Chapter VII (3)

Payne Knight seems never to suspect the testimony of Epiphanius. He argues that “if we make allowance for the willing exaggerations of religious hatred, and consequent popular prejudice, the general conviction that these sectarians had rites and practices of a licentious character appears too strong to be entirely disregarded.” If he draws an honest line of demarcation between the Gnostics of the first three centuries and those mediæval sects whose doctrines “rather closely resembled modern communism,” we have nothing to say. Only, we would beg every critic to remember that if the Templars were accused of that most “abominable crime” of applying the “holy kiss” to the root of Baphomet’s tail,[686] St. Augustine is also suspected, and on very good grounds, too, of having allowed his community to go somewhat astray from the primitive way of administering the “holy kiss” at the feast of the Eucharist. The holy Bishop seems quite too anxious as to certain details of the ladies’ toilet for the “kiss” to be of a strictly orthodox nature.[687] Wherever there lurks a true and sincere religious feeling, there is no room for worldly details.

Considering the extraordinary dislike exhibited from the first by Christians to all manner of cleanliness, we cannot enough wonder at such a strange solicitude on the part of the holy Bishop for his female parishioners, unless, indeed, we have to excuse it on the ground of a lingering reminiscence of Manichean rites!

It would be hard, indeed, to blame any writer for entertaining such suspicions of immorality as those above noticed, when the records of many historians are at hand to help us to make an impartial investigation. “Hæretics” are accused of crimes in which the Church has more or less openly indulged even down to the beginning of our century. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX. issued two bulls against the Stedingers “for various _heathen_ and magical practices,”[688] and the latter, as a matter of course, were exterminated in the name of Christ and his Holy Mother. In 1282 a parish priest of Inverkeithing, named John, performed rites on Easter day by far worse than “magical.” Collecting a crowd of young girls, he forced them to enter into “divine ecstasies” and Bacchanalian fury, dancing the old Amazonian circle-dance around the figure of the heathen “god of the gardens.” Notwithstanding that upon the complaint of some of his parishioners he was cited before his bishop, he retained his benefice because he proved that _such was the common usage of the country_.[689] The Waldenses, those “earliest Protestants,” were accused of the most unnatural horrors; burned, butchered, and exterminated for calumnies heaped upon them by their accusers. Meanwhile the latter, in open triumph, forming their heathen processions of “Corpus Christi,” with emblems modelled on those of Baal-Peor and “Osiris,” and every city in Southern France carrying, in yearly processions on Easter days, loaves and cakes fashioned like the so-much-decried emblems of the Hindu Sivites and Vishnites, as late as 1825![690]

Deprived of their old means for slandering Christian sects whose religious views differ from their own, it is now the turn of the “heathen,” Hindus, Chinese, and Japanese, to share with the ancient religions the honor of having cast in their teeth denunciations of their “libidinous religions.”

Without going far for proofs of equal if not surpassing immorality, we would remind Roman Catholic writers of certain _bas-reliefs_ on the doors of St. Peter’s Cathedral. They are as brazen-faced as the door itself; but less so than any author, who, knowing all this, feigns to ignore historical facts. A long succession of Popes have reposed their pastoral eyes upon these brazen pictures of the vilest obscenity, through those many centuries, without ever finding the slightest necessity for removing them. Quite the contrary; for we might name certain Popes and Cardinals who made it a life-long study to copy these heathen suggestions of “nature-gods,” in practice as well as in theory.

In Polish Podolia there was some years ago, in a Roman Catholic Church, a statue of Christ, in black marble. It was reputed to perform miracles on certain days, such as having its hair and beard grow in the sight of the public, and indulging in other _less_ innocent wonders. This show was finally prohibited by the Russian Government. When in 1585 the Protestants took Embrun (Department of the Upper Alps), they found in the churches of this town relics of such a character, that, as the Chronicle expresses it, “old Huguenot soldiers were seen to blush, several weeks after, at the bare mention of the discovery.” In a corner of the Church of St. Fiacre, near Monceaux, in France, there was--and it still is there, if we mistake not--a seat called “the chair of St. Fiacre,” which had the reputation of conferring fecundity upon barren women. A rock in the vicinity of Athens, not far from the so-called “Tomb of Socrates,” is said to be possessed of the same virtue. When, some twenty years since, the Queen Amelia, perhaps in a merry moment, was said to have tried the experiment, there was no end of most insulting abuse heaped upon her, by a Catholic Padre, on his way through Syra to some mission. The Queen, he declared, was a “superstitious heretic!” “an abominable witch!” “Jezebel using magic arts.” Much more the zealous missionary would doubtless have added, had he not found himself, right in the middle of his vituperations, landed in a pool of mud, outside the window. The virtuous elocutionist was forced to this unusual transit by the strong arm of a Greek officer, who happened to enter the room at the right moment.

There never was a great religious reform that was not pure at the beginning. The first followers of Buddha, as well as the disciples of Jesus, were all men of the highest morality. The aversion felt by the reformers of all ages to vice under any shape, is proved in the cases of Sâkya-muni, Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus, St. Paul, Ammonius Sakkas. The great Gnostic leaders--if less successful--were not less virtuous in practice nor less morally pure. Marcion, Basilides,[691] Valentinus, were renowned for their ascetic lives. The Nicolaïtans, who, if they did not belong to the great body of the Ophites, were numbered among the small sects which were absorbed in it at the beginning of the second century, owe their origin, as we have shown, to Nicolas of Antioch, “a man of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.” How absurd the idea that such men would have instituted “libidinous rites.” As well accuse Jesus of having promoted the similar rites which we find practiced so extensively by the mediæval _orthodox_ Christians behind the secure shelter of monastic walls.

If, however, we are asked to credit such an accusation against the Gnostics, an accusation transferred with tenfold acrimony, centuries later, to the unfortunate heads of the Templars, why should we not believe the same of the orthodox Christians? Minucius Felix states that “the first Christians were accused by the world of inducing, during the ceremony of the “Perfect Passover,” each neophyte, on his admission, to plunge a knife into an infant concealed under a heap of flour; the body then serving for a banquet to the whole congregation. After they had become the dominant party, they (the Christians) transferred this charge to their own dissenters.”[692]

The real crime of heterodoxy is plainly stated by John in his _Epistles_ and _Gospel_. “He that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh ... is a deceiver and _an antichrist_” (2 _Epistle_ 7). In his previous _Epistle_, he teaches his flock that there are _two_ trinities (7, 8)--in short, the Nazarene system.

The inference to be drawn from all this is, that the made-up and dogmatic Christianity of the Constantinian period is simply an offspring of the numerous conflicting sects, half-castes themselves, born of Pagan parents. Each of these could claim representatives converted to the so-called _orthodox_ body of Christians. And, as every newly-born dogma had to be carried out by the majority of votes, every sect colored the main substance with its own hue, till the moment when the emperor enforced this _revealed_ olla-podrida, of which he evidently did not himself understand a word, upon an unwilling world as the _religion of Christ_. Wearied in the vain attempt to sound this fathomless bog of international speculations, unable to appreciate a religion based on the pure spirituality of an ideal conception, Christendom gave itself up to the adoration of brutal force as represented by a Church backed up by Constantine. Since then, among the thousand rites, dogmas, and ceremonies copied from Paganism, the Church can claim but one invention as thoroughly original with her--namely, the doctrine of eternal damnation, and one custom, that of the anathema. The Pagans rejected both with horror. “An execration is a fearful and grievous thing,” says Plutarch. “Wherefore, the priestess at Athens was commended for refusing to curse Alkibiades (for desecration of the Mysteries) when the people required her to do it; _for_, she said, _that she was a priestess of prayers and not of curses_.”[693]

“Deep researches would show,” says Renan, “that nearly everything in Christianity is mere baggage brought from the Pagan Mysteries. The primitive Christian worship is nothing but a mystery. The whole interior police of the Church, the degrees of initiation, the command of silence, and a crowd of phrases in the ecclesiastical language, have no other origin.... The revolution which overthrew Paganism _seems_ at first glance ... an absolute rupture with the past ... but _the popular faith saved its most familiar symbols from shipwreck_. Christianity introduced, at first, so little change into the habits of private and social life, that with great numbers in the fourth and fifth centuries it remains uncertain whether they were Pagans or Christians; many seem even to have pursued an irresolute course between the two worships.” Speaking further of _Art_, which formed an essential part of the ancient religion, he says that “_it had to break with scarce one of its traditions_. Primitive Christian art is really nothing but Pagan art in its decay, or in its lower departments. The Good Shepherd of the catacombs in Rome is a copy from the Aristeus, or from the Apollo Nornius, which figure in the same posture on the Pagan sarcophagi, and still carries the flute of Pan in the midst of the four half-naked seasons. On the Christian tombs of the Cemetery of St. Calixtus, Orpheus charms the animals. Elsewhere, the Christ as Jupiter-Pluto, and Mary as Proserpina, receive the souls that Mercury, wearing the broad-brimmed hat and carrying in his hand the rod of the soul-guide (_psychopompos_), brings to them, in presence of the three fates. Pegasus, the symbol of the apotheosis; Psyche, the symbol of the immortal soul; Heaven, personified by an old man, the river Jordan; and Victory, figure on a host of Christian monuments.”

As we have elsewhere shown, the primitive Christian community was composed of small groups scattered about and organized in secret societies, with passwords, grips, and signs. To avoid the relentless persecutions of their enemies, they were obliged to seek safety and hold meetings in deserted catacombs, the fastnesses of mountains, and other safe retreats. Like disabilities were naturally encountered by each religious reform at its inception. From the very first appearance of Jesus and his twelve disciples, we see them congregating apart, having secure refuges in the wilderness, and among friends in Bethany, and elsewhere. Were Christianity not composed of “_secret communities_,” from the start, history would have more _facts_ to record of its founder and disciples than it has.

How little Jesus had impressed his personality upon his own century, is calculated to astound the inquirer. Renan shows that Philo, who died toward the year 50, and who was born many years earlier than Jesus, living all the while in Palestine while the “glad tidings” were being preached all over the country, according to the _Gospels_, had never heard of him! Josephus, the historian, who was born three or four years after the death of Jesus, mentions his execution in a short sentence, and even those few words were altered “by a _Christian hand_,” says the author of the _Life of Jesus_. Writing at the close of the first century, when Paul, the learned propagandist, is said to have founded so many churches, and Peter is alleged to have established the apostolic succession, which the Irenæo-Eusebian chronology shows to have already included three bishops of Rome,[694] Josephus, the painstaking enumerator and careful historian of even the most unimportant sects, entirely ignores the existence of a Christian sect. Suetonius, secretary of Adrian, writing in the first quarter of the second century, knows so little of Jesus or his history as to say that the Emperor Claudius “banished all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances, at the instigation of one _Crestus_,” meaning Christ, we must suppose.[695] The Emperor Adrian himself, writing still later, was so little impressed with the tenets or importance of the new sect, that in a letter to Servianus he shows that he believes the Christians to be worshippers of Serapis.[696] “In the second century,” says C. W. King, “the syncretistic sects that had sprung up in Alexandria, the very hot-bed of Gnosticism, found out in Serapis a prophetic type of Christ as the Lord and Creator of all, and Judge of the living and the dead.”[697] Thus, while the “Pagan” philosophers had never viewed Serapis, or rather the abstract idea which was embodied in him, as otherwise than a representation of the Anima Mundi, the Christians anthropomorphized the “Son of God” and his “Father,” finding no better model for him than the idol of a Pagan myth! “There can be no doubt,” remarks the same author, “that the head of Serapis, marked, as the face is, by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Saviour.”[698]

In the notes taken by a traveller--whose episode with the monks on Mount Athos we have mentioned elsewhere--we find that, during his early life, Jesus had frequent intercourse with the Essenes belonging to the Pythagorean school, and known as the Koinobi. We believe it rather hazardous on the part of Renan to assert so dogmatically, as he does, that Jesus “ignored the very name of Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Plato;” that he had never read a Greek nor a Buddhistic book, “although he had more than one element in him, which, unawares to himself, proceeded from Buddhism, Parsism, and the Greek wisdom.”[699] This is conceding half a miracle, and allowing as much to chance and coincidence. It is an abuse of privilege, when an author, who claims to write historical facts, draws convenient deductions from hypothetical premises, and then calls it a biography--a _Life_ of Jesus. No more than any other compiler of legends concerning the problematical history of the Nazarene prophet, has Renan one inch of secure foothold upon which to maintain himself; nor can any one else assert a claim to the contrary, except on inferential evidence. And yet, while Renan has not one solitary fact to show that Jesus had never studied the metaphysical tenets of Buddhism and Parsism, or heard of the philosophy of Plato, his opponents have the best reasons in the world to suspect the contrary. When they find that--1, all his sayings are in a Pythagorean spirit, when not _verbatim_ repetitions; 2, his code of ethics is purely Buddhistic; 3, his mode of action and walk in life, Essenean; and 4, his mystical mode of expression, his parables, and his ways, those of an initiate, whether Grecian, Chaldean, or Magian (for the “Perfect,” who spoke the _hidden_ wisdom, were of the same school of archaic learning the world over), it is difficult to escape from the logical conclusion that he belonged to that same body of initiates. It is a poor compliment paid the Supreme, this forcing upon Him four gospels, in which, contradictory as they often are, there is not a single narrative, sentence, or peculiar expression, whose parallel may not be found in some older doctrine or philosophy. Surely, the Almighty--were it but to spare future generations their present perplexity--might have brought down with Him, at His _first and only_ incarnation on earth, something original--something that would trace a distinct line of demarcation between Himself and the score or so of incarnate Pagan gods, who had been born of virgins, had all been saviours, and were either killed, or otherwise sacrificed themselves for humanity.

Too much has already been conceded to the emotional side of the story. What the world needs is a less exalted, but more faithful view of a personage, in whose favor nearly half of Christendom has dethroned the Almighty. It is not the erudite, world-famous scholar, whom we question for what we find in his _Vie de Jesus_, nor is it one of his _historical_ statements. We simply challenge a few unwarranted and untenable assertions that have found their way past the emotional narrator, into the otherwise beautiful pages of the work--a life built altogether on mere probabilities, and yet that of one who, if accepted as an historical personage, has far greater claims upon our love and veneration, fallible as he is with all his greatness, than if we figure him as an omnipotent God. It is but in the latter character that Jesus must be regarded by every reverential mind as a failure.

Notwithstanding the paucity of old philosophical works now extant, we could find no end of instances of perfect identity between Pythagorean, Hindu, and _New Testament_ sayings. There is no lack of proofs upon this point. What is needed is a Christian public that will examine what will be offered, and show common honesty in rendering its verdict. Bigotry has had its day, and done its worst. “We need not be frightened,” says Professor Müller, “if we discover traces of truth, traces even of Christian truth, among the sages and lawgivers of other nations.”

After reading the following philosophical aphorisms, who can believe that Jesus and Paul had never read the Grecian and Indian philosophers?

SENTENCES FROM SEXTUS, THE VERSES FROM THE
PYTHAGOREAN, and other NEW TESTAMENT.[700]
Heathen.

1. “Possess not treasures, but 1. “Lay not up for yourselves
those things which no one treasures upon earth.
can take from you.” where moth and rust doth
corrupt, and where
thieves break through and
steal” (_Matthew_ vi. 19).

2. “It is better for a part of 2. “And if thy hand offend
the body which contains thee, cut it off; it is
purulent matter, and better for thee to enter
threatens to infect the _unto life_ maimed, than go
whole, _to be burnt_, to hell,” etc. (_Mark_ ix.
than to continue so in 43).
_another state_ (life).”

3. “You have in yourself 3. “Know ye not ye are _the
something _similar to temple of God_, and that the
God_, and therefore use Spirit of God dwelleth in
yourself _as the temple you?” (_1 Corinthians_, iii.
of God_.” 16).

4. “The greatest honor which 4. “That ye may be the children
can be paid to God, is to of your Father, which is
know and imitate his in Heaven, be ye perfect
_perfection_.” even as your _Father is
perfect_” (_Matthew_ v.
45-48).

5. “What I do not wish men to 5. “Do ye unto others as ye
do to me, I also wish not would that others should do
to do to men” (_Analects to you.”
of Confucius_, p. 76; see
Max Müller’s _The Works
of Confucius_).

6. “The moon shines even in 6. “He maketh his sun to rise
the house of the wicked” on the evil and on the good,
(_Manu_). and sendeth rain on the just
and on the unjust” (_Matthew_
v. 45).

7. “They who give, have things 7. “Whosoever hath, to him
given to them; those who shall be given ... but
withhold, have things whosoever hath not, from him
taken from them” (Ibid.). shall be taken away”
(_Matthew_ xiii. 12).

8. “Purity of mind alone sees 8. “Blessed are the pure in
God” (Ibid.)--still a heart, for they shall see
popular saying in India. God” (_Matthew_ v. 8).

Plato did not conceal the fact that he derived his best philosophical doctrines from Pythagoras, and that himself was merely the first to reduce them to systematic order, occasionally interweaving with them metaphysical speculations of his own. But Pythagoras himself got his recondite doctrines, first from the descendants of Mochus, and later, from the Brahmans of India. He was also initiated into the Mysteries among the hierophants of Thebes, the Persian and Chaldean Magi. Thus, step by step do we trace the origin of most of our Christian doctrines to Middle Asia. Drop out from Christianity the personality of Jesus, so sublime, because of its unparalleled simplicity, and what remains? History and comparative theology echo back the melancholy answer, “A crumbling skeleton formed of the oldest Pagan myths!”

While the mythical birth and life of Jesus are a faithful copy of those of the Brahmanical Christna, his historical character of a religious reformer in Palestine is the true type of Buddha in India. In more than one respect their great resemblance in philanthropic and spiritual aspirations, as well as external circumstances is truly striking. Though the son of a king, while Jesus was but a carpenter, Buddha was not of the high Brahmanical caste by birth. Like Jesus, he felt dissatisfied with the dogmatic spirit of the religion of his country, the intolerance and hypocrisy of the priesthood, their outward show of devotion, and their useless ceremonials and prayers. As Buddha broke violently through the traditional laws and rules of the Brahmans, so did Jesus declare war against the Pharisees, and the proud Sadducees. What the Nazarene did as a consequence of his humble birth and position, Buddha did as a voluntary penance. He travelled about as a beggar; and--again like Jesus--later in life he sought by preference the companionship of publicans and sinners. Each aimed at a social as well as at a religious reform; and giving a death-blow to the old religions of his countries, each became the founder of a new one.

“The reform of Buddha,” says Max Müller, “had originally much more of a social than of a religious character. The most important element of Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. _That moral code is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known_ ... and he whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.” Further, the lecturer adds that were it otherwise, “Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of philosophic speculation by which India was deluged at all times.”[701]

The same with Jesus. While Philo, whom Renan calls Jesus’s elder brother, Hillel, Shammai, and Gamaliel, are hardly mentioned--Jesus has become a God! And still, pure and divine as was the moral code taught by Christ, it never could have borne comparison with that of Buddha, but for the tragedy of Calvary. That which helped forward the deification of Jesus was his dramatic death, the voluntary sacrifice of his life, alleged to have been made for the sake of mankind, and the later convenient dogma of the atonement, invented by the Christians. In India, where life is valued as of no account, the crucifixion would have produced little effect, if any. In a country where--as all the Indianists are well aware--religious fanatics set themselves to dying by inches, in penances lasting for years; where the most fearful macerations are self-inflicted by fakirs; where young and delicate widows, in a spirit of bravado against the government, as much as out of religious fanaticism, mount the funeral pile with a smile on their face; where, to quote the words of the great lecturer, “Men in the prime of life throw themselves under the car of Juggernâth, to be crushed to death by the idol they believe in, where the plaintiff who cannot get redress starves himself to death at the door of his judge; where the philosopher who thinks he has learned all which this world can teach him, and who longs for absorption into the Deity, quietly steps into the Ganges, in order to arrive at the other shore of existence,”[702] in such a country even a voluntary crucifixion would have passed unnoticed. In Judea, and even among braver nations than the Jews--the Romans and the Greeks--where every one clung more or less to life, and most people would have fought for it with desperation, the tragical end of the great Reformer was calculated to produce a profound impression. The names of even such minor heroes as Mutius Scævola, Horatius Cocles, the mother of the Gracchi, and others, have descended to posterity; and, during our school-days, as well as later in life, their histories have awakened our sympathy and commanded a reverential admiration. But, can we ever forget the scornful smile of certain Hindus, at Benares, when an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, tried to impress them with the greatness of the sacrifice of Jesus, in giving _his_ life for us? Then, for the first time the idea struck us how much the pathos of the great drama of Calvary had to do with subsequent events in the foundation of Christianity. Even the imaginative Renan was moved by this feeling to write in the last chapter of his _Vie de Jesus_, a few pages of singular and sympathetic beauty.[703]

Apollonius, a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, was, like him, an enthusiastic founder of a new spiritual school. Perhaps less metaphysical and more practical than Jesus, less tender and perfect in his nature, he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of spirituality, and the same high moral truths. His great mistake was to confine them too closely to the higher classes of society. While to the poor and the humble Jesus preached “Peace on earth and good will to men,” Apollonius was the friend of kings, and moved with the aristocracy. He was born among the latter, and himself a man of wealth, while the “Son of man,” representing the people, “had not where to lay his head;” nevertheless, the two “miracle-workers” exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Still earlier than Apollonius had appeared Simon Magus, called “the great Power of God.” His “miracles” are both more wonderful, more varied, and better attested than those either of the apostles or of the Galilean philosopher himself. Materialism denies the fact in both cases, but history affirms. Apollonius followed both; and how great and renowned were his miraculous works in comparison with those of the alleged founder of Christianity as the kabalists claim, we have history again, and Justin Martyr, to corroborate.[704]

Like Buddha and Jesus, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward show of piety, all display of useless religious ceremonies and hypocrisy. If, like the Christian Saviour, the sage of Tyana had by preference sought the companionship of the poor and humble; and if instead of dying comfortably, at over one hundred years of age, he had been a voluntary martyr, proclaiming divine Truth from a cross,[705] his blood might have proved as efficacious for the subsequent dissemination of spiritual doctrines as that of the Christian Messiah.

The calumnies set afloat against Apollonius, were as numerous as they were false. So late as eighteen centuries after his death he was defamed by Bishop Douglas in his work against miracles. In this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself against historical facts. If we study the question with a dispassionate mind, we will soon perceive that the ethics of Gautama-Buddha, Plato, Apollonius, Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas, and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic philosophy. That all worshipped one God, whether they considered Him as the “Father” of humanity, who lives in man as man lives in Him, or as the Incomprehensible Creative Principle; all led God-like lives. Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school dated from the days of Hermes, who brought his wisdom from India. It was the same mystical contemplation throughout, as that of the Yogin: the communion of the Brahman with his own luminous Self--the “Atman.” And this Hindu term is again kabalistic, _par excellence_. Who is “Self?” is asked in the _Rig-Veda_; “Self is the Lord of all things ... all things are contained in this Self; all selves are contained in this Self. Brahmân itself is but Self,”[706] is the answer. Says Idra Rabba: “All things are Himself, and Himself is _concealed_ on every side.”[707] The “Adam Kadmon of the kabalists contains in himself all the souls of the Israelites, and he is himself in every soul,” says the _Sohar_.[708] The groundwork of the Eclectic School was thus identical with the doctrines of the Yogin, the Hindu mystics, and the earlier Buddhism of the disciples of Gautama. And when Jesus assured his disciples that “the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because _it seeth Him not_, neither knoweth Him,” dwells _with_ and _in_ them, who “are in Him and He in them,”[709] he but expounded the same tenet that we find running through every philosophy worthy of that name.

Laboulaye, the learned and skeptical French savant, does not believe a word of the miraculous portion of Buddha’s life; nevertheless, he has the candor to speak of Gautama as being _only second to_ Christ in the great purity of his ethics and personal morality. For both of these opinions he is respectfully rebuked by des Mousseaux. Vexed at this scientific contradiction of his accusations of demonolatry against Gautama-Buddha, he assures his readers that “ce savant distingué n’a point etudié cette question.”[710]

“I do not hesitate to say,” remarks in his turn Barthelemy St. Hilaire, “that, except Christ alone, there is not among the founders of religions, a figure either more pure or more touching than that of Buddha. His life is spotless. His constant heroism equals his convictions.... He is the perfect model of all the virtues he preaches; his abnegation, his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition, do not fail him for one instant. He abandoned, at the age of twenty-nine, his father’s court to become a monk and a beggar ... and when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who practiced virtue all his life, and who dies convinced of having found the truth.”[711] This deserved panegyric is no stronger than the one which Laboulaye himself pronounced, and which occasioned des Mousseaux’s wrath. “It is more than difficult,” adds the former, “to understand how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high and approached so near the truth.”[712] Curious that there should be so many lofty souls “not assisted by revelation!”

And why should any one feel surprised that Gautama could die with philosophical serenity? As the kabalists justly say, “Death does not exist, and man never steps outside of universal life. Those whom we think dead live still in us, as we live in them.... The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die.”[713] And, we might add, that he who _lives_ for humanity does even more than him who dies for it.

The _Ineffable name_, in the search for which so many kabalists-- unacquainted with any Oriental or even European adept--vainly consume their knowledge and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man. This mirific name which, according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds ακοιμητω στροφαλιγγι,” can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And “when Elijah heard it he wrapped his _face in his mantle_ and stood in the entering of the cave. And behold there came _the_ voice.”

When Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the “small voice,” he used to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed both his feet, after having performed certain magnetic passes, and pronounced not the “name” but an invocation well known to every adept. Then he drew the mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or astral spirit was free. On ordinary occasions he wore wool no more than the priests of the temples. The possession of the secret combination of the “name” gave the hierophant supreme power over every being, human or otherwise, inferior to himself in soul-strength. Hence, when Max Müller tells us of the Quichè “Hidden majesty which was never to be opened by human hands,” the kabalist perfectly understands what was meant by the expression, and is not at all surprised to hear even this most erudite philologist exclaim: “What it was we do not know!”

We cannot too often repeat that it is only through the doctrines of the more ancient philosophies that the religion preached by Jesus may be understood. It is through Pythagoras, Confucius, and Plato, that we can comprehend the idea which underlies the term “Father” in the _New Testament_. Plato’s ideal of the Deity, whom he terms the one everlasting, invisible God, the Fashioner and Father of all things,[714] is rather the “Father” of Jesus. It is this Divine Being of whom the Grecian sage says that He can neither be envious nor the originator of evil, for He can produce nothing but what is good and just,[715] is certainly not the Mosaic Jehovah, the “_jealous_ God,” but the God of Jesus, who “alone is good.” He extols His all-embracing, divine power,[716] and His omnipotence, but at the same time intimates that, as He is unchangeable, He can never desire to change his laws, _i.e._, to extirpate evil from the world through a miracle.[717] He is omniscient, and nothing escapes His watchful eye.[718] His justice, which we find embodied in the law of compensation and retribution, will leave no crime without punishment, no virtue without its reward;[719] and therefore he declares that the only way to honor God is to cultivate moral purity. He utterly rejects not only the anthropomorphic idea that God could have a material body,[720] but “rejects with disgust those fables which ascribe passions, quarrels, and crimes of all sorts to the minor gods.”[721] He indignantly denies that God allows Himself to be propitiated, or rather bribed, by prayers and sacrifices.[722]

The _Phædrus_ of Plato displays all that man once was, and that which he may yet become again. “Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and was embodied with it through the loss of his wings, he lived among the gods in the airy [spiritual] world where everything is true and pure.” In the _Timæus_ he says that “there was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself, but lived as pure spirits.” In the future world, says Jesus, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage,” but “live as the angels of God in Heaven.”

The researches of Laboulaye, Anquetil Duperron, Colebrooke, Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Max Müller, Spiegel, Burnouf, Wilson, and so many other linguists, have brought some of the truth to light. And now that the difficulties of the Sanscrit, the Thibetan, the Singhalese, the Zend, the Pehlevi, the Chinese, and even of the Burmese, are partially conquered, and the _Vedas_, and the _Zend-Avesta_, the Buddhist texts, and even Kapila’s _Sûtras_ are translated, a door is thrown wide open, which, once passed, must close forever behind any speculative or ignorant calumniators of the old religions. Even till the present time, the clergy have, to use the words of Max Müller--“generally appealed to the deviltries and orgies of heathen worship ... but they have seldom, if ever, endeavored to discover the true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship which they call the work of the devil.”[723] When we read the true history of Buddha and Buddhism, by Müller, and the enthusiastic opinions of both expressed by Barthelemy St. Hilaire, and Laboulaye; and when, finally, a Popish missionary, an eye-witness, and one who least of all can be accused of partiality to the Buddhists--the Abbé Huc, we mean--finds occasion for nothing but admiration for the high individual character of these “devil-worshippers;” we must consider Sakyâ-muni’s philosophy as something more than the religion of fetishism and atheism, which the Catholics would have us believe it. Huc was a missionary and it was his first duty to regard Buddhism as no better than an outgrowth of the worship of Satan. The poor Abbé was struck off the list of missionaries at Rome,[724] after his book of travels was published. This illustrates how little we may expect to learn the truth about the religions of other people, through missionaries, when their accounts are first revised by the superior ecclesiastical authorities, and the former severely punished for telling the truth.

When these men who have been and still are often termed “the obscene ascetics,” the devotees of different sects of India in short, generally termed “Yogi,” were asked by Marco Polo, “how it comes that they are not ashamed to go stark naked as they do?” they answered the inquirer of the thirteenth century as a missionary of the nineteenth was answered. “We go naked,” they say, “because naked we came into the world, and we desire to have nothing about us that is of this world. Moreover, we have no sin of the flesh to be conscious of, and therefore, we are not ashamed of our nakedness any more than you are to show your hand or your face. You who are conscious of the sins of the flesh, do well to have shame, and to cover your nakedness.”[725]

One could make a curious list of the excuses and explanations of the clergy to account for similarities daily discovered between Romanism and heathen religions. Yet the summary would invariably lead to one sweeping claim: The doctrines of Christianity were plagiarized by the Pagans the world over! Plato and his older Academy stole the ideas from the Christian revelation--said the Alexandrian Fathers!! The Brahmans and Manu borrowed from the Jesuit missionaries, and the _Bhagaved-gita_ was the production of Father Calmet, who transformed Christ and John into Christna and Arjuna to fit the Hindu mind!! The trifling fact that Buddhism and Platonism both antedated Christianity, and the _Vedas_ had already degenerated into Brahmanism before the days of Moses, makes no difference. The same with regard to Apollonius of Tyana. Although his thaumaturgical powers could not be denied in the face of the testimony of emperors, their courts, and the populations of several cities; and although few of these had ever heard of the Nazarene prophet whose “miracles” had been witnessed by a few apostles only, whose very individualities remain to this day a problem in history, yet Apollonius has to be accepted as the “monkey of Christ.”

If of really pious, good, and honest men, many are yet found among the Catholic, Greek, and Protestant clergy, whose sincere faith has the best of their reasoning powers, and who having never been among heathen populations, are unjust only through ignorance, it is not so with the missionaries. The invariable subterfuge of the latter is to attribute to demonolatry the really Christ-like life of the Hindu and Buddhist ascetics and many of the lamas. Years of sojourn among “heathen” nations, in China, Tartary, Thibet, and Hindustan have furnished them with ample evidence how unjustly the so-called idolators have been slandered. The missionaries have not even the excuse of sincere faith to give the world that they mislead; and, with very few exceptions, one may boldly paraphrase the remark made by Garibaldi, and say that: “_A priest knows himself to be an impostor, unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood_.”