HPB-IU v.2 ch.6: Difference between revisions

servants,” says the {{Style S-Italic|Jezireh,}} showing the cosmical character of the later euhemerized angels,^{[#fn1495 1495]} and that the Spirit permeates every minutest atom of the Cosmos.^{[#fn1496 1496]}

[#fn1495anc 1495]. “Sepher Jezireh,” Mishna ix., 10.

[#fn1496anc 1496]. It is interesting to recall Hebrews i. 7, in connection with this passage. “Who maketh his angels (messengers) spirits, and his ministers (servants, those who minister) a flame of fire.” The resemblance is too striking for us to avoid the conclusion that the author of “Hebrews” was as familiar with the “Kabala” as adepts usually are.

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“And now again re-enter into the golden egg of His Thought, the germs of all that exist, as the divine Manu tells us. During His peaceful rest, the animated beings, endowed with the principles of action, cease their functions, and all feeling (manas) becomes dormant. When they are all absorbed in the Supreme Soul, this Soul of all the beings sleeps in complete repose, till the day when it resumes its form, and awakes again from its primitive darkness.”^{[#fn1497 1497]}

7. Rama-Chandra: as the hero of Ramayâna. Physically a perfect man; his next of kin, friend and ally Hanoum, the monkey-god. The {{Style S-Italic|monkey endowed with speech.^{[#fn1498 1498]}}}

8. Christna-Avatar: the Son of the Virgin Devanaguy (or Devaki) one formed by God, or rather by the manifested Deity Vishnu, who is identical with Adam Kadmon.^{[#fn1499 1499]} Christna is also called Kaneya, the Son of the Virgin.

[#fn1497anc 1497]. “The Sons of God;” “The India of the Brahmans,” p. 230.

[#fn1498anc 1498]. May it not be that Hanoum is the representative of that link of beings half-man, half-monkeys, which, according to the theories of Messrs. Hovelacque and Schleicher, were arrested in their development, and fell, so to say, into a retrogressive evolution?

[#fn1499anc 1499]. The Primal or Ultimate Essence has {{Style S-Italic|no name}} in India. It is indicated sometimes as “That” and “This.” “This (universe) was not originally anything. There was neither heaven, nor earth, nor atmosphere. That being non-existent resolved ‘Let me be.’” (Original Sanscrit Text.) Dr. Muir, vol. v., p. 366.

275 DIAGRAM OF THE AVATARS.

Brahmanism into two sects. That of the Vaïhnâva refuses to recognize the incarnations of their god Vishnu in animal forms literally. They claim that these must be understood as allegorical.

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while their female counterparts—the {{Style S-Italic|Sakti,}} represent the active energies of these attributes. The {{Style S-Italic|Durga}} (active virtue), is a subtile, invisible force, which answers to Shekinah—the garment of En-Soph. She is the Sakti through which the passive “Eternal” calls forth the visible universe from its first ideal conception. Every one of the three personages of the exoteric Trimurti are shown as using their {{Style S-Italic|Sakti}} as a {{Style S-Italic|Vehan}} (vehicle). Each of them is for the time being the form which sits upon the mysterious wagon of Ezekiel.

Nor do we see less clearly carried out in this succession of avatars, the truly philosophical idea of a simultaneous spiritual and physical evolution of creatures and man. From a fish the progress of this dual transformation carries on the physical form through the shape of a tortoise, a boar, and a man-lion; and then, appearing in the dwarf of humanity, it shows Parasu Rama physically, a perfect, spiritually, an undeveloped entity, until it carries mankind personified by one god-like man, to the apex of physical and spiritual perfection—a god on earth. In Christna and the other Saviours of the world we see the philosophical idea of the progressive dual development understood and as clearly expressed in the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar.}} The “Heavenly man,” who is the Protogonos, Tikkun, the first-born of God, or the universal Form and Idea, engenders Adam. Hence the latter is god-born in humanity, and endowed with the attributes of all the ten Sephiroth. These are: Wisdom, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Beauty, Splendor, Firmness, etc. They make him the Foundation or basis, “{{Style S-Italic|the mighty living one,”}} אלהי, and the crown of creation, thus placing him as the Alpha and Omega to reign over the “kingdom”—Malchuth. “Man is both the import and the highest degree of creation,” says the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar.}} “As soon as man was created, everything was complete, including the upper and nether worlds, for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms” (iii., p. 48 a).

277 THE FALL OF ADAM.

tive Man,” not the Sephiroth from angels. Hence, man was intended from the first to be a being of both a progressive and retrogressive nature. Beginning at the apex of the divine cycle, he gradually began receding from the centre of Light, acquiring at every new and lower sphere of being (worlds each inhabited by a different race of human beings) a more solid physical form and losing a portion of his {{Style S-Italic|divine}} faculties.

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Christian trinity, they are mutually convertible. In the esoteric doctrine they are one and the same manifestation of him “whose name is too sacred to be pronounced, and whose power is too majestic and infinite to be imagined.” Thus by describing the avatars of one, all others are included in the allegory, with a change of form but not of substance. It is out of such manifestations that emanated the many worlds that were, and that will emanate the one—which is to come.

Coleman, followed in it by other Orientalists, presents the seventh avatar of Vishnu in the most caricatured way.^{[#fn1500 1500]} Apart from the fact that the {{Style S-Italic|Ramayana}} is one of the grandest epic poems in the world—the source and origin of Homer’s inspiration—this avatar conceals one of the most scientific problems of our modern day. The learned Brahmans of India never understood the allegory of the famous war between men, giants, and monkeys, otherwise than in the light of the transformation of species. It is our firm belief that were European academicians to seek for information from some learned native Brahmans, instead of unanimously and incontinently rejecting their authority, and were they, like Jacolliot—against whom they have nearly all arrayed themselves—to seek for light in the oldest documents scattered about the country in pagodas, they might learn strange but not useless lessons. Let any one inquire of an {{Style S-Italic|educated}} Brahman the reason for the respect shown to monkeys—the origin of which feeling is indicated in the story of the valorous feats of Hanoumā, the generalissimo and faithful ally of the hero of Ramayana,^{[#fn1501 1501]} and he would soon be disabused of the erroneous idea that the Hindus accord deific honors to a monkey-{{Style S-Italic|god}}. He would, perhaps, learn—were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation—that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family—a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter.^{[#fn1502 1502]} He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated

[#fn1500anc 1500]. Coleman’s “Hindu Mythology.”

[#fn1501anc 1501]. The siege and subsequent surrender of Lanca (Isle of Ceylon) to Rama is placed by the Hindu chronology—based upon the Zodiac—at 7,500 to 8,000 years b.c., and the following or eighth incarnation of Vishnu at 4,800 b.c. (from the book of the Historical Zodiacs of the Brahmans).

[#fn1502anc 1502]. A Hanoverian scientist has recently published a work entitled {{Style S-Italic|Ueber die Auflosung der Arten dinck Naturliche Zucht Wahl,}} in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which has evolved from man. That, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the types and prototypes of our present race and of human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic, and kabalistic philosophy. His book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc. He says that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformations down to our times. And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body as our physical scientists should end as {{Style S-Italic|simia}} rather than as seraphs.

279 TENDER HUMANITY OF THE JAÏNS.

“heathen” the spiritual or {{Style S-Italic|inner}} man is one thing, and his terrestrial, physical casket another. That {{Style S-Italic|physical}} nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces ever creeping on toward perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine spirit. But the latter circumstance does not give man the right of life and death over the animals lower than himself in the scale of {{Style S-Italic|nature,}} or the right to torture them. Quite the reverse. Besides being endowed with a soul—of which every animal, and even plant, is more or less possessed—man has his immortal {{Style S-Italic|rational}} soul, or {{Style S-Italic|nous,}} which ought to make him at least equal in magnanimity to the elephant, who treads so carefully, lest he should crush weaker creatures than himself. It is this feeling which prompts Brahman and Buddhist alike to construct hospitals for sick animals, and even insects, and to prepare refuges wherein they may finish their days. It is this same feeling, again, which causes the Jain sectarian to sacrifice one-half of his life-time to brushing away from his path the helpless, crawling insects, rather than recklessly deprive the smallest of life; and it is again from this sense of highest benevolence and charity toward the weaker, however abject the creature may be, that they honor one of the natural modifications of their own dual nature, and that later the popular belief in metempsychosis arose. No trace of the latter is to be found in the {{Style S-Italic|Vedas;}} and the true interpretation of the doctrine, discussed at length in {{Style S-Italic|Manu}} and the Buddhistic sacred books, having been confined from the first to the learned sacerdotal castes, the false and foolish popular ideas concerning it need occasion no surprise.

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dual evolution; the doctrine of the transmigration of souls referring only to the progress of man from world to world, after death here. Every philosophy worthy of the name, taught that the {{Style S-Italic|spirit}} of man, if not the {{Style S-Italic|soul,}} was preëxistent. “The Essenes,” says Josephus, “believed that the souls were immortal, and that they descended from the ethereal spaces to be chained to bodies.”^{[#fn1503 1503]} In his turn, Philo Judæus says, the “air is full of them (of souls); those which are nearest the earth, descending to be tied to mortal bodies, παλινϑρομοῦσι αὔθις, return to other bodies, being desirous to live in them.”^{[#fn1504 1504]} In the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar,}} the soul is made to plead her freedom before God: “Lord of the Universe! I am happy in this world, and do not wish to go into another world, where I shall be a handmaid, and be exposed to all kinds of pollutions.”^{[#fn1505 1505]} The doctrine of fatal necessity, the everlasting immutable Law, is asserted in the answer of the Deity: “Against thy will thou becomest an embryo, and against thy will thou art born.”^{[#fn1506 1506]} Light would be incomprehensible without darkness, to make it manifest by contrast; good would be no good without evil, to show the priceless nature of the boon; and so, personal virtue could claim no merit, unless it had passed through the furnace of temptation. Nothing is eternal and unchangeable, save the Concealed Deity. Nothing that is finite—whether because it had a beginning, or must have an end—can remain stationary. It must either progress or recede; and a soul which thirsts after a reunion with its spirit, which alone confers upon it immortality, must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations, onward toward the only Land of Bliss and Eternal Rest, called in the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar,}} “The Palace of Love,” היכל אהבת; in the Hindu religion, “Moksha;” among the Gnostics, the “Pleroma of eternal Light;” and by the Buddhists, Nirvana. The Christian calls it the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and claims to have alone found the truth, whereas he has but invented a new name for a doctrine which is coëval with man.

The proof that the transmigration of the soul does not relate to man’s condition on this earth {{Style S-Italic|after}} death, is found in the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar,}} notwithstanding the many incorrect renderings of its translators. “All souls which have alienated themselves in heaven from the Holy One—blessed be His Name—have thrown themselves into an abyss at their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on earth.^{[#fn1507 1507]} . . .

[#fn1503anc 1503]. “De Bel. Jud.,” vol. ii., 12.

[#fn1504anc 1504]. “De Somniis,” p. 455 d.

[#fn1505anc 1505]. “Sohar,” vol. ii., p. 96.

[#fn1506anc 1506]. “Mishna” “Aboth,” vol. iv., p. 29; Mackenzie’s “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” p. 413.

[#fn1507anc 1507]. “Sohar,” vol. iii, p. 61 b.

281 PAUL ON THE TRINE HUMAN ENTITY.

Come and see when the soul reaches the abode of Love. . . . The soul could not bear this light, but for the luminous mantle which she puts on. For, just as the soul, when sent to this earth, puts on an earthly garment to preserve herself here, so she receives above a shining garment, in order to be able to look without injury into the mirror, whose light proceeds from the Lord of Light.”^{[#fn1508 1508]} Moreover, the {{Style S-Italic|Sohar}} teaches that the soul cannot reach the abode of bliss, unless she has received the “holy kiss,” or the re-union of the soul {{Style S-Italic|with the substance from which she emanated—}}spirit. All souls are dual, and, while the latter is a feminine principle, the spirit is masculine. While imprisoned in body, man is a trinity, unless his pollution is such as to have caused his divorce from the spirit. “Woe to the soul which prefers to her divine husband (spirit), the earthly wedlock with her terrestrial body,” records a text of the {{Style S-Italic|Book of the Keys.^{[#fn1509 1509]}}}

[#fn1508anc 1508]. Ibid., vol. i., p. 65b.

[#fn1509anc 1509]. Hermetic work.

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stance. “The first man is of the earth earthy, the second man from heaven.” Even James (iii. 15) identifies the soul by saying that its “wisdom descendeth not from the above but is terrestrial, {{Style S-Italic|psychical, demoniacal”}} (see Greek text). Plato, speaking of the Soul ({{Style S-Italic|psuché),}} observes that “when she allies herself to the {{Style S-Italic|nous}} (divine substance, a god, as psuché is a goddess), she does everything aright and felicitously; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to {{Style S-Italic|Annoia.”}} What Plato calls {{Style S-Italic|nous,}} Paul terms the {{Style S-Italic|Spirit;}} and Jesus makes the {{Style S-Italic|heart}} what Paul says of the {{Style S-Italic|flesh.}} The natural condition of mankind was called in Greek αποστασια; the new condition αναστασις. In Adam came the former (death), in Christ the latter (resurrection), for it is he who first publicly taught mankind the “Noble Path” to Eternal life, as Gautama pointed the same Path to Nirvana. To accomplish both ends there was but one way, according to the teachings of both. “Poverty, chastity, contemplation or inner prayer; contempt for wealth and the illusive joys of this world.”

“Enter on this Path and put an end to sorrow; verily the Path has been preached by me, who have found out how to quench the darts of grief. You yourselves must make the effort; {{Style S-Italic|the Buddhas are only preachers.}} The thoughtful who enter the Path are freed from the bondage of the Deceiver (Mara).”^{[#fn1510 1510]}

[#fn1510anc 1510]. {{Style S-Italic|“Dhamma-pada,” slokas 276 et seq.}}

283 IDEAS OF THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS.

nized {{Style S-Italic|noumena}} or subjective things. This is purely Buddhistic and esoteric.

{{Style S-Italic|The Platonic School is even more distinct in enunciating all this.}}

The real selfhood was at the basis of all. Socrates therefore taught that he had a δαιμόνιον {{Style S-Italic|(daimonion),}} a spiritual something which put him in the road to wisdom. He himself knew nothing, but this put him in the way to learn all.

“Plato and Pythagoras,” says Plutarch, “distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noëtic) and irrational ({{Style S-Italic|agnoia);}} that that part of the soul of man which is rational, is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason ({{Style S-Italic|agnoia}}) dies.”

has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man.

“Now of the deaths we die, {{Style S-Italic|the one makes man two of three,}} and the other, {{Style S-Italic|one}} of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries τελειν resembled that given to death, τελειν. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the {{Style S-Italic|other death}} it is in the moon or region of Persephoné. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. For this reason she is called {{Style S-Italic|Monogenes, only-begotten,}} or rather {{Style S-Italic|begetting one alone;}} for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Faith that every soul, whether with or without understanding ({{Style S-Italic|νοῦς),}} when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s proper and peculiar hope.”

285 IRENÆUS AND ORIGEN ON MAN’S SOUL.

likewise imagine the image reflected from a glass to be in that glass. But the more intelligent, who know it to be without, call it a Daëmon” (a god, a spirit).

We find even Irenæus, that untiring and mortal enemy of every Grecian and “heathen” heresy, explain his belief in the trinity of man. The perfect man, according to his views, consists of {{Style S-Italic|flesh, soul,}} and {{Style S-Italic|spirit.}} “. . . carne, anima, spiritu, altero quidem figurante, spiritu, altero quod formatur, carne. Id vero quod inter haec est duo, est anima, quae aliquando subsequens spiritum elevatur ab eo, aliquando autem consentiens carni in terrenas concupiscentias” ({{Style S-Italic|Irenæus}} v{{Style S-Italic|.,}} 1).

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of motion.” “Soul was generated prior to body, and body is posterior and secondary, as being, according to nature, ruled over by the ruling soul.” “The soul which administers all things that are moved in every way, administers likewise the heavens.”

These rather lengthy quotations are necessary for our purpose. Better than anything else, they show the agreement between the oldest “Pagan” philosophies—not “assisted by the light of divine revelation,” to use the curious expression of Laboulaye in relation to Buddha—and the early Christianity of some Fathers. Both Pagan philosophy and Christianity, however, owe their elevated ideas on the soul and spirit of man and the unknown Deity to Buddhism and the Hindu Manu. No wonder that the Manicheans maintained that Jesus was a permutation of Gautama; that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one and the same person,^{[#fn1511 1511]} for the teachings of the former two were identical. It was the doctrine of old India that Jesus held to when preaching the complete renunciation of the world and its vanities in order to reach the kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, where “men neither marry nor are given in marriage, but live like the angels.”

It is the philosophy of Siddhârtha-Buddha again that Pythagoras expounded, when asserting that the {{Style S-Italic|ego}} ({{Style S-Italic|νοῦς}}) was eternal with God, and that the soul only passed through various stages (Hindu {{Style S-Italic|Rupa-locas}}) to arrive at the divine excellence; meanwhile the {{Style S-Italic|thumos}} returned to the earth, and even the {{Style S-Italic|phren}} was eliminated. Thus the {{Style S-Italic|metempsychosis}} was only a succession of disciplines through refuge-heavens (called by the Buddhists {{Style S-Italic|Zion),}}^{[#fn1512 1512]} to work off the exterior mind, to rid the {{Style S-Italic|nous}} of the {{Style S-Italic|phren,}} or soul,

[#fn1511anc 1511]. Neander: “History of the Church,” vol. i., p. 817.

[#fn1512anc 1512]. It is from the highest {{Style S-Italic|Zion}} that Maitree-Buddha, the Saviour to come, will descend on earth; and it is also from Zion that comes the Christian Deliverer (see Romans xi. 26).

287 ST. HILAIRE’S DEFINITION OF DHYÂNA.

the Buddhist “Winyanaskandaya,” {{Style S-Italic|that principle that lives}} from {{Style S-Italic|Karma}} and the Skandhas (groups). It is the latter, the metaphysical personations of the “deeds” of man, whether good or bad, which, after the death of his body, incarnate themselves, so to say, and form their many invisible but never-dying compounds into a new body, or rather into an ethereal being, the {{Style S-Italic|double}} of what man was {{Style S-Italic|morally.}} It is the astral body of the kabalist and the “incarnated deeds” which form the new sentient self as his {{Style S-Italic|Ahancara}} (the ego, self-consciousness), given to him by the sovereign Master (the breath of God) can never perish, for it is immortal {{Style S-Italic|per se}} as a spirit; hence the sufferings of the newly-born {{Style S-Italic|self}} till he rids himself of every earthly thought, desire, and passion.

We now see that the “four mysteries” of the Buddhist doctrine have been as little understood and appreciated as the “wisdom” hinted at by Paul, and spoken “among them that are {{Style S-Italic|perfect”}} (initiated), the “mystery-wisdom” which “none of the {{Style S-Italic|Archons}} of this world knew.”^{[#fn1513 1513]} The fourth degree of the Buddhist Dhyâna, the fruit of Samâdhi, which leads to the utmost perfection, to {{Style S-Italic|Viconddham,}} a term correctly rendered by Burnouf in the verb “{{Style S-Italic|perfected,”^{[#fn1514 1514]}}} is wholly misunderstood by others, as well as in himself. Defining the condition of Dhyâna, St. Hilaire argues thus:

“Finally, having attained the fourth degree, the ascetic possesses no more this feeling of beatitude, however obscure it may be . . . he has also lost all memory . . . he has reached impassibility, as near a neighbor of Nirvana as can be. . . . However, this absolute impassibility does not hinder the ascetic from acquiring, at this very moment, {{Style S-Italic|omniscience and the magical power; a flagrant contradiction, about which the Buddhists}} no more disturb themselves than about so many others.”^{[#fn1515 1515]}

And why should they, when these contradictions are, in fact, no contradictions at all? It ill behooves us to speak of contradictions in other peoples’ religions, when those of our own have bred, besides the three great conflicting bodies of Romanism, Protestantism, and the Eastern Church, a thousand and one most curious smaller sects. However it may be, we have here a term applied to one and the same thing by the Buddhist holy “mendicants” and Paul, the Apostle. When the latter says: “If so be that I might attain the {{Style S-Italic|resurrection}} from among the dead [the Nirvana], not as though I had already attained, or were already {{Style S-Italic|perfect”}} (initiated),^{[#fn1516 1516]} he uses an expression common among the initiated Buddhists. When a Buddhist ascetic has reached the “fourth degree,” he is considered a rahat. He produces every kind of phenomena by the

[#fn1513anc 1513]. 1 Corinth. ii. 6, 7, 8.

[#fn1514anc 1514]. “Lotus de la Bonne Loi,” p. 806.

[#fn1515anc 1515]. “Du Bouddhisme,” 95.

[#fn1516anc 1516]. Philippians iii. 11-14.

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sole power of his freed spirit. A {{Style S-Italic|rahat,}} say the Buddhists, is one who has acquired the power of flying in the air, becoming invisible, commanding the elements, and working all manner of wonders, commonly, and as erroneously, called {{Style S-Italic|meipo}} (miracles). He is a {{Style S-Italic|perfect}} man, a demi-god. A god he will become when he reaches Nirvana; for, like the initiates of both Testaments, the worshippers of Buddha know that they “are gods.”

“Genuine Buddhism, overleaping the barrier between finite and infinite mind, urges its followers to aspire, {{Style S-Italic|by their own efforts,}} to that divine perfectibility of which it teaches that man is capable, and by attaining which man becomes {{Style S-Italic|a god,”}} says Brian Houghton Hodgson.^{[#fn1517 1517]}

Dreary and sad were the ways, and blood-covered the tortuous paths by which the world of the Christians was driven to embrace the Irenæan and Eusebian Christianity. And yet, unless we accept the views of the ancient Pagans, what claim has our generation to having solved any of the mysteries of the “kingdom of heaven”? What more does the most pious and learned of Christians know of the future destiny and progress of our immortal spirits than the heathen philosopher of old, or the modern “Pagan” beyond the Himalaya? Can he even boast that he knows as much, although he works in the full blaze of “divine” revelation? We have seen a Buddhist holding to the religion of his fathers, both in theory and practice; and, however blind may be his faith, however absurd his notions on some particular doctrinal points, later engraftings of an ambitious clergy, yet in practical works his Buddhism is far more Christ-like in deed and spirit than the average life of our Christian priests and ministers. The fact alone that his religion commands him to “honor his own faith, but never slander that of other people,”^{[#fn1518 1518]} is sufficient. It places the Buddhist lama immeasurably higher than any priest or clergyman who deems it his sacred duty to curse the “heathen” to his face, and sentence him and his religion to “eternal damnation.” Christianity becomes every day more a religion of pure emotionalism. The doctrine of Buddha is entirely based on practical works. A general love of all beings, human and animal, is its nucleus. A man who knows that unless he toils for himself he has to starve, and understands that he has no scapegoat to carry the burden of his iniquities for him, is ten times as likely to become a better man than one who is taught that murder, theft, and profligacy can be washed in one instant as white as snow, if he but believes in a God who, to borrow an expression of Volney, “once took food upon earth, and is now himself the food of his people.”

[#fn1517anc 1517]. “The Mahâvansa,” vol. i., Introduction.

[#fn1518anc 1518]. The Five Articles of Faith.