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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Faiths And Modern, by Thomas Inman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ancient Faiths And Modern
+       A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+
+Author: Thomas Inman
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38100]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN:
+
+A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+
+In Central And Western Asia, Europe, And Elsewhere, Before The Christian
+Era. Showing Their Relations To Religious Customs As They Now Exist.
+
+By Thomas Inman, M.D.
+
+Author Of "Ancient Faiths Embodied In Ancient Names," Etc., Etc.
+Consulting Physician To The Royal Infirmary, Liverpool; Lecturer,
+Successively, On Botany, Medical Jurisprudence, Therapeutics, Materia
+Medica, And The Principles And Practice Ok Medicine, Etc., In The
+Liverpool School Ok Medicine. Etc.
+
+1876
+
+TO THOSE
+
+WHO THIRST AFTER KNOWLEDGE,
+
+AND ARE NOT DETERRED FROM SEEKING IT
+
+BY THE FEAR OF IMAGINARY DANGERS,
+
+THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, WITH GREAT RESPECT,
+
+By
+
+THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+Some thirty years ago, after a period of laborious study, I became the
+House Surgeon of a large Infirmary. In that institution I was enabled to
+see the practice of seven different doctors, and to compare the results
+which followed from their various plans of treatment. I soon found
+that the number of cures was nearly equal amongst them all, and became
+certain that recovery was little influenced by the medicine given. The
+conclusion drawn was that the physician could do harm, but that his
+power for good was limited. This induced me to investigate the laws of
+health and of disease, with an especial desire to discover some sure
+ground on which the healing art might safely stand. The inquiry was a
+long one, and to myself satisfactory. The conclusions to which I came
+were extremely simple--amounting almost to truisms; and I was surprised
+that it had required long and sustained labour to find out such very
+homely truths as those which I seemed to have unearthed.
+
+Yet, with this discovery came the assurance that, if I could induce my
+medical brethren to adopt my views, they would deprive themselves of the
+means of living. Men, like horses or tigers, monkeys and codfish, can do
+without doctors. Here and there, it is true, that the art and skill of
+the physician or surgeon can relieve pain, avert danger from accidents,
+and ward off death for a time; but, in the generality of cases, doctors
+are powerless. It is the business of such men, however, to magnify their
+office to the utmost. They get their money ostensibly by curing the
+sick; but it is clear, that the shorter the illness the fewer will be
+the fees, and the more protracted the attendance the larger must be the
+"honorarium." There is, then, good reason why the medical profession
+should discourage too close an investigation into truth.
+
+But, outside of this fraternity, there are many men desirous of
+understanding the principles of the healing art Many of these have begun
+by noticing the style of the doctor's education. They find that he is
+taught in "halls," "colleges," and "schools," for a certain period of
+time; and then, at about the age of two-and-twenty, he is examined by
+some experienced men, and, if considered "competent," he pays certain
+fees, and is then licensed to practise as physician. As all regular
+doctors go through this course, it is natural that all should think and
+act in a common way, and style their doctrines "orthodox." It is equally
+certain that to such opinion the majority adhere through life. But
+it has always happened, that many men and women have aspired to the
+position of medical professors, without going through the usual career;
+or, having done so, they have struck out a novel plan of practice, which
+they designate a new method of cure. These have always been opposed
+by the "orthodox," and the contest is carried on with varying success,
+until the general public give their verdict on one side or the other.
+Into the motives which sway the respective combatants we will not enter;
+our chief desire being to show that each set is upheld by those who
+are designated "laymen," whose education has not been medical The most
+intelligent on the heterodox side have been clergymen; and many have
+been the complaints of "orthodox" doctors, that "the parsons" should
+patronize, so energetically as they do, medical "dissenters."
+
+As the "clerk" takes pleasure in examining the therapeutical doctrines
+of his physician, so the medical professor frequently inquires closely
+into his clergyman's theological views and feels himself at liberty
+to accept or oppose them, as the "clerk" adopts or attacks him and his
+theory and practice. It would, indeed, be disrespectful in the listener
+not to pay intelligent heed to the discourses which emanate from
+the pulpit. I have myself listened to the preaching of hundreds of
+university graduates, and of men who never took a degree, and have
+noticed that the same diversity of style exists amongst them, as is to
+be found in medical men. Some order a certain plan of treatment for a
+soul, which they assert to be grievously affected, and give no reason
+for what they say or do. Others give their motives for everything which
+they affirm, and for the plan which they prescribe for cure. Under the
+ministry of one of the last I sat for many years. Conspicuous for sound
+judgment, and for a peculiarly clear oratory, his sermons were to me an
+intellectual treat. From the exordium, forwards, I followed his words
+closely, and lost none of his arguments. But I soon became conscious
+that he never once carried his reasoning to its logical conclusion.
+Still further, it was manifest that certain things were by him taken for
+granted; and it was held to be culpable to inquire into the reality of
+those assumptions. In fine, it was evident, that there was a Bluebeard's
+closet in the house of God, into which, in the preacher's opinion, it
+was death to pry!
+
+With the idea which was gradually forced upon my mind, that there was
+a systematic suppression of the truth in the pulpit, I very carefully
+searched the Bible, with which I have been familiar from infancy, and
+upon which, it is asserted, all our faith is founded. At this time, too,
+a casual inquiry into some ancient cognomens, which have descended to
+us from remote antiquity, induced me to examine into ancient faiths
+generally. With this became associated an examination of all religions,
+and their influence upon mankind.
+
+I found that in every nation there have been, and still are, good men
+and bad, gentle and brutal, thoughtful and ignorant. That the best men
+of Paganism--Buddha, for example--did not lose, by comparison, with the
+brightest light of Christianity; and that such large cities as London
+and Paris, have as much vice within them as ancient Rome or modern
+Calcutta. I found, moreover, that there is a culpable colouring in the
+accounts given by Christian travellers of Pagan countries. The clerical
+pen rests invariably and strongly upon the bad points of every heathen
+cult, and contrasts them with the best elements of Christianity. I
+do not know that it has ever instituted a fair comparison between
+corresponding characters in each faith. As an illustration of my
+meaning, let us regard the stern virtue of the Roman Lucretia, who
+committed suicide, her body having been forcibly defiled by the embraces
+of another than her husband, even though the ravisher was a prince. She
+had heard nothing of the Jewish law or Christian gospel, nevertheless
+she was far better than the wives of the nobles in the courts of Louis
+the XIV. and XV., who gladly sold themselves and their daughters to the
+royal lechers. These, unlike the Italian woman, were instructed both in
+the law and the gospel; they attended one place or another of Christian
+worship daily or weekly. Nay, if report be true, "the eldest son of the
+Church," when he visited the "parc aux cerfs," made each fresh virgin,
+victim of his passion, duly say her prayers before she assisted him to
+commit adultery, and herself permitted fornication! We sympathize with
+Paul and the early Christian fathers in their denunciations of the
+Romans and Greeks for obscenities practised in honour of their gods;
+but, at the same time, we feel sure that, had those apostles and
+teachers lived in the middle ages, they would have denounced, with
+greater warmth, the murders which were constantly being perpetrated in
+honour of Jesus.
+
+In like manner, we may greatly regret, with the writer of Psalm xiv.,
+that amongst "the children of men, there is none that doeth good; no,
+not one;" but we must equally bow before the statement of Ezekiel
+(ch. xxii. 30), that there was no more propriety amongst the so-called
+"chosen people of God," than amongst the Gentile Canaanites and
+Babylonians.
+
+Again, we feel pain when we find the great ones of the earth--aye, and
+many small ones too--seeking out for villains, "willing to commit
+murder for a mede," and lament that lawgivers should secretly encourage
+lawlessness; but we cannot forget that Jesus of Nazareth is represented,
+in John vi. 70, to have selected a devil to bring about certain
+ends--see also John xiii. 26, 27, in which the agency is well marked.
+
+Modern divines tell us that war, tumult, hatred, malice, quarrels of all
+kinds, and murder come from the devil, and are the direct result of our
+fallen nature; nevertheless, we remember that Jesus is reported to have
+said--"I came not to send peace, but a sword; I am come to set a man at
+variance against his father, and the daughter against the mother," &c.
+(Matt. x. 34, 35). When we institute comparisons like these, the
+balance is not uneven. I found, moreover, that the sharply defined line,
+commonly drawn between Paganism and Christianity, is worthless--the
+doctrines of the latter being, in many respects, identical with, or
+deduced from, the former.
+
+It seemed necessary, therefore, to ascertain whether, in religion,
+any other line than the one in vogue in Europe, could be drawn with
+certainty.
+
+The result of my observations showed a wonderful similarity to exist
+between the clerical and medical profession; and I feel that, if my
+views about the cure of souls and bodies were generally adopted,
+there would be no need either for parson or for doctor. Instead of
+discovering, as I had hoped to do, which of all the rival sects of
+Christendom is the best one, I found that all were unnecessary, that
+many are degraded in doctrine and bad in practice; and that, if any
+must exist, the one which effects the least mischief should be the one
+selected for general adoption. It required much courage to allow myself
+to believe that doctors have, taking everything into consideration,
+done more harm in the world than good, and still more to announce my
+conviction that Christianity was even more culpable than medicine. The
+physician, when professing to cure, has too often assisted disease to
+kill; and he who has had the cure of souls, has invented plans to
+make believers in his doctrine miserable. The first fills his coffers
+proportionally to the extent to which he can protract recovery;
+the second becomes rich in proportion to the success with which he
+multiplies mental terrors, and then sells repose. The one enfeebles the
+body, the other cripples the intellect, and aggravates envy, hatred, and
+malice. Both are equally influential in preventing man from being such
+as we believe that the Almighty designed him to be.
+
+Though we oppose the old plan of medication of body and mind, we are
+far from asserting that there is no value in an honest doctor, either of
+divinity or medicine. On the contrary, I have a stronger faith in my own
+profession, as it has been reformed, than ever I had ere the light of
+good sense had shone upon it; and I have a far more confident trust
+in the religion propounded by F. W. Newman, in _Theism_, than in that
+current amongst Christians in general But in such schemes of physic
+and faith, very few "ministers" are necessary, shams find no place, and
+emoluments are small A man who communes with his God requires no priest,
+mediator, middle-man, or saint--whether virgin, martyr, or both--to
+intercede for him.
+
+Holding such opinions as these, it is not probable that I shall find
+many followers. I do not seek them. My aim has been to set good sterling
+stuff before the world, so that any one, whose self-reliance is great,
+may receive strength. There are many who would rather die with a
+physician close beside them when they are ill, than live without a
+doctor; and there are few who would not rather enjoy the fear of hell
+with the orthodox, than be with heretics free from such terrors--"For
+sure, the pleasure is as great in being cheated, as to cheat." To all
+such our writings are _caviare_. Yet, even to them, we would say that we
+have warrant for our belief in statements, to which the orthodox
+cannot reasonably object--viz., "If thou doest well, shalt thou not
+be accepted?" (Gen. iv. 7); "In every nation, he that feareth God, and
+worketh righteousness, is accepted with him" (Acts x. 35); "He that
+doeth righteousness, is righteous" (1 John iii. 7).
+
+Let me contrast my own views with those generally current amongst us. I
+believe that God did not make men, any more than the beasts, to damn the
+largest number of them throughout eternity. I believe that all who aver
+that they have been selected by the Creator from all the world besides
+as the only recipients of salvation are wrong, and deceivers of the
+people. In fine, I believe that God's "tender mercies are over all his
+works." The common opinion that the Almighty so revels in cruelty, that
+He makes creatures to torture them, is a horrible one to me--fit only
+to come from impotent Pagan priests. That Jehovah selected about one
+million of bad men, out of about four hundred other millions equally
+bad, solely because their progenitor, Abraham, consented to murder and
+burn his son, is to me a frightful blasphemy; and, lastly, that God has
+no tender mercies for nine-tenths of the human race, is to convert our
+conception of the Author of all good into the conventional "Devil." The
+comparison may be summed up thus: I believe in God, the Father of all
+things; the so-called orthodox believe in the God Satan. I do not know
+anything in all my studies which excited my attention more painfully
+than the result of the analysis of Jehovah's character, as given in our
+Bible. Kind to those who are said to please Him, He is a fearful demon
+to all who are said to oppose Him.
+
+How can any reasonable man hold the opinion that the Devil instigated
+all atrocities of the Syrians, Chaldees, Assyrians, Romans, Turks,
+Tartars, Saracens, Affghans, Mahometans, and Hindoos, and believe that
+the good God drowned the whole world, and nearly every single thing that
+had life; that He ordered the extermination, not only of Midianites and
+Amalekites, but slaughtered, in one way or another, all the people whom
+he led out of Egypt--except two--merely because they had a natural fear
+of war. What was the massacre at Cawnpore to that in Jericho and other
+Canaanite cities? I say it with sober seriousness--in sorrow, not in
+anger--as a thinking man, and not as an advocate for, or against, any
+religious view, that it is an awful thing for any nation to permit
+a book to circulate, as a sacred one, in which God and the Devil are
+painted in the same colours.
+
+Into this analysis of religion I was led to enter from the observation
+of a friend, who challenged me to find, in any non-Hebraic or
+non-Christian country, a faith or practice equal to that current amongst
+the followers of Moses and Jesus, or to discover any spot in the wide
+world where there is, or has been, a civilization equal to that which
+existed in Judea, and the parts inhabited by Christians. In consequence
+of this defiance, it became more than ever necessary for me to study the
+nature of the current faith and practice of Christendom, and to inquire
+how far the latter was dependent upon the former--that is to say,
+whether the practices of civilization are due to our religion, or have
+gradually grown up in spite of it. The next point was to pay similar
+heed to the doctrines and manner of life common amongst those to whom
+our Bible has been wholly unknown.
+
+Many of the conclusions to which I came have already appeared in the
+second volume of _Ancient Faiths_, under the heads of "Religion,"
+"Theology," &c.; but others came upon me when that book had been
+completed, and the present supplement is designed with the idea of
+expressing, still further, the extent of my views, and the evidence upon
+which they are founded--with special reference to the differential value
+of Christian and unchristian faith and practice.
+
+As was natural, this involved the question constantly before my mind in
+the preceding volumes--viz., "Is there in reality anything in the Hebrew
+and the Christian theology essentially different from that promulgated
+by the leaders of divinity in other countries?" This point has
+repeatedly been discussed, and amongst the orthodox there is no
+difficulty in allowing the existence of a strong similarity in all
+systems of religion; but the value of the fact is supposed to be reduced
+to ridicule by the monstrous assertion, that Moses and Jesus taught
+all the world. Amongst the books which came under my notice, whilst
+prosecuting my search, was a very remarkable one, called _The Modern
+Buddhist_, now _The Wheel of the Law_, which is an account of the
+religious thoughts of a Siamese monarch, with a statement of his
+conversations with Christian missionaries. In this the British churchman
+and non-conformist can see themselves as others see them; and the
+Asiatic has quite as great, perhaps even a superior, right to call the
+European "poor and benighted," as the Christian has to call the Buddhist
+"a miserable Pagan."
+
+Notwithstanding my endeavours to be perfectly "judicial," and to give
+what I believe to be an impartial account of the subjects which I
+describe, I have been, by certain critics, accused of special pleading.
+It is, perhaps, unnecessary to deny the charge, for each reader must
+judge of my fairness, or otherwise, for himself. But, on the other hand,
+I retort most strongly, by averring that I have not met, in the whole
+course of my reading, a religious work by an orthodox divine, which does
+not "bear false witness against its neighbours."
+
+There is in all both a _suppressio veri_ and a _suggestio falsi_,
+which makes the honest inquirer almost entirely reject their books.
+In addition to this, there is in them a recklessness of statement and
+assertion which is unequalled, except in the fierce controversies of
+ancient doctors. The perfect contempt which certain puny divines, who
+have endeavoured to throw dirt upon the present Bishop of Natal, show
+for the laws of evidence, and the systematic way in which they avoid
+every real point at issue, are marvellous to those who know that such
+people have had an university education, have studied logic, and
+profess an unlimited respect for truth. In future years the theological
+writings, generally, of our time will be as much objurgated by
+enlightened, earnest, and thoughtful readers, as Protestants of to-day
+abuse the theology and prurience of Sanchez, Thomas Aquinas, and Peter
+Dens.
+
+In conclusion, I would wish to add, that I am conscious, from the amount
+of correspondence which I have had on the subject in hand, that there
+is not only a wide, but a constantly extending dissatisfaction
+with the current theology taught by the ministers of all
+denominations--excepting, as a body, the Unitarians, and such
+individuals as Bishop Colenso, Bishop Hinds, Mr Voysey, and others. The
+laity are awaking to the fact that priests are strenuously endeavouring
+to quench the light of reason in the fogs of faith. Unless the
+Protestantism, of which Great Britain was once so proud, decides to
+drift into Papism--the only legitimate harbour for those who reject
+reason for a guide--it must thoroughly reform itself, and ruthlessly
+reject, as "necessary to salvation," every article of belief which is
+not only nonsensical or absurd, but which has unquestionably descended
+from a grovelling Paganism. To this end we hope that our essays will
+contribute.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     A recapitulation. Destruction of an old edifice precedes the
+     building of another on the same site. Chichester Cathedral.
+     Difficulties of reconstruction. Innovators are regarded as
+     enemies. The Old Testament appraised. The Jews and their
+     pretensions. Hebraic idea of Jehovah. The sun and moon. God
+     and goddess. Importance of sexual perfection in a Hebrew
+     male. Women are prizes given to the faithful Jews. Almost
+     everything Jewish came from Pagan sources, except the
+     Sabbath. Inquiry into the New Testament necessarily follows
+     upon an investigation of the Old. Thoughts upon the history
+     of Christianity. Malignancy of its professors. Life of
+     Jesus, by various authors. The ground preoccupied.    The
+     plan proposed.
+
+In commencing another volume of a series, and one to a great extent
+independent of the other two, it is advisable to pause and recapitulate
+the points advanced, and the positions attained. This is the more
+necessary when the present inquiry is a natural result of a preceding
+one, and when an attempt is made to collect and arrange the scattered
+materials into an harmonious and consistent edifice. Our volumes on the
+subject of "Ancient Faiths in Ancient Names" were, to a great extent,
+destructive. They struck heavy blows in all directions, wherever a false
+idol was to be recognized, and they destroyed many a cherished delusion,
+which was to many as dear as the apple of their eye. But, throughout
+the whole process of destruction, the idea of the necessity for a
+reconstruction was present to the mind of the author.
+
+It may, indeed, be propounded as an interesting question, whether any
+iconoclast ever destroys the idols which his fellow-beings cherish,
+without entertaining the belief that he has something superior to offer
+in their place. When the fanatic Spaniards upset, fractured, and ground
+to powder the stone monsters venerated by the Mexicans, they offered to
+the natives the image of a lovely virgin and her gentle son to replace
+them; and when the enthusiastic Scotchmen destroyed the marble saints
+and gaudy figures of the Popish churches throughout their own country,
+they eagerly set forth the superiority of adoring the invisible creator
+in spirit and imagination, which afforded scope for the most entrancing
+mental delineations, and was far superior to reverencing an ugly effigy,
+which no one with any correct taste could admire. In like manner, when
+the Mahometan Caliph destroyed the library of Alexandria, he offered to
+the mourners in its place the book of the Prophet Mahomet, which was, in
+his eyes, a pearl of so great price as to be equivalent in value to all
+the world besides.
+
+There can be no doubt, however, that the process of destruction is far
+more easy than the task of reconstruction. The engineer who is called
+upon to remove a bridge, on account of the badness of its foundation,
+may admire the extraordinary firmness with which every stone has been
+dovetailed together, and, with the means at his command, may be unable
+to construct another having a similar appearance of stability; yet,
+after all, an arch which is secure and stable is preferable to one which
+is good only in appearance. A very few years have elapsed since it was
+found that the tower and spire of the Cathedral at Chichester had been
+so built that there was imminent danger of the whole falling down. This
+part of the edifice resembled certain faiths which have been raised with
+great art to a vast height, with very slender and inadequate material.
+So long as they were not assailed by any storm, or tested by the changes
+which time produces, they seemed firm and unshakable; but, when they
+were really tried, they began to undergo a process similar to that which
+obtained in the Cathedral named--the admirers of the edifice attempted
+to prop up the failing tower; with iron and timber they shored up its
+bulging sides; they erected strong scaffolds to ease the mighty strain
+upon the crumbling walls; but all in vain--the lovely spire, built upon
+a foundation as rotten as the Mormon faith, came tumbling down, and
+the tall emblem pointing to the sky returned once more to earth. Before
+there could be any reconstruction attempted, it was necessary to procure
+all the material necessary; and when, with great labour, this was
+accumulated, a fresh erection was made, which was far stronger than the
+first, for every stone was duly examined, and solid masonry replaced
+the ancient rubble. So it has been with many a faith. Christianity has
+replaced the crumbling Judaism which existed at the beginning of our
+era, and the Reformed Church has since then, in many countries, replaced
+the gigantic sham of Popery. But the metaphor is one which we cannot
+wholly adopt, inasmuch as we believe that no faith of ancient times has
+ever wholly fallen like the spire and tower of Chichester, nor has any
+new system of belief the solidity of that new edifice which has replaced
+the old.
+
+The difficulties connected with reconstruction are greatly increased by
+the propensity which is so common in the human mind to make the best
+of that which is in actual existence and familiar to the vulgar, rather
+than to adopt something entirely new. The child who dislikes to go to
+bed at night equally dislikes to get up in the morning, and we have
+known elderly people who have systematically preferred an old lumbering
+stage-coach to a first-class compartment in a railway carriage. In every
+walk of life an innovator is regarded as an enemy by the majority, and
+especially by those whose practice or whose theories his discoveries
+supersede.
+
+Yet, great as is the contest which any new truth has to sustain, there
+is no doubt whatever that the first part of the fight--the preliminaries
+essential to conquest, are the investigation of the ground to be
+occupied; the real value of the defences; the superiority of the armour;
+and the temper, strength, and tenacity of the offensive weapons. The
+engineer to whom is confided the attack or the defence of a town will
+abandon or destroy everything which would harbour an enemy or facilitate
+his operations. The fighting commodore, ere he carries his ship into
+action, sacrifices readily all the gewgaws of luxury; and in like manner
+the ecclesiastic ought never to endanger his position by spending his
+energies in the defence of a useless outwork or a tinsel ornament.
+Entertaining these views ourselves, our first effort has been to
+clear the ground, and to remove every object which we consider to be
+detrimental to the spread of truth.
+
+We have demonstrated, as far as such a matter is capable of
+demonstration, that the Old Testament, which has descended to us from
+the Jews, is not the mine of truth which it has been supposed by so many
+to be: that not only it is not a revelation given by God to man, but
+that it is founded upon ideas of the Almighty which are contradicted
+by the whole of animate and inanimate nature. We showed, that its
+composition was wholly of human origin, and that its authors had a very
+mean and degrading notion of the Lord of Heaven and Earth. We proved,
+what indeed Colenso and a host of German critics have demonstrated in
+another fashion, that its historical portions are not to be depended
+upon; that its stories are of no more real value than so many fairy
+tales or national legends; that its myths can now be readily traced
+to Grecian, Babylonian, and Persian sources; that its miracles are as
+apocryphal as those told of Vishnu, Siva, and other deities; and its
+prophecies absolutely worthless. We proved, moreover, that the remote
+antiquity of its authorship has been greatly exaggerated; that the
+stories of the creation, of the flood, of Abraham, of Jacob, of the
+descent into, and the exodus from, Egypt, of the career of Moses and the
+Jews in the desert, of Joshua and his soldiers, of the judges and their
+clients, are all apocryphal, and were fabricated at a late period of
+Jewish history, with the design of inspiriting the Hebrews at a period
+when their depression of spirit from foreign conquest was extreme; that
+the so-called Mosaic laws were not known until long after the time of
+David, and that some of the enactments--that about the Jubilee, for
+example--were never promulgated at all. We showed that the Jewish
+conception of the Almighty, and of His heavenly host, did not materially
+differ from the Greek idea of Jupiter and his inferior deities; that
+the Hebrews regarded Jehovah as having human passions and very human
+failings--as loving, revengeful, stern, merry, and vacillating--as
+"everything by turns and nothing long"--as forming a resolution, and
+then contriving how He might, as it were, overreach Himself. We pointed
+out that the Jews did, in reality, paint God and the Devil or Satan, as
+the same individual, being the former to His friends, and the latter to
+His enemies. Indeed, anyone who compares 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 with 1 Chron.
+xxi. 1 will see this most clearly demonstrated. We called attention to
+the apparently utter ignorance of the Jews that certain laws of nature
+existed, and of their consequent belief that defeat, disease, famine,
+slaughter, pestilence, and the like, were direct punishments of
+ceremonial or other guilt; while victory, wealth, virility, and old age
+were special and decided proofs of the Divine favour. We showed that
+the Jews were, in general, an abject but a very boastful race, and
+that their spiritual guides--the so-called prophets--were constantly
+promising, but always vainly, a striking manifestation of the Almighty's
+power in favour of the Hebrews when they were in the depths of misery,
+that histories were fabricated to give colour to these statements, and
+that these, like modern miracles of saints, were narrated as occurring
+a long time ago, and in a locality which could not be visited, e.g., in
+Samaria and Egypt; we showed, moreover, that the race was imitative, and
+readily adopted the religious ideas and practices of those who conquered
+them. Still further, we proved that the Jews had no idea whatever of a
+future state, and were in utter ignorance of heaven or hell; that they
+regarded the Almighty as punishing crime or rewarding goodness in
+this world alone, and, consequently, we inferred either--(1) that
+the conversation said to have been held between Jehovah and certain
+apocryphal men did not really occur; or (2) that God did not think
+the existence of a future world a matter of sufficient consequence to
+communicate to His friends; or (3) that Elohim had not then created
+either a habitation for the blessed, or a future prison-house for the
+damned; and we pointed out that the opinions of the Pharisees about
+angels, spirits, and futurity were not based upon the writings of Moses
+and the prophets, but upon Persian fantasies. In fine, we showed, that
+the Hebrews could not sustain the claim they made to be the especial
+people of God, and that their writings are of no more value, as records
+of absolute truth, or of Divine revelation, than the books of the
+Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, or the more modern
+Mahometans.
+
+With all this we indicated that there was, throughout the nations known
+as Shemitic, a general belief in the existence of an Almighty Being,
+Creator, Director and Governor of the heaven, the earth, and the
+sea; that He was considered to be One, yet that He was, nevertheless,
+represented by a multiplicity of names, and as having many and opposite
+attributes.
+
+We also showed, that this sublime conception was very thickly coated
+with human ideas, often of a debased and grovelling type, and darkened
+by legends, which were invented by priests with the design of clothing
+themselves, and those of their order, with a portion of the garments
+which they had assigned to the Inscrutable. We showed, how the sun
+and moon, the stars and planets, became interwoven with the idea of a
+Celestial Being, and how they were described in turn as His ministers,
+His residence, His army, and sometimes even as Himself. We showed,
+moreover, that the Almighty was depicted by some as a male, having the
+attributes and passions of men, by others as a female, or celestial
+goddess, and by others as androgyne--not exactly a bifrons, like Janus,
+but masculine and feminine, Elohim, Baalim, Ashtaroth; that in the
+development of this idea, everything which has reference to the
+phenomena of mundane creation was closely studied, and introduced into
+one religious system or another. As a result of this, it followed, that
+there were some sects and temples consecrated to the adoration of the
+Creator as masculine, others as feminine, and others as both combined.
+We showed still farther, that each sect adopted certain emblems, which
+were intended to represent the distinctive mark of the sex under which
+it worshipped the Omnipotent, and that the emblems became multiplied
+as different nations came into contact with each other, learned foreign
+theology, and advanced in their knowledge of natural history. To such an
+extent was this symbolism, to which we refer, carried, that the sexual
+idea of the Creator at last pervaded, to a greater or less degree, all
+forms of worship, and gradually degraded them deeper and deeper, in
+consequence of the emblems of the deity being mistaken for the deity
+itself, much in the same way as the vulgar, amongst the Roman Catholics,
+regard a statuette or picture of the Virgin, or an Ashantee a particular
+form of idol fetish. As an example of such development, we pointed out
+that the Assyrians represented the Godhead as four-fold, consisting of
+the triple male and the single female element in mundane creation, and
+that the idea of the trinity in unity, which is a doctrine recognized
+as far back amongst all nations as history will carry us, was originally
+founded solely upon the well-known fact that the characteristic of the
+male is a triad, of which all the parts are really, and in no mysterious
+manner, "co-eternal together and co-equal." We also showed that the
+feminine idea of the Creator has, from time immemorial, been associated,
+in one form or another, with that of a lovely virgin holding a child in
+her arms, which is generally very young, and mostly receiving food from
+a maternal bosom, the reason of which we hinted at.
+
+We showed that the myths of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarai, Esau and
+Jacob, were incorporations of the idea that the trinity and the unity,
+or, to use the very words of the Athanasian creed, "the trinity in
+unity," were the founders of the race of living beings, and, as such,
+worthy of worship and honour throughout all ages. This union was spoken
+of as "the four," and was symbolized as a square or a cross of four
+points, or a cross of eight points. We showed, still farther, that
+the male Creator was identified with the sun, and the female with the
+crescent moon, and also with the earth; and that one of the symbols of
+this celestial union of the sexes was the sun lying within the moon's
+crescent.
+
+We also demonstrated, that a very large part of Pagan worship
+consisted in the performance of rites and ceremonies, whose end was the
+glorification of the deity under one or other of the selected symbols,
+and that a number of feasts were appointed to be held at certain
+astronomical periods, in which the assistants were encouraged to indulge
+in every form of sensuality (Deut. xiv. 26). We pointed out, that the
+Jewish people were largely tainted by this vicious form of worship prior
+to the Babylonian captivity, and that a very large portion of their
+nomenclature was based upon sexual ideas of the Creator. We also showed,
+that the Jewish writings encouraged certain forms of sensuality in a
+conspicuous manner; that the condition of the male organ was represented
+as being of such importance as to be the ground work of the covenant
+between God and the Hebrews, it being declared (Gen. xvii. 14), as if by
+the word of the Lord, that no man was to be allowed to live whose organ
+had not been improved in a definite manner, i.e., by circumcision or
+excision of the prepuce, and that no man was to be admitted into the
+congregation of the faithful whose characteristic male organs had in
+any way been injured or removed. Deuteronomy xxiii. 1 is conclusive upon
+this point, and there is no ambiguity in the words of the decree. We
+pointed out, also, that not only was abundance of offspring promised to
+the faithful as a proof of God's regard to them, but that the laws, said
+to be delivered by Jehovah to Moses, positively provided (see Deut. xxi.
+10-14) the means by which the harems of the wealthy could be stocked in
+times of war, and by which even the poor might also be indulged, in or
+about the precincts of the temple, where slave and foreign women were
+kept for the purpose (Numb. xxxi. 40). We pointed out that the
+natural result of this licensed debauchery was a great increase in the
+population, which was so much in excess of the capacity of the land to
+sustain them, that it was necessary to check the number of adult mouths
+by conniving at infanticide, as was done in Rajpootana up to a recent
+period, and is said to be done in China now. It is clear, from the
+denunciations by the prophets of the vileness of the Jews of Jerusalem,
+and the impotent laws which were introduced into the so-called Mosaic
+code, that the Hebrew family was to the full as bad and vile as were the
+nations around them.
+
+We further showed that there was a marked difference in the thoughts,
+the doctrines, the laws, the knowledge, the writings, and the form
+of worship amongst the Jews after they had come into contact with the
+Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks; and we adverted to the fact that the
+laws of the Persians, and those of him, whom we would designate
+"the fictitious Moses," were remarkably similar; and we showed
+that everything in the Old Testament, which is, by the majority of
+Christians, deemed to be of Divine origin, had been derived from or
+through one or other of the sources which we have named, and which we
+call Pagan. From this we deduced the important corollary, either that
+the so-called revelation of the Old Testament is a sham, a priestly
+fabrication, and what is known as "a pious fraud," or that it was not
+made originally to the Hebrews. In neither case can the Jews establish a
+title to be the "chosen people of God" in any sense of the words. If the
+Bible is true, the Gentiles have spiritual precedence over the Hebrews,
+and the Pagans have the _pas_ of the Christians.
+
+This deduction enabled us to recognize the importance of an extended
+inquiry into the faith, religion, and practice of other nations, before
+we assume ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the claims
+which one human being, or any body of men, might make to be the
+representatives of the Almighty, the sole recipients of His commands,
+and the only medium by which prayers can be forwarded to Him. Again, the
+history of the past, and a study of the present, enabled us to see that
+the foundation of a new religion, or the modification of an old one, did
+not destroy ancient practices, though it transferred priestly power to
+a new set of men, who, while they introduced new gods and new dogmas,
+endeavoured to incorporate the older ideas with new, so as to seduce or
+cheat the vulgar, whom it was not judicious to slaughter, into adopting
+the new faith. Consequently, we are able to understand how indecent
+ideas, sexual emblems, and Pagan festivals, with many of the licentious
+practices associated therewith, have been handed down from a remote
+idolatry to a modern and comparatively enlightened Christianity. The
+symbols of the objectionable still remain, but the things symbolized
+have been altered, and the original ideas suppressed. The male triad is
+a holy trinity; the monad is no longer the emblem of womankind, but of
+the so-called Mother of God, or, as the Romanists say, of the
+_Mater Creatoris_. But with this knowledge comes the very important
+consideration, how far Christian ideas, which are founded upon Pagan
+fancies, can be regarded as Divine. This, again, involves the question,
+how far Jesus, who had not penetration enough to discover the true
+nature of the writings to which he trusted, can be considered as an
+incarnation of Divine knowledge, or of unbounded wisdom. Still further,
+it became clear, after our arguments, that if the stories of the
+creation of man, the fall of Adam, the life of Noah, of Abraham, of
+Moses, the tale of Sinai, and the supremacy of Judah, are mythical--if
+the prophetic writings are as worthless as the oracles of Dodona and of
+Delphi--then all theories, dogmas, and doctrines founded upon them must
+be equally valueless.
+
+In pursuance of my subject, I pointed out that there was not a nation
+known to history which had not its god or gods, a sacred priesthood, a
+set of prophets, either located in one spot, or appearing as independent
+vaticinators, a number of holy festivals, of hallowed shrines, of
+mysterious temples, and an inner and recondite arcanum into which the
+profane were not permitted to enter. I showed that other nations besides
+the Jews had a sacred ark which was an emblem of a divinity; that the
+use of sacrifices was common to every nation of antiquity; and that such
+things had existed in Hindostan from time immemorial. I pointed out,
+that there was no single precept or order contained in the Jewish
+Ritual which could not be found amongst all other people, with the sole
+exception of the Sabbath; and that the respect for this very strange law
+was due to the ignorance of the Hebrews, who regarded Saturn as the most
+high amongst the gods--information gained from the Babylonians.
+
+Thus, an investigation into the nature and importance of Ancient Faiths
+becomes a necessary prelude to, or, rather, is unavoidably followed
+by, an inquiry into the beliefs, doctrines, and practices current in
+Christendom generally, and in Great Britain particularly. Yet, though
+I was insensibly driven forwards to complete the task which I began,
+without having any definite notion of the amount of labour I should
+have to undergo, I passively resisted for a long time the conclusions to
+which I was drawn, feeling myself unwilling, almost, indeed, unable, to
+undertake an examination which might shake my faith in the New Testament
+as it had been shaken in the Old. Like many others of a thoughtful turn
+of mind, I could see, without very strong regret, the Jewish writings
+consigned to their appropriate niche in the library of the world; but
+I shunned the effort required to take down the books of the Gospels
+and Epistles and weigh them in the impartial balance of critical
+truth. Nevertheless, as my work on Ancient Faiths progressed, I became
+painfully conscious that I must plead guilty to the charge of mental
+cowardice if I shirked the duty of examining the New, as I had
+investigated the Old, Testament. But when the resolution to investigate
+modern faith was at length formed, the difficulties surrounding the
+subject became apparent. The history of modern faith is, to a great
+extent, the history of Christianity, and the history of Christianity
+must start from a history of Jesus and his apostles--Paul, Peter, James,
+John, and Jude, as given in the Epistles and Gospels included in the
+canon of the New Testament. To cope with any one of these histories as
+they deserve to be handled would involve the work of a lifetime, and for
+one man to exhaust the whole seemed to me an impossibility. There
+was, in addition to this, another consideration which complicated
+my difficulty still farther, viz., the fact that there were already,
+written histories of the nature of those alluded to, and that it would
+be useless to multiply them. It is a thankless task to pursue the
+current of the Christian religion through the dark scenes which shrouded
+it, from the time when it was adopted by a few "unlearned and ignorant
+men," until it emerged as a power able to shake empires--from the period
+wherein its professors were burned and otherwise tortured to death,
+to the days when their own Christian successors racked, roasted, and
+tormented their opponents, with a malignancy and cruelty as great as
+that which they themselves had execrated when practised upon their
+predecessors. From the moment that Christianity became a political
+power, its history resembled that of any tyrant or other ruler, and it
+is filled with misrepresentation, lying, fraud, the records of fighting
+and slaughter, of brutal passions, frightful laws, and horrible
+punishments; in fact, the record of political Christianity is that of a
+Devil in sheep's clothing. Even Calvin, one of our cherished reformers,
+burnt another Protestant almost in the same year as the Papists burnt
+Ridley and Latimer. The English Episcopalians in Scotland, and the
+Cromwellian Puritans in Ireland, showed more of the ravening wolf in
+their actions than of the amiable shepherd, who "gently leads" the weak
+ones of his flock. In fact, the more loud the proclamation of a pure
+Christianity, the more devilish is the practice of its heralds.
+
+When I turned to the consideration of the life of Jesus, it was clear
+that the ground was already fully occupied. In 1799 a Mr Houston
+published a work entitled _Ecce Homo; or, a Critical Inquiry into the
+History of Jesus Christ: being an Analysis of the Gospels_, a second
+edition of which was made public fourteen years afterwards, and, as
+a result, its publisher (D. J. Eaton) was prosecuted, and such of the
+impressions as could be collected were publicly burned in St. George's
+Fields, London, by the common hangman, whose business it was to strangle
+truth as well as murderers. This book, which is little known to modern
+readers, is strictly what it professes to be--a critical inquiry
+into the history of Jesus Christ, and it may, to a great extent, be
+considered as the progenitor of more modern treatises. It does not
+materially differ from the _Ecce Homo_ of to-day, or from the other
+works which we shall name, except in its style and composition. Having
+been written when all were in the habit of expressing their views in
+strong language, and when opponents were abused in terms of coarse
+invective, the author has expressed himself in a manner calculated to
+offend rather than to convince, and to stir up anger rather than
+to encourage thought. Yet his arguments are unanswerable, and his
+deductions unimpeachable, by those who know the value of evidence and
+exercise their power of ratiocination. I have been unable to find that
+any work was written in refutation of the author's views, and the
+only opposition to it was from the usual agent of the weak-minded, but
+strong-bodied--persecution.
+
+In more recent times, and within a very short period of each
+other--so short, indeed, that we may say that the books were composed
+simultaneously in Hindostan, Germany, France, and England--there have
+appeared _A Voice from the Ganges,_ Strauss' _New Life of Jesus_,
+Kenan's _Life of Jesus_, The English _Life of Jesus_, by Mr Thomas
+Scott, of Norwood, a second _Ecce Homo_, from a modern Professor, and
+_The Prophet of Nazareth_, by Owen Meredith.* In these volumes, the
+historical value of the Gospel narratives closely and critically
+examined, and a just appreciation of the character, preaching, and
+practice of the Prophet of Nazareth are honestly sought after, and,
+in the opinion of impartial readers, they must be held to have been
+attained. Throughout the series which we have mentioned nothing that is
+capable of demonstration, or of approximate proof, is taken for granted.
+The scholarship of the critical philosopher everywhere overbears the
+prejudice of the Christian bigot. Since the appearance of these another
+author has treated upon the same subject, but only cursorily, and as
+bearing upon other matters, in a work entitled _The Book of God; or, The
+Apocalypse of Adam Oannes_, which was published anonymously, 1868.
+
+     * Whilst this sheet was in the printer's hands, a most
+     remarkable book was published anonymously, entitled,
+     _Supernatural Religion_, in two volumes. In it there is a
+     most scholarly account of the origin of the New Testament
+     writings, one which every thoughtful person should peruse.
+
+Between the publication of the first _Ecce Homo_ and the second, viz.,
+in 1836, there was printed, for private circulation, a very remarkable
+work, entitled _Anacalypsis; or, an Attempt to draw aside the Veil of
+the Saitic Isis_, by Godfrey Higgins. His two volumes are replete with
+learning, and with deductions more startling than any which had appeared
+prior to his own time; but the subject matter is so badly arranged,
+that it is with very great difficulty that the trains of thought which
+occupied the author's mind can be dis-. covered. His main idea is,
+that very nearly everything in religion which appears to be mythical or
+mysterious enfolds certain astronomical facts--such as the precession
+of equinoxes, the duration of cycles of time--such as are necessary
+to reproduce exactly a concordance between certain terrestrial and
+celestial phenomena. With this theory he interweaves an amazing number
+of facts which seem to favour the opinion enunciated in the book of
+Ecclesiastes--i.e., that there is nothing new under the sun. He shows
+that the idea of "incarnations," the birth of a heavenly child from a
+pure virgin, and a variety of so-called Christian dogmas, have existed
+in every age of which we have historical accounts.
+
+He gives a vivid sketch of the nature of Christianity and its progress
+from century to century, and he expresses himself respecting its modern
+developments much in the same strain, though in a far more gentlemanlike
+style, as did his contemporary, the Rev. R. Taylor, to whom was given,
+or who assumed for himself, the title of the Devil's chaplain.
+
+In the estimation of some of these writers, Jesus, the son of Mary, is
+quite as mythical a being as Hercules, the son of Alcmena. This view has
+been more recently adopted by some freethinkers of the present day. The
+main support on which such individuals rely is the fact that there is no
+mention of Jesus by any contemporary historian; and that, although
+there are extant Jewish records of current history, at the time in which
+Christ is said to have lived, they make no mention of him who is now
+called the Saviour and of his wonderful history. It is pointed out that
+the histories of the Gospels came out with marvellous rapidity, from
+Alexandria, about the end of the first century, at a time when all
+contemporaries of Jesus were dead.
+
+To this work of Higgins it is probable that we shall have repeatedly
+to refer, for his language is frequently so forcible that it cannot
+be improved, and, moreover, he very often quotes from books, copies of
+which I have been unable to obtain.
+
+When I found that the ground which I intended to occupy had already
+been so well and so ably cultivated, it occurred to me that it would be
+advisable to take a wider flight than was originally contemplated, and,
+instead of examining the Christian faith alone, to associate with it an
+account of the faiths of those nations of whom we have some knowledge.
+By this means it appeared to me, that we should be enabled to see
+clearly, how far the current belief and practice of Christendom differs
+from the doctrines and practices of those to whom Christianity could
+never, by any possibility, have come, and we can examine, incidentally,
+into the teachings of Jesus, and compare them with that of his
+predecessor, Sakya Muni, or Buddha. We may also investigate impartially
+such doctrines as the immaculate conception, and the existence of
+angels.
+
+When treating, however, a subject like the religions of the ancient and
+modern world, it is difficult to frame the history so as to bring out
+the salient points, in a manner satisfactory to the reader or to
+the writer. The latter is tempted to begin, as he believes, at the
+beginning, and to trace the development of religious thought from
+its simplest expression up to its highest aspiration. This temptation
+becomes all the stronger if, in the course of his study, he has
+investigated the animal and vegetable creations. In those vast kingdoms
+he sees that the philosopher is able to lead his disciples onwards
+from the minute monad, or the simplest mass of matter, to the gigantic
+mastodon, without any very conspicuous flaw or break in continuity; but,
+on closely observing his method of proceeding, the student finds that
+links which connect genera or species together are found in countries so
+wide apart, that no direct communication can be supposed between the one
+type and the other. Thus the gap between mammals and birds is said to
+be filled by the "ornithorhynchus paradoxus," an animal living in a
+vast island, in which scarcely one quadruped mammalian is known to
+have existed, and where the aboriginal birds form a class peculiar to
+Australia, and have no resemblance to the creature referred to.
+
+Yet, though the temptation is great, and although we feel justified in
+reasoning from the known to the unknown, and in supplying missing links
+from analogy, or from our own imagination, still, we consider that it
+will be our best plan to confine ourselves, as far as possible, to
+that which is written, and to describe first, the religious ideas and
+practices of some so-called savages; secondly, the ideas and practices
+of some ancient races, whose histories, more or less perfect, have
+come down to us, with a view to ascertain whether there is anything
+essentially good in modern Christianity, either in faith or practice,
+which is peculiar to that form of religion, or whether almost the same
+style of teaching may not be found to have been common in the remote
+East, at a period some centuries prior to the birth of Jesus.
+
+As we have investigated the subjects of Sin, Salvation, Prayer,
+Inspiration, &c., it is unnecessary to refer to them again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     Travellers' tales not to be trusted. Prejudice perverts
+     facts. The Esquimaux. Cause of reverence for parents. The
+     Red Indian in the presence of immigration is a moral
+     murderer. Inquiry into Indian religion. O. KEE. PA. Indian
+     reverence for phenomena of nature. Ruins of a past
+     civilization in America. Cairns and human sacrifices.
+     Manufactured goods. Bronze in Yucatan. Resemblance between
+     the ancient American people and certain Orientals. Abbé
+     Domenech's travels. Sacrifice at obsequies, idea involved
+     thereby. Scythian proceedings. Mexico and its theology. Two
+     different conceptions of deity. The Unity subdivided by
+     Mexicans, Jews, and Christians. The God of war and the Lord
+     of Hosts. The God of air a deity in Mexico, a devil in Judea
+     or Ephesus. Mexican baptismal regeneration. Resemblances
+     between the Occidental and Oriental people in many curious
+     doctrines. Particulars. Mexican Heaven, Hell, and Limbo.
+     Mexican baptism and prayers. Priests and their duties. A
+     parallel. Romanists and Mexicans. Confession. Expiation.
+     Human sacrifice to obtain pardon of sin. A comparison
+     suggested. Mexican education. Purity of life in the Mexican
+     priestesses. Father Acosta's opinion thereon. Tartary, Rome,
+     and Mexico have something common in culture. Education of
+     youth. Policy of the priesthood. Reflections thereupon.
+     Teocallis or houses of God. Worship. Festivals. Human
+     sacrifice. No sexual deities or rites. Question of
+     credibility--God and the Devil act alike! Aztecs and
+     Europeans compared. Christians have offered human sacrifice
+     from the time of Peter downwards. Transubstantiation is a
+     cannibal doctrine. Christian gods in Mexico as bad as the
+     Aztec deities. History of Peru. The policy of its rulers.
+     Roads and magazines. Nature of its government Governors were
+     instructed in their duties. Civil service examination.
+     Inauguration of youths into honourable manhood. Travelling
+     compulsory in rulers. Postal system--division of the people
+     --local magistrates--law speedy. Code of law. Punishment
+     without torture. Peruvians and inquisitors. Reports required
+     of lands and families. Register of births, &c. Rapidity of
+     communication. Plunder not permitted. Peace the motive for
+     war. The vanquished incorporated with the victors. A
+     paternal government. Peruvian religion. Difference between
+     political institutions and priestcraft. Peruvian sun god. An
+     invisible God recognised. Priests. Eternal life.      Heaven
+     and  Hell.     Temple of the sun magnificent. Golden
+     ornaments. Huge urns of silver. Number of priests.
+     Festivals. Cannibalism not permitted. Fire made from rays of
+     sun and concave mirror, or by friction. Virgins of the sun.
+     Concubines of the Inca. Matrimony.    Reflexions.
+
+When the philosopher reads over the histories which adventurous
+travellers, or Christian missionaries, have given of the religions of
+the savage, or uncivilized, people whom they have visited, he feels
+painfully conscious that the accounts are not implicitly to be relied
+upon. In some he recognizes the fact that communications only take place
+between the one party and the other by signs, which not only may be, but
+very generally are, misinterpreted on both sides; in others he is able
+to see, or, at least, he comes to the conclusion, that the untaught
+barbarians have not a single idea which is not connected with eating
+and drinking, war, revenge, and love;--that such, indeed, resemble brute
+beasts, who have no more conception of hell or heaven, God and the soul,
+than an elephant has of aerostation, or a crow of theology. In other
+narratives the observer notices, that the individuals who interrogate
+the savages are themselves enthusiasts of a high order, who ask leading
+questions, and are content to receive, as a satisfactory answer,
+anything which can be considered as a reply. By this means very
+erroneous ideas have crept in amongst ourselves, and writers have built
+arguments upon a foundation as flimsy as a shifting sand. For example,
+I have repeatedly heard it alleged that every known tribe, in every part
+of the world which has yet been visited, has a tradition respecting an
+universal deluge, and the salvation of their progenitors by a
+floating vessel; and on this has been founded the hypothesis that all
+architecture, and even written characters, have an ark for their type.
+This development has been very ingeniously supported by J. P. Lesley, in
+_Man's Origin and Destiny_ (Trubner, London, 1868), a work replete with
+learning, and bold, but somewhat unsound, deductions. This assumed fact
+has also been used in support of the Biblical story of Noah, his ark,
+and the universal deluge--a myth so palpably extravagant, that everyone
+who professes to credit it is compelled to object to some detail, and
+to lean upon some frail reed, with the hope that he may thus be pardoned
+for his credulity. Since the above was written, it has been ascertained
+that the tale of Noah and his deluge is adapted from an Assyrian or
+Babylonian legend, written apparently with a view to make a story
+fitting to the sign of the Zodiac called Aquarius, one to the full as
+fabulous as that of the birth of Bacchus, and the amours of Zeus.
+
+In some instances, moreover, and palpably in those cases where the
+account of the religion of barbarous nations is given by fanatics, such
+as the Roman Catholic invaders of America, or by such conquerors as
+Cæsar and others, who have themselves very hazy notions of their
+own faith, the philosopher feels that the savage is intentionally
+misrepresented; consequently, in these, as in all other instances, it
+behoves the philosopher to examine the evidence at his command with
+critical acumen, rather than accept the statements made by more or less
+careless observers. Endeavouring, therefore, to avoid these difficulties
+as far as possible, let us summarize the result of our reading, and
+record the impressions left upon our mind respecting the faith, ritual,
+and practice of certain modern and ancient barbarians.
+
+Beginning with the vast American continent, we find that the Esquimaux
+appear to have no conception whatever of a Creator, of a future state,
+of a mundane theocracy, or of any unseen agency but good or bad
+"luck." But they, nevertheless, put a certain amount of faith in
+conjurers--cunning men or women who profess to be able to insure them a
+good supply of seals or walrus, and protection from Arctic dangers. For
+such a people as this the wants of the day form the chief, if not the
+only, object of thought; and they resemble lions or eagles, who are now
+all but famished in the hunt for food, and now gorged to repletion with
+the result of their quest. To such a nation, Heaven, as described in the
+Bible, with its sea of glass, its harpists and singers, would afford no
+temptation, and, unless it was furnished with abundance of oily food, an
+Esquimaux would not visit it; nor would the fires and heat of Hell have
+any terrors for one whose torments on earth are connected with miserable
+cold. In practice, the Esquimaux are very much what they are made by
+their neighbours and visitors: they are very decently behaved to those
+who treat them well, and cruel, barbarous, and revengeful to strangers
+after they have themselves been worried by invaders. Alternately
+gluttons and starving they obey the necessities of their existence--they
+eat to keep themselves warm, and they must be anchorets as rigid as any
+Theban hermit whilst they are seeking their prey. With a temperature
+below zero, and winter huts constructed of ice, chastity is almost
+a necessary virtue, and adultery cannot possibly be frequent. Where
+everything of value is rare, covetousness is not common; but if the
+holder of the coveted prize be always alert, it is quite natural that
+murder shall be attempted, either by the thief or his victim. The
+reverence of parents here, as elsewhere, is a necessary accompaniment of
+savage life, and is quite independent of any knowledge of the decalogue.
+To prevent reiteration of this observation, let us consider for a
+moment, the chief if not the main cause, of the reverence given to the
+father, and, more rarely, to the mother in the economy of human life. We
+see that the Almighty has implanted an instinct in one or both parents,
+throughout the larger part of the animal creation, to nourish, guide,
+and teach their young. The duck leads her brood to a pond; the hen keeps
+her chicks from water, but teaches them to pick up seeds, grubs, and
+worms; whilst the cock keeps order amongst the family, The weasel
+teaches its offspring how to attack its prey most advantageously, and
+the eagle instructs her young ones to fly. In like manner, man is at the
+head of his own household; he is the first power to which the young ones
+bow; they know the weight of his arm, and dread his anger, knowing that
+they will suffer from it when it is stirred up. We all know, as a rule,
+that a habit contracted in childhood adheres to us throughout life,
+consequently, the dread of the father which exists in the youth becomes,
+very generally, filial reverence in the man. But we also know that
+almost throughout the animal creation, the young and sturdy males
+will, as they grow up to maturity, fight for supremacy, even with their
+parents. So long as the latter retain the mastery they are respected;
+but as soon as age and its accompanying weakness have made them succumb,
+all filial respect vanishes. If, therefore, a parent, when old, is
+unable to make himself feared by his prowess, revered for his good sense
+or knowledge, or beloved for some faculty which makes him pleasing to
+his family or the tribe, he is neglected, and often sacrificed, so
+that the young shall have only themselves to provide food for. Even in
+Christian England, where filial regard is cultivated as an essential
+part of our religion, we too frequently find that parents are wholly
+neglected by their adult offspring, as soon as they become, from
+sickness, age, or other infirmity, useless members of the family.
+
+Without having ever heard of a law, or set of laws, given in a desert
+from Mount Sinai, the Esquimaux are as moral as modern Christians, and
+more so than the ancient Jews: they certainly have not more gods than
+one, and do not worship any graven image. Amongst them blasphemy is
+unknown. Parents are honoured; chastity is general; murder is very
+rare; theft only exists when strangers come amongst them with valuable
+matters, such as cutting weapons. Amongst such a primitive people false
+witness is unknown, and covetousness only exists in the presence of
+travellers who have well-stocked ships or sledges. But the Esquimaux do
+not keep a Sabbath of rest every seventh day; how, indeed, could they,
+when many of their days have a duration of six weeks--according to the
+Hebrew computation, which measures the day by sunsets. It is clear,
+then, that what many persons designate Christian virtues do not
+necessarily depend upon a knowledge of Jehovah, of Jesus, or of both.
+
+The North American Indian appears to have been, when first discovered,
+wholly without any distinct religious faith. It is true that some
+authors have described him as reverencing his manitou, or great spirit,
+and speaking of some happy hunting ground to which his soul will pass
+after death; but I am unable to find any reliable testimony in support
+of this poetic notion. To me it seems that the Red Indian is nothing
+more than one of a ferocious tribe of men, who, having to subsist by the
+chase alone, bestows all his thoughts upon getting meat, and driving off
+his neighbours from interfering in his lands. To such an one a teeming
+population is equivalent to a diminution in the supply of game, and
+this, again, involves starvation. With him, therefore, the murder of his
+neighbours becomes a matter of necessity, one which may be regarded by
+him as an absolute virtue, a matter of public policy, and essentially
+a moral duty; and as he is little superior to a tiger or a cat, he does
+not scruple to add cruelty to homicide. He who has seen a carnivorous
+beast seize its living prey, disable, without killing it, and then lie
+by and watch its victim, rising now and again to give it a shake, or
+a pat with its claw, can well understand how a Blackfoot Indian might
+gloat over a dying Delaware, or a Mandan torture an Iroquois when he had
+the chance, each regarding the other as men consider wasps and hornets.
+Yet, though without religion, the Indian is not without fear. He is
+terrified by strange noises, and by weird sights; there is a being whom
+he dreads; and there is in every tribe a "medicine man," who is supposed
+to have supernatural power, and to be able to attract good or to banish
+evil fortune from the chief and his people. Practically, the Red Indian
+is as superstitious about lucky and unlucky days as was the Hebrew David
+and the Persian Haman, and, prior to the starting of an expedition, the
+diviner is consulted, who may, possibly, answer in the words of the Lord
+(?) of Judah, "let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the
+tops of the mulberry trees, then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then
+shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines"
+(2 Sam. v. 24).
+
+But though without religion, in the usual acceptation of the word, the
+Indians were not, when first the white man knew them, wholly without
+ritual, or what has been designated a sacred ceremony. The celebration
+to which we refer occurred every year, was conducted by a definite set
+of actors, and was attended to with wonderful reverence. A full account
+of such ceremony is given by G. Catlin, in a work entitled, O Kee Pa
+(Trübner, London, 1867). In it figures a mystic messenger, who comes to
+demand the initiation of the young men of the tribe who have attained
+a fighting age; tents are then prepared, and men and women are duly
+painted and otherwise disguised to represent buffaloes and bugbears,
+the bad spirit, etc.; the main intention of the whole being to test the
+courage, strength, and endurance of the young men by frightful tortures,
+which are too disgusting for description here. At the end of the trial,
+however, each votary sacrifices a joint of the little finger of one hand
+to the bad spirit. At this feast-some doll-like effigies are used to
+mark the "mystery" tent.
+
+Amongst barbarians like these are, it will readily be imagined that
+such virtues as chastity and charity have no existence,--that successful
+theft ennobles the robber, and that the slaughter of an enemy, either by
+treachery or in fair fight, is regarded as a proof of courage, much as
+it was amongst the Spartan Greeks. Polygamy is simply a matter of wealth
+and arrangement, and women are purchased and treated like slaves. It is
+the man's business to hunt and fight, it is the woman's duty to make the
+best or the most of the spoils of the chase.
+
+Yet, with this general absence of all religion, there appears to
+be, here and there, a reverence for certain strange phenomena of
+nature--such as hot or bubbling fountains, sulphur springs, steaming
+geysers, and curious rocks, like the celebrated pipe-stone rock in the
+Sioux territory. From this all pipes ought to be made, there being as
+much of orthodoxy in such bowls amongst the Indians as there is in an
+"Agnus Dei" amongst Christian papists. There is, too, a reverence for
+the dead occasionally to be met with, but it cannot be said to amount
+to worship. In some instances, but I do not find that the custom is
+general, a man is interred with his horse, weapons, and medicine bag,
+as if it was expected that he would live beyond the tomb, and require in
+his other state of existence that which he wanted in this.
+
+What we have said of the North American aborigines applies with equal,
+if not with greater, force to those of the South.
+
+From what the savage redskins are, and have been, during the last two or
+three centuries, a transition to what they have been in the past is very
+natural; and, whilst making the step, the philosopher will be reminded
+of the observation made by some profound observer, to the effect---"go
+where you will, no matter how savage the nation, you will be sure to
+find the remains of a previous empire, nation, or civilization." Vast
+forests, scarcely yet fully explored, cover ancient cities in Ceylon
+and Central America alike, and men, who toiled to build vast temples,
+towers, palaces, and fortresses, are replaced by wild animals. In
+the Bashan of Palestine, primeval houses of stone still stand, where
+scarcely a resident is to be found, and the present inhabitants are far
+inferior to the ancient race that built these enduring dwellings. Thus
+the Abbé Domenech writes (_Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of
+North America_, London, Longman, 1860), vol. I., p. 353--"From Florida
+to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the American soil
+is strewn with gigantic ruins of temples, tumuli, entrenched camps,
+fortifications, towers, villages, towers of observation, gardens, wells,
+artificial meadows, and high roads of the most remote antiquity."
+
+Without entering closely into the nature of the antiquities discovered,
+we may state that they comprise pyramids, cones, obelisks, hills
+surrounded by a deep vallum, like that adjoining Salisbury, and earthen
+constructions analogous to that at Avebury. There is evidence that
+the artificial erections, which were so built as to be visible from an
+enormous distance, were designed, possibly, as cairns, or memorials of
+the dead, but also as spots for sacrificial offerings, resembling those
+called high places in Ancient Palestine, the tumulus over Patroclus, and
+the Scythian mounds in the Crimea. The altars which have been discovered
+are made of baked clay or stone, and have the shape of large basins,
+varying in length from nineteen inches to seventeen yards, but generally
+about two yards and a-half. Under and around the altars calcined human
+bones were found, and sometimes a whole skeleton was met with in the
+tumulus, as if a sacrifice of men attended the funeral rites, as we
+learn from Homer that it did, before Troy, when Achilles directed the
+obsequies of his friend Patroclus. Cremation, as well as sepulture, was
+adopted, and with the dead, ornaments, arms, and other objects, which
+belonged in life to the departed, were buried; amongst these are to be
+reckoned trinkets of silver and of brass, as well as of stone and bone.
+As a proof of the advanced knowledge of the people referred to, I may
+here quote, from memory, a note from Stevens' _Central America_, to the
+effect that the bronze tools found in Yucatan, &c., amongst the quarries
+whence the stone for the ancient temples was procured, are nearly as
+hard as steel, and that a similar bronze is only known to have existed
+in some of the ancient tombs and quarries of Egypt, an observation
+which receives additional value from Domenech's remark, vol. I., p.
+364--"These works of art (arms, idols, and medals, found in New Granada
+tombs) are acknowledged, by the archaeologists of Panama, to possess the
+characteristics of both Chinese and Egyptian art." Here, again, I would
+call my readers' attention to the facts, that in very modern times
+Chinese have migrated to California, Australia, Singapore, and other
+distant localities, and that Fortune found Egyptian curiosities in
+_virtù_, shops in China, whilst Egyptologists have discovered Chinese
+manufactures in Egyptian tombs. The subject of the extent of travel in
+ancient times does not enter into my present plan; but as I am desirous
+to make the mind of my readers expansive enough to receive everything
+which bears upon the history of man upon the earth, I may be allowed to
+sow seed by the way-side, some of which may blossom as "a garden flower
+grown wild." Domenech, in p. 408, vol. I., figures a remarkable stone,
+by many persons supposed to be a hoax or forgery, which was found at the
+base of one of the largest mounds in North America, situated in Western
+Virginia. It lay in a sepulchral chamber, thirty-five feet from the
+surface, was elliptic in shape, two inches and a-half long, two wide,
+and about half an inch thick, and the material was of a dark colour, and
+very hard. The following is a copy from Domenech's work, and, without
+dwelling upon it, we may call attention to the similarity of some of
+the letters with those known to, or used by the Phoenicians, Ancient
+Greco-Italians, and Carthaginians. Like the Newton Stone, in Scotland,
+and some Gnostic gems, it may be said to be learned "gibberish," which
+"the spirits" can read but no one else.
+
+[Illustration: 056]
+
+There is, indeed, much more evidence than is generally supposed to
+connect the ancient mound-builders in America with the inhabitants
+of the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly in their modes of burial, the
+nature of their earthworks, and the style of such ornaments and figures
+as have been found. For example, there is one enclosure described, in
+the centre of which is erected a mound and pillar, precisely resembling
+the linga yoni of the East. In addition to these, carved stones have
+been found, which unite together such Oriental emblems as the sun and
+moon, the Tau, T and the egg, O which together make the well-known
+Egyptian symbol A. Again, Domenech figures some male and female human
+effigies, of whom American savans write that they represent idols of
+sexual design, similar to those exposed in the _Mysteries of Eleusis_,
+one of them being a badly finished image of Priapus. Domenech still
+farther states, on the authority of Cortez, that a form of worship,
+recalling the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, was established in
+America.
+
+Respecting the nature of the religion of the mound builders the Abbé
+writes--"The government of these nations appears to have been theocratic
+or sacerdotal, like that of the Jews, and the religious administrative
+and military power was, probably, vested in one and the same person.
+This is clearly evinced by the taboo, or sacred monuments, being
+combined with those of a purely military character," p. 366. Without
+straining doubtful points too far, we may content ourselves with
+affirming that the researches of Davis and Squire, of Stephens, and of
+Domenech, show that the mound builders of America raised high places
+for sacrificial fires; that they built huge piles of earth over dead
+warriors; and, that during the funeral rites which were observed at the
+obsequies, they immolated certain human victims.
+
+Let us now pause for a moment and consider how much is involved in the
+practice of making a sacrifice by fire, or otherwise, at the burial of
+any deceased chieftain or honoured man. With what idea could the living
+wife join her husband on the funeral pyre in India, or the ancient
+Tartars have slain the horse, slaves, wives, and chief officers of a
+defunct king, burying them all in a vast grave, unless they entertained
+the belief that there was a life beyond the grave? The faith may have
+been of the crudest form, yet the practice evidenced the belief that
+those who died, and were buried together, would arise and live at the
+same time and place, and in the same relative positions which they had
+during life. If this be granted, it demonstrates that the early dwellers
+in America had a higher conception of immortality than had the ancient
+Jews, even although the latter assumed, and pertinaciously persisted in
+the assertion, that they, and they only of all the nations of the
+world, were taught of God--a boast to which a vast number of thoughtless
+Christians give a profound reverence, and most implicit belief.
+
+Without speculating upon the probable connexion between the
+mound-builders and the inhabitants of ancient Mexico, we will endeavour,
+with the aid of Prescott, and other writers, to ascertain something
+of the faith professed by Montezuma and his subjects. Derived from two
+sources, there were two distinct elements in the Mexican religion; one
+of these was gentle and mild as the teaching of Christ, and the other,
+ferocious and cruel, like the practice of such of his followers as
+the sensual Crusaders, the persecuting Popes of Italy, and the brutal,
+money-grubbing Spaniards. The former gradually dried up, like primitive
+Christianity, and the harmlessness of the dove was replaced by the
+ferocity of the wolf. It is in strict accordance with human nature,
+that virtues are harder to maintain than vices, hence malignancy swelled
+itself up and became dominant. The priests of the sanguinary class
+contrived as burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in Judea,
+Greece, Spain, or Modern Rome, and they surrounded their deities with
+conceptions as grotesque as those which are clustered round the Hindoo
+gods of to-day, the divinities of the Greeks and Romans, and the
+innumerable virgins, saints, and martys of mediaeval and modern papal
+Christianity. The power and the inclination to make fetish is certainly
+not confined to African negroes. The Mexicans recognized a supreme
+Creator as the God by whom we live, one who was, for them, omnipresent
+and omniscient--the giver of all good things, "without whom man is as
+nothing." He was said to be "invisible, incorporeal, a being of absolute
+perfection and perfect purity," "under whose wings men may find repose
+and a sure defence." But this deity, though single, was subdivided
+by the Mexican theologians, much in the same way as Jehovah became
+separated into an innumerable host of angels, archangels, and devils,
+and as Zeus was split up into an equally numerous army of gods,
+goddesses, and demigods. The Mexicans had thirteen major, and about two
+hundred minor, divinities, to one or other of whom each day was devoted,
+much in the same way as certain modern Christians believe in one
+Creator, four persons, three of whom are male and the other female,
+seven archangels, and some hundreds of saints, virgins, or martyrs, to
+each of whom one day of the year is consecrated. There are more gods and
+goddesses in the Papal calendar than in that of Ancient Mexico, Greece,
+or even Rome.
+
+At the head of the celestial army was "the god of war," "the patron of
+the kingdom," whose temples were more noble in their barbaric majesty
+than any other, and to whom human beings were sacrificed in abundance.
+They were the noblest creatures that could be found, and in truth, there
+were very few other animals to offer in their place.
+
+This great Mexican divinity was essentially the same as the _Jehovah
+Tsebaoth_ of the Hebrew Scriptures; the Lord of Hosts of whom we read in
+Exod. xv. 3, "The Lord (Jehovah) is a man of war, the Lord (Jehovah) is
+His name;" and in Ps. xxiv. 8, "Who is this King of glory?--the Lord,
+strong and mighty; the Lord, mighty in battle;" and again, the same idea
+appears in verse 10 of the same Psalm; see also 1 Chron. xvii. 24, "The
+Lord of Hosts is the God of Israel." Indeed, we should weary the reader
+if we were to quote all the texts to be found in the Old Testament,
+which prove that the Hebrew Jehovah was as much a god of war as was the
+chief deity of the Mexicans. Modern civilization may frame the belief
+that God is not "the author of confusion, but of peace" (1 Cor. xiv.
+33); but the Hebrews in the East, and the Mexicans in the West, held a
+different opinion. Besides the god of war there was a god of the air,
+who once lived on earth, and taught metallurgy, agriculture, and the
+art of government. He was essentially a human benefactor, who caused the
+earth to teem with fruit and flowers, without the trouble of laborious
+cultivation--his reign was analogous to the golden age of the Greeks and
+Romans. But he was not wholly satisfactory, and was banished; yet he is
+to have a second coming, like Elias, and a modern deity of the Eastern
+world. His portrait is identical, apparently, with the commonly received
+likeness of Jesus. In Christian mythology (see Eph. ii. 2), "the prince
+of the power of the air" is regarded as "the adversary," or a devil.
+No other deities are described in detail by Prescott, but he says that
+every household had its "penates," or household gods. On turning
+to Higgins, who quotes entirely from Lord Kingsborough's _Mexican
+Antiquities_, we find that the Mexicans baptized their children with
+what they called "water of regeneration." Their king also danced before
+his god, as David did, to his chaste wife's disgust, and was consecrated
+and anointed by the high priest with a holy unction as Saul and the
+son of Jesse were. On one day of the year all the fires in the Mexican
+kingdom were extinguished and lighted again from one sacred hearth in
+the temple, which again reminds us of the Vestal Virgins, whose business
+was to keep up a holy fire in Rome, and of the lamp which was to burn
+perpetually in the Jewish temple (Exod. xxvii. 20). At the end of October
+the Mexicans had a feast resembling our "All Souls," or "Saints," day,
+which was called "the festival of advocates," because each human being
+had an advocate in the heaven above to plead for him, which again
+reminds us of Jesus' dictum, that children have guardian angels, who are
+always in God's presence (Matt, xviii. 10)
+
+The same people had a forty-days' fast, in honour of a god who was
+tempted forty days upon a mountain, and thus resembled the Prophet of
+Nazareth. He was called the morning star, and thus is to be identified
+with Lucifer as well as Jesus (Isa. xiv. 12, Rev. xxii. 16), and carried
+a reed for an emblem (see Eev. xxi. 15). The Mexicans honoured a cross,
+and the god of air was represented sometimes as nailed to one, and even
+occasionally between two other individuals.*
+
+     * As we cannot imagine that the Mexicans were aware of the
+     manner in which modern Christians depict Jesus on the cross,
+     we most, I think, seek for some idea which was common to
+     both the East and West. In Payne Knight's work, so often
+     referred to by us, there is a picture which represents a
+     cock with a lingam instead of a head and beak; on its
+     pediment there is in Greek the words, soteer kosmou, "the
+     saviour of the world." This is also an epithet of Siva, and
+     he is sometimes represented as a phallus. In this he is the
+     Asher or Bel of the Assyrian triad, erected higher than the
+     other two. In Christian history the outsiders are said to be
+     thieves, but it was not so in Mexico.    The three crosses
+     are simply emblems of the "trinity."
+
+A virgin and child were also adored, as they were in Babylonia, Assyria,
+Egypt, and Hindostan, and as they are in a great part of Europe at the
+present time. The people believed in vast cycles of years, at the end
+of each of which there was to be a general destruction of life, and a
+perfect regeneration, an idea which Higgins has shown to have existed
+amongst Persians, Romans, and Jews alike. The Mexicans still further
+believed in a threefold future state--a heaven for the brave, and those
+who were sacrificed, there being, so far as I can discover, no abstract
+idea of what we call "virtue"; a hell for the wicked; and a sort of
+quiet limbo for those who were in no way distinguished. Heaven was
+located in the sun, and the blessed were permitted to revel amongst
+lovely clouds and singing birds, enjoying, unharmed, all the charms of
+nature: a conception which is to the full as poetical, and, probably,
+quite as near the truth, as that given in "Revelation." When a man died
+he was burned, and, if rich, his slaves were sacrificed with him, the
+Mexicans, in this respect, resembling the ancient Scythians, with whom
+they had much in common. When the ceremony of giving a name to children
+was gone through, their lips and bosom were sprinkled with water, and
+the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that
+was given to the child before the foundation of the world, so that the
+infant might be born anew, or, in modern terms, regenerated (Prescott,
+ch. 3). Amongst their prayers, or invocations, were the formulas, "Wilt
+Thou blot us out, O Lord, for ever? Is this punishment intended, not for
+our reformation, but for our destruction?" again, "Impart to us, out of
+Thy great mercy, Thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through
+our own merits;" "Keep peace with all;" "Bear injuries with humility,
+God who sees will avenge you;" "He who looks too curiously on a woman
+commits adultery with eyes." These Mexican maxims so closely resemble
+those to be found in the Bible, that it is difficult to believe that the
+Spaniards really told the truth respecting them. The sacerdotal order
+amongst the Mexicans was a numerous one, well arranged and powerful. The
+priests used musical choirs in their worship, arranged the calendar, and
+appointed the time for festivals. They superintended the education of
+youth, and wrote up the traditions, like the "recorders" of the Jews,
+Persians, other Orientals, and Christian monks, and looked to the
+conservancy of the hieroglyphic paintings. There were two high priests,
+who alone had to undertake the duty of offering human sacrifices,
+and these were elected by the king and nobles, quite irrespective
+of previous rank, and, when elected, they were inferior only to the
+sovereign. When reading this, anyone who is familiar with biblical
+history will bethink him of Luke iii. 3, "Annas and Caiaphas being the
+high priests," the plural, not the singular, number being used, and of
+the dictum of Caiaphas, John xi. 50, "It is expedient for us that one
+man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not." We
+may put what construction we please upon these facts, but, whatever
+interpretation we may adopt, we must acknowledge that the Hebrews, at
+the time when our era commences, had two high priests who were concerned
+in human sacrifice.
+
+The priests, in general, were devoted to the service of some particular
+deity, and, during the time of their attendance, lived in the temple,
+celibate; but, when not on duty, they resided with their wives and
+families. Thrice during the day, and once at some period of the night,
+they were called to prayer, much like all the varieties of Christian
+monks and nuns. They were frequent in their ablutions, in which habit
+they may be contrasted with those saintly hermits, who regarded dirt as
+a divine ordinance, and never washed; and they mortified the flesh by
+long vigils, fasting, and cruel penance, drawing blood from their bodies
+by flagellation, or by piercing them with the thorns of the aloe. The
+resemblance of the Mexican sacerdotalism with Jewish and Christian
+customs is thus shown to be wonderful and striking, so much so, that
+the Spaniards started the idea that they had been taught by some
+stray apostle of Jesus. The great cities of Mexico were divided into
+districts, each of which was placed under the charge of a sort of
+parochial clergy, who regulated every act of religion within their
+precincts, and who administered the rites of confession and absolution.
+The secrets of the confessional were held inviolable, and penances were
+imposed, of much the same kind as those enjoined by the Roman Catholic
+Church upon her votaries.
+
+It was a tenet of Mexican faith, that a sin once atoned for, was, if
+repeated, inexpiable a second time; consequently, confession was only
+once resorted to, and that late in life; a good plan, upon the whole,
+for it enabled a man whose days were numbered to get pardon "for good
+and aye." It was also held that sacerdotal absolution was equivalent
+to magisterial punishment. The formula of absolution contained this,
+amongst other things, "O merciful Lord, Thou who knowest the secrets of
+all hearts, let Thy forgiveness and favour descend, like the pure waters
+of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this
+poor man has sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence
+of the sign under which he was born." This idea may well be compared
+with the current doctrine of the phrenologists, many of whom assert that
+a man acts according to the configuration of his brain and cranium, and
+is, therefore, only partially culpable for the commission of certain
+crimes. After a copious exhortation to the penitent, in which he was
+enjoined to undergo a variety of mortifications, and to perform minute
+ceremonies, by way of penance, he was particularly urged to procure,
+with the smallest possible delay, a slave, who was to be utilized in
+sacrifice to the Deity; the priest then concluded with inculcating
+charity to the poor--"Clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, whatever
+privations it may cost thee, for remember their flesh is like thine."
+
+The necessity of sacrifice, as an atonement for sin, forms an essential,
+though bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and
+history has long taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child,
+formed, in the estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one
+of the most acceptable of the forms of homage paid by a human being to
+the Creator. This idea is at the very basis of the Christian theology.
+It has been held, from the time of the apostle Paul to the present day,
+that Jehovah would not look favourably upon mankind until He had been
+propitiated, not by the sacrifice of an ordinary individual, but by the
+murder, in the crudest of modes, of a being whom He personally begat,
+for the purpose of killing him when arrived at maturity. In Hebrews
+x. 12, we find this doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words,
+"this man, after he had offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down
+on the right hand of God," and subsequently, v. 14, "by one offering he
+hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Again, in Heb. ix.
+26, "once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by
+the sacrifice of himself;" and in Heb. x. 10, "we are sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" and in ix. 28, "Christ
+was once offered to bear the sins of many." The philosopher may doubt
+whether the God whom the Christians have made for their own adoration,
+is in any way different to that of King Mesha, who offered up his own
+son in sacrifice, or to the Mexican one, who was contented with the
+blood of a slave.*
+
+     * It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real
+     attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or
+     to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the
+     usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and
+     hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen
+     deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general
+     belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual
+     sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and
+     offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who
+     was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was
+     beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror,
+     unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the
+     worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to
+     see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were
+     condemned to this penance, very little would any of them
+     talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are
+     lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and
+     texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to
+     look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for
+     worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest
+     manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns
+     which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In
+     "Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines--
+
+     "Let the water and the blood
+     From thy riven side that flowed,
+     Cleanse from sin and make me pure."
+
+     Another equally popular hymn begins
+
+     "From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows
+     Of water and of blood,
+     More healing than Bethesda's pool,
+     Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood
+     Shall never lose its power..." and again--
+
+     "There is a fountain filled with blood,
+     Drawn from Immanuels veins,
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood
+     Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+     No congregation of Christian, or any other men, would
+     tolerate for a moment the introduction into divine worship
+     of a bath of blood, into which all those should plunge who
+     desired salvation. Not one would endeavour to wash his sins
+     away in a sanguine stream, drawn from any source whatever.
+     The horror which would be produced by the doctrine that such
+     things are necessary to appease our God, would make every
+     thinking being detest it. Yet, when we only play with the
+     idea, we can talk of such matters with holy complacency. If
+     any Christian wants to test his faith, let me advise him to
+     get a basinful of blood and place it in his bed-room, and
+     say twice a day, when looking on it, that's the stuff which
+     propitiates my God! It would not be long ere he saw the
+     absurdity of his theological tenets, and the coarseness of
+     the hierarchy which invented so frightful an idea of the
+     Omnipotent.
+
+For the education of the youth of Mexico a part of the temples was
+allotted, where the boys and girls of the middle and higher classes were
+placed at an early period--the girls to be taught by the priestesses,
+the boys by priests; and from a note in Prescott's corrected edition,
+1866, p. 22, we learn that the former were even more generally pure
+in life than, we have reason to believe, the Egyptian priestesses and
+Christian nuns proved themselves to be, Father Acosto saying, "In truth,
+it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so
+great force amongst these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they
+will serve the Devil with so great vigour and austerity, which many
+of us do not in the service of the most high God, the which is a great
+shame and confusion." It is curious to notice how the Christian priest
+considers that chastity may be a snare of the Devil, as well as an
+ordinance of Jehovah. The boys, in these scholastic parts of the sacred
+temples, were taught the routine of monastic discipline--to decorate the
+shrines of the gods with flowers, to feed the sacred fires, and to chant
+in worship and at festivals. The Abbé Hue, in an account of his travels
+in Thibet and Tartary, has told us repeatedly of the similarity between
+the rites, practices, and ceremonies of the Romish Church and those in
+use amongst the followers of the Great Lama. It is equally marvellous to
+discover that the Mexican ritual resembles both. The Papalist endeavours
+to explain this, by the monstrous assumption that both Tartary and
+Mexico were evangelized by two different Christian Apostles. But it
+seems to us more probable that the Romanists, who are known to have
+adopted almost every ancient ceremony, symbol, doctrine, and the like,
+have unknowingly copied from travelled Orientals, than that the cult of
+the people of Thibet has travelled into America, as well as into Europe.
+Into the identity of the Tartars with the Red Indians it is not my
+intention to enter. The higher Mexicans were taught traditionary lore,
+the mysteries of hieroglyphics, the principles of government, and
+such astronomical and scientific knowledge as the priests would, or,
+probably, could, impart. The girls learned to weave and embroider
+coverings for the altars of the gods. Great attention was paid to
+morality, and offences were punished with extreme rigour, even with
+death itself. Youths were taught to eschew, vice and cleave to virtue,
+to abstain from wrath, to offer violence or do wrong to no man, and to
+do good where possible.
+
+When of an age to marry, the pupils were dismissed from the convent, and
+the recommendation of the principal thereof often introduced those
+whom he regarded as the most competent of the students, to responsible
+situations in public life. Such was the policy of the Mexican priests,
+who were thus enabled to mould the mind of the young, and to train it
+early to the necessity of giving reverence to religion, and especially
+to its ministers--a reverence which maintained its hold on the warrior
+long after every other vestige of education had been effaced. In this
+matter America showed an astuteness equal to that exhibited by Papal
+hierarchs in Rome.
+
+To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed, for the
+maintenance of the priests, and these glebes were augmented by
+successive princes, until, under Montezuma, they were of enormous
+extent, and covered every district of the* empire. The priests took the
+management of their property into their own hands, and treated their
+tenants with liberality and indulgence. In addition to this source of
+income, they had "first fruits," and other offerings, dictated by piety
+or superstition. The surplus was distributed in alms amongst the poor,
+a duty strenuously prescribed by their moral code. Thus we find, adds
+Prescott, whom we are closely, and almost verbatim, following, the
+same religion inculcating lessons of pure philanthropy and of merciless
+extermination--an inconsistency not incredible to those familiar with
+the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the early ages of the
+Inquisition.
+
+In the course of a not very long life, I have heard, upon many
+occasions, the argument that the persistency of the Roman Catholic
+Church, in spite of its abominable corruptions, its utter contempt for
+truth, its outrageous cruelty, its glaring superstition, its intolerable
+arrogance, and its rapacious covetousness, proves that it is, and must
+ever be regarded as a divine institution. But this argument loses all
+its weight when we find that the religion of the Mexicans, which the
+Spaniards declared to have sprung from the Devil, had the virtues, as
+well as many vices, of the Roman faith. If one came from Heaven, the
+other could not have come from Hell. The simple truth seems to be, that
+crafty and designing men are always able to find dupes, and that red men
+and black, the haughty Italian and the lively Frenchman, the stolid boor
+and the polished orator, may all suffer alike from an education which
+has taught them, in youth, to believe in the reality of a revelation
+given to a class of human beings who, by its means, assume to be divine.
+
+The Mexican temples--_teocallis_, or "houses of God "--were very
+numerous, indeed there were several hundreds in each of the principal
+cities of the kingdom; but we need not describe them more minutely than
+to say that they were truncated pyramids terminating in a level surface,
+upon which blazed the sacred fire. All religious services were public,
+as in Roman Catholic countries. There were long processions of priests,
+and numerous festivals of unusual sacredness, as well as monthly and
+daily appropriate celebrations of worship, so that it is difficult to
+conceive how the ordinary business of life was carried on. The sun was
+an universal object of reverence. At a period not long prior (about 200
+years) to the Spanish conquest, human sacrifices were adopted for the
+first time, and they speedily became common, both as regards repetition
+and the numbers of victims slaughtered. In some instances the oblations
+terminated with cannibalism. The burnt offering was roasted, not
+incinerated, and, like the Paschal lamb, was devoutly devoured. Sexual
+rites, symbols, or worship, appear to have been very rare, for I can
+only find one or two doubtful references to them. In this matter the
+Mexicans were far superior to all the old Shemitic and Egyptian, as well
+as the Hindoo, races. So far Prescott.
+
+Whilst writing the foregoing, it has required some determination not to
+comment very extensively upon the facts recorded, for they do, indeed,
+set the thoughtful mind on fire. Amongst the questions which they
+provoke, the first is, "how far the accounts given to us are to be
+depended upon?" In answering this query, we readily recognize that our
+authorities can only have been Spaniards, who were, to a great extent,
+implacable enemies of the Mexicans, to a great extent ignorant of their
+language, and bitterly hostile to them in matters of religion. But this
+recognition leads us to trust the accounts which they give, for, if the
+invaders had been able to treat the natives as unmitigated savages,
+they would have had the more excuse for pillaging their sacred stores,
+temples, and palaces, and exterminating the pagan worshippers. Again, if
+the picture thus painted were a fancy one, having no real existence save
+in the mind of the writer, we should be able readily to recognize its
+counterpart in the Spanish history of the Peruvians, just as we are able
+to ascertain the identity of the authorship of certain anonymous works
+by Lord Lytton, by the existence therein of his marked peculiarity of
+style. The best testimony, however, to the substantial truth of the
+accounts given of the nature of the Mexican faith, is to be found in
+various minute episodes of their general history, in the behaviour of
+the Aztecs with each other, and towards their invaders, and the general
+customs which are recorded. That the Spanish writers had a real belief
+in the account of which Prescott has given us so admirable a resume, we
+may feel assured, for one of them introduced the naïve remark, "that the
+Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which God
+had taught to Christendom."
+
+When once we have satisfied ourselves of the truth of the Spanish
+accounts of the ancient Mexican institutions, we find ourselves in the
+presence of some very striking religious and political facts. We see
+before us a nation who had attained to as distinct a conception of the
+Almighty as we have ourselves; who had discovered a heaven, a hell,
+and an intermediate place, without the assistance of Jew or Greek,
+Babylonian or Persian; who had instituted a sacerdotal class, and made
+provision for their subsistence, without any assistance from Melchizedek
+or Moses; who had adopted a principle of national education long before
+such a thing was thought of in England, or in Europe. In fine, the Aztec
+faith and policy were, at least, as praiseworthy, if not far nearer to
+perfection, than the faith and policy which obtained in Christian Italy,
+France, and Spain, during the dark and the middle ages. There is not,
+indeed, any one point in which the contrast is not favourable to the
+Aztecs, except in the single point of human sacrifice. Christianity can,
+apparently, make a heavy accusation against the Aztec religion on this
+point, and may fairly seem to reproach it for that frequency of human
+sacrifice, and even cannibalism, which formed, at the time of the
+Spanish conquest, an essential part of the Mexican faith.
+
+Yet, when we dive below the surface, and examine this matter with
+philosophic care, we readily see that the charge is deprived of much of
+its weight. Who, for example, can compare the practice of the people
+of Montezuma with that of Spaniards under the sway of Ferdinand and
+Isabella, without seeing that in Spain there were human sacrifices,
+which were conducted with far more cruelty than those in Mexico. We
+find, in the first place, that the custom of sacrificing human
+beings was no more an essential part of the Aztec, than it was of the
+Christian, faith; it was only in existence two hundred years before the
+Spanish invasion, and many centuries, bloodless of human offerings, had
+passed away ere the period of what we may term brutality arrived. Just
+so it was with the religion of Jesus; for centuries it was unstained by
+blood, and comparatively meek and humble, yet, when its priesthood rose
+to power, they indulged in human holocausts on a most extended scale.
+The Spaniards give accounts of thousands of victims offered up at once
+to the Mexican god of war; but what are these in comparison to the
+victims of Paris, sacrificed by Papists on the eve and day of St.
+Bartholomew, and those at Beziers.
+
+It may be doubted by the philosopher whether the Christian religion
+was not, from its very commencement, as intolerant of opposition and as
+persecuting as it became hereafter.
+
+The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree, which did not bear fruit out
+of its season (Mark xi. 13, 14, 21), shows that even he, whom the
+Christians take for an example, was quite capable of that pettiness,
+which visits upon the innocent the vexation felt by one's self. But when
+we read the story in Acts, v., about Ananias and Sapphira, we see, in
+all its naked horror, a fearful Christian persecution. The victims were
+done to death for deceiving an apostle. But why should we be surprised
+at the followers of "the Son" doing that which "the Father" ordained? Is
+there any human king who ever promulgated a more bloody order than did
+Jehovah Sabaoth, the God which, amongst the Hebrews, corresponded to the
+Mexican god of war, when he commissioned Samuel to say to Saul (1 Sam.
+xv. 3), "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they
+have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel
+and ass!" After such a destruction of the Midianites as is narrated
+in Numb, xxxi., the fearful slaughter, effected by Crusaders, of Jews,
+Turks, and heretics is scarcely worth mentioning.
+
+There was a teacher who remarked, "he who is without sin among you,
+let him first cast a stone" at the culprit; and surely, when our Bible,
+which is treasured by so many as the only rule of faith amongst us,
+details such horrible religious slaughters as are to be found in its
+pages, and abounds with persecuting precepts, we had better not talk too
+much about Mexican sacrifice. Was there any Aztec minister so brutal in
+his religious fury as Samuel was (1 Sam. xv. 33), who hewed Agag into
+pieces? The Mexican was merciful to his victim; the Hebrew was like
+a modern Chinese executioner, who kills the criminal by degrees. His
+cruelty has been emulated in Christian France, and under the reign of
+two of her kings, we have seen a Ravaillac and Damiens tortured slowly
+to death, by means too horrible to dwell upon.
+
+The writers upon Mexico tell us of a lovely youth, who was educated for
+a whole year to become a victim, and how, at the end of that time, he
+was feted, adorned, and even worshipped; how four of the most charming
+maidens of Mexico were selected as his wives, and how he remained in the
+enjoyment of the highest honour until the time of his sacrifice arrived,
+and we feel due horror at the recital. Yet, what is it compared with the
+accounts we read of miserable men and women racked, in hideous dungeons,
+by the most horrible tortures which an enlightened Christian ingenuity
+could devise, and who then, with limbs whose loosened fibres could
+scarcely sustain their bruised and mangled bodies, were led, or driven
+at the sword's point, to a stake fixed in the ground, there to be tied
+and burned, whilst devout Christian multitudes stood around, rejoicing,
+like demons, over the hellish scene.
+
+No one can gloat over the imaginary torments of Hell without being a
+persecuting devil at heart.
+
+Surely the Christians have too much sin amongst themselves to cast a
+stone at the inhabitants of Mexico.
+
+We find a strong offset to the horror of Aztec cruelty in the very
+Bible, which we regard as the mainstay of our religious world. What,
+for example, is the essential difference between a Mexican monarch
+sacrificing one or ten thousand men taken in battle, and Moses
+commanding the extermination of the inhabitants of Canaan, and only
+saving, out of Midian, thirty-two thousand virgins, that they might
+minister to the lust of his Hebrew followers? What, again, are we to say
+of David's God, who would not turn away his anger from Judah until
+seven sons of the preceding king had been offered up as victims? And
+lastly--thought still more awful! what must we say of the fundamental
+doctrines of Christianity, that Jehovah Himself sacrificed His own Son
+by a cruel death; and not only so, but that He had intercourse with
+an earthly woman, and had thus a son by her, for the sole purpose of
+bringing about his murder? Can we object to religious cannibalism in the
+Aztec, when Jesus of Nazareth is said to have urged his followers to eat
+his body and to drink his blood; and when hundreds of priests have shed
+the blood of millions of men, who, disbelieving the power of any man
+to convert bread and wine into flesh and blood, have refused to profane
+their lips by a cannibal feast?
+
+Having now examined the nature of the Aztec faith, let us, for a while,
+linger upon the fruits which it produced. Who can read the mournful
+story of the fall of Mexico without contrasting, in his own mind, the
+respective characters of the conquerors and the conquered? In every
+so-called Christian virtue Montezuma proved himself to be superior
+to the lying, unscrupulous, rapacious and covetous Cortez. Even the
+greatest fire-eater who ever lived cannot fail to see that the Spaniard
+would not have been victorious over the Mexican, if the latter had been
+equally well equipped with arms, armour, and horses, as the former was.
+We can only tell vaguely what was the condition of Anahuac prior to
+the invasion of Cortez; but, from the testimony given by Prescott, we
+believe that there were annual wars between adjoining tribes, who met
+solely to obtain from their enemies victims for sacrifice, the battles
+always ending with the day, and never being resumed for conquest, or for
+the plunder of maidens to be an indulgence of a victor's lust. What the
+condition of the same country under Christian rule has been, and still
+is, every reader of modern and contemporary history knows; and he sees,
+with regret, that Jehovah Sabaoth, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy
+Spirit, with an army of saints, angels, virgins, and martyrs, as well as
+ancient gods of the Eastern Hemisphere are, if they are to be judged by
+the acts of their worshippers, as cruel, revengeful, and malignant, as
+were the deities of the Mexican kingdom.
+
+The followers of the cross will appear to be quite as despicable when
+we contrast them with the Peruvians, as they were when compared with the
+inhabitants of Anahuac.
+
+There is something very fascinating in the history of Peru, as recorded
+by the Spanish authors, and rendered into the English language by
+Prescott. There is no account of ancient or modern people extant which
+has interested me so much as those of the realm of Manco Capac. To hear
+of a nation, separated by an ocean, we may, indeed, say two, and a vast
+continent, from the civilized portions of Asia, Europe, and Africa,
+located in a mountainous tract, where soil and water were scanty, and
+locomotion was rendered difficult from the configuration of the land;
+whose country was surrounded by strong natural enemies of all kinds;
+whose people were unable to use such agents as steel and gunpowder, and
+who were yet enabled to construct vast cities and temples, to quarry,
+remove, and use in buildings, fragments of rock thirty-eight feet long,
+eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick, and to transport these to
+distances varying from 12 to 45 miles, to form good roads along the
+mountain tops, for an extent of nearly two thousand miles, necessitating
+the filling up chasms of enormous depth, and the making of suspension
+bridges over rivers whose stream was too furious to bridge in the
+ordinary European fashion, is perfectly astonishing.
+
+The far-sighted Incas, to make these roads still more useful,
+accompanied them by the erection of large residences, like modern
+European bungalows in India, fit for the reception of a monarch with
+his army, and by vast magazines of provisions, sufficient to supply
+the wants of a warlike expedition, or of a population starving from an
+accidental failure of crops. The Peruvians, moreover, surrounded their
+chief towns with strong walls, in comparison with which the Cyclopean
+constructions of the old world seem small, stunted, and almost
+contemptible. It appears, in addition, that they knew how to form
+long tunnels, either for the passage of troops, for the benefit of
+travellers, or for the conveyance of water. All these, I say, are enough
+to fire the imagination of the dullest reader of history, and to shake
+the belief that civilization cannot be developed in the midst of what we
+have been accustomed to call savage life, and can only be brought to
+a moderate perfection by the influence of the Hebrew and Christian
+writings.
+
+Our wonder is not, however, bounded by the physical results produced by
+the industrious population of Peru, it is still farther exercised by
+the descriptions which are given of their wonderful domestic and foreign
+policy. It would be difficult to conceive, and still more difficult
+to carry into execution for many generations, a plan of government so
+eminently fitted to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number,
+as that which the Incas elaborated. The rulers were specially educated
+to fulfil their duties in every respect, and were not permitted, as
+modern princes are, to enter into the ranks of chivalry until they had
+undergone a public examination, which was conducted by the oldest and
+the most illustrious chiefs. The trial included tests of every warlike
+and manly quality. It lasted thirty days, during which time every
+competitor fared alike, living on the bare ground, and wearing a mean
+attire. Those who passed the ordeal honourably were admitted formally
+into the knightly order, the ceremony including an investiture of the
+youth with sandals put on by the most venerable noble, equivalent to
+the donning of the _toga virilis_ in Ancient Rome, and having the ear
+pierced with a golden bodkin by the reigning monarch. To take off the
+shoe was a ceremony exacted from all those who came into the Inca's
+presence, to have it put on by a grandee was great honour.
+
+That the rulers might understand the condition of the kingdom, they
+systematically travelled, much in the same way as James V. of Scotland,
+and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, are said to have done. The Incas, in
+addition to their other plans for good government, inaugurated a
+postal system: divided their peoples into tens, fifties, hundreds, five
+hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, much in the same way as the
+Saxon King Alfred is said to have done, whose plan is, in many respects,
+conserved to the present day; and the head man of each division was in
+all respects its ruler, to repress crime, to announce to his superior
+officer all unusual occurrences, and to report, generally, the actual
+state of his division to the chief above him. All legal trials,
+or appeals, were decided in less than five days, and a code was
+established, which all might readily know, a thing only attained by the
+French under the first Napoleon, and long desired by England, but in
+vain. Punishments were never attended with torture, or unnecessary
+cruelty. In this respect the Peruvians differed from every other
+civilized nation of which I have yet read. The Chinaman methodically
+inflicts painful punishments which have only been surpassed by the
+followers of the "gentle Jesus." The Persians and Turks have, certainly,
+shown their capacity for giving pain to those who are brought before
+their ministers of justice, and the Red Indians, during their day,
+reduced the art of tormenting themselves, but, still more, their
+prisoners, almost to perfection. The Babylonians had discovered that a
+death of agony could be accomplished by means of myriads of ants. It was
+reserved to Christians, eager to uphold the faith promulgated by a God
+of mercy, to find out the most exquisite of torments. Even Frenchmen,
+who have for centuries assumed the position of leaders of civilization,
+were, until the great Revolution beat down their kings and prelates,
+more ruthlessly cruel than the most fierce redskin. The Inquisition,
+which arrogated to itself the power to keep the Christian religion pure,
+was distinguished by the atrocity with which it gave anguish to its
+victims, and it held its head high until it was put down, we may hope
+for ever, by fiery republican enthusiasts, whom priestly demons, baulked
+of their prey, declared to be devils incarnate. More modern hierarchs
+are obliged to content themselves with making a hell for their
+enemies--with foretelling a variety of punishments to be inflicted
+hereafter, which cannot be enforced here.
+
+The Incas exacted an annual report of the lands possessed by
+individuals, with their condition as regards culture; and also of every
+family. A register of births, marriages, and deaths was regularly kept,
+so that the government might always know the real condition of the
+nation, soil, and people.
+
+As far as possible, families remained constant to their business, thus
+forming a sort of trade caste, but not a rigid one. The registers were
+always submitted to the perusal of the Inca, and, subsequently, kept in
+the capital.
+
+By the arrangement of "posts," and roads, an insurrection or invasion
+was readily discovered, and it was speedily announced at the capital
+city. The march of troops to suppress it, under these circumstances, was
+easy and immediate, for every requisite for war was always at hand. In
+all circumstances, plundering by the soldiery, whether at home or in an
+enemy's country, was severely punished, and war was undertaken solely
+with a view to peace. If a neighbour was turbulent, he was conquered,
+and absorbed into the old state, and if a province was rebellious, its
+worst inhabitants were carried away to some other locality, where their
+power for mischief would be curtailed; a plan which, we are told, was
+pursued by the Assyrian Shalmaneser (2 Kings xvii. 6), indicated by
+Sennacherib (2 Kings xviii. 32), and carried out by Nebuzaradan (2 Kings
+xxv. 11.). In fine, we may repeat, that it would be difficult for a
+modern philosopher to conceive a better model of a really paternal
+government than that which, it is asserted, was found by the Spaniards
+when they invaded the kingdom of the Incas. Of the respective value of
+Christian Spanish government, and of the so-called Pagan Inca rule, none
+can doubt, who reads the present by the light of the past. The Peruvians
+kept up their roads, protected their subjects, respected life, and
+fostered everything which tended to increase the general happiness
+and prosperity of the kingdom--all these objects, have been for a long
+period neglected, and Peru, which was under the Spanish rule, one of
+the blots on the face of civilization and Christianity, is only
+just emerging from a long night, under the influence of Republican
+institutions.
+
+Our next step will be to ascertain the religion of the people whose
+political condition contrasts so favourably with that of every other
+nation of whom travel and history have informed us. But we may, in the
+first place, remark, that there is no absolute or necessary connection
+between the happiness, or otherwise, of a nation and its dominant
+religion, as Buckle has already shown in his _History of Civilization_.
+The writer of to-day can find abundant evidence in recent history to
+illustrate the proposition here advanced. He can point to France,
+and its condition under a sacerdotal rule, prior to the time of the
+Revolution, and contrast it with its state since its rulers have
+tried to make the people prosperous and happy, independently of their
+religious faith. He can point to Austria and Spain, when they were laid
+at the feet of the Pope of Rome, and everything was made subservient to
+the demands of a powerful hierarchy, and to the same states now, when
+religion is subordinate to the material welfare of the majority. Who,
+that has read the story of modern Italy, or heard of the atrocities
+committed under the priest-led Ferdinand of Naples--better known in
+England by the sobriquet of Bomba; who, that knew anything of his
+brigand-rearing towns and cities, and has visited them since they have
+been ruled constitutionally, and with the priestly power curbed by a
+strong hand, can doubt which set of directors are the best? Christian
+Rome was never so happy under her Popes as she is now, when the
+so-called head of the church is subordinate to the chief of the state.
+But of all priest-ridden countries, one which would never have borne the
+popish sway as she has done, if her chieftains had been sensible and
+her people thoughtful, Ireland deserves our commiseration the most.
+Hibernian hierarchs of the Roman faith designate their country as a
+land of saints. So, perhaps, it is, if by the word is meant admirers of
+laziness and filth, who consider that attention to religion justifies
+murder, and every brutal crime against purse, person, and property.
+
+As a rule, admitting of no exceptions, civil government has preceded
+sacerdotal rule, and a nation is generally in a weakly and fallen
+condition as soon as its affairs are directed by the priestly class.
+When first the Aryans invaded Hindostan, the hierarchy was second to the
+warrior caste; but as the first aggrandized their power, the second lost
+their supremacy, and under Brahminic rule the foundation was laid for
+pusillanimous and indolent luxury in the warrior. The power to plan,
+and the nerve to enforce laws, for the benefit of all classes of the
+community, is very different to that which is requisite to exalt and
+enrich the priestly order; and the well-being of a state depends far
+more upon the exercise of the first than of the second. Whenever,
+therefore, the executive government is entirely independent of the
+influence of the hierarchy, or is itself the head of that caste, it can
+produce good results for the nation, no matter what may be the dogmas of
+the priesthood, or the nature of the gods which are reverenced.
+
+Still following Prescott as our guide, we find that the sun was the
+great god of the Peruvians, and that the Incas assumed the title of his
+true children. To that luminary a vast temple was built in Cuzco, more
+radiant with gold than that of Solomon at Jerusalem. To Cuzco, as to the
+capital of Judea, the name of Holy City was given, and to it pilgrims
+resorted from every part of the empire. Blasphemy against the sun was
+considered as bad as treason against the Inca, and both were punished
+with death. A province, or city, rebellious against the sun was laid
+waste, and its people exterminated. When conquest over a new tribe
+subjugated it to Peru, the people were compelled to worship the sun,
+temples to whose honour were erected in their territory. To these was
+attached a body of priests, to instruct the people in the proper form
+of adoration, which consisted in a rich and stately ceremonial. The
+divinities of the conquered people were removed to Cuzco and established
+in one of the temples, where they took order amongst the inferior
+deities of the Peruvians.
+
+But, though the sun was unquestionably worshipped, Prescott observes,
+ch. iii, "it is a remarkable fact that many, if not most, of the rude
+tribes inhabiting the vast American continent had attained to the
+sublime conception of one Great Spirit, the Creator of the universe,
+who, immaterial in his own nature, ought not to be dishonoured by an
+attempt at a visible representation, and who, pervading all space, was
+not to be circumscribed within the walls of any building, however grand
+or rich."
+
+As civilization progressed, we are told that a separate order of men,
+with a liberal provision for their subsistence, was set apart for
+religious service, and a minute and magnificent ceremonial contrived,
+which challenged comparison with that of the most polished nations of
+Christendom. This was the case with the natives of Quita, Bogota, and
+others inhabiting the highlands of South America, but especially with
+the Peruvians, who claimed a divine origin for the founders of their
+empire, whose laws rested on a divine sanction, and whose domestic
+institutions and foreign wars were directed to preserve and to propagate
+their faiths. Religion was the basis of their polity, the condition of
+their social existence. The government of the Incas was essentially a
+lay theocracy.
+
+The Peruvians believed in the future existence of the soul and the
+resurrection of the body. They had faith in a Hell, located in the
+earth's centre, and a Heaven, in which the good would revel in a life
+of luxury, tranquillity, and ease. The wicked, however, were not to be
+hopelessly damned and tormented for everlasting, but were to expiate
+their crimes by ages of wearisome labour. They believed, also, in an
+evil principle or spirit, called Cupay, to whom, however, they paid no
+more attention than an ordinary Christian does to the Devil.
+
+The great men were entombed after death, and were commonly buried with
+the chief things which they required on earth. Sometimes a chieftain was
+buried, not only with his treasures, but with his wives and domestics.
+Frequently, over the dead, vast mounds were raised, which were
+honeycombed, subsequently, with cells for the burial of others. Cairns
+were as common in that part of the New World as they have been in the
+Old, and the majority of buildings found at the present day in Peru have
+been connected with funereal pomp.
+
+The supreme Being in Peru was named Pachacamac, "he who gives life to
+the universe," and Viracocha, of which the only translation given is
+"foam of the sea." To him one temple only was raised, which is said to
+have been built prior to the accession of the Incas, and largely visited
+by vast numbers of distant Indians. The sun, as we have noticed, was
+chiefly venerated, and to him a temple was erected in every city and
+large village, and to him burnt offerings were made in abundance. The
+moon was also venerated, being connected with the sun as his wife--and
+Venus, called by the name of Chasca, "the youth with the long and
+curling locks"--was also regarded reverentially as the page of the sun.
+Temples were dedicated to thunder and to lightning as God's ministers,
+and the rainbow was regarded as an emanation from the great luminary.
+In addition to these, the elements, the winds, the earth, the air, the
+great mountains and rivers, were considered as inferior deities, to
+which were added the gods of the conquered races. The chief temple of
+the sun was extraordinarily gorgeous. It was constructed of stone, and
+was so finely executed, that a Spaniard declared that only two edifices
+in Spain could, in the stone work, be at all compared with it like
+Italian and other churches, it contained many small chapels and
+subordinate buildings, and the interior was dazzling with gold. On its
+western wall the deity was emblazoned as a human face surrounded with
+rays of light, just as the sun is personified amongst ourselves.
+The figure was engraved on a massy gold plate, thickly powdered with
+emeralds and precious stones. This was so situated in front of the
+great eastern portal, that the rays of the morning sun, falling upon it,
+lighted up the whole temple with a wondrous sheen; but every part of
+the inner walls blazed with gold. The roof was, however, "thatch" alone.
+Adjoining the temple of the sun were fanes of smaller dimensions, for
+the worship of the moon, stars, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow.
+
+"All the plate, ornaments, and utensils of every description
+appropriated to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver. Twelve
+immense vases of silver (said to be as high as a good lance, and so
+large that two men could barely encircle them with outstretched arms)
+stood on the floor of the great saloon, filled with Indian corn. The
+censers for the perfumes, the ewers which held the water for sacrifice,
+the pipes which conducted it through subterraneous channels into
+the buildings, the reservoir that received it, even the agricultural
+implements used in the gardens of the temple, were all of the same
+rich material. The gardens, like those belonging to the royal palaces,
+sparkled with gold and silver, and various imitations of the vegetable
+kingdom. Animals, also, were to be found there, amongst which the llama,
+with its golden fleece, was most conspicuous, executed in the same
+style, and with a degree of skill which, in this instance, probably did
+not surpass the excellence of the material" The reader of Prescott will
+find that he has not adopted this account without carefully estimating
+the value of his authorities, and I believe that he may be fairly
+trusted. The various reports, given by Spanish writers, of priests of
+the grand temple, seem also to have been carefully estimated by the
+historian, and the number which they amounted to is put down at four
+thousand at the least.
+
+The high priest was second in dignity only to the Inca, and he was
+generally closely related to this ruler. The monarch appointed this
+Peruvian pope, who held office for life. He had the appointment of
+inferior priests, but all must be from the sacred race of Incas. The
+high priests of the provinces were always of the blood royal. The
+hierarchy wore no peculiar badge or dress, nor was it the sole
+depositary of learning, and it had not to superintend education, or to
+do parochial work. These duties were performed by others of the Inca
+class, all of whom were holy, though not, so to speak, in "holy orders."
+The priest's business was to minister in the temple; his science was
+confined to a knowledge of the fasts and festivals to be observed in
+connection with religion, for these were very numerous, and demanded
+separate rituals. The four principal festivals were solar, i.e., at the
+equinoxes and solstices, that of Midsummer being the grandest, on which
+occasion every one who could find time and money enough to do so visited
+the capital city. The feast was preceded by a three days' fast, and no
+fires were to be lighted during that period.
+
+When the day arrived a vast array of people, dressed in their handsomest
+apparel, crowded the streets and squares, waiting for the rising of the
+sun. When it appeared shouts of joy, heightened by instrumental music,
+were raised in swelling tones, until the whole orb had ascended above
+the horizon, after which a libation was poured of fermented liquor,
+and all the nobles and the king repaired to the great temple, each
+individual, except members of the royal family, removing their sandals
+as they entered. After prayer came sacrifice, animals, grain, flowers,
+and sweet-scented gums being the prescribed offerings; sometimes a
+child or lovely maiden was also immolated, generally to commemorate a
+coronation, the birth of a royal heir, or a great victory. Cannibalism
+never followed the sacrifice; and it may be added, parenthetically,
+that when the Incas conquered and annexed man-sacrificing and man-eating
+tribes, they always abrogated the custom, and with far more decision
+and firmness than Britain has shown in abolishing self-immolation of
+Juggernaut pilgrims in her Indian Empire, and the burning of widows
+with their dead spouses. Some may doubt whether a conqueror ought to
+interfere with the religious customs of the vanquished, but few would
+plead for the continuance of such customs as human sacrifice and
+cannibalism.
+
+The animal usually sacrificed by the Peruvians was the llama, and
+the priest who officiated drew auguries from the appearance of the
+intestines. To effect the oblation a sacred fire was now kindled by a
+concave mirror which acted as "a burning glass," precisely as was done
+by Numa in the days of Ancient Rome. If the sky was clouded, and no rays
+could be collected, fire was produced by friction. When lighted, the
+fire was committed to the care of the virgins of the sun, who were
+bound to keep it up for the ensuing year. After the single sacrifice
+was completed, great numbers of other animals were slaughtered, and a
+regular carousal began, attended with music, dancing, and drinking,
+that lasted for many days, during which period all the lower orders kept
+holiday. In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival,
+the invading Spaniards saw a striking resemblance to the Christian
+communion, and they recognised a similar likeness in the Peruvian
+practices of confession and penance. The virgins of the sun were called
+"the elect," and were young maidens taken from their homes at an early
+age, and introduced into convents, where they were placed under the care
+of elderly matrons, who taught them their religious duties, and how to
+spin and weave, embroider and adorn hangings for the temples, and to
+frame garments for the Incas. Their work was such, that it was found to
+be superior to any which the Spaniards had ever seen, or were themselves
+able to produce. The virgins were separated wholly, not simply, from the
+world in general, but also from their own relations and friends--none
+but the king and queen could enter into their convent. The closest
+attention was paid to the morals of these maidens, and visitors were
+sent every year to inspect the institutions, and to report on the
+state of their discipline; a plan similar to which has been repeatedly
+proposed in Christian England, yet never sanctioned by the parliament!
+If a virgin was discovered in an intrigue she was buried alive, her
+lover was strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was
+razed to the ground, and sowed with stones, to efface even the memory
+of its site. These solar attendants were all of royal blood, and were
+estimated to number fifteen hundred; but to provincial convents the
+inferior nobility were allowed to send their daughters, and sometimes
+a peculiarly lovely peasant girl was admitted. The convents were all
+sumptuously furnished. But, though virgins of the sun, they were brides
+of the Incas, and we cannot fail, when we read of the vast harem of the
+Peruvian monarch, to think of the female establishments of the Jewish
+Solomon, of the Persian Ahasuerus, and that of Louis XV. of Christian
+France. If at any time the Inca reduced his harem, the superfluous
+concubines were restored to their homes, swelling with the importance
+which they had gained by their familiarity with the monarch.
+
+Polygamy was permitted. Matrimony was effected by the Inca, or other
+chief man, joining the hands of the parties. The king usually espoused
+his own sister, but no other person was allowed to do so. No marriage
+was valid without the consent of parents. As a general rule, all unions
+were effected on the same day of the year, and thus the wedding of
+couples was followed by general rejoicing.
+
+The genius of the Peruvian government penetrated into the most private
+recesses of domestic life, allowing no man to act for himself, even in
+those personal matters in which none but himself, or his family, could
+be interested. No Peruvian was too low for the fostering vigilance
+of the government; none was so high that he was not made to feel his
+dependence upon it in every act of his life. The government of the Incas
+was the mildest, but the most searching and beneficent, of despotisms.
+
+We now, but with great reluctance, leave our friendly guide, the
+accomplished Prescott, and ask ourselves, once more, the lessons which
+we have learned from the departed races of the vast American continent.
+Can anyone doubt that one of the most conspicuous results obtained
+is, that Christian rule, and the Christian doctrine, have not proved
+themselves, in any respect, superior to the Incas' government and their
+solar religion? Who can read of the civilization, the theology, and the
+practice of the Peruvians, without believing one of two things--the one,
+that Jewish ritualism, and the majority of Christian teaching, is of
+human invention; the other, that the Almighty has revealed His will in
+the Western as well as in the Eastern Hemisphere? Can any thoughtful
+man believe that the brutal, covetous, lying Spaniards, who broke,
+with impunity, every commandment promulgated in those Gospels, to whose
+authority they professed allegiance, and upon which their faith is
+founded, were better men, or more favoured by the Lord, "who loveth
+righteousness and hateth iniquity," than were the gentle Peruvians, who
+fell before them as lambs and sheep before wolves and tigers? Surely the
+story of the Incas should make Christians, in all ages, blush for their
+inferiority to those, amongst whom neither Moses, Samuel, and other
+so-called prophets, Jesus, nor any of his apostles, preached; and more
+strongly should it convince us that the wish to do good on a large scale
+can come otherwise than by the Gospel. If grace, and peace, and love
+came by the Nazarene alone, how is it--and let us ponder over the
+question deeply--that all Christian countries have been, and that some
+are still, conspicuous for the brutality of their political and priestly
+governments, for the frequency with which they make war, for their
+ferocity in the destruction of religious enemies, and for the intense
+hatred evinced against rival sects, by those who call themselves the
+representatives of the Prince of Peace; whilst, on the other hand,
+a nation who never heard of the son of Joseph or of Mary, should be
+conspicuous for the virtues which ought to adorn the soldiers of the
+cross, but do not? Surely, if the saying be true, "by their fruit ye
+shall know them," the denizens of the old world must be children of the
+Devil, who do the work, of their father, whilst certain of the nations
+of the new world, as it is called, were really children of the light,
+abounding in love, charity, and goodwill towards all men.
+
+To me it is astonishing how thoughtful men, who have read accounts of
+the Mexicans and the Peruvians, can continue to believe that the Bible
+is the book of God, written by holy men, whose thoughts and diction were
+essentially those of the third person in the Trinity. Who can assert
+that Abraham and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, were taught of God, and that to
+the Hebrews alone has the Creator revealed His will? Who can see, in
+the sensual king David, a man after God's heart, and applaud the brutal
+murder of Agag, the destruction of the priests of Baal, by the orders
+of Elijah, and the extermination of the Baalites in Israel by Jehu?
+Compared with such wretches as these the Incas were angels. They had not
+left to them the bloody legacy which has come to the Christian world by
+means of the Old Testament: they had not been taught to believe that the
+Almighty revelled in the blood of human beings: they never had, amongst
+their sacred songs, verses like the following--"that thy foot may be
+dipped in the blood of enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same"
+(Ps. lxviii. 23).
+
+Ah, it is time for civilized men to cease their admiration for a book
+which has produced such frightful fruits, and which has converted
+millions of human beings into incarnate fiends.
+
+The Vedas and the Shasters--the writings of the Buddhists, and those of
+the Parsees and the Chinese, contain, nowhere, such a justification
+of wholesale murder, as do the Scriptures of the Jews and of the
+Christians.* From these have been drawn the power to persecute, and, if
+possible, to exterminate those who worship God in a different fashion
+to those in power. Calvin was as bad as Torquemada; and, even at the
+present time, it is only public opinion that prevents fanatics, like the
+early New Englanders, from reducing their Christian hate to practical
+torture. Everywhere the professed followers of Jesus assume the power
+to torment their opponents, whenever they can do so without breaking the
+civil law, and there are few pulpits from which the voice of revilement,
+contumely, and denunciation is not repeatedly heard. The Romans abuse
+the Anglicans; the Establishment sneers at Dissent; Nonconformists
+censure all churches; and all libel those whom they call Free Thinkers
+and Atheists. To find "toleration" in matters of religion, one must seek
+amongst the Deists, or amongst those who refuse to see in the Bible the
+revealed will of God to man.
+
+     * See Matthew x. 34, 85; Luke xii. 49, 51, 52, 53.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Can civilization grow out of barbarism? Dislike of progress,
+     especially if mental. Rediscovery of ancient knowledge.
+     Advance and retrogression. China and Japan--influence of
+     strangers. Decadence of nations--followed by a rise. The
+     Shemitic and Negro races. Varied religious ideas. The Negro
+     Fetish and Obi. Jewish, Arab, and Christian communication
+     with the dead. Australian idea about white men. Ideas of a
+     soul and futurity amongst the Aryans and Egyptians. Their
+     priesthood. The Aryans Monotheiste. An Aryan hymn. Max
+     Müller and Talboys Wheeler. Aryan conceptions compared with
+     Psalm civ. 1-4. Monotheism of the Egyptians.   Shemitic
+     religions.
+
+At one period of my life I entertained the idea that civilization never
+had grown, nor ever could grow, out of barbarism. Perhaps I have not yet
+wholly abandoned it. The considerations which the question involves are
+all but infinite. It is doubtful whether we can reduce them into shape
+without writing an extensive treatise. We will, however, attempt to do
+so, and present the subject to our readers to the best of our ability.
+
+As far as our own personal and historic experience goes, we find that
+man has no natural propensity to learn beyond that which he has received
+simply as an animal. With him school is a hateful place, and education
+is a painful process, even in the midst of the highest civilization we
+see individuals who cast from them all the luxuries of life, and descend
+voluntarily to a level scarcely superior to that of the brute creation.
+But those who take kindly to education, and consent to try and learn
+everything which the teacher presents to their notice, are bounded by
+the amount of knowledge possessed by the instructor, who cannot impart
+to others information in matters of which all are ignorant. It is true
+that I once read a question propounded by his schoolmaster to one of my
+sons, which ran--"Enumerate upon paper all the capes, bays, and rivers
+of England that you don't know by name, and describe the seas which you
+have never heard of." Without dwelling upon the anecdote farther than
+to say, that it points out the absurdity of the idea that education
+of itself advances knowledge, we may pass on to remark, that even in
+nations, whose intellect is highly cultivated, the propensity to advance
+in knowledge is singularly small. Throughout the old world an inventor
+is usually regarded as a visionary, or a lunatic, and flouted by all his
+contemporaries.* From the time of Aristotle and Hippocrates, scarcely
+any advance was made in philosophy, and, throughout Europe, the
+fourteenth century was as barbarous, if not indeed more so, than the
+first of our era; and to such a dark age there is a strong clerical
+party in Great Britain which desires us to return.
+
+     * A man who had travelled much once said to me,--"I will
+     tell you the main difference between a Yankee and an
+     Englishman. If you inform the latter of some new discovery--
+     or propose the use of some recent invention for his own
+     benefit--he will tell you either that the thing is old, or
+     worthless. On the other hand, if you recount to the former
+     what you have told the latter of, his rejoinder will be, I
+     can improve upon that." This is true, and we are now
+     repeatedly adopting from the United States discoveries of
+     various kinds, which we rejected when offered to us in the
+     first place.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the propensity of cultivated nations to remain
+quiescent, there do appear, from time to time, individuals who,
+being discontented with things as they are, endeavour to bring about
+improvements in the arts, the sciences, and the general conditions of
+life. The recognition of a want, is an incentive to a thoughtful mind
+to supply the exigency. Whenever an individual endeavours to attain
+a definite end, he exercises his mind, not only in what he has been
+already taught, but what he can observe beyond that; he rakes up, if
+possible, the experience of others, studies their proceedings, and
+experiments with a definite object, and ponders upon the affinities,
+nature, and the like, of every substance which he surmises may be of
+service to him. When, by these means, he has obtained his purpose,
+he will repeatedly find that he has done no more than rediscover a
+something which was known thousands of years before his time. Without
+a doubt, much of the philosophy, science, art, religion, &c., of the
+present day, is due to a close observation and an attainment to the
+knowledge possessed by our predecessors. "Is there any thing whereof it
+may be said, see this is new?--it hath been already of old time, which
+was before us" (Eccles. i. 10).
+
+If this be true, even though it may only be so to a partial extent, it
+is clearly more philosophical to believe that some primeval men were
+created with a considerable amount of knowledge, rather than that all
+were savage, barely, if at all, superior to monkeys, and that one or
+more of these, gradually elevated their race, by degrees so slow, as to
+be imperceptible in less time than many thousand years.
+
+This side of the argument receives corroboration when we study the
+history of such semi-civilized countries as China, and such barbarous
+regions as those of Africa and Australia. In none of these parts do
+we see any general propensity to advance. In the first we see a
+retrogression; there is now no effort to repair ancient roads which
+have been worn away by centuries of traffic, to restore the old temples,
+towers, and landmarks, erected when time was younger, or even to keep
+up the teachings of Confucius. A similar apathy existed amongst the
+Japanese--yet no sooner do the civilized nations of Europe show the
+rulers of China and Japan that it is necessary for them to improve, if
+they desire to retain their power, than they attempt to learn the arts
+which have enabled their rivals to overcome them. In both cases, the
+progress is recognized as due to the interference of a nation, superior
+for the time being, to that whose education has been faulty. Advance,
+then, in such countries, is clearly due to foreign influence, rather
+than to an innate propensity to general, mental, scientific, or
+practical development.
+
+But, on the other side, it may be alleged that the African has been in
+existence from time immemorial--that he has been in contact with the
+civilization of ancient and modern Egypt--with Christianity--with the
+ancient Tyrians and Carthaginians--with the Arabs--with the Spaniards,
+Portuguese, and British, and yet the African tribes remain almost as
+savage now as when they first were known. Similar remarks apply to
+the inhabitants of the Andaman Isles, of the vast islands of Borneo,
+Celebez, Papua, New Guinea, and others.
+
+Yet in many places, now considered barbarous, we see the remains of
+previous empires--and when we are able to find some comparatively
+authentic history which tells of the overthrow of a powerful kingdom,
+it is clear that the civilized people have usually been destroyed by the
+barbarian. The wealth of Rome tempted the hordes from the inhospitable
+north, just as the gold of Mexico and Peru were the causes of their
+decadence under the Spaniards, whose people were in themselves scarcely
+superior to the troops led by Alaric, Genseric, and other so called
+barbarians. Yet we know, as in the case of Spain herself, that decadence
+from civilization to comparative barbarism may be due to causes inherent
+in the people and its governors, wholly independent of foreign conquest.
+This decadence is due to the bestial propensities of man being allowed
+to dominate over the intellectual, and the result is the same, whether
+the animal passions be cultivated by a debased and degrading policy of
+monarch and priest, or by the indolence of each individual.
+
+By developing the train of thought thus indicated, we imagine that the
+philosophical reader will conclude that amongst men, some race, family,
+or tribe, has been created with intelligence, as much above the rest of
+their kind as the elephant is superior to the hippopotamus, and the dog
+to the cat, and that others are generically as low as is the Australian
+"dingo" in the canine race. Those once perfect may deteriorate, yet
+carry with them the power of rising again--whilst those originally low
+never rise at all, no matter what example may be set them, unless force
+is used to make them learn. To these we must add a third set, specially
+to include the American, for we have no evidence whatever that the
+civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian was anything more than a
+restoration of the scientific knowledge of a more ancient people,
+possibly of an Aryan stock. Who that is acquainted with the Shemitic
+race can fail to see in its people the type of an ancient condition
+which has decayed, until, like a fallen gentleman, it can only show what
+once it was, by conserving and exhibiting a few ornaments of no value,
+save from their age, but whose sons may yet become princes in their
+paternal domains? Who that studies the negro in Africa, America, and St.
+Domingo, can fail to see that he is, or, at any rate has hitherto shown
+himself, almost wholly incapable of development as a philosophic man?
+And who can read the pages of Prescott without recognizing the fact that
+some of the ancient inhabitants of America inaugurated--unassisted, as
+we judge by any example from others--a style of religion and government
+of which the world has hardly, if at all, seen an equal? Yet it is
+remarkable, that both the Mexican and Peruvian traced their laws and
+institutions to strangers who came amongst them, as Oannes did to the
+Babylonians, and who taught them what arts, religion, and science they
+themselves had. The subject of centres of human life into which our
+considerations have drawn us, is by far too vast for discussion here.
+It involves the study of geology, of anthropology, of glossology,
+of navigation, of physical geography, of climate, of the laws of
+reproduction, of the influences of climate over animals, and of diet
+upon man. Into all these we dare not enter: we shall confine ourselves
+rather to considering the religious ideas of the lowest of the known
+races of mankind; and then proceed to those which have been held by what
+we may call the oscillating people, i.e., those vibrating repeatedly
+between a state of empire and one of slavery, like the people of
+Hindostan, Babylon, Judea, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Egypt.
+
+When we endeavour to ascertain the religion of the negro, by which term
+we include all the black native tribes of Africa, we find ourselves
+almost in the position of a modern chemist seeking for the philosopher's
+stone. In no single book, and I have read very many, can I find any
+trustworthy evidence of the negro having any religion at all. It is true
+that travellers in Abyssinia, and those who are now returned from their
+successful expedition against Magdala, tell us that in Abyssinia there
+is a form of religion which is evidently a corrupt form of Christianity,
+but with this exception, the blacks seem to have no idea of that
+congeries of fact and fiction, dogma, ritual, and practice, which passes
+current for religion in more civilized countries. Yet though they have
+no definite idea of a Creator, and the way in which He works throughout
+the universe, they have a dread of some unseen power, and, like a number
+of frightened children, dread the effects of "fetish," and the power of
+the Obi or Obeah man. When the mind is predisposed to fear, and it is so
+amongst the lower animals as well as in man, it is astonishing at what
+contemptible objects one may stand aghast. I can vividly remember being
+sent, whilst a very young child, with a message from an aunt, at whose
+home I was staying, to the maid, who was washing in an outhouse, but ere
+I reached the door of the latter, I was terrified at a head which seemed
+to be rising from the ground, Such was my horror that I ran away, too
+proud to scream, yet almost fainting with horror. To me that ancient
+battered barber's doll was "fetish," and if my friends had determined to
+cultivate the timidity which I then showed, it is quite possible that to
+this day I might have a dread not dissimilar to that of the African.
+As it was, my aunt told me that what had scared me, was only a piece of
+carved and painted wood, and so put me upon my mettle, that I delivered
+my message and gave the image a kick in the face; yet my valour was
+short lived, and during the rest of my sojourn I dared not venture
+within sight of the bugbear. To all intents and purposes that human head
+was, in my estimation, the guardian of the garden--its presence made all
+within its influence under taboo--had I ventured to tell a lie, or to
+have been naughty, I cannot conceive that any punishment would have been
+greater than being doomed to sit in the presence of the weird image.
+Hence I can easily understand the abject terror of the African at
+"fetish," and his dread of the Obeah man, who asserts that he can direct
+upon whom he will the power of the unknown god. So great is the fear of
+this negro magician, and so common is that fear to man in general, that
+we sometimes find the white man as full of it as the black. I have had,
+for example, under my own care, an Englishman of good education, who,
+whilst superintendent of a Jamaica plantation, became so cowed by "Obi,"
+that he was obliged to give up his position and return to England,
+literally insane upon the subject of "fetish" and "Obeah," and wholly
+unfitted for any work whatever.
+
+The objects to which the name of "fetish" is given are very numerous--a
+rock, a stone, a tree, a pool, a dried monkey, an alligator, man, or
+skull--anything will suit the purpose. One which is said to be very
+popular amongst chieftains is prepared somewhat in the following
+manner:--The head of a father is removed after death, and so placed,
+that as the brain decays and softens, it may fall into a receptacle
+already half filled with palm oil or other grease. The material so
+formed, consisting to a great extent of the thoughtful organ of the
+sire, is then supposed to give his spirit to the son, whenever the
+latter smears himself with it, or takes it as a potent medicinal spell.
+The head thus placed becomes the royal "fetish," and the king goes to
+take counsel from it just as ancient priests inquired, or pretended to
+inquire, from the god or lord of some shrine or oracle. I cannot charge
+my memory with everything that has been at one time or another regarded
+as an object of wonder, worship, or "fetish," but I have an indistinct
+recollection that a musical box has been venerated by Africans, as much
+as the Ancilia, the Palladium, the Diana which fell down from Jupiter,
+the Caaba or black stone of Mecca, the ark of the covenant, the brazen
+serpent, the wood of the true cross, the nails which pierced Jesus,
+and the handkerchief which was used to wipe the face of the suffering
+Nazarite, all of which have been sacred amongst civilized nations, and
+are still adored by some. It would be difficult for a philosopher to
+draw a distinction between an African "fetish" and a Papal relic. There
+is no virtue which the Romanist has attributed to old bones, old nails,
+old shoes, old coats, old houses, old staircases, old bits of wood, old
+links of chains, old hairs, old statues, &c., that has not been equally
+attributed by negroes to some absurd fetish in Ashantee, Dahomey, or
+elsewhere.
+
+In some parts of the vast African continent, however, there seems to be
+an indistinct idea of a life after death, and when a great man dies,
+or is killed, his wives, and many of his slaves, are sacrificed for his
+future use, and vast human sacrifices are made annually in his honour,
+that the departed may hear, from time to time, of the welfare of those
+whom he has left behind. Feeling indisposed to regard this practice
+as the offspring of religious faith, I would compare it with the crude
+conceptions of some of the lowest class in Europe and America, aye, of
+some cultivated intellects as well, who profess to be able, by means
+of _media_, to communicate with the dead, or who send messages to
+their departed relatives by friends that are dying. The most remarkable
+development of this idea which I have yet met with has recently occurred
+in France, where a young man attempted to murder a beautiful young
+woman, to whom he was a total stranger, the reason he assigned being,
+that he intended to commit suicide immediately after the murder, so that
+he might enter the future world with a pleasant companion.
+
+We can scarcely regard the persons figuring in the following true story
+as being very much superior to the King of Dahomey. In a well-cared
+for English village a poor woman was about to die in the full odour of
+Protestant sanctity. In youth she had lost one leg, and now had disease
+in the other. To her came an old woman and said,--"I hear thou's goin'
+to dee Betty, and that thou's goin' to heaven--at least parson says
+so--when thou's got there, willee tell my owd man that I've just bought
+that field as he set his heart on." "Oh dear," said the dying woman,
+"how can I go stumping all about heaven with my legs in the state
+they're in." "Well, you can tell him at anyrate if you happen to see him
+go by!"
+
+Passing from the African, let us now say a word or two about the
+Australian. It is, I think, Mitchell, who states, in an account of his
+travels in that country, that the white men were used in a manner so
+considerate, in some instances, indeed, so kindly, that he was induced
+to inquire into the cause. He found that these friendly tribes were
+in the habit of eating their defunct relatives--being always short of
+provisions, they used man meat, as do other starving creatures when they
+devour their like--and they cooked the body much in the same way as we
+do dead pig. By scalding the carcass, the cuticle and the black layer,
+called _rete mucosum_, was removed, and the corpse became white. This
+gave the people the notion that Europeans were their own dead relatives
+returned from the spirit world. Sir G. Gray also, in his account of an
+expedition to the north-west coasts of the same vast island, describes
+how all the people with whom he came into contact believed in the
+power of sorcery or witchcraft. Without extending our inquiry into the
+undeveloped religious ideas of other barbarians, we may affirm, from the
+preceding examples, that there is, even amongst the lowest human beings,
+some idea of a future state, and of the existence of some unseen power,
+which may work mischief upon themselves or their friends. Beyond these
+vague notions the savage who has neither been taught, nor inherited the
+power or propensity to learn, rarely, if ever, passes.
+
+If, then, the surmise to which we gave utterance awhile ago is founded
+in truth, we may fairly endeavour to ascertain what is the race, or
+the people, which have been born with a higher religious development, a
+greater capacity for learning, and a higher appreciation of the value of
+agriculture and civilization than the rest of the world's inhabitants.
+
+We now find ourselves on the threshold of a question which has, for many
+years past, divided the scientific world, viz., Was there originally one
+human couple only, or were there many intellectual centres? Into this
+matter it would be unprofitable to enter, for to give an account of the
+Chinese, Egyptian, Aryan, American, and Shemitic races, would require
+many huge volumes. It will, probably, be permitted to me to omit from
+the inquiry all but Aryans and Egyptians. I select these because I
+have, in the preceding volumes, descanted largely upon the faith of the
+Babylonians, Assyrians, Tyrians, and others, and because I believe that
+these ancients have done very much to modify the faith of Europe. If
+time and opportunity permitted, I fancy that anyone might make a
+most interesting analysis of that which Europe owes to the Shemites,
+Egyptians, and Aryans respectively; but it is beyond our powers at
+present to go into the whole subject. The volumes which have recently
+been published about the Ancient Hindoo religion may be counted by
+dozens, and the writings of Egyptologists are almost equally numerous.
+We must, therefore, content ourselves with a reference to a few main
+points.
+
+It seems to be an undoubted fact, that both the Egyptians and Aryans
+recognized the existence of a soul in human beings, and believed that it
+survived the dissolution of the body in some state, whose position and
+physical condition were unknown. They held, moreover, that the locality
+and condition of the spiritual part of man after death depended upon
+the actions of the individual during life. Both people believed in the
+influence of prayer, of sacrifices, of a maceration, or torturing of the
+fleshy body, and they had, moreover, each of them, a priestly race,
+who regulated festivals, ordained ceremonies, and prescribed everything
+which those who regarded their spiritual welfare should do. I believe
+that the Egyptians were, in reality, monotheistic; but my authority for
+the idea has escaped me. It is certain that the ancient Aryans were so,
+and I cannot do better than refer my readers to the _History of Sanscrit
+Literature_, by Max Müller, and the first vol. of the _History of
+India_, by Talboys Wheeler. Yet, as the first is out of print, and the
+second a volume of considerable size, it will, perhaps, be judicious if
+I quote some passages from both. The following hymn, translated by M.
+M., p. 559 sq., is, to my own ideas, far more grand in conception than
+any other which I have read, and shows a depth or sublimity of thought
+that could only be attained by a profoundly intelligent intellect.
+Moderns might equal it, none could surpass it. Speaking of the
+beginning, the words run, "Nothing that is, was then; even what is not,
+did not exist then." The poet then proceeds to deny the existence of
+the sky, and of the firmament, and yet, unable to bear the idea of an
+unlimited nothing, he exclaims, "What was it that hid or covered the
+existing? what was the refuge of what? was water the deep abyss, the
+chaos which swallowed up everything?" Then his mind, turning away from
+nature, dwells upon man, and the problem of human life. "There was no
+death, therefore there was nothing immortal There was no space, no life,
+and lastly, there was no time--no difference between day and night--no
+solar torch by which morning might have been told from evening. That One
+breathed breathless by itself, other than it, nothing since has been.
+That One breathed and lived; it enjoyed more than mere existence; yet
+its life was not dependent upon anything else, as our life depends upon
+the air we breathe. It breathed, breathless. Darkness there was, and all
+at first was veiled in gloom, profound as ocean without life." Müller
+then rather describes what the poet means than gives his words; I will,
+therefore, adopt now, for the rest of the hymn, the metrical version,
+which he gives at p. 564:--
+
+     "The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+     Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+     Then first came Love upon it, the new spring
+     Of mind; yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+     Pondering this bond between created things And uncreated.
+     Comes this spark from earth,
+     Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+     These seeds were sown, and mighty power arose,
+     Nature below, and Power and Will above.
+     Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?
+     Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+     The gods themselves came later into being.
+     Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+     He, from whom all this great creation came.
+     Whether His will created or was mute,
+     The Most High seer, that is in highest heaven,
+     He knows it; or, perchance, e'en He knows not"
+
+One more hymn is even more distinct in its monotheism, p. 569. "In the
+beginning there arose the source of golden light. He was the only born
+Lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He who gives life. He who
+gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow
+is immortality; whose shadow is death.... He who, through His power, is
+the only King of the breathing and the awakening world. He who governs
+all--man and beast.... He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power
+the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are,
+as it were, His two arms.... He through whom the sky is bright, and the
+earth firm. He through whom the heaven was 'stablished, nay, the highest
+heaven. He who measured out the light in the air.... He to whom heaven
+and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly.
+He over whom the rising sun shines forth.... Where-ever the mighty
+water-clouds went, where they placed the seed, and lit the fire, thence
+arose He who is the only life of the bright gods.... He who, by
+His might, looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave
+strength, and lit the sacrifice. He _who is God above all gods_.... May
+He not destroy us. He, the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous,
+who created the heaven. He who also created the bright and mighty
+waters." In this hymn I have only omitted the repeated question--Who is
+the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+Of the high antiquity of these productions no competent scholar
+entertains a doubt. It is not certain how many years before our era it
+was composed, but it is considered that it was prior to B. C. 2000, long
+before the time when the ideal Moses is said to have written, and _à
+fortiori_ anterior, by at least a thousand years, to the authors of the
+Book of Psalms.
+
+Talboys Wheeler remarks, p. 27--"Having thus sketched generally the
+individual character of the leading deities of the Aryans as they appear
+in the Rig Veda, it may be advisable to glance at that conception of One
+Supreme Being, as in all and above all, which finds full expression in
+the Vedic hymns. Upon this point the following passages will be found
+very significant:--'Who has seen the primeval being at the time of His
+being born? what is that endowed with substance that the unsubstantial
+sustains? from earth are the breath and blood, but where is the
+soul--who may repair to the sage to ask this? What is that One alone,
+who has upheld these six spheres in the form of an unborn?'" Then
+follows the hymn just quoted from M. Müller.
+
+I may add that the so-called gods Indra, Agni, Surya, the Maruts, &c.,
+are only personifications of the abstract powers of nature, the sky,
+fire, the sun, the winds, &c. These are the same conceptions as are
+referred to in Ps. civ. 1-4--they are not deities, but ministers.
+
+It will probably be said by the orthodox that these descriptions of the
+creation and the Creator are mere efforts of the human mind, and not the
+products of "revelation." We grant it at once, and answer, why, then,
+should the comparatively miserable conceptions of one or more Hebrews,
+who knew nothing of a soul or a future life till they had learned it
+from the Chaldeans or the Persians, be regarded differently? Was the
+Jewish ignorance the result of Divine "inspiration?" Did the Devil give
+to the heathen the knowledge of Satan's origin and power? If so, why did
+the Jews, and why do Christians, adopt it?
+
+I have already mentioned that the Aryans believed in the efficacy
+of prayer to their gods: they offered to them, much as we do now,
+supplications for rain, abundant harvests, prolific cattle, bodily
+vigour, long life, numerous progeny, &c., just as did, very rarely, the
+seed of Abraham.
+
+We may now make some quotations from the Egyptian Ritual for the Dead
+(Bunsen's _Egypt_, Vol. V.). "O soul, greatest of things created" (p.
+165); "I am the Great God, creating himself" (p. 172); "Oh Lord of the
+great abode, Chief of the gods" (p. 177). Throughout this invocation,
+however, the lord of the universe seems to be spoken of as the sun under
+various titles. There is frequent reference to the danger of the soul
+falling into the power of some malignant deity, and orthodoxy is secured
+by addressing every good god by his or her proper title. There is no
+grand conception anywhere, and the endless repetitions disgust the
+ordinary reader. I must add that the sun, Osiris, and the male organ,
+are spoken of as emblematic of each other.
+
+If we next turn to the Shemitic religions, we have to contend with the
+difficulty produced by the paucity of written records, and the doubts
+which exist about certain epithets that relate to the gods. As far as I
+can discover, there was an idea of a Supreme Being, whose name was Jeho.
+Io. Iou., or the like, and Il or El. His ministers were the sun, moon,
+planets, constellations, and stars. His emblems were the sexual organs,
+and worship was, to a great degree, licentious. There was no conception
+of a spiritual life after death, or of a state of future rewards and
+punishments. Sacrifice was thought much of, but I doubt whether there
+was anything like what we know as prayer. At any rate, in all those
+parts of the Bible which seem to be the oldest, there is a singular
+absence of any formula or command for supplication. Solomon's prayer
+is comparatively of modern date. Indeed, this vacuity is implied in the
+expression of one of Jesus' disciples, "Teach us to pray, as John
+also taught his disciples" (Luke xi. 1), thus showing clearly that the
+practice of prayer was not a Judaic, i.e., Mosaic one.*
+
+     * As a friend, who has been kind enough to assist me to
+     correct these sheets in their passage through the press,
+     considers that I ought to give some reasons for the
+     assertion made in the text, the following information is
+     appended:--
+
+     I.   There are, in all, about a score of different words in
+     Hebrew which have been translated, "prayer," "I pray,"
+     "praying," &c. These are--(1) ahnah or ahna, (2) begah, (3)
+     ghalah, (4) ghanan, (5) loo, (6) lahgash, (7) na, (8)
+     gathar, (9) pagag, (10) pahlal, (11) tztlah, (12) seeagh,
+     (13) shoal, (14) tephilah.    The rest are different forms
+     of the same roots.
+
+     II.  These words do not, except in a few instances, really
+     bear the signification of "prayer" or "intercession," which
+     is given to them in the Authorised English Version of the
+     Bible; as any one may convince himself by consulting
+     Wigram's Hebrew concordance.
+
+     Thus, No. 1, in three instances, is translated in the A. V.
+     by the interjection "or,(OL)" No. 2, in the A. V. is once
+     used as "praying," but in other parts as "seeking" for
+     persons, "desiring" or "requesting," and "making." No. 8 is
+     translated in various parts of the A. V.    "I am weak" "I
+     fell sick," "was not grieved," "a parturient woman crying,"
+     "to put one's self to pain," "is grievous," "hath laid," "is
+     my infirmity," and these meanings are far more common than
+     the signification of "prayer." No. 4 is only used twice, and
+     is in one place translated  "by showing mercy," and in the
+     other by "making supplication." No. 5 is translated "O
+     that," "peradventure," "would God that," "if," "if haply,"
+     "though," and only once "I pray thee." No. 6 is translated
+     "enchantment," "orator," "earrings," "charmed," and once
+     only "prayer," with the marginal reading "secret speech."
+     No. 7 is in one place "now," in another "Oh," "go to," as
+     well as "I pray," and this in the same sense as we should
+     use the words to a child "I wish you would be quiet" No. 8
+     is generally used in the sense of "intreaty" or "prayer,"
+     but it once is found as "earnest," and "multiplying words,"
+     as in a Litany. No. 9 is used to signify "he came,"
+     "reached," "thou shalt meet," "fall upon," or "kill,"  "he
+     lighted" on a certain place,  "they met together," and in
+     the 53d chapter of Isaiah the same word is used in verse 6,
+     "for the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," and
+     in verse 12, for "and made intercession for the
+     transgressors!" No. 10 is used almost exclusively for
+     prayer, but it is only found six times in the whole
+     Pentateuch, in one of which it is read "I had no  thought"
+     in the A. V. No. 11 is only found twice, once in Ezra and
+     once in Daniel, and signifies "prayer" in both. No. 12 has
+     many interpretations in the A. V., viz., "meditation,"
+     "speaking," "talking," "complaining," "declaring," in one
+     instance only is it translated "pray," and that in the
+     apparently important text Ps. lv. 17, "Evening and morning
+     and at noon will I pray."   As a substantive the word is
+     rendered as "complaint," "talking, meditation,"
+     "babbling," and only once "prayer," and that in Ps. lv. 2,
+     "Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer." No. 13 is generally
+     translated "ask," as we should remark, "well, if he asks me
+     what must I say?" "beg," as "he shall beg in harvest;"
+     "consulted," in the text "he consulted with images,"
+     "salute," "to salute him of peace;" "enquired," "Saul
+     enquired of the Lord;" "wished," "and wished in himself to
+     die;" "lent," "I have lent him to the Lord," "so that they
+     lent unto them." No. 14 is used exclusively for prayer, but
+     the word is not to be found in the whole of the Pentateuch.
+     III. There is reason to believe that the most important of
+     these words have come from the Persian, a language allied to
+     the Sanscrit;  and if so, it is clear that the idea of
+     prayer was adopted by the Jews after they were patronised by
+     the conquerors of Babylon.    Some of the other words are
+     Aramaic, and probably even more modern than the rest.    For
+     example, No. 10 is compared by Furst in his Hebrew and
+     Chaldee Lexicon, to the Sanscrit phal, and No. 8 may also be
+     derived from the Persian, and a Sanscrit root gad,  which
+     signifies "to speak to," or "call upon,"    Anahf No.  1, is
+     Aramaic.
+
+I think that it was Mons. Weill, in his remarkable book called Moise et
+le Talmud, who first drew attention to the influence of the Talmudists
+upon the Jewish Scriptures. He pointed out that in the Mosaic law there
+was no idea of prayer, intercession, or pardon; everything was based
+upon the "lex talionis," an eye was to be paid for with an eye, murder
+was to be avenged by murder, and ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and other
+transgressions were to be atoned, i.e., satisfaction was to be given by
+sacrifice and payments to the priest or tabernacle. But when the Jews,
+after their contact with the Chaldeans, Medea, Persians, Greeks, and
+Romans, began to study theology, two sects arose--the Talmudists, who
+explained away the older Scriptures, interpolated narratives, or simply
+texts therein, so as to suit their purposes; and the Sadducees, who
+refused to adopt as matters of faith anything which was not taught by
+Moses. The first was the strongest sect, and composed the majority in
+the Sanhedrim. They thus had power over the sacred canon, and could
+reject manuscripts or adopt them according as the purposes which were
+aimed at were served. The Talmudic interpolations are supposed to b«
+recognised chiefly in the more modern parts of the Old Testament,
+in Ezra, Nehemiah, the second Isaiah and Jeremiah, in the books of
+Zechariah and Malachi, in the Chronicles, Daniel, in many Psalms, more
+sparsely in the older histories, but very largely in the Pentateuch.
+From these considerations, from the absence of any order in the Mosaic
+law for the priests to offer any supplication, and from, the general
+absence of prayer from the sacrifices of all nations, we may conclude
+that "intercession" formed no part in the Jewish religion in the early
+days of its existence.
+
+When working upon this subject I endeavoured to examine the curious
+Iguvian tables, on which Aufrecht, Eircher, and Newman have bestowed
+such pains. These are, I believe, the only tables extant which give
+directions to the old Umbrian, or any other ancient priests, how to
+conduct public sacrifices and the ensuing feasts. In them there are
+directions for invocations, but no formula for prayers, unless one can
+call invocations by that name. I fancy, that in some parts of the
+tables there are words which may be rendered "speak," or "mutter," or
+"meditate," or "pray silently."
+
+The fact that a Hebrew historian has composed a prayer, and put it into
+the mouth of King Solomon, rather than into that of a high priest, shows
+that supplication for the people was not a strictly sacerdotal duty.
+Even now, with all our liberality of thought, we take our prayers from
+the Archbishops, and not from the crown.
+
+But what we have said points to another important consideration, viz.,
+how far our Authorized Version can be trusted as a foundation upon which
+to build a theory respecting the use of prayer, when we find that the
+words given in English do not correspond with the words in the original
+Hebrew.
+
+We have noticed in the text that both John and Jesus taught their
+disciples to pray; we may now call attention to the idea which the
+latter had of "prayer." In a parable, which was evidently intended to
+represent what was common enough in his day, he says, "Two men went up
+into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican;
+the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself--God, I thank Thee that
+I am not as other men are," &c (Luke xviii. 10-13). Surely one cannot
+call a boastful enumeration of one's virtues either "supplication,"
+"prayer," or "entreaty;" but we understand readily that what we should
+call "meditation" was once included under the name "prayer." This
+anecdote unquestionably seems to prove that there was nothing like
+public prayer in the temple ritual. The idea of the Ancients was to
+obtain what they wanted by costly sacrifice; the idea of the Moderns is
+to obtain their desires by the expenditure of words only. We know that
+Pagans used long litanies, and that Christians do so too. In Jezebel's
+time "0 Baal, hear us" resounded on Mount Carmel in sonorous monotony.
+We have replaced that heathen chant by another, and our cathedrals
+reverberate constantly with the musical rogation, "We beseech Thee to
+hear us, good Lord," uttered more than a score of times. Our orthodoxy
+consists in our using English instead Phoenician words, and in calling
+Baal by a word more familiar to us; and as the highest commendation
+which we can give to others is to imitate them, so we praise the Ancient
+heathen highly, who thought that they would be heard from their "much
+speaking." It is ever easier to change our words than our practice. Like
+the Pharisee, Christians boast that they are not as other men are; but
+by their proceedings they show that they are like the Jews, of whose
+paternity Jesus had not an exalted opinion. (See John viii. 44).
+
+In further illustration of the absence of a set form of prayer in the
+temple worship in Jerusalem, and of the independence of all devout
+solicitors of priestly aid, I may point to Matthew vi. 5 to 8, wherein
+we find that hypocrites offered their supplications, not only in the
+temple, but at the corners of the streets. It is just possible that in
+the former locality there might have been some public worship going on,
+in which the saintly could join, but certainly there was no such ritual
+at street corners. But if there had really been divine service in the
+temple, it follows that those who joined in it would not have been
+conspicuous, or deserving the name of hypocrites. The fault of these
+which is mentioned by Jesus is ostentatious public prayer, i.e.9 the
+doing of that which had not been prescribed by Moses.
+
+As I have, in a preceding volume, spoken at some length concerning the
+morals and manners of ancient races, and shown how, as a rule, their
+conduct has been the same as that of modern Christians, and as,
+moreover, the subject has been treated of in an essay by Lecky (_History
+of European Morals_), I will not pursue this part of my subject further
+than to remark, that we have scarcely two articles of faith--if, indeed
+we have more than one--i.e., respect for one day in seven--which we have
+not received, directly or indirectly, from Pagans. Even our Christianity
+is but a modified Buddhism, as I shall endeavour, in my next chapter, to
+show.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Christianity and Buddhism. The new and old world. An
+     impartial judge is said to be a partisan. Works on the
+     subject. Sakya Muni's birth, B.c. 620 (about), position in
+     life, original views. Parallels between Brahmin-ism,
+     Buddhism, Hebraism, and Christianity. History of Sakya Muni
+     --that of Jesus corresponds with it marvellously. Sakya
+     receives a commission from an angel--is henceforth a
+     saviour. History of Jesus follows that of Sakya. Siddartha
+     neither dictated nor wrote. A favourite garden. Sakya and
+     the Brahmins. Buddha and Christ equally persecuted. Spread
+     of Buddhism after Siddartha's death. Asoka a royal convert
+     Buddhist missionaries, b.c. 307. Their wonderful successes.
+     Different development of Buddhism and Christianity.
+     Persecution a Christian practice, Buddha tempted by the
+     Devil, and by women, like St Anthony. Buddha's life reduced
+     to writing, at least B.c. 90. Hardy on Buddhist miracles.
+     His remarks criticised. Necessity for miracles is doubtful.
+     Sakya and a future life. Resurrection from the dead. Jesus
+     not the first fruits of them that slept. Paul's argument
+     worthless. Buddhists in advance of Christians. Priestcraft
+     at time of Buddha and Jesus. Both did away with ceremonial.
+     Sakya's doctrine--compared with Christian teaching. Another
+     parallel between Buddha and Jesus. Commandments of Tathâgata
+     (Buddha), or the Great Sramana. Rules for his saintly
+     friends--for outsiders. Definition of terms. The Sra-mana's
+     opinion of miracles--a comparison. The history of Jesus told
+     without miracles. Buddhistic confession--remarks on in
+     modern times. Filial respect. Public confession, murder
+     absolved thereby. Asoka, about B.c. 263, sent out
+     missionaries. Objections made against Buddhism. Ideas
+     respecting God. Salvation. Buddha and Jesus. Nirvana. Heaven
+     and Hell--Christian ideas. Apocalypse. The heaven of John
+     and Mahomet compared with that of Buddha. Prayer not a
+     Buddhist institution--nor originally a Christian one. Nature
+     of prayer. The developments of Buddhism, particulars--
+     comparison between the Eastern ancient and Western modern
+     practice. Abbé Hue. No sexual element in Buddhism and
+     Christianity at first--it has crept into both in later
+     times. Inquiry into the probable introduction of Buddhism
+     into the West. Asceticism peculiar to Buddhism and
+     Christianity. The Essenes, their faith and practice--
+     resemblance to Buddhism. John and Jesus probably Essenes.
+     If Jesus was inspired, so was Siddartha.    Differences
+     between Sakya and Jesus. Jesus 'believed in an immediate
+     destruction of the world. Idea of préexistence in Jesus and
+     Sakya adopted by their followers. The basis of the two
+     faiths is morality--but an unsound one. Nature of the
+     unsoundness. Morality has a reference to a life on earth
+     only. The decalogue superfluous. Ideas of future rewards and
+     punishments. Dives and Lazarus. The world can exist without
+     a knowledge of a future life. God thought so when He taught
+     the Jews. Dogma versus morality. See how these Christians
+     live! There are a few good men amongst Christians.
+     Supplementary remarks.
+
+From the Peruvian and Aztec religious systems in what we designate the
+New World, a phrase which involves the idea that its existence was for
+ages wholly unknown to the historians of the Eastern Hemisphere, we turn
+to another form of faith, which demands even greater attention. Buddhism
+has, probably, done more to influence the minds of men in Asia than
+any other religion in any part of the globe, and its history is so
+remarkable, that it deserves the attention of every philosophical
+student of mankind. To the Christian it ought to be especially
+interesting, inasmuch as there is strong reason to believe that the
+faith current amongst ourselves is to be traced to the teaching of
+Sakya Muni, whose original name, we may notice, in passing, was no more
+"Buddha" than "Christ" was the cognomen of the son of Mary.
+
+An ingenious author on one occasion wrote a charming essay "upon the
+art of putting things," and I cannot read any treatise upon Buddhism,
+written by a Christian, without thinking how completely "the advocate"
+is to be seen throughout them all Ecclesiastical writers, who are
+Protestant preachers, endeavour laboriously to prove that the teaching
+of Sakya Muni could not have been inspired, and was certainly false;
+whilst other writers, who have no particular leaning towards Jesus,
+extol the author of Buddhism beyond that of Christianity. Truly, in such
+a matter it is extremely difficult not to appear as a partisan, however
+carefully the scales may be held. The very fact of endeavouring "to see
+ourselves as others see us" involves the necessity of "putting things"
+in a different light to that which is most common or familiar to us. A
+bumptious Briton thinks more of his own Islands than a Yankee thinks of
+them, and one who endeavours to describe "the wheel of the law" as an
+astute Buddhist would do, and who, at the same time, compares it with
+the teachings of the son of Mary, must seem to those who, without
+knowing its nature, despise the former, and yet implicitly believe in
+the latter, to be a partisan. Acting upon this belief, we shall not
+scruple to appear as an advocate, for we believe that "an opposition"
+is as good in religion as in politics, and that it behoves us all to
+examine every important question in all its bearings.
+
+In the following essay I shall not attempt to go into every detail about
+the life of Sakya Muni, for to do so would weary the reader. Anyone
+who wishes for such information may be referred to _Le Bouddha et sa
+Religion_, par J. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire, Paris, 1860, a book which
+may be fairly designated as exhaustive. The English reader may also
+consult _The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_, by Rev. R. Spence
+Hardy, London, 1866, which, though very prejudiced, is extremely
+suggestive. Hardy's _Eastern Monachism_ and _Manual of Buddhists_ are
+about the same. _The Mahawanso_ translated by Tumour, is also a very
+valuable work of reference.
+
+There appears to be little doubt that Sakya Muni was born about 622
+years before our era, and that he died when about eighty years of age,
+i.e.f B.C. 542. He was thus a contemporary of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
+other Jewish prophets. Though of royal birth, and of the warrior or
+kingly caste, he does not appear to have been instructed in general
+history, if, indeed, any such was in existence in Hindostan at that or
+any other period; and we cannot find a tittle of evidence that he
+ever heard of any other religion than Brahminism, the dominant faith,
+apparently, of the Aryan invaders of India. In that he was taught
+assiduously, and some of its tenets he most firmly believed. Amongst
+others, he held that men lived in a future world, in which each one was
+rewarded or punished according to his doings when in a human form. His
+teaching was founded upon the belief which the Brahmins inculcated,
+that all men endure misery in this world for their conduct in a previous
+state of existence, and that they would once again suffer after death,
+unless they conducted themselves, in this life, in a manner pleasing
+to the Almighty. In this creed is clearly involved, if not distinctly
+enunciated, a full acknowledgment of the existence and power of God, of
+the certainty of a future life, and a desire to escape from penalties
+to be inflicted therein by a supreme celestial Judge, for immorality or
+impropriety committed in the present state. For these points of doctrine
+Sakya did not contend, he merely laid down a different system to the
+Brahmins as to the method by which salvation was to be attained, and the
+penal consequences of a sinful life were to be avoided.
+
+We may now, halting here for a moment, examine these matters for
+ourselves, and inquire in what way such faith differs from our own.
+The Brahmin taught that man suffers pain, misery, and death for certain
+crimes committed in a previous state of existence; the Christian teaches
+that each one suffers for a fault committed by ancestors who lived
+thousands of years ago. Neither the one nor the other regard pain,
+sorrow, suffering, and death as the normal accompaniments of life, but
+both attribute them to the wrath of an offended deity, who can be, in
+some way, cheated, cajoled, appeased, or propitiated. Both assert that
+men are debtors to God, and that miseries are "duns" used to make men
+pay their obligations to heaven. The Brahmin taught that this could be
+effected by prayer, sacrifice, and sundry ceremonies to be performed
+by some man who had been specially appointed for the purpose. A due
+attention to morality was also inculcated, but it was apparently
+considered as of less importance than ritualistic observances.
+
+The Jew, whom so many amongst us believe to have been especially taught
+by God, propounded a belief essentially similar to that of the Brahmin,
+with the single exception that he had no faith in a future existence,
+but thought that sacrifice and offerings, through a priesthood, were
+necessary to obtain comfort in this life.
+
+The Christian teaches that the horrors of eternity can only be escaped
+by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts xvi. 30, 31), and by being
+moral in addition.
+
+The "belief" here referred to is somewhat amplified in other parts of
+the Bible, and notably in John iii. 15-17, 36; vi. 39, 40; ix. 35; xi.
+15; and Acts viii. 37; from which we learn that an item in the faith was
+a firm hold upon the idea that Jesus was the son, the only begotten son,
+of God. This dogma is still further extended in the "Apostles' Creed,"
+wherein the Christians express, as articles of faith, their belief, that
+Jesus Christ was the only son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and
+born of the Virgin Mary, &c. This tenet is somewhat varied in the Nicene
+Creed, which expresses the Christian belief to be, that the Lord Jesus
+Christ is the only begotten son of God--begotten of his Father before
+all worlds--being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things
+were made, &c.
+
+The fundamental teaching of Sakya was, that man can only escape the
+tortures of the damned, by a strict propriety of conduct in this
+world, and a persistent endeavour to renounce and think nothing of the
+gratifications which make life pleasant. The modern Buddhist adds to
+this a belief in the absolute divinity of the founder of his faith, not
+simply that he was a son of God, but a visible embodiment of a portion
+of the Creative Unity. Brahmins and Buddhists believe in transmigration
+of souls: the Christian does the like, only, instead of being converted
+into a beast, he imagines that he will become either an angel or a
+devil.
+
+Within certain limits, we may, therefore, say that the Brahminic, the
+Jewish, the Buddhist, and the Christian religions are essentially
+alike, differing only upon minor points, such as the absolute value of
+morality, of ceremonial, of doctrine, of asceticism, the nature of a
+hypothetical antecedent, and an equally uncertain future existence, and
+the best means of escaping the penalties attached, in the second state,
+to impropriety of conduct in the first. If we deride the Brahmin
+and the Buddhist for the faith which they entertain, our laugh must
+necessarily recoil on ourselves, for we have no more unequivocal grounds
+for our belief than they have for theirs. We point in vain to what we
+call "Revelation," for they can do the same, and if priority in such
+matters is good for anything, the Brahminic must take precedence of the
+Jewish, and the Buddhist of the Christian code. Nor can we call miracles
+to our exclusive aid, for the religious books of the Hindoo are as full
+of them as are those of the Jew and Christian, and the stories told
+in the one can be readily paralleled in impossibility, incapacity,
+frivolity, and absurdity by the others.
+
+We must remember, then, when speaking of the teaching of Sakya, that it
+was constructed upon the supposed fundamental truths of Brahminism, just
+as the doctrines of Jesus were built upon those of Judaism. By adopting
+these, respectively, the two preachers have demonstrated their belief in
+them, but neither the one nor the other have advanced our knowledge
+as to the reality of the earliest faith, nor demonstrated the truth of
+their subsequent assumptions.
+
+If we now endeavour, for the sake of comparison, to place the Eastern
+and the Western points of belief in parallel columns, we shall be better
+able to see the points of resemblance and of difference than by any
+other plan.
+
+[Illustration: 114]
+
+[Illustration: 115]
+
+These are only a few of the leading points of resemblance and
+difference, and might be almost indefinitely multiplied.
+
+After this preface, we may proceed to notice that Siddartha--another
+name for Buddha--was of royal birth, and born in wedlock: his mother was
+called Maya Devi, and was herself the daughter of a king. His father was
+of the warrior caste, and, according to ancient usage, Sakya, like Jesus
+some centuries later, was presented in the temple of the God of his
+parents, and recognized by a Brahmin, whom we may designate as a
+predecessor, by some hundreds of years, of the Jewish Simeon (Luke ii
+25, seq.)f as having the marks of a great man upon him. As Sakya grew up
+to man's estate he was found to be peculiarly clever, and soon distanced
+his masters, as Jesus was and did, when, at twelve years, he went into
+the temple and astonished the doctors. He was always thoughtful, and
+frequently remained alone. Once he wandered into a forest, (compare
+Matthew iv. 1-11), in which he was found lost in thought. When obliged
+to exhibit his talents, Siddartha was found to have every conceivable
+excellence, bodily and mental He was, by parental desire, married to a
+paragon of a wife, who showed her good sense by rejecting the use of a
+veil. In this Sakya differs from Mary's son, who never married, being,
+most probably, of the tribe of the Essenes. In later life Siddartha
+discouraged wedlock and every form of love. But, during all his outward
+happiness; Siddartha's thoughts ran upon the misery which he saw on
+every side to be common in the world, and he entertained a hope that
+he would be able to show man the road to a happy immortality. In these
+ideas the teacher was encouraged by a god, who appeared to him by night,
+and told him that the appointed time for the deliverer had come. This
+comforter also recommended him to leave his wife, his wealth, his
+father's house, and give up all he had, so as to be able to seek,
+unencumbered, the way of salvation. Compare here the passage, Mark x.
+20-30, wherein Jesus gives the same kind of advice as the angel gave
+to Sakya Muni. Having become satisfied of his mission from God, he
+resolutely abandoned everything, and, being really a scion of royalty,
+he had much to renounce. Siddartha thus became a mendicant, dependent
+upon others for food and raiment, and resembled that son of Mary, of
+whom we read that he had not a residence wherein to lay his head (Matt.
+viii. 20; Luke ix. 58). He was about twenty-nine years of age when he
+thus became poor for the sake of mankind. Compare what is said of
+Jesus, Luke iii. 23. Though Siddartha was opposed to the Brahmins, he
+nevertheless studied their doctrines, as Mary's son did that of the
+Hebrew theologians, thoroughly, under one of the wisest of them, for
+many years. Then, leaving this teacher, he went about preaching and
+doing good. So much were men impressed with his beauty, his piety, and
+his doctrines, that they flocked in crowds to see him, and he taught
+them whilst sitting on the brow of Mount Pandava--even kings came to
+hear him. Compare here what is said of the Nazarene, Matt. iv. 23 to
+Matt. viii. 1. Sakya was persecuted for a long time by a relative, who
+ultimately became one of his most ardent disciples. Compare Matt. xvi.
+22 and John xxi. 15, et seq. Siddartha's austerities and mortifications
+of himself, in every conceivable way, were excessive during the next six
+years, and these have been represented as a combat with the Devil, whose
+kingdom he destroyed. At the end of this probation, Sakya Muni, finding
+fasting and pain not profitable for eternal salvation, resumed the
+ordinary human habits of eating, &c. This disgusted many of his
+disciples, and "they walked no more with him." He was partly supported
+by a slave woman, and was content to clothe himself with vestments taken
+from the dead. Finally, this wonderful son of Maya heard within him a
+voice, which told him that he was divine, the saviour of the world, and
+the incarnation of the wisdom of God--Buddha, "the word" itself. Compare
+John i. 1, et seq. This was confirmed by a miracle, and thus, at the
+age of thirty-six, and at the foot of a fig tree, Sakya Muni received
+a divine commission, "and the word was made flesh." But, though thus
+divinely inspired, the saviour doubted his power to convert mankind, and
+at the first he only preached his new doctrines to a few. Even in this
+respect it is marvellous to see how closely the Christian story of Jesus
+follows that of his predecessor Siddartha. Some opposed Sakya, but these
+were soon converted by his majesty, and the glory with which he spake
+the words--"Yes," he said, "I have come to see clearly both immortality
+and the way to attain it; I am Buddha--I know all--I see all--I have
+blotted out my faults, and am above all law." Recognizing in Siddartha
+the teacher of mankind, the common people heard him gladly, and gave
+him homage, and he, in return, taught them his full doctrine. The Indian
+saviour then proceeded to the holy city, Benares, and taught there.
+But though he spoke much, he neither dictated nor wrote--like Jesus,
+subsequently, he made no provision by which his doctrines might be
+perpetuated. From Benares he went to other places, some of which were
+especially dear to him, and thus became sacred. In like manner Bethany
+was sanctified by Jesus. Amongst others was a garden, given to him,
+with a mansion, by a wealthy disciple, which a lively fancy might call a
+Hindoo Gethsemane. In this garden Buddha made many disciples, and in
+it the first council of his followers was held after his death. Another
+favourite retreat was a plantation of mango trees, and this, like every
+other spot that Siddartha is known to have visited, has been adorned by
+the faithful with ornamental architecture in commemoration of him.
+
+As may be supposed, Sakya, when he assailed the Brahmins, was in turn
+opposed by them with persevering malevolence; the former was outspoken
+and said what he thought of the priests--he called them hypocrites,
+cheats, impostors, and the like--and they were apparently conscious that
+they deserved such titles.
+
+Here, again, we notice a singular parallel between the Hindoo saviour
+and the Jewish one, who followed him after a long interval. Not that
+there is anything wonderful in the founder of a new faith reviling the
+ministers of one more ancient--nor in the priests of an established
+church endeavouring to suppress, by punishments, the professors who
+interfere with their repose. We know how the Christian fathers abused
+and lampooned the faith of those whose practices they detested--how
+Luther and his followers lashed the vices of the Papists, and how these
+in their turn burned the new preachers--when they had a chance; how the
+Nonconformists censured the Establishment, and how the Episcopal Church
+has harried Independents and Presbyterians. But it is strange to
+find both Sakya and Jesus inaugurating a religion of peace by fierce
+invectives. We have not particulars respecting the choice of language
+made use of by the Indian, but we can scarcely imagine that it could be
+more to the purpose than the vituperation employed by the Hebrew. Jesus
+says,--"Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is
+made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves,"--"Ye
+are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward,
+but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matt,
+xxiii. 15-27). One cannot wonder that the Brahmins and the Pharisees,
+who were objurgated as hypocrites, should retort upon their accusers,
+prosecute the one and crucify the other.
+
+As Sakya's influence increased, the power of the old priesthood
+diminished, and there are accounts of many contests between the old
+dispensers of Brahma's religion and the new saviour, which were held
+before kings and people. In consequence of these disputes Buddha's life
+was repeatedly in danger. But though often threatened, Siddartha died
+peacefully when about eighty years old, beloved by many, respected by
+more, worshipped as a divinity by his immediate disciples and intimate
+friends, and venerated by all who had listened to his discourses.
+
+There are a great many legends existent, and of very respectable
+antiquity too, which tell of miracles performed by this very remarkable
+Indian teacher; but the judicious historian, upon whose authority I am
+at present relying (St. Hilaire), does not intermingle these with the
+narrative of Siddartha's life. In this respect he shows greater judgment
+than the scribes who first compiled the stories of Buddha and of Jesus,
+both of whom conceived that human beings could not be converted to a new
+style of belief without thaumaturgy.
+
+The account of Sakya Muni and his religion would be incomplete did we
+not add that he left behind him enthusiastic disciples who were eager
+and successful in spreading his views. But many years, how many we do
+not know with absolute certainty, elapsed ere any account was written
+either of his life or of his teaching. Nor ought we to wonder at this,
+for until time has been given to mankind, it cannot fairly estimate the
+value of anything new; and when men do at length form, what they believe
+to be, a perfect judgment of the importance of the doctrine which has
+become deeply rooted, they are more eager to promulgate it in the world
+than to record it by writing in the closet.
+
+The new religion certainly spread extensively all over the vast
+continent of Hindustan, and in the course of about three hundred years,
+found an enthusiastic and powerful convert in the person of a king
+called Asoka, who was reigning when the third convocation of Buddhists
+was called, b.c. 307. This ruler was imbued with a missionary spirit,
+and under his influence, preachers full of energy went not only
+throughout India, but into China, Japan, Ceylon, and apparently into
+every country to which ships, caravans, and the flow of commerce gave
+them access, including Persia, Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and
+the very populous and important emporium Alexandria. We may judge of the
+fanaticism of these religious envoys by their success, and we may, as
+is often done by Christian missionaries, test the real value of their
+doctrine by its endurance, and its adaptability to the religious
+wants of the human animal. If missionary success is a test of truth in
+religion, Buddhism must be superior to Christianity. Buddah--for his
+name is spelled variously--has more followers, according to competent
+authorities, than Jesus, and if the depth and earnestness shown by the
+converts to the two men could be weighed in impartial scales, we believe
+that the preponderance would be in favour of the followers of the Indian
+saviour.
+
+We readily allow that Buddhism has not developed in many matters like
+Christianity has done. The Buddhism of to-day does not essentially
+differ from that in the early ages of the faith; the followers of
+Siddartha have not adopted the doctrines of the nations amongst which
+they have settled. The Christianity of to-day, on the other hand, is so
+widely different from that current in the first century of our era, that
+it has been remarked, with great pungency, that if Jesus revisited us
+now, he would be denounced as a heretic, and abused as a nonconformist.
+His followers soon introduced politics into religion, and adopted the
+fables and the doctrines of the Pagans amongst whom they dwelt, merely
+changing certain names, and ascribing virtues and miracles to saints,
+which the heathen attributed to Apollo, Mars, or Venus. Jesus, though a
+Jew, never sacrificed, nor did his apostles, but his followers thought
+prudent to filch the practice from the heathen; and, to smooth their
+difficulty, they profess to turn bread and wine into flesh and blood,
+and offer it up as an oblation upon their ecclesiastical altar. Jesus
+knew nothing of purgatory; with him the rich man went direct to hell,
+and Lazarus to Abraham's bosom. Modern Christians are wiser than their
+teacher; for he disdained the learning of Egypt, his followers took
+their purgatory and trinity therefrom. All this shows, that the faith
+of Christians in their teacher has not been equal to the unbounded trust
+felt by the Buddhist in his master's wisdom. Buddhism, moreover, has
+neither taught nor sanctioned any system of persecution. Sakya, it is
+true, encouraged men to make themselves miserable upon earth that they
+might attain future immunity from woe, but he never ordered them to use
+the sword or dragonnades to force other people to do so. The followers
+of Jesus, on the other hand, have but too often founded their claim to
+a happy immortality on making other men, whom they called heretics,
+miserable, as during the period of the crusades against the Saracens,
+the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Waldenses. The Christians in many
+ages seemed to argue thus:--As the painful death of Mary's son saved the
+world, so I, by torturing a heretic, may save myself. This is an idea
+of vicarious atonement which, though prevalent for centuries, has never
+been committed to writing by those who hold it. We do not mean to allege
+that the opinion referred to cannot be found in history, for it is from
+such a source that our assertion comes. A belief, such as we refer to,
+was promulgated amongst the Crusaders, and was fostered by the founders
+of the Inquisition. Such an idea, too, is embodied in the word--"The
+time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God
+service" (John xvi. 2).
+
+We may, however, trace the idea of persecution in the early Christian
+Scriptures. Paul, for example, when writing to the Corinthians (1
+Epistle v. 3-5) gives such encouragement as he can to those who punish
+an erring brother Christian, by delivering him over to Satan for the
+destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the
+Lord Jesus, and in (1st Tim. i. 20), the same author declares,--"I have
+delivered Hymenseus and Alexander unto Satan that they may learn not to
+blaspheme." The idea being, that by thus acting, both the Corinthians
+and Paul were improving their own ecclesiastical condition.
+
+As I may not have another available opportunity for introducing one or
+two striking parallels between Sakya Muni and Jesus, I may mention
+here that the former is represented as being tempted by and having
+conversation with an evil spirit called Mâra, Evil one, Destroyer,
+Devil, or Papiyan. In one of these confabulations Buddah says,--"I will
+soon triumph over you--'desires' are your chief soldiers, then come
+idleness, hunger and thirst, passions, sleepy indolence, fears, doubts,
+angers, hypocrisy, ambition, the desire to be respected, and to have
+renown, praise of yourself and blame for others--these are your black
+allies, the soldiers of the burning demon. Your soldiers subjugate gods
+and men, but not me, I shall crush them by wisdom, then what will you
+do?" (Hilaire, p. 61). The sage is then, not unlike the so-called St.
+Anthony, tempted by lovely woman, thirty-two lovely demons (Apsaras)
+deploying all their charms. Then follows a third trial, and Mâra says
+to Siddartha,--"I am the lord of desire, I am the master of the entire
+world, the gods, the crowd of Dâvanas (spirits), men and beasts have
+been subjugated by me and are in my power. Like them enter my domains,
+rise up and speak like them." Buddha replied,--"If you are the lord of
+desire you are not the lord of light. Look at me, I am the lord of the
+law, you are powerless, and in your very sight I shall obtain supreme
+intelligence," (p. 64, op. cit.). The demon makes one more effort, and
+is again conquered, and then retires, tracing with an arrow these words
+upon the ground--"My empire has passed away." It may be imagined that
+the French author whom I quote is a partisan of the Indian sage; far
+from it, he records such tales with regret, for he sees how strong an
+influence they must have upon the perfect or imperfect authenticity
+of the New Testament and the story of Jesus. The similarity of the two
+histories is heightened by the legend before noticed, that Buddha went
+to Heaven to convert his mother, whilst Jesus is said to have gone down
+to Hades to preach to the spirits in prison, with the implied intention
+of converting them to the faith which he preached.
+
+It will doubtless have occurred to anyone reading the preceding pages,
+if he be but familiar with the New Testament, that either the Christian
+histories called Gospels have been largely influenced by Buddhist's
+legends, or that the story of Siddartha has been moulded upon that
+of Jesus. The subject is one which demands and deserves the greatest
+attention, for if our religion be traceable to Buddhism, as the later
+Jewish faith is to the doctrines of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians,
+we must modify materially our notions of "inspiration" and "revelation."
+Into this inquiry St. Hilaire goes as far as documentary evidence allows
+him, and Hardy in _Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_ also enters
+upon it in an almost impartial manner. From their conclusions there can
+be no reasonable doubt that the story of the life of Sakya Muni, such as
+we have described it, certainly existed in writing ninety years before
+the birth of Jesus; consequently, if the one life seems to be a copy of
+the other, the gospel writers must be regarded as the plagiarists.
+
+In the story of Buddha, we have eliminated the miraculous part, and
+exhibited him simply as a remarkable man. Nevertheless, in the writings
+of his followers, miracles in abundance are assigned to him. Whether
+these existed in the original history Hardy doubts, and his remarks
+are so apposite that we reproduce them (op. cit. p. xxviii). "Upon
+the circumstances of this first rehearsal (of the life and doctrine of
+Siddartha), most important consequences depend. If the miracles ascribed
+to Buddha can be proved to have been recorded of him at the time of his
+death, this would go far towards proving that the authority to which
+he laid claim was his rightful prerogative. They were of too public
+character to have been ascribed to him then if they had not taken place;
+so that if it was openly declared by his contemporaries, by those who
+had lived with him in the same monastery, that he had been repeatedly
+visited by Sekra and other Deivas; and that he had walked through the
+air and visited the heavenly world in the presence of many thousands,
+and those the very persons whom they addressed, we ought to render to
+him the homage awarded to him by even his most devoted followers. But
+the legend of the early rehearsal has nothing to support it beyond
+the assertion of authors who lived at a period long subsequent. The
+testimony of contemporaneous history presents no record of any event
+that quadrates with the wonderful powers attributed to the 'rahals,'
+which would undoubtedly not have been wanting if these events had really
+taken place."
+
+The reader of this extract will now naturally turn his attention to the
+Christian gospels, and inquire into the time when they were written, and
+whether the arguments used by Hardy, for disbelieving the miracles
+of Buddha, do not equally disprove the authenticity of the miracles
+attributed to Jesus. We can find nowhere, in contemporary history--and
+there is an adequate account thereof, both Jewish and Roman--any records
+of the wonders said to have been done in Judea by the son of Mary.
+Though he was noticed by a certain writer in the Talmud, under the name
+of Ben Panther, that book contains no account of the marvellous works
+recorded in the gospels, nor any reference to his miraculous power. The
+Romans who dwelt in Jerusalem knew nothing of any real miracle, though
+Herod is reported to have noticed some gossiping accounts of John's
+successor. We do not find a single reference to any of the wonderful
+events told in the gospels in any epistle written by those who
+"companied with Jesus"--except the assertion that he had risen from the
+dead, to be found in 1 Corinthians xv. and elsewhere--whose value is
+problematical Still farther, we have tolerably good evidence to show
+that the Gospels were written at a time when they could not be tested
+by those people in whose presence the wonders were said to have been
+wrought. The narrative of John, for example, is, by scholars, supposed
+to have been written more than a century, probably one hundred and fifty
+years, after the crucifixion, and the others seem to have been composed
+for the benefit of those who did not live in, or know Jerusalem and
+Judea intimately. They resemble, in almost every respect, the stories
+told of such Roman saints as Francis of Assisi, Bernard, Carlo Borromeo,
+and Ignatius Loyola, which were always composed long after the death,
+and out of the presence of every one of those who could deny or
+controvert them. However much, or little, we may credit the biographies
+of Buddha and Jesus, we cannot for a moment doubt, that the two
+individuals were instrumental in founding forms of religion, which,
+by the aid of missionaries, spread over a vast extent of the habitable
+globe. Unlike that of Mahomet, the faiths referred to were promulgated
+by peaceful persuasion rather than by the sword, and by the power
+of eloquence, example, and precept, rather than by the influence of
+miracles. If, for the sake of argument, we grant that every specimen
+of thaumaturgy which his followers attribute to Jesus is correctly
+reported, we must allow also that his power of making converts by
+teaching, preaching, and wonder working, was inferior to that of his
+followers, who taught, preached, and proselytized without performing
+many, if any miracles. If we assert that miraculous powers are necessary
+for the establishment and propagation of a new religion, then we must,
+to be consistent with ourselves, believe in the thaumaturgy of the
+Buddhists, and the divine mission of Sakya Muni. If, on the other hand,
+we deny that Siddartha was an incarnate god or saviour, was not divinely
+inspired, and performed no real miracle, then it is clear that the
+miracles, which Jesus is said to have achieved, were wholly unnecessary,
+and not required in any way to upset an old religion, to found a new, or
+to spread it when established.
+
+The philosopher may pause here, with profit to himself, and inquire
+whether there is, or there are, any new form or forms of religion which
+has or have sprung up within his own observation, and if so, whether
+it or they has or have been based upon thaumaturgy--and, if one or more
+have been so founded, whether one shows evidence of stability.
+
+Few can deny that Mormonism is a form of belief which has a considerable
+number of adherents, a body of earnest missionaries, and a laity whose
+faith and practice have been sorely tested by hardship. Yet there has
+not been a single miracle performed by its prophets. It is reported
+that its founder announced that he would perform one in the sight of
+all Israel and of the sun, but when the time came he said, that if the
+spectators believed that he could do what was promised, that was quite
+enough!
+
+Spiritualism, on the other hand, is a new sort of theosophy, ostensibly
+founded and supported wholly by thaumaturgy; its disciples have induced
+themselves to believe, against their original ideas, that we are not
+only surrounded by the spirits of the departed, but that these can be
+brought into connection with us by means of certain individuals, called
+mediators or mediums--that these have such power, over the invisible
+beings hovering in the air, that the souls of the dead may be made to
+shake the tables of the living, and lift up their sofas to the ceiling.
+The miracles are believed in by many, but Spiritualism lags far behind
+the Mormon theology, and probably always will do.
+
+We may regard this part of our subject in yet another light. Let us,
+for example, suppose that the Buddhists and the Christians succeed in
+persuading each other of the incorrectness of the miraculous element
+in their respective books, does it therefore follow, that any essential
+part of the creed of either one or other must be altered? The doctrines
+of Siddartha would not be valueless even if his followers disbelieved
+in his power to fly as a bird, or cross a river on the surface of the
+water--nor would those of Mary's son be proved to be worthless if it
+were certain that he never marched over a billowy sea, and that he was
+not really killed by crucifixion. The disciples of Sakya Muni believed
+in a resurrection of the dead, without having had the advantage of
+a real or imaginary reappearance of their master after his supposed
+decease. The Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans, had all an Elysium to which
+the good folk went. The Red Indian believes in a future life and happy
+hunting grounds (so we are told), although he has never heard of Judea.
+The rude Northmen and Danes had also their Valhalla to go to after
+death, long ere they were Christians. Still farther, it is to be
+noticed, by the close observer, that the Jews at the time of Jesus, and
+some of the Greeks about the same period, were divided in their opinions
+respecting the existence of men in a future state. The Sadducees,
+holding fast to the books of Moses and the Prophets, denied the
+existence of a resurrection, of angels or of spirits. The Pharisees,
+on the other hand, influenced apparently by Babylonian and Persian
+theology, had faith in all three. That this belief in a future life was
+not commonly held by the poor folk in Judea, we infer from Mark ix. 10,
+wherein we are told that Peter, James, and John were "questioning
+with one another what the rising from the dead should mean." That the
+Athenians were equally careless about what is now called "heaven and
+hell," we judge from Acts xvii. 18, wherein we are told that Paul's
+preaching about "Jesus and the resurrection" was a strange affair, and
+from the thirty-second verse of the same chapter, wherein it is said
+that the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus was received with
+derision.
+
+I am quite aware that it may be objected to these remarks that the doubt
+about the rising from the dead does not point to a general resurrection,
+but simply to the return to life of one particular individual. This,
+however, only removes the difficulty to a short distance, for Greek
+story tells us of the annual return of Proserpine from the realms
+of Pluto to the light of day, and Adonis was yearly resuscitated, in
+mythical narrative. For the Hebrew, the rising from the dead ought not
+to be a wonderful matter. Was it not told in their Scriptures how, when
+certain persons were burying a man, the bearers in a fright threw the
+corpse into the sepulchre of Elijah, whose bones had such efficacy that
+they revived the dead man, who stood on his feet (2 Kings xiii. 21). We
+find also, from Mark vi. 16, Luke ix. 9, that Herod had a full belief in
+the power of John to rise again from the death to which that monarch had
+consigned him. The sceptic may doubt the ability of the two evangelists
+to read what was passing through the royal mind when Jesus and his works
+were brought before its notice, but he cannot doubt that the writer was
+aware that in Herod's time there was a belief in the resurrection of
+individuals. Indeed, we find in the verse following that which tells
+of the Apostle's bewilderment, Mark ix. 11, a question, "why say the
+scribes that Elias must first come?" To which the reply is that the
+prophet has come. We are constrained, therefore, to believe that
+Jesus was not the first who rose from the dead; nay, even he himself
+commissioned his disciples to "cleanse the lepers, and raise the dead"
+(Matth. x. 8). What, then, is the value of the arguments that Paul
+builds upon the assertion that Christ is "the first fruits of them that
+slept."
+
+This being so, we may fairly ask, whence did Mary's son derive the ideas
+which he promulgated of a resurrection, and of salvation, and why had
+a sophistical writer like Paul to adopt the clumsy contrivance of
+asserting that Jesus not only had risen, but that he was the first
+individual who had done so, to demonstrate that the dead really did
+return again to life? Paul's argument, indeed, shows how little he
+knew or had thought upon the subject, for he distinctly preaches a
+resurrection of the body, not of the soul, a belief adopted into the
+Apostles' creed. Yet, at the very period when the minds of Christians
+were thus unformed, the disciples of Buddha, to a man, believed in a
+future "Nirvana," in which "there should be no more sorrow nor crying,
+neither should there be any more pain, and where all earthly things
+should have passed away" (see Rev. xxi. 4). We are not yet in the
+position to prove that Mary's son and certain of his followers received
+their inspiration from disciples of Siddartha, but there is certainly
+a strong presumption in favour of the possibility, much evidence of its
+probability, and nothing whatever to disprove it. To this, however, we
+will return by and by.
+
+Ere we proceed to examine into the nature of the doctrines of Sakya Muni
+and of Jesus, we may cast a glance over the condition of the men whom
+they converted. In both instances, it is not too much to say that
+they all were "priest-ridden" in the fullest meaning of the term. The
+residents in Modern India and Papal Rome, until a short time ago, well
+understood what the term signifies; day by day, and almost hour by hour,
+there is, or was in these places, some ceremony to be attended, some
+prayer to be uttered, some confession to be made, some contribution
+to be given to monastery, church, or priest. Penances are, and were
+inflicted of the most painful, sometimes of the most disgusting kind.
+The last I heard of was in Wales, where a man was ordered to lie down
+at the church door as a mat, upon which the faithful were to wipe their
+feet. Both in India and Italy, men, women, and children alike are, or
+were, taught to regard themselves as the servants, and even slaves of
+the hierarchy, and their money is, or was, alienated from wives and
+children to swell the coffers of spiritual tyrants. Perpetual terrors of
+hell are sounded, until those hearers, whose hearts are impressionable,
+are habitually haunted by imaginary horrors, each one of which has to be
+bought off by a sort of hush-money paid to the priest, who has invented,
+adopted, or described them.
+
+Such was the condition of England and France prior to the Reformation
+and the Revolution.
+
+So long as men are debased by their guides, and allow themselves,
+with the docility of a well-trained dog, to be ruled, and so long as
+tyrannical flamens can wring an ever increasing tax from the people,
+there is probably nothing more in the breast of each than a vague
+feeling of dislike, or regret, at the existence of such things, which
+rarely receives utterance for fear of punishment. But as soon as a
+man, more bold than his neighbours, raises a standard of revolt, whose
+success appears to be secure, the bulk of the oppressed first sympathize
+with, yet fear to join him, then, after watching eagerly the course of
+events, and admiring the boldness of men more resolute than themselves,
+they timidly make common cause with the reformer, and, if circumstances
+favour them, they become enthusiastic. As the news of the mental revolt
+swells, the people, tired of oppression, rise in their might and sweep
+away the hierarchy, or compel it to abandon its pretensions. Buddha and
+Christ were such leaders as we here describe, and such was the course
+gone through by their followers. The timid Peter denying Jesus, and yet
+afterwards boldly preaching him up, is an example almost too well known
+to be quoted.
+
+We are now in a position to inquire into the nature of Siddartha's
+teaching.
+
+Premising that his doctrines were collected at least 200 years B. C.,
+the first which we notice is one that he not only inculcated by language
+but enforced by his abiding example. He taught that the comforts and
+pleasures of this life act as fetters, to chain man's spirit to earth;
+that day by day they necessitate the cultivation of propensities
+and passions more or less bestial in their nature; and that as these
+strengthen, so the individual who possessed them would be born again,
+after his death, to some form of misery and woe in which he would have
+to atone for the human infirmities which he had not conquered. To escape
+from the possibility of such an event, Sakya counselled his disciples
+to wean themselves, as far as possible, from every sensual passion; to
+mortify the body by fasting, so as to make it more readily separable
+from the inner man; to renounce all comfort except that of doing good;
+and believing in a state of perfect future salvation.
+
+A man, he taught, must abandon everything as valueless compared with the
+attainment of salvation or _nirvana_; he must be wholly dependent upon
+others for food and raiment; he must take no thought for the morrow, and
+live like a bird or lily, laying up no store; for certainly a disciple
+of Sakya ought not to undertake any trade or other means of gaining a
+livelihood, lest it should ensnare his spirit and tie it down to the
+grovelling things of earth.
+
+This was the rule for the very faithful, the infirm believers had a more
+lenient code.
+
+If we now turn to the doctrine said to have been taught by Jesus and
+his disciples, we shall find a close parallel between it and that of the
+Indian teacher. For example, John says (1 Epis. ii. 15,16) "Love not
+the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love
+the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
+world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye, and the pride of
+life, is not of the Father but is of the world." Paul says (Rom. xii. 2)
+"Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing
+of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and
+perfect will of God." James also says (ch. iv. 4) "Know ye not that the
+friendship of the world is enmity with God; whosoever, therefore,
+will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God." Again, we find in
+Matthew xix., Mark x., and Luke xii., the story of a young man who was
+possessed of wealth, probably scarcely less than that of Sakya Muni,
+and whose life had been conscientiously conducted, according to the
+commandments which he knew, and who having heard of Jesus, came to ask
+him if there were a more certain way of salvation than the one he was
+in. To him the reply is,--"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
+thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven,
+and come and follow me." In the verses, moreover, which follow, there is
+a remark from the same teacher to the effect, that "every one that hath
+forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,
+or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred
+fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."
+
+Once again, we find an exact counterpart of Buddha's teaching in the
+sermon on the Mount, which is recorded in Matth. vi. 25-34--"I say unto
+you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall
+drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more
+than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for
+they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your
+heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?... Why
+take ye thought for raiment, consider the lilies of the field... if God
+so clothe the grass... shall he not much more clothe you? Therefore
+take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or
+wherewithal shall we be clothed?... Take therefore no thought for the
+morrow... sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Other similar
+passages might readily be given, but the above suffice to demonstrate
+the Buddhistic teaching of the prophet of Nazareth.
+
+Both start from the idea that death, disease, pain, and misery is the
+result of sin--and both imagine that sin consists in living and acting
+upon the natural wants, necessities, and propensities of human kind.
+Both imagine that to be natural is to be vile, and that salvation is to
+be attained by resisting every impulse which is common to mankind Man
+desires to eat when hungry--this is a weakness to be combated; a mother
+loves her babe--this must not be tolerated; a youth covets a damsel in
+marriage--this is a snare to draw both down to hell; celibacy must be
+enforced. The argument runs thus,--If any one enjoys life he is sure to
+fear death, and will certainly pay for his pleasures; but if any one has
+the resolution to pass his years on earth in misery like that of hell,
+he will be glad to die, and fearless of any place of torment; use has
+bred a habit in him and no torture can come amiss.
+
+Some Christian author has ventured to assert "religion never was
+designed to make our pleasures less," but he was a conspicuous heretic.
+Buddha's doctrine was founded upon the assertion that life is always
+short, and that it is not worth a man's while to buy a few years of
+enjoyment with myriads of years of agony. Jesus preached that the Jews'
+time was short, for they, and most probably all the world besides, were
+to be burned up any day within the duration of the generation--what then
+was the use of laying up stores of grain, of buying fine clothes, and
+keeping wine to get mellow?
+
+Both preachers were equally short sighted and absurd in their teaching,
+for if their disciples were to live upon alms, and all repented and
+adopted the doctrine, it is clear that all would starve together, and
+self immolation by hunger was repugnant to both prophets. If no one made
+clothes all must go naked, and indecency was forbidden. If no one was
+to lay up money, there would be no one to pay for work, yet toil was
+considered to be a duty. If every one was to live from hand to mouth,
+who would keep a calf until it became a heifer, or a lamb to become a
+sheep?
+
+It is difficult to conceive that two individuals could have worked out
+such a scheme of salvation independently, and the minuteness of the
+resemblances induces me to believe that Jesus, possibly without knowing
+it, first adopted and then promulgated in Judea the doctrines of the
+Indian sage.
+
+Following, again, the lead of St. Hilaire (_Le Bouddha, &c_, 1860, pp.
+81, et seq.), we find that Siddartha taught 600 years B. C., that death
+and all the miseries of mankind were due to the passions, desires, and
+sins of man; that all this misery would cease in Nirvana (of which we
+shall speak by and by), and that the means to attain to this salvation
+is to keep the true faith; to have a correct judgment; to be truthful in
+all things, and to hold every false thing in abhorrence; always to act
+and to think with a pure and honest mind; to adopt a religious life,
+i.e., one that is in no respect worldly, not owing even subsistence
+to anything which might be tainted with sin; to practise a careful
+and earnest study of the law; to cultivate a good memory, so that all
+mistakes in conduct may be remembered if they have occurred, and be
+avoided in the future; and frequent meditation, i.e., an abstraction
+of the mind from self consciousness, a thinking of nothing, so as
+to approximate the soul to Nirvana. These were Buddha's fundamental
+verities. It is put more shortly thus,--"Practising no evil, advancing
+in the exercise of every virtue, purifying one's self in mind and will,
+this is indeed the doctrine of all the Buddhas." _Journal of Royal
+Asiatic Society_, vol. xix. p. 473.
+
+We may once more stop to compare the teaching of Siddartha with that
+familiar to Christians. Paul says, for example (Rom. v. 12) "As by one
+man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon
+all men, for that all have sinned;" again, in chap, vi. 23, "the wages of
+sin is death;" again, in chap. vii. 5, "when we were in the flesh the
+motions of sins... did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
+death;" and again, chap. viii. 6, "to be carnally minded is death; but
+to be spiritually minded is life and peace." We may next refer to what
+some call the fundamental teaching of Jesus, as enunciated in answer
+to the question of the young man "What shall I do that I may inherit
+eternal life?" Matthew xix., Mark x., "If thou wilt enter into life,
+keep the commandments. Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit
+adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness,
+honour thy father and thy mother, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as
+thyself." And when the young man asserted that he had done so, all
+that he was told to do in addition, was to sell his property, give the
+proceeds to the poor, and become a follower of Jesus, who had not where
+to lay his head, and to live upon the charity of other people. I must,
+however, notice in passing, that the teaching of Jesus is not by
+any means so uniform as that of Sakya, for we find the former here
+instructing a young man to do no murder, but at a subsequent period,
+that of the last supper, Jesus exhorts his disciples, and through them,
+possibly, the very man to whom he rehearsed the commandments, thus "He
+that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one," (Luke xxii
+36). Certainly a direct encouragement to homicide.
+
+For the benefit of the Buddhists a short formula of faith has been
+framed, which is to this effect--"Tathâgata (another name of Sakya
+Muni), in the proper condition, has explained that our present state
+is produced by antecedent causes, and the great Sramana, or Ascetic
+(another cognomen of Siddartha), has told us how to avoid the effects of
+sin. The effects are pain and actual existence, having for their cause
+past sins; the cause is the production of suffering: the cessation of
+these effects is Nirvana, the teaching of Tathâgata, or of the great
+Sramana, is the way which leads to Nirvana." The Christian formula runs,
+"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." To this
+we may compare a Nepaulese saying, "Arise, leave your possession, take
+up the law of Buddha, and break asunder the power of death."
+
+In addition to the fundamental maxim given on the preceding page, Sakya
+Muni added many others, amongst them, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
+not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not lie, thou
+shalt not get drunk;" others are of lighter consequence--"thou shalt
+not eat out of due season, thou shalt not watch dances or theatrical
+representations, or listen to songs or music, thou shalt abstain from
+all ornamentation of dress, &c., and from perfume; thou shalt not have
+a large bed, nor ever take gold or silver; thou shalt remain inflexibly
+chaste."
+
+To those who desired to become disciples and personal friends of Buddha,
+it was ordained that (a) They should only be clothed with rags taken
+from the cemeteries, or from heaps of refuse, or found on the high road.
+(b) That there should only be three of these vestments, and that each
+should be stitched by the wearer, and that they should be covered with
+a cloak of yellow wool (c) That the food should be as simple as
+possible--a rule adopted by Christian saints, but not by Bishops.
+(d) That all should live upon alms and offerings, which should be begged
+for, in perfect silence, from house to house, and placed in a vessel
+made of wood--a plan adopted by certain Christian mendicant friars.
+(e) That only one meal should be taken during the day--a rule to be found in
+some Christian monasteries. (f) That no aliments, even the most simple,
+should be taken after noon, the rest of the day after this period should
+be devoted to teaching and meditation. (g) The faithful should live in
+the wilderness or forest, and not in towns or villages. Hence Christian
+hermits lived in the deserts of the Thebaid. (h) They should only
+shelter themselves under the boughs and leaves of trees. (i) They should
+sit with the back supported only by the trunk chosen for refuge.
+(j) They should sleep sitting, and not lying down. (k) They should never
+change their sitting mat from the place where it was put first. (l) The
+disciples should unite together, at least upon one night in the month,
+to meditate amongst the tombs upon the instability of human things.
+Mendicity, chastity, and asceticism were essential parts of Sakya Muni's
+practice, and St. Hilaire (op. cit., p. 87) naively remarks that these
+certainly are not the means for making good citizens, though they may
+produce good saints.
+
+We may notice, in passing, that the pious followers of Sramana (the one
+who mastered his passions) were very much more proper, in our eyes, than
+some of the Brahmins, from whom they seceded, inasmuch as the former
+wore sufficient garments to cover themselves decently, whilst the
+latter, whom the Greeks called "Gymnosophists," went without any more
+clothing than the horse or ass. It is also to be noticed that Siddartha
+provided a sort of code of laws to be observed by those who wished to
+adopt his method of salvation, without becoming altogether "religious."
+These consisted in the enforcement of chastity, purity, patience,
+courage, contemplation, and knowledge--these were, it was asserted, the
+transcendent virtues which would pass man across the river of death.
+They would not land him there in life, but whilst these were adopted as
+the rule of life, the aspirant was in the right way to attain "Nirvana."
+
+The charity which Sakya Muni ordained was universal, extending even
+to what we call the lower animals, and one example is given in which a
+disciple cast himself into the sea to save a boat's crew in danger of
+death from a storm, whilst another tells of Buddha giving himself as
+food to a tigress, who had not sufficient milk for her young ones.
+
+Again, the precept against "lying" included false witness, and all that
+we call "bad language," as well as trifling chat, called "badinage,"
+"wit," and the like. Persons were not only to avoid wrong, but they
+were to cultivate every good habit, or what we designate each "Christian
+grace." It was inculcated, that beauty of language, or eloquence,
+pleasantness of voice, and a due respect to cadence should be studied,
+so as to make their teaching popular, a precept not much regarded
+amongst ordinary Christian divines. Beyond other things, humility was
+inculcated, not that which exists on the lips only, and is apparently
+compatible with the determined endeavour to exercise unlimited power,
+which has been conspicuous in the Papacy for a millennium at least, but
+that which conceals greatness and demonstrates littleness. Thus there
+is a legend of Buddha refusing, at the request of a king, to exhibit any
+miracle to convince his opponents, his answer being, "Great king, I do
+not teach the law to my hearers by saying to them, 'Go, oh you religious
+men! and before Brahmins and house-holders perform, by means of a
+supernatural power, miraculous things, which no other men can effect,'
+but I say to them, in teaching them the law, 'Live, oh ye pious ones, so as
+to conceal your good works, and to let your sins be seen.'"
+
+At this point we pause once more to draw a parallel between Siddartha
+and Jesus, though, in the delineation of the doctrine of the latter,
+we shall see a discrepancy which appears to indicate two distinct
+authorships in the recorded story. We refer, in the first place, to Luke
+vi, wherein we find, v. 27, et seq., "Love your enemies, do good to
+them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
+despitefully use you, and to him that smiteth thee on the one cheek
+offer also the other" (compare Matt. v. 39, 40). Again, Matt. vi. 3,
+"When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
+doeth," and in v. 6, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet," &c.;
+v. 16, "When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance."
+Side by side with this we may place the directions given in Matt, x.,
+where we find that Jesus called his disciples unto him, and gave them
+"power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner
+of sickness and all manner of disease "--they were, moreover, "to
+cleanse the lepers and raise the dead," i.e.t the disciples were to
+perform miracles; but if they, in their wanderings and teachings, should
+be rejected, despised, or affronted, the apostles were to shake off the
+dust of their feet against the persecutors, being certain that condign
+punishment would fall upon the offenders.
+
+It is curious that in the histories of the Indian and the Jew, there
+should be analogous discrepancies between records of their sayings and
+doings. Siddartha and Jesus are represented, each of them, as declining
+to perform miracles when asked or expected to do so. Nevertheless, in
+the same histories we find marvellous accounts of the wonders which they
+performed. We have seen the clashing reports of Buddha, the following
+reports of the son of Mary are equally discordant. To make the
+dissonance more striking, we place the passages in parallel columns.
+
+[Illustration: 141]
+
+At what time after the death of Jesus the miracles recorded of him were
+fabricated we can scarcely tell. If, with most critical scholars, we
+believe that John's Gospel was written by some Neoplatonic Greek, at
+least a century and a-half after the period alluded to, we must also
+believe, either that all the legends about the casting out of devils by
+the son of Mary were invented after the time when "John" lived, or else,
+which is probable, that the last evangelist gave no credit to them, if
+they did already exist; and if the good sense and superior knowledge of
+"John" led him to discredit the tale about the legion of devils, which
+left one man* to enter into about two thousand pigs, I do not see that
+other Christians are obliged to believe the legend. From considerations
+which we advanced in the articles Prophets, Prophecy, &c., in _Ancient
+Faiths_ (Vol. II., p. 515), and especially in the history of Barcochab,
+who was supposed to be the Messiah by some Jews in A.D. 131-5, we argued
+that new matter was certainly introduced into the story of Jesus told by
+Matthew, Mark, and John, as late as the era of that enthusiastic Hebrew
+leader. We noticed the doubts that existed in the minds of many early
+Christians as to whether this redoubtable warrior was not "the man"
+of whom the prophets spake. We may now still further notice that
+he professed to perform miracles, which appear to be thoroughly
+contemptible when weighed against those of the gospels. To our mind
+it is inconceivable that the followers of Mary's son could have been
+acquainted with the marvellous works attributed to Jesus in the gospels,
+and, yet be shaken by such a man as Barcochab. We notice, also, that not
+one "Epistle" writer refers to them--consequently, we believe that
+all the wondrous tales told of the prophet of Nazareth, must have been
+introduced after the time of Hadrian (in whose reign Barcochab was
+destroyed), and were fabricated by pious Christians, to prove that the
+Messiah, in whom they believed, was infinitely superior to that warrior
+whom others had for a time trusted. Both, to be sure, had been killed by
+the Romans, and thus both might seem upon a par, but if history could
+be cooked--and there is probably no single history existing which is
+strictly true--to show that the first performed a hundred times the
+wonderful works of the second, he would thus become greatly exalted. See
+especially Matt. xxiv. 24, in confirmation of this view. Be this as it
+may, there is, I understand, solid foundation for the assertion that
+the New Testament, such as we have it now, might have been composed,
+altered, curtailed, added to, remodelled, or otherwise fashioned, at
+any period between the years a.d. 50 and 300, after which change was
+difficult, though we cannot say impossible. A corresponding statement is
+true of the books which record the life and doctrines of Buddha.
+
+     * In Matthew viii. 30-32, we are told that there were two
+     men who were possessed with the devils which subsequently
+     entered the herd of swine;--in Mark v. 11-13, the spirits
+     are represented as being concentrated in one person, and in
+     Luke viii. 32-33, the tale appears in the same guise as in
+     Mark--only the man is made to call himself "Legion," on
+     account of the multitude of devils living inside him. In
+     cases of this kind one need not be rigidly particular, for
+     it signifies little whether the spirits were one thousand in
+     one man or two thousand in two--the wonder is that spirits
+     could talk--fly away from man to pig, or commit suicide in
+     the bodies of the swine when they might have done the same
+     thing in one or two men. It is clear from the miracle that
+     certain devils change their habits when they take up their
+     habitation in porcine instead of human beings.
+
+At this period of our parallel we may profitably examine the New
+Testament, and ascertain whether we cannot extract from it a tolerably
+fair account of the life and teaching of Jesus, without including
+therein a single act of thaumaturgy. We fearlessly assert, not only that
+we can, but that the miracles are not an essential part of his doctrine.
+For example, we learn that Jesus was the son of a woman betrothed to a
+carpenter, who became pregnant ere yet the ceremony of marriage was gone
+through. Her affianced husband did not make her frailty an excuse for
+annulling the contract, possibly for a good, and to him a sufficient
+reason. He married the already fruitful Mary, and her child passed
+amongst the neighbours as being the son of Joseph. This we learn from
+Matt. xiii. 55, where we find the people saying, "Is not this the
+carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James,
+and Joses, and Simon, and Judas, and his sisters, are they not all
+with us?" a statement repeated in similar terms, Mark vi. 3. This short
+account is important, since it completely destroys the papal doctrine
+that Mary was "ever virgin," for she bore at least four other sons
+than her first born, and two daughters. At no period was Jesus regarded
+either by the family or by the neighbours as illegitimate, nor is there
+any reason to believe that Joseph looked upon him otherwise than as his
+own son. Indeed, in Luke ii. 42-48, the carpenter distinctly appears to
+act as if he recognized Jesus as his own offspring--in verse 48, Mary
+says, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold thy father and I
+have sought thee sorrowing," asserting as plainly as words could speak,
+that Joseph had begotten Jesus. It is true that the youth replied, "Wist
+ye not that I must be about my father's business?" but the story adds
+the important information, that the couple did not understand the
+saying.
+
+It is clear to us, that if the legend of the impregnation of Mary by the
+Holy Ghost, after that event had been previously announced to her, and
+if, as we are told in Matt. i. 20, Joseph had been informed by "the
+angel of the Lord" that the foetus in Mary's womb was begotten by the
+Holy Ghost, it would not have been possible for Joseph and his wife
+to have misunderstood the words of Jesus. The very wonder which they
+expressed demonstrates the belief of the parents that there was nothing
+unusual in the conception. The father Joseph knew that he had borne his
+share in the event, and Mary knew that she had not conversed with any
+other man; consequently, for her son to indicate another father than
+Joseph, naturally mystified her. We therefore cannot allow the assertion
+to pass, that the conception and birth of Jesus was in itself a miracle.
+But as we shall revert to the subject in a separate chapter, we will say
+no more about it here.
+
+After living and working with his parents for some years, Jesus was
+attracted by the preaching of his cousin John, whose doctrines were
+essentially Buddhistic and Essenian. Like the Hindoos, he used water as
+an emblem of purification, and urged his hearers to repentance and good
+conduct. What motives urged John to become "the voice of one crying in
+the wilderness," we have no means of judging, but the gospel narratives
+tell us that he, like Jesus, believed in the almost immediate
+destruction of the world. His text was, "Repent, for the kingdom of
+heaven is at hand." Jesus adopted the view, and promulgated it more
+extensively. His text was the same as that of his cousin, but more
+expanded. "The kingdom of heaven means glory to the righteous, and
+everlasting life; misery and everlasting destruction to the wicked.
+The time is near, hasten to escape from the coming vengeance."
+The earnestness of Jesus, his acquaintance with the prophets, his
+self-denial and his constant kindness, endeared him to the common
+people. The same virtues had a like effect in the case of Buddha.
+Amongst villagers and poverty-stricken fishermen he soon won his way,
+and every one had some story to tell of him, which increased in wonder
+as it passed from mouth to ears, and from these to the tongue of the
+listeners. Those who know how an ordinary circumstance may gradually
+become described as miraculous, even in England, can well imagine how
+the miracles of Jesus and Siddartha were produced.
+
+In time Jesus endeavoured to induce the magnates of Jerusalem to adopt
+his doctrine, and to trust in repentance for salvation rather than in
+sacrifice, but the enthusiast could not overcome the ritualists, and
+they at once began to weigh their power against the influence of
+Jesus upon the multitude. After a time the priests were convinced that
+supremacy rested with them, and the man who preached a religion of the
+heart, was sacrificed by the adherents of ceremonial. Such a fight is
+common, as we see around us. The Evangelicals and the Ritualists of
+to-day, resemble the followers of Jesus and of Moses. When the latter
+appeared in the guise of powerful Romanist rulers, they put down the
+former, but now when the former are the strongest, they endeavour to
+depress the latter.
+
+After the death, or the withdrawal of Jesus from public life--for we
+have no belief in the legends of his resurrection--considering that
+his apparent decease was a prolonged fainting fit, for had he been dead
+blood would not have followed a spear wound as it did--the disciples of
+Jesus spread his fame largely. Whilst Jesus was with them they clung
+to him; when he was no more, each man became a preacher, and then
+Christianity spread until it met with Buddhism in Egypt, and thus became
+developed in a peculiar direction. Then came the gospels, which made
+Jesus a second Sakya. Although we can readily conceive that Jesus, like
+his paltry successor, Joe Smith, the Mormon, captivated the minds of
+hundreds without performing any supernatural deed, and that his "elders"
+vastly increased the number of those who believed in him, yet it is
+clear, that ancient and modern theologians were and are anxious to
+establish the reality of the thaumaturgy attributed to Jesus, that
+they may appeal to it to demonstrate that he was the son of God, an
+incarnation of a portion of the creative mind--"the word," or _logos_,
+having the same relationship to Jehovah, the "I Am," the Self-Existent
+One, as Buddha, "the understanding" had to "Brahma," The Supreme One.
+
+Accepting this issue for the sake of argument, we affirm once again
+that, as the miracles of Sakya and of the son of Mary are equally
+unreliable, or equally true, Buddha was as much a true son of God as
+Christ was, or that Jesus was no more an incarnation of Jehovah, than
+Siddartha was of Brahma. Jehovah and Brahma being merely different names
+for the same great Being. That miracles are not necessary to the spread
+of a new faith, the history of modern Presbyterianism and Mormonism
+distinctly proves. For further remarks, we refer the reader to
+the article Miracle in the preceding volume. We will postpone to a
+subsequent page what we have to say respecting the asceticism of the
+Buddhists, and that which was prevalent in the early Christian church.
+For the present, we resume our account of Sakya Muni's teaching as
+described by St. Hilaire.
+
+Founded upon his doctrine of absolute humility, he established the
+custom of confession amongst his apostles or disciples, and amongst
+those who venerated his teaching, though they did not' become his
+immediate followers. This confession was not that simply auricular one
+enforced by Ritualists, but it was made twice a month, at the new and
+the full moon, before the great Sramana and the congregation, in a clear
+voice. Powerful kings are reported to have followed this practice.
+
+It will not require more than a minute's reflection to see that the
+Buddhistic system of confession was far superior--as regards the end
+in view--than that which has been adopted by Romanists and Ritualists.
+Sakya and James (ch. v. 16) advised the practice in question, that
+the sinner might be humiliated in his own eyes, and deterred from the
+necessity of having again to acknowledge a fall from virtue before a
+congregation of the faithful. Popes and Protestant Ritualists, on the
+contrary, use confession for the purpose of inquiring into the character
+of every penitent, and the practice is adopted by the sinner, not with
+the view of repentance, but to wipe out periodically a sin which is
+habitually renewed.
+
+If confessions were made before a congregation, instead of to a priest
+in a closet, or some other secret spot, there would not then be current
+so many scandalous stories as there are--too true, alas, in many
+instances--respecting women who have been debauched under the guise
+of religion, and priests who have prostituted the ordinances of their
+church, until they have made them pander to vice, and act as seeds to
+produce immorality.
+
+Though personally Tathâgata preached celibacy, he had not, like some of
+the so-called saints of Christianity, any feeling of disrespect towards
+family ties. He always spoke affectionately of his mother, though he
+never knew her, and the legends say that he endeavoured to convert her
+in heaven. His command that all his followers should honour their father
+and mother was repeatedly enforced, that being only second to the duty
+of learning, venerating, and keeping the law. It even went so high as to
+include endeavours to teach the parents if they were ignorant.
+
+One of the main duties of every teacher appointed by Siddartha, was to
+go about preaching the law, and exhorting his hearers to learn and to
+obey it. But no one, on any account, was to introduce the persecuting
+element. No respect whatever was to be paid to caste, all being alike
+human before God. Buddha himself is described as a very striking
+preacher, charming his hearers by his clear and eloquent diction,
+astonishing them by his supernatural power, sometimes instructing the
+common folk with ingenious parables, and inciting them to emulation by
+telling what others had done. He referred to the sins which had been
+committed in former days by an ancient people, and how severely punished
+those who had committed them had been, or still were, and he even
+recorded his own faults, that others might learn to avoid them. He urged
+all his hearers to cultivate truth and reason, which is certainly not a
+Christian practice, and not blindly to obey their spiritual guides, as
+the modern faithful are taught to do. By making the practice of every
+virtue the sole means for attaining eternal salvation, he practically
+discouraged vice, but it does not appear that he endeavoured actively
+to denounce immorality, sin, or sinners. He did not, like many modern
+persons, "compound for sins they are inclined to, by damning those they
+have no mind to." It is distinctly declared that it was not necessary
+for ordinary followers of Buddha to become what is called "religious,"
+or "to enter into religion," as friars, monks, &c. To those who
+preferred an ordinary mode of life, instructions were given, that they
+should cultivate charity, purity, patience, courage, contemplation, and
+knowledge. Indeed, we may assert that the precepts of Jesus, as
+recorded in Matthew v., vi, and viii, and in Luke iii. 7 to 14, are not
+essentially different from those propounded by Sakya Muni Neither the
+one nor the other ordered or even recommended all men to be celibate,
+all men to become poor, all soldiers to leave their profession--but
+both urged upon every one who wished for salvation, to be kind, pure,
+patient, courageous, thoughtful and eager after all knowledge. It would
+be well if those calling themselves Christians would endeavour more
+fully to understand that cultivating science is the same as advancing in
+the knowledge of God.
+
+Some of the remarkable parables found in Buddhist books are very
+probably the original ones of Sakya; they are certainly ingeniously
+framed to illustrate his doctrine. Nor is there wanting, indeed, one
+in which there is an episode resembling the story of the thief upon
+the cross. It is of a lovely courtesan who falls deeply in love with
+a jeweller, young, and a devoted follower of Buddha, and solicits his
+company. To every message she sends him, he returns the answer "it
+is not time for you to see me." At length she commits a crime, and is
+sentenced to have ears, nose, hands, and feet cut off, and to be carried
+to the graveyard to die, leaving the cut off members at her ankles. At
+this period the young man visits her, to see the true nature of those
+joys which drown men in perdition; then he consoles the poor creature by
+teaching her the law; his discourse brings calm into her breast, and she
+dies in professing Buddhism with a certainty that she will rise again
+amongst the good.
+
+We may mention, in passing, that there were female Buddhists as well as
+males, both being on the same footing. The law, as announced by Sakya,
+equally concerned and affected the two sexes.
+
+Another and very interesting parable tells of a king who came before
+a Buddhist priest and his assembled hearers, to the number of 350, to
+confess his crimes, amongst others murder, and his resolution to avoid
+all faults in future, and Bhagavat (the teacher's name) at once remits,
+in conformity with the law, the faults of the king, which have thus
+been expiated before a numerous assembly of the faithful, a remarkable
+instance of remorse, repentance, confession, and remission of sin--some
+centuries before Jesus was born.
+
+At length a powerful king, Asoka, was converted to the new faith, or
+came to the throne already a Buddhist, in the year b.c. 263, and reigned
+thirty-seven years, during which time he devoted himself to spreading
+the religion of his choice. He sent out a cloud of earnest missionaries
+who spread themselves over Hindostan, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Thibet.
+Indeed, they seem to have gone wherever there was means of locomotion,
+or a knowledge of the existence of a people. As the Greeks were
+then certainly trading with India, both by land and sea, it would be
+surprising if the Buddhist missionaries had not accompanied the merchant
+ships, or the overland convoys to Alexandria. But this subject, it is
+convenient for the present to postpone.
+
+There are two points connected with the teaching of Sakya Muni to
+which many Christian writers have especially addressed their remarks,
+apparently with the view of rendering Buddha more or less contemptible,
+or at least of degrading him far below Jesus of Nazareth. It is asserted
+that Siddartha did not believe in a god, and that his Nirvana was
+nothing more than absolute annihilation. To these I am disposed to
+add, that the Buddhists were not taught to pray, nor did their founder
+practise the custom.
+
+To my own mind, the assertion that Sakya did not believe in God is
+wholly unsupported. Nay, his whole scheme is built upon the belief that
+there are powers above which are capable of punishing mankind for their
+sins. It is true that these "gods" were not called Elohim, nor Jah,
+nor Jahveh, nor Jehovah, nor Adonai, nor Eliieh (I am), nor Baalim,
+nor Ashtoreth--yet, for "the son of Suddhodana" (another name for Sakya
+Muni, for he has almost as many, if not more than the western god),
+there was a supreme being called Brahma, or some other name representing
+the same idea as we entertain of the Omnipotent. Still further, in the
+life of Buddha, quoted by St. Hilaire (p. 9) we find the following as
+part of the thoughts of the young Siddartha--"The three worlds, the
+world of the gods, the world of the assours (the benighted ones, or, as
+we should call them, 'the devils ), and that of men, are all plagued
+by the occurrence of old age and disease." We do not, for we dare not
+assert that this opinion is identical with ours; but we are equally
+indisposed to say that the opinions current amongst ourselves are
+absolutely true.
+
+Men living in future days, and whose minds are educated, will probably
+declare, "that the Christians of Europe and elsewhere, for nearly two
+thousand years, had no god but the devil They said he was good, but
+they painted him as one who rejoiced in pain, lamentation, mourning, and
+woe." Buddha preached that man suffered from the effects of his
+sins, and that unless he attained salvation, he would be punished
+everlastingly. The son of Mary, and all his followers, taught, and
+Christians still entertain the belief, that man suffers from the sin of
+a progenitor (assumed to be the parent of all mankind), and that each
+person will be tortured throughout eternity unless he is able to mollify
+his maker, who is also his judge. Both teachers had necessarily an idea
+of a power able to make laws for the conduct of human life, to ordain
+rewards for good behaviour, and to apportion punishment for offences,
+and yet who was sufficiently forgiving to cease from requital, "for a
+consideration," the bribe being invariably a bloody one. Jesus called
+this power "my Father," Siddartha called him Brahma, the Supreme one.
+
+Jesus and his followers have asserted that the power of the son with
+"the Father" is so great, that the latter will conform to the former,
+nay, he even asserts his identity with the Supreme in the words "I and
+my father are one," (John x. 30). See also Acts iv. 12, and 1 Thess. v.
+9, in which it is distinctly affirmed that Jesus is the sole means by
+which man can attain salvation, or, in other words, turn away the
+wrath of God and change it into love. But Jesus could only rise to the
+position of equal or prime favourite by a very sanguinary process, as we
+find from Heb. ix. 22, that there could be no remission of sin without
+shedding of blood. From the following verses, and from Heb. x. 19, we
+learn that it is by the sacrifice of himself that Jesus entered into his
+heavenly powers.
+
+Can any one who depicts the gods of savages, of Grecians and others
+to whom human beings were immolated in hundreds, call such deities
+"devils," and then assert that the Jehovah, whom he extols as above all
+gods, is not painted by men in the same colours. Siddartha's god was
+not a sanguinary one, nor did Buddha always talk of shedding blood, or
+profess to give his disciples his own flesh to eat, and his blood to
+them, that they might all drink of it.
+
+The way in which this Supreme One, Brahma, was painted at his time was
+accepted by Sakya as he found it. He no more questioned the accepted
+truths of Hindooism, than Jesus doubted about the absolute truth of
+the Hebrew scriptures. But, in his own mind, after he had contemplated
+deeply on the subject, he believed that the discovery which he had made
+of the way to Nirvana, universal knowledge, or whatever else Nirvana
+was, had raised him above Sakra Brahma, Mahesvara, and all the gods of
+the pantheon.
+
+Instead of breaking into expressions respecting the insanity or the
+blasphemy of such an idea, let us school ourselves into calmness, and
+turn to our own New Testament and read over Philippians, chap, ii. vv.
+5-11, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being
+in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but
+made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,
+and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a
+man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death
+of the cross: wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a
+name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
+should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under
+the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
+Lord to the glory of God the Father."
+
+Still further, I have repeatedly heard Protestant Christian divines
+assert that Jesus was really "Lord of the world above," and I cannot see
+any greater insanity or blasphemy in the son of Suddodana believing that
+he was at least equal with God, than in the son of Mary asserting "I and
+my Father are one" (John x. 30), and when reproached for making himself
+thus equal with God, he is reported to have remonstrated with his
+auditors who accused him of blasphemy because he asserted himself to be
+the son of God. The creeds of the Anglican and Roman churches repeatedly
+declare the identity of Jesus with Jehovah, e.g., "equal to the Father
+as touching his godhead."
+
+The natural rejoinder to this representation is the assertion by the
+Christian that he knows that Jesus of Nazareth really was what he
+represented himself, and he is sure that Sakya Muni was not; but, on
+the other hand, the Buddhist may say just the reverse with equal
+pertinacity. This argument, if such a name it really deserves, is so
+common amongst all careless religionists, that it deserves a few words
+in reply. It is based upon the very natural notion, "what I believe,
+must be true," and to an objector, the only answer is the question, "you
+don't fancy that I can be wrong, do you?" When two such persons as
+a Christian and a Mahometan met in days gone by, these were the only
+arguments used by each, and they were first of all enforced by such
+revilings as come naturally to the faithful--"hound of a Moslem"--"dog
+of a Christian," "you are a serpent"--"you are a viper," and the like;
+from words they came to blows, and the strongest arm was supposed to
+demonstrate the correctness of the victor's faith. If, instead of
+taking physical strength as a test of truth, we assume that a numerical
+preponderance on one side or another proves the correctness of the
+belief held by the greatest number, we come to the absurd conclusion
+that what is right to-day may be wrong to-morrow. Babylonians were once
+far more numerous than Jews, and Jews than Christians, to-day the
+last exceed vastly both the others. Now, there are more Buddhists
+in existence than true followers of Jesus, in the next century the
+proportion may be reversed.
+
+Truth does not so fluctuate, and a philosopher who uses his reason will
+take up a different stand entirely, and affirm that a man cannot become
+God by meditation, fancy or assertion, nor yet by the consent or vote of
+millions of his fellow-men, and that the assumption that any individual
+must be, and is the begotten son of God, is on a par with the folly of
+the potentates who call themselves brothers of the sun and moon. Such
+absurdity and blasphemy are very common, nevertheless, and men believe
+that Jesus is God, because they have elected him to that elevated
+position by a general vote--or European plebiscite.
+
+We now address ourselves to another important statement made by some
+writers upon the religion of Sakya Muni, to the effect that he taught
+annihilation to be the end most desirable for good men who have learned
+and practised the law. This view is held by St. Hilaire, who, in almost
+every other respect, has shown himself an historian rather favourable
+to Siddartha than otherwise, and who speaks with some regret of the
+conclusion which he feels obliged to draw. But he is opposed upon this
+point by a very great English or German authority, viz., Max Müller,
+who, in a lecture delivered before the general Meeting of the
+Association of German Philologists at Kiel, and which is to be found
+translated in Trubner's _American and Oriental Literary Record_, Oct.
+16, 1869, distinctly declares his belief that the nihilism attributed to
+Buddha's teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly
+wrong to suppose that Nirvana signified annihilation.
+
+When two such earnest inquirers differ, it is instructive to notice
+the reason why. This is to be found in the fact that the etymological
+signification of the word does signify "nothingness," or "extinction,"
+but not, as Müller contends, annihilation of the individual, but a
+complete cessation of all pain and misery. The last quoted author shows
+that Siddartha used Nirvana as synonymous with Moksha, Nirvritti, and
+other words, all designating the highest state of spiritual liberty and
+bliss, but not annihilation. It seems to be perfectly clear that what
+was meant by Sakya is, that to the good who have embraced the means of
+salvation preached by him, the future world would be a haven of rest,
+in which all sorrow, suffering, and sin should be annihilated. But
+the teacher does not go beyond this, and descant upon the opposite
+conditions, and promise joys ineffable and full of glory. His followers
+believe that they will attain to immortality, and that they will be free
+from all such horrors as life brings with it. But the pleasures which
+they expect are negative.
+
+Before we either pity or despise Siddartha for not giving his followers
+any idea of what we call Heaven, it would be well to endeavour to
+discover the true teaching of Jesus of Nazareth upon this point, and the
+ideas of his followers. We must also say a few words about his ideas of
+Hell. He clearly believed that there was a place in which those whose
+lives had been wicked would be punished after death by the devil and his
+angels--the place was one of outer darkness, where shall be weeping and
+wailing, and gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12). In Matt. xiii. 42 this
+place of outer darkness is described as "a furnace of fire," and in Mark
+ix. 43-44 this fire is described as one that never shall be quenched,
+and in which there lives a worm. In Luke xvi. 23-24 there is an
+expression of the belief that the body lives after death in its usual
+form, and has eyes, a tongue, the power of speech, &c.; yet in Matt. x.
+28 the doctrine is inculcated that both body and soul are destroyed
+in Hell. In Jude 7 and 13 Hell is again described as a place of
+unquenchable fire, and yet one occupied by the blackness of darkness;
+whilst in Revelation xix. 20 and xx. 10 we are told that the fire is
+a lake of burning brimstone. Of the absolute locality of this horrible
+spot not a word is said.
+
+On the other hand, Heaven is described (Matt xiii. 43) as a place where
+the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God. In
+Luke xvi. 22 the pleasure of Heaven is made to consist of a simple
+repose in the bosom of Abraham; but though we are there led to believe
+that the blessed can see the torments of the damned, it does not appear
+that either "the father of the faithful," or the poor beggar Lazarus,
+take any pleasure in contemplating them, as some few divines of the
+church of England believe that they will do, when they have arrived at
+the abode of bliss, and see their enemies in the burning lake. Paul,
+when writing to the Corinthians, (1 Ep. xv.) gives his idea of the
+resurrection of the just as one in which each man will be a spiritual
+edition of his former terrestrial self, but beyond the statement in 1
+Thess. iv. 17, that the redeemed will, when in heaven, dwell for
+ever with the Lord, he expresses no opinion of the occupation of
+the glorified ones. In John's gospel (xiv. 2) Jesus is reported as
+saying,--"In my Father's house are many mansions or houses--I go to
+prepare a place for you," but there is nothing like any account of what
+is to be done in those abodes.
+
+Again, we find, Ps. xvi. 11, in a verse which has been largely adapted
+to Christianity, an idea of Heaven given thus--"in thy presence is
+fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."
+What David's pleasures were we may judge from his life, and we may
+fairly imagine that the writer of the passage had an idea something like
+that of Mahomet--that there were houris in Heaven for the delectation of
+the faithful. But in Isaiah lxiv. 4, and I Cor. ii. 9 everything about
+Heaven is declared to be vague--a something which the eye has not seen,
+the ear heard, or the heart conceived.
+
+In the book called _The Revelation of St. John the Divine_, we have a
+far more detailed account of what was believed by some about heaven,
+than in any other, and there is no doubt that to it a large number of
+Christians appeal, for it is, indeed, almost the only foundation
+on which they can build. Yet the Apocalypse was for a long time an
+uncanonical book, and its truth and value were, and still are, doubted
+by many of the faithful. In the part referred to, heaven is described
+as a place incalculably rich in gold and precious stones, in music and
+pleasant odours, and its joys are pour-trayed as consisting in constant
+contact with the evidences of wealth, and in eternally singing a certain
+refrain, an hour of which would be a great trial to human ears. To this
+is added the absence of pain, sorrow, and suffering. The New Jerusalem,
+described in chapter xxi. is nothing more than a palace similar to that
+of Aladdin, which is described in _The Arabian Nights?_ fabulously
+adorned with gems, lighted by other means than a burning sun or a cold
+moon, cooled or refreshed with a river of clear water, and furnished
+with trees bearing different kinds of fruit, but all delicious--thus
+involving the certainty that the singing referred to, must have been
+suspended whilst the palate was regaled--and having leaves said to be
+_for the healing of the nations_. The words thus italicised seem to show
+the indefiniteness of the _idea_, we dare not say of the _knowledge_ of
+John, for the existence of this new Jerusalem involves the absence of
+any disease which required healing; and every person who was not already
+assigned to the brimstone lake, was a resident on the margin of the
+crystal river. Such discrepancies are common in visionary writings, and
+ought to make us distrust them; but instead of that, wild theories are
+founded upon these absurdities, and the builders thence attempt to prove
+their own superior knowledge. Well, in this new Jerusalem, every man
+is to be a ruler, for we are told, that in it the servants of the Lamb
+(chap. xxii. 3 sq.) shall serve him, and see his face, that his name
+shall be written upon their foreheads, and they shall _reign_ for ever
+and ever. The word italicised, very naturally recalls to us an earlier
+passage in the same book (chap, i. 6) wherein the writer expresses the
+belief that Jesus Christ has made his followers "kings and priests."
+It is then clear that John had the notion that in heaven every denizen
+would be a king. But king over whom? or over what? if every one in
+new Jerusalem is a ruler, what is he a ruler of? It is, to the critic,
+moderately certain, that all which the words are intended to convey is,
+that every inhabitant of the New Jerusalem or Heaven will be as rich and
+happy as a mundane sovereign. This, again, involves the belief that the
+author of the Apocalypse had an essentially sensual idea of Heaven,
+and that he pourtrayed it as a man would do, who, pining in misery,
+suffering from disease, pinched with want, obliged to serve as the slave
+of wealth, and to contribute much, out of his little, to the king's
+taxes, saw daily, and envied deeply, the high position and great wealth
+of a tyrant, with whom, his faith induced him to believe, that he would
+change places hereafter.
+
+That the descriptions of Heaven in Revelation can be considered as
+reliable, by any thoughtful Christian, I marvel, for they are bound up
+with an assurance which the lapse of time has fully demonstrated to be
+false. In chap, xxii., v. 12 and 20, the one who is described as the
+Lord of the New Jerusalem, the Christian Heaven, asserts that he is
+coming quickly, and that his reward is with him. Yet in no sense of the
+words is this true, nor has it ever been so.
+
+Tested, then, by every available means, we assert that the Heaven
+described by Jesus of Nazareth and his immediate followers is quite as
+vague, indistinct, and unreliable as the Buddhist Nirvana; or, if the
+affirmative be preferred, we say that the Christian Heaven is quite as
+uncertain or indefinite a prize for Jesus' disciples as the Nirvana
+of Sakya. Both teachers seem to have been equally confident of the
+existence of a Hell, and equally cautious in expressing their ideas
+about a Heaven. And we, who have had the advantage of many centuries of
+civilization and thought, dare no more frame or promulgate a scheme of
+Elysium than the Romans did--we really know nothing whatever about a
+future state.
+
+There is this, however, to be said in favour of Siddartha--he did not,
+like Mahomet and John, preach a Paradise, in which all the pleasures are
+worldly, sensuous, or sensual--John promising music and fruit, Mahomet
+feasting and women. All the Indian's teaching pointed to a future world,
+in which human passions, frailties, and propensities would find no
+place, for the purified being would cast off, with his earthly body,
+every carnal appetite. In fact, there is reason to believe that Buddha's
+idea was, that after death each essence would become reincorporated with
+the Great Spirit, of whom his soul had originally formed a part. It
+is doubtful whether any of us could tell him a more perfect way to the
+truth about the matter.
+
+Yet, although neither Sakya nor Jesus gave any distinct account of
+Heaven, it is certain that some of their followers have done so, and
+it is remarkable to see how they have developed their ideas in the same
+way. Compare, for example, the account given by John, Apocalypse chaps,
+xxi., xxii., with the following account, which I copy from the
+_Kusa Iatakya_, a Buddhistic legend of Ceylon, by T. Steele, p. 195.
+"_Swarga_, or the heaven occupied by Indra, is described as the most
+splendid the human mind can conceive (Percival's _Land of the Vedas_,
+p. 160). Its palaces are composed of pure gold, resplendent diamonds,
+jasper, sapphire, emerald, and other precious stones, whose brilliance
+exceeds that of a thousand suns! Its streets are of crystal, fringed
+with gold. The most beautiful and fragrant flowers adorn its forests,
+whose trees diffuse the sweetest odours. Refreshing breezes, canopies
+of fleecy clouds, thrones of the most dazzling brightness, birds of the
+sweetest melodies, and songs of the most delightful harmony, are heard
+in the enchanting pleasaunces, which are ever fragrant, ever robed in
+summer green." The author whom I am quoting follows these remarks with
+lines from Bernard de Morley's hymn, _Jerusalem the Golden_, clearly
+showing how greatly he has been struck with the parallelism between the
+Buddhist and Christian idea.
+
+So far as I can find, there appears to be a certainty that Sakya Muni
+did not teach to his followers the necessity for prayer. That Jesus did
+so teach his disciples is the common belief of Christians. Yet, in the
+parallel which we are thus drawing, we are perfectly justified in the
+assertion that the son of Mary did not teach it from his own spontaneous
+judgment, as John the Evangelist had done before him. Jesus certainly
+did not originate prayer; indeed, it appears that the subject was forced
+upon him, and that unless he had been urged to it, he would neither
+have taught to others the necessity for prayer, nor have dictated the
+supplication which still passes by his name. The following passage in
+Luke xi. 1 seems to be decisive upon this point:--"And it came to pass,
+as he was praying in a certain place, one of his disciples said unto
+him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." We
+see, then, in the first place, that Jesus did not hold, as a fundamental
+doctrine, that prayer was part of the duty of man, but that he took it
+up as a necessary part of his Jewish education, and adopted it amongst
+the subjects of his discourses, following the example of John. When
+we try to penetrate into the mind of Jesus, as shown in "the Lord's
+Prayer," and ascertain what he regarded as the fittest objects for
+orison, we find that they are almost exclusively worldly. There is,
+in the first place, an ascription of praise, or of reverence, then an
+expression of a desire that the world should become good; that each man
+should have a daily meal; that all offences should be condoned, and none
+others committed; and that no harm should happen to any who used the
+entreaty. Compared with the composition attributed to Solomon, and said
+to have been uttered by him at the dedication of the temple, that which
+is said to have been given by Jesus is meagre in the extreme. It
+does not contain a single supplication for spiritual blessing, or for
+salvation.
+
+In the mind of a philosopher there is a doubt whether the general
+heathen notion about prayer, or the apparent Buddhist prayerlessness, is
+to be the most commended. Yet, ere we discuss the point, I must remark
+that although Buddha does not appear to have taught the duty of prayer
+to his disciples, they practise it nevertheless, and have long litanies,
+chantings, and mechanical contrivances quite as efficacious, and not
+more absurd, than the senseless repetitions which pass current amongst
+us for supplications to the Most High. Now, if we require from ourselves
+a distinct answer to the question, what is prayer? we can frame no
+other than this--"it is the expression of a desire on our part that
+the Creator will modify the laws of nature in our favour, in favour of
+others, or in His own favour!" The idea that He will do this is plainly
+builded upon the supposition that the Creator is like a man, and can be
+induced to change His mind--that a creature thinks He is harsh or wrong,
+and must be set right. When put thus clearly, the most obtuse can see
+that prayer must necessarily be inefficacious, and must always proceed
+from a selfishness so intense as to cloak the blasphemy from view.
+
+If, instead of the above definition, we designate prayer as the uttering
+of a fervent hope or desire for the benefit of an individual, we can
+understand that it is quite as useful as any other ejaculation. Nothing
+is more common than for an angry man to curse with all the energy of
+exasperation; nothing more common than for a punished hound to yelp, and
+for a child, when pained, to cry or roar. Still further I will say, from
+personal experience, that the utterance of cries or groans enables an
+individual to bear pain with less effect upon his nervous system than
+would be felt if they were suppressed. Vociferations are as natural,
+and, to some, as necessary as indulging the appetite for hunger. In like
+manner, when the mind of man, especially of one only partially educated,
+is dominated by intense fear, or by any form of anxiety or present
+suffering, there is an instinctive propensity to seek aid from any
+source, certain or uncertain, and the enunciation of hopes with an
+audible voice is as much necessary to some as roaring is to a lion,
+or bleating to a sheep. In this sense prayer is a comfort--it helps to
+soothe feelings which, if pent up, would become, probably, too great for
+endurance; and, knowing this, I would no more deride prayer than I would
+laugh at a baby who cried for his absent mother.
+
+I do not doubt, in the smallest possible degree, that prayer is a
+comfort under certain circumstances. For example, my child may be
+seriously ill, and I may do everything which my medical knowledge
+enables me to do; but day by day drags wearily along, the fever seems to
+intensify, and it is clear that there is a struggle between the living
+force, and the agent which interferes with it. As hour after hour
+passes, and anxiety deepens into fear, I am like a hardy fellow under
+the lash: at first the stripes are borne with firmness, but as another
+and another falls, not only does-the pain seem keener, but the mental
+power which gives courage to bear the cutting agony diminishes, and the
+pent-up feelings are vented in a roar of anguish, or a groan of despair.
+Just so in the depth of my misery I may utter a prayer--a wish that in
+one way or another my torn and lacerated feelings as a father might be
+healed, and I may expect to receive solace thereby, no matter whether I
+address Jehovah, Brahma, Ishtar, or the Virgin Mary. To hear the sound
+of one's own voice, even the task of having to compose an intelligible
+sentence, relieves, for a time, the poignancy of grief, and thus helps
+one to bear it more patiently. That supplication thus brings relief I
+do not for a moment doubt, but that it has any influence in the result I
+deny.
+
+Entertaining this view, I cannot regard prayer as a duty. It seems to me
+to be a deliberate insult to the Almighty to be constantly urging Him to
+alter the course of nature--or as we may otherwise put it "to change His
+mind." To trust that prayer will obviate the necessity for action seems
+to me the height of folly. If a man uttered the words "Give me this day
+my daily bread" a hundred times over, and yet never sought to obtain it,
+we should regard him as a lunatic. Equally silly should we be if, when
+praying "Defend us in all assaults of our enemies," we did not prepare
+for battle--or if, after ejaculating "defend us from all perils and
+dangers of this night," we were to go to bed without seeing that our
+premises were as secure as forethought could make them. However much
+the theologian may believe in prayer, he cannot deny that it is less
+efficacious than action. Now Buddha preached action whilst Christ
+preached inaction, e.g., "take no thought for the morrow," &c. (Matt.
+vi. 25-34), consequently we are more disposed to give the palm for
+correct judgment to the Indian than to the Jew.
+
+We must, in the next place, notice that many followers of the son of
+Suddodana and the son of Mary have both acted, and do still act, upon
+the belief, not only that prayer is a duty, but that every supplication
+has positive power in the world above--consequently the more extended
+the utterances the greater their influence. In point of fact, prayers
+are spoken of as if they were equivalent to sacrifice, alms-giving, or
+any other supposed virtue. For this there seems to be some foundation
+in Acts x. 4, where Cornelius is told that his prayers and his alms have
+come up before God; in James v. vv. 15, 16, we are told that "the prayer
+of faith shall save the sick;" and that "the effectual, fervent prayer
+of a righteous man availeth much." In Revelation v. 8, we are told that
+the prayers of the saints are kept in golden vials in heaven, and used
+as odours. In chapter viii. 3, we find they are offered with incense
+upon the celestial altar, and that the two conjointly come before the
+presence of God. This being so, there is a desire to accumulate prayers
+on the creditor side of the heavenly books, just as in the days when
+sacrifices were trusted in, there was an attempt to increase their
+influence by augmenting the number of the creatures slaughtered. This
+propensity to multiply orisons was distinctly rebuked by Jesus, who
+ordered his followers not to make vain repetitions, for that the custom
+was heathenish and to be avoided; a prohibition which had been made by
+Siddartha to his followers some centuries before.
+
+To me, I confess, that a life of perpetual prayer without action
+indicates a belief that God can be "pestered" into doing something that
+He did not intend; and that it is infinitely worse than a life of
+action such as Sakya Muni inculcated. I can see no sense in praying for
+something that I do not want, or that I cannot have without personal
+exertion. It seems to me sheer nonsense for anyone to pray that he may
+not grow older, and equally foolish to supplicate that he may live to be
+a king. In like manner it would be silly in me to petition for power to
+read Assyrian writing, and yet never study its characters. If, then,
+by diligent and steady plodding a man can attain his desire, it appears
+wholly useless in him to pray for it. We may say the same of one who
+wishes to curb his passions--he can do so to a great extent by assiduous
+self-control; but he cannot do so any more completely by a lifetime
+passed in prayer. From this point of view, therefore, we must again side
+with Siddartha rather than with Jesus.
+
+It now remains to us to make some observations upon the developments of
+Buddhism after the death of Sakya Muni, but we need not linger over them
+long. His doctrine of self-denial, of patient suffering, of celibacy, of
+fasting, of preaching and of meditation, gradually produced a system in
+which asceticism, solitude, and penance were the prevalent duties.
+Men and women desirous of being saintly and of attaining to eternal
+happiness, selected some den, cave, or tree in which they could live
+a life devoted to contemplation, or else they banded themselves into
+companies where they could practise the Buddhistic virtues in each
+other's presence, and one could encourage or correct another. Buddhist
+monkeries and nunneries are almost as common, and certainly more ancient
+than Roman Catholic monasteries, and they had very nearly the same
+numerous accessories in worship, which we are familiar with in papal
+countries. It is almost impossible to read the accounts given by the
+Abbé Hue, and other Eastern travellers, of Buddhism in China, Thibet,
+and Japan, without seeing the close resemblance of the Roman Church to
+that founded by Siddartha. Indeed, the Abbé was sorely tried by what
+he saw; and it is rumoured that he was punished by some ecclesiastical
+authority, and his book suppressed. Pure Buddhism, moreover, was, like
+pure Christianity, a very painful religion in practice, consequently
+both the one and the other have degenerated, and have gradually become
+altered much in the same way--both having amalgamated themselves with
+other systems, and having gradually eliminated those proceedings which
+are most repulsive to human nature. In both there is now, apparently,
+the idea that the ascetic life may be lived, as it were, by deputy.
+In Buddhism, certain men obtain their living by fasting, meditating,
+macerating their flesh, and praying instead of other people, being, of
+course, adequately paid for their endurance of privation. In a branch
+of the Church founded by Jesus the same notion has obtained, and men who
+have wallowed in filth, starved themselves, and spent their days in
+a miserable round of penance and prayer, are dignified by the name of
+Saints, and are supposed to be able to hand over--for a consideration
+in money--the benefit of their sufferings to people who wish to live
+comfortably as well as piously.
+
+Without burdening this chapter with a dissertation upon the Romish
+doctrine of works of supererogation, I will quote a few extracts from
+the Roman Missal, in use in England, to show that works done by another
+can be made available for the use of any particular individual. On
+January 16, the day of Saint Marcellus, the people are told to pray
+"that we may be aided by the merits of blessed Marcellus, Thy martyr and
+bishop, in whose sufferings we rejoice." On January 29, the day of
+Saint Francis of Sales, we find in the prayer to be used by the people,
+"mercifully grant that we may by the aid of his merits, attain unto the
+joys of life everlasting." Again, on February 8, the day of Saint John
+of Matha, we find in the prescribed prayer, "mercifully grant that by his
+merits pleading for us, we may be," &c.--and, lastly, we notice on March
+19, on Saint Joseph's day, "vouchsafe, O Lord, that we may be helped by
+the merits of Thy most holy mother's spouse," &c. The practice of the
+Buddhists is then essentially followed by the Roman Christians.
+
+Pure Buddhism was wholly free from the sexual element so common in other
+religions of antiquity, and so was the religion of Jesus. Yet in Thibet
+the first became intermingled therewith and Vajrasatta or Dorjesempa the
+Thibetan "God above all," is represented in _Schlayintweit's Atlas
+of Plates_ as a male conjoined with a female; but so ingenious is
+the contrivance that the many might see the drawings without noticing
+anything particular, for the trinity and the unity are both hidden from
+view; and in Europe the latter has introduced St. Foutin and St. Cosmo
+into her calendar, and has founded her worship of a trinity and a virgin
+upon the pagan reverence given to the creative organs in both sexes.
+Veneration for a triune God and his female consort is no more a portion
+of the teaching of the son of Mary than it was the doctrine of the child
+of Maya Devi, Buddha's mother.
+
+It will probably be quite as difficult for the reader of the preceding
+pages, as it has been for the writer of them, to avoid putting the
+question to himself, "Was Jesus of Nazareth a Buddhist disciple?" In
+answer to this question I reply that we have no direct proof either on
+one side or the other, but there is much circumstantial evidence to show
+that he was. We may marshal it thus:--
+
+1. There is very strong reason for belief that the intercourse
+between the inhabitants of India and the successors of Alexander was
+considerable. For example, we find before the time of the Maccabees,
+b.c. 280, or perhaps somewhat later, that Antiochus, the king of Syria,
+had 120 elephants--things which had never before been seen in Syria,
+Palestine, or Egypt, and which took their local name from the Phoenician
+_aleph_, a bull--the Jews supposing that they were a new kind of cattle.
+From the accounts given us we infer that these were Indian, and were
+trained either by Hindoo mahouts or by Greeks taught in Hindustan.
+Animals of this size may have come by land or by water. In either
+case we have evidence of traffic. We have already seen that the great
+missionary effort of Buddhism took place in the time of Asoka about
+B.C. 307, and it is not likely that the West would be neglected when the
+Eastern countries received such attention as they did. The Greeks had by
+this time found their way by sea to India, and thus it is certain that
+the route was known. There is then presumptive evidence that Buddhism
+was taught amongst the people frequenting the kingdom of Antiochus the
+Second, B.C. 261. At this period and subsequently, this king and his
+subjects came much into contact with the Jews, so that it is equally
+easy to believe that the Hebrews were found out by the Hindoo
+missionaries as that the Alexandrian Greeks were.
+
+2. I have been unable to find in the Jewish law, in Grecian story, in
+the accounts of old Babylonians, Carthaginians, Romans, Egyptians, or
+in any other history except that of India, testimony which shows that
+asceticism was an essential part of religion. It is true that we do find
+fasting to be occasionally mentioned in the Old Testament as a sign of
+grief or of abasement,* but never as a means of gaining salvation in a
+future life--whose very existence was unknown to Moses and the Jews. The
+observation of a period of hunger formed no part of the Mosaic law. On
+the contrary, ancient European religions, and those of Egypt and Western
+Asia were associated with feasting and jollification (see Deut. xiv.
+26.) The Jews were encouraged to indulge in a plurality of wives; but
+they were nowhere directed or recommended to live on alms. Again,
+we find nowhere any orders to the priests or Levites to go about the
+country expounding or teaching the law. Consequently, when we notice
+the rise of asceticism, preaching, and celibacy, between the time of
+Antiochus and that of Jesus, we are justified in the belief that they
+were introduced from without, and by those of the only religion which
+inculcated them as articles of faith and practice.
+
+     * In Lev. xvi. 30; xxiii. 27, 28; and Numb. xxix. 7, there
+     are directions given to the Jews, that on a certain day they
+     are "to afflict their souls," and a threat is added, that
+     "whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that
+     self same day, he shall be cut off from amongst his people."
+     There is no specific direction as to the method of
+     afflicting the soul; but it is to be associated with
+     absolute laziness, for whatever soul doeth any work on that
+     day shall be destroyed (Lev. xxiii. 28-31). The law is
+     evidently a very modern one, as we do not find it referred
+     to in the Ancient Jewish records, and the idea of atonement
+     was introduced by the Talmudic Pharisees.
+
+3. The Hebrews always showed during the Old Testament times a great
+aptitude to adopt the faith of outsiders--and as the Jewish people were
+in great abasement and misery at the period when it is probable that the
+Buddhist missionaries came into Syria, they would be prepared for the
+doctrine that they were suffering for bygone sins. The idea that men
+in the present were sometimes punished for sins done in the past was a
+Hebrew as well as a Hindoo idea, else Saul's sons would not have
+been hanged for their father's misdeeds, or the Amalekites have been
+slaughtered by Samuel, because their forefathers had some centuries
+before fought with Israel and been conquered by Moses and Joshua.
+
+4. That after the Persian reign it is certain, that three Jewish sects
+existed,--the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees--the last alone
+being purely Mosaic, and the two first being very like the Buddhists.
+
+To strengthen the links of evidence, we may now say a few words about
+the remarkable sect of the Essenes, premising our belief that it was
+founded by missionaries of the faith of Sakya Muni, whose doctrines and
+practice became, subsequently, modified by Mosaism, just as Christianity
+was considerably remoulded by Talmudism, or, to use an example nearer
+our own times, as the Christianity preached by European missionaries to
+the New Zealanders has been altered by the natives, in accordance with
+their ancient ideas. To them the Old Testament is the Bible, the New
+Testament is of no value.
+
+The Essenes are described by the Rev. Dr Ginsburg, whose authority I
+follow (_The Essenes_. Longmans, London, 1864), as a Jewish sect of
+singular piety. They did not sacrifice animals, but endeavoured to make
+their own minds holy--fit for an acceptable offering to Jehovah. They
+provided themselves with just enough for the necessities of life, and
+held such goods as they possessed, e.g., clothes and cloaks, in common.
+They only allowed themselves to converse on such parts of philosophy
+as concern God and man. They abhorred slavery, but each served his
+neighbour. They respected the Sabbath. Their fundamental laws were, to
+love God, to love virtue, and to love mankind. They affected to despise
+money, fame, pleasures, professed the most strict chastity, or, rather,
+continence, and they practised endurance as a duty. They also cultivated
+simplicity, cheerfulness, modesty, and order. They lived together in
+the same houses and villages, and sustained the poor, the sick, and the
+aged. When they earned wages the money was paid to a common stock. They
+did not marry, or have children; but if any of their body chose to wed,
+there was nothing in the regulations to prevent their doing so, only
+they then had to enter another class of the brotherhood. When possible,
+they worked all day. They were highly respected by those who knew them,
+and were frequently receiving additions to their number. They seem to
+have resembled, in their habits and customs, a fraternity of monks of
+a working, rather than a mendicant, order. Pleasure they regarded as
+an evil, having a tendency to enchain man to earthly enjoyments, a
+peculiarly Buddhist tenet. Still further, they considered the use of
+ointment as defiling, which was certainly not a Hebraic doctrine; but
+they dressed decently. They prayed devoutly before sunrise; but until
+the orb had risen they never spoke of worldly matters. They gave thanks,
+and prayed before and after eating; and ere they entered the refectory
+bathed in pure water. The food provided was just sufficient to keep
+them alive. When a person wished to enter the community, he underwent
+a period of trial, and, if approved, he proceeded to take an oath--"to
+fear God; to be just towards all men; never to wrong anyone; to detest
+the wicked, and love the righteous; to keep faith with all men; not to
+be proud; not to try and outshine his neighbours in any matter; to love
+truth, and to try and reclaim all liars; never to steal or to cajole;
+never to conceal anything from the brotherhood, and to be reticent with
+outsiders." The Essenes reverenced Moses, and so great was their respect
+for the Sabbath, that they would not ease nature on that day. They bore
+all tortures with perfect equanimity, and fully believed in a future
+state of existence, in which the soul, liberated from the body,
+rejoices, and mounts upwards to a paradise, where there are no storms,
+no cold, and no intense heat, and where all are constantly refreshed by
+gentle ocean breezes. Josephus compares this sect with the Pythagoreans;
+and I think this fact is worth noticing, for there was, in old times,
+a strong opinion that the founder of that sect brought his peculiar
+opinions from Hindostan. Pliny, in writing of the Essenes, remarks that
+their usages differ from those of all other nations--which we may
+take as a demonstration that they did not copy their constitution from
+Greeks, Romans, or Jews. Respecting the origin of this sect nothing
+certain is known, beyond that they were in existence at the time of the
+Maccabees. Critics decline to see in them any direct relations to the
+Pythagoreans, and some imagine that the order sprung naturally out of a
+spiritual reading of the Mosaic law, modified, probably, by Persian or
+Chaldee notions.
+
+It seems to me, however, that the tenets and practice of the Essenes
+indicate rather a Buddhist than a Mosaic origin, for celibacy is
+everywhere in the Old Testament spoken of as a misfortune, and abundance
+of wives as a proof of God's favour; and I imagine that some devout
+Indian missionary persuaded many pious Jews to listen to his doctrine,
+but that he was unable to convert them sufficiently to induce them
+to give up the law of Moses for that of Siddartha. I conceive still
+further, that John the Evangelist, and, subsequently, Jesus of Nazareth,
+were perfectly cognizant of the doctrines of the Essenes, if they were
+not members of the sect, and that there is nothing incredible in
+the idea that both these preachers were instructed by some Buddhist
+missionary, although neither was ever induced to give up his belief
+in the absolute truth of those Jewish writings, which both had been
+accustomed to regard as absolutely true and sacred.
+
+We readily allow that our theory may be called a wild one, but we assert
+that, in reality, it is far otherwise. Of course a critic may say that
+John, and his follower, Jesus, were just as likely to have struck out a
+new theory of salvation as Sakya Muni was; or, if exceedingly orthodox,
+he may assume that the preaching of Jesus was the pure result of
+inspiration, not such as was given to the prophets by Jehovah, but
+emanating from himself as a source of absolute truth. But we demur to
+both assertions. The profound reverence that Mary's son showed, in the
+early part of his career, for the law and for the prophets, would have
+prevented his doing anything to upset the former in so marked a manner
+as he did, in respect to the Sabbath day and other matters (see Matthew
+v. 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44), unless there had been some strong
+influence, from without, brought to bear upon his mind, and to cast it
+in a different mould to that of Pharisee or Sadducee. Nor can we
+believe Jesus to have been inspired, unless we extend the same belief to
+Buddha's teaching, and believe that he also was a fountain of light and
+righteousness, which we certainly are not disposed to do.
+
+Our hypothesis respecting a connection between the teaching of the
+Indian and the Hebrew, appears to be strengthened when we contemplate
+the distinction between the doctrines of the Jewish and the Hindoo
+sage. We have seen how they agree as regards the morality which they
+inculcate, the celibacy and poverty that they enjoin, the firm belief
+in preexistent, or original, sin, and in a future state of rewards or
+punishments. They differ in the veneration paid to antecedent authority.
+Sakya Muni believed in his own inspiration, and rejected the writings
+which were reverenced by his parents and Mends. Jesus seems to have
+believed that he was himself supplemental to Moses and the prophets.
+He did not want to destroy or to supersede them absolutely, as we learn
+from Matthew v. 17, and xxiii. 23. He had, apparently, an unbounded
+confidence in their truth, and, with an assurance in their sanctity, he
+spoke of their writings as the very words of God, and we shall see
+that the main, if not the only, points in which Jesus diverges from
+the Hindoo prophet were the products of the Hebrew's full belief in the
+sacred truth of the Jewish Scriptures.
+
+The son of Mary taught, as the most important part of his doctrine, that
+the world would shortly come to an end, and that he was sent to
+show mankind, or, rather, the Jews, how to escape from the terrible
+catastrophe. I do not think it possible for anyone to read the words
+attributed to Jesus, and not recognize that this was the turning point
+upon which everything in his preaching hinged. Sakya Muni spoke of the
+future misery of all those who did not adopt his method of salvation;
+Jesus treated of the impending destruction of the whole world, of an
+immediate judgment of mankind, and of the certain punishment of the
+majority. That we are not uttering vague assertions we may show by
+reference to Matt. xxiv. 3, wherein we find certain disciples asking,
+"What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
+After a long preamble, telling of troubles and misery, we have the reply
+of Jesus in vv. 29 et seq.:--"Immediately after the tribulation of those
+days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
+and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
+shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in
+heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall
+see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great
+glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and
+they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end
+of heaven to another.... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall
+not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." This is substantially,
+and almost literally, repeated in Mark xiii. 26-30, and in Luke xxi. 32.*
+
+     * I have heard the words of this preceding quotation handled
+     by a great variety of divines, asserting themselves to be
+     orthodox, and who hold the position of Christian ministers.
+     All, without exception, profess to regard the expressions
+     about the sun being darkened and the stars falling, as
+     figurative or metaphorical, and each, according to his
+     prevalent ideas, or to the pet theory of the day, explain
+     the imagery as having a reference to some emperor, king,
+     queen, general of armies, and I know not what besides. But,
+     to anyone who examines the phraseology closely, it will be
+     seen that the words are to be taken in their most literal
+     sense. Jesus had, as we have shown, a firm belief in the
+     immediate destruction of the world, and upon that theme he
+     descants and dilates. Taking the Mosaic account of creation
+     as strictly true to the letter, Jesus regarded the sun,
+     moon, and stars as apanages of our earth, and very naturally
+     drew the inference, that when the world was burned up, there
+     would be no necessity for the celestial luminaries--the sun
+     would cease to shine, the moon would be dark, and the stars
+     fall from the sky under the influence of the same power that
+     produced the mundane destruction. These defunct bodies would
+     be replaced by a vast apparition, whose glory would exceed
+     that of the ancient rulers of the day and night, and he who
+     now stood on earth as a man of sorrows and acquainted with
+     grief would be seen and recognized as the arbiter of the
+     destinies of every man. The passages referred to in the text
+     bear no other meaning than the one here assigned to them;
+     nor would anyone, however wild "a divine" he might be, ever
+     see, or endeavour to discover, in the words referred to, a
+     hidden meaning, unless the solemn assertion of Jesus of his
+     immediate advent in the clouds of heaven had been such a
+     signal failure as time has proved it to be. We have always
+     protested against those theologians who pronounce passages
+     in the Bible to be metaphorical or literal as it suits the
+     event, and we do so now. Why such men should insist upon it
+     that everything in the Koran and Buddhistic books must be
+     taken au pied de la lettre and that everything in the Bible
+     may be allegorised, is a matter beyond my comprehension.
+     They surely forget the dictum--"with what measure ye mete it
+     shall be measured to you again" (Matt, vii. 2).
+
+In Matthew x. we find Jesus sending out his disciples as missionaries,
+saying to them (v. 7), "as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven
+is at hand," a doctrine previously proclaimed by John (Matt iii. 2), and
+based upon some words of Isaiah and the more precise presages in Daniel
+See also Matt iv. 14-17; Luke ix. 2, and x. 9. We find a yet more
+important reference in Matt. xi. 14, in which Jesus is reported to have
+said, when speaking of John, "If ye will receive it, this is Elias,
+which was for to come." The observation here made plainly refers to
+an utterance of the Jewish Malachi, who, in his last two chapters,
+foreshadows the advent of a messenger, who should immediately precede
+the coming of the Lord to judge the world. There is yet another passage,
+of almost equal force, in Matt. xvi. 27, 28--"For the Son of man shall
+come in the glory of the Father with his angels, and then shall he
+reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be
+some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son
+of man coming in his kingdom." In Matt. xix. 28 we read, "Jesus said
+unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the
+regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,
+ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
+Israel," &c. Again, we see in Matt, xxv., after a parable intended
+to show the possibility of a sudden occurrence, the words, "Watch,
+therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of
+man cometh." That this belief was due to the Jewish writings we judge
+from the frequent references made to them; and we may especially notice
+one which is attributed to Jesus after his resurrection, viz., "all
+things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and
+in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me." So firmly was the
+belief of an immediate judgment impressed upon the minds of Christians,
+that we find Paul affirming respecting it (1 Cor. xv.), "We shall not
+all sleep, but we shall all be changed... at the last trump" (vv. 31,
+52). This is more decidedly enunciated in 1 Thess. iv. 15-17--"For this
+we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and
+remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them that are
+asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
+with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead
+in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be
+caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
+and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Compare with this 2 Peter iii.
+1-4, in which there is a repetition of the same leading idea, and with
+Acts i. 11, and ii. 16-36.
+
+From these passages, it is unquestionable that Jesus preached that a
+destruction of the whole creation was imminent, and we, who have the
+light of history to guide us, can readily understand the powerful
+influence of the doctrine. We have read of panics, even in London, where
+some enthusiast has propounded the statement, that the world was to
+be destroyed upon a certain day, and can well believe, how a similar
+assertion would frighten ignorant, and, probably, learned Hebrew men.
+But, as time advanced, and generation after generation passed away, the
+original doctrine required to be modified. Yet it has never been quite
+given up, and to this day, a part of the system of Christianity is, to
+put faith in a second coming of Jesus, to judge the world. The
+"second coming" here referred to, frequently passes by the name of the
+Millennium, and earnest pietists believe that the son of Mary will come
+in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, to punish all who
+do not believe in him; and to elevate the existing, and all other past
+saints, to be kings and priests in a new Jerusalem, wherein all will
+enjoy perfect happiness for a thousand years.
+
+There is another point in connection between Buddha and Jesus, to which
+the biblical student should not fail to pay attention. The followers
+of the former had a perfect belief that each of them had lived in a
+previous state of existence. Upon this point not a doubt disturbed
+them. The disciples of the latter, however, had no such ideas, nor when
+propounded to them, did they apparently understand it. As far as we can
+judge from the first three Gospels, Jesus did not assert that he had
+ever existed prior to the time of his birth at Bethlehem. But in the
+fourth Gospel, written as almost every scholar believes, about A.D.
+150, a claim is repeatedly made by Jesus, of having lived for an untold
+period, in the spirit world in company with the Father.
+
+We will not enter here upon the grossness of thought, which is mingled
+with the better ideas of the writer of John's Gospel--a notion that
+involves the necessity for a celestial spouse of God; for if the son
+existed--"begotten by the father before all worlds," it could only be by
+some union--for the word "son" implies the necessity of a father and a
+mother--more especially when it is declared, that he was "begotten."
+Our chief business, however, is not with this point, but with the
+preëxistence of Jesus.
+
+The assertions by which the claim to a preëxistence is recognized, may
+be found in the well known words in the beginning of John, also in the
+10th verse--"The world was made by him." In these parts, the evangelist
+declares that Jesus was coeval with his father, which no son can be. In
+chap. iii. 13, we find, "no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he
+that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven,"--a
+strange text indeed, which totally ignores the ascension of Enoch and
+Elijah--or which demonstrates that they lived in heaven before they were
+born on earth, and which still further makes Jesus say, that he was in
+heaven at the time when he was talking to Nicodemus! In chap, vi. 62,
+there is a similar idea, "and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
+where he was before." In chap. viii. 14 to 23, 38, and 56, a similar
+idea is propounded; and in v. 58, Jesus is made to assert positively,
+"before Abraham was, I am." In chap, xvi. 28, again, we read, "I came
+forth from the Father," and in chap. xvii. 5, we see, "and now, O
+Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had
+with thee before the world was."
+
+We do not believe that the son of Mary made these assertions himself,
+nor did the son of Maya. But Sakya Muni had not long been dead, before
+his disciples promulgated the doctrine that he was, in reality, a part
+of the Supreme, who had existed for everlasting, and had been manifested
+in the flesh to become a teacher; what his followers did for Buddha, it
+was natural that others should do for Christ. It may be that the latter
+were stimulated to do so by noticing the former, but it is quite as
+probable that the idea of glorification came spontaneously to both sets
+of men. Whichever view of the case we may take, one thing is certain,
+viz., that both Buddhists and Christians, have, from the death of their
+respective masters, done everything in their power, century by century,
+to augment the claims of each, until indeed, individuals are found, who
+regard Sakya Muni as the Supreme, and Jesus the All in All. The learned
+historian may trace in the East, the rise of Buddha's influence in some
+spots, and its decadence in others; and, when he looks nearer home,
+he may see the gradual fall of Jesus, and the rise of Mary amongst the
+Papists, whilst amongst the Protestants, the son has been raised even
+above the Father. Not many months have passed, since a clever preacher
+and thoughtful man, told me that he was determined to see nothing in the
+world but Christ--for whatever was done, he felt a certain confidence
+that it was done by him, and for his glory.
+
+We see then, that both Buddhism and Christianity have been founded
+on the assertion that mankind suffers pain, misery, and death, in
+consequence of antecedent criminality before "The Great Master"--that
+men will be punished after death for certain sins committed in this
+life; and that they can attain to salvation by adopting the precepts
+and practice laid down by Buddha and by Christ. Those who preach these
+doctrines are sure of the facts that misery exists, and that man desires
+to escape it. According, then, to the painting of the one, and the
+earnest promise of the other, all teachers of the two sects have a
+strong hold upon the imagination of their followers. I assert, without
+fear of contradiction from any thoughtful man, that the main
+inducements held out by our divines to persuade their hearers to embrace
+Christianity, are an awful painting of the horrors of hell, and
+an assurance not only of escaping it, but of gaining a place quite
+different to the Devil's kingdom, provided only that the plan adopted
+by the theologian is followed to the letter. Neither Buddhists nor
+Christians seem ever to have studied the laws of nature, or the works of
+the Supreme, with any largeness of mind or understanding. Had they done
+so, they would alter their views respecting sin entirely, and they would
+attribute the miseries of life to their proper cause.
+
+It will be interesting to the reader, if we now endeavour to remove from
+the two religious systems, of which we treat, all those parts, which are
+to my mind, clearly imaginary; and examine what is left behind. There
+is nothing beyond a skeleton of morality, pure and simple. But even the
+morality is not based upon common sense. It is tainted by what every
+thinker must regard as absurdities. For example, when Siddartha
+instructed his disciples to become ascetics, and live upon alms, he did
+recognize the fact, that, if all men adopted his law, they must starve;
+for not one would have anything to give. In like manner, when Jesus
+of Nazareth sent off his disciples without any provision for their
+subsistence; and when he preached, "take no thought for the morrow,"
+he did not appear to take in the idea, that if all the world became
+converted to his doctrine, all would suffer, and die of hunger. It is,
+therefore, quite as necessary for a modern philosopher, to correct some
+of the better parts of the doctrines of the sons of Maya Devi, and
+Mary, as it is to emendate their worst features. If such an one were
+to pretend--or to believe, that he was "inspired" to rectify the
+dispensation of Siddartha and Jesus, as the latter thought himself
+commissioned to improve upon, or to fulfil the law of Moses--it is
+probable that he would be regarded as a prophet; but if he should only
+try to coax men to think, rather than drive them to believe, he would be
+unheeded by the majority. Nor after all, does it much signify. Sheep are
+tolerably comfortable whoever the shepherd may be, and if there should
+be a fight between rivals for the ownership of a flock, the quadrupeds
+do not care, so long as they are not trained to fight, to fast, or to
+live on an animal diet.
+
+When any one speaks of the morality, pure and simple, inculcated by
+Sakya Muni and Jesus, it is a fair question to ask whether asceticism
+is included therein. In other words, is there anything of the nature of
+absolute goodness in the attempt to make oneself miserable? Or, to vary
+the question still further--granting, for the sake of argument, that it
+is intrinsically right in the sight of God to abstain from such of our
+propensities as induce us to marry, to eat, drink, and sleep heartily,
+to fight a duel with a rival, to steal, to lie, to covet, and the
+like,--granting, too, that every such abstinence is entered as "an
+asset" on the creditor side of the books of Heaven--is it an equally
+available item to abstain from brotherly love and comfort generally?
+The logician sees clearly that there is no distinction in kind between
+controlling one set of animal passions and another, and is forced to
+allow that if it be a commendable thing to avoid indulging in one carnal
+appetite, it is still more commendable to endeavour to counteract them
+all Consequently, by granting the premisses, we find ourselves landed in
+a difficulty. If universal asceticism were to prevail, it is clear that
+man would be opposing himself to the manifest designs of the Creator,
+as shown in the world at large; and we cannot conceive, that direct
+disobedience to instincts, implanted in us by our Maker, can be anything
+but an item on the debtor side in the books, which Jewish writers
+have said that He keeps. Thus we are driven to investigate the very
+assertions which in the commencement of our inquiry we took for granted,
+and to ask ourselves, is there really any intrinsic value in morality
+in the sight of God? Can a most virtuous life command for the individual
+who has practised it an eternity of bliss? Jesus answers this tolerably
+distinctly in the words reported in Luke xvii. 10, "When ye shall have
+done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable
+servants: we have done that which it was our duty to do." But we doubt
+whether this dictum enunciates sufficiently clearly the abstract value
+of morality. To ascertain this we must endeavour to read the book of
+nature on other pages than those which treat of man.
+
+There can be no doubt in the mind of a thoughtful observer that man and
+the lower animals have much in common--that; all have been framed with a
+purpose, and are ruled by natural laws. Some creatures excel in cunning,
+some in reason, some in activity, some in sloth--all have certain
+proclivities. In some, instinct leads them to eat grass, boughs,
+leaves, and fruits; in others, it teaches them to seek insects or
+other creatures for their food. All have, more or less, periodically a
+propensity to propagate;--which is attended in some by a pairing off
+of male and female, who consort for the purpose of having offspring and
+assisting each other in rearing them. In others, either where there
+is naturally an equality of the sexes or a preponderance of males, the
+latter instinctively fight with each other for a single mate, or for a
+number of females. Again, in the case of animals actuated by hunger, or
+by other motives, there are frequent battles, and the conquered is not
+only killed, but eaten. Or where two or more sets of animals are living,
+the one on land, the other in the air, we may find that one will rob the
+other. Nothing, for example, is much more common than for rats and crows
+to steal eggs, or for tigers to commit murder. Nature, then, being such
+as we find it, we cannot assert--reasonably--that a young stag when he
+covets a neighbour's wife and fights her present consort, for property
+in her, commits a crime against the Almighty,--nor can we say that a fox
+which steals a goose will be sent to hell. On the other hand, we should
+never think of commending a hungry lion for abstaining from killing a
+harmless lamb, nor of declaring that he has done a good action in the
+sight of heaven. In like manner, a writer in proverbs tells us that
+"men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is
+hungry,"--and the general consent of mankind refuses to see the crime of
+murder in the slaughter of one, out of a miserable boat's crew, who
+is killed and eaten that the survivors may escape death from hunger.
+Society, too, is somewhat lenient when two men fight for the love
+of such a woman as Helen. But we readily recognise the fact that a
+community, or even a family, would be weakened and disorganized if theft
+was encouraged, and every pretty female was the cause of close fighting
+between man and man. Hence we see that, in reality, that which is called
+"the moral law," is a code which is intended to influence social life in
+this world, and not the position of human beings in the next.
+
+However much we might desire to think the contrary, we are driven to the
+belief that the moral precepts inculcated on the Jews, the Buddhists,
+and the Christians, had a human, and, we may add, a political origin.
+Taking the Bible even as being what many believe it to be--the inspired
+word of God--we must nevertheless allow that such a code as that book
+contains in Exodus and elsewhere, existed in Egypt long before the
+departure of the Jews from that country. Had not murder been prohibited
+on the Nile bank, Moses would not have run away to escape the penalty
+for homicide. Because the Mizraim punished killing, were they taught of
+God?
+
+The natural answer to this query when it is addressed to a bibliolater
+is that the Egyptians were taught by God to punish murder with death
+through the intervention of their forefather, Ham, who heard the command
+given by God to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
+blood be shed," Gen. ix. 6. But if the Egyptians thus knew the law, so
+the descendants of Shem must have learned it also; and if so, what need
+was there to repeat it amongst the thunders of Sinai. It is plain from
+the romantic legend of Joseph and Potiphar's wife: first, that the
+Hebrew slave feared to commit adultery, as it was a great wickedness
+and a sin against God, Gen. xxxix. 9; and, secondly, that the Egyptian
+considered it a crime in anyone to violate the wife of another. But
+neither Joseph nor Potiphar could by any possibility have heard of the
+laws enunciated on Sinai. So, if we could inquire farther, we should
+most assuredly learn that the Mizraim venerated their parents, punished
+theft, and took means to prevent and to punish perjury. If, then,
+the Egyptians had, long before they ever heard of a Jew, the same
+commandments amongst them which were subsequently enunciated in the
+wilderness, we can only come to the conclusion that the Hebrew writer
+who told the story of Sinai, gave the god whom he described, a great
+deal of unnecessary work. Can we for a moment suppose that the Jews when
+in Egypt had their wives in common?--and if each man had his mate, and
+each woman her husband, it is almost self-evident that adultery would
+not be tolerated amongst them. As there were therefore distinct moral
+laws long before the Exodus, the decalogue was entirely superfluous.
+
+The morality inculcated by teachers is nothing more than instructions
+for mankind how to attain the greatest harmony amongst their fellows.
+It is very natural for a thoughtless man to assert that one who wilfully
+disturbs the general comfort of the human family during his life-time,
+shall be tormented eternally after his death; and, on the other hand,
+to proclaim that he who does everything in his power to increase the
+happiness of his fellow-men shall be rewarded in a heaven above, with
+everlasting music, or other delights; yet we may fairly doubt the
+averments, for both are founded entirely upon human ideas of right and
+wrong, justice and injustice. The prevalent idea is, that everything
+which to some man seems to be wrong on earth, will be righted in another
+sphere--Even Jesus appears to have adopted this view, for he talks (Luke
+xvi) of a Dives and Lazarus--the one, a rich man who fared sumptuously
+every day, and the other a beggar, full of sores, who longed for the
+crumbs from wealth's table. After the deaths of these two people, we
+are told that the rich man went to Hell, and the poor one to Heaven,
+not--apparently--because one was bad and the other good; but simply
+because misery in the present is sure to be changed into luxury for the
+future, and _vice versa_. We see this doctrine distinctly enunciated by
+the imaginary Abraham, in whose bosom Lazarus lay, for he remarks (Luke
+xvi. 25), "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good
+things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and
+thou art tormented." We nowhere find that his position was a reward to
+the beggar for virtue or morality. There is also a current doctrine that
+he whom we call a vile man--one who indulges his brutal desires, shall
+in another world become more brutalized--meeting with, and being beaten
+by, powers whose mischievous propensities are superior to his own;
+whilst, on the other hand, he whom we call a saint, one who endeavours
+to subdue the affections of the flesh in this world, shall be able to
+indulge in any desire that he may have, in the next, unlimitedly. In
+short, each individual makes a Heaven for himself, and a Hell for his
+neighbours. I have heard, in days gone by, a Southern States lady say
+she would not go to heaven, willingly, if she knew that she should meet
+negroes there on terms of equality.
+
+In rejoinder to these considerations, the question is put, "Could the
+world be habitable by men, without the existence amongst them of a
+belief in a future state, in which rewards and punishments shall be
+meted out for supposed misdeeds committed in the present?" It is well
+for us to look the matter in the face boldly, and ask ourselves whether
+fierce tigers, angry bulls, combative stags, kindred devouring rats,
+offspring eating alligators, infanticidal birds and pigs have succeeded
+in extirpating their race? There are herds, without number, of
+graminivorous animals in Africa, and thousands of carnivorous creatures
+who could not exist without murdering some of the former; yet the
+slaughter committed by scores of lions does not annihilate antelopes. In
+like manner there are many folks who have lived in sundry islands of
+the Pacific without an idea, so far as we can learn, of an eternity,
+who sometimes spend their leisure time in fighting with and eating each
+other, and occasionally unite to kill a shark: each individual lives and
+dies like any other animal, but the race remains. Even the systematic
+"hellishness" of persecution indulged in by the followers of Jesus in
+the middle ages did not extirpate the Jews; and if organized murders,
+such as were, in days gone by, sanctioned by individuals wielding the
+sceptre of powerful governments, could not cut off from existence a
+comparatively feeble race, surely we may conclude that a nation can
+continue populous even if any individual, in a fit of passion, should
+rise against his fellow and smite him to the dust. But we need not go to
+New Zealand, China, and Japan to prove that men can live in a community
+without an idea of eternity, for we have only to refer to the Jews, the
+so-called people of God. To them no knowledge of eternal life was given,
+consequently we infer that Jehovah knew that they would get along in the
+world very well without it. What Elohim thought was unnecessary, it is
+not for man to propound as important.
+
+When the modern Christian philosopher--and there really are a few who
+deserve the term--finds that the morality of Jesus did not materially
+differ from that of Sakya Muni, he endeavours to show that the doctrine
+of "faith in the son of God" is of more value than simple propriety,
+and that even the most virtuous life will not enable a man to attain to
+paradise unless he holds the Catholic faith. When the "Catholic faith,"
+as it is termed, is placed in such a position, we are bound to examine
+its pretensions, and inquire in what way doctrines or dogmas are better
+than morality, and whether they are in any way superior to what the
+orthodox call "irreligion." To my mind the best method of solving
+the question is an appeal to history. If, as it is contended by the
+orthodox, the teaching of Christianity is far above that of any other
+religion, then it must follow that all those who believe in it, or even
+profess it, must be paragons amongst men as citizens and rulers. To
+what extent many theologians believe in this axiom may be judged by the
+frequency with which we hear, from the pulpit, an old anecdote to
+the effect, that the expression, "see how these Christians love one
+another," was, in olden time, nearly equal to the most powerful sermon
+in favour of the religion of Jesus. Without pointing a sneer, by
+requesting my readers to substitute the word Buddhists for Christians,
+let me lay the very heavy charge against the leaders of the faith, that
+the words in question are the heaviest condemnation possible against the
+supposed value of the doctrines of the son of Mary, as formerly and at
+present expounded. "See how these Christians love!" Aye, see how they
+love--read their own histories of the past, and their newspapers in
+the present; attend their meetings; listen to their speeches; and
+even follow them into private life. In every position "see how these
+Christians love one another" is the damning sentence which tells of the
+real value of the doctrine attributed to the son of Mary. Whilst I
+write (Jan. 7, 1870), a council, called OEcumenical, consisting of Roman
+Catholic Christian bishops, summoned to the capital of ancient Italy
+from all parts of the world, is sitting, and one of the subjects of its
+deliberation is, whether a certain individual, elected by men to assume
+the direction of a community of men holding a particular faith in
+common, shall be regarded, by those who join such branch of the church,
+as absolutely infallible in every statement of opinion which he makes as
+a high priest. Men positively have met to clothe, and now have invested,
+a man with an attribute of God, and millions of Christians will, by
+those men, be compelled to consider themselves bound by the decision!
+"See how these Christians love!" they are persecuted by the world at
+first, then they persecute their oppressors, and massacre each other;
+educated by Jesus, they gradually encourage ignorance until they reach
+a superstition as crass as the darkness of a dense fog in a moonless
+night. They oppose the advancement of knowledge and science, then, by
+degrees, endeavour to exalt each other, until, by common consent, they
+deify the chieftain of the order. There is not a known crime of which
+the leaders of the Christian church, as it is called, have not been
+guilty, both as men and ecclesiastical rulers. "See how these Christians
+love!" Yet these very men endeavour to deride, and affect to despise,
+those whom they call the godless. The latter, taking their stand upon
+morality and common sense, aver that all affairs between man and his
+maker ought to be referred to the arbitrement of Heaven. The Christian
+hierarchs, on the contrary, declare that they are the earthly agents of
+heaven, and that they, and the secular arm--a very mundane court--can
+act just as well, perhaps better, than the Supreme Judge. We will
+not say whether it was a pleasant pastime for the Spanish, and other
+Inquisitors, to torture individuals who were thought to be inimical to
+the true faith, inasmuch as we do not know their inmost mind; but
+we asseverate that all Europe, except those who had the power of
+persecution, and used it, rejoiced greatly when the enthusiastic armies,
+of what was designated atheistic France, annihilated the so-called Holy
+Inquisition.
+
+I speak with sober earnestness when I say, that after forty years'
+experience amongst those who profess Christianity, and those who
+proclaim, more or less quietly, their disagreement with it, I have
+noticed more sterling virtue and morality amongst the last than the
+first. Though I thus express myself, I must also acknowledge my belief
+in the dictum, "that many men are better than their creeds would
+make them," and, consequently, that all men are not to be taken as
+characteristic of their system of belief. I know, personally, many
+pious, sterling, good Christian people, whom I honour, admire, and,
+perhaps, would be glad to emulate or to equal; but they deserve the
+eulogy thus passed on them in consequence of their good sense having
+ignored the doctrine of faith to a great degree, and having cultivated
+the practice of good works. They have picked out the best bits of the
+Bible, and rejected the worst. In my judgment the most praiseworthy
+Christians whom I know are modified Buddhists, though, probably, not one
+of them ever heard of Siddartha. I would gladly trace their character,
+but I forbear, as I think they would be horrified at the thought of
+my comparing them with those whom they have been taught to regard as
+followers of a false prophet, or something worse. Let it suffice to say
+that I honour consistent reasonable Christians everywhere, and that
+whatever remarks I make which seem to be opposed to this, are directed
+against those whose doctrines, morality, and conduct, ostensibly built
+upon the Bible, are irrational and bad.
+
+Since the preceding remarks were written, there have appeared three very
+remarkable works upon Buddhism in addition to those which I have already
+noticed--and they have the advantage for general readers, of being
+clothed in an English dress. The first which I will notice, is _Travels
+of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun: Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India_ (408
+A.D., and 518 a.d.; London, Trübner, 1869, small 8vo. pp. 208.) This
+work is remarkable as illustrating the fact, that there has been the
+idea, even in China, of sending men, or of devout persons spontaneously
+going, to distant places, to endeavour to seek for more perfect
+religious knowledge, than they believe themselves and their teachers to
+possess where they are. With such an example before us, we can give
+more easy credence to the stories told of Pythagoras, of Solon, and
+Herodotus; how they visited distant countries to learn the way of God
+and man more perfectly. Nor must we pass by the proof, which the journey
+of the Chinese travellers affords, that, what may be called missionary
+zeal is not an apanage of Christianity alone. An account of their
+travels will be found in the next chapter. The second publication
+to which we refer, is _Buddhaghosa's Parables_, translated from the
+Burmese, by Capt. T. Rogers; with an introduction containing _Buddha's
+Dhammapada_, or _Path of Virtue_, translated from the Pâli, by Max
+Müller; London, Trubner & Co., 1870, 8vo. pp. 374. This work is of such
+importance to all students of the Science of Religion, that we shall
+notice it in a separate essay. The third contribution, is _The Modern
+Buddhist_, being the views of a Siamese Minister of State, on his own
+and other religions, translated, with remarks, by Henry Alabaster,
+interpreter of H. B. M., consulate-general in Siam; London, Triibner &
+Co., 1870, small 8vo. pp. 91. This has now arrived at a second edition,
+and is called _The Wheel of the Law_.
+
+This last book is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three, inasmuch
+as it enables us to compare the modern development of the religion of
+Buddha, and that of Christ. It enables us, moreover, to see ourselves
+and modern Christian doctrines as others see them, and to discover the
+essential points at issue, between the followers of the son of Maya
+Devi, and of Mary.
+
+The first point to which we would call attention, is the statement that
+the Siamese are nowhere excelled in the sincerity of their belief,
+and the liberality with which they support their religion. "In Bangkok
+alone, there are more than a hundred monasteries, and ten thousand monks
+and novices. More than this, every male Siamese, sometime during his
+life, and generally in the prime of it, takes orders as a monk, and
+retires for some months or years, to practise abstinence and meditation
+in a monastery." Against this, or side by side with it, what can Great
+Britain, or any other Christian country show? We have, it is true,
+plenty of monasteries in Christendom, and in the majority of western
+kingdoms, there are colleges and universities for the education of
+youth, and there is, in some such institutions, a pretence of meditation
+and of abstinence. Yet the finger of scandal points, and has pointed,
+for many hundred years, to the disreputable conduct pursued in almost
+the whole of such Christian institutions; whereas, not even its enemies
+can find evidence to convict Buddhist ascetics of indulging in sensual
+gratifications of any kind whatever.
+
+We learn, from Mr Alabaster's preface, that the late king of Siam,
+though "eminent amongst monks for his knowledge of the Buddhist
+scriptures, boldly preached against the canonicity of those of them,
+whose relations were opposed to his reason, and his knowledge of modern
+science." "His powers as a linguist were considerable, and enabled him
+to use an English library with facility." They are his views--which royal
+etiquette prevented him from writing, that inspired his prime minister.
+What have we here? Surely it is an example that British rulers, and
+especially divines, should follow. Yet with all our boasted skill,
+science, and powers of thought, our theologians prefer to preach, and to
+uphold, doctrines which they know to be repugnant, both to reason and to
+science, rather than abandon that which was propounded when reason and
+knowledge were almost in their infancy. Certainly, in this respect,
+the believers in Sakya Muni show themselves more sensible than those in
+Jesus.
+
+Again, let us quote the following paragraph--pointing out the analogy we
+wish to draw, by using a literary contrivance--and calling attention to
+the fact, that no Roman Catholic authority in Christian Europe, has yet
+dared to say, what a Buddhist ruler does.
+
+"Our {Siamese \ Papal} literature is not only scanty, but nonsensical,
+full of stories of {genii \ saints} stealing {women \ relics} and {men
+\ saints} fighting with {genii \ devils} and {extraordinary persons\
+Elijah and Philip} who could fly through the air, and bring dead
+people to life. And, even those works, which profess to teach anything,
+generally teach it wrong; so that there is not the least profit, though
+one studies them from morning to night" (p. 7).
+
+The following observation is equally powerful--Chaya. Phya.
+Praklang--the name of the Siamese author, might, "as a Buddhist, believe
+in the existence of a God, sublimed 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
+God 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 him
+by Christian Missionaries, or by Mahometans, Brahmins, or Jews, falls
+below his standard of even an ordinary good man" (p. 25).
+
+After the passages which we have quoted, the translator gives many
+pages of accounts of conversation between missionaries and the Siamese
+minister, which well repay a perusal. They are too long for quotation
+entire, but there are three paragraphs that deserve commemoration, as
+they show us the reasoning powers of the Buddhist in favourable contrast
+to the bigotry of his would-be instructor. "I said, 'then you consider
+that even a stone in the bladder is created by God?' He replied, 'Yes,
+everything, God creates everything.' 'Then,' answered I, if that is
+so, God creates in man that which will cause his death, and you medical
+missionaries remove it, and restore his health! Are you not opposing
+God by so doing? Are you not offending Him in curing those whom He would
+kill?' When I had said this the missionary became angry, and saying 'I
+was hard to teach,' left me" (p. 29). Again, when he and Dr Gutzlaff
+were discussing the story of the creation and "the fall," as taught in
+the Christian and Jewish Bible, and the Buddhist has clearly the best of
+the argument, the missionary told him, that if any spoke as the minister
+had been doing in European countries, he would be put in prison--and
+Chaya Phya adds, "I invite particular attention to this statement" (p.
+34). Thus, not only in other parts of his work, but here also, he points
+out how that which Christian emissaries say is "a religion of peace
+on earth and good will to men" is, in reality, one of intolerance and
+persecution, even on the showing of its own ministers. In the third
+example to which I refer, Gutzlaff is again talking with Chaya upon the
+curse of man, and the Siamese speaks thus--"Besides, the Bible says, by
+belief in Christ, man shall escape the consequences of Eve's sin; yet
+I cannot see that men do so escape in any degree, but suffer just as
+others do." The missionary answered, "It is waste of time to converse
+with evil men, who will not be taught, and so he left me" (p. 35). When
+men like Gutzlaff, who is really eminent in his way, can be so readily
+silenced and put to flight by a native of Siam, whose mind is not
+familiar with the science and logical training of European thinkers, it
+is by no means surprising that cultivated Englishmen should refuse
+to believe in the childish stories and foolish doctrines that are
+promulgated by Christians at home, as being an inspired and infallible
+revelation from the Almighty. Alas, for our country and her people!
+they have much to unlearn as well as to learn before they can lay a fair
+claim to the position which they assume to hold.
+
+We may next quote the following, as being useful to missionary societies
+here. After having described the religion of Papists, Protestants, and
+Mormons, Chaya says, "All these three sects worship the same God and
+Christ, why, then, should they blame each other, and charge each other
+with believing wrongfully, and say to each other, 'You are wrong, and
+will go to Hell; we are right, and shall go to Heaven?' You make us
+think that it is one religion which Christians hold, yet how can we join
+it when each party threatens us with Hell if we agree with another sect,
+and there is none to decide between them? I beg comparison of this with
+the teaching of the Lord Buddha, that whoever endeavours to keep the
+commandments, and is charitable, and walks virtuously, must attain to
+Heaven" (p. 43). The commandments referred to are--
+
+1st. Thou shalt not destroy nor cause the destruction of any living
+thing.
+
+2d. Thou shalt not, either by fraud or violence, obtain or keep that
+which belongs to another.
+
+3d. Thou shall not lie carnally with any but proper objects for thy
+lust.
+
+4th. Thou shalt not attempt, either by word or action, to lead others to
+believe that which is not true.
+
+5th. Thou shalt not become intoxicated.
+
+We much fear, that if the commandments which nominal Christians observe
+are contrasted with those kept by the Buddhists, that the former must be
+regarded as much lower in the scale of religious civilization than the
+latter.
+
+The Siamese author next discusses the question, "how shall a man select
+that religion which he can trust to for his future happiness?" His
+answer is, "He must reflect, and apply his mind to ascertain which
+comes nearest to truth." Then follow a few very true remarks about the
+difficulty of shaking off any faith once adopted--about the causes
+which determine men to change their belief, and, in illustration of the
+difficulties, the author quotes a sermon by Buddha to those who were
+in doubt, and desired to select a right religion. "And the Lord Buddha
+answered, You are right to doubt, for it was a doubtful matter. I say
+unto all of you, do not believe in what ye have heard, that is, when you
+have heard anyone say this is especially good or extremely bad; do not
+reason with yourselves, that if it had not been true it would not
+have been asserted, and so believe in its truth. Neither have faith in
+traditions, because they have been handed down for many generations, and
+in many places.
+
+"Do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken of by
+many; do not think that is a proof of its truth.
+
+"Do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is
+produced; do not be sure that the writing 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 haphazard, 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 because you think there is an analogy, that is, a
+suitability in things and occurrences--such as believing that there must
+be walls of the world because you see water in a basin, or that Mount
+Meru must exist because you have seen the reflection of trees, or that
+there must be a creating god because houses and towers have builders.
+
+"Do not believe in the truth of that to which you have become attached
+by habit, as every nation believes in the superiority of its own dress,
+and ornaments, and language.
+
+"Do not believe because your informant appears to be a credible person,
+as, for instance, when you see anyone having a very sharp appearance,
+conclude that he must be clever and trustworthy: or, when you see anyone
+who has powers and abilities beyond what men generally possess, believe
+in what he tells; or think that a great nobleman is to be believed, as
+he would not be raised by the king to high station unless he were a good
+man.
+
+"Do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and masters,
+or believe and practise merely because they believe and practise.
+
+"I 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 anyone, but will cause sorrow;' and when you know this,
+then eschew it" (pp. 45-47). Then follows a long account of the examples
+which Buddha gave to his disciples, examining them by questions, whose
+answer is obvious; but these, though wonderfully to the point, are too
+long for quotation, and we must refer our readers to the book itself.
+Nor do we act thus, reluctantly, for we believe that every honest
+inquirer will thank us for the introduction. We should rejoice if
+some of our divines became acquainted with it. They might draw as
+many valuable texts from the discourses attributed to Buddha, herein
+described, as they do now from Jesus' sermon on the mount. We may add,
+in passing, that, in the conversation of Sakya Muni, he says, "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 resurrection, 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; and if there should happen to be a
+future after all, they will be at a disadvantage--they will be like
+travellers without provisions" (p. 54).
+
+The following exposition of modern Buddhist belief well deserves
+attention.
+
+"Buddhists believe that every act, word, or thought, has its
+consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present, or in
+some future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, i.e., may
+cause a man misfortune in this world, or an evil birth in hell, or as
+an animal in some future existence. Good acts, etc., will produce good
+consequences; prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven, or in a high
+position in the world in some future state" (p. 57).
+
+We will only add, that if the value of Buddhism, like Christianity, is
+to be known by its fruits, it is clear, that the former, as practised
+generally in Siam, is decidedly superior to the latter as practised in
+Great Britain, America, and Christendom, generally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Priority of Buddhism to Christianity. Strange assumptions.
+     When was India first known to Christians? Thomas the
+     Apostle, When Asceticism was introduced into Christianity.
+     Results of inquiry into the introduction of Christianity
+     into India. Tarshish and Ceylon. Peacocks known as the
+     Persian birds to the Greeks, temp. Aristophanes. Indian
+     elephants in army of Darius. Roman traffic with India, b.c.
+     30. Buddhist missionaries. The gift of tongues. Rise of
+     Asceticism in Western Asia. Essenes again. Collection of
+     Buddhist writings, 450 b.c. Degeneracy of original Faith.
+     Missionaries from China to Hindostan in search of Buddhist
+     works and knowledge. Travels of Fah Hian, their experience
+     and remarks. Quotations from their writings. Footprints of
+     Buddha and Peter. Immaculate conception of Sakya. Old
+     Simeon--a repetition. Wise men from the East. St. Ursula.
+     Three Buddhist councils to compile scriptures. Buddhism
+     lapsed into image-worship and processions. Progress of the
+     pilgrims. Return by sea. Deductions. Developments of
+     Christianity and Asceticism. Observations about travelling.
+     Conclusions.
+
+With the usual pertinacity of Englishmen, there are many devout
+individuals who, on finding that Buddhism and Christianity very closely
+resemble each other, asseverate, with all the vehemence of an assumed
+orthodoxy, that the first has proceeded from the second. Nor can the
+absurdity of attempting to prove that the future must precede the past
+deter them from declaring that Buddhism was promulgated originally
+by Christian missionaries from Judea, and then became deteriorated by
+Brahminical and other fancies! It is really difficult, sometimes, to
+discover what are the real tenets of the obstinate orthodox to whom
+we refer; but, so far as we can learn from the character of their
+opposition, it would appear that they do not deny the existence of such
+a man as Sakya Muni, to whom his followers gave the name of Buddha. Just
+in the same way, we may add, as his followers gave the name of Jesus
+Christ to Ben Panther. Whilst allowing that Siddartha founded a new
+religion, the orthodox assert that all its bad parts are human, whilst
+all its good parts consist of doctrines tacked on to the original, after
+Christianity had been introduced into India, by one or more of Jesus'
+apostles or disciples.
+
+If, for the sake of argument, we accord to such cavillers the position
+of reasonable beings, and ask them to give us some proof of the
+assertion, that early Christian people went to Hindostan and preached
+the gospel there; or even to point out, in history, valid proofs that
+India was known to a single apostle, we find that they have nothing to
+say beyond the vaguest gossip.
+
+What the testimony is we may find by turning to the article Thomas,
+in Kitto's _Cyclopœdia of Biblical Literature_, which was written by
+a learned professor of Gottingen. Therein we see, and the statement
+is amply vouched by quotation from authorities, that the Apostle in
+question is said to have preached the gospel in Parthia and in Persia,
+and to have been buried in Edessa; and that, according to a later
+tradition, Thomas went to India, and suffered martyrdom there. Then
+follows a statement that this account has been assailed, &c. Similar
+traditions are mentioned by Dean Stanley in Smith's "_Dictionary of the
+Bible_" with the addition that it is now believed that the Thomas of
+Malabar Christian fame was a Nestorian missionary.
+
+Eusebius writes, book v., ch. 10, speaking of Pantaenus, about
+a.d. 190--"He is said to have displayed such ardour... that he was
+constituted a herald of the gospel of Christ to the nations of the East,
+and advanced even as far as India; and the report is, that he there
+found his own arrival anticipated by some who were acquainted with
+the gospel of Matthew, to whom Bartholomew, one of the Apostles, had
+preached, and had left them the gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew, which
+was also preserved unto this time. Pantænus became finally the head of
+the Alexandrian school." Such a piece of gossip no historian can trust
+for a moment.
+
+Socrates, in his _Ecclesiastical History_, about a.d. 420, writes,
+"We must now mention by what means the profession of Christianity
+was extended in Constantine's reign, for it was in his time that the
+nations, both of the Indians in the interior, and the Iberians, first
+embraced the Christian faith. But it may be needful briefly to explain
+why the expression in the interior is appended. When the apostles went
+forth by lot amongst the nations, Thomas received the apostleship of the
+Parthians. Matthew was allotted Ethiopia, and Bartholomew the part of
+India contiguous to that country; but the interior of India, which was
+inhabited by many barbarous nations, using different languages, was not
+enlightened by Christian doctrine before the time of Constantine," about
+320 A.D. Then follows a story of a Tynan philosopher, who, with two
+youths, took ship, and arrived somewhere in India, just after the
+violation of a treaty between that country and the Romans. Everyone in
+the ship was killed but the two lads, who, being young, were sent as a
+present to the Indian king. One became a cupbearer, the other the royal
+recorder. The king died, freeing the youths, and the queen, left with a
+young son, made the strangers his tutors, or regents. One, who was the
+highest, then began to inquire whether, amongst the Roman merchants
+trafficking with that country, there were any Christians to be found.
+Having discovered some, he induced them to select a place for worship,
+and he subsequently built a church, into which he admitted some Indians,
+after previous instruction. The other youth comes back to Tyre, and then
+the regent comes to Alexandria, talks to Athanasius, and begs him to
+send a bishop and clergy to the place he has left, to which no name is
+given. To the latter youth Frumentius, ordination is given, and he
+returns to India to preach, to perform miracles, and build oratories,
+[--Greek--]. The historian, adds Rufinus, assures us that he heard these
+facts from the former king's cupbearer, Edesius, who was afterwards
+inducted into the sacred office at Tyre.
+
+We may next quote the _Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of
+Philostorgius_ (who wrote about A.D. 425), compiled by Photius,
+Patriarch of Constantinople. Therein we may observe how completely the
+first contradicts Socrates as before quoted, and may also infer
+the reason why. In book ii., ch. 6, the words run, "The impious
+Philostorgius relates, that the Christians in Central India, who were
+converted to the faith of Christ by the preaching of St. Bartholomew,
+believe that the son is not of the same substance with the father." He
+adds that "Theophilus, the Indian who had embraced this opinion, came to
+them and delivered it to them as a doctrine; and also that these Indians
+are now called Homeritæ, instead of their old name, Sabæans, which they
+received from the city of Saba, the chief city of the whole nation."
+This leads me to doubt very strongly whether the ecclesiastical writers
+in early days did not group, under the name of India, the southern parts
+of Arabia, Persia, and Beloochistan.
+
+Sozomen, writing about the period of 325 A.D., says, book ii, ch. 24,
+"We have heard that about this period some of the most distant of the
+nations that we call Indian, to whom the preaching of Bartholomew was
+unknown, were converted to Christianity by Frumentius, a priest." Then
+follows an enlarged edition of the legend told by Socrates, and the
+words, "it is said that Frumentius discharged his priestly functions so
+admirably that he became an object of universal admiration." Theodoret,
+writing about 420 A.D., places the conversion of the Indians about 328
+A.D., and gives substantially the same account as the preceding writers
+whom we have quoted.
+
+We will not, however, content ourselves with this short notice, but
+will first inquire whether, if the accounts of the earlier reporters,
+Eusebius, Socrates, Clement, and Rufinus, who wrote about a.d. 320,
+390, 190, and 370, are not to be trusted, we can believe the stories of
+Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome, Nicephorus, and Abdias, who wrote
+about a.d. 380, 380, 400, 815, and 910 respectively. If we believe one
+set of Christian "fathers," that Thomas the apostle died in Syria, we
+cannot credit a set of Christian "sons," who affirm that he was martyred
+in India. But--and the point is an important one--we can see reason why
+the children should invent an account of which the parents saw not the
+necessity. About the period of Gregory Nazianzen arose that asceticism
+which sent Simeon Stylites upon the top of his pillar in a.d. 394, and
+kept him there for the rest of his life, and that peopled the Thebaid
+with hermits of the most approved Buddhist order--celibates shunning
+luxury, and cultivating filthiness of the outer to cleanse the inner
+man. The way in which the original faith, preached by Jesus and modified
+by Paul, was distorted during the first few centuries in Egypt can only
+be rationally accounted for by a spread of Buddhist doctrines by Indian
+missionaries, or promulgated by Christian merchants, who had travelled
+to the Indies, and modified their original faith by what they saw and
+heard from the followers of the great Sramana; and it was natural for
+the Alexandrian Christians to adopt the modifications referred to, and
+to stamp the innovations with the assertion that they were
+apostolic reflections--rays of divine light falling from "the sun of
+righteousness" upon the mind of the blessed Saint Somebody, Thomas, for
+this purpose, being a name which answered as well as any other. There is
+positively no evidence whatever--except some apocryphal Jesuit stories
+about certain disciples of Jesus, found by Papal missionaries at
+Malabar--that any disciple of Mary's son ever proceeded to Hindostan to
+preach the gospel during the first centuries of our era. Those who
+know the history of the "Decretals," and of Prester John, can readily
+estimate the value of tales told by Jesuits in India, where there was
+not at the time anyone to test their veracity.
+
+Being myself desirous of ascertaining what evidence really exists--or
+existed in the times of ancient authors, whose works have come down to
+us--of the knowledge of India by Europeans in days gone by, I instituted
+an inquiry, with the determination to be impartial. The results obtained
+were the following:--
+
+The only reason for believing that Hindostan and Ceylon were known to
+the Phoenicians is a short passage in the Biblical History of Solomon,
+in which we are told that after a three years' absence, Hiram's Tyrian
+sailors returned from Tarshish, bringing what our translators call
+ivory, apes, and peacocks. The words in the Hebrew original are said
+by Tennant to be all but identical with those in use in Ceylon at
+the present date. For a full account of the probable identity of the
+Tarshish in the passage alluded to and Galle, see Emerson Tennant's
+_History of Ceylon_.
+
+Yet, if we grant that the Tyrian shipmen traded to India, we are bound
+to confess that the knowledge which they acquired died with them;
+nor did their successors, the Greeks, know anything distinctly about
+Hindostan prior to the time of Alexander the Great. In the Biblical
+story of Esther we are told, i. 1, viii. 9, that a Persian king reigned
+from India to Ethiopia, the Hebrew word for the former being _Hodoo_,
+supposed to be a form of _handoo_, or _hindoo_; Pehlevi, _hendo_; Zend,
+_heando_; Sanscrit, _Sindhu_ (Fürst, s.v.), equivalent to the Greek
+_Indikee_, or the country of the Indus. We find reason to believe that
+the India of Artaxerxes was a portion of Hindostan--first, because the
+Persian monarch had Indian soldiers in his army, and elephants, when
+he fought with Alexander; and secondly, because the peacock, a bird of
+Ceylon, was known to the Greeks, in the time of Aristophanes, as "the
+Persian bird." That the Persians traded with Northern India we infer,
+from the account which Appian gives us of the advance eastward of
+Alexander, after his victory at Arbela. But the whole story of the
+Grecian warrior's advance into the Punjaub and down the Indus, contains,
+in itself, tolerably clear proof that Hindostan was very little known to
+the Greeks. Of a subsequent invasion of India by Alexander's successor,
+Seleucus Nicator; of the mission of Megasthenes to Sandracottus, the
+grandfather of Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine; of the navigation of the
+Grecian ship down the Indus, and the subsequent traffic by land and
+sea between the Greeks and the Hindoos, we need not say more than that
+Augustus, b.c. 30, regulated the trade to Hindostan, _via_ Alexandria,
+and that, at the time of Pliny the elder, about A.D. _60_, voyages were
+being made to India every year, companies of archers being carried on
+board the vessels to protect them from pirates. We learn also that a
+twelvemonth did not elapse without a drain upon the Roman Empire of
+about one million and a-half sterling for India, in exchange for Hindoo
+wares (book vi., ch. 26).
+
+At the period Pliny refers to, and for a long time previously, there
+can be no pretence that any of Jesus' apostles accompanied traders to
+Hindostan, for every one of them were employed nearer home. On the other
+hand, we may inquire into the possibility and the reasonableness of
+Buddhist missionaries travelling westward in the course of Alexandrian
+traffic, or of the caravans which, we have grounds for believing, came
+through Persia to the Roman Empire.
+
+On turning to Oriental literature, we find that the often-mentioned King
+Asokâ adopted Buddhism as the religion of his empire about b.c. 250, and
+that, in his time, missionaries carried that faith successfully to the
+uttermost parts of Hindostan--to Burmah, to Ceylon, to Japan, to Thibet,
+and to China. The envoys carried with them, in some instances, written
+books, in others, their guide was oral tradition. Wherever they went
+they bore a biography of Sakya--or Buddha--accounts of miracles that he
+had performed, and a summary, more or less extended, of his preaching or
+doctrines. This dispersion of Hindoo envoys was about fifty years later
+than the mission of the Greek Megasthenes to the court of Asokâ's
+grandfather, and it is quite as probable that Buddhist preachers went to
+enlighten what they imagined to be the benighted, and what they knew
+to be the then defeated Grecians, as that they went over frightful
+mountains and stormy seas to Thibet, China, and Japan.
+
+We may profitably pause for a moment here, to contemplate that which
+I at one time believed to be the most wonderful of all the miracles
+recorded in the New Testament, viz., "the gift of tongues." The
+references to this which we meet with in the epistles of the apostle
+Paul might lead to the supposition, that some who had this "gift" spoke
+mere gibberish--something which was not, either in intention or in
+reality, an utterance in a foreign language; but the story of the
+original imparting of power to speak in a previously unknown tongue
+involves the idea, that the disciples had, on the occasion referred
+to, a faculty given to them, by which they knew the languages used
+by various nationalities, without the trouble of learning them. Many
+divines have held that such ability was absolutely necessary to those
+who had to go forth to teach all nations the doctrines of the gospel I
+am quite aware that, however earnest I might be to propagate truth,
+I could not go, with advantage, to preach in Russia, because I know
+nothing of its language.
+
+Doubt in the reality of the miracle recorded in Acts ii. was not born
+until I found that Buddhist missionaries went out into distant lands,
+where their own tongue was unknown, and yet made converts. When once I
+felt dubious as regards the veracity of the historian, I began to notice
+what the apostles generally did when they went to a new country or town.
+Their practice seems to have been to have visited synagogues of the Jews
+living on the spot--and able, if they chose, to be interpreters--or,
+where there were such establishments, "the schools" were visited, where
+the students and the masters understood Greek. In the time of Paul the
+language of the Hellenes was spoken by Romans of high position, much as
+French was spoken at the court of Frederic the Great of Prussia, and
+as German is at St. Petersburg. The Apostle seems to have spoken Greek
+readily, and when he could use that tongue or the Hebrew he was fluent.
+I have sought in vain for evidence that either Paul or any of the
+Apostles ever addressed a foreign mob, whose language was neither Greek
+nor Hebrew. A study of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts will show
+this--especially, we must notice the end of the tenth verse, where we
+are told "that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both
+_Jews and Greeks_." When disturbance occurred in the theatre, Paul was
+not the orator put forward to appease the people--he probably could not
+speak their patois. Yet he tells us, 1 Cor. xiv. 18, that he spoke with
+tongues more than his fellows.*
+
+     * There is much difference amongst ecclesiastical writers
+     respecting what is called the "gift of tongues." The
+     difficulty arises mainly from the desire to reconcile "the
+     true" with "the absurd." Starting from the point that all
+     "scripture" is written by "inspiration of God," the orthodox
+     are obliged to receive the account narrated in Acts ii. as
+     being literally correct.
+
+In plain language, the story runs thus:--The Apostles, twelve in number,
+were sitting in a room. Whilst there, a noise was heard, and something
+like fiery tongues, more or less split, appeared, and one settled upon
+each of the company. These all, at once, began to speak in languages
+which were strange to all.
+
+From the noise made, neighbours had their attention called, and from one
+mouth to another the tidings of the ranting ran, until it reached the
+ears of devout men, who, from every nation under heaven, were then
+assembled in Jerusalem. Whether these foreigners were Hebrews, or
+whether they, being strangers, had the gift of understanding the reports
+couched in Aramaic, we do not know. But it is narrated that, in the
+course of a few minutes--possibly an hour or two--the devout strangers
+came to listen to the Apostles, either speaking singly or at once.
+
+As these foreigners noticed what was said, they recognized words
+in their own respective dialects, and then the Parthian said to the
+Mede--the Elamite to the Mesopotamian--the Phrygian to the Pamphyliaji,
+&c., "What does all this mean?" So to interchange a question involves
+that the interlocutors, like the Apostles, had suddenly received the
+gift of speaking, and understanding, other tongues than their own. When
+the listeners had convinced themselves about the marvel, each began to
+talk in his own language, and the Jews understood them to say, "What
+meaneth this?" the Hebrews, like the rest, having also the gift of
+knowing what was said in a strange language.
+
+Some, however, had not this power of interpretation, and remarked, "the
+fellows are drunk!" For a moment we pause to inquire how many people
+there were in one room of one house. The Apostles were twelve;
+then there were, at least three, Parthians, Medes, &c., in all about
+forty-five more, and in addition, there were "the mockers." To all
+these Peter preached, and the wonders of the day were crowned by the
+conversion of three thousand people!
+
+It seems, therefore, to be clear, from the account of this extraordinary
+miracle, that the Apostles then gathered together acquired the power of
+expressing their thoughts in languages which they had never learned, the
+judges of the feat being those whose dialects were spoken.
+
+If we now proceed in biblical order to examine into the ideas connected
+with this strange faculty, we find, in Acts x. 44-46, that the
+circumcised Jews alone were satisfied, in the plenitude of their own
+ignorance, that Cornelius and his company could "speak with tongues."
+Again, in Acts xix. 6, we learn that certain Ephesians, after baptism,
+and imposition of hands, "spake with tongues "--no judge of the fact
+being quoted.
+
+In 1 Cor. xii. 10, we discover that amongst the gifts of the Holy Spirit
+are "kinds of tongues," and the interpretation thereof which will,
+probably, remind the lover of Shakespeare of Act iv. Scenes 1 and 3,
+in "All's well that ends well," wherein there is a nonsensical jargon
+spoken by one person which another interprets to the satisfaction of the
+silly Parolles. In vv 28, 30, we see strong indications that the gift
+of tongues and interpretation may be compared to some things now heard
+of in spiritualistic or other conjuring séances.
+
+This notion of "speaking with other tongues" reaches its climax,
+apparently, in 1 Cor. xiii. 1, wherein Paul indicates, but does not
+positively assert, that he can "speak with the tongues of men and
+angels," a boast which 2 Cor. xii. 4 leads us to take literally. But how
+any one on earth could test the reality of assertion it is difficult to
+conceive.
+
+In 1 Cor. xiv. we see indications that "speaking with tongues" is little
+more or less than a sort of hysterical utterance of gibberish, which
+we may compare to the once celebrated chorus of
+
+     Lilli-bullero-lero-lero-Lillibullero bullen a la.
+
+One may now ask, "Why did people think that it was part of the
+Christian's privileges or powers to speak with tongues?" The only answer
+which I can discover is indicated in Acts ii. 18, wherein we find it
+given as the opinion of Peter, that a certain vaticination in Joel
+applied to the followers of Jesus. The philosopher may wonder at the
+ignorance--possibly at the knowledge--which confounded "prophesying"
+with the utterance of unintelligible rubbish; but the philologist should
+be led to investigate more strictly the real signification of words,
+and to inquire into the theories which are traceable to false
+interpretations.
+
+Considerations such as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely,
+I have come to the belief that the Apostles of Jesus were no better, as
+regards their knowledge of foreign tongues, than their predecessors,
+the missionaries sent by Asokâ, or than the modern envoys sent out by a
+London Society.
+
+What renders it probable that Buddhist ascetics found their way,
+probably amongst the camp followers of Antiochus the Great, and
+endeavoured to promulgate their doctrines in western Asia, is the fact
+that a sect sprang up amongst the Jews after the Grecian conquest of
+Palestine--called "The Essenes," to which we have before referred,
+amongst whose tenets Buddhism and Judaism were closely mingled The
+asceticism practised by this sect was, so far as we know, different to
+anything known at that time in Greece or Western Asia, and as it came
+into fashion at the same time in Palestine as Indian elephants and
+Hindoo Mahouts, there is some reason for the belief that it was brought
+by disciples of Siddartha. Without dwelling upon this again, we return
+to the well ascertained fact that Buddhism was promulgated most widely
+in Eastern and Northern Asia about 250 b.c., that a collection of
+religious books was made about two hundred years prior to that date, and
+that these were revised again during Asokâ's reign. But, however earnest
+were the teachers and the taught, the scriptures which they respected
+were so voluminous and the facilities for multiplying them were so
+small, that it happened, as it did amongst early Christians, that many a
+church had no written book of the law. As a consequence of this, one
+part or another of Sakya's doctrines became exalted unduly in one
+locality, whilst in another a portion was left out of sight. Stories,
+also, of miracles became varied, just as we find that they have been by
+the writers in the New Testament, the tendency being, as in the history
+of the blind man near Jericho, to exaggerate the wonder--for example,
+Mark and Luke, chap. x. and xviii, give an account of one man being
+cured of blindness, whilst Matthew, chap, xx., tells us that there were
+two. The narrators under such circumstances act as if they thought that
+it is as easy for a divinity to heal two or two thousand as to cure one,
+and we who tolerate the practice in a Christian evangelist must not
+ridicule it in Buddhist disciples.
+
+When we contemplate the confusion that existed in the Christian
+church--the gradual deterioration of the faith taught by Jesus, and more
+especially by Paul, and the steady absorption of Pagan rites into the
+worship inaugurated by Peter and the other apostles, we can readily
+understand that in the course of six or seven hundred years there would
+be reason in countries distant from the home of Siddartha to deplore
+the gradual decadence of Buddhism, and a desire amongst the devout for
+tuition at the fountain-head. In modern times we have read of hierarchs
+coming from the uttermost parts of the earth to consult the Roman
+Pontiff upon points of discipline affecting the church, and we therefore
+see without surprise that, about A.D. 400, six hundred years after it
+had been planted, the congregation of Buddhists in China had within
+it men who determined to go to India, and bring back to their
+fellow-worshippers what they hoped would be a purer doctrine than that
+which they were accustomed to, and, if possible, to secure authentic
+books. Pilgrimage, with this object, cannot be regarded as being so
+absurd as that which has in modern days taken numbers of Christians to
+Lourdes, in the Pyrenees, or to St. Paray-le-Monial.
+
+Ere we describe this Chinese search after truth, let us imagine a
+Christian from Central Russia determining to seek for enlightenment at
+Antioch about a.d. 640, and subsequently at the seven churches named
+in the Apocalypse--and afterwards writing his experience. We should be
+certain to find him bewailing the fall of Christianity and the rise
+of Islam. We may indeed affirm that if such a history was now to be
+discovered undated, we should regard it as having been written before
+or after the date named, according as "the churches" were described as
+being the seat of Mahommedism or of Christianity. Still further, if in
+every place which this traveller visited, he found a general belief in
+the stories told of Jesus and in the efficacy of his doctrine, we should
+consider this as proof that the people remained faithful to their early
+teaching. If, on the other hand, the wanderer found himself proscribed
+in any locality as a benighted heathen, without knowledge of the way
+of salvation--he would naturally think that a teacher had given to its
+inhabitants instruction different from that which was familiar to him.
+I do not exaggerate when I say that a genuine account of the travels in
+search of sound Christian doctrine through every part of Europe in the
+fifth century of our era, would be invaluable as an indication of the
+tenure of certain doctrines, not only in various localities, but as
+to the existence or the reverse of dogmas now regarded as of supreme
+importance.
+
+Such a manuscript, which, however, relates to Buddhism and not to
+Christianity, exists in China, and it has lately been translated into
+English _Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China
+to India_, 400 a.d. and 518 a.d., translated from the Chinese by Samuel
+Bea. (Trübner & Co., London, 1869.) It tells us, in a singularly terse
+style, how a large portion of China was traversed by these pilgrims;--of
+the terrible journey over the mountains to the north of Hindustan; of a
+visit to the birth-place of Siddartha; to Benares, to Calcutta, and to
+Ceylon;--with an account of the return voyage in a good-sized ship back
+again to China. Everywhere, with one single exception, they find the law
+of Buddha prevailing. The place referred to as exceptional is Yopoti,
+Java, of which it is said: "In this country, heretics and Brahmins
+flourish; but the law of Buddha is not much known" (p. 168). In every
+other spot which they visit the Chinese wanderers speak applaudingly of
+the hold which the religion of Siddartha has upon the people, and the
+exemplary conduct of the faithful. From the beginning of the journey
+to the end, the enquirers appear always to have found the same form of
+faith which had been preached in their own country six hundred years
+before. The most careful investigator fails to find a shadow of those
+doctrines in which the teaching of Jesus differs from that of Sakya.
+There is not any allusion made to an impending dissolution of the world,
+to baptism, or to any sacrament; every remark relates to the essentials
+of Buddhism as known in each place where Europeans have been able to
+peruse the authorized Buddhist scriptures.
+
+We may now quote some passages bearing on important points. About the
+sources of the Indus: "All the priests asked Fah-Hian what he knew as
+to the time when the law of Buddha began to spread eastward from their
+country." Hian replied, "On enquiry, men of those lands agreed in saying
+that, according to an ancient tradition, Shamans from India began to
+carry the sacred books of Buddha beyond the river, from the time when
+the image of Maitreya Bodhisatwa was set up." This image was set up
+three hundred years or so after the Nirvana of Buddha (about B.C.
+243--or, according to some estimates, B.C. 177), which corresponds with
+the time of Pingwang of the Chan family (b.c. 770--the Chinese date of
+Buddha's Nirvana being different from that which is usually received in
+India.) Hence it may be said that the diffusion of the great doctrine
+can be attributed to the influence of this image. For, apart from the
+power of the divine teacher Mait-reya, who followed in the footsteps
+of Sakya, who would have been sufficient to cause the knowledge of the
+three precious ones to be spread so far, that even men on the outskirts
+of the world acquired that knowledge? We may conclude, therefore, with
+certainty, that the origin of this diffusion of the law of Buddha was no
+human work, but sprung from the same cause as the dream of Ming Ti
+(pp. 23-25). The three precious ones above referred to, are the Buddhist
+trinity, everywhere acknowledged, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha--or, as
+some say, Buddha--the law and the church. The dream of Ming Ti resembles
+that which we know as the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and foretells
+the coming of "the Saviour," one of the names given to Siddartha. The
+vision of a divine being, 70 feet high, with a body like gold, and
+his head glorious as the sun--one who is fanciful may here discern a
+likeness to the individual described in Rev. i. 13, seq.--induced the
+king to send to India to seek after the law of Fo, or Buddha. Some one
+speaking of two great towers adorned with all the precious substances,
+which had been erected at a certain town--the Taxila of the Greeks--to
+commemorate episodes in the life of Buddha, makes the remark "The kings,
+ministers, and people of all the surrounding countries vie with each
+other in making religious offerings at these places, in scattering
+flowers and burning incense continually" (p. 33).
+
+"In the city of Hilo is the Vitiara containing the relic of the
+skull-bone of Buddha. This Vitiara is entirely covered with plates of
+gold, and decorated with the seven precious substances (gold, silver,
+lapis lazuli, crystal, cornelian, coral, and ruby.) The king of the
+country reverences in a high degree this sacred relic." As this example
+shows well the Buddhist veneration for memorials of the dead, I will not
+quote more. It is clear that old bones were regarded with religious
+awe in Hindostan before they were enshrined in Christendom. In the case
+above recorded, "extraordinary pains are taken to preserve the relic
+from theft or substitution, and the king offers flowers and incense
+in front of it daily, then bends his head to the ground before it
+in adoration, and departs." In another place Buddha's robe is kept,
+although we may fairly doubt whether he ever possessed one, but
+doubtless it is quite as authentic as "the holy coat" of Treves, or the
+Virgin Mary's milk. There is another relic of Sakya not yet copied by
+Christian pagans, viz., the shadow of the great teacher--which lives
+in a cave, and can only be seen by the faithful (p. 45, 46). We commend
+this to thaumaturgical Gallican divines, such as those who describe how
+certain it is that Mary of Judea came to show herself at Lourdes, and to
+talk French.
+
+On arriving at the Punjaub the record states, "The law of Buddha is
+prosperous and flourishing here..." On seeing disciples from China
+coming among them they were much affected, and spoke thus: "How
+wonderful to think that men from the ends of the earth should know the
+character of this religion, and should come thus far to seek the law
+of Buddha. We received from them all that we required, and were treated
+according to the provisions of the law" (p. 51,52). "All the kingdoms
+beyond the sandy deserts are spoken of as belonging to Western India.
+The kings of all these countries firmly believe in the law of Buddha"
+(pp. 53, 54).
+
+In the following, we may see the prototype of monasteries, "From the
+time of Buddha's Nirvana, the kings and nobles of all these countries
+began to erect viharas for the priesthood, and to endow them with lands,
+gardens, houses, and also men and oxen to cultivate them. The records
+of these endowments being engraved on sheets of copper, have been handed
+down from one king to another, so that no one has dared to deprive
+them of possession, and they continue to this day to enjoy their proper
+revenues. All the resident priests have chambers, beds, coverlets, food,
+drink, and clothes provided for them without stint or reserve. Thus it
+is in all places. The priests, on the other hand, continually employ
+themselves in reciting their scriptures, in works of benevolence, or in
+profound meditation" (pp. 55, 56).
+
+It is very important that we should notice, although it is unnecessary
+to dwell upon the fact, that the pilgrims visited the spot whence Buddha
+went up to heaven to preach his law to his mother Maya, who died when
+her child was seven days old, and, consequently, long before he became
+"the Saviour." The son remained with his parent three months (p. 62.)
+Jesus, it will be remembered, only preached to the spirits in prison
+during a day and a-half--which, by common consent, passes amongst
+Christians for three days. I may also notice that there is mentioned (p.
+66), an idea that three Buddhas existed before the advent of Sakya Muni,
+and that the following are their precepts, translated from the
+Chinese copy of a Buddhist book:--1. The heart carefully avoiding idle
+dissipation, diligently applying itself to religion, forsaking all lust
+and consequent disappointment, fixed and immovable, attains Nirvana
+(rest.) 2. Practising no vice, advancing in the exercise of virtue, and
+purifying the mind from evil; this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas.
+3. To keep one's tongue, to cleanse one's mind, to do no ill--this
+is the way to purify oneself throughout, and to attain this state of
+discipline is the doctrine of all the great sages (p. 66).
+
+The Buddhists also preserve impressions of Siddartha's feet and show
+them to pilgrims, just as certain papal priests show the impressions of
+St. Peter's feet at a church a little outside Rome, on the Appian
+way. The pilgrims "visit Kapilavastu, now a desert, but once the royal
+residence of Suddhodana. There are here a congregation of priests and
+ten families of lay people. In the ruined palace there is a picture of
+the Prince Apparent and his mother (supposed to be) taken at the time
+of his miraculous conception. The prince is represented as descending
+towards his mother riding on a white elephant." This elephant came from
+the Tusita heaven surrounded by light like the sun, and entered the
+left side of the mother. As the elephant is the strongest of known
+terrestrial animals, it certainly represented "The power of the Highest"
+(see Luke i. 35), and we may draw one of two inferences--either that the
+sons of Maya and Mary were conceived equally miraculously, or that the
+story of one is just as true or as incredible as that of the other.
+Certainly the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was known in India
+long before it was enunciated by a Christian Pope in Rome. Perhaps, had
+Pio Nono known that he was copying a Buddhistic story, he would have
+wavered long before he assimilated his religion to that of Siddartha.
+At the same locality a tower is raised to mark the spot where the Rishi
+(Saint or Prophet) Asita calculated the horoscope of Sakya, and declared
+that he would become a supreme Buddha--a legend which is very similar
+to that told of old Simeon and the infant Jesus (Luke ii. 25, seq.). The
+pilgrims were also shown the garden--not a stable--in which Maya brought
+forth her son, and wherein immediately afterwards the infant walked. Two
+dragon kings--perhaps wise men from the East--washed the infant's body,
+and this spot afterwards became a sacred well (p. 88).
+
+We must pass by an account of a miracle, to the full as wonderful and
+quite as incredible as that of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand
+virgins, who left their bones at Cologne because it has no distinct
+reference to Buddha. (P. 97)--But I may mention that the Chinese writer
+states after the end of the story, that a certain violation of the law
+occurred one hundred years after Sakya's death, and upon this record Mr
+Beal has the following important note--"This refers to the second great
+council of the Buddhist church. According to Singhalese authorities
+(Mahawanso) there were three great convocations or councils--1st,
+immediately after Buddha's death to compile the authorised scriptures;
+2d, to refute certain errors that had crept into the church; 3d, under
+the great Asokâ," (p. 99). We may doubt the value of the Mahawanso, but
+at the same time we may express a wish that early Christians had even a
+tradition of a council to compile authorised scriptures about the son
+of Mary ere time sufficient had elapsed to allow "the marvellous" to
+develop itself into "the incredible."
+
+In like manner I must omit the description of a procession of images,
+amongst which that of Buddha is conspicuous; the fête is held at Patna,
+supposed to be the ancient Palimbothra where Asokâ reigned. It resembles
+in almost all its details the grand processions of the Papists on
+certain occasions,--lamps, lights, games, riot, and religious offerings
+are mingled together for the healthy and for the sick, and wonderful
+cures are provided as far as possible. To this account is to be
+appended a very significant, perhaps I might say satirical, note by the
+translator of the pilgrims' manuscript. "From the whole of this account
+(of the procession of images), it would seem that the Buddhist worship
+had already begun to degenerate from its primitive simplicity and
+severity. Plays and music and concerts, are strictly forbidden by the
+rules of the order; we can begin to see how Buddhism lapsed into Sivite
+worship, and sank finally into the horrors of Jaganath" (p. 107). To
+the thoughtful reader of our christian history, this note upon Buddhist
+processions of images is painfully pregnant. It reminds us that the
+followers of Maya's son and Mary's alike lapsed into paganism, and
+almost by the same stages. We cannot accuse the Hindoos of copying the
+orgies of the Christian saturnalia or carnival, nor do we think that the
+Europeans cared to imitate the Hindoos; but what we do believe is that
+both parties have fallen lower and lower from their pristine purity in
+consequence of the gradually increasing feeling that the generality of
+human beings can only be brought under priestly power by an appeal to
+their animal propensities.
+
+Some affirm, with great show of argumentation, that it is man's bestial
+propensities which lead his race to hell. It may be so, but then, on the
+other hand, it is certain that ecclesiastics endeavour to chain us to
+their chariots by pandering to, managing, exciting, or otherwise playing
+upon those propensities, which man has in common with the sheep, the ox,
+the tiger, the serpent, and the elephant. Every form of religion, yet
+promulgated, that appeals to sound sense, thought, and reason, has
+failed from the want of followers capable of dominating their passions.
+Than a pure religion based upon thoughts such as Sakya Muni and the son
+of Mary gave utterance to, nothing seems grander, but such is its nature
+that it can only be fully embraced by a few. If all are poor, none can
+live upon alms--if all sell their worldly goods to purchase Heaven,
+no buyers will be found in the market. The Buddhist and the Christian
+anchorite may, for a time, live on charity, yet each succeeding
+generation of ascetics will more and more dislike the plan of winning
+food by misery. We have seen how kings made grand provision for the
+comfort of the priestly followers of the son of Maya; and in later
+times, we have seen how the followers of the son of Mary have, by
+artfulness, provided many similar homes for themselves. Yet, with all
+this, there are both Buddhists and Christians who have protested,
+by their actions, against religious luxury of every kind. Each of my
+readers may judge of what spirit he is, by asking himself whether he
+regards such individuals as wise or foolish.
+
+The pilgrims pass on to the place where five hundred saints assembled
+after Sakya's death to arrange the collection of sacred books (p.
+118)--thence to the spot where Siddartha bathed, and the Dêva or Angel
+held out the branch of a tree to assist him in coming out of the water
+(p. 121)--thence to the spot where Buddha was tempted by three daughters
+of Maka as courtesans, a more severe temptation than befel the Christian
+Anthony--and by Mara himself with a vast army; but all uselessly, for
+Sakya was as impregnable as Jesus. And we find that in the same spot he
+subsequently underwent mortification, not for forty days only, but for
+six years. All of these localities are marked by towers, which must,
+according to ecclesiastical reasoning, demonstrate the truth of the
+legends.
+
+After a very long search--for the purpose of Fah Hian was to seek for
+copies of the _Vinaya Pitaka_--he found his exertions to find a copy of
+the sacred work were useless, because, throughout the whole of Northern
+India, the various masters trusted to tradition only for their knowledge
+of the precepts, and had no written codes. The pilgrims, however, when
+they arrived in Middle India, found a copy, "which was that used by the
+first great assembly of priests convened during Buddha's lifetime" (p.
+142); this appears to have been generally regarded as the most correct
+and complete (p. 144). Fah Hian also obtained "one copy of Precepts, in
+manuscript, comprising about 7000 gâthas (verses or stanzas). This
+was the same as that generally used in China. In this place also an
+imperfect copy of the Abhidharma was obtained, containing 6000 gâthas;
+also, an abreviated form of Sutras, or Precepts, containing 2500 verses
+in an abreviated form; also, another expanded Sutra, with 5000 verses,
+and a second copy of the Abhidharma," according to the school of the
+Mahâ Sanghihas (the greater vehicle). "On this account Fah Hian abode in
+the place (Patma, the ancient Palibothra) for the space of three years,
+engaged in learning to read the Sanscrit books, to converse in that
+language, and to copy the Precepts. Here his companion, To Ching,
+remained; but Fah Hian, desiring with his whole heart to spread the
+knowledge of the Precepts throughout China, returned alone" (p. 146).
+This pilgrim then goes to the kingdom of Champa, where he stopped two
+years, to copy out sacred Sutras, and to take impressions of the figures
+used in worship. Here the law of Buddha was generally respected. He
+then sailed in a great merchant vessel for Ceylon (p. 148). From this
+expression we presume that he entered a seaport, and, as such, one
+likely to have been reached by some Christian missionary, if any had
+ever visited India, as Paul attained Asia Minor, Italy, &c. All that we
+learn about it, however, is in a translator's note, which tells us that
+the place was mentioned by another China man, Hiouen Thsang, who spoke
+of the number of heretical sects who were mixed together here--Buddhism
+being here corrupted at an early period by local superstitions. In
+Ceylon Fah Hian remained two years, and, continuing his search for the
+sacred books, obtained a copy of the Vinaya Pitaka, of the great Agama,
+and the miscellaneous Agama (books of elementary doctrine), also a
+volume of miscellaneous collections from the Pitakas, all of which were
+hitherto entirely unknown in China. Having obtained these works in the
+original language (Pali), he forthwith shipped himself on board a great
+merchant vessel, which carried about 200 men, and started for his native
+land (p. 166). "After Fah Hian left home, he was five years in arriving
+at Mid India. He resided there during six years, and was three more ere
+he arrived again in China. He had successively passed through thirty
+different countries." In all the countries of India, after passing the
+sandy desert (of Gobi), the dignified carriage of the priesthood, and
+the surprising influence of religion (amongst the people), cannot be
+adequately described... "Having been preserved by Divine power (by
+the influences of the Three honourable Ones), and brought through all
+dangers safely, he was induced to commit to writing the record of his
+travels, desirous that the virtuous of all ages may be informed of them
+as well as himself" (p. 173).
+
+After reading this account, we think that no thoughtful man can
+reasonably assert that Christianity was taught in India at an early
+period, was widely adopted, and became the parent of Buddhism. If, in
+rejoinder, we are told that no writers have asserted that there were
+Christians in India in olden times, except in Malabar, the answer is,
+that these were described by those who first met with their successors
+as totally distinct from the Hindoos, and, consequently, neither
+Buddhists nor Brahmins. Moreover, we are told that they were regarded
+by the Holy Inquisition of Europe as heretics, and were, consequently,
+persecuted by the Christians (see Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, vol. viii,
+355).
+
+Rosse, in his book of dates (London, 1858), speaks of an Indian embassy
+to Constantine the Great, a.d. 334, and another sent to Constantius the
+Second, but received by Julian, A.D. 362. I cannot, however, as yet,
+find his authority. But Socrates, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,
+book i, ch. 19, about A.D. 331, speaks of a treaty which had been in
+existence a short time before, between the Romans and the Indians, but
+which had been recently violated. He also, in the same chapter, states
+that there were Christians amongst the Roman merchants in India--no
+town or locality being given, however, so that we cannot test his
+assertion--but that they did not then unite to worship. We find also,
+from the same chapter, that up to that period there were no Christian
+Indians known.
+
+Coupling the foregoing fragments of history together, we may safely
+assert that India, generally, was Buddhist in A.D. 400, and that,
+according to Pliny, the Romans, or, rather, the Alexandrians, had been
+in yearly communication with the country, for at least three centuries,
+at the time of Constantine. As it appears that there were Roman
+merchants in India, so we presume that there were Hindoo traders
+resident in Egypt. The presumption is, that these were Buddhists, and
+that they were attended, or followed, by missionary Buddhist priests.
+Absolute proof of this there is none.
+
+We now turn to Gibbon's history, and inquire into the period when
+monastic asceticism first began to prevail in Egypt, the necessary
+residence of our presumed Hindoo traffickers. We find (see _Decline and
+Fall_, chapter 37) that Anthony, an Egyptian, and unable to write in
+Greek, living in the lower parts of Thebais, distributed his patrimony,
+deserted his family and native home, lived amongst tombs, or in a ruined
+tower, then in the desert, and then in some lonely spot, near the Red
+Sea, where he found shade and water. It certainly seems clear that he
+took the son of Maya, rather than the child of Mary, as his exemplar.
+At and after this time, the rage for asceticism spread amongst the
+inhabitants of Eastern Africa as conspicuously as it had done in
+Oriental Asia at the time of Asoka. It is difficult to read the chapter
+of Gibbon's history to which we refer, and a history of Buddhism,
+without regarding Egypt, and her miserable ascetics, in the same light
+as we look upon the folks of Hindustan and Thibet. If Jesus of Nazareth
+had dictated such a life, surely his early followers would have been
+more conspicuous in their habitual mortifications than their later
+disciples were. The son of man--the child of Mary--"came eating and
+drinking," and was called "a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend
+of publicans and sinners" (Luke vii. 34; Matt, xi. 19). Not so the
+son of Maya. The Apostles of Jesus had power to lead about a wife or a
+sister, and they did so. Neither Paul nor Peter shunned woman's society,
+nor did they practise poverty; nay, they worked with their own hands,
+lest they should have to live on alms (2 Thess. iii. 8), and they
+collected money for poor saints from the wealthier brethren. There was
+no asceticism here, nor can we find, in any part of the New Testament, a
+text upon which a system of austerity can be founded.
+
+We might, perhaps, think comparatively little of the parallel which we
+have drawn between Buddhism, and Christianity, did we not recognize the
+fact, that almost everyone of the later developments of the latter had,
+for centuries before, found a place in the former, even including, as we
+have mentioned, the dogma of the immaculate conception.
+
+To the preceding considerations we may add another, which, as Ivanhoe
+said of himself, "is of lesser renown and lower rank, and assumed into
+the honourable company less to aid their enterprise than to make up
+their number." Standing alone it may have small power, but as a link
+in a chain it is important. We refer to the abundant testimony which
+we possess of the strength of Grecian influence upon the tenets of
+Christianity. Without laying any stress upon the fact that the whole
+of the New Testament extant is written in Greek, we may advert to the
+current belief amongst thoughtful scholars, that the so-called Gospel of
+St. John was written by some Alexandrian Greek about 150 A.D., or by one
+who was imbued with the philosophy of Plato. Sharpe has distinctly shown
+that the doctrine of the trinity was held in Ancient Egypt, and first
+adopted, then promulgated, by the Egyptian or Alexandrian divines. The
+influence of Greek ideas upon Philo Judæus is very conspicuous.
+
+We may now turn our attention to one statement about the Athenians,
+viz., "that they and the strangers which were there spent their time
+in nothing else than to tell and to hear some new thing," and that they
+were so particular--in this respect resembling the Ancient Peruvians--in
+adopting foreign gods, that they had an altar to the Unknown Deity (Acts
+xvii). To this we must add what Sozomen says of them (_Ecclesiastical
+History_, book ii. chap. 24)--that the most celebrated philosophers
+amongst the Greeks took pleasure in exploring unknown cities and
+regions. Plato, the friend of Socrates, dwelt for a time amongst the
+Egyptians, in order to acquaint himself with their manners and customs.
+He likewise sailed to Sicily, to examine its craters.... These craters
+were likewise explored by Empedocles. Democritus of Coos relates that he
+visited many cities, and countries, and nations, and that eighty years
+of his life were spent in travelling in foreign lands. Besides these
+philosophers, thousands of wise men amongst the Greeks, ancient and
+modern, habituated themselves to travel. Solon, it is well known,
+travelled to the court of Croesus, and it is affirmed that Pythagoras
+visited India. Sozomen makes the above statement to explain how it was
+that Merope of Tyre, with two young relatives, visited India, the two
+latter becoming its first two bishops.
+
+Nothing is more probable than that Greeks, who had resided for a time
+in India, on their return, believing that as they had recognized
+in Hindostan an earnest form of Christianity, differing from the
+Alexandrian standard only in a few minor points, thought it right to
+introduce into western religion Buddhist practices--first into Egypt,
+_via_ Alexandria, and thence into Europe. We certainly cannot prove
+that they did it, but there is a very good reason for believing so.
+The doctrines of Jesus emanated, we believe, from some early Asokâ's
+missionaries; whilst the doctrines of the Alexandrians and the Ascetics,
+came from subsequent Buddhists, who placed their stamp on Christianity
+once more.
+
+Thus we have been led, by a strict inquiry into every extant testimony
+known, to believe that the faith taught by Siddartha, was held for at
+least 250--and most probably, 500 years, before our era. Still further,
+we have been led to believe, from the extraordinary energy and success
+of Buddhist missionaries in the three centuries before Christ--a success
+before which all Christian missionary enterprise pales--that emissaries
+from Asokâ's colleges of priests, penetrated westward with the Greeks as
+far as the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and forced some devout
+Jews to modify their belief. But, though it is probable that the Hindoo
+teachers introduced the morality inculcated by Sakya Muni, it seems
+certain that they could not induce their Hebrew disciples to abandon
+their implicit trust in those writings which they had been induced
+to think were absolutely inspired or written by direct command of
+the Almighty--consequently, Christianity must be regarded not as pure
+Buddhism, but a form of it modified by Jewish traditions. But when those
+who embraced the religion of Jesus, had learned to distrust the literal
+truth of the Old Testament, and had the certainty that the prophesies
+about the immediate destruction of the world were false, they came again
+into contact with Buddhist teaching, and were content to forego
+Judaism. They did not, however, give up Jesus as the Saviour. Instead of
+believing with Sakya, that man suffered for his own sin, they clung to
+the legend of Adam and Eve, and affirmed that suffering was introduced
+into the whole world by this very original couple. Instead of Nirvana,
+their heaven was Ouranos--the sky above them. Instead of an abode where
+all the senses were at rest, they adopted the idea of a golden city,
+with a river of crystal running through it; brilliant with jewels, and
+guarded by gates and walls in which all the good should spend their time
+in singing and music. The Christians adopted all the Asceticism, dirt,
+and love of vermin, that the disciples of Sakya, and even Siddartha
+himself, delighted in--but they nevertheless clung to the idea that the
+world was sure to be destroyed, and that Jesus would come again. It
+is indeed, difficult to reconcile the belief, that he who washed his
+disciples' feet, and praised a woman for cleaning and anointing his own,
+sanctioned an idea which, throughout centuries, urged religionists to be
+filthy; yet we must do so if we are orthodox. We have, indeed, similar
+anomalies now. Devout Christians tell us that this world ought to be
+made a preparation for another; and that the main joy of heaven will
+be an indefinite increase of knowledge. Yet these same people
+affirm, sometimes in distinct terms, that an extension of scientific
+attainments, and a constant inquiry into the will of God, as expressed
+in the works of His hands, are snares of the Devil, and so to be avoided
+by all good people. The Orthodox as a rule believe--though few venture
+to affirm it, that Jehovah loves the fools the best, and that ignorance
+is godliness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     Estimation of the Bible. The Dhammapada and Hebrew (sacred)
+     books. Certain important dates. Jews were never
+     missionaries. Precepts of Buddha. Contrasts. How to overcome
+     undesirable thoughts. Knowledge beats prayer. Sunday
+     proverbs. New birth. Divines preach brotherly love in the
+     pulpit, and provoke hate when out of it. Buddhist precept is
+     "do as I do," not "do as I say." The narrow way of the
+     Gospel finds an origin in Buddhism. One law broken all law
+     broken--a Buddhist maxim. Sakya taught about a future world.
+     Parallel passages. Effect of Buddhist and Christian
+     teaching. Parallel passages about truth and almsgiving.
+     Ignorance a Buddhist vice and a Christian virtue.
+     _Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi_ in the pulpit Classes in
+     the religious world. Why ignorance is cherished. Ignorance
+     often more profitable than knowledge. Examples. Charlatans
+     live by the fools. Honest doctors and parsons must be poor.
+     Poverty an essential part of Buddhism. Hierarchs are quite
+     unnecessary to the enlightened man. Parallel passages again.
+     Unphilosophical dicta in Buddhism and Bible. Prosperity not
+     a proof of propriety, and misery not always a reward of
+     badness. Lions and lambs. Design in creation. Right and
+     wrong--do they exist before the Creator. False analogies.
+     Persecution a Christian but not a Buddhist practice. Popgun
+     thunders from the Vatican. Age not equivalent to wisdom.
+     Siddartha did not prophesy, and so made no mistake about
+     that which was to follow. More negatives and positives.
+     Another contrast No obscene stories in Buddhist as in Jewish
+     scriptures--no legend of Lot and his daughters, David and
+     Bathsheba, of Onan, Judah and Tamar, Zimri, Cozbi, and
+     Phinehas, and a host of others. A good deal of nonsense in
+     all ancient writings. The foolish stories and prophecies of
+     the Bible--if abstracted, little remains. The little might
+     be improved by extracts from Plato, Epictetus, and Buddhist
+     scriptures, and even from those of Confucius.
+
+From the earliest times which I can remember, I have heard the English
+Bible spoken of with the utmost reverence, as the undoubted word of God,
+as a revelation of the will, ways, and even the thoughts of the Supreme
+Being. Everything which it contains has been regarded as infallibly
+true, and the wisdom, goodness, mercy, and justice of its doctrines
+and laws have been judged to be unimpeachable. From the pulpit of many
+earnest divines I have heard innumerable sermons whose burden has
+been praise of, and admiration for, the morality of the Old and
+New Testaments, the sublimity of the language therein used, and the
+loftiness of the thoughts embodied. From those same teachers, and from
+a still greater number of laymen, I have heard the assertion repeatedly
+made that the Bible must be divinely inspired, because no other set of
+men, except those who composed its books, could write so powerfully; and
+depict so graphically, the wants, the woes, the pleasures, the passions,
+the aspirations, and the doubts of the human mind. By a great majority,
+if not by the whole of our imperfectly educated ministers and people,
+the assertion to which we here refer is raised to the position of an
+argument; and any opponent who ventures to question the truth of the
+assumption, is challenged to show a book of divinity equal or superior
+to the Bible.
+
+The worthlessness of the argument might be readily shown to any one
+accustomed to use his reason, by pointing out that the religious books
+of the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medea, Persians, and
+Etruscans, are lost to us. We may compare the assertion with that which
+Englishmen might have made, to the effect that the British breed of
+horses was superior to any other, for no one could show them a better;
+yet as soon as our Crusaders became acquainted with the Arabian steed,
+the value of the assumption was destroyed. Yet such a remark would be
+wholly inoperative on the mind of every bigot whose judgment of evidence
+is always bribed by his prejudice. Consequently, to make any serious
+impression upon the mind of the Bibliolater, it is desirable, if
+possible, to make copies of the holy images worshipped by other nations,
+under the name of sacred books, and to place these side by side with
+that grotesque production, which, for our purposes, may be compared to
+Diana of the Ephesians--the thing which fell down from Jupiter.
+
+Yet even when we do bring from distant countries, to which in our
+complacency we give the name of "heathen," copies of their deified
+books, and show their equality with, or superiority to that which we
+are told was arranged by the disposition of angels (Acts vii. 53)--the
+scriptures that Paul (2 Tim. iii. 16) affirms were entirely given by
+inspiration of God [--Greek--], see also 1 Pet. i. 11, 12,--we are met
+by the assertion, if the equality is allowed, that the Pagan writings
+have been copied from, or are traceable to, the writers in the Old or in
+the New Testament.
+
+Whenever a thoughtless theologian asserts that such a thing _must_ be
+so, he is not by any means particular as to the facts upon which he
+bases his belief. This weakness of his is so conspicuous to the logical
+observer, that he sometimes feels pity at having to wound a mind so
+earnest as to be unable to use its reason. He almost regards himself as
+a man fighting a child or a weak woman. Yet men will, in their power and
+knowledge, deprive a baby of a bon-bon, which it is sucking eagerly, if
+they know that it is poisonous, and will lay violent hands upon a tender
+girl who, in a whirlwind of passion, is about to throw herself before a
+railway train. After the event both the individuals may learn to thank
+the roughness which saved them; and I feel sure that many an earnest
+religionist, who now thinks that the philosophers are treating him
+cruelly, by trying to deprive him of a cherished faith, will ultimately
+be grateful for having been induced to cease grovelling in the dust of a
+coarse antiquity.
+
+If we endeavour to ascertain the basis of the belief that everything
+which is good _must_ have come from the Bible, we find that it exists in
+the assertion that the Jews were the chosen people of God, selected by
+Him to receive a record of His past doings and His future desires. Hence
+it is argued, that all who have not been taught by the Jews, or through
+their influence, are without God in the world--poor, benighted pagans.
+To support assumptions so monstrous as this, there is not a tittle of
+evidence beyond the existence of certain stories in some books, said to
+contain a truthful record of facts. But although the theologian heaps up
+protestation upon asseveration until the mass attains an imposing size,
+the whole is not of more substantial value than a huge bubble blown by
+an energetic school boy. If millions could be brought to believe that
+such a hollow sphere was a solid, painted with the most resplendent
+colours obtained from the celestial mansions, it would not make it other
+than a film of soap and water filled with air.
+
+Yet though the unanimous consent of myriads cannot convert foam into a
+solid substance, a mass of froth may be treated as if it were something
+better, so long as all agree not to test its qualities; and any book
+may in like manner be regarded as of divine origin, so long as everybody
+determines not to test the reality of the opinion. We can easily imagine
+that those who have been educated to believe in the absolute density
+of a bubble, must be greatly distressed when it bursts. Indeed in every
+mercantile community we see frequent illustrations of this. Designing
+men weave a plausible story, and by inflated words induce a number of
+thoughtless people to believe their statements, adopt their promises,
+and act upon their recommendation. Whilst all seems to be prosperous,
+every dupe repels with indignation the statement that the whole of his
+confraternity are deceived. If faith in the stability of a banking house
+could have upheld it, Overend & Gurnets would never have broken. If
+then faith, the most complete and child-like trust in the truth of
+anything,--say particularly in a certain book--will not make it valuable
+if it be in reality worthless, then all those who wish to feel beneath
+them the everlasting arms of truth, should inquire into current beliefs
+rather than take everything for granted.
+
+At the time when the wealth, power, and stability of the Bank above
+referred to were implicitly believed in by the many, and especially
+trusted by its shareholders, there were, outside of its pale, many
+individuals who felt sure that the establishment was very shaky, and a
+few who were aware that it was toppling to its fall. If then, at that
+time, any customer or proprietor, feeling a doubt about its safety,
+should have endeavoured to investigate the rumours which were adverse to
+it; and should have acted as reason dictated, after he had weighed the
+alleged facts on both sides, he might have came to a safe decision
+and saved his money. What is true in this case may be applied to the
+Bible--the Bank upon which so many draw large drafts, and in whose
+stability they have unbounded confidence. The thoughtless may, and
+doubtless will, continue to trust it implicitly--the thoughtful will
+probably consult, not only the Bibliolaters, but those who put no faith
+whatever in the volume, and judge for themselves.
+
+The fear which many men have of biblical inquiry, has for a long period
+struck me as being inexplicable, inasmuch as it is at variance with the
+assertion of these very same people, that an examination of the book
+must prove it to be infallibly true. But investigation into a supposed
+truth can only end by confirming it fully, and thus making the truth
+more useful; or by demonstrating that the belief entertained is
+untenable. It has been the dread--nay the certainty, of the latter
+result, which has deterred many great minds from investigating the
+matter. Amongst these the late Professor Faraday was conspicuous, for we
+learn from a letter in the Athenaeum of Jan. 7, 1870, written by one of
+his own personal friends, that he--perhaps the most accomplished seeker
+after physical truth in his time, declined firmly to search into the
+value of the commonly received notions respecting "the scriptures," as
+he felt sure that his faith in them would thereby be shaken. Yet he was
+illogical enough to use them as a basis for his theological teaching.
+He preached to others from texts in which he had no confidence; and
+supported his doctrines by quotations from a book which, in his secret
+heart, he felt was valueless as an exponent of historical truth, or
+orthodox teaching.
+
+Before we proceed to the comparison between the "Dhammapada" and the
+Bible, it will be judicious to place fairly before the reader the points
+which we hope to elucidate. We wish to show, by a collation of dates and
+doctrines, that the two are wholly independent of each other, and as we
+have elsewhere remarked, that if there has been any relationship between
+Buddhist and Christian writings, the first have had more than two
+centuries' precedence over the last. We wish to compare the morality
+taught by Buddha, with that promulgated in the Old and New Testaments.
+We desire impartially to examine into the question, whether the claim
+for inspiration can be allowed in either one case or the other, or in
+both together--whether, indeed, it is possible to believe the Hebrew
+scriptures to be dictated by God, without giving a similar confidence
+to the teachings of Sakya Muni--or, assuming that there is to be found a
+code of pure morality or ethics which we may suppose to be of universal
+application, we shall endeavour to ascertain whether the Hebrews and the
+followers of Mary, or the disciples of the son of Maya Deva, have made
+the nearest approach to its discovery and establishment. Collaterally
+we shall examine whether Jesus has a greater claim than Buddha to be the
+Son of God. The Dhammapada which has recently (Trübner & Co., London,
+1870*) been translated by Max Mülller from the Pali, is one of the many
+books which profess to give, as our Gospels and Epistles do of Christ,
+the teachings or precepts of Buddha. These were for some two or three
+centuries traditional only; but about the period, B.C. 300, many, if not
+most of them, were committed to writing. As far as can be ascertained,
+the year b.c. 246 was the period of the first Buddhist council under
+Asok, and shortly after this, Mahuida, a priestly son of Asokâ, went as
+a missionary to Ceylon; other emissaries went to Burmah, China, Japan,
+and it is believed elsewhere. The oral promulgation of the Dhammapada
+would probably begin about b.c. 560--twenty years or thereabouts before
+the death of Siddartha. If we turn to contemporary history in the west
+of Asia, we find that at this period Jerusalem was in ruins, and the
+Jews were captives in Babylonia--no copies of any Hebrew sacred book
+were known to be in existence (2 Esdras xiv. 21; 2 Maccabees ii.
+1-13--see also 1 Maccabees i. 21-23), and, so far as we could
+learn, India was a country wholly unknown to the Shemitic race. The
+acquaintanceship between Hindustan and Europe seems to have been made in
+the time when the Greek monarch, Alexander, overthrew Darius of Persia.
+Alexander invaded India about b.c. 327, consequently we infer that there
+was no possibility of Buddha being influenced by western notions in b.c.
+560.
+
+     * _Buddhaghosa's Parables_, translated from Burmese, by Capt
+     T. Rogers; with an introduction, containing Buddha's
+     Dhammapada, or "Path of Virtue," by Max Müller.   Trübner &
+     Co., London, 1870.
+
+To these considerations we must add the fact that the Jews have
+never been, from the earliest to the latest times, a missionary
+nation,--indeed, their laws and precepts forced them to be so peculiarly
+reserved, that even if they had known about India they would not have
+sent their emissaries there, inasmuch as the Mosaic law obliged them to
+present themselves at the Temple at Jerusalem thrice a-year, which was
+wholly incompatible with distant travel. Moreover, there are many extant
+histories to show that intelligent westerns went to India for knowledge
+and religion, and never seemed to think of carrying their own faith
+thither. The whole course of history points to religion and civilization
+coming westerly from India or Central Asia.
+
+The dates above given will clearly show that Sakya Muni could not have
+derived his ideas from the teaching of Jesus, or of the Talmudists,
+neither of whom were in existence when he flourished. Whatever
+similarity, therefore, we find in the doctrines, &c., of the two, cannot
+be accounted for by supposing that Christian missionaries carried the
+New Testament to India. The reverse is far more probable, as we have
+demonstrated in a preceding chapter.
+
+Some inquirers into the history of the sons of Maya Deva and of Mary are
+so convinced of the priority of the first, and of the close resemblance
+of the incidents in the lives and in the teaching of the two, that
+they have found themselves forced, reluctantly, to consider the
+question--whether Christianity is not Buddhism altered in some respects
+by Judaism. This point having been elsewhere spoken of, we will not
+pursue it. But a far more important, and, for many Christians, a more
+momentous inquiry, is, whether we can speak of the Son of Mary as the
+offspring of Jehovah, and yet affirm that the child of Maya Deva
+was nothing but a common man. So deeply have some been moved by this
+consideration, that I have positively heard the opinion broached, that
+the Indian sage was the very same as he who subsequently was put to
+death in Jerusalem. Wild though the allegation is, there is quite as
+great an amount of probability in it as in the assertion that Jesus went
+and preached unto those spirits which were sometime disobedient, i.e.,
+in the time of Noah (1 Pet. iii. 19, 20), and were, consequently, then in
+prison, or that Buddha went to his dead mother, and converted her to
+his own faith. About supernatural births we shall treat in a succeeding
+part.
+
+Without incumbering our pages with all the precepts of the Dhammapada,
+we will copy a few in detail to show the reader their style, and then
+we will only quote those which are most appropriate to our subject. The
+opening paragraphs singularly resemble those in Bacon's _Novum Organon_,
+and run thus--"All that we are, is the result of what we have thought:
+it is founded on our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil
+thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who
+draws the carriage (lv.)."
+
+2. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded
+on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts
+with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never
+leaves him" (lvi. et. seq.).
+
+3. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me--hatred in
+those who harbour such thoughts will never cease."**
+
+4. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me--hatred in
+those who do not harbour such thoughts will cease."
+
+5. "For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by
+love"--this is an old rule.
+
+     * The figures refer to the separate precepts, which are
+     given in numerical order.
+
+     ** With this and the following saying we may compare the
+     words of the Psalms--"Do not I hate those, O Lord, that hate
+     thee? and am I not grieved with those that rise up against
+     thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred; I count them mine
+     enemies" (Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22). The words of David, said to
+     be a man after God's own heart, are equally opposed to the
+     law of love, viz., "Thou hast given me the necks of my
+     enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me" (2 Sam.
+     xxii. 41; Ps. xviii. 40); I shall see my desire on them that
+     hate me" (Ps. cxviii. 7). In Deuteronomy we find, moreover,
+     that indulgence in hatred is attributed to the Almighty,
+     "who repayeth them that hate Him to their face to destroy
+     them: He (God) will not be slack to him that hateth Him, he
+     will repay him to his face" (chap. vii. 10). Hatred of their
+     enemies is, indeed, everywhere encouraged in the Jewish
+     Scriptures, called sacred, and the Hebrew Jehovah is
+     described as one with whom the power to hate and revenge
+     Himself is a favourite luxury.
+
+6. "And some do not know that we must come to an end here; but others
+know it, and hence their quarrels cease."
+
+7. "He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled,
+immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, Mara (the Tempter, the
+Adversary, or Satan) will certainly overcome him, as the wind throws
+down a weak tree."
+
+8. "He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well
+controlled, in his enjoyments moderate, faithful and strong, Mara will
+certainly not overcome him, any more than the wind throws down a rocky
+mountain."
+
+11. "They who imagine truth in untruth, and see untruth in truth, never
+arrive at truth, but follow vain desires."
+
+15. "The evildoer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next, he
+mourns in both."....
+
+16. "The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights in the
+next; he delights in both."
+
+We may pause here, and ask ourselves whether, throughout the whole of
+the Old Testament, we can find a single passage which so distinctly
+points to a future state as does this Buddhistic teaching. Yet
+bibliolaters assert that the effusions of Jewish writers were inspired
+by God! Mortal men cannot tell what takes place after their bodies have
+become dissipated into various chemical compounds; consequently, they
+cannot decide, with certainty, which deserves the greater credit for
+accuracy--the Dhammapada, or the Hebrew Scriptures; but all those who
+believe in the teaching of Jesus are bound to acknowledge that the
+Indian sage was inspired by a power superior to that which is said to
+have dictated to the Israelite.
+
+How profitably, again, might the following observations be enunciated
+from our pulpits, instead of the vapid and superficial divinity, which
+disgraces both the utterer and the listener:--
+
+21. "Reflection is the path of immortality, thoughtlessness the path of
+death. Those who reflect do not die; those who are thoughtless are as if
+dead already."
+
+25. "By rousing himself, by reflection, by restraint and control, the
+wise man may make for himself an island, which no flood can overwhelm."
+
+27. "Follow not after vanity, nor after the enjoyment of love and lust.
+He who reflects and meditates obtains ample joy"
+
+We dare not affirm that the writer of the first epistle of John was
+familiar with the Dhammapada, but his words (chap. ii, v. 15), "Love not
+the world, neither the things that are in the world," &c., are as purely
+Buddhistic as if he had known the doctrine of the Indian sage.
+
+We doubt whether, in the whole Bible, a parallel passage to the
+following can be found:--
+
+36. "Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult to
+perceive, very artful, and they rush wherever they list: thoughts well
+guarded bring happiness."
+
+It is true that in the Psalms, and elsewhere, there is a full
+recognition of the power of God to know, and even to punish man for,
+bad thoughts, but there is no precept recommending man to cultivate his
+mental powers for the pleasure which the task will bring. The following
+observation is equally to be commended:--
+
+40. "Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, and making this
+thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mâra (the tempter, or
+Satan, the adversary) with the weapon of knowledge, one should watch him
+when conquered, and never cease from the fight."
+
+A few moments' consideration here, will show the reader that there is
+a fundamental distinction between the theology of the East and West
+in reference to the management of "the thoughts of the heart." Jew
+and Christian teachers alike encourage their disciples to combat evil
+thoughts by prayer and by fasting, but they never once allude to the
+value of "knowledge" as a weapon. Yet, of its power, relatively to
+supplication, none can have a doubt. It it probable that no man or woman
+can attain to adult age without being aware of the intrusion, into their
+minds, of thoughts, whose presence greatly distresses the individual,
+and the worst of these is, that they take so complete a possession,
+as not to be driven away by any simple wrestling with them. In this
+emergency the devout Christian has recourse to prayer, which serves to
+nail the intruder even more closely to his seat. The philosopher, on
+the other hand, turns his mind to think actively upon some other subject
+than that which has intruded upon him, and as soon as he has fixed his
+attention upon the second, the first immediately withdraws. Smarting,
+for example, under a sense of ridicule from some accident which has
+happened to himself in a ball-room, or other assembly, a man may retire
+to his pillow, yet find thereupon no rest. He sees, every minute, the
+merry faces which laughed when he put the sprig of lavender, that his
+lovely partner gave him for a keepsake, behind his ear, as if it were
+a pen, and grinds his teeth with rage or shame. Yet, if he now betakes
+himself to go through the preparations which ought to be made to enable
+observers to notice accurately the transit of Venus, and then the means
+by which they can approximately ascertain the mean distance of the sun
+from the earth, he will find at once a pleasant refuge from his trouble,
+and fall asleep whilst extracting a square root. Those young men, and
+others, who, like the old saints are said to have done, often suffer
+much from what may be called "presumptuous desires of the flesh," will
+find the acquisition of knowledge is a powerful agent in subduing
+the cravings of lust, and hard thinking curbs our passions far more
+effectually than the scourge of the ascetic, or the prayers of the
+hermit. Mental activity, although it does not entirely remove it,
+does much to repress inordinate desire, and we consequently prefer the
+teaching of the son of Maya to that of any son of Abraham.
+
+Of the estimate of a well-regulated mind we have the following:--
+
+42. "Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a
+wrongly-directed mind will do us greater mischief."
+
+43. "Not a mother, not a father, nor any other relative, will do so much
+that a well-directed mind will not do us greater service." To this we
+can find no parallel in the Hebrew scriptures.
+
+Some of the following are equal to any of those proverbs attributed to
+Solomon:--
+
+76. "If you see an intelligent man who tells you where true treasures
+are to be found, who shows you what is to be avoided, and who
+administers reproofs, follow that wise man: it will be better, not
+worse, for those who follow him."
+
+78. "Do not have evildoers for friends, do not have low people; have
+virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
+
+80. "Well-makers lead the water wherever they like, fletchers bend the
+arrow, carpenters bend a log of wood, wise people fashion themselves."
+
+81. "As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not
+amidst blame and praise."
+
+94. "The gods even envy him whose senses have been subdued, like horses
+well broken in by the driver, who is free from pride and free from
+frailty."
+
+97. "The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who
+has cut all ties, removed all temptations renounced all desires, he is
+the greatest of men." A saying which is almost identical with "He that
+is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his
+spirit better than he that taketh a city" (Prov. xvi. 32). Those
+Christians who believe in works of supererogation, and trust to stores
+of merit laid up by certain saints, who have lashed their bodies and
+otherwise injured themselves, may read the following opinion with
+profit:--
+
+108. "Whatever a man sacrifices in this world as an offering or as an
+oblation for a whole year in order to gain merit, the whole of it is not
+worth a quarter; reverence shown to the righteous is better."
+
+Respecting evil, we find the following:--
+
+116. "If a man would hasten towards the good, he should keep his thought
+away from evil; if a man does what is good slothfully, his mind delights
+in evil."
+
+117. "If a man commits a sin, let him not do it again, let him not
+delight in sin; pain is the outcome of evil."
+
+118. "If a man does what is good let him do it again, let him delight in
+it; happiness is the outcome of good."
+
+126. "Some people are born again; evil-doers go to Hell, righteous
+people go to Heaven; those who are free from all worldly desires enter
+Nirvana."
+
+It is therefore clear that Jesus of Nazareth did not inaugurate the idea
+of a new birth.
+
+In precept 133 we have another sentiment parallel with a passage in
+Proverbs: "Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will
+answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful blows, for blows
+will touch thee;" or, as our Bible has it, "A soft answer turneth away
+wrath, but grievous words stir up anger" (Prov. xv. 1).
+
+The following is a reproach to a vast number of individuals who are
+called Christian preachers, and teach doctrines of brotherly love, but
+act as if religious hatred of dissenters of every class were a duty:--
+
+159. "Let each man make himself as he teaches others to be; he who is
+well subdued may subdue others; one's own self is difficult to subdue."
+
+166. "Let no one neglect his own duty for the sake of another's,
+however great: let a man, after he has discerned his own duty, be always
+attentive to his duty."
+
+The following might have served as the original of the epistles of
+John:--
+
+167. "Do not follow the evil law! Do not live on in thoughtlessness! Do
+not follow false doctrine! Be not a friend of the world."
+
+168. 9. "Rouse thyself! do not be idle, follow the law of virtue--do not
+follow that of sin. The virtuous lives happily in this world and in the
+next."
+
+170, 1, 2, 3, & 4. "Look upon the world as a bubble; the foolish are
+immersed in it, but the wise do not cling to it. He who formerly was
+reckless, and afterwards became sober, and he whose evil deeds are
+covered by good deeds, brighten up this world like the moon when freed
+from clouds."
+
+174. "This world is dark--few only can be here; a few only go to heaven
+like birds escaped from the net." A statement repeated by Jesus in
+different words,--"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
+leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 14). There
+may likewise be a comparison instituted between the following:--
+
+176. "If a man has transgressed one law, and speaks lies and scoffs at
+another world, there is no evil he will not do." "Whosoever shall keep
+the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas.
+ii. 10).
+
+I quote this and the next saying to corroborate the assertion that
+Buddha taught the existence of a future world:--
+
+177. "The uncharitable do not go to the world of the gods; fools only do
+not praise liberality; a wise man rejoices in liberality, and through
+it becomes blessed in the other world."
+
+Compare 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18,19, "Charge them that are rich in this
+world.... that they be--ready to distribute, willing to communicate,
+laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to
+come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."
+
+See again (306), "He who says what is not, goes to hell; he also who,
+having done a thing, says I have not done it. After death both are
+equal, they are men with evil deeds in the next world."
+
+309. "Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbour's
+wife--a bad reputation, an uncomfortable bed--thirdly, punishment, and,
+lastly, hell."
+
+310. "There is bad reputation, and the evil way (to hell)."
+
+311. "As a grass blade if badly grasped cuts the arm, badly practised
+asceticism leads to hell."
+
+178. "Better than sovereignty over the earth, better than going to
+heaven, better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of the first
+step in holiness."
+
+"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his
+own soul?" or, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt,
+xvi. 26).
+
+It would be difficult to find any doctrine enunciated in the Bible more
+simple than the following:--
+
+183. "Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that
+is the teaching of the Awakened."
+
+184. "The Awakened call patience the highest penance, long-suffering the
+highest Nirvana, for he is not an anchorite who strikes others, he is
+not an ascetic who insults others."
+
+185. "Not to blame, not to strike, to live restrained under the law,
+to be moderate in eating, to sleep and eat alone, and to dwell on the
+highest thoughts, this is the teaching of the Awakened."
+
+Equally difficult would it be to find in the Old Testament such precepts
+as--
+
+197. "Let us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us; let us
+dwell free from hatred among men who hate." "Let us live free from greed
+among men who are greedy."
+
+200. "Let us live happily though we can call nothing our own."
+
+204. "Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches;
+trust is the best of relatives, Nirvana the highest happiness."
+
+The following quotations deserve the close attention of the Christian
+inquirer, for they not only contain sentiments almost identically the
+same as those found in the New Testament, but they are couched in the
+same language, as closely as the circumstances of the case allow. Both
+enunciate the opinion that it is injudicious to cultivate or even to
+permit the existence of those affections which we have in common with
+the lower animals, and that to attain perfection love and hatred must be
+trampled under foot. We give the Buddhist teaching priority, as it was
+promulgated first:--
+
+210. "Let no man ever look for what is pleasant or what is unpleasant.
+Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is
+unpleasant."
+
+211. "Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil.
+Those who love nothing and hate nothing have no fetters."
+
+212. "From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear, he who is
+free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear."
+
+213-6. "From affection comes grief and fear, from lust comes grief and
+fear, from love comes grief and fear, from greed comes grief and fear."
+"He who is free from affection, lust, love, and greed, knows neither
+grief nor fear." "He that loveth either father or mother more than me is
+not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter better than me is
+not worthy of me, and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after
+me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he
+that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. x. 37-39). "Love
+not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love
+the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
+world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
+life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth
+away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for
+ever" (1 John ii. 15-17).
+
+"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let
+him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever
+will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for
+my sake shall find it; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the
+whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange
+for his soul?" (Matt, xvi. 24). See also Mark viii. 34, x. 21, and Luke
+ix. 23-25, in the last verse of which the saying is varied by the words
+being used "what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose
+himself, or be cast away?" We are by habit more familiar with the style
+in which the Grecians wrote, than with that adopted by Sanscrit
+authors. But in both sets of writers the main idea is made strikingly
+apparent--viz., that to love anybody or anything on earth is prejudicial
+to our spiritual welfare, and that to act piously, it is necessary for
+the saint to free himself wholly from those instinctive affections which
+God has implanted in almost every one of his creatures. It is
+strange that any two ministers could have excogitated so monstrous a
+proposition, and that both should be called "Divine."
+
+The effect of the teaching of Buddha and of Jesus was to draw many from
+their hearth whose duty, in our estimation, was clearly to remain at
+home, and endeavour to cherish and support their family. I enter my
+strong protest as an Englishman, as well as individual Christian,
+against the idea that a man who believes himself a disciple of the son
+of Mary must go abroad to teach and preach, or become an ascetic, a
+hermit, or a monk, and leave his wife and children to be cared for by
+his friends or the parish. I believe most strongly that our affections
+are implanted in us by our Maker, just as a mother's love exists alike
+in the tigress and the eagle, and that any religion which teaches us
+that we must overcome these propensities, is a false one. It is strange,
+to say the least of it, that both the son of Maya and of Mary should
+have promulgated such a doctrine--i.e., that religion is designed to
+make our pleasures less, and our miseries greater. It is perhaps too
+much to assert that no other form of faith, besides those which have
+sprung from Buddha and from Jesus, possesses such a tenet as that to
+which we refer; but we can safely affirm that we do not know of any
+in which the natural affections existing between parents and children,
+husband and wife, brothers and sisters, have not been cultivated as a
+portion of the duties to be fulfilled by the faithful.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to call attention to the resemblance which the
+doctrine in question bears to that which was promulgated by the Grecian
+"Stoics"; and the similitude is still farther increased by such a
+sentence as the following in the Dhammapada:--
+
+221. "Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all
+bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to either body
+or soul, and who calls nothing his own."
+
+Once more we see a close resemblance between Buddhism and the Bible in
+
+223. "Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good,
+let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth." "If thine
+enemy be hungry give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him
+water to drink," (Prov. xxv. 21). But the motive for this recommendation
+to the Jews is a vindictive one, for he is told that by so doing he will
+heap coals of fire upon his enemy's head, whilst the Lord will take care
+to reward the deed to the doer. In the epistle to the Romans this saying
+of the Proverbs is endorsed, and to it is added "Be not overcome with
+evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. xii. 20, 21).
+
+224. "Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked,
+from the little thou hast--by those steps thou wilt go near the gods."
+"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them about thy neck; write
+them upon the table of thine heart; so shalt thou find favour and good
+understanding in the sight of God and man" (Prov. iii. 3-4); "Wherefore,
+putting away lying, let every man speak the truth with his neighbour"
+(Eph. iv. 25). We scarcely can find, in the Old Testament, a strict
+parallel with the Buddhist precept, "do not yield to anger," for the
+Jewish scriptures, without exception, depict their God as giving way
+habitually to wrath, anger, and revenge--e.g., in Ps. vii. 11, we find
+it stated that Elohim is angry with the wicked every day. Again, in
+Isaiah v. 25, we read, "for all this, God's anger is not turned away,
+but his hand is stretched out still;" Job iv. 9, By God's anger they are
+consumed; "To pour out upon them my fierce anger," (Zeph. iii. 8). There
+are, however, a few passages which inculcate upon men the propriety of
+a command over their temper. In Ps. xxxvii. 8, for example, we read,
+"Cease from anger, and forsake wrath," and in Proverbs xxvii. 4, "Wrath
+is cruel, and anger is outrageous," whilst "the Preacher" says, Eccles.
+vii. 9, "Anger resteth in the bosom of fools," and in xi. 10, "remove
+anger or sorrow from thy heart." In the Gospel we have a somewhat
+divided teaching. For example, we find, from Mark iii. 5, that Jesus
+himself indulged in anger, when he was vexed at what he thought the
+hardness of his hearers' hearts; and from his saying, in Matt. v. 22,
+"Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger
+of the judgment," it is clear that the son of Mary approved of anger
+which had a cause. Again, we find, in Eph. iv. 26, "Be ye angry and sin
+not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath," as if anger were not a
+culpable weakness, or passion, if only indulged in during the daylight.
+Yet, in the thirty-first verse of the same chapter we read, "Let all
+bitterness, and wrath, and anger.... be put away from you," and in Col.
+iii. 8, the putting away of anger is spoken of as an evidence of being
+regenerated.
+
+Of the duty of almsgiving we find much in the Bible, but we will content
+ourselves with the following passages:--"Charge them who are rich in
+this world that they be ready to give, and glad to distribute, laying up
+in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,
+that they may attain eternal life" (1 Tim. vi. 17-19). Quoted from the
+Communion Service in the Prayer-book--"To do good, and to distribute,
+forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." "Be merciful
+after thy power. If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast
+little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little, for so gatherest
+thou thyself a good reward in the day of necessity" (Prayer-book version
+of certain precepts in Tobit, chap. iv. 8, 9). If our readers will take
+the trouble to consult the entire chapter in Tobit, they will readily
+conceive that it was written by a Buddhist sage, instead of an ordinary
+Jew.
+
+Once more we turn to the Dhammapada, and find--
+
+231, 234. "Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body. Leave the sins
+of the body, and with thy body practise virtue; control thy tongue;
+leave the sins of the tongue, and practise virtue with thy tongue; leave
+the sins of the mind, and practise virtue with thy mind."
+
+This reference to the sins of the tongue, and the necessity for its
+control, recals to our mind the opinion expressed in the epistle of
+James, "If any one bridleth not his tongue, this man's religion is vain"
+(chap, i. 26); "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity," &c.; "the
+tongue can no man tame," &c. (chap. iii. w. 5-10); and the verse, "I
+said, I will take heed io my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will
+keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me" (Ps. xxxix.
+1).
+
+The next maxim to which I would direct attention is one which should be
+pondered deeply by all those who desire to become thoroughly civilized.
+So far as I know, its like cannot be found in any part of the Bible. It
+runs thus--
+
+243. "There is a taint worse than all taints, ignorance is the greatest
+taint."
+
+If we search our own scriptures for a parallel passage, we can only
+find that ignorance is inculcated, and with the express intention
+of preventing the mind from departing from the old into some new
+track--see, for example, Dent. xii. 30, where the Jews are enjoined not
+to inquire after the gods of other nations, lest they should adopt them:
+again, in Deut. iv. 19, the Hebrews are enjoined not to study or gain
+any information respecting the sun, moon, and stars, lest they should
+worship them. But Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, is even a more
+conspicuous advocate of ignorance, when he asserts that God hath chosen
+the foolish things [--Greek--] of the world to confound the wise (1
+Cor. i. vv. 19-28). "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy
+trust, avoiding.... oppositions of science falsely so called, which some
+professing have erred concerning the faith" (1 Tim. vi. 20, 21). Many,
+indeed, who call themselves civilized Christians, aver that, where
+ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise, a tenet held strongly by
+Mahometans, Papists, and Ritualists.
+
+That the dictum of Paul in the text last quoted has had a a most
+disastrous effect upon civilization, no one who is conversant with
+history can fairly deny. Neither can it be shown that any known
+religion, except Buddhism, has opposed itself to ignorance. In every
+nation the rulers in general, and the priesthood in particular, have,
+on the other hand, encouraged indolence of mind, lest the people should
+learn wisdom and shake off their thraldom. We have seen, in our own
+times, hierarchs of every denomination oppose the spread of science, not
+falsely so called, with the avowed intention of endeavouring to bolster
+up doctrines, dogmas, and assertions, which they feel sure true
+science will destroy, although the same people declare their tenets
+indestructible, and founded on truth. Nay, we may go still further, and
+assert that sciolism in religious matters is fostered by the clergy of
+all denominations, both by the suppression of what they believe to be
+genuine, and by the promulgation of what they know to be false. In the
+place of knowledge they inculcate blind faith.
+
+As one not wholly unknown to be an earnest and honest inquirer, I
+have had extensive correspondence and personal intercourse with many
+preachers, and with others whose opportunities for learning "the
+clerical mind" are more extensive than my own, and I may divide the
+body of religious ministers, and the laity as well, into the following
+classes:--1, Those who refuse to inquire, examine, and think about
+religious subjects, except in a certain prescribed way; 2, Those who
+will investigate into the grounds of their belief, as they would into
+any doubtful assertion, or into any science; 3, Those who individually
+abandon the old faith and yet continue to preach it, and profess to
+adhere to it as strongly as they did at first; 4, Those who venture
+timidly to insinuate doubts into the minds of others, whilst professing
+to be orthodox themselves; 5, Those who are too noble to be hypocrites,
+and boldly affirm that which their advance of knowledge has induced
+them to adopt as a belief. Yet these very men, distinguished above
+their fellows for earnestness, for science, for honesty of purpose, a
+religiously ignorant priesthood persecutes; and Englishmen, who wish to
+be regarded as peculiarly "enlightened," stand by almost unmoved, or, as
+happens too frequently, applauding.
+
+When we endeavour to ascertain the reason why ignorance is so greatly
+cherished amongst mankind, we can readily discover it in indolence on
+the part of one group of men, and cupidity on the part of others. There
+are many positions in life wherein Sciolism seems to be more profitable
+than knowledge. We may mention a few. A "solicitor" who has an imperfect
+acquaintance with the law, may induce his clients to bring cases before
+various legal courts, in which they are certain to lose their cause and
+money, but this solicitor gains large fees for his trouble. A physician
+who does not know how to cure certain diseases may yet treat them for
+months, pass for a devoted doctor and a clever friend, and receive a
+large honorarium, which is far beyond his merit, though the patient may
+think it far too small. The man, on the other hand, who can cure such
+complaints readily, has to be content with a very slender fee, as his
+attendance is only required for a few days. The schemers, who live upon
+the ignorance of dupes, bear the name of legion. We see one of the body
+as a promoter of all sorts of bubble companies, and as secretary to such
+societies as banks, trade unions, burial clubs, assurances, &c. Anon he
+takes the form of an adulterator of provisions, of various drinkables,
+of cloth, silk, linen, &c. If Sciolism were not common, such charlatans
+as "spiritualists," "clairvoyants," "mesmerists," and the like, could
+not thrive as they do, nor quacks of all kinds flourish famously. One
+medical pretender is indeed reported to have said to a "regular" doctor,
+who lived in the same street with him, but whose clients were few
+compared with those of the charlatan--"the reason why you have so small,
+and I have so large, a number of patients is, that the fools come to me,
+the knowing ones to you."
+
+What is true in the case of other professions is preeminently so in the
+clerical In religion, such as it is professed in Christendom, Sciolism,
+or imperfect knowledge, alone is lucrative. Real understanding, diffused
+amongst the people, would render every hierophant a beggar, and thorough
+enlightenment amongst the priesthood would force them to allow that
+such should be their normal position. For example, if every layman, in
+countries owning the spiritual headship of the Pope of Rome, knew that
+all the stories of Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, Angels, Saints, Confessors,
+Hermits, and the like, were absolutely baseless--if he knew that man has
+no power in the court of the Almighty to influence His will in favour
+of a congener, and that nothing whatever is known respecting the world
+beyond the grave--he would not order masses, whether high or low, and a
+host of other ceremonies, each of which has to be paid for. Or, if each
+Protestant knew, that every tenet preached to him from the pulpit is
+founded upon absolute ignorance of the Almighty's operations, that every
+doctrine, every prayer, and every ritual, is based upon fantastic, half
+savage, or semicivilized human ideas, he would recognize at once the
+total uselessness of the parson. "They that are whole need not
+the physician, but they that are sick." The doctor, knowing this,
+endeavours, when he has a chance, to induce a client to believe himself
+ill, and that he and no other man can cure him--or, if he should really
+be disordered, these ideas will be kept up as long as possible. So it is
+in "religion," it is only the culprit that wants the Saviour, but when
+he has a chance, the _soi disant_ saviour tries to persuade those who
+consult him, that they are sinners, yet that he can make them saints;
+and having once implanted this belief, he endeavours to sustain it. To
+doctors and priests such as we here describe, the ignorant credulity of
+their clients is a source of wealth. So long as there are dupes
+there will be sharpers, and so long as men are human, there will be,
+unconsciously very likely to themselves, abundance of both fools and
+knaves.
+
+From what has been already said, our readers will have probably drawn
+the conclusion that we deny the existence of a thoroughly educated
+and honest hierarch, who has become wealthy by the exercise of
+his profession in a perfectly conscientious manner. Exceptional
+circumstances prevent us saying exactly the same of a doctor, but
+into these we need not enter, as they have not their counterparts in
+divinity. Such being our belief, we recognize the fact that poverty and
+knowledge must, in an earnest priesthood, be ever associated. But the
+clergy of every denomination are loath to agree to this, and endeavour,
+by hook or by crook, to acquire the means of living well.
+
+Hence Buddha, who was thoroughly honest himself, and did not become a
+preacher for the sake of emolument or a livelihood, adopted, as part
+of his plan, a systematic estrangement from every luxury of whatever
+sort,--or, in other words, the adoption of a poverty as great as exists
+in the lower animals. He enjoined that the saintly teacher, having food
+and raiment of the most homely kind, ought therewith to be content. This
+was Paul's view also--see 1 Tim. vi. 8. In this teaching the son of Mary
+concurred; like the son of Maya, he "had not where to lay his head," he
+had not even such a home as a fox or a bird (Matt, viii. 20), and when
+he sent out his disciples to preach, his direction to them was, "Take
+nothing for your journey" (Luke ix. 3, see also Matt, vi. 25-28). To sum
+up our remarks upon this particular command of Buddha to avoid the
+taint of ignorance, we may frame an axiom in political economy,
+thus--"Ignorance in the many ensures wealth in a few," or, "A diffusion
+of sound knowledge amongst the ruled, reduces the power and the
+emoluments of the rulers, and compels them to work hard if they wish to
+retain their position." To apply this idea still further, I would add
+that a thoroughly educated people, each one of whom feels that he
+must "work out his own salvation" (Phil ii. 12), does not require a
+priesthood. Consequently hierarchs, whose sole business in this world
+seems to be to instil terror into young minds, and to make rules for
+them to break, that priests may be paid for showing how the imaginary
+results may be escaped, would have no place if men were wise and
+thoughtful. It is a curious, though a certain fact, that the depth of
+savagery and the height of civilization alike ignore the necessity of a
+hierarchy. The first does so because it never thinks of God--the second,
+because its conceptions of the Almighty are such that it cannot believe
+Him to be influenced by individuals who assume to be His earthly
+vicegerents, or are elected to that pretentious situation by their
+fellow-men. The God of the Bible can only be adored by individuals whose
+minds are not emancipated wholly from the thraldom of barbarism, and
+who regard Jehovah as a man, and not a good one either, or, as we have
+before remarked--a devil. We may once more extract some sentences for
+comparison, to show, either that no inspiration was necessary to pen the
+Bible, or that the Dhammapada has equal claims with the Old Testament--
+
+244. "Life is easy to live for a man who is without shame, a crow hero,
+a mischief maker, an insulting, bold, and wretched fellow. But life is
+hard to live for a modest man, who always looks for what is pure, who is
+disinterested, quiet, spotless, and intelligent. O man, know this, that
+the unrestrained are in a bad state; take care that greediness and vice
+do not bring thee to grief for a long time."
+
+Compare this with the Psalmist's expression--"I was envious at the
+foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands
+in their death, but their strength is firm; they are not in trouble
+as other men, neither are they plagued like other men; therefore pride
+compasseth them about as a chain, violence covereth them as a garment,
+their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could
+wish.... these are the ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase
+in riches.... Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou
+castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into
+desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors" (Ps.
+lxxiii. 3-19.) "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading
+himself like a green tree that groweth in his own soil, yet he passed
+away, and lo! he was not, yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.
+Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is
+peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together, the end of
+the wicked shall be cut off." "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers,
+neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall
+soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in
+the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and, verily, thou
+shalt be fed" (Ps. xxxvii. 35-38--1-3). The class of sentiments is the
+same in both, only they seem to differ because we are very familiar with
+the phraseology of the Bible, and the reverse with translations from the
+Sanskrit.
+
+At this point the philosopher may judiciously pause to inquire, whether
+the sentiments expressed in the preceding biblical quotations are not
+incorrect, and consequently whether they can be regarded as inspired;
+and whether the Buddhistic solution of the difficulty, which points to
+a future state, is not superior to the Jewish one which treats of this
+world only. Experience abundantly shows that individuals practising what
+is called "goodness" find it no safeguard against misery, starvation,
+tortures, and death. Jesus of Nazareth, his disciples, and vast numbers
+of his followers, have experienced from the dominant party in those
+states wherein they dwelled contumely, reproach, and hours of lingering
+torment. Louis the XIV. of France, and the New Englanders of America,
+alike persecuted "Protestants" and "Quakers." In Spain "the reformers"
+were successfully opposed by fire and sword, and Papal Italy once
+extirpated from her midst the disciples of Luther and Calvin. Yet the
+so-called wrong-doers flourished, and the unfortunate "good people" were
+run down or dragooned with a sudden and swift destruction. If the dictum
+of the Psalmist is right, then Admiral Coligny, who was killed in
+the Bartholomew massacre, at Paris, must have been a bad man put in a
+slippery place that he might fall, for his destruction came suddenly, in
+an instant. But all history shows him to have been a worthy fellow,
+who was punished for his virtues. The observer of nature is driven to
+believe that the co-existence of powerful and bad men, with feeble, yet
+good men, is a rule in creation for which no adequate explanation can
+be found. He sees that in the domain of the air there are hawks and
+pigeons, eagles and ostriches, cuckoos and hedge-sparrows, that on the
+land there are tigers and sheep, lions and buffaloes, wolves and deer,
+that in the water there are perch and minnows, pike and trout, sharks
+and whales--in other words, there is throughout the world a division of
+living creatures into those who live by destroying vegetables, and those
+who subsist by the destruction of animals. The cow, sheep, and deer are
+quite as ruthless, in their noxiousness to the ornaments of the meadow,
+as are foxes in a hen-roost to the beauties of the barn-door; both alike
+mar the graceful features of creation. Yet it is clear that both the
+graminivora and the carnivora were made to effect this apparent
+wrong. Still further, we see throughout creation, that in almost every
+community of animals, the strong ones dominate over the weak, and
+endeavour, far too frequently, to deprive them of such pleasures as they
+and their females possess. See, for example, a cock with a bevy of hens:
+he will allow no other chanticleer to strut besides him on the dunghill
+of the yard; he will not permit a rival to make love to anyone of his
+harem, nor to feed upon any dainty morsel, until his wives and himself
+have had enough. The same may be said of stags, of bulls, of rams, of
+horses, and many other creatures whose habits are known. The leader of
+a herd is a despot, and when he is at length conquered by another, those
+who are ruled have merely changed their masters. Young and weak cocks
+will never attain to power, and must ever submit to be bullied.
+
+We notice, at the same time, that each tyrant must in the end succumb;
+with age comes infirmity and loss of strength, in the last battle
+the old is beaten by the young. Just so it is with mankind; in its
+comparative infancy monarchs rule, and are at length deposed by others.
+The Babylonians conquered Palestine, the Medes and Persians vanquished
+the Babylonians, the Greeks subjugated the Persians, the Romans overcame
+the Greeks, and the Goths destroyed the Roman power; yet under every
+regime the powerful could torment the weak. The result in every case
+was brought about by the conqueror being strong and brutal--not by the
+immorality of the victims.
+
+When a philosopher sees such things, he very naturally endeavours to
+ascertain whether any design can be discovered in the events of the
+world, and to this end he may be diligent in collecting facts, or he
+may at once frame some theory, and then cease to think about the matter.
+"Oh," such an one may say, "all that is wrong here will be righted in
+another world." Another, who ponders more deeply, may doubt whether it
+is proper to divide the phenomena of nature into "right" and "wrong."
+"If," he will say, "I believe with the Jew that God is in the heavens,
+and does whatsoever He pleases" (Ps. cxv. 3), or that "the Lord hath
+made all for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov.
+xvi. 4) I must allow that everything which emanates from the Creator
+must be right. Speaking individually, I prefer rather to examine into
+the ways of Providence--i.e., of the Almighty, without framing any
+theory of right and wrong, than to dogmatize upon what He _must_ intend
+by this or that. "Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord (Jehovah),
+or being his counsellor hath taught him?" (Is. xl. 13)--see also the
+Pauline version of this sentiment, Rom. xi. 33, 34.
+
+It is very questionable whether any human analogy will enable us,
+even approximately, to fathom what are designated "the designs of
+Providence." Every example that I can at the present remember given by
+theologians is bad. Take, for example, the most common one which draws
+a comparison between God and a father, Ps. ciii. 13, "like as a father
+piti-eth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" Prov.
+iii. 12, "Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the
+son in whom he delighteth;" Heb. xii. 6, 7, "Whom the Lord loveth
+he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "If ye be
+without chastisement, whereof all men (are) partakers, then are ye
+bastards and not sons." These enunciate the idea that God, being the
+universal father, treats mankind as a judicious parent treats his
+offspring, and that as a child cannot at all times know why he is
+punished until many years have passed over his head, so human beings
+cannot tell, until they reach another world, why they were punished
+in this. To assist this assertion the text is quoted "What I do thou
+knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7.) If there
+be any truth in the analogy, it must follow that all who in this world
+"endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19), are children of
+God, whom he is educating for a better world. If that, again, be
+so, then--when Christians persecuted Mahometans, Romanists burned
+Protestants, and Spaniards slaughtered Mexicans and Peruvians--it
+follows that the vanquished, and not the conquerors, were the elect of
+the Father. But this deduction directly opposes those promises said to
+be made to the Jews by Jehovah, viz., that victory should be the reward
+of their piety. As it is a poor system which declares that two opposite
+results come from the same cause, we must refuse to believe that both
+victory and defeat are proofs of a Father's love. I am quite aware that
+some reader may retort that a kind parent may punish one child at the
+same time that he rewards another. I grant it at once, but that only
+demonstrates, if it proves anything, that all creatures must be regarded
+alike as the offspring of the Creator, and that none are favoured
+peculiarly on the one hand, or are outcasts on the other.
+
+As it is undesirable to mix political up with religious events, I
+refrain from drawing from history such illustrations as have frequently
+been supposed to indicate the will of the Almighty. The fall from power
+of Egypt, Tyre, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome,
+Spain, are all supposed to have been caused by some special providential
+design. In like manner theologians draw certain deductions from the
+discovery of the New World, and the slaughter of the majority of its
+aboriginal inhabitants; from the Crusades; from the influx of the Turks
+into Christendom; and of the Moors into Spain. Some, whose imaginative
+powers overwhelm their reasoning faculties, see in the wars of recent
+times that final shaking of the nations, which some _soi-disant_ prophet
+declares must precede the millennium, and the battle of Armageddon;
+vaccinators, and interpreters are as abundant and irrepressible now as
+ever they were. Their fundamental assumption is that God has acted as
+they would have done in His place. Now He is a sort of Irish landlord, a
+portion of whose property is overrun with pauper farmers, and He clears
+them away to make room for more sensible and wealthier tenants, as
+the Canaanites were removed to give place to the Hebrews. Now, He is
+represented as a parent, who hearing that a son has engaged in fight and
+been conquered, merely remarks "serves him right!"--the kind of
+comfort given to the Jews after they had been harried by the Edomite
+confederacy, and subsequently by the Chaldeans. Again, the same mighty
+Jehovah is represented as a Stoic, who remarks, when some mischance
+happens to those who are said to be his children, "Never mind, accidents
+will happen--through much tribulation you must enter into my rest, or
+the kingdom of heaven."
+
+I entirely decline to adopt the profession of prophet and interpreter,
+contenting myself with increasing what knowledge I may have, rather
+than endeavouring to deduce from it theories whose weakness an hour may
+demonstrate; nor do I put faith in any one who adopts such a business.
+
+For example, let us assume that two savage tribes, having gods
+of different names and shapes, go to war on the bidding of their
+priests--one is conquered and the other is victorious. The one
+attributes his reverse to the anger of his own deity, not to the power
+of the god of his enemy. The other imagines that he owes success to the
+influence of his protector and his superiority over his foe's fetish.
+A civilized on-looker, who believes that all the deities are devils and
+powerless, attributes victory and defeat to perfectly natural causes,
+e.g., superiority in weapons, tactics, numbers, or strength. It is
+clear that neither the deductions of the first nor second men are right;
+neither has read the mind of his fetish. So it is with the half educated
+theologians of our own day, who think and talk as glibly of God and
+Satan, as if they were personal acquaintances, who make no secret either
+of their deeds or their motives of action.
+
+Once more we return to the Dhammapada and find,
+
+248. "O, man, know this, that the unrestrained are in a bad state; take
+care that greediness and vice do not bring thee to grief for a long
+time." We do not here seek to find any parallel passage in the
+bible, but we turn to history, remote and collateral, and compare the
+priesthood of Buddha with that of Jesus. Does travel tell us of any set
+of teachers more self-denying than the individuals who devote themselves
+as religious Buddhists? Can history, on the other hand, tell us of any
+hierarchy more greedy and vicious than the Christian priesthood in the
+middle ages, and down to a comparatively recent period? We will not
+accuse them of vice, but even now is there in the whole world a more
+grasping set of men than those who have received what they term "holy
+orders" from the descendants of Jesus or of Peter? I trow not. If,
+therefore, a doctrine is to be known by its fruits, in one respect at
+least Buddhism is superior to that which we call Christianity, by which
+term I do not mean the exceptional practice of a few, but the general
+habits of the majority of the bishops, priests, &c., of Christendom.
+Once more let us contrast the doctrine of Buddha with the practice of
+Christians. He says--
+
+Da. 256, 7. "A man is not a just judge if he carries a matter by
+violence; no, he who distinguishes both right and wrong, who is learned,
+and leads others, not by violence, but by law and equity, he who is a
+guardian of the law and equity, he who is a guardian of the law, and
+intelligent, he is called just." Our histories tell us of Christians
+persecuting Christians; Trinitarians endeavouring to extirpate Arians;
+Franciscans torturing Dominicans; of Jews slaughtered by those
+whose master said, "Father, forgive them;" we see brutal Spaniards
+exterminating, under the shadow of the cross, whole nations in the new
+world who had never harmed them, and in the old world we find Crusaders,
+under the guise of piety, murdering and robbing the dwellers in
+Palestine. There is scarcely a large town in Europe which has not
+witnessed the ferocious violence of Papal, yea, and Protestant,
+hierarchs. Even in recent times we have seen bishops and their
+congeners, in our so-called civilized nation, oppose violence, and
+the popgun thunder of excommunication, to a learned prelate, and to an
+humble priest. Judged by the standard of Buddha, our divines are unjust
+and unrighteous. I cannot discover any standard by which they can be
+regarded as "praiseworthy," except that embodied in the two sayings,
+"Get what you can, and what you get hold;" "Where ignorance is bliss,
+'tis folly to be wise." We may say of such persecutors, in the words of
+the Dhammapada--
+
+260. "A man is not an elder because his head is grey; his age may be
+ripe, but he is called old in vain," and many would at once be able, if
+they tried, to remember the names of some who, in a Christian community,
+have abandoned their principles, or their learning, as soon as they
+became bishops or elders of the church. I have no doubt Popes have done
+so. There is a saying, that however clever a man is, you make a fool of
+him by placing a mitre upon his head.
+
+The following is, perhaps, more curious than our previous quotations, as
+it tells of the pre-Christian antiquity of a common Romish custom:--
+
+264. "Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man, who speaks falsehood,
+become a Sramana; can a man be a Sra-mana who is still held captive
+by desire and greediness?" The Sramana is a word equivalent to our
+"priest," literally, "a man who performs hard penances" (see Dhammapada,
+Note 265, p. cxxxii.).
+
+Without copying any other texts from the Dhammapada, we may next inquire
+what there is to be found in the Bible that is not to be found in the
+teaching of Buddha. We notice that the element of so-called prophecy is
+wholly wanting in the sayings of the Indian sage. I cannot remember that
+either Sakya Muni or any of his followers assumed the power to foretell
+the future. There is, it is true, a vague threat of future misery to the
+wicked, which was founded upon the prevalent idea of metempsychosis; but
+there is no endeavour to pourtray the occurrences that are supposed to
+be impending over one or more sections of the human race. There is not
+any attempt to induce individuals to join themselves to the son of Maya,
+by declarations that the world, and all that it contains, is about to be
+destroyed, and that all who do not become disciples of the teacher,
+and shelter themselves under his mantle, will be miserably punished
+throughout eternity.
+
+There is not any Buddhist description in detail, either of Hell, or
+Heaven, or Nirvana; there is no story of "worms," "fires," "devils,"
+"death," and the like, in the first. The second is not depicted, by
+the preacher himself, as a sort of palace, made gorgeous with gold and
+precious stones, resounding in barbaric music, and discordant chants,
+where animals dwell, and where horses are kept stabled, to go throughout
+the world with messengers upon their backs (see Zechariah i. 8, 10;
+vi. 2, 7; Rev. iv. 6, 7; vi. 2, 4, 8). There are no denunciations of
+vengeance upon heretics, nor is the god of Buddha like the one described
+by Hebrew writers, who "winks" during times of ignorance upon earth
+(Acts xvii. 30), who requires to be reminded by prayer of the wants of
+men (Exod. iii. 7), and who comes down to earth to inquire if matters
+are according to the accounts which have reached his dwelling-place
+(Gen. xviii. 21).
+
+In Siddartha's teaching there is, as we have seen, an absence of the
+element of prayer. According to his view, each man is regarded, to a
+certain extent, as the author of his own destiny. Man, in his opinion,
+must ever be influenced by the actions of other men--he may, for example
+either be caressed or tormented, yet, under both circumstances, he
+is instructed to retain equanimity of mind. He is not to pray for
+prosperity, nor to supplicate that trials may be removed. He is to face
+and overcome every trial by his resolute will, and not to waste time in
+praying not to be led into temptation.
+
+Again, in Buddha's writings, and in those of his followers, there is an
+absence of those obscene tales with which the Old Testament abounds. We
+seek in vain for counterparts of the story of Lot and his daughters, of
+Onan, of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar, of Judah and Tamar, David and
+Bathsheba, Amnon and his sister, Zimri Cozbi and Phinehas, and the
+like. It is true, that in some Buddhist writings, there is a cosmogony
+introduced more preposterous than that in the Bible; but there are no
+parallels to the tales of Noah, of Moses, and of Israel in Egypt, the
+desert, and Palestine. Indeed, when we remember that Sakya Muni was
+an Oriental, accustomed to inflated language, we are struck by the
+plainness of his speech.
+
+If we now ask ourselves, as earnest practical Christians--that is, as
+men, anxious and eager to attain to religious truth, and desirous of
+teaching only those things which would tend towards sound edification
+and to a pure morality--what parts of the Bible most offend sense of
+propriety, we should answer, that they are its untenable cosmogony; its
+preposterous accounts of the longevity of the men reported as being the
+earliest formed; the legend of the flood; the origin of the rainbow;
+the tales of Moses, Pharaoh, the plagues of Egypt, the sojourn in the
+desert, the capture of Canaan, the miraculous battles, in which each man
+of Israel put a thousand enemies to flight. We would wholly expunge
+the fabulous account of Elijah and Elisha; the ravings after vengeance
+uttered by the prophets; the apocryphal episodes described in the books
+of Jonah and Daniel, every obscene story, and disgusting speech and
+writing, whether uttered as a threat against Israel or his enemies.
+In like manner we would wish to expunge, from the teaching of
+Jesus, everything relating to the immediate destruction of the
+world--everything connected with community of goods, the advantages of
+beggary, and the potency of faith and prayer. We would suppress every
+miracle, and say nothing of a resurrection of the dead Jesus. We
+would equally abandon any attempt to describe Heaven or Hell, or any
+intermediate state.
+
+When all these were removed from the Bible, we positively should have
+very little left, except a certain amount of morality which is sound,
+and a large portion which is radically bad. To make such an emendated
+book as perfect as possible, we might, with great advantage, correct
+it from the teaching of Buddha or from the sayings of Socrates, Plato,
+Epic-tetus, and even of Confucius; and when all was completed, it would
+be found that all men, everywhere, have had instinctive notions, more
+or less definite, of morality, but have allowed their animal passions
+to overcome their better feelings. Far too many of us know the good, but
+yet the bad pursue.
+
+This investigation would most distinctly disprove the assertion, that
+God has selected a very small percentage of His creatures for objects
+of His care, and those who have charity towards all men would greatly
+rejoice thereat. Individually we cannot bear to eat, however hungry
+we may be, whilst we see others near us without food--our pleasure is
+heightened when we divide our luxuries with others; just so we believe
+it should be in religion--none should rejoice at the idea that he is one
+of the few that are to be saved, nor should anyone repine, as Jonah did,
+when he finds that the tender mercies of God are over all his works.
+
+To simplify the matter as far as possible, I have drawn up the following
+parallel between Buddhism and Christianity:--
+
+[Illustration: 263]
+
+[Illustration: 264]
+
+[Illustration: 265]
+
+[Illustration: 266]
+
+[Illustration: 267]
+
+In the next chapter I propose to examine, as far as authorities will
+permit, the religion of the Persians--a nation intervening, to a great
+degree, between the old Aryan and the Shemitic races.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The Medo-Persians and Parsees. Artfulness of theologians. They
+systematically break the ninth commandment. Frauds in orthodoxy. A man
+may use false weights innocently, but is punished, nevertheless. In
+theology ignorance does not justify deceit. Case in trade. Professional
+blindness. A law for punishing adulteration of truth is wanted. Mosaism
+and Zoroaster. Parsees and Christians. Moses and Zoroaster. The ancient
+magi. The Persians. Conflicting ideas of God in Bible. The source of the
+Biblical theology. Cyrus. Inquiry into the authenticity of the Avesta.
+The book condemned. Account of the Medo-Persian faith from Herodotus.
+Period of introduction of the Devil to the Bible. Summary. Comparison
+and contrast. Introduction to next chapter.
+
+In every ancient, and, indeed, in every modern, faith which I have
+yet examined, I have been shocked with the manner in which it has been
+represented by interested opponents. Whether they are Romanists or
+Protestants, Evangelicals or Ritualists, Orthodox or Non-conformists,
+all our divines endeavour to prove their own tenets to be the best, by
+blazoning everything which is good, and veiling from sight everything
+which is doubtful. This being so, it is not at all surprising that
+Christians generally should try to exalt the religion professed
+by themselves over that propounded by others, whom they designate
+"heathens." But though it is not strange that very human partisans
+should act thus, it is marvellous to find that all the ardent disciples
+of Jesus, without an exception, that I know of, should, in their
+dealings with mankind, systematically break the ninth of those
+commandments which they assert were given by God to man, upon Mount
+Sinai All of them bear false witness against their neighbour, and give
+incorrect accounts of themselves in addition. They resemble, indeed,
+those Dutch merchants whom Washington Irving describes, so pleasantly,
+in his history of New York, who had two sets of weights, a heavy lot by
+which to purchase, and a light set by which to sell Such traders we call
+"fraudulent;" and I assert that every so-called orthodox polemic whose
+books I have read deserves the same epithet. Their fraud is shown by the
+misrepresentations that they make, both of the creed which they uphold
+and the one which they oppose. The heterodox and the so-called atheist
+may be trusted, at least, to tell the truth.
+
+In saying this, I do not assert that everyone gives false witness
+knowingly, any more than I would blame a tradesman for using false
+scales, or weights, if he could demonstrate that he had purchased them
+as true, and could show that he had never tampered with them. Yet the
+law would punish such a man for their use, arguing that he ought to
+have made inquiry. In one of the large towns of Great Britain, on one
+occasion, a merchant, believed to be both religious and honest, sold to
+a broker a cargo of stuff which had no existence, and, when the delivery
+had to be made, the first destroyed himself, and the second was adjudged
+to be a culpable bankrupt, because he had taken the existence of the oil
+for granted, without investigation. Just so it is with ordinary divines;
+they assume certain statements in their own religious book to be
+true--they are taught to shut their eyes to the absurdities in the same
+volume, and to explain away, in one manner or another, everything which
+militates against common sense. By this plan they contrive to sell,
+as sterling stuff, something which is made of base material, without
+knowingly being parties to a fraud. In the same way a shopman may, on
+the word of the manufacturer, dispose of a piece of goods as wholly
+silk, although he has a shrewd presumption that the fabric contains a
+large proportion of cotton. For such individuals we have the proverb,
+"there are none so blind as those who will not see." But these very
+theologians of whom we are speaking, when they are dealing with the
+sacred books, ordinary customs, ritual, and the like, of other
+people, having a different religion to their own, are exact, in the
+extreme--every absurdity is exhibited ruthlessly; every legend is
+ridiculed; every discrepancy is magnified; and everything which betrays
+ignorance, or want of scientific knowledge, is paraded with inglorious
+ceremony. On the other hand, everything good which is to be found
+therein is, if possible, suppressed. A book, which was, for a long time,
+a standard one amongst our divines, entitled, _Christ and Many Masters_,
+is particularly open to this charge. In it there is throughout a
+_suppressio veri_, a _suggestio falsi_, and scarcely a page that
+does not bear false witness. If there were a law to punish those who
+adulterate or falsify "truth," our magistrates would be kept extremely
+busy.
+
+As an inquiry into the realities of Buddhism has led us to the belief
+that the origin of Christianity may be found in the doctrines of the
+son of Maya, which were adopted with certain Judaic modifications by the
+sons of Elizabeth and Mary--so it is highly probable that what is called
+Mosaism has been built upon the teachings of the Persian or Median
+theology, said to have been founded by Zoroaster. Perhaps it would
+be difficult to find any modern evidence of the likelihood of this
+hypothesis more powerful than the fact that at the present day the Jews
+and the Parsees fraternize almost like brothers. The latter in England,
+and, I understand, elsewhere, select, when they can, the house of a
+Hebrew wherein to lodge, rather than that of any man of another nation.
+To this testimony, such as it is, we must add another which is very
+telling, viz., that almost every modern orthodox writer who has
+treated of Zoroaster, has declared that the prophet of Persia drew his
+inspiration from the lawgiver of Israel The priority of the latter being
+asserted, and the second place having been given to the former, the
+matter was supposed to be proved, and the Persian, after having been
+regarded as a copy of the Hebrew, was consigned to oblivion.
+
+There can be little doubt, however, that the teachings of Zoroaster had
+more life in them than those either of the Jew or the Christian, for
+the Parsee always and even to the present day, and in every position of
+life, may lay claim to the title of nature's gentleman, which very
+few of the disciples of Jesus or of Moses could pretend to until very
+recently. The morality of these religionists is excellent. In every
+relation of life they endeavour to be, to do, and to think that which is
+right--and though there may be black sheep amongst them, the proportion
+of these to the main body is small In no period of their history, so
+far as I can learn it, have the Zoroastrians been as brutal as the
+Christians were so long as they had the power--nor have they ever
+introduced into their worship figures of men, women, or children with
+the apparent intention of honouring or adoring them, or the assertion
+that such things assisted their devotions. Being strictly monotheists,
+they have not split up the Godhead into three males influenced by
+a female who is the spouse of one and mother of a second; nor have
+asserted that the one great Creator is compounded of a father, a
+son, and a pigeon, with a woman for an intercessor with her celestial
+consort. Nor do the Parsees build vast temples for the Almighty to
+dwell in, neither do they reduce any portion of the Omnipotent to the
+necessity of residing in a bit of bread shut up for many a long day in
+a box. On the contrary, the modern followers of Zoroaster worship "the
+father" in spirit and in truth--not with eye service as men-pleasers,
+but with singleness of heart, fearing God (Col. iii. 22.), thus being, as
+we are told, the very men whom the Almighty seeketh (John iv. 23, 24).
+
+The first resemblance between the Persian and the Jewish lawgiver to
+which we would call attention, is the mythical nature of both. The
+Hebrew who believes in Moses can show no other ground for his faith
+than a number of books which tell of Moses, his genealogy, his acts,
+his laws, his character, and his death. Yet when an independent inquirer
+subjects these books, and the accounts which they contain, to a rigid
+examination, he finds evidence that the writings are fabrications of a
+period at least a full thousand years after the era of their supposed
+epoch--probably more; and that all collateral testimony and all internal
+evidence drawn from the books themselves disprove the actual existence
+of Moses. To the scholar, the Hebrew lawgiver is as apocryphal or
+fictitious a being as Hercules, Romulus, and our own king Arthur. Nor is
+this belief of the critic shaken when he finds that the history of Moses
+is interwoven with miraculous legends--credit them he cannot; but he may
+pause before he determines to see in them evidence of fabrication. He
+cannot fairly deny the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, because many
+marvellous stories were told of him, nor would a similar cause alone
+lead him to assert that Francis of Assisi was a mythical individual.
+But whichever way the careful philosophical inquirer may decide the
+questions at issue, he will remember that many strange stories are told
+of the conception, birth, and life of Zoroaster, and that the critic
+must mete out equal justice, both to the Jew and to the Persian. Again,
+impartial inquirers find themselves unable to determine, with anything
+approaching to accuracy, either by internal evidence or contemporary
+remains--the positive epoch when the tale about Moses was originated. It
+is true that the Bible seems to afford foundation for a chronology in
+a few parts, as, for example, in the historical books; but these are
+so completely contradicted by genealogies in other parts that we cannot
+trust them. After stripping away every doubtful scrap from Jewish
+history, all we can find is, that Moses was first talked of, familiarly,
+after what maybe called the Grecian Captivity of Jerusalem (see
+_Obadiah, Ancient Faiths, &c._t Vol. ii.), and that he was said to
+be the author of the ceremonial, moral, and political laws which were
+framed for the Jewish nation, and which were assiduously taught to the
+Hebrews after the Babylonish captivity.
+
+The followers of Zoroaster are equally ignorant of the real history of
+their prophet, and are equally unable to demonstrate the claim of the
+Zend Avesta to be a true account of the teaching of the Persian sage, as
+are the Jews to prove the antiquity of their laws and nation. Putting
+on one side all those which may be regarded as modern fancies, the first
+mention made of the Prophet is in the first Alcibiades of Plato, which
+we may imagine was written shortly after B.c. 412, in which year that
+distinguished Greek citizen negociated a treaty between Athens and
+Persia. Plato, when speaking of the education of the sons of the kings
+of Persia, says (_Bohn's_ edition, Vol. iv., p. 344), "At fourteen years
+of age, they who are called the royal preceptors, take the boy under
+their care. Now these are chosen out from those who are deemed most
+excellent of the Persians, men in the prime of life, four in number,
+excelling (severally) in wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude.
+The first of these instructs the youth in the learning of the Magi,
+according to Zoroaster, the son of Oromazes--now by this learning
+is meant the worship of the gods--and likewise in the art of kingly
+government." But Herodotus, writing about B.c. 450, when giving, in Book
+i, c. 131, an account of the religion of the Persians, makes not only
+no mention of Zoroaster, but attributes to that nation a form of worship
+differing from what is supposed to be pure Zoroastrianism;* but he
+mentions--and it seems to be a significant fact, that it is not lawful
+for a Persian to sacrifice unless one of the Magi is present, who
+sings an ode concerning the original of the gods which, they say, is an
+incantation.
+
+     * There is strong constructive evidence, from the nature of
+     the Aryan Mythology, from the pages of the Vedas, from the
+     anthropological resemblances between Persians, Caucasians,
+     Greeks, Latins, Germans, British, and others; from the
+     linguistic alliances between what have been called the Indo-
+     Germanic races; and from a variety of other sources, each
+     small in itself, but strong in the aggregate, for the belief
+     that the origin of the Aryan mythology, or the Vedic
+     religion as it is otherwise called, may be traced to Bactria
+     or to Ancient Persia. Persia is spoken of by Plato as if her
+     people carried the dynasties of their kings far back into
+     eternity. (First Alcibiades, Bohn's edition, vol. iv., p.
+     343). Herodotus again (Book i., c. 131) tells us that the
+     Persians from the earliest times have sacrificed to the sun
+     and moon, to the earth, fire, water, and the winds, that
+     they sacrifice on high places, have no divine statues, nor
+     do they build temples. Now this is almost entirely a
+     description of the old Aryan religion. The sun, for example,
+     is Surya, Aryama, Mitra, Vivaswat, Martunda, Savitor, Sura,
+     Ravi, Varuna, Indra Yama, Vishnu, and Krishna (Moor's Hindoo
+     Paillhcon, p. 287). The moon is Chandra and Soma, and the
+     origin of these words is to be found in the Persian as well
+     as in the Sanscrit writings (Moor's H. P., p. 284-5). The
+     Earth is Prit'hivi, 11a, Lakshmi, and Vasta. Fire is the
+     powerful Agni. The water is Nara, or Narayana (Moor's JET.
+     P., 74), from which all things came (see Water in Ancient
+     Faiths), and the Winds are Maruts and Vaya. To these
+     deities, individually or collectively, the modern Hindoo
+     offers prayer and praise; and the hymns of the Rig Veda,
+     such as we have them edited by Max Muller and Wilson, are
+     copies probably of the same chants which accompanied the
+     sacrifices of the Ancient Persians.
+
+
+This seems to indicate that the Persian religion was then undergoing
+some supervision by rulers who had a different faith to that held at a
+later period. When we next turn to Herodotus, Book L, c. 101, we find
+that the Magi were one of the six tribes which composed the Medes;
+and we notice that Phraortes, the son of Deioces, reduced the Persian
+kingdom under the dominion of the Medes about B.c. 650. If, then, we
+regard Zoroaster as being the founder of the Magi, we must throw back
+his epoch considerably further than this date. But even if we accept
+this conquest as the era of the Parsee prophet, we find that Zoroaster
+preceded the first public promulgation of the Mosaic law amongst the
+Jews.*
+
+     * Time of Zoroaster.--Dr. Hang, who is no mean authority in
+     everything which concerns Zoroastrianism, states in an able
+     resumê of the evidence, that we cannot assign a later date
+     to the prophet than 2300 years before Christ. He quotes from
+     Diogenes Laertius who affirms that Xanthos of Lydia, b.c.
+     600-450, states, that Zoroaster lived 6000 years before
+     Xerxes invaded Greece; from Pliny who, on the authority of
+     Aristotle, says that the teacher preceded Plato by 6000
+     years; from Hermippus of Smyrna, who studied Magism B.c.
+     250, and averred that the founder of that sect lived 5000
+     years before the Trojan war; and from Pliny, to show the
+     general belief of ancient Greek authors that Zoroaster lived
+     many thousand years before Moses. Dr. Haug says (I am
+     quoting from "A Lecture on an Original Speech of Zoroaster,
+     with Remarks on his Age, by Dr Haug" London: Triibner & Co.,
+     1865), that the traditional books of the Parsees say
+     Zerdosht (another form of the more familiar Greek name)
+     lived 300 years before Alexander invaded Persia. Our author
+     adds that Hermippus, in 250 b.c., speaks of two millions of
+     verses of Zoroastrian origin, and infers that these would
+     require 1000 years for their growth. He then points out the
+     relationship between the Iranian and the Yedic religion, and
+     Zoroaster's antagonism to the latter, and argues that this
+     must have happened ere the Aryans invaded the Punjaub, 2000
+     years B.c. Dr. Haug then inquires into the probable source
+     whence the Greeks drew their ideas respecting the antiquity
+     of Zerdosht, and argues, with great show of reason, that
+     they consulted the chronology of the Babylonian priests. He
+     shows that a trustworthy record was kept which went back to
+     2284 b.c., this he concludes, from data given by Berosus,
+     was the year when Babylon was conquered by the Medes;--and
+     from Synkellos he shows that the founder of the dynasty of
+     the eight Median tyrants over Babylon was called Zoroaster.
+     But this word, Zarathustra, in the original, signifies a
+     high priest, and to distinguish him from other hierarchs
+     the prophet is called Zarathustra Spitama, in the Zend
+     Avesta--hence this king is supposed not to be the prophet
+     him» self, but a descendant from him, and a priest in the
+     order which was founded by the original Zerdosht. This again
+     points to the fact that the Babylonians could only know
+     anything about the founder of Magism from the Medes
+     themselves, and they might, from want of any accurate
+     chronology, assign to Zoroaster any date they liked--just
+     as, with many a semi-civilized nation 'a long time may be
+     converted into ten, a hundred, a thousand, or a million
+     years.' Haug does not endeavour to assign any particular
+     date to the era of Zoroaster beyond expressing the opinion
+     that he might have lived one or two hundred years before the
+     Median conquest of Babylon, and that this occurrence was
+     probably one of the results of the ferment which his
+     doctrines caused. "He preached, like Moses, war and
+     destruction to all idolaters and wicked men, and said that
+     he was commissioned by God to spread the religion of Ahura
+     Mazda. Daring his life-time, and shortly after his death,
+     his followers seem to have engaged in incessant wars with
+     their religious antagonists, the Vedic Indians, which
+     struggle is well known in the Sanscrit writings as that
+     between the Asuras (Ahura) and Devas (the Hindu gods). But
+     afterwards they spread westward and invaded the countries of
+     other idol worshippers in order to uproot idolatry, and
+     establish everywhere the good Mazdayan religion. They really
+     appear to have changed the order of things in Babylon when
+     they conquered it, and spread a new creed, for they are
+     spoken of by Berosus as tyrants." Zoroaster was the first
+     prophet of truth who appeared in the world, and kindled a
+     fire which thousands of years could not entirely
+     extinguish."
+
+When Moses was first talked about we know not, but at the time of
+Samuel, David, and Josiah he was unknown. We have no reason to believe
+that the Hebrews ever came into contact with, or ever heard of the
+Persians, until after the Babylonish conquest, followed by that of
+Cyrus; consequently, if the Jewish law first propounded contained
+nothing akin to the doctrines and laws of Zoroaster, and subsequent
+publications did so, we should naturally conclude that the last were
+copied. It is unnecessary to tell the student of biblical history that
+the Jews were for many years under the dominion of the Persians and
+Medes, and that Nehemiah, one of their great men, after the Babylonian
+captivity, was a personal, though humble, friend, of the king of
+Persia--i.e., if we take his account of himself for true.
+
+Of the fact of there being two distinct doctrines respecting the
+Almighty in the Old Testament no scholar has a doubt. In the one, God
+is represented as the sole Being who rules and influences the world:
+whatsoever was done He was regarded as the doer of it. He had no
+powerful enemy who could thwart His will, no adversary who could
+withstand Him successfully. In the other the existence of two rival
+powers is distinctly recognised--Jehovah and Satan--the Aryan Mara,
+the tempter, who plot and counterplot against each other, and even
+condescend to personal wrangling. The most conspicuous example which
+we can give of these two doctrines is to be found in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, in
+which we are told that Jehovah moved David to number Israel, whereas
+in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, evidently written by a modern scribe, we find that
+Satan, the adversary, was he who incited the king to perform this deed.
+We see the duality of persons conspicuously put forward in the first and
+second chapters of Job, in which Satan is represented as being at large,
+not being even under the surveillance of Jehovah. See also 1 Kings xxii.
+20-23, wherein we find Jehovah at a loss how to bring about a certain
+result, and assisted out of a dilemma by a lying spirit--who can do what
+the Lord could not effect! We may say that the story is a fiction, but
+no Hebrew dare have spoken thus of Jehovah had he ever heard of Moses
+and his laws.
+
+As we cannot imagine that a revelation from God to the Hebrews would be
+thus changeable, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Jewish
+writings were of human origin, and their first doctrines modified by
+those of other nations to whom the Hebrews were subjects or enslaved. To
+this consideration we may add, that when the Israelites came in contact
+with the Medes and Persians, they were merely a 'posse' of slaves,
+a crowd of prisoners removed from their own land without a shadow
+of power, or any influence, and only anxious to induce those who had
+conquered their late masters, the Babylonians, to have pity on their
+misery, and restore them to beggared Jerusalem. The idea of the Hebrews
+gaining friends by endeavouring to induce the Persian Magi to change
+their faith and embrace that of the poor and probably despised Jew
+is preposterous. On the other hand, there would be every possible
+inducement for the Hebrews to study the faith of that people whose God
+had given them victory over the Chaldeans. See in corroboration of this
+Ps. cxxxvii., especially the two last verses.
+
+We may regard the question before us in yet another light, If we are
+to allow that the words of Isaiah are correct, which describe Cyrus as
+God's shepherd (ch. xliv. 28), and as anointed by Jehovah Himself, we
+cannot conceive that the religion which he professed was opposed to
+that entertained by the Hebrew prophet. As it is morally impossible
+that Cyrus and his hierarchy were taught their religion by any Jew, it
+follows that the Persian faith can lay the same claim to inspiration as
+the Hebrew, if the latter were not indeed almost identical with it.
+If, then, we insist upon the latter being "a true revelation," we must
+concede the same to the former, or if we pronounce the Persian religion
+to be of human invention, we must pass a similar verdict upon the
+Jewish.
+
+When we are upon the horns of such a great dilemma we may well pause.
+It is indeed almost impossible for orthodox divines to make a selection
+which prong of the fork is the worst. If we elect to say our belief
+is, that the primitive teaching of the Hebrew was God-given and a true
+revelation, we cannot put faith in those scriptures which tell us of a
+devil who fights with Jehovah, and is generally victorious. If, on the
+other hand, we hold that the Christian notions of the Creator and Satan
+are true, we must regard the Zoroastrian teaching as inspired; and
+the early Jewish writings as unworthy of credit--of human invention
+and heterodox. Theologians will probably elect to remain in a state of
+uncertainty on this subject. Philosophers, on the contrary, will escape
+from it at once by asserting their conviction that both the Hebrew and
+the Magian religion are wholly of human invention.*
+
+     * When commencing this chapter, it was my intention to
+     amplify what I have already said in Vol. II. respecting the
+     Magian religion, by giving an analysis of the celebrated
+     Zend Avesta, a translation of which into French, by Anquetil
+     du Perron, I had recently procured for the purpose.
+
+     As I was aware that Dr Haug, a learned scholar, believed the
+     original to be trust-worthy, I read the translation in good
+     faith, but I soon began to doubt whether the book was what
+     it professed to be, for to my mind it bore internal evidence
+     of having been fabricated at a comparatively recent period
+     by some one who was familiar both with the Aryan and the
+     Mosaic, if not the Christian, doctrines and literature. I
+     felt that I should not be acting honestly unless I took such
+     steps as lay in my power to satisfy myself upon this point
+     The essay was therefore laid aside for a considerable time,
+     until, indeed, every available source of information had
+     been searched. After my inquiry was over the text was
+     resumed as above.
+
+But in the middle, or perhaps we might say upon the threshold of our
+inquiry, we must pause to examine into the amount of confidence which
+can be given to those under whose guidance we are invited to place
+ourselves. Such investigations are too frequently omitted. Those who
+have faith in the Bible usually decline to search into the grounds
+of their belief, and, in like manner, those who have always heard
+the author of the Zend Avesta quoted as trustworthy are apt to take
+everything which it may say as correct. To avoid this error, I have
+consulted all the volumes of the transactions of the Royal Asiatic
+Society of London, and have found therein sufficient to throw the
+gravest doubts upon the great antiquity of the Parsee religion. It will
+be an useful task if I attempt to classify the evidence on each side,
+and to draw an inference therefrom. Our knowledge respecting the
+Magian religion which the Bactrian* prophet founded, is built, with the
+exception of the notices in Greek and Latin authors, already quoted,
+upon the work known as the Avesta. This is written in a language called
+Zand,** and there are within it parts, which are written in another
+tongue, to which the name of Pahlavi has been given, and from these the
+sacred books of the Parsees have been translated into French by Anquetil
+du Perron, into German by Spiegel, and into English by Haug. All these
+writers assume that the language referred to is Ancient Persian, and
+closely allied to the Sanscrit, and Haug especially endeavours to
+demonstrate that the Avesta, and the origin of the religion of the
+Parsees, must be as old as the time of the Vedas, inasmuch as the same
+sort of legends, the same names, and, to a certain extent, the same
+genii, are to be found in both. There is not absolute identity, however,
+for those which are spoken of as good by the Vedas are treated as bad in
+the Avesta. Viewed from this point, Haug assigns to the Zand volumes
+an age of about four thousand years, and he supports his belief by a
+reference to the length of time which would be required to make up the
+two million verses attributed to Zoroaster by some Greek author. In the
+conclusion that both the Zand and the Pahlavi are very ancient Persian
+tongues, it is stated that the majority of German and French critics
+agree.
+
+     * Zoroaster is said by many early writers to have been a
+     king in Bactria.--Smith's Dictionary, s.v.
+
+     ** The word "Zend" is more familiar to many than the form
+     "Zand;" but I have adopted the latter, as also the spelling
+     of Pahlavi, from an essay by Mr Romer, with an introduction
+     by Professor Wilson, in Vol. IV., Royal Asiatic Society's
+     Journal.
+
+But on the other hand, such orientalists as Sir William Jones, Colonel
+Vans Kennedy, Mr Thomas, and Mr Romer, and indeed all British oriental
+scholars, regard both the Zand and the Pahlavi as bastard languages,
+never spoken, and wholly fabricated by a comparatively modern
+priesthood, for the express purpose of making the holy books which they
+wrote comprehensible only by themselves. Such scholars show that the
+Zand and Pahlavi are built upon a Sanscrit, Arabic, and modern Persian
+model, and that the Parsee Pahlavi is very different to the Pehlevi of
+the Sassanian coins, and, in Vol. IV., Transactions of Royal Asiatic
+Society, Mr Romer supports this conclusion by a number of passages in
+the various languages referred to. It is also asserted that many words
+in the Avesta have been borrowed from the Arabic, and others from the
+Sanscrit tongues, possibly, also, from the Greek. Being unable, from my
+comparative ignorance of Eastern language, to form a decided opinion on
+independent grounds, all that I can say is, that it does really seem to
+be proved that the religious books of the Par-sees are not so ancient as
+they have been by many supposed to be.
+
+The question which next arises for our consideration is, whether such
+volumes represent the tenets of an ancient faith, or whether they
+are the fabrication of men who have, possibly in the wreck of an old
+worship, brought about by war or other calamity, endeavoured to create a
+new religion out of the relics of one or more old ones. In favour of the
+antiquity of the Avesta are the facts that the great god, Ahura Mazdao,
+seems to be almost identical with the Aura Mazda of the Persepolitan
+inscription of Darius. But in proof of its untruthfulness as a
+representative of pure Persian tradition, we find the book introducing
+Devs and Ahuras,--the counterpart of the Devas and Asuras of the Vedas,
+only reversing their character--we also see Indra mentioned as a devil,
+whilst Siva and Mitra are introduced as Sharva and Miltra. (Haug's
+_Essays on the Parsee_, Bombay, p. 230, 1862). If, therefore, we allow
+that there is some of the old Zoroastrian doctrine to be found in the
+Avesta, we must equally grant that such teaching has been modified by
+hatred of a rival faith. Yet herein is another question, viz., Was
+the antagonism between the doctrines of the Avesta and of the Vedas
+contemporary with the origin of the two systems, or was the teaching of
+the Avesta the result of its author's coming into hostile conflict with
+Vedic teachers, as they possibly might have done after Alexander had
+opened a highway for intercourse between Persia and Hindostan?
+
+On weighing the subject as impartially as I can, it seems to me that the
+Avesta contains a great deal of the Ancient Persian faith, but that it
+will be the safest plan for us to describe what is known of the Persian
+and Median faith from other sources, rather than take our information
+mainly from this doubtful source. Herodotus tells us of his own
+knowledge (B. i, c. 131, seq.), that the Persians, about b.c. 450, did
+not erect statues, temples, or altars--that they sacrificed on lofty
+hills to high heaven, the sun, moon, fire, water, and the winds, and
+that this had been a custom from time immemorial Sacrifice was attended
+by a priest or magus, and prayer and praise were offered, not for
+themselves alone, but for all the Persians, and especially for the king.
+
+In about the year 521 B.c., Darius, king of the Medes, caused be
+made, in three languages, upon a rock at Behistun, an inscription of
+considerable length. The one which is in the Persian tongue has been
+translated by Rawlinson (_Royal Asiatic Society Journal_, vol 10). In
+it, the king acknowledges Auramazda as his god, and speaks of him as the
+Jews did of Jehovah. This epithet is explained by two Sanscrit roots (Op
+cit., vol. x., p. 68), and may be paraphrased as "The Lord or giver of
+life," "The great Creator," or "The Eternal," and the king in a doubtful
+passage refers to "the evil one" (?), who by lies deceived the rulers
+of certain states, inducing them to rebel, and then left them to be
+conquered by the Ormazd-governed Darius. In the Babylonian copy "lies"
+are as it were personified. Whilst in the Scythian version, translated
+by Mr Norris (Op cit. vol. xv., p. 144), we find the account run thus:
+"These are the provinces which became rebellious, 'the god of lies'
+made them rebel that they would subvert the state, afterwards Ormaza
+delivered them into my hand." The "lies," or the god of lies, we very
+naturally associate with the being whom we call in our time the devil,
+who is spoken of (John viii. 44) as a liar, and the father of falsehood,
+who was so from the beginning [--Greek--], and consequently regarded as
+coeval with the "father of light."
+
+We next turn to such evidence as is given us in the book of Job. We
+select this ancient writing in consequence of the strong internal
+evidence there is, that it was written by some one about the period of
+the Achaemenian dynasty living in Persia (see Rawlinson in _Journal of
+B. A. Soc_., vol. 1, new series, p. 230). In Job we find two distinct
+powers spoken of, the one being the Good God, and the other Satan the
+opposer. The last is regularly described as if he had the power to cause
+war, devastation, tempest, disease, and death, for ch. ii., v. 6, lets
+us infer that he might have killed Job had he been so minded and God
+allowed the bargain, and in verse 19 of the same chapter we find
+him killing all the sons and daughters of the patriarch. Job
+clearly recognised the necessity of sacrifice for purification, for
+sanctification, and he seems not to have offered this upon any altar, in
+any temple, or with the intervention of any priest. It is clear that Job
+had never heard of Moses or the writings assigned to him. The persecuted
+patriarch and his friends all believe that punishment in this life is
+the result of offences committed against the Good God, but all seem
+to be singularly free from the idea that Satan is the cause of Job's
+sufferings either directly or indirectly. There is throughout the book
+no reference made to a preceding or a succeeding condition of man,
+such as obtained amongst the Brahmins, and it is doubtful whether the
+Persians believed in heaven or hell. When man died he was supposed to
+perish. Hence we conclude that the doctrine of the resurrection was not
+prevalent at the time the story was written, and in the country where
+the writer of the book of Job resided. Equally unknown to that author,
+whoever he was, were the ideas about angels, ministers of God, or
+disembodied spirits. These were of Babylonian origin. We must now, to
+carry on the thread of the argument, recal to mind the fact that Babylon
+was taken by the Medes and Persians, that the rulers of the united
+people often made that city their residence, that Herodotus tells us
+(B. 1, c. 135) that "the Persians are of all nations most ready to adopt
+foreign customs," and I may notice, in passing, that the same authority
+states that the two nations were scrupulously truthful, ceremoniously
+cleanly, and intolerant to leprosy. It is well known, moreover, that
+even after the commencement of our era Babylon was the chief seat of
+Babbinic and Talmudic lore.
+
+When we examine into the religion of the Babylonians we find that
+they believed in the existence of angels--minis-, ters of the
+Supreme--intelligences,--unseen by man, yet powerful to act in his
+favour, or against him. If we rightly interpret many of the engraved
+gems which were executed by the Chaldees, we can only come to the
+conclusion that they believed in a Devil, a Typhon, or spirit of
+destruction.
+
+We next must call attention to the fact that the Jews were conquered by
+the Babylonians, and enslaved in Mesopotamia for very many years--that
+they were subsequently emancipated by the Medo-Persians, and that the
+latter, whom from the inscription of Darius we believe to have been
+devout, permitted and even encouraged the Israelites to entertain the
+faith which they then held, and even assisted them to rebuild their
+temple. This permission, and the friendliness of Nehemiah with the
+Median monarch, seem to show a great similarity, if not an identity,
+between the Persian and the Jewish creeds.
+
+If, then, we could frame any definite idea of the tenets held by the
+Jews before they came into contact with the Babylonians, and those which
+they professed afterwards, we might form a conception of what they got
+from the Chaldees, the Medes, and the Persians respectively. Without
+going very deeply into the matter, we may say that Hebrew scholars
+generally allow that the ideas of Satan--a power opposed to that of God,
+and of angels or spirits, were introduced between the captivity and
+the period when the scriptures were translated into Greek, and that the
+notion of a future life and the resurrection of the dead, was developed
+after the time of the Septuagint, about b.c. 277.
+
+From the preceding considerations we draw the inference that the idea of
+the resurrection of the dead, of a future state of existence, in which
+each will be punished or rewarded for what had been done by him in his
+mortal condition, was not a portion of the original Median, Persian,
+Babylonian, or Jewish religion. A mass of circumstantial evidence has
+led me to believe that the idea of a Heaven for the good and a
+Hell for the bad, came from those who professed what we will call the
+Vedic or the Buddhist faith. If, in reply to this, it is alleged that
+it may have come from the Greeks directly, the rejoinder is simply
+this--that the Grecians, as Aryan colonists, brought with them only
+a rude notion of a futurity, which they were the medium of improving,
+when, through the influence of their arts and arms, they opened a
+highway to India both by sea and land. Those who could import into their
+armies such huge beasts as elephants, could far more readily import a
+new article of faith, if it pleased the priests.
+
+If our reasoning is sound, we cannot, I think, regard the Avesta as
+a trustworthy exposition of the ancient teaching of Zoroaster. On the
+other hand, we must, in my opinion, consider it as a book fabricated to
+serve a particular purpose. In this respect it resembles our own Bible,
+which was composed for the glorification of the Hebrews when smarting
+under a series of ignominious defeats and enslavements; and then
+enlarged, contracted, or altered, to suit emergencies.
+
+The following table will assist the reader to compare or contrast
+the religion of the Medo-Persians with that of the Hebrews in some
+matters:--
+
+[Illustration: 285]
+
+[Illustration: 286]
+
+The Hebrews first worshipped a calf, and then a box; they believed that
+their God taught them to build a tabernacle first, then a temple, and
+to It is not the practice of the Perform altars for sacrifice. The
+Hebrews sians to erect statues, or temples, also believed that Elohim
+had one or or altars, and they charge with folly more human forms--see
+Gen. xviii. 1, those that do. They do not think 2, and the following
+chap. xix. 1--see the gods have human forms, also Gen. xxxii. 1 and
+24-80, also Josh. v. 13, 14, 15, Jud. ii. 1-5.
+
+The anthropomorphism of the Jewish Scriptures has already been referred
+to in Vol. I. of Ancient Faiths.
+
+The Persians are accustomed to ascend the highest parts of the
+mountains, and offer sacrifice to Jupiter, calling the whole circle of
+the heavens by that name.
+
+The Persians sacrificed to the son and moon, to the earth, fire, water,
+and the winds.
+
+Amongst the Persians, sacrifices were attended by invocations and
+prayers, and were always offered up by a priest.
+
+The Persians, next to bravery in battle, considered the greatest proof
+of manliness was to be able to exhibit many children.
+
+Whoever has the leprosy or scrofula is not permitted to stay within a
+town, nor have communication with other Persians; and it is supposed
+that the infliction is caused by some offence against the deity (sun
+god). Herodotus, book I., chaps. 131,138.
+
+The eldest son of the Persian king was instructed during youth in the
+learning of the Magi according to Zoroaster the son of Oromazes--by this
+learning is meant the worship of the gods--and likewise in the art of
+kingly government. Plato, in Alcibiades.
+
+The Hebrews sacrificed on high places for a long period. Sacrifice in an
+enclosed place seems to have been adopted from the Phoenicians by David
+and Solomon, but not to have been popular for some centuries.
+
+The Jewish people sacrificed to sun, moon, and some planets--had a
+sacred fire in the temple, and regarded clouds and wind as the ministers
+of God. The God that answered by fire was the one adopted by Elyah. The
+so-called orthodox Jews only acknowledged one God, and subsequently one
+devil.
+
+The Jews neither offered invocation nor prayer at their sacrifices, and
+prophets and kings offered victims without priestly assistance. In later
+times every sacrifice was offered by a priest.
+
+The Hebrews regarded a large family as a gift from Jehovah.
+
+The Hebrews had the same practice; and, as we learn in the book of Job,
+and Deuter. xxviii, notably in the 27th verse, they deemed that botch,
+scab, itch, and emerods were punishments sent by Jehovah.
+
+The royal families of Judah received no instruction, either in political
+matters or in religion, and were allowed to grow up and do much as they
+liked in regard to worship. The only power which influenced them was
+that assumed by some man who professed to be divinely inspired.
+
+In a chapter of ancient faiths and notice an allegation which has that
+Parseeism or Zoroastriamsm has been borrowed from Jews and Christians.
+To this we wholly demur. Nowhere in the Avesta do we find a reference to
+the imminent destruction of the world, the resurrection of a dead man,
+his subjugating all the powers of evil, and reigning for a thousand
+years with his followers as kings and saints. Nowhere in the Avesta do
+we discover such immoral notions of God as prevailed amongst the ancient
+Jewish writers. Take these away from Judaism and Christianity, and
+then the two resemble the religions which are held everywhere by the
+thoughtful and the good. If there has really been any copying at all,
+we do not see the imitators in Central Asia but on the shores of
+the Mediterranean. The Jews copied from Tyre, Babylon, and
+Greece--Christians have taken as models Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, and
+even barbarians, and they have denied a once pure faith by covering it
+over with the ordures of heathenism. Yet we talk of others imitating us!
+
+I propose now to examine at some length into such of the developments as
+have taken place in certain religious systems, for by so doing we shall
+be better able to judge what are those doctrines which Christians hold,
+in common with what they call Pagan nations, and how far those matters
+which are regarded as fundamental points of doctrine are in reality
+trustworthy. We must ever bear in mind that if we find the same set of
+ideas entertained amongst peoples who by no possibility can have had any
+communication with each other, it is only rational to believe that each
+race possesses those notions in virtue of their being human. Or, if
+desirous of avoiding this admission, the orthodox declares that
+every asserted fact is a copy of a precedent one, then we ask them to
+reconcile the legend of Hercules being begotten by Jupiter, and Jesus by
+the Holy Ghost, for unquestionably the story of Alcmena's son preceded
+that told of Mary's.
+
+In the following chapter I shall avoid as far as possible any reference
+to the tales told of the conception of Jesus, for no man, however
+subtle he may be, can prove that the Son of Man had a certain mundane
+individual called Joseph for a father; all that I desire to show is,
+that in every nation whose history has come down to us there have been
+persons whose mothers have declared themselves to have been pure virgins
+until adopted by some god as a temporal and temporary spouse, or who,
+being wives, have asserted that a son who has distinguished himself
+in the world has been of divine procreation--an affirmation, be it
+observed, that can only be made in case the spouse has been manifestly
+unfaithful, or by some fulsome historian desirous of exalting his hero
+to celestial rank. There is scarcely a barbaric dynasty known, indeed,
+which does not claim an origin from some heavenly father, mother, or
+both.
+
+There have been many hierarchs who, having felt conscious of the
+absurdity of making, by miraculous agency, all wonderful beings come
+from woman only, have consequently invented legends in which men have
+produced offspring without a consort. Some may be disposed to deride
+these tales, who can readily credit the stories of virgin mothers; but
+in reality there is no difference between the two sets of legends, in
+probability, wherever "miracles" are assumed. It would have been quite
+as easy for the writer of Genesis to have made Isaac come from old
+Abraham's bosom as from the womb of his hoary-headed wife. But the
+Jewish writers have never proved themselves as subtle as the Hindoos and
+Greeks. Instead of asserting that a man, without a woman's assistance,
+has borne a son--a matter capable of proof--they have declared that a
+woman has conceived, without the assistance of a man; an asseveration
+for which there cannot be any proof whatever, no not even physical,
+for accoucheurs know that many a female conceives by her lover's
+instrumentality, and bears a child, at whose birth, or rather when
+parturition is imminent, that part which is called "the Hymen," and is
+the Mosaical test of virginity, is not only unbroken, but so small
+in aperture, and strong in flesh, as to require operative or surgical
+interference before the child can come into the world. According to
+Mosaism these must be regarded as absolutely virgin mothers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Supernatural generation. What is meant by the term. Examples. Children
+given by the gods. Anecdote. Frequency of god-begotten children in
+Ancient Greece. Their general fate. The stories not credited by the
+grandfathers of children, nor apparently by the mothers. The babies,
+how treated. Foundlings and Hospitals. Antiope. Leucothöe. Divinely
+conceived persons not necessarily great or good. Babylonian idea that
+a god came down to enjoy human women. Tale from Herodotus. Jehovah as a
+man. Grecian idea attached to the expression Son of God. Homer. Hebrew
+ideas. Roman notions. Romulus, son of Mars and a Vestal Augustus, son
+of Apollo. Modern ideas respecting Incubi. Prevalence of the belief.
+Its suppression. Causes of its origin. Bible made to pander to priestly
+lust. Dictionnaire Infernal. History of incubi therefrom. Stories.
+Strange idea that the Gods who made men out of nothing cannot as easily
+make babies. Divine Androgynes. Strange stories of single gods having
+offspring. Narayana and the Spirit of God of Genesis. Chaos. Hindoo
+mythos of Brahma. Birth from churning a dead man's left arm, and again
+his right. Ayonyesvara, his strange history. Similar ones referred
+to. History of Carticeya. Christian parallels. Immaculate conception a
+Hindoo myth. The dove in India and Christendom. Agni and cloven fiery
+tongues. Penance and its powers. Miraculous conception by means' of a
+dove. Other myths from various sources.
+
+It is a question which should, in my opinion, be asked by every
+individual in a rational community, whether it is advisable to continue,
+as a matter of faith, a doctrine which must be repudiated, as a matter
+of fact. To this we may join, as a rider, can anyone who puts his
+credence in a legend because it is old, claim to be superior to those
+who originally invented the tale, in the darkness of antiquity? When
+moderns smile at the stories told by the classic Varro, how certain
+mares in Lusitania were impregnated by the wind on a certain mountain,
+without any access to a horse, and at the credence given to similar
+accounts by Virgil, Pliny, and even the Christian bishop Augustine; and
+by some old Scotch authority how a young woman became a mother through
+the intervention of the ashes of the dead: and when they pity the
+benighted Greeks who gave to Hercules, Jupiter for a father; and to
+Mars, Juno for a mother, without intercourse with her celestial spouse,
+it behoves them to inquire whether each may not be addressed in the
+sentence, "Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur"--i.e., change but the
+name of the believers from Greeks and Romans to modern Christians, and
+it will be found that Popes, priests, and peoples believe as firmly
+now in supernatural generation as the most crass pagan of which history
+treats.
+
+Our classical reading tells us abundance of marvellous stories--how
+Jupiter seduced Danae in the form of a golden shower, and yet had a
+common son by her, who was not an aureous coin; how Leda received Zeus
+as a swan, and bore therefrom a couple of eggs; how Europa was tempted
+by him as a bull, and yet did not bear a calf; and how Callisto, a
+maiden of Diana, was debauched by the same god under the guise of her
+mistress, and yet that from two maidens a boy was formed.
+
+Of the amours of Apollo with a dozen and a half damsels, and of the very
+numerous disguises which he assumed, we find abundant details in our
+classical dictionaries. Mars, though not so frequently adopted by
+human females as a lover, had many children of whom he was the putative
+father.
+
+Jupiter had Bacchus and Minerva without Juno's aid, and Juno retaliated
+by bearing Ares without conversation with her consort. We deride these
+tales, and yet think, that because we laugh at a hundred such we shall
+be pardoned for believing one. How little we are justified in acting
+thus a few philosophical considerations will demonstrate.
+
+There are few things in mythology that are more curious than the subject
+of the miraculous formation of certain individuals. Some of these have
+been regarded as the offspring of a celestial father and a mother of
+earthly mould; others again, as for example Æneas, were said to be
+the result of a union between a heavenly mother and a terrestrial
+father--e.g., Æneas was the son of Anchises, a handsome man, and Venus,
+goddess of beauty and love. Some, though these are few, are said to be
+children of a virgin or deserted wife, who has produced them without any
+extraneous assistance,* and others are declared to be descended from a
+father whom no consort could ever claim. One individual, indeed, called
+Orion, is represented as having been wholly independent of both father
+and mother, and the result of a strange form of development, the like of
+which Darwin never dreamed of as he came from a bladder into which three
+gods had micturated. His name, we are gravely assured, came _ab urinâ_.
+
+     * The following is a good case in corroboration of what is
+     said in the text. In the _Dictionnaire Infernal_, to which
+     more particular reference will be made shortly, there is, s.
+     v. Fécondité, a report of a trial before the Parliament of
+     Grenoble, in which the question was, whether a certain
+     infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the
+     husband had been absent from his wife four full years. The
+     wife asserted that the baby was the offspring of a dream, in
+     which she had a vivid idea that her wandering spouse had
+     returned to love and duty. Midwives and physicians were
+     consulted, and reported on the subject. As a result, the
+     Parliament ordained that the infant should be adjudged
+     legitimate, and that its mother should be regarded as a true
+     and honourable wife.   The judgment bears date 13th February
+     1537.
+
+The quaint ideas associated in mythology with the supernatural
+generation here referred to have been various. In some instances they
+have been wholly poetical, as when we are told that "the Supreme" by his
+union with law and order (Themis) produced "Justice," "the Hours," "Good
+Laws," and "Peace" (Hesiod Theogony, 900), and as when Europa is said to
+have tempted Jupiter to leave Phoenicia, and travel westward to Crete
+as the first step towards the colonization of an unknown continent. In
+other instances, the ideas have been framed upon the very natural belief
+that anyone--whether existent in story only, or in reality--who has
+greatly surpassed his fellows, must have had a large element of the
+Deity in his constitution. In other instances, the notion has been
+associated with the once prevalent belief, that the Creator had a sex,
+to which we shall refer by and by; and in other cases, the fancy has
+clearly been mingled with the fact, that many an unmarried woman has
+attributed to some god, a pregnancy, or baby, which has been due, in
+reality, to a very mortal man. Here we may notice that the fecundity
+which damsels of old were wont to refer to a god or some inferior, but
+yet beneficent, deity, more modern christian girls have associated with
+a demon. Jupiter and Apollo being replaced by a special class of imps
+who were named "incubi," and of the particulars of whose embraces the
+strangest stories are told. This small truth seems to be sufficient to
+demonstrate that the Greeks were not familiar with the being to whom
+we give the name of "Satan" and the "Devil," and that their belief
+coincided in one respect with that of the older Jews, who considered
+that whatever occurrence happened in the world, whether apparently for
+good or evil, was done by Jehovah, or as the Hellenic damsels reported
+by Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars.
+
+Here, too, I may be permitted to introduce a remark suggested by a
+narrative, told to me by a lady of high British rank. She had been
+brought up in a foreign country under the eye of a sensible and pious,
+we may add prudish, mother, who endeavoured to shield her daughter from
+all contact with external vicious influences, and to prevent her ears
+or her mind from ever coming to the knowledge of those matters which
+are associated with love, marriage, and offspring. When the young lady
+naturally inquired of mamma where the infants sprang from which came
+into the world and grew up around her, she was told, "from God," and she
+was referred to Psalm cxxvii. 3, which declares that "children are an
+heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward." After
+having attained adult age, and being wholly imbued with this belief,
+she, on one occasion, expressed her opinion that Mademoiselle--who had
+recently been confined--must have been a peculiarly virtuous maiden, to
+have received so great a present as a baby from the beneficent Creator.
+This speech fell like a bombshell amongst a mixed company, but she knew
+not why. It was not until her marriage some time subsequently, that she
+learned that infants were said to come from God or the Devil according
+to circumstances, but that in reality they were always due to men and
+women.
+
+The anecdote given above, naturally enables us to call attention to
+the remarkable fact that though the Grecian poets repeatedly spoke of
+maidens being fertilized by a divinity, yet Greek fathers never paid
+any heed to the power of that god, whom their daughters asserted to have
+operated upon their femininity; but always treated the earthly love of
+the alleged celestial spouse, as if the latter was wholly powerless to
+punish the hard-hearted parent, who had no scruples to turn his daughter
+from his door, so that she might hide her shame in distant lands. In
+those classic times, procreation by a god upon a human being was the
+attempted cover for bastardy. Moreover, even the woman herself, to whom
+Jupiter or Apollo was alleged to have descended from heaven to honour,
+felt herself so much injured by the visit, that she either tried to
+destroy the resulting offspring with her own hands, or exposed it upon
+a mountain to the tender mercies of dogs and vultures. Much in the
+same way many a modern maiden places her shame-covered infant in
+the turn-table of a foundling institution. Antiope, for example, the
+daughter of a king of Thebes, was, according to her version, beloved by
+
+Jupiter, who visited her in the form of a satyr and implanted twins.
+When she discovered the coming event, which casts its shadow before, she
+left the paternal mansion, to avoid her father's anger, and fled to a
+mountain, on which she left her hapless offspring. They were found by
+shepherds and brought up.
+
+The story of fair Leucothöe is still more to the point. She was
+sufficiently beautiful to attract Apollo, who seduced her under the form
+of her own mother--not a very likely story it is true, but the two lived
+happily together until a rival told the loved one's father of the amour.
+The incensed paterfamilias ordered his daughter to be buried alive, and
+yet the god who could change her body after death into the frankincense
+tree, and himself into a matronly looking woman and yet retain his sex,
+could not prevent his earthly spouse from dying a cruel death. In other
+words, Orchamus, the parent of the damsel, wholly disbelieved in the
+existence of a divine "spark," and felt assured that his daughter had
+disgraced herself with a man far below her in earthly rank.
+
+From these, and a number of other Grecian anecdotes, we can draw no
+other conclusions than that the sires in those days were as jealous of
+the honour of their daughters as we are of our own now; that when that
+honour was in danger of being tarnished, a god was alleged by the
+damsel to be the offender; that the story was not believed; and that the
+daughter fled, was punished, or was pardoned, according to the sternness
+or credulity of the parents. The idea that individuals who were the
+sons or daughters of a god, must necessarily be great and good, does not
+appear to have prevailed amongst the ancient Greeks. Nay, we may even
+doubt whether any of them really believed that Jupiter, Apollo, or
+Neptune, could, or had ever become incarnate, for the sole purpose
+of impregnating a human female. That such an idea, however, prevailed
+amongst the Babylonians we learn from Herodotus, who informs us, book i.
+c. 181, that Belus comes into a chamber at the summit of a sacred tower
+to meet therein a native woman, chosen by the god from the whole nation;
+and in the succeeding chapter he indicates that a similar occurrence
+takes place in Egyptian Thebes, and in Lycian Patarae. Yet even whilst
+writing the tales, the historian expresses his own incredulity of their
+value, and we may well suppose that the thoughtful generally, would only
+give such credence to the statements of the temple priests, as was given
+to certain Christian stories by a philosopher, who said he believed them
+because they were impossible. Even if the common people credited the
+assertion that "The Supreme" did elect a woman with whom to converse, we
+must not despise them too lightly, for we are distinctly told in our own
+scriptures that Jehovah appeared as a man, and as such, ate, drank, and
+talked with Abraham (Gen. ch. xviii.); that Elohim was in the habit of
+conversing face to face with Moses (Exod. xxxiii. 11); and that the
+same God wrestled with Jacob as a man, and could not prevail against the
+patriarch until he had lamed him. We must also notice that myriads of
+Christians have believed, and many still do so, that He in a certain
+form had commerce with a Hebrew maiden (Luke i. 34, 35), and had by her
+a begotten son.
+
+When civilization spread over Greece, there seems to have been a
+change of expression--which being at the first wholly metaphorical,
+subsequently became realistic. Thus, any man peculiarly characteristic
+amongst his fellows for strength, knowledge, or power, was designated
+"a son of God." Thus, as Grote remarks (12 vol. edition), vol. ii. p. 132,
+note 1. "Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage; a damsel
+of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to
+Smyrna at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the
+poet" (Aristotle ap. Plutarch Vit. Homer, p. 1059). Plato, also by
+some, called "the divine," was said by Seusippus to be a son of Apollo
+(_Smith's Dictionary_, 8. v.) The Hebrews had a similar metaphorical
+expression, and gave to everything supereminently good, an epithet which
+we may paraphrase as "divine." Some few writers used the title, "sons
+of God," as for example, Job i. 6, and xxxviii. 7, and Hosea i. 10; an
+epithet adopted by John i. 12, Rom. viii. 14, 19, Phil ii. 15, 1 John iii
+1, 2, as if the same were applicable to all who are virtuous and good
+to an especial degree. The Hebrews even seem to have adopted the belief
+that Elohim, like the Grecian Zeus, had many children, could, and
+did really, associate with human beings, for we can in no other way
+reasonably interpret the strange narrative in Genesis vi, wherein we are
+told that the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, who became
+the sires of mighty men of great renown.
+
+Amongst the Romans, similar ideas to those which we find amongst the
+Greeks prevailed. For example, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars
+and a Vestal virgin; but so little did her relatives believe in the
+possibility of the occurrence, or the divine nature of the maiden's
+offspring, that the mother was buried alive, and the twins which she
+bare were exposed, much in the same way as modern "foundlings" are. In
+this case, as in many others, it is probable that little notice would
+have been taken of such supernatural generation had the mother been of
+low origin--but when a god inveigles a king's daughter from her duty,
+both the one and the other must be punished; the one in her person, the
+other in his child. Yet these very writers who told of the punishment of
+the Vestal Hia for her intrigue with Mars, took advantage of the story,
+and spread a report that Romulus, the offspring of the two, was, after
+his death, taken up to heaven to dwell there as a god. At a subsequent
+period, Augustus Caesar announced, on his mother's authority, that he
+was the son of Apollo, and claimed to be treated as a veritable scion of
+that venerable deity.
+
+The account of the conception and birth of Servius Tullius is curious
+from its circumstantiality. Ovid tells us, _Fasti_, vi., 625-659, Bonn's
+translation: "Vulcan was the father of Tullius; Ocrisia was his mother,
+a woman of Corniculum, remarkable for her beauty. Her, Tanaquil, having
+duly performed the sacred rites, ordered, in company with herself, to
+pour some wine on the decorated altar. Here amongst the ashes, either
+was, or seemed to be, a form of obscene shape; but such it really was.
+Being ordered to do so, the captive (Ocrisia was a slave), submits to
+its embraces; conceived by her, Servius had the origin of his birth from
+heaven. His father afforded a proof, at the time when he touched his
+head with the gleaming fire, and a flame rising to a point, blazed upon
+his locks." In some earlier lines, the poet tells us that the goddess,
+Fortune, was enamoured of this same Roman king, and visited him
+nightly--much as Venus came to converse with Anchises.
+
+In this story, we have an unusual ingredient, inasmuch as there is a
+witness to that which we may call the immaculate conception, and after
+birth, a proof of the child's divine origin! Of course there are many
+irreverent people who declare that the story is untrue--that it is far
+more likely that the real father was Tarquin, who, finding his consort's
+beautiful servant to be with child, contrived a plan by which she would
+escape the vindictiveness of the mistress--one which, if devotionally
+inclined, she was bound to give credence to. Nor can devout Christians
+altogether range themselves amongst the unbelievers in the miracle, for
+the founder of their religion was borne by a woman of low condition, and
+is said to have been begotten by an overshadowing spirit. He assumed to
+be a king; but the son of Ocrisia became one in reality, and instituted
+games in honour of his divine progenitor.
+
+For some more modern poetical fictions of the same nature, we may refer
+our readers to Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, where, in the account of the
+Highland seer, Brian, they will find a parallel to the story promulgated
+by Alexander the false prophet, respecting his birth, described by
+Lucian.
+
+The same ideas, with which we are all of us so familiar in Christendom,
+that they form a portion of the creeds which the orthodox weekly
+rehearse, have obtained in far Ceylon. Thus, for example, we read in a
+Buddhistic legend (_Kusa Iatakaya_, translated by T. Steele, Trübner,
+London, 1871, small 8vo., pp. 260):--
+
+     "As Sakra*, with his thousand eyes gazed over every land,
+     The hapless queen, with heart distraught, he saw dejected stand;
+     His godlike eye revealed to him that to her blessed womb
+     Two radiant gods illustrious from Heaven's high town should come.
+
+     Then entering first the Bodisat's blest skyey palace fair,
+     And next unto another god's, did Sakra straight repair:
+     Benign he said:--Go to the world of men, that distant scene,
+     And there be born from out the womb of yon delightful queen.
+
+     The saying of the king of gods unto their hearts they took;
+     Then bathed they in his feet's bright rays that shone as shines a brook:
+     'Let us be so conceived,' they said, when they the order heard,
+     'Within the womb of yonder queen, even as the Lord declared.'"
+
+     --Stanzas 129-131.
+
+     * Indra, "The Supreme."
+
+But the two children do not appear as twins, like Romulus and Remus, for
+we find in stanza 155--
+
+"Now when the darling little child, the wisdom-gifted one, Began to lift
+his tiny foot, and learn to walk alone, Another god from Heaven's high
+town flashed down the sky serene, And was conceived within the womb of
+that delightful queen."
+
+I may notice in passing, that the lady was married, but had always been
+barren with her husband.
+
+In the instances to which we have referred above, there has been no very
+marked departure from the ordinary course of nature. In all, an union
+between a father and mother has occurred--in all, the relation between
+each to the offspring has been maintained, and the ordinary progress of
+gestation observed. The main discrepancies which are to be noticed are,
+that a divine is substituted for a human father, or, as in the case of
+Æneas, the sire has been a man, and the mother a "celestial." But after
+birth, instead of the child being cared for by its parents, it very
+frequently happens that a goat, wolf, or other animal, performs
+the mother's duty as a nurse. The reader whose antiquarian lore is
+considerable, will probably remember that Christians in Italy, France,
+and I dare not say in how many other Catholic countries, were implicit
+believers in the idea that spirits from the invisible world could assume
+a human form, and under that, have intercourse with youths of either
+sex. The literature upon this subject was at one time very great, but
+such pains have been taken to destroy it, in order that so great a blot
+upon the infallibility of Papal rulers should no longer be found, that
+there are few books to which I can refer inquirers. The first time I
+met with the subject was in a Latin treatise by Cardan, a.d. 1444-1524,*
+being commentaries upon Hippocrates. In this, many chapters are devoted
+to the possibility of intercourse between women and embodied spirits.
+The Mediaeval virgins, unlike the Greeks, always attributed their
+pregnancy to demons and not to gods, although on some occasions maidens
+were foolish enough, like those of ancient Babylon, to believe that they
+were embraced, by a divine being or angel. Into this matter the Italian
+doctor enters folly, and endeavours to establish some distinction how
+a woman could distinguish an "incubus" from a human being, and if she
+became pregnant and brought forth, how the devil's offspring could
+be told from an ordinary baby. The particulars which are given to the
+learned in Latin, will not bear to be reproduced in the vernacular,
+suffice it to say, that they are such as would be given by silly women
+more or less conscious of having been guilty of impropriety, and who
+were goaded by sanctimonious but ribald divines to enter into every
+detail of the devil's doings and the females' sensations.
+
+     * It is more than thirty years since I read the book in
+     question, and I have long ago parted with it. As I am unable
+     now to lay my hands upon a copy I am not sure whether the
+     author was Facio Cardan, who flourished at the period given
+     in the text, or the more celebrated Jerome Cardan who lived
+     A.D. 1601-1576.
+
+Before saying more of the "incubi," we may bestow a passing glance upon
+the foundation of the idea of their existence. In mediaeval times, a
+large portion of the New Testament was taken to be literally true, and
+the people were instructed to believe that the devil went about like a
+roaring lion seeking whom he could devour. The papal priests encouraged
+the idea, for by frightening the ignorant, they induced them to purchase
+sacerdotal insurance by paying for masses to protect themselves from the
+snares of Satan. For hierarchs who were obliged to live without wives,
+it was easy in the first place to imbue the mind of a superstitious
+maiden with a horror of Apollyon's power, and then to take advantage of
+her fears by personifying the fiend. In this manner the bible suggested
+the sin to the priest and made the maiden passive.
+
+It would not be profitable to write a catalogue in detail of the
+authorities upon which I found these statements. I will rather give a
+short resume of an article upon "Incubi," which is to be found in a most
+curious book entitled _Dictionnaire Infernal ou Bibliothèque universelle
+sur les êtres, les personnages, les livres, les faits et les choses
+qui tiennent aux apparitions, à la magie, au commerce de Venfer, aux
+divinations, aux sciences secrètes,... aux erreurs et aux préjugés,...
+généralment à toutes les croyances mer-veilleuses, surprenantes
+mystérieuses et surnaturelles.--Par M. Colin de Plancy. Deuxième
+édition entièrement réfondue _; Paris, 1826. The book is rare, but most
+interesting to the philosopher who concerns himself about matters
+of "faith," for it shows, clearly, that there is no depth of human
+degradation into which people who are guided by blind trust in some
+fellow mortal, unchecked by the exercise of reason, will not enter, and
+there reside permanently, until stirred up by those whom they assert on
+the first blush to be "infidels."
+
+After a few preliminary remarks, we are told that the French incubi did
+not attack virgins, but in the next paragraph is an account of a maiden
+who was seduced by a demon in the form of her betrothed. This was in
+Sardinia. An English fiend acted in a similar way, and from the congress
+followed a frightful disease of which the poor girl died in three days.
+This story is told by Thomas Walsingham, b. A.D. 1410. A Scotch lass
+is the next victim reported, and to her the unclean spirit came nightly
+under the guise of a fine young man. She became pregnant, and avowed
+all. The parents then kept watch, and saw the devil near her in a
+monstrous unhuman form. He would not go away till a priest came, then
+the incubus made a frightful noise, burned the furniture, and went off
+upwards, carrying the roof with him. Three days after a queer form was
+born, more horrible than had ever been seen, so bad indeed, that the
+midwives strangled it. For the credulous, what fact could be more
+strongly attested than this? The reporter is Hector Boetius, b. 1470.
+
+The next tale, having a locale in Bonn, occurred at a time when priests
+married and had a family. The daughter of one who was closely watched
+and locked up when left by herself, was found out by a demon, who took
+upon him the form of a fine young man. Such an occurrence was thought
+nothing uncommon then, inasmuch as Paul had told the Corinthians that
+Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14). The
+poor victim became enceinte and confessed the whole to her father, who,
+fearing the devil, and anxious not to make a scandal, sent the daughter
+away from home. The impudent fiend came to remonstrate, and killed the
+wretched sire with a blow of his fist.--Quoted from _Cæsarii Heistere
+mirac_., lib. iii., c. 8. The next case occurs at Schinin, wherein
+we are told (Hauppius _Biblioth portai, pract._, p. 454) that a woman
+produced a baby without head or feet, with a mouth in the chest near to
+the left shoulder, and an ear near the right one; instead of fingers it
+had webs like frog's feet, it was liver coloured, and shaky as jelly, it
+cried when the mother wanted to wash it, but somebody stifled and then
+buried it. The mother, however, wanted it be exhumed and burned, for
+it was the offspring of a fiend who had counterfeited her husband. The
+thing was taken up and given to the hangman for cremation, but he could
+neither burn it nor the rags which enwrapped it until the day after the
+feast of Ascension.
+
+The following story is laid near Nantes:--Therein a young girl baulked
+of her lover, mutters something like a modern order to him to go to
+the foul fiend, and remarks to herself that a demon would be a better
+friend. She is betrayed in the usual manner, and finds, when too late,
+that she is embracing a hairy incubus which has a long tail. She exclaims
+fearfully. The "affreet" blows in her face and leaves her. She is found
+frightfully disfigured, and is brought to bed seven days after of a
+black cat. The remaining histories are of a similar nature, all alike
+showing how completely the so-called Christian people of Modern Europe
+believed that disembodied spirits could assume human form with such
+completeness as to be the father of offspring. We may fairly compare
+these tales with that told by heathen Greeks about Jupiter and Alcmena,
+but when we place them side by side, the ancients show a far superior
+fancy in their fables than do the comparative moderns. I find from
+_Reville's History of the Devil_, p. 54 (London: Williams & Norgate,
+1871), that so late as a.d. 1756, at Landshut, in Bavaria, a young girl
+of thirteen years of age, was convicted of impure intercourse with the
+devil, and put to death. It is a pity that no account of the trial is
+appended.
+
+Talboys Wheeler, in his _History of India_, vol. IL, p. 515, indicates
+that there is to this day, in India, a belief in _incubi_. Speaking
+of Paisacha marriages, in which a woman is united to a man without her
+knowledge or consent, he remarks:--"The origin of the name is somewhat
+curious. The Paisachas were evil spirits or ghosts (see "_Lilith"
+and "Satyr" Ancient Faiths_, vol. ii.) who were supposed to haunt the
+earth.... If, therefore, a damsel found herself likely to become a
+mother without her being able to furnish a satisfactory reason for her
+maternity, she would naturally plead that she had been victimized by a
+Paisach.... In modern times, however, the belief is still very general
+throughout the rural districts of India, that wives, as well as maidens,
+may be occasionally victimized by such ghostly admirers."
+
+Every mythologist who has invented such stories as that of Jupiter and
+Alcmena, and every woman who has ever attributed her pregnancy to a
+divine being, call him what she may, seems completely to ignore the idea
+that a god who deserves the name, does not require human aid to produce
+a man or woman. Surely every profound thinker would say to himself,
+The Supreme, who could by a word create full-grown creatures "in the
+beginning," has not lost the power now; surely He, who could make Adam
+out of dust, and Eve out of a bone of man, can produce in later days
+similar images of the godhead, as we are told in Genesis i. 26,
+without accoupling with a descendant of the rib. The mythological
+idea, therefore, of a divine child coming from a celestial father and a
+terrestrial mother, has nothing profound therein, for it is essentially
+a bungling contrivance of some stupid man. On the other hand, such a
+notion could only be entertained where a grovelling or anthropomorphic
+idea has prevailed, or is cherished amongst a credulous people. To put
+the subject into the fewest words possible, a god has never--so far as
+thoughtful men can judge--been said to be the father in the flesh of a
+human being, except by frail women, or vain, foolish, or designing men.
+
+We are fortified in this conclusion by the method in which nations or
+sects who have each their own favourite "son of God," treat each
+other. None endeavour to prove that the mother of their own hero had
+no commerce with man, for that is impossible--all, on the other hand,
+ridicule the idea of there being a child without a human father, and
+insist that no woman's word countervails the laws of nature. But this
+argument is only used against opposing religionists--it has no weight
+against their own divine leader. The cases which we have described are
+wholly different from those mythological stories, in which the union
+of the sexes is absolutely or relatively ignored. They differ also
+from those in which the Creator is represented as androgynous, or being
+originally without sex, becomes, by an effort of will, a bisexual being,
+so as to bring about the creation of man and of the world. For example,
+when we find in the Orphic Hymns (Cory's _Ancient Fragments_, pp. 290,
+seq.), "Zeus is male, Immortal Zeus is female," it is clear that there
+was in the writer an idea of an union of the sexes being necessary to
+creation. But when we find Chaos alone being the progenitor of Erebus
+and Black Night, from which again were born Ether and Bay, and Earth the
+parent of Heaven and the Sea (Hesiod, Theogony, 116-130), there is a
+total absence of a sexual notion. This idea, however, appears in the
+subsequent lines which represent Earth wedding with Heaven. The same
+sexual notion, appears in another fragment from _Aristophanes_, (Cory,
+A. R, p. 293), which tells us that "Night with the black wings first
+produced an aerial egg, which in its time gave rise to love, whence
+sprung all creation." Yet the egg necessarily presupposes a being which
+formed it, and another that fructified it, so that the mythos is not
+wholly free from the intermixture of the sexual element.
+
+When mythologists have been peculiarly anxious to shake off the somewhat
+grotesque doctrine that the celestial Creator must be independent of any
+other power, in the genesis of the world and heaven, there has been a
+great variety of attempts to show how this has been brought about. In
+one curious Hindoo legend, Vishnu is represented sleeping on the bosom
+of Devi, at the bottom of the ocean which covered the world. Suddenly a
+lotus sprung from his navel, and grew till it reached the surface of the
+flood. From this wonderful flower Brahma sprang, and, seeing nothing but
+water, imagined himself the first-born of all creatures. But ere he felt
+sure, he descended the stalk and found Vishnu at its root; and then the
+two contested their respective claims, but Mahadeva interposed, and, by
+a curious contrivance, stopped the quarrel, demonstrating that before
+either came into existence there reigned an everlasting lingam.
+
+Another myth closely resembles one which is indicated in the Hebrew
+Scriptures, viz., that Narayana, or the spirit of God, a self-existent
+entity, moved over the waters, and made them bring forth all things
+living. This Narayana is identical with the _yomer elohim_--"the spirit
+of God" of the Hebrew Genesis i. 2; the [--Greek--]--the spirit of God,
+or Holy Ghost of the Greeks. It is the same as the breezes of thick air
+which hovered over chaos in the legend assigned to Sanchoniathon (Cory's
+Fragments, p. 1), and produced the slimy matter from which all beings
+sprung. Narayana is again the same as the Night of the Orphic fragment
+which hovered with her black wings over immensity--the same as the
+_chakemah_, or "wisdom" of Proverbs viii.; the Greek _sophia_ and the
+_logos_--"the word" of John i. 1. The Buddha--or Brahma of the Hindoo.
+From this mysterious source matter was formed into shape and all
+creatures sprang into life.
+
+Another Indian mythos (Moor's _Hindoo Pantheon_, p. 78), attributes even
+more than this to Brahma. He is said to have produced four beings who
+proved refractory, and grieved their maker. To comfort him, Siva issued
+from a fold in his forehead--then strengthened by Siva, he produced
+Bhrigu and the seven Rishis, and after that, Narada, from his thigh,
+Kardama from his shadow, and Dacsha from the forefinger of his right
+hand. He had, apparently, without a consort, sixty daughters, and from
+these last proceeded all things divine, human, animal, vegetable, and
+mineral.
+
+This is not altogether dissimilar from the Hebrew idea of Jehovah
+creating all things except woman from the dust,* and forming her
+mysteriously from a rib of the only existing man. We may also compare
+it with the birth of Minerva from Jupiter's brain, and Bacchus from
+his thigh. But the Greek myth differs from the Hindoo, inasmuch as the
+deities referred to were originally conceived by human women, and did
+not grow from The Thunderer's body like branches from a tree.
+
+     * In Mythology, things ever repeat themselves, with very
+     little alteration. For example, Mahadeva is represented as
+     fighting with Dacsha, and producing heroes from the dost by
+     striking the ground with his hair. (See Moor's H. P., p.
+     107).
+
+There is amongst the Hindoos a goddess called Prit'hvi, who is said to
+personify the Earth; she had many names which we need not describe, and
+she was also furnished with a consort, whose birth is thus described
+(Moor, H. P., p. 111.)--"Vena being an impious and tyrannical prince,
+was cursed by the Brahmans, and, in consequence, died without issue. To
+remedy this, his left arm was opened, and churned with a stick till it
+produced a son, who, proving as wicked as his father, was set aside; and
+the right arm* was in like manner churned, which also produced a boy,
+who proved to be a form of Vishnu, under the name of Prit'hu." We may
+add that Prit'hvi treated him badly, and he had to beat and tear her
+before she would be comfortable with him. Hence the necessity for
+ploughing and digging before crops of cereals, &c., will abound. We can
+understand the last part of the legend better than the first. In the
+Vedic Mythology, we may say generally, that the means of producing
+offspring are curiously numerous; for example, we find in Goldstucker's
+_Sanscrit and English Dictionary_, page 20, under the word _angiras_--a
+statement that an individual bearing this cognomen, is named in the
+Vaidik legends, as one of the 'Prajâpatis', or progenitors of mankind,
+engendered, according to some, by Manu; according to others, by Brahma
+himself, either with the female half of his body, _or from his mouth, or
+from the space "between his eyebrows._"
+
+     * As these legends generally are based upon something which
+     Europeans would designate a vile pun, I turned to the
+     Sanscrit Lexicon (Monier Williams), first to ascertain the
+     names of "the arm;" and, secondly, if there were any words
+     allied to it, however remotely, which had a certain meaning.
+     Amongst others, I find that _buja_ signifies "an arm," and
+     _bhaga_ is a name of Siva--one of whose epithets, _bhagan-
+     dara_ = "rending the vulva." _Dosha_ also means "the arm"
+     and "night." Another word having the same meaning, is
+     _praveshta_, and this not only signifies the arm, but one
+     "who covers over." We can then, I think, see why the device
+     of the churning, referred to in the text, made a process
+     available for the production of a child. The legend is a
+     clumsy one, but not more so than that in Exodus xxxiii. 23,
+     wherein we are told that Jehovah showed to Moses "His back
+     parts,"--Vulgate, _posteriora mea_--inasmuch as no one could
+     see His face and live!
+
+A still more curious story is related in the same dictionary, p. 451,
+under the word _ayonijeswara_. This appellative is one belonging to a
+sacred place of pilgrimage sacred to _Ayonija_, whose miraculous birth
+was thus brought about. A very learned Muni, though making a commendable
+use of the proper nasal way of reading sacred scripture in his own
+person, yet associated with individuals who did not give the orthodox
+twang.* The good man remained, in consequence of this, in a sonless
+condition, but the legend does not condescend to explain why toleration
+of tones in religious ceremony should make a husband infertile and
+his wife barren. At any rate, the Muni, named Vidyananda, feeling the
+punishment a great one, travelled, apparently alone, from one holy
+place to another without being nearer paternity. At length he met with
+a _yogin_ or male anchoret, hermit, devotee, or saint, corresponding
+to the _yoginis_, who are represented by Moor (H. P., p. 235) as being
+sometimes very lovely and alluring; and he, taking pity upon the Muni,
+gave him a wonderful fruit, which, he informed him, if eaten by his
+wife, would have the effect of procuring for Vidyananda the birth of a
+son. But the Muni, like many another character in mythological and fairy
+tales, seems suddenly to have lost his sense of hope deferred and a
+certain prospect of relief, for instead of hurrying home he sought
+repose under a tree on a river's brink, and whilst there ate the fruit
+himself. He at once became pregnant. When the new state of things
+was evident, he confessed all that had happened to the Yogin, and the
+latter, by means of his supernatural power, introduced a stick into the
+body of Yidyânanda, and relieved him of the infant. The creature was a
+beautiful boy, radiant like the disc of the sun, and endowed with divine
+lustre, and on account of the mode in which he was born his father
+called him _Ayonija_, which signifies, "not born from the womb." The
+account then goes on to state that this miraculous infant became a
+wonderfully good, learned, pious, religious, and fanatic man; that the
+god, delighted with his piety, gave him sons and grandsons, and after
+his death received him into his heaven. Any persons coming now to
+bake at the spot where these favours from Siva were granted, and
+duly performing the various duties of a pious pilgrim, are rewarded,
+according to their piety, &c., with progeny, worldly happiness, freedom
+from transmigration, and eternal bliss.
+
+     * This reminds me of an anecdote which I once read of a
+     devout Scotch mother, who, on hearing her son read the Bible
+     in an ordinary tone of voice, cuffed him violently because
+     he presumed to read that Holy Book without the customary
+     religious drawl.
+
+Under the word _Ayonija_, Goldstucker gives the following examples
+of individuals "not born from the _yoni_" viz.:--"_Drona_, the son
+of Bharadwâja, who was born in a bucket" "_Suyya_, whose origin was
+unknown." "_Draupadi_, who at a sacrifice of her father Drupada, arose
+out of the sacrificial ground." "_Sita_, who sprang into existence in
+the same manner as Draupadi" The same is also an epithet of Vishnu or
+Krishna.
+
+These stories pale in interest before that of the origin of Carticeya
+(see Moor's H. P., p. 51, 89), and I give an account of this legend,
+foolish though many conceive it to be, for everything which is
+connected with a Hindoo mythos is remarkable, whenever it is found to be
+antecedently parallel with Christian surroundings of a somewhat similar
+narrative. We notice, for example, in the following tale, that the
+Indian idea of the power of "penance" and "asceticism," is, that these
+doings or actions are so great, that by their means alone man may compel
+the Creator to do things against His design, whilst in the Papal
+tales of certain monks and nuns, we find the doctrine asserted that by
+preeminent fastings, scourgings and prayers, people have acquired the
+power to sell salvation to their fellow men, in a manner different to
+that which is appointed. Again, the god when forced to obey the power of
+the devotee, is represented as inventing a method by which he could,
+as it were, cheat himself, just as Jehovah or Elohim is said to have
+contrived a plan by which He could circumvent Himself for the vow which
+He had made to destroy all the men upon the earth by a flood of water.
+Again, as the arrogance of the ascetic threatened to destroy the world
+and the heaven, a deliverer or a saviour was promised, who should be
+begotten by an incarnate god upon a goddess equally incarnate, and save
+mankind from a terrible devil This is a counterpart of the Papal theory,
+which makes it appear that a portion of the godhead became incorporated
+with a dove, and had union with a woman, herself an immaculate
+manifestation of another portion of "The Supreme." Yet still more
+striking than this, is the part which the dove plays in the Indian
+mythos of the birth of the Hindoo Saviour. In almost every mediaeval
+painting or etching of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, the
+dove takes the position of the divine father of Jesus. Nay, so distinct
+is the idea intended to be conveyed in one instance, that a dove,
+surrounded by a galaxy of angelic heads, darts a ray from his body on
+high, into the very part of the virgin, proper to receive it. The design
+of the artist is still farther heightened by the _vesica piscis_, the
+emblem of woman being marked upon the appropriate part of the dress, and
+a figure of an infant within it, points unmistakeably to the belief that
+the Holy Ghost, like a dove, absolutely begot the Jewish saviour as he
+did the Hindoo deliverer of gods and men. (_See Ancient Faiths_, vol IL,
+p. 648, fig. 48).
+
+But the parallel may even be carried farther, for in the Indian history
+it is Agni, the embodiment of fire or the fire or sun god, who
+becomes the dove; whilst in the Christian history, fire is one of the
+manifestations of the Holy Ghost (Acts ii. 3). We conclude this from the
+fact, that all devout churchmen believe that the Holy Ghost descended
+upon the day of Pentecost with the sound of a rushing mighty wind, as
+a multitude of cloven fiery tongues, which again suggests to the
+recollection of those familiar with the Vedic story, that the
+Maruts--rushing, mighty, stormy winds--were frequent attendants upon
+Agni For example, in one of the Hymns (p. 39) of the Rig Veda Sanhita
+(translated by Max Müller), the burden or chorus of every verse is,
+"with the Maruts come hither, O Agni." Here, however, the parallel
+between the two myths ceases, for in the Indian tale the saviour has no
+earthly mother. We may really affirm that he has no mother at all, being
+the offspring of the father alone, whilst in the Christian history, the
+deliverer is represented as having no human sire. The one story is just
+as likely to be true as the other, or just as unlikely. As a reasonable
+being I cannot believe the one without crediting the other, or reject
+only one of the two.
+
+With this preface, we may proceed to relate the legend as recorded
+by Moor. A certain devil or Daitya--for it must be remarked that the
+Hindoos regard the devil as being composed of many individualities,
+much in the same way as Christians do--was extremely ambitious and
+oppressive, as Satan is said to have been in heaven.* To force Brahma
+to promise him any boon he should require, the ascetic went through the
+following penances, persisting in each for a hundred years. (1) He stood
+on one foot, holding the other, and both hands upwards, and fixed his
+eyes on the sun. (2) He stood on one great toe. (3) He lived upon water
+alone. (4) He lived on air. (5) He immersed himself in water. (6) He
+buried himself in the earth, and yet continued as before in incessant
+adoration. (7) He then did the same in fire. (8) Then he stood upon his
+head with his feet upwards. (9) He then stood upon one hand. (10) He
+hung by his hands from a tree. (11) He hung on a tree with his head
+downwards.
+
+     * I call attention to these parallels, for they compel as
+     either to accept the Hindoo stories as true, because they
+     coincide with that which Christians regard as "revealed
+     truth," or they oblige as to distrust our current ideas as
+     to the inspired verity of some biblical stories, founded as
+     they are upon the same, or a similar, basis to those of the
+     Brahmins. The Hindoo tale being founded in the Sinpurana,
+     there can be no reasonable doubt that its fabrication
+     preceded that of the Hebrew or Christian mythos.
+
+The effect of these austerities alarmed all the gods, and they went to
+Brahma for consolation. He answered that though he was bound to grant
+the boon desired by a man who became powerful by his austerities, he
+would devise a method of rendering it inoffensive to the heavenly host.
+Tarika, the name borne by the Daitya, asked for the gift of unrivalled
+strength, and that no hand should slay him except a son of Mahadeva.
+This being acquired, he plundered all the minor gods--the sun, dreading
+him, gave no heat; and the moon, in terror, remained always at the
+full--in short, the devil, Tarika, usurped the entire management of the
+universe. Nareda--the personification of Reason--Wisdom, the Logos, or
+"word," now prophesied that the destined deliverer, or saviour of the
+world, would come from the union of Mahadeva and Parvati. But the
+first was indisposed to marry, and only consented to do so after being
+mollified by ardent devotions and great austerities enacted by the
+second. To the horror, however, of the discomfited world, Parvati was
+barren; and the gods deputed Agni to try to produce the son whom all
+so earnestly desired. He took the form of "a dove," and arrived in the
+presence of Mahadeva just as he had risen from the arms of Parvati,
+and received from him, in a manner not easy or necessary to describe
+minutely, the germ of Carticeya; but, unable to retain it, the bird let
+it fall from his bill into the Ganges. On the banks of this river arose,
+therefrom, a boy, beautiful as the moon, and bright as the sun. This was
+"The Saviour" promised by the prophet. When he attained to manhood, he
+fought the devil in a terrific combat which lasted ten whole days; but
+Carticeya came off the conqueror, and delivered the world. I may notice
+in passing that as Carticeya is represented to be the son of his
+father, Mahadeva alone--so Ganesa, who was born after the marriage
+above referred to, is said to be solely the son of his mother, Parvati;
+Mahadeva not having anything to do with him. It is still farther stated
+in the _Sin purana_ that the husband was jealous, and displeased at
+this assumption of independent power by his spouse, punished her in the
+person of this mysterious son (Moor, H. P., page 171-2).
+
+There is another Hindoo story in which a father alone becomes the
+progenitor of twins--and it is remarkable, not only for this, but for
+the dread which a deity is said to feel from the austerities of a man.
+Wheeler (_History of India_, vol. i, p. 78; Williams' _Sanscrit Lexicon,
+s. v. Kripa_), regards this tale as Brahmanical, and, accepting his
+authority, we can see that the asceticism which is introduced into the
+story is intended to exalt the claims of that section of the priesthood
+who torture themselves. It runs thus:--Saradvat, by the magnitude of his
+penances, frightened Indra, who sent a celestial nymph to tempt him.
+He resisted all her wiles, and refused all commerce with her; but his
+excited imagination produced one of its common effects, and from that
+which was "spilled upon the ground" a boy and girl arose, Drona and
+Kripa. In Wheeler's sketch of the story, two such miraculous events
+occur, for a precisely similar occurrence took place with a certain
+Raja--and the males sprung from this supernatural form of generation,
+Drona and Drupada, became cronies, and were educated together. In
+Wheeler's account Kripa becomes the wife of Drona, and not his twin
+sister. She is represented to have been born from a Brahmin named
+Gautama, in the same fashion as Drona was. Certes, the scribes who wrote
+the gospels, and doubled wonders to make them more miraculous, are far
+behind the Hindoos in the unblushing effrontery of their conceptions.
+
+A story somewhat analogous to that of the origin of Carticeya--Drona
+and Drupada, is to be found in Grecian mythology. Therein we read
+(see Lempriere's _Classical Dictionary, 8.V_., Minerva), that
+Jupiter promised to his daughter, Minerva, that she should never be
+married--since that was her especial desire. But, unfortunately, the
+Thunderer had not a good memory, and was unable to foresee the future;
+he therefore promised to Vulcan that he would--in return for a perfect
+suit of armour--give him whatsoever boon he asked. The distorted god,
+being a great admirer of the personification of wisdom, demanded Minerva
+in marriage. Zeus then granted his petition and gave Minerva to him for
+a bride, so that "arts and arms" should thenceforth be wedded together.
+But the goddess disliked Vulcan, just as much as science and philosophy
+shun war and physical weapons. Jupiter then privately counselled his
+daughter to submit, apparently, but to contend, actually, whenever her
+husband should endeavour to caress her. This advice the goddess very
+artfully and determinately carried out. But Vulcan's impetuosity was
+extreme, and the contest between the spouses was prolonged. Though the
+promised wife was in the end victorious, and retained her virginity, the
+scene of the strife, like many another battle-field, required cleansing.
+The material employed by the goddess in the process was thrown down
+to earth, and from this stuff sprung Ericthonius, as the son of Vulcan
+alone, who, on attaining man's estate, became the fourth king of Athens.
+
+A somewhat similar story is told of Jupiter (Arnobius, _adv. Gentes_, B.
+v.), who is represented as enamoured of Themis, who, when lying on the
+rock Agdus, in Phrygia, and there surprised by the god, resisted his
+desires, as Minerva had done those of Vulcan, and with a somewhat
+similar result. But in this instance, that which the author calls in
+another passage of his work, the _vis Lucilii_, fell upon the hard rock.
+This conceived, and, after ten months, the stony soil brought forth a
+son, called, from his maternal parent, Agdistis. His character, and even
+his appearance, were frightful and rugged in the extreme. His strength,
+recklessness, and audacity frightened all the gods. In their dilemma,
+Bacchus offered to give his aid, and proceeded first to make the man
+drunk by substituting wine for the water of the fountain from which he
+habitually drank. Then, by a curious contrivance, he made the fierce
+hunter emasculate himself. The earth swallows up the sanguinary ruins
+of his manhood, and in their place comes up a pomegranate tree in full
+bearing. This being seen by Nana, a king's daughter, she plucks some of
+the fruit, and lays it in her bosom. By this she becomes pregnant, and,
+her story being disbelieved, her father attempts to starve her. But the
+mother of the gods sustains her with apples (see Canticles ii. 5),
+and berries, or other food. Her baby, when born, is exposed as being
+illegitimate, but found by a goatherd and brought up--becoming the all
+but deified Atys.
+
+In this legend, we see one son born without a human mother, and a second
+without any other father than Rimmon, or a pomegranate.*
+
+     * Agdus, Agdistis, &c--I am frequently tempted, after
+     reading a story like the preceding, to search in the
+     Sanscrit lexicon to ascertain if there can be any esoteric
+     signification in the legend that can be explained by that
+     ancient language. Arnobius opens the story with a statement
+     of the remote antiquity of the tale, and how it is connected
+     with the Great Mother. He then tells of a wild district in
+     Phrygia, called Agdus. Stoaes taken from it, as Themis had
+     enjoined, were used by Deucalion and Pyrrha to repeople the
+     world which had been destroyed by a flood. The great mother
+     was fashioned amongst the rest, and animated by the deity;
+     then follows the story given in the text. Now, in the
+     Sanscrit, Agadha signifies a "hole or chasm," and such
+     things have from the earliest times typified the Celestial
+     Mother. Agdistis I take to be a Greek form of Agasti--son
+     both of Mitra and Varuna by Urvasi, said to have been born
+     in a water-jar, to have swallowed the ocean, and compelled
+     the Vindhya mountains to prostrate themselves before him,
+     &c. (Monier Williams' Sanskrit English Lexicon, pp. 4, 6).
+     Themis may be a corruption of Dhamas--the moon, an epithet
+     of Vishnu, Yama, and Brahma; also the Supreme Spirit (M. W.
+     op. cit., p. 448). Deucalion seems readily to be resolved
+     into the dyu or div--holy, and Kalam, semen virile (M. W.,
+     p. 211). Pyrrha may apparently be derived from bdra--an
+     opening or aperture (M. W.); also bhdra--bearing, carrying,
+     cherishing, supporting (M. W., p. 700). Atys, described as
+     of surpassing beauty, may fairly be associated with atisi
+     and atisaya--to surpass, excel, exceed; and pre-eminence,
+     superiority (M. W., op. cit., p. 15). Liber, again, who is
+     clever enough to outwit and conquer Agdistis, may, without
+     too strong a stretch of imagination, come from Idbha--
+     obtaining, gaining, getting; capture, conquest; the rootword
+     is labh--to seize, to take hold of, gain, recover, regain,
+     fcc. (M. W., p. 861, 2). Nana, the mother of Atys the
+     beautiful, has probably come from nanda--happiness,
+     pleasure, joy, felicity, delight (M. W., op. cit. p. 467).
+     In the previous volumes I have referred to the pomegranate--
+     Hebrew, Rimmon--as an emblem. In the legend which makes Nana
+     conceive by eating this fruit, there are, I fancy, two
+     ideas--one, that the pomegranate is filled with seeds and
+     pulp of a red colour; the other, that in the Greek its name
+     is rota, or roa, which has a close resemblance in sound with
+     reo--to flow or gush. Of the word Midas--the name of him who
+     sought to bring about the union of the opposite sexes by
+     marrying his daughter Nana to Attis or Atys, the most
+     appropriate etymon which I can find in the Sanscrit is in
+     the root math, which signifies to strike fire by rubbing
+     wood together, to churn or produce by churning.
+
+If we allow that there is truth in these derivations, we can then see
+how completely Arnobius has been deceived by taking the legend au pied
+de la lettre. He sees nothing but the exoteric side of the fable; the
+more instructed philosopher sees in it nothing beyond an attempt to
+weave a story to account for ordinary men and women existing. The Earth,
+from her deep womb produces stones which become male and female (compare
+Psalm cxxzix. 15--"When I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in
+the lowest parts of the earth." But mycologists were not always content
+with giving precedence in creation to the "Great Mother," consequently
+the "Father of all" comes upon the scene from no one knows where.
+Refusing to share with him her supremacy, he, like the Hindoo Mahadeva,
+becomes a father in spite of her. Like his parent, the son becomes
+raging mad, like an elephant or a horse in spring. He is tamed by
+castration, but the parts he loses still bear a fructifying power,
+and once more, a maiden--type of the celestial virgin, has offspring.
+Without going further into the tale, the story teller endeavours again
+to introduce marriage, but on the threshold arrests himself, apparently
+under the idea that the wedded state takes away the pleasure of freedom
+from fine young men. Beyond this point it would be unprofitable to go,
+since few of us can realize Greek ideas on certain matters.
+
+The origin of Venus is told by Hesiod in such a manner as to lead his
+readers to believe that, not only was she the daughter of a father
+alone, but of that particular part of his body which has been deified
+as a Trinity. After speaking (_Theogmy_, 170-200), of the cruelty of
+Ouranos, and how his wife inspirited Cronos to punish his father by
+means of a sickle made of white iron extracted from her body (t.&, the
+earth), we read--"Then came vast Heaven, Ouranos, bringing Night with
+him, and eager for love, brooded around Earth (_Ge_) and lay stretched,
+I wot, on all sides; but his son from out his ambush grasped at him with
+his left hand, whilst in his right he took the huge sickle, long and
+jagged-toothed, and hastily mowed off the genitals of his sire, and
+threw them, to be carried away, behind him. These fell into the sea,
+and kept drifting a long time up and down the deep, and all around kept
+rising a white foam from the immortal flesh; and in it a maiden was
+nourished. First, she drew nigh divine Cythera, and thence came next to
+wave-washed Cyprus. Then forth stepped an awful, beauteous goddess; and
+beneath her delicate feet the verdure throve around; her, gods and men
+name Aphrodite the foam-sprung goddess," &c. (Bonn's Translation, p.
+11,12).
+
+Still further, we find in the Grecian mythology that Minerva was the
+offspring of Jupiter without a mother being in the case--unless we
+put faith in the tale, that the god impregnated Metis, or wisdom, and
+afterwards ate her up. In this case the goddess ought, however, to have
+emerged from the abdomen, and not from the head of her father. Vulcan,
+moreover, is said to have been the son of Juno alone, "who in this
+wished to imitate Jupiter, who had produced Minerva from his brains"--a
+mythos which does not tally with the statement that Zeus ordered Vulcan
+to cleave his head open, not the part corresponding to the yoni The
+tales certainly lack that evidence which the philosopher is bound to
+seek for; but for those orthodox believers who are bound to credit every
+extraordinary event which is recorded in the books of the faithful,
+no testimony is required. Those who feel assured that a serpent, ox,
+donkey, tree, bush, and other things have spoken rationally, can readily
+extend their trust and assure themselves that a female has had a child
+without a male, and _vice versa_--especially when the individuals were
+divine.
+
+As we have before remarked, there is nothing in the mythological stories
+which we have just recounted that is either more or less miraculous than
+conception, &c., by a virgin without the intervention of a human
+spouse. There is, whenever a miraculous agency is presumed, no greater
+difficulty in believing that children may be produced without mothers,
+than that they should be formed without the intervention of a father.
+Ere a tree can rise in the soil of a field, a germ, seed, or cutting is
+as necessary as the existence of a moist mould, or other ground. There
+being then no greater probability that a crop will spring from a moist
+plain without seed, than that an abundant harvest will come from dry
+seed alone, we are necessarily thrown back upon testimony, when we are
+asked to believe in the paternity of man and the maternity of woman
+without any association of the one with the other.
+
+The mythologists who conceived, or who recorded the fabulous history of
+Orion, evidently had some idea in their minds of the necessity of two
+elements in the formation and growth of a child, when they told the
+tale of the generation of that giant; and the myth connected with this
+individual is so curiously like one recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures,
+that it deserves full notice. In Genesis the narrative informs us that
+there was an old couple, both beyond the age at which there is any
+probability of either party performing the part necessary for the
+production of offspring (Gen. xviii. 12), both were desirous of having
+at least one son, but though they had been long united in marriage,
+their aspirations had been vain. To this couple, or rather to the
+husband, Jehovah is said to have appeared with two companions (Gen.
+xviii. 1, 2), and as the man was hospitably disposed, he ordered his
+wife to make some cakes, whilst he went to fetch and kill a calf for his
+servant to dress and cook. The visitors then partook, alone, of the good
+cheer, and when they had made the repast they promised the husband that
+his long cherished desire should be fulfilled, and that he should have a
+son. There does not, however, appear to be anything supernatural in the
+generation of the infant, except the mere facts that the father had been
+effete for some time, and the mother had always been barren even when
+young, so that conception was more surely miraculous by reason of her
+advanced age. The probability of pregnancy at Sarah's time of life was
+certainly small, but she was reminded that nothing was too hard for
+Jehovah to effect. Had not He already made man out of dust and woman out
+of man? and surely after that it was easy to cause a man and woman to
+act their respective parts. The reader must specially bear in mind this
+observation of the Lord's when he reads the Greek story following. (See
+Ovid's _Fasti_, book 5).
+
+"Jupiter, his brother Neptune, and Mercury, were on their travels; the
+day was far spent and evening approached. They were spied by a venerable
+man, an humble farmer, who stood in the doorway of his small abode. He
+accosts them with the words, 'long is the road and but little of the day
+remains, my door too is ever open to the stranger,' and so earnest is
+his look of entreaty, that the gods accept his invitation."
+
+Jupiter and the others, however, conceal their divine nature, and
+eat and drink like common men. But after a draught of wine, Neptune
+inadvertently names Jupiter, and the poor man who has thus entertained
+angels unawares, is frightened at their presence. After a few moments of
+natural embarrassment, he goes to his field and kills his only ox--the
+drawer of his plough--then he cuts up the animal, roasts it well,
+produces his best wine, and lays the feast, when ready, before his
+august guests. Then Jove, delighted with his hospitality and piety, says
+to the farmer, 'If thy inclination leads thee to desire anything, wish
+for it, and thou shalt receive it.' To which the old man answers, 'I
+once had a dear wife, known as the choice of my early youth, yet she is
+now gone from me and an urn contains her ashes.
+
+To her I vowed, calling upon you my lord gods as witnesses to the oath,
+that I would never wed me more. I swore and will keep my word. She and
+I longed for a son, yet none came to bless our declining years. I yearn
+for one now, but will not endeavour to procure one, I wish to be a
+father, yet refuse to be a husband or enact his part.' To deities like
+Jupiter, such a request was by no means a difficult one to grant, the
+gods could as readily form a boy as they could fabricate Pandora--a
+lovely woman--and send her to Prometheus, with all the ills which flesh
+is heir to, confined in an ark, chest, or coffer. Yet the process of
+what may be designated conception was a strange one. The three simply
+relieved themselves of the wine which they had drunk, using the skin of
+the slaughtered ox instead of a more commodious vessel. The man was then
+ordered to bury the whole in the ground, and wait according to the time
+of life. The gestation of the earth was completed in ten months, and
+at the end of that period the venerable farmer possessed a fine lad who
+grew up and became famous. If, now, we substitute for the Grecian name,
+Hyrieus, the Hebrew title Abraham; if for Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury,
+we read, Jehovah and two angels; if for the phrase, "they were on their
+travels," we read, "they were going down to Sodom to see if it was as
+bad a place as it was reported to be" (see Gen. xviii. 21); if for the
+ox which was roasted, we place, "a calf tender and good," we see a
+wonderful resemblance between the stories of the conception of Orion and
+Isaac. But there is this difference that in the Hebrew tale the divine
+gift is brought about by a transient restoration of power to Abraham
+and Sarah; whilst in the Grecian mythos, the old man is faithful to
+the memory of a beloved spouse, and refuses to renew with another the
+pleasure which he had in her company. We conceive that the exigency of
+the Jewish account, made it necessary that the son of Abraham should be
+of his father begotten, as well as a child of promise; whereas no one
+can call Orion the son of any one, although he was as surely a child of
+promise granted by the gods, as Isaac was, who was given by Elohim (or
+the gods) of the Hebrews.
+
+We may enter now, for a short time, into a speculation whether the
+Grecian story was borrowed from the Hebrew or the contrary. We are
+disposed to believe that the tale was adopted by the Jews after they
+became acquainted with the Greeks. The following are our reasons:--The
+conception of a godhead composed of three persons, is foreign to the
+Hebrew thoughts of the Almighty. Still further was it from Jewish
+belief to think, that Jehovah would come down upon earth to acquire
+information, and when there, eat and drink and talk like any ordinary
+man. Amongst the Israelites it was generally held that no one could see
+the face of God and live, On the other hand, the Greeks were familiar
+with tales which told of gods coming down to earth in the guise of men.
+As an illustration of this, we may point to Acts xiv. 11-13, wherein
+we find that the people of Lycaonia imagined that the gods Jupiter and
+Mercurius had come down to them in the likeness of men, and prepared
+to sacrifice to them. Yet after all, Paul had simply cured a single
+paralytic. On the other hand, the Jews regarded as rank blasphemy, and
+a crime worthy of death, that Jesus should assert himself to be a son of
+God, even although the miracles alleged in support of the assertion were
+as stupendous as they were numerous.
+
+Still, further, we cannot imagine that the degrading story of Jehovah's
+feasting with Abraham could have been composed, except when the Jews
+were no better than an untaught and grossly superstitious race. We
+have already, in _Ancient Faiths, &c._, expressed our opinion that the
+Israelites were at the very lowest period of their history at the time
+when Isaiah began his exhortations. There had been a confederacy between
+the men of Edom, of Moab, Gebal, Amnion, Amalek, Tyre, Philistia, and
+Assyria, the Ismaélites and the Hagarenes, which had attacked Jerusalem
+and Judea, and captured all the inhabitants, many of whom they sold to
+the Grecians (see Joel iii. 5-7). At, and shortly after this time,
+the Jews were in a condition of abject misery (see Isaiah i. 4-9), and
+capable of believing any story told to them, and would just as easily
+credit the mythology which the Grecian captives told, or their Grecian
+masters taught, as their successors do those which at a subsequent
+period filled the Hebrew Scriptures.
+
+Whilst then, on the one hand, there is a probability of the Hebrews
+having borrowed the fable from Hellenistic sources, there is, on the
+other, the strongest objection to the supposition that the Greeks
+should have borrowed from the Jews. Everything which the latter say of
+themselves, indicates that they were exclusive to an inordinate
+degree, refusing to have intercourse on equal terms with any of their
+neighbours, that they never sought to make their history, laws, and
+customs, known to Gentiles, and especially those outside of Judea, and
+that their writings never assumed a Grecian dress until the time of
+Ptolemy Philadelphus, who ordered the Septuagint translation to be made
+about B.c. 285, with the direct view of making the Hebrew Scriptures
+known to the Greeks.
+
+Moreover, we know from everything which was said of the Jews by
+the Gentiles, that the latter treated the former with contempt and
+contumely, and would no more dream of imitating any of their writings,
+&c., than we should care to adopt the myths of Abyssinian negroes as an
+integral part of Christianity.
+
+It will now be profitable if we examine the story of Sanchoniathon and
+the statements of the Orphic Hymns.
+
+We have, in the course of this chapter and elsewhere, so» often referred
+to the Grecian story of the Creation as given by Sanchoniathon and in
+the Orphic hymns, that I think my readers are entitled to receive
+some further account of them; so I reproduce passages which bear upon
+supernatural generation, and especially that of the world and its
+inhabitants--my main authority being _Ancient Fragments, &c._, by J. P.
+Cory (London, 1832).
+
+Of Sanchoniathon we know little; our information may be summed up by
+saying that he is mentioned eulogistically by Eusebius (a.d. 270-338),
+an historian whose veracity cannot be entirely depended on. He says that
+Sanchoniathon had, ere his time, been translated by a certain writer
+called Philon Byblius, and it seems that Porphyry is credited with
+having copied a great part of this translation into Greek from the
+Phoenician. Nothing, however, is actually known of the historian in
+question, except from Eusebius (_Smith's Dictionary_, p. 308, vol.III.,
+s. v., Philon.) We may then assume, according to our inclination, either
+that the story is really a compendium of Tyrian legendary lore, or
+simply a representation of what the Greeks imagined. The way, however,
+in which the generation of beings is described, well deserves attention
+from its similarity, and its contrasts with the biblical story. First,
+there was a breeze of thick air and Chaos. These united and produced
+Pothos. This again united with the wind, and Mot was the result, also
+called Ilus; from this sprung the seed of Creation. And there were
+certain animals without sensation, from which intelligent animals were
+produced.* After this follows a quantity of stuff that is traceable to
+Hesiod, and a part of which may be considered a paraphrase of Genesis.
+Then mention is made of Elioun, called Hypsistus (the most High),
+and his wife Beruth--as being the contemporaries of others; but no
+indication is given from whence they came. These produced Ouranos
+(Heaven) and Ge (Earth). Their father was killed by wild beasts! Then
+Ouranos married Ge, and had offspring by her. But he had other women,
+and Ge was jealous. Ouranos, however, came to her when he listed and
+attempted to kill her children. He had a son, Cronus, who drove him from
+his kingdom. This son turns out to be the original being called Ilus,
+and he contrived to emasculate his father, and from the blood which
+flowed sprang rivers and fountains. The remainder of this story scarcely
+deserves notice.
+
+     * The author of the tale evidently had something in common
+     with our modern Darwin.
+
+Ere we turn our attention to the compositions known as the Orphic Hymns,
+it will be interesting to inquire whether the preceding account of
+Creation had a Phoenician origin, or may more fairly be traced to an
+Indian source flowing through a Greek channel After a diligent search in
+the Hebrew Lexicon--and it is to be noticed that the Hebrew is all but
+identical with the Tyrian and Carthaginian, I cannot find any words
+or roots from which the proper names in the opening paragraph of
+Sanchoniathon can by any ingenuity be derived. Nor can I discover in the
+Greek anything which explains the esoteric signification of the story.
+
+But, on reference to the Sanscrit, there is a curious identity apparent
+between the second verse in Genesis and a Hindoo idea. The former
+runs:--"The earth was without form and void (_tohu ve bohu_), and
+darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved
+on the face of the waters." The Indian interpretation of the myth is
+this:--"Air in motion, _vahu_, ruffled the inexplicable, or empty space,
+_ka, has_, or _Icha, Icham_, a word also signifying 'nothing.' Thence
+proceeded the earth, _Ua, or Mot_ (Sans); _Math_ (Sans) making fire
+by rubbing sticks (coitus?) _Mada, mdda, and moda_, pleasure, delight,
+gladness=love, Eros." This is almost the same idea that Hesiod
+propounds.
+
+In the Orphic Hymns we find much more clearly than in any other writing
+amongst the ancient Greeks the early Hellenic notion of the generation
+of the worlds and of mankind. Respecting the value of the fragments
+there may be some difference of opinion. The curious and doubtful may
+be referred to _Smith's Dictionary_ (s.v. Orpheus); for me it will
+be sufficient to state that both Aristophanes and Plato refer to the
+presumed author as a religious teacher and a preacher against murder,
+and Euripides frequently mentions him. This will place Orpheus at least
+before b.c. 480. If, however, we consider him as identical with the
+oft-sung husband of Eurydice, we must place him B.c. 650 (Smith, s.v.).
+
+In quoting from Cory's translation, I shall not scruple to make the
+sense of more importance than literality: "Zeus is the first--he, the
+thunderer, is the last; he is the head and the middle, he fabricated all
+things. Zeus is male; he, the immortal, is also female; he founded the
+earth and the starry heaven; he is the breath of all things, the rushing
+of indefatigable fire. Zeus is the root of the sea, the sun and moon,
+the king, the author of universal life; one power, one demon, the
+mighty prince of all things; one kingly frame, in which this universe
+revolves--fire and water, earth and ether, night and day, and Metis
+(counsel); the primeval father and all delightful Eros (love). All these
+things are united in the vast body of Zeus. Would you behold his head
+and his fair face? It is the resplendent heaven, round which his golden
+locks of glittering stars are beautifully exalted in the air. On each
+side are the two golden taurine horns, the risings and settings, the
+tracks of the celestial gods: his eyes are the sun and opposing moon;
+his unfallacious mind the royal incorruptible Ether."
+
+The next fragment has been filched by the author of _Sanchoniathon_, and
+we must not quote it. After a recapitulation about Chaos, Cronos, Ether,
+and Eros, he proceeds:--"I have sung the illustrious father of night
+existing from eternity, whom men call Phanes, for he first appeared. I
+have sung the birth of powerful Brimo (Hecate), and the unhallowed deeds
+of the earth-born giants who showered down from heaven their blood--the
+lamentable seed of generation, from whence sprung the race of mortals
+who inhabit the boundless earth for ever."
+
+"Chaos was generated first, and then the wide-bosomed Earth--the ever
+stable seat of all the Immortals that inhabit the snowy peaks of Olympus
+and the dark dim Tartarus in the depths of the broad-wayed earth, and
+Eros--the fairest of the immortal gods, that relaxes the strength of
+all, both gods and men, and subjugates the mind and the sage will in
+their breasts. From Chaos were generated Erebus and black Night; and
+from Night again were generated Ether and day, whom she brought forth,
+having conceived from the embrace of Erebus; and Earth first produced
+the starry heaven, equal to herself, that it might inclose all things
+around herself."
+
+The preceding is given by Hesiod (900 B.c.). The following is the
+version given by Aristophanes:--"First were Chaos and Night, and black
+Erebus and vast Tartarus; and there was neither Earth nor Air nor
+Heaven: but in the boundless bosoms of Erebus, Night with her black
+wings first produced an aerial egg, from which at the completed time
+sprang forth the lovely Eros, glittering with golden wings upon his back
+like the swift whirlwinds. But embracing the dark-winged Chaos in the
+vast Tartarus he begot our race (the birds). The race of the Immortals
+was not till Eros mingled all things together; but when the elements
+were mixed one with another, Heaven was produced, and Ocean and Earth
+and the imperishable race of all the blessed gods."
+
+"Maia, supreme of gods, Immortal Night, tell me, &c." The next
+invocation is to the double-natured Protogonus--the bull coming from
+the egg, the renowned light, the ineffable strength, Priapus the king,
+&c.--"Metis (wisdom) bearing the seed of the gods, whom the blessed
+inhabitants of Olympus call Phanes Protogonus." "Metis the first father
+and all-delightful Eros." Again, in allusion to Phanes,--
+
+"Therefore the first god bears with himself the heads of animals--many
+and single--of a bull, of a serpent, and of a fierce lion, and
+they sprung from the primeval egg in which the animal is seminally
+contained." "The theologist places around him the heads of a ram, a
+bull, a lion, and a dragon, and assigns him first both the male and
+female sex." "Female and Father is the mighty god Ericapeus; to him also
+the wings are first given."
+
+The Japanese account of the creation is of sufficient interest to
+be noticed here. I quote it from a translation of the _Annals of the
+Emperors of Japan_, by Mons. Titsingh, assisted by interpreters of the
+Dutch Factory at Nagasaki, and rendered into French, after being duly
+compared with the original by M. J. Klapworth--(printed for the Oriental
+Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; London, 1834). In the
+account of the seven generations of the heavenly bodies, we are told
+that "anciently the heaven and the earth were not distinct, nor was the
+female principle then separated from the male. The chaos, having the
+form of an egg, moved about like the waves of an agitated sea. The germs
+of everything were there, and these ultimately divided, the pure and
+transparent ones going upward to form heaven, whilst the dull and opaque
+ones coagulated and formed the earth. Between the two a divine being
+sprang up; he was followed by two others in succession." All these were
+pure males, and engendered without consorts. After them came a male and
+a female deity, but they had no intercourse with each other. These and
+three other divine couples, who followed them, reproduced their like by
+mutual contemplation. The last couple directed the "celestial spear
+made of a red precious stone"--said by Japanese commentators to be
+the phallus--into the world below, and stirred it up to the bottom. On
+withdrawing the lance some drops fell from it and produced an island,
+upon which the celestial couple descended. Each one then began to walk
+in opposite directions around the isle, and when they met the feminine
+spirit sang joyously--"I am delighted to find so handsome a young man."
+But this vexed the male spirit, who, being a man, asserted that he ought
+to have been allowed to speak the first. So they parted once more on
+their solitary walk; and when they met the second time, the woman waited
+to be spoken to. Then followed a conversation somewhat too coarse for
+repetition, which was followed by corporeal union. From the intercourse
+of these divine beings all creation sprang. But, after a time, the
+partners reflected that there was still wanting a governor for the
+world which they had engendered. So they again accoupled, and produced
+a daughter so lovely, that her parents thought her too good for earth;
+gave her the name of "the precious wisdom of the heavenly sun," and sent
+her to heaven, there to assume the universal government of all things.
+The parents once again united, and produced the moon, who was sent to
+heaven to assist her sister. A terrible fellow was then born from them,
+who represents the Devil, or those tempests which seem to oppose the
+beneficent action of the sun upon the soil. The parents returned to
+heaven, and there are constant contentions between the brother and
+sister. The former is described as being furious under attempts at
+control; generally, he was quiet, and always had tears in his eyes (dew
+and rain), but sometimes, when provoked, he broke every thing, uprooted
+trees, and set the mountain forests on fire. We need not pursue
+the story further than to say that the celestial beings created a
+terrestrial couple, whose children bear considerable resemblance to the
+Greek Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and others, and from them came the first
+Emperors of Japan. In the matter of evidence upon such a point as the
+conception of a man without a woman, or a woman without a man, it is
+clear that unsupported assertion is wholly valueless.
+
+For example, I may for a time absent myself from general society, and
+return to it again after a certain interval, having with me a child,
+whom I assert to be my very own, produced by my own inherent power, just
+as a tree produces a leaf which grows, matures, and falls. I may frame
+a romantic account of a dream, in which I was told that if I planted
+myself in the central bed of a certain garden, and contrived an
+apparatus for daily watering my buried legs, that a child would sprout
+from my right side, who should be to me as a daughter. Yet, however
+ingenious my tale, there is not any one possessing sound sense and
+knowledge who would believe me. In like manner, if a woman should tell a
+story analogous, though not identical, she is certain to be discredited;
+even the assertion of the existence of a divine father would not, if the
+woman were unmated, save her character from a stain.
+
+We may next refer to the legend of Prometheus, inasmuch as in many
+points it resembles the Hebrew mythos so greatly, that we must imagine
+they both have a common origin, or that the one is a copy--though
+an indifferent one, of the other. Prometheus, or forethought, was
+represented to be the first who made an ordinary man--he formed him
+of clay, and then animated him with fire from heaven. The Jewish tale
+asserts that it was Jehovah who made the first man. That man was first
+formed like a statue out of clay or dust, and had no life until breath
+was infused into his nostrils. In both stories man alone is formed
+first. In the Grecian fable Prometheus does not make a consort for his
+man; nay, he refuses to receive one for himself when the gods send
+to him Pandora--a paragon of loveliness. Instead of this he gives the
+damsel to Epimetheus--or after-thought--who takes her carelessly, and
+finds that even a charming woman is not a guarantee against cares and
+woes. Some accounts, however, say that Prometheus made both man and
+woman out of clay.
+
+The discrepancy does not signify much, for we see the same in Genesis,
+wherein we are told in one place that man and woman were made together,
+whilst in another the story runs that Adam preceded Eve, and that,
+instead of being formed of dust or clay, the latter was formed of bone.
+
+We may now refer to the story of Apollonius Tyaneus, whose history has
+interest for us, inasmuch as it illustrates three important points, upon
+which much stress has been, and may still be, laid by inquiring minds.
+The most conspicuous is the propensity of historians, or, to speak
+more correctly, of a biographer, to record wonderful things about an
+extraordinary man; next the ridicule cast upon the tale by those who
+have circulated stories equally improbable, and the indication that
+travel to Hindostan was apparently common, prior to and during his time.
+In sketching the life of the philosopher, I quote something from
+_Le Dictionnaire Infernal_, and the rest from Smith's _Biographical
+Dictionary_. The philosopher in question was born about 4 years B.C. His
+history was written by Philostratus, about 100 years after the hero's
+death, and is ostensibly founded upon memoirs left by his secretary,
+Damis, an Assyrian, who accompanied Apollonius during his travels, and
+recorded his discourses and prophecies, and acted much as Luke did with
+Paul.
+
+Amongst the proofs which Damis gives of his veracity, he tells us that
+when he and his master traversed the Caucasus, they saw the chains which
+bound Prometheus, still fixed to the rocks. This bit of verification
+is now derided, but in my school-days I recollect having an account put
+into my hands, written by some author, stating that the remains of the
+ark were still to be seen upon Mount Ararat.*
+
+     * On the day before this was written there appeared in _The
+     Telegraph_ a paragraph, to the effect that an Assyrian slab
+     had been translated by Mr. Smith of the British Museum. The
+     record is said to give an account of "the deluge," and it
+     tallies nearly with that given by Berosus, recorded in my
+     second volume.    It adds, however, that the ark was at that
+     period in existence, and its wood and bitumen used as
+     amulets. Singularly enough, the tale is supposed to confirm
+     the bible legend, the writer of the paragraph never dreaming
+     that it more certainly confirms the Babylonian or Assyrian
+     origin of the book of Genesis. The other parts of this slab,
+     which were wanting, have more recently been found. But there
+     is no necessity for me to change the wording of the note.
+
+There was also current a "Joe Miller" about some old woman, who would
+not believe in flying-fish, which her sailor-boy had seen, but who
+readily believed his tale of hooking up a chariot wheel on an anchor
+fluke from the bottom of the Red Sea!
+
+Dr. Smith, or Mr. Jowett, the author of the article, very judiciously
+says--"We have purposely omitted the wonders with which Philostratus has
+garnished his narrative.... _Many of these are curiously coincident with
+the Christian miracles_--(the italics are our own). The proclamation of
+the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of
+Proteus himself; the chorus of swans which sung for joy on the occasion,
+the casting out of devils, the raising the dead and healing the
+sick, the sudden disappearances and reappearances of Apollonius; his
+adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and the sacred voice which called
+him at his death--to which may be added his claim as a teacher, having
+authority to reform the world--cannot fail to suggest the parallel
+passages in the Gospel history." We learn, moreover, that the biographer
+was high in favour with Alexander Severus, and that Eusebius of Caesarea
+naively allows the truth of Philostratus' narrative in the main, with
+the exception of what is miraculous. None of the authors quoted seem
+to think of the adage--"Change but the names, and the same classes of
+wonders are a matter of faith to you." Surely it is as easy to credit
+the strange deeds of Proteus as those of Gabriel.
+
+Whether we choose to adopt the hypothesis that Apollonius was a rival
+of Jesus, that the Nazarene and Tyanean were independent of each other,
+that the evangelists took a hint from Damis, or Philostratus imitated
+Luke in more ways than one, we have still the fact that two different
+biographers, giving a history of the life of two contemporary
+individuals, assert that the birth of their respective heroes was
+announced by a divine being, who himself brought about the conception
+of the infant that, on arriving at maturity, was held to be divine.
+In writing thus, it will be distinctly understood that we draw no
+comparison between Jesus and Apollonius, but only between the authors
+who have undertaken their respective biography.
+
+Leaving this curious point, the next noteworthy one is that Philostratus
+records, that the Tyanean went through Assyria, Babylonia, and Bactria,
+to India, "where he met Jarchus, the chief of the Brahmins, and disputed
+with Indian gymnosophists _already versed in Alexandrian philosophy_."
+I have placed these last words in italics, to call attention to the
+apparent belief of the historian, that prior to his day there had been
+extensive religious communication between India and Greece--a point on
+which I have much insisted in a previous chapter. The Tyanean is said to
+have been five years upon his eastern journey. We have no idea where the
+Nazarene was during his youth and before he began his public career, and
+we cannot help regarding the omission to notice this part of his life as
+being blameworthy in the evangelists. Those who knew so much of Jesus at
+his conception, and about his birth and infancy, could surely, if they
+would, have informed us of his adult years.
+
+Nor, _à propos_ to this short account of the biography of Apollonius, by
+Damis and Philostratus, must we omit to notice the conceits of those
+who have assumed that the Tyanean was set up as a counterfoil to, or an
+imitator of, Jesus of Nazareth; for, just as the Christians may, with
+some show of reason, affirm that the miracles recorded in their writings
+have been filched by others; so may the Buddhist, with still greater
+plausibility, declare that the greatest part of the life of the
+Nazarene, as given in the Gospels, has been copied almost verbatim from
+the biographers or evangelists of the Indian saga For myself, I consider
+that the miraculous parts of the history of all the three conspicuous
+men which have been named are equally true or--false.
+
+The idea of attributing to the Supreme God the birth, or, rather, the
+procreation, of an extraordinary man, seems, so far as we can judge, to
+have existed in the Western Hemisphere as well as in the Eastern. For
+example, in an interesting book, entitled _New Tracks in North America_,
+by W. A. Bell, M.A., M.B., Cantab; London, 1869, we find the following
+legend respecting Montezuma, the most popular ruler of the ancient
+Mexicans. The legend is intended to explain the occurrence of vast ruins
+amongst the Pima Indians, of which other history is silent, and runs
+thus: "Long ago a woman of exquisite beauty ruled over the valleys and
+the region south of them. Many suitors came from far to woo her, and
+brought presents innumerable of corn, skins, and cattle to lay at her
+feet. Her virtue and determination to continue unmarried remained alike
+unshaken, and her store of worldly possessions so greatly increased,
+that, when drought and desolation came upon her land, she fed her people
+out of her great abundance, and did not miss it, there was so much left.
+One night, as she lay asleep, her garment was blown from off her breast,
+and a dew drop from the Great Spirit fell upon her bosom, entered her
+blood, and caused her to conceive. In time she bore a child, who was
+none other than Montezuma, who built the large 'Casas,' and all the
+other ruins which are scattered through the land" (vol. i. p. 199).
+
+It is allowable for the reader to doubt whether there ever was a Mexican
+Queen whose renown was spread far and wide, who preferred celibacy to
+marriage, and who, being rich, was not plundered by the chiefs whose
+alliance was rejected. We may equally doubt the efficacy of a drop
+of water, even though it came from the Great Celestial Spirit; but,
+notwithstanding every objection which the most sceptical can advance,
+the legend is quite as probable as those current amongst the ancient
+Greeks, the religious Hindoos, and a large portion of modern Christians.
+A miracle, always improbable, is not necessarily true because it is said
+to have occurred in the old world, or indubitably false because it is
+reported to have happened in the new. Nor can one who regards faith as
+superior to reason, refuse to believe or to question the truth of
+any supernatural story simply because he was not told it during his
+childhood or youth.
+
+When the philosophical inquirer finds that in every country, with whose
+literature we are familiar, there are, not only abundance of tales
+about supernatural generation before the world was formed, but from
+the earliest periods of history to our own day, he may well pause
+and inquire into the intrinsic value of a religion or a faith that is
+founded mainly, if not wholly, upon the assertion that a certain person
+was the son of the Supreme Creator, and being so, has the qualities of
+his sire as well as those of his human mother. The orthodox in Britain
+do not believe in Cristna, Krishna, or Vishnu, because the Hindoo sacred
+books declare that he has appeared repeatedly as an incarnation of
+the Creator--nor do they credit the tales told of the supernatural
+generation of Bacchus or Hercules--yet, when they are asked what
+stronger evidence they have for the truth of their own story, they are
+unable to give more than affirmations, strong, perhaps, but not more so
+than those of ancient Hellenic priests.
+
+It is out of my province, now, to enter into every thing connected
+with the doctrine held by those who are known as Trinitarians. My
+main endeavour in this part of my subject is to clear the way for
+"reconstruction." It is my desire to give to those who have not the
+leisure, or, perhaps, the inclination, to wade through the dull tomes of
+theological, mythological, and similar books, an account of what is and
+has been entertained as religious belief by others, with whom, or with
+whose opinions, they have not come in contact. I have no special wish to
+prove that my opinions are right and the prevailing ones wrong; my chief
+aim is to give data by which others may form a judgment for themselves.
+With this view I have systematically endeavoured to satisfy myself of
+the trustworthiness of the witnesses whom I call upon to testify to
+facts; to my knowledge, nothing has been suppressed which seems to me to
+bear upon my subject, nor is aught set down in malice.
+
+In my next chapter I shall institute an inquiry into another important
+doctrine, held by Christians from their first existence until the
+present day, namely, the Existence and Ministration of Angels. Since the
+chapter was originally written, Dr. Kalisch has published an essay upon
+the same subject in the second part of his commentary upon Leviticus.
+I shall probably take the liberty of quoting from his pages; but, as
+we treat the matter from different points of view, I do not feel called
+upon to suppress my own work because he has preceded me. It gives me
+pleasure to feel and to know that fellow-workers in the same toilsome
+task, not only may help each other, but rejoice in the opportunity of so
+doing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Angels. The ideas associated therewith. Why winged. Wishing-
+     caps. Jehovah and His Angels made to walk by the historian.
+     The belief in Angels incompatible with that of an
+     omnipresent and omniscient God. Pictorial representations.
+     Absurd conceptions of angelic wings. Angela want birds'
+     tails. Men have tried to fly. Difference between birds and
+     men. Arms and wings. A writer at fault about this world is
+     not to be trusted in his accounts of another. Bats and
+     similar mammals. The Devil better winged than Michael--Yet
+     Satan, a roaring lion, goes about as a bull with bat's
+     wings. Angels and beetles. Harmony in creation. Strange idea
+     of spirits. Spiritualism. Varieties of angelic forms. Not
+     the products of lunacy. Angels and demigods. Egyptian ideas.
+     Assyrian notions. Christian fancies. Birds and Men united in
+     human celestialism. Persian Angels. Mithra winged. Angels in
+     Persia twelve in number. Job, the work of a Persian Jew.
+     Angels referred to therein. Darius had a consecrated table.
+     Babylonian belief. Daniel. Greece and Rome. Gods, Demigods,
+     Angels, and Saints. Christian demigods. Angels' duties.
+     Book-keeping, clerks of wind and weather;--police-agents.
+     The inventor of Heaven admired centralization. Babylonian
+     tutelary Angels. Christian ones. Christian saintly imagery.
+     The bleeding heart of Mary. A funny Chaldean goddess to
+     match. Popish saints have an aureole, but no wings. Francis
+     of Assisi could make stigmata but could not change his arms
+     into pinions. Babylonian and Papal emblems identical
+     Development of Angels amongst the Jews in Babylon. Angelic
+     mythology founded upon Astronomy and Astrology. Planets are
+     Archangels. Angels and Devils mentioned on bowls found in
+     Mesopotamia by Layard. The probable meaning of their names.
+     Hebrews adopted Chaldee beliefs: evidence. Juvenal. Jews and
+     Chaldeans. Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees and our
+     Reformers compared. A legal anecdote. Angels in Ancient
+     Italy. Our angelic forms are of Etruscan origin. Some such
+     beings had three pairs of wings. Etruscans had guardian
+     angels for infants and children. Angels carry various
+     matters. Angels of marriage. Angels for heirs of salvation.
+     Etruscan angel of marriage. Jewish match-maker. Raphael.
+     Description of an Etruscan painting in tomb of Tarquin. The
+     angel of death. The Greek theology. The Greeks taught the
+     Jews. The Jews never taught other nations. Greeks had a
+     supreme god and a host of inferior deities. War in heaven.
+     Titans--giants. Children of the sons of God and daughters of
+     men. Greek origin of Christian and Miltonian angelic
+     mythology. The begotten Son of God (Hercules born to Jupiter
+     by Alcmena). Restores the kingdom to his father. Greek ideas
+     of demons. Hebrew and Christian ideas of good and bad
+     spirits. The recording angel. Demigods and archangels. Greek
+     deities not winged except Mercury. Some minor gods have
+     pinions.--Pegasus has wings. Hymen, the angel of the
+     covenant of marriage. Genius loci and cherubim. Alcmena and
+     Mary. Jupiter and "the power of the Highest" Roman
+     mythology. Romans adopted the Etruscan form of angels.
+     Christians adopted it from Romans. The Christian crozier is
+     the Etruscan and Roman _lituus_, or "divining staff." Rome
+     and London both avid of religious novelty. Instability in
+     religion a proof of infidelity in the old. Hence a desire
+     for infallibility, to crush doubt. Angelic mythology of the
+     Bible. Christians use words in parrot fashion. Words ought
+     not to stand for ideas. Prayer-cylinder in Thibet.
+     Contradictions. Figures and metaphors are theologian cities
+     of refuge. Prophet who says that he converses with an angel-
+     -is he to be credited? A spirit without flesh and bones,
+     cannot move his tongue to utter words. Drunkards see "blue
+     devils"--they are unreal If the appearance of a man in a
+     dream is an illusion, his words are so too. Absurd ideas
+     about phantoms. Notice of the deeds of a few Hebrew angels.
+     A resume of their history. Inspiration did not reveal
+     angels. Human fancy did. Conspiracy in Heaven! The Genesis
+     of Hell. What sort of a place it is supposed to be. God made
+     the Devil, so man must multiply his imps! Lucifer taught
+     Elohim! Old Testament less knowing than the New. The Devil
+     not a fallen angel. The book of Enoch. Deductions drawn.
+
+There is scarcely a single article in our current belief which does not
+prove, on examination, to have descended to us from Pagan sources, or to
+be identical with heathen beliefs older than the Hebrew. The idea of a
+personal God dwelling in some locality, vaguely described as "Heaven,"
+in which He reigns, and rules, like a modern emperor, has been found to
+exist in almost every nation whose language we know, and whose history
+has descended to us. Human weakness makes it so. Such a ruler has been
+called Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, Mahadeva, Bel or Baal, Melech or Moloch,
+Ormazd, Elohim, Jah, Jehovah, Jupiter, Yahu, God, and a variety of other
+names; but He has always been hailed as king, and lord of all creation,
+having a throne beside which attend a number of servitors, standing
+before and around him, all ready to do his bidding and to go wherever
+they are sent. As a potentate rules on earth over provinces far distant
+from the central government, so the heavenly monarch was, and is yet,
+supposed to have "viceroys," "lieutenants," or "vicars," who have
+authority delegated to them, and exercise it under his superintendence.
+
+A scheme such as we have described does not seem to have existed from
+the first amongst the Jews; for, when men of reasoning powers conceived
+the idea of a Creator, He was regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, and
+omnipresent. It became gradually interwoven with theology; for when men
+of limited capacity thought of such a vast empire as the universe, they,
+under the influence of a grovelling anthropomorphism, recognized, as
+they imagined, the necessity of furnishing it with a system of acquiring
+intelligence, and promulgating decrees which should be far superior to
+any postal plan devised by human kings. Amongst the Kaffirs, men with
+missives race against time, and by means of relays, messages are sent
+to vast distances in a comparatively short period. By means of horses,
+skilfully engaged beforehand, an ancient Persian tyrant could make his
+commands known all over his vast empire in the course of a few days,
+and moderns, by means of railways and the electric wire, can forward
+information at a still more rapid rate.
+
+Yet, to old theologians, and even to observant men of the present day,
+all these means of communication between God and his subjects seemed to
+be slow. We may, for example, notice a fly buzzing round the head of
+the running Kaffir, or the ears of the fleetest of Persian steeds, and
+a swallow on the wing outstrips a railway express. The velocity of the
+carrier-pigeon has long been known. All these were, therefore, regarded
+as swift-winged creatures, and fit for message bearers. As then, it was
+observed, that of all beings who could move, the bird is the swiftest
+in its movement from place to place, it was very natural that dogmatists
+should represent the messengers of the great king with powerful pinions,
+like those of the eagle or the albatross. In this manner the addition
+of wings to any mythological character sufficed to show that he who bore
+them was a celestial being; one who stood before the supreme ruler,
+and received from him delegated power--either as vicar, viceroy, or
+messenger. Thus the Greeks depicted Mercury with wings on his legs
+and elsewhere, and the Hebrews gave large pinions to their
+seraphim--sometimes as many as six being used by each (Isa. vi. 2.)
+The Etruscans pictured their angels with two wings only, and we have
+followed, implicitly, their lead. But the Hindoos did not in early times
+adopt ideas such as this. They noticed the speed of the sunbeam, the
+velocity of the hurricane, and the rapidity of thought; and since they
+saw many birds borne away by the wind, they imagined that celestial
+messengers must travel in a corresponding fashion. For one who rode upon
+the clouds of the typhoon, pinions were useless. I have in my possession
+a plate,* in which the celestial attendants on the god are all wingless,
+but have sex. The name given to the attendants referred to is "Apsaras,"
+who are described as having been produced in myriads when the ocean was
+churned. They are said to reside between the waters above the firmament
+and those below it, and are represented as being of consummate beauty
+and elegance of form, their business being to attend upon the gods and
+give them pleasure, by singing, music, dancing, and in every possible
+way. They are sometimes represented as being of both sexes, all having
+the power to change their gender. Generally, they are described as
+females, and take the business of Venus in the Greek heaven, and of the
+Houris in that provided by Mahomet and his followers. The Hindoos have
+in their theology an abode of bliss, in which the pleasures are wholly
+sensual. In this they do not differ from the Christians, except that the
+latter only expect to indulge in music and a sanctified vengeance.
+
+     * Plate x., vol. 1, "Recherches sur l'origine, &c., des Arts
+     de la Grèce," D'Harcanville, London, 1785. The author states
+     that the plate is copied from Le Voyage de Niebuhr, T. 1,
+     Tab. vi.
+
+With great ingenuity the Hebrews conceived that the will of God must
+be equivalent to His wish--that His wish must be the same as a command,
+and, consequently, that He could send His messenger from one spot
+to another in an instant; or, if He chose, He could go Himself and
+communicate personally, as He did with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and
+Joshua. For such a Being even light would be too slow (see Psalm xviii.
+10; civ. 3, 4).
+
+From a similar thought arose the stories which have found their way into
+our fairy mythology of "wishing caps" which would enable the bearer to
+pass in an instant of time, and wholly invisibly, from one part of the
+world to another. In oriental countries, a carpet or a coat was the
+carrying agent, whilst amongst the more clumsy story-tellers of Europe,
+a pair of boots was furnished, whose wearer could cover twenty miles at
+a stride.
+
+In the plenitude of our prejudice we may smile at the caprice which
+invented the "wishing cap;" but if we reflect calmly upon the matter,
+we discover more depth of thought in this than has been shown in the
+formation of tales in which winged angels are introduced. The contrast
+will readily be recognized if we take a scene from "Fortunatus," and
+another from the Old Testament The former, by putting on a cap, could
+transport himself in a moment from Formosa to Great Britain. Whereas
+we learn, from Genesis xviii, that three angelic men took "a walk" from
+somewhere to Sodom, that they might see what sort of a place it really
+was. The hero in the fairy tale was not fatigued; the angels of the
+Hebrew mythology were glad to wash their feet, and to eat and drink, so
+as to recruit their energies (v. 8; Ps. lxxviii. 25.) A mythical
+tale like this demonstrates incontestably the mean condition of the
+story-teller, who does not furnish Jehovah even with a mule or ass, but
+makes Him go afoot.
+
+We must, therefore, regard the theological contrivance which furnished
+angels with wings, as being a clumsy one; indicating superficiality,
+rather than profound thought, and emanating from human infirmity rather
+than divine inspiration or direct revelation. We shall see this more
+distinctly if we inquire into the ideas necessarily associated with
+wings.
+
+The theologians who have furnished their ideal messengers with wings
+show, in the first place, that they have the idea of an air upon which
+the sails can strike--of muscular structures to move the pinions, and
+of the necessity for food to enable the motive power to be kept up. The
+idea of a winged angel, therefore, necessarily implies a belief in the
+presence of a solid material body moving through an aeriform fluid,
+resembling the atmosphere just above the earth's surface. That there
+really was this belief associated with celestial messengers we find
+in the Jewish scriptures, wherein it is stated, as if it were a common
+occurrence, that angels came to talk familiarly with men; as, for
+example, Gen. xviii, xix., xxxii.; and Judges i., where we are told
+that an angel came from Gilgal to Bochim, to deliver a statement, to the
+Hebrews, such as a silly girl at Lourdes asserted the Virgin Mary had
+come from Heaven to make to her; see also Judges xiii., and the book of
+Tobit.
+
+That angels were, moreover, supposed to possess thews and sinews, we
+find from Gen. xxxii. 24-30, wherein we are told that some celestial
+being wrestled with Jacob, but could not prevail against him. In a
+previous chapter, although it is only in a dream, Jacob saw them mount
+and descend a ladder as if their wings--if they then had them--were
+useless.
+
+We shall not now be far from the truth, if we affirm that winged
+messengers, envoys, or angels, can only be supposed to exist by
+individuals whose god is nothing more than a man without universal power
+and knowledge. To any one who believes God to be omnipresent, the idea
+of His having ambassadors, or vicars upon earth, is blasphemous.
+
+The comparative coarseness of those minds which fabricated the notion
+of winged men, as celestial messengers, will be the more certainly
+recognised, if we examine into the pictorial conception which they have
+permitted, and still allow, to pass, for the embodiment of their idea.
+Let me, for example, invite the reader to cast his mental eye over the
+winged men-like bulls, &c., of Assyria and Babylonia; the winged genii
+of the ancient Egyptians; the winged soul and angel of Death of the
+Etruscans; the angels of ancient and modern Christian painters; and the
+pinioned heads which came from the walls to listen to the music of Saint
+Cecilia--according to Papal legends--and then to try to discover the
+locality of the muscular organs which are necessary to give movement to
+the wings. Everybody who has ever carved, at his dinner-table, a grouse,
+partridge, pheasant, duck, or other fowl, must be aware of the enormous
+mass of flesh which is associated with the wings. If we bare the breast
+and remove the pinion bones from any bird which flies--(it is necessary
+to make this proviso, for such as the dodo, the aptéryx, the ostrich,
+emu, and others, have wings which are only rudimentary, and not used for
+flight)--we find but a very meagre body remaining behind. Hence we see
+the necessity of furnishing an imaginary angel which has wings with
+muscles that will enable the pinions to be used; but in no pictorial
+representation of an angelic messenger do we ever find the ordinary
+figure of a man departed from, or any provision made for muscles to
+move the feathered organs. And we must notice, in passing, that it is
+monstrous to suppose that a man must become, in part, a bird ere he can
+be useful to a god!
+
+Again, we recognize in the conventional form of angels a total absence
+of knowledge of natural history, of gravity, of force, &c. Let us, for
+example, imagine for a moment that the metaphorical wings are real ones
+used in flight. We see directly that they will only raise the individual
+perpendicularly into the air. The angelic human creature, even if his
+wings were--as they ought to do--to replace his arms, would still lack
+a tail, to use as a rudder to direct his flight. It is clear, then, that
+no one has seen an angel, and that those who have pretended to have done
+so, were deeply ignorant men. To make our observations upon this point
+somewhat more comprehensible, we may just refer to the fact that many
+individuals, misled apparently by the mass of ideal celestial men--or
+angels--which are to be seen in almost every cathedral or parish church
+in Europe, have conceived the idea that they could fly, if only they
+could contrive the necessary apparatus to append to their arms, legs,
+or both; in other words, many men have fancied that they could do better
+for themselves than nature has done for them. But a few minutes' calm
+thought would teach any one familiar with the composition of forces,
+that an attempt at the imitation of a bird's flight must be a failure in
+man. Let me show this by a simple observation: A bird extends its wings,
+and by a strong stroke towards its own body, rises into the air, though
+neither solid nor rigid, both wings and air have apparently been so. In
+imitation of this bird, we will now suppose that a man places himself,
+with arms outspread, like the letter T between two uprights, forming
+something like the letter U.
+
+The individual would then be represented thus [J]--unlike the bird,
+his _point d' appui_ would be solid, and his arms would be far more
+unyielding than feathers. Yet not one athlete in a million could spring
+upwards, so as to stand upon the summit of the U. Man's "pectoral
+muscles"--as physiologists call the mass of flesh below the collar bone
+and above the nipple--are intended to move the arm; the bird's pectoral
+muscles are intended to move the body. Cut off a man's arms and
+pectorals--the counterpart of the bird's wings and fleshy breast--and he
+has barely lost a tenth part of his weight; on the other hand, cut off
+the corresponding parts of a bird, i.e.t the pinions and the muscles
+which move them, and not a tenth part of the original weight is left
+behind. Speaking coarsely, we may then affirm that man's body is
+relatively about a hundred times heavier--air being the standard--than
+that of a bird, and his pectoral muscles, relatively to his body, a
+hundred times less in bulk. Consequently, even if a human being could,
+by muscular action, develop the bulk of his "pectorals," so that they
+should be relatively to the rest of his frame, equal to those of a
+bird, still his bulk would be so much more solid than that of the bird's
+bones, flesh, and feathers, that his power of flight would be a hundred
+times less. A man, with the exception of his lungs, is in health, solid
+or fluid, in every part of him; a bird's bones, on the contrary, are
+everywhere permeated by air cavities, which make them as light as pith
+or cotton wool. A pound of lead and a pound of feathers are certainly
+equal in weight, yet, if both are allowed to drop from a balloon, the
+first will reach the ground a long time before the second. In like
+manner, by contrivance, I could with my breath sustain an ounce of
+eiderdown in the air, although I am quite powerless to sustain, by like
+means, the same quantity of solid meat. I say nothing of the relative
+position of the shoulder-joint in man and birds--although the point is
+physiologically important.
+
+Again, we may assert that the originators of the angelic mythology were
+absolutely ignorant of that which is called comparative anatomy. We
+have already expressed our belief that no one has a right to expect that
+people will believe in the reality of a man's knowledge respecting
+the unseen world, so long as he is palpably at fault in his notions
+respecting the visible creation. Consequently we assert that one who
+is careless as regards actual phenomena and ignorant of common truths,
+cannot be trusted in metaphorical, mythological, or divine lore.
+
+A comparatively small amount of observation proves to us that amongst
+the highest classes of animal life, the wing is the counterpart of the
+arm or of the fore-leg. In the creature called the "flying squirrel,"
+there is no pinion as there is in the "condor,"--there is simply an
+unusual development of skin which unites the fore and hind limbs much in
+the same way as the web unites together the toes of the goose or duck.
+In the bat, which, though a mammal, is allied, as regards its power of
+flight, to the birds, we find that the fore-leg is developed so as to
+make a bony frame on which a thin skin may be stretched, which is still
+farther strengthened by being attached to the hind leg. In the ordinary
+bird, the skin which we see in the bat and flying squirrel is replaced
+by feathers, which are longer, broader, and lighter than a fold of skin.
+The ordinary method, therefore, in which angelic beings are depicted
+does not associate them with the highest classes of animal life.
+Our modern artists are much more skilful in depicting Satan than in
+pourtraying Raphael, Gabriel, or Michael.
+
+Our last remarks would be comparatively unimportant, were it not that
+the close observation which the moderns have given, to every thing
+connected with natural history, has shown us that there is a harmony
+throughout creation. No animals have noses on their backs, nor eyes in
+their hind legs. No insect--so far as I can remember--has a thick neck;
+nor has any mammal or bird a thin one, like the wasp, bee, or fly. As we
+imagine that it is proper to extend our knowledge rather by the lights
+which we have already attained, than by silly or hap-hazard guessing, so
+we think that it is better to investigate the subject of angelic forms
+by comparative anatomy, than by the dreams of divines, who probably have
+never studied any other subject than the best means of gaining influence
+over their fellow-mortals. We assert that there is not in all the
+creation, known to man, any creature with arms and legs--or their
+equivalents, legs and wings, or fore-legs and hind legs--which has, in
+addition, wings upon arms, legs, head, or back. In such a combination
+there is something monstrous. I confess that I could, if satisfactory
+evidence were given, credit the occurrence of a devil with a tail--of a
+centaur with a horse's body and a human head--but I could not possibly
+believe that Satan went about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he could
+devour in the dress of a bull with bat-like wings, as well as horns and
+hoofs; or that an angel of God approaches us in a form nearer to the
+scarabseus of Egypt than to the human form divine. Yet when we say that
+a pictorial angel approaches nearer to a beetle that revels in
+filth, than to an etherial essence which ought to be very close upon
+perfection, we are still far from precision. Ladybirds, cockchafers, and
+others of the class allied to the scarabseus that was almost deified
+in Egypt, have six legs, two wings, and two wing cases--ten means of
+locomotion in all. Butterflies, moths, and the like, have six legs and
+two wings. Consequently, if there be any design in creation, and angels
+have been created, they can only be regarded as the connecting link
+between the highest and the lowest classes of animal life.
+
+If then, there be such a thing as harmony of design in Creation--if the
+Creator be not the author of confusion (1 Cor. xiv. 33)--if matter be
+material, and imponderable forces cannot be weighed or made otherwise
+recognisable by the senses, except by their effects--if the Almighty be
+omnipresent and omniscient, it is absolutely impossible for a thoughtful
+mind to believe in the existence of angels in any shape--whether
+material, immaterial, or essential. But this consideration forces us
+still further, and we feel compelled to ask ourselves, whether, with
+our minds constituted as they are, we can believe in, or understand
+any thing wholly immaterial? Whether we can imagine the existence, for,
+example, of "force" without matter?--a shape which is formless?--a form
+visible to the eye, yet wholly immaterial?
+
+It seems to me to be desirable, at the present day, to call attention to
+this point in a particular manner, inasmuch as there are vast numbers,
+both in Europe and America, who believe in what is called Spiritualism,
+and are, in reality, as greatly the dupes of charlatans as were the
+disciples of Alexander the false prophet, whose history we gave in vol.
+II. The jargon of these pretenders is based upon the assertion in the
+Bible that there are spirits--the accounts of certain of these returning
+to the earth which they have quitted, or conversing with human beings in
+dreams, or in reality. But both they and their victims fail to see that
+a spirit, being without a material existence, cannot put matter into
+motion--it cannot produce the waves in the ether that cause those
+impressions on eye and ear which give the idea of sight and sound.
+We may best give our reader a glimpse of our meaning, if we compare a
+spirit to a picture projected on a sheet by a magic lantern. It is true
+that we can see it--yet we know that it is powerless to hear, to speak,
+to move; it cannot of itself even vanish. Yet there are many onlookers
+who, by a ventriloquist, can be made to believe that the picture speaks.
+
+After prolonged observation, I believe that spirits, angels, demons, &c.,
+have no reality except in the delusions of individuals whose diseased
+brains induce them to believe that they see apparitions and hear them
+speak. To this matter we shall probably return by and by.
+
+We may now revert to a subject which we mentioned incidentally a few
+pages back--viz., the ideas which induced priestly inventors to depict
+the angels of their imagination in a particular form. Those who are
+familiar with the Bible, and not with any other book, and who decline to
+examine into the ways of God in the universe generally, will naturally
+reply to our strictures that the angels of the Jews were described in
+a particular fashion, because they were seen "in the visions of Elohim"
+(Ezek. i. 1; Dan. x. 5, 6; and Rev. i. 10-20). But this observation
+involves the idea that the angels which have appeared are so various
+in shape, that an individual who had seen and described one, could not
+enable another man to recognize a similar messenger when seen under
+another form. In Genesis xviii, xix., xxxii., and Judges xiii, angels
+assume the form of men; in Isaiah vi. they have six wings--one pair being
+used to cover the face, another to cover the feet, and another to
+fly with. To this it may be objected that what Isaiah described were
+seraphim; yet verse 6 shows that one of these, at least, was a messenger
+or envoy. In Ezekiel i. we find an apparent description of angels, or an
+envoy, which is so involved that it is most difficult to understand it.
+In Daniel x. an archangel is described as a brilliant man whose body was
+like the beryl--_tarshish_--a stone of a sea-green colour probably; or,
+possibly, a topaz, "whose eyes were like lightning, and whose arms and
+feet were like polished brass, and whose loins were girded with fine
+gold"--as if to conceal his sex--a characteristic which we find, from
+Matt. xxii. 30, angels do not possess. The writer's description must,
+therefore, be classed with that of afreets, genii, and the like, in the
+_Arabian Nights_ tales. In Zechariah, again, we find an angel or envoys
+described (ch. i.)--(a), "as a man riding upon a red horse," having
+behind him "red horses, speckled and white" (v. 8); (6), as "four horns"
+(vv. 18,19); (c), as "four carpenters" (w. 20, 21.) Again, in chap, v.,
+we find an angel in "a flying roll;" another in "an ephah;" another in
+a big piece of lead, and another in a woman, and still another in two
+beings of the same nature.
+
+We can readily understand that some who are unacquainted with lunatics,
+would describe these portraitures as the result of insanity or
+hallucination; but those who are more conversant with persons of unsound
+mind will doubt whether any ordinary insane persons ever see or describe
+things which they have never met with. One or two, certainly, have
+wonderful flights of imagination, but these have been highly educated
+men of extensive reading, &c. In mania, when visions are seen, some
+person or other whose description has been read by the lunatic, or who
+has really been observed, appears--or something which the individual has
+seen depicted, or otherwise been told of, presents itself, or there is
+a strange jumble of reality and possibility--just as in dreams,
+comical, grotesque, or horrible combinations are common, and cause us no
+surprise. There is, however, too much consistency in the method in which
+angels are depicted, to enable us to believe that their form was decided
+by any lunatic or dreamer.
+
+We scarcely can form an idea whether the Egyptians had a definite belief
+in angels, as the word is understood by moderns. With them, as it was
+with the Greeks, it is most probable that all beings which Jews
+and Christians alike would call angels, were designated "gods" or
+"demigods." Be this as it may, we find that the Mizraim had deities who
+wore wings. A round disc, apparently intended to represent the sun, two
+erected serpents to support it, and a long broad pinion on each side of
+the body, was symbolic of "the Supreme." The same may be said to be true
+of Assyria and Persia--only that in the symbolism of the two last,
+the serpents did not, generally, appear. In plate 30a, of Wilkinson's
+_Ancient Egyptians, 2d series_, a human figure is represented as winged,
+and before him is a five-rayed star. In plate 35 of the same book, Isis
+is represented as a nude woman, winged; the position of one pinion being
+such that it serves to conceal the body from the waist almost to
+the knees. In plate 36, "Athor" is depicted as being attended by a
+human-headed bird. On the other hand, in plate 39, where the gods are
+instructing the king in the use of the bow, the former are bird-headed
+men without wings. Whilst in plate 44, the soul of a dying man is
+represented as a human-headed bird with wings, arms, and legs. In plates
+52, 53 of the same work, we notice specimens of winged serpents. In
+plate 63, Isis again appears as a wing bearer, and in this figure we
+find, as we ought to do, that the feathers of the pinions are attached
+to the arms of the goddess.
+
+In Assyria, we may gather from the sculptures which have been preserved,
+that there was not any idea of angels being essentially different to
+gods. Indeed, it is very difficult wherever there is a polytheism in any
+form, to understand the distinction between a god and an angel Even in
+the religion which passes current as "the Christian," which acknowledges
+three gods as "coeternal together and coequal," we are distinctly
+told that one of the three "proceeds" from the father and the son
+(_Athanasian Creed_). The New Testament, again, repeatedly informs
+us that the son was "sent" into this world by his father to effect a
+special purpose--e.g.t "God sent his only begotten son into the world,
+that we might live through him" (1 John iv. 9; see also John iii. 16, 17;
+Matt. xxi. 37; Mark xii. 4; John v. 38; vi. 29; vii. 28, 29; and compare
+with John i. 33 and Mal.iii. 1-3). If, therefore, we regard the bearer
+of a message or an order from the supreme king as an "angel," Jesus of
+Nazareth was certainly one, inasmuch as he said that he was sent hither
+by the father of all; and the Holy Ghost was another, for we find John
+(xv. 26) stating that Jesus would send him to the earth--an assertion
+repeated in chap, xvi. 7--whilst in the fourteenth chapter of the same
+book we observe that the father was to send this comforter, who was
+to abide in this world for ever (v. 16). Indeed, the presumed
+identification of Jesus with the promised Messiah, "the prince" of Dan.
+ix. 25, shows the belief that he was one who was as much appointed to
+do a certain duty as was that "angel of death" which went out to destroy
+the Assyrian army (2 Kin. xix. 35).
+
+With such indicated reservation, we notice that the angel which the gods
+sent to watch over various Assyrian kings is depicted almost invariably
+with wings. Now he is an archer, standing in a disc representing the
+sun, having wings below him; now he stands in front of the circle, the
+pinions and sometimes his body terminating in feathers resembling a
+bird's expanded tail. Then, again, the minor divinities bear wings, some
+of them no less than four (Bonomi's _Nineveh_, 2d ed. p. 157). It would
+be superfluous to linger over a description of the winged bulls with
+human heads, and the winged men with eagle or hawks' faces, which are
+so familiar to us in consequence of the researches of Layard and others.
+All alike bear testimony to the connection, in human celestialism,
+between birds and men. Nor can we reasonably doubt, that the idea
+intended to be conveyed by the inventor of the Assyrian composition
+which we refer to was, that the being, thus symbolized, was famous for
+strength like the bull; for rapidity of movement, like the eagle; and
+for wisdom, like a man.
+
+There is to be found amongst the relics of the ancient Persians a symbol
+of an angel who was supposed specially to guard the king. This somewhat
+resembles that used at Nineveh. There are, however, many forms of it.
+For example, we find in Hyde's _De Religione veterum Persarum_ (Table
+6) a figure of a Persepolitan king, above whom, in the air, and quite
+distinct from the sun, stands a venerable man fully draped, standing
+upon what seems to be a large pine cone reversed, which is surrounded
+by clouds instead of being furnished with wings. The man thus depicted
+extends the forefinger of one hand to the sun, whilst with the other
+he holds a ring. In Table 6 Mithra is represented as winged, after the
+modern fashion of angels.
+
+Hyde assures us, in chapter twelve, that twelve angels were recognized
+by the ancient Persians, in addition to those who presided over the
+months and days. One of these appears to be the same as the Greek
+Rhadamanthus, who sat as supreme judge in the invisible world, and
+apportioned to the dead their rewards or punishments. A second was
+equivalent to Neptune and ruled the sea, but he had also under his
+charge everything which related to generation, or production generally.
+The third was much the same as the more modern Lares and Penates, and
+superintended dwelling-houses and families. The fourth had a somewhat
+similar and subordinate office. The fifth was named after the stars, and
+had his kingdom in the south heavens. The sixth the learned author does
+not describe. The seventh really seems to be a sort of duplicate angel,
+called Haruts and Maruts, who were two naughty ones that rebelled, and
+are, according to some, imprisoned still in Babylon, being hung up by
+the heels. The eighth, Hyde is himself doubtful about, and does not
+describe. The ninth is the same as the German "storm-king." The tenth
+may fairly be styled the "angel of the victualling department." The
+eleventh is the giver of life, the opponent of Azrael, the minister of
+death; and the twelfth angel is one which we may call either by the name
+of "conscience" or "judgment" for he it is who approves or reprobates
+the works of man.
+
+Though I quote from Hyde, I am somewhat doubtful of the value of his
+authority. He relies to a considerable extent upon the work known as the
+"Zend Avesta," and supposed to represent the tenets of Zoroaster and his
+followers. This book is, as I have mentioned, generally believed to be
+a genuine relic of antiquity by Continental scholars, though it is
+mistrusted by British orientalists, who regard it as a modern production
+founded upon Aryanism, Christianity, and Maho-metanism. In my judgment,
+my compatriots are right; and if it be proper to trust such a man as
+Sir H. Rawlinson in the matter of the "Avesta," one may be pardoned for
+believing with him that the book of Job was written by a Persian Jew, or
+translated by a Hebrew from a work in the time of Darius, or some other
+of the Achœmenidæ.
+
+In Job angels are only once mentioned--viz., in chap. iv. 18, and then
+they are spoken of in such a way, that we are doubtful whether or not
+to regard the verse simply as a poetic metaphor. The idea which runs
+through the part of the chapter in which the passage occurs is this:
+"Job, you are suffering; the innocent do not perish; the righteous are
+not cut off; you have been very proper; man has nothing to say against
+you; but you are not right in accusing God of injustice; you doubtless
+have done some wrong, for even God's servants are not wholly trusted;
+they sometimes misbehave unknowingly, and his own angels are called
+perverse by him (Job iv. 18); you cannot expect to be better than they,
+and it is no shame to you to be in the same category as they are."
+
+But it must be allowed that the words of the story--"There was a day
+when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and
+Satan came also among them; and the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest
+thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in
+the earth, and from walking up and down in it"--do really intimate
+a full belief in good angels and bad, who were not so much angels,
+messengers, or envoys, as subordinate powers resembling the barons of
+ancient England, the Paladins of Charlemagne, or the kings created by
+Buonaparte; amongst whom all were, so to speak, "good angels," except
+Bernadotte, of Sweden, who rebelled against the imperial thraldom, and
+became to his late master a modern satan. In whichever way we regard the
+subject of angels, amongst the Persians there is little doubt that
+the Iranian conception of God was wholly anthropomorphic, and that
+the Medians and their magi, as well as their Persian neighbours,
+acknowledged a "father of lies," who was antagonistic to the deity.*
+
+     * Quintus Curtius informs us (_Life of Alexander the Great_,
+     b. v. a ii.) that Darius had in Babylon a consecrated table,
+     from which he used to eat; that Alexander began to be
+     ashamed of his sacrilege in treading upon it--(it had been
+     placed as a footstool for his imperial chair)--the sacrilege
+     being against the gods presiding over hospitality, carved
+     upon the table. These may be regarded as angels or
+     otherwise, according to fancy.
+
+Our knowledge of the angelic mythology of Babylonia is comparatively
+slight. The main thing which shrouds the subject in darkness is the
+difficulty which exists to distinguish between god, gods, and angels. If
+we could put any confidence in the book of Daniel, we should recognize
+therefrom that his "Nebuchadnezzar" most distinctly believed in the
+existence of angels, for in chap. iii. 25 he believes that he sees the
+son of God (_bar elohim_), and in verse 28 of the same chap. he remarks
+that "God hath sent his angel (_malachah_), and delivered his servants
+that trusted in him." Again, in the fourth chapter, in which he recounts
+a dream, he declares that he saw "a watcher and a holy one" (_geer and
+kadesk_) come down from heaven with a message to him. But Daniel is not
+an adequate authority upon ancient Babylonian beliefs. We are, in the
+absence of direct testimony upon this subject» driven to such evidence
+as is drawn from sculptured or other remains in ruins and on gems, and
+to cuneiform and other writings. George Rawlinson sums up his account
+thus--(_Ancient Monarchies_, vol. I, ch. vii., pp. 138, 9): "Various
+deities, whom it was not considered at all necessary to trace to a
+single stock, divided the allegiance of the people, and even of the
+kings, who regarded with equal respect, and glorified with exalted
+epithets, some fifteen or sixteen personages. Next to these principal
+gods were a far more numerous assemblage of inferior or secondary
+divinities, less often mentioned, and regarded as less worthy of honour,
+but still recognized generally through the country. Finally, the
+Pantheon contained a host of mere local gods or genii, every town and
+almost every village in Babylonia being under the protection of its own
+particular divinity."
+
+The passage above quoted, which represents very fairly our existent
+knowledge, suggests to the thoughtful mind a comparison with other
+religions. In Greece there were many great gods and goddesses, and
+other divinities of less renown. In Rome there were gods for almost
+everything. But what these nations called "gods" the Hebrews called
+"angels," as we shall see shortly. In Christendom angels and gods have,
+as a general rule, been deposed, and "saints" have taken their
+places. Not only has every town a cathedral which is dedicated to some
+particular name--said to have been borne by a holy man or woman, whose
+aid in heaven is thus secured by his votaries upon earth--but every
+church in every parish, and every chapel in every church is set apart to
+a particular "saint." Still farther, every trade and every position in
+life has its tutelary patron in heaven, and secondary gods are as
+common in Papal districts as they were in the land of the Chaldeans. The
+philosopher cannot find a valid distinction between Ishtar, Venus, and
+Mary, Dionysus and Denis, and a host of other gods, saints, or angels.
+
+Assuming that the minor gods of Greece and Rome, and those essences
+generally called "angels" are substantially the same order of beings,
+we find that the Babylonians had a great number of celestial envoys,
+viceroys, or messengers who ruled over the land and sea,
+the sky and storms, the thunder and the rain, crops, men, war,
+buildings--everything, indeed, was superintended by some one on behalf
+of the Supreme Ruler.
+
+We might pause here to speculate upon the question whether there is any
+difference in kind between such a kingdom as Babylonia or Russia and the
+heaven believed in by the ancient Jews and the modern Christians. In
+all there is an autocratic sovereign who has a prime minister and
+secretaries of state, who keep his books and perform his will according
+to his bidding; under these again there are private clerks, who
+superintend wind and weather, rain and hail, snow and frost; governors
+of provinces, mayors, or prefects of cities; police, and so large a host
+of subordinates, that nothing, great or small, can be done which escapes
+the notice of one of the imperial envoys or ministers. The inventor
+of heaven, such as we know it, was certainly an admirer of
+'centralization'. Those who desire to see the description of the unseen
+world modified are those who are opposed to an absolute monarchy, and
+who see in everything, everybody, and in all the world a proof of the
+presence of a supreme, omniscient, omnipresent, Creator, Ruler, or
+Governor.
+
+Without going into an account of the Chaldean mythology, we may say that
+there is strong reason to believe, both from the nomenclature which has
+survived, and from such gems as are preserved from destruction, that
+every Babylonian, whether bond or free, was called after some deity, who
+was supposed ever afterwards to be his tutelary angel In modern times
+Roman Catholics hold a similar belief, and each parent imagines that by
+making selection, for his offspring, of the name of a particular saint,
+the latter can be induced to take the child under its special care.
+
+The learned in papal mythology know that every saint is depicted in
+such a manner that none shall be mistaken. To such an extent indeed is
+pictorial contrivance carried, that the art of recognising a particular
+saint demands a special study. It is all but certain that the same
+custom prevailed in Babylon; but, as all the professors which taught the
+means of identification have passed away, we can only guess at the
+name or nature of the angel. Let us imagine, for example, what an
+archaeologist could make of the figure of Mary--of the bleeding or
+burning heart, two thousand years after all history of the mother of
+Jesus has passed away, like that of Ishtar has done. A curious figure,
+called heart-shaped, but really not so, is found placed on the central
+part of a woman's breast; from it flames appear to arise and blood
+to drop, and through it is a dagger, and this mass of imagery is put
+outside the body, and the dress is held open to enable any one to see
+it.
+
+Without a key to the enigma, this is a mystery; but when the key is
+given, and the inquirer hears the explanation, he finds it so absurd
+that it is difficult to believe it. In like manner, when I see upon a
+Babylonian gem, copied as a vignette on the title-page of Landseer's
+_Sabean Researches_, a woman who has a beard, a necklace, two small
+breasts, from each of which she squeezes apparently a river of milk;
+over whose breastbone there is one large globe and two small ones,
+placed perpendicularly; who has a spider waist, and wears a skirt
+covered with pistol-shaped ornaments, I, not knowing whether the
+Chaldeans adored "our lady of the flowing bosom," cannot frame an idea
+as to the name of the saint, angel, virgin, or martyr which is depicted,
+or what may have been her peculiar duties, who she was, and what trade
+she patronised.
+
+Whatever idea the Papal Church entertains respecting her canonised
+saints, one thing is remarkable, viz., that they are not portrayed as
+having wings. Each has an aureole of some sort round his or her head--a
+painter's contrivance for saying "This individual, who seems like a man
+or woman, is not a common but a divine creature." Francis of Assisi is,
+in addition, depicted with stigmata, or marks on his hands, feet, and
+side, which, though they resemble those made with nails in the case of
+Jesus of Nazareth, were doubtless, in the case of the "saint," made with
+the strong caustic called "spirit of salt" or other escharotic. We
+might speculate upon the state of mind which sees in the assumption
+of "stigmata" a greater evidence of faith than would be offered by the
+conversion of the arms into the pinions of Michael the archangel; but,
+as it is so much easier for even the most potent saint to make breaches
+in his skin, than to persuade feathers to grow on his arms, we do not
+think the task worthy of our care.
+
+The Babylonians in this respect were predecessors of papal pagans. It is
+a rare thing to find on any of their gems a winged angel or genius. One
+such is depicted on the frontispiece of Landseer's _Sabean Researches_,
+which is birdlike both as regards the head and pinions; and four other
+winged creatures are given in Lajard's _Culte de Venus_. In two the
+figures are human headed, and combined with the body of a quadruped.
+At a later period of Babylonian mythology "grotesques" were introduced,
+apparently from Egypt.
+
+It is not to be lightly passed by, that the symbol which represented the
+presence of the deity--which, if we may adopt a phrase, we should call
+"the angel of his presence" (see Exod. xxxiii. 14,15; Isa, lxiii. 9), is
+almost identical in the Chaldean and the papal religions, viz., a circle
+containing a cross, an emblem as common in our churchyards as in the
+capital of Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+The resemblance between papal and Chaldean emblems and doctrines have
+repeatedly attracted the attention of theologians; and I am not far
+wrong in asserting that Protestants generally have identified "the
+woman" of Revelation xvii., spoken of as "Mystery, Babylon the Great,
+the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth," with Rome under
+the popes. For myself I do not care to express any opinion on the point,
+beyond a general dissent from the popular estimation of the dictum and
+its interpretation. At the same time I must declare that every year,
+over which my inquiries have extended, has imbued me more and more with
+wonder at the similarity between the ancient Babylonian and the modern
+papal religion. The two resemble children of the same parents, only that
+one is older than the other; and it requires but little penetration in
+an observer to trace in both, the lineaments of a grovelling
+superstition, united with a base priestly cunning.
+
+In our own estimation the strongest evidence in favour of a belief in
+angels, of every degree, amongst the Chaldeans and Babylonians is the
+enormous development of angelic mythology amongst the Jews, who lived
+in the city of Nebuchadnezzar, and in those who migrated thence into
+Palestine subsequent to the period of the captivity. From indications,
+which are necessarily imperfect, we have formed the opinion that the
+Babylonians were astronomical students of great proficiency, from a very
+remote antiquity; that many of these professors turned their attention
+to what is called judicial astrology--i.e., they attempted to judge
+of future events by certain phenomena occurring in the heavens, and
+especially in the relationship between different planets and the various
+constellations.
+
+As the planets wander through the sky, naturally they were regarded as
+the messengers of El--"the Supreme," who sent them to investigate the
+condition of groups of stars, many of which formed a sort of community
+that was unvisited by the Great King, for months together, and, in
+many instances, not at all.As the heliacal rising of one star seemed
+generally to be followed by good weather, and the corresponding rise
+of another intimated the reverse, it was natural that one should be
+regarded as an angel of happiness, the other as a harbinger of misery
+or death. So strongly rooted is this belief amongst some, that it even
+"holds its own" in educated England. The astronomer Royal is often asked
+to cast a nativity; and a living merchant of Liverpool does so yet,
+having confidence that his deductions suffice to prove their value.
+
+The formula is "_Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus_"--"The
+stars rule men, but God rules the stars." A guardian star, then, that is
+to say, the particular planet or other conspicuous celestial body which
+was "in the ascendant" at the period of the birth of each individual,
+was regarded in the same light as Christians esteem protective angels
+and Romanists estimate patron saints. There can be, we think, little
+doubt that the seven archangels are the seven planets known to the
+ancients, each of which had a day dedicated to it, and who thus
+originated the week of seven days. These amongst the Phoenicians were
+called the Cabeiri, or the powerful ones. In the conclusion at which we
+have arrived we are greatly strengthened by the discovery in Babylonian
+ruins of certain bowls; facsimiles and descriptions of which are given
+in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 510-526. The inscriptions which
+have been translated appear to be forms of exorcism, or amulets, by
+which evil spirits are to be driven away; and reference is made in these
+writings to the devil, for example, under the name _shida_; and to
+Satan under the cognomen _Satanah_, evidently the same as the Satanas
+habitually used in the New Testament; also to Nirich, probably from
+a root like the Hebrew _narag_, "a noise maker or screamer." This
+creature, as I think, is the same as the "Satyr" of Isaiah xiii. 21,
+and xxxiv. 14, and represents or personifies those unseen but howling
+maniacs who wandered about at night (see _Lilith and Satyr_ in my second
+volume). Another demon is called _Zachiah_, a cognomen which I cannot
+satisfactorily explain unless it is allied to _Zachar,_ and indicates
+the power which, as the French would say, "can tie a knot in the needle"
+(nouer l'aiguilette) or "a levin brand." Another of the devils is called
+"Abitur of the Mountain," whose name resembling, as it does, the Jewish
+_Abiathar_, is more likely to belong to the good than the bad angels.
+Lilith is another demon still feared by the Jews, who employ charms
+against her to this day. She is supposed to be a sort of spiritual
+vampyre, and to suck the life out of infants and young people. These
+names of angels occur in the first inscription given by Layard; in
+the second we find Satan, associated with idolatry, curses, vows,
+whisperings, witchcraft, and _Zevatta_--a concealer, rider, or enchanter
+from root like this and answering to the fairy which steals away.
+
+     "It was between the night and day
+     When the fairy king has power,
+     That I sank down in a sinful fray,
+     And 'twixt life and death was snatcht away
+     To the joyless Elfin bower."
+
+     --Lady of the Lake, canto iv., stanza xv.
+
+Another is named _Nidra_, which I take to signify vows made by supposed
+sorcerers. This demon is associated in the same line with _Zevatta_
+above described. _Patiki_ is another bad influence, probably now, "a
+sword," for the charm has reference to freedom from captivity. Another
+devil is called _Isarta_, which I take to be a leader of banditti or
+marauders, from the Assyrian word (Furst's lexicon s.v. _asar_),
+"a leader, head or commander," and a word from a root like _ta_, "to
+drive," "to push forward," "to sweep away." We should call such an one
+"the demon of destruction."
+
+In this same inscription two good angels are named, Batiel or Bethiail,
+probably a variant of Bethuel, "the residence of El," and Katuel or
+Kathuail, the executioner or sword of El, from _katal_, to kill; compare
+this with the expression, "Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and
+say, sword, go through that land, so that I put off man and beast
+from it" (Ezek. xiv. 17). In addition to these two angels another
+is mentioned who has eleven names, not one of which is written in
+full--e.g. SS. BB. CCC.
+
+In a third inscription a devil is named "Abdi," which may be derived
+from the root _abad_, and be regarded as the same as the New Testament
+Abaddon (Rev. ix. 10)--the king of the slaughterers, bucaneers, rovers,
+&c. We can fancy that Negroes who are captured and sold in droves
+to foreigners, might imagine that Abdi was the devil which ruled the
+African slave drivers and Christian purchasers. This demon is associated
+with Levatta,--with tribulations, the machinations of the Assyrians,
+misery, treachery, rebellion; Nidra, with sorrows generally; and _Shoq_,
+which I take to be from a root like _shuq, or shaqaq_--i.e., "enemies
+thirsting for booty, rangers, bands of robbers." Compare--"And the
+spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies"
+(1 Sam. xiii. 17). See also--He "delivered them into the hand of the
+spoilers" (Jud. ii. 14; 2 Kin. xvii. 20). Amongst the devils must, I
+think, also be classed _Asdarta_, which is clearly the same as the
+goddess Astarte, and she is closely associated with "the machinations of
+the Assyrians."
+
+The good angels of this inscription are Barakiel, Ramiel, Raamiel,
+Nahabiel, and Sharmiel, over whose names we will not now linger, except
+to notice that the devils have names compounded with _jah_, whilst the
+good ones are derived from EL.
+
+In the fifth inscription, amongst the bad things are mentioned evil
+spirits, both male and female, the evil eye, sorcery, and enchantments
+both from men and women, along with Nidra and Levatta. The good angels
+are called Babnaa, Ninikia, and Umanel, which I take to be intended
+for Wu, _banahel_=El builds, or "the strong one who establishes us;"
+_nachaghel_. El is powerful, or the Angel of Strength; and amanel, or
+"the fostering angel."
+
+In some fragments the names of good angels found have been Nadkiel,
+Ramiel, Damael, Hachael, and Sharmiel, which we shall probably notice
+again subsequently.
+
+We do not lay any particular stress upon the fact of the bowls, on which
+these inscriptions were found, having been dug up amongst Babylonian
+ruins; nor do we care to prove either that they were of Jewish or
+Chaldean origin. What we here desire to show is, that there existed in
+Babylon a full belief in the existence of evil and good influences which
+were invisible; that some individuals had, or were thought to possess,
+supernatural powers for harm, which could be counteracted by those
+who placed themselves under the protection of potencies supposed to be
+holier, wiser, or stronger than the evil genii From the method in which
+everything connected with witchcraft, magic, astrology, and the like, is
+spoken of in the Old Testament, and from the fact that slaves are much
+more likely to imitate their masters than conquerors to become pupils of
+the vanquished, we conclude that it was not the Hebrews who taught the
+Chaldees, but that the contrary was the case.
+
+In the view thus enunciated we are confirmed by the manner in which old
+Jewish writers spoke of the nation that enslaved them--e.g., "Babylon,
+the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency" (Isa. xiii. 19); "All of them
+princes to look at after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea."...
+And "she (Jerusalem) doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into
+Chaldea; and... she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated
+from (or by) them" (Ezek. xxiii. 15-17); "It is a mighty nation, it is
+an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not" (Jerem.
+v. 15)--Jeremiah knew more about the people than Isaiah (see Isa.
+xxiii. 13). Habakkuk, again, speaking of the same people, says (chap,
+i. 6-10)--"The Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation... terrible and
+dreadful:... they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a
+scorn unto them." Such being the estimation of the Babylonians by Hebrew
+prophets, it is morally certain that the Jews would regard them with
+respect, admire, study, and copy them. To what extent the imitation went
+it is difficult to say.
+
+When, therefore, we find that the descendants of Abraham, a patriarch
+whom a veneration for the ancient Babylonians induced the Israelite
+mythologists to represent as being a Chaldee; and those who were taught
+on the banks of the Euphrates, were spoken of in Rome about the time of
+our era, and shortly afterwards, as being almost synonymous epithets
+for sorcerers, astrologers, charmers, &c., we must conclude that the
+Mesopotamian was the master, the Palestinian the pupil. That the
+two were regarded as relatives we infer from Juvenal (sat. vi.
+544-552)--"For a small piece of money the Jews sell whatever dreams you
+may choose, but an Armenian or Commagenian soothsayer promises a tender
+love;... but her (i.e., the lady who consults such folk) confidence in
+Chaldeans will be the greater."
+
+But, ere we leave this portion of our Essay, we must notice one other
+piece of evidence of considerable value which is drawn from the New
+Testament. We find, for example, in Acts xxiii. 8, "The Sadducees
+say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but
+the Pharisees confess both." If we inquire into the origin of these
+sects--and we shall be greatly assisted in doing so by two very
+elaborate articles by the erudite Dr. Ginsburg, in Kitto's _Cyclopaedia
+of Biblical Knowledge_--we shall see reason to believe that the
+Sadducees were a sect who considered that they were not bound to believe
+any tenet as necessary unless they could find it distinctly enunciated
+in the Pentateuch. They resolutely declined, therefore, to accept
+as revelation such stories as had been adopted by the Hebrews from
+Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and possibly from the Romans.
+
+We might institute a comparison between the Sadducees and those whom
+we know as "reformers." The first acknowledged the authority of
+Moses alone, such as they found it in "the five books;" the second
+acknowledged the authority of Jesus and his apostles, such as they found
+it in the New Testament: the first rejected the commentaries of Rabbis;
+the second those of "the fathers." Both appealed to antiquity, and both
+traced to what we may designate paganism, heathenism, or foreign sources
+generally, a large portion of the current faith which they saw around
+them. The Sadducees regarded the doctrine of seraphic interference,
+and all the angelic mythology common in their time, as the fond fancy of
+those who desired to harmonize Judaism with Gentilism. The Reformers, in
+their turn, rejected all the fables of Papal anchorites, &c.; denied the
+power of any martyr to influence the condition of the living after their
+death; and generally opposed the saintly, as the Sadducees opposed the
+angelic, hierarchy. Individuals who sympathize with Luther, Calvin,
+and those of a similar way of thinking, may readily understand the
+Sadducees, whereas, those of what is called the "High Church," will give
+their interest to the Pharisees, who upheld the then mediaeval customs,
+&c.
+
+It is probable that some will say, that Jesus of Nazareth, being the
+son of God, a deity incarnate, and consequently familiar with everything
+which goes on in the court of heaven; having adopted the angelic
+mythology; having conversed familiarly with the devil; having sent, at
+least, two thousand devils out of one man into a herd of swine; having
+gone down to hell, wherever that may be; and having preached to the
+spirits imprisoned there, whoever they may be or have been; having,
+still further, had an angel to comfort him; having had a conference with
+Moses and Elijah on a certain hill; having asserted that he had only to
+pray to his father to obtain the assistance of twelve legions of angels;
+and having also told us that every child has an angel who stands before
+the face of God--seeing these things, I say, one can imagine persons
+asseverating that all our current notions of angels, which are built
+upon the New Testament, must be true.
+
+To this we rejoin, that these assertions beg the question. The
+philosopher affirms that the idea of angels is incompatible with that
+of an omnipresent God--that the belief of Jesus in an angelic mythology
+proves him to have had an anthropomorphic notion of "the Supreme," and,
+as a consequence, it follows that Jesus was nothing more than a Jew,
+although very superior to the generality of his countrymen, having
+possibly been taught by some Buddhist.* The bigot, on the other hand,
+can only scream out the formularies which the so-called orthodox provide
+for him. Johanna Southcote once made some folks believe that she was
+pregnant with a Messiah, and she had most enthusiastic followers; but
+neither argument nor rhetoric sufficed to beget the promised baby and,
+in like manner, no amount of declamation can convert an assumption into
+a fact. But of this truth most of our theologians appear to be ignorant,
+and, like the heathen with their litanies, they think that they will
+obtain their will by "much speaking."
+
+     * It will be noticed by the reader, that the remarks in the
+     text have reference to the supernatural stories which were
+     interwoven into the biography of Jesus by those whom we call
+     Evangelists. The bibliolaters must, however, stand or fall
+     by the many legendary tales which pass current for truth. If
+     Jesus, as an ordinary Jew, believed in angels--just as our
+     king, James I., believed in the existence of modern witches
+     --we cannot use his evidence to prove the existence of angels
+     and devils, any more than the Christian laws against
+     witchcraft demonstrate that old women and men sold their
+     souls and bodies to Satan. If, on the other hand, we allow
+     that the spiritual mythology of the New Testament is due to
+     Pharasaic influence, all the testimony propounded in favour
+     of the assertion, that Jesus was, in reality, "a son of
+     Jehovah," crumbles away.
+
+When summoned, a long time ago, to give evidence in a court of justice,
+the question was put to me--"Now, doctor, you have heard the symptoms
+from which the deceased suffered; do you believe that they were produced
+by arsenic?" Being doubtful about the propriety of the query in a court
+of law so prudish as ours is, I remained silent, and in an instant the
+judge, Baron Alderson, said--"I won't allow that question to be put or
+answered; you want the witness to take the place of the jury, and it
+shall not be done. You may ask the doctor, if you will, what are the
+symptoms produced by arsenic, when taken in a poisonous dose, and then
+it is the business of the jury to compare those, with such as have
+already been sworn to as occurring in the man before he died." This
+anecdote is frequently in my mind when I am composing an essay like the
+present. If I wish to convince the jury who reads my papers of the truth
+of a particular conclusion to which I have arrived, it is not enough for
+me to express my own opinions. I may assert, in the matter in question,
+that I am a skilled witness, and have closely investigated the subject,
+but it is open to any one to doubt my industry and to distrust my
+judgment; consequently, it is necessary for me to adduce evidence, as
+well as to draw deductions therefrom.
+
+The hypothesis which I have formed, after a pretty extensive reading,
+is, that the belief in the mythology of angels which is current amongst
+Christians at the present time, and which is based upon a series of
+pretended revelations, said to have been made exclusively to Jews of
+ancient times, is, in reality, founded upon fancies of pagan priests or
+poets; and, as a corollary, I infer, either that our celestial mythology
+must be given up to oblivion, as being heathenish, or that we must
+abandon those claims to an exclusive inspiration which have been made
+for, and accorded by many to, the Bible. I have already described the
+ideas associated with angels in some ancient peoples, and I now propose
+to examine those of other nations with whom the Jews and Christians,
+directly or indirectly, came in contact.
+
+The reader of ancient Roman history cannot doubt that the city on the
+Tiber was indebted to the Etruscans for all, or nearly all, of its early
+knowledge. It is probable that the original gods and goddesses of Rome
+were those of their northern neighbours, and everything which the Romans
+knew of augury was due to the priests of Etruria; consequently it is not
+unprofitable to inquire, as far as we can, whether these had any idea
+of beings such as we call angels. As we have not many available written
+remains of the remarkable people to whom we refer, we are obliged to be
+satisfied with pictorial and other relics which have survived until our
+days. Some of the scenes depicted on urns, vases, and walls, in tombs
+and elsewhere, are sufficiently explanatory of the subjects which
+the artist has desired to pourtray; others, on the contrary, can be
+interpreted in a variety of ways. Paying no attention to the latter,
+we may safely affirm, that the Etruscans had ideas upon the subject of
+angels very similar to our own. The form which their artists gave to
+them is precisely that which is current at the present day, except
+that, unlike the Christian, the Etruscan angels were of different sexes.
+Sometimes both males and females were draped from the neck to the
+feet, in other drawings they were partially or wholly nude. In the vast
+majority of cases each one possessed two wings that were attached to the
+back, behind the arms, precisely as they are in modern pictures; but in
+one very remarkable instance (plate 7, _Description de quelques Vases
+Etrusques_, par H. D. de Luynes--folio, Paris, 1840) the beings to
+whom we refer had each three pairs of pinions, the one attached to the
+shoulder blades, a second to the loins, and a third to the calves of the
+legs. These creatures correspond to our demons or imps of Satan, or the
+devils of the New Testament which were sent into a herd of swine.
+
+Some of the winged Etruscan demons must be regarded as "angels
+of death," for they are represented as hovering in the air over
+individuals, such as Cassandra and Polynices, who are about to be
+sacrificed. One angel, who, as usual, Diaitized bv is spoken of by the
+Christian describer thereof as a goddess, is designated "Cunina." Her
+business was to look after and take charge of infants in their cradle.
+A being such as this, by whatever name we may designate her, cannot fail
+to remind us of the expression in the New Testament--"Take heed that ye
+despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that in heaven
+their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven"
+(Matt, xviii. 10). In another Etruscan painting we find two angelic
+beings, fully draped, carrying a nude corpse apparently to the future
+or invisible state. These naturally remind us of the passage in Rev.
+xx. 1--"I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of
+the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand." In some Etruscan
+paintings we have scenes which are supposed to indicate the preparation
+of a bride for the wedding ceremony. In these there are diminutive
+angels introduced, which are sometimes hovering in the air and sometimes
+seated on the edge of the bath; these are by the learned supposed to
+represent Cupid, Eros, Hymen, or Love, and they indicate the devout
+feeling, that an angel watches over those who contract marriage in an
+orthodox manner.*
+
+     * Whether the Romans obtained all their inferior deities
+     from the Etruscans, or whether the priests of the Eternal
+     City in ancient times improved upon the mythology which came
+     to them from their predecessors, just as the priests of
+     modern Rome have expanded, without improving, the
+     Christianised paganism which came to them, is a matter
+     difficult to decide. But it is certain that the old Romans
+     multiplied their "gods," as the modern ones have multiplied
+     their "saints." Amongst the former were many curious
+     deities, who presided at the wedding of young people, some at
+     the public ceremony, and others at the private rites.
+     "PRema" was the angel of quietness, whose business it was to
+     see "ne subacta virgo se ultra modum commovens semen a vulva
+     ejiceret." "Subigus" was another angel or demigod, whose
+     duty it was to see that the consummation should take place
+     in an appropriate manner--lovingly, pleasantly, and
+     peacefully. There was another--Pertunda--of whom Augustine
+     (Civ. Dei, vol. 9) remarks--"Si adest dea Prema ut subacta se
+     non commoveat quum prematur, dea Pertunda quid ea facit?" In
+     modern times the Papal saints, Cosmo, Damian, Foutin, and
+     sundry others, have had the special duty assigned to them to
+     make the husband fit for his marital duties.
+
+That the absence of such a spirit was looked upon as unlucky we gather
+from an expression in Propertius (b. v. el. 3) in which a wife, whose
+husband has been obliged to leave her, and go to a distant war, when
+bewailing her destiny, amongst other references says--"I wedded without
+a god to accompany me." This calls to memory the statement in Hebrews
+i. 14, wherein, after speaking of angels, the writer asks--"Are they not
+all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be
+heirs of salvation?"--a sentence which implies the idea that those who
+are not heirs of salvation have not angels which minister for them. The
+doctrine was certainly not exclusively Christian. Of this any one may
+assure himself by referring to Eccles. v. 6--"Neither say thou before
+the angel that it was an error; wherefore... should God destroy the
+works of thine hands?"
+
+Again, we find an angel seated between two young folk of opposite sexes,
+and archaeologists tell us that the winged creature thus figured is
+a nuptial god--one whose business is to induce appropriate couples to
+meet, to love, and to marry. Such a celestial match-maker was the Jewish
+Raphael, who, though "one of the seven holy angels, which present the
+prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the
+Holy One" (Tobit xii. 15)--yet condescended to conduct Tobias a long way
+to meet Sara, and instructed him how he could marry her with safety, and
+defeat a devil.
+
+Amongst other individuals, in the Etruscan mythological paintings who
+are winged, are the following, which are named thus by the authors who
+describe the vases, &c., whether rightly or wrongly it is not necessary
+for me to prove:--Janus; Furina, the goddess of thieves; Mercury, the
+messenger of Jupiter and the patron of robbers; Vacuna, or Desideria,
+or Venus, the goddess of indolence, desire, or love; Hymen, the angel
+or god of marriage; Cupid, the god of love; Victory, Bacchus, Silenus,
+Dryads, Calliope, Tempest, Fame, Proserpine; Iibitina, the goddess of
+funerals; Venus, infera, Nemesis, or fate; Death, life, Charybdis, The
+Furies, Geryon, Justice, Peace, Iris, and Diana. On such a subject the
+reader may consult with advantage Augustine (_de Civitate Dei_, b. vl.
+c. 9); Arnobius (_Adversus Gentes_, b. iv. c. 7); and Tertullian (_Ad
+Nationes_, b. ii. c. 11).
+
+We may now refer to a remarkable series of drawings, representing the
+funeral of Patroclus, described by Homer, which were discovered in the
+Etruscan sepulchre of the Tarquinii near what once was Vulci and is now
+"Ponte della Badia," in the year 1857, and which is described in _Noël
+des Vergers L'Etrurie et les Etrusques_, and in _Corpus Inscriptionum
+Italicarum_ (Turin 1867), the latter of which I use as my authority. In
+one of the scenes we find depicted the sacrifice of the Trojan youths
+at the grave of Patroclus. The artist has not left to the fancy of the
+observer the identification of his figures, but has written in Etruscan
+letters the modified names of the actors. Beginning from the right hand,
+we find Ajax Oileus, and next to him a naked Trojan youth, whose hands
+are bound behind his back, and who is guarded by Telamonian Ajax. Behind
+and besides him is Charon, and in front of the latter is another Trojan
+youth, nude, seated on the ground, and receiving his death-wound from
+Achilles. Behind the latter stands a winged, draped, tall female figure,
+whom at one time I took to be the glorified soul of Patroclus; but,
+having seen a similar figure on other Etruscan designs depicting human
+sacrifice or death, and finding over the head of this one the word
+_fanth, vanth, or fano_--according to the value which we assign to the
+digamma or F and O--which is, I think, equivalent to the Latin _Fatum_,
+fate, &c., we must regard the figure as resembling Azrael--"the angel
+of death." Besides and behind her stands a draped man unarmed, having a
+fixed countenance of settled melancholy, and regarding without a shade
+of exultation the death of the young Trojan whom Achilles slaughters.
+Over his head are the words _hinthial patrucles_, which is believed
+to signify "the shade of Patroclus." The last figure in the group is
+Agamemnon.
+
+This and the other sculptures in the tomb are extremely interesting
+to the archaeologists, firstly, because they bear evidence of a very
+superior style of art; secondly, because they testify to the antiquity
+of Homer's _Iliad_, and its popularity in other nations than the Greek.
+They show, moreover, that the wealthy men amongst the Etrurians were not
+ignorant of the Grecian language, or rather literature, although they
+had difficulty in adapting the Hellenic words to their own alphabet;
+lastly, they ought to be especially valuable to us inasmuch as
+they demonstrate the existence of a belief in ancient Italy of the
+resurrection of the body, and of the existence of angels precisely the
+same in shape as those which pious Christians delight to see in their
+churches, and in their manuals of devotion. It is worthy of notice
+that upon some Etruscan vases in the museum at Munich there are angelic
+warriors covered with armour--a winged female carrying a caduceus, and
+winged horses--like Pegasus, and probably like those seen by Zechariah,
+the Hebrew vaticinator.
+
+We consider it best to omit making any remarks respecting the ideas
+entertained about angels by the Phoenicians, for we have scarcely any
+information about their mythology beyond the names of certain gods and
+goddesses. It will be more profitable to pass on to the Greeks, and
+inquire into the general system of their theological belief. This is,
+we think, a matter of some importance, for this people, as victors and
+masters, came into contact with the Jews in the time of Joel, about b.c.
+800; and if any captive Hebrews came back from Grecia (see Joel iii. 6),
+we believe that they would naturally bring back with them much of the
+Hellenic lore of their conquerors. The reader must not be carried away
+here with the once popular notion that everything which was found
+in heathendom, which resembled something biblical or Jewish, came of
+necessity from scriptural or Israelitish sources. The reverse is
+much more likely, for the Hebrews in old times are described by their
+historians and preachers as hankering after novelty--"going whoring
+after other gods," as the Bible has it. They, on the other hand, were
+encouraged to keep themselves aloof from others, and were never a
+missionary nation; nor, had they been so, were they sufficiently
+honourable or wealthy, as a race, ever to command respect. They were,
+indeed, generally despised by the people round about them, who would
+no more think of adopting Jewish fables than we should care to learn
+theology and cosmogony from African negroes.
+
+If we endeavour to reduce Grecian mythology to its simplest expression,
+we find that it consisted of a belief in a creator--grand beyond
+conception, and one whom the mind could not conceive, nor pencil nor
+the chisel depict. Under him there was thought to be a host of minor
+deities, who agreed, more or less, amongst themselves, each having
+a particular department of creation to preside over, or a definite
+function to perform. Jupiter, for example, had the air and the heavens
+generally under his management; Neptune superintended the sea; Rhea, or
+Gaia, or Gee, was the goddess of the surface of the earth; and Pluto had
+the management of the interior of the globe and of those who were buried
+therein. If corpses were unburied, they did not come under his immediate
+cognizance. Then, as it was quite possible that one deity might be
+counteracting another, as, indeed, they are represented to have done
+during the Trojan war, another god was necessary to be a medium of
+communication between the others, and Mercury became the messenger, or
+go-between.
+
+Below the major gods was an infinity of smaller ones, who presided
+over physical and moral matters. There were, for example, wood and
+tree nymphs; Dryads and hamadryads--gods of rivers, such as Simois
+and Scamander. Pan presided over husbandmen; Hermes, over thieves, &c.
+Others, like Eros, fulfilled the duty of bringing the sexes together.
+Hymen secured them in marriage, and Venus had the duty of insuring
+connubial happiness, whilst Lucina's business was to bring the offspring
+of the marriage into the world--with as little pain or danger as
+possible. Then, again, Fortune brought good luck. The "furies" brought
+evil, and the "fates" ruled the destiny of mortals.
+
+Against some of these gods others rebelled. For example, there were the
+Titans, the sons of Heaven and Earth (Cælus et Terra), who were all of
+gigantic stature, and may be said to be identical with the giants spoken
+of in Gen. vi. 2-4, as being the offspring of the sons of God and the
+daughters of men. These Titans were much disliked by their father, and
+confined in the bowels of the earth, or, as we should say, in Hell; but
+their mother relieved them, and they in turn revenged themselves upon
+their progenitor. When Jupiter succeeded to Cronos or Saturn, the
+giants, the sons of Tartarus and Terra, or Hell and Earth, united with
+their half-brothers, the Titans, and attacked Olympus, and its gods, in
+dismay, assumed disguises and fled into Egypt--a rare spot, whence also
+came as history tells us, the founder of Christianity and the doctrine
+of the Trinity. To regain his position, Jupiter found a man--a son of
+his own--whom he had begotten by lying three nights in the heart of
+the earth, or, as the fable has it, in the arms of Alcmena--Hercules by
+name, to attack the allied monsters, and thus with the aid of a mortal
+the gods became victorious. Just as in more modern days the divine
+mission and position of Jesus of Nazareth and Mahomet of Mecca, have
+been determined by the arms of human warriors. The power of men in
+heaven is wonderful, considering how great is their weakness upon earth!
+It is probable, that to the Greeks, Milton owed his ideas of _Paradise
+Lost_.
+
+According to the ordinary ideas of angels, the gods, demigods,
+goddesses, genii, and the like, were essentially the same amongst the
+Hebrews as the archangels and inferior hierarchy are in modern christian
+mythology. We shall the more readily see this if we inquire into the
+ideas of the Greeks respecting _demons_. "The latter were regarded as
+spirits which presided over the actions of mankind, and watched over
+their secret intentions." Many Greek theologians thought that each
+man had two, the one good, the other bad. These sprites could change
+themselves into any form, and at death the individual was delivered up
+to judgment by these companions, who testified to his actions during
+life. Socrates often spoke of his own peculiar "spirit." Not only were
+these creatures supposed to influence men, but they were also believed
+to guard places, and a genius loci was the same as the God of Ekron, or
+any other locality.
+
+It is almost impossible for a thoughtful man not to compare with the
+Greek ideas those held by moderns. We hear in familiar discourse, and
+read in popular books, about a good angel and a bad one. God is said to
+use both (see Ps. lxxviii. 49, and 1 Kings xxii. 21, 22.) Many, too, of
+the readers of Sterne will remember the remarks which he makes about a
+recording angel who was obliged to register an oath, but who contrived
+to blot out the entry with a tear (com. Mal. iii. 16.) As we have already
+adverted to the belief of Jesus that every child had an angel, who
+is always in the presence of. God, we need not remark again upon the
+matter.
+
+But though the Grecian gods and demigods were the counterparts of the
+archangels and lesser powers of the Jews and Christians, they were not
+pictorially depicted, as they were in other places, like winged men or
+other creatures.
+
+Arnobius, for example, in _Advenus génies_, when writing about the
+divinities of the heathen, remarks, that they are so like ordinary men
+and women, that the artist has to resort to some contrivance to show
+that any offspring of his brush, or of his chisel, is a god or goddess.
+A painter, he observes, will select the finest young women he can
+discover--or the handsomest prostitute in his country, and from one
+maiden, or from the collective charms of many, will paint a lovely woman
+and style her Venus; yet she is only a courtezan after all. His remark is
+a certainly true one. Jupiter is never represented otherwise than as a
+man, nor does Minerva ever figure except as a woman. None of the greater
+gods of Hellas are winged like the tutelar gods of the Assyrians and
+Persians were. Even Hermes, though he does bear pinions, does not carry
+them in the usual form. Instead of having powerful wings behind his
+arms, like the Gabriel or Michael of Christian mythology, he has little
+nippers attached to each side of a cap, of a pair of socks, and of a
+curiously-shaped wand--all of which he can put off when he pleases,
+or don when he is sent with a message. Jupiter's thunders bear similar
+wings. But such minor deities, or devils, as Eros or love; Hymen or
+marriage; Fame, or victory; Aurora, or day-break; the winds, the Genii,
+the Gorgons, the Furies, the Harpies, Iris, Isis, Hebe, Psyche, and even
+Pegasus--a wondrous horse, are winged with pinions which resemble those
+of the eagle.
+
+If we now pause for a moment to compare one thing with another, we
+readily see that Hymen may fairly be described as the angel of the
+covenant of marriage, and that Mercury is identical with Raphael. The
+"genius loci," the "dryad" or "hamadryad," is the counterpart of the
+cherubim guarding the ark and the mercyseat of the Jewish temple. Apollo
+is the angel in the sun (Rev. xix. 17.) Neptune is "the angel of the
+waters" (Rev. xvi. 5.) Nay, we may--indeed we must go further, and affirm
+that either the angel Gabriel, or "the power of the Highest," which,
+we are told in Luke i. 26, 35, overshadowed Mary, the espoused wife
+of Joseph, is a perfect counterpart of the Hellenic Jupiter who
+overshadowed Alcmena.
+
+Both produced a being equally celebrated--for we may fairly assert that
+Hercules was believed in by as many individuals as have faith in Jesus.
+For ourselves, we do not credit the myth of the Hellenists; of the very
+existence of a Hercules we are profoundly incredulous. Yet we do not
+doubt for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth lived as a man upon this
+earth, and founded, with the subsequent assistance of Paul, the religion
+which is called Christian. But of the supernatural conception of Mary
+and of her impregnation by a deity we are intensely sceptical.
+
+Of the theology of the Romans in the times prior to, and somewhat
+subsequent to, our era, we need say little. It resembled both the
+Etruscan and the Greek at the first, and subsequently it was modified by
+the Egyptian and by the Persian. But it was in Rome, whilst pagan, that
+the present pictorial type of angels was perfected (see Plates ix. to
+xiii, Lajard's _Culte de Venus_), in which allegorical figures, from old
+Roman bas-reliefs, precisely like modern angels, are represented killing
+the Mithraic bull. I may also add, in passing, that the crozier borne by
+Romanist bishops is a reproduction of the Etruscan _lituus_, the augurs'
+or diviners' staff of office.
+
+The Roman nation, like the Papist and Peruvian religions, was
+omnivorous, and not only venerated the old gods of the soil, but adopted
+new divinities eagerly. Whoever chose to import a new deity, and a novel
+style of worship was hailed, patronized and enriched, much in the same
+way as at London during recent times, Mesmerists, "spirit rappers,"
+"cord-conjurors," clairvoyants, male and female, spiritualists like
+Home, very High Churchmen, and many other classes of a similar stamp
+have been encouraged. As in Athens, we are told that "the Athenians and
+strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
+to tell or to hear some new thing" (Acts xvii), no matter whether the
+novelty was religious or otherwise, so it has been elsewhere. London
+really, and Rome metaphorically are constantly adopting new ideas, some
+highly commendable and philosophical, others quite the reverse. Amongst
+the latter, we may mention that which professes that a certain man
+can, like Jesus is said to have done, heal by a touch. This assertion,
+however, is only sparsely credited on the Thames. Far more general is
+the belief which professes, that an Ecumenical Council can by a vote
+make one man and his official successors "infallible."
+
+We cannot pass by this subject without remarking that instability in
+religion is evidence of infidelity; and the adoption of new tenets is a
+proof of the low estimation in which old ones have been held. Even the
+new, or Christian dispensation, as it is called, is founded upon the
+insufficiency of the old or Jewish covenant, which, by those who adopt
+the one, is a confession that they believe the other was imperfect and
+therefore not of God. Consequently, when we find a "church," like the
+Roman, habitually patching its old clothes, we conclude that its leaders
+are dissatisfied with them and desire better. A lover who finds his
+mistress perfect neither seeks nor wishes to change her for another; nor
+endeavours to induce her to modify her attire until he is dissatisfied
+therewith. When he insists upon an alteration it is because his ardent
+love has faded. The philosopher may see clearly why certain prelates
+desire to have some infallible man to appeal to--for it is easier
+to find out the opinion of one individual than to harmonize the
+contradictory hypotheses of fifty dogmatical or authoritative writers.
+Yet the same man will not fail to see that such a proceeding, whilst it
+strengthens the hold of the church upon the weak-minded, cuts it adrift
+from the strong. The policy is not altogether bad, for it seeks to bind
+closer those who, whilst wearing the chains of captivity, regard them
+as ornaments. But all those who adopt such tactics ought, boldly and
+unequivocally, to withdraw from the rank of truth-seekers, and of envoys
+of that God who is not "the author of confusion but of peace."
+
+We may now proceed to the consideration of the angelic mythology of the
+Old and New Testaments. In our inquiry we shall endeavour to arrive
+at the ideas contained in the words which are used, and not content
+ourselves with simple quotation. There is strong reason to believe that
+Christians in general rarely examine into the real signification of
+words which they are taught to use, or which, from some fancy or other,
+they commit to memory. They imagine--if they think on the subject at
+all--that to repeat a text or a creed is to perform an act of faith,
+which, in itself, is praiseworthy and a good work. Such do not, in any
+appreciable degree, differ from the Thibetans, described by the Abbé
+Hue, who perform their devotions by turning round upon their axles
+certain cylinders, upon which some prayers are engraved. Not only these
+Asiatics, but Europeans of large mental calibre are often contented with
+vague ideas; and when they are challenged to support "the faith which
+is in them," show that they have never yet examined it. If, for example,
+they are asked how they can believe in the truth of such passages,
+"I have seen God (Kohim) face to face" (Gen. xxxii. 30); "The Lord
+(Jehovah) spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his
+friend" (Exod. xxxiii. 11); "Moses whom the Lord knew face to face"
+(Deut. xxxiv. 10), and the opposite one, "Thou canst not see my face,
+for there shall no man see me and live" (Exod. xxxiii. 20)--the sole
+reply rendered is that the first passages are figurative, passing by
+entirely the comparison in the second, which asserts that God talked
+with Moses as one friend with another.
+
+As a farther illustration of my meaning, I may point to the glibness
+with which Christians talk, sing, and listen to discourses about blood.
+If people really gave heed to what they chant, and to the words of their
+ministers, they would really be puzzled to find a distinction between
+the god whom they worship and that idol deity of Mexico, which called
+constantly for the hearts and the blood of his worshippers. "Without
+shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. ix. 22) is a dogma that puts
+the Europeans' God on the same level as the deities worshipped in pagan
+Africa, New Zealand, and by the Anthropophagi generally.
+
+In like manner, if ordinary people are asked to reconcile such passages
+as the following--"Who maketh his angels spirits;" "A spirit hath not
+flesh and bones as ye see me have" (Luke xxiv. 39)--with a host of
+others, in which angels are said to have appeared, talked, and acted
+like men, they allege that "much of the phraseology of the Bible is
+metaphorical." But if it be granted that the language is metaphorical,
+must we not equally believe that the facts referred to are mythical; and
+if so, how much of the so-called inspired book can we trust? If metaphor
+and figure-imagery are cities of refuge for theologians, those who fly
+to them must remember, that there they must remain and live therein all
+their days; they cannot be citizens of the world, and yet never leave
+their asylum: if, for them, facts are fictions, by parity of reason
+fictions are facts.
+
+If, when an individual, said to be a prophet, and, as such, the
+mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost or of Jehovah, tells us that he saw and
+talked with an angel, who imparted to him such and such information,
+we are bound either to believe the whole statement or to reject it as
+valueless, _quoad_ revelation. If the man did see an angel, and that
+angel spoke, it must have been material; and if material, it could not
+be a spirit, and if not a spirit, it was not an angel.* If to this it be
+answered that individuals do see what they deem to be spirits--just
+as many a drunken man avers that he sees "blue devils," we grant it at
+once. We go still farther, and state that we know individuals in full
+possession, apparently, of all their senses, who see, occasionally, men,
+women, horses, dogs, and other things, which have no more existence
+than the figures which appear to us in dreams. Such men not only see
+imaginary beings, but they hear conversations or speeches which have no
+reality in them. But we cannot for a moment allow that such delusions of
+the senses are sterling, and such utterances, messages from the Almighty
+delivered by angels. To be logical, therefore, the theologian must
+either accept the stories told in the Bible about angelic beings as
+literally true, to the exclusion of all metaphor, or believe that
+every thing tainted by such celestial mythology is entirely of human
+invention.
+
+     * The authority for this is Ps. civ. 4; Heb. L 7, 14,--"Who
+     maketh his angels spirits;" "Are they not all ministering
+     spirits?"
+
+As an illustration, let us consider two episodes in the history of
+Elisha. We find in 2 Kings ii. 11, that a chariot of fire and horses of
+fire, appeared to this prophet, and parted him from Elijah, with whom
+he was walking, and carried the latter away into heaven; and we see in
+2 Kings vi. 17, that Elisha's servant could really see a multitude
+of chariots and horses of fire round about his master. We must also
+remember that "the chariots of the Lord are thousands of angels"
+(Ps. lxviii. 17; see also Ps. xxxiv. 7.) Now these were, or were not,
+realities--if the chariots and horsemen existed, then we infer that some
+sort of stables and ostlers exist in heaven; if none such exist, then
+the chariots and horses could neither have been seen, nor have separated
+the two prophets.
+
+It may be urged that supernatural beings do exist for those who can
+see them, and for no other; just as the angel was seen by Balaam's ass
+thrice (see Numbers xxii. 22-33) before he was recognized by her master.
+But this observation is worthless, for it amounts to nothing more than
+this--viz., that the persons seen in dreams exist for the dreamers and
+for no one else; but it in no way proves the reality of the asserted
+apparition.
+
+It would be as useless to discuss, at this point, the actuality of what
+are called "spectres," as of other things named fairies, pixies, gnomes,
+or sprites. Of the existence of such there is abundance of evidence; and
+for hundreds of years there was not a human being who did not believe in
+them. But there was even stronger proof that the world stood still, and
+the sun went round it, and during untold centuries all who thought on
+the matter believed the statement. Yet in these days all the testimony
+is regarded as worthless in the presence of the stern facts of science;
+and ghosts are only believed in by such as write treatises upon squaring
+the circle, perpetual motion, and the plane figure of the earth. We
+shall take up the subject at length in our next chapter.
+
+If we were to follow the bent of our inclination, we should now
+endeavour to prove that the Jews had no idea of an angelic mythology
+prior to the Babylonian captivity, and that they had no distinct
+literature prior to the Grecian and Edomite captivity referred to in
+Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Micah, except possibly such records and written
+laws as may be styled "annals" or "year-books;" and, as a consequence,
+that all parts of the Old Testament in which angelic beings figure are
+comparatively modern, having been fabricated after the long sojourn of
+the Jews in Babylon. But to carry out this intention would require a
+treatise rather than an essay, and I must content myself with saying
+that I believe it to be affirmed by all Hebrew scholars, that up to the
+time of Nebuchadnezzar--or Hezekiah--the sole unseen power recognized
+by the Jews was Jehovah alone. They did not believe either in angel or
+devil What their ideas were we may shortly describe*:--
+
+     * Long after the remark in the text was written, and long
+     before it was in type, Dr. Kalisch, in his second part of a
+     commentary on Leviticus, published his views upon the point
+     referred to. When I can refer my readers to so masterly a
+     composition as his essay upon Angels in the Jewish theology,
+     it is seedless for me to say much on the subject. I may also
+     refer those who are interested in the matter to a work
+     entitled _The Devil: his Origin, Greatness, and Decadence_
+     (Williams & Norgate, London, 1871--small 8vo., pp. 72). My
+     essay supplements these, and in no way clash therewith.
+
+1. Angels were spirits, being also ministers (Heb. L 7.) They were a
+flaming fire (Ps. civ. 4); compare Jud. xiii. 20, and Acts vii. 35--that
+is, spirits are made of a combustible material which is, however,
+incombustible!
+
+2. They could assume the form of men, and were identical with God (see
+Gen. xviii. 19; Tobit, and Luke i.): that is to say, they were masters,
+yet servants--the sender and the sent at the same time!
+
+3. Their faces were terrible (Jud. xiii. 6); but they also shone (Acts
+vi. 15) and yet they were so good-looking and handsome that the Sodomites
+fell in love with them as Jupiter did with Ganymede (Gen. xix).
+
+4 One was the superintendent of destruction, and was visible on one
+occasion to David (2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 17), to Oman, his sons, and to the
+elders of Israel (1 Chron. xxi. 16-20.) His weapon was a sword (_ibid._)
+He certainly must have had flesh and bones. It would be an interesting
+matter to inquire whether the sword was as spiritual as the angel was.
+
+5. One angel was outwitted by a donkey (see Numb. xxii. 22-33.) Yet
+this angel was God (comp. Numb. xxii. 35, and xxiv. 4, 15,16). It is
+marvellous to me how any one can read this history of Balaam and his
+ass, and notice how the animal turned God from His purpose (see chap,
+xxii. 33), and yet believe the story to be of _divine_ origin!
+
+6. They are made of light (Luke ii. 9), yet can talk the vernacular, and
+can be counterfeited by Satan (2 Cor. xi. 14); but how he manages it, and
+whether he then ceases to be a roaring lion or a fallen angel "reserved
+in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day"
+(Jude 6), is a matter for surmise.
+
+7. One of them fought with the Devil, and kept his temper (Jude 9.) Of
+the language used in the disputation we do not know; nor can we tell how
+the two recognized each other.
+
+8. Some of them are guilty of folly (Job. iv. 18), and some sinned--how,
+one does not know--and were cast down to hell, and delivered into chains
+of darkness. It is fitting that beings who have no flesh and bones
+should be bound by fetters that have no reality (2 Peter ii. 4).
+
+9. Some were discontented with their home and were punished (Jude 6);
+but where their original habitation was, or why it was regarded as so
+miserable that another place was desired, is a mystery.
+
+10. They have food provided for them (Ps. lxxviii. 25), and they eat like
+men (Gen. xviii. 8; and xix. 3), consequently angels must have flesh,
+blood, and a stomach to digest victuals. Sometimes instead of eating
+food they order it to be burned, and the smoke from the viands serves as
+a vehicle to heaven (Jud. xiii. 19, 20).
+
+11. Their number is twenty thousand (Ps. lxviii. 17).
+
+12. They are chariots (_ibid_), yet they walk and get their feet dusty
+(Gen. xviii. and xix. 2; compare Jud. ii. 1; vi. 12); the chariots are of
+fire, and so are the horses (2 Kings vi. 17); but they are also clouds
+(Ps. civ. 3).
+
+13. They are taught military discipline and arranged in "legions" (Matt
+xxvi. 53).
+
+14. They are sexless (Mark xii. 25), yet were men when they appeared to
+Abraham, Sarah, and the Sodomites (Gen. xviii, xix.).
+
+15. They are liable to do wrong, and will be judged by men, some time or
+other (1 Oor. vi. 2, 3). As in this passage the angels are put below the
+saints, and in Gen. xviii. and xix., it is clear that Elohim and Jehovah
+were angels, it follows that holy men, when raised, will be superior to
+the power that gave them heaven!
+
+16. Though sexless, the angels, or sons of God, may be captivated by the
+beauty of woman, and engender giants with them in a very human fashion
+(Gen. vi).
+
+17. They are very sensitive respecting the hair of women, and require
+it to be covered in worship--at other times they probably are not so
+particular. Although they minister upon those who are heirs of salvation
+(Heb. i. 14), they might be tempted from their business, if they were to
+see a pretty snood in golden tresses hid (1 Cor. xi. 10).
+
+18. Every child has an angel, or rather angels, to look after it (Matt,
+xviii. 10), which leads to the belief that the number of angels has
+increased since the sixty-eighth Psalm was written, when there were only
+20,000, and perhaps a few more.*
+
+     * The words of the christian father, Tertullian, upon this
+     subject are so very apposite to our subject of angels, that
+     I am tempted to quote them--Clark's edition, vol. i. p. 487-
+     8.
+
+     Speaking to the heathens, he says--"And you are not content
+     to assert the divinity of such as were once known to you,
+     whom you heard and handled, and whose portraits have been
+     painted, and actions recounted, and memory retained amongst
+     you; but men insist upon consecrating with a heavenly life,
+     i.e.t they insist on deifying, I know not what incorporeal
+     inanimate shadows and the names of things, dividing man's
+     entire existence amongst separate powers, even from his
+     conception in the womb, so that there is a god (read
+     _angel_) Consevius, to preside over concubital generation,
+     and Fluviona to preserve the infant in the womb; after these
+     come Vitumnus and Sentinus through whom the babe begins to
+     have life and its earliest sensation; then Diespiter, by
+     whose office the child accomplishes its birth. But when
+     women begin their parturition Candelifera also comes in aid,
+     since child-bearing requires the light of the candle; and
+     other goddesses there are (such as Lucina, Partula, Nona,
+     Décima, and Alemona) who get their names from the parts they
+     bear in the stages of travail There were two Carmentas
+     likewise, according to the general view.   To one of them,
+     called Postverta, belonged the function of assisting the
+     birth of the malpresented child; whilst the other, Prosa or
+     Prorso, executed the like office for the rightly born. The
+     god Farinus was so called from his inspiring the first
+     utterance, whilst others believed in Locutius from his gift
+     of speech. Cunina is present as the protector of the child's
+     deep slumber, and supplies to it refreshing rest. To lift
+     them when fallen there is Levana, and along with her Rumina
+     (from the old word _ruma_, a teat). It is a wonderful
+     oversight that no gods were appointed for clearing up the
+     filth of children. Then to preside over their first pap and
+     earliest drink you have Potina and Edula; to teach the child
+     to stand erect is the work of Statina (or Statilinus),
+     whilst Adeona helps him to come to dear mamma-, and Abeona
+     to toddle back again. Then there is Domiduca, to bring home
+     the bride, and the goddess Mens, to influence the mind to
+     either good or evil. They have likewise Volumnus and Voleta,
+     to control the will; Paventina, the goddess of fear;
+     Venilia, of hope; Volnpia, of pleasure; Praastitia, of
+     beauty. Then, again, they give his name to Peragenor, from
+     his teaching men to go through their work; to Consus, from
+     his suggesting to them counsel. Juventa is their guide on
+     assuming the manly gown, and 'bearded Fortune,' when they
+     come to full manhood. If I must touch on their nuptial
+     duties, there is Afferenda, whose appointed function is to
+     see to the offering of the dower. But fie on you--you have
+     your Mutunus, and Tutunus, and Pertunda, and Subigus, and
+     the goddess Prema, and likewise Perfica. O spare yourselves,
+     ye impudent gods."
+
+19. Some angels are evil, but are much the same as the good (Ps. lxxviii
+49), in their power of doing mischief.
+
+20. Every heir of salvation has an angel to minister to him in some way
+or other (Heb. i. 14); so have Roman babies--see note.
+
+21. The angels are only a trifle superior to men (Ps. viii. 5), and in
+the invisible world will be inferior to them if the latter be saints (1
+Cor. vi. 3; Heb. ii. 5).
+
+22. They can speak all sorts of languages (1 Cor. xiii. 1); that which
+Michael and the devil used (Jude 9) has not been revealed to us.
+
+23. They use a trumpet, probably as immaterial as themselves, and make a
+great noise thereby (Matt xxiv. 31); and horses (Zech. i. and Rev. vi).
+
+24. They have wings and can fly (Rev. viii. 13; xiv. 6), although they
+are chariots.
+
+25. When on earth they are clothed with a long white garment, have a
+face like lightning, and one can appear to be two, or not appear at all
+to some, though very distinctly seen by others (see Matt xxviii. 2, 3;
+Mark xvi. 5; Luke xxiv. 4; John xx. 12).
+
+Of all the angels mentioned in the Apocalypse we need not write. One
+of the best accounts I have met with of the angelic mythology of
+the Hebrews is in Coheleth, or The Book of Ecclesiastes, by Rev. Dr.
+Ginsburg (Longman, London, 1861). It is written in explanation of Ch. v.
+5, wherein is the expression, "Do not say before the angel that it was
+error" (page 340), and the following remarks are condensed therefrom:--
+"The angels occupy different rank and offices--seven of them as the
+highest functionaries; princes or archangels surround the throne of God
+and form the cabinet--(1) Michael, the prime minister, the guardian
+of the Jewish nation, the opponent of Satan (Zech. iii. 1, 2), of the
+prince of Persia (Dan. x. 13, 20), the conservator of the corpse of
+Moses (Jude 9), and the dragon (Rev. xii); (2) Raphael, who presides
+over the sanitary affairs (Tobit iii. 17, xii. 15)--'When God would cure
+any sick person,' says St. Jerome, 'he sends the archangel Raphael, one
+of the seven spirits before his throne, to accomplish the cure.' There
+can be little doubt that this was the angel who went down at certain
+seasons to move the waters of the pool to cure the impotent people (John
+v. 4); (3) Gabriel, the messenger to announce or to effect deliverance,
+also a presence angel (Luke i. 11-20, 26-35); (4) Uriel, mentioned
+in Esdras (2 b., ch. iv., w. 1 and 20). In Targums these four are
+represented as surrounding the throne of the divine majesty, but all do
+not agree; Jonathan's arrangement is--Michael at the right, Uriel at the
+left, Gabriel before, and Raphael behind.* The fifth, sixth, and seventh
+archangels are Phaniel, Raguel, and Sarakiel."
+
+     * An observation such as this distinctly shows how
+     completely the ideas of angels are associated with gross
+     anthropomorphism.
+
+"Next to the cabinet comes the privy council, composed of four and
+twenty crowned elders (1 Kings xxii. 19; Rev. iv. 4; vii. 13; viii. 3), who
+surround the throne, before whom Christ will confess those who
+confessed him. Then comes the council, consisting of the seventy angel
+princes--the provincial governors presiding over the affairs of the
+seventy nations into which the human family is divided." Hence the
+Targumic paraphrase on Gen. xi. 7, 8--"_The Lord said to the seventy
+presence angels, Come now and let us go down, and there let us confound
+their language, so that one may not understand the language of the
+other. And the Lord manifested himself against that city, and with him
+were the seventy angels according to the seventy nations_." Hence the
+Septuagint translation of Deut xxxii. 8--"When the Most High divided
+the nations... he set the boundaries... according to the number of the
+angels." The doctor also notices the four angels mentioned in Zech. vi,
+who seem to have the management of four great monarchies, but he
+does not advert to the angels of the seven churches spoken of in the
+Apocalypse. He then proceeds--"Then comes the innumerable company of
+presence angels, since every individual has a guardian angel as well
+as every nation"... St Jerome, remarking upon Matt, xviii. 10,
+says,--"_Great is the dignity of these little ones, for every one of
+them has from his very birth an angel dedicated to guard him_."* When
+St. Peter was chained in his prison, his angel released him (Acts xiii.
+7,11), and the damsel who opened a house door for him was told that he
+who was knocking was Peter's angel.
+
+     * We have never been able to see the force of this remark,
+     unless the idea of children having guardian angels was
+     associated with the belief that these beings left them when
+     they grew up. If the adults standing round Jesus had each an
+     individual warden, there would be nothing peculiar in the
+     warning given in the verse referred to. It is, however, just
+     possible that the notion existed that it was to adults only
+     that tutelary spirits were assigned, and that the prophet of
+     Nazareth declared that each infant had a protecting genius
+     as well as every man.
+
+Then there are angels who preside over all the phenomena of nature.
+One presides over the sun (Eev. xix. 17); angels guard the storm and
+lightning (Ps. civ. 4); four angels have charge over the four winds
+(Rev. vii. 1, 2); an angel presides over the waters (Rev. xvi. 5); and
+another over the temple altar (Rev. xiv. 18).
+
+We need not pursue this subject further; enough has been said to show
+that the Hebrew ideas of angels differ in no essential respect from
+those of other nations, who, if not older than the Jews, were certainly
+never influenced by the Hebrews. From the evidence before us, we are
+constrained to believe that the knowledge which we assume to possess of
+the celestial court has descended to us from heathen or pagan sources,
+and that the pictorial designs which pass current for likenesses of
+angels or archangels have descended from Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians,
+Grecians, Etruscans, and Romans, and cannot pretend to anything
+approaching to a revelation from God.
+
+We have already remarked that the Hebrew notions of the heavenly
+hierarchy are evidence of a gross anthropomorphism; they indicate a
+belief in the existence of a monarch having a face and back, a right
+hand and a left, ears and a mouth, and a wherewithal for sitting upon a
+throne--the part which was shown, as we are told, to Moses; they tell of
+a theology that recognizes places in the universe where God is not, and
+of which He has no cognizance save through messengers. If this be so,
+what shall we say of the hagiology which tells us that there was on one
+occasion a conspiracy amongst the courtiers of the celestial ruler, a
+discovery of treason, and a punishment of the offenders as dire as the
+most malignant man could invent? We have often thought that no human
+being, unless he were vile, brutal, sensual, clever, disappointed, and
+revengeful, could have invented the idea of hell, and that none would
+ever have believed in it unless he was both timid, thoughtless, and
+malignant The dormant hate of the orthodox against opponents is an
+awful quantity. The expression of "fallen angels" is a pregnant text; it
+recalls to our mind the passage--"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom
+I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against
+me" (Ps. xli. 9). It reminds us of David, Absalom and Ahitophel, of
+Solomon and Jeroboam, of Joram and Jehu, Benhadad and Hazael, Louis
+XVIII. and Marshal Ney. We feel sure that an individual who could
+write the words--"If we sin wilfully after that we have received the
+knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but
+a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which
+shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. x. 26, 27), could readily have
+invented a hell, if he had not found one already made to his hand. The
+sentence just quoted bears evidence of intense theological spitefulness,
+and a petty meanness that neither Sakya nor Jesus would have shown. Such
+thoughts are womanish, not manly, although apostolic.
+
+We can fancy it having been penned by James or John, who once asked
+Jesus whether they should not call down fire from heaven to consume
+the Samaritans, simply because the latter were not polite to the
+master--"because he seemed to be going to Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 53, 54).
+But if so, those disciples must have forgotten the rebuke of Jesus--"Ye
+know not what manner of spirit ye are of."
+
+Here we must pause awhile, and consider the idea of various peoples
+about Hell.
+
+Some, perhaps we ought to say, many, earthly potentates have encouraged
+the belief that there is a place in which evildoers, who have escaped
+punishment for crime in this world will, after their death here, receive
+their deserts. A place of torment which no man has seen, or can see
+in life, and which, consequently, anyone can describe, is a wonderful
+supplement to imperfect police arrangements, and as such, has been
+fabricated or adopted in various nations. But in all the nations of
+antiquity, and those which we call pagan, Hell has been assigned to
+those who have committed crimes upon earth, such as murder, theft, and
+the like, and whose evil deeds have outnumbered their good ones. The
+idea of a torture vault for heretics has, so far as I can learn, been
+reserved for Christian times, and for nations who punish ecclesiastical
+offences more severely than the most atrocious crimes. The papal church,
+wherever she has had power, has punished rejection of her communion far
+more cruelly than she has dealt with rape, robbery, and murder; and all,
+who think with her, draw their arguments for so doing from what is said
+to be God's method of dealing with His rebellious angels. Surely, the
+idea runs, if the Almighty, who cannot do wrong, has punished with fire
+and everlasting torment the ministers who stood in His presence and
+around His throne, simply because they kept not their position, or did
+not watch over their principality--for both meanings may be assigned
+to the original words--surely man must treat his heretic fellow on
+a similar plan. God, runs the argument, made the Devil, and man must
+multiply his imps. It is true, according to Hebrew and Christian
+mythology, that the idea of a Devil was not originally in the mind of
+Jehovah. But when Satan rebelled he was immediately invested with power!
+In other words, Lucifer taught Elohim, and thoughtful Christians believe
+this!!
+
+If we now attempt to frame a history of the modern Hell, its rulers,
+its angels, or its devils, we find, in the first place, that the Old
+Testament contains no idea whatever of Satan being an angel originally
+bright and fair, but subsequently disobedient, rebellious, conquered,
+and punished. Nor is the New Testament much more communicative--we
+find the arch-fiend described as a murderer and as a liar; he also is
+associated with angels, as in the words, "the Devil and his angels."
+He is described as "the Prince of the power of the air,"--as "a roaring
+lion, seeking whom he may devour." He is "the spirit which worketh in
+the children of disobedience." He is also represented as telling Jesus,
+that he is able to dispose of all the kingdoms of the globe, and to give
+their glory to whom he will. Yet nowhere is a hint breathed that he
+was once an angel in heaven. The only verse in the whole Bible which is
+supposed to bear upon this matter, shows that the devil and his imps
+are not identical with the fallen angels, for Jude distinctly declares
+(verse 6) that the latter are "reserved in everlasting chains, under
+darkness, unto the judgment of the great day," a condition quite
+incompatible with their identity with Satan, who is represented as
+telling God that he had been going to and fro through the earth, and
+walking up and down in it (Job ch. i., v. 7). A conversation then
+follows the question, which must have been quite impossible had God
+recognized him as an escaped convict.
+
+Again, if we turn to the book of Enoch (an apocryphal production,
+supposed for ages to have been lost, but discovered at the close of the
+last century in Abyssinia, now first translated from an Ethiopian MS. in
+the Bodleian Library, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel;
+3d edition, 8vo. Oxford, 1838),--which is, and I think justly, believed
+to be the authority quoted by Jude, we find a full confirmation of our
+view of the independence of the Devil or Satan, and the fallen angels.
+The foundation of the work is the story-told in the sixth chapter of
+Genesis. In that work, the angels which kept not their first estate are
+described as those who preferred intercourse with human females to
+a celestial celibacy, for in those days there were sons of God and
+daughters of men. Nay, in one verse (chap, liii. 6) it is distinctly
+declared that one cause why the wrath of God came upon them was that
+"they became ministers of Satan, and seduced those who dwell upon the
+earth." In many places a reference is made to the close imprisonment of
+the angels who had "been polluted with women;" one such will suffice,
+(chap, xxi. 6), where, on seeing a terrific place, Enoch is told by Uriel
+"this is the prison of the angels, and here are they kept for ever."
+It is not even Satan who tempts the angels, for chapter lxviii. tells us
+that it was Yekun and Kesabel, two of themselves, who gave evil counsel,
+and induced their fellows to corrupt their bodies by generating mankind.
+It is clear that such a writer does not conceive the possible existence
+of angelic women.
+
+The nearest approach to evidence of identification is the statement made
+in the same chapter (w. 6, 7), that Gradrel was the name of one of the
+leaders of the fallen, and that he seduced Eve. But this testimony is
+wholly worthless in the face of the fact that he, like all his company,
+are kept chained up, which Satan certainly is not.
+
+From the foregoing facts and considerations, we can come to no other
+conclusion than that there is no truth in the angelic mythology current
+amongst ourselves--for which Milton and his _Paradise Lost_ are mainly
+responsible. We may, indeed, affirm that a belief in angelic mythology
+is wholly incompatible with an enlightened religion. If we regard the
+Almighty as omnipresent and omniscient, we cannot imagine that He can
+require messengers, or organize an "intelligence department" in Heaven.
+A man who is present with his family requires no servant to tell him
+what each is doing, or to deliver his orders to one or other. So, if God
+be always with us, it is downright blasphemy to say that He requires a
+go-between to let Him know what we are doing, or what He wishes us to
+do.
+
+In our next chapter we shall enter upon the consideration of a subject
+closely allied to that of Angels--namely, that of Ghosts, Apparitions,
+Disembodied Spirits, or by whatever name they are called. These mainly
+differ from the beings of whom we have treated in the fact that, whereas
+an angel is a messenger--one sent to do certain duties--a ghost is a
+being who comes upon the scene, which he or she has quitted, to do or to
+persuade somebody else to perform something that has been omitted to be
+done during the life-time of the deceased. In nine-tenths of the stories
+which we read of "revenans," the returned one is not sent as a
+messenger, nor does he come for any definite purpose. A man or woman
+barbarously murdered is painted as haunting the scene where the violence
+was committed, as flies flit over a carcase. Misers come to brood over
+their hoards, not to use them. In no case which I can remember do the
+tales represent the ghosts as being sent from either of the two
+powers--God and Satan; and to fancy that a deceased man or woman is a
+free agent after death is, to say the least of it, a proof that the
+believers in the doctrine do not believe the biblical text--"As the tree
+falleth so it must lie."
+
+The ideas of Angels and of Ghosts have their origin in what may be
+called a superstitious education; and credence in the latter is an
+almost necessary pendant to a belief in the former. Indeed, if we put
+ourselves into the position of Manoah's wife, Zacharias (Luke i), and
+Mary, we feel sure that we should not have known whether the being who
+appeared was an angel or a ghost.
+
+Note.--The reader interested in the subject of this chapter, will find
+additional information thereupon in Records of the Past (Bag-ster,
+London, 1873-74; vol. i. 131-135, and vol. iii.139-154). The volumes
+are inexpensive, and extremely valuable to the student of Assyrian,
+Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     The inexorable logic of facts. Saul and the witch of Endor.
+     Influence of Elisha's bones. The widow's son. Ideas about
+     ghosts--about their power. Papal belief in ghosts. Ritual
+     for exorcisms. St. Dunstan and St. Anthony. The Bible and
+     ghosts. Scriptural ghosts. Ghosts independent of Judaism and
+     Christianity. Japanese story. Buddhist priests, like
+     Papalists, exorcise ghosts professionally. Ancient Grecian
+     ghosts. Stories from Homer, Herodotus, Iamblichus. Modern
+     French ghosts. Latin ghosts. Ghosts and lunacy. Ghosts and
+     spiritualism. Mistakes of clairvoyantes.
+
+It is not until we systematically inquire into certain tenets of our
+own belief, and compare or contrast them with those of other people far
+removed from us, that we are able to form an opinion about how much we
+owe to what we call "our peculiar religion," and how much we hold in
+common with other distant members of the human family.
+
+It is probable that there is scarcely a "Bible Christian" in Great
+Britain who is not impressed with the truth of the statement made in 2
+Tim. i. 10--_viz_., that Christ abolished death, and brought life and
+immortality to light by the Gospel. But the inexorable logic of facts
+proves to us that the idea of a life after death existed even amongst
+some ancient Jews--a people to whom it was certainly not revealed by
+God--and amongst nations who have not to this day become acquainted with
+Jesus, or what we call the Gospel, and who are mainly influenced by the
+doctrines of Buddha.
+
+To give examples: no one can read the very fabulous story of the Witch
+of Endor and Saul without recognizing the fact, that both the one and
+the other are represented by the historian to have believed, that,
+though the body of the prophet Samuel had been rotting for a long period
+in its tomb, the spirit of the man was yet existent. Nor does a Bible
+Christian see anything peculiar in the miracle of the restoration of the
+dead man mentioned in 2 Kings xiii. 21, who, when he touched the mouldy
+bones of Elisha, which represented all that was left, on earth, of that
+distinguished wonder-worker, at once revived, and stood upon his feet.
+But the story forces us to believe that the Hebrew writer, who had no
+revelation from Jehovah about a future life, was, from some cause or
+other, obliged to allow that the prophet had some sort of existence
+after his decease. A similar remark may be made respecting the story of
+the widow's son, given in 1 Kings xvii. 17-23, in which it is clear that
+both the mother of the child and the prophet believed it to be dead,
+although the latter acted as if there was yet its living spirit existing
+somewhere, and capable of being recalled. No simple figure of speech
+will explain away the doctrine referred to, for there is reference
+distinctly made to the idea of a life independent of that of the body.
+
+It may well be supposed, that the very extraordinary tales spoken of
+were introduced into the ancient books by modern Pharisees, as proofs
+of their faith being superior to that of the Sadducees--it is, indeed,
+probable that they were so; but into this point we will not enter. We
+pass by, in like manner, the real signification of the English word
+"ghost," and make no reference to the idea of there being a Holy, in
+contradistinction to a profane, vulgar, and unholy, ghost We may also
+omit anything more than a bare allusion to the fact that the third
+member of the Trinity, as it is called, appeared in forms recognizable
+by the eye; and that when it assumed an overshadowing condition (Luke
+i. 35), it acted as a male human body would have done, and impregnated
+Mary, as Jupiter did Leda. It is rather my desire to call attention to
+the ideas actually existing, probably in all Christendom, and certainly
+in Great Britain, respecting "ghosts." They may be thus described.
+
+It is believed by many that certain individuals have, during their
+lifetime, a power of determining that some immaterial part of their
+living body shall, after death, assume the figure and proportions
+possessed by the person during life, as well as his clothes, &c., and
+act as if this second self had a real existence, recognizable by men,
+animals, and even candles,* and a definite worldly purpose. In other
+cases it is assumed, that the defunct has not had any particular desire
+to return to life until after his death has taken place; but that his
+spirit, having as much power to think without its brains as with them,
+makes itself apparent with a distinct object, formed, not in the living
+body, but in the corpse. The purposes generally attributed to ghosts
+are, to give information about murder or money, to compel religious
+rites over their dead body, or to punish a relentless oppressor with
+daily horror. Still further, some suppose that ghosts are doomed for
+a certain time to walk the earth, and suffer during the day in fires
+perpetual, till, in some unknown way, the sins of their bodies have been
+purged away, or until some one, living, has made an atonement for
+sins committed and unpardoned during the lifetime of the "revenant"
+(Shakespeare in Hamlet). The so-called disembodied spirits are supposed
+to be able to operate upon matter, to throw our atmosphere into waves,
+producing vision and hearing, and to move from one spot to another. They
+have, still farther, the power of making and emitting light, and are so
+partial to using the faculty, that they prefer appearing by night, and
+in darkness.
+
+     * "And the lights in the chamber burnt blue."
+
+     --Alonzo the Brave.--Lewis.
+
+Of the real existence of such ghostly beings no devout Romanist can fail
+to convince himself; for his Church, which claims to be infallible, has
+provided special services for combating them, and a Papal priest has,
+many a time, claimed, and attempted to exercise, the power to drive what
+the French call "revenans," from the earth into the Red Sea. The saintly
+annals of the Church of Rome are filled with stories of angels, gods,
+and devils, who have appeared to holy men of old, either to applaud
+their conduct, or to try their faith The legends about Saint Dunstan
+and Saint Anthony are too well known to require repetition here, and
+it would be idle to refer to some particularly good ghost story, when
+everybody knows so many.
+
+The general credit obtained by the tales referred to has been attributed
+by many to the teaching of the Bible. The apparition of Samuel to Saul;
+the intercourse between the angel Raphael and Tobit; the manifestation
+of some celestial beings to Zacharias (Luke i. 11); to Mary (v. 28);
+to certain shepherds (Luke ii. 9); the statement that some men have
+entertained angels unawares (Heb. xiii. 2); the transfiguration scene,
+described in Matt, xvii. and Mark ix., in which Moses and Elias are said
+to have returned from heaven to earth, with the design of comforting
+Jesus; and the story of Peter and the angel, told in Acts xii. 6-15--all
+indicate a firm belief in the existence of ghosts, and form the
+Christian's warrant for believing in them.
+
+But an extended knowledge of the belief entertained by people other
+than the followers of Jesus shows that the idea in question is wholly
+independent of both Judaism and Christianity. A credence in ghosts is
+profound in Japan, and it resembles, in every respect, that which has
+been so long current in Europe. If any one, for example, will read a
+story in A B. Mitford's _Tales of Old Japan_ (Macmillan; London, 1871),
+entitled, "The Ghost of Sakura," a village, he will scarcely be able to
+divest himself of the idea that the legend is of British origin. Without
+going into the reasons which have convinced me that the writer has
+fairly given a purely Japanese tale, and one wholly untainted by Popish
+legends, I may shortly indicate the main points in the narrative, which
+purports to be a true one. A certain lord behaved very badly to his
+tenants, increasing the imposts upon them until life became a burden. By
+ordinary petitions he was unmoved, and it was necessary to have recourse
+to unusual means. The adoption of a promising plan was, in the mind of
+its proposer, a positive passport to a cruel death, by crucifixion. In a
+touching leave-taking of his wife, he ends his speech with the words--"I
+give my life to allay the misery of the people of this estate" (vol. ii,
+p. 12). His proceedings save the poor peasants, for whom he sacrifices
+himself, from utter ruin--every grievance which they have is redressed;
+but their saviour is condemned to be crucified, in which punishment
+his wife is included, and his sons are to be beheaded before his face.
+Unable to save the man, his nearest male friends become priests, and
+end their days praying and making offerings on behalf of their friends'
+souls, and those of the wife and offspring (p. 25), and they collect
+money enough to erect six bronze memorial Buddhas. "Thus," the tale goes
+on to say, "did these men, for the sake of Sogoro and his family, give
+themselves up to works of devotion; and the other villagers also brought
+food to soothe the spirits of the dead, and prayed for their entry into
+Paradise; and, as litanies were repeated without intermission, there
+can be no doubt that Sogoro attained salvation." The next sentence is a
+Buddhist text, viz.:--
+
+"In Paradise, where the blessings of God are distributed without
+favour, the soul learns its faults by the measure of the rewards given.
+The lusts of the flesh are abandoned, and the soul, purified, attains
+to the glory of Buddha." I scarcely need mention, to those interested
+in Buddhism, that this conception of Paradise is very different to that
+which many persons uphold to be "nothingness." The Japanese "Nirvana" is
+evidently not annihilation.
+
+When Sogoro was to die, the friendly priests entreated the authorities
+that they might have his body, so as to be able to bury it decently;
+but the request was only granted after the corpse had been exposed three
+days and three nights.
+
+At the time appointed, Sogoro and his wife are tied to two crosses, and
+their children brought out for decapitation. The utterance of the eldest
+son (æt. 13) is very touching--"Oh my father and mother, I am going
+before you to Paradise, that happy country, to wait for you. My little
+brothers and I will be on the banks of the river Sandzu,* and stretch
+out our hands, and help you across. Farewell, all you who have come
+to see us die; and now, please cut off my head at once." With this he
+stretched out his neck, murmuring a last prayer (p. 28).
+
+     * The Buddhist Styx, which separates Paradise from Hell,
+     across which the dead are ferried by an old woman, for whom
+     a small piece of money is buried with them. I may add that
+     such a custom obtains amongst the lower orders in Ireland to
+     this day.
+
+At length it is the parents turn to die, and thus speaks the
+wife--"Remember, my husband, that from the first you had made up your
+mind to this fate. What though our bodies be disgracefully exposed on
+these crosses? (compare Gal. iii. 13). We have the promises of the Gods
+before us; therefore, mourn not. Let us fix our minds upon death; we are
+drawing near to Paradise, and shall soon be with the saints. Be calm, my
+husband. Let us cheerfully lay down our lives for the good of many. Man
+lives but for one generation, his name for many. A good name is more to
+be prized than life." "Well said wife; what though we are punished for
+the many? our petition was successful, and there is nothing left to wish
+for..... For myself, I care not; but that my wife and children should
+be punished also is too much.... Let my lord fence himself in with iron
+walls, yet shall my spirit burst through them, and crush his bones, as a
+return for this deed." As he said this, he looked like the demon Razetsu
+(p. 30). The execution is completed by thrusting a spear into the side
+until it comes out at the opposite shoulder, and as it is withdrawn, the
+blood streams out like a fountain. Ere Sogoro dies, he again threatens
+his lord to revenge himself upon him in a manner never to be forgotten,
+and adds--"As a sign, when I am dead, my head shall turn and face
+towards the castle. When you see this, doubt not that my words shall
+come true" (p. 31). As Sogoro laid down his life for a noble cause, he
+was canonized, and became a tutelar deity of his lord's family. After
+the execution, those subordinates of the lord of the land were dismissed
+from their office, who, by their culpable and vile conduct, had made
+such a catastrophe necessary--a retribution that reminds the reader of
+that which is said to have fallen on the Jews, because of a death by
+crucifixion which they brought about. The Japanese historian then goes
+on (p. 34)--"In the history of the world, from the dark ages down to the
+present time, there are few instances of one man laying down his life
+for the many, as Sogoro did; noble and peasant praise him alike."
+
+Four years after this the ghosts of Sogoro and of his wife and family
+begin to torment their late cruel lord. His lady is gradually frightened
+to death; the crucified couple appear to her and to her husband in a far
+more fearful form than Jesus is said to have appeared to Constantine.
+They threaten both with the pains of Hell, and declare that they have
+come to take them there; and with them come other ghosts, who hoot,
+yell, laugh, and come and go at pleasure. No one, not even priests,
+could quiet the frightful sounds, or get rid of the horrible sights.
+Violence was wholly unavailing; mystic rites, incantations, and
+prayers were alike useless. The visions appeared at first by day, but
+subsequently by night. They were visible to everybody. But, after a long
+consultation, the once brutal, but now humbled, nobleman agrees to erect
+a shrine to the crucified man, and to pay him divine honours. This was
+done: Sogoro became a saint, under the name of Sogo Daimiyo, and the
+ghosts appeared no more. But terrible misfortunes fall upon the Lord
+Kotsuke, and he "began to feel that the death of his wife, and his own
+present misfortunes, were a just retribution for the death of Sogoro and
+his wife and children, and he was as one awakened from a dream. Then,
+night and morning, in his repentance, he offered up prayers to the
+sainted spirit of the dead farmer, acknowledged and bewailed his
+crime, vowing that, if his own family were spared from ruin, and
+re-established, intercession should be made at the court of the Mikado
+on behalf of the spirit of Sogoro, so that, being worshipped with even
+greater honours than before, his name should be handed down to all
+generations" (p. 43). In a foot note we learn that the Mikado of Japan
+could, like the Pope of Rome, confer posthumous divine honours upon whom
+he pleased. The tale tells us that, by the means just before alluded
+to, the spirit of Sogoro was appeased, and then positively became his
+quondam enemy's patron saint, and was universally respected in all that
+part of the country. His shrine was made beautiful as a gem, and night
+and day the devout worshipped at it Mitford adds (p. 47)--"The belief in
+ghosts appears to be as universal as that of the immortality of the soul
+upon which it depends. Both in China and Japan the departed spirit is
+invested with the power of revisiting the earth, and, in a visible form,
+tormenting its enemies, and haunting those places where the perishable
+part of it mourned and suffered. Haunted houses are slow to find
+tenants, for ghosts almost always come with revengeful intent; indeed,
+the owners of such houses will almost pay men to live in them, such is
+the dread which they inspire, and the anxiety to blot out the stigma."
+
+The parallel between an episode in Palestine, and that herein described
+as having occurred in Japan, will be completed if the reader remembers
+the passage in the Epistle to the Romans, wherein Paul, after speaking
+of the fall of the Jews, subsequent to the death of Jesus--who gave
+his life for others--remarks, "if the casting away of them be the
+reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life
+from the dead" (Rom. xi. 15).
+
+In addition to the ghost story above described, many others are detailed
+by Mr Mitford that are exact counterparts of some of those most
+firmly believed by orthodox Christians, and most commonly met with in
+novelettes and magazines. We give a digest of them--
+
+A paterfamilias is thrown into prison for gambling. After being confined
+some time, he returns home one night pale and thin, and, after receiving
+congratulations, he tells the friends assembled that he is permitted
+to leave the prison that evening by the jailers, for that he is to be
+returned to them the next day publicly. When the time arrives, they are
+summoned to remove his corpse--he had died the night before, and it was
+his ghost which had appeared. Compare Acts v. 19, and xii. 7-14.
+
+The next runs thus--A cruel policeman had a housemaid, who broke one of
+ten plates which he valued--she confessed the accident to the mistress.
+When the master came to hear of the loss, he tied the girl to a
+cupboard, and cut off one of her fingers daily. She managed to escape,
+and drowned herself in the garden well. Every night afterwards there
+was a noise from the well, counting up to nine, and then came a burst
+of grief. All the retainers left the place; the magistrate could not
+perform his duties, and was dismissed. The ghost was ultimately laid by
+a priest.
+
+After recounting this story, Mitford remarks--"The laying of disturbed
+spirits appears to form one of the regular functions of the Buddhist
+priests; at least, we find them playing a conspicuous part in every
+ghost story" (p. 50).
+
+The next tale is one of a haunted house. No paying tenant will live
+there, but a poor fencing master takes it for nothing. He first hears
+a terrific noise in the garden pond, and, on looking, sees a dark cloud
+enshrining a bald head. He inquires, and discovers that a former tenant,
+ten years ago, murdered a money-lender, and threw his head into the
+water. The actual tenant now drains the pond, finds the skull, takes it
+for burial to a temple, causing prayers to be offered up for the repose
+of the murdered man's soul. Thus the ghost was laid, and appeared no
+more. This tale serves as an additional means of recognizing the descent
+of Papism from Buddhism.
+
+Returning once again to Europe, we find that the ancient Greeks had not
+only an idea of the resurrection of the dead, and life after death, but
+that departed spirits could be summoned to appear by the living. For
+example, at the opening of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses
+recounts how-he offered a certain sacrifice, and tells us that, after
+it, the souls of the perished dead came forth from Erebus--betrothed
+girls and youths--much enduring old men, and tender virgins having
+a newly grieved mind--and many Mars-renowned men, wounded with
+brass-tipped spears, possessing gore-smeared arms, who in great numbers
+were wandering about the trench, on different sides, with a divine
+clamour, and pale fear seized upon me.... At first the soul of my
+companion, Elpenor, came, for he was not yet buried.... The shade
+addressed the hero, and, after telling the manner of his own death,
+entreats to have his corpse burned, and a tomb to be placed over it
+After this shade, appears Ulysses' mother, then Theban Tiresias, having
+a golden sceptre (Bohn's translation, pp. 147, 8). The rest of the
+book is made up of a number of dialogues between the traveller and the
+illustrious dead.
+
+The following, from Herodotus (vi. 68, 69), might have been introduced
+into chapter viii, for it is not only an example of a ghost, but of
+supernatural generation--but it is most appropriate here. Demaratus,
+having been twitted by certain persons that he was not the son of his
+putative father, who was known to be impotent, and that he was begotten
+by a mean man--a feeder of asses--adjures his mother, by a most solemn
+oath, to tell the truth. She replies--When Ariston had taken me to
+his own house, on the third night from the first a spectre, resembling
+Ariston, came to me, and having lain with me, put on me a crown that it
+had, it departed, and afterwards Ariston came; but when he saw me with
+the crown, he asked who it was that gave it me. I said, he did; but he
+would not admit it.... Ariston, seeing that I affirmed with an oath,
+discovered that the event was superhuman; and, in the first place, the
+crown proved to have come from the shrine... situate near the palace
+gates, which they call Astrabacus's; and, in the next place, the seers
+pronounced that it was the hero himself. We need not dwell upon the
+miracle, being only desirous to show that, in the time of Herodotus,
+ideas of the return of departed spirits to earth were common--had it not
+been so, the story would not have been conceived. See also _Herod_ iv.
+14, 15; _Æsch Theb_. 710; _cf. Porson on Eur_. Or. 401; _Æsch Ag_. 415.
+
+Perhaps the most striking example of a phantom is given in Herodotus
+viii. 84, where a spectre, in a woman's form, appeared, and cheered the
+Greeks on shipboard to a battle, saying, so that all the warriors heard
+her--"Dastards, how long will you back water?"
+
+In more recent times, Iamblicus (on the _Mysteries_, section ii, chap,
+iv.), speaking of different celestial and ordinarily invisible
+powers, observes--"In the motions of the heroic phasmata (or
+apparitions--phantoms or ghosts) a certain magnificence presents itself
+to the view." In the phasmata of the Archons the first energies appear
+to be most excellent and authoritative, and the phasmata of souls are
+seen to be the more moveable, yet are more imbecile, than those of
+heroes.... The magnitude of the epiphanies (or manifestations) in the
+gods, indeed, is so great, as sometimes to conceal all heaven.1' Then
+the author describes how this brilliancy is less in each inferior order
+of spirits, and is smallest in those souls below the grade of heroes
+(Taylor's translation, pp. 89, 90). In sect iii., chap, iii., the same
+writer remarks--"The soul has a twofold life, one being in conjunction
+with the body, the other being separated from all body." Again, in
+chap. xxxi.--"Still worse is the explanation of sacred operations, which
+assigns, as the cause of divination, a certain genus of daemons, which
+is naturally fraudulent, omniform, and various, and which assumes the
+appearance of gods and daemons, and the souls of the deceased" (Taylor's
+ed., p. 199). _Le Dictionnaire Infernal_, which I have previously
+described, gives two very modern-like histories from the Greeks, under
+the names Philinnion and Polycritus; but, as I cannot verify them by
+reference, I shall say no more of them.
+
+When we come to speak about the Romans, the first history which occurs
+to my mind is the well-known statement, that the ghost of Cæsar appeared
+to Brutus before the battle in which the latter met with his death. The
+narrator of the story dwells somewhat upon the coolness with which the
+living hero encounters the shade of the dead, as if it were strange for
+people, when they saw ghosts, not to be terrified. I think that we may
+believe in the Etruscans having an idea of invisible spirits becoming
+occasionally apparent, inasmuch as in a sepulchral painting, in the tomb
+of the Tarquinii, the shade of Patroclus is represented as standing over
+Achilles as he kills the Trojan captives in sacrifice.
+
+In later times, Otho declared that Galba's ghost had appeared to him,
+and had tumbled him out of bed (Suetonius' _Lives of the Caesars_, Otho,
+vii).
+
+We may take our next illustration from Cicero upon the nature of the
+gods. In book 2, ch. ii.,--"Who now," he makes Lucilius say, "believes
+in Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? or what old woman is now to be found so
+weak and ignorant as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which
+once so terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error and
+opinion, whilst it confirms the determinations of nature and truth. And
+therefore it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred
+institutions and the divine worship of the gods have been strengthened
+and improved from time to time; and this is not to be imputed to chance
+alone, but to the frequent appearance of the gods themselves. In the war
+with the Latins... Castor and Pollux were seen fighting with our army
+on horseback... and as P. Vatienus... was coming in the night to Rome...
+two young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king
+Perses was that day taken prisoner." He told the news and was imprisoned
+as a liar; but further information confirmed the ghost's story, and he
+was liberated and rewarded."... The voices of the Fauns have been often
+heard, and deities have appeared in forms so visible that they have
+compelled everyone, who is not senseless or hardened in impiety, to
+confess the presence of the gods" (Bohn's translation, p. 46). In page
+186 of the same edition, two remarkable instances are given wherein
+supernatural voices told of approaching trouble, and how it was to be
+avoided. No notice was taken of the warning, and the misfortunes which
+had been foretold occurred. The second miracle very closely resembled
+the modern voice of the Virgin at Lourdes.
+
+Whilst I was writing the preceding remarks, my attention was called by
+a friend to the following remarks in _The Examiner_, which seem to me so
+appropriate to this chapter and the preceding one, that I gladly
+quote them:--"If there is anything more striking than the thoughtless
+credulity with which men accept statements agreeing with their
+preconceptions, it is the stubborn incredulity with which they receive
+statements at variance with those preconceptions. The devotees of each
+religion, and even of each sect into which a religion is so commonly
+split up, accept and even adore the absurdities of their own belief,
+while they scan, with a sceptical severity that cannot be surpassed, the
+not greater follies of other systems of belief. In no respect is this
+fact more glaring than in the case of miracles. Each Church has its
+own special miracles, devoutly believed in, but repels with contempt
+or horror the alleged miracles of other religions. Happy that it is so.
+Were superstition not in its essence and nature a dividing folly, could
+it but muster in one herd all its votaries, common sense and truth would
+have a hard battle for existence."
+
+At this point of my subject, I feel the natural inclination of a
+physician to enter upon those changes in the nervous centres which
+induce individuals to hear, feel, and see, noises, sensations, and
+spectra, which have no real existence. But with the majority of
+experienced medical men, the matter is so well known that it would be
+idle for me to dwell upon it, further than to say, that it is a matter
+of fact that many an individual who hears and sees words and beings
+which are illusions, acts upon them as if they were real. Many an
+assault upon some quiet citizen, many an instance of wilful mischief,
+and even of murder, is due to a communication made, apparently by a
+supernatural visitor, to a person who has fully believed it. To a man
+in his perfect senses the delusive character of a spectre, or a message
+given in an audible voice may be readily recognized; but when an
+individual has a diseased brain, all delusions seem real, and it is a
+part of the affection that they are not only recognized, but acted on.
+
+The question has often suggested itself to my own mind, "How much
+has insanity of mind had to do with religion?" In modern times, the
+psychologist can readily see how far Swedenborg, Johanna Southcote, and
+many others, were influenced by a diseased condition of the brain; he
+can also see indications of lunacy in Ezekiel and the author of Daniel.
+But he is unable to prosecute the subject far without discovering that
+mental weakness is often bolstered up by fraud. Nothing is more easy
+than for an intelligent physician to understand the physical causes of
+such visions as certain religionists have talked of. But when a
+spurious miracle, like that of the apparition of a talking,
+immaculately-conceived Virgin at Lourdes, is traded on, the occurrence
+leaves the region of folly, and enters that of fraud. Into that it is
+injudicious to enter here.
+
+I may, however, advert to the current belief that certain individuals
+in the same family have, for many succeeding generations, their death
+foretold by some "wraith" or "phantom" appearing to them. This story is
+probably founded upon the fact that hereditary brain disease exists in
+the constitution of all such persons, and that its occurrence in each
+victim is marked by an ocular, and, perhaps, some aural delusion. The
+apparition may seem real to the diseased nervous system, though it has
+no absolute existence.
+
+We are then constrained to believe that the idea of ghosts has not
+arisen, in the first place, from any peculiar form of religious belief,
+but from the fact that in all inhabitants of the world there has existed
+that form of insanity which consists in the victim believing that he
+hears and sees individuals, inaudible and unseen by others. It is not,
+however, necessary that there shall be insanity with the hallucinations
+referred to; for I am personally acquainted with many individuals who
+have both seen and heard, as they imagine, persons and voices, but of
+whose sanity I have no doubt. Such delusions often come from overstudy,
+or too great mental emotion; and the medical worker in his closet and
+the Roman general in his tent may equally see a spirit.
+
+But it must be understood that to all classes the hallucination has the
+effect of reality, until, by the exercise of an active will, inquiry
+proves that both sounds and sights thus noticed are illusions. If,
+therefore, persons who have visions, &c., have not intellects which are
+cultivated, the spectres will pass for realities, and, as such, will be
+described.
+
+If we endeavour to apply this observation to certain cases, we shall
+see how far the deductions are _vraisemblable_. Of all the causes which
+produce atrocious crimes, insanity of mind is the most common. But this
+cause is rarely recognized at the time, even in a country like our own.
+Murder, rape, arson, and a host of other atrocities are often the first
+evidence of a diseased brain. The doctor is assured of this long before
+an ignorant public, and he traces without surprise the course of a
+malady which is not seen by the vulgar, until its culmination in some
+better known form of lunacy. These mental sufferers are exactly those
+to whom visions are most common, and who are most unable to test the
+reality of their hallucinations. If, then, they are integers of a people
+to whom insanity is unknown, it is natural that their narratives will be
+listened to with awe. The Japanese tyrant, whose case we have given,
+was probably brutal from impending brain disease, and the visions which
+appeared to him were caused by an increase of his malady.
+
+Shakespeare has evidently taken this view of the question, for, in
+_Macbeth_, he makes that hero (act ii., scene 1), soliloquise with a
+dagger which he sees, but cannot clutch--"Art thou not, fatal vision,
+sensible to feeling, as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind;
+a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" Conscious
+of the illusion, Macbeth recognizes the probable cause; but, at a
+later period, when the diseased brain is worse than it was before, the
+unfortunate man is quite unable to reason, and we find him in act iii.,
+scene 4, affrighted by the ghost of Banquo--whose appearance he believes
+to be real, even although his wife recalls to his mind the dagger scene,
+and reasons upon his weakness.
+
+I do not think that we shall be far wrong if we assume that many
+nations, who were not far advanced in mental speculation, obtained their
+first ideas of the resurrection of the body from the hallucinations
+of approaching or actual insanity. Christian divines unquestionably
+endeavour to demonstrate the truth of the dogma referred to, by the
+frequent appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his crucifixion.
+
+But the manifestation of Jesus differed wholly from that of Moses
+and Elias who once came to talk to him. He takes particular pains to
+demonstrate to Thomas that he has flesh and blood and a hole in his
+side, as well as in his hands and feet. This indicates that Jesus did
+not die upon the cross, but that he fainted and came back to life.
+
+To insist for a moment upon the lessons taught by the narrative in the
+gospels, let us inquire what is the value of the argument which proves
+the resurrection of the body, either by the appearance to some one of a
+departed friend or enemy, or the visits of Jesus to his disciples. If it
+is demonstrated thus that the body is eternal and will rise again, it is
+equally certain that its garments, whether cloth, linen, or calico, will
+be resuscitated also!
+
+The subject, however, is not yet exhausted, for we have now to remark,
+that no one has ever been known to see a spectre which does not
+represent some one whom he has seen, or whose picture he has noticed;
+nor does he ever hear a voice in a tongue unknown to himself.
+Consequently, when we find individuals recognizing some one whose
+portrait they have seen, but who talks in the mother tongue of the
+visionary, we are forced to conclude that the matter is unreal. If a
+French girl--or several of them, see the Virgin Mary, and hear her
+talk French, it is evident to every thinking mind, either that there
+is mental disorder or priestly craft. In like manner, when individuals,
+calling themselves "mediums," declare their power to call before them
+the ghosts of Homer and Hero, Leander and Alexander, and assert that
+they can distinguish Plato from Socrates, and Seneca from Xenophon, and
+can converse with all in pure English, it is clear that such people are
+not insane, and that their pretended skill has no existence. That which
+goes by the names of clairvoyance and spiritualism is based solely upon
+an unreasoning credulity.
+
+In speaking of a belief in "spiritualism" as being analogous to implicit
+credence in ghosts--and both as being founded upon imperfection in
+judgment, it is right that I should give some reasons for what I say.
+
+More than thirty years have elapsed since I attended my first séance
+with a clairvoyant. She had then been in Liverpool some time, and not
+only came to us from America with a wonderful renown, but soon attached
+to her triumphal car some of the most conspicuous of our local savans.
+Having read much upon the subject of Mesmerism--the Od or Odyllic
+force, animal magnetism, &c., I was desirous of gaining some personal
+experience, and gladly accepted an invitation to see the lady referred
+to, at the house of a near relative. There were many present, and before
+the meeting formally began, I obtained permission to take notes in
+writing of what passed. The first undertaking was that we should be told
+what two of our number were doing in a dark room below stairs. I was one
+of the two, and we stood with one hand upon the other's shoulder, and
+the loose hands were held out horizontally. One leg of each was resting
+on the tabla The lady reported us as sitting together on a sofa. Her
+husband explained away the failure by saying that there was a mirror in
+the room! As there was a looking-glass in every apartment in the house,
+my friend and I took our position on the stairs; and on this occasion
+we lay down at full length heads downwards. The clairvoyant said that we
+were arm in arm talking. After this second failure, I was asked to take
+the lady's hand in mine, and think deeply of some place which she would
+then describe to me.
+
+I must here pause to notice the condition referred to. My mind was to be
+absorbed in what I required to be described--if I allowed my thoughts to
+wander, I was told that the woman would be confused, and her performance
+a failure. This involved the idea that I was not to criticise, as the
+affair proceeded, but to make one thing "square" with another, if I
+could. My part was carefully pointed out, but nothing came of it. I then
+gave a possible clue, which was followed up, and with some surprise
+I found the woman describe what I was really thinking about. But the
+repetition of a phrase struck upon my ear--it was this, "I see a lot of
+things going back and for'rads," and I found that I had interpreted this
+as men, women, schoolboys, horses, palisades, trees, cloisters, houses,
+and coaches!
+
+After my retirement an elderly man grasped the hand, and I with pencil
+took down the words the woman used, with the intention of asking certain
+outsiders next day if the terms conveyed to them any distinct idea. I
+found the favourite sentence referred to came so often, that I merely
+left for the words a space with t. b. f., to show where the phrase
+occurred. There were far more spaces in my manuscript than words. But
+the old gentleman was satisfied, and so was his son who was present. It
+had been agreed between them that the clairvoyant was to describe "their
+house"--both were satisfied that she had; but one was thinking of the
+town and the other of the country house!
+
+During the talk, the woman, every time she uttered a sentence, said,
+"Am I right?" and when told that she was wrong, she adroitly changed her
+statement. Every experiment that night was a failure, and to some of us
+who were sceptics our host remarked--"How is it that when you expect the
+most, everything goes wrong?" To this my reply was--"When doubters
+are present you scan evidence closer than when you are all believers
+together."
+
+When once I was known as a pyrrhonist, I was invited to see everybody
+who was regarded by others as extraordinarily perfect in clairvoyance;
+and was astonished to find out how ignorant the believers were of the
+laws of evidence.
+
+After a time clairvoyance was replaced by spiritualism, and I was
+again challenged to test the virtue of mediums. As my avocations wholly
+prevented my personal attendance, I challenged certain of the faithful
+to describe my library, saying that I should not be content with being
+told that there were windows and a door, a fireplace and a chair, a
+table and an inkstand, &c., but that I had something very peculiar in
+it, the like of which I had never seen before--if this were described,
+I should fancy that the spirits knew something. But I added, so long as
+"spirits" only did things which conjurors, prestidigitateurs, "et
+hoc genus omne," did, I should decline to believe that spirits were
+corporeal, and that Grecian statesmen, Latin orators, and Sanscrit
+theologians were familiar with the English language.
+
+It must be emphatically stated that a man must not attribute everything,
+of which he knows little, to a power of which he knows less. No one
+can tell why an ordinary tree grows upwards, whilst a few peculiar ones
+grow, after a certain period of their life, downwards; and if any one
+were to declare that the first were influenced by the spirit of an
+unicorn, and the second by the spirit of a cow's tail, he would be
+regarded as a fool. Not much wiser would he be, who, when he heard a
+knock of some kind or other, asserted or believed that it came from the
+angel of night--the well-known Nox. The untutored savage, when first he
+sees a watch, cannot tell how it goes--if he says that he is ignorant,
+we may respect him; but if he declares that a spirit moves it, we
+despise his credulity. The polite circles of civilized cities who
+attribute the absurd capers of tambourines, concertinas, tables, and
+the like to the vivacity of the ghosts of defunct philosophers, and
+who think that it requires the shade of Venus to tell us, that feminine
+women are more graceful than masculine hoydens, are not much superior to
+the natural savage.
+
+These remarks may be supplemented by the experiences imparted to me by
+several personal friends; for, as it seems to me, each one has his
+own way in looking at things, and has, so to speak, an idiosyncrasy in
+belief and scepticism. One man, for example, inquires "How is it that
+if I propound to a spiritualist, to an artist with 'planchette,' or any
+other person who professes clairvoyance--a question, through a friend
+who does not know the answer, I never get a correct reply; but if I
+propound the same question the response is always right?" In this case
+it is clear that the inquirer answers himself--not wittingly, it is
+true; but, by means of a slight hesitation under certain circumstances,
+he gives to the adroit professor the needful clue. How far this is
+true has been repeatedly proved by those who have made the spirits say
+anything--"Where is my sister?" such an one asks, and by the alphabet
+and raps he hears that she is in Munich; but as the inquirer never had a
+sister, the spirits have clearly been duped.
+
+One of my friends, ordinarily a thorough sceptic, was converted to the
+belief that one of his hands was positively and the other negatively
+magnetic, and he showed me how he turned, by their means, a book
+suspended between us upon a door key finely tied within the leaves.
+But when I showed him that this was done by a movement of the body, and
+could not be done if both hands employed were fixed upon anything--he
+was convinced that what seemed due to one thing depended, in reality,
+upon another. Yet that man was an acute and able chemical analyst.
+How the late Dr Faraday convinced "table turners" that they did,
+unconsciously, that which they wished, but determined not to do, will
+long be remembered as a marvel of philosophical induction. We all have
+not the faculty of analyzing evidence, and it would be well if those who
+are deficient in that power would be less bigoted than they are. We can
+scarcely expect it, however, for ignorance and arrogance usually walk
+together; and no man is more convinced of his knowledge than the one
+who takes it at second hand, and believes what he is told. The faithful
+swallow "squid," and become a mass of blubber; the sceptics feed on
+solid flesh, and are thin as tigers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     Reconstructive. Faith and reason. Result of previous
+     investigations. Value of morality. Morality and Romanism.
+     Vice encouraged by priests--end in view. Submission to
+     priests more valuable than virtue. Vice better than
+     scepticism. Theological false witness. Compulsory faith.
+     Supply without demand--in theology. Correctness of doctrine
+     proved by the sword. Church and state in modern times.
+     "Nerve" required to change a belief. Moral courage. What is
+     faith? Absurd definition given by Paul. Faith must be
+     uncompromising. Why faith signifies blind confidence. Faith
+     and folly go hand in hand. Faith makes fools. Jesuits and
+     faith. Popery and faith. Faith persecutes reason. All
+     religious teachers uphold faith--the reason why. Quiet after
+     activity. The one who partly abjures faith resembles a
+     mariner at sea. Faith and reason incompatible. The author's
+     personal belief: Negative--positive. Opinions on various
+     received dogmas. Laws of Nature. Providence. The Book of God
+     in the universe. Sin--the ideas connected with children and
+     whelps. Human and animal instincts. Religious laws against
+     God's. Pious murder. When crimes are praiseworthy. Human
+     laws and ecclesiastical. Effect on common law of priestly
+     legislation. Ecclesiastical laws generally bad ones. The
+     Church makes sins; so does society. A case supposed. Society
+     contravenes the laws of Nature. The proper basis of
+     legislation. Personal impressions. Duty the guide of
+     conduct. Conclusions.
+
+Importance of them. Reason gives peace of mind. Fears of the orthodox.
+Reason may regenerate the world; Faith does not. Another way of treating
+the subject Mr Gladstone upon education. Opposes "dread of results" to
+"desire of learning." Gladstone and Strauss. Various oracles. Oxford
+graduates rarely philosophic. Lord Bacon's aphorisms. Science obstructed
+by human weaknesses. Progress of science barred by ecclesiastics.
+Religion and despotism. The man who scouts induction is a bigot.
+Revelation requires exposition. Three sets of expounders--all differ.
+Which must the faithful follow? Popish miracles claim credence from the
+faithful. He who argues must be logical. Can a bigot be a liberal? If
+learning is valuable, it must have free scope. Choice proposed--faith or
+reason? Men of mark who shun religious inquiry. Faraday and Gladstone.
+Influence of faith, or reason, on the clergy. Examples. An objection
+noticed. Reason useless in matters of faith--its absurdity demonstrated.
+
+It is now time to enter upon what has, throughout the composition of
+the preceding essays, been constantly present to my mind, viz.,
+"reconstruction." In the two larger volumes, and in this small one,
+it has been my aim to clear away the foul rags which have, for many
+thousand years, been heaped upon the lovely figure of truth--to
+endeavour to remove the meretricious, or rubbishy, constructions that
+designing men have builded round the magnificent structure of God's
+universe. I have, in my own opinion, demonstrated that the Jews have
+no real claim to be regarded as Jehovah's chosen people, and that their
+writings present no marks of having been inspired or revealed--that,
+on the contrary, there are proofs to show that a large portion of their
+Scriptures are worthless fabrications, contrived by imperfectly educated
+men, for a political purpose, or to foster vanity.
+
+In our examination into the character of the Hebrew God, and of those
+individuals said to be his special friends and messengers, as given
+in the Bible, we found evidence to show that the historians were a
+semi-civilized, sensual, and malignant race, whose ignorance was only
+surpassed by their arrogance. It has been further shown, that every
+portion of the Jewish Scriptures which modern Christians have adopted
+into their own religion, came to the so-called "chosen people" from
+those whom they, and many amongst ourselves, designate "heathen." We
+have, still further, shown the almost absolute identity between the
+current Christian faith and that originated by Sakya Muni, which still
+reigns in Thibet, Tartary, China, Ceylon, Japan, and elsewhere. We have
+demonstrated that a high grade of civilization, and a form of government
+more paternal and provident than any which the old world knew, existed
+in Peru, without the smallest evidence of Christianity or Mosaism having
+ever existed there.
+
+We have, in addition, shown that the miraculous conception of the Virgin
+Mary is not, by any means, as great a marvel as it is generally supposed
+to be, such an occurrence being as common to-day as it was from the
+beginning, and as it probably ever will be. By a similar inquiry we
+could readily have proved that the ascension of Jesus was not at all
+unique, inasmuch as great men of old were in the habit of rising after
+their decease, and making their dwelling in the heaven above--e.g.,
+Romulus.
+
+We have, still further, demonstrated that the modern belief in an
+angelic host has nothing in it peculiar to Bible Christians and
+modern Jews, and that our notion of a resurrection of the body is not
+exclusively a portion of the Christian's creed, but that it was held,
+in one form or another, more or less distinct, by the ancient Greeks and
+Romans, and the distant Japanese. In fine, we have done much to sweep
+away the major part of the religious doctrines and dogmas which are
+prevalent in the Christian world.. Our writing hitherto has been
+essentially iconoclastic.
+
+But, amongst all the idols which we have attempted to throw down, we
+have not, in any instance, threatened morality. We take no credit for
+forbearance, but we point to the fact, inasmuch as whenever opposite
+religionists contend about their tenets, they never lay violent hands
+upon morality. They may abuse the practice of their opponents, and hold
+up the imaginary vices of their enemy to execration, but real goodness
+in the work of life is ever respected.*
+
+     * I am, however, somewhat in doubt whether the Roman Church
+     deserves the eulogy here given to other bodies. In my
+     reading of history, especially in what are called the "Dark
+     Ages" of Christianity, the Papal authorities winked at
+     crimes against morality, so long as the sinners paid due
+     deference to ecclesiastical authority, and bled freely, by
+     pouring lands, treasures, and wealth of all kinds into the
+     priestly treasury. The history of the Popes is written
+     almost everywhere in blood. Murder, assassination, and
+     spoliation were common weapons in their hands, and rape and
+     robbery were condoned easily to those who were powerful and
+     active slaves of the Church.
+
+As soon as the Popes of Rome were free from persecution and danger,
+they, in their turn, used the arts of the tyrants of old, and sought for
+political supremacy by pandering to all the passions of kings and great
+men--if, by that means, they could make them friendly. Up to within a
+very short period there has not been a Christian despot, or a Pope, who
+has not punished political crimes more severely than offences against
+morality.
+
+Yet, with all the fearful practices adopted by Romanists, they have ever
+had in their months exhortations to propriety and personal purity--their
+words have been peaceful, whilst war of the most malignant type has been
+in their hearts. What they have practised, however, they have accused
+their adversaries of having preached.
+
+It may also be objected that some small sects in modern days have really
+preached the doctrines of "free love," and license in sensuality; but
+of these it would be unprofitable to discourse. The people who join in
+promulgating such doctrines are below contempt.
+
+When controversialists find that they have one subject upon which they
+can all of them cordially unite, the philosopher would expect that
+they would study to develope it, and, for that purpose, place it in the
+foreground. But this is far from their practice. The ministers of every
+denomination, on the contrary, place morality far behind doctrine--those
+of the Protestant sect, for example, declare "good works" to be
+essentially valueless without "faith," and our pulpits teem with
+discourses which demonstrate the enormous superiority of a blind belief,
+in doctrine and dogma, over an intelligent morality, irrespective of
+creed.
+
+In this propensity our preachers do not stand alone, for, in every
+instance where history has led us to inquire into this point, we find
+that submission to priestly rule has been regarded as more praiseworthy
+than virtue. When Israel slew the Midianites there was no apparent
+difference between the morals of the two people. Both were equally bad
+or good; but such as they were, their deeds were sanctioned by different
+gods; and whilst the Jews were right, their opponents were wrong. When
+the Crusaders attacked the Saracens, there can be little, if any, doubt
+that the worth of the latter far exceeded that of the former; but as
+their faith differed, the practice was of no consequence in the eyes of
+the invaders, and he who died in fighting for his country was execrated
+by the robbers, who desired to steal it.
+
+If, from a comparatively distant past, we approach nearer to our own
+times, there is abundance of testimony to prove that the excellence of
+the French Protestants was superior to that of the Papal priests and
+their followers in the time of Louis XIV.; but this was of no avail--the
+good were persecuted by the bad, because they were good only in deeds
+and not in doctrine--the last being upheld by the bigots who persecuted
+them.
+
+We may all see precisely the same phenomenon in our own day. Those who
+are called Unitarians, and the vast majority of those who are designated
+atheists are, in proportion to their numbers, far more moral than those
+who are generically described as "Christians;" but their integrity
+in every relation of life does not prevent their being abused and
+persecuted, by parsons in "the establishment," by every means available
+in a free country, and amongst the weapons used, the most common are
+slander and false witness.
+
+On inquiry into its origin, we find at the root of this aversion to
+recognize probity as the most important item of religion, the undoubted
+fact that the upright, thoughtful man requires no other person to help
+him as a priest or a mediator between him and the Creator.
+
+To possess a doctrine there must be some one to teach it, and the demand
+begets a supply. But though the last aphorism is true in commerce, it
+is not by any means universally so, for many an inventor of goods has
+to force a supply, ere any demand for his article can arise. It is
+certainly so in Ethics. The Jews made no request to Moses for a new
+religion when he offered to lead them; they soon became weary of him,
+and wanted to go back to Egypt. Jesus constrained his first followers
+to accept a salvation of which they did not feel the need, and Mahomet
+compelled, at the sword's point, his victims to accept that which they
+detested. In these instances there was no want to be met, except on the
+part of individuals who desired to obtain personal influence.
+
+In religion the laws of supply and demand have only exceptional sway,
+for each individual priest or minister may, according as he pleases,
+elect to provide for known desires, or to inaugurate a new set of
+requirements. But whether he does one or the other he is clearly an
+opponent to, and frequently disliked by, any one who refuses all manner
+of traffic in spiritual affairs. He is then practically in the same
+condition as the English government was in when the Chinamen refused to
+take the opium which they had been receiving for many years before; and,
+like it, he must endeavour to enforce his wishes by war. But the parson
+does not fight with cannon and gunpowder, for he assumes the power to
+wield weapons of far greater importance--viz., the power to torture
+after death all his adversaries. "Believe me," run his words, "and
+you shall be saved from hell fire; reject my message, and you shall be
+burned in everlasting flames!"
+
+When belligerent kings go to battle, they do not go alone and fight
+single-handed for their cause; on the contrary, they enlist upon their
+side every man whom they can influence or compel; nor do they care,
+so long as the troops obey orders, what their private thoughts are;
+probably few Chinese who fought the British were not opium consumers,
+and few English cared for the drug at all. In like manner, when priests
+differ among themselves, they do not meet in wordy tournaments, but
+they enlist on their respective sides everybody whom similarity in
+superstition, interest, or any other motive induces to join their
+standard. When an issue is joined, the result is governed by force of
+arms, arts, or numbers, as the case maybe.
+
+Thus, in the last resort, the correctness of a doctrine is, as we have
+frequently remarked in previous pages, proved by thews and sinews--not
+by brains. So long as the Pagans were numerically superior to
+Christians, the latter were heretics and victims; but when the disciples
+of Jesus were actually the strongest, they became suddenly "the
+orthodox," and the poor Pagans "the damned." In later times
+Protestantism asserted its faith by the prowess of Cromwell's
+"ironsides" in England and Ireland; in like manner the Covenanters of
+Scotland proved, by the might of their swords, Presbyterianism to be
+superior to Episcopal government. By dint of Saxon might, Ireland was
+long politically at one with Great Britain; now by her numbers she is
+allied to the Vatican.
+
+The well-read politician will see that a contest similar to those thus
+indicated is going on almost all over Europe. In Great Britain and
+Ireland, in France, Prussia, Austria, and Italy--even in the once
+bigoted Spain, priestly parties are striving for supremacy over the
+party of rational order and philosophical government. The question at
+issue is by no means doubtful--it is one which has been agitated for
+thousands of years, but that has never assumed large proportions in
+consequence of general ignorance and consequent apathy. In England,
+France, and Germany, innumerable champions on the one side have risen,
+fought, and died, overpowered by the numbers-ranged against them; but,
+as persecution is said to be the seed of orthodoxy, so these men and
+their writings have, by dissemination through the press, and the effect
+of increased education in the languages of Europe, gradually raised so
+large a party, as to be able to contend with some chances of success.
+
+It will be seen that the question to which I refer is this--"Shall men
+and states be governed by faith?" in other words, "by the hierarchy of
+the most numerous section of the community--or by reason--i.e., by the
+good sense of the majority?" In Austria and in Italy this issue has
+clearly been tried, and in both instances the priesthood has been
+obliged to accept a secondary position. In Prussia the same momentous
+point is being tried with every chance of the sacerdotal party being
+worsted. In the British kingdom religion has long been regarded as
+subordinate to state policy; nevertheless there is yet a strong party
+who desires to reduce her inhabitants to clerical bondage. If all the
+individuals composing this section of the community were united, they
+would prevail by their numbers; but, as the aggressive army is composed
+of troops who bear an almost deadly hate against each other, small
+danger is to be anticipated from them. The Ritualist and Roman Catholic
+might unite together; but these would not stand shoulder to shoulder
+with the Wesleyan, Baptist, and Low Churchman. Although all equally
+detest those who say "parsons are not wanted," sects will not ally
+themselves, lest, if every one were to be compelled to select a form of
+faith, the compulsory decree might augment the numbers following some
+adversary.
+
+We have thus placed before our readers what we believe is the first
+article which has to be considered in Reconstruction. We have to ask
+ourselves whether we should enlist ourselves under the banner of faith,
+and endeavour to add one form of religion to those already existing;
+or, whether we should join the banner of reason, and repudiate all
+doctrines, dogmas, credences, and the like, which are offensive to
+common sense. We may fairly parody the words of the mythical Elisha, and
+say to ourselves--"Choose ye this day whom ye will serve; if faith suits
+your indolence, then hug your chains; if you prefer reason, gird up the
+loins of your mind, and metaphorically kill the priests of Rite."
+
+Ere, however, we can reasonably expect those who have hitherto been
+inconsiderate to make their selection of standard bearers, it is
+desirable to say something of the two. _In limine_ we must observe that
+we do not believe that the choice will be determined by the head
+alone, for there are many whose arms are, so to speak, paralyzed by
+a constitutional peculiarity. A hero in his study has often proved a
+poltroon in the field of battle. I may point the moral by quoting from
+memory a story in Addison's _Spectator_--"A B is a hen-pecked husband;
+he knows it, and bewails his thraldom; he consults C D, who sympathises
+with his case, increases his detestation for the home tyranny, and tells
+him how to break the chains. A B, full of resolution, tries the plan
+recommended, but breaks down at once." The moral is, that those who are
+born to serve, or are too weak-minded to assert their independence, had
+better submit to be ruled--even if the tyrant be a woman, than try to
+gain peace by conflict. Into this story I fully enter, for I know, from
+experience, how much "nerve" is required for any one to change his or
+her relative position. The moral courage of which I speak, is one that
+dominates over constitutional shyness and fear; it differs from the
+boldness of a soldier, and the dash of the beast of prey; it is not a
+simple mental assent; but it is a motive which, after being once placed,
+becomes a mainspring of life. To adopt Faith as a guide, is to go
+through life easily--so long as "thought" can be sent to sleep. To adopt
+Reason, is to prevent thought ever slumbering, and to live the happier
+the more steadily that the mind is watchful In few words, Faith is "a
+quack doctor," Reason "a physician." The first will always have the most
+admirers.
+
+Without further preface, let us inquire "what Faith really is?" This is
+a question with which I have been familiar since my childhood, and the
+answer offered to me for adoption was--"It is the substance of things
+hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1). This reply
+has never suggested any distinct idea to me, and I am confident that the
+author of "Hebrews" had not a definite meaning in his own mind when he
+wrote the words. The context shows that the word [--Greek--] is used
+to signify distinct states of mind, and one example, which is given
+frequently, indicates a different signification from another that
+precedes or follows. For example, in v. 5 we are told that Enoch was
+translated by "faith;" but the only evidence for this is, that "he
+pleased God;" whereas, in verse 11, we are told that Sarah, who laughed
+at the idea of having offspring, and disbelieved the promise which said
+that she should have a son, conceived "through faith." Still further,
+the false history of the chapter disgusted me--e.g., we read in w. 24,
+25, 27, that Moses by faith elected to bear affliction with the people
+of God, and from the same cause forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
+the king, &c.--both of which statements are untrue, for he ran away both
+from the afflictions of the Hebrews and the wrath of the monarch, and
+required "pressing" before he would leave his retreat in Midian. I
+regard the chapter thus referred to as one of the great stumbling blocks
+of Christianity. Its logic is contemptible; yet it must pass for truth,
+because Paul is thought to have written it. Being now thrown back
+upon our own resources for a definition of "faith," we affirm that it
+signifies "_uncompromising_ belief in what one is told." Every religious
+book which occupies itself with this subject illustrates the word in
+question by affirming that it resembles the motive which actuates a
+child who, at a father's bidding; leaps from a height upon the promise
+that papa will catch him in his arms.
+
+Though, as a rule, I am disinclined to use adjectives, I have added the
+word in italics, because it is a material part of the definition, and
+involves more than at first sight appears. Peter tried to walk upon the
+water--he doubted, and began to sink. He has been imitated by others;
+they have all failed. "Doctor," a man may say, "can I swallow this
+without being choked?" "Yes, if you think you can." He tries to swallow
+the morsel, and is choked. The result in every case is attributed to a
+want of faith. In other words, hesitation cannot effect what confidence
+can. Consequently we are justified in asserting that faith and doubt
+are absolutely incompatible. Faith implies an absolute and perfect
+confidence. This faith may be compulsory--as when a shipmaster is
+obliged by local law to give up the management of his ship to a pilot;
+or it may be spontaneous, as when a patient trusts himself to a surgeon.
+For a man only to give a half confidence, is to cripple to that extent
+the capacity of the one who is responsible.
+
+Religious faith, then, involves the necessity of an absolute and blind
+confidence in the priestly pilot selected as a conductor through life
+to eternity; it precludes inquiry, discourages thought upon the most
+important matter which every man has to consider, and makes of a
+rational being an intellectual slave. In few words, it reduces its
+votary to the position of a tool, and renders him, so far as religion is
+concerned, mentally blind.
+
+We recognize the accuracy of our deductions when we find that the aim of
+the Roman church has been to reduce men to the condition here described,
+and then to use them as carpenters do planes, chisels, and axes. It is
+probable that there never existed in the world an order of men who have
+so completely reduced themselves, and voluntarily too, it must be borne
+in mind, to the position of a machine, as the Jesuits have done. They
+are an instrument in the hands of their superiors, and they blindly
+obey. Whether the order exists for good or harm, it is not my purpose to
+discuss.
+
+Next in order to the society of Jesus comes the gigantic society known
+as the Papacy, or Roman Catholicism. I place this as second to Jesuitry,
+because, for a long period, there was a certain freedom of opinion
+allowed to the superior clergy. But now, when it has become a tenet
+of the church of Rome, that its head is absolutely infallible in all
+matters of dogma and doctrine, it is probable that the demand of faith
+from the laity may equal, if not exceed, that made upon professed
+Jesuits.
+
+In religion, the only place in which uncompromising faith finds
+its home, is the Papal. That demands unlimited belief in everything
+ecclesiastically promulgated, hatred of everything dogmatically
+condemned, and acquiescence in every sacerdotal command. Amongst that
+sect, doubting is an offence, and opposition is a crime.
+
+We have seen this illustrated in the person of the learned Bishop
+Döllinger, who has been excommunicated simply because he refused to
+accept the new fangled notions of an almost effete old pope. He cannot
+see anything in a modern council to supersede apostolic traditions; he
+doubts; therefore the Papalists do everything in their power to damn
+him. In like manner, although prior in time to the declaration of
+the Pope's infallibility, we have seen the present king of Italy
+excommunicated; because he, as the head of his own dominions, ordered
+a decree to be carried into effect which, whilst it was good for the
+people generally, was regarded as hostile to the church.
+
+The observer need not, however, go far from home in search of
+illustrations, for every year sees one or another Protestant minister
+leaving the Anglican for the Roman communion, on the sole ground that
+in the latter there is no room for doctrinal doubts and contests. To the
+laity, the very repose of the religious mind is held out as a bait by
+Papal missionaries, and it is probably one of the most successful which
+"the fishers of men" employ. I once heard a brother physician express
+his opinion on this point. Conversation had turned upon a confrère who
+had been in religious matters "everything by turns, and nothing long."
+"Ah," said the Romanist, "he'll be tired of roaming some day, and find
+repose at last in the bosom of the church; his soul will then be at
+rest, and will wander no more."
+
+The possibility of Protestants entertaining a doubt upon the power of
+"the Church" to demand unlimited belief and obedience from the faithful,
+is a sore thorn in the side of many dignitaries of the national creed.
+As this propensity to inquiry is an essential part of the legacy
+bequeathed to Englishmen by the reformation, this last movement has been
+execrated by some of our High Churchmen. It is asserted, that, as the
+taking of the Bible for the sole rule of faith has been followed by
+a great splitting up of the so-called "Church of Christ," so it is
+advisable to change the standard, and to adopt that of "Ecclesiastics"
+personally or collectively. In any case, such advocates desire to
+re-establish the reign of faith. What the Reign of Faith has been in
+Europe, it would be idle to describe.
+
+As soon as the mind of an individual revolts from giving implicit faith
+to any creed, doctrine, or dogma, he must be regarded as a mariner who,
+being not quite contented with his own country, endeavours to find a
+better. In his voyage he first leaves the shore as a fledgling does the
+nest--he goes a short excursion, and returns; after a time he becomes
+more brave, and puts off more boldly. At first he probably finds
+a number of other barques as venturous as his own, and he becomes
+emboldened; it may be his arms are strong, his head clear, and his boat
+good; and he steers into the offing. No sooner does he leave the herd,
+however, than he is chased, and if he refuses to put back, curses follow
+him; and the friends whom once he had are condoled with. Such is the
+position of a Protestant who departs seriously from the religion of the
+majority. With or amongst the Romanists to leave the shore is an act of
+disbelief which must be atoned for by penance or punishment.
+
+It is clear that every such individual who, like a chick, leaves the
+shelter of the maternal wings, must be more or less at sea. He or she
+may have no idea of going very far, yet may be compelled to sail on
+until he has reached the other side of Doubting Straits, and has landed
+in the realm of Reason. We can well conceive the waters to be covered
+by small "craft," which keep together for company's sake, or who boldly
+sail out and solicit followers--some cluster, it may be, round a stately
+galleon, others sail with a dashing cruiser, some come into collision
+or hostile contact with their neighbours, and try to damage each others'
+barques. But all are at sea--driven hither and thither by breezes which
+spring up, no one knows how, and drop down again as swiftly as they
+rose. The mariners, however, seem to enjoy the excitement, and refuse to
+return to their own land.
+
+The individuals whom we here describe are the ordinary Protestant sects
+(not including the Unitarians, who have long reached a comparatively
+stable ground). These, by whatever name they are called, refuse to give
+implicit faith to the Pope; they will, however, accord, in some degree,
+to some pet parson, the management of their conscience; they dread what
+is called "free-thinking," as a mariner does a lee shore. They put up
+with every accident which arises from mingling faith with reason, and
+are, on the whole, contented, as long as too much pressure is not put
+upon them, to steer in a definite direction. Of these it may be said,
+"Thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then,
+because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
+out. of my mouth" (Rev. iii. 15,16). The endeavour to make reason
+subservient to faith, must ever be a failure as complete as would be
+the endeavour to weld iron with water, or to heat an anchor shaft by
+surrounding it with cold coals and wood, then blowing a blast of air
+upon the whole. He who is determined to use reason, must drop faith; and
+he who clings to faith, must drop reason. The conclusions drawn by all
+who attempt the combination will always be lame and impotent.
+
+If, in the stead of faith, an individual takes reason for his guide
+through this world to the next, he incurs the wrath and malignancy of
+the many, and the respect of the few. He comes in for far harder names
+than Pagans gave to Christians, and Papalists gave to Huguenots. If,
+unfortunately, he should live in a country where priests rule, he may be
+burned, as Savonarola was at Florence, Latimer and Ridley at Oxford, and
+Servetus at Geneva. Luther was said to be a devil--a so-called Atheist
+is believed to be something worse.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding all the obloquy thrown upon Freethinkers by the
+orthodox, they steadily have increased in numbers, ever since the spread
+of education and the cheapness of books have enabled men to study in
+retirement When there was little instruction and few books, people
+gained what knowledge they had from their spiritual guides. This power
+of the pulpit enabled the hierarchy to set up and substantiate any
+claims which they chose. But, since the power of the printing press has
+risen, the influence of the priesthood has diminished. With all this
+tendency to so-called Atheism, there has been no loss of propriety; on
+the contrary, the probity of the few exceeds that of the many, and in
+all there is a great improvement. The present times in Italy are far
+superior to those when the Borgias and their religion were supreme.
+
+When we inquire what the Freethinkers, or Rationalists, are, it is
+readily seen that they have been maligned by "the faithful." There is
+little difficulty in summing up their tenets: it is "Reverence, without
+servility." They draw their views from the book of creation, and hold it
+infamous to fight for supremacy where facts and logic can decide. This,
+however, is by far too meagre to satisfy either a friend, an inquirer,
+or an opponent; it is, therefore, desirable to go into the matter more
+fully. In doing so, I make no pretence to be the mouthpiece of a party,
+nor even to give a digested account of what those who have written and
+published before me have enunciated; my sole aim is to give, in as plain
+terms as I can command, the opinions which inquiry has forced upon my
+mind.
+
+My first confession of faith must be negative, for, until the ground has
+been cleared, it is not advisable either to plant or construct:
+
+1. I do not believe in the authority of any written book as being an
+inspired production, or as containing a revelation from God to man. In
+my estimation, the Bible is not in any way superior to the Koran, to
+the Dhammapada, the Puranas, the Main-yo-Khard, the Avesta, or any other
+collection of scriptures held sacred.
+
+2. I do not believe the story given in Genesis of the creation, of
+the formation of human beings, and what is ordinarily called "the
+temptation" and "the fall".
+
+3. I do not believe in the existence of what is technically designated
+"original sin," nor that the human race is "a fallen one;" consequently,
+I do not believe in the necessity for "salvation." I do not believe that
+death came into the world by sin.
+
+4 I do not believe in the existence of "sin," in the ordinary
+acceptation of the word; nor do I believe that man requires the
+intervention of any fellow mortal, either to reconcile or embroil him
+with an unseen power.
+
+5. I do not believe in the existence of a Devil, or of any other power
+in the whole universe, than that of the Supreme Maker of all.
+
+6. I do not believe in any description which has yet been given of Hell
+or Heaven.
+
+7. I do not believe that God has ever directly spoken to man.
+
+8. I do not believe that God has ever become incarnate, or that he has a
+celestial spouse, or a son.
+
+9. I do not believe in the existence of truth-speaking prophets, in the
+existence of angels, or ghosts, or in the supernatural birth of any one.
+
+10. I do not believe that God has now, or ever has had, a separate and
+chosen people, peculiarly "His own," and, consequently, that there are
+none to whom the term "the elect" can apply.
+
+11. I do not believe that what is generally designated religion is
+necessary to the existence of law and order in a state or in a family.
+
+12. I do not believe that God requires the assistance of man, here
+or elsewhere, to enable Him to find, or to keep, or to punish, His
+subjects.
+
+These negatives might be multiplied, but I doubt whether profitably so,
+inasmuch as the more we dilute important points, the less readily are
+they recognized. We may now proceed to affirmations:--
+
+1. I do believe in the existence of a distinct Power in creation--great
+beyond conception, which pervades all space--which is everywhere present
+in the earth, the sea, the air, and in every conceivable part of the
+Universe--which made all things, and gave to them properties, powers,
+and laws. A power to which it were blasphemy to assign ears, eyes,
+hands, or human parts, and an evidence of a grovelling mind to suppose
+it capable of human passions, such as love, hate, jealousy, and
+merriment, and to describe it as ignorant, vacillating, and grieved at
+its own work. That Power I cannot conceive as having either an origin or
+an end. Into the designs of such a power, man cannot enter, nor can he
+even seem to approach them, except by noticing the works of creation,
+and studying the laws which apparently govern it By the term, "laws of
+nature," I understand "the laws of the power of which I speak." I cannot
+conceive how man can form an idea of a state of spiritual existence of
+which he can neither see, observe, or notice anything.
+
+It is, in my opinion, unnecessary here to enter into the vexed question
+of the continued interference of this Power with its works, for where we
+have only human analogies to guide us, it is undesirable to argue
+upon them in the attempt to discover the superhuman. As we shall have
+occasion shortly to indicate our views upon a matter analogous to this,
+we will postpone anything which we may have to say.
+
+I believe that the Power has never made, nor can ever make, a mistake;
+that all its works are perfect, and that where they seem to us to be
+otherwise, it is from our ignorance of their design.
+
+It seems to me that lions and lambs, sharks and gudgeons, that hawks and
+chickens, form a portion of a grand scheme: that the distinct classes
+of animals were originally perfect; that they may deteriorate, yet never
+advance beyond perfection. I do not believe that a lion could become,
+under any circumstances, a bull; a bear a camel, or a pig an elephant.
+
+2. The belief that the Creator made each creature originally perfect,
+and with certain well defined propensities, involves the further
+confidence that the indulgence in those propensities is a necessary part
+of the scheme of creation; consequently, I believe that the tiger eats
+flesh because it is a law of his existence, and that in doing so he
+commits no sin. I believe, still further, that a close observation of
+nature gives us some apparent insight into the plan of creation For
+example, I think the existence of gills in a fish leads us fairly to the
+conclusion that it was intended to live in the water; that the existence
+of teeth implies that they were to be used in eating, wings in flying,
+legs in walking. Still further, when we notice that vegetables can
+assimilate mineral matter, which animals, as a rule, cannot, I believe
+that the vegetable kingdom has its special place in the world; and when,
+moreover, we find creatures who can eat and digest vegetables, and have
+a special apparatus for the purpose, it is fair to conclude that they
+too have their station assigned. A corresponding remark applies to the
+carnivora. Once again,--when an extended observation shows us that the
+beasts and birds of prey select for their victims the young of animals
+which their parents are unable to protect, the aged, who are too infirm
+to fight for themselves, or the sickly, which are quite unfit to live:
+when, moreover, we find these carnivorous creatures die when age or
+accident deprives them of the power of getting food; nay, when we see
+large numbers of all animals die from want of food, of air, of warmth,
+or from accidents--I believe that we are justified in deducing the idea
+that it is a design of the Power, that those which cannot live shall
+die; I believe that death is as essential a necessity to every creature
+as is its birth, and that its many forms have a definite purpose.
+
+Let us now, for a moment, turn our attention to the very commencement
+of life. If from any cause the new being is seriously malformed or
+diseased, it is a common thing for the dam to miscarry. If a mother, say
+a pig, rat, or bird, brings forth a larger brood than she can nourish,
+she commonly kills the smallest, and allows only those to survive which
+she can find food for--the bird that lays more eggs than her nest will
+hold, turns the overplus out; and if, when the fledglings grow up, they
+are too bulky, one of them will be discarded. The cuckoo's chick has a
+special provision made for helping it to turn out the young of another
+bird, and its mother has also a special instinct to lay its eggs in the
+nest of the hedge-sparrow. The life of one involves the death of three
+or more. Again, in the aquatic world, one fish makes no scruple to feed
+on its own young ones or those of its neighbours, and the old crocodile
+seeks out its offspring as a favourite luxury. We find, moreover,
+that where these creatures abound there may often be found a small
+animal--the ichneumon--whose instinct teaches it to seek for and destroy
+the eggs of the saurian. In like manner crows, rats, cuckoos, and
+probably many other creatures, have a propensity to feed upon the eggs
+of various birds. In few words, we recognize throughout creation an
+apparent design to prevent a superabundance of life.
+
+This remarkable provision, working, as it does, through laws which seem
+to be fixed and established, prevents our belief in the interference of
+the Creator. When an animal has reached the period of nearly adult age,
+there is in many instances a considerable amount of instruction given
+to it, sometimes by the sire, but mostly by the dam. When that has been
+imparted, parents and offspring seem to be like strangers to each other.
+
+It is probable that, if we could observe all animals, we should find
+some system of training of the family. As it is, we can only speak of
+domestic fowls, and notice the order which the hen keeps up amongst her
+brood of chickens; they are taught to live peaceably. Her punishments
+are never lenient; they are, indeed, necessarily severe.
+
+We may next proceed to inquire into the animal instincts which exist
+in adult life, at a period when every creature is supposed to be in its
+perfection. At a certain time of the year there is a propensity for
+the male and female to unite. There is not anything in creation which
+affords a more attractive study than this, for every class of creatures
+has a practice peculiar to itself. One might fancy that in an act so
+necessary and so simple there would be little cause for interest; yet,
+in reality, "the prodigality of design"--a term which we hope to explain
+fully hereafter--is more largely shown in this process than in any
+other. It is, however, a subject upon which one cannot descant before
+the general public.
+
+So far as we are able to observe animals, we find that at this period
+there is, amongst a great number of classes, a power amongst the males
+to discover the most perfect amongst the females, and to fight for them.
+By this means the young are certain to be the offspring of perfection of
+grace and beauty in the dam, and strength and size in the sire. We can
+readily understand that, if the loveliest hind were to pair with the
+weakliest stag, the breed would degenerate, and probably die out. But
+the conqueror can hold his place only so long as he has vigour; when age
+has weakened him, the youthful successor practically prevents the old
+buck from being a father. In some exceptional cases (apparently so at
+least) the number of males exceeds that of the females, and, as a result
+of the instinct before alluded to, the fight ends in the majority of the
+males being destroyed. The survivor then has one spouse only, and not a
+seraglio. This is said to obtain amongst rats and lions.
+
+As yet, there is not a sufficient amount of observation available to
+enable us to affirm what is the general cause of exit from life, when
+no death by violence occurs. We do not know the end of old buffaloes,
+elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, whales, and other monsters. Tales
+are told of decrepit lions being occasionally seen tottering to their
+fall; and gossip says that ancient cats know when they are about to die,
+and retire to some secluded nook, where they give up the ghost quietly.
+I cannot charge my memory with a single anecdote in which the youthful
+animal endeavours to sustain the old one, by feeding it during its
+decrepitude. Throughout creation parental affection signifies solicitude
+for offspring. We do not anywhere discover a love towards a parent after
+the younger creature has reached adult age.
+
+In all the cases to which I have referred, and, were I a naturalist,
+they might be greatly multiplied, there is no pretence, even amongst
+the orthodox, that any of the creatures have committed "sin" against
+the Almighty, or against the community of which they form a part. On the
+contrary, what is done, even though it amounts to murder, is regarded
+as a necessity; and we admire the laws of nature which bring about such
+results. We do not stop to inquire whether any contrivance would prevent
+birds from laying too many eggs, and cuckoos from dropping theirs into
+the nests of other birds; we content ourselves with saying, "such is the
+will of Providence." It is easy to come to such a conclusion as regards
+what we are pleased to call "the lower animals," but as soon as we
+inquire "whether similar laws or instincts are implanted in us," we are
+generally met with a howl of repugnance.
+
+But I believe that we shall never understand our true position in life
+and in nature until we deliberately investigate that which we have
+in common with other animals, and wherein we are different--probably
+superior. I use the word _probably_, because, in the estimation of
+higher beings than ourselves--if such there be--the horse and the
+elephant may be regarded as being far above us in the scale which those
+beings have framed for themselves.
+
+I have never yet seen any deliberate attempt to work out the problem
+referred to. Every one, or nearly so, who if orthodox, assumes that it
+is absolutely wicked to compare the beasts which perish, to man who has
+a soul As I have, in a previous volume, shown that the evidence for the
+immortality of the horse is equal to that for the human race, I will not
+stay to point out the absurdity of building an important argument upon a
+baseless assumption, but simply express my belief that man has very much
+in common with other mammals; but that he is in possession of something
+superadded, which, at first sight--though not in reality--takes him
+out of the trammels of the ordinary laws of nature that operate in the
+brutes.
+
+No one can doubt that man has as strong a propensity to unite with
+woman, as bulls and stags have with the females of their kind. He has,
+even in civilized societies, a propensity to fight with one or more of
+his fellows for a female of surpassing beauty. Men will combat about
+a disputed field or country as fiercely as dogs over a bone, or hermit
+crabs over a shell. As a rule, man detests to be taught, quite as much
+as does the whelp; yet, when he has gained an art, he is as proud of it
+as a highly trained spaniel. Men are gregarious as horses in a field,
+and quite as intolerant as they, of an interloper. Like the wild wolves,
+men will unite together to capture and prey upon creatures of each
+of whom individually he stands in fear. Like a set of wild bulls or
+buffaloes, men will, for a time, agree to obey a leader, and, when the
+object is gained, break loose. Like a cat, man will steal, when he can,
+his neighbours' goods, like a crow, he will pay no attention to his
+parents, nor to a Sunday.
+
+Without entering into farther particulars, we may affirm that some
+highly trained elephants, dogs, and horses, are superior to many human
+beings in every point upon which an impartial judge can determine.
+
+It is my belief that, for a man to obey an instinct which is implanted
+in his nature, is not "a sin" against God.
+
+To see this in a fair light, let us assume, as we have a right to do,
+that it is an instinct in the nature of all known creatures, to
+increase and multiply their like. To avoid doing so intentionally, is a
+contravention of one of the Creator's laws. If this be so, then celibacy
+is a sin, as great, indeed, as if one were to refrain from food of all
+kinds; and no one can be considered as worthy of the name of good,
+who remains unpaired without just cause. In like manner, it is not an
+offence against the laws of God for any man and woman to unite, for it
+is as much a law of nature that they shall do so, as that they must eat
+and drink. The plea of "religion" cannot make that wrong, which is by
+nature right.
+
+In like manner, if in a limited community--say upon an island, the
+number of men exceeds that of the women, I believe that a fight amongst
+the males for the possession of mates, would not be "sin" against the
+Omnipotent even though many combatants died during the contest.
+
+Nay, so common upon many points is the agreement; amongst even the most
+orthodox, that none would say that a man commits a crime when he steals
+the store of honey laid up by bees, kills animals for food or for their
+fur, or covets and appropriates the prairies hitherto occupied by herds
+of deer and bison. Even the commandments said to be delivered by
+God Himself are held not to be literally binding upon man, except in
+relation to his friends. He may, for example, by the laws of war, murder
+his enemies, fornicate with their wives, steal their property, and
+deceive them in every way. Abraham, the so-called friend of God,
+murdered many Orientals, and plundered them; not because he had any
+quarrel with them, but simply because they had murdered and plundered
+some of his friends. David again, a man after God's own heart, with his
+dying breath, gave his son instructions to put individuals to death in
+cold blood, superseding the law of Sinai, by a heritage of hate. When,
+therefore, common consent takes certain actions out of the list of
+crimes or sins, provided that the deeds are done against enemies, we
+have to seek for the origin of those ideas which make murder, theft,
+robbery, rape, and false-witness crimes in the abstract.
+
+To understand this point, we have really to start from the bestial
+basis, and aver that what is not sin in them, is not sin in savage man.
+No one of any intelligence would say that a Briton would be justified in
+shooting an Ashantee because the latter had killed and eaten an enemy,
+or an aged parent; nor would any one of us sentence a Hindoo to death
+because he had killed a dozen Thugs. Even in comparatively civilized
+American backwoods, a person who has killed a bully has been thought
+a public benefactor. Again, when we cast our eyes upon Australia, and
+learn the brutal way in which the black native virgins are violently
+carried away from their relatives and married, and how again they
+are repeatedly carried off as wives by other men, we feel ourselves
+justified in leaving the ravishers without punishment, for there is
+no violation of law, or, if there be, Englishmen have no right to
+interfere.
+
+But what we tolerate in uncivilized lands, even where we are ostensibly
+rulers, we will not suffer in our own. The reason of this is, that we
+have banded ourselves into a society in which "the laws," once settled
+and determined by the majority, supersede, in certain cases, individual
+action.
+
+To make our meaning clear, let us imagine that amongst some nation or
+people there is one man more astute and powerful than his fellows;
+still further, we assume that he has fought, or is desirous to fight, a
+neighbour of nearly equal force. It is clear that if his people murder
+each other from any cause he will lose warriors; consequently, he will
+let his tribe understand that he will punish homicide, on a plan which
+he thinks will be deterrent. Still further, as he requires soldiers of
+strong limbs and sturdy constitution, he declares that no woman shall
+many without his consent, so that he may prevent any one selling
+herself, or being sold, to a weak or old man for mere pelf. As, in a
+savage state, most possessions are those which are useful in war, he
+would prohibit theft. As a consequence, he, and all who respected his
+power to punish, would regard murder, theft, rape, and unauthorized
+wife-selling as crimes--offences, that is to say, against the ruler of
+the state, and not against the Creator of mankind.
+
+It signifies little to my argument, whether society is governed, as the
+early Aryans were, by warriors, or, as the later ones were, by Brahmans.
+In either case the leaders make laws, and declare a violation of them to
+be punishable.
+
+When communities are small in size, and extend over a small area, few
+rules of life are necessary; but when a nation increases in size,
+and especially when it consiste of many tribes or class which have
+voluntarily united together, legislation is far more complicated,
+inasmuch as the ideas of right and wrong in each section may, from long
+custom, vary from each other. For example, in most of the United States
+of America bigamy, or the possession of two wives at a time, is a crime;
+whereas, in Salt Lake city, its rulers have twenty, and its men a dozen,
+if they like, and yet are esteemed saints, and really conduct themselves
+as if they had a clear claim to the title.
+
+The greatest complication is when the laws of a community have been
+framed, partly by soldiers, partly by ecclesiastics, and partly by
+mercantile men, for each party has a different creed. The first makes
+no scruple to fight at the command of the second, whilst the third
+endeavours to prevent all war whatever. The second set intrigue to have
+the supreme power; the first and third often endeavour to suppress the
+second, knowing its aggressiveness and lust of supremacy.
+
+When a nation is under what is grandiloquently called a Theocracy, every
+offence against a command given _ex cathedra_ is regarded as a sin; not
+simply a disregard of the law, but a defiance of the God who is said to
+have ordained it. Thus, according to what is known as the Mosaic law,
+it was a crime punishable by a lingering death to gather sticks on a
+Sabbath day (Num. xv. 32-36); but it was no crime to kill all the
+males and women of a whole nation, and retain the maidens for private
+prostitution and for the use of the priest (Num. xxxi. 17, 18, 40,
+41). In such a nation it was no crime to commit forgery--and of all the
+bearers of false witness, none exceeded in ancient times the Jewish
+writers in the Bible--but in mercantile England, the former has been at
+one time punished with death, and the latter by ignominious penalties.
+
+In modern Theocracies, such as once existed in Austria, Spain, Italy,
+England, and elsewhere, it was considered criminal to think differently,
+upon any religious point, from the authorized standard. In those
+kingdoms many a person was doomed to die a painful death, and thereafter
+sent--as it was supposed, to Hell--whom we now regard as a virtuous,
+brave, and noble individual.
+
+The common sense of mankind induces all citizens to buy what they have
+need of, at the smallest possible price; but a mercantile government
+says to its people--"You shall not buy anything from anybody who has not
+first paid us for the privilege of trading, and something more for every
+ware which he offers for sale, and every one contravening this order
+shall be seriously punished." Here, again, an artificial offence is
+manufactured that has no origin in nature.
+
+When a people has succeeded in throwing off publicly the trammels of
+Ecclesiastical legislation, as England, Italy, Spain, France, Austria,
+Belgium, and other nations have done, they by no means shake off their
+private shackles. The only difference between Spain, Austria, and other
+places, now and formerly, is, that the priesthood are seeking to attain
+by subtlety what they could previously command by their state power. At
+one period in the history of modern Rome, it was a crime not to kneel
+on the bare ground when certain priests passed with a bit of wafer
+surrounded by gorgeous trappings. This is a crime no longer against the
+state, but for all who believe the Papal hierarchy it is yet a sin.
+
+At one time in England, it was a crime not to go to church on Sunday;
+it was equally punishable to carry on any business. The laws respecting
+these matters have not yet been repealed, and they have been put
+recently into operation, although the good sense of the majority has
+made them practically obsolete. Yet, though this is the case, and the
+law no longer punishes Sabbath-breaking, the priestly body continue to
+launch their thunders against all who regard every day alike. It is,
+indeed, doubtful if, in the eyes of our parsons, there is any sin so
+great as enjoying one's self on a Sunday. The law of our country does
+not make it a crime for a woman to prostitute her body, or for a man
+to have a concubine of greater or less permanency, but the hierarchs
+denounce the arrangement as criminal in the sight of God.
+
+We need not multiply our illustrations farther. Sufficient has been
+advanced to show that there are two distinct classes of sins--one, those
+made by Ecclesiastics, or by those legislators passing under the name
+"Society;" the other, those which are against the laws of nature--e.g.,
+an enforced celibacy, such as that to which Romish priests are doomed.
+In saying this, we readily allow that what is right, according to the
+laws of God, as set forth in the universe, is wrong according to the
+code made by the legally constituted authorities of the state in which
+an individual lives. We grant, moreover, that, if a government is strong
+enough, the laws of man should be enforced by human means. But we do not
+believe that mortals should be compelled to carry out that which priests
+tell them is the justice of the Immortal, of which they know absolutely
+nothing. I hold that no state can fairly claim to take cognizance of, or
+to punish, thoughts, or any private indulgence which creates no public
+scandal.
+
+If we endeavour to reduce our views to a still clearer issue, the
+difference between divine and human laws will be the more readily
+understood. Let us assume that Miss Kallistee is the most perfect
+woman in a district. For her contend with their natural weapons Messrs.
+Dunamis, Kratos, Kalos, Sophos, and Mathesis; and the conqueror, having
+killed his adversaries, takes the lady to wife. The law of man or of
+society now steps in and kills off the survivor; or, if it should know
+beforehand of the coming contest, will prevent it. As a consequence,
+the lady must be contended for peaceably, and may become the bride of
+impotent old age or wealthy disease. As a result, the healthy offspring,
+which nature would have reared, are either absent, sickly, diseased,
+or idiotic. Here, then, I affirm that a law of society is a sin against
+God.
+
+I would wish my readers to ponder over this matter, which gives much
+food for thought. I do not think that such contests as I have described
+can be tolerated in any society of civilized beings, for, in proportion
+to our emergence from barbarism, we do not seek mere strength and beauty
+of form in our population. We desire to cultivate the intellectual
+rather than the animal in man. But experience has shown that, as a rule,
+the further man departs from the latter, and the nearer he approaches to
+the former, the more does his progeny deteriorate physically.
+
+It is a problem whether, by any available contrivance short of that
+which was adopted by the Incas of Peru, man can uniformly develope
+upwards. The physiologist can readily see how the matter might be
+effected, but in republican or constitutional kingdoms, the means will
+never be adopted.
+
+We have now come to a point when it is necessary for me, as an
+individual, to express an opinion as to the selection which a
+philosopher, living in a comparatively civilized community, should make
+between a promulgation of the so-called laws of God--an instruction
+respecting the laws of nature--or an utterance of the laws of society,
+with the enforcement of them. Ere forming a decision, let us endeavour
+to ascertain what each alternative involves.
+
+If a state, acting through its executive government, decides to make
+what are called the laws of God the basis of legislation, it must first
+decide what those laws are. In the endeavour to do so, every thoughtful
+man will recognize the impossibility of verifying a single one. The
+whole must, therefore, be promulgated on assumption; and if so, the
+legislators will be conscious that they have no valid authority. If, on
+the other hand, they assume the laws of nature to be a safe guide, they
+must allow proceedings which are opposed to the feelings of the majority
+of civilized mortals. Being, then, averse to elect either of these codes
+as a sole basis, the statesman will endeavour, as far as in him lies, to
+make or adapt laws for the society in which he lives.
+
+When the well-being of the community becomes the basis of its
+legislation, the idea of sin vanishes from the statute book, and the
+stern realities of life have to be envisaged with firmness and decision.
+So also when religion has merged into common sense, and facts are
+appealed to rather than fancies, policy takes the place of dogma, and
+the voice of a majority overcomes that of any priesthood.
+
+Into political economy, however, it is not my desire to enter, further
+than may be necessary to illustrate my own opinions upon religion.
+
+Having emancipated myself from the thraldom of bibliolatry and
+priestcraft generally, it is my aim to examine what seems to be my duty
+as a man and an integer of society. I conceive that, although I have
+no certain knowledge thereof, I am one of the myriads of instruments
+by which the Almighty works out His designs. My appreciation may be
+imperfect, but still it seems to me a duty, always to be a good husband,
+father, friend, and citizen--to act ever towards others as I should
+desire myself to be treated under the same circumstances--to improve
+such talents as I am conscious of possessing; and, in a general way, to
+do as much good as I can during my lifetime--taking care, if possible,
+to leave after my death no mischievous agency set on foot by me. In
+few words, I believe that the only true religion consists in a constant
+steady performance of duty--a duty discovered and determined by the
+individual, and not one prescribed by any set of men.
+
+The conclusion thus arrived at, appears at first sight, to be meagre
+in the extreme, but when it is fully examined, it is found to involve
+important consequences. The faithful, for example, or, as they style
+themselves, "the orthodox," live, when they pay any attention to such
+matters, in a state of perpetual fear of God and eternity; some, indeed
+we may say many, go mad from the oppression which they feel from having
+committed an unpardonable sin; some pass through life weighted by the
+dread of not being finally "saved"; all, with rare exceptions, have a
+horror of death and of the results of "the judgment." Feeling assured
+that few will be saved, and the many will be damned, they have a
+dreadful feeling of certainty that either they or some of their dearest
+relatives or friends will be amongst the majority. Some go through life
+sinning and repenting--"in dust and ashes," as the technical phrase
+runs--until they are ashamed of their own vacillation, or go on sinning,
+without any qualms of conscience, until it is too late to mend; and
+they recognize before them "a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
+indignation." These fantastic terrors are far more deeply rooted in the
+Protestants than in the Papists, who have so completely become imbued
+with the belief that their priests have almost unlimited power in the
+unseen world, that the dying folk become easy in their minds, by a
+full assurance of hope that friends, hierarchs, and "masses" will make
+purgatory bearable and heaven certain. Of fear about eternity I know
+nothing; feeling confident that the God who made me--directly or
+indirectly it would be a waste of time to discuss--had some work for
+me to do here. I am quite content with whatever may be assigned to me
+hereafter by the same Power. Of a future state I am wholly ignorant.
+As an integer, I feel a sort of instinct that death is not absolute
+annihilation; but beyond that I do not now seek to know, for every
+source of intelligence is absent.
+
+To some inconsiderate enthusiasts this may seem a cold belief, but in
+reality it is anything but that, for my days and nights are freed from
+that wet blanket of vague dread which makes so many mentally shiver; and
+my time is passed pleasantly in the alternate labour required by duty,
+and the repose necessary to recruit one's energies.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider what would be the condition of the world,
+if each individual conducted himself according to the dictates of a pure
+and enlightened morality, instead of according to the direction of a
+body of Ecclesiastics.
+
+We may, I think, fearlessly assert that there would be no wars, no
+murders, thefts, adulteries, libels, violations of female purity; in
+short, every one would do as he wished to be done by. In such a people
+persecution would find no place, ignorance would not be permitted, and
+law would be unnecessary. Other desirable things would also take place,
+to which it is unnecessary to refer at large.
+
+When all are strictly proper in every relation of life, I cannot believe
+that anything more would be wanting to make the human family as happy
+as it can be here. What, let us ask, would the orthodox declare was
+amissing? The reply is, to my mind, awful: There would be, first, the
+want of hatred and malice; then would be added the want of Hell-to which
+enemies could be sent, and of a Heaven, in which the faithful could feed
+their malignancy by watching the tortures of those whom they detested on
+earth.
+
+In fine, I beg to express my own deliberate opinion, which has been
+growing stronger monthly since I first began to collect materials for
+this work, that those who can find nerve to sweep from their minds the
+trammels which have been woven around them by hundreds of generations of
+hierarchs, and adopt the simple faith which I have above indicated, will
+be far happier and better than ever they were before. No man will stand
+between them and God, and they will find Him infinitely more good and
+merciful than any of those who profess to be His agents.
+
+There is yet another way by which the subject of "faith and reason" may
+be approached, and their antagonism tested. This is by considering how
+far the former is essentially human, and the latter divine--by which
+we mean, superior to the propensity which all mankind has in common. We
+recognize the importance of the inquiry, when we find Mr Gladstone,
+a Prime Minister of England, discouraging the action resulting from
+philosophical thought, because a man named Paul, some 1800 years ago,
+recommended his friends to hold fast that which he, and they, under
+his teaching, believed to be good. The speech of the Premier, which
+was delivered at a large Liverpool School, and was written with unusual
+care, held up, to a lot of schoolboys, the propositions of Strauss as
+something which were so bad, that the enunciation of them carried with
+it their refutation. Yet, at the same time, the speaker allowed that the
+German thinker was conspicuous for intellectual attainments, powers of
+thought beyond the ordinary run of mortals, sobriety in mental culture,
+and boldness in the enunciation of the conclusions to which his reason
+compelled him. In Mr Gladstone's opinion, such a man's doctrines
+deserved to be withered; not because they were opposed to reason, to
+logic, to the stern reality of facts, but because they opposed the
+prejudices of certain persons educated in a different style of faith.
+
+If we inquire in what way the German philosopher and the English bigot
+differ, we can come to no other conclusion than that the one has used
+his intellect upon the dogmas which have been presented to his mind,
+from his infancy upwards, until they have been mistaken for fundamental
+truths, whilst the other has exercised his mental powers upon something
+beyond the doctrinal grounds on which his early education has been
+framed. The then English Premier, who had to direct the state, allowed
+himself to be guided by defunct men, precisely in the same way as
+Pyrrhus, Croesus, and others, were governed by the pretended oracles at
+Delphi, Dodona, and elsewhere. The man, in other words, who once wielded
+the might of England, and is conspicuous for his classical acquirements,
+is as much the slave of superstition as any ancient Egyptian or Grecian
+monarch, only his oracles are not the same as theirs.
+
+It is clear, that when the speech, to which reference has been made, was
+composed, Mr Gladstone was under the influence of the belief, that what
+he had been taught, and had adopted, must necessarily be the only truth
+which can be relied on, at least, in its fundamental points. It is this
+very presumption, this lazy habit of mind, that was long ago pointed out
+by Bacon as being the most fertile cause of the retardation of science,
+and it is remarkable that Oxford, as an University, and most of its
+alumni, are still victims to the weakness referred to. It naturally
+follows in the train of what is called classical learning, when the mind
+is taught to remember rather than to think; and one easily believes that
+he can recognize in the late Premier the gradual development of thought,
+and can tell the epochs when cherished idols have been thrown aside,
+with the energy of one who is suddenly roused to exercise a powerful
+mind in an independent manner.
+
+It would be useless to copy all the aphorisms by which Lord Bacon
+attempted to destroy the old philosophy, which, in his time, was most
+universally adopted, and to build up a new state of things, in which
+science should advance, but a few of them are of such value that they
+deserve recording. In _Novum Organum_, aph. 23 we read--"There is no
+small difference between the fancies [--Greek--] of the human mind and
+the ideas of the divine mind--that is, between certain notions that
+please us, and the real stamp and impression made by created objects as
+they are found in nature." That is to say, man commonly imagines things
+to be what he fancies they ought to be, and neglects what they really
+are. The learned aphorist then points out certain peculiarities of men,
+by which they are induced to cleave to the bad, and neglect the good.
+
+Aph. 46---"The human understanding, when any proposition has once
+been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the
+pleasure which it affords), forces everything to add to it support and
+confirmation. But this evil insinuates itself still more craftily in
+philosophy and in the sciences, in which a settled maxim vitiates and
+governs every other circumstance, although the latter be much more
+worthy of confidence." Aph. 47--"The human understanding is most excited
+by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and
+by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then
+begins, almost imperceptibly, to conceive and suppose that everything
+is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind,
+whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and
+heterogeneous instances by which axioms are tried, as by fire, unless
+the office be imposed upon it by severe regulations, and a powerful
+authority."
+
+We may paraphrase the preceding axiom thus:--Those who, from personal
+preaching, or by parental influence, have adopted a certain belief in
+the truth of that which has been taught to them as a "revelation," no
+matter who the individuals are, or may have been, who propound it, are
+loth, ever, to inquire into the real nature of the matter. Hence it is
+that "clairvoyance" and "spiritualism" have so many staunch adherents.
+
+Aph. 56--"Some dispositions evince an unbounded admiration of antiquity,
+others eagerly embrace novelty, and but few can preserve the just
+medium, so as neither to bear up what the ancients have correctly laid
+down, nor to despise the just innovations of the moderns. This is very
+prejudicial to the sciences and philosophy, and, instead of a correct
+judgment, we have but the factions of the ancients and the moderns."
+
+There are other aphorisms following, which point out the mischief of
+following certain theories, simply because they have been long accepted,
+and are generally supposed to be correct.
+
+At the period when Bacon wrote, there was the same conservatism in
+science and philosophy as there had been in the Roman Church for ages,
+and very few, if any, had ventured to suggest the necessity for a
+radical change. In England the reformation of church and state preceded
+the reformation of philosophy; yet, there are many amongst us yet who
+regard all such changes as a mistake. We constantly find individuals who
+hanker after a despotic rule, by king or emperor, who cannot endure a
+church in which there is no tyrannical head, nor a science which only
+professes to advance, and refuses to be stationary.
+
+Yet the thoughtful know how much the world would have lost, had it yet
+been prostrate at the feet of Aristotle and of barbaric Popes; and there
+is not a Christian who does not rejoice that Jesus prevented mankind
+from worshipping Moses, and adhering to Hebraic notions.
+
+When, therefore, an individual, professing to be learned, scouts the
+propositions of a careful inductive and rigidly reasoning philosopher,
+simply because they violate generally believed notions; and when,
+in addition, he appeals to the ignorance and impressionability of
+schoolboys rather than to the mature judgment of adults, he proclaims
+himself, in that respect, at least, a bigot--of a dye as deep as those
+fanatics who urged on their fellows to suppress the discoveries of
+Galileo. But the matter does not end here. We recognize the necessity
+for a public man, who has once proclaimed his adherence to the doctrines
+of Revelation, and has preached the necessity for "faith," and its
+superiority over reason--however calm and rigid, to go further, and
+to proclaim that which he regards as Revelation, and who are the
+individuals he will receive as the interpreters of that so-called
+communication from God to man.
+
+It is clear that the words which have been uttered by man require a
+human expounder; equally clear is it that, if the original sayings are
+regarded as being inspired, but, nevertheless, of doubtful meaning,
+they can only be cleared up by other men, who are, like the original
+oracles--"inspired." But, as a matter of fact, there are in our own
+times three distinct sets of individuals who lay claim to the faculty of
+interpretation; and these differ so amongst themselves, that certainly,
+at least, two, and very probably all, are wrong.
+
+The man, then, who is disposed to make faith his guide must, in so far
+as Christianity is concerned, join himself either to the Greek or Roman
+Church, whose pretensions to a divine presence in their midst have been
+of the longest; or to the Protestant Church, which endeavours to oust
+the other two upon the plea that they cannot be under divine teaching,
+because they have become corrupt; and then, on the plea of having
+discovered the alleged faults, it assumes to have the authority which
+its predecessors have forfeited.
+
+Thus, as we have frequently remarked before, man sits in judgment upon
+Him whom he calls his maker. The Protestant Churches, however, are the
+only ones who do not formally lay claim to having the divine presence
+amongst them in a conspicuous degree; they do not pretend to the
+performance of miracles, and they scout the idea that any modern
+representative of Jesus can do any wonders like those that teacher did.
+The Roman Church proves to the satisfaction of its votaries that "the
+Lord" is still with them, inasmuch as the presence of the Virgin, in
+a visible form, occurs to cheer her servants that trust in her
+intercession, and even pictures of her become instinct with life.
+
+If, then, an individual is resolved to walk by faith alone in matters of
+religion, he is bound to join himself to that church wherein the divine
+founder is habitually and visibly present; to whose saints the saviour
+has appeared, and given stigmata like those which were produced in the
+original by the barbarous nails and spear of the Roman soldiers. For the
+votaries of faith--pure and unadulterated belief in things divine--the
+only legitimate home is the bosom of the Papal Church. Why, then, do
+not men, like Mr Gladstone, join it? Simply because their faith is not
+a pure and confiding one. It is tainted by the doubt whether the
+pretensions of the Roman See are sustainable, or by the certainty that
+Popish miracles are contemptible shams. They believe that Francis
+of Assisi made the stigmata, which he professed to receive from his
+"crucified Saviour," by burning his hands, feet, and side, with some
+strong caustic, or by a heated iron.
+
+By these doubts, or certainties, individuals demonstrate that they are
+not in the list of the faithful; for doubt implies unbelief, and both
+are incompatible with faith pure and simple.
+
+Whenever, then, a person confesses, by his words or actions, that he
+does examine into the grounds of his belief, he is logically bound to
+continue those inquiries into everything wherein there is a possibility
+of human error creeping.
+
+When we pursue our observations further, and inquire into the reasons
+why a Papist believes certain things which a Protestant rejects, and
+vice versa, we find that, in the first place, each believes what he has
+been taught; he--to speak figuratively--imbibes his dogmas and belief
+with his mother's milk; and when he advances in age, is taught and
+imagines that he has mastered the stock arguments which are relied
+upon by the opposite parties. There is, therefore, on first sight, a
+reasoning power exercised by each; but it is not so, for the arguments
+themselves, and their force, are regarded as matters of faith--as
+weapons with which a warfare may be waged, but which, in no sense, are
+to be tested by those who use them.
+
+As far as the common run of religionists are concerned, they are all in
+this "fool's paradise;" they fancy that they are secure, invincible, and
+mighty, because they take their own prowess and their opponents weakness
+as matters of faith. But when one of these comes into collision with
+another whose reason is exercised upon facts and the deductions to be
+drawn from them, the questions occur, possibly for the first time, Are
+the grounds of my belief tenable? am I justified in using my reason only
+in one direction? if I profess to argue, am I not bound to be logical?
+and if what has been given to me as sound meat, is rotten in reality, am
+I bound to eat it? can it do me good in any way? When a thoughtful man
+has arrived at this point, he has to elect between Faith and Reason.
+Then, if, like Mr Gladstone, he foresees to what his inquiries will
+probably lead, and is disinclined to pull down a cherished edifice,
+even to erect a better, he will naturally cling to the old belief,
+saying--"With all thy faults, I love thee still." With his eyes wide
+open he hails the banner of bigotry, no matter what may be the scutcheon
+which it bears.
+
+Then come the important questions--"What right has any religious bigot
+to profess himself a liberal?" and, "With what face can a man, who
+refuses to exercise his understanding upon what he calls the most
+important part of life, i.e., the preparation for eternity, proclaim
+himself a friend of education?"
+
+To insist upon the value of "learning" in forming the mind, and then
+to set the example of recoiling from the knowledge which intellectual
+efforts bring, is, in a statesman, a mean vacillation. Mr Gladstone
+ought either to proclaim that his ideas are those of the Jesuits, or
+to pronounce in favour of education, to whatever goal it legitimately
+tends. To say to boys--or men--you must learn to think; but you must
+only come to the same conclusions as myself, would disgrace a statesman
+of a free country, though such a proclamation would seem natural to a
+pope, or any other tyrant I do not, for a moment, assert that the then
+Premier of England did, in a written, and, therefore, a deliberate
+speech, to a large and influential school of boys, utter the words
+which I have used; on the contrary, he employed his rhetorical powers
+to express the idea, without either clearly understanding it himself, or
+giving the lads a clue to it. Had the meaning of the discourse been put
+into a few pregnant sentences, it may be doubted whether it would ever
+have been uttered.
+
+If Mr Gladstone, like the mythical Elijah, had placed before his
+auditors, in naked words, the proposition--"Choose ye this day whom ye
+will serve, Faith or Reason," his discourse would have been clear. Even
+his own mind could not have painted the two as being the same thing; nor
+would a school-boy have failed to see that, in the future, he must
+elect between indefinitely expanding his intelligence, and materially
+contracting his intellect to the narrow limits prescribed by the faith
+of his parents.
+
+To my mind it is sad to witness men of great general capacity, like the
+late Dr Faraday, and the past Prime Minister of Great Britain, shunning,
+in every way, an inquiry into the basis of their belief. We cannot
+regard this as a result of simple intellectual indolence, or ignorance.
+The only cause to which we can attribute it, is that weakness which,
+by most people, is called moral cowardice; a fear, not so much of Mrs
+Grundy--the world and its dread laugh--but the fear of some unseen,
+unknown, incomprehensible danger to themselves--of dangers that have no
+reality, except in an imagination which has been moulded long before the
+mind was capable of thought, but whose hold upon the individual is
+such, that he shrinks from the mental effort necessary to efface its
+impressions.
+
+There is yet another phase of faith, which deserves a passing mention.
+It is that which declines to see or to hear a proof or an argument, lest
+it should be convinced against its will. There are many men amongst us
+who, in Scripture phrase, refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, charm
+he never so wisely. This obstinacy, stupidity, dogged-ness, or firmness,
+is quite compatible with a partially cultivated intellect, and is in
+itself a measure of intellectual capacity. I have heard, for example, a
+learned divine, but one whose writings are often so bemuddled, that the
+ideas which they contain are as difficult to discover "as a needle in
+a bottle of hay," declare that he would no more listen to an argument
+against the existence of "the trinity," than he would open his ears to
+hear evidence that his wife or mother was adulterous.
+
+Such strong asseverations we may sympathize with, and even admire; but
+they prove nothing beyond the impracticability of an individual mind,
+or what, in some cases, takes its place--viz., the injudiciousness of
+acknowledging a truth, when the enunciation of a belief in it would be
+followed by unpleasant consequences.
+
+Again, I know of another divine, who has steadily refused to inquire
+into the value of what are called "the Christian evidences," his reason
+being, that he is conscious that inquiry would shake his confidence in
+the doctrines which he teaches. He clings to what he feels to be a sham,
+lest others should, by his means, regard it in its proper light.
+
+Another divine, who has not feared to be an inquirer, is incessantly
+persecuted by his brethren, not because he has asserted his intellectual
+freedom, but because, by having done so, he has, by implication, cast
+a sort of odium upon those who hug their mental darkness. His argument
+is--Can a man who hates the light be worthy to speak of the "Sun of
+Righteousness?" Their reasoning is based upon the assertion, that those
+who live in darkness, and like it, need not be told about a luminary.
+If people chose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, it is
+more profitable to talk to them about its connection with the milky
+way, than to say that the notion is absurd. Faith teaches that, where
+ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise; whilst reason only impels one
+to habitual thought or mental worry.
+
+Other divines of my acquaintance have used their reason in a twofold
+way: they have ceased to hold their first faith, yet they hold their
+"livings," as they have no other means of subsistence; whilst a few
+have, with their advancement in knowledge, paid for their knowledge by
+embracing poverty.
+
+The world treats those who walk upon the ground with a far greater
+injustice than it treats those who lie beneath its surface. For a man
+who disturbs us in our fool's paradise, more feet than hands are used;
+but to him who only disturbed the father's complacency, and taught the
+son in youth, we erect memorial statues. Jesus was crucified when he was
+alive, and deified when dead. His apostles were persecuted when living;
+now that they are deceased, they are called saints. Savonarola was burnt
+alive at Florence; now his memory is cherished, and his worth fully
+known. Luther was detested when he was able to thunder in men's ears;
+now he is regarded as a son of light. The present Pope, Pio Nono,
+has found an obsequious council, whose voices have declared him to be
+infallible--a god upon earth; the time will come when that Pope, and
+that council, will be regarded as the personification of blasphemy
+and folly. The days of Faith will be everlasting; but her power to act
+wickedly will be curtailed more and more. The reign of Reason advances
+every year, for it is allied to thought and knowledge; and we may fairly
+hope that the old adage will be true--_Magna est Veritas et praevalebit_.
+
+It may be said that, in the preceding parts of this essay, I have wholly
+lost sight of, or, at least, have not referred to the argument--or
+the statement, made by the upholders of faith, as a rule of life--that
+reason has nothing to do with things divine, and that where God has made
+a direct revelation of His will to man, no human being has a right to
+criticise or object to it.
+
+This kind of remark is in the mouth of every preacher, and each minister
+who utters it imagines that he deals a blow so very heavy that nothing
+can stand against it. But in reality it is only a big bubble, which
+collapses when it is touched. "How," for example, we may ask, "can
+anything be recognized as divine, unless human judgment is passed upon
+it? or, How can any revelation be accepted, unless the mind has examined
+the messenger and the message?" Who would believe the ravings of a
+lunatic, even though he told us that God had sent him with a message
+to man? Why do Christians, as a body, reject the revelation made to
+Mahomet, and the frequent inspirations which give laws to the latter-day
+saints? To these queries the reply is--"Because we know that God does
+not speak to man now, and that when the bible was closed all revelation
+ceased." But when we inquire into the reason for this belief we can
+find not one. Every theologian must allow that the God who spoke once to
+Moses spoke again; that He supplanted one dispensation by a second, and
+has promised a third.
+
+Thus we see, that by their own books, the orthodox are bound to believe
+that supplementary communications must be made to the human race;
+consequently, when any one asserts that he is a divine prophet, his
+pretensions are examined. The faithful Christian disbelieved in Mahomet;
+the trusting Arabs believed in his mission, and fought for their creed.
+They, like orthodox divines of to-day, refused to use their reason
+in things divine, and to cavil at a revelation, Unable to agree, the
+followers of Jesus, and those of Mohammed, fought, the latter almost
+annihilating the former for a time, thus proving the value of their
+faith. Both parties had a firm belief--the one in the prophet of
+Nazareth, the other in the prophet of Arabia; and no reasoning could
+have convinced either that his trust was misplaced; nor, to this day,
+has reason convinced the Mahometans that Jesus was superior to Mahomet,
+or the Christian that the Arab sectarian was a prophet at all; and it
+is singular that both parties call in reason in attestation of their
+respective creeds.
+
+Is, then, the sturdy English theologian to be content to leave the
+followers of Islam alone, because they have faith? or, must he still
+endeavour to convert them by the use of reason? Can the Christian adopt
+the belief that Mahometan and Mormon are both orthodox because they have
+faith? and that the Jew must still be dear to Jehovah, inasmuch as he
+still clings closely by faith to the revelation given to Moses and the
+prophets? If this cannot be done, how can the follower of Jesus hope to
+convert others to his belief, unless by the use of reason? If, then, the
+theologian uses reason as a weapon against heterodoxy, upon what ground
+can he object to its being employed by another? Latter-day saints have
+made many proselytes in Christendom, and a Mahometan floored in debate
+the late pious Missionary, Henry Martyn, whose propositions were met
+by counter ones, and every one of whose arguments was taken up and
+retorted, the names only of the persons spoken of being changed. "I
+know," said the one, "that God spoke to us by Christ Jesus"--"I know,"
+said the other, "that Allah spoke to us by Mahomet" "You are wrong, my
+friend," said one, "Allah has not spoken to man since the last Apostle
+died." "You are wrong," said the other, "God has spoken to us long after
+that. You may call Mahomet an apostle, if you like; we call him a
+prophet of Allah, and know that he was one." And so controversy goes on
+now where there is faith without reason.
+
+It is clear, then, that truth cannot be established by any number of
+people thundering out "I believe it," and by their victoriously fighting
+for it. The argument, therefore, which I may be accused of omitting, is
+of no value at all; it is sheer nonsense--a windbag, or, perhaps, it may
+best be compared to a boomerang, which, when badly used, recoils upon
+the person of him who threw it. Of such arguments theology is builded
+up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     Honesty.   A question propounded.   Are "divines" honest?
+     Meaning of the word.    Learners and teachers--their
+     relations to each other.    Honesty expected in a professor.
+     Teachers of religion are trusted--they are bound to be
+     faithful.   Political rights of men in respect of the clergy
+     of the Established Church.    Right to see that religion is
+     not adulterated. Man's right to truth.   What truth is not.
+     Assertions required at "ordination."  Canonical Scriptures.
+     Verbal inspiration.   Doubts of laity.   Two schools--those
+     who will and those who will not inquire.     Rev.   Dr
+     Colenso.   Rev. Dr Browne.   Precious stones and "paste."
+     How should a doubt be tackled--by inquiry,  or  by ignoring
+     it?    An   analogy. Compass and bible.    If compass wrong,
+     why steer by it?   Passenger and captain--one appeals to
+     stars, the other to his owners and the seamen under him.
+     Precision of Colenso--his words falsified so as to be
+     confuted: this is not honesty.    Is Bishop Browne honest in
+     controversy? Tabernacle, temple, doors, &c.   The _Speaker's
+     Commentary_ not an honest book.    Papal falsehoods; false
+     decretals; false letter from Prester John. Pious frauds.
+     Influence of dishonest teaching on education.    The point
+     involved in sectarian discussions.   Lying miracles--are
+     they promulgated honestly?   Is it honest in religion to
+     promulgate that which we knew to be wrong, or which we dare
+     not inquire into for fear of consequences?    Do Papal
+     authorities believe in the annual miracle at Naples?  The
+     Protestant Church judged by a ruler of Siam.    Bigotry, by
+     not inquiring, does not establish truth.    Each man who is
+     deceived has a propensity to deceive others.   The masses
+     agree to be deceived.    Mr Gladstone on education. His
+     proposition that inquiry is bad if it leads to change of
+     religious opinions.   Anecdotes of stupidity.   Sailing in
+     search of truth.    Captains who avoid the right course.
+     The condition of society when the schoolmaster overrides the
+     ecclesiastic.    Reason and education ought to precede
+     faith. Result of honesty.   Divines recoil from the honest
+     truth.    Parsons in their pulpit preach what their week-day
+     precepts oppose.   Honesty in ecclesiastical matters is not
+     the best policy.    Divines and the silversmiths of Ephesus.
+     Examples.    An honest parson is persecuted by his fellows:
+     this insures mediocrity and bigotry.   If an author cannot
+     be persecuted he is avoided.    Ecclesiastics persecute
+     their colleagues, but do not prove them wrong.
+     Excommunication easier than refutation.   What an honest
+     merchant and divine should do when they discover a diamond
+     to be paste. Ought the divine to be less honest than the
+     merchant?   The Author's challenge.   Conclusion.
+
+I am now about to propound a question which I have heard mooted in quiet
+by many, but for which publicity seems to be dreaded by all--_viz_., "Is
+there honesty amongst Christians, and especially amongst the hierarchy
+of the Churches of England and Rome?"
+
+No one can doubt the importance of the subject; there is not a
+thoughtful person who does not, in words at least, scorn to build up his
+everlasting belief upon a fable, and who does not affect to be disgusted
+with everyone who is deliberately untruthful I speak not now of those
+time-servers who regard every artifice to be fair in love, war, and
+theology; but only of those earnest minds who are anxious to seek out
+and to hold fast that which is true, and who, under all circumstances,
+resolve to be honest with themselves. That there may be no doubt as to
+the sense in which I use the word, the following may be regarded as,
+in my opinion, the synonyms which are properly given in _Webster's
+Dictionary_--"Integrity, probity, uprightness, trustiness,
+faithfulness, honour, justice, equity, fairness, candour, plain dealing,
+veracity." To this may be added--"not bearing false witness."
+
+Presuming that English scholars agree in this definition, let me now
+inquire whether "we"--by which term I mean the non-theological class by
+profession--have a right to expect "honesty" amongst our teachers--be
+they Roman, Anglican, Hibernian, Scottish, Unitarian, Wesleyan, or of
+any other body? and, in the next place, whether we get that to which
+we are entitled? Presuming that it is necessary to begin with the
+foundation, let us first inquire into "our rights," and whence they are
+supposed to be derived.
+
+The positions of a learner and a teacher--or a disciple and a
+master--are, in some cases, different to what they are in others; for
+example, I need not, unless I think it desirable, learn astronomy,
+chemistry, the art of telegraphing, or that of ship-building; but if I
+do elect to learn any of these matters, and engage a man to instruct
+me, I have a legal claim upon him for his services. There is, indeed, a
+contract between us--he engaging to teach me, and I agreeing to pay him
+for his labour. In my selection of a professor, it is quite possible
+that I have not chosen the best; nay, seeing that I require to be
+taught, it is nearly certain that I cannot assume the position of a
+judge as regards the superiority of one teacher over another. But when
+the agreement is once entered into, each of the parties is bound to
+perform his part of the contract to the best of his ability. If, for
+example, I bargain with a master to teach me Spanish, and I, being
+wholly ignorant thereof, am instructed in Portuguese, I have a definite
+legal claim for redress.
+
+If, on the other hand, the law, or the custom of the country, compels
+me to take a certain class of teachers, whether they are competent or
+worthless, I, as one of the community, am justified in investigating the
+intellectual power of the professors, individually and collectively, in
+every way in my power.
+
+At one period, when autocracy, or tyranny, was supreme, this right was
+denied, and the legislators made it a criminal matter for any one to
+call in question the nature of the instruction which was given to the
+people in matters of politics, religion, and other things, wherein the
+government was concerned. At the present time there are few, if any,
+states whose ruling powers demand from the people such an abject
+submission.
+
+But, although a republic may allow unlimited latitude of opinion in
+matters of political economy, there may be a religious section within
+it, which consists of those who consent to be led, in matters of faith,
+by certain individuals, who, on their parts, are declared to be, by
+some power that the laity are disposed to submit to, the only persons
+competent to conduct persons to a happy eternity.
+
+Every individual in such a family is associated with the rest by
+voluntary ties. He may, if he chooses, inquire into the capacity of his
+guide; he is at perfect liberty to analyse his arguments, to inquire
+into his allegations, and, speaking generally, to test his truth. If, as
+a result of the investigation, any one is satisfied that the teacher is
+incompetent, the two are perfectly clear to make new engagements. There
+has been no definite contract, nor can there be any legal claim for a
+presumed breach thereof.
+
+When, on the other hand, there is a State Religion, supported by
+Parliamentary authority, and to which, in one way or another, the
+majority of the people must subscribe, each man has as perfect a right
+to see that he gets what he pays for, as he has to see that the member
+of parliament for whom he votes, does not neglect the interests of the
+town which he represents.
+
+As an Englishman, I have no right to call in question the power of the
+Pope of Rome, the Patriarch of the Greek Church, the Elder of the Mormon
+Communion, the Arch-Pneuma of the Spiritualists, or any other religious
+head, to teach his followers any doctrine that he may please. I may
+laugh at the "false decretals" of the papacy, and the charlatanerie of
+the clairvoyants; but no political right supports me in my calling them
+to account for their stewardship.
+
+On the other hand, when I know that the bishops of the Church of England
+are parties to the formation of our laws, and I find myself called upon
+to pay tithes or dues to individuals of the same establishment, I have
+a political right to ascertain, that the persons actually do what they
+profess to do for their money or position. If, for example, I live in a
+sparsely populated district, I and all my family are dependent upon the
+parson of the parish for instruction how to get to heaven; or, as an
+alternative, if I do not agree with his doctrine, I may abstain from
+being instructed at all. If, on the contrary, I inhabit a large town,
+still I am dependent for religious teaching upon the state clergyman,
+unless I elect to do without him, and any one else of the same
+persuasion, or select some non-conformist preacher who is to me no less
+offensive than the parliamentary parson.
+
+When a confraternity has obtained, no matter how, or by what means, a
+definite prescriptive right to sell a certain material to the community
+at large, the latter have certainly a legal power to see that the stuff
+given is according to contract. If a company of millers engage, for
+certain privileges, to sell good wheat flour to all comers, the last can
+deprive them of their exclusive right, provided that it can be proved
+either that the flour is bad, or that it comes from barley, rye, oats,
+or potatoes, or is adulterated with gypsum, &c.
+
+Presuming that this argument is tenable, our next inquiry is into that
+which our national church professes to sell, or to impart, in return for
+its privileges. In the fewest possible words we may say, that its duty
+is to impart "truth," or to teach what is, in its learned and educated
+opinion, the true religion for life and eternity.
+
+The word truth is one which lies at the root of our question respecting
+honesty. Pilate is reported to have said--"What is truth?" We may put
+the same question now.
+
+Without saying what "truth" is, we can readily declare what is
+"untruth." It is not truth if we, in argument, misrepresent an
+adversary; affirm that he made a certain statement, and then oppose--not
+the thing said--but some other matter which was not spoken of at all,
+and then assert that we have confuted him.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that observations recently made have been
+oftentimes presented before, and always successfully refuted, when
+the remarks in question are novel, never have been controverted, and
+apparently, are not capable of being disproved.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that human "authority," which, has been long
+acknowledged, can falsify "a fact," or make an unfounded assertion equal
+to a reality; or to declare, that one religion is good and another bad,
+simply because the speaker believes the matter to be so.
+
+It is not truth to assert, that a certain book, and every part of it,
+is the revealed word of God, when it is known to be contradicted by
+science--i.e.t by a knowledge of the laws imposed on creation by its
+Maker, to be inconsistent with itself, and to contain internal evidence
+that it was composed by men of small knowledge and of grovelling
+disposition.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that if God's world proves what is called
+God's Book to be wrong, science must be neglected and the Bible upheld.
+
+It is not truth to affirm that God spoke exclusively to one people, when
+it is known that the race in question drew nearly, if not quite, all
+their religious beliefs, from the neighbours amongst whom they were
+thrown.
+
+It is not honest to propound in the pulpit the propriety of examining
+the Scriptures daily, and yet to persecute any one who by doing so
+becomes convinced of their human origin.
+
+It would be honest, and prove the existence of a love of truth, if every
+preacher of every denomination spent as much time in trying the value of
+his text-book, as he does now in expounding it and explaining it away.
+
+We should imagine that a minister loved truth, if he were first to ask
+himself how he treats the Vedas and Puranas, the Avesta, the Koran, the
+Apocryphal Gospels, the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, the visions and
+prophecies of "Latter-day saints," "Friends," Roman visionaries, and
+the oracles delivered at Delphi and elsewhere, and then to treat his own
+book with the same measure as he used with the others.
+
+On the other hand, we should regard him as untruthful and dishonest,
+if he weighed the books and belief of others with weights and scales
+different to those with which he tried his own.
+
+From each minister of religion the people have a right to demand an
+impartial inquiry into the absolute value of the doctrines which he
+teaches, and an investigation into the foundation, as well as the
+superstructure; and they may require, still further, that he, like
+Great-heart in Bunyan's story, shall do battle with assailants. When
+such a leader professes to fight, but always avoids the shock of
+battle, he cannot be regarded either as honest, or as comparable with
+Valiant-for-truth in the _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+We are then, as laymen, justified in requiring that our spiritual
+leaders shall take a conspicuous part in examining the grounds of the
+faith which they teach, and that the leaders of the Established Church
+shall seek to establish its doctrine upon as firm basis as it is
+possible to obtain.
+
+This certainly involves inquiry and discussion upon those points which
+modern criticism has prominently advanced.
+
+When we turn to the "Prayer Book," we find that Deacons are required to
+say, that they unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures. Priests
+are obliged to affirm that the Holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all
+doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation, through faith in
+Jesus Christ, &c. In the consecration of bishops the same, or nearly the
+same, formula is gone through. Thus, at the outset of their career, the
+ministers of the Church of England commit themselves to, or are required
+by law to make, a declaration which will preclude inquiry into the value
+of the book on which their teaching is founded; their first step in the
+ministry puts it out of their power to be honest, if experience should
+teach them more than they knew when young. The bishops and priests,
+however, when they subscribe to the opinion that the Bible contains all
+things necessary for salvation, do not pledge themselves to the belief
+that every sentence, part, division, book, or arrangement of the
+Canonical Scriptures is, and must of necessity be, true. Even in the
+dawn of ecclesiastical information in England, there was not a belief in
+the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
+
+Of late years, when habits of thought and the art of printing have
+increased, the knowledge, and consequently, the power of the laity
+disproportionally to the advance made by clerics--a strong propensity
+to accumulate facts, and to argue thereupon has been very generally
+developed, and the increased information obtained has induced steadily
+increasing numbers to doubt, not only the verbal inspiration, but even
+the historical truth of the Scriptures. When this difficulty occurred,
+or rather, when it became recognized, scholars, no matter whether
+they were professional or amateur ecclesiastics, divided themselves
+involuntarily (we may fairly say, unknowingly, inasmuch as each
+individual worked quite independently, in the first place, of another)
+into those who believed that, if the Holy Spirit dictated the
+Scriptures, he must have seen that his amanuensis wrote correctly; those
+who imagined that the Bible was to be taken "in the lump;" and those
+who considered that the Scriptures are entirely of human origin, and
+absolutely valueless as a guide of faith. Consequently, three schools
+have arisen, two of which are essentially ecclesiastic. Of these,
+one regards all inquiry into the accepted text as improper, the other
+considers that everything should be done to verify the value of the
+so-called original Scripture.
+
+Amongst the latter, Dr Colenso, Bishop of Natal, stands out
+conspicuously. Of the highest intellectual attainments, trained to close
+and scientific inquiry; able, far better than men of meaner capacity, to
+weigh the value of "evidence," whether "ancient or modern," he has drawn
+the conclusion that the Bible is not what it is generally supposed to
+be; in other words, that its historical portions are not trustworthy,
+and that there is grave reason to believe its writings to have been
+produced for a purpose, which involved dishonesty in the scribe, and in
+the promulgator of his writings. The learned doctor was honest in his
+investigation, and fearless in announcing his conclusions.
+
+As an upright man, the Bishop of Natal is as completely justified in his
+inquiry into the validity or importance of an ancient book, alleged to
+be a pearl of great price, a gem or diamond of the first water, as the
+official curator of a museum would be, in determining whether a certain
+ruby, given into his charge, were real or artificial. Of the necessity
+of such an inquiry, the following anecdote, which was told me by the
+gentleman concerned, will convince the reader:--
+
+A wealthy lady, of high position in life, sent to a museum, for
+exhibition, a number of "precious stones." If they were really what they
+were supposed and stated to be, their value would have been reckoned by
+thousands of pounds sterling. If accepted as genuine, and found, upon
+their restoration to the depositor, to be imitation jewels, the curator
+would be liable, not only for their value, but his character for honesty
+would be gone; consequently, ere he gave a receipt for the lot, he
+tested each. Not one was real!
+
+This man was in the position which Dr Colenso occupies now. The owner of
+the jewels was indignant at the idea that the stones were false, and the
+apparent insinuation that imitations were being foisted on the public as
+realities; but her fury did not alter the fact. If she were artful, her
+plan was detected; if she had been deceived, her anger, though useless,
+was justified.
+
+On the other hand, there are many Bishops who uphold the verbal
+inspiration of the Bible, and will not inquire if the gem be real, or
+only test it by plans known to be valueless for the purpose. Some do not
+go altogether so far as this, They consider it obligatory upon them to
+examine just a little bit, but not to go too deeply, lest they should be
+forced to believe that there never was such a man as Moses--a man who
+is commonly reported to have written certain books at a distant period.
+Some persons seem to think that their hope of happiness in this, as well
+as in another world, and not only their own, but that of everybody who
+is under their instruction, depends upon their feeling sure that Israel
+was once in Egypt--that Abraham begat Isaac, and became the progenitor
+of an innumerable offspring, exceeding in number the Indians of
+Hindostan, the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, the Egyptians of the Nile, and
+the Romans of Italy. Between these two inquirers, if the latter class
+can fairly be called such, the issue is distinct. There can be no
+difficulty amongst scholars as to the means by which the question ought
+to be settled.
+
+An appeal to hard and dry facts is the plan adopted by philosophers. For
+men, who have a single eye to discover the truth, it matters little in
+what direction their inquiries lead them. Metaphorically speaking, they
+may begin a series of investigations, expecting that everything will
+lead them northwards, and they end by reaching the south; just as many
+an enthusiastic, but little instructed, man has accumulated "pyrites,"
+under the impression that it was an ore of gold, and found, on inquiry,
+that the material was a sulphuret of iron, and of small commercial
+value.
+
+But it is this very possibility of research bringing them to an
+undesirable goal, which deters so many of our divines from making any
+inquiry. Outwardly, they allow that it is their duty, as leaders, to
+examine, not only the condition of their own forces, but the position
+and power of those who assail the army which they profess to guide.
+Inwardly they find reasons for remaining quiet, and excuse themselves to
+their followers in some plausible fashion.
+
+Why, however, should any goal be undesirable which leads us nearer to
+truth? Why should any body of professedly learned-men run the risk
+of being considered wanting in honesty, or candour, by avoiding their
+opponents, whom they are in honour bound to encounter?
+
+The reply to these questions generally runs thus:--"We, as ministers
+of the Established Church of England, are bound to be faithful to the
+Bible, and to it we must adhere, whatever our own private judgment
+may be. We did not make the law; we simply take it as we find it, and,
+having sworn to obey it, we do so." This answer would be exhaustive, if
+it were the fact that the laity made the law for the theologians. But,
+as we know, that the ecclesiastics have, in the last resort always made
+laws for themselves, the rejoinder is not conclusive History tells us
+how ministers of religion have instructed the people, and how these,
+again, have legislated under the tuition of their advisers. When
+Paganism was supplanted by Christianity, the change was effected by
+preachers, who taught the populace to believe the new doctrine, and who
+influenced the minds of the lawmakers. In like manner, when Popery in
+England was put down by the Protestants, each party was headed by its
+priests. Many a minister, at that period, felt bound to follow what he
+believed to be truth, rather than to abide by a vow made in youth;
+and they who had upheld the authenticity of Popish miracles, and of
+Apocryphal Scriptures, ceased to give credence to them, or to use them
+as authorities in matters of religion. These men were honest.
+
+That which has been done by men aforetime, may be done or imitated in
+our own day; and our divines have as great a power to examine into the
+value of the Bible now, as they had at the Reformation. If they refuse
+to make the inquest suggested--in what way, may we ask, do they differ
+from the Romanists in the time of Luther, who would not inquire into the
+truth of his arguments lest they should be convinced? Can any one who
+professes to be a Protestant--a child of the Reformation--honestly
+refuse to investigate the grounds of the faith which is in him, and
+shelter himself, as Bonner and others did, under the pretext of a
+declaration or vow made at ordination?
+
+If those who make the excuse just referred to, are honest, they are
+bound to reject every doctrine which they, or their predecessors, have
+received from Romish priests, who propounded in adult life, doctrines
+different to those which they professed when yet almost children.
+
+To illustrate the tendency of our remarks still further, let us, for a
+moment, suppose that the captain of a ship has, from any cause whatever,
+adopted a particular "compass" by which he directs his course, and which
+perhaps he calls by the name of Faith. All in the vessel are, to a great
+extent, dependent upon him for a successful voyage, and a safe arrival
+at the desired haven. Seeing how the master-mariner honours the magnetic
+needle, every thoughtful passenger will probably consult it in like
+manner. One more advanced in knowledge than the rest may desire to test
+the instrument by the position of the pole star, and thinking that he
+could recognize the latter, might infer that the magnet did not point
+truly. This doubt, we will imagine still further, he imparts to the
+captain, who, disinclined to distrust his compass, endeavours to
+demonstrate that the position of the pole star is doubtful.
+
+In the place of the mariners' compass let us read the "Bible," and,
+instead of the pole star, let us substitute "science." We shall then
+recognize the position of such men as the Bishop of Winchester and Dr
+Colenso--the latter endeavours to test the value of the instrument which
+is most used by churchmen by certain well-known means; the former,
+on the contrary, aims to demonstrate that what he regards as a true
+indicator is so in spite of all which the planets prove to the contrary.
+
+To carry on our metaphor a point further, let us imagine that the
+captain and the doubting passenger appeal to the seamen and the other
+people on board the barque--the latter telling in simple terms the
+grounds of his belief, whilst the former appeals to the passions of
+those who have long trusted him, and only notices the arguments of his
+opponent to misrepresent them. This is what was done by the Papists, in
+every country, at the time of the Reformation, and which more recently
+has been done by the Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England,
+when in controversy with the Bishop of Natal Dr Colenso has in
+voluminous works, and with a precision which every scholar must admire,
+shown that the Old Testament--the "compass" of churchmen--is not what it
+is supposed to be. Against his views a new "Bible commentary" has been
+issued, with the sanction of the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries; and
+in it the authors stoop to misrepresentation! If there were no pretence
+of joint authorship, one might imagine that each writer was responsible
+only for his own shortcomings; but when there is a parade of great
+names, which is intended to demonstrate the almost infallible truth of
+everything (except typographical errors), one is bound to treat the
+contributors as being on a level with each other, and all hierarchical
+coadjutors. How can any one, with a tendency towards fair dealing,
+characterize but with the epithet "contemptible dishonesty," a
+deliberate quotation from Dr Colenso, which is falsified, that the
+fabrication may be refuted? The Bishop of Natal's argument is a just
+one, and, although it is only contained in a note and not in the text
+itself, is of great weight. It runs thus (Part v., p. 97)--"Of course
+the fact that the tabernacle at Shiloh had _doors_ (1 Sam. iii. 15)--
+that the lamp was allowed regularly to _go out_ in it (1 Sam. iii. 3),
+and that Samuel _slept_ in it, and apparently Eli also (1 Sam. iii. 2,
+3), are sufficient to show that this could not have been the 'Mosaic
+Tabernacle.'" This is a fair and scholarly statement; the layman
+recognizes it as such, and looks to his ecclesiastical superior for an
+honest opinion on its value. What does he find? Simply this--Bishop
+Browne answers: "The objection (Colenso, Part v., p. 97) that the
+Tabernacle (at Shiloh) could not be the tabernacle, in the wilderness,
+because it had a 'door' (1 Sam. ii. 22) is rather singular, if we
+observe that the words in Samuel, on which the objection is founded--
+'The women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the
+congregation'--are literally a quotation from Exod. xxxviii. 8--'The
+women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of
+congregation.' Of course the word door, fine _pethah_, is as applicable
+to a tent door as to a house door, and is constantly used of the door of
+the Tabernacle in the Pentateuch."
+
+In this observation of the Bishop of Winchester a false issue is
+deliberately raised; the quotation given by Colenso is not touched, and
+for it another, wide of the mark, is substituted! In the verse referred
+to by the Bishop of Natal the words are--"And Samuel lay until the
+morning, and opened the doors of the house of the Lord," &c.--"doors"
+being in the original, _dalethoth_--a different word altogether to
+_pethah_, and certainly in the plural number. In other language, we may
+say that in the _Speaker's Bible_, almost every argument and criticism
+of Colenso and his German authorities are left unnoticed and unanswered;
+and this, almost the only quotation made, is not a true one! Is this
+honest? So gross, in my opinion, is the want of candour shown in this
+case, that I, for one, cannot trust a single assertion of the Bishop
+of Ely, now translated to Winchester, even when he quotes chapter and
+verse, until I have verified the extract.
+
+But the flagrancy of the proceeding is, if it can be, heightened by a
+reference to the subject Dr Colenso was endeavouring to show, by those
+undesigned coincidences, that hierarchs profess to love so much, and
+which they parade with great earnestness when it suits their purpose,
+that the tabernacle at Shiloh was not that described in the Pentateuch.
+It was perfectly open to Dr Browne to adduce evidence that it was the
+same. This he does not do--the scholar can well understand the reason
+why, viz., that a close inquiry supports the Bishop of Natal's view. For
+example, in 1 Sam. L 9, we find that Eli is sitting "upon a seat by
+a post of the temple of the Lord." This sentence is significant in
+English, it is much more so in Hebrew. The words "post" and "temple"
+certainly are quite incompatible with a tent or tabernacle. In the
+Hebrew, the tabernacle is generally spoken of as _ohel_, whilst "temple"
+is _heckal_. Still further, the expression, "post of the temple," is
+peculiar, because a corresponding one is found only once in the Old
+Testament--viz., in Ezek. xli. 21, where the English version has "the
+posts of the temple," whilst the marginal reading has "post" The word
+_heckal_ is in constant use throughout the later Jewish books, but does
+not occur once in the Pentateuch; and it is a significant fact that, in
+1 Kings xxi. 1, 2 Kings xx. 18, Ps. xlv. 8, cxliv. 12, Pro. xxx. 28, Is.
+xiii. 22, xxxix. 7, Dan. i. 4, the word in question is translated in our
+authorized version _palace_.
+
+As the idea of a palace--a royal residence, is totally distinct from a
+tent or tabernacle, it is clear that the narrative about Eli, Hannah,
+and Samuel, was written by some one to whom the story told in
+the Pentateuch was quite unknown. The dishonesty--we speak thus,
+controversially--of the bishops concerned in the new commentary is not
+only shown in the _suggestio falsi_, but in the _suppressio veri_; and
+no amount of skill in argument or of book-learning can, amongst those
+who are aware of the fraud, get over the effect which is produced by
+the cheat. It is evident, that the questions which the Bishops ask
+themselves are--"Since there are so many who are wholly ignorant of this
+matter, shall we not do more to uphold current ideas by fraud than by
+truth?" and, "Is it not right for us to risk our own souls in support of
+a faith which we do not, but which the people do, believe?"
+
+In a time when all men are ignorant enough not to understand what is
+history and what pure fable; when they are so careless as not to examine
+quotations, made from "authorities," in confirmation of opinions, or
+so credulous as to believe anything which a churchman, and,
+_par-excellence_, a Bishop, may affirm, it may be regarded by
+ecclesiastical writers as a pardonable sin, if not, indeed, a tactical
+master stroke, to misrepresent an adversary. But in the present day,
+when all educated Englishmen have heard of the false decretals on which
+the Popes have founded their claims to superiority, and the astute
+legend of Prester John, it is bad policy for a Bishop to found an
+argument upon a wrong quotation, or to imagine that a glaring untruth
+can by any possibility support his position. For myself, I confess that
+I began to read the _Speaker's Commentary_ with interest, inasmuch as
+it purported to be an exposition and refutation of the arguments against
+the authenticity of certain Biblical writings; but when I found an
+English hierarch could so forget his duty to "the truth" as to misquote
+such a man as his episcopal brother, the Bishop of Natal, I abstained
+from a farther perusal, for I found the necessity of verifying
+quotations involved more time than I could afford. Dr Colenso has,
+however, sufficiently shown the viciousness of the new commentary, and
+there is no necessity for a second investigator.
+
+From what has been said, we have shown that the members of the Church
+of England, and all Protestant dissenters, have a right to expect from
+their teachers an opinion, founded upon learned inquiry, "whether the
+objections made by scholarly critics against the inspiration of the
+Bible are well founded," and that ministers of all denominations, as a
+body, not only shirk the duty, but persecute such of their fraternity as
+venture to do so.
+
+When an individual in the community accepts a trust and does not fulfil
+it, he is amenable to the law; and if it can be proved that there has
+been wilful negligence, the trustee may be punished. This does not,
+however, apply directly to the clergy, for the trust which is confided
+to them is to preach and teach from the Bible. That, certainly, is
+what they engage to do before the law, but the very essence of their
+existence as ministers of religion is, that they shall instruct men
+in the way of salvation. This trust, which is never put into legal
+phraseology, is proclaimed to be in existence by every preacher; and
+each minister, by implication or assertion, declares that he is desirous
+of exercising this trust to the best of his ability. If, then, the
+real value of his leadership is challenged, he ought, as a champion,
+to defend it. He does so in every point, except that which is most
+essential He will discuss circumcision with a Jew, infant christening
+with a baptist, purgatory with a popish priest, bishops with a
+presbyterian, confession with a ritualist, and the like. There must,
+then, be some cause why Revelation should not be treated of.
+
+If we consult human nature, the only causes to which we can assign this
+reticence are, conscientious cowardice and dishonesty. The first is,
+by many persons, regarded as a duty--they are taught that it is sin to
+doubt; the second is not called by its right name. Yet, as we have said
+elsewhere, our religious societies are founded upon the principle of
+sowing doubt broadcast; and we denounce the pious frauds which invented
+winking virgins and bleeding nuns. Surely, if there be any truth in the
+line--"An honest man's the noblest work of God," it is most essential
+that they, who style themselves His ministers, ought to be conspicuously
+honourable, candid, and thoroughly trustworthy in matters of doctrine as
+well as of morality.
+
+The subject on which we are now treating has ramifications so wide, that
+it is difficult to see the end of the branches. Amongst the most obvious
+is the influence which it has upon the matter of public education--one
+which occupies a large portion of the interest of our nation at the
+present time.
+
+In our preceding vol. II., p. 113, we have a note to the effect that
+there is much doubt upon the subject whether faith ought to be drilled
+into the minds of our youth prior to an acquisition of, or the power of
+using, their reasoning faculty, and we remarked that the question is far
+too extended to be treated in a casual note.
+
+The matter was shortly afterwards discussed in parliament, but not one
+of the orators ventured to touch upon the point involved. If we ask
+ourselves "the reason why," it is probable that the answer would
+run--because all the interlocutors did not venture to be honest; by
+which I mean, did not wish to utter, in distinct language, the
+opinions that they held, and the end which they sought. There are
+some legislators who regard moral cowardice as a virtue, and political
+dishonesty as a desirable kingcraft.
+
+If an observer of the parliamentary debates, to which we refer, was also
+a diligent and thoughtful reader of orations made in country towns and
+metropolitan districts, by preachers and teachers of all our various
+religious denominations, he would readily come to the conclusion that
+there was something underlying every speech, which was never allowed to
+come to the surface--a something which each was perfectly cognizant of,
+but which it would be unmannerly to name, or even to hint at strongly.
+It is not, in public meetings, or in parliament, permitted to any
+speaker to accuse an adversary of falsehood or dishonesty.
+
+Yet, what an orator may not judiciously say of particular individuals,
+a writer may assert of a class, or of a single person, if he is a
+representative of a body. I may, for example, accuse the Pope of
+dishonesty in misrepresenting certain well-known facts. I may equally
+charge controversial writers with fraud, when they falsify the words or
+arguments of an opponent. Whoever frames such an indictment is, however,
+bound to take into consideration the possibility of there being an
+unintentional error. It may, for example, be true that Popes never see
+newspapers which tell the truth, and that divines may quote without
+ever reading the book which they profess to criticise. In both cases
+the critic acquits them of malice, but only to convict them of culpable
+ignorance.
+
+When we investigate how this bears upon education, we ask ourselves--"Do
+we, as historians, or in our capacity of reading men, know that the
+pretensions of the Church of Rome are founded upon, or are bolstered
+up by, assertions which every learned man knows, or ought to know, are
+unworthy of belief?"
+
+To be more particular, let us propound the question--Does any Papal
+hierarch believe that Francis of Assisi received certain bodily marks on
+his hands and feet direct from Jesus? or that any portion of the blood
+of a man has been preserved for ages in the Cathedral of Naples, as
+having once belonged to a person who is called by the same name as
+the first month in our year? We might readily increase our queries by
+remarking about St. Dennis, St. George, St Fou-tin, and a variety of
+others who appear in the Roman heaven. Our purpose, however, will be
+answered if we ask, whether the thoughtful amongst us do not object to
+the Papal faith, because those who proclaim it are not to be trusted?
+
+If we listen to energetic Protestant divines, we hear much of "lying
+wonders," wrought by Antichrist, which are calculated even to deceive
+the very elect. These men frequently quote such passages as the
+following:--"Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the
+Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these" (Jer.
+vii. 4); "They have committed villany in Israel, and have spoken lying
+words in my name, which I have not commanded them" (Jer. xxix. 23);
+"Have ye not spoken a lying divination," &c. (Ezek. xiii. 7, 8, 9); "Then
+shall that Wicked be revealed, whose coming is with lying wonders, and
+with all deceivableness of unrighteousness; and for this cause God shall
+send them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie," &c. (2
+Thess. ii. 8-12). Indeed, the main objection to the Roman Church, amongst
+all those who are acquainted with its secret history, is that it is
+founded, and still exists, upon a foundation of fraud.
+
+There are many who consider that the Churches of England and of Scotland
+have not a better basis; but both have so many friends in Great
+Britain, that the sins of neither are closely examined, except by their
+adversaries.
+
+Each sectarian is fully alive to the want of good faith shown by every
+other division of the Church of Christ; and not only so, but we have
+seen, in our own times, a ruler in Siam who knows about them too (see
+_Wheel of the Law_, by H. Alabaster; Triibner & Co., London, 1871), and
+is perfectly alive to the fact that we deceive ourselves.
+
+It is a part of human nature that each individual has a propensity to
+deceive himself or herself. A child, who has been told that Old Bogy
+lives in a certain cupboard, will not go and look therein; a man who
+adores a lovely wife will not believe in her frailty; and a fond woman
+will not credit even her father, when he tells her that her admirer is a
+worthless scoundrel.
+
+We grant this readily, but we add the proviso, that we only allow
+ourselves to be deceived by our own friends. It would be, to all of us,
+a frightful infliction if our sons or daughters were to tell us that
+we were under strong delusions, and believing in lies. Consequently,
+everyone desires that his family shall have a similar faith with his
+own.
+
+At the present time, however, more conspicuously than at any other since
+printing was invented, there is, in society, a vast number of men who
+believe, from their critical inquiries, that all religionists trust
+in lying vanities which do not profit. These individuals have become
+sceptics, in consequence of education having led them to think for
+themselves. Being opposed to all, they are friendly with none; and
+although they are not aggressive, as a rule, they are vigorously
+attacked by every sect which steadily refuses to come to the light.
+
+Under these circumstances every hierarch argues: "The education which
+frees the mind from all the shackles of superstition is prejudicial to
+us, who earn our living hy making fetters, fixing them, and relaxing
+them when duly paid to do so. A sound teaching--a style of instruction
+that will induce the rising generation to examine into our pretensions
+will cut the ground from under our feet. We must, therefore, endeavour
+to limit, in some considerable degree, our tuition." Like the Jesuits in
+Austria and of to-day, they will cram the memory, but not exercise
+the understanding; they will crowd the mind with lying statements,
+and prohibit all inquiry. Sectarians, therefore, as a rule, object to
+education, unless it has a religious element in it. They agree in this
+point, but differ as to the style of faith which is to be taught Hence
+all the difference of opinion, for as the sectarians cannot decide upon
+what faith is to be taught, they object to all instruction whatever. Are
+they honest?
+
+If, instead of nursing a private idea, each legislator were boldly to
+say what he desired to obtain and to avoid, there might be some chance
+of united action. But when all pretend to work in common, yet not one is
+absolutely in earnest, and all, more or less, play at "make believe," no
+valuable end will be obtained.
+
+One politician, whose memory is tenacious, and his temerity great,
+cannot bear the idea that the British mind should approximate to that of
+the Germans; and, whilst he eulogizes education, he denounces Strauss.
+Not because the latter is not a man of profound learning, but because
+the cultivation of his intellect has led him to certain conclusions
+which are distasteful to an English politician. This is not honesty.
+
+Again, our bishops and the priesthood generally say, "Education is a
+desirable thing; it is wrong for man, who has a soul to be saved, not
+to seek out the way of salvation." But if, in the course of inquiry, a
+scholar imagines that their way is incorrect, he is anathematized, and
+his fellows are instructed to believe that no one can find comfort for
+the soul except in the way patronized by the Church. This, again, is
+not honest. But--and the word is of mighty import--if, instead of saying
+this distinctly, a few individuals of high standing in the Protestant
+community deliberately, and with the intention to deceive--or to retain
+people in the bonds which astute predecessors have thrown around the
+laity, state, as their belief, that which their critical knowledge tells
+them is untrue, or withhold knowledge of importance, because they deem
+its publication detrimental to ecclesiastical institutions, they are not
+simply dishonest--they are culpable, and guilty of spiritual murder.
+
+My meaning may be illustrated by one or two pertinent anecdotes: The
+captain of a man-of-war was doubtful of the existence of a rock laid
+down upon a chart. One day at dinner he announced to his company the
+disbelief which he had, adding, that if the spot were truly described,
+the ship would strike directly. It did so, and few survivors were left
+to tell the tale. The commander judiciously elected to perish with his
+vessel. Had he told his officers, and the distinguished passengers whom
+he was carrying, what he was doing, it is certain that the danger would
+have been avoided.
+
+Another ship captain was addressed by a civilian who was on board,
+and told that a hurricane was approaching, which might be avoided by
+steering in a certain direction; but, metaphorically speaking, the
+bishop would not listen to the layman. The typhoon came, the vessel was
+partially dismasted; then the passenger was consulted, and by his aid
+the ship got out of the danger.
+
+The civilian was well read, not in ancient books, but in modern science;
+the master mariner knew only his log-book, compass, and "the rule of
+thumb."
+
+A person who loses his ship because he is too stupid to believe a chart,
+or the rules of a science, which every scholar may test, deserves the
+name of an imbecile, and our Board of Trade would deprive him of the
+power to do any more mischief as a captain; but bishops and priests may
+pilot their vessel wrongly, for none have any jurisdiction over them,
+provided always that they steer in the old channels. It matters not
+how far the way may be shifted, all is supposed to be right, if the old
+landmarks are still used.
+
+To make our meaning still more clear, let us imagine ourselves a
+nation of mariners, and of ocean-travellers. We go to school, and learn
+astronomy, trigonometry, geography, physics, and the like; yet, when
+we are at sea in any ship whatever, we must neglect our knowledge, and
+trust implicitly to the captain of our ship. We know that we are, in
+reality, going southwards, when our proper destination lies to the
+north: for us it is easy to read the stars, and thus to test both the
+chronometer and the compass; must we, then, be quiet because we have
+embarked in a vessel belonging to a certain "line," which is commanded
+by a master appointed by the "firm" or "company" to which the barque
+belongs. What is the value of education unless it enables us, when
+necessary, to find whether we are in the right way or not?
+
+Let us, still further, suppose that we remonstrate with the captain, and
+that he, in place of arguing the matter fairly, endeavours to override
+our objections by quoting from ancient geographers, to demonstrate that
+what we believe to be the wrong is, in reality, the only true way to go;
+we may be silenced, probably until we accidently discover in the ship's
+library, a dissertation proving that the old traveller's charts are
+worthless. When we find out that, what will be our opinion of the
+captain? Can we believe him to be honest?
+
+If we now were to remonstrate with our naval dictator, and he were to
+rejoin--"My worthy brothers, I know that you are right, and that I
+have been wrong. I have, indeed, known it from the time I began to
+be commander, but my living depends upon my belief in old charts and
+ancient compasses. I dare not change my plan, for my masters would
+dismiss me. They know--at least I feel convinced that they are aware,
+that the old sailing directions are wrong; but they have not the courage
+to say so, or to alter them--and if I do so, they will cashier me."
+
+Is the "firm" or "company" honest? and if we are to mete out degrees of
+culpability, to whom must the severest punishment be awarded? Surely,
+in the case of the Church of England, to her Bishops, who, knowing, as
+scholars, that their compass and charts are incorrect, yet oblige those
+under their command to steer by them--thus compelling the men who ought
+to be standard-bearers in the forefront of intellectual work, either to
+be silent, or to fight at a disadvantage.
+
+It is the knowledge of the duplicity of a vast number of intelligent
+divines, which has induced laymen to take the business of education out
+of the hands of the clergy as a body. The Protestant believes that a
+Jesuit will not teach correct history; the Romanist feels certain
+that, even in biography, evangelical narratives cannot be trusted; and
+Nonconformists generally feel that they cannot rely upon the instruction
+given by those of a different sect.
+
+It is desirable to sketch, if possible, what would be the condition of
+society if, in the place of the clergy, there was a set of men trained
+to the office of instructor, and that all individuals in the kingdom
+were compelled to attend school for a definite period in their youth. In
+the first place, nothing would be taught which is not known to be true.
+After having mastered the rudiments of knowledge, the art of reading,
+writing, and ciphering, the students would be taught to train their
+minds in drawing inferences from facts, and the art of passing from
+imperfect knowledge to certainty. They would be schooled into habits of
+exactness, and the necessity for careful inquiry before they believed an
+assertion to have the same power as a fact Those whose inclination led
+them to study one or more of the arts or sciences, drawing, painting,
+sculpture, designing, weaving, chemistry, engineering, building, and
+a host of others, would learn that in every one of them knowledge and
+precision are required to ensure success.
+
+When the instructor found that his pupils were sufficiently trained to
+the exercise of reasoning, he would then proceed to explain the ideas
+which have been entertained by various people about the existence of
+beings, other than those which can be recognized by the senses. He would
+lead his class through the geological history of our planet, and point
+out the sequence of events from the latest formation, to the primary
+rocks; on his way he would linger on the nature of ancient plants and
+animals; from our earth he would lead them to a study of the stars, and
+then point out how very natural is the opinion that all the universe had
+a designer.
+
+Then, after giving a history of the belief in ancient times, he
+would gradually descend to our own. He would critically examine the
+pretensions of any person who had, in former ages, asserted, or who
+proclaimed now, that he or she knew all about this presumed Creator, and
+was charged to communicate that knowledge to mankind. After
+explaining the critical test by which such an assumed mission might be
+examined--viz., by accurate knowledge of the earth and of mankind, he
+would apply this trial to all known pretenders to inspiration.
+
+As a result, his pupils might prefer one to another, or refuse
+to believe in all which have hitherto appeared. In any case, each
+individual would enter upon the form of faith which he selected with
+full knowledge of the facts in favour of it. He would, therefore, be
+a disciple worth having. If, on the other hand, he disbelieved all
+pretenders to inspiration, his condition would be the result of
+deliberate reasoning upon ascertained facts, and not built, as
+all religion now is, upon parrot lore, taught in childhood, ere
+thoughtfulness has begun to grow.
+
+Assuming that men were thus trained by honest and able instructors,
+all those people who live upon the weaknesses and the ignorance of the
+multitude would cease their endeavours to prey upon mankind, and to get
+a living by playing upon the fears which so many persons have of the
+unknown. There would then be no religious wars or contests--no popes,
+prelates, priests, nor deacons. Quackery of all kinds would cease, and
+statesmen would all agree in endeavouring to procure for mankind the
+greatest amount of available happiness. This would be the result of
+honesty. But from such a picture many men absolutely recoil As the
+effect of training has been to make them believe that unsubstantial
+things are of sovereign importance, they cannot endure the idea of man
+being wholly rational; and they insist, as does the late Premier of
+England, that, if scientific schooling of the mind leads men to neglect
+what some call Revelation, the plan must be radically bad and worthless.
+But to eulogise education and to deprecate its results is dishonest.
+This political tenet or practice resembles that of many a parson, who
+tells his hearers from the pulpit that they are to "take no thought for
+the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself;"
+"they are not to take thought for life, for food, for raiment; nor to
+lay up for themselves treasures upon earth" (Matt vi. 19, 25, 34), and on
+the week-day urges them to lay by a store against the time of sickness
+or old age. Such double-dealing is dishonest, and is unworthy of a
+thoughtful man. If Jesus was right, why not enforce his teaching? if he
+was wrong, why not say so?
+
+Is it possible that any minister in politics, or religion, can believe
+that "Honesty is the best policy," and yet act with double-dealing? Can
+any person, who has power to think, believe that he will be respected
+when he, on a Sunday, preaches improvidence as being taught by the
+Almighty, and on a Monday proclaims that men are wicked who do not make
+a provision for the future? If such people were honest with themselves,
+they would soon discover that the doctrine propounded from the pulpit is
+a Buddhistic one, acted upon by all the early disciples of Sakya Muni,
+and in a conspicuous manner by himself. Yet, if a parson were to be
+candid thus far to himself, he would probably say--"I cannot afford
+to be honest in this matter openly, and I must keep this knowledge to
+myself." Interest, unfortunately, determines the actions, even of our
+divines, more than a rigid uprightness.
+
+We are thus at the foundation of those causes which are in operation
+to make the thoughtful laity distrustful of the clergy--it is, that
+the latter are not honourable or strictly veracious--they preach
+one doctrine, and act upon another. Honesty is on their lips, but
+self-interest in their hearts. From the Pope to the humblest deacon,
+there is a conscious reticence in every mind--an inner belief that their
+pretensions are not tenable, yet an outward determination to proclaim
+them at all hazards; like the silversmiths of Ephesus, they all unite in
+the belief that "their craft is in danger" when the apostles of reason
+appear.
+
+Far be it from me to assert that all the clergy are dishonest in
+the full meaning of the word. I believe that many of them have such
+undeveloped minds, or such mean intellectual capacities, that they are
+absolutely unable to think upon any subject which has not been drilled
+into them when their brains were childish and ductile. Others, again,
+have been schooled into the belief that "doubt" and "the devil" are
+identical, and who pray to be defended from both--with them, "to
+inquire" is a temptation of Satan, and so is to be manfully resisted;
+others, again, say to themselves, and sometimes even to their
+friends--"I know what will follow if I go into 'the evidences'--I dare
+not do it, and prefer to remain in my present condition." Others, again,
+say to their conscience--I am paid to expound a certain book, in a
+certain way; I cannot afford to give up my position; consequently I will
+neither hear of nor argue upon either the volume or the doctrine. There
+are, again, some few religionists who, by constantly encouraging a blind
+faith, and repressing all intellectual doubts, come at length to believe
+their position impregnable, and who trust it because it is, as it
+were, always kept under a glass-case. Some such I know, or have known,
+personally; and have heard from their own lips how their very accurate
+knowledge of the Bible has made them doubt its inspiration, and
+how "they have wrestled with God in prayer"--to use their own
+expression--until the temptation to distrust has been changed into a
+childlike confidence. Men like these are not dishonest to the world,
+they are only so to themselves.
+
+The career of one of my acquaintances has been so striking, that
+it deserves a record. The man of whom I speak was one of powerful
+intellect, and of an inquiring turn of mind; but he was in holy orders,
+and had schooled himself never to investigate the Bible's claim to
+inspiration, or anything connected with religion. He faithfully did the
+ordinary duties of a minister according to his lights; but throughout
+his ministrations, in the composition and delivery of every sermon,
+there was a powerful undercurrent of the mind which was constantly
+saying, without using words--"You know that you are not honest." Prayer
+did not subdue this mental conflict, and day by day the undercurrent
+grew stronger. It was, however, resolutely opposed, and an outward
+orthodoxy rigidly kept up. Of the throes of such a man, when he was
+quietly alone, few but those who have felt them can have an idea. Under
+their influence the brain gave way, and insanity was the reward of
+a resolute determination to be orthodox against personal conviction.
+Similar cases are not uncommon, when faith opposes reason.
+
+It is very doubtful whether ordinary laymen have an adequate idea of the
+extent of clerical dishonesty existing amongst us, not only in the seats
+of learning, but in our towns, cities, and villages. As I have had much
+correspondence and conversation with many ministers of religion, I have
+formed the opinion that parsons of all denominations regard themselves
+much in the same light as trade unionists and non-union men, the two
+parties look upon each other as hostile. The former, who call themselves
+the orthodox, keep up a sort of spy system upon those whose opinions
+they fear, because they are not in the union. Such men, if they had a
+chance, would not scruple to "ratten" an adversary. They judge of a man
+by the books which they chance to see in his library, book-cases, or
+upon his table; and, without the manliness to confront, they have the
+weakness to backbite those whose mind is more robust than their own.
+
+As a physician, I have been consulted by a Church of England minister,
+who was suspected by the rest of the ministers in his town of being a
+non-union man. Of strong mind, he did not preach the usual jargon which
+the pulpit delights in. Irons upon _Prophecy_ and Inman's _Ancient
+Faiths_ had been seen in his study, and he spoke approvingly of Colenso.
+As a consequence, he was watched in the pulpit and in the street. He was
+followed to the homes of poverty, and sick folk were visited, that the
+nature of his ministrations might be searched out. He was visited by
+persons of all classes, who, taking their cue from the New Testament,
+strove to entangle him in his talk. Being married, and having a family,
+and no means of subsistence, save his church living, this trade union
+persecution made him miserable, and seriously injured his health. But he
+was resolute not to be dishonest, and held on his way. I was, he assured
+me, the only person whom he knew that could appreciate his condition,
+and he was most thankful for my sympathy and advice. He left my house
+already improved in health; and the feeling that he had a friend to whom
+he might always apply, enabled him to bear his persecution manfully.
+He still retains his position, notwithstanding all the wiles and
+"picketings" of the trade unionists.
+
+This spy system, mentioned in the above example, is associated with an
+attempt to discover and apply backstairs influence--those who have
+the power of making appointments in the church, the chapel, or the
+meeting-house, are studied, and their opportunities to remove a
+non-unionist taken advantage of by clerical "By-ends," who endeavour to
+shape their judgment according to that of their patrons.
+
+This dishonesty reacts upon itself. Men who preach habitually one set of
+doctrines to a congregation, tie themselves and their understanding down
+to the low level of the majority of mediocrities; and as this level has,
+under such circumstances, a tendency to lower itself, the clergy have
+been compelled to fall, with their patrons, far down in the intellectual
+scale, and the intelligence and educational status of ministers of all
+denominations sinks annually lower. The proprieties of society prevent
+me from repeating what has come to my ears from the lips or pens of
+distinguished clerics. It will be enough if I utter my belief that one
+or more outspoken laymen will do more good to religion, and advance the
+interests of society more, than all ecclesiastical unionists. In this
+and the preceding volumes it has been my aim to be thoroughly honest. In
+some things of small moment, such as Greek accents, Hebrew points, &c.,
+it is probable I have been faulty. I will even allow, willingly, that a
+more perfect Hebrew scholar than myself may esteem my etymons fanciful
+and incorrect. My work having been done in the midst of constant
+interruptions, I concede that, to accomplished bookworms, it must appear
+disjointed. But, with all its faults, it is honest; and, being so, I
+claim the right to challenge any one who chooses to enter the lists, and
+encounter me honourably, to a knightly combat. I am sure that my aim has
+been, and is yet, to elicit truth. To me vituperation, because I have
+run foul of what are called established doctrines, has no more influence
+than it had upon the prime movers of any revolution. A foul blow, such
+as iniquitous misrepresentation, would probably anger me for a moment,
+yet it would nerve me, in the course of a few hours, to make an
+onslaught more furious than ever. With a literary rascal one cannot
+observe the strict laws of knighthood, except indeed, those which govern
+the relations of the noble and the varlet.
+
+I make this challenge the more boldly, because the so-called orthodox
+cannot persecute me by those meannesses which they employ against each
+other. Having no ecclesiastical status, I have no penalty to dread from
+frightened bishops or malignant priests. In the face of such a defiance
+the clerical party must fight fairly, or slink away as cravens. One
+condition, however, I must make with any one who enters the lists--viz.,
+that any misrepresentation, such as that made about Bishop Colenso by
+Dr Browne of the See of Winchester, shall be regarded as _ipso facto_--a
+signal of defeat.
+
+To return to the idea which is enunciated at the early part of this
+essay, let us contemplate what would be, or rather, what ought to be,
+the duty of an honest man, whose aim is to defend the faith which he
+professes, and to prove that the book which he reveres is deserving of
+his confidence.
+
+It is probable that, if a merchant had in his possession a bill,
+or promissory note, which some person had examined carefully, and
+pronounced to be a forgery, he would never think of parading it before
+his customers as a valid "asset." Yet, as I write the sentence, memory
+recalls to my mind that traders have done this very thing, and have
+counted what they ought to have known were bad debts, or fraudulent
+bills of exchange, amongst their securities for money; and that, when
+the parties so acting have become bankrupt, their proceedings have been
+severely punished by the authorities, as being dishonest and fraudulent.
+
+The analogy is an useful one, inasmuch as it enables me to ask the
+question--"Ought the morality of a 'divine' to be inferior to that
+practised by a merchant or banker?" Still further, let us inquire
+whether we should have a high opinion of a trader, who endeavoured
+to palm off upon us, as a genuine diamond, an article which had been
+publicly declared to be a bit of "paste," and whether we should be
+satisfied with his excuse--"I believe everything is a gem that goes by
+the name of a precious stone."
+
+In the course of this and our preceding volumes we have, as plainly as
+words could express our meaning, enunciated our conclusions upon certain
+Biblical difficulties. We have, at least, endeavoured to be honest; we
+have not misrepresented those with whose opinions we differ, nor have
+we tried to shirk any question, however difficult it may have been. We
+claim a corresponding degree of honesty from those who profess to be
+authorised guides--and certainly are in the position at present of
+national leaders in religion.
+
+We are not like an unfortunate clerk in "holy orders," who can be
+silenced by law. We are, on the contrary, a stranger knight who comes to
+a tourney, and claims the right to combat with the most redoubtable of
+the champions of their court and kingdom. Still further, we assume the
+power to write those down as cowards who, upon any pretence whatever,
+decline to compete in the lists with us.
+
+In the days of chivalry there was not a knight who would not have been
+regarded as "craven," if he declined a combat because his challenger
+did not speak or write French correctly, or had a speck of rust on his
+armour, a dint in his shield, or a hole in his breastplate. Yet, in
+these degenerate days, we see that poltroons refuse to entertain the
+arguments of a writer who, from any cause whatever, appears to be
+inaccurate in Hebrew points, or consonants, or Greek accents, or
+transliteration. For ourselves, we regard every excuse which is framed
+to avoid meeting a fairly stated argument as a proof of weakness, and
+when it is uttered by a professional champion, as an act of cowardice.
+When such champions are paid by a state to uphold the honour of their
+country, to avoid a challenge by evasion is dishonesty. There was,
+however, in knightly days, some established law of chivalry that no
+champion need fight a "squire" or "varlet;" but, on the other hand, no
+nobleman could refuse to enter the lists on the plea that his challenger
+had a different faith to his own. Combats between Christians and Paynim
+were common. Consequently, we cannot regard a bishop justified in
+declining a fair challenge, because he is invited to enter the lists by
+an "Infidel."
+
+Considering myself as an university graduate and an English gentleman,
+entitled to give a literary challenge, I make no scruple to enter the
+lists, and invite champions to break a lance with me in favour of their
+patron saint or lady.
+
+I assert that their tutelary saints--Adam, Abraham, David, Moses,
+Solomon, and the prophets, are imaginary beings, or, where real, were
+not as worthy as they are supposed to have been. I defy scholars to
+prove that the Israelites were ever, as a body, in Egypt; that they
+were delivered therefrom by Moses; that the people wandered during forty
+years in "the desert;" received a code of laws from Jehovah on Sinai;
+and were, in any sense whatever of the words, "the chosen people of
+God."
+
+I assert that the whole history of the Old Testament is untrue, with the
+exception of a few parts which tell of unimportant events--e.g., it is
+probable that the Jews fought with their neighbours, as the Swiss have
+done in modern days--but I do not believe the tale about Samson any more
+than that of William Tell.
+
+I assert that there is not a single true prophecy in the whole Bible,
+which can be proved to have been written before the event to which it
+is assumed to point, or which is superior, in any way, to the "oracles"
+delivered in various ancient lands.
+
+I assert that the whole of what, is called the Mosaic law had
+no existence in the days of David, Solomon, and the early Hebrew
+chieftains--or kings--if they are thought to deserve the title.
+
+Here there is no room for evasion--the issue is clear; the cause to be
+adjudged by combat is unmistakable. As the weapons on both sides
+must necessarily be literary--the pen, and not lance or spear, it is
+advisable to say a few words thereupon. In argument I do not recognize
+that style of logic which considers that the words "it may be" are equal
+to "it is."
+
+I am induced to make this remark, because in theological works, the two
+forms are constantly used as if they were identical. Many years ago, a
+near relative, staying in my house, was preparing for ordination in the
+Church of England, and amongst other hooks, had a certain work of the
+late Cardinal Wiseman, for perusal--with the intention of collecting
+materials for refuting it. He told me that the Papal Archbishop was too
+strong for him, and requested my aid. As a result, I became familiar,
+not only with many dogmatic writings of the Roman, but also of the
+Anglican, Church. All of them had, in my estimation, the same logical
+fault. Their authors imagined that any given point is proved when it
+can be shown that the occurrence in question _may_ have happened. At
+a subsequent period I discovered that this was the prevalent argument
+amongst writers in my own profession. It has, indeed, been supposed
+generally, that success in proving an opponent to be wrong, is the same
+as demonstrating your own propositions to be right.
+
+The writers in the _Speaker's Commentary_ upon the Bible have not
+advanced beyond this. A thousand such commonplaces as fill its pages,
+are worthless to the philosophical inquirer, and I no more regard them,
+than a knight would a targe and lance made of barley-sugar.
+
+My challenge, however, is not confined to the subject of the Old
+Testament; I affirm that the New Testament is equally untrue--although
+not to the same degree. Yet, as in the latter, there are not so many
+asserted facts, there cannot be so many points for cavil. To be more
+specific: I assert that the history of Jesus was framed upon that of
+Sakya Muni, and very probably at Alexandria, long after the death of
+the son of Mary. I do not deny the existence of Jesus; but I assert that
+every miracle which is told respecting him--and the narrative of his
+miraculous conception, and of the marvels occurring at his birth, have
+no foundation in fact.
+
+It is unnecessary to repeat what I have already said upon such points as
+"original sin," "the fall of man," and "the need of a Saviour."
+
+In what I now say or write, I am perfectly honest. I have not been paid
+to preach a certain doctrine, whether my understanding assents to it
+or not I affirm, moreover, that the comfort in which I live, is wholly
+unbroken by any fears for the future; and that I look back upon the
+period when my days and nights were made wretched by superstition, and
+rejoice that I am emancipated from the shackles of Ecclesiastics. "The
+Church," and every sect of it, which is known in Christendom, is, in my
+opinion, unfit to be trusted by thoughtful human beings. Its votaries
+are only happy in proportion to their power of forgetting its doctrines,
+or explaining them away. Yet all, as I said in the first chapter of
+my second volume, agree "to make believe," and by dint of persistently
+doing so, end in persuading themselves that they are clothed with lovely
+garments--which have no existence, save in the opinion of the wearer.
+
+My whole life has been passed amongst religionists of more or less
+piety. I have known them in public and in private, in their connection
+with the world, and their relations with wife, children, and servants. I
+am also familiar with some who are avowed free-thinkers. As an impartial
+judge, and certainly having the desire to be an honest one, I declare
+that the so-called irreligion or infidelity of the latter makes them
+better citizens of the world, better fathers of a family, and
+better priests to those who are struggling with misfortune, than the
+religion--orthodox or non-conformist--of the former induces them to
+become.
+
+If there were in reality, as there was once in fable, a domain in which
+every one was constrained to speak the truth; and if, still farther, one
+could carry thereto every religionist, and inquire into his belief, I
+feel sure that those whom the professed Christians affect to despise as
+infidels, would be the only ones who would be found faithful in private,
+to the principles which they profess in public. If, for an example,
+the question were put to both "What is honesty?" the answer of the
+free-thinkers would be--"Doing to others, in every position of life,
+that which you would wish others to do to you;" the reply of the
+dogmatic would be the same, with the important addition--"Except in
+matters of faith."
+
+My readers must not imagine that I am hasty or unscrupulous in what is
+passing from my mind to my pen. There never was a time in which I
+have felt more deeply that my duty, as an independent man, is to speak
+plainly. On the other hand, there is not one single religionist of my
+acquaintance, to whom the words--"Ye know not what manner of spirit ye
+are of" (Luke ix. 55)--do not apply.
+
+On the shelves of my library are books written by almost all classes of
+authors, and in many different languages. It has been a self-enforced
+duty to compare their contents, and to endeavour, still further, to
+elicit from those who are not writers, information which may assist me
+in forming a correct idea upon any particular point. Up to the present
+time I have not found one single work, which has relation to the
+religion of opponents, and is written by a parson, thoroughly
+trustworthy or honest Everyone is guilty, either of the _suppressio
+veri_ or _suggestio falsi_--generally of both. A book emanating from a
+priest is bad, that from a bishop is worse. Colenso, whom I regard as
+the only thoroughly truthful member of the episcopal hierarchy, is the
+one who is more foully treated by religionists than any other minister
+has ever been--"Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true."
+
+We may be pardoned, if we close this chapter by the expression of our
+views as to the religion which will prevail when men have thought as
+much upon their future life as upon their present, and are honest with
+themselves:
+
+1. They will try to form some distinct idea of what would be to them
+a heaven; but, as they will be wholly unsuccessful, they will cease to
+speculate upon it.
+
+2. They will cease to fear a hell, knowing that, if there be any
+immortal part of man, it must be immaterial; they will not believe that
+it can be tormented by material fires, forks, and furies.
+
+3. They will cease to pay any attention to men who call themselves
+prophets, divine messengers, or vicars of God on earth, whether they use
+lying wonders or not.
+
+4. Instead of constantly cogitating how much they can sin against, and
+yet get pardon from, some unknown deity, they will recognize the laws
+of nature for their guide, and live in communities as their reason
+dictates. The future will be left wholly in the power of the Creator.
+
+5. There will be no belief in a trinity, in a virgin mother of God, in
+intercessors of any kind whatever between human beings and the invisible
+God; each man and woman will be independent and alone in the presence of
+the Supreme.
+
+6. Man will no longer try to usurp the place of God, and persecute his
+fellow mortal on religious grounds.
+
+7. There will be no priests or ministers of religion; but there will be
+instructors in science, in the laws of life, and moral order; there will
+be magistrates to enforce social propriety, and establishments where the
+insane and the criminal can be secluded.
+
+8. There will be no strife about religion, for each will attend to his
+own personal concerns.
+
+9. The laws of nature will be studied as regards marriage and family;
+the infected will not be allowed to perpetuate a feeble race, nor the
+diseased infant be pampered, that it may live to a sickly and useless
+maturity.*
+
+     * We may add, that there will then be neither silly women
+     nor crotchety men, who will encourage free trade in
+     fornication, and the diffusion of loathsome diseases, and
+     endeavour to promote unnecessary suffering by their
+     opposition to the methods of avoidance.
+
+10. No law will be made but that which is drawn from a study of the ways
+of the Creator, and the proper requirements of His creatures.
+
+11. Every pretender to revelation, or inspiration, will be incarcerated
+as a rogue or a lunatic.
+
+12. The aim of all will be individual and general comfort, and as much
+happiness as is compatible with humanity.
+
+When each does to others as he would be done by, the millennium, so much
+talked of, will have come.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+27th March, 1875.
+
+Dear Dr Inman,
+
+At pp. 11 and 81 of your new volume, the proof-sheets of which you were
+good enough to show me, you intimate that an earlier origin can be found
+for all Hebrew feasts and observances excepting the Sabbath. It would
+appear, from discoveries made and works published since you began to
+write, that you need not make even this exception. There are, I think,
+plain indications of a Sabbath among the Egyptians, and proofs of its
+observance by the Assyrians.
+
+Dr G. G. Zerffi, in a note appended to Mr Tyssen's _Origin of the Week_*
+says--"Judging from the Egyptian mythology, we are justified in assuming
+that they had some correct notions of the division of time. Their eight
+gods of the first order point to an incarnation of the cosmical forces,
+or the planetary system. The twelve gods of the second order undoubtedly
+presided over the twelve months of the year; whilst the seven gods of
+the third order were to watch over the seven days of the week..... The
+Teutons have inherited the division, not only of the week in seven
+days, but also the names by which these days are called, from the
+Indians....." (Bohlen's _Das alte Indien_; _Toth_, by Dr Uhlemann;
+and Bunsen's _Egypt's Place in History_; Tacitus, Suidas, Pliny, and
+Amosis).
+
+     * The Origin of the Week Explained, by A. D. Tyasen, B.C.L.,
+     M.A.; Williams & Noigate, 1875.
+
+These, perhaps, are only what I have called them, indications of a
+Sabbath, since it is conceivable that a week of seven days might exist
+without one day being more sacred than another. A plainer indication may
+be found in the Hymn to Amen-Ka, which exists upon a hieratic papyrus,
+judged to be of the fourteenth century, B.C., and purporting to be only
+a copy of an earlier writing. I quote four lines, and call attention to
+the fourth:--
+
+     O! Ra adored in Aptu [Thebes]:
+     High-crowned in the house of the obelisk [Heliopolis]:
+     King (Ani) Lord of the New-moon festival:
+     To whom the sixth and seventh days are sacred.*
+
+When we leave Egypt for Assyria, we pass from indication to proof. At p.
+12 of George Smith's _Assyrian Discoveries_,** the author says--"In the
+year 1869 I discovered, among other things, a curious religious calendar
+of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and
+the seventh days, or 'Sabbaths' are marked out as days on which no work
+should be undertaken." More precise information as to these Sabbath-days
+is given by Rev. A. H Sayce, M.A., in _Records of the Past_, vol. I., p.
+164, where the following words occur:--"The Babylonian year was divided
+into twelve months of thirty days each, with an intercalary month every
+six years.... According to the lunar division, the seventh, fourteenth,
+nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days were days of 'rest' on
+which certain works were forbidden."
+
+     * Translated by C. W. Goodwin, M.A., in Records of the Past,
+     vol. II Bagster & Sons.
+
+     ** Sampson Low, & Co., 1875.
+
+The Assyrian legends tell of seven evil spirits who rebelled against
+the gods; of the goddess Ishtar descending to Hades, and passing through
+seven gates; of a deluge, the duration of which was seven days, &c., &c.
+Mr H. F. Talbot, F.R.S., speaks of the great degree of holiness which
+the Assyrians attributed to the number seven, and where that number was
+sacred, the seventh day could scarcely escape special honours. _Why_ the
+number seven was sacred, or whether the Babylonian Sabbath was at first
+any more than an unlucky day, like the sailor's Friday, when it was
+sowing for the whirlwind to begin any enterprise, are other questions.
+
+I am, yours faithfully,
+
+GEORGE ST. CLAIR.
+
+
+These observations of Mr St Clair deserve attention, for they show that,
+from an ancient period, a sixth and seventh day were holy in Egypt,
+although we cannot discover from the context whether they were reckoned
+after the first day of a year, a month, or a week. But this is of
+small importance, as I do not find evidence that the Jews borrowed any
+Egyptian ideas, even if they ever knew any. It is far more important to
+know, that in the Assyrian calendar the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth,
+twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month were days of "rest,"
+for all Biblical testimony points to the adoption of the Jewish Sabbath
+in the time of the second Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel--i.e., not very
+long after the Assyrians made their power felt in Palestine. When we
+consider the propensity which the Hebrews had to copy parts of the
+religion of those who conquered them, it is highly probable that some
+astute priest of the Jews adopted the idea of consecrating a seventh
+day, as their Mesopotamian adversaries had done, to the most high
+god Saturn; and as it was desirable to have some pretence for the
+introduction of the Sabbath, it was natural that it should be put under
+the same head as the new moon, and that stories should be invented, and
+gradually circulated, of the vast antiquity of the new institution. It
+is clear, from the Jewish history, that the Sabbath was not generally
+known amongst the common people until long after the return from
+Babylon. Had it been so, Ezra would not have thundered so energetically
+in its favour. The same remark applies to Nehemiah. I have elsewhere
+remarked that the Sabbath was unknown to David and Solomon, and may now
+add that any one who will read the episode in the history of Elijah,
+recorded 1 Kings xix. 7, 8, will see that this prophet could have known
+nothing, and the angel who spoke to him could have known no more, of the
+Mosaic Sabbath, inasmuch as the latter directs, and the former obeys,
+an order which must have involved a breaking of the "rest" of at least
+five, and possibly six, Sabbaths. The whole life, indeed, of Elijah
+shows a perfect ignorance of this so-called Mosaic institution.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Faiths And Modern, by Thomas Inman
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Ancient Faiths and Modern:, by Thomas Inman
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+    
+    body { margin:5%; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
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+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
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+    
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+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Faiths And Modern, by Thomas Inman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ancient Faiths And Modern
+       A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+
+Author: Thomas Inman
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38100]
+Last Updated: November 17, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN:
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      In Central And Western Asia, Europe, And Elsewhere, Before The Christian
+      Era. Showing Their Relations To Religious Customs As They Now Exist.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Thomas Inman
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Author Of "Ancient Faiths Embodied In Ancient Names," Etc., Etc.
+        Consulting Physician To The Royal Infirmary, Liverpool; Lecturer,
+        Successively, On Botany, Medical Jurisprudence, Therapeutics, Materia
+        Medica, And The Principles And Practice Ok Medicine, Etc., In The
+        Liverpool School Ok Medicine. Etc.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      1876
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      TO THOSE WHO THIRST AFTER KNOWLEDGE, AND ARE NOT DETERRED FROM SEEKING IT
+      BY THE FEAR OF IMAGINARY DANGERS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, WITH GREAT
+      RESPECT, By THE AUTHOR <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="titlepage (48K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      Contents
+    </h2>
+    <table summary="">
+      <tr>
+        <td>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> INTRODUCTORY </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>
+          </p>
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>
+          </p>
+          <br />
+          <p class="toc">
+            <a href="#link2H_APPE"> APPENDIX. </a>
+          </p>
+        </td>
+      </tr>
+    </table>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PREFACE.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Some thirty years ago, after a period of laborious study, I became the
+      House Surgeon of a large Infirmary. In that institution I was enabled to
+      see the practice of seven different doctors, and to compare the results
+      which followed from their various plans of treatment. I soon found that
+      the number of cures was nearly equal amongst them all, and became certain
+      that recovery was little influenced by the medicine given. The conclusion
+      drawn was that the physician could do harm, but that his power for good
+      was limited. This induced me to investigate the laws of health and of
+      disease, with an especial desire to discover some sure ground on which the
+      healing art might safely stand. The inquiry was a long one, and to myself
+      satisfactory. The conclusions to which I came were extremely simple&mdash;amounting
+      almost to truisms; and I was surprised that it had required long and
+      sustained labour to find out such very homely truths as those which I
+      seemed to have unearthed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, with this discovery came the assurance that, if I could induce my
+      medical brethren to adopt my views, they would deprive themselves of the
+      means of living. Men, like horses or tigers, monkeys and codfish, can do
+      without doctors. Here and there, it is true, that the art and skill of the
+      physician or surgeon can relieve pain, avert danger from accidents, and
+      ward off death for a time; but, in the generality of cases, doctors are
+      powerless. It is the business of such men, however, to magnify their
+      office to the utmost. They get their money ostensibly by curing the sick;
+      but it is clear, that the shorter the illness the fewer will be the fees,
+      and the more protracted the attendance the larger must be the
+      "honorarium." There is, then, good reason why the medical profession
+      should discourage too close an investigation into truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, outside of this fraternity, there are many men desirous of
+      understanding the principles of the healing art Many of these have begun
+      by noticing the style of the doctor's education. They find that he is
+      taught in "halls," "colleges," and "schools," for a certain period of
+      time; and then, at about the age of two-and-twenty, he is examined by some
+      experienced men, and, if considered "competent," he pays certain fees, and
+      is then licensed to practise as physician. As all regular doctors go
+      through this course, it is natural that all should think and act in a
+      common way, and style their doctrines "orthodox." It is equally certain
+      that to such opinion the majority adhere through life. But it has always
+      happened, that many men and women have aspired to the position of medical
+      professors, without going through the usual career; or, having done so,
+      they have struck out a novel plan of practice, which they designate a new
+      method of cure. These have always been opposed by the "orthodox," and the
+      contest is carried on with varying success, until the general public give
+      their verdict on one side or the other. Into the motives which sway the
+      respective combatants we will not enter; our chief desire being to show
+      that each set is upheld by those who are designated "laymen," whose
+      education has not been medical The most intelligent on the heterodox side
+      have been clergymen; and many have been the complaints of "orthodox"
+      doctors, that "the parsons" should patronize, so energetically as they do,
+      medical "dissenters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the "clerk" takes pleasure in examining the therapeutical doctrines of
+      his physician, so the medical professor frequently inquires closely into
+      his clergyman's theological views and feels himself at liberty to accept
+      or oppose them, as the "clerk" adopts or attacks him and his theory and
+      practice. It would, indeed, be disrespectful in the listener not to pay
+      intelligent heed to the discourses which emanate from the pulpit. I have
+      myself listened to the preaching of hundreds of university graduates, and
+      of men who never took a degree, and have noticed that the same diversity
+      of style exists amongst them, as is to be found in medical men. Some order
+      a certain plan of treatment for a soul, which they assert to be grievously
+      affected, and give no reason for what they say or do. Others give their
+      motives for everything which they affirm, and for the plan which they
+      prescribe for cure. Under the ministry of one of the last I sat for many
+      years. Conspicuous for sound judgment, and for a peculiarly clear oratory,
+      his sermons were to me an intellectual treat. From the exordium, forwards,
+      I followed his words closely, and lost none of his arguments. But I soon
+      became conscious that he never once carried his reasoning to its logical
+      conclusion. Still further, it was manifest that certain things were by him
+      taken for granted; and it was held to be culpable to inquire into the
+      reality of those assumptions. In fine, it was evident, that there was a
+      Bluebeard's closet in the house of God, into which, in the preacher's
+      opinion, it was death to pry!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the idea which was gradually forced upon my mind, that there was a
+      systematic suppression of the truth in the pulpit, I very carefully
+      searched the Bible, with which I have been familiar from infancy, and upon
+      which, it is asserted, all our faith is founded. At this time, too, a
+      casual inquiry into some ancient cognomens, which have descended to us
+      from remote antiquity, induced me to examine into ancient faiths
+      generally. With this became associated an examination of all religions,
+      and their influence upon mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found that in every nation there have been, and still are, good men and
+      bad, gentle and brutal, thoughtful and ignorant. That the best men of
+      Paganism&mdash;Buddha, for example&mdash;did not lose, by comparison, with
+      the brightest light of Christianity; and that such large cities as London
+      and Paris, have as much vice within them as ancient Rome or modern
+      Calcutta. I found, moreover, that there is a culpable colouring in the
+      accounts given by Christian travellers of Pagan countries. The clerical
+      pen rests invariably and strongly upon the bad points of every heathen
+      cult, and contrasts them with the best elements of Christianity. I do not
+      know that it has ever instituted a fair comparison between corresponding
+      characters in each faith. As an illustration of my meaning, let us regard
+      the stern virtue of the Roman Lucretia, who committed suicide, her body
+      having been forcibly defiled by the embraces of another than her husband,
+      even though the ravisher was a prince. She had heard nothing of the Jewish
+      law or Christian gospel, nevertheless she was far better than the wives of
+      the nobles in the courts of Louis the XIV. and XV., who gladly sold
+      themselves and their daughters to the royal lechers. These, unlike the
+      Italian woman, were instructed both in the law and the gospel; they
+      attended one place or another of Christian worship daily or weekly. Nay,
+      if report be true, "the eldest son of the Church," when he visited the
+      "parc aux cerfs," made each fresh virgin, victim of his passion, duly say
+      her prayers before she assisted him to commit adultery, and herself
+      permitted fornication! We sympathize with Paul and the early Christian
+      fathers in their denunciations of the Romans and Greeks for obscenities
+      practised in honour of their gods; but, at the same time, we feel sure
+      that, had those apostles and teachers lived in the middle ages, they would
+      have denounced, with greater warmth, the murders which were constantly
+      being perpetrated in honour of Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner, we may greatly regret, with the writer of Psalm xiv., that
+      amongst "the children of men, there is none that doeth good; no, not one;"
+      but we must equally bow before the statement of Ezekiel (ch. xxii. 30),
+      that there was no more propriety amongst the so-called "chosen people of
+      God," than amongst the Gentile Canaanites and Babylonians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, we feel pain when we find the great ones of the earth&mdash;aye,
+      and many small ones too&mdash;seeking out for villains, "willing to commit
+      murder for a mede," and lament that lawgivers should secretly encourage
+      lawlessness; but we cannot forget that Jesus of Nazareth is represented,
+      in John vi. 70, to have selected a devil to bring about certain ends&mdash;see
+      also John xiii. 26, 27, in which the agency is well marked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Modern divines tell us that war, tumult, hatred, malice, quarrels of all
+      kinds, and murder come from the devil, and are the direct result of our
+      fallen nature; nevertheless, we remember that Jesus is reported to have
+      said&mdash;"I came not to send peace, but a sword; I am come to set a man
+      at variance against his father, and the daughter against the mother,"
+      &amp;c. (Matt. x. 34, 35). When we institute comparisons like these, the
+      balance is not uneven. I found, moreover, that the sharply defined line,
+      commonly drawn between Paganism and Christianity, is worthless&mdash;the
+      doctrines of the latter being, in many respects, identical with, or
+      deduced from, the former.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seemed necessary, therefore, to ascertain whether, in religion, any
+      other line than the one in vogue in Europe, could be drawn with certainty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of my observations showed a wonderful similarity to exist
+      between the clerical and medical profession; and I feel that, if my views
+      about the cure of souls and bodies were generally adopted, there would be
+      no need either for parson or for doctor. Instead of discovering, as I had
+      hoped to do, which of all the rival sects of Christendom is the best one,
+      I found that all were unnecessary, that many are degraded in doctrine and
+      bad in practice; and that, if any must exist, the one which effects the
+      least mischief should be the one selected for general adoption. It
+      required much courage to allow myself to believe that doctors have, taking
+      everything into consideration, done more harm in the world than good, and
+      still more to announce my conviction that Christianity was even more
+      culpable than medicine. The physician, when professing to cure, has too
+      often assisted disease to kill; and he who has had the cure of souls, has
+      invented plans to make believers in his doctrine miserable. The first
+      fills his coffers proportionally to the extent to which he can protract
+      recovery; the second becomes rich in proportion to the success with which
+      he multiplies mental terrors, and then sells repose. The one enfeebles the
+      body, the other cripples the intellect, and aggravates envy, hatred, and
+      malice. Both are equally influential in preventing man from being such as
+      we believe that the Almighty designed him to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though we oppose the old plan of medication of body and mind, we are far
+      from asserting that there is no value in an honest doctor, either of
+      divinity or medicine. On the contrary, I have a stronger faith in my own
+      profession, as it has been reformed, than ever I had ere the light of good
+      sense had shone upon it; and I have a far more confident trust in the
+      religion propounded by F. W. Newman, in <i>Theism</i>, than in that
+      current amongst Christians in general But in such schemes of physic and
+      faith, very few "ministers" are necessary, shams find no place, and
+      emoluments are small A man who communes with his God requires no priest,
+      mediator, middle-man, or saint&mdash;whether virgin, martyr, or both&mdash;to
+      intercede for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holding such opinions as these, it is not probable that I shall find many
+      followers. I do not seek them. My aim has been to set good sterling stuff
+      before the world, so that any one, whose self-reliance is great, may
+      receive strength. There are many who would rather die with a physician
+      close beside them when they are ill, than live without a doctor; and there
+      are few who would not rather enjoy the fear of hell with the orthodox,
+      than be with heretics free from such terrors&mdash;"For sure, the pleasure
+      is as great in being cheated, as to cheat." To all such our writings are
+      <i>caviare</i>. Yet, even to them, we would say that we have warrant for
+      our belief in statements, to which the orthodox cannot reasonably object&mdash;viz.,
+      "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" (Gen. iv. 7); "In every
+      nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with
+      him" (Acts x. 35); "He that doeth righteousness, is righteous" (1 John
+      iii. 7).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me contrast my own views with those generally current amongst us. I
+      believe that God did not make men, any more than the beasts, to damn the
+      largest number of them throughout eternity. I believe that all who aver
+      that they have been selected by the Creator from all the world besides as
+      the only recipients of salvation are wrong, and deceivers of the people.
+      In fine, I believe that God's "tender mercies are over all his works." The
+      common opinion that the Almighty so revels in cruelty, that He makes
+      creatures to torture them, is a horrible one to me&mdash;fit only to come
+      from impotent Pagan priests. That Jehovah selected about one million of
+      bad men, out of about four hundred other millions equally bad, solely
+      because their progenitor, Abraham, consented to murder and burn his son,
+      is to me a frightful blasphemy; and, lastly, that God has no tender
+      mercies for nine-tenths of the human race, is to convert our conception of
+      the Author of all good into the conventional "Devil." The comparison may
+      be summed up thus: I believe in God, the Father of all things; the
+      so-called orthodox believe in the God Satan. I do not know anything in all
+      my studies which excited my attention more painfully than the result of
+      the analysis of Jehovah's character, as given in our Bible. Kind to those
+      who are said to please Him, He is a fearful demon to all who are said to
+      oppose Him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How can any reasonable man hold the opinion that the Devil instigated all
+      atrocities of the Syrians, Chaldees, Assyrians, Romans, Turks, Tartars,
+      Saracens, Affghans, Mahometans, and Hindoos, and believe that the good God
+      drowned the whole world, and nearly every single thing that had life; that
+      He ordered the extermination, not only of Midianites and Amalekites, but
+      slaughtered, in one way or another, all the people whom he led out of
+      Egypt&mdash;except two&mdash;merely because they had a natural fear of
+      war. What was the massacre at Cawnpore to that in Jericho and other
+      Canaanite cities? I say it with sober seriousness&mdash;in sorrow, not in
+      anger&mdash;as a thinking man, and not as an advocate for, or against, any
+      religious view, that it is an awful thing for any nation to permit a book
+      to circulate, as a sacred one, in which God and the Devil are painted in
+      the same colours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into this analysis of religion I was led to enter from the observation of
+      a friend, who challenged me to find, in any non-Hebraic or non-Christian
+      country, a faith or practice equal to that current amongst the followers
+      of Moses and Jesus, or to discover any spot in the wide world where there
+      is, or has been, a civilization equal to that which existed in Judea, and
+      the parts inhabited by Christians. In consequence of this defiance, it
+      became more than ever necessary for me to study the nature of the current
+      faith and practice of Christendom, and to inquire how far the latter was
+      dependent upon the former&mdash;that is to say, whether the practices of
+      civilization are due to our religion, or have gradually grown up in spite
+      of it. The next point was to pay similar heed to the doctrines and manner
+      of life common amongst those to whom our Bible has been wholly unknown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many of the conclusions to which I came have already appeared in the
+      second volume of <i>Ancient Faiths</i>, under the heads of "Religion,"
+      "Theology," &amp;c.; but others came upon me when that book had been
+      completed, and the present supplement is designed with the idea of
+      expressing, still further, the extent of my views, and the evidence upon
+      which they are founded&mdash;with special reference to the differential
+      value of Christian and unchristian faith and practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As was natural, this involved the question constantly before my mind in
+      the preceding volumes&mdash;viz., "Is there in reality anything in the
+      Hebrew and the Christian theology essentially different from that
+      promulgated by the leaders of divinity in other countries?" This point has
+      repeatedly been discussed, and amongst the orthodox there is no difficulty
+      in allowing the existence of a strong similarity in all systems of
+      religion; but the value of the fact is supposed to be reduced to ridicule
+      by the monstrous assertion, that Moses and Jesus taught all the world.
+      Amongst the books which came under my notice, whilst prosecuting my
+      search, was a very remarkable one, called <i>The Modern Buddhist</i>, now
+      <i>The Wheel of the Law</i>, which is an account of the religious thoughts
+      of a Siamese monarch, with a statement of his conversations with Christian
+      missionaries. In this the British churchman and non-conformist can see
+      themselves as others see them; and the Asiatic has quite as great, perhaps
+      even a superior, right to call the European "poor and benighted," as the
+      Christian has to call the Buddhist "a miserable Pagan."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Notwithstanding my endeavours to be perfectly "judicial," and to give what
+      I believe to be an impartial account of the subjects which I describe, I
+      have been, by certain critics, accused of special pleading. It is,
+      perhaps, unnecessary to deny the charge, for each reader must judge of my
+      fairness, or otherwise, for himself. But, on the other hand, I retort most
+      strongly, by averring that I have not met, in the whole course of my
+      reading, a religious work by an orthodox divine, which does not "bear
+      false witness against its neighbours."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is in all both a <i>suppressio veri</i> and a <i>suggestio falsi</i>,
+      which makes the honest inquirer almost entirely reject their books. In
+      addition to this, there is in them a recklessness of statement and
+      assertion which is unequalled, except in the fierce controversies of
+      ancient doctors. The perfect contempt which certain puny divines, who have
+      endeavoured to throw dirt upon the present Bishop of Natal, show for the
+      laws of evidence, and the systematic way in which they avoid every real
+      point at issue, are marvellous to those who know that such people have had
+      an university education, have studied logic, and profess an unlimited
+      respect for truth. In future years the theological writings, generally, of
+      our time will be as much objurgated by enlightened, earnest, and
+      thoughtful readers, as Protestants of to-day abuse the theology and
+      prurience of Sanchez, Thomas Aquinas, and Peter Dens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In conclusion, I would wish to add, that I am conscious, from the amount
+      of correspondence which I have had on the subject in hand, that there is
+      not only a wide, but a constantly extending dissatisfaction with the
+      current theology taught by the ministers of all denominations&mdash;excepting,
+      as a body, the Unitarians, and such individuals as Bishop Colenso, Bishop
+      Hinds, Mr Voysey, and others. The laity are awaking to the fact that
+      priests are strenuously endeavouring to quench the light of reason in the
+      fogs of faith. Unless the Protestantism, of which Great Britain was once
+      so proud, decides to drift into Papism&mdash;the only legitimate harbour
+      for those who reject reason for a guide&mdash;it must thoroughly reform
+      itself, and ruthlessly reject, as "necessary to salvation," every article
+      of belief which is not only nonsensical or absurd, but which has
+      unquestionably descended from a grovelling Paganism. To this end we hope
+      that our essays will contribute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTORY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     A recapitulation. Destruction of an old edifice precedes the
+     building of another on the same site. Chichester Cathedral.
+     Difficulties of reconstruction. Innovators are regarded as
+     enemies. The Old Testament appraised. The Jews and their
+     pretensions. Hebraic idea of Jehovah. The sun and moon. God
+     and goddess. Importance of sexual perfection in a Hebrew
+     male. Women are prizes given to the faithful Jews. Almost
+     everything Jewish came from Pagan sources, except the
+     Sabbath. Inquiry into the New Testament necessarily follows
+     upon an investigation of the Old. Thoughts upon the history
+     of Christianity. Malignancy of its professors. Life of
+     Jesus, by various authors. The ground preoccupied.    The
+     plan proposed.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In commencing another volume of a series, and one to a great extent
+      independent of the other two, it is advisable to pause and recapitulate
+      the points advanced, and the positions attained. This is the more
+      necessary when the present inquiry is a natural result of a preceding one,
+      and when an attempt is made to collect and arrange the scattered materials
+      into an harmonious and consistent edifice. Our volumes on the subject of
+      "Ancient Faiths in Ancient Names" were, to a great extent, destructive.
+      They struck heavy blows in all directions, wherever a false idol was to be
+      recognized, and they destroyed many a cherished delusion, which was to
+      many as dear as the apple of their eye. But, throughout the whole process
+      of destruction, the idea of the necessity for a reconstruction was present
+      to the mind of the author.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may, indeed, be propounded as an interesting question, whether any
+      iconoclast ever destroys the idols which his fellow-beings cherish,
+      without entertaining the belief that he has something superior to offer in
+      their place. When the fanatic Spaniards upset, fractured, and ground to
+      powder the stone monsters venerated by the Mexicans, they offered to the
+      natives the image of a lovely virgin and her gentle son to replace them;
+      and when the enthusiastic Scotchmen destroyed the marble saints and gaudy
+      figures of the Popish churches throughout their own country, they eagerly
+      set forth the superiority of adoring the invisible creator in spirit and
+      imagination, which afforded scope for the most entrancing mental
+      delineations, and was far superior to reverencing an ugly effigy, which no
+      one with any correct taste could admire. In like manner, when the
+      Mahometan Caliph destroyed the library of Alexandria, he offered to the
+      mourners in its place the book of the Prophet Mahomet, which was, in his
+      eyes, a pearl of so great price as to be equivalent in value to all the
+      world besides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There can be no doubt, however, that the process of destruction is far
+      more easy than the task of reconstruction. The engineer who is called upon
+      to remove a bridge, on account of the badness of its foundation, may
+      admire the extraordinary firmness with which every stone has been
+      dovetailed together, and, with the means at his command, may be unable to
+      construct another having a similar appearance of stability; yet, after
+      all, an arch which is secure and stable is preferable to one which is good
+      only in appearance. A very few years have elapsed since it was found that
+      the tower and spire of the Cathedral at Chichester had been so built that
+      there was imminent danger of the whole falling down. This part of the
+      edifice resembled certain faiths which have been raised with great art to
+      a vast height, with very slender and inadequate material. So long as they
+      were not assailed by any storm, or tested by the changes which time
+      produces, they seemed firm and unshakable; but, when they were really
+      tried, they began to undergo a process similar to that which obtained in
+      the Cathedral named&mdash;the admirers of the edifice attempted to prop up
+      the failing tower; with iron and timber they shored up its bulging sides;
+      they erected strong scaffolds to ease the mighty strain upon the crumbling
+      walls; but all in vain&mdash;the lovely spire, built upon a foundation as
+      rotten as the Mormon faith, came tumbling down, and the tall emblem
+      pointing to the sky returned once more to earth. Before there could be any
+      reconstruction attempted, it was necessary to procure all the material
+      necessary; and when, with great labour, this was accumulated, a fresh
+      erection was made, which was far stronger than the first, for every stone
+      was duly examined, and solid masonry replaced the ancient rubble. So it
+      has been with many a faith. Christianity has replaced the crumbling
+      Judaism which existed at the beginning of our era, and the Reformed Church
+      has since then, in many countries, replaced the gigantic sham of Popery.
+      But the metaphor is one which we cannot wholly adopt, inasmuch as we
+      believe that no faith of ancient times has ever wholly fallen like the
+      spire and tower of Chichester, nor has any new system of belief the
+      solidity of that new edifice which has replaced the old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The difficulties connected with reconstruction are greatly increased by
+      the propensity which is so common in the human mind to make the best of
+      that which is in actual existence and familiar to the vulgar, rather than
+      to adopt something entirely new. The child who dislikes to go to bed at
+      night equally dislikes to get up in the morning, and we have known elderly
+      people who have systematically preferred an old lumbering stage-coach to a
+      first-class compartment in a railway carriage. In every walk of life an
+      innovator is regarded as an enemy by the majority, and especially by those
+      whose practice or whose theories his discoveries supersede.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, great as is the contest which any new truth has to sustain, there is
+      no doubt whatever that the first part of the fight&mdash;the preliminaries
+      essential to conquest, are the investigation of the ground to be occupied;
+      the real value of the defences; the superiority of the armour; and the
+      temper, strength, and tenacity of the offensive weapons. The engineer to
+      whom is confided the attack or the defence of a town will abandon or
+      destroy everything which would harbour an enemy or facilitate his
+      operations. The fighting commodore, ere he carries his ship into action,
+      sacrifices readily all the gewgaws of luxury; and in like manner the
+      ecclesiastic ought never to endanger his position by spending his energies
+      in the defence of a useless outwork or a tinsel ornament. Entertaining
+      these views ourselves, our first effort has been to clear the ground, and
+      to remove every object which we consider to be detrimental to the spread
+      of truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have demonstrated, as far as such a matter is capable of demonstration,
+      that the Old Testament, which has descended to us from the Jews, is not
+      the mine of truth which it has been supposed by so many to be: that not
+      only it is not a revelation given by God to man, but that it is founded
+      upon ideas of the Almighty which are contradicted by the whole of animate
+      and inanimate nature. We showed, that its composition was wholly of human
+      origin, and that its authors had a very mean and degrading notion of the
+      Lord of Heaven and Earth. We proved, what indeed Colenso and a host of
+      German critics have demonstrated in another fashion, that its historical
+      portions are not to be depended upon; that its stories are of no more real
+      value than so many fairy tales or national legends; that its myths can now
+      be readily traced to Grecian, Babylonian, and Persian sources; that its
+      miracles are as apocryphal as those told of Vishnu, Siva, and other
+      deities; and its prophecies absolutely worthless. We proved, moreover,
+      that the remote antiquity of its authorship has been greatly exaggerated;
+      that the stories of the creation, of the flood, of Abraham, of Jacob, of
+      the descent into, and the exodus from, Egypt, of the career of Moses and
+      the Jews in the desert, of Joshua and his soldiers, of the judges and
+      their clients, are all apocryphal, and were fabricated at a late period of
+      Jewish history, with the design of inspiriting the Hebrews at a period
+      when their depression of spirit from foreign conquest was extreme; that
+      the so-called Mosaic laws were not known until long after the time of
+      David, and that some of the enactments&mdash;that about the Jubilee, for
+      example&mdash;were never promulgated at all. We showed that the Jewish
+      conception of the Almighty, and of His heavenly host, did not materially
+      differ from the Greek idea of Jupiter and his inferior deities; that the
+      Hebrews regarded Jehovah as having human passions and very human failings&mdash;as
+      loving, revengeful, stern, merry, and vacillating&mdash;as "everything by
+      turns and nothing long"&mdash;as forming a resolution, and then contriving
+      how He might, as it were, overreach Himself. We pointed out that the Jews
+      did, in reality, paint God and the Devil or Satan, as the same individual,
+      being the former to His friends, and the latter to His enemies. Indeed,
+      anyone who compares 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 with 1 Chron. xxi. 1 will see this most
+      clearly demonstrated. We called attention to the apparently utter
+      ignorance of the Jews that certain laws of nature existed, and of their
+      consequent belief that defeat, disease, famine, slaughter, pestilence, and
+      the like, were direct punishments of ceremonial or other guilt; while
+      victory, wealth, virility, and old age were special and decided proofs of
+      the Divine favour. We showed that the Jews were, in general, an abject but
+      a very boastful race, and that their spiritual guides&mdash;the so-called
+      prophets&mdash;were constantly promising, but always vainly, a striking
+      manifestation of the Almighty's power in favour of the Hebrews when they
+      were in the depths of misery, that histories were fabricated to give
+      colour to these statements, and that these, like modern miracles of
+      saints, were narrated as occurring a long time ago, and in a locality
+      which could not be visited, e.g., in Samaria and Egypt; we showed,
+      moreover, that the race was imitative, and readily adopted the religious
+      ideas and practices of those who conquered them. Still further, we proved
+      that the Jews had no idea whatever of a future state, and were in utter
+      ignorance of heaven or hell; that they regarded the Almighty as punishing
+      crime or rewarding goodness in this world alone, and, consequently, we
+      inferred either&mdash;(1) that the conversation said to have been held
+      between Jehovah and certain apocryphal men did not really occur; or (2)
+      that God did not think the existence of a future world a matter of
+      sufficient consequence to communicate to His friends; or (3) that Elohim
+      had not then created either a habitation for the blessed, or a future
+      prison-house for the damned; and we pointed out that the opinions of the
+      Pharisees about angels, spirits, and futurity were not based upon the
+      writings of Moses and the prophets, but upon Persian fantasies. In fine,
+      we showed, that the Hebrews could not sustain the claim they made to be
+      the especial people of God, and that their writings are of no more value,
+      as records of absolute truth, or of Divine revelation, than the books of
+      the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, or the more modern
+      Mahometans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With all this we indicated that there was, throughout the nations known as
+      Shemitic, a general belief in the existence of an Almighty Being, Creator,
+      Director and Governor of the heaven, the earth, and the sea; that He was
+      considered to be One, yet that He was, nevertheless, represented by a
+      multiplicity of names, and as having many and opposite attributes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We also showed, that this sublime conception was very thickly coated with
+      human ideas, often of a debased and grovelling type, and darkened by
+      legends, which were invented by priests with the design of clothing
+      themselves, and those of their order, with a portion of the garments which
+      they had assigned to the Inscrutable. We showed, how the sun and moon, the
+      stars and planets, became interwoven with the idea of a Celestial Being,
+      and how they were described in turn as His ministers, His residence, His
+      army, and sometimes even as Himself. We showed, moreover, that the
+      Almighty was depicted by some as a male, having the attributes and
+      passions of men, by others as a female, or celestial goddess, and by
+      others as androgyne&mdash;not exactly a bifrons, like Janus, but masculine
+      and feminine, Elohim, Baalim, Ashtaroth; that in the development of this
+      idea, everything which has reference to the phenomena of mundane creation
+      was closely studied, and introduced into one religious system or another.
+      As a result of this, it followed, that there were some sects and temples
+      consecrated to the adoration of the Creator as masculine, others as
+      feminine, and others as both combined. We showed still farther, that each
+      sect adopted certain emblems, which were intended to represent the
+      distinctive mark of the sex under which it worshipped the Omnipotent, and
+      that the emblems became multiplied as different nations came into contact
+      with each other, learned foreign theology, and advanced in their knowledge
+      of natural history. To such an extent was this symbolism, to which we
+      refer, carried, that the sexual idea of the Creator at last pervaded, to a
+      greater or less degree, all forms of worship, and gradually degraded them
+      deeper and deeper, in consequence of the emblems of the deity being
+      mistaken for the deity itself, much in the same way as the vulgar, amongst
+      the Roman Catholics, regard a statuette or picture of the Virgin, or an
+      Ashantee a particular form of idol fetish. As an example of such
+      development, we pointed out that the Assyrians represented the Godhead as
+      four-fold, consisting of the triple male and the single female element in
+      mundane creation, and that the idea of the trinity in unity, which is a
+      doctrine recognized as far back amongst all nations as history will carry
+      us, was originally founded solely upon the well-known fact that the
+      characteristic of the male is a triad, of which all the parts are really,
+      and in no mysterious manner, "co-eternal together and co-equal." We also
+      showed that the feminine idea of the Creator has, from time immemorial,
+      been associated, in one form or another, with that of a lovely virgin
+      holding a child in her arms, which is generally very young, and mostly
+      receiving food from a maternal bosom, the reason of which we hinted at.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We showed that the myths of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarai, Esau and
+      Jacob, were incorporations of the idea that the trinity and the unity, or,
+      to use the very words of the Athanasian creed, "the trinity in unity,"
+      were the founders of the race of living beings, and, as such, worthy of
+      worship and honour throughout all ages. This union was spoken of as "the
+      four," and was symbolized as a square or a cross of four points, or a
+      cross of eight points. We showed, still farther, that the male Creator was
+      identified with the sun, and the female with the crescent moon, and also
+      with the earth; and that one of the symbols of this celestial union of the
+      sexes was the sun lying within the moon's crescent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We also demonstrated, that a very large part of Pagan worship consisted in
+      the performance of rites and ceremonies, whose end was the glorification
+      of the deity under one or other of the selected symbols, and that a number
+      of feasts were appointed to be held at certain astronomical periods, in
+      which the assistants were encouraged to indulge in every form of
+      sensuality (Deut. xiv. 26). We pointed out, that the Jewish people were
+      largely tainted by this vicious form of worship prior to the Babylonian
+      captivity, and that a very large portion of their nomenclature was based
+      upon sexual ideas of the Creator. We also showed, that the Jewish writings
+      encouraged certain forms of sensuality in a conspicuous manner; that the
+      condition of the male organ was represented as being of such importance as
+      to be the ground work of the covenant between God and the Hebrews, it
+      being declared (Gen. xvii. 14), as if by the word of the Lord, that no man
+      was to be allowed to live whose organ had not been improved in a definite
+      manner, i.e., by circumcision or excision of the prepuce, and that no man
+      was to be admitted into the congregation of the faithful whose
+      characteristic male organs had in any way been injured or removed.
+      Deuteronomy xxiii. 1 is conclusive upon this point, and there is no
+      ambiguity in the words of the decree. We pointed out, also, that not only
+      was abundance of offspring promised to the faithful as a proof of God's
+      regard to them, but that the laws, said to be delivered by Jehovah to
+      Moses, positively provided (see Deut. xxi. 10-14) the means by which the
+      harems of the wealthy could be stocked in times of war, and by which even
+      the poor might also be indulged, in or about the precincts of the temple,
+      where slave and foreign women were kept for the purpose (Numb. xxxi. 40).
+      We pointed out that the natural result of this licensed debauchery was a
+      great increase in the population, which was so much in excess of the
+      capacity of the land to sustain them, that it was necessary to check the
+      number of adult mouths by conniving at infanticide, as was done in
+      Rajpootana up to a recent period, and is said to be done in China now. It
+      is clear, from the denunciations by the prophets of the vileness of the
+      Jews of Jerusalem, and the impotent laws which were introduced into the
+      so-called Mosaic code, that the Hebrew family was to the full as bad and
+      vile as were the nations around them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We further showed that there was a marked difference in the thoughts, the
+      doctrines, the laws, the knowledge, the writings, and the form of worship
+      amongst the Jews after they had come into contact with the Babylonians,
+      Persians, and Greeks; and we adverted to the fact that the laws of the
+      Persians, and those of him, whom we would designate "the fictitious
+      Moses," were remarkably similar; and we showed that everything in the Old
+      Testament, which is, by the majority of Christians, deemed to be of Divine
+      origin, had been derived from or through one or other of the sources which
+      we have named, and which we call Pagan. From this we deduced the important
+      corollary, either that the so-called revelation of the Old Testament is a
+      sham, a priestly fabrication, and what is known as "a pious fraud," or
+      that it was not made originally to the Hebrews. In neither case can the
+      Jews establish a title to be the "chosen people of God" in any sense of
+      the words. If the Bible is true, the Gentiles have spiritual precedence
+      over the Hebrews, and the Pagans have the <i>pas</i> of the Christians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This deduction enabled us to recognize the importance of an extended
+      inquiry into the faith, religion, and practice of other nations, before we
+      assume ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the claims which one
+      human being, or any body of men, might make to be the representatives of
+      the Almighty, the sole recipients of His commands, and the only medium by
+      which prayers can be forwarded to Him. Again, the history of the past, and
+      a study of the present, enabled us to see that the foundation of a new
+      religion, or the modification of an old one, did not destroy ancient
+      practices, though it transferred priestly power to a new set of men, who,
+      while they introduced new gods and new dogmas, endeavoured to incorporate
+      the older ideas with new, so as to seduce or cheat the vulgar, whom it was
+      not judicious to slaughter, into adopting the new faith. Consequently, we
+      are able to understand how indecent ideas, sexual emblems, and Pagan
+      festivals, with many of the licentious practices associated therewith,
+      have been handed down from a remote idolatry to a modern and comparatively
+      enlightened Christianity. The symbols of the objectionable still remain,
+      but the things symbolized have been altered, and the original ideas
+      suppressed. The male triad is a holy trinity; the monad is no longer the
+      emblem of womankind, but of the so-called Mother of God, or, as the
+      Romanists say, of the <i>Mater Creatoris</i>. But with this knowledge
+      comes the very important consideration, how far Christian ideas, which are
+      founded upon Pagan fancies, can be regarded as Divine. This, again,
+      involves the question, how far Jesus, who had not penetration enough to
+      discover the true nature of the writings to which he trusted, can be
+      considered as an incarnation of Divine knowledge, or of unbounded wisdom.
+      Still further, it became clear, after our arguments, that if the stories
+      of the creation of man, the fall of Adam, the life of Noah, of Abraham, of
+      Moses, the tale of Sinai, and the supremacy of Judah, are mythical&mdash;if
+      the prophetic writings are as worthless as the oracles of Dodona and of
+      Delphi&mdash;then all theories, dogmas, and doctrines founded upon them
+      must be equally valueless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In pursuance of my subject, I pointed out that there was not a nation
+      known to history which had not its god or gods, a sacred priesthood, a set
+      of prophets, either located in one spot, or appearing as independent
+      vaticinators, a number of holy festivals, of hallowed shrines, of
+      mysterious temples, and an inner and recondite arcanum into which the
+      profane were not permitted to enter. I showed that other nations besides
+      the Jews had a sacred ark which was an emblem of a divinity; that the use
+      of sacrifices was common to every nation of antiquity; and that such
+      things had existed in Hindostan from time immemorial. I pointed out, that
+      there was no single precept or order contained in the Jewish Ritual which
+      could not be found amongst all other people, with the sole exception of
+      the Sabbath; and that the respect for this very strange law was due to the
+      ignorance of the Hebrews, who regarded Saturn as the most high amongst the
+      gods&mdash;information gained from the Babylonians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, an investigation into the nature and importance of Ancient Faiths
+      becomes a necessary prelude to, or, rather, is unavoidably followed by, an
+      inquiry into the beliefs, doctrines, and practices current in Christendom
+      generally, and in Great Britain particularly. Yet, though I was insensibly
+      driven forwards to complete the task which I began, without having any
+      definite notion of the amount of labour I should have to undergo, I
+      passively resisted for a long time the conclusions to which I was drawn,
+      feeling myself unwilling, almost, indeed, unable, to undertake an
+      examination which might shake my faith in the New Testament as it had been
+      shaken in the Old. Like many others of a thoughtful turn of mind, I could
+      see, without very strong regret, the Jewish writings consigned to their
+      appropriate niche in the library of the world; but I shunned the effort
+      required to take down the books of the Gospels and Epistles and weigh them
+      in the impartial balance of critical truth. Nevertheless, as my work on
+      Ancient Faiths progressed, I became painfully conscious that I must plead
+      guilty to the charge of mental cowardice if I shirked the duty of
+      examining the New, as I had investigated the Old, Testament. But when the
+      resolution to investigate modern faith was at length formed, the
+      difficulties surrounding the subject became apparent. The history of
+      modern faith is, to a great extent, the history of Christianity, and the
+      history of Christianity must start from a history of Jesus and his
+      apostles&mdash;Paul, Peter, James, John, and Jude, as given in the
+      Epistles and Gospels included in the canon of the New Testament. To cope
+      with any one of these histories as they deserve to be handled would
+      involve the work of a lifetime, and for one man to exhaust the whole
+      seemed to me an impossibility. There was, in addition to this, another
+      consideration which complicated my difficulty still farther, viz., the
+      fact that there were already, written histories of the nature of those
+      alluded to, and that it would be useless to multiply them. It is a
+      thankless task to pursue the current of the Christian religion through the
+      dark scenes which shrouded it, from the time when it was adopted by a few
+      "unlearned and ignorant men," until it emerged as a power able to shake
+      empires&mdash;from the period wherein its professors were burned and
+      otherwise tortured to death, to the days when their own Christian
+      successors racked, roasted, and tormented their opponents, with a
+      malignancy and cruelty as great as that which they themselves had
+      execrated when practised upon their predecessors. From the moment that
+      Christianity became a political power, its history resembled that of any
+      tyrant or other ruler, and it is filled with misrepresentation, lying,
+      fraud, the records of fighting and slaughter, of brutal passions,
+      frightful laws, and horrible punishments; in fact, the record of political
+      Christianity is that of a Devil in sheep's clothing. Even Calvin, one of
+      our cherished reformers, burnt another Protestant almost in the same year
+      as the Papists burnt Ridley and Latimer. The English Episcopalians in
+      Scotland, and the Cromwellian Puritans in Ireland, showed more of the
+      ravening wolf in their actions than of the amiable shepherd, who "gently
+      leads" the weak ones of his flock. In fact, the more loud the proclamation
+      of a pure Christianity, the more devilish is the practice of its heralds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I turned to the consideration of the life of Jesus, it was clear that
+      the ground was already fully occupied. In 1799 a Mr Houston published a
+      work entitled <i>Ecce Homo; or, a Critical Inquiry into the History of
+      Jesus Christ: being an Analysis of the Gospels</i>, a second edition of
+      which was made public fourteen years afterwards, and, as a result, its
+      publisher (D. J. Eaton) was prosecuted, and such of the impressions as
+      could be collected were publicly burned in St. George's Fields, London, by
+      the common hangman, whose business it was to strangle truth as well as
+      murderers. This book, which is little known to modern readers, is strictly
+      what it professes to be&mdash;a critical inquiry into the history of Jesus
+      Christ, and it may, to a great extent, be considered as the progenitor of
+      more modern treatises. It does not materially differ from the <i>Ecce Homo</i>
+      of to-day, or from the other works which we shall name, except in its
+      style and composition. Having been written when all were in the habit of
+      expressing their views in strong language, and when opponents were abused
+      in terms of coarse invective, the author has expressed himself in a manner
+      calculated to offend rather than to convince, and to stir up anger rather
+      than to encourage thought. Yet his arguments are unanswerable, and his
+      deductions unimpeachable, by those who know the value of evidence and
+      exercise their power of ratiocination. I have been unable to find that any
+      work was written in refutation of the author's views, and the only
+      opposition to it was from the usual agent of the weak-minded, but
+      strong-bodied&mdash;persecution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In more recent times, and within a very short period of each other&mdash;so
+      short, indeed, that we may say that the books were composed simultaneously
+      in Hindostan, Germany, France, and England&mdash;there have appeared <i>A
+      Voice from the Ganges,</i> Strauss' <i>New Life of Jesus</i>, Kenan's <i>Life
+      of Jesus</i>, The English <i>Life of Jesus</i>, by Mr Thomas Scott, of
+      Norwood, a second <i>Ecce Homo</i>, from a modern Professor, and <i>The
+      Prophet of Nazareth</i>, by Owen Meredith.* In these volumes, the
+      historical value of the Gospel narratives closely and critically examined,
+      and a just appreciation of the character, preaching, and practice of the
+      Prophet of Nazareth are honestly sought after, and, in the opinion of
+      impartial readers, they must be held to have been attained. Throughout the
+      series which we have mentioned nothing that is capable of demonstration,
+      or of approximate proof, is taken for granted. The scholarship of the
+      critical philosopher everywhere overbears the prejudice of the Christian
+      bigot. Since the appearance of these another author has treated upon the
+      same subject, but only cursorily, and as bearing upon other matters, in a
+      work entitled <i>The Book of God; or, The Apocalypse of Adam Oannes</i>,
+      which was published anonymously, 1868.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Whilst this sheet was in the printer's hands, a most
+     remarkable book was published anonymously, entitled,
+     <i>Supernatural Religion</i>, in two volumes. In it there is a
+     most scholarly account of the origin of the New Testament
+     writings, one which every thoughtful person should peruse.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Between the publication of the first <i>Ecce Homo</i> and the second,
+      viz., in 1836, there was printed, for private circulation, a very
+      remarkable work, entitled <i>Anacalypsis; or, an Attempt to draw aside the
+      Veil of the Saitic Isis</i>, by Godfrey Higgins. His two volumes are
+      replete with learning, and with deductions more startling than any which
+      had appeared prior to his own time; but the subject matter is so badly
+      arranged, that it is with very great difficulty that the trains of thought
+      which occupied the author's mind can be dis-. covered. His main idea is,
+      that very nearly everything in religion which appears to be mythical or
+      mysterious enfolds certain astronomical facts&mdash;such as the precession
+      of equinoxes, the duration of cycles of time&mdash;such as are necessary
+      to reproduce exactly a concordance between certain terrestrial and
+      celestial phenomena. With this theory he interweaves an amazing number of
+      facts which seem to favour the opinion enunciated in the book of
+      Ecclesiastes&mdash;i.e., that there is nothing new under the sun. He shows
+      that the idea of "incarnations," the birth of a heavenly child from a pure
+      virgin, and a variety of so-called Christian dogmas, have existed in every
+      age of which we have historical accounts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gives a vivid sketch of the nature of Christianity and its progress
+      from century to century, and he expresses himself respecting its modern
+      developments much in the same strain, though in a far more gentlemanlike
+      style, as did his contemporary, the Rev. R. Taylor, to whom was given, or
+      who assumed for himself, the title of the Devil's chaplain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the estimation of some of these writers, Jesus, the son of Mary, is
+      quite as mythical a being as Hercules, the son of Alcmena. This view has
+      been more recently adopted by some freethinkers of the present day. The
+      main support on which such individuals rely is the fact that there is no
+      mention of Jesus by any contemporary historian; and that, although there
+      are extant Jewish records of current history, at the time in which Christ
+      is said to have lived, they make no mention of him who is now called the
+      Saviour and of his wonderful history. It is pointed out that the histories
+      of the Gospels came out with marvellous rapidity, from Alexandria, about
+      the end of the first century, at a time when all contemporaries of Jesus
+      were dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this work of Higgins it is probable that we shall have repeatedly to
+      refer, for his language is frequently so forcible that it cannot be
+      improved, and, moreover, he very often quotes from books, copies of which
+      I have been unable to obtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I found that the ground which I intended to occupy had already been
+      so well and so ably cultivated, it occurred to me that it would be
+      advisable to take a wider flight than was originally contemplated, and,
+      instead of examining the Christian faith alone, to associate with it an
+      account of the faiths of those nations of whom we have some knowledge. By
+      this means it appeared to me, that we should be enabled to see clearly,
+      how far the current belief and practice of Christendom differs from the
+      doctrines and practices of those to whom Christianity could never, by any
+      possibility, have come, and we can examine, incidentally, into the
+      teachings of Jesus, and compare them with that of his predecessor, Sakya
+      Muni, or Buddha. We may also investigate impartially such doctrines as the
+      immaculate conception, and the existence of angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When treating, however, a subject like the religions of the ancient and
+      modern world, it is difficult to frame the history so as to bring out the
+      salient points, in a manner satisfactory to the reader or to the writer.
+      The latter is tempted to begin, as he believes, at the beginning, and to
+      trace the development of religious thought from its simplest expression up
+      to its highest aspiration. This temptation becomes all the stronger if, in
+      the course of his study, he has investigated the animal and vegetable
+      creations. In those vast kingdoms he sees that the philosopher is able to
+      lead his disciples onwards from the minute monad, or the simplest mass of
+      matter, to the gigantic mastodon, without any very conspicuous flaw or
+      break in continuity; but, on closely observing his method of proceeding,
+      the student finds that links which connect genera or species together are
+      found in countries so wide apart, that no direct communication can be
+      supposed between the one type and the other. Thus the gap between mammals
+      and birds is said to be filled by the "ornithorhynchus paradoxus," an
+      animal living in a vast island, in which scarcely one quadruped mammalian
+      is known to have existed, and where the aboriginal birds form a class
+      peculiar to Australia, and have no resemblance to the creature referred
+      to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, though the temptation is great, and although we feel justified in
+      reasoning from the known to the unknown, and in supplying missing links
+      from analogy, or from our own imagination, still, we consider that it will
+      be our best plan to confine ourselves, as far as possible, to that which
+      is written, and to describe first, the religious ideas and practices of
+      some so-called savages; secondly, the ideas and practices of some ancient
+      races, whose histories, more or less perfect, have come down to us, with a
+      view to ascertain whether there is anything essentially good in modern
+      Christianity, either in faith or practice, which is peculiar to that form
+      of religion, or whether almost the same style of teaching may not be found
+      to have been common in the remote East, at a period some centuries prior
+      to the birth of Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we have investigated the subjects of Sin, Salvation, Prayer,
+      Inspiration, &amp;c., it is unnecessary to refer to them again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Travellers' tales not to be trusted. Prejudice perverts
+     facts. The Esquimaux. Cause of reverence for parents. The
+     Red Indian in the presence of immigration is a moral
+     murderer. Inquiry into Indian religion. O. KEE. PA. Indian
+     reverence for phenomena of nature. Ruins of a past
+     civilization in America. Cairns and human sacrifices.
+     Manufactured goods. Bronze in Yucatan. Resemblance between
+     the ancient American people and certain Orientals. Abbé
+     Domenech's travels. Sacrifice at obsequies, idea involved
+     thereby. Scythian proceedings. Mexico and its theology. Two
+     different conceptions of deity. The Unity subdivided by
+     Mexicans, Jews, and Christians. The God of war and the Lord
+     of Hosts. The God of air a deity in Mexico, a devil in Judea
+     or Ephesus. Mexican baptismal regeneration. Resemblances
+     between the Occidental and Oriental people in many curious
+     doctrines. Particulars. Mexican Heaven, Hell, and Limbo.
+     Mexican baptism and prayers. Priests and their duties. A
+     parallel. Romanists and Mexicans. Confession. Expiation.
+     Human sacrifice to obtain pardon of sin. A comparison
+     suggested. Mexican education. Purity of life in the Mexican
+     priestesses. Father Acosta's opinion thereon. Tartary, Rome,
+     and Mexico have something common in culture. Education of
+     youth. Policy of the priesthood. Reflections thereupon.
+     Teocallis or houses of God. Worship. Festivals. Human
+     sacrifice. No sexual deities or rites. Question of
+     credibility&mdash;God and the Devil act alike! Aztecs and
+     Europeans compared. Christians have offered human sacrifice
+     from the time of Peter downwards. Transubstantiation is a
+     cannibal doctrine. Christian gods in Mexico as bad as the
+     Aztec deities. History of Peru. The policy of its rulers.
+     Roads and magazines. Nature of its government Governors were
+     instructed in their duties. Civil service examination.
+     Inauguration of youths into honourable manhood. Travelling
+     compulsory in rulers. Postal system&mdash;division of the people
+     &mdash;local magistrates&mdash;law speedy. Code of law. Punishment
+     without torture. Peruvians and inquisitors. Reports required
+     of lands and families. Register of births, &amp;c. Rapidity of
+     communication. Plunder not permitted. Peace the motive for
+     war. The vanquished incorporated with the victors. A
+     paternal government. Peruvian religion. Difference between
+     political institutions and priestcraft. Peruvian sun god. An
+     invisible God recognised. Priests. Eternal life.      Heaven
+     and  Hell.     Temple of the sun magnificent. Golden
+     ornaments. Huge urns of silver. Number of priests.
+     Festivals. Cannibalism not permitted. Fire made from rays of
+     sun and concave mirror, or by friction. Virgins of the sun.
+     Concubines of the Inca. Matrimony.    Reflexions.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When the philosopher reads over the histories which adventurous
+      travellers, or Christian missionaries, have given of the religions of the
+      savage, or uncivilized, people whom they have visited, he feels painfully
+      conscious that the accounts are not implicitly to be relied upon. In some
+      he recognizes the fact that communications only take place between the one
+      party and the other by signs, which not only may be, but very generally
+      are, misinterpreted on both sides; in others he is able to see, or, at
+      least, he comes to the conclusion, that the untaught barbarians have not a
+      single idea which is not connected with eating and drinking, war, revenge,
+      and love;&mdash;that such, indeed, resemble brute beasts, who have no more
+      conception of hell or heaven, God and the soul, than an elephant has of
+      aerostation, or a crow of theology. In other narratives the observer
+      notices, that the individuals who interrogate the savages are themselves
+      enthusiasts of a high order, who ask leading questions, and are content to
+      receive, as a satisfactory answer, anything which can be considered as a
+      reply. By this means very erroneous ideas have crept in amongst ourselves,
+      and writers have built arguments upon a foundation as flimsy as a shifting
+      sand. For example, I have repeatedly heard it alleged that every known
+      tribe, in every part of the world which has yet been visited, has a
+      tradition respecting an universal deluge, and the salvation of their
+      progenitors by a floating vessel; and on this has been founded the
+      hypothesis that all architecture, and even written characters, have an ark
+      for their type. This development has been very ingeniously supported by J.
+      P. Lesley, in <i>Man's Origin and Destiny</i> (Trubner, London, 1868), a
+      work replete with learning, and bold, but somewhat unsound, deductions.
+      This assumed fact has also been used in support of the Biblical story of
+      Noah, his ark, and the universal deluge&mdash;a myth so palpably
+      extravagant, that everyone who professes to credit it is compelled to
+      object to some detail, and to lean upon some frail reed, with the hope
+      that he may thus be pardoned for his credulity. Since the above was
+      written, it has been ascertained that the tale of Noah and his deluge is
+      adapted from an Assyrian or Babylonian legend, written apparently with a
+      view to make a story fitting to the sign of the Zodiac called Aquarius,
+      one to the full as fabulous as that of the birth of Bacchus, and the
+      amours of Zeus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In some instances, moreover, and palpably in those cases where the account
+      of the religion of barbarous nations is given by fanatics, such as the
+      Roman Catholic invaders of America, or by such conquerors as Cæsar and
+      others, who have themselves very hazy notions of their own faith, the
+      philosopher feels that the savage is intentionally misrepresented;
+      consequently, in these, as in all other instances, it behoves the
+      philosopher to examine the evidence at his command with critical acumen,
+      rather than accept the statements made by more or less careless observers.
+      Endeavouring, therefore, to avoid these difficulties as far as possible,
+      let us summarize the result of our reading, and record the impressions
+      left upon our mind respecting the faith, ritual, and practice of certain
+      modern and ancient barbarians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beginning with the vast American continent, we find that the Esquimaux
+      appear to have no conception whatever of a Creator, of a future state, of
+      a mundane theocracy, or of any unseen agency but good or bad "luck." But
+      they, nevertheless, put a certain amount of faith in conjurers&mdash;cunning
+      men or women who profess to be able to insure them a good supply of seals
+      or walrus, and protection from Arctic dangers. For such a people as this
+      the wants of the day form the chief, if not the only, object of thought;
+      and they resemble lions or eagles, who are now all but famished in the
+      hunt for food, and now gorged to repletion with the result of their quest.
+      To such a nation, Heaven, as described in the Bible, with its sea of
+      glass, its harpists and singers, would afford no temptation, and, unless
+      it was furnished with abundance of oily food, an Esquimaux would not visit
+      it; nor would the fires and heat of Hell have any terrors for one whose
+      torments on earth are connected with miserable cold. In practice, the
+      Esquimaux are very much what they are made by their neighbours and
+      visitors: they are very decently behaved to those who treat them well, and
+      cruel, barbarous, and revengeful to strangers after they have themselves
+      been worried by invaders. Alternately gluttons and starving they obey the
+      necessities of their existence&mdash;they eat to keep themselves warm, and
+      they must be anchorets as rigid as any Theban hermit whilst they are
+      seeking their prey. With a temperature below zero, and winter huts
+      constructed of ice, chastity is almost a necessary virtue, and adultery
+      cannot possibly be frequent. Where everything of value is rare,
+      covetousness is not common; but if the holder of the coveted prize be
+      always alert, it is quite natural that murder shall be attempted, either
+      by the thief or his victim. The reverence of parents here, as elsewhere,
+      is a necessary accompaniment of savage life, and is quite independent of
+      any knowledge of the decalogue. To prevent reiteration of this
+      observation, let us consider for a moment, the chief if not the main
+      cause, of the reverence given to the father, and, more rarely, to the
+      mother in the economy of human life. We see that the Almighty has
+      implanted an instinct in one or both parents, throughout the larger part
+      of the animal creation, to nourish, guide, and teach their young. The duck
+      leads her brood to a pond; the hen keeps her chicks from water, but
+      teaches them to pick up seeds, grubs, and worms; whilst the cock keeps
+      order amongst the family, The weasel teaches its offspring how to attack
+      its prey most advantageously, and the eagle instructs her young ones to
+      fly. In like manner, man is at the head of his own household; he is the
+      first power to which the young ones bow; they know the weight of his arm,
+      and dread his anger, knowing that they will suffer from it when it is
+      stirred up. We all know, as a rule, that a habit contracted in childhood
+      adheres to us throughout life, consequently, the dread of the father which
+      exists in the youth becomes, very generally, filial reverence in the man.
+      But we also know that almost throughout the animal creation, the young and
+      sturdy males will, as they grow up to maturity, fight for supremacy, even
+      with their parents. So long as the latter retain the mastery they are
+      respected; but as soon as age and its accompanying weakness have made them
+      succumb, all filial respect vanishes. If, therefore, a parent, when old,
+      is unable to make himself feared by his prowess, revered for his good
+      sense or knowledge, or beloved for some faculty which makes him pleasing
+      to his family or the tribe, he is neglected, and often sacrificed, so that
+      the young shall have only themselves to provide food for. Even in
+      Christian England, where filial regard is cultivated as an essential part
+      of our religion, we too frequently find that parents are wholly neglected
+      by their adult offspring, as soon as they become, from sickness, age, or
+      other infirmity, useless members of the family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without having ever heard of a law, or set of laws, given in a desert from
+      Mount Sinai, the Esquimaux are as moral as modern Christians, and more so
+      than the ancient Jews: they certainly have not more gods than one, and do
+      not worship any graven image. Amongst them blasphemy is unknown. Parents
+      are honoured; chastity is general; murder is very rare; theft only exists
+      when strangers come amongst them with valuable matters, such as cutting
+      weapons. Amongst such a primitive people false witness is unknown, and
+      covetousness only exists in the presence of travellers who have
+      well-stocked ships or sledges. But the Esquimaux do not keep a Sabbath of
+      rest every seventh day; how, indeed, could they, when many of their days
+      have a duration of six weeks&mdash;according to the Hebrew computation,
+      which measures the day by sunsets. It is clear, then, that what many
+      persons designate Christian virtues do not necessarily depend upon a
+      knowledge of Jehovah, of Jesus, or of both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The North American Indian appears to have been, when first discovered,
+      wholly without any distinct religious faith. It is true that some authors
+      have described him as reverencing his manitou, or great spirit, and
+      speaking of some happy hunting ground to which his soul will pass after
+      death; but I am unable to find any reliable testimony in support of this
+      poetic notion. To me it seems that the Red Indian is nothing more than one
+      of a ferocious tribe of men, who, having to subsist by the chase alone,
+      bestows all his thoughts upon getting meat, and driving off his neighbours
+      from interfering in his lands. To such an one a teeming population is
+      equivalent to a diminution in the supply of game, and this, again,
+      involves starvation. With him, therefore, the murder of his neighbours
+      becomes a matter of necessity, one which may be regarded by him as an
+      absolute virtue, a matter of public policy, and essentially a moral duty;
+      and as he is little superior to a tiger or a cat, he does not scruple to
+      add cruelty to homicide. He who has seen a carnivorous beast seize its
+      living prey, disable, without killing it, and then lie by and watch its
+      victim, rising now and again to give it a shake, or a pat with its claw,
+      can well understand how a Blackfoot Indian might gloat over a dying
+      Delaware, or a Mandan torture an Iroquois when he had the chance, each
+      regarding the other as men consider wasps and hornets. Yet, though without
+      religion, the Indian is not without fear. He is terrified by strange
+      noises, and by weird sights; there is a being whom he dreads; and there is
+      in every tribe a "medicine man," who is supposed to have supernatural
+      power, and to be able to attract good or to banish evil fortune from the
+      chief and his people. Practically, the Red Indian is as superstitious
+      about lucky and unlucky days as was the Hebrew David and the Persian
+      Haman, and, prior to the starting of an expedition, the diviner is
+      consulted, who may, possibly, answer in the words of the Lord (?) of
+      Judah, "let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of
+      the mulberry trees, then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then shall the
+      Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines" (2 Sam. v.
+      24).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though without religion, in the usual acceptation of the word, the
+      Indians were not, when first the white man knew them, wholly without
+      ritual, or what has been designated a sacred ceremony. The celebration to
+      which we refer occurred every year, was conducted by a definite set of
+      actors, and was attended to with wonderful reverence. A full account of
+      such ceremony is given by G. Catlin, in a work entitled, O Kee Pa
+      (Trübner, London, 1867). In it figures a mystic messenger, who comes to
+      demand the initiation of the young men of the tribe who have attained a
+      fighting age; tents are then prepared, and men and women are duly painted
+      and otherwise disguised to represent buffaloes and bugbears, the bad
+      spirit, etc.; the main intention of the whole being to test the courage,
+      strength, and endurance of the young men by frightful tortures, which are
+      too disgusting for description here. At the end of the trial, however,
+      each votary sacrifices a joint of the little finger of one hand to the bad
+      spirit. At this feast-some doll-like effigies are used to mark the
+      "mystery" tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst barbarians like these are, it will readily be imagined that such
+      virtues as chastity and charity have no existence,&mdash;that successful
+      theft ennobles the robber, and that the slaughter of an enemy, either by
+      treachery or in fair fight, is regarded as a proof of courage, much as it
+      was amongst the Spartan Greeks. Polygamy is simply a matter of wealth and
+      arrangement, and women are purchased and treated like slaves. It is the
+      man's business to hunt and fight, it is the woman's duty to make the best
+      or the most of the spoils of the chase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, with this general absence of all religion, there appears to be, here
+      and there, a reverence for certain strange phenomena of nature&mdash;such
+      as hot or bubbling fountains, sulphur springs, steaming geysers, and
+      curious rocks, like the celebrated pipe-stone rock in the Sioux territory.
+      From this all pipes ought to be made, there being as much of orthodoxy in
+      such bowls amongst the Indians as there is in an "Agnus Dei" amongst
+      Christian papists. There is, too, a reverence for the dead occasionally to
+      be met with, but it cannot be said to amount to worship. In some
+      instances, but I do not find that the custom is general, a man is interred
+      with his horse, weapons, and medicine bag, as if it was expected that he
+      would live beyond the tomb, and require in his other state of existence
+      that which he wanted in this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What we have said of the North American aborigines applies with equal, if
+      not with greater, force to those of the South.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From what the savage redskins are, and have been, during the last two or
+      three centuries, a transition to what they have been in the past is very
+      natural; and, whilst making the step, the philosopher will be reminded of
+      the observation made by some profound observer, to the effect&mdash;-"go
+      where you will, no matter how savage the nation, you will be sure to find
+      the remains of a previous empire, nation, or civilization." Vast forests,
+      scarcely yet fully explored, cover ancient cities in Ceylon and Central
+      America alike, and men, who toiled to build vast temples, towers, palaces,
+      and fortresses, are replaced by wild animals. In the Bashan of Palestine,
+      primeval houses of stone still stand, where scarcely a resident is to be
+      found, and the present inhabitants are far inferior to the ancient race
+      that built these enduring dwellings. Thus the Abbé Domenech writes (<i>Seven
+      Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America</i>, London,
+      Longman, 1860), vol. I., p. 353&mdash;"From Florida to Canada, from the
+      Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the American soil is strewn with gigantic
+      ruins of temples, tumuli, entrenched camps, fortifications, towers,
+      villages, towers of observation, gardens, wells, artificial meadows, and
+      high roads of the most remote antiquity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without entering closely into the nature of the antiquities discovered, we
+      may state that they comprise pyramids, cones, obelisks, hills surrounded
+      by a deep vallum, like that adjoining Salisbury, and earthen constructions
+      analogous to that at Avebury. There is evidence that the artificial
+      erections, which were so built as to be visible from an enormous distance,
+      were designed, possibly, as cairns, or memorials of the dead, but also as
+      spots for sacrificial offerings, resembling those called high places in
+      Ancient Palestine, the tumulus over Patroclus, and the Scythian mounds in
+      the Crimea. The altars which have been discovered are made of baked clay
+      or stone, and have the shape of large basins, varying in length from
+      nineteen inches to seventeen yards, but generally about two yards and
+      a-half. Under and around the altars calcined human bones were found, and
+      sometimes a whole skeleton was met with in the tumulus, as if a sacrifice
+      of men attended the funeral rites, as we learn from Homer that it did,
+      before Troy, when Achilles directed the obsequies of his friend Patroclus.
+      Cremation, as well as sepulture, was adopted, and with the dead,
+      ornaments, arms, and other objects, which belonged in life to the
+      departed, were buried; amongst these are to be reckoned trinkets of silver
+      and of brass, as well as of stone and bone. As a proof of the advanced
+      knowledge of the people referred to, I may here quote, from memory, a note
+      from Stevens' <i>Central America</i>, to the effect that the bronze tools
+      found in Yucatan, &amp;c., amongst the quarries whence the stone for the
+      ancient temples was procured, are nearly as hard as steel, and that a
+      similar bronze is only known to have existed in some of the ancient tombs
+      and quarries of Egypt, an observation which receives additional value from
+      Domenech's remark, vol. I., p. 364&mdash;"These works of art (arms, idols,
+      and medals, found in New Granada tombs) are acknowledged, by the
+      archaeologists of Panama, to possess the characteristics of both Chinese
+      and Egyptian art." Here, again, I would call my readers' attention to the
+      facts, that in very modern times Chinese have migrated to California,
+      Australia, Singapore, and other distant localities, and that Fortune found
+      Egyptian curiosities in <i>virtù</i>, shops in China, whilst Egyptologists
+      have discovered Chinese manufactures in Egyptian tombs. The subject of the
+      extent of travel in ancient times does not enter into my present plan; but
+      as I am desirous to make the mind of my readers expansive enough to
+      receive everything which bears upon the history of man upon the earth, I
+      may be allowed to sow seed by the way-side, some of which may blossom as
+      "a garden flower grown wild." Domenech, in p. 408, vol. I., figures a
+      remarkable stone, by many persons supposed to be a hoax or forgery, which
+      was found at the base of one of the largest mounds in North America,
+      situated in Western Virginia. It lay in a sepulchral chamber, thirty-five
+      feet from the surface, was elliptic in shape, two inches and a-half long,
+      two wide, and about half an inch thick, and the material was of a dark
+      colour, and very hard. The following is a copy from Domenech's work, and,
+      without dwelling upon it, we may call attention to the similarity of some
+      of the letters with those known to, or used by the Phoenicians, Ancient
+      Greco-Italians, and Carthaginians. Like the Newton Stone, in Scotland, and
+      some Gnostic gems, it may be said to be learned "gibberish," which "the
+      spirits" can read but no one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/056a.jpg" alt="056 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      There is, indeed, much more evidence than is generally supposed to connect
+      the ancient mound-builders in America with the inhabitants of the Eastern
+      Hemisphere, particularly in their modes of burial, the nature of their
+      earthworks, and the style of such ornaments and figures as have been
+      found. For example, there is one enclosure described, in the centre of
+      which is erected a mound and pillar, precisely resembling the linga yoni
+      of the East. In addition to these, carved stones have been found, which
+      unite together such Oriental emblems as the sun and moon, the Tau, T and
+      the egg, O which together make the well-known Egyptian symbol A. Again,
+      Domenech figures some male and female human effigies, of whom American
+      savans write that they represent idols of sexual design, similar to those
+      exposed in the <i>Mysteries of Eleusis</i>, one of them being a badly
+      finished image of Priapus. Domenech still farther states, on the authority
+      of Cortez, that a form of worship, recalling the Egyptian mysteries of
+      Isis and Osiris, was established in America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img alt="056b (31K)" src="images/056b.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Respecting the nature of the religion of the mound builders the Abbé
+      writes&mdash;"The government of these nations appears to have been
+      theocratic or sacerdotal, like that of the Jews, and the religious
+      administrative and military power was, probably, vested in one and the
+      same person. This is clearly evinced by the taboo, or sacred monuments,
+      being combined with those of a purely military character," p. 366. Without
+      straining doubtful points too far, we may content ourselves with affirming
+      that the researches of Davis and Squire, of Stephens, and of Domenech,
+      show that the mound builders of America raised high places for sacrificial
+      fires; that they built huge piles of earth over dead warriors; and, that
+      during the funeral rites which were observed at the obsequies, they
+      immolated certain human victims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now pause for a moment and consider how much is involved in the
+      practice of making a sacrifice by fire, or otherwise, at the burial of any
+      deceased chieftain or honoured man. With what idea could the living wife
+      join her husband on the funeral pyre in India, or the ancient Tartars have
+      slain the horse, slaves, wives, and chief officers of a defunct king,
+      burying them all in a vast grave, unless they entertained the belief that
+      there was a life beyond the grave? The faith may have been of the crudest
+      form, yet the practice evidenced the belief that those who died, and were
+      buried together, would arise and live at the same time and place, and in
+      the same relative positions which they had during life. If this be
+      granted, it demonstrates that the early dwellers in America had a higher
+      conception of immortality than had the ancient Jews, even although the
+      latter assumed, and pertinaciously persisted in the assertion, that they,
+      and they only of all the nations of the world, were taught of God&mdash;a
+      boast to which a vast number of thoughtless Christians give a profound
+      reverence, and most implicit belief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without speculating upon the probable connexion between the mound-builders
+      and the inhabitants of ancient Mexico, we will endeavour, with the aid of
+      Prescott, and other writers, to ascertain something of the faith professed
+      by Montezuma and his subjects. Derived from two sources, there were two
+      distinct elements in the Mexican religion; one of these was gentle and
+      mild as the teaching of Christ, and the other, ferocious and cruel, like
+      the practice of such of his followers as the sensual Crusaders, the
+      persecuting Popes of Italy, and the brutal, money-grubbing Spaniards. The
+      former gradually dried up, like primitive Christianity, and the
+      harmlessness of the dove was replaced by the ferocity of the wolf. It is
+      in strict accordance with human nature, that virtues are harder to
+      maintain than vices, hence malignancy swelled itself up and became
+      dominant. The priests of the sanguinary class contrived as burdensome a
+      ceremonial as ever existed in Judea, Greece, Spain, or Modern Rome, and
+      they surrounded their deities with conceptions as grotesque as those which
+      are clustered round the Hindoo gods of to-day, the divinities of the
+      Greeks and Romans, and the innumerable virgins, saints, and martys of
+      mediaeval and modern papal Christianity. The power and the inclination to
+      make fetish is certainly not confined to African negroes. The Mexicans
+      recognized a supreme Creator as the God by whom we live, one who was, for
+      them, omnipresent and omniscient&mdash;the giver of all good things,
+      "without whom man is as nothing." He was said to be "invisible,
+      incorporeal, a being of absolute perfection and perfect purity," "under
+      whose wings men may find repose and a sure defence." But this deity,
+      though single, was subdivided by the Mexican theologians, much in the same
+      way as Jehovah became separated into an innumerable host of angels,
+      archangels, and devils, and as Zeus was split up into an equally numerous
+      army of gods, goddesses, and demigods. The Mexicans had thirteen major,
+      and about two hundred minor, divinities, to one or other of whom each day
+      was devoted, much in the same way as certain modern Christians believe in
+      one Creator, four persons, three of whom are male and the other female,
+      seven archangels, and some hundreds of saints, virgins, or martyrs, to
+      each of whom one day of the year is consecrated. There are more gods and
+      goddesses in the Papal calendar than in that of Ancient Mexico, Greece, or
+      even Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of the celestial army was "the god of war," "the patron of the
+      kingdom," whose temples were more noble in their barbaric majesty than any
+      other, and to whom human beings were sacrificed in abundance. They were
+      the noblest creatures that could be found, and in truth, there were very
+      few other animals to offer in their place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This great Mexican divinity was essentially the same as the <i>Jehovah
+      Tsebaoth</i> of the Hebrew Scriptures; the Lord of Hosts of whom we read
+      in Exod. xv. 3, "The Lord (Jehovah) is a man of war, the Lord (Jehovah) is
+      His name;" and in Ps. xxiv. 8, "Who is this King of glory?&mdash;the Lord,
+      strong and mighty; the Lord, mighty in battle;" and again, the same idea
+      appears in verse 10 of the same Psalm; see also 1 Chron. xvii. 24, "The
+      Lord of Hosts is the God of Israel." Indeed, we should weary the reader if
+      we were to quote all the texts to be found in the Old Testament, which
+      prove that the Hebrew Jehovah was as much a god of war as was the chief
+      deity of the Mexicans. Modern civilization may frame the belief that God
+      is not "the author of confusion, but of peace" (1 Cor. xiv. 33); but the
+      Hebrews in the East, and the Mexicans in the West, held a different
+      opinion. Besides the god of war there was a god of the air, who once lived
+      on earth, and taught metallurgy, agriculture, and the art of government.
+      He was essentially a human benefactor, who caused the earth to teem with
+      fruit and flowers, without the trouble of laborious cultivation&mdash;his
+      reign was analogous to the golden age of the Greeks and Romans. But he was
+      not wholly satisfactory, and was banished; yet he is to have a second
+      coming, like Elias, and a modern deity of the Eastern world. His portrait
+      is identical, apparently, with the commonly received likeness of Jesus. In
+      Christian mythology (see Eph. ii. 2), "the prince of the power of the air"
+      is regarded as "the adversary," or a devil. No other deities are described
+      in detail by Prescott, but he says that every household had its "penates,"
+      or household gods. On turning to Higgins, who quotes entirely from Lord
+      Kingsborough's <i>Mexican Antiquities</i>, we find that the Mexicans
+      baptized their children with what they called "water of regeneration."
+      Their king also danced before his god, as David did, to his chaste wife's
+      disgust, and was consecrated and anointed by the high priest with a holy
+      unction as Saul and the son of Jesse were. On one day of the year all the
+      fires in the Mexican kingdom were extinguished and lighted again from one
+      sacred hearth in the temple, which again reminds us of the Vestal Virgins,
+      whose business was to keep up a holy fire in Rome, and of the lamp which
+      was to burn perpetually in the Jewish temple (Exod. xxvii. 20). At the end
+      of October the Mexicans had a feast resembling our "All Souls," or
+      "Saints," day, which was called "the festival of advocates," because each
+      human being had an advocate in the heaven above to plead for him, which
+      again reminds us of Jesus' dictum, that children have guardian angels, who
+      are always in God's presence (Matt, xviii. 10)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same people had a forty-days' fast, in honour of a god who was tempted
+      forty days upon a mountain, and thus resembled the Prophet of Nazareth. He
+      was called the morning star, and thus is to be identified with Lucifer as
+      well as Jesus (Isa. xiv. 12, Rev. xxii. 16), and carried a reed for an
+      emblem (see Eev. xxi. 15). The Mexicans honoured a cross, and the god of
+      air was represented sometimes as nailed to one, and even occasionally
+      between two other individuals.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * As we cannot imagine that the Mexicans were aware of the
+     manner in which modern Christians depict Jesus on the cross,
+     we most, I think, seek for some idea which was common to
+     both the East and West. In Payne Knight's work, so often
+     referred to by us, there is a picture which represents a
+     cock with a lingam instead of a head and beak; on its
+     pediment there is in Greek the words, soteer kosmou, "the
+     saviour of the world." This is also an epithet of Siva, and
+     he is sometimes represented as a phallus. In this he is the
+     Asher or Bel of the Assyrian triad, erected higher than the
+     other two. In Christian history the outsiders are said to be
+     thieves, but it was not so in Mexico.    The three crosses
+     are simply emblems of the "trinity."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A virgin and child were also adored, as they were in Babylonia, Assyria,
+      Egypt, and Hindostan, and as they are in a great part of Europe at the
+      present time. The people believed in vast cycles of years, at the end of
+      each of which there was to be a general destruction of life, and a perfect
+      regeneration, an idea which Higgins has shown to have existed amongst
+      Persians, Romans, and Jews alike. The Mexicans still further believed in a
+      threefold future state&mdash;a heaven for the brave, and those who were
+      sacrificed, there being, so far as I can discover, no abstract idea of
+      what we call "virtue"; a hell for the wicked; and a sort of quiet limbo
+      for those who were in no way distinguished. Heaven was located in the sun,
+      and the blessed were permitted to revel amongst lovely clouds and singing
+      birds, enjoying, unharmed, all the charms of nature: a conception which is
+      to the full as poetical, and, probably, quite as near the truth, as that
+      given in "Revelation." When a man died he was burned, and, if rich, his
+      slaves were sacrificed with him, the Mexicans, in this respect, resembling
+      the ancient Scythians, with whom they had much in common. When the
+      ceremony of giving a name to children was gone through, their lips and
+      bosom were sprinkled with water, and the Lord was implored to permit the
+      holy drops to wash away the sin that was given to the child before the
+      foundation of the world, so that the infant might be born anew, or, in
+      modern terms, regenerated (Prescott, ch. 3). Amongst their prayers, or
+      invocations, were the formulas, "Wilt Thou blot us out, O Lord, for ever?
+      Is this punishment intended, not for our reformation, but for our
+      destruction?" again, "Impart to us, out of Thy great mercy, Thy gifts
+      which we are not worthy to receive through our own merits;" "Keep peace
+      with all;" "Bear injuries with humility, God who sees will avenge you;"
+      "He who looks too curiously on a woman commits adultery with eyes." These
+      Mexican maxims so closely resemble those to be found in the Bible, that it
+      is difficult to believe that the Spaniards really told the truth
+      respecting them. The sacerdotal order amongst the Mexicans was a numerous
+      one, well arranged and powerful. The priests used musical choirs in their
+      worship, arranged the calendar, and appointed the time for festivals. They
+      superintended the education of youth, and wrote up the traditions, like
+      the "recorders" of the Jews, Persians, other Orientals, and Christian
+      monks, and looked to the conservancy of the hieroglyphic paintings. There
+      were two high priests, who alone had to undertake the duty of offering
+      human sacrifices, and these were elected by the king and nobles, quite
+      irrespective of previous rank, and, when elected, they were inferior only
+      to the sovereign. When reading this, anyone who is familiar with biblical
+      history will bethink him of Luke iii. 3, "Annas and Caiaphas being the
+      high priests," the plural, not the singular, number being used, and of the
+      dictum of Caiaphas, John xi. 50, "It is expedient for us that one man
+      should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not." We may put
+      what construction we please upon these facts, but, whatever interpretation
+      we may adopt, we must acknowledge that the Hebrews, at the time when our
+      era commences, had two high priests who were concerned in human sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priests, in general, were devoted to the service of some particular
+      deity, and, during the time of their attendance, lived in the temple,
+      celibate; but, when not on duty, they resided with their wives and
+      families. Thrice during the day, and once at some period of the night,
+      they were called to prayer, much like all the varieties of Christian monks
+      and nuns. They were frequent in their ablutions, in which habit they may
+      be contrasted with those saintly hermits, who regarded dirt as a divine
+      ordinance, and never washed; and they mortified the flesh by long vigils,
+      fasting, and cruel penance, drawing blood from their bodies by
+      flagellation, or by piercing them with the thorns of the aloe. The
+      resemblance of the Mexican sacerdotalism with Jewish and Christian customs
+      is thus shown to be wonderful and striking, so much so, that the Spaniards
+      started the idea that they had been taught by some stray apostle of Jesus.
+      The great cities of Mexico were divided into districts, each of which was
+      placed under the charge of a sort of parochial clergy, who regulated every
+      act of religion within their precincts, and who administered the rites of
+      confession and absolution. The secrets of the confessional were held
+      inviolable, and penances were imposed, of much the same kind as those
+      enjoined by the Roman Catholic Church upon her votaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a tenet of Mexican faith, that a sin once atoned for, was, if
+      repeated, inexpiable a second time; consequently, confession was only once
+      resorted to, and that late in life; a good plan, upon the whole, for it
+      enabled a man whose days were numbered to get pardon "for good and aye."
+      It was also held that sacerdotal absolution was equivalent to magisterial
+      punishment. The formula of absolution contained this, amongst other
+      things, "O merciful Lord, Thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let
+      Thy forgiveness and favour descend, like the pure waters of heaven, to
+      wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor man has
+      sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence of the sign
+      under which he was born." This idea may well be compared with the current
+      doctrine of the phrenologists, many of whom assert that a man acts
+      according to the configuration of his brain and cranium, and is,
+      therefore, only partially culpable for the commission of certain crimes.
+      After a copious exhortation to the penitent, in which he was enjoined to
+      undergo a variety of mortifications, and to perform minute ceremonies, by
+      way of penance, he was particularly urged to procure, with the smallest
+      possible delay, a slave, who was to be utilized in sacrifice to the Deity;
+      the priest then concluded with inculcating charity to the poor&mdash;"Clothe
+      the naked, and feed the hungry, whatever privations it may cost thee, for
+      remember their flesh is like thine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The necessity of sacrifice, as an atonement for sin, forms an essential,
+      though bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and
+      history has long taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child,
+      formed, in the estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one of
+      the most acceptable of the forms of homage paid by a human being to the
+      Creator. This idea is at the very basis of the Christian theology. It has
+      been held, from the time of the apostle Paul to the present day, that
+      Jehovah would not look favourably upon mankind until He had been
+      propitiated, not by the sacrifice of an ordinary individual, but by the
+      murder, in the crudest of modes, of a being whom He personally begat, for
+      the purpose of killing him when arrived at maturity. In Hebrews x. 12, we
+      find this doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words, "this man,
+      after he had offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down on the right
+      hand of God," and subsequently, v. 14, "by one offering he hath perfected
+      for ever them that are sanctified." Again, in Heb. ix. 26, "once in the
+      end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
+      himself;" and in Heb. x. 10, "we are sanctified through the offering of
+      the body of Jesus Christ;" and in ix. 28, "Christ was once offered to bear
+      the sins of many." The philosopher may doubt whether the God whom the
+      Christians have made for their own adoration, is in any way different to
+      that of King Mesha, who offered up his own son in sacrifice, or to the
+      Mexican one, who was contented with the blood of a slave.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real
+     attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or
+     to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the
+     usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and
+     hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen
+     deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general
+     belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual
+     sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and
+     offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who
+     was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was
+     beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror,
+     unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the
+     worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to
+     see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were
+     condemned to this penance, very little would any of them
+     talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are
+     lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and
+     texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to
+     look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for
+     worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest
+     manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns
+     which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In
+     "Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines&mdash;
+
+     "Let the water and the blood
+     From thy riven side that flowed,
+     Cleanse from sin and make me pure."
+
+     Another equally popular hymn begins
+
+     "From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows
+     Of water and of blood,
+     More healing than Bethesda's pool,
+     Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood
+     Shall never lose its power..." and again&mdash;
+
+     "There is a fountain filled with blood,
+     Drawn from Immanuels veins,
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood
+     Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+     No congregation of Christian, or any other men, would
+     tolerate for a moment the introduction into divine worship
+     of a bath of blood, into which all those should plunge who
+     desired salvation. Not one would endeavour to wash his sins
+     away in a sanguine stream, drawn from any source whatever.
+     The horror which would be produced by the doctrine that such
+     things are necessary to appease our God, would make every
+     thinking being detest it. Yet, when we only play with the
+     idea, we can talk of such matters with holy complacency. If
+     any Christian wants to test his faith, let me advise him to
+     get a basinful of blood and place it in his bed-room, and
+     say twice a day, when looking on it, that's the stuff which
+     propitiates my God! It would not be long ere he saw the
+     absurdity of his theological tenets, and the coarseness of
+     the hierarchy which invented so frightful an idea of the
+     Omnipotent.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      For the education of the youth of Mexico a part of the temples was
+      allotted, where the boys and girls of the middle and higher classes were
+      placed at an early period&mdash;the girls to be taught by the priestesses,
+      the boys by priests; and from a note in Prescott's corrected edition,
+      1866, p. 22, we learn that the former were even more generally pure in
+      life than, we have reason to believe, the Egyptian priestesses and
+      Christian nuns proved themselves to be, Father Acosto saying, "In truth,
+      it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so
+      great force amongst these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they will
+      serve the Devil with so great vigour and austerity, which many of us do
+      not in the service of the most high God, the which is a great shame and
+      confusion." It is curious to notice how the Christian priest considers
+      that chastity may be a snare of the Devil, as well as an ordinance of
+      Jehovah. The boys, in these scholastic parts of the sacred temples, were
+      taught the routine of monastic discipline&mdash;to decorate the shrines of
+      the gods with flowers, to feed the sacred fires, and to chant in worship
+      and at festivals. The Abbé Hue, in an account of his travels in Thibet and
+      Tartary, has told us repeatedly of the similarity between the rites,
+      practices, and ceremonies of the Romish Church and those in use amongst
+      the followers of the Great Lama. It is equally marvellous to discover that
+      the Mexican ritual resembles both. The Papalist endeavours to explain
+      this, by the monstrous assumption that both Tartary and Mexico were
+      evangelized by two different Christian Apostles. But it seems to us more
+      probable that the Romanists, who are known to have adopted almost every
+      ancient ceremony, symbol, doctrine, and the like, have unknowingly copied
+      from travelled Orientals, than that the cult of the people of Thibet has
+      travelled into America, as well as into Europe. Into the identity of the
+      Tartars with the Red Indians it is not my intention to enter. The higher
+      Mexicans were taught traditionary lore, the mysteries of hieroglyphics,
+      the principles of government, and such astronomical and scientific
+      knowledge as the priests would, or, probably, could, impart. The girls
+      learned to weave and embroider coverings for the altars of the gods. Great
+      attention was paid to morality, and offences were punished with extreme
+      rigour, even with death itself. Youths were taught to eschew, vice and
+      cleave to virtue, to abstain from wrath, to offer violence or do wrong to
+      no man, and to do good where possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When of an age to marry, the pupils were dismissed from the convent, and
+      the recommendation of the principal thereof often introduced those whom he
+      regarded as the most competent of the students, to responsible situations
+      in public life. Such was the policy of the Mexican priests, who were thus
+      enabled to mould the mind of the young, and to train it early to the
+      necessity of giving reverence to religion, and especially to its ministers&mdash;a
+      reverence which maintained its hold on the warrior long after every other
+      vestige of education had been effaced. In this matter America showed an
+      astuteness equal to that exhibited by Papal hierarchs in Rome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed, for the maintenance
+      of the priests, and these glebes were augmented by successive princes,
+      until, under Montezuma, they were of enormous extent, and covered every
+      district of the* empire. The priests took the management of their property
+      into their own hands, and treated their tenants with liberality and
+      indulgence. In addition to this source of income, they had "first fruits,"
+      and other offerings, dictated by piety or superstition. The surplus was
+      distributed in alms amongst the poor, a duty strenuously prescribed by
+      their moral code. Thus we find, adds Prescott, whom we are closely, and
+      almost verbatim, following, the same religion inculcating lessons of pure
+      philanthropy and of merciless extermination&mdash;an inconsistency not
+      incredible to those familiar with the history of the Roman Catholic Church
+      in the early ages of the Inquisition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of a not very long life, I have heard, upon many occasions,
+      the argument that the persistency of the Roman Catholic Church, in spite
+      of its abominable corruptions, its utter contempt for truth, its
+      outrageous cruelty, its glaring superstition, its intolerable arrogance,
+      and its rapacious covetousness, proves that it is, and must ever be
+      regarded as a divine institution. But this argument loses all its weight
+      when we find that the religion of the Mexicans, which the Spaniards
+      declared to have sprung from the Devil, had the virtues, as well as many
+      vices, of the Roman faith. If one came from Heaven, the other could not
+      have come from Hell. The simple truth seems to be, that crafty and
+      designing men are always able to find dupes, and that red men and black,
+      the haughty Italian and the lively Frenchman, the stolid boor and the
+      polished orator, may all suffer alike from an education which has taught
+      them, in youth, to believe in the reality of a revelation given to a class
+      of human beings who, by its means, assume to be divine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Mexican temples&mdash;<i>teocallis</i>, or "houses of God "&mdash;were
+      very numerous, indeed there were several hundreds in each of the principal
+      cities of the kingdom; but we need not describe them more minutely than to
+      say that they were truncated pyramids terminating in a level surface, upon
+      which blazed the sacred fire. All religious services were public, as in
+      Roman Catholic countries. There were long processions of priests, and
+      numerous festivals of unusual sacredness, as well as monthly and daily
+      appropriate celebrations of worship, so that it is difficult to conceive
+      how the ordinary business of life was carried on. The sun was an universal
+      object of reverence. At a period not long prior (about 200 years) to the
+      Spanish conquest, human sacrifices were adopted for the first time, and
+      they speedily became common, both as regards repetition and the numbers of
+      victims slaughtered. In some instances the oblations terminated with
+      cannibalism. The burnt offering was roasted, not incinerated, and, like
+      the Paschal lamb, was devoutly devoured. Sexual rites, symbols, or
+      worship, appear to have been very rare, for I can only find one or two
+      doubtful references to them. In this matter the Mexicans were far superior
+      to all the old Shemitic and Egyptian, as well as the Hindoo, races. So far
+      Prescott.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst writing the foregoing, it has required some determination not to
+      comment very extensively upon the facts recorded, for they do, indeed, set
+      the thoughtful mind on fire. Amongst the questions which they provoke, the
+      first is, "how far the accounts given to us are to be depended upon?" In
+      answering this query, we readily recognize that our authorities can only
+      have been Spaniards, who were, to a great extent, implacable enemies of
+      the Mexicans, to a great extent ignorant of their language, and bitterly
+      hostile to them in matters of religion. But this recognition leads us to
+      trust the accounts which they give, for, if the invaders had been able to
+      treat the natives as unmitigated savages, they would have had the more
+      excuse for pillaging their sacred stores, temples, and palaces, and
+      exterminating the pagan worshippers. Again, if the picture thus painted
+      were a fancy one, having no real existence save in the mind of the writer,
+      we should be able readily to recognize its counterpart in the Spanish
+      history of the Peruvians, just as we are able to ascertain the identity of
+      the authorship of certain anonymous works by Lord Lytton, by the existence
+      therein of his marked peculiarity of style. The best testimony, however,
+      to the substantial truth of the accounts given of the nature of the
+      Mexican faith, is to be found in various minute episodes of their general
+      history, in the behaviour of the Aztecs with each other, and towards their
+      invaders, and the general customs which are recorded. That the Spanish
+      writers had a real belief in the account of which Prescott has given us so
+      admirable a resume, we may feel assured, for one of them introduced the
+      naïve remark, "that the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the
+      same things which God had taught to Christendom."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When once we have satisfied ourselves of the truth of the Spanish accounts
+      of the ancient Mexican institutions, we find ourselves in the presence of
+      some very striking religious and political facts. We see before us a
+      nation who had attained to as distinct a conception of the Almighty as we
+      have ourselves; who had discovered a heaven, a hell, and an intermediate
+      place, without the assistance of Jew or Greek, Babylonian or Persian; who
+      had instituted a sacerdotal class, and made provision for their
+      subsistence, without any assistance from Melchizedek or Moses; who had
+      adopted a principle of national education long before such a thing was
+      thought of in England, or in Europe. In fine, the Aztec faith and policy
+      were, at least, as praiseworthy, if not far nearer to perfection, than the
+      faith and policy which obtained in Christian Italy, France, and Spain,
+      during the dark and the middle ages. There is not, indeed, any one point
+      in which the contrast is not favourable to the Aztecs, except in the
+      single point of human sacrifice. Christianity can, apparently, make a
+      heavy accusation against the Aztec religion on this point, and may fairly
+      seem to reproach it for that frequency of human sacrifice, and even
+      cannibalism, which formed, at the time of the Spanish conquest, an
+      essential part of the Mexican faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, when we dive below the surface, and examine this matter with
+      philosophic care, we readily see that the charge is deprived of much of
+      its weight. Who, for example, can compare the practice of the people of
+      Montezuma with that of Spaniards under the sway of Ferdinand and Isabella,
+      without seeing that in Spain there were human sacrifices, which were
+      conducted with far more cruelty than those in Mexico. We find, in the
+      first place, that the custom of sacrificing human beings was no more an
+      essential part of the Aztec, than it was of the Christian, faith; it was
+      only in existence two hundred years before the Spanish invasion, and many
+      centuries, bloodless of human offerings, had passed away ere the period of
+      what we may term brutality arrived. Just so it was with the religion of
+      Jesus; for centuries it was unstained by blood, and comparatively meek and
+      humble, yet, when its priesthood rose to power, they indulged in human
+      holocausts on a most extended scale. The Spaniards give accounts of
+      thousands of victims offered up at once to the Mexican god of war; but
+      what are these in comparison to the victims of Paris, sacrificed by
+      Papists on the eve and day of St. Bartholomew, and those at Beziers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be doubted by the philosopher whether the Christian religion was
+      not, from its very commencement, as intolerant of opposition and as
+      persecuting as it became hereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree, which did not bear fruit out of its
+      season (Mark xi. 13, 14, 21), shows that even he, whom the Christians take
+      for an example, was quite capable of that pettiness, which visits upon the
+      innocent the vexation felt by one's self. But when we read the story in
+      Acts, v., about Ananias and Sapphira, we see, in all its naked horror, a
+      fearful Christian persecution. The victims were done to death for
+      deceiving an apostle. But why should we be surprised at the followers of
+      "the Son" doing that which "the Father" ordained? Is there any human king
+      who ever promulgated a more bloody order than did Jehovah Sabaoth, the God
+      which, amongst the Hebrews, corresponded to the Mexican god of war, when
+      he commissioned Samuel to say to Saul (1 Sam. xv. 3), "Now go and smite
+      Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; slay both man and woman,
+      infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass!" After such a
+      destruction of the Midianites as is narrated in Numb, xxxi., the fearful
+      slaughter, effected by Crusaders, of Jews, Turks, and heretics is scarcely
+      worth mentioning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a teacher who remarked, "he who is without sin among you, let
+      him first cast a stone" at the culprit; and surely, when our Bible, which
+      is treasured by so many as the only rule of faith amongst us, details such
+      horrible religious slaughters as are to be found in its pages, and abounds
+      with persecuting precepts, we had better not talk too much about Mexican
+      sacrifice. Was there any Aztec minister so brutal in his religious fury as
+      Samuel was (1 Sam. xv. 33), who hewed Agag into pieces? The Mexican was
+      merciful to his victim; the Hebrew was like a modern Chinese executioner,
+      who kills the criminal by degrees. His cruelty has been emulated in
+      Christian France, and under the reign of two of her kings, we have seen a
+      Ravaillac and Damiens tortured slowly to death, by means too horrible to
+      dwell upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The writers upon Mexico tell us of a lovely youth, who was educated for a
+      whole year to become a victim, and how, at the end of that time, he was
+      feted, adorned, and even worshipped; how four of the most charming maidens
+      of Mexico were selected as his wives, and how he remained in the enjoyment
+      of the highest honour until the time of his sacrifice arrived, and we feel
+      due horror at the recital. Yet, what is it compared with the accounts we
+      read of miserable men and women racked, in hideous dungeons, by the most
+      horrible tortures which an enlightened Christian ingenuity could devise,
+      and who then, with limbs whose loosened fibres could scarcely sustain
+      their bruised and mangled bodies, were led, or driven at the sword's
+      point, to a stake fixed in the ground, there to be tied and burned, whilst
+      devout Christian multitudes stood around, rejoicing, like demons, over the
+      hellish scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can gloat over the imaginary torments of Hell without being a
+      persecuting devil at heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Surely the Christians have too much sin amongst themselves to cast a stone
+      at the inhabitants of Mexico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We find a strong offset to the horror of Aztec cruelty in the very Bible,
+      which we regard as the mainstay of our religious world. What, for example,
+      is the essential difference between a Mexican monarch sacrificing one or
+      ten thousand men taken in battle, and Moses commanding the extermination
+      of the inhabitants of Canaan, and only saving, out of Midian, thirty-two
+      thousand virgins, that they might minister to the lust of his Hebrew
+      followers? What, again, are we to say of David's God, who would not turn
+      away his anger from Judah until seven sons of the preceding king had been
+      offered up as victims? And lastly&mdash;thought still more awful! what
+      must we say of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, that Jehovah
+      Himself sacrificed His own Son by a cruel death; and not only so, but that
+      He had intercourse with an earthly woman, and had thus a son by her, for
+      the sole purpose of bringing about his murder? Can we object to religious
+      cannibalism in the Aztec, when Jesus of Nazareth is said to have urged his
+      followers to eat his body and to drink his blood; and when hundreds of
+      priests have shed the blood of millions of men, who, disbelieving the
+      power of any man to convert bread and wine into flesh and blood, have
+      refused to profane their lips by a cannibal feast?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having now examined the nature of the Aztec faith, let us, for a while,
+      linger upon the fruits which it produced. Who can read the mournful story
+      of the fall of Mexico without contrasting, in his own mind, the respective
+      characters of the conquerors and the conquered? In every so-called
+      Christian virtue Montezuma proved himself to be superior to the lying,
+      unscrupulous, rapacious and covetous Cortez. Even the greatest fire-eater
+      who ever lived cannot fail to see that the Spaniard would not have been
+      victorious over the Mexican, if the latter had been equally well equipped
+      with arms, armour, and horses, as the former was. We can only tell vaguely
+      what was the condition of Anahuac prior to the invasion of Cortez; but,
+      from the testimony given by Prescott, we believe that there were annual
+      wars between adjoining tribes, who met solely to obtain from their enemies
+      victims for sacrifice, the battles always ending with the day, and never
+      being resumed for conquest, or for the plunder of maidens to be an
+      indulgence of a victor's lust. What the condition of the same country
+      under Christian rule has been, and still is, every reader of modern and
+      contemporary history knows; and he sees, with regret, that Jehovah
+      Sabaoth, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit, with an army of saints,
+      angels, virgins, and martyrs, as well as ancient gods of the Eastern
+      Hemisphere are, if they are to be judged by the acts of their worshippers,
+      as cruel, revengeful, and malignant, as were the deities of the Mexican
+      kingdom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The followers of the cross will appear to be quite as despicable when we
+      contrast them with the Peruvians, as they were when compared with the
+      inhabitants of Anahuac.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is something very fascinating in the history of Peru, as recorded by
+      the Spanish authors, and rendered into the English language by Prescott.
+      There is no account of ancient or modern people extant which has
+      interested me so much as those of the realm of Manco Capac. To hear of a
+      nation, separated by an ocean, we may, indeed, say two, and a vast
+      continent, from the civilized portions of Asia, Europe, and Africa,
+      located in a mountainous tract, where soil and water were scanty, and
+      locomotion was rendered difficult from the configuration of the land;
+      whose country was surrounded by strong natural enemies of all kinds; whose
+      people were unable to use such agents as steel and gunpowder, and who were
+      yet enabled to construct vast cities and temples, to quarry, remove, and
+      use in buildings, fragments of rock thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet
+      broad, and six feet thick, and to transport these to distances varying
+      from 12 to 45 miles, to form good roads along the mountain tops, for an
+      extent of nearly two thousand miles, necessitating the filling up chasms
+      of enormous depth, and the making of suspension bridges over rivers whose
+      stream was too furious to bridge in the ordinary European fashion, is
+      perfectly astonishing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The far-sighted Incas, to make these roads still more useful, accompanied
+      them by the erection of large residences, like modern European bungalows
+      in India, fit for the reception of a monarch with his army, and by vast
+      magazines of provisions, sufficient to supply the wants of a warlike
+      expedition, or of a population starving from an accidental failure of
+      crops. The Peruvians, moreover, surrounded their chief towns with strong
+      walls, in comparison with which the Cyclopean constructions of the old
+      world seem small, stunted, and almost contemptible. It appears, in
+      addition, that they knew how to form long tunnels, either for the passage
+      of troops, for the benefit of travellers, or for the conveyance of water.
+      All these, I say, are enough to fire the imagination of the dullest reader
+      of history, and to shake the belief that civilization cannot be developed
+      in the midst of what we have been accustomed to call savage life, and can
+      only be brought to a moderate perfection by the influence of the Hebrew
+      and Christian writings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our wonder is not, however, bounded by the physical results produced by
+      the industrious population of Peru, it is still farther exercised by the
+      descriptions which are given of their wonderful domestic and foreign
+      policy. It would be difficult to conceive, and still more difficult to
+      carry into execution for many generations, a plan of government so
+      eminently fitted to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number, as
+      that which the Incas elaborated. The rulers were specially educated to
+      fulfil their duties in every respect, and were not permitted, as modern
+      princes are, to enter into the ranks of chivalry until they had undergone
+      a public examination, which was conducted by the oldest and the most
+      illustrious chiefs. The trial included tests of every warlike and manly
+      quality. It lasted thirty days, during which time every competitor fared
+      alike, living on the bare ground, and wearing a mean attire. Those who
+      passed the ordeal honourably were admitted formally into the knightly
+      order, the ceremony including an investiture of the youth with sandals put
+      on by the most venerable noble, equivalent to the donning of the <i>toga
+      virilis</i> in Ancient Rome, and having the ear pierced with a golden
+      bodkin by the reigning monarch. To take off the shoe was a ceremony
+      exacted from all those who came into the Inca's presence, to have it put
+      on by a grandee was great honour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the rulers might understand the condition of the kingdom, they
+      systematically travelled, much in the same way as James V. of Scotland,
+      and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, are said to have done. The Incas, in
+      addition to their other plans for good government, inaugurated a postal
+      system: divided their peoples into tens, fifties, hundreds, five hundreds,
+      thousands, and ten thousands, much in the same way as the Saxon King
+      Alfred is said to have done, whose plan is, in many respects, conserved to
+      the present day; and the head man of each division was in all respects its
+      ruler, to repress crime, to announce to his superior officer all unusual
+      occurrences, and to report, generally, the actual state of his division to
+      the chief above him. All legal trials, or appeals, were decided in less
+      than five days, and a code was established, which all might readily know,
+      a thing only attained by the French under the first Napoleon, and long
+      desired by England, but in vain. Punishments were never attended with
+      torture, or unnecessary cruelty. In this respect the Peruvians differed
+      from every other civilized nation of which I have yet read. The Chinaman
+      methodically inflicts painful punishments which have only been surpassed
+      by the followers of the "gentle Jesus." The Persians and Turks have,
+      certainly, shown their capacity for giving pain to those who are brought
+      before their ministers of justice, and the Red Indians, during their day,
+      reduced the art of tormenting themselves, but, still more, their
+      prisoners, almost to perfection. The Babylonians had discovered that a
+      death of agony could be accomplished by means of myriads of ants. It was
+      reserved to Christians, eager to uphold the faith promulgated by a God of
+      mercy, to find out the most exquisite of torments. Even Frenchmen, who
+      have for centuries assumed the position of leaders of civilization, were,
+      until the great Revolution beat down their kings and prelates, more
+      ruthlessly cruel than the most fierce redskin. The Inquisition, which
+      arrogated to itself the power to keep the Christian religion pure, was
+      distinguished by the atrocity with which it gave anguish to its victims,
+      and it held its head high until it was put down, we may hope for ever, by
+      fiery republican enthusiasts, whom priestly demons, baulked of their prey,
+      declared to be devils incarnate. More modern hierarchs are obliged to
+      content themselves with making a hell for their enemies&mdash;with
+      foretelling a variety of punishments to be inflicted hereafter, which
+      cannot be enforced here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Incas exacted an annual report of the lands possessed by individuals,
+      with their condition as regards culture; and also of every family. A
+      register of births, marriages, and deaths was regularly kept, so that the
+      government might always know the real condition of the nation, soil, and
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as possible, families remained constant to their business, thus
+      forming a sort of trade caste, but not a rigid one. The registers were
+      always submitted to the perusal of the Inca, and, subsequently, kept in
+      the capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the arrangement of "posts," and roads, an insurrection or invasion was
+      readily discovered, and it was speedily announced at the capital city. The
+      march of troops to suppress it, under these circumstances, was easy and
+      immediate, for every requisite for war was always at hand. In all
+      circumstances, plundering by the soldiery, whether at home or in an
+      enemy's country, was severely punished, and war was undertaken solely with
+      a view to peace. If a neighbour was turbulent, he was conquered, and
+      absorbed into the old state, and if a province was rebellious, its worst
+      inhabitants were carried away to some other locality, where their power
+      for mischief would be curtailed; a plan which, we are told, was pursued by
+      the Assyrian Shalmaneser (2 Kings xvii. 6), indicated by Sennacherib (2
+      Kings xviii. 32), and carried out by Nebuzaradan (2 Kings xxv. 11.). In
+      fine, we may repeat, that it would be difficult for a modern philosopher
+      to conceive a better model of a really paternal government than that
+      which, it is asserted, was found by the Spaniards when they invaded the
+      kingdom of the Incas. Of the respective value of Christian Spanish
+      government, and of the so-called Pagan Inca rule, none can doubt, who
+      reads the present by the light of the past. The Peruvians kept up their
+      roads, protected their subjects, respected life, and fostered everything
+      which tended to increase the general happiness and prosperity of the
+      kingdom&mdash;all these objects, have been for a long period neglected,
+      and Peru, which was under the Spanish rule, one of the blots on the face
+      of civilization and Christianity, is only just emerging from a long night,
+      under the influence of Republican institutions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our next step will be to ascertain the religion of the people whose
+      political condition contrasts so favourably with that of every other
+      nation of whom travel and history have informed us. But we may, in the
+      first place, remark, that there is no absolute or necessary connection
+      between the happiness, or otherwise, of a nation and its dominant
+      religion, as Buckle has already shown in his <i>History of Civilization</i>.
+      The writer of to-day can find abundant evidence in recent history to
+      illustrate the proposition here advanced. He can point to France, and its
+      condition under a sacerdotal rule, prior to the time of the Revolution,
+      and contrast it with its state since its rulers have tried to make the
+      people prosperous and happy, independently of their religious faith. He
+      can point to Austria and Spain, when they were laid at the feet of the
+      Pope of Rome, and everything was made subservient to the demands of a
+      powerful hierarchy, and to the same states now, when religion is
+      subordinate to the material welfare of the majority. Who, that has read
+      the story of modern Italy, or heard of the atrocities committed under the
+      priest-led Ferdinand of Naples&mdash;better known in England by the
+      sobriquet of Bomba; who, that knew anything of his brigand-rearing towns
+      and cities, and has visited them since they have been ruled
+      constitutionally, and with the priestly power curbed by a strong hand, can
+      doubt which set of directors are the best? Christian Rome was never so
+      happy under her Popes as she is now, when the so-called head of the church
+      is subordinate to the chief of the state. But of all priest-ridden
+      countries, one which would never have borne the popish sway as she has
+      done, if her chieftains had been sensible and her people thoughtful,
+      Ireland deserves our commiseration the most. Hibernian hierarchs of the
+      Roman faith designate their country as a land of saints. So, perhaps, it
+      is, if by the word is meant admirers of laziness and filth, who consider
+      that attention to religion justifies murder, and every brutal crime
+      against purse, person, and property.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a rule, admitting of no exceptions, civil government has preceded
+      sacerdotal rule, and a nation is generally in a weakly and fallen
+      condition as soon as its affairs are directed by the priestly class. When
+      first the Aryans invaded Hindostan, the hierarchy was second to the
+      warrior caste; but as the first aggrandized their power, the second lost
+      their supremacy, and under Brahminic rule the foundation was laid for
+      pusillanimous and indolent luxury in the warrior. The power to plan, and
+      the nerve to enforce laws, for the benefit of all classes of the
+      community, is very different to that which is requisite to exalt and
+      enrich the priestly order; and the well-being of a state depends far more
+      upon the exercise of the first than of the second. Whenever, therefore,
+      the executive government is entirely independent of the influence of the
+      hierarchy, or is itself the head of that caste, it can produce good
+      results for the nation, no matter what may be the dogmas of the
+      priesthood, or the nature of the gods which are reverenced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still following Prescott as our guide, we find that the sun was the great
+      god of the Peruvians, and that the Incas assumed the title of his true
+      children. To that luminary a vast temple was built in Cuzco, more radiant
+      with gold than that of Solomon at Jerusalem. To Cuzco, as to the capital
+      of Judea, the name of Holy City was given, and to it pilgrims resorted
+      from every part of the empire. Blasphemy against the sun was considered as
+      bad as treason against the Inca, and both were punished with death. A
+      province, or city, rebellious against the sun was laid waste, and its
+      people exterminated. When conquest over a new tribe subjugated it to Peru,
+      the people were compelled to worship the sun, temples to whose honour were
+      erected in their territory. To these was attached a body of priests, to
+      instruct the people in the proper form of adoration, which consisted in a
+      rich and stately ceremonial. The divinities of the conquered people were
+      removed to Cuzco and established in one of the temples, where they took
+      order amongst the inferior deities of the Peruvians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, though the sun was unquestionably worshipped, Prescott observes, ch.
+      iii, "it is a remarkable fact that many, if not most, of the rude tribes
+      inhabiting the vast American continent had attained to the sublime
+      conception of one Great Spirit, the Creator of the universe, who,
+      immaterial in his own nature, ought not to be dishonoured by an attempt at
+      a visible representation, and who, pervading all space, was not to be
+      circumscribed within the walls of any building, however grand or rich."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As civilization progressed, we are told that a separate order of men, with
+      a liberal provision for their subsistence, was set apart for religious
+      service, and a minute and magnificent ceremonial contrived, which
+      challenged comparison with that of the most polished nations of
+      Christendom. This was the case with the natives of Quita, Bogota, and
+      others inhabiting the highlands of South America, but especially with the
+      Peruvians, who claimed a divine origin for the founders of their empire,
+      whose laws rested on a divine sanction, and whose domestic institutions
+      and foreign wars were directed to preserve and to propagate their faiths.
+      Religion was the basis of their polity, the condition of their social
+      existence. The government of the Incas was essentially a lay theocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Peruvians believed in the future existence of the soul and the
+      resurrection of the body. They had faith in a Hell, located in the earth's
+      centre, and a Heaven, in which the good would revel in a life of luxury,
+      tranquillity, and ease. The wicked, however, were not to be hopelessly
+      damned and tormented for everlasting, but were to expiate their crimes by
+      ages of wearisome labour. They believed, also, in an evil principle or
+      spirit, called Cupay, to whom, however, they paid no more attention than
+      an ordinary Christian does to the Devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great men were entombed after death, and were commonly buried with the
+      chief things which they required on earth. Sometimes a chieftain was
+      buried, not only with his treasures, but with his wives and domestics.
+      Frequently, over the dead, vast mounds were raised, which were
+      honeycombed, subsequently, with cells for the burial of others. Cairns
+      were as common in that part of the New World as they have been in the Old,
+      and the majority of buildings found at the present day in Peru have been
+      connected with funereal pomp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supreme Being in Peru was named Pachacamac, "he who gives life to the
+      universe," and Viracocha, of which the only translation given is "foam of
+      the sea." To him one temple only was raised, which is said to have been
+      built prior to the accession of the Incas, and largely visited by vast
+      numbers of distant Indians. The sun, as we have noticed, was chiefly
+      venerated, and to him a temple was erected in every city and large
+      village, and to him burnt offerings were made in abundance. The moon was
+      also venerated, being connected with the sun as his wife&mdash;and Venus,
+      called by the name of Chasca, "the youth with the long and curling locks"&mdash;was
+      also regarded reverentially as the page of the sun. Temples were dedicated
+      to thunder and to lightning as God's ministers, and the rainbow was
+      regarded as an emanation from the great luminary. In addition to these,
+      the elements, the winds, the earth, the air, the great mountains and
+      rivers, were considered as inferior deities, to which were added the gods
+      of the conquered races. The chief temple of the sun was extraordinarily
+      gorgeous. It was constructed of stone, and was so finely executed, that a
+      Spaniard declared that only two edifices in Spain could, in the stone
+      work, be at all compared with it like Italian and other churches, it
+      contained many small chapels and subordinate buildings, and the interior
+      was dazzling with gold. On its western wall the deity was emblazoned as a
+      human face surrounded with rays of light, just as the sun is personified
+      amongst ourselves. The figure was engraved on a massy gold plate, thickly
+      powdered with emeralds and precious stones. This was so situated in front
+      of the great eastern portal, that the rays of the morning sun, falling
+      upon it, lighted up the whole temple with a wondrous sheen; but every part
+      of the inner walls blazed with gold. The roof was, however, "thatch"
+      alone. Adjoining the temple of the sun were fanes of smaller dimensions,
+      for the worship of the moon, stars, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All the plate, ornaments, and utensils of every description appropriated
+      to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver. Twelve immense vases of
+      silver (said to be as high as a good lance, and so large that two men
+      could barely encircle them with outstretched arms) stood on the floor of
+      the great saloon, filled with Indian corn. The censers for the perfumes,
+      the ewers which held the water for sacrifice, the pipes which conducted it
+      through subterraneous channels into the buildings, the reservoir that
+      received it, even the agricultural implements used in the gardens of the
+      temple, were all of the same rich material. The gardens, like those
+      belonging to the royal palaces, sparkled with gold and silver, and various
+      imitations of the vegetable kingdom. Animals, also, were to be found
+      there, amongst which the llama, with its golden fleece, was most
+      conspicuous, executed in the same style, and with a degree of skill which,
+      in this instance, probably did not surpass the excellence of the material"
+      The reader of Prescott will find that he has not adopted this account
+      without carefully estimating the value of his authorities, and I believe
+      that he may be fairly trusted. The various reports, given by Spanish
+      writers, of priests of the grand temple, seem also to have been carefully
+      estimated by the historian, and the number which they amounted to is put
+      down at four thousand at the least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The high priest was second in dignity only to the Inca, and he was
+      generally closely related to this ruler. The monarch appointed this
+      Peruvian pope, who held office for life. He had the appointment of
+      inferior priests, but all must be from the sacred race of Incas. The high
+      priests of the provinces were always of the blood royal. The hierarchy
+      wore no peculiar badge or dress, nor was it the sole depositary of
+      learning, and it had not to superintend education, or to do parochial
+      work. These duties were performed by others of the Inca class, all of whom
+      were holy, though not, so to speak, in "holy orders." The priest's
+      business was to minister in the temple; his science was confined to a
+      knowledge of the fasts and festivals to be observed in connection with
+      religion, for these were very numerous, and demanded separate rituals. The
+      four principal festivals were solar, i.e., at the equinoxes and solstices,
+      that of Midsummer being the grandest, on which occasion every one who
+      could find time and money enough to do so visited the capital city. The
+      feast was preceded by a three days' fast, and no fires were to be lighted
+      during that period.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the day arrived a vast array of people, dressed in their handsomest
+      apparel, crowded the streets and squares, waiting for the rising of the
+      sun. When it appeared shouts of joy, heightened by instrumental music,
+      were raised in swelling tones, until the whole orb had ascended above the
+      horizon, after which a libation was poured of fermented liquor, and all
+      the nobles and the king repaired to the great temple, each individual,
+      except members of the royal family, removing their sandals as they
+      entered. After prayer came sacrifice, animals, grain, flowers, and
+      sweet-scented gums being the prescribed offerings; sometimes a child or
+      lovely maiden was also immolated, generally to commemorate a coronation,
+      the birth of a royal heir, or a great victory. Cannibalism never followed
+      the sacrifice; and it may be added, parenthetically, that when the Incas
+      conquered and annexed man-sacrificing and man-eating tribes, they always
+      abrogated the custom, and with far more decision and firmness than Britain
+      has shown in abolishing self-immolation of Juggernaut pilgrims in her
+      Indian Empire, and the burning of widows with their dead spouses. Some may
+      doubt whether a conqueror ought to interfere with the religious customs of
+      the vanquished, but few would plead for the continuance of such customs as
+      human sacrifice and cannibalism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The animal usually sacrificed by the Peruvians was the llama, and the
+      priest who officiated drew auguries from the appearance of the intestines.
+      To effect the oblation a sacred fire was now kindled by a concave mirror
+      which acted as "a burning glass," precisely as was done by Numa in the
+      days of Ancient Rome. If the sky was clouded, and no rays could be
+      collected, fire was produced by friction. When lighted, the fire was
+      committed to the care of the virgins of the sun, who were bound to keep it
+      up for the ensuing year. After the single sacrifice was completed, great
+      numbers of other animals were slaughtered, and a regular carousal began,
+      attended with music, dancing, and drinking, that lasted for many days,
+      during which period all the lower orders kept holiday. In the distribution
+      of bread and wine at this high festival, the invading Spaniards saw a
+      striking resemblance to the Christian communion, and they recognised a
+      similar likeness in the Peruvian practices of confession and penance. The
+      virgins of the sun were called "the elect," and were young maidens taken
+      from their homes at an early age, and introduced into convents, where they
+      were placed under the care of elderly matrons, who taught them their
+      religious duties, and how to spin and weave, embroider and adorn hangings
+      for the temples, and to frame garments for the Incas. Their work was such,
+      that it was found to be superior to any which the Spaniards had ever seen,
+      or were themselves able to produce. The virgins were separated wholly, not
+      simply, from the world in general, but also from their own relations and
+      friends&mdash;none but the king and queen could enter into their convent.
+      The closest attention was paid to the morals of these maidens, and
+      visitors were sent every year to inspect the institutions, and to report
+      on the state of their discipline; a plan similar to which has been
+      repeatedly proposed in Christian England, yet never sanctioned by the
+      parliament! If a virgin was discovered in an intrigue she was buried
+      alive, her lover was strangled, and the town or village to which he
+      belonged was razed to the ground, and sowed with stones, to efface even
+      the memory of its site. These solar attendants were all of royal blood,
+      and were estimated to number fifteen hundred; but to provincial convents
+      the inferior nobility were allowed to send their daughters, and sometimes
+      a peculiarly lovely peasant girl was admitted. The convents were all
+      sumptuously furnished. But, though virgins of the sun, they were brides of
+      the Incas, and we cannot fail, when we read of the vast harem of the
+      Peruvian monarch, to think of the female establishments of the Jewish
+      Solomon, of the Persian Ahasuerus, and that of Louis XV. of Christian
+      France. If at any time the Inca reduced his harem, the superfluous
+      concubines were restored to their homes, swelling with the importance
+      which they had gained by their familiarity with the monarch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Polygamy was permitted. Matrimony was effected by the Inca, or other chief
+      man, joining the hands of the parties. The king usually espoused his own
+      sister, but no other person was allowed to do so. No marriage was valid
+      without the consent of parents. As a general rule, all unions were
+      effected on the same day of the year, and thus the wedding of couples was
+      followed by general rejoicing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The genius of the Peruvian government penetrated into the most private
+      recesses of domestic life, allowing no man to act for himself, even in
+      those personal matters in which none but himself, or his family, could be
+      interested. No Peruvian was too low for the fostering vigilance of the
+      government; none was so high that he was not made to feel his dependence
+      upon it in every act of his life. The government of the Incas was the
+      mildest, but the most searching and beneficent, of despotisms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now, but with great reluctance, leave our friendly guide, the
+      accomplished Prescott, and ask ourselves, once more, the lessons which we
+      have learned from the departed races of the vast American continent. Can
+      anyone doubt that one of the most conspicuous results obtained is, that
+      Christian rule, and the Christian doctrine, have not proved themselves, in
+      any respect, superior to the Incas' government and their solar religion?
+      Who can read of the civilization, the theology, and the practice of the
+      Peruvians, without believing one of two things&mdash;the one, that Jewish
+      ritualism, and the majority of Christian teaching, is of human invention;
+      the other, that the Almighty has revealed His will in the Western as well
+      as in the Eastern Hemisphere? Can any thoughtful man believe that the
+      brutal, covetous, lying Spaniards, who broke, with impunity, every
+      commandment promulgated in those Gospels, to whose authority they
+      professed allegiance, and upon which their faith is founded, were better
+      men, or more favoured by the Lord, "who loveth righteousness and hateth
+      iniquity," than were the gentle Peruvians, who fell before them as lambs
+      and sheep before wolves and tigers? Surely the story of the Incas should
+      make Christians, in all ages, blush for their inferiority to those,
+      amongst whom neither Moses, Samuel, and other so-called prophets, Jesus,
+      nor any of his apostles, preached; and more strongly should it convince us
+      that the wish to do good on a large scale can come otherwise than by the
+      Gospel. If grace, and peace, and love came by the Nazarene alone, how is
+      it&mdash;and let us ponder over the question deeply&mdash;that all
+      Christian countries have been, and that some are still, conspicuous for
+      the brutality of their political and priestly governments, for the
+      frequency with which they make war, for their ferocity in the destruction
+      of religious enemies, and for the intense hatred evinced against rival
+      sects, by those who call themselves the representatives of the Prince of
+      Peace; whilst, on the other hand, a nation who never heard of the son of
+      Joseph or of Mary, should be conspicuous for the virtues which ought to
+      adorn the soldiers of the cross, but do not? Surely, if the saying be
+      true, "by their fruit ye shall know them," the denizens of the old world
+      must be children of the Devil, who do the work, of their father, whilst
+      certain of the nations of the new world, as it is called, were really
+      children of the light, abounding in love, charity, and goodwill towards
+      all men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me it is astonishing how thoughtful men, who have read accounts of the
+      Mexicans and the Peruvians, can continue to believe that the Bible is the
+      book of God, written by holy men, whose thoughts and diction were
+      essentially those of the third person in the Trinity. Who can assert that
+      Abraham and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, were taught of God, and that to the
+      Hebrews alone has the Creator revealed His will? Who can see, in the
+      sensual king David, a man after God's heart, and applaud the brutal murder
+      of Agag, the destruction of the priests of Baal, by the orders of Elijah,
+      and the extermination of the Baalites in Israel by Jehu? Compared with
+      such wretches as these the Incas were angels. They had not left to them
+      the bloody legacy which has come to the Christian world by means of the
+      Old Testament: they had not been taught to believe that the Almighty
+      revelled in the blood of human beings: they never had, amongst their
+      sacred songs, verses like the following&mdash;"that thy foot may be dipped
+      in the blood of enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same" (Ps.
+      lxviii. 23).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah, it is time for civilized men to cease their admiration for a book
+      which has produced such frightful fruits, and which has converted millions
+      of human beings into incarnate fiends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Vedas and the Shasters&mdash;the writings of the Buddhists, and those
+      of the Parsees and the Chinese, contain, nowhere, such a justification of
+      wholesale murder, as do the Scriptures of the Jews and of the Christians.*
+      From these have been drawn the power to persecute, and, if possible, to
+      exterminate those who worship God in a different fashion to those in
+      power. Calvin was as bad as Torquemada; and, even at the present time, it
+      is only public opinion that prevents fanatics, like the early New
+      Englanders, from reducing their Christian hate to practical torture.
+      Everywhere the professed followers of Jesus assume the power to torment
+      their opponents, whenever they can do so without breaking the civil law,
+      and there are few pulpits from which the voice of revilement, contumely,
+      and denunciation is not repeatedly heard. The Romans abuse the Anglicans;
+      the Establishment sneers at Dissent; Nonconformists censure all churches;
+      and all libel those whom they call Free Thinkers and Atheists. To find
+      "toleration" in matters of religion, one must seek amongst the Deists, or
+      amongst those who refuse to see in the Bible the revealed will of God to
+      man.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * See Matthew x. 34, 85; Luke xii. 49, 51, 52, 53.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Can civilization grow out of barbarism? Dislike of progress,
+     especially if mental. Rediscovery of ancient knowledge.
+     Advance and retrogression. China and Japan&mdash;influence of
+     strangers. Decadence of nations&mdash;followed by a rise. The
+     Shemitic and Negro races. Varied religious ideas. The Negro
+     Fetish and Obi. Jewish, Arab, and Christian communication
+     with the dead. Australian idea about white men. Ideas of a
+     soul and futurity amongst the Aryans and Egyptians. Their
+     priesthood. The Aryans Monotheiste. An Aryan hymn. Max
+     Müller and Talboys Wheeler. Aryan conceptions compared with
+     Psalm civ. 1-4. Monotheism of the Egyptians.   Shemitic
+     religions.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At one period of my life I entertained the idea that civilization never
+      had grown, nor ever could grow, out of barbarism. Perhaps I have not yet
+      wholly abandoned it. The considerations which the question involves are
+      all but infinite. It is doubtful whether we can reduce them into shape
+      without writing an extensive treatise. We will, however, attempt to do so,
+      and present the subject to our readers to the best of our ability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as our own personal and historic experience goes, we find that man
+      has no natural propensity to learn beyond that which he has received
+      simply as an animal. With him school is a hateful place, and education is
+      a painful process, even in the midst of the highest civilization we see
+      individuals who cast from them all the luxuries of life, and descend
+      voluntarily to a level scarcely superior to that of the brute creation.
+      But those who take kindly to education, and consent to try and learn
+      everything which the teacher presents to their notice, are bounded by the
+      amount of knowledge possessed by the instructor, who cannot impart to
+      others information in matters of which all are ignorant. It is true that I
+      once read a question propounded by his schoolmaster to one of my sons,
+      which ran&mdash;"Enumerate upon paper all the capes, bays, and rivers of
+      England that you don't know by name, and describe the seas which you have
+      never heard of." Without dwelling upon the anecdote farther than to say,
+      that it points out the absurdity of the idea that education of itself
+      advances knowledge, we may pass on to remark, that even in nations, whose
+      intellect is highly cultivated, the propensity to advance in knowledge is
+      singularly small. Throughout the old world an inventor is usually regarded
+      as a visionary, or a lunatic, and flouted by all his contemporaries.* From
+      the time of Aristotle and Hippocrates, scarcely any advance was made in
+      philosophy, and, throughout Europe, the fourteenth century was as
+      barbarous, if not indeed more so, than the first of our era; and to such a
+      dark age there is a strong clerical party in Great Britain which desires
+      us to return.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * A man who had travelled much once said to me,&mdash;"I will
+     tell you the main difference between a Yankee and an
+     Englishman. If you inform the latter of some new discovery&mdash;
+     or propose the use of some recent invention for his own
+     benefit&mdash;he will tell you either that the thing is old, or
+     worthless. On the other hand, if you recount to the former
+     what you have told the latter of, his rejoinder will be, I
+     can improve upon that." This is true, and we are now
+     repeatedly adopting from the United States discoveries of
+     various kinds, which we rejected when offered to us in the
+     first place.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Yet, notwithstanding the propensity of cultivated nations to remain
+      quiescent, there do appear, from time to time, individuals who, being
+      discontented with things as they are, endeavour to bring about
+      improvements in the arts, the sciences, and the general conditions of
+      life. The recognition of a want, is an incentive to a thoughtful mind to
+      supply the exigency. Whenever an individual endeavours to attain a
+      definite end, he exercises his mind, not only in what he has been already
+      taught, but what he can observe beyond that; he rakes up, if possible, the
+      experience of others, studies their proceedings, and experiments with a
+      definite object, and ponders upon the affinities, nature, and the like, of
+      every substance which he surmises may be of service to him. When, by these
+      means, he has obtained his purpose, he will repeatedly find that he has
+      done no more than rediscover a something which was known thousands of
+      years before his time. Without a doubt, much of the philosophy, science,
+      art, religion, &amp;c., of the present day, is due to a close observation
+      and an attainment to the knowledge possessed by our predecessors. "Is
+      there any thing whereof it may be said, see this is new?&mdash;it hath
+      been already of old time, which was before us" (Eccles. i. 10).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If this be true, even though it may only be so to a partial extent, it is
+      clearly more philosophical to believe that some primeval men were created
+      with a considerable amount of knowledge, rather than that all were savage,
+      barely, if at all, superior to monkeys, and that one or more of these,
+      gradually elevated their race, by degrees so slow, as to be imperceptible
+      in less time than many thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This side of the argument receives corroboration when we study the history
+      of such semi-civilized countries as China, and such barbarous regions as
+      those of Africa and Australia. In none of these parts do we see any
+      general propensity to advance. In the first we see a retrogression; there
+      is now no effort to repair ancient roads which have been worn away by
+      centuries of traffic, to restore the old temples, towers, and landmarks,
+      erected when time was younger, or even to keep up the teachings of
+      Confucius. A similar apathy existed amongst the Japanese&mdash;yet no
+      sooner do the civilized nations of Europe show the rulers of China and
+      Japan that it is necessary for them to improve, if they desire to retain
+      their power, than they attempt to learn the arts which have enabled their
+      rivals to overcome them. In both cases, the progress is recognized as due
+      to the interference of a nation, superior for the time being, to that
+      whose education has been faulty. Advance, then, in such countries, is
+      clearly due to foreign influence, rather than to an innate propensity to
+      general, mental, scientific, or practical development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, on the other side, it may be alleged that the African has been in
+      existence from time immemorial&mdash;that he has been in contact with the
+      civilization of ancient and modern Egypt&mdash;with Christianity&mdash;with
+      the ancient Tyrians and Carthaginians&mdash;with the Arabs&mdash;with the
+      Spaniards, Portuguese, and British, and yet the African tribes remain
+      almost as savage now as when they first were known. Similar remarks apply
+      to the inhabitants of the Andaman Isles, of the vast islands of Borneo,
+      Celebez, Papua, New Guinea, and others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet in many places, now considered barbarous, we see the remains of
+      previous empires&mdash;and when we are able to find some comparatively
+      authentic history which tells of the overthrow of a powerful kingdom, it
+      is clear that the civilized people have usually been destroyed by the
+      barbarian. The wealth of Rome tempted the hordes from the inhospitable
+      north, just as the gold of Mexico and Peru were the causes of their
+      decadence under the Spaniards, whose people were in themselves scarcely
+      superior to the troops led by Alaric, Genseric, and other so called
+      barbarians. Yet we know, as in the case of Spain herself, that decadence
+      from civilization to comparative barbarism may be due to causes inherent
+      in the people and its governors, wholly independent of foreign conquest.
+      This decadence is due to the bestial propensities of man being allowed to
+      dominate over the intellectual, and the result is the same, whether the
+      animal passions be cultivated by a debased and degrading policy of monarch
+      and priest, or by the indolence of each individual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By developing the train of thought thus indicated, we imagine that the
+      philosophical reader will conclude that amongst men, some race, family, or
+      tribe, has been created with intelligence, as much above the rest of their
+      kind as the elephant is superior to the hippopotamus, and the dog to the
+      cat, and that others are generically as low as is the Australian "dingo"
+      in the canine race. Those once perfect may deteriorate, yet carry with
+      them the power of rising again&mdash;whilst those originally low never
+      rise at all, no matter what example may be set them, unless force is used
+      to make them learn. To these we must add a third set, specially to include
+      the American, for we have no evidence whatever that the civilization of
+      the Aztec and Peruvian was anything more than a restoration of the
+      scientific knowledge of a more ancient people, possibly of an Aryan stock.
+      Who that is acquainted with the Shemitic race can fail to see in its
+      people the type of an ancient condition which has decayed, until, like a
+      fallen gentleman, it can only show what once it was, by conserving and
+      exhibiting a few ornaments of no value, save from their age, but whose
+      sons may yet become princes in their paternal domains? Who that studies
+      the negro in Africa, America, and St. Domingo, can fail to see that he is,
+      or, at any rate has hitherto shown himself, almost wholly incapable of
+      development as a philosophic man? And who can read the pages of Prescott
+      without recognizing the fact that some of the ancient inhabitants of
+      America inaugurated&mdash;unassisted, as we judge by any example from
+      others&mdash;a style of religion and government of which the world has
+      hardly, if at all, seen an equal? Yet it is remarkable, that both the
+      Mexican and Peruvian traced their laws and institutions to strangers who
+      came amongst them, as Oannes did to the Babylonians, and who taught them
+      what arts, religion, and science they themselves had. The subject of
+      centres of human life into which our considerations have drawn us, is by
+      far too vast for discussion here. It involves the study of geology, of
+      anthropology, of glossology, of navigation, of physical geography, of
+      climate, of the laws of reproduction, of the influences of climate over
+      animals, and of diet upon man. Into all these we dare not enter: we shall
+      confine ourselves rather to considering the religious ideas of the lowest
+      of the known races of mankind; and then proceed to those which have been
+      held by what we may call the oscillating people, i.e., those vibrating
+      repeatedly between a state of empire and one of slavery, like the people
+      of Hindostan, Babylon, Judea, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we endeavour to ascertain the religion of the negro, by which term we
+      include all the black native tribes of Africa, we find ourselves almost in
+      the position of a modern chemist seeking for the philosopher's stone. In
+      no single book, and I have read very many, can I find any trustworthy
+      evidence of the negro having any religion at all. It is true that
+      travellers in Abyssinia, and those who are now returned from their
+      successful expedition against Magdala, tell us that in Abyssinia there is
+      a form of religion which is evidently a corrupt form of Christianity, but
+      with this exception, the blacks seem to have no idea of that congeries of
+      fact and fiction, dogma, ritual, and practice, which passes current for
+      religion in more civilized countries. Yet though they have no definite
+      idea of a Creator, and the way in which He works throughout the universe,
+      they have a dread of some unseen power, and, like a number of frightened
+      children, dread the effects of "fetish," and the power of the Obi or Obeah
+      man. When the mind is predisposed to fear, and it is so amongst the lower
+      animals as well as in man, it is astonishing at what contemptible objects
+      one may stand aghast. I can vividly remember being sent, whilst a very
+      young child, with a message from an aunt, at whose home I was staying, to
+      the maid, who was washing in an outhouse, but ere I reached the door of
+      the latter, I was terrified at a head which seemed to be rising from the
+      ground, Such was my horror that I ran away, too proud to scream, yet
+      almost fainting with horror. To me that ancient battered barber's doll was
+      "fetish," and if my friends had determined to cultivate the timidity which
+      I then showed, it is quite possible that to this day I might have a dread
+      not dissimilar to that of the African. As it was, my aunt told me that
+      what had scared me, was only a piece of carved and painted wood, and so
+      put me upon my mettle, that I delivered my message and gave the image a
+      kick in the face; yet my valour was short lived, and during the rest of my
+      sojourn I dared not venture within sight of the bugbear. To all intents
+      and purposes that human head was, in my estimation, the guardian of the
+      garden&mdash;its presence made all within its influence under taboo&mdash;had
+      I ventured to tell a lie, or to have been naughty, I cannot conceive that
+      any punishment would have been greater than being doomed to sit in the
+      presence of the weird image. Hence I can easily understand the abject
+      terror of the African at "fetish," and his dread of the Obeah man, who
+      asserts that he can direct upon whom he will the power of the unknown god.
+      So great is the fear of this negro magician, and so common is that fear to
+      man in general, that we sometimes find the white man as full of it as the
+      black. I have had, for example, under my own care, an Englishman of good
+      education, who, whilst superintendent of a Jamaica plantation, became so
+      cowed by "Obi," that he was obliged to give up his position and return to
+      England, literally insane upon the subject of "fetish" and "Obeah," and
+      wholly unfitted for any work whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The objects to which the name of "fetish" is given are very numerous&mdash;a
+      rock, a stone, a tree, a pool, a dried monkey, an alligator, man, or skull&mdash;anything
+      will suit the purpose. One which is said to be very popular amongst
+      chieftains is prepared somewhat in the following manner:&mdash;The head of
+      a father is removed after death, and so placed, that as the brain decays
+      and softens, it may fall into a receptacle already half filled with palm
+      oil or other grease. The material so formed, consisting to a great extent
+      of the thoughtful organ of the sire, is then supposed to give his spirit
+      to the son, whenever the latter smears himself with it, or takes it as a
+      potent medicinal spell. The head thus placed becomes the royal "fetish,"
+      and the king goes to take counsel from it just as ancient priests
+      inquired, or pretended to inquire, from the god or lord of some shrine or
+      oracle. I cannot charge my memory with everything that has been at one
+      time or another regarded as an object of wonder, worship, or "fetish," but
+      I have an indistinct recollection that a musical box has been venerated by
+      Africans, as much as the Ancilia, the Palladium, the Diana which fell down
+      from Jupiter, the Caaba or black stone of Mecca, the ark of the covenant,
+      the brazen serpent, the wood of the true cross, the nails which pierced
+      Jesus, and the handkerchief which was used to wipe the face of the
+      suffering Nazarite, all of which have been sacred amongst civilized
+      nations, and are still adored by some. It would be difficult for a
+      philosopher to draw a distinction between an African "fetish" and a Papal
+      relic. There is no virtue which the Romanist has attributed to old bones,
+      old nails, old shoes, old coats, old houses, old staircases, old bits of
+      wood, old links of chains, old hairs, old statues, &amp;c., that has not
+      been equally attributed by negroes to some absurd fetish in Ashantee,
+      Dahomey, or elsewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In some parts of the vast African continent, however, there seems to be an
+      indistinct idea of a life after death, and when a great man dies, or is
+      killed, his wives, and many of his slaves, are sacrificed for his future
+      use, and vast human sacrifices are made annually in his honour, that the
+      departed may hear, from time to time, of the welfare of those whom he has
+      left behind. Feeling indisposed to regard this practice as the offspring
+      of religious faith, I would compare it with the crude conceptions of some
+      of the lowest class in Europe and America, aye, of some cultivated
+      intellects as well, who profess to be able, by means of <i>media</i>, to
+      communicate with the dead, or who send messages to their departed
+      relatives by friends that are dying. The most remarkable development of
+      this idea which I have yet met with has recently occurred in France, where
+      a young man attempted to murder a beautiful young woman, to whom he was a
+      total stranger, the reason he assigned being, that he intended to commit
+      suicide immediately after the murder, so that he might enter the future
+      world with a pleasant companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can scarcely regard the persons figuring in the following true story as
+      being very much superior to the King of Dahomey. In a well-cared for
+      English village a poor woman was about to die in the full odour of
+      Protestant sanctity. In youth she had lost one leg, and now had disease in
+      the other. To her came an old woman and said,&mdash;"I hear thou's goin'
+      to dee Betty, and that thou's goin' to heaven&mdash;at least parson says
+      so&mdash;when thou's got there, willee tell my owd man that I've just
+      bought that field as he set his heart on." "Oh dear," said the dying
+      woman, "how can I go stumping all about heaven with my legs in the state
+      they're in." "Well, you can tell him at anyrate if you happen to see him
+      go by!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Passing from the African, let us now say a word or two about the
+      Australian. It is, I think, Mitchell, who states, in an account of his
+      travels in that country, that the white men were used in a manner so
+      considerate, in some instances, indeed, so kindly, that he was induced to
+      inquire into the cause. He found that these friendly tribes were in the
+      habit of eating their defunct relatives&mdash;being always short of
+      provisions, they used man meat, as do other starving creatures when they
+      devour their like&mdash;and they cooked the body much in the same way as
+      we do dead pig. By scalding the carcass, the cuticle and the black layer,
+      called <i>rete mucosum</i>, was removed, and the corpse became white. This
+      gave the people the notion that Europeans were their own dead relatives
+      returned from the spirit world. Sir G. Gray also, in his account of an
+      expedition to the north-west coasts of the same vast island, describes how
+      all the people with whom he came into contact believed in the power of
+      sorcery or witchcraft. Without extending our inquiry into the undeveloped
+      religious ideas of other barbarians, we may affirm, from the preceding
+      examples, that there is, even amongst the lowest human beings, some idea
+      of a future state, and of the existence of some unseen power, which may
+      work mischief upon themselves or their friends. Beyond these vague notions
+      the savage who has neither been taught, nor inherited the power or
+      propensity to learn, rarely, if ever, passes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, the surmise to which we gave utterance awhile ago is founded in
+      truth, we may fairly endeavour to ascertain what is the race, or the
+      people, which have been born with a higher religious development, a
+      greater capacity for learning, and a higher appreciation of the value of
+      agriculture and civilization than the rest of the world's inhabitants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now find ourselves on the threshold of a question which has, for many
+      years past, divided the scientific world, viz., Was there originally one
+      human couple only, or were there many intellectual centres? Into this
+      matter it would be unprofitable to enter, for to give an account of the
+      Chinese, Egyptian, Aryan, American, and Shemitic races, would require many
+      huge volumes. It will, probably, be permitted to me to omit from the
+      inquiry all but Aryans and Egyptians. I select these because I have, in
+      the preceding volumes, descanted largely upon the faith of the
+      Babylonians, Assyrians, Tyrians, and others, and because I believe that
+      these ancients have done very much to modify the faith of Europe. If time
+      and opportunity permitted, I fancy that anyone might make a most
+      interesting analysis of that which Europe owes to the Shemites, Egyptians,
+      and Aryans respectively; but it is beyond our powers at present to go into
+      the whole subject. The volumes which have recently been published about
+      the Ancient Hindoo religion may be counted by dozens, and the writings of
+      Egyptologists are almost equally numerous. We must, therefore, content
+      ourselves with a reference to a few main points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to be an undoubted fact, that both the Egyptians and Aryans
+      recognized the existence of a soul in human beings, and believed that it
+      survived the dissolution of the body in some state, whose position and
+      physical condition were unknown. They held, moreover, that the locality
+      and condition of the spiritual part of man after death depended upon the
+      actions of the individual during life. Both people believed in the
+      influence of prayer, of sacrifices, of a maceration, or torturing of the
+      fleshy body, and they had, moreover, each of them, a priestly race, who
+      regulated festivals, ordained ceremonies, and prescribed everything which
+      those who regarded their spiritual welfare should do. I believe that the
+      Egyptians were, in reality, monotheistic; but my authority for the idea
+      has escaped me. It is certain that the ancient Aryans were so, and I
+      cannot do better than refer my readers to the <i>History of Sanscrit
+      Literature</i>, by Max Müller, and the first vol. of the <i>History of
+      India</i>, by Talboys Wheeler. Yet, as the first is out of print, and the
+      second a volume of considerable size, it will, perhaps, be judicious if I
+      quote some passages from both. The following hymn, translated by M. M., p.
+      559 sq., is, to my own ideas, far more grand in conception than any other
+      which I have read, and shows a depth or sublimity of thought that could
+      only be attained by a profoundly intelligent intellect. Moderns might
+      equal it, none could surpass it. Speaking of the beginning, the words run,
+      "Nothing that is, was then; even what is not, did not exist then." The
+      poet then proceeds to deny the existence of the sky, and of the firmament,
+      and yet, unable to bear the idea of an unlimited nothing, he exclaims,
+      "What was it that hid or covered the existing? what was the refuge of
+      what? was water the deep abyss, the chaos which swallowed up everything?"
+      Then his mind, turning away from nature, dwells upon man, and the problem
+      of human life. "There was no death, therefore there was nothing immortal
+      There was no space, no life, and lastly, there was no time&mdash;no
+      difference between day and night&mdash;no solar torch by which morning
+      might have been told from evening. That One breathed breathless by itself,
+      other than it, nothing since has been. That One breathed and lived; it
+      enjoyed more than mere existence; yet its life was not dependent upon
+      anything else, as our life depends upon the air we breathe. It breathed,
+      breathless. Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled in gloom,
+      profound as ocean without life." Müller then rather describes what the
+      poet means than gives his words; I will, therefore, adopt now, for the
+      rest of the hymn, the metrical version, which he gives at p. 564:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+     Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+     Then first came Love upon it, the new spring
+     Of mind; yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+     Pondering this bond between created things And uncreated.
+     Comes this spark from earth,
+     Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+     These seeds were sown, and mighty power arose,
+     Nature below, and Power and Will above.
+     Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?
+     Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+     The gods themselves came later into being.
+     Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+     He, from whom all this great creation came.
+     Whether His will created or was mute,
+     The Most High seer, that is in highest heaven,
+     He knows it; or, perchance, e'en He knows not"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One more hymn is even more distinct in its monotheism, p. 569. "In the
+      beginning there arose the source of golden light. He was the only born
+      Lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the God
+      to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He who gives life. He who gives
+      strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is
+      immortality; whose shadow is death.... He who, through His power, is the
+      only King of the breathing and the awakening world. He who governs all&mdash;man
+      and beast.... He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea
+      proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are, as it were,
+      His two arms.... He through whom the sky is bright, and the earth firm. He
+      through whom the heaven was 'stablished, nay, the highest heaven. He who
+      measured out the light in the air.... He to whom heaven and earth,
+      standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom the
+      rising sun shines forth.... Where-ever the mighty water-clouds went, where
+      they placed the seed, and lit the fire, thence arose He who is the only
+      life of the bright gods.... He who, by His might, looked even over the
+      water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength, and lit the sacrifice. He <i>who
+      is God above all gods</i>.... May He not destroy us. He, the creator of
+      the earth; or He, the righteous, who created the heaven. He who also
+      created the bright and mighty waters." In this hymn I have only omitted
+      the repeated question&mdash;Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
+      sacrifice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the high antiquity of these productions no competent scholar entertains
+      a doubt. It is not certain how many years before our era it was composed,
+      but it is considered that it was prior to B. C. 2000, long before the time
+      when the ideal Moses is said to have written, and <i>à fortiori</i>
+      anterior, by at least a thousand years, to the authors of the Book of
+      Psalms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Talboys Wheeler remarks, p. 27&mdash;"Having thus sketched generally the
+      individual character of the leading deities of the Aryans as they appear
+      in the Rig Veda, it may be advisable to glance at that conception of One
+      Supreme Being, as in all and above all, which finds full expression in the
+      Vedic hymns. Upon this point the following passages will be found very
+      significant:&mdash;'Who has seen the primeval being at the time of His
+      being born? what is that endowed with substance that the unsubstantial
+      sustains? from earth are the breath and blood, but where is the soul&mdash;who
+      may repair to the sage to ask this? What is that One alone, who has upheld
+      these six spheres in the form of an unborn?'" Then follows the hymn just
+      quoted from M. Müller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may add that the so-called gods Indra, Agni, Surya, the Maruts, &amp;c.,
+      are only personifications of the abstract powers of nature, the sky, fire,
+      the sun, the winds, &amp;c. These are the same conceptions as are referred
+      to in Ps. civ. 1-4&mdash;they are not deities, but ministers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will probably be said by the orthodox that these descriptions of the
+      creation and the Creator are mere efforts of the human mind, and not the
+      products of "revelation." We grant it at once, and answer, why, then,
+      should the comparatively miserable conceptions of one or more Hebrews, who
+      knew nothing of a soul or a future life till they had learned it from the
+      Chaldeans or the Persians, be regarded differently? Was the Jewish
+      ignorance the result of Divine "inspiration?" Did the Devil give to the
+      heathen the knowledge of Satan's origin and power? If so, why did the
+      Jews, and why do Christians, adopt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have already mentioned that the Aryans believed in the efficacy of
+      prayer to their gods: they offered to them, much as we do now,
+      supplications for rain, abundant harvests, prolific cattle, bodily vigour,
+      long life, numerous progeny, &amp;c., just as did, very rarely, the seed
+      of Abraham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now make some quotations from the Egyptian Ritual for the Dead
+      (Bunsen's <i>Egypt</i>, Vol. V.). "O soul, greatest of things created" (p.
+      165); "I am the Great God, creating himself" (p. 172); "Oh Lord of the
+      great abode, Chief of the gods" (p. 177). Throughout this invocation,
+      however, the lord of the universe seems to be spoken of as the sun under
+      various titles. There is frequent reference to the danger of the soul
+      falling into the power of some malignant deity, and orthodoxy is secured
+      by addressing every good god by his or her proper title. There is no grand
+      conception anywhere, and the endless repetitions disgust the ordinary
+      reader. I must add that the sun, Osiris, and the male organ, are spoken of
+      as emblematic of each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we next turn to the Shemitic religions, we have to contend with the
+      difficulty produced by the paucity of written records, and the doubts
+      which exist about certain epithets that relate to the gods. As far as I
+      can discover, there was an idea of a Supreme Being, whose name was Jeho.
+      Io. Iou., or the like, and Il or El. His ministers were the sun, moon,
+      planets, constellations, and stars. His emblems were the sexual organs,
+      and worship was, to a great degree, licentious. There was no conception of
+      a spiritual life after death, or of a state of future rewards and
+      punishments. Sacrifice was thought much of, but I doubt whether there was
+      anything like what we know as prayer. At any rate, in all those parts of
+      the Bible which seem to be the oldest, there is a singular absence of any
+      formula or command for supplication. Solomon's prayer is comparatively of
+      modern date. Indeed, this vacuity is implied in the expression of one of
+      Jesus' disciples, "Teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples"
+      (Luke xi. 1), thus showing clearly that the practice of prayer was not a
+      Judaic, i.e., Mosaic one.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * As a friend, who has been kind enough to assist me to
+     correct these sheets in their passage through the press,
+     considers that I ought to give some reasons for the
+     assertion made in the text, the following information is
+     appended:&mdash;
+
+     I.   There are, in all, about a score of different words in
+     Hebrew which have been translated, "prayer," "I pray,"
+     "praying," &amp;c. These are&mdash;(1) ahnah or ahna, (2) begah, (3)
+     ghalah, (4) ghanan, (5) loo, (6) lahgash, (7) na, (8)
+     gathar, (9) pagag, (10) pahlal, (11) tztlah, (12) seeagh,
+     (13) shoal, (14) tephilah.    The rest are different forms
+     of the same roots.
+
+     II.  These words do not, except in a few instances, really
+     bear the signification of "prayer" or "intercession," which
+     is given to them in the Authorised English Version of the
+     Bible; as any one may convince himself by consulting
+     Wigram's Hebrew concordance.
+
+     Thus, No. 1, in three instances, is translated in the A. V.
+     by the interjection "or,(OL)" No. 2, in the A. V. is once
+     used as "praying," but in other parts as "seeking" for
+     persons, "desiring" or "requesting," and "making." No. 8 is
+     translated in various parts of the A. V.    "I am weak" "I
+     fell sick," "was not grieved," "a parturient woman crying,"
+     "to put one's self to pain," "is grievous," "hath laid," "is
+     my infirmity," and these meanings are far more common than
+     the signification of "prayer." No. 4 is only used twice, and
+     is in one place translated  "by showing mercy," and in the
+     other by "making supplication." No. 5 is translated "O
+     that," "peradventure," "would God that," "if," "if haply,"
+     "though," and only once "I pray thee." No. 6 is translated
+     "enchantment," "orator," "earrings," "charmed," and once
+     only "prayer," with the marginal reading "secret speech."
+     No. 7 is in one place "now," in another "Oh," "go to," as
+     well as "I pray," and this in the same sense as we should
+     use the words to a child "I wish you would be quiet" No. 8
+     is generally used in the sense of "intreaty" or "prayer,"
+     but it once is found as "earnest," and "multiplying words,"
+     as in a Litany. No. 9 is used to signify "he came,"
+     "reached," "thou shalt meet," "fall upon," or "kill,"  "he
+     lighted" on a certain place,  "they met together," and in
+     the 53d chapter of Isaiah the same word is used in verse 6,
+     "for the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," and
+     in verse 12, for "and made intercession for the
+     transgressors!" No. 10 is used almost exclusively for
+     prayer, but it is only found six times in the whole
+     Pentateuch, in one of which it is read "I had no  thought"
+     in the A. V. No. 11 is only found twice, once in Ezra and
+     once in Daniel, and signifies "prayer" in both. No. 12 has
+     many interpretations in the A. V., viz., "meditation,"
+     "speaking," "talking," "complaining," "declaring," in one
+     instance only is it translated "pray," and that in the
+     apparently important text Ps. lv. 17, "Evening and morning
+     and at noon will I pray."   As a substantive the word is
+     rendered as "complaint," "talking, meditation,"
+     "babbling," and only once "prayer," and that in Ps. lv. 2,
+     "Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer." No. 13 is generally
+     translated "ask," as we should remark, "well, if he asks me
+     what must I say?" "beg," as "he shall beg in harvest;"
+     "consulted," in the text "he consulted with images,"
+     "salute," "to salute him of peace;" "enquired," "Saul
+     enquired of the Lord;" "wished," "and wished in himself to
+     die;" "lent," "I have lent him to the Lord," "so that they
+     lent unto them." No. 14 is used exclusively for prayer, but
+     the word is not to be found in the whole of the Pentateuch.
+     III. There is reason to believe that the most important of
+     these words have come from the Persian, a language allied to
+     the Sanscrit;  and if so, it is clear that the idea of
+     prayer was adopted by the Jews after they were patronised by
+     the conquerors of Babylon.    Some of the other words are
+     Aramaic, and probably even more modern than the rest.    For
+     example, No. 10 is compared by Furst in his Hebrew and
+     Chaldee Lexicon, to the Sanscrit phal, and No. 8 may also be
+     derived from the Persian, and a Sanscrit root gad,  which
+     signifies "to speak to," or "call upon,"    Anahf No.  1, is
+     Aramaic.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I think that it was Mons. Weill, in his remarkable book called Moise et le
+      Talmud, who first drew attention to the influence of the Talmudists upon
+      the Jewish Scriptures. He pointed out that in the Mosaic law there was no
+      idea of prayer, intercession, or pardon; everything was based upon the
+      "lex talionis," an eye was to be paid for with an eye, murder was to be
+      avenged by murder, and ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and other
+      transgressions were to be atoned, i.e., satisfaction was to be given by
+      sacrifice and payments to the priest or tabernacle. But when the Jews,
+      after their contact with the Chaldeans, Medea, Persians, Greeks, and
+      Romans, began to study theology, two sects arose&mdash;the Talmudists, who
+      explained away the older Scriptures, interpolated narratives, or simply
+      texts therein, so as to suit their purposes; and the Sadducees, who
+      refused to adopt as matters of faith anything which was not taught by
+      Moses. The first was the strongest sect, and composed the majority in the
+      Sanhedrim. They thus had power over the sacred canon, and could reject
+      manuscripts or adopt them according as the purposes which were aimed at
+      were served. The Talmudic interpolations are supposed to b« recognised
+      chiefly in the more modern parts of the Old Testament, in Ezra, Nehemiah,
+      the second Isaiah and Jeremiah, in the books of Zechariah and Malachi, in
+      the Chronicles, Daniel, in many Psalms, more sparsely in the older
+      histories, but very largely in the Pentateuch. From these considerations,
+      from the absence of any order in the Mosaic law for the priests to offer
+      any supplication, and from, the general absence of prayer from the
+      sacrifices of all nations, we may conclude that "intercession" formed no
+      part in the Jewish religion in the early days of its existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When working upon this subject I endeavoured to examine the curious
+      Iguvian tables, on which Aufrecht, Eircher, and Newman have bestowed such
+      pains. These are, I believe, the only tables extant which give directions
+      to the old Umbrian, or any other ancient priests, how to conduct public
+      sacrifices and the ensuing feasts. In them there are directions for
+      invocations, but no formula for prayers, unless one can call invocations
+      by that name. I fancy, that in some parts of the tables there are words
+      which may be rendered "speak," or "mutter," or "meditate," or "pray
+      silently."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact that a Hebrew historian has composed a prayer, and put it into
+      the mouth of King Solomon, rather than into that of a high priest, shows
+      that supplication for the people was not a strictly sacerdotal duty. Even
+      now, with all our liberality of thought, we take our prayers from the
+      Archbishops, and not from the crown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what we have said points to another important consideration, viz., how
+      far our Authorized Version can be trusted as a foundation upon which to
+      build a theory respecting the use of prayer, when we find that the words
+      given in English do not correspond with the words in the original Hebrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have noticed in the text that both John and Jesus taught their
+      disciples to pray; we may now call attention to the idea which the latter
+      had of "prayer." In a parable, which was evidently intended to represent
+      what was common enough in his day, he says, "Two men went up into the
+      temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican; the Pharisee
+      stood and prayed thus with himself&mdash;God, I thank Thee that I am not
+      as other men are," &amp;c (Luke xviii. 10-13). Surely one cannot call a
+      boastful enumeration of one's virtues either "supplication," "prayer," or
+      "entreaty;" but we understand readily that what we should call
+      "meditation" was once included under the name "prayer." This anecdote
+      unquestionably seems to prove that there was nothing like public prayer in
+      the temple ritual. The idea of the Ancients was to obtain what they wanted
+      by costly sacrifice; the idea of the Moderns is to obtain their desires by
+      the expenditure of words only. We know that Pagans used long litanies, and
+      that Christians do so too. In Jezebel's time "0 Baal, hear us" resounded
+      on Mount Carmel in sonorous monotony. We have replaced that heathen chant
+      by another, and our cathedrals reverberate constantly with the musical
+      rogation, "We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord," uttered more than a
+      score of times. Our orthodoxy consists in our using English instead
+      Phoenician words, and in calling Baal by a word more familiar to us; and
+      as the highest commendation which we can give to others is to imitate
+      them, so we praise the Ancient heathen highly, who thought that they would
+      be heard from their "much speaking." It is ever easier to change our words
+      than our practice. Like the Pharisee, Christians boast that they are not
+      as other men are; but by their proceedings they show that they are like
+      the Jews, of whose paternity Jesus had not an exalted opinion. (See John
+      viii. 44).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In further illustration of the absence of a set form of prayer in the
+      temple worship in Jerusalem, and of the independence of all devout
+      solicitors of priestly aid, I may point to Matthew vi. 5 to 8, wherein we
+      find that hypocrites offered their supplications, not only in the temple,
+      but at the corners of the streets. It is just possible that in the former
+      locality there might have been some public worship going on, in which the
+      saintly could join, but certainly there was no such ritual at street
+      corners. But if there had really been divine service in the temple, it
+      follows that those who joined in it would not have been conspicuous, or
+      deserving the name of hypocrites. The fault of these which is mentioned by
+      Jesus is ostentatious public prayer, i.e.9 the doing of that which had not
+      been prescribed by Moses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I have, in a preceding volume, spoken at some length concerning the
+      morals and manners of ancient races, and shown how, as a rule, their
+      conduct has been the same as that of modern Christians, and as, moreover,
+      the subject has been treated of in an essay by Lecky (<i>History of
+      European Morals</i>), I will not pursue this part of my subject further
+      than to remark, that we have scarcely two articles of faith&mdash;if,
+      indeed we have more than one&mdash;i.e., respect for one day in seven&mdash;which
+      we have not received, directly or indirectly, from Pagans. Even our
+      Christianity is but a modified Buddhism, as I shall endeavour, in my next
+      chapter, to show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Christianity and Buddhism. The new and old world. An
+     impartial judge is said to be a partisan. Works on the
+     subject. Sakya Muni's birth, B.c. 620 (about), position in
+     life, original views. Parallels between Brahmin-ism,
+     Buddhism, Hebraism, and Christianity. History of Sakya Muni
+     &mdash;that of Jesus corresponds with it marvellously. Sakya
+     receives a commission from an angel&mdash;is henceforth a
+     saviour. History of Jesus follows that of Sakya. Siddartha
+     neither dictated nor wrote. A favourite garden. Sakya and
+     the Brahmins. Buddha and Christ equally persecuted. Spread
+     of Buddhism after Siddartha's death. Asoka a royal convert
+     Buddhist missionaries, b.c. 307. Their wonderful successes.
+     Different development of Buddhism and Christianity.
+     Persecution a Christian practice, Buddha tempted by the
+     Devil, and by women, like St Anthony. Buddha's life reduced
+     to writing, at least B.c. 90. Hardy on Buddhist miracles.
+     His remarks criticised. Necessity for miracles is doubtful.
+     Sakya and a future life. Resurrection from the dead. Jesus
+     not the first fruits of them that slept. Paul's argument
+     worthless. Buddhists in advance of Christians. Priestcraft
+     at time of Buddha and Jesus. Both did away with ceremonial.
+     Sakya's doctrine&mdash;compared with Christian teaching. Another
+     parallel between Buddha and Jesus. Commandments of Tathâgata
+     (Buddha), or the Great Sramana. Rules for his saintly
+     friends&mdash;for outsiders. Definition of terms. The Sra-mana's
+     opinion of miracles&mdash;a comparison. The history of Jesus told
+     without miracles. Buddhistic confession&mdash;remarks on in
+     modern times. Filial respect. Public confession, murder
+     absolved thereby. Asoka, about B.c. 263, sent out
+     missionaries. Objections made against Buddhism. Ideas
+     respecting God. Salvation. Buddha and Jesus. Nirvana. Heaven
+     and Hell&mdash;Christian ideas. Apocalypse. The heaven of John
+     and Mahomet compared with that of Buddha. Prayer not a
+     Buddhist institution&mdash;nor originally a Christian one. Nature
+     of prayer. The developments of Buddhism, particulars&mdash;
+     comparison between the Eastern ancient and Western modern
+     practice. Abbé Hue. No sexual element in Buddhism and
+     Christianity at first&mdash;it has crept into both in later
+     times. Inquiry into the probable introduction of Buddhism
+     into the West. Asceticism peculiar to Buddhism and
+     Christianity. The Essenes, their faith and practice&mdash;
+     resemblance to Buddhism. John and Jesus probably Essenes.
+     If Jesus was inspired, so was Siddartha.    Differences
+     between Sakya and Jesus. Jesus 'believed in an immediate
+     destruction of the world. Idea of préexistence in Jesus and
+     Sakya adopted by their followers. The basis of the two
+     faiths is morality&mdash;but an unsound one. Nature of the
+     unsoundness. Morality has a reference to a life on earth
+     only. The decalogue superfluous. Ideas of future rewards and
+     punishments. Dives and Lazarus. The world can exist without
+     a knowledge of a future life. God thought so when He taught
+     the Jews. Dogma versus morality. See how these Christians
+     live! There are a few good men amongst Christians.
+     Supplementary remarks.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From the Peruvian and Aztec religious systems in what we designate the New
+      World, a phrase which involves the idea that its existence was for ages
+      wholly unknown to the historians of the Eastern Hemisphere, we turn to
+      another form of faith, which demands even greater attention. Buddhism has,
+      probably, done more to influence the minds of men in Asia than any other
+      religion in any part of the globe, and its history is so remarkable, that
+      it deserves the attention of every philosophical student of mankind. To
+      the Christian it ought to be especially interesting, inasmuch as there is
+      strong reason to believe that the faith current amongst ourselves is to be
+      traced to the teaching of Sakya Muni, whose original name, we may notice,
+      in passing, was no more "Buddha" than "Christ" was the cognomen of the son
+      of Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An ingenious author on one occasion wrote a charming essay "upon the art
+      of putting things," and I cannot read any treatise upon Buddhism, written
+      by a Christian, without thinking how completely "the advocate" is to be
+      seen throughout them all Ecclesiastical writers, who are Protestant
+      preachers, endeavour laboriously to prove that the teaching of Sakya Muni
+      could not have been inspired, and was certainly false; whilst other
+      writers, who have no particular leaning towards Jesus, extol the author of
+      Buddhism beyond that of Christianity. Truly, in such a matter it is
+      extremely difficult not to appear as a partisan, however carefully the
+      scales may be held. The very fact of endeavouring "to see ourselves as
+      others see us" involves the necessity of "putting things" in a different
+      light to that which is most common or familiar to us. A bumptious Briton
+      thinks more of his own Islands than a Yankee thinks of them, and one who
+      endeavours to describe "the wheel of the law" as an astute Buddhist would
+      do, and who, at the same time, compares it with the teachings of the son
+      of Mary, must seem to those who, without knowing its nature, despise the
+      former, and yet implicitly believe in the latter, to be a partisan. Acting
+      upon this belief, we shall not scruple to appear as an advocate, for we
+      believe that "an opposition" is as good in religion as in politics, and
+      that it behoves us all to examine every important question in all its
+      bearings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the following essay I shall not attempt to go into every detail about
+      the life of Sakya Muni, for to do so would weary the reader. Anyone who
+      wishes for such information may be referred to <i>Le Bouddha et sa
+      Religion</i>, par J. Barthélemy Saint Hilaire, Paris, 1860, a book which
+      may be fairly designated as exhaustive. The English reader may also
+      consult <i>The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists</i>, by Rev. R.
+      Spence Hardy, London, 1866, which, though very prejudiced, is extremely
+      suggestive. Hardy's <i>Eastern Monachism</i> and <i>Manual of Buddhists</i>
+      are about the same. <i>The Mahawanso</i> translated by Tumour, is also a
+      very valuable work of reference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There appears to be little doubt that Sakya Muni was born about 622 years
+      before our era, and that he died when about eighty years of age, i.e.f
+      B.C. 542. He was thus a contemporary of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other
+      Jewish prophets. Though of royal birth, and of the warrior or kingly
+      caste, he does not appear to have been instructed in general history, if,
+      indeed, any such was in existence in Hindostan at that or any other
+      period; and we cannot find a tittle of evidence that he ever heard of any
+      other religion than Brahminism, the dominant faith, apparently, of the
+      Aryan invaders of India. In that he was taught assiduously, and some of
+      its tenets he most firmly believed. Amongst others, he held that men lived
+      in a future world, in which each one was rewarded or punished according to
+      his doings when in a human form. His teaching was founded upon the belief
+      which the Brahmins inculcated, that all men endure misery in this world
+      for their conduct in a previous state of existence, and that they would
+      once again suffer after death, unless they conducted themselves, in this
+      life, in a manner pleasing to the Almighty. In this creed is clearly
+      involved, if not distinctly enunciated, a full acknowledgment of the
+      existence and power of God, of the certainty of a future life, and a
+      desire to escape from penalties to be inflicted therein by a supreme
+      celestial Judge, for immorality or impropriety committed in the present
+      state. For these points of doctrine Sakya did not contend, he merely laid
+      down a different system to the Brahmins as to the method by which
+      salvation was to be attained, and the penal consequences of a sinful life
+      were to be avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now, halting here for a moment, examine these matters for
+      ourselves, and inquire in what way such faith differs from our own. The
+      Brahmin taught that man suffers pain, misery, and death for certain crimes
+      committed in a previous state of existence; the Christian teaches that
+      each one suffers for a fault committed by ancestors who lived thousands of
+      years ago. Neither the one nor the other regard pain, sorrow, suffering,
+      and death as the normal accompaniments of life, but both attribute them to
+      the wrath of an offended deity, who can be, in some way, cheated, cajoled,
+      appeased, or propitiated. Both assert that men are debtors to God, and
+      that miseries are "duns" used to make men pay their obligations to heaven.
+      The Brahmin taught that this could be effected by prayer, sacrifice, and
+      sundry ceremonies to be performed by some man who had been specially
+      appointed for the purpose. A due attention to morality was also
+      inculcated, but it was apparently considered as of less importance than
+      ritualistic observances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jew, whom so many amongst us believe to have been especially taught by
+      God, propounded a belief essentially similar to that of the Brahmin, with
+      the single exception that he had no faith in a future existence, but
+      thought that sacrifice and offerings, through a priesthood, were necessary
+      to obtain comfort in this life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Christian teaches that the horrors of eternity can only be escaped by
+      believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts xvi. 30, 31), and by being moral
+      in addition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The "belief" here referred to is somewhat amplified in other parts of the
+      Bible, and notably in John iii. 15-17, 36; vi. 39, 40; ix. 35; xi. 15; and
+      Acts viii. 37; from which we learn that an item in the faith was a firm
+      hold upon the idea that Jesus was the son, the only begotten son, of God.
+      This dogma is still further extended in the "Apostles' Creed," wherein the
+      Christians express, as articles of faith, their belief, that Jesus Christ
+      was the only son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the
+      Virgin Mary, &amp;c. This tenet is somewhat varied in the Nicene Creed,
+      which expresses the Christian belief to be, that the Lord Jesus Christ is
+      the only begotten son of God&mdash;begotten of his Father before all
+      worlds&mdash;being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things
+      were made, &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fundamental teaching of Sakya was, that man can only escape the
+      tortures of the damned, by a strict propriety of conduct in this world,
+      and a persistent endeavour to renounce and think nothing of the
+      gratifications which make life pleasant. The modern Buddhist adds to this
+      a belief in the absolute divinity of the founder of his faith, not simply
+      that he was a son of God, but a visible embodiment of a portion of the
+      Creative Unity. Brahmins and Buddhists believe in transmigration of souls:
+      the Christian does the like, only, instead of being converted into a
+      beast, he imagines that he will become either an angel or a devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within certain limits, we may, therefore, say that the Brahminic, the
+      Jewish, the Buddhist, and the Christian religions are essentially alike,
+      differing only upon minor points, such as the absolute value of morality,
+      of ceremonial, of doctrine, of asceticism, the nature of a hypothetical
+      antecedent, and an equally uncertain future existence, and the best means
+      of escaping the penalties attached, in the second state, to impropriety of
+      conduct in the first. If we deride the Brahmin and the Buddhist for the
+      faith which they entertain, our laugh must necessarily recoil on
+      ourselves, for we have no more unequivocal grounds for our belief than
+      they have for theirs. We point in vain to what we call "Revelation," for
+      they can do the same, and if priority in such matters is good for
+      anything, the Brahminic must take precedence of the Jewish, and the
+      Buddhist of the Christian code. Nor can we call miracles to our exclusive
+      aid, for the religious books of the Hindoo are as full of them as are
+      those of the Jew and Christian, and the stories told in the one can be
+      readily paralleled in impossibility, incapacity, frivolity, and absurdity
+      by the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must remember, then, when speaking of the teaching of Sakya, that it
+      was constructed upon the supposed fundamental truths of Brahminism, just
+      as the doctrines of Jesus were built upon those of Judaism. By adopting
+      these, respectively, the two preachers have demonstrated their belief in
+      them, but neither the one nor the other have advanced our knowledge as to
+      the reality of the earliest faith, nor demonstrated the truth of their
+      subsequent assumptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now endeavour, for the sake of comparison, to place the Eastern and
+      the Western points of belief in parallel columns, we shall be better able
+      to see the points of resemblance and of difference than by any other plan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/115.jpg" alt="115 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      These are only a few of the leading points of resemblance and difference,
+      and might be almost indefinitely multiplied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After this preface, we may proceed to notice that Siddartha&mdash;another
+      name for Buddha&mdash;was of royal birth, and born in wedlock: his mother
+      was called Maya Devi, and was herself the daughter of a king. His father
+      was of the warrior caste, and, according to ancient usage, Sakya, like
+      Jesus some centuries later, was presented in the temple of the God of his
+      parents, and recognized by a Brahmin, whom we may designate as a
+      predecessor, by some hundreds of years, of the Jewish Simeon (Luke ii 25,
+      seq.)f as having the marks of a great man upon him. As Sakya grew up to
+      man's estate he was found to be peculiarly clever, and soon distanced his
+      masters, as Jesus was and did, when, at twelve years, he went into the
+      temple and astonished the doctors. He was always thoughtful, and
+      frequently remained alone. Once he wandered into a forest, (compare
+      Matthew iv. 1-11), in which he was found lost in thought. When obliged to
+      exhibit his talents, Siddartha was found to have every conceivable
+      excellence, bodily and mental He was, by parental desire, married to a
+      paragon of a wife, who showed her good sense by rejecting the use of a
+      veil. In this Sakya differs from Mary's son, who never married, being,
+      most probably, of the tribe of the Essenes. In later life Siddartha
+      discouraged wedlock and every form of love. But, during all his outward
+      happiness; Siddartha's thoughts ran upon the misery which he saw on every
+      side to be common in the world, and he entertained a hope that he would be
+      able to show man the road to a happy immortality. In these ideas the
+      teacher was encouraged by a god, who appeared to him by night, and told
+      him that the appointed time for the deliverer had come. This comforter
+      also recommended him to leave his wife, his wealth, his father's house,
+      and give up all he had, so as to be able to seek, unencumbered, the way of
+      salvation. Compare here the passage, Mark x. 20-30, wherein Jesus gives
+      the same kind of advice as the angel gave to Sakya Muni. Having become
+      satisfied of his mission from God, he resolutely abandoned everything,
+      and, being really a scion of royalty, he had much to renounce. Siddartha
+      thus became a mendicant, dependent upon others for food and raiment, and
+      resembled that son of Mary, of whom we read that he had not a residence
+      wherein to lay his head (Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58). He was about
+      twenty-nine years of age when he thus became poor for the sake of mankind.
+      Compare what is said of Jesus, Luke iii. 23. Though Siddartha was opposed
+      to the Brahmins, he nevertheless studied their doctrines, as Mary's son
+      did that of the Hebrew theologians, thoroughly, under one of the wisest of
+      them, for many years. Then, leaving this teacher, he went about preaching
+      and doing good. So much were men impressed with his beauty, his piety, and
+      his doctrines, that they flocked in crowds to see him, and he taught them
+      whilst sitting on the brow of Mount Pandava&mdash;even kings came to hear
+      him. Compare here what is said of the Nazarene, Matt. iv. 23 to Matt.
+      viii. 1. Sakya was persecuted for a long time by a relative, who
+      ultimately became one of his most ardent disciples. Compare Matt. xvi. 22
+      and John xxi. 15, et seq. Siddartha's austerities and mortifications of
+      himself, in every conceivable way, were excessive during the next six
+      years, and these have been represented as a combat with the Devil, whose
+      kingdom he destroyed. At the end of this probation, Sakya Muni, finding
+      fasting and pain not profitable for eternal salvation, resumed the
+      ordinary human habits of eating, &amp;c. This disgusted many of his
+      disciples, and "they walked no more with him." He was partly supported by
+      a slave woman, and was content to clothe himself with vestments taken from
+      the dead. Finally, this wonderful son of Maya heard within him a voice,
+      which told him that he was divine, the saviour of the world, and the
+      incarnation of the wisdom of God&mdash;Buddha, "the word" itself. Compare
+      John i. 1, et seq. This was confirmed by a miracle, and thus, at the age
+      of thirty-six, and at the foot of a fig tree, Sakya Muni received a divine
+      commission, "and the word was made flesh." But, though thus divinely
+      inspired, the saviour doubted his power to convert mankind, and at the
+      first he only preached his new doctrines to a few. Even in this respect it
+      is marvellous to see how closely the Christian story of Jesus follows that
+      of his predecessor Siddartha. Some opposed Sakya, but these were soon
+      converted by his majesty, and the glory with which he spake the words&mdash;"Yes,"
+      he said, "I have come to see clearly both immortality and the way to
+      attain it; I am Buddha&mdash;I know all&mdash;I see all&mdash;I have
+      blotted out my faults, and am above all law." Recognizing in Siddartha the
+      teacher of mankind, the common people heard him gladly, and gave him
+      homage, and he, in return, taught them his full doctrine. The Indian
+      saviour then proceeded to the holy city, Benares, and taught there. But
+      though he spoke much, he neither dictated nor wrote&mdash;like Jesus,
+      subsequently, he made no provision by which his doctrines might be
+      perpetuated. From Benares he went to other places, some of which were
+      especially dear to him, and thus became sacred. In like manner Bethany was
+      sanctified by Jesus. Amongst others was a garden, given to him, with a
+      mansion, by a wealthy disciple, which a lively fancy might call a Hindoo
+      Gethsemane. In this garden Buddha made many disciples, and in it the first
+      council of his followers was held after his death. Another favourite
+      retreat was a plantation of mango trees, and this, like every other spot
+      that Siddartha is known to have visited, has been adorned by the faithful
+      with ornamental architecture in commemoration of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As may be supposed, Sakya, when he assailed the Brahmins, was in turn
+      opposed by them with persevering malevolence; the former was outspoken and
+      said what he thought of the priests&mdash;he called them hypocrites,
+      cheats, impostors, and the like&mdash;and they were apparently conscious
+      that they deserved such titles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, again, we notice a singular parallel between the Hindoo saviour and
+      the Jewish one, who followed him after a long interval. Not that there is
+      anything wonderful in the founder of a new faith reviling the ministers of
+      one more ancient&mdash;nor in the priests of an established church
+      endeavouring to suppress, by punishments, the professors who interfere
+      with their repose. We know how the Christian fathers abused and lampooned
+      the faith of those whose practices they detested&mdash;how Luther and his
+      followers lashed the vices of the Papists, and how these in their turn
+      burned the new preachers&mdash;when they had a chance; how the
+      Nonconformists censured the Establishment, and how the Episcopal Church
+      has harried Independents and Presbyterians. But it is strange to find both
+      Sakya and Jesus inaugurating a religion of peace by fierce invectives. We
+      have not particulars respecting the choice of language made use of by the
+      Indian, but we can scarcely imagine that it could be more to the purpose
+      than the vituperation employed by the Hebrew. Jesus says,&mdash;"Ye
+      compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made ye make
+      him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves,"&mdash;"Ye are like
+      unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are
+      within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matt, xxiii. 15-27).
+      One cannot wonder that the Brahmins and the Pharisees, who were objurgated
+      as hypocrites, should retort upon their accusers, prosecute the one and
+      crucify the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Sakya's influence increased, the power of the old priesthood
+      diminished, and there are accounts of many contests between the old
+      dispensers of Brahma's religion and the new saviour, which were held
+      before kings and people. In consequence of these disputes Buddha's life
+      was repeatedly in danger. But though often threatened, Siddartha died
+      peacefully when about eighty years old, beloved by many, respected by
+      more, worshipped as a divinity by his immediate disciples and intimate
+      friends, and venerated by all who had listened to his discourses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are a great many legends existent, and of very respectable antiquity
+      too, which tell of miracles performed by this very remarkable Indian
+      teacher; but the judicious historian, upon whose authority I am at present
+      relying (St. Hilaire), does not intermingle these with the narrative of
+      Siddartha's life. In this respect he shows greater judgment than the
+      scribes who first compiled the stories of Buddha and of Jesus, both of
+      whom conceived that human beings could not be converted to a new style of
+      belief without thaumaturgy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The account of Sakya Muni and his religion would be incomplete did we not
+      add that he left behind him enthusiastic disciples who were eager and
+      successful in spreading his views. But many years, how many we do not know
+      with absolute certainty, elapsed ere any account was written either of his
+      life or of his teaching. Nor ought we to wonder at this, for until time
+      has been given to mankind, it cannot fairly estimate the value of anything
+      new; and when men do at length form, what they believe to be, a perfect
+      judgment of the importance of the doctrine which has become deeply rooted,
+      they are more eager to promulgate it in the world than to record it by
+      writing in the closet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The new religion certainly spread extensively all over the vast continent
+      of Hindustan, and in the course of about three hundred years, found an
+      enthusiastic and powerful convert in the person of a king called Asoka,
+      who was reigning when the third convocation of Buddhists was called, b.c.
+      307. This ruler was imbued with a missionary spirit, and under his
+      influence, preachers full of energy went not only throughout India, but
+      into China, Japan, Ceylon, and apparently into every country to which
+      ships, caravans, and the flow of commerce gave them access, including
+      Persia, Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and the very populous and
+      important emporium Alexandria. We may judge of the fanaticism of these
+      religious envoys by their success, and we may, as is often done by
+      Christian missionaries, test the real value of their doctrine by its
+      endurance, and its adaptability to the religious wants of the human
+      animal. If missionary success is a test of truth in religion, Buddhism
+      must be superior to Christianity. Buddah&mdash;for his name is spelled
+      variously&mdash;has more followers, according to competent authorities,
+      than Jesus, and if the depth and earnestness shown by the converts to the
+      two men could be weighed in impartial scales, we believe that the
+      preponderance would be in favour of the followers of the Indian saviour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We readily allow that Buddhism has not developed in many matters like
+      Christianity has done. The Buddhism of to-day does not essentially differ
+      from that in the early ages of the faith; the followers of Siddartha have
+      not adopted the doctrines of the nations amongst which they have settled.
+      The Christianity of to-day, on the other hand, is so widely different from
+      that current in the first century of our era, that it has been remarked,
+      with great pungency, that if Jesus revisited us now, he would be denounced
+      as a heretic, and abused as a nonconformist. His followers soon introduced
+      politics into religion, and adopted the fables and the doctrines of the
+      Pagans amongst whom they dwelt, merely changing certain names, and
+      ascribing virtues and miracles to saints, which the heathen attributed to
+      Apollo, Mars, or Venus. Jesus, though a Jew, never sacrificed, nor did his
+      apostles, but his followers thought prudent to filch the practice from the
+      heathen; and, to smooth their difficulty, they profess to turn bread and
+      wine into flesh and blood, and offer it up as an oblation upon their
+      ecclesiastical altar. Jesus knew nothing of purgatory; with him the rich
+      man went direct to hell, and Lazarus to Abraham's bosom. Modern Christians
+      are wiser than their teacher; for he disdained the learning of Egypt, his
+      followers took their purgatory and trinity therefrom. All this shows, that
+      the faith of Christians in their teacher has not been equal to the
+      unbounded trust felt by the Buddhist in his master's wisdom. Buddhism,
+      moreover, has neither taught nor sanctioned any system of persecution.
+      Sakya, it is true, encouraged men to make themselves miserable upon earth
+      that they might attain future immunity from woe, but he never ordered them
+      to use the sword or dragonnades to force other people to do so. The
+      followers of Jesus, on the other hand, have but too often founded their
+      claim to a happy immortality on making other men, whom they called
+      heretics, miserable, as during the period of the crusades against the
+      Saracens, the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Waldenses. The Christians
+      in many ages seemed to argue thus:&mdash;As the painful death of Mary's
+      son saved the world, so I, by torturing a heretic, may save myself. This
+      is an idea of vicarious atonement which, though prevalent for centuries,
+      has never been committed to writing by those who hold it. We do not mean
+      to allege that the opinion referred to cannot be found in history, for it
+      is from such a source that our assertion comes. A belief, such as we refer
+      to, was promulgated amongst the Crusaders, and was fostered by the
+      founders of the Inquisition. Such an idea, too, is embodied in the word&mdash;"The
+      time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God
+      service" (John xvi. 2).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may, however, trace the idea of persecution in the early Christian
+      Scriptures. Paul, for example, when writing to the Corinthians (1 Epistle
+      v. 3-5) gives such encouragement as he can to those who punish an erring
+      brother Christian, by delivering him over to Satan for the destruction of
+      the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus, and
+      in (1st Tim. i. 20), the same author declares,&mdash;"I have delivered
+      Hymenseus and Alexander unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme."
+      The idea being, that by thus acting, both the Corinthians and Paul were
+      improving their own ecclesiastical condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As I may not have another available opportunity for introducing one or two
+      striking parallels between Sakya Muni and Jesus, I may mention here that
+      the former is represented as being tempted by and having conversation with
+      an evil spirit called Mâra, Evil one, Destroyer, Devil, or Papiyan. In one
+      of these confabulations Buddah says,&mdash;"I will soon triumph over you&mdash;'desires'
+      are your chief soldiers, then come idleness, hunger and thirst, passions,
+      sleepy indolence, fears, doubts, angers, hypocrisy, ambition, the desire
+      to be respected, and to have renown, praise of yourself and blame for
+      others&mdash;these are your black allies, the soldiers of the burning
+      demon. Your soldiers subjugate gods and men, but not me, I shall crush
+      them by wisdom, then what will you do?" (Hilaire, p. 61). The sage is
+      then, not unlike the so-called St. Anthony, tempted by lovely woman,
+      thirty-two lovely demons (Apsaras) deploying all their charms. Then
+      follows a third trial, and Mâra says to Siddartha,&mdash;"I am the lord of
+      desire, I am the master of the entire world, the gods, the crowd of
+      Dâvanas (spirits), men and beasts have been subjugated by me and are in my
+      power. Like them enter my domains, rise up and speak like them." Buddha
+      replied,&mdash;"If you are the lord of desire you are not the lord of
+      light. Look at me, I am the lord of the law, you are powerless, and in
+      your very sight I shall obtain supreme intelligence," (p. 64, op. cit.).
+      The demon makes one more effort, and is again conquered, and then retires,
+      tracing with an arrow these words upon the ground&mdash;"My empire has
+      passed away." It may be imagined that the French author whom I quote is a
+      partisan of the Indian sage; far from it, he records such tales with
+      regret, for he sees how strong an influence they must have upon the
+      perfect or imperfect authenticity of the New Testament and the story of
+      Jesus. The similarity of the two histories is heightened by the legend
+      before noticed, that Buddha went to Heaven to convert his mother, whilst
+      Jesus is said to have gone down to Hades to preach to the spirits in
+      prison, with the implied intention of converting them to the faith which
+      he preached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will doubtless have occurred to anyone reading the preceding pages, if
+      he be but familiar with the New Testament, that either the Christian
+      histories called Gospels have been largely influenced by Buddhist's
+      legends, or that the story of Siddartha has been moulded upon that of
+      Jesus. The subject is one which demands and deserves the greatest
+      attention, for if our religion be traceable to Buddhism, as the later
+      Jewish faith is to the doctrines of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians, we
+      must modify materially our notions of "inspiration" and "revelation." Into
+      this inquiry St. Hilaire goes as far as documentary evidence allows him,
+      and Hardy in <i>Legends and Theories of the Buddhists</i> also enters upon
+      it in an almost impartial manner. From their conclusions there can be no
+      reasonable doubt that the story of the life of Sakya Muni, such as we have
+      described it, certainly existed in writing ninety years before the birth
+      of Jesus; consequently, if the one life seems to be a copy of the other,
+      the gospel writers must be regarded as the plagiarists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the story of Buddha, we have eliminated the miraculous part, and
+      exhibited him simply as a remarkable man. Nevertheless, in the writings of
+      his followers, miracles in abundance are assigned to him. Whether these
+      existed in the original history Hardy doubts, and his remarks are so
+      apposite that we reproduce them (op. cit. p. xxviii). "Upon the
+      circumstances of this first rehearsal (of the life and doctrine of
+      Siddartha), most important consequences depend. If the miracles ascribed
+      to Buddha can be proved to have been recorded of him at the time of his
+      death, this would go far towards proving that the authority to which he
+      laid claim was his rightful prerogative. They were of too public character
+      to have been ascribed to him then if they had not taken place; so that if
+      it was openly declared by his contemporaries, by those who had lived with
+      him in the same monastery, that he had been repeatedly visited by Sekra
+      and other Deivas; and that he had walked through the air and visited the
+      heavenly world in the presence of many thousands, and those the very
+      persons whom they addressed, we ought to render to him the homage awarded
+      to him by even his most devoted followers. But the legend of the early
+      rehearsal has nothing to support it beyond the assertion of authors who
+      lived at a period long subsequent. The testimony of contemporaneous
+      history presents no record of any event that quadrates with the wonderful
+      powers attributed to the 'rahals,' which would undoubtedly not have been
+      wanting if these events had really taken place."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader of this extract will now naturally turn his attention to the
+      Christian gospels, and inquire into the time when they were written, and
+      whether the arguments used by Hardy, for disbelieving the miracles of
+      Buddha, do not equally disprove the authenticity of the miracles
+      attributed to Jesus. We can find nowhere, in contemporary history&mdash;and
+      there is an adequate account thereof, both Jewish and Roman&mdash;any
+      records of the wonders said to have been done in Judea by the son of Mary.
+      Though he was noticed by a certain writer in the Talmud, under the name of
+      Ben Panther, that book contains no account of the marvellous works
+      recorded in the gospels, nor any reference to his miraculous power. The
+      Romans who dwelt in Jerusalem knew nothing of any real miracle, though
+      Herod is reported to have noticed some gossiping accounts of John's
+      successor. We do not find a single reference to any of the wonderful
+      events told in the gospels in any epistle written by those who "companied
+      with Jesus"&mdash;except the assertion that he had risen from the dead, to
+      be found in 1 Corinthians xv. and elsewhere&mdash;whose value is
+      problematical Still farther, we have tolerably good evidence to show that
+      the Gospels were written at a time when they could not be tested by those
+      people in whose presence the wonders were said to have been wrought. The
+      narrative of John, for example, is, by scholars, supposed to have been
+      written more than a century, probably one hundred and fifty years, after
+      the crucifixion, and the others seem to have been composed for the benefit
+      of those who did not live in, or know Jerusalem and Judea intimately. They
+      resemble, in almost every respect, the stories told of such Roman saints
+      as Francis of Assisi, Bernard, Carlo Borromeo, and Ignatius Loyola, which
+      were always composed long after the death, and out of the presence of
+      every one of those who could deny or controvert them. However much, or
+      little, we may credit the biographies of Buddha and Jesus, we cannot for a
+      moment doubt, that the two individuals were instrumental in founding forms
+      of religion, which, by the aid of missionaries, spread over a vast extent
+      of the habitable globe. Unlike that of Mahomet, the faiths referred to
+      were promulgated by peaceful persuasion rather than by the sword, and by
+      the power of eloquence, example, and precept, rather than by the influence
+      of miracles. If, for the sake of argument, we grant that every specimen of
+      thaumaturgy which his followers attribute to Jesus is correctly reported,
+      we must allow also that his power of making converts by teaching,
+      preaching, and wonder working, was inferior to that of his followers, who
+      taught, preached, and proselytized without performing many, if any
+      miracles. If we assert that miraculous powers are necessary for the
+      establishment and propagation of a new religion, then we must, to be
+      consistent with ourselves, believe in the thaumaturgy of the Buddhists,
+      and the divine mission of Sakya Muni. If, on the other hand, we deny that
+      Siddartha was an incarnate god or saviour, was not divinely inspired, and
+      performed no real miracle, then it is clear that the miracles, which Jesus
+      is said to have achieved, were wholly unnecessary, and not required in any
+      way to upset an old religion, to found a new, or to spread it when
+      established.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The philosopher may pause here, with profit to himself, and inquire
+      whether there is, or there are, any new form or forms of religion which
+      has or have sprung up within his own observation, and if so, whether it or
+      they has or have been based upon thaumaturgy&mdash;and, if one or more
+      have been so founded, whether one shows evidence of stability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Few can deny that Mormonism is a form of belief which has a considerable
+      number of adherents, a body of earnest missionaries, and a laity whose
+      faith and practice have been sorely tested by hardship. Yet there has not
+      been a single miracle performed by its prophets. It is reported that its
+      founder announced that he would perform one in the sight of all Israel and
+      of the sun, but when the time came he said, that if the spectators
+      believed that he could do what was promised, that was quite enough!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Spiritualism, on the other hand, is a new sort of theosophy, ostensibly
+      founded and supported wholly by thaumaturgy; its disciples have induced
+      themselves to believe, against their original ideas, that we are not only
+      surrounded by the spirits of the departed, but that these can be brought
+      into connection with us by means of certain individuals, called mediators
+      or mediums&mdash;that these have such power, over the invisible beings
+      hovering in the air, that the souls of the dead may be made to shake the
+      tables of the living, and lift up their sofas to the ceiling. The miracles
+      are believed in by many, but Spiritualism lags far behind the Mormon
+      theology, and probably always will do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may regard this part of our subject in yet another light. Let us, for
+      example, suppose that the Buddhists and the Christians succeed in
+      persuading each other of the incorrectness of the miraculous element in
+      their respective books, does it therefore follow, that any essential part
+      of the creed of either one or other must be altered? The doctrines of
+      Siddartha would not be valueless even if his followers disbelieved in his
+      power to fly as a bird, or cross a river on the surface of the water&mdash;nor
+      would those of Mary's son be proved to be worthless if it were certain
+      that he never marched over a billowy sea, and that he was not really
+      killed by crucifixion. The disciples of Sakya Muni believed in a
+      resurrection of the dead, without having had the advantage of a real or
+      imaginary reappearance of their master after his supposed decease. The
+      Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans, had all an Elysium to which the good folk
+      went. The Red Indian believes in a future life and happy hunting grounds
+      (so we are told), although he has never heard of Judea. The rude Northmen
+      and Danes had also their Valhalla to go to after death, long ere they were
+      Christians. Still farther, it is to be noticed, by the close observer,
+      that the Jews at the time of Jesus, and some of the Greeks about the same
+      period, were divided in their opinions respecting the existence of men in
+      a future state. The Sadducees, holding fast to the books of Moses and the
+      Prophets, denied the existence of a resurrection, of angels or of spirits.
+      The Pharisees, on the other hand, influenced apparently by Babylonian and
+      Persian theology, had faith in all three. That this belief in a future
+      life was not commonly held by the poor folk in Judea, we infer from Mark
+      ix. 10, wherein we are told that Peter, James, and John were "questioning
+      with one another what the rising from the dead should mean." That the
+      Athenians were equally careless about what is now called "heaven and
+      hell," we judge from Acts xvii. 18, wherein we are told that Paul's
+      preaching about "Jesus and the resurrection" was a strange affair, and
+      from the thirty-second verse of the same chapter, wherein it is said that
+      the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus was received with derision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am quite aware that it may be objected to these remarks that the doubt
+      about the rising from the dead does not point to a general resurrection,
+      but simply to the return to life of one particular individual. This,
+      however, only removes the difficulty to a short distance, for Greek story
+      tells us of the annual return of Proserpine from the realms of Pluto to
+      the light of day, and Adonis was yearly resuscitated, in mythical
+      narrative. For the Hebrew, the rising from the dead ought not to be a
+      wonderful matter. Was it not told in their Scriptures how, when certain
+      persons were burying a man, the bearers in a fright threw the corpse into
+      the sepulchre of Elijah, whose bones had such efficacy that they revived
+      the dead man, who stood on his feet (2 Kings xiii. 21). We find also, from
+      Mark vi. 16, Luke ix. 9, that Herod had a full belief in the power of John
+      to rise again from the death to which that monarch had consigned him. The
+      sceptic may doubt the ability of the two evangelists to read what was
+      passing through the royal mind when Jesus and his works were brought
+      before its notice, but he cannot doubt that the writer was aware that in
+      Herod's time there was a belief in the resurrection of individuals.
+      Indeed, we find in the verse following that which tells of the Apostle's
+      bewilderment, Mark ix. 11, a question, "why say the scribes that Elias
+      must first come?" To which the reply is that the prophet has come. We are
+      constrained, therefore, to believe that Jesus was not the first who rose
+      from the dead; nay, even he himself commissioned his disciples to "cleanse
+      the lepers, and raise the dead" (Matth. x. 8). What, then, is the value of
+      the arguments that Paul builds upon the assertion that Christ is "the
+      first fruits of them that slept."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This being so, we may fairly ask, whence did Mary's son derive the ideas
+      which he promulgated of a resurrection, and of salvation, and why had a
+      sophistical writer like Paul to adopt the clumsy contrivance of asserting
+      that Jesus not only had risen, but that he was the first individual who
+      had done so, to demonstrate that the dead really did return again to life?
+      Paul's argument, indeed, shows how little he knew or had thought upon the
+      subject, for he distinctly preaches a resurrection of the body, not of the
+      soul, a belief adopted into the Apostles' creed. Yet, at the very period
+      when the minds of Christians were thus unformed, the disciples of Buddha,
+      to a man, believed in a future "Nirvana," in which "there should be no
+      more sorrow nor crying, neither should there be any more pain, and where
+      all earthly things should have passed away" (see Rev. xxi. 4). We are not
+      yet in the position to prove that Mary's son and certain of his followers
+      received their inspiration from disciples of Siddartha, but there is
+      certainly a strong presumption in favour of the possibility, much evidence
+      of its probability, and nothing whatever to disprove it. To this, however,
+      we will return by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere we proceed to examine into the nature of the doctrines of Sakya Muni
+      and of Jesus, we may cast a glance over the condition of the men whom they
+      converted. In both instances, it is not too much to say that they all were
+      "priest-ridden" in the fullest meaning of the term. The residents in
+      Modern India and Papal Rome, until a short time ago, well understood what
+      the term signifies; day by day, and almost hour by hour, there is, or was
+      in these places, some ceremony to be attended, some prayer to be uttered,
+      some confession to be made, some contribution to be given to monastery,
+      church, or priest. Penances are, and were inflicted of the most painful,
+      sometimes of the most disgusting kind. The last I heard of was in Wales,
+      where a man was ordered to lie down at the church door as a mat, upon
+      which the faithful were to wipe their feet. Both in India and Italy, men,
+      women, and children alike are, or were, taught to regard themselves as the
+      servants, and even slaves of the hierarchy, and their money is, or was,
+      alienated from wives and children to swell the coffers of spiritual
+      tyrants. Perpetual terrors of hell are sounded, until those hearers, whose
+      hearts are impressionable, are habitually haunted by imaginary horrors,
+      each one of which has to be bought off by a sort of hush-money paid to the
+      priest, who has invented, adopted, or described them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the condition of England and France prior to the Reformation and
+      the Revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So long as men are debased by their guides, and allow themselves, with the
+      docility of a well-trained dog, to be ruled, and so long as tyrannical
+      flamens can wring an ever increasing tax from the people, there is
+      probably nothing more in the breast of each than a vague feeling of
+      dislike, or regret, at the existence of such things, which rarely receives
+      utterance for fear of punishment. But as soon as a man, more bold than his
+      neighbours, raises a standard of revolt, whose success appears to be
+      secure, the bulk of the oppressed first sympathize with, yet fear to join
+      him, then, after watching eagerly the course of events, and admiring the
+      boldness of men more resolute than themselves, they timidly make common
+      cause with the reformer, and, if circumstances favour them, they become
+      enthusiastic. As the news of the mental revolt swells, the people, tired
+      of oppression, rise in their might and sweep away the hierarchy, or compel
+      it to abandon its pretensions. Buddha and Christ were such leaders as we
+      here describe, and such was the course gone through by their followers.
+      The timid Peter denying Jesus, and yet afterwards boldly preaching him up,
+      is an example almost too well known to be quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are now in a position to inquire into the nature of Siddartha's
+      teaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Premising that his doctrines were collected at least 200 years B. C., the
+      first which we notice is one that he not only inculcated by language but
+      enforced by his abiding example. He taught that the comforts and pleasures
+      of this life act as fetters, to chain man's spirit to earth; that day by
+      day they necessitate the cultivation of propensities and passions more or
+      less bestial in their nature; and that as these strengthen, so the
+      individual who possessed them would be born again, after his death, to
+      some form of misery and woe in which he would have to atone for the human
+      infirmities which he had not conquered. To escape from the possibility of
+      such an event, Sakya counselled his disciples to wean themselves, as far
+      as possible, from every sensual passion; to mortify the body by fasting,
+      so as to make it more readily separable from the inner man; to renounce
+      all comfort except that of doing good; and believing in a state of perfect
+      future salvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man, he taught, must abandon everything as valueless compared with the
+      attainment of salvation or <i>nirvana</i>; he must be wholly dependent
+      upon others for food and raiment; he must take no thought for the morrow,
+      and live like a bird or lily, laying up no store; for certainly a disciple
+      of Sakya ought not to undertake any trade or other means of gaining a
+      livelihood, lest it should ensnare his spirit and tie it down to the
+      grovelling things of earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the rule for the very faithful, the infirm believers had a more
+      lenient code.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now turn to the doctrine said to have been taught by Jesus and his
+      disciples, we shall find a close parallel between it and that of the
+      Indian teacher. For example, John says (1 Epis. ii. 15,16) "Love not the
+      world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the
+      world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world,
+      the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is
+      not of the Father but is of the world." Paul says (Rom. xii. 2) "Be not
+      conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your
+      mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
+      of God." James also says (ch. iv. 4) "Know ye not that the friendship of
+      the world is enmity with God; whosoever, therefore, will be a friend of
+      the world, is the enemy of God." Again, we find in Matthew xix., Mark x.,
+      and Luke xii., the story of a young man who was possessed of wealth,
+      probably scarcely less than that of Sakya Muni, and whose life had been
+      conscientiously conducted, according to the commandments which he knew,
+      and who having heard of Jesus, came to ask him if there were a more
+      certain way of salvation than the one he was in. To him the reply is,&mdash;"If
+      thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor,
+      and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me." In the
+      verses, moreover, which follow, there is a remark from the same teacher to
+      the effect, that "every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or
+      sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my
+      name's sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting
+      life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once again, we find an exact counterpart of Buddha's teaching in the
+      sermon on the Mount, which is recorded in Matth. vi. 25-34&mdash;"I say
+      unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye
+      shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life
+      more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air,
+      for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your
+      heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?... Why
+      take ye thought for raiment, consider the lilies of the field... if God so
+      clothe the grass... shall he not much more clothe you? Therefore take no
+      thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal
+      shall we be clothed?... Take therefore no thought for the morrow...
+      sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Other similar passages might
+      readily be given, but the above suffice to demonstrate the Buddhistic
+      teaching of the prophet of Nazareth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both start from the idea that death, disease, pain, and misery is the
+      result of sin&mdash;and both imagine that sin consists in living and
+      acting upon the natural wants, necessities, and propensities of human
+      kind. Both imagine that to be natural is to be vile, and that salvation is
+      to be attained by resisting every impulse which is common to mankind Man
+      desires to eat when hungry&mdash;this is a weakness to be combated; a
+      mother loves her babe&mdash;this must not be tolerated; a youth covets a
+      damsel in marriage&mdash;this is a snare to draw both down to hell;
+      celibacy must be enforced. The argument runs thus,&mdash;If any one enjoys
+      life he is sure to fear death, and will certainly pay for his pleasures;
+      but if any one has the resolution to pass his years on earth in misery
+      like that of hell, he will be glad to die, and fearless of any place of
+      torment; use has bred a habit in him and no torture can come amiss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some Christian author has ventured to assert "religion never was designed
+      to make our pleasures less," but he was a conspicuous heretic. Buddha's
+      doctrine was founded upon the assertion that life is always short, and
+      that it is not worth a man's while to buy a few years of enjoyment with
+      myriads of years of agony. Jesus preached that the Jews' time was short,
+      for they, and most probably all the world besides, were to be burned up
+      any day within the duration of the generation&mdash;what then was the use
+      of laying up stores of grain, of buying fine clothes, and keeping wine to
+      get mellow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both preachers were equally short sighted and absurd in their teaching,
+      for if their disciples were to live upon alms, and all repented and
+      adopted the doctrine, it is clear that all would starve together, and self
+      immolation by hunger was repugnant to both prophets. If no one made
+      clothes all must go naked, and indecency was forbidden. If no one was to
+      lay up money, there would be no one to pay for work, yet toil was
+      considered to be a duty. If every one was to live from hand to mouth, who
+      would keep a calf until it became a heifer, or a lamb to become a sheep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is difficult to conceive that two individuals could have worked out
+      such a scheme of salvation independently, and the minuteness of the
+      resemblances induces me to believe that Jesus, possibly without knowing
+      it, first adopted and then promulgated in Judea the doctrines of the
+      Indian sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Following, again, the lead of St. Hilaire (<i>Le Bouddha, &amp;c</i>,
+      1860, pp. 81, et seq.), we find that Siddartha taught 600 years B. C.,
+      that death and all the miseries of mankind were due to the passions,
+      desires, and sins of man; that all this misery would cease in Nirvana (of
+      which we shall speak by and by), and that the means to attain to this
+      salvation is to keep the true faith; to have a correct judgment; to be
+      truthful in all things, and to hold every false thing in abhorrence;
+      always to act and to think with a pure and honest mind; to adopt a
+      religious life, i.e., one that is in no respect worldly, not owing even
+      subsistence to anything which might be tainted with sin; to practise a
+      careful and earnest study of the law; to cultivate a good memory, so that
+      all mistakes in conduct may be remembered if they have occurred, and be
+      avoided in the future; and frequent meditation, i.e., an abstraction of
+      the mind from self consciousness, a thinking of nothing, so as to
+      approximate the soul to Nirvana. These were Buddha's fundamental verities.
+      It is put more shortly thus,&mdash;"Practising no evil, advancing in the
+      exercise of every virtue, purifying one's self in mind and will, this is
+      indeed the doctrine of all the Buddhas." <i>Journal of Royal Asiatic
+      Society</i>, vol. xix. p. 473.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may once more stop to compare the teaching of Siddartha with that
+      familiar to Christians. Paul says, for example (Rom. v. 12) "As by one man
+      sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all
+      men, for that all have sinned;" again, in chap, vi. 23, "the wages of sin
+      is death;" again, in chap. vii. 5, "when we were in the flesh the motions
+      of sins... did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death;" and
+      again, chap. viii. 6, "to be carnally minded is death; but to be
+      spiritually minded is life and peace." We may next refer to what some call
+      the fundamental teaching of Jesus, as enunciated in answer to the question
+      of the young man "What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?"
+      Matthew xix., Mark x., "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the
+      commandments. Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery,
+      thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, honour thy father
+      and thy mother, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." And when
+      the young man asserted that he had done so, all that he was told to do in
+      addition, was to sell his property, give the proceeds to the poor, and
+      become a follower of Jesus, who had not where to lay his head, and to live
+      upon the charity of other people. I must, however, notice in passing, that
+      the teaching of Jesus is not by any means so uniform as that of Sakya, for
+      we find the former here instructing a young man to do no murder, but at a
+      subsequent period, that of the last supper, Jesus exhorts his disciples,
+      and through them, possibly, the very man to whom he rehearsed the
+      commandments, thus "He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and
+      buy one," (Luke xxii 36). Certainly a direct encouragement to homicide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the benefit of the Buddhists a short formula of faith has been framed,
+      which is to this effect&mdash;"Tathâgata (another name of Sakya Muni), in
+      the proper condition, has explained that our present state is produced by
+      antecedent causes, and the great Sramana, or Ascetic (another cognomen of
+      Siddartha), has told us how to avoid the effects of sin. The effects are
+      pain and actual existence, having for their cause past sins; the cause is
+      the production of suffering: the cessation of these effects is Nirvana,
+      the teaching of Tathâgata, or of the great Sramana, is the way which leads
+      to Nirvana." The Christian formula runs, "As in Adam all die, even so in
+      Christ shall all be made alive." To this we may compare a Nepaulese
+      saying, "Arise, leave your possession, take up the law of Buddha, and
+      break asunder the power of death."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to the fundamental maxim given on the preceding page, Sakya
+      Muni added many others, amongst them, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not
+      steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not
+      get drunk;" others are of lighter consequence&mdash;"thou shalt not eat
+      out of due season, thou shalt not watch dances or theatrical
+      representations, or listen to songs or music, thou shalt abstain from all
+      ornamentation of dress, &amp;c., and from perfume; thou shalt not have a
+      large bed, nor ever take gold or silver; thou shalt remain inflexibly
+      chaste."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To those who desired to become disciples and personal friends of Buddha,
+      it was ordained that (a) They should only be clothed with rags taken from
+      the cemeteries, or from heaps of refuse, or found on the high road. (b)
+      That there should only be three of these vestments, and that each should
+      be stitched by the wearer, and that they should be covered with a cloak of
+      yellow wool (c) That the food should be as simple as possible&mdash;a rule
+      adopted by Christian saints, but not by Bishops. (d) That all should live
+      upon alms and offerings, which should be begged for, in perfect silence,
+      from house to house, and placed in a vessel made of wood&mdash;a plan
+      adopted by certain Christian mendicant friars. (e) That only one meal
+      should be taken during the day&mdash;a rule to be found in some Christian
+      monasteries. (f) That no aliments, even the most simple, should be taken
+      after noon, the rest of the day after this period should be devoted to
+      teaching and meditation. (g) The faithful should live in the wilderness or
+      forest, and not in towns or villages. Hence Christian hermits lived in the
+      deserts of the Thebaid. (h) They should only shelter themselves under the
+      boughs and leaves of trees. (i) They should sit with the back supported
+      only by the trunk chosen for refuge. (j) They should sleep sitting, and
+      not lying down. (k) They should never change their sitting mat from the
+      place where it was put first. (l) The disciples should unite together, at
+      least upon one night in the month, to meditate amongst the tombs upon the
+      instability of human things. Mendicity, chastity, and asceticism were
+      essential parts of Sakya Muni's practice, and St. Hilaire (op. cit., p.
+      87) naively remarks that these certainly are not the means for making good
+      citizens, though they may produce good saints.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may notice, in passing, that the pious followers of Sramana (the one
+      who mastered his passions) were very much more proper, in our eyes, than
+      some of the Brahmins, from whom they seceded, inasmuch as the former wore
+      sufficient garments to cover themselves decently, whilst the latter, whom
+      the Greeks called "Gymnosophists," went without any more clothing than the
+      horse or ass. It is also to be noticed that Siddartha provided a sort of
+      code of laws to be observed by those who wished to adopt his method of
+      salvation, without becoming altogether "religious." These consisted in the
+      enforcement of chastity, purity, patience, courage, contemplation, and
+      knowledge&mdash;these were, it was asserted, the transcendent virtues
+      which would pass man across the river of death. They would not land him
+      there in life, but whilst these were adopted as the rule of life, the
+      aspirant was in the right way to attain "Nirvana."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The charity which Sakya Muni ordained was universal, extending even to
+      what we call the lower animals, and one example is given in which a
+      disciple cast himself into the sea to save a boat's crew in danger of
+      death from a storm, whilst another tells of Buddha giving himself as food
+      to a tigress, who had not sufficient milk for her young ones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, the precept against "lying" included false witness, and all that we
+      call "bad language," as well as trifling chat, called "badinage," "wit,"
+      and the like. Persons were not only to avoid wrong, but they were to
+      cultivate every good habit, or what we designate each "Christian grace."
+      It was inculcated, that beauty of language, or eloquence, pleasantness of
+      voice, and a due respect to cadence should be studied, so as to make their
+      teaching popular, a precept not much regarded amongst ordinary Christian
+      divines. Beyond other things, humility was inculcated, not that which
+      exists on the lips only, and is apparently compatible with the determined
+      endeavour to exercise unlimited power, which has been conspicuous in the
+      Papacy for a millennium at least, but that which conceals greatness and
+      demonstrates littleness. Thus there is a legend of Buddha refusing, at the
+      request of a king, to exhibit any miracle to convince his opponents, his
+      answer being, "Great king, I do not teach the law to my hearers by saying
+      to them, 'Go, oh you religious men! and before Brahmins and house-holders
+      perform, by means of a supernatural power, miraculous things, which no
+      other men can effect,' but I say to them, in teaching them the law, 'Live,
+      oh ye pious ones, so as to conceal your good works, and to let your sins
+      be seen.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point we pause once more to draw a parallel between Siddartha and
+      Jesus, though, in the delineation of the doctrine of the latter, we shall
+      see a discrepancy which appears to indicate two distinct authorships in
+      the recorded story. We refer, in the first place, to Luke vi, wherein we
+      find, v. 27, et seq., "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
+      bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you,
+      and to him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other"
+      (compare Matt. v. 39, 40). Again, Matt. vi. 3, "When thou doest alms, let
+      not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," and in v. 6, "When thou
+      prayest, enter into thy closet," &amp;c.; v. 16, "When ye fast, be not, as
+      the hypocrites, of a sad countenance." Side by side with this we may place
+      the directions given in Matt, x., where we find that Jesus called his
+      disciples unto him, and gave them "power against unclean spirits to cast
+      them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease "&mdash;they
+      were, moreover, "to cleanse the lepers and raise the dead," i.e.t the
+      disciples were to perform miracles; but if they, in their wanderings and
+      teachings, should be rejected, despised, or affronted, the apostles were
+      to shake off the dust of their feet against the persecutors, being certain
+      that condign punishment would fall upon the offenders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is curious that in the histories of the Indian and the Jew, there
+      should be analogous discrepancies between records of their sayings and
+      doings. Siddartha and Jesus are represented, each of them, as declining to
+      perform miracles when asked or expected to do so. Nevertheless, in the
+      same histories we find marvellous accounts of the wonders which they
+      performed. We have seen the clashing reports of Buddha, the following
+      reports of the son of Mary are equally discordant. To make the dissonance
+      more striking, we place the passages in parallel columns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/141.jpg" alt="141 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      At what time after the death of Jesus the miracles recorded of him were
+      fabricated we can scarcely tell. If, with most critical scholars, we
+      believe that John's Gospel was written by some Neoplatonic Greek, at least
+      a century and a-half after the period alluded to, we must also believe,
+      either that all the legends about the casting out of devils by the son of
+      Mary were invented after the time when "John" lived, or else, which is
+      probable, that the last evangelist gave no credit to them, if they did
+      already exist; and if the good sense and superior knowledge of "John" led
+      him to discredit the tale about the legion of devils, which left one man*
+      to enter into about two thousand pigs, I do not see that other Christians
+      are obliged to believe the legend. From considerations which we advanced
+      in the articles Prophets, Prophecy, &amp;c., in <i>Ancient Faiths</i>
+      (Vol. II., p. 515), and especially in the history of Barcochab, who was
+      supposed to be the Messiah by some Jews in A.D. 131-5, we argued that new
+      matter was certainly introduced into the story of Jesus told by Matthew,
+      Mark, and John, as late as the era of that enthusiastic Hebrew leader. We
+      noticed the doubts that existed in the minds of many early Christians as
+      to whether this redoubtable warrior was not "the man" of whom the prophets
+      spake. We may now still further notice that he professed to perform
+      miracles, which appear to be thoroughly contemptible when weighed against
+      those of the gospels. To our mind it is inconceivable that the followers
+      of Mary's son could have been acquainted with the marvellous works
+      attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and, yet be shaken by such a man as
+      Barcochab. We notice, also, that not one "Epistle" writer refers to them&mdash;consequently,
+      we believe that all the wondrous tales told of the prophet of Nazareth,
+      must have been introduced after the time of Hadrian (in whose reign
+      Barcochab was destroyed), and were fabricated by pious Christians, to
+      prove that the Messiah, in whom they believed, was infinitely superior to
+      that warrior whom others had for a time trusted. Both, to be sure, had
+      been killed by the Romans, and thus both might seem upon a par, but if
+      history could be cooked&mdash;and there is probably no single history
+      existing which is strictly true&mdash;to show that the first performed a
+      hundred times the wonderful works of the second, he would thus become
+      greatly exalted. See especially Matt. xxiv. 24, in confirmation of this
+      view. Be this as it may, there is, I understand, solid foundation for the
+      assertion that the New Testament, such as we have it now, might have been
+      composed, altered, curtailed, added to, remodelled, or otherwise
+      fashioned, at any period between the years a.d. 50 and 300, after which
+      change was difficult, though we cannot say impossible. A corresponding
+      statement is true of the books which record the life and doctrines of
+      Buddha.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In Matthew viii. 30-32, we are told that there were two
+     men who were possessed with the devils which subsequently
+     entered the herd of swine;&mdash;in Mark v. 11-13, the spirits
+     are represented as being concentrated in one person, and in
+     Luke viii. 32-33, the tale appears in the same guise as in
+     Mark&mdash;only the man is made to call himself "Legion," on
+     account of the multitude of devils living inside him. In
+     cases of this kind one need not be rigidly particular, for
+     it signifies little whether the spirits were one thousand in
+     one man or two thousand in two&mdash;the wonder is that spirits
+     could talk&mdash;fly away from man to pig, or commit suicide in
+     the bodies of the swine when they might have done the same
+     thing in one or two men. It is clear from the miracle that
+     certain devils change their habits when they take up their
+     habitation in porcine instead of human beings.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At this period of our parallel we may profitably examine the New
+      Testament, and ascertain whether we cannot extract from it a tolerably
+      fair account of the life and teaching of Jesus, without including therein
+      a single act of thaumaturgy. We fearlessly assert, not only that we can,
+      but that the miracles are not an essential part of his doctrine. For
+      example, we learn that Jesus was the son of a woman betrothed to a
+      carpenter, who became pregnant ere yet the ceremony of marriage was gone
+      through. Her affianced husband did not make her frailty an excuse for
+      annulling the contract, possibly for a good, and to him a sufficient
+      reason. He married the already fruitful Mary, and her child passed amongst
+      the neighbours as being the son of Joseph. This we learn from Matt. xiii.
+      55, where we find the people saying, "Is not this the carpenter's son? is
+      not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon,
+      and Judas, and his sisters, are they not all with us?" a statement
+      repeated in similar terms, Mark vi. 3. This short account is important,
+      since it completely destroys the papal doctrine that Mary was "ever
+      virgin," for she bore at least four other sons than her first born, and
+      two daughters. At no period was Jesus regarded either by the family or by
+      the neighbours as illegitimate, nor is there any reason to believe that
+      Joseph looked upon him otherwise than as his own son. Indeed, in Luke ii.
+      42-48, the carpenter distinctly appears to act as if he recognized Jesus
+      as his own offspring&mdash;in verse 48, Mary says, "Son, why hast thou
+      thus dealt with us? behold thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing,"
+      asserting as plainly as words could speak, that Joseph had begotten Jesus.
+      It is true that the youth replied, "Wist ye not that I must be about my
+      father's business?" but the story adds the important information, that the
+      couple did not understand the saying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is clear to us, that if the legend of the impregnation of Mary by the
+      Holy Ghost, after that event had been previously announced to her, and if,
+      as we are told in Matt. i. 20, Joseph had been informed by "the angel of
+      the Lord" that the foetus in Mary's womb was begotten by the Holy Ghost,
+      it would not have been possible for Joseph and his wife to have
+      misunderstood the words of Jesus. The very wonder which they expressed
+      demonstrates the belief of the parents that there was nothing unusual in
+      the conception. The father Joseph knew that he had borne his share in the
+      event, and Mary knew that she had not conversed with any other man;
+      consequently, for her son to indicate another father than Joseph,
+      naturally mystified her. We therefore cannot allow the assertion to pass,
+      that the conception and birth of Jesus was in itself a miracle. But as we
+      shall revert to the subject in a separate chapter, we will say no more
+      about it here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After living and working with his parents for some years, Jesus was
+      attracted by the preaching of his cousin John, whose doctrines were
+      essentially Buddhistic and Essenian. Like the Hindoos, he used water as an
+      emblem of purification, and urged his hearers to repentance and good
+      conduct. What motives urged John to become "the voice of one crying in the
+      wilderness," we have no means of judging, but the gospel narratives tell
+      us that he, like Jesus, believed in the almost immediate destruction of
+      the world. His text was, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
+      Jesus adopted the view, and promulgated it more extensively. His text was
+      the same as that of his cousin, but more expanded. "The kingdom of heaven
+      means glory to the righteous, and everlasting life; misery and everlasting
+      destruction to the wicked. The time is near, hasten to escape from the
+      coming vengeance." The earnestness of Jesus, his acquaintance with the
+      prophets, his self-denial and his constant kindness, endeared him to the
+      common people. The same virtues had a like effect in the case of Buddha.
+      Amongst villagers and poverty-stricken fishermen he soon won his way, and
+      every one had some story to tell of him, which increased in wonder as it
+      passed from mouth to ears, and from these to the tongue of the listeners.
+      Those who know how an ordinary circumstance may gradually become described
+      as miraculous, even in England, can well imagine how the miracles of Jesus
+      and Siddartha were produced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In time Jesus endeavoured to induce the magnates of Jerusalem to adopt his
+      doctrine, and to trust in repentance for salvation rather than in
+      sacrifice, but the enthusiast could not overcome the ritualists, and they
+      at once began to weigh their power against the influence of Jesus upon the
+      multitude. After a time the priests were convinced that supremacy rested
+      with them, and the man who preached a religion of the heart, was
+      sacrificed by the adherents of ceremonial. Such a fight is common, as we
+      see around us. The Evangelicals and the Ritualists of to-day, resemble the
+      followers of Jesus and of Moses. When the latter appeared in the guise of
+      powerful Romanist rulers, they put down the former, but now when the
+      former are the strongest, they endeavour to depress the latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the death, or the withdrawal of Jesus from public life&mdash;for we
+      have no belief in the legends of his resurrection&mdash;considering that
+      his apparent decease was a prolonged fainting fit, for had he been dead
+      blood would not have followed a spear wound as it did&mdash;the disciples
+      of Jesus spread his fame largely. Whilst Jesus was with them they clung to
+      him; when he was no more, each man became a preacher, and then
+      Christianity spread until it met with Buddhism in Egypt, and thus became
+      developed in a peculiar direction. Then came the gospels, which made Jesus
+      a second Sakya. Although we can readily conceive that Jesus, like his
+      paltry successor, Joe Smith, the Mormon, captivated the minds of hundreds
+      without performing any supernatural deed, and that his "elders" vastly
+      increased the number of those who believed in him, yet it is clear, that
+      ancient and modern theologians were and are anxious to establish the
+      reality of the thaumaturgy attributed to Jesus, that they may appeal to it
+      to demonstrate that he was the son of God, an incarnation of a portion of
+      the creative mind&mdash;"the word," or <i>logos</i>, having the same
+      relationship to Jehovah, the "I Am," the Self-Existent One, as Buddha,
+      "the understanding" had to "Brahma," The Supreme One.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accepting this issue for the sake of argument, we affirm once again that,
+      as the miracles of Sakya and of the son of Mary are equally unreliable, or
+      equally true, Buddha was as much a true son of God as Christ was, or that
+      Jesus was no more an incarnation of Jehovah, than Siddartha was of Brahma.
+      Jehovah and Brahma being merely different names for the same great Being.
+      That miracles are not necessary to the spread of a new faith, the history
+      of modern Presbyterianism and Mormonism distinctly proves. For further
+      remarks, we refer the reader to the article Miracle in the preceding
+      volume. We will postpone to a subsequent page what we have to say
+      respecting the asceticism of the Buddhists, and that which was prevalent
+      in the early Christian church. For the present, we resume our account of
+      Sakya Muni's teaching as described by St. Hilaire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Founded upon his doctrine of absolute humility, he established the custom
+      of confession amongst his apostles or disciples, and amongst those who
+      venerated his teaching, though they did not' become his immediate
+      followers. This confession was not that simply auricular one enforced by
+      Ritualists, but it was made twice a month, at the new and the full moon,
+      before the great Sramana and the congregation, in a clear voice. Powerful
+      kings are reported to have followed this practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will not require more than a minute's reflection to see that the
+      Buddhistic system of confession was far superior&mdash;as regards the end
+      in view&mdash;than that which has been adopted by Romanists and
+      Ritualists. Sakya and James (ch. v. 16) advised the practice in question,
+      that the sinner might be humiliated in his own eyes, and deterred from the
+      necessity of having again to acknowledge a fall from virtue before a
+      congregation of the faithful. Popes and Protestant Ritualists, on the
+      contrary, use confession for the purpose of inquiring into the character
+      of every penitent, and the practice is adopted by the sinner, not with the
+      view of repentance, but to wipe out periodically a sin which is habitually
+      renewed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If confessions were made before a congregation, instead of to a priest in
+      a closet, or some other secret spot, there would not then be current so
+      many scandalous stories as there are&mdash;too true, alas, in many
+      instances&mdash;respecting women who have been debauched under the guise
+      of religion, and priests who have prostituted the ordinances of their
+      church, until they have made them pander to vice, and act as seeds to
+      produce immorality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though personally Tathâgata preached celibacy, he had not, like some of
+      the so-called saints of Christianity, any feeling of disrespect towards
+      family ties. He always spoke affectionately of his mother, though he never
+      knew her, and the legends say that he endeavoured to convert her in
+      heaven. His command that all his followers should honour their father and
+      mother was repeatedly enforced, that being only second to the duty of
+      learning, venerating, and keeping the law. It even went so high as to
+      include endeavours to teach the parents if they were ignorant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the main duties of every teacher appointed by Siddartha, was to go
+      about preaching the law, and exhorting his hearers to learn and to obey
+      it. But no one, on any account, was to introduce the persecuting element.
+      No respect whatever was to be paid to caste, all being alike human before
+      God. Buddha himself is described as a very striking preacher, charming his
+      hearers by his clear and eloquent diction, astonishing them by his
+      supernatural power, sometimes instructing the common folk with ingenious
+      parables, and inciting them to emulation by telling what others had done.
+      He referred to the sins which had been committed in former days by an
+      ancient people, and how severely punished those who had committed them had
+      been, or still were, and he even recorded his own faults, that others
+      might learn to avoid them. He urged all his hearers to cultivate truth and
+      reason, which is certainly not a Christian practice, and not blindly to
+      obey their spiritual guides, as the modern faithful are taught to do. By
+      making the practice of every virtue the sole means for attaining eternal
+      salvation, he practically discouraged vice, but it does not appear that he
+      endeavoured actively to denounce immorality, sin, or sinners. He did not,
+      like many modern persons, "compound for sins they are inclined to, by
+      damning those they have no mind to." It is distinctly declared that it was
+      not necessary for ordinary followers of Buddha to become what is called
+      "religious," or "to enter into religion," as friars, monks, &amp;c. To
+      those who preferred an ordinary mode of life, instructions were given,
+      that they should cultivate charity, purity, patience, courage,
+      contemplation, and knowledge. Indeed, we may assert that the precepts of
+      Jesus, as recorded in Matthew v., vi, and viii, and in Luke iii. 7 to 14,
+      are not essentially different from those propounded by Sakya Muni Neither
+      the one nor the other ordered or even recommended all men to be celibate,
+      all men to become poor, all soldiers to leave their profession&mdash;but
+      both urged upon every one who wished for salvation, to be kind, pure,
+      patient, courageous, thoughtful and eager after all knowledge. It would be
+      well if those calling themselves Christians would endeavour more fully to
+      understand that cultivating science is the same as advancing in the
+      knowledge of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the remarkable parables found in Buddhist books are very probably
+      the original ones of Sakya; they are certainly ingeniously framed to
+      illustrate his doctrine. Nor is there wanting, indeed, one in which there
+      is an episode resembling the story of the thief upon the cross. It is of a
+      lovely courtesan who falls deeply in love with a jeweller, young, and a
+      devoted follower of Buddha, and solicits his company. To every message she
+      sends him, he returns the answer "it is not time for you to see me." At
+      length she commits a crime, and is sentenced to have ears, nose, hands,
+      and feet cut off, and to be carried to the graveyard to die, leaving the
+      cut off members at her ankles. At this period the young man visits her, to
+      see the true nature of those joys which drown men in perdition; then he
+      consoles the poor creature by teaching her the law; his discourse brings
+      calm into her breast, and she dies in professing Buddhism with a certainty
+      that she will rise again amongst the good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may mention, in passing, that there were female Buddhists as well as
+      males, both being on the same footing. The law, as announced by Sakya,
+      equally concerned and affected the two sexes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another and very interesting parable tells of a king who came before a
+      Buddhist priest and his assembled hearers, to the number of 350, to
+      confess his crimes, amongst others murder, and his resolution to avoid all
+      faults in future, and Bhagavat (the teacher's name) at once remits, in
+      conformity with the law, the faults of the king, which have thus been
+      expiated before a numerous assembly of the faithful, a remarkable instance
+      of remorse, repentance, confession, and remission of sin&mdash;some
+      centuries before Jesus was born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length a powerful king, Asoka, was converted to the new faith, or came
+      to the throne already a Buddhist, in the year b.c. 263, and reigned
+      thirty-seven years, during which time he devoted himself to spreading the
+      religion of his choice. He sent out a cloud of earnest missionaries who
+      spread themselves over Hindostan, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Thibet.
+      Indeed, they seem to have gone wherever there was means of locomotion, or
+      a knowledge of the existence of a people. As the Greeks were then
+      certainly trading with India, both by land and sea, it would be surprising
+      if the Buddhist missionaries had not accompanied the merchant ships, or
+      the overland convoys to Alexandria. But this subject, it is convenient for
+      the present to postpone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are two points connected with the teaching of Sakya Muni to which
+      many Christian writers have especially addressed their remarks, apparently
+      with the view of rendering Buddha more or less contemptible, or at least
+      of degrading him far below Jesus of Nazareth. It is asserted that
+      Siddartha did not believe in a god, and that his Nirvana was nothing more
+      than absolute annihilation. To these I am disposed to add, that the
+      Buddhists were not taught to pray, nor did their founder practise the
+      custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To my own mind, the assertion that Sakya did not believe in God is wholly
+      unsupported. Nay, his whole scheme is built upon the belief that there are
+      powers above which are capable of punishing mankind for their sins. It is
+      true that these "gods" were not called Elohim, nor Jah, nor Jahveh, nor
+      Jehovah, nor Adonai, nor Eliieh (I am), nor Baalim, nor Ashtoreth&mdash;yet,
+      for "the son of Suddhodana" (another name for Sakya Muni, for he has
+      almost as many, if not more than the western god), there was a supreme
+      being called Brahma, or some other name representing the same idea as we
+      entertain of the Omnipotent. Still further, in the life of Buddha, quoted
+      by St. Hilaire (p. 9) we find the following as part of the thoughts of the
+      young Siddartha&mdash;"The three worlds, the world of the gods, the world
+      of the assours (the benighted ones, or, as we should call them, 'the
+      devils ), and that of men, are all plagued by the occurrence of old age
+      and disease." We do not, for we dare not assert that this opinion is
+      identical with ours; but we are equally indisposed to say that the
+      opinions current amongst ourselves are absolutely true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Men living in future days, and whose minds are educated, will probably
+      declare, "that the Christians of Europe and elsewhere, for nearly two
+      thousand years, had no god but the devil They said he was good, but they
+      painted him as one who rejoiced in pain, lamentation, mourning, and woe."
+      Buddha preached that man suffered from the effects of his sins, and that
+      unless he attained salvation, he would be punished everlastingly. The son
+      of Mary, and all his followers, taught, and Christians still entertain the
+      belief, that man suffers from the sin of a progenitor (assumed to be the
+      parent of all mankind), and that each person will be tortured throughout
+      eternity unless he is able to mollify his maker, who is also his judge.
+      Both teachers had necessarily an idea of a power able to make laws for the
+      conduct of human life, to ordain rewards for good behaviour, and to
+      apportion punishment for offences, and yet who was sufficiently forgiving
+      to cease from requital, "for a consideration," the bribe being invariably
+      a bloody one. Jesus called this power "my Father," Siddartha called him
+      Brahma, the Supreme one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jesus and his followers have asserted that the power of the son with "the
+      Father" is so great, that the latter will conform to the former, nay, he
+      even asserts his identity with the Supreme in the words "I and my father
+      are one," (John x. 30). See also Acts iv. 12, and 1 Thess. v. 9, in which
+      it is distinctly affirmed that Jesus is the sole means by which man can
+      attain salvation, or, in other words, turn away the wrath of God and
+      change it into love. But Jesus could only rise to the position of equal or
+      prime favourite by a very sanguinary process, as we find from Heb. ix. 22,
+      that there could be no remission of sin without shedding of blood. From
+      the following verses, and from Heb. x. 19, we learn that it is by the
+      sacrifice of himself that Jesus entered into his heavenly powers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can any one who depicts the gods of savages, of Grecians and others to
+      whom human beings were immolated in hundreds, call such deities "devils,"
+      and then assert that the Jehovah, whom he extols as above all gods, is not
+      painted by men in the same colours. Siddartha's god was not a sanguinary
+      one, nor did Buddha always talk of shedding blood, or profess to give his
+      disciples his own flesh to eat, and his blood to them, that they might all
+      drink of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way in which this Supreme One, Brahma, was painted at his time was
+      accepted by Sakya as he found it. He no more questioned the accepted
+      truths of Hindooism, than Jesus doubted about the absolute truth of the
+      Hebrew scriptures. But, in his own mind, after he had contemplated deeply
+      on the subject, he believed that the discovery which he had made of the
+      way to Nirvana, universal knowledge, or whatever else Nirvana was, had
+      raised him above Sakra Brahma, Mahesvara, and all the gods of the
+      pantheon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instead of breaking into expressions respecting the insanity or the
+      blasphemy of such an idea, let us school ourselves into calmness, and turn
+      to our own New Testament and read over Philippians, chap, ii. vv. 5-11,
+      "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the
+      form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself
+      of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in
+      the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
+      himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross:
+      wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above
+      every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in
+      heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every
+      tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the
+      Father."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still further, I have repeatedly heard Protestant Christian divines assert
+      that Jesus was really "Lord of the world above," and I cannot see any
+      greater insanity or blasphemy in the son of Suddodana believing that he
+      was at least equal with God, than in the son of Mary asserting "I and my
+      Father are one" (John x. 30), and when reproached for making himself thus
+      equal with God, he is reported to have remonstrated with his auditors who
+      accused him of blasphemy because he asserted himself to be the son of God.
+      The creeds of the Anglican and Roman churches repeatedly declare the
+      identity of Jesus with Jehovah, e.g., "equal to the Father as touching his
+      godhead."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natural rejoinder to this representation is the assertion by the
+      Christian that he knows that Jesus of Nazareth really was what he
+      represented himself, and he is sure that Sakya Muni was not; but, on the
+      other hand, the Buddhist may say just the reverse with equal pertinacity.
+      This argument, if such a name it really deserves, is so common amongst all
+      careless religionists, that it deserves a few words in reply. It is based
+      upon the very natural notion, "what I believe, must be true," and to an
+      objector, the only answer is the question, "you don't fancy that I can be
+      wrong, do you?" When two such persons as a Christian and a Mahometan met
+      in days gone by, these were the only arguments used by each, and they were
+      first of all enforced by such revilings as come naturally to the faithful&mdash;"hound
+      of a Moslem"&mdash;"dog of a Christian," "you are a serpent"&mdash;"you
+      are a viper," and the like; from words they came to blows, and the
+      strongest arm was supposed to demonstrate the correctness of the victor's
+      faith. If, instead of taking physical strength as a test of truth, we
+      assume that a numerical preponderance on one side or another proves the
+      correctness of the belief held by the greatest number, we come to the
+      absurd conclusion that what is right to-day may be wrong to-morrow.
+      Babylonians were once far more numerous than Jews, and Jews than
+      Christians, to-day the last exceed vastly both the others. Now, there are
+      more Buddhists in existence than true followers of Jesus, in the next
+      century the proportion may be reversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth does not so fluctuate, and a philosopher who uses his reason will
+      take up a different stand entirely, and affirm that a man cannot become
+      God by meditation, fancy or assertion, nor yet by the consent or vote of
+      millions of his fellow-men, and that the assumption that any individual
+      must be, and is the begotten son of God, is on a par with the folly of the
+      potentates who call themselves brothers of the sun and moon. Such
+      absurdity and blasphemy are very common, nevertheless, and men believe
+      that Jesus is God, because they have elected him to that elevated position
+      by a general vote&mdash;or European plebiscite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now address ourselves to another important statement made by some
+      writers upon the religion of Sakya Muni, to the effect that he taught
+      annihilation to be the end most desirable for good men who have learned
+      and practised the law. This view is held by St. Hilaire, who, in almost
+      every other respect, has shown himself an historian rather favourable to
+      Siddartha than otherwise, and who speaks with some regret of the
+      conclusion which he feels obliged to draw. But he is opposed upon this
+      point by a very great English or German authority, viz., Max Müller, who,
+      in a lecture delivered before the general Meeting of the Association of
+      German Philologists at Kiel, and which is to be found translated in
+      Trubner's <i>American and Oriental Literary Record</i>, Oct. 16, 1869,
+      distinctly declares his belief that the nihilism attributed to Buddha's
+      teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly wrong to
+      suppose that Nirvana signified annihilation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When two such earnest inquirers differ, it is instructive to notice the
+      reason why. This is to be found in the fact that the etymological
+      signification of the word does signify "nothingness," or "extinction," but
+      not, as Müller contends, annihilation of the individual, but a complete
+      cessation of all pain and misery. The last quoted author shows that
+      Siddartha used Nirvana as synonymous with Moksha, Nirvritti, and other
+      words, all designating the highest state of spiritual liberty and bliss,
+      but not annihilation. It seems to be perfectly clear that what was meant
+      by Sakya is, that to the good who have embraced the means of salvation
+      preached by him, the future world would be a haven of rest, in which all
+      sorrow, suffering, and sin should be annihilated. But the teacher does not
+      go beyond this, and descant upon the opposite conditions, and promise joys
+      ineffable and full of glory. His followers believe that they will attain
+      to immortality, and that they will be free from all such horrors as life
+      brings with it. But the pleasures which they expect are negative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before we either pity or despise Siddartha for not giving his followers
+      any idea of what we call Heaven, it would be well to endeavour to discover
+      the true teaching of Jesus of Nazareth upon this point, and the ideas of
+      his followers. We must also say a few words about his ideas of Hell. He
+      clearly believed that there was a place in which those whose lives had
+      been wicked would be punished after death by the devil and his angels&mdash;the
+      place was one of outer darkness, where shall be weeping and wailing, and
+      gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12). In Matt. xiii. 42 this place of outer
+      darkness is described as "a furnace of fire," and in Mark ix. 43-44 this
+      fire is described as one that never shall be quenched, and in which there
+      lives a worm. In Luke xvi. 23-24 there is an expression of the belief that
+      the body lives after death in its usual form, and has eyes, a tongue, the
+      power of speech, &amp;c.; yet in Matt. x. 28 the doctrine is inculcated
+      that both body and soul are destroyed in Hell. In Jude 7 and 13 Hell is
+      again described as a place of unquenchable fire, and yet one occupied by
+      the blackness of darkness; whilst in Revelation xix. 20 and xx. 10 we are
+      told that the fire is a lake of burning brimstone. Of the absolute
+      locality of this horrible spot not a word is said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, Heaven is described (Matt xiii. 43) as a place where
+      the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God. In Luke
+      xvi. 22 the pleasure of Heaven is made to consist of a simple repose in
+      the bosom of Abraham; but though we are there led to believe that the
+      blessed can see the torments of the damned, it does not appear that either
+      "the father of the faithful," or the poor beggar Lazarus, take any
+      pleasure in contemplating them, as some few divines of the church of
+      England believe that they will do, when they have arrived at the abode of
+      bliss, and see their enemies in the burning lake. Paul, when writing to
+      the Corinthians, (1 Ep. xv.) gives his idea of the resurrection of the
+      just as one in which each man will be a spiritual edition of his former
+      terrestrial self, but beyond the statement in 1 Thess. iv. 17, that the
+      redeemed will, when in heaven, dwell for ever with the Lord, he expresses
+      no opinion of the occupation of the glorified ones. In John's gospel (xiv.
+      2) Jesus is reported as saying,&mdash;"In my Father's house are many
+      mansions or houses&mdash;I go to prepare a place for you," but there is
+      nothing like any account of what is to be done in those abodes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, we find, Ps. xvi. 11, in a verse which has been largely adapted to
+      Christianity, an idea of Heaven given thus&mdash;"in thy presence is
+      fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." What
+      David's pleasures were we may judge from his life, and we may fairly
+      imagine that the writer of the passage had an idea something like that of
+      Mahomet&mdash;that there were houris in Heaven for the delectation of the
+      faithful. But in Isaiah lxiv. 4, and I Cor. ii. 9 everything about Heaven
+      is declared to be vague&mdash;a something which the eye has not seen, the
+      ear heard, or the heart conceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the book called <i>The Revelation of St. John the Divine</i>, we have a
+      far more detailed account of what was believed by some about heaven, than
+      in any other, and there is no doubt that to it a large number of
+      Christians appeal, for it is, indeed, almost the only foundation on which
+      they can build. Yet the Apocalypse was for a long time an uncanonical
+      book, and its truth and value were, and still are, doubted by many of the
+      faithful. In the part referred to, heaven is described as a place
+      incalculably rich in gold and precious stones, in music and pleasant
+      odours, and its joys are pour-trayed as consisting in constant contact
+      with the evidences of wealth, and in eternally singing a certain refrain,
+      an hour of which would be a great trial to human ears. To this is added
+      the absence of pain, sorrow, and suffering. The New Jerusalem, described
+      in chapter xxi. is nothing more than a palace similar to that of Aladdin,
+      which is described in <i>The Arabian Nights?</i> fabulously adorned with
+      gems, lighted by other means than a burning sun or a cold moon, cooled or
+      refreshed with a river of clear water, and furnished with trees bearing
+      different kinds of fruit, but all delicious&mdash;thus involving the
+      certainty that the singing referred to, must have been suspended whilst
+      the palate was regaled&mdash;and having leaves said to be <i>for the
+      healing of the nations</i>. The words thus italicised seem to show the
+      indefiniteness of the <i>idea</i>, we dare not say of the <i>knowledge</i>
+      of John, for the existence of this new Jerusalem involves the absence of
+      any disease which required healing; and every person who was not already
+      assigned to the brimstone lake, was a resident on the margin of the
+      crystal river. Such discrepancies are common in visionary writings, and
+      ought to make us distrust them; but instead of that, wild theories are
+      founded upon these absurdities, and the builders thence attempt to prove
+      their own superior knowledge. Well, in this new Jerusalem, every man is to
+      be a ruler, for we are told, that in it the servants of the Lamb (chap.
+      xxii. 3 sq.) shall serve him, and see his face, that his name shall be
+      written upon their foreheads, and they shall <i>reign</i> for ever and
+      ever. The word italicised, very naturally recalls to us an earlier passage
+      in the same book (chap, i. 6) wherein the writer expresses the belief that
+      Jesus Christ has made his followers "kings and priests." It is then clear
+      that John had the notion that in heaven every denizen would be a king. But
+      king over whom? or over what? if every one in new Jerusalem is a ruler,
+      what is he a ruler of? It is, to the critic, moderately certain, that all
+      which the words are intended to convey is, that every inhabitant of the
+      New Jerusalem or Heaven will be as rich and happy as a mundane sovereign.
+      This, again, involves the belief that the author of the Apocalypse had an
+      essentially sensual idea of Heaven, and that he pourtrayed it as a man
+      would do, who, pining in misery, suffering from disease, pinched with
+      want, obliged to serve as the slave of wealth, and to contribute much, out
+      of his little, to the king's taxes, saw daily, and envied deeply, the high
+      position and great wealth of a tyrant, with whom, his faith induced him to
+      believe, that he would change places hereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the descriptions of Heaven in Revelation can be considered as
+      reliable, by any thoughtful Christian, I marvel, for they are bound up
+      with an assurance which the lapse of time has fully demonstrated to be
+      false. In chap, xxii., v. 12 and 20, the one who is described as the Lord
+      of the New Jerusalem, the Christian Heaven, asserts that he is coming
+      quickly, and that his reward is with him. Yet in no sense of the words is
+      this true, nor has it ever been so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tested, then, by every available means, we assert that the Heaven
+      described by Jesus of Nazareth and his immediate followers is quite as
+      vague, indistinct, and unreliable as the Buddhist Nirvana; or, if the
+      affirmative be preferred, we say that the Christian Heaven is quite as
+      uncertain or indefinite a prize for Jesus' disciples as the Nirvana of
+      Sakya. Both teachers seem to have been equally confident of the existence
+      of a Hell, and equally cautious in expressing their ideas about a Heaven.
+      And we, who have had the advantage of many centuries of civilization and
+      thought, dare no more frame or promulgate a scheme of Elysium than the
+      Romans did&mdash;we really know nothing whatever about a future state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is this, however, to be said in favour of Siddartha&mdash;he did
+      not, like Mahomet and John, preach a Paradise, in which all the pleasures
+      are worldly, sensuous, or sensual&mdash;John promising music and fruit,
+      Mahomet feasting and women. All the Indian's teaching pointed to a future
+      world, in which human passions, frailties, and propensities would find no
+      place, for the purified being would cast off, with his earthly body, every
+      carnal appetite. In fact, there is reason to believe that Buddha's idea
+      was, that after death each essence would become reincorporated with the
+      Great Spirit, of whom his soul had originally formed a part. It is
+      doubtful whether any of us could tell him a more perfect way to the truth
+      about the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, although neither Sakya nor Jesus gave any distinct account of Heaven,
+      it is certain that some of their followers have done so, and it is
+      remarkable to see how they have developed their ideas in the same way.
+      Compare, for example, the account given by John, Apocalypse chaps, xxi.,
+      xxii., with the following account, which I copy from the <i>Kusa Iatakya</i>,
+      a Buddhistic legend of Ceylon, by T. Steele, p. 195. "<i>Swarga</i>, or
+      the heaven occupied by Indra, is described as the most splendid the human
+      mind can conceive (Percival's <i>Land of the Vedas</i>, p. 160). Its
+      palaces are composed of pure gold, resplendent diamonds, jasper, sapphire,
+      emerald, and other precious stones, whose brilliance exceeds that of a
+      thousand suns! Its streets are of crystal, fringed with gold. The most
+      beautiful and fragrant flowers adorn its forests, whose trees diffuse the
+      sweetest odours. Refreshing breezes, canopies of fleecy clouds, thrones of
+      the most dazzling brightness, birds of the sweetest melodies, and songs of
+      the most delightful harmony, are heard in the enchanting pleasaunces,
+      which are ever fragrant, ever robed in summer green." The author whom I am
+      quoting follows these remarks with lines from Bernard de Morley's hymn, <i>Jerusalem
+      the Golden</i>, clearly showing how greatly he has been struck with the
+      parallelism between the Buddhist and Christian idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far as I can find, there appears to be a certainty that Sakya Muni did
+      not teach to his followers the necessity for prayer. That Jesus did so
+      teach his disciples is the common belief of Christians. Yet, in the
+      parallel which we are thus drawing, we are perfectly justified in the
+      assertion that the son of Mary did not teach it from his own spontaneous
+      judgment, as John the Evangelist had done before him. Jesus certainly did
+      not originate prayer; indeed, it appears that the subject was forced upon
+      him, and that unless he had been urged to it, he would neither have taught
+      to others the necessity for prayer, nor have dictated the supplication
+      which still passes by his name. The following passage in Luke xi. 1 seems
+      to be decisive upon this point:&mdash;"And it came to pass, as he was
+      praying in a certain place, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord,
+      teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." We see, then, in the
+      first place, that Jesus did not hold, as a fundamental doctrine, that
+      prayer was part of the duty of man, but that he took it up as a necessary
+      part of his Jewish education, and adopted it amongst the subjects of his
+      discourses, following the example of John. When we try to penetrate into
+      the mind of Jesus, as shown in "the Lord's Prayer," and ascertain what he
+      regarded as the fittest objects for orison, we find that they are almost
+      exclusively worldly. There is, in the first place, an ascription of
+      praise, or of reverence, then an expression of a desire that the world
+      should become good; that each man should have a daily meal; that all
+      offences should be condoned, and none others committed; and that no harm
+      should happen to any who used the entreaty. Compared with the composition
+      attributed to Solomon, and said to have been uttered by him at the
+      dedication of the temple, that which is said to have been given by Jesus
+      is meagre in the extreme. It does not contain a single supplication for
+      spiritual blessing, or for salvation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mind of a philosopher there is a doubt whether the general heathen
+      notion about prayer, or the apparent Buddhist prayerlessness, is to be the
+      most commended. Yet, ere we discuss the point, I must remark that although
+      Buddha does not appear to have taught the duty of prayer to his disciples,
+      they practise it nevertheless, and have long litanies, chantings, and
+      mechanical contrivances quite as efficacious, and not more absurd, than
+      the senseless repetitions which pass current amongst us for supplications
+      to the Most High. Now, if we require from ourselves a distinct answer to
+      the question, what is prayer? we can frame no other than this&mdash;"it is
+      the expression of a desire on our part that the Creator will modify the
+      laws of nature in our favour, in favour of others, or in His own favour!"
+      The idea that He will do this is plainly builded upon the supposition that
+      the Creator is like a man, and can be induced to change His mind&mdash;that
+      a creature thinks He is harsh or wrong, and must be set right. When put
+      thus clearly, the most obtuse can see that prayer must necessarily be
+      inefficacious, and must always proceed from a selfishness so intense as to
+      cloak the blasphemy from view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, instead of the above definition, we designate prayer as the uttering
+      of a fervent hope or desire for the benefit of an individual, we can
+      understand that it is quite as useful as any other ejaculation. Nothing is
+      more common than for an angry man to curse with all the energy of
+      exasperation; nothing more common than for a punished hound to yelp, and
+      for a child, when pained, to cry or roar. Still further I will say, from
+      personal experience, that the utterance of cries or groans enables an
+      individual to bear pain with less effect upon his nervous system than
+      would be felt if they were suppressed. Vociferations are as natural, and,
+      to some, as necessary as indulging the appetite for hunger. In like
+      manner, when the mind of man, especially of one only partially educated,
+      is dominated by intense fear, or by any form of anxiety or present
+      suffering, there is an instinctive propensity to seek aid from any source,
+      certain or uncertain, and the enunciation of hopes with an audible voice
+      is as much necessary to some as roaring is to a lion, or bleating to a
+      sheep. In this sense prayer is a comfort&mdash;it helps to soothe feelings
+      which, if pent up, would become, probably, too great for endurance; and,
+      knowing this, I would no more deride prayer than I would laugh at a baby
+      who cried for his absent mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not doubt, in the smallest possible degree, that prayer is a comfort
+      under certain circumstances. For example, my child may be seriously ill,
+      and I may do everything which my medical knowledge enables me to do; but
+      day by day drags wearily along, the fever seems to intensify, and it is
+      clear that there is a struggle between the living force, and the agent
+      which interferes with it. As hour after hour passes, and anxiety deepens
+      into fear, I am like a hardy fellow under the lash: at first the stripes
+      are borne with firmness, but as another and another falls, not only
+      does-the pain seem keener, but the mental power which gives courage to
+      bear the cutting agony diminishes, and the pent-up feelings are vented in
+      a roar of anguish, or a groan of despair. Just so in the depth of my
+      misery I may utter a prayer&mdash;a wish that in one way or another my
+      torn and lacerated feelings as a father might be healed, and I may expect
+      to receive solace thereby, no matter whether I address Jehovah, Brahma,
+      Ishtar, or the Virgin Mary. To hear the sound of one's own voice, even the
+      task of having to compose an intelligible sentence, relieves, for a time,
+      the poignancy of grief, and thus helps one to bear it more patiently. That
+      supplication thus brings relief I do not for a moment doubt, but that it
+      has any influence in the result I deny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Entertaining this view, I cannot regard prayer as a duty. It seems to me
+      to be a deliberate insult to the Almighty to be constantly urging Him to
+      alter the course of nature&mdash;or as we may otherwise put it "to change
+      His mind." To trust that prayer will obviate the necessity for action
+      seems to me the height of folly. If a man uttered the words "Give me this
+      day my daily bread" a hundred times over, and yet never sought to obtain
+      it, we should regard him as a lunatic. Equally silly should we be if, when
+      praying "Defend us in all assaults of our enemies," we did not prepare for
+      battle&mdash;or if, after ejaculating "defend us from all perils and
+      dangers of this night," we were to go to bed without seeing that our
+      premises were as secure as forethought could make them. However much the
+      theologian may believe in prayer, he cannot deny that it is less
+      efficacious than action. Now Buddha preached action whilst Christ preached
+      inaction, e.g., "take no thought for the morrow," &amp;c. (Matt. vi.
+      25-34), consequently we are more disposed to give the palm for correct
+      judgment to the Indian than to the Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must, in the next place, notice that many followers of the son of
+      Suddodana and the son of Mary have both acted, and do still act, upon the
+      belief, not only that prayer is a duty, but that every supplication has
+      positive power in the world above&mdash;consequently the more extended the
+      utterances the greater their influence. In point of fact, prayers are
+      spoken of as if they were equivalent to sacrifice, alms-giving, or any
+      other supposed virtue. For this there seems to be some foundation in Acts
+      x. 4, where Cornelius is told that his prayers and his alms have come up
+      before God; in James v. vv. 15, 16, we are told that "the prayer of faith
+      shall save the sick;" and that "the effectual, fervent prayer of a
+      righteous man availeth much." In Revelation v. 8, we are told that the
+      prayers of the saints are kept in golden vials in heaven, and used as
+      odours. In chapter viii. 3, we find they are offered with incense upon the
+      celestial altar, and that the two conjointly come before the presence of
+      God. This being so, there is a desire to accumulate prayers on the
+      creditor side of the heavenly books, just as in the days when sacrifices
+      were trusted in, there was an attempt to increase their influence by
+      augmenting the number of the creatures slaughtered. This propensity to
+      multiply orisons was distinctly rebuked by Jesus, who ordered his
+      followers not to make vain repetitions, for that the custom was heathenish
+      and to be avoided; a prohibition which had been made by Siddartha to his
+      followers some centuries before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me, I confess, that a life of perpetual prayer without action indicates
+      a belief that God can be "pestered" into doing something that He did not
+      intend; and that it is infinitely worse than a life of action such as
+      Sakya Muni inculcated. I can see no sense in praying for something that I
+      do not want, or that I cannot have without personal exertion. It seems to
+      me sheer nonsense for anyone to pray that he may not grow older, and
+      equally foolish to supplicate that he may live to be a king. In like
+      manner it would be silly in me to petition for power to read Assyrian
+      writing, and yet never study its characters. If, then, by diligent and
+      steady plodding a man can attain his desire, it appears wholly useless in
+      him to pray for it. We may say the same of one who wishes to curb his
+      passions&mdash;he can do so to a great extent by assiduous self-control;
+      but he cannot do so any more completely by a lifetime passed in prayer.
+      From this point of view, therefore, we must again side with Siddartha
+      rather than with Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It now remains to us to make some observations upon the developments of
+      Buddhism after the death of Sakya Muni, but we need not linger over them
+      long. His doctrine of self-denial, of patient suffering, of celibacy, of
+      fasting, of preaching and of meditation, gradually produced a system in
+      which asceticism, solitude, and penance were the prevalent duties. Men and
+      women desirous of being saintly and of attaining to eternal happiness,
+      selected some den, cave, or tree in which they could live a life devoted
+      to contemplation, or else they banded themselves into companies where they
+      could practise the Buddhistic virtues in each other's presence, and one
+      could encourage or correct another. Buddhist monkeries and nunneries are
+      almost as common, and certainly more ancient than Roman Catholic
+      monasteries, and they had very nearly the same numerous accessories in
+      worship, which we are familiar with in papal countries. It is almost
+      impossible to read the accounts given by the Abbé Hue, and other Eastern
+      travellers, of Buddhism in China, Thibet, and Japan, without seeing the
+      close resemblance of the Roman Church to that founded by Siddartha.
+      Indeed, the Abbé was sorely tried by what he saw; and it is rumoured that
+      he was punished by some ecclesiastical authority, and his book suppressed.
+      Pure Buddhism, moreover, was, like pure Christianity, a very painful
+      religion in practice, consequently both the one and the other have
+      degenerated, and have gradually become altered much in the same way&mdash;both
+      having amalgamated themselves with other systems, and having gradually
+      eliminated those proceedings which are most repulsive to human nature. In
+      both there is now, apparently, the idea that the ascetic life may be
+      lived, as it were, by deputy. In Buddhism, certain men obtain their living
+      by fasting, meditating, macerating their flesh, and praying instead of
+      other people, being, of course, adequately paid for their endurance of
+      privation. In a branch of the Church founded by Jesus the same notion has
+      obtained, and men who have wallowed in filth, starved themselves, and
+      spent their days in a miserable round of penance and prayer, are dignified
+      by the name of Saints, and are supposed to be able to hand over&mdash;for
+      a consideration in money&mdash;the benefit of their sufferings to people
+      who wish to live comfortably as well as piously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without burdening this chapter with a dissertation upon the Romish
+      doctrine of works of supererogation, I will quote a few extracts from the
+      Roman Missal, in use in England, to show that works done by another can be
+      made available for the use of any particular individual. On January 16,
+      the day of Saint Marcellus, the people are told to pray "that we may be
+      aided by the merits of blessed Marcellus, Thy martyr and bishop, in whose
+      sufferings we rejoice." On January 29, the day of Saint Francis of Sales,
+      we find in the prayer to be used by the people, "mercifully grant that we
+      may by the aid of his merits, attain unto the joys of life everlasting."
+      Again, on February 8, the day of Saint John of Matha, we find in the
+      prescribed prayer, "mercifully grant that by his merits pleading for us,
+      we may be," &amp;c.&mdash;and, lastly, we notice on March 19, on Saint
+      Joseph's day, "vouchsafe, O Lord, that we may be helped by the merits of
+      Thy most holy mother's spouse," &amp;c. The practice of the Buddhists is
+      then essentially followed by the Roman Christians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pure Buddhism was wholly free from the sexual element so common in other
+      religions of antiquity, and so was the religion of Jesus. Yet in Thibet
+      the first became intermingled therewith and Vajrasatta or Dorjesempa the
+      Thibetan "God above all," is represented in <i>Schlayintweit's Atlas of
+      Plates</i> as a male conjoined with a female; but so ingenious is the
+      contrivance that the many might see the drawings without noticing anything
+      particular, for the trinity and the unity are both hidden from view; and
+      in Europe the latter has introduced St. Foutin and St. Cosmo into her
+      calendar, and has founded her worship of a trinity and a virgin upon the
+      pagan reverence given to the creative organs in both sexes. Veneration for
+      a triune God and his female consort is no more a portion of the teaching
+      of the son of Mary than it was the doctrine of the child of Maya Devi,
+      Buddha's mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will probably be quite as difficult for the reader of the preceding
+      pages, as it has been for the writer of them, to avoid putting the
+      question to himself, "Was Jesus of Nazareth a Buddhist disciple?" In
+      answer to this question I reply that we have no direct proof either on one
+      side or the other, but there is much circumstantial evidence to show that
+      he was. We may marshal it thus:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. There is very strong reason for belief that the intercourse between the
+      inhabitants of India and the successors of Alexander was considerable. For
+      example, we find before the time of the Maccabees, b.c. 280, or perhaps
+      somewhat later, that Antiochus, the king of Syria, had 120 elephants&mdash;things
+      which had never before been seen in Syria, Palestine, or Egypt, and which
+      took their local name from the Phoenician <i>aleph</i>, a bull&mdash;the
+      Jews supposing that they were a new kind of cattle. From the accounts
+      given us we infer that these were Indian, and were trained either by
+      Hindoo mahouts or by Greeks taught in Hindustan. Animals of this size may
+      have come by land or by water. In either case we have evidence of traffic.
+      We have already seen that the great missionary effort of Buddhism took
+      place in the time of Asoka about B.C. 307, and it is not likely that the
+      West would be neglected when the Eastern countries received such attention
+      as they did. The Greeks had by this time found their way by sea to India,
+      and thus it is certain that the route was known. There is then presumptive
+      evidence that Buddhism was taught amongst the people frequenting the
+      kingdom of Antiochus the Second, B.C. 261. At this period and
+      subsequently, this king and his subjects came much into contact with the
+      Jews, so that it is equally easy to believe that the Hebrews were found
+      out by the Hindoo missionaries as that the Alexandrian Greeks were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. I have been unable to find in the Jewish law, in Grecian story, in the
+      accounts of old Babylonians, Carthaginians, Romans, Egyptians, or in any
+      other history except that of India, testimony which shows that asceticism
+      was an essential part of religion. It is true that we do find fasting to
+      be occasionally mentioned in the Old Testament as a sign of grief or of
+      abasement,* but never as a means of gaining salvation in a future life&mdash;whose
+      very existence was unknown to Moses and the Jews. The observation of a
+      period of hunger formed no part of the Mosaic law. On the contrary,
+      ancient European religions, and those of Egypt and Western Asia were
+      associated with feasting and jollification (see Deut. xiv. 26.) The Jews
+      were encouraged to indulge in a plurality of wives; but they were nowhere
+      directed or recommended to live on alms. Again, we find nowhere any orders
+      to the priests or Levites to go about the country expounding or teaching
+      the law. Consequently, when we notice the rise of asceticism, preaching,
+      and celibacy, between the time of Antiochus and that of Jesus, we are
+      justified in the belief that they were introduced from without, and by
+      those of the only religion which inculcated them as articles of faith and
+      practice.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In Lev. xvi. 30; xxiii. 27, 28; and Numb. xxix. 7, there
+     are directions given to the Jews, that on a certain day they
+     are "to afflict their souls," and a threat is added, that
+     "whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that
+     self same day, he shall be cut off from amongst his people."
+     There is no specific direction as to the method of
+     afflicting the soul; but it is to be associated with
+     absolute laziness, for whatever soul doeth any work on that
+     day shall be destroyed (Lev. xxiii. 28-31). The law is
+     evidently a very modern one, as we do not find it referred
+     to in the Ancient Jewish records, and the idea of atonement
+     was introduced by the Talmudic Pharisees.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      3. The Hebrews always showed during the Old Testament times a great
+      aptitude to adopt the faith of outsiders&mdash;and as the Jewish people
+      were in great abasement and misery at the period when it is probable that
+      the Buddhist missionaries came into Syria, they would be prepared for the
+      doctrine that they were suffering for bygone sins. The idea that men in
+      the present were sometimes punished for sins done in the past was a Hebrew
+      as well as a Hindoo idea, else Saul's sons would not have been hanged for
+      their father's misdeeds, or the Amalekites have been slaughtered by
+      Samuel, because their forefathers had some centuries before fought with
+      Israel and been conquered by Moses and Joshua.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. That after the Persian reign it is certain, that three Jewish sects
+      existed,&mdash;the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees&mdash;the
+      last alone being purely Mosaic, and the two first being very like the
+      Buddhists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To strengthen the links of evidence, we may now say a few words about the
+      remarkable sect of the Essenes, premising our belief that it was founded
+      by missionaries of the faith of Sakya Muni, whose doctrines and practice
+      became, subsequently, modified by Mosaism, just as Christianity was
+      considerably remoulded by Talmudism, or, to use an example nearer our own
+      times, as the Christianity preached by European missionaries to the New
+      Zealanders has been altered by the natives, in accordance with their
+      ancient ideas. To them the Old Testament is the Bible, the New Testament
+      is of no value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Essenes are described by the Rev. Dr Ginsburg, whose authority I
+      follow (<i>The Essenes</i>. Longmans, London, 1864), as a Jewish sect of
+      singular piety. They did not sacrifice animals, but endeavoured to make
+      their own minds holy&mdash;fit for an acceptable offering to Jehovah. They
+      provided themselves with just enough for the necessities of life, and held
+      such goods as they possessed, e.g., clothes and cloaks, in common. They
+      only allowed themselves to converse on such parts of philosophy as concern
+      God and man. They abhorred slavery, but each served his neighbour. They
+      respected the Sabbath. Their fundamental laws were, to love God, to love
+      virtue, and to love mankind. They affected to despise money, fame,
+      pleasures, professed the most strict chastity, or, rather, continence, and
+      they practised endurance as a duty. They also cultivated simplicity,
+      cheerfulness, modesty, and order. They lived together in the same houses
+      and villages, and sustained the poor, the sick, and the aged. When they
+      earned wages the money was paid to a common stock. They did not marry, or
+      have children; but if any of their body chose to wed, there was nothing in
+      the regulations to prevent their doing so, only they then had to enter
+      another class of the brotherhood. When possible, they worked all day. They
+      were highly respected by those who knew them, and were frequently
+      receiving additions to their number. They seem to have resembled, in their
+      habits and customs, a fraternity of monks of a working, rather than a
+      mendicant, order. Pleasure they regarded as an evil, having a tendency to
+      enchain man to earthly enjoyments, a peculiarly Buddhist tenet. Still
+      further, they considered the use of ointment as defiling, which was
+      certainly not a Hebraic doctrine; but they dressed decently. They prayed
+      devoutly before sunrise; but until the orb had risen they never spoke of
+      worldly matters. They gave thanks, and prayed before and after eating; and
+      ere they entered the refectory bathed in pure water. The food provided was
+      just sufficient to keep them alive. When a person wished to enter the
+      community, he underwent a period of trial, and, if approved, he proceeded
+      to take an oath&mdash;"to fear God; to be just towards all men; never to
+      wrong anyone; to detest the wicked, and love the righteous; to keep faith
+      with all men; not to be proud; not to try and outshine his neighbours in
+      any matter; to love truth, and to try and reclaim all liars; never to
+      steal or to cajole; never to conceal anything from the brotherhood, and to
+      be reticent with outsiders." The Essenes reverenced Moses, and so great
+      was their respect for the Sabbath, that they would not ease nature on that
+      day. They bore all tortures with perfect equanimity, and fully believed in
+      a future state of existence, in which the soul, liberated from the body,
+      rejoices, and mounts upwards to a paradise, where there are no storms, no
+      cold, and no intense heat, and where all are constantly refreshed by
+      gentle ocean breezes. Josephus compares this sect with the Pythagoreans;
+      and I think this fact is worth noticing, for there was, in old times, a
+      strong opinion that the founder of that sect brought his peculiar opinions
+      from Hindostan. Pliny, in writing of the Essenes, remarks that their
+      usages differ from those of all other nations&mdash;which we may take as a
+      demonstration that they did not copy their constitution from Greeks,
+      Romans, or Jews. Respecting the origin of this sect nothing certain is
+      known, beyond that they were in existence at the time of the Maccabees.
+      Critics decline to see in them any direct relations to the Pythagoreans,
+      and some imagine that the order sprung naturally out of a spiritual
+      reading of the Mosaic law, modified, probably, by Persian or Chaldee
+      notions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me, however, that the tenets and practice of the Essenes
+      indicate rather a Buddhist than a Mosaic origin, for celibacy is
+      everywhere in the Old Testament spoken of as a misfortune, and abundance
+      of wives as a proof of God's favour; and I imagine that some devout Indian
+      missionary persuaded many pious Jews to listen to his doctrine, but that
+      he was unable to convert them sufficiently to induce them to give up the
+      law of Moses for that of Siddartha. I conceive still further, that John
+      the Evangelist, and, subsequently, Jesus of Nazareth, were perfectly
+      cognizant of the doctrines of the Essenes, if they were not members of the
+      sect, and that there is nothing incredible in the idea that both these
+      preachers were instructed by some Buddhist missionary, although neither
+      was ever induced to give up his belief in the absolute truth of those
+      Jewish writings, which both had been accustomed to regard as absolutely
+      true and sacred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We readily allow that our theory may be called a wild one, but we assert
+      that, in reality, it is far otherwise. Of course a critic may say that
+      John, and his follower, Jesus, were just as likely to have struck out a
+      new theory of salvation as Sakya Muni was; or, if exceedingly orthodox, he
+      may assume that the preaching of Jesus was the pure result of inspiration,
+      not such as was given to the prophets by Jehovah, but emanating from
+      himself as a source of absolute truth. But we demur to both assertions.
+      The profound reverence that Mary's son showed, in the early part of his
+      career, for the law and for the prophets, would have prevented his doing
+      anything to upset the former in so marked a manner as he did, in respect
+      to the Sabbath day and other matters (see Matthew v. 31, 32, 33, 34, 38,
+      39, 43, 44), unless there had been some strong influence, from without,
+      brought to bear upon his mind, and to cast it in a different mould to that
+      of Pharisee or Sadducee. Nor can we believe Jesus to have been inspired,
+      unless we extend the same belief to Buddha's teaching, and believe that he
+      also was a fountain of light and righteousness, which we certainly are not
+      disposed to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our hypothesis respecting a connection between the teaching of the Indian
+      and the Hebrew, appears to be strengthened when we contemplate the
+      distinction between the doctrines of the Jewish and the Hindoo sage. We
+      have seen how they agree as regards the morality which they inculcate, the
+      celibacy and poverty that they enjoin, the firm belief in preexistent, or
+      original, sin, and in a future state of rewards or punishments. They
+      differ in the veneration paid to antecedent authority. Sakya Muni believed
+      in his own inspiration, and rejected the writings which were reverenced by
+      his parents and Mends. Jesus seems to have believed that he was himself
+      supplemental to Moses and the prophets. He did not want to destroy or to
+      supersede them absolutely, as we learn from Matthew v. 17, and xxiii. 23.
+      He had, apparently, an unbounded confidence in their truth, and, with an
+      assurance in their sanctity, he spoke of their writings as the very words
+      of God, and we shall see that the main, if not the only, points in which
+      Jesus diverges from the Hindoo prophet were the products of the Hebrew's
+      full belief in the sacred truth of the Jewish Scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The son of Mary taught, as the most important part of his doctrine, that
+      the world would shortly come to an end, and that he was sent to show
+      mankind, or, rather, the Jews, how to escape from the terrible
+      catastrophe. I do not think it possible for anyone to read the words
+      attributed to Jesus, and not recognize that this was the turning point
+      upon which everything in his preaching hinged. Sakya Muni spoke of the
+      future misery of all those who did not adopt his method of salvation;
+      Jesus treated of the impending destruction of the whole world, of an
+      immediate judgment of mankind, and of the certain punishment of the
+      majority. That we are not uttering vague assertions we may show by
+      reference to Matt. xxiv. 3, wherein we find certain disciples asking,
+      "What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?" After
+      a long preamble, telling of troubles and misery, we have the reply of
+      Jesus in vv. 29 et seq.:&mdash;"Immediately after the tribulation of those
+      days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and
+      the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be
+      shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and
+      then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son
+      of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he
+      shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall
+      gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to
+      another.... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till
+      all these things be fulfilled." This is substantially, and almost
+      literally, repeated in Mark xiii. 26-30, and in Luke xxi. 32.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * I have heard the words of this preceding quotation handled
+     by a great variety of divines, asserting themselves to be
+     orthodox, and who hold the position of Christian ministers.
+     All, without exception, profess to regard the expressions
+     about the sun being darkened and the stars falling, as
+     figurative or metaphorical, and each, according to his
+     prevalent ideas, or to the pet theory of the day, explain
+     the imagery as having a reference to some emperor, king,
+     queen, general of armies, and I know not what besides. But,
+     to anyone who examines the phraseology closely, it will be
+     seen that the words are to be taken in their most literal
+     sense. Jesus had, as we have shown, a firm belief in the
+     immediate destruction of the world, and upon that theme he
+     descants and dilates. Taking the Mosaic account of creation
+     as strictly true to the letter, Jesus regarded the sun,
+     moon, and stars as apanages of our earth, and very naturally
+     drew the inference, that when the world was burned up, there
+     would be no necessity for the celestial luminaries&mdash;the sun
+     would cease to shine, the moon would be dark, and the stars
+     fall from the sky under the influence of the same power that
+     produced the mundane destruction. These defunct bodies would
+     be replaced by a vast apparition, whose glory would exceed
+     that of the ancient rulers of the day and night, and he who
+     now stood on earth as a man of sorrows and acquainted with
+     grief would be seen and recognized as the arbiter of the
+     destinies of every man. The passages referred to in the text
+     bear no other meaning than the one here assigned to them;
+     nor would anyone, however wild "a divine" he might be, ever
+     see, or endeavour to discover, in the words referred to, a
+     hidden meaning, unless the solemn assertion of Jesus of his
+     immediate advent in the clouds of heaven had been such a
+     signal failure as time has proved it to be. We have always
+     protested against those theologians who pronounce passages
+     in the Bible to be metaphorical or literal as it suits the
+     event, and we do so now. Why such men should insist upon it
+     that everything in the Koran and Buddhistic books must be
+     taken au pied de la lettre and that everything in the Bible
+     may be allegorised, is a matter beyond my comprehension.
+     They surely forget the dictum&mdash;"with what measure ye mete it
+     shall be measured to you again" (Matt, vii. 2).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In Matthew x. we find Jesus sending out his disciples as missionaries,
+      saying to them (v. 7), "as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is
+      at hand," a doctrine previously proclaimed by John (Matt iii. 2), and
+      based upon some words of Isaiah and the more precise presages in Daniel
+      See also Matt iv. 14-17; Luke ix. 2, and x. 9. We find a yet more
+      important reference in Matt. xi. 14, in which Jesus is reported to have
+      said, when speaking of John, "If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which
+      was for to come." The observation here made plainly refers to an utterance
+      of the Jewish Malachi, who, in his last two chapters, foreshadows the
+      advent of a messenger, who should immediately precede the coming of the
+      Lord to judge the world. There is yet another passage, of almost equal
+      force, in Matt. xvi. 27, 28&mdash;"For the Son of man shall come in the
+      glory of the Father with his angels, and then shall he reward every man
+      according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here
+      which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his
+      kingdom." In Matt. xix. 28 we read, "Jesus said unto them, Verily I say
+      unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the
+      Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon
+      twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel," &amp;c. Again, we
+      see in Matt, xxv., after a parable intended to show the possibility of a
+      sudden occurrence, the words, "Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the
+      day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." That this belief was due
+      to the Jewish writings we judge from the frequent references made to them;
+      and we may especially notice one which is attributed to Jesus after his
+      resurrection, viz., "all things must be fulfilled which were written in
+      the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me."
+      So firmly was the belief of an immediate judgment impressed upon the minds
+      of Christians, that we find Paul affirming respecting it (1 Cor. xv.), "We
+      shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed... at the last trump"
+      (vv. 31, 52). This is more decidedly enunciated in 1 Thess. iv. 15-17&mdash;"For
+      this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and
+      remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them that are
+      asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with
+      the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in
+      Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be
+      caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
+      and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Compare with this 2 Peter iii.
+      1-4, in which there is a repetition of the same leading idea, and with
+      Acts i. 11, and ii. 16-36.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From these passages, it is unquestionable that Jesus preached that a
+      destruction of the whole creation was imminent, and we, who have the light
+      of history to guide us, can readily understand the powerful influence of
+      the doctrine. We have read of panics, even in London, where some
+      enthusiast has propounded the statement, that the world was to be
+      destroyed upon a certain day, and can well believe, how a similar
+      assertion would frighten ignorant, and, probably, learned Hebrew men. But,
+      as time advanced, and generation after generation passed away, the
+      original doctrine required to be modified. Yet it has never been quite
+      given up, and to this day, a part of the system of Christianity is, to put
+      faith in a second coming of Jesus, to judge the world. The "second coming"
+      here referred to, frequently passes by the name of the Millennium, and
+      earnest pietists believe that the son of Mary will come in the clouds of
+      heaven with power and great glory, to punish all who do not believe in
+      him; and to elevate the existing, and all other past saints, to be kings
+      and priests in a new Jerusalem, wherein all will enjoy perfect happiness
+      for a thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another point in connection between Buddha and Jesus, to which
+      the biblical student should not fail to pay attention. The followers of
+      the former had a perfect belief that each of them had lived in a previous
+      state of existence. Upon this point not a doubt disturbed them. The
+      disciples of the latter, however, had no such ideas, nor when propounded
+      to them, did they apparently understand it. As far as we can judge from
+      the first three Gospels, Jesus did not assert that he had ever existed
+      prior to the time of his birth at Bethlehem. But in the fourth Gospel,
+      written as almost every scholar believes, about A.D. 150, a claim is
+      repeatedly made by Jesus, of having lived for an untold period, in the
+      spirit world in company with the Father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not enter here upon the grossness of thought, which is mingled
+      with the better ideas of the writer of John's Gospel&mdash;a notion that
+      involves the necessity for a celestial spouse of God; for if the son
+      existed&mdash;"begotten by the father before all worlds," it could only be
+      by some union&mdash;for the word "son" implies the necessity of a father
+      and a mother&mdash;more especially when it is declared, that he was
+      "begotten." Our chief business, however, is not with this point, but with
+      the preëxistence of Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assertions by which the claim to a preëxistence is recognized, may be
+      found in the well known words in the beginning of John, also in the 10th
+      verse&mdash;"The world was made by him." In these parts, the evangelist
+      declares that Jesus was coeval with his father, which no son can be. In
+      chap. iii. 13, we find, "no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that
+      came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven,"&mdash;a
+      strange text indeed, which totally ignores the ascension of Enoch and
+      Elijah&mdash;or which demonstrates that they lived in heaven before they
+      were born on earth, and which still further makes Jesus say, that he was
+      in heaven at the time when he was talking to Nicodemus! In chap, vi. 62,
+      there is a similar idea, "and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
+      where he was before." In chap. viii. 14 to 23, 38, and 56, a similar idea
+      is propounded; and in v. 58, Jesus is made to assert positively, "before
+      Abraham was, I am." In chap, xvi. 28, again, we read, "I came forth from
+      the Father," and in chap. xvii. 5, we see, "and now, O Father, glorify
+      thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before
+      the world was."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not believe that the son of Mary made these assertions himself, nor
+      did the son of Maya. But Sakya Muni had not long been dead, before his
+      disciples promulgated the doctrine that he was, in reality, a part of the
+      Supreme, who had existed for everlasting, and had been manifested in the
+      flesh to become a teacher; what his followers did for Buddha, it was
+      natural that others should do for Christ. It may be that the latter were
+      stimulated to do so by noticing the former, but it is quite as probable
+      that the idea of glorification came spontaneously to both sets of men.
+      Whichever view of the case we may take, one thing is certain, viz., that
+      both Buddhists and Christians, have, from the death of their respective
+      masters, done everything in their power, century by century, to augment
+      the claims of each, until indeed, individuals are found, who regard Sakya
+      Muni as the Supreme, and Jesus the All in All. The learned historian may
+      trace in the East, the rise of Buddha's influence in some spots, and its
+      decadence in others; and, when he looks nearer home, he may see the
+      gradual fall of Jesus, and the rise of Mary amongst the Papists, whilst
+      amongst the Protestants, the son has been raised even above the Father.
+      Not many months have passed, since a clever preacher and thoughtful man,
+      told me that he was determined to see nothing in the world but Christ&mdash;for
+      whatever was done, he felt a certain confidence that it was done by him,
+      and for his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We see then, that both Buddhism and Christianity have been founded on the
+      assertion that mankind suffers pain, misery, and death, in consequence of
+      antecedent criminality before "The Great Master"&mdash;that men will be
+      punished after death for certain sins committed in this life; and that
+      they can attain to salvation by adopting the precepts and practice laid
+      down by Buddha and by Christ. Those who preach these doctrines are sure of
+      the facts that misery exists, and that man desires to escape it.
+      According, then, to the painting of the one, and the earnest promise of
+      the other, all teachers of the two sects have a strong hold upon the
+      imagination of their followers. I assert, without fear of contradiction
+      from any thoughtful man, that the main inducements held out by our divines
+      to persuade their hearers to embrace Christianity, are an awful painting
+      of the horrors of hell, and an assurance not only of escaping it, but of
+      gaining a place quite different to the Devil's kingdom, provided only that
+      the plan adopted by the theologian is followed to the letter. Neither
+      Buddhists nor Christians seem ever to have studied the laws of nature, or
+      the works of the Supreme, with any largeness of mind or understanding. Had
+      they done so, they would alter their views respecting sin entirely, and
+      they would attribute the miseries of life to their proper cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be interesting to the reader, if we now endeavour to remove from
+      the two religious systems, of which we treat, all those parts, which are
+      to my mind, clearly imaginary; and examine what is left behind. There is
+      nothing beyond a skeleton of morality, pure and simple. But even the
+      morality is not based upon common sense. It is tainted by what every
+      thinker must regard as absurdities. For example, when Siddartha instructed
+      his disciples to become ascetics, and live upon alms, he did recognize the
+      fact, that, if all men adopted his law, they must starve; for not one
+      would have anything to give. In like manner, when Jesus of Nazareth sent
+      off his disciples without any provision for their subsistence; and when he
+      preached, "take no thought for the morrow," he did not appear to take in
+      the idea, that if all the world became converted to his doctrine, all
+      would suffer, and die of hunger. It is, therefore, quite as necessary for
+      a modern philosopher, to correct some of the better parts of the doctrines
+      of the sons of Maya Devi, and Mary, as it is to emendate their worst
+      features. If such an one were to pretend&mdash;or to believe, that he was
+      "inspired" to rectify the dispensation of Siddartha and Jesus, as the
+      latter thought himself commissioned to improve upon, or to fulfil the law
+      of Moses&mdash;it is probable that he would be regarded as a prophet; but
+      if he should only try to coax men to think, rather than drive them to
+      believe, he would be unheeded by the majority. Nor after all, does it much
+      signify. Sheep are tolerably comfortable whoever the shepherd may be, and
+      if there should be a fight between rivals for the ownership of a flock,
+      the quadrupeds do not care, so long as they are not trained to fight, to
+      fast, or to live on an animal diet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When any one speaks of the morality, pure and simple, inculcated by Sakya
+      Muni and Jesus, it is a fair question to ask whether asceticism is
+      included therein. In other words, is there anything of the nature of
+      absolute goodness in the attempt to make oneself miserable? Or, to vary
+      the question still further&mdash;granting, for the sake of argument, that
+      it is intrinsically right in the sight of God to abstain from such of our
+      propensities as induce us to marry, to eat, drink, and sleep heartily, to
+      fight a duel with a rival, to steal, to lie, to covet, and the like,&mdash;granting,
+      too, that every such abstinence is entered as "an asset" on the creditor
+      side of the books of Heaven&mdash;is it an equally available item to
+      abstain from brotherly love and comfort generally? The logician sees
+      clearly that there is no distinction in kind between controlling one set
+      of animal passions and another, and is forced to allow that if it be a
+      commendable thing to avoid indulging in one carnal appetite, it is still
+      more commendable to endeavour to counteract them all Consequently, by
+      granting the premisses, we find ourselves landed in a difficulty. If
+      universal asceticism were to prevail, it is clear that man would be
+      opposing himself to the manifest designs of the Creator, as shown in the
+      world at large; and we cannot conceive, that direct disobedience to
+      instincts, implanted in us by our Maker, can be anything but an item on
+      the debtor side in the books, which Jewish writers have said that He
+      keeps. Thus we are driven to investigate the very assertions which in the
+      commencement of our inquiry we took for granted, and to ask ourselves, is
+      there really any intrinsic value in morality in the sight of God? Can a
+      most virtuous life command for the individual who has practised it an
+      eternity of bliss? Jesus answers this tolerably distinctly in the words
+      reported in Luke xvii. 10, "When ye shall have done all those things which
+      are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that
+      which it was our duty to do." But we doubt whether this dictum enunciates
+      sufficiently clearly the abstract value of morality. To ascertain this we
+      must endeavour to read the book of nature on other pages than those which
+      treat of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There can be no doubt in the mind of a thoughtful observer that man and
+      the lower animals have much in common&mdash;that; all have been framed
+      with a purpose, and are ruled by natural laws. Some creatures excel in
+      cunning, some in reason, some in activity, some in sloth&mdash;all have
+      certain proclivities. In some, instinct leads them to eat grass, boughs,
+      leaves, and fruits; in others, it teaches them to seek insects or other
+      creatures for their food. All have, more or less, periodically a
+      propensity to propagate;&mdash;which is attended in some by a pairing off
+      of male and female, who consort for the purpose of having offspring and
+      assisting each other in rearing them. In others, either where there is
+      naturally an equality of the sexes or a preponderance of males, the latter
+      instinctively fight with each other for a single mate, or for a number of
+      females. Again, in the case of animals actuated by hunger, or by other
+      motives, there are frequent battles, and the conquered is not only killed,
+      but eaten. Or where two or more sets of animals are living, the one on
+      land, the other in the air, we may find that one will rob the other.
+      Nothing, for example, is much more common than for rats and crows to steal
+      eggs, or for tigers to commit murder. Nature, then, being such as we find
+      it, we cannot assert&mdash;reasonably&mdash;that a young stag when he
+      covets a neighbour's wife and fights her present consort, for property in
+      her, commits a crime against the Almighty,&mdash;nor can we say that a fox
+      which steals a goose will be sent to hell. On the other hand, we should
+      never think of commending a hungry lion for abstaining from killing a
+      harmless lamb, nor of declaring that he has done a good action in the
+      sight of heaven. In like manner, a writer in proverbs tells us that "men
+      do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry,"&mdash;and
+      the general consent of mankind refuses to see the crime of murder in the
+      slaughter of one, out of a miserable boat's crew, who is killed and eaten
+      that the survivors may escape death from hunger. Society, too, is somewhat
+      lenient when two men fight for the love of such a woman as Helen. But we
+      readily recognise the fact that a community, or even a family, would be
+      weakened and disorganized if theft was encouraged, and every pretty female
+      was the cause of close fighting between man and man. Hence we see that, in
+      reality, that which is called "the moral law," is a code which is intended
+      to influence social life in this world, and not the position of human
+      beings in the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However much we might desire to think the contrary, we are driven to the
+      belief that the moral precepts inculcated on the Jews, the Buddhists, and
+      the Christians, had a human, and, we may add, a political origin. Taking
+      the Bible even as being what many believe it to be&mdash;the inspired word
+      of God&mdash;we must nevertheless allow that such a code as that book
+      contains in Exodus and elsewhere, existed in Egypt long before the
+      departure of the Jews from that country. Had not murder been prohibited on
+      the Nile bank, Moses would not have run away to escape the penalty for
+      homicide. Because the Mizraim punished killing, were they taught of God?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The natural answer to this query when it is addressed to a bibliolater is
+      that the Egyptians were taught by God to punish murder with death through
+      the intervention of their forefather, Ham, who heard the command given by
+      God to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,"
+      Gen. ix. 6. But if the Egyptians thus knew the law, so the descendants of
+      Shem must have learned it also; and if so, what need was there to repeat
+      it amongst the thunders of Sinai. It is plain from the romantic legend of
+      Joseph and Potiphar's wife: first, that the Hebrew slave feared to commit
+      adultery, as it was a great wickedness and a sin against God, Gen. xxxix.
+      9; and, secondly, that the Egyptian considered it a crime in anyone to
+      violate the wife of another. But neither Joseph nor Potiphar could by any
+      possibility have heard of the laws enunciated on Sinai. So, if we could
+      inquire farther, we should most assuredly learn that the Mizraim venerated
+      their parents, punished theft, and took means to prevent and to punish
+      perjury. If, then, the Egyptians had, long before they ever heard of a
+      Jew, the same commandments amongst them which were subsequently enunciated
+      in the wilderness, we can only come to the conclusion that the Hebrew
+      writer who told the story of Sinai, gave the god whom he described, a
+      great deal of unnecessary work. Can we for a moment suppose that the Jews
+      when in Egypt had their wives in common?&mdash;and if each man had his
+      mate, and each woman her husband, it is almost self-evident that adultery
+      would not be tolerated amongst them. As there were therefore distinct
+      moral laws long before the Exodus, the decalogue was entirely superfluous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morality inculcated by teachers is nothing more than instructions for
+      mankind how to attain the greatest harmony amongst their fellows. It is
+      very natural for a thoughtless man to assert that one who wilfully
+      disturbs the general comfort of the human family during his life-time,
+      shall be tormented eternally after his death; and, on the other hand, to
+      proclaim that he who does everything in his power to increase the
+      happiness of his fellow-men shall be rewarded in a heaven above, with
+      everlasting music, or other delights; yet we may fairly doubt the
+      averments, for both are founded entirely upon human ideas of right and
+      wrong, justice and injustice. The prevalent idea is, that everything which
+      to some man seems to be wrong on earth, will be righted in another sphere&mdash;Even
+      Jesus appears to have adopted this view, for he talks (Luke xvi) of a
+      Dives and Lazarus&mdash;the one, a rich man who fared sumptuously every
+      day, and the other a beggar, full of sores, who longed for the crumbs from
+      wealth's table. After the deaths of these two people, we are told that the
+      rich man went to Hell, and the poor one to Heaven, not&mdash;apparently&mdash;because
+      one was bad and the other good; but simply because misery in the present
+      is sure to be changed into luxury for the future, and <i>vice versa</i>.
+      We see this doctrine distinctly enunciated by the imaginary Abraham, in
+      whose bosom Lazarus lay, for he remarks (Luke xvi. 25), "Son, remember
+      that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
+      evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented." We nowhere
+      find that his position was a reward to the beggar for virtue or morality.
+      There is also a current doctrine that he whom we call a vile man&mdash;one
+      who indulges his brutal desires, shall in another world become more
+      brutalized&mdash;meeting with, and being beaten by, powers whose
+      mischievous propensities are superior to his own; whilst, on the other
+      hand, he whom we call a saint, one who endeavours to subdue the affections
+      of the flesh in this world, shall be able to indulge in any desire that he
+      may have, in the next, unlimitedly. In short, each individual makes a
+      Heaven for himself, and a Hell for his neighbours. I have heard, in days
+      gone by, a Southern States lady say she would not go to heaven, willingly,
+      if she knew that she should meet negroes there on terms of equality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In rejoinder to these considerations, the question is put, "Could the
+      world be habitable by men, without the existence amongst them of a belief
+      in a future state, in which rewards and punishments shall be meted out for
+      supposed misdeeds committed in the present?" It is well for us to look the
+      matter in the face boldly, and ask ourselves whether fierce tigers, angry
+      bulls, combative stags, kindred devouring rats, offspring eating
+      alligators, infanticidal birds and pigs have succeeded in extirpating
+      their race? There are herds, without number, of graminivorous animals in
+      Africa, and thousands of carnivorous creatures who could not exist without
+      murdering some of the former; yet the slaughter committed by scores of
+      lions does not annihilate antelopes. In like manner there are many folks
+      who have lived in sundry islands of the Pacific without an idea, so far as
+      we can learn, of an eternity, who sometimes spend their leisure time in
+      fighting with and eating each other, and occasionally unite to kill a
+      shark: each individual lives and dies like any other animal, but the race
+      remains. Even the systematic "hellishness" of persecution indulged in by
+      the followers of Jesus in the middle ages did not extirpate the Jews; and
+      if organized murders, such as were, in days gone by, sanctioned by
+      individuals wielding the sceptre of powerful governments, could not cut
+      off from existence a comparatively feeble race, surely we may conclude
+      that a nation can continue populous even if any individual, in a fit of
+      passion, should rise against his fellow and smite him to the dust. But we
+      need not go to New Zealand, China, and Japan to prove that men can live in
+      a community without an idea of eternity, for we have only to refer to the
+      Jews, the so-called people of God. To them no knowledge of eternal life
+      was given, consequently we infer that Jehovah knew that they would get
+      along in the world very well without it. What Elohim thought was
+      unnecessary, it is not for man to propound as important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the modern Christian philosopher&mdash;and there really are a few who
+      deserve the term&mdash;finds that the morality of Jesus did not materially
+      differ from that of Sakya Muni, he endeavours to show that the doctrine of
+      "faith in the son of God" is of more value than simple propriety, and that
+      even the most virtuous life will not enable a man to attain to paradise
+      unless he holds the Catholic faith. When the "Catholic faith," as it is
+      termed, is placed in such a position, we are bound to examine its
+      pretensions, and inquire in what way doctrines or dogmas are better than
+      morality, and whether they are in any way superior to what the orthodox
+      call "irreligion." To my mind the best method of solving the question is
+      an appeal to history. If, as it is contended by the orthodox, the teaching
+      of Christianity is far above that of any other religion, then it must
+      follow that all those who believe in it, or even profess it, must be
+      paragons amongst men as citizens and rulers. To what extent many
+      theologians believe in this axiom may be judged by the frequency with
+      which we hear, from the pulpit, an old anecdote to the effect, that the
+      expression, "see how these Christians love one another," was, in olden
+      time, nearly equal to the most powerful sermon in favour of the religion
+      of Jesus. Without pointing a sneer, by requesting my readers to substitute
+      the word Buddhists for Christians, let me lay the very heavy charge
+      against the leaders of the faith, that the words in question are the
+      heaviest condemnation possible against the supposed value of the doctrines
+      of the son of Mary, as formerly and at present expounded. "See how these
+      Christians love!" Aye, see how they love&mdash;read their own histories of
+      the past, and their newspapers in the present; attend their meetings;
+      listen to their speeches; and even follow them into private life. In every
+      position "see how these Christians love one another" is the damning
+      sentence which tells of the real value of the doctrine attributed to the
+      son of Mary. Whilst I write (Jan. 7, 1870), a council, called OEcumenical,
+      consisting of Roman Catholic Christian bishops, summoned to the capital of
+      ancient Italy from all parts of the world, is sitting, and one of the
+      subjects of its deliberation is, whether a certain individual, elected by
+      men to assume the direction of a community of men holding a particular
+      faith in common, shall be regarded, by those who join such branch of the
+      church, as absolutely infallible in every statement of opinion which he
+      makes as a high priest. Men positively have met to clothe, and now have
+      invested, a man with an attribute of God, and millions of Christians will,
+      by those men, be compelled to consider themselves bound by the decision!
+      "See how these Christians love!" they are persecuted by the world at
+      first, then they persecute their oppressors, and massacre each other;
+      educated by Jesus, they gradually encourage ignorance until they reach a
+      superstition as crass as the darkness of a dense fog in a moonless night.
+      They oppose the advancement of knowledge and science, then, by degrees,
+      endeavour to exalt each other, until, by common consent, they deify the
+      chieftain of the order. There is not a known crime of which the leaders of
+      the Christian church, as it is called, have not been guilty, both as men
+      and ecclesiastical rulers. "See how these Christians love!" Yet these very
+      men endeavour to deride, and affect to despise, those whom they call the
+      godless. The latter, taking their stand upon morality and common sense,
+      aver that all affairs between man and his maker ought to be referred to
+      the arbitrement of Heaven. The Christian hierarchs, on the contrary,
+      declare that they are the earthly agents of heaven, and that they, and the
+      secular arm&mdash;a very mundane court&mdash;can act just as well, perhaps
+      better, than the Supreme Judge. We will not say whether it was a pleasant
+      pastime for the Spanish, and other Inquisitors, to torture individuals who
+      were thought to be inimical to the true faith, inasmuch as we do not know
+      their inmost mind; but we asseverate that all Europe, except those who had
+      the power of persecution, and used it, rejoiced greatly when the
+      enthusiastic armies, of what was designated atheistic France, annihilated
+      the so-called Holy Inquisition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I speak with sober earnestness when I say, that after forty years'
+      experience amongst those who profess Christianity, and those who proclaim,
+      more or less quietly, their disagreement with it, I have noticed more
+      sterling virtue and morality amongst the last than the first. Though I
+      thus express myself, I must also acknowledge my belief in the dictum,
+      "that many men are better than their creeds would make them," and,
+      consequently, that all men are not to be taken as characteristic of their
+      system of belief. I know, personally, many pious, sterling, good Christian
+      people, whom I honour, admire, and, perhaps, would be glad to emulate or
+      to equal; but they deserve the eulogy thus passed on them in consequence
+      of their good sense having ignored the doctrine of faith to a great
+      degree, and having cultivated the practice of good works. They have picked
+      out the best bits of the Bible, and rejected the worst. In my judgment the
+      most praiseworthy Christians whom I know are modified Buddhists, though,
+      probably, not one of them ever heard of Siddartha. I would gladly trace
+      their character, but I forbear, as I think they would be horrified at the
+      thought of my comparing them with those whom they have been taught to
+      regard as followers of a false prophet, or something worse. Let it suffice
+      to say that I honour consistent reasonable Christians everywhere, and that
+      whatever remarks I make which seem to be opposed to this, are directed
+      against those whose doctrines, morality, and conduct, ostensibly built
+      upon the Bible, are irrational and bad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the preceding remarks were written, there have appeared three very
+      remarkable works upon Buddhism in addition to those which I have already
+      noticed&mdash;and they have the advantage for general readers, of being
+      clothed in an English dress. The first which I will notice, is <i>Travels
+      of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun: Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India</i> (408
+      A.D., and 518 a.d.; London, Trübner, 1869, small 8vo. pp. 208.) This work
+      is remarkable as illustrating the fact, that there has been the idea, even
+      in China, of sending men, or of devout persons spontaneously going, to
+      distant places, to endeavour to seek for more perfect religious knowledge,
+      than they believe themselves and their teachers to possess where they are.
+      With such an example before us, we can give more easy credence to the
+      stories told of Pythagoras, of Solon, and Herodotus; how they visited
+      distant countries to learn the way of God and man more perfectly. Nor must
+      we pass by the proof, which the journey of the Chinese travellers affords,
+      that, what may be called missionary zeal is not an apanage of Christianity
+      alone. An account of their travels will be found in the next chapter. The
+      second publication to which we refer, is <i>Buddhaghosa's Parables</i>,
+      translated from the Burmese, by Capt. T. Rogers; with an introduction
+      containing <i>Buddha's Dhammapada</i>, or <i>Path of Virtue</i>,
+      translated from the Pâli, by Max Müller; London, Trubner &amp; Co., 1870,
+      8vo. pp. 374. This work is of such importance to all students of the
+      Science of Religion, that we shall notice it in a separate essay. The
+      third contribution, is <i>The Modern Buddhist</i>, being the views of a
+      Siamese Minister of State, on his own and other religions, translated,
+      with remarks, by Henry Alabaster, interpreter of H. B. M.,
+      consulate-general in Siam; London, Triibner &amp; Co., 1870, small 8vo.
+      pp. 91. This has now arrived at a second edition, and is called <i>The
+      Wheel of the Law</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This last book is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three, inasmuch as
+      it enables us to compare the modern development of the religion of Buddha,
+      and that of Christ. It enables us, moreover, to see ourselves and modern
+      Christian doctrines as others see them, and to discover the essential
+      points at issue, between the followers of the son of Maya Devi, and of
+      Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first point to which we would call attention, is the statement that
+      the Siamese are nowhere excelled in the sincerity of their belief, and the
+      liberality with which they support their religion. "In Bangkok alone,
+      there are more than a hundred monasteries, and ten thousand monks and
+      novices. More than this, every male Siamese, sometime during his life, and
+      generally in the prime of it, takes orders as a monk, and retires for some
+      months or years, to practise abstinence and meditation in a monastery."
+      Against this, or side by side with it, what can Great Britain, or any
+      other Christian country show? We have, it is true, plenty of monasteries
+      in Christendom, and in the majority of western kingdoms, there are
+      colleges and universities for the education of youth, and there is, in
+      some such institutions, a pretence of meditation and of abstinence. Yet
+      the finger of scandal points, and has pointed, for many hundred years, to
+      the disreputable conduct pursued in almost the whole of such Christian
+      institutions; whereas, not even its enemies can find evidence to convict
+      Buddhist ascetics of indulging in sensual gratifications of any kind
+      whatever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We learn, from Mr Alabaster's preface, that the late king of Siam, though
+      "eminent amongst monks for his knowledge of the Buddhist scriptures,
+      boldly preached against the canonicity of those of them, whose relations
+      were opposed to his reason, and his knowledge of modern science." "His
+      powers as a linguist were considerable, and enabled him to use an English
+      library with facility." They are his views&mdash;which royal etiquette
+      prevented him from writing, that inspired his prime minister. What have we
+      here? Surely it is an example that British rulers, and especially divines,
+      should follow. Yet with all our boasted skill, science, and powers of
+      thought, our theologians prefer to preach, and to uphold, doctrines which
+      they know to be repugnant, both to reason and to science, rather than
+      abandon that which was propounded when reason and knowledge were almost in
+      their infancy. Certainly, in this respect, the believers in Sakya Muni
+      show themselves more sensible than those in Jesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, let us quote the following paragraph&mdash;pointing out the analogy
+      we wish to draw, by using a literary contrivance&mdash;and calling
+      attention to the fact, that no Roman Catholic authority in Christian
+      Europe, has yet dared to say, what a Buddhist ruler does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Our {Siamese \ Papal} literature is not only scanty, but nonsensical,
+      full of stories of {genii \ saints} stealing {women \ relics} and {men \
+      saints} fighting with {genii \ devils} and {extraordinary persons\ Elijah
+      and Philip} who could fly through the air, and bring dead people to life.
+      And, even those works, which profess to teach anything, generally teach it
+      wrong; so that there is not the least profit, though one studies them from
+      morning to night" (p. 7).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following observation is equally powerful&mdash;Chaya. Phya. Praklang&mdash;the
+      name of the Siamese author, might, "as a Buddhist, believe in the
+      existence of a God, sublimed above all human qualities and attributes&mdash;a
+      perfect God, above love, and hatred, and jealousy, calmly resting in a
+      quiet happiness that nothing could disturb; and of such a God 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 him by Christian Missionaries,
+      or by Mahometans, Brahmins, or Jews, falls below his standard of even an
+      ordinary good man" (p. 25).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the passages which we have quoted, the translator gives many pages
+      of accounts of conversation between missionaries and the Siamese minister,
+      which well repay a perusal. They are too long for quotation entire, but
+      there are three paragraphs that deserve commemoration, as they show us the
+      reasoning powers of the Buddhist in favourable contrast to the bigotry of
+      his would-be instructor. "I said, 'then you consider that even a stone in
+      the bladder is created by God?' He replied, 'Yes, everything, God creates
+      everything.' 'Then,' answered I, if that is so, God creates in man that
+      which will cause his death, and you medical missionaries remove it, and
+      restore his health! Are you not opposing God by so doing? Are you not
+      offending Him in curing those whom He would kill?' When I had said this
+      the missionary became angry, and saying 'I was hard to teach,' left me"
+      (p. 29). Again, when he and Dr Gutzlaff were discussing the story of the
+      creation and "the fall," as taught in the Christian and Jewish Bible, and
+      the Buddhist has clearly the best of the argument, the missionary told
+      him, that if any spoke as the minister had been doing in European
+      countries, he would be put in prison&mdash;and Chaya Phya adds, "I invite
+      particular attention to this statement" (p. 34). Thus, not only in other
+      parts of his work, but here also, he points out how that which Christian
+      emissaries say is "a religion of peace on earth and good will to men" is,
+      in reality, one of intolerance and persecution, even on the showing of its
+      own ministers. In the third example to which I refer, Gutzlaff is again
+      talking with Chaya upon the curse of man, and the Siamese speaks thus&mdash;"Besides,
+      the Bible says, by belief in Christ, man shall escape the consequences of
+      Eve's sin; yet I cannot see that men do so escape in any degree, but
+      suffer just as others do." The missionary answered, "It is waste of time
+      to converse with evil men, who will not be taught, and so he left me" (p.
+      35). When men like Gutzlaff, who is really eminent in his way, can be so
+      readily silenced and put to flight by a native of Siam, whose mind is not
+      familiar with the science and logical training of European thinkers, it is
+      by no means surprising that cultivated Englishmen should refuse to believe
+      in the childish stories and foolish doctrines that are promulgated by
+      Christians at home, as being an inspired and infallible revelation from
+      the Almighty. Alas, for our country and her people! they have much to
+      unlearn as well as to learn before they can lay a fair claim to the
+      position which they assume to hold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may next quote the following, as being useful to missionary societies
+      here. After having described the religion of Papists, Protestants, and
+      Mormons, Chaya says, "All these three sects worship the same God and
+      Christ, why, then, should they blame each other, and charge each other
+      with believing wrongfully, and say to each other, 'You are wrong, and will
+      go to Hell; we are right, and shall go to Heaven?' You make us think that
+      it is one religion which Christians hold, yet how can we join it when each
+      party threatens us with Hell if we agree with another sect, and there is
+      none to decide between them? I beg comparison of this with the teaching of
+      the Lord Buddha, that whoever endeavours to keep the commandments, and is
+      charitable, and walks virtuously, must attain to Heaven" (p. 43). The
+      commandments referred to are&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1st. Thou shalt not destroy nor cause the destruction of any living thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2d. Thou shalt not, either by fraud or violence, obtain or keep that which
+      belongs to another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3d. Thou shall not lie carnally with any but proper objects for thy lust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4th. Thou shalt not attempt, either by word or action, to lead others to
+      believe that which is not true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5th. Thou shalt not become intoxicated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We much fear, that if the commandments which nominal Christians observe
+      are contrasted with those kept by the Buddhists, that the former must be
+      regarded as much lower in the scale of religious civilization than the
+      latter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Siamese author next discusses the question, "how shall a man select
+      that religion which he can trust to for his future happiness?" His answer
+      is, "He must reflect, and apply his mind to ascertain which comes nearest
+      to truth." Then follow a few very true remarks about the difficulty of
+      shaking off any faith once adopted&mdash;about the causes which determine
+      men to change their belief, and, in illustration of the difficulties, the
+      author quotes a sermon by Buddha to those who were in doubt, and desired
+      to select a right religion. "And the Lord Buddha answered, You are right
+      to doubt, for it was a doubtful matter. I say unto all of you, do not
+      believe in what ye have heard, that is, when you have heard anyone say
+      this is especially good or extremely bad; do not reason with yourselves,
+      that if it had not been true it would not have been asserted, and so
+      believe in its truth. Neither have faith in traditions, because they have
+      been handed down for many generations, and in many places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken of by many;
+      do not think that is a proof of its truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is
+      produced; do not be sure that the writing 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.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe in guesses, that is, assuming something at haphazard, as a
+      starting point, and then drawing conclusions from it&mdash;reckoning your
+      two and your three and your four before you have fixed your number one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe because you think there is an analogy, that is, a
+      suitability in things and occurrences&mdash;such as believing that there
+      must be walls of the world because you see water in a basin, or that Mount
+      Meru must exist because you have seen the reflection of trees, or that
+      there must be a creating god because houses and towers have builders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe in the truth of that to which you have become attached by
+      habit, as every nation believes in the superiority of its own dress, and
+      ornaments, and language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe because your informant appears to be a credible person,
+      as, for instance, when you see anyone having a very sharp appearance,
+      conclude that he must be clever and trustworthy: or, when you see anyone
+      who has powers and abilities beyond what men generally possess, believe in
+      what he tells; or think that a great nobleman is to be believed, as he
+      would not be raised by the king to high station unless he were a good man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and masters, or
+      believe and practise merely because they believe and practise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I 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 anyone, but will cause sorrow;' and when you know this, then
+      eschew it" (pp. 45-47). Then follows a long account of the examples which
+      Buddha gave to his disciples, examining them by questions, whose answer is
+      obvious; but these, though wonderfully to the point, are too long for
+      quotation, and we must refer our readers to the book itself. Nor do we act
+      thus, reluctantly, for we believe that every honest inquirer will thank us
+      for the introduction. We should rejoice if some of our divines became
+      acquainted with it. They might draw as many valuable texts from the
+      discourses attributed to Buddha, herein described, as they do now from
+      Jesus' sermon on the mount. We may add, in passing, that, in the
+      conversation of Sakya Muni, he says, "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
+      resurrection, 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; and if
+      there should happen to be a future after all, they will be at a
+      disadvantage&mdash;they will be like travellers without provisions" (p.
+      54).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following exposition of modern Buddhist belief well deserves
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Buddhists believe that every act, word, or thought, has its consequence,
+      which will appear sooner or later in the present, or in some future state.
+      Evil acts will produce evil consequences, i.e., may cause a man misfortune
+      in this world, or an evil birth in hell, or as an animal in some future
+      existence. Good acts, etc., will produce good consequences; prosperity in
+      this world, or birth in heaven, or in a high position in the world in some
+      future state" (p. 57).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will only add, that if the value of Buddhism, like Christianity, is to
+      be known by its fruits, it is clear, that the former, as practised
+      generally in Siam, is decidedly superior to the latter as practised in
+      Great Britain, America, and Christendom, generally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Priority of Buddhism to Christianity. Strange assumptions.
+     When was India first known to Christians? Thomas the
+     Apostle, When Asceticism was introduced into Christianity.
+     Results of inquiry into the introduction of Christianity
+     into India. Tarshish and Ceylon. Peacocks known as the
+     Persian birds to the Greeks, temp. Aristophanes. Indian
+     elephants in army of Darius. Roman traffic with India, b.c.
+     30. Buddhist missionaries. The gift of tongues. Rise of
+     Asceticism in Western Asia. Essenes again. Collection of
+     Buddhist writings, 450 b.c. Degeneracy of original Faith.
+     Missionaries from China to Hindostan in search of Buddhist
+     works and knowledge. Travels of Fah Hian, their experience
+     and remarks. Quotations from their writings. Footprints of
+     Buddha and Peter. Immaculate conception of Sakya. Old
+     Simeon&mdash;a repetition. Wise men from the East. St. Ursula.
+     Three Buddhist councils to compile scriptures. Buddhism
+     lapsed into image-worship and processions. Progress of the
+     pilgrims. Return by sea. Deductions. Developments of
+     Christianity and Asceticism. Observations about travelling.
+     Conclusions.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With the usual pertinacity of Englishmen, there are many devout
+      individuals who, on finding that Buddhism and Christianity very closely
+      resemble each other, asseverate, with all the vehemence of an assumed
+      orthodoxy, that the first has proceeded from the second. Nor can the
+      absurdity of attempting to prove that the future must precede the past
+      deter them from declaring that Buddhism was promulgated originally by
+      Christian missionaries from Judea, and then became deteriorated by
+      Brahminical and other fancies! It is really difficult, sometimes, to
+      discover what are the real tenets of the obstinate orthodox to whom we
+      refer; but, so far as we can learn from the character of their opposition,
+      it would appear that they do not deny the existence of such a man as Sakya
+      Muni, to whom his followers gave the name of Buddha. Just in the same way,
+      we may add, as his followers gave the name of Jesus Christ to Ben Panther.
+      Whilst allowing that Siddartha founded a new religion, the orthodox assert
+      that all its bad parts are human, whilst all its good parts consist of
+      doctrines tacked on to the original, after Christianity had been
+      introduced into India, by one or more of Jesus' apostles or disciples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, for the sake of argument, we accord to such cavillers the position of
+      reasonable beings, and ask them to give us some proof of the assertion,
+      that early Christian people went to Hindostan and preached the gospel
+      there; or even to point out, in history, valid proofs that India was known
+      to a single apostle, we find that they have nothing to say beyond the
+      vaguest gossip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What the testimony is we may find by turning to the article Thomas, in
+      Kitto's <i>Cyclopoedia of Biblical Literature</i>, which was written by a
+      learned professor of Gottingen. Therein we see, and the statement is amply
+      vouched by quotation from authorities, that the Apostle in question is
+      said to have preached the gospel in Parthia and in Persia, and to have
+      been buried in Edessa; and that, according to a later tradition, Thomas
+      went to India, and suffered martyrdom there. Then follows a statement that
+      this account has been assailed, &amp;c. Similar traditions are mentioned
+      by Dean Stanley in Smith's "<i>Dictionary of the Bible</i>" with the
+      addition that it is now believed that the Thomas of Malabar Christian fame
+      was a Nestorian missionary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eusebius writes, book v., ch. 10, speaking of Pantaenus, about a.d. 190&mdash;"He
+      is said to have displayed such ardour... that he was constituted a herald
+      of the gospel of Christ to the nations of the East, and advanced even as
+      far as India; and the report is, that he there found his own arrival
+      anticipated by some who were acquainted with the gospel of Matthew, to
+      whom Bartholomew, one of the Apostles, had preached, and had left them the
+      gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew, which was also preserved unto this time.
+      Pantænus became finally the head of the Alexandrian school." Such a piece
+      of gossip no historian can trust for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Socrates, in his <i>Ecclesiastical History</i>, about a.d. 420, writes,
+      "We must now mention by what means the profession of Christianity was
+      extended in Constantine's reign, for it was in his time that the nations,
+      both of the Indians in the interior, and the Iberians, first embraced the
+      Christian faith. But it may be needful briefly to explain why the
+      expression in the interior is appended. When the apostles went forth by
+      lot amongst the nations, Thomas received the apostleship of the Parthians.
+      Matthew was allotted Ethiopia, and Bartholomew the part of India
+      contiguous to that country; but the interior of India, which was inhabited
+      by many barbarous nations, using different languages, was not enlightened
+      by Christian doctrine before the time of Constantine," about 320 A.D. Then
+      follows a story of a Tynan philosopher, who, with two youths, took ship,
+      and arrived somewhere in India, just after the violation of a treaty
+      between that country and the Romans. Everyone in the ship was killed but
+      the two lads, who, being young, were sent as a present to the Indian king.
+      One became a cupbearer, the other the royal recorder. The king died,
+      freeing the youths, and the queen, left with a young son, made the
+      strangers his tutors, or regents. One, who was the highest, then began to
+      inquire whether, amongst the Roman merchants trafficking with that
+      country, there were any Christians to be found. Having discovered some, he
+      induced them to select a place for worship, and he subsequently built a
+      church, into which he admitted some Indians, after previous instruction.
+      The other youth comes back to Tyre, and then the regent comes to
+      Alexandria, talks to Athanasius, and begs him to send a bishop and clergy
+      to the place he has left, to which no name is given. To the latter youth
+      Frumentius, ordination is given, and he returns to India to preach, to
+      perform miracles, and build oratories, [&mdash;Greek&mdash;]. The
+      historian, adds Rufinus, assures us that he heard these facts from the
+      former king's cupbearer, Edesius, who was afterwards inducted into the
+      sacred office at Tyre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may next quote the <i>Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of
+      Philostorgius</i> (who wrote about A.D. 425), compiled by Photius,
+      Patriarch of Constantinople. Therein we may observe how completely the
+      first contradicts Socrates as before quoted, and may also infer the reason
+      why. In book ii., ch. 6, the words run, "The impious Philostorgius
+      relates, that the Christians in Central India, who were converted to the
+      faith of Christ by the preaching of St. Bartholomew, believe that the son
+      is not of the same substance with the father." He adds that "Theophilus,
+      the Indian who had embraced this opinion, came to them and delivered it to
+      them as a doctrine; and also that these Indians are now called Homeritæ,
+      instead of their old name, Sabæans, which they received from the city of
+      Saba, the chief city of the whole nation." This leads me to doubt very
+      strongly whether the ecclesiastical writers in early days did not group,
+      under the name of India, the southern parts of Arabia, Persia, and
+      Beloochistan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sozomen, writing about the period of 325 A.D., says, book ii, ch. 24, "We
+      have heard that about this period some of the most distant of the nations
+      that we call Indian, to whom the preaching of Bartholomew was unknown,
+      were converted to Christianity by Frumentius, a priest." Then follows an
+      enlarged edition of the legend told by Socrates, and the words, "it is
+      said that Frumentius discharged his priestly functions so admirably that
+      he became an object of universal admiration." Theodoret, writing about 420
+      A.D., places the conversion of the Indians about 328 A.D., and gives
+      substantially the same account as the preceding writers whom we have
+      quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We will not, however, content ourselves with this short notice, but will
+      first inquire whether, if the accounts of the earlier reporters, Eusebius,
+      Socrates, Clement, and Rufinus, who wrote about a.d. 320, 390, 190, and
+      370, are not to be trusted, we can believe the stories of Gregory
+      Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome, Nicephorus, and Abdias, who wrote about a.d.
+      380, 380, 400, 815, and 910 respectively. If we believe one set of
+      Christian "fathers," that Thomas the apostle died in Syria, we cannot
+      credit a set of Christian "sons," who affirm that he was martyred in
+      India. But&mdash;and the point is an important one&mdash;we can see reason
+      why the children should invent an account of which the parents saw not the
+      necessity. About the period of Gregory Nazianzen arose that asceticism
+      which sent Simeon Stylites upon the top of his pillar in a.d. 394, and
+      kept him there for the rest of his life, and that peopled the Thebaid with
+      hermits of the most approved Buddhist order&mdash;celibates shunning
+      luxury, and cultivating filthiness of the outer to cleanse the inner man.
+      The way in which the original faith, preached by Jesus and modified by
+      Paul, was distorted during the first few centuries in Egypt can only be
+      rationally accounted for by a spread of Buddhist doctrines by Indian
+      missionaries, or promulgated by Christian merchants, who had travelled to
+      the Indies, and modified their original faith by what they saw and heard
+      from the followers of the great Sramana; and it was natural for the
+      Alexandrian Christians to adopt the modifications referred to, and to
+      stamp the innovations with the assertion that they were apostolic
+      reflections&mdash;rays of divine light falling from "the sun of
+      righteousness" upon the mind of the blessed Saint Somebody, Thomas, for
+      this purpose, being a name which answered as well as any other. There is
+      positively no evidence whatever&mdash;except some apocryphal Jesuit
+      stories about certain disciples of Jesus, found by Papal missionaries at
+      Malabar&mdash;that any disciple of Mary's son ever proceeded to Hindostan
+      to preach the gospel during the first centuries of our era. Those who know
+      the history of the "Decretals," and of Prester John, can readily estimate
+      the value of tales told by Jesuits in India, where there was not at the
+      time anyone to test their veracity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Being myself desirous of ascertaining what evidence really exists&mdash;or
+      existed in the times of ancient authors, whose works have come down to us&mdash;of
+      the knowledge of India by Europeans in days gone by, I instituted an
+      inquiry, with the determination to be impartial. The results obtained were
+      the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only reason for believing that Hindostan and Ceylon were known to the
+      Phoenicians is a short passage in the Biblical History of Solomon, in
+      which we are told that after a three years' absence, Hiram's Tyrian
+      sailors returned from Tarshish, bringing what our translators call ivory,
+      apes, and peacocks. The words in the Hebrew original are said by Tennant
+      to be all but identical with those in use in Ceylon at the present date.
+      For a full account of the probable identity of the Tarshish in the passage
+      alluded to and Galle, see Emerson Tennant's <i>History of Ceylon</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, if we grant that the Tyrian shipmen traded to India, we are bound to
+      confess that the knowledge which they acquired died with them; nor did
+      their successors, the Greeks, know anything distinctly about Hindostan
+      prior to the time of Alexander the Great. In the Biblical story of Esther
+      we are told, i. 1, viii. 9, that a Persian king reigned from India to
+      Ethiopia, the Hebrew word for the former being <i>Hodoo</i>, supposed to
+      be a form of <i>handoo</i>, or <i>hindoo</i>; Pehlevi, <i>hendo</i>; Zend,
+      <i>heando</i>; Sanscrit, <i>Sindhu</i> (Fürst, s.v.), equivalent to the
+      Greek <i>Indikee</i>, or the country of the Indus. We find reason to
+      believe that the India of Artaxerxes was a portion of Hindostan&mdash;first,
+      because the Persian monarch had Indian soldiers in his army, and
+      elephants, when he fought with Alexander; and secondly, because the
+      peacock, a bird of Ceylon, was known to the Greeks, in the time of
+      Aristophanes, as "the Persian bird." That the Persians traded with
+      Northern India we infer, from the account which Appian gives us of the
+      advance eastward of Alexander, after his victory at Arbela. But the whole
+      story of the Grecian warrior's advance into the Punjaub and down the
+      Indus, contains, in itself, tolerably clear proof that Hindostan was very
+      little known to the Greeks. Of a subsequent invasion of India by
+      Alexander's successor, Seleucus Nicator; of the mission of Megasthenes to
+      Sandracottus, the grandfather of Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine; of the
+      navigation of the Grecian ship down the Indus, and the subsequent traffic
+      by land and sea between the Greeks and the Hindoos, we need not say more
+      than that Augustus, b.c. 30, regulated the trade to Hindostan, <i>via</i>
+      Alexandria, and that, at the time of Pliny the elder, about A.D. <i>60</i>,
+      voyages were being made to India every year, companies of archers being
+      carried on board the vessels to protect them from pirates. We learn also
+      that a twelvemonth did not elapse without a drain upon the Roman Empire of
+      about one million and a-half sterling for India, in exchange for Hindoo
+      wares (book vi., ch. 26).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the period Pliny refers to, and for a long time previously, there can
+      be no pretence that any of Jesus' apostles accompanied traders to
+      Hindostan, for every one of them were employed nearer home. On the other
+      hand, we may inquire into the possibility and the reasonableness of
+      Buddhist missionaries travelling westward in the course of Alexandrian
+      traffic, or of the caravans which, we have grounds for believing, came
+      through Persia to the Roman Empire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On turning to Oriental literature, we find that the often-mentioned King
+      Asokâ adopted Buddhism as the religion of his empire about b.c. 250, and
+      that, in his time, missionaries carried that faith successfully to the
+      uttermost parts of Hindostan&mdash;to Burmah, to Ceylon, to Japan, to
+      Thibet, and to China. The envoys carried with them, in some instances,
+      written books, in others, their guide was oral tradition. Wherever they
+      went they bore a biography of Sakya&mdash;or Buddha&mdash;accounts of
+      miracles that he had performed, and a summary, more or less extended, of
+      his preaching or doctrines. This dispersion of Hindoo envoys was about
+      fifty years later than the mission of the Greek Megasthenes to the court
+      of Asokâ's grandfather, and it is quite as probable that Buddhist
+      preachers went to enlighten what they imagined to be the benighted, and
+      what they knew to be the then defeated Grecians, as that they went over
+      frightful mountains and stormy seas to Thibet, China, and Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may profitably pause for a moment here, to contemplate that which I at
+      one time believed to be the most wonderful of all the miracles recorded in
+      the New Testament, viz., "the gift of tongues." The references to this
+      which we meet with in the epistles of the apostle Paul might lead to the
+      supposition, that some who had this "gift" spoke mere gibberish&mdash;something
+      which was not, either in intention or in reality, an utterance in a
+      foreign language; but the story of the original imparting of power to
+      speak in a previously unknown tongue involves the idea, that the disciples
+      had, on the occasion referred to, a faculty given to them, by which they
+      knew the languages used by various nationalities, without the trouble of
+      learning them. Many divines have held that such ability was absolutely
+      necessary to those who had to go forth to teach all nations the doctrines
+      of the gospel I am quite aware that, however earnest I might be to
+      propagate truth, I could not go, with advantage, to preach in Russia,
+      because I know nothing of its language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Doubt in the reality of the miracle recorded in Acts ii. was not born
+      until I found that Buddhist missionaries went out into distant lands,
+      where their own tongue was unknown, and yet made converts. When once I
+      felt dubious as regards the veracity of the historian, I began to notice
+      what the apostles generally did when they went to a new country or town.
+      Their practice seems to have been to have visited synagogues of the Jews
+      living on the spot&mdash;and able, if they chose, to be interpreters&mdash;or,
+      where there were such establishments, "the schools" were visited, where
+      the students and the masters understood Greek. In the time of Paul the
+      language of the Hellenes was spoken by Romans of high position, much as
+      French was spoken at the court of Frederic the Great of Prussia, and as
+      German is at St. Petersburg. The Apostle seems to have spoken Greek
+      readily, and when he could use that tongue or the Hebrew he was fluent. I
+      have sought in vain for evidence that either Paul or any of the Apostles
+      ever addressed a foreign mob, whose language was neither Greek nor Hebrew.
+      A study of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts will show this&mdash;especially,
+      we must notice the end of the tenth verse, where we are told "that all who
+      dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both <i>Jews and Greeks</i>."
+      When disturbance occurred in the theatre, Paul was not the orator put
+      forward to appease the people&mdash;he probably could not speak their
+      patois. Yet he tells us, 1 Cor. xiv. 18, that he spoke with tongues more
+      than his fellows.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is much difference amongst ecclesiastical writers
+     respecting what is called the "gift of tongues." The
+     difficulty arises mainly from the desire to reconcile "the
+     true" with "the absurd." Starting from the point that all
+     "scripture" is written by "inspiration of God," the orthodox
+     are obliged to receive the account narrated in Acts ii. as
+     being literally correct.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      In plain language, the story runs thus:&mdash;The Apostles, twelve in
+      number, were sitting in a room. Whilst there, a noise was heard, and
+      something like fiery tongues, more or less split, appeared, and one
+      settled upon each of the company. These all, at once, began to speak in
+      languages which were strange to all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the noise made, neighbours had their attention called, and from one
+      mouth to another the tidings of the ranting ran, until it reached the ears
+      of devout men, who, from every nation under heaven, were then assembled in
+      Jerusalem. Whether these foreigners were Hebrews, or whether they, being
+      strangers, had the gift of understanding the reports couched in Aramaic,
+      we do not know. But it is narrated that, in the course of a few minutes&mdash;possibly
+      an hour or two&mdash;the devout strangers came to listen to the Apostles,
+      either speaking singly or at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As these foreigners noticed what was said, they recognized words in their
+      own respective dialects, and then the Parthian said to the Mede&mdash;the
+      Elamite to the Mesopotamian&mdash;the Phrygian to the Pamphyliaji, &amp;c.,
+      "What does all this mean?" So to interchange a question involves that the
+      interlocutors, like the Apostles, had suddenly received the gift of
+      speaking, and understanding, other tongues than their own. When the
+      listeners had convinced themselves about the marvel, each began to talk in
+      his own language, and the Jews understood them to say, "What meaneth
+      this?" the Hebrews, like the rest, having also the gift of knowing what
+      was said in a strange language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, however, had not this power of interpretation, and remarked, "the
+      fellows are drunk!" For a moment we pause to inquire how many people there
+      were in one room of one house. The Apostles were twelve; then there were,
+      at least three, Parthians, Medes, &amp;c., in all about forty-five more,
+      and in addition, there were "the mockers." To all these Peter preached,
+      and the wonders of the day were crowned by the conversion of three
+      thousand people!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems, therefore, to be clear, from the account of this extraordinary
+      miracle, that the Apostles then gathered together acquired the power of
+      expressing their thoughts in languages which they had never learned, the
+      judges of the feat being those whose dialects were spoken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now proceed in biblical order to examine into the ideas connected
+      with this strange faculty, we find, in Acts x. 44-46, that the circumcised
+      Jews alone were satisfied, in the plenitude of their own ignorance, that
+      Cornelius and his company could "speak with tongues." Again, in Acts xix.
+      6, we learn that certain Ephesians, after baptism, and imposition of
+      hands, "spake with tongues "&mdash;no judge of the fact being quoted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1 Cor. xii. 10, we discover that amongst the gifts of the Holy Spirit
+      are "kinds of tongues," and the interpretation thereof which will,
+      probably, remind the lover of Shakespeare of Act iv. Scenes 1 and 3, in
+      "All's well that ends well," wherein there is a nonsensical jargon spoken
+      by one person which another interprets to the satisfaction of the silly
+      Parolles. In vv 28, 30, we see strong indications that the gift of tongues
+      and interpretation may be compared to some things now heard of in
+      spiritualistic or other conjuring séances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This notion of "speaking with other tongues" reaches its climax,
+      apparently, in 1 Cor. xiii. 1, wherein Paul indicates, but does not
+      positively assert, that he can "speak with the tongues of men and angels,"
+      a boast which 2 Cor. xii. 4 leads us to take literally. But how any one on
+      earth could test the reality of assertion it is difficult to conceive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1 Cor. xiv. we see indications that "speaking with tongues" is little
+      more or less than a sort of hysterical utterance of gibberish, which we
+      may compare to the once celebrated chorus of
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Lilli-bullero-lero-lero-Lillibullero bullen a la.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      One may now ask, "Why did people think that it was part of the Christian's
+      privileges or powers to speak with tongues?" The only answer which I can
+      discover is indicated in Acts ii. 18, wherein we find it given as the
+      opinion of Peter, that a certain vaticination in Joel applied to the
+      followers of Jesus. The philosopher may wonder at the ignorance&mdash;possibly
+      at the knowledge&mdash;which confounded "prophesying" with the utterance
+      of unintelligible rubbish; but the philologist should be led to
+      investigate more strictly the real signification of words, and to inquire
+      into the theories which are traceable to false interpretations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considerations such as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely, I
+      have come to the belief that the Apostles of Jesus were no better, as
+      regards their knowledge of foreign tongues, than their predecessors, the
+      missionaries sent by Asokâ, or than the modern envoys sent out by a London
+      Society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What renders it probable that Buddhist ascetics found their way, probably
+      amongst the camp followers of Antiochus the Great, and endeavoured to
+      promulgate their doctrines in western Asia, is the fact that a sect sprang
+      up amongst the Jews after the Grecian conquest of Palestine&mdash;called
+      "The Essenes," to which we have before referred, amongst whose tenets
+      Buddhism and Judaism were closely mingled The asceticism practised by this
+      sect was, so far as we know, different to anything known at that time in
+      Greece or Western Asia, and as it came into fashion at the same time in
+      Palestine as Indian elephants and Hindoo Mahouts, there is some reason for
+      the belief that it was brought by disciples of Siddartha. Without dwelling
+      upon this again, we return to the well ascertained fact that Buddhism was
+      promulgated most widely in Eastern and Northern Asia about 250 b.c., that
+      a collection of religious books was made about two hundred years prior to
+      that date, and that these were revised again during Asokâ's reign. But,
+      however earnest were the teachers and the taught, the scriptures which
+      they respected were so voluminous and the facilities for multiplying them
+      were so small, that it happened, as it did amongst early Christians, that
+      many a church had no written book of the law. As a consequence of this,
+      one part or another of Sakya's doctrines became exalted unduly in one
+      locality, whilst in another a portion was left out of sight. Stories,
+      also, of miracles became varied, just as we find that they have been by
+      the writers in the New Testament, the tendency being, as in the history of
+      the blind man near Jericho, to exaggerate the wonder&mdash;for example,
+      Mark and Luke, chap. x. and xviii, give an account of one man being cured
+      of blindness, whilst Matthew, chap, xx., tells us that there were two. The
+      narrators under such circumstances act as if they thought that it is as
+      easy for a divinity to heal two or two thousand as to cure one, and we who
+      tolerate the practice in a Christian evangelist must not ridicule it in
+      Buddhist disciples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we contemplate the confusion that existed in the Christian church&mdash;the
+      gradual deterioration of the faith taught by Jesus, and more especially by
+      Paul, and the steady absorption of Pagan rites into the worship
+      inaugurated by Peter and the other apostles, we can readily understand
+      that in the course of six or seven hundred years there would be reason in
+      countries distant from the home of Siddartha to deplore the gradual
+      decadence of Buddhism, and a desire amongst the devout for tuition at the
+      fountain-head. In modern times we have read of hierarchs coming from the
+      uttermost parts of the earth to consult the Roman Pontiff upon points of
+      discipline affecting the church, and we therefore see without surprise
+      that, about A.D. 400, six hundred years after it had been planted, the
+      congregation of Buddhists in China had within it men who determined to go
+      to India, and bring back to their fellow-worshippers what they hoped would
+      be a purer doctrine than that which they were accustomed to, and, if
+      possible, to secure authentic books. Pilgrimage, with this object, cannot
+      be regarded as being so absurd as that which has in modern days taken
+      numbers of Christians to Lourdes, in the Pyrenees, or to St.
+      Paray-le-Monial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere we describe this Chinese search after truth, let us imagine a
+      Christian from Central Russia determining to seek for enlightenment at
+      Antioch about a.d. 640, and subsequently at the seven churches named in
+      the Apocalypse&mdash;and afterwards writing his experience. We should be
+      certain to find him bewailing the fall of Christianity and the rise of
+      Islam. We may indeed affirm that if such a history was now to be
+      discovered undated, we should regard it as having been written before or
+      after the date named, according as "the churches" were described as being
+      the seat of Mahommedism or of Christianity. Still further, if in every
+      place which this traveller visited, he found a general belief in the
+      stories told of Jesus and in the efficacy of his doctrine, we should
+      consider this as proof that the people remained faithful to their early
+      teaching. If, on the other hand, the wanderer found himself proscribed in
+      any locality as a benighted heathen, without knowledge of the way of
+      salvation&mdash;he would naturally think that a teacher had given to its
+      inhabitants instruction different from that which was familiar to him. I
+      do not exaggerate when I say that a genuine account of the travels in
+      search of sound Christian doctrine through every part of Europe in the
+      fifth century of our era, would be invaluable as an indication of the
+      tenure of certain doctrines, not only in various localities, but as to the
+      existence or the reverse of dogmas now regarded as of supreme importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a manuscript, which, however, relates to Buddhism and not to
+      Christianity, exists in China, and it has lately been translated into
+      English <i>Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China
+      to India</i>, 400 a.d. and 518 a.d., translated from the Chinese by Samuel
+      Bea. (Trübner &amp; Co., London, 1869.) It tells us, in a singularly terse
+      style, how a large portion of China was traversed by these pilgrims;&mdash;of
+      the terrible journey over the mountains to the north of Hindustan; of a
+      visit to the birth-place of Siddartha; to Benares, to Calcutta, and to
+      Ceylon;&mdash;with an account of the return voyage in a good-sized ship
+      back again to China. Everywhere, with one single exception, they find the
+      law of Buddha prevailing. The place referred to as exceptional is Yopoti,
+      Java, of which it is said: "In this country, heretics and Brahmins
+      flourish; but the law of Buddha is not much known" (p. 168). In every
+      other spot which they visit the Chinese wanderers speak applaudingly of
+      the hold which the religion of Siddartha has upon the people, and the
+      exemplary conduct of the faithful. From the beginning of the journey to
+      the end, the enquirers appear always to have found the same form of faith
+      which had been preached in their own country six hundred years before. The
+      most careful investigator fails to find a shadow of those doctrines in
+      which the teaching of Jesus differs from that of Sakya. There is not any
+      allusion made to an impending dissolution of the world, to baptism, or to
+      any sacrament; every remark relates to the essentials of Buddhism as known
+      in each place where Europeans have been able to peruse the authorized
+      Buddhist scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now quote some passages bearing on important points. About the
+      sources of the Indus: "All the priests asked Fah-Hian what he knew as to
+      the time when the law of Buddha began to spread eastward from their
+      country." Hian replied, "On enquiry, men of those lands agreed in saying
+      that, according to an ancient tradition, Shamans from India began to carry
+      the sacred books of Buddha beyond the river, from the time when the image
+      of Maitreya Bodhisatwa was set up." This image was set up three hundred
+      years or so after the Nirvana of Buddha (about B.C. 243&mdash;or,
+      according to some estimates, B.C. 177), which corresponds with the time of
+      Pingwang of the Chan family (b.c. 770&mdash;the Chinese date of Buddha's
+      Nirvana being different from that which is usually received in India.)
+      Hence it may be said that the diffusion of the great doctrine can be
+      attributed to the influence of this image. For, apart from the power of
+      the divine teacher Mait-reya, who followed in the footsteps of Sakya, who
+      would have been sufficient to cause the knowledge of the three precious
+      ones to be spread so far, that even men on the outskirts of the world
+      acquired that knowledge? We may conclude, therefore, with certainty, that
+      the origin of this diffusion of the law of Buddha was no human work, but
+      sprung from the same cause as the dream of Ming Ti (pp. 23-25). The three
+      precious ones above referred to, are the Buddhist trinity, everywhere
+      acknowledged, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha&mdash;or, as some say, Buddha&mdash;the
+      law and the church. The dream of Ming Ti resembles that which we know as
+      the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and foretells the coming of "the
+      Saviour," one of the names given to Siddartha. The vision of a divine
+      being, 70 feet high, with a body like gold, and his head glorious as the
+      sun&mdash;one who is fanciful may here discern a likeness to the
+      individual described in Rev. i. 13, seq.&mdash;induced the king to send to
+      India to seek after the law of Fo, or Buddha. Some one speaking of two
+      great towers adorned with all the precious substances, which had been
+      erected at a certain town&mdash;the Taxila of the Greeks&mdash;to
+      commemorate episodes in the life of Buddha, makes the remark "The kings,
+      ministers, and people of all the surrounding countries vie with each other
+      in making religious offerings at these places, in scattering flowers and
+      burning incense continually" (p. 33).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the city of Hilo is the Vitiara containing the relic of the skull-bone
+      of Buddha. This Vitiara is entirely covered with plates of gold, and
+      decorated with the seven precious substances (gold, silver, lapis lazuli,
+      crystal, cornelian, coral, and ruby.) The king of the country reverences
+      in a high degree this sacred relic." As this example shows well the
+      Buddhist veneration for memorials of the dead, I will not quote more. It
+      is clear that old bones were regarded with religious awe in Hindostan
+      before they were enshrined in Christendom. In the case above recorded,
+      "extraordinary pains are taken to preserve the relic from theft or
+      substitution, and the king offers flowers and incense in front of it
+      daily, then bends his head to the ground before it in adoration, and
+      departs." In another place Buddha's robe is kept, although we may fairly
+      doubt whether he ever possessed one, but doubtless it is quite as
+      authentic as "the holy coat" of Treves, or the Virgin Mary's milk. There
+      is another relic of Sakya not yet copied by Christian pagans, viz., the
+      shadow of the great teacher&mdash;which lives in a cave, and can only be
+      seen by the faithful (p. 45, 46). We commend this to thaumaturgical
+      Gallican divines, such as those who describe how certain it is that Mary
+      of Judea came to show herself at Lourdes, and to talk French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On arriving at the Punjaub the record states, "The law of Buddha is
+      prosperous and flourishing here..." On seeing disciples from China coming
+      among them they were much affected, and spoke thus: "How wonderful to
+      think that men from the ends of the earth should know the character of
+      this religion, and should come thus far to seek the law of Buddha. We
+      received from them all that we required, and were treated according to the
+      provisions of the law" (p. 51,52). "All the kingdoms beyond the sandy
+      deserts are spoken of as belonging to Western India. The kings of all
+      these countries firmly believe in the law of Buddha" (pp. 53, 54).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the following, we may see the prototype of monasteries, "From the time
+      of Buddha's Nirvana, the kings and nobles of all these countries began to
+      erect viharas for the priesthood, and to endow them with lands, gardens,
+      houses, and also men and oxen to cultivate them. The records of these
+      endowments being engraved on sheets of copper, have been handed down from
+      one king to another, so that no one has dared to deprive them of
+      possession, and they continue to this day to enjoy their proper revenues.
+      All the resident priests have chambers, beds, coverlets, food, drink, and
+      clothes provided for them without stint or reserve. Thus it is in all
+      places. The priests, on the other hand, continually employ themselves in
+      reciting their scriptures, in works of benevolence, or in profound
+      meditation" (pp. 55, 56).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very important that we should notice, although it is unnecessary to
+      dwell upon the fact, that the pilgrims visited the spot whence Buddha went
+      up to heaven to preach his law to his mother Maya, who died when her child
+      was seven days old, and, consequently, long before he became "the
+      Saviour." The son remained with his parent three months (p. 62.) Jesus, it
+      will be remembered, only preached to the spirits in prison during a day
+      and a-half&mdash;which, by common consent, passes amongst Christians for
+      three days. I may also notice that there is mentioned (p. 66), an idea
+      that three Buddhas existed before the advent of Sakya Muni, and that the
+      following are their precepts, translated from the Chinese copy of a
+      Buddhist book:&mdash;1. The heart carefully avoiding idle dissipation,
+      diligently applying itself to religion, forsaking all lust and consequent
+      disappointment, fixed and immovable, attains Nirvana (rest.) 2. Practising
+      no vice, advancing in the exercise of virtue, and purifying the mind from
+      evil; this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas. 3. To keep one's tongue, to
+      cleanse one's mind, to do no ill&mdash;this is the way to purify oneself
+      throughout, and to attain this state of discipline is the doctrine of all
+      the great sages (p. 66).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Buddhists also preserve impressions of Siddartha's feet and show them
+      to pilgrims, just as certain papal priests show the impressions of St.
+      Peter's feet at a church a little outside Rome, on the Appian way. The
+      pilgrims "visit Kapilavastu, now a desert, but once the royal residence of
+      Suddhodana. There are here a congregation of priests and ten families of
+      lay people. In the ruined palace there is a picture of the Prince Apparent
+      and his mother (supposed to be) taken at the time of his miraculous
+      conception. The prince is represented as descending towards his mother
+      riding on a white elephant." This elephant came from the Tusita heaven
+      surrounded by light like the sun, and entered the left side of the mother.
+      As the elephant is the strongest of known terrestrial animals, it
+      certainly represented "The power of the Highest" (see Luke i. 35), and we
+      may draw one of two inferences&mdash;either that the sons of Maya and Mary
+      were conceived equally miraculously, or that the story of one is just as
+      true or as incredible as that of the other. Certainly the doctrine of the
+      Immaculate Conception was known in India long before it was enunciated by
+      a Christian Pope in Rome. Perhaps, had Pio Nono known that he was copying
+      a Buddhistic story, he would have wavered long before he assimilated his
+      religion to that of Siddartha. At the same locality a tower is raised to
+      mark the spot where the Rishi (Saint or Prophet) Asita calculated the
+      horoscope of Sakya, and declared that he would become a supreme Buddha&mdash;a
+      legend which is very similar to that told of old Simeon and the infant
+      Jesus (Luke ii. 25, seq.). The pilgrims were also shown the garden&mdash;not
+      a stable&mdash;in which Maya brought forth her son, and wherein
+      immediately afterwards the infant walked. Two dragon kings&mdash;perhaps
+      wise men from the East&mdash;washed the infant's body, and this spot
+      afterwards became a sacred well (p. 88).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must pass by an account of a miracle, to the full as wonderful and
+      quite as incredible as that of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand
+      virgins, who left their bones at Cologne because it has no distinct
+      reference to Buddha. (P. 97)&mdash;But I may mention that the Chinese
+      writer states after the end of the story, that a certain violation of the
+      law occurred one hundred years after Sakya's death, and upon this record
+      Mr Beal has the following important note&mdash;"This refers to the second
+      great council of the Buddhist church. According to Singhalese authorities
+      (Mahawanso) there were three great convocations or councils&mdash;1st,
+      immediately after Buddha's death to compile the authorised scriptures; 2d,
+      to refute certain errors that had crept into the church; 3d, under the
+      great Asokâ," (p. 99). We may doubt the value of the Mahawanso, but at the
+      same time we may express a wish that early Christians had even a tradition
+      of a council to compile authorised scriptures about the son of Mary ere
+      time sufficient had elapsed to allow "the marvellous" to develop itself
+      into "the incredible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner I must omit the description of a procession of images,
+      amongst which that of Buddha is conspicuous; the fête is held at Patna,
+      supposed to be the ancient Palimbothra where Asokâ reigned. It resembles
+      in almost all its details the grand processions of the Papists on certain
+      occasions,&mdash;lamps, lights, games, riot, and religious offerings are
+      mingled together for the healthy and for the sick, and wonderful cures are
+      provided as far as possible. To this account is to be appended a very
+      significant, perhaps I might say satirical, note by the translator of the
+      pilgrims' manuscript. "From the whole of this account (of the procession
+      of images), it would seem that the Buddhist worship had already begun to
+      degenerate from its primitive simplicity and severity. Plays and music and
+      concerts, are strictly forbidden by the rules of the order; we can begin
+      to see how Buddhism lapsed into Sivite worship, and sank finally into the
+      horrors of Jaganath" (p. 107). To the thoughtful reader of our christian
+      history, this note upon Buddhist processions of images is painfully
+      pregnant. It reminds us that the followers of Maya's son and Mary's alike
+      lapsed into paganism, and almost by the same stages. We cannot accuse the
+      Hindoos of copying the orgies of the Christian saturnalia or carnival, nor
+      do we think that the Europeans cared to imitate the Hindoos; but what we
+      do believe is that both parties have fallen lower and lower from their
+      pristine purity in consequence of the gradually increasing feeling that
+      the generality of human beings can only be brought under priestly power by
+      an appeal to their animal propensities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some affirm, with great show of argumentation, that it is man's bestial
+      propensities which lead his race to hell. It may be so, but then, on the
+      other hand, it is certain that ecclesiastics endeavour to chain us to
+      their chariots by pandering to, managing, exciting, or otherwise playing
+      upon those propensities, which man has in common with the sheep, the ox,
+      the tiger, the serpent, and the elephant. Every form of religion, yet
+      promulgated, that appeals to sound sense, thought, and reason, has failed
+      from the want of followers capable of dominating their passions. Than a
+      pure religion based upon thoughts such as Sakya Muni and the son of Mary
+      gave utterance to, nothing seems grander, but such is its nature that it
+      can only be fully embraced by a few. If all are poor, none can live upon
+      alms&mdash;if all sell their worldly goods to purchase Heaven, no buyers
+      will be found in the market. The Buddhist and the Christian anchorite may,
+      for a time, live on charity, yet each succeeding generation of ascetics
+      will more and more dislike the plan of winning food by misery. We have
+      seen how kings made grand provision for the comfort of the priestly
+      followers of the son of Maya; and in later times, we have seen how the
+      followers of the son of Mary have, by artfulness, provided many similar
+      homes for themselves. Yet, with all this, there are both Buddhists and
+      Christians who have protested, by their actions, against religious luxury
+      of every kind. Each of my readers may judge of what spirit he is, by
+      asking himself whether he regards such individuals as wise or foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pilgrims pass on to the place where five hundred saints assembled
+      after Sakya's death to arrange the collection of sacred books (p. 118)&mdash;thence
+      to the spot where Siddartha bathed, and the Dêva or Angel held out the
+      branch of a tree to assist him in coming out of the water (p. 121)&mdash;thence
+      to the spot where Buddha was tempted by three daughters of Maka as
+      courtesans, a more severe temptation than befel the Christian Anthony&mdash;and
+      by Mara himself with a vast army; but all uselessly, for Sakya was as
+      impregnable as Jesus. And we find that in the same spot he subsequently
+      underwent mortification, not for forty days only, but for six years. All
+      of these localities are marked by towers, which must, according to
+      ecclesiastical reasoning, demonstrate the truth of the legends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a very long search&mdash;for the purpose of Fah Hian was to seek for
+      copies of the <i>Vinaya Pitaka</i>&mdash;he found his exertions to find a
+      copy of the sacred work were useless, because, throughout the whole of
+      Northern India, the various masters trusted to tradition only for their
+      knowledge of the precepts, and had no written codes. The pilgrims,
+      however, when they arrived in Middle India, found a copy, "which was that
+      used by the first great assembly of priests convened during Buddha's
+      lifetime" (p. 142); this appears to have been generally regarded as the
+      most correct and complete (p. 144). Fah Hian also obtained "one copy of
+      Precepts, in manuscript, comprising about 7000 gâthas (verses or stanzas).
+      This was the same as that generally used in China. In this place also an
+      imperfect copy of the Abhidharma was obtained, containing 6000 gâthas;
+      also, an abreviated form of Sutras, or Precepts, containing 2500 verses in
+      an abreviated form; also, another expanded Sutra, with 5000 verses, and a
+      second copy of the Abhidharma," according to the school of the Mahâ
+      Sanghihas (the greater vehicle). "On this account Fah Hian abode in the
+      place (Patma, the ancient Palibothra) for the space of three years,
+      engaged in learning to read the Sanscrit books, to converse in that
+      language, and to copy the Precepts. Here his companion, To Ching,
+      remained; but Fah Hian, desiring with his whole heart to spread the
+      knowledge of the Precepts throughout China, returned alone" (p. 146). This
+      pilgrim then goes to the kingdom of Champa, where he stopped two years, to
+      copy out sacred Sutras, and to take impressions of the figures used in
+      worship. Here the law of Buddha was generally respected. He then sailed in
+      a great merchant vessel for Ceylon (p. 148). From this expression we
+      presume that he entered a seaport, and, as such, one likely to have been
+      reached by some Christian missionary, if any had ever visited India, as
+      Paul attained Asia Minor, Italy, &amp;c. All that we learn about it,
+      however, is in a translator's note, which tells us that the place was
+      mentioned by another China man, Hiouen Thsang, who spoke of the number of
+      heretical sects who were mixed together here&mdash;Buddhism being here
+      corrupted at an early period by local superstitions. In Ceylon Fah Hian
+      remained two years, and, continuing his search for the sacred books,
+      obtained a copy of the Vinaya Pitaka, of the great Agama, and the
+      miscellaneous Agama (books of elementary doctrine), also a volume of
+      miscellaneous collections from the Pitakas, all of which were hitherto
+      entirely unknown in China. Having obtained these works in the original
+      language (Pali), he forthwith shipped himself on board a great merchant
+      vessel, which carried about 200 men, and started for his native land (p.
+      166). "After Fah Hian left home, he was five years in arriving at Mid
+      India. He resided there during six years, and was three more ere he
+      arrived again in China. He had successively passed through thirty
+      different countries." In all the countries of India, after passing the
+      sandy desert (of Gobi), the dignified carriage of the priesthood, and the
+      surprising influence of religion (amongst the people), cannot be
+      adequately described... "Having been preserved by Divine power (by the
+      influences of the Three honourable Ones), and brought through all dangers
+      safely, he was induced to commit to writing the record of his travels,
+      desirous that the virtuous of all ages may be informed of them as well as
+      himself" (p. 173).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After reading this account, we think that no thoughtful man can reasonably
+      assert that Christianity was taught in India at an early period, was
+      widely adopted, and became the parent of Buddhism. If, in rejoinder, we
+      are told that no writers have asserted that there were Christians in India
+      in olden times, except in Malabar, the answer is, that these were
+      described by those who first met with their successors as totally distinct
+      from the Hindoos, and, consequently, neither Buddhists nor Brahmins.
+      Moreover, we are told that they were regarded by the Holy Inquisition of
+      Europe as heretics, and were, consequently, persecuted by the Christians
+      (see Gibbon's <i>Roman Empire</i>, vol. viii, 355).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rosse, in his book of dates (London, 1858), speaks of an Indian embassy to
+      Constantine the Great, a.d. 334, and another sent to Constantius the
+      Second, but received by Julian, A.D. 362. I cannot, however, as yet, find
+      his authority. But Socrates, in his <i>Ecclesiastical History</i>, book i,
+      ch. 19, about A.D. 331, speaks of a treaty which had been in existence a
+      short time before, between the Romans and the Indians, but which had been
+      recently violated. He also, in the same chapter, states that there were
+      Christians amongst the Roman merchants in India&mdash;no town or locality
+      being given, however, so that we cannot test his assertion&mdash;but that
+      they did not then unite to worship. We find also, from the same chapter,
+      that up to that period there were no Christian Indians known.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coupling the foregoing fragments of history together, we may safely assert
+      that India, generally, was Buddhist in A.D. 400, and that, according to
+      Pliny, the Romans, or, rather, the Alexandrians, had been in yearly
+      communication with the country, for at least three centuries, at the time
+      of Constantine. As it appears that there were Roman merchants in India, so
+      we presume that there were Hindoo traders resident in Egypt. The
+      presumption is, that these were Buddhists, and that they were attended, or
+      followed, by missionary Buddhist priests. Absolute proof of this there is
+      none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now turn to Gibbon's history, and inquire into the period when monastic
+      asceticism first began to prevail in Egypt, the necessary residence of our
+      presumed Hindoo traffickers. We find (see <i>Decline and Fall</i>, chapter
+      37) that Anthony, an Egyptian, and unable to write in Greek, living in the
+      lower parts of Thebais, distributed his patrimony, deserted his family and
+      native home, lived amongst tombs, or in a ruined tower, then in the
+      desert, and then in some lonely spot, near the Red Sea, where he found
+      shade and water. It certainly seems clear that he took the son of Maya,
+      rather than the child of Mary, as his exemplar. At and after this time,
+      the rage for asceticism spread amongst the inhabitants of Eastern Africa
+      as conspicuously as it had done in Oriental Asia at the time of Asoka. It
+      is difficult to read the chapter of Gibbon's history to which we refer,
+      and a history of Buddhism, without regarding Egypt, and her miserable
+      ascetics, in the same light as we look upon the folks of Hindustan and
+      Thibet. If Jesus of Nazareth had dictated such a life, surely his early
+      followers would have been more conspicuous in their habitual
+      mortifications than their later disciples were. The son of man&mdash;the
+      child of Mary&mdash;"came eating and drinking," and was called "a
+      gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners" (Luke
+      vii. 34; Matt, xi. 19). Not so the son of Maya. The Apostles of Jesus had
+      power to lead about a wife or a sister, and they did so. Neither Paul nor
+      Peter shunned woman's society, nor did they practise poverty; nay, they
+      worked with their own hands, lest they should have to live on alms (2
+      Thess. iii. 8), and they collected money for poor saints from the
+      wealthier brethren. There was no asceticism here, nor can we find, in any
+      part of the New Testament, a text upon which a system of austerity can be
+      founded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might, perhaps, think comparatively little of the parallel which we
+      have drawn between Buddhism, and Christianity, did we not recognize the
+      fact, that almost everyone of the later developments of the latter had,
+      for centuries before, found a place in the former, even including, as we
+      have mentioned, the dogma of the immaculate conception.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the preceding considerations we may add another, which, as Ivanhoe said
+      of himself, "is of lesser renown and lower rank, and assumed into the
+      honourable company less to aid their enterprise than to make up their
+      number." Standing alone it may have small power, but as a link in a chain
+      it is important. We refer to the abundant testimony which we possess of
+      the strength of Grecian influence upon the tenets of Christianity. Without
+      laying any stress upon the fact that the whole of the New Testament extant
+      is written in Greek, we may advert to the current belief amongst
+      thoughtful scholars, that the so-called Gospel of St. John was written by
+      some Alexandrian Greek about 150 A.D., or by one who was imbued with the
+      philosophy of Plato. Sharpe has distinctly shown that the doctrine of the
+      trinity was held in Ancient Egypt, and first adopted, then promulgated, by
+      the Egyptian or Alexandrian divines. The influence of Greek ideas upon
+      Philo Judæus is very conspicuous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now turn our attention to one statement about the Athenians, viz.,
+      "that they and the strangers which were there spent their time in nothing
+      else than to tell and to hear some new thing," and that they were so
+      particular&mdash;in this respect resembling the Ancient Peruvians&mdash;in
+      adopting foreign gods, that they had an altar to the Unknown Deity (Acts
+      xvii). To this we must add what Sozomen says of them (<i>Ecclesiastical
+      History</i>, book ii. chap. 24)&mdash;that the most celebrated
+      philosophers amongst the Greeks took pleasure in exploring unknown cities
+      and regions. Plato, the friend of Socrates, dwelt for a time amongst the
+      Egyptians, in order to acquaint himself with their manners and customs. He
+      likewise sailed to Sicily, to examine its craters.... These craters were
+      likewise explored by Empedocles. Democritus of Coos relates that he
+      visited many cities, and countries, and nations, and that eighty years of
+      his life were spent in travelling in foreign lands. Besides these
+      philosophers, thousands of wise men amongst the Greeks, ancient and
+      modern, habituated themselves to travel. Solon, it is well known,
+      travelled to the court of Croesus, and it is affirmed that Pythagoras
+      visited India. Sozomen makes the above statement to explain how it was
+      that Merope of Tyre, with two young relatives, visited India, the two
+      latter becoming its first two bishops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing is more probable than that Greeks, who had resided for a time in
+      India, on their return, believing that as they had recognized in Hindostan
+      an earnest form of Christianity, differing from the Alexandrian standard
+      only in a few minor points, thought it right to introduce into western
+      religion Buddhist practices&mdash;first into Egypt, <i>via</i> Alexandria,
+      and thence into Europe. We certainly cannot prove that they did it, but
+      there is a very good reason for believing so. The doctrines of Jesus
+      emanated, we believe, from some early Asokâ's missionaries; whilst the
+      doctrines of the Alexandrians and the Ascetics, came from subsequent
+      Buddhists, who placed their stamp on Christianity once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus we have been led, by a strict inquiry into every extant testimony
+      known, to believe that the faith taught by Siddartha, was held for at
+      least 250&mdash;and most probably, 500 years, before our era. Still
+      further, we have been led to believe, from the extraordinary energy and
+      success of Buddhist missionaries in the three centuries before Christ&mdash;a
+      success before which all Christian missionary enterprise pales&mdash;that
+      emissaries from Asokâ's colleges of priests, penetrated westward with the
+      Greeks as far as the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and forced some
+      devout Jews to modify their belief. But, though it is probable that the
+      Hindoo teachers introduced the morality inculcated by Sakya Muni, it seems
+      certain that they could not induce their Hebrew disciples to abandon their
+      implicit trust in those writings which they had been induced to think were
+      absolutely inspired or written by direct command of the Almighty&mdash;consequently,
+      Christianity must be regarded not as pure Buddhism, but a form of it
+      modified by Jewish traditions. But when those who embraced the religion of
+      Jesus, had learned to distrust the literal truth of the Old Testament, and
+      had the certainty that the prophesies about the immediate destruction of
+      the world were false, they came again into contact with Buddhist teaching,
+      and were content to forego Judaism. They did not, however, give up Jesus
+      as the Saviour. Instead of believing with Sakya, that man suffered for his
+      own sin, they clung to the legend of Adam and Eve, and affirmed that
+      suffering was introduced into the whole world by this very original
+      couple. Instead of Nirvana, their heaven was Ouranos&mdash;the sky above
+      them. Instead of an abode where all the senses were at rest, they adopted
+      the idea of a golden city, with a river of crystal running through it;
+      brilliant with jewels, and guarded by gates and walls in which all the
+      good should spend their time in singing and music. The Christians adopted
+      all the Asceticism, dirt, and love of vermin, that the disciples of Sakya,
+      and even Siddartha himself, delighted in&mdash;but they nevertheless clung
+      to the idea that the world was sure to be destroyed, and that Jesus would
+      come again. It is indeed, difficult to reconcile the belief, that he who
+      washed his disciples' feet, and praised a woman for cleaning and anointing
+      his own, sanctioned an idea which, throughout centuries, urged
+      religionists to be filthy; yet we must do so if we are orthodox. We have,
+      indeed, similar anomalies now. Devout Christians tell us that this world
+      ought to be made a preparation for another; and that the main joy of
+      heaven will be an indefinite increase of knowledge. Yet these same people
+      affirm, sometimes in distinct terms, that an extension of scientific
+      attainments, and a constant inquiry into the will of God, as expressed in
+      the works of His hands, are snares of the Devil, and so to be avoided by
+      all good people. The Orthodox as a rule believe&mdash;though few venture
+      to affirm it, that Jehovah loves the fools the best, and that ignorance is
+      godliness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Estimation of the Bible. The Dhammapada and Hebrew (sacred)
+     books. Certain important dates. Jews were never
+     missionaries. Precepts of Buddha. Contrasts. How to overcome
+     undesirable thoughts. Knowledge beats prayer. Sunday
+     proverbs. New birth. Divines preach brotherly love in the
+     pulpit, and provoke hate when out of it. Buddhist precept is
+     "do as I do," not "do as I say." The narrow way of the
+     Gospel finds an origin in Buddhism. One law broken all law
+     broken&mdash;a Buddhist maxim. Sakya taught about a future world.
+     Parallel passages. Effect of Buddhist and Christian
+     teaching. Parallel passages about truth and almsgiving.
+     Ignorance a Buddhist vice and a Christian virtue.
+     <i>Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi</i> in the pulpit Classes in
+     the religious world. Why ignorance is cherished. Ignorance
+     often more profitable than knowledge. Examples. Charlatans
+     live by the fools. Honest doctors and parsons must be poor.
+     Poverty an essential part of Buddhism. Hierarchs are quite
+     unnecessary to the enlightened man. Parallel passages again.
+     Unphilosophical dicta in Buddhism and Bible. Prosperity not
+     a proof of propriety, and misery not always a reward of
+     badness. Lions and lambs. Design in creation. Right and
+     wrong&mdash;do they exist before the Creator. False analogies.
+     Persecution a Christian but not a Buddhist practice. Popgun
+     thunders from the Vatican. Age not equivalent to wisdom.
+     Siddartha did not prophesy, and so made no mistake about
+     that which was to follow. More negatives and positives.
+     Another contrast No obscene stories in Buddhist as in Jewish
+     scriptures&mdash;no legend of Lot and his daughters, David and
+     Bathsheba, of Onan, Judah and Tamar, Zimri, Cozbi, and
+     Phinehas, and a host of others. A good deal of nonsense in
+     all ancient writings. The foolish stories and prophecies of
+     the Bible&mdash;if abstracted, little remains. The little might
+     be improved by extracts from Plato, Epictetus, and Buddhist
+     scriptures, and even from those of Confucius.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From the earliest times which I can remember, I have heard the English
+      Bible spoken of with the utmost reverence, as the undoubted word of God,
+      as a revelation of the will, ways, and even the thoughts of the Supreme
+      Being. Everything which it contains has been regarded as infallibly true,
+      and the wisdom, goodness, mercy, and justice of its doctrines and laws
+      have been judged to be unimpeachable. From the pulpit of many earnest
+      divines I have heard innumerable sermons whose burden has been praise of,
+      and admiration for, the morality of the Old and New Testaments, the
+      sublimity of the language therein used, and the loftiness of the thoughts
+      embodied. From those same teachers, and from a still greater number of
+      laymen, I have heard the assertion repeatedly made that the Bible must be
+      divinely inspired, because no other set of men, except those who composed
+      its books, could write so powerfully; and depict so graphically, the
+      wants, the woes, the pleasures, the passions, the aspirations, and the
+      doubts of the human mind. By a great majority, if not by the whole of our
+      imperfectly educated ministers and people, the assertion to which we here
+      refer is raised to the position of an argument; and any opponent who
+      ventures to question the truth of the assumption, is challenged to show a
+      book of divinity equal or superior to the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The worthlessness of the argument might be readily shown to any one
+      accustomed to use his reason, by pointing out that the religious books of
+      the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medea, Persians, and
+      Etruscans, are lost to us. We may compare the assertion with that which
+      Englishmen might have made, to the effect that the British breed of horses
+      was superior to any other, for no one could show them a better; yet as
+      soon as our Crusaders became acquainted with the Arabian steed, the value
+      of the assumption was destroyed. Yet such a remark would be wholly
+      inoperative on the mind of every bigot whose judgment of evidence is
+      always bribed by his prejudice. Consequently, to make any serious
+      impression upon the mind of the Bibliolater, it is desirable, if possible,
+      to make copies of the holy images worshipped by other nations, under the
+      name of sacred books, and to place these side by side with that grotesque
+      production, which, for our purposes, may be compared to Diana of the
+      Ephesians&mdash;the thing which fell down from Jupiter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet even when we do bring from distant countries, to which in our
+      complacency we give the name of "heathen," copies of their deified books,
+      and show their equality with, or superiority to that which we are told was
+      arranged by the disposition of angels (Acts vii. 53)&mdash;the scriptures
+      that Paul (2 Tim. iii. 16) affirms were entirely given by inspiration of
+      God [&mdash;Greek&mdash;], see also 1 Pet. i. 11, 12,&mdash;we are met by
+      the assertion, if the equality is allowed, that the Pagan writings have
+      been copied from, or are traceable to, the writers in the Old or in the
+      New Testament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever a thoughtless theologian asserts that such a thing <i>must</i> be
+      so, he is not by any means particular as to the facts upon which he bases
+      his belief. This weakness of his is so conspicuous to the logical
+      observer, that he sometimes feels pity at having to wound a mind so
+      earnest as to be unable to use its reason. He almost regards himself as a
+      man fighting a child or a weak woman. Yet men will, in their power and
+      knowledge, deprive a baby of a bon-bon, which it is sucking eagerly, if
+      they know that it is poisonous, and will lay violent hands upon a tender
+      girl who, in a whirlwind of passion, is about to throw herself before a
+      railway train. After the event both the individuals may learn to thank the
+      roughness which saved them; and I feel sure that many an earnest
+      religionist, who now thinks that the philosophers are treating him
+      cruelly, by trying to deprive him of a cherished faith, will ultimately be
+      grateful for having been induced to cease grovelling in the dust of a
+      coarse antiquity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we endeavour to ascertain the basis of the belief that everything which
+      is good <i>must</i> have come from the Bible, we find that it exists in
+      the assertion that the Jews were the chosen people of God, selected by Him
+      to receive a record of His past doings and His future desires. Hence it is
+      argued, that all who have not been taught by the Jews, or through their
+      influence, are without God in the world&mdash;poor, benighted pagans. To
+      support assumptions so monstrous as this, there is not a tittle of
+      evidence beyond the existence of certain stories in some books, said to
+      contain a truthful record of facts. But although the theologian heaps up
+      protestation upon asseveration until the mass attains an imposing size,
+      the whole is not of more substantial value than a huge bubble blown by an
+      energetic school boy. If millions could be brought to believe that such a
+      hollow sphere was a solid, painted with the most resplendent colours
+      obtained from the celestial mansions, it would not make it other than a
+      film of soap and water filled with air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet though the unanimous consent of myriads cannot convert foam into a
+      solid substance, a mass of froth may be treated as if it were something
+      better, so long as all agree not to test its qualities; and any book may
+      in like manner be regarded as of divine origin, so long as everybody
+      determines not to test the reality of the opinion. We can easily imagine
+      that those who have been educated to believe in the absolute density of a
+      bubble, must be greatly distressed when it bursts. Indeed in every
+      mercantile community we see frequent illustrations of this. Designing men
+      weave a plausible story, and by inflated words induce a number of
+      thoughtless people to believe their statements, adopt their promises, and
+      act upon their recommendation. Whilst all seems to be prosperous, every
+      dupe repels with indignation the statement that the whole of his
+      confraternity are deceived. If faith in the stability of a banking house
+      could have upheld it, Overend &amp; Gurnets would never have broken. If
+      then faith, the most complete and child-like trust in the truth of
+      anything,&mdash;say particularly in a certain book&mdash;will not make it
+      valuable if it be in reality worthless, then all those who wish to feel
+      beneath them the everlasting arms of truth, should inquire into current
+      beliefs rather than take everything for granted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when the wealth, power, and stability of the Bank above
+      referred to were implicitly believed in by the many, and especially
+      trusted by its shareholders, there were, outside of its pale, many
+      individuals who felt sure that the establishment was very shaky, and a few
+      who were aware that it was toppling to its fall. If then, at that time,
+      any customer or proprietor, feeling a doubt about its safety, should have
+      endeavoured to investigate the rumours which were adverse to it; and
+      should have acted as reason dictated, after he had weighed the alleged
+      facts on both sides, he might have came to a safe decision and saved his
+      money. What is true in this case may be applied to the Bible&mdash;the
+      Bank upon which so many draw large drafts, and in whose stability they
+      have unbounded confidence. The thoughtless may, and doubtless will,
+      continue to trust it implicitly&mdash;the thoughtful will probably
+      consult, not only the Bibliolaters, but those who put no faith whatever in
+      the volume, and judge for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fear which many men have of biblical inquiry, has for a long period
+      struck me as being inexplicable, inasmuch as it is at variance with the
+      assertion of these very same people, that an examination of the book must
+      prove it to be infallibly true. But investigation into a supposed truth
+      can only end by confirming it fully, and thus making the truth more
+      useful; or by demonstrating that the belief entertained is untenable. It
+      has been the dread&mdash;nay the certainty, of the latter result, which
+      has deterred many great minds from investigating the matter. Amongst these
+      the late Professor Faraday was conspicuous, for we learn from a letter in
+      the Athenaeum of Jan. 7, 1870, written by one of his own personal friends,
+      that he&mdash;perhaps the most accomplished seeker after physical truth in
+      his time, declined firmly to search into the value of the commonly
+      received notions respecting "the scriptures," as he felt sure that his
+      faith in them would thereby be shaken. Yet he was illogical enough to use
+      them as a basis for his theological teaching. He preached to others from
+      texts in which he had no confidence; and supported his doctrines by
+      quotations from a book which, in his secret heart, he felt was valueless
+      as an exponent of historical truth, or orthodox teaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before we proceed to the comparison between the "Dhammapada" and the
+      Bible, it will be judicious to place fairly before the reader the points
+      which we hope to elucidate. We wish to show, by a collation of dates and
+      doctrines, that the two are wholly independent of each other, and as we
+      have elsewhere remarked, that if there has been any relationship between
+      Buddhist and Christian writings, the first have had more than two
+      centuries' precedence over the last. We wish to compare the morality
+      taught by Buddha, with that promulgated in the Old and New Testaments. We
+      desire impartially to examine into the question, whether the claim for
+      inspiration can be allowed in either one case or the other, or in both
+      together&mdash;whether, indeed, it is possible to believe the Hebrew
+      scriptures to be dictated by God, without giving a similar confidence to
+      the teachings of Sakya Muni&mdash;or, assuming that there is to be found a
+      code of pure morality or ethics which we may suppose to be of universal
+      application, we shall endeavour to ascertain whether the Hebrews and the
+      followers of Mary, or the disciples of the son of Maya Deva, have made the
+      nearest approach to its discovery and establishment. Collaterally we shall
+      examine whether Jesus has a greater claim than Buddha to be the Son of
+      God. The Dhammapada which has recently (Trübner &amp; Co., London, 1870*)
+      been translated by Max Mülller from the Pali, is one of the many books
+      which profess to give, as our Gospels and Epistles do of Christ, the
+      teachings or precepts of Buddha. These were for some two or three
+      centuries traditional only; but about the period, B.C. 300, many, if not
+      most of them, were committed to writing. As far as can be ascertained, the
+      year b.c. 246 was the period of the first Buddhist council under Asok, and
+      shortly after this, Mahuida, a priestly son of Asokâ, went as a missionary
+      to Ceylon; other emissaries went to Burmah, China, Japan, and it is
+      believed elsewhere. The oral promulgation of the Dhammapada would probably
+      begin about b.c. 560&mdash;twenty years or thereabouts before the death of
+      Siddartha. If we turn to contemporary history in the west of Asia, we find
+      that at this period Jerusalem was in ruins, and the Jews were captives in
+      Babylonia&mdash;no copies of any Hebrew sacred book were known to be in
+      existence (2 Esdras xiv. 21; 2 Maccabees ii. 1-13&mdash;see also 1
+      Maccabees i. 21-23), and, so far as we could learn, India was a country
+      wholly unknown to the Shemitic race. The acquaintanceship between
+      Hindustan and Europe seems to have been made in the time when the Greek
+      monarch, Alexander, overthrew Darius of Persia. Alexander invaded India
+      about b.c. 327, consequently we infer that there was no possibility of
+      Buddha being influenced by western notions in b.c. 560.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * <i>Buddhaghosa's Parables</i>, translated from Burmese, by Capt
+     T. Rogers; with an introduction, containing Buddha's
+     Dhammapada, or "Path of Virtue," by Max Müller.   Trübner &amp;
+     Co., London, 1870.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To these considerations we must add the fact that the Jews have never
+      been, from the earliest to the latest times, a missionary nation,&mdash;indeed,
+      their laws and precepts forced them to be so peculiarly reserved, that
+      even if they had known about India they would not have sent their
+      emissaries there, inasmuch as the Mosaic law obliged them to present
+      themselves at the Temple at Jerusalem thrice a-year, which was wholly
+      incompatible with distant travel. Moreover, there are many extant
+      histories to show that intelligent westerns went to India for knowledge
+      and religion, and never seemed to think of carrying their own faith
+      thither. The whole course of history points to religion and civilization
+      coming westerly from India or Central Asia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dates above given will clearly show that Sakya Muni could not have
+      derived his ideas from the teaching of Jesus, or of the Talmudists,
+      neither of whom were in existence when he flourished. Whatever similarity,
+      therefore, we find in the doctrines, &amp;c., of the two, cannot be
+      accounted for by supposing that Christian missionaries carried the New
+      Testament to India. The reverse is far more probable, as we have
+      demonstrated in a preceding chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some inquirers into the history of the sons of Maya Deva and of Mary are
+      so convinced of the priority of the first, and of the close resemblance of
+      the incidents in the lives and in the teaching of the two, that they have
+      found themselves forced, reluctantly, to consider the question&mdash;whether
+      Christianity is not Buddhism altered in some respects by Judaism. This
+      point having been elsewhere spoken of, we will not pursue it. But a far
+      more important, and, for many Christians, a more momentous inquiry, is,
+      whether we can speak of the Son of Mary as the offspring of Jehovah, and
+      yet affirm that the child of Maya Deva was nothing but a common man. So
+      deeply have some been moved by this consideration, that I have positively
+      heard the opinion broached, that the Indian sage was the very same as he
+      who subsequently was put to death in Jerusalem. Wild though the allegation
+      is, there is quite as great an amount of probability in it as in the
+      assertion that Jesus went and preached unto those spirits which were
+      sometime disobedient, i.e., in the time of Noah (1 Pet. iii. 19, 20), and
+      were, consequently, then in prison, or that Buddha went to his dead
+      mother, and converted her to his own faith. About supernatural births we
+      shall treat in a succeeding part.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without incumbering our pages with all the precepts of the Dhammapada, we
+      will copy a few in detail to show the reader their style, and then we will
+      only quote those which are most appropriate to our subject. The opening
+      paragraphs singularly resemble those in Bacon's <i>Novum Organon</i>, and
+      run thus&mdash;"All that we are, is the result of what we have thought: it
+      is founded on our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought,
+      pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who draws the
+      carriage (lv.)."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded
+      on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts
+      with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never
+      leaves him" (lvi. et. seq.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me&mdash;hatred in
+      those who harbour such thoughts will never cease."**
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me&mdash;hatred in
+      those who do not harbour such thoughts will cease."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. "For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by
+      love"&mdash;this is an old rule.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The figures refer to the separate precepts, which are
+     given in numerical order.
+
+     ** With this and the following saying we may compare the
+     words of the Psalms&mdash;"Do not I hate those, O Lord, that hate
+     thee? and am I not grieved with those that rise up against
+     thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred; I count them mine
+     enemies" (Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22). The words of David, said to
+     be a man after God's own heart, are equally opposed to the
+     law of love, viz., "Thou hast given me the necks of my
+     enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me" (2 Sam.
+     xxii. 41; Ps. xviii. 40); I shall see my desire on them that
+     hate me" (Ps. cxviii. 7). In Deuteronomy we find, moreover,
+     that indulgence in hatred is attributed to the Almighty,
+     "who repayeth them that hate Him to their face to destroy
+     them: He (God) will not be slack to him that hateth Him, he
+     will repay him to his face" (chap. vii. 10). Hatred of their
+     enemies is, indeed, everywhere encouraged in the Jewish
+     Scriptures, called sacred, and the Hebrew Jehovah is
+     described as one with whom the power to hate and revenge
+     Himself is a favourite luxury.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      6. "And some do not know that we must come to an end here; but others know
+      it, and hence their quarrels cease."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. "He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled,
+      immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, Mara (the Tempter, the
+      Adversary, or Satan) will certainly overcome him, as the wind throws down
+      a weak tree."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. "He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well
+      controlled, in his enjoyments moderate, faithful and strong, Mara will
+      certainly not overcome him, any more than the wind throws down a rocky
+      mountain."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. "They who imagine truth in untruth, and see untruth in truth, never
+      arrive at truth, but follow vain desires."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      15. "The evildoer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next, he
+      mourns in both."....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      16. "The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights in the next;
+      he delights in both."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may pause here, and ask ourselves whether, throughout the whole of the
+      Old Testament, we can find a single passage which so distinctly points to
+      a future state as does this Buddhistic teaching. Yet bibliolaters assert
+      that the effusions of Jewish writers were inspired by God! Mortal men
+      cannot tell what takes place after their bodies have become dissipated
+      into various chemical compounds; consequently, they cannot decide, with
+      certainty, which deserves the greater credit for accuracy&mdash;the
+      Dhammapada, or the Hebrew Scriptures; but all those who believe in the
+      teaching of Jesus are bound to acknowledge that the Indian sage was
+      inspired by a power superior to that which is said to have dictated to the
+      Israelite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How profitably, again, might the following observations be enunciated from
+      our pulpits, instead of the vapid and superficial divinity, which
+      disgraces both the utterer and the listener:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      21. "Reflection is the path of immortality, thoughtlessness the path of
+      death. Those who reflect do not die; those who are thoughtless are as if
+      dead already."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      25. "By rousing himself, by reflection, by restraint and control, the wise
+      man may make for himself an island, which no flood can overwhelm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      27. "Follow not after vanity, nor after the enjoyment of love and lust. He
+      who reflects and meditates obtains ample joy"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We dare not affirm that the writer of the first epistle of John was
+      familiar with the Dhammapada, but his words (chap. ii, v. 15), "Love not
+      the world, neither the things that are in the world," &amp;c., are as
+      purely Buddhistic as if he had known the doctrine of the Indian sage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We doubt whether, in the whole Bible, a parallel passage to the following
+      can be found:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      36. "Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult to
+      perceive, very artful, and they rush wherever they list: thoughts well
+      guarded bring happiness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true that in the Psalms, and elsewhere, there is a full recognition
+      of the power of God to know, and even to punish man for, bad thoughts, but
+      there is no precept recommending man to cultivate his mental powers for
+      the pleasure which the task will bring. The following observation is
+      equally to be commended:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      40. "Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, and making this
+      thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mâra (the tempter, or
+      Satan, the adversary) with the weapon of knowledge, one should watch him
+      when conquered, and never cease from the fight."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few moments' consideration here, will show the reader that there is a
+      fundamental distinction between the theology of the East and West in
+      reference to the management of "the thoughts of the heart." Jew and
+      Christian teachers alike encourage their disciples to combat evil thoughts
+      by prayer and by fasting, but they never once allude to the value of
+      "knowledge" as a weapon. Yet, of its power, relatively to supplication,
+      none can have a doubt. It it probable that no man or woman can attain to
+      adult age without being aware of the intrusion, into their minds, of
+      thoughts, whose presence greatly distresses the individual, and the worst
+      of these is, that they take so complete a possession, as not to be driven
+      away by any simple wrestling with them. In this emergency the devout
+      Christian has recourse to prayer, which serves to nail the intruder even
+      more closely to his seat. The philosopher, on the other hand, turns his
+      mind to think actively upon some other subject than that which has
+      intruded upon him, and as soon as he has fixed his attention upon the
+      second, the first immediately withdraws. Smarting, for example, under a
+      sense of ridicule from some accident which has happened to himself in a
+      ball-room, or other assembly, a man may retire to his pillow, yet find
+      thereupon no rest. He sees, every minute, the merry faces which laughed
+      when he put the sprig of lavender, that his lovely partner gave him for a
+      keepsake, behind his ear, as if it were a pen, and grinds his teeth with
+      rage or shame. Yet, if he now betakes himself to go through the
+      preparations which ought to be made to enable observers to notice
+      accurately the transit of Venus, and then the means by which they can
+      approximately ascertain the mean distance of the sun from the earth, he
+      will find at once a pleasant refuge from his trouble, and fall asleep
+      whilst extracting a square root. Those young men, and others, who, like
+      the old saints are said to have done, often suffer much from what may be
+      called "presumptuous desires of the flesh," will find the acquisition of
+      knowledge is a powerful agent in subduing the cravings of lust, and hard
+      thinking curbs our passions far more effectually than the scourge of the
+      ascetic, or the prayers of the hermit. Mental activity, although it does
+      not entirely remove it, does much to repress inordinate desire, and we
+      consequently prefer the teaching of the son of Maya to that of any son of
+      Abraham.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the estimate of a well-regulated mind we have the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      42. "Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a
+      wrongly-directed mind will do us greater mischief."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      43. "Not a mother, not a father, nor any other relative, will do so much
+      that a well-directed mind will not do us greater service." To this we can
+      find no parallel in the Hebrew scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the following are equal to any of those proverbs attributed to
+      Solomon:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      76. "If you see an intelligent man who tells you where true treasures are
+      to be found, who shows you what is to be avoided, and who administers
+      reproofs, follow that wise man: it will be better, not worse, for those
+      who follow him."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      78. "Do not have evildoers for friends, do not have low people; have
+      virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      80. "Well-makers lead the water wherever they like, fletchers bend the
+      arrow, carpenters bend a log of wood, wise people fashion themselves."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      81. "As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not
+      amidst blame and praise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      94. "The gods even envy him whose senses have been subdued, like horses
+      well broken in by the driver, who is free from pride and free from
+      frailty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      97. "The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who has
+      cut all ties, removed all temptations renounced all desires, he is the
+      greatest of men." A saying which is almost identical with "He that is slow
+      to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit better
+      than he that taketh a city" (Prov. xvi. 32). Those Christians who believe
+      in works of supererogation, and trust to stores of merit laid up by
+      certain saints, who have lashed their bodies and otherwise injured
+      themselves, may read the following opinion with profit:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      108. "Whatever a man sacrifices in this world as an offering or as an
+      oblation for a whole year in order to gain merit, the whole of it is not
+      worth a quarter; reverence shown to the righteous is better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Respecting evil, we find the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      116. "If a man would hasten towards the good, he should keep his thought
+      away from evil; if a man does what is good slothfully, his mind delights
+      in evil."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      117. "If a man commits a sin, let him not do it again, let him not delight
+      in sin; pain is the outcome of evil."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      118. "If a man does what is good let him do it again, let him delight in
+      it; happiness is the outcome of good."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      126. "Some people are born again; evil-doers go to Hell, righteous people
+      go to Heaven; those who are free from all worldly desires enter Nirvana."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is therefore clear that Jesus of Nazareth did not inaugurate the idea
+      of a new birth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In precept 133 we have another sentiment parallel with a passage in
+      Proverbs: "Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will
+      answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful blows, for blows will
+      touch thee;" or, as our Bible has it, "A soft answer turneth away wrath,
+      but grievous words stir up anger" (Prov. xv. 1).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following is a reproach to a vast number of individuals who are called
+      Christian preachers, and teach doctrines of brotherly love, but act as if
+      religious hatred of dissenters of every class were a duty:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      159. "Let each man make himself as he teaches others to be; he who is well
+      subdued may subdue others; one's own self is difficult to subdue."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      166. "Let no one neglect his own duty for the sake of another's, however
+      great: let a man, after he has discerned his own duty, be always attentive
+      to his duty."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following might have served as the original of the epistles of John:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      167. "Do not follow the evil law! Do not live on in thoughtlessness! Do
+      not follow false doctrine! Be not a friend of the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      168. 9. "Rouse thyself! do not be idle, follow the law of virtue&mdash;do
+      not follow that of sin. The virtuous lives happily in this world and in
+      the next."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      170, 1, 2, 3, &amp; 4. "Look upon the world as a bubble; the foolish are
+      immersed in it, but the wise do not cling to it. He who formerly was
+      reckless, and afterwards became sober, and he whose evil deeds are covered
+      by good deeds, brighten up this world like the moon when freed from
+      clouds."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      174. "This world is dark&mdash;few only can be here; a few only go to
+      heaven like birds escaped from the net." A statement repeated by Jesus in
+      different words,&mdash;"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
+      leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 14). There
+      may likewise be a comparison instituted between the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      176. "If a man has transgressed one law, and speaks lies and scoffs at
+      another world, there is no evil he will not do." "Whosoever shall keep the
+      whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas. ii.
+      10).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I quote this and the next saying to corroborate the assertion that Buddha
+      taught the existence of a future world:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      177. "The uncharitable do not go to the world of the gods; fools only do
+      not praise liberality; a wise man rejoices in liberality, and through it
+      becomes blessed in the other world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Compare 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18,19, "Charge them that are rich in this world....
+      that they be&mdash;ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up
+      in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that
+      they may lay hold on eternal life."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      See again (306), "He who says what is not, goes to hell; he also who,
+      having done a thing, says I have not done it. After death both are equal,
+      they are men with evil deeds in the next world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      309. "Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbour's wife&mdash;a
+      bad reputation, an uncomfortable bed&mdash;thirdly, punishment, and,
+      lastly, hell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      310. "There is bad reputation, and the evil way (to hell)."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      311. "As a grass blade if badly grasped cuts the arm, badly practised
+      asceticism leads to hell."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      178. "Better than sovereignty over the earth, better than going to heaven,
+      better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of the first step in
+      holiness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
+      soul?" or, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt, xvi.
+      26).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be difficult to find any doctrine enunciated in the Bible more
+      simple than the following:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      183. "Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is
+      the teaching of the Awakened."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      184. "The Awakened call patience the highest penance, long-suffering the
+      highest Nirvana, for he is not an anchorite who strikes others, he is not
+      an ascetic who insults others."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      185. "Not to blame, not to strike, to live restrained under the law, to be
+      moderate in eating, to sleep and eat alone, and to dwell on the highest
+      thoughts, this is the teaching of the Awakened."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Equally difficult would it be to find in the Old Testament such precepts
+      as&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      197. "Let us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us; let us
+      dwell free from hatred among men who hate." "Let us live free from greed
+      among men who are greedy."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      200. "Let us live happily though we can call nothing our own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      204. "Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches;
+      trust is the best of relatives, Nirvana the highest happiness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following quotations deserve the close attention of the Christian
+      inquirer, for they not only contain sentiments almost identically the same
+      as those found in the New Testament, but they are couched in the same
+      language, as closely as the circumstances of the case allow. Both
+      enunciate the opinion that it is injudicious to cultivate or even to
+      permit the existence of those affections which we have in common with the
+      lower animals, and that to attain perfection love and hatred must be
+      trampled under foot. We give the Buddhist teaching priority, as it was
+      promulgated first:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      210. "Let no man ever look for what is pleasant or what is unpleasant. Not
+      to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is
+      unpleasant."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      211. "Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil.
+      Those who love nothing and hate nothing have no fetters."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      212. "From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear, he who is free
+      from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      213-6. "From affection comes grief and fear, from lust comes grief and
+      fear, from love comes grief and fear, from greed comes grief and fear."
+      "He who is free from affection, lust, love, and greed, knows neither grief
+      nor fear." "He that loveth either father or mother more than me is not
+      worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter better than me is not
+      worthy of me, and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after me is
+      not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that
+      loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. x. 37-39). "Love not the
+      world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the
+      world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world,
+      the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is
+      not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the
+      lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever" (1 John
+      ii. 15-17).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let
+      him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will
+      save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake
+      shall find it; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world
+      and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
+      (Matt, xvi. 24). See also Mark viii. 34, x. 21, and Luke ix. 23-25, in the
+      last verse of which the saying is varied by the words being used "what is
+      a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself, or be cast
+      away?" We are by habit more familiar with the style in which the Grecians
+      wrote, than with that adopted by Sanscrit authors. But in both sets of
+      writers the main idea is made strikingly apparent&mdash;viz., that to love
+      anybody or anything on earth is prejudicial to our spiritual welfare, and
+      that to act piously, it is necessary for the saint to free himself wholly
+      from those instinctive affections which God has implanted in almost every
+      one of his creatures. It is strange that any two ministers could have
+      excogitated so monstrous a proposition, and that both should be called
+      "Divine."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The effect of the teaching of Buddha and of Jesus was to draw many from
+      their hearth whose duty, in our estimation, was clearly to remain at home,
+      and endeavour to cherish and support their family. I enter my strong
+      protest as an Englishman, as well as individual Christian, against the
+      idea that a man who believes himself a disciple of the son of Mary must go
+      abroad to teach and preach, or become an ascetic, a hermit, or a monk, and
+      leave his wife and children to be cared for by his friends or the parish.
+      I believe most strongly that our affections are implanted in us by our
+      Maker, just as a mother's love exists alike in the tigress and the eagle,
+      and that any religion which teaches us that we must overcome these
+      propensities, is a false one. It is strange, to say the least of it, that
+      both the son of Maya and of Mary should have promulgated such a doctrine&mdash;i.e.,
+      that religion is designed to make our pleasures less, and our miseries
+      greater. It is perhaps too much to assert that no other form of faith,
+      besides those which have sprung from Buddha and from Jesus, possesses such
+      a tenet as that to which we refer; but we can safely affirm that we do not
+      know of any in which the natural affections existing between parents and
+      children, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, have not been cultivated
+      as a portion of the duties to be fulfilled by the faithful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is scarcely necessary to call attention to the resemblance which the
+      doctrine in question bears to that which was promulgated by the Grecian
+      "Stoics"; and the similitude is still farther increased by such a sentence
+      as the following in the Dhammapada:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      221. "Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all
+      bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to either body
+      or soul, and who calls nothing his own."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more we see a close resemblance between Buddhism and the Bible in
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      223. "Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good, let
+      him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth." "If thine enemy
+      be hungry give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him water to
+      drink," (Prov. xxv. 21). But the motive for this recommendation to the
+      Jews is a vindictive one, for he is told that by so doing he will heap
+      coals of fire upon his enemy's head, whilst the Lord will take care to
+      reward the deed to the doer. In the epistle to the Romans this saying of
+      the Proverbs is endorsed, and to it is added "Be not overcome with evil,
+      but overcome evil with good" (Rom. xii. 20, 21).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      224. "Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked,
+      from the little thou hast&mdash;by those steps thou wilt go near the
+      gods." "Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them about thy neck;
+      write them upon the table of thine heart; so shalt thou find favour and
+      good understanding in the sight of God and man" (Prov. iii. 3-4);
+      "Wherefore, putting away lying, let every man speak the truth with his
+      neighbour" (Eph. iv. 25). We scarcely can find, in the Old Testament, a
+      strict parallel with the Buddhist precept, "do not yield to anger," for
+      the Jewish scriptures, without exception, depict their God as giving way
+      habitually to wrath, anger, and revenge&mdash;e.g., in Ps. vii. 11, we
+      find it stated that Elohim is angry with the wicked every day. Again, in
+      Isaiah v. 25, we read, "for all this, God's anger is not turned away, but
+      his hand is stretched out still;" Job iv. 9, By God's anger they are
+      consumed; "To pour out upon them my fierce anger," (Zeph. iii. 8). There
+      are, however, a few passages which inculcate upon men the propriety of a
+      command over their temper. In Ps. xxxvii. 8, for example, we read, "Cease
+      from anger, and forsake wrath," and in Proverbs xxvii. 4, "Wrath is cruel,
+      and anger is outrageous," whilst "the Preacher" says, Eccles. vii. 9,
+      "Anger resteth in the bosom of fools," and in xi. 10, "remove anger or
+      sorrow from thy heart." In the Gospel we have a somewhat divided teaching.
+      For example, we find, from Mark iii. 5, that Jesus himself indulged in
+      anger, when he was vexed at what he thought the hardness of his hearers'
+      hearts; and from his saying, in Matt. v. 22, "Whosoever is angry with his
+      brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment," it is clear
+      that the son of Mary approved of anger which had a cause. Again, we find,
+      in Eph. iv. 26, "Be ye angry and sin not, let not the sun go down upon
+      your wrath," as if anger were not a culpable weakness, or passion, if only
+      indulged in during the daylight. Yet, in the thirty-first verse of the
+      same chapter we read, "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger.... be put
+      away from you," and in Col. iii. 8, the putting away of anger is spoken of
+      as an evidence of being regenerated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the duty of almsgiving we find much in the Bible, but we will content
+      ourselves with the following passages:&mdash;"Charge them who are rich in
+      this world that they be ready to give, and glad to distribute, laying up
+      in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that
+      they may attain eternal life" (1 Tim. vi. 17-19). Quoted from the
+      Communion Service in the Prayer-book&mdash;"To do good, and to distribute,
+      forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." "Be merciful
+      after thy power. If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast little,
+      do thy diligence gladly to give of that little, for so gatherest thou
+      thyself a good reward in the day of necessity" (Prayer-book version of
+      certain precepts in Tobit, chap. iv. 8, 9). If our readers will take the
+      trouble to consult the entire chapter in Tobit, they will readily conceive
+      that it was written by a Buddhist sage, instead of an ordinary Jew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more we turn to the Dhammapada, and find&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      231, 234. "Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body. Leave the sins of
+      the body, and with thy body practise virtue; control thy tongue; leave the
+      sins of the tongue, and practise virtue with thy tongue; leave the sins of
+      the mind, and practise virtue with thy mind."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This reference to the sins of the tongue, and the necessity for its
+      control, recals to our mind the opinion expressed in the epistle of James,
+      "If any one bridleth not his tongue, this man's religion is vain" (chap,
+      i. 26); "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity," &amp;c.; "the tongue
+      can no man tame," &amp;c. (chap. iii. w. 5-10); and the verse, "I said, I
+      will take heed io my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep my
+      mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me" (Ps. xxxix. 1).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next maxim to which I would direct attention is one which should be
+      pondered deeply by all those who desire to become thoroughly civilized. So
+      far as I know, its like cannot be found in any part of the Bible. It runs
+      thus&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      243. "There is a taint worse than all taints, ignorance is the greatest
+      taint."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we search our own scriptures for a parallel passage, we can only find
+      that ignorance is inculcated, and with the express intention of preventing
+      the mind from departing from the old into some new track&mdash;see, for
+      example, Dent. xii. 30, where the Jews are enjoined not to inquire after
+      the gods of other nations, lest they should adopt them: again, in Deut.
+      iv. 19, the Hebrews are enjoined not to study or gain any information
+      respecting the sun, moon, and stars, lest they should worship them. But
+      Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, is even a more conspicuous advocate of
+      ignorance, when he asserts that God hath chosen the foolish things [&mdash;Greek&mdash;]
+      of the world to confound the wise (1 Cor. i. vv. 19-28). "O Timothy, keep
+      that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding.... oppositions of science
+      falsely so called, which some professing have erred concerning the faith"
+      (1 Tim. vi. 20, 21). Many, indeed, who call themselves civilized
+      Christians, aver that, where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise, a
+      tenet held strongly by Mahometans, Papists, and Ritualists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That the dictum of Paul in the text last quoted has had a a most
+      disastrous effect upon civilization, no one who is conversant with history
+      can fairly deny. Neither can it be shown that any known religion, except
+      Buddhism, has opposed itself to ignorance. In every nation the rulers in
+      general, and the priesthood in particular, have, on the other hand,
+      encouraged indolence of mind, lest the people should learn wisdom and
+      shake off their thraldom. We have seen, in our own times, hierarchs of
+      every denomination oppose the spread of science, not falsely so called,
+      with the avowed intention of endeavouring to bolster up doctrines, dogmas,
+      and assertions, which they feel sure true science will destroy, although
+      the same people declare their tenets indestructible, and founded on truth.
+      Nay, we may go still further, and assert that sciolism in religious
+      matters is fostered by the clergy of all denominations, both by the
+      suppression of what they believe to be genuine, and by the promulgation of
+      what they know to be false. In the place of knowledge they inculcate blind
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As one not wholly unknown to be an earnest and honest inquirer, I have had
+      extensive correspondence and personal intercourse with many preachers, and
+      with others whose opportunities for learning "the clerical mind" are more
+      extensive than my own, and I may divide the body of religious ministers,
+      and the laity as well, into the following classes:&mdash;1, Those who
+      refuse to inquire, examine, and think about religious subjects, except in
+      a certain prescribed way; 2, Those who will investigate into the grounds
+      of their belief, as they would into any doubtful assertion, or into any
+      science; 3, Those who individually abandon the old faith and yet continue
+      to preach it, and profess to adhere to it as strongly as they did at
+      first; 4, Those who venture timidly to insinuate doubts into the minds of
+      others, whilst professing to be orthodox themselves; 5, Those who are too
+      noble to be hypocrites, and boldly affirm that which their advance of
+      knowledge has induced them to adopt as a belief. Yet these very men,
+      distinguished above their fellows for earnestness, for science, for
+      honesty of purpose, a religiously ignorant priesthood persecutes; and
+      Englishmen, who wish to be regarded as peculiarly "enlightened," stand by
+      almost unmoved, or, as happens too frequently, applauding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we endeavour to ascertain the reason why ignorance is so greatly
+      cherished amongst mankind, we can readily discover it in indolence on the
+      part of one group of men, and cupidity on the part of others. There are
+      many positions in life wherein Sciolism seems to be more profitable than
+      knowledge. We may mention a few. A "solicitor" who has an imperfect
+      acquaintance with the law, may induce his clients to bring cases before
+      various legal courts, in which they are certain to lose their cause and
+      money, but this solicitor gains large fees for his trouble. A physician
+      who does not know how to cure certain diseases may yet treat them for
+      months, pass for a devoted doctor and a clever friend, and receive a large
+      honorarium, which is far beyond his merit, though the patient may think it
+      far too small. The man, on the other hand, who can cure such complaints
+      readily, has to be content with a very slender fee, as his attendance is
+      only required for a few days. The schemers, who live upon the ignorance of
+      dupes, bear the name of legion. We see one of the body as a promoter of
+      all sorts of bubble companies, and as secretary to such societies as
+      banks, trade unions, burial clubs, assurances, &amp;c. Anon he takes the
+      form of an adulterator of provisions, of various drinkables, of cloth,
+      silk, linen, &amp;c. If Sciolism were not common, such charlatans as
+      "spiritualists," "clairvoyants," "mesmerists," and the like, could not
+      thrive as they do, nor quacks of all kinds flourish famously. One medical
+      pretender is indeed reported to have said to a "regular" doctor, who lived
+      in the same street with him, but whose clients were few compared with
+      those of the charlatan&mdash;"the reason why you have so small, and I have
+      so large, a number of patients is, that the fools come to me, the knowing
+      ones to you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is true in the case of other professions is preeminently so in the
+      clerical In religion, such as it is professed in Christendom, Sciolism, or
+      imperfect knowledge, alone is lucrative. Real understanding, diffused
+      amongst the people, would render every hierophant a beggar, and thorough
+      enlightenment amongst the priesthood would force them to allow that such
+      should be their normal position. For example, if every layman, in
+      countries owning the spiritual headship of the Pope of Rome, knew that all
+      the stories of Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, Angels, Saints, Confessors,
+      Hermits, and the like, were absolutely baseless&mdash;if he knew that man
+      has no power in the court of the Almighty to influence His will in favour
+      of a congener, and that nothing whatever is known respecting the world
+      beyond the grave&mdash;he would not order masses, whether high or low, and
+      a host of other ceremonies, each of which has to be paid for. Or, if each
+      Protestant knew, that every tenet preached to him from the pulpit is
+      founded upon absolute ignorance of the Almighty's operations, that every
+      doctrine, every prayer, and every ritual, is based upon fantastic, half
+      savage, or semicivilized human ideas, he would recognize at once the total
+      uselessness of the parson. "They that are whole need not the physician,
+      but they that are sick." The doctor, knowing this, endeavours, when he has
+      a chance, to induce a client to believe himself ill, and that he and no
+      other man can cure him&mdash;or, if he should really be disordered, these
+      ideas will be kept up as long as possible. So it is in "religion," it is
+      only the culprit that wants the Saviour, but when he has a chance, the <i>soi
+      disant</i> saviour tries to persuade those who consult him, that they are
+      sinners, yet that he can make them saints; and having once implanted this
+      belief, he endeavours to sustain it. To doctors and priests such as we
+      here describe, the ignorant credulity of their clients is a source of
+      wealth. So long as there are dupes there will be sharpers, and so long as
+      men are human, there will be, unconsciously very likely to themselves,
+      abundance of both fools and knaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From what has been already said, our readers will have probably drawn the
+      conclusion that we deny the existence of a thoroughly educated and honest
+      hierarch, who has become wealthy by the exercise of his profession in a
+      perfectly conscientious manner. Exceptional circumstances prevent us
+      saying exactly the same of a doctor, but into these we need not enter, as
+      they have not their counterparts in divinity. Such being our belief, we
+      recognize the fact that poverty and knowledge must, in an earnest
+      priesthood, be ever associated. But the clergy of every denomination are
+      loath to agree to this, and endeavour, by hook or by crook, to acquire the
+      means of living well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence Buddha, who was thoroughly honest himself, and did not become a
+      preacher for the sake of emolument or a livelihood, adopted, as part of
+      his plan, a systematic estrangement from every luxury of whatever sort,&mdash;or,
+      in other words, the adoption of a poverty as great as exists in the lower
+      animals. He enjoined that the saintly teacher, having food and raiment of
+      the most homely kind, ought therewith to be content. This was Paul's view
+      also&mdash;see 1 Tim. vi. 8. In this teaching the son of Mary concurred;
+      like the son of Maya, he "had not where to lay his head," he had not even
+      such a home as a fox or a bird (Matt, viii. 20), and when he sent out his
+      disciples to preach, his direction to them was, "Take nothing for your
+      journey" (Luke ix. 3, see also Matt, vi. 25-28). To sum up our remarks
+      upon this particular command of Buddha to avoid the taint of ignorance, we
+      may frame an axiom in political economy, thus&mdash;"Ignorance in the many
+      ensures wealth in a few," or, "A diffusion of sound knowledge amongst the
+      ruled, reduces the power and the emoluments of the rulers, and compels
+      them to work hard if they wish to retain their position." To apply this
+      idea still further, I would add that a thoroughly educated people, each
+      one of whom feels that he must "work out his own salvation" (Phil ii. 12),
+      does not require a priesthood. Consequently hierarchs, whose sole business
+      in this world seems to be to instil terror into young minds, and to make
+      rules for them to break, that priests may be paid for showing how the
+      imaginary results may be escaped, would have no place if men were wise and
+      thoughtful. It is a curious, though a certain fact, that the depth of
+      savagery and the height of civilization alike ignore the necessity of a
+      hierarchy. The first does so because it never thinks of God&mdash;the
+      second, because its conceptions of the Almighty are such that it cannot
+      believe Him to be influenced by individuals who assume to be His earthly
+      vicegerents, or are elected to that pretentious situation by their
+      fellow-men. The God of the Bible can only be adored by individuals whose
+      minds are not emancipated wholly from the thraldom of barbarism, and who
+      regard Jehovah as a man, and not a good one either, or, as we have before
+      remarked&mdash;a devil. We may once more extract some sentences for
+      comparison, to show, either that no inspiration was necessary to pen the
+      Bible, or that the Dhammapada has equal claims with the Old Testament&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      244. "Life is easy to live for a man who is without shame, a crow hero, a
+      mischief maker, an insulting, bold, and wretched fellow. But life is hard
+      to live for a modest man, who always looks for what is pure, who is
+      disinterested, quiet, spotless, and intelligent. O man, know this, that
+      the unrestrained are in a bad state; take care that greediness and vice do
+      not bring thee to grief for a long time."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Compare this with the Psalmist's expression&mdash;"I was envious at the
+      foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands in
+      their death, but their strength is firm; they are not in trouble as other
+      men, neither are they plagued like other men; therefore pride compasseth
+      them about as a chain, violence covereth them as a garment, their eyes
+      stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish.... these are
+      the ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase in riches.... Surely
+      thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into
+      destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they
+      are utterly consumed with terrors" (Ps. lxxiii. 3-19.) "I have seen the
+      wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green tree that
+      groweth in his own soil, yet he passed away, and lo! he was not, yea, I
+      sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and behold
+      the upright, for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall
+      be destroyed together, the end of the wicked shall be cut off." "Fret not
+      thyself because of evil-doers, neither be thou envious against the workers
+      of iniquity, for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as
+      the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the
+      land, and, verily, thou shalt be fed" (Ps. xxxvii. 35-38&mdash;1-3). The
+      class of sentiments is the same in both, only they seem to differ because
+      we are very familiar with the phraseology of the Bible, and the reverse
+      with translations from the Sanskrit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the philosopher may judiciously pause to inquire, whether
+      the sentiments expressed in the preceding biblical quotations are not
+      incorrect, and consequently whether they can be regarded as inspired; and
+      whether the Buddhistic solution of the difficulty, which points to a
+      future state, is not superior to the Jewish one which treats of this world
+      only. Experience abundantly shows that individuals practising what is
+      called "goodness" find it no safeguard against misery, starvation,
+      tortures, and death. Jesus of Nazareth, his disciples, and vast numbers of
+      his followers, have experienced from the dominant party in those states
+      wherein they dwelled contumely, reproach, and hours of lingering torment.
+      Louis the XIV. of France, and the New Englanders of America, alike
+      persecuted "Protestants" and "Quakers." In Spain "the reformers" were
+      successfully opposed by fire and sword, and Papal Italy once extirpated
+      from her midst the disciples of Luther and Calvin. Yet the so-called
+      wrong-doers flourished, and the unfortunate "good people" were run down or
+      dragooned with a sudden and swift destruction. If the dictum of the
+      Psalmist is right, then Admiral Coligny, who was killed in the Bartholomew
+      massacre, at Paris, must have been a bad man put in a slippery place that
+      he might fall, for his destruction came suddenly, in an instant. But all
+      history shows him to have been a worthy fellow, who was punished for his
+      virtues. The observer of nature is driven to believe that the co-existence
+      of powerful and bad men, with feeble, yet good men, is a rule in creation
+      for which no adequate explanation can be found. He sees that in the domain
+      of the air there are hawks and pigeons, eagles and ostriches, cuckoos and
+      hedge-sparrows, that on the land there are tigers and sheep, lions and
+      buffaloes, wolves and deer, that in the water there are perch and minnows,
+      pike and trout, sharks and whales&mdash;in other words, there is
+      throughout the world a division of living creatures into those who live by
+      destroying vegetables, and those who subsist by the destruction of
+      animals. The cow, sheep, and deer are quite as ruthless, in their
+      noxiousness to the ornaments of the meadow, as are foxes in a hen-roost to
+      the beauties of the barn-door; both alike mar the graceful features of
+      creation. Yet it is clear that both the graminivora and the carnivora were
+      made to effect this apparent wrong. Still further, we see throughout
+      creation, that in almost every community of animals, the strong ones
+      dominate over the weak, and endeavour, far too frequently, to deprive them
+      of such pleasures as they and their females possess. See, for example, a
+      cock with a bevy of hens: he will allow no other chanticleer to strut
+      besides him on the dunghill of the yard; he will not permit a rival to
+      make love to anyone of his harem, nor to feed upon any dainty morsel,
+      until his wives and himself have had enough. The same may be said of
+      stags, of bulls, of rams, of horses, and many other creatures whose habits
+      are known. The leader of a herd is a despot, and when he is at length
+      conquered by another, those who are ruled have merely changed their
+      masters. Young and weak cocks will never attain to power, and must ever
+      submit to be bullied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We notice, at the same time, that each tyrant must in the end succumb;
+      with age comes infirmity and loss of strength, in the last battle the old
+      is beaten by the young. Just so it is with mankind; in its comparative
+      infancy monarchs rule, and are at length deposed by others. The
+      Babylonians conquered Palestine, the Medes and Persians vanquished the
+      Babylonians, the Greeks subjugated the Persians, the Romans overcame the
+      Greeks, and the Goths destroyed the Roman power; yet under every regime
+      the powerful could torment the weak. The result in every case was brought
+      about by the conqueror being strong and brutal&mdash;not by the immorality
+      of the victims.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a philosopher sees such things, he very naturally endeavours to
+      ascertain whether any design can be discovered in the events of the world,
+      and to this end he may be diligent in collecting facts, or he may at once
+      frame some theory, and then cease to think about the matter. "Oh," such an
+      one may say, "all that is wrong here will be righted in another world."
+      Another, who ponders more deeply, may doubt whether it is proper to divide
+      the phenomena of nature into "right" and "wrong." "If," he will say, "I
+      believe with the Jew that God is in the heavens, and does whatsoever He
+      pleases" (Ps. cxv. 3), or that "the Lord hath made all for Himself; yea,
+      even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov. xvi. 4) I must allow that
+      everything which emanates from the Creator must be right. Speaking
+      individually, I prefer rather to examine into the ways of Providence&mdash;i.e.,
+      of the Almighty, without framing any theory of right and wrong, than to
+      dogmatize upon what He <i>must</i> intend by this or that. "Who hath
+      directed the Spirit of the Lord (Jehovah), or being his counsellor hath
+      taught him?" (Is. xl. 13)&mdash;see also the Pauline version of this
+      sentiment, Rom. xi. 33, 34.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very questionable whether any human analogy will enable us, even
+      approximately, to fathom what are designated "the designs of Providence."
+      Every example that I can at the present remember given by theologians is
+      bad. Take, for example, the most common one which draws a comparison
+      between God and a father, Ps. ciii. 13, "like as a father piti-eth his
+      children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" Prov. iii. 12, "Whom
+      the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he
+      delighteth;" Heb. xii. 6, 7, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
+      scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "If ye be without chastisement,
+      whereof all men (are) partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons." These
+      enunciate the idea that God, being the universal father, treats mankind as
+      a judicious parent treats his offspring, and that as a child cannot at all
+      times know why he is punished until many years have passed over his head,
+      so human beings cannot tell, until they reach another world, why they were
+      punished in this. To assist this assertion the text is quoted "What I do
+      thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7.) If
+      there be any truth in the analogy, it must follow that all who in this
+      world "endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19), are children
+      of God, whom he is educating for a better world. If that, again, be so,
+      then&mdash;when Christians persecuted Mahometans, Romanists burned
+      Protestants, and Spaniards slaughtered Mexicans and Peruvians&mdash;it
+      follows that the vanquished, and not the conquerors, were the elect of the
+      Father. But this deduction directly opposes those promises said to be made
+      to the Jews by Jehovah, viz., that victory should be the reward of their
+      piety. As it is a poor system which declares that two opposite results
+      come from the same cause, we must refuse to believe that both victory and
+      defeat are proofs of a Father's love. I am quite aware that some reader
+      may retort that a kind parent may punish one child at the same time that
+      he rewards another. I grant it at once, but that only demonstrates, if it
+      proves anything, that all creatures must be regarded alike as the
+      offspring of the Creator, and that none are favoured peculiarly on the one
+      hand, or are outcasts on the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As it is undesirable to mix political up with religious events, I refrain
+      from drawing from history such illustrations as have frequently been
+      supposed to indicate the will of the Almighty. The fall from power of
+      Egypt, Tyre, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Spain,
+      are all supposed to have been caused by some special providential design.
+      In like manner theologians draw certain deductions from the discovery of
+      the New World, and the slaughter of the majority of its aboriginal
+      inhabitants; from the Crusades; from the influx of the Turks into
+      Christendom; and of the Moors into Spain. Some, whose imaginative powers
+      overwhelm their reasoning faculties, see in the wars of recent times that
+      final shaking of the nations, which some <i>soi-disant</i> prophet
+      declares must precede the millennium, and the battle of Armageddon;
+      vaccinators, and interpreters are as abundant and irrepressible now as
+      ever they were. Their fundamental assumption is that God has acted as they
+      would have done in His place. Now He is a sort of Irish landlord, a
+      portion of whose property is overrun with pauper farmers, and He clears
+      them away to make room for more sensible and wealthier tenants, as the
+      Canaanites were removed to give place to the Hebrews. Now, He is
+      represented as a parent, who hearing that a son has engaged in fight and
+      been conquered, merely remarks "serves him right!"&mdash;the kind of
+      comfort given to the Jews after they had been harried by the Edomite
+      confederacy, and subsequently by the Chaldeans. Again, the same mighty
+      Jehovah is represented as a Stoic, who remarks, when some mischance
+      happens to those who are said to be his children, "Never mind, accidents
+      will happen&mdash;through much tribulation you must enter into my rest, or
+      the kingdom of heaven."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I entirely decline to adopt the profession of prophet and interpreter,
+      contenting myself with increasing what knowledge I may have, rather than
+      endeavouring to deduce from it theories whose weakness an hour may
+      demonstrate; nor do I put faith in any one who adopts such a business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For example, let us assume that two savage tribes, having gods of
+      different names and shapes, go to war on the bidding of their priests&mdash;one
+      is conquered and the other is victorious. The one attributes his reverse
+      to the anger of his own deity, not to the power of the god of his enemy.
+      The other imagines that he owes success to the influence of his protector
+      and his superiority over his foe's fetish. A civilized on-looker, who
+      believes that all the deities are devils and powerless, attributes victory
+      and defeat to perfectly natural causes, e.g., superiority in weapons,
+      tactics, numbers, or strength. It is clear that neither the deductions of
+      the first nor second men are right; neither has read the mind of his
+      fetish. So it is with the half educated theologians of our own day, who
+      think and talk as glibly of God and Satan, as if they were personal
+      acquaintances, who make no secret either of their deeds or their motives
+      of action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more we return to the Dhammapada and find,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      248. "O, man, know this, that the unrestrained are in a bad state; take
+      care that greediness and vice do not bring thee to grief for a long time."
+      We do not here seek to find any parallel passage in the bible, but we turn
+      to history, remote and collateral, and compare the priesthood of Buddha
+      with that of Jesus. Does travel tell us of any set of teachers more
+      self-denying than the individuals who devote themselves as religious
+      Buddhists? Can history, on the other hand, tell us of any hierarchy more
+      greedy and vicious than the Christian priesthood in the middle ages, and
+      down to a comparatively recent period? We will not accuse them of vice,
+      but even now is there in the whole world a more grasping set of men than
+      those who have received what they term "holy orders" from the descendants
+      of Jesus or of Peter? I trow not. If, therefore, a doctrine is to be known
+      by its fruits, in one respect at least Buddhism is superior to that which
+      we call Christianity, by which term I do not mean the exceptional practice
+      of a few, but the general habits of the majority of the bishops, priests,
+      &amp;c., of Christendom. Once more let us contrast the doctrine of Buddha
+      with the practice of Christians. He says&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Da. 256, 7. "A man is not a just judge if he carries a matter by violence;
+      no, he who distinguishes both right and wrong, who is learned, and leads
+      others, not by violence, but by law and equity, he who is a guardian of
+      the law and equity, he who is a guardian of the law, and intelligent, he
+      is called just." Our histories tell us of Christians persecuting
+      Christians; Trinitarians endeavouring to extirpate Arians; Franciscans
+      torturing Dominicans; of Jews slaughtered by those whose master said,
+      "Father, forgive them;" we see brutal Spaniards exterminating, under the
+      shadow of the cross, whole nations in the new world who had never harmed
+      them, and in the old world we find Crusaders, under the guise of piety,
+      murdering and robbing the dwellers in Palestine. There is scarcely a large
+      town in Europe which has not witnessed the ferocious violence of Papal,
+      yea, and Protestant, hierarchs. Even in recent times we have seen bishops
+      and their congeners, in our so-called civilized nation, oppose violence,
+      and the popgun thunder of excommunication, to a learned prelate, and to an
+      humble priest. Judged by the standard of Buddha, our divines are unjust
+      and unrighteous. I cannot discover any standard by which they can be
+      regarded as "praiseworthy," except that embodied in the two sayings, "Get
+      what you can, and what you get hold;" "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis
+      folly to be wise." We may say of such persecutors, in the words of the
+      Dhammapada&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      260. "A man is not an elder because his head is grey; his age may be ripe,
+      but he is called old in vain," and many would at once be able, if they
+      tried, to remember the names of some who, in a Christian community, have
+      abandoned their principles, or their learning, as soon as they became
+      bishops or elders of the church. I have no doubt Popes have done so. There
+      is a saying, that however clever a man is, you make a fool of him by
+      placing a mitre upon his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following is, perhaps, more curious than our previous quotations, as
+      it tells of the pre-Christian antiquity of a common Romish custom:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      264. "Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man, who speaks falsehood,
+      become a Sramana; can a man be a Sra-mana who is still held captive by
+      desire and greediness?" The Sramana is a word equivalent to our "priest,"
+      literally, "a man who performs hard penances" (see Dhammapada, Note 265,
+      p. cxxxii.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without copying any other texts from the Dhammapada, we may next inquire
+      what there is to be found in the Bible that is not to be found in the
+      teaching of Buddha. We notice that the element of so-called prophecy is
+      wholly wanting in the sayings of the Indian sage. I cannot remember that
+      either Sakya Muni or any of his followers assumed the power to foretell
+      the future. There is, it is true, a vague threat of future misery to the
+      wicked, which was founded upon the prevalent idea of metempsychosis; but
+      there is no endeavour to pourtray the occurrences that are supposed to be
+      impending over one or more sections of the human race. There is not any
+      attempt to induce individuals to join themselves to the son of Maya, by
+      declarations that the world, and all that it contains, is about to be
+      destroyed, and that all who do not become disciples of the teacher, and
+      shelter themselves under his mantle, will be miserably punished throughout
+      eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is not any Buddhist description in detail, either of Hell, or
+      Heaven, or Nirvana; there is no story of "worms," "fires," "devils,"
+      "death," and the like, in the first. The second is not depicted, by the
+      preacher himself, as a sort of palace, made gorgeous with gold and
+      precious stones, resounding in barbaric music, and discordant chants,
+      where animals dwell, and where horses are kept stabled, to go throughout
+      the world with messengers upon their backs (see Zechariah i. 8, 10; vi. 2,
+      7; Rev. iv. 6, 7; vi. 2, 4, 8). There are no denunciations of vengeance
+      upon heretics, nor is the god of Buddha like the one described by Hebrew
+      writers, who "winks" during times of ignorance upon earth (Acts xvii. 30),
+      who requires to be reminded by prayer of the wants of men (Exod. iii. 7),
+      and who comes down to earth to inquire if matters are according to the
+      accounts which have reached his dwelling-place (Gen. xviii. 21).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Siddartha's teaching there is, as we have seen, an absence of the
+      element of prayer. According to his view, each man is regarded, to a
+      certain extent, as the author of his own destiny. Man, in his opinion,
+      must ever be influenced by the actions of other men&mdash;he may, for
+      example either be caressed or tormented, yet, under both circumstances, he
+      is instructed to retain equanimity of mind. He is not to pray for
+      prosperity, nor to supplicate that trials may be removed. He is to face
+      and overcome every trial by his resolute will, and not to waste time in
+      praying not to be led into temptation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, in Buddha's writings, and in those of his followers, there is an
+      absence of those obscene tales with which the Old Testament abounds. We
+      seek in vain for counterparts of the story of Lot and his daughters, of
+      Onan, of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar, of Judah and Tamar, David and
+      Bathsheba, Amnon and his sister, Zimri Cozbi and Phinehas, and the like.
+      It is true, that in some Buddhist writings, there is a cosmogony
+      introduced more preposterous than that in the Bible; but there are no
+      parallels to the tales of Noah, of Moses, and of Israel in Egypt, the
+      desert, and Palestine. Indeed, when we remember that Sakya Muni was an
+      Oriental, accustomed to inflated language, we are struck by the plainness
+      of his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now ask ourselves, as earnest practical Christians&mdash;that is, as
+      men, anxious and eager to attain to religious truth, and desirous of
+      teaching only those things which would tend towards sound edification and
+      to a pure morality&mdash;what parts of the Bible most offend sense of
+      propriety, we should answer, that they are its untenable cosmogony; its
+      preposterous accounts of the longevity of the men reported as being the
+      earliest formed; the legend of the flood; the origin of the rainbow; the
+      tales of Moses, Pharaoh, the plagues of Egypt, the sojourn in the desert,
+      the capture of Canaan, the miraculous battles, in which each man of Israel
+      put a thousand enemies to flight. We would wholly expunge the fabulous
+      account of Elijah and Elisha; the ravings after vengeance uttered by the
+      prophets; the apocryphal episodes described in the books of Jonah and
+      Daniel, every obscene story, and disgusting speech and writing, whether
+      uttered as a threat against Israel or his enemies. In like manner we would
+      wish to expunge, from the teaching of Jesus, everything relating to the
+      immediate destruction of the world&mdash;everything connected with
+      community of goods, the advantages of beggary, and the potency of faith
+      and prayer. We would suppress every miracle, and say nothing of a
+      resurrection of the dead Jesus. We would equally abandon any attempt to
+      describe Heaven or Hell, or any intermediate state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all these were removed from the Bible, we positively should have very
+      little left, except a certain amount of morality which is sound, and a
+      large portion which is radically bad. To make such an emendated book as
+      perfect as possible, we might, with great advantage, correct it from the
+      teaching of Buddha or from the sayings of Socrates, Plato, Epic-tetus, and
+      even of Confucius; and when all was completed, it would be found that all
+      men, everywhere, have had instinctive notions, more or less definite, of
+      morality, but have allowed their animal passions to overcome their better
+      feelings. Far too many of us know the good, but yet the bad pursue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This investigation would most distinctly disprove the assertion, that God
+      has selected a very small percentage of His creatures for objects of His
+      care, and those who have charity towards all men would greatly rejoice
+      thereat. Individually we cannot bear to eat, however hungry we may be,
+      whilst we see others near us without food&mdash;our pleasure is heightened
+      when we divide our luxuries with others; just so we believe it should be
+      in religion&mdash;none should rejoice at the idea that he is one of the
+      few that are to be saved, nor should anyone repine, as Jonah did, when he
+      finds that the tender mercies of God are over all his works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To simplify the matter as far as possible, I have drawn up the following
+      parallel between Buddhism and Christianity:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/263.jpg" alt="263 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/264.jpg" alt="264 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/265.jpg" alt="265 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/266.jpg" alt="266 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/267.jpg" alt="267 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      In the next chapter I propose to examine, as far as authorities will
+      permit, the religion of the Persians&mdash;a nation intervening, to a
+      great degree, between the old Aryan and the Shemitic races.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The Medo-Persians and Parsees. Artfulness of theologians. They
+      systematically break the ninth commandment. Frauds in orthodoxy. A man may
+      use false weights innocently, but is punished, nevertheless. In theology
+      ignorance does not justify deceit. Case in trade. Professional blindness.
+      A law for punishing adulteration of truth is wanted. Mosaism and
+      Zoroaster. Parsees and Christians. Moses and Zoroaster. The ancient magi.
+      The Persians. Conflicting ideas of God in Bible. The source of the
+      Biblical theology. Cyrus. Inquiry into the authenticity of the Avesta. The
+      book condemned. Account of the Medo-Persian faith from Herodotus. Period
+      of introduction of the Devil to the Bible. Summary. Comparison and
+      contrast. Introduction to next chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In every ancient, and, indeed, in every modern, faith which I have yet
+      examined, I have been shocked with the manner in which it has been
+      represented by interested opponents. Whether they are Romanists or
+      Protestants, Evangelicals or Ritualists, Orthodox or Non-conformists, all
+      our divines endeavour to prove their own tenets to be the best, by
+      blazoning everything which is good, and veiling from sight everything
+      which is doubtful. This being so, it is not at all surprising that
+      Christians generally should try to exalt the religion professed by
+      themselves over that propounded by others, whom they designate "heathens."
+      But though it is not strange that very human partisans should act thus, it
+      is marvellous to find that all the ardent disciples of Jesus, without an
+      exception, that I know of, should, in their dealings with mankind,
+      systematically break the ninth of those commandments which they assert
+      were given by God to man, upon Mount Sinai All of them bear false witness
+      against their neighbour, and give incorrect accounts of themselves in
+      addition. They resemble, indeed, those Dutch merchants whom Washington
+      Irving describes, so pleasantly, in his history of New York, who had two
+      sets of weights, a heavy lot by which to purchase, and a light set by
+      which to sell Such traders we call "fraudulent;" and I assert that every
+      so-called orthodox polemic whose books I have read deserves the same
+      epithet. Their fraud is shown by the misrepresentations that they make,
+      both of the creed which they uphold and the one which they oppose. The
+      heterodox and the so-called atheist may be trusted, at least, to tell the
+      truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In saying this, I do not assert that everyone gives false witness
+      knowingly, any more than I would blame a tradesman for using false scales,
+      or weights, if he could demonstrate that he had purchased them as true,
+      and could show that he had never tampered with them. Yet the law would
+      punish such a man for their use, arguing that he ought to have made
+      inquiry. In one of the large towns of Great Britain, on one occasion, a
+      merchant, believed to be both religious and honest, sold to a broker a
+      cargo of stuff which had no existence, and, when the delivery had to be
+      made, the first destroyed himself, and the second was adjudged to be a
+      culpable bankrupt, because he had taken the existence of the oil for
+      granted, without investigation. Just so it is with ordinary divines; they
+      assume certain statements in their own religious book to be true&mdash;they
+      are taught to shut their eyes to the absurdities in the same volume, and
+      to explain away, in one manner or another, everything which militates
+      against common sense. By this plan they contrive to sell, as sterling
+      stuff, something which is made of base material, without knowingly being
+      parties to a fraud. In the same way a shopman may, on the word of the
+      manufacturer, dispose of a piece of goods as wholly silk, although he has
+      a shrewd presumption that the fabric contains a large proportion of
+      cotton. For such individuals we have the proverb, "there are none so blind
+      as those who will not see." But these very theologians of whom we are
+      speaking, when they are dealing with the sacred books, ordinary customs,
+      ritual, and the like, of other people, having a different religion to
+      their own, are exact, in the extreme&mdash;every absurdity is exhibited
+      ruthlessly; every legend is ridiculed; every discrepancy is magnified; and
+      everything which betrays ignorance, or want of scientific knowledge, is
+      paraded with inglorious ceremony. On the other hand, everything good which
+      is to be found therein is, if possible, suppressed. A book, which was, for
+      a long time, a standard one amongst our divines, entitled, <i>Christ and
+      Many Masters</i>, is particularly open to this charge. In it there is
+      throughout a <i>suppressio veri</i>, a <i>suggestio falsi</i>, and
+      scarcely a page that does not bear false witness. If there were a law to
+      punish those who adulterate or falsify "truth," our magistrates would be
+      kept extremely busy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an inquiry into the realities of Buddhism has led us to the belief that
+      the origin of Christianity may be found in the doctrines of the son of
+      Maya, which were adopted with certain Judaic modifications by the sons of
+      Elizabeth and Mary&mdash;so it is highly probable that what is called
+      Mosaism has been built upon the teachings of the Persian or Median
+      theology, said to have been founded by Zoroaster. Perhaps it would be
+      difficult to find any modern evidence of the likelihood of this hypothesis
+      more powerful than the fact that at the present day the Jews and the
+      Parsees fraternize almost like brothers. The latter in England, and, I
+      understand, elsewhere, select, when they can, the house of a Hebrew
+      wherein to lodge, rather than that of any man of another nation. To this
+      testimony, such as it is, we must add another which is very telling, viz.,
+      that almost every modern orthodox writer who has treated of Zoroaster, has
+      declared that the prophet of Persia drew his inspiration from the lawgiver
+      of Israel The priority of the latter being asserted, and the second place
+      having been given to the former, the matter was supposed to be proved, and
+      the Persian, after having been regarded as a copy of the Hebrew, was
+      consigned to oblivion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There can be little doubt, however, that the teachings of Zoroaster had
+      more life in them than those either of the Jew or the Christian, for the
+      Parsee always and even to the present day, and in every position of life,
+      may lay claim to the title of nature's gentleman, which very few of the
+      disciples of Jesus or of Moses could pretend to until very recently. The
+      morality of these religionists is excellent. In every relation of life
+      they endeavour to be, to do, and to think that which is right&mdash;and
+      though there may be black sheep amongst them, the proportion of these to
+      the main body is small In no period of their history, so far as I can
+      learn it, have the Zoroastrians been as brutal as the Christians were so
+      long as they had the power&mdash;nor have they ever introduced into their
+      worship figures of men, women, or children with the apparent intention of
+      honouring or adoring them, or the assertion that such things assisted
+      their devotions. Being strictly monotheists, they have not split up the
+      Godhead into three males influenced by a female who is the spouse of one
+      and mother of a second; nor have asserted that the one great Creator is
+      compounded of a father, a son, and a pigeon, with a woman for an
+      intercessor with her celestial consort. Nor do the Parsees build vast
+      temples for the Almighty to dwell in, neither do they reduce any portion
+      of the Omnipotent to the necessity of residing in a bit of bread shut up
+      for many a long day in a box. On the contrary, the modern followers of
+      Zoroaster worship "the father" in spirit and in truth&mdash;not with eye
+      service as men-pleasers, but with singleness of heart, fearing God (Col.
+      iii. 22.), thus being, as we are told, the very men whom the Almighty
+      seeketh (John iv. 23, 24).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first resemblance between the Persian and the Jewish lawgiver to which
+      we would call attention, is the mythical nature of both. The Hebrew who
+      believes in Moses can show no other ground for his faith than a number of
+      books which tell of Moses, his genealogy, his acts, his laws, his
+      character, and his death. Yet when an independent inquirer subjects these
+      books, and the accounts which they contain, to a rigid examination, he
+      finds evidence that the writings are fabrications of a period at least a
+      full thousand years after the era of their supposed epoch&mdash;probably
+      more; and that all collateral testimony and all internal evidence drawn
+      from the books themselves disprove the actual existence of Moses. To the
+      scholar, the Hebrew lawgiver is as apocryphal or fictitious a being as
+      Hercules, Romulus, and our own king Arthur. Nor is this belief of the
+      critic shaken when he finds that the history of Moses is interwoven with
+      miraculous legends&mdash;credit them he cannot; but he may pause before he
+      determines to see in them evidence of fabrication. He cannot fairly deny
+      the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, because many marvellous stories were
+      told of him, nor would a similar cause alone lead him to assert that
+      Francis of Assisi was a mythical individual. But whichever way the careful
+      philosophical inquirer may decide the questions at issue, he will remember
+      that many strange stories are told of the conception, birth, and life of
+      Zoroaster, and that the critic must mete out equal justice, both to the
+      Jew and to the Persian. Again, impartial inquirers find themselves unable
+      to determine, with anything approaching to accuracy, either by internal
+      evidence or contemporary remains&mdash;the positive epoch when the tale
+      about Moses was originated. It is true that the Bible seems to afford
+      foundation for a chronology in a few parts, as, for example, in the
+      historical books; but these are so completely contradicted by genealogies
+      in other parts that we cannot trust them. After stripping away every
+      doubtful scrap from Jewish history, all we can find is, that Moses was
+      first talked of, familiarly, after what maybe called the Grecian Captivity
+      of Jerusalem (see <i>Obadiah, Ancient Faiths, &amp;c.</i>t Vol. ii.), and
+      that he was said to be the author of the ceremonial, moral, and political
+      laws which were framed for the Jewish nation, and which were assiduously
+      taught to the Hebrews after the Babylonish captivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The followers of Zoroaster are equally ignorant of the real history of
+      their prophet, and are equally unable to demonstrate the claim of the Zend
+      Avesta to be a true account of the teaching of the Persian sage, as are
+      the Jews to prove the antiquity of their laws and nation. Putting on one
+      side all those which may be regarded as modern fancies, the first mention
+      made of the Prophet is in the first Alcibiades of Plato, which we may
+      imagine was written shortly after B.c. 412, in which year that
+      distinguished Greek citizen negociated a treaty between Athens and Persia.
+      Plato, when speaking of the education of the sons of the kings of Persia,
+      says (<i>Bohn's</i> edition, Vol. iv., p. 344), "At fourteen years of age,
+      they who are called the royal preceptors, take the boy under their care.
+      Now these are chosen out from those who are deemed most excellent of the
+      Persians, men in the prime of life, four in number, excelling (severally)
+      in wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude. The first of these
+      instructs the youth in the learning of the Magi, according to Zoroaster,
+      the son of Oromazes&mdash;now by this learning is meant the worship of the
+      gods&mdash;and likewise in the art of kingly government." But Herodotus,
+      writing about B.c. 450, when giving, in Book i, c. 131, an account of the
+      religion of the Persians, makes not only no mention of Zoroaster, but
+      attributes to that nation a form of worship differing from what is
+      supposed to be pure Zoroastrianism;* but he mentions&mdash;and it seems to
+      be a significant fact, that it is not lawful for a Persian to sacrifice
+      unless one of the Magi is present, who sings an ode concerning the
+      original of the gods which, they say, is an incantation.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * There is strong constructive evidence, from the nature of
+     the Aryan Mythology, from the pages of the Vedas, from the
+     anthropological resemblances between Persians, Caucasians,
+     Greeks, Latins, Germans, British, and others; from the
+     linguistic alliances between what have been called the Indo-
+     Germanic races; and from a variety of other sources, each
+     small in itself, but strong in the aggregate, for the belief
+     that the origin of the Aryan mythology, or the Vedic
+     religion as it is otherwise called, may be traced to Bactria
+     or to Ancient Persia. Persia is spoken of by Plato as if her
+     people carried the dynasties of their kings far back into
+     eternity. (First Alcibiades, Bohn's edition, vol. iv., p.
+     343). Herodotus again (Book i., c. 131) tells us that the
+     Persians from the earliest times have sacrificed to the sun
+     and moon, to the earth, fire, water, and the winds, that
+     they sacrifice on high places, have no divine statues, nor
+     do they build temples. Now this is almost entirely a
+     description of the old Aryan religion. The sun, for example,
+     is Surya, Aryama, Mitra, Vivaswat, Martunda, Savitor, Sura,
+     Ravi, Varuna, Indra Yama, Vishnu, and Krishna (Moor's Hindoo
+     Paillhcon, p. 287). The moon is Chandra and Soma, and the
+     origin of these words is to be found in the Persian as well
+     as in the Sanscrit writings (Moor's H. P., p. 284-5). The
+     Earth is Prit'hivi, 11a, Lakshmi, and Vasta. Fire is the
+     powerful Agni. The water is Nara, or Narayana (Moor's JET.
+     P., 74), from which all things came (see Water in Ancient
+     Faiths), and the Winds are Maruts and Vaya. To these
+     deities, individually or collectively, the modern Hindoo
+     offers prayer and praise; and the hymns of the Rig Veda,
+     such as we have them edited by Max Muller and Wilson, are
+     copies probably of the same chants which accompanied the
+     sacrifices of the Ancient Persians.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This seems to indicate that the Persian religion was then undergoing some
+      supervision by rulers who had a different faith to that held at a later
+      period. When we next turn to Herodotus, Book L, c. 101, we find that the
+      Magi were one of the six tribes which composed the Medes; and we notice
+      that Phraortes, the son of Deioces, reduced the Persian kingdom under the
+      dominion of the Medes about B.c. 650. If, then, we regard Zoroaster as
+      being the founder of the Magi, we must throw back his epoch considerably
+      further than this date. But even if we accept this conquest as the era of
+      the Parsee prophet, we find that Zoroaster preceded the first public
+      promulgation of the Mosaic law amongst the Jews.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Time of Zoroaster.&mdash;Dr. Hang, who is no mean authority in
+     everything which concerns Zoroastrianism, states in an able
+     resumê of the evidence, that we cannot assign a later date
+     to the prophet than 2300 years before Christ. He quotes from
+     Diogenes Laertius who affirms that Xanthos of Lydia, b.c.
+     600-450, states, that Zoroaster lived 6000 years before
+     Xerxes invaded Greece; from Pliny who, on the authority of
+     Aristotle, says that the teacher preceded Plato by 6000
+     years; from Hermippus of Smyrna, who studied Magism B.c.
+     250, and averred that the founder of that sect lived 5000
+     years before the Trojan war; and from Pliny, to show the
+     general belief of ancient Greek authors that Zoroaster lived
+     many thousand years before Moses. Dr. Haug says (I am
+     quoting from "A Lecture on an Original Speech of Zoroaster,
+     with Remarks on his Age, by Dr Haug" London: Triibner &amp; Co.,
+     1865), that the traditional books of the Parsees say
+     Zerdosht (another form of the more familiar Greek name)
+     lived 300 years before Alexander invaded Persia. Our author
+     adds that Hermippus, in 250 b.c., speaks of two millions of
+     verses of Zoroastrian origin, and infers that these would
+     require 1000 years for their growth. He then points out the
+     relationship between the Iranian and the Yedic religion, and
+     Zoroaster's antagonism to the latter, and argues that this
+     must have happened ere the Aryans invaded the Punjaub, 2000
+     years B.c. Dr. Haug then inquires into the probable source
+     whence the Greeks drew their ideas respecting the antiquity
+     of Zerdosht, and argues, with great show of reason, that
+     they consulted the chronology of the Babylonian priests. He
+     shows that a trustworthy record was kept which went back to
+     2284 b.c., this he concludes, from data given by Berosus,
+     was the year when Babylon was conquered by the Medes;&mdash;and
+     from Synkellos he shows that the founder of the dynasty of
+     the eight Median tyrants over Babylon was called Zoroaster.
+     But this word, Zarathustra, in the original, signifies a
+     high priest, and to distinguish him from other hierarchs
+     the prophet is called Zarathustra Spitama, in the Zend
+     Avesta&mdash;hence this king is supposed not to be the prophet
+     him» self, but a descendant from him, and a priest in the
+     order which was founded by the original Zerdosht. This again
+     points to the fact that the Babylonians could only know
+     anything about the founder of Magism from the Medes
+     themselves, and they might, from want of any accurate
+     chronology, assign to Zoroaster any date they liked&mdash;just
+     as, with many a semi-civilized nation 'a long time may be
+     converted into ten, a hundred, a thousand, or a million
+     years.' Haug does not endeavour to assign any particular
+     date to the era of Zoroaster beyond expressing the opinion
+     that he might have lived one or two hundred years before the
+     Median conquest of Babylon, and that this occurrence was
+     probably one of the results of the ferment which his
+     doctrines caused. "He preached, like Moses, war and
+     destruction to all idolaters and wicked men, and said that
+     he was commissioned by God to spread the religion of Ahura
+     Mazda. Daring his life-time, and shortly after his death,
+     his followers seem to have engaged in incessant wars with
+     their religious antagonists, the Vedic Indians, which
+     struggle is well known in the Sanscrit writings as that
+     between the Asuras (Ahura) and Devas (the Hindu gods). But
+     afterwards they spread westward and invaded the countries of
+     other idol worshippers in order to uproot idolatry, and
+     establish everywhere the good Mazdayan religion. They really
+     appear to have changed the order of things in Babylon when
+     they conquered it, and spread a new creed, for they are
+     spoken of by Berosus as tyrants." Zoroaster was the first
+     prophet of truth who appeared in the world, and kindled a
+     fire which thousands of years could not entirely
+     extinguish."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When Moses was first talked about we know not, but at the time of Samuel,
+      David, and Josiah he was unknown. We have no reason to believe that the
+      Hebrews ever came into contact with, or ever heard of the Persians, until
+      after the Babylonish conquest, followed by that of Cyrus; consequently, if
+      the Jewish law first propounded contained nothing akin to the doctrines
+      and laws of Zoroaster, and subsequent publications did so, we should
+      naturally conclude that the last were copied. It is unnecessary to tell
+      the student of biblical history that the Jews were for many years under
+      the dominion of the Persians and Medes, and that Nehemiah, one of their
+      great men, after the Babylonian captivity, was a personal, though humble,
+      friend, of the king of Persia&mdash;i.e., if we take his account of
+      himself for true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the fact of there being two distinct doctrines respecting the Almighty
+      in the Old Testament no scholar has a doubt. In the one, God is
+      represented as the sole Being who rules and influences the world:
+      whatsoever was done He was regarded as the doer of it. He had no powerful
+      enemy who could thwart His will, no adversary who could withstand Him
+      successfully. In the other the existence of two rival powers is distinctly
+      recognised&mdash;Jehovah and Satan&mdash;the Aryan Mara, the tempter, who
+      plot and counterplot against each other, and even condescend to personal
+      wrangling. The most conspicuous example which we can give of these two
+      doctrines is to be found in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, in which we are told that
+      Jehovah moved David to number Israel, whereas in 1 Chron. xxi. 1,
+      evidently written by a modern scribe, we find that Satan, the adversary,
+      was he who incited the king to perform this deed. We see the duality of
+      persons conspicuously put forward in the first and second chapters of Job,
+      in which Satan is represented as being at large, not being even under the
+      surveillance of Jehovah. See also 1 Kings xxii. 20-23, wherein we find
+      Jehovah at a loss how to bring about a certain result, and assisted out of
+      a dilemma by a lying spirit&mdash;who can do what the Lord could not
+      effect! We may say that the story is a fiction, but no Hebrew dare have
+      spoken thus of Jehovah had he ever heard of Moses and his laws.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we cannot imagine that a revelation from God to the Hebrews would be
+      thus changeable, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Jewish
+      writings were of human origin, and their first doctrines modified by those
+      of other nations to whom the Hebrews were subjects or enslaved. To this
+      consideration we may add, that when the Israelites came in contact with
+      the Medes and Persians, they were merely a 'posse' of slaves, a crowd of
+      prisoners removed from their own land without a shadow of power, or any
+      influence, and only anxious to induce those who had conquered their late
+      masters, the Babylonians, to have pity on their misery, and restore them
+      to beggared Jerusalem. The idea of the Hebrews gaining friends by
+      endeavouring to induce the Persian Magi to change their faith and embrace
+      that of the poor and probably despised Jew is preposterous. On the other
+      hand, there would be every possible inducement for the Hebrews to study
+      the faith of that people whose God had given them victory over the
+      Chaldeans. See in corroboration of this Ps. cxxxvii., especially the two
+      last verses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may regard the question before us in yet another light, If we are to
+      allow that the words of Isaiah are correct, which describe Cyrus as God's
+      shepherd (ch. xliv. 28), and as anointed by Jehovah Himself, we cannot
+      conceive that the religion which he professed was opposed to that
+      entertained by the Hebrew prophet. As it is morally impossible that Cyrus
+      and his hierarchy were taught their religion by any Jew, it follows that
+      the Persian faith can lay the same claim to inspiration as the Hebrew, if
+      the latter were not indeed almost identical with it. If, then, we insist
+      upon the latter being "a true revelation," we must concede the same to the
+      former, or if we pronounce the Persian religion to be of human invention,
+      we must pass a similar verdict upon the Jewish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we are upon the horns of such a great dilemma we may well pause. It
+      is indeed almost impossible for orthodox divines to make a selection which
+      prong of the fork is the worst. If we elect to say our belief is, that the
+      primitive teaching of the Hebrew was God-given and a true revelation, we
+      cannot put faith in those scriptures which tell us of a devil who fights
+      with Jehovah, and is generally victorious. If, on the other hand, we hold
+      that the Christian notions of the Creator and Satan are true, we must
+      regard the Zoroastrian teaching as inspired; and the early Jewish writings
+      as unworthy of credit&mdash;of human invention and heterodox. Theologians
+      will probably elect to remain in a state of uncertainty on this subject.
+      Philosophers, on the contrary, will escape from it at once by asserting
+      their conviction that both the Hebrew and the Magian religion are wholly
+      of human invention.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * When commencing this chapter, it was my intention to
+     amplify what I have already said in Vol. II. respecting the
+     Magian religion, by giving an analysis of the celebrated
+     Zend Avesta, a translation of which into French, by Anquetil
+     du Perron, I had recently procured for the purpose.
+
+     As I was aware that Dr Haug, a learned scholar, believed the
+     original to be trust-worthy, I read the translation in good
+     faith, but I soon began to doubt whether the book was what
+     it professed to be, for to my mind it bore internal evidence
+     of having been fabricated at a comparatively recent period
+     by some one who was familiar both with the Aryan and the
+     Mosaic, if not the Christian, doctrines and literature. I
+     felt that I should not be acting honestly unless I took such
+     steps as lay in my power to satisfy myself upon this point
+     The essay was therefore laid aside for a considerable time,
+     until, indeed, every available source of information had
+     been searched. After my inquiry was over the text was
+     resumed as above.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But in the middle, or perhaps we might say upon the threshold of our
+      inquiry, we must pause to examine into the amount of confidence which can
+      be given to those under whose guidance we are invited to place ourselves.
+      Such investigations are too frequently omitted. Those who have faith in
+      the Bible usually decline to search into the grounds of their belief, and,
+      in like manner, those who have always heard the author of the Zend Avesta
+      quoted as trustworthy are apt to take everything which it may say as
+      correct. To avoid this error, I have consulted all the volumes of the
+      transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of London, and have found
+      therein sufficient to throw the gravest doubts upon the great antiquity of
+      the Parsee religion. It will be an useful task if I attempt to classify
+      the evidence on each side, and to draw an inference therefrom. Our
+      knowledge respecting the Magian religion which the Bactrian* prophet
+      founded, is built, with the exception of the notices in Greek and Latin
+      authors, already quoted, upon the work known as the Avesta. This is
+      written in a language called Zand,** and there are within it parts, which
+      are written in another tongue, to which the name of Pahlavi has been
+      given, and from these the sacred books of the Parsees have been translated
+      into French by Anquetil du Perron, into German by Spiegel, and into
+      English by Haug. All these writers assume that the language referred to is
+      Ancient Persian, and closely allied to the Sanscrit, and Haug especially
+      endeavours to demonstrate that the Avesta, and the origin of the religion
+      of the Parsees, must be as old as the time of the Vedas, inasmuch as the
+      same sort of legends, the same names, and, to a certain extent, the same
+      genii, are to be found in both. There is not absolute identity, however,
+      for those which are spoken of as good by the Vedas are treated as bad in
+      the Avesta. Viewed from this point, Haug assigns to the Zand volumes an
+      age of about four thousand years, and he supports his belief by a
+      reference to the length of time which would be required to make up the two
+      million verses attributed to Zoroaster by some Greek author. In the
+      conclusion that both the Zand and the Pahlavi are very ancient Persian
+      tongues, it is stated that the majority of German and French critics
+      agree.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Zoroaster is said by many early writers to have been a
+     king in Bactria.&mdash;Smith's Dictionary, s.v.
+
+     ** The word "Zend" is more familiar to many than the form
+     "Zand;" but I have adopted the latter, as also the spelling
+     of Pahlavi, from an essay by Mr Romer, with an introduction
+     by Professor Wilson, in Vol. IV., Royal Asiatic Society's
+     Journal.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But on the other hand, such orientalists as Sir William Jones, Colonel
+      Vans Kennedy, Mr Thomas, and Mr Romer, and indeed all British oriental
+      scholars, regard both the Zand and the Pahlavi as bastard languages, never
+      spoken, and wholly fabricated by a comparatively modern priesthood, for
+      the express purpose of making the holy books which they wrote
+      comprehensible only by themselves. Such scholars show that the Zand and
+      Pahlavi are built upon a Sanscrit, Arabic, and modern Persian model, and
+      that the Parsee Pahlavi is very different to the Pehlevi of the Sassanian
+      coins, and, in Vol. IV., Transactions of Royal Asiatic Society, Mr Romer
+      supports this conclusion by a number of passages in the various languages
+      referred to. It is also asserted that many words in the Avesta have been
+      borrowed from the Arabic, and others from the Sanscrit tongues, possibly,
+      also, from the Greek. Being unable, from my comparative ignorance of
+      Eastern language, to form a decided opinion on independent grounds, all
+      that I can say is, that it does really seem to be proved that the
+      religious books of the Par-sees are not so ancient as they have been by
+      many supposed to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question which next arises for our consideration is, whether such
+      volumes represent the tenets of an ancient faith, or whether they are the
+      fabrication of men who have, possibly in the wreck of an old worship,
+      brought about by war or other calamity, endeavoured to create a new
+      religion out of the relics of one or more old ones. In favour of the
+      antiquity of the Avesta are the facts that the great god, Ahura Mazdao,
+      seems to be almost identical with the Aura Mazda of the Persepolitan
+      inscription of Darius. But in proof of its untruthfulness as a
+      representative of pure Persian tradition, we find the book introducing
+      Devs and Ahuras,&mdash;the counterpart of the Devas and Asuras of the
+      Vedas, only reversing their character&mdash;we also see Indra mentioned as
+      a devil, whilst Siva and Mitra are introduced as Sharva and Miltra.
+      (Haug's <i>Essays on the Parsee</i>, Bombay, p. 230, 1862). If, therefore,
+      we allow that there is some of the old Zoroastrian doctrine to be found in
+      the Avesta, we must equally grant that such teaching has been modified by
+      hatred of a rival faith. Yet herein is another question, viz., Was the
+      antagonism between the doctrines of the Avesta and of the Vedas
+      contemporary with the origin of the two systems, or was the teaching of
+      the Avesta the result of its author's coming into hostile conflict with
+      Vedic teachers, as they possibly might have done after Alexander had
+      opened a highway for intercourse between Persia and Hindostan?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On weighing the subject as impartially as I can, it seems to me that the
+      Avesta contains a great deal of the Ancient Persian faith, but that it
+      will be the safest plan for us to describe what is known of the Persian
+      and Median faith from other sources, rather than take our information
+      mainly from this doubtful source. Herodotus tells us of his own knowledge
+      (B. i, c. 131, seq.), that the Persians, about b.c. 450, did not erect
+      statues, temples, or altars&mdash;that they sacrificed on lofty hills to
+      high heaven, the sun, moon, fire, water, and the winds, and that this had
+      been a custom from time immemorial Sacrifice was attended by a priest or
+      magus, and prayer and praise were offered, not for themselves alone, but
+      for all the Persians, and especially for the king.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In about the year 521 B.c., Darius, king of the Medes, caused be made, in
+      three languages, upon a rock at Behistun, an inscription of considerable
+      length. The one which is in the Persian tongue has been translated by
+      Rawlinson (<i>Royal Asiatic Society Journal</i>, vol 10). In it, the king
+      acknowledges Auramazda as his god, and speaks of him as the Jews did of
+      Jehovah. This epithet is explained by two Sanscrit roots (Op cit., vol.
+      x., p. 68), and may be paraphrased as "The Lord or giver of life," "The
+      great Creator," or "The Eternal," and the king in a doubtful passage
+      refers to "the evil one" (?), who by lies deceived the rulers of certain
+      states, inducing them to rebel, and then left them to be conquered by the
+      Ormazd-governed Darius. In the Babylonian copy "lies" are as it were
+      personified. Whilst in the Scythian version, translated by Mr Norris (Op
+      cit. vol. xv., p. 144), we find the account run thus: "These are the
+      provinces which became rebellious, 'the god of lies' made them rebel that
+      they would subvert the state, afterwards Ormaza delivered them into my
+      hand." The "lies," or the god of lies, we very naturally associate with
+      the being whom we call in our time the devil, who is spoken of (John viii.
+      44) as a liar, and the father of falsehood, who was so from the beginning
+      [&mdash;Greek&mdash;], and consequently regarded as coeval with the
+      "father of light."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We next turn to such evidence as is given us in the book of Job. We select
+      this ancient writing in consequence of the strong internal evidence there
+      is, that it was written by some one about the period of the Achaemenian
+      dynasty living in Persia (see Rawlinson in <i>Journal of B. A. Soc</i>.,
+      vol. 1, new series, p. 230). In Job we find two distinct powers spoken of,
+      the one being the Good God, and the other Satan the opposer. The last is
+      regularly described as if he had the power to cause war, devastation,
+      tempest, disease, and death, for ch. ii., v. 6, lets us infer that he
+      might have killed Job had he been so minded and God allowed the bargain,
+      and in verse 19 of the same chapter we find him killing all the sons and
+      daughters of the patriarch. Job clearly recognised the necessity of
+      sacrifice for purification, for sanctification, and he seems not to have
+      offered this upon any altar, in any temple, or with the intervention of
+      any priest. It is clear that Job had never heard of Moses or the writings
+      assigned to him. The persecuted patriarch and his friends all believe that
+      punishment in this life is the result of offences committed against the
+      Good God, but all seem to be singularly free from the idea that Satan is
+      the cause of Job's sufferings either directly or indirectly. There is
+      throughout the book no reference made to a preceding or a succeeding
+      condition of man, such as obtained amongst the Brahmins, and it is
+      doubtful whether the Persians believed in heaven or hell. When man died he
+      was supposed to perish. Hence we conclude that the doctrine of the
+      resurrection was not prevalent at the time the story was written, and in
+      the country where the writer of the book of Job resided. Equally unknown
+      to that author, whoever he was, were the ideas about angels, ministers of
+      God, or disembodied spirits. These were of Babylonian origin. We must now,
+      to carry on the thread of the argument, recal to mind the fact that
+      Babylon was taken by the Medes and Persians, that the rulers of the united
+      people often made that city their residence, that Herodotus tells us (B.
+      1, c. 135) that "the Persians are of all nations most ready to adopt
+      foreign customs," and I may notice, in passing, that the same authority
+      states that the two nations were scrupulously truthful, ceremoniously
+      cleanly, and intolerant to leprosy. It is well known, moreover, that even
+      after the commencement of our era Babylon was the chief seat of Babbinic
+      and Talmudic lore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we examine into the religion of the Babylonians we find that they
+      believed in the existence of angels&mdash;minis-, ters of the Supreme&mdash;intelligences,&mdash;unseen
+      by man, yet powerful to act in his favour, or against him. If we rightly
+      interpret many of the engraved gems which were executed by the Chaldees,
+      we can only come to the conclusion that they believed in a Devil, a
+      Typhon, or spirit of destruction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We next must call attention to the fact that the Jews were conquered by
+      the Babylonians, and enslaved in Mesopotamia for very many years&mdash;that
+      they were subsequently emancipated by the Medo-Persians, and that the
+      latter, whom from the inscription of Darius we believe to have been
+      devout, permitted and even encouraged the Israelites to entertain the
+      faith which they then held, and even assisted them to rebuild their
+      temple. This permission, and the friendliness of Nehemiah with the Median
+      monarch, seem to show a great similarity, if not an identity, between the
+      Persian and the Jewish creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, we could frame any definite idea of the tenets held by the Jews
+      before they came into contact with the Babylonians, and those which they
+      professed afterwards, we might form a conception of what they got from the
+      Chaldees, the Medes, and the Persians respectively. Without going very
+      deeply into the matter, we may say that Hebrew scholars generally allow
+      that the ideas of Satan&mdash;a power opposed to that of God, and of
+      angels or spirits, were introduced between the captivity and the period
+      when the scriptures were translated into Greek, and that the notion of a
+      future life and the resurrection of the dead, was developed after the time
+      of the Septuagint, about b.c. 277.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the preceding considerations we draw the inference that the idea of
+      the resurrection of the dead, of a future state of existence, in which
+      each will be punished or rewarded for what had been done by him in his
+      mortal condition, was not a portion of the original Median, Persian,
+      Babylonian, or Jewish religion. A mass of circumstantial evidence has led
+      me to believe that the idea of a Heaven for the good and a Hell for the
+      bad, came from those who professed what we will call the Vedic or the
+      Buddhist faith. If, in reply to this, it is alleged that it may have come
+      from the Greeks directly, the rejoinder is simply this&mdash;that the
+      Grecians, as Aryan colonists, brought with them only a rude notion of a
+      futurity, which they were the medium of improving, when, through the
+      influence of their arts and arms, they opened a highway to India both by
+      sea and land. Those who could import into their armies such huge beasts as
+      elephants, could far more readily import a new article of faith, if it
+      pleased the priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If our reasoning is sound, we cannot, I think, regard the Avesta as a
+      trustworthy exposition of the ancient teaching of Zoroaster. On the other
+      hand, we must, in my opinion, consider it as a book fabricated to serve a
+      particular purpose. In this respect it resembles our own Bible, which was
+      composed for the glorification of the Hebrews when smarting under a series
+      of ignominious defeats and enslavements; and then enlarged, contracted, or
+      altered, to suit emergencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following table will assist the reader to compare or contrast the
+      religion of the Medo-Persians with that of the Hebrews in some matters:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0010" id="linkimage-0010">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/285.jpg" alt="285 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="linkimage-0011" id="linkimage-0011">
+      <!-- IMG --></a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:80%">
+      <img src="images/286.jpg" alt="286 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      The Hebrews first worshipped a calf, and then a box; they believed that
+      their God taught them to build a tabernacle first, then a temple, and to
+      It is not the practice of the Perform altars for sacrifice. The Hebrews
+      sians to erect statues, or temples, also believed that Elohim had one or
+      or altars, and they charge with folly more human forms&mdash;see Gen.
+      xviii. 1, those that do. They do not think 2, and the following chap. xix.
+      1&mdash;see the gods have human forms, also Gen. xxxii. 1 and 24-80, also
+      Josh. v. 13, 14, 15, Jud. ii. 1-5.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anthropomorphism of the Jewish Scriptures has already been referred to
+      in Vol. I. of Ancient Faiths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Persians are accustomed to ascend the highest parts of the mountains,
+      and offer sacrifice to Jupiter, calling the whole circle of the heavens by
+      that name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Persians sacrificed to the son and moon, to the earth, fire, water,
+      and the winds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst the Persians, sacrifices were attended by invocations and prayers,
+      and were always offered up by a priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Persians, next to bravery in battle, considered the greatest proof of
+      manliness was to be able to exhibit many children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whoever has the leprosy or scrofula is not permitted to stay within a
+      town, nor have communication with other Persians; and it is supposed that
+      the infliction is caused by some offence against the deity (sun god).
+      Herodotus, book I., chaps. 131,138.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eldest son of the Persian king was instructed during youth in the
+      learning of the Magi according to Zoroaster the son of Oromazes&mdash;by
+      this learning is meant the worship of the gods&mdash;and likewise in the
+      art of kingly government. Plato, in Alcibiades.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hebrews sacrificed on high places for a long period. Sacrifice in an
+      enclosed place seems to have been adopted from the Phoenicians by David
+      and Solomon, but not to have been popular for some centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jewish people sacrificed to sun, moon, and some planets&mdash;had a
+      sacred fire in the temple, and regarded clouds and wind as the ministers
+      of God. The God that answered by fire was the one adopted by Elyah. The
+      so-called orthodox Jews only acknowledged one God, and subsequently one
+      devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Jews neither offered invocation nor prayer at their sacrifices, and
+      prophets and kings offered victims without priestly assistance. In later
+      times every sacrifice was offered by a priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hebrews regarded a large family as a gift from Jehovah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hebrews had the same practice; and, as we learn in the book of Job,
+      and Deuter. xxviii, notably in the 27th verse, they deemed that botch,
+      scab, itch, and emerods were punishments sent by Jehovah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The royal families of Judah received no instruction, either in political
+      matters or in religion, and were allowed to grow up and do much as they
+      liked in regard to worship. The only power which influenced them was that
+      assumed by some man who professed to be divinely inspired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a chapter of ancient faiths and notice an allegation which has that
+      Parseeism or Zoroastriamsm has been borrowed from Jews and Christians. To
+      this we wholly demur. Nowhere in the Avesta do we find a reference to the
+      imminent destruction of the world, the resurrection of a dead man, his
+      subjugating all the powers of evil, and reigning for a thousand years with
+      his followers as kings and saints. Nowhere in the Avesta do we discover
+      such immoral notions of God as prevailed amongst the ancient Jewish
+      writers. Take these away from Judaism and Christianity, and then the two
+      resemble the religions which are held everywhere by the thoughtful and the
+      good. If there has really been any copying at all, we do not see the
+      imitators in Central Asia but on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Jews
+      copied from Tyre, Babylon, and Greece&mdash;Christians have taken as
+      models Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, and even barbarians, and they have
+      denied a once pure faith by covering it over with the ordures of
+      heathenism. Yet we talk of others imitating us!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I propose now to examine at some length into such of the developments as
+      have taken place in certain religious systems, for by so doing we shall be
+      better able to judge what are those doctrines which Christians hold, in
+      common with what they call Pagan nations, and how far those matters which
+      are regarded as fundamental points of doctrine are in reality trustworthy.
+      We must ever bear in mind that if we find the same set of ideas
+      entertained amongst peoples who by no possibility can have had any
+      communication with each other, it is only rational to believe that each
+      race possesses those notions in virtue of their being human. Or, if
+      desirous of avoiding this admission, the orthodox declares that every
+      asserted fact is a copy of a precedent one, then we ask them to reconcile
+      the legend of Hercules being begotten by Jupiter, and Jesus by the Holy
+      Ghost, for unquestionably the story of Alcmena's son preceded that told of
+      Mary's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the following chapter I shall avoid as far as possible any reference to
+      the tales told of the conception of Jesus, for no man, however subtle he
+      may be, can prove that the Son of Man had a certain mundane individual
+      called Joseph for a father; all that I desire to show is, that in every
+      nation whose history has come down to us there have been persons whose
+      mothers have declared themselves to have been pure virgins until adopted
+      by some god as a temporal and temporary spouse, or who, being wives, have
+      asserted that a son who has distinguished himself in the world has been of
+      divine procreation&mdash;an affirmation, be it observed, that can only be
+      made in case the spouse has been manifestly unfaithful, or by some fulsome
+      historian desirous of exalting his hero to celestial rank. There is
+      scarcely a barbaric dynasty known, indeed, which does not claim an origin
+      from some heavenly father, mother, or both.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There have been many hierarchs who, having felt conscious of the absurdity
+      of making, by miraculous agency, all wonderful beings come from woman
+      only, have consequently invented legends in which men have produced
+      offspring without a consort. Some may be disposed to deride these tales,
+      who can readily credit the stories of virgin mothers; but in reality there
+      is no difference between the two sets of legends, in probability, wherever
+      "miracles" are assumed. It would have been quite as easy for the writer of
+      Genesis to have made Isaac come from old Abraham's bosom as from the womb
+      of his hoary-headed wife. But the Jewish writers have never proved
+      themselves as subtle as the Hindoos and Greeks. Instead of asserting that
+      a man, without a woman's assistance, has borne a son&mdash;a matter
+      capable of proof&mdash;they have declared that a woman has conceived,
+      without the assistance of a man; an asseveration for which there cannot be
+      any proof whatever, no not even physical, for accoucheurs know that many a
+      female conceives by her lover's instrumentality, and bears a child, at
+      whose birth, or rather when parturition is imminent, that part which is
+      called "the Hymen," and is the Mosaical test of virginity, is not only
+      unbroken, but so small in aperture, and strong in flesh, as to require
+      operative or surgical interference before the child can come into the
+      world. According to Mosaism these must be regarded as absolutely virgin
+      mothers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII.
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Supernatural generation. What is meant by the term. Examples. Children
+      given by the gods. Anecdote. Frequency of god-begotten children in Ancient
+      Greece. Their general fate. The stories not credited by the grandfathers
+      of children, nor apparently by the mothers. The babies, how treated.
+      Foundlings and Hospitals. Antiope. Leucothöe. Divinely conceived persons
+      not necessarily great or good. Babylonian idea that a god came down to
+      enjoy human women. Tale from Herodotus. Jehovah as a man. Grecian idea
+      attached to the expression Son of God. Homer. Hebrew ideas. Roman notions.
+      Romulus, son of Mars and a Vestal Augustus, son of Apollo. Modern ideas
+      respecting Incubi. Prevalence of the belief. Its suppression. Causes of
+      its origin. Bible made to pander to priestly lust. Dictionnaire Infernal.
+      History of incubi therefrom. Stories. Strange idea that the Gods who made
+      men out of nothing cannot as easily make babies. Divine Androgynes.
+      Strange stories of single gods having offspring. Narayana and the Spirit
+      of God of Genesis. Chaos. Hindoo mythos of Brahma. Birth from churning a
+      dead man's left arm, and again his right. Ayonyesvara, his strange
+      history. Similar ones referred to. History of Carticeya. Christian
+      parallels. Immaculate conception a Hindoo myth. The dove in India and
+      Christendom. Agni and cloven fiery tongues. Penance and its powers.
+      Miraculous conception by means' of a dove. Other myths from various
+      sources.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a question which should, in my opinion, be asked by every individual
+      in a rational community, whether it is advisable to continue, as a matter
+      of faith, a doctrine which must be repudiated, as a matter of fact. To
+      this we may join, as a rider, can anyone who puts his credence in a legend
+      because it is old, claim to be superior to those who originally invented
+      the tale, in the darkness of antiquity? When moderns smile at the stories
+      told by the classic Varro, how certain mares in Lusitania were impregnated
+      by the wind on a certain mountain, without any access to a horse, and at
+      the credence given to similar accounts by Virgil, Pliny, and even the
+      Christian bishop Augustine; and by some old Scotch authority how a young
+      woman became a mother through the intervention of the ashes of the dead:
+      and when they pity the benighted Greeks who gave to Hercules, Jupiter for
+      a father; and to Mars, Juno for a mother, without intercourse with her
+      celestial spouse, it behoves them to inquire whether each may not be
+      addressed in the sentence, "Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur"&mdash;i.e.,
+      change but the name of the believers from Greeks and Romans to modern
+      Christians, and it will be found that Popes, priests, and peoples believe
+      as firmly now in supernatural generation as the most crass pagan of which
+      history treats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our classical reading tells us abundance of marvellous stories&mdash;how
+      Jupiter seduced Danae in the form of a golden shower, and yet had a common
+      son by her, who was not an aureous coin; how Leda received Zeus as a swan,
+      and bore therefrom a couple of eggs; how Europa was tempted by him as a
+      bull, and yet did not bear a calf; and how Callisto, a maiden of Diana,
+      was debauched by the same god under the guise of her mistress, and yet
+      that from two maidens a boy was formed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the amours of Apollo with a dozen and a half damsels, and of the very
+      numerous disguises which he assumed, we find abundant details in our
+      classical dictionaries. Mars, though not so frequently adopted by human
+      females as a lover, had many children of whom he was the putative father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jupiter had Bacchus and Minerva without Juno's aid, and Juno retaliated by
+      bearing Ares without conversation with her consort. We deride these tales,
+      and yet think, that because we laugh at a hundred such we shall be
+      pardoned for believing one. How little we are justified in acting thus a
+      few philosophical considerations will demonstrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few things in mythology that are more curious than the subject
+      of the miraculous formation of certain individuals. Some of these have
+      been regarded as the offspring of a celestial father and a mother of
+      earthly mould; others again, as for example Æneas, were said to be the
+      result of a union between a heavenly mother and a terrestrial father&mdash;e.g.,
+      Æneas was the son of Anchises, a handsome man, and Venus, goddess of
+      beauty and love. Some, though these are few, are said to be children of a
+      virgin or deserted wife, who has produced them without any extraneous
+      assistance,* and others are declared to be descended from a father whom no
+      consort could ever claim. One individual, indeed, called Orion, is
+      represented as having been wholly independent of both father and mother,
+      and the result of a strange form of development, the like of which Darwin
+      never dreamed of as he came from a bladder into which three gods had
+      micturated. His name, we are gravely assured, came <i>ab urinâ</i>.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The following is a good case in corroboration of what is
+     said in the text. In the <i>Dictionnaire Infernal</i>, to which
+     more particular reference will be made shortly, there is, s.
+     v. Fécondité, a report of a trial before the Parliament of
+     Grenoble, in which the question was, whether a certain
+     infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the
+     husband had been absent from his wife four full years. The
+     wife asserted that the baby was the offspring of a dream, in
+     which she had a vivid idea that her wandering spouse had
+     returned to love and duty. Midwives and physicians were
+     consulted, and reported on the subject. As a result, the
+     Parliament ordained that the infant should be adjudged
+     legitimate, and that its mother should be regarded as a true
+     and honourable wife.   The judgment bears date 13th February
+     1537.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The quaint ideas associated in mythology with the supernatural generation
+      here referred to have been various. In some instances they have been
+      wholly poetical, as when we are told that "the Supreme" by his union with
+      law and order (Themis) produced "Justice," "the Hours," "Good Laws," and
+      "Peace" (Hesiod Theogony, 900), and as when Europa is said to have tempted
+      Jupiter to leave Phoenicia, and travel westward to Crete as the first step
+      towards the colonization of an unknown continent. In other instances, the
+      ideas have been framed upon the very natural belief that anyone&mdash;whether
+      existent in story only, or in reality&mdash;who has greatly surpassed his
+      fellows, must have had a large element of the Deity in his constitution.
+      In other instances, the notion has been associated with the once prevalent
+      belief, that the Creator had a sex, to which we shall refer by and by; and
+      in other cases, the fancy has clearly been mingled with the fact, that
+      many an unmarried woman has attributed to some god, a pregnancy, or baby,
+      which has been due, in reality, to a very mortal man. Here we may notice
+      that the fecundity which damsels of old were wont to refer to a god or
+      some inferior, but yet beneficent, deity, more modern christian girls have
+      associated with a demon. Jupiter and Apollo being replaced by a special
+      class of imps who were named "incubi," and of the particulars of whose
+      embraces the strangest stories are told. This small truth seems to be
+      sufficient to demonstrate that the Greeks were not familiar with the being
+      to whom we give the name of "Satan" and the "Devil," and that their belief
+      coincided in one respect with that of the older Jews, who considered that
+      whatever occurrence happened in the world, whether apparently for good or
+      evil, was done by Jehovah, or as the Hellenic damsels reported by Jupiter,
+      Apollo, or Mars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here, too, I may be permitted to introduce a remark suggested by a
+      narrative, told to me by a lady of high British rank. She had been brought
+      up in a foreign country under the eye of a sensible and pious, we may add
+      prudish, mother, who endeavoured to shield her daughter from all contact
+      with external vicious influences, and to prevent her ears or her mind from
+      ever coming to the knowledge of those matters which are associated with
+      love, marriage, and offspring. When the young lady naturally inquired of
+      mamma where the infants sprang from which came into the world and grew up
+      around her, she was told, "from God," and she was referred to Psalm
+      cxxvii. 3, which declares that "children are an heritage of the Lord, and
+      the fruit of the womb is His reward." After having attained adult age, and
+      being wholly imbued with this belief, she, on one occasion, expressed her
+      opinion that Mademoiselle&mdash;who had recently been confined&mdash;must
+      have been a peculiarly virtuous maiden, to have received so great a
+      present as a baby from the beneficent Creator. This speech fell like a
+      bombshell amongst a mixed company, but she knew not why. It was not until
+      her marriage some time subsequently, that she learned that infants were
+      said to come from God or the Devil according to circumstances, but that in
+      reality they were always due to men and women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The anecdote given above, naturally enables us to call attention to the
+      remarkable fact that though the Grecian poets repeatedly spoke of maidens
+      being fertilized by a divinity, yet Greek fathers never paid any heed to
+      the power of that god, whom their daughters asserted to have operated upon
+      their femininity; but always treated the earthly love of the alleged
+      celestial spouse, as if the latter was wholly powerless to punish the
+      hard-hearted parent, who had no scruples to turn his daughter from his
+      door, so that she might hide her shame in distant lands. In those classic
+      times, procreation by a god upon a human being was the attempted cover for
+      bastardy. Moreover, even the woman herself, to whom Jupiter or Apollo was
+      alleged to have descended from heaven to honour, felt herself so much
+      injured by the visit, that she either tried to destroy the resulting
+      offspring with her own hands, or exposed it upon a mountain to the tender
+      mercies of dogs and vultures. Much in the same way many a modern maiden
+      places her shame-covered infant in the turn-table of a foundling
+      institution. Antiope, for example, the daughter of a king of Thebes, was,
+      according to her version, beloved by
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jupiter, who visited her in the form of a satyr and implanted twins. When
+      she discovered the coming event, which casts its shadow before, she left
+      the paternal mansion, to avoid her father's anger, and fled to a mountain,
+      on which she left her hapless offspring. They were found by shepherds and
+      brought up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The story of fair Leucothöe is still more to the point. She was
+      sufficiently beautiful to attract Apollo, who seduced her under the form
+      of her own mother&mdash;not a very likely story it is true, but the two
+      lived happily together until a rival told the loved one's father of the
+      amour. The incensed paterfamilias ordered his daughter to be buried alive,
+      and yet the god who could change her body after death into the
+      frankincense tree, and himself into a matronly looking woman and yet
+      retain his sex, could not prevent his earthly spouse from dying a cruel
+      death. In other words, Orchamus, the parent of the damsel, wholly
+      disbelieved in the existence of a divine "spark," and felt assured that
+      his daughter had disgraced herself with a man far below her in earthly
+      rank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From these, and a number of other Grecian anecdotes, we can draw no other
+      conclusions than that the sires in those days were as jealous of the
+      honour of their daughters as we are of our own now; that when that honour
+      was in danger of being tarnished, a god was alleged by the damsel to be
+      the offender; that the story was not believed; and that the daughter fled,
+      was punished, or was pardoned, according to the sternness or credulity of
+      the parents. The idea that individuals who were the sons or daughters of a
+      god, must necessarily be great and good, does not appear to have prevailed
+      amongst the ancient Greeks. Nay, we may even doubt whether any of them
+      really believed that Jupiter, Apollo, or Neptune, could, or had ever
+      become incarnate, for the sole purpose of impregnating a human female.
+      That such an idea, however, prevailed amongst the Babylonians we learn
+      from Herodotus, who informs us, book i. c. 181, that Belus comes into a
+      chamber at the summit of a sacred tower to meet therein a native woman,
+      chosen by the god from the whole nation; and in the succeeding chapter he
+      indicates that a similar occurrence takes place in Egyptian Thebes, and in
+      Lycian Patarae. Yet even whilst writing the tales, the historian expresses
+      his own incredulity of their value, and we may well suppose that the
+      thoughtful generally, would only give such credence to the statements of
+      the temple priests, as was given to certain Christian stories by a
+      philosopher, who said he believed them because they were impossible. Even
+      if the common people credited the assertion that "The Supreme" did elect a
+      woman with whom to converse, we must not despise them too lightly, for we
+      are distinctly told in our own scriptures that Jehovah appeared as a man,
+      and as such, ate, drank, and talked with Abraham (Gen. ch. xviii.); that
+      Elohim was in the habit of conversing face to face with Moses (Exod.
+      xxxiii. 11); and that the same God wrestled with Jacob as a man, and could
+      not prevail against the patriarch until he had lamed him. We must also
+      notice that myriads of Christians have believed, and many still do so,
+      that He in a certain form had commerce with a Hebrew maiden (Luke i. 34,
+      35), and had by her a begotten son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When civilization spread over Greece, there seems to have been a change of
+      expression&mdash;which being at the first wholly metaphorical,
+      subsequently became realistic. Thus, any man peculiarly characteristic
+      amongst his fellows for strength, knowledge, or power, was designated "a
+      son of God." Thus, as Grote remarks (12 vol. edition), vol. ii. p. 132,
+      note 1. "Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage; a damsel of
+      the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to
+      Smyrna at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the
+      poet" (Aristotle ap. Plutarch Vit. Homer, p. 1059). Plato, also by some,
+      called "the divine," was said by Seusippus to be a son of Apollo (<i>Smith's
+      Dictionary</i>, 8. v.) The Hebrews had a similar metaphorical expression,
+      and gave to everything supereminently good, an epithet which we may
+      paraphrase as "divine." Some few writers used the title, "sons of God," as
+      for example, Job i. 6, and xxxviii. 7, and Hosea i. 10; an epithet adopted
+      by John i. 12, Rom. viii. 14, 19, Phil ii. 15, 1 John iii 1, 2, as if the
+      same were applicable to all who are virtuous and good to an especial
+      degree. The Hebrews even seem to have adopted the belief that Elohim, like
+      the Grecian Zeus, had many children, could, and did really, associate with
+      human beings, for we can in no other way reasonably interpret the strange
+      narrative in Genesis vi, wherein we are told that the sons of God came in
+      unto the daughters of men, who became the sires of mighty men of great
+      renown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst the Romans, similar ideas to those which we find amongst the
+      Greeks prevailed. For example, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars and
+      a Vestal virgin; but so little did her relatives believe in the
+      possibility of the occurrence, or the divine nature of the maiden's
+      offspring, that the mother was buried alive, and the twins which she bare
+      were exposed, much in the same way as modern "foundlings" are. In this
+      case, as in many others, it is probable that little notice would have been
+      taken of such supernatural generation had the mother been of low origin&mdash;but
+      when a god inveigles a king's daughter from her duty, both the one and the
+      other must be punished; the one in her person, the other in his child. Yet
+      these very writers who told of the punishment of the Vestal Hia for her
+      intrigue with Mars, took advantage of the story, and spread a report that
+      Romulus, the offspring of the two, was, after his death, taken up to
+      heaven to dwell there as a god. At a subsequent period, Augustus Caesar
+      announced, on his mother's authority, that he was the son of Apollo, and
+      claimed to be treated as a veritable scion of that venerable deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The account of the conception and birth of Servius Tullius is curious from
+      its circumstantiality. Ovid tells us, <i>Fasti</i>, vi., 625-659, Bonn's
+      translation: "Vulcan was the father of Tullius; Ocrisia was his mother, a
+      woman of Corniculum, remarkable for her beauty. Her, Tanaquil, having duly
+      performed the sacred rites, ordered, in company with herself, to pour some
+      wine on the decorated altar. Here amongst the ashes, either was, or seemed
+      to be, a form of obscene shape; but such it really was. Being ordered to
+      do so, the captive (Ocrisia was a slave), submits to its embraces;
+      conceived by her, Servius had the origin of his birth from heaven. His
+      father afforded a proof, at the time when he touched his head with the
+      gleaming fire, and a flame rising to a point, blazed upon his locks." In
+      some earlier lines, the poet tells us that the goddess, Fortune, was
+      enamoured of this same Roman king, and visited him nightly&mdash;much as
+      Venus came to converse with Anchises.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this story, we have an unusual ingredient, inasmuch as there is a
+      witness to that which we may call the immaculate conception, and after
+      birth, a proof of the child's divine origin! Of course there are many
+      irreverent people who declare that the story is untrue&mdash;that it is
+      far more likely that the real father was Tarquin, who, finding his
+      consort's beautiful servant to be with child, contrived a plan by which
+      she would escape the vindictiveness of the mistress&mdash;one which, if
+      devotionally inclined, she was bound to give credence to. Nor can devout
+      Christians altogether range themselves amongst the unbelievers in the
+      miracle, for the founder of their religion was borne by a woman of low
+      condition, and is said to have been begotten by an overshadowing spirit.
+      He assumed to be a king; but the son of Ocrisia became one in reality, and
+      instituted games in honour of his divine progenitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some more modern poetical fictions of the same nature, we may refer
+      our readers to Scott's <i>Lady of the Lake</i>, where, in the account of
+      the Highland seer, Brian, they will find a parallel to the story
+      promulgated by Alexander the false prophet, respecting his birth,
+      described by Lucian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The same ideas, with which we are all of us so familiar in Christendom,
+      that they form a portion of the creeds which the orthodox weekly rehearse,
+      have obtained in far Ceylon. Thus, for example, we read in a Buddhistic
+      legend (<i>Kusa Iatakaya</i>, translated by T. Steele, Trübner, London,
+      1871, small 8vo., pp. 260):&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "As Sakra*, with his thousand eyes gazed over every land,
+     The hapless queen, with heart distraught, he saw dejected stand;
+     His godlike eye revealed to him that to her blessed womb
+     Two radiant gods illustrious from Heaven's high town should come.
+
+     Then entering first the Bodisat's blest skyey palace fair,
+     And next unto another god's, did Sakra straight repair:
+     Benign he said:&mdash;Go to the world of men, that distant scene,
+     And there be born from out the womb of yon delightful queen.
+
+     The saying of the king of gods unto their hearts they took;
+     Then bathed they in his feet's bright rays that shone as shines a brook:
+     'Let us be so conceived,' they said, when they the order heard,
+     'Within the womb of yonder queen, even as the Lord declared.'"
+
+     &mdash;Stanzas 129-131.
+
+     * Indra, "The Supreme."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      But the two children do not appear as twins, like Romulus and Remus, for
+      we find in stanza 155&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now when the darling little child, the wisdom-gifted one, Began to lift
+      his tiny foot, and learn to walk alone, Another god from Heaven's high
+      town flashed down the sky serene, And was conceived within the womb of
+      that delightful queen."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may notice in passing, that the lady was married, but had always been
+      barren with her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the instances to which we have referred above, there has been no very
+      marked departure from the ordinary course of nature. In all, an union
+      between a father and mother has occurred&mdash;in all, the relation
+      between each to the offspring has been maintained, and the ordinary
+      progress of gestation observed. The main discrepancies which are to be
+      noticed are, that a divine is substituted for a human father, or, as in
+      the case of Æneas, the sire has been a man, and the mother a "celestial."
+      But after birth, instead of the child being cared for by its parents, it
+      very frequently happens that a goat, wolf, or other animal, performs the
+      mother's duty as a nurse. The reader whose antiquarian lore is
+      considerable, will probably remember that Christians in Italy, France, and
+      I dare not say in how many other Catholic countries, were implicit
+      believers in the idea that spirits from the invisible world could assume a
+      human form, and under that, have intercourse with youths of either sex.
+      The literature upon this subject was at one time very great, but such
+      pains have been taken to destroy it, in order that so great a blot upon
+      the infallibility of Papal rulers should no longer be found, that there
+      are few books to which I can refer inquirers. The first time I met with
+      the subject was in a Latin treatise by Cardan, a.d. 1444-1524,* being
+      commentaries upon Hippocrates. In this, many chapters are devoted to the
+      possibility of intercourse between women and embodied spirits. The
+      Mediaeval virgins, unlike the Greeks, always attributed their pregnancy to
+      demons and not to gods, although on some occasions maidens were foolish
+      enough, like those of ancient Babylon, to believe that they were embraced,
+      by a divine being or angel. Into this matter the Italian doctor enters
+      folly, and endeavours to establish some distinction how a woman could
+      distinguish an "incubus" from a human being, and if she became pregnant
+      and brought forth, how the devil's offspring could be told from an
+      ordinary baby. The particulars which are given to the learned in Latin,
+      will not bear to be reproduced in the vernacular, suffice it to say, that
+      they are such as would be given by silly women more or less conscious of
+      having been guilty of impropriety, and who were goaded by sanctimonious
+      but ribald divines to enter into every detail of the devil's doings and
+      the females' sensations.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It is more than thirty years since I read the book in
+     question, and I have long ago parted with it. As I am unable
+     now to lay my hands upon a copy I am not sure whether the
+     author was Facio Cardan, who flourished at the period given
+     in the text, or the more celebrated Jerome Cardan who lived
+     A.D. 1601-1576.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Before saying more of the "incubi," we may bestow a passing glance upon
+      the foundation of the idea of their existence. In mediaeval times, a large
+      portion of the New Testament was taken to be literally true, and the
+      people were instructed to believe that the devil went about like a roaring
+      lion seeking whom he could devour. The papal priests encouraged the idea,
+      for by frightening the ignorant, they induced them to purchase sacerdotal
+      insurance by paying for masses to protect themselves from the snares of
+      Satan. For hierarchs who were obliged to live without wives, it was easy
+      in the first place to imbue the mind of a superstitious maiden with a
+      horror of Apollyon's power, and then to take advantage of her fears by
+      personifying the fiend. In this manner the bible suggested the sin to the
+      priest and made the maiden passive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would not be profitable to write a catalogue in detail of the
+      authorities upon which I found these statements. I will rather give a
+      short resume of an article upon "Incubi," which is to be found in a most
+      curious book entitled <i>Dictionnaire Infernal ou Bibliothèque universelle
+      sur les êtres, les personnages, les livres, les faits et les choses qui
+      tiennent aux apparitions, à la magie, au commerce de Venfer, aux
+      divinations, aux sciences secrètes,... aux erreurs et aux préjugés,...
+      généralment à toutes les croyances mer-veilleuses, surprenantes
+      mystérieuses et surnaturelles.&mdash;Par M. Colin de Plancy. Deuxième
+      édition entièrement réfondue </i>; Paris, 1826. The book is rare, but most
+      interesting to the philosopher who concerns himself about matters of
+      "faith," for it shows, clearly, that there is no depth of human
+      degradation into which people who are guided by blind trust in some fellow
+      mortal, unchecked by the exercise of reason, will not enter, and there
+      reside permanently, until stirred up by those whom they assert on the
+      first blush to be "infidels."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few preliminary remarks, we are told that the French incubi did
+      not attack virgins, but in the next paragraph is an account of a maiden
+      who was seduced by a demon in the form of her betrothed. This was in
+      Sardinia. An English fiend acted in a similar way, and from the congress
+      followed a frightful disease of which the poor girl died in three days.
+      This story is told by Thomas Walsingham, b. A.D. 1410. A Scotch lass is
+      the next victim reported, and to her the unclean spirit came nightly under
+      the guise of a fine young man. She became pregnant, and avowed all. The
+      parents then kept watch, and saw the devil near her in a monstrous unhuman
+      form. He would not go away till a priest came, then the incubus made a
+      frightful noise, burned the furniture, and went off upwards, carrying the
+      roof with him. Three days after a queer form was born, more horrible than
+      had ever been seen, so bad indeed, that the midwives strangled it. For the
+      credulous, what fact could be more strongly attested than this? The
+      reporter is Hector Boetius, b. 1470.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next tale, having a locale in Bonn, occurred at a time when priests
+      married and had a family. The daughter of one who was closely watched and
+      locked up when left by herself, was found out by a demon, who took upon
+      him the form of a fine young man. Such an occurrence was thought nothing
+      uncommon then, inasmuch as Paul had told the Corinthians that Satan
+      himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14). The poor
+      victim became enceinte and confessed the whole to her father, who, fearing
+      the devil, and anxious not to make a scandal, sent the daughter away from
+      home. The impudent fiend came to remonstrate, and killed the wretched sire
+      with a blow of his fist.&mdash;Quoted from <i>Cæsarii Heistere mirac</i>.,
+      lib. iii., c. 8. The next case occurs at Schinin, wherein we are told
+      (Hauppius <i>Biblioth portai, pract.</i>, p. 454) that a woman produced a
+      baby without head or feet, with a mouth in the chest near to the left
+      shoulder, and an ear near the right one; instead of fingers it had webs
+      like frog's feet, it was liver coloured, and shaky as jelly, it cried when
+      the mother wanted to wash it, but somebody stifled and then buried it. The
+      mother, however, wanted it be exhumed and burned, for it was the offspring
+      of a fiend who had counterfeited her husband. The thing was taken up and
+      given to the hangman for cremation, but he could neither burn it nor the
+      rags which enwrapped it until the day after the feast of Ascension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following story is laid near Nantes:&mdash;Therein a young girl
+      baulked of her lover, mutters something like a modern order to him to go
+      to the foul fiend, and remarks to herself that a demon would be a better
+      friend. She is betrayed in the usual manner, and finds, when too late,
+      that she is embracing a hairy incubus which has a long tail. She exclaims
+      fearfully. The "affreet" blows in her face and leaves her. She is found
+      frightfully disfigured, and is brought to bed seven days after of a black
+      cat. The remaining histories are of a similar nature, all alike showing
+      how completely the so-called Christian people of Modern Europe believed
+      that disembodied spirits could assume human form with such completeness as
+      to be the father of offspring. We may fairly compare these tales with that
+      told by heathen Greeks about Jupiter and Alcmena, but when we place them
+      side by side, the ancients show a far superior fancy in their fables than
+      do the comparative moderns. I find from <i>Reville's History of the Devil</i>,
+      p. 54 (London: Williams &amp; Norgate, 1871), that so late as a.d. 1756,
+      at Landshut, in Bavaria, a young girl of thirteen years of age, was
+      convicted of impure intercourse with the devil, and put to death. It is a
+      pity that no account of the trial is appended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Talboys Wheeler, in his <i>History of India</i>, vol. IL, p. 515,
+      indicates that there is to this day, in India, a belief in <i>incubi</i>.
+      Speaking of Paisacha marriages, in which a woman is united to a man
+      without her knowledge or consent, he remarks:&mdash;"The origin of the
+      name is somewhat curious. The Paisachas were evil spirits or ghosts (see "<i>Lilith"
+      and "Satyr" Ancient Faiths</i>, vol. ii.) who were supposed to haunt the
+      earth.... If, therefore, a damsel found herself likely to become a mother
+      without her being able to furnish a satisfactory reason for her maternity,
+      she would naturally plead that she had been victimized by a Paisach.... In
+      modern times, however, the belief is still very general throughout the
+      rural districts of India, that wives, as well as maidens, may be
+      occasionally victimized by such ghostly admirers."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every mythologist who has invented such stories as that of Jupiter and
+      Alcmena, and every woman who has ever attributed her pregnancy to a divine
+      being, call him what she may, seems completely to ignore the idea that a
+      god who deserves the name, does not require human aid to produce a man or
+      woman. Surely every profound thinker would say to himself, The Supreme,
+      who could by a word create full-grown creatures "in the beginning," has
+      not lost the power now; surely He, who could make Adam out of dust, and
+      Eve out of a bone of man, can produce in later days similar images of the
+      godhead, as we are told in Genesis i. 26, without accoupling with a
+      descendant of the rib. The mythological idea, therefore, of a divine child
+      coming from a celestial father and a terrestrial mother, has nothing
+      profound therein, for it is essentially a bungling contrivance of some
+      stupid man. On the other hand, such a notion could only be entertained
+      where a grovelling or anthropomorphic idea has prevailed, or is cherished
+      amongst a credulous people. To put the subject into the fewest words
+      possible, a god has never&mdash;so far as thoughtful men can judge&mdash;been
+      said to be the father in the flesh of a human being, except by frail
+      women, or vain, foolish, or designing men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are fortified in this conclusion by the method in which nations or
+      sects who have each their own favourite "son of God," treat each other.
+      None endeavour to prove that the mother of their own hero had no commerce
+      with man, for that is impossible&mdash;all, on the other hand, ridicule
+      the idea of there being a child without a human father, and insist that no
+      woman's word countervails the laws of nature. But this argument is only
+      used against opposing religionists&mdash;it has no weight against their
+      own divine leader. The cases which we have described are wholly different
+      from those mythological stories, in which the union of the sexes is
+      absolutely or relatively ignored. They differ also from those in which the
+      Creator is represented as androgynous, or being originally without sex,
+      becomes, by an effort of will, a bisexual being, so as to bring about the
+      creation of man and of the world. For example, when we find in the Orphic
+      Hymns (Cory's <i>Ancient Fragments</i>, pp. 290, seq.), "Zeus is male,
+      Immortal Zeus is female," it is clear that there was in the writer an idea
+      of an union of the sexes being necessary to creation. But when we find
+      Chaos alone being the progenitor of Erebus and Black Night, from which
+      again were born Ether and Bay, and Earth the parent of Heaven and the Sea
+      (Hesiod, Theogony, 116-130), there is a total absence of a sexual notion.
+      This idea, however, appears in the subsequent lines which represent Earth
+      wedding with Heaven. The same sexual notion, appears in another fragment
+      from <i>Aristophanes</i>, (Cory, A. R, p. 293), which tells us that "Night
+      with the black wings first produced an aerial egg, which in its time gave
+      rise to love, whence sprung all creation." Yet the egg necessarily
+      presupposes a being which formed it, and another that fructified it, so
+      that the mythos is not wholly free from the intermixture of the sexual
+      element.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When mythologists have been peculiarly anxious to shake off the somewhat
+      grotesque doctrine that the celestial Creator must be independent of any
+      other power, in the genesis of the world and heaven, there has been a
+      great variety of attempts to show how this has been brought about. In one
+      curious Hindoo legend, Vishnu is represented sleeping on the bosom of
+      Devi, at the bottom of the ocean which covered the world. Suddenly a lotus
+      sprung from his navel, and grew till it reached the surface of the flood.
+      From this wonderful flower Brahma sprang, and, seeing nothing but water,
+      imagined himself the first-born of all creatures. But ere he felt sure, he
+      descended the stalk and found Vishnu at its root; and then the two
+      contested their respective claims, but Mahadeva interposed, and, by a
+      curious contrivance, stopped the quarrel, demonstrating that before either
+      came into existence there reigned an everlasting lingam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another myth closely resembles one which is indicated in the Hebrew
+      Scriptures, viz., that Narayana, or the spirit of God, a self-existent
+      entity, moved over the waters, and made them bring forth all things
+      living. This Narayana is identical with the <i>yomer elohim</i>&mdash;"the
+      spirit of God" of the Hebrew Genesis i. 2; the [&mdash;Greek&mdash;]&mdash;the
+      spirit of God, or Holy Ghost of the Greeks. It is the same as the breezes
+      of thick air which hovered over chaos in the legend assigned to
+      Sanchoniathon (Cory's Fragments, p. 1), and produced the slimy matter from
+      which all beings sprung. Narayana is again the same as the Night of the
+      Orphic fragment which hovered with her black wings over immensity&mdash;the
+      same as the <i>chakemah</i>, or "wisdom" of Proverbs viii.; the Greek <i>sophia</i>
+      and the <i>logos</i>&mdash;"the word" of John i. 1. The Buddha&mdash;or
+      Brahma of the Hindoo. From this mysterious source matter was formed into
+      shape and all creatures sprang into life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another Indian mythos (Moor's <i>Hindoo Pantheon</i>, p. 78), attributes
+      even more than this to Brahma. He is said to have produced four beings who
+      proved refractory, and grieved their maker. To comfort him, Siva issued
+      from a fold in his forehead&mdash;then strengthened by Siva, he produced
+      Bhrigu and the seven Rishis, and after that, Narada, from his thigh,
+      Kardama from his shadow, and Dacsha from the forefinger of his right hand.
+      He had, apparently, without a consort, sixty daughters, and from these
+      last proceeded all things divine, human, animal, vegetable, and mineral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not altogether dissimilar from the Hebrew idea of Jehovah creating
+      all things except woman from the dust,* and forming her mysteriously from
+      a rib of the only existing man. We may also compare it with the birth of
+      Minerva from Jupiter's brain, and Bacchus from his thigh. But the Greek
+      myth differs from the Hindoo, inasmuch as the deities referred to were
+      originally conceived by human women, and did not grow from The Thunderer's
+      body like branches from a tree.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * In Mythology, things ever repeat themselves, with very
+     little alteration. For example, Mahadeva is represented as
+     fighting with Dacsha, and producing heroes from the dost by
+     striking the ground with his hair. (See Moor's H. P., p.
+     107).
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There is amongst the Hindoos a goddess called Prit'hvi, who is said to
+      personify the Earth; she had many names which we need not describe, and
+      she was also furnished with a consort, whose birth is thus described
+      (Moor, H. P., p. 111.)&mdash;"Vena being an impious and tyrannical prince,
+      was cursed by the Brahmans, and, in consequence, died without issue. To
+      remedy this, his left arm was opened, and churned with a stick till it
+      produced a son, who, proving as wicked as his father, was set aside; and
+      the right arm* was in like manner churned, which also produced a boy, who
+      proved to be a form of Vishnu, under the name of Prit'hu." We may add that
+      Prit'hvi treated him badly, and he had to beat and tear her before she
+      would be comfortable with him. Hence the necessity for ploughing and
+      digging before crops of cereals, &amp;c., will abound. We can understand
+      the last part of the legend better than the first. In the Vedic Mythology,
+      we may say generally, that the means of producing offspring are curiously
+      numerous; for example, we find in Goldstucker's <i>Sanscrit and English
+      Dictionary</i>, page 20, under the word <i>angiras</i>&mdash;a statement
+      that an individual bearing this cognomen, is named in the Vaidik legends,
+      as one of the 'Prajâpatis', or progenitors of mankind, engendered,
+      according to some, by Manu; according to others, by Brahma himself, either
+      with the female half of his body, <i>or from his mouth, or from the space
+      "between his eyebrows.</i>"
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * As these legends generally are based upon something which
+     Europeans would designate a vile pun, I turned to the
+     Sanscrit Lexicon (Monier Williams), first to ascertain the
+     names of "the arm;" and, secondly, if there were any words
+     allied to it, however remotely, which had a certain meaning.
+     Amongst others, I find that <i>buja</i> signifies "an arm," and
+     <i>bhaga</i> is a name of Siva&mdash;one of whose epithets, <i>bhagan-
+     dara</i> = "rending the vulva." <i>Dosha</i> also means "the arm"
+     and "night." Another word having the same meaning, is
+     <i>praveshta</i>, and this not only signifies the arm, but one
+     "who covers over." We can then, I think, see why the device
+     of the churning, referred to in the text, made a process
+     available for the production of a child. The legend is a
+     clumsy one, but not more so than that in Exodus xxxiii. 23,
+     wherein we are told that Jehovah showed to Moses "His back
+     parts,"&mdash;Vulgate, <i>posteriora mea</i>&mdash;inasmuch as no one could
+     see His face and live!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      A still more curious story is related in the same dictionary, p. 451,
+      under the word <i>ayonijeswara</i>. This appellative is one belonging to a
+      sacred place of pilgrimage sacred to <i>Ayonija</i>, whose miraculous
+      birth was thus brought about. A very learned Muni, though making a
+      commendable use of the proper nasal way of reading sacred scripture in his
+      own person, yet associated with individuals who did not give the orthodox
+      twang.* The good man remained, in consequence of this, in a sonless
+      condition, but the legend does not condescend to explain why toleration of
+      tones in religious ceremony should make a husband infertile and his wife
+      barren. At any rate, the Muni, named Vidyananda, feeling the punishment a
+      great one, travelled, apparently alone, from one holy place to another
+      without being nearer paternity. At length he met with a <i>yogin</i> or
+      male anchoret, hermit, devotee, or saint, corresponding to the <i>yoginis</i>,
+      who are represented by Moor (H. P., p. 235) as being sometimes very lovely
+      and alluring; and he, taking pity upon the Muni, gave him a wonderful
+      fruit, which, he informed him, if eaten by his wife, would have the effect
+      of procuring for Vidyananda the birth of a son. But the Muni, like many
+      another character in mythological and fairy tales, seems suddenly to have
+      lost his sense of hope deferred and a certain prospect of relief, for
+      instead of hurrying home he sought repose under a tree on a river's brink,
+      and whilst there ate the fruit himself. He at once became pregnant. When
+      the new state of things was evident, he confessed all that had happened to
+      the Yogin, and the latter, by means of his supernatural power, introduced
+      a stick into the body of Yidyânanda, and relieved him of the infant. The
+      creature was a beautiful boy, radiant like the disc of the sun, and
+      endowed with divine lustre, and on account of the mode in which he was
+      born his father called him <i>Ayonija</i>, which signifies, "not born from
+      the womb." The account then goes on to state that this miraculous infant
+      became a wonderfully good, learned, pious, religious, and fanatic man;
+      that the god, delighted with his piety, gave him sons and grandsons, and
+      after his death received him into his heaven. Any persons coming now to
+      bake at the spot where these favours from Siva were granted, and duly
+      performing the various duties of a pious pilgrim, are rewarded, according
+      to their piety, &amp;c., with progeny, worldly happiness, freedom from
+      transmigration, and eternal bliss.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * This reminds me of an anecdote which I once read of a
+     devout Scotch mother, who, on hearing her son read the Bible
+     in an ordinary tone of voice, cuffed him violently because
+     he presumed to read that Holy Book without the customary
+     religious drawl.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Under the word <i>Ayonija</i>, Goldstucker gives the following examples of
+      individuals "not born from the <i>yoni</i>" viz.:&mdash;"<i>Drona</i>, the
+      son of Bharadwâja, who was born in a bucket" "<i>Suyya</i>, whose origin
+      was unknown." "<i>Draupadi</i>, who at a sacrifice of her father Drupada,
+      arose out of the sacrificial ground." "<i>Sita</i>, who sprang into
+      existence in the same manner as Draupadi" The same is also an epithet of
+      Vishnu or Krishna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These stories pale in interest before that of the origin of Carticeya (see
+      Moor's H. P., p. 51, 89), and I give an account of this legend, foolish
+      though many conceive it to be, for everything which is connected with a
+      Hindoo mythos is remarkable, whenever it is found to be antecedently
+      parallel with Christian surroundings of a somewhat similar narrative. We
+      notice, for example, in the following tale, that the Indian idea of the
+      power of "penance" and "asceticism," is, that these doings or actions are
+      so great, that by their means alone man may compel the Creator to do
+      things against His design, whilst in the Papal tales of certain monks and
+      nuns, we find the doctrine asserted that by preeminent fastings,
+      scourgings and prayers, people have acquired the power to sell salvation
+      to their fellow men, in a manner different to that which is appointed.
+      Again, the god when forced to obey the power of the devotee, is
+      represented as inventing a method by which he could, as it were, cheat
+      himself, just as Jehovah or Elohim is said to have contrived a plan by
+      which He could circumvent Himself for the vow which He had made to destroy
+      all the men upon the earth by a flood of water. Again, as the arrogance of
+      the ascetic threatened to destroy the world and the heaven, a deliverer or
+      a saviour was promised, who should be begotten by an incarnate god upon a
+      goddess equally incarnate, and save mankind from a terrible devil This is
+      a counterpart of the Papal theory, which makes it appear that a portion of
+      the godhead became incorporated with a dove, and had union with a woman,
+      herself an immaculate manifestation of another portion of "The Supreme."
+      Yet still more striking than this, is the part which the dove plays in the
+      Indian mythos of the birth of the Hindoo Saviour. In almost every
+      mediaeval painting or etching of the miraculous conception of the Virgin
+      Mary, the dove takes the position of the divine father of Jesus. Nay, so
+      distinct is the idea intended to be conveyed in one instance, that a dove,
+      surrounded by a galaxy of angelic heads, darts a ray from his body on
+      high, into the very part of the virgin, proper to receive it. The design
+      of the artist is still farther heightened by the <i>vesica piscis</i>, the
+      emblem of woman being marked upon the appropriate part of the dress, and a
+      figure of an infant within it, points unmistakeably to the belief that the
+      Holy Ghost, like a dove, absolutely begot the Jewish saviour as he did the
+      Hindoo deliverer of gods and men. (<i>See Ancient Faiths</i>, vol IL, p.
+      648, fig. 48).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the parallel may even be carried farther, for in the Indian history it
+      is Agni, the embodiment of fire or the fire or sun god, who becomes the
+      dove; whilst in the Christian history, fire is one of the manifestations
+      of the Holy Ghost (Acts ii. 3). We conclude this from the fact, that all
+      devout churchmen believe that the Holy Ghost descended upon the day of
+      Pentecost with the sound of a rushing mighty wind, as a multitude of
+      cloven fiery tongues, which again suggests to the recollection of those
+      familiar with the Vedic story, that the Maruts&mdash;rushing, mighty,
+      stormy winds&mdash;were frequent attendants upon Agni For example, in one
+      of the Hymns (p. 39) of the Rig Veda Sanhita (translated by Max Müller),
+      the burden or chorus of every verse is, "with the Maruts come hither, O
+      Agni." Here, however, the parallel between the two myths ceases, for in
+      the Indian tale the saviour has no earthly mother. We may really affirm
+      that he has no mother at all, being the offspring of the father alone,
+      whilst in the Christian history, the deliverer is represented as having no
+      human sire. The one story is just as likely to be true as the other, or
+      just as unlikely. As a reasonable being I cannot believe the one without
+      crediting the other, or reject only one of the two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this preface, we may proceed to relate the legend as recorded by
+      Moor. A certain devil or Daitya&mdash;for it must be remarked that the
+      Hindoos regard the devil as being composed of many individualities, much
+      in the same way as Christians do&mdash;was extremely ambitious and
+      oppressive, as Satan is said to have been in heaven.* To force Brahma to
+      promise him any boon he should require, the ascetic went through the
+      following penances, persisting in each for a hundred years. (1) He stood
+      on one foot, holding the other, and both hands upwards, and fixed his eyes
+      on the sun. (2) He stood on one great toe. (3) He lived upon water alone.
+      (4) He lived on air. (5) He immersed himself in water. (6) He buried
+      himself in the earth, and yet continued as before in incessant adoration.
+      (7) He then did the same in fire. (8) Then he stood upon his head with his
+      feet upwards. (9) He then stood upon one hand. (10) He hung by his hands
+      from a tree. (11) He hung on a tree with his head downwards.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * I call attention to these parallels, for they compel as
+     either to accept the Hindoo stories as true, because they
+     coincide with that which Christians regard as "revealed
+     truth," or they oblige as to distrust our current ideas as
+     to the inspired verity of some biblical stories, founded as
+     they are upon the same, or a similar, basis to those of the
+     Brahmins. The Hindoo tale being founded in the Sinpurana,
+     there can be no reasonable doubt that its fabrication
+     preceded that of the Hebrew or Christian mythos.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The effect of these austerities alarmed all the gods, and they went to
+      Brahma for consolation. He answered that though he was bound to grant the
+      boon desired by a man who became powerful by his austerities, he would
+      devise a method of rendering it inoffensive to the heavenly host. Tarika,
+      the name borne by the Daitya, asked for the gift of unrivalled strength,
+      and that no hand should slay him except a son of Mahadeva. This being
+      acquired, he plundered all the minor gods&mdash;the sun, dreading him,
+      gave no heat; and the moon, in terror, remained always at the full&mdash;in
+      short, the devil, Tarika, usurped the entire management of the universe.
+      Nareda&mdash;the personification of Reason&mdash;Wisdom, the Logos, or
+      "word," now prophesied that the destined deliverer, or saviour of the
+      world, would come from the union of Mahadeva and Parvati. But the first
+      was indisposed to marry, and only consented to do so after being mollified
+      by ardent devotions and great austerities enacted by the second. To the
+      horror, however, of the discomfited world, Parvati was barren; and the
+      gods deputed Agni to try to produce the son whom all so earnestly desired.
+      He took the form of "a dove," and arrived in the presence of Mahadeva just
+      as he had risen from the arms of Parvati, and received from him, in a
+      manner not easy or necessary to describe minutely, the germ of Carticeya;
+      but, unable to retain it, the bird let it fall from his bill into the
+      Ganges. On the banks of this river arose, therefrom, a boy, beautiful as
+      the moon, and bright as the sun. This was "The Saviour" promised by the
+      prophet. When he attained to manhood, he fought the devil in a terrific
+      combat which lasted ten whole days; but Carticeya came off the conqueror,
+      and delivered the world. I may notice in passing that as Carticeya is
+      represented to be the son of his father, Mahadeva alone&mdash;so Ganesa,
+      who was born after the marriage above referred to, is said to be solely
+      the son of his mother, Parvati; Mahadeva not having anything to do with
+      him. It is still farther stated in the <i>Sin purana</i> that the husband
+      was jealous, and displeased at this assumption of independent power by his
+      spouse, punished her in the person of this mysterious son (Moor, H. P.,
+      page 171-2).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another Hindoo story in which a father alone becomes the
+      progenitor of twins&mdash;and it is remarkable, not only for this, but for
+      the dread which a deity is said to feel from the austerities of a man.
+      Wheeler (<i>History of India</i>, vol. i, p. 78; Williams' <i>Sanscrit
+      Lexicon, s. v. Kripa</i>), regards this tale as Brahmanical, and,
+      accepting his authority, we can see that the asceticism which is
+      introduced into the story is intended to exalt the claims of that section
+      of the priesthood who torture themselves. It runs thus:&mdash;Saradvat, by
+      the magnitude of his penances, frightened Indra, who sent a celestial
+      nymph to tempt him. He resisted all her wiles, and refused all commerce
+      with her; but his excited imagination produced one of its common effects,
+      and from that which was "spilled upon the ground" a boy and girl arose,
+      Drona and Kripa. In Wheeler's sketch of the story, two such miraculous
+      events occur, for a precisely similar occurrence took place with a certain
+      Raja&mdash;and the males sprung from this supernatural form of generation,
+      Drona and Drupada, became cronies, and were educated together. In
+      Wheeler's account Kripa becomes the wife of Drona, and not his twin
+      sister. She is represented to have been born from a Brahmin named Gautama,
+      in the same fashion as Drona was. Certes, the scribes who wrote the
+      gospels, and doubled wonders to make them more miraculous, are far behind
+      the Hindoos in the unblushing effrontery of their conceptions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A story somewhat analogous to that of the origin of Carticeya&mdash;Drona
+      and Drupada, is to be found in Grecian mythology. Therein we read (see
+      Lempriere's <i>Classical Dictionary, 8.V</i>., Minerva), that Jupiter
+      promised to his daughter, Minerva, that she should never be married&mdash;since
+      that was her especial desire. But, unfortunately, the Thunderer had not a
+      good memory, and was unable to foresee the future; he therefore promised
+      to Vulcan that he would&mdash;in return for a perfect suit of armour&mdash;give
+      him whatsoever boon he asked. The distorted god, being a great admirer of
+      the personification of wisdom, demanded Minerva in marriage. Zeus then
+      granted his petition and gave Minerva to him for a bride, so that "arts
+      and arms" should thenceforth be wedded together. But the goddess disliked
+      Vulcan, just as much as science and philosophy shun war and physical
+      weapons. Jupiter then privately counselled his daughter to submit,
+      apparently, but to contend, actually, whenever her husband should
+      endeavour to caress her. This advice the goddess very artfully and
+      determinately carried out. But Vulcan's impetuosity was extreme, and the
+      contest between the spouses was prolonged. Though the promised wife was in
+      the end victorious, and retained her virginity, the scene of the strife,
+      like many another battle-field, required cleansing. The material employed
+      by the goddess in the process was thrown down to earth, and from this
+      stuff sprung Ericthonius, as the son of Vulcan alone, who, on attaining
+      man's estate, became the fourth king of Athens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A somewhat similar story is told of Jupiter (Arnobius, <i>adv. Gentes</i>,
+      B. v.), who is represented as enamoured of Themis, who, when lying on the
+      rock Agdus, in Phrygia, and there surprised by the god, resisted his
+      desires, as Minerva had done those of Vulcan, and with a somewhat similar
+      result. But in this instance, that which the author calls in another
+      passage of his work, the <i>vis Lucilii</i>, fell upon the hard rock. This
+      conceived, and, after ten months, the stony soil brought forth a son,
+      called, from his maternal parent, Agdistis. His character, and even his
+      appearance, were frightful and rugged in the extreme. His strength,
+      recklessness, and audacity frightened all the gods. In their dilemma,
+      Bacchus offered to give his aid, and proceeded first to make the man drunk
+      by substituting wine for the water of the fountain from which he
+      habitually drank. Then, by a curious contrivance, he made the fierce
+      hunter emasculate himself. The earth swallows up the sanguinary ruins of
+      his manhood, and in their place comes up a pomegranate tree in full
+      bearing. This being seen by Nana, a king's daughter, she plucks some of
+      the fruit, and lays it in her bosom. By this she becomes pregnant, and,
+      her story being disbelieved, her father attempts to starve her. But the
+      mother of the gods sustains her with apples (see Canticles ii. 5), and
+      berries, or other food. Her baby, when born, is exposed as being
+      illegitimate, but found by a goatherd and brought up&mdash;becoming the
+      all but deified Atys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this legend, we see one son born without a human mother, and a second
+      without any other father than Rimmon, or a pomegranate.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Agdus, Agdistis, &amp;c&mdash;I am frequently tempted, after
+     reading a story like the preceding, to search in the
+     Sanscrit lexicon to ascertain if there can be any esoteric
+     signification in the legend that can be explained by that
+     ancient language. Arnobius opens the story with a statement
+     of the remote antiquity of the tale, and how it is connected
+     with the Great Mother. He then tells of a wild district in
+     Phrygia, called Agdus. Stoaes taken from it, as Themis had
+     enjoined, were used by Deucalion and Pyrrha to repeople the
+     world which had been destroyed by a flood. The great mother
+     was fashioned amongst the rest, and animated by the deity;
+     then follows the story given in the text. Now, in the
+     Sanscrit, Agadha signifies a "hole or chasm," and such
+     things have from the earliest times typified the Celestial
+     Mother. Agdistis I take to be a Greek form of Agasti&mdash;son
+     both of Mitra and Varuna by Urvasi, said to have been born
+     in a water-jar, to have swallowed the ocean, and compelled
+     the Vindhya mountains to prostrate themselves before him,
+     &amp;c. (Monier Williams' Sanskrit English Lexicon, pp. 4, 6).
+     Themis may be a corruption of Dhamas&mdash;the moon, an epithet
+     of Vishnu, Yama, and Brahma; also the Supreme Spirit (M. W.
+     op. cit., p. 448). Deucalion seems readily to be resolved
+     into the dyu or div&mdash;holy, and Kalam, semen virile (M. W.,
+     p. 211). Pyrrha may apparently be derived from bdra&mdash;an
+     opening or aperture (M. W.); also bhdra&mdash;bearing, carrying,
+     cherishing, supporting (M. W., p. 700). Atys, described as
+     of surpassing beauty, may fairly be associated with atisi
+     and atisaya&mdash;to surpass, excel, exceed; and pre-eminence,
+     superiority (M. W., op. cit., p. 15). Liber, again, who is
+     clever enough to outwit and conquer Agdistis, may, without
+     too strong a stretch of imagination, come from Idbha&mdash;
+     obtaining, gaining, getting; capture, conquest; the rootword
+     is labh&mdash;to seize, to take hold of, gain, recover, regain,
+     fcc. (M. W., p. 861, 2). Nana, the mother of Atys the
+     beautiful, has probably come from nanda&mdash;happiness,
+     pleasure, joy, felicity, delight (M. W., op. cit. p. 467).
+     In the previous volumes I have referred to the pomegranate&mdash;
+     Hebrew, Rimmon&mdash;as an emblem. In the legend which makes Nana
+     conceive by eating this fruit, there are, I fancy, two
+     ideas&mdash;one, that the pomegranate is filled with seeds and
+     pulp of a red colour; the other, that in the Greek its name
+     is rota, or roa, which has a close resemblance in sound with
+     reo&mdash;to flow or gush. Of the word Midas&mdash;the name of him who
+     sought to bring about the union of the opposite sexes by
+     marrying his daughter Nana to Attis or Atys, the most
+     appropriate etymon which I can find in the Sanscrit is in
+     the root math, which signifies to strike fire by rubbing
+     wood together, to churn or produce by churning.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      If we allow that there is truth in these derivations, we can then see how
+      completely Arnobius has been deceived by taking the legend au pied de la
+      lettre. He sees nothing but the exoteric side of the fable; the more
+      instructed philosopher sees in it nothing beyond an attempt to weave a
+      story to account for ordinary men and women existing. The Earth, from her
+      deep womb produces stones which become male and female (compare Psalm
+      cxxzix. 15&mdash;"When I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the
+      lowest parts of the earth." But mycologists were not always content with
+      giving precedence in creation to the "Great Mother," consequently the
+      "Father of all" comes upon the scene from no one knows where. Refusing to
+      share with him her supremacy, he, like the Hindoo Mahadeva, becomes a
+      father in spite of her. Like his parent, the son becomes raging mad, like
+      an elephant or a horse in spring. He is tamed by castration, but the parts
+      he loses still bear a fructifying power, and once more, a maiden&mdash;type
+      of the celestial virgin, has offspring. Without going further into the
+      tale, the story teller endeavours again to introduce marriage, but on the
+      threshold arrests himself, apparently under the idea that the wedded state
+      takes away the pleasure of freedom from fine young men. Beyond this point
+      it would be unprofitable to go, since few of us can realize Greek ideas on
+      certain matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The origin of Venus is told by Hesiod in such a manner as to lead his
+      readers to believe that, not only was she the daughter of a father alone,
+      but of that particular part of his body which has been deified as a
+      Trinity. After speaking (<i>Theogmy</i>, 170-200), of the cruelty of
+      Ouranos, and how his wife inspirited Cronos to punish his father by means
+      of a sickle made of white iron extracted from her body (t.&amp;, the
+      earth), we read&mdash;"Then came vast Heaven, Ouranos, bringing Night with
+      him, and eager for love, brooded around Earth (<i>Ge</i>) and lay
+      stretched, I wot, on all sides; but his son from out his ambush grasped at
+      him with his left hand, whilst in his right he took the huge sickle, long
+      and jagged-toothed, and hastily mowed off the genitals of his sire, and
+      threw them, to be carried away, behind him. These fell into the sea, and
+      kept drifting a long time up and down the deep, and all around kept rising
+      a white foam from the immortal flesh; and in it a maiden was nourished.
+      First, she drew nigh divine Cythera, and thence came next to wave-washed
+      Cyprus. Then forth stepped an awful, beauteous goddess; and beneath her
+      delicate feet the verdure throve around; her, gods and men name Aphrodite
+      the foam-sprung goddess," &amp;c. (Bonn's Translation, p. 11,12).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still further, we find in the Grecian mythology that Minerva was the
+      offspring of Jupiter without a mother being in the case&mdash;unless we
+      put faith in the tale, that the god impregnated Metis, or wisdom, and
+      afterwards ate her up. In this case the goddess ought, however, to have
+      emerged from the abdomen, and not from the head of her father. Vulcan,
+      moreover, is said to have been the son of Juno alone, "who in this wished
+      to imitate Jupiter, who had produced Minerva from his brains"&mdash;a
+      mythos which does not tally with the statement that Zeus ordered Vulcan to
+      cleave his head open, not the part corresponding to the yoni The tales
+      certainly lack that evidence which the philosopher is bound to seek for;
+      but for those orthodox believers who are bound to credit every
+      extraordinary event which is recorded in the books of the faithful, no
+      testimony is required. Those who feel assured that a serpent, ox, donkey,
+      tree, bush, and other things have spoken rationally, can readily extend
+      their trust and assure themselves that a female has had a child without a
+      male, and <i>vice versa</i>&mdash;especially when the individuals were
+      divine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we have before remarked, there is nothing in the mythological stories
+      which we have just recounted that is either more or less miraculous than
+      conception, &amp;c., by a virgin without the intervention of a human
+      spouse. There is, whenever a miraculous agency is presumed, no greater
+      difficulty in believing that children may be produced without mothers,
+      than that they should be formed without the intervention of a father. Ere
+      a tree can rise in the soil of a field, a germ, seed, or cutting is as
+      necessary as the existence of a moist mould, or other ground. There being
+      then no greater probability that a crop will spring from a moist plain
+      without seed, than that an abundant harvest will come from dry seed alone,
+      we are necessarily thrown back upon testimony, when we are asked to
+      believe in the paternity of man and the maternity of woman without any
+      association of the one with the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mythologists who conceived, or who recorded the fabulous history of
+      Orion, evidently had some idea in their minds of the necessity of two
+      elements in the formation and growth of a child, when they told the tale
+      of the generation of that giant; and the myth connected with this
+      individual is so curiously like one recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures,
+      that it deserves full notice. In Genesis the narrative informs us that
+      there was an old couple, both beyond the age at which there is any
+      probability of either party performing the part necessary for the
+      production of offspring (Gen. xviii. 12), both were desirous of having at
+      least one son, but though they had been long united in marriage, their
+      aspirations had been vain. To this couple, or rather to the husband,
+      Jehovah is said to have appeared with two companions (Gen. xviii. 1, 2),
+      and as the man was hospitably disposed, he ordered his wife to make some
+      cakes, whilst he went to fetch and kill a calf for his servant to dress
+      and cook. The visitors then partook, alone, of the good cheer, and when
+      they had made the repast they promised the husband that his long cherished
+      desire should be fulfilled, and that he should have a son. There does not,
+      however, appear to be anything supernatural in the generation of the
+      infant, except the mere facts that the father had been effete for some
+      time, and the mother had always been barren even when young, so that
+      conception was more surely miraculous by reason of her advanced age. The
+      probability of pregnancy at Sarah's time of life was certainly small, but
+      she was reminded that nothing was too hard for Jehovah to effect. Had not
+      He already made man out of dust and woman out of man? and surely after
+      that it was easy to cause a man and woman to act their respective parts.
+      The reader must specially bear in mind this observation of the Lord's when
+      he reads the Greek story following. (See Ovid's <i>Fasti</i>, book 5).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Jupiter, his brother Neptune, and Mercury, were on their travels; the day
+      was far spent and evening approached. They were spied by a venerable man,
+      an humble farmer, who stood in the doorway of his small abode. He accosts
+      them with the words, 'long is the road and but little of the day remains,
+      my door too is ever open to the stranger,' and so earnest is his look of
+      entreaty, that the gods accept his invitation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jupiter and the others, however, conceal their divine nature, and eat and
+      drink like common men. But after a draught of wine, Neptune inadvertently
+      names Jupiter, and the poor man who has thus entertained angels unawares,
+      is frightened at their presence. After a few moments of natural
+      embarrassment, he goes to his field and kills his only ox&mdash;the drawer
+      of his plough&mdash;then he cuts up the animal, roasts it well, produces
+      his best wine, and lays the feast, when ready, before his august guests.
+      Then Jove, delighted with his hospitality and piety, says to the farmer,
+      'If thy inclination leads thee to desire anything, wish for it, and thou
+      shalt receive it.' To which the old man answers, 'I once had a dear wife,
+      known as the choice of my early youth, yet she is now gone from me and an
+      urn contains her ashes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her I vowed, calling upon you my lord gods as witnesses to the oath,
+      that I would never wed me more. I swore and will keep my word. She and I
+      longed for a son, yet none came to bless our declining years. I yearn for
+      one now, but will not endeavour to procure one, I wish to be a father, yet
+      refuse to be a husband or enact his part.' To deities like Jupiter, such a
+      request was by no means a difficult one to grant, the gods could as
+      readily form a boy as they could fabricate Pandora&mdash;a lovely woman&mdash;and
+      send her to Prometheus, with all the ills which flesh is heir to, confined
+      in an ark, chest, or coffer. Yet the process of what may be designated
+      conception was a strange one. The three simply relieved themselves of the
+      wine which they had drunk, using the skin of the slaughtered ox instead of
+      a more commodious vessel. The man was then ordered to bury the whole in
+      the ground, and wait according to the time of life. The gestation of the
+      earth was completed in ten months, and at the end of that period the
+      venerable farmer possessed a fine lad who grew up and became famous. If,
+      now, we substitute for the Grecian name, Hyrieus, the Hebrew title
+      Abraham; if for Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury, we read, Jehovah and two
+      angels; if for the phrase, "they were on their travels," we read, "they
+      were going down to Sodom to see if it was as bad a place as it was
+      reported to be" (see Gen. xviii. 21); if for the ox which was roasted, we
+      place, "a calf tender and good," we see a wonderful resemblance between
+      the stories of the conception of Orion and Isaac. But there is this
+      difference that in the Hebrew tale the divine gift is brought about by a
+      transient restoration of power to Abraham and Sarah; whilst in the Grecian
+      mythos, the old man is faithful to the memory of a beloved spouse, and
+      refuses to renew with another the pleasure which he had in her company. We
+      conceive that the exigency of the Jewish account, made it necessary that
+      the son of Abraham should be of his father begotten, as well as a child of
+      promise; whereas no one can call Orion the son of any one, although he was
+      as surely a child of promise granted by the gods, as Isaac was, who was
+      given by Elohim (or the gods) of the Hebrews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may enter now, for a short time, into a speculation whether the Grecian
+      story was borrowed from the Hebrew or the contrary. We are disposed to
+      believe that the tale was adopted by the Jews after they became acquainted
+      with the Greeks. The following are our reasons:&mdash;The conception of a
+      godhead composed of three persons, is foreign to the Hebrew thoughts of
+      the Almighty. Still further was it from Jewish belief to think, that
+      Jehovah would come down upon earth to acquire information, and when there,
+      eat and drink and talk like any ordinary man. Amongst the Israelites it
+      was generally held that no one could see the face of God and live, On the
+      other hand, the Greeks were familiar with tales which told of gods coming
+      down to earth in the guise of men. As an illustration of this, we may
+      point to Acts xiv. 11-13, wherein we find that the people of Lycaonia
+      imagined that the gods Jupiter and Mercurius had come down to them in the
+      likeness of men, and prepared to sacrifice to them. Yet after all, Paul
+      had simply cured a single paralytic. On the other hand, the Jews regarded
+      as rank blasphemy, and a crime worthy of death, that Jesus should assert
+      himself to be a son of God, even although the miracles alleged in support
+      of the assertion were as stupendous as they were numerous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, further, we cannot imagine that the degrading story of Jehovah's
+      feasting with Abraham could have been composed, except when the Jews were
+      no better than an untaught and grossly superstitious race. We have
+      already, in <i>Ancient Faiths, &amp;c.</i>, expressed our opinion that the
+      Israelites were at the very lowest period of their history at the time
+      when Isaiah began his exhortations. There had been a confederacy between
+      the men of Edom, of Moab, Gebal, Amnion, Amalek, Tyre, Philistia, and
+      Assyria, the Ismaélites and the Hagarenes, which had attacked Jerusalem
+      and Judea, and captured all the inhabitants, many of whom they sold to the
+      Grecians (see Joel iii. 5-7). At, and shortly after this time, the Jews
+      were in a condition of abject misery (see Isaiah i. 4-9), and capable of
+      believing any story told to them, and would just as easily credit the
+      mythology which the Grecian captives told, or their Grecian masters
+      taught, as their successors do those which at a subsequent period filled
+      the Hebrew Scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst then, on the one hand, there is a probability of the Hebrews having
+      borrowed the fable from Hellenistic sources, there is, on the other, the
+      strongest objection to the supposition that the Greeks should have
+      borrowed from the Jews. Everything which the latter say of themselves,
+      indicates that they were exclusive to an inordinate degree, refusing to
+      have intercourse on equal terms with any of their neighbours, that they
+      never sought to make their history, laws, and customs, known to Gentiles,
+      and especially those outside of Judea, and that their writings never
+      assumed a Grecian dress until the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who
+      ordered the Septuagint translation to be made about B.c. 285, with the
+      direct view of making the Hebrew Scriptures known to the Greeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moreover, we know from everything which was said of the Jews by the
+      Gentiles, that the latter treated the former with contempt and contumely,
+      and would no more dream of imitating any of their writings, &amp;c., than
+      we should care to adopt the myths of Abyssinian negroes as an integral
+      part of Christianity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will now be profitable if we examine the story of Sanchoniathon and the
+      statements of the Orphic Hymns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have, in the course of this chapter and elsewhere, so» often referred
+      to the Grecian story of the Creation as given by Sanchoniathon and in the
+      Orphic hymns, that I think my readers are entitled to receive some further
+      account of them; so I reproduce passages which bear upon supernatural
+      generation, and especially that of the world and its inhabitants&mdash;my
+      main authority being <i>Ancient Fragments, &amp;c.</i>, by J. P. Cory
+      (London, 1832).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of Sanchoniathon we know little; our information may be summed up by
+      saying that he is mentioned eulogistically by Eusebius (a.d. 270-338), an
+      historian whose veracity cannot be entirely depended on. He says that
+      Sanchoniathon had, ere his time, been translated by a certain writer
+      called Philon Byblius, and it seems that Porphyry is credited with having
+      copied a great part of this translation into Greek from the Phoenician.
+      Nothing, however, is actually known of the historian in question, except
+      from Eusebius (<i>Smith's Dictionary</i>, p. 308, vol.III., s. v.,
+      Philon.) We may then assume, according to our inclination, either that the
+      story is really a compendium of Tyrian legendary lore, or simply a
+      representation of what the Greeks imagined. The way, however, in which the
+      generation of beings is described, well deserves attention from its
+      similarity, and its contrasts with the biblical story. First, there was a
+      breeze of thick air and Chaos. These united and produced Pothos. This
+      again united with the wind, and Mot was the result, also called Ilus; from
+      this sprung the seed of Creation. And there were certain animals without
+      sensation, from which intelligent animals were produced.* After this
+      follows a quantity of stuff that is traceable to Hesiod, and a part of
+      which may be considered a paraphrase of Genesis. Then mention is made of
+      Elioun, called Hypsistus (the most High), and his wife Beruth&mdash;as
+      being the contemporaries of others; but no indication is given from whence
+      they came. These produced Ouranos (Heaven) and Ge (Earth). Their father
+      was killed by wild beasts! Then Ouranos married Ge, and had offspring by
+      her. But he had other women, and Ge was jealous. Ouranos, however, came to
+      her when he listed and attempted to kill her children. He had a son,
+      Cronus, who drove him from his kingdom. This son turns out to be the
+      original being called Ilus, and he contrived to emasculate his father, and
+      from the blood which flowed sprang rivers and fountains. The remainder of
+      this story scarcely deserves notice.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The author of the tale evidently had something in common
+     with our modern Darwin.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Ere we turn our attention to the compositions known as the Orphic Hymns,
+      it will be interesting to inquire whether the preceding account of
+      Creation had a Phoenician origin, or may more fairly be traced to an
+      Indian source flowing through a Greek channel After a diligent search in
+      the Hebrew Lexicon&mdash;and it is to be noticed that the Hebrew is all
+      but identical with the Tyrian and Carthaginian, I cannot find any words or
+      roots from which the proper names in the opening paragraph of
+      Sanchoniathon can by any ingenuity be derived. Nor can I discover in the
+      Greek anything which explains the esoteric signification of the story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, on reference to the Sanscrit, there is a curious identity apparent
+      between the second verse in Genesis and a Hindoo idea. The former runs:&mdash;"The
+      earth was without form and void (<i>tohu ve bohu</i>), and darkness was
+      upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the
+      waters." The Indian interpretation of the myth is this:&mdash;"Air in
+      motion, <i>vahu</i>, ruffled the inexplicable, or empty space, <i>ka, has</i>,
+      or <i>Icha, Icham</i>, a word also signifying 'nothing.' Thence proceeded
+      the earth, <i>Ua, or Mot</i> (Sans); <i>Math</i> (Sans) making fire by
+      rubbing sticks (coitus?) <i>Mada, mdda, and moda</i>, pleasure, delight,
+      gladness=love, Eros." This is almost the same idea that Hesiod propounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Orphic Hymns we find much more clearly than in any other writing
+      amongst the ancient Greeks the early Hellenic notion of the generation of
+      the worlds and of mankind. Respecting the value of the fragments there may
+      be some difference of opinion. The curious and doubtful may be referred to
+      <i>Smith's Dictionary</i> (s.v. Orpheus); for me it will be sufficient to
+      state that both Aristophanes and Plato refer to the presumed author as a
+      religious teacher and a preacher against murder, and Euripides frequently
+      mentions him. This will place Orpheus at least before b.c. 480. If,
+      however, we consider him as identical with the oft-sung husband of
+      Eurydice, we must place him B.c. 650 (Smith, s.v.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In quoting from Cory's translation, I shall not scruple to make the sense
+      of more importance than literality: "Zeus is the first&mdash;he, the
+      thunderer, is the last; he is the head and the middle, he fabricated all
+      things. Zeus is male; he, the immortal, is also female; he founded the
+      earth and the starry heaven; he is the breath of all things, the rushing
+      of indefatigable fire. Zeus is the root of the sea, the sun and moon, the
+      king, the author of universal life; one power, one demon, the mighty
+      prince of all things; one kingly frame, in which this universe revolves&mdash;fire
+      and water, earth and ether, night and day, and Metis (counsel); the
+      primeval father and all delightful Eros (love). All these things are
+      united in the vast body of Zeus. Would you behold his head and his fair
+      face? It is the resplendent heaven, round which his golden locks of
+      glittering stars are beautifully exalted in the air. On each side are the
+      two golden taurine horns, the risings and settings, the tracks of the
+      celestial gods: his eyes are the sun and opposing moon; his unfallacious
+      mind the royal incorruptible Ether."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next fragment has been filched by the author of <i>Sanchoniathon</i>,
+      and we must not quote it. After a recapitulation about Chaos, Cronos,
+      Ether, and Eros, he proceeds:&mdash;"I have sung the illustrious father of
+      night existing from eternity, whom men call Phanes, for he first appeared.
+      I have sung the birth of powerful Brimo (Hecate), and the unhallowed deeds
+      of the earth-born giants who showered down from heaven their blood&mdash;the
+      lamentable seed of generation, from whence sprung the race of mortals who
+      inhabit the boundless earth for ever."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Chaos was generated first, and then the wide-bosomed Earth&mdash;the ever
+      stable seat of all the Immortals that inhabit the snowy peaks of Olympus
+      and the dark dim Tartarus in the depths of the broad-wayed earth, and Eros&mdash;the
+      fairest of the immortal gods, that relaxes the strength of all, both gods
+      and men, and subjugates the mind and the sage will in their breasts. From
+      Chaos were generated Erebus and black Night; and from Night again were
+      generated Ether and day, whom she brought forth, having conceived from the
+      embrace of Erebus; and Earth first produced the starry heaven, equal to
+      herself, that it might inclose all things around herself."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The preceding is given by Hesiod (900 B.c.). The following is the version
+      given by Aristophanes:&mdash;"First were Chaos and Night, and black Erebus
+      and vast Tartarus; and there was neither Earth nor Air nor Heaven: but in
+      the boundless bosoms of Erebus, Night with her black wings first produced
+      an aerial egg, from which at the completed time sprang forth the lovely
+      Eros, glittering with golden wings upon his back like the swift
+      whirlwinds. But embracing the dark-winged Chaos in the vast Tartarus he
+      begot our race (the birds). The race of the Immortals was not till Eros
+      mingled all things together; but when the elements were mixed one with
+      another, Heaven was produced, and Ocean and Earth and the imperishable
+      race of all the blessed gods."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Maia, supreme of gods, Immortal Night, tell me, &amp;c." The next
+      invocation is to the double-natured Protogonus&mdash;the bull coming from
+      the egg, the renowned light, the ineffable strength, Priapus the king,
+      &amp;c.&mdash;"Metis (wisdom) bearing the seed of the gods, whom the
+      blessed inhabitants of Olympus call Phanes Protogonus." "Metis the first
+      father and all-delightful Eros." Again, in allusion to Phanes,&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Therefore the first god bears with himself the heads of animals&mdash;many
+      and single&mdash;of a bull, of a serpent, and of a fierce lion, and they
+      sprung from the primeval egg in which the animal is seminally contained."
+      "The theologist places around him the heads of a ram, a bull, a lion, and
+      a dragon, and assigns him first both the male and female sex." "Female and
+      Father is the mighty god Ericapeus; to him also the wings are first
+      given."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Japanese account of the creation is of sufficient interest to be
+      noticed here. I quote it from a translation of the <i>Annals of the
+      Emperors of Japan</i>, by Mons. Titsingh, assisted by interpreters of the
+      Dutch Factory at Nagasaki, and rendered into French, after being duly
+      compared with the original by M. J. Klapworth&mdash;(printed for the
+      Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; London, 1834). In
+      the account of the seven generations of the heavenly bodies, we are told
+      that "anciently the heaven and the earth were not distinct, nor was the
+      female principle then separated from the male. The chaos, having the form
+      of an egg, moved about like the waves of an agitated sea. The germs of
+      everything were there, and these ultimately divided, the pure and
+      transparent ones going upward to form heaven, whilst the dull and opaque
+      ones coagulated and formed the earth. Between the two a divine being
+      sprang up; he was followed by two others in succession." All these were
+      pure males, and engendered without consorts. After them came a male and a
+      female deity, but they had no intercourse with each other. These and three
+      other divine couples, who followed them, reproduced their like by mutual
+      contemplation. The last couple directed the "celestial spear made of a red
+      precious stone"&mdash;said by Japanese commentators to be the phallus&mdash;into
+      the world below, and stirred it up to the bottom. On withdrawing the lance
+      some drops fell from it and produced an island, upon which the celestial
+      couple descended. Each one then began to walk in opposite directions
+      around the isle, and when they met the feminine spirit sang joyously&mdash;"I
+      am delighted to find so handsome a young man." But this vexed the male
+      spirit, who, being a man, asserted that he ought to have been allowed to
+      speak the first. So they parted once more on their solitary walk; and when
+      they met the second time, the woman waited to be spoken to. Then followed
+      a conversation somewhat too coarse for repetition, which was followed by
+      corporeal union. From the intercourse of these divine beings all creation
+      sprang. But, after a time, the partners reflected that there was still
+      wanting a governor for the world which they had engendered. So they again
+      accoupled, and produced a daughter so lovely, that her parents thought her
+      too good for earth; gave her the name of "the precious wisdom of the
+      heavenly sun," and sent her to heaven, there to assume the universal
+      government of all things. The parents once again united, and produced the
+      moon, who was sent to heaven to assist her sister. A terrible fellow was
+      then born from them, who represents the Devil, or those tempests which
+      seem to oppose the beneficent action of the sun upon the soil. The parents
+      returned to heaven, and there are constant contentions between the brother
+      and sister. The former is described as being furious under attempts at
+      control; generally, he was quiet, and always had tears in his eyes (dew
+      and rain), but sometimes, when provoked, he broke every thing, uprooted
+      trees, and set the mountain forests on fire. We need not pursue the story
+      further than to say that the celestial beings created a terrestrial
+      couple, whose children bear considerable resemblance to the Greek Jupiter,
+      Apollo, Neptune, and others, and from them came the first Emperors of
+      Japan. In the matter of evidence upon such a point as the conception of a
+      man without a woman, or a woman without a man, it is clear that
+      unsupported assertion is wholly valueless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For example, I may for a time absent myself from general society, and
+      return to it again after a certain interval, having with me a child, whom
+      I assert to be my very own, produced by my own inherent power, just as a
+      tree produces a leaf which grows, matures, and falls. I may frame a
+      romantic account of a dream, in which I was told that if I planted myself
+      in the central bed of a certain garden, and contrived an apparatus for
+      daily watering my buried legs, that a child would sprout from my right
+      side, who should be to me as a daughter. Yet, however ingenious my tale,
+      there is not any one possessing sound sense and knowledge who would
+      believe me. In like manner, if a woman should tell a story analogous,
+      though not identical, she is certain to be discredited; even the assertion
+      of the existence of a divine father would not, if the woman were unmated,
+      save her character from a stain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may next refer to the legend of Prometheus, inasmuch as in many points
+      it resembles the Hebrew mythos so greatly, that we must imagine they both
+      have a common origin, or that the one is a copy&mdash;though an
+      indifferent one, of the other. Prometheus, or forethought, was represented
+      to be the first who made an ordinary man&mdash;he formed him of clay, and
+      then animated him with fire from heaven. The Jewish tale asserts that it
+      was Jehovah who made the first man. That man was first formed like a
+      statue out of clay or dust, and had no life until breath was infused into
+      his nostrils. In both stories man alone is formed first. In the Grecian
+      fable Prometheus does not make a consort for his man; nay, he refuses to
+      receive one for himself when the gods send to him Pandora&mdash;a paragon
+      of loveliness. Instead of this he gives the damsel to Epimetheus&mdash;or
+      after-thought&mdash;who takes her carelessly, and finds that even a
+      charming woman is not a guarantee against cares and woes. Some accounts,
+      however, say that Prometheus made both man and woman out of clay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The discrepancy does not signify much, for we see the same in Genesis,
+      wherein we are told in one place that man and woman were made together,
+      whilst in another the story runs that Adam preceded Eve, and that, instead
+      of being formed of dust or clay, the latter was formed of bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now refer to the story of Apollonius Tyaneus, whose history has
+      interest for us, inasmuch as it illustrates three important points, upon
+      which much stress has been, and may still be, laid by inquiring minds. The
+      most conspicuous is the propensity of historians, or, to speak more
+      correctly, of a biographer, to record wonderful things about an
+      extraordinary man; next the ridicule cast upon the tale by those who have
+      circulated stories equally improbable, and the indication that travel to
+      Hindostan was apparently common, prior to and during his time. In
+      sketching the life of the philosopher, I quote something from <i>Le
+      Dictionnaire Infernal</i>, and the rest from Smith's <i>Biographical
+      Dictionary</i>. The philosopher in question was born about 4 years B.C.
+      His history was written by Philostratus, about 100 years after the hero's
+      death, and is ostensibly founded upon memoirs left by his secretary,
+      Damis, an Assyrian, who accompanied Apollonius during his travels, and
+      recorded his discourses and prophecies, and acted much as Luke did with
+      Paul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst the proofs which Damis gives of his veracity, he tells us that
+      when he and his master traversed the Caucasus, they saw the chains which
+      bound Prometheus, still fixed to the rocks. This bit of verification is
+      now derided, but in my school-days I recollect having an account put into
+      my hands, written by some author, stating that the remains of the ark were
+      still to be seen upon Mount Ararat.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * On the day before this was written there appeared in <i>The
+     Telegraph</i> a paragraph, to the effect that an Assyrian slab
+     had been translated by Mr. Smith of the British Museum. The
+     record is said to give an account of "the deluge," and it
+     tallies nearly with that given by Berosus, recorded in my
+     second volume.    It adds, however, that the ark was at that
+     period in existence, and its wood and bitumen used as
+     amulets. Singularly enough, the tale is supposed to confirm
+     the bible legend, the writer of the paragraph never dreaming
+     that it more certainly confirms the Babylonian or Assyrian
+     origin of the book of Genesis. The other parts of this slab,
+     which were wanting, have more recently been found. But there
+     is no necessity for me to change the wording of the note.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There was also current a "Joe Miller" about some old woman, who would not
+      believe in flying-fish, which her sailor-boy had seen, but who readily
+      believed his tale of hooking up a chariot wheel on an anchor fluke from
+      the bottom of the Red Sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr. Smith, or Mr. Jowett, the author of the article, very judiciously says&mdash;"We
+      have purposely omitted the wonders with which Philostratus has garnished
+      his narrative.... <i>Many of these are curiously coincident with the
+      Christian miracles</i>&mdash;(the italics are our own). The proclamation
+      of the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation
+      of Proteus himself; the chorus of swans which sung for joy on the
+      occasion, the casting out of devils, the raising the dead and healing the
+      sick, the sudden disappearances and reappearances of Apollonius; his
+      adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and the sacred voice which called
+      him at his death&mdash;to which may be added his claim as a teacher,
+      having authority to reform the world&mdash;cannot fail to suggest the
+      parallel passages in the Gospel history." We learn, moreover, that the
+      biographer was high in favour with Alexander Severus, and that Eusebius of
+      Caesarea naively allows the truth of Philostratus' narrative in the main,
+      with the exception of what is miraculous. None of the authors quoted seem
+      to think of the adage&mdash;"Change but the names, and the same classes of
+      wonders are a matter of faith to you." Surely it is as easy to credit the
+      strange deeds of Proteus as those of Gabriel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether we choose to adopt the hypothesis that Apollonius was a rival of
+      Jesus, that the Nazarene and Tyanean were independent of each other, that
+      the evangelists took a hint from Damis, or Philostratus imitated Luke in
+      more ways than one, we have still the fact that two different biographers,
+      giving a history of the life of two contemporary individuals, assert that
+      the birth of their respective heroes was announced by a divine being, who
+      himself brought about the conception of the infant that, on arriving at
+      maturity, was held to be divine. In writing thus, it will be distinctly
+      understood that we draw no comparison between Jesus and Apollonius, but
+      only between the authors who have undertaken their respective biography.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving this curious point, the next noteworthy one is that Philostratus
+      records, that the Tyanean went through Assyria, Babylonia, and Bactria, to
+      India, "where he met Jarchus, the chief of the Brahmins, and disputed with
+      Indian gymnosophists <i>already versed in Alexandrian philosophy</i>." I
+      have placed these last words in italics, to call attention to the apparent
+      belief of the historian, that prior to his day there had been extensive
+      religious communication between India and Greece&mdash;a point on which I
+      have much insisted in a previous chapter. The Tyanean is said to have been
+      five years upon his eastern journey. We have no idea where the Nazarene
+      was during his youth and before he began his public career, and we cannot
+      help regarding the omission to notice this part of his life as being
+      blameworthy in the evangelists. Those who knew so much of Jesus at his
+      conception, and about his birth and infancy, could surely, if they would,
+      have informed us of his adult years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor, <i>à propos</i> to this short account of the biography of Apollonius,
+      by Damis and Philostratus, must we omit to notice the conceits of those
+      who have assumed that the Tyanean was set up as a counterfoil to, or an
+      imitator of, Jesus of Nazareth; for, just as the Christians may, with some
+      show of reason, affirm that the miracles recorded in their writings have
+      been filched by others; so may the Buddhist, with still greater
+      plausibility, declare that the greatest part of the life of the Nazarene,
+      as given in the Gospels, has been copied almost verbatim from the
+      biographers or evangelists of the Indian saga For myself, I consider that
+      the miraculous parts of the history of all the three conspicuous men which
+      have been named are equally true or&mdash;false.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea of attributing to the Supreme God the birth, or, rather, the
+      procreation, of an extraordinary man, seems, so far as we can judge, to
+      have existed in the Western Hemisphere as well as in the Eastern. For
+      example, in an interesting book, entitled <i>New Tracks in North America</i>,
+      by W. A. Bell, M.A., M.B., Cantab; London, 1869, we find the following
+      legend respecting Montezuma, the most popular ruler of the ancient
+      Mexicans. The legend is intended to explain the occurrence of vast ruins
+      amongst the Pima Indians, of which other history is silent, and runs thus:
+      "Long ago a woman of exquisite beauty ruled over the valleys and the
+      region south of them. Many suitors came from far to woo her, and brought
+      presents innumerable of corn, skins, and cattle to lay at her feet. Her
+      virtue and determination to continue unmarried remained alike unshaken,
+      and her store of worldly possessions so greatly increased, that, when
+      drought and desolation came upon her land, she fed her people out of her
+      great abundance, and did not miss it, there was so much left. One night,
+      as she lay asleep, her garment was blown from off her breast, and a dew
+      drop from the Great Spirit fell upon her bosom, entered her blood, and
+      caused her to conceive. In time she bore a child, who was none other than
+      Montezuma, who built the large 'Casas,' and all the other ruins which are
+      scattered through the land" (vol. i. p. 199).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is allowable for the reader to doubt whether there ever was a Mexican
+      Queen whose renown was spread far and wide, who preferred celibacy to
+      marriage, and who, being rich, was not plundered by the chiefs whose
+      alliance was rejected. We may equally doubt the efficacy of a drop of
+      water, even though it came from the Great Celestial Spirit; but,
+      notwithstanding every objection which the most sceptical can advance, the
+      legend is quite as probable as those current amongst the ancient Greeks,
+      the religious Hindoos, and a large portion of modern Christians. A
+      miracle, always improbable, is not necessarily true because it is said to
+      have occurred in the old world, or indubitably false because it is
+      reported to have happened in the new. Nor can one who regards faith as
+      superior to reason, refuse to believe or to question the truth of any
+      supernatural story simply because he was not told it during his childhood
+      or youth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the philosophical inquirer finds that in every country, with whose
+      literature we are familiar, there are, not only abundance of tales about
+      supernatural generation before the world was formed, but from the earliest
+      periods of history to our own day, he may well pause and inquire into the
+      intrinsic value of a religion or a faith that is founded mainly, if not
+      wholly, upon the assertion that a certain person was the son of the
+      Supreme Creator, and being so, has the qualities of his sire as well as
+      those of his human mother. The orthodox in Britain do not believe in
+      Cristna, Krishna, or Vishnu, because the Hindoo sacred books declare that
+      he has appeared repeatedly as an incarnation of the Creator&mdash;nor do
+      they credit the tales told of the supernatural generation of Bacchus or
+      Hercules&mdash;yet, when they are asked what stronger evidence they have
+      for the truth of their own story, they are unable to give more than
+      affirmations, strong, perhaps, but not more so than those of ancient
+      Hellenic priests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is out of my province, now, to enter into every thing connected with
+      the doctrine held by those who are known as Trinitarians. My main
+      endeavour in this part of my subject is to clear the way for
+      "reconstruction." It is my desire to give to those who have not the
+      leisure, or, perhaps, the inclination, to wade through the dull tomes of
+      theological, mythological, and similar books, an account of what is and
+      has been entertained as religious belief by others, with whom, or with
+      whose opinions, they have not come in contact. I have no special wish to
+      prove that my opinions are right and the prevailing ones wrong; my chief
+      aim is to give data by which others may form a judgment for themselves.
+      With this view I have systematically endeavoured to satisfy myself of the
+      trustworthiness of the witnesses whom I call upon to testify to facts; to
+      my knowledge, nothing has been suppressed which seems to me to bear upon
+      my subject, nor is aught set down in malice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my next chapter I shall institute an inquiry into another important
+      doctrine, held by Christians from their first existence until the present
+      day, namely, the Existence and Ministration of Angels. Since the chapter
+      was originally written, Dr. Kalisch has published an essay upon the same
+      subject in the second part of his commentary upon Leviticus. I shall
+      probably take the liberty of quoting from his pages; but, as we treat the
+      matter from different points of view, I do not feel called upon to
+      suppress my own work because he has preceded me. It gives me pleasure to
+      feel and to know that fellow-workers in the same toilsome task, not only
+      may help each other, but rejoice in the opportunity of so doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Angels. The ideas associated therewith. Why winged. Wishing-
+     caps. Jehovah and His Angels made to walk by the historian.
+     The belief in Angels incompatible with that of an
+     omnipresent and omniscient God. Pictorial representations.
+     Absurd conceptions of angelic wings. Angela want birds'
+     tails. Men have tried to fly. Difference between birds and
+     men. Arms and wings. A writer at fault about this world is
+     not to be trusted in his accounts of another. Bats and
+     similar mammals. The Devil better winged than Michael&mdash;Yet
+     Satan, a roaring lion, goes about as a bull with bat's
+     wings. Angels and beetles. Harmony in creation. Strange idea
+     of spirits. Spiritualism. Varieties of angelic forms. Not
+     the products of lunacy. Angels and demigods. Egyptian ideas.
+     Assyrian notions. Christian fancies. Birds and Men united in
+     human celestialism. Persian Angels. Mithra winged. Angels in
+     Persia twelve in number. Job, the work of a Persian Jew.
+     Angels referred to therein. Darius had a consecrated table.
+     Babylonian belief. Daniel. Greece and Rome. Gods, Demigods,
+     Angels, and Saints. Christian demigods. Angels' duties.
+     Book-keeping, clerks of wind and weather;&mdash;police-agents.
+     The inventor of Heaven admired centralization. Babylonian
+     tutelary Angels. Christian ones. Christian saintly imagery.
+     The bleeding heart of Mary. A funny Chaldean goddess to
+     match. Popish saints have an aureole, but no wings. Francis
+     of Assisi could make stigmata but could not change his arms
+     into pinions. Babylonian and Papal emblems identical
+     Development of Angels amongst the Jews in Babylon. Angelic
+     mythology founded upon Astronomy and Astrology. Planets are
+     Archangels. Angels and Devils mentioned on bowls found in
+     Mesopotamia by Layard. The probable meaning of their names.
+     Hebrews adopted Chaldee beliefs: evidence. Juvenal. Jews and
+     Chaldeans. Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees and our
+     Reformers compared. A legal anecdote. Angels in Ancient
+     Italy. Our angelic forms are of Etruscan origin. Some such
+     beings had three pairs of wings. Etruscans had guardian
+     angels for infants and children. Angels carry various
+     matters. Angels of marriage. Angels for heirs of salvation.
+     Etruscan angel of marriage. Jewish match-maker. Raphael.
+     Description of an Etruscan painting in tomb of Tarquin. The
+     angel of death. The Greek theology. The Greeks taught the
+     Jews. The Jews never taught other nations. Greeks had a
+     supreme god and a host of inferior deities. War in heaven.
+     Titans&mdash;giants. Children of the sons of God and daughters of
+     men. Greek origin of Christian and Miltonian angelic
+     mythology. The begotten Son of God (Hercules born to Jupiter
+     by Alcmena). Restores the kingdom to his father. Greek ideas
+     of demons. Hebrew and Christian ideas of good and bad
+     spirits. The recording angel. Demigods and archangels. Greek
+     deities not winged except Mercury. Some minor gods have
+     pinions.&mdash;Pegasus has wings. Hymen, the angel of the
+     covenant of marriage. Genius loci and cherubim. Alcmena and
+     Mary. Jupiter and "the power of the Highest" Roman
+     mythology. Romans adopted the Etruscan form of angels.
+     Christians adopted it from Romans. The Christian crozier is
+     the Etruscan and Roman <i>lituus</i>, or "divining staff." Rome
+     and London both avid of religious novelty. Instability in
+     religion a proof of infidelity in the old. Hence a desire
+     for infallibility, to crush doubt. Angelic mythology of the
+     Bible. Christians use words in parrot fashion. Words ought
+     not to stand for ideas. Prayer-cylinder in Thibet.
+     Contradictions. Figures and metaphors are theologian cities
+     of refuge. Prophet who says that he converses with an angel-
+     -is he to be credited? A spirit without flesh and bones,
+     cannot move his tongue to utter words. Drunkards see "blue
+     devils"&mdash;they are unreal If the appearance of a man in a
+     dream is an illusion, his words are so too. Absurd ideas
+     about phantoms. Notice of the deeds of a few Hebrew angels.
+     A resume of their history. Inspiration did not reveal
+     angels. Human fancy did. Conspiracy in Heaven! The Genesis
+     of Hell. What sort of a place it is supposed to be. God made
+     the Devil, so man must multiply his imps! Lucifer taught
+     Elohim! Old Testament less knowing than the New. The Devil
+     not a fallen angel. The book of Enoch. Deductions drawn.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There is scarcely a single article in our current belief which does not
+      prove, on examination, to have descended to us from Pagan sources, or to
+      be identical with heathen beliefs older than the Hebrew. The idea of a
+      personal God dwelling in some locality, vaguely described as "Heaven," in
+      which He reigns, and rules, like a modern emperor, has been found to exist
+      in almost every nation whose language we know, and whose history has
+      descended to us. Human weakness makes it so. Such a ruler has been called
+      Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, Mahadeva, Bel or Baal, Melech or Moloch, Ormazd,
+      Elohim, Jah, Jehovah, Jupiter, Yahu, God, and a variety of other names;
+      but He has always been hailed as king, and lord of all creation, having a
+      throne beside which attend a number of servitors, standing before and
+      around him, all ready to do his bidding and to go wherever they are sent.
+      As a potentate rules on earth over provinces far distant from the central
+      government, so the heavenly monarch was, and is yet, supposed to have
+      "viceroys," "lieutenants," or "vicars," who have authority delegated to
+      them, and exercise it under his superintendence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A scheme such as we have described does not seem to have existed from the
+      first amongst the Jews; for, when men of reasoning powers conceived the
+      idea of a Creator, He was regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, and
+      omnipresent. It became gradually interwoven with theology; for when men of
+      limited capacity thought of such a vast empire as the universe, they,
+      under the influence of a grovelling anthropomorphism, recognized, as they
+      imagined, the necessity of furnishing it with a system of acquiring
+      intelligence, and promulgating decrees which should be far superior to any
+      postal plan devised by human kings. Amongst the Kaffirs, men with missives
+      race against time, and by means of relays, messages are sent to vast
+      distances in a comparatively short period. By means of horses, skilfully
+      engaged beforehand, an ancient Persian tyrant could make his commands
+      known all over his vast empire in the course of a few days, and moderns,
+      by means of railways and the electric wire, can forward information at a
+      still more rapid rate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, to old theologians, and even to observant men of the present day, all
+      these means of communication between God and his subjects seemed to be
+      slow. We may, for example, notice a fly buzzing round the head of the
+      running Kaffir, or the ears of the fleetest of Persian steeds, and a
+      swallow on the wing outstrips a railway express. The velocity of the
+      carrier-pigeon has long been known. All these were, therefore, regarded as
+      swift-winged creatures, and fit for message bearers. As then, it was
+      observed, that of all beings who could move, the bird is the swiftest in
+      its movement from place to place, it was very natural that dogmatists
+      should represent the messengers of the great king with powerful pinions,
+      like those of the eagle or the albatross. In this manner the addition of
+      wings to any mythological character sufficed to show that he who bore them
+      was a celestial being; one who stood before the supreme ruler, and
+      received from him delegated power&mdash;either as vicar, viceroy, or
+      messenger. Thus the Greeks depicted Mercury with wings on his legs and
+      elsewhere, and the Hebrews gave large pinions to their seraphim&mdash;sometimes
+      as many as six being used by each (Isa. vi. 2.) The Etruscans pictured
+      their angels with two wings only, and we have followed, implicitly, their
+      lead. But the Hindoos did not in early times adopt ideas such as this.
+      They noticed the speed of the sunbeam, the velocity of the hurricane, and
+      the rapidity of thought; and since they saw many birds borne away by the
+      wind, they imagined that celestial messengers must travel in a
+      corresponding fashion. For one who rode upon the clouds of the typhoon,
+      pinions were useless. I have in my possession a plate,* in which the
+      celestial attendants on the god are all wingless, but have sex. The name
+      given to the attendants referred to is "Apsaras," who are described as
+      having been produced in myriads when the ocean was churned. They are said
+      to reside between the waters above the firmament and those below it, and
+      are represented as being of consummate beauty and elegance of form, their
+      business being to attend upon the gods and give them pleasure, by singing,
+      music, dancing, and in every possible way. They are sometimes represented
+      as being of both sexes, all having the power to change their gender.
+      Generally, they are described as females, and take the business of Venus
+      in the Greek heaven, and of the Houris in that provided by Mahomet and his
+      followers. The Hindoos have in their theology an abode of bliss, in which
+      the pleasures are wholly sensual. In this they do not differ from the
+      Christians, except that the latter only expect to indulge in music and a
+      sanctified vengeance.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Plate x., vol. 1, "Recherches sur l'origine, &amp;c., des Arts
+     de la Grèce," D'Harcanville, London, 1785. The author states
+     that the plate is copied from Le Voyage de Niebuhr, T. 1,
+     Tab. vi.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      With great ingenuity the Hebrews conceived that the will of God must be
+      equivalent to His wish&mdash;that His wish must be the same as a command,
+      and, consequently, that He could send His messenger from one spot to
+      another in an instant; or, if He chose, He could go Himself and
+      communicate personally, as He did with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and
+      Joshua. For such a Being even light would be too slow (see Psalm xviii.
+      10; civ. 3, 4).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From a similar thought arose the stories which have found their way into
+      our fairy mythology of "wishing caps" which would enable the bearer to
+      pass in an instant of time, and wholly invisibly, from one part of the
+      world to another. In oriental countries, a carpet or a coat was the
+      carrying agent, whilst amongst the more clumsy story-tellers of Europe, a
+      pair of boots was furnished, whose wearer could cover twenty miles at a
+      stride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the plenitude of our prejudice we may smile at the caprice which
+      invented the "wishing cap;" but if we reflect calmly upon the matter, we
+      discover more depth of thought in this than has been shown in the
+      formation of tales in which winged angels are introduced. The contrast
+      will readily be recognized if we take a scene from "Fortunatus," and
+      another from the Old Testament The former, by putting on a cap, could
+      transport himself in a moment from Formosa to Great Britain. Whereas we
+      learn, from Genesis xviii, that three angelic men took "a walk" from
+      somewhere to Sodom, that they might see what sort of a place it really
+      was. The hero in the fairy tale was not fatigued; the angels of the Hebrew
+      mythology were glad to wash their feet, and to eat and drink, so as to
+      recruit their energies (v. 8; Ps. lxxviii. 25.) A mythical tale like this
+      demonstrates incontestably the mean condition of the story-teller, who
+      does not furnish Jehovah even with a mule or ass, but makes Him go afoot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We must, therefore, regard the theological contrivance which furnished
+      angels with wings, as being a clumsy one; indicating superficiality,
+      rather than profound thought, and emanating from human infirmity rather
+      than divine inspiration or direct revelation. We shall see this more
+      distinctly if we inquire into the ideas necessarily associated with wings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theologians who have furnished their ideal messengers with wings show,
+      in the first place, that they have the idea of an air upon which the sails
+      can strike&mdash;of muscular structures to move the pinions, and of the
+      necessity for food to enable the motive power to be kept up. The idea of a
+      winged angel, therefore, necessarily implies a belief in the presence of a
+      solid material body moving through an aeriform fluid, resembling the
+      atmosphere just above the earth's surface. That there really was this
+      belief associated with celestial messengers we find in the Jewish
+      scriptures, wherein it is stated, as if it were a common occurrence, that
+      angels came to talk familiarly with men; as, for example, Gen. xviii,
+      xix., xxxii.; and Judges i., where we are told that an angel came from
+      Gilgal to Bochim, to deliver a statement, to the Hebrews, such as a silly
+      girl at Lourdes asserted the Virgin Mary had come from Heaven to make to
+      her; see also Judges xiii., and the book of Tobit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That angels were, moreover, supposed to possess thews and sinews, we find
+      from Gen. xxxii. 24-30, wherein we are told that some celestial being
+      wrestled with Jacob, but could not prevail against him. In a previous
+      chapter, although it is only in a dream, Jacob saw them mount and descend
+      a ladder as if their wings&mdash;if they then had them&mdash;were useless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We shall not now be far from the truth, if we affirm that winged
+      messengers, envoys, or angels, can only be supposed to exist by
+      individuals whose god is nothing more than a man without universal power
+      and knowledge. To any one who believes God to be omnipresent, the idea of
+      His having ambassadors, or vicars upon earth, is blasphemous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The comparative coarseness of those minds which fabricated the notion of
+      winged men, as celestial messengers, will be the more certainly
+      recognised, if we examine into the pictorial conception which they have
+      permitted, and still allow, to pass, for the embodiment of their idea. Let
+      me, for example, invite the reader to cast his mental eye over the winged
+      men-like bulls, &amp;c., of Assyria and Babylonia; the winged genii of the
+      ancient Egyptians; the winged soul and angel of Death of the Etruscans;
+      the angels of ancient and modern Christian painters; and the pinioned
+      heads which came from the walls to listen to the music of Saint Cecilia&mdash;according
+      to Papal legends&mdash;and then to try to discover the locality of the
+      muscular organs which are necessary to give movement to the wings.
+      Everybody who has ever carved, at his dinner-table, a grouse, partridge,
+      pheasant, duck, or other fowl, must be aware of the enormous mass of flesh
+      which is associated with the wings. If we bare the breast and remove the
+      pinion bones from any bird which flies&mdash;(it is necessary to make this
+      proviso, for such as the dodo, the aptéryx, the ostrich, emu, and others,
+      have wings which are only rudimentary, and not used for flight)&mdash;we
+      find but a very meagre body remaining behind. Hence we see the necessity
+      of furnishing an imaginary angel which has wings with muscles that will
+      enable the pinions to be used; but in no pictorial representation of an
+      angelic messenger do we ever find the ordinary figure of a man departed
+      from, or any provision made for muscles to move the feathered organs. And
+      we must notice, in passing, that it is monstrous to suppose that a man
+      must become, in part, a bird ere he can be useful to a god!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, we recognize in the conventional form of angels a total absence of
+      knowledge of natural history, of gravity, of force, &amp;c. Let us, for
+      example, imagine for a moment that the metaphorical wings are real ones
+      used in flight. We see directly that they will only raise the individual
+      perpendicularly into the air. The angelic human creature, even if his
+      wings were&mdash;as they ought to do&mdash;to replace his arms, would
+      still lack a tail, to use as a rudder to direct his flight. It is clear,
+      then, that no one has seen an angel, and that those who have pretended to
+      have done so, were deeply ignorant men. To make our observations upon this
+      point somewhat more comprehensible, we may just refer to the fact that
+      many individuals, misled apparently by the mass of ideal celestial men&mdash;or
+      angels&mdash;which are to be seen in almost every cathedral or parish
+      church in Europe, have conceived the idea that they could fly, if only
+      they could contrive the necessary apparatus to append to their arms, legs,
+      or both; in other words, many men have fancied that they could do better
+      for themselves than nature has done for them. But a few minutes' calm
+      thought would teach any one familiar with the composition of forces, that
+      an attempt at the imitation of a bird's flight must be a failure in man.
+      Let me show this by a simple observation: A bird extends its wings, and by
+      a strong stroke towards its own body, rises into the air, though neither
+      solid nor rigid, both wings and air have apparently been so. In imitation
+      of this bird, we will now suppose that a man places himself, with arms
+      outspread, like the letter T between two uprights, forming something like
+      the letter U.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The individual would then be represented thus [J]&mdash;unlike the bird,
+      his <i>point d' appui</i> would be solid, and his arms would be far more
+      unyielding than feathers. Yet not one athlete in a million could spring
+      upwards, so as to stand upon the summit of the U. Man's "pectoral muscles"&mdash;as
+      physiologists call the mass of flesh below the collar bone and above the
+      nipple&mdash;are intended to move the arm; the bird's pectoral muscles are
+      intended to move the body. Cut off a man's arms and pectorals&mdash;the
+      counterpart of the bird's wings and fleshy breast&mdash;and he has barely
+      lost a tenth part of his weight; on the other hand, cut off the
+      corresponding parts of a bird, i.e.t the pinions and the muscles which
+      move them, and not a tenth part of the original weight is left behind.
+      Speaking coarsely, we may then affirm that man's body is relatively about
+      a hundred times heavier&mdash;air being the standard&mdash;than that of a
+      bird, and his pectoral muscles, relatively to his body, a hundred times
+      less in bulk. Consequently, even if a human being could, by muscular
+      action, develop the bulk of his "pectorals," so that they should be
+      relatively to the rest of his frame, equal to those of a bird, still his
+      bulk would be so much more solid than that of the bird's bones, flesh, and
+      feathers, that his power of flight would be a hundred times less. A man,
+      with the exception of his lungs, is in health, solid or fluid, in every
+      part of him; a bird's bones, on the contrary, are everywhere permeated by
+      air cavities, which make them as light as pith or cotton wool. A pound of
+      lead and a pound of feathers are certainly equal in weight, yet, if both
+      are allowed to drop from a balloon, the first will reach the ground a long
+      time before the second. In like manner, by contrivance, I could with my
+      breath sustain an ounce of eiderdown in the air, although I am quite
+      powerless to sustain, by like means, the same quantity of solid meat. I
+      say nothing of the relative position of the shoulder-joint in man and
+      birds&mdash;although the point is physiologically important.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, we may assert that the originators of the angelic mythology were
+      absolutely ignorant of that which is called comparative anatomy. We have
+      already expressed our belief that no one has a right to expect that people
+      will believe in the reality of a man's knowledge respecting the unseen
+      world, so long as he is palpably at fault in his notions respecting the
+      visible creation. Consequently we assert that one who is careless as
+      regards actual phenomena and ignorant of common truths, cannot be trusted
+      in metaphorical, mythological, or divine lore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A comparatively small amount of observation proves to us that amongst the
+      highest classes of animal life, the wing is the counterpart of the arm or
+      of the fore-leg. In the creature called the "flying squirrel," there is no
+      pinion as there is in the "condor,"&mdash;there is simply an unusual
+      development of skin which unites the fore and hind limbs much in the same
+      way as the web unites together the toes of the goose or duck. In the bat,
+      which, though a mammal, is allied, as regards its power of flight, to the
+      birds, we find that the fore-leg is developed so as to make a bony frame
+      on which a thin skin may be stretched, which is still farther strengthened
+      by being attached to the hind leg. In the ordinary bird, the skin which we
+      see in the bat and flying squirrel is replaced by feathers, which are
+      longer, broader, and lighter than a fold of skin. The ordinary method,
+      therefore, in which angelic beings are depicted does not associate them
+      with the highest classes of animal life. Our modern artists are much more
+      skilful in depicting Satan than in pourtraying Raphael, Gabriel, or
+      Michael.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our last remarks would be comparatively unimportant, were it not that the
+      close observation which the moderns have given, to every thing connected
+      with natural history, has shown us that there is a harmony throughout
+      creation. No animals have noses on their backs, nor eyes in their hind
+      legs. No insect&mdash;so far as I can remember&mdash;has a thick neck; nor
+      has any mammal or bird a thin one, like the wasp, bee, or fly. As we
+      imagine that it is proper to extend our knowledge rather by the lights
+      which we have already attained, than by silly or hap-hazard guessing, so
+      we think that it is better to investigate the subject of angelic forms by
+      comparative anatomy, than by the dreams of divines, who probably have
+      never studied any other subject than the best means of gaining influence
+      over their fellow-mortals. We assert that there is not in all the
+      creation, known to man, any creature with arms and legs&mdash;or their
+      equivalents, legs and wings, or fore-legs and hind legs&mdash;which has,
+      in addition, wings upon arms, legs, head, or back. In such a combination
+      there is something monstrous. I confess that I could, if satisfactory
+      evidence were given, credit the occurrence of a devil with a tail&mdash;of
+      a centaur with a horse's body and a human head&mdash;but I could not
+      possibly believe that Satan went about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he
+      could devour in the dress of a bull with bat-like wings, as well as horns
+      and hoofs; or that an angel of God approaches us in a form nearer to the
+      scarabseus of Egypt than to the human form divine. Yet when we say that a
+      pictorial angel approaches nearer to a beetle that revels in filth, than
+      to an etherial essence which ought to be very close upon perfection, we
+      are still far from precision. Ladybirds, cockchafers, and others of the
+      class allied to the scarabseus that was almost deified in Egypt, have six
+      legs, two wings, and two wing cases&mdash;ten means of locomotion in all.
+      Butterflies, moths, and the like, have six legs and two wings.
+      Consequently, if there be any design in creation, and angels have been
+      created, they can only be regarded as the connecting link between the
+      highest and the lowest classes of animal life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If then, there be such a thing as harmony of design in Creation&mdash;if
+      the Creator be not the author of confusion (1 Cor. xiv. 33)&mdash;if
+      matter be material, and imponderable forces cannot be weighed or made
+      otherwise recognisable by the senses, except by their effects&mdash;if the
+      Almighty be omnipresent and omniscient, it is absolutely impossible for a
+      thoughtful mind to believe in the existence of angels in any shape&mdash;whether
+      material, immaterial, or essential. But this consideration forces us still
+      further, and we feel compelled to ask ourselves, whether, with our minds
+      constituted as they are, we can believe in, or understand any thing wholly
+      immaterial? Whether we can imagine the existence, for, example, of "force"
+      without matter?&mdash;a shape which is formless?&mdash;a form visible to
+      the eye, yet wholly immaterial?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me to be desirable, at the present day, to call attention to
+      this point in a particular manner, inasmuch as there are vast numbers,
+      both in Europe and America, who believe in what is called Spiritualism,
+      and are, in reality, as greatly the dupes of charlatans as were the
+      disciples of Alexander the false prophet, whose history we gave in vol.
+      II. The jargon of these pretenders is based upon the assertion in the
+      Bible that there are spirits&mdash;the accounts of certain of these
+      returning to the earth which they have quitted, or conversing with human
+      beings in dreams, or in reality. But both they and their victims fail to
+      see that a spirit, being without a material existence, cannot put matter
+      into motion&mdash;it cannot produce the waves in the ether that cause
+      those impressions on eye and ear which give the idea of sight and sound.
+      We may best give our reader a glimpse of our meaning, if we compare a
+      spirit to a picture projected on a sheet by a magic lantern. It is true
+      that we can see it&mdash;yet we know that it is powerless to hear, to
+      speak, to move; it cannot of itself even vanish. Yet there are many
+      onlookers who, by a ventriloquist, can be made to believe that the picture
+      speaks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After prolonged observation, I believe that spirits, angels, demons, &amp;c.,
+      have no reality except in the delusions of individuals whose diseased
+      brains induce them to believe that they see apparitions and hear them
+      speak. To this matter we shall probably return by and by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now revert to a subject which we mentioned incidentally a few pages
+      back&mdash;viz., the ideas which induced priestly inventors to depict the
+      angels of their imagination in a particular form. Those who are familiar
+      with the Bible, and not with any other book, and who decline to examine
+      into the ways of God in the universe generally, will naturally reply to
+      our strictures that the angels of the Jews were described in a particular
+      fashion, because they were seen "in the visions of Elohim" (Ezek. i. 1;
+      Dan. x. 5, 6; and Rev. i. 10-20). But this observation involves the idea
+      that the angels which have appeared are so various in shape, that an
+      individual who had seen and described one, could not enable another man to
+      recognize a similar messenger when seen under another form. In Genesis
+      xviii, xix., xxxii., and Judges xiii, angels assume the form of men; in
+      Isaiah vi. they have six wings&mdash;one pair being used to cover the
+      face, another to cover the feet, and another to fly with. To this it may
+      be objected that what Isaiah described were seraphim; yet verse 6 shows
+      that one of these, at least, was a messenger or envoy. In Ezekiel i. we
+      find an apparent description of angels, or an envoy, which is so involved
+      that it is most difficult to understand it. In Daniel x. an archangel is
+      described as a brilliant man whose body was like the beryl&mdash;<i>tarshish</i>&mdash;a
+      stone of a sea-green colour probably; or, possibly, a topaz, "whose eyes
+      were like lightning, and whose arms and feet were like polished brass, and
+      whose loins were girded with fine gold"&mdash;as if to conceal his sex&mdash;a
+      characteristic which we find, from Matt. xxii. 30, angels do not possess.
+      The writer's description must, therefore, be classed with that of afreets,
+      genii, and the like, in the <i>Arabian Nights</i> tales. In Zechariah,
+      again, we find an angel or envoys described (ch. i.)&mdash;(a), "as a man
+      riding upon a red horse," having behind him "red horses, speckled and
+      white" (v. 8); (6), as "four horns" (vv. 18,19); (c), as "four carpenters"
+      (w. 20, 21.) Again, in chap, v., we find an angel in "a flying roll;"
+      another in "an ephah;" another in a big piece of lead, and another in a
+      woman, and still another in two beings of the same nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can readily understand that some who are unacquainted with lunatics,
+      would describe these portraitures as the result of insanity or
+      hallucination; but those who are more conversant with persons of unsound
+      mind will doubt whether any ordinary insane persons ever see or describe
+      things which they have never met with. One or two, certainly, have
+      wonderful flights of imagination, but these have been highly educated men
+      of extensive reading, &amp;c. In mania, when visions are seen, some person
+      or other whose description has been read by the lunatic, or who has really
+      been observed, appears&mdash;or something which the individual has seen
+      depicted, or otherwise been told of, presents itself, or there is a
+      strange jumble of reality and possibility&mdash;just as in dreams,
+      comical, grotesque, or horrible combinations are common, and cause us no
+      surprise. There is, however, too much consistency in the method in which
+      angels are depicted, to enable us to believe that their form was decided
+      by any lunatic or dreamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We scarcely can form an idea whether the Egyptians had a definite belief
+      in angels, as the word is understood by moderns. With them, as it was with
+      the Greeks, it is most probable that all beings which Jews and Christians
+      alike would call angels, were designated "gods" or "demigods." Be this as
+      it may, we find that the Mizraim had deities who wore wings. A round disc,
+      apparently intended to represent the sun, two erected serpents to support
+      it, and a long broad pinion on each side of the body, was symbolic of "the
+      Supreme." The same may be said to be true of Assyria and Persia&mdash;only
+      that in the symbolism of the two last, the serpents did not, generally,
+      appear. In plate 30a, of Wilkinson's <i>Ancient Egyptians, 2d series</i>,
+      a human figure is represented as winged, and before him is a five-rayed
+      star. In plate 35 of the same book, Isis is represented as a nude woman,
+      winged; the position of one pinion being such that it serves to conceal
+      the body from the waist almost to the knees. In plate 36, "Athor" is
+      depicted as being attended by a human-headed bird. On the other hand, in
+      plate 39, where the gods are instructing the king in the use of the bow,
+      the former are bird-headed men without wings. Whilst in plate 44, the soul
+      of a dying man is represented as a human-headed bird with wings, arms, and
+      legs. In plates 52, 53 of the same work, we notice specimens of winged
+      serpents. In plate 63, Isis again appears as a wing bearer, and in this
+      figure we find, as we ought to do, that the feathers of the pinions are
+      attached to the arms of the goddess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Assyria, we may gather from the sculptures which have been preserved,
+      that there was not any idea of angels being essentially different to gods.
+      Indeed, it is very difficult wherever there is a polytheism in any form,
+      to understand the distinction between a god and an angel Even in the
+      religion which passes current as "the Christian," which acknowledges three
+      gods as "coeternal together and coequal," we are distinctly told that one
+      of the three "proceeds" from the father and the son (<i>Athanasian Creed</i>).
+      The New Testament, again, repeatedly informs us that the son was "sent"
+      into this world by his father to effect a special purpose&mdash;e.g.t "God
+      sent his only begotten son into the world, that we might live through him"
+      (1 John iv. 9; see also John iii. 16, 17; Matt. xxi. 37; Mark xii. 4; John
+      v. 38; vi. 29; vii. 28, 29; and compare with John i. 33 and Mal.iii. 1-3).
+      If, therefore, we regard the bearer of a message or an order from the
+      supreme king as an "angel," Jesus of Nazareth was certainly one, inasmuch
+      as he said that he was sent hither by the father of all; and the Holy
+      Ghost was another, for we find John (xv. 26) stating that Jesus would send
+      him to the earth&mdash;an assertion repeated in chap, xvi. 7&mdash;whilst
+      in the fourteenth chapter of the same book we observe that the father was
+      to send this comforter, who was to abide in this world for ever (v. 16).
+      Indeed, the presumed identification of Jesus with the promised Messiah,
+      "the prince" of Dan. ix. 25, shows the belief that he was one who was as
+      much appointed to do a certain duty as was that "angel of death" which
+      went out to destroy the Assyrian army (2 Kin. xix. 35).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such indicated reservation, we notice that the angel which the gods
+      sent to watch over various Assyrian kings is depicted almost invariably
+      with wings. Now he is an archer, standing in a disc representing the sun,
+      having wings below him; now he stands in front of the circle, the pinions
+      and sometimes his body terminating in feathers resembling a bird's
+      expanded tail. Then, again, the minor divinities bear wings, some of them
+      no less than four (Bonomi's <i>Nineveh</i>, 2d ed. p. 157). It would be
+      superfluous to linger over a description of the winged bulls with human
+      heads, and the winged men with eagle or hawks' faces, which are so
+      familiar to us in consequence of the researches of Layard and others. All
+      alike bear testimony to the connection, in human celestialism, between
+      birds and men. Nor can we reasonably doubt, that the idea intended to be
+      conveyed by the inventor of the Assyrian composition which we refer to
+      was, that the being, thus symbolized, was famous for strength like the
+      bull; for rapidity of movement, like the eagle; and for wisdom, like a
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is to be found amongst the relics of the ancient Persians a symbol
+      of an angel who was supposed specially to guard the king. This somewhat
+      resembles that used at Nineveh. There are, however, many forms of it. For
+      example, we find in Hyde's <i>De Religione veterum Persarum</i> (Table 6)
+      a figure of a Persepolitan king, above whom, in the air, and quite
+      distinct from the sun, stands a venerable man fully draped, standing upon
+      what seems to be a large pine cone reversed, which is surrounded by clouds
+      instead of being furnished with wings. The man thus depicted extends the
+      forefinger of one hand to the sun, whilst with the other he holds a ring.
+      In Table 6 Mithra is represented as winged, after the modern fashion of
+      angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hyde assures us, in chapter twelve, that twelve angels were recognized by
+      the ancient Persians, in addition to those who presided over the months
+      and days. One of these appears to be the same as the Greek Rhadamanthus,
+      who sat as supreme judge in the invisible world, and apportioned to the
+      dead their rewards or punishments. A second was equivalent to Neptune and
+      ruled the sea, but he had also under his charge everything which related
+      to generation, or production generally. The third was much the same as the
+      more modern Lares and Penates, and superintended dwelling-houses and
+      families. The fourth had a somewhat similar and subordinate office. The
+      fifth was named after the stars, and had his kingdom in the south heavens.
+      The sixth the learned author does not describe. The seventh really seems
+      to be a sort of duplicate angel, called Haruts and Maruts, who were two
+      naughty ones that rebelled, and are, according to some, imprisoned still
+      in Babylon, being hung up by the heels. The eighth, Hyde is himself
+      doubtful about, and does not describe. The ninth is the same as the German
+      "storm-king." The tenth may fairly be styled the "angel of the victualling
+      department." The eleventh is the giver of life, the opponent of Azrael,
+      the minister of death; and the twelfth angel is one which we may call
+      either by the name of "conscience" or "judgment" for he it is who approves
+      or reprobates the works of man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though I quote from Hyde, I am somewhat doubtful of the value of his
+      authority. He relies to a considerable extent upon the work known as the
+      "Zend Avesta," and supposed to represent the tenets of Zoroaster and his
+      followers. This book is, as I have mentioned, generally believed to be a
+      genuine relic of antiquity by Continental scholars, though it is
+      mistrusted by British orientalists, who regard it as a modern production
+      founded upon Aryanism, Christianity, and Maho-metanism. In my judgment, my
+      compatriots are right; and if it be proper to trust such a man as Sir H.
+      Rawlinson in the matter of the "Avesta," one may be pardoned for believing
+      with him that the book of Job was written by a Persian Jew, or translated
+      by a Hebrew from a work in the time of Darius, or some other of the
+      Achoemenidæ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Job angels are only once mentioned&mdash;viz., in chap. iv. 18, and
+      then they are spoken of in such a way, that we are doubtful whether or not
+      to regard the verse simply as a poetic metaphor. The idea which runs
+      through the part of the chapter in which the passage occurs is this: "Job,
+      you are suffering; the innocent do not perish; the righteous are not cut
+      off; you have been very proper; man has nothing to say against you; but
+      you are not right in accusing God of injustice; you doubtless have done
+      some wrong, for even God's servants are not wholly trusted; they sometimes
+      misbehave unknowingly, and his own angels are called perverse by him (Job
+      iv. 18); you cannot expect to be better than they, and it is no shame to
+      you to be in the same category as they are."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it must be allowed that the words of the story&mdash;"There was a day
+      when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan
+      came also among them; and the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou?
+      Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the
+      earth, and from walking up and down in it"&mdash;do really intimate a full
+      belief in good angels and bad, who were not so much angels, messengers, or
+      envoys, as subordinate powers resembling the barons of ancient England,
+      the Paladins of Charlemagne, or the kings created by Buonaparte; amongst
+      whom all were, so to speak, "good angels," except Bernadotte, of Sweden,
+      who rebelled against the imperial thraldom, and became to his late master
+      a modern satan. In whichever way we regard the subject of angels, amongst
+      the Persians there is little doubt that the Iranian conception of God was
+      wholly anthropomorphic, and that the Medians and their magi, as well as
+      their Persian neighbours, acknowledged a "father of lies," who was
+      antagonistic to the deity.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Quintus Curtius informs us (<i>Life of Alexander the Great</i>,
+     b. v. a ii.) that Darius had in Babylon a consecrated table,
+     from which he used to eat; that Alexander began to be
+     ashamed of his sacrilege in treading upon it&mdash;(it had been
+     placed as a footstool for his imperial chair)&mdash;the sacrilege
+     being against the gods presiding over hospitality, carved
+     upon the table. These may be regarded as angels or
+     otherwise, according to fancy.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Our knowledge of the angelic mythology of Babylonia is comparatively
+      slight. The main thing which shrouds the subject in darkness is the
+      difficulty which exists to distinguish between god, gods, and angels. If
+      we could put any confidence in the book of Daniel, we should recognize
+      therefrom that his "Nebuchadnezzar" most distinctly believed in the
+      existence of angels, for in chap. iii. 25 he believes that he sees the son
+      of God (<i>bar elohim</i>), and in verse 28 of the same chap. he remarks
+      that "God hath sent his angel (<i>malachah</i>), and delivered his
+      servants that trusted in him." Again, in the fourth chapter, in which he
+      recounts a dream, he declares that he saw "a watcher and a holy one" (<i>geer
+      and kadesk</i>) come down from heaven with a message to him. But Daniel is
+      not an adequate authority upon ancient Babylonian beliefs. We are, in the
+      absence of direct testimony upon this subject» driven to such evidence as
+      is drawn from sculptured or other remains in ruins and on gems, and to
+      cuneiform and other writings. George Rawlinson sums up his account thus&mdash;(<i>Ancient
+      Monarchies</i>, vol. I, ch. vii., pp. 138, 9): "Various deities, whom it
+      was not considered at all necessary to trace to a single stock, divided
+      the allegiance of the people, and even of the kings, who regarded with
+      equal respect, and glorified with exalted epithets, some fifteen or
+      sixteen personages. Next to these principal gods were a far more numerous
+      assemblage of inferior or secondary divinities, less often mentioned, and
+      regarded as less worthy of honour, but still recognized generally through
+      the country. Finally, the Pantheon contained a host of mere local gods or
+      genii, every town and almost every village in Babylonia being under the
+      protection of its own particular divinity."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The passage above quoted, which represents very fairly our existent
+      knowledge, suggests to the thoughtful mind a comparison with other
+      religions. In Greece there were many great gods and goddesses, and other
+      divinities of less renown. In Rome there were gods for almost everything.
+      But what these nations called "gods" the Hebrews called "angels," as we
+      shall see shortly. In Christendom angels and gods have, as a general rule,
+      been deposed, and "saints" have taken their places. Not only has every
+      town a cathedral which is dedicated to some particular name&mdash;said to
+      have been borne by a holy man or woman, whose aid in heaven is thus
+      secured by his votaries upon earth&mdash;but every church in every parish,
+      and every chapel in every church is set apart to a particular "saint."
+      Still farther, every trade and every position in life has its tutelary
+      patron in heaven, and secondary gods are as common in Papal districts as
+      they were in the land of the Chaldeans. The philosopher cannot find a
+      valid distinction between Ishtar, Venus, and Mary, Dionysus and Denis, and
+      a host of other gods, saints, or angels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assuming that the minor gods of Greece and Rome, and those essences
+      generally called "angels" are substantially the same order of beings, we
+      find that the Babylonians had a great number of celestial envoys,
+      viceroys, or messengers who ruled over the land and sea, the sky and
+      storms, the thunder and the rain, crops, men, war, buildings&mdash;everything,
+      indeed, was superintended by some one on behalf of the Supreme Ruler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might pause here to speculate upon the question whether there is any
+      difference in kind between such a kingdom as Babylonia or Russia and the
+      heaven believed in by the ancient Jews and the modern Christians. In all
+      there is an autocratic sovereign who has a prime minister and secretaries
+      of state, who keep his books and perform his will according to his
+      bidding; under these again there are private clerks, who superintend wind
+      and weather, rain and hail, snow and frost; governors of provinces,
+      mayors, or prefects of cities; police, and so large a host of
+      subordinates, that nothing, great or small, can be done which escapes the
+      notice of one of the imperial envoys or ministers. The inventor of heaven,
+      such as we know it, was certainly an admirer of 'centralization'. Those
+      who desire to see the description of the unseen world modified are those
+      who are opposed to an absolute monarchy, and who see in everything,
+      everybody, and in all the world a proof of the presence of a supreme,
+      omniscient, omnipresent, Creator, Ruler, or Governor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without going into an account of the Chaldean mythology, we may say that
+      there is strong reason to believe, both from the nomenclature which has
+      survived, and from such gems as are preserved from destruction, that every
+      Babylonian, whether bond or free, was called after some deity, who was
+      supposed ever afterwards to be his tutelary angel In modern times Roman
+      Catholics hold a similar belief, and each parent imagines that by making
+      selection, for his offspring, of the name of a particular saint, the
+      latter can be induced to take the child under its special care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The learned in papal mythology know that every saint is depicted in such a
+      manner that none shall be mistaken. To such an extent indeed is pictorial
+      contrivance carried, that the art of recognising a particular saint
+      demands a special study. It is all but certain that the same custom
+      prevailed in Babylon; but, as all the professors which taught the means of
+      identification have passed away, we can only guess at the name or nature
+      of the angel. Let us imagine, for example, what an archaeologist could
+      make of the figure of Mary&mdash;of the bleeding or burning heart, two
+      thousand years after all history of the mother of Jesus has passed away,
+      like that of Ishtar has done. A curious figure, called heart-shaped, but
+      really not so, is found placed on the central part of a woman's breast;
+      from it flames appear to arise and blood to drop, and through it is a
+      dagger, and this mass of imagery is put outside the body, and the dress is
+      held open to enable any one to see it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a key to the enigma, this is a mystery; but when the key is given,
+      and the inquirer hears the explanation, he finds it so absurd that it is
+      difficult to believe it. In like manner, when I see upon a Babylonian gem,
+      copied as a vignette on the title-page of Landseer's <i>Sabean Researches</i>,
+      a woman who has a beard, a necklace, two small breasts, from each of which
+      she squeezes apparently a river of milk; over whose breastbone there is
+      one large globe and two small ones, placed perpendicularly; who has a
+      spider waist, and wears a skirt covered with pistol-shaped ornaments, I,
+      not knowing whether the Chaldeans adored "our lady of the flowing bosom,"
+      cannot frame an idea as to the name of the saint, angel, virgin, or martyr
+      which is depicted, or what may have been her peculiar duties, who she was,
+      and what trade she patronised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever idea the Papal Church entertains respecting her canonised saints,
+      one thing is remarkable, viz., that they are not portrayed as having
+      wings. Each has an aureole of some sort round his or her head&mdash;a
+      painter's contrivance for saying "This individual, who seems like a man or
+      woman, is not a common but a divine creature." Francis of Assisi is, in
+      addition, depicted with stigmata, or marks on his hands, feet, and side,
+      which, though they resemble those made with nails in the case of Jesus of
+      Nazareth, were doubtless, in the case of the "saint," made with the strong
+      caustic called "spirit of salt" or other escharotic. We might speculate
+      upon the state of mind which sees in the assumption of "stigmata" a
+      greater evidence of faith than would be offered by the conversion of the
+      arms into the pinions of Michael the archangel; but, as it is so much
+      easier for even the most potent saint to make breaches in his skin, than
+      to persuade feathers to grow on his arms, we do not think the task worthy
+      of our care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Babylonians in this respect were predecessors of papal pagans. It is a
+      rare thing to find on any of their gems a winged angel or genius. One such
+      is depicted on the frontispiece of Landseer's <i>Sabean Researches</i>,
+      which is birdlike both as regards the head and pinions; and four other
+      winged creatures are given in Lajard's <i>Culte de Venus</i>. In two the
+      figures are human headed, and combined with the body of a quadruped. At a
+      later period of Babylonian mythology "grotesques" were introduced,
+      apparently from Egypt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not to be lightly passed by, that the symbol which represented the
+      presence of the deity&mdash;which, if we may adopt a phrase, we should
+      call "the angel of his presence" (see Exod. xxxiii. 14,15; Isa, lxiii. 9),
+      is almost identical in the Chaldean and the papal religions, viz., a
+      circle containing a cross, an emblem as common in our churchyards as in
+      the capital of Nebuchadnezzar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The resemblance between papal and Chaldean emblems and doctrines have
+      repeatedly attracted the attention of theologians; and I am not far wrong
+      in asserting that Protestants generally have identified "the woman" of
+      Revelation xvii., spoken of as "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of
+      harlots and abominations of the earth," with Rome under the popes. For
+      myself I do not care to express any opinion on the point, beyond a general
+      dissent from the popular estimation of the dictum and its interpretation.
+      At the same time I must declare that every year, over which my inquiries
+      have extended, has imbued me more and more with wonder at the similarity
+      between the ancient Babylonian and the modern papal religion. The two
+      resemble children of the same parents, only that one is older than the
+      other; and it requires but little penetration in an observer to trace in
+      both, the lineaments of a grovelling superstition, united with a base
+      priestly cunning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our own estimation the strongest evidence in favour of a belief in
+      angels, of every degree, amongst the Chaldeans and Babylonians is the
+      enormous development of angelic mythology amongst the Jews, who lived in
+      the city of Nebuchadnezzar, and in those who migrated thence into
+      Palestine subsequent to the period of the captivity. From indications,
+      which are necessarily imperfect, we have formed the opinion that the
+      Babylonians were astronomical students of great proficiency, from a very
+      remote antiquity; that many of these professors turned their attention to
+      what is called judicial astrology&mdash;i.e., they attempted to judge of
+      future events by certain phenomena occurring in the heavens, and
+      especially in the relationship between different planets and the various
+      constellations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the planets wander through the sky, naturally they were regarded as the
+      messengers of El&mdash;"the Supreme," who sent them to investigate the
+      condition of groups of stars, many of which formed a sort of community
+      that was unvisited by the Great King, for months together, and, in many
+      instances, not at all.As the heliacal rising of one star seemed generally
+      to be followed by good weather, and the corresponding rise of another
+      intimated the reverse, it was natural that one should be regarded as an
+      angel of happiness, the other as a harbinger of misery or death. So
+      strongly rooted is this belief amongst some, that it even "holds its own"
+      in educated England. The astronomer Royal is often asked to cast a
+      nativity; and a living merchant of Liverpool does so yet, having
+      confidence that his deductions suffice to prove their value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The formula is "<i>Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus</i>"&mdash;"The
+      stars rule men, but God rules the stars." A guardian star, then, that is
+      to say, the particular planet or other conspicuous celestial body which
+      was "in the ascendant" at the period of the birth of each individual, was
+      regarded in the same light as Christians esteem protective angels and
+      Romanists estimate patron saints. There can be, we think, little doubt
+      that the seven archangels are the seven planets known to the ancients,
+      each of which had a day dedicated to it, and who thus originated the week
+      of seven days. These amongst the Phoenicians were called the Cabeiri, or
+      the powerful ones. In the conclusion at which we have arrived we are
+      greatly strengthened by the discovery in Babylonian ruins of certain
+      bowls; facsimiles and descriptions of which are given in Layard's Nineveh
+      and Babylon, pp. 510-526. The inscriptions which have been translated
+      appear to be forms of exorcism, or amulets, by which evil spirits are to
+      be driven away; and reference is made in these writings to the devil, for
+      example, under the name <i>shida</i>; and to Satan under the cognomen <i>Satanah</i>,
+      evidently the same as the Satanas habitually used in the New Testament;
+      also to Nirich, probably from a root like the Hebrew <i>narag</i>, "a
+      noise maker or screamer." This creature, as I think, is the same as the
+      "Satyr" of Isaiah xiii. 21, and xxxiv. 14, and represents or personifies
+      those unseen but howling maniacs who wandered about at night (see <i>Lilith
+      and Satyr</i> in my second volume). Another demon is called <i>Zachiah</i>,
+      a cognomen which I cannot satisfactorily explain unless it is allied to <i>Zachar,</i>
+      and indicates the power which, as the French would say, "can tie a knot in
+      the needle" (nouer l'aiguilette) or "a levin brand." Another of the devils
+      is called "Abitur of the Mountain," whose name resembling, as it does, the
+      Jewish <i>Abiathar</i>, is more likely to belong to the good than the bad
+      angels. Lilith is another demon still feared by the Jews, who employ
+      charms against her to this day. She is supposed to be a sort of spiritual
+      vampyre, and to suck the life out of infants and young people. These names
+      of angels occur in the first inscription given by Layard; in the second we
+      find Satan, associated with idolatry, curses, vows, whisperings,
+      witchcraft, and <i>Zevatta</i>&mdash;a concealer, rider, or enchanter from
+      root like this and answering to the fairy which steals away.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     "It was between the night and day
+     When the fairy king has power,
+     That I sank down in a sinful fray,
+     And 'twixt life and death was snatcht away
+     To the joyless Elfin bower."
+
+     &mdash;Lady of the Lake, canto iv., stanza xv.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Another is named <i>Nidra</i>, which I take to signify vows made by
+      supposed sorcerers. This demon is associated in the same line with <i>Zevatta</i>
+      above described. <i>Patiki</i> is another bad influence, probably now, "a
+      sword," for the charm has reference to freedom from captivity. Another
+      devil is called <i>Isarta</i>, which I take to be a leader of banditti or
+      marauders, from the Assyrian word (Furst's lexicon s.v. <i>asar</i>), "a
+      leader, head or commander," and a word from a root like <i>ta</i>, "to
+      drive," "to push forward," "to sweep away." We should call such an one
+      "the demon of destruction."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this same inscription two good angels are named, Batiel or Bethiail,
+      probably a variant of Bethuel, "the residence of El," and Katuel or
+      Kathuail, the executioner or sword of El, from <i>katal</i>, to kill;
+      compare this with the expression, "Or if I bring a sword upon that land,
+      and say, sword, go through that land, so that I put off man and beast from
+      it" (Ezek. xiv. 17). In addition to these two angels another is mentioned
+      who has eleven names, not one of which is written in full&mdash;e.g. SS.
+      BB. CCC.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a third inscription a devil is named "Abdi," which may be derived from
+      the root <i>abad</i>, and be regarded as the same as the New Testament
+      Abaddon (Rev. ix. 10)&mdash;the king of the slaughterers, bucaneers,
+      rovers, &amp;c. We can fancy that Negroes who are captured and sold in
+      droves to foreigners, might imagine that Abdi was the devil which ruled
+      the African slave drivers and Christian purchasers. This demon is
+      associated with Levatta,&mdash;with tribulations, the machinations of the
+      Assyrians, misery, treachery, rebellion; Nidra, with sorrows generally;
+      and <i>Shoq</i>, which I take to be from a root like <i>shuq, or shaqaq</i>&mdash;i.e.,
+      "enemies thirsting for booty, rangers, bands of robbers." Compare&mdash;"And
+      the spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies"
+      (1 Sam. xiii. 17). See also&mdash;He "delivered them into the hand of the
+      spoilers" (Jud. ii. 14; 2 Kin. xvii. 20). Amongst the devils must, I
+      think, also be classed <i>Asdarta</i>, which is clearly the same as the
+      goddess Astarte, and she is closely associated with "the machinations of
+      the Assyrians."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good angels of this inscription are Barakiel, Ramiel, Raamiel,
+      Nahabiel, and Sharmiel, over whose names we will not now linger, except to
+      notice that the devils have names compounded with <i>jah</i>, whilst the
+      good ones are derived from EL.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fifth inscription, amongst the bad things are mentioned evil
+      spirits, both male and female, the evil eye, sorcery, and enchantments
+      both from men and women, along with Nidra and Levatta. The good angels are
+      called Babnaa, Ninikia, and Umanel, which I take to be intended for Wu, <i>banahel</i>=El
+      builds, or "the strong one who establishes us;" <i>nachaghel</i>. El is
+      powerful, or the Angel of Strength; and amanel, or "the fostering angel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In some fragments the names of good angels found have been Nadkiel,
+      Ramiel, Damael, Hachael, and Sharmiel, which we shall probably notice
+      again subsequently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We do not lay any particular stress upon the fact of the bowls, on which
+      these inscriptions were found, having been dug up amongst Babylonian
+      ruins; nor do we care to prove either that they were of Jewish or Chaldean
+      origin. What we here desire to show is, that there existed in Babylon a
+      full belief in the existence of evil and good influences which were
+      invisible; that some individuals had, or were thought to possess,
+      supernatural powers for harm, which could be counteracted by those who
+      placed themselves under the protection of potencies supposed to be holier,
+      wiser, or stronger than the evil genii From the method in which everything
+      connected with witchcraft, magic, astrology, and the like, is spoken of in
+      the Old Testament, and from the fact that slaves are much more likely to
+      imitate their masters than conquerors to become pupils of the vanquished,
+      we conclude that it was not the Hebrews who taught the Chaldees, but that
+      the contrary was the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the view thus enunciated we are confirmed by the manner in which old
+      Jewish writers spoke of the nation that enslaved them&mdash;e.g.,
+      "Babylon, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency" (Isa. xiii. 19); "All of
+      them princes to look at after the manner of the Babylonians of
+      Chaldea."... And "she (Jerusalem) doted upon them, and sent messengers
+      unto them into Chaldea; and... she was polluted with them, and her mind
+      was alienated from (or by) them" (Ezek. xxiii. 15-17); "It is a mighty
+      nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not"
+      (Jerem. v. 15)&mdash;Jeremiah knew more about the people than Isaiah (see
+      Isa. xxiii. 13). Habakkuk, again, speaking of the same people, says (chap,
+      i. 6-10)&mdash;"The Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation... terrible
+      and dreadful:... they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a
+      scorn unto them." Such being the estimation of the Babylonians by Hebrew
+      prophets, it is morally certain that the Jews would regard them with
+      respect, admire, study, and copy them. To what extent the imitation went
+      it is difficult to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, we find that the descendants of Abraham, a patriarch whom
+      a veneration for the ancient Babylonians induced the Israelite
+      mythologists to represent as being a Chaldee; and those who were taught on
+      the banks of the Euphrates, were spoken of in Rome about the time of our
+      era, and shortly afterwards, as being almost synonymous epithets for
+      sorcerers, astrologers, charmers, &amp;c., we must conclude that the
+      Mesopotamian was the master, the Palestinian the pupil. That the two were
+      regarded as relatives we infer from Juvenal (sat. vi. 544-552)&mdash;"For
+      a small piece of money the Jews sell whatever dreams you may choose, but
+      an Armenian or Commagenian soothsayer promises a tender love;... but her
+      (i.e., the lady who consults such folk) confidence in Chaldeans will be
+      the greater."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, ere we leave this portion of our Essay, we must notice one other
+      piece of evidence of considerable value which is drawn from the New
+      Testament. We find, for example, in Acts xxiii. 8, "The Sadducees say that
+      there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees
+      confess both." If we inquire into the origin of these sects&mdash;and we
+      shall be greatly assisted in doing so by two very elaborate articles by
+      the erudite Dr. Ginsburg, in Kitto's <i>Cyclopaedia of Biblical Knowledge</i>&mdash;we
+      shall see reason to believe that the Sadducees were a sect who considered
+      that they were not bound to believe any tenet as necessary unless they
+      could find it distinctly enunciated in the Pentateuch. They resolutely
+      declined, therefore, to accept as revelation such stories as had been
+      adopted by the Hebrews from Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and possibly
+      from the Romans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We might institute a comparison between the Sadducees and those whom we
+      know as "reformers." The first acknowledged the authority of Moses alone,
+      such as they found it in "the five books;" the second acknowledged the
+      authority of Jesus and his apostles, such as they found it in the New
+      Testament: the first rejected the commentaries of Rabbis; the second those
+      of "the fathers." Both appealed to antiquity, and both traced to what we
+      may designate paganism, heathenism, or foreign sources generally, a large
+      portion of the current faith which they saw around them. The Sadducees
+      regarded the doctrine of seraphic interference, and all the angelic
+      mythology common in their time, as the fond fancy of those who desired to
+      harmonize Judaism with Gentilism. The Reformers, in their turn, rejected
+      all the fables of Papal anchorites, &amp;c.; denied the power of any
+      martyr to influence the condition of the living after their death; and
+      generally opposed the saintly, as the Sadducees opposed the angelic,
+      hierarchy. Individuals who sympathize with Luther, Calvin, and those of a
+      similar way of thinking, may readily understand the Sadducees, whereas,
+      those of what is called the "High Church," will give their interest to the
+      Pharisees, who upheld the then mediaeval customs, &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that some will say, that Jesus of Nazareth, being the son
+      of God, a deity incarnate, and consequently familiar with everything which
+      goes on in the court of heaven; having adopted the angelic mythology;
+      having conversed familiarly with the devil; having sent, at least, two
+      thousand devils out of one man into a herd of swine; having gone down to
+      hell, wherever that may be; and having preached to the spirits imprisoned
+      there, whoever they may be or have been; having, still further, had an
+      angel to comfort him; having had a conference with Moses and Elijah on a
+      certain hill; having asserted that he had only to pray to his father to
+      obtain the assistance of twelve legions of angels; and having also told us
+      that every child has an angel who stands before the face of God&mdash;seeing
+      these things, I say, one can imagine persons asseverating that all our
+      current notions of angels, which are built upon the New Testament, must be
+      true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To this we rejoin, that these assertions beg the question. The philosopher
+      affirms that the idea of angels is incompatible with that of an
+      omnipresent God&mdash;that the belief of Jesus in an angelic mythology
+      proves him to have had an anthropomorphic notion of "the Supreme," and, as
+      a consequence, it follows that Jesus was nothing more than a Jew, although
+      very superior to the generality of his countrymen, having possibly been
+      taught by some Buddhist.* The bigot, on the other hand, can only scream
+      out the formularies which the so-called orthodox provide for him. Johanna
+      Southcote once made some folks believe that she was pregnant with a
+      Messiah, and she had most enthusiastic followers; but neither argument nor
+      rhetoric sufficed to beget the promised baby and, in like manner, no
+      amount of declamation can convert an assumption into a fact. But of this
+      truth most of our theologians appear to be ignorant, and, like the heathen
+      with their litanies, they think that they will obtain their will by "much
+      speaking."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * It will be noticed by the reader, that the remarks in the
+     text have reference to the supernatural stories which were
+     interwoven into the biography of Jesus by those whom we call
+     Evangelists. The bibliolaters must, however, stand or fall
+     by the many legendary tales which pass current for truth. If
+     Jesus, as an ordinary Jew, believed in angels&mdash;just as our
+     king, James I., believed in the existence of modern witches
+     &mdash;we cannot use his evidence to prove the existence of angels
+     and devils, any more than the Christian laws against
+     witchcraft demonstrate that old women and men sold their
+     souls and bodies to Satan. If, on the other hand, we allow
+     that the spiritual mythology of the New Testament is due to
+     Pharasaic influence, all the testimony propounded in favour
+     of the assertion, that Jesus was, in reality, "a son of
+     Jehovah," crumbles away.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When summoned, a long time ago, to give evidence in a court of justice,
+      the question was put to me&mdash;"Now, doctor, you have heard the symptoms
+      from which the deceased suffered; do you believe that they were produced
+      by arsenic?" Being doubtful about the propriety of the query in a court of
+      law so prudish as ours is, I remained silent, and in an instant the judge,
+      Baron Alderson, said&mdash;"I won't allow that question to be put or
+      answered; you want the witness to take the place of the jury, and it shall
+      not be done. You may ask the doctor, if you will, what are the symptoms
+      produced by arsenic, when taken in a poisonous dose, and then it is the
+      business of the jury to compare those, with such as have already been
+      sworn to as occurring in the man before he died." This anecdote is
+      frequently in my mind when I am composing an essay like the present. If I
+      wish to convince the jury who reads my papers of the truth of a particular
+      conclusion to which I have arrived, it is not enough for me to express my
+      own opinions. I may assert, in the matter in question, that I am a skilled
+      witness, and have closely investigated the subject, but it is open to any
+      one to doubt my industry and to distrust my judgment; consequently, it is
+      necessary for me to adduce evidence, as well as to draw deductions
+      therefrom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hypothesis which I have formed, after a pretty extensive reading, is,
+      that the belief in the mythology of angels which is current amongst
+      Christians at the present time, and which is based upon a series of
+      pretended revelations, said to have been made exclusively to Jews of
+      ancient times, is, in reality, founded upon fancies of pagan priests or
+      poets; and, as a corollary, I infer, either that our celestial mythology
+      must be given up to oblivion, as being heathenish, or that we must abandon
+      those claims to an exclusive inspiration which have been made for, and
+      accorded by many to, the Bible. I have already described the ideas
+      associated with angels in some ancient peoples, and I now propose to
+      examine those of other nations with whom the Jews and Christians, directly
+      or indirectly, came in contact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reader of ancient Roman history cannot doubt that the city on the
+      Tiber was indebted to the Etruscans for all, or nearly all, of its early
+      knowledge. It is probable that the original gods and goddesses of Rome
+      were those of their northern neighbours, and everything which the Romans
+      knew of augury was due to the priests of Etruria; consequently it is not
+      unprofitable to inquire, as far as we can, whether these had any idea of
+      beings such as we call angels. As we have not many available written
+      remains of the remarkable people to whom we refer, we are obliged to be
+      satisfied with pictorial and other relics which have survived until our
+      days. Some of the scenes depicted on urns, vases, and walls, in tombs and
+      elsewhere, are sufficiently explanatory of the subjects which the artist
+      has desired to pourtray; others, on the contrary, can be interpreted in a
+      variety of ways. Paying no attention to the latter, we may safely affirm,
+      that the Etruscans had ideas upon the subject of angels very similar to
+      our own. The form which their artists gave to them is precisely that which
+      is current at the present day, except that, unlike the Christian, the
+      Etruscan angels were of different sexes. Sometimes both males and females
+      were draped from the neck to the feet, in other drawings they were
+      partially or wholly nude. In the vast majority of cases each one possessed
+      two wings that were attached to the back, behind the arms, precisely as
+      they are in modern pictures; but in one very remarkable instance (plate 7,
+      <i>Description de quelques Vases Etrusques</i>, par H. D. de Luynes&mdash;folio,
+      Paris, 1840) the beings to whom we refer had each three pairs of pinions,
+      the one attached to the shoulder blades, a second to the loins, and a
+      third to the calves of the legs. These creatures correspond to our demons
+      or imps of Satan, or the devils of the New Testament which were sent into
+      a herd of swine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of the winged Etruscan demons must be regarded as "angels of death,"
+      for they are represented as hovering in the air over individuals, such as
+      Cassandra and Polynices, who are about to be sacrificed. One angel, who,
+      as usual, Diaitized bv is spoken of by the Christian describer thereof as
+      a goddess, is designated "Cunina." Her business was to look after and take
+      charge of infants in their cradle. A being such as this, by whatever name
+      we may designate her, cannot fail to remind us of the expression in the
+      New Testament&mdash;"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little
+      ones; for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the
+      face of my father which is in heaven" (Matt, xviii. 10). In another
+      Etruscan painting we find two angelic beings, fully draped, carrying a
+      nude corpse apparently to the future or invisible state. These naturally
+      remind us of the passage in Rev. xx. 1&mdash;"I saw an angel come down
+      from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his
+      hand." In some Etruscan paintings we have scenes which are supposed to
+      indicate the preparation of a bride for the wedding ceremony. In these
+      there are diminutive angels introduced, which are sometimes hovering in
+      the air and sometimes seated on the edge of the bath; these are by the
+      learned supposed to represent Cupid, Eros, Hymen, or Love, and they
+      indicate the devout feeling, that an angel watches over those who contract
+      marriage in an orthodox manner.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Whether the Romans obtained all their inferior deities
+     from the Etruscans, or whether the priests of the Eternal
+     City in ancient times improved upon the mythology which came
+     to them from their predecessors, just as the priests of
+     modern Rome have expanded, without improving, the
+     Christianised paganism which came to them, is a matter
+     difficult to decide. But it is certain that the old Romans
+     multiplied their "gods," as the modern ones have multiplied
+     their "saints." Amongst the former were many curious
+     deities, who presided at the wedding of young people, some at
+     the public ceremony, and others at the private rites.
+     "PRema" was the angel of quietness, whose business it was to
+     see "ne subacta virgo se ultra modum commovens semen a vulva
+     ejiceret." "Subigus" was another angel or demigod, whose
+     duty it was to see that the consummation should take place
+     in an appropriate manner&mdash;lovingly, pleasantly, and
+     peacefully. There was another&mdash;Pertunda&mdash;of whom Augustine
+     (Civ. Dei, vol. 9) remarks&mdash;"Si adest dea Prema ut subacta se
+     non commoveat quum prematur, dea Pertunda quid ea facit?" In
+     modern times the Papal saints, Cosmo, Damian, Foutin, and
+     sundry others, have had the special duty assigned to them to
+     make the husband fit for his marital duties.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That the absence of such a spirit was looked upon as unlucky we gather
+      from an expression in Propertius (b. v. el. 3) in which a wife, whose
+      husband has been obliged to leave her, and go to a distant war, when
+      bewailing her destiny, amongst other references says&mdash;"I wedded
+      without a god to accompany me." This calls to memory the statement in
+      Hebrews i. 14, wherein, after speaking of angels, the writer asks&mdash;"Are
+      they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who
+      shall be heirs of salvation?"&mdash;a sentence which implies the idea that
+      those who are not heirs of salvation have not angels which minister for
+      them. The doctrine was certainly not exclusively Christian. Of this any
+      one may assure himself by referring to Eccles. v. 6&mdash;"Neither say
+      thou before the angel that it was an error; wherefore... should God
+      destroy the works of thine hands?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, we find an angel seated between two young folk of opposite sexes,
+      and archaeologists tell us that the winged creature thus figured is a
+      nuptial god&mdash;one whose business is to induce appropriate couples to
+      meet, to love, and to marry. Such a celestial match-maker was the Jewish
+      Raphael, who, though "one of the seven holy angels, which present the
+      prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the
+      Holy One" (Tobit xii. 15)&mdash;yet condescended to conduct Tobias a long
+      way to meet Sara, and instructed him how he could marry her with safety,
+      and defeat a devil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst other individuals, in the Etruscan mythological paintings who are
+      winged, are the following, which are named thus by the authors who
+      describe the vases, &amp;c., whether rightly or wrongly it is not
+      necessary for me to prove:&mdash;Janus; Furina, the goddess of thieves;
+      Mercury, the messenger of Jupiter and the patron of robbers; Vacuna, or
+      Desideria, or Venus, the goddess of indolence, desire, or love; Hymen, the
+      angel or god of marriage; Cupid, the god of love; Victory, Bacchus,
+      Silenus, Dryads, Calliope, Tempest, Fame, Proserpine; Iibitina, the
+      goddess of funerals; Venus, infera, Nemesis, or fate; Death, life,
+      Charybdis, The Furies, Geryon, Justice, Peace, Iris, and Diana. On such a
+      subject the reader may consult with advantage Augustine (<i>de Civitate
+      Dei</i>, b. vl. c. 9); Arnobius (<i>Adversus Gentes</i>, b. iv. c. 7); and
+      Tertullian (<i>Ad Nationes</i>, b. ii. c. 11).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now refer to a remarkable series of drawings, representing the
+      funeral of Patroclus, described by Homer, which were discovered in the
+      Etruscan sepulchre of the Tarquinii near what once was Vulci and is now
+      "Ponte della Badia," in the year 1857, and which is described in <i>Noël
+      des Vergers L'Etrurie et les Etrusques</i>, and in <i>Corpus Inscriptionum
+      Italicarum</i> (Turin 1867), the latter of which I use as my authority. In
+      one of the scenes we find depicted the sacrifice of the Trojan youths at
+      the grave of Patroclus. The artist has not left to the fancy of the
+      observer the identification of his figures, but has written in Etruscan
+      letters the modified names of the actors. Beginning from the right hand,
+      we find Ajax Oileus, and next to him a naked Trojan youth, whose hands are
+      bound behind his back, and who is guarded by Telamonian Ajax. Behind and
+      besides him is Charon, and in front of the latter is another Trojan youth,
+      nude, seated on the ground, and receiving his death-wound from Achilles.
+      Behind the latter stands a winged, draped, tall female figure, whom at one
+      time I took to be the glorified soul of Patroclus; but, having seen a
+      similar figure on other Etruscan designs depicting human sacrifice or
+      death, and finding over the head of this one the word <i>fanth, vanth, or
+      fano</i>&mdash;according to the value which we assign to the digamma or F
+      and O&mdash;which is, I think, equivalent to the Latin <i>Fatum</i>, fate,
+      &amp;c., we must regard the figure as resembling Azrael&mdash;"the angel
+      of death." Besides and behind her stands a draped man unarmed, having a
+      fixed countenance of settled melancholy, and regarding without a shade of
+      exultation the death of the young Trojan whom Achilles slaughters. Over
+      his head are the words <i>hinthial patrucles</i>, which is believed to
+      signify "the shade of Patroclus." The last figure in the group is
+      Agamemnon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This and the other sculptures in the tomb are extremely interesting to the
+      archaeologists, firstly, because they bear evidence of a very superior
+      style of art; secondly, because they testify to the antiquity of Homer's
+      <i>Iliad</i>, and its popularity in other nations than the Greek. They
+      show, moreover, that the wealthy men amongst the Etrurians were not
+      ignorant of the Grecian language, or rather literature, although they had
+      difficulty in adapting the Hellenic words to their own alphabet; lastly,
+      they ought to be especially valuable to us inasmuch as they demonstrate
+      the existence of a belief in ancient Italy of the resurrection of the
+      body, and of the existence of angels precisely the same in shape as those
+      which pious Christians delight to see in their churches, and in their
+      manuals of devotion. It is worthy of notice that upon some Etruscan vases
+      in the museum at Munich there are angelic warriors covered with armour&mdash;a
+      winged female carrying a caduceus, and winged horses&mdash;like Pegasus,
+      and probably like those seen by Zechariah, the Hebrew vaticinator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We consider it best to omit making any remarks respecting the ideas
+      entertained about angels by the Phoenicians, for we have scarcely any
+      information about their mythology beyond the names of certain gods and
+      goddesses. It will be more profitable to pass on to the Greeks, and
+      inquire into the general system of their theological belief. This is, we
+      think, a matter of some importance, for this people, as victors and
+      masters, came into contact with the Jews in the time of Joel, about b.c.
+      800; and if any captive Hebrews came back from Grecia (see Joel iii. 6),
+      we believe that they would naturally bring back with them much of the
+      Hellenic lore of their conquerors. The reader must not be carried away
+      here with the once popular notion that everything which was found in
+      heathendom, which resembled something biblical or Jewish, came of
+      necessity from scriptural or Israelitish sources. The reverse is much more
+      likely, for the Hebrews in old times are described by their historians and
+      preachers as hankering after novelty&mdash;"going whoring after other
+      gods," as the Bible has it. They, on the other hand, were encouraged to
+      keep themselves aloof from others, and were never a missionary nation;
+      nor, had they been so, were they sufficiently honourable or wealthy, as a
+      race, ever to command respect. They were, indeed, generally despised by
+      the people round about them, who would no more think of adopting Jewish
+      fables than we should care to learn theology and cosmogony from African
+      negroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we endeavour to reduce Grecian mythology to its simplest expression, we
+      find that it consisted of a belief in a creator&mdash;grand beyond
+      conception, and one whom the mind could not conceive, nor pencil nor the
+      chisel depict. Under him there was thought to be a host of minor deities,
+      who agreed, more or less, amongst themselves, each having a particular
+      department of creation to preside over, or a definite function to perform.
+      Jupiter, for example, had the air and the heavens generally under his
+      management; Neptune superintended the sea; Rhea, or Gaia, or Gee, was the
+      goddess of the surface of the earth; and Pluto had the management of the
+      interior of the globe and of those who were buried therein. If corpses
+      were unburied, they did not come under his immediate cognizance. Then, as
+      it was quite possible that one deity might be counteracting another, as,
+      indeed, they are represented to have done during the Trojan war, another
+      god was necessary to be a medium of communication between the others, and
+      Mercury became the messenger, or go-between.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below the major gods was an infinity of smaller ones, who presided over
+      physical and moral matters. There were, for example, wood and tree nymphs;
+      Dryads and hamadryads&mdash;gods of rivers, such as Simois and Scamander.
+      Pan presided over husbandmen; Hermes, over thieves, &amp;c. Others, like
+      Eros, fulfilled the duty of bringing the sexes together. Hymen secured
+      them in marriage, and Venus had the duty of insuring connubial happiness,
+      whilst Lucina's business was to bring the offspring of the marriage into
+      the world&mdash;with as little pain or danger as possible. Then, again,
+      Fortune brought good luck. The "furies" brought evil, and the "fates"
+      ruled the destiny of mortals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Against some of these gods others rebelled. For example, there were the
+      Titans, the sons of Heaven and Earth (Cælus et Terra), who were all of
+      gigantic stature, and may be said to be identical with the giants spoken
+      of in Gen. vi. 2-4, as being the offspring of the sons of God and the
+      daughters of men. These Titans were much disliked by their father, and
+      confined in the bowels of the earth, or, as we should say, in Hell; but
+      their mother relieved them, and they in turn revenged themselves upon
+      their progenitor. When Jupiter succeeded to Cronos or Saturn, the giants,
+      the sons of Tartarus and Terra, or Hell and Earth, united with their
+      half-brothers, the Titans, and attacked Olympus, and its gods, in dismay,
+      assumed disguises and fled into Egypt&mdash;a rare spot, whence also came
+      as history tells us, the founder of Christianity and the doctrine of the
+      Trinity. To regain his position, Jupiter found a man&mdash;a son of his
+      own&mdash;whom he had begotten by lying three nights in the heart of the
+      earth, or, as the fable has it, in the arms of Alcmena&mdash;Hercules by
+      name, to attack the allied monsters, and thus with the aid of a mortal the
+      gods became victorious. Just as in more modern days the divine mission and
+      position of Jesus of Nazareth and Mahomet of Mecca, have been determined
+      by the arms of human warriors. The power of men in heaven is wonderful,
+      considering how great is their weakness upon earth! It is probable, that
+      to the Greeks, Milton owed his ideas of <i>Paradise Lost</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      According to the ordinary ideas of angels, the gods, demigods, goddesses,
+      genii, and the like, were essentially the same amongst the Hebrews as the
+      archangels and inferior hierarchy are in modern christian mythology. We
+      shall the more readily see this if we inquire into the ideas of the Greeks
+      respecting <i>demons</i>. "The latter were regarded as spirits which
+      presided over the actions of mankind, and watched over their secret
+      intentions." Many Greek theologians thought that each man had two, the one
+      good, the other bad. These sprites could change themselves into any form,
+      and at death the individual was delivered up to judgment by these
+      companions, who testified to his actions during life. Socrates often spoke
+      of his own peculiar "spirit." Not only were these creatures supposed to
+      influence men, but they were also believed to guard places, and a genius
+      loci was the same as the God of Ekron, or any other locality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is almost impossible for a thoughtful man not to compare with the Greek
+      ideas those held by moderns. We hear in familiar discourse, and read in
+      popular books, about a good angel and a bad one. God is said to use both
+      (see Ps. lxxviii. 49, and 1 Kings xxii. 21, 22.) Many, too, of the readers
+      of Sterne will remember the remarks which he makes about a recording angel
+      who was obliged to register an oath, but who contrived to blot out the
+      entry with a tear (com. Mal. iii. 16.) As we have already adverted to the
+      belief of Jesus that every child had an angel, who is always in the
+      presence of. God, we need not remark again upon the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the Grecian gods and demigods were the counterparts of the
+      archangels and lesser powers of the Jews and Christians, they were not
+      pictorially depicted, as they were in other places, like winged men or
+      other creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Arnobius, for example, in <i>Advenus génies</i>, when writing about the
+      divinities of the heathen, remarks, that they are so like ordinary men and
+      women, that the artist has to resort to some contrivance to show that any
+      offspring of his brush, or of his chisel, is a god or goddess. A painter,
+      he observes, will select the finest young women he can discover&mdash;or
+      the handsomest prostitute in his country, and from one maiden, or from the
+      collective charms of many, will paint a lovely woman and style her Venus;
+      yet she is only a courtezan after all. His remark is a certainly true one.
+      Jupiter is never represented otherwise than as a man, nor does Minerva
+      ever figure except as a woman. None of the greater gods of Hellas are
+      winged like the tutelar gods of the Assyrians and Persians were. Even
+      Hermes, though he does bear pinions, does not carry them in the usual
+      form. Instead of having powerful wings behind his arms, like the Gabriel
+      or Michael of Christian mythology, he has little nippers attached to each
+      side of a cap, of a pair of socks, and of a curiously-shaped wand&mdash;all
+      of which he can put off when he pleases, or don when he is sent with a
+      message. Jupiter's thunders bear similar wings. But such minor deities, or
+      devils, as Eros or love; Hymen or marriage; Fame, or victory; Aurora, or
+      day-break; the winds, the Genii, the Gorgons, the Furies, the Harpies,
+      Iris, Isis, Hebe, Psyche, and even Pegasus&mdash;a wondrous horse, are
+      winged with pinions which resemble those of the eagle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now pause for a moment to compare one thing with another, we readily
+      see that Hymen may fairly be described as the angel of the covenant of
+      marriage, and that Mercury is identical with Raphael. The "genius loci,"
+      the "dryad" or "hamadryad," is the counterpart of the cherubim guarding
+      the ark and the mercyseat of the Jewish temple. Apollo is the angel in the
+      sun (Rev. xix. 17.) Neptune is "the angel of the waters" (Rev. xvi. 5.)
+      Nay, we may&mdash;indeed we must go further, and affirm that either the
+      angel Gabriel, or "the power of the Highest," which, we are told in Luke
+      i. 26, 35, overshadowed Mary, the espoused wife of Joseph, is a perfect
+      counterpart of the Hellenic Jupiter who overshadowed Alcmena.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both produced a being equally celebrated&mdash;for we may fairly assert
+      that Hercules was believed in by as many individuals as have faith in
+      Jesus. For ourselves, we do not credit the myth of the Hellenists; of the
+      very existence of a Hercules we are profoundly incredulous. Yet we do not
+      doubt for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth lived as a man upon this earth,
+      and founded, with the subsequent assistance of Paul, the religion which is
+      called Christian. But of the supernatural conception of Mary and of her
+      impregnation by a deity we are intensely sceptical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the theology of the Romans in the times prior to, and somewhat
+      subsequent to, our era, we need say little. It resembled both the Etruscan
+      and the Greek at the first, and subsequently it was modified by the
+      Egyptian and by the Persian. But it was in Rome, whilst pagan, that the
+      present pictorial type of angels was perfected (see Plates ix. to xiii,
+      Lajard's <i>Culte de Venus</i>), in which allegorical figures, from old
+      Roman bas-reliefs, precisely like modern angels, are represented killing
+      the Mithraic bull. I may also add, in passing, that the crozier borne by
+      Romanist bishops is a reproduction of the Etruscan <i>lituus</i>, the
+      augurs' or diviners' staff of office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Roman nation, like the Papist and Peruvian religions, was omnivorous,
+      and not only venerated the old gods of the soil, but adopted new
+      divinities eagerly. Whoever chose to import a new deity, and a novel style
+      of worship was hailed, patronized and enriched, much in the same way as at
+      London during recent times, Mesmerists, "spirit rappers,"
+      "cord-conjurors," clairvoyants, male and female, spiritualists like Home,
+      very High Churchmen, and many other classes of a similar stamp have been
+      encouraged. As in Athens, we are told that "the Athenians and strangers
+      which were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to
+      hear some new thing" (Acts xvii), no matter whether the novelty was
+      religious or otherwise, so it has been elsewhere. London really, and Rome
+      metaphorically are constantly adopting new ideas, some highly commendable
+      and philosophical, others quite the reverse. Amongst the latter, we may
+      mention that which professes that a certain man can, like Jesus is said to
+      have done, heal by a touch. This assertion, however, is only sparsely
+      credited on the Thames. Far more general is the belief which professes,
+      that an Ecumenical Council can by a vote make one man and his official
+      successors "infallible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot pass by this subject without remarking that instability in
+      religion is evidence of infidelity; and the adoption of new tenets is a
+      proof of the low estimation in which old ones have been held. Even the
+      new, or Christian dispensation, as it is called, is founded upon the
+      insufficiency of the old or Jewish covenant, which, by those who adopt the
+      one, is a confession that they believe the other was imperfect and
+      therefore not of God. Consequently, when we find a "church," like the
+      Roman, habitually patching its old clothes, we conclude that its leaders
+      are dissatisfied with them and desire better. A lover who finds his
+      mistress perfect neither seeks nor wishes to change her for another; nor
+      endeavours to induce her to modify her attire until he is dissatisfied
+      therewith. When he insists upon an alteration it is because his ardent
+      love has faded. The philosopher may see clearly why certain prelates
+      desire to have some infallible man to appeal to&mdash;for it is easier to
+      find out the opinion of one individual than to harmonize the contradictory
+      hypotheses of fifty dogmatical or authoritative writers. Yet the same man
+      will not fail to see that such a proceeding, whilst it strengthens the
+      hold of the church upon the weak-minded, cuts it adrift from the strong.
+      The policy is not altogether bad, for it seeks to bind closer those who,
+      whilst wearing the chains of captivity, regard them as ornaments. But all
+      those who adopt such tactics ought, boldly and unequivocally, to withdraw
+      from the rank of truth-seekers, and of envoys of that God who is not "the
+      author of confusion but of peace."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now proceed to the consideration of the angelic mythology of the
+      Old and New Testaments. In our inquiry we shall endeavour to arrive at the
+      ideas contained in the words which are used, and not content ourselves
+      with simple quotation. There is strong reason to believe that Christians
+      in general rarely examine into the real signification of words which they
+      are taught to use, or which, from some fancy or other, they commit to
+      memory. They imagine&mdash;if they think on the subject at all&mdash;that
+      to repeat a text or a creed is to perform an act of faith, which, in
+      itself, is praiseworthy and a good work. Such do not, in any appreciable
+      degree, differ from the Thibetans, described by the Abbé Hue, who perform
+      their devotions by turning round upon their axles certain cylinders, upon
+      which some prayers are engraved. Not only these Asiatics, but Europeans of
+      large mental calibre are often contented with vague ideas; and when they
+      are challenged to support "the faith which is in them," show that they
+      have never yet examined it. If, for example, they are asked how they can
+      believe in the truth of such passages, "I have seen God (Kohim) face to
+      face" (Gen. xxxii. 30); "The Lord (Jehovah) spake unto Moses face to face
+      as a man speaketh unto his friend" (Exod. xxxiii. 11); "Moses whom the
+      Lord knew face to face" (Deut. xxxiv. 10), and the opposite one, "Thou
+      canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live" (Exod.
+      xxxiii. 20)&mdash;the sole reply rendered is that the first passages are
+      figurative, passing by entirely the comparison in the second, which
+      asserts that God talked with Moses as one friend with another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a farther illustration of my meaning, I may point to the glibness with
+      which Christians talk, sing, and listen to discourses about blood. If
+      people really gave heed to what they chant, and to the words of their
+      ministers, they would really be puzzled to find a distinction between the
+      god whom they worship and that idol deity of Mexico, which called
+      constantly for the hearts and the blood of his worshippers. "Without
+      shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. ix. 22) is a dogma that puts the
+      Europeans' God on the same level as the deities worshipped in pagan
+      Africa, New Zealand, and by the Anthropophagi generally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner, if ordinary people are asked to reconcile such passages as
+      the following&mdash;"Who maketh his angels spirits;" "A spirit hath not
+      flesh and bones as ye see me have" (Luke xxiv. 39)&mdash;with a host of
+      others, in which angels are said to have appeared, talked, and acted like
+      men, they allege that "much of the phraseology of the Bible is
+      metaphorical." But if it be granted that the language is metaphorical,
+      must we not equally believe that the facts referred to are mythical; and
+      if so, how much of the so-called inspired book can we trust? If metaphor
+      and figure-imagery are cities of refuge for theologians, those who fly to
+      them must remember, that there they must remain and live therein all their
+      days; they cannot be citizens of the world, and yet never leave their
+      asylum: if, for them, facts are fictions, by parity of reason fictions are
+      facts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, when an individual, said to be a prophet, and, as such, the mouthpiece
+      of the Holy Ghost or of Jehovah, tells us that he saw and talked with an
+      angel, who imparted to him such and such information, we are bound either
+      to believe the whole statement or to reject it as valueless, <i>quoad</i>
+      revelation. If the man did see an angel, and that angel spoke, it must
+      have been material; and if material, it could not be a spirit, and if not
+      a spirit, it was not an angel.* If to this it be answered that individuals
+      do see what they deem to be spirits&mdash;just as many a drunken man avers
+      that he sees "blue devils," we grant it at once. We go still farther, and
+      state that we know individuals in full possession, apparently, of all
+      their senses, who see, occasionally, men, women, horses, dogs, and other
+      things, which have no more existence than the figures which appear to us
+      in dreams. Such men not only see imaginary beings, but they hear
+      conversations or speeches which have no reality in them. But we cannot for
+      a moment allow that such delusions of the senses are sterling, and such
+      utterances, messages from the Almighty delivered by angels. To be logical,
+      therefore, the theologian must either accept the stories told in the Bible
+      about angelic beings as literally true, to the exclusion of all metaphor,
+      or believe that every thing tainted by such celestial mythology is
+      entirely of human invention.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The authority for this is Ps. civ. 4; Heb. L 7, 14,&mdash;"Who
+     maketh his angels spirits;" "Are they not all ministering
+     spirits?"
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As an illustration, let us consider two episodes in the history of Elisha.
+      We find in 2 Kings ii. 11, that a chariot of fire and horses of fire,
+      appeared to this prophet, and parted him from Elijah, with whom he was
+      walking, and carried the latter away into heaven; and we see in 2 Kings
+      vi. 17, that Elisha's servant could really see a multitude of chariots and
+      horses of fire round about his master. We must also remember that "the
+      chariots of the Lord are thousands of angels" (Ps. lxviii. 17; see also
+      Ps. xxxiv. 7.) Now these were, or were not, realities&mdash;if the
+      chariots and horsemen existed, then we infer that some sort of stables and
+      ostlers exist in heaven; if none such exist, then the chariots and horses
+      could neither have been seen, nor have separated the two prophets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be urged that supernatural beings do exist for those who can see
+      them, and for no other; just as the angel was seen by Balaam's ass thrice
+      (see Numbers xxii. 22-33) before he was recognized by her master. But this
+      observation is worthless, for it amounts to nothing more than this&mdash;viz.,
+      that the persons seen in dreams exist for the dreamers and for no one
+      else; but it in no way proves the reality of the asserted apparition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be as useless to discuss, at this point, the actuality of what
+      are called "spectres," as of other things named fairies, pixies, gnomes,
+      or sprites. Of the existence of such there is abundance of evidence; and
+      for hundreds of years there was not a human being who did not believe in
+      them. But there was even stronger proof that the world stood still, and
+      the sun went round it, and during untold centuries all who thought on the
+      matter believed the statement. Yet in these days all the testimony is
+      regarded as worthless in the presence of the stern facts of science; and
+      ghosts are only believed in by such as write treatises upon squaring the
+      circle, perpetual motion, and the plane figure of the earth. We shall take
+      up the subject at length in our next chapter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we were to follow the bent of our inclination, we should now endeavour
+      to prove that the Jews had no idea of an angelic mythology prior to the
+      Babylonian captivity, and that they had no distinct literature prior to
+      the Grecian and Edomite captivity referred to in Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and
+      Micah, except possibly such records and written laws as may be styled
+      "annals" or "year-books;" and, as a consequence, that all parts of the Old
+      Testament in which angelic beings figure are comparatively modern, having
+      been fabricated after the long sojourn of the Jews in Babylon. But to
+      carry out this intention would require a treatise rather than an essay,
+      and I must content myself with saying that I believe it to be affirmed by
+      all Hebrew scholars, that up to the time of Nebuchadnezzar&mdash;or
+      Hezekiah&mdash;the sole unseen power recognized by the Jews was Jehovah
+      alone. They did not believe either in angel or devil What their ideas were
+      we may shortly describe*:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Long after the remark in the text was written, and long
+     before it was in type, Dr. Kalisch, in his second part of a
+     commentary on Leviticus, published his views upon the point
+     referred to. When I can refer my readers to so masterly a
+     composition as his essay upon Angels in the Jewish theology,
+     it is seedless for me to say much on the subject. I may also
+     refer those who are interested in the matter to a work
+     entitled <i>The Devil: his Origin, Greatness, and Decadence</i>
+     (Williams &amp; Norgate, London, 1871&mdash;small 8vo., pp. 72). My
+     essay supplements these, and in no way clash therewith.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      1. Angels were spirits, being also ministers (Heb. L 7.) They were a
+      flaming fire (Ps. civ. 4); compare Jud. xiii. 20, and Acts vii. 35&mdash;that
+      is, spirits are made of a combustible material which is, however,
+      incombustible!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. They could assume the form of men, and were identical with God (see
+      Gen. xviii. 19; Tobit, and Luke i.): that is to say, they were masters,
+      yet servants&mdash;the sender and the sent at the same time!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. Their faces were terrible (Jud. xiii. 6); but they also shone (Acts vi.
+      15) and yet they were so good-looking and handsome that the Sodomites fell
+      in love with them as Jupiter did with Ganymede (Gen. xix).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4 One was the superintendent of destruction, and was visible on one
+      occasion to David (2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 17), to Oman, his sons, and to the
+      elders of Israel (1 Chron. xxi. 16-20.) His weapon was a sword (<i>ibid.</i>)
+      He certainly must have had flesh and bones. It would be an interesting
+      matter to inquire whether the sword was as spiritual as the angel was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. One angel was outwitted by a donkey (see Numb. xxii. 22-33.) Yet this
+      angel was God (comp. Numb. xxii. 35, and xxiv. 4, 15,16). It is marvellous
+      to me how any one can read this history of Balaam and his ass, and notice
+      how the animal turned God from His purpose (see chap, xxii. 33), and yet
+      believe the story to be of <i>divine</i> origin!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. They are made of light (Luke ii. 9), yet can talk the vernacular, and
+      can be counterfeited by Satan (2 Cor. xi. 14); but how he manages it, and
+      whether he then ceases to be a roaring lion or a fallen angel "reserved in
+      everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day"
+      (Jude 6), is a matter for surmise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. One of them fought with the Devil, and kept his temper (Jude 9.) Of the
+      language used in the disputation we do not know; nor can we tell how the
+      two recognized each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. Some of them are guilty of folly (Job. iv. 18), and some sinned&mdash;how,
+      one does not know&mdash;and were cast down to hell, and delivered into
+      chains of darkness. It is fitting that beings who have no flesh and bones
+      should be bound by fetters that have no reality (2 Peter ii. 4).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. Some were discontented with their home and were punished (Jude 6); but
+      where their original habitation was, or why it was regarded as so
+      miserable that another place was desired, is a mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. They have food provided for them (Ps. lxxviii. 25), and they eat like
+      men (Gen. xviii. 8; and xix. 3), consequently angels must have flesh,
+      blood, and a stomach to digest victuals. Sometimes instead of eating food
+      they order it to be burned, and the smoke from the viands serves as a
+      vehicle to heaven (Jud. xiii. 19, 20).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. Their number is twenty thousand (Ps. lxviii. 17).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. They are chariots (<i>ibid</i>), yet they walk and get their feet
+      dusty (Gen. xviii. and xix. 2; compare Jud. ii. 1; vi. 12); the chariots
+      are of fire, and so are the horses (2 Kings vi. 17); but they are also
+      clouds (Ps. civ. 3).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      13. They are taught military discipline and arranged in "legions" (Matt
+      xxvi. 53).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      14. They are sexless (Mark xii. 25), yet were men when they appeared to
+      Abraham, Sarah, and the Sodomites (Gen. xviii, xix.).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      15. They are liable to do wrong, and will be judged by men, some time or
+      other (1 Oor. vi. 2, 3). As in this passage the angels are put below the
+      saints, and in Gen. xviii. and xix., it is clear that Elohim and Jehovah
+      were angels, it follows that holy men, when raised, will be superior to
+      the power that gave them heaven!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      16. Though sexless, the angels, or sons of God, may be captivated by the
+      beauty of woman, and engender giants with them in a very human fashion
+      (Gen. vi).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      17. They are very sensitive respecting the hair of women, and require it
+      to be covered in worship&mdash;at other times they probably are not so
+      particular. Although they minister upon those who are heirs of salvation
+      (Heb. i. 14), they might be tempted from their business, if they were to
+      see a pretty snood in golden tresses hid (1 Cor. xi. 10).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      18. Every child has an angel, or rather angels, to look after it (Matt,
+      xviii. 10), which leads to the belief that the number of angels has
+      increased since the sixty-eighth Psalm was written, when there were only
+      20,000, and perhaps a few more.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The words of the christian father, Tertullian, upon this
+     subject are so very apposite to our subject of angels, that
+     I am tempted to quote them&mdash;Clark's edition, vol. i. p. 487-
+     8.
+
+     Speaking to the heathens, he says&mdash;"And you are not content
+     to assert the divinity of such as were once known to you,
+     whom you heard and handled, and whose portraits have been
+     painted, and actions recounted, and memory retained amongst
+     you; but men insist upon consecrating with a heavenly life,
+     i.e.t they insist on deifying, I know not what incorporeal
+     inanimate shadows and the names of things, dividing man's
+     entire existence amongst separate powers, even from his
+     conception in the womb, so that there is a god (read
+     <i>angel</i>) Consevius, to preside over concubital generation,
+     and Fluviona to preserve the infant in the womb; after these
+     come Vitumnus and Sentinus through whom the babe begins to
+     have life and its earliest sensation; then Diespiter, by
+     whose office the child accomplishes its birth. But when
+     women begin their parturition Candelifera also comes in aid,
+     since child-bearing requires the light of the candle; and
+     other goddesses there are (such as Lucina, Partula, Nona,
+     Décima, and Alemona) who get their names from the parts they
+     bear in the stages of travail There were two Carmentas
+     likewise, according to the general view.   To one of them,
+     called Postverta, belonged the function of assisting the
+     birth of the malpresented child; whilst the other, Prosa or
+     Prorso, executed the like office for the rightly born. The
+     god Farinus was so called from his inspiring the first
+     utterance, whilst others believed in Locutius from his gift
+     of speech. Cunina is present as the protector of the child's
+     deep slumber, and supplies to it refreshing rest. To lift
+     them when fallen there is Levana, and along with her Rumina
+     (from the old word <i>ruma</i>, a teat). It is a wonderful
+     oversight that no gods were appointed for clearing up the
+     filth of children. Then to preside over their first pap and
+     earliest drink you have Potina and Edula; to teach the child
+     to stand erect is the work of Statina (or Statilinus),
+     whilst Adeona helps him to come to dear mamma-, and Abeona
+     to toddle back again. Then there is Domiduca, to bring home
+     the bride, and the goddess Mens, to influence the mind to
+     either good or evil. They have likewise Volumnus and Voleta,
+     to control the will; Paventina, the goddess of fear;
+     Venilia, of hope; Volnpia, of pleasure; Praastitia, of
+     beauty. Then, again, they give his name to Peragenor, from
+     his teaching men to go through their work; to Consus, from
+     his suggesting to them counsel. Juventa is their guide on
+     assuming the manly gown, and 'bearded Fortune,' when they
+     come to full manhood. If I must touch on their nuptial
+     duties, there is Afferenda, whose appointed function is to
+     see to the offering of the dower. But fie on you&mdash;you have
+     your Mutunus, and Tutunus, and Pertunda, and Subigus, and
+     the goddess Prema, and likewise Perfica. O spare yourselves,
+     ye impudent gods."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      19. Some angels are evil, but are much the same as the good (Ps. lxxviii
+      49), in their power of doing mischief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      20. Every heir of salvation has an angel to minister to him in some way or
+      other (Heb. i. 14); so have Roman babies&mdash;see note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      21. The angels are only a trifle superior to men (Ps. viii. 5), and in the
+      invisible world will be inferior to them if the latter be saints (1 Cor.
+      vi. 3; Heb. ii. 5).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      22. They can speak all sorts of languages (1 Cor. xiii. 1); that which
+      Michael and the devil used (Jude 9) has not been revealed to us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      23. They use a trumpet, probably as immaterial as themselves, and make a
+      great noise thereby (Matt xxiv. 31); and horses (Zech. i. and Rev. vi).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      24. They have wings and can fly (Rev. viii. 13; xiv. 6), although they are
+      chariots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      25. When on earth they are clothed with a long white garment, have a face
+      like lightning, and one can appear to be two, or not appear at all to
+      some, though very distinctly seen by others (see Matt xxviii. 2, 3; Mark
+      xvi. 5; Luke xxiv. 4; John xx. 12).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of all the angels mentioned in the Apocalypse we need not write. One of
+      the best accounts I have met with of the angelic mythology of the Hebrews
+      is in Coheleth, or The Book of Ecclesiastes, by Rev. Dr. Ginsburg
+      (Longman, London, 1861). It is written in explanation of Ch. v. 5, wherein
+      is the expression, "Do not say before the angel that it was error" (page
+      340), and the following remarks are condensed therefrom:&mdash; "The
+      angels occupy different rank and offices&mdash;seven of them as the
+      highest functionaries; princes or archangels surround the throne of God
+      and form the cabinet&mdash;(1) Michael, the prime minister, the guardian
+      of the Jewish nation, the opponent of Satan (Zech. iii. 1, 2), of the
+      prince of Persia (Dan. x. 13, 20), the conservator of the corpse of Moses
+      (Jude 9), and the dragon (Rev. xii); (2) Raphael, who presides over the
+      sanitary affairs (Tobit iii. 17, xii. 15)&mdash;'When God would cure any
+      sick person,' says St. Jerome, 'he sends the archangel Raphael, one of the
+      seven spirits before his throne, to accomplish the cure.' There can be
+      little doubt that this was the angel who went down at certain seasons to
+      move the waters of the pool to cure the impotent people (John v. 4); (3)
+      Gabriel, the messenger to announce or to effect deliverance, also a
+      presence angel (Luke i. 11-20, 26-35); (4) Uriel, mentioned in Esdras (2
+      b., ch. iv., w. 1 and 20). In Targums these four are represented as
+      surrounding the throne of the divine majesty, but all do not agree;
+      Jonathan's arrangement is&mdash;Michael at the right, Uriel at the left,
+      Gabriel before, and Raphael behind.* The fifth, sixth, and seventh
+      archangels are Phaniel, Raguel, and Sarakiel."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * An observation such as this distinctly shows how
+     completely the ideas of angels are associated with gross
+     anthropomorphism.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      "Next to the cabinet comes the privy council, composed of four and twenty
+      crowned elders (1 Kings xxii. 19; Rev. iv. 4; vii. 13; viii. 3), who
+      surround the throne, before whom Christ will confess those who confessed
+      him. Then comes the council, consisting of the seventy angel princes&mdash;the
+      provincial governors presiding over the affairs of the seventy nations
+      into which the human family is divided." Hence the Targumic paraphrase on
+      Gen. xi. 7, 8&mdash;"<i>The Lord said to the seventy presence angels, Come
+      now and let us go down, and there let us confound their language, so that
+      one may not understand the language of the other. And the Lord manifested
+      himself against that city, and with him were the seventy angels according
+      to the seventy nations</i>." Hence the Septuagint translation of Deut
+      xxxii. 8&mdash;"When the Most High divided the nations... he set the
+      boundaries... according to the number of the angels." The doctor also
+      notices the four angels mentioned in Zech. vi, who seem to have the
+      management of four great monarchies, but he does not advert to the angels
+      of the seven churches spoken of in the Apocalypse. He then proceeds&mdash;"Then
+      comes the innumerable company of presence angels, since every individual
+      has a guardian angel as well as every nation"... St Jerome, remarking upon
+      Matt, xviii. 10, says,&mdash;"<i>Great is the dignity of these little
+      ones, for every one of them has from his very birth an angel dedicated to
+      guard him</i>."* When St. Peter was chained in his prison, his angel
+      released him (Acts xiii. 7,11), and the damsel who opened a house door for
+      him was told that he who was knocking was Peter's angel.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We have never been able to see the force of this remark,
+     unless the idea of children having guardian angels was
+     associated with the belief that these beings left them when
+     they grew up. If the adults standing round Jesus had each an
+     individual warden, there would be nothing peculiar in the
+     warning given in the verse referred to. It is, however, just
+     possible that the notion existed that it was to adults only
+     that tutelary spirits were assigned, and that the prophet of
+     Nazareth declared that each infant had a protecting genius
+     as well as every man.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Then there are angels who preside over all the phenomena of nature. One
+      presides over the sun (Eev. xix. 17); angels guard the storm and lightning
+      (Ps. civ. 4); four angels have charge over the four winds (Rev. vii. 1,
+      2); an angel presides over the waters (Rev. xvi. 5); and another over the
+      temple altar (Rev. xiv. 18).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need not pursue this subject further; enough has been said to show that
+      the Hebrew ideas of angels differ in no essential respect from those of
+      other nations, who, if not older than the Jews, were certainly never
+      influenced by the Hebrews. From the evidence before us, we are constrained
+      to believe that the knowledge which we assume to possess of the celestial
+      court has descended to us from heathen or pagan sources, and that the
+      pictorial designs which pass current for likenesses of angels or
+      archangels have descended from Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Grecians,
+      Etruscans, and Romans, and cannot pretend to anything approaching to a
+      revelation from God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have already remarked that the Hebrew notions of the heavenly hierarchy
+      are evidence of a gross anthropomorphism; they indicate a belief in the
+      existence of a monarch having a face and back, a right hand and a left,
+      ears and a mouth, and a wherewithal for sitting upon a throne&mdash;the
+      part which was shown, as we are told, to Moses; they tell of a theology
+      that recognizes places in the universe where God is not, and of which He
+      has no cognizance save through messengers. If this be so, what shall we
+      say of the hagiology which tells us that there was on one occasion a
+      conspiracy amongst the courtiers of the celestial ruler, a discovery of
+      treason, and a punishment of the offenders as dire as the most malignant
+      man could invent? We have often thought that no human being, unless he
+      were vile, brutal, sensual, clever, disappointed, and revengeful, could
+      have invented the idea of hell, and that none would ever have believed in
+      it unless he was both timid, thoughtless, and malignant The dormant hate
+      of the orthodox against opponents is an awful quantity. The expression of
+      "fallen angels" is a pregnant text; it recalls to our mind the passage&mdash;"Yea,
+      mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread,
+      hath lifted up his heel against me" (Ps. xli. 9). It reminds us of David,
+      Absalom and Ahitophel, of Solomon and Jeroboam, of Joram and Jehu,
+      Benhadad and Hazael, Louis XVIII. and Marshal Ney. We feel sure that an
+      individual who could write the words&mdash;"If we sin wilfully after that
+      we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more
+      sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and
+      fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. x. 26, 27),
+      could readily have invented a hell, if he had not found one already made
+      to his hand. The sentence just quoted bears evidence of intense
+      theological spitefulness, and a petty meanness that neither Sakya nor
+      Jesus would have shown. Such thoughts are womanish, not manly, although
+      apostolic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We can fancy it having been penned by James or John, who once asked Jesus
+      whether they should not call down fire from heaven to consume the
+      Samaritans, simply because the latter were not polite to the master&mdash;"because
+      he seemed to be going to Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 53, 54). But if so, those
+      disciples must have forgotten the rebuke of Jesus&mdash;"Ye know not what
+      manner of spirit ye are of."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here we must pause awhile, and consider the idea of various peoples about
+      Hell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some, perhaps we ought to say, many, earthly potentates have encouraged
+      the belief that there is a place in which evildoers, who have escaped
+      punishment for crime in this world will, after their death here, receive
+      their deserts. A place of torment which no man has seen, or can see in
+      life, and which, consequently, anyone can describe, is a wonderful
+      supplement to imperfect police arrangements, and as such, has been
+      fabricated or adopted in various nations. But in all the nations of
+      antiquity, and those which we call pagan, Hell has been assigned to those
+      who have committed crimes upon earth, such as murder, theft, and the like,
+      and whose evil deeds have outnumbered their good ones. The idea of a
+      torture vault for heretics has, so far as I can learn, been reserved for
+      Christian times, and for nations who punish ecclesiastical offences more
+      severely than the most atrocious crimes. The papal church, wherever she
+      has had power, has punished rejection of her communion far more cruelly
+      than she has dealt with rape, robbery, and murder; and all, who think with
+      her, draw their arguments for so doing from what is said to be God's
+      method of dealing with His rebellious angels. Surely, the idea runs, if
+      the Almighty, who cannot do wrong, has punished with fire and everlasting
+      torment the ministers who stood in His presence and around His throne,
+      simply because they kept not their position, or did not watch over their
+      principality&mdash;for both meanings may be assigned to the original words&mdash;surely
+      man must treat his heretic fellow on a similar plan. God, runs the
+      argument, made the Devil, and man must multiply his imps. It is true,
+      according to Hebrew and Christian mythology, that the idea of a Devil was
+      not originally in the mind of Jehovah. But when Satan rebelled he was
+      immediately invested with power! In other words, Lucifer taught Elohim,
+      and thoughtful Christians believe this!!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now attempt to frame a history of the modern Hell, its rulers, its
+      angels, or its devils, we find, in the first place, that the Old Testament
+      contains no idea whatever of Satan being an angel originally bright and
+      fair, but subsequently disobedient, rebellious, conquered, and punished.
+      Nor is the New Testament much more communicative&mdash;we find the
+      arch-fiend described as a murderer and as a liar; he also is associated
+      with angels, as in the words, "the Devil and his angels." He is described
+      as "the Prince of the power of the air,"&mdash;as "a roaring lion, seeking
+      whom he may devour." He is "the spirit which worketh in the children of
+      disobedience." He is also represented as telling Jesus, that he is able to
+      dispose of all the kingdoms of the globe, and to give their glory to whom
+      he will. Yet nowhere is a hint breathed that he was once an angel in
+      heaven. The only verse in the whole Bible which is supposed to bear upon
+      this matter, shows that the devil and his imps are not identical with the
+      fallen angels, for Jude distinctly declares (verse 6) that the latter are
+      "reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the
+      great day," a condition quite incompatible with their identity with Satan,
+      who is represented as telling God that he had been going to and fro
+      through the earth, and walking up and down in it (Job ch. i., v. 7). A
+      conversation then follows the question, which must have been quite
+      impossible had God recognized him as an escaped convict.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, if we turn to the book of Enoch (an apocryphal production, supposed
+      for ages to have been lost, but discovered at the close of the last
+      century in Abyssinia, now first translated from an Ethiopian MS. in the
+      Bodleian Library, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel; 3d
+      edition, 8vo. Oxford, 1838),&mdash;which is, and I think justly, believed
+      to be the authority quoted by Jude, we find a full confirmation of our
+      view of the independence of the Devil or Satan, and the fallen angels. The
+      foundation of the work is the story-told in the sixth chapter of Genesis.
+      In that work, the angels which kept not their first estate are described
+      as those who preferred intercourse with human females to a celestial
+      celibacy, for in those days there were sons of God and daughters of men.
+      Nay, in one verse (chap, liii. 6) it is distinctly declared that one cause
+      why the wrath of God came upon them was that "they became ministers of
+      Satan, and seduced those who dwell upon the earth." In many places a
+      reference is made to the close imprisonment of the angels who had "been
+      polluted with women;" one such will suffice, (chap, xxi. 6), where, on
+      seeing a terrific place, Enoch is told by Uriel "this is the prison of the
+      angels, and here are they kept for ever." It is not even Satan who tempts
+      the angels, for chapter lxviii. tells us that it was Yekun and Kesabel,
+      two of themselves, who gave evil counsel, and induced their fellows to
+      corrupt their bodies by generating mankind. It is clear that such a writer
+      does not conceive the possible existence of angelic women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nearest approach to evidence of identification is the statement made
+      in the same chapter (w. 6, 7), that Gradrel was the name of one of the
+      leaders of the fallen, and that he seduced Eve. But this testimony is
+      wholly worthless in the face of the fact that he, like all his company,
+      are kept chained up, which Satan certainly is not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the foregoing facts and considerations, we can come to no other
+      conclusion than that there is no truth in the angelic mythology current
+      amongst ourselves&mdash;for which Milton and his <i>Paradise Lost</i> are
+      mainly responsible. We may, indeed, affirm that a belief in angelic
+      mythology is wholly incompatible with an enlightened religion. If we
+      regard the Almighty as omnipresent and omniscient, we cannot imagine that
+      He can require messengers, or organize an "intelligence department" in
+      Heaven. A man who is present with his family requires no servant to tell
+      him what each is doing, or to deliver his orders to one or other. So, if
+      God be always with us, it is downright blasphemy to say that He requires a
+      go-between to let Him know what we are doing, or what He wishes us to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our next chapter we shall enter upon the consideration of a subject
+      closely allied to that of Angels&mdash;namely, that of Ghosts,
+      Apparitions, Disembodied Spirits, or by whatever name they are called.
+      These mainly differ from the beings of whom we have treated in the fact
+      that, whereas an angel is a messenger&mdash;one sent to do certain duties&mdash;a
+      ghost is a being who comes upon the scene, which he or she has quitted, to
+      do or to persuade somebody else to perform something that has been omitted
+      to be done during the life-time of the deceased. In nine-tenths of the
+      stories which we read of "revenans," the returned one is not sent as a
+      messenger, nor does he come for any definite purpose. A man or woman
+      barbarously murdered is painted as haunting the scene where the violence
+      was committed, as flies flit over a carcase. Misers come to brood over
+      their hoards, not to use them. In no case which I can remember do the
+      tales represent the ghosts as being sent from either of the two powers&mdash;God
+      and Satan; and to fancy that a deceased man or woman is a free agent after
+      death is, to say the least of it, a proof that the believers in the
+      doctrine do not believe the biblical text&mdash;"As the tree falleth so it
+      must lie."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ideas of Angels and of Ghosts have their origin in what may be called
+      a superstitious education; and credence in the latter is an almost
+      necessary pendant to a belief in the former. Indeed, if we put ourselves
+      into the position of Manoah's wife, Zacharias (Luke i), and Mary, we feel
+      sure that we should not have known whether the being who appeared was an
+      angel or a ghost.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Note.&mdash;The reader interested in the subject of this chapter, will
+      find additional information thereupon in Records of the Past (Bag-ster,
+      London, 1873-74; vol. i. 131-135, and vol. iii.139-154). The volumes are
+      inexpensive, and extremely valuable to the student of Assyrian,
+      Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The inexorable logic of facts. Saul and the witch of Endor.
+     Influence of Elisha's bones. The widow's son. Ideas about
+     ghosts&mdash;about their power. Papal belief in ghosts. Ritual
+     for exorcisms. St. Dunstan and St. Anthony. The Bible and
+     ghosts. Scriptural ghosts. Ghosts independent of Judaism and
+     Christianity. Japanese story. Buddhist priests, like
+     Papalists, exorcise ghosts professionally. Ancient Grecian
+     ghosts. Stories from Homer, Herodotus, Iamblichus. Modern
+     French ghosts. Latin ghosts. Ghosts and lunacy. Ghosts and
+     spiritualism. Mistakes of clairvoyantes.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is not until we systematically inquire into certain tenets of our own
+      belief, and compare or contrast them with those of other people far
+      removed from us, that we are able to form an opinion about how much we owe
+      to what we call "our peculiar religion," and how much we hold in common
+      with other distant members of the human family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that there is scarcely a "Bible Christian" in Great Britain
+      who is not impressed with the truth of the statement made in 2 Tim. i. 10&mdash;<i>viz</i>.,
+      that Christ abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by
+      the Gospel. But the inexorable logic of facts proves to us that the idea
+      of a life after death existed even amongst some ancient Jews&mdash;a
+      people to whom it was certainly not revealed by God&mdash;and amongst
+      nations who have not to this day become acquainted with Jesus, or what we
+      call the Gospel, and who are mainly influenced by the doctrines of Buddha.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To give examples: no one can read the very fabulous story of the Witch of
+      Endor and Saul without recognizing the fact, that both the one and the
+      other are represented by the historian to have believed, that, though the
+      body of the prophet Samuel had been rotting for a long period in its tomb,
+      the spirit of the man was yet existent. Nor does a Bible Christian see
+      anything peculiar in the miracle of the restoration of the dead man
+      mentioned in 2 Kings xiii. 21, who, when he touched the mouldy bones of
+      Elisha, which represented all that was left, on earth, of that
+      distinguished wonder-worker, at once revived, and stood upon his feet. But
+      the story forces us to believe that the Hebrew writer, who had no
+      revelation from Jehovah about a future life, was, from some cause or
+      other, obliged to allow that the prophet had some sort of existence after
+      his decease. A similar remark may be made respecting the story of the
+      widow's son, given in 1 Kings xvii. 17-23, in which it is clear that both
+      the mother of the child and the prophet believed it to be dead, although
+      the latter acted as if there was yet its living spirit existing somewhere,
+      and capable of being recalled. No simple figure of speech will explain
+      away the doctrine referred to, for there is reference distinctly made to
+      the idea of a life independent of that of the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may well be supposed, that the very extraordinary tales spoken of were
+      introduced into the ancient books by modern Pharisees, as proofs of their
+      faith being superior to that of the Sadducees&mdash;it is, indeed,
+      probable that they were so; but into this point we will not enter. We pass
+      by, in like manner, the real signification of the English word "ghost,"
+      and make no reference to the idea of there being a Holy, in
+      contradistinction to a profane, vulgar, and unholy, ghost We may also omit
+      anything more than a bare allusion to the fact that the third member of
+      the Trinity, as it is called, appeared in forms recognizable by the eye;
+      and that when it assumed an overshadowing condition (Luke i. 35), it acted
+      as a male human body would have done, and impregnated Mary, as Jupiter did
+      Leda. It is rather my desire to call attention to the ideas actually
+      existing, probably in all Christendom, and certainly in Great Britain,
+      respecting "ghosts." They may be thus described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is believed by many that certain individuals have, during their
+      lifetime, a power of determining that some immaterial part of their living
+      body shall, after death, assume the figure and proportions possessed by
+      the person during life, as well as his clothes, &amp;c., and act as if
+      this second self had a real existence, recognizable by men, animals, and
+      even candles,* and a definite worldly purpose. In other cases it is
+      assumed, that the defunct has not had any particular desire to return to
+      life until after his death has taken place; but that his spirit, having as
+      much power to think without its brains as with them, makes itself apparent
+      with a distinct object, formed, not in the living body, but in the corpse.
+      The purposes generally attributed to ghosts are, to give information about
+      murder or money, to compel religious rites over their dead body, or to
+      punish a relentless oppressor with daily horror. Still further, some
+      suppose that ghosts are doomed for a certain time to walk the earth, and
+      suffer during the day in fires perpetual, till, in some unknown way, the
+      sins of their bodies have been purged away, or until some one, living, has
+      made an atonement for sins committed and unpardoned during the lifetime of
+      the "revenant" (Shakespeare in Hamlet). The so-called disembodied spirits
+      are supposed to be able to operate upon matter, to throw our atmosphere
+      into waves, producing vision and hearing, and to move from one spot to
+      another. They have, still farther, the power of making and emitting light,
+      and are so partial to using the faculty, that they prefer appearing by
+      night, and in darkness.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * "And the lights in the chamber burnt blue."
+
+     &mdash;Alonzo the Brave.&mdash;Lewis.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Of the real existence of such ghostly beings no devout Romanist can fail
+      to convince himself; for his Church, which claims to be infallible, has
+      provided special services for combating them, and a Papal priest has, many
+      a time, claimed, and attempted to exercise, the power to drive what the
+      French call "revenans," from the earth into the Red Sea. The saintly
+      annals of the Church of Rome are filled with stories of angels, gods, and
+      devils, who have appeared to holy men of old, either to applaud their
+      conduct, or to try their faith The legends about Saint Dunstan and Saint
+      Anthony are too well known to require repetition here, and it would be
+      idle to refer to some particularly good ghost story, when everybody knows
+      so many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The general credit obtained by the tales referred to has been attributed
+      by many to the teaching of the Bible. The apparition of Samuel to Saul;
+      the intercourse between the angel Raphael and Tobit; the manifestation of
+      some celestial beings to Zacharias (Luke i. 11); to Mary (v. 28); to
+      certain shepherds (Luke ii. 9); the statement that some men have
+      entertained angels unawares (Heb. xiii. 2); the transfiguration scene,
+      described in Matt, xvii. and Mark ix., in which Moses and Elias are said
+      to have returned from heaven to earth, with the design of comforting
+      Jesus; and the story of Peter and the angel, told in Acts xii. 6-15&mdash;all
+      indicate a firm belief in the existence of ghosts, and form the
+      Christian's warrant for believing in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But an extended knowledge of the belief entertained by people other than
+      the followers of Jesus shows that the idea in question is wholly
+      independent of both Judaism and Christianity. A credence in ghosts is
+      profound in Japan, and it resembles, in every respect, that which has been
+      so long current in Europe. If any one, for example, will read a story in A
+      B. Mitford's <i>Tales of Old Japan</i> (Macmillan; London, 1871),
+      entitled, "The Ghost of Sakura," a village, he will scarcely be able to
+      divest himself of the idea that the legend is of British origin. Without
+      going into the reasons which have convinced me that the writer has fairly
+      given a purely Japanese tale, and one wholly untainted by Popish legends,
+      I may shortly indicate the main points in the narrative, which purports to
+      be a true one. A certain lord behaved very badly to his tenants,
+      increasing the imposts upon them until life became a burden. By ordinary
+      petitions he was unmoved, and it was necessary to have recourse to unusual
+      means. The adoption of a promising plan was, in the mind of its proposer,
+      a positive passport to a cruel death, by crucifixion. In a touching
+      leave-taking of his wife, he ends his speech with the words&mdash;"I give
+      my life to allay the misery of the people of this estate" (vol. ii, p.
+      12). His proceedings save the poor peasants, for whom he sacrifices
+      himself, from utter ruin&mdash;every grievance which they have is
+      redressed; but their saviour is condemned to be crucified, in which
+      punishment his wife is included, and his sons are to be beheaded before
+      his face. Unable to save the man, his nearest male friends become priests,
+      and end their days praying and making offerings on behalf of their
+      friends' souls, and those of the wife and offspring (p. 25), and they
+      collect money enough to erect six bronze memorial Buddhas. "Thus," the
+      tale goes on to say, "did these men, for the sake of Sogoro and his
+      family, give themselves up to works of devotion; and the other villagers
+      also brought food to soothe the spirits of the dead, and prayed for their
+      entry into Paradise; and, as litanies were repeated without intermission,
+      there can be no doubt that Sogoro attained salvation." The next sentence
+      is a Buddhist text, viz.:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In Paradise, where the blessings of God are distributed without favour,
+      the soul learns its faults by the measure of the rewards given. The lusts
+      of the flesh are abandoned, and the soul, purified, attains to the glory
+      of Buddha." I scarcely need mention, to those interested in Buddhism, that
+      this conception of Paradise is very different to that which many persons
+      uphold to be "nothingness." The Japanese "Nirvana" is evidently not
+      annihilation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Sogoro was to die, the friendly priests entreated the authorities
+      that they might have his body, so as to be able to bury it decently; but
+      the request was only granted after the corpse had been exposed three days
+      and three nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time appointed, Sogoro and his wife are tied to two crosses, and
+      their children brought out for decapitation. The utterance of the eldest
+      son (æt. 13) is very touching&mdash;"Oh my father and mother, I am going
+      before you to Paradise, that happy country, to wait for you. My little
+      brothers and I will be on the banks of the river Sandzu,* and stretch out
+      our hands, and help you across. Farewell, all you who have come to see us
+      die; and now, please cut off my head at once." With this he stretched out
+      his neck, murmuring a last prayer (p. 28).
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Buddhist Styx, which separates Paradise from Hell,
+     across which the dead are ferried by an old woman, for whom
+     a small piece of money is buried with them. I may add that
+     such a custom obtains amongst the lower orders in Ireland to
+     this day.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      At length it is the parents turn to die, and thus speaks the wife&mdash;"Remember,
+      my husband, that from the first you had made up your mind to this fate.
+      What though our bodies be disgracefully exposed on these crosses? (compare
+      Gal. iii. 13). We have the promises of the Gods before us; therefore,
+      mourn not. Let us fix our minds upon death; we are drawing near to
+      Paradise, and shall soon be with the saints. Be calm, my husband. Let us
+      cheerfully lay down our lives for the good of many. Man lives but for one
+      generation, his name for many. A good name is more to be prized than
+      life." "Well said wife; what though we are punished for the many? our
+      petition was successful, and there is nothing left to wish for..... For
+      myself, I care not; but that my wife and children should be punished also
+      is too much.... Let my lord fence himself in with iron walls, yet shall my
+      spirit burst through them, and crush his bones, as a return for this
+      deed." As he said this, he looked like the demon Razetsu (p. 30). The
+      execution is completed by thrusting a spear into the side until it comes
+      out at the opposite shoulder, and as it is withdrawn, the blood streams
+      out like a fountain. Ere Sogoro dies, he again threatens his lord to
+      revenge himself upon him in a manner never to be forgotten, and adds&mdash;"As
+      a sign, when I am dead, my head shall turn and face towards the castle.
+      When you see this, doubt not that my words shall come true" (p. 31). As
+      Sogoro laid down his life for a noble cause, he was canonized, and became
+      a tutelar deity of his lord's family. After the execution, those
+      subordinates of the lord of the land were dismissed from their office,
+      who, by their culpable and vile conduct, had made such a catastrophe
+      necessary&mdash;a retribution that reminds the reader of that which is
+      said to have fallen on the Jews, because of a death by crucifixion which
+      they brought about. The Japanese historian then goes on (p. 34)&mdash;"In
+      the history of the world, from the dark ages down to the present time,
+      there are few instances of one man laying down his life for the many, as
+      Sogoro did; noble and peasant praise him alike."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four years after this the ghosts of Sogoro and of his wife and family
+      begin to torment their late cruel lord. His lady is gradually frightened
+      to death; the crucified couple appear to her and to her husband in a far
+      more fearful form than Jesus is said to have appeared to Constantine. They
+      threaten both with the pains of Hell, and declare that they have come to
+      take them there; and with them come other ghosts, who hoot, yell, laugh,
+      and come and go at pleasure. No one, not even priests, could quiet the
+      frightful sounds, or get rid of the horrible sights. Violence was wholly
+      unavailing; mystic rites, incantations, and prayers were alike useless.
+      The visions appeared at first by day, but subsequently by night. They were
+      visible to everybody. But, after a long consultation, the once brutal, but
+      now humbled, nobleman agrees to erect a shrine to the crucified man, and
+      to pay him divine honours. This was done: Sogoro became a saint, under the
+      name of Sogo Daimiyo, and the ghosts appeared no more. But terrible
+      misfortunes fall upon the Lord Kotsuke, and he "began to feel that the
+      death of his wife, and his own present misfortunes, were a just
+      retribution for the death of Sogoro and his wife and children, and he was
+      as one awakened from a dream. Then, night and morning, in his repentance,
+      he offered up prayers to the sainted spirit of the dead farmer,
+      acknowledged and bewailed his crime, vowing that, if his own family were
+      spared from ruin, and re-established, intercession should be made at the
+      court of the Mikado on behalf of the spirit of Sogoro, so that, being
+      worshipped with even greater honours than before, his name should be
+      handed down to all generations" (p. 43). In a foot note we learn that the
+      Mikado of Japan could, like the Pope of Rome, confer posthumous divine
+      honours upon whom he pleased. The tale tells us that, by the means just
+      before alluded to, the spirit of Sogoro was appeased, and then positively
+      became his quondam enemy's patron saint, and was universally respected in
+      all that part of the country. His shrine was made beautiful as a gem, and
+      night and day the devout worshipped at it Mitford adds (p. 47)&mdash;"The
+      belief in ghosts appears to be as universal as that of the immortality of
+      the soul upon which it depends. Both in China and Japan the departed
+      spirit is invested with the power of revisiting the earth, and, in a
+      visible form, tormenting its enemies, and haunting those places where the
+      perishable part of it mourned and suffered. Haunted houses are slow to
+      find tenants, for ghosts almost always come with revengeful intent;
+      indeed, the owners of such houses will almost pay men to live in them,
+      such is the dread which they inspire, and the anxiety to blot out the
+      stigma."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The parallel between an episode in Palestine, and that herein described as
+      having occurred in Japan, will be completed if the reader remembers the
+      passage in the Epistle to the Romans, wherein Paul, after speaking of the
+      fall of the Jews, subsequent to the death of Jesus&mdash;who gave his life
+      for others&mdash;remarks, "if the casting away of them be the reconciling
+      of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead"
+      (Rom. xi. 15).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In addition to the ghost story above described, many others are detailed
+      by Mr Mitford that are exact counterparts of some of those most firmly
+      believed by orthodox Christians, and most commonly met with in novelettes
+      and magazines. We give a digest of them&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A paterfamilias is thrown into prison for gambling. After being confined
+      some time, he returns home one night pale and thin, and, after receiving
+      congratulations, he tells the friends assembled that he is permitted to
+      leave the prison that evening by the jailers, for that he is to be
+      returned to them the next day publicly. When the time arrives, they are
+      summoned to remove his corpse&mdash;he had died the night before, and it
+      was his ghost which had appeared. Compare Acts v. 19, and xii. 7-14.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next runs thus&mdash;A cruel policeman had a housemaid, who broke one
+      of ten plates which he valued&mdash;she confessed the accident to the
+      mistress. When the master came to hear of the loss, he tied the girl to a
+      cupboard, and cut off one of her fingers daily. She managed to escape, and
+      drowned herself in the garden well. Every night afterwards there was a
+      noise from the well, counting up to nine, and then came a burst of grief.
+      All the retainers left the place; the magistrate could not perform his
+      duties, and was dismissed. The ghost was ultimately laid by a priest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After recounting this story, Mitford remarks&mdash;"The laying of
+      disturbed spirits appears to form one of the regular functions of the
+      Buddhist priests; at least, we find them playing a conspicuous part in
+      every ghost story" (p. 50).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next tale is one of a haunted house. No paying tenant will live there,
+      but a poor fencing master takes it for nothing. He first hears a terrific
+      noise in the garden pond, and, on looking, sees a dark cloud enshrining a
+      bald head. He inquires, and discovers that a former tenant, ten years ago,
+      murdered a money-lender, and threw his head into the water. The actual
+      tenant now drains the pond, finds the skull, takes it for burial to a
+      temple, causing prayers to be offered up for the repose of the murdered
+      man's soul. Thus the ghost was laid, and appeared no more. This tale
+      serves as an additional means of recognizing the descent of Papism from
+      Buddhism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Returning once again to Europe, we find that the ancient Greeks had not
+      only an idea of the resurrection of the dead, and life after death, but
+      that departed spirits could be summoned to appear by the living. For
+      example, at the opening of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses
+      recounts how-he offered a certain sacrifice, and tells us that, after it,
+      the souls of the perished dead came forth from Erebus&mdash;betrothed
+      girls and youths&mdash;much enduring old men, and tender virgins having a
+      newly grieved mind&mdash;and many Mars-renowned men, wounded with
+      brass-tipped spears, possessing gore-smeared arms, who in great numbers
+      were wandering about the trench, on different sides, with a divine
+      clamour, and pale fear seized upon me.... At first the soul of my
+      companion, Elpenor, came, for he was not yet buried.... The shade
+      addressed the hero, and, after telling the manner of his own death,
+      entreats to have his corpse burned, and a tomb to be placed over it After
+      this shade, appears Ulysses' mother, then Theban Tiresias, having a golden
+      sceptre (Bohn's translation, pp. 147, 8). The rest of the book is made up
+      of a number of dialogues between the traveller and the illustrious dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The following, from Herodotus (vi. 68, 69), might have been introduced
+      into chapter viii, for it is not only an example of a ghost, but of
+      supernatural generation&mdash;but it is most appropriate here. Demaratus,
+      having been twitted by certain persons that he was not the son of his
+      putative father, who was known to be impotent, and that he was begotten by
+      a mean man&mdash;a feeder of asses&mdash;adjures his mother, by a most
+      solemn oath, to tell the truth. She replies&mdash;When Ariston had taken
+      me to his own house, on the third night from the first a spectre,
+      resembling Ariston, came to me, and having lain with me, put on me a crown
+      that it had, it departed, and afterwards Ariston came; but when he saw me
+      with the crown, he asked who it was that gave it me. I said, he did; but
+      he would not admit it.... Ariston, seeing that I affirmed with an oath,
+      discovered that the event was superhuman; and, in the first place, the
+      crown proved to have come from the shrine... situate near the palace
+      gates, which they call Astrabacus's; and, in the next place, the seers
+      pronounced that it was the hero himself. We need not dwell upon the
+      miracle, being only desirous to show that, in the time of Herodotus, ideas
+      of the return of departed spirits to earth were common&mdash;had it not
+      been so, the story would not have been conceived. See also <i>Herod</i>
+      iv. 14, 15; <i>Æsch Theb</i>. 710; <i>cf. Porson on Eur</i>. Or. 401; <i>Æsch
+      Ag</i>. 415.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the most striking example of a phantom is given in Herodotus viii.
+      84, where a spectre, in a woman's form, appeared, and cheered the Greeks
+      on shipboard to a battle, saying, so that all the warriors heard her&mdash;"Dastards,
+      how long will you back water?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In more recent times, Iamblicus (on the <i>Mysteries</i>, section ii,
+      chap, iv.), speaking of different celestial and ordinarily invisible
+      powers, observes&mdash;"In the motions of the heroic phasmata (or
+      apparitions&mdash;phantoms or ghosts) a certain magnificence presents
+      itself to the view." In the phasmata of the Archons the first energies
+      appear to be most excellent and authoritative, and the phasmata of souls
+      are seen to be the more moveable, yet are more imbecile, than those of
+      heroes.... The magnitude of the epiphanies (or manifestations) in the
+      gods, indeed, is so great, as sometimes to conceal all heaven.1' Then the
+      author describes how this brilliancy is less in each inferior order of
+      spirits, and is smallest in those souls below the grade of heroes
+      (Taylor's translation, pp. 89, 90). In sect iii., chap, iii., the same
+      writer remarks&mdash;"The soul has a twofold life, one being in
+      conjunction with the body, the other being separated from all body."
+      Again, in chap. xxxi.&mdash;"Still worse is the explanation of sacred
+      operations, which assigns, as the cause of divination, a certain genus of
+      daemons, which is naturally fraudulent, omniform, and various, and which
+      assumes the appearance of gods and daemons, and the souls of the deceased"
+      (Taylor's ed., p. 199). <i>Le Dictionnaire Infernal</i>, which I have
+      previously described, gives two very modern-like histories from the
+      Greeks, under the names Philinnion and Polycritus; but, as I cannot verify
+      them by reference, I shall say no more of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we come to speak about the Romans, the first history which occurs to
+      my mind is the well-known statement, that the ghost of Cæsar appeared to
+      Brutus before the battle in which the latter met with his death. The
+      narrator of the story dwells somewhat upon the coolness with which the
+      living hero encounters the shade of the dead, as if it were strange for
+      people, when they saw ghosts, not to be terrified. I think that we may
+      believe in the Etruscans having an idea of invisible spirits becoming
+      occasionally apparent, inasmuch as in a sepulchral painting, in the tomb
+      of the Tarquinii, the shade of Patroclus is represented as standing over
+      Achilles as he kills the Trojan captives in sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In later times, Otho declared that Galba's ghost had appeared to him, and
+      had tumbled him out of bed (Suetonius' <i>Lives of the Caesars</i>, Otho,
+      vii).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may take our next illustration from Cicero upon the nature of the gods.
+      In book 2, ch. ii.,&mdash;"Who now," he makes Lucilius say, "believes in
+      Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? or what old woman is now to be found so weak
+      and ignorant as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which once so
+      terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error and opinion,
+      whilst it confirms the determinations of nature and truth. And therefore
+      it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred institutions
+      and the divine worship of the gods have been strengthened and improved
+      from time to time; and this is not to be imputed to chance alone, but to
+      the frequent appearance of the gods themselves. In the war with the
+      Latins... Castor and Pollux were seen fighting with our army on
+      horseback... and as P. Vatienus... was coming in the night to Rome... two
+      young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king Perses
+      was that day taken prisoner." He told the news and was imprisoned as a
+      liar; but further information confirmed the ghost's story, and he was
+      liberated and rewarded."... The voices of the Fauns have been often heard,
+      and deities have appeared in forms so visible that they have compelled
+      everyone, who is not senseless or hardened in impiety, to confess the
+      presence of the gods" (Bohn's translation, p. 46). In page 186 of the same
+      edition, two remarkable instances are given wherein supernatural voices
+      told of approaching trouble, and how it was to be avoided. No notice was
+      taken of the warning, and the misfortunes which had been foretold
+      occurred. The second miracle very closely resembled the modern voice of
+      the Virgin at Lourdes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whilst I was writing the preceding remarks, my attention was called by a
+      friend to the following remarks in <i>The Examiner</i>, which seem to me
+      so appropriate to this chapter and the preceding one, that I gladly quote
+      them:&mdash;"If there is anything more striking than the thoughtless
+      credulity with which men accept statements agreeing with their
+      preconceptions, it is the stubborn incredulity with which they receive
+      statements at variance with those preconceptions. The devotees of each
+      religion, and even of each sect into which a religion is so commonly split
+      up, accept and even adore the absurdities of their own belief, while they
+      scan, with a sceptical severity that cannot be surpassed, the not greater
+      follies of other systems of belief. In no respect is this fact more
+      glaring than in the case of miracles. Each Church has its own special
+      miracles, devoutly believed in, but repels with contempt or horror the
+      alleged miracles of other religions. Happy that it is so. Were
+      superstition not in its essence and nature a dividing folly, could it but
+      muster in one herd all its votaries, common sense and truth would have a
+      hard battle for existence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point of my subject, I feel the natural inclination of a physician
+      to enter upon those changes in the nervous centres which induce
+      individuals to hear, feel, and see, noises, sensations, and spectra, which
+      have no real existence. But with the majority of experienced medical men,
+      the matter is so well known that it would be idle for me to dwell upon it,
+      further than to say, that it is a matter of fact that many an individual
+      who hears and sees words and beings which are illusions, acts upon them as
+      if they were real. Many an assault upon some quiet citizen, many an
+      instance of wilful mischief, and even of murder, is due to a communication
+      made, apparently by a supernatural visitor, to a person who has fully
+      believed it. To a man in his perfect senses the delusive character of a
+      spectre, or a message given in an audible voice may be readily recognized;
+      but when an individual has a diseased brain, all delusions seem real, and
+      it is a part of the affection that they are not only recognized, but acted
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The question has often suggested itself to my own mind, "How much has
+      insanity of mind had to do with religion?" In modern times, the
+      psychologist can readily see how far Swedenborg, Johanna Southcote, and
+      many others, were influenced by a diseased condition of the brain; he can
+      also see indications of lunacy in Ezekiel and the author of Daniel. But he
+      is unable to prosecute the subject far without discovering that mental
+      weakness is often bolstered up by fraud. Nothing is more easy than for an
+      intelligent physician to understand the physical causes of such visions as
+      certain religionists have talked of. But when a spurious miracle, like
+      that of the apparition of a talking, immaculately-conceived Virgin at
+      Lourdes, is traded on, the occurrence leaves the region of folly, and
+      enters that of fraud. Into that it is injudicious to enter here.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may, however, advert to the current belief that certain individuals in
+      the same family have, for many succeeding generations, their death
+      foretold by some "wraith" or "phantom" appearing to them. This story is
+      probably founded upon the fact that hereditary brain disease exists in the
+      constitution of all such persons, and that its occurrence in each victim
+      is marked by an ocular, and, perhaps, some aural delusion. The apparition
+      may seem real to the diseased nervous system, though it has no absolute
+      existence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are then constrained to believe that the idea of ghosts has not arisen,
+      in the first place, from any peculiar form of religious belief, but from
+      the fact that in all inhabitants of the world there has existed that form
+      of insanity which consists in the victim believing that he hears and sees
+      individuals, inaudible and unseen by others. It is not, however, necessary
+      that there shall be insanity with the hallucinations referred to; for I am
+      personally acquainted with many individuals who have both seen and heard,
+      as they imagine, persons and voices, but of whose sanity I have no doubt.
+      Such delusions often come from overstudy, or too great mental emotion; and
+      the medical worker in his closet and the Roman general in his tent may
+      equally see a spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it must be understood that to all classes the hallucination has the
+      effect of reality, until, by the exercise of an active will, inquiry
+      proves that both sounds and sights thus noticed are illusions. If,
+      therefore, persons who have visions, &amp;c., have not intellects which
+      are cultivated, the spectres will pass for realities, and, as such, will
+      be described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we endeavour to apply this observation to certain cases, we shall see
+      how far the deductions are <i>vraisemblable</i>. Of all the causes which
+      produce atrocious crimes, insanity of mind is the most common. But this
+      cause is rarely recognized at the time, even in a country like our own.
+      Murder, rape, arson, and a host of other atrocities are often the first
+      evidence of a diseased brain. The doctor is assured of this long before an
+      ignorant public, and he traces without surprise the course of a malady
+      which is not seen by the vulgar, until its culmination in some better
+      known form of lunacy. These mental sufferers are exactly those to whom
+      visions are most common, and who are most unable to test the reality of
+      their hallucinations. If, then, they are integers of a people to whom
+      insanity is unknown, it is natural that their narratives will be listened
+      to with awe. The Japanese tyrant, whose case we have given, was probably
+      brutal from impending brain disease, and the visions which appeared to him
+      were caused by an increase of his malady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare has evidently taken this view of the question, for, in <i>Macbeth</i>,
+      he makes that hero (act ii., scene 1), soliloquise with a dagger which he
+      sees, but cannot clutch&mdash;"Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to
+      feeling, as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind; a false
+      creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" Conscious of the
+      illusion, Macbeth recognizes the probable cause; but, at a later period,
+      when the diseased brain is worse than it was before, the unfortunate man
+      is quite unable to reason, and we find him in act iii., scene 4,
+      affrighted by the ghost of Banquo&mdash;whose appearance he believes to be
+      real, even although his wife recalls to his mind the dagger scene, and
+      reasons upon his weakness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think that we shall be far wrong if we assume that many nations,
+      who were not far advanced in mental speculation, obtained their first
+      ideas of the resurrection of the body from the hallucinations of
+      approaching or actual insanity. Christian divines unquestionably endeavour
+      to demonstrate the truth of the dogma referred to, by the frequent
+      appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his crucifixion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the manifestation of Jesus differed wholly from that of Moses and
+      Elias who once came to talk to him. He takes particular pains to
+      demonstrate to Thomas that he has flesh and blood and a hole in his side,
+      as well as in his hands and feet. This indicates that Jesus did not die
+      upon the cross, but that he fainted and came back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To insist for a moment upon the lessons taught by the narrative in the
+      gospels, let us inquire what is the value of the argument which proves the
+      resurrection of the body, either by the appearance to some one of a
+      departed friend or enemy, or the visits of Jesus to his disciples. If it
+      is demonstrated thus that the body is eternal and will rise again, it is
+      equally certain that its garments, whether cloth, linen, or calico, will
+      be resuscitated also!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject, however, is not yet exhausted, for we have now to remark,
+      that no one has ever been known to see a spectre which does not represent
+      some one whom he has seen, or whose picture he has noticed; nor does he
+      ever hear a voice in a tongue unknown to himself. Consequently, when we
+      find individuals recognizing some one whose portrait they have seen, but
+      who talks in the mother tongue of the visionary, we are forced to conclude
+      that the matter is unreal. If a French girl&mdash;or several of them, see
+      the Virgin Mary, and hear her talk French, it is evident to every thinking
+      mind, either that there is mental disorder or priestly craft. In like
+      manner, when individuals, calling themselves "mediums," declare their
+      power to call before them the ghosts of Homer and Hero, Leander and
+      Alexander, and assert that they can distinguish Plato from Socrates, and
+      Seneca from Xenophon, and can converse with all in pure English, it is
+      clear that such people are not insane, and that their pretended skill has
+      no existence. That which goes by the names of clairvoyance and
+      spiritualism is based solely upon an unreasoning credulity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In speaking of a belief in "spiritualism" as being analogous to implicit
+      credence in ghosts&mdash;and both as being founded upon imperfection in
+      judgment, it is right that I should give some reasons for what I say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More than thirty years have elapsed since I attended my first séance with
+      a clairvoyant. She had then been in Liverpool some time, and not only came
+      to us from America with a wonderful renown, but soon attached to her
+      triumphal car some of the most conspicuous of our local savans. Having
+      read much upon the subject of Mesmerism&mdash;the Od or Odyllic force,
+      animal magnetism, &amp;c., I was desirous of gaining some personal
+      experience, and gladly accepted an invitation to see the lady referred to,
+      at the house of a near relative. There were many present, and before the
+      meeting formally began, I obtained permission to take notes in writing of
+      what passed. The first undertaking was that we should be told what two of
+      our number were doing in a dark room below stairs. I was one of the two,
+      and we stood with one hand upon the other's shoulder, and the loose hands
+      were held out horizontally. One leg of each was resting on the tabla The
+      lady reported us as sitting together on a sofa. Her husband explained away
+      the failure by saying that there was a mirror in the room! As there was a
+      looking-glass in every apartment in the house, my friend and I took our
+      position on the stairs; and on this occasion we lay down at full length
+      heads downwards. The clairvoyant said that we were arm in arm talking.
+      After this second failure, I was asked to take the lady's hand in mine,
+      and think deeply of some place which she would then describe to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must here pause to notice the condition referred to. My mind was to be
+      absorbed in what I required to be described&mdash;if I allowed my thoughts
+      to wander, I was told that the woman would be confused, and her
+      performance a failure. This involved the idea that I was not to criticise,
+      as the affair proceeded, but to make one thing "square" with another, if I
+      could. My part was carefully pointed out, but nothing came of it. I then
+      gave a possible clue, which was followed up, and with some surprise I
+      found the woman describe what I was really thinking about. But the
+      repetition of a phrase struck upon my ear&mdash;it was this, "I see a lot
+      of things going back and for'rads," and I found that I had interpreted
+      this as men, women, schoolboys, horses, palisades, trees, cloisters,
+      houses, and coaches!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After my retirement an elderly man grasped the hand, and I with pencil
+      took down the words the woman used, with the intention of asking certain
+      outsiders next day if the terms conveyed to them any distinct idea. I
+      found the favourite sentence referred to came so often, that I merely left
+      for the words a space with t. b. f., to show where the phrase occurred.
+      There were far more spaces in my manuscript than words. But the old
+      gentleman was satisfied, and so was his son who was present. It had been
+      agreed between them that the clairvoyant was to describe "their house"&mdash;both
+      were satisfied that she had; but one was thinking of the town and the
+      other of the country house!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the talk, the woman, every time she uttered a sentence, said, "Am I
+      right?" and when told that she was wrong, she adroitly changed her
+      statement. Every experiment that night was a failure, and to some of us
+      who were sceptics our host remarked&mdash;"How is it that when you expect
+      the most, everything goes wrong?" To this my reply was&mdash;"When
+      doubters are present you scan evidence closer than when you are all
+      believers together."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When once I was known as a pyrrhonist, I was invited to see everybody who
+      was regarded by others as extraordinarily perfect in clairvoyance; and was
+      astonished to find out how ignorant the believers were of the laws of
+      evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a time clairvoyance was replaced by spiritualism, and I was again
+      challenged to test the virtue of mediums. As my avocations wholly
+      prevented my personal attendance, I challenged certain of the faithful to
+      describe my library, saying that I should not be content with being told
+      that there were windows and a door, a fireplace and a chair, a table and
+      an inkstand, &amp;c., but that I had something very peculiar in it, the
+      like of which I had never seen before&mdash;if this were described, I
+      should fancy that the spirits knew something. But I added, so long as
+      "spirits" only did things which conjurors, prestidigitateurs, "et hoc
+      genus omne," did, I should decline to believe that spirits were corporeal,
+      and that Grecian statesmen, Latin orators, and Sanscrit theologians were
+      familiar with the English language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must be emphatically stated that a man must not attribute everything,
+      of which he knows little, to a power of which he knows less. No one can
+      tell why an ordinary tree grows upwards, whilst a few peculiar ones grow,
+      after a certain period of their life, downwards; and if any one were to
+      declare that the first were influenced by the spirit of an unicorn, and
+      the second by the spirit of a cow's tail, he would be regarded as a fool.
+      Not much wiser would he be, who, when he heard a knock of some kind or
+      other, asserted or believed that it came from the angel of night&mdash;the
+      well-known Nox. The untutored savage, when first he sees a watch, cannot
+      tell how it goes&mdash;if he says that he is ignorant, we may respect him;
+      but if he declares that a spirit moves it, we despise his credulity. The
+      polite circles of civilized cities who attribute the absurd capers of
+      tambourines, concertinas, tables, and the like to the vivacity of the
+      ghosts of defunct philosophers, and who think that it requires the shade
+      of Venus to tell us, that feminine women are more graceful than masculine
+      hoydens, are not much superior to the natural savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These remarks may be supplemented by the experiences imparted to me by
+      several personal friends; for, as it seems to me, each one has his own way
+      in looking at things, and has, so to speak, an idiosyncrasy in belief and
+      scepticism. One man, for example, inquires "How is it that if I propound
+      to a spiritualist, to an artist with 'planchette,' or any other person who
+      professes clairvoyance&mdash;a question, through a friend who does not
+      know the answer, I never get a correct reply; but if I propound the same
+      question the response is always right?" In this case it is clear that the
+      inquirer answers himself&mdash;not wittingly, it is true; but, by means of
+      a slight hesitation under certain circumstances, he gives to the adroit
+      professor the needful clue. How far this is true has been repeatedly
+      proved by those who have made the spirits say anything&mdash;"Where is my
+      sister?" such an one asks, and by the alphabet and raps he hears that she
+      is in Munich; but as the inquirer never had a sister, the spirits have
+      clearly been duped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of my friends, ordinarily a thorough sceptic, was converted to the
+      belief that one of his hands was positively and the other negatively
+      magnetic, and he showed me how he turned, by their means, a book suspended
+      between us upon a door key finely tied within the leaves. But when I
+      showed him that this was done by a movement of the body, and could not be
+      done if both hands employed were fixed upon anything&mdash;he was
+      convinced that what seemed due to one thing depended, in reality, upon
+      another. Yet that man was an acute and able chemical analyst. How the late
+      Dr Faraday convinced "table turners" that they did, unconsciously, that
+      which they wished, but determined not to do, will long be remembered as a
+      marvel of philosophical induction. We all have not the faculty of
+      analyzing evidence, and it would be well if those who are deficient in
+      that power would be less bigoted than they are. We can scarcely expect it,
+      however, for ignorance and arrogance usually walk together; and no man is
+      more convinced of his knowledge than the one who takes it at second hand,
+      and believes what he is told. The faithful swallow "squid," and become a
+      mass of blubber; the sceptics feed on solid flesh, and are thin as tigers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Reconstructive. Faith and reason. Result of previous
+     investigations. Value of morality. Morality and Romanism.
+     Vice encouraged by priests&mdash;end in view. Submission to
+     priests more valuable than virtue. Vice better than
+     scepticism. Theological false witness. Compulsory faith.
+     Supply without demand&mdash;in theology. Correctness of doctrine
+     proved by the sword. Church and state in modern times.
+     "Nerve" required to change a belief. Moral courage. What is
+     faith? Absurd definition given by Paul. Faith must be
+     uncompromising. Why faith signifies blind confidence. Faith
+     and folly go hand in hand. Faith makes fools. Jesuits and
+     faith. Popery and faith. Faith persecutes reason. All
+     religious teachers uphold faith&mdash;the reason why. Quiet after
+     activity. The one who partly abjures faith resembles a
+     mariner at sea. Faith and reason incompatible. The author's
+     personal belief: Negative&mdash;positive. Opinions on various
+     received dogmas. Laws of Nature. Providence. The Book of God
+     in the universe. Sin&mdash;the ideas connected with children and
+     whelps. Human and animal instincts. Religious laws against
+     God's. Pious murder. When crimes are praiseworthy. Human
+     laws and ecclesiastical. Effect on common law of priestly
+     legislation. Ecclesiastical laws generally bad ones. The
+     Church makes sins; so does society. A case supposed. Society
+     contravenes the laws of Nature. The proper basis of
+     legislation. Personal impressions. Duty the guide of
+     conduct. Conclusions.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Importance of them. Reason gives peace of mind. Fears of the orthodox.
+      Reason may regenerate the world; Faith does not. Another way of treating
+      the subject Mr Gladstone upon education. Opposes "dread of results" to
+      "desire of learning." Gladstone and Strauss. Various oracles. Oxford
+      graduates rarely philosophic. Lord Bacon's aphorisms. Science obstructed
+      by human weaknesses. Progress of science barred by ecclesiastics. Religion
+      and despotism. The man who scouts induction is a bigot. Revelation
+      requires exposition. Three sets of expounders&mdash;all differ. Which must
+      the faithful follow? Popish miracles claim credence from the faithful. He
+      who argues must be logical. Can a bigot be a liberal? If learning is
+      valuable, it must have free scope. Choice proposed&mdash;faith or reason?
+      Men of mark who shun religious inquiry. Faraday and Gladstone. Influence
+      of faith, or reason, on the clergy. Examples. An objection noticed. Reason
+      useless in matters of faith&mdash;its absurdity demonstrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is now time to enter upon what has, throughout the composition of the
+      preceding essays, been constantly present to my mind, viz.,
+      "reconstruction." In the two larger volumes, and in this small one, it has
+      been my aim to clear away the foul rags which have, for many thousand
+      years, been heaped upon the lovely figure of truth&mdash;to endeavour to
+      remove the meretricious, or rubbishy, constructions that designing men
+      have builded round the magnificent structure of God's universe. I have, in
+      my own opinion, demonstrated that the Jews have no real claim to be
+      regarded as Jehovah's chosen people, and that their writings present no
+      marks of having been inspired or revealed&mdash;that, on the contrary,
+      there are proofs to show that a large portion of their Scriptures are
+      worthless fabrications, contrived by imperfectly educated men, for a
+      political purpose, or to foster vanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our examination into the character of the Hebrew God, and of those
+      individuals said to be his special friends and messengers, as given in the
+      Bible, we found evidence to show that the historians were a
+      semi-civilized, sensual, and malignant race, whose ignorance was only
+      surpassed by their arrogance. It has been further shown, that every
+      portion of the Jewish Scriptures which modern Christians have adopted into
+      their own religion, came to the so-called "chosen people" from those whom
+      they, and many amongst ourselves, designate "heathen." We have, still
+      further, shown the almost absolute identity between the current Christian
+      faith and that originated by Sakya Muni, which still reigns in Thibet,
+      Tartary, China, Ceylon, Japan, and elsewhere. We have demonstrated that a
+      high grade of civilization, and a form of government more paternal and
+      provident than any which the old world knew, existed in Peru, without the
+      smallest evidence of Christianity or Mosaism having ever existed there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have, in addition, shown that the miraculous conception of the Virgin
+      Mary is not, by any means, as great a marvel as it is generally supposed
+      to be, such an occurrence being as common to-day as it was from the
+      beginning, and as it probably ever will be. By a similar inquiry we could
+      readily have proved that the ascension of Jesus was not at all unique,
+      inasmuch as great men of old were in the habit of rising after their
+      decease, and making their dwelling in the heaven above&mdash;e.g.,
+      Romulus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have, still further, demonstrated that the modern belief in an angelic
+      host has nothing in it peculiar to Bible Christians and modern Jews, and
+      that our notion of a resurrection of the body is not exclusively a portion
+      of the Christian's creed, but that it was held, in one form or another,
+      more or less distinct, by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the distant
+      Japanese. In fine, we have done much to sweep away the major part of the
+      religious doctrines and dogmas which are prevalent in the Christian
+      world.. Our writing hitherto has been essentially iconoclastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, amongst all the idols which we have attempted to throw down, we have
+      not, in any instance, threatened morality. We take no credit for
+      forbearance, but we point to the fact, inasmuch as whenever opposite
+      religionists contend about their tenets, they never lay violent hands upon
+      morality. They may abuse the practice of their opponents, and hold up the
+      imaginary vices of their enemy to execration, but real goodness in the
+      work of life is ever respected.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * I am, however, somewhat in doubt whether the Roman Church
+     deserves the eulogy here given to other bodies. In my
+     reading of history, especially in what are called the "Dark
+     Ages" of Christianity, the Papal authorities winked at
+     crimes against morality, so long as the sinners paid due
+     deference to ecclesiastical authority, and bled freely, by
+     pouring lands, treasures, and wealth of all kinds into the
+     priestly treasury. The history of the Popes is written
+     almost everywhere in blood. Murder, assassination, and
+     spoliation were common weapons in their hands, and rape and
+     robbery were condoned easily to those who were powerful and
+     active slaves of the Church.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the Popes of Rome were free from persecution and danger, they,
+      in their turn, used the arts of the tyrants of old, and sought for
+      political supremacy by pandering to all the passions of kings and great
+      men&mdash;if, by that means, they could make them friendly. Up to within a
+      very short period there has not been a Christian despot, or a Pope, who
+      has not punished political crimes more severely than offences against
+      morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, with all the fearful practices adopted by Romanists, they have ever
+      had in their months exhortations to propriety and personal purity&mdash;their
+      words have been peaceful, whilst war of the most malignant type has been
+      in their hearts. What they have practised, however, they have accused
+      their adversaries of having preached.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may also be objected that some small sects in modern days have really
+      preached the doctrines of "free love," and license in sensuality; but of
+      these it would be unprofitable to discourse. The people who join in
+      promulgating such doctrines are below contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When controversialists find that they have one subject upon which they can
+      all of them cordially unite, the philosopher would expect that they would
+      study to develope it, and, for that purpose, place it in the foreground.
+      But this is far from their practice. The ministers of every denomination,
+      on the contrary, place morality far behind doctrine&mdash;those of the
+      Protestant sect, for example, declare "good works" to be essentially
+      valueless without "faith," and our pulpits teem with discourses which
+      demonstrate the enormous superiority of a blind belief, in doctrine and
+      dogma, over an intelligent morality, irrespective of creed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this propensity our preachers do not stand alone, for, in every
+      instance where history has led us to inquire into this point, we find that
+      submission to priestly rule has been regarded as more praiseworthy than
+      virtue. When Israel slew the Midianites there was no apparent difference
+      between the morals of the two people. Both were equally bad or good; but
+      such as they were, their deeds were sanctioned by different gods; and
+      whilst the Jews were right, their opponents were wrong. When the Crusaders
+      attacked the Saracens, there can be little, if any, doubt that the worth
+      of the latter far exceeded that of the former; but as their faith
+      differed, the practice was of no consequence in the eyes of the invaders,
+      and he who died in fighting for his country was execrated by the robbers,
+      who desired to steal it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, from a comparatively distant past, we approach nearer to our own
+      times, there is abundance of testimony to prove that the excellence of the
+      French Protestants was superior to that of the Papal priests and their
+      followers in the time of Louis XIV.; but this was of no avail&mdash;the
+      good were persecuted by the bad, because they were good only in deeds and
+      not in doctrine&mdash;the last being upheld by the bigots who persecuted
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may all see precisely the same phenomenon in our own day. Those who are
+      called Unitarians, and the vast majority of those who are designated
+      atheists are, in proportion to their numbers, far more moral than those
+      who are generically described as "Christians;" but their integrity in
+      every relation of life does not prevent their being abused and persecuted,
+      by parsons in "the establishment," by every means available in a free
+      country, and amongst the weapons used, the most common are slander and
+      false witness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On inquiry into its origin, we find at the root of this aversion to
+      recognize probity as the most important item of religion, the undoubted
+      fact that the upright, thoughtful man requires no other person to help him
+      as a priest or a mediator between him and the Creator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To possess a doctrine there must be some one to teach it, and the demand
+      begets a supply. But though the last aphorism is true in commerce, it is
+      not by any means universally so, for many an inventor of goods has to
+      force a supply, ere any demand for his article can arise. It is certainly
+      so in Ethics. The Jews made no request to Moses for a new religion when he
+      offered to lead them; they soon became weary of him, and wanted to go back
+      to Egypt. Jesus constrained his first followers to accept a salvation of
+      which they did not feel the need, and Mahomet compelled, at the sword's
+      point, his victims to accept that which they detested. In these instances
+      there was no want to be met, except on the part of individuals who desired
+      to obtain personal influence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In religion the laws of supply and demand have only exceptional sway, for
+      each individual priest or minister may, according as he pleases, elect to
+      provide for known desires, or to inaugurate a new set of requirements. But
+      whether he does one or the other he is clearly an opponent to, and
+      frequently disliked by, any one who refuses all manner of traffic in
+      spiritual affairs. He is then practically in the same condition as the
+      English government was in when the Chinamen refused to take the opium
+      which they had been receiving for many years before; and, like it, he must
+      endeavour to enforce his wishes by war. But the parson does not fight with
+      cannon and gunpowder, for he assumes the power to wield weapons of far
+      greater importance&mdash;viz., the power to torture after death all his
+      adversaries. "Believe me," run his words, "and you shall be saved from
+      hell fire; reject my message, and you shall be burned in everlasting
+      flames!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When belligerent kings go to battle, they do not go alone and fight
+      single-handed for their cause; on the contrary, they enlist upon their
+      side every man whom they can influence or compel; nor do they care, so
+      long as the troops obey orders, what their private thoughts are; probably
+      few Chinese who fought the British were not opium consumers, and few
+      English cared for the drug at all. In like manner, when priests differ
+      among themselves, they do not meet in wordy tournaments, but they enlist
+      on their respective sides everybody whom similarity in superstition,
+      interest, or any other motive induces to join their standard. When an
+      issue is joined, the result is governed by force of arms, arts, or
+      numbers, as the case maybe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, in the last resort, the correctness of a doctrine is, as we have
+      frequently remarked in previous pages, proved by thews and sinews&mdash;not
+      by brains. So long as the Pagans were numerically superior to Christians,
+      the latter were heretics and victims; but when the disciples of Jesus were
+      actually the strongest, they became suddenly "the orthodox," and the poor
+      Pagans "the damned." In later times Protestantism asserted its faith by
+      the prowess of Cromwell's "ironsides" in England and Ireland; in like
+      manner the Covenanters of Scotland proved, by the might of their swords,
+      Presbyterianism to be superior to Episcopal government. By dint of Saxon
+      might, Ireland was long politically at one with Great Britain; now by her
+      numbers she is allied to the Vatican.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The well-read politician will see that a contest similar to those thus
+      indicated is going on almost all over Europe. In Great Britain and
+      Ireland, in France, Prussia, Austria, and Italy&mdash;even in the once
+      bigoted Spain, priestly parties are striving for supremacy over the party
+      of rational order and philosophical government. The question at issue is
+      by no means doubtful&mdash;it is one which has been agitated for thousands
+      of years, but that has never assumed large proportions in consequence of
+      general ignorance and consequent apathy. In England, France, and Germany,
+      innumerable champions on the one side have risen, fought, and died,
+      overpowered by the numbers-ranged against them; but, as persecution is
+      said to be the seed of orthodoxy, so these men and their writings have, by
+      dissemination through the press, and the effect of increased education in
+      the languages of Europe, gradually raised so large a party, as to be able
+      to contend with some chances of success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen that the question to which I refer is this&mdash;"Shall
+      men and states be governed by faith?" in other words, "by the hierarchy of
+      the most numerous section of the community&mdash;or by reason&mdash;i.e.,
+      by the good sense of the majority?" In Austria and in Italy this issue has
+      clearly been tried, and in both instances the priesthood has been obliged
+      to accept a secondary position. In Prussia the same momentous point is
+      being tried with every chance of the sacerdotal party being worsted. In
+      the British kingdom religion has long been regarded as subordinate to
+      state policy; nevertheless there is yet a strong party who desires to
+      reduce her inhabitants to clerical bondage. If all the individuals
+      composing this section of the community were united, they would prevail by
+      their numbers; but, as the aggressive army is composed of troops who bear
+      an almost deadly hate against each other, small danger is to be
+      anticipated from them. The Ritualist and Roman Catholic might unite
+      together; but these would not stand shoulder to shoulder with the
+      Wesleyan, Baptist, and Low Churchman. Although all equally detest those
+      who say "parsons are not wanted," sects will not ally themselves, lest, if
+      every one were to be compelled to select a form of faith, the compulsory
+      decree might augment the numbers following some adversary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have thus placed before our readers what we believe is the first
+      article which has to be considered in Reconstruction. We have to ask
+      ourselves whether we should enlist ourselves under the banner of faith,
+      and endeavour to add one form of religion to those already existing; or,
+      whether we should join the banner of reason, and repudiate all doctrines,
+      dogmas, credences, and the like, which are offensive to common sense. We
+      may fairly parody the words of the mythical Elisha, and say to ourselves&mdash;"Choose
+      ye this day whom ye will serve; if faith suits your indolence, then hug
+      your chains; if you prefer reason, gird up the loins of your mind, and
+      metaphorically kill the priests of Rite."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ere, however, we can reasonably expect those who have hitherto been
+      inconsiderate to make their selection of standard bearers, it is desirable
+      to say something of the two. <i>In limine</i> we must observe that we do
+      not believe that the choice will be determined by the head alone, for
+      there are many whose arms are, so to speak, paralyzed by a constitutional
+      peculiarity. A hero in his study has often proved a poltroon in the field
+      of battle. I may point the moral by quoting from memory a story in
+      Addison's <i>Spectator</i>&mdash;"A B is a hen-pecked husband; he knows
+      it, and bewails his thraldom; he consults C D, who sympathises with his
+      case, increases his detestation for the home tyranny, and tells him how to
+      break the chains. A B, full of resolution, tries the plan recommended, but
+      breaks down at once." The moral is, that those who are born to serve, or
+      are too weak-minded to assert their independence, had better submit to be
+      ruled&mdash;even if the tyrant be a woman, than try to gain peace by
+      conflict. Into this story I fully enter, for I know, from experience, how
+      much "nerve" is required for any one to change his or her relative
+      position. The moral courage of which I speak, is one that dominates over
+      constitutional shyness and fear; it differs from the boldness of a
+      soldier, and the dash of the beast of prey; it is not a simple mental
+      assent; but it is a motive which, after being once placed, becomes a
+      mainspring of life. To adopt Faith as a guide, is to go through life
+      easily&mdash;so long as "thought" can be sent to sleep. To adopt Reason,
+      is to prevent thought ever slumbering, and to live the happier the more
+      steadily that the mind is watchful In few words, Faith is "a quack
+      doctor," Reason "a physician." The first will always have the most
+      admirers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further preface, let us inquire "what Faith really is?" This is a
+      question with which I have been familiar since my childhood, and the
+      answer offered to me for adoption was&mdash;"It is the substance of things
+      hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1). This reply has
+      never suggested any distinct idea to me, and I am confident that the
+      author of "Hebrews" had not a definite meaning in his own mind when he
+      wrote the words. The context shows that the word [&mdash;Greek&mdash;] is
+      used to signify distinct states of mind, and one example, which is given
+      frequently, indicates a different signification from another that precedes
+      or follows. For example, in v. 5 we are told that Enoch was translated by
+      "faith;" but the only evidence for this is, that "he pleased God;"
+      whereas, in verse 11, we are told that Sarah, who laughed at the idea of
+      having offspring, and disbelieved the promise which said that she should
+      have a son, conceived "through faith." Still further, the false history of
+      the chapter disgusted me&mdash;e.g., we read in w. 24, 25, 27, that Moses
+      by faith elected to bear affliction with the people of God, and from the
+      same cause forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, &amp;c.&mdash;both
+      of which statements are untrue, for he ran away both from the afflictions
+      of the Hebrews and the wrath of the monarch, and required "pressing"
+      before he would leave his retreat in Midian. I regard the chapter thus
+      referred to as one of the great stumbling blocks of Christianity. Its
+      logic is contemptible; yet it must pass for truth, because Paul is thought
+      to have written it. Being now thrown back upon our own resources for a
+      definition of "faith," we affirm that it signifies "<i>uncompromising</i>
+      belief in what one is told." Every religious book which occupies itself
+      with this subject illustrates the word in question by affirming that it
+      resembles the motive which actuates a child who, at a father's bidding;
+      leaps from a height upon the promise that papa will catch him in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Though, as a rule, I am disinclined to use adjectives, I have added the
+      word in italics, because it is a material part of the definition, and
+      involves more than at first sight appears. Peter tried to walk upon the
+      water&mdash;he doubted, and began to sink. He has been imitated by others;
+      they have all failed. "Doctor," a man may say, "can I swallow this without
+      being choked?" "Yes, if you think you can." He tries to swallow the
+      morsel, and is choked. The result in every case is attributed to a want of
+      faith. In other words, hesitation cannot effect what confidence can.
+      Consequently we are justified in asserting that faith and doubt are
+      absolutely incompatible. Faith implies an absolute and perfect confidence.
+      This faith may be compulsory&mdash;as when a shipmaster is obliged by
+      local law to give up the management of his ship to a pilot; or it may be
+      spontaneous, as when a patient trusts himself to a surgeon. For a man only
+      to give a half confidence, is to cripple to that extent the capacity of
+      the one who is responsible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Religious faith, then, involves the necessity of an absolute and blind
+      confidence in the priestly pilot selected as a conductor through life to
+      eternity; it precludes inquiry, discourages thought upon the most
+      important matter which every man has to consider, and makes of a rational
+      being an intellectual slave. In few words, it reduces its votary to the
+      position of a tool, and renders him, so far as religion is concerned,
+      mentally blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We recognize the accuracy of our deductions when we find that the aim of
+      the Roman church has been to reduce men to the condition here described,
+      and then to use them as carpenters do planes, chisels, and axes. It is
+      probable that there never existed in the world an order of men who have so
+      completely reduced themselves, and voluntarily too, it must be borne in
+      mind, to the position of a machine, as the Jesuits have done. They are an
+      instrument in the hands of their superiors, and they blindly obey. Whether
+      the order exists for good or harm, it is not my purpose to discuss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next in order to the society of Jesus comes the gigantic society known as
+      the Papacy, or Roman Catholicism. I place this as second to Jesuitry,
+      because, for a long period, there was a certain freedom of opinion allowed
+      to the superior clergy. But now, when it has become a tenet of the church
+      of Rome, that its head is absolutely infallible in all matters of dogma
+      and doctrine, it is probable that the demand of faith from the laity may
+      equal, if not exceed, that made upon professed Jesuits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In religion, the only place in which uncompromising faith finds its home,
+      is the Papal. That demands unlimited belief in everything ecclesiastically
+      promulgated, hatred of everything dogmatically condemned, and acquiescence
+      in every sacerdotal command. Amongst that sect, doubting is an offence,
+      and opposition is a crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have seen this illustrated in the person of the learned Bishop
+      Döllinger, who has been excommunicated simply because he refused to accept
+      the new fangled notions of an almost effete old pope. He cannot see
+      anything in a modern council to supersede apostolic traditions; he doubts;
+      therefore the Papalists do everything in their power to damn him. In like
+      manner, although prior in time to the declaration of the Pope's
+      infallibility, we have seen the present king of Italy excommunicated;
+      because he, as the head of his own dominions, ordered a decree to be
+      carried into effect which, whilst it was good for the people generally,
+      was regarded as hostile to the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The observer need not, however, go far from home in search of
+      illustrations, for every year sees one or another Protestant minister
+      leaving the Anglican for the Roman communion, on the sole ground that in
+      the latter there is no room for doctrinal doubts and contests. To the
+      laity, the very repose of the religious mind is held out as a bait by
+      Papal missionaries, and it is probably one of the most successful which
+      "the fishers of men" employ. I once heard a brother physician express his
+      opinion on this point. Conversation had turned upon a confrère who had
+      been in religious matters "everything by turns, and nothing long." "Ah,"
+      said the Romanist, "he'll be tired of roaming some day, and find repose at
+      last in the bosom of the church; his soul will then be at rest, and will
+      wander no more."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The possibility of Protestants entertaining a doubt upon the power of "the
+      Church" to demand unlimited belief and obedience from the faithful, is a
+      sore thorn in the side of many dignitaries of the national creed. As this
+      propensity to inquiry is an essential part of the legacy bequeathed to
+      Englishmen by the reformation, this last movement has been execrated by
+      some of our High Churchmen. It is asserted, that, as the taking of the
+      Bible for the sole rule of faith has been followed by a great splitting up
+      of the so-called "Church of Christ," so it is advisable to change the
+      standard, and to adopt that of "Ecclesiastics" personally or collectively.
+      In any case, such advocates desire to re-establish the reign of faith.
+      What the Reign of Faith has been in Europe, it would be idle to describe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the mind of an individual revolts from giving implicit faith to
+      any creed, doctrine, or dogma, he must be regarded as a mariner who, being
+      not quite contented with his own country, endeavours to find a better. In
+      his voyage he first leaves the shore as a fledgling does the nest&mdash;he
+      goes a short excursion, and returns; after a time he becomes more brave,
+      and puts off more boldly. At first he probably finds a number of other
+      barques as venturous as his own, and he becomes emboldened; it may be his
+      arms are strong, his head clear, and his boat good; and he steers into the
+      offing. No sooner does he leave the herd, however, than he is chased, and
+      if he refuses to put back, curses follow him; and the friends whom once he
+      had are condoled with. Such is the position of a Protestant who departs
+      seriously from the religion of the majority. With or amongst the Romanists
+      to leave the shore is an act of disbelief which must be atoned for by
+      penance or punishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is clear that every such individual who, like a chick, leaves the
+      shelter of the maternal wings, must be more or less at sea. He or she may
+      have no idea of going very far, yet may be compelled to sail on until he
+      has reached the other side of Doubting Straits, and has landed in the
+      realm of Reason. We can well conceive the waters to be covered by small
+      "craft," which keep together for company's sake, or who boldly sail out
+      and solicit followers&mdash;some cluster, it may be, round a stately
+      galleon, others sail with a dashing cruiser, some come into collision or
+      hostile contact with their neighbours, and try to damage each others'
+      barques. But all are at sea&mdash;driven hither and thither by breezes
+      which spring up, no one knows how, and drop down again as swiftly as they
+      rose. The mariners, however, seem to enjoy the excitement, and refuse to
+      return to their own land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The individuals whom we here describe are the ordinary Protestant sects
+      (not including the Unitarians, who have long reached a comparatively
+      stable ground). These, by whatever name they are called, refuse to give
+      implicit faith to the Pope; they will, however, accord, in some degree, to
+      some pet parson, the management of their conscience; they dread what is
+      called "free-thinking," as a mariner does a lee shore. They put up with
+      every accident which arises from mingling faith with reason, and are, on
+      the whole, contented, as long as too much pressure is not put upon them,
+      to steer in a definite direction. Of these it may be said, "Thou art
+      neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou
+      art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out. of my mouth"
+      (Rev. iii. 15,16). The endeavour to make reason subservient to faith, must
+      ever be a failure as complete as would be the endeavour to weld iron with
+      water, or to heat an anchor shaft by surrounding it with cold coals and
+      wood, then blowing a blast of air upon the whole. He who is determined to
+      use reason, must drop faith; and he who clings to faith, must drop reason.
+      The conclusions drawn by all who attempt the combination will always be
+      lame and impotent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, in the stead of faith, an individual takes reason for his guide
+      through this world to the next, he incurs the wrath and malignancy of the
+      many, and the respect of the few. He comes in for far harder names than
+      Pagans gave to Christians, and Papalists gave to Huguenots. If,
+      unfortunately, he should live in a country where priests rule, he may be
+      burned, as Savonarola was at Florence, Latimer and Ridley at Oxford, and
+      Servetus at Geneva. Luther was said to be a devil&mdash;a so-called
+      Atheist is believed to be something worse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, notwithstanding all the obloquy thrown upon Freethinkers by the
+      orthodox, they steadily have increased in numbers, ever since the spread
+      of education and the cheapness of books have enabled men to study in
+      retirement When there was little instruction and few books, people gained
+      what knowledge they had from their spiritual guides. This power of the
+      pulpit enabled the hierarchy to set up and substantiate any claims which
+      they chose. But, since the power of the printing press has risen, the
+      influence of the priesthood has diminished. With all this tendency to
+      so-called Atheism, there has been no loss of propriety; on the contrary,
+      the probity of the few exceeds that of the many, and in all there is a
+      great improvement. The present times in Italy are far superior to those
+      when the Borgias and their religion were supreme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we inquire what the Freethinkers, or Rationalists, are, it is readily
+      seen that they have been maligned by "the faithful." There is little
+      difficulty in summing up their tenets: it is "Reverence, without
+      servility." They draw their views from the book of creation, and hold it
+      infamous to fight for supremacy where facts and logic can decide. This,
+      however, is by far too meagre to satisfy either a friend, an inquirer, or
+      an opponent; it is, therefore, desirable to go into the matter more fully.
+      In doing so, I make no pretence to be the mouthpiece of a party, nor even
+      to give a digested account of what those who have written and published
+      before me have enunciated; my sole aim is to give, in as plain terms as I
+      can command, the opinions which inquiry has forced upon my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My first confession of faith must be negative, for, until the ground has
+      been cleared, it is not advisable either to plant or construct:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. I do not believe in the authority of any written book as being an
+      inspired production, or as containing a revelation from God to man. In my
+      estimation, the Bible is not in any way superior to the Koran, to the
+      Dhammapada, the Puranas, the Main-yo-Khard, the Avesta, or any other
+      collection of scriptures held sacred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. I do not believe the story given in Genesis of the creation, of the
+      formation of human beings, and what is ordinarily called "the temptation"
+      and "the fall".
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. I do not believe in the existence of what is technically designated
+      "original sin," nor that the human race is "a fallen one;" consequently, I
+      do not believe in the necessity for "salvation." I do not believe that
+      death came into the world by sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4 I do not believe in the existence of "sin," in the ordinary acceptation
+      of the word; nor do I believe that man requires the intervention of any
+      fellow mortal, either to reconcile or embroil him with an unseen power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. I do not believe in the existence of a Devil, or of any other power in
+      the whole universe, than that of the Supreme Maker of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. I do not believe in any description which has yet been given of Hell or
+      Heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. I do not believe that God has ever directly spoken to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. I do not believe that God has ever become incarnate, or that he has a
+      celestial spouse, or a son.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. I do not believe in the existence of truth-speaking prophets, in the
+      existence of angels, or ghosts, or in the supernatural birth of any one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      10. I do not believe that God has now, or ever has had, a separate and
+      chosen people, peculiarly "His own," and, consequently, that there are
+      none to whom the term "the elect" can apply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. I do not believe that what is generally designated religion is
+      necessary to the existence of law and order in a state or in a family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. I do not believe that God requires the assistance of man, here or
+      elsewhere, to enable Him to find, or to keep, or to punish, His subjects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These negatives might be multiplied, but I doubt whether profitably so,
+      inasmuch as the more we dilute important points, the less readily are they
+      recognized. We may now proceed to affirmations:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. I do believe in the existence of a distinct Power in creation&mdash;great
+      beyond conception, which pervades all space&mdash;which is everywhere
+      present in the earth, the sea, the air, and in every conceivable part of
+      the Universe&mdash;which made all things, and gave to them properties,
+      powers, and laws. A power to which it were blasphemy to assign ears, eyes,
+      hands, or human parts, and an evidence of a grovelling mind to suppose it
+      capable of human passions, such as love, hate, jealousy, and merriment,
+      and to describe it as ignorant, vacillating, and grieved at its own work.
+      That Power I cannot conceive as having either an origin or an end. Into
+      the designs of such a power, man cannot enter, nor can he even seem to
+      approach them, except by noticing the works of creation, and studying the
+      laws which apparently govern it By the term, "laws of nature," I
+      understand "the laws of the power of which I speak." I cannot conceive how
+      man can form an idea of a state of spiritual existence of which he can
+      neither see, observe, or notice anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, in my opinion, unnecessary here to enter into the vexed question of
+      the continued interference of this Power with its works, for where we have
+      only human analogies to guide us, it is undesirable to argue upon them in
+      the attempt to discover the superhuman. As we shall have occasion shortly
+      to indicate our views upon a matter analogous to this, we will postpone
+      anything which we may have to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe that the Power has never made, nor can ever make, a mistake;
+      that all its works are perfect, and that where they seem to us to be
+      otherwise, it is from our ignorance of their design.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me that lions and lambs, sharks and gudgeons, that hawks and
+      chickens, form a portion of a grand scheme: that the distinct classes of
+      animals were originally perfect; that they may deteriorate, yet never
+      advance beyond perfection. I do not believe that a lion could become,
+      under any circumstances, a bull; a bear a camel, or a pig an elephant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. The belief that the Creator made each creature originally perfect, and
+      with certain well defined propensities, involves the further confidence
+      that the indulgence in those propensities is a necessary part of the
+      scheme of creation; consequently, I believe that the tiger eats flesh
+      because it is a law of his existence, and that in doing so he commits no
+      sin. I believe, still further, that a close observation of nature gives us
+      some apparent insight into the plan of creation For example, I think the
+      existence of gills in a fish leads us fairly to the conclusion that it was
+      intended to live in the water; that the existence of teeth implies that
+      they were to be used in eating, wings in flying, legs in walking. Still
+      further, when we notice that vegetables can assimilate mineral matter,
+      which animals, as a rule, cannot, I believe that the vegetable kingdom has
+      its special place in the world; and when, moreover, we find creatures who
+      can eat and digest vegetables, and have a special apparatus for the
+      purpose, it is fair to conclude that they too have their station assigned.
+      A corresponding remark applies to the carnivora. Once again,&mdash;when an
+      extended observation shows us that the beasts and birds of prey select for
+      their victims the young of animals which their parents are unable to
+      protect, the aged, who are too infirm to fight for themselves, or the
+      sickly, which are quite unfit to live: when, moreover, we find these
+      carnivorous creatures die when age or accident deprives them of the power
+      of getting food; nay, when we see large numbers of all animals die from
+      want of food, of air, of warmth, or from accidents&mdash;I believe that we
+      are justified in deducing the idea that it is a design of the Power, that
+      those which cannot live shall die; I believe that death is as essential a
+      necessity to every creature as is its birth, and that its many forms have
+      a definite purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us now, for a moment, turn our attention to the very commencement of
+      life. If from any cause the new being is seriously malformed or diseased,
+      it is a common thing for the dam to miscarry. If a mother, say a pig, rat,
+      or bird, brings forth a larger brood than she can nourish, she commonly
+      kills the smallest, and allows only those to survive which she can find
+      food for&mdash;the bird that lays more eggs than her nest will hold, turns
+      the overplus out; and if, when the fledglings grow up, they are too bulky,
+      one of them will be discarded. The cuckoo's chick has a special provision
+      made for helping it to turn out the young of another bird, and its mother
+      has also a special instinct to lay its eggs in the nest of the
+      hedge-sparrow. The life of one involves the death of three or more. Again,
+      in the aquatic world, one fish makes no scruple to feed on its own young
+      ones or those of its neighbours, and the old crocodile seeks out its
+      offspring as a favourite luxury. We find, moreover, that where these
+      creatures abound there may often be found a small animal&mdash;the
+      ichneumon&mdash;whose instinct teaches it to seek for and destroy the eggs
+      of the saurian. In like manner crows, rats, cuckoos, and probably many
+      other creatures, have a propensity to feed upon the eggs of various birds.
+      In few words, we recognize throughout creation an apparent design to
+      prevent a superabundance of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This remarkable provision, working, as it does, through laws which seem to
+      be fixed and established, prevents our belief in the interference of the
+      Creator. When an animal has reached the period of nearly adult age, there
+      is in many instances a considerable amount of instruction given to it,
+      sometimes by the sire, but mostly by the dam. When that has been imparted,
+      parents and offspring seem to be like strangers to each other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that, if we could observe all animals, we should find some
+      system of training of the family. As it is, we can only speak of domestic
+      fowls, and notice the order which the hen keeps up amongst her brood of
+      chickens; they are taught to live peaceably. Her punishments are never
+      lenient; they are, indeed, necessarily severe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may next proceed to inquire into the animal instincts which exist in
+      adult life, at a period when every creature is supposed to be in its
+      perfection. At a certain time of the year there is a propensity for the
+      male and female to unite. There is not anything in creation which affords
+      a more attractive study than this, for every class of creatures has a
+      practice peculiar to itself. One might fancy that in an act so necessary
+      and so simple there would be little cause for interest; yet, in reality,
+      "the prodigality of design"&mdash;a term which we hope to explain fully
+      hereafter&mdash;is more largely shown in this process than in any other.
+      It is, however, a subject upon which one cannot descant before the general
+      public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far as we are able to observe animals, we find that at this period
+      there is, amongst a great number of classes, a power amongst the males to
+      discover the most perfect amongst the females, and to fight for them. By
+      this means the young are certain to be the offspring of perfection of
+      grace and beauty in the dam, and strength and size in the sire. We can
+      readily understand that, if the loveliest hind were to pair with the
+      weakliest stag, the breed would degenerate, and probably die out. But the
+      conqueror can hold his place only so long as he has vigour; when age has
+      weakened him, the youthful successor practically prevents the old buck
+      from being a father. In some exceptional cases (apparently so at least)
+      the number of males exceeds that of the females, and, as a result of the
+      instinct before alluded to, the fight ends in the majority of the males
+      being destroyed. The survivor then has one spouse only, and not a
+      seraglio. This is said to obtain amongst rats and lions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As yet, there is not a sufficient amount of observation available to
+      enable us to affirm what is the general cause of exit from life, when no
+      death by violence occurs. We do not know the end of old buffaloes,
+      elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, whales, and other monsters. Tales
+      are told of decrepit lions being occasionally seen tottering to their
+      fall; and gossip says that ancient cats know when they are about to die,
+      and retire to some secluded nook, where they give up the ghost quietly. I
+      cannot charge my memory with a single anecdote in which the youthful
+      animal endeavours to sustain the old one, by feeding it during its
+      decrepitude. Throughout creation parental affection signifies solicitude
+      for offspring. We do not anywhere discover a love towards a parent after
+      the younger creature has reached adult age.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In all the cases to which I have referred, and, were I a naturalist, they
+      might be greatly multiplied, there is no pretence, even amongst the
+      orthodox, that any of the creatures have committed "sin" against the
+      Almighty, or against the community of which they form a part. On the
+      contrary, what is done, even though it amounts to murder, is regarded as a
+      necessity; and we admire the laws of nature which bring about such
+      results. We do not stop to inquire whether any contrivance would prevent
+      birds from laying too many eggs, and cuckoos from dropping theirs into the
+      nests of other birds; we content ourselves with saying, "such is the will
+      of Providence." It is easy to come to such a conclusion as regards what we
+      are pleased to call "the lower animals," but as soon as we inquire
+      "whether similar laws or instincts are implanted in us," we are generally
+      met with a howl of repugnance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I believe that we shall never understand our true position in life and
+      in nature until we deliberately investigate that which we have in common
+      with other animals, and wherein we are different&mdash;probably superior.
+      I use the word <i>probably</i>, because, in the estimation of higher
+      beings than ourselves&mdash;if such there be&mdash;the horse and the
+      elephant may be regarded as being far above us in the scale which those
+      beings have framed for themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have never yet seen any deliberate attempt to work out the problem
+      referred to. Every one, or nearly so, who if orthodox, assumes that it is
+      absolutely wicked to compare the beasts which perish, to man who has a
+      soul As I have, in a previous volume, shown that the evidence for the
+      immortality of the horse is equal to that for the human race, I will not
+      stay to point out the absurdity of building an important argument upon a
+      baseless assumption, but simply express my belief that man has very much
+      in common with other mammals; but that he is in possession of something
+      superadded, which, at first sight&mdash;though not in reality&mdash;takes
+      him out of the trammels of the ordinary laws of nature that operate in the
+      brutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can doubt that man has as strong a propensity to unite with woman,
+      as bulls and stags have with the females of their kind. He has, even in
+      civilized societies, a propensity to fight with one or more of his fellows
+      for a female of surpassing beauty. Men will combat about a disputed field
+      or country as fiercely as dogs over a bone, or hermit crabs over a shell.
+      As a rule, man detests to be taught, quite as much as does the whelp; yet,
+      when he has gained an art, he is as proud of it as a highly trained
+      spaniel. Men are gregarious as horses in a field, and quite as intolerant
+      as they, of an interloper. Like the wild wolves, men will unite together
+      to capture and prey upon creatures of each of whom individually he stands
+      in fear. Like a set of wild bulls or buffaloes, men will, for a time,
+      agree to obey a leader, and, when the object is gained, break loose. Like
+      a cat, man will steal, when he can, his neighbours' goods, like a crow, he
+      will pay no attention to his parents, nor to a Sunday.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without entering into farther particulars, we may affirm that some highly
+      trained elephants, dogs, and horses, are superior to many human beings in
+      every point upon which an impartial judge can determine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is my belief that, for a man to obey an instinct which is implanted in
+      his nature, is not "a sin" against God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To see this in a fair light, let us assume, as we have a right to do, that
+      it is an instinct in the nature of all known creatures, to increase and
+      multiply their like. To avoid doing so intentionally, is a contravention
+      of one of the Creator's laws. If this be so, then celibacy is a sin, as
+      great, indeed, as if one were to refrain from food of all kinds; and no
+      one can be considered as worthy of the name of good, who remains unpaired
+      without just cause. In like manner, it is not an offence against the laws
+      of God for any man and woman to unite, for it is as much a law of nature
+      that they shall do so, as that they must eat and drink. The plea of
+      "religion" cannot make that wrong, which is by nature right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In like manner, if in a limited community&mdash;say upon an island, the
+      number of men exceeds that of the women, I believe that a fight amongst
+      the males for the possession of mates, would not be "sin" against the
+      Omnipotent even though many combatants died during the contest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nay, so common upon many points is the agreement; amongst even the most
+      orthodox, that none would say that a man commits a crime when he steals
+      the store of honey laid up by bees, kills animals for food or for their
+      fur, or covets and appropriates the prairies hitherto occupied by herds of
+      deer and bison. Even the commandments said to be delivered by God Himself
+      are held not to be literally binding upon man, except in relation to his
+      friends. He may, for example, by the laws of war, murder his enemies,
+      fornicate with their wives, steal their property, and deceive them in
+      every way. Abraham, the so-called friend of God, murdered many Orientals,
+      and plundered them; not because he had any quarrel with them, but simply
+      because they had murdered and plundered some of his friends. David again,
+      a man after God's own heart, with his dying breath, gave his son
+      instructions to put individuals to death in cold blood, superseding the
+      law of Sinai, by a heritage of hate. When, therefore, common consent takes
+      certain actions out of the list of crimes or sins, provided that the deeds
+      are done against enemies, we have to seek for the origin of those ideas
+      which make murder, theft, robbery, rape, and false-witness crimes in the
+      abstract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To understand this point, we have really to start from the bestial basis,
+      and aver that what is not sin in them, is not sin in savage man. No one of
+      any intelligence would say that a Briton would be justified in shooting an
+      Ashantee because the latter had killed and eaten an enemy, or an aged
+      parent; nor would any one of us sentence a Hindoo to death because he had
+      killed a dozen Thugs. Even in comparatively civilized American backwoods,
+      a person who has killed a bully has been thought a public benefactor.
+      Again, when we cast our eyes upon Australia, and learn the brutal way in
+      which the black native virgins are violently carried away from their
+      relatives and married, and how again they are repeatedly carried off as
+      wives by other men, we feel ourselves justified in leaving the ravishers
+      without punishment, for there is no violation of law, or, if there be,
+      Englishmen have no right to interfere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But what we tolerate in uncivilized lands, even where we are ostensibly
+      rulers, we will not suffer in our own. The reason of this is, that we have
+      banded ourselves into a society in which "the laws," once settled and
+      determined by the majority, supersede, in certain cases, individual
+      action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make our meaning clear, let us imagine that amongst some nation or
+      people there is one man more astute and powerful than his fellows; still
+      further, we assume that he has fought, or is desirous to fight, a
+      neighbour of nearly equal force. It is clear that if his people murder
+      each other from any cause he will lose warriors; consequently, he will let
+      his tribe understand that he will punish homicide, on a plan which he
+      thinks will be deterrent. Still further, as he requires soldiers of strong
+      limbs and sturdy constitution, he declares that no woman shall many
+      without his consent, so that he may prevent any one selling herself, or
+      being sold, to a weak or old man for mere pelf. As, in a savage state,
+      most possessions are those which are useful in war, he would prohibit
+      theft. As a consequence, he, and all who respected his power to punish,
+      would regard murder, theft, rape, and unauthorized wife-selling as crimes&mdash;offences,
+      that is to say, against the ruler of the state, and not against the
+      Creator of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It signifies little to my argument, whether society is governed, as the
+      early Aryans were, by warriors, or, as the later ones were, by Brahmans.
+      In either case the leaders make laws, and declare a violation of them to
+      be punishable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When communities are small in size, and extend over a small area, few
+      rules of life are necessary; but when a nation increases in size, and
+      especially when it consiste of many tribes or class which have voluntarily
+      united together, legislation is far more complicated, inasmuch as the
+      ideas of right and wrong in each section may, from long custom, vary from
+      each other. For example, in most of the United States of America bigamy,
+      or the possession of two wives at a time, is a crime; whereas, in Salt
+      Lake city, its rulers have twenty, and its men a dozen, if they like, and
+      yet are esteemed saints, and really conduct themselves as if they had a
+      clear claim to the title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The greatest complication is when the laws of a community have been
+      framed, partly by soldiers, partly by ecclesiastics, and partly by
+      mercantile men, for each party has a different creed. The first makes no
+      scruple to fight at the command of the second, whilst the third endeavours
+      to prevent all war whatever. The second set intrigue to have the supreme
+      power; the first and third often endeavour to suppress the second, knowing
+      its aggressiveness and lust of supremacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a nation is under what is grandiloquently called a Theocracy, every
+      offence against a command given <i>ex cathedra</i> is regarded as a sin;
+      not simply a disregard of the law, but a defiance of the God who is said
+      to have ordained it. Thus, according to what is known as the Mosaic law,
+      it was a crime punishable by a lingering death to gather sticks on a
+      Sabbath day (Num. xv. 32-36); but it was no crime to kill all the males
+      and women of a whole nation, and retain the maidens for private
+      prostitution and for the use of the priest (Num. xxxi. 17, 18, 40, 41). In
+      such a nation it was no crime to commit forgery&mdash;and of all the
+      bearers of false witness, none exceeded in ancient times the Jewish
+      writers in the Bible&mdash;but in mercantile England, the former has been
+      at one time punished with death, and the latter by ignominious penalties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In modern Theocracies, such as once existed in Austria, Spain, Italy,
+      England, and elsewhere, it was considered criminal to think differently,
+      upon any religious point, from the authorized standard. In those kingdoms
+      many a person was doomed to die a painful death, and thereafter sent&mdash;as
+      it was supposed, to Hell&mdash;whom we now regard as a virtuous, brave,
+      and noble individual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The common sense of mankind induces all citizens to buy what they have
+      need of, at the smallest possible price; but a mercantile government says
+      to its people&mdash;"You shall not buy anything from anybody who has not
+      first paid us for the privilege of trading, and something more for every
+      ware which he offers for sale, and every one contravening this order shall
+      be seriously punished." Here, again, an artificial offence is manufactured
+      that has no origin in nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a people has succeeded in throwing off publicly the trammels of
+      Ecclesiastical legislation, as England, Italy, Spain, France, Austria,
+      Belgium, and other nations have done, they by no means shake off their
+      private shackles. The only difference between Spain, Austria, and other
+      places, now and formerly, is, that the priesthood are seeking to attain by
+      subtlety what they could previously command by their state power. At one
+      period in the history of modern Rome, it was a crime not to kneel on the
+      bare ground when certain priests passed with a bit of wafer surrounded by
+      gorgeous trappings. This is a crime no longer against the state, but for
+      all who believe the Papal hierarchy it is yet a sin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one time in England, it was a crime not to go to church on Sunday; it
+      was equally punishable to carry on any business. The laws respecting these
+      matters have not yet been repealed, and they have been put recently into
+      operation, although the good sense of the majority has made them
+      practically obsolete. Yet, though this is the case, and the law no longer
+      punishes Sabbath-breaking, the priestly body continue to launch their
+      thunders against all who regard every day alike. It is, indeed, doubtful
+      if, in the eyes of our parsons, there is any sin so great as enjoying
+      one's self on a Sunday. The law of our country does not make it a crime
+      for a woman to prostitute her body, or for a man to have a concubine of
+      greater or less permanency, but the hierarchs denounce the arrangement as
+      criminal in the sight of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We need not multiply our illustrations farther. Sufficient has been
+      advanced to show that there are two distinct classes of sins&mdash;one,
+      those made by Ecclesiastics, or by those legislators passing under the
+      name "Society;" the other, those which are against the laws of nature&mdash;e.g.,
+      an enforced celibacy, such as that to which Romish priests are doomed. In
+      saying this, we readily allow that what is right, according to the laws of
+      God, as set forth in the universe, is wrong according to the code made by
+      the legally constituted authorities of the state in which an individual
+      lives. We grant, moreover, that, if a government is strong enough, the
+      laws of man should be enforced by human means. But we do not believe that
+      mortals should be compelled to carry out that which priests tell them is
+      the justice of the Immortal, of which they know absolutely nothing. I hold
+      that no state can fairly claim to take cognizance of, or to punish,
+      thoughts, or any private indulgence which creates no public scandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we endeavour to reduce our views to a still clearer issue, the
+      difference between divine and human laws will be the more readily
+      understood. Let us assume that Miss Kallistee is the most perfect woman in
+      a district. For her contend with their natural weapons Messrs. Dunamis,
+      Kratos, Kalos, Sophos, and Mathesis; and the conqueror, having killed his
+      adversaries, takes the lady to wife. The law of man or of society now
+      steps in and kills off the survivor; or, if it should know beforehand of
+      the coming contest, will prevent it. As a consequence, the lady must be
+      contended for peaceably, and may become the bride of impotent old age or
+      wealthy disease. As a result, the healthy offspring, which nature would
+      have reared, are either absent, sickly, diseased, or idiotic. Here, then,
+      I affirm that a law of society is a sin against God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I would wish my readers to ponder over this matter, which gives much food
+      for thought. I do not think that such contests as I have described can be
+      tolerated in any society of civilized beings, for, in proportion to our
+      emergence from barbarism, we do not seek mere strength and beauty of form
+      in our population. We desire to cultivate the intellectual rather than the
+      animal in man. But experience has shown that, as a rule, the further man
+      departs from the latter, and the nearer he approaches to the former, the
+      more does his progeny deteriorate physically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a problem whether, by any available contrivance short of that which
+      was adopted by the Incas of Peru, man can uniformly develope upwards. The
+      physiologist can readily see how the matter might be effected, but in
+      republican or constitutional kingdoms, the means will never be adopted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have now come to a point when it is necessary for me, as an individual,
+      to express an opinion as to the selection which a philosopher, living in a
+      comparatively civilized community, should make between a promulgation of
+      the so-called laws of God&mdash;an instruction respecting the laws of
+      nature&mdash;or an utterance of the laws of society, with the enforcement
+      of them. Ere forming a decision, let us endeavour to ascertain what each
+      alternative involves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a state, acting through its executive government, decides to make what
+      are called the laws of God the basis of legislation, it must first decide
+      what those laws are. In the endeavour to do so, every thoughtful man will
+      recognize the impossibility of verifying a single one. The whole must,
+      therefore, be promulgated on assumption; and if so, the legislators will
+      be conscious that they have no valid authority. If, on the other hand,
+      they assume the laws of nature to be a safe guide, they must allow
+      proceedings which are opposed to the feelings of the majority of civilized
+      mortals. Being, then, averse to elect either of these codes as a sole
+      basis, the statesman will endeavour, as far as in him lies, to make or
+      adapt laws for the society in which he lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the well-being of the community becomes the basis of its legislation,
+      the idea of sin vanishes from the statute book, and the stern realities of
+      life have to be envisaged with firmness and decision. So also when
+      religion has merged into common sense, and facts are appealed to rather
+      than fancies, policy takes the place of dogma, and the voice of a majority
+      overcomes that of any priesthood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Into political economy, however, it is not my desire to enter, further
+      than may be necessary to illustrate my own opinions upon religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having emancipated myself from the thraldom of bibliolatry and priestcraft
+      generally, it is my aim to examine what seems to be my duty as a man and
+      an integer of society. I conceive that, although I have no certain
+      knowledge thereof, I am one of the myriads of instruments by which the
+      Almighty works out His designs. My appreciation may be imperfect, but
+      still it seems to me a duty, always to be a good husband, father, friend,
+      and citizen&mdash;to act ever towards others as I should desire myself to
+      be treated under the same circumstances&mdash;to improve such talents as I
+      am conscious of possessing; and, in a general way, to do as much good as I
+      can during my lifetime&mdash;taking care, if possible, to leave after my
+      death no mischievous agency set on foot by me. In few words, I believe
+      that the only true religion consists in a constant steady performance of
+      duty&mdash;a duty discovered and determined by the individual, and not one
+      prescribed by any set of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conclusion thus arrived at, appears at first sight, to be meagre in
+      the extreme, but when it is fully examined, it is found to involve
+      important consequences. The faithful, for example, or, as they style
+      themselves, "the orthodox," live, when they pay any attention to such
+      matters, in a state of perpetual fear of God and eternity; some, indeed we
+      may say many, go mad from the oppression which they feel from having
+      committed an unpardonable sin; some pass through life weighted by the
+      dread of not being finally "saved"; all, with rare exceptions, have a
+      horror of death and of the results of "the judgment." Feeling assured that
+      few will be saved, and the many will be damned, they have a dreadful
+      feeling of certainty that either they or some of their dearest relatives
+      or friends will be amongst the majority. Some go through life sinning and
+      repenting&mdash;"in dust and ashes," as the technical phrase runs&mdash;until
+      they are ashamed of their own vacillation, or go on sinning, without any
+      qualms of conscience, until it is too late to mend; and they recognize
+      before them "a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation."
+      These fantastic terrors are far more deeply rooted in the Protestants than
+      in the Papists, who have so completely become imbued with the belief that
+      their priests have almost unlimited power in the unseen world, that the
+      dying folk become easy in their minds, by a full assurance of hope that
+      friends, hierarchs, and "masses" will make purgatory bearable and heaven
+      certain. Of fear about eternity I know nothing; feeling confident that the
+      God who made me&mdash;directly or indirectly it would be a waste of time
+      to discuss&mdash;had some work for me to do here. I am quite content with
+      whatever may be assigned to me hereafter by the same Power. Of a future
+      state I am wholly ignorant. As an integer, I feel a sort of instinct that
+      death is not absolute annihilation; but beyond that I do not now seek to
+      know, for every source of intelligence is absent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To some inconsiderate enthusiasts this may seem a cold belief, but in
+      reality it is anything but that, for my days and nights are freed from
+      that wet blanket of vague dread which makes so many mentally shiver; and
+      my time is passed pleasantly in the alternate labour required by duty, and
+      the repose necessary to recruit one's energies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us, for a moment, consider what would be the condition of the world,
+      if each individual conducted himself according to the dictates of a pure
+      and enlightened morality, instead of according to the direction of a body
+      of Ecclesiastics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may, I think, fearlessly assert that there would be no wars, no
+      murders, thefts, adulteries, libels, violations of female purity; in
+      short, every one would do as he wished to be done by. In such a people
+      persecution would find no place, ignorance would not be permitted, and law
+      would be unnecessary. Other desirable things would also take place, to
+      which it is unnecessary to refer at large.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When all are strictly proper in every relation of life, I cannot believe
+      that anything more would be wanting to make the human family as happy as
+      it can be here. What, let us ask, would the orthodox declare was amissing?
+      The reply is, to my mind, awful: There would be, first, the want of hatred
+      and malice; then would be added the want of Hell-to which enemies could be
+      sent, and of a Heaven, in which the faithful could feed their malignancy
+      by watching the tortures of those whom they detested on earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In fine, I beg to express my own deliberate opinion, which has been
+      growing stronger monthly since I first began to collect materials for this
+      work, that those who can find nerve to sweep from their minds the trammels
+      which have been woven around them by hundreds of generations of hierarchs,
+      and adopt the simple faith which I have above indicated, will be far
+      happier and better than ever they were before. No man will stand between
+      them and God, and they will find Him infinitely more good and merciful
+      than any of those who profess to be His agents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is yet another way by which the subject of "faith and reason" may be
+      approached, and their antagonism tested. This is by considering how far
+      the former is essentially human, and the latter divine&mdash;by which we
+      mean, superior to the propensity which all mankind has in common. We
+      recognize the importance of the inquiry, when we find Mr Gladstone, a
+      Prime Minister of England, discouraging the action resulting from
+      philosophical thought, because a man named Paul, some 1800 years ago,
+      recommended his friends to hold fast that which he, and they, under his
+      teaching, believed to be good. The speech of the Premier, which was
+      delivered at a large Liverpool School, and was written with unusual care,
+      held up, to a lot of schoolboys, the propositions of Strauss as something
+      which were so bad, that the enunciation of them carried with it their
+      refutation. Yet, at the same time, the speaker allowed that the German
+      thinker was conspicuous for intellectual attainments, powers of thought
+      beyond the ordinary run of mortals, sobriety in mental culture, and
+      boldness in the enunciation of the conclusions to which his reason
+      compelled him. In Mr Gladstone's opinion, such a man's doctrines deserved
+      to be withered; not because they were opposed to reason, to logic, to the
+      stern reality of facts, but because they opposed the prejudices of certain
+      persons educated in a different style of faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we inquire in what way the German philosopher and the English bigot
+      differ, we can come to no other conclusion than that the one has used his
+      intellect upon the dogmas which have been presented to his mind, from his
+      infancy upwards, until they have been mistaken for fundamental truths,
+      whilst the other has exercised his mental powers upon something beyond the
+      doctrinal grounds on which his early education has been framed. The then
+      English Premier, who had to direct the state, allowed himself to be guided
+      by defunct men, precisely in the same way as Pyrrhus, Croesus, and others,
+      were governed by the pretended oracles at Delphi, Dodona, and elsewhere.
+      The man, in other words, who once wielded the might of England, and is
+      conspicuous for his classical acquirements, is as much the slave of
+      superstition as any ancient Egyptian or Grecian monarch, only his oracles
+      are not the same as theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is clear, that when the speech, to which reference has been made, was
+      composed, Mr Gladstone was under the influence of the belief, that what he
+      had been taught, and had adopted, must necessarily be the only truth which
+      can be relied on, at least, in its fundamental points. It is this very
+      presumption, this lazy habit of mind, that was long ago pointed out by
+      Bacon as being the most fertile cause of the retardation of science, and
+      it is remarkable that Oxford, as an University, and most of its alumni,
+      are still victims to the weakness referred to. It naturally follows in the
+      train of what is called classical learning, when the mind is taught to
+      remember rather than to think; and one easily believes that he can
+      recognize in the late Premier the gradual development of thought, and can
+      tell the epochs when cherished idols have been thrown aside, with the
+      energy of one who is suddenly roused to exercise a powerful mind in an
+      independent manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be useless to copy all the aphorisms by which Lord Bacon
+      attempted to destroy the old philosophy, which, in his time, was most
+      universally adopted, and to build up a new state of things, in which
+      science should advance, but a few of them are of such value that they
+      deserve recording. In <i>Novum Organum</i>, aph. 23 we read&mdash;"There
+      is no small difference between the fancies [&mdash;Greek&mdash;] of the
+      human mind and the ideas of the divine mind&mdash;that is, between certain
+      notions that please us, and the real stamp and impression made by created
+      objects as they are found in nature." That is to say, man commonly
+      imagines things to be what he fancies they ought to be, and neglects what
+      they really are. The learned aphorist then points out certain
+      peculiarities of men, by which they are induced to cleave to the bad, and
+      neglect the good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aph. 46&mdash;-"The human understanding, when any proposition has once
+      been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the
+      pleasure which it affords), forces everything to add to it support and
+      confirmation. But this evil insinuates itself still more craftily in
+      philosophy and in the sciences, in which a settled maxim vitiates and
+      governs every other circumstance, although the latter be much more worthy
+      of confidence." Aph. 47&mdash;"The human understanding is most excited by
+      that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and by which
+      the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then begins, almost
+      imperceptibly, to conceive and suppose that everything is similar to the
+      few objects which have taken possession of the mind, whilst it is very
+      slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and heterogeneous
+      instances by which axioms are tried, as by fire, unless the office be
+      imposed upon it by severe regulations, and a powerful authority."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may paraphrase the preceding axiom thus:&mdash;Those who, from personal
+      preaching, or by parental influence, have adopted a certain belief in the
+      truth of that which has been taught to them as a "revelation," no matter
+      who the individuals are, or may have been, who propound it, are loth,
+      ever, to inquire into the real nature of the matter. Hence it is that
+      "clairvoyance" and "spiritualism" have so many staunch adherents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Aph. 56&mdash;"Some dispositions evince an unbounded admiration of
+      antiquity, others eagerly embrace novelty, and but few can preserve the
+      just medium, so as neither to bear up what the ancients have correctly
+      laid down, nor to despise the just innovations of the moderns. This is
+      very prejudicial to the sciences and philosophy, and, instead of a correct
+      judgment, we have but the factions of the ancients and the moderns."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are other aphorisms following, which point out the mischief of
+      following certain theories, simply because they have been long accepted,
+      and are generally supposed to be correct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the period when Bacon wrote, there was the same conservatism in science
+      and philosophy as there had been in the Roman Church for ages, and very
+      few, if any, had ventured to suggest the necessity for a radical change.
+      In England the reformation of church and state preceded the reformation of
+      philosophy; yet, there are many amongst us yet who regard all such changes
+      as a mistake. We constantly find individuals who hanker after a despotic
+      rule, by king or emperor, who cannot endure a church in which there is no
+      tyrannical head, nor a science which only professes to advance, and
+      refuses to be stationary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the thoughtful know how much the world would have lost, had it yet
+      been prostrate at the feet of Aristotle and of barbaric Popes; and there
+      is not a Christian who does not rejoice that Jesus prevented mankind from
+      worshipping Moses, and adhering to Hebraic notions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, therefore, an individual, professing to be learned, scouts the
+      propositions of a careful inductive and rigidly reasoning philosopher,
+      simply because they violate generally believed notions; and when, in
+      addition, he appeals to the ignorance and impressionability of schoolboys
+      rather than to the mature judgment of adults, he proclaims himself, in
+      that respect, at least, a bigot&mdash;of a dye as deep as those fanatics
+      who urged on their fellows to suppress the discoveries of Galileo. But the
+      matter does not end here. We recognize the necessity for a public man, who
+      has once proclaimed his adherence to the doctrines of Revelation, and has
+      preached the necessity for "faith," and its superiority over reason&mdash;however
+      calm and rigid, to go further, and to proclaim that which he regards as
+      Revelation, and who are the individuals he will receive as the
+      interpreters of that so-called communication from God to man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is clear that the words which have been uttered by man require a human
+      expounder; equally clear is it that, if the original sayings are regarded
+      as being inspired, but, nevertheless, of doubtful meaning, they can only
+      be cleared up by other men, who are, like the original oracles&mdash;"inspired."
+      But, as a matter of fact, there are in our own times three distinct sets
+      of individuals who lay claim to the faculty of interpretation; and these
+      differ so amongst themselves, that certainly, at least, two, and very
+      probably all, are wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man, then, who is disposed to make faith his guide must, in so far as
+      Christianity is concerned, join himself either to the Greek or Roman
+      Church, whose pretensions to a divine presence in their midst have been of
+      the longest; or to the Protestant Church, which endeavours to oust the
+      other two upon the plea that they cannot be under divine teaching, because
+      they have become corrupt; and then, on the plea of having discovered the
+      alleged faults, it assumes to have the authority which its predecessors
+      have forfeited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, as we have frequently remarked before, man sits in judgment upon Him
+      whom he calls his maker. The Protestant Churches, however, are the only
+      ones who do not formally lay claim to having the divine presence amongst
+      them in a conspicuous degree; they do not pretend to the performance of
+      miracles, and they scout the idea that any modern representative of Jesus
+      can do any wonders like those that teacher did. The Roman Church proves to
+      the satisfaction of its votaries that "the Lord" is still with them,
+      inasmuch as the presence of the Virgin, in a visible form, occurs to cheer
+      her servants that trust in her intercession, and even pictures of her
+      become instinct with life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, then, an individual is resolved to walk by faith alone in matters of
+      religion, he is bound to join himself to that church wherein the divine
+      founder is habitually and visibly present; to whose saints the saviour has
+      appeared, and given stigmata like those which were produced in the
+      original by the barbarous nails and spear of the Roman soldiers. For the
+      votaries of faith&mdash;pure and unadulterated belief in things divine&mdash;the
+      only legitimate home is the bosom of the Papal Church. Why, then, do not
+      men, like Mr Gladstone, join it? Simply because their faith is not a pure
+      and confiding one. It is tainted by the doubt whether the pretensions of
+      the Roman See are sustainable, or by the certainty that Popish miracles
+      are contemptible shams. They believe that Francis of Assisi made the
+      stigmata, which he professed to receive from his "crucified Saviour," by
+      burning his hands, feet, and side, with some strong caustic, or by a
+      heated iron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By these doubts, or certainties, individuals demonstrate that they are not
+      in the list of the faithful; for doubt implies unbelief, and both are
+      incompatible with faith pure and simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever, then, a person confesses, by his words or actions, that he does
+      examine into the grounds of his belief, he is logically bound to continue
+      those inquiries into everything wherein there is a possibility of human
+      error creeping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we pursue our observations further, and inquire into the reasons why
+      a Papist believes certain things which a Protestant rejects, and vice
+      versa, we find that, in the first place, each believes what he has been
+      taught; he&mdash;to speak figuratively&mdash;imbibes his dogmas and belief
+      with his mother's milk; and when he advances in age, is taught and
+      imagines that he has mastered the stock arguments which are relied upon by
+      the opposite parties. There is, therefore, on first sight, a reasoning
+      power exercised by each; but it is not so, for the arguments themselves,
+      and their force, are regarded as matters of faith&mdash;as weapons with
+      which a warfare may be waged, but which, in no sense, are to be tested by
+      those who use them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As far as the common run of religionists are concerned, they are all in
+      this "fool's paradise;" they fancy that they are secure, invincible, and
+      mighty, because they take their own prowess and their opponents weakness
+      as matters of faith. But when one of these comes into collision with
+      another whose reason is exercised upon facts and the deductions to be
+      drawn from them, the questions occur, possibly for the first time, Are the
+      grounds of my belief tenable? am I justified in using my reason only in
+      one direction? if I profess to argue, am I not bound to be logical? and if
+      what has been given to me as sound meat, is rotten in reality, am I bound
+      to eat it? can it do me good in any way? When a thoughtful man has arrived
+      at this point, he has to elect between Faith and Reason. Then, if, like Mr
+      Gladstone, he foresees to what his inquiries will probably lead, and is
+      disinclined to pull down a cherished edifice, even to erect a better, he
+      will naturally cling to the old belief, saying&mdash;"With all thy faults,
+      I love thee still." With his eyes wide open he hails the banner of
+      bigotry, no matter what may be the scutcheon which it bears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then come the important questions&mdash;"What right has any religious
+      bigot to profess himself a liberal?" and, "With what face can a man, who
+      refuses to exercise his understanding upon what he calls the most
+      important part of life, i.e., the preparation for eternity, proclaim
+      himself a friend of education?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To insist upon the value of "learning" in forming the mind, and then to
+      set the example of recoiling from the knowledge which intellectual efforts
+      bring, is, in a statesman, a mean vacillation. Mr Gladstone ought either
+      to proclaim that his ideas are those of the Jesuits, or to pronounce in
+      favour of education, to whatever goal it legitimately tends. To say to
+      boys&mdash;or men&mdash;you must learn to think; but you must only come to
+      the same conclusions as myself, would disgrace a statesman of a free
+      country, though such a proclamation would seem natural to a pope, or any
+      other tyrant I do not, for a moment, assert that the then Premier of
+      England did, in a written, and, therefore, a deliberate speech, to a large
+      and influential school of boys, utter the words which I have used; on the
+      contrary, he employed his rhetorical powers to express the idea, without
+      either clearly understanding it himself, or giving the lads a clue to it.
+      Had the meaning of the discourse been put into a few pregnant sentences,
+      it may be doubted whether it would ever have been uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Mr Gladstone, like the mythical Elijah, had placed before his auditors,
+      in naked words, the proposition&mdash;"Choose ye this day whom ye will
+      serve, Faith or Reason," his discourse would have been clear. Even his own
+      mind could not have painted the two as being the same thing; nor would a
+      school-boy have failed to see that, in the future, he must elect between
+      indefinitely expanding his intelligence, and materially contracting his
+      intellect to the narrow limits prescribed by the faith of his parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To my mind it is sad to witness men of great general capacity, like the
+      late Dr Faraday, and the past Prime Minister of Great Britain, shunning,
+      in every way, an inquiry into the basis of their belief. We cannot regard
+      this as a result of simple intellectual indolence, or ignorance. The only
+      cause to which we can attribute it, is that weakness which, by most
+      people, is called moral cowardice; a fear, not so much of Mrs Grundy&mdash;the
+      world and its dread laugh&mdash;but the fear of some unseen, unknown,
+      incomprehensible danger to themselves&mdash;of dangers that have no
+      reality, except in an imagination which has been moulded long before the
+      mind was capable of thought, but whose hold upon the individual is such,
+      that he shrinks from the mental effort necessary to efface its
+      impressions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is yet another phase of faith, which deserves a passing mention. It
+      is that which declines to see or to hear a proof or an argument, lest it
+      should be convinced against its will. There are many men amongst us who,
+      in Scripture phrase, refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he
+      never so wisely. This obstinacy, stupidity, dogged-ness, or firmness, is
+      quite compatible with a partially cultivated intellect, and is in itself a
+      measure of intellectual capacity. I have heard, for example, a learned
+      divine, but one whose writings are often so bemuddled, that the ideas
+      which they contain are as difficult to discover "as a needle in a bottle
+      of hay," declare that he would no more listen to an argument against the
+      existence of "the trinity," than he would open his ears to hear evidence
+      that his wife or mother was adulterous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such strong asseverations we may sympathize with, and even admire; but
+      they prove nothing beyond the impracticability of an individual mind, or
+      what, in some cases, takes its place&mdash;viz., the injudiciousness of
+      acknowledging a truth, when the enunciation of a belief in it would be
+      followed by unpleasant consequences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, I know of another divine, who has steadily refused to inquire into
+      the value of what are called "the Christian evidences," his reason being,
+      that he is conscious that inquiry would shake his confidence in the
+      doctrines which he teaches. He clings to what he feels to be a sham, lest
+      others should, by his means, regard it in its proper light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another divine, who has not feared to be an inquirer, is incessantly
+      persecuted by his brethren, not because he has asserted his intellectual
+      freedom, but because, by having done so, he has, by implication, cast a
+      sort of odium upon those who hug their mental darkness. His argument is&mdash;Can
+      a man who hates the light be worthy to speak of the "Sun of
+      Righteousness?" Their reasoning is based upon the assertion, that those
+      who live in darkness, and like it, need not be told about a luminary. If
+      people chose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, it is more
+      profitable to talk to them about its connection with the milky way, than
+      to say that the notion is absurd. Faith teaches that, where ignorance is
+      bliss, 'tis folly to be wise; whilst reason only impels one to habitual
+      thought or mental worry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other divines of my acquaintance have used their reason in a twofold way:
+      they have ceased to hold their first faith, yet they hold their "livings,"
+      as they have no other means of subsistence; whilst a few have, with their
+      advancement in knowledge, paid for their knowledge by embracing poverty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The world treats those who walk upon the ground with a far greater
+      injustice than it treats those who lie beneath its surface. For a man who
+      disturbs us in our fool's paradise, more feet than hands are used; but to
+      him who only disturbed the father's complacency, and taught the son in
+      youth, we erect memorial statues. Jesus was crucified when he was alive,
+      and deified when dead. His apostles were persecuted when living; now that
+      they are deceased, they are called saints. Savonarola was burnt alive at
+      Florence; now his memory is cherished, and his worth fully known. Luther
+      was detested when he was able to thunder in men's ears; now he is regarded
+      as a son of light. The present Pope, Pio Nono, has found an obsequious
+      council, whose voices have declared him to be infallible&mdash;a god upon
+      earth; the time will come when that Pope, and that council, will be
+      regarded as the personification of blasphemy and folly. The days of Faith
+      will be everlasting; but her power to act wickedly will be curtailed more
+      and more. The reign of Reason advances every year, for it is allied to
+      thought and knowledge; and we may fairly hope that the old adage will be
+      true&mdash;<i>Magna est Veritas et praevalebit</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be said that, in the preceding parts of this essay, I have wholly
+      lost sight of, or, at least, have not referred to the argument&mdash;or
+      the statement, made by the upholders of faith, as a rule of life&mdash;that
+      reason has nothing to do with things divine, and that where God has made a
+      direct revelation of His will to man, no human being has a right to
+      criticise or object to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This kind of remark is in the mouth of every preacher, and each minister
+      who utters it imagines that he deals a blow so very heavy that nothing can
+      stand against it. But in reality it is only a big bubble, which collapses
+      when it is touched. "How," for example, we may ask, "can anything be
+      recognized as divine, unless human judgment is passed upon it? or, How can
+      any revelation be accepted, unless the mind has examined the messenger and
+      the message?" Who would believe the ravings of a lunatic, even though he
+      told us that God had sent him with a message to man? Why do Christians, as
+      a body, reject the revelation made to Mahomet, and the frequent
+      inspirations which give laws to the latter-day saints? To these queries
+      the reply is&mdash;"Because we know that God does not speak to man now,
+      and that when the bible was closed all revelation ceased." But when we
+      inquire into the reason for this belief we can find not one. Every
+      theologian must allow that the God who spoke once to Moses spoke again;
+      that He supplanted one dispensation by a second, and has promised a third.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus we see, that by their own books, the orthodox are bound to believe
+      that supplementary communications must be made to the human race;
+      consequently, when any one asserts that he is a divine prophet, his
+      pretensions are examined. The faithful Christian disbelieved in Mahomet;
+      the trusting Arabs believed in his mission, and fought for their creed.
+      They, like orthodox divines of to-day, refused to use their reason in
+      things divine, and to cavil at a revelation, Unable to agree, the
+      followers of Jesus, and those of Mohammed, fought, the latter almost
+      annihilating the former for a time, thus proving the value of their faith.
+      Both parties had a firm belief&mdash;the one in the prophet of Nazareth,
+      the other in the prophet of Arabia; and no reasoning could have convinced
+      either that his trust was misplaced; nor, to this day, has reason
+      convinced the Mahometans that Jesus was superior to Mahomet, or the
+      Christian that the Arab sectarian was a prophet at all; and it is singular
+      that both parties call in reason in attestation of their respective
+      creeds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is, then, the sturdy English theologian to be content to leave the
+      followers of Islam alone, because they have faith? or, must he still
+      endeavour to convert them by the use of reason? Can the Christian adopt
+      the belief that Mahometan and Mormon are both orthodox because they have
+      faith? and that the Jew must still be dear to Jehovah, inasmuch as he
+      still clings closely by faith to the revelation given to Moses and the
+      prophets? If this cannot be done, how can the follower of Jesus hope to
+      convert others to his belief, unless by the use of reason? If, then, the
+      theologian uses reason as a weapon against heterodoxy, upon what ground
+      can he object to its being employed by another? Latter-day saints have
+      made many proselytes in Christendom, and a Mahometan floored in debate the
+      late pious Missionary, Henry Martyn, whose propositions were met by
+      counter ones, and every one of whose arguments was taken up and retorted,
+      the names only of the persons spoken of being changed. "I know," said the
+      one, "that God spoke to us by Christ Jesus"&mdash;"I know," said the
+      other, "that Allah spoke to us by Mahomet" "You are wrong, my friend,"
+      said one, "Allah has not spoken to man since the last Apostle died." "You
+      are wrong," said the other, "God has spoken to us long after that. You may
+      call Mahomet an apostle, if you like; we call him a prophet of Allah, and
+      know that he was one." And so controversy goes on now where there is faith
+      without reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is clear, then, that truth cannot be established by any number of
+      people thundering out "I believe it," and by their victoriously fighting
+      for it. The argument, therefore, which I may be accused of omitting, is of
+      no value at all; it is sheer nonsense&mdash;a windbag, or, perhaps, it may
+      best be compared to a boomerang, which, when badly used, recoils upon the
+      person of him who threw it. Of such arguments theology is builded up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII.
+    </h2>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Honesty.   A question propounded.   Are "divines" honest?
+     Meaning of the word.    Learners and teachers&mdash;their
+     relations to each other.    Honesty expected in a professor.
+     Teachers of religion are trusted&mdash;they are bound to be
+     faithful.   Political rights of men in respect of the clergy
+     of the Established Church.    Right to see that religion is
+     not adulterated. Man's right to truth.   What truth is not.
+     Assertions required at "ordination."  Canonical Scriptures.
+     Verbal inspiration.   Doubts of laity.   Two schools&mdash;those
+     who will and those who will not inquire.     Rev.   Dr
+     Colenso.   Rev. Dr Browne.   Precious stones and "paste."
+     How should a doubt be tackled&mdash;by inquiry,  or  by ignoring
+     it?    An   analogy. Compass and bible.    If compass wrong,
+     why steer by it?   Passenger and captain&mdash;one appeals to
+     stars, the other to his owners and the seamen under him.
+     Precision of Colenso&mdash;his words falsified so as to be
+     confuted: this is not honesty.    Is Bishop Browne honest in
+     controversy? Tabernacle, temple, doors, &amp;c.   The <i>Speaker's
+     Commentary</i> not an honest book.    Papal falsehoods; false
+     decretals; false letter from Prester John. Pious frauds.
+     Influence of dishonest teaching on education.    The point
+     involved in sectarian discussions.   Lying miracles&mdash;are
+     they promulgated honestly?   Is it honest in religion to
+     promulgate that which we knew to be wrong, or which we dare
+     not inquire into for fear of consequences?    Do Papal
+     authorities believe in the annual miracle at Naples?  The
+     Protestant Church judged by a ruler of Siam.    Bigotry, by
+     not inquiring, does not establish truth.    Each man who is
+     deceived has a propensity to deceive others.   The masses
+     agree to be deceived.    Mr Gladstone on education. His
+     proposition that inquiry is bad if it leads to change of
+     religious opinions.   Anecdotes of stupidity.   Sailing in
+     search of truth.    Captains who avoid the right course.
+     The condition of society when the schoolmaster overrides the
+     ecclesiastic.    Reason and education ought to precede
+     faith. Result of honesty.   Divines recoil from the honest
+     truth.    Parsons in their pulpit preach what their week-day
+     precepts oppose.   Honesty in ecclesiastical matters is not
+     the best policy.    Divines and the silversmiths of Ephesus.
+     Examples.    An honest parson is persecuted by his fellows:
+     this insures mediocrity and bigotry.   If an author cannot
+     be persecuted he is avoided.    Ecclesiastics persecute
+     their colleagues, but do not prove them wrong.
+     Excommunication easier than refutation.   What an honest
+     merchant and divine should do when they discover a diamond
+     to be paste. Ought the divine to be less honest than the
+     merchant?   The Author's challenge.   Conclusion.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I am now about to propound a question which I have heard mooted in quiet
+      by many, but for which publicity seems to be dreaded by all&mdash;<i>viz</i>.,
+      "Is there honesty amongst Christians, and especially amongst the hierarchy
+      of the Churches of England and Rome?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can doubt the importance of the subject; there is not a thoughtful
+      person who does not, in words at least, scorn to build up his everlasting
+      belief upon a fable, and who does not affect to be disgusted with everyone
+      who is deliberately untruthful I speak not now of those time-servers who
+      regard every artifice to be fair in love, war, and theology; but only of
+      those earnest minds who are anxious to seek out and to hold fast that
+      which is true, and who, under all circumstances, resolve to be honest with
+      themselves. That there may be no doubt as to the sense in which I use the
+      word, the following may be regarded as, in my opinion, the synonyms which
+      are properly given in <i>Webster's Dictionary</i>&mdash;"Integrity,
+      probity, uprightness, trustiness, faithfulness, honour, justice, equity,
+      fairness, candour, plain dealing, veracity." To this may be added&mdash;"not
+      bearing false witness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presuming that English scholars agree in this definition, let me now
+      inquire whether "we"&mdash;by which term I mean the non-theological class
+      by profession&mdash;have a right to expect "honesty" amongst our teachers&mdash;be
+      they Roman, Anglican, Hibernian, Scottish, Unitarian, Wesleyan, or of any
+      other body? and, in the next place, whether we get that to which we are
+      entitled? Presuming that it is necessary to begin with the foundation, let
+      us first inquire into "our rights," and whence they are supposed to be
+      derived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The positions of a learner and a teacher&mdash;or a disciple and a master&mdash;are,
+      in some cases, different to what they are in others; for example, I need
+      not, unless I think it desirable, learn astronomy, chemistry, the art of
+      telegraphing, or that of ship-building; but if I do elect to learn any of
+      these matters, and engage a man to instruct me, I have a legal claim upon
+      him for his services. There is, indeed, a contract between us&mdash;he
+      engaging to teach me, and I agreeing to pay him for his labour. In my
+      selection of a professor, it is quite possible that I have not chosen the
+      best; nay, seeing that I require to be taught, it is nearly certain that I
+      cannot assume the position of a judge as regards the superiority of one
+      teacher over another. But when the agreement is once entered into, each of
+      the parties is bound to perform his part of the contract to the best of
+      his ability. If, for example, I bargain with a master to teach me Spanish,
+      and I, being wholly ignorant thereof, am instructed in Portuguese, I have
+      a definite legal claim for redress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, on the other hand, the law, or the custom of the country, compels me
+      to take a certain class of teachers, whether they are competent or
+      worthless, I, as one of the community, am justified in investigating the
+      intellectual power of the professors, individually and collectively, in
+      every way in my power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At one period, when autocracy, or tyranny, was supreme, this right was
+      denied, and the legislators made it a criminal matter for any one to call
+      in question the nature of the instruction which was given to the people in
+      matters of politics, religion, and other things, wherein the government
+      was concerned. At the present time there are few, if any, states whose
+      ruling powers demand from the people such an abject submission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, although a republic may allow unlimited latitude of opinion in
+      matters of political economy, there may be a religious section within it,
+      which consists of those who consent to be led, in matters of faith, by
+      certain individuals, who, on their parts, are declared to be, by some
+      power that the laity are disposed to submit to, the only persons competent
+      to conduct persons to a happy eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every individual in such a family is associated with the rest by voluntary
+      ties. He may, if he chooses, inquire into the capacity of his guide; he is
+      at perfect liberty to analyse his arguments, to inquire into his
+      allegations, and, speaking generally, to test his truth. If, as a result
+      of the investigation, any one is satisfied that the teacher is
+      incompetent, the two are perfectly clear to make new engagements. There
+      has been no definite contract, nor can there be any legal claim for a
+      presumed breach thereof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When, on the other hand, there is a State Religion, supported by
+      Parliamentary authority, and to which, in one way or another, the majority
+      of the people must subscribe, each man has as perfect a right to see that
+      he gets what he pays for, as he has to see that the member of parliament
+      for whom he votes, does not neglect the interests of the town which he
+      represents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an Englishman, I have no right to call in question the power of the
+      Pope of Rome, the Patriarch of the Greek Church, the Elder of the Mormon
+      Communion, the Arch-Pneuma of the Spiritualists, or any other religious
+      head, to teach his followers any doctrine that he may please. I may laugh
+      at the "false decretals" of the papacy, and the charlatanerie of the
+      clairvoyants; but no political right supports me in my calling them to
+      account for their stewardship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, when I know that the bishops of the Church of England
+      are parties to the formation of our laws, and I find myself called upon to
+      pay tithes or dues to individuals of the same establishment, I have a
+      political right to ascertain, that the persons actually do what they
+      profess to do for their money or position. If, for example, I live in a
+      sparsely populated district, I and all my family are dependent upon the
+      parson of the parish for instruction how to get to heaven; or, as an
+      alternative, if I do not agree with his doctrine, I may abstain from being
+      instructed at all. If, on the contrary, I inhabit a large town, still I am
+      dependent for religious teaching upon the state clergyman, unless I elect
+      to do without him, and any one else of the same persuasion, or select some
+      non-conformist preacher who is to me no less offensive than the
+      parliamentary parson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a confraternity has obtained, no matter how, or by what means, a
+      definite prescriptive right to sell a certain material to the community at
+      large, the latter have certainly a legal power to see that the stuff given
+      is according to contract. If a company of millers engage, for certain
+      privileges, to sell good wheat flour to all comers, the last can deprive
+      them of their exclusive right, provided that it can be proved either that
+      the flour is bad, or that it comes from barley, rye, oats, or potatoes, or
+      is adulterated with gypsum, &amp;c.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presuming that this argument is tenable, our next inquiry is into that
+      which our national church professes to sell, or to impart, in return for
+      its privileges. In the fewest possible words we may say, that its duty is
+      to impart "truth," or to teach what is, in its learned and educated
+      opinion, the true religion for life and eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The word truth is one which lies at the root of our question respecting
+      honesty. Pilate is reported to have said&mdash;"What is truth?" We may put
+      the same question now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without saying what "truth" is, we can readily declare what is "untruth."
+      It is not truth if we, in argument, misrepresent an adversary; affirm that
+      he made a certain statement, and then oppose&mdash;not the thing said&mdash;but
+      some other matter which was not spoken of at all, and then assert that we
+      have confuted him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not truth to affirm, that observations recently made have been
+      oftentimes presented before, and always successfully refuted, when the
+      remarks in question are novel, never have been controverted, and
+      apparently, are not capable of being disproved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not truth to affirm, that human "authority," which, has been long
+      acknowledged, can falsify "a fact," or make an unfounded assertion equal
+      to a reality; or to declare, that one religion is good and another bad,
+      simply because the speaker believes the matter to be so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not truth to assert, that a certain book, and every part of it, is
+      the revealed word of God, when it is known to be contradicted by science&mdash;i.e.t
+      by a knowledge of the laws imposed on creation by its Maker, to be
+      inconsistent with itself, and to contain internal evidence that it was
+      composed by men of small knowledge and of grovelling disposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not truth to affirm, that if God's world proves what is called God's
+      Book to be wrong, science must be neglected and the Bible upheld.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not truth to affirm that God spoke exclusively to one people, when
+      it is known that the race in question drew nearly, if not quite, all their
+      religious beliefs, from the neighbours amongst whom they were thrown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not honest to propound in the pulpit the propriety of examining the
+      Scriptures daily, and yet to persecute any one who by doing so becomes
+      convinced of their human origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be honest, and prove the existence of a love of truth, if every
+      preacher of every denomination spent as much time in trying the value of
+      his text-book, as he does now in expounding it and explaining it away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We should imagine that a minister loved truth, if he were first to ask
+      himself how he treats the Vedas and Puranas, the Avesta, the Koran, the
+      Apocryphal Gospels, the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, the visions and
+      prophecies of "Latter-day saints," "Friends," Roman visionaries, and the
+      oracles delivered at Delphi and elsewhere, and then to treat his own book
+      with the same measure as he used with the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, we should regard him as untruthful and dishonest, if he
+      weighed the books and belief of others with weights and scales different
+      to those with which he tried his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From each minister of religion the people have a right to demand an
+      impartial inquiry into the absolute value of the doctrines which he
+      teaches, and an investigation into the foundation, as well as the
+      superstructure; and they may require, still further, that he, like
+      Great-heart in Bunyan's story, shall do battle with assailants. When such
+      a leader professes to fight, but always avoids the shock of battle, he
+      cannot be regarded either as honest, or as comparable with
+      Valiant-for-truth in the <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are then, as laymen, justified in requiring that our spiritual leaders
+      shall take a conspicuous part in examining the grounds of the faith which
+      they teach, and that the leaders of the Established Church shall seek to
+      establish its doctrine upon as firm basis as it is possible to obtain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This certainly involves inquiry and discussion upon those points which
+      modern criticism has prominently advanced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we turn to the "Prayer Book," we find that Deacons are required to
+      say, that they unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures. Priests
+      are obliged to affirm that the Holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all
+      doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation, through faith in
+      Jesus Christ, &amp;c. In the consecration of bishops the same, or nearly
+      the same, formula is gone through. Thus, at the outset of their career,
+      the ministers of the Church of England commit themselves to, or are
+      required by law to make, a declaration which will preclude inquiry into
+      the value of the book on which their teaching is founded; their first step
+      in the ministry puts it out of their power to be honest, if experience
+      should teach them more than they knew when young. The bishops and priests,
+      however, when they subscribe to the opinion that the Bible contains all
+      things necessary for salvation, do not pledge themselves to the belief
+      that every sentence, part, division, book, or arrangement of the Canonical
+      Scriptures is, and must of necessity be, true. Even in the dawn of
+      ecclesiastical information in England, there was not a belief in the
+      verbal inspiration of the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of late years, when habits of thought and the art of printing have
+      increased, the knowledge, and consequently, the power of the laity
+      disproportionally to the advance made by clerics&mdash;a strong propensity
+      to accumulate facts, and to argue thereupon has been very generally
+      developed, and the increased information obtained has induced steadily
+      increasing numbers to doubt, not only the verbal inspiration, but even the
+      historical truth of the Scriptures. When this difficulty occurred, or
+      rather, when it became recognized, scholars, no matter whether they were
+      professional or amateur ecclesiastics, divided themselves involuntarily
+      (we may fairly say, unknowingly, inasmuch as each individual worked quite
+      independently, in the first place, of another) into those who believed
+      that, if the Holy Spirit dictated the Scriptures, he must have seen that
+      his amanuensis wrote correctly; those who imagined that the Bible was to
+      be taken "in the lump;" and those who considered that the Scriptures are
+      entirely of human origin, and absolutely valueless as a guide of faith.
+      Consequently, three schools have arisen, two of which are essentially
+      ecclesiastic. Of these, one regards all inquiry into the accepted text as
+      improper, the other considers that everything should be done to verify the
+      value of the so-called original Scripture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amongst the latter, Dr Colenso, Bishop of Natal, stands out conspicuously.
+      Of the highest intellectual attainments, trained to close and scientific
+      inquiry; able, far better than men of meaner capacity, to weigh the value
+      of "evidence," whether "ancient or modern," he has drawn the conclusion
+      that the Bible is not what it is generally supposed to be; in other words,
+      that its historical portions are not trustworthy, and that there is grave
+      reason to believe its writings to have been produced for a purpose, which
+      involved dishonesty in the scribe, and in the promulgator of his writings.
+      The learned doctor was honest in his investigation, and fearless in
+      announcing his conclusions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As an upright man, the Bishop of Natal is as completely justified in his
+      inquiry into the validity or importance of an ancient book, alleged to be
+      a pearl of great price, a gem or diamond of the first water, as the
+      official curator of a museum would be, in determining whether a certain
+      ruby, given into his charge, were real or artificial. Of the necessity of
+      such an inquiry, the following anecdote, which was told me by the
+      gentleman concerned, will convince the reader:&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wealthy lady, of high position in life, sent to a museum, for
+      exhibition, a number of "precious stones." If they were really what they
+      were supposed and stated to be, their value would have been reckoned by
+      thousands of pounds sterling. If accepted as genuine, and found, upon
+      their restoration to the depositor, to be imitation jewels, the curator
+      would be liable, not only for their value, but his character for honesty
+      would be gone; consequently, ere he gave a receipt for the lot, he tested
+      each. Not one was real!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This man was in the position which Dr Colenso occupies now. The owner of
+      the jewels was indignant at the idea that the stones were false, and the
+      apparent insinuation that imitations were being foisted on the public as
+      realities; but her fury did not alter the fact. If she were artful, her
+      plan was detected; if she had been deceived, her anger, though useless,
+      was justified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other hand, there are many Bishops who uphold the verbal
+      inspiration of the Bible, and will not inquire if the gem be real, or only
+      test it by plans known to be valueless for the purpose. Some do not go
+      altogether so far as this, They consider it obligatory upon them to
+      examine just a little bit, but not to go too deeply, lest they should be
+      forced to believe that there never was such a man as Moses&mdash;a man who
+      is commonly reported to have written certain books at a distant period.
+      Some persons seem to think that their hope of happiness in this, as well
+      as in another world, and not only their own, but that of everybody who is
+      under their instruction, depends upon their feeling sure that Israel was
+      once in Egypt&mdash;that Abraham begat Isaac, and became the progenitor of
+      an innumerable offspring, exceeding in number the Indians of Hindostan,
+      the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, the Egyptians of the Nile, and the Romans of
+      Italy. Between these two inquirers, if the latter class can fairly be
+      called such, the issue is distinct. There can be no difficulty amongst
+      scholars as to the means by which the question ought to be settled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An appeal to hard and dry facts is the plan adopted by philosophers. For
+      men, who have a single eye to discover the truth, it matters little in
+      what direction their inquiries lead them. Metaphorically speaking, they
+      may begin a series of investigations, expecting that everything will lead
+      them northwards, and they end by reaching the south; just as many an
+      enthusiastic, but little instructed, man has accumulated "pyrites," under
+      the impression that it was an ore of gold, and found, on inquiry, that the
+      material was a sulphuret of iron, and of small commercial value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is this very possibility of research bringing them to an
+      undesirable goal, which deters so many of our divines from making any
+      inquiry. Outwardly, they allow that it is their duty, as leaders, to
+      examine, not only the condition of their own forces, but the position and
+      power of those who assail the army which they profess to guide. Inwardly
+      they find reasons for remaining quiet, and excuse themselves to their
+      followers in some plausible fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why, however, should any goal be undesirable which leads us nearer to
+      truth? Why should any body of professedly learned-men run the risk of
+      being considered wanting in honesty, or candour, by avoiding their
+      opponents, whom they are in honour bound to encounter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reply to these questions generally runs thus:&mdash;"We, as ministers
+      of the Established Church of England, are bound to be faithful to the
+      Bible, and to it we must adhere, whatever our own private judgment may be.
+      We did not make the law; we simply take it as we find it, and, having
+      sworn to obey it, we do so." This answer would be exhaustive, if it were
+      the fact that the laity made the law for the theologians. But, as we know,
+      that the ecclesiastics have, in the last resort always made laws for
+      themselves, the rejoinder is not conclusive History tells us how ministers
+      of religion have instructed the people, and how these, again, have
+      legislated under the tuition of their advisers. When Paganism was
+      supplanted by Christianity, the change was effected by preachers, who
+      taught the populace to believe the new doctrine, and who influenced the
+      minds of the lawmakers. In like manner, when Popery in England was put
+      down by the Protestants, each party was headed by its priests. Many a
+      minister, at that period, felt bound to follow what he believed to be
+      truth, rather than to abide by a vow made in youth; and they who had
+      upheld the authenticity of Popish miracles, and of Apocryphal Scriptures,
+      ceased to give credence to them, or to use them as authorities in matters
+      of religion. These men were honest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That which has been done by men aforetime, may be done or imitated in our
+      own day; and our divines have as great a power to examine into the value
+      of the Bible now, as they had at the Reformation. If they refuse to make
+      the inquest suggested&mdash;in what way, may we ask, do they differ from
+      the Romanists in the time of Luther, who would not inquire into the truth
+      of his arguments lest they should be convinced? Can any one who professes
+      to be a Protestant&mdash;a child of the Reformation&mdash;honestly refuse
+      to investigate the grounds of the faith which is in him, and shelter
+      himself, as Bonner and others did, under the pretext of a declaration or
+      vow made at ordination?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If those who make the excuse just referred to, are honest, they are bound
+      to reject every doctrine which they, or their predecessors, have received
+      from Romish priests, who propounded in adult life, doctrines different to
+      those which they professed when yet almost children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To illustrate the tendency of our remarks still further, let us, for a
+      moment, suppose that the captain of a ship has, from any cause whatever,
+      adopted a particular "compass" by which he directs his course, and which
+      perhaps he calls by the name of Faith. All in the vessel are, to a great
+      extent, dependent upon him for a successful voyage, and a safe arrival at
+      the desired haven. Seeing how the master-mariner honours the magnetic
+      needle, every thoughtful passenger will probably consult it in like
+      manner. One more advanced in knowledge than the rest may desire to test
+      the instrument by the position of the pole star, and thinking that he
+      could recognize the latter, might infer that the magnet did not point
+      truly. This doubt, we will imagine still further, he imparts to the
+      captain, who, disinclined to distrust his compass, endeavours to
+      demonstrate that the position of the pole star is doubtful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the place of the mariners' compass let us read the "Bible," and,
+      instead of the pole star, let us substitute "science." We shall then
+      recognize the position of such men as the Bishop of Winchester and Dr
+      Colenso&mdash;the latter endeavours to test the value of the instrument
+      which is most used by churchmen by certain well-known means; the former,
+      on the contrary, aims to demonstrate that what he regards as a true
+      indicator is so in spite of all which the planets prove to the contrary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To carry on our metaphor a point further, let us imagine that the captain
+      and the doubting passenger appeal to the seamen and the other people on
+      board the barque&mdash;the latter telling in simple terms the grounds of
+      his belief, whilst the former appeals to the passions of those who have
+      long trusted him, and only notices the arguments of his opponent to
+      misrepresent them. This is what was done by the Papists, in every country,
+      at the time of the Reformation, and which more recently has been done by
+      the Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England, when in controversy
+      with the Bishop of Natal Dr Colenso has in voluminous works, and with a
+      precision which every scholar must admire, shown that the Old Testament&mdash;the
+      "compass" of churchmen&mdash;is not what it is supposed to be. Against his
+      views a new "Bible commentary" has been issued, with the sanction of the
+      highest ecclesiastical dignitaries; and in it the authors stoop to
+      misrepresentation! If there were no pretence of joint authorship, one
+      might imagine that each writer was responsible only for his own
+      shortcomings; but when there is a parade of great names, which is intended
+      to demonstrate the almost infallible truth of everything (except
+      typographical errors), one is bound to treat the contributors as being on
+      a level with each other, and all hierarchical coadjutors. How can any one,
+      with a tendency towards fair dealing, characterize but with the epithet
+      "contemptible dishonesty," a deliberate quotation from Dr Colenso, which
+      is falsified, that the fabrication may be refuted? The Bishop of Natal's
+      argument is a just one, and, although it is only contained in a note and
+      not in the text itself, is of great weight. It runs thus (Part v., p. 97)&mdash;"Of
+      course the fact that the tabernacle at Shiloh had <i>doors</i> (1 Sam.
+      iii. 15)&mdash; that the lamp was allowed regularly to <i>go out</i> in it
+      (1 Sam. iii. 3), and that Samuel <i>slept</i> in it, and apparently Eli
+      also (1 Sam. iii. 2, 3), are sufficient to show that this could not have
+      been the 'Mosaic Tabernacle.'" This is a fair and scholarly statement; the
+      layman recognizes it as such, and looks to his ecclesiastical superior for
+      an honest opinion on its value. What does he find? Simply this&mdash;Bishop
+      Browne answers: "The objection (Colenso, Part v., p. 97) that the
+      Tabernacle (at Shiloh) could not be the tabernacle, in the wilderness,
+      because it had a 'door' (1 Sam. ii. 22) is rather singular, if we observe
+      that the words in Samuel, on which the objection is founded&mdash; 'The
+      women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation'&mdash;are
+      literally a quotation from Exod. xxxviii. 8&mdash;'The women assembling,
+      which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of congregation.' Of course
+      the word door, fine <i>pethah</i>, is as applicable to a tent door as to a
+      house door, and is constantly used of the door of the Tabernacle in the
+      Pentateuch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In this observation of the Bishop of Winchester a false issue is
+      deliberately raised; the quotation given by Colenso is not touched, and
+      for it another, wide of the mark, is substituted! In the verse referred to
+      by the Bishop of Natal the words are&mdash;"And Samuel lay until the
+      morning, and opened the doors of the house of the Lord," &amp;c.&mdash;"doors"
+      being in the original, <i>dalethoth</i>&mdash;a different word altogether
+      to <i>pethah</i>, and certainly in the plural number. In other language,
+      we may say that in the <i>Speaker's Bible</i>, almost every argument and
+      criticism of Colenso and his German authorities are left unnoticed and
+      unanswered; and this, almost the only quotation made, is not a true one!
+      Is this honest? So gross, in my opinion, is the want of candour shown in
+      this case, that I, for one, cannot trust a single assertion of the Bishop
+      of Ely, now translated to Winchester, even when he quotes chapter and
+      verse, until I have verified the extract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the flagrancy of the proceeding is, if it can be, heightened by a
+      reference to the subject Dr Colenso was endeavouring to show, by those
+      undesigned coincidences, that hierarchs profess to love so much, and which
+      they parade with great earnestness when it suits their purpose, that the
+      tabernacle at Shiloh was not that described in the Pentateuch. It was
+      perfectly open to Dr Browne to adduce evidence that it was the same. This
+      he does not do&mdash;the scholar can well understand the reason why, viz.,
+      that a close inquiry supports the Bishop of Natal's view. For example, in
+      1 Sam. L 9, we find that Eli is sitting "upon a seat by a post of the
+      temple of the Lord." This sentence is significant in English, it is much
+      more so in Hebrew. The words "post" and "temple" certainly are quite
+      incompatible with a tent or tabernacle. In the Hebrew, the tabernacle is
+      generally spoken of as <i>ohel</i>, whilst "temple" is <i>heckal</i>.
+      Still further, the expression, "post of the temple," is peculiar, because
+      a corresponding one is found only once in the Old Testament&mdash;viz., in
+      Ezek. xli. 21, where the English version has "the posts of the temple,"
+      whilst the marginal reading has "post" The word <i>heckal</i> is in
+      constant use throughout the later Jewish books, but does not occur once in
+      the Pentateuch; and it is a significant fact that, in 1 Kings xxi. 1, 2
+      Kings xx. 18, Ps. xlv. 8, cxliv. 12, Pro. xxx. 28, Is. xiii. 22, xxxix. 7,
+      Dan. i. 4, the word in question is translated in our authorized version <i>palace</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the idea of a palace&mdash;a royal residence, is totally distinct from
+      a tent or tabernacle, it is clear that the narrative about Eli, Hannah,
+      and Samuel, was written by some one to whom the story told in the
+      Pentateuch was quite unknown. The dishonesty&mdash;we speak thus,
+      controversially&mdash;of the bishops concerned in the new commentary is
+      not only shown in the <i>suggestio falsi</i>, but in the <i>suppressio
+      veri</i>; and no amount of skill in argument or of book-learning can,
+      amongst those who are aware of the fraud, get over the effect which is
+      produced by the cheat. It is evident, that the questions which the Bishops
+      ask themselves are&mdash;"Since there are so many who are wholly ignorant
+      of this matter, shall we not do more to uphold current ideas by fraud than
+      by truth?" and, "Is it not right for us to risk our own souls in support
+      of a faith which we do not, but which the people do, believe?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a time when all men are ignorant enough not to understand what is
+      history and what pure fable; when they are so careless as not to examine
+      quotations, made from "authorities," in confirmation of opinions, or so
+      credulous as to believe anything which a churchman, and, <i>par-excellence</i>,
+      a Bishop, may affirm, it may be regarded by ecclesiastical writers as a
+      pardonable sin, if not, indeed, a tactical master stroke, to misrepresent
+      an adversary. But in the present day, when all educated Englishmen have
+      heard of the false decretals on which the Popes have founded their claims
+      to superiority, and the astute legend of Prester John, it is bad policy
+      for a Bishop to found an argument upon a wrong quotation, or to imagine
+      that a glaring untruth can by any possibility support his position. For
+      myself, I confess that I began to read the <i>Speaker's Commentary</i>
+      with interest, inasmuch as it purported to be an exposition and refutation
+      of the arguments against the authenticity of certain Biblical writings;
+      but when I found an English hierarch could so forget his duty to "the
+      truth" as to misquote such a man as his episcopal brother, the Bishop of
+      Natal, I abstained from a farther perusal, for I found the necessity of
+      verifying quotations involved more time than I could afford. Dr Colenso
+      has, however, sufficiently shown the viciousness of the new commentary,
+      and there is no necessity for a second investigator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From what has been said, we have shown that the members of the Church of
+      England, and all Protestant dissenters, have a right to expect from their
+      teachers an opinion, founded upon learned inquiry, "whether the objections
+      made by scholarly critics against the inspiration of the Bible are well
+      founded," and that ministers of all denominations, as a body, not only
+      shirk the duty, but persecute such of their fraternity as venture to do
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When an individual in the community accepts a trust and does not fulfil
+      it, he is amenable to the law; and if it can be proved that there has been
+      wilful negligence, the trustee may be punished. This does not, however,
+      apply directly to the clergy, for the trust which is confided to them is
+      to preach and teach from the Bible. That, certainly, is what they engage
+      to do before the law, but the very essence of their existence as ministers
+      of religion is, that they shall instruct men in the way of salvation. This
+      trust, which is never put into legal phraseology, is proclaimed to be in
+      existence by every preacher; and each minister, by implication or
+      assertion, declares that he is desirous of exercising this trust to the
+      best of his ability. If, then, the real value of his leadership is
+      challenged, he ought, as a champion, to defend it. He does so in every
+      point, except that which is most essential He will discuss circumcision
+      with a Jew, infant christening with a baptist, purgatory with a popish
+      priest, bishops with a presbyterian, confession with a ritualist, and the
+      like. There must, then, be some cause why Revelation should not be treated
+      of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we consult human nature, the only causes to which we can assign this
+      reticence are, conscientious cowardice and dishonesty. The first is, by
+      many persons, regarded as a duty&mdash;they are taught that it is sin to
+      doubt; the second is not called by its right name. Yet, as we have said
+      elsewhere, our religious societies are founded upon the principle of
+      sowing doubt broadcast; and we denounce the pious frauds which invented
+      winking virgins and bleeding nuns. Surely, if there be any truth in the
+      line&mdash;"An honest man's the noblest work of God," it is most essential
+      that they, who style themselves His ministers, ought to be conspicuously
+      honourable, candid, and thoroughly trustworthy in matters of doctrine as
+      well as of morality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The subject on which we are now treating has ramifications so wide, that
+      it is difficult to see the end of the branches. Amongst the most obvious
+      is the influence which it has upon the matter of public education&mdash;one
+      which occupies a large portion of the interest of our nation at the
+      present time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our preceding vol. II., p. 113, we have a note to the effect that there
+      is much doubt upon the subject whether faith ought to be drilled into the
+      minds of our youth prior to an acquisition of, or the power of using,
+      their reasoning faculty, and we remarked that the question is far too
+      extended to be treated in a casual note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The matter was shortly afterwards discussed in parliament, but not one of
+      the orators ventured to touch upon the point involved. If we ask ourselves
+      "the reason why," it is probable that the answer would run&mdash;because
+      all the interlocutors did not venture to be honest; by which I mean, did
+      not wish to utter, in distinct language, the opinions that they held, and
+      the end which they sought. There are some legislators who regard moral
+      cowardice as a virtue, and political dishonesty as a desirable kingcraft.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If an observer of the parliamentary debates, to which we refer, was also a
+      diligent and thoughtful reader of orations made in country towns and
+      metropolitan districts, by preachers and teachers of all our various
+      religious denominations, he would readily come to the conclusion that
+      there was something underlying every speech, which was never allowed to
+      come to the surface&mdash;a something which each was perfectly cognizant
+      of, but which it would be unmannerly to name, or even to hint at strongly.
+      It is not, in public meetings, or in parliament, permitted to any speaker
+      to accuse an adversary of falsehood or dishonesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet, what an orator may not judiciously say of particular individuals, a
+      writer may assert of a class, or of a single person, if he is a
+      representative of a body. I may, for example, accuse the Pope of
+      dishonesty in misrepresenting certain well-known facts. I may equally
+      charge controversial writers with fraud, when they falsify the words or
+      arguments of an opponent. Whoever frames such an indictment is, however,
+      bound to take into consideration the possibility of there being an
+      unintentional error. It may, for example, be true that Popes never see
+      newspapers which tell the truth, and that divines may quote without ever
+      reading the book which they profess to criticise. In both cases the critic
+      acquits them of malice, but only to convict them of culpable ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we investigate how this bears upon education, we ask ourselves&mdash;"Do
+      we, as historians, or in our capacity of reading men, know that the
+      pretensions of the Church of Rome are founded upon, or are bolstered up
+      by, assertions which every learned man knows, or ought to know, are
+      unworthy of belief?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be more particular, let us propound the question&mdash;Does any Papal
+      hierarch believe that Francis of Assisi received certain bodily marks on
+      his hands and feet direct from Jesus? or that any portion of the blood of
+      a man has been preserved for ages in the Cathedral of Naples, as having
+      once belonged to a person who is called by the same name as the first
+      month in our year? We might readily increase our queries by remarking
+      about St. Dennis, St. George, St Fou-tin, and a variety of others who
+      appear in the Roman heaven. Our purpose, however, will be answered if we
+      ask, whether the thoughtful amongst us do not object to the Papal faith,
+      because those who proclaim it are not to be trusted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we listen to energetic Protestant divines, we hear much of "lying
+      wonders," wrought by Antichrist, which are calculated even to deceive the
+      very elect. These men frequently quote such passages as the following:&mdash;"Trust
+      ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, the temple of the
+      Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these" (Jer. vii. 4); "They have
+      committed villany in Israel, and have spoken lying words in my name, which
+      I have not commanded them" (Jer. xxix. 23); "Have ye not spoken a lying
+      divination," &amp;c. (Ezek. xiii. 7, 8, 9); "Then shall that Wicked be
+      revealed, whose coming is with lying wonders, and with all deceivableness
+      of unrighteousness; and for this cause God shall send them strong
+      delusions, that they should believe a lie," &amp;c. (2 Thess. ii. 8-12).
+      Indeed, the main objection to the Roman Church, amongst all those who are
+      acquainted with its secret history, is that it is founded, and still
+      exists, upon a foundation of fraud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are many who consider that the Churches of England and of Scotland
+      have not a better basis; but both have so many friends in Great Britain,
+      that the sins of neither are closely examined, except by their
+      adversaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Each sectarian is fully alive to the want of good faith shown by every
+      other division of the Church of Christ; and not only so, but we have seen,
+      in our own times, a ruler in Siam who knows about them too (see <i>Wheel
+      of the Law</i>, by H. Alabaster; Triibner &amp; Co., London, 1871), and is
+      perfectly alive to the fact that we deceive ourselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a part of human nature that each individual has a propensity to
+      deceive himself or herself. A child, who has been told that Old Bogy lives
+      in a certain cupboard, will not go and look therein; a man who adores a
+      lovely wife will not believe in her frailty; and a fond woman will not
+      credit even her father, when he tells her that her admirer is a worthless
+      scoundrel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We grant this readily, but we add the proviso, that we only allow
+      ourselves to be deceived by our own friends. It would be, to all of us, a
+      frightful infliction if our sons or daughters were to tell us that we were
+      under strong delusions, and believing in lies. Consequently, everyone
+      desires that his family shall have a similar faith with his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the present time, however, more conspicuously than at any other since
+      printing was invented, there is, in society, a vast number of men who
+      believe, from their critical inquiries, that all religionists trust in
+      lying vanities which do not profit. These individuals have become
+      sceptics, in consequence of education having led them to think for
+      themselves. Being opposed to all, they are friendly with none; and
+      although they are not aggressive, as a rule, they are vigorously attacked
+      by every sect which steadily refuses to come to the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Under these circumstances every hierarch argues: "The education which
+      frees the mind from all the shackles of superstition is prejudicial to us,
+      who earn our living hy making fetters, fixing them, and relaxing them when
+      duly paid to do so. A sound teaching&mdash;a style of instruction that
+      will induce the rising generation to examine into our pretensions will cut
+      the ground from under our feet. We must, therefore, endeavour to limit, in
+      some considerable degree, our tuition." Like the Jesuits in Austria and of
+      to-day, they will cram the memory, but not exercise the understanding;
+      they will crowd the mind with lying statements, and prohibit all inquiry.
+      Sectarians, therefore, as a rule, object to education, unless it has a
+      religious element in it. They agree in this point, but differ as to the
+      style of faith which is to be taught Hence all the difference of opinion,
+      for as the sectarians cannot decide upon what faith is to be taught, they
+      object to all instruction whatever. Are they honest?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, instead of nursing a private idea, each legislator were boldly to say
+      what he desired to obtain and to avoid, there might be some chance of
+      united action. But when all pretend to work in common, yet not one is
+      absolutely in earnest, and all, more or less, play at "make believe," no
+      valuable end will be obtained.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One politician, whose memory is tenacious, and his temerity great, cannot
+      bear the idea that the British mind should approximate to that of the
+      Germans; and, whilst he eulogizes education, he denounces Strauss. Not
+      because the latter is not a man of profound learning, but because the
+      cultivation of his intellect has led him to certain conclusions which are
+      distasteful to an English politician. This is not honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again, our bishops and the priesthood generally say, "Education is a
+      desirable thing; it is wrong for man, who has a soul to be saved, not to
+      seek out the way of salvation." But if, in the course of inquiry, a
+      scholar imagines that their way is incorrect, he is anathematized, and his
+      fellows are instructed to believe that no one can find comfort for the
+      soul except in the way patronized by the Church. This, again, is not
+      honest. But&mdash;and the word is of mighty import&mdash;if, instead of
+      saying this distinctly, a few individuals of high standing in the
+      Protestant community deliberately, and with the intention to deceive&mdash;or
+      to retain people in the bonds which astute predecessors have thrown around
+      the laity, state, as their belief, that which their critical knowledge
+      tells them is untrue, or withhold knowledge of importance, because they
+      deem its publication detrimental to ecclesiastical institutions, they are
+      not simply dishonest&mdash;they are culpable, and guilty of spiritual
+      murder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My meaning may be illustrated by one or two pertinent anecdotes: The
+      captain of a man-of-war was doubtful of the existence of a rock laid down
+      upon a chart. One day at dinner he announced to his company the disbelief
+      which he had, adding, that if the spot were truly described, the ship
+      would strike directly. It did so, and few survivors were left to tell the
+      tale. The commander judiciously elected to perish with his vessel. Had he
+      told his officers, and the distinguished passengers whom he was carrying,
+      what he was doing, it is certain that the danger would have been avoided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another ship captain was addressed by a civilian who was on board, and
+      told that a hurricane was approaching, which might be avoided by steering
+      in a certain direction; but, metaphorically speaking, the bishop would not
+      listen to the layman. The typhoon came, the vessel was partially
+      dismasted; then the passenger was consulted, and by his aid the ship got
+      out of the danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The civilian was well read, not in ancient books, but in modern science;
+      the master mariner knew only his log-book, compass, and "the rule of
+      thumb."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A person who loses his ship because he is too stupid to believe a chart,
+      or the rules of a science, which every scholar may test, deserves the name
+      of an imbecile, and our Board of Trade would deprive him of the power to
+      do any more mischief as a captain; but bishops and priests may pilot their
+      vessel wrongly, for none have any jurisdiction over them, provided always
+      that they steer in the old channels. It matters not how far the way may be
+      shifted, all is supposed to be right, if the old landmarks are still used.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To make our meaning still more clear, let us imagine ourselves a nation of
+      mariners, and of ocean-travellers. We go to school, and learn astronomy,
+      trigonometry, geography, physics, and the like; yet, when we are at sea in
+      any ship whatever, we must neglect our knowledge, and trust implicitly to
+      the captain of our ship. We know that we are, in reality, going
+      southwards, when our proper destination lies to the north: for us it is
+      easy to read the stars, and thus to test both the chronometer and the
+      compass; must we, then, be quiet because we have embarked in a vessel
+      belonging to a certain "line," which is commanded by a master appointed by
+      the "firm" or "company" to which the barque belongs. What is the value of
+      education unless it enables us, when necessary, to find whether we are in
+      the right way or not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us, still further, suppose that we remonstrate with the captain, and
+      that he, in place of arguing the matter fairly, endeavours to override our
+      objections by quoting from ancient geographers, to demonstrate that what
+      we believe to be the wrong is, in reality, the only true way to go; we may
+      be silenced, probably until we accidently discover in the ship's library,
+      a dissertation proving that the old traveller's charts are worthless. When
+      we find out that, what will be our opinion of the captain? Can we believe
+      him to be honest?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we now were to remonstrate with our naval dictator, and he were to
+      rejoin&mdash;"My worthy brothers, I know that you are right, and that I
+      have been wrong. I have, indeed, known it from the time I began to be
+      commander, but my living depends upon my belief in old charts and ancient
+      compasses. I dare not change my plan, for my masters would dismiss me.
+      They know&mdash;at least I feel convinced that they are aware, that the
+      old sailing directions are wrong; but they have not the courage to say so,
+      or to alter them&mdash;and if I do so, they will cashier me."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is the "firm" or "company" honest? and if we are to mete out degrees of
+      culpability, to whom must the severest punishment be awarded? Surely, in
+      the case of the Church of England, to her Bishops, who, knowing, as
+      scholars, that their compass and charts are incorrect, yet oblige those
+      under their command to steer by them&mdash;thus compelling the men who
+      ought to be standard-bearers in the forefront of intellectual work, either
+      to be silent, or to fight at a disadvantage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the knowledge of the duplicity of a vast number of intelligent
+      divines, which has induced laymen to take the business of education out of
+      the hands of the clergy as a body. The Protestant believes that a Jesuit
+      will not teach correct history; the Romanist feels certain that, even in
+      biography, evangelical narratives cannot be trusted; and Nonconformists
+      generally feel that they cannot rely upon the instruction given by those
+      of a different sect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is desirable to sketch, if possible, what would be the condition of
+      society if, in the place of the clergy, there was a set of men trained to
+      the office of instructor, and that all individuals in the kingdom were
+      compelled to attend school for a definite period in their youth. In the
+      first place, nothing would be taught which is not known to be true. After
+      having mastered the rudiments of knowledge, the art of reading, writing,
+      and ciphering, the students would be taught to train their minds in
+      drawing inferences from facts, and the art of passing from imperfect
+      knowledge to certainty. They would be schooled into habits of exactness,
+      and the necessity for careful inquiry before they believed an assertion to
+      have the same power as a fact Those whose inclination led them to study
+      one or more of the arts or sciences, drawing, painting, sculpture,
+      designing, weaving, chemistry, engineering, building, and a host of
+      others, would learn that in every one of them knowledge and precision are
+      required to ensure success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the instructor found that his pupils were sufficiently trained to the
+      exercise of reasoning, he would then proceed to explain the ideas which
+      have been entertained by various people about the existence of beings,
+      other than those which can be recognized by the senses. He would lead his
+      class through the geological history of our planet, and point out the
+      sequence of events from the latest formation, to the primary rocks; on his
+      way he would linger on the nature of ancient plants and animals; from our
+      earth he would lead them to a study of the stars, and then point out how
+      very natural is the opinion that all the universe had a designer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, after giving a history of the belief in ancient times, he would
+      gradually descend to our own. He would critically examine the pretensions
+      of any person who had, in former ages, asserted, or who proclaimed now,
+      that he or she knew all about this presumed Creator, and was charged to
+      communicate that knowledge to mankind. After explaining the critical test
+      by which such an assumed mission might be examined&mdash;viz., by accurate
+      knowledge of the earth and of mankind, he would apply this trial to all
+      known pretenders to inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a result, his pupils might prefer one to another, or refuse to believe
+      in all which have hitherto appeared. In any case, each individual would
+      enter upon the form of faith which he selected with full knowledge of the
+      facts in favour of it. He would, therefore, be a disciple worth having.
+      If, on the other hand, he disbelieved all pretenders to inspiration, his
+      condition would be the result of deliberate reasoning upon ascertained
+      facts, and not built, as all religion now is, upon parrot lore, taught in
+      childhood, ere thoughtfulness has begun to grow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Assuming that men were thus trained by honest and able instructors, all
+      those people who live upon the weaknesses and the ignorance of the
+      multitude would cease their endeavours to prey upon mankind, and to get a
+      living by playing upon the fears which so many persons have of the
+      unknown. There would then be no religious wars or contests&mdash;no popes,
+      prelates, priests, nor deacons. Quackery of all kinds would cease, and
+      statesmen would all agree in endeavouring to procure for mankind the
+      greatest amount of available happiness. This would be the result of
+      honesty. But from such a picture many men absolutely recoil As the effect
+      of training has been to make them believe that unsubstantial things are of
+      sovereign importance, they cannot endure the idea of man being wholly
+      rational; and they insist, as does the late Premier of England, that, if
+      scientific schooling of the mind leads men to neglect what some call
+      Revelation, the plan must be radically bad and worthless. But to eulogise
+      education and to deprecate its results is dishonest. This political tenet
+      or practice resembles that of many a parson, who tells his hearers from
+      the pulpit that they are to "take no thought for the morrow, for the
+      morrow will take thought for the things of itself;" "they are not to take
+      thought for life, for food, for raiment; nor to lay up for themselves
+      treasures upon earth" (Matt vi. 19, 25, 34), and on the week-day urges
+      them to lay by a store against the time of sickness or old age. Such
+      double-dealing is dishonest, and is unworthy of a thoughtful man. If Jesus
+      was right, why not enforce his teaching? if he was wrong, why not say so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Is it possible that any minister in politics, or religion, can believe
+      that "Honesty is the best policy," and yet act with double-dealing? Can
+      any person, who has power to think, believe that he will be respected when
+      he, on a Sunday, preaches improvidence as being taught by the Almighty,
+      and on a Monday proclaims that men are wicked who do not make a provision
+      for the future? If such people were honest with themselves, they would
+      soon discover that the doctrine propounded from the pulpit is a Buddhistic
+      one, acted upon by all the early disciples of Sakya Muni, and in a
+      conspicuous manner by himself. Yet, if a parson were to be candid thus far
+      to himself, he would probably say&mdash;"I cannot afford to be honest in
+      this matter openly, and I must keep this knowledge to myself." Interest,
+      unfortunately, determines the actions, even of our divines, more than a
+      rigid uprightness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are thus at the foundation of those causes which are in operation to
+      make the thoughtful laity distrustful of the clergy&mdash;it is, that the
+      latter are not honourable or strictly veracious&mdash;they preach one
+      doctrine, and act upon another. Honesty is on their lips, but
+      self-interest in their hearts. From the Pope to the humblest deacon, there
+      is a conscious reticence in every mind&mdash;an inner belief that their
+      pretensions are not tenable, yet an outward determination to proclaim them
+      at all hazards; like the silversmiths of Ephesus, they all unite in the
+      belief that "their craft is in danger" when the apostles of reason appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Far be it from me to assert that all the clergy are dishonest in the full
+      meaning of the word. I believe that many of them have such undeveloped
+      minds, or such mean intellectual capacities, that they are absolutely
+      unable to think upon any subject which has not been drilled into them when
+      their brains were childish and ductile. Others, again, have been schooled
+      into the belief that "doubt" and "the devil" are identical, and who pray
+      to be defended from both&mdash;with them, "to inquire" is a temptation of
+      Satan, and so is to be manfully resisted; others, again, say to
+      themselves, and sometimes even to their friends&mdash;"I know what will
+      follow if I go into 'the evidences'&mdash;I dare not do it, and prefer to
+      remain in my present condition." Others, again, say to their conscience&mdash;I
+      am paid to expound a certain book, in a certain way; I cannot afford to
+      give up my position; consequently I will neither hear of nor argue upon
+      either the volume or the doctrine. There are, again, some few religionists
+      who, by constantly encouraging a blind faith, and repressing all
+      intellectual doubts, come at length to believe their position impregnable,
+      and who trust it because it is, as it were, always kept under a
+      glass-case. Some such I know, or have known, personally; and have heard
+      from their own lips how their very accurate knowledge of the Bible has
+      made them doubt its inspiration, and how "they have wrestled with God in
+      prayer"&mdash;to use their own expression&mdash;until the temptation to
+      distrust has been changed into a childlike confidence. Men like these are
+      not dishonest to the world, they are only so to themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The career of one of my acquaintances has been so striking, that it
+      deserves a record. The man of whom I speak was one of powerful intellect,
+      and of an inquiring turn of mind; but he was in holy orders, and had
+      schooled himself never to investigate the Bible's claim to inspiration, or
+      anything connected with religion. He faithfully did the ordinary duties of
+      a minister according to his lights; but throughout his ministrations, in
+      the composition and delivery of every sermon, there was a powerful
+      undercurrent of the mind which was constantly saying, without using words&mdash;"You
+      know that you are not honest." Prayer did not subdue this mental conflict,
+      and day by day the undercurrent grew stronger. It was, however, resolutely
+      opposed, and an outward orthodoxy rigidly kept up. Of the throes of such a
+      man, when he was quietly alone, few but those who have felt them can have
+      an idea. Under their influence the brain gave way, and insanity was the
+      reward of a resolute determination to be orthodox against personal
+      conviction. Similar cases are not uncommon, when faith opposes reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is very doubtful whether ordinary laymen have an adequate idea of the
+      extent of clerical dishonesty existing amongst us, not only in the seats
+      of learning, but in our towns, cities, and villages. As I have had much
+      correspondence and conversation with many ministers of religion, I have
+      formed the opinion that parsons of all denominations regard themselves
+      much in the same light as trade unionists and non-union men, the two
+      parties look upon each other as hostile. The former, who call themselves
+      the orthodox, keep up a sort of spy system upon those whose opinions they
+      fear, because they are not in the union. Such men, if they had a chance,
+      would not scruple to "ratten" an adversary. They judge of a man by the
+      books which they chance to see in his library, book-cases, or upon his
+      table; and, without the manliness to confront, they have the weakness to
+      backbite those whose mind is more robust than their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a physician, I have been consulted by a Church of England minister, who
+      was suspected by the rest of the ministers in his town of being a
+      non-union man. Of strong mind, he did not preach the usual jargon which
+      the pulpit delights in. Irons upon <i>Prophecy</i> and Inman's <i>Ancient
+      Faiths</i> had been seen in his study, and he spoke approvingly of
+      Colenso. As a consequence, he was watched in the pulpit and in the street.
+      He was followed to the homes of poverty, and sick folk were visited, that
+      the nature of his ministrations might be searched out. He was visited by
+      persons of all classes, who, taking their cue from the New Testament,
+      strove to entangle him in his talk. Being married, and having a family,
+      and no means of subsistence, save his church living, this trade union
+      persecution made him miserable, and seriously injured his health. But he
+      was resolute not to be dishonest, and held on his way. I was, he assured
+      me, the only person whom he knew that could appreciate his condition, and
+      he was most thankful for my sympathy and advice. He left my house already
+      improved in health; and the feeling that he had a friend to whom he might
+      always apply, enabled him to bear his persecution manfully. He still
+      retains his position, notwithstanding all the wiles and "picketings" of
+      the trade unionists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This spy system, mentioned in the above example, is associated with an
+      attempt to discover and apply backstairs influence&mdash;those who have
+      the power of making appointments in the church, the chapel, or the
+      meeting-house, are studied, and their opportunities to remove a
+      non-unionist taken advantage of by clerical "By-ends," who endeavour to
+      shape their judgment according to that of their patrons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This dishonesty reacts upon itself. Men who preach habitually one set of
+      doctrines to a congregation, tie themselves and their understanding down
+      to the low level of the majority of mediocrities; and as this level has,
+      under such circumstances, a tendency to lower itself, the clergy have been
+      compelled to fall, with their patrons, far down in the intellectual scale,
+      and the intelligence and educational status of ministers of all
+      denominations sinks annually lower. The proprieties of society prevent me
+      from repeating what has come to my ears from the lips or pens of
+      distinguished clerics. It will be enough if I utter my belief that one or
+      more outspoken laymen will do more good to religion, and advance the
+      interests of society more, than all ecclesiastical unionists. In this and
+      the preceding volumes it has been my aim to be thoroughly honest. In some
+      things of small moment, such as Greek accents, Hebrew points, &amp;c., it
+      is probable I have been faulty. I will even allow, willingly, that a more
+      perfect Hebrew scholar than myself may esteem my etymons fanciful and
+      incorrect. My work having been done in the midst of constant
+      interruptions, I concede that, to accomplished bookworms, it must appear
+      disjointed. But, with all its faults, it is honest; and, being so, I claim
+      the right to challenge any one who chooses to enter the lists, and
+      encounter me honourably, to a knightly combat. I am sure that my aim has
+      been, and is yet, to elicit truth. To me vituperation, because I have run
+      foul of what are called established doctrines, has no more influence than
+      it had upon the prime movers of any revolution. A foul blow, such as
+      iniquitous misrepresentation, would probably anger me for a moment, yet it
+      would nerve me, in the course of a few hours, to make an onslaught more
+      furious than ever. With a literary rascal one cannot observe the strict
+      laws of knighthood, except indeed, those which govern the relations of the
+      noble and the varlet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I make this challenge the more boldly, because the so-called orthodox
+      cannot persecute me by those meannesses which they employ against each
+      other. Having no ecclesiastical status, I have no penalty to dread from
+      frightened bishops or malignant priests. In the face of such a defiance
+      the clerical party must fight fairly, or slink away as cravens. One
+      condition, however, I must make with any one who enters the lists&mdash;viz.,
+      that any misrepresentation, such as that made about Bishop Colenso by Dr
+      Browne of the See of Winchester, shall be regarded as <i>ipso facto</i>&mdash;a
+      signal of defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To return to the idea which is enunciated at the early part of this essay,
+      let us contemplate what would be, or rather, what ought to be, the duty of
+      an honest man, whose aim is to defend the faith which he professes, and to
+      prove that the book which he reveres is deserving of his confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is probable that, if a merchant had in his possession a bill, or
+      promissory note, which some person had examined carefully, and pronounced
+      to be a forgery, he would never think of parading it before his customers
+      as a valid "asset." Yet, as I write the sentence, memory recalls to my
+      mind that traders have done this very thing, and have counted what they
+      ought to have known were bad debts, or fraudulent bills of exchange,
+      amongst their securities for money; and that, when the parties so acting
+      have become bankrupt, their proceedings have been severely punished by the
+      authorities, as being dishonest and fraudulent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The analogy is an useful one, inasmuch as it enables me to ask the
+      question&mdash;"Ought the morality of a 'divine' to be inferior to that
+      practised by a merchant or banker?" Still further, let us inquire whether
+      we should have a high opinion of a trader, who endeavoured to palm off
+      upon us, as a genuine diamond, an article which had been publicly declared
+      to be a bit of "paste," and whether we should be satisfied with his excuse&mdash;"I
+      believe everything is a gem that goes by the name of a precious stone."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of this and our preceding volumes we have, as plainly as
+      words could express our meaning, enunciated our conclusions upon certain
+      Biblical difficulties. We have, at least, endeavoured to be honest; we
+      have not misrepresented those with whose opinions we differ, nor have we
+      tried to shirk any question, however difficult it may have been. We claim
+      a corresponding degree of honesty from those who profess to be authorised
+      guides&mdash;and certainly are in the position at present of national
+      leaders in religion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are not like an unfortunate clerk in "holy orders," who can be silenced
+      by law. We are, on the contrary, a stranger knight who comes to a tourney,
+      and claims the right to combat with the most redoubtable of the champions
+      of their court and kingdom. Still further, we assume the power to write
+      those down as cowards who, upon any pretence whatever, decline to compete
+      in the lists with us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the days of chivalry there was not a knight who would not have been
+      regarded as "craven," if he declined a combat because his challenger did
+      not speak or write French correctly, or had a speck of rust on his armour,
+      a dint in his shield, or a hole in his breastplate. Yet, in these
+      degenerate days, we see that poltroons refuse to entertain the arguments
+      of a writer who, from any cause whatever, appears to be inaccurate in
+      Hebrew points, or consonants, or Greek accents, or transliteration. For
+      ourselves, we regard every excuse which is framed to avoid meeting a
+      fairly stated argument as a proof of weakness, and when it is uttered by a
+      professional champion, as an act of cowardice. When such champions are
+      paid by a state to uphold the honour of their country, to avoid a
+      challenge by evasion is dishonesty. There was, however, in knightly days,
+      some established law of chivalry that no champion need fight a "squire" or
+      "varlet;" but, on the other hand, no nobleman could refuse to enter the
+      lists on the plea that his challenger had a different faith to his own.
+      Combats between Christians and Paynim were common. Consequently, we cannot
+      regard a bishop justified in declining a fair challenge, because he is
+      invited to enter the lists by an "Infidel."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering myself as an university graduate and an English gentleman,
+      entitled to give a literary challenge, I make no scruple to enter the
+      lists, and invite champions to break a lance with me in favour of their
+      patron saint or lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assert that their tutelary saints&mdash;Adam, Abraham, David, Moses,
+      Solomon, and the prophets, are imaginary beings, or, where real, were not
+      as worthy as they are supposed to have been. I defy scholars to prove that
+      the Israelites were ever, as a body, in Egypt; that they were delivered
+      therefrom by Moses; that the people wandered during forty years in "the
+      desert;" received a code of laws from Jehovah on Sinai; and were, in any
+      sense whatever of the words, "the chosen people of God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assert that the whole history of the Old Testament is untrue, with the
+      exception of a few parts which tell of unimportant events&mdash;e.g., it
+      is probable that the Jews fought with their neighbours, as the Swiss have
+      done in modern days&mdash;but I do not believe the tale about Samson any
+      more than that of William Tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assert that there is not a single true prophecy in the whole Bible,
+      which can be proved to have been written before the event to which it is
+      assumed to point, or which is superior, in any way, to the "oracles"
+      delivered in various ancient lands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assert that the whole of what, is called the Mosaic law had no existence
+      in the days of David, Solomon, and the early Hebrew chieftains&mdash;or
+      kings&mdash;if they are thought to deserve the title.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here there is no room for evasion&mdash;the issue is clear; the cause to
+      be adjudged by combat is unmistakable. As the weapons on both sides must
+      necessarily be literary&mdash;the pen, and not lance or spear, it is
+      advisable to say a few words thereupon. In argument I do not recognize
+      that style of logic which considers that the words "it may be" are equal
+      to "it is."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am induced to make this remark, because in theological works, the two
+      forms are constantly used as if they were identical. Many years ago, a
+      near relative, staying in my house, was preparing for ordination in the
+      Church of England, and amongst other hooks, had a certain work of the late
+      Cardinal Wiseman, for perusal&mdash;with the intention of collecting
+      materials for refuting it. He told me that the Papal Archbishop was too
+      strong for him, and requested my aid. As a result, I became familiar, not
+      only with many dogmatic writings of the Roman, but also of the Anglican,
+      Church. All of them had, in my estimation, the same logical fault. Their
+      authors imagined that any given point is proved when it can be shown that
+      the occurrence in question <i>may</i> have happened. At a subsequent
+      period I discovered that this was the prevalent argument amongst writers
+      in my own profession. It has, indeed, been supposed generally, that
+      success in proving an opponent to be wrong, is the same as demonstrating
+      your own propositions to be right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The writers in the <i>Speaker's Commentary</i> upon the Bible have not
+      advanced beyond this. A thousand such commonplaces as fill its pages, are
+      worthless to the philosophical inquirer, and I no more regard them, than a
+      knight would a targe and lance made of barley-sugar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My challenge, however, is not confined to the subject of the Old
+      Testament; I affirm that the New Testament is equally untrue&mdash;although
+      not to the same degree. Yet, as in the latter, there are not so many
+      asserted facts, there cannot be so many points for cavil. To be more
+      specific: I assert that the history of Jesus was framed upon that of Sakya
+      Muni, and very probably at Alexandria, long after the death of the son of
+      Mary. I do not deny the existence of Jesus; but I assert that every
+      miracle which is told respecting him&mdash;and the narrative of his
+      miraculous conception, and of the marvels occurring at his birth, have no
+      foundation in fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is unnecessary to repeat what I have already said upon such points as
+      "original sin," "the fall of man," and "the need of a Saviour."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In what I now say or write, I am perfectly honest. I have not been paid to
+      preach a certain doctrine, whether my understanding assents to it or not I
+      affirm, moreover, that the comfort in which I live, is wholly unbroken by
+      any fears for the future; and that I look back upon the period when my
+      days and nights were made wretched by superstition, and rejoice that I am
+      emancipated from the shackles of Ecclesiastics. "The Church," and every
+      sect of it, which is known in Christendom, is, in my opinion, unfit to be
+      trusted by thoughtful human beings. Its votaries are only happy in
+      proportion to their power of forgetting its doctrines, or explaining them
+      away. Yet all, as I said in the first chapter of my second volume, agree
+      "to make believe," and by dint of persistently doing so, end in persuading
+      themselves that they are clothed with lovely garments&mdash;which have no
+      existence, save in the opinion of the wearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My whole life has been passed amongst religionists of more or less piety.
+      I have known them in public and in private, in their connection with the
+      world, and their relations with wife, children, and servants. I am also
+      familiar with some who are avowed free-thinkers. As an impartial judge,
+      and certainly having the desire to be an honest one, I declare that the
+      so-called irreligion or infidelity of the latter makes them better
+      citizens of the world, better fathers of a family, and better priests to
+      those who are struggling with misfortune, than the religion&mdash;orthodox
+      or non-conformist&mdash;of the former induces them to become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there were in reality, as there was once in fable, a domain in which
+      every one was constrained to speak the truth; and if, still farther, one
+      could carry thereto every religionist, and inquire into his belief, I feel
+      sure that those whom the professed Christians affect to despise as
+      infidels, would be the only ones who would be found faithful in private,
+      to the principles which they profess in public. If, for an example, the
+      question were put to both "What is honesty?" the answer of the
+      free-thinkers would be&mdash;"Doing to others, in every position of life,
+      that which you would wish others to do to you;" the reply of the dogmatic
+      would be the same, with the important addition&mdash;"Except in matters of
+      faith."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My readers must not imagine that I am hasty or unscrupulous in what is
+      passing from my mind to my pen. There never was a time in which I have
+      felt more deeply that my duty, as an independent man, is to speak plainly.
+      On the other hand, there is not one single religionist of my acquaintance,
+      to whom the words&mdash;"Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of"
+      (Luke ix. 55)&mdash;do not apply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the shelves of my library are books written by almost all classes of
+      authors, and in many different languages. It has been a self-enforced duty
+      to compare their contents, and to endeavour, still further, to elicit from
+      those who are not writers, information which may assist me in forming a
+      correct idea upon any particular point. Up to the present time I have not
+      found one single work, which has relation to the religion of opponents,
+      and is written by a parson, thoroughly trustworthy or honest Everyone is
+      guilty, either of the <i>suppressio veri</i> or <i>suggestio falsi</i>&mdash;generally
+      of both. A book emanating from a priest is bad, that from a bishop is
+      worse. Colenso, whom I regard as the only thoroughly truthful member of
+      the episcopal hierarchy, is the one who is more foully treated by
+      religionists than any other minister has ever been&mdash;"Tis true, 'tis
+      pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may be pardoned, if we close this chapter by the expression of our
+      views as to the religion which will prevail when men have thought as much
+      upon their future life as upon their present, and are honest with
+      themselves:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. They will try to form some distinct idea of what would be to them a
+      heaven; but, as they will be wholly unsuccessful, they will cease to
+      speculate upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2. They will cease to fear a hell, knowing that, if there be any immortal
+      part of man, it must be immaterial; they will not believe that it can be
+      tormented by material fires, forks, and furies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      3. They will cease to pay any attention to men who call themselves
+      prophets, divine messengers, or vicars of God on earth, whether they use
+      lying wonders or not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      4. Instead of constantly cogitating how much they can sin against, and yet
+      get pardon from, some unknown deity, they will recognize the laws of
+      nature for their guide, and live in communities as their reason dictates.
+      The future will be left wholly in the power of the Creator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      5. There will be no belief in a trinity, in a virgin mother of God, in
+      intercessors of any kind whatever between human beings and the invisible
+      God; each man and woman will be independent and alone in the presence of
+      the Supreme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      6. Man will no longer try to usurp the place of God, and persecute his
+      fellow mortal on religious grounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      7. There will be no priests or ministers of religion; but there will be
+      instructors in science, in the laws of life, and moral order; there will
+      be magistrates to enforce social propriety, and establishments where the
+      insane and the criminal can be secluded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      8. There will be no strife about religion, for each will attend to his own
+      personal concerns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      9. The laws of nature will be studied as regards marriage and family; the
+      infected will not be allowed to perpetuate a feeble race, nor the diseased
+      infant be pampered, that it may live to a sickly and useless maturity.*
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * We may add, that there will then be neither silly women
+     nor crotchety men, who will encourage free trade in
+     fornication, and the diffusion of loathsome diseases, and
+     endeavour to promote unnecessary suffering by their
+     opposition to the methods of avoidance.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      10. No law will be made but that which is drawn from a study of the ways
+      of the Creator, and the proper requirements of His creatures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      11. Every pretender to revelation, or inspiration, will be incarcerated as
+      a rogue or a lunatic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      12. The aim of all will be individual and general comfort, and as much
+      happiness as is compatible with humanity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When each does to others as he would be done by, the millennium, so much
+      talked of, will have come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_APPE" id="link2H_APPE">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      APPENDIX.
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      27th March, 1875.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Dear Dr Inman,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At pp. 11 and 81 of your new volume, the proof-sheets of which you were
+      good enough to show me, you intimate that an earlier origin can be found
+      for all Hebrew feasts and observances excepting the Sabbath. It would
+      appear, from discoveries made and works published since you began to
+      write, that you need not make even this exception. There are, I think,
+      plain indications of a Sabbath among the Egyptians, and proofs of its
+      observance by the Assyrians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dr G. G. Zerffi, in a note appended to Mr Tyssen's <i>Origin of the Week</i>*
+      says&mdash;"Judging from the Egyptian mythology, we are justified in
+      assuming that they had some correct notions of the division of time. Their
+      eight gods of the first order point to an incarnation of the cosmical
+      forces, or the planetary system. The twelve gods of the second order
+      undoubtedly presided over the twelve months of the year; whilst the seven
+      gods of the third order were to watch over the seven days of the week.....
+      The Teutons have inherited the division, not only of the week in seven
+      days, but also the names by which these days are called, from the
+      Indians....." (Bohlen's <i>Das alte Indien</i>; <i>Toth</i>, by Dr
+      Uhlemann; and Bunsen's <i>Egypt's Place in History</i>; Tacitus, Suidas,
+      Pliny, and Amosis).
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * The Origin of the Week Explained, by A. D. Tyasen, B.C.L.,
+     M.A.; Williams &amp; Noigate, 1875.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      These, perhaps, are only what I have called them, indications of a
+      Sabbath, since it is conceivable that a week of seven days might exist
+      without one day being more sacred than another. A plainer indication may
+      be found in the Hymn to Amen-Ka, which exists upon a hieratic papyrus,
+      judged to be of the fourteenth century, B.C., and purporting to be only a
+      copy of an earlier writing. I quote four lines, and call attention to the
+      fourth:&mdash;
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     O! Ra adored in Aptu [Thebes]:
+     High-crowned in the house of the obelisk [Heliopolis]:
+     King (Ani) Lord of the New-moon festival:
+     To whom the sixth and seventh days are sacred.*
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      When we leave Egypt for Assyria, we pass from indication to proof. At p.
+      12 of George Smith's <i>Assyrian Discoveries</i>,** the author says&mdash;"In
+      the year 1869 I discovered, among other things, a curious religious
+      calendar of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four
+      weeks, and the seventh days, or 'Sabbaths' are marked out as days on which
+      no work should be undertaken." More precise information as to these
+      Sabbath-days is given by Rev. A. H Sayce, M.A., in <i>Records of the Past</i>,
+      vol. I., p. 164, where the following words occur:&mdash;"The Babylonian
+      year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with an
+      intercalary month every six years.... According to the lunar division, the
+      seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days were
+      days of 'rest' on which certain works were forbidden."
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     * Translated by C. W. Goodwin, M.A., in Records of the Past,
+     vol. II Bagster &amp; Sons.
+
+     ** Sampson Low, &amp; Co., 1875.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The Assyrian legends tell of seven evil spirits who rebelled against the
+      gods; of the goddess Ishtar descending to Hades, and passing through seven
+      gates; of a deluge, the duration of which was seven days, &amp;c., &amp;c.
+      Mr H. F. Talbot, F.R.S., speaks of the great degree of holiness which the
+      Assyrians attributed to the number seven, and where that number was
+      sacred, the seventh day could scarcely escape special honours. <i>Why</i>
+      the number seven was sacred, or whether the Babylonian Sabbath was at
+      first any more than an unlucky day, like the sailor's Friday, when it was
+      sowing for the whirlwind to begin any enterprise, are other questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am, yours faithfully,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      GEORGE ST. CLAIR.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These observations of Mr St Clair deserve attention, for they show that,
+      from an ancient period, a sixth and seventh day were holy in Egypt,
+      although we cannot discover from the context whether they were reckoned
+      after the first day of a year, a month, or a week. But this is of small
+      importance, as I do not find evidence that the Jews borrowed any Egyptian
+      ideas, even if they ever knew any. It is far more important to know, that
+      in the Assyrian calendar the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth,
+      twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month were days of "rest," for
+      all Biblical testimony points to the adoption of the Jewish Sabbath in the
+      time of the second Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel&mdash;i.e., not very long
+      after the Assyrians made their power felt in Palestine. When we consider
+      the propensity which the Hebrews had to copy parts of the religion of
+      those who conquered them, it is highly probable that some astute priest of
+      the Jews adopted the idea of consecrating a seventh day, as their
+      Mesopotamian adversaries had done, to the most high god Saturn; and as it
+      was desirable to have some pretence for the introduction of the Sabbath,
+      it was natural that it should be put under the same head as the new moon,
+      and that stories should be invented, and gradually circulated, of the vast
+      antiquity of the new institution. It is clear, from the Jewish history,
+      that the Sabbath was not generally known amongst the common people until
+      long after the return from Babylon. Had it been so, Ezra would not have
+      thundered so energetically in its favour. The same remark applies to
+      Nehemiah. I have elsewhere remarked that the Sabbath was unknown to David
+      and Solomon, and may now add that any one who will read the episode in the
+      history of Elijah, recorded 1 Kings xix. 7, 8, will see that this prophet
+      could have known nothing, and the angel who spoke to him could have known
+      no more, of the Mosaic Sabbath, inasmuch as the latter directs, and the
+      former obeys, an order which must have involved a breaking of the "rest"
+      of at least five, and possibly six, Sabbaths. The whole life, indeed, of
+      Elijah shows a perfect ignorance of this so-called Mosaic institution.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ancient Faiths And Modern, by Thomas Inman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ancient Faiths And Modern
+       A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+
+Author: Thomas Inman
+
+Release Date: November 22, 2011 [EBook #38100]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANCIENT FAITHS AND MODERN:
+
+A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities
+
+In Central And Western Asia, Europe, And Elsewhere, Before The Christian
+Era. Showing Their Relations To Religious Customs As They Now Exist.
+
+By Thomas Inman, M.D.
+
+Author Of "Ancient Faiths Embodied In Ancient Names," Etc., Etc.
+Consulting Physician To The Royal Infirmary, Liverpool; Lecturer,
+Successively, On Botany, Medical Jurisprudence, Therapeutics, Materia
+Medica, And The Principles And Practice Ok Medicine, Etc., In The
+Liverpool School Ok Medicine. Etc.
+
+1876
+
+TO THOSE
+
+WHO THIRST AFTER KNOWLEDGE,
+
+AND ARE NOT DETERRED FROM SEEKING IT
+
+BY THE FEAR OF IMAGINARY DANGERS,
+
+THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, WITH GREAT RESPECT,
+
+By
+
+THE AUTHOR
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+Some thirty years ago, after a period of laborious study, I became the
+House Surgeon of a large Infirmary. In that institution I was enabled to
+see the practice of seven different doctors, and to compare the results
+which followed from their various plans of treatment. I soon found
+that the number of cures was nearly equal amongst them all, and became
+certain that recovery was little influenced by the medicine given. The
+conclusion drawn was that the physician could do harm, but that his
+power for good was limited. This induced me to investigate the laws of
+health and of disease, with an especial desire to discover some sure
+ground on which the healing art might safely stand. The inquiry was a
+long one, and to myself satisfactory. The conclusions to which I came
+were extremely simple--amounting almost to truisms; and I was surprised
+that it had required long and sustained labour to find out such very
+homely truths as those which I seemed to have unearthed.
+
+Yet, with this discovery came the assurance that, if I could induce my
+medical brethren to adopt my views, they would deprive themselves of the
+means of living. Men, like horses or tigers, monkeys and codfish, can do
+without doctors. Here and there, it is true, that the art and skill of
+the physician or surgeon can relieve pain, avert danger from accidents,
+and ward off death for a time; but, in the generality of cases, doctors
+are powerless. It is the business of such men, however, to magnify their
+office to the utmost. They get their money ostensibly by curing the
+sick; but it is clear, that the shorter the illness the fewer will be
+the fees, and the more protracted the attendance the larger must be the
+"honorarium." There is, then, good reason why the medical profession
+should discourage too close an investigation into truth.
+
+But, outside of this fraternity, there are many men desirous of
+understanding the principles of the healing art Many of these have begun
+by noticing the style of the doctor's education. They find that he is
+taught in "halls," "colleges," and "schools," for a certain period of
+time; and then, at about the age of two-and-twenty, he is examined by
+some experienced men, and, if considered "competent," he pays certain
+fees, and is then licensed to practise as physician. As all regular
+doctors go through this course, it is natural that all should think and
+act in a common way, and style their doctrines "orthodox." It is equally
+certain that to such opinion the majority adhere through life. But
+it has always happened, that many men and women have aspired to the
+position of medical professors, without going through the usual career;
+or, having done so, they have struck out a novel plan of practice, which
+they designate a new method of cure. These have always been opposed
+by the "orthodox," and the contest is carried on with varying success,
+until the general public give their verdict on one side or the other.
+Into the motives which sway the respective combatants we will not enter;
+our chief desire being to show that each set is upheld by those who
+are designated "laymen," whose education has not been medical The most
+intelligent on the heterodox side have been clergymen; and many have
+been the complaints of "orthodox" doctors, that "the parsons" should
+patronize, so energetically as they do, medical "dissenters."
+
+As the "clerk" takes pleasure in examining the therapeutical doctrines
+of his physician, so the medical professor frequently inquires closely
+into his clergyman's theological views and feels himself at liberty
+to accept or oppose them, as the "clerk" adopts or attacks him and his
+theory and practice. It would, indeed, be disrespectful in the listener
+not to pay intelligent heed to the discourses which emanate from
+the pulpit. I have myself listened to the preaching of hundreds of
+university graduates, and of men who never took a degree, and have
+noticed that the same diversity of style exists amongst them, as is to
+be found in medical men. Some order a certain plan of treatment for a
+soul, which they assert to be grievously affected, and give no reason
+for what they say or do. Others give their motives for everything which
+they affirm, and for the plan which they prescribe for cure. Under the
+ministry of one of the last I sat for many years. Conspicuous for sound
+judgment, and for a peculiarly clear oratory, his sermons were to me an
+intellectual treat. From the exordium, forwards, I followed his words
+closely, and lost none of his arguments. But I soon became conscious
+that he never once carried his reasoning to its logical conclusion.
+Still further, it was manifest that certain things were by him taken for
+granted; and it was held to be culpable to inquire into the reality of
+those assumptions. In fine, it was evident, that there was a Bluebeard's
+closet in the house of God, into which, in the preacher's opinion, it
+was death to pry!
+
+With the idea which was gradually forced upon my mind, that there was
+a systematic suppression of the truth in the pulpit, I very carefully
+searched the Bible, with which I have been familiar from infancy, and
+upon which, it is asserted, all our faith is founded. At this time, too,
+a casual inquiry into some ancient cognomens, which have descended to
+us from remote antiquity, induced me to examine into ancient faiths
+generally. With this became associated an examination of all religions,
+and their influence upon mankind.
+
+I found that in every nation there have been, and still are, good men
+and bad, gentle and brutal, thoughtful and ignorant. That the best men
+of Paganism--Buddha, for example--did not lose, by comparison, with the
+brightest light of Christianity; and that such large cities as London
+and Paris, have as much vice within them as ancient Rome or modern
+Calcutta. I found, moreover, that there is a culpable colouring in the
+accounts given by Christian travellers of Pagan countries. The clerical
+pen rests invariably and strongly upon the bad points of every heathen
+cult, and contrasts them with the best elements of Christianity. I
+do not know that it has ever instituted a fair comparison between
+corresponding characters in each faith. As an illustration of my
+meaning, let us regard the stern virtue of the Roman Lucretia, who
+committed suicide, her body having been forcibly defiled by the embraces
+of another than her husband, even though the ravisher was a prince. She
+had heard nothing of the Jewish law or Christian gospel, nevertheless
+she was far better than the wives of the nobles in the courts of Louis
+the XIV. and XV., who gladly sold themselves and their daughters to the
+royal lechers. These, unlike the Italian woman, were instructed both in
+the law and the gospel; they attended one place or another of Christian
+worship daily or weekly. Nay, if report be true, "the eldest son of the
+Church," when he visited the "parc aux cerfs," made each fresh virgin,
+victim of his passion, duly say her prayers before she assisted him to
+commit adultery, and herself permitted fornication! We sympathize with
+Paul and the early Christian fathers in their denunciations of the
+Romans and Greeks for obscenities practised in honour of their gods;
+but, at the same time, we feel sure that, had those apostles and
+teachers lived in the middle ages, they would have denounced, with
+greater warmth, the murders which were constantly being perpetrated in
+honour of Jesus.
+
+In like manner, we may greatly regret, with the writer of Psalm xiv.,
+that amongst "the children of men, there is none that doeth good; no,
+not one;" but we must equally bow before the statement of Ezekiel
+(ch. xxii. 30), that there was no more propriety amongst the so-called
+"chosen people of God," than amongst the Gentile Canaanites and
+Babylonians.
+
+Again, we feel pain when we find the great ones of the earth--aye, and
+many small ones too--seeking out for villains, "willing to commit
+murder for a mede," and lament that lawgivers should secretly encourage
+lawlessness; but we cannot forget that Jesus of Nazareth is represented,
+in John vi. 70, to have selected a devil to bring about certain
+ends--see also John xiii. 26, 27, in which the agency is well marked.
+
+Modern divines tell us that war, tumult, hatred, malice, quarrels of all
+kinds, and murder come from the devil, and are the direct result of our
+fallen nature; nevertheless, we remember that Jesus is reported to have
+said--"I came not to send peace, but a sword; I am come to set a man at
+variance against his father, and the daughter against the mother," &c.
+(Matt. x. 34, 35). When we institute comparisons like these, the
+balance is not uneven. I found, moreover, that the sharply defined line,
+commonly drawn between Paganism and Christianity, is worthless--the
+doctrines of the latter being, in many respects, identical with, or
+deduced from, the former.
+
+It seemed necessary, therefore, to ascertain whether, in religion,
+any other line than the one in vogue in Europe, could be drawn with
+certainty.
+
+The result of my observations showed a wonderful similarity to exist
+between the clerical and medical profession; and I feel that, if my
+views about the cure of souls and bodies were generally adopted,
+there would be no need either for parson or for doctor. Instead of
+discovering, as I had hoped to do, which of all the rival sects of
+Christendom is the best one, I found that all were unnecessary, that
+many are degraded in doctrine and bad in practice; and that, if any
+must exist, the one which effects the least mischief should be the one
+selected for general adoption. It required much courage to allow myself
+to believe that doctors have, taking everything into consideration,
+done more harm in the world than good, and still more to announce my
+conviction that Christianity was even more culpable than medicine. The
+physician, when professing to cure, has too often assisted disease to
+kill; and he who has had the cure of souls, has invented plans to
+make believers in his doctrine miserable. The first fills his coffers
+proportionally to the extent to which he can protract recovery;
+the second becomes rich in proportion to the success with which he
+multiplies mental terrors, and then sells repose. The one enfeebles the
+body, the other cripples the intellect, and aggravates envy, hatred, and
+malice. Both are equally influential in preventing man from being such
+as we believe that the Almighty designed him to be.
+
+Though we oppose the old plan of medication of body and mind, we are
+far from asserting that there is no value in an honest doctor, either of
+divinity or medicine. On the contrary, I have a stronger faith in my own
+profession, as it has been reformed, than ever I had ere the light of
+good sense had shone upon it; and I have a far more confident trust
+in the religion propounded by F. W. Newman, in _Theism_, than in that
+current amongst Christians in general But in such schemes of physic
+and faith, very few "ministers" are necessary, shams find no place, and
+emoluments are small A man who communes with his God requires no priest,
+mediator, middle-man, or saint--whether virgin, martyr, or both--to
+intercede for him.
+
+Holding such opinions as these, it is not probable that I shall find
+many followers. I do not seek them. My aim has been to set good sterling
+stuff before the world, so that any one, whose self-reliance is great,
+may receive strength. There are many who would rather die with a
+physician close beside them when they are ill, than live without a
+doctor; and there are few who would not rather enjoy the fear of hell
+with the orthodox, than be with heretics free from such terrors--"For
+sure, the pleasure is as great in being cheated, as to cheat." To all
+such our writings are _caviare_. Yet, even to them, we would say that we
+have warrant for our belief in statements, to which the orthodox
+cannot reasonably object--viz., "If thou doest well, shalt thou not
+be accepted?" (Gen. iv. 7); "In every nation, he that feareth God, and
+worketh righteousness, is accepted with him" (Acts x. 35); "He that
+doeth righteousness, is righteous" (1 John iii. 7).
+
+Let me contrast my own views with those generally current amongst us. I
+believe that God did not make men, any more than the beasts, to damn the
+largest number of them throughout eternity. I believe that all who aver
+that they have been selected by the Creator from all the world besides
+as the only recipients of salvation are wrong, and deceivers of the
+people. In fine, I believe that God's "tender mercies are over all his
+works." The common opinion that the Almighty so revels in cruelty, that
+He makes creatures to torture them, is a horrible one to me--fit only
+to come from impotent Pagan priests. That Jehovah selected about one
+million of bad men, out of about four hundred other millions equally
+bad, solely because their progenitor, Abraham, consented to murder and
+burn his son, is to me a frightful blasphemy; and, lastly, that God has
+no tender mercies for nine-tenths of the human race, is to convert our
+conception of the Author of all good into the conventional "Devil." The
+comparison may be summed up thus: I believe in God, the Father of all
+things; the so-called orthodox believe in the God Satan. I do not know
+anything in all my studies which excited my attention more painfully
+than the result of the analysis of Jehovah's character, as given in our
+Bible. Kind to those who are said to please Him, He is a fearful demon
+to all who are said to oppose Him.
+
+How can any reasonable man hold the opinion that the Devil instigated
+all atrocities of the Syrians, Chaldees, Assyrians, Romans, Turks,
+Tartars, Saracens, Affghans, Mahometans, and Hindoos, and believe that
+the good God drowned the whole world, and nearly every single thing that
+had life; that He ordered the extermination, not only of Midianites and
+Amalekites, but slaughtered, in one way or another, all the people whom
+he led out of Egypt--except two--merely because they had a natural fear
+of war. What was the massacre at Cawnpore to that in Jericho and other
+Canaanite cities? I say it with sober seriousness--in sorrow, not in
+anger--as a thinking man, and not as an advocate for, or against, any
+religious view, that it is an awful thing for any nation to permit
+a book to circulate, as a sacred one, in which God and the Devil are
+painted in the same colours.
+
+Into this analysis of religion I was led to enter from the observation
+of a friend, who challenged me to find, in any non-Hebraic or
+non-Christian country, a faith or practice equal to that current amongst
+the followers of Moses and Jesus, or to discover any spot in the wide
+world where there is, or has been, a civilization equal to that which
+existed in Judea, and the parts inhabited by Christians. In consequence
+of this defiance, it became more than ever necessary for me to study the
+nature of the current faith and practice of Christendom, and to inquire
+how far the latter was dependent upon the former--that is to say,
+whether the practices of civilization are due to our religion, or have
+gradually grown up in spite of it. The next point was to pay similar
+heed to the doctrines and manner of life common amongst those to whom
+our Bible has been wholly unknown.
+
+Many of the conclusions to which I came have already appeared in the
+second volume of _Ancient Faiths_, under the heads of "Religion,"
+"Theology," &c.; but others came upon me when that book had been
+completed, and the present supplement is designed with the idea of
+expressing, still further, the extent of my views, and the evidence upon
+which they are founded--with special reference to the differential value
+of Christian and unchristian faith and practice.
+
+As was natural, this involved the question constantly before my mind in
+the preceding volumes--viz., "Is there in reality anything in the Hebrew
+and the Christian theology essentially different from that promulgated
+by the leaders of divinity in other countries?" This point has
+repeatedly been discussed, and amongst the orthodox there is no
+difficulty in allowing the existence of a strong similarity in all
+systems of religion; but the value of the fact is supposed to be reduced
+to ridicule by the monstrous assertion, that Moses and Jesus taught
+all the world. Amongst the books which came under my notice, whilst
+prosecuting my search, was a very remarkable one, called _The Modern
+Buddhist_, now _The Wheel of the Law_, which is an account of the
+religious thoughts of a Siamese monarch, with a statement of his
+conversations with Christian missionaries. In this the British churchman
+and non-conformist can see themselves as others see them; and the
+Asiatic has quite as great, perhaps even a superior, right to call the
+European "poor and benighted," as the Christian has to call the Buddhist
+"a miserable Pagan."
+
+Notwithstanding my endeavours to be perfectly "judicial," and to give
+what I believe to be an impartial account of the subjects which I
+describe, I have been, by certain critics, accused of special pleading.
+It is, perhaps, unnecessary to deny the charge, for each reader must
+judge of my fairness, or otherwise, for himself. But, on the other hand,
+I retort most strongly, by averring that I have not met, in the whole
+course of my reading, a religious work by an orthodox divine, which does
+not "bear false witness against its neighbours."
+
+There is in all both a _suppressio veri_ and a _suggestio falsi_,
+which makes the honest inquirer almost entirely reject their books.
+In addition to this, there is in them a recklessness of statement and
+assertion which is unequalled, except in the fierce controversies of
+ancient doctors. The perfect contempt which certain puny divines, who
+have endeavoured to throw dirt upon the present Bishop of Natal, show
+for the laws of evidence, and the systematic way in which they avoid
+every real point at issue, are marvellous to those who know that such
+people have had an university education, have studied logic, and
+profess an unlimited respect for truth. In future years the theological
+writings, generally, of our time will be as much objurgated by
+enlightened, earnest, and thoughtful readers, as Protestants of to-day
+abuse the theology and prurience of Sanchez, Thomas Aquinas, and Peter
+Dens.
+
+In conclusion, I would wish to add, that I am conscious, from the amount
+of correspondence which I have had on the subject in hand, that there
+is not only a wide, but a constantly extending dissatisfaction
+with the current theology taught by the ministers of all
+denominations--excepting, as a body, the Unitarians, and such
+individuals as Bishop Colenso, Bishop Hinds, Mr Voysey, and others. The
+laity are awaking to the fact that priests are strenuously endeavouring
+to quench the light of reason in the fogs of faith. Unless the
+Protestantism, of which Great Britain was once so proud, decides to
+drift into Papism--the only legitimate harbour for those who reject
+reason for a guide--it must thoroughly reform itself, and ruthlessly
+reject, as "necessary to salvation," every article of belief which is
+not only nonsensical or absurd, but which has unquestionably descended
+from a grovelling Paganism. To this end we hope that our essays will
+contribute.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     A recapitulation. Destruction of an old edifice precedes the
+     building of another on the same site. Chichester Cathedral.
+     Difficulties of reconstruction. Innovators are regarded as
+     enemies. The Old Testament appraised. The Jews and their
+     pretensions. Hebraic idea of Jehovah. The sun and moon. God
+     and goddess. Importance of sexual perfection in a Hebrew
+     male. Women are prizes given to the faithful Jews. Almost
+     everything Jewish came from Pagan sources, except the
+     Sabbath. Inquiry into the New Testament necessarily follows
+     upon an investigation of the Old. Thoughts upon the history
+     of Christianity. Malignancy of its professors. Life of
+     Jesus, by various authors. The ground preoccupied.    The
+     plan proposed.
+
+In commencing another volume of a series, and one to a great extent
+independent of the other two, it is advisable to pause and recapitulate
+the points advanced, and the positions attained. This is the more
+necessary when the present inquiry is a natural result of a preceding
+one, and when an attempt is made to collect and arrange the scattered
+materials into an harmonious and consistent edifice. Our volumes on the
+subject of "Ancient Faiths in Ancient Names" were, to a great extent,
+destructive. They struck heavy blows in all directions, wherever a false
+idol was to be recognized, and they destroyed many a cherished delusion,
+which was to many as dear as the apple of their eye. But, throughout
+the whole process of destruction, the idea of the necessity for a
+reconstruction was present to the mind of the author.
+
+It may, indeed, be propounded as an interesting question, whether any
+iconoclast ever destroys the idols which his fellow-beings cherish,
+without entertaining the belief that he has something superior to offer
+in their place. When the fanatic Spaniards upset, fractured, and ground
+to powder the stone monsters venerated by the Mexicans, they offered to
+the natives the image of a lovely virgin and her gentle son to replace
+them; and when the enthusiastic Scotchmen destroyed the marble saints
+and gaudy figures of the Popish churches throughout their own country,
+they eagerly set forth the superiority of adoring the invisible creator
+in spirit and imagination, which afforded scope for the most entrancing
+mental delineations, and was far superior to reverencing an ugly effigy,
+which no one with any correct taste could admire. In like manner, when
+the Mahometan Caliph destroyed the library of Alexandria, he offered to
+the mourners in its place the book of the Prophet Mahomet, which was, in
+his eyes, a pearl of so great price as to be equivalent in value to all
+the world besides.
+
+There can be no doubt, however, that the process of destruction is far
+more easy than the task of reconstruction. The engineer who is called
+upon to remove a bridge, on account of the badness of its foundation,
+may admire the extraordinary firmness with which every stone has been
+dovetailed together, and, with the means at his command, may be unable
+to construct another having a similar appearance of stability; yet,
+after all, an arch which is secure and stable is preferable to one which
+is good only in appearance. A very few years have elapsed since it was
+found that the tower and spire of the Cathedral at Chichester had been
+so built that there was imminent danger of the whole falling down. This
+part of the edifice resembled certain faiths which have been raised with
+great art to a vast height, with very slender and inadequate material.
+So long as they were not assailed by any storm, or tested by the changes
+which time produces, they seemed firm and unshakable; but, when they
+were really tried, they began to undergo a process similar to that which
+obtained in the Cathedral named--the admirers of the edifice attempted
+to prop up the failing tower; with iron and timber they shored up its
+bulging sides; they erected strong scaffolds to ease the mighty strain
+upon the crumbling walls; but all in vain--the lovely spire, built upon
+a foundation as rotten as the Mormon faith, came tumbling down, and
+the tall emblem pointing to the sky returned once more to earth. Before
+there could be any reconstruction attempted, it was necessary to procure
+all the material necessary; and when, with great labour, this was
+accumulated, a fresh erection was made, which was far stronger than the
+first, for every stone was duly examined, and solid masonry replaced
+the ancient rubble. So it has been with many a faith. Christianity has
+replaced the crumbling Judaism which existed at the beginning of our
+era, and the Reformed Church has since then, in many countries, replaced
+the gigantic sham of Popery. But the metaphor is one which we cannot
+wholly adopt, inasmuch as we believe that no faith of ancient times has
+ever wholly fallen like the spire and tower of Chichester, nor has any
+new system of belief the solidity of that new edifice which has replaced
+the old.
+
+The difficulties connected with reconstruction are greatly increased by
+the propensity which is so common in the human mind to make the best
+of that which is in actual existence and familiar to the vulgar, rather
+than to adopt something entirely new. The child who dislikes to go to
+bed at night equally dislikes to get up in the morning, and we have
+known elderly people who have systematically preferred an old lumbering
+stage-coach to a first-class compartment in a railway carriage. In every
+walk of life an innovator is regarded as an enemy by the majority, and
+especially by those whose practice or whose theories his discoveries
+supersede.
+
+Yet, great as is the contest which any new truth has to sustain, there
+is no doubt whatever that the first part of the fight--the preliminaries
+essential to conquest, are the investigation of the ground to be
+occupied; the real value of the defences; the superiority of the armour;
+and the temper, strength, and tenacity of the offensive weapons. The
+engineer to whom is confided the attack or the defence of a town will
+abandon or destroy everything which would harbour an enemy or facilitate
+his operations. The fighting commodore, ere he carries his ship into
+action, sacrifices readily all the gewgaws of luxury; and in like manner
+the ecclesiastic ought never to endanger his position by spending his
+energies in the defence of a useless outwork or a tinsel ornament.
+Entertaining these views ourselves, our first effort has been to
+clear the ground, and to remove every object which we consider to be
+detrimental to the spread of truth.
+
+We have demonstrated, as far as such a matter is capable of
+demonstration, that the Old Testament, which has descended to us from
+the Jews, is not the mine of truth which it has been supposed by so many
+to be: that not only it is not a revelation given by God to man, but
+that it is founded upon ideas of the Almighty which are contradicted
+by the whole of animate and inanimate nature. We showed, that its
+composition was wholly of human origin, and that its authors had a very
+mean and degrading notion of the Lord of Heaven and Earth. We proved,
+what indeed Colenso and a host of German critics have demonstrated in
+another fashion, that its historical portions are not to be depended
+upon; that its stories are of no more real value than so many fairy
+tales or national legends; that its myths can now be readily traced
+to Grecian, Babylonian, and Persian sources; that its miracles are as
+apocryphal as those told of Vishnu, Siva, and other deities; and its
+prophecies absolutely worthless. We proved, moreover, that the remote
+antiquity of its authorship has been greatly exaggerated; that the
+stories of the creation, of the flood, of Abraham, of Jacob, of the
+descent into, and the exodus from, Egypt, of the career of Moses and the
+Jews in the desert, of Joshua and his soldiers, of the judges and their
+clients, are all apocryphal, and were fabricated at a late period of
+Jewish history, with the design of inspiriting the Hebrews at a period
+when their depression of spirit from foreign conquest was extreme; that
+the so-called Mosaic laws were not known until long after the time of
+David, and that some of the enactments--that about the Jubilee, for
+example--were never promulgated at all. We showed that the Jewish
+conception of the Almighty, and of His heavenly host, did not materially
+differ from the Greek idea of Jupiter and his inferior deities; that
+the Hebrews regarded Jehovah as having human passions and very human
+failings--as loving, revengeful, stern, merry, and vacillating--as
+"everything by turns and nothing long"--as forming a resolution, and
+then contriving how He might, as it were, overreach Himself. We pointed
+out that the Jews did, in reality, paint God and the Devil or Satan, as
+the same individual, being the former to His friends, and the latter to
+His enemies. Indeed, anyone who compares 2 Sam. xxiv. 1 with 1 Chron.
+xxi. 1 will see this most clearly demonstrated. We called attention to
+the apparently utter ignorance of the Jews that certain laws of nature
+existed, and of their consequent belief that defeat, disease, famine,
+slaughter, pestilence, and the like, were direct punishments of
+ceremonial or other guilt; while victory, wealth, virility, and old age
+were special and decided proofs of the Divine favour. We showed that
+the Jews were, in general, an abject but a very boastful race, and
+that their spiritual guides--the so-called prophets--were constantly
+promising, but always vainly, a striking manifestation of the Almighty's
+power in favour of the Hebrews when they were in the depths of misery,
+that histories were fabricated to give colour to these statements, and
+that these, like modern miracles of saints, were narrated as occurring
+a long time ago, and in a locality which could not be visited, e.g., in
+Samaria and Egypt; we showed, moreover, that the race was imitative, and
+readily adopted the religious ideas and practices of those who conquered
+them. Still further, we proved that the Jews had no idea whatever of a
+future state, and were in utter ignorance of heaven or hell; that they
+regarded the Almighty as punishing crime or rewarding goodness in
+this world alone, and, consequently, we inferred either--(1) that
+the conversation said to have been held between Jehovah and certain
+apocryphal men did not really occur; or (2) that God did not think
+the existence of a future world a matter of sufficient consequence to
+communicate to His friends; or (3) that Elohim had not then created
+either a habitation for the blessed, or a future prison-house for the
+damned; and we pointed out that the opinions of the Pharisees about
+angels, spirits, and futurity were not based upon the writings of Moses
+and the prophets, but upon Persian fantasies. In fine, we showed, that
+the Hebrews could not sustain the claim they made to be the especial
+people of God, and that their writings are of no more value, as records
+of absolute truth, or of Divine revelation, than the books of the
+Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, or the more modern
+Mahometans.
+
+With all this we indicated that there was, throughout the nations known
+as Shemitic, a general belief in the existence of an Almighty Being,
+Creator, Director and Governor of the heaven, the earth, and the
+sea; that He was considered to be One, yet that He was, nevertheless,
+represented by a multiplicity of names, and as having many and opposite
+attributes.
+
+We also showed, that this sublime conception was very thickly coated
+with human ideas, often of a debased and grovelling type, and darkened
+by legends, which were invented by priests with the design of clothing
+themselves, and those of their order, with a portion of the garments
+which they had assigned to the Inscrutable. We showed, how the sun
+and moon, the stars and planets, became interwoven with the idea of a
+Celestial Being, and how they were described in turn as His ministers,
+His residence, His army, and sometimes even as Himself. We showed,
+moreover, that the Almighty was depicted by some as a male, having the
+attributes and passions of men, by others as a female, or celestial
+goddess, and by others as androgyne--not exactly a bifrons, like Janus,
+but masculine and feminine, Elohim, Baalim, Ashtaroth; that in the
+development of this idea, everything which has reference to the
+phenomena of mundane creation was closely studied, and introduced into
+one religious system or another. As a result of this, it followed, that
+there were some sects and temples consecrated to the adoration of the
+Creator as masculine, others as feminine, and others as both combined.
+We showed still farther, that each sect adopted certain emblems, which
+were intended to represent the distinctive mark of the sex under which
+it worshipped the Omnipotent, and that the emblems became multiplied
+as different nations came into contact with each other, learned foreign
+theology, and advanced in their knowledge of natural history. To such an
+extent was this symbolism, to which we refer, carried, that the sexual
+idea of the Creator at last pervaded, to a greater or less degree, all
+forms of worship, and gradually degraded them deeper and deeper, in
+consequence of the emblems of the deity being mistaken for the deity
+itself, much in the same way as the vulgar, amongst the Roman Catholics,
+regard a statuette or picture of the Virgin, or an Ashantee a particular
+form of idol fetish. As an example of such development, we pointed out
+that the Assyrians represented the Godhead as four-fold, consisting of
+the triple male and the single female element in mundane creation, and
+that the idea of the trinity in unity, which is a doctrine recognized
+as far back amongst all nations as history will carry us, was originally
+founded solely upon the well-known fact that the characteristic of the
+male is a triad, of which all the parts are really, and in no mysterious
+manner, "co-eternal together and co-equal." We also showed that the
+feminine idea of the Creator has, from time immemorial, been associated,
+in one form or another, with that of a lovely virgin holding a child in
+her arms, which is generally very young, and mostly receiving food from
+a maternal bosom, the reason of which we hinted at.
+
+We showed that the myths of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarai, Esau and
+Jacob, were incorporations of the idea that the trinity and the unity,
+or, to use the very words of the Athanasian creed, "the trinity in
+unity," were the founders of the race of living beings, and, as such,
+worthy of worship and honour throughout all ages. This union was spoken
+of as "the four," and was symbolized as a square or a cross of four
+points, or a cross of eight points. We showed, still farther, that
+the male Creator was identified with the sun, and the female with the
+crescent moon, and also with the earth; and that one of the symbols of
+this celestial union of the sexes was the sun lying within the moon's
+crescent.
+
+We also demonstrated, that a very large part of Pagan worship
+consisted in the performance of rites and ceremonies, whose end was the
+glorification of the deity under one or other of the selected symbols,
+and that a number of feasts were appointed to be held at certain
+astronomical periods, in which the assistants were encouraged to indulge
+in every form of sensuality (Deut. xiv. 26). We pointed out, that the
+Jewish people were largely tainted by this vicious form of worship prior
+to the Babylonian captivity, and that a very large portion of their
+nomenclature was based upon sexual ideas of the Creator. We also showed,
+that the Jewish writings encouraged certain forms of sensuality in a
+conspicuous manner; that the condition of the male organ was represented
+as being of such importance as to be the ground work of the covenant
+between God and the Hebrews, it being declared (Gen. xvii. 14), as if by
+the word of the Lord, that no man was to be allowed to live whose organ
+had not been improved in a definite manner, i.e., by circumcision or
+excision of the prepuce, and that no man was to be admitted into the
+congregation of the faithful whose characteristic male organs had in
+any way been injured or removed. Deuteronomy xxiii. 1 is conclusive upon
+this point, and there is no ambiguity in the words of the decree. We
+pointed out, also, that not only was abundance of offspring promised to
+the faithful as a proof of God's regard to them, but that the laws, said
+to be delivered by Jehovah to Moses, positively provided (see Deut. xxi.
+10-14) the means by which the harems of the wealthy could be stocked in
+times of war, and by which even the poor might also be indulged, in or
+about the precincts of the temple, where slave and foreign women were
+kept for the purpose (Numb. xxxi. 40). We pointed out that the
+natural result of this licensed debauchery was a great increase in the
+population, which was so much in excess of the capacity of the land to
+sustain them, that it was necessary to check the number of adult mouths
+by conniving at infanticide, as was done in Rajpootana up to a recent
+period, and is said to be done in China now. It is clear, from the
+denunciations by the prophets of the vileness of the Jews of Jerusalem,
+and the impotent laws which were introduced into the so-called Mosaic
+code, that the Hebrew family was to the full as bad and vile as were the
+nations around them.
+
+We further showed that there was a marked difference in the thoughts,
+the doctrines, the laws, the knowledge, the writings, and the form
+of worship amongst the Jews after they had come into contact with the
+Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks; and we adverted to the fact that the
+laws of the Persians, and those of him, whom we would designate
+"the fictitious Moses," were remarkably similar; and we showed
+that everything in the Old Testament, which is, by the majority of
+Christians, deemed to be of Divine origin, had been derived from or
+through one or other of the sources which we have named, and which we
+call Pagan. From this we deduced the important corollary, either that
+the so-called revelation of the Old Testament is a sham, a priestly
+fabrication, and what is known as "a pious fraud," or that it was not
+made originally to the Hebrews. In neither case can the Jews establish a
+title to be the "chosen people of God" in any sense of the words. If the
+Bible is true, the Gentiles have spiritual precedence over the Hebrews,
+and the Pagans have the _pas_ of the Christians.
+
+This deduction enabled us to recognize the importance of an extended
+inquiry into the faith, religion, and practice of other nations, before
+we assume ourselves to be in a position to appreciate the claims
+which one human being, or any body of men, might make to be the
+representatives of the Almighty, the sole recipients of His commands,
+and the only medium by which prayers can be forwarded to Him. Again, the
+history of the past, and a study of the present, enabled us to see that
+the foundation of a new religion, or the modification of an old one, did
+not destroy ancient practices, though it transferred priestly power to
+a new set of men, who, while they introduced new gods and new dogmas,
+endeavoured to incorporate the older ideas with new, so as to seduce or
+cheat the vulgar, whom it was not judicious to slaughter, into adopting
+the new faith. Consequently, we are able to understand how indecent
+ideas, sexual emblems, and Pagan festivals, with many of the licentious
+practices associated therewith, have been handed down from a remote
+idolatry to a modern and comparatively enlightened Christianity. The
+symbols of the objectionable still remain, but the things symbolized
+have been altered, and the original ideas suppressed. The male triad is
+a holy trinity; the monad is no longer the emblem of womankind, but of
+the so-called Mother of God, or, as the Romanists say, of the
+_Mater Creatoris_. But with this knowledge comes the very important
+consideration, how far Christian ideas, which are founded upon Pagan
+fancies, can be regarded as Divine. This, again, involves the question,
+how far Jesus, who had not penetration enough to discover the true
+nature of the writings to which he trusted, can be considered as an
+incarnation of Divine knowledge, or of unbounded wisdom. Still further,
+it became clear, after our arguments, that if the stories of the
+creation of man, the fall of Adam, the life of Noah, of Abraham, of
+Moses, the tale of Sinai, and the supremacy of Judah, are mythical--if
+the prophetic writings are as worthless as the oracles of Dodona and of
+Delphi--then all theories, dogmas, and doctrines founded upon them must
+be equally valueless.
+
+In pursuance of my subject, I pointed out that there was not a nation
+known to history which had not its god or gods, a sacred priesthood, a
+set of prophets, either located in one spot, or appearing as independent
+vaticinators, a number of holy festivals, of hallowed shrines, of
+mysterious temples, and an inner and recondite arcanum into which the
+profane were not permitted to enter. I showed that other nations besides
+the Jews had a sacred ark which was an emblem of a divinity; that the
+use of sacrifices was common to every nation of antiquity; and that such
+things had existed in Hindostan from time immemorial. I pointed out,
+that there was no single precept or order contained in the Jewish
+Ritual which could not be found amongst all other people, with the sole
+exception of the Sabbath; and that the respect for this very strange law
+was due to the ignorance of the Hebrews, who regarded Saturn as the most
+high amongst the gods--information gained from the Babylonians.
+
+Thus, an investigation into the nature and importance of Ancient Faiths
+becomes a necessary prelude to, or, rather, is unavoidably followed
+by, an inquiry into the beliefs, doctrines, and practices current in
+Christendom generally, and in Great Britain particularly. Yet, though
+I was insensibly driven forwards to complete the task which I began,
+without having any definite notion of the amount of labour I should
+have to undergo, I passively resisted for a long time the conclusions to
+which I was drawn, feeling myself unwilling, almost, indeed, unable, to
+undertake an examination which might shake my faith in the New Testament
+as it had been shaken in the Old. Like many others of a thoughtful turn
+of mind, I could see, without very strong regret, the Jewish writings
+consigned to their appropriate niche in the library of the world; but
+I shunned the effort required to take down the books of the Gospels
+and Epistles and weigh them in the impartial balance of critical
+truth. Nevertheless, as my work on Ancient Faiths progressed, I became
+painfully conscious that I must plead guilty to the charge of mental
+cowardice if I shirked the duty of examining the New, as I had
+investigated the Old, Testament. But when the resolution to investigate
+modern faith was at length formed, the difficulties surrounding the
+subject became apparent. The history of modern faith is, to a great
+extent, the history of Christianity, and the history of Christianity
+must start from a history of Jesus and his apostles--Paul, Peter, James,
+John, and Jude, as given in the Epistles and Gospels included in the
+canon of the New Testament. To cope with any one of these histories as
+they deserve to be handled would involve the work of a lifetime, and for
+one man to exhaust the whole seemed to me an impossibility. There
+was, in addition to this, another consideration which complicated
+my difficulty still farther, viz., the fact that there were already,
+written histories of the nature of those alluded to, and that it would
+be useless to multiply them. It is a thankless task to pursue the
+current of the Christian religion through the dark scenes which shrouded
+it, from the time when it was adopted by a few "unlearned and ignorant
+men," until it emerged as a power able to shake empires--from the period
+wherein its professors were burned and otherwise tortured to death,
+to the days when their own Christian successors racked, roasted, and
+tormented their opponents, with a malignancy and cruelty as great as
+that which they themselves had execrated when practised upon their
+predecessors. From the moment that Christianity became a political
+power, its history resembled that of any tyrant or other ruler, and it
+is filled with misrepresentation, lying, fraud, the records of fighting
+and slaughter, of brutal passions, frightful laws, and horrible
+punishments; in fact, the record of political Christianity is that of a
+Devil in sheep's clothing. Even Calvin, one of our cherished reformers,
+burnt another Protestant almost in the same year as the Papists burnt
+Ridley and Latimer. The English Episcopalians in Scotland, and the
+Cromwellian Puritans in Ireland, showed more of the ravening wolf in
+their actions than of the amiable shepherd, who "gently leads" the weak
+ones of his flock. In fact, the more loud the proclamation of a pure
+Christianity, the more devilish is the practice of its heralds.
+
+When I turned to the consideration of the life of Jesus, it was clear
+that the ground was already fully occupied. In 1799 a Mr Houston
+published a work entitled _Ecce Homo; or, a Critical Inquiry into the
+History of Jesus Christ: being an Analysis of the Gospels_, a second
+edition of which was made public fourteen years afterwards, and, as
+a result, its publisher (D. J. Eaton) was prosecuted, and such of the
+impressions as could be collected were publicly burned in St. George's
+Fields, London, by the common hangman, whose business it was to strangle
+truth as well as murderers. This book, which is little known to modern
+readers, is strictly what it professes to be--a critical inquiry
+into the history of Jesus Christ, and it may, to a great extent, be
+considered as the progenitor of more modern treatises. It does not
+materially differ from the _Ecce Homo_ of to-day, or from the other
+works which we shall name, except in its style and composition. Having
+been written when all were in the habit of expressing their views in
+strong language, and when opponents were abused in terms of coarse
+invective, the author has expressed himself in a manner calculated to
+offend rather than to convince, and to stir up anger rather than
+to encourage thought. Yet his arguments are unanswerable, and his
+deductions unimpeachable, by those who know the value of evidence and
+exercise their power of ratiocination. I have been unable to find that
+any work was written in refutation of the author's views, and the
+only opposition to it was from the usual agent of the weak-minded, but
+strong-bodied--persecution.
+
+In more recent times, and within a very short period of each
+other--so short, indeed, that we may say that the books were composed
+simultaneously in Hindostan, Germany, France, and England--there have
+appeared _A Voice from the Ganges,_ Strauss' _New Life of Jesus_,
+Kenan's _Life of Jesus_, The English _Life of Jesus_, by Mr Thomas
+Scott, of Norwood, a second _Ecce Homo_, from a modern Professor, and
+_The Prophet of Nazareth_, by Owen Meredith.* In these volumes, the
+historical value of the Gospel narratives closely and critically
+examined, and a just appreciation of the character, preaching, and
+practice of the Prophet of Nazareth are honestly sought after, and,
+in the opinion of impartial readers, they must be held to have been
+attained. Throughout the series which we have mentioned nothing that is
+capable of demonstration, or of approximate proof, is taken for granted.
+The scholarship of the critical philosopher everywhere overbears the
+prejudice of the Christian bigot. Since the appearance of these another
+author has treated upon the same subject, but only cursorily, and as
+bearing upon other matters, in a work entitled _The Book of God; or, The
+Apocalypse of Adam Oannes_, which was published anonymously, 1868.
+
+     * Whilst this sheet was in the printer's hands, a most
+     remarkable book was published anonymously, entitled,
+     _Supernatural Religion_, in two volumes. In it there is a
+     most scholarly account of the origin of the New Testament
+     writings, one which every thoughtful person should peruse.
+
+Between the publication of the first _Ecce Homo_ and the second, viz.,
+in 1836, there was printed, for private circulation, a very remarkable
+work, entitled _Anacalypsis; or, an Attempt to draw aside the Veil of
+the Saitic Isis_, by Godfrey Higgins. His two volumes are replete with
+learning, and with deductions more startling than any which had appeared
+prior to his own time; but the subject matter is so badly arranged,
+that it is with very great difficulty that the trains of thought which
+occupied the author's mind can be dis-. covered. His main idea is,
+that very nearly everything in religion which appears to be mythical or
+mysterious enfolds certain astronomical facts--such as the precession
+of equinoxes, the duration of cycles of time--such as are necessary
+to reproduce exactly a concordance between certain terrestrial and
+celestial phenomena. With this theory he interweaves an amazing number
+of facts which seem to favour the opinion enunciated in the book of
+Ecclesiastes--i.e., that there is nothing new under the sun. He shows
+that the idea of "incarnations," the birth of a heavenly child from a
+pure virgin, and a variety of so-called Christian dogmas, have existed
+in every age of which we have historical accounts.
+
+He gives a vivid sketch of the nature of Christianity and its progress
+from century to century, and he expresses himself respecting its modern
+developments much in the same strain, though in a far more gentlemanlike
+style, as did his contemporary, the Rev. R. Taylor, to whom was given,
+or who assumed for himself, the title of the Devil's chaplain.
+
+In the estimation of some of these writers, Jesus, the son of Mary, is
+quite as mythical a being as Hercules, the son of Alcmena. This view has
+been more recently adopted by some freethinkers of the present day. The
+main support on which such individuals rely is the fact that there is no
+mention of Jesus by any contemporary historian; and that, although
+there are extant Jewish records of current history, at the time in which
+Christ is said to have lived, they make no mention of him who is now
+called the Saviour and of his wonderful history. It is pointed out that
+the histories of the Gospels came out with marvellous rapidity, from
+Alexandria, about the end of the first century, at a time when all
+contemporaries of Jesus were dead.
+
+To this work of Higgins it is probable that we shall have repeatedly
+to refer, for his language is frequently so forcible that it cannot
+be improved, and, moreover, he very often quotes from books, copies of
+which I have been unable to obtain.
+
+When I found that the ground which I intended to occupy had already
+been so well and so ably cultivated, it occurred to me that it would be
+advisable to take a wider flight than was originally contemplated, and,
+instead of examining the Christian faith alone, to associate with it an
+account of the faiths of those nations of whom we have some knowledge.
+By this means it appeared to me, that we should be enabled to see
+clearly, how far the current belief and practice of Christendom differs
+from the doctrines and practices of those to whom Christianity could
+never, by any possibility, have come, and we can examine, incidentally,
+into the teachings of Jesus, and compare them with that of his
+predecessor, Sakya Muni, or Buddha. We may also investigate impartially
+such doctrines as the immaculate conception, and the existence of
+angels.
+
+When treating, however, a subject like the religions of the ancient and
+modern world, it is difficult to frame the history so as to bring out
+the salient points, in a manner satisfactory to the reader or to
+the writer. The latter is tempted to begin, as he believes, at the
+beginning, and to trace the development of religious thought from
+its simplest expression up to its highest aspiration. This temptation
+becomes all the stronger if, in the course of his study, he has
+investigated the animal and vegetable creations. In those vast kingdoms
+he sees that the philosopher is able to lead his disciples onwards
+from the minute monad, or the simplest mass of matter, to the gigantic
+mastodon, without any very conspicuous flaw or break in continuity; but,
+on closely observing his method of proceeding, the student finds that
+links which connect genera or species together are found in countries so
+wide apart, that no direct communication can be supposed between the one
+type and the other. Thus the gap between mammals and birds is said to
+be filled by the "ornithorhynchus paradoxus," an animal living in a
+vast island, in which scarcely one quadruped mammalian is known to
+have existed, and where the aboriginal birds form a class peculiar to
+Australia, and have no resemblance to the creature referred to.
+
+Yet, though the temptation is great, and although we feel justified in
+reasoning from the known to the unknown, and in supplying missing links
+from analogy, or from our own imagination, still, we consider that it
+will be our best plan to confine ourselves, as far as possible, to
+that which is written, and to describe first, the religious ideas and
+practices of some so-called savages; secondly, the ideas and practices
+of some ancient races, whose histories, more or less perfect, have
+come down to us, with a view to ascertain whether there is anything
+essentially good in modern Christianity, either in faith or practice,
+which is peculiar to that form of religion, or whether almost the same
+style of teaching may not be found to have been common in the remote
+East, at a period some centuries prior to the birth of Jesus.
+
+As we have investigated the subjects of Sin, Salvation, Prayer,
+Inspiration, &c., it is unnecessary to refer to them again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     Travellers' tales not to be trusted. Prejudice perverts
+     facts. The Esquimaux. Cause of reverence for parents. The
+     Red Indian in the presence of immigration is a moral
+     murderer. Inquiry into Indian religion. O. KEE. PA. Indian
+     reverence for phenomena of nature. Ruins of a past
+     civilization in America. Cairns and human sacrifices.
+     Manufactured goods. Bronze in Yucatan. Resemblance between
+     the ancient American people and certain Orientals. Abbe
+     Domenech's travels. Sacrifice at obsequies, idea involved
+     thereby. Scythian proceedings. Mexico and its theology. Two
+     different conceptions of deity. The Unity subdivided by
+     Mexicans, Jews, and Christians. The God of war and the Lord
+     of Hosts. The God of air a deity in Mexico, a devil in Judea
+     or Ephesus. Mexican baptismal regeneration. Resemblances
+     between the Occidental and Oriental people in many curious
+     doctrines. Particulars. Mexican Heaven, Hell, and Limbo.
+     Mexican baptism and prayers. Priests and their duties. A
+     parallel. Romanists and Mexicans. Confession. Expiation.
+     Human sacrifice to obtain pardon of sin. A comparison
+     suggested. Mexican education. Purity of life in the Mexican
+     priestesses. Father Acosta's opinion thereon. Tartary, Rome,
+     and Mexico have something common in culture. Education of
+     youth. Policy of the priesthood. Reflections thereupon.
+     Teocallis or houses of God. Worship. Festivals. Human
+     sacrifice. No sexual deities or rites. Question of
+     credibility--God and the Devil act alike! Aztecs and
+     Europeans compared. Christians have offered human sacrifice
+     from the time of Peter downwards. Transubstantiation is a
+     cannibal doctrine. Christian gods in Mexico as bad as the
+     Aztec deities. History of Peru. The policy of its rulers.
+     Roads and magazines. Nature of its government Governors were
+     instructed in their duties. Civil service examination.
+     Inauguration of youths into honourable manhood. Travelling
+     compulsory in rulers. Postal system--division of the people
+     --local magistrates--law speedy. Code of law. Punishment
+     without torture. Peruvians and inquisitors. Reports required
+     of lands and families. Register of births, &c. Rapidity of
+     communication. Plunder not permitted. Peace the motive for
+     war. The vanquished incorporated with the victors. A
+     paternal government. Peruvian religion. Difference between
+     political institutions and priestcraft. Peruvian sun god. An
+     invisible God recognised. Priests. Eternal life.      Heaven
+     and  Hell.     Temple of the sun magnificent. Golden
+     ornaments. Huge urns of silver. Number of priests.
+     Festivals. Cannibalism not permitted. Fire made from rays of
+     sun and concave mirror, or by friction. Virgins of the sun.
+     Concubines of the Inca. Matrimony.    Reflexions.
+
+When the philosopher reads over the histories which adventurous
+travellers, or Christian missionaries, have given of the religions of
+the savage, or uncivilized, people whom they have visited, he feels
+painfully conscious that the accounts are not implicitly to be relied
+upon. In some he recognizes the fact that communications only take place
+between the one party and the other by signs, which not only may be, but
+very generally are, misinterpreted on both sides; in others he is able
+to see, or, at least, he comes to the conclusion, that the untaught
+barbarians have not a single idea which is not connected with eating
+and drinking, war, revenge, and love;--that such, indeed, resemble brute
+beasts, who have no more conception of hell or heaven, God and the soul,
+than an elephant has of aerostation, or a crow of theology. In other
+narratives the observer notices, that the individuals who interrogate
+the savages are themselves enthusiasts of a high order, who ask leading
+questions, and are content to receive, as a satisfactory answer,
+anything which can be considered as a reply. By this means very
+erroneous ideas have crept in amongst ourselves, and writers have built
+arguments upon a foundation as flimsy as a shifting sand. For example,
+I have repeatedly heard it alleged that every known tribe, in every part
+of the world which has yet been visited, has a tradition respecting an
+universal deluge, and the salvation of their progenitors by a
+floating vessel; and on this has been founded the hypothesis that all
+architecture, and even written characters, have an ark for their type.
+This development has been very ingeniously supported by J. P. Lesley, in
+_Man's Origin and Destiny_ (Trubner, London, 1868), a work replete with
+learning, and bold, but somewhat unsound, deductions. This assumed fact
+has also been used in support of the Biblical story of Noah, his ark,
+and the universal deluge--a myth so palpably extravagant, that everyone
+who professes to credit it is compelled to object to some detail, and
+to lean upon some frail reed, with the hope that he may thus be pardoned
+for his credulity. Since the above was written, it has been ascertained
+that the tale of Noah and his deluge is adapted from an Assyrian or
+Babylonian legend, written apparently with a view to make a story
+fitting to the sign of the Zodiac called Aquarius, one to the full as
+fabulous as that of the birth of Bacchus, and the amours of Zeus.
+
+In some instances, moreover, and palpably in those cases where the
+account of the religion of barbarous nations is given by fanatics, such
+as the Roman Catholic invaders of America, or by such conquerors as
+Caesar and others, who have themselves very hazy notions of their
+own faith, the philosopher feels that the savage is intentionally
+misrepresented; consequently, in these, as in all other instances, it
+behoves the philosopher to examine the evidence at his command with
+critical acumen, rather than accept the statements made by more or less
+careless observers. Endeavouring, therefore, to avoid these difficulties
+as far as possible, let us summarize the result of our reading, and
+record the impressions left upon our mind respecting the faith, ritual,
+and practice of certain modern and ancient barbarians.
+
+Beginning with the vast American continent, we find that the Esquimaux
+appear to have no conception whatever of a Creator, of a future state,
+of a mundane theocracy, or of any unseen agency but good or bad
+"luck." But they, nevertheless, put a certain amount of faith in
+conjurers--cunning men or women who profess to be able to insure them a
+good supply of seals or walrus, and protection from Arctic dangers. For
+such a people as this the wants of the day form the chief, if not the
+only, object of thought; and they resemble lions or eagles, who are now
+all but famished in the hunt for food, and now gorged to repletion with
+the result of their quest. To such a nation, Heaven, as described in the
+Bible, with its sea of glass, its harpists and singers, would afford no
+temptation, and, unless it was furnished with abundance of oily food, an
+Esquimaux would not visit it; nor would the fires and heat of Hell have
+any terrors for one whose torments on earth are connected with miserable
+cold. In practice, the Esquimaux are very much what they are made by
+their neighbours and visitors: they are very decently behaved to those
+who treat them well, and cruel, barbarous, and revengeful to strangers
+after they have themselves been worried by invaders. Alternately
+gluttons and starving they obey the necessities of their existence--they
+eat to keep themselves warm, and they must be anchorets as rigid as any
+Theban hermit whilst they are seeking their prey. With a temperature
+below zero, and winter huts constructed of ice, chastity is almost
+a necessary virtue, and adultery cannot possibly be frequent. Where
+everything of value is rare, covetousness is not common; but if the
+holder of the coveted prize be always alert, it is quite natural that
+murder shall be attempted, either by the thief or his victim. The
+reverence of parents here, as elsewhere, is a necessary accompaniment of
+savage life, and is quite independent of any knowledge of the decalogue.
+To prevent reiteration of this observation, let us consider for a
+moment, the chief if not the main cause, of the reverence given to the
+father, and, more rarely, to the mother in the economy of human life. We
+see that the Almighty has implanted an instinct in one or both parents,
+throughout the larger part of the animal creation, to nourish, guide,
+and teach their young. The duck leads her brood to a pond; the hen keeps
+her chicks from water, but teaches them to pick up seeds, grubs, and
+worms; whilst the cock keeps order amongst the family, The weasel
+teaches its offspring how to attack its prey most advantageously, and
+the eagle instructs her young ones to fly. In like manner, man is at the
+head of his own household; he is the first power to which the young ones
+bow; they know the weight of his arm, and dread his anger, knowing that
+they will suffer from it when it is stirred up. We all know, as a rule,
+that a habit contracted in childhood adheres to us throughout life,
+consequently, the dread of the father which exists in the youth becomes,
+very generally, filial reverence in the man. But we also know that
+almost throughout the animal creation, the young and sturdy males
+will, as they grow up to maturity, fight for supremacy, even with their
+parents. So long as the latter retain the mastery they are respected;
+but as soon as age and its accompanying weakness have made them succumb,
+all filial respect vanishes. If, therefore, a parent, when old, is
+unable to make himself feared by his prowess, revered for his good sense
+or knowledge, or beloved for some faculty which makes him pleasing to
+his family or the tribe, he is neglected, and often sacrificed, so
+that the young shall have only themselves to provide food for. Even in
+Christian England, where filial regard is cultivated as an essential
+part of our religion, we too frequently find that parents are wholly
+neglected by their adult offspring, as soon as they become, from
+sickness, age, or other infirmity, useless members of the family.
+
+Without having ever heard of a law, or set of laws, given in a desert
+from Mount Sinai, the Esquimaux are as moral as modern Christians, and
+more so than the ancient Jews: they certainly have not more gods than
+one, and do not worship any graven image. Amongst them blasphemy is
+unknown. Parents are honoured; chastity is general; murder is very
+rare; theft only exists when strangers come amongst them with valuable
+matters, such as cutting weapons. Amongst such a primitive people false
+witness is unknown, and covetousness only exists in the presence of
+travellers who have well-stocked ships or sledges. But the Esquimaux do
+not keep a Sabbath of rest every seventh day; how, indeed, could they,
+when many of their days have a duration of six weeks--according to the
+Hebrew computation, which measures the day by sunsets. It is clear,
+then, that what many persons designate Christian virtues do not
+necessarily depend upon a knowledge of Jehovah, of Jesus, or of both.
+
+The North American Indian appears to have been, when first discovered,
+wholly without any distinct religious faith. It is true that some
+authors have described him as reverencing his manitou, or great spirit,
+and speaking of some happy hunting ground to which his soul will pass
+after death; but I am unable to find any reliable testimony in support
+of this poetic notion. To me it seems that the Red Indian is nothing
+more than one of a ferocious tribe of men, who, having to subsist by the
+chase alone, bestows all his thoughts upon getting meat, and driving off
+his neighbours from interfering in his lands. To such an one a teeming
+population is equivalent to a diminution in the supply of game, and
+this, again, involves starvation. With him, therefore, the murder of his
+neighbours becomes a matter of necessity, one which may be regarded by
+him as an absolute virtue, a matter of public policy, and essentially
+a moral duty; and as he is little superior to a tiger or a cat, he does
+not scruple to add cruelty to homicide. He who has seen a carnivorous
+beast seize its living prey, disable, without killing it, and then lie
+by and watch its victim, rising now and again to give it a shake, or
+a pat with its claw, can well understand how a Blackfoot Indian might
+gloat over a dying Delaware, or a Mandan torture an Iroquois when he had
+the chance, each regarding the other as men consider wasps and hornets.
+Yet, though without religion, the Indian is not without fear. He is
+terrified by strange noises, and by weird sights; there is a being whom
+he dreads; and there is in every tribe a "medicine man," who is supposed
+to have supernatural power, and to be able to attract good or to banish
+evil fortune from the chief and his people. Practically, the Red Indian
+is as superstitious about lucky and unlucky days as was the Hebrew David
+and the Persian Haman, and, prior to the starting of an expedition, the
+diviner is consulted, who may, possibly, answer in the words of the Lord
+(?) of Judah, "let it be when thou hearest the sound of a going in the
+tops of the mulberry trees, then thou shalt bestir thyself, for then
+shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines"
+(2 Sam. v. 24).
+
+But though without religion, in the usual acceptation of the word, the
+Indians were not, when first the white man knew them, wholly without
+ritual, or what has been designated a sacred ceremony. The celebration
+to which we refer occurred every year, was conducted by a definite set
+of actors, and was attended to with wonderful reverence. A full account
+of such ceremony is given by G. Catlin, in a work entitled, O Kee Pa
+(Truebner, London, 1867). In it figures a mystic messenger, who comes to
+demand the initiation of the young men of the tribe who have attained
+a fighting age; tents are then prepared, and men and women are duly
+painted and otherwise disguised to represent buffaloes and bugbears,
+the bad spirit, etc.; the main intention of the whole being to test the
+courage, strength, and endurance of the young men by frightful tortures,
+which are too disgusting for description here. At the end of the trial,
+however, each votary sacrifices a joint of the little finger of one hand
+to the bad spirit. At this feast-some doll-like effigies are used to
+mark the "mystery" tent.
+
+Amongst barbarians like these are, it will readily be imagined that
+such virtues as chastity and charity have no existence,--that successful
+theft ennobles the robber, and that the slaughter of an enemy, either by
+treachery or in fair fight, is regarded as a proof of courage, much as
+it was amongst the Spartan Greeks. Polygamy is simply a matter of wealth
+and arrangement, and women are purchased and treated like slaves. It is
+the man's business to hunt and fight, it is the woman's duty to make the
+best or the most of the spoils of the chase.
+
+Yet, with this general absence of all religion, there appears to
+be, here and there, a reverence for certain strange phenomena of
+nature--such as hot or bubbling fountains, sulphur springs, steaming
+geysers, and curious rocks, like the celebrated pipe-stone rock in the
+Sioux territory. From this all pipes ought to be made, there being as
+much of orthodoxy in such bowls amongst the Indians as there is in an
+"Agnus Dei" amongst Christian papists. There is, too, a reverence for
+the dead occasionally to be met with, but it cannot be said to amount
+to worship. In some instances, but I do not find that the custom is
+general, a man is interred with his horse, weapons, and medicine bag,
+as if it was expected that he would live beyond the tomb, and require in
+his other state of existence that which he wanted in this.
+
+What we have said of the North American aborigines applies with equal,
+if not with greater, force to those of the South.
+
+From what the savage redskins are, and have been, during the last two or
+three centuries, a transition to what they have been in the past is very
+natural; and, whilst making the step, the philosopher will be reminded
+of the observation made by some profound observer, to the effect---"go
+where you will, no matter how savage the nation, you will be sure to
+find the remains of a previous empire, nation, or civilization." Vast
+forests, scarcely yet fully explored, cover ancient cities in Ceylon
+and Central America alike, and men, who toiled to build vast temples,
+towers, palaces, and fortresses, are replaced by wild animals. In
+the Bashan of Palestine, primeval houses of stone still stand, where
+scarcely a resident is to be found, and the present inhabitants are far
+inferior to the ancient race that built these enduring dwellings. Thus
+the Abbe Domenech writes (_Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of
+North America_, London, Longman, 1860), vol. I., p. 353--"From Florida
+to Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, the American soil
+is strewn with gigantic ruins of temples, tumuli, entrenched camps,
+fortifications, towers, villages, towers of observation, gardens, wells,
+artificial meadows, and high roads of the most remote antiquity."
+
+Without entering closely into the nature of the antiquities discovered,
+we may state that they comprise pyramids, cones, obelisks, hills
+surrounded by a deep vallum, like that adjoining Salisbury, and earthen
+constructions analogous to that at Avebury. There is evidence that
+the artificial erections, which were so built as to be visible from an
+enormous distance, were designed, possibly, as cairns, or memorials of
+the dead, but also as spots for sacrificial offerings, resembling those
+called high places in Ancient Palestine, the tumulus over Patroclus, and
+the Scythian mounds in the Crimea. The altars which have been discovered
+are made of baked clay or stone, and have the shape of large basins,
+varying in length from nineteen inches to seventeen yards, but generally
+about two yards and a-half. Under and around the altars calcined human
+bones were found, and sometimes a whole skeleton was met with in the
+tumulus, as if a sacrifice of men attended the funeral rites, as we
+learn from Homer that it did, before Troy, when Achilles directed the
+obsequies of his friend Patroclus. Cremation, as well as sepulture, was
+adopted, and with the dead, ornaments, arms, and other objects, which
+belonged in life to the departed, were buried; amongst these are to be
+reckoned trinkets of silver and of brass, as well as of stone and bone.
+As a proof of the advanced knowledge of the people referred to, I may
+here quote, from memory, a note from Stevens' _Central America_, to the
+effect that the bronze tools found in Yucatan, &c., amongst the quarries
+whence the stone for the ancient temples was procured, are nearly as
+hard as steel, and that a similar bronze is only known to have existed
+in some of the ancient tombs and quarries of Egypt, an observation
+which receives additional value from Domenech's remark, vol. I., p.
+364--"These works of art (arms, idols, and medals, found in New Granada
+tombs) are acknowledged, by the archaeologists of Panama, to possess the
+characteristics of both Chinese and Egyptian art." Here, again, I would
+call my readers' attention to the facts, that in very modern times
+Chinese have migrated to California, Australia, Singapore, and other
+distant localities, and that Fortune found Egyptian curiosities in
+_virtu_, shops in China, whilst Egyptologists have discovered Chinese
+manufactures in Egyptian tombs. The subject of the extent of travel in
+ancient times does not enter into my present plan; but as I am desirous
+to make the mind of my readers expansive enough to receive everything
+which bears upon the history of man upon the earth, I may be allowed to
+sow seed by the way-side, some of which may blossom as "a garden flower
+grown wild." Domenech, in p. 408, vol. I., figures a remarkable stone,
+by many persons supposed to be a hoax or forgery, which was found at the
+base of one of the largest mounds in North America, situated in Western
+Virginia. It lay in a sepulchral chamber, thirty-five feet from the
+surface, was elliptic in shape, two inches and a-half long, two wide,
+and about half an inch thick, and the material was of a dark colour, and
+very hard. The following is a copy from Domenech's work, and, without
+dwelling upon it, we may call attention to the similarity of some of
+the letters with those known to, or used by the Phoenicians, Ancient
+Greco-Italians, and Carthaginians. Like the Newton Stone, in Scotland,
+and some Gnostic gems, it may be said to be learned "gibberish," which
+"the spirits" can read but no one else.
+
+[Illustration: 056]
+
+There is, indeed, much more evidence than is generally supposed to
+connect the ancient mound-builders in America with the inhabitants
+of the Eastern Hemisphere, particularly in their modes of burial, the
+nature of their earthworks, and the style of such ornaments and figures
+as have been found. For example, there is one enclosure described, in
+the centre of which is erected a mound and pillar, precisely resembling
+the linga yoni of the East. In addition to these, carved stones have
+been found, which unite together such Oriental emblems as the sun and
+moon, the Tau, T and the egg, O which together make the well-known
+Egyptian symbol A. Again, Domenech figures some male and female human
+effigies, of whom American savans write that they represent idols of
+sexual design, similar to those exposed in the _Mysteries of Eleusis_,
+one of them being a badly finished image of Priapus. Domenech still
+farther states, on the authority of Cortez, that a form of worship,
+recalling the Egyptian mysteries of Isis and Osiris, was established in
+America.
+
+Respecting the nature of the religion of the mound builders the Abbe
+writes--"The government of these nations appears to have been theocratic
+or sacerdotal, like that of the Jews, and the religious administrative
+and military power was, probably, vested in one and the same person.
+This is clearly evinced by the taboo, or sacred monuments, being
+combined with those of a purely military character," p. 366. Without
+straining doubtful points too far, we may content ourselves with
+affirming that the researches of Davis and Squire, of Stephens, and of
+Domenech, show that the mound builders of America raised high places
+for sacrificial fires; that they built huge piles of earth over dead
+warriors; and, that during the funeral rites which were observed at the
+obsequies, they immolated certain human victims.
+
+Let us now pause for a moment and consider how much is involved in the
+practice of making a sacrifice by fire, or otherwise, at the burial of
+any deceased chieftain or honoured man. With what idea could the living
+wife join her husband on the funeral pyre in India, or the ancient
+Tartars have slain the horse, slaves, wives, and chief officers of a
+defunct king, burying them all in a vast grave, unless they entertained
+the belief that there was a life beyond the grave? The faith may have
+been of the crudest form, yet the practice evidenced the belief that
+those who died, and were buried together, would arise and live at the
+same time and place, and in the same relative positions which they had
+during life. If this be granted, it demonstrates that the early dwellers
+in America had a higher conception of immortality than had the ancient
+Jews, even although the latter assumed, and pertinaciously persisted in
+the assertion, that they, and they only of all the nations of the
+world, were taught of God--a boast to which a vast number of thoughtless
+Christians give a profound reverence, and most implicit belief.
+
+Without speculating upon the probable connexion between the
+mound-builders and the inhabitants of ancient Mexico, we will endeavour,
+with the aid of Prescott, and other writers, to ascertain something
+of the faith professed by Montezuma and his subjects. Derived from two
+sources, there were two distinct elements in the Mexican religion; one
+of these was gentle and mild as the teaching of Christ, and the other,
+ferocious and cruel, like the practice of such of his followers as
+the sensual Crusaders, the persecuting Popes of Italy, and the brutal,
+money-grubbing Spaniards. The former gradually dried up, like primitive
+Christianity, and the harmlessness of the dove was replaced by the
+ferocity of the wolf. It is in strict accordance with human nature,
+that virtues are harder to maintain than vices, hence malignancy swelled
+itself up and became dominant. The priests of the sanguinary class
+contrived as burdensome a ceremonial as ever existed in Judea,
+Greece, Spain, or Modern Rome, and they surrounded their deities with
+conceptions as grotesque as those which are clustered round the Hindoo
+gods of to-day, the divinities of the Greeks and Romans, and the
+innumerable virgins, saints, and martys of mediaeval and modern papal
+Christianity. The power and the inclination to make fetish is certainly
+not confined to African negroes. The Mexicans recognized a supreme
+Creator as the God by whom we live, one who was, for them, omnipresent
+and omniscient--the giver of all good things, "without whom man is as
+nothing." He was said to be "invisible, incorporeal, a being of absolute
+perfection and perfect purity," "under whose wings men may find repose
+and a sure defence." But this deity, though single, was subdivided
+by the Mexican theologians, much in the same way as Jehovah became
+separated into an innumerable host of angels, archangels, and devils,
+and as Zeus was split up into an equally numerous army of gods,
+goddesses, and demigods. The Mexicans had thirteen major, and about two
+hundred minor, divinities, to one or other of whom each day was devoted,
+much in the same way as certain modern Christians believe in one
+Creator, four persons, three of whom are male and the other female,
+seven archangels, and some hundreds of saints, virgins, or martyrs, to
+each of whom one day of the year is consecrated. There are more gods and
+goddesses in the Papal calendar than in that of Ancient Mexico, Greece,
+or even Rome.
+
+At the head of the celestial army was "the god of war," "the patron of
+the kingdom," whose temples were more noble in their barbaric majesty
+than any other, and to whom human beings were sacrificed in abundance.
+They were the noblest creatures that could be found, and in truth, there
+were very few other animals to offer in their place.
+
+This great Mexican divinity was essentially the same as the _Jehovah
+Tsebaoth_ of the Hebrew Scriptures; the Lord of Hosts of whom we read in
+Exod. xv. 3, "The Lord (Jehovah) is a man of war, the Lord (Jehovah) is
+His name;" and in Ps. xxiv. 8, "Who is this King of glory?--the Lord,
+strong and mighty; the Lord, mighty in battle;" and again, the same idea
+appears in verse 10 of the same Psalm; see also 1 Chron. xvii. 24, "The
+Lord of Hosts is the God of Israel." Indeed, we should weary the reader
+if we were to quote all the texts to be found in the Old Testament,
+which prove that the Hebrew Jehovah was as much a god of war as was the
+chief deity of the Mexicans. Modern civilization may frame the belief
+that God is not "the author of confusion, but of peace" (1 Cor. xiv.
+33); but the Hebrews in the East, and the Mexicans in the West, held a
+different opinion. Besides the god of war there was a god of the air,
+who once lived on earth, and taught metallurgy, agriculture, and the
+art of government. He was essentially a human benefactor, who caused the
+earth to teem with fruit and flowers, without the trouble of laborious
+cultivation--his reign was analogous to the golden age of the Greeks and
+Romans. But he was not wholly satisfactory, and was banished; yet he is
+to have a second coming, like Elias, and a modern deity of the Eastern
+world. His portrait is identical, apparently, with the commonly received
+likeness of Jesus. In Christian mythology (see Eph. ii. 2), "the prince
+of the power of the air" is regarded as "the adversary," or a devil.
+No other deities are described in detail by Prescott, but he says that
+every household had its "penates," or household gods. On turning
+to Higgins, who quotes entirely from Lord Kingsborough's _Mexican
+Antiquities_, we find that the Mexicans baptized their children with
+what they called "water of regeneration." Their king also danced before
+his god, as David did, to his chaste wife's disgust, and was consecrated
+and anointed by the high priest with a holy unction as Saul and the
+son of Jesse were. On one day of the year all the fires in the Mexican
+kingdom were extinguished and lighted again from one sacred hearth in
+the temple, which again reminds us of the Vestal Virgins, whose business
+was to keep up a holy fire in Rome, and of the lamp which was to burn
+perpetually in the Jewish temple (Exod. xxvii. 20). At the end of October
+the Mexicans had a feast resembling our "All Souls," or "Saints," day,
+which was called "the festival of advocates," because each human being
+had an advocate in the heaven above to plead for him, which again
+reminds us of Jesus' dictum, that children have guardian angels, who are
+always in God's presence (Matt, xviii. 10)
+
+The same people had a forty-days' fast, in honour of a god who was
+tempted forty days upon a mountain, and thus resembled the Prophet of
+Nazareth. He was called the morning star, and thus is to be identified
+with Lucifer as well as Jesus (Isa. xiv. 12, Rev. xxii. 16), and carried
+a reed for an emblem (see Eev. xxi. 15). The Mexicans honoured a cross,
+and the god of air was represented sometimes as nailed to one, and even
+occasionally between two other individuals.*
+
+     * As we cannot imagine that the Mexicans were aware of the
+     manner in which modern Christians depict Jesus on the cross,
+     we most, I think, seek for some idea which was common to
+     both the East and West. In Payne Knight's work, so often
+     referred to by us, there is a picture which represents a
+     cock with a lingam instead of a head and beak; on its
+     pediment there is in Greek the words, soteer kosmou, "the
+     saviour of the world." This is also an epithet of Siva, and
+     he is sometimes represented as a phallus. In this he is the
+     Asher or Bel of the Assyrian triad, erected higher than the
+     other two. In Christian history the outsiders are said to be
+     thieves, but it was not so in Mexico.    The three crosses
+     are simply emblems of the "trinity."
+
+A virgin and child were also adored, as they were in Babylonia, Assyria,
+Egypt, and Hindostan, and as they are in a great part of Europe at the
+present time. The people believed in vast cycles of years, at the end
+of each of which there was to be a general destruction of life, and a
+perfect regeneration, an idea which Higgins has shown to have existed
+amongst Persians, Romans, and Jews alike. The Mexicans still further
+believed in a threefold future state--a heaven for the brave, and those
+who were sacrificed, there being, so far as I can discover, no abstract
+idea of what we call "virtue"; a hell for the wicked; and a sort of
+quiet limbo for those who were in no way distinguished. Heaven was
+located in the sun, and the blessed were permitted to revel amongst
+lovely clouds and singing birds, enjoying, unharmed, all the charms of
+nature: a conception which is to the full as poetical, and, probably,
+quite as near the truth, as that given in "Revelation." When a man died
+he was burned, and, if rich, his slaves were sacrificed with him, the
+Mexicans, in this respect, resembling the ancient Scythians, with whom
+they had much in common. When the ceremony of giving a name to children
+was gone through, their lips and bosom were sprinkled with water, and
+the Lord was implored to permit the holy drops to wash away the sin that
+was given to the child before the foundation of the world, so that the
+infant might be born anew, or, in modern terms, regenerated (Prescott,
+ch. 3). Amongst their prayers, or invocations, were the formulas, "Wilt
+Thou blot us out, O Lord, for ever? Is this punishment intended, not for
+our reformation, but for our destruction?" again, "Impart to us, out of
+Thy great mercy, Thy gifts which we are not worthy to receive through
+our own merits;" "Keep peace with all;" "Bear injuries with humility,
+God who sees will avenge you;" "He who looks too curiously on a woman
+commits adultery with eyes." These Mexican maxims so closely resemble
+those to be found in the Bible, that it is difficult to believe that the
+Spaniards really told the truth respecting them. The sacerdotal order
+amongst the Mexicans was a numerous one, well arranged and powerful. The
+priests used musical choirs in their worship, arranged the calendar, and
+appointed the time for festivals. They superintended the education of
+youth, and wrote up the traditions, like the "recorders" of the Jews,
+Persians, other Orientals, and Christian monks, and looked to the
+conservancy of the hieroglyphic paintings. There were two high priests,
+who alone had to undertake the duty of offering human sacrifices,
+and these were elected by the king and nobles, quite irrespective
+of previous rank, and, when elected, they were inferior only to the
+sovereign. When reading this, anyone who is familiar with biblical
+history will bethink him of Luke iii. 3, "Annas and Caiaphas being the
+high priests," the plural, not the singular, number being used, and of
+the dictum of Caiaphas, John xi. 50, "It is expedient for us that one
+man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not." We
+may put what construction we please upon these facts, but, whatever
+interpretation we may adopt, we must acknowledge that the Hebrews, at
+the time when our era commences, had two high priests who were concerned
+in human sacrifice.
+
+The priests, in general, were devoted to the service of some particular
+deity, and, during the time of their attendance, lived in the temple,
+celibate; but, when not on duty, they resided with their wives and
+families. Thrice during the day, and once at some period of the night,
+they were called to prayer, much like all the varieties of Christian
+monks and nuns. They were frequent in their ablutions, in which habit
+they may be contrasted with those saintly hermits, who regarded dirt as
+a divine ordinance, and never washed; and they mortified the flesh by
+long vigils, fasting, and cruel penance, drawing blood from their bodies
+by flagellation, or by piercing them with the thorns of the aloe. The
+resemblance of the Mexican sacerdotalism with Jewish and Christian
+customs is thus shown to be wonderful and striking, so much so, that
+the Spaniards started the idea that they had been taught by some
+stray apostle of Jesus. The great cities of Mexico were divided into
+districts, each of which was placed under the charge of a sort of
+parochial clergy, who regulated every act of religion within their
+precincts, and who administered the rites of confession and absolution.
+The secrets of the confessional were held inviolable, and penances were
+imposed, of much the same kind as those enjoined by the Roman Catholic
+Church upon her votaries.
+
+It was a tenet of Mexican faith, that a sin once atoned for, was, if
+repeated, inexpiable a second time; consequently, confession was only
+once resorted to, and that late in life; a good plan, upon the whole,
+for it enabled a man whose days were numbered to get pardon "for good
+and aye." It was also held that sacerdotal absolution was equivalent
+to magisterial punishment. The formula of absolution contained this,
+amongst other things, "O merciful Lord, Thou who knowest the secrets of
+all hearts, let Thy forgiveness and favour descend, like the pure waters
+of heaven, to wash away the stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this
+poor man has sinned, not from his own free will, but from the influence
+of the sign under which he was born." This idea may well be compared
+with the current doctrine of the phrenologists, many of whom assert that
+a man acts according to the configuration of his brain and cranium, and
+is, therefore, only partially culpable for the commission of certain
+crimes. After a copious exhortation to the penitent, in which he was
+enjoined to undergo a variety of mortifications, and to perform minute
+ceremonies, by way of penance, he was particularly urged to procure,
+with the smallest possible delay, a slave, who was to be utilized in
+sacrifice to the Deity; the priest then concluded with inculcating
+charity to the poor--"Clothe the naked, and feed the hungry, whatever
+privations it may cost thee, for remember their flesh is like thine."
+
+The necessity of sacrifice, as an atonement for sin, forms an essential,
+though bloody, part of both the Hebrew and the Christian faiths, and
+history has long taught us that the slaughter of a man, woman, or child,
+formed, in the estimation of the Ancient Greeks, and other nations, one
+of the most acceptable of the forms of homage paid by a human being to
+the Creator. This idea is at the very basis of the Christian theology.
+It has been held, from the time of the apostle Paul to the present day,
+that Jehovah would not look favourably upon mankind until He had been
+propitiated, not by the sacrifice of an ordinary individual, but by the
+murder, in the crudest of modes, of a being whom He personally begat,
+for the purpose of killing him when arrived at maturity. In Hebrews
+x. 12, we find this doctrine very distinctly enunciated, in the words,
+"this man, after he had offered one sacrifice of sins for ever, sat down
+on the right hand of God," and subsequently, v. 14, "by one offering he
+hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Again, in Heb. ix.
+26, "once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by
+the sacrifice of himself;" and in Heb. x. 10, "we are sanctified through
+the offering of the body of Jesus Christ;" and in ix. 28, "Christ
+was once offered to bear the sins of many." The philosopher may doubt
+whether the God whom the Christians have made for their own adoration,
+is in any way different to that of King Mesha, who offered up his own
+son in sacrifice, or to the Mexican one, who was contented with the
+blood of a slave.*
+
+     * It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real
+     attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or
+     to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the
+     usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and
+     hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen
+     deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general
+     belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual
+     sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and
+     offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who
+     was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was
+     beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror,
+     unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the
+     worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to
+     see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were
+     condemned to this penance, very little would any of them
+     talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are
+     lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and
+     texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to
+     look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for
+     worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest
+     manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns
+     which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In
+     "Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines--
+
+     "Let the water and the blood
+     From thy riven side that flowed,
+     Cleanse from sin and make me pure."
+
+     Another equally popular hymn begins
+
+     "From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows
+     Of water and of blood,
+     More healing than Bethesda's pool,
+     Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood
+     Shall never lose its power..." and again--
+
+     "There is a fountain filled with blood,
+     Drawn from Immanuels veins,
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood
+     Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+     No congregation of Christian, or any other men, would
+     tolerate for a moment the introduction into divine worship
+     of a bath of blood, into which all those should plunge who
+     desired salvation. Not one would endeavour to wash his sins
+     away in a sanguine stream, drawn from any source whatever.
+     The horror which would be produced by the doctrine that such
+     things are necessary to appease our God, would make every
+     thinking being detest it. Yet, when we only play with the
+     idea, we can talk of such matters with holy complacency. If
+     any Christian wants to test his faith, let me advise him to
+     get a basinful of blood and place it in his bed-room, and
+     say twice a day, when looking on it, that's the stuff which
+     propitiates my God! It would not be long ere he saw the
+     absurdity of his theological tenets, and the coarseness of
+     the hierarchy which invented so frightful an idea of the
+     Omnipotent.
+
+For the education of the youth of Mexico a part of the temples was
+allotted, where the boys and girls of the middle and higher classes were
+placed at an early period--the girls to be taught by the priestesses,
+the boys by priests; and from a note in Prescott's corrected edition,
+1866, p. 22, we learn that the former were even more generally pure
+in life than, we have reason to believe, the Egyptian priestesses and
+Christian nuns proved themselves to be, Father Acosto saying, "In truth,
+it is very strange to see that this false opinion of religion hath so
+great force amongst these young men and maidens of Mexico, that they
+will serve the Devil with so great vigour and austerity, which many
+of us do not in the service of the most high God, the which is a great
+shame and confusion." It is curious to notice how the Christian priest
+considers that chastity may be a snare of the Devil, as well as an
+ordinance of Jehovah. The boys, in these scholastic parts of the sacred
+temples, were taught the routine of monastic discipline--to decorate the
+shrines of the gods with flowers, to feed the sacred fires, and to chant
+in worship and at festivals. The Abbe Hue, in an account of his travels
+in Thibet and Tartary, has told us repeatedly of the similarity between
+the rites, practices, and ceremonies of the Romish Church and those in
+use amongst the followers of the Great Lama. It is equally marvellous to
+discover that the Mexican ritual resembles both. The Papalist endeavours
+to explain this, by the monstrous assumption that both Tartary and
+Mexico were evangelized by two different Christian Apostles. But it
+seems to us more probable that the Romanists, who are known to have
+adopted almost every ancient ceremony, symbol, doctrine, and the like,
+have unknowingly copied from travelled Orientals, than that the cult of
+the people of Thibet has travelled into America, as well as into Europe.
+Into the identity of the Tartars with the Red Indians it is not my
+intention to enter. The higher Mexicans were taught traditionary lore,
+the mysteries of hieroglyphics, the principles of government, and
+such astronomical and scientific knowledge as the priests would, or,
+probably, could, impart. The girls learned to weave and embroider
+coverings for the altars of the gods. Great attention was paid to
+morality, and offences were punished with extreme rigour, even with
+death itself. Youths were taught to eschew, vice and cleave to virtue,
+to abstain from wrath, to offer violence or do wrong to no man, and to
+do good where possible.
+
+When of an age to marry, the pupils were dismissed from the convent, and
+the recommendation of the principal thereof often introduced those
+whom he regarded as the most competent of the students, to responsible
+situations in public life. Such was the policy of the Mexican priests,
+who were thus enabled to mould the mind of the young, and to train it
+early to the necessity of giving reverence to religion, and especially
+to its ministers--a reverence which maintained its hold on the warrior
+long after every other vestige of education had been effaced. In this
+matter America showed an astuteness equal to that exhibited by Papal
+hierarchs in Rome.
+
+To each of the principal temples, lands were annexed, for the
+maintenance of the priests, and these glebes were augmented by
+successive princes, until, under Montezuma, they were of enormous
+extent, and covered every district of the* empire. The priests took the
+management of their property into their own hands, and treated their
+tenants with liberality and indulgence. In addition to this source of
+income, they had "first fruits," and other offerings, dictated by piety
+or superstition. The surplus was distributed in alms amongst the poor,
+a duty strenuously prescribed by their moral code. Thus we find, adds
+Prescott, whom we are closely, and almost verbatim, following, the
+same religion inculcating lessons of pure philanthropy and of merciless
+extermination--an inconsistency not incredible to those familiar with
+the history of the Roman Catholic Church in the early ages of the
+Inquisition.
+
+In the course of a not very long life, I have heard, upon many
+occasions, the argument that the persistency of the Roman Catholic
+Church, in spite of its abominable corruptions, its utter contempt for
+truth, its outrageous cruelty, its glaring superstition, its intolerable
+arrogance, and its rapacious covetousness, proves that it is, and must
+ever be regarded as a divine institution. But this argument loses all
+its weight when we find that the religion of the Mexicans, which the
+Spaniards declared to have sprung from the Devil, had the virtues, as
+well as many vices, of the Roman faith. If one came from Heaven, the
+other could not have come from Hell. The simple truth seems to be, that
+crafty and designing men are always able to find dupes, and that red men
+and black, the haughty Italian and the lively Frenchman, the stolid boor
+and the polished orator, may all suffer alike from an education which
+has taught them, in youth, to believe in the reality of a revelation
+given to a class of human beings who, by its means, assume to be divine.
+
+The Mexican temples--_teocallis_, or "houses of God "--were very
+numerous, indeed there were several hundreds in each of the principal
+cities of the kingdom; but we need not describe them more minutely than
+to say that they were truncated pyramids terminating in a level surface,
+upon which blazed the sacred fire. All religious services were public,
+as in Roman Catholic countries. There were long processions of priests,
+and numerous festivals of unusual sacredness, as well as monthly and
+daily appropriate celebrations of worship, so that it is difficult to
+conceive how the ordinary business of life was carried on. The sun was
+an universal object of reverence. At a period not long prior (about 200
+years) to the Spanish conquest, human sacrifices were adopted for the
+first time, and they speedily became common, both as regards repetition
+and the numbers of victims slaughtered. In some instances the oblations
+terminated with cannibalism. The burnt offering was roasted, not
+incinerated, and, like the Paschal lamb, was devoutly devoured. Sexual
+rites, symbols, or worship, appear to have been very rare, for I can
+only find one or two doubtful references to them. In this matter the
+Mexicans were far superior to all the old Shemitic and Egyptian, as well
+as the Hindoo, races. So far Prescott.
+
+Whilst writing the foregoing, it has required some determination not to
+comment very extensively upon the facts recorded, for they do, indeed,
+set the thoughtful mind on fire. Amongst the questions which they
+provoke, the first is, "how far the accounts given to us are to be
+depended upon?" In answering this query, we readily recognize that our
+authorities can only have been Spaniards, who were, to a great extent,
+implacable enemies of the Mexicans, to a great extent ignorant of their
+language, and bitterly hostile to them in matters of religion. But this
+recognition leads us to trust the accounts which they give, for, if the
+invaders had been able to treat the natives as unmitigated savages,
+they would have had the more excuse for pillaging their sacred stores,
+temples, and palaces, and exterminating the pagan worshippers. Again, if
+the picture thus painted were a fancy one, having no real existence save
+in the mind of the writer, we should be able readily to recognize its
+counterpart in the Spanish history of the Peruvians, just as we are able
+to ascertain the identity of the authorship of certain anonymous works
+by Lord Lytton, by the existence therein of his marked peculiarity of
+style. The best testimony, however, to the substantial truth of the
+accounts given of the nature of the Mexican faith, is to be found in
+various minute episodes of their general history, in the behaviour of
+the Aztecs with each other, and towards their invaders, and the general
+customs which are recorded. That the Spanish writers had a real belief
+in the account of which Prescott has given us so admirable a resume, we
+may feel assured, for one of them introduced the naive remark, "that the
+Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which God
+had taught to Christendom."
+
+When once we have satisfied ourselves of the truth of the Spanish
+accounts of the ancient Mexican institutions, we find ourselves in the
+presence of some very striking religious and political facts. We see
+before us a nation who had attained to as distinct a conception of the
+Almighty as we have ourselves; who had discovered a heaven, a hell,
+and an intermediate place, without the assistance of Jew or Greek,
+Babylonian or Persian; who had instituted a sacerdotal class, and made
+provision for their subsistence, without any assistance from Melchizedek
+or Moses; who had adopted a principle of national education long before
+such a thing was thought of in England, or in Europe. In fine, the Aztec
+faith and policy were, at least, as praiseworthy, if not far nearer to
+perfection, than the faith and policy which obtained in Christian Italy,
+France, and Spain, during the dark and the middle ages. There is not,
+indeed, any one point in which the contrast is not favourable to the
+Aztecs, except in the single point of human sacrifice. Christianity can,
+apparently, make a heavy accusation against the Aztec religion on this
+point, and may fairly seem to reproach it for that frequency of human
+sacrifice, and even cannibalism, which formed, at the time of the
+Spanish conquest, an essential part of the Mexican faith.
+
+Yet, when we dive below the surface, and examine this matter with
+philosophic care, we readily see that the charge is deprived of much of
+its weight. Who, for example, can compare the practice of the people
+of Montezuma with that of Spaniards under the sway of Ferdinand and
+Isabella, without seeing that in Spain there were human sacrifices,
+which were conducted with far more cruelty than those in Mexico. We
+find, in the first place, that the custom of sacrificing human
+beings was no more an essential part of the Aztec, than it was of the
+Christian, faith; it was only in existence two hundred years before the
+Spanish invasion, and many centuries, bloodless of human offerings, had
+passed away ere the period of what we may term brutality arrived. Just
+so it was with the religion of Jesus; for centuries it was unstained by
+blood, and comparatively meek and humble, yet, when its priesthood rose
+to power, they indulged in human holocausts on a most extended scale.
+The Spaniards give accounts of thousands of victims offered up at once
+to the Mexican god of war; but what are these in comparison to the
+victims of Paris, sacrificed by Papists on the eve and day of St.
+Bartholomew, and those at Beziers.
+
+It may be doubted by the philosopher whether the Christian religion
+was not, from its very commencement, as intolerant of opposition and as
+persecuting as it became hereafter.
+
+The story of Jesus cursing a fig tree, which did not bear fruit out
+of its season (Mark xi. 13, 14, 21), shows that even he, whom the
+Christians take for an example, was quite capable of that pettiness,
+which visits upon the innocent the vexation felt by one's self. But when
+we read the story in Acts, v., about Ananias and Sapphira, we see, in
+all its naked horror, a fearful Christian persecution. The victims were
+done to death for deceiving an apostle. But why should we be surprised
+at the followers of "the Son" doing that which "the Father" ordained? Is
+there any human king who ever promulgated a more bloody order than did
+Jehovah Sabaoth, the God which, amongst the Hebrews, corresponded to the
+Mexican god of war, when he commissioned Samuel to say to Saul (1 Sam.
+xv. 3), "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they
+have; slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel
+and ass!" After such a destruction of the Midianites as is narrated
+in Numb, xxxi., the fearful slaughter, effected by Crusaders, of Jews,
+Turks, and heretics is scarcely worth mentioning.
+
+There was a teacher who remarked, "he who is without sin among you,
+let him first cast a stone" at the culprit; and surely, when our Bible,
+which is treasured by so many as the only rule of faith amongst us,
+details such horrible religious slaughters as are to be found in its
+pages, and abounds with persecuting precepts, we had better not talk too
+much about Mexican sacrifice. Was there any Aztec minister so brutal in
+his religious fury as Samuel was (1 Sam. xv. 33), who hewed Agag into
+pieces? The Mexican was merciful to his victim; the Hebrew was like
+a modern Chinese executioner, who kills the criminal by degrees. His
+cruelty has been emulated in Christian France, and under the reign of
+two of her kings, we have seen a Ravaillac and Damiens tortured slowly
+to death, by means too horrible to dwell upon.
+
+The writers upon Mexico tell us of a lovely youth, who was educated for
+a whole year to become a victim, and how, at the end of that time, he
+was feted, adorned, and even worshipped; how four of the most charming
+maidens of Mexico were selected as his wives, and how he remained in the
+enjoyment of the highest honour until the time of his sacrifice arrived,
+and we feel due horror at the recital. Yet, what is it compared with the
+accounts we read of miserable men and women racked, in hideous dungeons,
+by the most horrible tortures which an enlightened Christian ingenuity
+could devise, and who then, with limbs whose loosened fibres could
+scarcely sustain their bruised and mangled bodies, were led, or driven
+at the sword's point, to a stake fixed in the ground, there to be tied
+and burned, whilst devout Christian multitudes stood around, rejoicing,
+like demons, over the hellish scene.
+
+No one can gloat over the imaginary torments of Hell without being a
+persecuting devil at heart.
+
+Surely the Christians have too much sin amongst themselves to cast a
+stone at the inhabitants of Mexico.
+
+We find a strong offset to the horror of Aztec cruelty in the very
+Bible, which we regard as the mainstay of our religious world. What,
+for example, is the essential difference between a Mexican monarch
+sacrificing one or ten thousand men taken in battle, and Moses
+commanding the extermination of the inhabitants of Canaan, and only
+saving, out of Midian, thirty-two thousand virgins, that they might
+minister to the lust of his Hebrew followers? What, again, are we to say
+of David's God, who would not turn away his anger from Judah until
+seven sons of the preceding king had been offered up as victims? And
+lastly--thought still more awful! what must we say of the fundamental
+doctrines of Christianity, that Jehovah Himself sacrificed His own Son
+by a cruel death; and not only so, but that He had intercourse with
+an earthly woman, and had thus a son by her, for the sole purpose of
+bringing about his murder? Can we object to religious cannibalism in the
+Aztec, when Jesus of Nazareth is said to have urged his followers to eat
+his body and to drink his blood; and when hundreds of priests have shed
+the blood of millions of men, who, disbelieving the power of any man
+to convert bread and wine into flesh and blood, have refused to profane
+their lips by a cannibal feast?
+
+Having now examined the nature of the Aztec faith, let us, for a while,
+linger upon the fruits which it produced. Who can read the mournful
+story of the fall of Mexico without contrasting, in his own mind, the
+respective characters of the conquerors and the conquered? In every
+so-called Christian virtue Montezuma proved himself to be superior
+to the lying, unscrupulous, rapacious and covetous Cortez. Even the
+greatest fire-eater who ever lived cannot fail to see that the Spaniard
+would not have been victorious over the Mexican, if the latter had been
+equally well equipped with arms, armour, and horses, as the former was.
+We can only tell vaguely what was the condition of Anahuac prior to
+the invasion of Cortez; but, from the testimony given by Prescott, we
+believe that there were annual wars between adjoining tribes, who met
+solely to obtain from their enemies victims for sacrifice, the battles
+always ending with the day, and never being resumed for conquest, or for
+the plunder of maidens to be an indulgence of a victor's lust. What the
+condition of the same country under Christian rule has been, and still
+is, every reader of modern and contemporary history knows; and he sees,
+with regret, that Jehovah Sabaoth, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy
+Spirit, with an army of saints, angels, virgins, and martyrs, as well as
+ancient gods of the Eastern Hemisphere are, if they are to be judged by
+the acts of their worshippers, as cruel, revengeful, and malignant, as
+were the deities of the Mexican kingdom.
+
+The followers of the cross will appear to be quite as despicable when
+we contrast them with the Peruvians, as they were when compared with the
+inhabitants of Anahuac.
+
+There is something very fascinating in the history of Peru, as recorded
+by the Spanish authors, and rendered into the English language by
+Prescott. There is no account of ancient or modern people extant which
+has interested me so much as those of the realm of Manco Capac. To hear
+of a nation, separated by an ocean, we may, indeed, say two, and a vast
+continent, from the civilized portions of Asia, Europe, and Africa,
+located in a mountainous tract, where soil and water were scanty, and
+locomotion was rendered difficult from the configuration of the land;
+whose country was surrounded by strong natural enemies of all kinds;
+whose people were unable to use such agents as steel and gunpowder, and
+who were yet enabled to construct vast cities and temples, to quarry,
+remove, and use in buildings, fragments of rock thirty-eight feet long,
+eighteen feet broad, and six feet thick, and to transport these to
+distances varying from 12 to 45 miles, to form good roads along the
+mountain tops, for an extent of nearly two thousand miles, necessitating
+the filling up chasms of enormous depth, and the making of suspension
+bridges over rivers whose stream was too furious to bridge in the
+ordinary European fashion, is perfectly astonishing.
+
+The far-sighted Incas, to make these roads still more useful,
+accompanied them by the erection of large residences, like modern
+European bungalows in India, fit for the reception of a monarch with
+his army, and by vast magazines of provisions, sufficient to supply
+the wants of a warlike expedition, or of a population starving from an
+accidental failure of crops. The Peruvians, moreover, surrounded their
+chief towns with strong walls, in comparison with which the Cyclopean
+constructions of the old world seem small, stunted, and almost
+contemptible. It appears, in addition, that they knew how to form
+long tunnels, either for the passage of troops, for the benefit of
+travellers, or for the conveyance of water. All these, I say, are enough
+to fire the imagination of the dullest reader of history, and to shake
+the belief that civilization cannot be developed in the midst of what we
+have been accustomed to call savage life, and can only be brought to
+a moderate perfection by the influence of the Hebrew and Christian
+writings.
+
+Our wonder is not, however, bounded by the physical results produced by
+the industrious population of Peru, it is still farther exercised by
+the descriptions which are given of their wonderful domestic and foreign
+policy. It would be difficult to conceive, and still more difficult
+to carry into execution for many generations, a plan of government so
+eminently fitted to give the greatest happiness to the greatest number,
+as that which the Incas elaborated. The rulers were specially educated
+to fulfil their duties in every respect, and were not permitted, as
+modern princes are, to enter into the ranks of chivalry until they had
+undergone a public examination, which was conducted by the oldest and
+the most illustrious chiefs. The trial included tests of every warlike
+and manly quality. It lasted thirty days, during which time every
+competitor fared alike, living on the bare ground, and wearing a mean
+attire. Those who passed the ordeal honourably were admitted formally
+into the knightly order, the ceremony including an investiture of the
+youth with sandals put on by the most venerable noble, equivalent to
+the donning of the _toga virilis_ in Ancient Rome, and having the ear
+pierced with a golden bodkin by the reigning monarch. To take off the
+shoe was a ceremony exacted from all those who came into the Inca's
+presence, to have it put on by a grandee was great honour.
+
+That the rulers might understand the condition of the kingdom, they
+systematically travelled, much in the same way as James V. of Scotland,
+and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, are said to have done. The Incas, in
+addition to their other plans for good government, inaugurated a
+postal system: divided their peoples into tens, fifties, hundreds, five
+hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, much in the same way as the
+Saxon King Alfred is said to have done, whose plan is, in many respects,
+conserved to the present day; and the head man of each division was in
+all respects its ruler, to repress crime, to announce to his superior
+officer all unusual occurrences, and to report, generally, the actual
+state of his division to the chief above him. All legal trials,
+or appeals, were decided in less than five days, and a code was
+established, which all might readily know, a thing only attained by the
+French under the first Napoleon, and long desired by England, but in
+vain. Punishments were never attended with torture, or unnecessary
+cruelty. In this respect the Peruvians differed from every other
+civilized nation of which I have yet read. The Chinaman methodically
+inflicts painful punishments which have only been surpassed by the
+followers of the "gentle Jesus." The Persians and Turks have, certainly,
+shown their capacity for giving pain to those who are brought before
+their ministers of justice, and the Red Indians, during their day,
+reduced the art of tormenting themselves, but, still more, their
+prisoners, almost to perfection. The Babylonians had discovered that a
+death of agony could be accomplished by means of myriads of ants. It was
+reserved to Christians, eager to uphold the faith promulgated by a God
+of mercy, to find out the most exquisite of torments. Even Frenchmen,
+who have for centuries assumed the position of leaders of civilization,
+were, until the great Revolution beat down their kings and prelates,
+more ruthlessly cruel than the most fierce redskin. The Inquisition,
+which arrogated to itself the power to keep the Christian religion pure,
+was distinguished by the atrocity with which it gave anguish to its
+victims, and it held its head high until it was put down, we may hope
+for ever, by fiery republican enthusiasts, whom priestly demons, baulked
+of their prey, declared to be devils incarnate. More modern hierarchs
+are obliged to content themselves with making a hell for their
+enemies--with foretelling a variety of punishments to be inflicted
+hereafter, which cannot be enforced here.
+
+The Incas exacted an annual report of the lands possessed by
+individuals, with their condition as regards culture; and also of every
+family. A register of births, marriages, and deaths was regularly kept,
+so that the government might always know the real condition of the
+nation, soil, and people.
+
+As far as possible, families remained constant to their business, thus
+forming a sort of trade caste, but not a rigid one. The registers were
+always submitted to the perusal of the Inca, and, subsequently, kept in
+the capital.
+
+By the arrangement of "posts," and roads, an insurrection or invasion
+was readily discovered, and it was speedily announced at the capital
+city. The march of troops to suppress it, under these circumstances, was
+easy and immediate, for every requisite for war was always at hand. In
+all circumstances, plundering by the soldiery, whether at home or in an
+enemy's country, was severely punished, and war was undertaken solely
+with a view to peace. If a neighbour was turbulent, he was conquered,
+and absorbed into the old state, and if a province was rebellious, its
+worst inhabitants were carried away to some other locality, where their
+power for mischief would be curtailed; a plan which, we are told, was
+pursued by the Assyrian Shalmaneser (2 Kings xvii. 6), indicated by
+Sennacherib (2 Kings xviii. 32), and carried out by Nebuzaradan (2 Kings
+xxv. 11.). In fine, we may repeat, that it would be difficult for a
+modern philosopher to conceive a better model of a really paternal
+government than that which, it is asserted, was found by the Spaniards
+when they invaded the kingdom of the Incas. Of the respective value of
+Christian Spanish government, and of the so-called Pagan Inca rule, none
+can doubt, who reads the present by the light of the past. The Peruvians
+kept up their roads, protected their subjects, respected life, and
+fostered everything which tended to increase the general happiness
+and prosperity of the kingdom--all these objects, have been for a long
+period neglected, and Peru, which was under the Spanish rule, one of
+the blots on the face of civilization and Christianity, is only
+just emerging from a long night, under the influence of Republican
+institutions.
+
+Our next step will be to ascertain the religion of the people whose
+political condition contrasts so favourably with that of every other
+nation of whom travel and history have informed us. But we may, in the
+first place, remark, that there is no absolute or necessary connection
+between the happiness, or otherwise, of a nation and its dominant
+religion, as Buckle has already shown in his _History of Civilization_.
+The writer of to-day can find abundant evidence in recent history to
+illustrate the proposition here advanced. He can point to France,
+and its condition under a sacerdotal rule, prior to the time of the
+Revolution, and contrast it with its state since its rulers have
+tried to make the people prosperous and happy, independently of their
+religious faith. He can point to Austria and Spain, when they were laid
+at the feet of the Pope of Rome, and everything was made subservient to
+the demands of a powerful hierarchy, and to the same states now, when
+religion is subordinate to the material welfare of the majority. Who,
+that has read the story of modern Italy, or heard of the atrocities
+committed under the priest-led Ferdinand of Naples--better known in
+England by the sobriquet of Bomba; who, that knew anything of his
+brigand-rearing towns and cities, and has visited them since they have
+been ruled constitutionally, and with the priestly power curbed by a
+strong hand, can doubt which set of directors are the best? Christian
+Rome was never so happy under her Popes as she is now, when the
+so-called head of the church is subordinate to the chief of the state.
+But of all priest-ridden countries, one which would never have borne the
+popish sway as she has done, if her chieftains had been sensible and
+her people thoughtful, Ireland deserves our commiseration the most.
+Hibernian hierarchs of the Roman faith designate their country as a
+land of saints. So, perhaps, it is, if by the word is meant admirers of
+laziness and filth, who consider that attention to religion justifies
+murder, and every brutal crime against purse, person, and property.
+
+As a rule, admitting of no exceptions, civil government has preceded
+sacerdotal rule, and a nation is generally in a weakly and fallen
+condition as soon as its affairs are directed by the priestly class.
+When first the Aryans invaded Hindostan, the hierarchy was second to the
+warrior caste; but as the first aggrandized their power, the second lost
+their supremacy, and under Brahminic rule the foundation was laid for
+pusillanimous and indolent luxury in the warrior. The power to plan,
+and the nerve to enforce laws, for the benefit of all classes of the
+community, is very different to that which is requisite to exalt and
+enrich the priestly order; and the well-being of a state depends far
+more upon the exercise of the first than of the second. Whenever,
+therefore, the executive government is entirely independent of the
+influence of the hierarchy, or is itself the head of that caste, it can
+produce good results for the nation, no matter what may be the dogmas of
+the priesthood, or the nature of the gods which are reverenced.
+
+Still following Prescott as our guide, we find that the sun was the
+great god of the Peruvians, and that the Incas assumed the title of his
+true children. To that luminary a vast temple was built in Cuzco, more
+radiant with gold than that of Solomon at Jerusalem. To Cuzco, as to the
+capital of Judea, the name of Holy City was given, and to it pilgrims
+resorted from every part of the empire. Blasphemy against the sun was
+considered as bad as treason against the Inca, and both were punished
+with death. A province, or city, rebellious against the sun was laid
+waste, and its people exterminated. When conquest over a new tribe
+subjugated it to Peru, the people were compelled to worship the sun,
+temples to whose honour were erected in their territory. To these was
+attached a body of priests, to instruct the people in the proper form
+of adoration, which consisted in a rich and stately ceremonial. The
+divinities of the conquered people were removed to Cuzco and established
+in one of the temples, where they took order amongst the inferior
+deities of the Peruvians.
+
+But, though the sun was unquestionably worshipped, Prescott observes,
+ch. iii, "it is a remarkable fact that many, if not most, of the rude
+tribes inhabiting the vast American continent had attained to the
+sublime conception of one Great Spirit, the Creator of the universe,
+who, immaterial in his own nature, ought not to be dishonoured by an
+attempt at a visible representation, and who, pervading all space, was
+not to be circumscribed within the walls of any building, however grand
+or rich."
+
+As civilization progressed, we are told that a separate order of men,
+with a liberal provision for their subsistence, was set apart for
+religious service, and a minute and magnificent ceremonial contrived,
+which challenged comparison with that of the most polished nations of
+Christendom. This was the case with the natives of Quita, Bogota, and
+others inhabiting the highlands of South America, but especially with
+the Peruvians, who claimed a divine origin for the founders of their
+empire, whose laws rested on a divine sanction, and whose domestic
+institutions and foreign wars were directed to preserve and to propagate
+their faiths. Religion was the basis of their polity, the condition of
+their social existence. The government of the Incas was essentially a
+lay theocracy.
+
+The Peruvians believed in the future existence of the soul and the
+resurrection of the body. They had faith in a Hell, located in the
+earth's centre, and a Heaven, in which the good would revel in a life
+of luxury, tranquillity, and ease. The wicked, however, were not to be
+hopelessly damned and tormented for everlasting, but were to expiate
+their crimes by ages of wearisome labour. They believed, also, in an
+evil principle or spirit, called Cupay, to whom, however, they paid no
+more attention than an ordinary Christian does to the Devil.
+
+The great men were entombed after death, and were commonly buried with
+the chief things which they required on earth. Sometimes a chieftain was
+buried, not only with his treasures, but with his wives and domestics.
+Frequently, over the dead, vast mounds were raised, which were
+honeycombed, subsequently, with cells for the burial of others. Cairns
+were as common in that part of the New World as they have been in the
+Old, and the majority of buildings found at the present day in Peru have
+been connected with funereal pomp.
+
+The supreme Being in Peru was named Pachacamac, "he who gives life to
+the universe," and Viracocha, of which the only translation given is
+"foam of the sea." To him one temple only was raised, which is said to
+have been built prior to the accession of the Incas, and largely visited
+by vast numbers of distant Indians. The sun, as we have noticed, was
+chiefly venerated, and to him a temple was erected in every city and
+large village, and to him burnt offerings were made in abundance. The
+moon was also venerated, being connected with the sun as his wife--and
+Venus, called by the name of Chasca, "the youth with the long and
+curling locks"--was also regarded reverentially as the page of the sun.
+Temples were dedicated to thunder and to lightning as God's ministers,
+and the rainbow was regarded as an emanation from the great luminary.
+In addition to these, the elements, the winds, the earth, the air, the
+great mountains and rivers, were considered as inferior deities, to
+which were added the gods of the conquered races. The chief temple of
+the sun was extraordinarily gorgeous. It was constructed of stone, and
+was so finely executed, that a Spaniard declared that only two edifices
+in Spain could, in the stone work, be at all compared with it like
+Italian and other churches, it contained many small chapels and
+subordinate buildings, and the interior was dazzling with gold. On its
+western wall the deity was emblazoned as a human face surrounded with
+rays of light, just as the sun is personified amongst ourselves.
+The figure was engraved on a massy gold plate, thickly powdered with
+emeralds and precious stones. This was so situated in front of the
+great eastern portal, that the rays of the morning sun, falling upon it,
+lighted up the whole temple with a wondrous sheen; but every part of
+the inner walls blazed with gold. The roof was, however, "thatch" alone.
+Adjoining the temple of the sun were fanes of smaller dimensions, for
+the worship of the moon, stars, thunder, lightning, and the rainbow.
+
+"All the plate, ornaments, and utensils of every description
+appropriated to the uses of religion, were of gold or silver. Twelve
+immense vases of silver (said to be as high as a good lance, and so
+large that two men could barely encircle them with outstretched arms)
+stood on the floor of the great saloon, filled with Indian corn. The
+censers for the perfumes, the ewers which held the water for sacrifice,
+the pipes which conducted it through subterraneous channels into
+the buildings, the reservoir that received it, even the agricultural
+implements used in the gardens of the temple, were all of the same
+rich material. The gardens, like those belonging to the royal palaces,
+sparkled with gold and silver, and various imitations of the vegetable
+kingdom. Animals, also, were to be found there, amongst which the llama,
+with its golden fleece, was most conspicuous, executed in the same
+style, and with a degree of skill which, in this instance, probably did
+not surpass the excellence of the material" The reader of Prescott will
+find that he has not adopted this account without carefully estimating
+the value of his authorities, and I believe that he may be fairly
+trusted. The various reports, given by Spanish writers, of priests of
+the grand temple, seem also to have been carefully estimated by the
+historian, and the number which they amounted to is put down at four
+thousand at the least.
+
+The high priest was second in dignity only to the Inca, and he was
+generally closely related to this ruler. The monarch appointed this
+Peruvian pope, who held office for life. He had the appointment of
+inferior priests, but all must be from the sacred race of Incas. The
+high priests of the provinces were always of the blood royal. The
+hierarchy wore no peculiar badge or dress, nor was it the sole
+depositary of learning, and it had not to superintend education, or to
+do parochial work. These duties were performed by others of the Inca
+class, all of whom were holy, though not, so to speak, in "holy orders."
+The priest's business was to minister in the temple; his science was
+confined to a knowledge of the fasts and festivals to be observed in
+connection with religion, for these were very numerous, and demanded
+separate rituals. The four principal festivals were solar, i.e., at the
+equinoxes and solstices, that of Midsummer being the grandest, on which
+occasion every one who could find time and money enough to do so visited
+the capital city. The feast was preceded by a three days' fast, and no
+fires were to be lighted during that period.
+
+When the day arrived a vast array of people, dressed in their handsomest
+apparel, crowded the streets and squares, waiting for the rising of the
+sun. When it appeared shouts of joy, heightened by instrumental music,
+were raised in swelling tones, until the whole orb had ascended above
+the horizon, after which a libation was poured of fermented liquor,
+and all the nobles and the king repaired to the great temple, each
+individual, except members of the royal family, removing their sandals
+as they entered. After prayer came sacrifice, animals, grain, flowers,
+and sweet-scented gums being the prescribed offerings; sometimes a
+child or lovely maiden was also immolated, generally to commemorate a
+coronation, the birth of a royal heir, or a great victory. Cannibalism
+never followed the sacrifice; and it may be added, parenthetically,
+that when the Incas conquered and annexed man-sacrificing and man-eating
+tribes, they always abrogated the custom, and with far more decision
+and firmness than Britain has shown in abolishing self-immolation of
+Juggernaut pilgrims in her Indian Empire, and the burning of widows
+with their dead spouses. Some may doubt whether a conqueror ought to
+interfere with the religious customs of the vanquished, but few would
+plead for the continuance of such customs as human sacrifice and
+cannibalism.
+
+The animal usually sacrificed by the Peruvians was the llama, and
+the priest who officiated drew auguries from the appearance of the
+intestines. To effect the oblation a sacred fire was now kindled by a
+concave mirror which acted as "a burning glass," precisely as was done
+by Numa in the days of Ancient Rome. If the sky was clouded, and no rays
+could be collected, fire was produced by friction. When lighted, the
+fire was committed to the care of the virgins of the sun, who were
+bound to keep it up for the ensuing year. After the single sacrifice
+was completed, great numbers of other animals were slaughtered, and a
+regular carousal began, attended with music, dancing, and drinking,
+that lasted for many days, during which period all the lower orders kept
+holiday. In the distribution of bread and wine at this high festival,
+the invading Spaniards saw a striking resemblance to the Christian
+communion, and they recognised a similar likeness in the Peruvian
+practices of confession and penance. The virgins of the sun were called
+"the elect," and were young maidens taken from their homes at an early
+age, and introduced into convents, where they were placed under the care
+of elderly matrons, who taught them their religious duties, and how to
+spin and weave, embroider and adorn hangings for the temples, and to
+frame garments for the Incas. Their work was such, that it was found to
+be superior to any which the Spaniards had ever seen, or were themselves
+able to produce. The virgins were separated wholly, not simply, from the
+world in general, but also from their own relations and friends--none
+but the king and queen could enter into their convent. The closest
+attention was paid to the morals of these maidens, and visitors were
+sent every year to inspect the institutions, and to report on the
+state of their discipline; a plan similar to which has been repeatedly
+proposed in Christian England, yet never sanctioned by the parliament!
+If a virgin was discovered in an intrigue she was buried alive, her
+lover was strangled, and the town or village to which he belonged was
+razed to the ground, and sowed with stones, to efface even the memory
+of its site. These solar attendants were all of royal blood, and were
+estimated to number fifteen hundred; but to provincial convents the
+inferior nobility were allowed to send their daughters, and sometimes
+a peculiarly lovely peasant girl was admitted. The convents were all
+sumptuously furnished. But, though virgins of the sun, they were brides
+of the Incas, and we cannot fail, when we read of the vast harem of the
+Peruvian monarch, to think of the female establishments of the Jewish
+Solomon, of the Persian Ahasuerus, and that of Louis XV. of Christian
+France. If at any time the Inca reduced his harem, the superfluous
+concubines were restored to their homes, swelling with the importance
+which they had gained by their familiarity with the monarch.
+
+Polygamy was permitted. Matrimony was effected by the Inca, or other
+chief man, joining the hands of the parties. The king usually espoused
+his own sister, but no other person was allowed to do so. No marriage
+was valid without the consent of parents. As a general rule, all unions
+were effected on the same day of the year, and thus the wedding of
+couples was followed by general rejoicing.
+
+The genius of the Peruvian government penetrated into the most private
+recesses of domestic life, allowing no man to act for himself, even in
+those personal matters in which none but himself, or his family, could
+be interested. No Peruvian was too low for the fostering vigilance
+of the government; none was so high that he was not made to feel his
+dependence upon it in every act of his life. The government of the Incas
+was the mildest, but the most searching and beneficent, of despotisms.
+
+We now, but with great reluctance, leave our friendly guide, the
+accomplished Prescott, and ask ourselves, once more, the lessons which
+we have learned from the departed races of the vast American continent.
+Can anyone doubt that one of the most conspicuous results obtained
+is, that Christian rule, and the Christian doctrine, have not proved
+themselves, in any respect, superior to the Incas' government and their
+solar religion? Who can read of the civilization, the theology, and the
+practice of the Peruvians, without believing one of two things--the one,
+that Jewish ritualism, and the majority of Christian teaching, is of
+human invention; the other, that the Almighty has revealed His will in
+the Western as well as in the Eastern Hemisphere? Can any thoughtful
+man believe that the brutal, covetous, lying Spaniards, who broke,
+with impunity, every commandment promulgated in those Gospels, to whose
+authority they professed allegiance, and upon which their faith is
+founded, were better men, or more favoured by the Lord, "who loveth
+righteousness and hateth iniquity," than were the gentle Peruvians, who
+fell before them as lambs and sheep before wolves and tigers? Surely the
+story of the Incas should make Christians, in all ages, blush for their
+inferiority to those, amongst whom neither Moses, Samuel, and other
+so-called prophets, Jesus, nor any of his apostles, preached; and more
+strongly should it convince us that the wish to do good on a large scale
+can come otherwise than by the Gospel. If grace, and peace, and love
+came by the Nazarene alone, how is it--and let us ponder over the
+question deeply--that all Christian countries have been, and that some
+are still, conspicuous for the brutality of their political and priestly
+governments, for the frequency with which they make war, for their
+ferocity in the destruction of religious enemies, and for the intense
+hatred evinced against rival sects, by those who call themselves the
+representatives of the Prince of Peace; whilst, on the other hand,
+a nation who never heard of the son of Joseph or of Mary, should be
+conspicuous for the virtues which ought to adorn the soldiers of the
+cross, but do not? Surely, if the saying be true, "by their fruit ye
+shall know them," the denizens of the old world must be children of the
+Devil, who do the work, of their father, whilst certain of the nations
+of the new world, as it is called, were really children of the light,
+abounding in love, charity, and goodwill towards all men.
+
+To me it is astonishing how thoughtful men, who have read accounts of
+the Mexicans and the Peruvians, can continue to believe that the Bible
+is the book of God, written by holy men, whose thoughts and diction were
+essentially those of the third person in the Trinity. Who can assert
+that Abraham and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, were taught of God, and that to
+the Hebrews alone has the Creator revealed His will? Who can see, in
+the sensual king David, a man after God's heart, and applaud the brutal
+murder of Agag, the destruction of the priests of Baal, by the orders
+of Elijah, and the extermination of the Baalites in Israel by Jehu?
+Compared with such wretches as these the Incas were angels. They had not
+left to them the bloody legacy which has come to the Christian world by
+means of the Old Testament: they had not been taught to believe that the
+Almighty revelled in the blood of human beings: they never had, amongst
+their sacred songs, verses like the following--"that thy foot may be
+dipped in the blood of enemies, and the tongue of thy dogs in the same"
+(Ps. lxviii. 23).
+
+Ah, it is time for civilized men to cease their admiration for a book
+which has produced such frightful fruits, and which has converted
+millions of human beings into incarnate fiends.
+
+The Vedas and the Shasters--the writings of the Buddhists, and those of
+the Parsees and the Chinese, contain, nowhere, such a justification
+of wholesale murder, as do the Scriptures of the Jews and of the
+Christians.* From these have been drawn the power to persecute, and, if
+possible, to exterminate those who worship God in a different fashion
+to those in power. Calvin was as bad as Torquemada; and, even at the
+present time, it is only public opinion that prevents fanatics, like the
+early New Englanders, from reducing their Christian hate to practical
+torture. Everywhere the professed followers of Jesus assume the power
+to torment their opponents, whenever they can do so without breaking the
+civil law, and there are few pulpits from which the voice of revilement,
+contumely, and denunciation is not repeatedly heard. The Romans abuse
+the Anglicans; the Establishment sneers at Dissent; Nonconformists
+censure all churches; and all libel those whom they call Free Thinkers
+and Atheists. To find "toleration" in matters of religion, one must seek
+amongst the Deists, or amongst those who refuse to see in the Bible the
+revealed will of God to man.
+
+     * See Matthew x. 34, 85; Luke xii. 49, 51, 52, 53.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Can civilization grow out of barbarism? Dislike of progress,
+     especially if mental. Rediscovery of ancient knowledge.
+     Advance and retrogression. China and Japan--influence of
+     strangers. Decadence of nations--followed by a rise. The
+     Shemitic and Negro races. Varied religious ideas. The Negro
+     Fetish and Obi. Jewish, Arab, and Christian communication
+     with the dead. Australian idea about white men. Ideas of a
+     soul and futurity amongst the Aryans and Egyptians. Their
+     priesthood. The Aryans Monotheiste. An Aryan hymn. Max
+     Mueller and Talboys Wheeler. Aryan conceptions compared with
+     Psalm civ. 1-4. Monotheism of the Egyptians.   Shemitic
+     religions.
+
+At one period of my life I entertained the idea that civilization never
+had grown, nor ever could grow, out of barbarism. Perhaps I have not yet
+wholly abandoned it. The considerations which the question involves are
+all but infinite. It is doubtful whether we can reduce them into shape
+without writing an extensive treatise. We will, however, attempt to do
+so, and present the subject to our readers to the best of our ability.
+
+As far as our own personal and historic experience goes, we find that
+man has no natural propensity to learn beyond that which he has received
+simply as an animal. With him school is a hateful place, and education
+is a painful process, even in the midst of the highest civilization we
+see individuals who cast from them all the luxuries of life, and descend
+voluntarily to a level scarcely superior to that of the brute creation.
+But those who take kindly to education, and consent to try and learn
+everything which the teacher presents to their notice, are bounded by
+the amount of knowledge possessed by the instructor, who cannot impart
+to others information in matters of which all are ignorant. It is true
+that I once read a question propounded by his schoolmaster to one of my
+sons, which ran--"Enumerate upon paper all the capes, bays, and rivers
+of England that you don't know by name, and describe the seas which you
+have never heard of." Without dwelling upon the anecdote farther than
+to say, that it points out the absurdity of the idea that education
+of itself advances knowledge, we may pass on to remark, that even in
+nations, whose intellect is highly cultivated, the propensity to advance
+in knowledge is singularly small. Throughout the old world an inventor
+is usually regarded as a visionary, or a lunatic, and flouted by all his
+contemporaries.* From the time of Aristotle and Hippocrates, scarcely
+any advance was made in philosophy, and, throughout Europe, the
+fourteenth century was as barbarous, if not indeed more so, than the
+first of our era; and to such a dark age there is a strong clerical
+party in Great Britain which desires us to return.
+
+     * A man who had travelled much once said to me,--"I will
+     tell you the main difference between a Yankee and an
+     Englishman. If you inform the latter of some new discovery--
+     or propose the use of some recent invention for his own
+     benefit--he will tell you either that the thing is old, or
+     worthless. On the other hand, if you recount to the former
+     what you have told the latter of, his rejoinder will be, I
+     can improve upon that." This is true, and we are now
+     repeatedly adopting from the United States discoveries of
+     various kinds, which we rejected when offered to us in the
+     first place.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding the propensity of cultivated nations to remain
+quiescent, there do appear, from time to time, individuals who,
+being discontented with things as they are, endeavour to bring about
+improvements in the arts, the sciences, and the general conditions of
+life. The recognition of a want, is an incentive to a thoughtful mind
+to supply the exigency. Whenever an individual endeavours to attain
+a definite end, he exercises his mind, not only in what he has been
+already taught, but what he can observe beyond that; he rakes up, if
+possible, the experience of others, studies their proceedings, and
+experiments with a definite object, and ponders upon the affinities,
+nature, and the like, of every substance which he surmises may be of
+service to him. When, by these means, he has obtained his purpose,
+he will repeatedly find that he has done no more than rediscover a
+something which was known thousands of years before his time. Without
+a doubt, much of the philosophy, science, art, religion, &c., of the
+present day, is due to a close observation and an attainment to the
+knowledge possessed by our predecessors. "Is there any thing whereof it
+may be said, see this is new?--it hath been already of old time, which
+was before us" (Eccles. i. 10).
+
+If this be true, even though it may only be so to a partial extent, it
+is clearly more philosophical to believe that some primeval men were
+created with a considerable amount of knowledge, rather than that all
+were savage, barely, if at all, superior to monkeys, and that one or
+more of these, gradually elevated their race, by degrees so slow, as to
+be imperceptible in less time than many thousand years.
+
+This side of the argument receives corroboration when we study the
+history of such semi-civilized countries as China, and such barbarous
+regions as those of Africa and Australia. In none of these parts do
+we see any general propensity to advance. In the first we see a
+retrogression; there is now no effort to repair ancient roads which
+have been worn away by centuries of traffic, to restore the old temples,
+towers, and landmarks, erected when time was younger, or even to keep
+up the teachings of Confucius. A similar apathy existed amongst the
+Japanese--yet no sooner do the civilized nations of Europe show the
+rulers of China and Japan that it is necessary for them to improve, if
+they desire to retain their power, than they attempt to learn the arts
+which have enabled their rivals to overcome them. In both cases, the
+progress is recognized as due to the interference of a nation, superior
+for the time being, to that whose education has been faulty. Advance,
+then, in such countries, is clearly due to foreign influence, rather
+than to an innate propensity to general, mental, scientific, or
+practical development.
+
+But, on the other side, it may be alleged that the African has been in
+existence from time immemorial--that he has been in contact with the
+civilization of ancient and modern Egypt--with Christianity--with the
+ancient Tyrians and Carthaginians--with the Arabs--with the Spaniards,
+Portuguese, and British, and yet the African tribes remain almost as
+savage now as when they first were known. Similar remarks apply to
+the inhabitants of the Andaman Isles, of the vast islands of Borneo,
+Celebez, Papua, New Guinea, and others.
+
+Yet in many places, now considered barbarous, we see the remains of
+previous empires--and when we are able to find some comparatively
+authentic history which tells of the overthrow of a powerful kingdom,
+it is clear that the civilized people have usually been destroyed by the
+barbarian. The wealth of Rome tempted the hordes from the inhospitable
+north, just as the gold of Mexico and Peru were the causes of their
+decadence under the Spaniards, whose people were in themselves scarcely
+superior to the troops led by Alaric, Genseric, and other so called
+barbarians. Yet we know, as in the case of Spain herself, that decadence
+from civilization to comparative barbarism may be due to causes inherent
+in the people and its governors, wholly independent of foreign conquest.
+This decadence is due to the bestial propensities of man being allowed
+to dominate over the intellectual, and the result is the same, whether
+the animal passions be cultivated by a debased and degrading policy of
+monarch and priest, or by the indolence of each individual.
+
+By developing the train of thought thus indicated, we imagine that the
+philosophical reader will conclude that amongst men, some race, family,
+or tribe, has been created with intelligence, as much above the rest of
+their kind as the elephant is superior to the hippopotamus, and the dog
+to the cat, and that others are generically as low as is the Australian
+"dingo" in the canine race. Those once perfect may deteriorate, yet
+carry with them the power of rising again--whilst those originally low
+never rise at all, no matter what example may be set them, unless force
+is used to make them learn. To these we must add a third set, specially
+to include the American, for we have no evidence whatever that the
+civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian was anything more than a
+restoration of the scientific knowledge of a more ancient people,
+possibly of an Aryan stock. Who that is acquainted with the Shemitic
+race can fail to see in its people the type of an ancient condition
+which has decayed, until, like a fallen gentleman, it can only show what
+once it was, by conserving and exhibiting a few ornaments of no value,
+save from their age, but whose sons may yet become princes in their
+paternal domains? Who that studies the negro in Africa, America, and St.
+Domingo, can fail to see that he is, or, at any rate has hitherto shown
+himself, almost wholly incapable of development as a philosophic man?
+And who can read the pages of Prescott without recognizing the fact that
+some of the ancient inhabitants of America inaugurated--unassisted, as
+we judge by any example from others--a style of religion and government
+of which the world has hardly, if at all, seen an equal? Yet it is
+remarkable, that both the Mexican and Peruvian traced their laws and
+institutions to strangers who came amongst them, as Oannes did to the
+Babylonians, and who taught them what arts, religion, and science they
+themselves had. The subject of centres of human life into which our
+considerations have drawn us, is by far too vast for discussion here.
+It involves the study of geology, of anthropology, of glossology,
+of navigation, of physical geography, of climate, of the laws of
+reproduction, of the influences of climate over animals, and of diet
+upon man. Into all these we dare not enter: we shall confine ourselves
+rather to considering the religious ideas of the lowest of the known
+races of mankind; and then proceed to those which have been held by what
+we may call the oscillating people, i.e., those vibrating repeatedly
+between a state of empire and one of slavery, like the people of
+Hindostan, Babylon, Judea, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Egypt.
+
+When we endeavour to ascertain the religion of the negro, by which term
+we include all the black native tribes of Africa, we find ourselves
+almost in the position of a modern chemist seeking for the philosopher's
+stone. In no single book, and I have read very many, can I find any
+trustworthy evidence of the negro having any religion at all. It is true
+that travellers in Abyssinia, and those who are now returned from their
+successful expedition against Magdala, tell us that in Abyssinia there
+is a form of religion which is evidently a corrupt form of Christianity,
+but with this exception, the blacks seem to have no idea of that
+congeries of fact and fiction, dogma, ritual, and practice, which passes
+current for religion in more civilized countries. Yet though they have
+no definite idea of a Creator, and the way in which He works throughout
+the universe, they have a dread of some unseen power, and, like a number
+of frightened children, dread the effects of "fetish," and the power of
+the Obi or Obeah man. When the mind is predisposed to fear, and it is so
+amongst the lower animals as well as in man, it is astonishing at what
+contemptible objects one may stand aghast. I can vividly remember being
+sent, whilst a very young child, with a message from an aunt, at whose
+home I was staying, to the maid, who was washing in an outhouse, but ere
+I reached the door of the latter, I was terrified at a head which seemed
+to be rising from the ground, Such was my horror that I ran away, too
+proud to scream, yet almost fainting with horror. To me that ancient
+battered barber's doll was "fetish," and if my friends had determined to
+cultivate the timidity which I then showed, it is quite possible that to
+this day I might have a dread not dissimilar to that of the African.
+As it was, my aunt told me that what had scared me, was only a piece of
+carved and painted wood, and so put me upon my mettle, that I delivered
+my message and gave the image a kick in the face; yet my valour was
+short lived, and during the rest of my sojourn I dared not venture
+within sight of the bugbear. To all intents and purposes that human head
+was, in my estimation, the guardian of the garden--its presence made all
+within its influence under taboo--had I ventured to tell a lie, or to
+have been naughty, I cannot conceive that any punishment would have been
+greater than being doomed to sit in the presence of the weird image.
+Hence I can easily understand the abject terror of the African at
+"fetish," and his dread of the Obeah man, who asserts that he can direct
+upon whom he will the power of the unknown god. So great is the fear of
+this negro magician, and so common is that fear to man in general, that
+we sometimes find the white man as full of it as the black. I have had,
+for example, under my own care, an Englishman of good education, who,
+whilst superintendent of a Jamaica plantation, became so cowed by "Obi,"
+that he was obliged to give up his position and return to England,
+literally insane upon the subject of "fetish" and "Obeah," and wholly
+unfitted for any work whatever.
+
+The objects to which the name of "fetish" is given are very numerous--a
+rock, a stone, a tree, a pool, a dried monkey, an alligator, man, or
+skull--anything will suit the purpose. One which is said to be very
+popular amongst chieftains is prepared somewhat in the following
+manner:--The head of a father is removed after death, and so placed,
+that as the brain decays and softens, it may fall into a receptacle
+already half filled with palm oil or other grease. The material so
+formed, consisting to a great extent of the thoughtful organ of the
+sire, is then supposed to give his spirit to the son, whenever the
+latter smears himself with it, or takes it as a potent medicinal spell.
+The head thus placed becomes the royal "fetish," and the king goes to
+take counsel from it just as ancient priests inquired, or pretended to
+inquire, from the god or lord of some shrine or oracle. I cannot charge
+my memory with everything that has been at one time or another regarded
+as an object of wonder, worship, or "fetish," but I have an indistinct
+recollection that a musical box has been venerated by Africans, as much
+as the Ancilia, the Palladium, the Diana which fell down from Jupiter,
+the Caaba or black stone of Mecca, the ark of the covenant, the brazen
+serpent, the wood of the true cross, the nails which pierced Jesus,
+and the handkerchief which was used to wipe the face of the suffering
+Nazarite, all of which have been sacred amongst civilized nations, and
+are still adored by some. It would be difficult for a philosopher to
+draw a distinction between an African "fetish" and a Papal relic. There
+is no virtue which the Romanist has attributed to old bones, old nails,
+old shoes, old coats, old houses, old staircases, old bits of wood, old
+links of chains, old hairs, old statues, &c., that has not been equally
+attributed by negroes to some absurd fetish in Ashantee, Dahomey, or
+elsewhere.
+
+In some parts of the vast African continent, however, there seems to be
+an indistinct idea of a life after death, and when a great man dies,
+or is killed, his wives, and many of his slaves, are sacrificed for his
+future use, and vast human sacrifices are made annually in his honour,
+that the departed may hear, from time to time, of the welfare of those
+whom he has left behind. Feeling indisposed to regard this practice
+as the offspring of religious faith, I would compare it with the crude
+conceptions of some of the lowest class in Europe and America, aye, of
+some cultivated intellects as well, who profess to be able, by means
+of _media_, to communicate with the dead, or who send messages to
+their departed relatives by friends that are dying. The most remarkable
+development of this idea which I have yet met with has recently occurred
+in France, where a young man attempted to murder a beautiful young
+woman, to whom he was a total stranger, the reason he assigned being,
+that he intended to commit suicide immediately after the murder, so that
+he might enter the future world with a pleasant companion.
+
+We can scarcely regard the persons figuring in the following true story
+as being very much superior to the King of Dahomey. In a well-cared
+for English village a poor woman was about to die in the full odour of
+Protestant sanctity. In youth she had lost one leg, and now had disease
+in the other. To her came an old woman and said,--"I hear thou's goin'
+to dee Betty, and that thou's goin' to heaven--at least parson says
+so--when thou's got there, willee tell my owd man that I've just bought
+that field as he set his heart on." "Oh dear," said the dying woman,
+"how can I go stumping all about heaven with my legs in the state
+they're in." "Well, you can tell him at anyrate if you happen to see him
+go by!"
+
+Passing from the African, let us now say a word or two about the
+Australian. It is, I think, Mitchell, who states, in an account of his
+travels in that country, that the white men were used in a manner so
+considerate, in some instances, indeed, so kindly, that he was induced
+to inquire into the cause. He found that these friendly tribes were
+in the habit of eating their defunct relatives--being always short of
+provisions, they used man meat, as do other starving creatures when they
+devour their like--and they cooked the body much in the same way as we
+do dead pig. By scalding the carcass, the cuticle and the black layer,
+called _rete mucosum_, was removed, and the corpse became white. This
+gave the people the notion that Europeans were their own dead relatives
+returned from the spirit world. Sir G. Gray also, in his account of an
+expedition to the north-west coasts of the same vast island, describes
+how all the people with whom he came into contact believed in the
+power of sorcery or witchcraft. Without extending our inquiry into the
+undeveloped religious ideas of other barbarians, we may affirm, from the
+preceding examples, that there is, even amongst the lowest human beings,
+some idea of a future state, and of the existence of some unseen power,
+which may work mischief upon themselves or their friends. Beyond these
+vague notions the savage who has neither been taught, nor inherited the
+power or propensity to learn, rarely, if ever, passes.
+
+If, then, the surmise to which we gave utterance awhile ago is founded
+in truth, we may fairly endeavour to ascertain what is the race, or
+the people, which have been born with a higher religious development, a
+greater capacity for learning, and a higher appreciation of the value of
+agriculture and civilization than the rest of the world's inhabitants.
+
+We now find ourselves on the threshold of a question which has, for many
+years past, divided the scientific world, viz., Was there originally one
+human couple only, or were there many intellectual centres? Into this
+matter it would be unprofitable to enter, for to give an account of the
+Chinese, Egyptian, Aryan, American, and Shemitic races, would require
+many huge volumes. It will, probably, be permitted to me to omit from
+the inquiry all but Aryans and Egyptians. I select these because I
+have, in the preceding volumes, descanted largely upon the faith of the
+Babylonians, Assyrians, Tyrians, and others, and because I believe that
+these ancients have done very much to modify the faith of Europe. If
+time and opportunity permitted, I fancy that anyone might make a
+most interesting analysis of that which Europe owes to the Shemites,
+Egyptians, and Aryans respectively; but it is beyond our powers at
+present to go into the whole subject. The volumes which have recently
+been published about the Ancient Hindoo religion may be counted by
+dozens, and the writings of Egyptologists are almost equally numerous.
+We must, therefore, content ourselves with a reference to a few main
+points.
+
+It seems to be an undoubted fact, that both the Egyptians and Aryans
+recognized the existence of a soul in human beings, and believed that it
+survived the dissolution of the body in some state, whose position and
+physical condition were unknown. They held, moreover, that the locality
+and condition of the spiritual part of man after death depended upon
+the actions of the individual during life. Both people believed in the
+influence of prayer, of sacrifices, of a maceration, or torturing of the
+fleshy body, and they had, moreover, each of them, a priestly race,
+who regulated festivals, ordained ceremonies, and prescribed everything
+which those who regarded their spiritual welfare should do. I believe
+that the Egyptians were, in reality, monotheistic; but my authority for
+the idea has escaped me. It is certain that the ancient Aryans were so,
+and I cannot do better than refer my readers to the _History of Sanscrit
+Literature_, by Max Mueller, and the first vol. of the _History of
+India_, by Talboys Wheeler. Yet, as the first is out of print, and the
+second a volume of considerable size, it will, perhaps, be judicious if
+I quote some passages from both. The following hymn, translated by M.
+M., p. 559 sq., is, to my own ideas, far more grand in conception than
+any other which I have read, and shows a depth or sublimity of thought
+that could only be attained by a profoundly intelligent intellect.
+Moderns might equal it, none could surpass it. Speaking of the
+beginning, the words run, "Nothing that is, was then; even what is not,
+did not exist then." The poet then proceeds to deny the existence of
+the sky, and of the firmament, and yet, unable to bear the idea of an
+unlimited nothing, he exclaims, "What was it that hid or covered the
+existing? what was the refuge of what? was water the deep abyss, the
+chaos which swallowed up everything?" Then his mind, turning away from
+nature, dwells upon man, and the problem of human life. "There was no
+death, therefore there was nothing immortal There was no space, no life,
+and lastly, there was no time--no difference between day and night--no
+solar torch by which morning might have been told from evening. That One
+breathed breathless by itself, other than it, nothing since has been.
+That One breathed and lived; it enjoyed more than mere existence; yet
+its life was not dependent upon anything else, as our life depends upon
+the air we breathe. It breathed, breathless. Darkness there was, and all
+at first was veiled in gloom, profound as ocean without life." Mueller
+then rather describes what the poet means than gives his words; I will,
+therefore, adopt now, for the rest of the hymn, the metrical version,
+which he gives at p. 564:--
+
+     "The germ that still lay covered in the husk
+     Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
+     Then first came Love upon it, the new spring
+     Of mind; yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
+     Pondering this bond between created things And uncreated.
+     Comes this spark from earth,
+     Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
+     These seeds were sown, and mighty power arose,
+     Nature below, and Power and Will above.
+     Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here?
+     Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?
+     The gods themselves came later into being.
+     Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
+     He, from whom all this great creation came.
+     Whether His will created or was mute,
+     The Most High seer, that is in highest heaven,
+     He knows it; or, perchance, e'en He knows not"
+
+One more hymn is even more distinct in its monotheism, p. 569. "In the
+beginning there arose the source of golden light. He was the only born
+Lord of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the
+God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice? He who gives life. He who
+gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow
+is immortality; whose shadow is death.... He who, through His power, is
+the only King of the breathing and the awakening world. He who governs
+all--man and beast.... He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power
+the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are,
+as it were, His two arms.... He through whom the sky is bright, and the
+earth firm. He through whom the heaven was 'stablished, nay, the highest
+heaven. He who measured out the light in the air.... He to whom heaven
+and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly.
+He over whom the rising sun shines forth.... Where-ever the mighty
+water-clouds went, where they placed the seed, and lit the fire, thence
+arose He who is the only life of the bright gods.... He who, by
+His might, looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave
+strength, and lit the sacrifice. He _who is God above all gods_.... May
+He not destroy us. He, the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous,
+who created the heaven. He who also created the bright and mighty
+waters." In this hymn I have only omitted the repeated question--Who is
+the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
+
+Of the high antiquity of these productions no competent scholar
+entertains a doubt. It is not certain how many years before our era it
+was composed, but it is considered that it was prior to B. C. 2000, long
+before the time when the ideal Moses is said to have written, and _a
+fortiori_ anterior, by at least a thousand years, to the authors of the
+Book of Psalms.
+
+Talboys Wheeler remarks, p. 27--"Having thus sketched generally the
+individual character of the leading deities of the Aryans as they appear
+in the Rig Veda, it may be advisable to glance at that conception of One
+Supreme Being, as in all and above all, which finds full expression in
+the Vedic hymns. Upon this point the following passages will be found
+very significant:--'Who has seen the primeval being at the time of His
+being born? what is that endowed with substance that the unsubstantial
+sustains? from earth are the breath and blood, but where is the
+soul--who may repair to the sage to ask this? What is that One alone,
+who has upheld these six spheres in the form of an unborn?'" Then
+follows the hymn just quoted from M. Mueller.
+
+I may add that the so-called gods Indra, Agni, Surya, the Maruts, &c.,
+are only personifications of the abstract powers of nature, the sky,
+fire, the sun, the winds, &c. These are the same conceptions as are
+referred to in Ps. civ. 1-4--they are not deities, but ministers.
+
+It will probably be said by the orthodox that these descriptions of the
+creation and the Creator are mere efforts of the human mind, and not the
+products of "revelation." We grant it at once, and answer, why, then,
+should the comparatively miserable conceptions of one or more Hebrews,
+who knew nothing of a soul or a future life till they had learned it
+from the Chaldeans or the Persians, be regarded differently? Was the
+Jewish ignorance the result of Divine "inspiration?" Did the Devil give
+to the heathen the knowledge of Satan's origin and power? If so, why did
+the Jews, and why do Christians, adopt it?
+
+I have already mentioned that the Aryans believed in the efficacy
+of prayer to their gods: they offered to them, much as we do now,
+supplications for rain, abundant harvests, prolific cattle, bodily
+vigour, long life, numerous progeny, &c., just as did, very rarely, the
+seed of Abraham.
+
+We may now make some quotations from the Egyptian Ritual for the Dead
+(Bunsen's _Egypt_, Vol. V.). "O soul, greatest of things created" (p.
+165); "I am the Great God, creating himself" (p. 172); "Oh Lord of the
+great abode, Chief of the gods" (p. 177). Throughout this invocation,
+however, the lord of the universe seems to be spoken of as the sun under
+various titles. There is frequent reference to the danger of the soul
+falling into the power of some malignant deity, and orthodoxy is secured
+by addressing every good god by his or her proper title. There is no
+grand conception anywhere, and the endless repetitions disgust the
+ordinary reader. I must add that the sun, Osiris, and the male organ,
+are spoken of as emblematic of each other.
+
+If we next turn to the Shemitic religions, we have to contend with the
+difficulty produced by the paucity of written records, and the doubts
+which exist about certain epithets that relate to the gods. As far as I
+can discover, there was an idea of a Supreme Being, whose name was Jeho.
+Io. Iou., or the like, and Il or El. His ministers were the sun, moon,
+planets, constellations, and stars. His emblems were the sexual organs,
+and worship was, to a great degree, licentious. There was no conception
+of a spiritual life after death, or of a state of future rewards and
+punishments. Sacrifice was thought much of, but I doubt whether there
+was anything like what we know as prayer. At any rate, in all those
+parts of the Bible which seem to be the oldest, there is a singular
+absence of any formula or command for supplication. Solomon's prayer
+is comparatively of modern date. Indeed, this vacuity is implied in the
+expression of one of Jesus' disciples, "Teach us to pray, as John
+also taught his disciples" (Luke xi. 1), thus showing clearly that the
+practice of prayer was not a Judaic, i.e., Mosaic one.*
+
+     * As a friend, who has been kind enough to assist me to
+     correct these sheets in their passage through the press,
+     considers that I ought to give some reasons for the
+     assertion made in the text, the following information is
+     appended:--
+
+     I.   There are, in all, about a score of different words in
+     Hebrew which have been translated, "prayer," "I pray,"
+     "praying," &c. These are--(1) ahnah or ahna, (2) begah, (3)
+     ghalah, (4) ghanan, (5) loo, (6) lahgash, (7) na, (8)
+     gathar, (9) pagag, (10) pahlal, (11) tztlah, (12) seeagh,
+     (13) shoal, (14) tephilah.    The rest are different forms
+     of the same roots.
+
+     II.  These words do not, except in a few instances, really
+     bear the signification of "prayer" or "intercession," which
+     is given to them in the Authorised English Version of the
+     Bible; as any one may convince himself by consulting
+     Wigram's Hebrew concordance.
+
+     Thus, No. 1, in three instances, is translated in the A. V.
+     by the interjection "or,(OL)" No. 2, in the A. V. is once
+     used as "praying," but in other parts as "seeking" for
+     persons, "desiring" or "requesting," and "making." No. 8 is
+     translated in various parts of the A. V.    "I am weak" "I
+     fell sick," "was not grieved," "a parturient woman crying,"
+     "to put one's self to pain," "is grievous," "hath laid," "is
+     my infirmity," and these meanings are far more common than
+     the signification of "prayer." No. 4 is only used twice, and
+     is in one place translated  "by showing mercy," and in the
+     other by "making supplication." No. 5 is translated "O
+     that," "peradventure," "would God that," "if," "if haply,"
+     "though," and only once "I pray thee." No. 6 is translated
+     "enchantment," "orator," "earrings," "charmed," and once
+     only "prayer," with the marginal reading "secret speech."
+     No. 7 is in one place "now," in another "Oh," "go to," as
+     well as "I pray," and this in the same sense as we should
+     use the words to a child "I wish you would be quiet" No. 8
+     is generally used in the sense of "intreaty" or "prayer,"
+     but it once is found as "earnest," and "multiplying words,"
+     as in a Litany. No. 9 is used to signify "he came,"
+     "reached," "thou shalt meet," "fall upon," or "kill,"  "he
+     lighted" on a certain place,  "they met together," and in
+     the 53d chapter of Isaiah the same word is used in verse 6,
+     "for the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all," and
+     in verse 12, for "and made intercession for the
+     transgressors!" No. 10 is used almost exclusively for
+     prayer, but it is only found six times in the whole
+     Pentateuch, in one of which it is read "I had no  thought"
+     in the A. V. No. 11 is only found twice, once in Ezra and
+     once in Daniel, and signifies "prayer" in both. No. 12 has
+     many interpretations in the A. V., viz., "meditation,"
+     "speaking," "talking," "complaining," "declaring," in one
+     instance only is it translated "pray," and that in the
+     apparently important text Ps. lv. 17, "Evening and morning
+     and at noon will I pray."   As a substantive the word is
+     rendered as "complaint," "talking, meditation,"
+     "babbling," and only once "prayer," and that in Ps. lv. 2,
+     "Hear my voice, O God, in my prayer." No. 13 is generally
+     translated "ask," as we should remark, "well, if he asks me
+     what must I say?" "beg," as "he shall beg in harvest;"
+     "consulted," in the text "he consulted with images,"
+     "salute," "to salute him of peace;" "enquired," "Saul
+     enquired of the Lord;" "wished," "and wished in himself to
+     die;" "lent," "I have lent him to the Lord," "so that they
+     lent unto them." No. 14 is used exclusively for prayer, but
+     the word is not to be found in the whole of the Pentateuch.
+     III. There is reason to believe that the most important of
+     these words have come from the Persian, a language allied to
+     the Sanscrit;  and if so, it is clear that the idea of
+     prayer was adopted by the Jews after they were patronised by
+     the conquerors of Babylon.    Some of the other words are
+     Aramaic, and probably even more modern than the rest.    For
+     example, No. 10 is compared by Furst in his Hebrew and
+     Chaldee Lexicon, to the Sanscrit phal, and No. 8 may also be
+     derived from the Persian, and a Sanscrit root gad,  which
+     signifies "to speak to," or "call upon,"    Anahf No.  1, is
+     Aramaic.
+
+I think that it was Mons. Weill, in his remarkable book called Moise et
+le Talmud, who first drew attention to the influence of the Talmudists
+upon the Jewish Scriptures. He pointed out that in the Mosaic law there
+was no idea of prayer, intercession, or pardon; everything was based
+upon the "lex talionis," an eye was to be paid for with an eye, murder
+was to be avenged by murder, and ecclesiastical, ceremonial, and other
+transgressions were to be atoned, i.e., satisfaction was to be given by
+sacrifice and payments to the priest or tabernacle. But when the Jews,
+after their contact with the Chaldeans, Medea, Persians, Greeks, and
+Romans, began to study theology, two sects arose--the Talmudists, who
+explained away the older Scriptures, interpolated narratives, or simply
+texts therein, so as to suit their purposes; and the Sadducees, who
+refused to adopt as matters of faith anything which was not taught by
+Moses. The first was the strongest sect, and composed the majority in
+the Sanhedrim. They thus had power over the sacred canon, and could
+reject manuscripts or adopt them according as the purposes which were
+aimed at were served. The Talmudic interpolations are supposed to b"
+recognised chiefly in the more modern parts of the Old Testament,
+in Ezra, Nehemiah, the second Isaiah and Jeremiah, in the books of
+Zechariah and Malachi, in the Chronicles, Daniel, in many Psalms, more
+sparsely in the older histories, but very largely in the Pentateuch.
+From these considerations, from the absence of any order in the Mosaic
+law for the priests to offer any supplication, and from, the general
+absence of prayer from the sacrifices of all nations, we may conclude
+that "intercession" formed no part in the Jewish religion in the early
+days of its existence.
+
+When working upon this subject I endeavoured to examine the curious
+Iguvian tables, on which Aufrecht, Eircher, and Newman have bestowed
+such pains. These are, I believe, the only tables extant which give
+directions to the old Umbrian, or any other ancient priests, how to
+conduct public sacrifices and the ensuing feasts. In them there are
+directions for invocations, but no formula for prayers, unless one can
+call invocations by that name. I fancy, that in some parts of the
+tables there are words which may be rendered "speak," or "mutter," or
+"meditate," or "pray silently."
+
+The fact that a Hebrew historian has composed a prayer, and put it into
+the mouth of King Solomon, rather than into that of a high priest, shows
+that supplication for the people was not a strictly sacerdotal duty.
+Even now, with all our liberality of thought, we take our prayers from
+the Archbishops, and not from the crown.
+
+But what we have said points to another important consideration, viz.,
+how far our Authorized Version can be trusted as a foundation upon which
+to build a theory respecting the use of prayer, when we find that the
+words given in English do not correspond with the words in the original
+Hebrew.
+
+We have noticed in the text that both John and Jesus taught their
+disciples to pray; we may now call attention to the idea which the
+latter had of "prayer." In a parable, which was evidently intended to
+represent what was common enough in his day, he says, "Two men went up
+into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican;
+the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself--God, I thank Thee that
+I am not as other men are," &c (Luke xviii. 10-13). Surely one cannot
+call a boastful enumeration of one's virtues either "supplication,"
+"prayer," or "entreaty;" but we understand readily that what we should
+call "meditation" was once included under the name "prayer." This
+anecdote unquestionably seems to prove that there was nothing like
+public prayer in the temple ritual. The idea of the Ancients was to
+obtain what they wanted by costly sacrifice; the idea of the Moderns is
+to obtain their desires by the expenditure of words only. We know that
+Pagans used long litanies, and that Christians do so too. In Jezebel's
+time "0 Baal, hear us" resounded on Mount Carmel in sonorous monotony.
+We have replaced that heathen chant by another, and our cathedrals
+reverberate constantly with the musical rogation, "We beseech Thee to
+hear us, good Lord," uttered more than a score of times. Our orthodoxy
+consists in our using English instead Phoenician words, and in calling
+Baal by a word more familiar to us; and as the highest commendation
+which we can give to others is to imitate them, so we praise the Ancient
+heathen highly, who thought that they would be heard from their "much
+speaking." It is ever easier to change our words than our practice. Like
+the Pharisee, Christians boast that they are not as other men are; but
+by their proceedings they show that they are like the Jews, of whose
+paternity Jesus had not an exalted opinion. (See John viii. 44).
+
+In further illustration of the absence of a set form of prayer in the
+temple worship in Jerusalem, and of the independence of all devout
+solicitors of priestly aid, I may point to Matthew vi. 5 to 8, wherein
+we find that hypocrites offered their supplications, not only in the
+temple, but at the corners of the streets. It is just possible that in
+the former locality there might have been some public worship going on,
+in which the saintly could join, but certainly there was no such ritual
+at street corners. But if there had really been divine service in the
+temple, it follows that those who joined in it would not have been
+conspicuous, or deserving the name of hypocrites. The fault of these
+which is mentioned by Jesus is ostentatious public prayer, i.e.9 the
+doing of that which had not been prescribed by Moses.
+
+As I have, in a preceding volume, spoken at some length concerning the
+morals and manners of ancient races, and shown how, as a rule, their
+conduct has been the same as that of modern Christians, and as,
+moreover, the subject has been treated of in an essay by Lecky (_History
+of European Morals_), I will not pursue this part of my subject further
+than to remark, that we have scarcely two articles of faith--if, indeed
+we have more than one--i.e., respect for one day in seven--which we have
+not received, directly or indirectly, from Pagans. Even our Christianity
+is but a modified Buddhism, as I shall endeavour, in my next chapter, to
+show.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     Christianity and Buddhism. The new and old world. An
+     impartial judge is said to be a partisan. Works on the
+     subject. Sakya Muni's birth, B.c. 620 (about), position in
+     life, original views. Parallels between Brahmin-ism,
+     Buddhism, Hebraism, and Christianity. History of Sakya Muni
+     --that of Jesus corresponds with it marvellously. Sakya
+     receives a commission from an angel--is henceforth a
+     saviour. History of Jesus follows that of Sakya. Siddartha
+     neither dictated nor wrote. A favourite garden. Sakya and
+     the Brahmins. Buddha and Christ equally persecuted. Spread
+     of Buddhism after Siddartha's death. Asoka a royal convert
+     Buddhist missionaries, b.c. 307. Their wonderful successes.
+     Different development of Buddhism and Christianity.
+     Persecution a Christian practice, Buddha tempted by the
+     Devil, and by women, like St Anthony. Buddha's life reduced
+     to writing, at least B.c. 90. Hardy on Buddhist miracles.
+     His remarks criticised. Necessity for miracles is doubtful.
+     Sakya and a future life. Resurrection from the dead. Jesus
+     not the first fruits of them that slept. Paul's argument
+     worthless. Buddhists in advance of Christians. Priestcraft
+     at time of Buddha and Jesus. Both did away with ceremonial.
+     Sakya's doctrine--compared with Christian teaching. Another
+     parallel between Buddha and Jesus. Commandments of Tathagata
+     (Buddha), or the Great Sramana. Rules for his saintly
+     friends--for outsiders. Definition of terms. The Sra-mana's
+     opinion of miracles--a comparison. The history of Jesus told
+     without miracles. Buddhistic confession--remarks on in
+     modern times. Filial respect. Public confession, murder
+     absolved thereby. Asoka, about B.c. 263, sent out
+     missionaries. Objections made against Buddhism. Ideas
+     respecting God. Salvation. Buddha and Jesus. Nirvana. Heaven
+     and Hell--Christian ideas. Apocalypse. The heaven of John
+     and Mahomet compared with that of Buddha. Prayer not a
+     Buddhist institution--nor originally a Christian one. Nature
+     of prayer. The developments of Buddhism, particulars--
+     comparison between the Eastern ancient and Western modern
+     practice. Abbe Hue. No sexual element in Buddhism and
+     Christianity at first--it has crept into both in later
+     times. Inquiry into the probable introduction of Buddhism
+     into the West. Asceticism peculiar to Buddhism and
+     Christianity. The Essenes, their faith and practice--
+     resemblance to Buddhism. John and Jesus probably Essenes.
+     If Jesus was inspired, so was Siddartha.    Differences
+     between Sakya and Jesus. Jesus 'believed in an immediate
+     destruction of the world. Idea of preexistence in Jesus and
+     Sakya adopted by their followers. The basis of the two
+     faiths is morality--but an unsound one. Nature of the
+     unsoundness. Morality has a reference to a life on earth
+     only. The decalogue superfluous. Ideas of future rewards and
+     punishments. Dives and Lazarus. The world can exist without
+     a knowledge of a future life. God thought so when He taught
+     the Jews. Dogma versus morality. See how these Christians
+     live! There are a few good men amongst Christians.
+     Supplementary remarks.
+
+From the Peruvian and Aztec religious systems in what we designate the
+New World, a phrase which involves the idea that its existence was for
+ages wholly unknown to the historians of the Eastern Hemisphere, we turn
+to another form of faith, which demands even greater attention. Buddhism
+has, probably, done more to influence the minds of men in Asia than
+any other religion in any part of the globe, and its history is so
+remarkable, that it deserves the attention of every philosophical
+student of mankind. To the Christian it ought to be especially
+interesting, inasmuch as there is strong reason to believe that the
+faith current amongst ourselves is to be traced to the teaching of
+Sakya Muni, whose original name, we may notice, in passing, was no more
+"Buddha" than "Christ" was the cognomen of the son of Mary.
+
+An ingenious author on one occasion wrote a charming essay "upon the
+art of putting things," and I cannot read any treatise upon Buddhism,
+written by a Christian, without thinking how completely "the advocate"
+is to be seen throughout them all Ecclesiastical writers, who are
+Protestant preachers, endeavour laboriously to prove that the teaching
+of Sakya Muni could not have been inspired, and was certainly false;
+whilst other writers, who have no particular leaning towards Jesus,
+extol the author of Buddhism beyond that of Christianity. Truly, in such
+a matter it is extremely difficult not to appear as a partisan, however
+carefully the scales may be held. The very fact of endeavouring "to see
+ourselves as others see us" involves the necessity of "putting things"
+in a different light to that which is most common or familiar to us. A
+bumptious Briton thinks more of his own Islands than a Yankee thinks of
+them, and one who endeavours to describe "the wheel of the law" as an
+astute Buddhist would do, and who, at the same time, compares it with
+the teachings of the son of Mary, must seem to those who, without
+knowing its nature, despise the former, and yet implicitly believe in
+the latter, to be a partisan. Acting upon this belief, we shall not
+scruple to appear as an advocate, for we believe that "an opposition"
+is as good in religion as in politics, and that it behoves us all to
+examine every important question in all its bearings.
+
+In the following essay I shall not attempt to go into every detail about
+the life of Sakya Muni, for to do so would weary the reader. Anyone
+who wishes for such information may be referred to _Le Bouddha et sa
+Religion_, par J. Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, Paris, 1860, a book which
+may be fairly designated as exhaustive. The English reader may also
+consult _The Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_, by Rev. R. Spence
+Hardy, London, 1866, which, though very prejudiced, is extremely
+suggestive. Hardy's _Eastern Monachism_ and _Manual of Buddhists_ are
+about the same. _The Mahawanso_ translated by Tumour, is also a very
+valuable work of reference.
+
+There appears to be little doubt that Sakya Muni was born about 622
+years before our era, and that he died when about eighty years of age,
+i.e.f B.C. 542. He was thus a contemporary of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and
+other Jewish prophets. Though of royal birth, and of the warrior or
+kingly caste, he does not appear to have been instructed in general
+history, if, indeed, any such was in existence in Hindostan at that or
+any other period; and we cannot find a tittle of evidence that he
+ever heard of any other religion than Brahminism, the dominant faith,
+apparently, of the Aryan invaders of India. In that he was taught
+assiduously, and some of its tenets he most firmly believed. Amongst
+others, he held that men lived in a future world, in which each one was
+rewarded or punished according to his doings when in a human form. His
+teaching was founded upon the belief which the Brahmins inculcated,
+that all men endure misery in this world for their conduct in a previous
+state of existence, and that they would once again suffer after death,
+unless they conducted themselves, in this life, in a manner pleasing
+to the Almighty. In this creed is clearly involved, if not distinctly
+enunciated, a full acknowledgment of the existence and power of God, of
+the certainty of a future life, and a desire to escape from penalties
+to be inflicted therein by a supreme celestial Judge, for immorality or
+impropriety committed in the present state. For these points of doctrine
+Sakya did not contend, he merely laid down a different system to the
+Brahmins as to the method by which salvation was to be attained, and the
+penal consequences of a sinful life were to be avoided.
+
+We may now, halting here for a moment, examine these matters for
+ourselves, and inquire in what way such faith differs from our own.
+The Brahmin taught that man suffers pain, misery, and death for certain
+crimes committed in a previous state of existence; the Christian teaches
+that each one suffers for a fault committed by ancestors who lived
+thousands of years ago. Neither the one nor the other regard pain,
+sorrow, suffering, and death as the normal accompaniments of life, but
+both attribute them to the wrath of an offended deity, who can be, in
+some way, cheated, cajoled, appeased, or propitiated. Both assert that
+men are debtors to God, and that miseries are "duns" used to make men
+pay their obligations to heaven. The Brahmin taught that this could be
+effected by prayer, sacrifice, and sundry ceremonies to be performed
+by some man who had been specially appointed for the purpose. A due
+attention to morality was also inculcated, but it was apparently
+considered as of less importance than ritualistic observances.
+
+The Jew, whom so many amongst us believe to have been especially taught
+by God, propounded a belief essentially similar to that of the Brahmin,
+with the single exception that he had no faith in a future existence,
+but thought that sacrifice and offerings, through a priesthood, were
+necessary to obtain comfort in this life.
+
+The Christian teaches that the horrors of eternity can only be escaped
+by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts xvi. 30, 31), and by being
+moral in addition.
+
+The "belief" here referred to is somewhat amplified in other parts of
+the Bible, and notably in John iii. 15-17, 36; vi. 39, 40; ix. 35; xi.
+15; and Acts viii. 37; from which we learn that an item in the faith was
+a firm hold upon the idea that Jesus was the son, the only begotten son,
+of God. This dogma is still further extended in the "Apostles' Creed,"
+wherein the Christians express, as articles of faith, their belief, that
+Jesus Christ was the only son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, and
+born of the Virgin Mary, &c. This tenet is somewhat varied in the Nicene
+Creed, which expresses the Christian belief to be, that the Lord Jesus
+Christ is the only begotten son of God--begotten of his Father before
+all worlds--being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things
+were made, &c.
+
+The fundamental teaching of Sakya was, that man can only escape the
+tortures of the damned, by a strict propriety of conduct in this
+world, and a persistent endeavour to renounce and think nothing of the
+gratifications which make life pleasant. The modern Buddhist adds to
+this a belief in the absolute divinity of the founder of his faith, not
+simply that he was a son of God, but a visible embodiment of a portion
+of the Creative Unity. Brahmins and Buddhists believe in transmigration
+of souls: the Christian does the like, only, instead of being converted
+into a beast, he imagines that he will become either an angel or a
+devil.
+
+Within certain limits, we may, therefore, say that the Brahminic, the
+Jewish, the Buddhist, and the Christian religions are essentially
+alike, differing only upon minor points, such as the absolute value of
+morality, of ceremonial, of doctrine, of asceticism, the nature of a
+hypothetical antecedent, and an equally uncertain future existence, and
+the best means of escaping the penalties attached, in the second state,
+to impropriety of conduct in the first. If we deride the Brahmin
+and the Buddhist for the faith which they entertain, our laugh must
+necessarily recoil on ourselves, for we have no more unequivocal grounds
+for our belief than they have for theirs. We point in vain to what we
+call "Revelation," for they can do the same, and if priority in such
+matters is good for anything, the Brahminic must take precedence of the
+Jewish, and the Buddhist of the Christian code. Nor can we call miracles
+to our exclusive aid, for the religious books of the Hindoo are as full
+of them as are those of the Jew and Christian, and the stories told
+in the one can be readily paralleled in impossibility, incapacity,
+frivolity, and absurdity by the others.
+
+We must remember, then, when speaking of the teaching of Sakya, that it
+was constructed upon the supposed fundamental truths of Brahminism, just
+as the doctrines of Jesus were built upon those of Judaism. By adopting
+these, respectively, the two preachers have demonstrated their belief in
+them, but neither the one nor the other have advanced our knowledge
+as to the reality of the earliest faith, nor demonstrated the truth of
+their subsequent assumptions.
+
+If we now endeavour, for the sake of comparison, to place the Eastern
+and the Western points of belief in parallel columns, we shall be better
+able to see the points of resemblance and of difference than by any
+other plan.
+
+[Illustration: 114]
+
+[Illustration: 115]
+
+These are only a few of the leading points of resemblance and
+difference, and might be almost indefinitely multiplied.
+
+After this preface, we may proceed to notice that Siddartha--another
+name for Buddha--was of royal birth, and born in wedlock: his mother was
+called Maya Devi, and was herself the daughter of a king. His father was
+of the warrior caste, and, according to ancient usage, Sakya, like Jesus
+some centuries later, was presented in the temple of the God of his
+parents, and recognized by a Brahmin, whom we may designate as a
+predecessor, by some hundreds of years, of the Jewish Simeon (Luke ii
+25, seq.)f as having the marks of a great man upon him. As Sakya grew up
+to man's estate he was found to be peculiarly clever, and soon distanced
+his masters, as Jesus was and did, when, at twelve years, he went into
+the temple and astonished the doctors. He was always thoughtful, and
+frequently remained alone. Once he wandered into a forest, (compare
+Matthew iv. 1-11), in which he was found lost in thought. When obliged
+to exhibit his talents, Siddartha was found to have every conceivable
+excellence, bodily and mental He was, by parental desire, married to a
+paragon of a wife, who showed her good sense by rejecting the use of a
+veil. In this Sakya differs from Mary's son, who never married, being,
+most probably, of the tribe of the Essenes. In later life Siddartha
+discouraged wedlock and every form of love. But, during all his outward
+happiness; Siddartha's thoughts ran upon the misery which he saw on
+every side to be common in the world, and he entertained a hope that
+he would be able to show man the road to a happy immortality. In these
+ideas the teacher was encouraged by a god, who appeared to him by night,
+and told him that the appointed time for the deliverer had come. This
+comforter also recommended him to leave his wife, his wealth, his
+father's house, and give up all he had, so as to be able to seek,
+unencumbered, the way of salvation. Compare here the passage, Mark x.
+20-30, wherein Jesus gives the same kind of advice as the angel gave
+to Sakya Muni. Having become satisfied of his mission from God, he
+resolutely abandoned everything, and, being really a scion of royalty,
+he had much to renounce. Siddartha thus became a mendicant, dependent
+upon others for food and raiment, and resembled that son of Mary, of
+whom we read that he had not a residence wherein to lay his head (Matt.
+viii. 20; Luke ix. 58). He was about twenty-nine years of age when he
+thus became poor for the sake of mankind. Compare what is said of
+Jesus, Luke iii. 23. Though Siddartha was opposed to the Brahmins, he
+nevertheless studied their doctrines, as Mary's son did that of the
+Hebrew theologians, thoroughly, under one of the wisest of them, for
+many years. Then, leaving this teacher, he went about preaching and
+doing good. So much were men impressed with his beauty, his piety, and
+his doctrines, that they flocked in crowds to see him, and he taught
+them whilst sitting on the brow of Mount Pandava--even kings came to
+hear him. Compare here what is said of the Nazarene, Matt. iv. 23 to
+Matt. viii. 1. Sakya was persecuted for a long time by a relative, who
+ultimately became one of his most ardent disciples. Compare Matt. xvi.
+22 and John xxi. 15, et seq. Siddartha's austerities and mortifications
+of himself, in every conceivable way, were excessive during the next six
+years, and these have been represented as a combat with the Devil, whose
+kingdom he destroyed. At the end of this probation, Sakya Muni, finding
+fasting and pain not profitable for eternal salvation, resumed the
+ordinary human habits of eating, &c. This disgusted many of his
+disciples, and "they walked no more with him." He was partly supported
+by a slave woman, and was content to clothe himself with vestments taken
+from the dead. Finally, this wonderful son of Maya heard within him a
+voice, which told him that he was divine, the saviour of the world, and
+the incarnation of the wisdom of God--Buddha, "the word" itself. Compare
+John i. 1, et seq. This was confirmed by a miracle, and thus, at the
+age of thirty-six, and at the foot of a fig tree, Sakya Muni received
+a divine commission, "and the word was made flesh." But, though thus
+divinely inspired, the saviour doubted his power to convert mankind, and
+at the first he only preached his new doctrines to a few. Even in this
+respect it is marvellous to see how closely the Christian story of Jesus
+follows that of his predecessor Siddartha. Some opposed Sakya, but these
+were soon converted by his majesty, and the glory with which he spake
+the words--"Yes," he said, "I have come to see clearly both immortality
+and the way to attain it; I am Buddha--I know all--I see all--I have
+blotted out my faults, and am above all law." Recognizing in Siddartha
+the teacher of mankind, the common people heard him gladly, and gave
+him homage, and he, in return, taught them his full doctrine. The Indian
+saviour then proceeded to the holy city, Benares, and taught there.
+But though he spoke much, he neither dictated nor wrote--like Jesus,
+subsequently, he made no provision by which his doctrines might be
+perpetuated. From Benares he went to other places, some of which were
+especially dear to him, and thus became sacred. In like manner Bethany
+was sanctified by Jesus. Amongst others was a garden, given to him,
+with a mansion, by a wealthy disciple, which a lively fancy might call a
+Hindoo Gethsemane. In this garden Buddha made many disciples, and in
+it the first council of his followers was held after his death. Another
+favourite retreat was a plantation of mango trees, and this, like every
+other spot that Siddartha is known to have visited, has been adorned by
+the faithful with ornamental architecture in commemoration of him.
+
+As may be supposed, Sakya, when he assailed the Brahmins, was in turn
+opposed by them with persevering malevolence; the former was outspoken
+and said what he thought of the priests--he called them hypocrites,
+cheats, impostors, and the like--and they were apparently conscious that
+they deserved such titles.
+
+Here, again, we notice a singular parallel between the Hindoo saviour
+and the Jewish one, who followed him after a long interval. Not that
+there is anything wonderful in the founder of a new faith reviling the
+ministers of one more ancient--nor in the priests of an established
+church endeavouring to suppress, by punishments, the professors who
+interfere with their repose. We know how the Christian fathers abused
+and lampooned the faith of those whose practices they detested--how
+Luther and his followers lashed the vices of the Papists, and how these
+in their turn burned the new preachers--when they had a chance; how the
+Nonconformists censured the Establishment, and how the Episcopal Church
+has harried Independents and Presbyterians. But it is strange to
+find both Sakya and Jesus inaugurating a religion of peace by fierce
+invectives. We have not particulars respecting the choice of language
+made use of by the Indian, but we can scarcely imagine that it could be
+more to the purpose than the vituperation employed by the Hebrew. Jesus
+says,--"Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is
+made ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves,"--"Ye
+are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward,
+but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matt,
+xxiii. 15-27). One cannot wonder that the Brahmins and the Pharisees,
+who were objurgated as hypocrites, should retort upon their accusers,
+prosecute the one and crucify the other.
+
+As Sakya's influence increased, the power of the old priesthood
+diminished, and there are accounts of many contests between the old
+dispensers of Brahma's religion and the new saviour, which were held
+before kings and people. In consequence of these disputes Buddha's life
+was repeatedly in danger. But though often threatened, Siddartha died
+peacefully when about eighty years old, beloved by many, respected by
+more, worshipped as a divinity by his immediate disciples and intimate
+friends, and venerated by all who had listened to his discourses.
+
+There are a great many legends existent, and of very respectable
+antiquity too, which tell of miracles performed by this very remarkable
+Indian teacher; but the judicious historian, upon whose authority I am
+at present relying (St. Hilaire), does not intermingle these with the
+narrative of Siddartha's life. In this respect he shows greater judgment
+than the scribes who first compiled the stories of Buddha and of Jesus,
+both of whom conceived that human beings could not be converted to a new
+style of belief without thaumaturgy.
+
+The account of Sakya Muni and his religion would be incomplete did we
+not add that he left behind him enthusiastic disciples who were eager
+and successful in spreading his views. But many years, how many we do
+not know with absolute certainty, elapsed ere any account was written
+either of his life or of his teaching. Nor ought we to wonder at this,
+for until time has been given to mankind, it cannot fairly estimate the
+value of anything new; and when men do at length form, what they believe
+to be, a perfect judgment of the importance of the doctrine which has
+become deeply rooted, they are more eager to promulgate it in the world
+than to record it by writing in the closet.
+
+The new religion certainly spread extensively all over the vast
+continent of Hindustan, and in the course of about three hundred years,
+found an enthusiastic and powerful convert in the person of a king
+called Asoka, who was reigning when the third convocation of Buddhists
+was called, b.c. 307. This ruler was imbued with a missionary spirit,
+and under his influence, preachers full of energy went not only
+throughout India, but into China, Japan, Ceylon, and apparently into
+every country to which ships, caravans, and the flow of commerce gave
+them access, including Persia, Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and
+the very populous and important emporium Alexandria. We may judge of the
+fanaticism of these religious envoys by their success, and we may, as
+is often done by Christian missionaries, test the real value of their
+doctrine by its endurance, and its adaptability to the religious
+wants of the human animal. If missionary success is a test of truth in
+religion, Buddhism must be superior to Christianity. Buddah--for his
+name is spelled variously--has more followers, according to competent
+authorities, than Jesus, and if the depth and earnestness shown by the
+converts to the two men could be weighed in impartial scales, we believe
+that the preponderance would be in favour of the followers of the Indian
+saviour.
+
+We readily allow that Buddhism has not developed in many matters like
+Christianity has done. The Buddhism of to-day does not essentially
+differ from that in the early ages of the faith; the followers of
+Siddartha have not adopted the doctrines of the nations amongst which
+they have settled. The Christianity of to-day, on the other hand, is so
+widely different from that current in the first century of our era, that
+it has been remarked, with great pungency, that if Jesus revisited us
+now, he would be denounced as a heretic, and abused as a nonconformist.
+His followers soon introduced politics into religion, and adopted the
+fables and the doctrines of the Pagans amongst whom they dwelt, merely
+changing certain names, and ascribing virtues and miracles to saints,
+which the heathen attributed to Apollo, Mars, or Venus. Jesus, though a
+Jew, never sacrificed, nor did his apostles, but his followers thought
+prudent to filch the practice from the heathen; and, to smooth their
+difficulty, they profess to turn bread and wine into flesh and blood,
+and offer it up as an oblation upon their ecclesiastical altar. Jesus
+knew nothing of purgatory; with him the rich man went direct to hell,
+and Lazarus to Abraham's bosom. Modern Christians are wiser than their
+teacher; for he disdained the learning of Egypt, his followers took
+their purgatory and trinity therefrom. All this shows, that the faith
+of Christians in their teacher has not been equal to the unbounded trust
+felt by the Buddhist in his master's wisdom. Buddhism, moreover, has
+neither taught nor sanctioned any system of persecution. Sakya, it is
+true, encouraged men to make themselves miserable upon earth that they
+might attain future immunity from woe, but he never ordered them to use
+the sword or dragonnades to force other people to do so. The followers
+of Jesus, on the other hand, have but too often founded their claim to
+a happy immortality on making other men, whom they called heretics,
+miserable, as during the period of the crusades against the Saracens,
+the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Waldenses. The Christians in many
+ages seemed to argue thus:--As the painful death of Mary's son saved the
+world, so I, by torturing a heretic, may save myself. This is an idea
+of vicarious atonement which, though prevalent for centuries, has never
+been committed to writing by those who hold it. We do not mean to allege
+that the opinion referred to cannot be found in history, for it is from
+such a source that our assertion comes. A belief, such as we refer to,
+was promulgated amongst the Crusaders, and was fostered by the founders
+of the Inquisition. Such an idea, too, is embodied in the word--"The
+time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God
+service" (John xvi. 2).
+
+We may, however, trace the idea of persecution in the early Christian
+Scriptures. Paul, for example, when writing to the Corinthians (1
+Epistle v. 3-5) gives such encouragement as he can to those who punish
+an erring brother Christian, by delivering him over to Satan for the
+destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the
+Lord Jesus, and in (1st Tim. i. 20), the same author declares,--"I have
+delivered Hymenseus and Alexander unto Satan that they may learn not to
+blaspheme." The idea being, that by thus acting, both the Corinthians
+and Paul were improving their own ecclesiastical condition.
+
+As I may not have another available opportunity for introducing one or
+two striking parallels between Sakya Muni and Jesus, I may mention
+here that the former is represented as being tempted by and having
+conversation with an evil spirit called Mara, Evil one, Destroyer,
+Devil, or Papiyan. In one of these confabulations Buddah says,--"I will
+soon triumph over you--'desires' are your chief soldiers, then come
+idleness, hunger and thirst, passions, sleepy indolence, fears, doubts,
+angers, hypocrisy, ambition, the desire to be respected, and to have
+renown, praise of yourself and blame for others--these are your black
+allies, the soldiers of the burning demon. Your soldiers subjugate gods
+and men, but not me, I shall crush them by wisdom, then what will you
+do?" (Hilaire, p. 61). The sage is then, not unlike the so-called St.
+Anthony, tempted by lovely woman, thirty-two lovely demons (Apsaras)
+deploying all their charms. Then follows a third trial, and Mara says
+to Siddartha,--"I am the lord of desire, I am the master of the entire
+world, the gods, the crowd of Davanas (spirits), men and beasts have
+been subjugated by me and are in my power. Like them enter my domains,
+rise up and speak like them." Buddha replied,--"If you are the lord of
+desire you are not the lord of light. Look at me, I am the lord of the
+law, you are powerless, and in your very sight I shall obtain supreme
+intelligence," (p. 64, op. cit.). The demon makes one more effort, and
+is again conquered, and then retires, tracing with an arrow these words
+upon the ground--"My empire has passed away." It may be imagined that
+the French author whom I quote is a partisan of the Indian sage; far
+from it, he records such tales with regret, for he sees how strong an
+influence they must have upon the perfect or imperfect authenticity
+of the New Testament and the story of Jesus. The similarity of the two
+histories is heightened by the legend before noticed, that Buddha went
+to Heaven to convert his mother, whilst Jesus is said to have gone down
+to Hades to preach to the spirits in prison, with the implied intention
+of converting them to the faith which he preached.
+
+It will doubtless have occurred to anyone reading the preceding pages,
+if he be but familiar with the New Testament, that either the Christian
+histories called Gospels have been largely influenced by Buddhist's
+legends, or that the story of Siddartha has been moulded upon that
+of Jesus. The subject is one which demands and deserves the greatest
+attention, for if our religion be traceable to Buddhism, as the later
+Jewish faith is to the doctrines of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians,
+we must modify materially our notions of "inspiration" and "revelation."
+Into this inquiry St. Hilaire goes as far as documentary evidence allows
+him, and Hardy in _Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_ also enters
+upon it in an almost impartial manner. From their conclusions there can
+be no reasonable doubt that the story of the life of Sakya Muni, such as
+we have described it, certainly existed in writing ninety years before
+the birth of Jesus; consequently, if the one life seems to be a copy of
+the other, the gospel writers must be regarded as the plagiarists.
+
+In the story of Buddha, we have eliminated the miraculous part, and
+exhibited him simply as a remarkable man. Nevertheless, in the writings
+of his followers, miracles in abundance are assigned to him. Whether
+these existed in the original history Hardy doubts, and his remarks
+are so apposite that we reproduce them (op. cit. p. xxviii). "Upon
+the circumstances of this first rehearsal (of the life and doctrine of
+Siddartha), most important consequences depend. If the miracles ascribed
+to Buddha can be proved to have been recorded of him at the time of his
+death, this would go far towards proving that the authority to which
+he laid claim was his rightful prerogative. They were of too public
+character to have been ascribed to him then if they had not taken place;
+so that if it was openly declared by his contemporaries, by those who
+had lived with him in the same monastery, that he had been repeatedly
+visited by Sekra and other Deivas; and that he had walked through the
+air and visited the heavenly world in the presence of many thousands,
+and those the very persons whom they addressed, we ought to render to
+him the homage awarded to him by even his most devoted followers. But
+the legend of the early rehearsal has nothing to support it beyond
+the assertion of authors who lived at a period long subsequent. The
+testimony of contemporaneous history presents no record of any event
+that quadrates with the wonderful powers attributed to the 'rahals,'
+which would undoubtedly not have been wanting if these events had really
+taken place."
+
+The reader of this extract will now naturally turn his attention to the
+Christian gospels, and inquire into the time when they were written, and
+whether the arguments used by Hardy, for disbelieving the miracles
+of Buddha, do not equally disprove the authenticity of the miracles
+attributed to Jesus. We can find nowhere, in contemporary history--and
+there is an adequate account thereof, both Jewish and Roman--any records
+of the wonders said to have been done in Judea by the son of Mary.
+Though he was noticed by a certain writer in the Talmud, under the name
+of Ben Panther, that book contains no account of the marvellous works
+recorded in the gospels, nor any reference to his miraculous power. The
+Romans who dwelt in Jerusalem knew nothing of any real miracle, though
+Herod is reported to have noticed some gossiping accounts of John's
+successor. We do not find a single reference to any of the wonderful
+events told in the gospels in any epistle written by those who
+"companied with Jesus"--except the assertion that he had risen from the
+dead, to be found in 1 Corinthians xv. and elsewhere--whose value is
+problematical Still farther, we have tolerably good evidence to show
+that the Gospels were written at a time when they could not be tested
+by those people in whose presence the wonders were said to have been
+wrought. The narrative of John, for example, is, by scholars, supposed
+to have been written more than a century, probably one hundred and fifty
+years, after the crucifixion, and the others seem to have been composed
+for the benefit of those who did not live in, or know Jerusalem and
+Judea intimately. They resemble, in almost every respect, the stories
+told of such Roman saints as Francis of Assisi, Bernard, Carlo Borromeo,
+and Ignatius Loyola, which were always composed long after the death,
+and out of the presence of every one of those who could deny or
+controvert them. However much, or little, we may credit the biographies
+of Buddha and Jesus, we cannot for a moment doubt, that the two
+individuals were instrumental in founding forms of religion, which,
+by the aid of missionaries, spread over a vast extent of the habitable
+globe. Unlike that of Mahomet, the faiths referred to were promulgated
+by peaceful persuasion rather than by the sword, and by the power
+of eloquence, example, and precept, rather than by the influence of
+miracles. If, for the sake of argument, we grant that every specimen
+of thaumaturgy which his followers attribute to Jesus is correctly
+reported, we must allow also that his power of making converts by
+teaching, preaching, and wonder working, was inferior to that of his
+followers, who taught, preached, and proselytized without performing
+many, if any miracles. If we assert that miraculous powers are necessary
+for the establishment and propagation of a new religion, then we must,
+to be consistent with ourselves, believe in the thaumaturgy of the
+Buddhists, and the divine mission of Sakya Muni. If, on the other hand,
+we deny that Siddartha was an incarnate god or saviour, was not divinely
+inspired, and performed no real miracle, then it is clear that the
+miracles, which Jesus is said to have achieved, were wholly unnecessary,
+and not required in any way to upset an old religion, to found a new, or
+to spread it when established.
+
+The philosopher may pause here, with profit to himself, and inquire
+whether there is, or there are, any new form or forms of religion which
+has or have sprung up within his own observation, and if so, whether
+it or they has or have been based upon thaumaturgy--and, if one or more
+have been so founded, whether one shows evidence of stability.
+
+Few can deny that Mormonism is a form of belief which has a considerable
+number of adherents, a body of earnest missionaries, and a laity whose
+faith and practice have been sorely tested by hardship. Yet there has
+not been a single miracle performed by its prophets. It is reported
+that its founder announced that he would perform one in the sight of
+all Israel and of the sun, but when the time came he said, that if the
+spectators believed that he could do what was promised, that was quite
+enough!
+
+Spiritualism, on the other hand, is a new sort of theosophy, ostensibly
+founded and supported wholly by thaumaturgy; its disciples have induced
+themselves to believe, against their original ideas, that we are not
+only surrounded by the spirits of the departed, but that these can be
+brought into connection with us by means of certain individuals, called
+mediators or mediums--that these have such power, over the invisible
+beings hovering in the air, that the souls of the dead may be made to
+shake the tables of the living, and lift up their sofas to the ceiling.
+The miracles are believed in by many, but Spiritualism lags far behind
+the Mormon theology, and probably always will do.
+
+We may regard this part of our subject in yet another light. Let us,
+for example, suppose that the Buddhists and the Christians succeed in
+persuading each other of the incorrectness of the miraculous element
+in their respective books, does it therefore follow, that any essential
+part of the creed of either one or other must be altered? The doctrines
+of Siddartha would not be valueless even if his followers disbelieved
+in his power to fly as a bird, or cross a river on the surface of the
+water--nor would those of Mary's son be proved to be worthless if it
+were certain that he never marched over a billowy sea, and that he was
+not really killed by crucifixion. The disciples of Sakya Muni believed
+in a resurrection of the dead, without having had the advantage of
+a real or imaginary reappearance of their master after his supposed
+decease. The Etruscans, Greeks, and Romans, had all an Elysium to which
+the good folk went. The Red Indian believes in a future life and happy
+hunting grounds (so we are told), although he has never heard of Judea.
+The rude Northmen and Danes had also their Valhalla to go to after
+death, long ere they were Christians. Still farther, it is to be
+noticed, by the close observer, that the Jews at the time of Jesus, and
+some of the Greeks about the same period, were divided in their opinions
+respecting the existence of men in a future state. The Sadducees,
+holding fast to the books of Moses and the Prophets, denied the
+existence of a resurrection, of angels or of spirits. The Pharisees,
+on the other hand, influenced apparently by Babylonian and Persian
+theology, had faith in all three. That this belief in a future life was
+not commonly held by the poor folk in Judea, we infer from Mark ix. 10,
+wherein we are told that Peter, James, and John were "questioning
+with one another what the rising from the dead should mean." That the
+Athenians were equally careless about what is now called "heaven and
+hell," we judge from Acts xvii. 18, wherein we are told that Paul's
+preaching about "Jesus and the resurrection" was a strange affair, and
+from the thirty-second verse of the same chapter, wherein it is said
+that the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus was received with
+derision.
+
+I am quite aware that it may be objected to these remarks that the doubt
+about the rising from the dead does not point to a general resurrection,
+but simply to the return to life of one particular individual. This,
+however, only removes the difficulty to a short distance, for Greek
+story tells us of the annual return of Proserpine from the realms
+of Pluto to the light of day, and Adonis was yearly resuscitated, in
+mythical narrative. For the Hebrew, the rising from the dead ought not
+to be a wonderful matter. Was it not told in their Scriptures how, when
+certain persons were burying a man, the bearers in a fright threw the
+corpse into the sepulchre of Elijah, whose bones had such efficacy that
+they revived the dead man, who stood on his feet (2 Kings xiii. 21). We
+find also, from Mark vi. 16, Luke ix. 9, that Herod had a full belief in
+the power of John to rise again from the death to which that monarch had
+consigned him. The sceptic may doubt the ability of the two evangelists
+to read what was passing through the royal mind when Jesus and his works
+were brought before its notice, but he cannot doubt that the writer was
+aware that in Herod's time there was a belief in the resurrection of
+individuals. Indeed, we find in the verse following that which tells
+of the Apostle's bewilderment, Mark ix. 11, a question, "why say the
+scribes that Elias must first come?" To which the reply is that the
+prophet has come. We are constrained, therefore, to believe that
+Jesus was not the first who rose from the dead; nay, even he himself
+commissioned his disciples to "cleanse the lepers, and raise the dead"
+(Matth. x. 8). What, then, is the value of the arguments that Paul
+builds upon the assertion that Christ is "the first fruits of them that
+slept."
+
+This being so, we may fairly ask, whence did Mary's son derive the ideas
+which he promulgated of a resurrection, and of salvation, and why had
+a sophistical writer like Paul to adopt the clumsy contrivance of
+asserting that Jesus not only had risen, but that he was the first
+individual who had done so, to demonstrate that the dead really did
+return again to life? Paul's argument, indeed, shows how little he
+knew or had thought upon the subject, for he distinctly preaches a
+resurrection of the body, not of the soul, a belief adopted into the
+Apostles' creed. Yet, at the very period when the minds of Christians
+were thus unformed, the disciples of Buddha, to a man, believed in a
+future "Nirvana," in which "there should be no more sorrow nor crying,
+neither should there be any more pain, and where all earthly things
+should have passed away" (see Rev. xxi. 4). We are not yet in the
+position to prove that Mary's son and certain of his followers received
+their inspiration from disciples of Siddartha, but there is certainly
+a strong presumption in favour of the possibility, much evidence of its
+probability, and nothing whatever to disprove it. To this, however, we
+will return by and by.
+
+Ere we proceed to examine into the nature of the doctrines of Sakya Muni
+and of Jesus, we may cast a glance over the condition of the men whom
+they converted. In both instances, it is not too much to say that
+they all were "priest-ridden" in the fullest meaning of the term. The
+residents in Modern India and Papal Rome, until a short time ago, well
+understood what the term signifies; day by day, and almost hour by hour,
+there is, or was in these places, some ceremony to be attended, some
+prayer to be uttered, some confession to be made, some contribution
+to be given to monastery, church, or priest. Penances are, and were
+inflicted of the most painful, sometimes of the most disgusting kind.
+The last I heard of was in Wales, where a man was ordered to lie down
+at the church door as a mat, upon which the faithful were to wipe their
+feet. Both in India and Italy, men, women, and children alike are, or
+were, taught to regard themselves as the servants, and even slaves of
+the hierarchy, and their money is, or was, alienated from wives and
+children to swell the coffers of spiritual tyrants. Perpetual terrors of
+hell are sounded, until those hearers, whose hearts are impressionable,
+are habitually haunted by imaginary horrors, each one of which has to be
+bought off by a sort of hush-money paid to the priest, who has invented,
+adopted, or described them.
+
+Such was the condition of England and France prior to the Reformation
+and the Revolution.
+
+So long as men are debased by their guides, and allow themselves,
+with the docility of a well-trained dog, to be ruled, and so long as
+tyrannical flamens can wring an ever increasing tax from the people,
+there is probably nothing more in the breast of each than a vague
+feeling of dislike, or regret, at the existence of such things, which
+rarely receives utterance for fear of punishment. But as soon as a
+man, more bold than his neighbours, raises a standard of revolt, whose
+success appears to be secure, the bulk of the oppressed first sympathize
+with, yet fear to join him, then, after watching eagerly the course of
+events, and admiring the boldness of men more resolute than themselves,
+they timidly make common cause with the reformer, and, if circumstances
+favour them, they become enthusiastic. As the news of the mental revolt
+swells, the people, tired of oppression, rise in their might and sweep
+away the hierarchy, or compel it to abandon its pretensions. Buddha and
+Christ were such leaders as we here describe, and such was the course
+gone through by their followers. The timid Peter denying Jesus, and yet
+afterwards boldly preaching him up, is an example almost too well known
+to be quoted.
+
+We are now in a position to inquire into the nature of Siddartha's
+teaching.
+
+Premising that his doctrines were collected at least 200 years B. C.,
+the first which we notice is one that he not only inculcated by language
+but enforced by his abiding example. He taught that the comforts and
+pleasures of this life act as fetters, to chain man's spirit to earth;
+that day by day they necessitate the cultivation of propensities
+and passions more or less bestial in their nature; and that as these
+strengthen, so the individual who possessed them would be born again,
+after his death, to some form of misery and woe in which he would have
+to atone for the human infirmities which he had not conquered. To escape
+from the possibility of such an event, Sakya counselled his disciples
+to wean themselves, as far as possible, from every sensual passion; to
+mortify the body by fasting, so as to make it more readily separable
+from the inner man; to renounce all comfort except that of doing good;
+and believing in a state of perfect future salvation.
+
+A man, he taught, must abandon everything as valueless compared with the
+attainment of salvation or _nirvana_; he must be wholly dependent upon
+others for food and raiment; he must take no thought for the morrow, and
+live like a bird or lily, laying up no store; for certainly a disciple
+of Sakya ought not to undertake any trade or other means of gaining a
+livelihood, lest it should ensnare his spirit and tie it down to the
+grovelling things of earth.
+
+This was the rule for the very faithful, the infirm believers had a more
+lenient code.
+
+If we now turn to the doctrine said to have been taught by Jesus and
+his disciples, we shall find a close parallel between it and that of the
+Indian teacher. For example, John says (1 Epis. ii. 15,16) "Love not
+the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love
+the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
+world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye, and the pride of
+life, is not of the Father but is of the world." Paul says (Rom. xii. 2)
+"Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing
+of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and
+perfect will of God." James also says (ch. iv. 4) "Know ye not that the
+friendship of the world is enmity with God; whosoever, therefore,
+will be a friend of the world, is the enemy of God." Again, we find in
+Matthew xix., Mark x., and Luke xii., the story of a young man who was
+possessed of wealth, probably scarcely less than that of Sakya Muni,
+and whose life had been conscientiously conducted, according to the
+commandments which he knew, and who having heard of Jesus, came to ask
+him if there were a more certain way of salvation than the one he was
+in. To him the reply is,--"If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
+thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven,
+and come and follow me." In the verses, moreover, which follow, there is
+a remark from the same teacher to the effect, that "every one that hath
+forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,
+or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred
+fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."
+
+Once again, we find an exact counterpart of Buddha's teaching in the
+sermon on the Mount, which is recorded in Matth. vi. 25-34--"I say unto
+you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall
+drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more
+than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for
+they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your
+heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?... Why
+take ye thought for raiment, consider the lilies of the field... if God
+so clothe the grass... shall he not much more clothe you? Therefore
+take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or
+wherewithal shall we be clothed?... Take therefore no thought for the
+morrow... sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Other similar
+passages might readily be given, but the above suffice to demonstrate
+the Buddhistic teaching of the prophet of Nazareth.
+
+Both start from the idea that death, disease, pain, and misery is the
+result of sin--and both imagine that sin consists in living and acting
+upon the natural wants, necessities, and propensities of human kind.
+Both imagine that to be natural is to be vile, and that salvation is to
+be attained by resisting every impulse which is common to mankind Man
+desires to eat when hungry--this is a weakness to be combated; a mother
+loves her babe--this must not be tolerated; a youth covets a damsel in
+marriage--this is a snare to draw both down to hell; celibacy must be
+enforced. The argument runs thus,--If any one enjoys life he is sure to
+fear death, and will certainly pay for his pleasures; but if any one has
+the resolution to pass his years on earth in misery like that of hell,
+he will be glad to die, and fearless of any place of torment; use has
+bred a habit in him and no torture can come amiss.
+
+Some Christian author has ventured to assert "religion never was
+designed to make our pleasures less," but he was a conspicuous heretic.
+Buddha's doctrine was founded upon the assertion that life is always
+short, and that it is not worth a man's while to buy a few years of
+enjoyment with myriads of years of agony. Jesus preached that the Jews'
+time was short, for they, and most probably all the world besides, were
+to be burned up any day within the duration of the generation--what then
+was the use of laying up stores of grain, of buying fine clothes, and
+keeping wine to get mellow?
+
+Both preachers were equally short sighted and absurd in their teaching,
+for if their disciples were to live upon alms, and all repented and
+adopted the doctrine, it is clear that all would starve together, and
+self immolation by hunger was repugnant to both prophets. If no one made
+clothes all must go naked, and indecency was forbidden. If no one was
+to lay up money, there would be no one to pay for work, yet toil was
+considered to be a duty. If every one was to live from hand to mouth,
+who would keep a calf until it became a heifer, or a lamb to become a
+sheep?
+
+It is difficult to conceive that two individuals could have worked out
+such a scheme of salvation independently, and the minuteness of the
+resemblances induces me to believe that Jesus, possibly without knowing
+it, first adopted and then promulgated in Judea the doctrines of the
+Indian sage.
+
+Following, again, the lead of St. Hilaire (_Le Bouddha, &c_, 1860, pp.
+81, et seq.), we find that Siddartha taught 600 years B. C., that death
+and all the miseries of mankind were due to the passions, desires, and
+sins of man; that all this misery would cease in Nirvana (of which we
+shall speak by and by), and that the means to attain to this salvation
+is to keep the true faith; to have a correct judgment; to be truthful in
+all things, and to hold every false thing in abhorrence; always to act
+and to think with a pure and honest mind; to adopt a religious life,
+i.e., one that is in no respect worldly, not owing even subsistence
+to anything which might be tainted with sin; to practise a careful
+and earnest study of the law; to cultivate a good memory, so that all
+mistakes in conduct may be remembered if they have occurred, and be
+avoided in the future; and frequent meditation, i.e., an abstraction
+of the mind from self consciousness, a thinking of nothing, so as
+to approximate the soul to Nirvana. These were Buddha's fundamental
+verities. It is put more shortly thus,--"Practising no evil, advancing
+in the exercise of every virtue, purifying one's self in mind and will,
+this is indeed the doctrine of all the Buddhas." _Journal of Royal
+Asiatic Society_, vol. xix. p. 473.
+
+We may once more stop to compare the teaching of Siddartha with that
+familiar to Christians. Paul says, for example (Rom. v. 12) "As by one
+man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon
+all men, for that all have sinned;" again, in chap, vi. 23, "the wages of
+sin is death;" again, in chap. vii. 5, "when we were in the flesh the
+motions of sins... did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
+death;" and again, chap. viii. 6, "to be carnally minded is death; but
+to be spiritually minded is life and peace." We may next refer to what
+some call the fundamental teaching of Jesus, as enunciated in answer
+to the question of the young man "What shall I do that I may inherit
+eternal life?" Matthew xix., Mark x., "If thou wilt enter into life,
+keep the commandments. Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit
+adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness,
+honour thy father and thy mother, and thou shalt love thy neighbour as
+thyself." And when the young man asserted that he had done so, all
+that he was told to do in addition, was to sell his property, give the
+proceeds to the poor, and become a follower of Jesus, who had not where
+to lay his head, and to live upon the charity of other people. I must,
+however, notice in passing, that the teaching of Jesus is not by
+any means so uniform as that of Sakya, for we find the former here
+instructing a young man to do no murder, but at a subsequent period,
+that of the last supper, Jesus exhorts his disciples, and through them,
+possibly, the very man to whom he rehearsed the commandments, thus "He
+that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one," (Luke xxii
+36). Certainly a direct encouragement to homicide.
+
+For the benefit of the Buddhists a short formula of faith has been
+framed, which is to this effect--"Tathagata (another name of Sakya
+Muni), in the proper condition, has explained that our present state
+is produced by antecedent causes, and the great Sramana, or Ascetic
+(another cognomen of Siddartha), has told us how to avoid the effects of
+sin. The effects are pain and actual existence, having for their cause
+past sins; the cause is the production of suffering: the cessation of
+these effects is Nirvana, the teaching of Tathagata, or of the great
+Sramana, is the way which leads to Nirvana." The Christian formula runs,
+"As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." To this
+we may compare a Nepaulese saying, "Arise, leave your possession, take
+up the law of Buddha, and break asunder the power of death."
+
+In addition to the fundamental maxim given on the preceding page, Sakya
+Muni added many others, amongst them, "Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt
+not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not lie, thou
+shalt not get drunk;" others are of lighter consequence--"thou shalt
+not eat out of due season, thou shalt not watch dances or theatrical
+representations, or listen to songs or music, thou shalt abstain from
+all ornamentation of dress, &c., and from perfume; thou shalt not have
+a large bed, nor ever take gold or silver; thou shalt remain inflexibly
+chaste."
+
+To those who desired to become disciples and personal friends of Buddha,
+it was ordained that (a) They should only be clothed with rags taken
+from the cemeteries, or from heaps of refuse, or found on the high road.
+(b) That there should only be three of these vestments, and that each
+should be stitched by the wearer, and that they should be covered with
+a cloak of yellow wool (c) That the food should be as simple as
+possible--a rule adopted by Christian saints, but not by Bishops.
+(d) That all should live upon alms and offerings, which should be begged
+for, in perfect silence, from house to house, and placed in a vessel
+made of wood--a plan adopted by certain Christian mendicant friars.
+(e) That only one meal should be taken during the day--a rule to be found in
+some Christian monasteries. (f) That no aliments, even the most simple,
+should be taken after noon, the rest of the day after this period should
+be devoted to teaching and meditation. (g) The faithful should live in
+the wilderness or forest, and not in towns or villages. Hence Christian
+hermits lived in the deserts of the Thebaid. (h) They should only
+shelter themselves under the boughs and leaves of trees. (i) They should
+sit with the back supported only by the trunk chosen for refuge.
+(j) They should sleep sitting, and not lying down. (k) They should never
+change their sitting mat from the place where it was put first. (l) The
+disciples should unite together, at least upon one night in the month,
+to meditate amongst the tombs upon the instability of human things.
+Mendicity, chastity, and asceticism were essential parts of Sakya Muni's
+practice, and St. Hilaire (op. cit., p. 87) naively remarks that these
+certainly are not the means for making good citizens, though they may
+produce good saints.
+
+We may notice, in passing, that the pious followers of Sramana (the one
+who mastered his passions) were very much more proper, in our eyes, than
+some of the Brahmins, from whom they seceded, inasmuch as the former
+wore sufficient garments to cover themselves decently, whilst the
+latter, whom the Greeks called "Gymnosophists," went without any more
+clothing than the horse or ass. It is also to be noticed that Siddartha
+provided a sort of code of laws to be observed by those who wished to
+adopt his method of salvation, without becoming altogether "religious."
+These consisted in the enforcement of chastity, purity, patience,
+courage, contemplation, and knowledge--these were, it was asserted, the
+transcendent virtues which would pass man across the river of death.
+They would not land him there in life, but whilst these were adopted as
+the rule of life, the aspirant was in the right way to attain "Nirvana."
+
+The charity which Sakya Muni ordained was universal, extending even
+to what we call the lower animals, and one example is given in which a
+disciple cast himself into the sea to save a boat's crew in danger of
+death from a storm, whilst another tells of Buddha giving himself as
+food to a tigress, who had not sufficient milk for her young ones.
+
+Again, the precept against "lying" included false witness, and all that
+we call "bad language," as well as trifling chat, called "badinage,"
+"wit," and the like. Persons were not only to avoid wrong, but they
+were to cultivate every good habit, or what we designate each "Christian
+grace." It was inculcated, that beauty of language, or eloquence,
+pleasantness of voice, and a due respect to cadence should be studied,
+so as to make their teaching popular, a precept not much regarded
+amongst ordinary Christian divines. Beyond other things, humility was
+inculcated, not that which exists on the lips only, and is apparently
+compatible with the determined endeavour to exercise unlimited power,
+which has been conspicuous in the Papacy for a millennium at least, but
+that which conceals greatness and demonstrates littleness. Thus there
+is a legend of Buddha refusing, at the request of a king, to exhibit any
+miracle to convince his opponents, his answer being, "Great king, I do
+not teach the law to my hearers by saying to them, 'Go, oh you religious
+men! and before Brahmins and house-holders perform, by means of a
+supernatural power, miraculous things, which no other men can effect,'
+but I say to them, in teaching them the law, 'Live, oh ye pious ones, so as
+to conceal your good works, and to let your sins be seen.'"
+
+At this point we pause once more to draw a parallel between Siddartha
+and Jesus, though, in the delineation of the doctrine of the latter,
+we shall see a discrepancy which appears to indicate two distinct
+authorships in the recorded story. We refer, in the first place, to Luke
+vi, wherein we find, v. 27, et seq., "Love your enemies, do good to
+them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which
+despitefully use you, and to him that smiteth thee on the one cheek
+offer also the other" (compare Matt. v. 39, 40). Again, Matt. vi. 3,
+"When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
+doeth," and in v. 6, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet," &c.;
+v. 16, "When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance."
+Side by side with this we may place the directions given in Matt, x.,
+where we find that Jesus called his disciples unto him, and gave them
+"power against unclean spirits to cast them out, and to heal all manner
+of sickness and all manner of disease "--they were, moreover, "to
+cleanse the lepers and raise the dead," i.e.t the disciples were to
+perform miracles; but if they, in their wanderings and teachings, should
+be rejected, despised, or affronted, the apostles were to shake off the
+dust of their feet against the persecutors, being certain that condign
+punishment would fall upon the offenders.
+
+It is curious that in the histories of the Indian and the Jew, there
+should be analogous discrepancies between records of their sayings and
+doings. Siddartha and Jesus are represented, each of them, as declining
+to perform miracles when asked or expected to do so. Nevertheless, in
+the same histories we find marvellous accounts of the wonders which they
+performed. We have seen the clashing reports of Buddha, the following
+reports of the son of Mary are equally discordant. To make the
+dissonance more striking, we place the passages in parallel columns.
+
+[Illustration: 141]
+
+At what time after the death of Jesus the miracles recorded of him were
+fabricated we can scarcely tell. If, with most critical scholars, we
+believe that John's Gospel was written by some Neoplatonic Greek, at
+least a century and a-half after the period alluded to, we must also
+believe, either that all the legends about the casting out of devils by
+the son of Mary were invented after the time when "John" lived, or else,
+which is probable, that the last evangelist gave no credit to them, if
+they did already exist; and if the good sense and superior knowledge of
+"John" led him to discredit the tale about the legion of devils, which
+left one man* to enter into about two thousand pigs, I do not see that
+other Christians are obliged to believe the legend. From considerations
+which we advanced in the articles Prophets, Prophecy, &c., in _Ancient
+Faiths_ (Vol. II., p. 515), and especially in the history of Barcochab,
+who was supposed to be the Messiah by some Jews in A.D. 131-5, we argued
+that new matter was certainly introduced into the story of Jesus told by
+Matthew, Mark, and John, as late as the era of that enthusiastic Hebrew
+leader. We noticed the doubts that existed in the minds of many early
+Christians as to whether this redoubtable warrior was not "the man"
+of whom the prophets spake. We may now still further notice that
+he professed to perform miracles, which appear to be thoroughly
+contemptible when weighed against those of the gospels. To our mind
+it is inconceivable that the followers of Mary's son could have been
+acquainted with the marvellous works attributed to Jesus in the gospels,
+and, yet be shaken by such a man as Barcochab. We notice, also, that not
+one "Epistle" writer refers to them--consequently, we believe that
+all the wondrous tales told of the prophet of Nazareth, must have been
+introduced after the time of Hadrian (in whose reign Barcochab was
+destroyed), and were fabricated by pious Christians, to prove that the
+Messiah, in whom they believed, was infinitely superior to that warrior
+whom others had for a time trusted. Both, to be sure, had been killed by
+the Romans, and thus both might seem upon a par, but if history could
+be cooked--and there is probably no single history existing which is
+strictly true--to show that the first performed a hundred times the
+wonderful works of the second, he would thus become greatly exalted. See
+especially Matt. xxiv. 24, in confirmation of this view. Be this as it
+may, there is, I understand, solid foundation for the assertion that
+the New Testament, such as we have it now, might have been composed,
+altered, curtailed, added to, remodelled, or otherwise fashioned, at
+any period between the years a.d. 50 and 300, after which change was
+difficult, though we cannot say impossible. A corresponding statement is
+true of the books which record the life and doctrines of Buddha.
+
+     * In Matthew viii. 30-32, we are told that there were two
+     men who were possessed with the devils which subsequently
+     entered the herd of swine;--in Mark v. 11-13, the spirits
+     are represented as being concentrated in one person, and in
+     Luke viii. 32-33, the tale appears in the same guise as in
+     Mark--only the man is made to call himself "Legion," on
+     account of the multitude of devils living inside him. In
+     cases of this kind one need not be rigidly particular, for
+     it signifies little whether the spirits were one thousand in
+     one man or two thousand in two--the wonder is that spirits
+     could talk--fly away from man to pig, or commit suicide in
+     the bodies of the swine when they might have done the same
+     thing in one or two men. It is clear from the miracle that
+     certain devils change their habits when they take up their
+     habitation in porcine instead of human beings.
+
+At this period of our parallel we may profitably examine the New
+Testament, and ascertain whether we cannot extract from it a tolerably
+fair account of the life and teaching of Jesus, without including
+therein a single act of thaumaturgy. We fearlessly assert, not only that
+we can, but that the miracles are not an essential part of his doctrine.
+For example, we learn that Jesus was the son of a woman betrothed to a
+carpenter, who became pregnant ere yet the ceremony of marriage was gone
+through. Her affianced husband did not make her frailty an excuse for
+annulling the contract, possibly for a good, and to him a sufficient
+reason. He married the already fruitful Mary, and her child passed
+amongst the neighbours as being the son of Joseph. This we learn from
+Matt. xiii. 55, where we find the people saying, "Is not this the
+carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren James,
+and Joses, and Simon, and Judas, and his sisters, are they not all
+with us?" a statement repeated in similar terms, Mark vi. 3. This short
+account is important, since it completely destroys the papal doctrine
+that Mary was "ever virgin," for she bore at least four other sons
+than her first born, and two daughters. At no period was Jesus regarded
+either by the family or by the neighbours as illegitimate, nor is there
+any reason to believe that Joseph looked upon him otherwise than as his
+own son. Indeed, in Luke ii. 42-48, the carpenter distinctly appears to
+act as if he recognized Jesus as his own offspring--in verse 48, Mary
+says, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold thy father and I
+have sought thee sorrowing," asserting as plainly as words could speak,
+that Joseph had begotten Jesus. It is true that the youth replied, "Wist
+ye not that I must be about my father's business?" but the story adds
+the important information, that the couple did not understand the
+saying.
+
+It is clear to us, that if the legend of the impregnation of Mary by the
+Holy Ghost, after that event had been previously announced to her, and
+if, as we are told in Matt. i. 20, Joseph had been informed by "the
+angel of the Lord" that the foetus in Mary's womb was begotten by the
+Holy Ghost, it would not have been possible for Joseph and his wife
+to have misunderstood the words of Jesus. The very wonder which they
+expressed demonstrates the belief of the parents that there was nothing
+unusual in the conception. The father Joseph knew that he had borne his
+share in the event, and Mary knew that she had not conversed with any
+other man; consequently, for her son to indicate another father than
+Joseph, naturally mystified her. We therefore cannot allow the assertion
+to pass, that the conception and birth of Jesus was in itself a miracle.
+But as we shall revert to the subject in a separate chapter, we will say
+no more about it here.
+
+After living and working with his parents for some years, Jesus was
+attracted by the preaching of his cousin John, whose doctrines were
+essentially Buddhistic and Essenian. Like the Hindoos, he used water as
+an emblem of purification, and urged his hearers to repentance and good
+conduct. What motives urged John to become "the voice of one crying in
+the wilderness," we have no means of judging, but the gospel narratives
+tell us that he, like Jesus, believed in the almost immediate
+destruction of the world. His text was, "Repent, for the kingdom of
+heaven is at hand." Jesus adopted the view, and promulgated it more
+extensively. His text was the same as that of his cousin, but more
+expanded. "The kingdom of heaven means glory to the righteous, and
+everlasting life; misery and everlasting destruction to the wicked.
+The time is near, hasten to escape from the coming vengeance."
+The earnestness of Jesus, his acquaintance with the prophets, his
+self-denial and his constant kindness, endeared him to the common
+people. The same virtues had a like effect in the case of Buddha.
+Amongst villagers and poverty-stricken fishermen he soon won his way,
+and every one had some story to tell of him, which increased in wonder
+as it passed from mouth to ears, and from these to the tongue of the
+listeners. Those who know how an ordinary circumstance may gradually
+become described as miraculous, even in England, can well imagine how
+the miracles of Jesus and Siddartha were produced.
+
+In time Jesus endeavoured to induce the magnates of Jerusalem to adopt
+his doctrine, and to trust in repentance for salvation rather than in
+sacrifice, but the enthusiast could not overcome the ritualists, and
+they at once began to weigh their power against the influence of
+Jesus upon the multitude. After a time the priests were convinced that
+supremacy rested with them, and the man who preached a religion of the
+heart, was sacrificed by the adherents of ceremonial. Such a fight is
+common, as we see around us. The Evangelicals and the Ritualists of
+to-day, resemble the followers of Jesus and of Moses. When the latter
+appeared in the guise of powerful Romanist rulers, they put down the
+former, but now when the former are the strongest, they endeavour to
+depress the latter.
+
+After the death, or the withdrawal of Jesus from public life--for we
+have no belief in the legends of his resurrection--considering that
+his apparent decease was a prolonged fainting fit, for had he been dead
+blood would not have followed a spear wound as it did--the disciples of
+Jesus spread his fame largely. Whilst Jesus was with them they clung
+to him; when he was no more, each man became a preacher, and then
+Christianity spread until it met with Buddhism in Egypt, and thus became
+developed in a peculiar direction. Then came the gospels, which made
+Jesus a second Sakya. Although we can readily conceive that Jesus, like
+his paltry successor, Joe Smith, the Mormon, captivated the minds of
+hundreds without performing any supernatural deed, and that his "elders"
+vastly increased the number of those who believed in him, yet it is
+clear, that ancient and modern theologians were and are anxious to
+establish the reality of the thaumaturgy attributed to Jesus, that
+they may appeal to it to demonstrate that he was the son of God, an
+incarnation of a portion of the creative mind--"the word," or _logos_,
+having the same relationship to Jehovah, the "I Am," the Self-Existent
+One, as Buddha, "the understanding" had to "Brahma," The Supreme One.
+
+Accepting this issue for the sake of argument, we affirm once again
+that, as the miracles of Sakya and of the son of Mary are equally
+unreliable, or equally true, Buddha was as much a true son of God as
+Christ was, or that Jesus was no more an incarnation of Jehovah, than
+Siddartha was of Brahma. Jehovah and Brahma being merely different names
+for the same great Being. That miracles are not necessary to the spread
+of a new faith, the history of modern Presbyterianism and Mormonism
+distinctly proves. For further remarks, we refer the reader to
+the article Miracle in the preceding volume. We will postpone to a
+subsequent page what we have to say respecting the asceticism of the
+Buddhists, and that which was prevalent in the early Christian church.
+For the present, we resume our account of Sakya Muni's teaching as
+described by St. Hilaire.
+
+Founded upon his doctrine of absolute humility, he established the
+custom of confession amongst his apostles or disciples, and amongst
+those who venerated his teaching, though they did not' become his
+immediate followers. This confession was not that simply auricular one
+enforced by Ritualists, but it was made twice a month, at the new and
+the full moon, before the great Sramana and the congregation, in a clear
+voice. Powerful kings are reported to have followed this practice.
+
+It will not require more than a minute's reflection to see that the
+Buddhistic system of confession was far superior--as regards the end
+in view--than that which has been adopted by Romanists and Ritualists.
+Sakya and James (ch. v. 16) advised the practice in question, that
+the sinner might be humiliated in his own eyes, and deterred from the
+necessity of having again to acknowledge a fall from virtue before a
+congregation of the faithful. Popes and Protestant Ritualists, on the
+contrary, use confession for the purpose of inquiring into the character
+of every penitent, and the practice is adopted by the sinner, not with
+the view of repentance, but to wipe out periodically a sin which is
+habitually renewed.
+
+If confessions were made before a congregation, instead of to a priest
+in a closet, or some other secret spot, there would not then be current
+so many scandalous stories as there are--too true, alas, in many
+instances--respecting women who have been debauched under the guise
+of religion, and priests who have prostituted the ordinances of their
+church, until they have made them pander to vice, and act as seeds to
+produce immorality.
+
+Though personally Tathagata preached celibacy, he had not, like some of
+the so-called saints of Christianity, any feeling of disrespect towards
+family ties. He always spoke affectionately of his mother, though he
+never knew her, and the legends say that he endeavoured to convert her
+in heaven. His command that all his followers should honour their father
+and mother was repeatedly enforced, that being only second to the duty
+of learning, venerating, and keeping the law. It even went so high as to
+include endeavours to teach the parents if they were ignorant.
+
+One of the main duties of every teacher appointed by Siddartha, was to
+go about preaching the law, and exhorting his hearers to learn and to
+obey it. But no one, on any account, was to introduce the persecuting
+element. No respect whatever was to be paid to caste, all being alike
+human before God. Buddha himself is described as a very striking
+preacher, charming his hearers by his clear and eloquent diction,
+astonishing them by his supernatural power, sometimes instructing the
+common folk with ingenious parables, and inciting them to emulation by
+telling what others had done. He referred to the sins which had been
+committed in former days by an ancient people, and how severely punished
+those who had committed them had been, or still were, and he even
+recorded his own faults, that others might learn to avoid them. He urged
+all his hearers to cultivate truth and reason, which is certainly not a
+Christian practice, and not blindly to obey their spiritual guides, as
+the modern faithful are taught to do. By making the practice of every
+virtue the sole means for attaining eternal salvation, he practically
+discouraged vice, but it does not appear that he endeavoured actively
+to denounce immorality, sin, or sinners. He did not, like many modern
+persons, "compound for sins they are inclined to, by damning those they
+have no mind to." It is distinctly declared that it was not necessary
+for ordinary followers of Buddha to become what is called "religious,"
+or "to enter into religion," as friars, monks, &c. To those who
+preferred an ordinary mode of life, instructions were given, that they
+should cultivate charity, purity, patience, courage, contemplation, and
+knowledge. Indeed, we may assert that the precepts of Jesus, as
+recorded in Matthew v., vi, and viii, and in Luke iii. 7 to 14, are not
+essentially different from those propounded by Sakya Muni Neither the
+one nor the other ordered or even recommended all men to be celibate,
+all men to become poor, all soldiers to leave their profession--but
+both urged upon every one who wished for salvation, to be kind, pure,
+patient, courageous, thoughtful and eager after all knowledge. It would
+be well if those calling themselves Christians would endeavour more
+fully to understand that cultivating science is the same as advancing in
+the knowledge of God.
+
+Some of the remarkable parables found in Buddhist books are very
+probably the original ones of Sakya; they are certainly ingeniously
+framed to illustrate his doctrine. Nor is there wanting, indeed, one
+in which there is an episode resembling the story of the thief upon
+the cross. It is of a lovely courtesan who falls deeply in love with
+a jeweller, young, and a devoted follower of Buddha, and solicits his
+company. To every message she sends him, he returns the answer "it
+is not time for you to see me." At length she commits a crime, and is
+sentenced to have ears, nose, hands, and feet cut off, and to be carried
+to the graveyard to die, leaving the cut off members at her ankles. At
+this period the young man visits her, to see the true nature of those
+joys which drown men in perdition; then he consoles the poor creature by
+teaching her the law; his discourse brings calm into her breast, and she
+dies in professing Buddhism with a certainty that she will rise again
+amongst the good.
+
+We may mention, in passing, that there were female Buddhists as well as
+males, both being on the same footing. The law, as announced by Sakya,
+equally concerned and affected the two sexes.
+
+Another and very interesting parable tells of a king who came before
+a Buddhist priest and his assembled hearers, to the number of 350, to
+confess his crimes, amongst others murder, and his resolution to avoid
+all faults in future, and Bhagavat (the teacher's name) at once remits,
+in conformity with the law, the faults of the king, which have thus
+been expiated before a numerous assembly of the faithful, a remarkable
+instance of remorse, repentance, confession, and remission of sin--some
+centuries before Jesus was born.
+
+At length a powerful king, Asoka, was converted to the new faith, or
+came to the throne already a Buddhist, in the year b.c. 263, and reigned
+thirty-seven years, during which time he devoted himself to spreading
+the religion of his choice. He sent out a cloud of earnest missionaries
+who spread themselves over Hindostan, Ceylon, China, Japan, and Thibet.
+Indeed, they seem to have gone wherever there was means of locomotion,
+or a knowledge of the existence of a people. As the Greeks were
+then certainly trading with India, both by land and sea, it would be
+surprising if the Buddhist missionaries had not accompanied the merchant
+ships, or the overland convoys to Alexandria. But this subject, it is
+convenient for the present to postpone.
+
+There are two points connected with the teaching of Sakya Muni to
+which many Christian writers have especially addressed their remarks,
+apparently with the view of rendering Buddha more or less contemptible,
+or at least of degrading him far below Jesus of Nazareth. It is asserted
+that Siddartha did not believe in a god, and that his Nirvana was
+nothing more than absolute annihilation. To these I am disposed to
+add, that the Buddhists were not taught to pray, nor did their founder
+practise the custom.
+
+To my own mind, the assertion that Sakya did not believe in God is
+wholly unsupported. Nay, his whole scheme is built upon the belief that
+there are powers above which are capable of punishing mankind for their
+sins. It is true that these "gods" were not called Elohim, nor Jah,
+nor Jahveh, nor Jehovah, nor Adonai, nor Eliieh (I am), nor Baalim,
+nor Ashtoreth--yet, for "the son of Suddhodana" (another name for Sakya
+Muni, for he has almost as many, if not more than the western god),
+there was a supreme being called Brahma, or some other name representing
+the same idea as we entertain of the Omnipotent. Still further, in the
+life of Buddha, quoted by St. Hilaire (p. 9) we find the following as
+part of the thoughts of the young Siddartha--"The three worlds, the
+world of the gods, the world of the assours (the benighted ones, or, as
+we should call them, 'the devils ), and that of men, are all plagued
+by the occurrence of old age and disease." We do not, for we dare not
+assert that this opinion is identical with ours; but we are equally
+indisposed to say that the opinions current amongst ourselves are
+absolutely true.
+
+Men living in future days, and whose minds are educated, will probably
+declare, "that the Christians of Europe and elsewhere, for nearly two
+thousand years, had no god but the devil They said he was good, but
+they painted him as one who rejoiced in pain, lamentation, mourning, and
+woe." Buddha preached that man suffered from the effects of his
+sins, and that unless he attained salvation, he would be punished
+everlastingly. The son of Mary, and all his followers, taught, and
+Christians still entertain the belief, that man suffers from the sin of
+a progenitor (assumed to be the parent of all mankind), and that each
+person will be tortured throughout eternity unless he is able to mollify
+his maker, who is also his judge. Both teachers had necessarily an idea
+of a power able to make laws for the conduct of human life, to ordain
+rewards for good behaviour, and to apportion punishment for offences,
+and yet who was sufficiently forgiving to cease from requital, "for a
+consideration," the bribe being invariably a bloody one. Jesus called
+this power "my Father," Siddartha called him Brahma, the Supreme one.
+
+Jesus and his followers have asserted that the power of the son with
+"the Father" is so great, that the latter will conform to the former,
+nay, he even asserts his identity with the Supreme in the words "I and
+my father are one," (John x. 30). See also Acts iv. 12, and 1 Thess. v.
+9, in which it is distinctly affirmed that Jesus is the sole means by
+which man can attain salvation, or, in other words, turn away the
+wrath of God and change it into love. But Jesus could only rise to the
+position of equal or prime favourite by a very sanguinary process, as we
+find from Heb. ix. 22, that there could be no remission of sin without
+shedding of blood. From the following verses, and from Heb. x. 19, we
+learn that it is by the sacrifice of himself that Jesus entered into his
+heavenly powers.
+
+Can any one who depicts the gods of savages, of Grecians and others
+to whom human beings were immolated in hundreds, call such deities
+"devils," and then assert that the Jehovah, whom he extols as above all
+gods, is not painted by men in the same colours. Siddartha's god was
+not a sanguinary one, nor did Buddha always talk of shedding blood, or
+profess to give his disciples his own flesh to eat, and his blood to
+them, that they might all drink of it.
+
+The way in which this Supreme One, Brahma, was painted at his time was
+accepted by Sakya as he found it. He no more questioned the accepted
+truths of Hindooism, than Jesus doubted about the absolute truth of
+the Hebrew scriptures. But, in his own mind, after he had contemplated
+deeply on the subject, he believed that the discovery which he had made
+of the way to Nirvana, universal knowledge, or whatever else Nirvana
+was, had raised him above Sakra Brahma, Mahesvara, and all the gods of
+the pantheon.
+
+Instead of breaking into expressions respecting the insanity or the
+blasphemy of such an idea, let us school ourselves into calmness, and
+turn to our own New Testament and read over Philippians, chap, ii. vv.
+5-11, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being
+in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but
+made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant,
+and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a
+man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death
+of the cross: wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a
+name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
+should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth and things under
+the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
+Lord to the glory of God the Father."
+
+Still further, I have repeatedly heard Protestant Christian divines
+assert that Jesus was really "Lord of the world above," and I cannot see
+any greater insanity or blasphemy in the son of Suddodana believing that
+he was at least equal with God, than in the son of Mary asserting "I and
+my Father are one" (John x. 30), and when reproached for making himself
+thus equal with God, he is reported to have remonstrated with his
+auditors who accused him of blasphemy because he asserted himself to be
+the son of God. The creeds of the Anglican and Roman churches repeatedly
+declare the identity of Jesus with Jehovah, e.g., "equal to the Father
+as touching his godhead."
+
+The natural rejoinder to this representation is the assertion by the
+Christian that he knows that Jesus of Nazareth really was what he
+represented himself, and he is sure that Sakya Muni was not; but, on
+the other hand, the Buddhist may say just the reverse with equal
+pertinacity. This argument, if such a name it really deserves, is so
+common amongst all careless religionists, that it deserves a few words
+in reply. It is based upon the very natural notion, "what I believe,
+must be true," and to an objector, the only answer is the question, "you
+don't fancy that I can be wrong, do you?" When two such persons as
+a Christian and a Mahometan met in days gone by, these were the only
+arguments used by each, and they were first of all enforced by such
+revilings as come naturally to the faithful--"hound of a Moslem"--"dog
+of a Christian," "you are a serpent"--"you are a viper," and the like;
+from words they came to blows, and the strongest arm was supposed to
+demonstrate the correctness of the victor's faith. If, instead of
+taking physical strength as a test of truth, we assume that a numerical
+preponderance on one side or another proves the correctness of the
+belief held by the greatest number, we come to the absurd conclusion
+that what is right to-day may be wrong to-morrow. Babylonians were once
+far more numerous than Jews, and Jews than Christians, to-day the
+last exceed vastly both the others. Now, there are more Buddhists
+in existence than true followers of Jesus, in the next century the
+proportion may be reversed.
+
+Truth does not so fluctuate, and a philosopher who uses his reason will
+take up a different stand entirely, and affirm that a man cannot become
+God by meditation, fancy or assertion, nor yet by the consent or vote of
+millions of his fellow-men, and that the assumption that any individual
+must be, and is the begotten son of God, is on a par with the folly of
+the potentates who call themselves brothers of the sun and moon. Such
+absurdity and blasphemy are very common, nevertheless, and men believe
+that Jesus is God, because they have elected him to that elevated
+position by a general vote--or European plebiscite.
+
+We now address ourselves to another important statement made by some
+writers upon the religion of Sakya Muni, to the effect that he taught
+annihilation to be the end most desirable for good men who have learned
+and practised the law. This view is held by St. Hilaire, who, in almost
+every other respect, has shown himself an historian rather favourable
+to Siddartha than otherwise, and who speaks with some regret of the
+conclusion which he feels obliged to draw. But he is opposed upon this
+point by a very great English or German authority, viz., Max Mueller,
+who, in a lecture delivered before the general Meeting of the
+Association of German Philologists at Kiel, and which is to be found
+translated in Trubner's _American and Oriental Literary Record_, Oct.
+16, 1869, distinctly declares his belief that the nihilism attributed to
+Buddha's teaching forms no part of his doctrine, and that it is wholly
+wrong to suppose that Nirvana signified annihilation.
+
+When two such earnest inquirers differ, it is instructive to notice
+the reason why. This is to be found in the fact that the etymological
+signification of the word does signify "nothingness," or "extinction,"
+but not, as Mueller contends, annihilation of the individual, but a
+complete cessation of all pain and misery. The last quoted author shows
+that Siddartha used Nirvana as synonymous with Moksha, Nirvritti, and
+other words, all designating the highest state of spiritual liberty and
+bliss, but not annihilation. It seems to be perfectly clear that what
+was meant by Sakya is, that to the good who have embraced the means of
+salvation preached by him, the future world would be a haven of rest,
+in which all sorrow, suffering, and sin should be annihilated. But
+the teacher does not go beyond this, and descant upon the opposite
+conditions, and promise joys ineffable and full of glory. His followers
+believe that they will attain to immortality, and that they will be free
+from all such horrors as life brings with it. But the pleasures which
+they expect are negative.
+
+Before we either pity or despise Siddartha for not giving his followers
+any idea of what we call Heaven, it would be well to endeavour to
+discover the true teaching of Jesus of Nazareth upon this point, and the
+ideas of his followers. We must also say a few words about his ideas of
+Hell. He clearly believed that there was a place in which those whose
+lives had been wicked would be punished after death by the devil and his
+angels--the place was one of outer darkness, where shall be weeping and
+wailing, and gnashing of teeth (Matt. viii. 12). In Matt. xiii. 42 this
+place of outer darkness is described as "a furnace of fire," and in Mark
+ix. 43-44 this fire is described as one that never shall be quenched,
+and in which there lives a worm. In Luke xvi. 23-24 there is an
+expression of the belief that the body lives after death in its usual
+form, and has eyes, a tongue, the power of speech, &c.; yet in Matt. x.
+28 the doctrine is inculcated that both body and soul are destroyed
+in Hell. In Jude 7 and 13 Hell is again described as a place of
+unquenchable fire, and yet one occupied by the blackness of darkness;
+whilst in Revelation xix. 20 and xx. 10 we are told that the fire is
+a lake of burning brimstone. Of the absolute locality of this horrible
+spot not a word is said.
+
+On the other hand, Heaven is described (Matt xiii. 43) as a place where
+the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of God. In
+Luke xvi. 22 the pleasure of Heaven is made to consist of a simple
+repose in the bosom of Abraham; but though we are there led to believe
+that the blessed can see the torments of the damned, it does not appear
+that either "the father of the faithful," or the poor beggar Lazarus,
+take any pleasure in contemplating them, as some few divines of the
+church of England believe that they will do, when they have arrived at
+the abode of bliss, and see their enemies in the burning lake. Paul,
+when writing to the Corinthians, (1 Ep. xv.) gives his idea of the
+resurrection of the just as one in which each man will be a spiritual
+edition of his former terrestrial self, but beyond the statement in 1
+Thess. iv. 17, that the redeemed will, when in heaven, dwell for
+ever with the Lord, he expresses no opinion of the occupation of
+the glorified ones. In John's gospel (xiv. 2) Jesus is reported as
+saying,--"In my Father's house are many mansions or houses--I go to
+prepare a place for you," but there is nothing like any account of what
+is to be done in those abodes.
+
+Again, we find, Ps. xvi. 11, in a verse which has been largely adapted
+to Christianity, an idea of Heaven given thus--"in thy presence is
+fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."
+What David's pleasures were we may judge from his life, and we may
+fairly imagine that the writer of the passage had an idea something like
+that of Mahomet--that there were houris in Heaven for the delectation of
+the faithful. But in Isaiah lxiv. 4, and I Cor. ii. 9 everything about
+Heaven is declared to be vague--a something which the eye has not seen,
+the ear heard, or the heart conceived.
+
+In the book called _The Revelation of St. John the Divine_, we have a
+far more detailed account of what was believed by some about heaven,
+than in any other, and there is no doubt that to it a large number of
+Christians appeal, for it is, indeed, almost the only foundation
+on which they can build. Yet the Apocalypse was for a long time an
+uncanonical book, and its truth and value were, and still are, doubted
+by many of the faithful. In the part referred to, heaven is described
+as a place incalculably rich in gold and precious stones, in music and
+pleasant odours, and its joys are pour-trayed as consisting in constant
+contact with the evidences of wealth, and in eternally singing a certain
+refrain, an hour of which would be a great trial to human ears. To this
+is added the absence of pain, sorrow, and suffering. The New Jerusalem,
+described in chapter xxi. is nothing more than a palace similar to that
+of Aladdin, which is described in _The Arabian Nights?_ fabulously
+adorned with gems, lighted by other means than a burning sun or a cold
+moon, cooled or refreshed with a river of clear water, and furnished
+with trees bearing different kinds of fruit, but all delicious--thus
+involving the certainty that the singing referred to, must have been
+suspended whilst the palate was regaled--and having leaves said to be
+_for the healing of the nations_. The words thus italicised seem to show
+the indefiniteness of the _idea_, we dare not say of the _knowledge_ of
+John, for the existence of this new Jerusalem involves the absence of
+any disease which required healing; and every person who was not already
+assigned to the brimstone lake, was a resident on the margin of the
+crystal river. Such discrepancies are common in visionary writings, and
+ought to make us distrust them; but instead of that, wild theories are
+founded upon these absurdities, and the builders thence attempt to prove
+their own superior knowledge. Well, in this new Jerusalem, every man
+is to be a ruler, for we are told, that in it the servants of the Lamb
+(chap. xxii. 3 sq.) shall serve him, and see his face, that his name
+shall be written upon their foreheads, and they shall _reign_ for ever
+and ever. The word italicised, very naturally recalls to us an earlier
+passage in the same book (chap, i. 6) wherein the writer expresses the
+belief that Jesus Christ has made his followers "kings and priests."
+It is then clear that John had the notion that in heaven every denizen
+would be a king. But king over whom? or over what? if every one in
+new Jerusalem is a ruler, what is he a ruler of? It is, to the critic,
+moderately certain, that all which the words are intended to convey is,
+that every inhabitant of the New Jerusalem or Heaven will be as rich and
+happy as a mundane sovereign. This, again, involves the belief that the
+author of the Apocalypse had an essentially sensual idea of Heaven,
+and that he pourtrayed it as a man would do, who, pining in misery,
+suffering from disease, pinched with want, obliged to serve as the slave
+of wealth, and to contribute much, out of his little, to the king's
+taxes, saw daily, and envied deeply, the high position and great wealth
+of a tyrant, with whom, his faith induced him to believe, that he would
+change places hereafter.
+
+That the descriptions of Heaven in Revelation can be considered as
+reliable, by any thoughtful Christian, I marvel, for they are bound up
+with an assurance which the lapse of time has fully demonstrated to be
+false. In chap, xxii., v. 12 and 20, the one who is described as the
+Lord of the New Jerusalem, the Christian Heaven, asserts that he is
+coming quickly, and that his reward is with him. Yet in no sense of the
+words is this true, nor has it ever been so.
+
+Tested, then, by every available means, we assert that the Heaven
+described by Jesus of Nazareth and his immediate followers is quite as
+vague, indistinct, and unreliable as the Buddhist Nirvana; or, if the
+affirmative be preferred, we say that the Christian Heaven is quite as
+uncertain or indefinite a prize for Jesus' disciples as the Nirvana
+of Sakya. Both teachers seem to have been equally confident of the
+existence of a Hell, and equally cautious in expressing their ideas
+about a Heaven. And we, who have had the advantage of many centuries of
+civilization and thought, dare no more frame or promulgate a scheme of
+Elysium than the Romans did--we really know nothing whatever about a
+future state.
+
+There is this, however, to be said in favour of Siddartha--he did not,
+like Mahomet and John, preach a Paradise, in which all the pleasures are
+worldly, sensuous, or sensual--John promising music and fruit, Mahomet
+feasting and women. All the Indian's teaching pointed to a future world,
+in which human passions, frailties, and propensities would find no
+place, for the purified being would cast off, with his earthly body,
+every carnal appetite. In fact, there is reason to believe that Buddha's
+idea was, that after death each essence would become reincorporated with
+the Great Spirit, of whom his soul had originally formed a part. It
+is doubtful whether any of us could tell him a more perfect way to the
+truth about the matter.
+
+Yet, although neither Sakya nor Jesus gave any distinct account of
+Heaven, it is certain that some of their followers have done so, and
+it is remarkable to see how they have developed their ideas in the same
+way. Compare, for example, the account given by John, Apocalypse chaps,
+xxi., xxii., with the following account, which I copy from the
+_Kusa Iatakya_, a Buddhistic legend of Ceylon, by T. Steele, p. 195.
+"_Swarga_, or the heaven occupied by Indra, is described as the most
+splendid the human mind can conceive (Percival's _Land of the Vedas_,
+p. 160). Its palaces are composed of pure gold, resplendent diamonds,
+jasper, sapphire, emerald, and other precious stones, whose brilliance
+exceeds that of a thousand suns! Its streets are of crystal, fringed
+with gold. The most beautiful and fragrant flowers adorn its forests,
+whose trees diffuse the sweetest odours. Refreshing breezes, canopies
+of fleecy clouds, thrones of the most dazzling brightness, birds of the
+sweetest melodies, and songs of the most delightful harmony, are heard
+in the enchanting pleasaunces, which are ever fragrant, ever robed in
+summer green." The author whom I am quoting follows these remarks with
+lines from Bernard de Morley's hymn, _Jerusalem the Golden_, clearly
+showing how greatly he has been struck with the parallelism between the
+Buddhist and Christian idea.
+
+So far as I can find, there appears to be a certainty that Sakya Muni
+did not teach to his followers the necessity for prayer. That Jesus did
+so teach his disciples is the common belief of Christians. Yet, in the
+parallel which we are thus drawing, we are perfectly justified in the
+assertion that the son of Mary did not teach it from his own spontaneous
+judgment, as John the Evangelist had done before him. Jesus certainly
+did not originate prayer; indeed, it appears that the subject was forced
+upon him, and that unless he had been urged to it, he would neither
+have taught to others the necessity for prayer, nor have dictated the
+supplication which still passes by his name. The following passage in
+Luke xi. 1 seems to be decisive upon this point:--"And it came to pass,
+as he was praying in a certain place, one of his disciples said unto
+him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." We
+see, then, in the first place, that Jesus did not hold, as a fundamental
+doctrine, that prayer was part of the duty of man, but that he took it
+up as a necessary part of his Jewish education, and adopted it amongst
+the subjects of his discourses, following the example of John. When
+we try to penetrate into the mind of Jesus, as shown in "the Lord's
+Prayer," and ascertain what he regarded as the fittest objects for
+orison, we find that they are almost exclusively worldly. There is,
+in the first place, an ascription of praise, or of reverence, then an
+expression of a desire that the world should become good; that each man
+should have a daily meal; that all offences should be condoned, and none
+others committed; and that no harm should happen to any who used the
+entreaty. Compared with the composition attributed to Solomon, and said
+to have been uttered by him at the dedication of the temple, that which
+is said to have been given by Jesus is meagre in the extreme. It
+does not contain a single supplication for spiritual blessing, or for
+salvation.
+
+In the mind of a philosopher there is a doubt whether the general
+heathen notion about prayer, or the apparent Buddhist prayerlessness, is
+to be the most commended. Yet, ere we discuss the point, I must remark
+that although Buddha does not appear to have taught the duty of prayer
+to his disciples, they practise it nevertheless, and have long litanies,
+chantings, and mechanical contrivances quite as efficacious, and not
+more absurd, than the senseless repetitions which pass current amongst
+us for supplications to the Most High. Now, if we require from ourselves
+a distinct answer to the question, what is prayer? we can frame no
+other than this--"it is the expression of a desire on our part that
+the Creator will modify the laws of nature in our favour, in favour of
+others, or in His own favour!" The idea that He will do this is plainly
+builded upon the supposition that the Creator is like a man, and can be
+induced to change His mind--that a creature thinks He is harsh or wrong,
+and must be set right. When put thus clearly, the most obtuse can see
+that prayer must necessarily be inefficacious, and must always proceed
+from a selfishness so intense as to cloak the blasphemy from view.
+
+If, instead of the above definition, we designate prayer as the uttering
+of a fervent hope or desire for the benefit of an individual, we can
+understand that it is quite as useful as any other ejaculation. Nothing
+is more common than for an angry man to curse with all the energy of
+exasperation; nothing more common than for a punished hound to yelp, and
+for a child, when pained, to cry or roar. Still further I will say, from
+personal experience, that the utterance of cries or groans enables an
+individual to bear pain with less effect upon his nervous system than
+would be felt if they were suppressed. Vociferations are as natural,
+and, to some, as necessary as indulging the appetite for hunger. In like
+manner, when the mind of man, especially of one only partially educated,
+is dominated by intense fear, or by any form of anxiety or present
+suffering, there is an instinctive propensity to seek aid from any
+source, certain or uncertain, and the enunciation of hopes with an
+audible voice is as much necessary to some as roaring is to a lion,
+or bleating to a sheep. In this sense prayer is a comfort--it helps to
+soothe feelings which, if pent up, would become, probably, too great for
+endurance; and, knowing this, I would no more deride prayer than I would
+laugh at a baby who cried for his absent mother.
+
+I do not doubt, in the smallest possible degree, that prayer is a
+comfort under certain circumstances. For example, my child may be
+seriously ill, and I may do everything which my medical knowledge
+enables me to do; but day by day drags wearily along, the fever seems to
+intensify, and it is clear that there is a struggle between the living
+force, and the agent which interferes with it. As hour after hour
+passes, and anxiety deepens into fear, I am like a hardy fellow under
+the lash: at first the stripes are borne with firmness, but as another
+and another falls, not only does-the pain seem keener, but the mental
+power which gives courage to bear the cutting agony diminishes, and the
+pent-up feelings are vented in a roar of anguish, or a groan of despair.
+Just so in the depth of my misery I may utter a prayer--a wish that in
+one way or another my torn and lacerated feelings as a father might be
+healed, and I may expect to receive solace thereby, no matter whether I
+address Jehovah, Brahma, Ishtar, or the Virgin Mary. To hear the sound
+of one's own voice, even the task of having to compose an intelligible
+sentence, relieves, for a time, the poignancy of grief, and thus helps
+one to bear it more patiently. That supplication thus brings relief I
+do not for a moment doubt, but that it has any influence in the result I
+deny.
+
+Entertaining this view, I cannot regard prayer as a duty. It seems to me
+to be a deliberate insult to the Almighty to be constantly urging Him to
+alter the course of nature--or as we may otherwise put it "to change His
+mind." To trust that prayer will obviate the necessity for action seems
+to me the height of folly. If a man uttered the words "Give me this day
+my daily bread" a hundred times over, and yet never sought to obtain it,
+we should regard him as a lunatic. Equally silly should we be if, when
+praying "Defend us in all assaults of our enemies," we did not prepare
+for battle--or if, after ejaculating "defend us from all perils and
+dangers of this night," we were to go to bed without seeing that our
+premises were as secure as forethought could make them. However much
+the theologian may believe in prayer, he cannot deny that it is less
+efficacious than action. Now Buddha preached action whilst Christ
+preached inaction, e.g., "take no thought for the morrow," &c. (Matt.
+vi. 25-34), consequently we are more disposed to give the palm for
+correct judgment to the Indian than to the Jew.
+
+We must, in the next place, notice that many followers of the son of
+Suddodana and the son of Mary have both acted, and do still act, upon
+the belief, not only that prayer is a duty, but that every supplication
+has positive power in the world above--consequently the more extended
+the utterances the greater their influence. In point of fact, prayers
+are spoken of as if they were equivalent to sacrifice, alms-giving, or
+any other supposed virtue. For this there seems to be some foundation
+in Acts x. 4, where Cornelius is told that his prayers and his alms have
+come up before God; in James v. vv. 15, 16, we are told that "the prayer
+of faith shall save the sick;" and that "the effectual, fervent prayer
+of a righteous man availeth much." In Revelation v. 8, we are told that
+the prayers of the saints are kept in golden vials in heaven, and used
+as odours. In chapter viii. 3, we find they are offered with incense
+upon the celestial altar, and that the two conjointly come before the
+presence of God. This being so, there is a desire to accumulate prayers
+on the creditor side of the heavenly books, just as in the days when
+sacrifices were trusted in, there was an attempt to increase their
+influence by augmenting the number of the creatures slaughtered. This
+propensity to multiply orisons was distinctly rebuked by Jesus, who
+ordered his followers not to make vain repetitions, for that the custom
+was heathenish and to be avoided; a prohibition which had been made by
+Siddartha to his followers some centuries before.
+
+To me, I confess, that a life of perpetual prayer without action
+indicates a belief that God can be "pestered" into doing something that
+He did not intend; and that it is infinitely worse than a life of
+action such as Sakya Muni inculcated. I can see no sense in praying for
+something that I do not want, or that I cannot have without personal
+exertion. It seems to me sheer nonsense for anyone to pray that he may
+not grow older, and equally foolish to supplicate that he may live to be
+a king. In like manner it would be silly in me to petition for power to
+read Assyrian writing, and yet never study its characters. If, then,
+by diligent and steady plodding a man can attain his desire, it appears
+wholly useless in him to pray for it. We may say the same of one who
+wishes to curb his passions--he can do so to a great extent by assiduous
+self-control; but he cannot do so any more completely by a lifetime
+passed in prayer. From this point of view, therefore, we must again side
+with Siddartha rather than with Jesus.
+
+It now remains to us to make some observations upon the developments of
+Buddhism after the death of Sakya Muni, but we need not linger over them
+long. His doctrine of self-denial, of patient suffering, of celibacy, of
+fasting, of preaching and of meditation, gradually produced a system in
+which asceticism, solitude, and penance were the prevalent duties.
+Men and women desirous of being saintly and of attaining to eternal
+happiness, selected some den, cave, or tree in which they could live
+a life devoted to contemplation, or else they banded themselves into
+companies where they could practise the Buddhistic virtues in each
+other's presence, and one could encourage or correct another. Buddhist
+monkeries and nunneries are almost as common, and certainly more ancient
+than Roman Catholic monasteries, and they had very nearly the same
+numerous accessories in worship, which we are familiar with in papal
+countries. It is almost impossible to read the accounts given by the
+Abbe Hue, and other Eastern travellers, of Buddhism in China, Thibet,
+and Japan, without seeing the close resemblance of the Roman Church to
+that founded by Siddartha. Indeed, the Abbe was sorely tried by what
+he saw; and it is rumoured that he was punished by some ecclesiastical
+authority, and his book suppressed. Pure Buddhism, moreover, was, like
+pure Christianity, a very painful religion in practice, consequently
+both the one and the other have degenerated, and have gradually become
+altered much in the same way--both having amalgamated themselves with
+other systems, and having gradually eliminated those proceedings which
+are most repulsive to human nature. In both there is now, apparently,
+the idea that the ascetic life may be lived, as it were, by deputy.
+In Buddhism, certain men obtain their living by fasting, meditating,
+macerating their flesh, and praying instead of other people, being, of
+course, adequately paid for their endurance of privation. In a branch
+of the Church founded by Jesus the same notion has obtained, and men who
+have wallowed in filth, starved themselves, and spent their days in
+a miserable round of penance and prayer, are dignified by the name of
+Saints, and are supposed to be able to hand over--for a consideration
+in money--the benefit of their sufferings to people who wish to live
+comfortably as well as piously.
+
+Without burdening this chapter with a dissertation upon the Romish
+doctrine of works of supererogation, I will quote a few extracts from
+the Roman Missal, in use in England, to show that works done by another
+can be made available for the use of any particular individual. On
+January 16, the day of Saint Marcellus, the people are told to pray
+"that we may be aided by the merits of blessed Marcellus, Thy martyr and
+bishop, in whose sufferings we rejoice." On January 29, the day of
+Saint Francis of Sales, we find in the prayer to be used by the people,
+"mercifully grant that we may by the aid of his merits, attain unto the
+joys of life everlasting." Again, on February 8, the day of Saint John
+of Matha, we find in the prescribed prayer, "mercifully grant that by his
+merits pleading for us, we may be," &c.--and, lastly, we notice on March
+19, on Saint Joseph's day, "vouchsafe, O Lord, that we may be helped by
+the merits of Thy most holy mother's spouse," &c. The practice of the
+Buddhists is then essentially followed by the Roman Christians.
+
+Pure Buddhism was wholly free from the sexual element so common in other
+religions of antiquity, and so was the religion of Jesus. Yet in Thibet
+the first became intermingled therewith and Vajrasatta or Dorjesempa the
+Thibetan "God above all," is represented in _Schlayintweit's Atlas
+of Plates_ as a male conjoined with a female; but so ingenious is
+the contrivance that the many might see the drawings without noticing
+anything particular, for the trinity and the unity are both hidden from
+view; and in Europe the latter has introduced St. Foutin and St. Cosmo
+into her calendar, and has founded her worship of a trinity and a virgin
+upon the pagan reverence given to the creative organs in both sexes.
+Veneration for a triune God and his female consort is no more a portion
+of the teaching of the son of Mary than it was the doctrine of the child
+of Maya Devi, Buddha's mother.
+
+It will probably be quite as difficult for the reader of the preceding
+pages, as it has been for the writer of them, to avoid putting the
+question to himself, "Was Jesus of Nazareth a Buddhist disciple?" In
+answer to this question I reply that we have no direct proof either on
+one side or the other, but there is much circumstantial evidence to show
+that he was. We may marshal it thus:--
+
+1. There is very strong reason for belief that the intercourse
+between the inhabitants of India and the successors of Alexander was
+considerable. For example, we find before the time of the Maccabees,
+b.c. 280, or perhaps somewhat later, that Antiochus, the king of Syria,
+had 120 elephants--things which had never before been seen in Syria,
+Palestine, or Egypt, and which took their local name from the Phoenician
+_aleph_, a bull--the Jews supposing that they were a new kind of cattle.
+From the accounts given us we infer that these were Indian, and were
+trained either by Hindoo mahouts or by Greeks taught in Hindustan.
+Animals of this size may have come by land or by water. In either
+case we have evidence of traffic. We have already seen that the great
+missionary effort of Buddhism took place in the time of Asoka about
+B.C. 307, and it is not likely that the West would be neglected when the
+Eastern countries received such attention as they did. The Greeks had by
+this time found their way by sea to India, and thus it is certain that
+the route was known. There is then presumptive evidence that Buddhism
+was taught amongst the people frequenting the kingdom of Antiochus the
+Second, B.C. 261. At this period and subsequently, this king and his
+subjects came much into contact with the Jews, so that it is equally
+easy to believe that the Hebrews were found out by the Hindoo
+missionaries as that the Alexandrian Greeks were.
+
+2. I have been unable to find in the Jewish law, in Grecian story, in
+the accounts of old Babylonians, Carthaginians, Romans, Egyptians, or
+in any other history except that of India, testimony which shows that
+asceticism was an essential part of religion. It is true that we do find
+fasting to be occasionally mentioned in the Old Testament as a sign of
+grief or of abasement,* but never as a means of gaining salvation in a
+future life--whose very existence was unknown to Moses and the Jews. The
+observation of a period of hunger formed no part of the Mosaic law. On
+the contrary, ancient European religions, and those of Egypt and Western
+Asia were associated with feasting and jollification (see Deut. xiv.
+26.) The Jews were encouraged to indulge in a plurality of wives; but
+they were nowhere directed or recommended to live on alms. Again,
+we find nowhere any orders to the priests or Levites to go about the
+country expounding or teaching the law. Consequently, when we notice
+the rise of asceticism, preaching, and celibacy, between the time of
+Antiochus and that of Jesus, we are justified in the belief that they
+were introduced from without, and by those of the only religion which
+inculcated them as articles of faith and practice.
+
+     * In Lev. xvi. 30; xxiii. 27, 28; and Numb. xxix. 7, there
+     are directions given to the Jews, that on a certain day they
+     are "to afflict their souls," and a threat is added, that
+     "whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that
+     self same day, he shall be cut off from amongst his people."
+     There is no specific direction as to the method of
+     afflicting the soul; but it is to be associated with
+     absolute laziness, for whatever soul doeth any work on that
+     day shall be destroyed (Lev. xxiii. 28-31). The law is
+     evidently a very modern one, as we do not find it referred
+     to in the Ancient Jewish records, and the idea of atonement
+     was introduced by the Talmudic Pharisees.
+
+3. The Hebrews always showed during the Old Testament times a great
+aptitude to adopt the faith of outsiders--and as the Jewish people were
+in great abasement and misery at the period when it is probable that the
+Buddhist missionaries came into Syria, they would be prepared for the
+doctrine that they were suffering for bygone sins. The idea that men
+in the present were sometimes punished for sins done in the past was a
+Hebrew as well as a Hindoo idea, else Saul's sons would not have
+been hanged for their father's misdeeds, or the Amalekites have been
+slaughtered by Samuel, because their forefathers had some centuries
+before fought with Israel and been conquered by Moses and Joshua.
+
+4. That after the Persian reign it is certain, that three Jewish sects
+existed,--the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees--the last alone
+being purely Mosaic, and the two first being very like the Buddhists.
+
+To strengthen the links of evidence, we may now say a few words about
+the remarkable sect of the Essenes, premising our belief that it was
+founded by missionaries of the faith of Sakya Muni, whose doctrines and
+practice became, subsequently, modified by Mosaism, just as Christianity
+was considerably remoulded by Talmudism, or, to use an example nearer
+our own times, as the Christianity preached by European missionaries to
+the New Zealanders has been altered by the natives, in accordance with
+their ancient ideas. To them the Old Testament is the Bible, the New
+Testament is of no value.
+
+The Essenes are described by the Rev. Dr Ginsburg, whose authority I
+follow (_The Essenes_. Longmans, London, 1864), as a Jewish sect of
+singular piety. They did not sacrifice animals, but endeavoured to make
+their own minds holy--fit for an acceptable offering to Jehovah. They
+provided themselves with just enough for the necessities of life, and
+held such goods as they possessed, e.g., clothes and cloaks, in common.
+They only allowed themselves to converse on such parts of philosophy
+as concern God and man. They abhorred slavery, but each served his
+neighbour. They respected the Sabbath. Their fundamental laws were, to
+love God, to love virtue, and to love mankind. They affected to despise
+money, fame, pleasures, professed the most strict chastity, or, rather,
+continence, and they practised endurance as a duty. They also cultivated
+simplicity, cheerfulness, modesty, and order. They lived together in
+the same houses and villages, and sustained the poor, the sick, and the
+aged. When they earned wages the money was paid to a common stock. They
+did not marry, or have children; but if any of their body chose to wed,
+there was nothing in the regulations to prevent their doing so, only
+they then had to enter another class of the brotherhood. When possible,
+they worked all day. They were highly respected by those who knew them,
+and were frequently receiving additions to their number. They seem to
+have resembled, in their habits and customs, a fraternity of monks of
+a working, rather than a mendicant, order. Pleasure they regarded as
+an evil, having a tendency to enchain man to earthly enjoyments, a
+peculiarly Buddhist tenet. Still further, they considered the use of
+ointment as defiling, which was certainly not a Hebraic doctrine; but
+they dressed decently. They prayed devoutly before sunrise; but until
+the orb had risen they never spoke of worldly matters. They gave thanks,
+and prayed before and after eating; and ere they entered the refectory
+bathed in pure water. The food provided was just sufficient to keep
+them alive. When a person wished to enter the community, he underwent
+a period of trial, and, if approved, he proceeded to take an oath--"to
+fear God; to be just towards all men; never to wrong anyone; to detest
+the wicked, and love the righteous; to keep faith with all men; not to
+be proud; not to try and outshine his neighbours in any matter; to love
+truth, and to try and reclaim all liars; never to steal or to cajole;
+never to conceal anything from the brotherhood, and to be reticent with
+outsiders." The Essenes reverenced Moses, and so great was their respect
+for the Sabbath, that they would not ease nature on that day. They bore
+all tortures with perfect equanimity, and fully believed in a future
+state of existence, in which the soul, liberated from the body,
+rejoices, and mounts upwards to a paradise, where there are no storms,
+no cold, and no intense heat, and where all are constantly refreshed by
+gentle ocean breezes. Josephus compares this sect with the Pythagoreans;
+and I think this fact is worth noticing, for there was, in old times,
+a strong opinion that the founder of that sect brought his peculiar
+opinions from Hindostan. Pliny, in writing of the Essenes, remarks that
+their usages differ from those of all other nations--which we may
+take as a demonstration that they did not copy their constitution from
+Greeks, Romans, or Jews. Respecting the origin of this sect nothing
+certain is known, beyond that they were in existence at the time of the
+Maccabees. Critics decline to see in them any direct relations to the
+Pythagoreans, and some imagine that the order sprung naturally out of a
+spiritual reading of the Mosaic law, modified, probably, by Persian or
+Chaldee notions.
+
+It seems to me, however, that the tenets and practice of the Essenes
+indicate rather a Buddhist than a Mosaic origin, for celibacy is
+everywhere in the Old Testament spoken of as a misfortune, and abundance
+of wives as a proof of God's favour; and I imagine that some devout
+Indian missionary persuaded many pious Jews to listen to his doctrine,
+but that he was unable to convert them sufficiently to induce them
+to give up the law of Moses for that of Siddartha. I conceive still
+further, that John the Evangelist, and, subsequently, Jesus of Nazareth,
+were perfectly cognizant of the doctrines of the Essenes, if they were
+not members of the sect, and that there is nothing incredible in
+the idea that both these preachers were instructed by some Buddhist
+missionary, although neither was ever induced to give up his belief
+in the absolute truth of those Jewish writings, which both had been
+accustomed to regard as absolutely true and sacred.
+
+We readily allow that our theory may be called a wild one, but we assert
+that, in reality, it is far otherwise. Of course a critic may say that
+John, and his follower, Jesus, were just as likely to have struck out a
+new theory of salvation as Sakya Muni was; or, if exceedingly orthodox,
+he may assume that the preaching of Jesus was the pure result of
+inspiration, not such as was given to the prophets by Jehovah, but
+emanating from himself as a source of absolute truth. But we demur to
+both assertions. The profound reverence that Mary's son showed, in the
+early part of his career, for the law and for the prophets, would have
+prevented his doing anything to upset the former in so marked a manner
+as he did, in respect to the Sabbath day and other matters (see Matthew
+v. 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39, 43, 44), unless there had been some strong
+influence, from without, brought to bear upon his mind, and to cast it
+in a different mould to that of Pharisee or Sadducee. Nor can we
+believe Jesus to have been inspired, unless we extend the same belief to
+Buddha's teaching, and believe that he also was a fountain of light and
+righteousness, which we certainly are not disposed to do.
+
+Our hypothesis respecting a connection between the teaching of the
+Indian and the Hebrew, appears to be strengthened when we contemplate
+the distinction between the doctrines of the Jewish and the Hindoo
+sage. We have seen how they agree as regards the morality which they
+inculcate, the celibacy and poverty that they enjoin, the firm belief
+in preexistent, or original, sin, and in a future state of rewards or
+punishments. They differ in the veneration paid to antecedent authority.
+Sakya Muni believed in his own inspiration, and rejected the writings
+which were reverenced by his parents and Mends. Jesus seems to have
+believed that he was himself supplemental to Moses and the prophets.
+He did not want to destroy or to supersede them absolutely, as we learn
+from Matthew v. 17, and xxiii. 23. He had, apparently, an unbounded
+confidence in their truth, and, with an assurance in their sanctity, he
+spoke of their writings as the very words of God, and we shall see
+that the main, if not the only, points in which Jesus diverges from
+the Hindoo prophet were the products of the Hebrew's full belief in the
+sacred truth of the Jewish Scriptures.
+
+The son of Mary taught, as the most important part of his doctrine, that
+the world would shortly come to an end, and that he was sent to
+show mankind, or, rather, the Jews, how to escape from the terrible
+catastrophe. I do not think it possible for anyone to read the words
+attributed to Jesus, and not recognize that this was the turning point
+upon which everything in his preaching hinged. Sakya Muni spoke of the
+future misery of all those who did not adopt his method of salvation;
+Jesus treated of the impending destruction of the whole world, of an
+immediate judgment of mankind, and of the certain punishment of the
+majority. That we are not uttering vague assertions we may show by
+reference to Matt. xxiv. 3, wherein we find certain disciples asking,
+"What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
+After a long preamble, telling of troubles and misery, we have the reply
+of Jesus in vv. 29 et seq.:--"Immediately after the tribulation of those
+days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
+and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
+shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in
+heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall
+see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great
+glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and
+they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end
+of heaven to another.... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall
+not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." This is substantially,
+and almost literally, repeated in Mark xiii. 26-30, and in Luke xxi. 32.*
+
+     * I have heard the words of this preceding quotation handled
+     by a great variety of divines, asserting themselves to be
+     orthodox, and who hold the position of Christian ministers.
+     All, without exception, profess to regard the expressions
+     about the sun being darkened and the stars falling, as
+     figurative or metaphorical, and each, according to his
+     prevalent ideas, or to the pet theory of the day, explain
+     the imagery as having a reference to some emperor, king,
+     queen, general of armies, and I know not what besides. But,
+     to anyone who examines the phraseology closely, it will be
+     seen that the words are to be taken in their most literal
+     sense. Jesus had, as we have shown, a firm belief in the
+     immediate destruction of the world, and upon that theme he
+     descants and dilates. Taking the Mosaic account of creation
+     as strictly true to the letter, Jesus regarded the sun,
+     moon, and stars as apanages of our earth, and very naturally
+     drew the inference, that when the world was burned up, there
+     would be no necessity for the celestial luminaries--the sun
+     would cease to shine, the moon would be dark, and the stars
+     fall from the sky under the influence of the same power that
+     produced the mundane destruction. These defunct bodies would
+     be replaced by a vast apparition, whose glory would exceed
+     that of the ancient rulers of the day and night, and he who
+     now stood on earth as a man of sorrows and acquainted with
+     grief would be seen and recognized as the arbiter of the
+     destinies of every man. The passages referred to in the text
+     bear no other meaning than the one here assigned to them;
+     nor would anyone, however wild "a divine" he might be, ever
+     see, or endeavour to discover, in the words referred to, a
+     hidden meaning, unless the solemn assertion of Jesus of his
+     immediate advent in the clouds of heaven had been such a
+     signal failure as time has proved it to be. We have always
+     protested against those theologians who pronounce passages
+     in the Bible to be metaphorical or literal as it suits the
+     event, and we do so now. Why such men should insist upon it
+     that everything in the Koran and Buddhistic books must be
+     taken au pied de la lettre and that everything in the Bible
+     may be allegorised, is a matter beyond my comprehension.
+     They surely forget the dictum--"with what measure ye mete it
+     shall be measured to you again" (Matt, vii. 2).
+
+In Matthew x. we find Jesus sending out his disciples as missionaries,
+saying to them (v. 7), "as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven
+is at hand," a doctrine previously proclaimed by John (Matt iii. 2), and
+based upon some words of Isaiah and the more precise presages in Daniel
+See also Matt iv. 14-17; Luke ix. 2, and x. 9. We find a yet more
+important reference in Matt. xi. 14, in which Jesus is reported to have
+said, when speaking of John, "If ye will receive it, this is Elias,
+which was for to come." The observation here made plainly refers to
+an utterance of the Jewish Malachi, who, in his last two chapters,
+foreshadows the advent of a messenger, who should immediately precede
+the coming of the Lord to judge the world. There is yet another passage,
+of almost equal force, in Matt. xvi. 27, 28--"For the Son of man shall
+come in the glory of the Father with his angels, and then shall he
+reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be
+some standing here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son
+of man coming in his kingdom." In Matt. xix. 28 we read, "Jesus said
+unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the
+regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,
+ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
+Israel," &c. Again, we see in Matt, xxv., after a parable intended
+to show the possibility of a sudden occurrence, the words, "Watch,
+therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of
+man cometh." That this belief was due to the Jewish writings we judge
+from the frequent references made to them; and we may especially notice
+one which is attributed to Jesus after his resurrection, viz., "all
+things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and
+in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me." So firmly was the
+belief of an immediate judgment impressed upon the minds of Christians,
+that we find Paul affirming respecting it (1 Cor. xv.), "We shall not
+all sleep, but we shall all be changed... at the last trump" (vv. 31,
+52). This is more decidedly enunciated in 1 Thess. iv. 15-17--"For this
+we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive, and
+remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them that are
+asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
+with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead
+in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be
+caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
+and so shall we ever be with the Lord." Compare with this 2 Peter iii.
+1-4, in which there is a repetition of the same leading idea, and with
+Acts i. 11, and ii. 16-36.
+
+From these passages, it is unquestionable that Jesus preached that a
+destruction of the whole creation was imminent, and we, who have the
+light of history to guide us, can readily understand the powerful
+influence of the doctrine. We have read of panics, even in London, where
+some enthusiast has propounded the statement, that the world was to
+be destroyed upon a certain day, and can well believe, how a similar
+assertion would frighten ignorant, and, probably, learned Hebrew men.
+But, as time advanced, and generation after generation passed away, the
+original doctrine required to be modified. Yet it has never been quite
+given up, and to this day, a part of the system of Christianity is, to
+put faith in a second coming of Jesus, to judge the world. The
+"second coming" here referred to, frequently passes by the name of the
+Millennium, and earnest pietists believe that the son of Mary will come
+in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, to punish all who
+do not believe in him; and to elevate the existing, and all other past
+saints, to be kings and priests in a new Jerusalem, wherein all will
+enjoy perfect happiness for a thousand years.
+
+There is another point in connection between Buddha and Jesus, to which
+the biblical student should not fail to pay attention. The followers
+of the former had a perfect belief that each of them had lived in a
+previous state of existence. Upon this point not a doubt disturbed
+them. The disciples of the latter, however, had no such ideas, nor when
+propounded to them, did they apparently understand it. As far as we can
+judge from the first three Gospels, Jesus did not assert that he had
+ever existed prior to the time of his birth at Bethlehem. But in the
+fourth Gospel, written as almost every scholar believes, about A.D.
+150, a claim is repeatedly made by Jesus, of having lived for an untold
+period, in the spirit world in company with the Father.
+
+We will not enter here upon the grossness of thought, which is mingled
+with the better ideas of the writer of John's Gospel--a notion that
+involves the necessity for a celestial spouse of God; for if the son
+existed--"begotten by the father before all worlds," it could only be by
+some union--for the word "son" implies the necessity of a father and a
+mother--more especially when it is declared, that he was "begotten."
+Our chief business, however, is not with this point, but with the
+preexistence of Jesus.
+
+The assertions by which the claim to a preexistence is recognized, may
+be found in the well known words in the beginning of John, also in the
+10th verse--"The world was made by him." In these parts, the evangelist
+declares that Jesus was coeval with his father, which no son can be. In
+chap. iii. 13, we find, "no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he
+that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven,"--a
+strange text indeed, which totally ignores the ascension of Enoch and
+Elijah--or which demonstrates that they lived in heaven before they were
+born on earth, and which still further makes Jesus say, that he was in
+heaven at the time when he was talking to Nicodemus! In chap, vi. 62,
+there is a similar idea, "and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
+where he was before." In chap. viii. 14 to 23, 38, and 56, a similar
+idea is propounded; and in v. 58, Jesus is made to assert positively,
+"before Abraham was, I am." In chap, xvi. 28, again, we read, "I came
+forth from the Father," and in chap. xvii. 5, we see, "and now, O
+Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had
+with thee before the world was."
+
+We do not believe that the son of Mary made these assertions himself,
+nor did the son of Maya. But Sakya Muni had not long been dead, before
+his disciples promulgated the doctrine that he was, in reality, a part
+of the Supreme, who had existed for everlasting, and had been manifested
+in the flesh to become a teacher; what his followers did for Buddha, it
+was natural that others should do for Christ. It may be that the latter
+were stimulated to do so by noticing the former, but it is quite as
+probable that the idea of glorification came spontaneously to both sets
+of men. Whichever view of the case we may take, one thing is certain,
+viz., that both Buddhists and Christians, have, from the death of their
+respective masters, done everything in their power, century by century,
+to augment the claims of each, until indeed, individuals are found, who
+regard Sakya Muni as the Supreme, and Jesus the All in All. The learned
+historian may trace in the East, the rise of Buddha's influence in some
+spots, and its decadence in others; and, when he looks nearer home,
+he may see the gradual fall of Jesus, and the rise of Mary amongst the
+Papists, whilst amongst the Protestants, the son has been raised even
+above the Father. Not many months have passed, since a clever preacher
+and thoughtful man, told me that he was determined to see nothing in the
+world but Christ--for whatever was done, he felt a certain confidence
+that it was done by him, and for his glory.
+
+We see then, that both Buddhism and Christianity have been founded
+on the assertion that mankind suffers pain, misery, and death, in
+consequence of antecedent criminality before "The Great Master"--that
+men will be punished after death for certain sins committed in this
+life; and that they can attain to salvation by adopting the precepts
+and practice laid down by Buddha and by Christ. Those who preach these
+doctrines are sure of the facts that misery exists, and that man desires
+to escape it. According, then, to the painting of the one, and the
+earnest promise of the other, all teachers of the two sects have a
+strong hold upon the imagination of their followers. I assert, without
+fear of contradiction from any thoughtful man, that the main
+inducements held out by our divines to persuade their hearers to embrace
+Christianity, are an awful painting of the horrors of hell, and
+an assurance not only of escaping it, but of gaining a place quite
+different to the Devil's kingdom, provided only that the plan adopted
+by the theologian is followed to the letter. Neither Buddhists nor
+Christians seem ever to have studied the laws of nature, or the works of
+the Supreme, with any largeness of mind or understanding. Had they done
+so, they would alter their views respecting sin entirely, and they would
+attribute the miseries of life to their proper cause.
+
+It will be interesting to the reader, if we now endeavour to remove from
+the two religious systems, of which we treat, all those parts, which are
+to my mind, clearly imaginary; and examine what is left behind. There
+is nothing beyond a skeleton of morality, pure and simple. But even the
+morality is not based upon common sense. It is tainted by what every
+thinker must regard as absurdities. For example, when Siddartha
+instructed his disciples to become ascetics, and live upon alms, he did
+recognize the fact, that, if all men adopted his law, they must starve;
+for not one would have anything to give. In like manner, when Jesus
+of Nazareth sent off his disciples without any provision for their
+subsistence; and when he preached, "take no thought for the morrow,"
+he did not appear to take in the idea, that if all the world became
+converted to his doctrine, all would suffer, and die of hunger. It is,
+therefore, quite as necessary for a modern philosopher, to correct some
+of the better parts of the doctrines of the sons of Maya Devi, and
+Mary, as it is to emendate their worst features. If such an one were
+to pretend--or to believe, that he was "inspired" to rectify the
+dispensation of Siddartha and Jesus, as the latter thought himself
+commissioned to improve upon, or to fulfil the law of Moses--it is
+probable that he would be regarded as a prophet; but if he should only
+try to coax men to think, rather than drive them to believe, he would be
+unheeded by the majority. Nor after all, does it much signify. Sheep are
+tolerably comfortable whoever the shepherd may be, and if there should
+be a fight between rivals for the ownership of a flock, the quadrupeds
+do not care, so long as they are not trained to fight, to fast, or to
+live on an animal diet.
+
+When any one speaks of the morality, pure and simple, inculcated by
+Sakya Muni and Jesus, it is a fair question to ask whether asceticism
+is included therein. In other words, is there anything of the nature of
+absolute goodness in the attempt to make oneself miserable? Or, to vary
+the question still further--granting, for the sake of argument, that it
+is intrinsically right in the sight of God to abstain from such of our
+propensities as induce us to marry, to eat, drink, and sleep heartily,
+to fight a duel with a rival, to steal, to lie, to covet, and the
+like,--granting, too, that every such abstinence is entered as "an
+asset" on the creditor side of the books of Heaven--is it an equally
+available item to abstain from brotherly love and comfort generally?
+The logician sees clearly that there is no distinction in kind between
+controlling one set of animal passions and another, and is forced to
+allow that if it be a commendable thing to avoid indulging in one carnal
+appetite, it is still more commendable to endeavour to counteract them
+all Consequently, by granting the premisses, we find ourselves landed in
+a difficulty. If universal asceticism were to prevail, it is clear that
+man would be opposing himself to the manifest designs of the Creator,
+as shown in the world at large; and we cannot conceive, that direct
+disobedience to instincts, implanted in us by our Maker, can be anything
+but an item on the debtor side in the books, which Jewish writers
+have said that He keeps. Thus we are driven to investigate the very
+assertions which in the commencement of our inquiry we took for granted,
+and to ask ourselves, is there really any intrinsic value in morality
+in the sight of God? Can a most virtuous life command for the individual
+who has practised it an eternity of bliss? Jesus answers this tolerably
+distinctly in the words reported in Luke xvii. 10, "When ye shall have
+done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable
+servants: we have done that which it was our duty to do." But we doubt
+whether this dictum enunciates sufficiently clearly the abstract value
+of morality. To ascertain this we must endeavour to read the book of
+nature on other pages than those which treat of man.
+
+There can be no doubt in the mind of a thoughtful observer that man and
+the lower animals have much in common--that; all have been framed with a
+purpose, and are ruled by natural laws. Some creatures excel in cunning,
+some in reason, some in activity, some in sloth--all have certain
+proclivities. In some, instinct leads them to eat grass, boughs,
+leaves, and fruits; in others, it teaches them to seek insects or
+other creatures for their food. All have, more or less, periodically a
+propensity to propagate;--which is attended in some by a pairing off
+of male and female, who consort for the purpose of having offspring and
+assisting each other in rearing them. In others, either where there
+is naturally an equality of the sexes or a preponderance of males, the
+latter instinctively fight with each other for a single mate, or for a
+number of females. Again, in the case of animals actuated by hunger, or
+by other motives, there are frequent battles, and the conquered is not
+only killed, but eaten. Or where two or more sets of animals are living,
+the one on land, the other in the air, we may find that one will rob the
+other. Nothing, for example, is much more common than for rats and crows
+to steal eggs, or for tigers to commit murder. Nature, then, being such
+as we find it, we cannot assert--reasonably--that a young stag when he
+covets a neighbour's wife and fights her present consort, for property
+in her, commits a crime against the Almighty,--nor can we say that a fox
+which steals a goose will be sent to hell. On the other hand, we should
+never think of commending a hungry lion for abstaining from killing a
+harmless lamb, nor of declaring that he has done a good action in the
+sight of heaven. In like manner, a writer in proverbs tells us that
+"men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is
+hungry,"--and the general consent of mankind refuses to see the crime of
+murder in the slaughter of one, out of a miserable boat's crew, who
+is killed and eaten that the survivors may escape death from hunger.
+Society, too, is somewhat lenient when two men fight for the love
+of such a woman as Helen. But we readily recognise the fact that a
+community, or even a family, would be weakened and disorganized if theft
+was encouraged, and every pretty female was the cause of close fighting
+between man and man. Hence we see that, in reality, that which is called
+"the moral law," is a code which is intended to influence social life in
+this world, and not the position of human beings in the next.
+
+However much we might desire to think the contrary, we are driven to the
+belief that the moral precepts inculcated on the Jews, the Buddhists,
+and the Christians, had a human, and, we may add, a political origin.
+Taking the Bible even as being what many believe it to be--the inspired
+word of God--we must nevertheless allow that such a code as that book
+contains in Exodus and elsewhere, existed in Egypt long before the
+departure of the Jews from that country. Had not murder been prohibited
+on the Nile bank, Moses would not have run away to escape the penalty
+for homicide. Because the Mizraim punished killing, were they taught of
+God?
+
+The natural answer to this query when it is addressed to a bibliolater
+is that the Egyptians were taught by God to punish murder with death
+through the intervention of their forefather, Ham, who heard the command
+given by God to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
+blood be shed," Gen. ix. 6. But if the Egyptians thus knew the law, so
+the descendants of Shem must have learned it also; and if so, what need
+was there to repeat it amongst the thunders of Sinai. It is plain from
+the romantic legend of Joseph and Potiphar's wife: first, that the
+Hebrew slave feared to commit adultery, as it was a great wickedness
+and a sin against God, Gen. xxxix. 9; and, secondly, that the Egyptian
+considered it a crime in anyone to violate the wife of another. But
+neither Joseph nor Potiphar could by any possibility have heard of the
+laws enunciated on Sinai. So, if we could inquire farther, we should
+most assuredly learn that the Mizraim venerated their parents, punished
+theft, and took means to prevent and to punish perjury. If, then,
+the Egyptians had, long before they ever heard of a Jew, the same
+commandments amongst them which were subsequently enunciated in the
+wilderness, we can only come to the conclusion that the Hebrew writer
+who told the story of Sinai, gave the god whom he described, a great
+deal of unnecessary work. Can we for a moment suppose that the Jews when
+in Egypt had their wives in common?--and if each man had his mate, and
+each woman her husband, it is almost self-evident that adultery would
+not be tolerated amongst them. As there were therefore distinct moral
+laws long before the Exodus, the decalogue was entirely superfluous.
+
+The morality inculcated by teachers is nothing more than instructions
+for mankind how to attain the greatest harmony amongst their fellows.
+It is very natural for a thoughtless man to assert that one who wilfully
+disturbs the general comfort of the human family during his life-time,
+shall be tormented eternally after his death; and, on the other hand,
+to proclaim that he who does everything in his power to increase the
+happiness of his fellow-men shall be rewarded in a heaven above, with
+everlasting music, or other delights; yet we may fairly doubt the
+averments, for both are founded entirely upon human ideas of right and
+wrong, justice and injustice. The prevalent idea is, that everything
+which to some man seems to be wrong on earth, will be righted in another
+sphere--Even Jesus appears to have adopted this view, for he talks (Luke
+xvi) of a Dives and Lazarus--the one, a rich man who fared sumptuously
+every day, and the other a beggar, full of sores, who longed for the
+crumbs from wealth's table. After the deaths of these two people, we
+are told that the rich man went to Hell, and the poor one to Heaven,
+not--apparently--because one was bad and the other good; but simply
+because misery in the present is sure to be changed into luxury for the
+future, and _vice versa_. We see this doctrine distinctly enunciated by
+the imaginary Abraham, in whose bosom Lazarus lay, for he remarks (Luke
+xvi. 25), "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good
+things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and
+thou art tormented." We nowhere find that his position was a reward to
+the beggar for virtue or morality. There is also a current doctrine that
+he whom we call a vile man--one who indulges his brutal desires, shall
+in another world become more brutalized--meeting with, and being beaten
+by, powers whose mischievous propensities are superior to his own;
+whilst, on the other hand, he whom we call a saint, one who endeavours
+to subdue the affections of the flesh in this world, shall be able to
+indulge in any desire that he may have, in the next, unlimitedly. In
+short, each individual makes a Heaven for himself, and a Hell for his
+neighbours. I have heard, in days gone by, a Southern States lady say
+she would not go to heaven, willingly, if she knew that she should meet
+negroes there on terms of equality.
+
+In rejoinder to these considerations, the question is put, "Could the
+world be habitable by men, without the existence amongst them of a
+belief in a future state, in which rewards and punishments shall be
+meted out for supposed misdeeds committed in the present?" It is well
+for us to look the matter in the face boldly, and ask ourselves whether
+fierce tigers, angry bulls, combative stags, kindred devouring rats,
+offspring eating alligators, infanticidal birds and pigs have succeeded
+in extirpating their race? There are herds, without number, of
+graminivorous animals in Africa, and thousands of carnivorous creatures
+who could not exist without murdering some of the former; yet the
+slaughter committed by scores of lions does not annihilate antelopes. In
+like manner there are many folks who have lived in sundry islands of
+the Pacific without an idea, so far as we can learn, of an eternity,
+who sometimes spend their leisure time in fighting with and eating each
+other, and occasionally unite to kill a shark: each individual lives and
+dies like any other animal, but the race remains. Even the systematic
+"hellishness" of persecution indulged in by the followers of Jesus in
+the middle ages did not extirpate the Jews; and if organized murders,
+such as were, in days gone by, sanctioned by individuals wielding the
+sceptre of powerful governments, could not cut off from existence a
+comparatively feeble race, surely we may conclude that a nation can
+continue populous even if any individual, in a fit of passion, should
+rise against his fellow and smite him to the dust. But we need not go to
+New Zealand, China, and Japan to prove that men can live in a community
+without an idea of eternity, for we have only to refer to the Jews, the
+so-called people of God. To them no knowledge of eternal life was given,
+consequently we infer that Jehovah knew that they would get along in the
+world very well without it. What Elohim thought was unnecessary, it is
+not for man to propound as important.
+
+When the modern Christian philosopher--and there really are a few who
+deserve the term--finds that the morality of Jesus did not materially
+differ from that of Sakya Muni, he endeavours to show that the doctrine
+of "faith in the son of God" is of more value than simple propriety,
+and that even the most virtuous life will not enable a man to attain to
+paradise unless he holds the Catholic faith. When the "Catholic faith,"
+as it is termed, is placed in such a position, we are bound to examine
+its pretensions, and inquire in what way doctrines or dogmas are better
+than morality, and whether they are in any way superior to what the
+orthodox call "irreligion." To my mind the best method of solving
+the question is an appeal to history. If, as it is contended by the
+orthodox, the teaching of Christianity is far above that of any other
+religion, then it must follow that all those who believe in it, or even
+profess it, must be paragons amongst men as citizens and rulers. To
+what extent many theologians believe in this axiom may be judged by the
+frequency with which we hear, from the pulpit, an old anecdote to
+the effect, that the expression, "see how these Christians love one
+another," was, in olden time, nearly equal to the most powerful sermon
+in favour of the religion of Jesus. Without pointing a sneer, by
+requesting my readers to substitute the word Buddhists for Christians,
+let me lay the very heavy charge against the leaders of the faith, that
+the words in question are the heaviest condemnation possible against the
+supposed value of the doctrines of the son of Mary, as formerly and at
+present expounded. "See how these Christians love!" Aye, see how they
+love--read their own histories of the past, and their newspapers in
+the present; attend their meetings; listen to their speeches; and
+even follow them into private life. In every position "see how these
+Christians love one another" is the damning sentence which tells of the
+real value of the doctrine attributed to the son of Mary. Whilst I
+write (Jan. 7, 1870), a council, called OEcumenical, consisting of Roman
+Catholic Christian bishops, summoned to the capital of ancient Italy
+from all parts of the world, is sitting, and one of the subjects of its
+deliberation is, whether a certain individual, elected by men to assume
+the direction of a community of men holding a particular faith in
+common, shall be regarded, by those who join such branch of the church,
+as absolutely infallible in every statement of opinion which he makes as
+a high priest. Men positively have met to clothe, and now have invested,
+a man with an attribute of God, and millions of Christians will, by
+those men, be compelled to consider themselves bound by the decision!
+"See how these Christians love!" they are persecuted by the world at
+first, then they persecute their oppressors, and massacre each other;
+educated by Jesus, they gradually encourage ignorance until they reach
+a superstition as crass as the darkness of a dense fog in a moonless
+night. They oppose the advancement of knowledge and science, then, by
+degrees, endeavour to exalt each other, until, by common consent, they
+deify the chieftain of the order. There is not a known crime of which
+the leaders of the Christian church, as it is called, have not been
+guilty, both as men and ecclesiastical rulers. "See how these Christians
+love!" Yet these very men endeavour to deride, and affect to despise,
+those whom they call the godless. The latter, taking their stand upon
+morality and common sense, aver that all affairs between man and his
+maker ought to be referred to the arbitrement of Heaven. The Christian
+hierarchs, on the contrary, declare that they are the earthly agents of
+heaven, and that they, and the secular arm--a very mundane court--can
+act just as well, perhaps better, than the Supreme Judge. We will
+not say whether it was a pleasant pastime for the Spanish, and other
+Inquisitors, to torture individuals who were thought to be inimical to
+the true faith, inasmuch as we do not know their inmost mind; but
+we asseverate that all Europe, except those who had the power of
+persecution, and used it, rejoiced greatly when the enthusiastic armies,
+of what was designated atheistic France, annihilated the so-called Holy
+Inquisition.
+
+I speak with sober earnestness when I say, that after forty years'
+experience amongst those who profess Christianity, and those who
+proclaim, more or less quietly, their disagreement with it, I have
+noticed more sterling virtue and morality amongst the last than the
+first. Though I thus express myself, I must also acknowledge my belief
+in the dictum, "that many men are better than their creeds would
+make them," and, consequently, that all men are not to be taken as
+characteristic of their system of belief. I know, personally, many
+pious, sterling, good Christian people, whom I honour, admire, and,
+perhaps, would be glad to emulate or to equal; but they deserve the
+eulogy thus passed on them in consequence of their good sense having
+ignored the doctrine of faith to a great degree, and having cultivated
+the practice of good works. They have picked out the best bits of the
+Bible, and rejected the worst. In my judgment the most praiseworthy
+Christians whom I know are modified Buddhists, though, probably, not one
+of them ever heard of Siddartha. I would gladly trace their character,
+but I forbear, as I think they would be horrified at the thought of
+my comparing them with those whom they have been taught to regard as
+followers of a false prophet, or something worse. Let it suffice to say
+that I honour consistent reasonable Christians everywhere, and that
+whatever remarks I make which seem to be opposed to this, are directed
+against those whose doctrines, morality, and conduct, ostensibly built
+upon the Bible, are irrational and bad.
+
+Since the preceding remarks were written, there have appeared three very
+remarkable works upon Buddhism in addition to those which I have already
+noticed--and they have the advantage for general readers, of being
+clothed in an English dress. The first which I will notice, is _Travels
+of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun: Buddhist Pilgrims from China to India_ (408
+A.D., and 518 a.d.; London, Truebner, 1869, small 8vo. pp. 208.) This
+work is remarkable as illustrating the fact, that there has been the
+idea, even in China, of sending men, or of devout persons spontaneously
+going, to distant places, to endeavour to seek for more perfect
+religious knowledge, than they believe themselves and their teachers to
+possess where they are. With such an example before us, we can give
+more easy credence to the stories told of Pythagoras, of Solon, and
+Herodotus; how they visited distant countries to learn the way of God
+and man more perfectly. Nor must we pass by the proof, which the journey
+of the Chinese travellers affords, that, what may be called missionary
+zeal is not an apanage of Christianity alone. An account of their
+travels will be found in the next chapter. The second publication
+to which we refer, is _Buddhaghosa's Parables_, translated from the
+Burmese, by Capt. T. Rogers; with an introduction containing _Buddha's
+Dhammapada_, or _Path of Virtue_, translated from the Pali, by Max
+Mueller; London, Trubner & Co., 1870, 8vo. pp. 374. This work is of such
+importance to all students of the Science of Religion, that we shall
+notice it in a separate essay. The third contribution, is _The Modern
+Buddhist_, being the views of a Siamese Minister of State, on his own
+and other religions, translated, with remarks, by Henry Alabaster,
+interpreter of H. B. M., consulate-general in Siam; London, Triibner &
+Co., 1870, small 8vo. pp. 91. This has now arrived at a second edition,
+and is called _The Wheel of the Law_.
+
+This last book is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three, inasmuch
+as it enables us to compare the modern development of the religion of
+Buddha, and that of Christ. It enables us, moreover, to see ourselves
+and modern Christian doctrines as others see them, and to discover the
+essential points at issue, between the followers of the son of Maya
+Devi, and of Mary.
+
+The first point to which we would call attention, is the statement that
+the Siamese are nowhere excelled in the sincerity of their belief,
+and the liberality with which they support their religion. "In Bangkok
+alone, there are more than a hundred monasteries, and ten thousand monks
+and novices. More than this, every male Siamese, sometime during his
+life, and generally in the prime of it, takes orders as a monk, and
+retires for some months or years, to practise abstinence and meditation
+in a monastery." Against this, or side by side with it, what can Great
+Britain, or any other Christian country show? We have, it is true,
+plenty of monasteries in Christendom, and in the majority of western
+kingdoms, there are colleges and universities for the education of
+youth, and there is, in some such institutions, a pretence of meditation
+and of abstinence. Yet the finger of scandal points, and has pointed,
+for many hundred years, to the disreputable conduct pursued in almost
+the whole of such Christian institutions; whereas, not even its enemies
+can find evidence to convict Buddhist ascetics of indulging in sensual
+gratifications of any kind whatever.
+
+We learn, from Mr Alabaster's preface, that the late king of Siam,
+though "eminent amongst monks for his knowledge of the Buddhist
+scriptures, boldly preached against the canonicity of those of them,
+whose relations were opposed to his reason, and his knowledge of modern
+science." "His powers as a linguist were considerable, and enabled him
+to use an English library with facility." They are his views--which royal
+etiquette prevented him from writing, that inspired his prime minister.
+What have we here? Surely it is an example that British rulers, and
+especially divines, should follow. Yet with all our boasted skill,
+science, and powers of thought, our theologians prefer to preach, and to
+uphold, doctrines which they know to be repugnant, both to reason and to
+science, rather than abandon that which was propounded when reason and
+knowledge were almost in their infancy. Certainly, in this respect,
+the believers in Sakya Muni show themselves more sensible than those in
+Jesus.
+
+Again, let us quote the following paragraph--pointing out the analogy we
+wish to draw, by using a literary contrivance--and calling attention to
+the fact, that no Roman Catholic authority in Christian Europe, has yet
+dared to say, what a Buddhist ruler does.
+
+"Our {Siamese \ Papal} literature is not only scanty, but nonsensical,
+full of stories of {genii \ saints} stealing {women \ relics} and {men
+\ saints} fighting with {genii \ devils} and {extraordinary persons\
+Elijah and Philip} who could fly through the air, and bring dead
+people to life. And, even those works, which profess to teach anything,
+generally teach it wrong; so that there is not the least profit, though
+one studies them from morning to night" (p. 7).
+
+The following observation is equally powerful--Chaya. Phya.
+Praklang--the name of the Siamese author, might, "as a Buddhist, believe
+in the existence of a God, sublimed 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
+God 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 him
+by Christian Missionaries, or by Mahometans, Brahmins, or Jews, falls
+below his standard of even an ordinary good man" (p. 25).
+
+After the passages which we have quoted, the translator gives many
+pages of accounts of conversation between missionaries and the Siamese
+minister, which well repay a perusal. They are too long for quotation
+entire, but there are three paragraphs that deserve commemoration, as
+they show us the reasoning powers of the Buddhist in favourable contrast
+to the bigotry of his would-be instructor. "I said, 'then you consider
+that even a stone in the bladder is created by God?' He replied, 'Yes,
+everything, God creates everything.' 'Then,' answered I, if that is
+so, God creates in man that which will cause his death, and you medical
+missionaries remove it, and restore his health! Are you not opposing
+God by so doing? Are you not offending Him in curing those whom He would
+kill?' When I had said this the missionary became angry, and saying 'I
+was hard to teach,' left me" (p. 29). Again, when he and Dr Gutzlaff
+were discussing the story of the creation and "the fall," as taught in
+the Christian and Jewish Bible, and the Buddhist has clearly the best of
+the argument, the missionary told him, that if any spoke as the minister
+had been doing in European countries, he would be put in prison--and
+Chaya Phya adds, "I invite particular attention to this statement" (p.
+34). Thus, not only in other parts of his work, but here also, he points
+out how that which Christian emissaries say is "a religion of peace
+on earth and good will to men" is, in reality, one of intolerance and
+persecution, even on the showing of its own ministers. In the third
+example to which I refer, Gutzlaff is again talking with Chaya upon the
+curse of man, and the Siamese speaks thus--"Besides, the Bible says, by
+belief in Christ, man shall escape the consequences of Eve's sin; yet
+I cannot see that men do so escape in any degree, but suffer just as
+others do." The missionary answered, "It is waste of time to converse
+with evil men, who will not be taught, and so he left me" (p. 35). When
+men like Gutzlaff, who is really eminent in his way, can be so readily
+silenced and put to flight by a native of Siam, whose mind is not
+familiar with the science and logical training of European thinkers, it
+is by no means surprising that cultivated Englishmen should refuse
+to believe in the childish stories and foolish doctrines that are
+promulgated by Christians at home, as being an inspired and infallible
+revelation from the Almighty. Alas, for our country and her people!
+they have much to unlearn as well as to learn before they can lay a fair
+claim to the position which they assume to hold.
+
+We may next quote the following, as being useful to missionary societies
+here. After having described the religion of Papists, Protestants, and
+Mormons, Chaya says, "All these three sects worship the same God and
+Christ, why, then, should they blame each other, and charge each other
+with believing wrongfully, and say to each other, 'You are wrong, and
+will go to Hell; we are right, and shall go to Heaven?' You make us
+think that it is one religion which Christians hold, yet how can we join
+it when each party threatens us with Hell if we agree with another sect,
+and there is none to decide between them? I beg comparison of this with
+the teaching of the Lord Buddha, that whoever endeavours to keep the
+commandments, and is charitable, and walks virtuously, must attain to
+Heaven" (p. 43). The commandments referred to are--
+
+1st. Thou shalt not destroy nor cause the destruction of any living
+thing.
+
+2d. Thou shalt not, either by fraud or violence, obtain or keep that
+which belongs to another.
+
+3d. Thou shall not lie carnally with any but proper objects for thy
+lust.
+
+4th. Thou shalt not attempt, either by word or action, to lead others to
+believe that which is not true.
+
+5th. Thou shalt not become intoxicated.
+
+We much fear, that if the commandments which nominal Christians observe
+are contrasted with those kept by the Buddhists, that the former must be
+regarded as much lower in the scale of religious civilization than the
+latter.
+
+The Siamese author next discusses the question, "how shall a man select
+that religion which he can trust to for his future happiness?" His
+answer is, "He must reflect, and apply his mind to ascertain which
+comes nearest to truth." Then follow a few very true remarks about the
+difficulty of shaking off any faith once adopted--about the causes
+which determine men to change their belief, and, in illustration of the
+difficulties, the author quotes a sermon by Buddha to those who were
+in doubt, and desired to select a right religion. "And the Lord Buddha
+answered, You are right to doubt, for it was a doubtful matter. I say
+unto all of you, do not believe in what ye have heard, that is, when you
+have heard anyone say this is especially good or extremely bad; do not
+reason with yourselves, that if it had not been true it would not
+have been asserted, and so believe in its truth. Neither have faith in
+traditions, because they have been handed down for many generations, and
+in many places.
+
+"Do not believe in anything because it is rumoured and spoken of by
+many; do not think that is a proof of its truth.
+
+"Do not believe merely because the written statement of some old sage is
+produced; do not be sure that the writing 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 haphazard, 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 because you think there is an analogy, that is, a
+suitability in things and occurrences--such as believing that there must
+be walls of the world because you see water in a basin, or that Mount
+Meru must exist because you have seen the reflection of trees, or that
+there must be a creating god because houses and towers have builders.
+
+"Do not believe in the truth of that to which you have become attached
+by habit, as every nation believes in the superiority of its own dress,
+and ornaments, and language.
+
+"Do not believe because your informant appears to be a credible person,
+as, for instance, when you see anyone having a very sharp appearance,
+conclude that he must be clever and trustworthy: or, when you see anyone
+who has powers and abilities beyond what men generally possess, believe
+in what he tells; or think that a great nobleman is to be believed, as
+he would not be raised by the king to high station unless he were a good
+man.
+
+"Do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and masters,
+or believe and practise merely because they believe and practise.
+
+"I 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 anyone, but will cause sorrow;' and when you know this,
+then eschew it" (pp. 45-47). Then follows a long account of the examples
+which Buddha gave to his disciples, examining them by questions, whose
+answer is obvious; but these, though wonderfully to the point, are too
+long for quotation, and we must refer our readers to the book itself.
+Nor do we act thus, reluctantly, for we believe that every honest
+inquirer will thank us for the introduction. We should rejoice if
+some of our divines became acquainted with it. They might draw as
+many valuable texts from the discourses attributed to Buddha, herein
+described, as they do now from Jesus' sermon on the mount. We may add,
+in passing, that, in the conversation of Sakya Muni, he says, "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 resurrection, 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; and if there should happen to be a
+future after all, they will be at a disadvantage--they will be like
+travellers without provisions" (p. 54).
+
+The following exposition of modern Buddhist belief well deserves
+attention.
+
+"Buddhists believe that every act, word, or thought, has its
+consequence, which will appear sooner or later in the present, or in
+some future state. Evil acts will produce evil consequences, i.e., may
+cause a man misfortune in this world, or an evil birth in hell, or as
+an animal in some future existence. Good acts, etc., will produce good
+consequences; prosperity in this world, or birth in heaven, or in a high
+position in the world in some future state" (p. 57).
+
+We will only add, that if the value of Buddhism, like Christianity, is
+to be known by its fruits, it is clear, that the former, as practised
+generally in Siam, is decidedly superior to the latter as practised in
+Great Britain, America, and Christendom, generally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Priority of Buddhism to Christianity. Strange assumptions.
+     When was India first known to Christians? Thomas the
+     Apostle, When Asceticism was introduced into Christianity.
+     Results of inquiry into the introduction of Christianity
+     into India. Tarshish and Ceylon. Peacocks known as the
+     Persian birds to the Greeks, temp. Aristophanes. Indian
+     elephants in army of Darius. Roman traffic with India, b.c.
+     30. Buddhist missionaries. The gift of tongues. Rise of
+     Asceticism in Western Asia. Essenes again. Collection of
+     Buddhist writings, 450 b.c. Degeneracy of original Faith.
+     Missionaries from China to Hindostan in search of Buddhist
+     works and knowledge. Travels of Fah Hian, their experience
+     and remarks. Quotations from their writings. Footprints of
+     Buddha and Peter. Immaculate conception of Sakya. Old
+     Simeon--a repetition. Wise men from the East. St. Ursula.
+     Three Buddhist councils to compile scriptures. Buddhism
+     lapsed into image-worship and processions. Progress of the
+     pilgrims. Return by sea. Deductions. Developments of
+     Christianity and Asceticism. Observations about travelling.
+     Conclusions.
+
+With the usual pertinacity of Englishmen, there are many devout
+individuals who, on finding that Buddhism and Christianity very closely
+resemble each other, asseverate, with all the vehemence of an assumed
+orthodoxy, that the first has proceeded from the second. Nor can the
+absurdity of attempting to prove that the future must precede the past
+deter them from declaring that Buddhism was promulgated originally
+by Christian missionaries from Judea, and then became deteriorated by
+Brahminical and other fancies! It is really difficult, sometimes, to
+discover what are the real tenets of the obstinate orthodox to whom
+we refer; but, so far as we can learn from the character of their
+opposition, it would appear that they do not deny the existence of such
+a man as Sakya Muni, to whom his followers gave the name of Buddha. Just
+in the same way, we may add, as his followers gave the name of Jesus
+Christ to Ben Panther. Whilst allowing that Siddartha founded a new
+religion, the orthodox assert that all its bad parts are human, whilst
+all its good parts consist of doctrines tacked on to the original, after
+Christianity had been introduced into India, by one or more of Jesus'
+apostles or disciples.
+
+If, for the sake of argument, we accord to such cavillers the position
+of reasonable beings, and ask them to give us some proof of the
+assertion, that early Christian people went to Hindostan and preached
+the gospel there; or even to point out, in history, valid proofs that
+India was known to a single apostle, we find that they have nothing to
+say beyond the vaguest gossip.
+
+What the testimony is we may find by turning to the article Thomas,
+in Kitto's _Cyclopoedia of Biblical Literature_, which was written by
+a learned professor of Gottingen. Therein we see, and the statement
+is amply vouched by quotation from authorities, that the Apostle in
+question is said to have preached the gospel in Parthia and in Persia,
+and to have been buried in Edessa; and that, according to a later
+tradition, Thomas went to India, and suffered martyrdom there. Then
+follows a statement that this account has been assailed, &c. Similar
+traditions are mentioned by Dean Stanley in Smith's "_Dictionary of the
+Bible_" with the addition that it is now believed that the Thomas of
+Malabar Christian fame was a Nestorian missionary.
+
+Eusebius writes, book v., ch. 10, speaking of Pantaenus, about
+a.d. 190--"He is said to have displayed such ardour... that he was
+constituted a herald of the gospel of Christ to the nations of the East,
+and advanced even as far as India; and the report is, that he there
+found his own arrival anticipated by some who were acquainted with
+the gospel of Matthew, to whom Bartholomew, one of the Apostles, had
+preached, and had left them the gospel of Matthew in the Hebrew, which
+was also preserved unto this time. Pantaenus became finally the head of
+the Alexandrian school." Such a piece of gossip no historian can trust
+for a moment.
+
+Socrates, in his _Ecclesiastical History_, about a.d. 420, writes,
+"We must now mention by what means the profession of Christianity
+was extended in Constantine's reign, for it was in his time that the
+nations, both of the Indians in the interior, and the Iberians, first
+embraced the Christian faith. But it may be needful briefly to explain
+why the expression in the interior is appended. When the apostles went
+forth by lot amongst the nations, Thomas received the apostleship of the
+Parthians. Matthew was allotted Ethiopia, and Bartholomew the part of
+India contiguous to that country; but the interior of India, which was
+inhabited by many barbarous nations, using different languages, was not
+enlightened by Christian doctrine before the time of Constantine," about
+320 A.D. Then follows a story of a Tynan philosopher, who, with two
+youths, took ship, and arrived somewhere in India, just after the
+violation of a treaty between that country and the Romans. Everyone in
+the ship was killed but the two lads, who, being young, were sent as a
+present to the Indian king. One became a cupbearer, the other the royal
+recorder. The king died, freeing the youths, and the queen, left with a
+young son, made the strangers his tutors, or regents. One, who was the
+highest, then began to inquire whether, amongst the Roman merchants
+trafficking with that country, there were any Christians to be found.
+Having discovered some, he induced them to select a place for worship,
+and he subsequently built a church, into which he admitted some Indians,
+after previous instruction. The other youth comes back to Tyre, and then
+the regent comes to Alexandria, talks to Athanasius, and begs him to
+send a bishop and clergy to the place he has left, to which no name is
+given. To the latter youth Frumentius, ordination is given, and he
+returns to India to preach, to perform miracles, and build oratories,
+[--Greek--]. The historian, adds Rufinus, assures us that he heard these
+facts from the former king's cupbearer, Edesius, who was afterwards
+inducted into the sacred office at Tyre.
+
+We may next quote the _Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of
+Philostorgius_ (who wrote about A.D. 425), compiled by Photius,
+Patriarch of Constantinople. Therein we may observe how completely the
+first contradicts Socrates as before quoted, and may also infer
+the reason why. In book ii., ch. 6, the words run, "The impious
+Philostorgius relates, that the Christians in Central India, who were
+converted to the faith of Christ by the preaching of St. Bartholomew,
+believe that the son is not of the same substance with the father." He
+adds that "Theophilus, the Indian who had embraced this opinion, came to
+them and delivered it to them as a doctrine; and also that these Indians
+are now called Homeritae, instead of their old name, Sabaeans, which they
+received from the city of Saba, the chief city of the whole nation."
+This leads me to doubt very strongly whether the ecclesiastical writers
+in early days did not group, under the name of India, the southern parts
+of Arabia, Persia, and Beloochistan.
+
+Sozomen, writing about the period of 325 A.D., says, book ii, ch. 24,
+"We have heard that about this period some of the most distant of the
+nations that we call Indian, to whom the preaching of Bartholomew was
+unknown, were converted to Christianity by Frumentius, a priest." Then
+follows an enlarged edition of the legend told by Socrates, and the
+words, "it is said that Frumentius discharged his priestly functions so
+admirably that he became an object of universal admiration." Theodoret,
+writing about 420 A.D., places the conversion of the Indians about 328
+A.D., and gives substantially the same account as the preceding writers
+whom we have quoted.
+
+We will not, however, content ourselves with this short notice, but
+will first inquire whether, if the accounts of the earlier reporters,
+Eusebius, Socrates, Clement, and Rufinus, who wrote about a.d. 320,
+390, 190, and 370, are not to be trusted, we can believe the stories of
+Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome, Nicephorus, and Abdias, who wrote
+about a.d. 380, 380, 400, 815, and 910 respectively. If we believe one
+set of Christian "fathers," that Thomas the apostle died in Syria, we
+cannot credit a set of Christian "sons," who affirm that he was martyred
+in India. But--and the point is an important one--we can see reason why
+the children should invent an account of which the parents saw not the
+necessity. About the period of Gregory Nazianzen arose that asceticism
+which sent Simeon Stylites upon the top of his pillar in a.d. 394, and
+kept him there for the rest of his life, and that peopled the Thebaid
+with hermits of the most approved Buddhist order--celibates shunning
+luxury, and cultivating filthiness of the outer to cleanse the inner
+man. The way in which the original faith, preached by Jesus and modified
+by Paul, was distorted during the first few centuries in Egypt can only
+be rationally accounted for by a spread of Buddhist doctrines by Indian
+missionaries, or promulgated by Christian merchants, who had travelled
+to the Indies, and modified their original faith by what they saw and
+heard from the followers of the great Sramana; and it was natural for
+the Alexandrian Christians to adopt the modifications referred to, and
+to stamp the innovations with the assertion that they were
+apostolic reflections--rays of divine light falling from "the sun of
+righteousness" upon the mind of the blessed Saint Somebody, Thomas, for
+this purpose, being a name which answered as well as any other. There is
+positively no evidence whatever--except some apocryphal Jesuit stories
+about certain disciples of Jesus, found by Papal missionaries at
+Malabar--that any disciple of Mary's son ever proceeded to Hindostan to
+preach the gospel during the first centuries of our era. Those who
+know the history of the "Decretals," and of Prester John, can readily
+estimate the value of tales told by Jesuits in India, where there was
+not at the time anyone to test their veracity.
+
+Being myself desirous of ascertaining what evidence really exists--or
+existed in the times of ancient authors, whose works have come down to
+us--of the knowledge of India by Europeans in days gone by, I instituted
+an inquiry, with the determination to be impartial. The results obtained
+were the following:--
+
+The only reason for believing that Hindostan and Ceylon were known to
+the Phoenicians is a short passage in the Biblical History of Solomon,
+in which we are told that after a three years' absence, Hiram's Tyrian
+sailors returned from Tarshish, bringing what our translators call
+ivory, apes, and peacocks. The words in the Hebrew original are said
+by Tennant to be all but identical with those in use in Ceylon at
+the present date. For a full account of the probable identity of the
+Tarshish in the passage alluded to and Galle, see Emerson Tennant's
+_History of Ceylon_.
+
+Yet, if we grant that the Tyrian shipmen traded to India, we are bound
+to confess that the knowledge which they acquired died with them;
+nor did their successors, the Greeks, know anything distinctly about
+Hindostan prior to the time of Alexander the Great. In the Biblical
+story of Esther we are told, i. 1, viii. 9, that a Persian king reigned
+from India to Ethiopia, the Hebrew word for the former being _Hodoo_,
+supposed to be a form of _handoo_, or _hindoo_; Pehlevi, _hendo_; Zend,
+_heando_; Sanscrit, _Sindhu_ (Fuerst, s.v.), equivalent to the Greek
+_Indikee_, or the country of the Indus. We find reason to believe that
+the India of Artaxerxes was a portion of Hindostan--first, because the
+Persian monarch had Indian soldiers in his army, and elephants, when
+he fought with Alexander; and secondly, because the peacock, a bird of
+Ceylon, was known to the Greeks, in the time of Aristophanes, as "the
+Persian bird." That the Persians traded with Northern India we infer,
+from the account which Appian gives us of the advance eastward of
+Alexander, after his victory at Arbela. But the whole story of the
+Grecian warrior's advance into the Punjaub and down the Indus, contains,
+in itself, tolerably clear proof that Hindostan was very little known to
+the Greeks. Of a subsequent invasion of India by Alexander's successor,
+Seleucus Nicator; of the mission of Megasthenes to Sandracottus, the
+grandfather of Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine; of the navigation of the
+Grecian ship down the Indus, and the subsequent traffic by land and
+sea between the Greeks and the Hindoos, we need not say more than that
+Augustus, b.c. 30, regulated the trade to Hindostan, _via_ Alexandria,
+and that, at the time of Pliny the elder, about A.D. _60_, voyages were
+being made to India every year, companies of archers being carried on
+board the vessels to protect them from pirates. We learn also that a
+twelvemonth did not elapse without a drain upon the Roman Empire of
+about one million and a-half sterling for India, in exchange for Hindoo
+wares (book vi., ch. 26).
+
+At the period Pliny refers to, and for a long time previously, there
+can be no pretence that any of Jesus' apostles accompanied traders to
+Hindostan, for every one of them were employed nearer home. On the other
+hand, we may inquire into the possibility and the reasonableness of
+Buddhist missionaries travelling westward in the course of Alexandrian
+traffic, or of the caravans which, we have grounds for believing, came
+through Persia to the Roman Empire.
+
+On turning to Oriental literature, we find that the often-mentioned King
+Asoka adopted Buddhism as the religion of his empire about b.c. 250, and
+that, in his time, missionaries carried that faith successfully to the
+uttermost parts of Hindostan--to Burmah, to Ceylon, to Japan, to Thibet,
+and to China. The envoys carried with them, in some instances, written
+books, in others, their guide was oral tradition. Wherever they went
+they bore a biography of Sakya--or Buddha--accounts of miracles that he
+had performed, and a summary, more or less extended, of his preaching or
+doctrines. This dispersion of Hindoo envoys was about fifty years later
+than the mission of the Greek Megasthenes to the court of Asoka's
+grandfather, and it is quite as probable that Buddhist preachers went to
+enlighten what they imagined to be the benighted, and what they knew
+to be the then defeated Grecians, as that they went over frightful
+mountains and stormy seas to Thibet, China, and Japan.
+
+We may profitably pause for a moment here, to contemplate that which
+I at one time believed to be the most wonderful of all the miracles
+recorded in the New Testament, viz., "the gift of tongues." The
+references to this which we meet with in the epistles of the apostle
+Paul might lead to the supposition, that some who had this "gift" spoke
+mere gibberish--something which was not, either in intention or in
+reality, an utterance in a foreign language; but the story of the
+original imparting of power to speak in a previously unknown tongue
+involves the idea, that the disciples had, on the occasion referred
+to, a faculty given to them, by which they knew the languages used
+by various nationalities, without the trouble of learning them. Many
+divines have held that such ability was absolutely necessary to those
+who had to go forth to teach all nations the doctrines of the gospel I
+am quite aware that, however earnest I might be to propagate truth,
+I could not go, with advantage, to preach in Russia, because I know
+nothing of its language.
+
+Doubt in the reality of the miracle recorded in Acts ii. was not born
+until I found that Buddhist missionaries went out into distant lands,
+where their own tongue was unknown, and yet made converts. When once I
+felt dubious as regards the veracity of the historian, I began to notice
+what the apostles generally did when they went to a new country or town.
+Their practice seems to have been to have visited synagogues of the Jews
+living on the spot--and able, if they chose, to be interpreters--or,
+where there were such establishments, "the schools" were visited, where
+the students and the masters understood Greek. In the time of Paul the
+language of the Hellenes was spoken by Romans of high position, much as
+French was spoken at the court of Frederic the Great of Prussia, and
+as German is at St. Petersburg. The Apostle seems to have spoken Greek
+readily, and when he could use that tongue or the Hebrew he was fluent.
+I have sought in vain for evidence that either Paul or any of the
+Apostles ever addressed a foreign mob, whose language was neither Greek
+nor Hebrew. A study of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts will show
+this--especially, we must notice the end of the tenth verse, where we
+are told "that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, both
+_Jews and Greeks_." When disturbance occurred in the theatre, Paul was
+not the orator put forward to appease the people--he probably could not
+speak their patois. Yet he tells us, 1 Cor. xiv. 18, that he spoke with
+tongues more than his fellows.*
+
+     * There is much difference amongst ecclesiastical writers
+     respecting what is called the "gift of tongues." The
+     difficulty arises mainly from the desire to reconcile "the
+     true" with "the absurd." Starting from the point that all
+     "scripture" is written by "inspiration of God," the orthodox
+     are obliged to receive the account narrated in Acts ii. as
+     being literally correct.
+
+In plain language, the story runs thus:--The Apostles, twelve in number,
+were sitting in a room. Whilst there, a noise was heard, and something
+like fiery tongues, more or less split, appeared, and one settled upon
+each of the company. These all, at once, began to speak in languages
+which were strange to all.
+
+From the noise made, neighbours had their attention called, and from one
+mouth to another the tidings of the ranting ran, until it reached the
+ears of devout men, who, from every nation under heaven, were then
+assembled in Jerusalem. Whether these foreigners were Hebrews, or
+whether they, being strangers, had the gift of understanding the reports
+couched in Aramaic, we do not know. But it is narrated that, in the
+course of a few minutes--possibly an hour or two--the devout strangers
+came to listen to the Apostles, either speaking singly or at once.
+
+As these foreigners noticed what was said, they recognized words
+in their own respective dialects, and then the Parthian said to the
+Mede--the Elamite to the Mesopotamian--the Phrygian to the Pamphyliaji,
+&c., "What does all this mean?" So to interchange a question involves
+that the interlocutors, like the Apostles, had suddenly received the
+gift of speaking, and understanding, other tongues than their own. When
+the listeners had convinced themselves about the marvel, each began to
+talk in his own language, and the Jews understood them to say, "What
+meaneth this?" the Hebrews, like the rest, having also the gift of
+knowing what was said in a strange language.
+
+Some, however, had not this power of interpretation, and remarked, "the
+fellows are drunk!" For a moment we pause to inquire how many people
+there were in one room of one house. The Apostles were twelve;
+then there were, at least three, Parthians, Medes, &c., in all about
+forty-five more, and in addition, there were "the mockers." To all
+these Peter preached, and the wonders of the day were crowned by the
+conversion of three thousand people!
+
+It seems, therefore, to be clear, from the account of this extraordinary
+miracle, that the Apostles then gathered together acquired the power of
+expressing their thoughts in languages which they had never learned, the
+judges of the feat being those whose dialects were spoken.
+
+If we now proceed in biblical order to examine into the ideas connected
+with this strange faculty, we find, in Acts x. 44-46, that the
+circumcised Jews alone were satisfied, in the plenitude of their own
+ignorance, that Cornelius and his company could "speak with tongues."
+Again, in Acts xix. 6, we learn that certain Ephesians, after baptism,
+and imposition of hands, "spake with tongues "--no judge of the fact
+being quoted.
+
+In 1 Cor. xii. 10, we discover that amongst the gifts of the Holy Spirit
+are "kinds of tongues," and the interpretation thereof which will,
+probably, remind the lover of Shakespeare of Act iv. Scenes 1 and 3,
+in "All's well that ends well," wherein there is a nonsensical jargon
+spoken by one person which another interprets to the satisfaction of the
+silly Parolles. In vv 28, 30, we see strong indications that the gift
+of tongues and interpretation may be compared to some things now heard
+of in spiritualistic or other conjuring seances.
+
+This notion of "speaking with other tongues" reaches its climax,
+apparently, in 1 Cor. xiii. 1, wherein Paul indicates, but does not
+positively assert, that he can "speak with the tongues of men and
+angels," a boast which 2 Cor. xii. 4 leads us to take literally. But how
+any one on earth could test the reality of assertion it is difficult to
+conceive.
+
+In 1 Cor. xiv. we see indications that "speaking with tongues" is little
+more or less than a sort of hysterical utterance of gibberish, which
+we may compare to the once celebrated chorus of
+
+     Lilli-bullero-lero-lero-Lillibullero bullen a la.
+
+One may now ask, "Why did people think that it was part of the
+Christian's privileges or powers to speak with tongues?" The only answer
+which I can discover is indicated in Acts ii. 18, wherein we find it
+given as the opinion of Peter, that a certain vaticination in Joel
+applied to the followers of Jesus. The philosopher may wonder at the
+ignorance--possibly at the knowledge--which confounded "prophesying"
+with the utterance of unintelligible rubbish; but the philologist should
+be led to investigate more strictly the real signification of words,
+and to inquire into the theories which are traceable to false
+interpretations.
+
+Considerations such as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely,
+I have come to the belief that the Apostles of Jesus were no better, as
+regards their knowledge of foreign tongues, than their predecessors,
+the missionaries sent by Asoka, or than the modern envoys sent out by a
+London Society.
+
+What renders it probable that Buddhist ascetics found their way,
+probably amongst the camp followers of Antiochus the Great, and
+endeavoured to promulgate their doctrines in western Asia, is the fact
+that a sect sprang up amongst the Jews after the Grecian conquest of
+Palestine--called "The Essenes," to which we have before referred,
+amongst whose tenets Buddhism and Judaism were closely mingled The
+asceticism practised by this sect was, so far as we know, different to
+anything known at that time in Greece or Western Asia, and as it came
+into fashion at the same time in Palestine as Indian elephants and
+Hindoo Mahouts, there is some reason for the belief that it was brought
+by disciples of Siddartha. Without dwelling upon this again, we return
+to the well ascertained fact that Buddhism was promulgated most widely
+in Eastern and Northern Asia about 250 b.c., that a collection of
+religious books was made about two hundred years prior to that date, and
+that these were revised again during Asoka's reign. But, however earnest
+were the teachers and the taught, the scriptures which they respected
+were so voluminous and the facilities for multiplying them were so
+small, that it happened, as it did amongst early Christians, that many a
+church had no written book of the law. As a consequence of this, one
+part or another of Sakya's doctrines became exalted unduly in one
+locality, whilst in another a portion was left out of sight. Stories,
+also, of miracles became varied, just as we find that they have been by
+the writers in the New Testament, the tendency being, as in the history
+of the blind man near Jericho, to exaggerate the wonder--for example,
+Mark and Luke, chap. x. and xviii, give an account of one man being
+cured of blindness, whilst Matthew, chap, xx., tells us that there were
+two. The narrators under such circumstances act as if they thought that
+it is as easy for a divinity to heal two or two thousand as to cure one,
+and we who tolerate the practice in a Christian evangelist must not
+ridicule it in Buddhist disciples.
+
+When we contemplate the confusion that existed in the Christian
+church--the gradual deterioration of the faith taught by Jesus, and more
+especially by Paul, and the steady absorption of Pagan rites into the
+worship inaugurated by Peter and the other apostles, we can readily
+understand that in the course of six or seven hundred years there would
+be reason in countries distant from the home of Siddartha to deplore
+the gradual decadence of Buddhism, and a desire amongst the devout for
+tuition at the fountain-head. In modern times we have read of hierarchs
+coming from the uttermost parts of the earth to consult the Roman
+Pontiff upon points of discipline affecting the church, and we therefore
+see without surprise that, about A.D. 400, six hundred years after it
+had been planted, the congregation of Buddhists in China had within
+it men who determined to go to India, and bring back to their
+fellow-worshippers what they hoped would be a purer doctrine than that
+which they were accustomed to, and, if possible, to secure authentic
+books. Pilgrimage, with this object, cannot be regarded as being so
+absurd as that which has in modern days taken numbers of Christians to
+Lourdes, in the Pyrenees, or to St. Paray-le-Monial.
+
+Ere we describe this Chinese search after truth, let us imagine a
+Christian from Central Russia determining to seek for enlightenment at
+Antioch about a.d. 640, and subsequently at the seven churches named
+in the Apocalypse--and afterwards writing his experience. We should be
+certain to find him bewailing the fall of Christianity and the rise
+of Islam. We may indeed affirm that if such a history was now to be
+discovered undated, we should regard it as having been written before
+or after the date named, according as "the churches" were described as
+being the seat of Mahommedism or of Christianity. Still further, if in
+every place which this traveller visited, he found a general belief in
+the stories told of Jesus and in the efficacy of his doctrine, we should
+consider this as proof that the people remained faithful to their early
+teaching. If, on the other hand, the wanderer found himself proscribed
+in any locality as a benighted heathen, without knowledge of the way
+of salvation--he would naturally think that a teacher had given to its
+inhabitants instruction different from that which was familiar to him.
+I do not exaggerate when I say that a genuine account of the travels in
+search of sound Christian doctrine through every part of Europe in the
+fifth century of our era, would be invaluable as an indication of the
+tenure of certain doctrines, not only in various localities, but as
+to the existence or the reverse of dogmas now regarded as of supreme
+importance.
+
+Such a manuscript, which, however, relates to Buddhism and not to
+Christianity, exists in China, and it has lately been translated into
+English _Travels of Fah-Hian and Sung-Yun, Buddhist Pilgrims from China
+to India_, 400 a.d. and 518 a.d., translated from the Chinese by Samuel
+Bea. (Truebner & Co., London, 1869.) It tells us, in a singularly terse
+style, how a large portion of China was traversed by these pilgrims;--of
+the terrible journey over the mountains to the north of Hindustan; of a
+visit to the birth-place of Siddartha; to Benares, to Calcutta, and to
+Ceylon;--with an account of the return voyage in a good-sized ship back
+again to China. Everywhere, with one single exception, they find the law
+of Buddha prevailing. The place referred to as exceptional is Yopoti,
+Java, of which it is said: "In this country, heretics and Brahmins
+flourish; but the law of Buddha is not much known" (p. 168). In every
+other spot which they visit the Chinese wanderers speak applaudingly of
+the hold which the religion of Siddartha has upon the people, and the
+exemplary conduct of the faithful. From the beginning of the journey
+to the end, the enquirers appear always to have found the same form of
+faith which had been preached in their own country six hundred years
+before. The most careful investigator fails to find a shadow of those
+doctrines in which the teaching of Jesus differs from that of Sakya.
+There is not any allusion made to an impending dissolution of the world,
+to baptism, or to any sacrament; every remark relates to the essentials
+of Buddhism as known in each place where Europeans have been able to
+peruse the authorized Buddhist scriptures.
+
+We may now quote some passages bearing on important points. About the
+sources of the Indus: "All the priests asked Fah-Hian what he knew as
+to the time when the law of Buddha began to spread eastward from their
+country." Hian replied, "On enquiry, men of those lands agreed in saying
+that, according to an ancient tradition, Shamans from India began to
+carry the sacred books of Buddha beyond the river, from the time when
+the image of Maitreya Bodhisatwa was set up." This image was set up
+three hundred years or so after the Nirvana of Buddha (about B.C.
+243--or, according to some estimates, B.C. 177), which corresponds with
+the time of Pingwang of the Chan family (b.c. 770--the Chinese date of
+Buddha's Nirvana being different from that which is usually received in
+India.) Hence it may be said that the diffusion of the great doctrine
+can be attributed to the influence of this image. For, apart from the
+power of the divine teacher Mait-reya, who followed in the footsteps
+of Sakya, who would have been sufficient to cause the knowledge of the
+three precious ones to be spread so far, that even men on the outskirts
+of the world acquired that knowledge? We may conclude, therefore, with
+certainty, that the origin of this diffusion of the law of Buddha was no
+human work, but sprung from the same cause as the dream of Ming Ti
+(pp. 23-25). The three precious ones above referred to, are the Buddhist
+trinity, everywhere acknowledged, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha--or, as
+some say, Buddha--the law and the church. The dream of Ming Ti resembles
+that which we know as the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and foretells
+the coming of "the Saviour," one of the names given to Siddartha. The
+vision of a divine being, 70 feet high, with a body like gold, and
+his head glorious as the sun--one who is fanciful may here discern a
+likeness to the individual described in Rev. i. 13, seq.--induced the
+king to send to India to seek after the law of Fo, or Buddha. Some one
+speaking of two great towers adorned with all the precious substances,
+which had been erected at a certain town--the Taxila of the Greeks--to
+commemorate episodes in the life of Buddha, makes the remark "The kings,
+ministers, and people of all the surrounding countries vie with each
+other in making religious offerings at these places, in scattering
+flowers and burning incense continually" (p. 33).
+
+"In the city of Hilo is the Vitiara containing the relic of the
+skull-bone of Buddha. This Vitiara is entirely covered with plates of
+gold, and decorated with the seven precious substances (gold, silver,
+lapis lazuli, crystal, cornelian, coral, and ruby.) The king of the
+country reverences in a high degree this sacred relic." As this example
+shows well the Buddhist veneration for memorials of the dead, I will not
+quote more. It is clear that old bones were regarded with religious
+awe in Hindostan before they were enshrined in Christendom. In the case
+above recorded, "extraordinary pains are taken to preserve the relic
+from theft or substitution, and the king offers flowers and incense
+in front of it daily, then bends his head to the ground before it
+in adoration, and departs." In another place Buddha's robe is kept,
+although we may fairly doubt whether he ever possessed one, but
+doubtless it is quite as authentic as "the holy coat" of Treves, or the
+Virgin Mary's milk. There is another relic of Sakya not yet copied by
+Christian pagans, viz., the shadow of the great teacher--which lives
+in a cave, and can only be seen by the faithful (p. 45, 46). We commend
+this to thaumaturgical Gallican divines, such as those who describe how
+certain it is that Mary of Judea came to show herself at Lourdes, and to
+talk French.
+
+On arriving at the Punjaub the record states, "The law of Buddha is
+prosperous and flourishing here..." On seeing disciples from China
+coming among them they were much affected, and spoke thus: "How
+wonderful to think that men from the ends of the earth should know the
+character of this religion, and should come thus far to seek the law
+of Buddha. We received from them all that we required, and were treated
+according to the provisions of the law" (p. 51,52). "All the kingdoms
+beyond the sandy deserts are spoken of as belonging to Western India.
+The kings of all these countries firmly believe in the law of Buddha"
+(pp. 53, 54).
+
+In the following, we may see the prototype of monasteries, "From the
+time of Buddha's Nirvana, the kings and nobles of all these countries
+began to erect viharas for the priesthood, and to endow them with lands,
+gardens, houses, and also men and oxen to cultivate them. The records
+of these endowments being engraved on sheets of copper, have been handed
+down from one king to another, so that no one has dared to deprive
+them of possession, and they continue to this day to enjoy their proper
+revenues. All the resident priests have chambers, beds, coverlets, food,
+drink, and clothes provided for them without stint or reserve. Thus it
+is in all places. The priests, on the other hand, continually employ
+themselves in reciting their scriptures, in works of benevolence, or in
+profound meditation" (pp. 55, 56).
+
+It is very important that we should notice, although it is unnecessary
+to dwell upon the fact, that the pilgrims visited the spot whence Buddha
+went up to heaven to preach his law to his mother Maya, who died when
+her child was seven days old, and, consequently, long before he became
+"the Saviour." The son remained with his parent three months (p. 62.)
+Jesus, it will be remembered, only preached to the spirits in prison
+during a day and a-half--which, by common consent, passes amongst
+Christians for three days. I may also notice that there is mentioned (p.
+66), an idea that three Buddhas existed before the advent of Sakya Muni,
+and that the following are their precepts, translated from the
+Chinese copy of a Buddhist book:--1. The heart carefully avoiding idle
+dissipation, diligently applying itself to religion, forsaking all lust
+and consequent disappointment, fixed and immovable, attains Nirvana
+(rest.) 2. Practising no vice, advancing in the exercise of virtue, and
+purifying the mind from evil; this is the doctrine of all the Buddhas.
+3. To keep one's tongue, to cleanse one's mind, to do no ill--this
+is the way to purify oneself throughout, and to attain this state of
+discipline is the doctrine of all the great sages (p. 66).
+
+The Buddhists also preserve impressions of Siddartha's feet and show
+them to pilgrims, just as certain papal priests show the impressions of
+St. Peter's feet at a church a little outside Rome, on the Appian
+way. The pilgrims "visit Kapilavastu, now a desert, but once the royal
+residence of Suddhodana. There are here a congregation of priests and
+ten families of lay people. In the ruined palace there is a picture of
+the Prince Apparent and his mother (supposed to be) taken at the time
+of his miraculous conception. The prince is represented as descending
+towards his mother riding on a white elephant." This elephant came from
+the Tusita heaven surrounded by light like the sun, and entered the
+left side of the mother. As the elephant is the strongest of known
+terrestrial animals, it certainly represented "The power of the Highest"
+(see Luke i. 35), and we may draw one of two inferences--either that the
+sons of Maya and Mary were conceived equally miraculously, or that the
+story of one is just as true or as incredible as that of the other.
+Certainly the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was known in India
+long before it was enunciated by a Christian Pope in Rome. Perhaps, had
+Pio Nono known that he was copying a Buddhistic story, he would have
+wavered long before he assimilated his religion to that of Siddartha.
+At the same locality a tower is raised to mark the spot where the Rishi
+(Saint or Prophet) Asita calculated the horoscope of Sakya, and declared
+that he would become a supreme Buddha--a legend which is very similar
+to that told of old Simeon and the infant Jesus (Luke ii. 25, seq.). The
+pilgrims were also shown the garden--not a stable--in which Maya brought
+forth her son, and wherein immediately afterwards the infant walked. Two
+dragon kings--perhaps wise men from the East--washed the infant's body,
+and this spot afterwards became a sacred well (p. 88).
+
+We must pass by an account of a miracle, to the full as wonderful and
+quite as incredible as that of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand
+virgins, who left their bones at Cologne because it has no distinct
+reference to Buddha. (P. 97)--But I may mention that the Chinese writer
+states after the end of the story, that a certain violation of the law
+occurred one hundred years after Sakya's death, and upon this record Mr
+Beal has the following important note--"This refers to the second great
+council of the Buddhist church. According to Singhalese authorities
+(Mahawanso) there were three great convocations or councils--1st,
+immediately after Buddha's death to compile the authorised scriptures;
+2d, to refute certain errors that had crept into the church; 3d, under
+the great Asoka," (p. 99). We may doubt the value of the Mahawanso, but
+at the same time we may express a wish that early Christians had even a
+tradition of a council to compile authorised scriptures about the son
+of Mary ere time sufficient had elapsed to allow "the marvellous" to
+develop itself into "the incredible."
+
+In like manner I must omit the description of a procession of images,
+amongst which that of Buddha is conspicuous; the fete is held at Patna,
+supposed to be the ancient Palimbothra where Asoka reigned. It resembles
+in almost all its details the grand processions of the Papists on
+certain occasions,--lamps, lights, games, riot, and religious offerings
+are mingled together for the healthy and for the sick, and wonderful
+cures are provided as far as possible. To this account is to be
+appended a very significant, perhaps I might say satirical, note by the
+translator of the pilgrims' manuscript. "From the whole of this account
+(of the procession of images), it would seem that the Buddhist worship
+had already begun to degenerate from its primitive simplicity and
+severity. Plays and music and concerts, are strictly forbidden by the
+rules of the order; we can begin to see how Buddhism lapsed into Sivite
+worship, and sank finally into the horrors of Jaganath" (p. 107). To
+the thoughtful reader of our christian history, this note upon Buddhist
+processions of images is painfully pregnant. It reminds us that the
+followers of Maya's son and Mary's alike lapsed into paganism, and
+almost by the same stages. We cannot accuse the Hindoos of copying the
+orgies of the Christian saturnalia or carnival, nor do we think that the
+Europeans cared to imitate the Hindoos; but what we do believe is that
+both parties have fallen lower and lower from their pristine purity in
+consequence of the gradually increasing feeling that the generality of
+human beings can only be brought under priestly power by an appeal to
+their animal propensities.
+
+Some affirm, with great show of argumentation, that it is man's bestial
+propensities which lead his race to hell. It may be so, but then, on the
+other hand, it is certain that ecclesiastics endeavour to chain us to
+their chariots by pandering to, managing, exciting, or otherwise playing
+upon those propensities, which man has in common with the sheep, the ox,
+the tiger, the serpent, and the elephant. Every form of religion, yet
+promulgated, that appeals to sound sense, thought, and reason, has
+failed from the want of followers capable of dominating their passions.
+Than a pure religion based upon thoughts such as Sakya Muni and the son
+of Mary gave utterance to, nothing seems grander, but such is its nature
+that it can only be fully embraced by a few. If all are poor, none can
+live upon alms--if all sell their worldly goods to purchase Heaven,
+no buyers will be found in the market. The Buddhist and the Christian
+anchorite may, for a time, live on charity, yet each succeeding
+generation of ascetics will more and more dislike the plan of winning
+food by misery. We have seen how kings made grand provision for the
+comfort of the priestly followers of the son of Maya; and in later
+times, we have seen how the followers of the son of Mary have, by
+artfulness, provided many similar homes for themselves. Yet, with all
+this, there are both Buddhists and Christians who have protested,
+by their actions, against religious luxury of every kind. Each of my
+readers may judge of what spirit he is, by asking himself whether he
+regards such individuals as wise or foolish.
+
+The pilgrims pass on to the place where five hundred saints assembled
+after Sakya's death to arrange the collection of sacred books (p.
+118)--thence to the spot where Siddartha bathed, and the Deva or Angel
+held out the branch of a tree to assist him in coming out of the water
+(p. 121)--thence to the spot where Buddha was tempted by three daughters
+of Maka as courtesans, a more severe temptation than befel the Christian
+Anthony--and by Mara himself with a vast army; but all uselessly, for
+Sakya was as impregnable as Jesus. And we find that in the same spot he
+subsequently underwent mortification, not for forty days only, but for
+six years. All of these localities are marked by towers, which must,
+according to ecclesiastical reasoning, demonstrate the truth of the
+legends.
+
+After a very long search--for the purpose of Fah Hian was to seek for
+copies of the _Vinaya Pitaka_--he found his exertions to find a copy of
+the sacred work were useless, because, throughout the whole of Northern
+India, the various masters trusted to tradition only for their knowledge
+of the precepts, and had no written codes. The pilgrims, however, when
+they arrived in Middle India, found a copy, "which was that used by the
+first great assembly of priests convened during Buddha's lifetime" (p.
+142); this appears to have been generally regarded as the most correct
+and complete (p. 144). Fah Hian also obtained "one copy of Precepts, in
+manuscript, comprising about 7000 gathas (verses or stanzas). This
+was the same as that generally used in China. In this place also an
+imperfect copy of the Abhidharma was obtained, containing 6000 gathas;
+also, an abreviated form of Sutras, or Precepts, containing 2500 verses
+in an abreviated form; also, another expanded Sutra, with 5000 verses,
+and a second copy of the Abhidharma," according to the school of the
+Maha Sanghihas (the greater vehicle). "On this account Fah Hian abode in
+the place (Patma, the ancient Palibothra) for the space of three years,
+engaged in learning to read the Sanscrit books, to converse in that
+language, and to copy the Precepts. Here his companion, To Ching,
+remained; but Fah Hian, desiring with his whole heart to spread the
+knowledge of the Precepts throughout China, returned alone" (p. 146).
+This pilgrim then goes to the kingdom of Champa, where he stopped two
+years, to copy out sacred Sutras, and to take impressions of the figures
+used in worship. Here the law of Buddha was generally respected. He
+then sailed in a great merchant vessel for Ceylon (p. 148). From this
+expression we presume that he entered a seaport, and, as such, one
+likely to have been reached by some Christian missionary, if any had
+ever visited India, as Paul attained Asia Minor, Italy, &c. All that we
+learn about it, however, is in a translator's note, which tells us that
+the place was mentioned by another China man, Hiouen Thsang, who spoke
+of the number of heretical sects who were mixed together here--Buddhism
+being here corrupted at an early period by local superstitions. In
+Ceylon Fah Hian remained two years, and, continuing his search for the
+sacred books, obtained a copy of the Vinaya Pitaka, of the great Agama,
+and the miscellaneous Agama (books of elementary doctrine), also a
+volume of miscellaneous collections from the Pitakas, all of which were
+hitherto entirely unknown in China. Having obtained these works in the
+original language (Pali), he forthwith shipped himself on board a great
+merchant vessel, which carried about 200 men, and started for his native
+land (p. 166). "After Fah Hian left home, he was five years in arriving
+at Mid India. He resided there during six years, and was three more ere
+he arrived again in China. He had successively passed through thirty
+different countries." In all the countries of India, after passing the
+sandy desert (of Gobi), the dignified carriage of the priesthood, and
+the surprising influence of religion (amongst the people), cannot be
+adequately described... "Having been preserved by Divine power (by
+the influences of the Three honourable Ones), and brought through all
+dangers safely, he was induced to commit to writing the record of his
+travels, desirous that the virtuous of all ages may be informed of them
+as well as himself" (p. 173).
+
+After reading this account, we think that no thoughtful man can
+reasonably assert that Christianity was taught in India at an early
+period, was widely adopted, and became the parent of Buddhism. If, in
+rejoinder, we are told that no writers have asserted that there were
+Christians in India in olden times, except in Malabar, the answer is,
+that these were described by those who first met with their successors
+as totally distinct from the Hindoos, and, consequently, neither
+Buddhists nor Brahmins. Moreover, we are told that they were regarded
+by the Holy Inquisition of Europe as heretics, and were, consequently,
+persecuted by the Christians (see Gibbon's _Roman Empire_, vol. viii,
+355).
+
+Rosse, in his book of dates (London, 1858), speaks of an Indian embassy
+to Constantine the Great, a.d. 334, and another sent to Constantius the
+Second, but received by Julian, A.D. 362. I cannot, however, as yet,
+find his authority. But Socrates, in his _Ecclesiastical History_,
+book i, ch. 19, about A.D. 331, speaks of a treaty which had been in
+existence a short time before, between the Romans and the Indians, but
+which had been recently violated. He also, in the same chapter, states
+that there were Christians amongst the Roman merchants in India--no
+town or locality being given, however, so that we cannot test his
+assertion--but that they did not then unite to worship. We find also,
+from the same chapter, that up to that period there were no Christian
+Indians known.
+
+Coupling the foregoing fragments of history together, we may safely
+assert that India, generally, was Buddhist in A.D. 400, and that,
+according to Pliny, the Romans, or, rather, the Alexandrians, had been
+in yearly communication with the country, for at least three centuries,
+at the time of Constantine. As it appears that there were Roman
+merchants in India, so we presume that there were Hindoo traders
+resident in Egypt. The presumption is, that these were Buddhists, and
+that they were attended, or followed, by missionary Buddhist priests.
+Absolute proof of this there is none.
+
+We now turn to Gibbon's history, and inquire into the period when
+monastic asceticism first began to prevail in Egypt, the necessary
+residence of our presumed Hindoo traffickers. We find (see _Decline and
+Fall_, chapter 37) that Anthony, an Egyptian, and unable to write in
+Greek, living in the lower parts of Thebais, distributed his patrimony,
+deserted his family and native home, lived amongst tombs, or in a ruined
+tower, then in the desert, and then in some lonely spot, near the Red
+Sea, where he found shade and water. It certainly seems clear that he
+took the son of Maya, rather than the child of Mary, as his exemplar.
+At and after this time, the rage for asceticism spread amongst the
+inhabitants of Eastern Africa as conspicuously as it had done in
+Oriental Asia at the time of Asoka. It is difficult to read the chapter
+of Gibbon's history to which we refer, and a history of Buddhism,
+without regarding Egypt, and her miserable ascetics, in the same light
+as we look upon the folks of Hindustan and Thibet. If Jesus of Nazareth
+had dictated such a life, surely his early followers would have been
+more conspicuous in their habitual mortifications than their later
+disciples were. The son of man--the child of Mary--"came eating and
+drinking," and was called "a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend
+of publicans and sinners" (Luke vii. 34; Matt, xi. 19). Not so the
+son of Maya. The Apostles of Jesus had power to lead about a wife or a
+sister, and they did so. Neither Paul nor Peter shunned woman's society,
+nor did they practise poverty; nay, they worked with their own hands,
+lest they should have to live on alms (2 Thess. iii. 8), and they
+collected money for poor saints from the wealthier brethren. There was
+no asceticism here, nor can we find, in any part of the New Testament, a
+text upon which a system of austerity can be founded.
+
+We might, perhaps, think comparatively little of the parallel which we
+have drawn between Buddhism, and Christianity, did we not recognize the
+fact, that almost everyone of the later developments of the latter had,
+for centuries before, found a place in the former, even including, as we
+have mentioned, the dogma of the immaculate conception.
+
+To the preceding considerations we may add another, which, as Ivanhoe
+said of himself, "is of lesser renown and lower rank, and assumed into
+the honourable company less to aid their enterprise than to make up
+their number." Standing alone it may have small power, but as a link
+in a chain it is important. We refer to the abundant testimony which
+we possess of the strength of Grecian influence upon the tenets of
+Christianity. Without laying any stress upon the fact that the whole
+of the New Testament extant is written in Greek, we may advert to the
+current belief amongst thoughtful scholars, that the so-called Gospel of
+St. John was written by some Alexandrian Greek about 150 A.D., or by one
+who was imbued with the philosophy of Plato. Sharpe has distinctly shown
+that the doctrine of the trinity was held in Ancient Egypt, and first
+adopted, then promulgated, by the Egyptian or Alexandrian divines. The
+influence of Greek ideas upon Philo Judaeus is very conspicuous.
+
+We may now turn our attention to one statement about the Athenians,
+viz., "that they and the strangers which were there spent their time
+in nothing else than to tell and to hear some new thing," and that they
+were so particular--in this respect resembling the Ancient Peruvians--in
+adopting foreign gods, that they had an altar to the Unknown Deity (Acts
+xvii). To this we must add what Sozomen says of them (_Ecclesiastical
+History_, book ii. chap. 24)--that the most celebrated philosophers
+amongst the Greeks took pleasure in exploring unknown cities and
+regions. Plato, the friend of Socrates, dwelt for a time amongst the
+Egyptians, in order to acquaint himself with their manners and customs.
+He likewise sailed to Sicily, to examine its craters.... These craters
+were likewise explored by Empedocles. Democritus of Coos relates that he
+visited many cities, and countries, and nations, and that eighty years
+of his life were spent in travelling in foreign lands. Besides these
+philosophers, thousands of wise men amongst the Greeks, ancient and
+modern, habituated themselves to travel. Solon, it is well known,
+travelled to the court of Croesus, and it is affirmed that Pythagoras
+visited India. Sozomen makes the above statement to explain how it was
+that Merope of Tyre, with two young relatives, visited India, the two
+latter becoming its first two bishops.
+
+Nothing is more probable than that Greeks, who had resided for a time
+in India, on their return, believing that as they had recognized
+in Hindostan an earnest form of Christianity, differing from the
+Alexandrian standard only in a few minor points, thought it right to
+introduce into western religion Buddhist practices--first into Egypt,
+_via_ Alexandria, and thence into Europe. We certainly cannot prove
+that they did it, but there is a very good reason for believing so.
+The doctrines of Jesus emanated, we believe, from some early Asoka's
+missionaries; whilst the doctrines of the Alexandrians and the Ascetics,
+came from subsequent Buddhists, who placed their stamp on Christianity
+once more.
+
+Thus we have been led, by a strict inquiry into every extant testimony
+known, to believe that the faith taught by Siddartha, was held for at
+least 250--and most probably, 500 years, before our era. Still further,
+we have been led to believe, from the extraordinary energy and success
+of Buddhist missionaries in the three centuries before Christ--a success
+before which all Christian missionary enterprise pales--that emissaries
+from Asoka's colleges of priests, penetrated westward with the Greeks as
+far as the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, and forced some devout
+Jews to modify their belief. But, though it is probable that the Hindoo
+teachers introduced the morality inculcated by Sakya Muni, it seems
+certain that they could not induce their Hebrew disciples to abandon
+their implicit trust in those writings which they had been induced
+to think were absolutely inspired or written by direct command of
+the Almighty--consequently, Christianity must be regarded not as pure
+Buddhism, but a form of it modified by Jewish traditions. But when those
+who embraced the religion of Jesus, had learned to distrust the literal
+truth of the Old Testament, and had the certainty that the prophesies
+about the immediate destruction of the world were false, they came again
+into contact with Buddhist teaching, and were content to forego
+Judaism. They did not, however, give up Jesus as the Saviour. Instead of
+believing with Sakya, that man suffered for his own sin, they clung to
+the legend of Adam and Eve, and affirmed that suffering was introduced
+into the whole world by this very original couple. Instead of Nirvana,
+their heaven was Ouranos--the sky above them. Instead of an abode where
+all the senses were at rest, they adopted the idea of a golden city,
+with a river of crystal running through it; brilliant with jewels, and
+guarded by gates and walls in which all the good should spend their time
+in singing and music. The Christians adopted all the Asceticism, dirt,
+and love of vermin, that the disciples of Sakya, and even Siddartha
+himself, delighted in--but they nevertheless clung to the idea that the
+world was sure to be destroyed, and that Jesus would come again. It
+is indeed, difficult to reconcile the belief, that he who washed his
+disciples' feet, and praised a woman for cleaning and anointing his own,
+sanctioned an idea which, throughout centuries, urged religionists to be
+filthy; yet we must do so if we are orthodox. We have, indeed, similar
+anomalies now. Devout Christians tell us that this world ought to be
+made a preparation for another; and that the main joy of heaven will
+be an indefinite increase of knowledge. Yet these same people
+affirm, sometimes in distinct terms, that an extension of scientific
+attainments, and a constant inquiry into the will of God, as expressed
+in the works of His hands, are snares of the Devil, and so to be avoided
+by all good people. The Orthodox as a rule believe--though few venture
+to affirm it, that Jehovah loves the fools the best, and that ignorance
+is godliness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     Estimation of the Bible. The Dhammapada and Hebrew (sacred)
+     books. Certain important dates. Jews were never
+     missionaries. Precepts of Buddha. Contrasts. How to overcome
+     undesirable thoughts. Knowledge beats prayer. Sunday
+     proverbs. New birth. Divines preach brotherly love in the
+     pulpit, and provoke hate when out of it. Buddhist precept is
+     "do as I do," not "do as I say." The narrow way of the
+     Gospel finds an origin in Buddhism. One law broken all law
+     broken--a Buddhist maxim. Sakya taught about a future world.
+     Parallel passages. Effect of Buddhist and Christian
+     teaching. Parallel passages about truth and almsgiving.
+     Ignorance a Buddhist vice and a Christian virtue.
+     _Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi_ in the pulpit Classes in
+     the religious world. Why ignorance is cherished. Ignorance
+     often more profitable than knowledge. Examples. Charlatans
+     live by the fools. Honest doctors and parsons must be poor.
+     Poverty an essential part of Buddhism. Hierarchs are quite
+     unnecessary to the enlightened man. Parallel passages again.
+     Unphilosophical dicta in Buddhism and Bible. Prosperity not
+     a proof of propriety, and misery not always a reward of
+     badness. Lions and lambs. Design in creation. Right and
+     wrong--do they exist before the Creator. False analogies.
+     Persecution a Christian but not a Buddhist practice. Popgun
+     thunders from the Vatican. Age not equivalent to wisdom.
+     Siddartha did not prophesy, and so made no mistake about
+     that which was to follow. More negatives and positives.
+     Another contrast No obscene stories in Buddhist as in Jewish
+     scriptures--no legend of Lot and his daughters, David and
+     Bathsheba, of Onan, Judah and Tamar, Zimri, Cozbi, and
+     Phinehas, and a host of others. A good deal of nonsense in
+     all ancient writings. The foolish stories and prophecies of
+     the Bible--if abstracted, little remains. The little might
+     be improved by extracts from Plato, Epictetus, and Buddhist
+     scriptures, and even from those of Confucius.
+
+From the earliest times which I can remember, I have heard the English
+Bible spoken of with the utmost reverence, as the undoubted word of God,
+as a revelation of the will, ways, and even the thoughts of the Supreme
+Being. Everything which it contains has been regarded as infallibly
+true, and the wisdom, goodness, mercy, and justice of its doctrines
+and laws have been judged to be unimpeachable. From the pulpit of many
+earnest divines I have heard innumerable sermons whose burden has
+been praise of, and admiration for, the morality of the Old and
+New Testaments, the sublimity of the language therein used, and the
+loftiness of the thoughts embodied. From those same teachers, and from
+a still greater number of laymen, I have heard the assertion repeatedly
+made that the Bible must be divinely inspired, because no other set of
+men, except those who composed its books, could write so powerfully; and
+depict so graphically, the wants, the woes, the pleasures, the passions,
+the aspirations, and the doubts of the human mind. By a great majority,
+if not by the whole of our imperfectly educated ministers and people,
+the assertion to which we here refer is raised to the position of an
+argument; and any opponent who ventures to question the truth of the
+assumption, is challenged to show a book of divinity equal or superior
+to the Bible.
+
+The worthlessness of the argument might be readily shown to any one
+accustomed to use his reason, by pointing out that the religious books
+of the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medea, Persians, and
+Etruscans, are lost to us. We may compare the assertion with that which
+Englishmen might have made, to the effect that the British breed of
+horses was superior to any other, for no one could show them a better;
+yet as soon as our Crusaders became acquainted with the Arabian steed,
+the value of the assumption was destroyed. Yet such a remark would be
+wholly inoperative on the mind of every bigot whose judgment of evidence
+is always bribed by his prejudice. Consequently, to make any serious
+impression upon the mind of the Bibliolater, it is desirable, if
+possible, to make copies of the holy images worshipped by other nations,
+under the name of sacred books, and to place these side by side with
+that grotesque production, which, for our purposes, may be compared to
+Diana of the Ephesians--the thing which fell down from Jupiter.
+
+Yet even when we do bring from distant countries, to which in our
+complacency we give the name of "heathen," copies of their deified
+books, and show their equality with, or superiority to that which we
+are told was arranged by the disposition of angels (Acts vii. 53)--the
+scriptures that Paul (2 Tim. iii. 16) affirms were entirely given by
+inspiration of God [--Greek--], see also 1 Pet. i. 11, 12,--we are met
+by the assertion, if the equality is allowed, that the Pagan writings
+have been copied from, or are traceable to, the writers in the Old or in
+the New Testament.
+
+Whenever a thoughtless theologian asserts that such a thing _must_ be
+so, he is not by any means particular as to the facts upon which he
+bases his belief. This weakness of his is so conspicuous to the logical
+observer, that he sometimes feels pity at having to wound a mind so
+earnest as to be unable to use its reason. He almost regards himself as
+a man fighting a child or a weak woman. Yet men will, in their power and
+knowledge, deprive a baby of a bon-bon, which it is sucking eagerly, if
+they know that it is poisonous, and will lay violent hands upon a tender
+girl who, in a whirlwind of passion, is about to throw herself before a
+railway train. After the event both the individuals may learn to thank
+the roughness which saved them; and I feel sure that many an earnest
+religionist, who now thinks that the philosophers are treating him
+cruelly, by trying to deprive him of a cherished faith, will ultimately
+be grateful for having been induced to cease grovelling in the dust of a
+coarse antiquity.
+
+If we endeavour to ascertain the basis of the belief that everything
+which is good _must_ have come from the Bible, we find that it exists in
+the assertion that the Jews were the chosen people of God, selected by
+Him to receive a record of His past doings and His future desires. Hence
+it is argued, that all who have not been taught by the Jews, or through
+their influence, are without God in the world--poor, benighted pagans.
+To support assumptions so monstrous as this, there is not a tittle of
+evidence beyond the existence of certain stories in some books, said to
+contain a truthful record of facts. But although the theologian heaps up
+protestation upon asseveration until the mass attains an imposing size,
+the whole is not of more substantial value than a huge bubble blown by
+an energetic school boy. If millions could be brought to believe that
+such a hollow sphere was a solid, painted with the most resplendent
+colours obtained from the celestial mansions, it would not make it other
+than a film of soap and water filled with air.
+
+Yet though the unanimous consent of myriads cannot convert foam into a
+solid substance, a mass of froth may be treated as if it were something
+better, so long as all agree not to test its qualities; and any book
+may in like manner be regarded as of divine origin, so long as everybody
+determines not to test the reality of the opinion. We can easily imagine
+that those who have been educated to believe in the absolute density
+of a bubble, must be greatly distressed when it bursts. Indeed in every
+mercantile community we see frequent illustrations of this. Designing
+men weave a plausible story, and by inflated words induce a number of
+thoughtless people to believe their statements, adopt their promises,
+and act upon their recommendation. Whilst all seems to be prosperous,
+every dupe repels with indignation the statement that the whole of his
+confraternity are deceived. If faith in the stability of a banking house
+could have upheld it, Overend & Gurnets would never have broken. If
+then faith, the most complete and child-like trust in the truth of
+anything,--say particularly in a certain book--will not make it valuable
+if it be in reality worthless, then all those who wish to feel beneath
+them the everlasting arms of truth, should inquire into current beliefs
+rather than take everything for granted.
+
+At the time when the wealth, power, and stability of the Bank above
+referred to were implicitly believed in by the many, and especially
+trusted by its shareholders, there were, outside of its pale, many
+individuals who felt sure that the establishment was very shaky, and a
+few who were aware that it was toppling to its fall. If then, at that
+time, any customer or proprietor, feeling a doubt about its safety,
+should have endeavoured to investigate the rumours which were adverse to
+it; and should have acted as reason dictated, after he had weighed the
+alleged facts on both sides, he might have came to a safe decision
+and saved his money. What is true in this case may be applied to the
+Bible--the Bank upon which so many draw large drafts, and in whose
+stability they have unbounded confidence. The thoughtless may, and
+doubtless will, continue to trust it implicitly--the thoughtful will
+probably consult, not only the Bibliolaters, but those who put no faith
+whatever in the volume, and judge for themselves.
+
+The fear which many men have of biblical inquiry, has for a long period
+struck me as being inexplicable, inasmuch as it is at variance with the
+assertion of these very same people, that an examination of the book
+must prove it to be infallibly true. But investigation into a supposed
+truth can only end by confirming it fully, and thus making the truth
+more useful; or by demonstrating that the belief entertained is
+untenable. It has been the dread--nay the certainty, of the latter
+result, which has deterred many great minds from investigating the
+matter. Amongst these the late Professor Faraday was conspicuous, for we
+learn from a letter in the Athenaeum of Jan. 7, 1870, written by one of
+his own personal friends, that he--perhaps the most accomplished seeker
+after physical truth in his time, declined firmly to search into the
+value of the commonly received notions respecting "the scriptures," as
+he felt sure that his faith in them would thereby be shaken. Yet he was
+illogical enough to use them as a basis for his theological teaching.
+He preached to others from texts in which he had no confidence; and
+supported his doctrines by quotations from a book which, in his secret
+heart, he felt was valueless as an exponent of historical truth, or
+orthodox teaching.
+
+Before we proceed to the comparison between the "Dhammapada" and the
+Bible, it will be judicious to place fairly before the reader the points
+which we hope to elucidate. We wish to show, by a collation of dates and
+doctrines, that the two are wholly independent of each other, and as we
+have elsewhere remarked, that if there has been any relationship between
+Buddhist and Christian writings, the first have had more than two
+centuries' precedence over the last. We wish to compare the morality
+taught by Buddha, with that promulgated in the Old and New Testaments.
+We desire impartially to examine into the question, whether the claim
+for inspiration can be allowed in either one case or the other, or in
+both together--whether, indeed, it is possible to believe the Hebrew
+scriptures to be dictated by God, without giving a similar confidence
+to the teachings of Sakya Muni--or, assuming that there is to be found a
+code of pure morality or ethics which we may suppose to be of universal
+application, we shall endeavour to ascertain whether the Hebrews and the
+followers of Mary, or the disciples of the son of Maya Deva, have made
+the nearest approach to its discovery and establishment. Collaterally
+we shall examine whether Jesus has a greater claim than Buddha to be the
+Son of God. The Dhammapada which has recently (Truebner & Co., London,
+1870*) been translated by Max Muelller from the Pali, is one of the many
+books which profess to give, as our Gospels and Epistles do of Christ,
+the teachings or precepts of Buddha. These were for some two or three
+centuries traditional only; but about the period, B.C. 300, many, if not
+most of them, were committed to writing. As far as can be ascertained,
+the year b.c. 246 was the period of the first Buddhist council under
+Asok, and shortly after this, Mahuida, a priestly son of Asoka, went as
+a missionary to Ceylon; other emissaries went to Burmah, China, Japan,
+and it is believed elsewhere. The oral promulgation of the Dhammapada
+would probably begin about b.c. 560--twenty years or thereabouts before
+the death of Siddartha. If we turn to contemporary history in the west
+of Asia, we find that at this period Jerusalem was in ruins, and the
+Jews were captives in Babylonia--no copies of any Hebrew sacred book
+were known to be in existence (2 Esdras xiv. 21; 2 Maccabees ii.
+1-13--see also 1 Maccabees i. 21-23), and, so far as we could
+learn, India was a country wholly unknown to the Shemitic race. The
+acquaintanceship between Hindustan and Europe seems to have been made in
+the time when the Greek monarch, Alexander, overthrew Darius of Persia.
+Alexander invaded India about b.c. 327, consequently we infer that there
+was no possibility of Buddha being influenced by western notions in b.c.
+560.
+
+     * _Buddhaghosa's Parables_, translated from Burmese, by Capt
+     T. Rogers; with an introduction, containing Buddha's
+     Dhammapada, or "Path of Virtue," by Max Mueller.   Truebner &
+     Co., London, 1870.
+
+To these considerations we must add the fact that the Jews have
+never been, from the earliest to the latest times, a missionary
+nation,--indeed, their laws and precepts forced them to be so peculiarly
+reserved, that even if they had known about India they would not have
+sent their emissaries there, inasmuch as the Mosaic law obliged them to
+present themselves at the Temple at Jerusalem thrice a-year, which was
+wholly incompatible with distant travel. Moreover, there are many extant
+histories to show that intelligent westerns went to India for knowledge
+and religion, and never seemed to think of carrying their own faith
+thither. The whole course of history points to religion and civilization
+coming westerly from India or Central Asia.
+
+The dates above given will clearly show that Sakya Muni could not have
+derived his ideas from the teaching of Jesus, or of the Talmudists,
+neither of whom were in existence when he flourished. Whatever
+similarity, therefore, we find in the doctrines, &c., of the two, cannot
+be accounted for by supposing that Christian missionaries carried the
+New Testament to India. The reverse is far more probable, as we have
+demonstrated in a preceding chapter.
+
+Some inquirers into the history of the sons of Maya Deva and of Mary are
+so convinced of the priority of the first, and of the close resemblance
+of the incidents in the lives and in the teaching of the two, that
+they have found themselves forced, reluctantly, to consider the
+question--whether Christianity is not Buddhism altered in some respects
+by Judaism. This point having been elsewhere spoken of, we will not
+pursue it. But a far more important, and, for many Christians, a more
+momentous inquiry, is, whether we can speak of the Son of Mary as the
+offspring of Jehovah, and yet affirm that the child of Maya Deva
+was nothing but a common man. So deeply have some been moved by this
+consideration, that I have positively heard the opinion broached, that
+the Indian sage was the very same as he who subsequently was put to
+death in Jerusalem. Wild though the allegation is, there is quite as
+great an amount of probability in it as in the assertion that Jesus went
+and preached unto those spirits which were sometime disobedient, i.e.,
+in the time of Noah (1 Pet. iii. 19, 20), and were, consequently, then in
+prison, or that Buddha went to his dead mother, and converted her to
+his own faith. About supernatural births we shall treat in a succeeding
+part.
+
+Without incumbering our pages with all the precepts of the Dhammapada,
+we will copy a few in detail to show the reader their style, and then
+we will only quote those which are most appropriate to our subject. The
+opening paragraphs singularly resemble those in Bacon's _Novum Organon_,
+and run thus--"All that we are, is the result of what we have thought:
+it is founded on our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil
+thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of him who
+draws the carriage (lv.)."
+
+2. "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded
+on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts
+with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never
+leaves him" (lvi. et. seq.).
+
+3. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me--hatred in
+those who harbour such thoughts will never cease."**
+
+4. "He abused me, he beat me, he defeated me, he robbed me--hatred in
+those who do not harbour such thoughts will cease."
+
+5. "For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by
+love"--this is an old rule.
+
+     * The figures refer to the separate precepts, which are
+     given in numerical order.
+
+     ** With this and the following saying we may compare the
+     words of the Psalms--"Do not I hate those, O Lord, that hate
+     thee? and am I not grieved with those that rise up against
+     thee? I hate them with a perfect hatred; I count them mine
+     enemies" (Ps. cxxxix. 21, 22). The words of David, said to
+     be a man after God's own heart, are equally opposed to the
+     law of love, viz., "Thou hast given me the necks of my
+     enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me" (2 Sam.
+     xxii. 41; Ps. xviii. 40); I shall see my desire on them that
+     hate me" (Ps. cxviii. 7). In Deuteronomy we find, moreover,
+     that indulgence in hatred is attributed to the Almighty,
+     "who repayeth them that hate Him to their face to destroy
+     them: He (God) will not be slack to him that hateth Him, he
+     will repay him to his face" (chap. vii. 10). Hatred of their
+     enemies is, indeed, everywhere encouraged in the Jewish
+     Scriptures, called sacred, and the Hebrew Jehovah is
+     described as one with whom the power to hate and revenge
+     Himself is a favourite luxury.
+
+6. "And some do not know that we must come to an end here; but others
+know it, and hence their quarrels cease."
+
+7. "He who lives looking for pleasures only, his senses uncontrolled,
+immoderate in his enjoyments, idle and weak, Mara (the Tempter, the
+Adversary, or Satan) will certainly overcome him, as the wind throws
+down a weak tree."
+
+8. "He who lives without looking for pleasures, his senses well
+controlled, in his enjoyments moderate, faithful and strong, Mara will
+certainly not overcome him, any more than the wind throws down a rocky
+mountain."
+
+11. "They who imagine truth in untruth, and see untruth in truth, never
+arrive at truth, but follow vain desires."
+
+15. "The evildoer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next, he
+mourns in both."....
+
+16. "The virtuous man delights in this world, and he delights in the
+next; he delights in both."
+
+We may pause here, and ask ourselves whether, throughout the whole of
+the Old Testament, we can find a single passage which so distinctly
+points to a future state as does this Buddhistic teaching. Yet
+bibliolaters assert that the effusions of Jewish writers were inspired
+by God! Mortal men cannot tell what takes place after their bodies have
+become dissipated into various chemical compounds; consequently, they
+cannot decide, with certainty, which deserves the greater credit for
+accuracy--the Dhammapada, or the Hebrew Scriptures; but all those who
+believe in the teaching of Jesus are bound to acknowledge that the
+Indian sage was inspired by a power superior to that which is said to
+have dictated to the Israelite.
+
+How profitably, again, might the following observations be enunciated
+from our pulpits, instead of the vapid and superficial divinity, which
+disgraces both the utterer and the listener:--
+
+21. "Reflection is the path of immortality, thoughtlessness the path of
+death. Those who reflect do not die; those who are thoughtless are as if
+dead already."
+
+25. "By rousing himself, by reflection, by restraint and control, the
+wise man may make for himself an island, which no flood can overwhelm."
+
+27. "Follow not after vanity, nor after the enjoyment of love and lust.
+He who reflects and meditates obtains ample joy"
+
+We dare not affirm that the writer of the first epistle of John was
+familiar with the Dhammapada, but his words (chap. ii, v. 15), "Love not
+the world, neither the things that are in the world," &c., are as purely
+Buddhistic as if he had known the doctrine of the Indian sage.
+
+We doubt whether, in the whole Bible, a parallel passage to the
+following can be found:--
+
+36. "Let the wise man guard his thoughts, for they are difficult to
+perceive, very artful, and they rush wherever they list: thoughts well
+guarded bring happiness."
+
+It is true that in the Psalms, and elsewhere, there is a full
+recognition of the power of God to know, and even to punish man for,
+bad thoughts, but there is no precept recommending man to cultivate his
+mental powers for the pleasure which the task will bring. The following
+observation is equally to be commended:--
+
+40. "Knowing that this body is (fragile) like a jar, and making this
+thought firm like a fortress, one should attack Mara (the tempter, or
+Satan, the adversary) with the weapon of knowledge, one should watch him
+when conquered, and never cease from the fight."
+
+A few moments' consideration here, will show the reader that there is
+a fundamental distinction between the theology of the East and West
+in reference to the management of "the thoughts of the heart." Jew
+and Christian teachers alike encourage their disciples to combat evil
+thoughts by prayer and by fasting, but they never once allude to the
+value of "knowledge" as a weapon. Yet, of its power, relatively to
+supplication, none can have a doubt. It it probable that no man or woman
+can attain to adult age without being aware of the intrusion, into their
+minds, of thoughts, whose presence greatly distresses the individual,
+and the worst of these is, that they take so complete a possession,
+as not to be driven away by any simple wrestling with them. In this
+emergency the devout Christian has recourse to prayer, which serves to
+nail the intruder even more closely to his seat. The philosopher, on
+the other hand, turns his mind to think actively upon some other subject
+than that which has intruded upon him, and as soon as he has fixed his
+attention upon the second, the first immediately withdraws. Smarting,
+for example, under a sense of ridicule from some accident which has
+happened to himself in a ball-room, or other assembly, a man may retire
+to his pillow, yet find thereupon no rest. He sees, every minute, the
+merry faces which laughed when he put the sprig of lavender, that his
+lovely partner gave him for a keepsake, behind his ear, as if it were
+a pen, and grinds his teeth with rage or shame. Yet, if he now betakes
+himself to go through the preparations which ought to be made to enable
+observers to notice accurately the transit of Venus, and then the means
+by which they can approximately ascertain the mean distance of the sun
+from the earth, he will find at once a pleasant refuge from his trouble,
+and fall asleep whilst extracting a square root. Those young men, and
+others, who, like the old saints are said to have done, often suffer
+much from what may be called "presumptuous desires of the flesh," will
+find the acquisition of knowledge is a powerful agent in subduing
+the cravings of lust, and hard thinking curbs our passions far more
+effectually than the scourge of the ascetic, or the prayers of the
+hermit. Mental activity, although it does not entirely remove it,
+does much to repress inordinate desire, and we consequently prefer the
+teaching of the son of Maya to that of any son of Abraham.
+
+Of the estimate of a well-regulated mind we have the following:--
+
+42. "Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy, a
+wrongly-directed mind will do us greater mischief."
+
+43. "Not a mother, not a father, nor any other relative, will do so much
+that a well-directed mind will not do us greater service." To this we
+can find no parallel in the Hebrew scriptures.
+
+Some of the following are equal to any of those proverbs attributed to
+Solomon:--
+
+76. "If you see an intelligent man who tells you where true treasures
+are to be found, who shows you what is to be avoided, and who
+administers reproofs, follow that wise man: it will be better, not
+worse, for those who follow him."
+
+78. "Do not have evildoers for friends, do not have low people; have
+virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men."
+
+80. "Well-makers lead the water wherever they like, fletchers bend the
+arrow, carpenters bend a log of wood, wise people fashion themselves."
+
+81. "As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not
+amidst blame and praise."
+
+94. "The gods even envy him whose senses have been subdued, like horses
+well broken in by the driver, who is free from pride and free from
+frailty."
+
+97. "The man who is free from credulity, but knows the uncreated, who
+has cut all ties, removed all temptations renounced all desires, he is
+the greatest of men." A saying which is almost identical with "He that
+is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his
+spirit better than he that taketh a city" (Prov. xvi. 32). Those
+Christians who believe in works of supererogation, and trust to stores
+of merit laid up by certain saints, who have lashed their bodies and
+otherwise injured themselves, may read the following opinion with
+profit:--
+
+108. "Whatever a man sacrifices in this world as an offering or as an
+oblation for a whole year in order to gain merit, the whole of it is not
+worth a quarter; reverence shown to the righteous is better."
+
+Respecting evil, we find the following:--
+
+116. "If a man would hasten towards the good, he should keep his thought
+away from evil; if a man does what is good slothfully, his mind delights
+in evil."
+
+117. "If a man commits a sin, let him not do it again, let him not
+delight in sin; pain is the outcome of evil."
+
+118. "If a man does what is good let him do it again, let him delight in
+it; happiness is the outcome of good."
+
+126. "Some people are born again; evil-doers go to Hell, righteous
+people go to Heaven; those who are free from all worldly desires enter
+Nirvana."
+
+It is therefore clear that Jesus of Nazareth did not inaugurate the idea
+of a new birth.
+
+In precept 133 we have another sentiment parallel with a passage in
+Proverbs: "Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will
+answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful blows, for blows
+will touch thee;" or, as our Bible has it, "A soft answer turneth away
+wrath, but grievous words stir up anger" (Prov. xv. 1).
+
+The following is a reproach to a vast number of individuals who are
+called Christian preachers, and teach doctrines of brotherly love, but
+act as if religious hatred of dissenters of every class were a duty:--
+
+159. "Let each man make himself as he teaches others to be; he who is
+well subdued may subdue others; one's own self is difficult to subdue."
+
+166. "Let no one neglect his own duty for the sake of another's,
+however great: let a man, after he has discerned his own duty, be always
+attentive to his duty."
+
+The following might have served as the original of the epistles of
+John:--
+
+167. "Do not follow the evil law! Do not live on in thoughtlessness! Do
+not follow false doctrine! Be not a friend of the world."
+
+168. 9. "Rouse thyself! do not be idle, follow the law of virtue--do not
+follow that of sin. The virtuous lives happily in this world and in the
+next."
+
+170, 1, 2, 3, & 4. "Look upon the world as a bubble; the foolish are
+immersed in it, but the wise do not cling to it. He who formerly was
+reckless, and afterwards became sober, and he whose evil deeds are
+covered by good deeds, brighten up this world like the moon when freed
+from clouds."
+
+174. "This world is dark--few only can be here; a few only go to heaven
+like birds escaped from the net." A statement repeated by Jesus in
+different words,--"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which
+leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 14). There
+may likewise be a comparison instituted between the following:--
+
+176. "If a man has transgressed one law, and speaks lies and scoffs at
+another world, there is no evil he will not do." "Whosoever shall keep
+the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (Jas.
+ii. 10).
+
+I quote this and the next saying to corroborate the assertion that
+Buddha taught the existence of a future world:--
+
+177. "The uncharitable do not go to the world of the gods; fools only do
+not praise liberality; a wise man rejoices in liberality, and through
+it becomes blessed in the other world."
+
+Compare 1 Tim. vi. 17, 18,19, "Charge them that are rich in this
+world.... that they be--ready to distribute, willing to communicate,
+laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to
+come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."
+
+See again (306), "He who says what is not, goes to hell; he also who,
+having done a thing, says I have not done it. After death both are
+equal, they are men with evil deeds in the next world."
+
+309. "Four things does a reckless man gain who covets his neighbour's
+wife--a bad reputation, an uncomfortable bed--thirdly, punishment, and,
+lastly, hell."
+
+310. "There is bad reputation, and the evil way (to hell)."
+
+311. "As a grass blade if badly grasped cuts the arm, badly practised
+asceticism leads to hell."
+
+178. "Better than sovereignty over the earth, better than going to
+heaven, better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of the first
+step in holiness."
+
+"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his
+own soul?" or, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt,
+xvi. 26).
+
+It would be difficult to find any doctrine enunciated in the Bible more
+simple than the following:--
+
+183. "Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that
+is the teaching of the Awakened."
+
+184. "The Awakened call patience the highest penance, long-suffering the
+highest Nirvana, for he is not an anchorite who strikes others, he is
+not an ascetic who insults others."
+
+185. "Not to blame, not to strike, to live restrained under the law,
+to be moderate in eating, to sleep and eat alone, and to dwell on the
+highest thoughts, this is the teaching of the Awakened."
+
+Equally difficult would it be to find in the Old Testament such precepts
+as--
+
+197. "Let us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us; let us
+dwell free from hatred among men who hate." "Let us live free from greed
+among men who are greedy."
+
+200. "Let us live happily though we can call nothing our own."
+
+204. "Health is the greatest of gifts, contentedness the best riches;
+trust is the best of relatives, Nirvana the highest happiness."
+
+The following quotations deserve the close attention of the Christian
+inquirer, for they not only contain sentiments almost identically the
+same as those found in the New Testament, but they are couched in the
+same language, as closely as the circumstances of the case allow. Both
+enunciate the opinion that it is injudicious to cultivate or even to
+permit the existence of those affections which we have in common with
+the lower animals, and that to attain perfection love and hatred must be
+trampled under foot. We give the Buddhist teaching priority, as it was
+promulgated first:--
+
+210. "Let no man ever look for what is pleasant or what is unpleasant.
+Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is
+unpleasant."
+
+211. "Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil.
+Those who love nothing and hate nothing have no fetters."
+
+212. "From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear, he who is
+free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear."
+
+213-6. "From affection comes grief and fear, from lust comes grief and
+fear, from love comes grief and fear, from greed comes grief and fear."
+"He who is free from affection, lust, love, and greed, knows neither
+grief nor fear." "He that loveth either father or mother more than me is
+not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter better than me is
+not worthy of me, and he that taketh not his cross and followeth after
+me is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he
+that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. x. 37-39). "Love
+not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love
+the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the
+world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
+life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth
+away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for
+ever" (1 John ii. 15-17).
+
+"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let
+him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever
+will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for
+my sake shall find it; for what is a man profited if he shall gain the
+whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange
+for his soul?" (Matt, xvi. 24). See also Mark viii. 34, x. 21, and Luke
+ix. 23-25, in the last verse of which the saying is varied by the words
+being used "what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose
+himself, or be cast away?" We are by habit more familiar with the style
+in which the Grecians wrote, than with that adopted by Sanscrit
+authors. But in both sets of writers the main idea is made strikingly
+apparent--viz., that to love anybody or anything on earth is prejudicial
+to our spiritual welfare, and that to act piously, it is necessary for
+the saint to free himself wholly from those instinctive affections which
+God has implanted in almost every one of his creatures. It is
+strange that any two ministers could have excogitated so monstrous a
+proposition, and that both should be called "Divine."
+
+The effect of the teaching of Buddha and of Jesus was to draw many from
+their hearth whose duty, in our estimation, was clearly to remain at
+home, and endeavour to cherish and support their family. I enter my
+strong protest as an Englishman, as well as individual Christian,
+against the idea that a man who believes himself a disciple of the son
+of Mary must go abroad to teach and preach, or become an ascetic, a
+hermit, or a monk, and leave his wife and children to be cared for by
+his friends or the parish. I believe most strongly that our affections
+are implanted in us by our Maker, just as a mother's love exists alike
+in the tigress and the eagle, and that any religion which teaches us
+that we must overcome these propensities, is a false one. It is strange,
+to say the least of it, that both the son of Maya and of Mary should
+have promulgated such a doctrine--i.e., that religion is designed to
+make our pleasures less, and our miseries greater. It is perhaps too
+much to assert that no other form of faith, besides those which have
+sprung from Buddha and from Jesus, possesses such a tenet as that to
+which we refer; but we can safely affirm that we do not know of any
+in which the natural affections existing between parents and children,
+husband and wife, brothers and sisters, have not been cultivated as a
+portion of the duties to be fulfilled by the faithful.
+
+It is scarcely necessary to call attention to the resemblance which the
+doctrine in question bears to that which was promulgated by the Grecian
+"Stoics"; and the similitude is still farther increased by such a
+sentence as the following in the Dhammapada:--
+
+221. "Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all
+bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to either body
+or soul, and who calls nothing his own."
+
+Once more we see a close resemblance between Buddhism and the Bible in
+
+223. "Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good,
+let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth." "If thine
+enemy be hungry give him bread to eat, and if he be thirsty give him
+water to drink," (Prov. xxv. 21). But the motive for this recommendation
+to the Jews is a vindictive one, for he is told that by so doing he will
+heap coals of fire upon his enemy's head, whilst the Lord will take care
+to reward the deed to the doer. In the epistle to the Romans this saying
+of the Proverbs is endorsed, and to it is added "Be not overcome with
+evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom. xii. 20, 21).
+
+224. "Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked,
+from the little thou hast--by those steps thou wilt go near the gods."
+"Let not mercy and truth forsake thee, bind them about thy neck; write
+them upon the table of thine heart; so shalt thou find favour and good
+understanding in the sight of God and man" (Prov. iii. 3-4); "Wherefore,
+putting away lying, let every man speak the truth with his neighbour"
+(Eph. iv. 25). We scarcely can find, in the Old Testament, a strict
+parallel with the Buddhist precept, "do not yield to anger," for the
+Jewish scriptures, without exception, depict their God as giving way
+habitually to wrath, anger, and revenge--e.g., in Ps. vii. 11, we find
+it stated that Elohim is angry with the wicked every day. Again, in
+Isaiah v. 25, we read, "for all this, God's anger is not turned away,
+but his hand is stretched out still;" Job iv. 9, By God's anger they are
+consumed; "To pour out upon them my fierce anger," (Zeph. iii. 8). There
+are, however, a few passages which inculcate upon men the propriety of
+a command over their temper. In Ps. xxxvii. 8, for example, we read,
+"Cease from anger, and forsake wrath," and in Proverbs xxvii. 4, "Wrath
+is cruel, and anger is outrageous," whilst "the Preacher" says, Eccles.
+vii. 9, "Anger resteth in the bosom of fools," and in xi. 10, "remove
+anger or sorrow from thy heart." In the Gospel we have a somewhat
+divided teaching. For example, we find, from Mark iii. 5, that Jesus
+himself indulged in anger, when he was vexed at what he thought the
+hardness of his hearers' hearts; and from his saying, in Matt. v. 22,
+"Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger
+of the judgment," it is clear that the son of Mary approved of anger
+which had a cause. Again, we find, in Eph. iv. 26, "Be ye angry and sin
+not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath," as if anger were not a
+culpable weakness, or passion, if only indulged in during the daylight.
+Yet, in the thirty-first verse of the same chapter we read, "Let all
+bitterness, and wrath, and anger.... be put away from you," and in Col.
+iii. 8, the putting away of anger is spoken of as an evidence of being
+regenerated.
+
+Of the duty of almsgiving we find much in the Bible, but we will content
+ourselves with the following passages:--"Charge them who are rich in
+this world that they be ready to give, and glad to distribute, laying up
+in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come,
+that they may attain eternal life" (1 Tim. vi. 17-19). Quoted from the
+Communion Service in the Prayer-book--"To do good, and to distribute,
+forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." "Be merciful
+after thy power. If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast
+little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little, for so gatherest
+thou thyself a good reward in the day of necessity" (Prayer-book version
+of certain precepts in Tobit, chap. iv. 8, 9). If our readers will take
+the trouble to consult the entire chapter in Tobit, they will readily
+conceive that it was written by a Buddhist sage, instead of an ordinary
+Jew.
+
+Once more we turn to the Dhammapada, and find--
+
+231, 234. "Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body. Leave the sins
+of the body, and with thy body practise virtue; control thy tongue;
+leave the sins of the tongue, and practise virtue with thy tongue; leave
+the sins of the mind, and practise virtue with thy mind."
+
+This reference to the sins of the tongue, and the necessity for its
+control, recals to our mind the opinion expressed in the epistle of
+James, "If any one bridleth not his tongue, this man's religion is vain"
+(chap, i. 26); "The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity," &c.; "the
+tongue can no man tame," &c. (chap. iii. w. 5-10); and the verse, "I
+said, I will take heed io my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will
+keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked is before me" (Ps. xxxix.
+1).
+
+The next maxim to which I would direct attention is one which should be
+pondered deeply by all those who desire to become thoroughly civilized.
+So far as I know, its like cannot be found in any part of the Bible. It
+runs thus--
+
+243. "There is a taint worse than all taints, ignorance is the greatest
+taint."
+
+If we search our own scriptures for a parallel passage, we can only
+find that ignorance is inculcated, and with the express intention
+of preventing the mind from departing from the old into some new
+track--see, for example, Dent. xii. 30, where the Jews are enjoined not
+to inquire after the gods of other nations, lest they should adopt them:
+again, in Deut. iv. 19, the Hebrews are enjoined not to study or gain
+any information respecting the sun, moon, and stars, lest they should
+worship them. But Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, is even a more
+conspicuous advocate of ignorance, when he asserts that God hath chosen
+the foolish things [--Greek--] of the world to confound the wise (1
+Cor. i. vv. 19-28). "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy
+trust, avoiding.... oppositions of science falsely so called, which some
+professing have erred concerning the faith" (1 Tim. vi. 20, 21). Many,
+indeed, who call themselves civilized Christians, aver that, where
+ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise, a tenet held strongly by
+Mahometans, Papists, and Ritualists.
+
+That the dictum of Paul in the text last quoted has had a a most
+disastrous effect upon civilization, no one who is conversant with
+history can fairly deny. Neither can it be shown that any known
+religion, except Buddhism, has opposed itself to ignorance. In every
+nation the rulers in general, and the priesthood in particular, have,
+on the other hand, encouraged indolence of mind, lest the people should
+learn wisdom and shake off their thraldom. We have seen, in our own
+times, hierarchs of every denomination oppose the spread of science, not
+falsely so called, with the avowed intention of endeavouring to bolster
+up doctrines, dogmas, and assertions, which they feel sure true
+science will destroy, although the same people declare their tenets
+indestructible, and founded on truth. Nay, we may go still further, and
+assert that sciolism in religious matters is fostered by the clergy of
+all denominations, both by the suppression of what they believe to be
+genuine, and by the promulgation of what they know to be false. In the
+place of knowledge they inculcate blind faith.
+
+As one not wholly unknown to be an earnest and honest inquirer, I
+have had extensive correspondence and personal intercourse with many
+preachers, and with others whose opportunities for learning "the
+clerical mind" are more extensive than my own, and I may divide the
+body of religious ministers, and the laity as well, into the following
+classes:--1, Those who refuse to inquire, examine, and think about
+religious subjects, except in a certain prescribed way; 2, Those who
+will investigate into the grounds of their belief, as they would into
+any doubtful assertion, or into any science; 3, Those who individually
+abandon the old faith and yet continue to preach it, and profess to
+adhere to it as strongly as they did at first; 4, Those who venture
+timidly to insinuate doubts into the minds of others, whilst professing
+to be orthodox themselves; 5, Those who are too noble to be hypocrites,
+and boldly affirm that which their advance of knowledge has induced
+them to adopt as a belief. Yet these very men, distinguished above
+their fellows for earnestness, for science, for honesty of purpose, a
+religiously ignorant priesthood persecutes; and Englishmen, who wish to
+be regarded as peculiarly "enlightened," stand by almost unmoved, or, as
+happens too frequently, applauding.
+
+When we endeavour to ascertain the reason why ignorance is so greatly
+cherished amongst mankind, we can readily discover it in indolence on
+the part of one group of men, and cupidity on the part of others. There
+are many positions in life wherein Sciolism seems to be more profitable
+than knowledge. We may mention a few. A "solicitor" who has an imperfect
+acquaintance with the law, may induce his clients to bring cases before
+various legal courts, in which they are certain to lose their cause and
+money, but this solicitor gains large fees for his trouble. A physician
+who does not know how to cure certain diseases may yet treat them for
+months, pass for a devoted doctor and a clever friend, and receive a
+large honorarium, which is far beyond his merit, though the patient may
+think it far too small. The man, on the other hand, who can cure such
+complaints readily, has to be content with a very slender fee, as his
+attendance is only required for a few days. The schemers, who live upon
+the ignorance of dupes, bear the name of legion. We see one of the body
+as a promoter of all sorts of bubble companies, and as secretary to such
+societies as banks, trade unions, burial clubs, assurances, &c. Anon he
+takes the form of an adulterator of provisions, of various drinkables,
+of cloth, silk, linen, &c. If Sciolism were not common, such charlatans
+as "spiritualists," "clairvoyants," "mesmerists," and the like, could
+not thrive as they do, nor quacks of all kinds flourish famously. One
+medical pretender is indeed reported to have said to a "regular" doctor,
+who lived in the same street with him, but whose clients were few
+compared with those of the charlatan--"the reason why you have so small,
+and I have so large, a number of patients is, that the fools come to me,
+the knowing ones to you."
+
+What is true in the case of other professions is preeminently so in the
+clerical In religion, such as it is professed in Christendom, Sciolism,
+or imperfect knowledge, alone is lucrative. Real understanding, diffused
+amongst the people, would render every hierophant a beggar, and thorough
+enlightenment amongst the priesthood would force them to allow that
+such should be their normal position. For example, if every layman, in
+countries owning the spiritual headship of the Pope of Rome, knew that
+all the stories of Heaven, Purgatory, Hell, Angels, Saints, Confessors,
+Hermits, and the like, were absolutely baseless--if he knew that man has
+no power in the court of the Almighty to influence His will in favour
+of a congener, and that nothing whatever is known respecting the world
+beyond the grave--he would not order masses, whether high or low, and a
+host of other ceremonies, each of which has to be paid for. Or, if each
+Protestant knew, that every tenet preached to him from the pulpit is
+founded upon absolute ignorance of the Almighty's operations, that every
+doctrine, every prayer, and every ritual, is based upon fantastic, half
+savage, or semicivilized human ideas, he would recognize at once the
+total uselessness of the parson. "They that are whole need not
+the physician, but they that are sick." The doctor, knowing this,
+endeavours, when he has a chance, to induce a client to believe himself
+ill, and that he and no other man can cure him--or, if he should really
+be disordered, these ideas will be kept up as long as possible. So it is
+in "religion," it is only the culprit that wants the Saviour, but when
+he has a chance, the _soi disant_ saviour tries to persuade those who
+consult him, that they are sinners, yet that he can make them saints;
+and having once implanted this belief, he endeavours to sustain it. To
+doctors and priests such as we here describe, the ignorant credulity of
+their clients is a source of wealth. So long as there are dupes
+there will be sharpers, and so long as men are human, there will be,
+unconsciously very likely to themselves, abundance of both fools and
+knaves.
+
+From what has been already said, our readers will have probably drawn
+the conclusion that we deny the existence of a thoroughly educated
+and honest hierarch, who has become wealthy by the exercise of
+his profession in a perfectly conscientious manner. Exceptional
+circumstances prevent us saying exactly the same of a doctor, but
+into these we need not enter, as they have not their counterparts in
+divinity. Such being our belief, we recognize the fact that poverty and
+knowledge must, in an earnest priesthood, be ever associated. But the
+clergy of every denomination are loath to agree to this, and endeavour,
+by hook or by crook, to acquire the means of living well.
+
+Hence Buddha, who was thoroughly honest himself, and did not become a
+preacher for the sake of emolument or a livelihood, adopted, as part
+of his plan, a systematic estrangement from every luxury of whatever
+sort,--or, in other words, the adoption of a poverty as great as exists
+in the lower animals. He enjoined that the saintly teacher, having food
+and raiment of the most homely kind, ought therewith to be content. This
+was Paul's view also--see 1 Tim. vi. 8. In this teaching the son of Mary
+concurred; like the son of Maya, he "had not where to lay his head," he
+had not even such a home as a fox or a bird (Matt, viii. 20), and when
+he sent out his disciples to preach, his direction to them was, "Take
+nothing for your journey" (Luke ix. 3, see also Matt, vi. 25-28). To sum
+up our remarks upon this particular command of Buddha to avoid the
+taint of ignorance, we may frame an axiom in political economy,
+thus--"Ignorance in the many ensures wealth in a few," or, "A diffusion
+of sound knowledge amongst the ruled, reduces the power and the
+emoluments of the rulers, and compels them to work hard if they wish to
+retain their position." To apply this idea still further, I would add
+that a thoroughly educated people, each one of whom feels that he
+must "work out his own salvation" (Phil ii. 12), does not require a
+priesthood. Consequently hierarchs, whose sole business in this world
+seems to be to instil terror into young minds, and to make rules for
+them to break, that priests may be paid for showing how the imaginary
+results may be escaped, would have no place if men were wise and
+thoughtful. It is a curious, though a certain fact, that the depth of
+savagery and the height of civilization alike ignore the necessity of a
+hierarchy. The first does so because it never thinks of God--the second,
+because its conceptions of the Almighty are such that it cannot believe
+Him to be influenced by individuals who assume to be His earthly
+vicegerents, or are elected to that pretentious situation by their
+fellow-men. The God of the Bible can only be adored by individuals whose
+minds are not emancipated wholly from the thraldom of barbarism, and
+who regard Jehovah as a man, and not a good one either, or, as we have
+before remarked--a devil. We may once more extract some sentences for
+comparison, to show, either that no inspiration was necessary to pen the
+Bible, or that the Dhammapada has equal claims with the Old Testament--
+
+244. "Life is easy to live for a man who is without shame, a crow hero,
+a mischief maker, an insulting, bold, and wretched fellow. But life is
+hard to live for a modest man, who always looks for what is pure, who is
+disinterested, quiet, spotless, and intelligent. O man, know this, that
+the unrestrained are in a bad state; take care that greediness and vice
+do not bring thee to grief for a long time."
+
+Compare this with the Psalmist's expression--"I was envious at the
+foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands
+in their death, but their strength is firm; they are not in trouble
+as other men, neither are they plagued like other men; therefore pride
+compasseth them about as a chain, violence covereth them as a garment,
+their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could
+wish.... these are the ungodly who prosper in the world, they increase
+in riches.... Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou
+castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into
+desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors" (Ps.
+lxxiii. 3-19.) "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading
+himself like a green tree that groweth in his own soil, yet he passed
+away, and lo! he was not, yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.
+Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is
+peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together, the end of
+the wicked shall be cut off." "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers,
+neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity, for they shall
+soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb. Trust in
+the Lord and do good, so shalt thou dwell in the land, and, verily, thou
+shalt be fed" (Ps. xxxvii. 35-38--1-3). The class of sentiments is the
+same in both, only they seem to differ because we are very familiar with
+the phraseology of the Bible, and the reverse with translations from the
+Sanskrit.
+
+At this point the philosopher may judiciously pause to inquire, whether
+the sentiments expressed in the preceding biblical quotations are not
+incorrect, and consequently whether they can be regarded as inspired;
+and whether the Buddhistic solution of the difficulty, which points to
+a future state, is not superior to the Jewish one which treats of this
+world only. Experience abundantly shows that individuals practising what
+is called "goodness" find it no safeguard against misery, starvation,
+tortures, and death. Jesus of Nazareth, his disciples, and vast numbers
+of his followers, have experienced from the dominant party in those
+states wherein they dwelled contumely, reproach, and hours of lingering
+torment. Louis the XIV. of France, and the New Englanders of America,
+alike persecuted "Protestants" and "Quakers." In Spain "the reformers"
+were successfully opposed by fire and sword, and Papal Italy once
+extirpated from her midst the disciples of Luther and Calvin. Yet the
+so-called wrong-doers flourished, and the unfortunate "good people" were
+run down or dragooned with a sudden and swift destruction. If the dictum
+of the Psalmist is right, then Admiral Coligny, who was killed in
+the Bartholomew massacre, at Paris, must have been a bad man put in a
+slippery place that he might fall, for his destruction came suddenly, in
+an instant. But all history shows him to have been a worthy fellow,
+who was punished for his virtues. The observer of nature is driven to
+believe that the co-existence of powerful and bad men, with feeble, yet
+good men, is a rule in creation for which no adequate explanation can
+be found. He sees that in the domain of the air there are hawks and
+pigeons, eagles and ostriches, cuckoos and hedge-sparrows, that on the
+land there are tigers and sheep, lions and buffaloes, wolves and deer,
+that in the water there are perch and minnows, pike and trout, sharks
+and whales--in other words, there is throughout the world a division of
+living creatures into those who live by destroying vegetables, and those
+who subsist by the destruction of animals. The cow, sheep, and deer are
+quite as ruthless, in their noxiousness to the ornaments of the meadow,
+as are foxes in a hen-roost to the beauties of the barn-door; both alike
+mar the graceful features of creation. Yet it is clear that both the
+graminivora and the carnivora were made to effect this apparent
+wrong. Still further, we see throughout creation, that in almost every
+community of animals, the strong ones dominate over the weak, and
+endeavour, far too frequently, to deprive them of such pleasures as they
+and their females possess. See, for example, a cock with a bevy of hens:
+he will allow no other chanticleer to strut besides him on the dunghill
+of the yard; he will not permit a rival to make love to anyone of his
+harem, nor to feed upon any dainty morsel, until his wives and himself
+have had enough. The same may be said of stags, of bulls, of rams, of
+horses, and many other creatures whose habits are known. The leader of
+a herd is a despot, and when he is at length conquered by another, those
+who are ruled have merely changed their masters. Young and weak cocks
+will never attain to power, and must ever submit to be bullied.
+
+We notice, at the same time, that each tyrant must in the end succumb;
+with age comes infirmity and loss of strength, in the last battle
+the old is beaten by the young. Just so it is with mankind; in its
+comparative infancy monarchs rule, and are at length deposed by others.
+The Babylonians conquered Palestine, the Medes and Persians vanquished
+the Babylonians, the Greeks subjugated the Persians, the Romans overcame
+the Greeks, and the Goths destroyed the Roman power; yet under every
+regime the powerful could torment the weak. The result in every case
+was brought about by the conqueror being strong and brutal--not by the
+immorality of the victims.
+
+When a philosopher sees such things, he very naturally endeavours to
+ascertain whether any design can be discovered in the events of the
+world, and to this end he may be diligent in collecting facts, or he
+may at once frame some theory, and then cease to think about the matter.
+"Oh," such an one may say, "all that is wrong here will be righted in
+another world." Another, who ponders more deeply, may doubt whether it
+is proper to divide the phenomena of nature into "right" and "wrong."
+"If," he will say, "I believe with the Jew that God is in the heavens,
+and does whatsoever He pleases" (Ps. cxv. 3), or that "the Lord hath
+made all for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov.
+xvi. 4) I must allow that everything which emanates from the Creator
+must be right. Speaking individually, I prefer rather to examine into
+the ways of Providence--i.e., of the Almighty, without framing any
+theory of right and wrong, than to dogmatize upon what He _must_ intend
+by this or that. "Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord (Jehovah),
+or being his counsellor hath taught him?" (Is. xl. 13)--see also the
+Pauline version of this sentiment, Rom. xi. 33, 34.
+
+It is very questionable whether any human analogy will enable us,
+even approximately, to fathom what are designated "the designs of
+Providence." Every example that I can at the present remember given by
+theologians is bad. Take, for example, the most common one which draws
+a comparison between God and a father, Ps. ciii. 13, "like as a father
+piti-eth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" Prov.
+iii. 12, "Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the
+son in whom he delighteth;" Heb. xii. 6, 7, "Whom the Lord loveth
+he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "If ye be
+without chastisement, whereof all men (are) partakers, then are ye
+bastards and not sons." These enunciate the idea that God, being the
+universal father, treats mankind as a judicious parent treats his
+offspring, and that as a child cannot at all times know why he is
+punished until many years have passed over his head, so human beings
+cannot tell, until they reach another world, why they were punished
+in this. To assist this assertion the text is quoted "What I do thou
+knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7.) If there
+be any truth in the analogy, it must follow that all who in this world
+"endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19), are children of
+God, whom he is educating for a better world. If that, again, be
+so, then--when Christians persecuted Mahometans, Romanists burned
+Protestants, and Spaniards slaughtered Mexicans and Peruvians--it
+follows that the vanquished, and not the conquerors, were the elect of
+the Father. But this deduction directly opposes those promises said to
+be made to the Jews by Jehovah, viz., that victory should be the reward
+of their piety. As it is a poor system which declares that two opposite
+results come from the same cause, we must refuse to believe that both
+victory and defeat are proofs of a Father's love. I am quite aware that
+some reader may retort that a kind parent may punish one child at the
+same time that he rewards another. I grant it at once, but that only
+demonstrates, if it proves anything, that all creatures must be regarded
+alike as the offspring of the Creator, and that none are favoured
+peculiarly on the one hand, or are outcasts on the other.
+
+As it is undesirable to mix political up with religious events, I
+refrain from drawing from history such illustrations as have frequently
+been supposed to indicate the will of the Almighty. The fall from power
+of Egypt, Tyre, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome,
+Spain, are all supposed to have been caused by some special providential
+design. In like manner theologians draw certain deductions from the
+discovery of the New World, and the slaughter of the majority of its
+aboriginal inhabitants; from the Crusades; from the influx of the Turks
+into Christendom; and of the Moors into Spain. Some, whose imaginative
+powers overwhelm their reasoning faculties, see in the wars of recent
+times that final shaking of the nations, which some _soi-disant_ prophet
+declares must precede the millennium, and the battle of Armageddon;
+vaccinators, and interpreters are as abundant and irrepressible now as
+ever they were. Their fundamental assumption is that God has acted as
+they would have done in His place. Now He is a sort of Irish landlord, a
+portion of whose property is overrun with pauper farmers, and He clears
+them away to make room for more sensible and wealthier tenants, as
+the Canaanites were removed to give place to the Hebrews. Now, He is
+represented as a parent, who hearing that a son has engaged in fight and
+been conquered, merely remarks "serves him right!"--the kind of
+comfort given to the Jews after they had been harried by the Edomite
+confederacy, and subsequently by the Chaldeans. Again, the same mighty
+Jehovah is represented as a Stoic, who remarks, when some mischance
+happens to those who are said to be his children, "Never mind, accidents
+will happen--through much tribulation you must enter into my rest, or
+the kingdom of heaven."
+
+I entirely decline to adopt the profession of prophet and interpreter,
+contenting myself with increasing what knowledge I may have, rather
+than endeavouring to deduce from it theories whose weakness an hour may
+demonstrate; nor do I put faith in any one who adopts such a business.
+
+For example, let us assume that two savage tribes, having gods
+of different names and shapes, go to war on the bidding of their
+priests--one is conquered and the other is victorious. The one
+attributes his reverse to the anger of his own deity, not to the power
+of the god of his enemy. The other imagines that he owes success to the
+influence of his protector and his superiority over his foe's fetish.
+A civilized on-looker, who believes that all the deities are devils and
+powerless, attributes victory and defeat to perfectly natural causes,
+e.g., superiority in weapons, tactics, numbers, or strength. It is
+clear that neither the deductions of the first nor second men are right;
+neither has read the mind of his fetish. So it is with the half educated
+theologians of our own day, who think and talk as glibly of God and
+Satan, as if they were personal acquaintances, who make no secret either
+of their deeds or their motives of action.
+
+Once more we return to the Dhammapada and find,
+
+248. "O, man, know this, that the unrestrained are in a bad state; take
+care that greediness and vice do not bring thee to grief for a long
+time." We do not here seek to find any parallel passage in the
+bible, but we turn to history, remote and collateral, and compare the
+priesthood of Buddha with that of Jesus. Does travel tell us of any set
+of teachers more self-denying than the individuals who devote themselves
+as religious Buddhists? Can history, on the other hand, tell us of any
+hierarchy more greedy and vicious than the Christian priesthood in the
+middle ages, and down to a comparatively recent period? We will not
+accuse them of vice, but even now is there in the whole world a more
+grasping set of men than those who have received what they term "holy
+orders" from the descendants of Jesus or of Peter? I trow not. If,
+therefore, a doctrine is to be known by its fruits, in one respect at
+least Buddhism is superior to that which we call Christianity, by which
+term I do not mean the exceptional practice of a few, but the general
+habits of the majority of the bishops, priests, &c., of Christendom.
+Once more let us contrast the doctrine of Buddha with the practice of
+Christians. He says--
+
+Da. 256, 7. "A man is not a just judge if he carries a matter by
+violence; no, he who distinguishes both right and wrong, who is learned,
+and leads others, not by violence, but by law and equity, he who is a
+guardian of the law and equity, he who is a guardian of the law, and
+intelligent, he is called just." Our histories tell us of Christians
+persecuting Christians; Trinitarians endeavouring to extirpate Arians;
+Franciscans torturing Dominicans; of Jews slaughtered by those
+whose master said, "Father, forgive them;" we see brutal Spaniards
+exterminating, under the shadow of the cross, whole nations in the new
+world who had never harmed them, and in the old world we find Crusaders,
+under the guise of piety, murdering and robbing the dwellers in
+Palestine. There is scarcely a large town in Europe which has not
+witnessed the ferocious violence of Papal, yea, and Protestant,
+hierarchs. Even in recent times we have seen bishops and their
+congeners, in our so-called civilized nation, oppose violence, and
+the popgun thunder of excommunication, to a learned prelate, and to an
+humble priest. Judged by the standard of Buddha, our divines are unjust
+and unrighteous. I cannot discover any standard by which they can be
+regarded as "praiseworthy," except that embodied in the two sayings,
+"Get what you can, and what you get hold;" "Where ignorance is bliss,
+'tis folly to be wise." We may say of such persecutors, in the words of
+the Dhammapada--
+
+260. "A man is not an elder because his head is grey; his age may be
+ripe, but he is called old in vain," and many would at once be able, if
+they tried, to remember the names of some who, in a Christian community,
+have abandoned their principles, or their learning, as soon as they
+became bishops or elders of the church. I have no doubt Popes have done
+so. There is a saying, that however clever a man is, you make a fool of
+him by placing a mitre upon his head.
+
+The following is, perhaps, more curious than our previous quotations, as
+it tells of the pre-Christian antiquity of a common Romish custom:--
+
+264. "Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man, who speaks falsehood,
+become a Sramana; can a man be a Sra-mana who is still held captive
+by desire and greediness?" The Sramana is a word equivalent to our
+"priest," literally, "a man who performs hard penances" (see Dhammapada,
+Note 265, p. cxxxii.).
+
+Without copying any other texts from the Dhammapada, we may next inquire
+what there is to be found in the Bible that is not to be found in the
+teaching of Buddha. We notice that the element of so-called prophecy is
+wholly wanting in the sayings of the Indian sage. I cannot remember that
+either Sakya Muni or any of his followers assumed the power to foretell
+the future. There is, it is true, a vague threat of future misery to the
+wicked, which was founded upon the prevalent idea of metempsychosis; but
+there is no endeavour to pourtray the occurrences that are supposed to
+be impending over one or more sections of the human race. There is not
+any attempt to induce individuals to join themselves to the son of Maya,
+by declarations that the world, and all that it contains, is about to be
+destroyed, and that all who do not become disciples of the teacher,
+and shelter themselves under his mantle, will be miserably punished
+throughout eternity.
+
+There is not any Buddhist description in detail, either of Hell, or
+Heaven, or Nirvana; there is no story of "worms," "fires," "devils,"
+"death," and the like, in the first. The second is not depicted, by
+the preacher himself, as a sort of palace, made gorgeous with gold and
+precious stones, resounding in barbaric music, and discordant chants,
+where animals dwell, and where horses are kept stabled, to go throughout
+the world with messengers upon their backs (see Zechariah i. 8, 10;
+vi. 2, 7; Rev. iv. 6, 7; vi. 2, 4, 8). There are no denunciations of
+vengeance upon heretics, nor is the god of Buddha like the one described
+by Hebrew writers, who "winks" during times of ignorance upon earth
+(Acts xvii. 30), who requires to be reminded by prayer of the wants of
+men (Exod. iii. 7), and who comes down to earth to inquire if matters
+are according to the accounts which have reached his dwelling-place
+(Gen. xviii. 21).
+
+In Siddartha's teaching there is, as we have seen, an absence of the
+element of prayer. According to his view, each man is regarded, to a
+certain extent, as the author of his own destiny. Man, in his opinion,
+must ever be influenced by the actions of other men--he may, for example
+either be caressed or tormented, yet, under both circumstances, he
+is instructed to retain equanimity of mind. He is not to pray for
+prosperity, nor to supplicate that trials may be removed. He is to face
+and overcome every trial by his resolute will, and not to waste time in
+praying not to be led into temptation.
+
+Again, in Buddha's writings, and in those of his followers, there is an
+absence of those obscene tales with which the Old Testament abounds. We
+seek in vain for counterparts of the story of Lot and his daughters, of
+Onan, of Joseph and the wife of Potiphar, of Judah and Tamar, David and
+Bathsheba, Amnon and his sister, Zimri Cozbi and Phinehas, and the
+like. It is true, that in some Buddhist writings, there is a cosmogony
+introduced more preposterous than that in the Bible; but there are no
+parallels to the tales of Noah, of Moses, and of Israel in Egypt, the
+desert, and Palestine. Indeed, when we remember that Sakya Muni was
+an Oriental, accustomed to inflated language, we are struck by the
+plainness of his speech.
+
+If we now ask ourselves, as earnest practical Christians--that is, as
+men, anxious and eager to attain to religious truth, and desirous of
+teaching only those things which would tend towards sound edification
+and to a pure morality--what parts of the Bible most offend sense of
+propriety, we should answer, that they are its untenable cosmogony; its
+preposterous accounts of the longevity of the men reported as being the
+earliest formed; the legend of the flood; the origin of the rainbow;
+the tales of Moses, Pharaoh, the plagues of Egypt, the sojourn in the
+desert, the capture of Canaan, the miraculous battles, in which each man
+of Israel put a thousand enemies to flight. We would wholly expunge
+the fabulous account of Elijah and Elisha; the ravings after vengeance
+uttered by the prophets; the apocryphal episodes described in the books
+of Jonah and Daniel, every obscene story, and disgusting speech and
+writing, whether uttered as a threat against Israel or his enemies.
+In like manner we would wish to expunge, from the teaching of
+Jesus, everything relating to the immediate destruction of the
+world--everything connected with community of goods, the advantages of
+beggary, and the potency of faith and prayer. We would suppress every
+miracle, and say nothing of a resurrection of the dead Jesus. We
+would equally abandon any attempt to describe Heaven or Hell, or any
+intermediate state.
+
+When all these were removed from the Bible, we positively should have
+very little left, except a certain amount of morality which is sound,
+and a large portion which is radically bad. To make such an emendated
+book as perfect as possible, we might, with great advantage, correct
+it from the teaching of Buddha or from the sayings of Socrates, Plato,
+Epic-tetus, and even of Confucius; and when all was completed, it would
+be found that all men, everywhere, have had instinctive notions, more
+or less definite, of morality, but have allowed their animal passions
+to overcome their better feelings. Far too many of us know the good, but
+yet the bad pursue.
+
+This investigation would most distinctly disprove the assertion, that
+God has selected a very small percentage of His creatures for objects
+of His care, and those who have charity towards all men would greatly
+rejoice thereat. Individually we cannot bear to eat, however hungry
+we may be, whilst we see others near us without food--our pleasure is
+heightened when we divide our luxuries with others; just so we believe
+it should be in religion--none should rejoice at the idea that he is one
+of the few that are to be saved, nor should anyone repine, as Jonah did,
+when he finds that the tender mercies of God are over all his works.
+
+To simplify the matter as far as possible, I have drawn up the following
+parallel between Buddhism and Christianity:--
+
+[Illustration: 263]
+
+[Illustration: 264]
+
+[Illustration: 265]
+
+[Illustration: 266]
+
+[Illustration: 267]
+
+In the next chapter I propose to examine, as far as authorities will
+permit, the religion of the Persians--a nation intervening, to a great
+degree, between the old Aryan and the Shemitic races.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+The Medo-Persians and Parsees. Artfulness of theologians. They
+systematically break the ninth commandment. Frauds in orthodoxy. A man
+may use false weights innocently, but is punished, nevertheless. In
+theology ignorance does not justify deceit. Case in trade. Professional
+blindness. A law for punishing adulteration of truth is wanted. Mosaism
+and Zoroaster. Parsees and Christians. Moses and Zoroaster. The ancient
+magi. The Persians. Conflicting ideas of God in Bible. The source of the
+Biblical theology. Cyrus. Inquiry into the authenticity of the Avesta.
+The book condemned. Account of the Medo-Persian faith from Herodotus.
+Period of introduction of the Devil to the Bible. Summary. Comparison
+and contrast. Introduction to next chapter.
+
+In every ancient, and, indeed, in every modern, faith which I have
+yet examined, I have been shocked with the manner in which it has been
+represented by interested opponents. Whether they are Romanists or
+Protestants, Evangelicals or Ritualists, Orthodox or Non-conformists,
+all our divines endeavour to prove their own tenets to be the best, by
+blazoning everything which is good, and veiling from sight everything
+which is doubtful. This being so, it is not at all surprising that
+Christians generally should try to exalt the religion professed
+by themselves over that propounded by others, whom they designate
+"heathens." But though it is not strange that very human partisans
+should act thus, it is marvellous to find that all the ardent disciples
+of Jesus, without an exception, that I know of, should, in their
+dealings with mankind, systematically break the ninth of those
+commandments which they assert were given by God to man, upon Mount
+Sinai All of them bear false witness against their neighbour, and give
+incorrect accounts of themselves in addition. They resemble, indeed,
+those Dutch merchants whom Washington Irving describes, so pleasantly,
+in his history of New York, who had two sets of weights, a heavy lot by
+which to purchase, and a light set by which to sell Such traders we call
+"fraudulent;" and I assert that every so-called orthodox polemic whose
+books I have read deserves the same epithet. Their fraud is shown by the
+misrepresentations that they make, both of the creed which they uphold
+and the one which they oppose. The heterodox and the so-called atheist
+may be trusted, at least, to tell the truth.
+
+In saying this, I do not assert that everyone gives false witness
+knowingly, any more than I would blame a tradesman for using false
+scales, or weights, if he could demonstrate that he had purchased them
+as true, and could show that he had never tampered with them. Yet the
+law would punish such a man for their use, arguing that he ought to
+have made inquiry. In one of the large towns of Great Britain, on one
+occasion, a merchant, believed to be both religious and honest, sold to
+a broker a cargo of stuff which had no existence, and, when the delivery
+had to be made, the first destroyed himself, and the second was adjudged
+to be a culpable bankrupt, because he had taken the existence of the oil
+for granted, without investigation. Just so it is with ordinary divines;
+they assume certain statements in their own religious book to be
+true--they are taught to shut their eyes to the absurdities in the same
+volume, and to explain away, in one manner or another, everything which
+militates against common sense. By this plan they contrive to sell,
+as sterling stuff, something which is made of base material, without
+knowingly being parties to a fraud. In the same way a shopman may, on
+the word of the manufacturer, dispose of a piece of goods as wholly
+silk, although he has a shrewd presumption that the fabric contains a
+large proportion of cotton. For such individuals we have the proverb,
+"there are none so blind as those who will not see." But these very
+theologians of whom we are speaking, when they are dealing with the
+sacred books, ordinary customs, ritual, and the like, of other
+people, having a different religion to their own, are exact, in the
+extreme--every absurdity is exhibited ruthlessly; every legend is
+ridiculed; every discrepancy is magnified; and everything which betrays
+ignorance, or want of scientific knowledge, is paraded with inglorious
+ceremony. On the other hand, everything good which is to be found
+therein is, if possible, suppressed. A book, which was, for a long time,
+a standard one amongst our divines, entitled, _Christ and Many Masters_,
+is particularly open to this charge. In it there is throughout a
+_suppressio veri_, a _suggestio falsi_, and scarcely a page that
+does not bear false witness. If there were a law to punish those who
+adulterate or falsify "truth," our magistrates would be kept extremely
+busy.
+
+As an inquiry into the realities of Buddhism has led us to the belief
+that the origin of Christianity may be found in the doctrines of the
+son of Maya, which were adopted with certain Judaic modifications by the
+sons of Elizabeth and Mary--so it is highly probable that what is called
+Mosaism has been built upon the teachings of the Persian or Median
+theology, said to have been founded by Zoroaster. Perhaps it would
+be difficult to find any modern evidence of the likelihood of this
+hypothesis more powerful than the fact that at the present day the Jews
+and the Parsees fraternize almost like brothers. The latter in England,
+and, I understand, elsewhere, select, when they can, the house of a
+Hebrew wherein to lodge, rather than that of any man of another nation.
+To this testimony, such as it is, we must add another which is very
+telling, viz., that almost every modern orthodox writer who has
+treated of Zoroaster, has declared that the prophet of Persia drew his
+inspiration from the lawgiver of Israel The priority of the latter being
+asserted, and the second place having been given to the former, the
+matter was supposed to be proved, and the Persian, after having been
+regarded as a copy of the Hebrew, was consigned to oblivion.
+
+There can be little doubt, however, that the teachings of Zoroaster had
+more life in them than those either of the Jew or the Christian, for
+the Parsee always and even to the present day, and in every position of
+life, may lay claim to the title of nature's gentleman, which very
+few of the disciples of Jesus or of Moses could pretend to until very
+recently. The morality of these religionists is excellent. In every
+relation of life they endeavour to be, to do, and to think that which is
+right--and though there may be black sheep amongst them, the proportion
+of these to the main body is small In no period of their history, so
+far as I can learn it, have the Zoroastrians been as brutal as the
+Christians were so long as they had the power--nor have they ever
+introduced into their worship figures of men, women, or children with
+the apparent intention of honouring or adoring them, or the assertion
+that such things assisted their devotions. Being strictly monotheists,
+they have not split up the Godhead into three males influenced by
+a female who is the spouse of one and mother of a second; nor have
+asserted that the one great Creator is compounded of a father, a
+son, and a pigeon, with a woman for an intercessor with her celestial
+consort. Nor do the Parsees build vast temples for the Almighty to
+dwell in, neither do they reduce any portion of the Omnipotent to the
+necessity of residing in a bit of bread shut up for many a long day in
+a box. On the contrary, the modern followers of Zoroaster worship "the
+father" in spirit and in truth--not with eye service as men-pleasers,
+but with singleness of heart, fearing God (Col. iii. 22.), thus being, as
+we are told, the very men whom the Almighty seeketh (John iv. 23, 24).
+
+The first resemblance between the Persian and the Jewish lawgiver to
+which we would call attention, is the mythical nature of both. The
+Hebrew who believes in Moses can show no other ground for his faith
+than a number of books which tell of Moses, his genealogy, his acts,
+his laws, his character, and his death. Yet when an independent inquirer
+subjects these books, and the accounts which they contain, to a rigid
+examination, he finds evidence that the writings are fabrications of a
+period at least a full thousand years after the era of their supposed
+epoch--probably more; and that all collateral testimony and all internal
+evidence drawn from the books themselves disprove the actual existence
+of Moses. To the scholar, the Hebrew lawgiver is as apocryphal or
+fictitious a being as Hercules, Romulus, and our own king Arthur. Nor is
+this belief of the critic shaken when he finds that the history of Moses
+is interwoven with miraculous legends--credit them he cannot; but he may
+pause before he determines to see in them evidence of fabrication. He
+cannot fairly deny the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, because many
+marvellous stories were told of him, nor would a similar cause alone
+lead him to assert that Francis of Assisi was a mythical individual.
+But whichever way the careful philosophical inquirer may decide the
+questions at issue, he will remember that many strange stories are told
+of the conception, birth, and life of Zoroaster, and that the critic
+must mete out equal justice, both to the Jew and to the Persian. Again,
+impartial inquirers find themselves unable to determine, with anything
+approaching to accuracy, either by internal evidence or contemporary
+remains--the positive epoch when the tale about Moses was originated. It
+is true that the Bible seems to afford foundation for a chronology in
+a few parts, as, for example, in the historical books; but these are
+so completely contradicted by genealogies in other parts that we cannot
+trust them. After stripping away every doubtful scrap from Jewish
+history, all we can find is, that Moses was first talked of, familiarly,
+after what maybe called the Grecian Captivity of Jerusalem (see
+_Obadiah, Ancient Faiths, &c._t Vol. ii.), and that he was said to
+be the author of the ceremonial, moral, and political laws which were
+framed for the Jewish nation, and which were assiduously taught to the
+Hebrews after the Babylonish captivity.
+
+The followers of Zoroaster are equally ignorant of the real history of
+their prophet, and are equally unable to demonstrate the claim of the
+Zend Avesta to be a true account of the teaching of the Persian sage, as
+are the Jews to prove the antiquity of their laws and nation. Putting
+on one side all those which may be regarded as modern fancies, the first
+mention made of the Prophet is in the first Alcibiades of Plato, which
+we may imagine was written shortly after B.c. 412, in which year that
+distinguished Greek citizen negociated a treaty between Athens and
+Persia. Plato, when speaking of the education of the sons of the kings
+of Persia, says (_Bohn's_ edition, Vol. iv., p. 344), "At fourteen years
+of age, they who are called the royal preceptors, take the boy under
+their care. Now these are chosen out from those who are deemed most
+excellent of the Persians, men in the prime of life, four in number,
+excelling (severally) in wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude.
+The first of these instructs the youth in the learning of the Magi,
+according to Zoroaster, the son of Oromazes--now by this learning
+is meant the worship of the gods--and likewise in the art of kingly
+government." But Herodotus, writing about B.c. 450, when giving, in Book
+i, c. 131, an account of the religion of the Persians, makes not only
+no mention of Zoroaster, but attributes to that nation a form of worship
+differing from what is supposed to be pure Zoroastrianism;* but he
+mentions--and it seems to be a significant fact, that it is not lawful
+for a Persian to sacrifice unless one of the Magi is present, who
+sings an ode concerning the original of the gods which, they say, is an
+incantation.
+
+     * There is strong constructive evidence, from the nature of
+     the Aryan Mythology, from the pages of the Vedas, from the
+     anthropological resemblances between Persians, Caucasians,
+     Greeks, Latins, Germans, British, and others; from the
+     linguistic alliances between what have been called the Indo-
+     Germanic races; and from a variety of other sources, each
+     small in itself, but strong in the aggregate, for the belief
+     that the origin of the Aryan mythology, or the Vedic
+     religion as it is otherwise called, may be traced to Bactria
+     or to Ancient Persia. Persia is spoken of by Plato as if her
+     people carried the dynasties of their kings far back into
+     eternity. (First Alcibiades, Bohn's edition, vol. iv., p.
+     343). Herodotus again (Book i., c. 131) tells us that the
+     Persians from the earliest times have sacrificed to the sun
+     and moon, to the earth, fire, water, and the winds, that
+     they sacrifice on high places, have no divine statues, nor
+     do they build temples. Now this is almost entirely a
+     description of the old Aryan religion. The sun, for example,
+     is Surya, Aryama, Mitra, Vivaswat, Martunda, Savitor, Sura,
+     Ravi, Varuna, Indra Yama, Vishnu, and Krishna (Moor's Hindoo
+     Paillhcon, p. 287). The moon is Chandra and Soma, and the
+     origin of these words is to be found in the Persian as well
+     as in the Sanscrit writings (Moor's H. P., p. 284-5). The
+     Earth is Prit'hivi, 11a, Lakshmi, and Vasta. Fire is the
+     powerful Agni. The water is Nara, or Narayana (Moor's JET.
+     P., 74), from which all things came (see Water in Ancient
+     Faiths), and the Winds are Maruts and Vaya. To these
+     deities, individually or collectively, the modern Hindoo
+     offers prayer and praise; and the hymns of the Rig Veda,
+     such as we have them edited by Max Muller and Wilson, are
+     copies probably of the same chants which accompanied the
+     sacrifices of the Ancient Persians.
+
+
+This seems to indicate that the Persian religion was then undergoing
+some supervision by rulers who had a different faith to that held at a
+later period. When we next turn to Herodotus, Book L, c. 101, we find
+that the Magi were one of the six tribes which composed the Medes;
+and we notice that Phraortes, the son of Deioces, reduced the Persian
+kingdom under the dominion of the Medes about B.c. 650. If, then, we
+regard Zoroaster as being the founder of the Magi, we must throw back
+his epoch considerably further than this date. But even if we accept
+this conquest as the era of the Parsee prophet, we find that Zoroaster
+preceded the first public promulgation of the Mosaic law amongst the
+Jews.*
+
+     * Time of Zoroaster.--Dr. Hang, who is no mean authority in
+     everything which concerns Zoroastrianism, states in an able
+     resume of the evidence, that we cannot assign a later date
+     to the prophet than 2300 years before Christ. He quotes from
+     Diogenes Laertius who affirms that Xanthos of Lydia, b.c.
+     600-450, states, that Zoroaster lived 6000 years before
+     Xerxes invaded Greece; from Pliny who, on the authority of
+     Aristotle, says that the teacher preceded Plato by 6000
+     years; from Hermippus of Smyrna, who studied Magism B.c.
+     250, and averred that the founder of that sect lived 5000
+     years before the Trojan war; and from Pliny, to show the
+     general belief of ancient Greek authors that Zoroaster lived
+     many thousand years before Moses. Dr. Haug says (I am
+     quoting from "A Lecture on an Original Speech of Zoroaster,
+     with Remarks on his Age, by Dr Haug" London: Triibner & Co.,
+     1865), that the traditional books of the Parsees say
+     Zerdosht (another form of the more familiar Greek name)
+     lived 300 years before Alexander invaded Persia. Our author
+     adds that Hermippus, in 250 b.c., speaks of two millions of
+     verses of Zoroastrian origin, and infers that these would
+     require 1000 years for their growth. He then points out the
+     relationship between the Iranian and the Yedic religion, and
+     Zoroaster's antagonism to the latter, and argues that this
+     must have happened ere the Aryans invaded the Punjaub, 2000
+     years B.c. Dr. Haug then inquires into the probable source
+     whence the Greeks drew their ideas respecting the antiquity
+     of Zerdosht, and argues, with great show of reason, that
+     they consulted the chronology of the Babylonian priests. He
+     shows that a trustworthy record was kept which went back to
+     2284 b.c., this he concludes, from data given by Berosus,
+     was the year when Babylon was conquered by the Medes;--and
+     from Synkellos he shows that the founder of the dynasty of
+     the eight Median tyrants over Babylon was called Zoroaster.
+     But this word, Zarathustra, in the original, signifies a
+     high priest, and to distinguish him from other hierarchs
+     the prophet is called Zarathustra Spitama, in the Zend
+     Avesta--hence this king is supposed not to be the prophet
+     him" self, but a descendant from him, and a priest in the
+     order which was founded by the original Zerdosht. This again
+     points to the fact that the Babylonians could only know
+     anything about the founder of Magism from the Medes
+     themselves, and they might, from want of any accurate
+     chronology, assign to Zoroaster any date they liked--just
+     as, with many a semi-civilized nation 'a long time may be
+     converted into ten, a hundred, a thousand, or a million
+     years.' Haug does not endeavour to assign any particular
+     date to the era of Zoroaster beyond expressing the opinion
+     that he might have lived one or two hundred years before the
+     Median conquest of Babylon, and that this occurrence was
+     probably one of the results of the ferment which his
+     doctrines caused. "He preached, like Moses, war and
+     destruction to all idolaters and wicked men, and said that
+     he was commissioned by God to spread the religion of Ahura
+     Mazda. Daring his life-time, and shortly after his death,
+     his followers seem to have engaged in incessant wars with
+     their religious antagonists, the Vedic Indians, which
+     struggle is well known in the Sanscrit writings as that
+     between the Asuras (Ahura) and Devas (the Hindu gods). But
+     afterwards they spread westward and invaded the countries of
+     other idol worshippers in order to uproot idolatry, and
+     establish everywhere the good Mazdayan religion. They really
+     appear to have changed the order of things in Babylon when
+     they conquered it, and spread a new creed, for they are
+     spoken of by Berosus as tyrants." Zoroaster was the first
+     prophet of truth who appeared in the world, and kindled a
+     fire which thousands of years could not entirely
+     extinguish."
+
+When Moses was first talked about we know not, but at the time of
+Samuel, David, and Josiah he was unknown. We have no reason to believe
+that the Hebrews ever came into contact with, or ever heard of the
+Persians, until after the Babylonish conquest, followed by that of
+Cyrus; consequently, if the Jewish law first propounded contained
+nothing akin to the doctrines and laws of Zoroaster, and subsequent
+publications did so, we should naturally conclude that the last were
+copied. It is unnecessary to tell the student of biblical history that
+the Jews were for many years under the dominion of the Persians and
+Medes, and that Nehemiah, one of their great men, after the Babylonian
+captivity, was a personal, though humble, friend, of the king of
+Persia--i.e., if we take his account of himself for true.
+
+Of the fact of there being two distinct doctrines respecting the
+Almighty in the Old Testament no scholar has a doubt. In the one, God
+is represented as the sole Being who rules and influences the world:
+whatsoever was done He was regarded as the doer of it. He had no
+powerful enemy who could thwart His will, no adversary who could
+withstand Him successfully. In the other the existence of two rival
+powers is distinctly recognised--Jehovah and Satan--the Aryan Mara,
+the tempter, who plot and counterplot against each other, and even
+condescend to personal wrangling. The most conspicuous example which
+we can give of these two doctrines is to be found in 2 Sam. xxiv. 1, in
+which we are told that Jehovah moved David to number Israel, whereas
+in 1 Chron. xxi. 1, evidently written by a modern scribe, we find that
+Satan, the adversary, was he who incited the king to perform this deed.
+We see the duality of persons conspicuously put forward in the first and
+second chapters of Job, in which Satan is represented as being at large,
+not being even under the surveillance of Jehovah. See also 1 Kings xxii.
+20-23, wherein we find Jehovah at a loss how to bring about a certain
+result, and assisted out of a dilemma by a lying spirit--who can do what
+the Lord could not effect! We may say that the story is a fiction, but
+no Hebrew dare have spoken thus of Jehovah had he ever heard of Moses
+and his laws.
+
+As we cannot imagine that a revelation from God to the Hebrews would be
+thus changeable, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Jewish
+writings were of human origin, and their first doctrines modified by
+those of other nations to whom the Hebrews were subjects or enslaved. To
+this consideration we may add, that when the Israelites came in contact
+with the Medes and Persians, they were merely a 'posse' of slaves,
+a crowd of prisoners removed from their own land without a shadow
+of power, or any influence, and only anxious to induce those who had
+conquered their late masters, the Babylonians, to have pity on their
+misery, and restore them to beggared Jerusalem. The idea of the Hebrews
+gaining friends by endeavouring to induce the Persian Magi to change
+their faith and embrace that of the poor and probably despised Jew
+is preposterous. On the other hand, there would be every possible
+inducement for the Hebrews to study the faith of that people whose God
+had given them victory over the Chaldeans. See in corroboration of this
+Ps. cxxxvii., especially the two last verses.
+
+We may regard the question before us in yet another light, If we are
+to allow that the words of Isaiah are correct, which describe Cyrus as
+God's shepherd (ch. xliv. 28), and as anointed by Jehovah Himself, we
+cannot conceive that the religion which he professed was opposed to
+that entertained by the Hebrew prophet. As it is morally impossible
+that Cyrus and his hierarchy were taught their religion by any Jew, it
+follows that the Persian faith can lay the same claim to inspiration as
+the Hebrew, if the latter were not indeed almost identical with it.
+If, then, we insist upon the latter being "a true revelation," we must
+concede the same to the former, or if we pronounce the Persian religion
+to be of human invention, we must pass a similar verdict upon the
+Jewish.
+
+When we are upon the horns of such a great dilemma we may well pause.
+It is indeed almost impossible for orthodox divines to make a selection
+which prong of the fork is the worst. If we elect to say our belief
+is, that the primitive teaching of the Hebrew was God-given and a true
+revelation, we cannot put faith in those scriptures which tell us of a
+devil who fights with Jehovah, and is generally victorious. If, on the
+other hand, we hold that the Christian notions of the Creator and Satan
+are true, we must regard the Zoroastrian teaching as inspired; and
+the early Jewish writings as unworthy of credit--of human invention
+and heterodox. Theologians will probably elect to remain in a state of
+uncertainty on this subject. Philosophers, on the contrary, will escape
+from it at once by asserting their conviction that both the Hebrew and
+the Magian religion are wholly of human invention.*
+
+     * When commencing this chapter, it was my intention to
+     amplify what I have already said in Vol. II. respecting the
+     Magian religion, by giving an analysis of the celebrated
+     Zend Avesta, a translation of which into French, by Anquetil
+     du Perron, I had recently procured for the purpose.
+
+     As I was aware that Dr Haug, a learned scholar, believed the
+     original to be trust-worthy, I read the translation in good
+     faith, but I soon began to doubt whether the book was what
+     it professed to be, for to my mind it bore internal evidence
+     of having been fabricated at a comparatively recent period
+     by some one who was familiar both with the Aryan and the
+     Mosaic, if not the Christian, doctrines and literature. I
+     felt that I should not be acting honestly unless I took such
+     steps as lay in my power to satisfy myself upon this point
+     The essay was therefore laid aside for a considerable time,
+     until, indeed, every available source of information had
+     been searched. After my inquiry was over the text was
+     resumed as above.
+
+But in the middle, or perhaps we might say upon the threshold of our
+inquiry, we must pause to examine into the amount of confidence which
+can be given to those under whose guidance we are invited to place
+ourselves. Such investigations are too frequently omitted. Those who
+have faith in the Bible usually decline to search into the grounds
+of their belief, and, in like manner, those who have always heard
+the author of the Zend Avesta quoted as trustworthy are apt to take
+everything which it may say as correct. To avoid this error, I have
+consulted all the volumes of the transactions of the Royal Asiatic
+Society of London, and have found therein sufficient to throw the
+gravest doubts upon the great antiquity of the Parsee religion. It will
+be an useful task if I attempt to classify the evidence on each side,
+and to draw an inference therefrom. Our knowledge respecting the
+Magian religion which the Bactrian* prophet founded, is built, with the
+exception of the notices in Greek and Latin authors, already quoted,
+upon the work known as the Avesta. This is written in a language called
+Zand,** and there are within it parts, which are written in another
+tongue, to which the name of Pahlavi has been given, and from these the
+sacred books of the Parsees have been translated into French by Anquetil
+du Perron, into German by Spiegel, and into English by Haug. All these
+writers assume that the language referred to is Ancient Persian, and
+closely allied to the Sanscrit, and Haug especially endeavours to
+demonstrate that the Avesta, and the origin of the religion of the
+Parsees, must be as old as the time of the Vedas, inasmuch as the same
+sort of legends, the same names, and, to a certain extent, the same
+genii, are to be found in both. There is not absolute identity, however,
+for those which are spoken of as good by the Vedas are treated as bad in
+the Avesta. Viewed from this point, Haug assigns to the Zand volumes
+an age of about four thousand years, and he supports his belief by a
+reference to the length of time which would be required to make up the
+two million verses attributed to Zoroaster by some Greek author. In the
+conclusion that both the Zand and the Pahlavi are very ancient Persian
+tongues, it is stated that the majority of German and French critics
+agree.
+
+     * Zoroaster is said by many early writers to have been a
+     king in Bactria.--Smith's Dictionary, s.v.
+
+     ** The word "Zend" is more familiar to many than the form
+     "Zand;" but I have adopted the latter, as also the spelling
+     of Pahlavi, from an essay by Mr Romer, with an introduction
+     by Professor Wilson, in Vol. IV., Royal Asiatic Society's
+     Journal.
+
+But on the other hand, such orientalists as Sir William Jones, Colonel
+Vans Kennedy, Mr Thomas, and Mr Romer, and indeed all British oriental
+scholars, regard both the Zand and the Pahlavi as bastard languages,
+never spoken, and wholly fabricated by a comparatively modern
+priesthood, for the express purpose of making the holy books which they
+wrote comprehensible only by themselves. Such scholars show that the
+Zand and Pahlavi are built upon a Sanscrit, Arabic, and modern Persian
+model, and that the Parsee Pahlavi is very different to the Pehlevi of
+the Sassanian coins, and, in Vol. IV., Transactions of Royal Asiatic
+Society, Mr Romer supports this conclusion by a number of passages in
+the various languages referred to. It is also asserted that many words
+in the Avesta have been borrowed from the Arabic, and others from the
+Sanscrit tongues, possibly, also, from the Greek. Being unable, from my
+comparative ignorance of Eastern language, to form a decided opinion on
+independent grounds, all that I can say is, that it does really seem to
+be proved that the religious books of the Par-sees are not so ancient as
+they have been by many supposed to be.
+
+The question which next arises for our consideration is, whether such
+volumes represent the tenets of an ancient faith, or whether they
+are the fabrication of men who have, possibly in the wreck of an old
+worship, brought about by war or other calamity, endeavoured to create a
+new religion out of the relics of one or more old ones. In favour of the
+antiquity of the Avesta are the facts that the great god, Ahura Mazdao,
+seems to be almost identical with the Aura Mazda of the Persepolitan
+inscription of Darius. But in proof of its untruthfulness as a
+representative of pure Persian tradition, we find the book introducing
+Devs and Ahuras,--the counterpart of the Devas and Asuras of the Vedas,
+only reversing their character--we also see Indra mentioned as a devil,
+whilst Siva and Mitra are introduced as Sharva and Miltra. (Haug's
+_Essays on the Parsee_, Bombay, p. 230, 1862). If, therefore, we allow
+that there is some of the old Zoroastrian doctrine to be found in the
+Avesta, we must equally grant that such teaching has been modified by
+hatred of a rival faith. Yet herein is another question, viz., Was
+the antagonism between the doctrines of the Avesta and of the Vedas
+contemporary with the origin of the two systems, or was the teaching of
+the Avesta the result of its author's coming into hostile conflict with
+Vedic teachers, as they possibly might have done after Alexander had
+opened a highway for intercourse between Persia and Hindostan?
+
+On weighing the subject as impartially as I can, it seems to me that the
+Avesta contains a great deal of the Ancient Persian faith, but that it
+will be the safest plan for us to describe what is known of the Persian
+and Median faith from other sources, rather than take our information
+mainly from this doubtful source. Herodotus tells us of his own
+knowledge (B. i, c. 131, seq.), that the Persians, about b.c. 450, did
+not erect statues, temples, or altars--that they sacrificed on lofty
+hills to high heaven, the sun, moon, fire, water, and the winds, and
+that this had been a custom from time immemorial Sacrifice was attended
+by a priest or magus, and prayer and praise were offered, not for
+themselves alone, but for all the Persians, and especially for the king.
+
+In about the year 521 B.c., Darius, king of the Medes, caused be
+made, in three languages, upon a rock at Behistun, an inscription of
+considerable length. The one which is in the Persian tongue has been
+translated by Rawlinson (_Royal Asiatic Society Journal_, vol 10). In
+it, the king acknowledges Auramazda as his god, and speaks of him as the
+Jews did of Jehovah. This epithet is explained by two Sanscrit roots (Op
+cit., vol. x., p. 68), and may be paraphrased as "The Lord or giver of
+life," "The great Creator," or "The Eternal," and the king in a doubtful
+passage refers to "the evil one" (?), who by lies deceived the rulers
+of certain states, inducing them to rebel, and then left them to be
+conquered by the Ormazd-governed Darius. In the Babylonian copy "lies"
+are as it were personified. Whilst in the Scythian version, translated
+by Mr Norris (Op cit. vol. xv., p. 144), we find the account run thus:
+"These are the provinces which became rebellious, 'the god of lies'
+made them rebel that they would subvert the state, afterwards Ormaza
+delivered them into my hand." The "lies," or the god of lies, we very
+naturally associate with the being whom we call in our time the devil,
+who is spoken of (John viii. 44) as a liar, and the father of falsehood,
+who was so from the beginning [--Greek--], and consequently regarded as
+coeval with the "father of light."
+
+We next turn to such evidence as is given us in the book of Job. We
+select this ancient writing in consequence of the strong internal
+evidence there is, that it was written by some one about the period of
+the Achaemenian dynasty living in Persia (see Rawlinson in _Journal of
+B. A. Soc_., vol. 1, new series, p. 230). In Job we find two distinct
+powers spoken of, the one being the Good God, and the other Satan the
+opposer. The last is regularly described as if he had the power to cause
+war, devastation, tempest, disease, and death, for ch. ii., v. 6, lets
+us infer that he might have killed Job had he been so minded and God
+allowed the bargain, and in verse 19 of the same chapter we find
+him killing all the sons and daughters of the patriarch. Job
+clearly recognised the necessity of sacrifice for purification, for
+sanctification, and he seems not to have offered this upon any altar, in
+any temple, or with the intervention of any priest. It is clear that Job
+had never heard of Moses or the writings assigned to him. The persecuted
+patriarch and his friends all believe that punishment in this life is
+the result of offences committed against the Good God, but all seem
+to be singularly free from the idea that Satan is the cause of Job's
+sufferings either directly or indirectly. There is throughout the book
+no reference made to a preceding or a succeeding condition of man,
+such as obtained amongst the Brahmins, and it is doubtful whether the
+Persians believed in heaven or hell. When man died he was supposed to
+perish. Hence we conclude that the doctrine of the resurrection was not
+prevalent at the time the story was written, and in the country where
+the writer of the book of Job resided. Equally unknown to that author,
+whoever he was, were the ideas about angels, ministers of God, or
+disembodied spirits. These were of Babylonian origin. We must now, to
+carry on the thread of the argument, recal to mind the fact that Babylon
+was taken by the Medes and Persians, that the rulers of the united
+people often made that city their residence, that Herodotus tells us
+(B. 1, c. 135) that "the Persians are of all nations most ready to adopt
+foreign customs," and I may notice, in passing, that the same authority
+states that the two nations were scrupulously truthful, ceremoniously
+cleanly, and intolerant to leprosy. It is well known, moreover, that
+even after the commencement of our era Babylon was the chief seat of
+Babbinic and Talmudic lore.
+
+When we examine into the religion of the Babylonians we find that
+they believed in the existence of angels--minis-, ters of the
+Supreme--intelligences,--unseen by man, yet powerful to act in his
+favour, or against him. If we rightly interpret many of the engraved
+gems which were executed by the Chaldees, we can only come to the
+conclusion that they believed in a Devil, a Typhon, or spirit of
+destruction.
+
+We next must call attention to the fact that the Jews were conquered by
+the Babylonians, and enslaved in Mesopotamia for very many years--that
+they were subsequently emancipated by the Medo-Persians, and that the
+latter, whom from the inscription of Darius we believe to have been
+devout, permitted and even encouraged the Israelites to entertain the
+faith which they then held, and even assisted them to rebuild their
+temple. This permission, and the friendliness of Nehemiah with the
+Median monarch, seem to show a great similarity, if not an identity,
+between the Persian and the Jewish creeds.
+
+If, then, we could frame any definite idea of the tenets held by the
+Jews before they came into contact with the Babylonians, and those which
+they professed afterwards, we might form a conception of what they got
+from the Chaldees, the Medes, and the Persians respectively. Without
+going very deeply into the matter, we may say that Hebrew scholars
+generally allow that the ideas of Satan--a power opposed to that of God,
+and of angels or spirits, were introduced between the captivity and
+the period when the scriptures were translated into Greek, and that the
+notion of a future life and the resurrection of the dead, was developed
+after the time of the Septuagint, about b.c. 277.
+
+From the preceding considerations we draw the inference that the idea of
+the resurrection of the dead, of a future state of existence, in which
+each will be punished or rewarded for what had been done by him in his
+mortal condition, was not a portion of the original Median, Persian,
+Babylonian, or Jewish religion. A mass of circumstantial evidence has
+led me to believe that the idea of a Heaven for the good and a
+Hell for the bad, came from those who professed what we will call the
+Vedic or the Buddhist faith. If, in reply to this, it is alleged that
+it may have come from the Greeks directly, the rejoinder is simply
+this--that the Grecians, as Aryan colonists, brought with them only
+a rude notion of a futurity, which they were the medium of improving,
+when, through the influence of their arts and arms, they opened a
+highway to India both by sea and land. Those who could import into their
+armies such huge beasts as elephants, could far more readily import a
+new article of faith, if it pleased the priests.
+
+If our reasoning is sound, we cannot, I think, regard the Avesta as
+a trustworthy exposition of the ancient teaching of Zoroaster. On the
+other hand, we must, in my opinion, consider it as a book fabricated to
+serve a particular purpose. In this respect it resembles our own Bible,
+which was composed for the glorification of the Hebrews when smarting
+under a series of ignominious defeats and enslavements; and then
+enlarged, contracted, or altered, to suit emergencies.
+
+The following table will assist the reader to compare or contrast
+the religion of the Medo-Persians with that of the Hebrews in some
+matters:--
+
+[Illustration: 285]
+
+[Illustration: 286]
+
+The Hebrews first worshipped a calf, and then a box; they believed that
+their God taught them to build a tabernacle first, then a temple, and
+to It is not the practice of the Perform altars for sacrifice. The
+Hebrews sians to erect statues, or temples, also believed that Elohim
+had one or or altars, and they charge with folly more human forms--see
+Gen. xviii. 1, those that do. They do not think 2, and the following
+chap. xix. 1--see the gods have human forms, also Gen. xxxii. 1 and
+24-80, also Josh. v. 13, 14, 15, Jud. ii. 1-5.
+
+The anthropomorphism of the Jewish Scriptures has already been referred
+to in Vol. I. of Ancient Faiths.
+
+The Persians are accustomed to ascend the highest parts of the
+mountains, and offer sacrifice to Jupiter, calling the whole circle of
+the heavens by that name.
+
+The Persians sacrificed to the son and moon, to the earth, fire, water,
+and the winds.
+
+Amongst the Persians, sacrifices were attended by invocations and
+prayers, and were always offered up by a priest.
+
+The Persians, next to bravery in battle, considered the greatest proof
+of manliness was to be able to exhibit many children.
+
+Whoever has the leprosy or scrofula is not permitted to stay within a
+town, nor have communication with other Persians; and it is supposed
+that the infliction is caused by some offence against the deity (sun
+god). Herodotus, book I., chaps. 131,138.
+
+The eldest son of the Persian king was instructed during youth in the
+learning of the Magi according to Zoroaster the son of Oromazes--by this
+learning is meant the worship of the gods--and likewise in the art of
+kingly government. Plato, in Alcibiades.
+
+The Hebrews sacrificed on high places for a long period. Sacrifice in an
+enclosed place seems to have been adopted from the Phoenicians by David
+and Solomon, but not to have been popular for some centuries.
+
+The Jewish people sacrificed to sun, moon, and some planets--had a
+sacred fire in the temple, and regarded clouds and wind as the ministers
+of God. The God that answered by fire was the one adopted by Elyah. The
+so-called orthodox Jews only acknowledged one God, and subsequently one
+devil.
+
+The Jews neither offered invocation nor prayer at their sacrifices, and
+prophets and kings offered victims without priestly assistance. In later
+times every sacrifice was offered by a priest.
+
+The Hebrews regarded a large family as a gift from Jehovah.
+
+The Hebrews had the same practice; and, as we learn in the book of Job,
+and Deuter. xxviii, notably in the 27th verse, they deemed that botch,
+scab, itch, and emerods were punishments sent by Jehovah.
+
+The royal families of Judah received no instruction, either in political
+matters or in religion, and were allowed to grow up and do much as they
+liked in regard to worship. The only power which influenced them was
+that assumed by some man who professed to be divinely inspired.
+
+In a chapter of ancient faiths and notice an allegation which has that
+Parseeism or Zoroastriamsm has been borrowed from Jews and Christians.
+To this we wholly demur. Nowhere in the Avesta do we find a reference to
+the imminent destruction of the world, the resurrection of a dead man,
+his subjugating all the powers of evil, and reigning for a thousand
+years with his followers as kings and saints. Nowhere in the Avesta do
+we discover such immoral notions of God as prevailed amongst the ancient
+Jewish writers. Take these away from Judaism and Christianity, and
+then the two resemble the religions which are held everywhere by the
+thoughtful and the good. If there has really been any copying at all,
+we do not see the imitators in Central Asia but on the shores of
+the Mediterranean. The Jews copied from Tyre, Babylon, and
+Greece--Christians have taken as models Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, and
+even barbarians, and they have denied a once pure faith by covering it
+over with the ordures of heathenism. Yet we talk of others imitating us!
+
+I propose now to examine at some length into such of the developments as
+have taken place in certain religious systems, for by so doing we shall
+be better able to judge what are those doctrines which Christians hold,
+in common with what they call Pagan nations, and how far those matters
+which are regarded as fundamental points of doctrine are in reality
+trustworthy. We must ever bear in mind that if we find the same set of
+ideas entertained amongst peoples who by no possibility can have had any
+communication with each other, it is only rational to believe that each
+race possesses those notions in virtue of their being human. Or, if
+desirous of avoiding this admission, the orthodox declares that
+every asserted fact is a copy of a precedent one, then we ask them to
+reconcile the legend of Hercules being begotten by Jupiter, and Jesus by
+the Holy Ghost, for unquestionably the story of Alcmena's son preceded
+that told of Mary's.
+
+In the following chapter I shall avoid as far as possible any reference
+to the tales told of the conception of Jesus, for no man, however
+subtle he may be, can prove that the Son of Man had a certain mundane
+individual called Joseph for a father; all that I desire to show is,
+that in every nation whose history has come down to us there have been
+persons whose mothers have declared themselves to have been pure virgins
+until adopted by some god as a temporal and temporary spouse, or who,
+being wives, have asserted that a son who has distinguished himself
+in the world has been of divine procreation--an affirmation, be it
+observed, that can only be made in case the spouse has been manifestly
+unfaithful, or by some fulsome historian desirous of exalting his hero
+to celestial rank. There is scarcely a barbaric dynasty known, indeed,
+which does not claim an origin from some heavenly father, mother, or
+both.
+
+There have been many hierarchs who, having felt conscious of the
+absurdity of making, by miraculous agency, all wonderful beings come
+from woman only, have consequently invented legends in which men have
+produced offspring without a consort. Some may be disposed to deride
+these tales, who can readily credit the stories of virgin mothers; but
+in reality there is no difference between the two sets of legends, in
+probability, wherever "miracles" are assumed. It would have been quite
+as easy for the writer of Genesis to have made Isaac come from old
+Abraham's bosom as from the womb of his hoary-headed wife. But the
+Jewish writers have never proved themselves as subtle as the Hindoos and
+Greeks. Instead of asserting that a man, without a woman's assistance,
+has borne a son--a matter capable of proof--they have declared that a
+woman has conceived, without the assistance of a man; an asseveration
+for which there cannot be any proof whatever, no not even physical,
+for accoucheurs know that many a female conceives by her lover's
+instrumentality, and bears a child, at whose birth, or rather when
+parturition is imminent, that part which is called "the Hymen," and is
+the Mosaical test of virginity, is not only unbroken, but so small
+in aperture, and strong in flesh, as to require operative or surgical
+interference before the child can come into the world. According to
+Mosaism these must be regarded as absolutely virgin mothers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Supernatural generation. What is meant by the term. Examples. Children
+given by the gods. Anecdote. Frequency of god-begotten children in
+Ancient Greece. Their general fate. The stories not credited by the
+grandfathers of children, nor apparently by the mothers. The babies,
+how treated. Foundlings and Hospitals. Antiope. Leucothoee. Divinely
+conceived persons not necessarily great or good. Babylonian idea that
+a god came down to enjoy human women. Tale from Herodotus. Jehovah as a
+man. Grecian idea attached to the expression Son of God. Homer. Hebrew
+ideas. Roman notions. Romulus, son of Mars and a Vestal Augustus, son
+of Apollo. Modern ideas respecting Incubi. Prevalence of the belief.
+Its suppression. Causes of its origin. Bible made to pander to priestly
+lust. Dictionnaire Infernal. History of incubi therefrom. Stories.
+Strange idea that the Gods who made men out of nothing cannot as easily
+make babies. Divine Androgynes. Strange stories of single gods having
+offspring. Narayana and the Spirit of God of Genesis. Chaos. Hindoo
+mythos of Brahma. Birth from churning a dead man's left arm, and again
+his right. Ayonyesvara, his strange history. Similar ones referred
+to. History of Carticeya. Christian parallels. Immaculate conception a
+Hindoo myth. The dove in India and Christendom. Agni and cloven fiery
+tongues. Penance and its powers. Miraculous conception by means' of a
+dove. Other myths from various sources.
+
+It is a question which should, in my opinion, be asked by every
+individual in a rational community, whether it is advisable to continue,
+as a matter of faith, a doctrine which must be repudiated, as a matter
+of fact. To this we may join, as a rider, can anyone who puts his
+credence in a legend because it is old, claim to be superior to those
+who originally invented the tale, in the darkness of antiquity? When
+moderns smile at the stories told by the classic Varro, how certain
+mares in Lusitania were impregnated by the wind on a certain mountain,
+without any access to a horse, and at the credence given to similar
+accounts by Virgil, Pliny, and even the Christian bishop Augustine; and
+by some old Scotch authority how a young woman became a mother through
+the intervention of the ashes of the dead: and when they pity the
+benighted Greeks who gave to Hercules, Jupiter for a father; and to
+Mars, Juno for a mother, without intercourse with her celestial spouse,
+it behoves them to inquire whether each may not be addressed in the
+sentence, "Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur"--i.e., change but the
+name of the believers from Greeks and Romans to modern Christians, and
+it will be found that Popes, priests, and peoples believe as firmly
+now in supernatural generation as the most crass pagan of which history
+treats.
+
+Our classical reading tells us abundance of marvellous stories--how
+Jupiter seduced Danae in the form of a golden shower, and yet had a
+common son by her, who was not an aureous coin; how Leda received Zeus
+as a swan, and bore therefrom a couple of eggs; how Europa was tempted
+by him as a bull, and yet did not bear a calf; and how Callisto, a
+maiden of Diana, was debauched by the same god under the guise of her
+mistress, and yet that from two maidens a boy was formed.
+
+Of the amours of Apollo with a dozen and a half damsels, and of the very
+numerous disguises which he assumed, we find abundant details in our
+classical dictionaries. Mars, though not so frequently adopted by
+human females as a lover, had many children of whom he was the putative
+father.
+
+Jupiter had Bacchus and Minerva without Juno's aid, and Juno retaliated
+by bearing Ares without conversation with her consort. We deride these
+tales, and yet think, that because we laugh at a hundred such we shall
+be pardoned for believing one. How little we are justified in acting
+thus a few philosophical considerations will demonstrate.
+
+There are few things in mythology that are more curious than the subject
+of the miraculous formation of certain individuals. Some of these have
+been regarded as the offspring of a celestial father and a mother of
+earthly mould; others again, as for example AEneas, were said to be
+the result of a union between a heavenly mother and a terrestrial
+father--e.g., AEneas was the son of Anchises, a handsome man, and Venus,
+goddess of beauty and love. Some, though these are few, are said to be
+children of a virgin or deserted wife, who has produced them without any
+extraneous assistance,* and others are declared to be descended from a
+father whom no consort could ever claim. One individual, indeed, called
+Orion, is represented as having been wholly independent of both father
+and mother, and the result of a strange form of development, the like of
+which Darwin never dreamed of as he came from a bladder into which three
+gods had micturated. His name, we are gravely assured, came _ab urina_.
+
+     * The following is a good case in corroboration of what is
+     said in the text. In the _Dictionnaire Infernal_, to which
+     more particular reference will be made shortly, there is, s.
+     v. Fecondite, a report of a trial before the Parliament of
+     Grenoble, in which the question was, whether a certain
+     infant could be declared legitimate which was born after the
+     husband had been absent from his wife four full years. The
+     wife asserted that the baby was the offspring of a dream, in
+     which she had a vivid idea that her wandering spouse had
+     returned to love and duty. Midwives and physicians were
+     consulted, and reported on the subject. As a result, the
+     Parliament ordained that the infant should be adjudged
+     legitimate, and that its mother should be regarded as a true
+     and honourable wife.   The judgment bears date 13th February
+     1537.
+
+The quaint ideas associated in mythology with the supernatural
+generation here referred to have been various. In some instances they
+have been wholly poetical, as when we are told that "the Supreme" by his
+union with law and order (Themis) produced "Justice," "the Hours," "Good
+Laws," and "Peace" (Hesiod Theogony, 900), and as when Europa is said to
+have tempted Jupiter to leave Phoenicia, and travel westward to Crete
+as the first step towards the colonization of an unknown continent. In
+other instances, the ideas have been framed upon the very natural belief
+that anyone--whether existent in story only, or in reality--who has
+greatly surpassed his fellows, must have had a large element of the
+Deity in his constitution. In other instances, the notion has been
+associated with the once prevalent belief, that the Creator had a sex,
+to which we shall refer by and by; and in other cases, the fancy has
+clearly been mingled with the fact, that many an unmarried woman has
+attributed to some god, a pregnancy, or baby, which has been due, in
+reality, to a very mortal man. Here we may notice that the fecundity
+which damsels of old were wont to refer to a god or some inferior, but
+yet beneficent, deity, more modern christian girls have associated with
+a demon. Jupiter and Apollo being replaced by a special class of imps
+who were named "incubi," and of the particulars of whose embraces the
+strangest stories are told. This small truth seems to be sufficient to
+demonstrate that the Greeks were not familiar with the being to whom
+we give the name of "Satan" and the "Devil," and that their belief
+coincided in one respect with that of the older Jews, who considered
+that whatever occurrence happened in the world, whether apparently for
+good or evil, was done by Jehovah, or as the Hellenic damsels reported
+by Jupiter, Apollo, or Mars.
+
+Here, too, I may be permitted to introduce a remark suggested by a
+narrative, told to me by a lady of high British rank. She had been
+brought up in a foreign country under the eye of a sensible and pious,
+we may add prudish, mother, who endeavoured to shield her daughter from
+all contact with external vicious influences, and to prevent her ears
+or her mind from ever coming to the knowledge of those matters which
+are associated with love, marriage, and offspring. When the young lady
+naturally inquired of mamma where the infants sprang from which came
+into the world and grew up around her, she was told, "from God," and she
+was referred to Psalm cxxvii. 3, which declares that "children are an
+heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is His reward." After
+having attained adult age, and being wholly imbued with this belief,
+she, on one occasion, expressed her opinion that Mademoiselle--who had
+recently been confined--must have been a peculiarly virtuous maiden, to
+have received so great a present as a baby from the beneficent Creator.
+This speech fell like a bombshell amongst a mixed company, but she knew
+not why. It was not until her marriage some time subsequently, that she
+learned that infants were said to come from God or the Devil according
+to circumstances, but that in reality they were always due to men and
+women.
+
+The anecdote given above, naturally enables us to call attention to
+the remarkable fact that though the Grecian poets repeatedly spoke of
+maidens being fertilized by a divinity, yet Greek fathers never paid
+any heed to the power of that god, whom their daughters asserted to have
+operated upon their femininity; but always treated the earthly love of
+the alleged celestial spouse, as if the latter was wholly powerless to
+punish the hard-hearted parent, who had no scruples to turn his daughter
+from his door, so that she might hide her shame in distant lands. In
+those classic times, procreation by a god upon a human being was the
+attempted cover for bastardy. Moreover, even the woman herself, to whom
+Jupiter or Apollo was alleged to have descended from heaven to honour,
+felt herself so much injured by the visit, that she either tried to
+destroy the resulting offspring with her own hands, or exposed it upon
+a mountain to the tender mercies of dogs and vultures. Much in the
+same way many a modern maiden places her shame-covered infant in
+the turn-table of a foundling institution. Antiope, for example, the
+daughter of a king of Thebes, was, according to her version, beloved by
+
+Jupiter, who visited her in the form of a satyr and implanted twins.
+When she discovered the coming event, which casts its shadow before, she
+left the paternal mansion, to avoid her father's anger, and fled to a
+mountain, on which she left her hapless offspring. They were found by
+shepherds and brought up.
+
+The story of fair Leucothoee is still more to the point. She was
+sufficiently beautiful to attract Apollo, who seduced her under the form
+of her own mother--not a very likely story it is true, but the two lived
+happily together until a rival told the loved one's father of the amour.
+The incensed paterfamilias ordered his daughter to be buried alive, and
+yet the god who could change her body after death into the frankincense
+tree, and himself into a matronly looking woman and yet retain his sex,
+could not prevent his earthly spouse from dying a cruel death. In other
+words, Orchamus, the parent of the damsel, wholly disbelieved in the
+existence of a divine "spark," and felt assured that his daughter had
+disgraced herself with a man far below her in earthly rank.
+
+From these, and a number of other Grecian anecdotes, we can draw no
+other conclusions than that the sires in those days were as jealous of
+the honour of their daughters as we are of our own now; that when that
+honour was in danger of being tarnished, a god was alleged by the
+damsel to be the offender; that the story was not believed; and that the
+daughter fled, was punished, or was pardoned, according to the sternness
+or credulity of the parents. The idea that individuals who were the
+sons or daughters of a god, must necessarily be great and good, does not
+appear to have prevailed amongst the ancient Greeks. Nay, we may even
+doubt whether any of them really believed that Jupiter, Apollo, or
+Neptune, could, or had ever become incarnate, for the sole purpose
+of impregnating a human female. That such an idea, however, prevailed
+amongst the Babylonians we learn from Herodotus, who informs us, book i.
+c. 181, that Belus comes into a chamber at the summit of a sacred tower
+to meet therein a native woman, chosen by the god from the whole nation;
+and in the succeeding chapter he indicates that a similar occurrence
+takes place in Egyptian Thebes, and in Lycian Patarae. Yet even whilst
+writing the tales, the historian expresses his own incredulity of their
+value, and we may well suppose that the thoughtful generally, would only
+give such credence to the statements of the temple priests, as was given
+to certain Christian stories by a philosopher, who said he believed them
+because they were impossible. Even if the common people credited the
+assertion that "The Supreme" did elect a woman with whom to converse, we
+must not despise them too lightly, for we are distinctly told in our own
+scriptures that Jehovah appeared as a man, and as such, ate, drank, and
+talked with Abraham (Gen. ch. xviii.); that Elohim was in the habit of
+conversing face to face with Moses (Exod. xxxiii. 11); and that the
+same God wrestled with Jacob as a man, and could not prevail against the
+patriarch until he had lamed him. We must also notice that myriads of
+Christians have believed, and many still do so, that He in a certain
+form had commerce with a Hebrew maiden (Luke i. 34, 35), and had by her
+a begotten son.
+
+When civilization spread over Greece, there seems to have been a
+change of expression--which being at the first wholly metaphorical,
+subsequently became realistic. Thus, any man peculiarly characteristic
+amongst his fellows for strength, knowledge, or power, was designated
+"a son of God." Thus, as Grote remarks (12 vol. edition), vol. ii. p. 132,
+note 1. "Even Aristotle ascribed to Homer a divine parentage; a damsel
+of the isle of Ios, pregnant by some god, was carried off by pirates to
+Smyrna at the time of the Ionic emigration, and there gave birth to the
+poet" (Aristotle ap. Plutarch Vit. Homer, p. 1059). Plato, also by
+some, called "the divine," was said by Seusippus to be a son of Apollo
+(_Smith's Dictionary_, 8. v.) The Hebrews had a similar metaphorical
+expression, and gave to everything supereminently good, an epithet which
+we may paraphrase as "divine." Some few writers used the title, "sons
+of God," as for example, Job i. 6, and xxxviii. 7, and Hosea i. 10; an
+epithet adopted by John i. 12, Rom. viii. 14, 19, Phil ii. 15, 1 John iii
+1, 2, as if the same were applicable to all who are virtuous and good
+to an especial degree. The Hebrews even seem to have adopted the belief
+that Elohim, like the Grecian Zeus, had many children, could, and
+did really, associate with human beings, for we can in no other way
+reasonably interpret the strange narrative in Genesis vi, wherein we are
+told that the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, who became
+the sires of mighty men of great renown.
+
+Amongst the Romans, similar ideas to those which we find amongst the
+Greeks prevailed. For example, Romulus was said to be the son of Mars
+and a Vestal virgin; but so little did her relatives believe in the
+possibility of the occurrence, or the divine nature of the maiden's
+offspring, that the mother was buried alive, and the twins which she
+bare were exposed, much in the same way as modern "foundlings" are. In
+this case, as in many others, it is probable that little notice would
+have been taken of such supernatural generation had the mother been of
+low origin--but when a god inveigles a king's daughter from her duty,
+both the one and the other must be punished; the one in her person, the
+other in his child. Yet these very writers who told of the punishment of
+the Vestal Hia for her intrigue with Mars, took advantage of the story,
+and spread a report that Romulus, the offspring of the two, was, after
+his death, taken up to heaven to dwell there as a god. At a subsequent
+period, Augustus Caesar announced, on his mother's authority, that he
+was the son of Apollo, and claimed to be treated as a veritable scion of
+that venerable deity.
+
+The account of the conception and birth of Servius Tullius is curious
+from its circumstantiality. Ovid tells us, _Fasti_, vi., 625-659, Bonn's
+translation: "Vulcan was the father of Tullius; Ocrisia was his mother,
+a woman of Corniculum, remarkable for her beauty. Her, Tanaquil, having
+duly performed the sacred rites, ordered, in company with herself, to
+pour some wine on the decorated altar. Here amongst the ashes, either
+was, or seemed to be, a form of obscene shape; but such it really was.
+Being ordered to do so, the captive (Ocrisia was a slave), submits to
+its embraces; conceived by her, Servius had the origin of his birth from
+heaven. His father afforded a proof, at the time when he touched his
+head with the gleaming fire, and a flame rising to a point, blazed upon
+his locks." In some earlier lines, the poet tells us that the goddess,
+Fortune, was enamoured of this same Roman king, and visited him
+nightly--much as Venus came to converse with Anchises.
+
+In this story, we have an unusual ingredient, inasmuch as there is a
+witness to that which we may call the immaculate conception, and after
+birth, a proof of the child's divine origin! Of course there are many
+irreverent people who declare that the story is untrue--that it is far
+more likely that the real father was Tarquin, who, finding his consort's
+beautiful servant to be with child, contrived a plan by which she would
+escape the vindictiveness of the mistress--one which, if devotionally
+inclined, she was bound to give credence to. Nor can devout Christians
+altogether range themselves amongst the unbelievers in the miracle, for
+the founder of their religion was borne by a woman of low condition, and
+is said to have been begotten by an overshadowing spirit. He assumed to
+be a king; but the son of Ocrisia became one in reality, and instituted
+games in honour of his divine progenitor.
+
+For some more modern poetical fictions of the same nature, we may refer
+our readers to Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, where, in the account of the
+Highland seer, Brian, they will find a parallel to the story promulgated
+by Alexander the false prophet, respecting his birth, described by
+Lucian.
+
+The same ideas, with which we are all of us so familiar in Christendom,
+that they form a portion of the creeds which the orthodox weekly
+rehearse, have obtained in far Ceylon. Thus, for example, we read in a
+Buddhistic legend (_Kusa Iatakaya_, translated by T. Steele, Truebner,
+London, 1871, small 8vo., pp. 260):--
+
+     "As Sakra*, with his thousand eyes gazed over every land,
+     The hapless queen, with heart distraught, he saw dejected stand;
+     His godlike eye revealed to him that to her blessed womb
+     Two radiant gods illustrious from Heaven's high town should come.
+
+     Then entering first the Bodisat's blest skyey palace fair,
+     And next unto another god's, did Sakra straight repair:
+     Benign he said:--Go to the world of men, that distant scene,
+     And there be born from out the womb of yon delightful queen.
+
+     The saying of the king of gods unto their hearts they took;
+     Then bathed they in his feet's bright rays that shone as shines a brook:
+     'Let us be so conceived,' they said, when they the order heard,
+     'Within the womb of yonder queen, even as the Lord declared.'"
+
+     --Stanzas 129-131.
+
+     * Indra, "The Supreme."
+
+But the two children do not appear as twins, like Romulus and Remus, for
+we find in stanza 155--
+
+"Now when the darling little child, the wisdom-gifted one, Began to lift
+his tiny foot, and learn to walk alone, Another god from Heaven's high
+town flashed down the sky serene, And was conceived within the womb of
+that delightful queen."
+
+I may notice in passing, that the lady was married, but had always been
+barren with her husband.
+
+In the instances to which we have referred above, there has been no very
+marked departure from the ordinary course of nature. In all, an union
+between a father and mother has occurred--in all, the relation between
+each to the offspring has been maintained, and the ordinary progress of
+gestation observed. The main discrepancies which are to be noticed are,
+that a divine is substituted for a human father, or, as in the case of
+AEneas, the sire has been a man, and the mother a "celestial." But after
+birth, instead of the child being cared for by its parents, it very
+frequently happens that a goat, wolf, or other animal, performs
+the mother's duty as a nurse. The reader whose antiquarian lore is
+considerable, will probably remember that Christians in Italy, France,
+and I dare not say in how many other Catholic countries, were implicit
+believers in the idea that spirits from the invisible world could assume
+a human form, and under that, have intercourse with youths of either
+sex. The literature upon this subject was at one time very great, but
+such pains have been taken to destroy it, in order that so great a blot
+upon the infallibility of Papal rulers should no longer be found, that
+there are few books to which I can refer inquirers. The first time I
+met with the subject was in a Latin treatise by Cardan, a.d. 1444-1524,*
+being commentaries upon Hippocrates. In this, many chapters are devoted
+to the possibility of intercourse between women and embodied spirits.
+The Mediaeval virgins, unlike the Greeks, always attributed their
+pregnancy to demons and not to gods, although on some occasions maidens
+were foolish enough, like those of ancient Babylon, to believe that they
+were embraced, by a divine being or angel. Into this matter the Italian
+doctor enters folly, and endeavours to establish some distinction how
+a woman could distinguish an "incubus" from a human being, and if she
+became pregnant and brought forth, how the devil's offspring could
+be told from an ordinary baby. The particulars which are given to the
+learned in Latin, will not bear to be reproduced in the vernacular,
+suffice it to say, that they are such as would be given by silly women
+more or less conscious of having been guilty of impropriety, and who
+were goaded by sanctimonious but ribald divines to enter into every
+detail of the devil's doings and the females' sensations.
+
+     * It is more than thirty years since I read the book in
+     question, and I have long ago parted with it. As I am unable
+     now to lay my hands upon a copy I am not sure whether the
+     author was Facio Cardan, who flourished at the period given
+     in the text, or the more celebrated Jerome Cardan who lived
+     A.D. 1601-1576.
+
+Before saying more of the "incubi," we may bestow a passing glance upon
+the foundation of the idea of their existence. In mediaeval times, a
+large portion of the New Testament was taken to be literally true, and
+the people were instructed to believe that the devil went about like a
+roaring lion seeking whom he could devour. The papal priests encouraged
+the idea, for by frightening the ignorant, they induced them to purchase
+sacerdotal insurance by paying for masses to protect themselves from the
+snares of Satan. For hierarchs who were obliged to live without wives,
+it was easy in the first place to imbue the mind of a superstitious
+maiden with a horror of Apollyon's power, and then to take advantage of
+her fears by personifying the fiend. In this manner the bible suggested
+the sin to the priest and made the maiden passive.
+
+It would not be profitable to write a catalogue in detail of the
+authorities upon which I found these statements. I will rather give a
+short resume of an article upon "Incubi," which is to be found in a most
+curious book entitled _Dictionnaire Infernal ou Bibliotheque universelle
+sur les etres, les personnages, les livres, les faits et les choses
+qui tiennent aux apparitions, a la magie, au commerce de Venfer, aux
+divinations, aux sciences secretes,... aux erreurs et aux prejuges,...
+generalment a toutes les croyances mer-veilleuses, surprenantes
+mysterieuses et surnaturelles.--Par M. Colin de Plancy. Deuxieme
+edition entierement refondue _; Paris, 1826. The book is rare, but most
+interesting to the philosopher who concerns himself about matters
+of "faith," for it shows, clearly, that there is no depth of human
+degradation into which people who are guided by blind trust in some
+fellow mortal, unchecked by the exercise of reason, will not enter, and
+there reside permanently, until stirred up by those whom they assert on
+the first blush to be "infidels."
+
+After a few preliminary remarks, we are told that the French incubi did
+not attack virgins, but in the next paragraph is an account of a maiden
+who was seduced by a demon in the form of her betrothed. This was in
+Sardinia. An English fiend acted in a similar way, and from the congress
+followed a frightful disease of which the poor girl died in three days.
+This story is told by Thomas Walsingham, b. A.D. 1410. A Scotch lass
+is the next victim reported, and to her the unclean spirit came nightly
+under the guise of a fine young man. She became pregnant, and avowed
+all. The parents then kept watch, and saw the devil near her in a
+monstrous unhuman form. He would not go away till a priest came, then
+the incubus made a frightful noise, burned the furniture, and went off
+upwards, carrying the roof with him. Three days after a queer form was
+born, more horrible than had ever been seen, so bad indeed, that the
+midwives strangled it. For the credulous, what fact could be more
+strongly attested than this? The reporter is Hector Boetius, b. 1470.
+
+The next tale, having a locale in Bonn, occurred at a time when priests
+married and had a family. The daughter of one who was closely watched
+and locked up when left by herself, was found out by a demon, who took
+upon him the form of a fine young man. Such an occurrence was thought
+nothing uncommon then, inasmuch as Paul had told the Corinthians that
+Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light (2 Cor. xi. 14). The
+poor victim became enceinte and confessed the whole to her father, who,
+fearing the devil, and anxious not to make a scandal, sent the daughter
+away from home. The impudent fiend came to remonstrate, and killed the
+wretched sire with a blow of his fist.--Quoted from _Caesarii Heistere
+mirac_., lib. iii., c. 8. The next case occurs at Schinin, wherein
+we are told (Hauppius _Biblioth portai, pract._, p. 454) that a woman
+produced a baby without head or feet, with a mouth in the chest near to
+the left shoulder, and an ear near the right one; instead of fingers it
+had webs like frog's feet, it was liver coloured, and shaky as jelly, it
+cried when the mother wanted to wash it, but somebody stifled and then
+buried it. The mother, however, wanted it be exhumed and burned, for
+it was the offspring of a fiend who had counterfeited her husband. The
+thing was taken up and given to the hangman for cremation, but he could
+neither burn it nor the rags which enwrapped it until the day after the
+feast of Ascension.
+
+The following story is laid near Nantes:--Therein a young girl baulked
+of her lover, mutters something like a modern order to him to go to
+the foul fiend, and remarks to herself that a demon would be a better
+friend. She is betrayed in the usual manner, and finds, when too late,
+that she is embracing a hairy incubus which has a long tail. She exclaims
+fearfully. The "affreet" blows in her face and leaves her. She is found
+frightfully disfigured, and is brought to bed seven days after of a
+black cat. The remaining histories are of a similar nature, all alike
+showing how completely the so-called Christian people of Modern Europe
+believed that disembodied spirits could assume human form with such
+completeness as to be the father of offspring. We may fairly compare
+these tales with that told by heathen Greeks about Jupiter and Alcmena,
+but when we place them side by side, the ancients show a far superior
+fancy in their fables than do the comparative moderns. I find from
+_Reville's History of the Devil_, p. 54 (London: Williams & Norgate,
+1871), that so late as a.d. 1756, at Landshut, in Bavaria, a young girl
+of thirteen years of age, was convicted of impure intercourse with the
+devil, and put to death. It is a pity that no account of the trial is
+appended.
+
+Talboys Wheeler, in his _History of India_, vol. IL, p. 515, indicates
+that there is to this day, in India, a belief in _incubi_. Speaking
+of Paisacha marriages, in which a woman is united to a man without her
+knowledge or consent, he remarks:--"The origin of the name is somewhat
+curious. The Paisachas were evil spirits or ghosts (see "_Lilith"
+and "Satyr" Ancient Faiths_, vol. ii.) who were supposed to haunt the
+earth.... If, therefore, a damsel found herself likely to become a
+mother without her being able to furnish a satisfactory reason for her
+maternity, she would naturally plead that she had been victimized by a
+Paisach.... In modern times, however, the belief is still very general
+throughout the rural districts of India, that wives, as well as maidens,
+may be occasionally victimized by such ghostly admirers."
+
+Every mythologist who has invented such stories as that of Jupiter and
+Alcmena, and every woman who has ever attributed her pregnancy to a
+divine being, call him what she may, seems completely to ignore the idea
+that a god who deserves the name, does not require human aid to produce
+a man or woman. Surely every profound thinker would say to himself,
+The Supreme, who could by a word create full-grown creatures "in the
+beginning," has not lost the power now; surely He, who could make Adam
+out of dust, and Eve out of a bone of man, can produce in later days
+similar images of the godhead, as we are told in Genesis i. 26,
+without accoupling with a descendant of the rib. The mythological
+idea, therefore, of a divine child coming from a celestial father and a
+terrestrial mother, has nothing profound therein, for it is essentially
+a bungling contrivance of some stupid man. On the other hand, such a
+notion could only be entertained where a grovelling or anthropomorphic
+idea has prevailed, or is cherished amongst a credulous people. To put
+the subject into the fewest words possible, a god has never--so far as
+thoughtful men can judge--been said to be the father in the flesh of a
+human being, except by frail women, or vain, foolish, or designing men.
+
+We are fortified in this conclusion by the method in which nations or
+sects who have each their own favourite "son of God," treat each
+other. None endeavour to prove that the mother of their own hero had
+no commerce with man, for that is impossible--all, on the other hand,
+ridicule the idea of there being a child without a human father, and
+insist that no woman's word countervails the laws of nature. But this
+argument is only used against opposing religionists--it has no weight
+against their own divine leader. The cases which we have described are
+wholly different from those mythological stories, in which the union
+of the sexes is absolutely or relatively ignored. They differ also
+from those in which the Creator is represented as androgynous, or being
+originally without sex, becomes, by an effort of will, a bisexual being,
+so as to bring about the creation of man and of the world. For example,
+when we find in the Orphic Hymns (Cory's _Ancient Fragments_, pp. 290,
+seq.), "Zeus is male, Immortal Zeus is female," it is clear that there
+was in the writer an idea of an union of the sexes being necessary to
+creation. But when we find Chaos alone being the progenitor of Erebus
+and Black Night, from which again were born Ether and Bay, and Earth the
+parent of Heaven and the Sea (Hesiod, Theogony, 116-130), there is a
+total absence of a sexual notion. This idea, however, appears in the
+subsequent lines which represent Earth wedding with Heaven. The same
+sexual notion, appears in another fragment from _Aristophanes_, (Cory,
+A. R, p. 293), which tells us that "Night with the black wings first
+produced an aerial egg, which in its time gave rise to love, whence
+sprung all creation." Yet the egg necessarily presupposes a being which
+formed it, and another that fructified it, so that the mythos is not
+wholly free from the intermixture of the sexual element.
+
+When mythologists have been peculiarly anxious to shake off the somewhat
+grotesque doctrine that the celestial Creator must be independent of any
+other power, in the genesis of the world and heaven, there has been a
+great variety of attempts to show how this has been brought about. In
+one curious Hindoo legend, Vishnu is represented sleeping on the bosom
+of Devi, at the bottom of the ocean which covered the world. Suddenly a
+lotus sprung from his navel, and grew till it reached the surface of the
+flood. From this wonderful flower Brahma sprang, and, seeing nothing but
+water, imagined himself the first-born of all creatures. But ere he felt
+sure, he descended the stalk and found Vishnu at its root; and then the
+two contested their respective claims, but Mahadeva interposed, and, by
+a curious contrivance, stopped the quarrel, demonstrating that before
+either came into existence there reigned an everlasting lingam.
+
+Another myth closely resembles one which is indicated in the Hebrew
+Scriptures, viz., that Narayana, or the spirit of God, a self-existent
+entity, moved over the waters, and made them bring forth all things
+living. This Narayana is identical with the _yomer elohim_--"the spirit
+of God" of the Hebrew Genesis i. 2; the [--Greek--]--the spirit of God,
+or Holy Ghost of the Greeks. It is the same as the breezes of thick air
+which hovered over chaos in the legend assigned to Sanchoniathon (Cory's
+Fragments, p. 1), and produced the slimy matter from which all beings
+sprung. Narayana is again the same as the Night of the Orphic fragment
+which hovered with her black wings over immensity--the same as the
+_chakemah_, or "wisdom" of Proverbs viii.; the Greek _sophia_ and the
+_logos_--"the word" of John i. 1. The Buddha--or Brahma of the Hindoo.
+From this mysterious source matter was formed into shape and all
+creatures sprang into life.
+
+Another Indian mythos (Moor's _Hindoo Pantheon_, p. 78), attributes even
+more than this to Brahma. He is said to have produced four beings who
+proved refractory, and grieved their maker. To comfort him, Siva issued
+from a fold in his forehead--then strengthened by Siva, he produced
+Bhrigu and the seven Rishis, and after that, Narada, from his thigh,
+Kardama from his shadow, and Dacsha from the forefinger of his right
+hand. He had, apparently, without a consort, sixty daughters, and from
+these last proceeded all things divine, human, animal, vegetable, and
+mineral.
+
+This is not altogether dissimilar from the Hebrew idea of Jehovah
+creating all things except woman from the dust,* and forming her
+mysteriously from a rib of the only existing man. We may also compare
+it with the birth of Minerva from Jupiter's brain, and Bacchus from
+his thigh. But the Greek myth differs from the Hindoo, inasmuch as the
+deities referred to were originally conceived by human women, and did
+not grow from The Thunderer's body like branches from a tree.
+
+     * In Mythology, things ever repeat themselves, with very
+     little alteration. For example, Mahadeva is represented as
+     fighting with Dacsha, and producing heroes from the dost by
+     striking the ground with his hair. (See Moor's H. P., p.
+     107).
+
+There is amongst the Hindoos a goddess called Prit'hvi, who is said to
+personify the Earth; she had many names which we need not describe, and
+she was also furnished with a consort, whose birth is thus described
+(Moor, H. P., p. 111.)--"Vena being an impious and tyrannical prince,
+was cursed by the Brahmans, and, in consequence, died without issue. To
+remedy this, his left arm was opened, and churned with a stick till it
+produced a son, who, proving as wicked as his father, was set aside; and
+the right arm* was in like manner churned, which also produced a boy,
+who proved to be a form of Vishnu, under the name of Prit'hu." We may
+add that Prit'hvi treated him badly, and he had to beat and tear her
+before she would be comfortable with him. Hence the necessity for
+ploughing and digging before crops of cereals, &c., will abound. We can
+understand the last part of the legend better than the first. In the
+Vedic Mythology, we may say generally, that the means of producing
+offspring are curiously numerous; for example, we find in Goldstucker's
+_Sanscrit and English Dictionary_, page 20, under the word _angiras_--a
+statement that an individual bearing this cognomen, is named in the
+Vaidik legends, as one of the 'Prajapatis', or progenitors of mankind,
+engendered, according to some, by Manu; according to others, by Brahma
+himself, either with the female half of his body, _or from his mouth, or
+from the space "between his eyebrows._"
+
+     * As these legends generally are based upon something which
+     Europeans would designate a vile pun, I turned to the
+     Sanscrit Lexicon (Monier Williams), first to ascertain the
+     names of "the arm;" and, secondly, if there were any words
+     allied to it, however remotely, which had a certain meaning.
+     Amongst others, I find that _buja_ signifies "an arm," and
+     _bhaga_ is a name of Siva--one of whose epithets, _bhagan-
+     dara_ = "rending the vulva." _Dosha_ also means "the arm"
+     and "night." Another word having the same meaning, is
+     _praveshta_, and this not only signifies the arm, but one
+     "who covers over." We can then, I think, see why the device
+     of the churning, referred to in the text, made a process
+     available for the production of a child. The legend is a
+     clumsy one, but not more so than that in Exodus xxxiii. 23,
+     wherein we are told that Jehovah showed to Moses "His back
+     parts,"--Vulgate, _posteriora mea_--inasmuch as no one could
+     see His face and live!
+
+A still more curious story is related in the same dictionary, p. 451,
+under the word _ayonijeswara_. This appellative is one belonging to a
+sacred place of pilgrimage sacred to _Ayonija_, whose miraculous birth
+was thus brought about. A very learned Muni, though making a commendable
+use of the proper nasal way of reading sacred scripture in his own
+person, yet associated with individuals who did not give the orthodox
+twang.* The good man remained, in consequence of this, in a sonless
+condition, but the legend does not condescend to explain why toleration
+of tones in religious ceremony should make a husband infertile and
+his wife barren. At any rate, the Muni, named Vidyananda, feeling the
+punishment a great one, travelled, apparently alone, from one holy
+place to another without being nearer paternity. At length he met with
+a _yogin_ or male anchoret, hermit, devotee, or saint, corresponding
+to the _yoginis_, who are represented by Moor (H. P., p. 235) as being
+sometimes very lovely and alluring; and he, taking pity upon the Muni,
+gave him a wonderful fruit, which, he informed him, if eaten by his
+wife, would have the effect of procuring for Vidyananda the birth of a
+son. But the Muni, like many another character in mythological and fairy
+tales, seems suddenly to have lost his sense of hope deferred and a
+certain prospect of relief, for instead of hurrying home he sought
+repose under a tree on a river's brink, and whilst there ate the fruit
+himself. He at once became pregnant. When the new state of things
+was evident, he confessed all that had happened to the Yogin, and the
+latter, by means of his supernatural power, introduced a stick into the
+body of Yidyananda, and relieved him of the infant. The creature was a
+beautiful boy, radiant like the disc of the sun, and endowed with divine
+lustre, and on account of the mode in which he was born his father
+called him _Ayonija_, which signifies, "not born from the womb." The
+account then goes on to state that this miraculous infant became a
+wonderfully good, learned, pious, religious, and fanatic man; that the
+god, delighted with his piety, gave him sons and grandsons, and after
+his death received him into his heaven. Any persons coming now to
+bake at the spot where these favours from Siva were granted, and
+duly performing the various duties of a pious pilgrim, are rewarded,
+according to their piety, &c., with progeny, worldly happiness, freedom
+from transmigration, and eternal bliss.
+
+     * This reminds me of an anecdote which I once read of a
+     devout Scotch mother, who, on hearing her son read the Bible
+     in an ordinary tone of voice, cuffed him violently because
+     he presumed to read that Holy Book without the customary
+     religious drawl.
+
+Under the word _Ayonija_, Goldstucker gives the following examples
+of individuals "not born from the _yoni_" viz.:--"_Drona_, the son
+of Bharadwaja, who was born in a bucket" "_Suyya_, whose origin was
+unknown." "_Draupadi_, who at a sacrifice of her father Drupada, arose
+out of the sacrificial ground." "_Sita_, who sprang into existence in
+the same manner as Draupadi" The same is also an epithet of Vishnu or
+Krishna.
+
+These stories pale in interest before that of the origin of Carticeya
+(see Moor's H. P., p. 51, 89), and I give an account of this legend,
+foolish though many conceive it to be, for everything which is
+connected with a Hindoo mythos is remarkable, whenever it is found to be
+antecedently parallel with Christian surroundings of a somewhat similar
+narrative. We notice, for example, in the following tale, that the
+Indian idea of the power of "penance" and "asceticism," is, that these
+doings or actions are so great, that by their means alone man may compel
+the Creator to do things against His design, whilst in the Papal
+tales of certain monks and nuns, we find the doctrine asserted that by
+preeminent fastings, scourgings and prayers, people have acquired the
+power to sell salvation to their fellow men, in a manner different to
+that which is appointed. Again, the god when forced to obey the power of
+the devotee, is represented as inventing a method by which he could,
+as it were, cheat himself, just as Jehovah or Elohim is said to have
+contrived a plan by which He could circumvent Himself for the vow which
+He had made to destroy all the men upon the earth by a flood of water.
+Again, as the arrogance of the ascetic threatened to destroy the world
+and the heaven, a deliverer or a saviour was promised, who should be
+begotten by an incarnate god upon a goddess equally incarnate, and save
+mankind from a terrible devil This is a counterpart of the Papal theory,
+which makes it appear that a portion of the godhead became incorporated
+with a dove, and had union with a woman, herself an immaculate
+manifestation of another portion of "The Supreme." Yet still more
+striking than this, is the part which the dove plays in the Indian
+mythos of the birth of the Hindoo Saviour. In almost every mediaeval
+painting or etching of the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, the
+dove takes the position of the divine father of Jesus. Nay, so distinct
+is the idea intended to be conveyed in one instance, that a dove,
+surrounded by a galaxy of angelic heads, darts a ray from his body on
+high, into the very part of the virgin, proper to receive it. The design
+of the artist is still farther heightened by the _vesica piscis_, the
+emblem of woman being marked upon the appropriate part of the dress, and
+a figure of an infant within it, points unmistakeably to the belief that
+the Holy Ghost, like a dove, absolutely begot the Jewish saviour as he
+did the Hindoo deliverer of gods and men. (_See Ancient Faiths_, vol IL,
+p. 648, fig. 48).
+
+But the parallel may even be carried farther, for in the Indian history
+it is Agni, the embodiment of fire or the fire or sun god, who
+becomes the dove; whilst in the Christian history, fire is one of the
+manifestations of the Holy Ghost (Acts ii. 3). We conclude this from the
+fact, that all devout churchmen believe that the Holy Ghost descended
+upon the day of Pentecost with the sound of a rushing mighty wind, as
+a multitude of cloven fiery tongues, which again suggests to the
+recollection of those familiar with the Vedic story, that the
+Maruts--rushing, mighty, stormy winds--were frequent attendants upon
+Agni For example, in one of the Hymns (p. 39) of the Rig Veda Sanhita
+(translated by Max Mueller), the burden or chorus of every verse is,
+"with the Maruts come hither, O Agni." Here, however, the parallel
+between the two myths ceases, for in the Indian tale the saviour has no
+earthly mother. We may really affirm that he has no mother at all, being
+the offspring of the father alone, whilst in the Christian history, the
+deliverer is represented as having no human sire. The one story is just
+as likely to be true as the other, or just as unlikely. As a reasonable
+being I cannot believe the one without crediting the other, or reject
+only one of the two.
+
+With this preface, we may proceed to relate the legend as recorded
+by Moor. A certain devil or Daitya--for it must be remarked that the
+Hindoos regard the devil as being composed of many individualities,
+much in the same way as Christians do--was extremely ambitious and
+oppressive, as Satan is said to have been in heaven.* To force Brahma
+to promise him any boon he should require, the ascetic went through the
+following penances, persisting in each for a hundred years. (1) He stood
+on one foot, holding the other, and both hands upwards, and fixed his
+eyes on the sun. (2) He stood on one great toe. (3) He lived upon water
+alone. (4) He lived on air. (5) He immersed himself in water. (6) He
+buried himself in the earth, and yet continued as before in incessant
+adoration. (7) He then did the same in fire. (8) Then he stood upon his
+head with his feet upwards. (9) He then stood upon one hand. (10) He
+hung by his hands from a tree. (11) He hung on a tree with his head
+downwards.
+
+     * I call attention to these parallels, for they compel as
+     either to accept the Hindoo stories as true, because they
+     coincide with that which Christians regard as "revealed
+     truth," or they oblige as to distrust our current ideas as
+     to the inspired verity of some biblical stories, founded as
+     they are upon the same, or a similar, basis to those of the
+     Brahmins. The Hindoo tale being founded in the Sinpurana,
+     there can be no reasonable doubt that its fabrication
+     preceded that of the Hebrew or Christian mythos.
+
+The effect of these austerities alarmed all the gods, and they went to
+Brahma for consolation. He answered that though he was bound to grant
+the boon desired by a man who became powerful by his austerities, he
+would devise a method of rendering it inoffensive to the heavenly host.
+Tarika, the name borne by the Daitya, asked for the gift of unrivalled
+strength, and that no hand should slay him except a son of Mahadeva.
+This being acquired, he plundered all the minor gods--the sun, dreading
+him, gave no heat; and the moon, in terror, remained always at the
+full--in short, the devil, Tarika, usurped the entire management of the
+universe. Nareda--the personification of Reason--Wisdom, the Logos, or
+"word," now prophesied that the destined deliverer, or saviour of the
+world, would come from the union of Mahadeva and Parvati. But the
+first was indisposed to marry, and only consented to do so after being
+mollified by ardent devotions and great austerities enacted by the
+second. To the horror, however, of the discomfited world, Parvati was
+barren; and the gods deputed Agni to try to produce the son whom all
+so earnestly desired. He took the form of "a dove," and arrived in the
+presence of Mahadeva just as he had risen from the arms of Parvati,
+and received from him, in a manner not easy or necessary to describe
+minutely, the germ of Carticeya; but, unable to retain it, the bird let
+it fall from his bill into the Ganges. On the banks of this river arose,
+therefrom, a boy, beautiful as the moon, and bright as the sun. This was
+"The Saviour" promised by the prophet. When he attained to manhood, he
+fought the devil in a terrific combat which lasted ten whole days; but
+Carticeya came off the conqueror, and delivered the world. I may notice
+in passing that as Carticeya is represented to be the son of his
+father, Mahadeva alone--so Ganesa, who was born after the marriage
+above referred to, is said to be solely the son of his mother, Parvati;
+Mahadeva not having anything to do with him. It is still farther stated
+in the _Sin purana_ that the husband was jealous, and displeased at
+this assumption of independent power by his spouse, punished her in the
+person of this mysterious son (Moor, H. P., page 171-2).
+
+There is another Hindoo story in which a father alone becomes the
+progenitor of twins--and it is remarkable, not only for this, but for
+the dread which a deity is said to feel from the austerities of a man.
+Wheeler (_History of India_, vol. i, p. 78; Williams' _Sanscrit Lexicon,
+s. v. Kripa_), regards this tale as Brahmanical, and, accepting his
+authority, we can see that the asceticism which is introduced into the
+story is intended to exalt the claims of that section of the priesthood
+who torture themselves. It runs thus:--Saradvat, by the magnitude of his
+penances, frightened Indra, who sent a celestial nymph to tempt him.
+He resisted all her wiles, and refused all commerce with her; but his
+excited imagination produced one of its common effects, and from that
+which was "spilled upon the ground" a boy and girl arose, Drona and
+Kripa. In Wheeler's sketch of the story, two such miraculous events
+occur, for a precisely similar occurrence took place with a certain
+Raja--and the males sprung from this supernatural form of generation,
+Drona and Drupada, became cronies, and were educated together. In
+Wheeler's account Kripa becomes the wife of Drona, and not his twin
+sister. She is represented to have been born from a Brahmin named
+Gautama, in the same fashion as Drona was. Certes, the scribes who wrote
+the gospels, and doubled wonders to make them more miraculous, are far
+behind the Hindoos in the unblushing effrontery of their conceptions.
+
+A story somewhat analogous to that of the origin of Carticeya--Drona
+and Drupada, is to be found in Grecian mythology. Therein we read
+(see Lempriere's _Classical Dictionary, 8.V_., Minerva), that
+Jupiter promised to his daughter, Minerva, that she should never be
+married--since that was her especial desire. But, unfortunately, the
+Thunderer had not a good memory, and was unable to foresee the future;
+he therefore promised to Vulcan that he would--in return for a perfect
+suit of armour--give him whatsoever boon he asked. The distorted god,
+being a great admirer of the personification of wisdom, demanded Minerva
+in marriage. Zeus then granted his petition and gave Minerva to him for
+a bride, so that "arts and arms" should thenceforth be wedded together.
+But the goddess disliked Vulcan, just as much as science and philosophy
+shun war and physical weapons. Jupiter then privately counselled his
+daughter to submit, apparently, but to contend, actually, whenever her
+husband should endeavour to caress her. This advice the goddess very
+artfully and determinately carried out. But Vulcan's impetuosity was
+extreme, and the contest between the spouses was prolonged. Though the
+promised wife was in the end victorious, and retained her virginity, the
+scene of the strife, like many another battle-field, required cleansing.
+The material employed by the goddess in the process was thrown down
+to earth, and from this stuff sprung Ericthonius, as the son of Vulcan
+alone, who, on attaining man's estate, became the fourth king of Athens.
+
+A somewhat similar story is told of Jupiter (Arnobius, _adv. Gentes_, B.
+v.), who is represented as enamoured of Themis, who, when lying on the
+rock Agdus, in Phrygia, and there surprised by the god, resisted his
+desires, as Minerva had done those of Vulcan, and with a somewhat
+similar result. But in this instance, that which the author calls in
+another passage of his work, the _vis Lucilii_, fell upon the hard rock.
+This conceived, and, after ten months, the stony soil brought forth a
+son, called, from his maternal parent, Agdistis. His character, and even
+his appearance, were frightful and rugged in the extreme. His strength,
+recklessness, and audacity frightened all the gods. In their dilemma,
+Bacchus offered to give his aid, and proceeded first to make the man
+drunk by substituting wine for the water of the fountain from which he
+habitually drank. Then, by a curious contrivance, he made the fierce
+hunter emasculate himself. The earth swallows up the sanguinary ruins
+of his manhood, and in their place comes up a pomegranate tree in full
+bearing. This being seen by Nana, a king's daughter, she plucks some of
+the fruit, and lays it in her bosom. By this she becomes pregnant, and,
+her story being disbelieved, her father attempts to starve her. But the
+mother of the gods sustains her with apples (see Canticles ii. 5),
+and berries, or other food. Her baby, when born, is exposed as being
+illegitimate, but found by a goatherd and brought up--becoming the all
+but deified Atys.
+
+In this legend, we see one son born without a human mother, and a second
+without any other father than Rimmon, or a pomegranate.*
+
+     * Agdus, Agdistis, &c--I am frequently tempted, after
+     reading a story like the preceding, to search in the
+     Sanscrit lexicon to ascertain if there can be any esoteric
+     signification in the legend that can be explained by that
+     ancient language. Arnobius opens the story with a statement
+     of the remote antiquity of the tale, and how it is connected
+     with the Great Mother. He then tells of a wild district in
+     Phrygia, called Agdus. Stoaes taken from it, as Themis had
+     enjoined, were used by Deucalion and Pyrrha to repeople the
+     world which had been destroyed by a flood. The great mother
+     was fashioned amongst the rest, and animated by the deity;
+     then follows the story given in the text. Now, in the
+     Sanscrit, Agadha signifies a "hole or chasm," and such
+     things have from the earliest times typified the Celestial
+     Mother. Agdistis I take to be a Greek form of Agasti--son
+     both of Mitra and Varuna by Urvasi, said to have been born
+     in a water-jar, to have swallowed the ocean, and compelled
+     the Vindhya mountains to prostrate themselves before him,
+     &c. (Monier Williams' Sanskrit English Lexicon, pp. 4, 6).
+     Themis may be a corruption of Dhamas--the moon, an epithet
+     of Vishnu, Yama, and Brahma; also the Supreme Spirit (M. W.
+     op. cit., p. 448). Deucalion seems readily to be resolved
+     into the dyu or div--holy, and Kalam, semen virile (M. W.,
+     p. 211). Pyrrha may apparently be derived from bdra--an
+     opening or aperture (M. W.); also bhdra--bearing, carrying,
+     cherishing, supporting (M. W., p. 700). Atys, described as
+     of surpassing beauty, may fairly be associated with atisi
+     and atisaya--to surpass, excel, exceed; and pre-eminence,
+     superiority (M. W., op. cit., p. 15). Liber, again, who is
+     clever enough to outwit and conquer Agdistis, may, without
+     too strong a stretch of imagination, come from Idbha--
+     obtaining, gaining, getting; capture, conquest; the rootword
+     is labh--to seize, to take hold of, gain, recover, regain,
+     fcc. (M. W., p. 861, 2). Nana, the mother of Atys the
+     beautiful, has probably come from nanda--happiness,
+     pleasure, joy, felicity, delight (M. W., op. cit. p. 467).
+     In the previous volumes I have referred to the pomegranate--
+     Hebrew, Rimmon--as an emblem. In the legend which makes Nana
+     conceive by eating this fruit, there are, I fancy, two
+     ideas--one, that the pomegranate is filled with seeds and
+     pulp of a red colour; the other, that in the Greek its name
+     is rota, or roa, which has a close resemblance in sound with
+     reo--to flow or gush. Of the word Midas--the name of him who
+     sought to bring about the union of the opposite sexes by
+     marrying his daughter Nana to Attis or Atys, the most
+     appropriate etymon which I can find in the Sanscrit is in
+     the root math, which signifies to strike fire by rubbing
+     wood together, to churn or produce by churning.
+
+If we allow that there is truth in these derivations, we can then see
+how completely Arnobius has been deceived by taking the legend au pied
+de la lettre. He sees nothing but the exoteric side of the fable; the
+more instructed philosopher sees in it nothing beyond an attempt to
+weave a story to account for ordinary men and women existing. The Earth,
+from her deep womb produces stones which become male and female (compare
+Psalm cxxzix. 15--"When I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in
+the lowest parts of the earth." But mycologists were not always content
+with giving precedence in creation to the "Great Mother," consequently
+the "Father of all" comes upon the scene from no one knows where.
+Refusing to share with him her supremacy, he, like the Hindoo Mahadeva,
+becomes a father in spite of her. Like his parent, the son becomes
+raging mad, like an elephant or a horse in spring. He is tamed by
+castration, but the parts he loses still bear a fructifying power,
+and once more, a maiden--type of the celestial virgin, has offspring.
+Without going further into the tale, the story teller endeavours again
+to introduce marriage, but on the threshold arrests himself, apparently
+under the idea that the wedded state takes away the pleasure of freedom
+from fine young men. Beyond this point it would be unprofitable to go,
+since few of us can realize Greek ideas on certain matters.
+
+The origin of Venus is told by Hesiod in such a manner as to lead his
+readers to believe that, not only was she the daughter of a father
+alone, but of that particular part of his body which has been deified
+as a Trinity. After speaking (_Theogmy_, 170-200), of the cruelty of
+Ouranos, and how his wife inspirited Cronos to punish his father by
+means of a sickle made of white iron extracted from her body (t.&, the
+earth), we read--"Then came vast Heaven, Ouranos, bringing Night with
+him, and eager for love, brooded around Earth (_Ge_) and lay stretched,
+I wot, on all sides; but his son from out his ambush grasped at him with
+his left hand, whilst in his right he took the huge sickle, long and
+jagged-toothed, and hastily mowed off the genitals of his sire, and
+threw them, to be carried away, behind him. These fell into the sea,
+and kept drifting a long time up and down the deep, and all around kept
+rising a white foam from the immortal flesh; and in it a maiden was
+nourished. First, she drew nigh divine Cythera, and thence came next to
+wave-washed Cyprus. Then forth stepped an awful, beauteous goddess; and
+beneath her delicate feet the verdure throve around; her, gods and men
+name Aphrodite the foam-sprung goddess," &c. (Bonn's Translation, p.
+11,12).
+
+Still further, we find in the Grecian mythology that Minerva was the
+offspring of Jupiter without a mother being in the case--unless we
+put faith in the tale, that the god impregnated Metis, or wisdom, and
+afterwards ate her up. In this case the goddess ought, however, to have
+emerged from the abdomen, and not from the head of her father. Vulcan,
+moreover, is said to have been the son of Juno alone, "who in this
+wished to imitate Jupiter, who had produced Minerva from his brains"--a
+mythos which does not tally with the statement that Zeus ordered Vulcan
+to cleave his head open, not the part corresponding to the yoni The
+tales certainly lack that evidence which the philosopher is bound to
+seek for; but for those orthodox believers who are bound to credit every
+extraordinary event which is recorded in the books of the faithful,
+no testimony is required. Those who feel assured that a serpent, ox,
+donkey, tree, bush, and other things have spoken rationally, can readily
+extend their trust and assure themselves that a female has had a child
+without a male, and _vice versa_--especially when the individuals were
+divine.
+
+As we have before remarked, there is nothing in the mythological stories
+which we have just recounted that is either more or less miraculous than
+conception, &c., by a virgin without the intervention of a human
+spouse. There is, whenever a miraculous agency is presumed, no greater
+difficulty in believing that children may be produced without mothers,
+than that they should be formed without the intervention of a father.
+Ere a tree can rise in the soil of a field, a germ, seed, or cutting is
+as necessary as the existence of a moist mould, or other ground. There
+being then no greater probability that a crop will spring from a moist
+plain without seed, than that an abundant harvest will come from dry
+seed alone, we are necessarily thrown back upon testimony, when we are
+asked to believe in the paternity of man and the maternity of woman
+without any association of the one with the other.
+
+The mythologists who conceived, or who recorded the fabulous history of
+Orion, evidently had some idea in their minds of the necessity of two
+elements in the formation and growth of a child, when they told the
+tale of the generation of that giant; and the myth connected with this
+individual is so curiously like one recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures,
+that it deserves full notice. In Genesis the narrative informs us that
+there was an old couple, both beyond the age at which there is any
+probability of either party performing the part necessary for the
+production of offspring (Gen. xviii. 12), both were desirous of having
+at least one son, but though they had been long united in marriage,
+their aspirations had been vain. To this couple, or rather to the
+husband, Jehovah is said to have appeared with two companions (Gen.
+xviii. 1, 2), and as the man was hospitably disposed, he ordered his
+wife to make some cakes, whilst he went to fetch and kill a calf for his
+servant to dress and cook. The visitors then partook, alone, of the good
+cheer, and when they had made the repast they promised the husband that
+his long cherished desire should be fulfilled, and that he should have a
+son. There does not, however, appear to be anything supernatural in the
+generation of the infant, except the mere facts that the father had been
+effete for some time, and the mother had always been barren even when
+young, so that conception was more surely miraculous by reason of her
+advanced age. The probability of pregnancy at Sarah's time of life was
+certainly small, but she was reminded that nothing was too hard for
+Jehovah to effect. Had not He already made man out of dust and woman out
+of man? and surely after that it was easy to cause a man and woman to
+act their respective parts. The reader must specially bear in mind this
+observation of the Lord's when he reads the Greek story following. (See
+Ovid's _Fasti_, book 5).
+
+"Jupiter, his brother Neptune, and Mercury, were on their travels; the
+day was far spent and evening approached. They were spied by a venerable
+man, an humble farmer, who stood in the doorway of his small abode. He
+accosts them with the words, 'long is the road and but little of the day
+remains, my door too is ever open to the stranger,' and so earnest is
+his look of entreaty, that the gods accept his invitation."
+
+Jupiter and the others, however, conceal their divine nature, and
+eat and drink like common men. But after a draught of wine, Neptune
+inadvertently names Jupiter, and the poor man who has thus entertained
+angels unawares, is frightened at their presence. After a few moments of
+natural embarrassment, he goes to his field and kills his only ox--the
+drawer of his plough--then he cuts up the animal, roasts it well,
+produces his best wine, and lays the feast, when ready, before his
+august guests. Then Jove, delighted with his hospitality and piety, says
+to the farmer, 'If thy inclination leads thee to desire anything, wish
+for it, and thou shalt receive it.' To which the old man answers, 'I
+once had a dear wife, known as the choice of my early youth, yet she is
+now gone from me and an urn contains her ashes.
+
+To her I vowed, calling upon you my lord gods as witnesses to the oath,
+that I would never wed me more. I swore and will keep my word. She and
+I longed for a son, yet none came to bless our declining years. I yearn
+for one now, but will not endeavour to procure one, I wish to be a
+father, yet refuse to be a husband or enact his part.' To deities like
+Jupiter, such a request was by no means a difficult one to grant, the
+gods could as readily form a boy as they could fabricate Pandora--a
+lovely woman--and send her to Prometheus, with all the ills which flesh
+is heir to, confined in an ark, chest, or coffer. Yet the process of
+what may be designated conception was a strange one. The three simply
+relieved themselves of the wine which they had drunk, using the skin of
+the slaughtered ox instead of a more commodious vessel. The man was then
+ordered to bury the whole in the ground, and wait according to the time
+of life. The gestation of the earth was completed in ten months, and
+at the end of that period the venerable farmer possessed a fine lad who
+grew up and became famous. If, now, we substitute for the Grecian name,
+Hyrieus, the Hebrew title Abraham; if for Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury,
+we read, Jehovah and two angels; if for the phrase, "they were on their
+travels," we read, "they were going down to Sodom to see if it was as
+bad a place as it was reported to be" (see Gen. xviii. 21); if for the
+ox which was roasted, we place, "a calf tender and good," we see a
+wonderful resemblance between the stories of the conception of Orion and
+Isaac. But there is this difference that in the Hebrew tale the divine
+gift is brought about by a transient restoration of power to Abraham
+and Sarah; whilst in the Grecian mythos, the old man is faithful to
+the memory of a beloved spouse, and refuses to renew with another the
+pleasure which he had in her company. We conceive that the exigency of
+the Jewish account, made it necessary that the son of Abraham should be
+of his father begotten, as well as a child of promise; whereas no one
+can call Orion the son of any one, although he was as surely a child of
+promise granted by the gods, as Isaac was, who was given by Elohim (or
+the gods) of the Hebrews.
+
+We may enter now, for a short time, into a speculation whether the
+Grecian story was borrowed from the Hebrew or the contrary. We are
+disposed to believe that the tale was adopted by the Jews after they
+became acquainted with the Greeks. The following are our reasons:--The
+conception of a godhead composed of three persons, is foreign to the
+Hebrew thoughts of the Almighty. Still further was it from Jewish
+belief to think, that Jehovah would come down upon earth to acquire
+information, and when there, eat and drink and talk like any ordinary
+man. Amongst the Israelites it was generally held that no one could see
+the face of God and live, On the other hand, the Greeks were familiar
+with tales which told of gods coming down to earth in the guise of men.
+As an illustration of this, we may point to Acts xiv. 11-13, wherein
+we find that the people of Lycaonia imagined that the gods Jupiter and
+Mercurius had come down to them in the likeness of men, and prepared
+to sacrifice to them. Yet after all, Paul had simply cured a single
+paralytic. On the other hand, the Jews regarded as rank blasphemy, and
+a crime worthy of death, that Jesus should assert himself to be a son of
+God, even although the miracles alleged in support of the assertion were
+as stupendous as they were numerous.
+
+Still, further, we cannot imagine that the degrading story of Jehovah's
+feasting with Abraham could have been composed, except when the Jews
+were no better than an untaught and grossly superstitious race. We
+have already, in _Ancient Faiths, &c._, expressed our opinion that the
+Israelites were at the very lowest period of their history at the time
+when Isaiah began his exhortations. There had been a confederacy between
+the men of Edom, of Moab, Gebal, Amnion, Amalek, Tyre, Philistia, and
+Assyria, the Ismaelites and the Hagarenes, which had attacked Jerusalem
+and Judea, and captured all the inhabitants, many of whom they sold to
+the Grecians (see Joel iii. 5-7). At, and shortly after this time,
+the Jews were in a condition of abject misery (see Isaiah i. 4-9), and
+capable of believing any story told to them, and would just as easily
+credit the mythology which the Grecian captives told, or their Grecian
+masters taught, as their successors do those which at a subsequent
+period filled the Hebrew Scriptures.
+
+Whilst then, on the one hand, there is a probability of the Hebrews
+having borrowed the fable from Hellenistic sources, there is, on the
+other, the strongest objection to the supposition that the Greeks
+should have borrowed from the Jews. Everything which the latter say of
+themselves, indicates that they were exclusive to an inordinate
+degree, refusing to have intercourse on equal terms with any of their
+neighbours, that they never sought to make their history, laws, and
+customs, known to Gentiles, and especially those outside of Judea, and
+that their writings never assumed a Grecian dress until the time of
+Ptolemy Philadelphus, who ordered the Septuagint translation to be made
+about B.c. 285, with the direct view of making the Hebrew Scriptures
+known to the Greeks.
+
+Moreover, we know from everything which was said of the Jews by
+the Gentiles, that the latter treated the former with contempt and
+contumely, and would no more dream of imitating any of their writings,
+&c., than we should care to adopt the myths of Abyssinian negroes as an
+integral part of Christianity.
+
+It will now be profitable if we examine the story of Sanchoniathon and
+the statements of the Orphic Hymns.
+
+We have, in the course of this chapter and elsewhere, so" often referred
+to the Grecian story of the Creation as given by Sanchoniathon and in
+the Orphic hymns, that I think my readers are entitled to receive
+some further account of them; so I reproduce passages which bear upon
+supernatural generation, and especially that of the world and its
+inhabitants--my main authority being _Ancient Fragments, &c._, by J. P.
+Cory (London, 1832).
+
+Of Sanchoniathon we know little; our information may be summed up by
+saying that he is mentioned eulogistically by Eusebius (a.d. 270-338),
+an historian whose veracity cannot be entirely depended on. He says that
+Sanchoniathon had, ere his time, been translated by a certain writer
+called Philon Byblius, and it seems that Porphyry is credited with
+having copied a great part of this translation into Greek from the
+Phoenician. Nothing, however, is actually known of the historian in
+question, except from Eusebius (_Smith's Dictionary_, p. 308, vol.III.,
+s. v., Philon.) We may then assume, according to our inclination, either
+that the story is really a compendium of Tyrian legendary lore, or
+simply a representation of what the Greeks imagined. The way, however,
+in which the generation of beings is described, well deserves attention
+from its similarity, and its contrasts with the biblical story. First,
+there was a breeze of thick air and Chaos. These united and produced
+Pothos. This again united with the wind, and Mot was the result, also
+called Ilus; from this sprung the seed of Creation. And there were
+certain animals without sensation, from which intelligent animals were
+produced.* After this follows a quantity of stuff that is traceable to
+Hesiod, and a part of which may be considered a paraphrase of Genesis.
+Then mention is made of Elioun, called Hypsistus (the most High),
+and his wife Beruth--as being the contemporaries of others; but no
+indication is given from whence they came. These produced Ouranos
+(Heaven) and Ge (Earth). Their father was killed by wild beasts! Then
+Ouranos married Ge, and had offspring by her. But he had other women,
+and Ge was jealous. Ouranos, however, came to her when he listed and
+attempted to kill her children. He had a son, Cronus, who drove him from
+his kingdom. This son turns out to be the original being called Ilus,
+and he contrived to emasculate his father, and from the blood which
+flowed sprang rivers and fountains. The remainder of this story scarcely
+deserves notice.
+
+     * The author of the tale evidently had something in common
+     with our modern Darwin.
+
+Ere we turn our attention to the compositions known as the Orphic Hymns,
+it will be interesting to inquire whether the preceding account of
+Creation had a Phoenician origin, or may more fairly be traced to an
+Indian source flowing through a Greek channel After a diligent search in
+the Hebrew Lexicon--and it is to be noticed that the Hebrew is all but
+identical with the Tyrian and Carthaginian, I cannot find any words
+or roots from which the proper names in the opening paragraph of
+Sanchoniathon can by any ingenuity be derived. Nor can I discover in the
+Greek anything which explains the esoteric signification of the story.
+
+But, on reference to the Sanscrit, there is a curious identity apparent
+between the second verse in Genesis and a Hindoo idea. The former
+runs:--"The earth was without form and void (_tohu ve bohu_), and
+darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved
+on the face of the waters." The Indian interpretation of the myth is
+this:--"Air in motion, _vahu_, ruffled the inexplicable, or empty space,
+_ka, has_, or _Icha, Icham_, a word also signifying 'nothing.' Thence
+proceeded the earth, _Ua, or Mot_ (Sans); _Math_ (Sans) making fire
+by rubbing sticks (coitus?) _Mada, mdda, and moda_, pleasure, delight,
+gladness=love, Eros." This is almost the same idea that Hesiod
+propounds.
+
+In the Orphic Hymns we find much more clearly than in any other writing
+amongst the ancient Greeks the early Hellenic notion of the generation
+of the worlds and of mankind. Respecting the value of the fragments
+there may be some difference of opinion. The curious and doubtful may
+be referred to _Smith's Dictionary_ (s.v. Orpheus); for me it will
+be sufficient to state that both Aristophanes and Plato refer to the
+presumed author as a religious teacher and a preacher against murder,
+and Euripides frequently mentions him. This will place Orpheus at least
+before b.c. 480. If, however, we consider him as identical with the
+oft-sung husband of Eurydice, we must place him B.c. 650 (Smith, s.v.).
+
+In quoting from Cory's translation, I shall not scruple to make the
+sense of more importance than literality: "Zeus is the first--he, the
+thunderer, is the last; he is the head and the middle, he fabricated all
+things. Zeus is male; he, the immortal, is also female; he founded the
+earth and the starry heaven; he is the breath of all things, the rushing
+of indefatigable fire. Zeus is the root of the sea, the sun and moon,
+the king, the author of universal life; one power, one demon, the
+mighty prince of all things; one kingly frame, in which this universe
+revolves--fire and water, earth and ether, night and day, and Metis
+(counsel); the primeval father and all delightful Eros (love). All these
+things are united in the vast body of Zeus. Would you behold his head
+and his fair face? It is the resplendent heaven, round which his golden
+locks of glittering stars are beautifully exalted in the air. On each
+side are the two golden taurine horns, the risings and settings, the
+tracks of the celestial gods: his eyes are the sun and opposing moon;
+his unfallacious mind the royal incorruptible Ether."
+
+The next fragment has been filched by the author of _Sanchoniathon_, and
+we must not quote it. After a recapitulation about Chaos, Cronos, Ether,
+and Eros, he proceeds:--"I have sung the illustrious father of night
+existing from eternity, whom men call Phanes, for he first appeared. I
+have sung the birth of powerful Brimo (Hecate), and the unhallowed deeds
+of the earth-born giants who showered down from heaven their blood--the
+lamentable seed of generation, from whence sprung the race of mortals
+who inhabit the boundless earth for ever."
+
+"Chaos was generated first, and then the wide-bosomed Earth--the ever
+stable seat of all the Immortals that inhabit the snowy peaks of Olympus
+and the dark dim Tartarus in the depths of the broad-wayed earth, and
+Eros--the fairest of the immortal gods, that relaxes the strength of
+all, both gods and men, and subjugates the mind and the sage will in
+their breasts. From Chaos were generated Erebus and black Night; and
+from Night again were generated Ether and day, whom she brought forth,
+having conceived from the embrace of Erebus; and Earth first produced
+the starry heaven, equal to herself, that it might inclose all things
+around herself."
+
+The preceding is given by Hesiod (900 B.c.). The following is the
+version given by Aristophanes:--"First were Chaos and Night, and black
+Erebus and vast Tartarus; and there was neither Earth nor Air nor
+Heaven: but in the boundless bosoms of Erebus, Night with her black
+wings first produced an aerial egg, from which at the completed time
+sprang forth the lovely Eros, glittering with golden wings upon his back
+like the swift whirlwinds. But embracing the dark-winged Chaos in the
+vast Tartarus he begot our race (the birds). The race of the Immortals
+was not till Eros mingled all things together; but when the elements
+were mixed one with another, Heaven was produced, and Ocean and Earth
+and the imperishable race of all the blessed gods."
+
+"Maia, supreme of gods, Immortal Night, tell me, &c." The next
+invocation is to the double-natured Protogonus--the bull coming from
+the egg, the renowned light, the ineffable strength, Priapus the king,
+&c.--"Metis (wisdom) bearing the seed of the gods, whom the blessed
+inhabitants of Olympus call Phanes Protogonus." "Metis the first father
+and all-delightful Eros." Again, in allusion to Phanes,--
+
+"Therefore the first god bears with himself the heads of animals--many
+and single--of a bull, of a serpent, and of a fierce lion, and
+they sprung from the primeval egg in which the animal is seminally
+contained." "The theologist places around him the heads of a ram, a
+bull, a lion, and a dragon, and assigns him first both the male and
+female sex." "Female and Father is the mighty god Ericapeus; to him also
+the wings are first given."
+
+The Japanese account of the creation is of sufficient interest to
+be noticed here. I quote it from a translation of the _Annals of the
+Emperors of Japan_, by Mons. Titsingh, assisted by interpreters of the
+Dutch Factory at Nagasaki, and rendered into French, after being duly
+compared with the original by M. J. Klapworth--(printed for the Oriental
+Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland; London, 1834). In the
+account of the seven generations of the heavenly bodies, we are told
+that "anciently the heaven and the earth were not distinct, nor was the
+female principle then separated from the male. The chaos, having the
+form of an egg, moved about like the waves of an agitated sea. The germs
+of everything were there, and these ultimately divided, the pure and
+transparent ones going upward to form heaven, whilst the dull and opaque
+ones coagulated and formed the earth. Between the two a divine being
+sprang up; he was followed by two others in succession." All these were
+pure males, and engendered without consorts. After them came a male and
+a female deity, but they had no intercourse with each other. These and
+three other divine couples, who followed them, reproduced their like by
+mutual contemplation. The last couple directed the "celestial spear
+made of a red precious stone"--said by Japanese commentators to be
+the phallus--into the world below, and stirred it up to the bottom. On
+withdrawing the lance some drops fell from it and produced an island,
+upon which the celestial couple descended. Each one then began to walk
+in opposite directions around the isle, and when they met the feminine
+spirit sang joyously--"I am delighted to find so handsome a young man."
+But this vexed the male spirit, who, being a man, asserted that he ought
+to have been allowed to speak the first. So they parted once more on
+their solitary walk; and when they met the second time, the woman waited
+to be spoken to. Then followed a conversation somewhat too coarse for
+repetition, which was followed by corporeal union. From the intercourse
+of these divine beings all creation sprang. But, after a time, the
+partners reflected that there was still wanting a governor for the
+world which they had engendered. So they again accoupled, and produced
+a daughter so lovely, that her parents thought her too good for earth;
+gave her the name of "the precious wisdom of the heavenly sun," and sent
+her to heaven, there to assume the universal government of all things.
+The parents once again united, and produced the moon, who was sent to
+heaven to assist her sister. A terrible fellow was then born from them,
+who represents the Devil, or those tempests which seem to oppose the
+beneficent action of the sun upon the soil. The parents returned to
+heaven, and there are constant contentions between the brother and
+sister. The former is described as being furious under attempts at
+control; generally, he was quiet, and always had tears in his eyes (dew
+and rain), but sometimes, when provoked, he broke every thing, uprooted
+trees, and set the mountain forests on fire. We need not pursue
+the story further than to say that the celestial beings created a
+terrestrial couple, whose children bear considerable resemblance to the
+Greek Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, and others, and from them came the first
+Emperors of Japan. In the matter of evidence upon such a point as the
+conception of a man without a woman, or a woman without a man, it is
+clear that unsupported assertion is wholly valueless.
+
+For example, I may for a time absent myself from general society, and
+return to it again after a certain interval, having with me a child,
+whom I assert to be my very own, produced by my own inherent power, just
+as a tree produces a leaf which grows, matures, and falls. I may frame
+a romantic account of a dream, in which I was told that if I planted
+myself in the central bed of a certain garden, and contrived an
+apparatus for daily watering my buried legs, that a child would sprout
+from my right side, who should be to me as a daughter. Yet, however
+ingenious my tale, there is not any one possessing sound sense and
+knowledge who would believe me. In like manner, if a woman should tell a
+story analogous, though not identical, she is certain to be discredited;
+even the assertion of the existence of a divine father would not, if the
+woman were unmated, save her character from a stain.
+
+We may next refer to the legend of Prometheus, inasmuch as in many
+points it resembles the Hebrew mythos so greatly, that we must imagine
+they both have a common origin, or that the one is a copy--though
+an indifferent one, of the other. Prometheus, or forethought, was
+represented to be the first who made an ordinary man--he formed him
+of clay, and then animated him with fire from heaven. The Jewish tale
+asserts that it was Jehovah who made the first man. That man was first
+formed like a statue out of clay or dust, and had no life until breath
+was infused into his nostrils. In both stories man alone is formed
+first. In the Grecian fable Prometheus does not make a consort for his
+man; nay, he refuses to receive one for himself when the gods send
+to him Pandora--a paragon of loveliness. Instead of this he gives the
+damsel to Epimetheus--or after-thought--who takes her carelessly, and
+finds that even a charming woman is not a guarantee against cares and
+woes. Some accounts, however, say that Prometheus made both man and
+woman out of clay.
+
+The discrepancy does not signify much, for we see the same in Genesis,
+wherein we are told in one place that man and woman were made together,
+whilst in another the story runs that Adam preceded Eve, and that,
+instead of being formed of dust or clay, the latter was formed of bone.
+
+We may now refer to the story of Apollonius Tyaneus, whose history has
+interest for us, inasmuch as it illustrates three important points, upon
+which much stress has been, and may still be, laid by inquiring minds.
+The most conspicuous is the propensity of historians, or, to speak
+more correctly, of a biographer, to record wonderful things about an
+extraordinary man; next the ridicule cast upon the tale by those who
+have circulated stories equally improbable, and the indication that
+travel to Hindostan was apparently common, prior to and during his time.
+In sketching the life of the philosopher, I quote something from
+_Le Dictionnaire Infernal_, and the rest from Smith's _Biographical
+Dictionary_. The philosopher in question was born about 4 years B.C. His
+history was written by Philostratus, about 100 years after the hero's
+death, and is ostensibly founded upon memoirs left by his secretary,
+Damis, an Assyrian, who accompanied Apollonius during his travels, and
+recorded his discourses and prophecies, and acted much as Luke did with
+Paul.
+
+Amongst the proofs which Damis gives of his veracity, he tells us that
+when he and his master traversed the Caucasus, they saw the chains which
+bound Prometheus, still fixed to the rocks. This bit of verification
+is now derided, but in my school-days I recollect having an account put
+into my hands, written by some author, stating that the remains of the
+ark were still to be seen upon Mount Ararat.*
+
+     * On the day before this was written there appeared in _The
+     Telegraph_ a paragraph, to the effect that an Assyrian slab
+     had been translated by Mr. Smith of the British Museum. The
+     record is said to give an account of "the deluge," and it
+     tallies nearly with that given by Berosus, recorded in my
+     second volume.    It adds, however, that the ark was at that
+     period in existence, and its wood and bitumen used as
+     amulets. Singularly enough, the tale is supposed to confirm
+     the bible legend, the writer of the paragraph never dreaming
+     that it more certainly confirms the Babylonian or Assyrian
+     origin of the book of Genesis. The other parts of this slab,
+     which were wanting, have more recently been found. But there
+     is no necessity for me to change the wording of the note.
+
+There was also current a "Joe Miller" about some old woman, who would
+not believe in flying-fish, which her sailor-boy had seen, but who
+readily believed his tale of hooking up a chariot wheel on an anchor
+fluke from the bottom of the Red Sea!
+
+Dr. Smith, or Mr. Jowett, the author of the article, very judiciously
+says--"We have purposely omitted the wonders with which Philostratus has
+garnished his narrative.... _Many of these are curiously coincident with
+the Christian miracles_--(the italics are our own). The proclamation of
+the birth of Apollonius to his mother by Proteus, and the incarnation of
+Proteus himself; the chorus of swans which sung for joy on the occasion,
+the casting out of devils, the raising the dead and healing the
+sick, the sudden disappearances and reappearances of Apollonius; his
+adventures in the cave of Trophonius, and the sacred voice which called
+him at his death--to which may be added his claim as a teacher, having
+authority to reform the world--cannot fail to suggest the parallel
+passages in the Gospel history." We learn, moreover, that the biographer
+was high in favour with Alexander Severus, and that Eusebius of Caesarea
+naively allows the truth of Philostratus' narrative in the main, with
+the exception of what is miraculous. None of the authors quoted seem
+to think of the adage--"Change but the names, and the same classes of
+wonders are a matter of faith to you." Surely it is as easy to credit
+the strange deeds of Proteus as those of Gabriel.
+
+Whether we choose to adopt the hypothesis that Apollonius was a rival
+of Jesus, that the Nazarene and Tyanean were independent of each other,
+that the evangelists took a hint from Damis, or Philostratus imitated
+Luke in more ways than one, we have still the fact that two different
+biographers, giving a history of the life of two contemporary
+individuals, assert that the birth of their respective heroes was
+announced by a divine being, who himself brought about the conception
+of the infant that, on arriving at maturity, was held to be divine.
+In writing thus, it will be distinctly understood that we draw no
+comparison between Jesus and Apollonius, but only between the authors
+who have undertaken their respective biography.
+
+Leaving this curious point, the next noteworthy one is that Philostratus
+records, that the Tyanean went through Assyria, Babylonia, and Bactria,
+to India, "where he met Jarchus, the chief of the Brahmins, and disputed
+with Indian gymnosophists _already versed in Alexandrian philosophy_."
+I have placed these last words in italics, to call attention to the
+apparent belief of the historian, that prior to his day there had been
+extensive religious communication between India and Greece--a point on
+which I have much insisted in a previous chapter. The Tyanean is said to
+have been five years upon his eastern journey. We have no idea where the
+Nazarene was during his youth and before he began his public career, and
+we cannot help regarding the omission to notice this part of his life as
+being blameworthy in the evangelists. Those who knew so much of Jesus at
+his conception, and about his birth and infancy, could surely, if they
+would, have informed us of his adult years.
+
+Nor, _a propos_ to this short account of the biography of Apollonius, by
+Damis and Philostratus, must we omit to notice the conceits of those
+who have assumed that the Tyanean was set up as a counterfoil to, or an
+imitator of, Jesus of Nazareth; for, just as the Christians may, with
+some show of reason, affirm that the miracles recorded in their writings
+have been filched by others; so may the Buddhist, with still greater
+plausibility, declare that the greatest part of the life of the
+Nazarene, as given in the Gospels, has been copied almost verbatim from
+the biographers or evangelists of the Indian saga For myself, I consider
+that the miraculous parts of the history of all the three conspicuous
+men which have been named are equally true or--false.
+
+The idea of attributing to the Supreme God the birth, or, rather, the
+procreation, of an extraordinary man, seems, so far as we can judge, to
+have existed in the Western Hemisphere as well as in the Eastern. For
+example, in an interesting book, entitled _New Tracks in North America_,
+by W. A. Bell, M.A., M.B., Cantab; London, 1869, we find the following
+legend respecting Montezuma, the most popular ruler of the ancient
+Mexicans. The legend is intended to explain the occurrence of vast ruins
+amongst the Pima Indians, of which other history is silent, and runs
+thus: "Long ago a woman of exquisite beauty ruled over the valleys and
+the region south of them. Many suitors came from far to woo her, and
+brought presents innumerable of corn, skins, and cattle to lay at her
+feet. Her virtue and determination to continue unmarried remained alike
+unshaken, and her store of worldly possessions so greatly increased,
+that, when drought and desolation came upon her land, she fed her people
+out of her great abundance, and did not miss it, there was so much left.
+One night, as she lay asleep, her garment was blown from off her breast,
+and a dew drop from the Great Spirit fell upon her bosom, entered her
+blood, and caused her to conceive. In time she bore a child, who was
+none other than Montezuma, who built the large 'Casas,' and all the
+other ruins which are scattered through the land" (vol. i. p. 199).
+
+It is allowable for the reader to doubt whether there ever was a Mexican
+Queen whose renown was spread far and wide, who preferred celibacy to
+marriage, and who, being rich, was not plundered by the chiefs whose
+alliance was rejected. We may equally doubt the efficacy of a drop
+of water, even though it came from the Great Celestial Spirit; but,
+notwithstanding every objection which the most sceptical can advance,
+the legend is quite as probable as those current amongst the ancient
+Greeks, the religious Hindoos, and a large portion of modern Christians.
+A miracle, always improbable, is not necessarily true because it is said
+to have occurred in the old world, or indubitably false because it is
+reported to have happened in the new. Nor can one who regards faith as
+superior to reason, refuse to believe or to question the truth of
+any supernatural story simply because he was not told it during his
+childhood or youth.
+
+When the philosophical inquirer finds that in every country, with whose
+literature we are familiar, there are, not only abundance of tales
+about supernatural generation before the world was formed, but from
+the earliest periods of history to our own day, he may well pause
+and inquire into the intrinsic value of a religion or a faith that is
+founded mainly, if not wholly, upon the assertion that a certain person
+was the son of the Supreme Creator, and being so, has the qualities of
+his sire as well as those of his human mother. The orthodox in Britain
+do not believe in Cristna, Krishna, or Vishnu, because the Hindoo sacred
+books declare that he has appeared repeatedly as an incarnation of
+the Creator--nor do they credit the tales told of the supernatural
+generation of Bacchus or Hercules--yet, when they are asked what
+stronger evidence they have for the truth of their own story, they are
+unable to give more than affirmations, strong, perhaps, but not more so
+than those of ancient Hellenic priests.
+
+It is out of my province, now, to enter into every thing connected
+with the doctrine held by those who are known as Trinitarians. My
+main endeavour in this part of my subject is to clear the way for
+"reconstruction." It is my desire to give to those who have not the
+leisure, or, perhaps, the inclination, to wade through the dull tomes of
+theological, mythological, and similar books, an account of what is and
+has been entertained as religious belief by others, with whom, or with
+whose opinions, they have not come in contact. I have no special wish to
+prove that my opinions are right and the prevailing ones wrong; my chief
+aim is to give data by which others may form a judgment for themselves.
+With this view I have systematically endeavoured to satisfy myself of
+the trustworthiness of the witnesses whom I call upon to testify to
+facts; to my knowledge, nothing has been suppressed which seems to me to
+bear upon my subject, nor is aught set down in malice.
+
+In my next chapter I shall institute an inquiry into another important
+doctrine, held by Christians from their first existence until the
+present day, namely, the Existence and Ministration of Angels. Since the
+chapter was originally written, Dr. Kalisch has published an essay upon
+the same subject in the second part of his commentary upon Leviticus.
+I shall probably take the liberty of quoting from his pages; but, as
+we treat the matter from different points of view, I do not feel called
+upon to suppress my own work because he has preceded me. It gives me
+pleasure to feel and to know that fellow-workers in the same toilsome
+task, not only may help each other, but rejoice in the opportunity of so
+doing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     Angels. The ideas associated therewith. Why winged. Wishing-
+     caps. Jehovah and His Angels made to walk by the historian.
+     The belief in Angels incompatible with that of an
+     omnipresent and omniscient God. Pictorial representations.
+     Absurd conceptions of angelic wings. Angela want birds'
+     tails. Men have tried to fly. Difference between birds and
+     men. Arms and wings. A writer at fault about this world is
+     not to be trusted in his accounts of another. Bats and
+     similar mammals. The Devil better winged than Michael--Yet
+     Satan, a roaring lion, goes about as a bull with bat's
+     wings. Angels and beetles. Harmony in creation. Strange idea
+     of spirits. Spiritualism. Varieties of angelic forms. Not
+     the products of lunacy. Angels and demigods. Egyptian ideas.
+     Assyrian notions. Christian fancies. Birds and Men united in
+     human celestialism. Persian Angels. Mithra winged. Angels in
+     Persia twelve in number. Job, the work of a Persian Jew.
+     Angels referred to therein. Darius had a consecrated table.
+     Babylonian belief. Daniel. Greece and Rome. Gods, Demigods,
+     Angels, and Saints. Christian demigods. Angels' duties.
+     Book-keeping, clerks of wind and weather;--police-agents.
+     The inventor of Heaven admired centralization. Babylonian
+     tutelary Angels. Christian ones. Christian saintly imagery.
+     The bleeding heart of Mary. A funny Chaldean goddess to
+     match. Popish saints have an aureole, but no wings. Francis
+     of Assisi could make stigmata but could not change his arms
+     into pinions. Babylonian and Papal emblems identical
+     Development of Angels amongst the Jews in Babylon. Angelic
+     mythology founded upon Astronomy and Astrology. Planets are
+     Archangels. Angels and Devils mentioned on bowls found in
+     Mesopotamia by Layard. The probable meaning of their names.
+     Hebrews adopted Chaldee beliefs: evidence. Juvenal. Jews and
+     Chaldeans. Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees and our
+     Reformers compared. A legal anecdote. Angels in Ancient
+     Italy. Our angelic forms are of Etruscan origin. Some such
+     beings had three pairs of wings. Etruscans had guardian
+     angels for infants and children. Angels carry various
+     matters. Angels of marriage. Angels for heirs of salvation.
+     Etruscan angel of marriage. Jewish match-maker. Raphael.
+     Description of an Etruscan painting in tomb of Tarquin. The
+     angel of death. The Greek theology. The Greeks taught the
+     Jews. The Jews never taught other nations. Greeks had a
+     supreme god and a host of inferior deities. War in heaven.
+     Titans--giants. Children of the sons of God and daughters of
+     men. Greek origin of Christian and Miltonian angelic
+     mythology. The begotten Son of God (Hercules born to Jupiter
+     by Alcmena). Restores the kingdom to his father. Greek ideas
+     of demons. Hebrew and Christian ideas of good and bad
+     spirits. The recording angel. Demigods and archangels. Greek
+     deities not winged except Mercury. Some minor gods have
+     pinions.--Pegasus has wings. Hymen, the angel of the
+     covenant of marriage. Genius loci and cherubim. Alcmena and
+     Mary. Jupiter and "the power of the Highest" Roman
+     mythology. Romans adopted the Etruscan form of angels.
+     Christians adopted it from Romans. The Christian crozier is
+     the Etruscan and Roman _lituus_, or "divining staff." Rome
+     and London both avid of religious novelty. Instability in
+     religion a proof of infidelity in the old. Hence a desire
+     for infallibility, to crush doubt. Angelic mythology of the
+     Bible. Christians use words in parrot fashion. Words ought
+     not to stand for ideas. Prayer-cylinder in Thibet.
+     Contradictions. Figures and metaphors are theologian cities
+     of refuge. Prophet who says that he converses with an angel-
+     -is he to be credited? A spirit without flesh and bones,
+     cannot move his tongue to utter words. Drunkards see "blue
+     devils"--they are unreal If the appearance of a man in a
+     dream is an illusion, his words are so too. Absurd ideas
+     about phantoms. Notice of the deeds of a few Hebrew angels.
+     A resume of their history. Inspiration did not reveal
+     angels. Human fancy did. Conspiracy in Heaven! The Genesis
+     of Hell. What sort of a place it is supposed to be. God made
+     the Devil, so man must multiply his imps! Lucifer taught
+     Elohim! Old Testament less knowing than the New. The Devil
+     not a fallen angel. The book of Enoch. Deductions drawn.
+
+There is scarcely a single article in our current belief which does not
+prove, on examination, to have descended to us from Pagan sources, or to
+be identical with heathen beliefs older than the Hebrew. The idea of a
+personal God dwelling in some locality, vaguely described as "Heaven,"
+in which He reigns, and rules, like a modern emperor, has been found to
+exist in almost every nation whose language we know, and whose history
+has descended to us. Human weakness makes it so. Such a ruler has been
+called Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, Mahadeva, Bel or Baal, Melech or Moloch,
+Ormazd, Elohim, Jah, Jehovah, Jupiter, Yahu, God, and a variety of other
+names; but He has always been hailed as king, and lord of all creation,
+having a throne beside which attend a number of servitors, standing
+before and around him, all ready to do his bidding and to go wherever
+they are sent. As a potentate rules on earth over provinces far distant
+from the central government, so the heavenly monarch was, and is yet,
+supposed to have "viceroys," "lieutenants," or "vicars," who have
+authority delegated to them, and exercise it under his superintendence.
+
+A scheme such as we have described does not seem to have existed from
+the first amongst the Jews; for, when men of reasoning powers conceived
+the idea of a Creator, He was regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, and
+omnipresent. It became gradually interwoven with theology; for when men
+of limited capacity thought of such a vast empire as the universe, they,
+under the influence of a grovelling anthropomorphism, recognized, as
+they imagined, the necessity of furnishing it with a system of acquiring
+intelligence, and promulgating decrees which should be far superior to
+any postal plan devised by human kings. Amongst the Kaffirs, men with
+missives race against time, and by means of relays, messages are sent
+to vast distances in a comparatively short period. By means of horses,
+skilfully engaged beforehand, an ancient Persian tyrant could make his
+commands known all over his vast empire in the course of a few days,
+and moderns, by means of railways and the electric wire, can forward
+information at a still more rapid rate.
+
+Yet, to old theologians, and even to observant men of the present day,
+all these means of communication between God and his subjects seemed to
+be slow. We may, for example, notice a fly buzzing round the head of
+the running Kaffir, or the ears of the fleetest of Persian steeds, and
+a swallow on the wing outstrips a railway express. The velocity of the
+carrier-pigeon has long been known. All these were, therefore, regarded
+as swift-winged creatures, and fit for message bearers. As then, it was
+observed, that of all beings who could move, the bird is the swiftest
+in its movement from place to place, it was very natural that dogmatists
+should represent the messengers of the great king with powerful pinions,
+like those of the eagle or the albatross. In this manner the addition
+of wings to any mythological character sufficed to show that he who bore
+them was a celestial being; one who stood before the supreme ruler,
+and received from him delegated power--either as vicar, viceroy, or
+messenger. Thus the Greeks depicted Mercury with wings on his legs
+and elsewhere, and the Hebrews gave large pinions to their
+seraphim--sometimes as many as six being used by each (Isa. vi. 2.)
+The Etruscans pictured their angels with two wings only, and we have
+followed, implicitly, their lead. But the Hindoos did not in early times
+adopt ideas such as this. They noticed the speed of the sunbeam, the
+velocity of the hurricane, and the rapidity of thought; and since they
+saw many birds borne away by the wind, they imagined that celestial
+messengers must travel in a corresponding fashion. For one who rode upon
+the clouds of the typhoon, pinions were useless. I have in my possession
+a plate,* in which the celestial attendants on the god are all wingless,
+but have sex. The name given to the attendants referred to is "Apsaras,"
+who are described as having been produced in myriads when the ocean was
+churned. They are said to reside between the waters above the firmament
+and those below it, and are represented as being of consummate beauty
+and elegance of form, their business being to attend upon the gods and
+give them pleasure, by singing, music, dancing, and in every possible
+way. They are sometimes represented as being of both sexes, all having
+the power to change their gender. Generally, they are described as
+females, and take the business of Venus in the Greek heaven, and of the
+Houris in that provided by Mahomet and his followers. The Hindoos have
+in their theology an abode of bliss, in which the pleasures are wholly
+sensual. In this they do not differ from the Christians, except that the
+latter only expect to indulge in music and a sanctified vengeance.
+
+     * Plate x., vol. 1, "Recherches sur l'origine, &c., des Arts
+     de la Grece," D'Harcanville, London, 1785. The author states
+     that the plate is copied from Le Voyage de Niebuhr, T. 1,
+     Tab. vi.
+
+With great ingenuity the Hebrews conceived that the will of God must
+be equivalent to His wish--that His wish must be the same as a command,
+and, consequently, that He could send His messenger from one spot
+to another in an instant; or, if He chose, He could go Himself and
+communicate personally, as He did with Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and
+Joshua. For such a Being even light would be too slow (see Psalm xviii.
+10; civ. 3, 4).
+
+From a similar thought arose the stories which have found their way into
+our fairy mythology of "wishing caps" which would enable the bearer to
+pass in an instant of time, and wholly invisibly, from one part of the
+world to another. In oriental countries, a carpet or a coat was the
+carrying agent, whilst amongst the more clumsy story-tellers of Europe,
+a pair of boots was furnished, whose wearer could cover twenty miles at
+a stride.
+
+In the plenitude of our prejudice we may smile at the caprice which
+invented the "wishing cap;" but if we reflect calmly upon the matter,
+we discover more depth of thought in this than has been shown in the
+formation of tales in which winged angels are introduced. The contrast
+will readily be recognized if we take a scene from "Fortunatus," and
+another from the Old Testament The former, by putting on a cap, could
+transport himself in a moment from Formosa to Great Britain. Whereas
+we learn, from Genesis xviii, that three angelic men took "a walk" from
+somewhere to Sodom, that they might see what sort of a place it really
+was. The hero in the fairy tale was not fatigued; the angels of the
+Hebrew mythology were glad to wash their feet, and to eat and drink, so
+as to recruit their energies (v. 8; Ps. lxxviii. 25.) A mythical
+tale like this demonstrates incontestably the mean condition of the
+story-teller, who does not furnish Jehovah even with a mule or ass, but
+makes Him go afoot.
+
+We must, therefore, regard the theological contrivance which furnished
+angels with wings, as being a clumsy one; indicating superficiality,
+rather than profound thought, and emanating from human infirmity rather
+than divine inspiration or direct revelation. We shall see this more
+distinctly if we inquire into the ideas necessarily associated with
+wings.
+
+The theologians who have furnished their ideal messengers with wings
+show, in the first place, that they have the idea of an air upon which
+the sails can strike--of muscular structures to move the pinions, and
+of the necessity for food to enable the motive power to be kept up. The
+idea of a winged angel, therefore, necessarily implies a belief in the
+presence of a solid material body moving through an aeriform fluid,
+resembling the atmosphere just above the earth's surface. That there
+really was this belief associated with celestial messengers we find
+in the Jewish scriptures, wherein it is stated, as if it were a common
+occurrence, that angels came to talk familiarly with men; as, for
+example, Gen. xviii, xix., xxxii.; and Judges i., where we are told
+that an angel came from Gilgal to Bochim, to deliver a statement, to the
+Hebrews, such as a silly girl at Lourdes asserted the Virgin Mary had
+come from Heaven to make to her; see also Judges xiii., and the book of
+Tobit.
+
+That angels were, moreover, supposed to possess thews and sinews, we
+find from Gen. xxxii. 24-30, wherein we are told that some celestial
+being wrestled with Jacob, but could not prevail against him. In a
+previous chapter, although it is only in a dream, Jacob saw them mount
+and descend a ladder as if their wings--if they then had them--were
+useless.
+
+We shall not now be far from the truth, if we affirm that winged
+messengers, envoys, or angels, can only be supposed to exist by
+individuals whose god is nothing more than a man without universal power
+and knowledge. To any one who believes God to be omnipresent, the idea
+of His having ambassadors, or vicars upon earth, is blasphemous.
+
+The comparative coarseness of those minds which fabricated the notion
+of winged men, as celestial messengers, will be the more certainly
+recognised, if we examine into the pictorial conception which they have
+permitted, and still allow, to pass, for the embodiment of their idea.
+Let me, for example, invite the reader to cast his mental eye over the
+winged men-like bulls, &c., of Assyria and Babylonia; the winged genii
+of the ancient Egyptians; the winged soul and angel of Death of the
+Etruscans; the angels of ancient and modern Christian painters; and the
+pinioned heads which came from the walls to listen to the music of Saint
+Cecilia--according to Papal legends--and then to try to discover the
+locality of the muscular organs which are necessary to give movement to
+the wings. Everybody who has ever carved, at his dinner-table, a grouse,
+partridge, pheasant, duck, or other fowl, must be aware of the enormous
+mass of flesh which is associated with the wings. If we bare the breast
+and remove the pinion bones from any bird which flies--(it is necessary
+to make this proviso, for such as the dodo, the apteryx, the ostrich,
+emu, and others, have wings which are only rudimentary, and not used for
+flight)--we find but a very meagre body remaining behind. Hence we see
+the necessity of furnishing an imaginary angel which has wings with
+muscles that will enable the pinions to be used; but in no pictorial
+representation of an angelic messenger do we ever find the ordinary
+figure of a man departed from, or any provision made for muscles to
+move the feathered organs. And we must notice, in passing, that it is
+monstrous to suppose that a man must become, in part, a bird ere he can
+be useful to a god!
+
+Again, we recognize in the conventional form of angels a total absence
+of knowledge of natural history, of gravity, of force, &c. Let us, for
+example, imagine for a moment that the metaphorical wings are real ones
+used in flight. We see directly that they will only raise the individual
+perpendicularly into the air. The angelic human creature, even if his
+wings were--as they ought to do--to replace his arms, would still lack
+a tail, to use as a rudder to direct his flight. It is clear, then, that
+no one has seen an angel, and that those who have pretended to have done
+so, were deeply ignorant men. To make our observations upon this point
+somewhat more comprehensible, we may just refer to the fact that many
+individuals, misled apparently by the mass of ideal celestial men--or
+angels--which are to be seen in almost every cathedral or parish church
+in Europe, have conceived the idea that they could fly, if only they
+could contrive the necessary apparatus to append to their arms, legs,
+or both; in other words, many men have fancied that they could do better
+for themselves than nature has done for them. But a few minutes' calm
+thought would teach any one familiar with the composition of forces,
+that an attempt at the imitation of a bird's flight must be a failure in
+man. Let me show this by a simple observation: A bird extends its wings,
+and by a strong stroke towards its own body, rises into the air, though
+neither solid nor rigid, both wings and air have apparently been so. In
+imitation of this bird, we will now suppose that a man places himself,
+with arms outspread, like the letter T between two uprights, forming
+something like the letter U.
+
+The individual would then be represented thus [J]--unlike the bird,
+his _point d' appui_ would be solid, and his arms would be far more
+unyielding than feathers. Yet not one athlete in a million could spring
+upwards, so as to stand upon the summit of the U. Man's "pectoral
+muscles"--as physiologists call the mass of flesh below the collar bone
+and above the nipple--are intended to move the arm; the bird's pectoral
+muscles are intended to move the body. Cut off a man's arms and
+pectorals--the counterpart of the bird's wings and fleshy breast--and he
+has barely lost a tenth part of his weight; on the other hand, cut off
+the corresponding parts of a bird, i.e.t the pinions and the muscles
+which move them, and not a tenth part of the original weight is left
+behind. Speaking coarsely, we may then affirm that man's body is
+relatively about a hundred times heavier--air being the standard--than
+that of a bird, and his pectoral muscles, relatively to his body, a
+hundred times less in bulk. Consequently, even if a human being could,
+by muscular action, develop the bulk of his "pectorals," so that they
+should be relatively to the rest of his frame, equal to those of a
+bird, still his bulk would be so much more solid than that of the bird's
+bones, flesh, and feathers, that his power of flight would be a hundred
+times less. A man, with the exception of his lungs, is in health, solid
+or fluid, in every part of him; a bird's bones, on the contrary, are
+everywhere permeated by air cavities, which make them as light as pith
+or cotton wool. A pound of lead and a pound of feathers are certainly
+equal in weight, yet, if both are allowed to drop from a balloon, the
+first will reach the ground a long time before the second. In like
+manner, by contrivance, I could with my breath sustain an ounce of
+eiderdown in the air, although I am quite powerless to sustain, by like
+means, the same quantity of solid meat. I say nothing of the relative
+position of the shoulder-joint in man and birds--although the point is
+physiologically important.
+
+Again, we may assert that the originators of the angelic mythology were
+absolutely ignorant of that which is called comparative anatomy. We
+have already expressed our belief that no one has a right to expect that
+people will believe in the reality of a man's knowledge respecting
+the unseen world, so long as he is palpably at fault in his notions
+respecting the visible creation. Consequently we assert that one who
+is careless as regards actual phenomena and ignorant of common truths,
+cannot be trusted in metaphorical, mythological, or divine lore.
+
+A comparatively small amount of observation proves to us that amongst
+the highest classes of animal life, the wing is the counterpart of the
+arm or of the fore-leg. In the creature called the "flying squirrel,"
+there is no pinion as there is in the "condor,"--there is simply an
+unusual development of skin which unites the fore and hind limbs much in
+the same way as the web unites together the toes of the goose or duck.
+In the bat, which, though a mammal, is allied, as regards its power of
+flight, to the birds, we find that the fore-leg is developed so as to
+make a bony frame on which a thin skin may be stretched, which is still
+farther strengthened by being attached to the hind leg. In the ordinary
+bird, the skin which we see in the bat and flying squirrel is replaced
+by feathers, which are longer, broader, and lighter than a fold of skin.
+The ordinary method, therefore, in which angelic beings are depicted
+does not associate them with the highest classes of animal life.
+Our modern artists are much more skilful in depicting Satan than in
+pourtraying Raphael, Gabriel, or Michael.
+
+Our last remarks would be comparatively unimportant, were it not that
+the close observation which the moderns have given, to every thing
+connected with natural history, has shown us that there is a harmony
+throughout creation. No animals have noses on their backs, nor eyes in
+their hind legs. No insect--so far as I can remember--has a thick neck;
+nor has any mammal or bird a thin one, like the wasp, bee, or fly. As we
+imagine that it is proper to extend our knowledge rather by the lights
+which we have already attained, than by silly or hap-hazard guessing, so
+we think that it is better to investigate the subject of angelic forms
+by comparative anatomy, than by the dreams of divines, who probably have
+never studied any other subject than the best means of gaining influence
+over their fellow-mortals. We assert that there is not in all the
+creation, known to man, any creature with arms and legs--or their
+equivalents, legs and wings, or fore-legs and hind legs--which has, in
+addition, wings upon arms, legs, head, or back. In such a combination
+there is something monstrous. I confess that I could, if satisfactory
+evidence were given, credit the occurrence of a devil with a tail--of a
+centaur with a horse's body and a human head--but I could not possibly
+believe that Satan went about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he could
+devour in the dress of a bull with bat-like wings, as well as horns and
+hoofs; or that an angel of God approaches us in a form nearer to the
+scarabseus of Egypt than to the human form divine. Yet when we say that
+a pictorial angel approaches nearer to a beetle that revels in
+filth, than to an etherial essence which ought to be very close upon
+perfection, we are still far from precision. Ladybirds, cockchafers, and
+others of the class allied to the scarabseus that was almost deified
+in Egypt, have six legs, two wings, and two wing cases--ten means of
+locomotion in all. Butterflies, moths, and the like, have six legs and
+two wings. Consequently, if there be any design in creation, and angels
+have been created, they can only be regarded as the connecting link
+between the highest and the lowest classes of animal life.
+
+If then, there be such a thing as harmony of design in Creation--if the
+Creator be not the author of confusion (1 Cor. xiv. 33)--if matter be
+material, and imponderable forces cannot be weighed or made otherwise
+recognisable by the senses, except by their effects--if the Almighty be
+omnipresent and omniscient, it is absolutely impossible for a thoughtful
+mind to believe in the existence of angels in any shape--whether
+material, immaterial, or essential. But this consideration forces us
+still further, and we feel compelled to ask ourselves, whether, with
+our minds constituted as they are, we can believe in, or understand
+any thing wholly immaterial? Whether we can imagine the existence, for,
+example, of "force" without matter?--a shape which is formless?--a form
+visible to the eye, yet wholly immaterial?
+
+It seems to me to be desirable, at the present day, to call attention to
+this point in a particular manner, inasmuch as there are vast numbers,
+both in Europe and America, who believe in what is called Spiritualism,
+and are, in reality, as greatly the dupes of charlatans as were the
+disciples of Alexander the false prophet, whose history we gave in vol.
+II. The jargon of these pretenders is based upon the assertion in the
+Bible that there are spirits--the accounts of certain of these returning
+to the earth which they have quitted, or conversing with human beings in
+dreams, or in reality. But both they and their victims fail to see that
+a spirit, being without a material existence, cannot put matter into
+motion--it cannot produce the waves in the ether that cause those
+impressions on eye and ear which give the idea of sight and sound.
+We may best give our reader a glimpse of our meaning, if we compare a
+spirit to a picture projected on a sheet by a magic lantern. It is true
+that we can see it--yet we know that it is powerless to hear, to speak,
+to move; it cannot of itself even vanish. Yet there are many onlookers
+who, by a ventriloquist, can be made to believe that the picture speaks.
+
+After prolonged observation, I believe that spirits, angels, demons, &c.,
+have no reality except in the delusions of individuals whose diseased
+brains induce them to believe that they see apparitions and hear them
+speak. To this matter we shall probably return by and by.
+
+We may now revert to a subject which we mentioned incidentally a few
+pages back--viz., the ideas which induced priestly inventors to depict
+the angels of their imagination in a particular form. Those who are
+familiar with the Bible, and not with any other book, and who decline to
+examine into the ways of God in the universe generally, will naturally
+reply to our strictures that the angels of the Jews were described in
+a particular fashion, because they were seen "in the visions of Elohim"
+(Ezek. i. 1; Dan. x. 5, 6; and Rev. i. 10-20). But this observation
+involves the idea that the angels which have appeared are so various
+in shape, that an individual who had seen and described one, could not
+enable another man to recognize a similar messenger when seen under
+another form. In Genesis xviii, xix., xxxii., and Judges xiii, angels
+assume the form of men; in Isaiah vi. they have six wings--one pair being
+used to cover the face, another to cover the feet, and another to
+fly with. To this it may be objected that what Isaiah described were
+seraphim; yet verse 6 shows that one of these, at least, was a messenger
+or envoy. In Ezekiel i. we find an apparent description of angels, or an
+envoy, which is so involved that it is most difficult to understand it.
+In Daniel x. an archangel is described as a brilliant man whose body was
+like the beryl--_tarshish_--a stone of a sea-green colour probably; or,
+possibly, a topaz, "whose eyes were like lightning, and whose arms and
+feet were like polished brass, and whose loins were girded with fine
+gold"--as if to conceal his sex--a characteristic which we find, from
+Matt. xxii. 30, angels do not possess. The writer's description must,
+therefore, be classed with that of afreets, genii, and the like, in the
+_Arabian Nights_ tales. In Zechariah, again, we find an angel or envoys
+described (ch. i.)--(a), "as a man riding upon a red horse," having
+behind him "red horses, speckled and white" (v. 8); (6), as "four horns"
+(vv. 18,19); (c), as "four carpenters" (w. 20, 21.) Again, in chap, v.,
+we find an angel in "a flying roll;" another in "an ephah;" another in
+a big piece of lead, and another in a woman, and still another in two
+beings of the same nature.
+
+We can readily understand that some who are unacquainted with lunatics,
+would describe these portraitures as the result of insanity or
+hallucination; but those who are more conversant with persons of unsound
+mind will doubt whether any ordinary insane persons ever see or describe
+things which they have never met with. One or two, certainly, have
+wonderful flights of imagination, but these have been highly educated
+men of extensive reading, &c. In mania, when visions are seen, some
+person or other whose description has been read by the lunatic, or who
+has really been observed, appears--or something which the individual has
+seen depicted, or otherwise been told of, presents itself, or there is
+a strange jumble of reality and possibility--just as in dreams,
+comical, grotesque, or horrible combinations are common, and cause us no
+surprise. There is, however, too much consistency in the method in which
+angels are depicted, to enable us to believe that their form was decided
+by any lunatic or dreamer.
+
+We scarcely can form an idea whether the Egyptians had a definite belief
+in angels, as the word is understood by moderns. With them, as it was
+with the Greeks, it is most probable that all beings which Jews
+and Christians alike would call angels, were designated "gods" or
+"demigods." Be this as it may, we find that the Mizraim had deities who
+wore wings. A round disc, apparently intended to represent the sun, two
+erected serpents to support it, and a long broad pinion on each side of
+the body, was symbolic of "the Supreme." The same may be said to be true
+of Assyria and Persia--only that in the symbolism of the two last,
+the serpents did not, generally, appear. In plate 30a, of Wilkinson's
+_Ancient Egyptians, 2d series_, a human figure is represented as winged,
+and before him is a five-rayed star. In plate 35 of the same book, Isis
+is represented as a nude woman, winged; the position of one pinion being
+such that it serves to conceal the body from the waist almost to
+the knees. In plate 36, "Athor" is depicted as being attended by a
+human-headed bird. On the other hand, in plate 39, where the gods are
+instructing the king in the use of the bow, the former are bird-headed
+men without wings. Whilst in plate 44, the soul of a dying man is
+represented as a human-headed bird with wings, arms, and legs. In plates
+52, 53 of the same work, we notice specimens of winged serpents. In
+plate 63, Isis again appears as a wing bearer, and in this figure we
+find, as we ought to do, that the feathers of the pinions are attached
+to the arms of the goddess.
+
+In Assyria, we may gather from the sculptures which have been preserved,
+that there was not any idea of angels being essentially different to
+gods. Indeed, it is very difficult wherever there is a polytheism in any
+form, to understand the distinction between a god and an angel Even in
+the religion which passes current as "the Christian," which acknowledges
+three gods as "coeternal together and coequal," we are distinctly
+told that one of the three "proceeds" from the father and the son
+(_Athanasian Creed_). The New Testament, again, repeatedly informs
+us that the son was "sent" into this world by his father to effect a
+special purpose--e.g.t "God sent his only begotten son into the world,
+that we might live through him" (1 John iv. 9; see also John iii. 16, 17;
+Matt. xxi. 37; Mark xii. 4; John v. 38; vi. 29; vii. 28, 29; and compare
+with John i. 33 and Mal.iii. 1-3). If, therefore, we regard the bearer
+of a message or an order from the supreme king as an "angel," Jesus of
+Nazareth was certainly one, inasmuch as he said that he was sent hither
+by the father of all; and the Holy Ghost was another, for we find John
+(xv. 26) stating that Jesus would send him to the earth--an assertion
+repeated in chap, xvi. 7--whilst in the fourteenth chapter of the same
+book we observe that the father was to send this comforter, who was
+to abide in this world for ever (v. 16). Indeed, the presumed
+identification of Jesus with the promised Messiah, "the prince" of Dan.
+ix. 25, shows the belief that he was one who was as much appointed to
+do a certain duty as was that "angel of death" which went out to destroy
+the Assyrian army (2 Kin. xix. 35).
+
+With such indicated reservation, we notice that the angel which the gods
+sent to watch over various Assyrian kings is depicted almost invariably
+with wings. Now he is an archer, standing in a disc representing the
+sun, having wings below him; now he stands in front of the circle, the
+pinions and sometimes his body terminating in feathers resembling a
+bird's expanded tail. Then, again, the minor divinities bear wings, some
+of them no less than four (Bonomi's _Nineveh_, 2d ed. p. 157). It would
+be superfluous to linger over a description of the winged bulls with
+human heads, and the winged men with eagle or hawks' faces, which are
+so familiar to us in consequence of the researches of Layard and others.
+All alike bear testimony to the connection, in human celestialism,
+between birds and men. Nor can we reasonably doubt, that the idea
+intended to be conveyed by the inventor of the Assyrian composition
+which we refer to was, that the being, thus symbolized, was famous for
+strength like the bull; for rapidity of movement, like the eagle; and
+for wisdom, like a man.
+
+There is to be found amongst the relics of the ancient Persians a symbol
+of an angel who was supposed specially to guard the king. This somewhat
+resembles that used at Nineveh. There are, however, many forms of it.
+For example, we find in Hyde's _De Religione veterum Persarum_ (Table
+6) a figure of a Persepolitan king, above whom, in the air, and quite
+distinct from the sun, stands a venerable man fully draped, standing
+upon what seems to be a large pine cone reversed, which is surrounded
+by clouds instead of being furnished with wings. The man thus depicted
+extends the forefinger of one hand to the sun, whilst with the other
+he holds a ring. In Table 6 Mithra is represented as winged, after the
+modern fashion of angels.
+
+Hyde assures us, in chapter twelve, that twelve angels were recognized
+by the ancient Persians, in addition to those who presided over the
+months and days. One of these appears to be the same as the Greek
+Rhadamanthus, who sat as supreme judge in the invisible world, and
+apportioned to the dead their rewards or punishments. A second was
+equivalent to Neptune and ruled the sea, but he had also under his
+charge everything which related to generation, or production generally.
+The third was much the same as the more modern Lares and Penates, and
+superintended dwelling-houses and families. The fourth had a somewhat
+similar and subordinate office. The fifth was named after the stars, and
+had his kingdom in the south heavens. The sixth the learned author does
+not describe. The seventh really seems to be a sort of duplicate angel,
+called Haruts and Maruts, who were two naughty ones that rebelled, and
+are, according to some, imprisoned still in Babylon, being hung up by
+the heels. The eighth, Hyde is himself doubtful about, and does not
+describe. The ninth is the same as the German "storm-king." The tenth
+may fairly be styled the "angel of the victualling department." The
+eleventh is the giver of life, the opponent of Azrael, the minister of
+death; and the twelfth angel is one which we may call either by the name
+of "conscience" or "judgment" for he it is who approves or reprobates
+the works of man.
+
+Though I quote from Hyde, I am somewhat doubtful of the value of his
+authority. He relies to a considerable extent upon the work known as the
+"Zend Avesta," and supposed to represent the tenets of Zoroaster and his
+followers. This book is, as I have mentioned, generally believed to be
+a genuine relic of antiquity by Continental scholars, though it is
+mistrusted by British orientalists, who regard it as a modern production
+founded upon Aryanism, Christianity, and Maho-metanism. In my judgment,
+my compatriots are right; and if it be proper to trust such a man as
+Sir H. Rawlinson in the matter of the "Avesta," one may be pardoned for
+believing with him that the book of Job was written by a Persian Jew, or
+translated by a Hebrew from a work in the time of Darius, or some other
+of the Achoemenidae.
+
+In Job angels are only once mentioned--viz., in chap. iv. 18, and then
+they are spoken of in such a way, that we are doubtful whether or not
+to regard the verse simply as a poetic metaphor. The idea which runs
+through the part of the chapter in which the passage occurs is this:
+"Job, you are suffering; the innocent do not perish; the righteous are
+not cut off; you have been very proper; man has nothing to say against
+you; but you are not right in accusing God of injustice; you doubtless
+have done some wrong, for even God's servants are not wholly trusted;
+they sometimes misbehave unknowingly, and his own angels are called
+perverse by him (Job iv. 18); you cannot expect to be better than they,
+and it is no shame to you to be in the same category as they are."
+
+But it must be allowed that the words of the story--"There was a day
+when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and
+Satan came also among them; and the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest
+thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in
+the earth, and from walking up and down in it"--do really intimate
+a full belief in good angels and bad, who were not so much angels,
+messengers, or envoys, as subordinate powers resembling the barons of
+ancient England, the Paladins of Charlemagne, or the kings created by
+Buonaparte; amongst whom all were, so to speak, "good angels," except
+Bernadotte, of Sweden, who rebelled against the imperial thraldom, and
+became to his late master a modern satan. In whichever way we regard the
+subject of angels, amongst the Persians there is little doubt that
+the Iranian conception of God was wholly anthropomorphic, and that
+the Medians and their magi, as well as their Persian neighbours,
+acknowledged a "father of lies," who was antagonistic to the deity.*
+
+     * Quintus Curtius informs us (_Life of Alexander the Great_,
+     b. v. a ii.) that Darius had in Babylon a consecrated table,
+     from which he used to eat; that Alexander began to be
+     ashamed of his sacrilege in treading upon it--(it had been
+     placed as a footstool for his imperial chair)--the sacrilege
+     being against the gods presiding over hospitality, carved
+     upon the table. These may be regarded as angels or
+     otherwise, according to fancy.
+
+Our knowledge of the angelic mythology of Babylonia is comparatively
+slight. The main thing which shrouds the subject in darkness is the
+difficulty which exists to distinguish between god, gods, and angels. If
+we could put any confidence in the book of Daniel, we should recognize
+therefrom that his "Nebuchadnezzar" most distinctly believed in the
+existence of angels, for in chap. iii. 25 he believes that he sees the
+son of God (_bar elohim_), and in verse 28 of the same chap. he remarks
+that "God hath sent his angel (_malachah_), and delivered his servants
+that trusted in him." Again, in the fourth chapter, in which he recounts
+a dream, he declares that he saw "a watcher and a holy one" (_geer and
+kadesk_) come down from heaven with a message to him. But Daniel is not
+an adequate authority upon ancient Babylonian beliefs. We are, in the
+absence of direct testimony upon this subject" driven to such evidence
+as is drawn from sculptured or other remains in ruins and on gems, and
+to cuneiform and other writings. George Rawlinson sums up his account
+thus--(_Ancient Monarchies_, vol. I, ch. vii., pp. 138, 9): "Various
+deities, whom it was not considered at all necessary to trace to a
+single stock, divided the allegiance of the people, and even of the
+kings, who regarded with equal respect, and glorified with exalted
+epithets, some fifteen or sixteen personages. Next to these principal
+gods were a far more numerous assemblage of inferior or secondary
+divinities, less often mentioned, and regarded as less worthy of honour,
+but still recognized generally through the country. Finally, the
+Pantheon contained a host of mere local gods or genii, every town and
+almost every village in Babylonia being under the protection of its own
+particular divinity."
+
+The passage above quoted, which represents very fairly our existent
+knowledge, suggests to the thoughtful mind a comparison with other
+religions. In Greece there were many great gods and goddesses, and
+other divinities of less renown. In Rome there were gods for almost
+everything. But what these nations called "gods" the Hebrews called
+"angels," as we shall see shortly. In Christendom angels and gods have,
+as a general rule, been deposed, and "saints" have taken their
+places. Not only has every town a cathedral which is dedicated to some
+particular name--said to have been borne by a holy man or woman, whose
+aid in heaven is thus secured by his votaries upon earth--but every
+church in every parish, and every chapel in every church is set apart to
+a particular "saint." Still farther, every trade and every position in
+life has its tutelary patron in heaven, and secondary gods are as
+common in Papal districts as they were in the land of the Chaldeans. The
+philosopher cannot find a valid distinction between Ishtar, Venus, and
+Mary, Dionysus and Denis, and a host of other gods, saints, or angels.
+
+Assuming that the minor gods of Greece and Rome, and those essences
+generally called "angels" are substantially the same order of beings,
+we find that the Babylonians had a great number of celestial envoys,
+viceroys, or messengers who ruled over the land and sea,
+the sky and storms, the thunder and the rain, crops, men, war,
+buildings--everything, indeed, was superintended by some one on behalf
+of the Supreme Ruler.
+
+We might pause here to speculate upon the question whether there is any
+difference in kind between such a kingdom as Babylonia or Russia and the
+heaven believed in by the ancient Jews and the modern Christians. In
+all there is an autocratic sovereign who has a prime minister and
+secretaries of state, who keep his books and perform his will according
+to his bidding; under these again there are private clerks, who
+superintend wind and weather, rain and hail, snow and frost; governors
+of provinces, mayors, or prefects of cities; police, and so large a host
+of subordinates, that nothing, great or small, can be done which escapes
+the notice of one of the imperial envoys or ministers. The inventor
+of heaven, such as we know it, was certainly an admirer of
+'centralization'. Those who desire to see the description of the unseen
+world modified are those who are opposed to an absolute monarchy, and
+who see in everything, everybody, and in all the world a proof of the
+presence of a supreme, omniscient, omnipresent, Creator, Ruler, or
+Governor.
+
+Without going into an account of the Chaldean mythology, we may say that
+there is strong reason to believe, both from the nomenclature which has
+survived, and from such gems as are preserved from destruction, that
+every Babylonian, whether bond or free, was called after some deity, who
+was supposed ever afterwards to be his tutelary angel In modern times
+Roman Catholics hold a similar belief, and each parent imagines that by
+making selection, for his offspring, of the name of a particular saint,
+the latter can be induced to take the child under its special care.
+
+The learned in papal mythology know that every saint is depicted in
+such a manner that none shall be mistaken. To such an extent indeed is
+pictorial contrivance carried, that the art of recognising a particular
+saint demands a special study. It is all but certain that the same
+custom prevailed in Babylon; but, as all the professors which taught the
+means of identification have passed away, we can only guess at the
+name or nature of the angel. Let us imagine, for example, what an
+archaeologist could make of the figure of Mary--of the bleeding or
+burning heart, two thousand years after all history of the mother of
+Jesus has passed away, like that of Ishtar has done. A curious figure,
+called heart-shaped, but really not so, is found placed on the central
+part of a woman's breast; from it flames appear to arise and blood
+to drop, and through it is a dagger, and this mass of imagery is put
+outside the body, and the dress is held open to enable any one to see
+it.
+
+Without a key to the enigma, this is a mystery; but when the key is
+given, and the inquirer hears the explanation, he finds it so absurd
+that it is difficult to believe it. In like manner, when I see upon a
+Babylonian gem, copied as a vignette on the title-page of Landseer's
+_Sabean Researches_, a woman who has a beard, a necklace, two small
+breasts, from each of which she squeezes apparently a river of milk;
+over whose breastbone there is one large globe and two small ones,
+placed perpendicularly; who has a spider waist, and wears a skirt
+covered with pistol-shaped ornaments, I, not knowing whether the
+Chaldeans adored "our lady of the flowing bosom," cannot frame an idea
+as to the name of the saint, angel, virgin, or martyr which is depicted,
+or what may have been her peculiar duties, who she was, and what trade
+she patronised.
+
+Whatever idea the Papal Church entertains respecting her canonised
+saints, one thing is remarkable, viz., that they are not portrayed as
+having wings. Each has an aureole of some sort round his or her head--a
+painter's contrivance for saying "This individual, who seems like a man
+or woman, is not a common but a divine creature." Francis of Assisi is,
+in addition, depicted with stigmata, or marks on his hands, feet, and
+side, which, though they resemble those made with nails in the case of
+Jesus of Nazareth, were doubtless, in the case of the "saint," made with
+the strong caustic called "spirit of salt" or other escharotic. We
+might speculate upon the state of mind which sees in the assumption
+of "stigmata" a greater evidence of faith than would be offered by the
+conversion of the arms into the pinions of Michael the archangel; but,
+as it is so much easier for even the most potent saint to make breaches
+in his skin, than to persuade feathers to grow on his arms, we do not
+think the task worthy of our care.
+
+The Babylonians in this respect were predecessors of papal pagans. It is
+a rare thing to find on any of their gems a winged angel or genius. One
+such is depicted on the frontispiece of Landseer's _Sabean Researches_,
+which is birdlike both as regards the head and pinions; and four other
+winged creatures are given in Lajard's _Culte de Venus_. In two the
+figures are human headed, and combined with the body of a quadruped.
+At a later period of Babylonian mythology "grotesques" were introduced,
+apparently from Egypt.
+
+It is not to be lightly passed by, that the symbol which represented the
+presence of the deity--which, if we may adopt a phrase, we should call
+"the angel of his presence" (see Exod. xxxiii. 14,15; Isa, lxiii. 9), is
+almost identical in the Chaldean and the papal religions, viz., a circle
+containing a cross, an emblem as common in our churchyards as in the
+capital of Nebuchadnezzar.
+
+The resemblance between papal and Chaldean emblems and doctrines have
+repeatedly attracted the attention of theologians; and I am not far
+wrong in asserting that Protestants generally have identified "the
+woman" of Revelation xvii., spoken of as "Mystery, Babylon the Great,
+the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth," with Rome under
+the popes. For myself I do not care to express any opinion on the point,
+beyond a general dissent from the popular estimation of the dictum and
+its interpretation. At the same time I must declare that every year,
+over which my inquiries have extended, has imbued me more and more with
+wonder at the similarity between the ancient Babylonian and the modern
+papal religion. The two resemble children of the same parents, only that
+one is older than the other; and it requires but little penetration in
+an observer to trace in both, the lineaments of a grovelling
+superstition, united with a base priestly cunning.
+
+In our own estimation the strongest evidence in favour of a belief in
+angels, of every degree, amongst the Chaldeans and Babylonians is the
+enormous development of angelic mythology amongst the Jews, who lived
+in the city of Nebuchadnezzar, and in those who migrated thence into
+Palestine subsequent to the period of the captivity. From indications,
+which are necessarily imperfect, we have formed the opinion that the
+Babylonians were astronomical students of great proficiency, from a very
+remote antiquity; that many of these professors turned their attention
+to what is called judicial astrology--i.e., they attempted to judge
+of future events by certain phenomena occurring in the heavens, and
+especially in the relationship between different planets and the various
+constellations.
+
+As the planets wander through the sky, naturally they were regarded as
+the messengers of El--"the Supreme," who sent them to investigate the
+condition of groups of stars, many of which formed a sort of community
+that was unvisited by the Great King, for months together, and, in
+many instances, not at all.As the heliacal rising of one star seemed
+generally to be followed by good weather, and the corresponding rise
+of another intimated the reverse, it was natural that one should be
+regarded as an angel of happiness, the other as a harbinger of misery
+or death. So strongly rooted is this belief amongst some, that it even
+"holds its own" in educated England. The astronomer Royal is often asked
+to cast a nativity; and a living merchant of Liverpool does so yet,
+having confidence that his deductions suffice to prove their value.
+
+The formula is "_Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus_"--"The
+stars rule men, but God rules the stars." A guardian star, then, that is
+to say, the particular planet or other conspicuous celestial body which
+was "in the ascendant" at the period of the birth of each individual,
+was regarded in the same light as Christians esteem protective angels
+and Romanists estimate patron saints. There can be, we think, little
+doubt that the seven archangels are the seven planets known to the
+ancients, each of which had a day dedicated to it, and who thus
+originated the week of seven days. These amongst the Phoenicians were
+called the Cabeiri, or the powerful ones. In the conclusion at which we
+have arrived we are greatly strengthened by the discovery in Babylonian
+ruins of certain bowls; facsimiles and descriptions of which are given
+in Layard's Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 510-526. The inscriptions which
+have been translated appear to be forms of exorcism, or amulets, by
+which evil spirits are to be driven away; and reference is made in these
+writings to the devil, for example, under the name _shida_; and to
+Satan under the cognomen _Satanah_, evidently the same as the Satanas
+habitually used in the New Testament; also to Nirich, probably from
+a root like the Hebrew _narag_, "a noise maker or screamer." This
+creature, as I think, is the same as the "Satyr" of Isaiah xiii. 21,
+and xxxiv. 14, and represents or personifies those unseen but howling
+maniacs who wandered about at night (see _Lilith and Satyr_ in my second
+volume). Another demon is called _Zachiah_, a cognomen which I cannot
+satisfactorily explain unless it is allied to _Zachar,_ and indicates
+the power which, as the French would say, "can tie a knot in the needle"
+(nouer l'aiguilette) or "a levin brand." Another of the devils is called
+"Abitur of the Mountain," whose name resembling, as it does, the Jewish
+_Abiathar_, is more likely to belong to the good than the bad angels.
+Lilith is another demon still feared by the Jews, who employ charms
+against her to this day. She is supposed to be a sort of spiritual
+vampyre, and to suck the life out of infants and young people. These
+names of angels occur in the first inscription given by Layard; in
+the second we find Satan, associated with idolatry, curses, vows,
+whisperings, witchcraft, and _Zevatta_--a concealer, rider, or enchanter
+from root like this and answering to the fairy which steals away.
+
+     "It was between the night and day
+     When the fairy king has power,
+     That I sank down in a sinful fray,
+     And 'twixt life and death was snatcht away
+     To the joyless Elfin bower."
+
+     --Lady of the Lake, canto iv., stanza xv.
+
+Another is named _Nidra_, which I take to signify vows made by supposed
+sorcerers. This demon is associated in the same line with _Zevatta_
+above described. _Patiki_ is another bad influence, probably now, "a
+sword," for the charm has reference to freedom from captivity. Another
+devil is called _Isarta_, which I take to be a leader of banditti or
+marauders, from the Assyrian word (Furst's lexicon s.v. _asar_),
+"a leader, head or commander," and a word from a root like _ta_, "to
+drive," "to push forward," "to sweep away." We should call such an one
+"the demon of destruction."
+
+In this same inscription two good angels are named, Batiel or Bethiail,
+probably a variant of Bethuel, "the residence of El," and Katuel or
+Kathuail, the executioner or sword of El, from _katal_, to kill; compare
+this with the expression, "Or if I bring a sword upon that land, and
+say, sword, go through that land, so that I put off man and beast
+from it" (Ezek. xiv. 17). In addition to these two angels another
+is mentioned who has eleven names, not one of which is written in
+full--e.g. SS. BB. CCC.
+
+In a third inscription a devil is named "Abdi," which may be derived
+from the root _abad_, and be regarded as the same as the New Testament
+Abaddon (Rev. ix. 10)--the king of the slaughterers, bucaneers, rovers,
+&c. We can fancy that Negroes who are captured and sold in droves
+to foreigners, might imagine that Abdi was the devil which ruled the
+African slave drivers and Christian purchasers. This demon is associated
+with Levatta,--with tribulations, the machinations of the Assyrians,
+misery, treachery, rebellion; Nidra, with sorrows generally; and _Shoq_,
+which I take to be from a root like _shuq, or shaqaq_--i.e., "enemies
+thirsting for booty, rangers, bands of robbers." Compare--"And the
+spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines in three companies"
+(1 Sam. xiii. 17). See also--He "delivered them into the hand of the
+spoilers" (Jud. ii. 14; 2 Kin. xvii. 20). Amongst the devils must, I
+think, also be classed _Asdarta_, which is clearly the same as the
+goddess Astarte, and she is closely associated with "the machinations of
+the Assyrians."
+
+The good angels of this inscription are Barakiel, Ramiel, Raamiel,
+Nahabiel, and Sharmiel, over whose names we will not now linger, except
+to notice that the devils have names compounded with _jah_, whilst the
+good ones are derived from EL.
+
+In the fifth inscription, amongst the bad things are mentioned evil
+spirits, both male and female, the evil eye, sorcery, and enchantments
+both from men and women, along with Nidra and Levatta. The good angels
+are called Babnaa, Ninikia, and Umanel, which I take to be intended
+for Wu, _banahel_=El builds, or "the strong one who establishes us;"
+_nachaghel_. El is powerful, or the Angel of Strength; and amanel, or
+"the fostering angel."
+
+In some fragments the names of good angels found have been Nadkiel,
+Ramiel, Damael, Hachael, and Sharmiel, which we shall probably notice
+again subsequently.
+
+We do not lay any particular stress upon the fact of the bowls, on which
+these inscriptions were found, having been dug up amongst Babylonian
+ruins; nor do we care to prove either that they were of Jewish or
+Chaldean origin. What we here desire to show is, that there existed in
+Babylon a full belief in the existence of evil and good influences which
+were invisible; that some individuals had, or were thought to possess,
+supernatural powers for harm, which could be counteracted by those
+who placed themselves under the protection of potencies supposed to be
+holier, wiser, or stronger than the evil genii From the method in which
+everything connected with witchcraft, magic, astrology, and the like, is
+spoken of in the Old Testament, and from the fact that slaves are much
+more likely to imitate their masters than conquerors to become pupils of
+the vanquished, we conclude that it was not the Hebrews who taught the
+Chaldees, but that the contrary was the case.
+
+In the view thus enunciated we are confirmed by the manner in which old
+Jewish writers spoke of the nation that enslaved them--e.g., "Babylon,
+the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency" (Isa. xiii. 19); "All of them
+princes to look at after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea."...
+And "she (Jerusalem) doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into
+Chaldea; and... she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated
+from (or by) them" (Ezek. xxiii. 15-17); "It is a mighty nation, it is
+an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not" (Jerem.
+v. 15)--Jeremiah knew more about the people than Isaiah (see Isa.
+xxiii. 13). Habakkuk, again, speaking of the same people, says (chap,
+i. 6-10)--"The Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation... terrible and
+dreadful:... they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a
+scorn unto them." Such being the estimation of the Babylonians by Hebrew
+prophets, it is morally certain that the Jews would regard them with
+respect, admire, study, and copy them. To what extent the imitation went
+it is difficult to say.
+
+When, therefore, we find that the descendants of Abraham, a patriarch
+whom a veneration for the ancient Babylonians induced the Israelite
+mythologists to represent as being a Chaldee; and those who were taught
+on the banks of the Euphrates, were spoken of in Rome about the time of
+our era, and shortly afterwards, as being almost synonymous epithets
+for sorcerers, astrologers, charmers, &c., we must conclude that the
+Mesopotamian was the master, the Palestinian the pupil. That the
+two were regarded as relatives we infer from Juvenal (sat. vi.
+544-552)--"For a small piece of money the Jews sell whatever dreams you
+may choose, but an Armenian or Commagenian soothsayer promises a tender
+love;... but her (i.e., the lady who consults such folk) confidence in
+Chaldeans will be the greater."
+
+But, ere we leave this portion of our Essay, we must notice one other
+piece of evidence of considerable value which is drawn from the New
+Testament. We find, for example, in Acts xxiii. 8, "The Sadducees
+say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but
+the Pharisees confess both." If we inquire into the origin of these
+sects--and we shall be greatly assisted in doing so by two very
+elaborate articles by the erudite Dr. Ginsburg, in Kitto's _Cyclopaedia
+of Biblical Knowledge_--we shall see reason to believe that the
+Sadducees were a sect who considered that they were not bound to believe
+any tenet as necessary unless they could find it distinctly enunciated
+in the Pentateuch. They resolutely declined, therefore, to accept
+as revelation such stories as had been adopted by the Hebrews from
+Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and possibly from the Romans.
+
+We might institute a comparison between the Sadducees and those whom
+we know as "reformers." The first acknowledged the authority of
+Moses alone, such as they found it in "the five books;" the second
+acknowledged the authority of Jesus and his apostles, such as they found
+it in the New Testament: the first rejected the commentaries of Rabbis;
+the second those of "the fathers." Both appealed to antiquity, and both
+traced to what we may designate paganism, heathenism, or foreign sources
+generally, a large portion of the current faith which they saw around
+them. The Sadducees regarded the doctrine of seraphic interference,
+and all the angelic mythology common in their time, as the fond fancy of
+those who desired to harmonize Judaism with Gentilism. The Reformers, in
+their turn, rejected all the fables of Papal anchorites, &c.; denied the
+power of any martyr to influence the condition of the living after their
+death; and generally opposed the saintly, as the Sadducees opposed the
+angelic, hierarchy. Individuals who sympathize with Luther, Calvin,
+and those of a similar way of thinking, may readily understand the
+Sadducees, whereas, those of what is called the "High Church," will give
+their interest to the Pharisees, who upheld the then mediaeval customs,
+&c.
+
+It is probable that some will say, that Jesus of Nazareth, being the
+son of God, a deity incarnate, and consequently familiar with everything
+which goes on in the court of heaven; having adopted the angelic
+mythology; having conversed familiarly with the devil; having sent, at
+least, two thousand devils out of one man into a herd of swine; having
+gone down to hell, wherever that may be; and having preached to the
+spirits imprisoned there, whoever they may be or have been; having,
+still further, had an angel to comfort him; having had a conference with
+Moses and Elijah on a certain hill; having asserted that he had only to
+pray to his father to obtain the assistance of twelve legions of angels;
+and having also told us that every child has an angel who stands before
+the face of God--seeing these things, I say, one can imagine persons
+asseverating that all our current notions of angels, which are built
+upon the New Testament, must be true.
+
+To this we rejoin, that these assertions beg the question. The
+philosopher affirms that the idea of angels is incompatible with that
+of an omnipresent God--that the belief of Jesus in an angelic mythology
+proves him to have had an anthropomorphic notion of "the Supreme," and,
+as a consequence, it follows that Jesus was nothing more than a Jew,
+although very superior to the generality of his countrymen, having
+possibly been taught by some Buddhist.* The bigot, on the other hand,
+can only scream out the formularies which the so-called orthodox provide
+for him. Johanna Southcote once made some folks believe that she was
+pregnant with a Messiah, and she had most enthusiastic followers; but
+neither argument nor rhetoric sufficed to beget the promised baby and,
+in like manner, no amount of declamation can convert an assumption into
+a fact. But of this truth most of our theologians appear to be ignorant,
+and, like the heathen with their litanies, they think that they will
+obtain their will by "much speaking."
+
+     * It will be noticed by the reader, that the remarks in the
+     text have reference to the supernatural stories which were
+     interwoven into the biography of Jesus by those whom we call
+     Evangelists. The bibliolaters must, however, stand or fall
+     by the many legendary tales which pass current for truth. If
+     Jesus, as an ordinary Jew, believed in angels--just as our
+     king, James I., believed in the existence of modern witches
+     --we cannot use his evidence to prove the existence of angels
+     and devils, any more than the Christian laws against
+     witchcraft demonstrate that old women and men sold their
+     souls and bodies to Satan. If, on the other hand, we allow
+     that the spiritual mythology of the New Testament is due to
+     Pharasaic influence, all the testimony propounded in favour
+     of the assertion, that Jesus was, in reality, "a son of
+     Jehovah," crumbles away.
+
+When summoned, a long time ago, to give evidence in a court of justice,
+the question was put to me--"Now, doctor, you have heard the symptoms
+from which the deceased suffered; do you believe that they were produced
+by arsenic?" Being doubtful about the propriety of the query in a court
+of law so prudish as ours is, I remained silent, and in an instant the
+judge, Baron Alderson, said--"I won't allow that question to be put or
+answered; you want the witness to take the place of the jury, and it
+shall not be done. You may ask the doctor, if you will, what are the
+symptoms produced by arsenic, when taken in a poisonous dose, and then
+it is the business of the jury to compare those, with such as have
+already been sworn to as occurring in the man before he died." This
+anecdote is frequently in my mind when I am composing an essay like the
+present. If I wish to convince the jury who reads my papers of the truth
+of a particular conclusion to which I have arrived, it is not enough for
+me to express my own opinions. I may assert, in the matter in question,
+that I am a skilled witness, and have closely investigated the subject,
+but it is open to any one to doubt my industry and to distrust my
+judgment; consequently, it is necessary for me to adduce evidence, as
+well as to draw deductions therefrom.
+
+The hypothesis which I have formed, after a pretty extensive reading,
+is, that the belief in the mythology of angels which is current amongst
+Christians at the present time, and which is based upon a series of
+pretended revelations, said to have been made exclusively to Jews of
+ancient times, is, in reality, founded upon fancies of pagan priests or
+poets; and, as a corollary, I infer, either that our celestial mythology
+must be given up to oblivion, as being heathenish, or that we must
+abandon those claims to an exclusive inspiration which have been made
+for, and accorded by many to, the Bible. I have already described the
+ideas associated with angels in some ancient peoples, and I now propose
+to examine those of other nations with whom the Jews and Christians,
+directly or indirectly, came in contact.
+
+The reader of ancient Roman history cannot doubt that the city on the
+Tiber was indebted to the Etruscans for all, or nearly all, of its early
+knowledge. It is probable that the original gods and goddesses of Rome
+were those of their northern neighbours, and everything which the Romans
+knew of augury was due to the priests of Etruria; consequently it is not
+unprofitable to inquire, as far as we can, whether these had any idea
+of beings such as we call angels. As we have not many available written
+remains of the remarkable people to whom we refer, we are obliged to be
+satisfied with pictorial and other relics which have survived until our
+days. Some of the scenes depicted on urns, vases, and walls, in tombs
+and elsewhere, are sufficiently explanatory of the subjects which
+the artist has desired to pourtray; others, on the contrary, can be
+interpreted in a variety of ways. Paying no attention to the latter,
+we may safely affirm, that the Etruscans had ideas upon the subject of
+angels very similar to our own. The form which their artists gave to
+them is precisely that which is current at the present day, except
+that, unlike the Christian, the Etruscan angels were of different sexes.
+Sometimes both males and females were draped from the neck to the
+feet, in other drawings they were partially or wholly nude. In the vast
+majority of cases each one possessed two wings that were attached to the
+back, behind the arms, precisely as they are in modern pictures; but in
+one very remarkable instance (plate 7, _Description de quelques Vases
+Etrusques_, par H. D. de Luynes--folio, Paris, 1840) the beings to
+whom we refer had each three pairs of pinions, the one attached to the
+shoulder blades, a second to the loins, and a third to the calves of the
+legs. These creatures correspond to our demons or imps of Satan, or the
+devils of the New Testament which were sent into a herd of swine.
+
+Some of the winged Etruscan demons must be regarded as "angels
+of death," for they are represented as hovering in the air over
+individuals, such as Cassandra and Polynices, who are about to be
+sacrificed. One angel, who, as usual, Diaitized bv is spoken of by the
+Christian describer thereof as a goddess, is designated "Cunina." Her
+business was to look after and take charge of infants in their cradle.
+A being such as this, by whatever name we may designate her, cannot fail
+to remind us of the expression in the New Testament--"Take heed that ye
+despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you that in heaven
+their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven"
+(Matt, xviii. 10). In another Etruscan painting we find two angelic
+beings, fully draped, carrying a nude corpse apparently to the future
+or invisible state. These naturally remind us of the passage in Rev.
+xx. 1--"I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of
+the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand." In some Etruscan
+paintings we have scenes which are supposed to indicate the preparation
+of a bride for the wedding ceremony. In these there are diminutive
+angels introduced, which are sometimes hovering in the air and sometimes
+seated on the edge of the bath; these are by the learned supposed to
+represent Cupid, Eros, Hymen, or Love, and they indicate the devout
+feeling, that an angel watches over those who contract marriage in an
+orthodox manner.*
+
+     * Whether the Romans obtained all their inferior deities
+     from the Etruscans, or whether the priests of the Eternal
+     City in ancient times improved upon the mythology which came
+     to them from their predecessors, just as the priests of
+     modern Rome have expanded, without improving, the
+     Christianised paganism which came to them, is a matter
+     difficult to decide. But it is certain that the old Romans
+     multiplied their "gods," as the modern ones have multiplied
+     their "saints." Amongst the former were many curious
+     deities, who presided at the wedding of young people, some at
+     the public ceremony, and others at the private rites.
+     "PRema" was the angel of quietness, whose business it was to
+     see "ne subacta virgo se ultra modum commovens semen a vulva
+     ejiceret." "Subigus" was another angel or demigod, whose
+     duty it was to see that the consummation should take place
+     in an appropriate manner--lovingly, pleasantly, and
+     peacefully. There was another--Pertunda--of whom Augustine
+     (Civ. Dei, vol. 9) remarks--"Si adest dea Prema ut subacta se
+     non commoveat quum prematur, dea Pertunda quid ea facit?" In
+     modern times the Papal saints, Cosmo, Damian, Foutin, and
+     sundry others, have had the special duty assigned to them to
+     make the husband fit for his marital duties.
+
+That the absence of such a spirit was looked upon as unlucky we gather
+from an expression in Propertius (b. v. el. 3) in which a wife, whose
+husband has been obliged to leave her, and go to a distant war, when
+bewailing her destiny, amongst other references says--"I wedded without
+a god to accompany me." This calls to memory the statement in Hebrews
+i. 14, wherein, after speaking of angels, the writer asks--"Are they not
+all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be
+heirs of salvation?"--a sentence which implies the idea that those who
+are not heirs of salvation have not angels which minister for them. The
+doctrine was certainly not exclusively Christian. Of this any one may
+assure himself by referring to Eccles. v. 6--"Neither say thou before
+the angel that it was an error; wherefore... should God destroy the
+works of thine hands?"
+
+Again, we find an angel seated between two young folk of opposite sexes,
+and archaeologists tell us that the winged creature thus figured is
+a nuptial god--one whose business is to induce appropriate couples to
+meet, to love, and to marry. Such a celestial match-maker was the Jewish
+Raphael, who, though "one of the seven holy angels, which present the
+prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the
+Holy One" (Tobit xii. 15)--yet condescended to conduct Tobias a long way
+to meet Sara, and instructed him how he could marry her with safety, and
+defeat a devil.
+
+Amongst other individuals, in the Etruscan mythological paintings who
+are winged, are the following, which are named thus by the authors who
+describe the vases, &c., whether rightly or wrongly it is not necessary
+for me to prove:--Janus; Furina, the goddess of thieves; Mercury, the
+messenger of Jupiter and the patron of robbers; Vacuna, or Desideria,
+or Venus, the goddess of indolence, desire, or love; Hymen, the angel
+or god of marriage; Cupid, the god of love; Victory, Bacchus, Silenus,
+Dryads, Calliope, Tempest, Fame, Proserpine; Iibitina, the goddess of
+funerals; Venus, infera, Nemesis, or fate; Death, life, Charybdis, The
+Furies, Geryon, Justice, Peace, Iris, and Diana. On such a subject the
+reader may consult with advantage Augustine (_de Civitate Dei_, b. vl.
+c. 9); Arnobius (_Adversus Gentes_, b. iv. c. 7); and Tertullian (_Ad
+Nationes_, b. ii. c. 11).
+
+We may now refer to a remarkable series of drawings, representing the
+funeral of Patroclus, described by Homer, which were discovered in the
+Etruscan sepulchre of the Tarquinii near what once was Vulci and is now
+"Ponte della Badia," in the year 1857, and which is described in _Noel
+des Vergers L'Etrurie et les Etrusques_, and in _Corpus Inscriptionum
+Italicarum_ (Turin 1867), the latter of which I use as my authority. In
+one of the scenes we find depicted the sacrifice of the Trojan youths
+at the grave of Patroclus. The artist has not left to the fancy of the
+observer the identification of his figures, but has written in Etruscan
+letters the modified names of the actors. Beginning from the right hand,
+we find Ajax Oileus, and next to him a naked Trojan youth, whose hands
+are bound behind his back, and who is guarded by Telamonian Ajax. Behind
+and besides him is Charon, and in front of the latter is another Trojan
+youth, nude, seated on the ground, and receiving his death-wound from
+Achilles. Behind the latter stands a winged, draped, tall female figure,
+whom at one time I took to be the glorified soul of Patroclus; but,
+having seen a similar figure on other Etruscan designs depicting human
+sacrifice or death, and finding over the head of this one the word
+_fanth, vanth, or fano_--according to the value which we assign to the
+digamma or F and O--which is, I think, equivalent to the Latin _Fatum_,
+fate, &c., we must regard the figure as resembling Azrael--"the angel
+of death." Besides and behind her stands a draped man unarmed, having a
+fixed countenance of settled melancholy, and regarding without a shade
+of exultation the death of the young Trojan whom Achilles slaughters.
+Over his head are the words _hinthial patrucles_, which is believed
+to signify "the shade of Patroclus." The last figure in the group is
+Agamemnon.
+
+This and the other sculptures in the tomb are extremely interesting
+to the archaeologists, firstly, because they bear evidence of a very
+superior style of art; secondly, because they testify to the antiquity
+of Homer's _Iliad_, and its popularity in other nations than the Greek.
+They show, moreover, that the wealthy men amongst the Etrurians were not
+ignorant of the Grecian language, or rather literature, although they
+had difficulty in adapting the Hellenic words to their own alphabet;
+lastly, they ought to be especially valuable to us inasmuch as
+they demonstrate the existence of a belief in ancient Italy of the
+resurrection of the body, and of the existence of angels precisely the
+same in shape as those which pious Christians delight to see in their
+churches, and in their manuals of devotion. It is worthy of notice
+that upon some Etruscan vases in the museum at Munich there are angelic
+warriors covered with armour--a winged female carrying a caduceus, and
+winged horses--like Pegasus, and probably like those seen by Zechariah,
+the Hebrew vaticinator.
+
+We consider it best to omit making any remarks respecting the ideas
+entertained about angels by the Phoenicians, for we have scarcely any
+information about their mythology beyond the names of certain gods and
+goddesses. It will be more profitable to pass on to the Greeks, and
+inquire into the general system of their theological belief. This is,
+we think, a matter of some importance, for this people, as victors and
+masters, came into contact with the Jews in the time of Joel, about b.c.
+800; and if any captive Hebrews came back from Grecia (see Joel iii. 6),
+we believe that they would naturally bring back with them much of the
+Hellenic lore of their conquerors. The reader must not be carried away
+here with the once popular notion that everything which was found
+in heathendom, which resembled something biblical or Jewish, came of
+necessity from scriptural or Israelitish sources. The reverse is
+much more likely, for the Hebrews in old times are described by their
+historians and preachers as hankering after novelty--"going whoring
+after other gods," as the Bible has it. They, on the other hand, were
+encouraged to keep themselves aloof from others, and were never a
+missionary nation; nor, had they been so, were they sufficiently
+honourable or wealthy, as a race, ever to command respect. They were,
+indeed, generally despised by the people round about them, who would
+no more think of adopting Jewish fables than we should care to learn
+theology and cosmogony from African negroes.
+
+If we endeavour to reduce Grecian mythology to its simplest expression,
+we find that it consisted of a belief in a creator--grand beyond
+conception, and one whom the mind could not conceive, nor pencil nor
+the chisel depict. Under him there was thought to be a host of minor
+deities, who agreed, more or less, amongst themselves, each having
+a particular department of creation to preside over, or a definite
+function to perform. Jupiter, for example, had the air and the heavens
+generally under his management; Neptune superintended the sea; Rhea, or
+Gaia, or Gee, was the goddess of the surface of the earth; and Pluto had
+the management of the interior of the globe and of those who were buried
+therein. If corpses were unburied, they did not come under his immediate
+cognizance. Then, as it was quite possible that one deity might be
+counteracting another, as, indeed, they are represented to have done
+during the Trojan war, another god was necessary to be a medium of
+communication between the others, and Mercury became the messenger, or
+go-between.
+
+Below the major gods was an infinity of smaller ones, who presided
+over physical and moral matters. There were, for example, wood and
+tree nymphs; Dryads and hamadryads--gods of rivers, such as Simois
+and Scamander. Pan presided over husbandmen; Hermes, over thieves, &c.
+Others, like Eros, fulfilled the duty of bringing the sexes together.
+Hymen secured them in marriage, and Venus had the duty of insuring
+connubial happiness, whilst Lucina's business was to bring the offspring
+of the marriage into the world--with as little pain or danger as
+possible. Then, again, Fortune brought good luck. The "furies" brought
+evil, and the "fates" ruled the destiny of mortals.
+
+Against some of these gods others rebelled. For example, there were the
+Titans, the sons of Heaven and Earth (Caelus et Terra), who were all of
+gigantic stature, and may be said to be identical with the giants spoken
+of in Gen. vi. 2-4, as being the offspring of the sons of God and the
+daughters of men. These Titans were much disliked by their father, and
+confined in the bowels of the earth, or, as we should say, in Hell; but
+their mother relieved them, and they in turn revenged themselves upon
+their progenitor. When Jupiter succeeded to Cronos or Saturn, the
+giants, the sons of Tartarus and Terra, or Hell and Earth, united with
+their half-brothers, the Titans, and attacked Olympus, and its gods, in
+dismay, assumed disguises and fled into Egypt--a rare spot, whence also
+came as history tells us, the founder of Christianity and the doctrine
+of the Trinity. To regain his position, Jupiter found a man--a son of
+his own--whom he had begotten by lying three nights in the heart of
+the earth, or, as the fable has it, in the arms of Alcmena--Hercules by
+name, to attack the allied monsters, and thus with the aid of a mortal
+the gods became victorious. Just as in more modern days the divine
+mission and position of Jesus of Nazareth and Mahomet of Mecca, have
+been determined by the arms of human warriors. The power of men in
+heaven is wonderful, considering how great is their weakness upon earth!
+It is probable, that to the Greeks, Milton owed his ideas of _Paradise
+Lost_.
+
+According to the ordinary ideas of angels, the gods, demigods,
+goddesses, genii, and the like, were essentially the same amongst the
+Hebrews as the archangels and inferior hierarchy are in modern christian
+mythology. We shall the more readily see this if we inquire into the
+ideas of the Greeks respecting _demons_. "The latter were regarded as
+spirits which presided over the actions of mankind, and watched over
+their secret intentions." Many Greek theologians thought that each
+man had two, the one good, the other bad. These sprites could change
+themselves into any form, and at death the individual was delivered up
+to judgment by these companions, who testified to his actions during
+life. Socrates often spoke of his own peculiar "spirit." Not only were
+these creatures supposed to influence men, but they were also believed
+to guard places, and a genius loci was the same as the God of Ekron, or
+any other locality.
+
+It is almost impossible for a thoughtful man not to compare with the
+Greek ideas those held by moderns. We hear in familiar discourse, and
+read in popular books, about a good angel and a bad one. God is said to
+use both (see Ps. lxxviii. 49, and 1 Kings xxii. 21, 22.) Many, too, of
+the readers of Sterne will remember the remarks which he makes about a
+recording angel who was obliged to register an oath, but who contrived
+to blot out the entry with a tear (com. Mal. iii. 16.) As we have already
+adverted to the belief of Jesus that every child had an angel, who
+is always in the presence of. God, we need not remark again upon the
+matter.
+
+But though the Grecian gods and demigods were the counterparts of the
+archangels and lesser powers of the Jews and Christians, they were not
+pictorially depicted, as they were in other places, like winged men or
+other creatures.
+
+Arnobius, for example, in _Advenus genies_, when writing about the
+divinities of the heathen, remarks, that they are so like ordinary men
+and women, that the artist has to resort to some contrivance to show
+that any offspring of his brush, or of his chisel, is a god or goddess.
+A painter, he observes, will select the finest young women he can
+discover--or the handsomest prostitute in his country, and from one
+maiden, or from the collective charms of many, will paint a lovely woman
+and style her Venus; yet she is only a courtezan after all. His remark is
+a certainly true one. Jupiter is never represented otherwise than as a
+man, nor does Minerva ever figure except as a woman. None of the greater
+gods of Hellas are winged like the tutelar gods of the Assyrians and
+Persians were. Even Hermes, though he does bear pinions, does not carry
+them in the usual form. Instead of having powerful wings behind his
+arms, like the Gabriel or Michael of Christian mythology, he has little
+nippers attached to each side of a cap, of a pair of socks, and of a
+curiously-shaped wand--all of which he can put off when he pleases,
+or don when he is sent with a message. Jupiter's thunders bear similar
+wings. But such minor deities, or devils, as Eros or love; Hymen or
+marriage; Fame, or victory; Aurora, or day-break; the winds, the Genii,
+the Gorgons, the Furies, the Harpies, Iris, Isis, Hebe, Psyche, and even
+Pegasus--a wondrous horse, are winged with pinions which resemble those
+of the eagle.
+
+If we now pause for a moment to compare one thing with another, we
+readily see that Hymen may fairly be described as the angel of the
+covenant of marriage, and that Mercury is identical with Raphael. The
+"genius loci," the "dryad" or "hamadryad," is the counterpart of the
+cherubim guarding the ark and the mercyseat of the Jewish temple. Apollo
+is the angel in the sun (Rev. xix. 17.) Neptune is "the angel of the
+waters" (Rev. xvi. 5.) Nay, we may--indeed we must go further, and affirm
+that either the angel Gabriel, or "the power of the Highest," which,
+we are told in Luke i. 26, 35, overshadowed Mary, the espoused wife
+of Joseph, is a perfect counterpart of the Hellenic Jupiter who
+overshadowed Alcmena.
+
+Both produced a being equally celebrated--for we may fairly assert that
+Hercules was believed in by as many individuals as have faith in Jesus.
+For ourselves, we do not credit the myth of the Hellenists; of the very
+existence of a Hercules we are profoundly incredulous. Yet we do not
+doubt for a moment that Jesus of Nazareth lived as a man upon this
+earth, and founded, with the subsequent assistance of Paul, the religion
+which is called Christian. But of the supernatural conception of Mary
+and of her impregnation by a deity we are intensely sceptical.
+
+Of the theology of the Romans in the times prior to, and somewhat
+subsequent to, our era, we need say little. It resembled both the
+Etruscan and the Greek at the first, and subsequently it was modified by
+the Egyptian and by the Persian. But it was in Rome, whilst pagan, that
+the present pictorial type of angels was perfected (see Plates ix. to
+xiii, Lajard's _Culte de Venus_), in which allegorical figures, from old
+Roman bas-reliefs, precisely like modern angels, are represented killing
+the Mithraic bull. I may also add, in passing, that the crozier borne by
+Romanist bishops is a reproduction of the Etruscan _lituus_, the augurs'
+or diviners' staff of office.
+
+The Roman nation, like the Papist and Peruvian religions, was
+omnivorous, and not only venerated the old gods of the soil, but adopted
+new divinities eagerly. Whoever chose to import a new deity, and a novel
+style of worship was hailed, patronized and enriched, much in the same
+way as at London during recent times, Mesmerists, "spirit rappers,"
+"cord-conjurors," clairvoyants, male and female, spiritualists like
+Home, very High Churchmen, and many other classes of a similar stamp
+have been encouraged. As in Athens, we are told that "the Athenians and
+strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
+to tell or to hear some new thing" (Acts xvii), no matter whether the
+novelty was religious or otherwise, so it has been elsewhere. London
+really, and Rome metaphorically are constantly adopting new ideas, some
+highly commendable and philosophical, others quite the reverse. Amongst
+the latter, we may mention that which professes that a certain man
+can, like Jesus is said to have done, heal by a touch. This assertion,
+however, is only sparsely credited on the Thames. Far more general is
+the belief which professes, that an Ecumenical Council can by a vote
+make one man and his official successors "infallible."
+
+We cannot pass by this subject without remarking that instability in
+religion is evidence of infidelity; and the adoption of new tenets is a
+proof of the low estimation in which old ones have been held. Even the
+new, or Christian dispensation, as it is called, is founded upon the
+insufficiency of the old or Jewish covenant, which, by those who adopt
+the one, is a confession that they believe the other was imperfect and
+therefore not of God. Consequently, when we find a "church," like the
+Roman, habitually patching its old clothes, we conclude that its leaders
+are dissatisfied with them and desire better. A lover who finds his
+mistress perfect neither seeks nor wishes to change her for another; nor
+endeavours to induce her to modify her attire until he is dissatisfied
+therewith. When he insists upon an alteration it is because his ardent
+love has faded. The philosopher may see clearly why certain prelates
+desire to have some infallible man to appeal to--for it is easier
+to find out the opinion of one individual than to harmonize the
+contradictory hypotheses of fifty dogmatical or authoritative writers.
+Yet the same man will not fail to see that such a proceeding, whilst it
+strengthens the hold of the church upon the weak-minded, cuts it adrift
+from the strong. The policy is not altogether bad, for it seeks to bind
+closer those who, whilst wearing the chains of captivity, regard them
+as ornaments. But all those who adopt such tactics ought, boldly and
+unequivocally, to withdraw from the rank of truth-seekers, and of envoys
+of that God who is not "the author of confusion but of peace."
+
+We may now proceed to the consideration of the angelic mythology of the
+Old and New Testaments. In our inquiry we shall endeavour to arrive
+at the ideas contained in the words which are used, and not content
+ourselves with simple quotation. There is strong reason to believe that
+Christians in general rarely examine into the real signification of
+words which they are taught to use, or which, from some fancy or other,
+they commit to memory. They imagine--if they think on the subject at
+all--that to repeat a text or a creed is to perform an act of faith,
+which, in itself, is praiseworthy and a good work. Such do not, in any
+appreciable degree, differ from the Thibetans, described by the Abbe
+Hue, who perform their devotions by turning round upon their axles
+certain cylinders, upon which some prayers are engraved. Not only these
+Asiatics, but Europeans of large mental calibre are often contented with
+vague ideas; and when they are challenged to support "the faith which
+is in them," show that they have never yet examined it. If, for example,
+they are asked how they can believe in the truth of such passages,
+"I have seen God (Kohim) face to face" (Gen. xxxii. 30); "The Lord
+(Jehovah) spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his
+friend" (Exod. xxxiii. 11); "Moses whom the Lord knew face to face"
+(Deut. xxxiv. 10), and the opposite one, "Thou canst not see my face,
+for there shall no man see me and live" (Exod. xxxiii. 20)--the sole
+reply rendered is that the first passages are figurative, passing by
+entirely the comparison in the second, which asserts that God talked
+with Moses as one friend with another.
+
+As a farther illustration of my meaning, I may point to the glibness
+with which Christians talk, sing, and listen to discourses about blood.
+If people really gave heed to what they chant, and to the words of their
+ministers, they would really be puzzled to find a distinction between
+the god whom they worship and that idol deity of Mexico, which called
+constantly for the hearts and the blood of his worshippers. "Without
+shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. ix. 22) is a dogma that puts
+the Europeans' God on the same level as the deities worshipped in pagan
+Africa, New Zealand, and by the Anthropophagi generally.
+
+In like manner, if ordinary people are asked to reconcile such passages
+as the following--"Who maketh his angels spirits;" "A spirit hath not
+flesh and bones as ye see me have" (Luke xxiv. 39)--with a host of
+others, in which angels are said to have appeared, talked, and acted
+like men, they allege that "much of the phraseology of the Bible is
+metaphorical." But if it be granted that the language is metaphorical,
+must we not equally believe that the facts referred to are mythical; and
+if so, how much of the so-called inspired book can we trust? If metaphor
+and figure-imagery are cities of refuge for theologians, those who fly
+to them must remember, that there they must remain and live therein all
+their days; they cannot be citizens of the world, and yet never leave
+their asylum: if, for them, facts are fictions, by parity of reason
+fictions are facts.
+
+If, when an individual, said to be a prophet, and, as such, the
+mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost or of Jehovah, tells us that he saw and
+talked with an angel, who imparted to him such and such information,
+we are bound either to believe the whole statement or to reject it as
+valueless, _quoad_ revelation. If the man did see an angel, and that
+angel spoke, it must have been material; and if material, it could not
+be a spirit, and if not a spirit, it was not an angel.* If to this it be
+answered that individuals do see what they deem to be spirits--just
+as many a drunken man avers that he sees "blue devils," we grant it at
+once. We go still farther, and state that we know individuals in full
+possession, apparently, of all their senses, who see, occasionally, men,
+women, horses, dogs, and other things, which have no more existence
+than the figures which appear to us in dreams. Such men not only see
+imaginary beings, but they hear conversations or speeches which have no
+reality in them. But we cannot for a moment allow that such delusions of
+the senses are sterling, and such utterances, messages from the Almighty
+delivered by angels. To be logical, therefore, the theologian must
+either accept the stories told in the Bible about angelic beings as
+literally true, to the exclusion of all metaphor, or believe that
+every thing tainted by such celestial mythology is entirely of human
+invention.
+
+     * The authority for this is Ps. civ. 4; Heb. L 7, 14,--"Who
+     maketh his angels spirits;" "Are they not all ministering
+     spirits?"
+
+As an illustration, let us consider two episodes in the history of
+Elisha. We find in 2 Kings ii. 11, that a chariot of fire and horses of
+fire, appeared to this prophet, and parted him from Elijah, with whom
+he was walking, and carried the latter away into heaven; and we see in
+2 Kings vi. 17, that Elisha's servant could really see a multitude
+of chariots and horses of fire round about his master. We must also
+remember that "the chariots of the Lord are thousands of angels"
+(Ps. lxviii. 17; see also Ps. xxxiv. 7.) Now these were, or were not,
+realities--if the chariots and horsemen existed, then we infer that some
+sort of stables and ostlers exist in heaven; if none such exist, then
+the chariots and horses could neither have been seen, nor have separated
+the two prophets.
+
+It may be urged that supernatural beings do exist for those who can
+see them, and for no other; just as the angel was seen by Balaam's ass
+thrice (see Numbers xxii. 22-33) before he was recognized by her master.
+But this observation is worthless, for it amounts to nothing more than
+this--viz., that the persons seen in dreams exist for the dreamers and
+for no one else; but it in no way proves the reality of the asserted
+apparition.
+
+It would be as useless to discuss, at this point, the actuality of what
+are called "spectres," as of other things named fairies, pixies, gnomes,
+or sprites. Of the existence of such there is abundance of evidence; and
+for hundreds of years there was not a human being who did not believe in
+them. But there was even stronger proof that the world stood still, and
+the sun went round it, and during untold centuries all who thought on
+the matter believed the statement. Yet in these days all the testimony
+is regarded as worthless in the presence of the stern facts of science;
+and ghosts are only believed in by such as write treatises upon squaring
+the circle, perpetual motion, and the plane figure of the earth. We
+shall take up the subject at length in our next chapter.
+
+If we were to follow the bent of our inclination, we should now
+endeavour to prove that the Jews had no idea of an angelic mythology
+prior to the Babylonian captivity, and that they had no distinct
+literature prior to the Grecian and Edomite captivity referred to in
+Joel, Amos, Obadiah, and Micah, except possibly such records and written
+laws as may be styled "annals" or "year-books;" and, as a consequence,
+that all parts of the Old Testament in which angelic beings figure are
+comparatively modern, having been fabricated after the long sojourn of
+the Jews in Babylon. But to carry out this intention would require a
+treatise rather than an essay, and I must content myself with saying
+that I believe it to be affirmed by all Hebrew scholars, that up to the
+time of Nebuchadnezzar--or Hezekiah--the sole unseen power recognized
+by the Jews was Jehovah alone. They did not believe either in angel or
+devil What their ideas were we may shortly describe*:--
+
+     * Long after the remark in the text was written, and long
+     before it was in type, Dr. Kalisch, in his second part of a
+     commentary on Leviticus, published his views upon the point
+     referred to. When I can refer my readers to so masterly a
+     composition as his essay upon Angels in the Jewish theology,
+     it is seedless for me to say much on the subject. I may also
+     refer those who are interested in the matter to a work
+     entitled _The Devil: his Origin, Greatness, and Decadence_
+     (Williams & Norgate, London, 1871--small 8vo., pp. 72). My
+     essay supplements these, and in no way clash therewith.
+
+1. Angels were spirits, being also ministers (Heb. L 7.) They were a
+flaming fire (Ps. civ. 4); compare Jud. xiii. 20, and Acts vii. 35--that
+is, spirits are made of a combustible material which is, however,
+incombustible!
+
+2. They could assume the form of men, and were identical with God (see
+Gen. xviii. 19; Tobit, and Luke i.): that is to say, they were masters,
+yet servants--the sender and the sent at the same time!
+
+3. Their faces were terrible (Jud. xiii. 6); but they also shone (Acts
+vi. 15) and yet they were so good-looking and handsome that the Sodomites
+fell in love with them as Jupiter did with Ganymede (Gen. xix).
+
+4 One was the superintendent of destruction, and was visible on one
+occasion to David (2 Sam. xxiv. 16, 17), to Oman, his sons, and to the
+elders of Israel (1 Chron. xxi. 16-20.) His weapon was a sword (_ibid._)
+He certainly must have had flesh and bones. It would be an interesting
+matter to inquire whether the sword was as spiritual as the angel was.
+
+5. One angel was outwitted by a donkey (see Numb. xxii. 22-33.) Yet
+this angel was God (comp. Numb. xxii. 35, and xxiv. 4, 15,16). It is
+marvellous to me how any one can read this history of Balaam and his
+ass, and notice how the animal turned God from His purpose (see chap,
+xxii. 33), and yet believe the story to be of _divine_ origin!
+
+6. They are made of light (Luke ii. 9), yet can talk the vernacular, and
+can be counterfeited by Satan (2 Cor. xi. 14); but how he manages it, and
+whether he then ceases to be a roaring lion or a fallen angel "reserved
+in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day"
+(Jude 6), is a matter for surmise.
+
+7. One of them fought with the Devil, and kept his temper (Jude 9.) Of
+the language used in the disputation we do not know; nor can we tell how
+the two recognized each other.
+
+8. Some of them are guilty of folly (Job. iv. 18), and some sinned--how,
+one does not know--and were cast down to hell, and delivered into chains
+of darkness. It is fitting that beings who have no flesh and bones
+should be bound by fetters that have no reality (2 Peter ii. 4).
+
+9. Some were discontented with their home and were punished (Jude 6);
+but where their original habitation was, or why it was regarded as so
+miserable that another place was desired, is a mystery.
+
+10. They have food provided for them (Ps. lxxviii. 25), and they eat like
+men (Gen. xviii. 8; and xix. 3), consequently angels must have flesh,
+blood, and a stomach to digest victuals. Sometimes instead of eating
+food they order it to be burned, and the smoke from the viands serves as
+a vehicle to heaven (Jud. xiii. 19, 20).
+
+11. Their number is twenty thousand (Ps. lxviii. 17).
+
+12. They are chariots (_ibid_), yet they walk and get their feet dusty
+(Gen. xviii. and xix. 2; compare Jud. ii. 1; vi. 12); the chariots are of
+fire, and so are the horses (2 Kings vi. 17); but they are also clouds
+(Ps. civ. 3).
+
+13. They are taught military discipline and arranged in "legions" (Matt
+xxvi. 53).
+
+14. They are sexless (Mark xii. 25), yet were men when they appeared to
+Abraham, Sarah, and the Sodomites (Gen. xviii, xix.).
+
+15. They are liable to do wrong, and will be judged by men, some time or
+other (1 Oor. vi. 2, 3). As in this passage the angels are put below the
+saints, and in Gen. xviii. and xix., it is clear that Elohim and Jehovah
+were angels, it follows that holy men, when raised, will be superior to
+the power that gave them heaven!
+
+16. Though sexless, the angels, or sons of God, may be captivated by the
+beauty of woman, and engender giants with them in a very human fashion
+(Gen. vi).
+
+17. They are very sensitive respecting the hair of women, and require
+it to be covered in worship--at other times they probably are not so
+particular. Although they minister upon those who are heirs of salvation
+(Heb. i. 14), they might be tempted from their business, if they were to
+see a pretty snood in golden tresses hid (1 Cor. xi. 10).
+
+18. Every child has an angel, or rather angels, to look after it (Matt,
+xviii. 10), which leads to the belief that the number of angels has
+increased since the sixty-eighth Psalm was written, when there were only
+20,000, and perhaps a few more.*
+
+     * The words of the christian father, Tertullian, upon this
+     subject are so very apposite to our subject of angels, that
+     I am tempted to quote them--Clark's edition, vol. i. p. 487-
+     8.
+
+     Speaking to the heathens, he says--"And you are not content
+     to assert the divinity of such as were once known to you,
+     whom you heard and handled, and whose portraits have been
+     painted, and actions recounted, and memory retained amongst
+     you; but men insist upon consecrating with a heavenly life,
+     i.e.t they insist on deifying, I know not what incorporeal
+     inanimate shadows and the names of things, dividing man's
+     entire existence amongst separate powers, even from his
+     conception in the womb, so that there is a god (read
+     _angel_) Consevius, to preside over concubital generation,
+     and Fluviona to preserve the infant in the womb; after these
+     come Vitumnus and Sentinus through whom the babe begins to
+     have life and its earliest sensation; then Diespiter, by
+     whose office the child accomplishes its birth. But when
+     women begin their parturition Candelifera also comes in aid,
+     since child-bearing requires the light of the candle; and
+     other goddesses there are (such as Lucina, Partula, Nona,
+     Decima, and Alemona) who get their names from the parts they
+     bear in the stages of travail There were two Carmentas
+     likewise, according to the general view.   To one of them,
+     called Postverta, belonged the function of assisting the
+     birth of the malpresented child; whilst the other, Prosa or
+     Prorso, executed the like office for the rightly born. The
+     god Farinus was so called from his inspiring the first
+     utterance, whilst others believed in Locutius from his gift
+     of speech. Cunina is present as the protector of the child's
+     deep slumber, and supplies to it refreshing rest. To lift
+     them when fallen there is Levana, and along with her Rumina
+     (from the old word _ruma_, a teat). It is a wonderful
+     oversight that no gods were appointed for clearing up the
+     filth of children. Then to preside over their first pap and
+     earliest drink you have Potina and Edula; to teach the child
+     to stand erect is the work of Statina (or Statilinus),
+     whilst Adeona helps him to come to dear mamma-, and Abeona
+     to toddle back again. Then there is Domiduca, to bring home
+     the bride, and the goddess Mens, to influence the mind to
+     either good or evil. They have likewise Volumnus and Voleta,
+     to control the will; Paventina, the goddess of fear;
+     Venilia, of hope; Volnpia, of pleasure; Praastitia, of
+     beauty. Then, again, they give his name to Peragenor, from
+     his teaching men to go through their work; to Consus, from
+     his suggesting to them counsel. Juventa is their guide on
+     assuming the manly gown, and 'bearded Fortune,' when they
+     come to full manhood. If I must touch on their nuptial
+     duties, there is Afferenda, whose appointed function is to
+     see to the offering of the dower. But fie on you--you have
+     your Mutunus, and Tutunus, and Pertunda, and Subigus, and
+     the goddess Prema, and likewise Perfica. O spare yourselves,
+     ye impudent gods."
+
+19. Some angels are evil, but are much the same as the good (Ps. lxxviii
+49), in their power of doing mischief.
+
+20. Every heir of salvation has an angel to minister to him in some way
+or other (Heb. i. 14); so have Roman babies--see note.
+
+21. The angels are only a trifle superior to men (Ps. viii. 5), and in
+the invisible world will be inferior to them if the latter be saints (1
+Cor. vi. 3; Heb. ii. 5).
+
+22. They can speak all sorts of languages (1 Cor. xiii. 1); that which
+Michael and the devil used (Jude 9) has not been revealed to us.
+
+23. They use a trumpet, probably as immaterial as themselves, and make a
+great noise thereby (Matt xxiv. 31); and horses (Zech. i. and Rev. vi).
+
+24. They have wings and can fly (Rev. viii. 13; xiv. 6), although they
+are chariots.
+
+25. When on earth they are clothed with a long white garment, have a
+face like lightning, and one can appear to be two, or not appear at all
+to some, though very distinctly seen by others (see Matt xxviii. 2, 3;
+Mark xvi. 5; Luke xxiv. 4; John xx. 12).
+
+Of all the angels mentioned in the Apocalypse we need not write. One
+of the best accounts I have met with of the angelic mythology of
+the Hebrews is in Coheleth, or The Book of Ecclesiastes, by Rev. Dr.
+Ginsburg (Longman, London, 1861). It is written in explanation of Ch. v.
+5, wherein is the expression, "Do not say before the angel that it was
+error" (page 340), and the following remarks are condensed therefrom:--
+"The angels occupy different rank and offices--seven of them as the
+highest functionaries; princes or archangels surround the throne of God
+and form the cabinet--(1) Michael, the prime minister, the guardian
+of the Jewish nation, the opponent of Satan (Zech. iii. 1, 2), of the
+prince of Persia (Dan. x. 13, 20), the conservator of the corpse of
+Moses (Jude 9), and the dragon (Rev. xii); (2) Raphael, who presides
+over the sanitary affairs (Tobit iii. 17, xii. 15)--'When God would cure
+any sick person,' says St. Jerome, 'he sends the archangel Raphael, one
+of the seven spirits before his throne, to accomplish the cure.' There
+can be little doubt that this was the angel who went down at certain
+seasons to move the waters of the pool to cure the impotent people (John
+v. 4); (3) Gabriel, the messenger to announce or to effect deliverance,
+also a presence angel (Luke i. 11-20, 26-35); (4) Uriel, mentioned
+in Esdras (2 b., ch. iv., w. 1 and 20). In Targums these four are
+represented as surrounding the throne of the divine majesty, but all do
+not agree; Jonathan's arrangement is--Michael at the right, Uriel at the
+left, Gabriel before, and Raphael behind.* The fifth, sixth, and seventh
+archangels are Phaniel, Raguel, and Sarakiel."
+
+     * An observation such as this distinctly shows how
+     completely the ideas of angels are associated with gross
+     anthropomorphism.
+
+"Next to the cabinet comes the privy council, composed of four and
+twenty crowned elders (1 Kings xxii. 19; Rev. iv. 4; vii. 13; viii. 3), who
+surround the throne, before whom Christ will confess those who
+confessed him. Then comes the council, consisting of the seventy angel
+princes--the provincial governors presiding over the affairs of the
+seventy nations into which the human family is divided." Hence the
+Targumic paraphrase on Gen. xi. 7, 8--"_The Lord said to the seventy
+presence angels, Come now and let us go down, and there let us confound
+their language, so that one may not understand the language of the
+other. And the Lord manifested himself against that city, and with him
+were the seventy angels according to the seventy nations_." Hence the
+Septuagint translation of Deut xxxii. 8--"When the Most High divided
+the nations... he set the boundaries... according to the number of the
+angels." The doctor also notices the four angels mentioned in Zech. vi,
+who seem to have the management of four great monarchies, but he
+does not advert to the angels of the seven churches spoken of in the
+Apocalypse. He then proceeds--"Then comes the innumerable company of
+presence angels, since every individual has a guardian angel as well
+as every nation"... St Jerome, remarking upon Matt, xviii. 10,
+says,--"_Great is the dignity of these little ones, for every one of
+them has from his very birth an angel dedicated to guard him_."* When
+St. Peter was chained in his prison, his angel released him (Acts xiii.
+7,11), and the damsel who opened a house door for him was told that he
+who was knocking was Peter's angel.
+
+     * We have never been able to see the force of this remark,
+     unless the idea of children having guardian angels was
+     associated with the belief that these beings left them when
+     they grew up. If the adults standing round Jesus had each an
+     individual warden, there would be nothing peculiar in the
+     warning given in the verse referred to. It is, however, just
+     possible that the notion existed that it was to adults only
+     that tutelary spirits were assigned, and that the prophet of
+     Nazareth declared that each infant had a protecting genius
+     as well as every man.
+
+Then there are angels who preside over all the phenomena of nature.
+One presides over the sun (Eev. xix. 17); angels guard the storm and
+lightning (Ps. civ. 4); four angels have charge over the four winds
+(Rev. vii. 1, 2); an angel presides over the waters (Rev. xvi. 5); and
+another over the temple altar (Rev. xiv. 18).
+
+We need not pursue this subject further; enough has been said to show
+that the Hebrew ideas of angels differ in no essential respect from
+those of other nations, who, if not older than the Jews, were certainly
+never influenced by the Hebrews. From the evidence before us, we are
+constrained to believe that the knowledge which we assume to possess of
+the celestial court has descended to us from heathen or pagan sources,
+and that the pictorial designs which pass current for likenesses of
+angels or archangels have descended from Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians,
+Grecians, Etruscans, and Romans, and cannot pretend to anything
+approaching to a revelation from God.
+
+We have already remarked that the Hebrew notions of the heavenly
+hierarchy are evidence of a gross anthropomorphism; they indicate a
+belief in the existence of a monarch having a face and back, a right
+hand and a left, ears and a mouth, and a wherewithal for sitting upon a
+throne--the part which was shown, as we are told, to Moses; they tell of
+a theology that recognizes places in the universe where God is not, and
+of which He has no cognizance save through messengers. If this be so,
+what shall we say of the hagiology which tells us that there was on one
+occasion a conspiracy amongst the courtiers of the celestial ruler, a
+discovery of treason, and a punishment of the offenders as dire as the
+most malignant man could invent? We have often thought that no human
+being, unless he were vile, brutal, sensual, clever, disappointed, and
+revengeful, could have invented the idea of hell, and that none would
+ever have believed in it unless he was both timid, thoughtless, and
+malignant The dormant hate of the orthodox against opponents is an
+awful quantity. The expression of "fallen angels" is a pregnant text; it
+recalls to our mind the passage--"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom
+I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against
+me" (Ps. xli. 9). It reminds us of David, Absalom and Ahitophel, of
+Solomon and Jeroboam, of Joram and Jehu, Benhadad and Hazael, Louis
+XVIII. and Marshal Ney. We feel sure that an individual who could
+write the words--"If we sin wilfully after that we have received the
+knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but
+a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which
+shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. x. 26, 27), could readily have
+invented a hell, if he had not found one already made to his hand. The
+sentence just quoted bears evidence of intense theological spitefulness,
+and a petty meanness that neither Sakya nor Jesus would have shown. Such
+thoughts are womanish, not manly, although apostolic.
+
+We can fancy it having been penned by James or John, who once asked
+Jesus whether they should not call down fire from heaven to consume
+the Samaritans, simply because the latter were not polite to the
+master--"because he seemed to be going to Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 53, 54).
+But if so, those disciples must have forgotten the rebuke of Jesus--"Ye
+know not what manner of spirit ye are of."
+
+Here we must pause awhile, and consider the idea of various peoples
+about Hell.
+
+Some, perhaps we ought to say, many, earthly potentates have encouraged
+the belief that there is a place in which evildoers, who have escaped
+punishment for crime in this world will, after their death here, receive
+their deserts. A place of torment which no man has seen, or can see
+in life, and which, consequently, anyone can describe, is a wonderful
+supplement to imperfect police arrangements, and as such, has been
+fabricated or adopted in various nations. But in all the nations of
+antiquity, and those which we call pagan, Hell has been assigned to
+those who have committed crimes upon earth, such as murder, theft, and
+the like, and whose evil deeds have outnumbered their good ones. The
+idea of a torture vault for heretics has, so far as I can learn, been
+reserved for Christian times, and for nations who punish ecclesiastical
+offences more severely than the most atrocious crimes. The papal church,
+wherever she has had power, has punished rejection of her communion far
+more cruelly than she has dealt with rape, robbery, and murder; and all,
+who think with her, draw their arguments for so doing from what is said
+to be God's method of dealing with His rebellious angels. Surely, the
+idea runs, if the Almighty, who cannot do wrong, has punished with fire
+and everlasting torment the ministers who stood in His presence and
+around His throne, simply because they kept not their position, or did
+not watch over their principality--for both meanings may be assigned
+to the original words--surely man must treat his heretic fellow on
+a similar plan. God, runs the argument, made the Devil, and man must
+multiply his imps. It is true, according to Hebrew and Christian
+mythology, that the idea of a Devil was not originally in the mind of
+Jehovah. But when Satan rebelled he was immediately invested with power!
+In other words, Lucifer taught Elohim, and thoughtful Christians believe
+this!!
+
+If we now attempt to frame a history of the modern Hell, its rulers,
+its angels, or its devils, we find, in the first place, that the Old
+Testament contains no idea whatever of Satan being an angel originally
+bright and fair, but subsequently disobedient, rebellious, conquered,
+and punished. Nor is the New Testament much more communicative--we
+find the arch-fiend described as a murderer and as a liar; he also is
+associated with angels, as in the words, "the Devil and his angels."
+He is described as "the Prince of the power of the air,"--as "a roaring
+lion, seeking whom he may devour." He is "the spirit which worketh in
+the children of disobedience." He is also represented as telling Jesus,
+that he is able to dispose of all the kingdoms of the globe, and to give
+their glory to whom he will. Yet nowhere is a hint breathed that he
+was once an angel in heaven. The only verse in the whole Bible which is
+supposed to bear upon this matter, shows that the devil and his imps
+are not identical with the fallen angels, for Jude distinctly declares
+(verse 6) that the latter are "reserved in everlasting chains, under
+darkness, unto the judgment of the great day," a condition quite
+incompatible with their identity with Satan, who is represented as
+telling God that he had been going to and fro through the earth, and
+walking up and down in it (Job ch. i., v. 7). A conversation then
+follows the question, which must have been quite impossible had God
+recognized him as an escaped convict.
+
+Again, if we turn to the book of Enoch (an apocryphal production,
+supposed for ages to have been lost, but discovered at the close of the
+last century in Abyssinia, now first translated from an Ethiopian MS. in
+the Bodleian Library, by Richard Laurence, LL.D., Archbishop of Cashel;
+3d edition, 8vo. Oxford, 1838),--which is, and I think justly, believed
+to be the authority quoted by Jude, we find a full confirmation of our
+view of the independence of the Devil or Satan, and the fallen angels.
+The foundation of the work is the story-told in the sixth chapter of
+Genesis. In that work, the angels which kept not their first estate are
+described as those who preferred intercourse with human females to
+a celestial celibacy, for in those days there were sons of God and
+daughters of men. Nay, in one verse (chap, liii. 6) it is distinctly
+declared that one cause why the wrath of God came upon them was that
+"they became ministers of Satan, and seduced those who dwell upon the
+earth." In many places a reference is made to the close imprisonment of
+the angels who had "been polluted with women;" one such will suffice,
+(chap, xxi. 6), where, on seeing a terrific place, Enoch is told by Uriel
+"this is the prison of the angels, and here are they kept for ever."
+It is not even Satan who tempts the angels, for chapter lxviii. tells us
+that it was Yekun and Kesabel, two of themselves, who gave evil counsel,
+and induced their fellows to corrupt their bodies by generating mankind.
+It is clear that such a writer does not conceive the possible existence
+of angelic women.
+
+The nearest approach to evidence of identification is the statement made
+in the same chapter (w. 6, 7), that Gradrel was the name of one of the
+leaders of the fallen, and that he seduced Eve. But this testimony is
+wholly worthless in the face of the fact that he, like all his company,
+are kept chained up, which Satan certainly is not.
+
+From the foregoing facts and considerations, we can come to no other
+conclusion than that there is no truth in the angelic mythology current
+amongst ourselves--for which Milton and his _Paradise Lost_ are mainly
+responsible. We may, indeed, affirm that a belief in angelic mythology
+is wholly incompatible with an enlightened religion. If we regard the
+Almighty as omnipresent and omniscient, we cannot imagine that He can
+require messengers, or organize an "intelligence department" in Heaven.
+A man who is present with his family requires no servant to tell him
+what each is doing, or to deliver his orders to one or other. So, if God
+be always with us, it is downright blasphemy to say that He requires a
+go-between to let Him know what we are doing, or what He wishes us to
+do.
+
+In our next chapter we shall enter upon the consideration of a subject
+closely allied to that of Angels--namely, that of Ghosts, Apparitions,
+Disembodied Spirits, or by whatever name they are called. These mainly
+differ from the beings of whom we have treated in the fact that, whereas
+an angel is a messenger--one sent to do certain duties--a ghost is a
+being who comes upon the scene, which he or she has quitted, to do or to
+persuade somebody else to perform something that has been omitted to be
+done during the life-time of the deceased. In nine-tenths of the stories
+which we read of "revenans," the returned one is not sent as a
+messenger, nor does he come for any definite purpose. A man or woman
+barbarously murdered is painted as haunting the scene where the violence
+was committed, as flies flit over a carcase. Misers come to brood over
+their hoards, not to use them. In no case which I can remember do the
+tales represent the ghosts as being sent from either of the two
+powers--God and Satan; and to fancy that a deceased man or woman is a
+free agent after death is, to say the least of it, a proof that the
+believers in the doctrine do not believe the biblical text--"As the tree
+falleth so it must lie."
+
+The ideas of Angels and of Ghosts have their origin in what may be
+called a superstitious education; and credence in the latter is an
+almost necessary pendant to a belief in the former. Indeed, if we put
+ourselves into the position of Manoah's wife, Zacharias (Luke i), and
+Mary, we feel sure that we should not have known whether the being who
+appeared was an angel or a ghost.
+
+Note.--The reader interested in the subject of this chapter, will find
+additional information thereupon in Records of the Past (Bag-ster,
+London, 1873-74; vol. i. 131-135, and vol. iii.139-154). The volumes
+are inexpensive, and extremely valuable to the student of Assyrian,
+Babylonian, and Egyptian mythology.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     The inexorable logic of facts. Saul and the witch of Endor.
+     Influence of Elisha's bones. The widow's son. Ideas about
+     ghosts--about their power. Papal belief in ghosts. Ritual
+     for exorcisms. St. Dunstan and St. Anthony. The Bible and
+     ghosts. Scriptural ghosts. Ghosts independent of Judaism and
+     Christianity. Japanese story. Buddhist priests, like
+     Papalists, exorcise ghosts professionally. Ancient Grecian
+     ghosts. Stories from Homer, Herodotus, Iamblichus. Modern
+     French ghosts. Latin ghosts. Ghosts and lunacy. Ghosts and
+     spiritualism. Mistakes of clairvoyantes.
+
+It is not until we systematically inquire into certain tenets of our
+own belief, and compare or contrast them with those of other people far
+removed from us, that we are able to form an opinion about how much we
+owe to what we call "our peculiar religion," and how much we hold in
+common with other distant members of the human family.
+
+It is probable that there is scarcely a "Bible Christian" in Great
+Britain who is not impressed with the truth of the statement made in 2
+Tim. i. 10--_viz_., that Christ abolished death, and brought life and
+immortality to light by the Gospel. But the inexorable logic of facts
+proves to us that the idea of a life after death existed even amongst
+some ancient Jews--a people to whom it was certainly not revealed by
+God--and amongst nations who have not to this day become acquainted with
+Jesus, or what we call the Gospel, and who are mainly influenced by the
+doctrines of Buddha.
+
+To give examples: no one can read the very fabulous story of the Witch
+of Endor and Saul without recognizing the fact, that both the one and
+the other are represented by the historian to have believed, that,
+though the body of the prophet Samuel had been rotting for a long period
+in its tomb, the spirit of the man was yet existent. Nor does a Bible
+Christian see anything peculiar in the miracle of the restoration of the
+dead man mentioned in 2 Kings xiii. 21, who, when he touched the mouldy
+bones of Elisha, which represented all that was left, on earth, of that
+distinguished wonder-worker, at once revived, and stood upon his feet.
+But the story forces us to believe that the Hebrew writer, who had no
+revelation from Jehovah about a future life, was, from some cause or
+other, obliged to allow that the prophet had some sort of existence
+after his decease. A similar remark may be made respecting the story of
+the widow's son, given in 1 Kings xvii. 17-23, in which it is clear that
+both the mother of the child and the prophet believed it to be dead,
+although the latter acted as if there was yet its living spirit existing
+somewhere, and capable of being recalled. No simple figure of speech
+will explain away the doctrine referred to, for there is reference
+distinctly made to the idea of a life independent of that of the body.
+
+It may well be supposed, that the very extraordinary tales spoken of
+were introduced into the ancient books by modern Pharisees, as proofs
+of their faith being superior to that of the Sadducees--it is, indeed,
+probable that they were so; but into this point we will not enter. We
+pass by, in like manner, the real signification of the English word
+"ghost," and make no reference to the idea of there being a Holy, in
+contradistinction to a profane, vulgar, and unholy, ghost We may also
+omit anything more than a bare allusion to the fact that the third
+member of the Trinity, as it is called, appeared in forms recognizable
+by the eye; and that when it assumed an overshadowing condition (Luke
+i. 35), it acted as a male human body would have done, and impregnated
+Mary, as Jupiter did Leda. It is rather my desire to call attention to
+the ideas actually existing, probably in all Christendom, and certainly
+in Great Britain, respecting "ghosts." They may be thus described.
+
+It is believed by many that certain individuals have, during their
+lifetime, a power of determining that some immaterial part of their
+living body shall, after death, assume the figure and proportions
+possessed by the person during life, as well as his clothes, &c., and
+act as if this second self had a real existence, recognizable by men,
+animals, and even candles,* and a definite worldly purpose. In other
+cases it is assumed, that the defunct has not had any particular desire
+to return to life until after his death has taken place; but that his
+spirit, having as much power to think without its brains as with them,
+makes itself apparent with a distinct object, formed, not in the living
+body, but in the corpse. The purposes generally attributed to ghosts
+are, to give information about murder or money, to compel religious
+rites over their dead body, or to punish a relentless oppressor with
+daily horror. Still further, some suppose that ghosts are doomed for
+a certain time to walk the earth, and suffer during the day in fires
+perpetual, till, in some unknown way, the sins of their bodies have been
+purged away, or until some one, living, has made an atonement for
+sins committed and unpardoned during the lifetime of the "revenant"
+(Shakespeare in Hamlet). The so-called disembodied spirits are supposed
+to be able to operate upon matter, to throw our atmosphere into waves,
+producing vision and hearing, and to move from one spot to another. They
+have, still farther, the power of making and emitting light, and are so
+partial to using the faculty, that they prefer appearing by night, and
+in darkness.
+
+     * "And the lights in the chamber burnt blue."
+
+     --Alonzo the Brave.--Lewis.
+
+Of the real existence of such ghostly beings no devout Romanist can fail
+to convince himself; for his Church, which claims to be infallible, has
+provided special services for combating them, and a Papal priest has,
+many a time, claimed, and attempted to exercise, the power to drive what
+the French call "revenans," from the earth into the Red Sea. The saintly
+annals of the Church of Rome are filled with stories of angels, gods,
+and devils, who have appeared to holy men of old, either to applaud
+their conduct, or to try their faith The legends about Saint Dunstan
+and Saint Anthony are too well known to require repetition here, and
+it would be idle to refer to some particularly good ghost story, when
+everybody knows so many.
+
+The general credit obtained by the tales referred to has been attributed
+by many to the teaching of the Bible. The apparition of Samuel to Saul;
+the intercourse between the angel Raphael and Tobit; the manifestation
+of some celestial beings to Zacharias (Luke i. 11); to Mary (v. 28);
+to certain shepherds (Luke ii. 9); the statement that some men have
+entertained angels unawares (Heb. xiii. 2); the transfiguration scene,
+described in Matt, xvii. and Mark ix., in which Moses and Elias are said
+to have returned from heaven to earth, with the design of comforting
+Jesus; and the story of Peter and the angel, told in Acts xii. 6-15--all
+indicate a firm belief in the existence of ghosts, and form the
+Christian's warrant for believing in them.
+
+But an extended knowledge of the belief entertained by people other
+than the followers of Jesus shows that the idea in question is wholly
+independent of both Judaism and Christianity. A credence in ghosts is
+profound in Japan, and it resembles, in every respect, that which has
+been so long current in Europe. If any one, for example, will read a
+story in A B. Mitford's _Tales of Old Japan_ (Macmillan; London, 1871),
+entitled, "The Ghost of Sakura," a village, he will scarcely be able to
+divest himself of the idea that the legend is of British origin. Without
+going into the reasons which have convinced me that the writer has
+fairly given a purely Japanese tale, and one wholly untainted by Popish
+legends, I may shortly indicate the main points in the narrative, which
+purports to be a true one. A certain lord behaved very badly to his
+tenants, increasing the imposts upon them until life became a burden. By
+ordinary petitions he was unmoved, and it was necessary to have recourse
+to unusual means. The adoption of a promising plan was, in the mind of
+its proposer, a positive passport to a cruel death, by crucifixion. In a
+touching leave-taking of his wife, he ends his speech with the words--"I
+give my life to allay the misery of the people of this estate" (vol. ii,
+p. 12). His proceedings save the poor peasants, for whom he sacrifices
+himself, from utter ruin--every grievance which they have is redressed;
+but their saviour is condemned to be crucified, in which punishment
+his wife is included, and his sons are to be beheaded before his face.
+Unable to save the man, his nearest male friends become priests, and
+end their days praying and making offerings on behalf of their friends'
+souls, and those of the wife and offspring (p. 25), and they collect
+money enough to erect six bronze memorial Buddhas. "Thus," the tale goes
+on to say, "did these men, for the sake of Sogoro and his family, give
+themselves up to works of devotion; and the other villagers also brought
+food to soothe the spirits of the dead, and prayed for their entry into
+Paradise; and, as litanies were repeated without intermission, there
+can be no doubt that Sogoro attained salvation." The next sentence is a
+Buddhist text, viz.:--
+
+"In Paradise, where the blessings of God are distributed without
+favour, the soul learns its faults by the measure of the rewards given.
+The lusts of the flesh are abandoned, and the soul, purified, attains
+to the glory of Buddha." I scarcely need mention, to those interested
+in Buddhism, that this conception of Paradise is very different to that
+which many persons uphold to be "nothingness." The Japanese "Nirvana" is
+evidently not annihilation.
+
+When Sogoro was to die, the friendly priests entreated the authorities
+that they might have his body, so as to be able to bury it decently;
+but the request was only granted after the corpse had been exposed three
+days and three nights.
+
+At the time appointed, Sogoro and his wife are tied to two crosses, and
+their children brought out for decapitation. The utterance of the eldest
+son (aet. 13) is very touching--"Oh my father and mother, I am going
+before you to Paradise, that happy country, to wait for you. My little
+brothers and I will be on the banks of the river Sandzu,* and stretch
+out our hands, and help you across. Farewell, all you who have come
+to see us die; and now, please cut off my head at once." With this he
+stretched out his neck, murmuring a last prayer (p. 28).
+
+     * The Buddhist Styx, which separates Paradise from Hell,
+     across which the dead are ferried by an old woman, for whom
+     a small piece of money is buried with them. I may add that
+     such a custom obtains amongst the lower orders in Ireland to
+     this day.
+
+At length it is the parents turn to die, and thus speaks the
+wife--"Remember, my husband, that from the first you had made up your
+mind to this fate. What though our bodies be disgracefully exposed on
+these crosses? (compare Gal. iii. 13). We have the promises of the Gods
+before us; therefore, mourn not. Let us fix our minds upon death; we are
+drawing near to Paradise, and shall soon be with the saints. Be calm, my
+husband. Let us cheerfully lay down our lives for the good of many. Man
+lives but for one generation, his name for many. A good name is more to
+be prized than life." "Well said wife; what though we are punished for
+the many? our petition was successful, and there is nothing left to wish
+for..... For myself, I care not; but that my wife and children should
+be punished also is too much.... Let my lord fence himself in with iron
+walls, yet shall my spirit burst through them, and crush his bones, as a
+return for this deed." As he said this, he looked like the demon Razetsu
+(p. 30). The execution is completed by thrusting a spear into the side
+until it comes out at the opposite shoulder, and as it is withdrawn, the
+blood streams out like a fountain. Ere Sogoro dies, he again threatens
+his lord to revenge himself upon him in a manner never to be forgotten,
+and adds--"As a sign, when I am dead, my head shall turn and face
+towards the castle. When you see this, doubt not that my words shall
+come true" (p. 31). As Sogoro laid down his life for a noble cause, he
+was canonized, and became a tutelar deity of his lord's family. After
+the execution, those subordinates of the lord of the land were dismissed
+from their office, who, by their culpable and vile conduct, had made
+such a catastrophe necessary--a retribution that reminds the reader of
+that which is said to have fallen on the Jews, because of a death by
+crucifixion which they brought about. The Japanese historian then goes
+on (p. 34)--"In the history of the world, from the dark ages down to the
+present time, there are few instances of one man laying down his life
+for the many, as Sogoro did; noble and peasant praise him alike."
+
+Four years after this the ghosts of Sogoro and of his wife and family
+begin to torment their late cruel lord. His lady is gradually frightened
+to death; the crucified couple appear to her and to her husband in a far
+more fearful form than Jesus is said to have appeared to Constantine.
+They threaten both with the pains of Hell, and declare that they have
+come to take them there; and with them come other ghosts, who hoot,
+yell, laugh, and come and go at pleasure. No one, not even priests,
+could quiet the frightful sounds, or get rid of the horrible sights.
+Violence was wholly unavailing; mystic rites, incantations, and
+prayers were alike useless. The visions appeared at first by day, but
+subsequently by night. They were visible to everybody. But, after a long
+consultation, the once brutal, but now humbled, nobleman agrees to erect
+a shrine to the crucified man, and to pay him divine honours. This was
+done: Sogoro became a saint, under the name of Sogo Daimiyo, and the
+ghosts appeared no more. But terrible misfortunes fall upon the Lord
+Kotsuke, and he "began to feel that the death of his wife, and his own
+present misfortunes, were a just retribution for the death of Sogoro and
+his wife and children, and he was as one awakened from a dream. Then,
+night and morning, in his repentance, he offered up prayers to the
+sainted spirit of the dead farmer, acknowledged and bewailed his
+crime, vowing that, if his own family were spared from ruin, and
+re-established, intercession should be made at the court of the Mikado
+on behalf of the spirit of Sogoro, so that, being worshipped with even
+greater honours than before, his name should be handed down to all
+generations" (p. 43). In a foot note we learn that the Mikado of Japan
+could, like the Pope of Rome, confer posthumous divine honours upon whom
+he pleased. The tale tells us that, by the means just before alluded
+to, the spirit of Sogoro was appeased, and then positively became his
+quondam enemy's patron saint, and was universally respected in all that
+part of the country. His shrine was made beautiful as a gem, and night
+and day the devout worshipped at it Mitford adds (p. 47)--"The belief in
+ghosts appears to be as universal as that of the immortality of the soul
+upon which it depends. Both in China and Japan the departed spirit is
+invested with the power of revisiting the earth, and, in a visible form,
+tormenting its enemies, and haunting those places where the perishable
+part of it mourned and suffered. Haunted houses are slow to find
+tenants, for ghosts almost always come with revengeful intent; indeed,
+the owners of such houses will almost pay men to live in them, such is
+the dread which they inspire, and the anxiety to blot out the stigma."
+
+The parallel between an episode in Palestine, and that herein described
+as having occurred in Japan, will be completed if the reader remembers
+the passage in the Epistle to the Romans, wherein Paul, after speaking
+of the fall of the Jews, subsequent to the death of Jesus--who gave
+his life for others--remarks, "if the casting away of them be the
+reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life
+from the dead" (Rom. xi. 15).
+
+In addition to the ghost story above described, many others are detailed
+by Mr Mitford that are exact counterparts of some of those most
+firmly believed by orthodox Christians, and most commonly met with in
+novelettes and magazines. We give a digest of them--
+
+A paterfamilias is thrown into prison for gambling. After being confined
+some time, he returns home one night pale and thin, and, after receiving
+congratulations, he tells the friends assembled that he is permitted
+to leave the prison that evening by the jailers, for that he is to be
+returned to them the next day publicly. When the time arrives, they are
+summoned to remove his corpse--he had died the night before, and it was
+his ghost which had appeared. Compare Acts v. 19, and xii. 7-14.
+
+The next runs thus--A cruel policeman had a housemaid, who broke one of
+ten plates which he valued--she confessed the accident to the mistress.
+When the master came to hear of the loss, he tied the girl to a
+cupboard, and cut off one of her fingers daily. She managed to escape,
+and drowned herself in the garden well. Every night afterwards there
+was a noise from the well, counting up to nine, and then came a burst
+of grief. All the retainers left the place; the magistrate could not
+perform his duties, and was dismissed. The ghost was ultimately laid by
+a priest.
+
+After recounting this story, Mitford remarks--"The laying of disturbed
+spirits appears to form one of the regular functions of the Buddhist
+priests; at least, we find them playing a conspicuous part in every
+ghost story" (p. 50).
+
+The next tale is one of a haunted house. No paying tenant will live
+there, but a poor fencing master takes it for nothing. He first hears
+a terrific noise in the garden pond, and, on looking, sees a dark cloud
+enshrining a bald head. He inquires, and discovers that a former tenant,
+ten years ago, murdered a money-lender, and threw his head into the
+water. The actual tenant now drains the pond, finds the skull, takes it
+for burial to a temple, causing prayers to be offered up for the repose
+of the murdered man's soul. Thus the ghost was laid, and appeared no
+more. This tale serves as an additional means of recognizing the descent
+of Papism from Buddhism.
+
+Returning once again to Europe, we find that the ancient Greeks had not
+only an idea of the resurrection of the dead, and life after death, but
+that departed spirits could be summoned to appear by the living. For
+example, at the opening of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses
+recounts how-he offered a certain sacrifice, and tells us that, after
+it, the souls of the perished dead came forth from Erebus--betrothed
+girls and youths--much enduring old men, and tender virgins having
+a newly grieved mind--and many Mars-renowned men, wounded with
+brass-tipped spears, possessing gore-smeared arms, who in great numbers
+were wandering about the trench, on different sides, with a divine
+clamour, and pale fear seized upon me.... At first the soul of my
+companion, Elpenor, came, for he was not yet buried.... The shade
+addressed the hero, and, after telling the manner of his own death,
+entreats to have his corpse burned, and a tomb to be placed over it
+After this shade, appears Ulysses' mother, then Theban Tiresias, having
+a golden sceptre (Bohn's translation, pp. 147, 8). The rest of the
+book is made up of a number of dialogues between the traveller and the
+illustrious dead.
+
+The following, from Herodotus (vi. 68, 69), might have been introduced
+into chapter viii, for it is not only an example of a ghost, but of
+supernatural generation--but it is most appropriate here. Demaratus,
+having been twitted by certain persons that he was not the son of his
+putative father, who was known to be impotent, and that he was begotten
+by a mean man--a feeder of asses--adjures his mother, by a most solemn
+oath, to tell the truth. She replies--When Ariston had taken me to
+his own house, on the third night from the first a spectre, resembling
+Ariston, came to me, and having lain with me, put on me a crown that it
+had, it departed, and afterwards Ariston came; but when he saw me with
+the crown, he asked who it was that gave it me. I said, he did; but he
+would not admit it.... Ariston, seeing that I affirmed with an oath,
+discovered that the event was superhuman; and, in the first place, the
+crown proved to have come from the shrine... situate near the palace
+gates, which they call Astrabacus's; and, in the next place, the seers
+pronounced that it was the hero himself. We need not dwell upon the
+miracle, being only desirous to show that, in the time of Herodotus,
+ideas of the return of departed spirits to earth were common--had it not
+been so, the story would not have been conceived. See also _Herod_ iv.
+14, 15; _AEsch Theb_. 710; _cf. Porson on Eur_. Or. 401; _AEsch Ag_. 415.
+
+Perhaps the most striking example of a phantom is given in Herodotus
+viii. 84, where a spectre, in a woman's form, appeared, and cheered the
+Greeks on shipboard to a battle, saying, so that all the warriors heard
+her--"Dastards, how long will you back water?"
+
+In more recent times, Iamblicus (on the _Mysteries_, section ii, chap,
+iv.), speaking of different celestial and ordinarily invisible
+powers, observes--"In the motions of the heroic phasmata (or
+apparitions--phantoms or ghosts) a certain magnificence presents itself
+to the view." In the phasmata of the Archons the first energies appear
+to be most excellent and authoritative, and the phasmata of souls are
+seen to be the more moveable, yet are more imbecile, than those of
+heroes.... The magnitude of the epiphanies (or manifestations) in the
+gods, indeed, is so great, as sometimes to conceal all heaven.1' Then
+the author describes how this brilliancy is less in each inferior order
+of spirits, and is smallest in those souls below the grade of heroes
+(Taylor's translation, pp. 89, 90). In sect iii., chap, iii., the same
+writer remarks--"The soul has a twofold life, one being in conjunction
+with the body, the other being separated from all body." Again, in
+chap. xxxi.--"Still worse is the explanation of sacred operations, which
+assigns, as the cause of divination, a certain genus of daemons, which
+is naturally fraudulent, omniform, and various, and which assumes the
+appearance of gods and daemons, and the souls of the deceased" (Taylor's
+ed., p. 199). _Le Dictionnaire Infernal_, which I have previously
+described, gives two very modern-like histories from the Greeks, under
+the names Philinnion and Polycritus; but, as I cannot verify them by
+reference, I shall say no more of them.
+
+When we come to speak about the Romans, the first history which occurs
+to my mind is the well-known statement, that the ghost of Caesar appeared
+to Brutus before the battle in which the latter met with his death. The
+narrator of the story dwells somewhat upon the coolness with which the
+living hero encounters the shade of the dead, as if it were strange for
+people, when they saw ghosts, not to be terrified. I think that we may
+believe in the Etruscans having an idea of invisible spirits becoming
+occasionally apparent, inasmuch as in a sepulchral painting, in the tomb
+of the Tarquinii, the shade of Patroclus is represented as standing over
+Achilles as he kills the Trojan captives in sacrifice.
+
+In later times, Otho declared that Galba's ghost had appeared to him,
+and had tumbled him out of bed (Suetonius' _Lives of the Caesars_, Otho,
+vii).
+
+We may take our next illustration from Cicero upon the nature of the
+gods. In book 2, ch. ii.,--"Who now," he makes Lucilius say, "believes
+in Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? or what old woman is now to be found so
+weak and ignorant as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which
+once so terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error and
+opinion, whilst it confirms the determinations of nature and truth. And
+therefore it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred
+institutions and the divine worship of the gods have been strengthened
+and improved from time to time; and this is not to be imputed to chance
+alone, but to the frequent appearance of the gods themselves. In the war
+with the Latins... Castor and Pollux were seen fighting with our army
+on horseback... and as P. Vatienus... was coming in the night to Rome...
+two young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king
+Perses was that day taken prisoner." He told the news and was imprisoned
+as a liar; but further information confirmed the ghost's story, and he
+was liberated and rewarded."... The voices of the Fauns have been often
+heard, and deities have appeared in forms so visible that they have
+compelled everyone, who is not senseless or hardened in impiety, to
+confess the presence of the gods" (Bohn's translation, p. 46). In page
+186 of the same edition, two remarkable instances are given wherein
+supernatural voices told of approaching trouble, and how it was to be
+avoided. No notice was taken of the warning, and the misfortunes which
+had been foretold occurred. The second miracle very closely resembled
+the modern voice of the Virgin at Lourdes.
+
+Whilst I was writing the preceding remarks, my attention was called by
+a friend to the following remarks in _The Examiner_, which seem to me so
+appropriate to this chapter and the preceding one, that I gladly
+quote them:--"If there is anything more striking than the thoughtless
+credulity with which men accept statements agreeing with their
+preconceptions, it is the stubborn incredulity with which they receive
+statements at variance with those preconceptions. The devotees of each
+religion, and even of each sect into which a religion is so commonly
+split up, accept and even adore the absurdities of their own belief,
+while they scan, with a sceptical severity that cannot be surpassed, the
+not greater follies of other systems of belief. In no respect is this
+fact more glaring than in the case of miracles. Each Church has its
+own special miracles, devoutly believed in, but repels with contempt
+or horror the alleged miracles of other religions. Happy that it is so.
+Were superstition not in its essence and nature a dividing folly, could
+it but muster in one herd all its votaries, common sense and truth would
+have a hard battle for existence."
+
+At this point of my subject, I feel the natural inclination of a
+physician to enter upon those changes in the nervous centres which
+induce individuals to hear, feel, and see, noises, sensations, and
+spectra, which have no real existence. But with the majority of
+experienced medical men, the matter is so well known that it would be
+idle for me to dwell upon it, further than to say, that it is a matter
+of fact that many an individual who hears and sees words and beings
+which are illusions, acts upon them as if they were real. Many an
+assault upon some quiet citizen, many an instance of wilful mischief,
+and even of murder, is due to a communication made, apparently by a
+supernatural visitor, to a person who has fully believed it. To a man
+in his perfect senses the delusive character of a spectre, or a message
+given in an audible voice may be readily recognized; but when an
+individual has a diseased brain, all delusions seem real, and it is a
+part of the affection that they are not only recognized, but acted on.
+
+The question has often suggested itself to my own mind, "How much
+has insanity of mind had to do with religion?" In modern times, the
+psychologist can readily see how far Swedenborg, Johanna Southcote, and
+many others, were influenced by a diseased condition of the brain; he
+can also see indications of lunacy in Ezekiel and the author of Daniel.
+But he is unable to prosecute the subject far without discovering that
+mental weakness is often bolstered up by fraud. Nothing is more easy
+than for an intelligent physician to understand the physical causes of
+such visions as certain religionists have talked of. But when a
+spurious miracle, like that of the apparition of a talking,
+immaculately-conceived Virgin at Lourdes, is traded on, the occurrence
+leaves the region of folly, and enters that of fraud. Into that it is
+injudicious to enter here.
+
+I may, however, advert to the current belief that certain individuals
+in the same family have, for many succeeding generations, their death
+foretold by some "wraith" or "phantom" appearing to them. This story is
+probably founded upon the fact that hereditary brain disease exists in
+the constitution of all such persons, and that its occurrence in each
+victim is marked by an ocular, and, perhaps, some aural delusion. The
+apparition may seem real to the diseased nervous system, though it has
+no absolute existence.
+
+We are then constrained to believe that the idea of ghosts has not
+arisen, in the first place, from any peculiar form of religious belief,
+but from the fact that in all inhabitants of the world there has existed
+that form of insanity which consists in the victim believing that he
+hears and sees individuals, inaudible and unseen by others. It is not,
+however, necessary that there shall be insanity with the hallucinations
+referred to; for I am personally acquainted with many individuals who
+have both seen and heard, as they imagine, persons and voices, but of
+whose sanity I have no doubt. Such delusions often come from overstudy,
+or too great mental emotion; and the medical worker in his closet and
+the Roman general in his tent may equally see a spirit.
+
+But it must be understood that to all classes the hallucination has the
+effect of reality, until, by the exercise of an active will, inquiry
+proves that both sounds and sights thus noticed are illusions. If,
+therefore, persons who have visions, &c., have not intellects which are
+cultivated, the spectres will pass for realities, and, as such, will be
+described.
+
+If we endeavour to apply this observation to certain cases, we shall
+see how far the deductions are _vraisemblable_. Of all the causes which
+produce atrocious crimes, insanity of mind is the most common. But this
+cause is rarely recognized at the time, even in a country like our own.
+Murder, rape, arson, and a host of other atrocities are often the first
+evidence of a diseased brain. The doctor is assured of this long before
+an ignorant public, and he traces without surprise the course of a
+malady which is not seen by the vulgar, until its culmination in some
+better known form of lunacy. These mental sufferers are exactly those
+to whom visions are most common, and who are most unable to test the
+reality of their hallucinations. If, then, they are integers of a people
+to whom insanity is unknown, it is natural that their narratives will be
+listened to with awe. The Japanese tyrant, whose case we have given,
+was probably brutal from impending brain disease, and the visions which
+appeared to him were caused by an increase of his malady.
+
+Shakespeare has evidently taken this view of the question, for, in
+_Macbeth_, he makes that hero (act ii., scene 1), soliloquise with a
+dagger which he sees, but cannot clutch--"Art thou not, fatal vision,
+sensible to feeling, as to sight, or art thou but a dagger of the mind;
+a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?" Conscious
+of the illusion, Macbeth recognizes the probable cause; but, at a
+later period, when the diseased brain is worse than it was before, the
+unfortunate man is quite unable to reason, and we find him in act iii.,
+scene 4, affrighted by the ghost of Banquo--whose appearance he believes
+to be real, even although his wife recalls to his mind the dagger scene,
+and reasons upon his weakness.
+
+I do not think that we shall be far wrong if we assume that many
+nations, who were not far advanced in mental speculation, obtained their
+first ideas of the resurrection of the body from the hallucinations
+of approaching or actual insanity. Christian divines unquestionably
+endeavour to demonstrate the truth of the dogma referred to, by the
+frequent appearance of Jesus to his disciples after his crucifixion.
+
+But the manifestation of Jesus differed wholly from that of Moses
+and Elias who once came to talk to him. He takes particular pains to
+demonstrate to Thomas that he has flesh and blood and a hole in his
+side, as well as in his hands and feet. This indicates that Jesus did
+not die upon the cross, but that he fainted and came back to life.
+
+To insist for a moment upon the lessons taught by the narrative in the
+gospels, let us inquire what is the value of the argument which proves
+the resurrection of the body, either by the appearance to some one of a
+departed friend or enemy, or the visits of Jesus to his disciples. If it
+is demonstrated thus that the body is eternal and will rise again, it is
+equally certain that its garments, whether cloth, linen, or calico, will
+be resuscitated also!
+
+The subject, however, is not yet exhausted, for we have now to remark,
+that no one has ever been known to see a spectre which does not
+represent some one whom he has seen, or whose picture he has noticed;
+nor does he ever hear a voice in a tongue unknown to himself.
+Consequently, when we find individuals recognizing some one whose
+portrait they have seen, but who talks in the mother tongue of the
+visionary, we are forced to conclude that the matter is unreal. If a
+French girl--or several of them, see the Virgin Mary, and hear her
+talk French, it is evident to every thinking mind, either that there
+is mental disorder or priestly craft. In like manner, when individuals,
+calling themselves "mediums," declare their power to call before them
+the ghosts of Homer and Hero, Leander and Alexander, and assert that
+they can distinguish Plato from Socrates, and Seneca from Xenophon, and
+can converse with all in pure English, it is clear that such people are
+not insane, and that their pretended skill has no existence. That which
+goes by the names of clairvoyance and spiritualism is based solely upon
+an unreasoning credulity.
+
+In speaking of a belief in "spiritualism" as being analogous to implicit
+credence in ghosts--and both as being founded upon imperfection in
+judgment, it is right that I should give some reasons for what I say.
+
+More than thirty years have elapsed since I attended my first seance
+with a clairvoyant. She had then been in Liverpool some time, and not
+only came to us from America with a wonderful renown, but soon attached
+to her triumphal car some of the most conspicuous of our local savans.
+Having read much upon the subject of Mesmerism--the Od or Odyllic
+force, animal magnetism, &c., I was desirous of gaining some personal
+experience, and gladly accepted an invitation to see the lady referred
+to, at the house of a near relative. There were many present, and before
+the meeting formally began, I obtained permission to take notes in
+writing of what passed. The first undertaking was that we should be told
+what two of our number were doing in a dark room below stairs. I was one
+of the two, and we stood with one hand upon the other's shoulder, and
+the loose hands were held out horizontally. One leg of each was resting
+on the tabla The lady reported us as sitting together on a sofa. Her
+husband explained away the failure by saying that there was a mirror in
+the room! As there was a looking-glass in every apartment in the house,
+my friend and I took our position on the stairs; and on this occasion
+we lay down at full length heads downwards. The clairvoyant said that we
+were arm in arm talking. After this second failure, I was asked to take
+the lady's hand in mine, and think deeply of some place which she would
+then describe to me.
+
+I must here pause to notice the condition referred to. My mind was to be
+absorbed in what I required to be described--if I allowed my thoughts to
+wander, I was told that the woman would be confused, and her performance
+a failure. This involved the idea that I was not to criticise, as the
+affair proceeded, but to make one thing "square" with another, if I
+could. My part was carefully pointed out, but nothing came of it. I then
+gave a possible clue, which was followed up, and with some surprise
+I found the woman describe what I was really thinking about. But the
+repetition of a phrase struck upon my ear--it was this, "I see a lot of
+things going back and for'rads," and I found that I had interpreted this
+as men, women, schoolboys, horses, palisades, trees, cloisters, houses,
+and coaches!
+
+After my retirement an elderly man grasped the hand, and I with pencil
+took down the words the woman used, with the intention of asking certain
+outsiders next day if the terms conveyed to them any distinct idea. I
+found the favourite sentence referred to came so often, that I merely
+left for the words a space with t. b. f., to show where the phrase
+occurred. There were far more spaces in my manuscript than words. But
+the old gentleman was satisfied, and so was his son who was present. It
+had been agreed between them that the clairvoyant was to describe "their
+house"--both were satisfied that she had; but one was thinking of the
+town and the other of the country house!
+
+During the talk, the woman, every time she uttered a sentence, said,
+"Am I right?" and when told that she was wrong, she adroitly changed her
+statement. Every experiment that night was a failure, and to some of us
+who were sceptics our host remarked--"How is it that when you expect the
+most, everything goes wrong?" To this my reply was--"When doubters
+are present you scan evidence closer than when you are all believers
+together."
+
+When once I was known as a pyrrhonist, I was invited to see everybody
+who was regarded by others as extraordinarily perfect in clairvoyance;
+and was astonished to find out how ignorant the believers were of the
+laws of evidence.
+
+After a time clairvoyance was replaced by spiritualism, and I was
+again challenged to test the virtue of mediums. As my avocations wholly
+prevented my personal attendance, I challenged certain of the faithful
+to describe my library, saying that I should not be content with being
+told that there were windows and a door, a fireplace and a chair, a
+table and an inkstand, &c., but that I had something very peculiar in
+it, the like of which I had never seen before--if this were described,
+I should fancy that the spirits knew something. But I added, so long as
+"spirits" only did things which conjurors, prestidigitateurs, "et
+hoc genus omne," did, I should decline to believe that spirits were
+corporeal, and that Grecian statesmen, Latin orators, and Sanscrit
+theologians were familiar with the English language.
+
+It must be emphatically stated that a man must not attribute everything,
+of which he knows little, to a power of which he knows less. No one
+can tell why an ordinary tree grows upwards, whilst a few peculiar ones
+grow, after a certain period of their life, downwards; and if any one
+were to declare that the first were influenced by the spirit of an
+unicorn, and the second by the spirit of a cow's tail, he would be
+regarded as a fool. Not much wiser would he be, who, when he heard a
+knock of some kind or other, asserted or believed that it came from the
+angel of night--the well-known Nox. The untutored savage, when first he
+sees a watch, cannot tell how it goes--if he says that he is ignorant,
+we may respect him; but if he declares that a spirit moves it, we
+despise his credulity. The polite circles of civilized cities who
+attribute the absurd capers of tambourines, concertinas, tables, and
+the like to the vivacity of the ghosts of defunct philosophers, and
+who think that it requires the shade of Venus to tell us, that feminine
+women are more graceful than masculine hoydens, are not much superior to
+the natural savage.
+
+These remarks may be supplemented by the experiences imparted to me by
+several personal friends; for, as it seems to me, each one has his
+own way in looking at things, and has, so to speak, an idiosyncrasy in
+belief and scepticism. One man, for example, inquires "How is it that
+if I propound to a spiritualist, to an artist with 'planchette,' or any
+other person who professes clairvoyance--a question, through a friend
+who does not know the answer, I never get a correct reply; but if I
+propound the same question the response is always right?" In this case
+it is clear that the inquirer answers himself--not wittingly, it is
+true; but, by means of a slight hesitation under certain circumstances,
+he gives to the adroit professor the needful clue. How far this is
+true has been repeatedly proved by those who have made the spirits say
+anything--"Where is my sister?" such an one asks, and by the alphabet
+and raps he hears that she is in Munich; but as the inquirer never had a
+sister, the spirits have clearly been duped.
+
+One of my friends, ordinarily a thorough sceptic, was converted to the
+belief that one of his hands was positively and the other negatively
+magnetic, and he showed me how he turned, by their means, a book
+suspended between us upon a door key finely tied within the leaves.
+But when I showed him that this was done by a movement of the body, and
+could not be done if both hands employed were fixed upon anything--he
+was convinced that what seemed due to one thing depended, in reality,
+upon another. Yet that man was an acute and able chemical analyst.
+How the late Dr Faraday convinced "table turners" that they did,
+unconsciously, that which they wished, but determined not to do, will
+long be remembered as a marvel of philosophical induction. We all have
+not the faculty of analyzing evidence, and it would be well if those who
+are deficient in that power would be less bigoted than they are. We can
+scarcely expect it, however, for ignorance and arrogance usually walk
+together; and no man is more convinced of his knowledge than the one
+who takes it at second hand, and believes what he is told. The faithful
+swallow "squid," and become a mass of blubber; the sceptics feed on
+solid flesh, and are thin as tigers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+     Reconstructive. Faith and reason. Result of previous
+     investigations. Value of morality. Morality and Romanism.
+     Vice encouraged by priests--end in view. Submission to
+     priests more valuable than virtue. Vice better than
+     scepticism. Theological false witness. Compulsory faith.
+     Supply without demand--in theology. Correctness of doctrine
+     proved by the sword. Church and state in modern times.
+     "Nerve" required to change a belief. Moral courage. What is
+     faith? Absurd definition given by Paul. Faith must be
+     uncompromising. Why faith signifies blind confidence. Faith
+     and folly go hand in hand. Faith makes fools. Jesuits and
+     faith. Popery and faith. Faith persecutes reason. All
+     religious teachers uphold faith--the reason why. Quiet after
+     activity. The one who partly abjures faith resembles a
+     mariner at sea. Faith and reason incompatible. The author's
+     personal belief: Negative--positive. Opinions on various
+     received dogmas. Laws of Nature. Providence. The Book of God
+     in the universe. Sin--the ideas connected with children and
+     whelps. Human and animal instincts. Religious laws against
+     God's. Pious murder. When crimes are praiseworthy. Human
+     laws and ecclesiastical. Effect on common law of priestly
+     legislation. Ecclesiastical laws generally bad ones. The
+     Church makes sins; so does society. A case supposed. Society
+     contravenes the laws of Nature. The proper basis of
+     legislation. Personal impressions. Duty the guide of
+     conduct. Conclusions.
+
+Importance of them. Reason gives peace of mind. Fears of the orthodox.
+Reason may regenerate the world; Faith does not. Another way of treating
+the subject Mr Gladstone upon education. Opposes "dread of results" to
+"desire of learning." Gladstone and Strauss. Various oracles. Oxford
+graduates rarely philosophic. Lord Bacon's aphorisms. Science obstructed
+by human weaknesses. Progress of science barred by ecclesiastics.
+Religion and despotism. The man who scouts induction is a bigot.
+Revelation requires exposition. Three sets of expounders--all differ.
+Which must the faithful follow? Popish miracles claim credence from the
+faithful. He who argues must be logical. Can a bigot be a liberal? If
+learning is valuable, it must have free scope. Choice proposed--faith or
+reason? Men of mark who shun religious inquiry. Faraday and Gladstone.
+Influence of faith, or reason, on the clergy. Examples. An objection
+noticed. Reason useless in matters of faith--its absurdity demonstrated.
+
+It is now time to enter upon what has, throughout the composition of
+the preceding essays, been constantly present to my mind, viz.,
+"reconstruction." In the two larger volumes, and in this small one,
+it has been my aim to clear away the foul rags which have, for many
+thousand years, been heaped upon the lovely figure of truth--to
+endeavour to remove the meretricious, or rubbishy, constructions that
+designing men have builded round the magnificent structure of God's
+universe. I have, in my own opinion, demonstrated that the Jews have
+no real claim to be regarded as Jehovah's chosen people, and that their
+writings present no marks of having been inspired or revealed--that,
+on the contrary, there are proofs to show that a large portion of their
+Scriptures are worthless fabrications, contrived by imperfectly educated
+men, for a political purpose, or to foster vanity.
+
+In our examination into the character of the Hebrew God, and of those
+individuals said to be his special friends and messengers, as given
+in the Bible, we found evidence to show that the historians were a
+semi-civilized, sensual, and malignant race, whose ignorance was only
+surpassed by their arrogance. It has been further shown, that every
+portion of the Jewish Scriptures which modern Christians have adopted
+into their own religion, came to the so-called "chosen people" from
+those whom they, and many amongst ourselves, designate "heathen." We
+have, still further, shown the almost absolute identity between the
+current Christian faith and that originated by Sakya Muni, which still
+reigns in Thibet, Tartary, China, Ceylon, Japan, and elsewhere. We have
+demonstrated that a high grade of civilization, and a form of government
+more paternal and provident than any which the old world knew, existed
+in Peru, without the smallest evidence of Christianity or Mosaism having
+ever existed there.
+
+We have, in addition, shown that the miraculous conception of the Virgin
+Mary is not, by any means, as great a marvel as it is generally supposed
+to be, such an occurrence being as common to-day as it was from the
+beginning, and as it probably ever will be. By a similar inquiry we
+could readily have proved that the ascension of Jesus was not at all
+unique, inasmuch as great men of old were in the habit of rising after
+their decease, and making their dwelling in the heaven above--e.g.,
+Romulus.
+
+We have, still further, demonstrated that the modern belief in an
+angelic host has nothing in it peculiar to Bible Christians and
+modern Jews, and that our notion of a resurrection of the body is not
+exclusively a portion of the Christian's creed, but that it was held,
+in one form or another, more or less distinct, by the ancient Greeks and
+Romans, and the distant Japanese. In fine, we have done much to sweep
+away the major part of the religious doctrines and dogmas which are
+prevalent in the Christian world.. Our writing hitherto has been
+essentially iconoclastic.
+
+But, amongst all the idols which we have attempted to throw down, we
+have not, in any instance, threatened morality. We take no credit for
+forbearance, but we point to the fact, inasmuch as whenever opposite
+religionists contend about their tenets, they never lay violent hands
+upon morality. They may abuse the practice of their opponents, and hold
+up the imaginary vices of their enemy to execration, but real goodness
+in the work of life is ever respected.*
+
+     * I am, however, somewhat in doubt whether the Roman Church
+     deserves the eulogy here given to other bodies. In my
+     reading of history, especially in what are called the "Dark
+     Ages" of Christianity, the Papal authorities winked at
+     crimes against morality, so long as the sinners paid due
+     deference to ecclesiastical authority, and bled freely, by
+     pouring lands, treasures, and wealth of all kinds into the
+     priestly treasury. The history of the Popes is written
+     almost everywhere in blood. Murder, assassination, and
+     spoliation were common weapons in their hands, and rape and
+     robbery were condoned easily to those who were powerful and
+     active slaves of the Church.
+
+As soon as the Popes of Rome were free from persecution and danger,
+they, in their turn, used the arts of the tyrants of old, and sought for
+political supremacy by pandering to all the passions of kings and great
+men--if, by that means, they could make them friendly. Up to within a
+very short period there has not been a Christian despot, or a Pope, who
+has not punished political crimes more severely than offences against
+morality.
+
+Yet, with all the fearful practices adopted by Romanists, they have ever
+had in their months exhortations to propriety and personal purity--their
+words have been peaceful, whilst war of the most malignant type has been
+in their hearts. What they have practised, however, they have accused
+their adversaries of having preached.
+
+It may also be objected that some small sects in modern days have really
+preached the doctrines of "free love," and license in sensuality; but
+of these it would be unprofitable to discourse. The people who join in
+promulgating such doctrines are below contempt.
+
+When controversialists find that they have one subject upon which they
+can all of them cordially unite, the philosopher would expect that
+they would study to develope it, and, for that purpose, place it in the
+foreground. But this is far from their practice. The ministers of every
+denomination, on the contrary, place morality far behind doctrine--those
+of the Protestant sect, for example, declare "good works" to be
+essentially valueless without "faith," and our pulpits teem with
+discourses which demonstrate the enormous superiority of a blind belief,
+in doctrine and dogma, over an intelligent morality, irrespective of
+creed.
+
+In this propensity our preachers do not stand alone, for, in every
+instance where history has led us to inquire into this point, we find
+that submission to priestly rule has been regarded as more praiseworthy
+than virtue. When Israel slew the Midianites there was no apparent
+difference between the morals of the two people. Both were equally bad
+or good; but such as they were, their deeds were sanctioned by different
+gods; and whilst the Jews were right, their opponents were wrong. When
+the Crusaders attacked the Saracens, there can be little, if any, doubt
+that the worth of the latter far exceeded that of the former; but as
+their faith differed, the practice was of no consequence in the eyes of
+the invaders, and he who died in fighting for his country was execrated
+by the robbers, who desired to steal it.
+
+If, from a comparatively distant past, we approach nearer to our own
+times, there is abundance of testimony to prove that the excellence of
+the French Protestants was superior to that of the Papal priests and
+their followers in the time of Louis XIV.; but this was of no avail--the
+good were persecuted by the bad, because they were good only in deeds
+and not in doctrine--the last being upheld by the bigots who persecuted
+them.
+
+We may all see precisely the same phenomenon in our own day. Those who
+are called Unitarians, and the vast majority of those who are designated
+atheists are, in proportion to their numbers, far more moral than those
+who are generically described as "Christians;" but their integrity
+in every relation of life does not prevent their being abused and
+persecuted, by parsons in "the establishment," by every means available
+in a free country, and amongst the weapons used, the most common are
+slander and false witness.
+
+On inquiry into its origin, we find at the root of this aversion to
+recognize probity as the most important item of religion, the undoubted
+fact that the upright, thoughtful man requires no other person to help
+him as a priest or a mediator between him and the Creator.
+
+To possess a doctrine there must be some one to teach it, and the demand
+begets a supply. But though the last aphorism is true in commerce, it
+is not by any means universally so, for many an inventor of goods has
+to force a supply, ere any demand for his article can arise. It is
+certainly so in Ethics. The Jews made no request to Moses for a new
+religion when he offered to lead them; they soon became weary of him,
+and wanted to go back to Egypt. Jesus constrained his first followers
+to accept a salvation of which they did not feel the need, and Mahomet
+compelled, at the sword's point, his victims to accept that which they
+detested. In these instances there was no want to be met, except on the
+part of individuals who desired to obtain personal influence.
+
+In religion the laws of supply and demand have only exceptional sway,
+for each individual priest or minister may, according as he pleases,
+elect to provide for known desires, or to inaugurate a new set of
+requirements. But whether he does one or the other he is clearly an
+opponent to, and frequently disliked by, any one who refuses all manner
+of traffic in spiritual affairs. He is then practically in the same
+condition as the English government was in when the Chinamen refused to
+take the opium which they had been receiving for many years before; and,
+like it, he must endeavour to enforce his wishes by war. But the parson
+does not fight with cannon and gunpowder, for he assumes the power to
+wield weapons of far greater importance--viz., the power to torture
+after death all his adversaries. "Believe me," run his words, "and
+you shall be saved from hell fire; reject my message, and you shall be
+burned in everlasting flames!"
+
+When belligerent kings go to battle, they do not go alone and fight
+single-handed for their cause; on the contrary, they enlist upon their
+side every man whom they can influence or compel; nor do they care,
+so long as the troops obey orders, what their private thoughts are;
+probably few Chinese who fought the British were not opium consumers,
+and few English cared for the drug at all. In like manner, when priests
+differ among themselves, they do not meet in wordy tournaments, but
+they enlist on their respective sides everybody whom similarity in
+superstition, interest, or any other motive induces to join their
+standard. When an issue is joined, the result is governed by force of
+arms, arts, or numbers, as the case maybe.
+
+Thus, in the last resort, the correctness of a doctrine is, as we have
+frequently remarked in previous pages, proved by thews and sinews--not
+by brains. So long as the Pagans were numerically superior to
+Christians, the latter were heretics and victims; but when the disciples
+of Jesus were actually the strongest, they became suddenly "the
+orthodox," and the poor Pagans "the damned." In later times
+Protestantism asserted its faith by the prowess of Cromwell's
+"ironsides" in England and Ireland; in like manner the Covenanters of
+Scotland proved, by the might of their swords, Presbyterianism to be
+superior to Episcopal government. By dint of Saxon might, Ireland was
+long politically at one with Great Britain; now by her numbers she is
+allied to the Vatican.
+
+The well-read politician will see that a contest similar to those thus
+indicated is going on almost all over Europe. In Great Britain and
+Ireland, in France, Prussia, Austria, and Italy--even in the once
+bigoted Spain, priestly parties are striving for supremacy over the
+party of rational order and philosophical government. The question at
+issue is by no means doubtful--it is one which has been agitated for
+thousands of years, but that has never assumed large proportions in
+consequence of general ignorance and consequent apathy. In England,
+France, and Germany, innumerable champions on the one side have risen,
+fought, and died, overpowered by the numbers-ranged against them; but,
+as persecution is said to be the seed of orthodoxy, so these men and
+their writings have, by dissemination through the press, and the effect
+of increased education in the languages of Europe, gradually raised so
+large a party, as to be able to contend with some chances of success.
+
+It will be seen that the question to which I refer is this--"Shall men
+and states be governed by faith?" in other words, "by the hierarchy of
+the most numerous section of the community--or by reason--i.e., by the
+good sense of the majority?" In Austria and in Italy this issue has
+clearly been tried, and in both instances the priesthood has been
+obliged to accept a secondary position. In Prussia the same momentous
+point is being tried with every chance of the sacerdotal party being
+worsted. In the British kingdom religion has long been regarded as
+subordinate to state policy; nevertheless there is yet a strong party
+who desires to reduce her inhabitants to clerical bondage. If all the
+individuals composing this section of the community were united, they
+would prevail by their numbers; but, as the aggressive army is composed
+of troops who bear an almost deadly hate against each other, small
+danger is to be anticipated from them. The Ritualist and Roman Catholic
+might unite together; but these would not stand shoulder to shoulder
+with the Wesleyan, Baptist, and Low Churchman. Although all equally
+detest those who say "parsons are not wanted," sects will not ally
+themselves, lest, if every one were to be compelled to select a form of
+faith, the compulsory decree might augment the numbers following some
+adversary.
+
+We have thus placed before our readers what we believe is the first
+article which has to be considered in Reconstruction. We have to ask
+ourselves whether we should enlist ourselves under the banner of faith,
+and endeavour to add one form of religion to those already existing;
+or, whether we should join the banner of reason, and repudiate all
+doctrines, dogmas, credences, and the like, which are offensive to
+common sense. We may fairly parody the words of the mythical Elisha, and
+say to ourselves--"Choose ye this day whom ye will serve; if faith suits
+your indolence, then hug your chains; if you prefer reason, gird up the
+loins of your mind, and metaphorically kill the priests of Rite."
+
+Ere, however, we can reasonably expect those who have hitherto been
+inconsiderate to make their selection of standard bearers, it is
+desirable to say something of the two. _In limine_ we must observe that
+we do not believe that the choice will be determined by the head
+alone, for there are many whose arms are, so to speak, paralyzed by
+a constitutional peculiarity. A hero in his study has often proved a
+poltroon in the field of battle. I may point the moral by quoting from
+memory a story in Addison's _Spectator_--"A B is a hen-pecked husband;
+he knows it, and bewails his thraldom; he consults C D, who sympathises
+with his case, increases his detestation for the home tyranny, and tells
+him how to break the chains. A B, full of resolution, tries the plan
+recommended, but breaks down at once." The moral is, that those who are
+born to serve, or are too weak-minded to assert their independence, had
+better submit to be ruled--even if the tyrant be a woman, than try to
+gain peace by conflict. Into this story I fully enter, for I know, from
+experience, how much "nerve" is required for any one to change his or
+her relative position. The moral courage of which I speak, is one that
+dominates over constitutional shyness and fear; it differs from the
+boldness of a soldier, and the dash of the beast of prey; it is not a
+simple mental assent; but it is a motive which, after being once placed,
+becomes a mainspring of life. To adopt Faith as a guide, is to go
+through life easily--so long as "thought" can be sent to sleep. To adopt
+Reason, is to prevent thought ever slumbering, and to live the happier
+the more steadily that the mind is watchful In few words, Faith is "a
+quack doctor," Reason "a physician." The first will always have the most
+admirers.
+
+Without further preface, let us inquire "what Faith really is?" This is
+a question with which I have been familiar since my childhood, and the
+answer offered to me for adoption was--"It is the substance of things
+hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. xi. 1). This reply
+has never suggested any distinct idea to me, and I am confident that the
+author of "Hebrews" had not a definite meaning in his own mind when he
+wrote the words. The context shows that the word [--Greek--] is used
+to signify distinct states of mind, and one example, which is given
+frequently, indicates a different signification from another that
+precedes or follows. For example, in v. 5 we are told that Enoch was
+translated by "faith;" but the only evidence for this is, that "he
+pleased God;" whereas, in verse 11, we are told that Sarah, who laughed
+at the idea of having offspring, and disbelieved the promise which said
+that she should have a son, conceived "through faith." Still further,
+the false history of the chapter disgusted me--e.g., we read in w. 24,
+25, 27, that Moses by faith elected to bear affliction with the people
+of God, and from the same cause forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
+the king, &c.--both of which statements are untrue, for he ran away both
+from the afflictions of the Hebrews and the wrath of the monarch, and
+required "pressing" before he would leave his retreat in Midian. I
+regard the chapter thus referred to as one of the great stumbling blocks
+of Christianity. Its logic is contemptible; yet it must pass for truth,
+because Paul is thought to have written it. Being now thrown back
+upon our own resources for a definition of "faith," we affirm that it
+signifies "_uncompromising_ belief in what one is told." Every religious
+book which occupies itself with this subject illustrates the word in
+question by affirming that it resembles the motive which actuates a
+child who, at a father's bidding; leaps from a height upon the promise
+that papa will catch him in his arms.
+
+Though, as a rule, I am disinclined to use adjectives, I have added the
+word in italics, because it is a material part of the definition, and
+involves more than at first sight appears. Peter tried to walk upon the
+water--he doubted, and began to sink. He has been imitated by others;
+they have all failed. "Doctor," a man may say, "can I swallow this
+without being choked?" "Yes, if you think you can." He tries to swallow
+the morsel, and is choked. The result in every case is attributed to a
+want of faith. In other words, hesitation cannot effect what confidence
+can. Consequently we are justified in asserting that faith and doubt
+are absolutely incompatible. Faith implies an absolute and perfect
+confidence. This faith may be compulsory--as when a shipmaster is
+obliged by local law to give up the management of his ship to a pilot;
+or it may be spontaneous, as when a patient trusts himself to a surgeon.
+For a man only to give a half confidence, is to cripple to that extent
+the capacity of the one who is responsible.
+
+Religious faith, then, involves the necessity of an absolute and blind
+confidence in the priestly pilot selected as a conductor through life
+to eternity; it precludes inquiry, discourages thought upon the most
+important matter which every man has to consider, and makes of a
+rational being an intellectual slave. In few words, it reduces its
+votary to the position of a tool, and renders him, so far as religion is
+concerned, mentally blind.
+
+We recognize the accuracy of our deductions when we find that the aim of
+the Roman church has been to reduce men to the condition here described,
+and then to use them as carpenters do planes, chisels, and axes. It is
+probable that there never existed in the world an order of men who have
+so completely reduced themselves, and voluntarily too, it must be borne
+in mind, to the position of a machine, as the Jesuits have done. They
+are an instrument in the hands of their superiors, and they blindly
+obey. Whether the order exists for good or harm, it is not my purpose to
+discuss.
+
+Next in order to the society of Jesus comes the gigantic society known
+as the Papacy, or Roman Catholicism. I place this as second to Jesuitry,
+because, for a long period, there was a certain freedom of opinion
+allowed to the superior clergy. But now, when it has become a tenet
+of the church of Rome, that its head is absolutely infallible in all
+matters of dogma and doctrine, it is probable that the demand of faith
+from the laity may equal, if not exceed, that made upon professed
+Jesuits.
+
+In religion, the only place in which uncompromising faith finds
+its home, is the Papal. That demands unlimited belief in everything
+ecclesiastically promulgated, hatred of everything dogmatically
+condemned, and acquiescence in every sacerdotal command. Amongst that
+sect, doubting is an offence, and opposition is a crime.
+
+We have seen this illustrated in the person of the learned Bishop
+Doellinger, who has been excommunicated simply because he refused to
+accept the new fangled notions of an almost effete old pope. He cannot
+see anything in a modern council to supersede apostolic traditions; he
+doubts; therefore the Papalists do everything in their power to damn
+him. In like manner, although prior in time to the declaration of
+the Pope's infallibility, we have seen the present king of Italy
+excommunicated; because he, as the head of his own dominions, ordered
+a decree to be carried into effect which, whilst it was good for the
+people generally, was regarded as hostile to the church.
+
+The observer need not, however, go far from home in search of
+illustrations, for every year sees one or another Protestant minister
+leaving the Anglican for the Roman communion, on the sole ground that
+in the latter there is no room for doctrinal doubts and contests. To the
+laity, the very repose of the religious mind is held out as a bait by
+Papal missionaries, and it is probably one of the most successful which
+"the fishers of men" employ. I once heard a brother physician express
+his opinion on this point. Conversation had turned upon a confrere who
+had been in religious matters "everything by turns, and nothing long."
+"Ah," said the Romanist, "he'll be tired of roaming some day, and find
+repose at last in the bosom of the church; his soul will then be at
+rest, and will wander no more."
+
+The possibility of Protestants entertaining a doubt upon the power of
+"the Church" to demand unlimited belief and obedience from the faithful,
+is a sore thorn in the side of many dignitaries of the national creed.
+As this propensity to inquiry is an essential part of the legacy
+bequeathed to Englishmen by the reformation, this last movement has been
+execrated by some of our High Churchmen. It is asserted, that, as the
+taking of the Bible for the sole rule of faith has been followed by
+a great splitting up of the so-called "Church of Christ," so it is
+advisable to change the standard, and to adopt that of "Ecclesiastics"
+personally or collectively. In any case, such advocates desire to
+re-establish the reign of faith. What the Reign of Faith has been in
+Europe, it would be idle to describe.
+
+As soon as the mind of an individual revolts from giving implicit faith
+to any creed, doctrine, or dogma, he must be regarded as a mariner who,
+being not quite contented with his own country, endeavours to find a
+better. In his voyage he first leaves the shore as a fledgling does the
+nest--he goes a short excursion, and returns; after a time he becomes
+more brave, and puts off more boldly. At first he probably finds
+a number of other barques as venturous as his own, and he becomes
+emboldened; it may be his arms are strong, his head clear, and his boat
+good; and he steers into the offing. No sooner does he leave the herd,
+however, than he is chased, and if he refuses to put back, curses follow
+him; and the friends whom once he had are condoled with. Such is the
+position of a Protestant who departs seriously from the religion of the
+majority. With or amongst the Romanists to leave the shore is an act of
+disbelief which must be atoned for by penance or punishment.
+
+It is clear that every such individual who, like a chick, leaves the
+shelter of the maternal wings, must be more or less at sea. He or she
+may have no idea of going very far, yet may be compelled to sail on
+until he has reached the other side of Doubting Straits, and has landed
+in the realm of Reason. We can well conceive the waters to be covered
+by small "craft," which keep together for company's sake, or who boldly
+sail out and solicit followers--some cluster, it may be, round a stately
+galleon, others sail with a dashing cruiser, some come into collision
+or hostile contact with their neighbours, and try to damage each others'
+barques. But all are at sea--driven hither and thither by breezes which
+spring up, no one knows how, and drop down again as swiftly as they
+rose. The mariners, however, seem to enjoy the excitement, and refuse to
+return to their own land.
+
+The individuals whom we here describe are the ordinary Protestant sects
+(not including the Unitarians, who have long reached a comparatively
+stable ground). These, by whatever name they are called, refuse to give
+implicit faith to the Pope; they will, however, accord, in some degree,
+to some pet parson, the management of their conscience; they dread what
+is called "free-thinking," as a mariner does a lee shore. They put up
+with every accident which arises from mingling faith with reason, and
+are, on the whole, contented, as long as too much pressure is not put
+upon them, to steer in a definite direction. Of these it may be said,
+"Thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then,
+because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
+out. of my mouth" (Rev. iii. 15,16). The endeavour to make reason
+subservient to faith, must ever be a failure as complete as would be
+the endeavour to weld iron with water, or to heat an anchor shaft by
+surrounding it with cold coals and wood, then blowing a blast of air
+upon the whole. He who is determined to use reason, must drop faith; and
+he who clings to faith, must drop reason. The conclusions drawn by all
+who attempt the combination will always be lame and impotent.
+
+If, in the stead of faith, an individual takes reason for his guide
+through this world to the next, he incurs the wrath and malignancy of
+the many, and the respect of the few. He comes in for far harder names
+than Pagans gave to Christians, and Papalists gave to Huguenots. If,
+unfortunately, he should live in a country where priests rule, he may be
+burned, as Savonarola was at Florence, Latimer and Ridley at Oxford, and
+Servetus at Geneva. Luther was said to be a devil--a so-called Atheist
+is believed to be something worse.
+
+Yet, notwithstanding all the obloquy thrown upon Freethinkers by the
+orthodox, they steadily have increased in numbers, ever since the spread
+of education and the cheapness of books have enabled men to study in
+retirement When there was little instruction and few books, people
+gained what knowledge they had from their spiritual guides. This power
+of the pulpit enabled the hierarchy to set up and substantiate any
+claims which they chose. But, since the power of the printing press has
+risen, the influence of the priesthood has diminished. With all this
+tendency to so-called Atheism, there has been no loss of propriety; on
+the contrary, the probity of the few exceeds that of the many, and in
+all there is a great improvement. The present times in Italy are far
+superior to those when the Borgias and their religion were supreme.
+
+When we inquire what the Freethinkers, or Rationalists, are, it is
+readily seen that they have been maligned by "the faithful." There is
+little difficulty in summing up their tenets: it is "Reverence, without
+servility." They draw their views from the book of creation, and hold it
+infamous to fight for supremacy where facts and logic can decide. This,
+however, is by far too meagre to satisfy either a friend, an inquirer,
+or an opponent; it is, therefore, desirable to go into the matter more
+fully. In doing so, I make no pretence to be the mouthpiece of a party,
+nor even to give a digested account of what those who have written and
+published before me have enunciated; my sole aim is to give, in as plain
+terms as I can command, the opinions which inquiry has forced upon my
+mind.
+
+My first confession of faith must be negative, for, until the ground has
+been cleared, it is not advisable either to plant or construct:
+
+1. I do not believe in the authority of any written book as being an
+inspired production, or as containing a revelation from God to man. In
+my estimation, the Bible is not in any way superior to the Koran, to
+the Dhammapada, the Puranas, the Main-yo-Khard, the Avesta, or any other
+collection of scriptures held sacred.
+
+2. I do not believe the story given in Genesis of the creation, of
+the formation of human beings, and what is ordinarily called "the
+temptation" and "the fall".
+
+3. I do not believe in the existence of what is technically designated
+"original sin," nor that the human race is "a fallen one;" consequently,
+I do not believe in the necessity for "salvation." I do not believe that
+death came into the world by sin.
+
+4 I do not believe in the existence of "sin," in the ordinary
+acceptation of the word; nor do I believe that man requires the
+intervention of any fellow mortal, either to reconcile or embroil him
+with an unseen power.
+
+5. I do not believe in the existence of a Devil, or of any other power
+in the whole universe, than that of the Supreme Maker of all.
+
+6. I do not believe in any description which has yet been given of Hell
+or Heaven.
+
+7. I do not believe that God has ever directly spoken to man.
+
+8. I do not believe that God has ever become incarnate, or that he has a
+celestial spouse, or a son.
+
+9. I do not believe in the existence of truth-speaking prophets, in the
+existence of angels, or ghosts, or in the supernatural birth of any one.
+
+10. I do not believe that God has now, or ever has had, a separate and
+chosen people, peculiarly "His own," and, consequently, that there are
+none to whom the term "the elect" can apply.
+
+11. I do not believe that what is generally designated religion is
+necessary to the existence of law and order in a state or in a family.
+
+12. I do not believe that God requires the assistance of man, here
+or elsewhere, to enable Him to find, or to keep, or to punish, His
+subjects.
+
+These negatives might be multiplied, but I doubt whether profitably so,
+inasmuch as the more we dilute important points, the less readily are
+they recognized. We may now proceed to affirmations:--
+
+1. I do believe in the existence of a distinct Power in creation--great
+beyond conception, which pervades all space--which is everywhere present
+in the earth, the sea, the air, and in every conceivable part of the
+Universe--which made all things, and gave to them properties, powers,
+and laws. A power to which it were blasphemy to assign ears, eyes,
+hands, or human parts, and an evidence of a grovelling mind to suppose
+it capable of human passions, such as love, hate, jealousy, and
+merriment, and to describe it as ignorant, vacillating, and grieved at
+its own work. That Power I cannot conceive as having either an origin or
+an end. Into the designs of such a power, man cannot enter, nor can he
+even seem to approach them, except by noticing the works of creation,
+and studying the laws which apparently govern it By the term, "laws of
+nature," I understand "the laws of the power of which I speak." I cannot
+conceive how man can form an idea of a state of spiritual existence of
+which he can neither see, observe, or notice anything.
+
+It is, in my opinion, unnecessary here to enter into the vexed question
+of the continued interference of this Power with its works, for where we
+have only human analogies to guide us, it is undesirable to argue
+upon them in the attempt to discover the superhuman. As we shall have
+occasion shortly to indicate our views upon a matter analogous to this,
+we will postpone anything which we may have to say.
+
+I believe that the Power has never made, nor can ever make, a mistake;
+that all its works are perfect, and that where they seem to us to be
+otherwise, it is from our ignorance of their design.
+
+It seems to me that lions and lambs, sharks and gudgeons, that hawks and
+chickens, form a portion of a grand scheme: that the distinct classes
+of animals were originally perfect; that they may deteriorate, yet never
+advance beyond perfection. I do not believe that a lion could become,
+under any circumstances, a bull; a bear a camel, or a pig an elephant.
+
+2. The belief that the Creator made each creature originally perfect,
+and with certain well defined propensities, involves the further
+confidence that the indulgence in those propensities is a necessary part
+of the scheme of creation; consequently, I believe that the tiger eats
+flesh because it is a law of his existence, and that in doing so he
+commits no sin. I believe, still further, that a close observation of
+nature gives us some apparent insight into the plan of creation For
+example, I think the existence of gills in a fish leads us fairly to the
+conclusion that it was intended to live in the water; that the existence
+of teeth implies that they were to be used in eating, wings in flying,
+legs in walking. Still further, when we notice that vegetables can
+assimilate mineral matter, which animals, as a rule, cannot, I believe
+that the vegetable kingdom has its special place in the world; and when,
+moreover, we find creatures who can eat and digest vegetables, and have
+a special apparatus for the purpose, it is fair to conclude that they
+too have their station assigned. A corresponding remark applies to the
+carnivora. Once again,--when an extended observation shows us that the
+beasts and birds of prey select for their victims the young of animals
+which their parents are unable to protect, the aged, who are too infirm
+to fight for themselves, or the sickly, which are quite unfit to live:
+when, moreover, we find these carnivorous creatures die when age or
+accident deprives them of the power of getting food; nay, when we see
+large numbers of all animals die from want of food, of air, of warmth,
+or from accidents--I believe that we are justified in deducing the idea
+that it is a design of the Power, that those which cannot live shall
+die; I believe that death is as essential a necessity to every creature
+as is its birth, and that its many forms have a definite purpose.
+
+Let us now, for a moment, turn our attention to the very commencement
+of life. If from any cause the new being is seriously malformed or
+diseased, it is a common thing for the dam to miscarry. If a mother, say
+a pig, rat, or bird, brings forth a larger brood than she can nourish,
+she commonly kills the smallest, and allows only those to survive which
+she can find food for--the bird that lays more eggs than her nest will
+hold, turns the overplus out; and if, when the fledglings grow up, they
+are too bulky, one of them will be discarded. The cuckoo's chick has a
+special provision made for helping it to turn out the young of another
+bird, and its mother has also a special instinct to lay its eggs in the
+nest of the hedge-sparrow. The life of one involves the death of three
+or more. Again, in the aquatic world, one fish makes no scruple to feed
+on its own young ones or those of its neighbours, and the old crocodile
+seeks out its offspring as a favourite luxury. We find, moreover,
+that where these creatures abound there may often be found a small
+animal--the ichneumon--whose instinct teaches it to seek for and destroy
+the eggs of the saurian. In like manner crows, rats, cuckoos, and
+probably many other creatures, have a propensity to feed upon the eggs
+of various birds. In few words, we recognize throughout creation an
+apparent design to prevent a superabundance of life.
+
+This remarkable provision, working, as it does, through laws which seem
+to be fixed and established, prevents our belief in the interference of
+the Creator. When an animal has reached the period of nearly adult age,
+there is in many instances a considerable amount of instruction given
+to it, sometimes by the sire, but mostly by the dam. When that has been
+imparted, parents and offspring seem to be like strangers to each other.
+
+It is probable that, if we could observe all animals, we should find
+some system of training of the family. As it is, we can only speak of
+domestic fowls, and notice the order which the hen keeps up amongst her
+brood of chickens; they are taught to live peaceably. Her punishments
+are never lenient; they are, indeed, necessarily severe.
+
+We may next proceed to inquire into the animal instincts which exist
+in adult life, at a period when every creature is supposed to be in its
+perfection. At a certain time of the year there is a propensity for
+the male and female to unite. There is not anything in creation which
+affords a more attractive study than this, for every class of creatures
+has a practice peculiar to itself. One might fancy that in an act so
+necessary and so simple there would be little cause for interest; yet,
+in reality, "the prodigality of design"--a term which we hope to explain
+fully hereafter--is more largely shown in this process than in any
+other. It is, however, a subject upon which one cannot descant before
+the general public.
+
+So far as we are able to observe animals, we find that at this period
+there is, amongst a great number of classes, a power amongst the males
+to discover the most perfect amongst the females, and to fight for them.
+By this means the young are certain to be the offspring of perfection of
+grace and beauty in the dam, and strength and size in the sire. We can
+readily understand that, if the loveliest hind were to pair with the
+weakliest stag, the breed would degenerate, and probably die out. But
+the conqueror can hold his place only so long as he has vigour; when age
+has weakened him, the youthful successor practically prevents the old
+buck from being a father. In some exceptional cases (apparently so at
+least) the number of males exceeds that of the females, and, as a result
+of the instinct before alluded to, the fight ends in the majority of the
+males being destroyed. The survivor then has one spouse only, and not a
+seraglio. This is said to obtain amongst rats and lions.
+
+As yet, there is not a sufficient amount of observation available to
+enable us to affirm what is the general cause of exit from life, when
+no death by violence occurs. We do not know the end of old buffaloes,
+elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, whales, and other monsters. Tales
+are told of decrepit lions being occasionally seen tottering to their
+fall; and gossip says that ancient cats know when they are about to die,
+and retire to some secluded nook, where they give up the ghost quietly.
+I cannot charge my memory with a single anecdote in which the youthful
+animal endeavours to sustain the old one, by feeding it during its
+decrepitude. Throughout creation parental affection signifies solicitude
+for offspring. We do not anywhere discover a love towards a parent after
+the younger creature has reached adult age.
+
+In all the cases to which I have referred, and, were I a naturalist,
+they might be greatly multiplied, there is no pretence, even amongst
+the orthodox, that any of the creatures have committed "sin" against
+the Almighty, or against the community of which they form a part. On the
+contrary, what is done, even though it amounts to murder, is regarded
+as a necessity; and we admire the laws of nature which bring about such
+results. We do not stop to inquire whether any contrivance would prevent
+birds from laying too many eggs, and cuckoos from dropping theirs into
+the nests of other birds; we content ourselves with saying, "such is the
+will of Providence." It is easy to come to such a conclusion as regards
+what we are pleased to call "the lower animals," but as soon as we
+inquire "whether similar laws or instincts are implanted in us," we are
+generally met with a howl of repugnance.
+
+But I believe that we shall never understand our true position in life
+and in nature until we deliberately investigate that which we have
+in common with other animals, and wherein we are different--probably
+superior. I use the word _probably_, because, in the estimation of
+higher beings than ourselves--if such there be--the horse and the
+elephant may be regarded as being far above us in the scale which those
+beings have framed for themselves.
+
+I have never yet seen any deliberate attempt to work out the problem
+referred to. Every one, or nearly so, who if orthodox, assumes that it
+is absolutely wicked to compare the beasts which perish, to man who has
+a soul As I have, in a previous volume, shown that the evidence for the
+immortality of the horse is equal to that for the human race, I will not
+stay to point out the absurdity of building an important argument upon a
+baseless assumption, but simply express my belief that man has very much
+in common with other mammals; but that he is in possession of something
+superadded, which, at first sight--though not in reality--takes him
+out of the trammels of the ordinary laws of nature that operate in the
+brutes.
+
+No one can doubt that man has as strong a propensity to unite with
+woman, as bulls and stags have with the females of their kind. He has,
+even in civilized societies, a propensity to fight with one or more of
+his fellows for a female of surpassing beauty. Men will combat about
+a disputed field or country as fiercely as dogs over a bone, or hermit
+crabs over a shell. As a rule, man detests to be taught, quite as much
+as does the whelp; yet, when he has gained an art, he is as proud of it
+as a highly trained spaniel. Men are gregarious as horses in a field,
+and quite as intolerant as they, of an interloper. Like the wild wolves,
+men will unite together to capture and prey upon creatures of each
+of whom individually he stands in fear. Like a set of wild bulls or
+buffaloes, men will, for a time, agree to obey a leader, and, when the
+object is gained, break loose. Like a cat, man will steal, when he can,
+his neighbours' goods, like a crow, he will pay no attention to his
+parents, nor to a Sunday.
+
+Without entering into farther particulars, we may affirm that some
+highly trained elephants, dogs, and horses, are superior to many human
+beings in every point upon which an impartial judge can determine.
+
+It is my belief that, for a man to obey an instinct which is implanted
+in his nature, is not "a sin" against God.
+
+To see this in a fair light, let us assume, as we have a right to do,
+that it is an instinct in the nature of all known creatures, to
+increase and multiply their like. To avoid doing so intentionally, is a
+contravention of one of the Creator's laws. If this be so, then celibacy
+is a sin, as great, indeed, as if one were to refrain from food of all
+kinds; and no one can be considered as worthy of the name of good,
+who remains unpaired without just cause. In like manner, it is not an
+offence against the laws of God for any man and woman to unite, for it
+is as much a law of nature that they shall do so, as that they must eat
+and drink. The plea of "religion" cannot make that wrong, which is by
+nature right.
+
+In like manner, if in a limited community--say upon an island, the
+number of men exceeds that of the women, I believe that a fight amongst
+the males for the possession of mates, would not be "sin" against the
+Omnipotent even though many combatants died during the contest.
+
+Nay, so common upon many points is the agreement; amongst even the most
+orthodox, that none would say that a man commits a crime when he steals
+the store of honey laid up by bees, kills animals for food or for their
+fur, or covets and appropriates the prairies hitherto occupied by herds
+of deer and bison. Even the commandments said to be delivered by
+God Himself are held not to be literally binding upon man, except in
+relation to his friends. He may, for example, by the laws of war, murder
+his enemies, fornicate with their wives, steal their property, and
+deceive them in every way. Abraham, the so-called friend of God,
+murdered many Orientals, and plundered them; not because he had any
+quarrel with them, but simply because they had murdered and plundered
+some of his friends. David again, a man after God's own heart, with his
+dying breath, gave his son instructions to put individuals to death in
+cold blood, superseding the law of Sinai, by a heritage of hate. When,
+therefore, common consent takes certain actions out of the list of
+crimes or sins, provided that the deeds are done against enemies, we
+have to seek for the origin of those ideas which make murder, theft,
+robbery, rape, and false-witness crimes in the abstract.
+
+To understand this point, we have really to start from the bestial
+basis, and aver that what is not sin in them, is not sin in savage man.
+No one of any intelligence would say that a Briton would be justified in
+shooting an Ashantee because the latter had killed and eaten an enemy,
+or an aged parent; nor would any one of us sentence a Hindoo to death
+because he had killed a dozen Thugs. Even in comparatively civilized
+American backwoods, a person who has killed a bully has been thought
+a public benefactor. Again, when we cast our eyes upon Australia, and
+learn the brutal way in which the black native virgins are violently
+carried away from their relatives and married, and how again they
+are repeatedly carried off as wives by other men, we feel ourselves
+justified in leaving the ravishers without punishment, for there is
+no violation of law, or, if there be, Englishmen have no right to
+interfere.
+
+But what we tolerate in uncivilized lands, even where we are ostensibly
+rulers, we will not suffer in our own. The reason of this is, that we
+have banded ourselves into a society in which "the laws," once settled
+and determined by the majority, supersede, in certain cases, individual
+action.
+
+To make our meaning clear, let us imagine that amongst some nation or
+people there is one man more astute and powerful than his fellows;
+still further, we assume that he has fought, or is desirous to fight, a
+neighbour of nearly equal force. It is clear that if his people murder
+each other from any cause he will lose warriors; consequently, he will
+let his tribe understand that he will punish homicide, on a plan which
+he thinks will be deterrent. Still further, as he requires soldiers of
+strong limbs and sturdy constitution, he declares that no woman shall
+many without his consent, so that he may prevent any one selling
+herself, or being sold, to a weak or old man for mere pelf. As, in a
+savage state, most possessions are those which are useful in war, he
+would prohibit theft. As a consequence, he, and all who respected his
+power to punish, would regard murder, theft, rape, and unauthorized
+wife-selling as crimes--offences, that is to say, against the ruler of
+the state, and not against the Creator of mankind.
+
+It signifies little to my argument, whether society is governed, as the
+early Aryans were, by warriors, or, as the later ones were, by Brahmans.
+In either case the leaders make laws, and declare a violation of them to
+be punishable.
+
+When communities are small in size, and extend over a small area, few
+rules of life are necessary; but when a nation increases in size,
+and especially when it consiste of many tribes or class which have
+voluntarily united together, legislation is far more complicated,
+inasmuch as the ideas of right and wrong in each section may, from long
+custom, vary from each other. For example, in most of the United States
+of America bigamy, or the possession of two wives at a time, is a crime;
+whereas, in Salt Lake city, its rulers have twenty, and its men a dozen,
+if they like, and yet are esteemed saints, and really conduct themselves
+as if they had a clear claim to the title.
+
+The greatest complication is when the laws of a community have been
+framed, partly by soldiers, partly by ecclesiastics, and partly by
+mercantile men, for each party has a different creed. The first makes
+no scruple to fight at the command of the second, whilst the third
+endeavours to prevent all war whatever. The second set intrigue to have
+the supreme power; the first and third often endeavour to suppress the
+second, knowing its aggressiveness and lust of supremacy.
+
+When a nation is under what is grandiloquently called a Theocracy, every
+offence against a command given _ex cathedra_ is regarded as a sin; not
+simply a disregard of the law, but a defiance of the God who is said to
+have ordained it. Thus, according to what is known as the Mosaic law,
+it was a crime punishable by a lingering death to gather sticks on a
+Sabbath day (Num. xv. 32-36); but it was no crime to kill all the
+males and women of a whole nation, and retain the maidens for private
+prostitution and for the use of the priest (Num. xxxi. 17, 18, 40,
+41). In such a nation it was no crime to commit forgery--and of all the
+bearers of false witness, none exceeded in ancient times the Jewish
+writers in the Bible--but in mercantile England, the former has been at
+one time punished with death, and the latter by ignominious penalties.
+
+In modern Theocracies, such as once existed in Austria, Spain, Italy,
+England, and elsewhere, it was considered criminal to think differently,
+upon any religious point, from the authorized standard. In those
+kingdoms many a person was doomed to die a painful death, and thereafter
+sent--as it was supposed, to Hell--whom we now regard as a virtuous,
+brave, and noble individual.
+
+The common sense of mankind induces all citizens to buy what they have
+need of, at the smallest possible price; but a mercantile government
+says to its people--"You shall not buy anything from anybody who has not
+first paid us for the privilege of trading, and something more for every
+ware which he offers for sale, and every one contravening this order
+shall be seriously punished." Here, again, an artificial offence is
+manufactured that has no origin in nature.
+
+When a people has succeeded in throwing off publicly the trammels of
+Ecclesiastical legislation, as England, Italy, Spain, France, Austria,
+Belgium, and other nations have done, they by no means shake off their
+private shackles. The only difference between Spain, Austria, and other
+places, now and formerly, is, that the priesthood are seeking to attain
+by subtlety what they could previously command by their state power. At
+one period in the history of modern Rome, it was a crime not to kneel
+on the bare ground when certain priests passed with a bit of wafer
+surrounded by gorgeous trappings. This is a crime no longer against the
+state, but for all who believe the Papal hierarchy it is yet a sin.
+
+At one time in England, it was a crime not to go to church on Sunday;
+it was equally punishable to carry on any business. The laws respecting
+these matters have not yet been repealed, and they have been put
+recently into operation, although the good sense of the majority has
+made them practically obsolete. Yet, though this is the case, and the
+law no longer punishes Sabbath-breaking, the priestly body continue to
+launch their thunders against all who regard every day alike. It is,
+indeed, doubtful if, in the eyes of our parsons, there is any sin so
+great as enjoying one's self on a Sunday. The law of our country does
+not make it a crime for a woman to prostitute her body, or for a man
+to have a concubine of greater or less permanency, but the hierarchs
+denounce the arrangement as criminal in the sight of God.
+
+We need not multiply our illustrations farther. Sufficient has been
+advanced to show that there are two distinct classes of sins--one, those
+made by Ecclesiastics, or by those legislators passing under the name
+"Society;" the other, those which are against the laws of nature--e.g.,
+an enforced celibacy, such as that to which Romish priests are doomed.
+In saying this, we readily allow that what is right, according to the
+laws of God, as set forth in the universe, is wrong according to the
+code made by the legally constituted authorities of the state in which
+an individual lives. We grant, moreover, that, if a government is strong
+enough, the laws of man should be enforced by human means. But we do not
+believe that mortals should be compelled to carry out that which priests
+tell them is the justice of the Immortal, of which they know absolutely
+nothing. I hold that no state can fairly claim to take cognizance of, or
+to punish, thoughts, or any private indulgence which creates no public
+scandal.
+
+If we endeavour to reduce our views to a still clearer issue, the
+difference between divine and human laws will be the more readily
+understood. Let us assume that Miss Kallistee is the most perfect
+woman in a district. For her contend with their natural weapons Messrs.
+Dunamis, Kratos, Kalos, Sophos, and Mathesis; and the conqueror, having
+killed his adversaries, takes the lady to wife. The law of man or of
+society now steps in and kills off the survivor; or, if it should know
+beforehand of the coming contest, will prevent it. As a consequence,
+the lady must be contended for peaceably, and may become the bride of
+impotent old age or wealthy disease. As a result, the healthy offspring,
+which nature would have reared, are either absent, sickly, diseased,
+or idiotic. Here, then, I affirm that a law of society is a sin against
+God.
+
+I would wish my readers to ponder over this matter, which gives much
+food for thought. I do not think that such contests as I have described
+can be tolerated in any society of civilized beings, for, in proportion
+to our emergence from barbarism, we do not seek mere strength and beauty
+of form in our population. We desire to cultivate the intellectual
+rather than the animal in man. But experience has shown that, as a rule,
+the further man departs from the latter, and the nearer he approaches to
+the former, the more does his progeny deteriorate physically.
+
+It is a problem whether, by any available contrivance short of that
+which was adopted by the Incas of Peru, man can uniformly develope
+upwards. The physiologist can readily see how the matter might be
+effected, but in republican or constitutional kingdoms, the means will
+never be adopted.
+
+We have now come to a point when it is necessary for me, as an
+individual, to express an opinion as to the selection which a
+philosopher, living in a comparatively civilized community, should make
+between a promulgation of the so-called laws of God--an instruction
+respecting the laws of nature--or an utterance of the laws of society,
+with the enforcement of them. Ere forming a decision, let us endeavour
+to ascertain what each alternative involves.
+
+If a state, acting through its executive government, decides to make
+what are called the laws of God the basis of legislation, it must first
+decide what those laws are. In the endeavour to do so, every thoughtful
+man will recognize the impossibility of verifying a single one. The
+whole must, therefore, be promulgated on assumption; and if so, the
+legislators will be conscious that they have no valid authority. If, on
+the other hand, they assume the laws of nature to be a safe guide, they
+must allow proceedings which are opposed to the feelings of the majority
+of civilized mortals. Being, then, averse to elect either of these codes
+as a sole basis, the statesman will endeavour, as far as in him lies, to
+make or adapt laws for the society in which he lives.
+
+When the well-being of the community becomes the basis of its
+legislation, the idea of sin vanishes from the statute book, and the
+stern realities of life have to be envisaged with firmness and decision.
+So also when religion has merged into common sense, and facts are
+appealed to rather than fancies, policy takes the place of dogma, and
+the voice of a majority overcomes that of any priesthood.
+
+Into political economy, however, it is not my desire to enter, further
+than may be necessary to illustrate my own opinions upon religion.
+
+Having emancipated myself from the thraldom of bibliolatry and
+priestcraft generally, it is my aim to examine what seems to be my duty
+as a man and an integer of society. I conceive that, although I have
+no certain knowledge thereof, I am one of the myriads of instruments
+by which the Almighty works out His designs. My appreciation may be
+imperfect, but still it seems to me a duty, always to be a good husband,
+father, friend, and citizen--to act ever towards others as I should
+desire myself to be treated under the same circumstances--to improve
+such talents as I am conscious of possessing; and, in a general way, to
+do as much good as I can during my lifetime--taking care, if possible,
+to leave after my death no mischievous agency set on foot by me. In
+few words, I believe that the only true religion consists in a constant
+steady performance of duty--a duty discovered and determined by the
+individual, and not one prescribed by any set of men.
+
+The conclusion thus arrived at, appears at first sight, to be meagre
+in the extreme, but when it is fully examined, it is found to involve
+important consequences. The faithful, for example, or, as they style
+themselves, "the orthodox," live, when they pay any attention to such
+matters, in a state of perpetual fear of God and eternity; some, indeed
+we may say many, go mad from the oppression which they feel from having
+committed an unpardonable sin; some pass through life weighted by the
+dread of not being finally "saved"; all, with rare exceptions, have a
+horror of death and of the results of "the judgment." Feeling assured
+that few will be saved, and the many will be damned, they have a
+dreadful feeling of certainty that either they or some of their dearest
+relatives or friends will be amongst the majority. Some go through life
+sinning and repenting--"in dust and ashes," as the technical phrase
+runs--until they are ashamed of their own vacillation, or go on sinning,
+without any qualms of conscience, until it is too late to mend; and
+they recognize before them "a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
+indignation." These fantastic terrors are far more deeply rooted in the
+Protestants than in the Papists, who have so completely become imbued
+with the belief that their priests have almost unlimited power in the
+unseen world, that the dying folk become easy in their minds, by a
+full assurance of hope that friends, hierarchs, and "masses" will make
+purgatory bearable and heaven certain. Of fear about eternity I know
+nothing; feeling confident that the God who made me--directly or
+indirectly it would be a waste of time to discuss--had some work for
+me to do here. I am quite content with whatever may be assigned to me
+hereafter by the same Power. Of a future state I am wholly ignorant.
+As an integer, I feel a sort of instinct that death is not absolute
+annihilation; but beyond that I do not now seek to know, for every
+source of intelligence is absent.
+
+To some inconsiderate enthusiasts this may seem a cold belief, but in
+reality it is anything but that, for my days and nights are freed from
+that wet blanket of vague dread which makes so many mentally shiver; and
+my time is passed pleasantly in the alternate labour required by duty,
+and the repose necessary to recruit one's energies.
+
+Let us, for a moment, consider what would be the condition of the world,
+if each individual conducted himself according to the dictates of a pure
+and enlightened morality, instead of according to the direction of a
+body of Ecclesiastics.
+
+We may, I think, fearlessly assert that there would be no wars, no
+murders, thefts, adulteries, libels, violations of female purity; in
+short, every one would do as he wished to be done by. In such a people
+persecution would find no place, ignorance would not be permitted, and
+law would be unnecessary. Other desirable things would also take place,
+to which it is unnecessary to refer at large.
+
+When all are strictly proper in every relation of life, I cannot believe
+that anything more would be wanting to make the human family as happy
+as it can be here. What, let us ask, would the orthodox declare was
+amissing? The reply is, to my mind, awful: There would be, first, the
+want of hatred and malice; then would be added the want of Hell-to which
+enemies could be sent, and of a Heaven, in which the faithful could feed
+their malignancy by watching the tortures of those whom they detested on
+earth.
+
+In fine, I beg to express my own deliberate opinion, which has been
+growing stronger monthly since I first began to collect materials for
+this work, that those who can find nerve to sweep from their minds the
+trammels which have been woven around them by hundreds of generations of
+hierarchs, and adopt the simple faith which I have above indicated, will
+be far happier and better than ever they were before. No man will stand
+between them and God, and they will find Him infinitely more good and
+merciful than any of those who profess to be His agents.
+
+There is yet another way by which the subject of "faith and reason" may
+be approached, and their antagonism tested. This is by considering how
+far the former is essentially human, and the latter divine--by which
+we mean, superior to the propensity which all mankind has in common. We
+recognize the importance of the inquiry, when we find Mr Gladstone,
+a Prime Minister of England, discouraging the action resulting from
+philosophical thought, because a man named Paul, some 1800 years ago,
+recommended his friends to hold fast that which he, and they, under
+his teaching, believed to be good. The speech of the Premier, which
+was delivered at a large Liverpool School, and was written with unusual
+care, held up, to a lot of schoolboys, the propositions of Strauss as
+something which were so bad, that the enunciation of them carried with
+it their refutation. Yet, at the same time, the speaker allowed that the
+German thinker was conspicuous for intellectual attainments, powers of
+thought beyond the ordinary run of mortals, sobriety in mental culture,
+and boldness in the enunciation of the conclusions to which his reason
+compelled him. In Mr Gladstone's opinion, such a man's doctrines
+deserved to be withered; not because they were opposed to reason, to
+logic, to the stern reality of facts, but because they opposed the
+prejudices of certain persons educated in a different style of faith.
+
+If we inquire in what way the German philosopher and the English bigot
+differ, we can come to no other conclusion than that the one has used
+his intellect upon the dogmas which have been presented to his mind,
+from his infancy upwards, until they have been mistaken for fundamental
+truths, whilst the other has exercised his mental powers upon something
+beyond the doctrinal grounds on which his early education has been
+framed. The then English Premier, who had to direct the state, allowed
+himself to be guided by defunct men, precisely in the same way as
+Pyrrhus, Croesus, and others, were governed by the pretended oracles at
+Delphi, Dodona, and elsewhere. The man, in other words, who once wielded
+the might of England, and is conspicuous for his classical acquirements,
+is as much the slave of superstition as any ancient Egyptian or Grecian
+monarch, only his oracles are not the same as theirs.
+
+It is clear, that when the speech, to which reference has been made, was
+composed, Mr Gladstone was under the influence of the belief, that what
+he had been taught, and had adopted, must necessarily be the only truth
+which can be relied on, at least, in its fundamental points. It is this
+very presumption, this lazy habit of mind, that was long ago pointed out
+by Bacon as being the most fertile cause of the retardation of science,
+and it is remarkable that Oxford, as an University, and most of its
+alumni, are still victims to the weakness referred to. It naturally
+follows in the train of what is called classical learning, when the mind
+is taught to remember rather than to think; and one easily believes that
+he can recognize in the late Premier the gradual development of thought,
+and can tell the epochs when cherished idols have been thrown aside,
+with the energy of one who is suddenly roused to exercise a powerful
+mind in an independent manner.
+
+It would be useless to copy all the aphorisms by which Lord Bacon
+attempted to destroy the old philosophy, which, in his time, was most
+universally adopted, and to build up a new state of things, in which
+science should advance, but a few of them are of such value that they
+deserve recording. In _Novum Organum_, aph. 23 we read--"There is no
+small difference between the fancies [--Greek--] of the human mind and
+the ideas of the divine mind--that is, between certain notions that
+please us, and the real stamp and impression made by created objects as
+they are found in nature." That is to say, man commonly imagines things
+to be what he fancies they ought to be, and neglects what they really
+are. The learned aphorist then points out certain peculiarities of men,
+by which they are induced to cleave to the bad, and neglect the good.
+
+Aph. 46---"The human understanding, when any proposition has once
+been laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the
+pleasure which it affords), forces everything to add to it support and
+confirmation. But this evil insinuates itself still more craftily in
+philosophy and in the sciences, in which a settled maxim vitiates and
+governs every other circumstance, although the latter be much more
+worthy of confidence." Aph. 47--"The human understanding is most excited
+by that which strikes and enters the mind at once and suddenly, and
+by which the imagination is immediately filled and inflated. It then
+begins, almost imperceptibly, to conceive and suppose that everything
+is similar to the few objects which have taken possession of the mind,
+whilst it is very slow and unfit for the transition to the remote and
+heterogeneous instances by which axioms are tried, as by fire, unless
+the office be imposed upon it by severe regulations, and a powerful
+authority."
+
+We may paraphrase the preceding axiom thus:--Those who, from personal
+preaching, or by parental influence, have adopted a certain belief in
+the truth of that which has been taught to them as a "revelation," no
+matter who the individuals are, or may have been, who propound it, are
+loth, ever, to inquire into the real nature of the matter. Hence it is
+that "clairvoyance" and "spiritualism" have so many staunch adherents.
+
+Aph. 56--"Some dispositions evince an unbounded admiration of antiquity,
+others eagerly embrace novelty, and but few can preserve the just
+medium, so as neither to bear up what the ancients have correctly laid
+down, nor to despise the just innovations of the moderns. This is very
+prejudicial to the sciences and philosophy, and, instead of a correct
+judgment, we have but the factions of the ancients and the moderns."
+
+There are other aphorisms following, which point out the mischief of
+following certain theories, simply because they have been long accepted,
+and are generally supposed to be correct.
+
+At the period when Bacon wrote, there was the same conservatism in
+science and philosophy as there had been in the Roman Church for ages,
+and very few, if any, had ventured to suggest the necessity for a
+radical change. In England the reformation of church and state preceded
+the reformation of philosophy; yet, there are many amongst us yet who
+regard all such changes as a mistake. We constantly find individuals who
+hanker after a despotic rule, by king or emperor, who cannot endure a
+church in which there is no tyrannical head, nor a science which only
+professes to advance, and refuses to be stationary.
+
+Yet the thoughtful know how much the world would have lost, had it yet
+been prostrate at the feet of Aristotle and of barbaric Popes; and there
+is not a Christian who does not rejoice that Jesus prevented mankind
+from worshipping Moses, and adhering to Hebraic notions.
+
+When, therefore, an individual, professing to be learned, scouts the
+propositions of a careful inductive and rigidly reasoning philosopher,
+simply because they violate generally believed notions; and when,
+in addition, he appeals to the ignorance and impressionability of
+schoolboys rather than to the mature judgment of adults, he proclaims
+himself, in that respect, at least, a bigot--of a dye as deep as those
+fanatics who urged on their fellows to suppress the discoveries of
+Galileo. But the matter does not end here. We recognize the necessity
+for a public man, who has once proclaimed his adherence to the doctrines
+of Revelation, and has preached the necessity for "faith," and its
+superiority over reason--however calm and rigid, to go further, and
+to proclaim that which he regards as Revelation, and who are the
+individuals he will receive as the interpreters of that so-called
+communication from God to man.
+
+It is clear that the words which have been uttered by man require a
+human expounder; equally clear is it that, if the original sayings are
+regarded as being inspired, but, nevertheless, of doubtful meaning,
+they can only be cleared up by other men, who are, like the original
+oracles--"inspired." But, as a matter of fact, there are in our own
+times three distinct sets of individuals who lay claim to the faculty of
+interpretation; and these differ so amongst themselves, that certainly,
+at least, two, and very probably all, are wrong.
+
+The man, then, who is disposed to make faith his guide must, in so far
+as Christianity is concerned, join himself either to the Greek or Roman
+Church, whose pretensions to a divine presence in their midst have been
+of the longest; or to the Protestant Church, which endeavours to oust
+the other two upon the plea that they cannot be under divine teaching,
+because they have become corrupt; and then, on the plea of having
+discovered the alleged faults, it assumes to have the authority which
+its predecessors have forfeited.
+
+Thus, as we have frequently remarked before, man sits in judgment upon
+Him whom he calls his maker. The Protestant Churches, however, are the
+only ones who do not formally lay claim to having the divine presence
+amongst them in a conspicuous degree; they do not pretend to the
+performance of miracles, and they scout the idea that any modern
+representative of Jesus can do any wonders like those that teacher did.
+The Roman Church proves to the satisfaction of its votaries that "the
+Lord" is still with them, inasmuch as the presence of the Virgin, in
+a visible form, occurs to cheer her servants that trust in her
+intercession, and even pictures of her become instinct with life.
+
+If, then, an individual is resolved to walk by faith alone in matters of
+religion, he is bound to join himself to that church wherein the divine
+founder is habitually and visibly present; to whose saints the saviour
+has appeared, and given stigmata like those which were produced in the
+original by the barbarous nails and spear of the Roman soldiers. For the
+votaries of faith--pure and unadulterated belief in things divine--the
+only legitimate home is the bosom of the Papal Church. Why, then, do
+not men, like Mr Gladstone, join it? Simply because their faith is not
+a pure and confiding one. It is tainted by the doubt whether the
+pretensions of the Roman See are sustainable, or by the certainty that
+Popish miracles are contemptible shams. They believe that Francis
+of Assisi made the stigmata, which he professed to receive from his
+"crucified Saviour," by burning his hands, feet, and side, with some
+strong caustic, or by a heated iron.
+
+By these doubts, or certainties, individuals demonstrate that they are
+not in the list of the faithful; for doubt implies unbelief, and both
+are incompatible with faith pure and simple.
+
+Whenever, then, a person confesses, by his words or actions, that he
+does examine into the grounds of his belief, he is logically bound to
+continue those inquiries into everything wherein there is a possibility
+of human error creeping.
+
+When we pursue our observations further, and inquire into the reasons
+why a Papist believes certain things which a Protestant rejects, and
+vice versa, we find that, in the first place, each believes what he has
+been taught; he--to speak figuratively--imbibes his dogmas and belief
+with his mother's milk; and when he advances in age, is taught and
+imagines that he has mastered the stock arguments which are relied
+upon by the opposite parties. There is, therefore, on first sight, a
+reasoning power exercised by each; but it is not so, for the arguments
+themselves, and their force, are regarded as matters of faith--as
+weapons with which a warfare may be waged, but which, in no sense, are
+to be tested by those who use them.
+
+As far as the common run of religionists are concerned, they are all in
+this "fool's paradise;" they fancy that they are secure, invincible, and
+mighty, because they take their own prowess and their opponents weakness
+as matters of faith. But when one of these comes into collision with
+another whose reason is exercised upon facts and the deductions to be
+drawn from them, the questions occur, possibly for the first time, Are
+the grounds of my belief tenable? am I justified in using my reason only
+in one direction? if I profess to argue, am I not bound to be logical?
+and if what has been given to me as sound meat, is rotten in reality, am
+I bound to eat it? can it do me good in any way? When a thoughtful man
+has arrived at this point, he has to elect between Faith and Reason.
+Then, if, like Mr Gladstone, he foresees to what his inquiries will
+probably lead, and is disinclined to pull down a cherished edifice,
+even to erect a better, he will naturally cling to the old belief,
+saying--"With all thy faults, I love thee still." With his eyes wide
+open he hails the banner of bigotry, no matter what may be the scutcheon
+which it bears.
+
+Then come the important questions--"What right has any religious bigot
+to profess himself a liberal?" and, "With what face can a man, who
+refuses to exercise his understanding upon what he calls the most
+important part of life, i.e., the preparation for eternity, proclaim
+himself a friend of education?"
+
+To insist upon the value of "learning" in forming the mind, and then
+to set the example of recoiling from the knowledge which intellectual
+efforts bring, is, in a statesman, a mean vacillation. Mr Gladstone
+ought either to proclaim that his ideas are those of the Jesuits, or
+to pronounce in favour of education, to whatever goal it legitimately
+tends. To say to boys--or men--you must learn to think; but you must
+only come to the same conclusions as myself, would disgrace a statesman
+of a free country, though such a proclamation would seem natural to a
+pope, or any other tyrant I do not, for a moment, assert that the then
+Premier of England did, in a written, and, therefore, a deliberate
+speech, to a large and influential school of boys, utter the words
+which I have used; on the contrary, he employed his rhetorical powers
+to express the idea, without either clearly understanding it himself, or
+giving the lads a clue to it. Had the meaning of the discourse been put
+into a few pregnant sentences, it may be doubted whether it would ever
+have been uttered.
+
+If Mr Gladstone, like the mythical Elijah, had placed before his
+auditors, in naked words, the proposition--"Choose ye this day whom ye
+will serve, Faith or Reason," his discourse would have been clear. Even
+his own mind could not have painted the two as being the same thing; nor
+would a school-boy have failed to see that, in the future, he must
+elect between indefinitely expanding his intelligence, and materially
+contracting his intellect to the narrow limits prescribed by the faith
+of his parents.
+
+To my mind it is sad to witness men of great general capacity, like the
+late Dr Faraday, and the past Prime Minister of Great Britain, shunning,
+in every way, an inquiry into the basis of their belief. We cannot
+regard this as a result of simple intellectual indolence, or ignorance.
+The only cause to which we can attribute it, is that weakness which,
+by most people, is called moral cowardice; a fear, not so much of Mrs
+Grundy--the world and its dread laugh--but the fear of some unseen,
+unknown, incomprehensible danger to themselves--of dangers that have no
+reality, except in an imagination which has been moulded long before the
+mind was capable of thought, but whose hold upon the individual is
+such, that he shrinks from the mental effort necessary to efface its
+impressions.
+
+There is yet another phase of faith, which deserves a passing mention.
+It is that which declines to see or to hear a proof or an argument, lest
+it should be convinced against its will. There are many men amongst us
+who, in Scripture phrase, refuse to hear the voice of the charmer, charm
+he never so wisely. This obstinacy, stupidity, dogged-ness, or firmness,
+is quite compatible with a partially cultivated intellect, and is in
+itself a measure of intellectual capacity. I have heard, for example, a
+learned divine, but one whose writings are often so bemuddled, that the
+ideas which they contain are as difficult to discover "as a needle in
+a bottle of hay," declare that he would no more listen to an argument
+against the existence of "the trinity," than he would open his ears to
+hear evidence that his wife or mother was adulterous.
+
+Such strong asseverations we may sympathize with, and even admire; but
+they prove nothing beyond the impracticability of an individual mind,
+or what, in some cases, takes its place--viz., the injudiciousness of
+acknowledging a truth, when the enunciation of a belief in it would be
+followed by unpleasant consequences.
+
+Again, I know of another divine, who has steadily refused to inquire
+into the value of what are called "the Christian evidences," his reason
+being, that he is conscious that inquiry would shake his confidence in
+the doctrines which he teaches. He clings to what he feels to be a sham,
+lest others should, by his means, regard it in its proper light.
+
+Another divine, who has not feared to be an inquirer, is incessantly
+persecuted by his brethren, not because he has asserted his intellectual
+freedom, but because, by having done so, he has, by implication, cast
+a sort of odium upon those who hug their mental darkness. His argument
+is--Can a man who hates the light be worthy to speak of the "Sun of
+Righteousness?" Their reasoning is based upon the assertion, that those
+who live in darkness, and like it, need not be told about a luminary.
+If people chose to believe that the moon is made of green cheese, it is
+more profitable to talk to them about its connection with the milky
+way, than to say that the notion is absurd. Faith teaches that, where
+ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise; whilst reason only impels one
+to habitual thought or mental worry.
+
+Other divines of my acquaintance have used their reason in a twofold
+way: they have ceased to hold their first faith, yet they hold their
+"livings," as they have no other means of subsistence; whilst a few
+have, with their advancement in knowledge, paid for their knowledge by
+embracing poverty.
+
+The world treats those who walk upon the ground with a far greater
+injustice than it treats those who lie beneath its surface. For a man
+who disturbs us in our fool's paradise, more feet than hands are used;
+but to him who only disturbed the father's complacency, and taught the
+son in youth, we erect memorial statues. Jesus was crucified when he was
+alive, and deified when dead. His apostles were persecuted when living;
+now that they are deceased, they are called saints. Savonarola was burnt
+alive at Florence; now his memory is cherished, and his worth fully
+known. Luther was detested when he was able to thunder in men's ears;
+now he is regarded as a son of light. The present Pope, Pio Nono,
+has found an obsequious council, whose voices have declared him to be
+infallible--a god upon earth; the time will come when that Pope, and
+that council, will be regarded as the personification of blasphemy
+and folly. The days of Faith will be everlasting; but her power to act
+wickedly will be curtailed more and more. The reign of Reason advances
+every year, for it is allied to thought and knowledge; and we may fairly
+hope that the old adage will be true--_Magna est Veritas et praevalebit_.
+
+It may be said that, in the preceding parts of this essay, I have wholly
+lost sight of, or, at least, have not referred to the argument--or
+the statement, made by the upholders of faith, as a rule of life--that
+reason has nothing to do with things divine, and that where God has made
+a direct revelation of His will to man, no human being has a right to
+criticise or object to it.
+
+This kind of remark is in the mouth of every preacher, and each minister
+who utters it imagines that he deals a blow so very heavy that nothing
+can stand against it. But in reality it is only a big bubble, which
+collapses when it is touched. "How," for example, we may ask, "can
+anything be recognized as divine, unless human judgment is passed upon
+it? or, How can any revelation be accepted, unless the mind has examined
+the messenger and the message?" Who would believe the ravings of a
+lunatic, even though he told us that God had sent him with a message
+to man? Why do Christians, as a body, reject the revelation made to
+Mahomet, and the frequent inspirations which give laws to the latter-day
+saints? To these queries the reply is--"Because we know that God does
+not speak to man now, and that when the bible was closed all revelation
+ceased." But when we inquire into the reason for this belief we can
+find not one. Every theologian must allow that the God who spoke once to
+Moses spoke again; that He supplanted one dispensation by a second, and
+has promised a third.
+
+Thus we see, that by their own books, the orthodox are bound to believe
+that supplementary communications must be made to the human race;
+consequently, when any one asserts that he is a divine prophet, his
+pretensions are examined. The faithful Christian disbelieved in Mahomet;
+the trusting Arabs believed in his mission, and fought for their creed.
+They, like orthodox divines of to-day, refused to use their reason
+in things divine, and to cavil at a revelation, Unable to agree, the
+followers of Jesus, and those of Mohammed, fought, the latter almost
+annihilating the former for a time, thus proving the value of their
+faith. Both parties had a firm belief--the one in the prophet of
+Nazareth, the other in the prophet of Arabia; and no reasoning could
+have convinced either that his trust was misplaced; nor, to this day,
+has reason convinced the Mahometans that Jesus was superior to Mahomet,
+or the Christian that the Arab sectarian was a prophet at all; and it
+is singular that both parties call in reason in attestation of their
+respective creeds.
+
+Is, then, the sturdy English theologian to be content to leave the
+followers of Islam alone, because they have faith? or, must he still
+endeavour to convert them by the use of reason? Can the Christian adopt
+the belief that Mahometan and Mormon are both orthodox because they have
+faith? and that the Jew must still be dear to Jehovah, inasmuch as he
+still clings closely by faith to the revelation given to Moses and the
+prophets? If this cannot be done, how can the follower of Jesus hope to
+convert others to his belief, unless by the use of reason? If, then, the
+theologian uses reason as a weapon against heterodoxy, upon what ground
+can he object to its being employed by another? Latter-day saints have
+made many proselytes in Christendom, and a Mahometan floored in debate
+the late pious Missionary, Henry Martyn, whose propositions were met
+by counter ones, and every one of whose arguments was taken up and
+retorted, the names only of the persons spoken of being changed. "I
+know," said the one, "that God spoke to us by Christ Jesus"--"I know,"
+said the other, "that Allah spoke to us by Mahomet" "You are wrong, my
+friend," said one, "Allah has not spoken to man since the last Apostle
+died." "You are wrong," said the other, "God has spoken to us long after
+that. You may call Mahomet an apostle, if you like; we call him a
+prophet of Allah, and know that he was one." And so controversy goes on
+now where there is faith without reason.
+
+It is clear, then, that truth cannot be established by any number of
+people thundering out "I believe it," and by their victoriously fighting
+for it. The argument, therefore, which I may be accused of omitting, is
+of no value at all; it is sheer nonsense--a windbag, or, perhaps, it may
+best be compared to a boomerang, which, when badly used, recoils upon
+the person of him who threw it. Of such arguments theology is builded
+up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+     Honesty.   A question propounded.   Are "divines" honest?
+     Meaning of the word.    Learners and teachers--their
+     relations to each other.    Honesty expected in a professor.
+     Teachers of religion are trusted--they are bound to be
+     faithful.   Political rights of men in respect of the clergy
+     of the Established Church.    Right to see that religion is
+     not adulterated. Man's right to truth.   What truth is not.
+     Assertions required at "ordination."  Canonical Scriptures.
+     Verbal inspiration.   Doubts of laity.   Two schools--those
+     who will and those who will not inquire.     Rev.   Dr
+     Colenso.   Rev. Dr Browne.   Precious stones and "paste."
+     How should a doubt be tackled--by inquiry,  or  by ignoring
+     it?    An   analogy. Compass and bible.    If compass wrong,
+     why steer by it?   Passenger and captain--one appeals to
+     stars, the other to his owners and the seamen under him.
+     Precision of Colenso--his words falsified so as to be
+     confuted: this is not honesty.    Is Bishop Browne honest in
+     controversy? Tabernacle, temple, doors, &c.   The _Speaker's
+     Commentary_ not an honest book.    Papal falsehoods; false
+     decretals; false letter from Prester John. Pious frauds.
+     Influence of dishonest teaching on education.    The point
+     involved in sectarian discussions.   Lying miracles--are
+     they promulgated honestly?   Is it honest in religion to
+     promulgate that which we knew to be wrong, or which we dare
+     not inquire into for fear of consequences?    Do Papal
+     authorities believe in the annual miracle at Naples?  The
+     Protestant Church judged by a ruler of Siam.    Bigotry, by
+     not inquiring, does not establish truth.    Each man who is
+     deceived has a propensity to deceive others.   The masses
+     agree to be deceived.    Mr Gladstone on education. His
+     proposition that inquiry is bad if it leads to change of
+     religious opinions.   Anecdotes of stupidity.   Sailing in
+     search of truth.    Captains who avoid the right course.
+     The condition of society when the schoolmaster overrides the
+     ecclesiastic.    Reason and education ought to precede
+     faith. Result of honesty.   Divines recoil from the honest
+     truth.    Parsons in their pulpit preach what their week-day
+     precepts oppose.   Honesty in ecclesiastical matters is not
+     the best policy.    Divines and the silversmiths of Ephesus.
+     Examples.    An honest parson is persecuted by his fellows:
+     this insures mediocrity and bigotry.   If an author cannot
+     be persecuted he is avoided.    Ecclesiastics persecute
+     their colleagues, but do not prove them wrong.
+     Excommunication easier than refutation.   What an honest
+     merchant and divine should do when they discover a diamond
+     to be paste. Ought the divine to be less honest than the
+     merchant?   The Author's challenge.   Conclusion.
+
+I am now about to propound a question which I have heard mooted in quiet
+by many, but for which publicity seems to be dreaded by all--_viz_., "Is
+there honesty amongst Christians, and especially amongst the hierarchy
+of the Churches of England and Rome?"
+
+No one can doubt the importance of the subject; there is not a
+thoughtful person who does not, in words at least, scorn to build up his
+everlasting belief upon a fable, and who does not affect to be disgusted
+with everyone who is deliberately untruthful I speak not now of those
+time-servers who regard every artifice to be fair in love, war, and
+theology; but only of those earnest minds who are anxious to seek out
+and to hold fast that which is true, and who, under all circumstances,
+resolve to be honest with themselves. That there may be no doubt as to
+the sense in which I use the word, the following may be regarded as,
+in my opinion, the synonyms which are properly given in _Webster's
+Dictionary_--"Integrity, probity, uprightness, trustiness,
+faithfulness, honour, justice, equity, fairness, candour, plain dealing,
+veracity." To this may be added--"not bearing false witness."
+
+Presuming that English scholars agree in this definition, let me now
+inquire whether "we"--by which term I mean the non-theological class by
+profession--have a right to expect "honesty" amongst our teachers--be
+they Roman, Anglican, Hibernian, Scottish, Unitarian, Wesleyan, or of
+any other body? and, in the next place, whether we get that to which
+we are entitled? Presuming that it is necessary to begin with the
+foundation, let us first inquire into "our rights," and whence they are
+supposed to be derived.
+
+The positions of a learner and a teacher--or a disciple and a
+master--are, in some cases, different to what they are in others; for
+example, I need not, unless I think it desirable, learn astronomy,
+chemistry, the art of telegraphing, or that of ship-building; but if I
+do elect to learn any of these matters, and engage a man to instruct
+me, I have a legal claim upon him for his services. There is, indeed, a
+contract between us--he engaging to teach me, and I agreeing to pay him
+for his labour. In my selection of a professor, it is quite possible
+that I have not chosen the best; nay, seeing that I require to be
+taught, it is nearly certain that I cannot assume the position of a
+judge as regards the superiority of one teacher over another. But when
+the agreement is once entered into, each of the parties is bound to
+perform his part of the contract to the best of his ability. If, for
+example, I bargain with a master to teach me Spanish, and I, being
+wholly ignorant thereof, am instructed in Portuguese, I have a definite
+legal claim for redress.
+
+If, on the other hand, the law, or the custom of the country, compels
+me to take a certain class of teachers, whether they are competent or
+worthless, I, as one of the community, am justified in investigating the
+intellectual power of the professors, individually and collectively, in
+every way in my power.
+
+At one period, when autocracy, or tyranny, was supreme, this right was
+denied, and the legislators made it a criminal matter for any one to
+call in question the nature of the instruction which was given to the
+people in matters of politics, religion, and other things, wherein the
+government was concerned. At the present time there are few, if any,
+states whose ruling powers demand from the people such an abject
+submission.
+
+But, although a republic may allow unlimited latitude of opinion in
+matters of political economy, there may be a religious section within
+it, which consists of those who consent to be led, in matters of faith,
+by certain individuals, who, on their parts, are declared to be, by
+some power that the laity are disposed to submit to, the only persons
+competent to conduct persons to a happy eternity.
+
+Every individual in such a family is associated with the rest by
+voluntary ties. He may, if he chooses, inquire into the capacity of his
+guide; he is at perfect liberty to analyse his arguments, to inquire
+into his allegations, and, speaking generally, to test his truth. If, as
+a result of the investigation, any one is satisfied that the teacher is
+incompetent, the two are perfectly clear to make new engagements. There
+has been no definite contract, nor can there be any legal claim for a
+presumed breach thereof.
+
+When, on the other hand, there is a State Religion, supported by
+Parliamentary authority, and to which, in one way or another, the
+majority of the people must subscribe, each man has as perfect a right
+to see that he gets what he pays for, as he has to see that the member
+of parliament for whom he votes, does not neglect the interests of the
+town which he represents.
+
+As an Englishman, I have no right to call in question the power of the
+Pope of Rome, the Patriarch of the Greek Church, the Elder of the Mormon
+Communion, the Arch-Pneuma of the Spiritualists, or any other religious
+head, to teach his followers any doctrine that he may please. I may
+laugh at the "false decretals" of the papacy, and the charlatanerie of
+the clairvoyants; but no political right supports me in my calling them
+to account for their stewardship.
+
+On the other hand, when I know that the bishops of the Church of England
+are parties to the formation of our laws, and I find myself called upon
+to pay tithes or dues to individuals of the same establishment, I have
+a political right to ascertain, that the persons actually do what they
+profess to do for their money or position. If, for example, I live in a
+sparsely populated district, I and all my family are dependent upon the
+parson of the parish for instruction how to get to heaven; or, as an
+alternative, if I do not agree with his doctrine, I may abstain from
+being instructed at all. If, on the contrary, I inhabit a large town,
+still I am dependent for religious teaching upon the state clergyman,
+unless I elect to do without him, and any one else of the same
+persuasion, or select some non-conformist preacher who is to me no less
+offensive than the parliamentary parson.
+
+When a confraternity has obtained, no matter how, or by what means, a
+definite prescriptive right to sell a certain material to the community
+at large, the latter have certainly a legal power to see that the stuff
+given is according to contract. If a company of millers engage, for
+certain privileges, to sell good wheat flour to all comers, the last can
+deprive them of their exclusive right, provided that it can be proved
+either that the flour is bad, or that it comes from barley, rye, oats,
+or potatoes, or is adulterated with gypsum, &c.
+
+Presuming that this argument is tenable, our next inquiry is into that
+which our national church professes to sell, or to impart, in return for
+its privileges. In the fewest possible words we may say, that its duty
+is to impart "truth," or to teach what is, in its learned and educated
+opinion, the true religion for life and eternity.
+
+The word truth is one which lies at the root of our question respecting
+honesty. Pilate is reported to have said--"What is truth?" We may put
+the same question now.
+
+Without saying what "truth" is, we can readily declare what is
+"untruth." It is not truth if we, in argument, misrepresent an
+adversary; affirm that he made a certain statement, and then oppose--not
+the thing said--but some other matter which was not spoken of at all,
+and then assert that we have confuted him.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that observations recently made have been
+oftentimes presented before, and always successfully refuted, when
+the remarks in question are novel, never have been controverted, and
+apparently, are not capable of being disproved.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that human "authority," which, has been long
+acknowledged, can falsify "a fact," or make an unfounded assertion equal
+to a reality; or to declare, that one religion is good and another bad,
+simply because the speaker believes the matter to be so.
+
+It is not truth to assert, that a certain book, and every part of it,
+is the revealed word of God, when it is known to be contradicted by
+science--i.e.t by a knowledge of the laws imposed on creation by its
+Maker, to be inconsistent with itself, and to contain internal evidence
+that it was composed by men of small knowledge and of grovelling
+disposition.
+
+It is not truth to affirm, that if God's world proves what is called
+God's Book to be wrong, science must be neglected and the Bible upheld.
+
+It is not truth to affirm that God spoke exclusively to one people, when
+it is known that the race in question drew nearly, if not quite, all
+their religious beliefs, from the neighbours amongst whom they were
+thrown.
+
+It is not honest to propound in the pulpit the propriety of examining
+the Scriptures daily, and yet to persecute any one who by doing so
+becomes convinced of their human origin.
+
+It would be honest, and prove the existence of a love of truth, if every
+preacher of every denomination spent as much time in trying the value of
+his text-book, as he does now in expounding it and explaining it away.
+
+We should imagine that a minister loved truth, if he were first to ask
+himself how he treats the Vedas and Puranas, the Avesta, the Koran, the
+Apocryphal Gospels, the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, the visions and
+prophecies of "Latter-day saints," "Friends," Roman visionaries, and
+the oracles delivered at Delphi and elsewhere, and then to treat his own
+book with the same measure as he used with the others.
+
+On the other hand, we should regard him as untruthful and dishonest,
+if he weighed the books and belief of others with weights and scales
+different to those with which he tried his own.
+
+From each minister of religion the people have a right to demand an
+impartial inquiry into the absolute value of the doctrines which he
+teaches, and an investigation into the foundation, as well as the
+superstructure; and they may require, still further, that he, like
+Great-heart in Bunyan's story, shall do battle with assailants. When
+such a leader professes to fight, but always avoids the shock of
+battle, he cannot be regarded either as honest, or as comparable with
+Valiant-for-truth in the _Pilgrim's Progress_.
+
+We are then, as laymen, justified in requiring that our spiritual
+leaders shall take a conspicuous part in examining the grounds of the
+faith which they teach, and that the leaders of the Established Church
+shall seek to establish its doctrine upon as firm basis as it is
+possible to obtain.
+
+This certainly involves inquiry and discussion upon those points which
+modern criticism has prominently advanced.
+
+When we turn to the "Prayer Book," we find that Deacons are required to
+say, that they unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures. Priests
+are obliged to affirm that the Holy Scriptures contain sufficiently all
+doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation, through faith in
+Jesus Christ, &c. In the consecration of bishops the same, or nearly the
+same, formula is gone through. Thus, at the outset of their career, the
+ministers of the Church of England commit themselves to, or are required
+by law to make, a declaration which will preclude inquiry into the value
+of the book on which their teaching is founded; their first step in the
+ministry puts it out of their power to be honest, if experience should
+teach them more than they knew when young. The bishops and priests,
+however, when they subscribe to the opinion that the Bible contains all
+things necessary for salvation, do not pledge themselves to the belief
+that every sentence, part, division, book, or arrangement of the
+Canonical Scriptures is, and must of necessity be, true. Even in the
+dawn of ecclesiastical information in England, there was not a belief in
+the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
+
+Of late years, when habits of thought and the art of printing have
+increased, the knowledge, and consequently, the power of the laity
+disproportionally to the advance made by clerics--a strong propensity
+to accumulate facts, and to argue thereupon has been very generally
+developed, and the increased information obtained has induced steadily
+increasing numbers to doubt, not only the verbal inspiration, but even
+the historical truth of the Scriptures. When this difficulty occurred,
+or rather, when it became recognized, scholars, no matter whether
+they were professional or amateur ecclesiastics, divided themselves
+involuntarily (we may fairly say, unknowingly, inasmuch as each
+individual worked quite independently, in the first place, of another)
+into those who believed that, if the Holy Spirit dictated the
+Scriptures, he must have seen that his amanuensis wrote correctly; those
+who imagined that the Bible was to be taken "in the lump;" and those
+who considered that the Scriptures are entirely of human origin, and
+absolutely valueless as a guide of faith. Consequently, three schools
+have arisen, two of which are essentially ecclesiastic. Of these,
+one regards all inquiry into the accepted text as improper, the other
+considers that everything should be done to verify the value of the
+so-called original Scripture.
+
+Amongst the latter, Dr Colenso, Bishop of Natal, stands out
+conspicuously. Of the highest intellectual attainments, trained to close
+and scientific inquiry; able, far better than men of meaner capacity, to
+weigh the value of "evidence," whether "ancient or modern," he has drawn
+the conclusion that the Bible is not what it is generally supposed to
+be; in other words, that its historical portions are not trustworthy,
+and that there is grave reason to believe its writings to have been
+produced for a purpose, which involved dishonesty in the scribe, and in
+the promulgator of his writings. The learned doctor was honest in his
+investigation, and fearless in announcing his conclusions.
+
+As an upright man, the Bishop of Natal is as completely justified in his
+inquiry into the validity or importance of an ancient book, alleged to
+be a pearl of great price, a gem or diamond of the first water, as the
+official curator of a museum would be, in determining whether a certain
+ruby, given into his charge, were real or artificial. Of the necessity
+of such an inquiry, the following anecdote, which was told me by the
+gentleman concerned, will convince the reader:--
+
+A wealthy lady, of high position in life, sent to a museum, for
+exhibition, a number of "precious stones." If they were really what they
+were supposed and stated to be, their value would have been reckoned by
+thousands of pounds sterling. If accepted as genuine, and found, upon
+their restoration to the depositor, to be imitation jewels, the curator
+would be liable, not only for their value, but his character for honesty
+would be gone; consequently, ere he gave a receipt for the lot, he
+tested each. Not one was real!
+
+This man was in the position which Dr Colenso occupies now. The owner of
+the jewels was indignant at the idea that the stones were false, and the
+apparent insinuation that imitations were being foisted on the public as
+realities; but her fury did not alter the fact. If she were artful, her
+plan was detected; if she had been deceived, her anger, though useless,
+was justified.
+
+On the other hand, there are many Bishops who uphold the verbal
+inspiration of the Bible, and will not inquire if the gem be real, or
+only test it by plans known to be valueless for the purpose. Some do not
+go altogether so far as this, They consider it obligatory upon them to
+examine just a little bit, but not to go too deeply, lest they should be
+forced to believe that there never was such a man as Moses--a man who
+is commonly reported to have written certain books at a distant period.
+Some persons seem to think that their hope of happiness in this, as well
+as in another world, and not only their own, but that of everybody who
+is under their instruction, depends upon their feeling sure that Israel
+was once in Egypt--that Abraham begat Isaac, and became the progenitor
+of an innumerable offspring, exceeding in number the Indians of
+Hindostan, the Assyrians of Mesopotamia, the Egyptians of the Nile, and
+the Romans of Italy. Between these two inquirers, if the latter class
+can fairly be called such, the issue is distinct. There can be no
+difficulty amongst scholars as to the means by which the question ought
+to be settled.
+
+An appeal to hard and dry facts is the plan adopted by philosophers. For
+men, who have a single eye to discover the truth, it matters little in
+what direction their inquiries lead them. Metaphorically speaking, they
+may begin a series of investigations, expecting that everything will
+lead them northwards, and they end by reaching the south; just as many
+an enthusiastic, but little instructed, man has accumulated "pyrites,"
+under the impression that it was an ore of gold, and found, on inquiry,
+that the material was a sulphuret of iron, and of small commercial
+value.
+
+But it is this very possibility of research bringing them to an
+undesirable goal, which deters so many of our divines from making any
+inquiry. Outwardly, they allow that it is their duty, as leaders, to
+examine, not only the condition of their own forces, but the position
+and power of those who assail the army which they profess to guide.
+Inwardly they find reasons for remaining quiet, and excuse themselves to
+their followers in some plausible fashion.
+
+Why, however, should any goal be undesirable which leads us nearer to
+truth? Why should any body of professedly learned-men run the risk
+of being considered wanting in honesty, or candour, by avoiding their
+opponents, whom they are in honour bound to encounter?
+
+The reply to these questions generally runs thus:--"We, as ministers
+of the Established Church of England, are bound to be faithful to the
+Bible, and to it we must adhere, whatever our own private judgment
+may be. We did not make the law; we simply take it as we find it, and,
+having sworn to obey it, we do so." This answer would be exhaustive, if
+it were the fact that the laity made the law for the theologians. But,
+as we know, that the ecclesiastics have, in the last resort always made
+laws for themselves, the rejoinder is not conclusive History tells us
+how ministers of religion have instructed the people, and how these,
+again, have legislated under the tuition of their advisers. When
+Paganism was supplanted by Christianity, the change was effected by
+preachers, who taught the populace to believe the new doctrine, and who
+influenced the minds of the lawmakers. In like manner, when Popery in
+England was put down by the Protestants, each party was headed by its
+priests. Many a minister, at that period, felt bound to follow what he
+believed to be truth, rather than to abide by a vow made in youth;
+and they who had upheld the authenticity of Popish miracles, and of
+Apocryphal Scriptures, ceased to give credence to them, or to use them
+as authorities in matters of religion. These men were honest.
+
+That which has been done by men aforetime, may be done or imitated in
+our own day; and our divines have as great a power to examine into the
+value of the Bible now, as they had at the Reformation. If they refuse
+to make the inquest suggested--in what way, may we ask, do they differ
+from the Romanists in the time of Luther, who would not inquire into the
+truth of his arguments lest they should be convinced? Can any one who
+professes to be a Protestant--a child of the Reformation--honestly
+refuse to investigate the grounds of the faith which is in him, and
+shelter himself, as Bonner and others did, under the pretext of a
+declaration or vow made at ordination?
+
+If those who make the excuse just referred to, are honest, they are
+bound to reject every doctrine which they, or their predecessors, have
+received from Romish priests, who propounded in adult life, doctrines
+different to those which they professed when yet almost children.
+
+To illustrate the tendency of our remarks still further, let us, for a
+moment, suppose that the captain of a ship has, from any cause whatever,
+adopted a particular "compass" by which he directs his course, and which
+perhaps he calls by the name of Faith. All in the vessel are, to a great
+extent, dependent upon him for a successful voyage, and a safe arrival
+at the desired haven. Seeing how the master-mariner honours the magnetic
+needle, every thoughtful passenger will probably consult it in like
+manner. One more advanced in knowledge than the rest may desire to test
+the instrument by the position of the pole star, and thinking that he
+could recognize the latter, might infer that the magnet did not point
+truly. This doubt, we will imagine still further, he imparts to the
+captain, who, disinclined to distrust his compass, endeavours to
+demonstrate that the position of the pole star is doubtful.
+
+In the place of the mariners' compass let us read the "Bible," and,
+instead of the pole star, let us substitute "science." We shall then
+recognize the position of such men as the Bishop of Winchester and Dr
+Colenso--the latter endeavours to test the value of the instrument which
+is most used by churchmen by certain well-known means; the former,
+on the contrary, aims to demonstrate that what he regards as a true
+indicator is so in spite of all which the planets prove to the contrary.
+
+To carry on our metaphor a point further, let us imagine that the
+captain and the doubting passenger appeal to the seamen and the other
+people on board the barque--the latter telling in simple terms the
+grounds of his belief, whilst the former appeals to the passions of
+those who have long trusted him, and only notices the arguments of his
+opponent to misrepresent them. This is what was done by the Papists, in
+every country, at the time of the Reformation, and which more recently
+has been done by the Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England,
+when in controversy with the Bishop of Natal Dr Colenso has in
+voluminous works, and with a precision which every scholar must admire,
+shown that the Old Testament--the "compass" of churchmen--is not what it
+is supposed to be. Against his views a new "Bible commentary" has been
+issued, with the sanction of the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries; and
+in it the authors stoop to misrepresentation! If there were no pretence
+of joint authorship, one might imagine that each writer was responsible
+only for his own shortcomings; but when there is a parade of great
+names, which is intended to demonstrate the almost infallible truth of
+everything (except typographical errors), one is bound to treat the
+contributors as being on a level with each other, and all hierarchical
+coadjutors. How can any one, with a tendency towards fair dealing,
+characterize but with the epithet "contemptible dishonesty," a
+deliberate quotation from Dr Colenso, which is falsified, that the
+fabrication may be refuted? The Bishop of Natal's argument is a just
+one, and, although it is only contained in a note and not in the text
+itself, is of great weight. It runs thus (Part v., p. 97)--"Of course
+the fact that the tabernacle at Shiloh had _doors_ (1 Sam. iii. 15)--
+that the lamp was allowed regularly to _go out_ in it (1 Sam. iii. 3),
+and that Samuel _slept_ in it, and apparently Eli also (1 Sam. iii. 2,
+3), are sufficient to show that this could not have been the 'Mosaic
+Tabernacle.'" This is a fair and scholarly statement; the layman
+recognizes it as such, and looks to his ecclesiastical superior for an
+honest opinion on its value. What does he find? Simply this--Bishop
+Browne answers: "The objection (Colenso, Part v., p. 97) that the
+Tabernacle (at Shiloh) could not be the tabernacle, in the wilderness,
+because it had a 'door' (1 Sam. ii. 22) is rather singular, if we
+observe that the words in Samuel, on which the objection is founded--
+'The women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the
+congregation'--are literally a quotation from Exod. xxxviii. 8--'The
+women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of
+congregation.' Of course the word door, fine _pethah_, is as applicable
+to a tent door as to a house door, and is constantly used of the door of
+the Tabernacle in the Pentateuch."
+
+In this observation of the Bishop of Winchester a false issue is
+deliberately raised; the quotation given by Colenso is not touched, and
+for it another, wide of the mark, is substituted! In the verse referred
+to by the Bishop of Natal the words are--"And Samuel lay until the
+morning, and opened the doors of the house of the Lord," &c.--"doors"
+being in the original, _dalethoth_--a different word altogether to
+_pethah_, and certainly in the plural number. In other language, we may
+say that in the _Speaker's Bible_, almost every argument and criticism
+of Colenso and his German authorities are left unnoticed and unanswered;
+and this, almost the only quotation made, is not a true one! Is this
+honest? So gross, in my opinion, is the want of candour shown in this
+case, that I, for one, cannot trust a single assertion of the Bishop
+of Ely, now translated to Winchester, even when he quotes chapter and
+verse, until I have verified the extract.
+
+But the flagrancy of the proceeding is, if it can be, heightened by a
+reference to the subject Dr Colenso was endeavouring to show, by those
+undesigned coincidences, that hierarchs profess to love so much, and
+which they parade with great earnestness when it suits their purpose,
+that the tabernacle at Shiloh was not that described in the Pentateuch.
+It was perfectly open to Dr Browne to adduce evidence that it was the
+same. This he does not do--the scholar can well understand the reason
+why, viz., that a close inquiry supports the Bishop of Natal's view. For
+example, in 1 Sam. L 9, we find that Eli is sitting "upon a seat by
+a post of the temple of the Lord." This sentence is significant in
+English, it is much more so in Hebrew. The words "post" and "temple"
+certainly are quite incompatible with a tent or tabernacle. In the
+Hebrew, the tabernacle is generally spoken of as _ohel_, whilst "temple"
+is _heckal_. Still further, the expression, "post of the temple," is
+peculiar, because a corresponding one is found only once in the Old
+Testament--viz., in Ezek. xli. 21, where the English version has "the
+posts of the temple," whilst the marginal reading has "post" The word
+_heckal_ is in constant use throughout the later Jewish books, but does
+not occur once in the Pentateuch; and it is a significant fact that, in
+1 Kings xxi. 1, 2 Kings xx. 18, Ps. xlv. 8, cxliv. 12, Pro. xxx. 28, Is.
+xiii. 22, xxxix. 7, Dan. i. 4, the word in question is translated in our
+authorized version _palace_.
+
+As the idea of a palace--a royal residence, is totally distinct from a
+tent or tabernacle, it is clear that the narrative about Eli, Hannah,
+and Samuel, was written by some one to whom the story told in
+the Pentateuch was quite unknown. The dishonesty--we speak thus,
+controversially--of the bishops concerned in the new commentary is not
+only shown in the _suggestio falsi_, but in the _suppressio veri_; and
+no amount of skill in argument or of book-learning can, amongst those
+who are aware of the fraud, get over the effect which is produced by
+the cheat. It is evident, that the questions which the Bishops ask
+themselves are--"Since there are so many who are wholly ignorant of this
+matter, shall we not do more to uphold current ideas by fraud than by
+truth?" and, "Is it not right for us to risk our own souls in support of
+a faith which we do not, but which the people do, believe?"
+
+In a time when all men are ignorant enough not to understand what is
+history and what pure fable; when they are so careless as not to examine
+quotations, made from "authorities," in confirmation of opinions, or
+so credulous as to believe anything which a churchman, and,
+_par-excellence_, a Bishop, may affirm, it may be regarded by
+ecclesiastical writers as a pardonable sin, if not, indeed, a tactical
+master stroke, to misrepresent an adversary. But in the present day,
+when all educated Englishmen have heard of the false decretals on which
+the Popes have founded their claims to superiority, and the astute
+legend of Prester John, it is bad policy for a Bishop to found an
+argument upon a wrong quotation, or to imagine that a glaring untruth
+can by any possibility support his position. For myself, I confess that
+I began to read the _Speaker's Commentary_ with interest, inasmuch as
+it purported to be an exposition and refutation of the arguments against
+the authenticity of certain Biblical writings; but when I found an
+English hierarch could so forget his duty to "the truth" as to misquote
+such a man as his episcopal brother, the Bishop of Natal, I abstained
+from a farther perusal, for I found the necessity of verifying
+quotations involved more time than I could afford. Dr Colenso has,
+however, sufficiently shown the viciousness of the new commentary, and
+there is no necessity for a second investigator.
+
+From what has been said, we have shown that the members of the Church
+of England, and all Protestant dissenters, have a right to expect from
+their teachers an opinion, founded upon learned inquiry, "whether the
+objections made by scholarly critics against the inspiration of the
+Bible are well founded," and that ministers of all denominations, as a
+body, not only shirk the duty, but persecute such of their fraternity as
+venture to do so.
+
+When an individual in the community accepts a trust and does not fulfil
+it, he is amenable to the law; and if it can be proved that there has
+been wilful negligence, the trustee may be punished. This does not,
+however, apply directly to the clergy, for the trust which is confided
+to them is to preach and teach from the Bible. That, certainly, is
+what they engage to do before the law, but the very essence of their
+existence as ministers of religion is, that they shall instruct men
+in the way of salvation. This trust, which is never put into legal
+phraseology, is proclaimed to be in existence by every preacher; and
+each minister, by implication or assertion, declares that he is desirous
+of exercising this trust to the best of his ability. If, then, the
+real value of his leadership is challenged, he ought, as a champion,
+to defend it. He does so in every point, except that which is most
+essential He will discuss circumcision with a Jew, infant christening
+with a baptist, purgatory with a popish priest, bishops with a
+presbyterian, confession with a ritualist, and the like. There must,
+then, be some cause why Revelation should not be treated of.
+
+If we consult human nature, the only causes to which we can assign this
+reticence are, conscientious cowardice and dishonesty. The first is,
+by many persons, regarded as a duty--they are taught that it is sin to
+doubt; the second is not called by its right name. Yet, as we have said
+elsewhere, our religious societies are founded upon the principle of
+sowing doubt broadcast; and we denounce the pious frauds which invented
+winking virgins and bleeding nuns. Surely, if there be any truth in the
+line--"An honest man's the noblest work of God," it is most essential
+that they, who style themselves His ministers, ought to be conspicuously
+honourable, candid, and thoroughly trustworthy in matters of doctrine as
+well as of morality.
+
+The subject on which we are now treating has ramifications so wide, that
+it is difficult to see the end of the branches. Amongst the most obvious
+is the influence which it has upon the matter of public education--one
+which occupies a large portion of the interest of our nation at the
+present time.
+
+In our preceding vol. II., p. 113, we have a note to the effect that
+there is much doubt upon the subject whether faith ought to be drilled
+into the minds of our youth prior to an acquisition of, or the power of
+using, their reasoning faculty, and we remarked that the question is far
+too extended to be treated in a casual note.
+
+The matter was shortly afterwards discussed in parliament, but not one
+of the orators ventured to touch upon the point involved. If we ask
+ourselves "the reason why," it is probable that the answer would
+run--because all the interlocutors did not venture to be honest; by
+which I mean, did not wish to utter, in distinct language, the
+opinions that they held, and the end which they sought. There are
+some legislators who regard moral cowardice as a virtue, and political
+dishonesty as a desirable kingcraft.
+
+If an observer of the parliamentary debates, to which we refer, was also
+a diligent and thoughtful reader of orations made in country towns and
+metropolitan districts, by preachers and teachers of all our various
+religious denominations, he would readily come to the conclusion that
+there was something underlying every speech, which was never allowed to
+come to the surface--a something which each was perfectly cognizant of,
+but which it would be unmannerly to name, or even to hint at strongly.
+It is not, in public meetings, or in parliament, permitted to any
+speaker to accuse an adversary of falsehood or dishonesty.
+
+Yet, what an orator may not judiciously say of particular individuals,
+a writer may assert of a class, or of a single person, if he is a
+representative of a body. I may, for example, accuse the Pope of
+dishonesty in misrepresenting certain well-known facts. I may equally
+charge controversial writers with fraud, when they falsify the words or
+arguments of an opponent. Whoever frames such an indictment is, however,
+bound to take into consideration the possibility of there being an
+unintentional error. It may, for example, be true that Popes never see
+newspapers which tell the truth, and that divines may quote without
+ever reading the book which they profess to criticise. In both cases
+the critic acquits them of malice, but only to convict them of culpable
+ignorance.
+
+When we investigate how this bears upon education, we ask ourselves--"Do
+we, as historians, or in our capacity of reading men, know that the
+pretensions of the Church of Rome are founded upon, or are bolstered
+up by, assertions which every learned man knows, or ought to know, are
+unworthy of belief?"
+
+To be more particular, let us propound the question--Does any Papal
+hierarch believe that Francis of Assisi received certain bodily marks on
+his hands and feet direct from Jesus? or that any portion of the blood
+of a man has been preserved for ages in the Cathedral of Naples, as
+having once belonged to a person who is called by the same name as
+the first month in our year? We might readily increase our queries by
+remarking about St. Dennis, St. George, St Fou-tin, and a variety of
+others who appear in the Roman heaven. Our purpose, however, will be
+answered if we ask, whether the thoughtful amongst us do not object to
+the Papal faith, because those who proclaim it are not to be trusted?
+
+If we listen to energetic Protestant divines, we hear much of "lying
+wonders," wrought by Antichrist, which are calculated even to deceive
+the very elect. These men frequently quote such passages as the
+following:--"Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the
+Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these" (Jer.
+vii. 4); "They have committed villany in Israel, and have spoken lying
+words in my name, which I have not commanded them" (Jer. xxix. 23);
+"Have ye not spoken a lying divination," &c. (Ezek. xiii. 7, 8, 9); "Then
+shall that Wicked be revealed, whose coming is with lying wonders, and
+with all deceivableness of unrighteousness; and for this cause God shall
+send them strong delusions, that they should believe a lie," &c. (2
+Thess. ii. 8-12). Indeed, the main objection to the Roman Church, amongst
+all those who are acquainted with its secret history, is that it is
+founded, and still exists, upon a foundation of fraud.
+
+There are many who consider that the Churches of England and of Scotland
+have not a better basis; but both have so many friends in Great
+Britain, that the sins of neither are closely examined, except by their
+adversaries.
+
+Each sectarian is fully alive to the want of good faith shown by every
+other division of the Church of Christ; and not only so, but we have
+seen, in our own times, a ruler in Siam who knows about them too (see
+_Wheel of the Law_, by H. Alabaster; Triibner & Co., London, 1871), and
+is perfectly alive to the fact that we deceive ourselves.
+
+It is a part of human nature that each individual has a propensity to
+deceive himself or herself. A child, who has been told that Old Bogy
+lives in a certain cupboard, will not go and look therein; a man who
+adores a lovely wife will not believe in her frailty; and a fond woman
+will not credit even her father, when he tells her that her admirer is a
+worthless scoundrel.
+
+We grant this readily, but we add the proviso, that we only allow
+ourselves to be deceived by our own friends. It would be, to all of us,
+a frightful infliction if our sons or daughters were to tell us that
+we were under strong delusions, and believing in lies. Consequently,
+everyone desires that his family shall have a similar faith with his
+own.
+
+At the present time, however, more conspicuously than at any other since
+printing was invented, there is, in society, a vast number of men who
+believe, from their critical inquiries, that all religionists trust
+in lying vanities which do not profit. These individuals have become
+sceptics, in consequence of education having led them to think for
+themselves. Being opposed to all, they are friendly with none; and
+although they are not aggressive, as a rule, they are vigorously
+attacked by every sect which steadily refuses to come to the light.
+
+Under these circumstances every hierarch argues: "The education which
+frees the mind from all the shackles of superstition is prejudicial to
+us, who earn our living hy making fetters, fixing them, and relaxing
+them when duly paid to do so. A sound teaching--a style of instruction
+that will induce the rising generation to examine into our pretensions
+will cut the ground from under our feet. We must, therefore, endeavour
+to limit, in some considerable degree, our tuition." Like the Jesuits in
+Austria and of to-day, they will cram the memory, but not exercise
+the understanding; they will crowd the mind with lying statements,
+and prohibit all inquiry. Sectarians, therefore, as a rule, object to
+education, unless it has a religious element in it. They agree in this
+point, but differ as to the style of faith which is to be taught Hence
+all the difference of opinion, for as the sectarians cannot decide upon
+what faith is to be taught, they object to all instruction whatever. Are
+they honest?
+
+If, instead of nursing a private idea, each legislator were boldly to
+say what he desired to obtain and to avoid, there might be some chance
+of united action. But when all pretend to work in common, yet not one is
+absolutely in earnest, and all, more or less, play at "make believe," no
+valuable end will be obtained.
+
+One politician, whose memory is tenacious, and his temerity great,
+cannot bear the idea that the British mind should approximate to that of
+the Germans; and, whilst he eulogizes education, he denounces Strauss.
+Not because the latter is not a man of profound learning, but because
+the cultivation of his intellect has led him to certain conclusions
+which are distasteful to an English politician. This is not honesty.
+
+Again, our bishops and the priesthood generally say, "Education is a
+desirable thing; it is wrong for man, who has a soul to be saved, not
+to seek out the way of salvation." But if, in the course of inquiry, a
+scholar imagines that their way is incorrect, he is anathematized, and
+his fellows are instructed to believe that no one can find comfort for
+the soul except in the way patronized by the Church. This, again, is
+not honest. But--and the word is of mighty import--if, instead of saying
+this distinctly, a few individuals of high standing in the Protestant
+community deliberately, and with the intention to deceive--or to retain
+people in the bonds which astute predecessors have thrown around the
+laity, state, as their belief, that which their critical knowledge tells
+them is untrue, or withhold knowledge of importance, because they deem
+its publication detrimental to ecclesiastical institutions, they are not
+simply dishonest--they are culpable, and guilty of spiritual murder.
+
+My meaning may be illustrated by one or two pertinent anecdotes: The
+captain of a man-of-war was doubtful of the existence of a rock laid
+down upon a chart. One day at dinner he announced to his company the
+disbelief which he had, adding, that if the spot were truly described,
+the ship would strike directly. It did so, and few survivors were left
+to tell the tale. The commander judiciously elected to perish with his
+vessel. Had he told his officers, and the distinguished passengers whom
+he was carrying, what he was doing, it is certain that the danger would
+have been avoided.
+
+Another ship captain was addressed by a civilian who was on board,
+and told that a hurricane was approaching, which might be avoided by
+steering in a certain direction; but, metaphorically speaking, the
+bishop would not listen to the layman. The typhoon came, the vessel was
+partially dismasted; then the passenger was consulted, and by his aid
+the ship got out of the danger.
+
+The civilian was well read, not in ancient books, but in modern science;
+the master mariner knew only his log-book, compass, and "the rule of
+thumb."
+
+A person who loses his ship because he is too stupid to believe a chart,
+or the rules of a science, which every scholar may test, deserves the
+name of an imbecile, and our Board of Trade would deprive him of the
+power to do any more mischief as a captain; but bishops and priests may
+pilot their vessel wrongly, for none have any jurisdiction over them,
+provided always that they steer in the old channels. It matters not
+how far the way may be shifted, all is supposed to be right, if the old
+landmarks are still used.
+
+To make our meaning still more clear, let us imagine ourselves a
+nation of mariners, and of ocean-travellers. We go to school, and learn
+astronomy, trigonometry, geography, physics, and the like; yet, when
+we are at sea in any ship whatever, we must neglect our knowledge, and
+trust implicitly to the captain of our ship. We know that we are, in
+reality, going southwards, when our proper destination lies to the
+north: for us it is easy to read the stars, and thus to test both the
+chronometer and the compass; must we, then, be quiet because we have
+embarked in a vessel belonging to a certain "line," which is commanded
+by a master appointed by the "firm" or "company" to which the barque
+belongs. What is the value of education unless it enables us, when
+necessary, to find whether we are in the right way or not?
+
+Let us, still further, suppose that we remonstrate with the captain, and
+that he, in place of arguing the matter fairly, endeavours to override
+our objections by quoting from ancient geographers, to demonstrate that
+what we believe to be the wrong is, in reality, the only true way to go;
+we may be silenced, probably until we accidently discover in the ship's
+library, a dissertation proving that the old traveller's charts are
+worthless. When we find out that, what will be our opinion of the
+captain? Can we believe him to be honest?
+
+If we now were to remonstrate with our naval dictator, and he were to
+rejoin--"My worthy brothers, I know that you are right, and that I
+have been wrong. I have, indeed, known it from the time I began to
+be commander, but my living depends upon my belief in old charts and
+ancient compasses. I dare not change my plan, for my masters would
+dismiss me. They know--at least I feel convinced that they are aware,
+that the old sailing directions are wrong; but they have not the courage
+to say so, or to alter them--and if I do so, they will cashier me."
+
+Is the "firm" or "company" honest? and if we are to mete out degrees of
+culpability, to whom must the severest punishment be awarded? Surely,
+in the case of the Church of England, to her Bishops, who, knowing, as
+scholars, that their compass and charts are incorrect, yet oblige those
+under their command to steer by them--thus compelling the men who ought
+to be standard-bearers in the forefront of intellectual work, either to
+be silent, or to fight at a disadvantage.
+
+It is the knowledge of the duplicity of a vast number of intelligent
+divines, which has induced laymen to take the business of education out
+of the hands of the clergy as a body. The Protestant believes that a
+Jesuit will not teach correct history; the Romanist feels certain
+that, even in biography, evangelical narratives cannot be trusted; and
+Nonconformists generally feel that they cannot rely upon the instruction
+given by those of a different sect.
+
+It is desirable to sketch, if possible, what would be the condition of
+society if, in the place of the clergy, there was a set of men trained
+to the office of instructor, and that all individuals in the kingdom
+were compelled to attend school for a definite period in their youth. In
+the first place, nothing would be taught which is not known to be true.
+After having mastered the rudiments of knowledge, the art of reading,
+writing, and ciphering, the students would be taught to train their
+minds in drawing inferences from facts, and the art of passing from
+imperfect knowledge to certainty. They would be schooled into habits of
+exactness, and the necessity for careful inquiry before they believed an
+assertion to have the same power as a fact Those whose inclination led
+them to study one or more of the arts or sciences, drawing, painting,
+sculpture, designing, weaving, chemistry, engineering, building, and
+a host of others, would learn that in every one of them knowledge and
+precision are required to ensure success.
+
+When the instructor found that his pupils were sufficiently trained to
+the exercise of reasoning, he would then proceed to explain the ideas
+which have been entertained by various people about the existence of
+beings, other than those which can be recognized by the senses. He would
+lead his class through the geological history of our planet, and point
+out the sequence of events from the latest formation, to the primary
+rocks; on his way he would linger on the nature of ancient plants and
+animals; from our earth he would lead them to a study of the stars, and
+then point out how very natural is the opinion that all the universe had
+a designer.
+
+Then, after giving a history of the belief in ancient times, he
+would gradually descend to our own. He would critically examine the
+pretensions of any person who had, in former ages, asserted, or who
+proclaimed now, that he or she knew all about this presumed Creator, and
+was charged to communicate that knowledge to mankind. After
+explaining the critical test by which such an assumed mission might be
+examined--viz., by accurate knowledge of the earth and of mankind, he
+would apply this trial to all known pretenders to inspiration.
+
+As a result, his pupils might prefer one to another, or refuse
+to believe in all which have hitherto appeared. In any case, each
+individual would enter upon the form of faith which he selected with
+full knowledge of the facts in favour of it. He would, therefore, be
+a disciple worth having. If, on the other hand, he disbelieved all
+pretenders to inspiration, his condition would be the result of
+deliberate reasoning upon ascertained facts, and not built, as
+all religion now is, upon parrot lore, taught in childhood, ere
+thoughtfulness has begun to grow.
+
+Assuming that men were thus trained by honest and able instructors,
+all those people who live upon the weaknesses and the ignorance of the
+multitude would cease their endeavours to prey upon mankind, and to get
+a living by playing upon the fears which so many persons have of the
+unknown. There would then be no religious wars or contests--no popes,
+prelates, priests, nor deacons. Quackery of all kinds would cease, and
+statesmen would all agree in endeavouring to procure for mankind the
+greatest amount of available happiness. This would be the result of
+honesty. But from such a picture many men absolutely recoil As the
+effect of training has been to make them believe that unsubstantial
+things are of sovereign importance, they cannot endure the idea of man
+being wholly rational; and they insist, as does the late Premier of
+England, that, if scientific schooling of the mind leads men to neglect
+what some call Revelation, the plan must be radically bad and worthless.
+But to eulogise education and to deprecate its results is dishonest.
+This political tenet or practice resembles that of many a parson, who
+tells his hearers from the pulpit that they are to "take no thought for
+the morrow, for the morrow will take thought for the things of itself;"
+"they are not to take thought for life, for food, for raiment; nor to
+lay up for themselves treasures upon earth" (Matt vi. 19, 25, 34), and on
+the week-day urges them to lay by a store against the time of sickness
+or old age. Such double-dealing is dishonest, and is unworthy of a
+thoughtful man. If Jesus was right, why not enforce his teaching? if he
+was wrong, why not say so?
+
+Is it possible that any minister in politics, or religion, can believe
+that "Honesty is the best policy," and yet act with double-dealing? Can
+any person, who has power to think, believe that he will be respected
+when he, on a Sunday, preaches improvidence as being taught by the
+Almighty, and on a Monday proclaims that men are wicked who do not make
+a provision for the future? If such people were honest with themselves,
+they would soon discover that the doctrine propounded from the pulpit is
+a Buddhistic one, acted upon by all the early disciples of Sakya Muni,
+and in a conspicuous manner by himself. Yet, if a parson were to be
+candid thus far to himself, he would probably say--"I cannot afford
+to be honest in this matter openly, and I must keep this knowledge to
+myself." Interest, unfortunately, determines the actions, even of our
+divines, more than a rigid uprightness.
+
+We are thus at the foundation of those causes which are in operation
+to make the thoughtful laity distrustful of the clergy--it is, that
+the latter are not honourable or strictly veracious--they preach
+one doctrine, and act upon another. Honesty is on their lips, but
+self-interest in their hearts. From the Pope to the humblest deacon,
+there is a conscious reticence in every mind--an inner belief that their
+pretensions are not tenable, yet an outward determination to proclaim
+them at all hazards; like the silversmiths of Ephesus, they all unite in
+the belief that "their craft is in danger" when the apostles of reason
+appear.
+
+Far be it from me to assert that all the clergy are dishonest in
+the full meaning of the word. I believe that many of them have such
+undeveloped minds, or such mean intellectual capacities, that they are
+absolutely unable to think upon any subject which has not been drilled
+into them when their brains were childish and ductile. Others, again,
+have been schooled into the belief that "doubt" and "the devil" are
+identical, and who pray to be defended from both--with them, "to
+inquire" is a temptation of Satan, and so is to be manfully resisted;
+others, again, say to themselves, and sometimes even to their
+friends--"I know what will follow if I go into 'the evidences'--I dare
+not do it, and prefer to remain in my present condition." Others, again,
+say to their conscience--I am paid to expound a certain book, in a
+certain way; I cannot afford to give up my position; consequently I will
+neither hear of nor argue upon either the volume or the doctrine. There
+are, again, some few religionists who, by constantly encouraging a blind
+faith, and repressing all intellectual doubts, come at length to believe
+their position impregnable, and who trust it because it is, as it
+were, always kept under a glass-case. Some such I know, or have known,
+personally; and have heard from their own lips how their very accurate
+knowledge of the Bible has made them doubt its inspiration, and
+how "they have wrestled with God in prayer"--to use their own
+expression--until the temptation to distrust has been changed into a
+childlike confidence. Men like these are not dishonest to the world,
+they are only so to themselves.
+
+The career of one of my acquaintances has been so striking, that
+it deserves a record. The man of whom I speak was one of powerful
+intellect, and of an inquiring turn of mind; but he was in holy orders,
+and had schooled himself never to investigate the Bible's claim to
+inspiration, or anything connected with religion. He faithfully did the
+ordinary duties of a minister according to his lights; but throughout
+his ministrations, in the composition and delivery of every sermon,
+there was a powerful undercurrent of the mind which was constantly
+saying, without using words--"You know that you are not honest." Prayer
+did not subdue this mental conflict, and day by day the undercurrent
+grew stronger. It was, however, resolutely opposed, and an outward
+orthodoxy rigidly kept up. Of the throes of such a man, when he was
+quietly alone, few but those who have felt them can have an idea. Under
+their influence the brain gave way, and insanity was the reward of
+a resolute determination to be orthodox against personal conviction.
+Similar cases are not uncommon, when faith opposes reason.
+
+It is very doubtful whether ordinary laymen have an adequate idea of the
+extent of clerical dishonesty existing amongst us, not only in the seats
+of learning, but in our towns, cities, and villages. As I have had much
+correspondence and conversation with many ministers of religion, I have
+formed the opinion that parsons of all denominations regard themselves
+much in the same light as trade unionists and non-union men, the two
+parties look upon each other as hostile. The former, who call themselves
+the orthodox, keep up a sort of spy system upon those whose opinions
+they fear, because they are not in the union. Such men, if they had a
+chance, would not scruple to "ratten" an adversary. They judge of a man
+by the books which they chance to see in his library, book-cases, or
+upon his table; and, without the manliness to confront, they have the
+weakness to backbite those whose mind is more robust than their own.
+
+As a physician, I have been consulted by a Church of England minister,
+who was suspected by the rest of the ministers in his town of being a
+non-union man. Of strong mind, he did not preach the usual jargon which
+the pulpit delights in. Irons upon _Prophecy_ and Inman's _Ancient
+Faiths_ had been seen in his study, and he spoke approvingly of Colenso.
+As a consequence, he was watched in the pulpit and in the street. He was
+followed to the homes of poverty, and sick folk were visited, that the
+nature of his ministrations might be searched out. He was visited by
+persons of all classes, who, taking their cue from the New Testament,
+strove to entangle him in his talk. Being married, and having a family,
+and no means of subsistence, save his church living, this trade union
+persecution made him miserable, and seriously injured his health. But he
+was resolute not to be dishonest, and held on his way. I was, he assured
+me, the only person whom he knew that could appreciate his condition,
+and he was most thankful for my sympathy and advice. He left my house
+already improved in health; and the feeling that he had a friend to whom
+he might always apply, enabled him to bear his persecution manfully.
+He still retains his position, notwithstanding all the wiles and
+"picketings" of the trade unionists.
+
+This spy system, mentioned in the above example, is associated with an
+attempt to discover and apply backstairs influence--those who have
+the power of making appointments in the church, the chapel, or the
+meeting-house, are studied, and their opportunities to remove a
+non-unionist taken advantage of by clerical "By-ends," who endeavour to
+shape their judgment according to that of their patrons.
+
+This dishonesty reacts upon itself. Men who preach habitually one set of
+doctrines to a congregation, tie themselves and their understanding down
+to the low level of the majority of mediocrities; and as this level has,
+under such circumstances, a tendency to lower itself, the clergy have
+been compelled to fall, with their patrons, far down in the intellectual
+scale, and the intelligence and educational status of ministers of all
+denominations sinks annually lower. The proprieties of society prevent
+me from repeating what has come to my ears from the lips or pens of
+distinguished clerics. It will be enough if I utter my belief that one
+or more outspoken laymen will do more good to religion, and advance the
+interests of society more, than all ecclesiastical unionists. In this
+and the preceding volumes it has been my aim to be thoroughly honest. In
+some things of small moment, such as Greek accents, Hebrew points, &c.,
+it is probable I have been faulty. I will even allow, willingly, that a
+more perfect Hebrew scholar than myself may esteem my etymons fanciful
+and incorrect. My work having been done in the midst of constant
+interruptions, I concede that, to accomplished bookworms, it must appear
+disjointed. But, with all its faults, it is honest; and, being so, I
+claim the right to challenge any one who chooses to enter the lists, and
+encounter me honourably, to a knightly combat. I am sure that my aim has
+been, and is yet, to elicit truth. To me vituperation, because I have
+run foul of what are called established doctrines, has no more influence
+than it had upon the prime movers of any revolution. A foul blow, such
+as iniquitous misrepresentation, would probably anger me for a moment,
+yet it would nerve me, in the course of a few hours, to make an
+onslaught more furious than ever. With a literary rascal one cannot
+observe the strict laws of knighthood, except indeed, those which govern
+the relations of the noble and the varlet.
+
+I make this challenge the more boldly, because the so-called orthodox
+cannot persecute me by those meannesses which they employ against each
+other. Having no ecclesiastical status, I have no penalty to dread from
+frightened bishops or malignant priests. In the face of such a defiance
+the clerical party must fight fairly, or slink away as cravens. One
+condition, however, I must make with any one who enters the lists--viz.,
+that any misrepresentation, such as that made about Bishop Colenso by
+Dr Browne of the See of Winchester, shall be regarded as _ipso facto_--a
+signal of defeat.
+
+To return to the idea which is enunciated at the early part of this
+essay, let us contemplate what would be, or rather, what ought to be,
+the duty of an honest man, whose aim is to defend the faith which he
+professes, and to prove that the book which he reveres is deserving of
+his confidence.
+
+It is probable that, if a merchant had in his possession a bill,
+or promissory note, which some person had examined carefully, and
+pronounced to be a forgery, he would never think of parading it before
+his customers as a valid "asset." Yet, as I write the sentence, memory
+recalls to my mind that traders have done this very thing, and have
+counted what they ought to have known were bad debts, or fraudulent
+bills of exchange, amongst their securities for money; and that, when
+the parties so acting have become bankrupt, their proceedings have been
+severely punished by the authorities, as being dishonest and fraudulent.
+
+The analogy is an useful one, inasmuch as it enables me to ask the
+question--"Ought the morality of a 'divine' to be inferior to that
+practised by a merchant or banker?" Still further, let us inquire
+whether we should have a high opinion of a trader, who endeavoured
+to palm off upon us, as a genuine diamond, an article which had been
+publicly declared to be a bit of "paste," and whether we should be
+satisfied with his excuse--"I believe everything is a gem that goes by
+the name of a precious stone."
+
+In the course of this and our preceding volumes we have, as plainly as
+words could express our meaning, enunciated our conclusions upon certain
+Biblical difficulties. We have, at least, endeavoured to be honest; we
+have not misrepresented those with whose opinions we differ, nor have
+we tried to shirk any question, however difficult it may have been. We
+claim a corresponding degree of honesty from those who profess to be
+authorised guides--and certainly are in the position at present of
+national leaders in religion.
+
+We are not like an unfortunate clerk in "holy orders," who can be
+silenced by law. We are, on the contrary, a stranger knight who comes to
+a tourney, and claims the right to combat with the most redoubtable of
+the champions of their court and kingdom. Still further, we assume the
+power to write those down as cowards who, upon any pretence whatever,
+decline to compete in the lists with us.
+
+In the days of chivalry there was not a knight who would not have been
+regarded as "craven," if he declined a combat because his challenger
+did not speak or write French correctly, or had a speck of rust on his
+armour, a dint in his shield, or a hole in his breastplate. Yet, in
+these degenerate days, we see that poltroons refuse to entertain the
+arguments of a writer who, from any cause whatever, appears to be
+inaccurate in Hebrew points, or consonants, or Greek accents, or
+transliteration. For ourselves, we regard every excuse which is framed
+to avoid meeting a fairly stated argument as a proof of weakness, and
+when it is uttered by a professional champion, as an act of cowardice.
+When such champions are paid by a state to uphold the honour of their
+country, to avoid a challenge by evasion is dishonesty. There was,
+however, in knightly days, some established law of chivalry that no
+champion need fight a "squire" or "varlet;" but, on the other hand, no
+nobleman could refuse to enter the lists on the plea that his challenger
+had a different faith to his own. Combats between Christians and Paynim
+were common. Consequently, we cannot regard a bishop justified in
+declining a fair challenge, because he is invited to enter the lists by
+an "Infidel."
+
+Considering myself as an university graduate and an English gentleman,
+entitled to give a literary challenge, I make no scruple to enter the
+lists, and invite champions to break a lance with me in favour of their
+patron saint or lady.
+
+I assert that their tutelary saints--Adam, Abraham, David, Moses,
+Solomon, and the prophets, are imaginary beings, or, where real, were
+not as worthy as they are supposed to have been. I defy scholars to
+prove that the Israelites were ever, as a body, in Egypt; that they
+were delivered therefrom by Moses; that the people wandered during forty
+years in "the desert;" received a code of laws from Jehovah on Sinai;
+and were, in any sense whatever of the words, "the chosen people of
+God."
+
+I assert that the whole history of the Old Testament is untrue, with the
+exception of a few parts which tell of unimportant events--e.g., it is
+probable that the Jews fought with their neighbours, as the Swiss have
+done in modern days--but I do not believe the tale about Samson any more
+than that of William Tell.
+
+I assert that there is not a single true prophecy in the whole Bible,
+which can be proved to have been written before the event to which it
+is assumed to point, or which is superior, in any way, to the "oracles"
+delivered in various ancient lands.
+
+I assert that the whole of what, is called the Mosaic law had
+no existence in the days of David, Solomon, and the early Hebrew
+chieftains--or kings--if they are thought to deserve the title.
+
+Here there is no room for evasion--the issue is clear; the cause to be
+adjudged by combat is unmistakable. As the weapons on both sides
+must necessarily be literary--the pen, and not lance or spear, it is
+advisable to say a few words thereupon. In argument I do not recognize
+that style of logic which considers that the words "it may be" are equal
+to "it is."
+
+I am induced to make this remark, because in theological works, the two
+forms are constantly used as if they were identical. Many years ago, a
+near relative, staying in my house, was preparing for ordination in the
+Church of England, and amongst other hooks, had a certain work of the
+late Cardinal Wiseman, for perusal--with the intention of collecting
+materials for refuting it. He told me that the Papal Archbishop was too
+strong for him, and requested my aid. As a result, I became familiar,
+not only with many dogmatic writings of the Roman, but also of the
+Anglican, Church. All of them had, in my estimation, the same logical
+fault. Their authors imagined that any given point is proved when it
+can be shown that the occurrence in question _may_ have happened. At
+a subsequent period I discovered that this was the prevalent argument
+amongst writers in my own profession. It has, indeed, been supposed
+generally, that success in proving an opponent to be wrong, is the same
+as demonstrating your own propositions to be right.
+
+The writers in the _Speaker's Commentary_ upon the Bible have not
+advanced beyond this. A thousand such commonplaces as fill its pages,
+are worthless to the philosophical inquirer, and I no more regard them,
+than a knight would a targe and lance made of barley-sugar.
+
+My challenge, however, is not confined to the subject of the Old
+Testament; I affirm that the New Testament is equally untrue--although
+not to the same degree. Yet, as in the latter, there are not so many
+asserted facts, there cannot be so many points for cavil. To be more
+specific: I assert that the history of Jesus was framed upon that of
+Sakya Muni, and very probably at Alexandria, long after the death of
+the son of Mary. I do not deny the existence of Jesus; but I assert that
+every miracle which is told respecting him--and the narrative of his
+miraculous conception, and of the marvels occurring at his birth, have
+no foundation in fact.
+
+It is unnecessary to repeat what I have already said upon such points as
+"original sin," "the fall of man," and "the need of a Saviour."
+
+In what I now say or write, I am perfectly honest. I have not been paid
+to preach a certain doctrine, whether my understanding assents to it
+or not I affirm, moreover, that the comfort in which I live, is wholly
+unbroken by any fears for the future; and that I look back upon the
+period when my days and nights were made wretched by superstition, and
+rejoice that I am emancipated from the shackles of Ecclesiastics. "The
+Church," and every sect of it, which is known in Christendom, is, in my
+opinion, unfit to be trusted by thoughtful human beings. Its votaries
+are only happy in proportion to their power of forgetting its doctrines,
+or explaining them away. Yet all, as I said in the first chapter of
+my second volume, agree "to make believe," and by dint of persistently
+doing so, end in persuading themselves that they are clothed with lovely
+garments--which have no existence, save in the opinion of the wearer.
+
+My whole life has been passed amongst religionists of more or less
+piety. I have known them in public and in private, in their connection
+with the world, and their relations with wife, children, and servants. I
+am also familiar with some who are avowed free-thinkers. As an impartial
+judge, and certainly having the desire to be an honest one, I declare
+that the so-called irreligion or infidelity of the latter makes them
+better citizens of the world, better fathers of a family, and
+better priests to those who are struggling with misfortune, than the
+religion--orthodox or non-conformist--of the former induces them to
+become.
+
+If there were in reality, as there was once in fable, a domain in which
+every one was constrained to speak the truth; and if, still farther, one
+could carry thereto every religionist, and inquire into his belief, I
+feel sure that those whom the professed Christians affect to despise as
+infidels, would be the only ones who would be found faithful in private,
+to the principles which they profess in public. If, for an example,
+the question were put to both "What is honesty?" the answer of the
+free-thinkers would be--"Doing to others, in every position of life,
+that which you would wish others to do to you;" the reply of the
+dogmatic would be the same, with the important addition--"Except in
+matters of faith."
+
+My readers must not imagine that I am hasty or unscrupulous in what is
+passing from my mind to my pen. There never was a time in which I
+have felt more deeply that my duty, as an independent man, is to speak
+plainly. On the other hand, there is not one single religionist of my
+acquaintance, to whom the words--"Ye know not what manner of spirit ye
+are of" (Luke ix. 55)--do not apply.
+
+On the shelves of my library are books written by almost all classes of
+authors, and in many different languages. It has been a self-enforced
+duty to compare their contents, and to endeavour, still further, to
+elicit from those who are not writers, information which may assist me
+in forming a correct idea upon any particular point. Up to the present
+time I have not found one single work, which has relation to the
+religion of opponents, and is written by a parson, thoroughly
+trustworthy or honest Everyone is guilty, either of the _suppressio
+veri_ or _suggestio falsi_--generally of both. A book emanating from a
+priest is bad, that from a bishop is worse. Colenso, whom I regard as
+the only thoroughly truthful member of the episcopal hierarchy, is the
+one who is more foully treated by religionists than any other minister
+has ever been--"Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true."
+
+We may be pardoned, if we close this chapter by the expression of our
+views as to the religion which will prevail when men have thought as
+much upon their future life as upon their present, and are honest with
+themselves:
+
+1. They will try to form some distinct idea of what would be to them
+a heaven; but, as they will be wholly unsuccessful, they will cease to
+speculate upon it.
+
+2. They will cease to fear a hell, knowing that, if there be any
+immortal part of man, it must be immaterial; they will not believe that
+it can be tormented by material fires, forks, and furies.
+
+3. They will cease to pay any attention to men who call themselves
+prophets, divine messengers, or vicars of God on earth, whether they use
+lying wonders or not.
+
+4. Instead of constantly cogitating how much they can sin against, and
+yet get pardon from, some unknown deity, they will recognize the laws
+of nature for their guide, and live in communities as their reason
+dictates. The future will be left wholly in the power of the Creator.
+
+5. There will be no belief in a trinity, in a virgin mother of God, in
+intercessors of any kind whatever between human beings and the invisible
+God; each man and woman will be independent and alone in the presence of
+the Supreme.
+
+6. Man will no longer try to usurp the place of God, and persecute his
+fellow mortal on religious grounds.
+
+7. There will be no priests or ministers of religion; but there will be
+instructors in science, in the laws of life, and moral order; there will
+be magistrates to enforce social propriety, and establishments where the
+insane and the criminal can be secluded.
+
+8. There will be no strife about religion, for each will attend to his
+own personal concerns.
+
+9. The laws of nature will be studied as regards marriage and family;
+the infected will not be allowed to perpetuate a feeble race, nor the
+diseased infant be pampered, that it may live to a sickly and useless
+maturity.*
+
+     * We may add, that there will then be neither silly women
+     nor crotchety men, who will encourage free trade in
+     fornication, and the diffusion of loathsome diseases, and
+     endeavour to promote unnecessary suffering by their
+     opposition to the methods of avoidance.
+
+10. No law will be made but that which is drawn from a study of the ways
+of the Creator, and the proper requirements of His creatures.
+
+11. Every pretender to revelation, or inspiration, will be incarcerated
+as a rogue or a lunatic.
+
+12. The aim of all will be individual and general comfort, and as much
+happiness as is compatible with humanity.
+
+When each does to others as he would be done by, the millennium, so much
+talked of, will have come.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+27th March, 1875.
+
+Dear Dr Inman,
+
+At pp. 11 and 81 of your new volume, the proof-sheets of which you were
+good enough to show me, you intimate that an earlier origin can be found
+for all Hebrew feasts and observances excepting the Sabbath. It would
+appear, from discoveries made and works published since you began to
+write, that you need not make even this exception. There are, I think,
+plain indications of a Sabbath among the Egyptians, and proofs of its
+observance by the Assyrians.
+
+Dr G. G. Zerffi, in a note appended to Mr Tyssen's _Origin of the Week_*
+says--"Judging from the Egyptian mythology, we are justified in assuming
+that they had some correct notions of the division of time. Their eight
+gods of the first order point to an incarnation of the cosmical forces,
+or the planetary system. The twelve gods of the second order undoubtedly
+presided over the twelve months of the year; whilst the seven gods of
+the third order were to watch over the seven days of the week..... The
+Teutons have inherited the division, not only of the week in seven
+days, but also the names by which these days are called, from the
+Indians....." (Bohlen's _Das alte Indien_; _Toth_, by Dr Uhlemann;
+and Bunsen's _Egypt's Place in History_; Tacitus, Suidas, Pliny, and
+Amosis).
+
+     * The Origin of the Week Explained, by A. D. Tyasen, B.C.L.,
+     M.A.; Williams & Noigate, 1875.
+
+These, perhaps, are only what I have called them, indications of a
+Sabbath, since it is conceivable that a week of seven days might exist
+without one day being more sacred than another. A plainer indication may
+be found in the Hymn to Amen-Ka, which exists upon a hieratic papyrus,
+judged to be of the fourteenth century, B.C., and purporting to be only
+a copy of an earlier writing. I quote four lines, and call attention to
+the fourth:--
+
+     O! Ra adored in Aptu [Thebes]:
+     High-crowned in the house of the obelisk [Heliopolis]:
+     King (Ani) Lord of the New-moon festival:
+     To whom the sixth and seventh days are sacred.*
+
+When we leave Egypt for Assyria, we pass from indication to proof. At p.
+12 of George Smith's _Assyrian Discoveries_,** the author says--"In the
+year 1869 I discovered, among other things, a curious religious calendar
+of the Assyrians, in which every month is divided into four weeks, and
+the seventh days, or 'Sabbaths' are marked out as days on which no work
+should be undertaken." More precise information as to these Sabbath-days
+is given by Rev. A. H Sayce, M.A., in _Records of the Past_, vol. I., p.
+164, where the following words occur:--"The Babylonian year was divided
+into twelve months of thirty days each, with an intercalary month every
+six years.... According to the lunar division, the seventh, fourteenth,
+nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days were days of 'rest' on
+which certain works were forbidden."
+
+     * Translated by C. W. Goodwin, M.A., in Records of the Past,
+     vol. II Bagster & Sons.
+
+     ** Sampson Low, & Co., 1875.
+
+The Assyrian legends tell of seven evil spirits who rebelled against
+the gods; of the goddess Ishtar descending to Hades, and passing through
+seven gates; of a deluge, the duration of which was seven days, &c., &c.
+Mr H. F. Talbot, F.R.S., speaks of the great degree of holiness which
+the Assyrians attributed to the number seven, and where that number was
+sacred, the seventh day could scarcely escape special honours. _Why_ the
+number seven was sacred, or whether the Babylonian Sabbath was at first
+any more than an unlucky day, like the sailor's Friday, when it was
+sowing for the whirlwind to begin any enterprise, are other questions.
+
+I am, yours faithfully,
+
+GEORGE ST. CLAIR.
+
+
+These observations of Mr St Clair deserve attention, for they show that,
+from an ancient period, a sixth and seventh day were holy in Egypt,
+although we cannot discover from the context whether they were reckoned
+after the first day of a year, a month, or a week. But this is of
+small importance, as I do not find evidence that the Jews borrowed any
+Egyptian ideas, even if they ever knew any. It is far more important to
+know, that in the Assyrian calendar the seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth,
+twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month were days of "rest,"
+for all Biblical testimony points to the adoption of the Jewish Sabbath
+in the time of the second Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel--i.e., not very
+long after the Assyrians made their power felt in Palestine. When we
+consider the propensity which the Hebrews had to copy parts of the
+religion of those who conquered them, it is highly probable that some
+astute priest of the Jews adopted the idea of consecrating a seventh
+day, as their Mesopotamian adversaries had done, to the most high
+god Saturn; and as it was desirable to have some pretence for the
+introduction of the Sabbath, it was natural that it should be put under
+the same head as the new moon, and that stories should be invented, and
+gradually circulated, of the vast antiquity of the new institution. It
+is clear, from the Jewish history, that the Sabbath was not generally
+known amongst the common people until long after the return from
+Babylon. Had it been so, Ezra would not have thundered so energetically
+in its favour. The same remark applies to Nehemiah. I have elsewhere
+remarked that the Sabbath was unknown to David and Solomon, and may now
+add that any one who will read the episode in the history of Elijah,
+recorded 1 Kings xix. 7, 8, will see that this prophet could have known
+nothing, and the angel who spoke to him could have known no more, of the
+Mosaic Sabbath, inasmuch as the latter directs, and the former obeys,
+an order which must have involved a breaking of the "rest" of at least
+five, and possibly six, Sabbaths. The whole life, indeed, of Elijah
+shows a perfect ignorance of this so-called Mosaic institution.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ancient Faiths And Modern, by Thomas Inman
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