The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

In another place,24 when speaking again of the doctrine of the Trinity, he says: “Men forget that it supports and is supported by the whole weight of a fact in history, with which nothing else in the wide world can even for a moment be compared. That fact is the age-long empire of Jesus Christ over the hearts of men.” This, then, is the final argument in support of the Christian dogmas, including this the most incomprehensible of them all. Why should not the Buddhist claim the same authority for the dogmas of his faith? The evidential value is precisely the same. Turn to any well-known work bearing on this phase of the question. Read, we will say, Edwin Arnold’s poem, The Light of Asia; or, better still, read Mr. Fielding’s books, The Soul of a People and The Hearts of Men, and hear the words of one who has lived for years among Buddhists and studied their hearts.

That an ideal should reign over the hearts of men is no new thing; much less is this a cause for marvel when “One has come, claiming to be God made manifest—manifest in order to attract our love.”25 Christian apologists urge that He has not only attracted the hearts of men in the past, but still retains His hold upon their affections, and that therein lies an essential difference between Christianity and all other religions. Christianity, say they, in this respect at least, stands pre-eminently alone. Is not Buddhism, then, one of the great living religions of the present day? Has it not existed during twenty-four centuries? Does it not at the present time surpass, in the number of its followers and the area of its prevalence, any other form of creed? Is not Gautama Buddha worthy of men’s love, if we are to credit the best authenticated records of his life? “Discordant in frequent particulars,” writes26 Sir Edwin Arnold, “and sorely overlaid by corruptions, inventions, and misconceptions, the Buddhistical books yet agree in the one point of recording nothing—no single act or word—which mars the perfect purity and tenderness of this Indian teacher, who united the truest princely qualities with the intellect of a sage and the passionate devotion of a martyr.” Loving disciples, living in an age of ignorance and superstition, piously ascribed to him divine powers, and, disobeying his mandate, gave him fervent worship. That worship, that adoration, still persists. So likewise the adoration of Jesus Christ still persists.