Buddhism and Christianity: A Parallel and a Contrast

In endeavouring to perform the very honourable task assigned to me, I have had to contend all along with the difficulty of comprising in six what would require many more lectures properly to relate. Much which was actually prepared I have been forced to omit, consoling myself with the thought that, after all, I had simply to lecture and not to write a compendious treatise, and that it was my business to sketch as truthfully as I could what it was simply impossible, within the limits prescribed, adequately to depict. It was originally my intention to give in parallel quotations the alleged similarities between the contents of the Pitakas and the New Testament, but the conditions of time and space compelled me to be content with references to specimens of them in the Sacred Books of the East, from which any ordinary English reader may be able to form a judgment concerning them. Moreover, when well on with the work, I discovered that a much more thorough examination of Professor Seydel’s Buddhist-Christian Harmony than I could profess to make had already been published by Professor Kellogg of Allegheny, U.S., in his book on the Light of Asia and the Light of the World. An Indian missionary of eleven years’ experience, and the author of an excellent Grammar of the Hindi language, can write upon this subject, not only with greater authority, but to much better purpose, than one who only knows Indian books through the medium of European translations, and who has not seldom been compelled to take on trust what he felt strongly inclined to question. If Dr.

Our sketch has been confined to Buddhism as a religion and as an ethical system. The philosophy which has grown out of it, and especially the psychology which lies at the base of its original dogmas, would require a large volume to expound. A great field is open here for those who have the ability and the leisure to cultivate it; and though good work has already been done in it, we may be convinced that, until this psychology has been more thoroughly investigated, we must continue in uncertainty as to what original Buddhism was. Though much has been written upon the origin and growth of Buddhism, the first authoritative words are only now beginning to be spoken by the learned translators of the Pali texts; and though they have dispelled illusions and corrected false impressions not a few, we cannot affirm that there is a strong consensus of opinion among them as to the life and teaching of the founder of Buddhism. One is greatly impressed by the modest hesitation with which they have presented their views, but this very diffidence makes one fear that we may be attributing to Buddha sayings which he never uttered, or that we have drawn from them inferences which he would have disowned.

I have endeavoured to bear in mind that our modern religion may in many features grossly misrepresent that of its Divine Author, and, indeed, that “Christianity has all along been much embarrassed in being obliged to apologise for Christendom.”[401] In like manner I have tried to make plain the great distinction between the original system of Buddha and that which very soon came to be known by his name. An Oriental will certainly misjudge Christianity if he derives his knowledge of it from mediæval theology or from some nineteenth-century sermons; and we may unconsciously commit the same mistake in ascribing to the primitive dogmas the interpretation put upon them by its later schools.[402] I have read several books in which this mistake was flagrant, and I should be extremely sorry to follow their bad example. In the present state of our knowledge, however, and until the earliest texts have been accurately ascertained, and sifted, and classified, this, to a certain extent, is inevitable, and therefore excusable. If I have failed in my attempt to portray accurately even the salient features of this great religion, it has been from no desire to caricature it.

The days have surely passed when it could be said that we were “too infatuated by a sense of the superiority of our own to make a fair survey of other religions.”[403] It is our duty, and it will be for our interest, to do justice to them, and, instead of being content with the schoolboy’s endeavour to prove them false, we should seek carefully among the ruins of the most degraded of them for all the elements of truth we can discover. It is in this direction that we must proceed if we would find solid foundations for a true Christian theology, and the more we address ourselves to the work the more likely shall we be to convince the Church of the proper value of the Faith deposited in its keeping, and to rouse it to realise its destiny and fulfil its glorious mission to the world.

In correcting these sheets for the press, I have often been sensible of my great obligations to a very highly valued personal friend, whose goodness was as remarkable as his learning. May I be forgiven if, in gratitude for his kind and generous help in these very studies, given now long ago, I desire to keep alive the memory of this justly esteemed Sanskrit scholar, by adding this little stone to his cairn, and adorning my book with the name of Dr. John Muir.