apostle, which lie at
the root of all Christian almsgiving : " Whoso hath
this world's good and seeth his brother have need,
and shutteth up his compassion from him, how
dweUeth the love of God in him ? " He would
rather have said, " Whoso hath this world's good,
how can he attain Nirvana?" Almsgiving, then,
was not the sign of a compassion which showed the
indweUing love of God ; it was the untying of one of
the cords that held the soul to life. Christian alms-

CHRIST'S BELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 151
gi-ving is the sharing of that which is considered a
good. Buddhist almsgiving is the getting rid of
that which is an evU.
The last point needful to consider in this connec
tion is the forgiveness of injuries. Christ's teaching
concerning resentment has always been supposed to
be unique. It is true that there have been those
who have declared it to be impracticable, but never
before have we had reason to suppose that it had
been anticipated. But Buddha's charge to his dis
ciples lays as much stress upon the importance of
bearing injuries with patience as do Jesus' words to
the disciples. Again and again they are told not
to resist injuries, not to return insults, but to bear
themselves with patience in the midst of a perverse
generation. He who holds back rising anger like a roUing chariot,
him I caU a real driver ; other people are but holding the
reins. Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome
evU by good ; let him overcome the greedy by UberaUty,
the har by truth !
Beware of bodUy anger, and control thy body ! Leave
the sins of the body, and with thy body practice virtue !
Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy
tongue ! Leave the sins of the tongue, and practice virtue
with thy tongue !
Beware of the anger of the mind, and control thy
mind 1 Leave the sins of the mind, and practice virtue
with thy mind 1
The -wise who control their body, who control their

152 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed weU
controlled.' There Is a beautiful story of a father, who, being
murdered by his enemy, with his dying breath said
to his son : " My son, look not too far and not too
near. For enmity comes not to an end by enmity,
my son ; by non-enmity, my son, enmity comes to an
end." ^ But if we ask the reason that Is assigned
for a course of action apparently so opposed to the
in.stlncts of the human heart, we find that the reason
is as far as possible removed from that given by
Jesus in counseling the same thing. Jesus said, " All
ye are brethren." " Ye must be the children of your
father in heaven, for He maketh his sun to rise on the
evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust." "As your father," Jesus seeras
to say, — " as your father continues to bless In spite
of evil, so do you. Good is more powerful than evil.
It wiU prevail. Ye are all brethren, ye must not re
turn evil with evil, for that is to call forth evil again
in him. Ye must quench the fiery darts of his evil
spirit in the stream of your love, until, his evil being
exhausted, ye save his soul alive." Now whether
that be practical or not it is InteUiglble. We know
that what Jesus wished to teach was that every man,
who had learned that God was his father, was to be
anxious about bis brother's soul and not at all anx
ious about his own dignity, or rights, or peace, if only
he might save his brother's soul.
But if we look at the sequel of the Buddhist story
^ Dhammapada, chap. xvii.
' Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 294.

Christ's religion and buddhism. 153
already alluded to we shall learn that nothing was
further from the thought of the moralist than this.
Passivity was recommended because it was on the
whole more profitable than resistance. In the long
run the peaceable raan would have the best of it ;
would not beget enemies, but would reap the advan
tages of peace. So that this doctrine, which at first
sight promised to be the anticipation of the Chris
tian doctrine of love, is seen to be a most pusillan
imous code, far less likely to lead to moral great
ness than the rugged Roman doctrine of virtue or
strength. It Is not the generous self-surrender of
love, but the cool reflection that peace is more prof
itable than war, which is the mainspring of Buddhist
morality.' But there was a deeper reason still, one which lay
nearer to the heart of the Buddhist than anything
else, and that was the thought that all resistance,
all moral excitement, was agitating, and any agita
tion was hurtful. What they were striving to reach
was Nirvana, — the calm that was not blown upon.
Whenever they gave way to anger they disturbed
the soul's calra. That was why they were not to re
sist evil. We see, then, that the apostolic Injunction
to be " angry " yet not sin would have been incom
prehensible to the Buddhist. Chilst's cleansing of
the Temple, his withering denunciation of hypocrisy,
which made his disciples think of one eaten up by a
zeal for a holy cause, — all that would have seemed
to the Buddhist a foolish waste of energy a use-
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 292.

154 HIS star in the east.
less disturbance of the soul's calm.' The sense of
duty to a brother's highest good, that can lead the
sarae life to denounce his evil and suffer patiently
his resentment, which (together with love to God)
lies at the root of Christian morality, would be as
incomprehensible to the Buddhist as the pregnant
paradox of Jesus, " He that vnU save his soul
shall lose it."
Nothing could have been further from the thought
of Jesus than any exhortation to calra. " I ara not
come to send peace, but a sword ;" " I am come to
set a man at variance with his father ; " "A man's
foes shall be they of his own household."
He was contlnuaUy calling the attention of his
disciples to the fact that the following of Him would
lead to suffering and disappointment and sharae.
Now it was inevitable that this doctrine of non-
resistance, because of its disturbing effect on the
soul's calm, would lead to the obliteration of aU dis
tinction between good and evil. And this we find
to be the case. "Those who cause rae pain and
those who cause me joy, to aU I ara alike ; affection
and hatred I know not. In joy and sorrow I reraain
unmoved. In honor and disjionor ; throughout I am
alike. That Is ray equanimity." ^
It is constantly urged in favor of Buddhism that
it was the first religion to Inculcate moral exertion
as a raeans of salvation. And certainly in as far as
1 The Neoplatonists were so impressed with the importance of
maintaining the soul's calm that they condemned suicide chiefly on
that account. See Lecky' s History of European Morals, vol. ii. p.
43. 2 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 298.

CHRIST'S religion AND BUDDHISM. 155
this served as a substitute for ritualism, it was a
great advance on what had gone before. But it will
not bear the test of too strict an examination. Bud
dha himself, and his disciples after him, seem to have
been profoundly impressed with the reality of an
evU spirit, hostUe to the moral improvement of man
kind. Yet when we ask how that spirit was to be
overcome, we learn frora the parable of the tortoise
and the jackal. The jackal endeavoring to seize
the tortoise he withdrew into his sheU, and the jackal
having waited long in the hopes of gaining an ad
vantage at length gave over in despair, finding that
the tortoise would put forth neither foot nor tail.'
Moral exertion, then, consisted simply in withdraw
ing into the citadel of the soul ; there the life re
mained a prisoner to the end. Could anything be
further from the Christian counsel, " Resist the devil
and he -will flee from you " ?
This belief in the watchfulness of evil and the
susceptibility of human nature to evil begot a ti
midity of spirit which made the healthy Christian
freedom, " to the pure all things are pure," impossi
ble, and so prevented any progress in holiness.
But of course the weakness of the whole moral
system lay in the Impossibility of prayer. If moral
ity be the " custom " which has slowly formed as the
result of the gradual revelation of God's wIU, —
which is the assumption with which Christian mo
rality begins, — then the thing of most importance
is that the " way " for the revelation of that will be
kept open by communion between the human and the
1 Oldenburg's Life of Buddha, p. 313.

156 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
divine spirit, and that the human spirit by that spir
itual exercise be strengthened to receive the same.
But Buddhism, starting with the assumption that
gods and men were both dependent upon raoral exer
tion, had no place for prayer, consequently raoral
"exertion " was only self -contemplation, which, so far
from being exertion, the effort of the human spirit
to commune with the source of light and trath, be
came, before long, a state of moral and mental ab
straction, which led to nothing but self-conceit or
spiritual vacuity.
There are some, indeed, who hold that the aban
donraent of prayer was in itself a distinct raoral gain,
inasmuch as prayer is essentially selfish. But they
have in mind soraething very different frora Chris
tian prayer, the essence of which is unselfishness,
which. In the last analysis, resolves itself into a pe
tition that the individual will may not be done. So
that, considered simply as a moral exercise, nothing
has ever been suggested as so likely to destroy self
ishness as Christian prayer.'
While, then, we do not admit that the teaching of
Buddha on the subject of raorals is equal to that of
Christ, yet no one can fail to be struck with adrai
ration at two things in Buddhisra. The one is the
saint, and the other is the raissionary. It Is easy to
call attention to the selfishness, and the ignorance,
and the sensuality of Buddhist monasteries, for there
1 "Prayer is just life ; inspiration, and respiration, in the king
dom of God : receiving and giving, the circulation of Love." Letters
from a Mystic, p. 157.

CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 157
is enough of aU ; but as in Catholicism there were
found a Fra Angelico, a St. Bernard, and these but
representatives of a great company of saints known
ouly to God, who, in the midst of the corruption of
the Church, were the salt of the earth, so it Is In
Buddhism. There are to-day in Japan boly raen who sit un
moved amidst all the changing fashions of that vola
tile people, wrapt in the contemplation of the Un
changeable, so full of dignity, so gentle, so courteous,
so peaceful, the fires of passion which once seemed so
fierce they raight never be quenched are extinguished,
and there shines from the life a sort of moon-like ra
diance that speaks of the day of struggle passed, of
the evening of perfect peace. If by their fruits we
are to know raen, then we raay be sure that by such
a life has stood one whose narae he did not know.
If we take note of such a life, we wiU be sure that it
has been with Jesus. No wonder that when such
an one dies the monks should feel again something
of that thriU which made them tremble when they
stood as novices on the threshold of what they
thought would be a higher life. We are told they
gather about the dying saint, and lay on his heart a
coU of spun cotton ; and standing round him, and
holding each in his hand a thread, to draw some
virtue from the holy life they failed to imitate, they
say, "I take refuge in Buddha," and the saint re
plies, " I come to thee, O Lord." " Buddha, save
us," cry the brothers, and the flickering breath as it
issues from the lips parted in a smUe of ecstasy

158 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
murmurs, " O Essence Divine, with joy, with rapture,
I come to lose myself in Thee." '
There can be no doubt that such lives have had a
profound influence In extending the limits of the king
dora of Buddha. What has been said of the early
Christian anchorites applies equaUy to Buddhism.
The first condition of aU reaUy great moral exceUence
is a spirit of genuine self-sacrifice and self-renunciation,
. . . which exercises a most attractive influence upon
mankind. Imperfect and distorted as was the ideal of
the anchorite, deeply too as it was perverted by the ad
mixture of a spiritual selfishness, stUl the example of many
thousands who, in obedience to what they beUeved to be
right, voluntarUy gave up all that men hold dear, cast to
the winds every compromise with enjoyment, and made
extreme self-abnegation the very principle of their lives,
was not whoUy lost upon the world.^
Of the missionary I may not speak at length,
though the subject is full of Interest. There have
been three missionary religions : Christianity, which
ever has and must be such, because it is the religion
of the Son of Man; Mahometanisra, which prose
lytes with the sword ; and Buddhisra, which has spent
its force. And yet the annals of the last might be
compared for heroism, for zeal, and for results ac
complished, to the records of Christian missions.
It has been said. The Brahman seeks to save his
own soul ; the Buddhist seeks to save his own soul
by saving another. This is not true of Buddhists
1 This description was given to the author by Mrs. Leonowens,
who was present at the death of a Buddhist saint in Siam.
^ Leoky's Hist, of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 156.

CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 159
in general, yet it is nearly true of the Buddhist mis
sionary, though not as the logical outcome of their
system, but rather as the result of the influence of
that Spirit which ever breathes on the soul that
seeks for good.
And now let us compare Buddhist philosophy
with Christian theology, for that raust be the test to
which we raust bring the religion of Jesus. Can it
sympathize with raankind ? Can it suffer with every
part of the great human family in its search for
truth ? Has it an explanation of that secret which
Buddha tried to answer ?
We have seen that the starting-point of Buddhist
phUosophy was sorrow. Buddha called men to him
as to one over whora sorrow had no raore power, be
cause the sensibilities were deadened. Now Jesus
came with the same appreciation of sorrow and be
gan with the Invitation, " Come unto me aU ye that
labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Again, He said to his disciples, " In the world ye
shaU have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world." Not, be it noticed, not by
deadening his sensibilities, for we read that so keen
were they that " He endured the cross and disre
garded the shame, because of the joy that was ever
before Him."
And now let us go a step further. The sorrow of
life, said Buddha, is caused by the impermanence of
life. But Christ felt that too. " Heaven and earth,"
He said, " shaU pass away." He wept when he
thought how soon the solid structure of the city He

160 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
loved should be dissolved. The disciple who came the
nearest to his heart wrote words which the Buddhist
can appreciate perhaps better than we. " Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world ;
for all that is In the world, the lust of the eyes,
the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, is not of
the Father, but is of the world, and the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof ; " and these
words let us into the heart of the whole question.
The religion of Jesus appreciates as profoundly as
that of Buddha the sorrow of life ; but Christ de
clares that impermanence Is the characteristic only
of the " world," that which has no consciousness of
the life of the Father in it. Buddhism knows no
such distinction. The heroism of the martyr, and
the subtlety of the serpent, both are the result 'of
the Skandhas ; neither has the life of the Father in
it. All shaU pass away, said Buddha. But a disciple
of Jesus wrote, " Some things shaU be removed that
those things which cannot be shaken raay remain."
StiU, it may be said, " After all here are two opin
ions concerning life : there is something to be said .
for each ; how Is one to decide between them ? " Let
us follow the streara of Buddhisra a little nearer to
its source. Life, said Buddha, is sorrow. Sorrow is
caused by impermanency. Man is carried on like a
fluttering leaf, or like a straw that the tide bears on
its surface. Here it touches the bank of love, and
there It is drifted to the land of sickness and decay.
Striving to attach itself to something, it is drifted
out to the sea of death, only to float back again be
tween the banks of life. Man is the slave of the

Christ's beligion and buddhism. 161
circumstances that made hira. His personality is
the fiction of the Skandhas.
Now what says Christ to this ? Says ? He says
nothing. He stands before us in his majesty, and
as we gaze on Him we come to know with a certainty
that no logical deduction can attain : That He is not
the slave of time and tide. He is a power ; He is
not an effect ; He is a cause. Whatever men may
be, Jesus is not a thing. He is a person. He is a
king. We may be the result of the Skandhas, but
the perfect man lays his hand on nature's rocks,
and they are as wax in his fingers. The voice of
the true man calls back the dead. The voice of
the true raan the waves and winds obey. The true
man Is nature's master. The perfect man drives
back with a word the cloud of sorrow, and the dark
ened life blooms with beauty as heaven's light
rushes in. The perfect man touches the soul all
shriveled up with sin, and the life leaps and walks
and glorifies God. All this the perfect, the true,
the natural raan does. We have seen but one nat
ural man. He does not teU us what he is. He
asks us what we think of him, and we try to answer
by comparing him with the best of the unnatural
men, — Elias, the great reformer, Jeremias, the man
of sorrow, one of the prophets who foretold a greater.
But there is no response. It is only when that which
is like a rock within the individual, that which is un
shaken by public opinion, answers, " Thou art the
Son of the living God," that the Son of Man reveals
hiraself and says, "Thou art blessed." Flesh and
blood did not reveal this, no meditation on nature or
11

162 his stab in the east.
on man led to this : but my Father in heaven, the
source of aU life, whom you see in seeing me, hath
revealed unto that within you which is partaker of
his own life, that the true man is not the result of
circumstances, but the son of the living God. That
faith is the result of the Incarnation, the manifesta
tion of the Son of man. In the power of that man,
of that Son, the men and women who knew Jesus
" after the flesh," and the innumerable company of
those who have known Hira in the spirit, rose to be
lieve that they too were persons, — children. In the
person of Jesus they saw at once the revelation of
the personality of God and the assurance of the per
sonality of man.
The Christian answer to the Buddhist doctrine of
the " Skandhas " is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ,
the manifestation of one who knew that He " carae
from God and went to God." " In his light men have
seen light." There can be no question that the sup
posed re-vival of Buddhism among certain people in
our o-wn land is due to the waning belief in the per
manence of human personality. It is then of the
utmost importance that we should remember that
the Gospel assumes the personality of God and of
man, and that apart from that assumption the words
of Jefsus have no meaning. Now Buddhism inherited
its skepticism of personality from Brahmanism, but
the pantheism of Brahmanlsra rested on the assump
tion that the essence of life is power. Now nothing
can be more certain than that power must return
again to its original source. The everlasting divi
sion of power is unthinkable. But Jesus' revelation

Christ's religion and buddhism. 163
of God is not primarily a Being of power, but of
love. But undivided love is as unthinkable as di
vided power. It is true that
Love's sum remains what it was before ;
but love presupposes an object, and self-conscious
ness and wiU. So that if love imparts itself, it must
impart the essentials of personality. This is not
stated in logical sequence in the Gospel, but it is
assumed. The essence of personality with Buddha
was Kamma, the result of selfishness ; the essence of
personality with Jesus was love realizing Sonship.
" Because we were (by creation) sons, God hath
sent forth his Spu-it in our hearts, whereby we cry
Abba, Father," — that Is the cry of a latent per-
sonaUty realizing its possibility.
. . . God 's all, man 's naught :
But, also God, whose pleasure brought
Man into being, stands away
As it were a handbreadth oflt, to give
Room for the newly-made to live,
And look at Him from a place apart.
And use his gifts of brain and heart.
Given indeed but to keep forever.
Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
Man's very elements from man,
Saying " But all is God 's,'' whose plan
Was to create man and then leave him
Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
But able to glorify Him too.
As a mere machine could never do.
That prayed or praised all unaware
Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer,
Made perfect as a thing of course.
Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
Of love and power as a pin-point rock.
And, looking to God who ordained divorce

164 his stab in the east.
Of the rock from his boundless continent.
Sees in his power made evident,
Only excess by a million-fold
O'er the power God gave man in the mould.
But that personality Is progressive. " He came unto
his own ; . . . to as many as received Him, to them
gave He power to become (consciously) the sons of
God." " God is the only perfect personality."' The
beauty with which Browning has stated this is
equaled by the profound insight which led hira to
incorporate it in the poera of " Christmas Eve," as
the necessary condition of the Incarnation.
That is the real question at issue between not only
Buddhism and Christianity, but nearly aU Oriental
reUglons and Christianity. It is popularly supposed
that man forras his conception of God in accord
ance with his notion of hiraself; but I think the
religious history of India wUl teach us that the con
trary is true. It was the panthelsra of India that
made belief in the personality of man impossible.
Divinity yawned, as it were, a great gulf at man's
feet ; into it he must ine-vltably fall. How was It
possible for any individual to stand forth and de
clare that he alone was a person ; not only an effect,
but a cause ; not merely a creature, but a creator ;
not merely natural, but also supernatural? Such
presumption was impossible save for the man who
was conscious of having, before the world was, shared
the glory of that unseen, majestic, irresistible, omni
present power which He could call his Father, the es
sence of whose being is love and light. Such an one
could speak of himself as a Son. Now if in the
1 Lotze, Philosophy of Beligion, trans, by George T. Ladd.

Christ's religion and buddhism. 165
presence of such an one the Buddhist could come to
feel that he too was partaker of this indestructible
sonship, tbe very corner-stone of the Buddhist phi
losophy would be removed, and every noble aspira
tion and every virtuous deed would find its place
in that buUding the corner-stone of which is Jesus
Christ. So much for the relation of Christian theology to
the starting-point of Buddhist phUosophy; but can
it go farther and enter into the solemn doctrine of
Kamma ?
Of course, if it be once admitted that man is a
person, that death is an incident which the person
ality survives, Kamma can no longer be regarded
as the survivor of the previous life, — a sort of evil
individuality from which man should seek to escape ;
but still that which Kamma represents remains, as
an awful fact, to be accounted for. Pantheism shad
ing off into agnosticism was the theological basis of
Buddhism, the doctrine of the Skandhas was its phil
osophical, and Kamma its moral, expression. The
Incarnation we believe to be the answer to the first ;
what has the religion of Christ to say to the second ?
It cannot be ignored, for the law of Kamma bears
the sarae relation to ethics that the law of the con
servation of physical force does to physics.
We have already described this doctrine at such
length that it will be only necessary to recall Its
meaning here. St. Paul's words describe it: "What
soever a man soweth, that shaU he also reap." Let
us see what that means. Here is a man, we wiU say.

166 his stab in the east.
who has no thought in life save to heap up wealth
and gratify his senses. He succeeds ; at last he
dies. Now what becomes of that force of selfishness
which he set In motion? Modern science tells us
that by the law of heredity it is transmitted to the
man's descendants; it may lie latent for a genera
tion or two, but like a subterranean river it wiU come
to the surface at last. But Buddhism would not
rest content with this answer ; It would say that Is
one of the effects, but what have you to say of the
man himself? What has been the effect on him?
Is he to remain the same forever? What scheme
have you for changing him ? Or take his case be
fore he dies. Every sin begets the desire to sin.
Every good Impulse resisted makes a man less able
to struggle against temptation. How is a man to
escape from the bondage? We see that It Is the
same problem by which the Jew was perplexed. He
had broken the law. How could that violation be
atoned for ? How could he be free from sin ? The
Buddhist answer was a perfectly logical one. It
was, as we have seen, an exhortation to ascetcism.
Suppress every wish and evil wishes wiU be smoth
ered. Crush every hope and there wIU be no dis
appointment. Kill every passion and there wiU be
no lust.
Now the Christian answer was very different. St.
Paul, who appreciated as profoundly as any Buddhist
the stupendous power of Kamma, wrote, " The law of
the spirit of Ufe in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and of death." That is a very
remarkable expression, " the law of the spirit of life."

cheist's beligion and buddhism. 167
There is no escape by violating or disregarding law,
only the law of sin and of death is subordinated to
the " law of the spirit of life," just as the law of
gravitation by which a rock is held fast rooted In the
ground is subordinated by the high law of mechanics
by which the same rock is lifted up and set for a
polished corner of the temple. The Buddhist and
Christian doctrine of salvation are as unlike as the
different advice that raight be given to a man who
was about to pass through a plague - stricken city.
One would say. Remember that whatever you touch Is
tainted, therefore eat as little, drink as little, breathe
as little as you can ; speak to no man, touch no one ;
the less your contact with life, the less your chance
of death. And another would say. Seek to lay hold
of the law of life, eat and drink, and fill your lungs
with pure air, build up your system, do not think of
death ; but go your way through the streets of the
stricken city, touch aU whom you can help, bear
yourself like Italy's brave king in cholera-stricken
Naples, and the law of the spirit of life wiU make
you free frora the law of death.
Now what Is the thing that can bring us under the
influence of the law of Ufe ? For unless we can
find that we must admit that the Buddhist is right,
that the law of death is inevitable.
The Christian answer is, that the revelation of
Jesus Christ has saved great raultitudes whom no
man can number from the vanity which Buddhisra
deplores, and from the pessimism which Is the Bud
dhist antidote. How ? In this way : —
In seeing the life of Jesus, men have felt the

168 his stab in the east.
silent rebuke upon their own low lives. In the ad
miration which has deepened into love, they have
recognized the presence of unsuspected Ideals and
become conscious of a power to realize them. For
getful of themselves, they have followed that life
along its path of beauty and power, and seen it end
in a death which revealed at once not only the vanity
but the horror of sin, and yet showed that neither
sin nor death can separate God's child from his love
and care. Men have corae down from Calvary con
vinced that God is on their side In the battle against
sin and sorrow. When they tried to analyze their
position in life, they found that the principle of faith
by which they identified themselves with the Son of
God was the means by which a sense of pardon for
the past was produced and an assurance of future
salvation. A new principle of life has come into their
lives ; they have been, as it were, born again. But
the Buddhist will say : How about the past ? You
can't get rid of that ; it has produced its effect upon
your character. You are stiU under law. And the
Christian will answer : Somehow, since this change
has come, the past, which was a burden, is now no
burden at all. I suppose my faith in God's power,
my faith In God's love, which did not hesitate at the
sacrifice of Jesus to bring me to Him, has made me
feel that He could take care of the past. But In
deed I am not under " law, but under grace." I am
like a man who had within him the seeds of con
sumption, living all uncared for, in a cliraate that
sooner or later would work death ; that is to be
under " law." I have been led into a balmy atmos-

CHBIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 169
phere where day by day a physician tends me ; that
is to be " under " personal favor or " grace."
So I have learned that health can never be gained
by the suppression of disease, but by the gift of the
principle of life. I know that I must reap what I
bave sown, but when I reap I know that the seeds
of the grain cannot root theraselves in ray redeemed
nature. I reap in repentance, in humility, in thank
fulness, even in joy ; for I can in this way enter Into
the fellowship of my Master's suffering, be made
conformable unto his death,- and so attain to the res
urrection unto a higher Ufe.
However men may formulate the doctrine, the
fact has been that, by the Influence of the cross of
Christ, raen have been able to turn their faces away
frora the Gorgon head of the past, the horror of
which has well-nigh petrified the East, and echo St.
Paul's shout of joy, " Forgetting those things which
are behind, I press toward the mark for the prize
of the high calling of God In Christ Jesus." That
is the everlasting hope which has manifested itself
in individual endeavor and national progress.
If, says the Buddhist, you will only wait, if the
soul wiU, as it were, hold its breath, Kamma will be
exhausted. But the Christian says, " ' Up, let us be
going.' ' In the cross of Christ I flnd the assurance
of God's pardon for the past and the promise of his
favor for the future. If you teU me that law raust
work itself out to the end, I say that, by the Influ-
^ See Robertson's sermon on the text "Sleep on now and take
your rest — Up, let us be going."

170 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
ence of Jesus I am being drawn into the natural
atmosphere of the soul, and in that atmosphere sin
cannot have dominion over me, and sorrow and sigh
ing flee away."
The fact is that Buddhism had not rightly diag
nosed the disease of humanity. It is sin, not sorrow,
which Is a " sore burden too heavy to bear." Sin
begins in selfishness and continues from despair.
Now the cross of Christ, " constraining " man to
love, makes selfishness appear shameful, and the res
urrection, opening the pathway to eternal Ufe, slays
despair. That is redemption. So that the Chris
tian can say, " It Is no longer I that do what I would
not, but sin which dwelleth in me," and In the same
breath, " Sin shaU not reign in my mortal body."
In considering the revelation of the cross of
Christ, by which man is redeemed from the power
of sin, we find that it not only answers the problem
of Kamma, but also throws light on the "Way."
The inertness of the divinity of Brahmanism had
thrown on man the labor of Sisyphus, — the task of
rolling his own soul up the hill of God. The Brah
man said the oneness of man and God is dependent
upon Kamma, some human " act," i. e., sacrifice.
Buddha said : Gods (if there be such) and men are
alike the slaves of Kararaa, therefore exercise your
spiritual nature so as to suppress It. In both reli
gions the Inactive East has declared its belief in the
efficacy of human effort. And that faith Buddha
formulated In the doctrine of the " Way."
To some it may seera as if nothing could be

Christ's beligion and buddhism. 171
further from this doctrine than St. Paul's teaching,
for he seemed to count all human effort as useless,
but that is the result of shallow criticism. St. Paul
would have welcoraed the moral earnestness of Bud
dhism ; he, too, would have said aU men are the
slaves of Kamma ; he would have agreed with Bud
dha that this law could never be counteracted by
Brahmanical Kararaa, or sacrifice; but he would
have asserted quite as strongly that it could not be
suppressed by self-destruction. What then ? Would
he have said that man was a passive instrument In
this matter of his own fate ? Far from it ! He
would have declared that the law of sin could only
be overcome by a most treraendous effort of the hu
man spirit, — by the great Kararaa, or act of raan's
spiritual nature, by which he identifies hiraself with
the conqueror of sin and death, — which St. Paul
called, by a power of spiritual insight never equaled,
faith.^ By faith Paul raeant that absolute trust in
God as a Father, by which the prophet had said that
the " just," those who have been brought into the
right relation to God, live. That trust Is the result
of the revelation of Jesus Christ : the disciple gains
that spirit frora his master. The perfectly trustful
man is the perfectly " just " man, because the " just,"
or right relation of the soul to God, is the relation
of a child to its father.^ That trust, St. Paul said,
was effected by the cross of Christ. The Brahman
was right in declaring the necessity of sacrifice, and
^ " Religion is never exactly a demonstrable theorem, but the
conviction of its truth is a deed that is accredited to character."
Lotze's Philosophy of Beligion.
' See Erskine's Spiritual Order.

172 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the Buddhist In Insisting upon moral exertion. Both
are justified In Christian faith — the effect of sacri
fice and also a spiritual act.
It may be objected that this is not as logical as
the Buddhist doctrine. It may be, but it does not
follow that it is not true. There is more in man
than the logical faculty. This " faith," of which the
Scripture speaks, is not, as It is sometimes said, the
paralysis of reason. It is the very glorification of
reason. It Is the powerful exercise of the whole
spiritual nature In response to the divine call. When
that has been heard, sin Is fearful no more, as to the
Buddhist, because of its inevitable penalty, but be
cause it Is the violation of the perfect law of love.
There remains one more question to consider, and
that is the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana and the
Christian heaven.
To gain rest ; to find a refuge from which pain
can be excluded, a harbor where the soul is no more
ruffled by the chilling winds of life : to find a secret
chamber and shut to the door, and exclude even self-
consciousness, — that is what the tired soul wants.
Quiet and rest, and peace and calm. What can be
better ? Apparently Christ had nothing better to
offer. He came with an in-vitation to " rest," and
he departed leaving his '•'peace."
But Nirv&na and heaven are not the same. Bud
dha's rest is the relaxation of a soul tired out at the
end of life, which sinks exhausted never more to
rise. Christ's rest is the unwearied exercise of the
highest faculties. It is the rest of the lark, who

Christ's beligion and buddhism. 173
hangs between heaven and earth intoxicated with
the very joy of existence, strong in the conscious
ness that the eternal winds are uplifting her. Bud
dha's peace is gained by severing every tie that
binds man to his feUows. The Christian peace is
found in the perfect accord of kindred souls united
in the adoration of the ideal life which at last they
see. Buddha's highest joy was to be found In an absorp
tion which would sUence the individual cry. But to
the Christian the impatience with this petty individ
uality gives place to a great hope. Now our indi
viduality is like an organ in a damp room. Most of
the keys stick, and only here and there a querulous
sound is heard. But take the organ into a genial
atmosphere, let aU the silent notes speak, and then
its individuality will be a glorious thing. And the
perfect speaking of every human instrument will
make the eternal harmony that echoes about the
throne of God.
Thus it stands then. Buddha says this individ
uality is so miserable a thing that no real peace can
come tUl it is destroyed. This Indi-vldual life, Jesus
tells us In the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep,
and the prodigal son, is so precious a thing that It is
worth aU sacrifice to bring it where it can show Its
glory. It is only partial now, but hereafter all the
unsuspected faculties wIU spring to life. Every soul
shall find itself partaker of all humanity's glories.
Each shall be poet and orator, and artist and mu
sician, because each wiU be a saint, and a saint Is
a holy man, and a holy man means a whole man.

174 his stab in the east.
and the whole man is he in whom dwells all the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. Buddha says to
humanity, " You are beaten in the battle of life ;
you will find peace only when you have reached a
place of safety, where no more wounds can come."
He appeals to our weakness. Jesus says, " Be of
good cheer ; I have overcome the world." " In my
father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare
a place for you." " In that day ye shaU know that
I am in my father, and ye in me, and I in you."
In the consciousness of that power humanity shaU
wake up after God's likeness and be satisfied with
it. No Buddhist anticipates with a thrill the dawn
ing of that day when. In the joyous confusion of
that home-coming, the chUdren of God who were
scattered abroad find aU unexpectedly the gifts that
have been prepared for them ; when the lame man
shaU leap as an hart, the ears of the deaf shaU be
unstopped, the blind shall see. Verily in that day
the gospel, the good news, shaU be preached to our
poor humanity, when we see the things that God
has prepared for them who love him. Not an in
dividuality more and more isolated and cramped tiU
it would hide Itself for very sharae, but an individ
uality which loses its peculiarities and eccentricities
through a development which raakes it partaker of
all the glory of humanity : that is the gospel of the
Christ, and it appeals to the noblest instinct of our
nature, an undying hope.
I have endeavored, as far as time would permit,
to review the salient points of Buddhism, and com-

CHBIST's EELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 175
pare them with the religion of Jesus. Beginning
with the phUosophy of Buddhism, we have traced its
teachings tlU they are lost in the clouds of Nirvana.
But it raay be said nothing i is easier than to refute
any religious system by taking a bit here and there,
and commenting on It. A religion, like a man, has
a right to be justified by faith, and not by works.
The true way would be to ask what does a religion
seek to do, and so judge it by its spirit.
Now the spirit of Buddhism is pessimism. Its
great hope is hopelessness. " Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity." That is the Buddhist preaching. On
that principle conduct Is regulated, and It consists in
an effort to lessen the contact with all life, because
all life without distinction is vanity. Those who de
light to speak of Jesus as the disciple of Gautama
point to the same tone in his teaching. " How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of
heaven ! " " Lay not up for yourselves treasure upon
earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where
thieves break through and steal." But they miss
the raeaning of Jesus' pessimism. That arises not
from the essential vanity of Ufe, but frora the vanity
of life divorced frora God. The interest of a man
in the jewel case frora which the pearl of great price
had been lost — that is pitiful. The child who has
lost his father, wandering alralessly through the
splendid palace, seeking to solace hiraself with toys
and baubles — that is pathetic. When the son tried
to feed his soul in rioting and drunkenness, he found
" the vanity of vanities ; " but when he " came to
himself," when he came home, the ring and the best

176 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
robe, the fatted calf, the music and the dancing,
were the fit symbols of an eternal joy. Life to the
Buddha seeraed vain, because there was no purpose
back of it. Life seemed vain to Jesus, because
he knew the purpose back of it, and saw men war
ring against it. That thought has been the main
spring of Christian activity. The incarnation of
Jesus, the manifestation of the divine in the human,
was a revelation of the divine already In the human.
It was the holding up of a lamp in a dark room, by
which one might see the lost jewels amidst the rub
bish of life. " Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness," said Jesus, " and all these
things shall be added to you." Men filled with
that spirit have looked on civilization and all its
splendor as the outward and visible sign of the in
ward and spiritual grace of God's favor upon man.
Civilization is the gradual adjustment of human life
to eternal law.
Against civilization two forces have ever been at
work. First, atheism, manifesting itself in materi
alism, which has always crumbled and fallen as did
the splendor of Rome. And secondly, pessimisra,
which, because it Is agnostic, knows nothing of God,
is ignorant of the immanent Divine life, loses In
terest In the symbol that symbolizes nothing, and
sinks down to wait for the end. Buddhism, with its
pure morality and noble self-denial, ought to have
civilized the East. It failed, because like a bridge
which men would build across some mighty chasm,
there was no hand on the further shore to make fast
the cable on which the structure should swing.

CHBIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM. 177
So far humanity has seen but one religion whieh,
looking with calm eye on the beauty and majesty of
life, has said, " Behold, it is all very good ; " " To
the pure all things are pure;" and "Love not the
world neither the things that are in the world, for
the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." Who
shall Interpret the oracle ? It has been interpreted
by the Son of Man, who took a little child and set
him in the midst, and said, " The kingdom of God
is like this ; except ye become as little children ye
cannot see the kingdom of God." Childlike faith in
the father's goodness, childlike love of the brethren,
childlike hope which no cloud can obscure, — that is
the essence of the kingdom of God. But the king
doms of the world are parts of the kingdom of God,
If that spirit be In thera. The only religion which is
favorable to human development is the religion of
the child Jesus. The power of civilization is not
materialism nor pessimisra, but the childlike spirit,
as the prophet foresaw." The wolf shall dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the
kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the f atling
together ; and a Uttle child shall lead them." That
reign of peace and plenty shall not come with ag
nosticism, but shall corae, the sarae prophet says,
" when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea."
12

CHAPTER VII.
HINDUISM.
That Buddhism could not become the popular re
ligion of India, any one farailiar -with Hindu thought
might have prophesied. No " religion " which ban
ished God could long satisfy a people whose whole
history had witnessed to the belief that " in Him we
live and raove and have our being."
Buddhism was a revolt from Brahmanism. The
Supreme Being, who dwelt in self-satisfied seclusion,
unmoved by the sorrows of men, " careless of man
kind," could be nothing less than revolting to the
men who had looked on the sorrows of life and felt
the bitterness of suffering. Henceforth men would
leave the gods in their drowsy contentment and
" work out their own salvation." So said Buddha ;
but the proof that God does not so Uve is found in
the inability of raen who had known true thoughts
of God to rest satisfied with Buddhisra. When and
how it was driven from India no one can say. Doubt
less it was with war and tumult ; but however that
may be Buddhism is no longer found as a distinct
religious system in India to-day. It stUl exists in a
debased form in Ceylon and in the valleys of Ne
paul, but the banks of the Ganges and the plains of
the Deccan know it no more.

HINDUISM. 179
Brahmanism as it appears after Buddha's refor
mation is like Catholicism after the CouncU of Trent ;
it is the same, and yet it has felt the influence of the
times. In this last form, in which it stiU exists in
India, Brahmanism is known as Hinduism.
The origin of Hinduism is shrouded in mystery,
but it is probable that it took its rise in that seeth
ing time of Indian thought, — the sixth century be
fore our era. It, too, was a protest against Brahman
ism, but it differed from the Buddhist moveraent in
this, that whUe Buddhism began to walk a path
which led to atheism, Hinduism set its face from the
beginning towards theism. But it was the theism of
a phUosophic sort, and so in its flrst form had no
attraction for the comraon people. The power of
Buddhisra lay in its truthfulness. It did not try to
deceive the people. It carae at a tirae when raen
had drunk deep of the cup of pantheism, and yet
cried out for a li-ving God. Then came Buddha and
said. There is no living God : the hope of humanity
is in itself. The living God has yet to be ; you and
I are parts of it. Realize the possibility of your na
ture, and humanity wUI emerge from the struggle
mighty in power.
But the human soul when it becomes conscious of
spiritual thirst craves nothing less than the Eternal.
To beckon men on with the promise of a God who
is yet to be is as vain as to console them with tra
ditions of a God that has been. The first was the
error of Buddhism, the second was the weakness of
Hinduism, in its first stage, during the lifetime of
Buddha or his immediate disciples. We have seen

180 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
that the Atman, or one soul of the universe, was often
spoken of in Brahmanlsra as Brahraa, or spirit. It
was that name on which Hinduism fastened, but in
stead of using the neuter forra the masculine was
substituted, and the people were caUed to the wor
ship of Brahma the Creator.
The caU met with but slight response. A few
philosophers who had felt the insufficiency of pan
theism, but who shrank from the atheism whieh
seemed to be supplanting it, — who perhaps also
were disgusted with the "publicans and sinners"
with whom Buddha consorted, accepted the new doc
trine of the personality of God. Yet, after all, it
was but a shado-wy personality at best. No one
could think of Brahma as one who eould be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities, — he was a crear
tor, that was all that could be said for him. This
was something better no doubt than the inevitable,
irresistible law of Kamma, but it was not enough.
In their reaction from pantheism the Hindus had
fallen short of theism, and so remained in the fatal
istic atmosphere of deism. Their God could never
be spoken of as "mighty to save." They had, so to
speak, waked Brahma from the sleep of ages, but
they could not bring him near to man. They had
let slip the fundamental truth of Hindu philosophy,
that creation is a continuous process, and witnesses
to the presence of an immanent, li-ving God. They
had lost their hold on that truth, and so could only
speak of Brahma as one who had once, by a fiat of
his will, created all things out of the lUusion which
like a cloud surrounded him.

HINDUISM. 181
It was not long before Brahma began to sink be
low the horizon of consciousness, as one who had ac
complished his work. That was a dark period In
Indian religious life. It seemed as if the only step
that could be taken in the direction of theisra had
failed, and that the last state was destined to be
worse than the first. But it was not so. These phi
losophers had given the clew to the escape from the
labyrinth, and the Brahmans were not slow to avail
themselves of it.
Hinduism, then, which began as an independent
spontaneous movement, contemporaneous with Bud
dhisra, and like it a revolt from Brahmanlsra, was
now taken possession of by the Brahmans, and de
liberately used as a ineans of checking the rising tide
of Buddhisra. It was to theism that the people
were caUed, and when they responded Buddhism van
ished from India like the raorning mist, never to re
turn. But it was a theism much more virile than that
of which we have just spoken. Atheisra was not the
only weakness of Buddhism ; it was weak because It
had broken with the past. The Brahmans, who un
dertook to revive Brahmanism in the forra of Hin
duism, knew the value of the continuity of thought ;
therefore they sought for the deities of the people in
the great storehouse of religious thought, the Vedas.
If a person was needed to attract the wandering wor
shipers, the Brahmans determined that he should
be the best. We have seen that in the Vedas four
gods were originally the heads of the pantheon, —
Agni, Indra, Rudra, and Varuna.

182 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
In time Varuna, the god of the cloudless sky, gave
place to Sarya, the sun-god, a more active deity.
Then Indra began to be spoken of as the same as
Rudra, so that there were but three gods left. But
these three were but manifestation of the one ele
ment of fire : Agni the fire on earth, Indra-Rudra
the lightning, and Sarya the sun. In a land where
the greatest blessing is rain it Is easy to see why
Indra-Rudra should soon have come to be spoken of
as supreme. It was the old Vedic god Indra-Rudra
at once dispeUing clouds and bringing rain, blasting
with the thunderbolt and blessing with the refresh
ing shower, that the Brahmans called the people to
the worship of, under the name of Shiva, the Au
spicious, or the Benefactor, the representative of the
creative and destructive forces of nature.
But there was need of more than a name to satisfy
people who had known the influence of the search
ing skepticisra of Buddhism. There was need of a
philosophy, which would answer the InteUectual crav
ings of the thoughtful. That, too, was found in the
past. We have seen that the great monument of
the thought of the Brahmanic age was the Maha-
Bharata. In its first form it had been no doubt noth
ing more than a great epic, describing the war be
tween two branches of the great Bharata f amUy. But
it had been added to again and again, untU it had
lost its original character, and was now a great mass
of legends, romances, hymns, and philosophical trea
tises. At what time that part of the Maha-Bharata
known as the Bhagavadgita, or Gita, — the song
sung by the deity, — was written, we need not here

HINDUISM. 183
discuss. When it is known that the critics differ to
the extent of assigning it to dates eight hundred
years apart, it will be seen how impossible it will be
for any one to speak with confidence on the subject.
The point which interests us, however, in this con
nection is, that no matter when the Gita was writ
ten, it became the philosophical expression of Hin
duism, and has so remained to this day. There is a
most adrairable analysis of this work in Cousin's
" History of Modern Philosophy," but the poem itself
has been translated into English, so that it may be
read of aU ; therefore it wUl only be necessary to
caU attention to one or two points in it which may
serve to make clear this part of our subject.
On the morning of the decisive battle between the
two rival houses, when the armies are drawn up in
hostUe array, the heart of Arjuna, fails him, as he
sees his kindred whom he is caUed upon to destroy.
In this dilemma he appeals to the god, who incites
him to war by pointing out that he cannot kill his
relatives, for " there is no existence for that which
is unreal : there Is no non-existence for that which is
real. And the correct conclusion about both is per
ceived by those who perceive the truth. Know That
to be Indestructible which pervades aU this ; the de
struction of that indestructible Principle none can
bring about. These bodies appertaining to the em
bodied Self, which is eternal, indestructible, and In
definable, are said to be perishable ; therefore do en
gage in battle, O descendant of Bharata ! He who
thinks It to be the klUer, and he who thinks It to be
kUled, both know nothing. It kUls not, is not kUled.

184 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
. . . Unborn, everlasting, unchangeable, and prime
val. It is not killed when the body is killed." '
It is easy to see what this mysticism would lead
to. It could only end in Antinomianism. The ex
ternal is nothing. The Internal Is everything. The
letter does not kill ; the letter has no existence.
Therefore, it is of no consequence what the acts of
life are, the only thing to consider is the condition
of the spirit ! In the Puranas and Tantras, which
are the fuUer expression of Hindu thought, this
theory is carried to Its most desperate conclusion.
There is something dreadful In this phase of Indian
thought. It shrinks from no conclusion. It never
seems to occur to an Indian philosopher that a con
clusion which contradicts the fundamental instincts
of humanity indicates a fallacy. Buddha had glori
fied knowledge and works, and Hinduism answers,
salvation is only by faith and love.
This principle was, however, as much opposed to
Brahraanlsra as to Buddhism. Buddhisra was the
moral expression of the Brahmanical doctrine of
Kamma, or ceremonial. If moral acts were indif
ferent, much more ceremonial. It was here that
Hinduism parted with Brahmanism, and, disregard
ing the sacredness of the priests, became a demo
cratic movement.
When we consider its treatment of the necessity
of " love " as well as " faith " we are brought to more
dreadful conclusions. Love requires an object. This
was found in Shiva, the Auspicious. He created and
' The Bhagavadgita, Sacred Books of the East, vol. viii. pp.
44,45.

HnsiDUisM. 185
he destroyed. The cycle of birth and life, of de
struction and recreation, which, as we have seen, was
the burden of Buddha's preaching, which he declared
was the inevitable law to which all life must submit,
which led and could lead only to suffering, the wor
shipers of Shiva declared was not the effect of an im
personal law, but the work of a personal god. Birth
and death, the disintegration and assimilation of
matter, in heaven above and the earth beneath and
the water under the earth, are all his work, and the
result is not sorrow but an eternal joy. He is the
Auspicious, he is continuaUy bringing good out of
evil. That was a noble faith, raore like the rugged
theism of Israel than anything we have yet found.
But they seemed unable to live by that faith.
The worshipers of Shiva committed the sin of Re-
hoboara the son of Nebat, and attempted to raake
sensuous a faith which raust ever rest on the contact
of the spirit of raan with the Eternal. AU atterapts
to realize the generative power of God have ended
in the grossest idolatry. We know what came of it
in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Israel. It was the same
in India. The teraples were soon fiUed with iraages
of buUs, the fittest emblems of generative power.
Finally the bazaars of India were filled with the im
ages of the genital organs as the likeness of their
god, and Indian philosophy, which had begun in the
purest idealism, ended in the grossest materialisra.
It might be possible for a powerful being who
brought good out of evil to command the faith, but
hardly the love of his creatures, and therefore Shiva
was soon spoken of as a being capable of love and

186 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
as having a consort. No doubt the intention here,
as in the worship of the Linga, was pure. The
Hindu mind had not forgotten its old dream of
Yoga, union with the divine ; and there seems to be
no doubt that aU that was intended by this worship
was to typify the union of the soul with God. This
thought had been the burden of the prophecy of
Hosea, and had been heard again and again iu the
great and holy words of the prophets of Israel. But
it is one thing to speak of the soul as the " Bride of
Christ; " to say, "as the bridegroom rejoices over the
bride, so the Lord thy God rejoiceth over thee ; " and
quite another to attempt to represent that union by
any visible sign. Shaivism ended, as modern reaUsm
must end, in debauchery and shame.
It is true an effort was made to check this descent,
and Shiva was, by an act of sublime inconsistency,
preached as the ascetic representative of Buddha.
But the spirit of sensualism having been evoked in
the name of religion could not be so easily laid, and
Shaivism descended to its lowest depth in the dis
ciples of " the left hand," as they are called, whose
delirious frenzy, the result of the orgies which are to
them the highest worship of which man is capable,
is such as could not be described in any book.
There are still to be found in India many who
have always held to the idealistic interpretation of
Shaivism, and who, indeed, utterly repudiate sensual
ism as in any sense the result of Its teachings.
There is one other point in Shaivism to which at
tention should be called, and that is its doctrine of a
future state. The soul that has attained to Yoga wiU

HINDUISM. 187
not at death be absorbed into Shiva, but wUl enjoy
the communion with the Auspicious One which has
been so inadequately symbolized by the iraages. It
seems at first strange that such a doctrine should
have been proclaimed so soon after Buddha's preach
ing of Nirvana ; but it was more than a revolt from
the cold comfort of Buddhism. Buddha, with all his
efforts to discourage the " delusion of personality,"
had done more than perhaps any man in Indian his
tory to manifest the glory and the power of person
ality ; so that it came to pass finally that the way of
salvation was felt to lie through faith in the more
than huraan personality of the great teacher. It was
here that Shaivism found a point of contact with Bud
dhism. " By love and faith," it said, " you can cultivate a
personality which, throughout aU time, will find a
joy in communion with the divine life which the
keenest ecstasy of which the body of man Is capable
wiU but faintly typify. We have seen how soon the
worshipers of Shiva fell from the ideal, and becarae
debased by the adoration of the image ; but it would
be doing a gross injustice to our brethren of the one
great family if we did not endeavor to appreciate as
far as possible the reUgious significance of that from
which we at first sight instinctively recoil.
What, then, is the outlook for Shaivism ? There
can be no doubt that its days are numbered ; for
while, as we have seen, it was not without good, yet
it has failed to answer the needs of the human heart
to which it seemed at first to respond.
It began vnth a message of hope. Men are not

188 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the atoms on which a relentless law grinds without a
purpose. Men are the subjects of a king who kills
that he may make alive again. But that hope was de
lusive. It Is as fatalistic as Mahometanism, and will
succumb to Mahometanism if it be not gathered Into
a larger truth. And the reason Is this : with aU its
promise of theism, and its revelation of the relation of
the soul to the Eternal, Shaivism had not freed itself
frora the dualism which was always latent in the pan
theism of Brahmanism. The union of the god Shiva
and his consort is only the old Brahmanic dream of
the union of Brahma and Prakiti, the issue of which
had been the material universe. Now duaUsm seems
to lead the mind to a satisfying conclusion, because
it fastens attention on the opposing effects evident in
the world — good and evil, while keeping the cause
out of sight. The doctrine of the unity of God
doubtless leads to results which are perplexing, but
the history of humanity shows that peace is found
in resting upon an inscrutable mystery, rather than
upon a solution which seeras to be what the human
mind requires, but is gained by the violation of a
fundamental Instinct.
What now, it may be asked, is left for the religion
which would convert the Shaivlst, but the repudiation
of It ? Certainly we have so far met with no religion
which would be so likely to justify that method ; and
yet anything which has ever called forth the reli
gious instinct in the heart of man must have that
within it on which the religion of Christ can fasten,
and rising from which can show the fulfUlment of a
dream which has apparently violated every religious
instinct.

HINDUISM. 189
Can the religion of Jesus have anything in com
mon with raodern Shaivisra, so associated in our minds
with Sati and blood-stained idols and the creaking
car of Juggernaut? Yes, for Shaivism, in aU its
degradation, was a noble effort to find a via media
between the humanltarlanisra of Buddha and his
inevitable law of decay, and Brahmanic pantheism.
The divine essence, said Shaivism, is a person ; he has
a body like us, and you poor people can corae near
to him. You have your place in the great religion
of which your fathers sung in the Vedic hymns.
Think of the old god Indra-Rudra as Shiva your ben
efactor. This law of decay, to which Buddha says
we must submit, is the expression of Shiva's wIU. He
klUs and he makes alive. One power is the source
of both. Shaivism was the first step back toward a
pure theism, and therefore toward Christianity. The
Shaivas did for India what Mahomet did for Arabia :
taught the people to think of themselves as subjects
of a divine king ; and Incomplete as it raay seem to
us, it is the beginning of strength, for it calls forth
faith in an aU-wIse, the details of whose government
must be wise too. " Let me," cried the great Hebrew
king, " let me faU into the hand of God and not into
the hand of man;" and the Chiistian in his hour of
greatest agony bows the head and says, " The Lord
gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the
name of the Lord." That faith strikes its root into
Shaivism, but lifts Its head above it. Christianity,
with its new knowledge of nature, knows that there
is no decay save for better growth. Shaivism rests
on the faith that good wiU come out of e-vil. Its

190 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
justification is in the beneficence of nature, which
kills to make alive. Christianity, with its new knowl
edge of nature, knows far better than Shaivism that
there is no decay save for better growth, but it finds
the real justification of its faith in the life of Jesus.
His death and coming to life again have done more
than reveal a law : they have revealed the divine will
toward man. " He that spared not his own Son, but
delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with
him also freely give us all things ? " This man has
been declared to be the Son of God vdth power, by
the resurrection from the dead, therefore the disin
tegration of soul and body in the service of the living
God is the pathway to eternal life. That Is the mes
sage to Shaivism.
Into that second great article of the faith of
Shaivism, Christianity can enter with a profound
sympathy. It too places faith and love above all
things. But it is saved from the degradation which
has so often resulted frora that faith by the revela
tion of one in whora the confUct between faith and
works Is harmonized. Jesus reveals himself as one
whose very existence is dependent upon faith in his
father. He is the Lamb of God, who waits upon the
Shepherd of his soul ; but this faith and love are
manifesting themselves ceaselessly in doing the will
of the Father. That was his " meat and drink."
Ever to have missed doing that will which was re
vealed by faith would have been to sever that faith.
" Works without faith are dead," but the faith that
does not show itself by its works is dead also. That
is a truism in the religion of Jesus, but it would be
good news in India.

HINDUISM. 191
The revolt from Brahmanism to the veneration of
Brahma and the worship of Shiva having been suc
cessful, it was inevitable that others should foUow.
So true has this been that Hinduism has been de
fined as the religion of Sects.' There are now ten
of these to be found in India, but we shall consider
but one more, and that the great rival of Shaivism,
caUed Vaishnuism, or the worship of the god Vishnu.
The name Vishnu also is found in the Vedas, but
he plays no such part as the god Shiva, under the
form of Indra-Rudra.
Vaishnuism arose like its rival out of the religious
conditions produced by Buddhisra, and It was an
attempt to satisfy the demand which arose, on the
death of Buddha, for sympathy and love. Shal-vism
had attempted to recall the people to theism by pre
senting a scherae of theology which would satisfy
their inteUectual needs. It set forth a theology of
"faith and love" as opposed to "knowledge and
works." The result was the same as followed on
the preaching of Brahma as the creator, — it at
tracted only the philosopher. Shai-vism became a
popular movement only when It became corrupt.
Vaishnuism avoided that mistake, and began, not
with theology, but -with the preaching of one who
was more truly the friend of man than even the
loving Buddha, — one who had manifested his love
again and again in order to save his people from
their sins. There was little enough of this thought
In the Vedas, and so the leaders of Vaishnuism went
there only for a name. It was the Maha-Bharata to
1 Beligions of India, by A. Barth.

192 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
which they tumed their attention ; and under the
sklUful raanipulation to which it was then subjected
the great epic becarae the gospel of Vaishnuism.
The god who gave the victory to men, the god who
instructed the hero In wisdom, was none other than
Vishnu, the Pervader, who, under the form of Krish
na, had descended to earth, not for the first time, that
good might prevail over evil. But there was another
epic on which they laid their hands with a like result.
The Ramayana had been originally the story of the
abduction of Sita, wife of Rama, by the king of
Ceylon. This tradition was to the Indian minstrels
what the rape of Helen had been to the poets of
Greece. It became a mighty poem, sung at every
durbar and recited in every viUage. On this the
worshipers of Vishnu now fastened, and the hero
Rama, whose goodness and prowess had been the
delight of children for generations, was now used
as a mighty engine for the propagation of the new
faith. Rama, like Krishna, was a manifestation of
the incarnate Vishnu. We may imagine what an
effect a story with all the charra of the Iliad might
have upon the imagination of a nation when into
it was infused the religious power of the Pilgrim's
Progress. Yet that was the transformation effected
upon the Ramayana. We can easily understand,
therefore, how it raight corae to pass that, as Pro
fessor Monier WiUiams says, " Vaishnuism, notwith
standing the gross polytheistic superstitions and
hideous idolatry to which it gives rise, is the only
real religion of the Hindu peoples." '
' Bdigious Life and Thought in India.

HINDUISM. 193
One secret of its success no doubt is to be ascribed
to its elasticity. And this was due to that funda
mental conception of the incarnation which is ex
pressed In the Gita by the Deity. " Whensoever,
O descendant of Bharata, piety languishes, and im
piety is in the ascendant, I create myself. I am
born age after age, for the protection of the good,
for the destruction of evil-doers, and the establish
ment of piety." '
We see what an advantage this gave over other
systems. Whatever the people loved could be
claimed vsithout inconsistency as a manifestation of
Vishnu ! Is Buddha praised ? The accoraraodating
priest declares that he is an incarnation of Vishnu.
Is Christ preached ? All that is asserted of Him is
accepted — only He is an Incarnation of Vishnu !
Here, then, are two aspects in which Vaishnuism
claimed, and claimed justly, the allegiance of the
people. First, there was no good which was not the
work of Vishnu. Vaishnuism is as intolerant of a
rival as Christianity itself. Secondly, these manifes
tations of Vishnu are not raere exhibitions of power,
they are raanifestations of love. They would say
vrith St. John, " For this cause was the Son of God
manifested, that he might destroy the works of the
devil." But Vaishnuism went a step farther. It
could not, after the preaching of Buddha, ignore the
past. Rama, Krishna, Buddha, were historical man
ifestations of Vishnu ; there is one more to come at
the end of time. But if we look back we shall never
find a time when Vishnu was not "making for
' Bhagavadgita, p. 79.
13

194 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
righteousness." First he was incarnated in a fish ;
secondly in a tortoise ; thirdly in a boar ; fourthly
in a man lion ; and then in a dwarf.
There is something more here, I think, than sim
ple stretching back by thought into the past. There
is a sequence in these manifestations : beginning with
the lowest form of sentient life, it mounts to the
beast of the field ; then to the half man, half brute ;
then to the manikin ; then to the hero ; and at last
to the saint.'
Here I think we may discern a feeling after that
great truth of the gradual revelation of the divine
life which St. John so emphasizes, and which the
writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews announces with
so much power. " God having of old time spoken
unto the fathers in the prophets, by divers portions,
and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days
spoken unto us by a Son, — the effulgence of his
glory, and the very image of his substance." ^
Yet with all this promise Vaishnuism has sunk
lower than any forra of Indian reUgion. Sorae of
the worshipers of Shiva have retained their purity,
but Vaishnuism has gone down as a system. We
need not here trace its mournful history, all the
more sad because it gave the best promise of re-
deeraing India. It had something worse than the
Antinomianism of Shaivism at its heart. It was
bad enough to say that the acts of men were indif
ferent to God as long as there was faith, for faith
even in its lowest form implies some sort of spirit
ual activity ; but Vaishnuism lays so much stress on
1 Compare Indian 'Wisdom, p. 336. ^ Heb. i. 1, R. V.

HINDUISM. 195
the last thought of life that an incantation at the
end of life wiU go far to counteract the evil effect
of a character which has become ingrained. In the
Gita we read, " He who leaves this body and departs
from this world remembering me In his last mo
ments comes into ray essence." ' This led also to
the belief in the efficacy of rites and cereraonies, pil
grimages and relics. Multitudes may be seen to-day
gathered about the weU of Vishnu at Benares, in
which all sins can be washed away. This belief
in the power of a ceremonial absolution has pro
duced the sarae immoral results In India that the
indulgences of Catholicism produced before the Ref
orraation. Thus Vaishnuism not only proved Itself popular
with the common people, but It was able to hold its
own in controversy by denying the eternity of Shiva.
Vishnu, it was said, is the only true God. Shiva
has no existence apart frora the body in which he
now dwells ; when that decays Shiva will be no raore.
Not so Vishnu ; he has an existence which is eternal.
He is the Pervader. He is Independent of all form,
and yet has the power and the wiU to assume many.
Thus we see that that doctrine of an incarnation
which seemed to be the most inconsistent with the
fundamental conception of Indian philosophy has*
really fallen heir to the powerful doctrine of trans
migration, which has underlain every phase of Hindu
theology. 1 Bhagavadgita, p. 78. It is true that it is also stated that one
-will naturally think at the last of what he has habitually pondered
on, but there is no intimation that the past will avail if the mem
ory fails.

196 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Has Valshnuiam, it raay be asked, then anticipated
the doctrine of the incarnation? Williams, In the
work before alluded to, tells us that " the Sanskrit
language has no exact equivalent for ' incarnation ; '
the coramon word is Avatara, and means 'descent.'
Furthermore it must be borne In mind that inter
vening between the Supreme Being and these Ava-
taras there must be placed personal deities, such as
Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, therefore the so-called
incarnations ought to be regarded as incarnations of
incarnations." It is important that this fact should
be borne In mind, because no popular objection is
more frequently urged against Christian theology
than that it has borrowed its fundamental doc
trine from India. It was originaUy urged, I believe
by French writers, in the very dawn of the science
of comparative religions, but it has reappeared In
our own day.
The Indian belief in Avatara is a belief in a
descent, temporary, and to effect a definite object.
Again, it is a mere emanation, a belief against which
the Christian consciousness has protested from the
first formulation of a creed tlU to-day. That there
is a sense in which the Christian incarnation may
be spoken of as a " descent," I suppose no one who
believes in it at aU wiU deny. St. Paul, in a highly
poetical passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, so
speaks of it ; but throughout the Gospels generally,
and above aU, in the proem to the Fourth Gospel, the
incarnation is spoken of as a revelation or unveiling
of the divine reason which had been In the Kosmos
and In huraanity from the " beginning." In Jesus

HINDUISM. 197
the scattered rays of the light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world were concentrated.
In Him the syllables of the Logos were corabined to
forra the word which is the name of God and man,
— the divine character in humanity.
Until that fundamental distinction between the
Indian Avatara and the Christian Incarnation is ap
preciated, I do not believe we can expect any result
from Christian missions among the Vaishnavas.
If we are only deists who believe that God once
descended Into a huraan form, and that the proof
thereof is to be found in the miracles of Jesus,
then, I believe that the worshipers of Vishnu wiU
conquer. They too believe in that sort of incarna
tion, and stand ready to prove it by miracles, com
pared with which the gracious signs which Jesus
gave, if viewed as works of wonder only, are beneath
contempt. Did not Krishna lift a whole mountain
range on his finger ? On what, then, it may be asked,
are we to trust as evidences of the Divine origin of
Christianity, if not on the physical miracles which
served for proof so long ? The Christian answer to
the human need, — that answering of deep to deep
is the best witness to the presence of one who " sitteth
above the water floods and remaineth a king forever."
Yet, no one can glance at the teachings of Vaish
nuism without feeling that in its doctrine of Avata-
ras It was prophesying to that incarnation which
should be a revelation, not that God had once come
to man, but that humanity's name is Emmanuel ; that
never since man flrst felt the breath of the Divine
life that lifted him above the beasts of the field had

198 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
God left him. The message of Christianity to Vaish
nuism is not, " You have coraraitted sin in your hero-
worship of Rama and Krishna," but, " Your sin be
gan when you left the teachings of the Vedic hymns
and the Upanishads, which would have led you to rec
ognize the divinity of man, and saved you from the
animal worship which Is the shame of India to-day."
It is here that the reUgion of Christ raust find its
point of contact with Vaishnuisra. Its false concep
tion of the relation of the divine to the human was
brought with it out of the degradation into which
Brahmanism had sunk at the last. The fundamental
idea of the deity was to them power; the funda
mental idea of humanity was nonentity ; therefore an
" incarnation " could be nothing but an Avatara, a
descent of divine power into huraan weakness. The
consequence was that man gained no revelation of
the character either of God or of raan by any such
descent. But the Christian doctrine of the Incar
nation says. There is a revelation first of human
nature, because the light of the world illuminates it ;
and, secondly, a revelation of the Divine character
by con-vincing men that it is essentiaUy human.
Now the reason why neither Greece nor India had
any true conception of the character of the Divine
was that they had no true conception of what was
essentiaUy human. They both identified humanity
vnth what St. Paul caUs the "Old Adam," the
natural man. The consequence was, that in Greece
there was found the apotheosis of vice. There was
nothing that men saw in the lives of one another

HINDUISM. 199
that was not ascribed to the gods; In India there
was felt to be no incongruity in the appearance of
Vishnu in the -vilest woman or the bloodthlrstiest
man, and that shame was the natural outcome of its
faith. For religion must in some way realize Its
faith in the possibUity of the union between God
and man. Brahmanism only succeeded in enunciat
ing a theory which destroyed humanity. Buddhism
foUowed vnth a doctrine which dispensed with God.
Vaishnuism preached Avataras, which had no con
nection -with morality. A god who appears in a
hero, an animal, or a saint indifferently, cannot
forever command the worship of raan. That Is the
reason of the debaucheries of Vaishnuisra. It is to
that that raodern Vaishnuisra has sunk. The hero-
worship which began with Krishna and Raraa has
descended to the worship of brigands ; and the wor
ship of Vishnu's consort came, at last, to the honor
ing of pubUc prostitutes as high-priestesses.
This doctrine of the Avatara has its reflection in
the doctrine of metempsychosis, and, as a saint may
have passed into a serpent, the serpent, the ape,
and the cow, and every creeping thing, is in turn
adored by a people intoxicated with the draught of
pantheism, and debauched by the spectacle of un
bridled license in a land of lust.
Yet it is here, if anywhere, that the Gospel raust
speak to the hearts of the people. The incarnation
may be preached here as in Greece, not as the de
scent of divine power, but as the unveiling of the
image of God and revealing at once the character of
God and man. To the Greek it showed that the be
Uef of mankind that God is huraan, whatever else

200 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
He may be, is true. But it showed that by hu
manity was meant that sinless Son in whom the
Father is well pleased. It must begin at the other
end in India ; it must reveal the Huraanity which is
worthy to be caUed the Son of God. The revela
tion of the Son of God as the Son of Man was the
justification of the faith of the Greek. The reve
lation of the Son of Man as the Son of God will be
the justification of the faith of the Hindu, because
the Hindu has never believed that man could have
any being apart from God. This must be the point
of contact ; how rauch remains then to be done the
scope of this book does not permit me to say.
It would be interesting to see how far modem In
dia has been affected by the influx of other ethnic
religions, by the Invasion of Alexander, the Mon
golian inroads, and the conquest of Akbar, but that
must be left. The rise of the theistic movement
will be spoken of later ; it is undoubtedly not the
least of the effects produced by the preaching of the
gospel of the Son of Man.
It cannot, however, be too often repeated that we
must not judge of Indian religious thought by what
appears now in the idolatrous worship of modern
India. It Is the dregs which we see in the cup now,
but there has been rich wine there In the days of
old ; and he who would rouse a people to better
things raust not begin by scorning their degradation ;
he must remind them of a great and glorious past,
the promise of a nobler future, when they shall see
" the fellowship of the mystery which from the be
ginning of the world hath been hid in God."

CHAPTER VIIL
ZOEOASTRIANISM.
The student of Zoroastrianism is tempted to doubt
the existence of any law of spiritual conservation.
If there be such a law it raust be universal in its ap
plication, and yet It would seera to have failed here.
Zoroastrianism was undoubtedly once a great moral
power in the religious history of the world, but it has
been well said that " No other great belief in the
world ever left such poor and meagre monuments of
its past splendor. " Nevertheless, an examination of
the history of the Medes and Persians wiU show con
clusively that there is a law that " changeth not," —
the law that not an atom of truth is lost in the great
march of humanity. A nation or an individual may
fail, but the truth which It had In keeping is gath
ered up by some other nation or Individual and made
more truly than before the property of huraanity.
The present representatives of Zoroastrianlsra are,
as we know, the Parsis, a " feeble folk," scattered
frora Bombay to Hong Kong ; a few of them are stUI
found In Persia, but they are fast dwindling away.
So that it may be said that the Parsis are only found
as a religious organization in Bombay, whither their
fathers fled on the fall of the Persian empire under
the mighty blows of the Moslem.

202 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
For a long time it was doubtful to what branch of
the human faraily these people belonged. The cast
of countenance is not unlike the Semitic type, and on
the discovery of the Zend-Avesta by Anquetil-Duper-
ron in 1754, it was believed to be largely composed
of Arabic words. But such is not the case. We
know now that the Parsis are a part of the great
Indo-European, stock, and that their religion sprung
from the same root as Vedaism ; so that they have a
claim to a place among the religions of India.
It is a strange fate which has brought them to
India. Their fathers utterly refused to go through
the mountain passes Into the Punjab ; and yet cen
turies later their children came to India by way of
the sea. They fled from Persia to escape the rule of
Mahomet, only to see their brethren conquer north
ern India as the disciples of the Prophet. I can
not think that this is chance. They are evidently a
people waiting for something. They still cling to
certain ancient ceremonies ; they may be seen in the
early morning standing on the sea-shore bowing in
reverence to greet the rising sun ; they stiU expose
their dead on high towers that the earth may not be
polluted by the corrupting flesh, but that It may be
torn away by the birds of prey ; but the great phi
losophy which lay back of their rites they have for
gotten or discarded ; they are now a people scrupu
lously moral and devotedly monotheistic, not ready
to die, and yet without vitality to proselyte.
The Bible of the Parsis is popularly known as the
Zend-Avesta, but Oriental scholars tell us that we
should call It the Avesta, Zend, and Pazend, and that

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 203
its reputed author should be called Spitama Zara-
thustra ; but we wiU content ourselves with the
popular terms.
If we open the Zend-Avesta at the flrst Fargard
or hymn, we read : —
Ahura-Mazda spake to the holy Zarathustra.
I created, 0 boly Zarathustra, a place, a creation of
deUght, but nowhere was created a possibUity of ap
proach. For had I not, O holy Zarathustra, created a place, a
creation of delight, where nowhere was created a possi
biUty of approach.
The whole corporeal world would have gone after
Airyana-vaeja,.*. e., this paradise. . . .
The first and best of regions and places have I created,
I who am Ahura-Mazda :
The Airyana-vaeja of the good creation.
The Airva Maineyus, who is fuU of death, created an
opposition to the same :
A great Serpent and Winter, which the Daevas have
created. Ten winter months are there, two summer months.
And these are cold as to the water, cold as to the earth,
cold as to the trees.
After this to the middle of the earth, then to the heart
of the earth.
Comes the winter ; then comes the most evU.'
In this hymn Mr. John Fiske ^ finds the record
of a tradition of one of the glacial periods which
changed Siberia to a land of ¦ snow. Dr. James
Freeman Clarke ^ also thinks that it is the record
^ F. Spiegel, Eng. trans.
^ Excursions of an Evolutionist.
^ Ten Great Beligions.

204 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
of the migration of the Aryan family from north to
south. Professor Max Muller,' however, declares that
it is altogether mythical ; an imaginary account of
an imaginary creation. It would seem, then, as if as
yet we could affirm nothing definitely concerning the
cradle of the Aryan family. But as we read on In
the Zend-Avesta we come to names which we have
already met under a slightly different form in the
Vedas. The word " Ahura," the name for divinity
in the Avesta, we have found as Asura in the Vedas.
Again, the coraraon narae for the gods, "Daevas,"
is the same in the sacred books of both. Only this
is to be noted, the word Asura in the earliest Vedic
hymns had a good sense, but in the' later hymns
the Asuras are the enemies of the gods. But In
the Avesta, Ahura Is always a title of the highest
honor. The word Daevas or Devas, which has descended
to our own day as 6evs, Deus, Dieu, Tius in Its Teu
tonic form, whence our Tuesday, Dios in Portuguese,
whence the pigeon-English josh-house, this word, on
which the religious history of the Aryan peoples
might be engraved, came in the Avesta to mean de
mons or devils. And lastly the chief god of the
early Vedic hymns, Indra, figures as one of the chief
devils in the Iranian mythology.
One of the few names for the divine which they
have In common Is Soma or Haoma, for though this
is a plant the leaves of which the acolyte pounded
in India and Persia alike, and the juice of which the
worshipers drank, yet in both mythologies it is also
* Chipsfrom a German 'Workshop.

ZOROASTRIANISM. 205
a god. It holds, if possible, a higher place in Zoro
astrianism than in Vedaism. It is with the twigs of
the haoma (or soma) tree called BarSgma in the
hymns, that prayer and sacrifice are opened.
How are we to account for this Ukeness between
Vedaism and Zoroastrianism ? It would seem that
originaUy the Iranian and the Indian branches of
the Aryan faraUy had dwelt together as one great
division of the human family in its journey towards
the ends of the earth.
When it was, no scholar can tell us. As to where
it was, there seems to be less doubt.
On the high table-land of Central Asia known to
ancient writers as Bactria or Bactriana, named on
our latest maps "Independent Turkistan," full of
new Interest to us as the region in which are Khiva,
Bokhara, and Merv, watered by the Oxus and north
of the Hindu Kush mountains, the Aryan family
seems to have halted in Its march.
Could we have looked upon our forefathers as
they filled the valleys of the Oxus, we should have
seen that conflict between the nomadic and the agri
cultural people of which, perhaps, the Semitic story
of Cain and Abel is a spiritualized reflection. The
answer to the prayer of the perplexed Rebecca is the
statement of the condition of all the divisions of the
human race, " Two nations are within thy womb,
and two manner of people shall be separated from
thy bowels." "The running hunter and the plain
man dwelling in tents " were both at that early day
in Bactria.
There are two words which serve as torches to

206 HIS STAR m THE EAST.
light up the obscurity of this time, they are kavi
and kava. They are from the same root, kalp, to
celebrate ; kava is used in the Avesta, as a term of
honor, but kavi is a despicable word. This signifi
cance is reversed in the Vedas. The explanation
given by Haug ' Is this. Kavi was the name of the
priests of the united people. They were their leaders.
They were prophets as weU as priests and kings. To
them the people went to inquire the wiU of the gods.
The sacrifice was offered with the intoxicating soma
juice, and when Indra was thoroughly inebriated,
which happened only when the priests were, one
of those marauding expeditions was begun, which
ended in the plundering of the more peaceful Ira
nians who had flocks and herds. No wonder they
came to look with horror on the kavi, no wonder In
dra seemed a devil. Yet the words had taken too
deep a root in their language to be eradicated, and
so with a slight change of form the word became the
designation of the Iranian kings, doubtless the chief
men who first resisted these inroads of their neigh
bors. They were caUed kava, and so we find the
word kava in the Vedas as the designation of the
enemies of the true faith, wliUe kavi in the Avesta
means the worshiper of devUs ; so we see that the
amenities of ecclesiastlcism have a strong claim upon
the devotee of antiquity.
It was impossible that such a state of things
should continue long. The nomadic tribes pushed
1 Essays on the Sacred Language, etc., of the Parsis, by Martin
Haug. The same thing is described as happening to-day in Tartary,
in Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartaric, par I'Abb^ Hue.

ZOROASTRIANISM. 207
on through Cashmere or through Afghanistan until
they stood at the entrance of the rich plain of India,
which lay before tbem. Into the Punjab the Ira
nians seem to have corae very little, if at all. They
preferred a settled life, and began to feed their
flocks on the alps of Bactria, and to till the valleys
of the Oxus. Soon the schism was complete, and
those who would come from the Aryan to the Ira
nian branch were required to abjure the religion of
the Vedas. The form of that abjuration has come
down to us. It came to mean in time the renuncia
tion of aU evil, like our renunciation of the world,
the flesh, and the devil, but in those early days it
meant the lea-ving of one well-known form of wor
ship and throwing in the lot with the schismatics.
" I cease," so said the convert, — "I cease to be a
Deva worshiper. I profess to be a worshiper of
Ahura-Mazda." " I forsake the Devas, the wicked,
bad, wrongful originators of mischief, the most bane-
fiU, destructive, and basest of beings."
Thus was made the first recorded religious schism,
the first of that great number of protests against
wickedness which some may think is sufficiently ex
plained by saying that it was a mere question of
occupation; just as some historians think that the
Protestant Reformation is explained by saying the
monk Luther wanted a wife, or that the American
Revolution was caused by the unwillingness of the
colonists to pay a slight tax on tea. But the student
of history wUl not rest satisfied with an explanation
which confounds the occasion with the cause.
What the cause of this first schism was, what was

208 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the fundamental conception of the divine, which dif
ferentiated the Iranian from the Vedic religion, it
wiU be the object of this chapter to trace.
But before we do that it -will be well to remember
the raoral value of a protest. It is often said, and
more often repeated, that Protestantism is essentially
a negative thing, whereas, in fact, it is of all things
the most positive of which the human mind is capa^
ble. For what is a protest but the assertion of in
dividuality? The positive action of truth upon the
soul of man as opposed to the negative acquiescence
in wrong because of lack of spiritual vitaUty ? As
well say that the man who lifts a fallen tree out of
the path of a band of pilgrims is doing a negative
thing because he is resisting the power of gravita
tion, as to say that the man who, in the power of his
individual righteousness, resists evil in opposition to
the dead weight of thoughtless acquiescence, is nega
tive in his deed ! This, then, is the glory of Zoroas
trianism, that it was the first sign of the individual
in religion.' Now individualism is in spiritual as
in material things the first step toward personality.
The child must through the sense of pain learn that
it differs from the things around it, before it can
rise to the fuU glory of its manhood ; and so in re
ligion the soul must recognize the fact that it per
sonally is responsible for wrong, and that its first
duty is to separate itself from evil, before it can
come to the measure of the fuUness of the stature of
Christ. 1 See Oriental Beligions, — Persia, by Samuel Johnson.

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 209
We have seen that it was the failure of the Hindu
mind to realize its own personality in the conscious
ness of a relation to a divine person, which led
to the imraorallty and failure of Indian religious
thought. But as personality must begin with in
dividuality, so individuality must begin with the
moral apprehension of responsibUity, before it can
pass into the true personality of the spirit of Son-
ship. Now the first downward step of Indian theo
logy was taken In Bactria, and the glory of Zo
roastrianism began to da-wn In that day when the
forefathers of Luther, and Latimer, and Knox, and
CromweU, and Wesley refused to believe the ortho
doxy of the day, that the divine life could be pleased
with the drunken orgies of the kavi.
Undoubtedly individualism has its dangers, one
of which is to make any cooperation Impossible ; but
that is what Protestantism seeks, — the uniting of
the scattered individuals under the leadership of a
strong personality for the furtherance of the truth,
which conflict has raade raore precious than ever.
Iranian Protestantism obeyed this law, and found in
Zoroaster a leader fitted for the great work of the
Iranian branch of the Aryan people.
Strange to say, the life of the reputed author of
Zoroastrianism is shrouded in greater mystery than
the early history of the religion itself. His very
name, which in its Latin form of Zoroaster is so
well known to us, has taxed the ingenuity of crit
ical scholars. Zarathustra means, according to one
commentator, " devoted to agriculture," but another
14

210 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
affirms that it means " the golden one," " the color
of fire." " He came into the world," says a tradi
tion, " not like aU the other sons of men with a cry,
but laughing." Biblical commentators, not content
with the glory which is in the Bible, but more ortho
dox than the prophets, and jealous of any truth not
recorded in the sacred records of Israel, have found
in the life of Zoroaster a Persian version of Shem
the son of Noah, of Moses, and of Daniel. Indeed,
where so Uttle is known, it is safe to assert almost
anything, and lay the burden of proof on the ob
jector. In such a matter as this we cannot do better than
rest upon the opinion of that authority which seems
to be the highest. I suppose there is no higher au
thority than that of Professor Haug, whose essays on
the Parsis form a part of Triibner's Oriental Series.
It is the opinion of Professor Haug that the word
Zarathustra means " most excellent." But we may
add that amongst a people avowedly devoted to agri
culture it is not strange that he should be caUed Za
rathustra who excelled in the national occupation;
and that in a religion the highest rite of which was
celebrated vidth fire, the " fire colored " would be
deemed an appropriate name for him whom they
venerated as the founder of their cult. But our
author declares that this title was originaUy given
to all the priests of the Iranians after their separs/-
tion from the Indian Aryans, and that the family
name of that Zarathustrian who was the father of
the faithful was Spitama.
He must have lived at a very early date. Cer-

ZOROASTRIANISM. 211
tainly as early as Moses, probably before, for whUe
the Bactrian revolt against Vedaism was little more
than a protest against certain e-vils in the established
system, this prophet appeared and saved the nation
from sinking into nature worship, and caUed on
them to lift up their eyes to the eternal.' The
earliest of the hymns of the Avesta represent him as
talking with God face to face. He stands in Iranian
history like Abraham in Semitic, as the "friend of
God." In the uncritical period of the science of
comparative religions, Zoroaster was supposed to
have been the author of the whole of the Zend-
Avesta, but scholars now teU us that the hymns
which compose this book are of various dates, though
the spirit of Zoroaster inspires them all.
The full title of the Zend-Avesta, once the source
of inspiration of the whole of the great Iranian peo
ple, is " Avesta," and Zend, and Pazend, — that is
the Avesta is the ancient text written in Bactrian,
and the Zend the commentary on that text written
in Pahlavi or ancient Persian, and Pazend a further
explanation -written in Parsi.
The Avesta and the Zend took their present
form, no doubt, amid the horror and confusion which
followed the overthrow of the great Sassanian dy
nasty, when In the midst of the national degradation
the priests alone had the wisdom to save the chief
treasure of the people, and so justify in the eyes of
posterity their national existence.
In trying to reach the sanctum sanctorum of Zo-
^ Bunsen's God in History.

212 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
roastrianism we wiU do weU to seek an entrance
through the ceremonies which are described in the
Avesta. Now, if we wiU recall the contemporaneous
rites amongst the Indian Aryans, we shall see that
an advance in the spiritual conception of the divine
was made by the Iranians. In the Vedas we saw
that Agni, the god of fire, was implored to mount on
high and bring down the gods to participate In the
sacrificial banquet. But here we find no material
bond between the worshiper and the di-vine being.
" Here with Zaotra and Bare9ma (i. e., with
holy water and the bundle of sacred twigs), I wish
hither with praise the lords of the heavenly, the
lords of the earthly, the lords of the water-animals,
the lords of the beings which live under heaven," etc.
This formula, so purely spiritual, occurs times with
out number: "I wish hither with praise," or this
other, " I invite and announce to the Lords." '
So often is this simple ceremony alluded to in the
Avesta that one might easily conclude that the con
secration of water, the emblem of purity, and the
blessing of the twigs, which were the emblem of life,
was the only rite recognized in the Avesta. But
that was far from being the case. There were more
elaborate sacrifices of bread, of flesh, and the haoma
juice. These being properly arranged by the priest,
the hymn of praise to the immortal gods, whose name
was legion, was begun.
Sometiraes a victim gayly decked was led to the
altar and sacrificed by the attendant priest, but for
the most part the sacrifices were bloodless.
1 Spiegel, Avesta.

ZOEOASTRIANISM. 213
One of the finest hymns was to Haoma, who is
worshiped as a god, while the haoma juice is poured
from a silver to a golden cup.
The tenth hymn of the Ya^na begins with an ex
orcism : —
Away shall then the Daevas hasten which are here ;
away the male, away the female Daevas.
At the beginning of the morning-dawn I praise thee
with words, O IntelUgent, whilst I seize the branches.
At the forthcoming of the morning-dawn I praise thee
with words, O Intelligent, whilst I slay (the Daevas) with
the strength of a man.
I praise the lofty mountains where thou, 0 Haoma,
growest. Manifestly thou art the seat of purity ; increase thou my
speech. . . .
Haoma increases when he is praised, therefore is he
who praises him the most victorious.
Away vanishes the impurity brought hither, out of
such a dweUing, wherever one brings in, wherever one
praises, the heaUng Haoma.
Easy is the knowledge of Haoma.
O Haoma, give me of thy remedies, on account of
which thou art (known as) the giver of remedies.
I submit myself to thee as the great dispenser of wis
dom. Praise be to the Haoma, for he makes the soul of the
poor in greatness like that of the richest.
Then spake Zarathustra : Praise to the Haoma created
by Mazda ! Good is Haoma created by Mazda ! Praise
to the Haoma !
And take this ninth Ya^na : —
Haoma gives to those who as mighty ones make teams
to hasten, horses, might, and strength.

214 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Haoma makes manifest to those who are maidens and
were long unwedded a spouse, who quickly sues, and is
endowed with good understanding.
Haoma is lord of the house, of the clan, of the confed
eracy, of the region, through his holiness; also lord of
wisdom. I invoke thee for strength, for victory, for the
body, as very pure nourishment. Come hither with a
weapon for the pure to protect the body, O golden Haoma.'
Now let us not hastily conclude that this is a vul
gar drinking-song sung at a heathen orgy, — far from
it. It was a hymn in praise of the Iranian Diony
sus, if you wiU, but he was praised by men who felt
that they were wrestling "not with fiesh and blood,
but against principalities and powers, -with spiritual
wickedness in high places." They promised to slay
the Daevas " with the strength of a man" but they
knew that that would not suffice, — they needed
the strength of a God. Under the influence of the
haoma juice they lost the sense of sin, and so con
cluded that they had become pure. "Thou art
manifestly the seat of purity," they sang. FiUed
with the glory of Haoma they cried, " Thou makest
the poorest as the richest." We, who have come to
associate Haoma with the spirit of evil, raust re
member that in Its exhUaratlon the Iranian, like the
Greek, found the fittest symbol of the glory of hu
manity filled with the divine, — and more, identified
that which had such power to make the coward brave,
the weak strong, the diUl wise, and the poor rich, with
God who so blesses his children.
Let us turn now to the gods, — see what these
1 Spiegel, Avesta.

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 216
people thought of them and what they expected of
them. Amongst a pastoral people we should expect to
find pastoral gods, and so It was. One of the chief
gods was Mithra. He Is praised again and again in
the hymns. Mithra, the god of vigilance, — with a
thousand ears and ten thousand eyes, he watches
speciaUy over the wide pastures of the people,
doubtless because their chief property was in land,
and so arose the idea of honesty. Mithra Is the di
vinity who witnesses contracts, and, finally, it shall
be before him that the departed soul shaU stand aud
answer whether he has been faithful on the field of
Ufe to his fellow-man.
It is only by remembering this early agricultural
and pastoral proclivity that we can understand the
frequent hymns to Tistrya — Sirius — the dog-star.
The dog is to the Iranian shepherd what the horse
is to the Arabian Bedouin. Heavy penalties are
decreed for all who injure him, and " Tistrya, the
faithfiU watch-dog of the heavens, is praised as the
shining, the majestic one, who goes round about
bestowing great joy."
Next to Mithra stands Craosa, the hearer. His
special watch Is just before the dawn, when heaven
and earth hold their breath to listen. Before him,
too, shaU the soul appear. Mithra sees what we
have done in the open day, but Craosa hears what
has been whispered in the ear.
The tribunal is completed by Rasnu, the inflex
ible judge. For what they did and said and thought
the Iranians were taught they must give an account
at the day of judgment.

216 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Time will not permit us to name more of the Ira
nian gods, nor would it be profitable. The heavens
and earth swarm with them. It is an innumerable
company; but high above them aU sits Ahura-
Mazda. The eternal, the omniscient God of gods
and Lord of lords, the Holy Spirit, the creator of
Ught and goodness, Ahura-Mazda — better known
to us by the Persian corruption Ormuzd — sits above
heaven and earth crowned with light.'
The question may be asked, how does aU this dif
fer from any of the mythologies ? How does it differ
from the religion of the Vedas ? And the answer is
to be found in that fundaraental conception of God
and of raan which lay back of their mythology.
The Iranians seem to have brought with them out
of their conflict with the Indian Aryans a most pro
found veneration for truth and purity. There was,
as we have seen, a god who watched over contracts,
to whom raen must give an account after death.
There was no special god of purity, because it was
considered the very essence of divinity. It was a
characteristic of all the gods. Thus the twelfth Vis-
pered (or hymn) begins : " To Ahura-Mazda an
nounce we this Haoma uplifted. To him the good
ruler, the pure, to hira the ruler over the lords of
purity," and again : " The Fravashis (that is the
spiritual Image of the pure) we praise ; Craosa the
victorious praise we; the pure man praise we." ^
The first Ya^na contains sixty-eight verses, each
an invitation to a different god to be present at the
1 L'Hovique. ^ Spiegel, Avesta.

ZOEOASTBIANISM. ' 217
sacrifice, and the title "Lord of purity," or "the
pure," occurs thirty-eight times ; and so It is in most
of the hymns.
In the seventh Ya^na, which Is a long one, nearly
every verse begins with the words "with purity I
offer" the sacrifice, — and so examples might be
multiplied, without end.
No one can read the Zend-Avesta without feeling
that the Iranians, more than any people in the
world, would have welcomed the beatitude of Jesus
as the justification of their whole religious life.
" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shaU see
God." To live a pure life, then, and a true life,
seemed to the Iranian the best thing on earth, —
that soiU shaU pass at death safely over the bridge
Chinvah, pass by the fearful dogs that guard It, and
stand undismayed before the judges Mithra, Craosa,
and Rasnu.
Certainly this is a moral advance from Vedaism.
In some respects it is better than Judaism.
But we find a spiritual progress, too, in the Ira
nian conception of man's relation to the world as
compared with Vedaism. The daily conflict between
light and darkness the Indian looked on as a specta
tor, — an Interested one. It is true, one who hoped for
the triumph of light ; but the Iranian felt that he
was a partaker in this conflict, that nature's strug
gle was but an outward and visible sign of a spirit
ual conflict. In which he must fight for light and
truth and purity against spiritual darkness and lies
and uncleanness.

218 ms STAB IN THE EAST.
"Purity" was to the disciples of Zoroaster what
" righteousness " was to the chUdren of Abraham.
Righteousness means right relation with Jehovah.
Those who would have us believe that it is to be ex
pressed by any such word as " conduct " have tried
to understand Judaism without St. Paul's commen
tary on It. Undoubtedly right " conduct " would be
the manifestation of righteousness, but a man might
be " righteous " who was guUty of very dreadful
lapses in " conduct," as was David, who yet was a
man after God's own heart, because not his conduct,
but his motive, the aim of his Ufe, was right, and
that right was the result of his " righteousness ; "
i. e., his right spiritual relation with God, conceived
of not at aU as " the Eternal making for righteous
ness," but as a merciful king living above the sky,
with whom David believed that he could talk, and to
whom he believed he could sing. " Renew a right
spirit within rae," said the penitent Psalmist, for
righteousness was right spiritual relation to Israel's
king and father.
In the same way the " purity " of Zoroastrianism
was something more than restraint from impure acts,
it was a right relation of man with himself, an In
ternal harmony, something far nobler than the Greek
conception of harmony, even the rule of the intel
lectual and the moral over the raaterial and the sen
sual. The result of purity, we are told. Is the power
of seeing God ; that Internal harraony, which sensu
alism does more than anything else to destroy, is the
means of the revelation of God, because God can
only truly be seen by man in himself, and the stained

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 219
mirror of an impure life can never reflect the bea-
tiflc vision of the saints. Yet purity alone was not
the end of religion, but rather a means to the high
est religion ; nor Is " righteousness " alone enough ;
righteousness must manifest itself in purity. So we
see that Israel had a part of the truth, — the more
important, it Is true, because the thing of utmost im
portance is not " conduct," but a rigbt relation with
God ; but Persia had another part of the truth, and
that was the doctrine of purity, without which right
eousness would, ere long, become that of the scribes
and Pharisees.
Before considering any further the doctrines con
tained in the Zend-Avesta it would be weU for us,
at this point, to retrace our steps a little and see how
it was that the representatives of righteousness and
purity were brought together. It is a marvelous
story, — perhaps without its equal in history.
We are all familiar with the story of the Semitic
progress in the knowledge of truth, beginning with
the Chaldean Sheik Abraham, reaching the zenith of
its material grandeur in David, whose dominion was
"from sea to sea," and Its spiritual splendor In the
visions of Isaiah ; but the true raeaning of the his
tory of the people of Israel did not appear until they
were brought under the influence of the Iranians, of
whom, perchance, Abraham had known in the days
of old.
Imagination must play a large part in fllllng up
the outline drawn by tradition in the history of the
Iranian people. The first nation formed from the

220 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
migrating hordes of Iran, of which we have any
sure testimony, is the Medes. There is a tradition
that they soon overspread the low lands of Mesopo
tamia, till then inhabited by the Semites. When
they lost their hold upon the south we do not know,
but we find them finally established in the northern
kingdom of Media. This, then, is the first kingdom
in which Zoroastrianism found its home.
It was at this time far simpler than we find It
later, as recorded in the Avesta. Whether its dual
ism had been developed at this time it is impossible
to say, but it was latent in it from the beginning.
For as a faUure to rise to the consciousness of per
sonality leads inevitably to pantheism, so an intense
belief in human personaUty, unmodified by a belief
in some " atonement " of the human and the divine,
leads to dualism. As soon as man becomes conscious
of sin, he becomes aware of his distance from God.
Unless he can in some way be assured that, in spite
of sin, he is stUl one with the Divine, he wiU seek to
find some evil principle under whose power he will
believe himself to be, and then a divorce between
the human and Divine is complete.
There seems to be no reason to think that Zoro
astrianism had reached this stage of development at
the time of which we now speak: for, had that been
the case, we should expect to find greater iufluence
than there is trace of as a result of the inroad of the
Scythians, under whose dominion the Medes now feU.
The religion of the Scythians was Maglanism, that
is, the worship of the material elements of nature, —
not as all people have more or less venerated them as

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 221
the best symbols of almighty power, but as the power
itself. The chief of these powers was fire, and to
that the highest worship was paid.
This worship of fire was attractive to the Medes
In two ways : in the first place they could not imagine
a more perfect symbol of irresistible purity, any
thing that so weU expressed their belief that the
power of Ahura-Mazda was irresistible. It had also
a link with the past. It was the earliest rite of the
Aryan people, and had served In the days of old as
a bond between the heavens and man, — the only
thing man possessed which had power to mount up
to the dweUing-place of God.
But it was a descent from the high plane on which
Zoroaster had stood, strong in the sarae faith which
had made the Hebrew Sheik the friend of God ; and
its evil effects were soon seen.
The early Iranians had burned or buried their
dead, but now fire was thought to be too pure to
touch the corrupting body ; the earth also was one
of the original elements of nature and raight not be
defiled ; so too was water, and consequently the cus
tom of exposing the dead to the vultures soon be
came a distinguishing mark of Parsism.'
But the Scythian influence did not stop here. In
order to keep the flre burning on the mountain-tops,
and to decide what In nature was clean and unclean,
there was a need of priests, and the Magians stepped
in to flU a place which their own doctrine had cre
ated, for before this Zoroastrianism had been as free
from a hierarchy as the patriarchic congregation of
' Drummond's Origines, vol. i.

222 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
Israel. Such seems to have been the history of Zo
roastrianism ; the early belief in the Invisible God,
who is pure and loves the truth, and with whom men
must fight against evil, was overlaid by nature wor
ship, by a sense of the necessity of a priesthood, and
confused by subtle distinctions between the clean and
the imclean which the trained casuist alone could de
cide.' But a better tirae was coming to save them from
the corruption which must soon have succeeded this
mongrel religion.
A fresh horde of Iranians poured into Media, and
under the leadership of Cyaxares threw off the
Scythian yoke. Had they thrown off the Scythian
influence their history and that of the world might
have been changed. But the new king was bent on
conquest and turned from truth to power.
We need not foUow the history of Media further.
The only event that concerns us after this is the faU
of Nineveh, hailed with such grim delight by the
Prophet Nahum, and all the weary exiles for whom
he spoke. His description of the Median assault,
and the ignoble crurabling of that great Mammon-
worshiping Assyrian empire which had crushed Da^
mascus and Samaria in order to get the trade of
Tyre and the commerce of Egypt, is Homeric in its
simplicity and passion.^
After that Media loses interest for us. It be
comes In turn a great conqueror. It invades Lydia,
it turns back and enslaves its brethren of the com-
1 Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies.
2 See Sayoe's Ancient E-mpires.

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 223
mon Iranian blood. But here it met its death. In
558 B. C, Cyrus, a prince of the royal blood, threw off
the Median yoke, and organizing with consummate
skiU a fresh band of Iranian emigrants overthrew and
conquered the Median empire, and took up the work
that Media had failed to do, as " Cyrus the Persian."
For twenty years the work of conquest continues,
until, in the year 538, he turns his face southward
and raarches to the siege of Babylon.
The prophecy of Nahum had prepared the inhab
itants of Jerusalera to expect deliverance from the
Medes, but the faU of Nineveh was the occasion for
the rise of the Chaldean empire, far more dangerous
to the safety of Jerusalem.
When Jerusalem feU it seemed to the Jews as If
God had forgotten them, but the events which fol
lowed the first twenty years of their captivity seemed
destined to change that fear Into certainty.
The Median power which had promised so weU
did nothing for the captives of Nineveh, and kept
on in its triumphant course far north of Babylon.
WeU for the history of the world it is that it did:
for the corrupted Maglanism had no treasure for Is
rael. When, however, Cyrus the Persian arose, the
representative of pure Zoroastrianism, he was hailed
by a prophet whose words have been incorporated
into the prophecy of Isaiah as the " servant of Je
hovah." The unnaturalness of Isaiah's prediction of
Cyrus's reign, which was once thought to be so essen
tial to the truth of Christianity, has served to obscure
the reaUy supernatural character of the faith of the
Unknown Prophet, who could welcome this Iranian

224 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
conqueror as a man called by God. The twenty
years which passed between the revolt of Cyrus and
the siege of Babylon must have seemed to the peo
ple who groaned beneath the burden of the Chalde
ans as sure a proof of the failure of prophecy, as did
the railing of Rabshakeh to their fathers In the day
when Isaiah said the city " shall not faU." But again
the prediction of a man of faith, that is of spiritual
insight, was shown to be true. Cyrus came at last
and the city feU, and he who had been hailed as the
servant of Jehovah by the prophet declared that
Jehovah was his God.'
The fall of Babylon takes rank in history with the
sack of Rome, and the French Revolution — one of
the three great crises which introduces a new order.
Both Hebrew and Greek tradition unite in ascrib
ing to Cyrus aU the virtues which should adorn a
noble prince, so that aU that we know of his charac
ter tends to justify the faith of the great prophet that
he was the servant of Jehovah.
However the decree recorded in the Bible may
have been colored by Hebrew predilection, there
seems no reason to doubt that In giving permission
to the Jews to return to Jerusalem, Cyrus felt that
he was obeying the wiU of Him whom the Jews
called Jehovah. It could not have been otherwise
when we remember that the whole strength of the He
brew people had been tested In the struggle against
the worship of the images of their cruel conquerors,
and that Cyrus was the very embodiment of the
1 Ezra i. 1-4.

ZOEO.iSTRIANlSM. 225
spirit of iconoclasm. It was here that the two re
ligions found a raeeting point, and a further ac
quaintance only served to show the kinship between
the spirituality of Zoroastrianism and the true wor
ship of Jehovah. And here we find another ex
ample of that v/liich meets the thoughtful student on
almost every page of history : the truth that the eter
nal law is working out the good, though so often it
seems as if it must have been deflected by the power
of e-vil. We have already seen that Nahum had
hailed the Median triumph as bringing safety to
Jerusalem as weU as revenge to Samaria, and that it
failed to accomplish his hope. Had it done so the
Jews would have been brought in contact with a
phase of Zoroastrianlsra so debased by Magian in
fluence that it could only have served to harden
them in their belief that God had no care for any
people save those in Israel. But when Cyrus ab
sorbed the Median power he restored the pure reli
gion of Zoroaster, and it was to that that Judaism
was akin. Even as it was, they came near to de
struction by the Magian influence, as we flnd in the
reign of Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus, when,
during the Egyptian campaign, the false Smerdls
revolted and reestablished the Magian religion, the
influence of which was felt even In Palestine ; for It
was by his order that the petition of the Samaritans
was received, and the work of rebuilding the Temple
at Jerusalem was stopped. On the triumph of Da
rius, the work was renewed, and the Jews were as
sured of the support of the great king, who revived
the worship of the earlier Iranians, and suppressed
15

226 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the foreign rites which had crept in during the Ma
gian power.
These facts it is iraportant to bear in raind, if we
would rightly estiraate the influence of Persia upon
Judaea. That the Jews actually borrowed frora the Per
sians is not likely. It seems probable that the theory
of Kuenen ' is the correct one : that the Jews, hav
ing been absorbed into the great Persian empire,
were naturaUy Influenced by the prevaUing religious
thought of the time, which in its fundamentals was
so akin to their own, and consequently had the seeds
which had lain latent during the Captivity quickened
by the genial warmth of the Persian sympathy.
The first effect of Persian influence is seen in
the ser-vlce of the synagogue. Of course, when the
Temple was destroyed the rise of the synagogue
was inevitable, if the people were to be kept in re
merabrance of the great things which God had done
for them, and if their children were to be instructed
in the law. But we can well believe that at best it
must have seemed to the men who wrote the Psalms,
so full of devotion to the Teraple and its service, but
a teraporary raakeshlft. Yet we know that when
the opportunity was given to rebuUd the Temple
but a small part of the people took advantage of the
decree. Why was this ? Not, I think, because they
had lost interest in the religion of their fathers, as is
sometimes supposed, for they continued till the faU
of the Persian empire to hold the most friendly re-
^ History of Israel.

ZOEOASTRIANISM. 227
lations with their kindred in Palestine, and yet to
have had no desire to return. Now no one who
reads the last chapters of the prophecy of Isaiah can
doubt that If the decree of Cyrus had been promul
gated by Belshazzar the whole people would have
availed theraselves of that which, at that time, would
have seemed to thera most essential for the proper
worship of Jehovah. Certainly we do not exercise
too great a liberty when we say that this was the re
sult of their contact with a people who had no tem
ple, but believed that God was a spirit and must be
worshiped not on the Mount Zion only, but In every
place In spirit and in truth. The flight of Jonah
from the land of Israel, in the belief that In that
way he might escape from the eye of the God of
Israel, and the refusal of the captives to return and
rebuUd the Temple are two great landmarks which
show the spiritual progress of the chosen people.
So read, the tears of the old men who had seen the
first Teraple were not caUed forth alone by the infe
riority of the later building, but also by the " New
Theology," which was seen to affect even those who
had returned to the promised land. The later Tem
ple never became to the Jews what the old Temple
had been to Israel. The real worship of the Jews
in Palestine, as weU as of those of the Dispersion,
was the synagogue worship. How essential that
was for any real growth in religious thought every
student of history knows. It was in the synagogue
that Jesus taught and worshiped ; it was the Car
tholicism of the synagogue that Jesus opposed to
the sectarianism of Samaria; it was in the syna-

228 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
gogue that the gospel was first preached by Paul,
and it was after its simple family worship that the
service of the earliest Christian churches were mod
eled. And all this was originally fostered by the
people who could not think of God as dwelling in
teraples raade with hands.
Closely connected with the synagogue there be
gan to be felt what we call personal religion, that
sense of personal relation to Jehovah which could
come only after tbe idea of a nation In communion
with Him, had taken deep root in the national con
science. The latter, we raay say, was the fruit of
aU the experiences of the nation frora the day they
came out of Egypt till they were carried away cap
tive, after which they were never again an indepen
dent people-
But the loss of national independence was more
than compensated for by the revelation of personal
freedom. The book of Ezekiel is full of this idea
of personal responsibility : " The soul that sinneth it
shall die." " When the wicked man turneth away
from his wickedness he shaU save his soul alive." '
How much such a spirit would be encouraged by
contact with the Persians we can guess from a
remembrance that Zoroastrianism was essentiaUy
a religion of Indmdualisra. Righteousness, as we
have seen, was the burden of the prophets of Israel ;
but righteousness had sunk at the tirae of the Cap
tivity to mean union with a nation chosen by God.
Purity was the gospel of Zoroastrianism, but purity
is essentially personal.
' See Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Ch-urch,

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 229
Where can we find this more beautifully ex
pressed than in the Khordah- Avesta, a later growth,
no doubt, and yet a legitimate one, of the original
Zoroastrian thought.
I repent of those sins which burden the conscience ; as
to see sin and not warn him who does it : to teach evil ly
ing, and inspire doubts of the good : to do harm to any
one : to take anything by fraud ; to say there is no God ;
to turn from repentance.
Which I suppose raeans to turn frora the repentant
man.
I confess the sins against father, mother, sister, brother,
wife, and child.
I confess that that which was the wish of Ormuzd the
Creator, and I ought to have thought, I have not thought.
That which was the wish of Ahriman and I ought not
to have thought, I have thought.
And yet they too hoped to be justified by faith, for
they added to their confessions : —
With aU good deeds I am in agreement, and with aU
evil deeds I am not in agreement. May Ahriman be
broken, may Ormuzd increase.'
That thought is most strongly eraphasized In the
prophecy of Malachi. The messenger of the Lord
is to sit as a refiner, but who can abide the day of
his coming ; what individual can stand before hira
who wIU try the sons of Levi ?
That is the last thought in the Old Testament, a
promise that a new day is coming, but a day pre
ceded by the return of a spirit like his who said,
" /, even I only am left," and " Choose you this
^ Spiegel, Avesta, and Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv.

230 HIS STAE IN THE EAST.
day whom ye wUl serve." With that cry of Elijah
so long hushed by centuries of ecclesiastlcism, the
New Testament opens. " The axe is laid at the foot
of the tree. Every tree that bringeth not forth
srood fruit is to be cast Into the fire." Think not to
osay in such a crisis we are the children of Abraham ;
the hard heart which yields to God's influence rises
up a chUd of Abraham. Behold the Lamb of God
which taketh away the sin of the world is to each
individual In the world what the paschal lamb was
to each individual in the famiUes of Israel.
This intense individualism was the necessary
preparation for the belief in personal immortality
which was the glory of Zoroastrianism, and which
appears as a leading point In the theology of Israel.
No doubt there had graduaUy been creeping into
the minds of the most serious men in Israel a sus
picion that death was not the end of the soul's re
lation to Jehovah ; but that was quite a different
thing frora the strong conviction of the Persian that
deatii is but a crisis in the moral struggle in which
the pure in heart shall come off victorious. The
suspicion of immortality was deepened into cer
tainty by Israel's contact -with Persia. No one can
compare the Psalms written before the Captivity,
such as the ninetieth, with the book of Daniel, for
instance, without being struck with the great pro
gress which has been raade in the knowledge of
God's wiU concerning his children. And this hope
of immortality also served to quicken their sympa
thies with surrounding nations. The book of Dan
iel and the stiU earlier book of Malachi show this

ZOBOASTRLANISM. 231
change raost clearly. The author of the book of
Daniel felt that all the great movements of the hu
man race were tending to establish a kingdora not
of Israel, but of humanity, of the Son of Man.
Malachi declared that in every nation there were
those who were offering incense and a pure offering,
and that araong the Gentiles the name of Jehovah
was being magnified.
It was after the Captivity, too, that there was re
vived that beautiful belief in the appearance of the
angels who accorapany Jehovah, which had been a
raark of the earliest belief of Israel, but which had
gradually disappeared as God was raore and raore
thought of as separate from his people.
So far we find nothing except what was good re
sulting from the contact of the chosen people with
the disciples of Zoroaster. But whether it was that
Zoroastrianlsra fell again under the influence of the
Magians, or whether it siraply deteriorated as the re
sult of its own prosperity, we cannot tell ; certain
it is that the later effects of Zoroastrianism upon
Israel were most disastrous. That these results
were not Incorporated Into our Bibles is not due to
accident ; they are a part of the Apocrypha still ac
knowledged as canonical by the Roman Church, but
not by the Protestant Churches, for the Reformers
knew that the teachings of the Apocrypha were for
eign to the pure religion of Israel. They are akin
to that ecclesiasticism which was the result of the
contact of the Jews after the close of the canon with
the degenerate reUgion of Persia, after it had ceased

232 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
to be a power for good in history. It is worth while
to examine the dates of Persian history after the re
turn of the Jews from Captivity, for in no other way
could we feel so strongly the influence of a guiding
hand In the destinies of the people. Babylon was
taken by Cyrus in the year 538 B. C. Two years
later the Jews began to return to Jerusalem. Da
rius came to the throne in 522. He openly propa
gated the religion of Zoroaster, and encouraged the
Jews to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. The
Temple was dedicated in 516. When the Jews
departed from Babylon the empire was at the height
of its power. Six years later, 510, occurred the ex
pulsion of the PIsistratidse from Athens, which led to
the Persian war. The battle of Marathon was fought
in 490, and after that Persia ceased to be a power.
Here, then, is a remarkable fact, that the Persian
empire was a power while it was giving its treasures
to Judsea, but as soon as that was done its useful
ness seems to have ceased. To one who believes
that the Jewish nation was the divinely - elected
medium for the Incarnation, the reason for the Per
sian existence is seen when, having been led to Baby
lon, they have poured the pure stream of Aryan
theology into the strong current of Hebrew faith,
purifying and spiritualizing It.
If, now, we ask what it was that prevented the
Aryan religion from supplanting the Semitic, the
answer is its superstition. St. James, in describing
Jehovah as seen in the light of Jesus' life, "said, " He
is the Father of light, in whom is no shadow." It
has been thought that that was the creed of Zoroas-

ZOROASTRIANISM. 233
ter himself. However tbat may have been, the belief
was early held amongst the Iranians that Ahura-
Mazda had a shadow, and that this shadow was not
the darkness which always lies outside the line of
humanity's -vision of the divine, but a veritable sub
stance, the great rival of the god of light, to whom
they gave the name of " Aiira-Mainyu," or " Ahri
man." As Ormuzd had attendant divinities, so Ahriman
was surrounded by an innumerable host of devils,
whose delight it was to perplex and hinder the work
of goodness. This opinion entered into every de
partment of life. The eartli was created, not as the
Hebrews believed for the delight of God and raan,
but only as a means of thwarting the sinister designs
of the devil, by localizing, as we should say, the evil.
The next step was to divide all things on earth into
two classes of clean and unclean. The result of that
was to make an endless list of perfectly arbitrary
rules for purity. It was the end of freedom. The
only science the Persians studied was astronomy.
The stars were pure, but the earth was not. The
earth being the spot on which the devil is to be van
quished, Ormuzd did not dwell thereon, but apart
from the world. His will was known by the revela
tion which he had made once for all to Zoroaster.
The religious consciousness of Zoroaster became,
therefore, the standard for aU time. The Koran Is
no more sacred and InfaUIble to the Moslem than
the Zend-Avesta was to the Persian, and for the
same reason, it was a revelation given once for aU
by an absen4god. He wUl come again from the dis-

234 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
tant heaven to judge the world, but he wiU come as
man, — Sosios, the son of Zoroaster, the savior of
the world.
Let us sum up now the cardinal points of this
creed and compare it with Christianity.
First, then, we find a belief in two rival deities,
the conflict between whom led to the creation of this
earth as a means of localizing evil.
Secondly, a belief that once in time a revelation
was raade, but that never since has God spoken to
man. The ascription of aU the parts of the Zend-
Avesta, though written at different times, to Zo
roaster only serves to emphasize this belief.
Thirdly, the hope that some day this absent God
wiU return In the form of man as a savior.
And lastly, the conviction that purity is the means
by which, in that day, man may be found acceptable.
It was this last point that gave strength to the
Iranian religion ; for though it made formal distinc
tions, yet at the same time It was searching, and in
sisted upon cleanness in the inward thoughts. The
fire that burned up aU that was foreign to itself was
the best symbol of this all-exacting virtue.
But if one wished to find a proof that morality
cannot succeed In long floating a systera of theology
which hinders progress, he has only to study the
religion of Zoroaster, which, with the purest mo
rality of any of the old religions, yet gave up its
treasures by an Irresistible law of attraction to a
miserable race of slaves, and crumbled to the dust
on the first touch of Greek free thougl#. And yet

ZOROASTRIANISM. 235
this philosophy is the one that is popularly sup
posed to most resemble Christian theology. That
it has had a most powerful infiuence for evil upon
Christianity we are only beginning to understand.
We have spoken of the spiritual Influence of Per
sian thought upon the Jews, but that spirit was
materialized. It was probably under the influence
of later Persian thought that the compilers of He
brew Uterature ascribed so many writings of dif
ferent dates to the old hero-emancipator, Moses, and
so taught the people to find the proof of the in
spiration of the Pentateuch, not in the quickening
of the spiritual life under the Influence of a living
Spirit, but in the mere historical association with a
man to whom they knew God had spoken. The re
sult of this is seen in the cessation of " Inspired "
writings soon after the return from Babylon.
It was at this time, too, that the doctrine of an evU
spirit, the rival of Jehovah, first appears in Hebrew
thought. And this belief grew more strong as the
thought of an absent God gained ground amongst
the people. Then followed the beUef in a material
resurrection, the conscience of man demanding that
by some process this impure matter should be puri
fied. And last of all carae the belief that the Mes
siah would corae with a sign from heaven, — a visible
witness that the absent God was drawing near to
earth. These were some of the degrading beliefs which
the Jews held when their religion had hardened into
an ecclesiasticism, under the governraent of the high
priests, far nearer kin to the debased Maglanism

236 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
than to the spiritual worship of the prophets. It
was at a time when they had long lost all faith In a
living God in the midst of the congregation.
Yet these beliefs which show their Influence more
or less In the book of Daniel appear still more in
the book of Tobit, and became the very life of the
Talmud, and were the sum and substance of the
orthodox belief at the time of Jesus, the " tradi
tion " which He continually denounced. The wash
ing of tbe outside of the cup and platter was the
parody of the purity of Zoroaster.
The question of Jesus' relation to the popular be
lief of his day in demons is not one we can enter
into here. That there are other beings beside human
beings in the kosmos capable of resisting the divine
influence is an opinion that no one may presume to
dogmatize upon. That they raay have an Influence
upon human life as diaboli, the false accusers of
man to man, and God to man, has much to commend
it. But the opinion which once was taught, but is
now falling into well - deserved contempt, is the
mediasval notion of a rival to God, whom God has
to plan to defeat ; a notion that was born of the
Manichean speculations of the early Christian cen
turies, which were theraselves the offspring of Per
sian duallsra. But at the idea of rivalry, which is
the essence of dualism, the Gospel strikes in the mys
terious story of the temptation of Jesus, where we
read that the " devil said unto him. All this power
wiU I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is de
livered unto me; and to whomsoever I will, I give
it. . . . And Jesus answered, and said unto him, Get

ZOEOASTRIANISM. 237
thee behind me Satan." ' Such an answer would
have been impossible for the Persian, because he be
lieved the lie that all power was given to Ahriman,
and that to whomsoever he would, he could give It ;
but Jesus, when brought face to face with that opin
ion, utterly repudiated it, and said, " Get behind me,
Satan," the first step towards that sublime statement
of humanity's position on earth, afterwards described
when He said, " AU power is given unto me In
heaven and earth."
Look now at that second article of Persian faith,
the revelation to Zoroaster and the subsequent si
lence of the divine voice, an opinion that had such
a blighting effect upon Hebrew developraent, that
under its influence the mighty voices of the proph-
set ceased, a hierarchy took their place to witness
to the distance between man and God, the scribes
came to expound the sayings of a dead God, and
the Pharisees arose to decide where the burning
fire of God's righteousness had passed when It
had been last seen on earth. Now look at Jesus
preaching to the peasants In the synagogue of Naz
areth. He is no scribe expounding a dead law ; He
is a man speaking with that authority which can
give an account of itself, to the majesty of which no
rairacle can add ; the authority of one who speaks
the things he has heard from God. Under the in
fluence of that life sacred literature revived. Hu
manity, as represented by those who came nearest
to that life, felt Itself under an irresistible Impulse
to cry aloud the glad tidings that God is living
1 St. Luke iv. 6, 8.

288 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
amongst men. The belief has never failed through
aU these ages that humanity is being led by the
Spirit of truth into truth.
The belief that the Messiah would come like the
Persian Sosios from heaven, breaking through the
visible vault that hid God from raan's eyes, — this
is the sign that the Jews were always asking for.
" Show us a sign from heaven," and that was the
sign that Jesus always refused to give. If they could
not recognize the divine life when it stood beside
them. He would give no sign which would confirm
the orthodox heresy that God's coraing to raan was
the return of an absent king. The object of the in
carnation was to lead men to see that the divine life
which had always been araong them was now mani
fested. That the true meaning of the incarnation
was not seen at once, that old prejudices fell off Uttle
by little, is only what we should expect. That the
full meaning of it is not appreciated yet, that every
advance in the history of raan has only served to
throw new light upon It, wUl surprise no one who
believes the birth of Jesus Christ to have been the
suprerae act of history, the explanation of the past
and the prophecy of the future.
Now one of the first effects of that notion of an
absent God which sprang up in the Christian Church
as the result of a revival of a debased form of He
braism, and the Influence of the dregs of Zoroas
trianism which stUl lingered in Asia Minor, was
seen in the prevalence of the belief In the superior
ity of the ascetic life.' God had raade the world,
' See Histoire du Gnosticism, par M. Jacques Matter.

ZOEOASTBIANISM. 239
and left it, and now the devU ruled, therefore the
less we had to do with life the better. It was dual
ism working itself out Into practice that produced
that monstrosity of asceticism which Theodore Par
ker said was the daughter of atheism and sensualism.
It may seem as if the subject of this chapter had
been forgotten, whicii is the relation of Zoroastrian
ism to Christianity ; but indeed just as one who
wished to study the true meaning of Wycliffe's cora-
mon-sense religion would have to go to Bohemia to
see how it burned, like great lumps of sea coal, un
der the influence of the southern character, or as one
who would judge of the best fruits of the political
French writings in the eighteenth century would
have to leave the Bastile and the Place de la Con
corde and stand on Bunker HIU or In Independence
HaU, so he who would see the outcome of Iranian
theology must leave the Euphrates and stand beside
the Jordan and the Tiber.
We have seen how much Jewish thought was in
debted to Iranian spirituality, and how the continu
ance of the Hebrew religion was the justification of
that spiritual faith, but it remained for Christianity
to justify the essential element of Zoroastrianism.
The necessity of purity for a knowledge of God
had been from the beginning the conservative force
of the religion of Zoroaster. And this Christ justi
fied, not by simply adopting it after the method of
eclecticism, but by deepening its meaning and show
ing upon what it is dependent. " Blessed are the
pure in heart," said Jesus, " for they shall see God."

240 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
If these words had come down to us as the saying of
an unknown teacher, we might well have concluded
that he had felt the influence of the Iranian reli
gion ; but they are the words of one whose life is a
witness that a purity which is not a formal cere
mony, but a Uving principle of the heart, is depen
dent upon the constant seeing of God. The life of
Jesus is the counterpart to the Beatitude, Blessed
are the pure in heart, and they that see God are
pure. One of the disciples felt this when he wrote
that the effect of the full vision of God would be
similitude, " we shaU be like him, for we shall see
him as he is;" and another formulated the very
Augsburg Confession of spiritual freedom when he
wrote, freeing the Christian Church forever from
arbitrary distinctions, "to the pure all things are
pure." But as this purity was not to be a matter merely
of ceremonial observance, neither was it to be pro
duced by the observance of any rules. It was to
be the effect of the consciousness of an indwelling
Spirit of holiness, the highest gift of God.
Zoroastrianism had begun with some such thought.
As long as God was thought of as communing with
man, so long had purity been a state of the spirit.
When God was thought of as absent, purity clung
to " observances." The whole history of religion
shows that the two go together : the worship of an
absent God must be the "tithing of mint, anise,
and cummin ; " the service of the immanent God Is
" mercy, judgment, and truth." By the gift of the
Spirit, Jesus insured the purity of his Church.

ZOEOASTRIANISM. 241
Out of that faith In the power of purity, that of
the possibility of individuaUy knowing God, sprung
a faith in the everlasting existence of the life that
had talked with God. Crudely as that belief may
have expressed itself, grossly as it may have become
materialized, It may be questioned whether the resur
rection of Jesus could have found acceptance, had
not Zoroastrianism prepared a nidus for that belief.
But the resurrection of Jesus, whatever may have
been its physical aspects, was invariably spoken of by
Its witnesses as the fulfUlment of the law of Christ's
being. " It was not possible that he should be holden
of death." It was declared both by Peter and Paul
in their first recorded sermons that Jesus was the
Christ, the Anointed Man, of whom it had been said
of old that He could not see corruption. Or, as it is
more strongly put by St. Paul elsewhere. He was
declared to be the Son of God " with power, accord
ing to the spirit of hoUness, by the resurrection
from the dead ; " in other words, it was in accordance
with the spirit of holiness (which Includes Hebrew
"righteousness " and Persian "purity") that Jesus
rose from the dead. That which the Psalmist had
declared to be the law for the Son of David, the
disciples of Zoroaster had taught was the reward of
each man's struggle against evil, and that faith
the Son of Man justified. Justified It as He did the
Hebrew faith In righteousness, by showing that it
was a far nobler and better thing than any reanima-
tlon of the flesh ; even a life which exceeds In glory
and power the present life more than mature man
hood surpasses trembling infancy. Of the Son of
16

242 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
Man even it was said, in reference to his Resurrec
tion, This day have I begotten thee ; as if the life
that the earth had seen was nothing as compared
with the life that burst upon Him who had been
dead and was alive again.
The part played by Zoroastrianism in preparing
the world for the resurrection must not be over
looked, for it Is Its greatest glory. It was the first
religious system to feel the power of personality, and
proclaim that it was a spark of the divine flame
which should neither be " blown out," nor absorbed
by the consuming fire.
Zoroastrianism has been called Oriental Puri
tanism. I would prefer to call it the John Baptist
of the Ethnic prophets. In some respects it was the
nearest to Christianity, and in others it was the far
thest removed. It was destined to decrease while
that must increase. Christianity could not deliver
it from the prison-house of superstition; but when
it sends asking, " Art thou that which should come,
or do we look for another," the answer is, " For this
cause was the Son of God manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil," and " Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." It says this,
not as a rival system of philosophy, but as the wit
ness to a life which revealed the power of humanity
to conquer sin, and the reality of humanity's dream
of " seeing the King in his beauty," in the " power
of an endless life."

CHAPTER IX.
"the PERVERSION OE THE GOSPEL."
As we look back over the path which we have
marked, we see that the early Aryan religions were
feeling after an answer to great questions, to which
the Christian Church, Influenced by the spirit of
Christ, believed that they were answering in that
sumraary of the Christian faith called the Apostles'
Creed. To the first article of that creed Vedaism
brought its problem of creation, saying. We know
of the divine as omnipresent and kind. But Jesus
knew the divine as the iraraanent creative power, —
no blind force, but an everlasting Father upholding
aU things by the power of his will.
In Brahmanism we found that the divine was con
ceived of less as a principle of matter, and more
and more as a spiritual Image, immanent in man and
recognizable by man's spirit, and that true bliss con
sisted in the union of the divine image in man with
the indestructible essence of life. But we saw, also,
that this divine essence was Impassive, — having no
power to effect this union. To the aspiration of
Brahmanism the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, quick
ening the latent image, inspiring with the hope of
reaching the measure of the stature of Him who is
the perfect image, leading to a union which is the re*-
conciUation of a son and a father, comes as a gospel.

244 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
We have seen how Buddha, looking on the sorrow
of life, declared that there could be no escape save
by the cessation of desire. That the fiction of per
sonality was at the root of all delusion, and that if
men would but free themselves from delusion by de
taching themselves frora life they should enter a per
fect peace where they would desire nothing. We
saw how Christ came with as profound an apprecia
tion of sorrow as Buddha, but that He declared It
was inherent not in life, but in the " world," — that
existence in which there is no consciousness of the
Father. He said that He was come that men inight
have " abundant life," and that the pathway to life
lay, not through the deadening of sensibility, but
through the death of selfishness. And yet, with all
his hatred of selfishness. He so magnified the glory
of personality that He opened a heaven of endless
progress in the knowledge and love of God, which.
He declared, was eternal life.
We saw, also, in the inevitable revolt frora the
nihilism of Buddhism, the rise of Hindu theism,
with its Shiva, the God of life and death, and
Vishnu, the preserver. Into sympathy with that
more profound religion we saw that the Church
could enter, because it has the Gospel of the Word
made flesh, which justified humanity's faith in its
own divinity, and revealed God as a character essen
tially Christian, — like Shiva, the giver of life and
death ; like Vishnu, the preserver. And this gospel
is not a story of sorae Avatara, a sudden and tem
porary descent Into a human form to effect a spe
cific purpose, but the history of the Incarnation,

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 245
which has revealed the mysterious power which re
deems huraan nature frora death and sin.
Lastly, we retraced our steps to the starting-point
of Aryan history, and foUowed the Iranian revolt
against Aryanisra to the time when it yielded up its
treasures of spirituality and purity to Judaism. But
we saw the weakness of Zoroastrianism, too, — the
arbitrary distinctions between right and wrong, its
absent god. Its corapleted revelation, its hostUe power
of evU. We found that Christ set his seal to its
inherent truth, but repudiated the parasitic growths
which had well-nigh strangled it. And that these
might never hinder the truth again He caUed to
gether a Church, an assemblage of the faithful, who
would " judge all things " in the consciousness of the
power of the indwelling Spirit of truth, and in hope
of eternal life through Him who had been dead and
was aUve again.
Compare, then, the results of Vedaism with the
Christian faith in the Fatherhood of God, Brahmanic
aspiration -with the Gospel of the Holy Spirit, Budd
hist despair with the story of the Cross and Resur
rection, Hinduism with its "feeling after" Him who
is not far from any of us with the doctrine of the
Incarnation, Zoroastrianism with its purity so inade
quate with the beUef in the Communion of saints,
and then ask how it came to pass that a peasant of
GalUee inspired men with a faith which reveals Him
as the desire of aU nations.
The anomaly of that character cannot be too
often insisted upon in questions of this sort, and yet
that character itself cannot be rightly appreciated

246 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
if It be considered only in its manifestation in the
three years of Jesus' rainistry ; we must look to his
body the Church if we would see what Jesus' life is.
For in some way it carae to pass that the Church
was founded. A company of men and women
were caUed together. Some overwhelming emotion
awaked in them the consciousness that they were
nearer to Jesus and saw more clearly the Father
than in the days when Jesus was visible to the eye.
No doubt they were unable to explain this until
Paul appeared, and declared that it was because the
sarae Spirit which had sanctified Jesus was an in
herent part of human nature. This thought was car
ried on by John, and the Christ-Spirit was declared
to be the portion not only of the Christian, but " the
Ught tbat Ughteth every man that cometh into the
world." So that the difference between the Christian
and the non-Christian was not like the difference
between the Buddhist or the Zoroastrian and the
Brahman, — the difference which exists between the
merabers of various sects ; it was simply the differ
ence between one who knew what relation humanity
bore to God and one who did not know it. We hear
a good deal about the corruption of the simpUcity of
the Gospel by the speculations of philosophy, but it
was not until the Gospel had been " corrupted " by
St. Paul that the Church began to understand that
Jesus had not died and risen in order to form a sect
in the midst of Judaism, but the Catholic Church.
And that was absolutely a new thought In the his
tory of raankind. None of the religions which we
have considered every dreamed of a church, much

" THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL," 247
less of a Catholic Church. Buddhism came the
nearest to it, but we have seen that it soon was com
peUed to draw a line between the secular and the
consecrated life, and establish religious orders to
realize what it was admitted man was unequal to.
And even had that not followed. Buddhism at the
best could never have attracted the West ; for the
characteristic of the West Is activity, which is the
deadly sin of Buddhism. If it be answered that
Christ violated instincts of humanity as deep as that
for activity, — as in his teaching concerning re
venge, — the answer is that He never violated an
instinct of huraanity.
No doubt it seems as if He did, but if by an in
stinct of huraanity is meant such an Ingrained senti
ment — no matter what its origin — as is capable of
progress, then with revenge as with all other things
Jesus was " set for the falling " before there carae
the " rising of Israel." Revenge in its brutal forra
is the desire to inflict suffering because of suffering
caused, but it is only transfigured revenge which
cries, "Father, forgive them ! " There is an instinct
in the human heart which demands that evil shaU not
triumph over good. The man who has lost that has
lost an essential part of his humanity. The simplest
way of preventing the triumph of evil is the infliction
of some punishraent which will equal that inflicted,
and so prevent the preponderance of evil ! But Christ
revealed a better way when He said, " Pray for them
that despItefuUy use you and persecute you." And
under the influence of that spirit revenge, which
was the protest against the triumph of evU, gave

248 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
place to the enthusiasm for conversion, which is the
demand for the coming of the kingdom of God.
The Catholic Church, then, is nothing less than
the calling of humanity to realize its humanity in
the Spirit of Jesus. And that it cannot be too
often repeated is a new thought, a veritable gospel
to mankind.
But the Church could never have been built up
had it not been that individuals had already, in part
at least, realized that Ufe which the Church was to
declare to be the true life of humanity. The record
of those Christians before Christ, found in the Jew
ish Scriptures as in the literature of no other peo
ple, the Christian Church took with it, and said that
that which had been realized in narrow bounds and
in partial ways by a people who felt the presence
of God must be realized more perfectly by men
and woraen who had been brought by other ways
to the knowledge of the truth.
For a long time that was the only Bible the
Church had : when the Apostle went to the syna
gogue he reasoned out of that; when he went to
those to whom it was unknown he spoke of God's
raessage which comes in the falling rain and the
warming sun, or he turned to the poetry with which
they were famUiar, and led them through that to
God. But this new experience of the indweUing
Spirit was producing a literature which was to be
raore precious to the world than the Prophecies and
Psalms. The epistles to the churches soon were
found to be of larger appUcation than had been sup
posed. The Philippians were addressed as men, and

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 249
in this gospel to men there was a lesson for every
man. Then as the eye-witnesses passed away it was
felt that the tradition of Jesus' life must be gath
ered before It was too late, and in the Gospels there
was embodied the portrait of Him who walked
among men and raade thera know that they had
seen the image of God. Thus our Bible grew, and
it became, together with the Church, the great wit
ness to the truth. The one witnessed to the Imma
nence of God in society, that gathering together of
Individuals in a common faith which we call the
Church : and the other witnessed to the iraraanence
of God in the unpremeditated aggregation of men
in the nation, — God In history ; while the life of
Jesus, recorded or unrecorded, witnessed to the Im
manence of God in the individual because In hu
manity. That is the threefold witness which is to
convince the world.
And now the question which may well be asked,
and to which it Is hoped this book will give some
sort of an answer, is this : If Christianity be the
satisfaction of the great human needs and wants as
expressed in the religions of the world, why has it
failed to conquer the world ? It has not conquered
it. Europe and America are nominally Christian ;
but Central Asia Is Mahometan, while from the Gan
ges eastward Buddhisra is the religion which has
absorbed all the rest. Yet for fifteen hundred years
Christianity has been helped by the wealth, the
material power, and the intellectual ability of the
world. Its Founder gave it a world-wide commis-

250 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
sion. It began with a missionary spirit that seemed
destined to sweep the world with its enthusiasm, but
it did almost nothing in the East. Its triumphs were
chiefly in the West, and now its force seeras spent ;
it Is not converting the heathen, and it is with dif
ficulty that it holds its own against the advancing
tide of inteUigence in Europe and Araerica. Why
is this ?
It ought not by any means to be adraitted that
all that is Implied In these objections is true ; on the
contrary, it might be possible to show that the mis
sionary spirit of the last twenty-five years has done
an apostolic work, but It is best to place before our
selves as clearly as possible what it Is that is being
said against the religion of Christ, and recognize that
it has power, because we ourselves feel that there is
truth in the objection that we are not doing what we
ought to be doing. But the important question is
not. Are we doing what we might do if we entered
more fully into the spirit of Jesus ? but. Has that
spirit so spent its force that it is not possible that
Intelligent raen should be inspired by it to-day as
they were eighteen hundred years ago ?
To answer all that such a question implies would
necessitate the writing of the history of the Church,
but these few facts should be remembered in any
such discussion.
In the first place, the Gospel was, as Paul said, a
" treasure in earthen vessels," and the first mistake
of the Church was when the Roman Empire was
aUowed to gild those vessels with flattery. In that
day the glory of serving gave place to that of ruling.

" THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 251
But the Church had hardly seated herself in her new
erapire, had hardly tirae to show whether the Chris
tian spirit could predorainate over the traditions of
the past, before the storm of the barbarian Incur
sion fell upon her. No greater proof of her vitality
could be educed from history than the fact that when
the storm had subsided the Church alone, amid the
¦wreck of principalities and powers, lifted up her head.
But the sight that met her gaze might well have ap
palled the stoutest heart ; the civilization of cen
turies destroyed, and half-naked savages, drunk with
their titanic orgies, the masters of the world. That
Christianity should bave survived such a day of
judgment, that the Bishop of Rome and his brave
clergy could ever have had the faith to begin the
rebuilding of the world, is sufficient proof of the
vitality of the faith of Christ in the year 452 A. D.
The conversion of the barbarians to Christianity
was a wonderful, but to us a most unsatisfactory
piece of work. Of course, if we were shut up in a
block-bouse on the frontier with a drunken savage,
we would try to tame him before we began to convert
him. Now the truth seems to be that the Church was
so glad to get the barbarians tamed that she com
promised there and caUed them converted, consecrat
ing all their ceremonies which were not immoral, and
alas ! absorbing many of their superstitions. The
consequence was that mediaeval Christianity was
composed of three elements ; the simplicity of the
gospel of Christ, the imperial policy of Rome, and
the barbarian superstitions. The Reformation was
the great national protest against the imperial pol-

252 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
icy of Rome, and a reUgious protest against the
barbarian superstitions. The full meaning of the
political revolution we know now means that which
the authors of it never dreamed it could mean, — de
mocracy. The goal of the religious movement, we
are only now beginning to see, is the liberty of the
sons of God.
So then when any one brings it as an objection
against Christianity that it has spent its force, the
proof being that the early missionary triumphs of
the Church were greater than our own, it raust be
reraerabered that the Church had had no tirae to
free herself from the seductions of the state alliance
before the incursion of the barbarians occurred ; and
that frora that day till the Reforraation mediseval
Christendom was what the author of the " Continu
ity of Christian Thought " caUs a " parenthesis in
the larger record of the life of Christendom." '
It may be asked why more has not been done
to convert the world since the Reformation. The
answer is that far more has been done than ever
before. More Christians have been made in the
past one hundred years than in any six hundred
before. Perhaps this cannot be said of the nuraber
of converts, but the question cannot be decided by
statistics ; for no one who considers what the life of
Jesus was supposes that the converts raade by the
Jesuits in Canada or by Xavier in Japan are to be
counted araong the triumphs of the cross ! But
the real reason why more has not been done since
1 The Continuity of Christian Thought, by Alex. V. G. AUen, D. D.

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 253
the Reformation is that the Reformation is not yet
finished. Up to this time its work has been largely
negative. Its positive work has yet to be done, or
rather completed. For of course nothing could be
raore positive than the English Revolution, the Amer
ican Revolution, and even the French Revolution, aU
of thera the outcome of the Reformation.
Nothing could be more positive, also, than the
scientific effects of the Reformation ; but when I
speak of its negative results I mean theologically.
The reason why its results have been so positively
good in politics and science is that they were born
as the result of that great labor, but theology had
been held in bondage, and has not yet been set free.
The Reformation will not have finished its work
until the spirit of dogmatism has been put down.
And when I say dogmatisra I do not mean agree
ment in the acceptance of certain facts, — nor even
in opinion about those facts ; In that sense dogma
tism is an essential element in human society ; but
when I speak of dograatism, I mean the spirit that
insists upon inteUectual agreeraent in regard to de
tails which in the nature of the case we must be
ignorant of, as, for instance, the exact condition of
the dead ; which discourages historical criticism be
cause there is supposed to be a fixed tradition con
cerning the canon of Scripture which may not be vio
lated ; which decides that scientific discoveries must
be held back until the scribes have examined the text
of Scripture to see whether the admission of truth Is
" safe ; " which, in fine, would turn the Church into
a club, into which no one may be admitted whose

254 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
intellectual condition is not entirely satisfactory to
every meraber, and which raakes the acceptance of
metaphysical speculations upon inscrutable mysteries
the test of fellowship with Him who said, " Come
unto me, aU ye that labor and are heavy laden," and
" If any man Is coming toward me I wIU in nowise
turn him back." That spirit has been the shadow of
Protestantism, and prevented the power of the great
religious revival of the sixteenth century from being
felt. Is that spirit on the increase or not ? It is
on the decrease. This new and fashionable spirit
of agnosticism has certainly done this good. It has
made men ashamed of their dogmatism. The theo
logians have been like two heated disputants, and
agnosticism, instead of taking sides, has simply said.
Neither of you know anything about the inatter. It
has stopped the dispute ; it has set raen to thinking
as to the grounds of religious certitude. It has led
multitudes to feel that the truth of any spiritual
announcement is to be proved, not by an external
miracle, nor by an unbroken tradition, but by the
iraraediate response of the human soul to that an
nouncement. As Maurice has well said, " Conscience
is not the measure of truth, but it is its test."
No doubt agnosticism itself raay becorae dogmatic.
It has done so. It has asserted with the old odium
theologicum that God is unknown and unknowable.
But we need not be troubled by its dogmatisra ; we
may be sure that it has become dogmatic, because it
has no new message. For I suppose it is always
true that men become dogmatic when they are con
scious that they have nothing new to say, and so fall

"THE PEEVEESION OF THE GOSPEL." 255
to reiterating the old statements untU they gain a
certain sanctity which they never had in the early
days when they were only the preliminaries of some
thing better. No one who can read the signs of the
times at all can fail to see that the Christian spirit,
so far frora being hurt by the dissolution of dog
matisra, has really begun to feel the pulse of a new
life. It is the old fond delusion, that a captive bird
would die if set free In the forest, that leads men to
think that Christian liberty needs the cage of dog
matism. History shows that It does not need it.
When the Reformation has done its work it vnU
be free.
But dogmatism is only the intellectual symptom
of a disease of which institutionalism is the eccle
siastical. The bane of the Roraan Church has been
institutionalism, with all its materialistic philosophy
of a spiritual effect to be produced by a material
act. That heresy has prevented the heroism of the
Jesuits from bearing its legitimate fruit. Xavier
and Loyola and other Catholic missionaries devoted
themselves to enrolling their converts in a visible
array, trusting to the organization to effect a change
of heart and life. The bane of Catholic raissions,
rooted as they are in instltutionallsra, has been poli
tics. Owing to the heroic labors of Xavier, Japan
was at one time nominally almost a Christian coun
try, but the wicked attempt of the Jesuits to place a
so-called Christian prince on the throne of his father,
the heathen Mikado, led to a revolution which appar
ently ended in the martyrdom of thousands at the
rock of Pappenburg in the harbor of Nagasaki. But

256 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
that was not the end ; a prejudice was produced
against the religion of Christ which is only begin
ning to give way to-day. Indeed, it is said that in
the interior of Japan crosses are stiU set up on the
Tokaldo, and the little children are taught to spit at
them as expressive of the utter detestation by the
people of the religion that they warmed in their
bosom, and like an adder stung thera. Institutional
ism has been the bane of the Jesuits. But the day
of institutionalism is waning. The American Revo
lution was the dawning of a new day, when the in
strument of the divine power was no longer to be
sought In an ancient institution, but in the federa
tion of individual men inspired with the hope of a
great purpose. That dawn was obscured by the clouds
of the French Revolution ; it may be retarded by the
sycophancy of Teutonic socialism or the madness of
Russian nihilism ; but it is sure to come, and those
who live to see that day -will find that the religion
of Christ has again the opportunity which it once
had, and which the institutionalism of Rome and
the dogmatisra of Geneva have prevented it having
since to influence indi-vidual men and women con
scious of the true glory of humanity in the life of
the Son of Man.
But dogmatism and institutionalism are them
selves symptoms of a deeper evil, and that is sec
tarianism. Now it was against sectarianism that the
Reformation protested ! That great truth has been
obscured by historians, because they were confused
themselves about the matter. For what is the es-

"THE PEEVEESION OP THE GOSPEL." 257
sence of sectarianism ? Is it not that spirit which
denies that salvation or truth or virtue can be had
out of a certain section of the Church ? WeU, where
did that spirit ever manifest itself as in that section
of the Church which was ruled by the Bishop of
Rome ? It was against that sectarianism that the
Reformation protested.
In France that protest took the scientific form of
reconstructing what was supposed to be the original
organization of the Church, and became Presby
terian. In Germany the national mysticism mani
fested itself in the preaching faith, spiritual insight,
as the summum bonum. In England it followed the
course of the national proclivity, and expressed it
self in a conservative government under law, violat
ing as little as possible the tradition of the past. So
far there were, if we may so speak, more sects and
less sectarianism ; that is, the Christian Church had
been marked out in certain well-defined lines, but
there was no attempt to insist that any one of these
was the norm for aU Christendom. It was the Roman
Church which was full of the old spirit, and insisted
on its sect dogmas and its sect organization. Had
the unity which at first prevailed between the Lu
theran, Genevan, and Anglican churches continued,
the world would have been nearer the kingdom of
God than it now is. But the demon of sectarian
ism is not so easily exorcised. First there carae the
sectarian dogmatism of Luther, and then the institu
tional sectarianism of Calvin, and then the institu
tional sectarianism of Archbishop Laud. Then came
the second wave of the Reformation, the great Puri-
ir

258 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
tan revolt. But sectarianism was not yet dead, and
division has followed division, until it has come to
be believed that the object of the Reformation was
sectarianism, and the results must be either the disso
lution of the Christian Church, or a return to some
previous form of belief and organization which all
will accept. It seems strange that this plan should
coraraend itself to thoughtful people. And indeed it
does not ; that is to say, no thoughtful man thinks
weU of the plan unless it be stated as the return to
his own denomination. It seems stranger stUl that
it is not recognized that any part of the church
which caUs itself the Catholic Church, as distin
guished from other parts of it, is only placing itself
in the unenviable position of Bunyan's " brisk young
lad coming out of the country of Conceit whose name
was Ignorance."
Yet in spite of aU this no one can be found to de
fend sectarianism ! AU are agreed that unity is the
one thing needful, as indeed it is, but no one need
dream that unity is to be obtained otherwise than
as our fathers thought. God had inspired them to
obtain it by protest against aU that makes against it.
For unity is not uniformity either of doctrine or
of discipUne. We have seen that, and the Church
scarcely survived it. Differences of opinion are
essential to active spiritual life, and active spiritual
life is essential to morals. Those who ask that men
should lay aside their theological differences are ask
ing they know not what, — a return to that day when
theology, the knowledge of God, was the treasure of
a dass ; when that day comes there wUl be a loss

" THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 259
of interest in God, a loss of faith in God's revela
tion of his character to men, and, consequently, the
immorality which has always succeeded. Equally
vain is the dream of one organization. Were it
obtained to-day it would be overthrown to-morrow.
What then is the outlook ? Further divisions ? It
may be. For no unity can be obtained untU it is
clearly seen what is to unite. That only can unite
which is an integral part of the body. Certainly
the sects are not that, — neither Roman, Anglican,
Lutheran, nor Genevan. They are aU the work of
men. The Church is the body of Christ, and the
members of that body are individuals. Every in
dividual in whom the Spirit of Christ dweUs is a
member of his flesh and of his bones. If that be
true, all this talk about the sect to which he belongs
not being a part of Christ's body is apart from the
question. It ought not to be said that any organi
zation is a member of Christ's body. St. Paul told
the Corinthians that they were members " in par
ticular." If then the individual is a " member," he,
with aU others who are so inspired, constitute the
Church of the living God, and they are one in Him.
That body, as St. Paul says, cannot be divided.
That is the unity of the spirit, the bond of peace.
Any other union would be a bond of discord. What
then, it may be said, is the value of this unity, if it
cannot make itself effective ? But it can. In the
first place, many of the sects will die the day this
unity is recognized, because at best they have had
but a galvanic sort of life, the result of the friction
produced by some " estabUshment," and will be re-

260 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
absorbed into some stronger form of life. But of
those which remain there is no reason why there
should not be effective unity. If only each would
forego its claim to Catholicity. Calvinism and Lu
theranism, Anglicanism and Romanism, are but the
expression of great huraan needs which always have
existed and always wiU exist. Let thera exist. Give
up aU attempts to proselytize from one part of the
Church to another, and let Christians as Christians
unite for the conversion of the world. Let a bap
tized man be counted a Christian, and then let
him worship God and express his belief in his
Saviour in that way in which God has spoken to
him. But it wiU be said we need a coramon creed to
express our belief ! WeU, we have it. Every man
who caUs himself a Christian believes in the Lord
Jesus Christ. But there, it wiU be said, is the dif
ficulty. One thinks of him as " God over all blessed
forever," and another as only the best of men. How
can those two comraune together ? Why not ? Are
we sure that Matthew and Paul and John could
have drawn up a creed that would have satisfied
each in aU respects ? Are we sure that each dis
ciple meant the same thing when he assented to
Peter's confession, " Thou art the Son of the living
God"? And if not, do we believe in truth, and think that
it will not make itself known to raen through raen ?
Are we afraid that the Unitarian will convert the
Orthodox, or do we believe that Unitarianism is an
anomaly, and that it has always appeared in certain

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 261
conditions, and wIU reappear again in like condi
tions ? I have placed In the forefront that question
which of aU others stirs, and rightly, the hearts of
Christian people. But if that can be seen to be
solvable, then no other ought to trouble us. We
ought to be able to eat the bread and drink the cup
with any disciple in the presence of Him who is our
Saviour and our King. No more reason is there that
we should refuse so to do than that we should refuse
to look on the rising sun with one to whom it spoke
only indefinitely of promise and hope, while to us It
was the veritable witness that God was Uving and
Ughting his people.
That this is the unity which St. Paul praised when
he wrote, " In him is neither barbarian, Scythian,
bond, nor free, but Christ is all and in aU," seems
too plain to need argument ; but if not, indeed there
is no argument that wIU convince any man, because
it goes down to the eternal question. What think ye
of Christ ? If Christ accepts a raan as a foUower,
can those who have Christ's spirit refuse his com
pany, or make conditions which he cannot accept
without the violation of that conscience which has
led him to Christ ? Of course there wIU always be
" groups " of disciples, but this " grouping " Is not
schism ; that is the deadly sin of resisting the Spirit
of Christ which alone makes us members of his
body. The effect of such a unity as that of which I
speak would be seen at once in missions. It would
be recognized that there are in heathendom poten
tial Methodists, AngUcans, and Calvinists, and that

262 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
when they become Christian they wiU inevitably fol
low their predispositions. Therefore we should be
content to carry them the gospel in its simplicity,
and encourage them to organize theraselve on the
lines of that division of the Catholic Church which
seems best to answer the needs of their nature.
That simplicity was the characteristic of the Apos
tles' method seeras clear enough. They told the story
of Jesus' life, and when men felt themselves drawn
to that life they said, " It is the revelation of the
character of God," and into the name and character
of God they baptized every man who said, " I be
lieve in Jesus Christ." The secret of their success
lay in their simplicity.
How they would have dealt with differences among
their converts we raay learn from the way in which
they dealt with them araong theraselves. Peter and
Paul and James differed in their understanding
of the meaning and scope of the Gospel as much
as Cardinal Manning, Henry Ward Beecher, and
Bishop Huntington ; therefore they agreed to differ.
Paul went to the GentUes and Peter to the Jews,
while James reraained in Jerusalera ; the only thing
they had in coraraon was their love for the Master
of whom they thought so differently. That was the
second secret of their work : they perceived that God
had different ways of revealing Hiraself to different
men, and no one of them claimed to know all and
be aU.'
' Into the question of the sectarianism of the disciples of Peter and
James and Paul the scope of this book does not permit us to enter ;
doubtless it was far greater than is generally supposed. That Paul

" THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 263
That is the spirit of the Catholic Church, and
when that spirit again prevails the Catholic Church
which has survived Romanism and Anglicanism and
Calvinism, which contains thera aU and Is none of
them, — when that returns, then the world will be
lieve that the Father sent the Son to be its Saviour.
Dogmatism wiU give place to the love of truth, and
ecclesiasticism to free organization for the expression
of a new energy.
There Is one more characteristic of the Apostolic
method which must be revived before the great
work of converting the world can succeed. St. Paul,
who is the ideal raissionary, laid It down as a funda
mental principle that to the Jew a man must become
as a Jew, to them that are without law as without
law, to the weak as weak, aU things to aU men, that
he might by any means save some. Which means
that by the power of that enthusiasm for humanity,
which was the effect of the gift of the Spirit of Jesus,
he threw himself into sympathy with the religious
wants and experiences of the people to whom he
preached. It Is necessary to take but one of the
many examples of this adaptation which meet us on
every page in the history of his missionary journeys.
In that fragment which has come down to us of
his great serraon on Mars Hill, Paul says not one
word about Hebrew law and prophets. It begins
was persistently followed by the Jews of Asia Minor, and to some
extent by " certain from James," " false brethren," is clear enough.
How far the overthrow of Pauline Christianity prepared the way
for the collapse of the Syrian and Asian Church, on the Mahometan
inroad, is a question yet to be investigated.

264 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
with the announcement of the revelation of an un
known God to the agnostic Athenians ; it goes on
to speak of the relation of this God to temples,
to that nation of artists ; it declares the brotherhood
of mankind to that democratic state ; it announces
the iraraanence of God to the fellow - citizens of
Socrates ; it declares the di-vine sonship of humanity
to those lovers of beauty ; it announces a judgment
by a Divine Man to those ideallzers of humanity;
and a resurrection from the dead to those Greeks
who loved life well and hated " dark death." And
this is declared to be the fulfillment not of Hebrew
prophecy, but of Greek poetry ; he does not quote
Isaiah, as when he spoke in the synagogues, but an
ode of Cleanthes. That was the method of Paul,
that was the secret of his success in Europe, and the
truth of this wIU be seen If we turn from the Apos
tolic successes to their failures.
The Apostles were successful all around the Medi
terranean Sea, but there are traditions which we may
not ignore that they went to the far East, and even
to the land of the Scythians, yet no monument of
their work is found. Why that should be has never
been explained. I believe It was because they found
themselves araong a people so far removed from
Hebrew, Greek, and Roman thought that they were
unable to fulfUl the first requirement of missionary
success as laid down by St. Paul. They could not
place themselves in sympathetic accord with the
people among whom they were. Surely their labors
were not in vain. Their exaraple has been a stimu
lus in all ages ; but it has been left for our own day

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL." 265
to enter into such political and commercial relations
with the East as to enable us, if we wish so to do, to
preach the Gospel in India, China, and Japan as
Paul preached it in Europe.
The Apostles were successful In their efforts to con
vert the Jews who stiU held to the faith of Abra
ham, by answering their demand for righteousness.
They were successful in preaching to those Greeks
who had not sunk into utter sensuality, by answer
ing their ideallsra. They converted those Romans
who were not utterly brutalized, by answering their
efforts for an universal brotherhood.
But when they passed beyond the influence of
Roman, Greek, and Hebrew thought, the advance
was checked. Why was this ? Because they knew
God In part and man in part, but not yet nature ;
consequently when they found themselves in the
East they came in contact with pantheism, which
underlies aU Oriental thought ; with that they could
not sympathize, and therefore had to fall back into
that region in which the chief interest centred in
humanity. St. Paul's experience, when he was for
bidden by the Spirit to go Into Asia, was an epitome
of the Spirit's governraent of the whole Church.
It was led westward, God intending that frora the
West the Ught should turn back again toward the
East. I do not say that no mission work has been done
in the East : far frora it ; but no nations have been
converted as in the West. Heretofore we have had
to convert individuals by separating thera from the
national Ufe, and, consequently, Oriental converts

266 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
have always been more or less unsatisfactory. They
have rarely been the best type of their people, for
in the best type the national idea would be strongly
manifested ; but we have been able, so far, to do lit
tle with the national, or perhaps it would be better to
say the race. Idea. If we are ever to convert a na
tion or people, it must be by converting individuals
on the national or race line.'
' The success of the Nestorians in the East is very suggestive.
Nestorius was too much influenced by the dualistic pantheism of
Gnosticism, but the East recognized in his disciples men who felt
the majesty of the Divine too profo-iindly to use the doubtful ex
pression " Mother of God,'' and who recognized the immanence of
God so keenly that they shrunk from saying that God was " bom."
Nestorian missions might give the clew to the Church by whieh the
Incarnation might be preached in the East. For a statement of
Nestorius' position, see MUman's LcUin Christianity, vol. i. book ii.
chapter iii.

CHAPTER X.
THE FUTURE OP CHEISt'S EELIGION.
We have seen, in the last chapter, how the Gospel
was perverted ; but for that the Church would long
ago have outgrovvm the necessary limitations of the
Apostolic age and converted the world. The ques
tion which we need to ask before this work is brought
to a close is, Are we in any better condition to do
that than the Apostles Thomas and Bartholomew ?
We have no new gospel. We have the same mes
sage that they had. We must hesitate before we
say we know the Master better than they. What,
then, is our advantage ? I think we know the East
better. We are better able than they to " become
to the Orientals as an Oriental."
And that wiU be more evident if we consider the
drift of Western thought.
The great study to-day in Europe and America is
Natural Science. What has it taught us? I do
not mean what has it taught us about the weight
of the moon and the distance of the sun, for, as
Matthew Arnold says, people care very little about
that ; but the eager world has been crowding around
the scientist while he keeps his eye to the telescope
or the microscope, and crying. What do you flnd
about God ? No doubt there have been many to say,

268 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
We have found that there is no God, and the godless
have cried, " Then let us eat and drink for to-morrow
we die." But the true scientists have grown more
profoundly reverent, more deeply impressed with the
presence of mystery back of aU phenomena, year
after year. No rolling worlds have been discovered
in this crowded space which are not subject to law ;
no minutest particle of dust has the microscope re
vealed that does not receive and transrait force.
Now law has no meaning except as expressing or
derly arrangement, and force has no raeaning save
as the expression of the result of the exercise of will.
Science, then, has banished forever the atheistic no
tion of dead matter. There is no such thing. We
know, says science, no matter that does not reveal
force and law. Back of all phenomena is mystery.
No doubt science has been dogmatic, — a necessary
condition of partial knowledge. No doubt the relig
ion of positivism has declared tbat God is unknown
and unknowable ; but we do not need, because of
dogmatism, to reject the truth that commends itself
to our reason. Whatever science may say when it
puts on the robes of religion, as long as it remains
science It declares the immanence in matter of the
unconscious God as law and force. If science could
discover the Christian God in nature the Gospel story
would be overturned, for that begins with the state
ment that the divine reason was In the Kosmos, and
that the Kosmos was made by it, and the Kosmos
was not conscious of it.
If we turn to the East we find that the books
which are most popular to-day are the writings of

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 269
the positivists, — not, I am sure, because of their
dogmatism, but because they recognize that which
the East has always declared : that God is nowhere
if He is not in nature. One of the best tracts that
could be distributed In the East would be Words
worth's poetry, which is fiUed with the thought of
Christian pantheism, which is the doctrine of the
immanence of God. I say, then, that just in pro
portion as we can enter into sympathy with the Ori
ental adoration of nature wiU we be able to preach
the gospel of the Logos, who was manifested not
only in nature but also in man.
What, then, is the outlook for a return to St.
Paul's sympathy with the religious aspiration of the
Gentiles ? The new science of comparative religions
is making ignorance of the faith of mankind impos
sible. The gradual effect of that knowledge Is in
structive. Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,
expressed the feelings of religious people, when the
spiritual treasures of the East were first opened, by
saying of the Buddhist ritual in China, " There is
not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a
ceremony of the court of Rome, which the devil has
not copied in this country." '
When that simple theory was abandoned it was
asserted that the Buddhists had copied from the Nes
torian missionaries, — and if rites, why not opin
ions? The dogma that trath could come to man only
through the teachings of the Church drove men to
^ Quoted in Ten Great Beligions.

270 HIS STAR m THE EAST.
strange expedients. But if any one would appreci
ate the change that has come to the Christian tem
per in the last century, let him compare these two
quotations, the first from the Preface to "Paley's
Evidences," and the second from the Preface to the
" Sacred Books of the East," by F. Max MiiUer : —
I desire, moreover (says the archdeacon), that in judg
ing of Christianity it may be remembered that the ques
tion lies between this reUgion and none ; for if the
Christian religion be not credible, no one with whom we
have to do wiU support the pretensions of any other.
I most heartily agree with that statement, but I
would be sorry to think it true if by Christianity
we are to understand Paley's notion of it ; but the
real animus is to be found in the determination not
even to consider any other religion.
Now listen to this : —
To watch, in " The Sacred Books of the East," the da-wn
of the religious consciousness of man, must always re
main one of the most inspiring and haUowing sights in
the whole history of the world : and he whose heart can
not quiver with the first quivering rays of human thought
and human faith is unfit for it. . . . What we want
here, as everywhere else, is the truth and the whole truth :
and if the whole truth must be told, it is that, however
radiant the dawn of religious thought, it is not without
its dark clouds, its dulling colds, its noxious vapors. Who
ever does not know these, or would hide them from his
own sight and from the sight of others, does not know
and can never understand the real toil and travail of the
human heart in its first reUgious aspirations ; and not

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S EELIGION. 271
knowing its toil and travail, can never know the intensity
of its triumphs and its joys.
Paley would prove the brightness of Christianity
by comparing it with the darkness of heathenism ;
Max MiiUer would let the glory of Christ's religion
be judged in the light of the Gentiles.
One other cause of the poor success of Protestant
missions raay be named. Buddhist and Mahoraetan
missionaries have this advantage over Christians, that
it is an easy thing to practice what they preach, to
conforra to sorae outward sign. Jesuit missionaries
have the same advantage over Protestants, that they
can point to faithful Imitation of ecclesiastical
rites as a proof of conversion. But the Protestant
goes with the message, " The kingdora of God is not
meat and drink, but love, joy, and peace ; " and when
he is asked for examples of Christians, he has to
acknowledge v/Ith shame that drunken sailors, self
ish merchants, and godless travelers answer to that
name. I suppose the one thing a missionary would
most dread for his convert would be that he should
visit a Christian land. Such an one would not see
the patient, heroic, noble lives that are following
Christ ; he would see the dens of iniquity winked at
by the law, the degradation of the Christian poor,
and the selfishness of the rich. He would see great
arraies of men kept from peaceful labor that they
may defend their homes from Christian neighbors,
and Christian fleets built to ravage heathen lands.
Had Christian people as nations sought the king
dom of God and his righteousness, the meanness of

272 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
capital and the grasping selfishness of labor would
be as impossible as slavery. We have failed to real
ize the brotherhood of humanity, and that is why
we hear in our own land the frantic shriek of the
anarchist, and see the destruction of life and prop
erty in Europe. Men talk about that thing being
suppressed by force ; they might as well talk of driv
ing back malaria Into the swarap. The land must
be drained or the evil will continue, and we may be
lieve that Nihilism is our day of judgment which no
generation shall escape. We may believe that in
the clouds thereof men shall see the appearing of the
Son of Man, and that a further step wiU be taken
toward the realization of the brotherhood of man
kind. These are some of the forces for the coming of
the kingdom of God which are working while men
sleep, — Agnosticism and Nihilism, Deraocracy and
the study of the science of comparative religions.
There are others which we have not yet spoken of,
because they are not evidently working against cer
tain well-ascertained hindrances to the spread of the
kingdom, but they are none the less working for It.
What, then, is the outlook? I believe that the
outlook for rational, that is spiritual, that is Chris
tian, religion was never so bright as now. Those
who live in fear that history raay repeat Itself, and
that savage hordes may again devastate civilized
lands, have not learned the lesson of history. That
is no more likely to happen than the evolution of a
new type of Ufe, which scientists teU us is finished.

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S EELIGION. 273
What we must look for is a mental and moral mod
ification of the highest type — man. If that be
true, then raan is but in his moral and Intellectual
infancy, and Christ has come not at the end of his
tory, with but little time left for humanity to realize
his life, but in the very dawn of history, as soon as
the infant man could hear the divine voice. We
need expect no more overturnlngs of society by bar
barians. We know the world ; we know what to
expect. Macaulay's vision of the New Zealander on
London Bridge is vain. The world Is free to begin
its development as far as external dangers are con
cerned. Its real dangers are internal, and menace
the religious life. But already we may see the signs
of better things. The theological and ecclesiastical
discussions which have broken out afresh after slum
bering so long must drive men a little nearer to the
realization of the unity of the Spirit as they see the
futility of any unity of compromise.
In attempting to answer the various objections
which come to our ears, I would not leave the impres
sion that the Christian Church needs apology after
apology. When it is asked why more has not been
done, — and that question must be asked by the faith
ful disciple, — it is well if we can find how it has come
to pass that the work has been hindered, and better
still if we can see the signs of better tiraes, through
a return to the Apostolic spirit. Both of these I have
tried to do, because they are essential to an under
standing of the future of Christ's religion. If there
are any who think that the reasons assigned are not
the true ones, such would do weU to study carefuUy
18

274 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
the history of missions, and see whether the work
has not deepened and broadened as the better spirit,
the manifestations of which have been great in the
last hundred years, has Influenced churches and in
dividuals. Should this spirit prevail still more we should see
an enthusiasra for missions, sueh as has never been
seen In our day ; for the Church would feel that in
her power to " fulfiU " she was destined to great tri
umphs in awaking the heathen to an appreciation of
their own treasures, in the faith that they would not
rest satisfied in them, but througii them pass to the
discipleship of Him who has the words of eternal life.
And yet I would not mean to imply that all our
dangers are behind. They are not. There is great
danger lest knowledge be divorced from faith. We
are living In one of the great epochs of history. Our
chUdren's chUdren -will look back to this day as our
fathers looked back to the day of Copernicus. What
Copernicus did for astronomy, Darwin has done for
natural history. Life can never be the same again.
The churches raay reject the new knowledge, and
grow hard and narrow. Ecclesiasticisra may refuse
to obey the law of " Divine Providence," and insist
uj)on its own willfulness. Disgusted by sectarian-
Ism, thoughtful men raay grow indifferent to the
truth, and thus hinder the progress of the Church.
But the most dreadful danger is that atheism within
the Church which denies we are under the guidance
of the Spirit of truth, which we hear the sound of,
but cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes,
only we believe that it is the Spirit of the Father

THE FUTUBE OF CHRIST'S BELIGION. 275
and of the Son. These are sorae of the dangers and
some of the forces working for the future. And
when we speak of the forces which are working in
behalf of the kingdom, we are only speaking of cer
tain manifestations of the Spirit's presence in pol
itics, in philosophy, and In society ; but we have no
name by which we can describe that mysterious
awakening of men's souls In our day to a deeper ap
prehension of the work of Jesus, which is more truly
the characteristic of this age than the facility to
invent or the enthusiam to discover the secrets of
nature. And now turn frora the problem of enlightening
the theology of heathendom to this stIU more per
plexing question of the elevation of its morality.
It has often been thought that this is a hopeless
task, that it is useless to attempt to place before
men any particular statement of moral worth, be
cause there can be no such statement. It is a mat
ter of climate, or of food, or political institution, or
national temperament. That which is considered
right among one people is thought to be wrong
among their neighbors. Each nation develops a
raorality which Is proved by experience to be the
most expedient for its peculiar condition. Penalties
are enacted to insure its enforcement, and public
opinion " cements a cake of custom " which the indi
vidual finds it hard to break. To have a uniform
morality necessitates a uniform climate, and the same
food. But the answer to all that is, that nations
whose climate has remained the same, and whose

276 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
food has not changed, have made progress in moral
ity ; as for example the Jews, whose sacred books at
one time declare that the foul raurder of Sisera, by
Jael, was an act inspired by God, and later enunci
ated principles by the mouth of the prophets which
show that to them such a deed must have appeared
as horrible as it does to us. Evidently, then, the first
thing necessary before we can proclaim a morality
for humanity is to decide whether there is such a
thing as sin for huraanity. I do not say sins, but sin ;
for while the estimate put upon different sins may
differ, the important question is. Is there such a
thing as a sinful condition, of which sins are the par
ticular manifestation.
Let us turn to the Epistle to the Romans. The
whole Idea is that of election, the caUIng out of the
spiritual man ; and the whole conflict of life, we are
there told, consists in the effort of the spiritual man
to free himself from the " natural " man. Follow
ing the Rabbis, Paul declared that the struggling of
Jacob and Esau in the womb was a prophecy of the
perpetual struggle between the raan of flesh and the
man of spirit. But he describes the experience of
every earnest man when he says, " I know that in
me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing :
for to will is present with me, but how to perform
that which is present I find not. For the good that
I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not,
that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no
more I that do it, but sin that dweUeth in me. I
find, then, a law that when I would do good, evil is
present with me. For I delight in the law of God

THE FUTUBE OF CHEIST's EELIGION. 277
after the inward man. But I see another law in my
members warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is
in my members."
Here, then, is St. Paul's philosophy of sin. God
is caUIng the spiritual raan out from the natural
man ; the conflict of life consists In the holding back
of the spiritual man by the flesh, which he calls sin.
He afterwards calls this natural man the old Adam.
The highest type of the animal Ufe into which God
has not breathed the breath of eternal life ; and sin
fulness, according to Paul, consists In Identifying
one's self with the old animal life from out of which
God is caUing man, until the life becomes again
" carnal," beastlike. I say we are In a better po
sition to interpret that teaching of St. Paul than
ever before. For science has taught us that man
has been developed frora the lower animal life, and
that just in proportion as men have obeyed the bet
ter impulse they have left behind the old carnal pas
sions and appetites. Sin, says science, is choosing
the lower life from which man has been evolved. If,
then, sin be defined as willful incompleteness. It is
a characteristic of humanity, for there is no man
who Is not conscious that he is below that which he
somehow dimly feels he might have been.
But of course there Is no gospel in that. There
is need that we should have clearly before us the
antipode of sin, and decide whether or not there is a
holiness which Is for humanity as opposed to the sin
of which every individual is now conscious. If we
turn to the Epistle to the Ephesians we shall find

278 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
that St. Paul, who had so eraphasized the universal
ity of sin, believed that there was a universal holi
ness possible for raan.
The word that gives the key to that Epistle is
" edification " or " upbuilding." Upbuilding to what ?
" To the measure of the stature of the fuUness of
Christ." What hinders that ? The vanity of mind
of those who, having the " understanding darkened,
and being aUenated from the life of God, have given
themselves over to uncleanness." But those who-
have " learned Christ " wUl " put off the old man,
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and
wIU put on the new man, which after God is created
in righteousness and true holiness." Holiness, then,
according to him who has defined sin as willful inr
completeness. Is nothing less than willing complete
ness. Out of the old beast - like life science and the
Bible both tell us man is being called, up to a life
which science cannot narae, but which the Bible caUs
the new man, Christ Jesus.
Of course we have reached now a point where
argument will have no influence. It is distinctly
said that the victory which overcometh the world is
faith. But if it be asked why any one should be
lieve that the revelation of Jesus Christ will be to
men in every nation the unveiling of an Image which
has been dimly before their eyes frora the beginning,
the first reason is that Jesus himself believed it, and
it was efficacious ; the second Is that in proportion
as the Church has believed It, has she been able to
buUd men up to this completeness. There is a deeper

THE FUTUBE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 279
reason stiU, of which we shall speak later. If, then,
we begin with that faith, we shall see that it is not so
unreasonable as we may at first suppose. For the
long history of ethics shows us nothing more clearly
than this : that raen have believed theraselves either
to be driven on to a better life by some authority
which compelled obedience, or that they have been
beckoned on by some happiness which seeraed to hide
itself behind some duty. It must be that there is a
truth in each ; it must be that neither Is complete.
What if Christ really combines the two ? Yet that
is just what the Church has always believed of Him,
not because sorae one has said it, but because indi
viduals are continuaUy experiencing its truth.
The description given of Jesus satisfies these two
conditions, " full of grace and truth." To one man
it was the grace which appealed ; to another, it was
the truth that was In Him. It was the " grace " re
flected in the face of Philip which drew Nathanael
to him, but when he drew near he saw the " truth."
The poor wretches who brought the sinful woman
into his presence slunk away because of the penalty
of his awful majesty. The heart-broken penitent
crept to his feet, because she loved the grace of that
perfect hoUness.
But it was not only the method of Jesus which ex
hibited these two eleraents of the power of raorality,
it was in the end which He set before men as well.
He told of a kingdom within each man ; He spoke
of violated law and unfailing penalty ; but He fiUed
the hearts of men with a longing they had never
supposed could take possession of them for that

280 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
peace which is the harmony of righteousness. And
then He went a step farther, and showed them one
who was at once King and Father, demanding obe
dience and giving happiness ; nay more, identifying
obedience and happiness. And the law of that king
dora also was twofold, — love and loyalty.
Of course the objection against this statement is
that no external, arbitrary standard can ever suffice
for humanity if it is to continue to progress in mo
rality ; but the truth is that while «Tesus begins with
an external standard, it differs from all others In this,
that it is the standard of a life, not of a code, and so
is not open to the objection urged, because the object
of the external standard is to reveal the Internal per
sonal standard which is in every man by reason of his
sonship. Therefore so far from hindering progress. It
insures progress ; for morality having once been iden
tified with the love of a son to the Father, the Father
having been revealed as eternal, the knowledge of that
love must deepen more and more as the exhibition of
It becomes more apparent, and the application of it
must increase as the knowledge of the relation of
one son to another in the great family grows more
and raore plain in the consciences of raen. Therefore
while it is true that no raorality which in its applica
tion is limited can ever satisfy the wants of a pro
gressing humanity. It is equaUy true that the morality
of Jesus can never be Insufficient, because it is based
on the revelation of the Identity of the King and the
Father, ' on the oneness of duty and happiness, on
the identity of loyalty and love. This, then, is the
^ See The Influence of Jesus, by Phillips Brooks.

THE FUTUBE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 281
standard of " corapleteness," the perfection like that
of the Father in heaven.
This raorality, then, beginning with faith proceeds
to love and leads on to hope. That last is essential ;
for the holding up of any standard which either
threatens penalty or promises happiness is worse
than useless, if it does not reveal a possibility of
corapliance with its demands. What can be the rev
elation which can reveal to man the possibility of at
taining to the divine perfection ? Nothing but that
which is the revelation of Jesus, the Identity of na
ture between the Human and the Divine. By this
revelation every man raay see hiraself as his Father
would have hira be. Jesus stands before every life
as a ralrror stands before a child but half awake, —
the chUd sees an Image which it does not recognize,
and then, as the light grows clearer, it sees that it
is gazing on itself. When man sees Jesus, he sees
himself free from sin, fully alive to his relationship
to God. So by the power of hope the standard has
changed from the outside to the inside. There has
come that which St. Paul experienced : " Though I
have known Christ after the flesh, yet henceforth
I know Him so no more. Christ dwelleth in me ; I
live, yet not I, but Christ which dweUeth In me."
Surely we have here a morality which is truly
humanitarian, — a moraUty which is based on the
oneness of humanity with God and with itself ; which
reveals the authority which the soul demands ; which
gives the happiness that the soul craves ; which re
veals a standard by which raen may guide their
steps, by faith in the life which has embodied it ;

282 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
which shows that the law is within, and that the king
is within, and that the kingdom is vnthin ; and yet
opens the -vista of an endless progress in the hope of
the increase of the kingdom as it is enlarged under
the providence of the Father, untU the kingdoms of
the world are subject to it, and the Son delivers up
the kingdom to God who is the Father, that God may
be all In all.
But in this progress man does not remain a passive
instrument. He can yield — and is daily tempted
to yield — his members as instruments of the old
carnal life, or he can identify himself with the new
Man, who has crucified the affections and lusts by
finding his meat and drink In doing the wUl of his
Father. It may be said, all this is not pure ethics, but
ethics mingled with theology. Whether ethics must
not always be so mingled Is a question which we can
not enter upon here ; but this we may be sure of, that
no ethics which have been divorced from theology
wiU ever reform the life of the East, for the Orientals
are above all things theologians : and that is why
Christian raorality will have an attraction for thera,
rather than any system of utilitarianism. It must
begin with theology — as Christian ethics begin.
For who Is this Son who reveals our sonship to
us ? Is He too only a product of evolution moving
to something not yet seen ? The Gospel says not.
First. In the beginning was the Reason, and the
Reason was with God, and the Reason was God.
Secondly. AU things were made by Him; and
without Him was not anything made that was made.

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 283
(So too says science, " Nothing was made without
law, the expression of Reason.)
Thirdly. He was in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos
was made by Hira, and the Kosmos knew Him not.
( So too says science. Nature knows only ybrce.)
Fourthly. He came unto his own (i. e., to men),
aud his own received Him not. (Alas ! how true a
statement of history.)
Fifthly. But as raany as received Hira, to them
gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to
thera that believe on his name ; which were born not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the
will of man, but of God.
Finally. The Reason was made flesh and dwelt
araong us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as
of the only begotten of the Father, fuU of grace
and truth.
Here, then, is the message of Christianity to
humanity, — a message as old as the Church itself,
but one which we could never fuUy understand while
we thought of sin as a positive entity, but, through
the knowledge of the history of evolution, we have
come to understand there is the " soul of good In
things evil."
With this gospel we can go to the Gentiles and
say all these differences of morality show different
stages of evolution out of the beast life to the
Christ life. Heretofore each nation has been con
tent simply to perpetuate its own standard, but now
you can see one who realized every ethnic ideal, and
still lifts the standard of moral progress above hu
manity.

284 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
The hospitality and carelessness of the Japanese
are perfected in the Friend of raan, who took no
thought as to v/hat He should eat and drink. The
Chinese imitation of the past is idealized In Jesus'
fidfillment of the past. Hindu patience and Western
activity were united in Him who was led as a lamb
to the slaughter, and yet said : " I must work while
it is day, the night coraeth when no man can work."
And it is only when we so consider the question that
we corae to appreciate the arrogance with which we
have thought of aU God's other children. We have
actually identified the morality of Jesus with the
morality of the West ! And yet there is a vast deal
of Christ's morality — the passive element in it —
which the West has never realized at aU. We hear
a great deal just now about the Impractieablllty of
Christ's law of forgiveness and his views of property ;
but they are not Impracticable to the Oriental mind,
and it was to the Orient that Jesus belonged. Any
one who will read that beautiful book the " Oriental
Christ," by Mozumdar, will be convinced that we have
lost our hold on a very essential eleraent in Christ's
teaching, and that consciousness will help us to carry
the Gospel to the heathen, — not the lesson of Eng
lish prudence and American smartness, but the law
of brotherhood in Jesus Christ. The Church must
show that the morality of Jesus, like his theology,
comes to individuals at the salient point which they
have thrown out.
When that is accepted by the East we shall find
something more than moral progress as the residt.

THE FUTURE OF CHEIST'S RELIGION. 285
We shaU find a more distinct spiritual vision. For,
first, in that seeing of the perfect raan there would
come, as always bas come, an enthusiasm for human
ity, for they would fall in love with huraanity's Ira
age ; and when that took place panthelsra would
cease, for in the light of that life raen would learn
that personal consciousness is higher than imper
sonal unconsciousness, and so, under the "grace"
of Jesus Christ, they would realize their relation to
a person, even a Father.
And, secondly, that fear which in the East has
always been associated with a personal god, because
personality to them has always had the element of
fickleness, would vanish, as under the influence of
that life men began to feel that the secret of Jesus'
life was unbroken coramuniou with a father, as it
began to dawn upon them that this father was the
Father of aU living, and that the assurance of his
love was to be found not In efforts to bribe Hira, but
in the identification of the individual life with the
Son in whom He is well pleased.
And, thirdly, that awful sense of the necessity of
some atonement for the past would be removed, as
under the influence of that life men felt that the
atonement had been made in the revelation of the
essential unity of the human and the divine, and
borne witness to, even unto death, by the Son of
Man, who knew that the transmuting love of the
Father was able to raake the sins which were as
scarlet white as wool.
And, finaUy, as the story of the impossibility of
the perpetual extinguishment of that life by death

286 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
found its response in their hearts, there would be a
new hope. Hopelessness has been the temper of the
Oriental. There was nothing to be gained by prog
ress in the raanner of life, for life had no future,
and no future was desirable for a life so raiserable.
Our pulses quicken at the thought of an endless life
of progress and unwearied activity, for we have be
corae conscious of an inexhaustible energy, which
must make itself felt. But no drearier news could
be carried to the Chinese, for example, than that life
should have no end. If, then, instead of trying to
believe that or anything else they could once be
brought to feel the Influence of Jesus' life, they
would find that ideals had come to them which eter
nity would be none too long to realize, and in the
" power of an endless life " they would experience
that hope in the unending progress in the knowledge
of God which is the gift of the Spirit of Truth.
I have spoken as if the future were certain, but
there are dangers. No mysterious ones, but ones
that can be prevented. The fir-st is that knowledge
may leave faith behind. If that come to pass the
sin will lie at the Church's door. We are living to
day at the beginning of a new age. Life will never
be the. same again. Religion can never be the same
again. In the centuries to come raen will look back
on this day as we look back to the days of Coper
nicus. Religious thought set Itself against the Co-
pernican theory, and reUgious thought becarae con
temptible. Religious thought may set itself against
the law of evolution, but it wUl only succeed in be-

THE FUTUBE OF CHEIST'S EELIGION. 287
coming again contemptible. We hear a great deal
about defending the " outworks " of Christianity ;
but if the " outworks " are exploded theories of his
tory, nature, and man, the sooner they fall the
sooner will that which remaineth the same yester
day, to-day, and forever be revealed.
Another danger, which needs no comment, is that
ignorance may utter itself in dogmatism, and so pre
vent the cooperation of intelligent religious men in
all that makes for righteousness.
We have reason to fear lest heathenism, catching
the materialistic spirit of so-called Christian lands,
may rest satisfied with " progress." No thoughtful
man can visit Japan without seeing that they are In
danger of adopting every foreign extravagance, In
stead of developing under the influence of a new
spirit their own dignity and beauty.
What Japan needs is the spirit of Christ to call
forth her inherent glory, and if she fails to get that
she wIU becorae the base iraitator of all that is
crude and uncouth in American and European civil
ization. I know there are to be heard voices which say it
is all a dream, Christianity has spent Its force. But
I look backward over history, and the scientist tells
me that every upheaval of nature, every modification
in plant and animal, prophesied of the coming of
man ; that without man the whole scheme of evolu
tion would be meaningless. I look over history. I
see empires rise and fall. I hear prophets amongst
every people declaring that aU the travailing and

288 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
groaning of humanity is not in vain ; that human
ity shall conceive and bring forth a Son, and that
his name shaU be called Emraanuel. I see Jesus,
the desire of all nations. I see nineteen centuries
of Christian history, and I learn that it has been
for the raanlfestation of the life of Christ. I find
that this life has not come to men because they have
progressed, but I find that when it has come they
have progressed. I find that a handful of Jews ac
cepted Him, and as a result there was bom the Cath
olic Church. The middle wall of prejudice between
Jew and GentUe was broken down. I find that the
Roman accepted Him, and the position of women was
changed. In Him was neither male nor female. I
find that America accepted Hira, and In his presence
slavery became intolerable. There could be no dif
ference between bond and free In the brotherhood of
mankind. Look back over these 1,900 years, and you find
that everything has changed, even to the very lan
guage of the peoples ; and yet, through it aU, with
the wars of nations and the conflict of churches,
there has been the unshaken love for and faith in
and gratitude to that Life which men have believed
called their souls out of darkness into his marvelous
light. Under the influence of that Life we find
three things : a deeper knowledge of the character
of God ; a stronger enthusiasm for humanity ; and
a continual progress In the understanding of nature.
Progress In the knowledge of God, — Father, Son,
Spirit.

THE FUTUBE OF CHEIST'S EELIGION. 289
And now look abroad. It has been perraitted us to
see the rise and progress of one of the raost remarka
ble religious movements in any age. I refer to the
Brahmo Somaj, the theistic Church of India. Be
ginning in an attempt to revive the monotheistic
teaching of certain of the Vedic hymns, it has been
drawing slowly but surely nearer to the Christian
doctrine of the perfect manifestation of God in Jesus
Christ. Space will not perrait me to quote extracts
from the serraons of that remarkable raan Keshub
Chunder Sen ; but no one can read thera without
feeling the force of St. Paul's words : " I know that
he who hath begun a good work in you will per
form it till the day of Jesus Christ."
I know that it may be said, " That is but one
point of light In the darkness of heathenism, — it is
more likely to die out than to spread." But I have
no such fear, for I have seen, as it were, the parable
of the spread of the gospel glory in the scenery of
India itself.
I once stood on the top of the first range of the
Himalayas, and saw, across the great valley, the
mountains of the second range, with the mighty
Kinchenjunga towering above all. The light of the
declining moon was only sufficient to show, at the
bottom of the valley, the great mist which, like an
old serpent, lay colled about the base of the ancient
hiUs. And as I stood there, cold and trembling, the
air was pierced by a bitter cry from a little child in
the darkness of the valley ; and, while I listened,
as if in answer to this human cry, the topmost peak
of Kinchenjunga flushed with a faint pink light, -—
19

290 HIS STAR IN THE EAST.
" the sun has risen," some one cried, and yet the
world was dark as ever ; but it was true, the mighty
mountain had seen, afar off, the breaking of the day,
and glowed and trembled in the new-born light.
Soon the whole snowy range was ablaze with glory,
and the arrows of light fell thick and fast, and the
old serpent was slain, and the valley disclosed in aU
its beauty and peace. So it Is true that only here
and there a prophetic soul, towering like a mountain
above the coraraon level of our dusk, has flushed
with glory at the vision of the new day. But we need
not fear that the light will turn back : the soul that
knows the power of that Sun of Righteousness knows
that He wiU rise with healing In his wings, until the
old serpent of despair is slain, and the valleys of hu
manity glow in the Dayspring from on high which
hath visited us.
If, then, I were asked what has Christianity done
for the early Aryan religions, I would answer. It has
justified every aspiration of their faith, and has
opened a vista of unsuspected glory beyond.
If I were asked what is the future of Christianity,
I would answer : As humanity increases in wisdom
and stature, in favor with God and man, the con
sciousness of its sonship wUl grow stronger and
deeper ; but it will be an incomplete thing while it
is only Occidental. We shall never know its true
glory ourselves till East and West meet at the cra
dle of Jesus, and the Wise Men say. We have seen
his star in the East and are come to worship Him.
Only when the East gives Him its gold and frankin-

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST'S RELIGION. 291
cense and myrrh, shall we of the West understand
what manner of child this is.

Already wise men in the East are beginning to
say, " Where is He that is born the King ? We
have seen his star In the East." What answer has
the Church? Will the answer that any section of
it may give satisfy " wise men " ? Is not the only
witness which can convince the world the oneness of
his disciples? There are raany who believe they
see the nearness of a unity as far nobler than the
uniformity of mediaevalism as is the " federation of
the world " to the national subjection to the Papal
See. " It is a hope, cherished by many of the most
thoughtful and earnest Christians of our time, that
God is preparing the introduction, at last, of sorae
new religious era. . . . What, possibly. Is He offer
ing, if only we are ready to receive it, but a grand
inaugural of the Spirit throughout Christendora, —
an open day of life and love and spiritual brother
hood. In which our narrow confines of bigotry and
prejudice shall be raelted away, and all the raerabers
of Christ's body, holding visibly the Head, shall,
visibly, own each other ; shining in the light, reveal
ing the Spirit, coi5perating in the works of Christ,
and Uving for the common object of establishing his
kingdom ? " '
When that comes the Gospel wiU be preached to
the heathen with power, and in proportion as it is
preached wUl that spirit pervade the Church.
1 God in Christ, by Horace Bushnell, pp. 279 aad 297.

292 HIS STAB IN THE EAST.
To have all men see the fellowship of the mystery
which from the beginning hath been hid in Him who
created all things by Jesus Christ may seem to some
a dream, but to those who know Him it Is the
One far off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.

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