Buddhism and Christianity: A Parallel and a Contrast

111. Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religion, Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 187.

112. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol.i.p. 275.

113. Jos.Contra Ap.ii. 30. 32; Antiq. xviii. 1. 1; Jewish Wars, ii. 8.

114. Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity, chaps.i.ii.; Jos.Antiq.xiii. 9. 1, and 11. 3, and Contra Ap. ii. 10. 39; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, iii. 273 seq.; Renan, Les Apôtres, pp. 253, 260.

115. The truth on which the Sabbath is founded is the majestic truth of a completed creation, and one conform to the latest discoveries of science. During the whole course of human observation no new creative effort has been displayed in the production of a new type. The animal and vegetable worlds stand to-day as man first beheld them. The creative spirit has passed into the soul of man, in whose world is the progress which nature has long ceased to manifest, and under whose handling nature itself improves. But God, though resting from His works of creation, is not in Scripture said to be resting from His works of mercy: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

116. “The words of Agur the son of Jakeh,” Proverbs xxxi. 1.

117. Hüber, Der Pessimismus, 1876, p. 8; Holdheim, Preface to vol. iii. of Predigten, quoted by Cheyne, Job and Solomon, pp. 250-253.

118. Eccles.xii. 12.

119. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol.i.p. 276; Keim, Jesus of Nazara, vol. i. pp. 316-325; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. iii. p. 177.

120. E.g. Sinai = Hagar (Gal. iv. 24-31); also Claudius = ὁ κατέχων (2 Thess. ii. 6, 7); Hausrath, Life and Times of Jesus, vol. i. p. 77.

121. Derenbourg, Hist. de la Palestine d’après les Talmuds, pp. 159, 202.

122. Wellhausen, The Pharisees and Sadducees, pp. 8, 26-43; Greifswald, 1874.

123. Jos.Antiq.xiii. 5. 9, xv. 10. 4, 5; Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 2, 14.

124. Keim, Jesus of Nazara, vol.i.p. 392.

125. Delitzsch, Jesus and Hillel, pp. 31 seq.; Pirké Abôth, Cambridge, 1877, passim.

126. Jos.Antiq.xvii. 4.

127. Philo, Quod omnis Probus Liber, p. 12.

128. Bühler, Ind. Ant. vol. vii. p. 143; Jacobi, “Mahâvira and his Predecessors,” Ind. Ant. vol. viii. pp. 311-314; Kern, History of Buddhism in India, vol. i. p. 143; Colebrooke’s Essays, vol. i. p. 380.

129. See “Jainism,” by Dr. Shoolbred—Report of the Missionary Conference, 1888, vol. i. p. 41; Wilson’s Essays, vol. i. p. 427 seq.

130. “Sramana,” in Brahman speech, was a man who performed hard penances, from sram, to work hard. There is another Sanscrit root, sam, to quiet, and from it afterwards the popular etymology derived the word. See Professor Max Müller’s translation of the Dhammapada in Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. p. 65 note.

131. There seems to have been four great divisions of Sramanas, with as many as sixty-three philosophical systems represented by them. The Brahmanas were also similarly divided. See Sutta Nipâta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. Part ii. pp. 15, 16, 88, 93.

132. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 71.

133. See Year-Book of Protestant Theology for 1883 for an account of the views of Professor Loman of Amsterdam.

134. M. Senart, Legend of Buddha, Paris, 1875; Kern, History of Buddhism in India: Schoebel. Buddh. Actes de la Soc. Philol.; Paris, 1874, vol iv. pp. 160 seq.

135. Annual Report of the Asiatic Society; Paris, July 1875.

136. Cunningham, Ancient Geog. of India, vol.i.p. 147; Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 95; Beal, Chinese Buddhism, p. 67.

137. “Mâra eat le démon de l’amour, du péché et de la mort,” says Burnouf in his Introduction to the Study of Indian Buddism, p. 76; see also Sutta Nipâta, Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part ii. p. 159, for the popular conception of Buddha’s temptation; the arrows of Mâra are “flower-pointed,” like Kama’s, the Hindu god of love. See Dhammapada, Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part i. p. 17.

138. Geikie, Life of Christ, vol.i.p. 449.

139. Mahavagga, i. 5. 2; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xvii.

140. This is not the place to discuss the substance of their respective teachings. Their aims seemed to be similar, for both proclaimed freedom to be gained by the Truth, or saving knowledge, but their conceptions of the knowledge that saves are as widely contrasted as are their ideas of salvation. If we put the Sermon on the Mount side by side with Buddha’s first sermon (translated in vol. xi. p. 146 of Sacred Books of the East) we find contradiction in almost every sentence. “Blessed are the poor in spirit” is an utterance not only foreign to but in direct antithesis to the preaching of Buddha. He has no sympathy with the “poor in spirit,” if we take the phrase in the light of the old Hebrew concept of it. His benediction is reserved for the self-conscious and self-reliant, who are bent upon self-culture and self-development. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, etc., and thy neighbour as thyself.” Buddha found no higher to adore, and no other than self to consider. The moral precepts in his law are based on no appeal to conscience, and are inspired by no sense of duty. Others were regarded as the occasion for winning merit, and kindness done to them was not done for their sake, but with the view of securing the safety of the doer.

141. Dr. Oldenberg (Buddha, etc., p. 148) very properly remarks that Ambapali the courtesan was no Mary Magdalene, and that she was not regarded by Buddha as the woman that was a sinner was regarded by Christ. Buddha had not Christ’s horror of sin, and therefore felt none of His boundless pity for the frailty of its victims; of hatred of sin in the Christian sense Buddhism knows nothing. Its highest virtue is imperturbability, a serenity that is apathetic in regard to the most outrageous wrong or the most heinous wickedness. Cariya Pitaka, iii. 15; also Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Part ii. p. 151.

142. Bishop Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, p. 287; Professor H. Wilson, Essays, vol. ii. p. 243; Wheeler, History of India, vol. iii. p. 139; Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., p. 148; Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, in Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. pp. 71, 72.

143. Mahâparanibhâna Sutta, vi. 10, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 114. Dr. Edkins, in Chinese Buddhism, p. 57, gives a version of an appearance of Buddha after cremation to his mother, Máya, who came down from heaven to see his coffin. Professor Childers finds no trace in any Pali earliest literature of any belief in Buddha’s existence after death (Dictionary of Pali Language, p. 472, note 1).

144. Oldenberg, Buddha, etc., pp. 322, 323; Kuenen, Hibbert Lectures, p. 264.

145. In the Bhagavadgitá loving devotion for Krishna is demanded as the only means of salvation; but Krishna-worship began very considerably later than the origin of Christianity. Professor Müller admits (Gifford Lectures, p. 99) that Christian influences were possible then, but says that there is no necessity for admitting them. He cites the passage from Bhagavad. ix. 29 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. viii. p. 34), “They who worship me with devotion or love, they are in me, and I in them,” as an interesting parallel to John vi. 7 and xvii. 23, but we must remember that St. John’s words were circulating all over the world for generations before these were penned.

146. Mahavagga, v. 1. 18.

147. The Lalita Vistara, of which there are many versions, is the chief authority for the legends. In the Buddhist Birth-Stories, translated by T. W. Rhys Davids, in Bigandet’s Life of Gaudama, and Spence Hardy’s Manual (Legends of the Buddhists), in the Romantic Legend of Sakya Buddha, translated by Professor S. Beal, will be found a large and interesting miscellany of the prodigies connected with the coming of Buddha.

148. A wife, not a virgin; Romantic Legend, pp. 32, 36, 37, 41.

149. Lalita Vistara, p. 63, Calcutta edition; Buddhist Birth-Stories, pp. 62, 68.

150. Nalaka Sutta, Sutta Nipâta, xi. 1. 20, 21; Sacred Books of the East, vol. x. Asita, the aged ascetic, is said to have ascended to heaven after his daily repast, and upon finding the gods in joyful commotion he at length returned to see the new-born wonder (Birth-Stories, p. 69).