I. *' The Buddhists hold that nothing i. *^ The Christians will accept any noa-

which is contradicted by sound reason sense, if promulgated by the Church as can be a true doctrine of Buddha.'' a matter of faith.'' |
♦ Buddhaghosa's ** Parables," translated from the Burmese, by CoL H. T. Rogers, K. E. ; with an introduction by M. Miiller, containing ** Dhammapada,** 187OW f Interpreter of the Consulate-General in Siam.
X ** Ancient Faith and Modern," p. 162. § Ibid.
I The words contained within quotation marks are Inman's.
THE WHEEL OF THE LAW.
541
2. ''The Buddhists do not adore the mother of Sakya," though they honor her as a holy and saint-like woman, chosen to be his mother through her great virtue.
3. ** The Buddhists have no sacraments."
4. The Buddhists do not believe in any pardon for their sins, except after an adequate punishment for each evil deed, and a proportionate compensation to the parties injured.
2. *' The Romanists adore the mother of Jesus, and prayer is made to her for aid and intercession." The worship of the Virgin has weakened that of Christ and thrown entirely into the shadow that of the Almighty.
3. ** The papal followers have seven."
4. The Christians are promised that if they only believe in the ** precious blood of Christ," this blood offered by Him for the expiation of the sins of the whole of mankind (read Christians) will atone for every mortal sin.
Which of these theologies most commends itself to the sincere inquirer, is a question that may safely be left to the sound judgment of the reader. One offers light, the other darkness.
The Wheel of the Law has the following :
** Buddhists believe that every act, word, or thought has its conse- quence, which will appear sooner or later in the present or in the future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences,* good acts will pro- duce good consequences : prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven ... in some future state." f
This is strict and impartial justice. This is the idea of a Supreme Power which cannot fail, and therefore, can have neither wrath nor mercy, but leaves every cause, great or small, to work out its inevitable effects. ** With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again " J neither by expression nor implication points to any hope of future mercy or salvation by proxy. Cruelty and mercy are finite feel- ings. The Supreme Deity is infinite, hence it can only be just, and Justice must be blind. The ancient Pagans held on this question far more philosophical views than modem Christians, for they represented their Themis blindfold. And the Siamese author of the work under notice, has again a more reverent conception of the Deity than the Chris- tians have, when he thus gives vent to his thought : "A Buddhist might believe in the existence of a God, sublime above all human qualities and attributes — a perfect God, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a quiet happiness that nothing could disturb ; and of such a CJod he would speak no disparagement, not from a desire to please Him, or fear to offend Him, but from natural veneration. But he cannot understand a God with the attributes and qualities of men, a God who loves and hates, and shows anger ; a Deity, who, whether described to
♦ See vol. L of this work, p. 319.
t p. 57.
\ Matthew vii. 2.
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hira by Christian missionaries, or by Mahometans, or Brahnians, or Jewrs, falls below his standard of even an ordinary good man." *
We have often wondered at the extraordinary ideas of God and Hb justice that seem to be honestly held by those Christians who blindly rely upon the clergy for their religion, and never upon their own reason. How strangely illogical is this doctrine of the Atonement We propose to discuss it with the Christians from the Buddhistic stand-point, and show at once by what a series of sophistries, directed toward the one object of tightening the ecclesiastical yoke upon the popular neck, its accept- ance as a divine command has been finally effected ; also, that it has proved one of the most pernicious and demoralizing of doctrines.
The clergy say : no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and His blood will wash out every stain. God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to con- ceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And, furthermore, it is never too late to repent Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Para- dise ; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church.
But if we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the uni- verse as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of Justice revolts against this Vicarious Atonement ! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself ; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity — not even the Supremest of the Supreme — can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incompreluensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society, and the natural order of things, and then — through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, matters not — be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt — this is preposterous ! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned ? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into a calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use
♦ P. 25.
THE DOGMA OF THE ATONEMENT ANALYZED. 543
it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter, as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction — outward and downward — drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever ; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled ! . . .
So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instan- taneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliter- ate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Timers record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement.
The Chicago Times recently printed the hangman's record of the first half of the present year (1877) — a long and ghastly record of murders and hangings. Nearly every one of these murderers received religious consolation, and many announced that they had received God's forgive- ness through the blood of Jesus, and were going that day to Heaven I Their conversion was effected in prison. See how this ledger-balance of Christian Justice ( ! ) stands : These red-handed murderers, urged on by the demons of lust, revenge, cupidity, fanaticism, or mere brutat thirst for blood, slew their victims, in most cases, without giving them time to repent, or call on Jesus to wash them clean with his blood. They, per- haps, died sinful, and, of course, — consistently with theological logic — met the reward of their greater or lesser offenses. But the murderer, overtaken by human justice, is imprisoned, wept over by sentimentalists, prayed with and at, pronounces the charmed words of conversion, and goes to the scaffold a redeemed child of Jesus I Except for the murder, he would not have been prayed with, redeemed, pardoned. Clearly this man did well to murder, for thus he gained eternal happiness? And how about the victim, and his or her family, relatives, dependants, social relations — has Justice no recompense for them? Must they suffer in this world and the next, while he who wronged them sits beside the "holy thief" of Calvary and is forever blessed? On this question the clergy keep a pnident silence.
Steve Anderson was one of these American criminals — convicted of double murder, arson, and robbery. Before the hour of his death he was ** converted," but, the record tells us that ^^ his clerical attendants ob- jected to his reprie^^e^ on the ground that they felt sure of his salvation
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should he die then^ hut could not answer for it if his execution was post- ponedy We address these ministers, and ask them to tell us on what grounds they felt sure of such a monstrous thing. How they could feci sure^ with the dark future before them, and the endless results of this double murder, arson, and robbery ? They could be sure of nothing, but that their abominable doctrine is the cause of three-fourths of the crimes of so-called Christians ; that these terrific causes must produce like mon- strous effects, which in their turn will beget other results, and so roll on throughout eternity to an accomplishment that no man can calculate.
Or take another crime, one of the most selfish, cruel, and heartless, and yet the most frequent, the seduction of a young girl. Society, by an instinct of self-preservation, pitilessly judges the victim, and ostracizes her. She may be driven to infanticide, or self-murder, or if too averse to die, live to plunge into a career of vice and crime. She may become the mother of criminals, who, as in the now celebrated Jukes, of whose appall- ing details Mr. Dugdale has published the particulars, breed other genera- tions of felons to the number of hundreds, in fifty or sixty years. All tl:is social disaster came through one man's selfish passion ; shall he be for- given by Divine Justice until his offense is expiated, and punishment fall only upon the wretched human scorpions begotten of his lust ?
An outcry has just been made in England over the discovery that Anglican priests are largely introducing auricular confession and granting absolution after enforcing penances. Inquiry shows the same thing pre- vailing more or less in the United States. Put to the ordeal of cross-ex- amination, the clergy quote triumphantly from the English Book of Com- mon Prayer the rubrics which clearly give them the absolving authority, through the power of " God, the Holy Ghost," committed unto them by the bishop by imposition of hands at their ordination. The bishop, ques- tioned, points to Matthew xvi., 19, for the source of his authority to bind and loose on earth those who are to be blessed or damned in heaven ; and to the apostolic succession for proof of its transmission from Simon Barjona to himself. The present volumes have been written to small purpose if they have not shown, i, that Jesus, the Christ-God, is a myth concocted two centuries after the real Hebrew Jesus died ; 2, that, therefore, he never had any authority to give Peter, or any one else, plen- ary power ; 3, that even if he had given such authority, the word Petra (rock) referred to the revealed truths of the Petroma, not to him who thrice denied him ; and that besides, the apostolic succession is a gross and [)alpable fraud ; 4, that the Gospel according to Matthew is a fabri- cation based upon a wholly different manuscript The whole thing, therefore, is an imposition alike upon priest and penitent. But putting all these points aside for the moment, it suffices to ask these pretended
POWER TO LOOSE AND BIND SOULS IMPOSSIBLE. $45
agents of the three gods of the Trinity, how they reconcile it with the most rudimental notions of equity, that if the power to pardon sinners for sin- ning has been given them, //i^y did fwt also receive the ability by miracle to obliterate the wrongs done against person or property. Let them re- store life to the murdered ; honor to the dishonored ; property to those who have been wronged, and force the scales of human and divine justice to recover their equilibrium. Then we may talk of their divine com- mission to bind and loose. Let them say, if they can do this. Hitherto the world has received nothing but sophistry — ^believed on blind faith ; we ask palpable, tangible evidence of their God's justice and mercy. But all are silent ; no answer, no reply, and still the inexorable unerring Law of Compensation proceeds on its unswerving path. If we but watch its progress, we will find that it ignores all creeds, shows no preferences, but its sunlight and its thunderbolts fall alike on heathen and Christian. No absolution can shield the latter when guilty, no anathema hurt the former when innocent.
Away from us such an insulting conception of divine justice as that preached by priests on their own authority. It is fit only for cowards and criminals ! If they are backed by a whole array of Fathers and Churchmen, we are supported by the greatest of all authorities, an in- stinctive and reverential sense of the everlasting and everpresent law of harmony and justice.
But, besides that of reason, we have other evidence to show that such a construction is wholly unwarranted. The Gospels being " Divine reve- lation," doubtless Christians will regard their testimony as conclusive. Do they affirm that Jesus gave himself as a voluntary sacrifice ? On the contrary, there is not a word to sustain the idea. They make it clear that he would rather have lived to continue what he considered his mis- sion, and that he died because he could not help it^ and only when betrayed. Before, when threatened with violence, he had made himself invisible by employing the mesmeric power over the bystanders, claimed by every Eastern adept, and escaped. When, finally, he saw that his time had come, he succumbed to the inevitable. But see him in the garden, on the Mount of Olives, writhing in agony until ** his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood," praying with fervid supplication that the cu]> might be removed from him ; exhausted by his strug;gle to such a degree that an angel from heaven had to come and strengthen him ; and say if the picture is that of a self-immolating hostage and martyr. To crown all, and leave no lingering doubt in our minds, we have his own despairing words, **NoT MY wiLi^ but thincy be done !" {Luke xxii. 42, 43.)
Again, in the Puranas it may be found that Christna was nailed to a tree by the arrow of a hunter, who, begging the dying god to forgive
35
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hiin, receives the following answer : " Go, hunter, through my favor, to Heaven, the abode of the gods. . . . Then the illustrious Christna, having united himself with his own pure, spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying, imperishable, and universal Spirit, which is one with Vasudeva, abandoned his mortal body, and ... he became Nirguna" (Wilson's Vishnu Purana^ p. 612). Is not this the original of the story of Christ forgiving the thief on the cross, and promising him a place in Heaven ? Such examples " challenge inquiry as to their origin and mean- ing so long anterior to Christian ity^^ says Dr. Lundy in Monumental Chris- tianity'y and yet to all this he adds : " The idea of Krishna as a shepherd, I take to be older than either (the Gospel of Infancy and that of St. John)^ and prophetic of Christ'* (p. 156).
Facts like these, perchance, furnished later a plausible pretext fpr declaring apocryphal all such works as the Homilies^ which proved but too clearly the utter want of any early authority for the doctrine of atonement. The Homilies clash but little with the Gospels ; they disa- gree entirely with the dogmas of the Church. • Peter knew nothing of the atonement ; and his reverence for the mythical father Adam would never have allowed him to admit that this patriarch had sinned and was accursed. Neither do the Alexandrian theological schools appear to have been cognizant of this doctrine, nor Tertullian ; nor was it discussed by any of the earlier Fathers. Philo represents the story of the FcUl as symbolical, and Origen regarded it the same way as Paul, as an allegory.*
Whether they will or not, the Christians have to credit the foolish story of Eve*s temptation by a serpent. Besides, Augustine has formally pronounced upon the subject. *' God, by His arbitrary will," he says, **has selected beforehand certain persons, without regard to foreseen faith or good actions, and has irretrievably ordained to bestow upon them eternal happiness ; while He has condemned others in the same way to eternal reprobation / / " (De dono perseverantiac).\
* Sec Draper's •* Conflict between Religion and Science,'* p. 224.
\ This is the doctrine of the Supralai>sarians, who asserted that '* He [God] predes- tinated the fall 0/ Adam^ with all its pernicious consequences, from all eternity, and that our first parents had no liberty from the beginning."
It is also to this highly-moral doctrine that the Catholic world became inde1)ted, in the eleventh century, for the institution of the Order known as the Carthusian monks^ Bruno, its founder, was driven to the foundation of this monstrous Order by a circura- stance well worthy of being recorded here, as it graphically illustrates this divine pre- destination. A friend of Bruno, a French physician, famed far and wide for his extra- ordinary piety ^ purity of morals^ and charity^ died, and his body was watched by Bruno himself. Three days after his death, and as he was going to be buried, the pious jihysi- cian suddenly sat up in his coffin and declared, in a loud and solemn voice, " that by the
THE CRUEL DOCTRINES OF CALVIN. 547
Calvin promulgated views of Divine partiality and bloodthirstiness equally abhorrent. •* The human race, corrupted radically in the fall with Adam, has upon it the guilt and impotence of original sin ; its redemption can be achieved only through an incarnation and a propitia- tion ; of this redemption only electing grace can make the soul a partici- pant, and such grace, once given, is never lost ; this election can come only from Godj and it includes only a part of the race, the rest being left to perdition ; election and perdition (the horribile decretum) are both pre- destinated in the Divine plan ; that plan is a decree, and this decree is eternal and unchangeable . . . justification is by faith aloncy and faith is the gift of Godr
O Divine Justice, how blasphemed has been thy name ! Unfortunately for all such speculations, belief in the propitiatory efficacy of blood can be traced to the oldest rites. Hardly a nation remained ignorant of it. Every people offered animal and even human sacrifices to the gods, in the hope of averting thereby public calamity, by pacifying the wrath oi' some avenging deity. There are instances of Greek and Roman gener- als offering their lives simply for the success of their army. Cresar com- plains of it, and calls it a superstition of the Gauls. "They devote themselves to death . . . believing that unless life is rendered for life the immortal gods cannot be appeased," he writes. " If any evil is about to befall either those who now sacrifice, or Egypt, may it be averted on this head," was pronounced by the Egyptian priests when sacrificing one of their sacred animals. And imprecations were uttered over the head of the expiatory victim, around whose horns a piece of byblus was rolled.* The animal was generally led to some barren region, sacred to Typhon, in those primitive ages when this fatal deity was yet held in a certain con- sideration by the Egyptians. It is in this custom that lies the origin of the ** scape-goat " of the Jews, who, when the rufous ass-god was rejected by the Egyptians, began sacrificing to another deity the "red heifer."
" Let all sins that have been committed in this world fall on me that the world may be delivered," exclaimed Gautama, the Hindu Saviour, centuries before our era.
just judgment of God he was eternally damned." After which consoling message from beyond the '* dark river/* he fell back and relapsed into death.
In their turn, the Parsi theologians speak thus : "If any of you commit sin under the belief that he shall be saved by somebody, both the deceiver as well as the deceived shall be damned to the day of Rasta Kh^z. . . . There is no Saviour. In the other world you shall receive the letum according to your actions. . . . Your Saviour is your deeds and God Himself.*
♦ ** Do Isid. et Osir," p. 380.
1 "The Modem Parsis/' lecture by Max MdUer, iMa.
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No one will pretend to assert in our own age that it was the Egyptians who borrowed anything from the Israelites, as they now accuse the Hindus of doing. Bunsen, Lepsius, Champollion, have long since established the precedence of Egypt over the Israelites in age as well as in all the religious rites that we now recognize among the *' chosen peo- ])le." Even the New Testament teems with quotations and repetitions from the Book of the Dead^ and Jesus, if everything attributed to him by his four biographers is true — must have been acquainted with the Blgyp- tian Funereal Hymns.* In the Gospel according to Matthew we find whole sentences from the ancient and sacred Ritual which preceded our era by more than 4,000 years. We will again compare.f
The " soul " under trial is brought before Osiris, the " Lord of Truth," who sits decorated with the Egyptian cross, emblem of eternal life, and holding in his right hand the Vannus or the flagellum of justice.} The spirit begins, in the " Hall of the Two Truths," an earnest appekl, and enumerates its good deeds, supported by the responses of the forty- two assessors — its incarnated deeds and accusers. If justified, it is ad- dressed as OsiriSy thus assuming the appellation of the Deity whence its divine essence proceeded, and the following words, full of majesty and justice, are pronounced ! " Let the Osiris go ; ye see he is ^i-ithout fault. ... He lived on truth, he has fed on truth , . . The god has welcomed him as he desired. He has given food to my hungry, drink to my thirsty ones, clothes to my naked, ... He has made the sacred food of the gods the meat of the spirits."
In the parable of the Kingdom of Heaven {Matthew xxv.), the Son of Man (Osiris is also called the Son) sits upon the throne of his glory, judging the nations, and says to the justified, ** Come ye blessed of my Father (the God) inherit the kingdom . . . For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink . . . naked and
* Every tradition shows that Jesus was educated in Egypt and passed his infancy and youth vrith the Brotherhoods of the Essenes and other mystic communities.
\ Bunsen found some records which show the language and religious worship of the Egyptians, for instance, not only exbting at the opening of the old Empire, ** but already so fully established and fixed as to receive but a very slight development in the course of the old, middle, and modem Empires," and while this opening of the old Empire is placed by him beyond the Menes period, at least 4,000 years B.C.. the origin of the ancient Hermetic prayers and hymns of the •* Book of the Dead," is assigned by Bunsen to the pre-Menite dynasty of Abydos (between 4,000 and 4,500 B.C.), thus showing that '^ the system of Osirian worship and mythology was already formed 3,000 years before the days of Moses."
^ It was also called the ^*hook of attraction.*' Virgil terms it '^ Mystica vannus lacchi," '*Georgics,'* i., i66.
PETER cooper's PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY. S49
ye clothed mey * To complete the resemblance (Matthew iii. 12) : John is made to describe Christ as Osiris, ** whose fan (winnow or vannus) is in his hand, and who will '* purge his floor and gather his wheat into the gamer."
The same in relation to Buddhist legends. In Matthew iv. 19, Jesus is made to say : " Follow me and I will make yon fishers of men/' the whole adapted to a conversation between him and Simon l^eter and Andrew his brother.
In Schmidt's " Der Weise und der Thory\ a work full of anecdotes about Buddha and his disciples, the whole from original texts, it is said of a new convert to the faith, that ** he had been caught by the hook of the doctrine, just as a fish, who has caught at the bait and line is securely pulled out.** In the temples of Siam the image of the expected Buddha, the Messiah Mai tree, is represented with a fisherman's net in the hand, while in Thibet he holds a kind of a trap. The explanation of it reads as follows : '* He (Buddha) disseminates upon the Ocean of birth and decay the Lotus-flower of the excellent law as a bait ; with the loop of devotion, never cast out in vain, he brings living beings up like fishes, and carries them to the other side of the river, where there is true un- derstanding/' \
Had the erudite Archbishop Cave, Grabe, and Dr. Parker, who so zealously contended in their time for the admission of the Epistles of fesus Christ and Abgarus^ King of Edessa^ into the Canon of the Scripture^ lived in our days of Max Miillcr and Sanscrit scholarship, we doubt whether they would have acted as they did. The first mention of these Epistles ever made, was by the famous Eusebius. This pious bishop seems to have been self-appointed to furnish Christianity with the most unexpected proofs to corroborate its wildest fancies. Whether
* In an Address to the Delegates of the Evangelical Alliance, New York, 1874, Mr. Peter Cooper, a Unitarian, and one of the noblest practical Christians of the age, closes it with the following memorable language : ** In that last and final account it will be happy for as if we shall then find that our influence through life has tended to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and soothe the sorrows of those who were sick and in prison." Such words from a man who has given two million dollars in charity ; educated four thousand young girls in useful arts, by which they gain a comfortable support ; maintained a free public library, nmseum,and reading-room ; classes for working people ; public lectures by eminent scientists, open to all ; and been foremost in all good works, throughout a long and blameless life, come with the noble force that marks the utterances of all benefactors of their kind. The deeds of Peter Cooper will cause posterity to treasure his golden sayings in its heart.
f ** Aus dcm Tibetischcn iibersctzt und mit dem Originaltexte herausgegeben^^ von S. J. Schmidt.
% *' Buddhism in Tibet," by Emil Schlagintweit^ 1863, p* 213.
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among the many accomplishnients of the Bishop of Caesarea, we must include a knowledge of the Cingalese, Pehlevi, Thibetan, and other lan- guages, we know not ; but he surely transcribed the letters of Jesus and Abgarus, and the story of the miraculous portrait of Christ taken on a piece of cloth, by the simple wiping of his face, from the Buddhistical Canon. To be sure, the bishop declared that he found the letter him- self written in Syriac, preserved among the registers and records of the city of Edessa, where Abgarus reigned. * We recall the words of Babrias : '* Myth, O son of King Alexander, is an ancient human invention of Syrians, who lived in old time under Ninus and Belus." Edessa was one of the ancient ** holy cities." The Arabs venerate it to this day ; and the purest Arabic is there spoken. They call it still by its ancient name Orfa, once the city Arpha-Kasda (Arphaxad) the seat of a College of Chaldeans and Magi ; whose missionary, called Orpheus, brought thence the Bacchic Mysteries to Thrace. Very naturally, Euse- bius found there the tales which he wrought over into the story of Abgarus, and the sacred picture taken on a cloth ; as that of Bhagavat, or the blessed TathagAta (Buddha) f was obtained by King Binsbisara. \ The King having brought it, Bhagavat projected his shadow on it. § This bit of ** miraculous stuff," with its shadow, is still preserved, say the Buddhists; " only the shadow itself is rarely seen."
In like manner, the Gnostic author of the Gospel according to John, copied and metamorphosed the legend of Ananda who asked drink of a Matangha woman — the antitype of the woman met by Jesus at the well, J
♦ ** Ecclesiastical History," L i., c. 13.
f Tathag&ta is Buddha, ** he who walks in the footsteps of his predecessors ; '* as Bhagavat — he is the Lord,
\ We have the same legend about St. Veronica — as a pendant.
§** Introduction i PHistoire du Buddhisme Indien," E. Bumouf, p. 341.
I Moses was a most notable practitioner of Hermetic Science. Bearing in mind that Moses (Asarsiph) is made to run away to the Land of Midian, and that he ** sat down by a well " (Exod. ii.), we find the following :
The ** Well" played a prominent part in the Mysteries of the Bacchic festivals. In the sacerdotal language of every country, it had the same significance. A well is '* the fountain of salvation '* mentioned in Itaiah (xii 3). The water is the male principle in its spiritual sense. In its physical relation in the allegory of creation, the water is chaos, and chaos is the female principle vivified by the Spirit of God — the male principle. In the " Kabala," Zcuhar means ^'male; ** and the Jordan wa& called Zachar (*' Universal History," vol. ii., p. 429). It is curious that the Father of St. John the Baptist, the Prophet of yordaH—TAi:x^9X — should be called Zachar^ias, One of the names of Bacchus is Zagreus. The ceremony of pouring water on the shrine was sacred in the Osirian rites as well as in the Mosaic institutions. In the Miskna it is said, ** Thou shalt dwell in Succa and/(7Mr out water seven, and the pipes bix days'* ( ** Mishna Succah," p. i). " Take virgin earth , . . and work up the dust with Zr&w
THE SAMARITAN WOMAN'S STORY BUDDHISTIC. 55 1
and was reminded by her that she belongs to a low caste^ and may have nothing to do with a holy monk. ** 1 do not ask thee, my sister/' answers Ananda to the woman, " either thy caste or thy fatnily, I only ask thee for water, if thou canst give me some." This Matangha woman, charmed and moved to tears, repents, joins the monastic Order of Gautama, and becomes a saint, rescued from a life of unchastity by Sakya-muni. Many of her subsequent actions were used by Christian forgers, to endow Mary Magdalen and other female saints and martyrs.
*' And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward," says the Gospel {^Matthew x. 42). *' Wliosoever, with a purely believing heart, offers nothing but a handful of water, or presents so much to the spiritual assembly, or gives drink therewith to the poor and needy, or to a beast of the field ; diis meri- torious action will not be exhausted in many ages," * says the Buddhist Canon,
Ax the hour of Gautama-Buddha* s birth there were 32,000 wonders performed. The clouds stopped immovable in the sky, the waters of the rivers ceased to flow ; the flowers ceased unbudding ; the birds re-
ing WATER,'' prescribes the Sohar (Introduction to " Sohar ; *' ** Kabbala Denudata,'* it, pp. 220, 221). Only "earth and water, according to Moses, can bring forth a liv- ing soulf''' quotes Cornelius Agrippa. The water of Bacchus was considered to impart the Holy Pneuma to the initiate ; and it washes off all sin by baptism through the Holy Ghosts with the Christians. The '* well " in the kabalistic sense, is the mysterious emblem of the Secret Doctrine. '* If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,^* says Jesus (John vii.).
Therefore, Moses the adept, is naturally enough represented sitting by a well. He is approached by the seven daughters of the Kenite Priest of Midian coming to fill the troughs, to water their father* s ftock. Here we have seven again — the mystic number. In tlie present biblical allegory the daughters represent the seven occult powers, *" The shepherds came and drove them (the seven daughters) away, but Moses stood up, and helped them, and watered their flock.'' The shepherds are shown, by some kabalistic interpreters, to represent the seven "badly-disposed Stellars*" of the Nazarenes; for in the old Samaritan text the number of these Shepherds is also said to be seven (see kabalistic books).
Then Moses, who had conquered the seven evil Powers, and won the friendship of the seven occult and beneficent ones, is represented as living with the Keuel Priest of Midian, who invites ** the Egyptian " to eat bread, i.e., to partake of his wisdom. In the Bible the elders of Midian are known as great soothsayers and diviners. Finally, Reuel or Jeihro, the initiator and instructor of Moses, gives him in marriage his daughter. This daughter is Zipporah, 1. ^., the esoteric Wisdom, the shining li^ht of knowledge, for Siprah means the "shining" or *• resplendent," from the word *' Sapar" to shine. Sippara, in Chaldea, was the city of the " Sun." Thus Moses was initiated by the Midianite, or rather the Kenite, and thence the biblical allegory.
♦ Schmidt : " Der Weisc und dcr Thor," p. 37.
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mained silent and full of wonder ; all nature remained suspended in her course, and was full of expectation. " There was a preternatural light spread all over the world ; animals suspended their eating ; the blind saw ; and the lame and dumb were cured," etc. *
We now quote from the Protevangelion :
" At the hour of the Nativity, as Joseph looked up into the air, * I saw,' he says, *'ihe clouds astonished^ and the fowls of the air stopping in the midst of their flight. . . . And I beheld the sheep dispersed . . . and yet the sheep stood still ; and I looked into a river, and saw the kids with their mouths close to the wcUer^ and touching itj but they did not drink,
" Then a bright cloud overshadowed the catfe. But on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the cave, so that their eyes could not bear it. . . , The hand of Salom6, which was withered, was straightway cured. . . . The blind saw ; the lame and dumb were cured." f
When sent to school, the young Gautama, without having ever studied, completely worsted all his competitors ; not only in writing, but in arithmetic, mathematics, metaphysics, wrestling, archery, astronomy, geometry, and finally vanquishes his own professors by giving the defini- tion of sixty-four kinds of writings, which were unknown to the masters themselves. J
And this is what is said again in the Gospel of the Infancy: *' And when he (Jesus) was twelve years old ... a certain principal Rabbi asked him, ' Hast thou read books ? * and a certain astronomer asked the Lord Jesus whether he had studied astronomy. And Lord Jesus explained to him . . . about the spheres . . . about the physics and metai)hysics. Also things that reason of man had never discovered. . . . The constitutions of the body, how the soul operated upon the body, . . . etc. And at this the master was so surprised that he said : ** I believe this boy was born before Noah ... he is more learned than any master.' " §
The precepts of Hillel, who died forty years b.c, a])i>ear rather as quotations than original expressions in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus taught the world nothing that had not been taught as earnestly before by other masters. He begins his sermon with certain purely Buddhistic
♦ "Rgya Tcher Rol. Pa.," ** History of Buddha Sakya-muni" (Sanscrit), -'Lali- tavistara," vol. ii., pp. 90, 91.
f *' Protevangelion '* (ascribed to James), ch. xiiL and xiv.
X ** Pali Buddhistical Annals," iii., p. 28; ^* Manual of Buddhism," 142. Hardy.
§*^ Gospel of the Infancy/* chap, xx., xxl ; accepted by Eusebius, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, Jerome, and others. The same story, with the Hindu ear- marks rubbed off to avoid detection, is found at Luke ii. 46, 47.
MISSIONARY JUDSON'S ANTAGONIST. 553
precepts that had found acceptance among the Essenes, and were gener- ally practiced by the Orphikoi^ and the Neo-platonists. There were the Philhellencs, who, like Apollonius, had devoted their lives to moral and physical purity, and who practiced asceticism. He tries to imbue the hearts of his audience with a scorn for worldly wealth ; a fakir-like un- concern for the morrow; love for humanity, poverty, and chastity. He blesses the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungering and the thirsting after righteousness, the merciful and the peace-makers, and, Buddha-like, leaves but a poor chance for the proud castes to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Every word of his sermon is an echo of the essential ]>rinciples of monastic Buddhism. The ten commandments of Buddha, as found in an appendix to the PrcUimoksIia Sutra (Pali-Burman text), are elaborated to their full extent in Matthew, If we desire to acquaint ourselves with the historical Jesus we have to set the mythical Christ entirely aside, and learn all we can of the man in the first Gospel. His doctrines, religious views, and grandest aspirations will be found concentrated in his ser- mon.
This is the principal cause of the failure of missionaries to convert Brahmanists and Buddhists. These see that the little of really good that is offered in the new reli^on is paraded only in theory, while their own faith demands that those identical rules shall be appHed in practice. Notwithstanding the impossibility for Christian missionaries to understand clearly the spirit of a religion wholly based on that doctrine of emana- tion which is so inimical to their own theology, the reasoning powers of some simple Buddhistical preachers are so high, that we see a scholar like Gutzlaff,* utterly silenced and put to great straits by Buddhists. Judson, the famous Baptist missionary in Burmah, confesses, in his Journal^ the dif- ficulties to which he was often driven by them. Speaking of a certain Oo- yan, he remarks that his strong mind was capable of grasping the most diffi- cult subjects. '^ His words," he remarks, '^ are as smooth as oil, as sweet as honey, and as sharp as razors ; his mode of reasoning is soft, insinuating, and acute ; and so adroitly does he act his part, that I ivith the strength of truths was scarcely able to keep him down." It appears though, that at a later period of his mission, Mr. Judson found that he had utterly mis- taken the doctrine. " I begin to find," he says, " that the semi-atheism, which I had sometimes mentioned, is nothing but a refined Buddhism, having its foundation in the Buddhistic Scriptures." Thus he discovered at last that while there is in Buddhism ** a generic term of most exalted perfection actually applied to numerous individuals, a Buddha superior to the whole host of subordinate deities," there are also lurking in the
♦ Alabaster : ** Wheel of the I-aw," pp. 29, 34, 3$, and 38.
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system " the glimmerings of an anima mundi anterior to, and even supe- rior to, Buddha." ♦
This is a happy discovery, indeed !
Even the so-slandered Chinese believe in One^ Highest God. " The Supreme Ruler of Heavens." Yuh-Hwang-Shang-ti, has his name inscribed only on the golden tablet before the altar of heaven at the great temple at Pekin, T*Iantan. '^This worship," says Colonel Yule, "is mentioned by the Mahometan narrator of Shah Rulch*s embassy (a.d. 142 1) : 'Every year there are some days on which the emperor eats no animal food. . . . He spends his time in an apartment which contains no idol, and says that he is worshipping the God of Heaven'' f
Speaking of Shahrastani, the great Arabian scholar, Chwolsohn says that for him Sabaeism was not astrolatry, as many are inclined to think. He tlrought " that God is too sublime and too great to occupy Himself with the immediate management of this world ; that He has, therefore, transferred the government thereof to the gods, and retained only the most important affairs for Himself; that further, man is too weak to be able to apply immediately to the Highest; that he must, therefore, address his prayers and sacrifices to the intermediate divinities, to whom the management of the world has been entrusted by the Highest.*' Chwol- sohn argues that this idea is as old as the world, and that " in the heathen world this view was universally shared by the cultivated." J
Father Boori, a Portuguese missionary, who was sent to convert the " poor heathen '* of Cochin-China, as early as the sixteenth century, " pro- tests in despair, in his narrative, that there is not a dress, office, or ceremony in the Church of Rome, to which the Devil has not here provided some counterpart. Even when the Father began inveighing against the idols, he was answered that these were the images of departed great men, whom they worshipped exactly on the same principle, and in the same manner, as the Catholics did the images of the apostles and martyrs." ^ Moreover, these idols have importance but in the eyes of the ignorant multitudes. The philosophy of Buddhism ignores images and fetishes. Its strongest vitality lies in its psychological conceptions of man*s inner self. The road to the supreme state of felicity, called the Ford of Nir- vana, winds its invisible paths through the spiritual, not physical life of a person while on this earth. The sacred Buddhistical- literature points the way by stimulating man to follow practically the example of Gau-
* E. Upham : ** The History and Doctrines of Buddhism," p. 135. Dr. Judson fell into this prodigious error by reason of his fanaticism. In his zeal to " save souls." he refused to peruse the Burmese classics, lest his attention should be diverted thereby.
f '* Indian Antiquary," vol. ii., p. 81 ; " Book of Ser Marco Polo/' vol. i., p. 441.
X " Ssabismus," vol i., p. 725. § Murray's ** Hbtory of Discoveries in Asia."
MORE CHRISTIAN PILFERINGS FROM BUDDHISM. 555
tama. Therefore, the Buddhistical writings lay a particular stress on the spiritual privileges of man, advising him to cultivate his powers for the production of Meipo (phenomena) during life, and for the attainment of Nirvana in the hereafter.
But turning again from the historical to the mythical narratives, invented alike about Christna, Buddha, and Christ, we find the following :
Setting a model for the Christian avatar and the archangel Gabriel to follow, the luminous San-tusita (Bodhisat) appeared to Maha-maya Mike a cloud in the moonlight, coming from the north, and in his hand holding a white lotus.' He announced to her the birth of her son, and circumambulating the queen's couch thrice . . . passed away from the dewa loka and was conceived in the world of men.* The resemblance will be found still more perfect upon examining the illustrations in medi- aeval psalters, f and the panel-paintings of the sixteenth century (in the Church of Jouy, for instance, in which the Virgin is represented kneeling, with her hands uplifted toward the Holy Ghost, and the unborn child is miraculously seen through her body), and then finding the same subject treated in the identical way in the sculptures in certain convents in Thibet. In the Pali-Buddhistic annals, and other religious records, it is stated that Maha-devi and all her attendants were constantly gratified with the sight of the infant Bodhisatva quietly developing within his mother^s bosom, and beaming already, from his place of gestation, upon humanity "the resplendent moonshine of his future benevolence." J
Ananda, the cousin and future disciple of Sakya-muni, is re|)resented as having been born at the same time. He appears to have been the original for the old legends about John the Baptist. For example, the Pali narrative relates that Maha-maya, while pregnant with the sage, paid a visit to his mother, as Mary did to the mother of the Baptist. Immediately, as she entered the apartment, the unborn Ananda greeted the unborn Buddha-Siddhflrtha, who also returned the salutation ; and in like manner the babe, afterward John the Baptist, leaped in the womb of Elizabeth when Mary came in.§ More even than that ; for Didron de- scribes a scene of salutation, painted ott shutters at Lyons, between Elizabeth and Mary, in which the two unborn infants, both pictured as outside their mothers, are also saluting each other. \
If we turn now to Christna and attentively compare the prophecies respecting him, as collected in the Ramatsariarian traditions of the
• •* Manual of Buddhism," p. 143.
f See Inman*s " Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism," p. 92.
\ •« Rgya. Tcher. Rol. Pa.," Bkah Hgyour (Thibetan version).
§ Gospel according to Luke, i. 39-45.
I Didron ; " Iconograph. Chr^tiennc Histoire dc Dieu."
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Atharva, the Vedangas^ and the Vedantas,* with passages in the BibU and apocryphal Gospels, of which it is pretended that some presage the coming of Christ, we shall find very curious facts. Following are examples :
From the Hindu Books.
ist. "He (the Redeemer) shall come, crowned wtth lights^ the pure fluid issu- ing from the great soul . . . dispersing darkness" {Atharva).
2d. *' In the early part of the KaliYuga shall be born the son of the Virgin " {Vedanta).
3d. ** The Redeemer shall come, and the accursed Rakhasas shall fly for refuge to the deej^est hell'* {At/iarvd).
4th. ** He shall come, and life will defy death . . . and he shall revivify the blood of all beings, shall regenerate all bodies, and purify all souls."
5th. " He shall come, and all animated beings, all the flowers, plants, men, women, the infants, the slaves . . . shall together intone the chant of joy, for he is the Lord of all creatures ... he is infinite, for he is power, for he is wis- dom, for he is beauty, for he is all and in aU."
6th. '' He shall come, more sweet than honey and ambrosia, more pure than the iamb without spot " (Ibid.).
7th. ** Happy the blest womb that shall bear him" (Ibid.).
8th. *' And God shall manifest His glory, and make His power resound, and shall reconcile Himself with His creatures" (Ibid. ).
9th. " It is in the bosom of a woman that the ray of the Divine splendor will receive human form, and she shall bring forth, being a virgin, for no impure con- tact shall have defiled her " ( Vtdangas).
From the Christian Books.
ist. " The people of Galilee of the Gtn* tiles which sat in darkness saw great light " {Matthnv iv. from Itaiah ix. 1, 2).
2d. '^ Behold, a vurgin shall conceive and bear a son " {Isaiah vii. quoted ^i Mat- thew i. 23).
3d. •* Behold, now, Jesus of Nazareth, with the brightness of his glorious divin- ity, put to flight all the horrid pon-en of darkness** {Nicodemus),
4th. ^^ And I give unto them eternal life^ and they shall never perish " (yokn x. 28).
5th. ** Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ! shout, O daughter of Jerusalem 1 behold, thy King cometh unto thee . . . he is just . . . for how great is his good- ness, and how great is his beauty ! Cora shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids" {Zechariah ix.).
6th. «* Behold the lamb of God" {yohn I 36). "He was brought as a Iamb to the slaughter" {Isaiah 53).
7th. " Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb" {Luke I); "Blessed is the womb that
• bare thee " (xi. 27).
8th. "God mauifeslevl forth His glory" {John^ 1st Ep.).
"God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Corinth, v.).
9th. * ' Being an unparalleled instance, with- out any pollution or defilement, and a virgin shall bring forth a son, and a maid shall bring forth the Lord " ( Goipel of Mary, iii,).
♦ There are numerous works deduced immediately from the " Vedas," called the **Upa-Ved." Four works are included under this denommatiuii, namely, the " Ayus," **Gandharva," *' Dhanus," and "Sthftpatya." The third ** Upavcda" was composed by Viswamitra for the use of the Kshatriyas, the warrior caste.
THE CRUCIFIXION OF WITTOBA. 557
Let there be exaggeration or not in attributing to the Aiharva- Veda and the other books such a great antiquity, the fact remains that these prophecies and their realization preceded Christianity^ and Christna preceded Christ. That is all we need care to inquire.
One is completely overwhelmed with astonishment upon reading Dr. Lundy's Monumental Christianity, It would be difficult to say whether an admiration for the author's erudition, or amazement at his serene and unparalleled sophistry is stronger. He has gathered a world of facts which prove that the religions, far more ancient than Christianity, of Christna, Buddha, and Osiris had anticipated even its minutest symbols. His materials come from no forged papyri, no interpolated Gospels, but from sculptures on the walls of ancient temples, from monuments, in- scriptions, and other archaic relics, only mutilated by the hammers of iconoclasts, the cannon of fanatics, and the effects of time. He shows us Christna and Apollo as good shepherds ; Christna holding the cruci- form chank and the chakra, and Christna " crucified in space," as he calls it {^Monumental Christianity^ fig. 72). Of this figure — borrowed by Dr. Lundy from Moor's Hindu Pantheon— \\. may be truly said that it is calculated to petrify a Chnstian with astonishment, for it is the crucified Christ of Romish art to the last degree of resemblance. Not a feature is lacking ; and, the author says of it himself: ** This representa- tion 1 believe to be anterior to Christianity. ... It looks like a Chris- tian crucifix in many respects. . . . The drawing, the attitude, the nail- marks in hands and feet, indicate a Christian origin, while the Parthian coronet of seven points, the absence of the wood, and of the usual in- scription, and the rays of glory above, would seem to point to some other than a Christian origin. Can it be the victim-man, or the priest and victim both in one, of the Hindu Mythology, who offered himself a sacrifice before the worlds were ? Can it be Plato's Second God who impressed himself on the universe jn the form of the cross ? Or is it his divine man who would be scourged, tormented, fettered ; have his eyes burnt out ; and lastly . . . would be crucified /" (Republic, c. ii., p. 52, Spens. Trans,), It is all that and much more ; Archaic Religious Philosophy was universal.
As it is, Dr. Lundy contradicts Moor, and maintains that this figure is that of IVittoba, one of the avatars of Vishnu, hence Christna, and anterior to Christianity, which is a fact not very easily to be put down. And yet although he finds it prophetic of Christianity, he thinks it has no relation whatever to Christ ! His only reason is that ** in a Christian crucifix the glory always comes from the sacred head ; here it is from above and beyond. . . . The Pundit's Wittoba then, given to Moor, would seem to be the crucified Krishna, the shepherd-god of Mathura
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... a Saviour — the Lord of the Covenant, as well as Lord of Heai*en and earth — pure and impure, light and dark^ good and bad, peaceful and war- like, amiable and wrathful, mild and turbulent, forgiving and vindictive, God and a strange mixture of man, but not the Christ of the Gospels."
Now all these qualities must pertain to Jesus as well as to Chnstna. The very fact that Jesus was a man upon the mother's side-:— even though he were a God, implies as much. His behavior toward the fig-tree, and his self-contradictions, in Matthew, where at one time he promises peace on earth, and at another the sword, etc., are proofs in this direction. Undoubtedly this cut was never intended to represent Jesus of Nazareth. It was Wittoba, as Moor was told, and as moreover the Hindu Sacred Scriptures state, Brahma, the sacrificer who is " at once both sacrificer and victim ; " it is " Brahma, victim in His Son Christna, who came to die on earth for our salvation, who Himself accomplishes the solemn sacrifice (of the Sarvameda)." And yet, it is the man Jesus as well as the man Christna, for both were united to their Chrestos.
Thus we have either to admit periodical "incarnations,** or let Christianity go as the greatest imposture and plagiarism of the ages !
As to the Jewish Scriptures, only such men as the Jesuit de Carriere, a convenient representative of the majority of the Catholic clergy, can still command their followers to accept only the chronology established by the Holy Ghost. It is on the authority of the latter that we learn that Jacob went, with a family of seventy persons, all told, to settle in Egypt in a.m. 2298, and that in a.m. 2513 — ^just 215 years afterward — these seventy persons had so increased that they left Egypt 600,000 fighting men strong, "without counting women and children," which, according to the science of statistics, should represent a total population of between two and three millions ! ! Natural history affords no parallel to such fecundity, except in red herrings. After this let the Christian missionaries laugh, if they can, at Hindu chronology and computations.
" Happy are those persons, but not to be envied," exclaims Bunsen, "who have no misgivings about making Moses march out ^nth more than two millions of people at the end of a popular conspiracy and rising, in the sunny days of the eighteenth dynasty ; who make the Israelites conquer Kanaan under Joshua, during and previous to the most formida- ble campaigns of conquering Pharaohs in that same country. The Egyp- tian and Assyrian annals, combined with the historical criticism of the Bible, prove that the exodus could only have taken place under Meneph- thah, so that Joshua could not have crossed the Jordan befoie Easter 1280, the last campaign of Ramses III. in Palestine being in 1281." ♦
* Bunsen^s ** Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. v., p. 93.
''THE LAMA OF JEHOVAH." SS9
But we must resume the thread of our narrative with Buddha.
Neither he nor Jesus ever wrote one word of their doctrines. We have to take the teachings of the masters on the testimony of the disci- ples, and therefore it is but fair that we should be allowed to judge both doctrines on their intrinsic value. Where the logical preponderance lies, may be seen in the results of frequent encounters between Christian missionaries and Buddhist theologians {pungut). The latter usually, if not invariably, have the better of their opponents. On the other hand, the •* I.ama of Jehovah " rarely fails to lose his temper, to the great delight of the I.ama of Buddha, and practically demonstrates his religion of pa- tience, mercy, and charity, by abusing his disputant in the most uncanon- ical language. This we have witnessed repeatedly.
Despite the notable similarity of the direct teachings of Gautama and Jesus, we yet find their respective followers starting from two diametri- cally opposite points. The Buddhist divine, following literally the ethical doctrine of his master, remains thus true to the legacy of Gautama ; while the Christian minister, distorting the precepts recorded by the four Gospels beyond recognition, teaches, not that which Jesus taught, but the absurd, too often pernicious, interpretations of fallible men — Popes, I.uthers, and Calvins included. The following are two instances selected from both religions, and brought into contrast. Let the reader judge for himself :
" Do not believe in anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many," says Buddha; "do not think that is a proof of its tnith.
** Do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is produced ; do not be sure that the ivriting has ever been revised by the said sage, or can be relied on. Do not believe in what you have fancied, thinking that, because an idea is extraordinary^ it must have been implanted by a Deva^ or some wonderful being,
" Do not believe in guesses, that is, assuming something at hap-hazard as a starting-point, and then drawing conclusions from it — reckoning your two and your three and your four before you have fixed your number one.
*' Do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and masters^ or believe and practice merely because they believe and practice,
** I [Buddha] tell you all, you must of yourselves know that this is evil, this is punishable, this is censured by wise men ; belief in this will bring no advantage to any one, but will cause sorrow ; and when you know this, then eschew it.'* *
It is impossible to avoid contrasting with these benevolent and human sentmients, the fulminations of the OEcumenical Council and the Pope,
♦ Alabaster : " Wheel of the Law,** pp. 43-47.
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against the employment of reason, and the pursuit of science when it clashes with revelation. The atrocious Papal benediction of Moslem arras and cursing of the Russian and Bulgarian Christians have roused the indig- nation of some of the most devoted Cathoh'c communities. The Catho- lic Czechs of Prague on the day of the recent semi-centennial jubilee of Pius IX., and again on the 6th of July, the day sacred to the memory of John Huss, the burned martyr, to mark their horror of the Ultramontane policy in this respect, gathered by thousands upon the neighboring Mount Zhishko, and with great ceremony and denunciations, burned the Pope's portrait, his Syllabus, and last allocution against the Russian Czar, saying that they were good Catholics, but better Slavs. Evidently, the memory of John Huss is more sacred to them than the Vatican Popes.
" The worship of words is more pernicious than the worship of images," remarks Robert Dale Owen. " Grammatolatry is the worst species of idolatry. We have arrived at an era in which literalism is destroying faith. . . . The letter killeth." ♦
There is not a dogma in the Church to which these words can be better applied than to the doctrine of transubstantiation. \ " WTioso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life," Christ is made to say. " This is a hard saying," repeated his dismayed listeners. The answer was that of an initiate, ** Doth this offend you ? It is the Spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profitcth nothing. The words (rcmata^ or arcane utterances) that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are Life."
During the Mysteries wine represented Bacchus, and bread Ceres .J
* ** The Debatable Land," p. 145.
f ** We divide our zeal," says Dr. Henry More, ** against so many things that \i'e fancy Popish, that we scarce reserve a just share of detestation against what is truly so. Such are that gross, rank, and scandalous impossibility of transubstantiation^ the vari- ous modes uf fulsome idolatry and lying impostures, the uncertainty of their loyalty to their lawful sovereigns by their su()erstitious adhesion to the spiritual tyranny of the Pope, and that barbarous and ferine cruelty against those that are not either soch fools as to be persuaded to believe such things as they would obtrude upon men, or, are not so false to God and their own consciences, as, knowing better, yet to profess them" (Postscript to "Glanvill").
X Payne Knight believes that Ceres was not a personification of the bmte matter which composed the earth, but of the {tvazX^ productive principle supposed to pervade it. which, joined to the active, was held to be the cause of the organization and animation of its substance. . . . She is mentioned as the wife of the Omnipotent P'ather, ifither, or Jupiter ('* The Symlwlical Language of Ancient Art and Mytholog)-," xxxvi.). Hence the words of Christ, **it is the Spirit that in their dual meaning to both spiritual and terrestrial things, to spirit and matter.
Bacchus, as Dionysus, is of Indian origin. Cicero mentions him as a son of Thyone and Nibus. ^i.tvucm means the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned
WINE AND BREAD IN THE MYSTERIES. $6 1
The hierophant-initiator presented symbolically before the final rri'dation wine and bread to the candidate who had to eat and drink of both in token that the spirit was to quicken matter, i.e,^ the divine wisdom was to enter into his body through what was to be revealed to him. Jesus, in his Oriental phraseology, constantly assimilated himself to the true vine {John XV. i). Furthermore, the hierophant, the discloser of the Pe- troma, was called " Father." When Jesus says, " Drink . . . this is my blood," what else was meant, it was simply a metaphorical assimilation of himself to the vine, which bears the grape, whose juice is its blood — wine. It was a hint that as he had himself been initiated by the ** Father," so he desired to initiate others. His " Father " was the hus- bandman, himself the vine, his disciples the branches. His followers being ignorant of the terminology of the Mysteries, wondered ; they even took it as an oflfense, which is not surprising, considering the Mosaic in- junction against blood.
There is quite enough in the four gospels to show what was the secret and most fervent hope of Jesus ; the hope in which he began to teach, and in which he died. In his immense and unselfish love for hu- manity, he considers it unjust to deprive the many of the results of the knowledge acquired by the few. This result he accordingly preaches — the unity of a spiritual God, whose temple is within each of us, and in whom we live as He lives in us — in spirit. This knowledge was in the hands of the Jewish adepts of the school of Hillel and the kabalists. But the ** scribes," or lawyers, having gradually merged into the dogmatism of the dead letter, had long since separated themselves from the Tanalm, the true spiritual teachers ; and the practical kabalists were more or less persecuted by the Synagogue. Hence, we find Jesus exclaiming : " Woe unto you lawyers ! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge [the Gno- sis] : ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering ye pre- vented" {Luke xi. 52). The meaning here is clear. They did take the key away, and could not even profit by it themselves, for the Masorah (tradition) had become a closed book to themselves as well as to others.
with ivy, or kissos, is Christna, one of whose names was Kissen, Dionysus is preeminently the deity on whom were centred all the hopes for future life ; in short, he was the god wlio was expected to liberate the souls of men from their prisons of flesh. Orpheus, the poet- Argonaut, b also said to have come on earth to purify the religion of its gross, and terrestrial anthropomorphism, he abolished human sacrifice and instituted a mystic theology based on pure spirituality. Cicero calls Orpheus a son of Bacchus. It is strange that both seem to have originally come from India. At least, as Dionysus Zagreus, Bacchus is of undoubted Hindu ori ogy between the name of Orpheus and An old Greek term, «Jf ^if, dark or ta^vny-col- aredf make him Hindu by connecting the term with his dusky Hindu complexion. See Voss, Hcyne and Schneider on the Argonautis.
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Neither Renan nor Strauss, nor the more ipodern Viscount Amberley seem to have had the remotest suspicion of the real meaning of many of the parables of Jesus, or even of the character of the great Galilean phi- losopher. Renan, as we have seen, presented him to us as a Gallicized Rabbi, **/ over, who does not even come out of the school of Hillel, or any school either, albeit he terms him repeatedly "the charming doctor."* He shows him as a sentimental young enthusiast, sprung out of the plebeian classes of Galilee, who imagines the ideal kings of his parables the em- purpled and jewelled beings of whom one reads in nursery tales, f
Lord Amberley*s Jesus, on the other hand, is an " iconoclastic ideal- ist," far inferior in subtilty and logic to his critics. Renan looks over at Jesus with the one sidedness of a Semitomaniac ; Viscount Amberley looks down upon him from the social plane of an English lord. Apropos of this marriage-feast parable, which he considers as embodying ** a curi- ous theory of social intercourse," the Viscount says : " Nobody can object to charitable individuals asking poor people or invalids without rank at their houses. . . . But we cannot admit that this kind action ought to be rendered obligatory ... it is eminently desirable that we should do exactly what Christ would forbid us doing — namely, invite our neighbors and be invited by them as circumstances may require. The fear that we may receive a recompense for the dinner-parties we may give, is surely chimerical. . . . Jesus, in fact, overlooks entirely the more intellectual side of society.*' J All of which unquestionably shows that the " Son of God " was no master of social etiquette, nor fit for " society ; " but it is also a fair example of the prevalent misconception of even his most suggestive parables.
The theory of Anquetil du Perron that the Bagaved-gita is an inde- pendent work, as it is absent from several manuscripts of the Mahd- Bhdrata^ may be as much a plea for a still greater antiquity as the reverse. The work is purely metaphysical and ethical, and in a certain sense it is anti- Vcdic ; so far, at least, that it is in opposition with many of the later Brahmanical interpretations of the Vedas. How comes it, then, that instead of destroying the work, or, at least, of sentencing it as unca- nonical — an expedient to which the Christian Church would never have failed to resort — the Brahmans show it the greatest reverence? Per- fectly unitarian in its aim, it clashes with the popular idol-worship. Still, the only precaution taken by the Brahmans to keep its tenets from becoming too well known, is to preserve it more secretly than any other
* " Vic de Jesus," p. 219. f IWd., p. 221.
{ ** Analysis of Religious Belief," voL i., p. 467.
christna's maxims to arjuna. 563
religious book from Qyery caste except the sacerdotal ; and, to impose upon that even, in many cases, certain restrictions. The grandest mys- teries of the Brahmanical religion are embraced within this magnificent ])oem ; and even the Buddhists recognize it, explaining certain dog- matic difficulties in their own way. " Be unselfish, subdue your senses and passions, which obscure reason and lead to deceit," says Christna to *^'« disciple Arjuna, thus enunciating a purely Buddhistic principle. • Low men follow examples, great men give them. . . . The soul ought to free itself from the bonds of action, and act absolutely according to its divine origin. TTiere is but one God, and all other devotas are infe- rior, and mere forms (powers) of Brahma or of myself. Worship by deeds predominates over that of contemplation,'^ *
This doctrine coincides perfectly with that of Jesus himself, f Faith alone, unaccompanied by " works," is reduced to naught in the Baga- ved'gita. As to the AtJiarva- V^da, it was and is preserved in such se- crecy by the Brahmans, that it is -a matter of doubt whether the Orien- talists have a complete copy of it One who has read what Abb6 Dubois says may well doubt the fact. " Of the last species — the Atharva — there are very few," he says, writing of the Vedas, " and many people suppose they no longer exist. But the truth is, they do exist, though they conceal themselves with more caution than the others, from the fear of being suspected to be initiated in the magic mysteries and other dreaded mysteries which the work is believed to teach." J
There were even those among the highest epoptce of the greater Mysteries who knew nothing of their last and dreaded rite — the voluntary transfer of life from hierophant to candidate. In Ghost-Land \ this mystical operation of the adept's transfer of his spiritual entity, after the death of his body, into the youth he loves with all the ardent love of a spiritual parent, is superbly described. As in the case of the reincarna- tion of the lamas of Thibet, an adept of the highest order may live in- definitely. His mortal casket wears out notwithstanding certain alchem- ical secrets for prolonging the youthful vigor far beyond the usual limits, yet the body can rarely be kept alive beyond ten or twelve score of years. The old garment is then worn out, and the spiritual Ego forced to leave it, selects for its habitation a new body, fresh and full of healthy vital principle. In case the reader should feel inclined to ridicule this asser-
♦ Sec the " Gita," translated by Charles Wilkins, in 1785 ; and the «* Bhagavad- Purana," containing the history of Christna, translated into French by Eugene Bur- noaf. 1840.
f Matthew viu 21. % " Of the People of India," vol L, p. 84.
I Or *^ Researches into the Mysteries of Occultism ; " Boston, 1877, Edited by Mrs. £. Uardinge Britten.
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tion of the possible prolongation of human life, we may as well refer him to the statistics of several countries. The author of an able article in the WesiminsUr Review^ for October, 1850, is responsible for the statement that in England, they have the authentic instances of one Thomas Jenkins dying at the age of 169, and " Old Parr" at 152 ; and that in Russia some of the peasants are ** known to have reached 242 years." ♦ There are also cases of centenarianism reported among the Peruvian Indians. We are aware that many able writers have recently discredited these claims to an extreme longevity, but we nevertheless affirm our belief in their truth.
True or fialse there are " superstitions " among the Eastern people such as have never been dreamed even by an Edgar Poe or a Hoffmann. And these beliefs run in the very blood of the nations with which they origin- ated. Carefully stripped of exaggeration they will be found to embody an universal belief in those resdess, wandering, astral souls, which are called ghouls and vampires. An Armenian Bishop of the fifth century, named Yeznik, gives a number of such narratives in a manuscript work (Book i., §§ 20, 30), preserved some thirty years ago in the library of the Monastery of Etchmeadzine.f Among others, there is a tradition dating from the days of heathendom, that whenever a hero whose life is needed yet on earth falls on the battle-field, the Aralez, the popular gods of an- cient Armenia, empowered to bring back to life those slaughtered in battle, lick the bleeding wounds of the victim, and breathe on them until they have imparted a new and vigorous life. After that the warrior rises, washes off all traces of his wounds, and resumes his place in the fray. But his immortal spirit has fled ; and for the remainder of his days he lives — a deserted temple.
Once that an adept was initiated into the last and most solemn mys- tery of the life-transfer, the awful seventh rite of the great sacerdotal operation, which is the highest theurgy, he belonged no more to this world. His soul was free thereafter, and the seven mortal sins lying in wait to devour his heart, as the soul, liberated by death, would be crossing the seven halls and seven staircases, could hurt him no more alive or dead ; he has passed the " twice seven trials " the twelve labors of the final hour. J
The High Hierophant alone knew how to perform this solemn opera-
* See ** Stone Him to Death ;" ** Septenary Institutions." Capt. James Riley, in his '* Narrative" of his enslavement in Africa, relates like instances of great longevity on the Sahara Desert.
f Russian Armenia ; one of the most ancient Christian convents.
X ** £lgyptian Book of the Dead." The Hindus have seven upper and seven lower heavens. The seven mortal sins of the Christians have been borrowed from the Egyp- tian Books of Hermes with which Clement of Alexandria was so familiar.
THE EXPRESSION " BORN AGAIN " INTERPRETED. 565
tion by infusing his own vital life and astral soul into the adept, chosen by hiin for his successor, who thus became endowed with a double life.*
" Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can- not see the kingdom of God " (JoJin iii. 3). Jesus tells Nicodemus, spirit is spirit.'*
This allusion, so unintelligible in itself, is explained in the Satapa- Brdhmana, It teaches that a man striving after spiritual perfection must have three births : ist. Physical from his mortal parents ; 2d. Spiri- tual, ihxow^x^Wgxoyi^ sacrifice (initiation) ; 3d. His flnal birth 'into the world of spirit — at death. Though it may seem strange that we should have to go to the old land of the Punj&b and the banks of the sacred Ganges, for an interi:>reter of words spoken in Jerusalem and expounded on the banks of the Jordan, the fact is evident This second birth, or regeneration of spirit, after the natural birth of that which is born of die flesh, might have astonished a Jewish ruler. Nevertheless, it had been taught 3,000 years before the appearance of the great Galilean prophet, not only in old India but to all the epoptace of the Pagan initia- tion, who were instructed in the great mysteries of Life and Death. This secret of secrets, that soul is not knit to flesh, was practically de- monstrated in the instance of the Yogis, the followers of Kapila. Hav- ing emancipated their souls from the fetters of Prakriti, or Maliai (the physical perception of the senses and mind — in one sense, creation), they so developed their soul-power and will-force^ as to have actually enabled themselves, while on earth, to communicate with the supernal worlds, and perform what is bunglingly termed " miracles." f Men
* The atrocious custom subsequently introduced among the people, of sacrificing human victims is a perverted copy of the Theurjjic Mystery. The Pagan priests, who did not belong to the class of the hierophants, carried on for awhile this hideous rite, and it served to screen the genuine purpose. But the Grecian Herakles is represented as the adversary of human sacrifices and as slaying the men and monsters who offered them. Bunsen shows, by the very absence of any representation of human sacrifice on the oldest monuments, that this custom had been abolished in the old Empire, at the close oftheseventh century after Menes ; therefore, 3,ocx) years B.C., Iphiscrates had stopped the human sacrifices entirely among the Carthaginians. Diphilus ordered bulls to be substituted for human victims. Amosis forced the priests to replace the latter by figures of wax. On the other hand, for every stranger offered on the shrine of Diana by the inhabitants of the Tauric Chersonesus, the Inquisition and the Christian clergy can boast of a dozen of heretics offered on the altar of the "mother of God," and her *^Son.'* And when did the Christians ever think of substituting either animals or wax-figures for living heretics, Jews, and witches ? They burned these in effij^y only when, through providential interference, the doomed victims had esca|)e
f This Is why Jesus recommends prayer in the solitude of one's closet. Tliis secret prayer Is but the paravidya of the Vedantic philosopher : ** He who knows his soul
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whose astral spirits have attained on earth the nehreyasa, or the mukii^ are half-gods ; disembodied spirits, they reach Moksha or Nirvana,, and this is their second spiritual birth.
Buddha teaches the doctrine of a new birth as plainly as Jesus does. Desiring to break with the ancient Mysteries, to which it was impossible to admit the ignorant masses, the Hindu reformer, though generally silent upon more than one secret dogma, clearly states his thought in sev- eral passages. Thus, he says : " Some people are horn again ; evildoers go to Hell ; righteous people go to Heaven ; those who are free from all worldly desires enter Nirvana" {Precepts of the Dhammapada^ v., 126). Elsewhere Buddha states that "it is better to believe in a future life, in which happiness or misery can be felt ; for if the heart believes therein, it will abandon sin and act virtuously ; and even if there is no resurrec- tion, such a life will bring a good name and the regard of men. But those who believe in extinction at death will not fail to commit any sin that they may choose, because of their disbelief in a future." ♦
The Epistle to the Hebrews treats of the sacrifice of blood. ** Where a testament is," says the writer, " there must be of necessity the death of the testator. . . . Without the shedding ^^A?^^ is no remission." Then again : "Christ glorified not himself to be made High Priest ; but He that said unto him : Thou art my son ; to-day have I begotten thee ** (Heb, V. 5). This is a very clear inference, that, i, Jesus was considered only in the light of a high priest, like Melchisedek — another avatar, or in- carnation of Christ, according to the Fathers ; and, 2, that the writer thought that Jesus had become a "Son of God" only at the moment of his initia- tion by water ; hence, that he was not born a god, neither was he begotten physically by Him. Every initiate of the **last hour" became, by the very fact of his initiation, a son of God. When Maxime, the Ephesian, initiated the Emperor Julian into the MithraTc Mysteries, he pronounced as the usual formula of the rite, the following : " By this blood, 1 wash thee from thy sins. The Word of the Highest has entered unto thee, and His Si)irit henceforth will rest upon the newly- born, t?ie ^^^a^-begotten of the Highest God. . . . Thou art the son of Mithra." "Thou art the * Son of Gody " repeated the disciples after Christ's baptism. WTien Paul shook off the viper into the fire without further injury to himself, the peo- ple of Melita said " that he was a god** {Acts xxviii.). " He is the son of God, the Beautiful!" was the term used by the disciples of Simon
(inner self) daily retires to the region of Siuarga (the heavenly realm) in his own heart,** says tlie Brihad-Aranyaka. The Vedantic philosopher recognizes the Atman, the spiritual self^ as the sole and Supreme God. ♦ «« Wheel of the Law," p. 54.
MAGICAL PROPERTIES OF BLOOD. $6/
Magus, for they thought they recognized the *' great power of God" in him.
A man can have no god that is not bounded by his own human con- ceptions. The wider the sweep of his spiritual vision, the mightier will be his deity. But where can we find a better demonstration of Him than in man himself; in the spiritual and divine powers lying dormant in every human being ? " The very capacity to imagine the possibility of thaumaturgical powers, is itself evidence that they exist," says the author of Prophecy, " The critic, as well as the skeptic, is generally inferior to the person or subject that he is reviewing, and, therefore, is hardly a competent witness. If there are counterfeits^ somewhere there must have been a genuine original." *
Blood begets phantoms, and its emanations furnish certain spirits with the materials required to fashion their temporary appearances. " Blood," says Levi, " is the first incarnation of the universal fluid ; it is the mate- rialized vital light. Its birth is the most marvellous of all nature's mar- vels ; it lives only by perpetually transforming itself, for it is the universal Proteus. The blood issues from principles where there was none of it before, and it becomes flesh, bones, hair, nails . . . tears, and perspira^ tion. It can be allied neither to corruption nor death ; when life is gone, it begins decomposing ; if you know how to reanimate it, to infuse into it life by a new magnetization of its globules, life will return to it again. The universal substance, with its double motion, is the great arcanum of being ; blood is the great arcanum of life."
** Blood," says the Hindu Ramatsariar, ** contains all the mysterious secrets of existence, no living being can exist without. It is profaning the great work of the Creator to eat blood."
In his turn Moses, following the universal and traditional law, forbids eating blood.
Paracelsus writes that with the fumes of blood one is enabled to call forth any spirit we desire to see ; for with its emanations it will build it- self an appearance, a visible body — only this is sorcery. The hiero- phants of Baal made deep incisions all over their bodies and produced apparitions, objective and tangible, with their own blood. Thft followers of a certain sect in Persia, many of whom may be found around the Rus- sian settlements in Temerchan-Shoura, and Derbent, have their religious mysteries in which they form a large ring, and whirl round in a frantic dance. Their temples are ruined, and they worship in large temporary buildings, securely enclosed, and with the earthen floor deeply strewn with sand. They are all dressed in long white robes, and their heads are
* A. Wilder: "Ancient and Modern Prophecy."
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bare and closely shaved. Armed with knives, they soon reach a point of furious exaltation, and wound themselves and others until their gar- ments and the sand on the floor are soaked with blood. Before the end of the " Mystery " every man has a companion^ who whirls round with him. Sometimes the spectral dancers have hair on their heads^ which makes them quite distinct from their unconscious creators. As we have solemnly promised never to divulge the principal details of this terrible ceremony (which we were allowed to witness but once), we must leave the subject.*
In the days of antiquity the sorceresses of Thessaly added sometime^ to the blood of a black lamb that of an infant, and by this means evoked the shadows. The priests were taught the art of calling up the spirits of the dead, as well as those of the elements, but their mode was cer- tainly not that of Thessalian sorceresses.
Among the Yakuts of Siberia there is a tribe dwelling on the very confines of the Transbaikal regions near the river Vitema (eastern Siberia) which practices sorcery as known in the days of the Thessalian witches. Their religious beliefs are curious as a mixture of philosophy and superstition. They have a chief or supreme god Aij-Taion, who did not create, they say, but only presides over the creation of all the worlds. He lives on the ninth heaven, and it is but from the sei^enih that the other minor gods — his servants — can manifest themselves to their crea- tures. This ninth heaven, according to the revelation of the minor deities (spirits, we suppose), has three suns and three moons, and the ground of this abode is formed of four lakes (the four cardinal points) of " soft air" (ether), instead of water. While they offer no sacrifices to the Supreme Deity, for he needs none, they do try to propitiate both the good and bad deities, which they respectively term the " white " and the ** black " gods. They do it, because neither of the two classes are good or bad through personal merit or demerit. As they are all subject to the Supreme Aij-Taion, and each has to carry on the duty assigned to him from eternity, they are not responsible for either the good or evil they produce in this world. The reason given by the Yakuts for such sacrifices is very curious. Sacrifices, they say, help each class of gods to perform their mission the better, and so please the Supreme; and every mortal that helps either of them in performing his duty must,
* While at Petrovsk (Dhagestan, region of the Caucasus) we had tlie opportunity of witnessing another such mystery. It was owing to the kindness of Prince Melikoff, the governor-general of Dhagestan, living at Temerchan-Shoura, and especially of Prince Shamsoudine, the ex-reigning Shamchal of TarchoflF, a native Tartar, that dur- ing the summer of 1865 we assisted at this ceremonial from the safe distance of a sort of private tx)x, constructed under the ceiling of the temporary building.
BLOOD-EVOCATIONS IN BULGARIA AND MOLDAVIA. $69
therefore, please the Supreme as well, for he will have helped justice to take place. As the " black " gods are appointed to bring diseases, evils, and all kinds of calamities to mankind, each of which is a punishment for some transgression, the Yakuts offer to them " bloody " sacrifices of animals ; while to the ** white " they make pure offerings, consisting gen- erally of an animal consecrated to some special god and taken care of with great ceremony, as having become sacred. According to their ideas the souls of the dead become ** shadows," and are doomed to wan- der on earth, till a certain change takes place either for the better or worse, which the Yakuts do not pretend to explain. The light shadows, i.e., those of good people, become the guardians and protector* of those they loved on earth; the "dark" shadows (the wicked) always seek, on the contrary, to hurt those they knew, by inciting them to crimes, wicked acts, and otherwise injuring mortals. Besides these, like the ancient Chaldees, they reckon seven divine Sheitans (diemons) or minoi gods. It is during the sacrifices of blood, which take place at night, that the Yakuts call forth the wicked or dark shadows, to inquire of them what they can do to arrest their mischief; hence, blood is necessary^ for without its fumes the ghosts could not make themselves clearly visi- ble, amd would become, according to their ideas, but the more danger- ous, for they would suck it from living persons by their perspiration.* As to the good, light shadows, they need not be called out ; besides that, such an act disturbs them ; they can make their presence felt, when needed, without any preparation and ceremonies.
The blood-evocation is also practiced, although with a different pur- ]x>se, in several parts of Bulgaria and Moldavia, especially in districts in the vicinity of Mussulmans. The fearful oppressions and slavery to which these unfortunate Christians have been subjected for centuries has rendered them a thousand-fold more impressible, and at the same time more superstitious, than those who live in civilized countries. On every seventh of May the inhabitants of every Moldavo-Valachian and Bul- garian city or village, have what they term the "feast of the dead." After sunset, immense* crowds of women and men, each with a lighted wax taper in hand, resort to the burial places, and pray on the tombs of their departed friends. This ancient and solemn ceremony, called Triznay is everywhere a reminiscence of primitive Christian rites, but far more solemn yet, while in Mussulman slavery. Every tomb is fur- nished with a kind of cupboard, about half a yard high, built of four stones, and with hinged double-doors. These closets contain what is termed the household of the defunct : namely, a few wax tapers, some
* Does not this afford as a point of comparison with the so-called " materializing mediums?"
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oil and an earthen lamp, which is lighted on that day, and burns for twenty-four hours. Wealthy people have silver lamps richly chiselled, and bejewelled images, which are secure from thieves, for in the burial ground the closets are even left open. Such is the dread of the popu- lation (Mussulman and Christian) of the revenge of the dead that a thief bold enough to commit any murder, would never dare touch the property of a dead person. The Bulgarians have a belief that every Saturday, and especially the eve of Easter Sunday, and until Trinity day (about seven weeks) the souls of the dead descend on earth, some to beg forgiveness from those living whom they had wronged ; others to protect and commune with their loved ones. Faithfully following the traditional rites of their forefathers, the natives on each Saturday of these seven weeks keep either lamps or tapers lighted. In addition to that, on the seventh of May they drench the tombs with grape wine, and burn incense around them from sunset to sunrise. With the inhabitants of towns, the ceremony is limited to these simple observances. With some of the rustics though, the rite assumes the proportions of a theurgic evocation. On the eve of Ascension Day, Bulgarian women light a quantity of tapers and lamps ; the pots are placed upon tripods, and incense perfumes the atmosphere for miles around ; while thick white clouds of smoke envelope each tomb, as though a veil had separated it from the others. During the evening, and until a little before midnight, in memory of the deceased, acquaintances and a certain number of mendicants are fed and treated with wine and raki (grape-whiskey), and money is distributed among the poor according to the means of the sur- viving relatives. When the feast is ended, the guests approaching the tomb and addressing the defunct by name, thank him or her for the bounties received. When all but the nearest relatives are gone, a woman, usually the most aged, remains alone with the dead, and — some say — resorts to the ceremony of invocation.
After fervent prayers, repeated face downward on the grave-mound, more or less drops of blood are drawn from near the left bosom, and allowed to trickle upon the tomb. This gives strength to the invisible spirit which hovers around, to assume for a few instants a visible form, and whisper his instructions to the Christian theurgist — if he has any to offer, or simply to " bless the mourner " and then disappear again till the following year. So firmly rooted is this belief that we have heard, in a case of family difficulty, a Moldavian woman appeal to her sister to put off every decision till Ascension-night, when their dead father would be able to tell them of his will and pleasure in person ; to which the sister consented as simply as though their parent were in the next room.
A TRIBE OF REAL SORCERERS. 5/1
That there are fearful secrets in nature may well be believed when, as we have seen in the case of the Russian Znachar^ the sorcerer cannot die until he has passed the word to another, and the hierophants of White Magic rarely do. It seems as if the dread power of the ** Word '* could only be entrusted to one man of a certain district or body of people at a time. When the Brahmdtma was about to lay aside the burden of physical existence, he imparted his secret to his successor, either orally, or by a writing placed in a securely-fastened casket which went into the latter's hands alone. Moses *Mays his hands" upon his neophyte, Joshua, in the solitudes of Nebo and passes away forever. Aaron initiates Eleazar on Moant Hor, and dies. Siddhjirtha-Huddha promises his mendicants before his death to live in him who shall deserve it, embraces his favorite disciple, whispers in his ear, and dies ; and as John's head lies upon the bosom of Jesus, he is told that he shall "tarry" until he shall come. Like signal-fires of the olden times, which, lighted and extinguished by turns upon one hill-top after another, conveyed intelligence along a whole stretch of country, so we see along line of '* wise " men from the beginning of history down to our own times communicating the word of wisdom to their direct successors. Passing from seer to seer, the *' Word " flashes out like lightning, and while carrying off the initiator from human sight forever, brings the new initiate into view. Meanwhile, whole nations murder each other in the name of another " Word," an empty substitute accepted literally by each, and misinterpreted by all !
We have met few sects which truly practice sorcery. One such is the Yezidis, considered by some a branch of the Koords, though we be- lieve erroneously. These inhabit chiefly the mountainous and desolate regions of Asiatic Turkey, about Mosul, Armenia, and are found even in Syria,* and Mesopotamia. They are called and known everywhere as devil worshippers ; and most certainly it is not either through ignorance or mental obscuration that they have set up the worship and a regular inter- communication with the lowest and the most malicious of both elementals and elementaries. They recognize the present wickedness of the chief of the "black powers;" but at the same time they dread his power, and so try
♦ The Yezidis must namber over 200,000 men altogether. The tribes which inhabit the Pashalik of Bagdad, and are scattered over the Sindjar mountains are the most dan- gerous, as well as the most hated for their evil practices. Their chief Sheik lives con- stantly near the tomb of their prophet and reformer Adi, but every tril)e chooses its own sheik among the most learned in the " black art.'* This Adi or Ad is a mythic ancestor of theirs, and simply is, Adi — the God of wisdom or the Parsi Al>ad the first ancestor of the human race, or again Adh-Buddha of the Hindus, anthropomorphized and degenerated.
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to conciliate to themselves his favors. He is in an open quarrel with Allah, they say, but a reconciliation can take place between the two at any day ; and those who have shown marks of their disresp>ect to the ''black one '* now, may suffer for it at some future time, and thus have both Crod and Devil against them. This is simply a cunning policy that seeks to propitiate his Satanic majesty, who is no other than the great Tcherno-bo^ (the black god) of the Variagi-Russ, the ancient idolatroas Russians before the days of Vladimir.
Like Wierus, the famous demonographer of the sixteenth century (who in his Pseudomonarchia Damonutn describes and enumerates a regu- lar infernal court, which has its dignitaries, princes, dukes, nobles, and officers), the Yezidis have a whole pantheon of devils, and use the Jakshas, aerial spirits, to convey their prayers and respects to Satan their master, and the Afrites of the Desert. During their prayer-meetings, they join hands, and form immense rings, with their Sheik, or an officiating priest in the middle who claps his hands, and intones every verse in honor of Sheitan (Satan). Then they whirl and leap in the air. When the frenzy is at its climax, they often wound and cut themselves with their daggers, occasionally rendering the same service to their next neighbors. But their wounds do not heal and cicatrize as easily as in the case of lamai and holy men ; for but too often they fall victims to these self inflicted wounds. While dancing and flourishmg high their daggers without un- clasping hands — for this would be considered a sacrilege, and the spell instantly broken, they coax and praise Sheitan, and entreat him to mani- fest himself in his works by ** miracles." As their rites are chiefly accom- plished during night, they do not fail to obtain manifestations of various character, the least of which are enormous globes of fire which take the shapes of the most uncouth animals.
Lady Hester Stanhope, whose name was for many years a power among the masonic fraternities of the East, is said to have witnessed, personally, several of these Yezidean ceremonies. We were told by an Ockhal, of the sect of Druses, that after having been present at one of the Yezidis* " Devil's masses," as they are called, this extraordinary lady, so noted for personal courage and daring bravery, fainted, and notwithstanding her usual Emir's male attire, was recalled to life and health with the greatest difficulty. Personally, we regret to say, all our efforts to witness one of these performances failed.
A recent article in a Catholic journal on Nagualism and Voodooism charges Hayti with being the centre of secret societies, with terrible forms of initiation and bloody rites, where human infants are sacrificed ana devoured by the adepts ( ! ! ) Piron, a French traveller, is quoted at length, describing a most fearful scene witnessed by him in Cuba, in the
THE INCANTATIONS OF THE VOODOO. 573
house of a lady whom he never would have suspected of any connection with so monstrous a sect. "A naked white girl acted as a voodoo priestess, wrought up to frenzy by dances and incantations that followed the sacrifice of a white and a black hen. A serpent, trained to its part, and acted on by the music, coiled round the limbs of the girl, its motions studied by the votaries dancing around or standing to watch its contortions. The spectator fled at last in horror when the poor girl fell writhing in an epileptic fit."
While deploring such a state of things in Christian countries, the Catholic article in question explains this tenacity for ancestral religious rites as evidence of the natural depravity of the human hearty and makes a loud call for greater zeal on the part of Catholics. Besides re- peating the absurd fiction about devouring children, the writer seems wholly insensible to the fact that a devotion to one's faith that centuries of the most cruel and bloody persecution cannot quench, makes heroes and martyrs of a people, whereas their conversion to any other faith would turn them simply into renegades. A compulsory religion can never breed anything but deceit. The answer received by the missionary Margil from some Indians supports the above truism. The question being : ** How is it that you are so heathenish after having been Chris- tians so long ? " The answer was : " What would you do, father, if ene- mies of your faith entered your land ? Would you not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion and retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our priests, and prophets, and soothsayers, and nagualists have done to this time and are still doing."
Such an answer from a Roman Catholic, questioned by a missionary of either Greek or Protestant Church, would earn for him the crown of a saint in the Popish martyrology. Better a " heathen " religion that can extort from a PVancis Xavier such a tribute as he pays the Japanese, in saying that " in virtue and probity they suri)assed all the nations he had ever seen ; " than a Christianity whose advance over the face of the earth sweeps aboriginal nations out of existence as with a hurricane of fire.* Disease, drunkenness, and demoralization are the immediate results of apostasy from the faith of their fathers, and conversion into a religion of mere forms.
What Christianity is doing for British India, we need go to no inim-
• Within less than four months we have collected from the daily papers forty-seven cases of crime, ranging from drunkenness up to murder, committed by ecclesiastics in the United States only. By the end of the year our correspondents in the East will have valuable facts to offset missionary denunciations of " heathen ^^ misdemeanors.
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ical sources to inquire. Captain O'Grady, the British ex-official, says : "The British government is doing a shameful thing in turning the natives of India from a sober race to a nation of drunkards. And for pure greed. Drinking is forbidden by the religion alike of Hindus and Mussulmans. But . . . drinking is daily becoming more and more prevalent. . . . What the accursed opium traffic, forced on China by British greed, has been to that unhappy country, the government sale of li(juor is likely to become to India. For it is a government monoi)oly, based on almost precisely the same model as the govern- ment monopoly of tobacco in Spain. . . . The outside domestics in European families usually get to be terrible drunkards. . . . The in- door servants usually detest drinking, and are a good deal more respect- able in this particular than their masters and mistresses . . . everj-body drinks . . . bishops, chaplains, freshly-imported boarding-school girls, and all."
Yes, these are the *' blessings " that the modern Christian religion brings with its Bibles and Catechisms to the " poor heathen." Rum and bastardy to Hindustan ; opium to China ; rum and foul disorders to Tahiti ; and, worst of all, the example of hypocrisy in religion, and a ]iractical skepticism and atheism, which, since it seems to be good enough for civilized people, may well in time be thought good enough for those whom theology has too often been holding under a very heavy yoke. On the other hand, everything that is noble, spiritual, elevating, in the old religion is denied, and even deliberately falsified.
Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see whether any one can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the word Christ any- thing more than the abstract ideal of the personal divinity indwelling in man. For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied idea. ** If any man is in Christ he is a new creation," he is reborn^ as after initiation, for the Lord is spirit — the spirit of man. Paul was the only one of the apostles who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus, although he had never met him. But Paul had been initiated himself; and, bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the whole of humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above the wisdom of the ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final revelation to the epoptae. As Professor A. Wilder well proves in a series of able articles, it was not Jesus, but Paul ivho was the real founder of Christianity, ** The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch," say the Acts of the Apostles, " Such men as Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and F.usebius have transmitted to posterity a reputation for untruth and dis- honest practices ; and the heart sickens at the story of the crimes of that
MAHOMET NEVER A GOD TO MOSLEMS. 575
period," writes this author, in a recent article.* " It will be remembered," he adds, *' that when the Moslems overran Syria and Asia Minor for the tirst time, they were welcomed by the Christians of those regions as deliverers from the intolerable oppression of the ruling authorities of the Church."
Mahomet never was, neither is he now, considered a god ; yet under the stimulus of his name millions of Moslems have served their God with an ardor that can never be paralleled by Christian sectarianism. That they have sadly degenerated since the days of their prophet, does not alter the case in hand, but only proves the more the prevalence of matter over spirit all over the world. Besides, they have never degenerated more from primitive faith than Christians themselves. Why, then, should not Jesus of Nazareth, a thousandfold higher, nobler, and morally grander than Mahomet, be as well revered by Christians and followed in practice, instead of being blindly adored in fruitless faith as a god, and at the same time worshipped much after the fashion of certain Buddhists, who turn their wheel of prayers. That this faith has become sterile, and is no more worthy the name of Christianity than the fetishism of Calmucks that of the philosophy preached by Buddha, is doubted by none. '* We would not be supposed to entertain the opinion," says Dr. Wilder, " that modem Christianity is in any degree identical with the religion preached by Paul. It lacks his breadth of view, his earnestness, his keen spiritual perception. Bearing the impress of the nations by which it is professed, it exhibits as many forms as there are races. It is one thing in Italy and Spain, but widely differs in France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Great Britain, Russia, Armenia, Kurdistan, and Abyssinia. As compared with the preceding worships, the change seems to be more in name than in genius. Men had gone to bed Pagans and awoke Christians. As for the Sermon on the Afount, its conspicuous doctrines are more or less repudi- ated by every Christian community of any considerable dimensions. Bar- barism, oppression, cruel punishments, are as common now as in the days of Pagan ism^
** The Christianity of Peter exists no more ; that of Paul supplanted it, and was in its turn amalgamated with the other world religions. When mankind are enlightened, or the barbarous races and families are sup- planted by those of nobler nature and instincts, the ideal excellencies may become realities.
**The 'Christ of Paul* has constituted an enigma which evoked the most strenuous endeavor to solve. He was something else than the Jesus of the Gospels. Paul disregarded utterly their * endless genealogies.' The
♦ ** Evolution,^ art. Paul, the Founder of Christianity.
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author of the fourth Gospel^ himself an Alexandrian Gnostic, describes Jesus as what would now be termed a * materialized ' divine spirit. He was the Logos, or First Emanation — the Metathron. . . . The ' mother of Jesus,' like the Princess Maya, Dana6, or perhaps Periktion^, had given birth, not to a love-child, but to a divine oflfspring. No Jew of whatever sect, no apostle, no early believer, ever promulgated such an idea. Paul treats of Christ as a personage rather than as a person. The sacred lessons of the secret assemblies often personified the divine good and the divine truth in a human form, assailed by the passions and appe- tites of mankind, but superior to them ; and this doctrine, emerging from the crypt, was apprehended by churchlings and gross- minded men as that of immaculate conception and divine incarnation."
In the old book, published in 1693 and written by the Sieur de la Loub^re, French Ambassador to the King of Siam, are related many in- teresting facts of the Siamese religion. The remarks of the satirical Frenchman are so pointed that we will quote his words about the Sia- mese Saviour — Sommona-Cadom.
" How marvellous soever they pretend the birth of their Saviour has been, they cease not to give him a father and a mother* His mother, whose name is found in some of their Balie (Pali?) books, was called, as they say, Maha Maria, which seems to signify the great Mary, for Maha signifies great. However it be, this ceases not to give attention to the missionaries, and has perhaps given occasion to the Siamese to believe that Jesus being the son of Mary, was brother to Sommona-Cadom, and that, having been crucified, he was that wicked brother whom they give to Sommona-Cadom, under the name of Thevetat, and whom they report to be punished in Hell, with a punishment which participates something of a cross. . . . The Siamese expect another Sommona-Cadom, 1 mean, another miraculous man like him, whom they already named Pronarote^ and whom they say was foretold by Sommona. He made all sorts of miracles. . . . He had two disciples, both standing on each hand of his idol ; one f»n the right hand, and the other on the left . . . the first is named Pra-Magla, and the second Pra Scaribout. . . . The father of Sommona-Cadom was, according to this same Balie Book, a King of Teve Lanca, that is to say, a King of Ceylon. But the Balie Books being without date and without the author' s name, have no more authority than all the traditions, whose origin is unknown. ^^ \
* We find in Galatians iv. 4, the following: **But when the fulness of the time was come, (iod sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the laiv.'"
\ The date has been fully established for these Pali Books in our own century ; suffi- ciently so, at least, to show that they existed in Ceylon, 316 B.C., when Mahinda, the son of Asoka, was there (See Max Miiller, " Chips, etc.," vol. i., on Buddhism).
NO BObK LESS AUTHENTICATED THAN THE BIBLE. 577
This last axgument is as ill-considered as it is naively expressed. We do not know of any book in the whole world less authenticated as to date, authors' names, or tradition, than our Christian Bible. Under these circumstances the Siamese have as much reason to believe in their miraculous Sommona-Cadom as the Christians in their miraculously-born Saviour. Moreover, they have no better right to force their religion upon the Siamese, or any other people, against their will, and in their own country, where they go unasked, than the so-called heathen " to compel France or England to accept Buddhism at the point of the sword." A Buddhist missionary, even in free-thinking America, would daily risk being mobbed, but this does not at all prevent missionaries from abusing the religion of the Brahmans, Lamas, and Bonzes, publicly to their teeth ; and the latter are not always at liberty to answer them. This is termed diffusing the beneficent light of Christianity and civilization upon the darkness of heathenism 1
And yet we find that these pretensions — which might appear ludicious were they not so fatal to millions of our fellow-men, who only ask to be left alone — were fully appreciated as early as in the seventeenth centuiy. We find the same witty Monsieur de la Loub^re, under a pretext of pious sympathy, giving some truly curious instructions to the ecclesiastical authorities at home,* which embody the very soul of JesuitisnL
" From what I have said concerning the opinions of the Orientals," he remarks, ''it is easy to comprehend how difficult an enterprise it is to bring them over to the Christian religion ; and of what consequence it is that the missionaries, which preach the Gospel in'the East, do perfectly understand the manners and belief of these people. For as the apos^ ties and first Christians, when God supported their preaching by so many wonders, did not on a sudden discover to the heathens all the mys- teries which we adore, but a long time concealed from them, and the Catechumens themselves, the knowledge of those which might scandalize them ; it seems very rational to me that the missionaries, who have not
♦ "A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam," by M. de la Loub^re, Envoy to Siam from France, 1687-8, chap, xxv., London ; " Diverse Observations to be Made in Preaching the Gospel to the Orientals."
The Sieur de la Loub^re^s report to the king was made, as we see, in 1687^. How thoroughly his proposition to the Jesuits, to suppress and dissemble in preach- ing Christianity to the Siamese, met their approval, is shown in the passage elsewhere quoted from the Thesis propounded by the Jesuits of Caen (** Thesis propugnata in regio Soc. Jes. Collegio, celeberrimae Academise Cadoniensis, die Veneris, 30 Jan., 1693), to the following effect :**... neither do the Fathers of the Society of Jesus dissemble when they adopt the institute and the habit of the Talapoins of Siam.*' In five years the Ambassador's little lump of leaven had leavened the whole.
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the gift of miracles, ought not presently to discover to the Orientals all the mysteries nor all the practices of Christianity.
" ^Twould be convenient, for example, if I am not mistaken, not to preach unto them, without great caution^ the worshipping of saints ; and as to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, I think it would be necessary to manage it with them, if I may so say, and not to speak to them of the mystery of the Incarnation^ till after having convinced them of the existence of a God Creator. For what probability is there, to begin with, of persuading the Siamese to remove Sommona-Cadom, Pra Mogla, and Pra Scaribout from the altars, to set up Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and St Paul, in their stead ? 'Twould, perhaps, be more proper not to preach unto them Jesus Christ crucified, till they have first comprehended that one may be unfortunate and innocent ; and that by the rule received, even amongst them, which is, that the innocent might load himself with the crimes of the guilty, it was necessary that a god should become man^ to the end that this man-God should, by a laborious life, and a shamefiil but voluntary death, satisfy for all the sins of men ; but before all things it would be necessary to give them the true idea of a God Creator, and justly provoked against men. The Eucharist, after this, will not scandal- ize the Siamese, as it formerly scandalized the Pagans of Europe ; foras- much as the Siamese do not believe Sommona-Cadom could give his wife and children to the Talapoins to eat.
" On the contrary, as the Chinese are respectful toward their parents even to a scruple, I doubt not that if the Gospel should be presently put into their hands, they would be scandalized at that place, where, when some told Jesus Christ that his mother and his brethren asked after him, he answered in such a manner, that he seems so little to regard them, that he affected not to know them. They would not be less offended at those other mysterious words, which our divine Saviour spoke to the young man, who desired time to go and bury his parents : " Let the dead," said he, " bury the dead." Every one knows the trouble which the Japanese expressed to St. Francis Xavier upon the eternity of damnation^ not being able to believe that their dead parents should fall into so horrible a misfortune for want of having embraced Christianity^ which they had never heard of, , , . It seems necessary, therefore, to prevent and mollify this thought, by the means which that great apostle of the Indies used, in first establish- ing the idea of an omnipotent, all-wise, and most just God, the author of all good, to whom only everything is due, and by whose will we owe unto kings, bishops, magistrates and to our parents the respects which we owe them.
** These examples are sufficient to show with what precautions it is
BUDDHA TRANSFORMED INTO A CATHOLIC SAINT I $79
necessary to prepare the minds of the Orientals to think like us, and fiot to be offendf.d with most of the articles of the Christian faith." ♦
And what, we ask, is left to preach ? With no Saviour, no atonement, no crucifixion for human sin, no Gospel, no eternal damnation to tell them of, and no miracles to display, what remained for the Jesuits to spread among the Siamese but the dust of the Pagan sanctuaries with which to blind their eyes ? The sarcasm is biting indeed. The morality to which these poor heathen are made to adhere by their ancestral faith is so pure, that Christianity has to be stripped of every distinguishing mark before its priests can ventiure to offer it for their examination. A religion that cannot be trusted to the scrutiny of an unsophisticated people who are patterns of filial piety, of honest dealing, of deep rever- ence for God and an instinctive horror of profaning His majesty, must indeed be founded upon error. That it is so, our century is discovering little by little.
In the general spoliation of Buddhism to make up the new Christian religion, it was not to be expected that so peerless a character as Gauta- ma-Buddha would be left unappropriated. It was but natural that after taking his legendary history to fill out the blanks left in the fictitious story of Jesus, after using what they could of Christna's, they should take the man Sakya-muni and put him in their calendar under an alias. This they actually did, and the Hindu Saviour in due time appeared on the list of saints as Josaphat, to keep company with those martyrs of religion, SS. Aura and Placida, I^onginus and AmphiboUis.
In Palermo there is even a church dedicated to Divo Josaphat. Among the vain attempts of subsequent ecclesiastical writers to fix the genealogy of this mysterious saint, the most original was the making him Joshua, the son of Nun. But these trifling difficulties being at last surmounted, we find the history of Gautama copied word for word from Buddhist sacred books, into the Golden Legend. Names of individuals
* In a discourse of Hermes with Thoth, the former says: ** It is impossible for thought to rightly conceive of God. . . . One cannot describe, through material organs, that which is immaterial and eternal . . . One is a perception of the spirit, the other a reality. That which can be perceived by our senses can be described in words ; but that which is incorporeal, invisible, immaterial, and without form cannot be realized through our ordinary senses. I understand thus, O Thoth, I understand that God is ineffable."
In the Catechism of the Parsis^ as translated by M. Dadabhai Naoroji, we read the following :
'* Q. What is the form of our God ? »»
** A. Our God has neither face nor form, color nor shape, nor fixed place. There is no other like Him. He is Himself, singly such a glory that we cannot praise or de- scribe Him ; nor our mind comprehend Him."
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are changed, the place of action, India, remains the same — in the Chris- tian as in the Buddhist Legends. It can be also found in the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, which was written in the thirteenth century. The first discovery is due to the historian de Couto, although Professor Muller credits the first recognition of the identity of the two stories to M. Laboulaye, in 1859. Colonel Yule tells us that* these stories of Barlaam and Josaphat, are recognized by Baronius, and are to be found at p. 348, of The Roman Marty rology^ set forth by command of Pope Gregory XIII., and revised by the authority of Pope Urban VI 11^ trans- lated out of Latin into English by G. K. of the Society of Jesus.f
To repeat even a small portion of this ecclesiastical nonsense would be tedious and useless. Let him who doubts and who would learn the story read it as given by Colonel Yule. Some J of the Christian and eccle- siastical speculations seem to have embarrassed even Dominie Valentyn. "There be some, who hold this Budhum for a fugitive Syrian Jew," he writes ; " others who hold him for a disciple of the Apostle Thomas ; but how in that case he could have been born 622 years before Christ I leave them to explain. Diego de Couto stands by the belief that he was certainly yj7J>4«a, which is still more absurd !*'
" The religious romance called Jlie History of Barlaam and JosaphtU was, for several centuries, one of the most popular works in Christendom," says Col. Yule. " It was translated into all the chief European lan- guages, including Scandinavian and Sclavonic tongues. . . . This story first appears among the works of St. John of Damascus, a theologian of the early part of the eighth century." § Here then lies the secret of its origin, for this St John, before he became a divine, held a high office at the court of the Khalif Abu Jafar Almansur, where he probably learned the story, and afterwards adapted it to the new orthodox necessities of the Buddha turned into a Christian saint.
Having repeated the plagiarized story, Diego de Couto, who seems to yield up with reluctance his curious notion that Gautama was Joshua, says : " To this name (Bud^o) the Gentiles throughout all India have dedicated great and superb pagodas. With reference to this story, we have been diligent in inquiring if the ancient Gentiles of those parts had in their writings any knowledge of St. Josa])hat who was converted by Balaam, and who in his legend is represented as the son of a g^at king of India, and who had just the same up-bringing, with all the same par- ticulars that we have recounted of the life of the Bud&o. And as I was
♦ ** Contemporary Review," p. 588, July, 187a
t " Book of Ser Marco Polo," vol. ii., pp. 304, 306.
X Ibid. § Ibid.
THE FRAUDULENT TALE OF ST. JOSAPHAT. 581
travelling in the Isle of Salsette, and went to see that rare and admira- ble pagoda, which we call the Canard Pagoda (Kdnhari Caves) made in a mountain, with many halls cut out of one solid rock, and inquiring of an old man about the work, what he thought as to who had made it, he told us that without doubt the work was made by order of the father of St. Josaphat to bring him up in seclusion, as the story tells. And as it informs us that he was the son of a great king in India, it may well be, as we have just said, that he was the Bud4o, of whom they relate such marvels." ♦
The Christian legend is taken, moreover, in most of its details, from the Ceylonese tradition. It is on this island that originated the story of young Gautama rejecting his father's throne, and the king's erecting a superb palace for him, in which he kept him half prisoner, surrounded by all the temptations of life and wealth. Marco Polo told it as he had it from the Ceylonese, and his version is now found to be a faithful repeti- tion of what is given in the various Buddhist books. As Marco naively expresses it, Buddha led a life of such hardship and sanctity, and kept such great abstinence, ^^just as if he had been a Christian. Indeed," he adds, '' had he but been so, he would have been a great saint of our Lord Jesus Christ, so good and pure was the life he led." To which pious apothegm his editor very pertinently remarks that '' Marco is not the only eminent person who has expressed this view of Sakya-muni's life in such words." And in his turn Prof. Max Miiller says: **And whatever we may think of the sanctity of saints, let those who doubt the right of Buddha to a place among them, read the story of his life as it is told in the Buddhistical canon. If he lived the life which is there described, few saints have a better claim to the title than Buddha ; and no one either in the Greek or the Roman Church need be ashamed of having paid to his memory the honor that was intended for St. Josaphat, the prince, the hermit, and the saint."
The Roman Catholic Church has never had so good a chance to Christianize all China, Thibet, and Tartary, as in the thirteenth century, during the reign of Kublai-Khan. It seems strange that they did not embrace the opportunity when Kublai was hesitating at one time between the four religions of the world, and, perhaps through the eloquence of Marco Polo, favored Christianity more than either Mahometanism, Judaism, or Buddhism. Marco Polo and Ramusio, one of his interpre- ters, tell us why. It seems that, unfortunately for Rome, the embassy of Marco's father and uncle failed, because Clement IV. happened to die just at that very time. There was no Pope for several months to
• ** Dec," v., lib. vi, cap. 2.
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receive the friendly overtures of Kublai-Khan ; and thus the one hun- dred Christian missionaries invited by him could not be sent to Thibet and Tai'tary. To those who believe that there is an intelligent Deity above who takes a certain concern in the welfare of our miserable little world, this contretemps must in itself seem a pretty good proof that Buddhism should have the best of Christianity. Perhaps — who knows — Pope Clement fell sick so as to save the Buddhists from sinking into the idolatry of Roman Catholicism ?
From pure Buddhism, the religion of these districts has degenerated into lamaism ; but th# latter, with all its blemishes — purely formalistic and impairing but little the doctrine itself — is yet far above Catholicism. The poor Abb6 Hue very soon found it out for himself. As he moved on with his caravan, he writes — " every one repeated to us that, as we advanced toward the west, we should find the doctrines growing more luminous and sublime. Lha-Ssa was the great focus of light, the rays from which became weakened as they were diffused." One day he gave to a Thibetan lama " a brief summary of Christian doctrine, which ap- peared by no means unfamiliar to him [we do not wonder at that], and he even maintained that it [Catholicism] did not differ much from the faith of the grand lamas of Thibet. . . . These words of the Thibetan lama astonished us not a little," writes the missionary ; " the unity of ^ God, the mystery of the Incarnation, the dogma of the real presence, appeared to us in his belief. . . . The new light thrown on the religion of Buddha induced us really to believe that we should find among the lamas of Thibet a more purified system." * It is these words of praise to lamaism, with which Hue's book abounds, that caused his work to be placed on the Index at Rome, and himself to be unfrocked.
When questioned why, since he held the Christian faith to be the best of the religions protected by him, he did not attach himself to it, the answer given by Kublai-Khan is as suggestive as it is curious :
** How would you have me to become a Christian ? There are four prophets worshipped and revered by all the world. The Christians say their God is Jesus Christ ; the Saracens, Mahomet ; the Jews, Moses ; the idolaters, Sogomon Borkan (Sakya-muni Burkham, or Buddha), who was the first god among the idols ; and I worship and pay respect to all four, and pray that he among them who is greatest in heaven in very truth may aid me."
We may ridicule the Khan's prudence ; we cannot blame him for trustingly leaving the decision of the puzzling dilemma to Providence itself. One of his most unsurmountable objections to embrace Chris-
* "Travels in Tartary," etc., pp. 121, 122.
THE ADEPTS OF KUBLAI-KHAN. $83
tianity he thus specifies to Marco : " You see that the Christians of these parts are so ignorant that they achieve nothing and can achieve nothing, whilst you see the idolaters can do anything they please, insomuch that when I sit at table, the cups from the middle of the hall come to me full of wine or other liquor, without being touched by anybody, and I drink from them. They control storms, causing them to pass in whatever direc- tion they please, and do many other marvels ; whilst, as you know, their idols speak, and give them predictions on whatever subjects they choose. But if I were to turn to the faith of Christ and become a Christian, then my barons and others who are not converted, would say : * What has moved you to be baptized ? . . . What powers or miracles have you wit- nessed on the part of Christ ? You know the idolaters here say that their wonders are performed by the sanctity and power of their idols.' Well, I should not know what answer to make, so they would only be confirmed in their errors, and the idolaters, who are adepts in such surprising arts, would easily compass my death. But now you shall go to your Pope, and pray him on my part to send hither an hundred men skilled in your law ; and if they are capable of rebuking the practices of idolaters to their faces, and of proving to them that they too know how to do such things, but will not, because they are done by the help of the Devil and other evil spirits ; and if they so control the idolaters that these shall have no power to perform such things in their presence, and when we shall witness this, we will denounce the idolaters and their religion, and then I will receive baptism, and then all my barons and chiefs shall be baptized also, and thus, in the end, there will be more Christians here than exist in your part of the world." *
The proposition was fair. Why did not the Christians avail them- selves of it ? Moses is said to have faced such an ordeal before Pharaoh, and come off triumphant.
To our mind, the logic of this uneducated Mongol was unanswerable, his intuition faultless. He saw good results in all religions, and felt that, whether a man be Buddhist, Christian, Mahometan, or Jew, his spiritual powers might equally be developed, his faith equally lead him to the highest truth. All he asked before making choice of a creed for his peo- ple, was the evidence upon which to base faith.
To judge alone by its jugglers, India must certainly be better acquainted with alchemy, chemistry, and physics than any European academy. The psychological wonders produced by some fakirs of Southern Hindustan, and by the shaberons and hobilhans of Thibet and Mongolia, alike prove our case. The science of psychology has there reached an acme of per-
•
Book of Ser Marco Polo,*' voL IL, p. 540.
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fection never attained elsewhere in the annals of the marvellous. That such powers are not alone due to study, but are natural to every humao being, is now proved in Europe and America by the phenomena of mes> merism and what is termed " spiritualism." If the majority of foreign travellers, and residents in British India, are disposed to regard the whole as clever jugglery, not so with a few Europeans who have had the rare luck to be admitted behind the veil in the pagodas. Surely these will not deride the rites, nor undervalue the phenomena produced in the secret lodges of India. The mahadthh.>assthanam of the pagodas (usually termed goparam^ from the sacred pyramidal gateway by which the buildings axe entered) has been known to Europeans before now, though to a mere handful in all.
We do not know whether the prolific Jacolliot * was ever admitted into one of these lodges. It is extremely doubtful, we should say, if we may judge from his many fantastic tales of the immoralities of the mystical rites among the Brahmans, the fakirs of the pagodas, and even the Bud- dhists ( ! !) at all of which he makes himself figure as a Joseph. Anyhow, it is evident that the Brahmans taught him no secrets, for speaking of the fakirs and their wonders, he remarks, " under the direction of initiated Brahmans they practice in the seclusion of the pagodas, the ocmU sciences, . , . And let no one be surprised at this word, which seems to open the door of the supernatural ; while there are in the sciences which the Brahmans call occult, phenomena so extraordinary as to baffle all in- vestigation, there is not one whft:h cannot be explained, and which is not subject to natural law."
Unquestionably, any initiated Brahman could, if he would, explaio every phenomenon. But he will not. Meanwhile, we have yet to sec an explanation by the best of our physicists of even the most trivial occult phenomenon produced by a fakir-pupil of a pagoda.
Jacolliot says that it will be quite impracticable to give an account of the marvellous facts witnessed by himself. But adds, with entire truthfulness, " let it suffice to say, that in regard to magnetism and spiritism, Europe
* His twenty or more volumes on Oriental subjects are indeed a curious conglome- rate of truth and fiction. They contain a vast deal of fiact about Indian traditions, philosophy and chronology, with most just views courageously expressed. But it seems as if the philosopher were constantly being overlaid by the romancist. It is as thoi^ two men were united in their authorship — one careful, serious, erudite, scholarly, the other a sensational and sensual French romancer, who judges of facts not as they ait but as he imagines them. His translations from Manu are admirable ; his controversial ability marked ; his views of priestly morals unfair, and in the case of the Buddhists, positively slanderous. But in all the series of volumes there is not a line of dull reading; he has the eye of the artist, the pen of the poet of nature.
TRUE MENDICANTS AND GENUINE BEGGARS. 58$
has yet to stammer over the ^st letters of the alphabet, and that the Brahiuans have reached, in these two departments of learning, results in the way of phenomena that are truly stupefying. When one sees these strange manifestations, whose power one cannot deny, without grasping the laws that the Brahmans keep so carefully concealed^ the mind is overwhelmed with wonder, and one feels that he must nm away and break the charm that holds him."
*• The only explanation that we have been able to obtain on the sub- ject from a learned Brahman, with whom we were on terms of the closest Intimacy, was this : ' You have studied physical nature, and you have obtained, through the laws of nature, marvellous results — steam, electri- city, etc. ; for twenty thousand years or more^ we have studied the intel* lectual forces, we have discovered their laws, and we obtain^ by making them act alone or in concert with matter^ phenomena still more astonishing than your own.**'
Jacoliiot must indeed have been stupefied by wonders, for he says : ** We have seen things such as one does not describe for fear of making his readers doubt his intelligence . . . but still we have seen them. And truly one comprehends how, in presence of such facts, the ancient world believed ... in possessions of the Devil and in exorcism." *
But yet this uncompromising enemy of priestcraft, monastic orders, and the clergy of every religion and every land — including Brahmans, lamas, and fakirs — is so struck with the contrast between the fact-sup- ported cults of India, and the empty pretences of Catholicism, that after describing the terrible self-tortures of the fakirs, in a burst of honest in- dignation, he thus gives vent to his feelings : " Nevertheless, these fakirs, these mendicant Brahmans, have still something grand about them : when they flagellate themselves, when during the self-inflicted martyrdom the flesh is torn out by bits, the blood pours upon the ground. But you (Catholic mendicants), what do you do to-day ? You, Gray Friars, Capu- chins, Franciscans, who play at fakirs, with your knotted cords, your flints, your hair shirts, and your rose-water flagellations, your bare feet and your comical mortifications — ^fanatics without faith, martyrs without tor- tures? Has not one the right to ask you, if it is to obey the law of God that you shut yourselves in behind thick walls, and thus escape the law of labor which weighs so heavily upon all other men ? . . . Away, you are only beggars ! "
Let them pass on — we have devoted too much space to them and their conglomerate theology, already. We have weighed both in the balance of history, of logic, of truth, and found them wanting. Their
* Les Fils de Dieu, " LTnde Brahmanique," p. 296.
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system breeds atheism, nihilism, despair, and crime; its priests and preachers are unable to prove by works their reception of divine power. If both Church and priest could but pass out of the sight of the world as easily as their names do now from the eye of our reader, it would be a happy day for humanity. New York and London might then soon become as moral as a heathen city unoccupied by Christians ; Paris be cleaner than the ancient Sodom. When Catholic and Protestant would be as fully satisfied as a Buddhist or Brahman that their every crime would be punished, and every good deed rewarded, they might spend upon their own heathen what now goes to give missionaries long picnics, and to make the name of Christian hated and despised by every nation outside the boundaries of Christendom.
As occasion required, we have reinforced our argument with descrip- tions of a few of the innumerable phenomena witnessed by us in different parts of the world. The remaining space at our disposal will be devoted to like subjects. Having laid a foundation by elucidating the philosophy of occult phenomena, it seems opportune to illustrate the theme with facts that have occurred under our own eye, and that may be verified by any traveller. Primitive peoples have disappeared, but primitive wisdom sur- vives, and is attainable by those who " will," " dare," and can " keep silent"