His star in the east

Front matter

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 1

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Chapter I. The Religion Of The Son Of Man

Evidences of Christianity. — Paley's position. — Miracles. — Prophecy. — Recent objections. — Christianity and Civilization. — Revelation. — What is originality ? — Eclecticism. — The relation of the ethnic religions to Christ's religion 13

CHAPTER n.

VEDAISM.

Periods in Indian History. — The Yedas. — The gods. — Kathenotheism. — Asura. — Universality of the Divine. — Kindness of the gods. — Christ's justification of Vedaism. — Weakness of Vedaism 27

Chapter III. Brahmanism

Rise of caste. — New Vedas. — Brahmanas. — Laws of Manu. — Ritual. — Upanishads. — Sat. — Atman. — Brahma. — Brahmanism and the gospel. — Sacrifice divine. — Need of atonement. — Fatal weakness of Brahmanism 57

10 CONTENTS.

Chapter IV. Transition From Brahmanism To Buddhism

Mimansa. — Nyaya. — Kapila. — Vedanta. — Lessons of religious history 93

CHAPTEE V.

BUDDHISM.

Divisions of Buddhism. — Life of the Buddha. — - The great renunciation. — Buddha's teaching. — The existence of pain. — Cause of sorrow. — " The Way." — The Skandhas. — Kamma. — Faith. — lutelligence. — Nirvana. — Secret of Buddhism 103

CHAPTER YI.

CHRIST'S RELIGION AND BUDDHISM.

Kindred legends in both. — Christian and Buddhist morality, caste, almsgiving, forgiveness of injuries. — Saint and missionary. — Buddhist philosophy and Christian theology. — Sorrow. — The Skandhas and the Incarnation. — Christ's revelation of personality. — Kamma and the cross of Christ. — The power of faith. — Nirvana and the Christian Heaven. — Buddhist pessimism and Christian hope. — Progress dependent upon knowledge of God 145

CHAPTER YIL

HINDUISM.

Indian Theism. — Return to the Vedas. — The Maha- Bharata. — Shiva. — Shaivism. — Vishnu. — Vaishnuism. — Avatara. — The Incarnation 178

CONTENTS. 11

CHAPTER YIII.

ZOROASTRIANISM.

The Parsis. — The Zend-Avesta. — Bactria. — The first religious schism. — Zoroaster. — Prayer. — Inspiration.

— The gods. — Truth and purity. — Moral struggle.

— Relation of Zoroastrianism to Judaism. — The Medes.

— Fall of Nineveh. — The Captivity. — Cyrus. — Influence of Persian thought. — The Synagogue. — Personal responsibility. — Inspired writings. — Dualism. — Influence on Christian thought. — The absent God. — Importance of purity. — The Resurrection 201

CHAPTER IX.

"THE PERVERSION OF THE GOSPEL."

Review. — The Catholic Church a new thought. — Why is not the world Christian ? — Influence of the Roman Empire. — Incursion of the barbarians. — Medijevalism.

— The Reformation. — Dogmatism. — Institutionalism.

— Sectarianism. — Unity. — Saint Paul the ideal missionary. — Power of sympathy 243

CHAPTER X.

THE FUTURE OF CHRIST' S RELIGION.

Influence of physical science. — Science of comparative religions. — Failure of Christian nations to realize their calling. — Future of humanity. — The evolution of morality. — From what to what ? — Humanitarian morality. — Need of hope. — The real dangers. — The lesson of history. — The Brahmo Somaj. — Wise men in the East 267

HIS STAR IN THE EAST.

Chapter I. The Religion Of The Son Of Man

The purpose of this short study in the early- Aryan religions is to call attention to the witness that they bear to man's need of the gospel, and to show that that need has been answered, just in so far as any people, or rather any individual, was prepared to receive it. The assumption that the heathen once had a perfect revelation which they deliberately rejected is far more likely to " cut the nerve of missions " than any theory of the mercy which " endureth forever ; " while the belief that God has neglected the larger part of his children will justify men in neglecting them too. But such a position, if once taken by the Church, would lead to a theory of Election, which must harden into a Phariseeism, which is the '' middle wall " which Christ came to break down.

The title of the book expresses the thought with which this study began and which subsequent research has deepened, that the " Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world " has been seen in the East, and that the true way to make disciples of all nations is by declaring unto them Jesus as Agni, Brahma, Buddha, or Sosios, as He was first declared to the Jew as the Christ. So considered, the religions of the world become the great " Evidences of Christianity," that is, of Christ.

That there is need of such study seems evident enough ; for whatever may have been the merits of the old standards in this department, their usefulness is a thing of the past. That exceedingly interesting book, "The Evidences of Christianity," by Paley? would hardly be referred to to-day in an argument with a skeptic. And the reason is simple enough : Paley's book was written to refute the popular objection of his day, that Christianity was the invention of priests. " No," said Paley, impostors could not work miracles ; the disciples worked miracles and thereby proved that what they said was true. Jesus worked miracles and thereby proved that He came from God. Ergo, Christianity was not an invention of impostors. We can scarcely refrain from smiling at the naivetS of his argument, yet it was sufficient for such an absurd objection. But it is unfortunate that the argument was ever used against any opponents save those against whom the sturdy Archdeacon aimed it ; for it has no force as against men who feel, with Hume, that a miracle is intrinsically so improbable that no evidence is sufficient to prove it.

A second argument — what might be called the intellectual miracle, as opposed to the physical miracles — was found in the literal fulfillment of ancient prophecies in the events recorded in the Gospels. But the new science of Biblical criticism has shown that there is no such literal agreement as we fondly supposed.

Higher ground was taken by the great Bishop Butler, when he said that the proof of the truth of the gospel was found in the willingness of the Apostles to die in the assertion that what is there recorded is true. But we know now that SS. Peter and Paul were both dead before the Gospels were written, and that there is no proof that any Apostle died asserting the truth of the gospel record. And even if it be said that when the " gospel " is spoken of the great saving truths, and not the record, is meant, the answer has been that, even so, the death of, any witness only proves Ms belief in that which he asseverates. And therein lay the weakness of all this great theologian's argument in the second part of the " Analogy." He was influenced by the atmosphere in which he wrote. It was a time when Christianity was spoken of as a " system," — something finished long ago and sent into the world, in which men ought to express a " belief " as the result of a careful weighing of probabilities, with a careful eye to the result in case of error. Such a good man as Dr. Johnson, for instance, was forever talking about Christianity, as we might talk about the pyramids, — as something that existed outside of England, in which he believed because a traveler in whom he had confidence told him that he had seen it ! And that was the more remarkable in his case, for he had heard Wesley proclaim the presence of the unseen

King, of the God who had revealed his son in him^ and caused the light of the gospel to shine in his heart. Methodism was the inevitable reaction from the deism within and without the Church. Its immense superiority to what preceded it is now acknowledged by all ; the advances from the position of Paley are not so readily acknowledged, but they are no less great. Hume's dictum concerning miracles has done nothing to discredit the miraculous, but it has made it necessary to think of miracles as the natural effects of a supernatural character, rather than as a proof of a divine mission. And when we say that, we mean that Jesus is known to be the Christ, not after having been kept standing in the antechamber while his credentials were examined, but by the majesty to which all that is worthy in humanity bends the knee.

The new thought about prophecy is nothing less than the recovery of the higher ground on which the Apostle stood who wrote, " the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." The presence of the prophetic spirit in us is the bond of sympathy by which we are able to recognize the outlines of the ideal man of whom each prophet drew some feature, until we find them all fulfilled and transfigured in the character of the Son of man.

For Paley and Butler and other great and good men to write in answer to the objections of their day was to do a work for which the Church can never be too grateful, but for us to use such arguments to-day is a mark of skepticism. It is as if a man were to say Michael Angelo did succeed in making the dome of

St. Peter's float in the liquid air, and yet all the time was building a scaffolding outside it to keep it from falling down. It does float, or it does n't. If it does, it will assert its origin from genius ; and if it does not, both it and the scaffolding will fall.

And that is why the old text-books are no longer useful ; we have come to feel that the effort to prove Christianity divine is like an effort to prove the virtue of one's mother. A man believes himself to be the son of his reputed father, but in the nature of the case proof is impossible. The truth and love and purity and goodness that are forever associated with his mother's character make any other supposition impossible. And so it is that " Evidences of Christianity," as the word is popularly understood, are impossible ; for Christianity is only a scholastic term for that which Jesus called the Kingdom of God, which He said was within us, that is, the Christ spirit. The man who has the assurance of the spirit know^s that it came forth from God, and the man who has it not cannot be convinced by argument. But illustrations of its power and deep meaning will be found in every age and in each individual in which it has been felt. This spirit is like what we call the vital force of nature. Proofs of vegetable life having once existed in the Arctic regions may be found in the fossil remains of plants and flowers. No proof of this force is needed in the tropics, yet illustrations of its myriad fantastic forms may be found year after year, and viewed with new interest by all lovers of nature. And so it is with the living power of Christianity. If we would know what form it took in the historic life of Jesus, we may study the Gospels. If we wish to see its power working in the lives of the Apostles, we have the Acts and the Epistles ; but if we wish to see how it works to-day, we must look to the life of General Gordon, a free man in his desert prison; to the heroism of our own countrymen, who in the long arctic night had light in all their dwellings, and in their hunger were fed with the bread of life ; to the patience of those whom Keble called the " pillars of the Church," the poor, who in garret and in cellar are waiting for the descent of the heavenly city. It is with such illustrations — or evidences — that the Christian pulpit is dealing week after week; but something more seems to be needed, and to that I have ventured to apply myself.

There are two popular objections urged against Christianity, neither of them inspired by a hatred of it, but rather the expression of a feeling that it — a thing which has done and may do good in the world — is hindered by the extravagant claims of its ignorant disciples. The first of these objections is against that claim which asserts that modern civilization is the result of the preaching of the freedom of the sons of God. " Modern civilization," it is said, " is a mighty power, which would have been essentially what it is without the religion of Christ. It would have evolved a religion had not that of the Galilean been at hand convenient for the purpose." This objection was considered a few years since by that distinguished orator, Dy. Richard Storrs, when he held great multitudes of people spellbound by the magic of his rhetoric, and drew a picture of society in Greece and Rome before the coming of Christ,^ — which if to some it appeared in somewhat darker colors than could be always verified, was still dark enough to show what another century must have brought forth ; and then turned to the world of to-day, — which, if far from realizing the seer's vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem, still shows the influence of the new spirit which came with Jesus Christ.

The second objection deals with the origin of Christianity. " Christianity," it is said, " can no longer claim to be a revelation, for there is no such thing as revelation. Every nation has evolved a religion colored by the circumstances by which the nation was surrounded. Nor is that all ; Christianity must now forego even its claim to originality^ for all students of the ethnic religions know that Christianity is a system of eclecticism, the fragments of which may be found scattered from the Yellow Sea to the steppes of Tartary, from the Himalayas to the Nile." ^

Now to the first objection, that there is no such thing as revealed religion, it is sufficient to answer that all religion wherever it may be found, with whomsoever associated, is revealed. Religion, the binding of the soul of man to the Spirit of God, whether we find the fruit of it in the pure contemplation of Confucius, or the sweet mysticism of

^ The Divine Origin of Christianity indicated by its Historical Defects. By Richard S. Storrs, D. D., LL. D. 2 Evolution and Christianity^ by Yorke.

Buddha, or the wrapt vision of Isaiah, is the same, coming, like " every good and perfect gift, from above." "It is born not of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." But that religion we speah of as most fully revealed^ which most perfectly reveals — a religion which brings to man such a vision of God's character as to change his relation to God, to man, to nature, to life and to time, satisfying and fulfilling what the human consciousness has witnessed to as the fundamental instincts of the human heart, — such a religion so exceeds all others in the degree of its revelation as almost to justify us in speaking of it as different in kind, as the only revealed religion. That this is the religion of Jesus we assume. It may be that a serious study of some of the great religions of the world will show that assumption to be one which no thoughtful man need be ashamed to confess.

The other objection, that Christianity lacks originality, has had perhaps greater influence than any objection urged in our day. When it has once been asserted it seems so easy to find illustration of it, it seems so in harmony with the great law of development, that few ask themselves if the supposed illustrations throw light on the subject, and fewer still if the law of evolution does not show that when an original type appears other types begin to disappear. When the new type man appeared, many old types ceased to exist, and all evolution of new physical types ceased, and man showed himself a creature linked to the past, and yet having that which the past had never seen, the power to superintend his own future development and modify it in accordance with his own sense of the fitness of things. In other words, man came on the stage of life as a creator.^

We start with a like assumption (which it is not the province of this book to prove), — that the religion of the Son of man, while it has its roots in the past religious consciousness of men — specially of Israel — has also an element in it which the past cannot explain.

But what, after all, is originality ? Surely it is something more than a question of chronology, otherwise Shakespeare can lay no claim to it. For the plots of a large part of his plays were drawn from Italian originals which had passed through the medium of the French romances, of the sixteenth century, or from older English plays ; yet no one will deny that in the truest sense of the term, the '' Merchant of Venice," " Othello," and " Hamlet " are original plays. And the reason is this : the test of originality is not to be found so much in the origin of a work, if one may so say, as in the original effect produced. An old truth set in a new light, or shown to belong to some deeper principle, is as truly original as the first enunciation of it is an isolated fact.

Those who assert that Christianity is a system of eclecticism have not considered, I venture to say, either what eclecticism is or what its effect is.

Cousin's ''Lectures on Modern Philosophy," for instance, are an example of eclecticism. '' Material-

^ See The Destiny of Man, by John Fiske.

ism, Idealism, Mysticism, and Skepticism, these are the four forms that philosophy is perpetually taking," says this delighf ul lecturer. '' There is truth in each ; combine those truths and you have the ultimate philosophy." Well, we ask after reading him, what is the central truth into which these partial truths are to fit? And the answer is, "the philosophic spirit of eclecticism." But that is no truth at all. It is simply a state of mind, and what is more, a state of mind that is destined to react against itself into the narrowest dogmatism.

Again, eclecticism is only fitted to produce men " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." It could never have produced a Paul. Now apply either of these tests to the religion of Christ and they will fail. Jesus had no such knowledge of the religious systems of the world as to deliberately form an eclectic system. " True," say our objectors, '' but Palestine was full of every sort of doctrine. Buddhist monks and Parsee priests, Egyptian magicians and Hebrew rabbis met in Alexandria, and Antioch, and probably in Jerusalem. It was impossible that Jesus should not have been unconsciously, and his later disciples consciously, influenced by these conflicting doctrines. The morality of the Sermon on the Mount had been preached by Confucius and Buddha, and the so-called ' Lord's Prayer ' is a compilation from rabbinic sources." Now in regard to the relation of Christian to Buddhistic morality we shall speak in another chapter ; suffice it to say here that the originality of Christ's morality is not to be sought for in any enunciation of a new duty, so much as in the concentration of all duty into the passion of love. And the object of that love is to be found not in an abstract principle, but in the living God, whose character is essentially like that of Jesus ; and in our fellow-man made like Jesus and so like God. Jesus revealed sin, not as indulgence in pleasure, nor the violation of a written code, but as the ungrateful violation of the sweet reasonableness of human nature in which God our Father is well pleased.

Jesus satisfies, then, the first test of originality by revealing one fundamental principle into which the morality of humanity can fit.

He satisfies also the second test. He has placed old truths in such a new light that they are essentially new. Thus, take but one petition of the Lord's Prayer. What did " Our Father, Vv^ho art in Heaven," mean on the lips of the rabbis ? It meant a Being who dwelt above the visible vault of heaven, caring for that remnant of the seed of Abraham which kept the ceremonial law as expounded by the scribes. But on the lips of the Christian, it means, in the light of the Incarnation, the Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being, who dwells in the heaven of purity and peace and joy which is " about our path and about our bed," and who creates and guides and loves every child of man who is born into the world. That is the originality of Jesus. Such an illumination of the original instincts of man's spiritual nature as to enable him to take out of his treasures old things, and behold, they become new ! The relation which his teaching, or rather his revelation of himself, bore to the teachings of other men was like the relation of the ocean to the streams which irresistibly flow into it. Each little stream and rivulet, each mighty river and placid bay, brings its own force ; each inlet has its own eddy ; but they do not make the ocean. It absorbs them all and then flows back, filling them with new life and power. So is it with the religion of the Christ. It sweeps by the turbid rivers and vast bays of heathenism and claims kinship with them, fulfilling and purifying them.

Has its effect on life been original, or not ? That question has, as has been already said, been well answered by the distinguished divine to whose work we referred. The object of this book is quite different. It is hoped to show by this study that evidences of Christianity, or rather, illustrations of the truth of Christianity, are to be found in the great ethnic religions.

How can that be best done ? How can Christianity be proved to be the catholic, the universal religion ? for if that can be done, if it can be shown that the religion of Christ contains the desire of humanity, as manifested in the religions of the world, our task will have been completed.

Let us take an illustration that may make our purpose clearer. Suppose a farm of many fields : suppose there be one field that we believe to be all that can be desired ; suppose it be objected that each field of the farm has its own advantages, how could we prove the chosen one to be the best ? We might begin by pointing out deep buried rocks in one, undestroyed stumps in another, a third might be declared too marshy to produce a crop, — and so we might make the round of the farm, and prove the first field best by comparing its advantages with the disadvantages of all the others. This method is one that seems to commend itself to some who think they are the defenders of the faith. It is, alas ! the prevailing note in most meetings held to advocate missions, and perhaps it is the most effective for getting money — once ; but it must not be used too often ; there is a point beyond which faithful Christian people will not go, and where the voice of the scoffer will be heard. " Why try to prove the love of God," it will be said, " to nations whom, on your own showing, God has left from the creation until now in darkness?" Is it not time that the orthodoxy which would magnify the moral grandeur of the ethnic religion of Moses and the Catholic religion of Jesus by depressing the religions of India, China, and Egjrpt, be declared heresy against the written as well as the unwritten gospel? Surely there must be another way, and — to return to our illustration of the farm — if we began by pointing out the excellence of each field in turn, and then showed the same excellence in the first, the first field would have been shown to be supremely superior to any of the others in degree ; but if in addition it could be shown that the first field had anything more than all the others, then its excellence would have been shown to be different in hind. This, then, is what it is hoped this book will do : first, point out the excellence of each religion which is considered, and then show that the religion of Christ has the same ; secondly, to show that over and above the excellent things which may be found elsewhere, there is that in the gospel which " eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man," but which God hath revealed in the life of Jesus the Christ.

The religions considered here are those in which that branch of the human family known as the Aryan lived and died. Strictly speaking, the Aryan religions include those of India and Persia before the Mohammedan conquest, Greek, Roman, and Teutonic mythologies. But this book will treat only of the religions of India, or what may be called the early Aryan.

Chapter II. Vedaism

The religious history of India divides itself into four periods, viz. : I. The Vedic ; II. The Brahmanic ; III. The Buddhist ; and IV. The Hindu.

The Vedic cannot easily be separated from the Brahmanic, because the one flowed by an unbroken gradation into the other. But it has been said that the difference between the two periods is this : " The Vedic age was the one in which the main traditions of the Maha-Bharata and Ramayana seem to have taken place ; whilst the Brahmanic age, which succeeded to the Vedic period, was the one in which the two poems were composed." ^ The Maha-Bharata, or " Great War of the Bharata," has for its foundation the struggle of the two rival branches of the great Bharata family, — a sort of Indian " War of the Roses," which took place in that part of India lying north of AUahabad and east of the Punjab. This was probably about a thousand years before our era, — some would place it as early as fifteen hundred years before.

The traditions of this struggle were to the descendants of the mighty Bharata what the siege of Troy was to the Greeks : and having been sung by ^ History of Indiay by J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i.

the minstrels and recounted by the story-tellers, they took permanent form in the great Indian Epic, tinder the hands of the Brahmans, who made it the vehicle of theological instruction.^ Of its theological bias we shall have occasion to speak later ; now we have need only to note what it has to teach us of the habits of the people of whom it speaks.

But of course the great storehouse from which we must draw our materials is the Eig-Veda. The Vedas or "knowledge," the sacred writings of the Vedic-Aryans, are probably the oldest of all the efforts made by man to record the influence of God's spirit upon his soul. The Hindus believe that the original Veda was written by Brahma, and that having been preserved by tradition, it was finally arranged in its present form by the sage Dwaipayana, or Yyasa, — the " collector," as he is commonly called. These Vedas are divided into four parts, of which the first, called the Rich or Veda in metre^ has given the name Rig- Veda to the whole collection.^ But the Rig- Veda proper is the only one which is undoubtedly " Vedic," the other three are Brahmanic.

The whole chronology of India is too uncertain, too much like objects seen in a dream, to enable us to determine with any certainty the date of the Rig- Veda, but it is probable that the last of the hymns had been written before the great war, for the sailors of Solomon who brought back the treasures of the Indies to Jerusalem used the names which were given in India, but which were no longer the pure

^ Colebrooke's Misc. Essays, vol. i.

2 History of India, J. Talboys Wheeler, vol. i.

forms of the Rig- Veda ; ^ so that if its language was archaic in the time of Solomon, it is allowing none too much time, in that age of slow change, if we saythat the last of the hymns had been sung before Moses led the people out of Egypt.

Out of the mystery which shrouds the table-land of Central Asia, into the land of the Five Rivers, came the fathers of the Indo- Aryan race. They were a company of herdsmen, and the prayer which was ever on their lips was that the heavens would give them rain; for unless the clouds, the ''heavenly kine," let down their udders, the earthly cattle must die. That is the way their religious sense first expressed itself ; rising from the immediate human want, in prayer to the infinitely human power which could sympathize with man, and be touched with the feeling of his infirmities. To the God, then, who had power over sun and rain, to the God of the firmament, the most frequent prayer was addressed.