sounds, and know all thoughts, and see all former births, and watch the course of all transmigrations, and learn the cause of all causes, what advantage is derived therefrom, if the acquirement of this power is to lead to results so insignificant? For what is the next stage in the supposed uprising of this privileged priest? He has done all that he has to do; the work of existence is completed; life's labour, in births innumerable, is over; the goal, the long anticipated reward, the final consummation of the whole series of births and deaths, is now attained. But what is it? NOTHINGNESS.

In the whole story of humanity; in all the confessions of heathen philosophy; in all that we learn from the misery produced by caste, slavery, and the foul deeds of war; in all the conclusions to which disappointed man has come, in his far wanderings from God; there is nothing more cheerless, more depressing, or more afflictive, than the revelations of the Suttanta in which Buddha tries to set forth the highest privilege of the highest order of sentient being. As we read it, we should be ready to rebuke, with all severity, the religious guide who thus takes from man all that is eminent in present attainment, and all that is bright in anticipation, did we not know that its representations arose from ignorance of the mercy and love of the one and only Lord of earth and heaven, and that they are another illustration of the apostle's words, "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." But the angelic song has been heard, proclaiming "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people," through Him who was then born "in the

city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord," and by whose atonement upon the cross there is now offered to every one who, through faith, will accept it, a "joy unspeakable, and full of glory," and "to them who by patient endurance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, ETERNAL LIFE."

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CHAPTER IV.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BUDDHISM.

1. GOTAMA BUDDHA.

In the preceding pages, I have spoken of Buddha as a real personage; I have attributed to an individual words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the Pitakas as said and done by that individual; but in this I have used the language of the Buddhist, and not that of my own conviction or belief. I will not say that I think no such person as Sákya Singha ever existed; but I affirm that we cannot know anything about him with certainty; and that, as it is not possible to separate the myth from the truth, we cannot rely implicitly on any one statement that is made in relation to him, either in the Text or Commentary. There is doubt as to his birth-place, his race, and the age in which he lived; and in a still greater degree, about almost every other event connected with his history. There are a few things said about him that we might believe, because they are such as are common to man; but even upon these we cannot look without suspicion, from the overcrowding of the page that records them with the most glaring untruths; and whether Gótama, prince and philosopher, ever existed or not, we are quite certain that the Gótama

Buddha of the Pitakas is an imaginary being, and never did exist.

2.

THE LEGENDS OF BUDDHA AND MAHOMET

COMPARED.

It will be said, "How do you account, then, for the production of these works, if the sage whose teachings they profess to contain, and whose miraculous power they set forth, never did teach these doctrines, and never did perform these supernatural deeds ?" In answering this question, there may be an apparent difficulty; but it is not real. The fables invented by the Buddhists have had their counterpart in other ages, and among other people. There are the Puránas and other works of the Brahmans, and the Zend Avesta of the Parsees, abounding with exaggerations almost equally extravagant. The Talmuds of the Jews are of a similar character. In classic history, without mentioning the innumerable myths about imaginary heroes and gods, we have Pythagoras of Samos, Apollonius of Tyana, Apuleius the African, and Melampus of Argos, who may have been real personages, but have become mythical through the miraculous endowments that are attributed to them, and the tales that have been invented about their knowledge and power. In fact, wherever the word of God is unknown, or it is regarded as a sealed book to be read only by the priest, all classes and races have formed for themselves, like the Buddhists, a mythology, with a host of imaginary beings, whom they have invested with prodigious strength, unbounded wisdom, or unearthly purity.

The manner in which these inventions arise, may be traced the most clearly in the history of Mahomet. Against the supposition that legends of this character would be invented about the impostor of Mecca, there is the existence of the Koran, collected soon after his death, and the fact that he laid no claim to the possession of miraculous powers. But about 200 years after the Hegira, the traditions respecting him had multiplied to such an extent, that it was thought necessary to collect them together, and separate the trustworthy from the fabulous.

"Reliance upon oral traditions," says Dr. Weil, "at a time when they were transmitted by memory, alone, and every day produced new divisions among the professors of Islam, opened up a wide field for fabrication and distortion. There was nothing easier, when required to defend any religious or political system, than to appeal to an oral tradition of the prophet. The nature of these so-called traditions, and the manner in which the name of Mahomet was abused to support all possible lies and absurdities, may be gathered most clearly from the fact that Bockhári, who travelled from land to land to gather from the learned the traditions they had received, came to the conclusion, after many years' sifting, that out of 600,000 traditions ascertained by him to be then current, only 4,000 were authentic." We may remark, that Mahomet began to contemplate his pretended mission about six centuries after Christ, and Gótama is represented as looking towards his exalted office the same number of years before Christ. Nor is this the only resemblance in the circumstances of the two men. As there was no pain to the mother of