A Handbook of Comparative Religion

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Harvard Depositor;
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A HANDBOOK

OF

Comparative Religion

b^/KVvuXC. n

BY

-OQG, D.D.,

REV. S. H. KELLOQG, D.D., LLD

( 1 MISSIONARY TO INDIA,

AUTHOR OF

' The Ugkt of Asia and the Light of the World;' " The Genesii i

Growth of Religion" ^^ From Death to

Resurrection^** etc.^ etc.

PHILADELPHIA

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS
1899

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' -^''t^^o-w^CV^

Copyright, 1899, by The Trustees of

The Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-

Scho6l Work.

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CONTENTS.

PAOX
V

PBEFACE - . - . .

CHAPTER I.
The Classification of Religions - - i

CHAPTER II.
Fundamental Agreements . . _ g

CHAPTER III.

The Doctrine of the World- Religions Concern-
ing God - - - - - - 11

CHAPTER IV.
The Doctrine Concerning Sin - - - VjST

CHAPTER V.
The DocrrRiNE Regarding Salvation • - 69

CHAPTER VI.
The Doctrine Concerning the Future - O^^

CHAPTER Vll.
Practical Morals - - - - 116

CHAPTER VIII.

The Relation of the World- Religions to Chris-
tianity ---.-. 157
iii

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PREFACE.

It might perhaps seem as if such a brief and
incomplete discussion of the question of Com-
parative Religion, as is given in the following
pages, would be superfluous. Many of the
ablest scholars and specialists in the world
have published of late yeare elaborate discus-
sions of the subject, which have laid all stu-
dents under lasting obligations. It is to be re-
gretted, however, that to a very great extent,
the general result of the presentation of the
subject, so far as it has hitherto been made
popularly accessible, has been to create a
widely spread impression that the diflference
between the various religions of the world has
formerly been greatly exaggerated ; and that,
in particular, the teaching hitherto current in
the Church as to the exclusive position held by
Christianity as the one only divinely revealed
system of saving truth, is as erroneous as un-
charitable.

It seems to be imagined by many, that just
as we ought to have charity toward our fellow-

V

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vi Preface.

Christians in various sections of the Church of
Christ, who hold on many points religious be-
liefs different from those which we have been
educated to receive, inasmuch as in all that
is essential to true religion and acceptance
with God, we are truly at one ; even so ought
we to regard those who are not even Christians
in name, but followers of one or other of the
great world-religions. It is strangely fancied
that howsoever these may diflfer from us in
many things, yet in all things which are essen-
tial to man's eternal well-being, they also are
practically at one with Christians ; so that, if
they but carefully live up to the precepts and
observances prescribed in their several reli-
gions, it is thought that it is onl}^ charitable to
suppose that their prospects for the life to
come may be, on the whole, as good as our
own.

The practical bearing of opinions of this
kind is only too obvious. When the Lord
Jesus Christ ivas about to ascend into heaven.
He gave unto His disciples orders, in the
clearest possible terms, to preach His gospel
in all the world, to every creature ; and that
with the object of making men who were
disciples of Buddha or Confucius, or worship-
ers of Jupiter or other of the gods of Greece

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Preface, vii

and Rome, disciples to Himself, and worship-
ers of the one God and Father, whom He de-
clared that He had come into the world to re-
veal unto men. If, however, the view of the
other religions of the world which we have
just indicated, be correct, then it certainly
seems much of an impertinence that men
should undertake a proselytizing work of this u
kind ; and it is only natural that people who
cherish such a view of the non-Christian reli-
gions, should withhold from Christian missions
both their service, their means, and their sym-
pathy. As a matter of fact, I have observed,
during many years' residence in India, and an
acquaintance more than usually extensive with
missions and missionaries in every part of the
world, that men and women who entertain so
favorable views of the various ethnic religions,
as all alike more or less perfect revelations of
the mind and will of God, are very rarely
found in the missionary ranks. But this is
only what we should naturally expect.

If then the facts set forth in the following
pages with regard to the most important of
these religions in the world of to-day, shall
prove helpful in enlightening any as to their
actual teachings, or correct in any case the
very radical and serious misconceptions on

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viii Preface,

this subject, which, we fear, are already begin-
ning to show their effect in dulling the mis-
sionary zeal of many professed Christians, one
great object of the writer will be attained.

It may not be amiss to remark that this
book has been perforce written under great
disadvantage, on account of the impossibility
of access to many valuable sources of illustra-
tion such as abound in libraries in Great
Britain and America ; for in such a small and
out-of-the-way station as has been of late the
author's home in India, such helps are prac-
tically not obtainable. I will only venture to
hope that for this lack some slight compensa-
tion may be found in the writer's many years
of residence and familiarity with the life and
language of the people, in such a great non-
Christian land as India.

S. H. Kellogg.

Landoub, Mussoobie, Nobth India,
Jaly, 1898.

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A HANDBOOK

OF

COMPARATIVE RELIGION.

CHAPTEE I.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF RELIGIONS.

At first, to the casual observer, the various
religions of mankind seem to present such a
chaos of conflicting beliefs as to defy classi-
fication. Upon somewhat fuller and more ex-
act knowledge, however, it becomes quite pos-
sible to bring all under a few distinct and com-
prehensive heads. First, we have the theistic
religions, of which, at present, Christianity,
Judaism, and Mohammedanism, are the chief
examples. In the second place, we have the
pantheistic religions, of which the most im-
portant example is found in the popular reli-
gion of the Hindoos. Thirdly, paradoxical
though it may seem, we have atheistic reli-
1

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2^ Handbook of Comparative Religion,

gions. Such appears to be the Shinto reliT
gion of Japan, that of the Jains in India, but,
most important by far, the religion of the
Buddha, who, in the Buddhist Scriptures, is
said to have declared of himself that nowhere
among gods or men, did he see any one whom
it would be "proper for him to honor." In
the fourth place, we may name the prevailing
anpestor worship which is specially character-
istic of Confucianism. Originally, this would
appear to have coexisted with a general the-
istic belief in Shang Te as the Supreme Grod ;
but all agree that the worship of the Supreme
God forms no part of the Chinese religion of
to-day.*

Lastly, we have a large number of religions,
found for the most part among the uncultured
races, which may be classified in a general way
as " animistic." In all religions of this class,
the objects of popular worship are spirits of
various grades of power and importance, good
and evil, whom it is supposed to be important
to propitiate in order to man's earthly well-
being. In some of these, as in many of the
religions of Africa, a Supreme God is dimly

* Quite possibly Confiicianfsm mtght be properly classified with
Buddhism as an atheistic religion ; but in the official worship by
the emperor in Pekin, there is still a vague recognition of God
under (ne panie of heaven*

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The Classification of Religions, 3

recognized; but He is not believed to have
anything to do at present with human affairs,
and the crude religion of the people therefore
is not concerned with man's relations to Him.

Polytheism, as such, does not appear in this
classification; for the reason that among dif-
ferent peoples, the popular polytheism is based
on very diverse presuppositions. The polythe-
ism of India, for instance, is grounded upon,
and is popularly justified by, pantheistic as-
sumptions ; while that of the Turanian aborig-
ines of India, such as the Santals, the Gonds,
and others, is animistic ; though among these
savage peoples, the existence of one great God,
above all the spirits and demons whom they
worship, is commonly recognized. With Him,
however, they believe that they have nothing
to do. So, again, among the northern Bud-
dhists, we have a type of practical polytheism
which rests upon, and is a development from,
the atheistic Buddhism. Similarly, nature wor-
ship, wherever it prevails, commonly rests upon
either pantheistic or theistic presuppositions, or
else is connected with animistic superstitions.

It should be remarked that in point of fact,
these different types of religion above enumer-
ated, are not in practice always sharply dis-
tinct. For example, while the popular Hin-

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4 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

dooism of the masses of the population of
India is correctly described as a pantheistic
polytheism, yet many religious observances,
more especially among the lower castes, are
undoubtedly of an animistic type, and have
arisen from the intercourse of the Aryan Hin-
doos with the aboriginal Turanian demon wor-
shipers whom they found living in the land
when first they entered it, and who still exist
to the number of several millions, in the more
remote and inaccessible parts of the country.
So also, although no faith is more emphatically
theistic than that of Islam, yet among certain
Mohammedan sectaries, as, e, g., the Stifls, the
conception of the Deity has become distinctly
modified in the direction of a mystic pantheism.
As it were quite impossible within the limits
imposed upon the present work, to consider all
the various religions of each type, ancient and
modern, it has been necessary to confine the
discussion to typical examples of each type, as
existing in the world of to-day. If animistic
religions have been but slightly treated, this
is simply because they present us with no such
elaborated system of religious thought as we
find in the reb'gious systems of the more culti-
vated races of the world ; so that there is com-
paratively little to be said as to the details of

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The Classification of Religions, 6

the religious beliefs of those who hold them.
But, as regards the practical purpose of the
present book, this is of the less consequence,
since Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the
other religions of China, which we have con-
sidered at length, together claim as their ad-
herents the immense majority — probably not
less than some 1,300,000,000 — of the human
race.

With these prefatory observations, we may
now proceed to inquire, What are the teach-
ings of the chief world-religions of to-day on
the fundamental questions of religion ? These
are, firstly, the being, nature, and character, of
God; secondly, the relation of man to Him,
especially as affected by the universal fact of
sin ; thirdly, concerning the way of salvation ;
fourthly, concerning the future of individuals
and of the world ; and, finally, the question as
to the duty of man to God and to his fellow-
man.

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CHAPTER 11.

FUNDAMENTAL AGEEEMENT8.

It is not without much reason that man has
been defined as " a religious animal." If we
define him as "a rational animal," as some
have done, there is left room for discussion ;
for it cannot well be denied that many actions
of the higher animals seem to indicate not
merely the operation of instinct, but also a
process of true reasoning. But no one has
ventured soberly to maintain that some ani-
mals are also religious. To speak of the re-
ligion of a monkey, a dog, or a horse, were
only to excite a smile. Man only is religious ;
and in the case of man, religion, in some form
or other, often no doubt very vague and ill-
defined, is universal. It is yet to be proved
that any tribe has ever been found so degraded
as to be utterly destitute of religious ideas.
The assertions to the contrary which have
often been made, have repeatedly by further
investigation been shown to be erroneous.

No doubt when we thus speak of religion as
universal, we must use the word " religion " in
6

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Fundamental Agreements, T

a very broad sense; but however broad the
sense in which we take it, it is still true that
the possession of a religious faculty is one of
the most distinctive characteristics of the hu-
man race.

In any comparison of the various religions
wherein the religious nature of man manifests
its activity, we shall do well first to note those
elements which are common to all. All reli-
gions, from the highest to the lowest, assume
the existence of a Power (or powers) superior
to man, on which he is dependent, and which
is able decisively to influence his destiny. It
is also taken for granted in all religions that
the relation between man and the superior
Power or powers, is a necessary relation. Man
feels instinctively that he is born into this re-
lation, and that by no power or wisdom of his
own is he able to free himself from it. As to
the nature of the Power assumed, religions dif-
fer. Some regard the Power as one and only ;
others assume a plurality of such powers. It
is however important to observe that in most,
if not all, cases where men worship gods many,
there is discoverable in the background of the
religious consciousness the dim outline of one
sole Power, of which the many who are wor-
shiped are either different manifestations, or

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8 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

to which they hold a position strictly subordi-
nate.

More or less distinctly in all religions is the
thought also expressed, that because of man's
relation to this Supreme Power, certain things
are obligatory on him, and other things must
be avoided at the peril of suffering. It is true
that among many peoples morality has become ,
more or less dissevered from religion ; but it
would probably be hard to find a people so
far degraded that there remained not at least
some vague sense of responsibility for one's
actions ; and this is true, even although among
many such the commonly accepted theory of
religion logically precludes responsibility.

In all religions, again, is expressed the feel-
ing that between man and the Supreme Power
or powers, something is wrong; in other
words, all religions more or less distinctly ex-
press or appeal to man's sense of sin. This is
clear from various familiar facts ; but it is es-
pecially evidenced from the wide prevalence
of religious offerings and sacrifices, designed
to propitiate or conciliate the good will of the
Being worshiped, to whom the offerer feels
himself subordinate, and whose favor he be-
lieves to be necessary to his well-being. The
significance of such religious observances is

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Fundamental Agreements, 9

the greater, that in many instances they have
maintained their place even although, as in the
case of Mohammedanism, the authoritative
Book declares any propitiation of the Deity to
be impo^ible, or when, as in Hindooism, an
inexorable logic, which is accepted practically
by not a few, declares such ritual services to
be folly unworthy of a man who has attained
the supreme wisdom.

Again, more or less distinctly, religions
generally assume that there is for man a state
of being after death; and that the conse-
quences of wrongdoing or right-doing in this
present life will follow a man after death.
There is no doubt a very great difference in
the way in which this life after death is con-
ceived; and indeed, in some instances, as
notably in the primitive Buddhism, the ortho-
dox teaching seems even to deny the existence
of a soul which can live after the death of the
body. And yet even in Buddhism one meets
with much that seems inconsistent with this
denial ; while the constant tendency of man-
kind in such cases is still to insist, despite the
philosophers, on the reality of a state of future
rewards and retributions. The profound sig-
nificance of this fact needs but to be men-
tioned.

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10 Handbook of Corrvpa/rative HeUffiofi,

Finally, it is to be observed that the general
acceptance, in religions the most diverse, of the
fundamental beliefs which have been enumer-
ated, gives the strongest a priori reason for
inferring that to these beliefs correspond
veritable spiritual realities in the unseen
world. For these are beliefs which have been
so universally accepted in all ages by men of
both the highest and the lowest degree of
culture, that we can hardly avoid the conclu-
sion that they must be due to a certain instinct
of man's nature. But where in the whole
kingdom of life is there an instance of an in-
stinct or appetency universal in any species,
to which, nevertheless, nothing whatever in its
environment corresponds? Is it not then in
the last degree improbable that man should
exhibit a unique and solitary exception to a
law which elsewhere appears to be universal ?
and that, too, in regard to a matter which
most vitally concerns his conduct and happi-
ness, even in this present state of existence 1

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CHAPTER in.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE WOBLB-BELIOIONS
CONCERNING GOD.

In any comparison of the various religions
of mankind, fundamental to all else is the in-
quiry as to what they severally teach with
regard to the existence and the nature of the
Supreme Being.

Christianity assumes the existence of a God
who is self-existent, and therefore eternal.
All else exists only because He has willed its
existence; He alone exists necessarily, and
therefore from eternity to eternity.

Secondly, the God of Christianity is a
personal Being. By this we mean that He is
eternally distinct and separate from all other
beings, rational or irrational, personal or im-
personal ; that He is eternally and necessarily
conscious of Himself as the eternal Ego ; and,
finally, that He is possessed of the power of
free self-determination. In all His acting. He
acts, not under any inner law of physical ne-
cessity, as when a tree produces a flower, but
as we act ; namely, through an absolutely free
11

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12 Hcundbook of Corrvpa/rati/ve BeUgion.

and unfettered choice, alike of various ends
and of the means to secure them*

Again, the God of Christianity is a moral
Being, loving righteousness and hating in-
iquity. Hence His choosing is never like the
arbitrary choice of a human despot, who
chooses and decrees whatever he will, often
through mere caprice and unjustly. His
choices and decisions are always determined
with reference to those eternal principles of
righteousness, goodness, and truth, of which
His own nature is the eternal and absolutely
perfect expression.

Again, in all His attributes as such an in-
telligent, moral Agent, the God of Christianity
is represented as absolutely without limita-
tions. As to His Being, He is without begin-
ning and without end, and He fills immensity
with His presence. He is not merely more
wise, more just, more good, more holy and
loving than any other being, but He is infi-
nitely wise, infinitely just, infinitely good,
infinitely holy, and infinitely loving and
merciful.

Hence, in consistency with all this, the God
of Christianity is represented as Sole, Unique,
and Supreme. There is no other like Him;
there is no other associated with Him. In all

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Doctrine of the World-Iieligions, 13

His boundless perfections, He is absolutely
solitary and unique.

But the Church in all ages has generally
understood the Holy Scriptures also to teach
that in the unity of the Godhead there is a
Trinity of Personality. The one and only
God, indivisible in His essence, exists neces-
sarily and eternally as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. For the Eternal Love there ever ex-
isted within the unity of His own Being and
Essence, an eternal and infinitely worthy
object of that Love, revealed to us as the
"well-beloved Son"; and there is also an
eternal holy fellowship of the Father and the
Son in a Third, even the Holy Ghost. And
yet though the one God thus exists in persons
three, nevertheless, according to the belief of
the universal Church, the Three are not three
Gods, but God is in His essence One eternally.

This is not the place to argue this ineffable
mystery : our present object is merely to state,
for the purpose of comparison with other re-
ligions what, as a matter of fact, the over-
whelming majority of Christians have for cen-
turies understood to be the clear teaching of
the Holy Scriptures as to the nature of God.

From the conception of God above set forth,
it follows that such a Being must be the Cre-

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14 Hcmdhook of Goinpa/rative Religion,

ator and the Moral Governor of the universe.
If He i&the only self-existent One, and is pos-
sessed with all the attributes assigned to Him,
then evidently, if anything else exists, it must
exist simply because it is God's will that it
should exist. And again, if any creature, ra-
tional or irrational, act in any way, this must
be because God, according to the nature of the
case, either causes it to act, or, for whatsoever
inscrutable reason, allows it so to act. In a
word, the Christian doctrine on this subject
is summed up in the words of the apostle
Paul: "Of Him, and through Him, and to
Him are all things." ^

If we inquire more particularly as to what
Christianity teaches as to the relation of God
to the world, it is to be answered that He at
once transcends the universe, and is also im-
manent therein. He transcends the universe,
as the phrase is. That is, in time and in space
He is before all, and beyond all, and independ-
ent of all. Hence He is by no means to be
identified with the universe of matter or mind,
as if these were the phenomena of which He
is the eternal substrate. Before any of these
were, He was.

But no less is it the doctrine of Christianity

'iU>m.xi.36.

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Doctrine of the WorldrReUgiorts. 15

that Grod is immanent in all things. This as-
peict of the relation of God "to the world, — of
which the perversion is pantheism — has in ear-
lier days been too much overlooked by theolo-
gians, but in our day is again much insisted on
by Christian thinkers, and with abundant rea-
son. For this is the constant teaching of those
sacred writings which are the foundation of
Christianity. No less than on God's transcend-
ence to all, do they also insist on His imma-
nence in all things. " In Him we live, and
move, and have our being ; " ^ "in Him," as the
eternal Son, " all things consist." ^ The various
activities of nature are constantly referred to
God in terms which, as modern physical sci-
ence unmistakably suggests, are not so much
the language of poetry, as the sober and accu-
rate phraseology of careful statement of fact.
But in view of comparisons to be hereafter
instituted, it is of importance, to notice here
that the Christian Scriptures do not allow us
to infer from this immanence of God in all
things, that He is therefore the sole real Agent
in all the various activities of man. While
spirit, soul, and body are all upheld in being
by the incessant operation of His almighty
power, so that it is true that " in His hand our

» Acte xvii. 28. • Col. i. 17 (R. v. ).

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16 Handhook of Comparative Religion,

breath is, and His are all our ways ; " ^ yet wh«n
a man acts, it is he himself who acts, and not
God. He acts moreover under no necessity of
external constraint, but in the fullest and
most unhindered exercise of that freedom of
personal choice without which indeed he could
not be regarded as in any true sense a respon-
sible moral agent.

Such, then, in brief, is the teaching of Chris-
tianity as to the being and nature of God, and
His relation to the universe of matter and spirit
which He has made.

Nearest of kin to Christianity among the
ethnic religions, is Mohammedanism. Most
strenuously, as all know, Islam insists on the
spirituality, unity, and personality, of God.
" There is no God but God," is the keynote of
the theology of Islam. Yet even here we are
met by a difference from Christianity most
profound and far-reaching. For when the Mo-
hammedan affirms with such energy the unity
of God, he means thereby not merely to deny
all polytheism, but also the doctrine of the
trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead,
as held by the immense majority of Christian
people. Those who have labored among Mo-
hammedans will agree that when the Moham-

» Dan. V. 23.

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Doctrine of the World-Religions. 17

mfidaa so insists on the unity of God, he has
indeed in mind above all else, the Christian
doctrine of the Holy Trinity. To affirm this,
he declares, is to be guilty of the damnable sin
of " shirk " ; i. e.j of affirming that God has a
" sharik '* or associate ; no less than if one af-
firmed the existence of the many gods of the
polytheist.

Again, while Islam affirms, in opposition to
pantheism, that God is a personal Being, it yet
so represents — or rather, misrepresents — this
truth, that the idea of personality is caricatured.
For while it is true that personality is centered
in will, and implies the perfect moral freedom
of the agent ; yet the highest possible concep-
tion of personality does not imply a power to
will arbitrarily, without reference to the na-
ture of the person willing, or to reasons be-
lieved by him to be good and sufficient for
willing as he does. Hence, while Christian
theology attribute's to God the power of free
Self-determination, it is ever careful to explain
that this self-determination is not arbitrarj^
but that, on the contrary, God in all His choos-
ing is determined by the highest reason and
righteousness, and the most perfect goodness
and love. Thus while the Holy Scriptures un-
mistakably teach that in the life to come God

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18 Handbook of Comparative lieligion,

will punish many of the human race with ex-
treme severity, yet they never represent this as
proceeding from arbitrary caprice, but always
as based on a moral reason ; namely, the free
choice by such men of sin, and their incorrigi-
ble persistence in rebellion against the infinite
Love.

In contrast with this, one of the most emi-
nent and enlightened Mohammedan doctors of
our day, regarding this matter has used the
following startling language : " It is the pre-
rogative of God, if He please, without repent-
ance, to pardon all sins, except that of shirk;
or again, if He please, to visit His wrath upon
the very smallest of all transgressions." " In
this we have self-determination no doubt, and
therefore personality, but a will which is freed
from the control of all considerations of rea-
son and righteousness.*

The contrast between Mohammedan and
Christian teaching regarding God, comes out
still more impressively when we consider the
question of the divine attributes. Both alike in-
sist indeed on the infinite wisdom, power, and

' sir Sayad Ahmad Khan, in the Introduction to his Commen^
taty on the Boole of GenesiM.

* GompHre the words of Kuenen : ** It was not in the God of the
Mittazilite, whose essence was righteousness, but in t)ie God of
Orthodoxy, the AliniKbty. subject to^ no other rule than Bis own
caurice, that they recognized their own and Mohammed's All^."
Hibbert Lectures, 1882, p. 49.

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Doctrine of the World-Religions. 19

gdbdiless of God, but they stand in profound
contrast regarding the relation and proportion
of His attributes. In the foreground of the
Mohammedan system, beyond question, stands
the almightiness of God. In the front of the
Christian system of doctrine stands the infinite
love of God. "God is love" is an apostolic
summary of theology. Yet, according to the
gospel, neither the power nor the love is
ever exercised capriciously. When God puts
forth His almighty power, this is ever to carry
out the purposes of His infinite righteousness
and love. In like manner, when God displays
His love, it is ever in full accord with rigl^t-
eousness, and under the limitations imposed by
the fact that He is as righteous as He is lov-
ing, and as holy as He is kind. Consequently,
when He pardons. He pardons righteously, no
less than when He condemns ; and is declared
to be "just" even when He "justifies the un-
godly." * And although He is infinite in love
and compassion, so that to save the guilty He
is said to have given His only begotten Son ; *
yet when men, in the unfettered exercise of
their power of free choice, persist in impeni-
tence and rebellion, they are not by the love of
God, exercised in a way of weak and unholy

*Bom.lli.a0. *JobnIH.l6.

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20 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

indulgence, saved from the just consequences
and heavy penalties of their sin. Yet in it
all, the Christian revelation ever holds forth
God as the God of holy and infinite love. The
keynote of both the Old and the New Testa-
ments is that which we hear in the words of
the prophet Ezekiel : " As I live, saith the
Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of
the wicked. . . . Turn ye, turn ye from
your evil ways ; for why will ye die ? " ^

Most impressive and most sad is the con-
trast herein with the character of God as pre-
sented in the Quran and the Hadis.' It is
quite true that here and there in the Quran
we find representations of God which so far as
they go, are true in thought and sublime in
expression. A Christian can well join in the
ascription of praise which we find in Sura 1 :

** Praise be to God, Lord of aU the worlds.
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
King ou the Day of reckoDing !
Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help." *

But although God is continually praised as
"the Most Merciful," His mercy is not thought
of as springing from His nature as eternal

» Ezek. xxxlll. U.

• The niitliorfzed Mohammedan Tradition.

* See also a number of passages brought together by Mr. Bos-
worth Smith In his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, pp. 179-181.

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Doctrine of the World-Religions, 21

Love, but as exercised in the most arbitrary
caprice. The one attribute which in the Quran
and all Mohammedan writings is ever placed
in the foreground, is not God's love, but His
power. The names of God are reckoned at
ninety and nine, but the name " Father '' is not
among them. Sir William Muir has rightly
said : " We may search the Quran in vain from
beginning to end for any such declaration as
this, ' The Lord is not willing that any should
perish,' or 'Who will have all men to be
saved.' " ^ On the contrary, again and again
God is represented as misleading men and
causing them to believe error.

Nor is this to be understood as merely
meaning, as in the Christian Scriptures, that
He abandons the incorrigible to their self-chosen
ways of sin and error. On the contrary, God
is represented as saying that He actually cre-
ated those who are damned in order that hell
might be full. Thus, e, ff., we read: "If thy
Lord pleased. He had made all men of one re-
ligion; . . . but unto this hath He created
them ; for the word of thy Lord shall be ful-
filled ; Verily, I will fill hell altogether with
genii and men."* And so again: "We cre-

•^ T/ie Coyari. its COinpositiOfi and Teaching, p. 56.
» Sura xi. 119. -

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22 Handhook of Go7nparatvo6 Heligion.

ated man of a most excellent fabric; after-
ward we rendered him the vilest of the vile.'^^

Again, the God of the Quran is not a holy
God. The word qvddus^ meaning " holy," is
indeed used of God ; but practically one rarely
hears the word applied to Him. The Kev, S.
M. Zwemer, missionary to the Mohammedans
at Busrah, rightly says that in the Quran the
word qvddus " nowhere occurs in its biblical
sense of ' pure in heart,' ' separate from sin.'
God is called once or twice ' the holy King,'
but the reference is more to His glory and
majesty than to His holiness." That which
the same authority says of the Arabs, is true
also of the Mohammedans of India: "The
very word ' holy ' is an unusual, often an unin-
telligible one to the Arabs about the Persian
Gulf. It is the name least frequently given to
Allah among all the ninety and nine beautiful
names they number on the rosary of Islam."

Not to enlarge further, we may thus say
without hesitation that the representation of
the character and nature of God which is
found in the Quran, and that which is given in
the Christian Scriptures, are, in matters the
most vital, diametrically opposed the one to

* Snra xcv. 4. 5. See also. The Ooran, by Sir William Mnir, p,
62, f(N)tiiote t, wliere is given a list of tweuty-two texts of tf
Quran to tbe same effect.

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Doctrine of t/ve WorldrBeligions, 23

th^ Other. In name^ the God of Mc^iammed
is the God of Abraham, of the prophets, and
of the Lord Jesus; but in fact, He is repre-
sented as a Being of a very different char-
acter.

Hindooism, whether ancient or modern,
teaches a doctrine concerning God, which
offers the greatest contrast to both that of Chris-
tianity and of Islam. It is however difficult
to state with any brevity the teaching of
Hindooism concerning God, for the reason
that the " Six Systems '' of philosophy which
are regarded as authoritative among all ortho-
dox Hindoos, differ radically among them-
selves as to this very question of a God. But
no one of all these systems teaches the exist-
ence of a God who is personal. Two of them,
indeed, acknowledge no Supreme Kuler, and,
like Buddhism, make the abstraction of
karmma or " deeds " to be in effect, the su-
preme power to which all things are due. But
leaving the teachings of the Hindoo Scriptures
and dealing with the actual beliefs accepted by
the mass of the Hindoos to-day, we may safely
say ^at all their belief and thinking regarding
the being and nature of God are determined by
the pantheism of the Vedantic system of philos-

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24 Handbook of Coinparatvoe Religion,

ophy. Thus every Hindoo, howsoever many
gods and goddesses he may acknowledge and
worship, will none the less steadfastly main-
tain that God is one and one only. The for-
mula which represents their faith is found in the
words, " ekannbrahmam dvitiyandsU : Brahma
is one and there is no second." But these
words, which in sound so perfectly agree with
Christian teaching, in reality have in the mind
of the Hindoo a very diflferent meaning. For
by this formula it is intended, not that besides
Brahma there is no second God, but that be-
sides Him, — or It — there is no second real ex-
istence whatsoever. In other words, the God
of the Hindoos is not a personal Being. This
is indeed indicated by the fact that in the
above and similar Sanskrit expressions the
word for " God " is neuter.

As regards the attributes of God, it is one
of the commonplaces of Hindooism that
Brahma exists in a twofold form ; viz, nh^un^
and sagun, lit. " with bonds," and " without
bonds." In other words He is to be thought
of either as with, or as without, attributes ; or,
more precisely, in our modern philosophical
terminology, as " unconditioned," or as " con-
ditioned." In His essential ultimate nature
He is " unconditioned " ; as manifested in the

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Doctrine of the WorldrBeligion^. 26

universe of miiid and matter He is "condi-
tioned." As nirgun^ He is declared to be
an " invisible, imperceptible, formless, infinite,
and immutable Essence," Avhich not only was,
and is, and ever shall be, but besides which
nothing else ever really was, or is, or can be.
This is not merely the doctrine of learned
Sanskrit works, of which jbhe masses know
nothing, but is the teaching of the most popu-
lar of North India poets, Tulsi Das, who says,
in the Bal K^nd of his E^mayan, "Both un-
conditioned and conditioned is Kam's essential
nature;" "Ineffable, incomprehensible, with-
out beginning, and without his like."

Hence, while the God of Christianity is a
personal Being, eternally and necessarily self-
conscious and self-determining, the God of the
Hindoos is not a personal Being, nor is he es-
sentially distinct either from man or from the
universe. This, again, is not merely the doc-
trine held by the learned and educated few,
but is the belief of the people generally. Even
from ignorant coolies who cannot readj I have
often heard the words, Ham usl he ansh
hain^ "We are parts of That One ; " or, again,
Jo holtd hai^ so wah\ ha% " He who speaks is
That One ; " that is, whenever I speak, that in
me which speaks is God. Or, again, they will

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26 Handbook qf Comparative Religion,

sayv Karttd wahV ha% "That One. ia tb^
Agent.'^

Some have fancied, however, that there was
at least a real and very suggestive analogy be-
tween the Hindoo and the Christian concep-
tioii of God, in the Hindoo doctrine of the Di-
vine Triad, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the
Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, who are
each the one Grod. But the analogy is super-
ficial and utterly misleading. For the Chris-
tian teaching represents the threeness in the
one esisence of the Godhead to be a threeness
of persons ; such that the Father and the Son
can reciprocally address each other as " Thou,"
etc., etc. But Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva are
not regarded as three distinct persons, but as
ideally three manifestations of the One Being,
which— in another than the Christian sense —
is all and in all. Brahma is That One, con-
ceived as originating new manifestations of be-
i^g ; Vishnu, as maintaining these manif sta-
tions; Shiva, as bringing them to an end;
and, indeed, as these three are one, so their
work also, from the Hindoo point of view, is
one. For it is argued : There is no creating of
something new which does not involve the
bringing to an end of that thing or condition
which existed before it ; hence, the act of

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Doctri7ie of the World- Rdigwfia. 27

origmation and of destroying are really one
and inseparable ; and, again, what is presefifa-
tion but a continued creation ?

It follows from this popular conception of
God that when a Hindoo assents to the Chris-
tian affinnation of certain attributes as belong-
ing to th^ Supreme Being, he does not mean
what the Christian means. He will readily
admit that God is all-powerful, but meaning
that all power is really His power, and that we
cannot set limits to that power ; that He is om-
niscient, inasmuch as all knowing is His know-
ing; omnipresent — or rather, all-pervariTe ;
but only because all that is, is His very essence.
He will admit that God is holy, but explains
this in such a way that it is clear at once that
he does not mean by this what the Christian
means ; but only that all holiness is of God in
the same pantheistic sense and manner in
which also all unholy actions are, no less truly,
the acts of that one only Agent. Hence, it is
extremely difficult to make the ordinary
Hindoo feel that there is anything in, for in-
stance, the unspeakable licentiousness imputed
to Krishna, or the awful bloodthirstiness at-
tributed to Shiva or Kali, which is inconsistent
with the supposition that each of these is truly
Divine, and to be worshiped as such. It is

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28 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

^nite true that an ineradicable instinct of social
self-preservation has led Hindoo writers to
teach that in acts of such a character their sup-
posed deities are not to be imitated by us ; a
counsel logically indefensible and not always
observed ; but it is only too generally believed
that their favorite poet, Tulsi Das, was quite
right in his constantly quoted dictum : " To the
mighty, O Gusain, is no sin." *

From all this it is evident that Hindoo polj^-
theism is not inconsistent with the universal
insistence of the Hindoos on the unity of God,
as they understand that unity ; but is instead
securely grounded .on it. If everything —
whatever else by reason of ignorance it may
api>ear to me to be — is really God, then it is
assuredlj^ right to regard and worship any-
thing as God. Whether it be the intellectual
Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita, or the licen-
tious Krishna of the Prem Sagar ; whether the
glorious sun or the — very common — obscene
symbol of the ling or united ling and yoni^
each is Divine, and he who likes may worship
either mthout blame. Even so, the evil char-

*TbH Is not merely an unpractical speculation. In the speech
made in 1897 at Poona by tfie Hon. Mr. Gangadhar Tilak, whicli
was the occasion of his arrest, trial, and imprisonment on the
charge of inciting to rebellion against the British Government of
India, he justiHed the Mahrattanero, Shiva Jee, in tlie assassina-
-Ciou'of the then -Mohammedan ruler, expressly on this ground.-

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Doctrine of the W(yt*l'd- Religions. 2©

acter of many of their supposed incarnations
is not inconsistent with Hindoo belief as to the
attributes of God, but is evidently in full ac-
cord therewith.

It only remains to be added that this teach-
ing of Hindooism as to the being and nature
of God, logically involves what the Hindoos
commonly believe as to the relation of God to
the world. All Hindoos agree that God is the
Creator cjf the world ; but, again, they mean
not by this what the Christian means by such
words. That God created the world out of
nothing, according to Hindooism, is not for a
moment to be believed. The Sanskrit maxim
is regarded as expressing axiomatic truth: —
ndvdstuno vastuaiddhih^ " out of nothing noth-
ing can come." Christianity teaches that God
is the efficient cause of the world ; Hindooism,
that He is the mateHal cause. That is. He is
the cause of the existence of the world in the
sense in which the clay is the cause of the ex-
istence of the pot which is made of it. Or, to
use their own favorite illustration: If I go
into a dark room and see a rope which I mis-
take for a snake, the rope is the cause of the
appearance of that snake ; even so, when I see
the world, which seems to every one to be
other than God, yet is really That One, I must

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30 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

say that God is the cause of what appears to
me to be a world.

Also, as according to the Hindoo concep-
tion, God is not, in the Christian sense, the
Creator of the world, so neither is He to be
thought of as in any true sense its Moral Gov-
ernor. For it is evident that the everyday
phrase among the Hindoos, Karttd wah\ km
" He himself is the Agent " — i. e.j in all man's
seemingly free actions — excludes the idea of a
moral government of the world by God. Hin-
dooism indeed admits that there is a necessary
and inevitable sequence between our acts and
their reward or retribution ; but this is not be-
cause of any moral government of the world
by God, as we understand it ; but only because
of an inherent and necessary, but non-moral,
nexus between karmma and phaly "works"
and "fruit." And indeed if the personality
of God be denied, where is there left any place
for the conception of His moral government ?

Such in merest outline is the teaching of
Hindooism as to the being and nature of God.
If there be at first sight not a few points of
apparent similarity to Christian doctrine, yet
a very little examination shows that the simi-
larity is chiefly apparent, and that the contra-
dictions between the teaching of the two sys-

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Doctrine of the World-Iidigions. 31

t^ms as to this most fundamental questioili far
outweigh any real agreements. ' *

Buddhism in recent years has been much
lauded by many as a religion which, more than
any other, agrees with Christianity. We have
been told that Buddha, no less than Jesus
Christ, taught the existence of a personal God.
Mr. James Freeman Clarke has told his readers
that the object of the life of Sakya Muni " was
to attain nirvana^ ... a union with Gold;
the Injfinite Being." * Mr. Ernest de Bunsen
has gone even further and declares that the
doctrine of Gautama Buddha " centered in the
belief in a personal God." * But over against
such assertions we may place the well-nigh
unanimous declarations of the most eminent
specialists in the study of Buddhism. Koppen
declares categorically that Buddhism knows of
" no God, . . . as to be supposed anteced-
ent to the world. . . . There is only an
eternal Becoming^ no eternal Being.^^ ' Olden-
berg, who perhaps may be regarded as facUe
princeps among modern investigators of Bud-
dhism, says that the Buddhists maintain " caus-
ality without substance." " Where there is np

* Tm Great Rpllgioiis, p. 168.

*77<e Angel Messiah, of BuddhUt^, JSiMfnea, Ofltf C/irftliantft

^'•liUJUUgiondeB Buddha, I Bd.B.2aSK

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82 Hcmdhook of Convpa/tative Hdigiim.

Bemgy but only a coming to pass, there (^n be
recognized as the First and the Last, not a
substance, but only a law." ^ No less categor-
ically Professor Max Mtiller says that Buddha
denies the existence, "not only of a Creator
but of any absolute Being;"' and that as re-
gards " the idea of a personal Creator . . .
Buddha seems merciless."^ A few citations
from the canonical Buddhist Scriptures will
show with what good reason such scholars
have so spoken. In the Vinaya Text of the
PdrdjiJca^ the Buddha is represented as say-
ing, " I do not see any one in the heavenly
worlds, nor in that of Mara, nor among the
inhabitants of the Brahma worlds, nor among
gods or men, whom it would be proper for
me to honor." In the SaUa Sutta of the
SuUa Nipdta the Buddha declares, "With-
out a cause and unknown is the life of mor-
tals in this world." Similar statements and
intimations are so numerous, and the utter
absence of anything contradictory of them is
so conspicuous, that it is no wonder that the
leading Buddhistic scholars of our day are
practically unanimous as to this point of Bud-
dhist doctrine ; and such assertions to the con-

* Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Oemeindet 8. 257, 25S.
'^ Chips from a Oerman Workshop, vol. 1. p. 227.

* Brndhaghosha's Parables, Introduction, p. xxxL .

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Doctrine of the World-Iieligions. 33

trary as are above cited, are evidently based
on an astonishing misapprehension or igno-
rance of the facts. With the statements of
European students of the Sacred Books of
Buddhism, agrees the unanimous testimony of
missionaries in Buddhist lands who, as living
in daily contact with the people, are of all
others best qualified to tell us what is under-
stood by the votaries of Buddhism to be its
teaching. Mr. Hardy, who was many years a
missionary in Ceylon, says that while there
are here and there individual Buddhists, more
particularly among those who have come under
Christian influence, who believe in the exist-
ence of a God, yet these are exceptions; and
"the missionaries are frequently told that our
religion would be an excellent one, if we could
leave out of it all that is said about a Creator." *
Dr. Edkins, some time missionary to China,
says : " Atheism is one point in the faith of
the southern Buddhists : . . . the Chinese
Buddhists do not hold that one Supreme Spirit
rules over the whole collection of worlds."'
To the same effect might be cited the testi-
mony of Dr. Adoniram Judson, missionary to
Burmah, and many others. I will add only

* Legends and Theories oS the BuddhUts, p. 2^1,
■ Chinese Buddhism, p. 191.

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34 Hcmdhooh of Comparative Religion,

that in. India, the birthplace of Buddhism^
Buddhism is universally understood by the
people to be distinguished from Brahmanical
Hindooism as being atheistic. The Brahmans
constantly use the phrases Bauddha mat^ " the
Buddhist doctrine," as equivalent to Ndstik
maty lit. " the He-is-not doctrine ; L e., the doc-
trine which declares that He — namely, God —
is not.*

Confucius probably could not fairly be called
an atheist, but he avoids, to a great extent, re-
ferring to any Supreme Being. He frequently
refers to the ordinances of " Heaven," but in
a way which leaves it uncertain whether he
thought of the power thus named as a personal
God. In fact, Confucianism deals so exclu-
sively with the affairs of earth, and the duties
between man and man, that it may well be
questioned whether it can fairly be called a
religion, or anything more than a system of
social ethics. All agree that in extreme an-
tiquity, the Chinese recognized the existence
of a Supreme God, known as Shang Te. Pro-
fessor Douglas says that then " in the eyes of
the emperor and people, Shang Te appeared

*For a much more complete dlscusnlon of this and other points
of Buddhist doctrine, I mav be permitted to refer the reader to
my Light aS Asia and the Light of the World, Macmillan & Co.,
London and New York,

I

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Doctrine of the WorVd-Religiona. 35

as a personal God, directing their ways, sup-
porting them in their difficulties, and chastis-
ing them for their faults. . . . But as time
went on, the distinctive belief in the person-
ality of Shang Te became obscured, and he was
degraded from his supremacy to*the level of
the impersonal Heaven." * From this national
degradation of belief, Confucius did not es-
cape. He is said never to mention this Shang
Te, nor enjoin his worship, although he does
sanction the worship of spirits and also of
one's ancestors. It is therefore only in a very
qualified sense, if at all, that we can speak of
Confucianism as a theistic religion.

Not much better can be said of the Chinese
Taouism. What indeed were the real teach-
ings of its founder, Laou Tsze, with reference
to God, has been — and probably always will
be — ^greatly disputed. On the whole, however,
the opinion seems probable that, although in
veiled and obscure language, Laou Tsze meant
to teach the existence of a Supreme Being.
But certainly, if this was his intention, he must
be understood in a pantheistic sense ; for, as
Professor Douglas tells us, he taught that it
was possible for the creature to be absorbed
into the Creator.* But whatever may have

* CoikS'^^o.tdfm. and TUouUnit p. 83. *See ibid. pp. 211, 212.

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36 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

been his precise belief, his modern disciples
have practically lost sight of the Supreme God,
and instead worship Laon Tsze himself, and
with him also an imaginary being, Yuh-hwang
Shang Te — supposed to be the ruler of the ma-
terial univefse. In addition to these are also
worshiped the heavenly bodies, and the vari-
ous powers of nature, together with a multi-
tude of imaginary spirits, who are supposed to
preside over the various departments of life.

Passing over to Japan, in the national Shin-
toism we find a religion — if religion it can
properly be called — which is thoroughly athe-
istic. It can hardly be better described than
as a system of fantastic atheistic evolution.
The "gods" who are worshiped in Shintoism
are not the originators of the world, but were
themselves evolved from it. But it is needless
for our purpose to go into further detail. In
a word, the Shinto doctrine regarding God, is
that there is no such Being, and that the so-
called gods appeared spontaneously, at a cer-
tain stage of the world's evolution.

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CHAPTEE IV.

THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING SIN.

A3 before remarked, all religions more or
less distinctly recognize and deal with the fact
of man's consciousness of sin. Even such re-
ligions as Shintoism and Buddhism, wherein
is recognized no personal Creator, are no ex-
ceptions to this rule. What sin really is many
sadly misunderstand, but they cannot ignore
the fact that man is not in a spiritually normal
condition.

Nothing is more characteristic of the Chris-
tian religion than the place which sin holds in
its system of teaching. It is, in a word, that
supreme evil, the root of all other evil, to de-
liver man from which is everywhere repre-
sented as the prime object of Christ in coming
into the world. As to the nature of sin, it is
the Christian teaching that sin concerns man's
relation to God. It consists fundamentally in
this: that man is not what the holy law of
God rightly requires him to be, and does not
do what either the law of nature or of super-
natural revelation requires of him. That re-
37

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38 Hcmdbook of Cornparati/ve Religion.

quirement is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, . . . [and] thy
nei^bor as thyself."^ *'He that loveth an-
other hath fulfilled the law."* He that lov-
eth not thus God and man, is a lawbreaker, a
sinner.

Going still more deeply into the matter, the
Christian Scriptures teach that sin concerns
not only actions but states and feelings as well ;
in a word, that man^s nature is sinful. He
did not merely, by some unfortunate accident
or unwise choice become a sinner, and thus the
object of God's holy anger, but he is a child
of wrath by nature.* Nevertheless, the Chris-
tian teaching insists that for this God is not
responsible, but man. With the utmost ear-
nestness the apostle James declares that God
neither is nor can be the author of sin.* The
trouble is with man, with his perverse and re-
belling will which will insist on self-will as the
rule of life, instead of God's will.

Hence, Christianity magnifies to the utmost
the guilt of sin. It declares that because " the
invisible things of God from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, even His eternal
power and Godhead," therefore men are " with-

* See Matt. xxii. 87-^9, and parallels. * Rom. xlll. 8.

• Bph. il. 8. « See James i. 18, 14.

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. Tli^ Doctrine Concerning Sin. 89

out excuse^' in that "when they \knew-- God
they glorified Him not as God, neither were
thanldhiL" * It further teaches that this guilt
of man is such that by no tears of repentance
nor any sacrifice of his own, however costly,
can he expiate his guilt and become reconciled
to God. It teaches, moreover, that while sin
leaves man's free agency untouched, so that
he is fully responsible for his sin, yet it is none
the less true that, as Jesus said, " Whosoever
committeth sin, is the servant [slave] of sin." '
It is insisted that for one who is accustomed
to do evil, to learn to do well is as possible as
for the Ethiopian to change his skin or the
leopard his spots.^

As for the consequences of sin, Christianity
is, again, most explicit. For man left to his
own resources, there is no escape from a life
of unending sin and misery. While the first be-
ginnings of these evil issues are felt with more
or less severity in this present life, they are
represented as culminating in the life to come ;
which retributions none have described in
more terrible language than He who said that
He came into the world to save sinners.

As to the origin of the sin and misery in
which mankind is evidently sunk, Christianity

» Rotn. 1. 20, 21. » John vlli. 84. • Jer. xIH. 28.

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4:0 Handbook of Coinparative Religion.

does not attempt to explain the ultimate my^^
tery, fur&er than to teach that it had its origin
in the abuse of man's free agency, and that
the sin of the first ancestor of the race in this
respect involved the whole race in hereditary
guilt and misery. " By one man sin entered
into the world and death by sin." ^

Among modern non-Christian religions, Mo-
hammedanism , although widely differing from
(Jiiristian teaching in its doctrine as to sin, yet
most nearly approaches it. As in Christianity,
sin is regarded as consisting in opposition to
the will of God. Sin has however in the. the-
ology of Islam, a much narrower definition
than in Christianity, inasmuch as only willful
violations of the law of God are reckoned sin,
and sins of ignorance are not recognized.

But the Mohammedan conception of sin is
further vitiated by a misapprehension of what
is involved in the absolute freedom of God.
Whereas, according to the Christian concejv
tion, God wills this or that because it is right,
namely, in accord with His own infinitely per-
fect and holy nature, on the other hand, it is
\p. I the Mohammedan doctrine that a thing is right
%^ I merely because God wills it. Consistently, in
> the Quran, God is represented as ordering the
■ Rom. T. 12.

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-^1

The Doctrine Concmifiing Sin. 41

coipmisskm of gross crimes, forbidden in the
Mosaic Decak^ue, which then become right
and obligatory, simply becanse God has de-
clared this to be His will. Hence it is that,
very significantly, instead of the words " guilt "
and " transgression," Mohammedan writers

J prefer the terms " the permitted " and " the
forbidden." Hence, again, the distinction be-
tween moral and ceremonial precepts is almost
completely destroyed. Thus, Mr. Palgrave, in
his travels in Arabia, tells us that on one oc-
casion he asked a Wahabi Mohammedan what,
in his opinion, was the greatest of sins. " Un-
doubtedly," he replied, "the sin of shirk.'*^^
And what the second? "Undoubtedly, the
use of tobacco." And how about murder, ly-
ing, and adultery ? " Ah ! God is merciful ! "
was the reply.
Again, sin, according to the Mohammedan

{doctrine, has nothing to do with our nature.
It is denied that the nature of man has any
evil taint. It is believed that human sin be-
gan with the fall of Adam, as related in Gene-
sis ; but man inherits from him nothing of the
nature of moral evil. Yet the Quran admits
the universal sinfulness of man, though little
is said of it. Thus : " If God should punish

'That is, d^uying the personal unity of tlie Godliead.

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42 Handbook of Co^apm^ative Religion,

men for their iniquity, He would not leave
upon the earth any moving thing." ^ Why sin
should be thus universal, if there be no taint
of nature, and each man sins independently, is

ta question which Mohammedanism leaves un-
noticed.

As to the consequences of sin, in this life and

the life to come, Mohammed depicted these in

the most terrible language. "The wicked

, shall be cast into scorching fire to be broiled ;

vthey shall be given to drink of a boiling foun-

\tain; they shall have no food, but of dry

\ thorns and thistles.'" But the sufferings of

the wicked are not represented, as in the Bible,

as the necessary moral consequence of sin, but

as due simply to the arbitrary will and decree

of God.*

In contrast with the teaching of the Chris-
tian Scriptures, Mohammed did not recognize
the guilt of sin to be such as to require an ex-
piation in order to the Divine forgiveness.
The remission of the penalty of sin is regarded
i as wholly within the prerogative of God, and
(dependent solely on His sovereign pleasure,
i wholly apart from any mediation or expiation.

* Sura xvi. 63.
'Stii*alxxxviH.3.

* See also the passage cited above, p. 18, from tlie writings of
Sir Sayad Alimad Kiian, p. 10.

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Tlie Doctrine ConcemiTig Sin. 48

Evidently, therefore, Mohammed rated the
guilt and ill-desert of sin much lower than do
those religions in which atonement, in some
form or other, is regarded as the indispensable
condition of pardon ; and accordingly, among
Mohammedans everywhere the sense of the
guilt of sin is exceedingly slight.

Nothing has done more to lessen the sense
of guilt among Mohammedans than their doc-
trine of taqdlry or the foreordination of God.
According to the general belief of Mohammed-
ans, everything — even the apparently free acts
of men — has not only been foreordained by
God, but the morally good and the morally
evil have been foreordained in the same sense
and in the same manner. If this be so, then
it is quite plain that man is a mere puppet in
God's hands, and responsibility and guilt there
cannot be.

It is indeed true that there are some passages
in the Quran which seem inconsistent with the
extreme form in which Mohammed taught the
foreordination of God. Thus men are com-
manded to pray, to believe the prophet, and to
do good works, and salvation is often repre-
sented as depending upon their believing or re-
jecting the doctrine taught by Mohammed.
We read, for example : " The truth is from

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44 Hwadhooh of Convpm'atvoe Religion,

your Lord ; wherefore let liim who will believe ;
and let him that will be incredulous. We have
surely prepared for the unjust hell fire." '

But the Quran is full of passages of a very
diflFerent tone; which, as every one knows,
have had the eflFect of making the Mohammed-
ans everywhere to be the most thoroughgoing
fatalists to be found in the world. Thus it is
written: "The fate of every man have we
. bound about his neck." " God misleadeth
>whom He pleaseth, and guideth whom He
^pleaseth aright." '

If it be asked, wherein does the doctrine of
the divine foreordination as taught in the
Quran and accepted by Mohammedans gen-
erally, diflFer from the same as taught in the
Christian Scriptures, we may say that the fun-
damental difference lies in this ; that, accord-
ing to the Scriptures, while God has predeter-
mined all things, and while the ultimate rea-
sons of His decrees are found in Himself, yet
inasinuch as He is not only infinite in power,
but also, by the very necessity of His nature,
infinite in righteousness and love, therefore no
decree can be arbitrary, but has its reason in
the perfect righteousness, love, and goodness
of God. Hence it follows that, according to

' Sum xviil. 28. *Sura xvi. 95 ; xv^il. U« et passim.

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The Doctrine Concerning Sin. 45

Holy Scripture, the purpose of God is not re-
lated in the same way to all the free acts of
His creatures. He decrees that which is good
effectively^ as its direct source and origin ; but
the origin of evil is never in the Scriptures at-
tributed to the foreordination of God, but to
the abuse of free agency by His creatures. So/
again, though He have chosen some unto life
eternal in His Son, not on the ground of their
works, but solely out of His free grace and
pity ; on the other hand it is nowhere taught
in the Bible, as in the Quran, that God in like
manner foreordains some to perdition without
reference to their works, creating them for this
end. For while it is taught that many are
undoubtedly foreordained to perdition, it is
ever kept before us that this is on the ground
of their willful and incorrigible rebellion, as
foreseen by God. But the Quran, on the con-
trary, represents the Divine decree as related
in precisely the same way to the good and the
evil acts of men. God decrees, now the salva-
^ tion of this one, and now the damnation of that
one, simply and only because He wills it. The
decreeing of God is wholly independent of any
considerations of either righteousness, justice,
or love. The spirit of the theology of Islam
on this point is well represented in one of the

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46 Handbook of CoTnparative Religion,

authentic Mohammedan traditions, which Mr.
Palgrave gives as often heard by him from the
Wahabees of Nejed, thus :

" When God resolved to create the human
race, He took into His hands a mass of earth,
the same whence all mankind were to be
formed, and in which they in a manner pre-
existed ; and having then divided the clod into
two equal portions, He threw the one half into
hell, saying. These to eternal fire, and I care
not ; and projected the other half into heaven,
adding. And these to Paradise, and I care
not."^

Terrible as the language of the " Traditions "
is, it does not go beyond the teaching of the
Quran as to the relation of God to the sin of
men, in such words as these: "If we had
pleased, we had certainly given unto every
soul its direction; but the word which hath
proceeded from me must necessarily be ful-
filled when I said. Verily, I will fill hell with
genii and with men altogether " . . . " unto
this hath he created them." '

Obviously the inevitable effect of teaching
such as this will be to blunt to the utmost the
sense of responsibility and of ill-desert for

• Quoted in Clarke's Ten Great Religions, p. 478.

* Sura xxxii. 13; xi. 119. The Quran fs full of similar statementa.

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Tlie Doctrine Concerning Sin, 47

wrongdoing. If a man sin, the Quran itself
assures him that this is because God "hath
bound his fate about his neck " ; * so that the
fault is not man's but God's.

The teaching of Hindooism as regards sin, is
in marked contrast alike with T)oth Christianity
and Mohammedanism. Both of these, as we
have seen, agree in so far that they regard sin
as an evil which essentially consists in opposi-
tion to the will of a personal God. But ac-
cording to the doctrinal creed, commonly ac-
^ cepted by the Hindoos, sin, in this Christian
r sense of the word, cannot accurately be said to
{ exist. This follows, first, from the denial by
^ orthodox Hindooism of a God who is personal.
If there is no personal God, then law, in the
Christian or Islamic sense of the word, cannot
exist, for law is the expression of a personal
will. Sin in the Christian sense of the term,
is the more impossible, because the agent in
every act, is really God. If so, then guilt is
but a fiction. I who seem to be the agent, in
reality am not the agent.

Again, essential to the Christian conception
of sin, is this, that the sinner in sinning act
freely. If a man do a thing which in outward
form is sinful, but do this under constraint, as

»SuraxvU. 14.

i

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48 Handbook of Compomjutvoe Religion.

when he has been drugged, and simjdy oame$
<Mrt the purpose of another, his own will
through no fault of his being in abeyance,
then however evil and ruinous the action may
be in itself, there is no sin, and no responsi-
bility or guilt. But this is precisely the pop-
ular creed of Hindooism ; that whatever I do,
I do under the same law of physical necessity
as that under which a certain tree bears a cer-
tain kind of fruit. This is so with the tree be-
cause of the nature of the seed which was
sown ; because of which this particular kind of
fruit is borne, and no other. So according to
the universal Hindoo belief, shared alike by
the most ignorant villagers and by the most
learned pundits, all that I am, and all that I
do, be it what we call good, or be it evil, is the
necessary and inevitable result of certain other
acts of mine in a previous state of being, of
which I have no recollection, but the fruit of
[which I nevertheless must bring forth, of
i whatever sort it be. So while Hindooism and
Mohammedanism agree in affirming that every-
thing — even the evil that I do — is predeter-
mined; yet they differ profoundly, in that
whereas the Mohammedan believes that the
predetermination is the act of a personal God,
who wUU what each man shall do or shall not

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The Doctrine Concerning Sin. 49

do, Hindooism makes the pi^edeterminatioii of
all things to be simply the nexsessary self-mani-
festation of the unconscious Brahma, in a mul-
titudinous and almost endless series of in-
dividual births and consequent acts of human
beings.

Indeed, the reality of an essential distinction
between good and evil, as by logical necessity,
so often in actual fact, is formally deni^.
For the Hindoo will often insist that if we
will speak accurately, what we call "sin " j>4Pj
and "righteousness" or "merit," dharmma^
punya^ are both alike evil ; because every act,
be it good or bad, makes it necessary that I
be again bom that I may reap its fruit, and
that personal existence in some form should be
continued ; for it is this, and not what we call
sin, that is really the fundamental eviL

And if the conscience or reason of any still
rebel against such teaching, and insist on the
reality of the distinction between moral good
and evil, sin and righteousness, then Hindooism
has yet one more resource by which to silence
the witness of conscience. This is found in its
^doctrine of mdyd or " illusion." Mdyd is that
illusion which of necessity arises when the
Supreme Brahma, essentially unconditioned,
{nirgun) becomes conditioned (sagun) in the

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50 Handbook of Comparative Beli^ioii,

lUiivfirse. Of this may a are begotten the
ideas of a distinction between God and the
world, of personality, free agency, responsi-
bility, sin and righteousness. For it is quite
clear that if indeed Brahma is the only Being,
then there is no room for sin, and the idea of
sin and all connected with it must be illusion.
In this way, again, orthodox Hindooism denies
the reality of sin as the opposite of righteous-
ness.

Such is the Hindoo doctrine as to the nature
of sin. It will be asked: Do men in India
practically accept this belief? The question
cannot be answered in a word. Not a few
there are, who endeavor, with a horrible faith-
fulness to their principles, to exhibit those
principles in actual living. Here we see them
walking about in stark nakedness and utter
shamelessness ; there, again, seeking in deep
meditation to center their thoughts on this one
conception, aham Brdhmam^ " I am Brahma,"
and so to cultivate and attain an absolute free-
dom alike from doing right and doing wrong.
With such the writer has often talked; and
men in a more hopeless moral state it would
be impossible to find. Furthermore, the real-
ity of any necessary, unchanging distinction
between moral right and wrong, is practically

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The Doctrine Concerning Sin. 51

denied by every one in the constant use of
the popular proverb before cited, "To the
mighty is no sin " ; and in the refusal to admit
that the indescribable licentiousness of Krishna,
or the horrible bloodthirstiness of Shiva or
Kali, is in the least incompatible with the belief
that these are worthy representations of the
Deity. When men do wrong, one often hears
responsibility denied in the words : " True, I
have sinned ; but what fault was it of mine ?
It was in my karmma,^^

And yet while, logically, no Hindoo should
ever admit sin, yet their Sacred Books have
much to say of sin, and prescribe many pen-
ances and expiations by which it may be re-
moved. Well known is the Sanskrit couplet :

Phpohamphpakarmrnhham p(ipdimd, phpammbJuivah
Trd,hi mam pundarikhhsha Barwaphpaharo mama,
" I am sin, my work is sin, my spirit is sin, in sin was

I conceived :
Save me, O Lotns-eyed One, Remover of aU mj sin."

The Kig Veda even speaks of a sin of the
fathers, whose sin has come on us. Thus

** Absolve us from the sin of our fathers,
And from those which we have committed with
oar own bodies.'* *

Especially are such confessions of sin, how-

•RlgVeda. va.86.

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\

62 HoAfidbook of Convpa/rative Region.

ever, to be found in the modern non-canonical
writings of many Hindoo reformers, who
doubtless became such because the sense of sin
was too strong in them for the Hindoo creed.
Such are the following :

''With what face can I approach thee? Shame cometh

Unto me 1
Thon knowest the evil I have done. How can I be pleasing

nn to thee?"

"I went ont to seek a bad man ; bad man I found none at

aU:
If I look into my own heart, Myself is the worst of all."

But having lost sight of the personality of
God, and therewith of the true nature of sin
as opposition to His holy will, the conceptions
of the Hindoos as to the nature of sin — so far
as it is, despite philosophy, admitted, — have
been perverted and degraded correspondingly.
A man will lie and cheat with no apparent

f sense that he is thereby sinning ; but will not
so much as touch an egg^ lest he should thus
become defiled, and be reckoned as a sinner.

If it be possible, the Buddhist religion leaves
even less room for a ngh^onception of sin
than modern Hindooism. It is true that the
Buddhist Scriptures have much to say of sin,
and by this fact many who are ignorant of the
true significance of terms in the Buddhist re-

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The Doot/rine Concerning Sin, 63

ligion, and so read into this word "sin" a
Christian meaning, are grievously misled.
Hence a degree of harmony is imagined be-
tween the teachings of Gautama Muni and
those of Jesus Christ, where instead there is
only the most irreconcilable antagonism.

Recalling what has been shown in a former
chapter as to the essentially atheistic character
of orthodox Buddhism, it will be seen at once
that where tCere^?^nial of, or even uncer-
tainty as to, the being of God, there cannot
possibly be any conception of sin in any such
sense as that which Christians attach to the
word. For the very essence of sin lies in an-
tagonism between the will of God and the will
of man ; and where the being of God is doubted
or denied, as in Buddhism, obviously sin, as we
understand the term, cannot be recognized.

If it be asked then. What is it that the
Buddhist means when he speaks of sin? we
answer, that according to the Buddhist Scrip-
tures sin consists essentially in tanhd {trishnd),
j Tanhdy lit. "thirst," means "desire," and is
I therefore often rendered in English "lust,"
\ and so appears as identical with that "lust"
I (Gr. imeufiia) of which the apostle James says
I that "The lust, when it hath conceived, bear-
/eth sin." (r. v. James i. 15.) But a little study

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64- Handbook of Gomparatwe Religion,

of the Buddhist authorities serves to show
thit what the Buddhist means hj^ tanhd is far
enough removed from what the New Testa-
ment writers mean by imdufita "lust." As
to the real meaning of tanhdy either of two
views may be maintained with good show of
reason. A large number of passages in the
Buddhist Scriptures seem to teach clearly that
hy tanhd is meant desire of anything what-
ever, whether in this life or another. It is
directed that he who will attain to peace
" learn to subdue " — not merely evil desires —
but "all the desires that arise inwardly."^
The Bhikkhu, or disciple of the Buddha, is
charged explicitly not to "desire anything
whatever."

Nevertheless here and there passages occur
which seem to limit this all-inclusiveness of
the term, and from these some eminent spe-
cialists have inferred that these prohibitions of
desire can refer only to such aims and aspira-
tions as are " grasping and selfish." * But even
if we take the term in this restricted sense, we
are as far as ever from the Christian meaning
of the word " sin." For the Buddhist regards
not merely those acts or states of mind as self-

»8ee Shttta Nipata ; Maha viyhha JShttta 5-8.
•See Rhys Davids: Buddhism, pp. 101, 10$.

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Tli^ Docirhie CoTicerning Sin, 55

ish which we should so call; but all desire
which terminates on or has regard to self ,
and thus even the desire for a life of happiness
in heaven.* Hence, while no doubt, according
to the Buddhist doctrine, many things are re-
garded as sinful which we also regard as sin,
many other things are regarded as no less the
offspring of ta/nhd and therefore sinful, which
in reality are not sinful in the least. This
utter confusion of mind on the subject of sin
is well illustrated by the list of "the Ten
Sins " which we find enumerated in Buddhist
authorities. These are said to be: Doubt;
Dependence on rites ; Sensuality ; Bodily pas-
sions; Hatred, or ill-feeling; Love of life on
earth ; Desire for life in heaven ; Pride ; Self-
righteousness ; and Ignorance.

The wide divergence between the Buddhist
and the Christian conception of sin is no less
strikingly shown by the Buddhist Decalogue,
as contrasted with the M^mic. The ten com-
mands are as follows:— ^ Take not life (of
any living thing); ^ Do not lie; (^ Do not
steal; ^ Do not commit adultery; ^ Do not
drink wnat can intoxicate. These five only,
indeed, are regarded as obligatory on the ordi-
nary Buddhist layman ; but for him who will

* This Is reckoned one of *' The Ten 81ns.*'

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66 Handbook of Comjparative Heligion.

become an ArSJiat or saint, the fourth pom-
raand above given is modified to a command
to lead a chaste celibate life, and then the Dec-
alogue is completed as follows : ^Eat not at
prohibited times ; (^ Wear no garlands, and
use no dentrifices or perfumes; (^ Sleep on
no high or broad bed; (^ Abstain from music,
dancing, and from stage plays ; ^^ Abstain
from the use of gold or silver.

As these ten commands constitute the Deca-
logue, perfect conformity to which is one mark
of the perfected Buddhist saint, therefore the
doing of any of these prohibited things is a
sin. So we see that not only lying, stealing
and adultery, but also using tooth powders,
singing even the purest and most elevating
song or hymn, and even the use of gold and
silver in the ordinary and most necessary
transactions of life, — all these things are reck-
oned sin. Surely this is enough to show that
when any one, in reading anything regarding
sin in any Buddhist book, understands that
word in the Christian sense, he is under a
misapprehension which must lead him utterly
astray in bis understanding and estimate of
the moral value of the Buddhist religion as
compared with Christianity.

In reading the teachings of Confucius, one

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The Doctrine Concerning Sin. 67

cannot but again be impressed deeply with the
total absence of any adequate conception of
sin. Among the "Five Kelations of Life,"*
the relation of man to God is not mentioned.
Indeed, since sin consists in a disturbance
of the relation between man and God, there
is obviously no room in Confucianism for the
Christian conception of sin. Whether Con-
fucius was at heart an atheist or agnostic or
not, it is certain that he never clearly recog-
nizes any duties but such as are due from man
to man. Indeed, occasionally he seems to go
further, and enter his voice against the recog-
nition of such duties. Said he : " To give one's
self earnestly to the duties due to men, and
while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof
from them, may be called wisdom." '

The views of LaouTzse it is difficult to set
forth with exactness. His works are said by
Chinese scholars to be difficult of understand-
ing even by the Chinese themselves. But in
what of his teachings has been made accessible
to European readers, it is as difficult to find
any clear recognition by him of duties due
from man to God, as in the teachings of Con-

* These are:— the relation of friend to friend, of brother to
brother, of husband to wife, of father to son, and of ruler to
subject.

'Quoted in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopoedla, In article, "Con-
fucius," vol. i., p. 582.

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58 Handbook of Omnparative Religion,

fucius. As to the duties of man to his fellow,
he said much which, is good and true; but
that there are duties due from man to God,
and that in these man fails, and is therefore
a sinner, of this we have yet to find any ac-
knowledgment. Indeed, Professor Douglas
tells us that Laou Tzse, like Confucius, " held
that man's nature was good, and that he who
acted in all things with the uncontaminated
instincts of that nature, would eventually re-
turn home to Taou." ^

How very profound is the difference be-
tween the chief non-Christian religions, and
that of Jesus Christ, in their teaching as to
sin, we have now seen. But these, again, in-
volve differences no less profound and radical
in regard to the vital matter of salvation.
What the great world-religions teach on this
subject, we shall see in the next chapter,

■ ConfucianUm and Taouitm, p. 196.

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CHAPTER Y.

THE DOCTRINE REGARDING SALVATION.

If anything be vital to religion, it is the
question of man's salvation. That the human
race is in an evil condition, that men are in
bondage to various evil tendencies and pas-
sions, is admitted, as we have seen, in all re-
ligions. Hence the question is fundamental in
religion, how man may be saved from sin and
its present and future manifold miseries.

Evidently, man needs two things, namely
pardon and cleansing. He is in a state of
manifest disharmony with God. Among men
of all ages and all religions we find variously
expressed this sense of alienation from God.
Very touching utterance has sometimes been
given to the need which is felt of reconcilia-
tion between man and God ; more frequently,
perhaps, in other than the canonical books of
the various ethnic religions. Thus, in North
India, Kabir D^s lamented:

'* Master ! Master ! aU are saying ; bnt I have another con-
cern :
I'm not with the Master acquainted ! Ah I where ahidl I
sit in His presence? ''

59

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60 Handbook of Compcuratvoe Religion,

But man needs more than pardon ; he needs
also cleansing and deliverance from the pres-
ence and power of sin. This is also admitted
among men of all races and religions. Again
and again, by one and another in non-Chris-
tian lands, the sense of this need has been
most pathetically expressed, as thus in South
India :

*'*' Parification before the great God
Is greater than life and is stronger than death ;
'Tis the hope of the wise, 'tis the prize of the saint.
Where is the fount whence flows this pure stream V

On this momentous subject, the Christian
teaching is very clear and emphatic. In the
first place, the Christian Scriptures teach that
man is wholly unable, by any effort or expe-
dient of his own, to attain either to assured
reconciliation and peace with God, or to de-
liverance from the power of sin. As regards
reconciliation with God, the apostle Paul only
sums up the teaching of all Scripture when he
declares that " by the deeds of the law shall
no flesh be justified in his sight." ^ While no
other religion admits this in theory, yet his-
torically nothing is clearer than that this is
the practical confession of all men. For no

'Rom.UI.20.

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The Doctrine Rega/rding ScUvatiofi. 61

sooner is one supposed work of merit com-
pleted, whether sacrifice, penance, lustration,
than straightway the man undertakes another,
thus unwittingly confessing that the sought-
for certitude of pardon, and peace of con-
science, has not yet been attained.

The Scriptures teach, in the second place, that
man is equally unable to deliver himself from
the bondage to sin, and secure purity of heart.
The Lord Jesus Christ said plainly : " Who-
soever committeth sin, is the servant [slave] of
sin." '

Again, the Christian Scriptures teach that
what man is thus unable to do for himself,
God is both able and willing to do for him ;
and that He has in fact provided for the pardon
and purification of every man who will have
the blessing, through the incarnation, atoning
death, resurrection, and exaltation of His only-
begotten Son Jesus Christ to the right hand of
power.

As for the Incarnation, the statements of
Holy Scripture are such as these : The Word,
by whom " all things were made," " was made
flesh and dwelt among us." * The Son of man
"came down from heaven," to do the will of
Him that sent Him.' Jesus speaks of a glory

* John Yiii. 84. • John 1. 8, 14. ' John Ti. 88.

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62 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

which He " had with the Father before the
world was," ^ which glory He left, to come into
the world to save man. The apostle Paul
goes not a word beyond the explicit teaching
of Christ Himself, when he says that He " be-
ing in the form of God, counted it not a prize
to be on an equality with God, but emptied
Himself, taking the form of a servant, being
made in the likeness of men ; and being found
in fashion as a man. He humbled Himself, be-
coming obedient even unto death." *

As to the relation of the work of Jesus
Christ to the salvation of men, the sacred
writers are also unanimous and explicit. The
apostles uniformly teach that man's salvation
is secured, primarily, not through the moral
influence of the holy life or self-sacrificing
death of Jesus Christ, but through that death
as an expiation for sin. He is said, with al-
lusion to the ancient Jewish sacrifices, to be
" the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin
of the world " ; ' and to be " the propitiation
for our sins." * We are said to be " reconciled "
by His death, even as, being thus reconciled,
we are "saved by His [glorified] life."* He
is said to have " put away sin by the sacrifice

» John xvli. 6. • Phil. il. 6-8 (r. v.).

'John i. 29. « 1 John ii. 2 ; Rom. ill. 26.

*Bom. T.IO.

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The Doctrine Regarding Salvation, -63

of Himself " ; ^ to have been " delivered up on
account of our offenses,"^ so that we are
"justified,"^ not by our own works, but "by
BQs blood."* And all these and numerous
similar statements only reproduce in varied
form what our Lord explicitly said of Himself,
that He came, not merely to set men a noble
example, and lure them to God by the beauty
of holiness, but "to give His life as a ran-
som for many," * and shed His blood " for the
remission of sins." '

As the Christian teaching concerning recon-
ciliation of God is on this wise, so it is also
taught with equal clearness, that as pardon, so
also purijBcation of the heart and life, is at-
tainable only through the power of this same
Christ, working in us by the Holy Spirit. We
are said to be saved " by His life." ^ He is said
to be " able to save to the uttermost them that
draw near unto God through Him, seeing He
ever liveth to make intercession for them."^
We are said to be made " free from the law of
sin and of death," to which we are all by na-
ture in bondage, by " the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus."* The atoning death it-

« Heb. Ix. 28. « Rom. Iv. 25, Greek.

•Rom. III. 20. *Rom. V. 9.

• Matt. XX. 28. • Matt. xxvl. 28.

' llom. V. 10. • Heb. .vil. 25 (B. v.).
*Rom.Yiii. 2(B. v.).

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64 Handhook of Compaa*ati/ve Religion.

self is re|»^esent6d as in order to this end. He
is said to have reconciled us " through [His]
death," in order to present us "holy and with-
out blemish and unreprovable before Him
[God]."^

And as to the way in which men may secure
this pardon and purity of heart which is pro-
vided for us in Christ, the Scriptures teach
that both the pardon and the purification and
deliverance come through faith. "By Him
every one that believeth is justified from all
things." * Sanctification also is declared to be
"by faith in "Him.*

Finally, the Scriptures which teach these
things teach no less explicitly that this is not
merely one way, or the best of many ways of
salvation, but the only way. The apostle de-
clared: "There is none other name under
heaven given . . . whereby we must be
saved." * Even to His own disciples Jesus said,
with regard to holy living : " Apart from Me
ye can do nothing." * That men may also be
saved by faithful following of the prescrip-
tions of other religions, although in these days
a very popular opinion, is not only a thought
wholly foreign to biblical teaching, but is

» Col. 1. 22 (R. v.). • Acto Xlll. 89 (R. v.).

' Acts XXVI. 18. * Acts iv. 12.

*Jobnxy.5(B. v.).

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The Doctrine Regarding SalmaMon, &i

again and again directly contradicted in the^
Scriptures. Concerning all who had come be*
fore Him, and offered themselves to men for
their spiritual shepherds, Jesus Himself said :
"All that came before Me are thieves and
robbers." ^ So much for the biblical doctrine
as to the way of salvation.

The M ohammeda n doctrine of salvation
stands in ttesnarpest contrast with all this.
While according to the teaching of our Lord,
salvation is, above all, a salvation from the
power and the presence of sin ; and deliverance
from the penalty of sin, is simply in order to
this end ; on the other hand, in the Moham-
medan conception, salvation consists merely in
deliverance from punishment. The connection
of salvation with holiness of character, as per-
taining to its very essence, is so completely lost
sight of, that, as above noted, one of the most
enlightened Maulavis in India has declared that
God, in virtue of His absolute sovereignty, may
even save some who have never repented of
sin.^ Hence there may easily be impenitent
sinners in Paradise !

With such low views of the evil of sin, and
indifference to deliverance from it, it is not
surprising that IslaiU Utterly denies the need.

* John X. 8. ? See above p. 18.

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66 Ilandhook of Comparative Religion.

of any expiatory sacrifice in order to the
pardon of sin. The Christian doctrine of
atonement is in the Quran denied again and
again in the most explicit manner. Thus re-
peatedly it is written to this effect : " No soul
shall acquire any merits or demerits but for
itself; and no burdened soul shall bear the
burden of another ; " * " Nothing shall be im-
puted to a man for righteousness except his
own labor."

Hence, as is well known, Mohammedanism
also denies with emphasis the Incarnation of
the Son of God. Christ Jesus was merely a
man; a prophet, no doubt, but yet a mere
man like Abraham, Moses, and the other
prophets ; greater than those before him, but
less than Mohammed.' With so little appre-
hension of the evil of sin, it is not strange that
the doctrine of the New Testament, of an in-
carnation in order to a Divine atonement for
sin, should find no place in Islam. There is
no logical place for it, if Mohammedan postu-
lates be granted. The Quran once and again
declares that those who regard Jesus as God,
are "infidels," and for them a special hell
(lAza) is prepared. The affirmation of the In-

» Sura v!. 164.

•And yet, strangely, while the sinfulness of Mohammed is ad-
mitted |u the Quran. .Jesus is represented as a sinless prophet !

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The Doctrine Regarding Sanation, 67

carnation is " shirk^'* the greatest sin of which
a man can be guilty. It is Icufr^ blasphemy
— against God.

It should be noted, however, in passing, that
notwithstanding all this, even in Islam the
crying need of the human soul for an incarna-
tion and for atoning blood is witnessed. In-
consistently enough, sacrifice is required of
every good Mohammedan. It is true that the
expiatory idea is ignored, and the Moham-
medan sacrifices are explained as commemora-
tive of the readiness of the patriarch Abraham
to offer up Isaac, as self-dedicatory, or as of-
fered by way of thanksgiving. Still, behind
these lies none the less truly, even though un-
consciously, the original witness of the human
heart to the need of incarnation and atoning
blood in order to salvation. Moreover, va-
rious sects among the Mohammedans, as, e. ^.,
the Babis in Persia, and the followers of the
Caliph Hakim in Egypt, hold to some notion
of an incarnation; and the Shais in India
maintain that the deaths of Hosein and Hasan
at Kerbela were expiatory of sin.

As for deliverance from the presence of sin,
and the attainment of holiness, Mohammed
has simply nothing to say on the subject. A
missionary to Egypt states that he has ex-

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68 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

amined every passage in the Quran with refer-
ence to this question of personal holiness, and
as the result declares that "it is a hopeless
task to look for . . . the doctrine of the
necessity of purity of heart in the Quran."
There is therefore no suggestion whatever as
to the way of its attainment.

In the Quran the means of such a salvation
as it recognizes, is said to be faith ; but this,
again, not in the Christian sense. There is no
element of trust in a loving and forgiving God
and Saviour. Faith is represented as consist-
ing merely in an intellectual, nay even igno-
rant, unintelligent, and merely verbal assent to
the Kalima : — " There is no God but God and
Mohammed is His prophet." Good works,
however, have their place in obtaining salva-
tion. Especially important is it to observe
daily the five times of prayer, to give ahns, to
fast from sunrise to sunset throughout the
whole month of Ramazan, and once in the life
to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Sometimes
language is used which seems to ascribe to
good works a direct efficacy in the procure-
ment of salvation.

Thus it is said that if believers who give
alms conceal them, and give unto the poor,
" this will be better for you, and will atone for

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The Doc^vne Regarding Salvation. 69

yoiir sins." ^ Practically, it is fair to say that
Mohammedanism teaches the merit of good
works, and their efficacy as a ground — though
not a certain ground — of acceptance with God.

Finally, Mohammedanism teaches no less
emphatically than the Christian Scriptures
that there is only one way of salvation : but
whereas in the gospel Christ declares Himself
to be the only Way, and His Name the only
name given under heaven whereby men may
be saved, the Quran teaches that there is no
salvation for any outside of Islam. " Whoso-
ever followeth any other religion than Islam,
it shall not be accepted of him; and in the
next life he shall be of those that perish." *

Very different alike from the Christian and
the Mohammedan conception of salvation, is
that of Hindooism. No more than in Islam,
is the question how to be rid of the sinful
heart and character ; but rather how to escape
from the various sufferings incident to this
embodied life. But, according to the com-
monly accepted notion, these various suflfer-

» Snra 11. 271.

«Sura lil. 84. It is indeed tnie that in Sura li. 61, an early Sura,
given at Medina, it i» said that .lews. Christians, and Sabians, in a
word, ** whoever believeth in God and tiie last day, and doth that
wliicii is right shall have their reward with tlieir Lord, and there
shall come no fear on tliem." But it is generally agreed by the
Mohammedan doctors that tills eaiiy deliverauce was degraded
by the passage given in the text.

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70 Handbook of Comparatwe HeUgion.

ings and troubles of life, are in fact insepa;-
rable from personal existence. Hence when
the Hindoo speaks of mukt% which is the term
usually employed by Indian Christians to
denote " salvation," he means something very
different from what we mean. The word
strictly means " liberation," but connotes noth-
ing as to what that is from which one is liber-
ated. With the Christian, mvMi is "liber-
ation" from sin; but with the Hindoo it is
liberation from personal conscious existence.

All sects of Hindoos believe in the doctrine
of transmigration. When a man dies he is or-
dinarily born again, either in this world or
some other : but in any case this rebirth in-
volves at least the liability to manifold pains
and troubles. As a South India Folk Song
puts it :

'*How maoy births are past, I cuunot telL
How many yet to come do man can say :
But this alone I know, and know fuU weU,
That i)ain and grief embitter aU the way.*^

Deliverance from this necessity of repeated
births, whether into this world, or one of the
heavens or of the hells, is what the Hindoo
means when he talks of obtaining salvation.
I do not recollect ever to have met the con-

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Tlic JJoetriiie Regarding SaVvcUiim. Tl

•ception in any authority on modem orthodox
Hindooism that salvation essentially consists
in deliverance from sin, in an inner radical
transformation of character.

As to the means of salvation, understood in
the Hindoo sense, it is taught, in general, that
there are two ways, namely, the gydn mdrg^
" the way of knowledge," and Ihakti mdrg^ or
"the way of devotion," or — as some have
chosen to put it — of faith. From those who
advocate the superior excellence of the way of
knowledge, one often hears language which
sounds very like the teaching of Christ, that
to know God is life eternal. But the knowl-
edge intended is very different in the two
cases. The knowledge, the attainment of
which, according to the gydn indrg^a becomes
the instrument of liberation, is the recognition
of my essential identity with Brahma, the
impersonal God; whence it follows that all
that consciousness testifies to the contrary is
an illusion; as is frankly admitted. It is
taught that this transcendental knowledge is
to be attained by the diligent practice of va-
rious ascetic observances, which space will not
allow us to detail. For this reason, the gydn
mdrcp has not had the popularity that the
Ihakti mdrg has had. This is the way of

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72 Handbook of Coiiiparative Religion,

" devotion," or " faith " in personal deities, es- •
pecially in the god Krishna. But this hhakti
is as different as possible from the Christian
conception of faith in Christ. For nowhere is
it taught that either Krishna or any other of
the personal objects of worship has done any-
thing for the sinner's salvation ; nor do they
propose to do anything for him. His liber-
ation is to be obtained by something which he
is to do himself ; namely, by the maintenance
of a certain frame of mind toward the deity
whom he worships.

In the Bhagavad Gita, wherein it is at-
tempted to combine these two contrasted
schemes of salvation, it is taught that the
hhakti which thus saves consists in doing
everything with exclusive reference to Krishna,
without regard to any pleasure or other ad-
vantage or benefit to be derived from such ac-
tions. Ordinarily, it is taught, we are by our
actions, good and bad, bound to the necessity
of repeated births. Hence the ideal of the
gydn mdrgh is to renounce " action " ; an ideal
most nearly attained by some of the Hindoo
ascetics, who sit day after day with their eyes
closed, apparently oblivious to all about them,
endeavoring to think nothing but this one
thought, Tadaham^ " I am That," i. e.^ Brahma.

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The Doctrine Rega/rdiing Sal/oation. Td

But the more popular Bh%avad teaches that
this end may be more easily attained. Even
although I act, as is necessary for most men in
this world, I may be saved, if only my actions
be all performed without any reference to any
advantage, here or hereafter, which may come
to me through them.

In the primitive Vedic religion of India,
there is much which reminds one of the Chris-
tian doctrine of the necessity of a Divine
atonement to the forgiveness of sin. In the
Kig Veda we find expressions such as this :
"Do thou, by means of sacrifice, take away
from us all sin." ^ In the T^ndya Maha Brah-
mana of the Sama Yeda it is said of sacrifice :
"Thou art the annulment of sin — of sin!"
Not only so, but the doctrine of that early
time was that Prajapati, the Lord and Saviour
of the universe, gave Himself for men. Thus
it is written in the Satapatha Brahmana:
" The Lord of creatures gave Himself for them ;
for He became their sacrifice." In the Tait-
tiriya Brahmana it is written : " The sacrifice
is the victim ; it (the sacrifice) takes the sacri-
ficer to the blessed place."

But these ancient conceptions, so marvel-
ously near the truth set forth in the gospel,

» Rig Veda X. 133-6.

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74 Hcmdbooh of Comparatwe Religion,

have practically disappeared from iriodera
Hindooism. The place which is occupied by
sacrifice — now much less frequent — ^in the
modern religion, is very different. In these
days, the ideas of atonement and substitution
are not commonly connected with the sacrifice.
It is instead regarded either as an offering of
food to the god which is worshiped, or as in
order to the placation of some angry demon.
But while we cannot say, that atonement, in
the sense of the substitution of a sacrificed
victim for the sinner, in order to the expiation
of his sin, is a doctrine of modern Hindooism ;
yet it is still believed that sin must be expiated,
in order to salvation ; and this by the sinner's
own voluntary or involuntary acts or suffei^
ings. That is, whatever evil one does, the ill-
desert of the act must be expiated, either
through some penance {prdyaschitt) enjoined
by the Brahmans, or by suffering in some fu-
ture birth. But it is held equally true that
whatever good one may do, this also, no less
than the evil, makes a rebirth necessary, in
order that he may reap the fruit of this. But
this is far enough from the Christian doctrine
of atonement.

The Hindoos, as is well known, generally be-
lieve in the incarnation of the Deity. Concern-

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Tlw Doctrme Itegardiiig Saihation. Y6

ing this, it is the orthodox doctrine that there
thus far have been nine incarnations (avatirs), *
and that a tenth, commonly known as the
Nishhalank Avatar^ or " Sinless Incarnation,"
is still future. It has often been fancied that
in this doctrine of incarnation we have a very
close agreement with Christian doctrine. But
in reality, between the Christian and the Hin-
doo doctrine as to the incarnation of the Deity,
there is much more of contrast than of agree-
ment.

In the first place, it is the Christian doctrine
of the Incarnation that Jesus Christ was God
incarnate in a sense unique and exclusive. On
the contrary, the Hindoo doctrine, in accord-
ance with the universal pantheism, is that the
distinction between men in general and the so-
called incarnations, is not in kind, but in de-
gree only. All men are incarnations of the
Deity, each in his measure ; and even among
the ten who are regarded as incarnations par
excellence^ some are said to have had more,
some less, of the Divine nature.

Secondly, the incarnation of the Son of God,
according to New Testament teaching, was in
its very nature incapable of repetition ; while,
as just remarked, the Hindoos maintain that in

'Lit. *'desceiito.**

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76 Hcmdbook of Compwratvoe Religion.

the special supereminent sense there have
already been nine incarnations of the Deity,
and that a tenth is yet to come. Again, the
Christian doctrine lays stress upon the fact
that the incarnation of the Son of God was a
voluntary act; while Hindooism expressly
teaches that the supposed incarnations of the
Deity, no less really than the births of ordi-
nary men, were the necessary fruit of works
done by the incarnate one in a previous state
of existence. They could not therefore be ex-
pressions of the Divine love to lost sinners,
and as a matter of fact, are never so repre-
sented. Further, whereas our blessed Lord is
declared to have been without sin, "holy,
harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners,"
all the Hindoo incarnations thus far are repre-
sented as having been sinful ; indeed, many of
them are set forth as having differed from
ordinary men in nothing more than in having
utterly transcended them in impurity of life,
hatred, anger, and vindictiveness. The doctrine
of the "sinless incarnation" yet to appear, is
however very suggestive, as being a virtual con-
fession, which seems to express the sense of
the Hindoos that these supposed incarnations
hitherto, as having been thus sinful, have not
fulfilled the ideal of a Divine incarnation.

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The Doctrine Regarding Salvation. 77

Finally, whereas it is said to have been the
object of the incarnation of our Lord that He
might save His people from their sins, this is
never in the Hindoo Scriptures once repre-
sented as the purpose of any of their incarna-
tions. On the contrary, the Deity is again
and again said to have assumed bodily form
on earth, in order to deliver the good from
their enemies, and destroy sinners, instead of
saving them. Even the Nishk<xlank Avata/r^
still expected, is likewise foretold as to come
for the destruction of sinners. Thus in no in-
stance has the Hindoo doctrine of incarnation,
any more than have their modern sacrificial
rites, any connection with the salvation of sin-
ners from their sins ; while, it should be added,
the Shaivites or worshipers of Shiva, deny the
doctrine of incarnation altogether.

In connection with the doctrine of salvation,
Christianity lays great stress upon union with
God through Jesus Christ, as essential to sal-
vation from sin and to holy living ; and, so far
as words go, the expressions which are used in
many Hindoo sacred books might seem to teach
the same thing. Yoga^ or union with the Su-
preme Being, is often held up as the highest
good, in language which sounds like much in
the gospels and epistles. But in this matter

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78 Handbook of Compa/rative Religion.

again, in reality, we have not similarity, but
the strongest contrast. For the union with
God in Christ of which the New Testament
writers say so much, does not involve any sup-
pression of, still less loss of, personality. The
believer, through his faith mystically united
with God in Christ, is still, according to the
New Testament teaching, as separate and dis-
tinct from God as ever he was. But, on the
contrary, all Hindoos intend by yoga^ " union "
with God, the exact opposite ; namely, the ut-
ter loss of the separate personality of the
devotee, the absolute and final cessation of per-
sonal existence, through absorption in Brahma,
even as the wave becomes lost in the ocean.

Finally, to complete this part of our com-
parison, it must be added that whereas Chris-
tianity recognizes no way of salvation apart
from Christ, Hindooism regards no man as ex-
cluded from the final possibility of mnlcti^ on
account of race or religion. Some will no
doubt regard this as a point wherein the Hin-
doo teaching, as being more broad, is superior
to that of Jesus Christ ; but the vital question,
after all, is not which is the broader, but which
is the true teaching. Nor can we credit this
belief to the superiority of the Hindoo to the
Christian in charity ; seeing that such an in-

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The Doctrine Regarding Salvation, 79

ference necessarily follows from the pantheism
which is fundamental to the modern Hindoo
religion.

Turning now to Buddhism, we meet with a
doctrine concerning salvation which is even
more remote from Christianity than that of
Hindooism. Salvation, in the Buddhist doc-
trine, is not absorption in the universal Divine
Essence, as in Hindooism, for Buddhism knows
of no Supreme Being, whether in a theistic or
pantheistic sense. Still less is it eternal resi-
dence in heaven, even such a heaven as is prom-
ised to the faithful Mussulman. It is simply
non-existence. It is deliverance from that ne-
cessity of repeated rebirth which is occasioned
by the presence of tanhd or " desire," and is
eternal cessation of being. This is nirvana or
nibhdna ; ^ or, to be more precise, — since a lower
grade of nirvana is recognized, — ^it i^jparinih-
ha/na^ the supreme nirvana,

I am well aware that this has often been
denied by scholars of eminence ; but it is hard
to resist the feeling — if one may judge some
such by their own words — that they have often
been determined in their opinion more by their
western ideas as to the highest good, than by
a reference to the plain words of the ancient

* Nibhana Is the PMi form of the Sanskrit word nii^cina.

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80 Hcmdhook of Comparative lidigioH,

Buddhist Scriptures.^ It is hftrd to see how
the non-existence of him who has attained
nirvana could be more categorically affirmed
than by the words attributed to the Buddha in
the Sutta Nipdta ; wherein one asking infor-
mation on this subject is answered by the Bud-
dha : " That by which they say * He is ' exists for
him (the delivered or saved one) no longer."'
No less explicit are the words in another part
of the same Sutta^ where we are told that they
" who perfectly conceive the state (of nihbdna)
. . . are completely extinguished."' So
again with equal explicitness, we read in the
Vinaya Pitaka^ " By the destruction of thirst
{tanhd\ Attachment is destroyed ; by the de-
struction of Attachment, Existence is de-
stroyed."

And indeed, when it is remembered that the
idea of the supreme good must needs be deter-
mined by the conception one may have of the
supreme evil, it is plain that granting the Bud-
dhist postulates constantly reaffirmed, that the
chief evil is pain or sorrow, and that sorrow is
a necessary and inseparable concomitant of ex-
istence, then salvation, at least in its strict and

*See, e. g., the laii|<;uaRe used by Sir Edwin Arnold, In the Pref-
ace to his Light of Asia ; also the words used by Professor Max
M tiller. Science of Religion, p. 140.

^See Sutta Nipata ; Parayanavagga, vll. 4-8.

•lb. Dvayatdinupassana Sutta, 42.

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The Doctrine Regarding Salvation, 81

highest sense, mvst consist in the extinction of
existence. ^

It is however true that nirvana is also rep-
resented in a different way in the Buddhist
authorities; namely, as the attainment of a
certain ethical state and temper of mind and
character; something, moreover, which is or
may be reached in this present life. We read,
for instance: "The destruction of passion,
and of wish for the dear objects which have
been perceived, O Hemaka, is the imperishable
state of nirvdna.^^ ^ Here then we meet with
a conception of salvation which in so far a^ees

* Quire recently, Dr. Paul Carusjn The MonUU has reiterated
the denial that nirvana consists in the extinetiun of existence.
Rut I find In his article nothing whieli should constrain one to be-
lieve that such eminent s|>ecialistH in Buddiiist doctilne as Child*
ers, Oldenberg. Rhys Davids.and otliers, are mistaken In thismat<
ter. He argues his position from a passii^e in the Samyutta
Nikdpa, wherein apparently, if it be undersUKKl according to our
western Ideas, the continued existence of him wlio has attained
nirvana might seem Ut be taught. But Dr. <'arus' own interpreta-
tion seems to lead to the very conclusion which we maintain. For
we are told that all the constituents of man are "transitory," and
tlieiefore '*cannot be regarded as his . . . enduring self."
But If so, then If alt the constituents of the man wiio has attained
nirvana are gone, how can the man himself be still regarded as
existing? Dr. Cams illustrates what he regards as the correct
understanding of this matter by a quotation from the Vimddhi
^fnffga, which he takes to imply his own view of the nature of nlr-
vana. Thus :

"Misery only doth exist, none miserable.
No dof»r is there, naught save the deed Is found.
Nirvana /«, but not the man who seeks It :
The Path exists, but not the traveler on it."

But these words will seem to most of us as onlv a paradoxical ex-

Cresslon of the most extreme nihilism. The substance is perished,
ut Its attributes remain I The deed remains, but not the doer !
To attempt to distinguish such a condition frcmi what In ordinary
language we call non-existence, seems to be a mere waste of
words. See The Monist. Jan. 1897, pi). 266, 266.
^Sutta Nipata; Parayanavagga, Ix. 3.

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82 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

with that of Christianity that it is made to con-
sist in the attainment of a certain type of char-
acter ; a type, moreover, which is characterized
by the extinction of sin. But when we recall
to mind what has been set forth in the previous
chapter as to the Buddhist idea of sin, it is
plain that the resemblance herein between this
conception of the nature of salvation and that
which is presented in Christianity, is wholly
superficial and unreal. For sin is one thing in
Christianity, quite another in Buddhism. It
is true enough that certain things regarded
as sinful by the Buddhist, are held to be sin
also by the Christian ; but many other things
are held to be sin by the Buddhist, which ac-
cording to the gospel are not sin ; so that it is
very clear that the standard by which an ac-
tion or moral state was judged by the Buddha
to be sinful or otherwise, was very diflferent
from that which determines this in Christianity.
Hence nirvana^ even if considered in its (lower)
sense of deliverance from sin, is something very
different from the salvation of the gospel.
The Buddhist who is regarded as in this sense
a saved man, is not merely a man who has
ceased to hate, but who has ceased also to love ;
who has not only ceased to desire evil, but also
to desire good ; and who, if delivered from the

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The Doctrine Rega/rding Salvation, 83

desire of long life in this sinful world, is equally
delivered from any desire to go to heaven!
Assuredly, this ideal of salvation is only one
less degree removed from that of the gospel,
than that of absolute annihilation.

Again, it is also true, that the common
people, in Buddhist lands often conceive of
salvation as consisting in a residence after
death in a place of blessedness ; and for this
view also texts can be quoted from the Bud-
dhist Scriptures. Thus, we read : "Evil doers
go to hell; righteous people go to heaven."
But it is immediately added in this text from
the DKammapada^ — as if to caution any one
from supposing that in its highest sense this
is salvation — "those who are free from all
worldly desires " (i. ^., from all desire for any-
thing, either good or evil in this world) " at-
tain nirvdnaP ^

Furthermore, the Buddhist heaven is not a
place of eternal abode. No one can stay there
forever. To suppose this, were to contradict
directly the fundamental postulate of the
whole Buddhist system, that there is no per-
manence anywhere in anything, either good
or evil.

Again, whereas the teaching of Christ was

* Vhammapada, 126.

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84 Handbook of Coityparatvoe Religion,

that no man ever has saved or can save him-
self, and that the sole author of salvation is
God Himself in Christ, the Buddha taught,
and that with emphasis, the exact opposite,
that every man must be his own saviour. It
is written :

" By one's self the evil is done ; by one's self
one suffers ; by one's self evil is left undone ;
by one's self one is purified. Lo, no man can
purify another." '

In nothing is the contrast between Bud-
dhism and Christianity more marked than just
at this point. The teaching of the gospel is
that God became man to save man : that of
Buddhism is, in effect, that man may make
himself God, thereby saving himself. The one
teaches a Divine self-humiliation to save sin-
ful man, the other a human self-exaltation
whereby the man may save himself.

One can scarcely speak of a " ground " of
salvation, when speaking of the Buddhist sal-
vation; for this phrase implies a superior
Power who accepts or rejects a man on ac-
count of certain things done or suffered by
himself or another, whereas Buddhism knows
nothing of any such Power. It is taught,
however, that the means whereby one may

' Vhammapada, 165.

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The Doctrine Reijardhig Salvation. 85

attain to salvation is the practice of certain
good works. Not that there is any superior
Power which will reward the doer ; but there
is a certain necessary, though non-moral, nexus
between certain deeds or acts and certain re-
sults, which insures that, given certain acts, a
certain result will follow. But the reason of
this is not judicial or legal, but purely physical,
like that in virtue of which the planting of a
certain seed insures the appearance of a certain
kind of plant.

As for the means whereby one may secure
salv^ation, the biblical statements^ are plain that
the sinner obtains salvation by means of faith ;
that is, by trust in a crucified, but now risen
and living, Saviour, Jesus Christ the Lord, and
in virtue of His atoning death. The Buddha,
on the contrary, taught that salvation is to be
obtained by following the " Noble Eightfold
Path." From the standpoint of the southern
and orthodox Buddhism, to speak of trust in
the Buddha were absurd ; for having attained
the ineffable nirvana^ he is now infinitely be-
yond reach. The "Noble Eightfold Path"
is declared by the Buddha to be: — Eight
views; Right aspirations; Right speech ; Right
coriduct ; Right livelihood ; Right effort ; Right
mindfulness; and Right contemplation. Even

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86 Hcmdhook of Comparative Religion,

were we to assume that these several phrases
mean what the words naturally suggest to any
one brought up in a Christian land, it would
be plain that the Buddhist doctrine of salva-
tion, as contrasted with the Christian, teaches
instead of salvation by trust in another, salva-
tion by one's own works, in a word, by right-
ness of life. Even so, the two doctrines are
antagonistic, — ^if one is true, the other is false.
But the divergence is far greater than this.
For the Buddha did not intend to teach by
these words merely salvation by moral and
upright living, such as is the trust of so many
in Christian lands ; he meant something wholly
different. For what these words may mean,
manifestly depends upon what is regarded as
the standard of rightness ; which in this case
is one nowhere recognized in Christendom.
For instance, when " right views " are enjoined
as fundamental to all the rightness, by this it
is meant that he who would be saved, must
hold those views of life which are set forth in
what are known as " the Four Noble Truths,"
namely: that existence of necessity involves
sorrow ; that this sorrow is caused by desire ;
that the extinction of sorrow, which is the
object of the doctrine of salvation, is therefore
to be attained through the extinction of all

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The Doctrine Reya/rding Sdhatuyiu 87

desire; and, finally, that this extinction of
desire will be brought about by walking in
the above described " Noble Eightfold Path."
These are the " right views," the adoption of
which is the first step in the " Noble Eightfold
Path " which conducts to nirvana. Similarly,
the " right aims " are described as " such as
tend to the renouncing of the world." But
this phrase is not intended in the ordinary
ethical sense as understood by Protestants;
but in the most extreme monastic sense. By
" rightness of livelihood," again, as another of
these means of salvation, it is intended that a
man shall gain his livelihood in such a way as
shall injure no living being. It is taught, for
example, that the emplojrment of a hunter, or
a fisherman, or a butcher, is incompatible with
walk in the " Noble Eightfold Path " ; and if
consistent, the Buddhist would also have to
say that the employment of a doctor com-
monly involves sin ; because, by giving quinine
to a patient suflfering with intermittent fever,
he thereby destroys that low form of animal
life the presence of which in the circulation
causes the chill and fever !

Such is the means of salvation as set forth
in the canonical books of orthodox Buddhism
as held in Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam. In

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88 Handbook of Comparative Beligion,

Thibet, China, and Japan, however, Buddhism
has become greatly modified, and therewith
especially its doctrine as to the means of sal-
vation. The northern Buddhists believe that
a Buddha yet to be born on earth is at present
living somewhere in the heavens; and this
imaginary being, called the Bodhisat^ is prac-
tically regarded as a God to whom men in
their need may pray and look for help. And
so it has come about that in consequence of
that ineradicable sense of the need of a Saviour,
which the orthodox Buddhism utterly refuses
to satisfy, man has evolved for himself, in the
northern Buddhism, a doctrine of salvation
which bears a considerable resemblance to
the Christian doctrine. Not Christ, but the
heavenly Bodhisat^ the so-called Amitaha Bvd-
dha^ is the object of faith. He is supposed
through countless bygone ages to have been
accumulating for himself an infinite stock of
merit ; and it is believed that when a man puts
his faith in this imaginary being, all of
Amitaba's merit is, as it were, transferred to
him ; and so, released now from the necessity
of continued rebirth into this world of pain
and sorrow, the believer is at death received
into a heaven of everlasting blessedness. It
has with reason been remarked : " It is very

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The Doctrine Regarding Salvation. 89

remarkable that Buddhism, beginning in sheer
atheism, should finally have reached the very
threshold of Christianity, without the Christ.
No other false system has ever paid so marked
a tribute, though involuntary, to the funda-
mental doctrines of Christianity." ^

As for Confucianism, it cannot be said to
have a doctrine of salvation. Confucius con-
cerned himself exclusively with this present
life; and, ignoring God and our relation to
Him, and with this the future and unseen
world, he had no place for any teaching as to
the saving of sinners. The question does not
even seem to have been within his horizon.

Taouism long ago borrowed from Buddhism
the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and
appears to teach that the deliverance of man
from evil is brought about through various
purgatorial sufferings. If these fail to bring
about a man's moral improvement, he is then
consigned to endless torment in hell. But so
inadequately have both Confucianism and
Taouism dealt with the question of what a
sinner must do to be saved, that practically,
the Chinese have fallen back for a doctrine of
salvation, on a Buddhism of the type just ex-
plained.

* Encyclopaedia of Missions, vol. i., p. 21Z

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OHAPTEE VI.

THE DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE FUTURE.

Of importance fully equal to the fascination
which it has had for the greatest minds in all
ages, is the question, What shall the end be ?
This question comprehends two questions:
first. What is the final destiny of the individual
man ? and, second, What is the destiny of this
world of men as a collective organism ?

' In answer to the first of these two questions,
the gospel of Christ assures us that death does
not end all ; that the soul of man is immortal,
so that man will live forever, as a self-con-
scious personality; and moreover that there
shall yet be, at a time unknown to all but God,
a resurrection to bodily life of all the dead, in
order that they may be judged according to
their works. It further teaches that until the
day of resurrection the souls of all penitent and
obedient believers in God, and — whenever and
wherever revealed — in His Son Jesus Christ,
when they die, " depart to be with Christ " ;
and that if their blessedness in this disem-
90

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Th^ Doctrhie Concerning the Future, 91

bodied state be not yet complete, their condi-
tion is yet " very far better " than in this pres-
ent life.*

It is taught, on the other hand, that the souls
of the departed ungodly and wicked — to use
the words employed by the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, concerning the rich man who died —
are "in torment"; which He Himself also
chose to illustrate by the image of fire and ex-
treme thirst.'

With regard to that period called " the day
of judgment," it is taught that " all that are
in the tombs shall hear His [Christ's] voice,
and shall come forth ; they that have done
good unto the resurrection of life, and they
that have done ill unto the resurrection
of judgment."' In that day, we are told,
every man shall be rewarded according to his
works ; * that as for believers, while their ac-
ceptance before God on the ground of Christ's
atonement is the sole reason for their exemp-
tioa from that " indignation and wrath, tribu-
lation and anguish " which shall overtake the
ungodly,* so that they are saved merely
through the grace of God; yet their reward
shall be strictly according to their works; one

» Phil. i. 28. (R. V.) «Lukexvi.23,24.

* John V. 28, 29. (B. y.) * Matt. xvi. 27, and N. T. passim,

•Rom. ii. 8, 9.

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92 Hcmdbook of Compa/rative Religion.

shall rule over five, another over ten cities ; '
while the work of others which they wrought
in the days of their eartlily life "shall be
burned," so that, although they themselves
shall be saved, it shall yet be as "through
tire."^

In like manner, it was taught by Jesus
Christ that there will be great differences in
the severity of the punishment of the finally
impenitent and condemned. The servant that
knew his master's will and did it not, shall be
beaten " with many stripes " ; w^hile he that
knew not his master's will and did it not, shall
be beaten " with few stripes." ^ And, according
to the teaching of the Scriptures, as under-
stood by the great majority of Christians in
all age^ not only the reward of the righteous,
but also the retribution of the ungodly will be
eternal. Regarding this matter the Lord
Jesus used these most explicit words : " These "
— i. <9., those just mentioned who had failed in
the law of love — " shall go away into eternal
punishment : but the righteous into eternal
life." '

It is of the greatest importance to observe,
in comparing Christian with non-Christian

» Luke xlx. 17. 18. « 1 Cor. III. 16. (b. v.}

' Luke xii. 47. * Matt. xxv. 46 (b. t.).

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The Doctrine Coticeming the Future, 93

teaching on this point, that, according to
Christian doctrine, in this final fixation of the
eternal destiny of men, there is nothing arbi-
trary. The final destiny is determined by the
presence or absence of a certain type of moral
character, marked by purity of heart, and su-
preme love to God. That the salvation of the
believer is always said to be of grace, does not
affect this fact : for the Holy Scriptures every-
where teach that the grace which through
atoning blood justifies and pardons the be-
liever, does this in order that by the in work-
ing of the Holy Spirit, the teaching of the
Word, and the various discipline of life, the
once sinful man may finally come to be without
" spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." ^ Nor
does any word of Scripture ever hint that any
man will ever be visited with everlastirig pun-
ishment in whom this holiness of character is
found. Such, in brief, is the teaching of Chris-
tianity, as commonly understood, regarding
the ultimate destiny of individual men.

As regards the final destiny of this world,
the Scriptures teach, as understood by all
Christians, that whereas now sin and unright-
eousness; and ignorance of God, prevail more
or less in all lands, a day is coming in which

* Epb. ¥. 27.

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94 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

all this shall be reversed ; " the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea," ^ and " all nations shall
serve" and obey the Christ of^God. * They
also teach that in that day of judgment which
brings in the resurrection and reward of the
righteous and the wicked, this material earth
in which we live shall be burned with fire.'
But the same apostle who speaks most fully on
this subject, hastens to add that the result of
these last fires, shall be, not the annihilation
of the planet as a habitable globe, but the ap-
pearance of " a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness." ^ And the sacred record closes
with a picture full of mysterious glory, in
which it is no doubt hard to say how much
is to be taken as literal, and how much as
figurative, but in which this at least seems
clearly to appear as the issue of human his-
tory : namely, a new heaven and a new earth,
from which all that is impure and unholy shall
be forever excluded, and whose blessed inhab-
itants shall live in the immediate vision and
fellowship of their God and Father to all eter-
nity.* Such, in a very general way, is the
teaching of Christianity concerning the last

»l8.Xl.9. »Ps. Ixxll.ll.

» 2 Pet. Hi. 7, 10. * 2 Pet. HI. 18.

'ReT.xxi.l-8;xxU. 1-6.

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future, 95

things, as understood by the majority of Chris-
tian peoglg.
\ A^^slan^has drawn so largely from the
Christian and Jewish Scriptures, we find in its
eschatology much that is in agreement with
these, though still more derived from the fan-
cies of rabbinical traditions. Like the Chris-
tian Scriptures, the Quran teaches, or rather
assumes, the immortality of the soul of man ,j^:^_
and the persistence forever of self-conscious<
ness and personality. Like Christianity, Islam
also teaches the resurrection of the dead, at a
certain preordained time, unknown to ail but
God, and the eternal existence thereafter, in a
form of bodily life, of all men who shall have
ever lived. Islam adds, however, that not

ionly men, but also angels, the imaginary be-
ings called jinns, and even the brutes, shall
have part in the resurrection.* But as re-
gards the last named, it is taught that after
having been thus raised, and having taken
satisfaction for all that they had suffered, and
having been duly punished for all evil done
by them, their bodies shall be again reduced
to dust.*
The Mohammedan religion also recognizes,

» Sura vl. 35-37 : xvli. 62-54.

"See Sale's Jh^eliminary Discourse to the Quran,

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96 Hcmdhook of Comparative Religion,

fot necessity, an i ntermediate stat e of the souls
^of the departed, between death and the resur-

(^rection. As to its natui^e, and the condition of
man therein, the Quran has but little to say ;
though traditions of sayings attributed, with
more or less reason, to Mohammed, have vari-
ously supplied the deficiency. It is taught in
the Quran, however, that the angel of death
separates the soul from the body, with vio-
lence in the case of the wicked, and with gen-
tleness in that of the righteous.^ After the
corpse is placed in the grave, it is visited by
the two angels, Munkir and Nakir, who ex-
amine the dead man as to his religious stand-
ing. If he believe in the Tcalima^ they give
him no further trouble ; but if he be an unbe-
liever, they beat him cruelly with heavy
clubs.' When this examination is completed,
the soul passes into Al BarzaTch^ the Moham-
medan Hades.* Concerning the condition of
the faithful who have departed this life, noth-
ing in the Quran is in higher tone than what
is said of those who had fallen in battle at
Ohod:

"Thou shalt in no wise reckon those who
have been slain in the cause of God as dead ;

» Sura xvl. 34, 35 ; Ixxix. 1, 2. * Sura xlvil. 29 ; vlli. 62.

•See Sura xxlli. 10], and the Kev. Dr. Wherry's Note thereon In
Ills Commentary on the Quran, vol. ill., p. 184.

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future, 97

nay, thay are sustained alive with their Lord^
rejoicing for what God of His favor has
granted them ; and being glad for those, who,
coming after them, have not yet overtaken
them : because there shall no fear come upon
them, neither shall they be grieved. They are
filled with joy for the favor which they have
received from God and His bounty; and for
that God suffereth not the reward of the faith-
ful to perish." ^

But Islam has not been content with this,
and the various traditions accounted authentic
by Mohammedans, add numerous particulars
as to the state of the dead, most of Avhich are
in suggestive contrast with the Kew Testa-
ment on this subject. A distinction is taught
as to the condition of disembodied spirits. The
^^Quls of prophets are admitted at once into
C Paradise ; those of the martyrs are said to rest
J in the crops of green birds in Paradise. As to
the souls of other Mohammedans, many be-
lieve them to linger around the graves where
the bodies are laid. Others teach that all
dwell in the lowest heaven with Adam, the
righteous on his right hand, and the wicked
on Jiis left; others, again, that they exist under
the throne of God in the form of white birds,

' Sura ill. 170-172.

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98 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

- The souls of the wicked, many believe to be

I kept in durance in a dungeon in the lowest

\ earth ; others believe that, according to a

i. ^ ( tradition imputed to Mohammed, they dwell

^ ) under the jaw of Satan, and are tormented by

\ him until the resurrection.

As to the nature of the resurrection , it is
taught that faithful Mohammedans are raised
in their own bodies, in various degrees of
honor, according to their merit.* Unbelievers ,
on the other hand, will not in all cases be
raised in their own bodies; some will bp. rftkftd
i n the form of ap es, others as swine, others as:
maimed or variously distorted.^ Oi the teach-
ing of the New Testament, based on that of
our Lord, that the resurrection body shall be
a spiritual body, such that " in the resurrec-

\tion . . . [they] neither marry, nor are

\ given in marriage,"^ there is not a trace in the
Quran. On the contrary, all the descriptions,
many of them in gross language, intimate that
the body shall be as truly an animal body as
this. Believers shall not only be delighted
with the pleasures of the palate, but shall be
capable as here of procreation ; and for their

'Suraxxxvi. 64.

^See, for a detailed account of the teaching of the Traditions on
this whole subject, Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Quran^
sec. Iv.

'LuHexx. 36,

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future, 99

enjoyment beautiful houris shall be assigned
to every true believer.^

The resurrection is to take place in the day
/'of judgment, of which the purpose is declared
Vto be the reward of all according to their
C works. Kightly enough, great emphasis is laid
* on the certainty, and the unspeakable terror
of that day. Sura Al Haqqat opens with the
words : " The infallible ! the infallible ! What
is the infallible ? " ^ To which the answer is
given that it is the announcement of this great
day of judgment. The day is said in the
Quran to be preceded by signs, such as the
splitting of the moon,' the appearing of a
great and awful smoke ; * to which the author-
ized traditions add many more: such as the
appearing of a portentous beast sixty cubits
high ; great distress among all nations ; the de-
cay of the faith ; sunrise in the west, the de-
scent of Jesus from heaven, Avho will marry
and live on the earth for forty years,* kill
antichrist, etc., etc. During this short period
of His sojourn, the earth shall enjoy great

*The grossness of tlie deseiiptioiiH of these sensual enjoyments
of good Mussulmans in Paradise, which are found in the Quran, is
astounding. See (6.^7). Suras Iv. 41-78; Ivli. 11-39; IxvJ. 12-22, e^

* Hence the name, Al Haqqdt, of this Sura.

•Suraliv. 1.2.

*Suraxliv.9, 10.

*Some say, twenty-four years.

\

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100 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

peace, so that even camels and sheep shall live
with lions and bears, and little children shall
play with serpents. Beasts and even inanimate
things shall use articulate speech ; the Imam
Mahdi shall appear ; the moon shall be eclipsed
when in conjunction with the sun ; ^ etc., etc.

As to the adjudications of that day, it is
taught: "The weighing of man's actions on
that day shall be just; and they whose bal-
ances laden with their good works shall be
heavy, are those who shall be happy; but
those whose balances shall be light, are those
who have lost their souls." These " shall re-
ma in in hell forever ." ^ Great physical coii-
vulsions shall occur : "The earth shall be shaken
with a violent shock, and the mountains shall
be dashed in pieces, and shall become as dust
scattered abroad. And ye shall be separated
into three distinct classes : The companions of
the right hand — how happy shall the compan-
ions of the right hand be ! And the companions
of the left hand — ^how miserable shall the com-
panions of the left hand, be ! And those who
have preceded others in the faith, shall pre-
cede them to Paradise."'

' Siiiji Ixxv. 8, 9. See Sale's Preliminary Discourse^ etc., sec. Iv.
In which seventeen such signs are enumerated.
^Surasvll.8,9; xxlll. 104.
"Sura Ivl. 4-10.

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Tlie Doctrine Cmieer-nhig the Future. 101

The duration of the day of judgment is said
in one place to be " the twinkling of an eye,
or even more quick " ; elsewhere, a thousand
years, and again, in another place, fifty thou-
sand years.*

The issue of the day will be the driving of
the wicked into hell, and the reception of the
righteous into Paradise.* According to the
authoritative "Traditions," all will have to
pass the bridge Sirat, no broader than a hair,
and sharper than a sword, which the righteous
shall cross safely, while the unbelievers shall
fall oflf into hell.' It should be added, how-
ever, that Islam teaches that wicked Moham-
medans will have to expiate their sins in the
hell called jahannmn ; but that finally all,
even of such Mussulmans, will be delivered,
while, on the other hand, no one who was not
on earth a true Moslem, will ever be delivered
from the torments of hell.

In nothing is there a greater contrast be-
tween the Christian Scriptures and the Mo-
hammedan Quran and traditions, than in the
way in which the paips of hell are described.
The few statementsTu' the New TuyLumi^nTare
awful indeed ; but there is a holy reticence on

» Suras xvl. 79 ; xxxH. 4 ; Ixx. 4.

*Snra Ivi. 11-43, et. seg.: also cl. 6-9 etvasMm.

*A notion probably derived from the Magious.

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102 Homdhook of Co7/iparative lieligimi,

the subject, and always an undertone of yearn-
ing pity and longing for the salvation of all;
as also a careful justice which declares that
but " few stripes " shall be visited on him who
did not his Master's will through ignorance.
In terrible contrast with this, in the Quran the
tortures to be inflicted on men in hell are
dwelt upon to weariness, and with a gross-
ness of detailed description and an utter ab-
sence of any trace of pity that any must so
suffer. Thus we read: ** Verily, those who
disbelieve our signs, we will cast to be broiled
in hell-fire; so often as their skins shall be
well burned, we will give them other skins in
exchange, that they may taste the sharper
torment ; for God is wise."^J " Transgressors
shall be cast into hell to be burned ; and a
wretched couch it shall be. This let them
taste, to wit: scalding water and corruption
flowiiig from the bodies of the damned." For
refreshment they shall have the fruit of the
tree Al Zaqqum, which is described as a " tree
that issueth from the bottom of hell : the fruit
thereof resembleth the heads of devils, and
the damned shall eat the same and shall fill
their bellies therewith, and there shall be given
them a mixture of filth and boiling water to

^Sura Iv. 64.

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Thii Doctrine Concerning the Future. 103

driiikVand afterwards, they shall return into
hell." ^ Instead of a justice tempered with holy
pity, they are represented as taunted in their
helpless agony. When the unbelievers shall
be cast into a fire " furiously raging and roar-
ing; . . . they shall call for death." It
shall be answered them, "Call not this day
for one death, but call for many deaths." " It
shall be said to the tormentors, * Take him and
drag him into the midst of hell and pour on
his head the torture of boiling water, saying.
Taste this! for thou wast that mighty and
honorable person.' " ^

Equally gross are the descriptions constantly
recurring in the Quran, of the enjoyments of
Paradise. The New Testament dwells on the
spiritual fellowship with God, and with all the
earthly imagery that is employed, never once
uses an image which could suggest an evil
thought. Very different is it with the Quran.
It is true indeed, that now and then is found a
not unworthy description of heaven, as : " They
shall be introduced into gardens of perpetual
abode ; . . . and they shall say. Praise be
to God who hath taken sorrow from us. Ver-
ily our Lord is ready to forgive the sinners
and to reward the obedient, who hath caused

' Sura XXX vii. eo-€6. "Sura xll v. 47-49.

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104 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

us to take up our rest in a dwelling of perpet-
ual stability through His bounty, wherein shall
no labor touch us, neither shall any weariness
affect us." ^

Far more frequent, however, are such de-
scriptions of the pleasures reserved for the
faithful as the following : " They shall repose
on couches the linings of w^hich shall be of
thick silk interwoven with gold. ...
Therein shall receive them beauteous damsels
refraining their eyes from beholding any be-
sides their spouses, whom no man shall have
deflowered before them."^ Elsewhere, we
read concerning " the companions of the right
hand": "They shall repose themselves on
lofty beds. Verily, we have created the dam-
sels of Paradise by a peculiar creation: and
we have made them virgins, beloved by their
husbands, of equal age with them, for the de-
light of the companions of the right hand." ^

An eternity of sensual enjoyment — this is
the heaven set forth in the Quran for the re-
ward of them that please God, as the passages
are naturally interpreted by all orthodox Mo-
hammedan interpreters.

As to the future of this earth and the world

' Sura XXXV. 80-32. * Sura l¥. 56.

•Suralvi. 83-87.

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The Doctrine CiyncerniTiy the Future, 105

of men, Islam holds out no bright prospect.
Where the Holy Scriptures tell of the coming

Sand permanent triumph of the kingdom of
God on earth, of this Mohammed seems to
have known nothing. This world is to go on,
much as now, in all its evil, until the break of
the day of judgment. The traditions indeed
say that Jesus will come again into the world,
and continue here for an ordinary lifetime,
and that during this short period universal
peace and harmony will prevail. But I have
never fallen in with a Mohammedan who
seems to have had this creed. And whereas
after the fiery judgment wherein " the earth
and the works that are therein shall be burned
up," the New Testament bids us anticipate
" new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness," * and which shall en-
dure forever;' Islam knows nothing of this
hope. So to the dark enigma of human history
with all its sin and suffering, Islam returns no
answer and offers no solution, other than that
the ages of sin and agony were what they were
simply because it so pleased God, Avho willed
that the hell which He had created should be
fill^ All is because of a horrible caprice of
Absolute and arbitrary almightiness.

^ Pet. HI. 18. • Is. Ixvl. 22.

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106 Handbook of Cmnparative Religion .

^ To all this, the eschatology oMjindooismjLn
every form, offers a great contrasT. .A^to
the future of individual men, whether, as the
Nyayiks believe, the souls of men are distinct
from each other and from God ; or whether,
as is the common Vedantic belief, all souls are
reaUy parts of the Divine essence, all agree
that the soul exists eternally. With equal
unanimity, however, is denied the continuance
of personality. The transmigration of souls
is universally believed ; but it is not claimed
that either the recollection of past forms of
existence abides in the present, or that the
memory of the present life shall survive into
th« next stage of being.

Hindooism speaks of a heaven and a hell to
which many go, but these are by no means
jthe onh^ places or states of post-mortem ex-
\ istence. I maj^ after death assume some
heavenly or some infernal form, in one of the
heavens or hells, or I may reappear here on
earth, in the form either of a human being or
some other living creature, j^en though on e
^o to heaven or hell, no one there abides Tor-
ever . For the whole Hindoo theory of rewards
and punishments is based on a sj^stemofsaly
tionby merit. If any one goes to hell, or is born
insome'form again on earth or in the highest

^;

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27/^ Doctrine Cmicernvtiy the Future, 107

heavens, this state of being will endure only
until the amount of happiness or of suffering
which is the necessary fruit of his works here,
shall have been exhausted. But inasmuch as
in each new state of being new actions, good
or evil, are done, this necessitates yet another
birth, as and where one's merit may determine.
Apart from the interposed effect of any saving
mode of religious life, this continual succession
of births and rebirths is supposed to go on,
until the transmigration shall have been re-
peated unto eighty-four lakhs, i.e,^ 8,400,000
times. Hence a common colloquialism for the
attainment of salvation is "to cut short the
eighty-four." After this, at latest, each soulf
is reabsorbed into the unconscious Brahma,/^
even as a wave after rolling on and on for
months is at last reabsorbed and lost in the
ocean out of which it arose. Obviously, while
this eschatology, in its steadfast insistence
upon the necessity of recompense for works
good or evil, seems to lay stress on at least
one ethical element, in reality it deprives the
doctrine of the hereafter of all moral character
and power. For evidently, if either reward or
punishment is to have any moral effect either
on myself or another, I must recognize myself,
and others must be able to recognize me, as

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108 Handbook of Co7riparatioe Heliffion.

the self-same person who in this life did that

of which in the next life I reap the fruit. But

the doctrine of transmigration does not con-

j template this. No one pretends to have such

imemory of those deeds of a previous life, be-

jcause of which he enjoys or suffers what he

/does ; nor is there left any room for believing

that in the case of a next birth, the memory

of the present will survive the change called

death.

For the world of men at large, or for the
earth in which we live, Hindooism holds forth
no more hope than Islam. The history of the
world is believed to be divided into four ages ;
Satya, Dwapur, Treta, and Kali. Of these four
each in succession is worse than that which
preceded it, till now has come the Kali Yug,
which is the worst of all, and which will be
terminated by the Mahapralaya, or "Great
Catastrophe," in which the world of men, with
the earth on which thej^ live, shall finally
perish. This shall no doubt be succeeded by
another world, but that has no connection
with the present, and so far as anything is
taught or believed, is destined to have no
different history. Of a final everlasting tri-
umph of righteousness, Hindooism, like Islam,
knows nothing.

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future. 109

i No more satisfactojautliaQ^he teaching of
-^ Hindooism is that ^^Buddhis^^garding the
last things. What is^ lunaamental on this
point has been of necessity anticipated, and a
brief recapitulation will suffice. According
to orthodox Buddhism, {gy t.Jip. inrlivifi^jfll lymn
^^tiftrft 1R nn fntnrp. 1jf<^. It is repeatedly taught
that man consists of merely ndmarupa^ " name
and form." He is merely the result of the
combination of certain shandhas ; and when
these are separated in death, nothing of the
man can remain any more than — to use the
common Buddhist illustration — when a wagon
is taken to pieces anything of the wagon can
remain except the mere idea.

Transmigration is held, but in a sense dis-
tinctly different from that of Hindooism. As
according to the original teaching of the Bud-

'dha, the doctrine of an abiding soul is one of
"the ten heresies"; therefore, there is not
supposed to be any substantial essence which

I passes from one body to another. The con-
nection between this body and that which
shall follow it, is therefore not physical, but
^merely ethical, not real, but ideal. That is,

I the works which I do, necessitate the produc-
tion after my death of another body in which
their fruit can be realized. Hence, to speak

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110 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

.with accuracy, this is not so much a transmi-
y igration of souls, a s a transmifip^ation of karmm a

Obviously such teaching as this deprives the
doctrine of future reward and punishment of
all ethical character and moral power. So far
as a man is concerned, regarded as a conscious
responsible person, death for him ends all.

But as already remarked, despite the clear
teaching of the Tripitaka, this doctrine is re-
jected by millions of Buddhists to-day. The
masses in most Buddhist lands believe in the
transmigration of souls in the same sense as
the Hindoos. Like them, they also believe in
various heavens and hells, into one or other of
which any one, according to his merit or de-
merit, may be born. But, as in Hindooism, so
in Buddhism, even as thus understood, there is
no eternal heaven, any more than an eternal
hell. No matter what summits of celestial
bliss in one of the highest heavens a man may
attain, and no matter how many ages he may
live there, when his merit is exhausted, which
brought and kept him there, he must again be
born, in heaven, earth, or hell, according to
Ihis deeds. And so must the weary sequence
/of birth and death go on, until at last, per-
1 chance, in some one of these myriad births, by

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future. Ill

following and walking steadfastly in the "No-
ble Eightfold Path," the poor soul may attain
n irvan a^ and know no more of bliss or woe
foreveJ.

This supreme attainment, however, we are
assured, is very rarely reached. Theoretically,
it is within the reach of every man : but, in
fact, we are told that in all the ages only two
men outside the monastic order have ever at-
tained parinibhdna ; and, even of the monks,
only two since the time of the Buddha have
achieved this consummation.

Buddhism has a doctrine of the future of the
world and the race as well as of the individual,
but it is by no means cheerful and inspiring.
Indeed, granted the Buddha's fundamental
postulate of the necessary impermanence of all
things, and the necessary evil of all existence,
a cheerful eschatology is impossible. And so
Buddhism teaches that from the time of the
Buddha onward to the end, the tendency of
the human race, religiously considered, will be
downward, until at last, the state of things
shall have become so very bad, as to necessi-
tate the appearing upon earth of ^^^thftr ^'.l^-
dha again to preach the Way. This will help for
a time ; but soon a similar retrogression will be-
gin, and the same dreary history shall repeat

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->

112 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

itself, and so on and so on, for no one knows

rhow long. Of an unending age of a holy hu*

\ manity on a glorified earth, such as the New

\ Testament predicts, there is not a suggestion

in orthodox Buddhism.

In a very late work, however, the Saddhar-
mapimdariha^ " The Lotus of the Good Law,"
which can scarcely be older than a. d. 200,
six or seven hundred years after the Buddha,
an eschatology is set forth, which, in contrast
with the above, presents an outlook more
cheerful, and more in accord with the biblical
teaching. In this book it is represented indeed
that the process of moral degeneration will go
on until the end of this Tcalpa or world-period,
when this world will be destroyed by fire,
Mara, the Spirit of Evil, having been destroyed
previously. Thereafter will appear a better
world, in which purity and righteousness shall
prevail. Such a representation is of much in-
terest, as so closely agreeing to the represen-
tations of the New Testament; but it can
hardly be fairly credited to Buddhism, with
the original doctrine of which it is in direct
contradiction. In fact, when we remember
that according to evidence of considerable
weight, the gospel was preached through India
already before this book was ^vritten, it is

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The Doctrine Concerning the Future. 113

scarcely possible not t » believe that as in the
Krishna legend of Hindooism, so in this teach-
ing, we may justly trace a historical connect
tion with the gospel doctrine, which, before
the above named book had been written, had
been undoubtedly preached in India.

As for the earth, it has been already noted
that Buddhism, like the New Testament, pre-
dicts a future destruction of this earth by fire,
and the appearing thereafter of yet another
earth. But this teaching diverges widely from
that of the New Testament. For according
to the latter, the new earth, though material,
is not to be like this present earth, but in
bright contrast with this, in that in it righteous-
ness is to abide; whereas, it is the general
Buddhist teaching that the earth which shall
succeed the present, shall be in all respects like
unto this. Sin and evil shall rule in that earth
as in this. Man shall go from bad to worse ;
from time to time a new Buddha shall appear
to preach the Way, and stay for a little the
downward course of men, and again and again
shall men soon forget his teaching, and go on
their downward way as before, till at last an-
other world catastrophe shall occur as before,
and thereafter a new halpa and a new earth,
in which the whole dismal movement shall be

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114 Hcmdbook of Comparative Religion:,

repeated. And so shall it go on, for all that
Buddhism teaches to the contrary, forever and
forever.

Such is the teaching of Buddliism regarding
the future, whether of the individual, or of the
earth and world of collective humankind.

From what has been before said, it will be
clear that Confucianism has no eschatology.
Confucius concerned himself wholly with this
world and with our life here and now. The
questions what shall be after death for the in-
dividual, or to what consummation the history
of the world is moving, he simply ignored.

Taouism has ventured more. The Taouists
teach that each man has three souls, one of
which abides with the dead body, another
near the " spirit-tablet," while another is sup-
posed to be taken to purgatory, where it is
made to undergo various disciplinary suffer-
ings ; and if at last, after all the transmigra-
tions and the pains of purgatory, the sinner
prove irreformable, he is sent to an endless
hell. But it is said that in general these post-
mortem penalties are little thought of, and the
penalties attached to sin in " The Book of Re-
wards" consist merely in the shortening of
the sinner's earthly Ufe. It should be said

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The Doctrinie Concerning the Future. 115

however that some scholars, like, e. g.^ Pro-
fessor Douglas, deny that the doctrine of a
heaven and a hell is any part of Taouism.
As to the future course of human history on
earth, Taouism is as silent as the doctrine of
Confucius.

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CHAPTEE VII.

PRACTICAL MORALS.

The moral teachings of Christianity are
summed up in the Ten Commandments, as
illustrated and explained by our Lord. As
regards our duties to one another, all is
summed up in the words: "Whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them." And lest even this might be mis-
interpreted into a merely outward regulation,
concerning external acts alone, in another pas-
sage our Lord has laid down the principle
that all true morality, all the commandments
of God regarding our duties to Himself, and
our duties to each other, are summed up in.
these memorable words: "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and
with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thy-
self."^

From this it follows that a mere external keep-
ing even of the Ten Commandments, or a merely

» Luke X. 27.

116

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Practical Mm*als. 117

outward observance of the ordinances of re-
ligion is very far from satisfying the moral
ideal set before us in the gospel. Hence, we
find that Christ taught that even the feeling
of hatred in a man's heart, in God's sight
makes him a murderer ; and the indulgence of
the lustful look, makes a man in God's sight
an adulterer. *

It is again most characteristic of the moral
teaching of the New Testament, that stress is
everywhere laid rather upon principles than
on the literal and punctilious observance of a
multitude of minute regulations. Slavery is
not prohibited ; Onesimus is even by an in-
spired apostle commanded to go back to his
master, nor is Philemon commanded to eman-
cipate him; and yet in commanding him to
treat Onesimus as a brother beloved, he used
words which, as they have worked on through
the ages, have put an end to the institution of
slavery in all Christian lands. This is but
- a single instance out of the many with which
history is filled, that show with more than
noonday clearness how the elevating and re-
forming power of the moral teaching of Christ
is no less conspicuous than its singular purity
and nobility.

•Matt. V. 21,22, 27,28.

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118 Handbook of Comparative Religio^i.

In Mohanunedanismj we may readily admit
that many precepts can be found, as indeed in
all religions, which are in full accord with the
law of the gospel. The best of Islam is ex-
pressed in the following passage in the Surat
ul Baqr:

" It is not righteousness that ye turn your
faces in prayer toward the east and the west ;
but righteousness is of him who believeth in
God, and the last day, and the angels, and the
Scriptures, and the prophets; who giveth
money for God's sake imto his kindred, and
unto orphans, and the needy, and the stranger,
and those who ask, and for redemption of cap-
tives ; who is constant at prayer, and giveth
alms; and of those who perform their cove-
nant when they have covenanted, and who be-
have themselves patiently in adversity, and
hardships, and in time of violence ; these are
they who are true, and these are they who fear
God."'

To refer to particulars, willful murder is pro-
hibited in the Quran, and especially infanti-
cide ; also adultery, theft, and taking of usury ;
and believers are directed to treat with kind-
ness the wives whom they may have. Not
only drunkenness, as in the New Testament,

'Surali. 177.

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Practical Mo7*aU, 119

but unlike the New Testament, all use of wine
is absolutely prohibited.

All this and much more is well ; but now
many things must be added which will show
how very much lower is the moral standard
of the Quran than that of the gospel. If will-
ful murder is prohibited, yet it is commanded
in the case of unbelievers in Mohammed, who
will neither accept Islam nor pay tribute, and,
in particular, in the case of every Moslem who
may embrace another religion. In Sura ul
Maida, we read that " the recompense of those
who fight against God and His apostle shall
be that they shall be slain, or crucified, or
have their hands and feet cut off on opposite
sides, or be banished the land." ^

Again, theft is prohibited, which is well ; but
for this the cruel punishment is said to be
" appointed by God," that both of " the hands
of the thief shall be cut off." ^ Slavery is not
only negatively tolerated, but is commanded ;
in that the Moslems are directed to make
slaves of the women and children of heathen,
Jews, and Christians, conquered in battle,

It is urged by some, however, that Moham-
med at least ameliorated slavery ; and this

* Sura V. 87. See also Suras i v. 28 ; f x. 6, 29.
*Sui'a V. 42.

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120 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

claim is supported, e, g., by the fact that the
prophet said, on the occasion of the Farewell
Pilgrimage: "See that ye feed your slaves
with such food as ye eat yourselves, and clothe
them with the stuff ye wear." So also there
is a qualified prohibition of prostitution of fe-
male slaves, thus: "Compel not your maid-
servants to prostitute themselves, if they be
willing to live chastely";^ and in the same
verse it is said to be an act of merit to give
slaves " of the riches of God, which He hath
given," in order to help them to redeem them-
selves from slavery.

Again, the law was given regarding slaves :
" If they commit a fault which ye incline not
to forgive, then sell them; for they are the
servants of the Lord, and are not to be tor-
mented." ^

Nevertheless, no one familiar with the facts
can deny that up to this present time, there is
no indication that the Mohammedan world
even desires to give up the institution of
slavery ; and, as a matter of fact, Islam is di-
rectly responsible for about all the slavery

. *8nraxx!v. 83.

' Mr. Bosworth Smitli'ft statement that Mohammed laid down the
principle that the captive who emhraced Islam should be ipno
facto free. Is simply Incomprehensible. In Surat un Nisa, vs. 24,
explicit reference is made to such female slaves "as are true be-
Uevers '^ ; nor is this a solitary reference to such slaves.

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Practical Morals, 121

that exists in the world to-day. Moreover,
that slavery throughout the Mohammedan
world is of an exceptionally cruel'and debas-
ing type, as witness the facts of the African
slave trade with which we are only too pain-
fully familiar-—" the open sore of the world."

Especially notorious is the fact that under
the explicit and repeated instruction of the
Quran, formally authorizing unlimited concu-
binage with female slaves, slavery has been
made to pander to all the basest lusts. For
while polygamy was authorized, yet the num-
ber of wives was limited to four : but the ap-
parent limitation on sensuality was nullified
by the explicit declaration in the Quran that
as to "the carnal knowledge of . . . the
slaves which their right hands possess" the
good Mussulman " shall be blameless." *

It is sometimes urged, in comparing Moham-
medan with Christian social morality, that as
regards the sin of prostitution, the case is not
so bad in Mohammedan as in Christian lands.
After living for many years in a land where
Mohammedanism prevails, the writer can see
no adequate ground for this statement. It is
true that the form under which licentiousness
prevails, may in some places be modified ; but

* Sura Ixx. 29, 80.

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122 Handbook of Comjjarative lieliymn.

it is to be declared with emphasis that Mp-
hammedanism has not diminished licentious-
ness, but increased it. Not only so, but in
Mohammedan communities it appears under
forms more revolting than anywhere in Chris-
tendom. We agree entirely with the strong
language used by the Kev. Dr. Henry Jessup,
of Beirut, Syria, who has said : " In these days
when so much has been written about the
high ethical tone of Islam, we shall speak
plainly on this subject, unpleasant though it
is. . . . Polygamy has not diminished li-
centiousness among the Mohammedans. The
sin of Sodom is so common among them as to
make them in many places objects of dread to
their neighbors. The burning words of the
apostle Paul in Rom. i. 24-27, are applicable
to tens of thousands in Mohammedan lands
to-day." * These statements are substantially
warranted as regards the state of society in
India to-day. It is here generally agreed that
in respect of licentiousness, the Mohammedans
of India compare very unfavorably with their
Hindoo neighbors.

. If anything could add to the debasement of
the family as unalterably determined by the

• *See ThB Mohammedan Missionary Problem, p. 46 et $eg.
Also compare the reiuarks of the Rev. Dr. Wherry, in Uls Oom^
mentary on the Q7iran, Note on Sura Iv. 3, in vol. li., p. 69.

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Practical Morah. 123

legislation of the Quran, it is found in the
regulations regarding divorce. It is in all
Mohammedan lands permitted to a man to
divorce a wife merely by a word, and for no
cause but a caprice. He may even do this
twice, and take her back again ; but if he do
this a third time, then he cannot take her back
until she shall previously have been married
and cohabited with another man, who may
then in turn divorce her, when the former
husband may take her back again. ^ And in
Moslem lands, such marriages of temporary
convenience are often formally arranged to
suit the wish of some capricious and tyrannical
husband. In a word, woman, in the ethics of
the Quran, is not practically regarded as a
human being, but as an animal, to be used
merely for the service and pleasure of her
master ; who, while he is charged to treat her
with kindness, is yet formally invested with
unqualified authority to beat or confine her
whenever he judge her to be perverse ; and
abandon her when he please.* If anything
were needed to the stimulation of the animal
passions by the moral (?) law instituted by
Mohammed, it is found in this, that whereas

* Sura if. 229, 290. Compare this with the Old Testament view of
such an action ; Jer. iii. l.
«SuratT.88.

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124 Handbook of Coinparatioe Religion,

there is some nominal restriction on unbounded
licentiousness on earth, in the limitation of the
number of wives ; the pious Moslem is taught
that when he shall reach Paradise, all restric-
tion shall be removed, and the faithful are
promised that they shall delight themselves
with thousands of beautiful virgins.^

To give a just and complete account of the
ethical teachings of Hindooism in any short
space is impossible. Not only is there no one
authority on the subject to which one might
refer, but the differences in moral teaching in
different forms of Hindooism are so many and
great, that comparatively few statements can
be made of universal application. To repre-
sent the morality of Hindooism by the un-
natural orgies of the Bam-margis or followers
of the Tantrik Hindooism, would be as unfair
as, on the other hand, it would be to take the
often lofty morality of the eclectic Bhagavad
Gita, as representing the average moral code
of the millions of India.

In general, one may say that not a few
moral duties are generally recognized and the
merit of observing them extolled. The duty
of children to honor and obey their parents,

* See the passages from the Quran cited above, pp. 96, lOi.

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Practical Morals. 125

howsoever often neglected — ^as, alas, even in
Christian lands — is much emphasized by all.
Equableness of temper is enjoined by writers
of every school, though on grounds widely
different from those exhibited in the New
Testament. Neither is one to be easily ruffled
by provocations or by trouble of any kind, nor,
on the other hand, should the wise man be
greatly elated by what is pleasant and agree-
able. Truthfulness, though little enough ob-
served by most people, is in theory ranked as
a very great virtue. The greatest stress is laid
on the inviolability of the marriage relation ;
and one may well believe that the women of
India are generally loyal to their husbands.
Polygamy, if allowed, is not extensively prac-
ticed ; the disloyalty of a wife is regarded with
the strongest feelings of reprobation.

On the other side, however, not so much
can be said. The frequency of violations of
the seventh commandment is sadly evidenced,
as medical friends tell us, by the exceeding
prevalence of the disease which is its common
penalty. More strikingly suggestive still is
the fact that in Hiq^i there is no word an-
swering to the English word " chaste," which
can possibly be applied to a man. The only
word of such meaning which is in the Ian-

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12^ Handbook of Comparative Religion,

guage, can only be used of a woman. Ob-
scenity in speech is one of the crying sins of
the land, and is confined to no class or sex.
But this is not strange, when we note to what
an extent obscenity is connected with Hindoo-
ism. In the Penal Code of British India, in
the section regarding obscene pictures, carv-
ings, etc., the government was obliged, out of a
prudent regard to the feelings of the people,
to enter a clause to the effect that the prohi-
bition and penalty attached was not to be
understood as applying to the carvings of
temples and idol cars, etc.

Nor can it be said that this is merely char-
acteristic of the modern corrupt Puranic Hin-
dooism. In the course of a quarrel in the
Panjab a few years ago between the orthodox
Hindoos and the Reformed Hindoos of the
Arya Samaj, who insist that the Hindoos
ought to return to the religion of the Vedas,
it came about that a part of the Sanskrit text
of the Yajur Veda relating to the Asvamedhay
or Horse Sacrifice, of ancient times, together
with the Commentary of Mahidhar upon it,
was translated into the vernacular of the
people, for general circulation. A complaint
was made against the Aryas for an alleged
false translation; with the result that when

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Practical Morals, ViTi

eiLslmined by Sanskrit experts, the translation
was declared accurate ; and thereupon the gov-
ernment, although always cautious of doing
anything to offend the religious prejudices of
the natives, to the dismay of the Aryas, pun-
ished those concerned in the translation and
publication of this part of the Veda, as having
violated the law against obscene literature!
Writing of this matter, the Kev. T. Williams,
C. M. S., of Kewari, Panjab, says, in the Indian
Evangelical Review ; ^ "I dare not give, and
you dare not print, the ipsissima verba of an
English version of the original Yajur Veda
mantras. . . . Even a Latin translation of
these scandalous mantras^ would not, I im-
agine, be tolerated in a newspaper."

Yet all this only agrees with the repre-
sentation of the character of God which is
given in some of the authoritative "sacred
books " of the Hindoos. It is safe to say that
the view which any religion gives of the Divine
character may be fairly taken as indicating the
moral standard accepted by the people who
follow such religion. If Hindooism be thus
judged, it is found terribly guilty. It is indeed
true that the character of the incarnation
known as the R^m Avatar, presents many at-

* Jan., 1891.

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128 Handbook of Comparative Beligion,

tractive features ; but Ram is by no means free
from deceit and other human ifrailties ; and if
the character of Krishna as placed before us in
the Bhagavad Gita, be pure from sensuality,
the character of the same supposed incarna-
tion as presented, e, g.^ in the Bhagavat Purana,
is distinguished by the uttermost licentiousness
conceivable. Eam and Krishna present the
incarnations of Vishnu, the second member of
the Divine Triad. Many however adore the
Divine ideal as presented in the god Shiva or
Mahadev, the third member of the Triad. In
him, that ideal is represented in a character
which combines in the highest degree the traits
of a revolting asceticism and of unspeakable
filthiness and cruelty. What then must be the
moral ideals of the mass of the people, who be-
lieve that such characters as these are worthj''
manifestations of the Deity ? It is true that
in one of the Puranas, readers are cautioned
that they are not to suppose it permissible to
ordinary people to imitate these Divine Beings
in such things. But the caution is not care-
fully observed even now, and in earlier days,
when English law was not supreme in India,
far less than in these times.

Again, in contrast with practical Christian
ethics, it is the great outstanding fact that the

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Practical Morals. 129

system of caste, alike in the laws, written and
unwritten, by which it is regulated, and in
their practical application in the India of to-
day, is nothing less than the formulated rejec-
tion of the fundamental principle of morals
laid down by Christ, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself." How merciless has been
the tyranny which the Brahmans of India have
exercised over the castes below them, is a mat-
ter of common knowledge among intelligent
people, , It may be added that the members
of each lower caste, taught by their exam-
ple, in their turn, as they have opportunity,
are no less merciless in their enforcement of
caste laws on those who may be still lower in
the social scale than themselves. It is also
worthy of notice that while a few advanced
thinkers, especially in the Brahmo Samaj and
a few similar associations, repudiate caste laws,
yet the most of the highly educated men in
India still feel that, practically, whatever else
of Hindooism they may reject, they must by no
means break the bonds of caste. Indeed a re-
cent Bengali writer strenuously maintains that
it is the recognition and acceptance of the rules
of caste, and not any particular theological be-
lief, that constitutes a man religiously a Hin-
doo. He says : " The Hindoo 'system is a hier-

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130 Handbook of Comparatvve Religion,

archy of caste, and those who belong to this
hierarchy of caste are Hindoos." ^

Injustice belongs to the very essence both
of the teachings and the practice of Hindooism
concerning caste. Manu declares that a king
'' should not slay a Brahman, even if he be oc-
cupied in crime of every sort ; but he should
put him out of the realm in possession of all
his property, and uninjured." * Again, he says :
" If a low-born man, a Shudra, assault one of
the twice-born castes, he ought to have his
tongue cut out." If a man be of a caste lower
than the Brahman, he is not to be taught the
law of the Veda nor is any religious observance
to be enjoined upon him ; and the man who
teaches him religion is to be cast, together with
his pupil, into " the darkness of hell." ' Instead
of the law which teaches that we are to seek
every one another's good, and in honor to
" prefer one another," it is the law of Manu
that " a Brahman may take possession of the
goods of a Shudra with perfect peace of mind,
since nothing at all belongs to this Shudra as
his own." * Instead of giving a poor Shudra
what is good, he is to receive from the Brahman

» Introduction to the Stvdy of Hindooism by Guru Prosad Sen,
p. 2F>.
« InstUutes of Manu," Book 1. 380.
' Cfode of ManVt Book Iv. 81.
•lb. Bookviii.417.

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Practical Morals, 131

" the blighted part of the grain, and one's old
clothes and furniture." *

It will be said, and truly, that such laws as
these are not actually carried out. But the
reason is obvious. Under the British rule in
India, the Brahman who should attempt to act
toward the lower castes in all respects accord-
ing to the authoritative law of Manu, would
soon find himself in the penitentiary. But this
undoubted improvement in the situation can-
not be fairly credited to Hindooism. And of
caste, even as it exists to-day, under the British
administration of India, not a Christian, but a
Hindoo reformer has said: "That caste is a
frightful social scourge, no one can deny.
. . . When we view it on moral grounds, it
appears as a scandal to conscience, and an in-
sult to humanity, and all our moral ideals and
sentiments rise to execrate it." ^

Hindoo ethics is again to be contrasted with
Christian morals, in the position which is as-
signed to woman. No doubt excellent things
may be quoted even from Manu, as to the
honor in which women should be held; as
when he says that " women are to be honored
by fathers and brothers, by husbands, as also

* Code (tf Manu, Book x. 125.

^ Keshub Cbuuder Sen, iu his Appeal to Young fntUa.

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132 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

by brothers-in-law who desire much prosperity,
etc."^ But then the same authority teaches
that on occasion " a wife . . . should be
beaten with a cord or a bamboo cane."^ If
loyalty to a husband is enjoined by all Hindoo
authorities, the duties required by that loyalty
are exaggerated to the utmost. Thus in the
Skanda Purana it is said : " Let the wife who
wishes to perform sacred oblations wash the
feet of her lord, and drink the water. . . .
The husband is her god, her priest, and her re-
ligion ; wherefore, abandoning everything else,
she ought chiefly to worship her husband." *

The treatment of widows in India, even of
those who are mere children, is a matter which
is notorious. It is indeed sometimes charged
that missionaries exaggerate the evils incident
to Hindoo widowhood ; but it was not a mis-
sionary, but a Hindoo * who has used the fol-
lowing strong language: "An adequate idea
of the intolerable hardships of early widow-
hood can be formed only by those whose
daughters, sisters, daughters-in-law, and other
female relations have been deprived of their
husbands during infancy."

But worst of all in Hindoo ethics is the de-

' Code of Mann, Book III. 59. « lb. Book iv. 299.

•Op. cit-. Iv. 135.

* Pundit Iswara Chundra Vldyasagar.

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Practical MoraU, 133

nial of the necessary and essential distinction
between right and wrong. This vitiates every-
thing. As already observed, the Ramayan for-
mally teaches the doctrine that " might makes
right," and in the Bhagavad Gita, which is
probably the purest and noblest production of
Hindoo literature, the doctrine is most fully
and plainly taught that actions in themselves
defile no one, so that they are but performed
in the state of mind which is enjoined in the
poem. Krishna is therein said to declare of
himself as God incarnate, " Actions defile me
not ; " and of his worshipers, " He who know-
eth me thus, is not bound by actions." ^

That this belief is not merely the teaching
of the sacred books of the Hindoos, but is the
actual creed of many of the educated Hindoos
of to-day, is an indisputable fact. In a book
published by S. C. Muhopadhaya, M. A., The
Imitation of Sree Krishna^ this educated Ben-
gali gentleman says : " To our mind virtue and
vice being relative terms can never be applied
to one who is regarded as the Supreme Being.
. . . Conceive a man who is trying his ut-
most to fly from vice to its opposite pole vir-
tue; . . . imagine a being to whom vir-
tue and vice are the same ; and you will find

»Op.cit. iv. 14.

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134 Sandbook of Comparative Religion,

that the latter is infinitely superior to the
former." (!) Nothing then is of necessary and
unalterable obligation ; and to do right or to
do wickedly, is merely a question of expedi-
ency !

If this be so, then it follows that the idea
of moral obligation is simply an illusion. Ac-
cording to Christian ethics, the ultimate reason
why this or that should be done or not done,
is found in the fact that such is the will of an
infinitely good, wise, and holy God, to whom
we are bound by an indissoluble bond, to whom
we owe everything, and on whom we abso-
lutely depend. Hence the profound moral sig-
nificance of our common words to denote this
moral obligation. "Duty" is that which is
" due " from, or is owed by me to another. In
the word "ought" the same thought is ex-
pressed in Anglo Saxon, as in the other case
in a word of Latin origin. For "ought" is
" owed," ^ and what I ought to do is what I owe
to some one ; so that sin in this aspect becomes
a debt {dehitum) even as our Lord taught in
the Lord's Prayer. Now it is a very striking
fact that in Hindi, the language of full one-
third of the population of India — and, to the

*As In Ty ndale*8 New Testament, Luke vll. 41, " There was a cer-
tain lender which had two debtors, tlie one ought five hundred
pence.'*

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Practical Morals. 135

best of my knowledge, in the other Aryan
languages of India — there is no term which
really corresponds to this class of words in
English. Every preacher and translator in
India has painfully felt his impotence when
attempting to express in the vernacular, these
profound moral conceptions. Of such words
in North India the most common is chdhiye^
which however only means " that which is to
be desired " ; thus tacitly implying that only
what one may wish to do is what he ought to
do. The story is told of an eminent mission-
ary translator into Bengali, who was seeking
for a Bengali equivalent for the word "con-
science ", to whom his native pundit replied,
after the missionary had tried to explain to
him the content of this English term : " Sahib,
where there is not the thing, how can one
have the word?" Yet this is not strange:
for where pantheism has become the faith of a
people, how can such ideas as "duty" or "con-
science," in the Christian sense of those terms,
have any longer a place? All such terms
connote relations to a Being who is personal,
and whose will is and must be for us law. But
when the Person has vanished from the spiritual
vision, the relationship to Him also of neces-
sity disappears.

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136 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

In our day the ethics of Buddhism has
been by many extolled almost without limit.
We can readily admit that when contrasted
with the moral system of the Hindooism
against which it was a revolt, it is in many
ways far superior. It was a noble and right-
eous protest against the tyranny of caste, and
boldly asserted the equality of all men.* It
was also a protest against the degrading cere-
monialism of the popular Hindooism, and de-
clared most truly, in words which remind us
of the teaching of our Lord: "Anger,
intoxication, obstinacy, deceit, envy, gran-
diloquence, pride and conceit, intimacy with
the unjust; this is uncleanness, but not the
eating of flesh." ^ Hence, in contrast with
Hindooism, many moral duties are placed in
the foreground of the Buddhist system, and
their observance declared essential to salva-
tion. Its first five commandments forbid
lying, stealing, killing, drinking what can in-
toxicate, and adultery. Not only so, but Bud-
dhism teaches that not merely outward actions,

*Bnt not the •' brotlicrhood *' of men. as somethnesrepiTsented.
For bvofliPiiiood implies a coinmoii fntlier: but of u Cio<l jiiid
Fiitlier of men, of wliom all men are in a line sense. ''Ihe otl-
sprinjr," the Buddlia, with all liis supposed enllgliteiiinent, liiiew
nothing.

' 8utta Nipata ; Amagandha Sutta. 7. Yet the Bnddhlsts of to-
day lay tlie greatest stress on abstinence from eai lug flesh, as a
high religious duty; and are Indeed in this in full accord with
other teachings of tlie Buddhist Scriptures.

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Practical Morals, 13Y

but sllSd inner states and feelings constitute
sin. Instead of retaliating for injuries, it is
written: "Let a man overcome anger by
love ; let him overcome evil by good." We
are to " leave the sins of the mind," as well as
those which are outward : * the lustful look at
the wife of another, is sin.

But, for all this, very deep and significant is
the contrast between Buddhist and Christian
ethics. First and most fundamental is the fact
that since Buddhism ignores the being of a God,
the moral " law " of Buddhism knows nothing
of any duty that a man owes to Him. From
which it follows immediately that God being
thus ignored, the ground of obligation, even
as regards undoubted duties of man to man, is
not found in the will and command of an in-
finitely good and holy God. In fact, it is
quite correct to say that, if one will speak ac-
curately, there is no such thing as "law," in
our sense of the word, in Buddhist ethics. All
is merely advisory. The word is constantly
used in translating Buddhist works, but this
must never be forgotten, that it connotes noth-
ing mandatory.

Again, while we may gladly admit that
many counsels are given in Buddhist books

' Dhammapada, 222, 232.

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138 Scmdbook of Comparati/ve Religion.

which are most excellent, and while passages
may be produced in which, as remarked, a
merely ceremonial righteousness, as compared
with moral purity and righteousness, is depre-
ciated utterly : yet in utter inconsistency with
this, it is taught that whoever wishes to attain
to the summit of Buddhist saintship, must at-
tend to a variety of ceremonial observances,
many of which are most puerile, and some
even revolting to decency. Thus, in Buddhist
ethics, injunctions most excellent are mingled
with others to observances utterly trivial and
indifferent, and in some instances even degrad-
ing ; as, for example, the direction to the saint
to go clad in rags and lead a mendicant life.
If it is written that no one should lie, or steal,
or commit adultery; it is added that if one
would attain to a still higher degree of saint-
ship than the observance of such duties alone
would make possible, he must not use tooth-
powders, nor sleep on a bed which is broad or
high !

This utter confusion of the moral sense
which is evidenced by the ethics of Buddhism,
is well illustrated by the well-known enumer-
ation of " the Ten Sins," which the Buddhist
saint must overcome. Among these we find,
quite rightly, hatred, pride, and self-righteous-

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Practical Morals, 189

ness, and dependence on rites : but on the other
hand are enumerated, " doubt," namely, of the
truth of the atheistic and pessimistic teaching
of the Buddha ; " the delusion of self," that is,
the belief in the existence of the Ego as a
permanent subsistence; "sensuality" — not in
our sense of the word — but all gratification of
the senses; and finally all love of life on
earth, and all desire for life anywhere else,
even in heaven.

Finally, whereas in the Christian system of
morals, the highest motive to all right living
is found in supreme love to a God who is both
the absolutely perfect expression of all moral
beauty and excellence, and our Father in
heaven, in the Buddhist ethics, the highest
motive is found in the desire to escape, by
obedience to the Buddha's "law," from the
misery which in greater or less degree is said
to be inseparably connected with existence
even in heaven itself. Thus while the Chris-
tian moral ideal is found in perfect love to an
absolutely perfect Being, leading to utter self-
forgetfulness for His sake, in Buddhism, the
ideal is found in an absolute and selfish as-
ceticism, which in its fullest realization regards
virtue and vice alike with indifference.

To the ethical system of Confucius one may

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140 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

rightly give much praise. If all men were to
obey his precepts, one may safely say that this
would at least be a far happier world than it
is. All men, Confucius taught, should seek to
live a virtuous life. All virtue, he said, begins
with knowledge, and knowledge is obtain-
able only through learning. Only, according
to Confucius, the sotirce of knowledge is not
independent thought, but the careful study of
the teachings of the great sages of antiquity.
By this a man may hope to arrive at truth,
and especially the knowledge of his own
defects and shortcomings. Attaining to this
knowledge, the superior man will above all be
sincere. His supreme affections and his high-
est desires will be set on what is right. He
will be "gentle, forbearing and forgiving."
Asked by one to give him a rule of moral con-
duct which might serve to regulate all one's
life, Confucius answered : " Keciprocity. What
you do not want done to yourself, do not do
to others." It must be admitted that this
falls below the " Golden Kule " of the Kew
Testament, in that it does not positively en-
join one to do what he wishes that another
should do to him, but only, negatively, to ab-
stain from what he would not like to have
done to himself; still, one cannot but recog-

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Practical Marals. 141

nize with thankfulness the approxiiiiation to
the teaching of Christ.

Chief among the virtues, according to Con-
fucius, stand courage and benevolence. Un-
der the latter term, however, he included
much more than the word commonly connotes
with us. It is explained as having relation
not only to those who are below us, but no
less to those who are above us ; in a word, it
is said to consist in "love to all men." As
exemplified in life, it includes the rule of
" reciprocity," as above given, then " loyalty,"
"reverence," and "faith." By loyalty is in-
tended not merely loyalty to one's sovereign
or ruler, but no less to equals and inferiors ; in
a word, faithfulness in the performance of all
the duties owed by man to his fellow in every
relation of life. Keverence is explained as
first exemplified in the feeling of the son to-
ward his father ; then, of all subjects to their
rulers; and then, of the emperor himself to
heaven. By "faith" is apparently intended
sincerity in the performance of all these
duties.

Among all the virtues in which the per-
formance of these duties will be exemplified,
filial piety is given a foremost place. This is
said to be indeed " the beginning of all virtue,"

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142 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

and brotherly love "the sequel of virtue."
Filial piety is said to consist in serving and
obeying one's parents so long as they live, and
in giving them a suitable burial when they
die ; to which it is added that it also requires
that after their death men shall offer to them
sacrifices. On this exaggerated idea of what
the duty of filial piety requires, is based the
whole system of ancestral worship prevalent
in China. Confucius declared that in filial
obedience there was nothing "so essential
as to reverence one's father"; and that "as
a mark of reverence there is nothing more im-
portant than to place him on an equality with
heaven." Great stress was laid by Confucius
on the duties, not only of subjects toward
their rulers, but on the duty of the emperor
toward his subjects.

Such, in brief, are the chief points in the
moral teaching of Confucius, and in them we
all will admit there is much to commend.

On the other hand, as in Buddhism, so in
Confucianism, duties to God, if not absolutely
ignored, are relegated to the background. It
would probably not be correct to say that
Confucius was an atheist ; but, if he endorsed
the ancient rule of reciprocity, he seems to
have utterly failed to discover that other rule

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Practical Morals. 143

which requires us not only to love our neigh-
bor as ourself, but also to love the Lord our
God with all our heart, mind, and strength ;
and which also rightly places this first, as the
root from which the love to one's neighbor is
sure to spring.

As in Buddhism, so in Confucianism, woman
is depreciated, and the duties arising out of
the relations of man and woman are very im-
perfectly apprehended. The sister, for ex-
ample, is not contemplated when Confucius
extols fraternal affection. Not until a girl be-
comes a mother, does she acquire any proper
claim to regard. In the opinion of Confucius,
the most difficult people of all to manage, are
" women and servants."

Marriage, with the Confucian, is not, as in
the New Testament, in order that husband
and wife may live together in mutual helpful-
ness, " as being heirs together of the grace of
life";* but is simply in order to the procre-
ation of children. It naturally follows from
this conception of the ideal and object of mar-
riage, that both divorce for many reasons, and
also polygamy, are sanctioned. If a wife bear
no children, her husband may at his pleasure
either divorce her, or may take another wife.

U Pet. III. 7.

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144 Handbook of Comparative Heligion,

The " Kites of the Chow Dynasty " enact that
since it is of special importance that the em-
peror should have a son to succeed him, he
should have beside the empress, one hundred
and twenty concubines. For divorce, Confu-
cius enumerated seven suflBcient reasons,
namely: disobedience to either of the wife's
parents-in-law ; barrenness ; lewdness ; jeal-
ousy ; leprosy ; garrulousness ; and stealing.
As the procreation of sons is the chief object
of marriage, it is made the duty of the child-
less widower to marry again ; while, on the
contrary, if a widow remarry, this is held to
be a sign of a bad and lustful character. To
sum up in the words of Professor Douglas,
from whose valuable little Handbook I have
largely drawn : " The failure to recognize the
sanctity of the marriage bond is a great blot
on the Confucian system. It has in a great
measure destroyed domesticity, it has robbed
women of their lawful influence, and has de-
graded them into a position which is little bet-
ter than slavery."

The ethics of Taouism is represented in two
small books, the Yin chih wan^ or " Book of
Secret Blessings," and the Kan ying peen^ or
"Book of Ke wards and Punishments." A
translation of the whole text of the last named

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Practical Morals, 145

booklet is given by Professor Douglas/ and
consists of two hundred and twelve precepts,
a large part of which are every way commend-
able, and enjoin most of those natural virtues
which the common conscience of mankind re-
quires. Thus we read : " Practice righteous-
ness and filial piety, be affectionate toward
your younger brothers, and respectful toward
your elder brothers." " Have pity for orphans,
and cherish widows." " Kespect old men, and
cherish infants." "Pity the misfortunes of
others." " Kejoice in the successes of others,
and sympathize with their reverses." " Never
boast of superiority." "Bestow favors with-
out expecting recompense." " Do not calum-
niate your fellow-students." "Be not hard,
violent, or inhuman." "Be not forgetful of
benefits." " Commit not murder for the sake
of gain." " When you know what is right, do
it." "Do not separate husband and wife."
" When you see others possessed of riches, do
not desire that they may lose them."

While the duties of man to man are thus
fully set forth, we find in this book only two
allusions to any duty to a Supreme Being,
thus: "Do not murmur against Heaven at
your lot." " Do not seek to obtain anything

* CHmSucianUm and Taouism, pp. 257-271,

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146 Handbook of ComparaUve Religion,

beyond the lot appointed you by Heaven."
Moreover, as so often in other non-Christian
religions, with such commendable precepts as
the above, are mingled others which are merely
silly and puerile. Thus : " Do not leap over
a well or a hearth." " Do not shout or get
angry on the first day of the month." " Do
not spit toward shooting stars." "Do not
weep or spit toward the north." "Do not
point at a rainbow." " Do not stare at the sun
or moon."

Similar remarks might be made, in general,
as to the contents of the other ethical book of
the Taouists, the Yin chih wan. In it we
read: "Devote your wealth to the good of
your fellow-men." "In all your actions fol-
low the principles of Heaven, and in all your
words follow the purified heart of man."
" Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and bury
the dead." But also : " Never destroy paper
which is written upon." " Be careful not to
tread upon insects on the road " ; etc., etc.^

Not to enter into further detail as to the
ethics of the various non-Christian religions, it
is to be observed, in general, that in all, to a
great extent in theory — as universally in prac-
tice — morality is dissevered from religion. In

* See Confucianism and Taouism, pp. 272-274.

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Practical Morals, 147

all alike, it is true that a man may be very re-
ligious, and yet in one way or another, very
wicked. To be a Confucian in good standing,
if only the authority of the sage is recognized,
it is not necessary to recognize God in any
way. The fearful prevalence of infanticide in
Confucian China, is a sad illustration of our
remark. To be a Hindoo in good repute as
regards religion, it is by no means necessary
to abstain from lying, stealing, or even murder.
This is evident from the fact that while in
India there are very many things because of
which a man may be excommunicated from
caste fellowship, violations of the moral law
are not among these.

But this is only the natural consequence of
the fact that in the preceptive part of the best
of the ethnic religions, the observance of vari-
ous ceremonial injunctions is practically made
of much more consequence than the keeping
of the law of morality. The effect of this
upon the people is most manifest everywhere,
in all non-Christian lands. T have known a
man, while in the midst of lying to me about
work which he had done for me, to refuse to
touch a piece of old dry bone, on the plea that
it was contrary to religion. In all the great
world-religions except Christianity, the moral,

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148 Hcmdhook of Comparative Religion.

the immoral, and the morally indifferent are
hopelessly confounded.

Most noteworthy, again, is the fact that
whereas the ethics of the New Testament,
while no doubt teaching a certain subordina-
tion of woman to man, yet ever regards
woman as the equal of man, as an heir to-
gether with him of the grace of life ; on the
other hand, in all the other great- world-reli-
gions, in one way or another, and more or less
formally, woman is debased. Most commonly
this is brought about through concubinage and
polygamy, which, as already shown, have the
formal sanction of the Quran; while also
among the Hindoos of all schools, as among
the followers of Confucius, polygamy is more
or less formally recognized as law^ful.

Even the modern reformed schools of Hin-
dooism have not always been able to free
themselves from this reproach. It is, more-
over, to the special infamy of the Arya Sam^j
of North India, that while in many ways this
Samaj encourages the education and elevation
of women, yet the Aryas earnestly uphold and
justify the infamous Hindoo rite of niyoga ;
which may best be described as an arrange-
ment by which a childless husband, in order to
secure oflFspring and so continue his family, ar-

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Practical MoraU. 14l>

ranges for the adultery of his wife through her
temporary union with another man.

Buddhism would seem to deal better with
woman, in some respects, than Mohammedan-
ism and Hindooism. The cruel seclusion of
women which in accordance with the Quran, is
the rule in Mohammedan lands, and to so great
extent in India — where Moslem violence and
licentiousness made it necessary after the Mo-
hammedan invasions — is unknown in Buddhist
countries like Burmah and Siam, where in this
respect women have all the liberty which is
enjoyed by their sisters in Christian lands.
Nevertheless, Buddhism does not exalt, but
debases woman. Instead of elevating and
glorifying the marriage relation, as does the
gospel law, it declares in its authoritative
Scriptures that " the house life is the seat of
impurity " ; * and teaches that " so long as the
love of man toward women, even the smallest,
is not destroyed, so long is his mind in bond-
age." ^ He who would attain to any high de-
gree of saintship is charged that he have noth-
ing to do with any woman, not so much as to
speak to one.* With the idea of woman which
such injunctions imply, it is not strange that

» Sutta Nipata ; Pabbajja Sutta^ 2.

* Dhammapada. 284.

* See Mahaparinibbana Sutta^ v. 28.

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150 Handhook of Comparative Religion,

Buddhism, at its best, has never succeeded in
elevating woman to her proper place. If it
has not enjoined polygamy or polyandry, it
has not succeeded in suppressing them; and
the laxity of morals in Buddhist lands is
notorious.

Most striking, again, is the contrast that
appears between Christianity and other re-
ligions as regards the place which they
severally give to man's duties to God. As
already seen, in both Buddhism and Con-
fucianism, these are ignored. In Hindooism,
if not ignored, they are grievously misrepre-
sented ; as indeed it is easy to see that they
must be, when we remember how grievously
Hindooism errs in its representations of God.
Mohammedanism no doubt very fully recog-
nizes the fact that man has duties to God, but
strangely fails to inculcate the chief duty :
namely, to love the Lord our God with all the
heart, which alone is the root and the bond of
all moral perfections. But how indeed could
a God such as is exhibited in the Quran, be
loved ? He might no doubt, be regarded with
great awe ; and may be very greatly dreaded ;
but never loved.

Again, the great religions of the world
stand contrasted with Christianity in respect

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Practical Morals. 151

to the highest motive which they severally
place before man.

The chief motive which is brought before us
in the ethics of the gospel is that of grateful
love to a God who has not only made, and ever
upholds us, but has given His only Son for our
salvation. Other motives are doubtless recog-
nized, but to this one supreme motive all
others are made subordinate.

On the other hand, no other religion knows
in its system of morality any motive higher
than that of expediency. The morals of Con-
fucius, which contain so much that is excellent,
nevertheless never rise above the motive of
the politic and expedient. If you live so and
so, it will be better for you, and better for the
State. Buddhism, knowing nothing of a God,
obviously can know nothing of the love of God
as a motive. Over and over, on the other
hand, the Buddhist authorities represent the
ultimate motive for all action or abstinence
from any action as " the quieting of pain." If
self-restraint in all things is extolled, it is be-
cause such a man is " freed at last " through
the attainment of the unconscious nirvana,
"from all pain."*

Nor can better be said for Hindooism. Not

* Dhammapada, 861.

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152 Handbook of Compa7'ative Religion,

holiness, nor even happiness, but rather free-
dom from pain, is the great motive. This
takes the form of desire for exemption from
further transmigration. If a man is exhorted
to live so and so, this is in order that he may
thus bring to an end the wearisome succession
of repeated births, and therewith the inevi-
table pain and suffering which birth insures.

Very touching is the expression of this long-
ing, this dread of an earthly existence renewed,
which is sometimes found in Indian literature.
Thus in a song of South India one moans :

** A weary and broken-down man,
With grief I come to thy feet ;
Subdued by the pain and the ban
Of a sorrowful, infinite life."

It is true that much is made of union with
God as the chief object after which a man
should strive. But when we learn the mean-
ing of the words employed, it becomes evident
that not a moral, but a physical, union is in-
tended. The Hindoo devotee seeks that he
may in such a sense become united with the
infinite Brahma, that he shall have no exist-
ence as separate and distinct from him; but
lose at once self-consciousness and personality
in Him, or rather, in that eternal, unconscious
impersonal Essence, and so end pain forever.

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Practical Morals, 153

It should hardly be necessary to add that in
nothing do the best of the non-Christian reli-
gions stand more^ strikingly contrasted with
Christianity, than in the fact that not one of
these religions, either in modern or in ancient
times, has ever shown any power to realize in
the lives of its followers any high moral ideal ;
not even in so far as that ideal has been dimly
perceived. It is no doubt true that for almost
every precept of Christianity which concerns
the duty of man to man, a parallel can be shown
in the ethical teachings of other religions.
Purity, truth, generosity, forgiveness of in-
juries, patience, benevolence, — all these are in
all religions extolled greatly. Nor is it denied
that here and there in the non-Christian world
individuals appear in whose character there is
much to admire, and who are often much bet-
ter than the religions they profess. But it is a
simple matter of historic fact that outside of
Christianity the general failure of the accepted
religion to realize these virtues, and lift society
in general out of the mire of sin and impurity,
is nothing less than appalling.

This may seem to some very harsh and un-
charitable ; but let us hear what is confessed
by intelligent men among these same peoples.
In a recent article on the late Mr. Gladstone

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154 Ha/iidhook of Co^upwrative Religion.

in the Urdu paper, The Hindv^tan% of Luck-
now, the editor, who is not a Christian, writes
as follows with regard to the moral condition
of his countrymen :

" We Indians are yet far from true progress.
Englishmen rule over us because they are pos-
sessed of those high moral virtues of which we
have not a vestige, nor are likely to acquire
them for centuries yet. Leave alone political
matters, is there among us a pious and highly
moral man ? Does he get justice done him ?
Are not people ready everywhere to put him
into trouble ? ... It is impossible for our
narrow minds to understand how a man can
devote himself to the service of his nation. It
is very essential that before we demand polit-
ical rights and privileges from Englishmen (our
rulers) we should endeavor to acquire those
virtues which alone have made Englishmen
great among the nations of the world."

So writes this Indian gentleman of the moral
condition of his countrymen, and such admis-
sions are far from uncommon. Yet no one will
claim that as compared with China, Africa,
and other non-Christian lands, the moral con-
dition of India is exceptionally bad. We do
not forget that much gross sin is also practiced
among peoples whom we call Christian. But

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Pra<:tical Morals. 165

in estimating the significance of this, it must
be kept in mind that according to the teaching
of the New Testament, men are not born Chris-
tians, nor are they true Christians in virtue of
education or baptism, but only through re-
pentance and a new birth by the Holy Ghost.
It is the undoubted fact that as a rule,
where we meet with those who intelligently
profess to have known the saving power of
God's Holy Spirit, and to have experienced
this transcendent change, we do see such a de-
gree of deliverance from the power of sin as
we look for in vain among the most devoted
adherents of other religions.

When we take a broader view, and regard
the state of society in Christian communities,
in which true Christians and unbelievers are
mingled together, even then what a great and
marvelous contrast with the condition of things
in lands in no sense Christian ! Despite the
existence in such communities of many great
sins and crying evils, how diflferent is the state
of society and the atmosphere of public opin-
ion in America or Great Britain, from that
which exists in India, China, and other like
countries, none assuredly can realize who have
not lived in other than Christian lands. From
Christian communities, slavery and polygamy

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156 Handbook of Cmtiparative Religion,

have disappeared. The horrible unnatural
crimes of which the apostle Paul speaks in
Rom. i., common enough in communities not
Christian in profession, have so completely dis-
appeared from Christian lands where an open
and free Bible is found, that the most of those
who read the terrible description of Roman
society as given in that chapter, do not even
understand what the apostle means. Where,
in a word, is there a spot on the whole earth
outside of Christian lands, where a decent man
would of choice bring up his children ?

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CHAPTER Vin.

THE EELATION OF THE WORLD-EELIGIONS TO
CHRISTIANITY.

What is the true relation of the non-Chris-
tian religions to the religion of Christ ? Very
commonly, and in our day more and more, it
is maintained that the various religions of man-
kind, from fetichism up to Christianity, repre-
sent successive stages of progress in the natural
evolution of religious thought. All alike are
the product of the operation of the human
mind upon the phenomena of the material and
spiritual world ; and thus represent a progress-
ive approximation to the absolute truth, which
many tell us has probably not even yet in Chris-
tianity been reached. Hence, to speak of the
various ethnic religions in relation to Chris-
tianity as religions of nature contrasted with
revealed religion, or as the " false " religions,
in contrast with the " true," we are assured, is
wholly unwarranted, unscientific, and erro-
neous.

For the discussion of the question thus raised
157

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158 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

an entire book would be required, and we can-
not pretend to enter into it in this place.
Only, in general, as against the view above set
forth, we place the indisputable facts of the
history of religions. There is not the slightest
evidence that, as a law of evolution, the gen-
eral tendency of religious thought among men
has been from lower to higher and more cor-
rect thinking and belief as to God and the re-
lation of man and of the world to Him. On
the contrary, there is no exception to the rule
that from the earliest beginnings of authentic
history to the present time, the history of each
and every religion has been a history of de-
cline and increasing obscuration of right con-
ceptions of God, interrupted only at rare inter-
vals by the appearing of one or another to re-
call to the minds of men, at least in some im-
perfect degree, almost forgotten truths.

It was so in Egypt, where the earliest ex-
pressions of religious thought are incomparably
the purest and noblest.* It was so in India
also. For whatever may be said as to the
excellencies and defects of the ancient Vedic
religion, it was assuredly much purer and
nearer the truth in its conceptions of the

* See Reuouf : Hibbert I^ectures, on The Origin and Growth af
Jteligion, etc., pp. 91, 249.

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The Relation of the World- Religions. 159

" Heaven-Father " than the vulgar Hindooism
of modern India.^ The Chinese, again, unani-
mously testify to the same effect ; that the re-
ligion of the earliest days of their nation was
much purer than the religion of modern
China.^ No less certain again is it that mod-
ern Buddhism has fallen far below the origi-
nal faith as proclaimed by Gautama Muni.
The Buddha thought he saw no one anywhere
whom he ought to worship ; ^ but his followers
of to-day are practically as truly idolaters as
any people in the world.^ Not to multiply il-
lustrations, to represent the various religions
of mankind as indicating successive stages of
religious progress, and as showing a continuous
advance in the apprehension of religious truth,
is to confound movement with progress. Move-
ment there has undoubtedly been, but the law
of the movement has ever been backward and
downward, and not forward and upward.* To
ntaintain the contrary, one must ignore his-

*See the explicit admission of tliis by Professor Max Muller,
History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 659.

''See Professor Douglas on tlie worship of Shang Te, in Confu-
cianism and Taouism, pp. 82, 83.

»ln the Farajlka of the Vinaya Texts.

•For a full account of the process of this degradation from the
original Buddhism, see Rhys Davids' Buddhism, cliaps. vil., viii.

•For a more detailed account of tlie facts wliicli justify these
statements see tlie author's Genesis and Growth of Religion, Lon-
don, Mncmillan & Co., pp. 203-247; and especially the whole sec-
ond volume of Ebrard's Apologetik, which contains an exhaustive
presentati<m of the historical facts that justify the statements
made in the text.

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160 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

tory, and set at naught the testunony of human
experience for bygone millenniums.

As Christians, we do well also to keep in
mind that not only is the fashionable modem
view as to the evolutionary religious progress
of mankind, and the relation of the various
ethnic religions to Christianity, contradicted
by the facts of history, but also, no less cer-
tainly, is it in the most direct opposition to the
teachings of those Scriptures which as Chris-
tians we profess to receive as the Word of God.
In both the Old and the New Testaments, there
is much about the religions which surrounded
the writers of the various books; and never
once do those writers, speaking "as they
were moved by the Holy Ghost," exhibit that
broad " sympathy " with the ethnic religions
which, we are now taught by many, it is
the first duty of the intelligent Christian to
cherish.

On the contrary, the rich resources of the
Hebrew language in terms relating to the
moral and spiritual life are taxed to the utter-
most, by the writers of the Old Testament
books, to express the severity of their con-
demnation, and the depth of their loathing and
contempt, for the religions of Babylon, Assyria,
Canaan, and Egypt. This is true both as re-

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Ths Relation of the World-Religions. 161

gards idolatry of the grosser form, and all
nature worship as well, together with the false
philosophy by which these were popularly jus-
tified. Very striking is the phrase so con-
stantly recurring in the Books of Kings and
Chronicles concerning the apostatizing kings
of Judah and Israel: not merely, as in our
authorized version, " he did evil in the sight of
the Lord," but always in Hebrew with the
definite article, ^Hhe evil" — R. v., "that
which was evil"; in other words — as often
explained by themselves — the king in question
was an idolater. Instead of looking with a
kindly sympathy on the Assyrian bowing be-
fore some visible symbol of the Creator, his
idol is stigmatized as "an abomination," a
"stump." Or, again, the idol is contemp-
tuously termed dven^ " a nothing," ayim^ " a
bugbear," or eVil^ with ridicule, as "a wee god,
a godling " ; and — with special reference, prob-
ably, to phallic images such as are common
in India to-day — miphletseth^ " a horror." In-
stead of recognizing in the worship of idols a
reaching out of the soul after God, the Holy
Scriptures represent idolatry as rebellion
against Him. It is reckoned a sin of such
enormity as to be properly classed with witch-
craft, stubbornness, hatred, lying, and murder,

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162 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

etc., etc.* Most frequently of all it is repre-
sented by the Old Testament writers as a
veritable adultery of the soul, provoking God
to a fiery heat of jealousy; a crime which
therefore, like the type, is deserving of the
most condign punishment. Kever once in the
whole Old Testament is the Assyrian, Egyp-
tian, Phenician, or any other religion of the
old world, represented as expressing an effort
of man after communion with God, but, in-
stead, as formal revolt against Him ; not as
marking an approach of the soul to God, but
as a guilty departure from Him. When the
prophet Isaiah saw the men of his time bow-
ing down and worshiping carved pieces of
wood as emblems of the invisible God, instead
of expressing any sympathy with this kind of
worship, as being well-intended, even though
so imperfect in form, he poured upon such a
man the most scathing ridicule and contempt ;
that he should actually bow down to a part of
a stick of wood, from another part of which
he had cooked his dinner ! ^

The apostle Paul, in a more formal manner
than any other of the sacred writers, has set
forth the genesis of the religions of the ancient

* See Gal. v. 20; 1 Cor. vl. 9, etc., etc.
•Seels, xllv. 10-17.

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The Relation of the World-Beligions. 163

world as they existed around him.* He declares
that they all had their origin, not in love to
God, and the aspiration of the soul after Him,
but in alienation from Him. He teaches that
they had arisen because men " did not like to
retain God in their knowledge " ; that, instead
of representing the progress of man in religion,
they expressed progressive moral and spiritual
degradation ; that, instead of having their root
in what was good in man, they grew out
of man's aversion to God, and his ungrateful
ignoring of Him. Instead of making ex-
cuses for the multitudes who were in his day
bowing before idols, or worshiping various
objects in nature, he expressly declared that
the light of nature is so clear in its rev-
elation of the being and character of God,
that the votaries of these various idolatrous
religions were without excuse for their error.
It is in full keeping with all these representa-
tions of the Old and New Testaments, that
the sacred Book closes with a declaration
which associates all who in any religion wor-
ship and adore aught but the invisible Creator,
with " liars, whoremongers, and murderers " ;
for it is written that, equally with such as
these, the idolater shall be excluded forever

* Bom. i. l»-25.

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164 Handbook of Comparative Heligion,

from the Holy City, and have his portion,
with such like men, "in the lake which bum-
eth with fire and brimstone." ^

Nor is it merely the grosser forms of the
ethnic religions which are thus condemned.
No distinction is made as regards the fact of
condemnation. One may adore as a symbol
of Deity, a stone or a stick; another, more
enlightened, may adore a deified hero; an-
other still, may worship the sun ; but all alike
fall under the same unsparing condemnation.
Nor has the apostle any gentler or more toler-
ant words for the philosophy which underlies
these various religions. On the contrary, he
asserts that as an attempt to attain to the
knowledge of God, it had been a failure;*
and that the supposed philosophic wisdom of
the ancient Greeks, Eomans, and others, was
in God's sight mere "foolishness."' In a
word, as regards all forms of the ethnic re-
ligions, the whole teaching of the Christian
Scriptures stands in the most complete and
unqualified opposition to the modern view,
which, in a spurious charity, maintains that all
religions alike present a means, more or less
perfect, of attaining to communion with God,
and in their history afford cheering evidence

» ^V. xxl. 8. n Cor. 1 . 21 , » 1 Cor . Hi. 19.

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Th^ Relation of the Wm^ld-Religions, 165

of -the gradual religious progress of the human
race.

But it will be said, and truly, that such rep-
resentations as the above respecting religions
characterized by idoltary, cannot hold good
against the religion of Islam ; which, it is sup-
posed, we may therefore regard with a larger
degree of charity and sympathy ; since Islam
everywhere and always protests against all
worship of any other than the one invisible
God, in as emphatic terms as Christianity.
But if Mohammedanism is happily strong in
its utterances on this point, it is no less em-
phatic in its uncompromising denial of the
holy incarnation of the Son of God, and of
atonement as made through His sacrificial
death. When this is remembered, it will be
clear at once that Mohammedanism falls under
no less unsparing condemnation, in the New
Testament, than the other non-Christian re-
ligions. For not only are we told that " the
Word " who " was in the beginning with God "
who " was God," " the only begotten Son which
is in the bosom of the Father " " became flesh," *
and also that " His [God's] Son . . . was
born of the seed of David according to the
flesh ; * that to deny, as do the followers of

» John i. 1, 14, 18 (R. v.). «Rom. i. 3 (». v.).

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166 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

Mohamme^, that Jesus of Kazareth was the
Son of God in the sense for the affirmation of
which He was declared by the high priest and
the sanhedrin to be guilty of blasphemy and
was condemned to death,' is to deny the Father
also who sent Him ; * but we are further taught
that "many deceivers are entered into the
world who confess not that Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an
antichrist." ^

These considerations have now prepared the
way for an answer to the question whether or
not it is correct, in the light of the facts which
the comparative study of religions has brought
before us, to distinguish other religions from
the Christian religion as the false from the-
true. Only let the question be rightly appre-
hended. It is not, as sometimes assumed,
whether other religions than the Christian rec-
ognize important moral and spiritual truths.
About this there is no dispute. Indeed, ex-
cept for this, they would not have had the
power they have to attract the millions of

» Matt. xxvl. 63-65: Mark xiv. 61-64; Luke xxil. 66-71.

«1 John II. 22. 23. The Rev. Dr. Robsmi. of Aberdeen, for many
years a missionary In India, has truly said,— as Illustrating this
connection of the denial of the Son with the denial of the Father:
'• II is of the essence of Christianity to affirm the Fatherliood of
God. It Is of the essence of Mohammedanism to deny the Father-
hoo<l of God." British and Foreign Evangelical Review; as quoted
by DihIs in Mohammed^ Buddah, and Christ, pp. 10. 11.

• 2 John 7 (R. V.) ; and 1 John Iv. 1-3 (r. v.) where same Is Implied.

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The Relation of the World- Religimis, 167

mankind. Moreover, it may be remarked in
passing, that it is of great importance that all
Christians, and missionaries especially, recog-
nize and heartily acknowledge such truths as
they may find more or less clearly admitted in
the religions of those among whom they labor.
Let us by aU means acknowledge with thank-
fulness the fact that Islam insists on the
unity and spirituality of God, as opposed to
all polytheism and pantheism; and no less,
on His absolute supremacy and sovereignty
over all that is. Let us rejoice again, that
in Hindooism we find so many intimations
of that other profound truth, of which Islam
seems never to have caught a glimpse, the im-
manence of God in the world. Let us even
thank Buddhism for its continual insistence
on the utter vanity and the unsatisfying na-
ture of the world and all that is in it, and for
its assertion of the equality of all men, as
against the intolerable pretensions of caste.

Nor have we the least reason to fear, lest by
such frank recognition of any truth to which
any non-Christian religion may give witness,
we detract aught from the Divine authority
and unique supremacy of Christianity. If the
teaching of the Holy Scriptures is to be re-
ceived, it were even incredible that some frag-

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168 Handbook of Comparative Religion.

ments of spiritual truth should not be found in
all religions. For the teaching of the Word is
explicit that all men alike have a moral na-
ture, and that humanity began its history with
a true, if imperfect, knowledge of God. We
are told that the invisible things of God, from
the time of the creation itself, have been
clearly revealed, "being understood by the
things that are made " ; * and that men who
have not the revealed law of God, are yet " a
law unto themselves " ; inasmuch as they show
the operation of a "law written in their
hearts," when their thoughts within them ac-
cuse or else excuse them for what they have
done.* Moreover, the same Scriptures teach
no less clearly that the working of God's Holy
Spirit is by no means confined to those who
have the revealed Word, but that the eternal
Word "lighteth every man."^ And since
the same Scriptures also teach that even be-
fore God separated Israel to be the special
vehicle and channel of His supernatural reve-
lation. His will for our salvation was made
known to the children of men ; therefore, in
the light of all these facts, we need not be sur-
prised that among religions other than the
Christian we should find, as we do find, some

'Rom. i. 20. "Bom. ii. 14, 16. 'John I. 9.

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The Relation of the World-Religions, 169

vestiges of Grod's ancient revelation and many
most impressive suggestions of truths which
are commonly regarded as belonging, not to
natural, but to revealed religion.

Then we have further to remember that by
the dispersion of the Jews after the Babylo-'
nian captivity, in the first instance, and after
that, by the preaching of the apostles and
their associates and immediate successors, the
distinctive facts of the gospel were very widely
spread abroad in the world of that time. That
such truths, so extensively proclaimed, should
have everywhere utterly perished fi'om the
memory of men, in those various lands where
they labored, had been truly astonishing ; and
the evidence is all to the contrary.

As is well known, Mohammedanism accepts
as infallible truth very much of the history
and doctrine of the Old and New Testaments.
Hindooism, with its teaching concerning Pra-
japati, who sacrificed himself in behalf of the
gods, recognized in its most ancient days, the
doctrine of a Divine Atoner and atonement ;
and at this present time, in its doctrine of the
avata.rs, confesses to the fact that if the world
is to be saved, an incarnation of the Deity is
required. These two ideas have been strik-
ingly combined in the Bhagavad Gita, where

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170 Hatidhook of Comjmrative Religion,

Krishna, as an incarnation of the Deity, is
represented as saying, in language which
might be applied without modification to our
Lord Jesus Christ : " I am the offering ; I am
the sacrifice ; I am the burnt offering." ^ The
' poem is of later origin than the Christian era,
and this teaching with regard to Krishna, like
some of the incidents of his life as given in the
Bhagavad Purana, may indicate faint riecol-
lections of Christian preaching by the apostle
Thomas, or other early missionaries to India.
But the fundamental idea thus expressed had
found striking expression even in India before
the incarnation of our Lord ; as in one of the
Brahmanas previously cited: "The Lord of
creatures gave Himself for them, ^ for He be-
came their sacrifice."'

Not to multiply illustrations, let it then be
granted, once for all, that in all the great re-
ligions of mankind may be discovered more or
less important fragments of Divine truth ; and
even of such truths as are distinctive of Chris-
tianity.

But it by no means follows from this that
it is therefore wrong to speak of the various
ethnic religions as " false," and of Christianity

^Bhcigavad Olta, Ix. 16.

'I. e., the gods: but these were originally mortal men.

*Satapatha Brahmana, xiv. 3, 2, 1.

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The Relation of the World-Religions, 171

alone as the " true " religion. For, in the first
place, it is to be noted that even where a truth
is recognized in any one of the non-Christian
religions, it is very commonly exaggerated out
of all proportion to other truths, or utterly
erroneous inferences are drawn from it; or,
again, the representation itself is distorted, like
the image of the full-orbed sun upon a tossing
sea. Thus, if Islam insists on the unity of God,
as we have seen, it misapprehends this, as be-
ing a unity such as excludes the possibility of
a threeness of personality in the one God. If,
again, it makes much of His absolute power
and sovereignty, it so caricatures this doctrine
as to make it essential to believe that God is
the author of evil, and even when it most
loudly extols Him as " the Merciful and the
Compassionate," quite loses sight of the depths
of His pardoning grace and loving-kindness.

Hindooism, again, holding so firmly to the
truth of an immanence of God in the world,
has identified His relation to the soul with His
relation to matter, has lost sight of His per-
sonality, and by making God the agent in all
acting, makes Him to be the author of all sin.
If Buddhism has rightly said much of the van-
ity and unsatisfying nature of all earthly
things, in doing this, it has missed of the mo-

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172 Handbook of Corwpa/rative Religion,

mentous truth that the evil which pertains to
this earthly life, is not because existence — even
bodily existence — ^is of necessity evil ; but is
because of man's sin, which has turned what
God made " very good " into evil.

But not only are the truths which are recog-
nized in the various religions thus either dis-
torted, or separated from their proper place in
the system of truth, but the system of religious
teaching in which they are made to take some
place, in each and every case, as a system, is
diametrically opposed to Christianity. And
this is the real question as to the truth or fal-
sity of any religion as compared with Chris-
tianity. It is not whether in such religion
many religious truths are recognized; it is
whether the system of teaching represented in
that religion, as a whole, is true or false. Now
sui'ely it is quite inconceivable that a religion,
for example, which is based on the denial of
the personality of God, and theremth also of
man and of his responsibility to God, and a
religion in which, as in Christianity, all this is
affirmed, can both be true. It is impossible,
again, that a religion which affirms an incar-
nation of the Deity in order to the salvation
of men through a Divine atonement for sin,
is affirmed as a historic fact and fundamental

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The Relation of the World-Religions, 173

truth, and a religious system like that of Islam,
wherein the denial of the possibility of either
incarnation or atonement for sin is made an
element integral and essential, can both of
them be true. It is, again, no less certain
that, if in one religion, as in Buddhism, God
is ignored or denied, and it is assumed as fun-
damental truth that existence, everywhere and
always, is of necessity an evil, and the whole
doctrine of salvation is based on this assump-
tion ; and if in another religion, as in Chris-
tianity, we have a system of teaching which
assumes the existence of a personal God, the
Creator of all, and teaches the original excel-
lence of all things as made by Him ; then it
should be as clear as the noonday that these
two religions cannot both be true.

Hence, being assured that as an organized
and self-consistent system of related truths,
Christianity is to be held a true religion, it is
not through any lack of charity, but under the
constraint of an imperious logical necessity,
that we affirm that Islam, Hindooism, Bud-
dhism, Confucianism, in a word, all religions
whatsoever other than that of Christ, must be
regarded as false. Howsoever they may all
incidentally acknowledge many important
truths, nevertheless, as systems of religion^

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174 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

we must pronounce them false. Contradic-
tories cannot both be true.

Finally, in the light of these facts, we are
now prepared to consider the question so often
debated in Christian circles, whether men can
be saved by other religions than that of
Christ. There are many who think that this
is quite possible, if only a man live up to
the injunctions of the religion which he pro-
fesses ; and there are many still who deny
this. Let it be carefully observed, however,
that this question is quite distinct from another
with which it is often confounded ; namely,
whether men who are outwardly numbered in
a body professing other than the Christian
faith can possibly be saved. This may safely
be said, to preclude any misconception, that it is
perfectly certain that whenever and wherever
a man truly repents of all his sin and turns
unto God, he will be saved. Only the ques-
tion may fairly be raised just here, whether a
man can repent of sinning against God, who,
like a Buddhist, is not assured of His exist-
ence; or who, like a Brahman, is unable to
believe that God is a personal Being. How-
ever, the question immediately before us is
not whether, as a matter of fact, individuals
not professedly Christian have ever truly

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The Relation of the Worid- Religions, 175

turned from all sin unto God ; but the very
distinct question whether a man can be
saved from sin here and hereafter ly means
of a diligent observance of the prescriptions
of some other religion than that of Jesus
Christ.

In answer to this question we remark first
— what is very little understood — that reli-
gions other than the Christian do not even pro-
pose salvation from sin as the object to be at-
tained. As has been already fully shown, the
salvation proposed by the world-religions is,
in every case, merely a salvation from those
sufferings here or hereafter, which are caused
by sin. Let it be remembered that, for instance,
the Mohammedan idea of salvation, like that
of too many nominal Christians, is merely sal-
vation from hell-fire. The Hindoo idea of sal-
vation is deliverance from the necessity of
going through the eighty-four lakhs of trans-
migrations, and therewith, speedier deliver-
ance from suffering by the final loss of self-
conscious personality through absorption in
the infinite Brahma. The Buddhist idea of
salvation, in the highest sense apprehended by
the Buddha, the parinihhdnd^ is to cease to
be eternally, to reach that state wherein
" That by which they say ^ He is,' exists for him

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176 Handbook of Comparative Religion,

no longer."* Even though we should grant
that any one religion is adapted to the attain-
ment of salvation in the sense in which its
votaries understand that term, surely it would
not follow that they were therefore adapted to
the attainment of a salvation from sin, when
this is not even contemplated therein as the
end of the religious life.

Again, to suppose that by obedience to the
prescriptions of any religion other than the
Christian, men may attain to acceptance with
God, is to assume that God can be pleased and
satisfied by actions and observances of dia-
metrically opposite moral character; with
human sacrifices, or with no sacrifice; with
reliance upon His incarnate Son, or without
it. Is this conceivable ? If we accept Chris-
tianity as true, then we must admit that it
teaches that the Divine verdict is that no man
can possibly attain to salvation through efforts
of his own, and that salvation therefore is of
necessity through God's free grace alone. But
every other religion, without exception, in so
far as it teaches anything on the subject,
teaches with all possible emphasis that salva-
tion, of whatsoever sort it be, is to be attained
through something done or suffered by the

* Sutta Nipdta : Parayanavagga, vil. 8.

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The Relation of the World-Religiona, 177

man himself. Can these contradictory teach-
ings both be true ?

Finally, as Christians, we are bound to
admit that for all who honestly receive the
New Testament as the Word of God, this
question should be regarded as settled. Noth-
ing could be more explicit than the words of
the apostle with regard to Jesus Christ : " In
none other is there salvation: for neither is
there any other name under heaven, that is
given among men, wherein we must be saved." ^

This statement of the apostle, together
with all the foregoing arguments, is also justi-
fied historically. For it must ever be borne in
mind that salvation consists essentially, not so
much in escaping the retributions of eternity,
as in the production of a certain type of char-
acter, which is described by the term " holy,"
taken in the biblical sense of that word.
Now there is no want of charity when we
affirm that among the votaries of other re-
ligions we do not, as a matter of fact, find this
special type of character- We doubtless find
among them all, here and there, men who may
be rightly described as brave, or generous, or
benevolent, or moral, but for holiness we look
in vain. When and where has Islam, for ex-

» Acts Iv. 12. (R. V.)

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178 Ilcmdbook of Comparative Meligion,

ample, ever produced a Saint John? When
has Hindooism ever shown the world an
Isaiah ; or Buddhism, a Saint Paul ? And if
the world-religions do not develop such a type
of character here and now, what possible
reason is there to believe that by devotion to
them here, a man may at last secure complete
deliverance from sin, and personal holiness of
character in the life to come ?

The practical consequence of the argument
of this book is so evident that it needs only to
be mentioned. If the differences between the
various religions of the world and the religion
of Jesus Christ are such as have been herein
set forth, and if the teaching of Christianity
be accepted as undoubted truth, then Chris-
tian missions to the followers of other religions
become a duty so clear that it should be self-
evident. If the words of the Tamil poet be-
fore quoted be true, and

" ParificatioQ before the great God
Is greater than life and is stronger than death ;
Is the hope of the wise and the prize of the saint/'

and if, as both the history of our race and the
Holy Scriptures clearly testify, all religions
except that of Jesus Christ have utterly failed
to secure for man this supreme blessing, then

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The Relation of the World-Iieligions. 179

manifestly it is the first duty of the Church to
let all the world know, without any further
delay, that what neither the Buddha, nor any
of the deified heroes of Hindooism, nor Mo-
hammed, nor Confucius, nor any other teacher
of religion has ever proved able to do, has
been done by Jesus Christ our Lord ; who in
very truth saves His people from their sins,^
and whose gospel is shown by the history of
almost nineteen hundred years to be of a
truth " the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth."^

*■ Matt. i. 21. * Rom. i. 16 ; 1 Cor. i. 24.

FINIS.

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