The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors Part 32

'The people believed he was a G.o.d.' They eagerly caught the words which fell from his lips, which taught his divine mission, and they called him the 'Holy One,' and finally the 'Living G.o.d.' He performed miraculous cures. At his birth a marvelous light illumined the earth. His followers baptised, and performed miraculous cures. And he, when a child, attracted attention by his miracles. While attending the herds with his foster-father a great serpent poisoned the river, which caused the death of cows and shepherd-boys when they drank of it, whom Chrishna restored to life by a look of divine power. His life was devoted to mercy and charity. He left paradise from pure compa.s.sion, to die for suffering sinners. He sought to lead men to better paths and lives of virtue and rect.i.tude. He suffered to atone for the sins of the world; and the sinner, through faith in him, can be saved. Christ and Chrishna both taught the equality of man. Prayers addressed to Chrishna were after this fas.h.i.+on: 'O thou Supreme One! thy essence is inscrutable. Thou art all in all. The understanding of man cannot reach thy Almighty Power.

I, who know nothing, fly to thee for protection. Show mercy unto me, and enable me to see and know thee.' Chrishna replies, 'Have faith in me.

No one who wors.h.i.+ps me can perish. Address thyself to me as the only asylum. I will deliver thee from sin. I am animated with equal benevolence toward all beings. I know neither hatred nor partiality.

Those who adore me devoutly are in me and I in them'"--"Christ within you the hope of glory." (Abridged from Mr. Tuttle.)

"If we consider that Budhism proclaimed the equality of all men and women in the sight of G.o.d, that it denounced the impious pretensions of the most mischievous priesthood the world ever saw, and that it inculcated a pure system of practical morality, we must admit that the innovation was as advantageous as it was extensively spread and adopted." (Hue's Journey through China, chap. v.)

"To Chrishna the Hindoos were indebted for a code of pure and practical morality, which inculcated charity and chast.i.ty, performance of good works, abstinence from evil, and general kindness to all living things."

(Cunningham.)

"Budhism never confounds right or wrong, and never excuses any sin"

(Catharine Beecher.)

"He (Chrishna) honored humanity by his virtues." (St Hilaire.)

"It is probable that every incident in his (Chrisna's) life is founded in fact, which, if separated from surrounding fable, would afford a history that would scarce have any equal in the importance of the lessons it would teach." (Hardy's Manual of Budhism.)

"He (Chrishna) undertakes and counsels a constant struggle against the body. In his eyes the body is the enemy of man's soul (as Paul thought when he spoke of 'our vile bodies.') He aims to subdue the body and the burning pa.s.sions which consume it.... He requires humility, disregard of wordly wealth, patience and resignation in adversity, love to enemies, religious tolerance, horror at falsehood, avoidance of frivolous conversation, consideration and esteem for women, sanct.i.ty of the marriage relation, non-resistance to evil, confession of sins, and conversion." (St. Hilaire.)

"Budhism has been called the Christianity of the East." (Abel Remuset.)

"The doctrine and practical piety of their bible (the Baghavat Gita) bear a strong resemblance to those of the Holy Scriptures. It has scarcely a precept or principle that is not found in the (Christian) bible. And were the people to live up to its principles of peace and love, oppression and injury would be known no more within their borders... It has no mythology of obscene and ferocious deities, no sanguinary or impure observances, no self-inflicting tortures, no tyrannizing priesthood, no confounding of right and wrong by making certain iniquities laudable in wors.h.i.+p. In its moral code, its description of the purity and peace of the first ages, and the shortening of man's life by sin, it seems to follow genuine traditions.

In almost every respect it seems to be the best religion ever invented by man." (Rev. H. Malcom's Travels in Asia.)

"If the morality of Budhism be examined, its exhortations to guard the will, to curb the thoughts, to exercise kindness towards others, to abstain from wrong to all, it propounds a very high standard of practice." (Upham's Doctrines and History of Budhism.)

"It seeks the highest triumphants of humanity in the exercise of devotion, self-contemplation, and self-denial." (Theogony of the Hindoos, by Bjornsjerma.)

"And the doctrines of Budhism are not alone in the beauty of their sentiments and the excellence of much of their morality. 'It is not permitted to you to return evil for evil' is one of the sentiments of Socrates." (Rev. H. S. Hardy's Eastern Monachism.)

"Budhism insists on the necessity of taking the intellectual faculties for guides in philosophical researches." (Tiberghien.)

"It sought to wean mankind from the pleasures and vanities of life by pointing to the transitoriness of all human enjoyment." (Smith's Mongolia.)

"The princ.i.p.al characteristics of Budhism are the doctrines of mildness and the universal brotherhood of man." (Ibid.)

"Life is a state of probation and misery, according to Budhism."

(Upham, chap. vi.)

"The Brahmins found fault with him (Chrishna) for receiving as disciples the outcasts of Hindoo society (as the Jews did Christ for fellows.h.i.+pping publicans and sinners). But he (Chrishna) replied, 'My law is a law of mercy to all.'" (Hue's Voyages through China.)

"Budhism attracted and furnished consolation for the poor and unfortunate." (Ibid.)

"Budhism is a rationalistic and reform system as compared with Brahminism. Landresse expresses his high admiration of the heroism with which the Budhist missionaries before Christ crossed streams and seas which had arrested armies, and traversed deserts and mountains upon which no caravans dared to venture, and braved dangers and surmounted obstacles which had defied the omnipotence of the emperors." (A note on Landresse's _Foe Koui Ki._)

"If we addressed a Mogul or Thibetan this question, Who is Chrishna?

the reply was, instantly, 'The Savior of men.'" (Hue's Journey through China.)

"Chrishna, the incarnate Deity of the Sanscrit romance continues to this hour the darling G.o.d of the women of India.... Chrishna was the person of Vishnu (G.o.d) himself in the human form." (Asiat. Researches, 260).

"Respectable natives told me that some of the missionaries had told them that they were even now almost Christians" (owing to the two religions being so nearly alike). (Ibid).

"All that converting the Hindoos to Christianity does for them is to change the object of their wors.h.i.+p from Chrishna to Christ." (Robert Cheyne.)

"Brahminism or Budhism in some of its forms is said to const.i.tute the religion of considerably more than half the human race. It teaches the existence of one supreme eternal, and uncreated G.o.d, called Brahma, who created the world through Chrishna, the second member of the Trinity."

Paul says, G.o.d created the world through Jesus Christ, the second member of the Christian Trinity. (Eph. iii. 9.) How striking the resemblance!

"The doctrine of the incarnation, the descent of the Deity upon earth, and his manifestation in a human form for the redemption of mankind, seems to have existed in the shape of prophecy or fact in all ages of the world. Hindooism teaches nine of these incarnations. Furthermore, it teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, the fall and redemption of man, and a state of future rewards and punishments in a future life.... This religion in chief of Asia is traceable to remote ages. The doctrine of the Trinity is represented in the Elephantine cavern, and taught in the Mahabarat, which goes back for its origin nearly two thousand years before Christ." (New York Sunday Despatch, 1855.)

"In the year 3600, Chrishna descended to the earth for the purpose of defeating the evil machinations of Chivan (the devil), as Christ 'came to destroy the devil and his works.' (See John iii. 8.) After a fierce combat with the devil, or serpent, he defeated him by bruising his head--he receiving, during the contest, a wound in the heel. ('It [the serpent] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.'--Gen.

iii. 15.) He died at last between two thieves.... He lead a pure and holy life, and was a meek, tender, and benevolent being, and enjoined charity, hospitality, and mercy, and forbade lying, prevarication, hypocrisy, and overreaching in dealing, and pilfering, and theft, and violence toward any being." (Lecture before the Free Press a.s.sociation in 1827.)

"The birthplace of the Hindoo hero (Chrishna) is called Mathura, which is easily changed, and by correct translation becomes Maturea, the place where Christ is said to have stopped, between Nazareth and Egypt... To show his humility he washed the feet of the Brahmins (as Christ is said to have washed the feet of the Jews--see John xiii. 14). One day a woman came to him and anointed his hair with oil, in return for which he healed her maladies. One of his first miracles was that of healing a leper, like Christ (See Mark i. 4). Finally, he was crucified, then descended to Hades. (It is said of Christ, 'his soul was not left in h.e.l.l.'--Acts ii. 31.) He (Chrishna) rose from the dead and ascended to Voicontha (heaven.)" (Higgin's Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 239).

Now, we ask, is it any wonder, in view of the foregoing historical exposition, that Eusebius should exclaim, "The religion of Jesus Christ is neither new nor strange?" (Eccl. Hist. ch. iv.) Truly did St. Augustine say, "This, in our day, is the Christian religion, not as having been unknown in former times, but as having recently received that name."

Here, then, we pause to ask our good Christian reader, _Where is your original Christianity now?_ or what const.i.tutes the revealed religion of Jesus Christ? or where is the evidence that any new religion was revealed by him or preached by him, seeing we have all his religion, as shown by the foregoing historical citations, included in an old heathen system more than a thousand years old when Jesus Christ was born?

We find it all here in this old oriental system of Budhism--_every essential part, particle and principle_ of it. We find Christianity all here--its Alpha and Omega, its beginning and end. We find it here in all its details,--its root, essence, and ent.i.ty,--all its "revealed doctrines," religious ideas, beautiful truths, senseless dogmas and oriental phantoms. Not, a doctrine, principle, or precept of the Christian system, but that is here proclaimed to the world ages before "the angels announced the birth of a divine babe in Bethlehem." Will you, then, persist in claiming that "truth, life, and immortality came by Jesus Christ," and that "Christ came to preach a new gospel to the world, and to set forth a new religion never before heard amongst men"

(to use the language of Archbishop Tillotson), when the historical facts cited in this work demonstrate a hundred times over that such a position is palpably erroneous? Will you still persist, with all those undeniable facts staring you in the face (proving and reproving, with overwhelming demonstration, that the statement is untrue), in declaring that "the religion of Jesus Christ is the only true and soul-saving religion, and all other systems are mere straw, stubble, tradition, and superst.i.tion"

(as a.s.serted by a popular Christian writer), when no mathematician ever demonstrated a scientific problem more clearly than we have proved in these pages that all the principle systems of the past, by no means excepting Christianity, are essentially alike in every important particular--all of their cardinal doctrines being the same, differing only in unimportant details?

Seeing, then, that all systems of religion have been found to be essentially alike in spirit and in practice, the all-important question arises here, What is the true cause a.s.signable for this striking resemblance? How is it to be accounted for? Perhaps some of our good Christian readers, unacquainted with history, may cherish the thought that all the oriental systems brought to notice are but imitations of Christianity; that they were reconstructed out of materials obtained from that source; that Christianity is the parent, and they the off-spring. But, alas for their long-cherished idol, those who entertain such forlorn hopes are "sowing to the wind, and are doomed to disappointment." With the exception of Mahomedanism alone, Christianity is the youngest system in the whole catalogue. The historical facts to prove this statement are voluminous. But as it needs no proof to those who have read religious history, but little s.p.a.ce will be occupied with citations for this purpose. With respect to the antiquity of the princ.i.p.al oriental system, we need only to quote the testimony of Sir William Jones, a devout Christian writer, who spent years in India, and whose testimony will be accepted by any person acquainted with his history. He makes the emphatic declaration, "That the name of Chrishna, and the general outline of his history, were long anterior to the birth of our Savior, and probably to the time of Homer (900 b. C.) we know very certainly." (Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 254.) No guess-work about it.

"_We know very certainly_."

And being a scholar, a traveler, and a sojourner among the Hindoos, and well versed in their history, no person ever had a better opportunity to know than he. We will hear this renowned author further. "In the Sanscrit dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole history of the incarnate deity (Chrishna), born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country (Cansa). He pa.s.sed a life of the most extraordinary and incomprehensible devotion. His birth was concealed from the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that one born at that time, and in that family, would destroy him;" i. e., destroy his power. (Asiat.

Res. vol. i. p. 273.) This writer also states that the first Christian missionaries who entered India were astonished to find there a religion so near like their own, and could only account for it by supposing that the devil, foreseeing the advent of Christ, originated a system of religion in advance of his, and "just like it." Stated in other words, he got out the second edition of the gospel plan of salvation before the first edition was published or had an existence. Rather a smart trick this, thus to outwit G.o.d Almighty.

With respect to the vast antiquity of the Hindoo oriental religion, which indicates it as being not only the source from which the materials of the Christian religion were drawn, but as being the parent of all the leading systems, with their three thousand subordinate branches which existed at a much earlier period than Christianity, we need only point to the deep chiseled sculptures and imperishable monuments enstamped on their time-honored temples, tombs, altars, vases, columns, paG.o.das, ruined towers, &c., which, with contemporary inscriptions, warrant us in antedating the religion of the Himmalehas far beyond the authentic records of any other religion that has floated down to us on the stream of time. The numerous images of their crucified G.o.ds, Chrishna and Saki, emblazoned on their old rock temples in various parts of the country, some of which are constructed of clay porphyry, now the very hardest species of rock, with their attendant inscriptions in a language so very ancient as to be lost to the memory of man, vie with the Sanscrit in age, the oldest deciphered language in the world.

All these and a hundred corroboratory historical facts fix on India as being the birthplace of the mother of all religions now existing, or that ever had an existence, while the great workshop in which they were subsequently remodeled was in Alexandria in Egypt, whose theological schools furnished the model for nearly every system now found noticed on the page of history--Christianity of course included. So much for the unrivaled antiquity of the Hindoo religion. Now, the more important query arises, What relations.h.i.+p does ancient heathen or Hindoo Budhism bear to Christianity? What is the evidence that the latter is an outgrowth of the former? As an answer to this question, the reader will please note the following facts of history:--

1. Alexandria, the home of the world's great conqueror, was at one period of time the great focal center for religious speculation and propagandism, the great emporium for religious dogmas throughout the East, and a place of resort for the disciples of nearly every system of religious faith then existing.

2. In this capital city, comprising about five hundred thousand inhabitants, were established a voluminous library, and vast theological schools, in which men of every religious order, and of every phase of faith, met and exchanged religious ideas, and borrowed new doctrines, with which they remodeled their former systems of faith, amounting in some cases to an entire change of their long-established creeds.

3. In these theological schools the Jewish sect, which afterward became the founders of Christianity, were extensively represented; for, let it be noted, its first disciples and founders had all been Jews, probably of the Essene sect. "For a long time the Christians were but a Jewish sect," says M. Reuss' "History of Christian Theology." Alexander had, previous to this time (that is, about 330 b. c.), subjected the whole of Western Asia to his dominions, including, of course, "The Holy Land"--Judea.

4. By this act a large portion of the Jewish nation were transferred from their own country to Alexandria. And this number was afterward vastly increased by Alexander's successor, Ptolemy Sotor, who carried off and settled in that credal city one hundred thousand more Jews.

5. As the result, in part, of these repeated calamities, "the Lord's chosen people" were literally broken up. They lost their law, lost their leader and lawgiver, lost their language, lost the control of their country, the "_Promised Land"_ which (they verily believed) the Lord had deeded to them _in fee simple_, and ratified in the high court of heaven, and had declared they should hold and possess forever. And finally they partially lost their nationality, being literally dissolved and broken up; and were finally almost lost to history--the ten tribes disappearing entirely.

6. The Jews had ever manifested a p.r.o.neness for copying after the religious customs of their heathen neighbors, and engrafting their doctrines into their own creeds, as their bible history furnishes ample proof.

7. In Alexandria a very superior opportunity was afforded for doing this, excelling in this respect any previous period of their history.

8. The shattered condition of their own religion, with all its conventional creeds, customs, and ceremonies, now suspended and literally prostrated, as above shown, vastly augmented the temptation ever rife with them to make another change in their religion, and subject their creed to another installment of new doctrines, by which it became Christianity.

9. The liberal character and tolerant spirit of the political and religious inst.i.tutions of the kingdom of Alexandria, with its vast and attractive library of two hundred thousand volumes, established princ.i.p.ally by Ptolemy Phila-delphus, with other attractive features already pointed out, furnished great facilities, as well as increased temptations to religious propagandists to absorb new theories, and make new creeds out of the vast medley of religious doctrines and speculative dogmas preached and propagated in that royal city by the disciples and representatives of nearly every religious system then in existence, brought together by the attractions above specified.

10. Hence every consideration would lead us to conclude, taken in connection with the facts above stated, and the well-known borrowing proclivity and imitative propensity of the Jews, that they would not, and could not, withstand the overweening and overpowering temptation to make another radical change in their religion by a new draught on the boundless reservoir of speculative ideas, religious tenets, and specious theories then glowing in the popular schools of Alexandria.