God and my Neighbour Part 20

Mr. Lillie says of these sects:

Each had two prominent rites: baptism, and what Tertullian calls the "oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons, presbyters, ephemerents. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy, community of goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical way--so mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to discover that the b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden, not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have been pointed out between these two sects by all Catholic writers from Eusebius to the poet Racine... Was there any connection between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive that there can be two answers to such a question.

The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity were accounted for by the Christian Fathers very simply. The Buddhists had been instructed by the Devil, and there was no more to be said. Later Christian scholars face the difficulty by declaring that the Buddhists copied from the Christians.

Reminded that Buddha lived five hundred years before Christ, and that the Buddhist religion was in its prime two hundred years before Christ, the Christian apologist replies that, for all that, the Buddhist Scriptures are of comparatively late date. Let us see how the matter stands.

The resemblances of the two religions are of two kinds. There is, first, the resemblance between the Christian life of Christ and the Indian life of Buddha; and there is, secondly, the resemblance between the moral teachings of Christ and Buddha.

Now, if the Indian Scriptures _are_ of later date than the Gospels, it is just possible that the Buddhists may have copied incidents from the life of Christ.

But it is perfectly certain that the change of borrowing cannot be brought against Augustus Caesar, Plato, and the compilers of the mythologies of Egypt and Greece and Rome. And it is as certain that the Christians did borrow from the Jews as that the Jews borrowed from Babylon. But a little while ago all Christendom would have denied the indebtedness of Moses to King Sargon.

Now, since the Christian ideas were antic.i.p.ated by the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks, why should we suppose that they were copied by the Buddhists, whose religion was triumphant some centuries before Christ?

And, again, while there is no reason to suppose that Christian missionaries in the early centuries of the era made any appreciable impression on India or China, there is good reason to suppose that the Buddhists, who were the first and most successful of all missionaries, reached Egypt and Persia and Palestine, and made their influence felt.

I now turn to the statement of M. Burnouf, quoted by Mr. Lillie. M.

Burnouf a.s.serts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longer contested:

It has been placed in full light by the researches of scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of the original texts... In point of fact, for a long time folks had been struck with the resemblances--or, rather, the identical elements--contained in Christianity and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have admitted them.

In the last century these a.n.a.logies were set down to the Nestorians; but since then the science of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced step by step from India to Jerusalem.

There was baptism before Christ, and before John the Baptist. There were G.o.ds, man-G.o.ds, son-G.o.ds, and saviours before Christ. There were Bibles, hymns, temples, monasteries, priests, monks, missionaries, crosses, sacraments, and mysteries before Christ.

Perhaps the most important sacrament of the Christian religion to-day is the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. But this idea of the Eucharist, or the ceremonial eating of the G.o.d, has its roots far back in the prehistoric days of religious cannibalism. Prehistoric man believed that if he ate anything its virtue pa.s.sed into his physical system. Therefore he began by devouring his G.o.ds, body and bones. Later, man mended his manners so far as to subst.i.tute animal for human sacrifice; still later he employed bread and wine as symbolical subst.i.tutes for flesh and blood. This is the origin and evolution of the strange and, to many of us, repulsive idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ.

Now, supposing these facts to be as I have stated them above, to what conclusion do they point?

Bear in mind the statement of M. Burnouf, that religions are built up slowly by a process of adaptation; add that to the statements of Eusebius, the great Christian historian, and of St. Augustine, the great Christian Father, that the Christian religion is no new thing, but was known to the ancients, and does it not seem most reasonable to suppose that Christianity is a religion founded on ancient myths and legends, on ancient ethics, and on ancient allegorical mysteries and metaphysical errors?

To support those statements with adequate evidence I should have to compile a book four times as large as the present volume. As I have not room to state the case properly, I shall content myself with the recommendation of some books in which the reader may study the subject for himself.

A list of these books I now subjoin:

_The Golden Bough._ Frazer. Macmillan & Co.

_A Short History of Christianity._ Robertson. Watts & Co.

_The Evolution of the Idea of G.o.d._ Grant Allen. Rationalist

Press a.s.sociation. _Buddha and Buddhism._ Lillie. Clark.

_Our Sun G.o.d._ Parsons. Parsons.

_Christianity and Mythology._ Robertson. Watts & Co.

_Pagan Christs._ Robertson. Watts & Co.

_The Legend of Perseus._ Hartland. Nutt.

_The Birth of Jesus._ Soltau. Black.

The above are all scholarly and important books, and should be generally known.

For reasons given above I claim, with regard to the divinity and Resurrection of Jesus Christ:

That outside the New Testament there is no evidence of any value to show that Christ ever lived, that He ever taught, that He ever rose from the dead.

That the evidence of the New Testament is anonymous, is contradictory, is loaded with myths and miracles.

That the Gospels do not contain a word of proof by any eye-witness as to the fact that Christ was really dead; nor the statement of any eye-witness that He was seen to return to life and quit His tomb.

That Paul, who preached the Resurrection of Christ, did not see Christ dead, did not see Him arise from the dead, did not see Him ascend into Heaven.

That Paul nowhere supports the Gospel accounts of Christ's life and teaching.

That the Gospels are of mixed and doubtful origin, that they show signs of interpolation and tampering, and that they have been selected from a number of other Gospels, all of which were once accepted as genuine.

And that, while there is no real evidence of the life or the teachings, or the Resurrection of Christ, there is a great deal of evidence to show that the Gospels were founded upon anterior legends and older ethics.

But Christian apologists offer other reasons why we should accept the stories of the miraculous birth and Resurrection of Christ as true. Let us examine these reasons, and see what they amount to.

OTHER EVIDENCES OF CHRIST'S DIVINITY

Archdeacon Wilson gives two reasons for accepting the doctrines of Christ's divinity and Resurrection as true. The first of these reasons is, the success of the Christian religion; the second is, the evolution of the Christlike type of character.

If the success of the Christian religion proves that Christ was G.o.d, what does the success of the Buddhist religion prove? What does the success of the Mohammedan religion prove?

Was Buddha G.o.d? Was Mahomet G.o.d?

The archdeacon does not believe in any miracles but those of his own religion. But if the spread of a faith proves its miracles to be true, what can be said about the spread of the Buddhist and Mohammedan religions?

Islam spread faster and farther than Christianity. So did Buddhism.

To-day the numbers of these religions are somewhat as follows:

Buddhist: 450 millions.

Christians: 375 millions, of which only 180 millions are Protestants.

Hindus: 200 millions.

Mohammedans: 160 millions.

It will be seen that the Buddhist religion is older than Christianity, and has more followers. What does that prove?

But as to the reasons for the great growth of these two religions I will say more by and by. At present I merely repeat that the Buddhist faith owed a great deal to the fact that King Asoka made it the State religion of a great kingdom, and that Christianity owes a great deal to the fact that Constantine adopted it as the State religion of the Roman Empire.

We come now to the archdeacon's second argument: that the divinity of Christ is proved by the evolution of the Christlike type of character.

And here the archdeacon makes a most surprising statement, for he says that type of character was unknown on this globe until Christ came.